Across the Waves of Time

Radegonde, here for the history, mostly 18th century. I also do palaeography. If you want me to try and transcribe something, feel free to drop it in my inbox! 

[acrossthewavesoftime]

Merry Christmas (from New York, 1776)!

I know that somewhere, sometime, I reblogged the original post but cannot find it for the life of me, so here is my little edit that feels seasonally appropriate.

...Because when your name is Mary, it's not always the carpenter who takes your (pregnant) self on a strenuous journey away from home (I'm looking at you, Thomas Baddeley) who is suited to raise your firstborn son.

Sometimes, it's the starkly middle aged British army general with a receding hairline.

[jack-the-sol]

TURИ - That HAS To Be an Innuendo

[acrossthewavesoftime]

(I admit that the gif is not very historically informed, but it sprung to mind reading the post and the tags)

I know that TURN didn't try to be as historically informed as it could have been (though it unfortunately was marketed as such), but there is no sound historical basis for suggesting that Clinton was gay, much as the character himself was a pleasant addition - they could just have made a name up and gone with a fictional general instead of using Clinton, though, if they wanted a (very much openly) gay high-ranking British officer.

In fact, Clinton had 11 children by 3 different women, a lady he had met while campaigning in Germany during the Seven Years' War, his wife Harriot, and his partner Mary Baddeley (although both were eventually widowed, they never married over the course of their almost 2 decades-long relationship that only ended with Clinton's death). Fathering 11 children, 10 of them in 2 long-term relationships that only ended when one partner died, are definitively a conscious choice.

Clinton himself left a memoir about the absolutely incredible story how he met and fell in love with Mary Baddeley - involving him immediately assuming that he would be allowed a part in helping raise the pregnant Mary Baddeley's baby, him trying to shield her from sexual harrassment by a British officer, Mary in turn, becoming his housekeeper, polishing up his finances, a shipwreck, involuntary separation, a runaway aristocrat, and a surprising amount of detailed negotiation of consent and boundaries between the pair. Although we do not have Mary's perspective, it is rather touching and surprising from a modern perspective to read about an 18th century man not using his position of power over a woman - in fact, it seems to have been important to him that there was mutual affection and attraction between them and therefore accepted that Mary at first turned down his suggestion of adding a sexual relationship to their relationship as she felt uncomfortable embarking on an affair as a married woman. Reading between the lines of the memoir, according to Clinton, Mary decided on the precise day and time they first became intimate with one another.

For all I know, the very feeble rumour that Clinton could have been gay has been mentioned in connection with him having kept an erotic poem written by John André - which could have a dozen different reasons than it being a lover's memento.

Clinton in general felt more at ease among the younger men of his staff, finding it difficult to socialise with men of a similar age and rank. André was also a personal friend, and following his execution, his effects were, if memory serves, returned to his family - it doesn't seem unlikely that Clinton, himself certainly not a prude, could have kept the poem fir reasons of sentimentality a testament of the late André's vivacious character, adding to the saucy words the emotional dimension of the poem being written in his own hand, or simply, to remove the naughty verses in order to curate André's memory - erotic poetry is certainly not something one would pass on to a grieving family without a second thought.

I am all for queer representation in media with historical settings, but Clinton was not a good, or obvious choice. Simcoe, the historical one, not what the series made of him, on the other hand could have been interesting to work with. He wanted to put his own life on the line to rescue André, and there is a poem written to him by a comrade in arms/old school friend that could possibly transcend the conventions of the day which allowed for a much more, to people with a modern socialisation, 'romamtically-coded' language even in platonic contexts. On top of that, one of Simcoe's closest friends later in life was his wife's best friend, who may have been romantically inclined towards women and led an unconventional life as a self-reliant writer, turning down at least one proposal by a man. She was later trusted with raising the Simcoe-daughters while their parents moved to Canada for John Graves' appointnent as Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, so it can be assumed that Simcoe himself was at least socially open-minded towards people with lifestyles that did not fit into the moulds of societal conventions.

In terms of historical license, I would have loved to see a scene between Mary Woodhull and Mary Baddeley (who could have been used as an interesting recurring character) - both women of good family fallen on hard times due to the incompetency of their husbands, and with little sons of a similar age, but ultimately finding themselves on different sides of the conflict.

[marquisevonobst]

He's always on my mind...

