Richard III & the Car Park

[Phil H]

"What a fascinating insight into social life in the colonies," Bertie said, setting aside his top hat. "Better change for dinner, Jeeves, old chap.! White tie for dear aunt Celia."

[Errata]

"What a fascinating insight into social life in the colonies," Bertie said, setting aside his top hat. "Better change for dinner, Jeeves, old chap.! White tie for dear aunt Celia."

We really are appalling when it comes to these things. I'm a fan of the social forms that go along with dress and manners. You always know where you stand. I hate going to weddings because I don't know what anything means anymore. What the hell is semi formal anyway? Long gown with converse and a baseball hat?

[Phil H]

The origin of social manners and ettiquette, today widely seen as a corset on natural behaviour and thus as a "bad thing" - was precisely to ensure that people knew how to behave in given circumstances and were never "caught out" or embarrassed.

Today one does not know whether a lady should be addressed as Ms, Miss or ms and can easily cause offense if one inadvertently uses the wrong form - but how does one tell? A Victorian, even someone of my mother's generation, would have known.

Dress is the same.

I am particularly amused at the difference between "smart casual" which means, so far as I can tell, designer/labels and expensive; and "casual" - torn jeans and old gear!!

Phil

[Steve S]

I started getting confused with "plate mail"....While I worked out what was meant,it's not a term I've met before..To my mind the big change does occur round about 1415....from a gambeson/mail set-up with supplementary plate,to the arming doublet as the basis for a plate-orientated system.....That's for top end of course............

[Phil H]

I think you have it spot on, Steve.

I'd put the change a tad before 1415, but only a decade or so.

the look changes again around 1450, with the arrival of the barbutte and salet helmets, work with a gorget and with even greater articulation of the plates. But I would not like to be definite as to dates.

Phil

[RivkahChaya]

The origin of social manners and ettiquette, today widely seen as a corset on natural behaviour and thus as a "bad thing" - was precisely to ensure that people knew how to behave in given circumstances and were never "caught out" or embarrassed.

You could also make a point without having to come out and say it. In Henry James' The Spoils of Poynton, there's a fantastic scene where Owen Gereth stops by to visit Fleda Vetch. She doesn't want to see him, but instead of ordering him away, allows him to come in, but does not ask him to sit down. He leans against the mantle, and shifts his weight from foot to foot for a while, and then leaves, without staying too long. How I wish a person could still make a point like that. People come in, and do not wait to be asked to sit. I remember as recently as 1972, my mother conveying that an acquaintance had become a genuine friend, when she told her she did not have to wait to be asked to sit when she came over. I don't get pleasures like that.

Today one does not know whether a lady should be addressed as Ms, Miss or ms and can easily cause offense if one inadvertently uses the wrong form - but how does one tell? A Victorian, even someone of my mother's generation, would have known.

Well, if you know the person, you should know her preference. I'm more disturbed by people who leap down someone's throat for using something she does not like, when there is no way for the person to know her preference. To persist in calling someone, for example, a married woman who has kept her maiden name, "Mrs.," when it is both incorrect, and annoys her, isn't just rude, it's mean-spirited.

I'm also bothered by the new thing in the US where children call adults by their first names. I mean full-grown adults, not college-aged babysitters. And little children, preschoolers, not teenagers.

We really are appalling when it comes to these things. I'm a fan of the social forms that go along with dress and manners. You always know where you stand. I hate going to weddings because I don't know what anything means anymore. What the hell is semi formal anyway? Long gown with converse and a baseball hat?

The next time something says "semi-formal" (as opposed to "informal") I'm going to be tempted to sew half an evening dress to half a broomstick skirt and half of one of those embroidered blouses you get at a kiosk in the mall.

10 proms. Don't ask me why, but I went to 10 proms. On three dresses. Well, technically four because one of my friends asked me to dress like a hooker so everyone would think he paid for his date, so I borrow a patent leather minidress for that one. Fun times...

