Things you miss about the 19th century

Outhouses

Open drains

The slave roller coaster

Those cute but crazy Brontes.

No morbidly obese people

Fainting couches and country estates stuffed with servants.

The smell of horse manure wafting through the open windows in Spring...and the flies that come with it.

[quote]Male-only suffrage

We could vote

Smegma Cheese

Toe jam

Using corn Cobb's

REAL COKE COLA

[quote] No morbidly obese people

Bugger off, peasant!

Walt Whitman's blowjobs.

Consumption

Sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom. With Lincoln.

Patent medicines loaded with cocaine, morphine, and opium!!!

I don't miss people emptying bedpans out windows.

wood burning stoves

lice

the bathtub in the kitchen on Saturday night and Aunt Minnie pouring hot water on Uncle Stump's back.

watching Granny pop those big pussy boils on Grandpa's back.

Me, natch.

Redcoats

Bank failures and Great Depressions every decade or so.

Orphan trains.

Dead horses in the street, blowing up in the heat.

Surgery without benefit of anesthesia.

The laudanum made everything else much easier to take.

The old swimming hole.

Stinky linky, R21.

Oops, trying again.

Opium dens

Those darling Victorian values

Cholera

Whites only toilets

The hoop skirt.

I MISS THE MUSCULAR LADS AT THE GENTLEMEN’S COMMUNITY LEISURE CLUB WHO TAUGHT ME VARIOUS ATHLETIC ENDEAVORS SUCH AS BARE-HANDED FISTICUFFS AND INTRODUCED ME TO THE DELIGHTS OF THE BOTTLE UNTIL I HAD SUFFICIENT.

Corsets

Petticoats

Dark night skies

Ormolu

That hottie who was one of the Lincoln assassination conspirators! If only he had gotten life those other prisoners would have known how to handle him!

Sigh.

The singular bath day of the week on the prairies where every member in the family used the same fetid water, except for Pa who got to enjoy his first and be the only one who really bathed clean. (Not that he ever filled the tub nor heated water in the kettle, nor carried the buckets from the stream; nor emptied the damn thing when everyone was done.)

Mixed-race Native Americans trying to pass as “white” with no clue that their great great great grandchilden would one day try to do the exact opposite.

The one drop rule... back then it meant something.

Whale oil lamps

Duels

Pinafores

Petticoats

Hoop skirts

Fans

Elegantly riding side saddle:

Colonies, white power and slavery

Chamber pots under the bed.

And a maid to empty it, who got paid nothing but her meals and some old clothes.

Robbers who would break into your home and bludgeon you and your whole family to death with the blunt side of an axe - YOUR axe - the one you carelessly left sitting on top of the woodpile.

Gilbert and Sullivan musicals.

Stuffed birds decorating wide brimmed hats

Dingleberries stuck between your teeth

Love letters by telegraph

The better servants.

Child labor, and child servants working in your home.

People retiring at forty, because they were too old and broke down to keep working.

I miss the smell of chamber pots,

The midnight shrieks of Ripper wenches,

The penny dreadfuls' lurid plots,

Be-wigged lords damning from their benches.

I miss the tune of fetid gas

That whistles from a rotting crook,

Dangling forlornly as its ass

Is pecked at by some sassy rook.

Gone are the days of filth and gore.

Sadly, those days will come no more.

R38 - To be fair, we still have G&S operettas.

But I do miss the theatres with real torches circling the stage, risking stampedes after the curtains catch.

Serialisation of "Sherlock Holmes" in The London Illustrated.

Pellagra

Dropsy

Rickets

Scurvy

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

Thomas Hardy novels

Real Kings and Queens.

Regency everything.

Reports from Darwin's voyages.

Men who had sex with other men getting the death penalty! Those were the good old days!

The higher child mortality rate.

No Top 40 vapid pop music.

Fruit and vegetables probably tasted better - no GMOs

No shopping malls, parking lots, McMansions, freeways...

Boy brothels patronized by aristocrats

Leeching as a medical treatment.

Leather bars.

Slavery

Leprosy.

Surgery done with (very flammable) ether and saws of various sizes.

Wait - I was in Africa about 20 years ago and observed surgery under ether, not a pretty sight.

Literature - real literature: the Brontes, Hardy (mentioned above, credit where due), Eliot, Dickens (all right, maybe not Dickens), Carroll, Thackeray (has Vanity Fair EVER seemed more relevant?!), Stevenson . . . and abroad, Hugo, Dumas, Tolstoy, Zola, Balzac . . .

Little girls being named Marigold, Pansy, Drusilla, Alice, Prudence, and Henrietta.

Little boys dressed as little girls.

Boys named Vivian, Evelyn, and Beverly.

Dolls and other playthings that looked like they would kill you in your sleep.

Ripper Terror.

Castor oil as the cure all for all of life's ills.

Dying of Tetanus or Rabies!

