Today is Shrove Tuesday — also known as “Mardi Gras” or “Fat Tuesday” — the day before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. Traditionally viewed as a day of repentance, Shrove Tuesday has become a day of celebration and feasting before the period of fasting required during the Lenten season. The name Shrove...
Fashion print is from the March 1818 issue of Ackermann’s Repository of Arts fashion magazine. The image to the right is the original plate, faded and yellowed over time. Below is the fashion plate as refined by me. The print was described in the magazine as follows: “A fawn-coloured poplin...
ORGEAT – the drink with the odd pronunciation (I will explain in a moment), is never mentioned by Jane Austen, either in a letter or her novels, but surely would have been known to her. Mentions of Orgeat being served at Almacks and other Society gatherings are scattered throughout letters...
A Visit from St. Nicholas, more commonly know today as ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas, by Clement Clarke Moore was written in 1822 and published anonymously in the Troy, New York Sentinel on December 23, 1823. This simple 14-stanza composition is largely responsible for the concept of Santa Claus as...
In the Middle Ages, posset was a warm dish served to invalids and those suffering from a fever or cold. Milk was heated and then curdled by adding spiced wine, spirits, or ale. Egg yolks might be added as a thickener or to create a smooth thin custard-like drink. During the...
Regency decorations, in most respects, were not all that different from ours today. A Christmas tree was a rarity, becoming most popular thanks to Queen Victoria, although the wife to the Prince Regent, Catherine of Brunswick, was reputed to have brought the custom from her native Germany. For some reason...
Presidentially pardoned turkeys are now sent to Mount Vernon, George Washington’s estate in Virginia to live out their final days. History of the Presidential turkey pardon can be read HERE on History.com Female turkeys do not gobble. Only male turkeys gobble. A male turkey is called a tom, a female is...
The traditional cornucopia is a curved goat’s horn filled to brim with fruits and grains. According to Greek legend, Amalthea (a goat) broke one of her horns and offered it to Greek God Zeus as a sign of reverence. As a sign of gratitude, Zeus later set the goat’s image...
Until very recently my experiences with fishing have been practically non-existent. I have vague memories of fishing (or attempting to fish) in the small pond in my hometown. Most often I caught pollywogs and frogs by hand, which in my opinion was way easier than trying to hook a fish!...
Continuing the quest to cover the alphabet! That may prove impossible due to the vast number of words in the English language, but I can try to find a few fascinating examples. For a list of all my archived posts covering the topic: VOCABULARY Doughnut The term doughnut is first...
A true eponym is an ordinary common noun derived from the name of a person or place. The important, defining property is that the word does not refer exclusively to the person or place named by the proper noun, as does Marxism or Christian, but is used to refer to a general...
The history of clothing for European infants and children is relatively unremarkable until the last decades of the 18th century. From birth to nearly two years of age, infants (male and female) were swaddled tightly (a philosophy that, thankfully, waned in the 17th century until obsolete by the late 1700s). At...
Colonel Meriwether Lewis Clark, Jr., the founder of the Kentucky Derby — click to read my post on Austen Authors for more on thoroughbred horse racing — modeled the race after European-style racing events like the Royal Ascot and Derby at Epsom Downs. In the past, and still to this...
Horses and Kentucky go hand-in-hand. I always heard of the endless rolling fields of “bluegrass” edged with ancient trees and stark white fences — I even saw the pictures and movies like Seabiscuit, so knew it must be true. Yet nothing prepared me for the exquisite grandeur of a real,...
April 23rd is generally considered to be a good day to celebrate the birth of England’s greatest poet and playwright, William Shakespeare. This is partly because there are no records of his birth—although he was baptized on April 26—and partly because he died on April 23, so there is a...
