The Lantern Party: 1902

Art Nouveau Chinese Lanterns fan, c. 1900 https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/beta/asset/art-nouveau-sirens-for-maison-bail/mAGiOKoM61QQGg

A Unique Affair.

“It would seem now and then as if society devices in delightful entertainment were about exhausted.” remarked a little lady just home from a summer up north, “but we were invited to a rarely charming garden party while away. It was called ‘a lantern party.’ and was given by a lady who owns a summer cottage set far back from a country road almost In the deep woods. The cards of Invitation were decorated with her own delicate drawings and water color sketches of Chinese lanterns and antique lanterns, and the guests were expected to carry lanterns with them; it was quietly noised around that a prize would be given to the bearer of the most unique or artistic lantern.

“As you can imagine, there was much energetic scurrying about in the small town to find something pretty in lanterns. Richard drove several miles out into the country to borrow a quaint old tin lantern he had seen at a farmhouse; but Louise and I contented ourselves with some pretty Japanese lanterns we had in the house. Little Richard was invited, too. and he got together quite a surprising and dazzling achievement in the way of a lantern out of an old cigar box and some red and yellow tissue paper.

“It was a great lot of fun, going after dark down the village street carrying our lighted lanterns. The sidewalks here and there were dotted with other guests, also carrying bright lanterns. People on the sidewalks and on the summer piazzas exclaimed at this unusual sight. When we reached the country road leading to the cottage of our hostess the spectacle was even more beautiful. Such a number of bright, yet subdued, lights flitting noiselessly along in the dark. As we neared the cottage we were all spellbound; a beautiful picture was presented house, porches and the long lane to the great gate hung with colored lanterns of all kinds and sizes. After we arrived in the garden and were seated, it was charming to watch all the new arrivals coming up the lane bearing lanterns a long vista of gigantic fireflies done in bright color. Those who wearied of carrying their lanterns could hang them, ticketed, on one of the verandas; and, before the evening was over, three judges quietly inspected them and made the awards. The chief prize was a lovely little Moorish lantern, and was won by a gentleman who carried a curious little Venetian lantern, which was said to have belonged to Robert Browning. He sent to his Chicago home for it. I learned, and as he was a much-traveled man, no doubt the little literary lantern was authentic.

“To our great surprise, little Richard’s cigar-box lantern won the consolation prize–a pretty copy of Stevenson’s beautiful essay, ‘The Lantern Bearers.’ “Music, conversation and the usual summer refreshments were other features of the evening, but the charm of the lanterns really made all else seem superfluous. Our lantern hostess told me she had once given such a party at her city home, where she knew many artists and curio lovers; and the rallying of beautiful, rare old foreign lanterns on that occasion, she said, really made her heart ache with the envious greed of nonpossesslon.”

The Indianapolis [IN] Journal 14 September 1902: p.13

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Parties and cosy-corners were not the only venues for these pretty lanterns:

Some riders, in view of the fact that lamps are easily extinguished, have adopted the gaudy Chinese lantern, which, if it goes out, is readily noticed. In the evening these gay lanterns are very attractive.

Godey’s Lady’s Book [Philadelphia, PA] October 1896

Mrs Daffodil is sorry to dash her readers’ cherished beliefs, but Chinese lanterns were rarely made in that country:

The Chinese Lantern Trade.

During the last two or three years a large and regular demand for Chinese-lanterns has been created in this country, and the sale of these articles now constitutes one of the most important, if not the most important branch of the business of dealer in pyrotechnics. This has been especially true this season, when the demand for ordinary “fireworks” has been insignificant, but for Chinese-lanterns it has been larger than ever before. Garden parties, which are becoming very popular, are a profitable source of income to the manufacturers of Chinese-lanterns, as is also the custom now in vogue at some of the watering places of having a grand illumination once or twice each season. On two different occasions this summer Martha’s Vineyard has called upon Boston dealers for 15,000 lanterns for a single evening’s illumination.