The rise of psychology.

The rise of all that Occultism and the Oxford Golden Dawn Society.

The clop of horses hooves on the streets.

Fireplaces actually being used to heat living spaces.

Coal hods.

Organ grinders with monkeys.

And don't forget vendors calling out their wares in the streets - through streets broad and narrow.

This thread has unearthed all the goths lurking on DL.

Smelling salts.

Fans.

Watch brooches nestled in the lace of ladies' dresses.

Velvet ribbons around the throat.

White gloves for men going to a ball.

R71 - Oh, dear, and I thought we were being so clever!

Neo-Gothic architecture.

"Dropsy" is my favorite name for a disease, R45.

It sounds both cute and lethal.

Consumption

Rats

Plague

People coughing up bloody mucus and running fevers dropping dead in the streets.

Post-mortem photos of loved ones posed in lifelike positions with eyes painted on the eyelids.

Fig leaves over genitalia in museums and art galleries.

The fracas over Turner's work.

Top hats and frock coats.

Madonna's early albums.

R78 - Meowwwwwwww!

The waltz, the quadrille, the mazurka, and the two-step.

Going to the seaside to take the "waters" for one's health.

Inclines

Swallowing one's earrings as a method of committing suicide.

Consumptives playing at their sanatorium.

Pogroms against Jews in Eastern Europe.

Effective cough syrup.

My laudanum craving is off the charts. I also want some of that cough syrup r86

Children routinely eaten by wolves

Jewelry made out of human hair.

Being able to dress as a Moor for Hallowe’en.

Using newspapers before toilet paper came along.

Ladies carrying lace handkerchiefs al the time.

Laundresses.

Dear Lord in Heaven!

Coffins with bells attached in case the person about to be buried is still alive.

Daguerreotype porn.

Belief in faeries at the bottom of the garden. And along those lines;

a great flowering of children's lit in England: MacDonald, Burnett, Kipling, Pyle, and E. Nesbit (although her stuff bled over into the Edwardian era).

Long earrings.

Caftans over corsets.

Oh Mother! You’re so 19th Century!

Boot scrapers, butter churns, bidets and bustles

Taffeta petticoats, crinoline rustles

Chamber pots gleaming, to welcome my piss

These are a few of the things that I miss...

All that Guards cock in late night Hyde Park.

Unburying a relative to wash the bones and find the body contorted as they had been buried alive and had not been saved by the bell.

As I guess somebody forgot it. I mean you really have to have a check list to avoid these mishaps.

R98, no need to miss that. Just go to Hyde Park.

R97 a catchy cadence!

The Vapours

Female Hysteria

Slave auctions ( Mandingo etc.)

Poll taxes to stop black people from voting

R103 - Oh, we took a stab at that here in the 20th century for different reasons - it was intended to make rates more fair but actually stuck it to the less well off (naturally, and who told them they should have it easier?!).

Bloody rioters.

No ban on ivory.

Homes decorated with framed photographs of deceased family members, taken after they had died.

Nothing

Wearing your hair in curls.

John Gielgud asked his mother what she missed most about the 19th Century and she said the food. Though looking today at those menus and recipes it seems unappealing to our palates.

Being able to use up your wife's assets before the advent of the Married Women's Property Act in the later part of the century.

Steam without punk.

R111 - The Empire.

R111 - Apologies, that was meant to be a solo post, not a reply to yours.

R112

Duels (suspect this faded after the first half, though)

The rise of Romanticism in music.

Limited war.

Places one could not reach.

Terra incognita.

Seasonal fruit ONLY.

Black armbands.

Women who spoke intelligently, conversed with interest and care, avoided topics concerning their menstrual issues, and listened to what others said.

Affordable street hustlers/naive and eager lads.

DataLounge: The Telegraph Years

Cocaine and opiates being available through the Sears and Roebuck catalog that also served the bathroom.

Muffs, bustles and parasols

Wax roll phonographs

The irony of Her Majesty Victoria, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, Defender of the Faith, Empress of India, expecting women to know their place.

Tops.

Passenger pigeons and Carolina parakeets.

No starlings in the Western Hemisphere.

Old San Francisco.

Gunts from having 12 children and not from being worthlessly obese owing to chocolate doughnuts.

Madras as it was!

r102 But don't you have all of those things now, Miss Lindsey?

Prussia

The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies

54-40 or Fight!

The Ottoman Empire

Maximilian and Carlota

old Erna still had her own teeth

Social salons where the intelligentsia gathered to smoke and sort out the world.

Popular culture that did not include Bonnie Franklin or "One Day at a Time."

Tiger caps, snow leopard jackets and cheetah muffs.

Jack the Ripper.

People who actually remembered the Alamo.

Seeing the South burning and utterly destroyed.

Yellow Jack!

Ante bellum barbecues with handsome strapping young men in their tailcoats and boots.

