Servant

Back to Dobbs, where the ratio of women, children, and dogs to Provincial soldiers is just right for an 18th-century frontier fort. Sandbyland. Lovely Carolina weather: 80 degrees during the day, 30 at night. The site director kindly allowed his drunkenness to be a valet for two days, a chance to up the common soldier game and stay busy. The Letenant's dual role made him hard to locate at times, but his possessions were always handy.

Friday was school day at the site. Showing 500 children how a musket works has it's moments. When asked about the practicality of the mid-18th century uniform, one young girl quipped "it was probably the swag of the day." Still time in the evening for work. Shoes need cleaning and black ball. Hot water from the laundress is helpful. The officer's coat is thoroughly brushed, tape restitched, and a pocket flap repaired. A vain fellow, our officer cannot grow long hair, so his wig needs redressing.

All this happens after hours, which begs the question if you interpret history and no one is there to see it, what's the point? The skills are still useful. The laundresses experimented with indigo in their rinse water to get just the right shade of blue for white linen. The public has a role to play, but are they required? It's a challenge to mesh the duties of the soldier with those of the servant: dressing both of us before formation, and preparing a noon day meal right after drill. Always keep the port glass full.

 Meanwhile, Red Shoes laundry boils dozens of shirts and stockings in the blazing sun. After drying, stockings are darned and repaired. Not everyone has this level of obsession. Others get bored easily. The officer's clean shirts have no marks: time to paint initials on them. The scrounged tablecloth needs mending. Here is hobby as work. Dressing the part and learning facts is only half the battle.

With enough fatigue it's possible to stuff a huge rag down a dry musket barrel while cleaning. Rookie mistake #5 means a stuck rammer and barrel removal with primitive tools. Thanks to Todd and his viselike grip the breech plug came out. Blacksmiths are 18th-century superheros. The servant role requires further exploration, but next time we'll start an early 19th century summer suit.      

Disneyland

A full couple of weeks, these past. Film continues to answer the need for more gritty immersion, even if only for one or two takes. Black powder charges buried in potting soil with cork fragments are safe, but still ring your bell. The air bursts are worse.

Faux soldiers can never come close to the terror experienced in real combat, but the dread of remote detonations, and the concussion is exhausting. Loading on the run and falling are good tests for clothes gear and skills.

 It's nice to relax indoors with a new waistcoat. Fit is excellent, it could be longer. The side vented needed to be shortened a couple of inches. With so many great sites full of talented people, it's easy to become complacent. Living history land is mostly populated by good folks, which makes the appearance of bad apples glaring. Irony is not lost on the drunk tailor when normal 18th century behavior rears it's ugly head.

Sadly, physical altercations are no longer a civil matter. Pain is inspiring. Shunning still seems to work, and having units police up their drunks is pretty efficient. The spirit of 1976 lingers. Women sometimes feel unsafe (or worse.) New ideas are looked down upon. Humans hate change, love routine for routine's sake. Best to inspire young people, charm them away from the creaking edifice that was reenacting.  

Drunk

Helyar's Company of the 7th Regiment of Foot waits. Smoke and shouts drift up the hill towards them. The crash of hundreds of muskets and a ball buzzing off a tree make them forget momentarily how hungry they are. If only the liquor had not run out.

General Cornwallis is concerned, desertions are up, and men are being captured as they forage for whiskey. He knows Greene's army is huge and he needs every man to attack the rebels.

We're on the home stretch of the mid-century waistcoat, there are enough buttons to close it and work on the side seams. Apparently, the back piece was cut for a POW or child. No idea why it is so small. Oh well. Thankfully, there are surviving period waistcoats with pieced side seams. Wearers gain weight, cloth runs short, tailors drink. Since it's not lined there are more seams to whip, but... All of this will be hidden by the coat anyway.

 More potential drunkenness. As with coats, a good deal of fitting happens in the shoulder seams. Since this garment is double-breasted, with lapel linings it is temping to finish the neck seam before assembly. It should work. Sometimes the neck opening humps as seen in the left of this picture. The trick is to remember.

Best to open the turned bits of the neck seam, sew the shoulder seams together, THEN roll the neck seam as one piece, as shown on the right. All that is left is to do up the arm holes and hem the bottom.

For something completely different, it's time to be an officer's servant for an event. Not enough gentlemen with servants.