My junior year was the year of the Bergman film. My senior year, I was 18, and dating a 21-year-old guy who was a college sophomore (it was a college town, my uncle was a professor, and I'd taken several classes, in addition to belonging to SCA chapter, and my aunt being friends with the Hillel rabbi). The high school had a rule that no one 21 or older could go to the prom as a ticket-holder, which probably had something to do with not wanting anyone legally allowed to buy alcohol there, so even if I had been incline to go, I wouldn't have. I think that might have been the night BF & I saw The Wicker Man. I don't remember.

I am particularly amused at the difference between "smart casual"

Torn jeans, patched with a copy of either your SAT scores, or your Mensa acceptance letter. And one of those T-shirts from Cafe-press with the period table of the elements on it.

Or this shirt:

[Phil H]

She doesn't want to see him, but instead of ordering him away, allows him to come in, but does not ask him to sit down. He leans against the mantle, and shifts his weight from foot to foot for a while, and then leaves, without staying too long.

The Queen was once said to have done exactly that with Mrs Thatcher during one of their weekly audiences. HM wanted to make a point that she disapproved of something Maggie had done.

In a work context the same idea was called "an interview without coffee"!!

Well, if you know the person, you should know her preference. I'm more disturbed by people who leap down someone's throat for using something she does not like, when there is no way for the person to know her preference.

Which is EXACTLY the situation I was thinking of, Rivkah.

In England in say Jane Austen's time (but still true among relations of mine until the 1990s) was:

Mrs Tom Smith (wife married to living husband)
Mrs Annie Smith (widow of Tom Smith now reverted to her own forename)
Miss Smith - their eldest daughter
Miss Jane, Miss Dorothy Smith etc - younger daughters.

Master Timothy Smith - a son of the family who was young. In my experience this died out when you were about 12.

In my youth, a young man became of age at 21 and it was a big event, black-tie parties etc. It changed to 18 (with the vote, in around 1970) but the idea of coming of age has all but been lost now.

Phil

you knew precisely where you stood.

[RivkahChaya]

Mrs Tom Smith (wife married to living husband)
Mrs Annie Smith (widow of Tom Smith now reverted to her own forename)
Miss Smith - their eldest daughter
Miss Jane, Miss Dorothy Smith etc - younger daughters.

That may be correct UK usage, but in the US, it was never considered correct to call a woman "Mrs. OwnFirstName Husband'sLastName." Divorced women were sometimes called Mrs. MaidenName-MarriedName, although the woman's last name was often part of the settlement, and with the husband's permission, a woman sometimes kept her married name. Dorothy Parker married rather young, and hated her maiden name, probably because she didn't like either of her parents very much, but there may have been a bit of anti-Semitism in it, because she had a Jewish last name, from her Jewish father, but her mother was not Jewish, and so she herself was not. Anyway, in the brief time that she was Mrs. Parker, she established a name for herself as a writer, and so when she divorced, she kept the name "Parker" with her husband's permission. Even when she remarried, she did not take her second husband's name.

It was rather common in the US for women who had become known under their maiden names to continue to use them professionally, but to be Mrs. Husband'sLastName socially.

"Miz" was used in the South for years, by people of all classes and both races as a woman's honorific, and it was used with first names as well as last names. It just had no abbreviation. In the 1970s, There was a movement to spell it "Ms.," and have it as an all-purpose honorific for women who either did not wish to disclose their marital status, had kept their maiden names, and were not correctly "Mrs. LegalLastName." Also, for divorced women using their maiden names, who were not comfortable with "Miss," since it did not fell technically correct, and anyway, some of these women were middle-aged.