The greater part of the “Chinese-lanterns” are made in this country, in the vicinity of New York, or in Germany, and as they have been in such active request of late years much ingenuity has been expended in producing them in the most attractive and convenient, and at the same time the cheapest, forms. The result of these ingenious efforts has been the manufacture of paper lanterns, some of which are surprisingly well adapted to the purposes for which they are designed, others being marvelously cheap, and many combining both of these desirable qualities to some extent. Pretty Chinese-lanterns of a cylindrical shape, and perhaps twelve inches long and four or five inches in diameter when in use, but capable of being compressed into about one-twelfth of their ordinary length for transportation, are sold as low as $6 per hundred; and large, gorgeously decorated globes, selling at $20 to $30 per hundred, are constructed with wire frames so as to be capable of being folded into the merest fraction of their usual space.

The Pittsfield [MA] Sun 7 November 1877: p. 7

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

Plaster Casts of Their Pretty Faces, a Summer Fad: 1888

Plaster life-mask of the face of ballerina Anna Pavlova. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1113998/mask/

The Latest Fashionable Folly.

Some few of the summer girls before gathering their butterfly raiment about them for flight left souvenirs of themselves with the business-tied young men who remain in the city. These souvenirs were neither more nor less than plaster casts of their pretty faces, and as the fashion in which these casts are obtained is by no means a pleasant one they must be judged to have displayed heroism worthy of a better cause. A cast, they argue, has no more significance than a photograph, while it is a much newer method of giving a token of one’s regard. The damsel who designs to honor any friend masculine after this mode send for one of those swarthy, under-sized Italian modelers who abound in certain quarters down town. The little man attends in the lady’s boudoir and a studio is extemporized. This means that some convenient sister or girl friend hold her hand and calms her rising terrors while the victim is laid back in a reclining chair or extending on a table.

The hair is snooded up carefully and covered that no touch of plaster may come near it. Then some variety of sweet oil is rubbed upon the skin, tubes of one description or another are put into the nostrils and the mixture is poured on. It does not take many minutes for it to set nor many more for it to be got off, discovering the summer girl very commonly in a state bordering on hysteria and as glad to be released as if she were jumping from a dentist’s clutches. There is no real discomfort attending the operation, the oil preventing any adhesion of the skin and the castee soon recovers sufficiently to describe the whole thing as “real fun,” and to discuss the number of copies of her countenance she will have made from the mold.

A bachelor’s den, in case the bachelor chances to have a number of girl friends, presents an interesting appearance just now. Rows of white faces look down from the mantel, more stand around on tables or bookshelves. Some are set in plaques, some hung up in frames. Some, it grieves one to record, are not treated with due consideration, one irreverent dog of a youngster, for instance, turning the plaster mask of his best girl over and using the reverse side for an ash tray.

The Plain Dealer [Cleveland OH] 29 July 1888: p. 10

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  Irreverent dog, indeed. Mrs Daffodil appreciates that the summer girl feels a life-mask to be more of a “speaking likeness” than a photograph. Still, even the most skillful modeller cannot hide their shuddersome resemblance to a death mask. Unless one’s beloved bachelor has some strange tastes indeed, one feels that a portrait in tasteful evening costume would more effectively call the girl friend to the bachelor’s mind.

The photograph at the head of this post is a cast-plaster life-mask of ballerina Anna Pavlova. Here is a bronze cast taken from the plaster mold:

http://www.bonhams.com/auctions/21866/lot/332/

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

The Great Grampus Bath-house Tragedy: 1875

The Sad Result of Using Patent Bathing Houses.

New Orleans Picayune.

