History of the World According to the Movies: Part 49 – Life in 19th Century Europe

Posted by historymaniacmegan on May 6, 2014

Here we have a lovely ball scene from Luchino Visconti’s 1963 movie The Leopard starring Burt Lancaster as an aristocrat having to deal with the changes that come with Italian unification as well as other aspects that any noble of the 19th century has to deal with like a rising middle class, a dying aristocracy, and other things. Still, Burt Lancaster’s character faces many of the obstacles that befall many people in his class all over Europe. Still, it’s nice to see him dance with Claudia Cardinale who plays the woman who marries his nephew.

Europe went through a lot in the 19th century and not just in France, Great Britain, or in the German speaking world either. Spain lost its most of its colonial empire and would soon become a constitutional monarchy by the end. Belgium would form in the 1830s as a constitutional monarchy though it would later have a king named Leopold II who would be responsible for atrocities in the Congo Free State which would inspire Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as well as the first human rights movement. Much of Eastern Europe would continue to be dominated under Prussia, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire, though the Greeks did manage to gain their independence with Lord Byron fighting for them. Finally, Italy would unify in the 1860s thanks to the efforts of Giuseppe Garibaldi and his army of Redshirts known for their fighting prowess as well as utter ability to be utterly disposable (couldn’t resist with the Star Trek reference). Still, there were plenty of others fighting alongside him as well as plenty of opera composers, too. And of course, Russia tried to modernize by getting rid of the serfs and slaves but doesn’t do much else except produce a string of composers and writers. Nevertheless, Europe at the end of the 19th century would be a very different place than at its beginning just in time for another big trans formative century. Still, there are a lot of movies made in this time period which get a lot of things wrong about this time, and I shall list these errors.

Spain:

Queen Maria Louisa hated her unflattering portrait Francisco Goya painted for her. (She actually liked it so much that she made Goya the first court painter in Spain.)

Francisco Goya’s artwork brought him to the unwanted attention of the Spanish Inquisition. (There’s no record it did.)

Queen Isabella II was running Spain while she was ten. (Her mother was actually ruling as regent but John Quincy Adams would’ve just wanted to say that in Amistad.)

Ireland:

The Irish were a bunch of culturally backward country bumpkins who drank heavily and encouraged spousal abuse. (This is not only false but very offensive.)

Sein Finn was formed during Queen Victoria’s reign. (It was founded in 1905, four years after Victoria died.)

Belgium:

King Leopold I of Belgium was a pushy manipulator who tried to use his nephew Albert to control Queen Victoria. (He was actually Victoria’s favorite uncle who gave her a lot of good advice. However, his son was a real evil bastard, to put it mildly.)

King Leopold I didn’t visit Great Britain with his family. (He did but since his kids were Leopold II and the Mad Carlotta, it’s kind of justifiable you don’t see them in The Young Victoria.)

King Leopold was the youngest son of a penniless duke. (For one, he had a younger brother who died shortly after birth which was two years after his. Second, his old man Francis of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld was far from penniless.)

Vincent van Gogh took up with a prostitute named Sien when she had a small baby. (She was pregnant by that time and had a five-year-old girl. However she was an alcoholic prostitute who hated him when she shacked up with Vince.)

Norway:

Norway’s capital was Oslo at this time. (Yes, but the city’s name was Christiana. Sort of like how Tokyo was the capital of Japan in the Tokugawa Era when it was named Edo.)

Miscellaneous:

The Duchy of Savoy existed in the early 19th century. (It had ceased to exist by 1713 when the duchy acquired the kingdom of Sardinia. At that time the Duke of Savoy was simply called, “the king of Sardinia.”)

Everyone in the nineteenth century aged faster than they do today. (They aged at around the same speed as we do today once you subtract the hard work and malnutrition.)

Young revolutionaries in Europe were sympathetic to the peasants and their plights. (Actually they revolted more for themselves since they were mostly middle class born and when they got what they wanted, rejoined the human race and went on with their lives.)

19th century scientists ranged from loveable eccentrics whose experiments tended to go out of control to total nutcases and/or possibly sociopaths who performed scientific experiments with little regard to ethics or concern for the community and usually in their secret laboratory.

Photography was available in the 1820s and 1830s. (It wasn’t available until the 1840s.)

The Prayer of St. Michael existed in 1846. (It was written by Pope Leo XIII in 1888.)

19th century 12 pound guns could fire at a distance of 1,500 yards. (This would be well beyond accurate range for any gun like this.)

The Peterson System pipe was around during the mid-1800s. (It wasn’t patented until 1894 and made in Dublin.)

Metal cartridges were widely used from the mid-19th century. (They wouldn’t be widely used until the late 1860s.)

4 wheeled train cars were common place throughout the 19th century. (Not in the US after 1850.)

It wasn’t unusual for a woman in the 19th century to be wearing a bra. (19th century women didn’t wear bras, which were invented in 1913.)

Dynamite was around since the mid-1800s. (It was invented in 1866.)

19th century Gatling guns were reliable weapons. (Let’s just say these machine guns didn’t have a fast firing speed like they do in many Civil War movies.)

All 19th century trains had air brakes. (They weren’t invented until 1869 yet trains in movies before that somehow had them.)

Dresses had in seam pockets throughout the 19th century. (Flat surface pockets weren’t invented until after the American Civil war. Before that, wealthy women used Chatelaines that held purses and other items while poorer women used cloth pockets suspended from a strap pinned to a waistband.)

Kissing and holding hands in public was acceptable behavior in the upper classes. (Not until the turn of the 20th century.)

Vaccines were around at this time. (They were developed in 1885 by Louis Pasteur but Edward Jenner did have one for smallpox in the 18th century.)

Gas lighting was clean with no ill effects as well as gave warm glow. (By this I mean, literal gas lighting not the type of emotional abuse inspired by the Ingrid Bergman movie. Gas lights left a sooty residue everywhere, blackened ceilings, corroded metal, and even wilted and yellowed indoor plants. Rich people didn’t use gas lighting for the damage it did to paintings and precious fabrics. They also had a nasty tendency to explode and were a great fire hazard. Still, this should make you wonder why Ingrid Bergman’s ceilings were so clean in Gaslight.)

Household servants were treated well by the estate owners. (Depends on the location. If you were a servant in early 19th century Russia or Pre-Civil War America, you probably didn’t earn anything at all. Still, while people in the 19th century viewed servants like people nowadays view their appliances, doesn’t mean they were treated that well. A live-in maid usually earned less than $35 a year while general servants could make as much as $90 annually. A better paid butler could expect to earn an annual salary of $230 a year. They also faced a constant risk of being let go and were subject to an honesty test by their employers hiding a coin or something valuable in plain sight to see if they would pocket it. Sometimes they weren’t even called by their own names.)

Photographs were always black and white or sepia toned.

Small boys wore pants and short hair. (They actually wore dresses because they weren’t potty trained and fasteners like snaps, zippers, and Velcro weren’t available for the time period. Also, clothes for very young children were hard to make and the fact that babies and toddlers grew quickly. Having them wear dresses was a matter of practicality because it made diaper changing easier and could be worn for a few years. Thus, men like Ernest Hemingway, Douglas MacArthur, Teddy Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and others. As for hair, it wasn’t unusual for some to have long hair and curls {though this wasn’t standard for the time period}.)