There was an unfortunate backlash against it. It was considered unnatural for women not to want to disclose their marital status, and blah, blah. The New York Times refused to capitulate for a very long time, so when Geraldine Ferraro ran for vice-president, it had a real problem. It refused to use "Ms.," but as Ferraro was married, although retaining her maiden name, she was not correctly either Miss or Mrs. Ferraro. Her husband's last name was Zaccaro, and I believe the Times actually tried to refer to her as Mrs. Zaccaro once, but the people who understood who they meant threatened a boycott. At that point, they just began referring to her as "Ferraro," no honorific, which is how they refer to men in the news (as opposed to the society pages). It was even more ridiculous, since, at the time, she had not yet been officially asked to run, and was still a member of congress, so she could have been called "Rep. [representative] Ferraro."

The Times finally started using "Ms." at some ridiculously late hour, like 1992.

Now, I mentioned The South. Something about the US, is that customs vary by state and region, so even when the rules were more rigid, they weren't entirely universal.

I'm in favor of some change, though. The rule that men used honorifics other than "Mr." socially, and women did not was stupid. My parents both had/have (my father is dead, my mother isn't) Ph.Ds, and yet they used to get invitations addressed to "Dr. & Mrs. LastName." My mother would blow her stack, and I don't blame her.

[Phil H]

My mother would blow her stack, and I don't blame her.

So why didn't women object to having to get their husband's permission to use a name (married name) surely legally theirs?

Under English law a woman keeps her married status/title even after divorce.

So Diana remained "Princess of Wales" even if no longer HRH.

Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, retained her title (in a dowager's form) even after a highly acrimonious divorce. (Her name was later associated with that of Douglas Fairbank's Jnr.)

In the Us doesn't a child often take the mother's maiden name as a middle name, i.e. the child of Bill Smith and Edna Bellows, becomes Tom Bellows Smith?

In the States you also have that tradition of giving (male?) children a family name and then using Jnr, III, IV etc. In Europe, I only recall that being used in the princely house of Reuss (Germany) where every male child was named Henry!!!

I'd assumed always that the "Miz" used in the South of the USA was an ellison, rather than a specific title.

Phil

[Errata]

I started getting confused with "plate mail"....While I worked out what was meant,it's not a term I've met before..To my mind the big change does occur round about 1415....from a gambeson/mail set-up with supplementary plate,to the arming doublet as the basis for a plate-orientated system.....That's for top end of course............

The term "Plate mail" to the best of my knowledge appears nowhere except amongst ren faire armorers who have to make it, and role playing games. I'm not even sure it has a name, being a combination of styles. I've seen it referred to as Brigandine, which it isn't. Brigandine is based on leather. Unless Brigandine means "combination of different types of armor", but I have yet to find that kind of a definition for that word.

There are two seperate questions. The first is "What kind of armor did a 14th century nobleman wear?" and the other is "What did a combat experienced 14th century nobleman wear during actual battle?" It's like asking what does the Queen wear, and what does the queen wear for an afternoon at Sandringham? The answer to the first is that Queen wears a crown, and a purple cloak, and an ermine collar, etc. The answer to the second is slacks and a button down shirt. No crown. 14 century noblemen wore full plate. I know. I've seen the suits. A 14th century nobleman in the middle of an actual battle does not wear full plate. He can't turn his head in full plate because he neck protection was... limiting. If people are hitting you with things, you need to move your head. So you compromise the full plate and wear some mail instead. The plate is lovely, but was in the end designed for the list. The Germans had some functional plate, but it didn't catch on, probably because you couldn't wear it in the list.

But the guy on the top of the hill looking shiny and heroic whose battle you are fighting? He's wearing full plate. He has too. Aside from it being a better visual for his men, it makes him stand out so his men can see him.

[RivkahChaya]

My mother would blow her stack, and I don't blame her.

So why didn't women object to having to get their husband's permission to use a name (married name) surely legally theirs?

They didn't have to get their husband's permission to use it after marriage-- in fact, there was a time when they had to make a point of informing people they weren't going to use it, when that was the case, although that was a long time ago.

