A little known fact about Queen Victoria was that her favorite stone was the opal, specifically the Australian Opal. She loved them so much that she gave jewels fashioned from opals to her daughters upon the occasions of their marriages. Her daughters took to loving opals as well and gave opal jewelry to their friends as gifts. People at court were also encouraged to wear the stone, despite the myth that they were unlucky to those who wore them unless they were their birthstones. Even when her beloved Prince Albert died in 1861, she still maintained her love of opals but instead wore them black for mourning him.

If you think strange creatures and things that go bump in the night are inventions of the twentieth century, you are sorely mistaken. The Victorians loved their Gothic literature, spearheaded their own Spiritualist movement, and even encountered a mythological creature or two. Victorians even had their own cryptozoological creatures swimming about their waters and creeping about their forests. In fact, most of the cryptozoological creatures people encounter today were the same ones encountered in the times of our ancestors.

Scotland has the Loch Ness Monster and New England has the Great New England Sea Serpent. Sightings of the sea serpent around the New England coast began in 1638 and have continued being told by boaters and fishermen since then. The creature resembles a large ocean snake, the major difference being its massive size described between 30 and 80 feet long in my brief research. No real specimen of this creature has been caught, although people in 1817 believed they caught a baby sea serpent, which was most likely a deformed terrestrial snake.

The sightings of the sea serpent were not limited to lower class fishermen, sailors and boaters, however. About a year ago, I came across a copy of the Brunswick Telegraph from the 1880s with an odd article in it about yet another sighting of the slithery creature. The article reported peripherally that General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, the great Civil War hero and former governor of Maine, had actually seen the great sea serpent with his own two eyes. He was on his schooner, the Pinafore, off one of the peninsulas south of Brunswick (I believe it was Casco Bay) and he saw what he described as a serpentine creature that he had never seen before and was quite large. I want to say he estimated that it was 40 feet long. I don't have the article in front of me as it is in storage but it appeared to me that the reporter, of course, did not take the story very seriously. A joke was cracked in the article about General Chamberlain charging the great serpent as he had charged the rebels on Little Round Top.

Even so, Chamberlain was not prone to lying and I find him to be a credible source. If he said he saw the Great New England Sea Serpent, then he saw it.

In the nineteenth century, fashion plates could be found in most ladies magazines. It was not unlike thumbing through the pages of Vogue today in order to keep up with the latest styles and trends. Some fashion plates were ink drawings, while others were hand-painted pieces of art inserted in between poetry, child rearing articles, and so forth. Some of the most popular American magazines for women in the nineteenth century were Peterson's Magazine and Godey's Ladies Book. Have you seen Ladies Home Journal in grocery stores? That particular magazine has been in publication since 1883! Magazines of the nineteenth century were sent to subscribers through the mail just as today.

Here is an example of a hand-painted fashion plate. Each week, I will post a new one. These particular selections were in the October 1864 edition of Godey's and were the height of fashion for that season. As with most magazines today, the images are exaggerated glamorous versions of the trends found on the street in everyday life.

Did you know that Fanny Chamberlain's step-uncle was George F. Root, a popular composer and songwriter in the nineteenth century?

In the 1850s, Fanny's adoptive father (biologically her cousin) surprised everyone in their family by taking a second wife. His new bride was Helen Root, a young woman only a few months older than Fanny, yet she had to get along with her as her new stepdaughter. Miss Root's older brother was George Root.

From Wikipedia:

He became particularly successful during the American Civil War, as the composer of martial songs such as Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! (The Prisoner's Hope), Just before the Battle, Mother, and The Battle Cry of Freedom. He wrote the first song concerning the war, The First Gun is Fired, only two days after the conflict began with the bombardment of Fort Sumter. He ultimately had at least 35 war-time "hits", ranging in tone from the bellicose to the ethereal. His songs were played and sung at both the home front and the real front. Tramp, Tramp, Tramp became popular on troop marches, and Battle Cry of Freedom became well-known even in England.

I am sitting now at the same window where we sat together all that night. How could you think that I would shrink from you ever! You who seem so holy, so pure and noble to me! -- how could I even if you did press my finger to your dear lips? O! there was nothing even then, that you could have done that would not have seemed beautiful and right to me. Ah! those nights! so full of terrible beauty; will they never come again?...O! dear Lawrence I would know you more, and I would have you know me as you never have known me. My soul longs to speak to yours as it never has spoken...I rest in you as I never have rested before; -- you know it, do you not? and I would be everything to you; I would nestle closely in your arms forever, and love you and cling to you and be your 'bird': dear, precious heart!

- Fanny Adams to Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain on January 1, 1852

I don't remember where I saw this information but when I find the source, I will update the blog.

The bracelet was designed by the Civil War hero Major General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain as a tenth anniversary present for his wife, Frances Caroline Adams Chamberlain, who had seen precious little of him during the war. In November 1865 he contacted Tiffany and Company in New York City to see if they could execute the design. The firm replied that it was "perfectly practicable" and that Chamberlain should reply by telegraph "to insure its completion in time" for the anniversary. Tiffany's bill, dated December 6, 1865, noted "Bracelet to order - $250." The following day, the Chamberlains' anniversary as well as what was then Thanksgiving Day in Maine, the general presented the bracelet to his wife.