Details

He reeks of tobacco more that usual. Watchman Langford sits on his cold bed, undressing. He smoked his week's allowance in a single night. The glob of what looks like egg on his shoe must be Samuel Gray's brains. At least he has stopped shaking: a mixture of exhaustion, fear, and rage. As he enters his tiny room at dawn he barely notices the new red cloth hanging from his neighbor's window. Smallpox quarantine. Time for some rest. Not sleep, there has been no sleep for days. He hates his job and he is beginning to hate his adoptive home of Boston.

We are in strange territory. It's fun to dress in old timey clothes and shoot muskets, but it gets boring. It feels strangely inadequate to play the part of an actual person in 1770 Boston and not know about his life and motivations.  We are trapped between costuming and some sort of experimental theater. At the same time, the fossil view of history is equally strange. Some tiny percentage of dinosaurs actually died in the right place at the right time to get fossilized. Discovery Channel does cool shows, but there are tons of critters we may never know about. So many missing details.

Replicating what survives in museums and basing clothing on one or two period images is better than just making things up, but there is so much more out there. Most reenactors spend weekends pretending to be at war, socializing on Saturday night, with repeat performances on Sunday (often slower due to hangover.) If there is interaction with the public, it takes the form of a lecture on historic facts or basic musket function. Humans are comforted by ritual, and the public has come to expect this routine. They may or may not learn anything.

While faux battles are exciting, the dogs, chickens, laundry, drunks, women, and children seen in period illustrations are missing. It's the fossil view. Living history needs more (God help me) Hollywood. There has to be a way to add mundane things back.

These folks are well on their way. While the site raises money to rebuilt the mid-18th century fort that once stood here, life on the Carolina frontier continues. Rumors of Cherokee attack bring refugees from surrounding farms. Laundry gets washed, beer is brewed. Have a look inside the cabin the Provincials built to survive the winter until the fort is finished.

Four months after he was hired, Langford watched the regulars march into Boston with fife and drum, colors flying. His life became much more complicated. No more walking his beat alone. His partner, Constable Burdick never hesitated or showed fear. When soldiers disobeyed him or caused trouble, Burdick simply beat them. As an Anglican, Langford loves his king, but his representatives treat everyone in the town like dirt. Night watchmen have little authority, even less with men in uniform.

The winter of 1770 terrified Langford. He was used to scuffling with groups of teens some nights, chasing the howling urchins with their three-legged dog, but never catching them. He watched a pretty street vendor steal fence posts for firewood, but chose not to stop stop her. Now there were mobs marching with effigies, bond fires, children shot, houses being torn down, and he felt helpless. Foreign sailors from god-knows-where brawled and swore.  His threats of jail fell on deaf ears. Burdick started carrying a sword. Home and safe, Langford curled in a ball and closed his eyes. The grim face of Private Killroy illuminated by the pan flash of his musket would not leave him.

Why can be as important as what you wear.    

Assumptions

Progress. Being trapped in an airport in New England helps. Creating twenty-three button holes, only fourteen (at most) of which will ever be used seems silly. The Taylor's Complete Guide (1796) reminds us: "...we should recommend the making holes down both sides for the advantage of the wearer, lest any unforeseen accident should happen from dirt, and the wearer's day's pleasure be spoiled, by not having the opportunity of changing the other side of the breast."

Since the lapels can be turned out, the first three buttonholes have their knots towards the inside to match the gradual shift of the lining edge. With any luck this will be ready the first weekend in March. The Boston Massacre.

Night watchman Edward Langford saw a man killed that night. We know because his testimony helped convict a soldier. Recreating an actual person is strange. A quick image search produces the typical 18th-century English watchman. The hat, coat, staff, lantern and wooden ratchet (noise maker) appear over and over. Nice dog too. Many cities established similar patrols at the end of the 17th century. At first it was a civic duty, later a city job.

It's tempting to replicate this chap, except he is in London, not Boston. Time to dig deeper. The Massachusetts legislature rewrote the laws pertaining to Watches and Wards in 1796: "Be it further Enacted, that whenever a Watch shall be so appointed and agreed upon, different from a Constable's watch, the number and qualifications of the persons whereof it shall consist, shall also be agreed upon by the said Inhabitants of the Town, observing the rule prescribed in the first Section of this Act; and one sober, discreet, able-bodied householder shall be appointed officer of the watch, by said Justices, & Selectmen, or
Selectmen alone (as the case may be) to take the charge and command of such watch, who, as the badge of his office, shall carry a quarter-pike, with a spire on the top thereof; and every Watchman, as well in this as in the Constable's watch, shall carry a Staff with a Bill fastened thereon, as is usual. And the powers & duties of the said Officer & Watchmen shall be the same as are before prescribed in the second Section of this Act in the case of a Constable's Watch."