[acrossthewavesoftime]

"This place is cursed," I mutter as out of the blue, a dangly ornament falls off my vintage porcelain chandelier, blissfully ignoring the little 19th century portrait of a shifty-looking gentleman with poor beard choices on the shelf that's so ugly nobody else wanted it (from a "for free" bin, no less), the early Art Nouveau epergne formerly of a castle that no longer exists on the table, the sofa that was first sat upon some 160-ish years ago, the 1789 portrait miniature of a mother and baby son who both died young, a jug with an inscription on unrequited love and loneliness dated 1802, and the portrait of a nameless 1780s gentleman bought because I was persuaded by his utterly charming, puppy-eyed smile that he wanted nothing more than to come home with me

[acrossthewavesoftime]

Yesterday I learned that some pizza places will actually deliver your order to a location/address given as "the ruins of [Place Name] castle". At dusk.

[acrossthewavesoftime]

So I bought a cheap calligraphy pen for A Project. And on thr back of the packaging, I see this:

This:

I am seriously unsure whether someone at the place responsible for the production, distribution and packaging of these calligraphy pens simply doesn't believe in the Act of Union of 1801 and this is a subtle political statement, or if it is just a silly, yet honest mistake.

But yeah, according to the person who designs the packaging of reasonably priced calligraphy pens, the Act of Union never happened and Northern Ireland is not part of the UK.

I like how I did not find out about these important news via the usual hellsite meme or a reputable enough news medium, but through buying a pen that will let me fake the effect of a quill convinvingly enough for people who do not usually read 18th century handwriting.

[drinkthemlock]

ur boyfriend so ugly your picture with him would be titled “death and the maiden”

[acrossthewavesoftime]

Today I learned that people in a quiet archive reading room do notice when you inadvertently exclaim the name of a historical person you like whose handwriting you did not expect to find in a stash of barely organised papers.

[thepaintedchateau]

...time will take us where we need to be...

[acrossthewavesoftime]

Since nobody added the original location yet: this is the garden of Schloss Weesenstein in Saxony, Germany. One of Weesenstein's peculiarities is that it evolved from a medieval fortified structure to a minor residence of the House of Wettin over time, meaning that more and more additions were added to its original medieval core, resulting in the peculiarity that in the medieval part of Weesenstein, and with the house expanding downhill due to its location on a rock, the ground floor is level with the first floor in the rooms that were added over time.

Have some more exterior shots I of Weesenstein two years ago:

[acrossthewavesoftime]

In today's unexpected adventures, I accidentally became a stowaway on an inland ferry.

[klainebayeuxtapestry]

every period drama does this every period drama is a reflection of the fashion and social mores and values of the age it was produced in you are just living in the 2020s and can notice it everything is about the way we view the past at a certain moment of history this is completely universal throughout like all of history this is how the victorians made art about the middle ages like i agree lots of period dramas right now are sort of dumb but lots of period dramas have always been sort of dumb you just weren’t living at the time they were made but i promise if you think about it for five seconds those movies have the EXACT fashion and values of the year they were produced. whatever whatever i don’t care and also think movies are often bad or whatever but this isn’t a real problem. historical accuracy is a lie and everything is made to process the time we live in because that is our reality. the good movies will survive and the bad movies will be forgotten.

[acrossthewavesoftime]

This... is not how it works.

Historical accuracy is indeed a concept that as such cannot hold up for obvious reasons (which any historian worth their salt will be happy to confirm to you - this is honestly no new debate among historians), but any good historical production should try to be historically informed anyways, and that, contrary to the absolute term of accuracy, is a spectrum that can mean different things depending on what the production means to do, and what the budget is - I have seen stellar small-time stage productions that felt more true to the period they meant to represent than big Netflix hit dramas with millions behind them.

To give a stark example, I have watched both an opera with a monster truck and a live donkey on stage and a play at a small theatre which had the most dedicated costume designer making early 1800s clothes for the actors directly based on one specific fashion magazine and both were visually pleasing, and true to the material at the basis of the respective productions, but in different ways. Historicity in art is a spectrum, and one that absolutely allows for conscious breaks, experiments and re-interpretation.

Any good piece of media should absolutely have relevance to the people who are the intended audience, and playing around with just how much historical elements one wants to represent and how can be a good tool for staging historical fiction for the stage/screen/even in novels.

Talking about the stage/screen formats explicitly here, often, especially the visual language is plain lazy. It's easy to try to draw the viewer in by making the characters and sets visually familiar by putting them in cheap little plastic prom dresses and hiring actors that appeal to a present-day beauty standard, but it's mostly lazy and boring. Just set your Tiktok romance novel adaption in a 2020s insurance firm already, and spare everyone else the polyester and faux-'antique' AliExpress props.

It also begs the question why you so desperately need your production to have a historical setting when you don't even feel like committing to something as basic as the visuals of the period to some degree, which can ideally be used as a means of story-telling as well.