Benjamin Disraeli

Bloomsbury when it really felt like Bloomsbury

Opening night at the Met. I mean literally opening night at the Met.

R133 - And latching on to your post:

Women draped in jewels and gowns at the Opera (I assume you meant the Metropolitan Opera at its first location in New York City).

Lorgnettes

Edith Wharton's New York.

The opening of the Pinkerton's Detective Agency

Beaver hats and then silk hats

Ear trumpets. I could use one.

Male bonding

R131 and nothing else

Separate bedrooms for marrieds.

"Women who spoke intelligently, conversed with interest and care, avoided topics concerning their menstrual issues, and listened to what others said."

Spoke intelligently? Many women couldn't even read back then. I see the Republicans have weighed in.

Trepanning.

Married people still have separate bedrooms. There's also the couch for men.

Fainting couches

Oil lamps at the top of the stairs.

Seven-course dinners for the upper classes.

Pigeon pie.

Women's fashion covering them from neck to ankles. And no, I'm not a misogynist . I've just always found this style of dress to be the most flattering on women.

"Many women couldn't even read back then."

Not true at all. Literacy rates were in fact probably higher than they are now.

R145 - LOL - probably covered a multitude of flaws.

The term paterfamilias when it still meant something benign.

Parasols as a de rigueur item of dress in the summer

Letter writing as the primary form of long-distance communication.

Debtors Prison

Arranged marriages.

Families of 10 or 20 children.

Being treated to a "Grand Tour" of Europe by your parents when you were young, so you could become familiar with all the places a gentleman ought to be familiar with.

Women putting their hair up when they were old enough to look for a husband.

And "coming out" meaning that a girl was leaving the nursery and entering adult life, and looking for a husband.

Another nod to the now extinct Carolina Parakeet.

And lest we forget : The Great Auk

The names Maria and Sophia, pronounced with a long-I.

Child living spaces in middle-class households being called "the nursery".

Nursery maids taking childen in little hats and capes out to places like Kensington Gardens.

The tenants tugging their forelocks when the Lord of the Manor comes by. (The male ones, that is.)

Men actually wearing deerstalker hats out in the country, just like Sherlock.

Workhouses

Insane asylums

Olive Oatman and her tragic tattoo. It's a wonderful (but very sad) story and book. I always enjoy chatting with the British and Irish members of DL. Every now, and then, I can't help wishing one of them would read a story from US history. I know our crap dominates the airwaves and all, but a very real, authentic story of American life (to be honest, most Americans need to read something like that). I actually do read British histories, now and then.

"Not true at all. Literacy rates were in fact probably higher than they are now."

Wrong.

Piano keys made of actual ivory.

Literacy rates in the 19th century were probably higher than ours today.

Fanology

"Pressed to the lips: Kiss me"

Duels Andrew Jackson style - if your opponent took their shot and didn't kill you, he'd have to stand there while you took yours.

Your ancestors standing still for five minutes in their best outfit for the one photograph taken in their lifetime - and they still have a greasy slicked-down mop of hair.

Lard, for cooking.

Butter, for eating.

No antibiotics.

A (male) life expectancy of 45.

Sterile procedures, including washing of hands, mostly unheard of.

Death in childbirth rampant.

Living in a sod house and liking it.

R161 - Departure for factoid here on the childbirth issue: although ether was available, it was generally withheld from women in childbirth, as the dim idea from the Old Testament "in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children" still held some force. Queen Victoria, however, said, "Bollocks to that, bring that ether or you'll find your head on a spike on the entrance to the Tower." So they did, and when she did it, it be came "acceptable" for other women to have their labour pain relieved, as well.

Telling time by real clocks that chimed.

Seeing the night skies blanketed by stars.

No rap music.

US Weekly has Meghan on the cover with the title "Her Side of the Story", but above it are the words, Shallow? Greedy? Social Climber?

Don't doubt that inside they line up with Meghan, but I wonder if they realise that a good many people who don't read US as they move through the checkout line will only remember Meghan's face with Shallow? Greedy? Social Climber? above it.

Wonder if it's deliberate.

Well, damn it all to hell I've posted on the wrong thread, again.

Apologies, again, for posting on the wrong thread.

I thought you missed the nonexistence in the 19th century of US Weekly.

Trips to the woodshed. Being seen and not heard. The swimming hole.

lethal syphilis

R164 Thanks for the memory. The night sky full of stars persisted into my childhood living on the Canadian prairies and I have encountered it since : in the Darien region of Panama, but it's becoming a rare phenomenon. Where I live now I'm lucky if I can see Venus.

Boys wearing short pants until puberty.

I've seen in old movies (costume dramas) young unmarried women being completely covered up while older women (eg. in their fifties, sixties) wore low cut gowns -- a frightening fashion trend if it was real.

Pffft. No internet in the 19th century. I don't know how people survived.

