Fashion Plates Galore!

I just realised I've been a bit bad at sharing some of the truly awesome resources out there and thought I'd remedy that, by letting you in on a pretty little secret - Collection Maciet.

Source: Collection Maciet, Mode. [XIXe siècle]. 1886

It is hosted by Les Arts Décoratifs, which is a private not-for-profit association and recognized as being in the public interest under French law. It originated in 1882, in the wake of the Universal Exhibitions, when a group of collectors banded together with the idea of promoting the applied arts and developing links between industry and culture, design and production. Thus, it is a thoroughly Victorian product which in itself is rather nice, n'est-ce pas?

That's all very well, you're saying now, but what is it good for? Why, old chap, says I. Fashion, of course! Lots and lots of fashion!

Source: Collection Maciet, Mode. [XIXe siècle]. 1842 à 1843, image 10

You see, the Collection Maciet contains a great number of fashion plates, going back to the 18th century and up to 1940. Well, they have later stuff too, but it's not available online, and, anyway, that's not what we're her for, is it? No, we want the 19th century stuff, right? No worries. There's plenty of that to be had.

The trick, however, is that the search function is in French. If you speak the lovely language of Molière and Racine, that's fine of course, but if you don't it's not entirely simple how to find what you are looking for. Because of that, I thought I'd provide a short guide.

Go here, and pick Consulation du Catalogue (or click that link obviously, but I wanted you to be able to hack it for yourselves without having to start here, appreciated that your visit is). Then pick "Recherche simple". If it isn't obvious, it means "simple search". You then get this menu:

Do what I have done here - fill in "mode" under Termes de recherche and select "Album Maciet". Then click Rechercher and you'll get a list of fashion related material, in chronological order. Scroll down to the years you are interested in. Say you want the fashions for 1868, for example. Just scroll down until you find the listing Mode : [XIXe siècle] : 1868 .- ... .- [éditeurs divers] .- 1868 .- Collection Maciet. Click the number next to the listing and you get this window:

Click "Voir les vignettes Maciet" and you get all the images as thumbnails. Select the ones that look interesting and enjoy - you can zoom rather far and also adjust contrasts and lighting, so you won't miss a single detail.

Source: Collection Maciet, Mode. [XIXe siècle]. 1868, image 2

Hope it proves useful to you. If nothing else, there's plenty of eye candy for the Victorian-ly inclined!

Wilkie Collins Journal Online

Public domain image (source)

For those interested in Victorian literature in general and the great Wilkie Collins specifically, The Wilkie Collins Journal, formerly The Wilkie Collins Society Journal, has recently been relaunched as an on-line, open access, peer-reviewed resource. It contains both articles on Collins-related topics and reviews, and can be found here: http://acc.wilkiecollinssociety.org/

I'm going to add the link to the Resources page as well.

A Visit to Lapland, 1868

Today is the international Sami Day. If you don't know the word, the Sami are the indigenous people inhabiting the far northern region of Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola peninsular of Russia that is sometimes called "Sàpmi" or "Sami land". The Sami are traditionally hunters, gatherers and reindeer herders and were continually pushed north from part of their traditional lands by settlers, and their way of life, religion and language has been under threat for hundreds of years. The old Swedish word for the Sami is "Lapps", which is now considered derogatory and no longer in use. The word "Lappland" derives from that, and it is still used for parts of northern Sweden and Finland.

I'm part Sami, and in the 19th century, my family all lived in the traditionally way. They were nomads and reindeer herders and they lived in materially very poor conditions, in lands that were covered in snow and ice for 9 months a year and where there was no daylight at all in December.

In the 19th century, anthropological studies were gaining in popularity, and in 1868 Swedish physician and anthropologist Gustaf von Düben organized the first of two expeditions to Swedish Lapland in order to study the Sami people. He brought his wife Lotten, who helped document the Sami way of life using the still relatively new tool of photography. Her photographs are now in the care of Nordiska Museet of Stockholm, Sweden, who has kindly made them available on Flickr Commons.