What women needed permission to do was to style themselves "Mrs. MarriedLastName" after a divorce. But that may not have been true in every state. In fact, from about 1840-1920, states varied widely on custody issues (prior to that, children were considered the father's property, and he got custody, and after that, if the children were under the age of either 12 or 14, the mother did, under the "tender years" laws, and some states that granted women automatic custody encouraged them to keep their married names so they would have the same last name as their children).

What upset my mother was the idea that my father was still an educated person socially, but she somehow had to leave her brain behind when she left the office. Just to be clear, the invitations were not from people who did not realize that my parents were both doctors-- they realized it, and when an invitation was to a university function, like a reception following a lecture, or the installation of a new president, or something, they got "The Drs. LastName" invitations.

In the Us doesn't a child often take the mother's maiden name as a middle name, i.e. the child of Bill Smith and Edna Bellows, becomes Tom Bellows Smith?

When a family "daughtered-out" (ie, there are no sons born in a generation, and the name will die), the first child of the first daughter to have a child, whether a boy or girl, was usually given the mother's maiden name as a first name, in the south; in the north, it was usually reserved for a first son. That's why first names like "Taylor" for girls are more common in the south. The rest of the daughters would give it to the first child, or first son, as a middle name.

Now, some people of Spanish descent gave all the children the mother's name as a middle name, in order to preserve the Spanish custom of the child having both name, without giving the child a hyphenated name.

Also, during most of US history, upper class women would cease to use their baptismal middle name upon marriage, and use their maiden name as a middle name. The middle classes started copying the custom in the 20th century. My mother did it when she got married, just because she hated her middle name (which in her case, wasn't a "baptismal" name, but by the time she was born, everyone had birth certificates).

In the States you also have that tradition of giving (male?) children a family name and then using Jnr, III, IV etc. In Europe, I only recall that being used in the princely house of Reuss (Germany) where every male child was named Henry!!!

Actually, most people really do know how to use this correctly. A man is only "junior" if he has his father's exact name, and his father is living. There are occasional exceptions where the father is very famous, or, for example, Ed Begley, jr., the actor, who began acting while his father, Ed Begley, sr., was also acting professionally, and using the name "Ed Begley." According to the rules of the Screen Actors' Guild, two cardholding actors cannot use the same name, so EB, jr., had to use the jr., or call himself "Edward Begley," or use a middle initial. Now that his father is dead, he is still Ed Begley, jr., in film credits, because that is still his SAG name.

If a man is John Peter Smith, and his son is John Nikos Smith, the son is not a "junior," or a "II." He should use his middle initial to differentiate himself. (Or, if he lives in West Virginia during the Depression, "John-Boy.")

If someone is "John Peter Smith, II," then he is the grandson, or nephew of John Peter Smith I, and JPS I is still living.

I'd assumed always that the "Miz" used in the South of the USA was an ellison, rather than a specific title.

It is an elision, but of "mistress," just like "missus," abbreviated "Mrs." is. In the South, there are specific rules to using Miz/Ms., however you want to spell it. In the north, children often called non-relatives "Aunt/Uncle FirstName," when they were close friends of their parents. Children in the south would call some adult women Ms. FirstName, but it wasn't permissible of all adult women in general. I'm not from the south, so I don't know all the rules, but I remember the first time I was in Kentucky, when I was a teenager, hearing this, not in a movie, and being surprised that people really said that (it was the early 1980s). Kentucky isn't even really the south, at least not the Deep South, and not part of the former Confederacy (it sat on the fence), but you definitely feel something when you cross the Indiana/Kentucky border.

[Errata]

Miz is typically used with a first name, not a last name. My elderly next door neighbor's name was Helen Langdon. To us she was Miz Helen. Never Miz Langdon. Essentially today it is a compromise. We reflexively refer to our elders as "Ma'am" or "Mrs. Langdon". Many of them say "Call me Helen (insert name here)" but it just feels SO wrong, that we say "Miz Helen". Basically, we never feel adult enough to address anyone more than 10 years older than us by first name. And we train our children to do the same.

