Discussion Post: The Cardboard Box

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

This week, the canon story we’re looking at is The Cardboard Box, and the chosen topic is Seaside Holidays.

Here are some interesting facts courtesy of garonne:

☀ Victorians valued sea-water baths, and the Great Eastern Railway Company delivered sea-water daily from Lowestoft to London, to hotels, schools, hospitals, and any private citizen who ordered it, at the price of sixpence for every three gallons (in 1908). There was even a plan at one point to build a gigantic pipe from Brighton to London to supply sea-water to the city for bathing purposes, but it never came to fruition. [Dickens Dictionary of London 1908]

☀ At the start of the Victorian period, sea bathing meant standing in the sea and ducking oneself under the surface a few times before getting out and drying off . Men did it naked, and women wore a sort of woollen sack with a hole for the head. They could hardly move but it didn't matter because they weren't swimming and nobody could see them except the 'dipping woman' helping them to immerse themselves in the water.

☀ By the 1870s, men and women were swimming in the sea for fun. Beaches were segregated, and resorts sold maps to help you find the male or the female beach. By now, train tickets were cheap enough for middle and working class people to go on day trips to the sea, and resorts were springing up with promenades, gardens, concert halls, bandstands etc.

☀ Towards the end of the century, men were wearing a short-sleeved thigh-length swimsuit, and women were wearing a tunic and drawers combination usually made of serge, with the arms and lower legs bare.

☀ Women sometimes wore 'bathing stays', a sort of light corset, because they were so used to being corseted that they felt uncomfortable without one.

☀ By 1900, half the British population was able to take an occasional short holiday by the sea. [How to be a Victorian, Ruth Goodman, 2014]


Some useful resources:

New Brighton – A Victorian Seaside Resort by Tony Franks-Buckley

Victorian History: By the Seaside, By the Beautiful Sea

British History: The Victorian Seaside by Professor John Walton

The Seaside in the Victorian Literary Imagination by Jacqueline Banerjee, Contributing Editor, Victorian Web (UK)

Seaside Insanity Comes from Odd People in Odd Places by James Greenwood, [1883], on Victorian London.

Victorian Britain - Seaside Holidays On YouTube: a 7:50 minute clip from a documentary—some wonderful footage of Victorian people enjoying themselves at seaside resorts in the north west of England.



Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.

Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.

Comments

Regarding ears

[debriswoman]

I was looking through a copy of the Strand, containing several Sherlock Holmes tales, and came across this article...luckily also on line.

http://solispress.com/A%20Chapter%20on%20Ears_web.pdf

:-p

Re: Regarding ears

[grrlpup]

The more ears I look at, the more funny-looking they seem!

Re: Regarding ears

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

"And what have you been doing today, Frankles?" "Looking at black & white photographs of celebrities' ears and then comparing my own in the mirror."

Thank you for the link. A most enlightening (and amusing and light-hearted ^^) article. Somehow I can't see Holmes having written it. But there's a certain pawky humour I recognise...

Re: Regarding ears

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

I think an ear fetish fic might (but only MIGHT) be beyond my scope. But naughty dipping girls...well...we'll have to see about that...

Re: Regarding ears

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm sure you could manage an ear fetish fic :P And rather looking forward to the naughty dipping girls fic. It just depends what rating you go up to, and whether I feel I'm going to be able to look you in the eye icon afterwards ^___^

Re: Regarding ears

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

I dunno. It might be too much like the foot one. But we'll see.

On the one hand, people should never read something they feel uncomfortable with, on the other hand, you shouldn't feel embarrassed. And any point in time (say, for example, now) I might be in the middle of drafting yet another (!) alien ovipositor kink fic. There's no shame here.

RE: Re: Regarding ears

[debriswoman]

We all need a hobby
And I am now pleased with my small ear lobes:-p

Re: Regarding ears

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Show off :P

RE: Re: Regarding ears

[debriswoman]

Well, wouldn't you, if you had the ear lobes of Lord Randolph Churchill?

Re: Regarding ears

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

I think we're getting into creepy!Holmes territory again... (:P)

RE: Re: Regarding ears

[debriswoman]

I shall return them later:-)

[debriswoman]

One would have to really really want to bathe to go through all that...fascinating detail:-)

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

Can you imagine wearing bathing stays?

[debriswoman]

Quite an endurance feat:-p
Those Victorians were made of stern stuff:-)

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

And bathing in a wooden sack--you'd look like shipwrecked cargo (for the few minutes that you bobbed)!

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Some of us look like shipwrecked cargo even without the sack ^_^

You know, looking at it again and having done some Googling... I think garonne meant "woollen" sack. I'm just going to correct it.

[grrlpup]

Children's author Margery Williams Bianco fictionalized her childhood memories from 1890s Kensington in Bright Morning-- it's a great child's-eye view of well-to-do Victorian life. There's a seaside-holiday chapter in which a horse-drawn bathing machine takes her and her female relatives out into the water, so no one will see them crossing the sand in their bathing-costumes!

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Must admit I'm entirely unfamiliar with the book and the author but it's sounds like a great read.

Thank you for the link - some interesting stuff. And using bathing machines would make for a very amusing scene in a Holmes fic ^_^

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

It's sort of like a mobile, seaside version of, say, a BROOM CUPBOARD!

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

Watson did say he wanted to go on holiday ...

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Kinda writes itself, no?

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

I'm beginning to suspect you are an undiscovered genius ^_^ That's brilliant.

[laurose8.livejournal.com]

On my latest rereading, I noticed more how Mary seemed to have really loved Alec Fairbairn, from how she acted when he was killed.

In a grim touch Sarah does win. She wanted to be first with Browner, and when he's just killed his wife, he thinks of Sarah more, and mutiilates his wife's body for her sake.

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Yes, she was completely unconcerned for her own safety - she was just overtaken with grief for Fairbairn. It looks like she must have truly loved him.

I'm not sure that I'd agree Sarah came first with Browner but I'd certainly agree with you that his hate of her paradoxically made her important to him.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

The saddest tale in Canon. CARD's combination of gruesome details, the unfolding of what seems like a ghastly medical prank into pure horror, cruelly mistaken identity, adultery (the reason many publications kept this one out of Holmes collections for a while), sibling rivalry, and a crime of passion all combine to make Holmes' plaints at beginning and end of the story sound like the mournful Chorus of a Shakespearean tragedy.

As was said in one of the poetry offerings, no one emerges a winner in this tale - even the murderer is a haunted and pitiable man after his deed.

How sadly appropriate that Jeremy Brett's very last filmed moment as Sherlock Holmes was the "What purpose is served by it all, Watson?" speech at "Cardboard Box's" end.

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

I read a bit of Doyle's biography and wonder if that speech/statement doesn't echo what Doyle himself felt after his early stint at Stonyhurst College, a Jesuit boarding school. The source I read said that he lost his belief in Christianity there and then went searching (and of course later found spiritualism) for something else.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

Tragically, this would only embed deeper into Doyle's psyche after his son was killed in the Great War, when his obsession with spiritualism took over his life.

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

It's a story where you just want to go back and make everything all right for everyone. There are so many bad decisions before the final tragedy.

The Granada version made a huge impression on me - I think it must have been the first time I'd ever come across CARD. I certainly hadn't read the story yet. Though there's a certain horror to a brutal murder happening in bright sunshine, I think it was an inspired idea to change the scene to ice and snow. And while never excusing what he had done, I felt great pity and sympathy for Browner.

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

I'd wondered why they changed the time of year, unless it was simply wintertime when they filmed. Certainly made for a grim Holmesian Christmas story that stands in stark contrast to the warmth of BLUE.