Just saw this elsewhere, thought it appropriate to crosspost...
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/11/born-a-century-too-soon.html
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Comments
He looks happy, the others
He looks happy, the others not so much.
Difficult to tell ...
... and it's easy to assume people in the 19th century were dismal because that's how they appear in photographs. Photography was in its infancy then; the film was slow and needed long exposures so portraits inevitably show the subjects with fixed expressions which appear very serious and solemn.
It's surprising that Howard makes no attempt to disguise his very masculine hair cut.
Robi
The Part
The part in the middle of the hair was something only women did in the 1860s. By parting his hair as he has, the lad is doing his best to come across as feminine.
As to the expressions of the mother and sister, I would not read too much into that. Smiling for photos was not done. Even a cursory examination of photos of the era will show the expressions of most of the subjects were like those in the photo.
Nancy Cole
"You may be what you resolve to be."
T.J. Jackson
Then, as now...
...there was a fairly wide variation in men's hairstyles, depending on personal taste and whether or not he was balding.
Parisian composers: The Circle of the Rue Royale, 1868
John Tyler
Thomas Henry Huxley
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Great
And how many of the men you have in your example have their hair parted in the middle? That style was not adopted by men until well after the War of Northern Aggression.
Nancy Cole
"You may be what you resolve to be."
T.J. Jackson
Handeling objections
Georg Friedrich Händel- Early 1700's
Are you suggesting that this style was meant to imply that he was attempting to appear "feminine?" How about King George III?
Young King George and his tutor
Fashion is just that, fashion. Individuals have always existed who didn't pay much attention to the fashions of the day, and fashions change essentially at random.
The typical "side part" is meant to make otherwise unsymmetrical and "ugly" people look better, and it also looks a bit less silly on men with creeping male pattern baldness, so you see a lot of men with side parts, or no parts. If one's features are symmetrical -- a typical measure of "beauty" (or handsomeness) -- a side part is far less becoming than a center-part or a swept-back look, because it makes a balanced face look unbalanced.
The original picture clearly shows an unbreeched boy, who makes no attempt to hide his masculinity, is posed in a decidedly unladylike manner, and indeed has that typical boyish insouciance that is a hallmark of the species.
We generally prefer the more genteel term: Civil War, so as not to descend into etiological terminology problems like "The War to End Southern Savagery and Brutality" versus "The War of Northern Aggression." The first is relatively neutral, whilst the others take sides in a quarrel in which one side lost.
Would any of us now be proud to live in a state in which it was legal to own slaves? To use enslaved women as whores? To live in, let's say, a slave-holding Georgia, which cruelly expelled the Cherokee, killing many outright, and leaving almost a third of those expelled to die of starvation and exposure along the "Trail of Tears?" The expulsions were designed to free up land for white slaveholders. As it happens, my paternal grandfather was half Cherokee, of the Bird Clan, so I have to admit that I have a partisan interest.
Cheers,
Puddin'
Jefferson abhorred slavery, of which he wrote, "it is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other." Jefferson's first draft of the Virginia State Constitution included a clause stipulating that all people born on Virginia soil would be born free. The good male landholders of Virginia, the only people who held the Franchise is this "land of the free," didn't agree, so this laudable provision didn't make it into the final document.
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Nancy likes to use the phrase
Nancy likes to use the phrase "War of Northern Aggression" as a wind-up, and it works!
I've heard that genteel southerners after the war, when in mixed company (that is, when Yankees were present), used the phrase "the late unpleasantness between the States".
Kris
Kris
{I leave a trail of Kudos as I browse the site. Be careful where you step!}
Mother Grimm…
…probably has every reason to look as she does. In the mid to late 19th century sensitised materials used for studio portraits—usually wet plates—were exceedingly slow, requiring exposures of several seconds, during which time the sitter had to remain rigidly still, “watching the birdieâ€. I have a copy of the British Journal of Photography Almanac dated in the 1880s and it is full of instruments of torture that photographers used to clamp their sitters in a rigid pose. Mother Grimm was probably a very jolly person when she was not clamped up for an exposure. Of course she might just have been dying for a wee and, in Victorian times, that was a totally UNMENTIONABLE subject—rather like that 3-letter word beginning with “Sâ€, which although being such a verbal no-no, the good Victorian ladies and gentlemen seemed to enjoy greatly—judging by the size of their families. Rude things!
Gabi.
Gabi.
Three letter word
What, 'sin'?
Someone has to do
a story on that one, if only to explain his smirk and his mother's expression as if she's just sat in something cold and wet.
Angharad
Angharad
Breeching...
Breeching for boys was usually done by eight, but it wasn't completely uncommon to be delayed.
According to the article, the 17th century French cleric and memoirist François-Timoléon de Choisy is supposed to have been dressed in girl's clothes until he was eighteen. It wasn't common, but there are outliers everywhere.
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
My father ...
... was born in 1909 and I've seen a photograph of him at about 4/5 years old with long ringlets and wearing a dress. It used to hang in a rarely used room at home. Don't know what happened to it - probably thrown away when he moved to a small bungalow when he eventually retired.
Robi
I told you
what would happen if you got your good clothes dirty before the photgraphy session!
I love the expresions on their faces
You have to wonder about the story going on here. Mom is definately not pleased with what is going on, sis seems like this may embarrass her the rest of her life and "Howard" is fulfilled. Photos were not cheap back then so this was not a lark. The dresses seem to match.
Have to wonder who Howard grew up to be?
Just a thought!
ALISON
If you magnify this picture some intriguing points come out.Namely,'Mothers' short hair,her jaw line and the thickness of
her neck.Also,the jawline of the 'sister' and compare the size of her hands to Howards.There may be more to this picture than meets the eye.
ALISON
I wonder what someone like an Orthopodist would say?
Apparently there are certain ratios that occur that are different between male and female. The finger one is not the only one. It would be interesting to know more about the family; where they lived and country of origin.
My own family originated in America in Eastern Virginia and it is documented that we slowly migrated across the south, winding up in Oklahoma by around 1880. Some family history people have told me that interbreeding was rife, and with some of our genetic and mental health issues, I'd say it is a good indicator.
Much Peace
Gwendolyn
Short hair
I understood that short hair, in that period, would only be found on women during or immediately after an illness. For some reason, probably cleanliness, it would be cut short if they were confined to bed for any extended time. The removed hair would often be kept wrapped in paper in a drawer - for what reason I haven't a clue.
There is an example of this behaviour if you read the Sherlock Holmes story "The Copper Beeches". Now, that's a story which begs to be made into a TG tale!
Hmm. Now I look at that picture a little more closely, are any of them actually female?
Penny
Female
Penny, when I looked at that the first time,I thought "Dad in a dress too"