Not having a wise mammy who knows my foibles but loves me and cares about me all the same.

R167 - LOL. More than compensated by the Illustrated London News.

R155, thanks for the recommendation, and if you'd like to add any others, please do.

The unquestioned class system.

Men not expected to be sensitive alphas.

Hard boundaries between public and private life.

John Ruskin

Queen Victoria

Men not leaving the house without jackets. Watch the very great Coleman in The Late George Apley.

Nobody leaving the house without a hat, ever, under any circumstances.

Not just because sunglasses and sunblock hadn't been invented, but because a bare head made you underdressed. Of course in earlier centuries, a bare head was thought of as indecent.

Wearing ten layers of clothing including a wool jacket, at the height of summer.

Jim Crow

Coca Cola with real coke.

Going to the outhouse in January.

Waiting for the next serialized installment of one of Mr. Charles Dickens's sensational novels.

God forbid a woman was without a hat. That meant she was fast. And not in a good way.

Exclaiming," Oh, Fiddledeedee"! after looking at the result of sashaying across the street in a hoop skirt, ankle deep in horse shit.

Real tea time, by the fireside.

r186, I still do that.

R188 - Where did you come by it? The hooped skirt I mean, not the horseshit.

Bathing once a month.

Fireflies lighting up the night sky in summer,

Cowboy square dances by the campfire. And then the orgy following it.

Needing a ladies' maid just to get your hair up properly.

Buttonhooks.

Whalebone corsets

Handmade shoes

Fashionable Sideburns

Constantly having to revive fainting women and being expected to carry smelling salts, because no woman of fashion could breathe.

All the women having marvellous complexions.

Moor murders.

Discovering gold.

R201 - Following your lead: the creation of pinchbeck so the middle-classes could wear lower priced jewellery that looked like gold.

And natural rather than cultured pearl jewellery.

Hats with ostrich plumes.

No ban on ivory.

One room school houses.

Separation of the sexes after Dinner.

Town criers.

The good old-fashioned carnival midway

Widows wearing black for a year with those little veils at the back of their hats. (The way Gene Tierney looks when she first looks at the house in "The Ghost and Mrs Muir").

After one year, they can move on to lilac and lavender and mauve.

Women who liked sex being thought of as inherently immoral.

Lamplighters

Actresses and dancers costumes catching fire and burning to death in front of a live audience, which is what happens when your footlights are open gas flames and the ladies onstage are wearing huge full skirts.

No, really! It happened!

Milk in glass bottles (although we did have that well into the 20th century).

Rules about what one wore in the country as opposed to the city (as Lady Bellamy's rule had it, "No diamonds in the country.")

The lack of a need for gun laws.

Respect for rural life.

Belief in the power of "the waters".

One thing I didn't like: Hordes of subhuman Irish and Italians flooding this great country with their popish ways.

INCESTUOUS RAPE IN THE WILDERNESS

TUBERCULOSIS ASYLUMS

BORDELLOS

OCTOROONS

HAVING A WHORE WASH YOUR COCK TO CHECK FOR STD'S,

"Belief in the power of "the waters".

A lot of these places where one went to "take the waters" offered mineral water which contained sulfur, among other elements. In the days before antibiotics, drinking water containing sulfur or bathing in sulfur water might have been a help in fighting any bacterial infections one had. Some bacteria are sensitive to sulfur, and there's an entire class of sulfanilamide antibiotics in use today.

Sunday dinner.

Help who would work for room and board and a dollar a day.

Ah yes, Sunday dinner, a big meal taken on the Lord's Day, a mandated day of rest and prayer... except for the servants who had to cook it! Nah, those servants got their half-day off on Wednesday or Thursday, and worked dawn to bedtime on the Lord's Day.

Jewish families at least had their servants rest on the Shabbat (except for the odd Shabbas Goy), and meals were actually prepared beforehand. Look at any traditional Jewish cookbook and you'll see recipes for slow-cooked stews and things that could be kept overnight warm for Saturday lunch.

White Britain.

Separation of the upper class from the servant class.

Buggery in the stables of an English Country House

No income taxes, no real estate taxes.

R223 - That alone is worth investing in a Time Machine.

Upper-class boys' boarding schools, where buggery, "fagging", and corporal punishment abounded.

Really nice china, silver, and napery, and no paper plates and napkins and cups.

Bearding in a sham marriage was acceptable as long as you had children to continue the family line.

Arsenic in my cupboard.

R228 - And laudanum.

Patent medicines guaranteeing to cure you of many ills but do absolutely northing.

When all the women who wore silk or velvet knew all the other women who wore silk or velvet, and everybody knew everybody else’s family horse and carriage.

Calling cards if the person you wanted to visit was not home or indisposed you could leave your card with a brief message.

r232 But only if they were placed on a silver salver presented by one's butler.