I personally adore The First Churchills (1969), representing court life in England between the reigns of Charles II and Queen Anne (so a span of some 30+ years) - there was evidently not much money behind it, the eye-liner on the female protagonists was a sound 300 years off, but boy, did they commit to changing the hairstyles as with time passing in the series as characters aged and fashion trends came and went. The same goes for The Prince Regent (1981), following the life of the man after whom the Regency period was named - George IV, which goes so far as to utilise extant letters from the people portrayed as a basis for some dialogues. Both series also had a stellar cast of actors who actually resembled the known depictions of the people they were portraying.

On a different end of the spectrum is The Favourite (2018), set at the court of Queen Anne in the early 1700s. I have my gripes with it where some plot points are concerned, but the costumes combining modern techniques such as denim fabrics and laser-cut lace and historical silhouettes added a nice touch visually and supported the story the film meant to tell.

Going beyond the mere visuals, as someone who has training in the field, I cannot watch a lot of especially romance-focussed modern historical dramas because the trend to modernise how people several hundred years in the past would have met and married their partners to appeal to present-day viewers confuses me - in the world these characters allegedly live in, their actions make no sense - and on that thought, we're back at either committing to some basic understanding of the period (this time of societal conventions of the day) or setting more dramas in modern-day office settings already, please.

For a modern film that modernised the plot in a way that did not detract from the historical setting or indeed the original material, see e. g. Emma (2020) - contrary to the original novel by Jane Austen, the film makes a point to highlight the friendship between Emma and Harriet and develops it a little further, veering somewhat from the source material, but in a way that feels authentic to the original plot, and at the same time carries a touching message.

Lastly, "the good movies will survive and the bad movies will be forgotten" is a short-sighted fallacy - you may not know about a great many excellent historical films and series because they were shot decades ago, and are simply hard to find because their being remembered relies on one dedicated individual in a small town in the Czech Republic who recorded the episodes on video tapes when they ran on plain old linear TV in the 80s, digitised them and uploads them to YouTube every time they get taken down again, whereas more modern productions are readily available to rent/buy both as physical copies and on stream (NB: if anyone here knows where I can find the Dutch drama Charlotte Sophie Bentinck (1996) please do tell - I read about its existence but cannot find it anywhere).

As evidenced by the films/series I cited, my bias is that my knowledge is very euro-centristic, there are likely many more good arguments to be made, and excellent pieces of media to be recommended that other people are much more competent to talk about than I am.

But my point stands - false advertising is bad. If you say that your piece of media is "historical", give the viewer some historicity!

[marquisevonobst]

POV: You found a letter, which apparently hasn't been quoted yet, in which Willem addresses Hanni as “Mon Cousin”. @acrossthewavesoftime

[acrossthewavesoftime]

Cousin of a King

A young Hans Willem Bentinck (l) and William, Prince of Orange (r). Detail from a portrait depicting William and Bentinck with a black servant boy and a white female figure, possibly serving as a personification of the province of Utrecht or the Netherlands in general, detail. Anonymous, c. mid-1670s, oil on canvas. Via RKD Images.

For all interested, here's a digitised copy of the letter in the Dutch Nationaalarchief.

The address "Mon Cousin" used by a person of a significantly higher to refer to a person of a significantly lower social status is no small thing within the strictly hierarchical and formulaic codes of conduct of the time.

Among the ruling families in Europe at the time, "Mon Cousin" would have been an appropriate address for either a monarch of equal rank, highlighting personal respect and regard for the addressee, or (or rather, often and) a close blood-relation of a (near-)equal rank.

To contextualise the significance: I was previously lucky to see a letter written by William III in his own hand to his cousin, the Electoral Prince Friedrich of Brandenburg (later Friedrich I King in Prussia and grandfather to Friedrich II "the Great") in an archive. In this letter, Friedrich is "Monsieur" to William, and only as he closes the letter does William speak of himself as "your cousin G[uillaume] Prince d'Orange" - which is essentially merely stating a biological fact - Friedrich and William were first cousins through the siblings Luise Henriette and William II of Orange.

Here, writing to Bentinck, William directly addresses his friend as "Mon Cousin", and puts further emphasis on the phrase and the meaning it entails by repeating it in closing the letter, which he signs with "Guillaume" only, utilising no further titles - which is striking, taking into account that the letter dates to early 1690, meaning William had very recently also taken the title of King of England as well as that of Stadtholder of the United Provinces. It is clearly William's intention to convey his trust and affection to Bentinck, and highlight the close personal connection between (not-so-) plain "Guillaume" and the man he professes to keep in the same regard as if he were a close blood relation.

Again, this expression is no empty phrase to write from William's perspctive, as he overtly likens Bentinck to being equal to him and the Orange-Nassau and Stuart families - a minor noble from Gelderland, a penniless third son equal to a Prince who had recently aquired the title of a King.