The bracelet is made of yellow gold with a central medallion bearing a red enameled Maltese cross bordered with diamonds, set on a white enameled field. This was the insignia of the Fifth Corps Army of the Potomac, which included the Twentieth Maine Infantry, commanded by Chamberlain during the Civil War. Apparently Chamberlain had suggested that the cross be outlined in rubies, for in their November letter to him Tiffany's cautioned that "the rubies as a border to the red enamel would not look well & the effect would be bad & lost." The firm assured him that the difference in price between rubies and diamonds would not be more than twenty dollars.


Opposite the Maltese cross is a replica of Chamberlain's shoulder bar with two silver stars (Pl. III), indicating his rank of major general a promotion he received shortly after he presided over the Confederate surrender at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia. Like the red cross, the blue bar is enameled en guilloche. The border of the bar and the edges of the bracelet are chased to simulate military cording. Engraved on the inside of the bracelet behind the bar is "Fannie C. Chamberlain/Dec. 7th 1865."

The edges of the bracelet are joined by twenty-four miniature hourglasses that, according to family tradition, symbolize the weary hours of each day that Chamberlain was away from his wife during the war. The names of twenty-four battles in which he fought are engraved on the hourglasses as follows: ANTIETAM, SHEPARDSTOWN FORD, FREDERICKSBURG, CHANCELLORSVILLE, GETTYSBURG, SHARPSBURG PIKE, MANASSAS GAP, BRANDY STATION, RAPPHANNOCK ST[ATIO]N, SPOTSYLVANIA C.[OURT] H.[OUSE], TA RIVER, NORTH ANNA, LITTLE RIVER, TOLOPATAMOY, MAGNOLIA SWAMP, BETHESDA CHURCH, CHICKAHOMINY, PETERSBURG, WATKIN'S FARM, QUAKER ROAD, WHITE OAK ROAD, FIVE FORKS, SOUTH SIDE R.[AIL] R.[OAD], and APPOMATTOX C.[OURT] H.[OUSE].

The first of several "regular" posts I have planned is called Lillian's Kitchen, named for Lillian Edmunds, who was Joshua L. Chamberlain's secretary. Lillian, who was actually a distant relative of Fanny's, later became Fanny's personal companion. During the last few years of Fanny's life, Lillian took care of her; the pair would even travel to Portland for shopping excursions. During this time, Joshua referred to Lillian as "a blessing to all" (J.L. Chamberlain, quoted in Smith, 302). After Fanny's 1905 death she became Joshua's housekeeper, and, as he grew older, his nurse at the Portland home where he spent the last years of his life. (Source: Pine Grove Cemetery of Brunswick, Maine) She was so loved by the Chamberlain family that "Joshua" (he was actually called Lawrence by family and friends) left her a space in the family cemetery plot, although her sister Elizabeth used it instead.

So in honor of Lillian's long service to the Chamberlain family, the kitchen posts here are named for her. Today we will begin with a recipe from The Cook's Oracle by William Kitchiner, MD, published in New York in 1829. It's very simple to get you started with how old recipes were worded.


FRENCH BEANS

Green beans
Salt

Cut off the stalk end first, and then turn to the point and strip off the strings. If not quite fresh, have a bowl of spring-water, with a little salt dissolved in it, standing before you, and as the beans are cleaned and stringed, throw them in. When all are done, put them on the fire in boiling water, with some salt in it; after they have boiled fifteen or twenty minutes, take one out and taste it; as soon as they are tender take them up; throw them into a colander or sieve to drain.

To send up the beans whole is much the better method when they are thus young, and their delicate flavor and color are much better preserved. When a little more grown, they must be cut across in two after stringing; and for common tables they are split, and divided across; cut them all the same length; but those who are nice never have them at such a growth as to require splitting.

When they are very large they look pretty cut into lozenges.

Fanny Chamberlain, ca. 1862.

Welcome to Fanny's Parlor: The 19th Century Brought to Life.

I was inspired to create this blog because every time I talked about life in the 19th century, people always wanted to know where they could find more information. I'm a teacher by nature and I believe in teaching through giving people things they can relate to and that makes history less of a dry odyssey through dates and names that mean nothing to most people now.

I chose to call this blog Fanny's Parlor after a nineteenth century woman by the name of Fanny Chamberlain. (Most of you who know me already know about her.) Born in quite humble beginnings, Fanny rose to become an artist living on her own, a music and voice teacher, a college professor's wife, onto a Civil War general's wife, the First Lady of Maine, and a college president's wife. She led a unique life for nineteenth century standards and witnessed things that most of her peers never dreamed of in their own lives.

Fanny was known in her lifetime for inviting students of Bowdoin College and people in the town of Brunswick, Maine, into her home for parties and social gatherings. She helped the students with their problems and cared for them so much that the habits were mentioned in her eulogy. It was said: "Then to the time Mr. Chamberlain was made president of Bowdoin College when she was still 'the same little Fannie Adams,' and the students came to her with their joys and sorrows, wrong doings and love affairs. Whatever happened, she always took the part of the student, being almost a mother to them." It was also said of her: "Mrs. Chamberlain had a fund of funny stories and of quaint sayings. She was young and bright in spirit, even to her last. She was cultured and intellectual and an artist in painting as well as in music. But better than all her versatile talents was her dear, true strong, loving heart."

She is the namesake of this blog and the point of reference for the things taught here. No subject will be off-limits. There will be everything from humor to seriousness, birth to death, Victorian oddities, sex, love, marriage, careers, fashion, architecture, furniture, incorporating Victorianisms into the present, and everything in between. In the spirit of Fanny's "fund of funny stories and of quaint sayings," this blog will be anything but a dry historical reference.

I hope to see all of you here in the evolution of Fanny's Parlor.