Chimney sweeps were pre-teen boys who went in fully clothed. (Except in the German states {where chimney sweeps had their own guilds and were primarily adults}, chimney sweeps elsewhere in the western world started out as young as 4-5 years old {in the US they were primarily black in the 19th century and from the South and hired from their owners} and were usually at the end of their careers by 11 or 12. Known as “climbing boys” they would climb up the chimneys naked {or in pants and a cotton shirt} propelling themselves with their knees and elbows which would be scraped raw. Oh, and they rarely bathed. There were also methods to enforce the boys to work harder. One was to light a pile of straw in the grate to send a blast of heat up the chimney after them. Another was to send another sweep to prick pins on the soles of his feet or butt. Of course, the child chimney sweep is a fixture in the 19th century though the practice of child chimney sweeps began to fade in the 1870s mostly due to laws banning the practice.)

Child chimney sweeps rarely got stuck in the chimneys they were cleaning. (Many boys did get stuck in chimneys, which could be for hours before they were either pushed from below, pulled out with a rope, or taking out by removing bricks from the chimney. They harder they struggled, the tighter they were wedged could possibly cause a fall of soot which could lead to their suffocation. Child chimney sweeps suffered from hazards like general neglect, stunted growth and deformities of spine, legs, and arms, blindness, asthma and respiratory problems, chest inflammation, burns, accidents, and bruises. Yet, perhaps the most famous health hazard for a child chimney sweep was Chimney Sweeps’ Cancer which was a cancer of the scrotum and didn’t occur until the sweep was in his late teens or early 20s. It was the first reported occupational cancer.)

Women’s dresses weren’t fire hazards in the mid-19th century. (Women who wore crinolines of tulle and gauze as well as wide sleeves were walking torches in the era of candles and open flames. In the 1850s, there was a prima ballerina who died when her petticoat puffed tutu was ignited by a gas lamp.)

Women in the mid-19th century never experienced embarrassing wardrobe malfunctions. (If a fashionable woman fell, the crinoline would splay all about her like a 3D fan exposing whatever was beneath. Also, this was a time when such clothing wouldn’t make it easy for women to go to the bathroom so they probably wore split crotch knickers which explained why the can-can was considered obscene. Yes, any women experiencing a wardrobe malfunction in this era would make Janet Jackson’s little incident at the 2004 Super Bowl seem tame.)

Workhouses were primarily for orphan children. (They were actually for those who were too poor, old, or ill to support themselves. This could be due to periods of high unemployment, someone having no family willing or able to provide care for them when they were elderly or sick. However, contrary to most adaptations of Oliver Twist, orphan children weren’t the only people living at workhouses which included unmarried pregnant women disowned by their families, mentally ill and mentally handicapped poor, and others who had no other means of support or economic opportunity. Workhouses in 19th century were in Britain during both the Georgian and Victorian Eras. Nevertheless, Oliver Twist wouldn’t be just working alongside orphans like himself though inmates were segregated into certain classes depending on gender, age, and health. )

Workhouse admission was akin to a form of prison. (In the 19th century, this was seen as a poor relief measure and entry was usually voluntary {except maybe in Oliver Twist’s case since he practically lived in one all his life}, though it was a painful decision since it carried a change of legal status such as the loss of political rights. Still, they life there was kind of like prison, except that inmates would have their possessions seized and stored until they left.)

Women had no rights during this time. (This depended on the country or what time in the 19th century you lived in. Still, this was a century when women made gains in property ownership, divorce, work, and education. Still, by the end of the 19th century, only women in New Zealand had the right to vote but the Women’s Suffrage movement was in full swing by this time.)

The 1890s were a great time in history. (In old movies, this was a very nostalgic decade for a time. However, in this decade, there was rampant child labor, rampant discrimination in the United States, European Anti-Semitism, lots of abject poverty, wars and human rights abuses in Africa, and other things.)

History of the World According to the Movies: Part 48 – The German-Speaking World of the 19th Century

Posted by historymaniacmegan on May 4, 2014

Here’s Gary Oldman as Ludwig van Beethoven in 1994’s Immortal Beloved which makes Amadeus look like a faithful biopic. Sure Oldman does look like Beethoven as you clearly see. Yet, let’s just say, he wouldn’t ask Metternich for favors, he didn’t love his sister-in-law Johanna, and he didn’t sire his own nephew Karl. Nor did he will his estate to his Immortal Beloved either.

The German speaking world of the 19th century was a key place during this time period. The Holy Roman Empire had collapsed in 1806 (partly thanks to Napoleon who probably had something to do with it) which left the Empire of Austria-Hungary which still had an Emperor that would last until World War I. Nevertheless, while Vienna was the home of the royal family as well as where the famous Clemmens von Metternich ran things from 1790 until he was forced to resign among the 1848 Revolutions. However, though many contemporaries think that the Austrian-Hungarian Empire was a backward, ignorant, and underdeveloped, they forget that this was Vienna was home to a lot of great 19th century German composers as well as Sigmund Freud. Then you have Germany which began the 19th century as a loose confederation of small entities until the Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck started a war with France in the 1870s and helped form these little countries into Germany which was ruled by the Kaisers. It was also a place for composers, scientists, and other people of note. There aren’t a lot of movies made in this period save maybe a few Nazi propaganda films as well as those that take place in Vienna. Yet, there are plenty of inaccuracies in these films, nevertheless.

Austria:

Ludwig van Beethoven:

Ludwig van Beethoven’s will mentioned an “immortal beloved.” (She wasn’t mentioned in his will. Also, the mention of an “immortal beloved” was in a series of letters dating said to be written in 1812. Beethoven died in 1827 and probably wasn’t still hung up with her. Still, he had quite a lot of romances in his life so there are plenty of candidates. As to his will, he left the bulk of his estate to his nephew Karl who he loved with a sort of tormented horror in a parental fashion.)

Ludwig van Beethoven was deaf when he wrote the “Pathetique” sonata. (He wrote it in 1798 when he could still hear and was doing performances. He certainly heard it.)

Ludwig van Beethoven was a ladies man. (Contrary to what Immortal Beloved says, he was unlucky with women in general and often rejected by them. He also tended to form attachments with women who were unreachable {already married}.)

Ludwig van Beethoven stopped playing after his Eroica Symphony. (He stopped playing in 1814 due to his hearing loss. However, this was long after he wrote the Eroica {or Third Symphony} which was in 1805 and said to originally to be titled the Bonaparte Symphony. However, he changed it to Eroica when he found that Napoleon had declared himself Emperor according to one of his biographers. He was crushed and tore the title page in half.)

Ludwig van Beethoven died poor. (He may not have been a wealthy composer but he was a shrewd businessman and not above doing music commissions just for money. Still, he spent a lot of his money on his family, especially when it came to his brother Kaspar’s tuberculosis treatment and in a custody battle over his nephew. Not to mention, as a composer in his day, he was responsible for all the expenses in performing his work.)

Ludwig van Beethoven had an unkempt appearance, had terrible manners, and was emotionally unstable. (He had usually been a neat freak and was polite in public until his personal life and health problems began to take their toll in the 1810s. His hearing loss was also a factor. Still, he had a close circle of devoted friends all his life though there are accounts of him accusing them of cheating him only to later get over it and apologize to them the next day.)

