Novels are not much good for research. No Titus Bass ever lived that life, and John Johnsons story carries too much myth.
However old novels, written at the time of our interest are good looks at what people thought and how they saw the world, often verbal pictures that made the story relatable.
Right now I’m rereading the Count of Monte Christo, I’ve not read it in thirty years or more.
And I came across this piece in it. And here in I think a view in to the past in an all to real world experience
It is Dantes wedding, just on the edge of his false arrest and imprisonment
A feast is about to be set forth.
The story starts just before the hundred days of Napoleon’s return from Elba in 1815
However the elder Dantes shows up for his sons wedding, so proud is he….
“The old man was attired in a suit of glistening watered silk, trimmed with steel buttons, beautifully cut and polished. His thin but wiry legs were arrayed in a pair of richly embroidered clocked stockings, evedenty of English manufacture, while his three cornered hat depended a long streaming knot of white and blue ribbons. This he came along, supporting himself on a curiously carved stick, his aged countenance lit up with happiness, looking for all the world like one of the aged dandies of 1796, parading the newly opened gardens of the Luxembourg or Tuileries”
Here in France this aged gentleman, poor for sure, but still proud, is dressed twenty years out of style
While this is written years after the setting for the story, we see the believable and no doubt all to familiar story of a ‘square’ a ‘Chaw Bacon’ , a fuddy duddy .
One can’t dress in styles not yet invented but one, especially an older one, can be behind the times
However old novels, written at the time of our interest are good looks at what people thought and how they saw the world, often verbal pictures that made the story relatable.
Right now I’m rereading the Count of Monte Christo, I’ve not read it in thirty years or more.
And I came across this piece in it. And here in I think a view in to the past in an all to real world experience
It is Dantes wedding, just on the edge of his false arrest and imprisonment
A feast is about to be set forth.
The story starts just before the hundred days of Napoleon’s return from Elba in 1815
However the elder Dantes shows up for his sons wedding, so proud is he….
“The old man was attired in a suit of glistening watered silk, trimmed with steel buttons, beautifully cut and polished. His thin but wiry legs were arrayed in a pair of richly embroidered clocked stockings, evedenty of English manufacture, while his three cornered hat depended a long streaming knot of white and blue ribbons. This he came along, supporting himself on a curiously carved stick, his aged countenance lit up with happiness, looking for all the world like one of the aged dandies of 1796, parading the newly opened gardens of the Luxembourg or Tuileries”
Here in France this aged gentleman, poor for sure, but still proud, is dressed twenty years out of style
While this is written years after the setting for the story, we see the believable and no doubt all to familiar story of a ‘square’ a ‘Chaw Bacon’ , a fuddy duddy .
One can’t dress in styles not yet invented but one, especially an older one, can be behind the times
