I was musing this morning about the fact that in today's world, we who dress in period garb often mutter amongst ourselves about how warm the layers of clothing can be during the warmer months.
Even if one wears all natural fibers, which breathe and are actually cooler, just as they did 200 or 300 years ago, the padding and petticoats required to get the right shape and silhouette, or sometimes just the layers needed with some more diaphanous or light colored dresses from the Regency period, can really make it warm.
There may be a couple of reasons for this. First, we may be wearing modern clothing of centuries past, but we are still modern women. Likelier than not, we are rushing around at the pace we keep when wearing shorts and t shirts, despite our period garb, and so we get quite warm, quite quickly. Efforts to slow down may work for a short while, but overall we resume or usual pace and heat up again.
Did women in centuries past move more slowly? Possibly. Did they have servants to do things for them so they actually led lives of more leisure than we do today? Possibly, at least the 'better' classes, as they termed it then. Was perspiring and its attendant issues like stained and smelly clothing all less important than it is today? Certainly: sensibilities for that type of thing were quite different. Expectations were different and what people smelled like--even when clean--was also different. In fact, the smell of good clean sweat was thought by some to be attractive...but that's the subject for another posting!
As for moving more slowly and leading a more leisurely life, I do not know for certain, but I suspect it is partially true, at least. Think about it: you get dressed in the early morning: it's still fairly cool, especially inside a thick-walled stone house. Whether or not you have a maid to dress you, you arrive at breakfast quite fresh. After breakfast, perhaps you go cut some flowers for the house. A pleasant task and you do not need to exert a great amount of effort or energy. Your lip may perspire a bit, or your brow, but you likely wouldn't be soaking wet.
Afterwards, maybe you sew or embroider or play the piano--inside, or for the first two pastimes, outside if there is shade and a breeze. You might also read. Again, not sweaty activities. If visitors come in the afternoon, you sit and talk, probably inside. Ground floor rooms are probably fairly cool, but hand fans might be employed if it is warm or humid. If you have hot tea, that actually helps you feel cooler. Eating will also draw blood flow to your stomach, making the rest of you feel slightly cooler. And chatting is normally not an activity requiring great physical exertion.
So you've made it to dinner time without too much perspiring. Once the meal is over, evening pursuits are probably not much more strenuous than those of earlier in the day. Then it's time for bed, and the day is over.
The one thing I think would certainly produce an uncomfortably sweaty situation is a dance in summer time. I don't care if you only have a single layer--scandalous! no petticoat???--and if you are doing the most stately of gavottes: you get all those people together in a room, it'll be warm. And movement, no matter how stately, is movement. You're going to perspire.
So did women in, say, Georgian or Regency times, or even in the Victorian Era, perspire when they went to dances? I think they did, at least if the dance were in summer time, when it would be warm. Why aren't period films' heroines depicted as sweating as or after they dance? Because it isn't terribly attractive. Did people object to the smell of perspiration? Probably less than we do today (see above) and as the decades passed, better methods for cleaning clothing were developed. And because women wore their chemises, or 'shimmys' next to their skin, that article of clothing would absorb much of the perspiration and odor, saving the outer garments. Chemises were usually made of cotton and could easily be washed and women had more than one if they could afford it. So while the ball room might have a distinctly less than fresh odor wafting through it by the middle or end of an evening, the perspiring participants could go home, wash their soiled chemises and probably themselves to some degree, and carry on.
All of this speculation is mostly concerned with the upper or middle upper classes. But what about the lower classes? Again, speculation, but I think those women must have perspired just as much or more than their upper class contemporaries because they were actually working. A laundress, though she spends much time immersed to her elbows in water, must expend considerable, sweat making energy to accomplish her task. Some of the water is very hot, too, making it worse. Women who serve in others' homes as maids of all work, for example, or cooks, would have had to sweep and tidy the house, do the laundry, prepare the meals and clean up, all endeavors that require effort. Going to market and carrying back heavy supplies would equal perspiration. Hauling water from the river and emptying slop pails would also make anyone sweat in the heat. And these women wore as many layers as wealthier women did, although they may have had fewer scruples about hiking up their outer skirts for convenience and coolness during some of the more arduous tasks. They also had a chemise as their first layer of clothing, but unlike wealthier women, they probably only had one. What this meant was that it wasn't washed very often and after a while did little to protect the woman's outer clothing from absorbing the perspiration and odors.