As is usual? The Bill is a Medieval weapon, muscular cousin of the fascine knife. No doubt, the Tower of London was glad to dispose of their surplus in the colonies. Boston's King Street watch house used one to grab a prisoner in their fight with some red coats in 1769. Perhaps the pole arms were for such emergencies. With help from J.L. Bell's spectacular blog we can look closer at Boston. Yankee thrift meant no ratchets or swords, but a staff and a lantern are indicated. The ratchet was cheap on eBay, too (damn it.) As Kitty would say "context is critical." Many thanks to her for help with this post. 

What IS that dog doing there?

 

Buckram

William Sidney Mount created this fantastic Rustic Dance After a Sleigh Ride. It's a chance to study everyday life in New York around 1830. Just look at it. So much going on here. Let's just focus on men's neckware for now. Dancing machine, in his yellow waistcoat, opted for droopy comfort: unbuttoning his shirt collar and tying on a kerchief.

More formal chap, in black, either added whalebone support for his red neck cloth or he is wearing a stock. The secret to stocks, all the high collars on the coats, and the crisp edges on the men's garments is buckram. Most commonly linen, buckram is an interface material that is stiff, flexible, waterproof and can be ironed. Buckram's secret is one of humankind's oldest trade items: plant gum.

Desert plants evolved an interesting way of defending against scrapes and cuts. Cellulose breakdown creates a sticky fluid that hardens in air. Goat's thorn, which grows abundantly in Iran, produces Gum tragacanth. Tragacanth is still used in an insane number of products, from pastels, to cake decoration, as a burn salve, and to stick cigars closed. It's harder to obtain, but unlike other gums it doesn't stick to itself. "Gum dragon" as it was called, was common in 18th and 19th century tailoring and leather work.

    Gum arabic comes from several species of Acacia trees found in Sudan. It's used in shoe polish, envelope adhesive, drug capsules, in ceramic glazes and painting. Either gum can be found in liquid and powdered form. Arabic dissolves in water, but it takes twenty four hours. Mix two parts water to one part powder. Refrigeration is required for long term storage.

Brush it on thinly, both sides of the cloth and allow to dry. The result is vaguely like fiberglass, and nothing like linen with the sizing still in it. Powder is cheaper, but tedious to mix, best for small batches. Leather and cake suppliers are the best source for liquid gum dragon. One coat is pretty stiff, but two can't hurt. MOST important: the cloth shrinks when it dries. Make a big enough sheet to cut out all the parts you need.

Another Year

Happy New Year! The holiday was merry and Federal swag-filled, while construction of the Velocipede proceeds apace. Brother Joseph pointed out something excellent on eBay:

These chaps are Italian, of indeterminate age, but could pass for 18th century. Plus they are sharp has hell. All of eight bucks, SCORE! They needed a polish and some oil, the only complaint: the drunk tailor is left-handed. Perhaps some button hole chisels will turn up soon. Thanks, Joseph.

Our sleazy waistcoat is progressing slowly but surely. Cold and darkness makes 23 button holes feel like 700. May have to add the expanding waist seam inserts as well. The black button covers are total conjecture, but fun: gives it a Nazi/White Stripes vibe. While the project pile is deep, it can be hard not to get distracted by something new and quick.

Hammer provided such a distraction. This thing turned out okay, but it's a bit too tight and stiff. Easy enough to fix either of those issues, but further research indicates that surviving early 19th century white silk stocks are for dress up.

There is a horrible, checked, Federal summer suit in our future. One where none of pattern lines up on any of the seams, and all the button covers are exactly the same. The kind that when it shows up in a museum collection you have to wonder.

The only way to improve that ensemble is with  clashing, checked neckware of some kind. Behold:

Courtesy of my Muse at the Rhode Island Historical Society. She also provided cloth that matches. What's not to love about a gigantic seam down the front and badly matched pattern? The tabs appear to be edged in wool tape. The only thing missing from this Federal Period clip-on bow tie is just that. A bow tie.

A wee, pieced-together bow tie can only enhance the awfulness. While we're at it let's make some buckram from scratch.