Ladies who couldn't afford silk petticoats shoving sheets of newspaper under their skirts, because that'd make a rustling sound similar to that of genuine silk petticoats.

These days, that'd be called a "life hack for the aspirational".

R232 - On "at home" days only, of course!

I love you, R231.

Smoking opium in the opium den.

Steerage Class

A set of matching monogramed luggage from steamer trunks down to hat boxes all with the same design and engraved with your initials.

R239 - Add handkerchiefs and in some cases bed linen and foundation garments labelled with embroidered initials. (Cf. the First Mrs De Winter's knickers preserved and as proudly displayed by Mrs Danvers to the demoralised Second Mrs De Winter).

The men were hotter back then.

R241 There were more uncut men back then.

If you were a part of the small middle class you could still afford a few servants such as a cook and a house maid.

Ah the good old days. Any body need a camel jockey? I'm good.

R244 -The modern Republic of Sudan was founded in 1966, inheriting Anglo-Egyptian boundaries established in1899. But Sudan, the region, was founded in the 16th century. It's probably a safe bet that your basic South Sudanese child was better off in 1819 than 2019, before Europe got there and it was entwined politically instead with Egypt. Life was probably never easy in the area, but maybe you should rethink your post.

I miss the Pony Express riders. They had nice asses.

Water so foul it required whiskey to be potable.

Ringworm that made bare feet winters tolerable.

The Great Auk

I miss the technology.

Le Lounge au Data - originally chalk marks left near a latrine - tracking size and girth.

It was in bad French - and required too much space. Ex: “#sixty thirteen - 😲

I miss sleeping five to a bed.

No tighty whities and high wasted pants, every man showed a basket. This is why when you bought a suit the tailor asked if you "dressed on the right or left" depending on which pant leg you let it hang.

Carriage houses.

I miss making out with the hot daddy next door over by the pump house.

Yes, R252, elastic had yet to be invented and everything was held up with laces and buttons. Everything was... looser.

Patriotism

Velvet smoking jackets.

Braiding.

Bunting.

Wow, DLers are younger than I thought.

Oratory

With the exception of the very rich, people owned less stuff but what they had was of the best quality they could afford.

People who put on their long john under wear at the first frost and took them off again in the spring. It was heaven for a stank queen!

I miss Martin Van Buren.

I miss Gladstone and Disrael and Queen Victoria and seeing early photos of her and her daughter in law, Princess Alexandra, draped in enough diamonds and pearls to sink the Titanic a short time later.

*Disraeli

That approach to architecture which consisted of throwing the last 500 years to a wall and seeing what stuck.

Barnum' s Museum

Lillian Russell

Sarah Berndhardt

Minstrel shows

Smelling salts

Fainting couches

Tent revival meetings and plays

Vaudeville

The dodo bird

Gilbert and Sullivan

Uncle Tom's Cabin (the book and many plays)

Velocipedes

[quote]If you were a part of the small middle class you could still afford a few servants such as a cook and a house maid.

You needed them because keeping even a modestly nice house involved a lot of manual labor. There were a lot of needy single women out there to take on the role of cook or maid just to be able to eat and live indoors.

Clothes were tailored to your dimensions there were no racks of standard size clothes. Custom tailoring was the norm not the exception.

R267 I'm afraid the dodo had already gone the way of the dodo by the 19th century.

Being able to randomly clobber other people's kids in the street.

Mule trains. They had great asses.

Everything was hand crafted and very affordable.

Illiterate servants. If you wanted the cook to learn a new recipe, you had to read it to her.

Discussing the operas of that new composer Verdi and how he was stealing from Meyerbeer and Donizetti.

People knowing their place.

Men of the church knowing what was best because they got it direct from God.

Slapping children around because well they deserve it no matter what they did or because you were in a lousy mood and the concept of child abuse not existing.

Being very poor and maiming your child so that when you begged for alms you'd get a better take.

I miss the spiritualists who helped me contact my deceased little brother who died of red measles.

White Privilege

Whist tournaments. Horehound hard candies. Whale oil lamps.

The ribbon clerk at Whitney's Notions that would meet me behind the gasometer at the edge of town...

Mens Clubs that did not permit women on the premises.

The quagga.

Beautiful hats made from the corpses of rare birds.

I miss the overall sassiness of the century. A certain naughtiness, if you will.

Really? Well I found it all rather common and too often lugubrious.

R274 -

"The golf links lay so near the mill

That almost every day

The labouring children can look out

And see the men at play."

Sarah Cleghorn

[quote]Male-only suffrage

Like Republicans a lot, do ya?

Oh, and fuck you.

I miss my wild weekends with Walt Whitman.

R287 - Good God, get over yourself - this thread is loaded with ironic comments. The state of 19th cyentury dentistry alone would stop most of us from using a time machine to go back there - really, the title of the thread should have told you something.

I mean, did you really think people were missing outdoor lavs, cholera outbreaks, etc.?!