Clemens Von Metternich and Ludwig van Beethoven met in person in which the latter offered to write an oratorio praising the former in return for the arch-conservative minister intervening on the composer’s custody dispute over his nephew. (For one, they didn’t meet in person. Second, to think Beethoven would propose such a thing to a guy who had secret police on him is not only absurd, it’s borderline slanderous because Beethoven was a passionate democrat who supported revolutions sweeping across Europe.)

Ludwig van Beethoven’s immortal beloved was his sister-in-law Johanna and was her son Karl’s real father. And the reason why he was so horrible and abusive to Johanna was that he was secretly crazy in love with her. (For fucking God’s sake, Immortal Beloved, Beethoven isn’t a sparkly vampire from Twilight! Besides, it’s highly unlikely that Johanna van Beethoven was the immortal beloved because he was completely awful to her, calling her a whore in public multiple times and questioning her fitness as a mother. It’s also likely that his nephew Karl had a lot of resentment for his uncle because of how he treated his mom. Not to mention, Karl wasn’t his son since Ludwig and Joanna were on bad terms from the start. His biographer Anton Schindler is said to allege that Giulietta Guicciardi was the most likely candidate who might’ve been engaged to Beethoven at one point but ended up dumping him for another guy mostly due to their different social standings. Nevertheless, if Johanna was the immortal beloved, Beethoven probably would’ve married her without a hitch which would’ve made things a lot easier for both of them as well as Karl.)

Countess Anna Marie Erdody saved Ludwig van Beethoven from public humiliation, gave him a place to stay, and took up with him. (All that’s known about her in Beethoven’s life was that she paid to keep him in Vienna when he threatened to leave.)

Ludwig van Beethoven wrote the “Immortal Beloved” letter in Karlsbad. (It’s fairly certain he actually wrote it while at a spa in Teplitz. The person he wrote to was in Karlsbad or Prague as far as he knew.)

Ludwig van Beethoven met Giulietta Guicciardi in 1804. (He actually met her in 1800.)

Ludwig van Beethoven’s music was way for him to express himself during times in his life. (Actually he was a man dedicated to his craft who composed music for its own sake. Yet, he didn’t always compose music that was inspired from his life. He also said that it was his music that kept him from committing suicide since couldn’t bear to leave his music unwritten.)

Ludwig van Beethoven’s relationship with Giulietta Guicciardi fell apart over a bet to see on whether Beethoven still knew how to play the piano. Giulietta also betrayed Beethoven by testing his deafness. (Beethoven’s main instruments were the piano and violin since he wrote a lot of music for them. Still, they more or less broke up due to their different social standings and he knew they had no future together. Also, it’s very likely that Giulietta’s cousins didn’t tear up their dresses in a public place to have sex with him. Still, Beethoven’s love life was hampered by class issues since he was a commoner who kept falling for aristocratic women way out of his league. Maybe he should’ve just marry girls like his brothers did.)

Anton Schindler was Beethoven’s executor. (He was his first biographer, secretary, and friend. Yet, he’d probably be executor, too.)

Ludwig van Beethoven had a female copyist and co-conductor. (He had two and they were both male and neither contributed or altered the score. Also, the person who assisted him with conducting the 9th Symphony was Michael Umlauf though Beethoven was on stage but the orchestra had been told to ignore him. Also, one of the soloists by the name of Caroline Unger had to turn him around to see the enthusiastic applause of the audience.)

In 1824, Ludwig van Beethoven was hard of hearing but quite capable of understanding people who spoke loudly. (Though he had never experienced permanent deafness, his condition fluctuated between total silence and terrible tinnitus. Also, his hearing had deteriorated severely by the time he composed his 9th symphony. Still, unlike many popular portrayals of Beethoven today, he was able to carry on conversations as long as they were facilitated by notebooks and that the person he was talking to looked directly at him since he could read lips.)

Ludwig van Beethoven was deaf for most of his life even in his youth. (He could hear perfectly fine until he started to lose his hearing at 26 this was gradual process due to having a “distended inner ear” which developed lesions over time. By 1818 he was almost completely deaf. As to what caused it, his hearing loss has been attributed to typhus, aut0-immune disorders {like systemic lupus erythematosus}, or his habit of immersing cold water on his head to stay awake.)

Ludwig van Beethoven’s 9th Symphony was an ode to himself escaping the oppression of his father. (Uh, Beethoven’s actual inspiration for his 9th Symphony was

Ludwig van Beethoven was private about his deafness. (His deafness wasn’t a secret and he was very public about it.)

Ludwig van Beethoven’s grave was an 8-foot obelisk. (His original grave was 2 feet tall and in a different Vienna cemetery. His body would later be moved next to Schubert in the 1880s at the site where the 8 foot obelisk in his memorial stands.)

Kaspar van Beethoven survived his famous brother Ludwig. (He died of tuberculosis in 1815 and was one of the reasons why Beethoven had a nasty custody battle with his widow. Heck, Beethoven had spent money for his care.)

Karl van Beethoven left his uncle Ludwig after he tried to commit suicide. (Yes, Beethoven did have a stormy relationship with his nephew who tried to kill himself. Yet, Karl didn’t leave his uncle until after finishing the metronome markings for his uncle’s 9th Symphony. And when he did, he left under his uncle’s permission {though reluctantly} to join the army.)

Sigmund Freud:

Sigmund Freud’s “Dora” case was in 1892, in which Freud had her strip naked for a back massage. (Freud had the “Dora” case for 11 weeks in 1900. Also, according to his published account of the whole thing, he never laid a hand on her. Not to mention, he never had his patients strip naked and never massaged anything other than their foreheads. Yet, there were some erotic undercurrents in Freud’s treatment of her. Still, Freud was a psychiatrist not a masseuse.)

Anna O. was Sigmund Freud’s patient. (She may have been the founding patient of psychoanalysis but she was the patient of Josef Breuer, Freud’s friend and patron. He reported the case to Freud in detail and often at his request. Yet, Freud never met this women, let alone treated her.)

Sigmund Freud hypnotized a female patient to get to the root of her traumatic experience in 1896. (He had given up using hypnotism by this time since he had discovered the value of sitting behind his patients instead. Though he did use both years earlier. Still, Freud didn’t pursue any of his female patients and was well known for being faithful to his wife.)

Signmund Freud’s theories of psychology revolved around sex. (Many did, but he also had theories on dreams. However, what cements Freud’s place in history is the use of his method of talking to people in order to cure their mental issues, his work concerning the subconscious, and his theory of the Id, Ego, and Superego were all considered groundbreaking and laid the foundations of what much is understood about psychology today.)

After discovering the Oedipus complex, Sigmund Freud felt horrendously guilty and was ready to abandon his practice because it revealed the latent hatred of his father. (There’s no evidence that his theory of the Oedipus complex depressed him. In fact, he was quite pleased with it saying that every man has been a little Oedipus at some time in his life. And, by Oedipus complex, he didn’t mean that guys are sexually attracted to their mothers, which it mostly implies in pop culture.)