But again, sensibilities and expectations were different then, something that is not easy to assimilate and even more difficult to live: just visit with re enactors or living historians during a heat wave, and you will see what I mean. No matter how die hard you may be, if faced with wearing authentic garb in 90 F degree humid, sunny days, you're going to reach for that modern antiperspirant and deodorant because in today's world the smell of sweat is not as acceptable as it was centuries ago.
But there's one other thing to consider as you look, as I have been this week, at the forecast, and eschew your more elaborate garb for the simplest and coolest you have for upcoming events. I've got a Revolutionary/French & Indian Primitive Encampment event this Saturday and Sunday at the Black Walnut Legion Post near Laceyville, where I'll be in garb selling my historical fiction about The Oldest House (shameless plug). I was going to wear a new 1770's outfit, complete with bum roll, and I was really excited about it, as it's a somewhat new look for me. But it'll be in the upper 80's to low 90's on Saturday, and humid, mid 80's and damp on Sunday, so I'm thinking Regency, and I'll probably remove my bonnet...
So what gives with how hot wearing garb can really be? How did they do it, sensibilities aside, centuries ago without getting soaked through on a hot summer day?
Two or three centuries ago, the weather was, at least in the northern hemisphere, actually cooler. No, it's not your imagination. And this is not a diatribe about global warming, either. Whether that's a factor or not, the fact is that there was something called the 'Little Ice Age' a few centuries back that meant the average temperature could be as much as five degrees cooler in summer over all of Europe and North America.
The Little Ice Age started about 1250-1300 depending on which events one uses to date the Age. Pack ice moved down from the North Pole into the North Atlantic at a remarkable rate around 1300 but the movement had begun a half century earlier. Although 1850 is an accepted terminus for the Age, some climatologists say that it wasn't until the first or second decade of the 20th century that the Age truly ended, followed by gradual warming.
Prior to the Little Ice Age there was what's referred to as the Mediaeval Warm Period, probably a climate similar to what we are experiencing now. This allowed, among other things, for great migrations of people across the globe, because the warmer temperatures allowed for easier travel. So, it's not all bad: if it weren't for the MWP, we might not be living where we are, or not in the same way.
So back to the Little Ice Age. In addition to the pack ice, there were recorded heavier snowfalls. In Europe, warm winters no longer were reliable: there was even one year known as 'the year without a summer' (1816). That was actually caused by volcanic ash that spread across the globe and caused overcast days and dropped temperatures dramatically. But it occurred during the LIA and right after one of the coldest periods of the LIA. This made the volcanic ash from Mount Tambora, which erupted in April of 1815, able to cool the temperature across the world significantly. Crops began to fail, resulting in famines, and also in a change to the way farming was done and which crops were grown. The famines led to emigration and in the U.S., spurred the westward migration. The downswing in agriculture may, I think, have also been a partial impetus for the First Industrial Revolution: if the agrarian way of making a living looked, to most, as though it were going to tank, it would have been natural to invent machines that would enable people to make a living in other ways.
The Thames famously froze over several times, and 'ice fairs' were held on its surface in London. The Baltic Sea froze over during one especially chilly period. In the LIA there were three especially cold periods, one from 1650-1670, one from 1770-1800 and another from 1850-1870. Look at the dates of the LIA and the very cold decades: they coincide exactly with the periods re enactors portray. We strive to faithfully recreate the layers and look of late Renaissance, Georgian, Regency, Victorian, Civil War, and Belle Epoque garb but we are living in a time when the weather is as much as five degrees warmer overall! If you don't think five degrees is much, think about 85F vs 80F. Especially if it is also humid. Big difference.
No wonder we perspire under our panniers!
The Little Ice Age and indeed, historical global climatology, has fascinated me ever since I learned about the LIA a couple of decades ago. If you're interested, just google it: there's a host of info out there, all of it intriguing and thought provoking.
And the next time you have to garb for an event, remember as you don your cotton petticoat and dress, pop your bonnet on your head, and suddenly feel unacceptably warm, that you are dressing for colder weather than what we are currently experiencing. Take a deep breath. Stay hydrated. Smile...and try to think of perspiration as just your personal 'glow.'
Good luck!
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