Terminus Ante Quem Or How Jeans Appeared In The Concert Hall
“The present Covent Garden management wisely do not insist upon evening dress and although the majority in the stalls and boxes still assume the claw-hammer coat and white tie of convention, the costumes are of a very varied character.
On Saturday, for example, two gentlemen who occupied the stalls wore a wool jacket, knickerbockers and worsted stockings. In this strange attire, they, during the entr’actes, disported themselves in the corridors which, at the Jubilee State performance only a few months ago were resplendent with uniforms and gowns and coronets worn by members of some of the noblest families in Europe.
A well-known Wagnerian peer grumbled last season because a shooting jacket was forbidden in the stalls. During the present opera season he can adorn himself with any sort of costume he pleases.”
A small item from the Daily News* 11th October 1897 nestled between an update on the three front runners for the office of chemist at the London County Council and a report from Berlin about “self-immolating fanatics” in St Petersburg.
All this and more await in the British Library’s 19th century newspaper archives now available online. The full text of the article is behind a pay wall but a snippet to establish context is available so you can have a better idea of what awaits.
Memberships are £9.99 for 200 articles over 7 days or £6.99 for 100 articles over 3 days.
*The Daily News was founded in 1846, aiming to provide a Liberal rival to the morning Conservative newspapers, most notably The Times. The paper is famous for its founding editor, Charles Dickens, who remained in post for only twenty days, but continued to write occasional columns for the paper.
After a disastrous first twenty years(!), The News gradually established itself as one of the most popular daily papers. By the end of the century, it claimed to have ‘the largest circulation of any Liberal Paper in the world’, with circulation peaking at 93,000 copies in 1890 (Brown, Victorian news and newspapers, 1985, p.31).
Ha! Reminds me of I used to wear knickerbockers to the ballet when I was a little girl. But they were velvet in a lovely shade of deep forest green and I thought I was quite dressed up!
I vaguely remember a burgundy pair that I loved at about age 6 or 7. They were also velvet but we called them knickers…yet another chapter in the great under/overwear controversy between North America and UK/AUS/NZ dialects.
I can’t tell you how many tells I broadcasted quite innocently to an entire store how much I like these pants when I lived in Manchester.
Wouldn’t this have been better placed in the “advertorial” category?
It would be if this were a paid placement. Since it’s not, it belongs in the “things I thought readers might find interesting” category.