Empress Elisabeth:

Empress consort Elisabeth was hated by her mother-in-law Dowager Sophie and brought the sun and love to everyone else by solving their problems with much class and sweetness. (She was more of a woman who was unable to withstand pressure coming from the Hapsburg Court and plagued by disgraces and mental illness. She never recovered from the loss of her son who died of a murder-suicide with his mistress at the Mayerling hunting lodge. Not to mention, in many ways, she was kind of strange to put it lightly. Also, Sophie was more of an ignored expert yet she was still a domineering woman who picked all grandchildren’s names. But she tried to make her daughter-in-law a good empress and was adamant about tradition. This clashed with Elisabeth’s free spirited nature. And though she was stern and strict, Sophie was very caring and actually worried about her daughter-in-law. Still, Empress Elisabeth was nowhere near the Disney princess mode a she’s depicted in the Sissi trilogy.)

Empress consort Elisabeth and Emperor Franz Josef were around the same age. (Well, they did have an eight year age difference like my grandparents. Yet, when they met Franz was 23 and Elisabeth was 15. Oh, and he met her while on a visit to meet her sister whom he was supposed to marry in the first place but fell for her instead.)

Emperor Franz Josef and Empress Elisabeth had a fairytale relationship. (They had a rocky marriage. However, Elisabeth would undergo mercury treatments {which were commonly used for treating syphilis} and soon had her teeth rot. She also displayed erratic behavior. So somebody wasn’t being faithful here.)

The “Emperor’s Waltz” was played at Franz Joseph and Elisabeth’s wedding in 1854. (It was composed by Johann Strauss Jr. in 1889.)

Empress consort Elisabeth met Maria Vetsera. (She probably didn’t since she had been the wandering Empress who shunned Vienna, the Court, the etiquette, and even the politics. However, she was in Vienna when Crown Prince Rudolf died.)

Johann Strauss Jr.:

Johann Strauss Jr.’s first marriage was to a baker’s daughter. (It was to a singer named Henrietta Trefz, who wasn’t a baker’s daughter.)

Johann Strauss Jr. composed “The Blue Danube” during his dad’s lifetime. (“The Blue Danube” was composed in 1866. Johann Strauss Sr. died in 1849 so he probably wouldn’t have been able to hear it.)

The Mayerling Incident:

Maria Vetsera lived to be 20. (She died at 17 in a murder-suicide with her lover the Crown Prince Rudolf at the Mayerling hunting lodge. Pretty sad story. Still, this incident was one of the reasons why Archduke Ferdinand would be assassinated since it practically made him heir to the throne of Austria after his dad renounced his claim.)

Maria Vetsera refused to bow before Crown Princess Stephanie at the German Embassy ball. (Contrary to the movie Mayerling with Omar Sharif, this was never mentioned by anyone who attended the party. The only account that does mention this is from the Countess Marie Larish who wasn’t even invited because her mother was an actress. She was also kind of a shady and perverse character despite being Empress Elisabeth’s protege.)

Crown Prince Rudolf and Maria Vetsera made a suicide pact because they couldn’t live in a world without love or prospects for peace. (Most historians agree this wasn’t the case. Actually, contrast with the movie Mayerling, the incident isn’t as romantic as it implies. Many historians think that Rudolf’s murder-suicide had more to do with Rudolf being a desperate man too afraid to die alone {though official reports say that it was due to Franz Josef’s demand that the couple end their relationship}. Also, Maria Vetsera wasn’t his only mistress nor was she the only one Rudolf asked to die with him. Still, though Rudolf did at least play with the idea of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire having a federal parliamentary democracy {though there’s doubt whether he really believed them} and clashed with his father, he was a jaded alcoholic who was seriously ill with some STD and used morphine to relieve his suffering as well as a weak and unsound man. Also, unlike his Omar Sharif portrayal, Rudolf didn’t leave a good looking corpse. As for Maria she was just a 17 year old girl desperately in love with a troubled man and was too young to understand her lover was using her as a helping hand to die. Not to mention, Rudolf died six hours after his teenage mistress.)

Crown Prince Rudolf took part in student demonstrations. (This is implausible since his dad’s henchmen watched him like a hawk day and night. Also, he was more interested in partying than political protesting regardless of what his ideas were.)

Crown Prince Rudolf was drawn into a treasonable attempt to dethrone his father as the King of Hungary mostly because he wanted to put his liberal ideas into practice and that he could divorce his wife Stephanie and marry his mistress Maria Vetsera. (Unlike the Omar Sharif portrayal in Mayerling, the real Crown Prince Rudolf would’ve done no such thing. For one, while Hungary had the right to self-govern within the Empire, most Hungarians were perfectly fine with the Dual Monarchy and would’ve never wished to replace Emperor Franz Josef as their king, especially with a divorced man, something that would’ve been totally unacceptable in a predominantly Catholic nation. Second, Rudolf may have had liberal ideas{or at least played with them} and probably toyed with the idea of divorcing his wife {since it was an unhappy marriage and that his wife had failed to give him a son and may have been rendered infertile due to contracting VD from her husband. Not to mention, his father-in-law was Leopold II who was famous for his brutality in the Congo}. Third, he probably had no plans on marrying his teenage mistress and it’s very likely he didn’t love her anyway. Fourth, he wasn’t serious enough about politics to even consider overthrowing his old man over anything.)

Maria Vetsera was blond. (Photographs indicate that she had dark hair.)

Other:

Richard Wagner was responsible for Nazism. (No, he wasn’t. Sure he was anti-Semitic but he died six years before Hitler was born. Still, the Nazis were a fan of his music and he gets a bad rap for that.)

Germany:

Kasper Hauser was a young man when he appeared in Nuremberg. (He was said to be 17.)

Albert and his brother Ernest lived in Saxe-Coburg-Gotha around 1837. (They were attending the University of Bonn as residents.)
There was a Prince of Brunswick at the Duke of Richmond’s ball during the Napoleonic Wars. (There was never a prince of Brunswick but there was a Duke of Brunswick who was 43 at the time of Waterloo.)

The Brothers Grimm wrote “Jack and the Beanstalk.” (It’s an old English tale and not well-known in Germany so it’s not one of them.)
Prussian General Blücher ordered his army to leave no survivors. (He actually told them to pursue the French until their last breath. It’s just that his army was in no mood in taking prisoners at the time.)

The Prussians wore black military uniforms. (They were dark blue. Also, contrary to Waterloo, the black-clad Leibhusaren weren’t part of Blucher’s army. )

Otto von Bismarck challenged Kaiser Wilhelm I’s authority. (No, because Kaiser Wilhelm I let Bismarck do whatever he wanted. Still, Bismarck was one of the reasons why Kaiser Wilhem was able to rule Germany though it was the Kaiser who appointed him prime minister. Unfortunately Kaiser Wilhelm I died in 1888 and his son Frederich III died of cancer after ruling Germany for 99 days which paved the way for Kaiser Wilhelm II who eventually fired Bismarck from his job after unifying Germany and running it for nearly 20 years mostly because Wilhelm II was fed up with being Bismarck’s puppet.)

Otto von Bismarck was a proto-Hitler. (No, he wasn’t despite being portrayed like that in Nazi propaganda films. Still, Bismarck was a sneaky bastard who enacted social welfare policies to reduce worker support for the socialist parties he loathed and set the retirement age to 65 thinking that nobody would receive benefits since a lot of people didn’t live past 50 at the time. However, though he had few scruples he wasn’t willing to override, Bismarck was a pragmatist more willing to find more expedient and effective ways to get what he wanted and didn’t pursue aggressive foreign policy.)

