Privatecorv Reloaded

Edit: THERE’S A THIRD ONE?!????

I was unable to locate the exact needlework pattern, but I think there’s a decent chance these waistcoats are inspired by the description of one worn by the character Mr. Jawleyford in popular sporting author Robert Smith Surtees’s book Mr. Sponge’s Sporting Tour (first serialized in 1849 (at least that’s the earliest I could find) and published as a novel in 1853.)

Mr. Jawleyford is described in the book as “a cross between a military man and a dandy, with a slight touch of the squire” and his hunting ensemble is described in minute detail including: “But if Mr. Jawleyford’s coat went to ‘hare’, his waistcoat was all for the ‘fox’. On a bright blue ground he sported such an infinity of ‘heads’ that there is no saying he would have been safe in a kennel of un-entered or unsteady hounds.”

Now I can’t say for certain whether the waistcoats were inspired by the book or the description of Mr. Jawleyford’s ensemble was based on an already extant trend for blue fox head waistcoats, but there’s clearly some sort of connection.

I looked to see if I could find any earlier mention of this trend, but the closest I found was in The Ladies’ Fancy Needle-Work Instructor (printed in 1841) which states that “for sporting gentlemen the “Fox Head” is very pretty” but doesn’t go into any more detail than that.

1857 Jean-François Portaels - Charlotte of Belgium, Empress consort of Mexico wearing the costume outfit of a peasant woman from Brianza

18th century Antoine de Favray - Portrait of a gentleman, seated, half-length, in a silver-trimmed pink coat and a powdered wig, with a plan of Valletta and a domed church beyond

Most period illustrations of Landsknechts are black-and-white woodcuts…

…though in 1905 a book called „Geschichte des Kostüms“ - History of Costume - assembled a bunch of black-and-whites and added colour.

If they look excessively gaudy, they’re not, because these next prints were coloured in-period by an artist called Erhard Schön, and it’s fair to assume he was representing what he saw.

Am I the only one seeing them balanced their swords on their junk. Or their codpieces? Or ye old athletic cups, whatever they may be?

Are you telling me the shampoo challenge where Bros take pictures balancing shampoo bottles on their junk in underclothes has its roots this far back? That Bros have always been about having pictures of themselves balancing things on their junk?

At a guess, the art captures something really done back in the day as yet another part of the swaggering, hyper-macho Landsknecht image. Those two soldier-with-women drawings with the monogram VG are by Urs Graf, who was an artist, a goldsmith, and a mercenary soldier with first-hand knowledge of his subject.

The little dagger that sometimes appears as part of his monogram is a distinctive Swiss design of baselard, itself named for the Swiss city and canton of Basel. Here it is in the monogram of a drawing that was probably a pin-up in its day, alongside the heraldic bishop’s crozier that’s the Basel canton badge.

This Graf drawing shows how it was worn to best show off that fancy scabbard.

…and here’s the full drawing. of mercenaries being recruited, paymaster on the right, reaching into his wallet, Death on the left representing their actual wages; the guy just in front of Death is yet another example of sword on codpiece.

The sword - in fact both of them - has the distinctive curled guard of the Landsknecht Katzbalger, which was usually a short sword, but as the art and this photo proves, not always.

Urs Graf wasn’t a Landsknecht, who were German mercs; he was a Reisläufer, which was the Swiss equivalent. The two groups despised each other; think of Star Wars / Star Trek or Mac / PC, but with pikes, swords and a willingness to use them on each other. Yet the swords in his art suggest he always drew Germans, because the typical Swiss sword - styled like the dagger - look completely different.

I haven’t been able to find out why, but at a guess the Katzbalger and outrageous clothing may have been European art shorthand for a mercenary soldier in the same way as an AK-47 rifle and a balaclava are modern media shorthand for a terrorist.

Swiss swords did appear in art, and this example - the standard-bearer of Canton Bern - is sending just as much of a message as the Landsknecht ones…

The Bernese, being Swiss, have the right to bear arms; they also arm bears…

Here are a few more Graf drawings which suggest that sword-hilts worn close to codpieces were A Definite Thing.

there’s a glass thing aboard wooden whaling ships where it’s like a little crystal they put in the ceiling to let light in belowdecks

what the fuck is it called

it looks kind of like this

YES! THANK YOU SO MUCH!

