Victorian Bicycle Humour

Gertrude: "My dear Jessie, what on earth is that Bicycle Suit for!"

Jessie: "Why, to wear, of course."

Gertrude: "But you haven't got a Bicycle!"

Jessie: "No: but I've got a Sewing Machine!"

The cat's in the corn

Bicycle "DON'TS" for the Victorian Woman

• Don’t be a fright.
• Don’t faint on the road.
• Don’t wear a man’s cap.
• Don’t wear tight garters.
• Don’t forget your toolbag
• Don’t attempt a “century.”
• Don’t coast. It is dangerous.
• Don’t boast of your long rides.
• Don’t criticize people’s “legs.”
• Don’t wear loud hued leggings.
• Don’t cultivate a “bicycle face.”
• Don’t refuse assistance up a hill.
• Don’t wear clothes that don’t fit.
• Don’t neglect a “light’s out” cry.
• Don’t wear jewelry while on a tour.
• Don’t race. Leave that to the scorchers.
• Don’t wear laced boots. They are tiresome.
• Don’t imagine everybody is looking at you.
• Don’t go to church in your bicycle costume.
• Don’t wear a garden party hat with bloomers.
• Don’t contest the right of way with cable cars.
• Don’t chew gum. Exercise your jaws in private.
• Don’t wear white kid gloves. Silk is the thing.
• Don’t ask, “What do you think of my bloomers?”
• Don’t use bicycle slang. Leave that to the boys.
• Don’t go out after dark without a male escort.
• Don’t go without a needle, thread and thimble.
• Don’t try to have every article of your attire “match.”
• Don’t let your golden hair be hanging down your back.
• Don’t allow dear little Fido to accompany you
• Don’t scratch a match on the seat of your bloomers.
• Don’t discuss bloomers with every man you know.
• Don’t appear in public until you have learned to ride well.
• Don’t overdo things. Let cycling be a recreation, not a labor.
• Don’t ignore the laws of the road because you are a woman.
• Don’t try to ride in your brother’s clothes “to see how it feels.”
• Don’t scream if you meet a cow. If she sees you first, she will run.
• Don’t cultivate everything that is up to date because yon ride a wheel.
• Don’t emulate your brother’s attitude if he rides parallel with the ground.
• Don’t undertake a long ride if you are not confident of performing it easily.
• Don’t appear to be up on “records” and “record smashing.” That is sporty.

Christopher Walken doll with cat

Kwanzan cherry trees burst into bloom in downtown Port Coquitlam

Me and the cherry tree: a ravishing encounter with nature on city streets

William Shatner reveals battle with loneliness | 60 Minutes Australia

Shatner, still ageless at 88, has made a deal with the devil, but sometimes the price is wearisome. The road is very long, and for all his fans, it's solitary. This only makes us love him more.

A remedy for the bugle-beak

BLOGGER'S NOTE. A good remedy for the hideous bugle-beak nose which has become the breed standard for Arabian horses is this radically-contrasting model, the so-called "Roman nose", which is convex and varies from gentle swell to really pronounced hump. This occurs naturally in certain breeds, such as the Andalusian, Lusitano and Lipizzan (and I feel better just having written those glorious words). I've found some examples of this classic noble horse profile, and I put them here because it's Easter Monday, a day as indefinable as that abyss between Christmas and New Years, when you might as well eat egg salad sandwiches and relax. 

O Happy, Joyous Eastertide!

The twelve-inch waist and other curiosities

"Here is a 'reader's letter' from New Orleans Times-Democrat, 22 March, 1896

 (though from the reference to India I suspect it may have been reproduced from a British source):

A correspondent writes from Jhalra, Central India:

“I wish more girls would write their figure-training experiences to your paper. I have just left the finishing school where I was for two years, and have come out to my father in India. I may say, without conceit, that I have a good figure and small waist, which are entirely due to the careful system of figure-training enforced at the school I had the good fortune to be sent to. I wish first to protest against the common belief that a small waist and tight-lacing are synonymous terms, that a small waist can only be the outward and visible sign of a tightly-laced corset, whereas it is much more usually the result of years of careful training while the figure is growing and supple and can be molded. 

When I went to the Paris school, at the age of sixteen, my waist measure was twenty-one inches, and I had never worn any but ready-made stays. On reaching my new school my figure was very carefully measured round chest, waist, and hips, my height and weight were taken, and all details entered in a book. After a few days I was fitted with a pair of long, fully-boned corsets with shoulder straps, the waist measure being twenty inches. I was laced into these without much difficulty, and at night I had to wear similar sized, though less stiffly boned, corsets. I at first felt very uncomfortable, but I was old enough to admire and envy the beautiful figures and tiny waists of the elder girls.

“The system enforced was that our waists should be reduced a quarter of an inch every month until the Superior considered that the utmost limit of tenuity, consistent with good health, bad been reached. Great attention was paid to our food and exercise, and drill, and corsets formed the medium through which we received our rewards and punishments. There was considerable rivalry between the girls, and rewards consisted in being allowed to lace our waists in as small as our vanity, or spirit of rivalry, desired on Sundays, and after 5 o'clock In the afternoon on week days. Punishments consisted of what was called ‘backboard drill’ and punishment corsets; the latter were very long, and as stiff as steel bones could make them, and were certainly instruments of torture. When I left school my waist measure was fourteen inches, and I can honestly say that I enjoyed good health and suffered no more than slight temporary inconvenience, and that, with one or two exceptions, the Superior and her staff had to exercise more vigilance to see that we did not lace in our waists smaller than the decreed size, than to see that the decreed size was not exceeded.

“During our free time in the evenings we used to see how small we could make our waists; and I dare say that many will disbelieve me when 1 tell you that many of us often succeeded in getting the tape to meet at twelve inches. I do not mean to say that I could have exhibited my waist laced in to twelve inches; on the contrary, we often were so tightly laced that we could scarcely breathe, and sometimes fainted before we were released. Since I have been “out” I have not been allowed to show my waist smaller than fifteen inches in public, Father says “people stare so at you,” but my night corsets are still always laced in till my waist measures only fourteen inches.

“Everyone here seems to think that I must be fearfully tight-laced. and must be suffering agonies, but it is just as easy and comfortable for me to wear a fifteen Inch waist as it is for untrained figures to wear a twenty or twenty-five inch waist, and I am able to take as much exercise walking, ruling, dancing, tennis. badminton, etc. as my larger-waisted girl friends. I am thankful to say that father likes to see my waist small, and when we dine at home alone I never show larger than fourteen inches, and in one pair of corsets with a lovely frock I exhibit a thirteen and a half inch waist: to make sure of this I am wearing that frock to-night, and father has just measured my waist, and says he certifies it is just over thirteen and a half over dress measurement.

“I am afraid you will think my letter very long, but I must add one word more. The superior's rule was that as long as a girl could wear her corset day and night for a month without such pain as to necessitate relaxing the lace, she should have the usual quarter-inch further reduction on the 1st of next month, and that a corset which could be worn from month's end to month's end, without release was not tightly laced.

“Tight-lacing only began when the corset was so tightly laced that it could not be worn all day and night without such pain as to necessitate relaxing the lace, and that there was hardly any limit to the tenuity to which a girl might reduce her waist provided that she always relaxed the lace when she found she was suffering from being too long in confinement at the extra small size; and she used to warn us never to allow our vanity to risk exhibiting in public a smaller waist than we had proved by private practice we were able to bear.”

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