Albert Einstein was a patent clerk in 1899. (He was still in school at this point and wouldn’t become one until 1902.)

History of the World According to the Movies: Part 47 – The Victorian Era

Posted by historymaniacmegan on May 2, 2014

Emily Blunt stars in 2009’s The Young Victoria which is known for it’s costume design yet it did take a few liberties with the truth though it shows a Queen Victoria we rarely get to see. Still, in movies, we’re used to seeing Queen Victoria as an old queen wearing black but we forget that she ascended the British throne at just 18 and didn’t start wearing black until the death of her husband Prince Albert in 1861. Not to mention, white wasn’t considered a traditional wedding color until Queen Victoria wore it at her nuptials as shown here. Still, while the Victorian Era was know for traditionalism, it also started a lot of traditions we come to know today.

Though remembered as an era of stale and frumpy traditionalism, the Victorian Era was a time of tumultuous social, cultural, and technological change in Great Britain. Victorian Britain is said to be the birthplace of the modern middle class as well as for the rapid and jarring transformation to a highly industrialized nation, the massive Expansion of the British Empire, and the high emphasis on morality and propriety that only barely masked a dark and seedy underbelly of society. However, it was also a time of many of your familiar authors like Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, the Bronte sisters, the Brownings, Lewis Carroll, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, and Arthur Conan Doyle. Not to mention, it was time when the English speaking world started celebrating Christmas as a major holiday with Christmas trees, Christmas cards, Christmas caroling, Christmas lights, and Christmas dinner all introduced by Queen Victoria’s beloved German husband Prince Albert. Still, no discussion of the Victorian Era would be complete without talking about Queen Victoria herself, who reigned for sixty-four years, longer than any British monarch before or since (so far). Nevertheless, there are a lot of movies set in this era since most of these authors listed above had at least one book made into one. Not to mention, Victorian Britain tends to be a common setting for period pieces though you can always tell how far along since Victorian fashions changed quite a bit as time went on. Still, as far as movies go, there quite a bit of historical inaccuracies which I shall list.

Queen Victoria:

William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne and Queen Victoria were of similar age. (He was about 40 years her senior and was the closest thing she had to a dad {her biological father Prince Edward, Duke of Kent died when she was a baby. However, he did take great pride in her, said she was going to be Queen, and brought her to a military review to the shock of his brother the future King George IV}. Interestingly, Lord Melbourne was married to the infamous Caroline Lamb known for her short affair with Lord Byron and conducted a vicious tirade of revenge against him after he dumped her, that lasted longer than the original affair as well as played a major part in ruining Byron’s reputation in England with accusations of crimes up to and including murder. Yep, Queen Victoria’s father figure was married to Lord Byron’s psycho ex.)

Queen Victoria had a crush on Lord Melbourne. (No, she didn’t have any romantic feelings toward him at all because he was her father figure nearly 40 years older than her. Their relationship was more likely paternal than romantic.)

Queen Victoria had a loving relationship with Prince Albert. (Yes, but she was rather conflicted with Albert taking over more and more of her work when her pregnancies forced her to step aside. She really appreciated him for picking up the slack but she didn’t like being robbed of her powers as queen. She was also prone to temper tantrums and hated being pregnant and breastfeeding. Not to mention, neither Albert nor Victoria were loving parents to Bertie {future Edward VII who was actually a decent and charming king but he had many affairs}. Then there’s the fact that Prince Albert wasn’t very popular in Britain until the Great Exhibition of 1851 and that he helped popularize Christmas. Nevertheless, it’s said the Victoria actually married Albert as soon as she could in order to move out of her self-centered mother’s house {even as Queen she had to live with her mom, whom she had a difficult relationship with}. Victoria and Albert’s relationship wasn’t easy but they loved each other.)

Queen Victoria was a prudish old woman with no sense of humor. (She wasn’t always an old woman as seen in The Young Victoria. Also, she never said, “We are not amused” and actually did have a sense of humor an there’s a picture of her smiling {she was even a fan of Alice in Wonderland}. It’s also said by her staff she, “was immensely amused and roared with laughter” on many occasions. Still, she and Albert managed to have nine children so make that what you will. Also, she liked to draw and collect male nude figure drawings and at least gave one to her husband as a gift.)

Queen Victoria sent a portrait to Albert with her in a white dress with a tiara and a vertical bun while they were dating. (This portrait was done two years after they were married. Furthermore, the tiara and hair style were suggested by Albert himself.)

Victoria and Albert reigned. (Except that Albert was a prince consort and had no official standing.)

Queen Victoria was British. (She was born in Britain but to a German father and a half-German mother. She even spoke German with her husband. Also, Victoria wasn’t a British name until she came to the throne. Still, she did speak English in a British accent like you’d expect.)

Queen Victoria lived to be over 85. (She died at 81 in 1901.)

Queen Victoria was right handed. (She was left handed but a lot of movies get this wrong.)

Queen Victoria was interested in Albert due to the guy’s successful wooing. (It was more on her willingness to please her uncle Leopold. Luckily he didn’t want her to marry his own son who was crazy though Victoria did comment on the younger Leopold’s industriousness after she sent him a toy steam engine {little she know that her cousin Leopold II would become one of history’s greatest villains due to the atrocities he was responsible for in the Congo Free State inspiring Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness}.)

Prince Albert was present at Queen Victoria’s coronation. (Sorry, Julian Fellowes, but Prince Albert wasn’t at his future wife’s coronation ceremony. They were dating at the time though and wrote letters to each other. Also, his family wasn’t invited.)

It was love at first sight for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. (She was repelled of him during their first meeting in 1836 since he had a tendency to be fat at the time. Still, he did lose the weight and developed a fine waist which Victoria admired so much that she married him. As for Albert, he was actually quite ambivalent about coming to Britain and marrying Victoria {unexpectedly} and wasn’t the lovesick puppy as depicted in The Young Victoria. Actually his love for her developed more or less after their marriage than before.)

Prince Albert was willing to take a bullet for Queen Victoria. (He was never forced to do such thing and was never harmed in any of her assassination attempts.)

Sir John Conroy was at court when Queen Victoria was crowned. (She had expelled Conroy from court as soon as she became queen. However, sure he was a piece of shit but he wasn’t quite the bastard depicted in The Young Victoria.)

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were first cousins. (Well, they were supposed to be first cousins since Queen Victoria’s mother and Prince Albert’s {official} father were siblings. However, according to German historians Prince Albert was said to have resembled his mother’s boyfriend, Alexander von Hanstein who wasn’t related to any of the German royal families so it’s up for debate who his biological father really was. Nevertheless, their marriage didn’t have much to do with Victoria’s descendents having hemophilia since she became a carrier due to having a father who was in his fifties at the time she was born.)

Queen Victoria’s relationship to her servant John Brown fed a wave of republicanism to the nation at large. (Yes, Republicanism was on the rise in Great Britain but she wasn’t the sole cause. Yet, it had its roots in the Chartist movement, was stoked by a financial crisis in 1866, and the naming of the Prince of Wales in a divorce case was also a factor.)

