Traveling Through Time into the Commyne Place

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person out there who's running on sensory overload when it comes to hoarding digital photos, recipes, great quotes, patterns and lists of library books I'm definitely going to read within the next year. Too much technology makes it kind of easy to hold onto too much.

So I was glad to read that even 400 years ago, Elizabethans were overdoing things when it came to collecting the wisdom of the ages too. Apparently  Common Place books , a repository for all the things you mean to get around to, memorize, read and pass onto your friends were the latest thing. Gee.... this sure reminds me of something I do on my computer. Now gee, what could it be?

Isn't old Will the best playwright ever? Quick before you forget, go ahead and write down those quips about asses and wise fathers, that made you laugh so hard you almost bust your stay laces. What better place then your new Common Place book to keep them from getting lost.

Did you finally score the world's best receipt for grouse pastry puffs? Into the Common Place book it goes.

Managed to sneak in a detailed description of the perfect knot garden when your hosts weren't looking? Slip that drawing in your Common Place book.

Found a wonderful new method for poisoning rats? Tuck it in.

The idea, of course, is that you'll know right where to go when you next  tie on your pastry apron or slip on your rat-taming, gardening gloves. Oh you bet.

Now we know why somebody invented the search key.

A fun blog entry with great detailed info about common place books (and other fun reads as well).

Sewing Chronicles of Lady Lizbeth Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maid - Meet That Rascal William Sainsbury

 Oh William Sainsbury, you rascal you!


It's all Sweet Will's fault that Liz ended up temporarily trapped in Tudor times.


He seemed so cute when she'd first met him back at the local Elizabethan Springe Flinge. And then, when he suggested a meet-up on her trip to London, well.... after all they'd been Facebook friends for over a year. It wasn't like she didn't know anything about him.


Wrong!


Will had plans for Liz, and they didn't just involve a quick kiss at the pub door. You see, Will's got needs - no not THOSE kinds of needs. His involved getting back home, and the pathway home just isn't as easy to follow as you might think. He needed a little help. And Liz was just the kind of help he needed.


So now Liz has got her needle buried in more blackwork embroidery than she ever dreamed about. 


And she's blogging the old-fashioned way.


(Co-Published with A Stitche In Time)

Part 8: Sewing Chronicles of Lady Lizbeth, Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maide

Gold on black,

Silver and wine.

 Thy clothes show the world

Ye can afford fine.

 Pithy sayings of Lady Margaret Hobey

Part 8: Clothes make the Maide

Since my readers are sewers, you’ll want to hear what I wore my first night down to supper. Did you wonder what I was going to do for clothes, beyond the outfit William had snatched up for me from the day-in-a-life dress up zone in the British Galleries? (That's right when he was supposedly looking for his cell phone, that weasel!) The real Lady Elizabeth’s trunk had been sent on ahead of her. That was before her uncle’s state of health had kept her from starting out as soon as she’d intended.  No one in the Hobey's household, other than the aforementioned weasel, had gotten a chance to read the letter from the other Liz’s auntie, conveying this rather pertinent piece of information. Ole Will had seen to that.

Luckily for me, Lady E.’s clothes fit me. Wouldn’t it have been tricky to explain otherwise?

So here's the scoop. First off, let me remind you that that the currently (current in 1581 that is) in style dropped-waist look, is carried off by means of a busk-point, in my case that's a nasty hard piece of bone, whittled into a kind of v-shape, that’s inserted into the front of my stays. This instrument of torture gives me that glamorous long pointy Elizabethan torso-look and it also makes sitting down a whole new experience. I'm sure you know, that the stays are laced over the chemise and the under petticoat. They stays also push all my womanliness into nearly full view, providing me with that bosom-on-a-platter look you see in all the portraits. There's also a farthangale. Cecily was surprised that I made any complaint about that, because apparently it’s the minimalist's version. Don’t even get me started on the joys of dealing with a farthingale. Are you wondering how long it took me to learn how to walk around in just my undergarments?

Over all this I somehow, with a lot of help from the maideservant Hannah, managed to struggle into a deliciously smocked soft yellow linen kirtle undergown. As far as I was concerned, that would have been enough. But then we got on to the outer bits, a deep green woolen bodice and matching bell shaped skirt, that opened down the front to display the rows of yellow smocking. About that time the whole process was starting to seem worth it.

Did I mention that there was blackwork embroidery on the sleeve and neck edges of the chemise? It just peeked out (rather fetchingly I thought) at the edges of the sleeves and the neckline of the green bodice. Oh, I didn’t tell you about the sleeves, did I? They were tied on to my kirtle (of course who wouldn’t want her sleeves tied on?) and were heavily embroidered with a couch stitch in black wool thread.- an all over intertwined arabesque design. 

The whole thing was yummy. I figured now I’d just run a brush through my curls and get on down to eat, that's assuming I could squeeze food into my stomach under those stays. Cecily had more plans for me however. I looked down at the fragile lacey item Hannah was starting to stitch onto the back neckline of my bodice.

“But the Queen’s 'Statutes of Apparel' forbids anyone not of noble birth from wearing lace or ruffs. I uh – well that is to say we never wear anything like that at home.”

“But we’re gentry, dear. It’s only a collar, not a full ruff. And besides that, it’s drawn-thread work, not proper bobbin lace like the nobility wears. 