Portrait of Maria Persdotter Länta, aged 45, from Sirkas Sami village (from Flickr Commons)

Inga Pantsi, a widow from Tuorpon Sami village, and her granddaughter (from Flickr Commons)

A Sami man carrying a spear (from Flickr Commons)

Portrait of Lars Anders Baggi, aged 25, from Jokkmokk (from Flickr Commons)

Portrait of Karin Savalo, a widow from Tuorpon Sami village, and her daughter Inga (from Flickr Commons)

Please feel free to have a look at the entire collection (which is really rather remarkable), and if you are interested in more facts about the Sami, you can of course find an article on Wikipedia.

Review: The Ruling Caste by David Gilmour

Full title: The Ruling Caste: Imperial Lives in the Victorian Raj (non-fiction) 
Writer: David Gilmour
First published: 2005
Available: digitally on Amazon and possibly in a library near you (I used both options as the pictures and extremely helpful sketch over the organisation of the Indian administration wasn't included in the Kindle version)

Quote: "Their ethos is portrayed in Kipling's story 'The Head of the District' in the persons of Orde, who on his deathbed by the Indus remembers that four villages need a remission of rent because their crops have been poor, and of Tallantire, who defeats a tribal rebellion and brings order to the district after the Indian Civilian has run away."

The Ruling Caste is an ambitious book. Gilmour states in the preface that his aim is to show how the senior Civil servants of Victorian India lived from chota hazri to sundown and to portray not only their careers but their thoughts and beliefs and domestic arrangements. Somehow, he actually manages that rather well, which is a feat in only 300 pages. I have seen several reviews that complain that too many details make it a sluggish read, and certainly, there isn't a page that is not loaded with information, facts and footnotes. However, to me it read fairly easily all the same – I admit that I may not be the typical reader being both obscenely interested in the Victorian world and having a good deal of bureaucratic experience myself which probably made it easier for all those administrative proceedings to leap to life for me  – and the focus is always rather up-close and personal.

Gilmour uses a rather fixed set of characters as the focus of his narrative – we meet and get acquainted with Henry Cotton, Alfred Lyall, Henry Lawrence among others – and mixes personal accounts and letters with official accounts of the India Civil Service in the late 19th century. Therein lies one of my reservations against this book; reading it, as I was, for the express purpose of research, it was a little annoying to have the dates occasionally obfuscated, especially since Gilmour also points out that the organisation and attitudes of the ICS was not static but evolving over the period. Despite that, there are sections where accounts as far apart as 50 years are treated side-by-side and the time-gap is only visible if you actually check the footnotes. Also, you may quirk an eyebrow at finding quotes etc. from the teens and 20s in a book that has "Victorian" in the title, but seeing as I do the same thing here, I'm not really at liberty to criticise a slightly wider interpretation of the Victorian era.

It is a fascinating world Gilmour describes; utterly different from the modern bureaucracy and yet strangely familiar. His Civilians work, dream, win promotions and marry until, finally, most of them slip into oblivion as pensioners reminiscing about "the good old days" in a rather suburban atmosphere in South Kensington. The book is a treasure trove for a novelist, because it tells you so much about the mundane life and attitudes of the British Raj precisely because of it's obsessive unfolding of details, and David Gilmour's love for his subject shines through on every page. While making for an entertaining read, that fondness is also the reason for my second big reservation about this book – there is a strong bias pro-ICS/Britain that sometimes shines through. While mostly providing a rather sober look at the British Civilian, there are places when Gilmour leaps to the defence of the ICS in a rather jarring way (he clearly loathes A Passage To India, for example). It's a pity, because these almost chauvinistic little outbursts mar an otherwise brilliant and detailed study, and makes me question if there is an underlying bias that tilts the entire narrative. That nagging doubt makes me a little wary about trusting it too much, which detracts a little from its usefulness.

Nevertheless, it is still a fascinating read and recommended for anyone interested in the subject.

I gave it 4/5 on Goodreads.