A harrowing story comes to us from one of our sea side watering places. Old Mr. Grampus was in Paris last spring, and he brought home with him one of Baptiste’s patent bath houses. It was made of vulcanized silk with steel ribs, and it shut and opened by a spring. Open it had the appearance of a beautiful blue and buff striped pavilion, octagonal in shape, and covering a superficial area of some ninety or a hundred square feet. Shut up, it looked like a huge Brobdignagian umbrella, though, being very light, Mr. Grampus could carry it to the beach as easy as he did his camp stool. The Grampuses were very proud of this bath-house. They used to take it down to the most crowded point on the sands and flaunt it in the faces of their rivals. It afforded to Mrs. Grampus and the Miss Grampuses a satisfaction more ecstatic than they had ever known before to emerge from this gorgeous edifice just as those odious Millers came sneaking out of their dingy old wooden huts under the cliff. The crowd gazed at them with envy and admiration, while they either pitied or ignored the Millers. Baptiste’s patent bath-house was an object of respectful amazement to the whole caravansary, and the Grampuses came in for no little social eminence and superiority in consequence.

This sort of thing went on smoothly for a fortnight or so, until the Millers and the Joneses and the Snagsbys were absolutely on the point of leaving Jolimer for sheer mortification. And perhaps they would have gone the very next day, but for the singular adventure which little Blinker had with his donkey. It was about 11 o’clock; the beach had been crowed for an hour or more, and as usual the centre of attraction and of interest was the Grampus bath-house. They had lately embellished this beautiful structure with a pair of golden horns [antlers] and a silk centennial flag, and in the eyes of the unhappy Millers it looked more insolent and gaudy and overwhelming than ever. The Grampus ladies had been inside for a quarter of an hour or so, and the spectators conjectured, rightly as it afterward transpired, that they were almost ready for the surf, when all of a sudden little Blinkers was seen descending one of the winding paths astride a particularly contumacious and evil-minded donkey. His agonized cries and expostulations attracted attention, and in less than a minute every eye, except those of the doomed and unsuspecting Grampuses, was riveted on Blinkers. Here he came, his donkey churning away at the bit, and buck-jumping like a mustang, and be miserable, frantic and helpless with terror. Blinkers stuck, though, and the donkey lunged away down the path like something mad, without shaking off the stricken wretch who rode him.

There were a few Ravelian acrobatics, a wild lurch, and then Blinkers and the donkey went kerslap again the Grampuses’ patent bath-house! One complicated shriek shot through the air, a flutter and a rattling as of machinery, and the next instant Blinkers was dashed upon the sand in a crumpled heap, and a haggard and affrighted donkey with his ears pinned back and his tail between his legs, was seen hustling down the beach like some panic-stricken meteor. And then the great Grampus pavilion with a creak and a snap, suddenly shut itself up into umbrella shape, and waddled hysterically toward the surf on a pair of elephantine legs—identified by a spectator as the legs of the Mrs. Grampus—suggesting the idea, with its towering outline and its antlers and its flag, for some gigantic species of horned giraffe which had just taken the blue ribbon at the fair.

And that was the end of the great Grampus bath-house tragedy. Old mother Grampus pranced about the beach awhile with the patent bath house sitting on her head like a long but emaciated extinguisher, and the two Miss Grampuses who had escaped the collapse rushed frantically into the surf, with a good deal less bathing dress than they would have had if Blinkers and his donkey had given them a little more time. Next day the family departed before the rest of the world had wakened, and the Millers and the Joneses, and the Snagsbys are having their own way. Now, if this narrative should reach the eye of any family using Baptiste’s patent portable bath-house, we trust they will take warning, and never afterward trust to its protection until it has been enclosed in a serviceable picket fence.

Fort Wayne [IN] Weekly Sentinel 18 August 1875: p. 1

Advertisement for Seaside Bathing Tent courtesy of http://dakotaboo-vintage-books-magazines.blogspot.com/2011/08/vintage-advertisement-for-seaside.html

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Truly, a useful warning about bathing-pavilion hubris, which we all should take to heart. How are the Vulcanized fallen!  Mrs Daffodil has sought casually, but in vain for the inventor. Considering his role in submerging persons in water, he must have been called “Jean Baptiste.”

Mrs Daffodil has previously written about a bathing machine as the scene of scandal, as well as the ideal bath-house, which will, indeed make one the envy of one’s friends, if not one’s maid.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.