Naturally, given the formulaic, hierarchical social expectations and rules of the day, Bentinck could not have reversed positions and called William his cousin in a letter - though their letter exchanges suggest that in private at least, there may have been an informal tone adopted between the two.

In the past, there have been ample speculations whether the two may have been lovers, which is highly unlikely (the rumour was originally started by Liselotte von der Pfalz and is easily refuted by a wealth of contemporary documents, letter exchanges between William and Bentinck among them), but this letter really helps to understand the nature of their interpersonal relationship - William thought of them as as good as being a favourite relation.

This may be pure conjecture, but it seems likely that Bentinck, a middle child in a large family who all his life was particularly close to his big sister Eleonora Sophie, yet also had several younger siblings, felt instantly at ease adopting a similar role in William's life, who in turn had rarely had had contact to children of a like age growing up, and only met his only (known) illegitimate half-brother in his late 20s.

While we, people of a vastly different time (and in many cases, place) who have been socialised in vastly different societies, may not have the perfect words to express the nature of their relationship to exactness, their close bond, and the lifelong duration of their friendship (despite some troubles in later years) is rather touching.

And because the only thing that is ever cited is how Beninck stayed with William during the nights of his smallpox-infection, here are a few examples of how William in turn supported his friend:

In 1675, Bentinck was head over heels in love with Charlotte Philliberthe von Nassau-Beverweerd, a distant cousin of William's from a minor branch of the Nassau family, and seems to have proposed to her. "Lotte" as she was known to William, promised she would give Bentinck an answer - and then ignored both the patiently waiting Bentinck and the a lot less patient William, who tried to get Lotte to give her answer (whichever one it would be) by letter. For the full details, see my post here.

In February 1678, Bentinck married Anne Villiers, an attendant of William's new child mail order bride Mary Stuart. Anne had been set on a life as an unmarried lady-in-waiting in Mary's household as her family did not have the means to pay dowries for her and her sisters. Combined with the fact that the future Mr and Mrs Bentinck only had effectively known each other for approximately 3 (!) moths, theirs seems to have been a love match. To save the bride some blushes on the financial front, William awarded her a dowry from his private fortune.

William was godfather to 2 generations of young Bentincks, and sometimes, he would receive visits from them, unaccompanied. As one remarkable letter indicates, William made a point of being informed on Bentinck's parenting, and respected his rules - such as not allowing the teenage Henry Bentinck to go on hunting parties, no matter how much pleading and sulking would be involved.

And here is William's wish for Bentinck on the birth of his son Willem (called Willemtie by the family, including William) in 1681: "[...] who I hope will live long enough to become as honest a man as you are. And if I should have children, I hope they will love each other as much as we do."

[acrossthewavesoftime]

Whoever said they partied hard has never partied with baroque musicians who decide to get the second (!) harpsicord out at 4 AM.

[acrossthewavesoftime]

You know the party is raging when someone starts singing Watkin's Ale

[acrossthewavesoftime]

Whoever said they partied hard has never partied with baroque musicians who decide to get the second (!) harpsicord out at 4 AM.

[acrossthewavesoftime]

Whoever said they partied hard has never partied with baroque musicians who decide to get the second (!) harpsicord out at 4 AM.

[acrossthewavesoftime]

https://www.tumblr.com/acrossthewavesoftime/740250650689044481/tumblr-dashboard-simulator-1670s1680s-english?source=share

Can you do a version with Charles 1st pls 🙏🏻 I have a recent obsession.

You are so funny

Hi there, thank you! I am glad to hear we seem to share a sense of humour.

I think I have said it before, in a very similar context, but: the fact aside that I presently do not have the capacities to build elaborate Tumblr-posts, the format or genre of this post is free real estate - go ahead, be creative and make your own!

I don't own this style of post, and you can make whatever you want - in fact, I had much fun making the post you linked, myself.

That aside, I don't view myself as a "creator", and do not create things on demand; the things I do make, I make for the fun of it because I had an idea I liked in that moment and went with it.

In addition to this (and this may let on my relative age), I find it peculiar to ask strangers on the internet to make specifc things you want to see/consumee for free - I realise that this message is very friendly, and the Anon simply excited about their recent new "obsession", but seeing as this is not the first message I have received in that vein, asking me to make something specific catering to their interests, I wonder if this is a shift in online culture making itself obvious to me.

Anyways, I hope you have a nice day with lots of fun engaging with your new research interest! :-)

[acrossthewavesoftime]

Do you know anything about Anne and the bishop??

...If only I knew (and sorry for the tardy reply!) Off the top of my head, I have no clue who the bishop could have been that that the future Queen Anne may have, at least according to the very reliable sources that are brodadsides and related cheap mass print articles, had an affair with. If any of you finds out, please do let @shysoulcolor and I know!