I've been with my fiance for more than 5 years, and I have managed to so far never address the woman. I don't feel at all comfortable calling her by her first name, but it seems ridiculous to refer to her by her married name. I have for five years waited for the woman to sit next to me or address me first before speaking, just to avoid making a choice. It's insane, I'm aware.

[Phil H]

Errata - I'm afraid that on the question of armour we'll just have to disagree.

I do accept that in battle conditions, things would differ from theory. Indeed, many suits of armour were made as a "suite" of elements, so that different combinations might be worn depending on the circumstances. For instance in the lead up to a battle, a knight might wear the part of his body armour covering the abdomen, with his arming doublet or a brigandine underneath (assuming also his leg and perhaps arm armour was in place. If a battle took place unexpectedly he might go into combat like that.

But I am in no doubt, based on my reading and modern sources, that Richard III fought at Bosworth in full plate, with a diadem on his helmet, and that most of his household and other lords and knights on both sides would have been similarly equipped (crowns apart).

Once again, sorry to disagree.

Phil

[RivkahChaya]

Miz is typically used with a first name, not a last name. My elderly next door neighbor's name was Helen Langdon. To us she was Miz Helen. Never Miz Langdon. Essentially today it is a compromise. We reflexively refer to our elders as "Ma'am" or "Mrs. Langdon". Many of them say "Call me Helen (insert name here)" but it just feels SO wrong, that we say "Miz Helen". Basically, we never feel adult enough to address anyone more than 10 years older than us by first name. And we train our children to do the same.

I hear is used sometimes by people whop are the same age, or even a little older than the person they are addressing, but are in a work situation where they are addressing a supervisor-- usually an immediate supervisor they see every day, and with whom they are friendly, as opposed to someone several ranks higher, who is still Mr./Mrs./Miss/Ms. LastName.

I remember interpreting in a situation where my client had just been hired to clean rooms in a very large hotel. Nearly all the room service people were black, and many of them, judging from their speech, were originally from the south (I'm from New York, so I can tell you they weren't from anywhere east, or far north, but they could have been from southern Indiana or Kentucky just as well as Alabama, and I'm not sure I would have known the difference; however, I think the rules for using "Miz" are pretty much the same). Anyway, the immediate supervisor was someone who had been promoted from the ranks, and they all called her "Miz Firstname," the white people, and the people who by their speech were from Chicago or Michigan. I ended up calling her that, because the first time I called her "Mrs. Lastname," she didn't respond.

[Errata]

Errata - I'm afraid that on the question of armour we'll just have to disagree.

I do accept that in battle conditions, things would differ from theory. Indeed, many suits of armour were made as a "suite" of elements, so that different combinations might be worn depending on the circumstances. For instance in the lead up to a battle, a knight might wear the part of his body armour covering the abdomen, with his arming doublet or a brigandine underneath (assuming also his leg and perhaps arm armour was in place. If a battle took place unexpectedly he might go into combat like that.

But I am in no doubt, based on my reading and modern sources, that Richard III fought at Bosworth in full plate, with a diadem on his helmet, and that most of his household and other lords and knights on both sides would have been similarly equipped (crowns apart).

Once again, sorry to disagree.

Phil

Actually, on that we agree. A: He had to be visible on the field B: they couldn't have stripped him quickly unless he was in full plate, and C: I don't think he would have gotten unhorsed unless he was in full plate and got hooked by a polearm. So there we agree.

My only question was whether or not he was used to the armor. And he probably was, but it would not be out of the question for him to have spent most of his career in plate and chain if he spent most of his military career against rebels and peasants, which is a much less structured form of fighting. Also plate and chain would be less painful for someone with a bad back. So it was a random thing I entertained. But yes. He was in plate at Bosworth. Crown and all.

But I think it's Henry V we disagree on. I think he was in a plate and mail combo at Agincourt. So it may be that I have been arguing Henry while you argued Richard. As this is a Richard thread, I bow to your assessment. You are correct sir. And I apologize if I made it sound like I did not think you were, or if wires were crossed.