Baedeker to the rescue

While Murder at the Gasworks is being edited, I have done what everyone says you should do and begun a new novel.

This one is set in Portsmouth (for a bit) and then London in 1883. I’ve written 14k words so far and have no idea where the plot is going. Is it a mystery? Or an adventure story? Or a bromance? Again, I meant to plan, to outline it all, to get effing organized for once. But then I just didn’t. I prefer to let the horse run, hold the reins loose, and see what happens.

But things have arisen, naturally. Two of my characters want to go do interesting things in London, since they’ve never been there. From writing my Victorian mysteries, I know a lot about the city in 1860, 1862, 1863, and 1870. But 1883 is quite different.

There’s been the Franco-Prussian War, for one thing, in 1870-71. It was expensive, and impacted fashion trends. Gone were the Scarlett O’Hara skirts and the waist-pinching corsets. S-corsets, long line, were supposedly better for health, the dresses narrowed, and the colors were from chemicals rather than nature, causing an unacceptable amount of puce in the visual landscape. My theory holds true that when women’s fashion moves away from hourglass fertility, they have gained more public rights – the suffrage movement was gaining strength. Bustles were no longer as fashionable so women could sit comfortably at a suffrage meeting.

The sewers were already built and in operation, and most middle class homes have toilets by now. So my usual fun with sanitation and pollution is not as interesting. Most toilets, not all, were tied to the sewer system as required by law. But laws aren’t always obeyed or enforced, so there’s something suspicious in the cellar of the townhouse…

I always like goods, and knowing what’s in the shops. I can find that through paratext, the ads scattered around the sources. Almost every book published had advertisements. 1883 seems to feature Dr. Scott’s Electric Corset, Chocolate Menier, Swan & Edgar Mercers and Drapers, sheet music, watches, yarn, and ice-cooled refrigerators.

But I digress. What should my characters do to have fun on the town? If I were a tourist, I’d turn to the Baedeker’s guide. I found one for 1883 on Etsy, confirming my enthusiasm for the web as a source for things I could never have found 20 years ago. Cost me $40, but it even includes the pull-open map pages and notes written in pencil in 1867 by one of the book’s owners who obviously traveled with it.

The book is full of useful information for the visitor, and quite a bit of advice. Keep your sovereign coins and your shillings in separate pockets, because although one is gold and the other silver, they are of similar size and might be confused. To prevent being overcharged, do not pay for a cab yourself, but let the doorman at your hotel do it on your behalf. And if you’re visiting from America (as I believe P.H. Mayo, the penciled owner of the book, was if the way he wrote dates was anything to go by), you don’t need a passport.

I also have a slightly out-dated 1880 book by Herbert Fry, in its not-very-well-reprinted edition (you can peruse a version at HathiTrust here). The plates are blurry but show a bird’s eye view of major streets so my characteers can walk around looking for adventure.

(As a recovering medievalist, I confess I still find it awesome how many detailed sources about the Victorian era I can find and use to create realistic settings.)

However, these city guides rarely touch upon anything more exciting than pubs and music halls, perhaps not the only sort of adventure a pair of young men would wish to find. Looking at some seedier sources, I am finding things like poses plastiques, where nude women would pose with white powder on their bodies, completely still in their tableaux lest they break a law about nudity in public. And of course the theatre district had houses that weren’t theatres. But it is so trite to have them visit a house of ill repute. And the story is not about their sexual antics. At least I don’t think it is.

I shall take another look through Baedeker.

 

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