Did Our Ancestors Celebrate the Past?

Moonlight Serenade by Glenn Miller popped up next on my iPod. As I listened I thought of some friends who love the 1930s and 40s. They are World War II reenactors, swing dancers and club hoppers. They scour vintage and second-hand shops looking for that “new” fur wrap or handbag to add to their vintage wardrobe.

These friends are also avid collectors of knick-knacks, gadgets, dishware, music and hats of these mid-20th Century decades. Many times they’ll sew new wardrobe pieces directly from the sewing patterns of the period.

Now, these years are not really all that long ago – 60, 70, 80 years in the past. Our parents and grandparents are products of this era. We might even get to chat with our living family members about their memories of this time.

But it makes me wonder…

If I have 30-something year-old friends who try to capture the essence of 75 years ago, were there people in 1936 who relished the  quintessential 1861? (Let’s imagine before the Civil War started.) Was there that one daughter who just couldn’t get enough of playing dress-up in her great-grandmother’s wedding dress? Or the passionate hoarder of anything Victorian?

Sometimes there’s this great challenge for those of us who re-create the past through clothing and participate in living history events to fully take part in modern 21st Century life. I mean, if I want to add in the romance of yesteryear into my life, how do I do that without alienating my family and friends?

How do I merge my idea of a lavishly decorated Victorian Queen Anne house into a welcoming pad ready for a Superbowl party?

If I’m thinking on this, then how did my ancestors in the 1940s blend their romantic ideals of history into their war-torn community? Did things like “living history” programs even exist to inspire others to take up sewing a dress from 1872? Were people even interested in such things?

We do know from published photographs that our Edwardian ancestors loved the Regency era. However, most of the garments they wore in those pictures were primarily originals, not reproductions.

 

Where are those clubs of girls who ardently begged their mothers for yards of silk to make a dress from the time Queen Victoria took the throne? It seems so absurd that they would do that.

So why do we do it today? What makes those of us “born in the wrong century” desire a closet full of fashions from over a hundred years ago? And has our leisure time increased so much with the use of technology that we now go looking for things to do and, for some of us, that’s sewing non-essential garments?

Surely there must have been some who longed for the past to make an appearance in their modern lives. What do you think? Do you think our ancestors developed a form of escapism that included reproducing the past?

10 thoughts on “Did Our Ancestors Celebrate the Past?

  1. Judy Saunders says:

    The Society for Creative Anachronism will be reaching its 50th anniversary in a few short years (2019, I believe), and we focus on Medieval and Renaissance eras. I heard (though I can’t recall where or when now) of some noble in the 19th century holding a medieval jousting tournament or some such. I agree that as a species we have always romanticized the past. I also suspect it is only in the last half century that we have endeavored to reach historical accuracy.

  2. Diane Ullman says:

    While I doubt that the poor had the education–let alone the time–for nostagia, the middle- and upper classes from most eras most assuredly did. The Victorians were interested in Egypt, but were also facinated by the Reaissance and the complex history of Japan. The upper class of 18th century Vienna wore fashions inspired by Ancient Turkey, Constantinople and the Middle East. The people of the Renaissance were captured by fantasies of Ancient Rome and Greece.

    I suppose a longing for a fabulous ‘Golden Age’ from some distant, misty and largely imaginary past has captured imaginations for as long as we’ve had histories and memories.

  3. Taylor says:

    I’ve seen patterns from the bicentennial for “Revolutionary War” costumes. Of course that wasn’t very long ago, though. It seems that all the fancy-dress pictures of Edwardians in “medieval” costumes seem to be sort of tinged to that era. Of course, “medieval” costumes today don’t look all that much like what they really wore!

  4. May says:

    Pre Raphaelites were doing the late medieval thing, the regency saw throw backs to the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans and the beginnings of archaeology (and a lot of other ologys as well). Gone with the wind was a form of escapism during the second world war (1939-1945 for those of us out side the USA.