Benjamin Disraeli shamed Queen Victoria on her relationship with her servant John Brown after the man’s death. (She was never shamed out of her admiration for Brown. She also developed an attachment to her Hindustani teacher Abdul Karim. Still, Mrs. Brown probably plays down the romance with John Brown which is probably more or less right.)

Queen Victoria ordered a Mass of Thanksgiving at St. George’s Chapel when her oldest son recovered from typhoid. (She was a devout low-church Anglican/Presbyterian in England and Scotland and would never have ordered a Mass. She actually ordered a Church of England service at St. Paul’s Cathedral to celebrate her son Edward’s recovery.)

Prince Albert and her cousin George were the only suitors Queen Victoria had to deal with. (Actually she had other suitors including Albert’s brother Edward.)

Benjamin Disraeli:

Benjamin Disraeli spoke from notes in his speeches in Parliament. (Disraeli made a point in delivering all his speeches from memory even if they were several hours long or involved complicated statistics. He also warned younger politicians against using notes as a crutch.)

Benjamin Disraeli was British Prime Minister in 1866. (He didn’t serve his first term as prime minister until 1868.)

Benjamin Disraeli was prime minister during the “Disestablishment of the Irish Church” question which was in 1867. (Disraeli didn’t start his first term as prime minister until 1868. The “Disestablishment of the Irish Church” question wasn’t raised in 1867 or under his first term either. Rather it was raised in 1869 under the prime minister ship of William Gladstone, his rival.)

Benjamin Disraeli wasn’t Jewish. (He was and his whole life was a history of struggling to overcome Anti-Semitism to be accepted in mainstream British society. Interestingly, he got his start as a romance novelist so he could get into politics but continued his writing even after he got his wish. However, though Jewish, he wasn’t a practicing Jew.)

Lord Melbourne took an active interest in Benjamin Disraeli. (Lord Melbourne was dubious about Disraeli’s future as anyone else was.)

Benjamin Disraeli knew Queen Victoria personally during her coronation. (She didn’t know much about him at the time apart from him writing some novels. Actually, she didn’t really become acquainted with him until after Prince Albert had died.)

Sir Henry Ponsonby:

Sir Henry Ponsonby was Queen Victoria’s private secretary before 1866. (He didn’t serve until after the death of his predecessor Sir Charles Grey in 1870.)

Ripper Murders:

Jack the Ripper was the most notorious serial killer of all time. (The only thing that was notorious about him was that he was never caught mostly because 19th century police investigation was very, very faulty and unreliable. Still, he only killed 5 people when many identified serial killers have killed more than that even Victorian Britain.)

Jack the Ripper murdered attractive young women. (Four of his victims were in their mid-forties and only one of them was said to be young and good looking.)

Frederick Abberline was a young man as well as psychic and an opium addict who died soon after the Ripper murders. (He was a middle-aged man in 1888 with no known opium addiction nor claim on psychic abilities. Not to mention, he would investigate other cases after Jack the Ripper. Also, he died in 1929 in his 80s at his Bournemouth villa. Yet, in a movie called From Hell, he’s played by Johnny Depp.)

All of Jack the Ripper’s victims were friends. (Well, they were professional colleagues in the oldest profession. However, there’s no evidence to support this.)

Prince Albert Victor, the Duke of Clarence was Jack the Ripper. (He’s been a candidate for Jack the Ripper but there are plenty of reasons to doubt he was. First, there’s no basis in him ever being involved with East End prostitutes, let alone siring a child by one. Second, there were rumors he was gay and he didn’t seem to show much interest in women {save maybe a couple}. Third, though it’s rumored he may have had syphilis, royal records state that he died from a bout of influenza in the pandemic of 1889-1892. Fourth, at the time of two of the Ripper murders, he was in Scotland in the presence of Queen Victoria and other family members, visiting German royalty, and a large number of staff. Furthermore, there are plenty of records that state he couldn’t have been near any of the Ripper murders at all. Fifth, he was a high profile member of the royal family as well as considered second in line to the throne, a position that would give him a lot of attention from the media of the time. So to think that Prince Albert Victor was Jack the Ripper is very much of a stretch since there’s overwhelming evidence he wasn’t.)

Jack the Ripper was dressed in a top hat and a cape as well as carried a “Gladstone bag.” (Witnesses say that he actually wore common clothes indicative of lower-middle class status {making it another reason why Prince Albert Victor couldn’t have been Jack the Ripper}. Also, while there has been a sighting of a man with a “Gladstone bag” he was later proven not to be involved in the murders. Not to mention, most true sightings of the killer showed nothing but his hands yet one may have contained a parcel of paper that may have concealed the knife.)

Jack the Ripper didn’t kill alone and didn’t kill his victims where they were found. (With one possible exception, there’s no evidence more than one person was involved in the murders or that his victims were killed anywhere other than where they were found.)

Jack the Ripper used a carriage as a mode of transportation. (For one, there’s little evidence that he had since they were loud on cobble-stoned streets and witnesses certainly would’ve noticed it. Second, he’s said to be a lower middle class guy.)

Jack the Ripper knew his victims. (He may have talked to them but there’s no evidence he knew them personally.)

Frederick Abberline was acquainted with Mary Kelly before her murder. (He didn’t know of her existence until her corpse turned up.)

The Ripper letters came from Jack the Ripper himself. (Hundreds of Ripper letters were written but historians believed few actually came from the killer himself, if at all.)

Sir William Gull was Jack the Ripper. (There’s no evidence he was. Also, though he was the royal physician, he was in his seventies during the Ripper murders and had recently suffered a stroke.)

Charles Darwin:

Charles Darwin abandoned Christianity after his voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle that led him to develop his theory of evolution. (To be fair, Charles Darwin did lose his faith but that didn’t happen until decades after his Beagle voyage and It’s pretty clear that his scientific findings had nothing to do with it. In fact, he considered his work to be proof of God’s existence as well as wrote extensively and approvingly about the religious implications {despite knowing how controversial the work would be}. The reason why Darwin lost his faith is highly debatable, one possible explanation could be the tragic and prolonged death of his daughter. Also, as a side note, there were many amateur scientists in the 19th century who were also clergymen.)

Charles Darwin was the first man to propose the theory of evolution. (Darwin was just the first guy who explained the process of evolution which could be observed and tested. The idea of evolution isn’t an new idea but has been around for a very long time, even during the Middle Ages {Saint Thomas Aquinas may have wrote something suggesting it}. Also, there were other theories of evolution out there before Darwin came along.)

Charles Darwin formulated his theory of evolution by studying finches in the Galapagos during his Beagle voyage. (He wasn’t just studying finches there but other animals of which many that tend to exist in areas they didn’t seem to fit and others that would’ve been well suited but didn’t exist.)

Charles Darwin proclaimed that humans descended from monkeys and apes. (Actually he said that humans are related to monkeys and apes as well as evolved from a common primate ancestor. He didn’t say that humans evolved from them. To add further note, Darwin was not a fan of eugenics nor believed in Social Darwinism.)

Edward VII:

King Edward VII was addressed as “Edward” while Prince of Wales. (He was actually called Albert Edward, and prior to his ascension was known as Prince Albert {after whom, by the way, the brand of pipe tobacco was named a source of Prince Albert in a can jokes. Yes, he’s that Prince Albert, not his dad}. Also, his family and close friends called him, “Bertie.” This is kind of confusing but true.)

