Paul Minor

Delving Into Yester~Year

Local historian and writer Paul Miner takes items from The Republican’s Yester-Year column to develop an interesting, informative and often humorous article.

To the Editor: I constantly pursue style advice, whether sartorial or comportment. It abounds locally, harkening back to Hendricks County’s dawning days. Earlier hints are gleaned before there was a Danville, or the county’s first pioneers.

Madam Spitfire from Knox County in 1817, had style.

She set up shop “at the Furies on Hackle Street, next door to the Cat’s Paw Tavern.” Around the clock, any day, she dispensed “the noble art of Scolding and Quarreling, in good or bad humor, in love or spite.” Her approach was in “the newest and most approved style.” How we need her now. She was ready “before or after meals,” and in English or Dutch. She had a technique for everyone, aimed at anyone. Married women could scold their husbands “blind, deaf and dumb in six weeks.”

Think of it. An accomplished harpy battle-axe in six weeks. Madame Spitfire, herself, had scolded eight husbands to death in three years, and the ninth was heading in that direction.

She was so accomplished she had scolded her own teeth out, rendering her powerless to teach biting. She worried little about toothaches.

She taught grimaces and “furious faces.” She taught how to scratch with needles and pins. She claimed the power to scold water into vinegar. By 1885, ladies were cautioned not to whistle, climb fences or scold when they were angry. In 1883, in Danville at 6 W. Main St., John Bayne sold Solar Tip shoes “in style, quantity and price.” I went on-line to get a street view of that address and blocking it was a fellow in a black Suburban, a big Slurpee in hand, taking up two parking spaces. That’s style.

Ladies’ hosiery featured lengthwise stripes in fall 1881, yet mere inches from that disclosure I read that “fashionable” hosiery had nearly horizontal gold threads, and in various colors and stripes. That confusion aside, was anyone decently allowed a good glimpse of what covered ladies’ legs back then?

Later that year, a notice observed that “a lady wants to know that latest Parisian style of dress and bonnet and a new way to arrange the hair.”

Turns out “millions were expended for artificial appliances” in a vain attempt to mask the truth that “emaciation, nervous debility and female weakness exist.”

The style and fashion of carrying canes had rules “among the swells and lah-de-dah lads” of New York in 1883. Fops observed yearly changes “with as much exquisite punctilio” as ladies who wore a poke bonnet, then a scoop hat.

The Dude of the 1880’s, with his cane.

Canes, fashioned from wood from across the globe, had changed from a fish hookshaped shepherd’s crook from London to the plain Zulu curve from Paris. The year before, fribbles sported canes with a silver-ball handle.

A generation earlier, the whalebone cane was in.

Each season, style dictated how the cane was carried. I can’t fathom the “aesthetic” style where the dandy held the cane limply between the first and second fingers of both

hands, elbows forward and shoulders rounded. I tried it with my livestock cane and it made no sense.

I think more than a few rural residents laughed themselves silly reading about those posers. As for townsfolk, I confidently assume at least a few affected those styles reported by The Republican.

Men were advised late in 1884 never to come down to breakfast in their dressing gowns. Rather, their morning suit was appropriate. “There are men who sit at table in their shirt-sleeves. This is very vulgar.”

Someone in 1886 counseled young men to black the back of their boots, and not wear reversible collars and cuffs.

“What does it indicate when the heels of the boots are not blackened? The boy is not thorough. He only does what he is forced to do.” He was not a true gentleman and lacked character. How many readers looked at their boots?

Paul Miner Lizton