OP you listed in the Guinness Book of Records?

Fabulous dinners with Jane Austen

The constant tours of Our American Cousin which I saw many times. It was hilarious. Of course Abe getting himself knocked off ruined that but once the country moves on it will again take its place as a comic staple.

Our American Cousin was one of those naughty but nice sex comedies where the heroine pushing 30 realizes that marriage with someone she loves is more important than losing her virginity to a wealthy middle aged roué. Lots of double entendres and a tired businessman's idea of an entertaining show which his wife wouldn't object to. I'm not sure if it would be successful today.

The Carolina Parakeet

[quote]The constant tours of Our American Cousin which I saw many times.

Do you think it would work as a rap musical?

Can we do a "Things you miss about the 14th century" thread after this? (or 15th, 16th, whatever)

Beethoven. He (and Mozart) died way too soon. Think of all of the beautiful music we missed out on.

Burning one's under garments.

Crinoline hoop skirts were the height of fashion for a while.

R297 - Mozart was 18th century, he died before 1800. (And, we're still listening to him.)

But we got the rise of Brahms (my man - he looked like Viggo Mortensen when young, no, he really did!), Mendelssohn, Schumann, Schubert, Dvorak, the Russians - in short, the rise of Romanticism as Europe's music broke away from the domination of the German standard of "pure" music (i.e., non-programmatic, except for opera).

The flowering of art, music, and literature in the 19th century has, in my opinion, never been matched.

Hastening to add re my tag line that I know Prokofiev died in the 20th century, along with Stravinsky. But they were still rooted in the 19th century musically - I count them as bridges between the two centuries.

R300

R300 Of course, I know Mozart died in the 18th century - which is why I just said Beethoven. Mozart was part of the parenthetical to convey how he was lost too soon nonetheless.

I do love Brahms though (Hungarian Dance No. 5 is one of my favorite songs). I am partial to Baroque and Classical composer though (Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart).

Adding: going to start listening to more Prokofiev and Stravinsky - haven't really given the late 19th century/20th century a chance. Thanks for the inspiration!

I almost fully agree about the greatness of 19th century, but Mozart, Rembrandt (17th century), and some 20th century literature/writers are, in my opinion, unparalleled.

All those Royals, in their delightful little postage stamp countries

Goofy travelling snake oil salesmen. They had a certain flair to separate fools from their money.

We have tRump but it's just not the same...

R304 - Oh, I don't think anyone would give you an argument about the standing of Mozart - or Rembrandt. I certainly won't.

R300

Science was fashionable!

No, really. It was. Being an amateur scientist was all the rage for the educated, and ladies and gentlemen attended scientific lectures for fun.

People walking around with saddle nose because there was no cure for syphilis then and that was one of the signs of end-stage syphilis.

Washable sanitary pads for one's monthly visitor.

R301 You could easily say that about Schoenberg and Berg whose earlier works were rooted in 19th Century romanticism. They were products of the 1800s.

R311 - True - but Schoenberg's later work really diverged at some point. Transfigured Night is one of my favourite piecesand is from his earlier phase. DId you know the string orchestra version was premiered in Newcastle, of all places? I suppose that saying about standing on the shoulders of giants remains true and simply goes on and on.

Oh they both certainly diverged as did Prokofiev and Stravinsky.

Yes Transfigured Night is beautiful and Karajan's version on DG is a recording I listen to often.

Istanbul was a great party town.

R313 - At the risk of further hijacking this thread - that's the recording I have. I've also seen Pillar of Fire, the ballet that was done to it by Antony Tudor. I don't think it's been done in some time.

Apologies if the thread seems hijacked, but this does in some way relate to 19th century culture . . .

Wow. You guys really make me appreciate these days vs those days.

Thomas Nast cartoons in Harper's Weekly

Churning butter

Bathing once a month whether you needed it or not.

Dying from a cut finger.

The Absolute Apex of The Empire . . .

And in that connection, news from the Boer War front, although admittedly that was at the tag end.

The grass seemed greener back then.

Indentured servants, the next best thing to slavery.

Droit de seigneur

R320 Or a blister.

R324 - Wrong century.

I was like how did the 18th century get in here?

Hansen’s Disease, “Leprosy”

The long boat trips.

The chocking stench of animal and human waste on city streets

R330 - Is "chocking" something we all missed about the 19th century?

R327 - 13th, more like.

Sorry...shocking

Beautiful penmanship.

Sundays were a day of rest and a fine afternoon meal was enjoyed. People spent time with each other.

Excellent manners.

Afternoon Tea.

People writing charming, literate letters to one another.

The 19th century was better for men than for women. Women who got pregnant had a 50/50 chance of dying in childbirth. Babies and children died of childhood diseases that we have vaccines for now.

Formal dinners with service a la Russe, and six wineglasses and ten forks all in a row!

