Two random thoughts kept me awake for a while the other night, the experience of travel and proving a negative.
The first was spurred on by an audio book about the Rev. War I am attempting to listen to on the way to and from work. One of the characters was traveling by some type of carriage on a muddy, rutty road. In the story, he was trying to keep his mind on something other than the tossing and rocking of the carriage. Of course this got me wondering about what it was actually like to ride for an extended time in a carriage or stage. Several months ago I wrote about travel in regards to the modes and prescribed etiquette. This pondering is more about the actual experience. In our modern car travel we have radios, heaters, air conditioning, artificial light, adjustable seats and so on. On the hour plus trips we tend to take frequently, I curl up in my seat, talk with Dan, check my mail, make shopping lists. I have lots of space and a comfortable seat. Thinking about what I might do on a journey in the 19th century, I first thought I would bring needle-work or a book like is often depicted in movies. But then I started wondering about the amount of natural light in different vehicles. We are accustom too much more artificial light in the present-day. How much natural light would a woman have wanted to do her needle-work or to read by in a closed vehicle? I’m not sure how much light makes it into some of these vehicles. The carriages I usually see used at various events are open or have a roof that can pull up. There is plenty of light in those. When I see closed vehicles, they are in generally on display inside carriage barns. In those situations it is difficult to determine how much light gets in a vehicle when there is limited light inside in the first place. I wish I would have paid more attention on the occasions at the museum when more vehicles were out for use. The next piece I wondered about is the actual riding. I was trying to imagine what it was like to travel in a closed vehicle in a mid-century dress. As I mentioned, I like to curl up in the car. There is a huge difference between me in my jeans or a little modern dress and the cloths from mid-century. I know what it is like to ride in a late century train car with a cage on. The seats are comfortable for an adult woman and a child. But the seating is tight for two adults and extremely tight for two adult women wearing 100″+ cages. In our experience, with the larger cages one woman sits down then the other sits with her skirts on top of the other. This can be Highly inconvenient. With smaller cages, 90-100ish inches it is possible to sit side by side with our skirts tucked to our sides quite comfortably. I wish I knew how the dimensions of these seats compare to the seats of the 1850s. The width, depth, height and space between them would all be factors. So would the aisle width and storage spaces. Even though the seating was tight, I didn’t find it overly uncomfortable because the space was open, air could move around the car and the window let in plenty of light to see by. Would these three aspects still be available in a closed horse-drawn vehicle? Would a mid-19th century woman place as much importance on them as I do?
On to the second pondering….
On of the struggles we have in researching what was or wasn’t available, popular or fashionable during the 1850s and 60s is proving/showing that something wasn’t. With finer points of fashion we can sometimes find a reference to something falling out of fashion. Great! But what about aspects of material culture that don’t have convenient textual references holding against them? When the concept of proving a negative was mentioned in a recent email discussion, I seriously stared thinking about what the process might be or the process I would take. (Okay, so when I am stressed and can’t sleep my mind wanders on the oddest of subjects.) The project that came to mind was the research on folding chairs. While I didn’t start our to prove a negative, in a way that is what I faced for the civilian use of folding chairs. While folding furniture had been around for centuries, the use of folding chairs was not prevalent for domestic use during the first half of the nineteenth century. The reemergence of folding furniture, also referred to as patent furniture, coincided with the onset of the Civil War. What became a vast array of beautiful and creative domestic and travel furniture in the later half of the century, began as functional pieces with a military purpose. Looking at this example it is possible to chart the frequency of patents and advertisements through the century. Doing so, we see the start of chairs for military use and the transition into the domestic sphere. Additionally, we can look at the patents for this furniture and the manufacturing establishments. We see when those contracted for the military moved to producing domestic folding furniture and when their establishments grew. So, my approach to proving a negative requires looking at the timeline or spectrum of the subject matter’s existence and production; looking at when something was in use/favor, when it emerged, when it declined, what was in its place if anything. It would have been nice to have some of my former science wing coworkers to ask how they would scientifically approach proving a negative.
If I Had My Own Blue Box: 