Kaiser Wilhem II was Edward VII’s cousin. (The Kaiser was his nephew as well as Queen Victoria’s grandson.)

Oscar Wilde:

Oscar Wilde didn’t have a homosexual encounter until after he was married with kids. (A recent biographer said he had a relationship with Frank Miles in 1876 but his sex life after his marriage is much better known.)

Oscar Wilde met Lord Alfred Douglas at the premiere of Lady Windemere’s Fan in 1892. (He’s said to have met Douglas through another of Wilde’s young men at his residence on Tite Street in 1891.)

Winston Churchill:

Winston Churchill’s parents were doting and supportive of him. (Actually, with few exceptions, the portrayals of Winston Churchill’s parents in Young Winston are false and compared to them, they make any reality show parent look like a Mother or Father of the Year. His parents basically neglected him and his brother and he was one of the only kids in school not to go home for Christmas and basically spent his summers in France which was a way for his parents to get rid of him. His dad had no idea of what was going on with his kids’ lives nor he care to. He didn’t know the school he sent Winston to or how old he was. And Jennie as pretty as she was, was also selfish, shallow, and thrill-seeking type who didn’t much care for kids. She was also said to have slept with nineteen men including King Edward VII. And Winston was well aware of that and even knew one who was kinder to him than his own father. Perhaps the best things about Winston Churchill’s childhood were that he was from a wealthy family and grew up during Victorian times. If he had been growing up these days, the future prime minister’s family would’ve been featured in a reality show.)

Winston Churchill was a dutiful and obedient child at school. (He was actually known for constant misbehavior and occasional acts of unprovoked violence. Of course, it was to be expected since he had very shitty parents.)

Jennie Churchill was an angel in the house and a model of sexual propriety who didn’t understand when her husband’s doctors explained his syphilis illness. (Churchill’s mother had a reputation as a slut and after Randolph died, she married a man about the same age as Winston. When it went wrong with him, she married an even younger man after that. Still, to say she was a model of Victorian womanhood is a joke. Amazing embarrassing mother? Absolutely. By the way, Winston Churchill was listed as being born 2 months premature on his birth certificate though we’re probably sure it may have more to do with being born less than eight months after his parents were married.)

The Bronte Sisters:

Both Emily and Charlotte Bronte were in love with the same man. (Contrary to Devotion, they never were.)

Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning:

It was love at first sight between Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. (Their courtship actually began through a correspondence of letters they exchanged before they even met in person. The first one was a fan letter sent by Robert Browning fawning over how much he liked the poems Elizabeth published in 1844. So it was probably more like love before first sight to them.)

Edward Barrett expressed incestuous tendencies toward his daughters and discouraged contact with any guys. (Actually her dad discouraged marriage between any of his children whether male or female and disinherited them for this reason {Elizabeth had eight brothers and three sisters with all but one girl surviving to adulthood}. Still, there’s no evidence that he was sexually aggressive toward any family members.)

Edward Barrett had a sex addiction and regularly raped his wife. (There’s no evidence of this. Still, Edward Barrett wasn’t an abusive father or a rapist. He was just a man of his time.)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was disabled. (She had a lot of health problems that made it painful for her to stand or walk. More or less an invalid than disabled.)

Crimean War:

The Battle of Balaklava directly resulted in the fall of Sebastopol. (It actually left the Russians in charge of an Allied supply route.)

Lord Raglan was a stiff-upper lipped commander. (He was even stiffer than his John Gielgud portrayal in The Charge of the Light Brigade. When he had his arm amputated due to being shot in the elbow with a musket ball at Waterloo, he was stoically silent without anesthesia while the surgeon sawed off his arm. The only comment he made was when he saw his arm chucked in the basket in which he said, “Hey, bring my arm back up. There’s a ring my wife gave me on the finger.” Yes, this guy was really like this in real life.)

Captain Louis Nolan had an affair with another officer’s wife as well as ordered black Moselle wine when Lord Cardigan asked for champagne. This made Cardigan furious that he had Nolan arrested. (I’m not sure that Nolan had an affair or whether that was made up. However, the wine incident did happen but with a guy named Captain John Reynolds who was in the Indian division of the British Army, not Nolan. The real Nolan did fight in the Sikh Wars but he was born in Milan and served in the 10th Hungarian Hussars before joining the British Army.)

Fanny Duberly was a featherbrained slut trying to bed Lord Cardigan. (She was actually a tough minded adventurous woman who was endlessly faithful to her husband. She should sue for slander in her depiction in The Charge of the Light Brigade.)

It was General Airey that half-garbled the order from Lord Raglan to Lord Cardigan which prompted the Charge of the Light Brigade. (Most historians blamed Captain Nolan for garbling the order, which was then misinterpreted by Lord Lucan, and the charge was carried out by Lord Cardigan. There’s actually some dispute over who was responsible for the disastrous charge though but agree that Captain Nolan was an arrogant and hotheaded young officer who kind of got what he deserved in the end.)

The Charge of the Light Brigade was a direct plan to invade the Russian camp. (It was the result of a command mix up between Lord Cardigan and Lord Raglan. Also, the Charge of the Light Brigade was a complete and utter disaster mostly because of the incompetence of the British top brass consisted of a bunch of upper class twits. Also, during the charge, whole regiments were annihilated.)

The Battle of Balaclava resulted in the fall of Sebastopol. (It didn’t.)

The Battle of Balaclava and the Charge of the Light Brigade took place in 1856. (It took place in 1854.)

The Light Brigade regiments wore cherry color breeches. (Only the 11th Hussars wore pants of that color. Officers and troops of the other four regiments wore dark blue breeches with double yellow stripes or white stripes in the case of the 17th Lancers.)

The Crimean War was a primarily British conflict. (It was primarily between Russia and the Ottoman Empire. France and Great Britain were allies on the Turkish side since they knew the Ottoman Empire was on the decline and wanted its territories. Yes, Britain and France sided with the Muslim power this time.)

Lord Raglan was an air-headed incompetent. (While he wasn’t the best general, Lord Lucan and Cardigan were probably worse than he was. Yet, his incompetence is highly debatable.)

Lords Lucan and Cardigan hated each other for no reason. (The men were brothers-in-law and didn’t like each other. However, most historians think their enmity stemmed from Lucan mistreating Cardigan’s sister. Still, after the Charge of the Light Brigade, both guys tried to viciously smear one another over it.)

The Battle of Balaclava was an important battle in the Crimean War. (Contrary to the fact that it featured one of the greatest military blunders in history that inspired a Tennyson poem, it was actually a minor skirmish compared to larger, bloodier, and more important battles like the Alma and Inkerman, let alone the protracted siege of Sevastopol {which Leo Tolstoy participated in}. Also, the Russians and Turks fought famous battles in the Caucasus and the Balkans without French and British participation, but nobody pays attention to that.)

The Charge of the Light Brigade started in India. (It started in Russia. Unlike the depiction in the 1936 film, it was never stationed in India. Still, the 1936 Charge of the Light Brigade film almost has nothing to do with the Crimean War and more or less resembles the Siege of Cawnpore.)

Florence Nightingale was the lady with the lamp who helped clean up Crimea. (Yes, but The Lady with the Lamp ignores that she was also a mathematical genius who invented the pie chart. Also, she may have been gay.)