  5. JF says:

    check out a wonderful short story in a collection by Jack Finney (“Time and Again”, “From Time to Time”); the collection is “About Time: 12 Short Stories” – stories about people who long for a past time, and were mostly written in the 1950’s and 1960’s. My favorite is “Where the Cluetts Are” . . but for the unlimited resources of the couple in the story, my husband and I would be right next door to them! ;o) We still can dream of rescuing an Old House from the 1880’s and living in a better time!….

  6. William S Dean says:

    Without question, our ancestors celebrated the past, whether in masquerades and historical festivals like the those annual ones in Venice and Basel, as well as reenactments as commemorations including Custer’s Last Stand in the 1920s, manor fetes in England, etc. etc. The examples are numerous and stretch back in history at least as far as Ancient Rome where many festivities celebrated past rituals and events.

  7. PJMoore says:

    Come to think of it, I have pics of my Mother(b.1924) and my Grandmother(b.1898) at what they called “George Washington Parties” Pretty cool seeing them in powdered wigs and satins but no doubt they were costumes.

  8. Tonya Clevenger says:

    Interesting and thought provoking post. As I recall, the Victorians were great ones for collecting Egyptian and classical artifacts and there were the curiosity cabinets and museums. But your were talking about recreating and clothing..hmmm. I don’t know how long living history has been around or when it started. I feel the urge to do reasearch LOL. I imagine there have always been some, like us, who were fascinated with how others lived but circumstances did not let them explore that. Survival had to come first. I think the modern age is partly the cause of us doing this. We love our tech stuff but it is all happening so fast. We (I) long for a simpler,more elegant time. A time where we knew where we belonged, for good or bad. Anchored and more or less safe. And we tend to romanticize the past I will interested in what others have to say about this.

  9. Lauren says:

    I meant all of the above in relation to authentic historical clothing, not just a romanticism of the past. I should have said that, but I forgot 🙂
    I know there was a romanticism about the past for sure- all the costume movies and novels and such about times gone by. I think we’re just drawn to that by nature- thinking that one era is better than the other and not remembering that there’s both good and bad in both times 🙂

  10. Lauren says:

    An interesting thought, and one I’ve often considered myself.
    I can’t imagine that it is the case, and if it was, it would probably have been for the rich. I can see the Victorians and Edwardians doing something of the sort and having “societies” that met, but it probably would have been more for aesthetic than accuracy. You’re right that a lot of the fancy dress was actual period garments, a lot of which were made over or refitted for the fashionable shape at the time.
    Post 1929 America, I doubt it was the case, as even just a look at old Hollywood of the time didn’t seem to have a desire to make movies period accurate. In some 30s movies the Victorians were mocked for aesthetic and taste- just think that some of the grandmothers might still be wearing their Edwardian garments!
    I think the history of dress as a legitimate acedemic study and not just to dress actors is somewhat new, isn’t it?
    I think that a lot of it has to do with our disposible income and ability to get good somewhat cheap. A lot of women couldn’t afford silk for their day to day dresses (which is why rayon was so wildly popular) so I can’t see them justifying 10+ yards for an authentic Victorian gown. As much as I love the fashions and some of the aesthetic of the 1930s and 1940s it must have been a hard time to live through- the crash in 1929, the dust bowl, great depression, WWII… if you weren’t scrimping and saving because of the economy you were to support the war effort. Hollywood was lucky that they could remake and reuse a lot of their fabrics on hand during those years, but there’s a reason we don’t see huge costume dramas on the Marie Antoinette or Gone with the Wind scale during that time- it would have been unpatriotic with all those yards of clothes for a single dress! Just think of the Zoot Suit Riots- it could have been Hoops Skirt Riots! Lol!
    Anyways, sorry for my long tanget, but I often think of this myself!
    However, I think I did hear there was a Roman movement in the 1930s, but I don’t remember where I heard it… or maybe I dreamed it?

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