Sure, it was a social minefield likely to leave anyone crushed if they didn't know exactly what the seventh fork was for, and must have been interminable if you found yourself sitting next to a door, but still! It was a ritual celebration of elegance and luxury, and I'd have liked to enjoy it once in my life. Modern informal dinners just aren't the same.

R336, most centuries were.

Passage on a clipper ship around Cape Horn to California.

Notes taken around by servants rather than post.

New huge luxury steamships to the continent that can carry 4000 people.

I miss the morning dew.

The 'Vapors'.

Swimming in the Hudson.

New York in the 1870-80's and now.

Pestilence.

Choice

Two observations from R345's link:

Cars are... ugly, aren't they?

("I'm not sure George is wrong about automobiles. With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization. May be that they won't add to the beauty of the world or the life of the men's souls, I'm not sure. But automobiles have come and almost all outwards things will be different because of what they bring. They're going to alter war and they're going to alter peace. And I think men's minds are going to be changed in subtle ways because of automobiles. And it may be that George is right. May be that in ten to twenty years from now that if we can see the inward change in men by that time, I shouldn't be able to defend the gasoline engine but agree with George - that automobiles had no business to be invented.")

No one was walking a dog in the 1870s footage.

Only the very rich - usually ladies, had pet lap dogs they would carry in their carriages to parade in pleasure gardens rather than dirty streets. Most other hounds kept then were working dogs and did not get to go out walkies on a lead.

Female boxers wearing appropriate attire.

Anonymity

Summer meadows in wildflower bloom with twittering skylarks high above.

59 Amazing Photos Showing Life in the 1850s

People were more distinctive looking in the mid 1800's

R351 - An astute mention, if I may say so. You actually could live a private life, and the boundaries between private and public life were firm. No satellite surveillance, chips in the phones and GPS devices, MI6 tracking code words in your emails . . . no sense that if you went out for a pint you should let everyone on FB know what the weather was like and whether the local was crowded . . .

Being able to start a new life under a new name with no trouble at all!

Really, you just went to another town where nobody knew you and nobody who knew you was likely to go, and said your name was... whatever you liked. That was all, you were now Bob Schmidt or Sam Gunderson, and tough shit on all the relatives you left behind! Nowadays you can't just become someone else, the IRS and credit industry won't allow it.

R355 - We have forgotten what real privacy was like.

Walking 10 miles to school.

...in the snow.

Sternwheelers. The hight of technology . Close the patent office!

Being able to go out in seedy districts with a gun in your pocket in order to look for trouble as an excuse to beat up or kill bastards from a specific group you dislike and come across as manly.

Fashion. The ease of running away and starting over.

Traveling to Paris on a grand tour.

A fascinating film. Thanks for sharing. It's great to see that horse-drawn fire engine at 3:43.

Luxury travel before airplanes.

Street Life in London, 1876-1877

Wiener Staatsoper gefolgt von Abendessen, Champagner und Sodomie

I miss only having two genders.

Grand hotels that really were grand rather than pretentious minimalist jokes.

The yearning for space travel.

Ah yes, "The Grand Tour". Oh, to be a wealthy young man in the era when it was expected that any unmarried young man of good family get a lengthy all-expenses paid trip to Europe, while he was still college age! It was considered normal to pay for your kid to spend months traveling, and staying at the best hotels at his family's expense, because that was where he'd meet the best people, see all the appropriate sights, and acquire the sophistication and polish that would make him into a true gentleman.

Girls didn't get grand tours, of course.

The absence of social media and the frantic pace the future.

Amazing to think that when people went out, even during the day, they were dressed in their best clothes, now look at us. We're slobs.

Of course girls got grand tours with family members or chaperones. You know to forget the man they were in love with that their father detested. Have you heard of Henry James?

[quote]You know to forget the man they were in love with that their father detested. Have you heard of Henry James?

Marriages were arranged by the parents, the girls was married off to a suitor with money, political or social connections to improve the standing of her family in society.

Beautiful Elm trees lining every street. Too bad about the disease and lack of diversity in the plantings.

But I would miss Elm trees.

Bleeding Kansas

Sherman's March to the Sea

Upper and Lower Canada

Saloons

Salons

Saint-Saens

Musical recitals in the parlor

R373 - Grand Tours were also popular as honeymoons.

I miss the tea dances.

The Klondike gold rush. There's gold in them thar hills.

Westward expansion as more people moved west for land, the Federal Gov't. continued to break their promises to the Indians and forced them off their lands.

The presentation of debutantes to the Queen (although to be fair this continued into the 20th century until it was discontinued after Edward VIII).

[quote]Amazing to think that when people went out, even during the day, they were dressed in their best clothes, now look at us. We're slobs.

Yeah, but we're comfortable. I cannot imagine having to wear those kinds of clothes --- and without air conditioning.