I was starting to see just why the sumptuary laws had been a failure. The new merchant class could afford to be conspicuous consumers and no old-school noble types were really going to get in their way. There’s always a way around the rules aren’t there?

The household boosted a Venetian mirror on the landing just outside our chamber. Despite the fact that it made it hard to turn my head, I found the stiff lacey collar quite pretty. It frames my face nicely and would make anybody look like she’s got more neck than she does. Hannah brushed my hair back and secured it in a black threadwork caul embellished with little seed pearls and tied in place with a fillet of green ribbon. Cecily volunteered to pluck all those nasty hairs away from the top of my brow herself. It would look so much lovelier, but I said no thanks. Though she’s clearly too sweet and polite to let on, I can just imagine what Cecily thinks about me. A good thing I can put on my dogpatch attitude, blaming my total lack of fashion sense on my remote island upbringing.

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Part 6: Sewing Chronicles of Lady Lizbeth, Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maid

Part 6: A Tale of Tudor Time

Not only did I win a rather spontaneous, trip back to Tudor Times, it seems I get a husband in the bargain. Kidding, kidding! I won’t actually be around long enough to cut the big white cake (make that free four and twenty black birds trapped in a pie these days). You see there is a real Lady Elizabeth Chumley and I’m just her stand in back here in the year 1581, until the new moon rolls around. (William Sainsbury swears he can get me back through the time portal, on the next neaps tide. That boy better know what he’s talking about!)  Lady Elizabeth, it turns out, is from one of the new upwardly mobile merchant class, and she’s just rollin' in the shillings. Lucky Liz is apparently looking for the guy of her dreams, and I get to be her proxy.

If I’ve got it right, my hostess will be lining up the suitors and I more or less take my pick. Won’t the other Liz be surprised when she does eventually make it on over to Northumberland, and finds out the papers have been all drawn up? All she’ll need to do is sign on the dotted line!

My hostess is Lady Margaret Hoby, she of the time-portal-connecting claviorgan. (Did you miss the lead-in to this story? You can catch up by following this link and listening in to the June podcast. That podcast extends the introduction of this story beyond what is published in this art journal.)  Lady Madge has her own little flock of unmarried women living in the house right now, and I fit right in with the crowd. Thomas Hoby’s lady seems to be in the business of marrying off girls who need husbands, and from what I can tell that’s anybody who’s single, has her eyesight, and is more or less in possession of her right mind.

One good thing about my little time-away jaunt is that this group of unmarried gals, or Lady Margaret’s Maides as we’re called collectively, spend a good part of each afternoon and evening doing needlework and making music. And as you well know both are pretty high up on my list of priorities. It’s also late spring back in these times, just like it was when I left London in 2011. Up here in Northumberland the wildflowers are thick, the birds are singing, and the fuzzy lambs are gamboling their little hearts out. I’ve seen a bit of  English countryside in my own time and I must say, the rural scene, if you overlook manure piles, is even prettier back in the days of 1581.

The bad thing is that I have to share not only a room (yeah, yeah they call it a chamber) with the other Maides, but also a bed.  Cecily’ has adenoids and Lettice gets up several times during the night to pray out loud. The snoring I can live with and even the oratory has a kind of cadence that puts me back to sleep about as well as an old-movie on t.v. It’s more the lack of, (how can I put this delicately?), well let’s just say hygiene. Not only are these gals not at all big on bathing, they don’t go in for any kind of deodorant that I’ve been able to locate. And don’t let anybody tell you that gillyflower water will do the trick. It doesn’t. Believe me.

I didn’t have much choice about my new persona. William had it all fixed up. (You probably guessed that ole Will was up to something back in the introduction didn’t you? I must have been taking my gormless pills that day.) My options were pretty limited and he knew it, the bozo. Either I said I was Lady Liz or I’d be lucky if they put me to work shoveling horse pucky or scrubbing pots in the Hoby’s kitchen. OK, call me elitist, but I got a whiff of my potential colleagues in the stable and the kitchen. At least Cecily and Lettice wipe themselves down once or twice a day, and dot on a little eau-de-gillyflower in the more offensive areas. I’ll take the less-crowded zone upstairs. Besides, given that I’ll be back in my own time in less than two weeks, I might as well make the most of the opportunity.

It’s all about culture isn’t it? Here I’ve got a change to sink my needle into a piece of blackwork embroidery that might just turn up at the V&A in my time, and blend my soprano with Cecily’s alto, while Lettice plays Crecquillon latest hot little chanson on her lute. I can think of at least three reenactors at our Elizabethan Springtyme Feste, who’d consider bumping off a fellow player with digitalis for this chance.

Travel’s like that, isn’t it? It’s the unexpected stuff that really hits me over the head. There was that time I came across three spring hares cavorting like total nuts around the meadows in Yorkshire. They made me feel like I’d taken a quick broomstick to OZ. Then there was the  cab-driver veteran of World War II, who told me about his life during the blitz, and how it impacted his attitude when he was part of the bombing raid to Dresden. That’s when it hit me, that the war had been real and not just something from books and the movies.

You gotta open your eyes and ears to the moment you land in. Then again, sometimes you just stumble on a real dissembling jolthead like William Sainsbury who finagles the moment for you. Should I even speak to a man who’s sent me spinning back to Tudor times unasked, just because he couldn’t get back there himself without an assist?

At the very least I ought to get some kind of free miles for this. I wonder what I could cash them in for…

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