[ID: photo of closely clustered ship bunks, lit by an overhead prism. /end ID]

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Spencer ca. 1820

to be fair, neither could Rasputin. Alexei very much continued to have haemophilia.

Based on the available historical evidence, the most likely sequence of events is as follows:

The conspirators attempt to kill Rasputin with poison-laced cakes, but fail; it’s unknown whether this is because de Lazovert fucked up the poison, because Rasputin – who had a well-known dislike of sweets – didn’t go in on the cakes as heavily as they expected, or just because a poisoned cake is a really stupid idea.  

Seeing that the poison has failed, Yusupov gets Rasputin alone for a moment and shoots him once in the chest, causing him to fall senseless to the floor. Because he’s a useless nerd who thinks he knows how murder works because he read a book, Yusupov is unaware that a single handgun shot is very unlikely to be immediately fatal, and neglects to finish Rasputin off, instead leaving the room to confer with his fellow conspirators.  

When the conspirators return to retrieve Rasputin’s body, he recovers from the shock of the initial gunshot and attacks them. Following some general panic, a third conspirator, Vladimir Purishkevich, opens up guns blazing; Purishkevich manages to miss several times in spite of being at point-blank range, but eventually strikes Rasputin in the head, killing him instantly.  

The conspirators beat the shit out of Rasputin’s body just to be sure, then proceed to make a complete clownshow out of disposing of the corpse; the remainder of Rasputin’s injuries are sustained postmortem.

Pretty much everything else about Rasputin’s miraculous invincibility is invented whole cloth, much of it by Yusupov himself in order to build himself up in his own published memoirs.

there was once a little boy.

he is born disabled. his body hurts, and he can’t walk properly the way the other children do. he doesn’t understand why. he’s a little boy. but he plays with wooden boats and pulls toys on a string.

somebody makes him a tunic. they sew ducks onto it in red and green and yellow and blue. the bright colours of a child.

the little boy is eight years old, and he’s going to be king now. there’s a big ceremony about it. he doesn’t really fully understand what’s going on, because he’s eight, but he wears the tunic with the brightly coloured ducks for the occasion because he loves it. look at his ducks! aren’t they great?

he is a child. the adults around him manipulate and coax him to gain more power for themselves. he still plays with toys.

as a teenager, not yet an adult, he fathers children. they do not survive. he’s not even old enough to have full agency in his job and is still being manipulated, but he had babies and they died.

he does not make it to his twenties. at eighteen or nineteen years old he dies, and is buried. his babies, so tiny, are buried with him.

and so is his tunic with the little ducks that he loved so much he kept it long after it no longer fit.

yeah i think that like. especially with historical figures in your mind people who were kings and queens or important nobles were adults. even if you know how old they were it doesn’t really click. it doesn’t seem real

but then you get something like a little tunic with brightly coloured ducks on it and it hits you like a fucking truck that this really was a little kid and no matter how far removed you are a little kid is still a little kid. their brains didn’t develop any quicker back then. he was just as developed/mature mentally as any 8 year old now. he had cartoonish animals on his clothes and he played with toy boats and probably terrorised the local cat population.

tutankhamun was a child and he didn’t make it to adulthood because he was unfortunate enough to be a very important child

his dad died when he was 8. he saw his own babies die when he was still just a boy himself.

tutankhamun had a little pair of sandals with ducks on them. he had earrings decorated with ducks. he kept those, and other items of childhood clothing. some toys. keepsakes. things he loved, and treasured. he kept them all in a little wooden chest. the chest… was carved with ducks.

and that little duck chest, filled with things he kept from his childhood, was buried with him. maybe he was keeping them for the little babies who did not make it. maybe they just reminded him of good days and fun times.

WITH PLEASURE

(greyscale makes it hard but the duck head is on the right above the toe strap. always takes me a while to find it too)

Robe à Transformation

1865