You see people out and about on summer days or on boardwalks or even sitting on lawns for picnics fully covered and they don't look at all uncomfortable. I mean we today would be so miserable.

Getting away for the summer to your cottage in Newport, RI

There's a woman (probably more than one) on YouTube whose hobby is dressing in the style of different eras. Even though she shows all the layers worn my women in the past, she emphasizes how comfortable the clothing is because all the layers worn in the warm months are light cotton. Just because something's bulky doesn't make it hot.

R386 - forgot that there would be no synthetic materials, which of course would make the materials more breathable.

Most of the Newport mansions were achieved about 1900 or so, including the pictured Rosecliff.

Isn't 1900 still the 19th Century?

Mistaking the arsenic for sugar.

Arguably 1900 only not 1901.

Realistic and entertaining deadly mishaps in the modern Victorian home.

Harpsichords

I miss the penny dreadfuls.

Confederate "General" Julius Howell Recalls the 1860s

^^ they even talked different, more formal.

I miss the shoes. They lasted forevah!

Learning the newest songs from sheet music playing them on the piano.

"I miss the shoes. They lasted forevah! "

No, but you kept them forever whether they lasted or not, because all shoes were handmade and much more comparatively expensive than today's shoes. If you couldn't afford a new pair of shoes you wore them while the heels were worn to a 45 degree angle and there were gaping holes in the soles, if you could afford to have them re-soled you did, and if not you just used cardboard as an insole to keep some of the snow out.

People just had fewer clothes and things, before the day of cheap mass production.

No cure for STDs

Actually, they used mercury to treat STDs, imagine dying of mercury poisoning too.

Pining for the 18th century.

Traveling to the Subcontinent.

People working to help the poor by visiting hospitals and orphanages and going around asking men like Ebenezer Scrooge for donations.

I’m the typhus that deprived your family of life. They still live in the house by the railroad station.

Climate change hadn't fucked things up yet.

Irish roughs down at the New York docks.

Knitting circles.

People who knew better trying to be better than their betters.

Union Suits

Sunday in the park with George.

People who speak English with a heavy Yiddish accent.

The wild frontier.

When the winters were cold enough to skate on the lakes in Central Park.

And even the Hudson would freeze over.

Ambrose Bierce, the original grammar-troll.

Bitching about Prince Albert marrying into the royal family instead of Meghan Markle.

R395, General Howe is a bore!

The Ottoman Empire and sizemeat from the Levant!

Celebrating Christmas before it became a commercial and retail holiday.

Rap music 150 years away.

I miss the crisp breeze.

Band concerts in the public gardens.

Ladies trying to shade their complexions rather than tanning them.

Family portraits

figgy pudding

Canning beets.

R424 No wonder there are so many homely people today. I was wondering where they all came from.

Making your own headcheese from the head of a real pig.

The Early American antiques. They had so many back then!

Insane Asylums

Seances

Traveling circuses

The Crystal Palace Exhibition celebrating the industrial progress of mankind.

Passing though Donner Pass before winter

Young ladies being taught to play the piano and sing as a matter of course.

The Medicine Show coming to town.

Being able to say Pshaw ! when vexed.

No fucking productions of King Lear with everyone in leather jackets.

I agree. No Shakespeare history plays in which the nobility wear suits, ties and carry attache cases and smart phones.

R439 - Too right. And not having to read claims by the directors that having an all-female cast of Julius Caesar and updating Richard III to fascist Germany will reveal tremendous new insights into the plays after 450 years that we didn't already know.

The seasons-long all-male exploratory adventures in the uncharted territories that became total fuckfests.

Boudoirs as normal retreats for the lady of the house.

I miss all that good fiddle music.

Manifest Destiny a widely held belief in the United States that its settlers were destined to expand across North America. ... The special virtues of the American people and their institutions.

The White Man's Burden

Grand staircases for making grand entrances at your party.

Capital punishment.

Public hangings

R448 - Not in Britain, just to be accurate.

I miss the silence.

The pain and the shame of a good old-fashioned public horse-whipping.

Taking the horse and buggy out for a Sunday ride.

Being ridden hard and put away wet.

I miss taking brisk walks with Father.

The stars at night were big and bright.

Stereopticons

Playing Puss in the Corner late into the night in the parlor with the family.

Long tedious evenings spent at house parties, playing charades and other children's games. Because one had to spend a certain amount of time with the company, before pretending to retire and fucking whoever you weren't supposed to fuck.

Old-timey first (aka Christian) names - for example -

Girls: Dorcas, Drusilla, Griselda, Dymphna

Boys: Ebenezer, Gaylord, Chauncey, Cuthbert

I miss the first snows of winter.

Political cartoons that were better done than they are today.

Royal mistresses being no biggie.

R455 I agree. How great to spend some time after night fall pointing out the various constellations. I haven't been able to see the big dipper for years because of the light pollution in my region.