The Elephant Man:

The Elephant Man’s name was John Merrick. (It was Joseph Merrick.)

The Elephant Man had no control over his sideshow career. (Actually Merrick chose to exhibit himself and was treated well by the sideshow establishment as well as established an equal financial partnership with his trainer Tom Norman whose speaking to him “like a dog” was actually part of an act. During 22 months, Merrick managed to save £50 of his earnings {equivalent of what a working class family earned for a year}. So he was probably not a helpless victim but a guy who used what God gave him and was savvy enough to financially benefit from it.)

The Elephant Man was taken in by the Royal London Hospital, was kidnapped by his boss, and carried off to Belgium where he was locked in a cage with baboons. (Merrick never shared any living quarters with baboons and actually went to Belgium by choice after the tide of public taste turned against freak shows in Great Britain. Not to mention, he was robbed by his Austrian business partner there. However, Merrick was only at the Royal Hospital in London after he returned to Great Britain in a state of distress.)

Miscellaneous:

Welsh children were more content to work in the coal mines than go to school. (Actually this is the other way around. Most nineteenth century children would rather go to school even though that was no day at the beach either but at least school children didn’t have to worry about losing a limb, disfigurement, having soot all over their faces, or work-place related death.)

The upper classes of Victorian England were uptight prudes. (They tended to be anything but. However they were very good at keeping up appearances. Also, Victorian era porn would make much of the smut on the internet look like something out of a children’s book. Not to mention, many Victorians also wrote erotica.)

The Duke of Sussex was as tall as Queen Victoria and sported a mustache by the time he walked her down the aisle. (He was very tall and had shaved his mustache and wore a set of mutton chops.)

Robert Burns gave a recital of “Auld Lang Syne” at Queen Victoria’s Balmoral Castle during her reign. (The poem was written in 1788 which meant that Burns was probably long dead at that point. Also, it was published as a song in 1886.)

Anne Crook had an affair with Prince Albert Victor as well as had his child. (There’s no evidence for this nor is there evidence of her knowing any of the Ripper victims or receiving a lobotomy. Also, she’s probably a fictional character.)

Lower class Londoners had Cockney accents. (Really, gov’nuh?)

Sweet lovely virginal young women of aristocratic status and downtrodden whores could die of the same disease yet suffer it in very different ways.

Contrived coincidences abounded everywhere among the characters, especially when it concerned unknown parents.

Lord Kelvin was a sniveling, conniving, backstabber willing to stop anyone out of a little more than professional jealousy. (Of course, this is how Disney depicted him in Around the World in 80 Days. However, this guy was a noteworthy scientist who discovered the first and second laws of thermodynamics, the concept of absolute zero temperature resulting in getting a scale named after him, other things noteworthy of science. Furthermore, he was knighted for working on the Transatlantic Telegraph Cable, including several inventions on this project. Still, Disney’s Kelvin rendition kind of captures the Victorian viciousness in the scientific community perfectly.)

Charlie Chaplin was a kid around 1887. (Sorry Shanghai Knights, but Chaplin was born in 1889, around the same week as Hitler no doubt.)

History of the World According to the Movies: Part 46 – Late Georgian Great Britain

Posted by historymaniacmegan on May 2, 2014

The 1941 film That Hamilton Woman starring husband and wife Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh recounts the scandalous relationship between Admiral Horatio Nelson and Lady Emma Hamilton. Of course, this movie isn’t 100% accurate due to stuff like the Hays Code and let’s say that Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton weren’t that hot in real life at this point in their lives. Nor did Lord Nelson ever wear an eye patch. Still, at least this romance featured two historical characters who actually loved each other in real life unlike some movies.

Great Britain’s first 37 years in the 19th century were encompassed by the Late Georgian Era. Of course, the Industrial Revolution had already kicked off by this time and its effects would later lend inspiration to many Charles Dickens novels. The lives of the upper-classes and gentry, however, would become the tableau in which many novels from Jane Austen are set, especially during the Regency when King George III went permanently insane that the future George IV had to rule as regent for nine years. Not to mention, a lot of the works of the Bronte sisters take place in this period as well though you wouldn’t know it since many movies of their works usually have women in big dresses. Still, much the movies set in this period would usually pertain to either Austen novels or the Napoleonic Wars since the British were the main adversaries of the French as well as introduced heroes like the Duke of Wellington who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo and Admiral Horatio Nelson, famous for his victory at Trafalgar, having one arm and one eye, and his scandalous relationship with Lady Emma Hamilton. This would also be an era of Romantic Era poets and writers like Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Mary Shelley as well. Not to mention, this would be the time period when Britain would give the vote to Catholics and abolish slavery. Nevertheless, there are plenty of historical errors in movies set in this time period I shall list accordingly.

Napoleonic Wars:

The Battle of Waterloo was mostly a British victory. (Wellington’s army wasn’t just made up of English, Scottish, or Irish soldiers as seen in Waterloo, but also the contingents from various German states and the Kingdom of the United Netherlands {Dutch and Belgian} that consisted of 2/3 of his army. It was an international effort.)

General Ponsonby died in the same way as his father during the Napoleonic wars. (His dad was a politician who died peacefully in 1806. Ponsonby himself, according to French accounts surrendered to a French sergeant of lancers who later killed him when a group of British cavalrymen attempted to rescue him {and Ponsonby was getting ready to bolt without handing his sword or dismounting}.)

Royal Marines had child drummers during the Napoleonic Wars. (Their drummers were adults.)

Royal Navy vessels always had one man at the wheel during the Napoleonic Wars whether in battle or during a storm. (There could be as many as four or more guys on the wheel in either situation.)

ADC Lord Hay was killed at Waterloo. (He actually was killed at Quatre Bas.)

The HMS Agamemnon was a 3 decked battleship on the line. (It had 2 gun decks.)

The Santisma Trinidad burned and sank during the Battle of Trafalgar while several ships exploded. (It was captured and taken by the British as a prize after the battle. But it was lost in a storm. Also, during the Battle of Trafalgar, there only one ship that blew up, which was a French gunner called the Achilles.)

The Burke and Hare Murders:

William Burke and William Hare were childless. (Contrary to Burke & Hare, Burke had left a wife and two children in Northern Ireland. We’re not sure whether he deserted them or that his wife simply refused to join him in Scotland. Hare and his wife had a baby with whooping cough during the trial proceedings who was said to be used “as an instrument for delaying or evading whatever question it was inconvenient for her to answer.” Hare’s wife also had another kid to her first marriage.)

William Burke’s girlfriend was an actress named Ginny Hawkins he met during the murders. (Her name was Helen McDougal and they had been living together for 10 years they were assumed to be married. In fact, they had been living at the Hares’ lodging house since they arrived in Edinburgh in 1827. And Burke was well-acquainted with Hare’s wife whom he met on previous trips to the city. As for Hare’s wife, her name was Margaret Laird who did run a lodging house. But she had inherited it from her previous husband after he died. And in 1828, she had one child and was pregnant for some time during the murders. Nevertheless, Ginny Hawkins was loosely based on a real actress named Eva Le Gallienne who played the role of Hamlet.)

William Burke got involved in the murders to raise money for his girlfriend’s play. (This was a ploy for Burke & Hare to make Burke seem like a more sympathetic character. If there’s any motive it might’ve been the possibility that he was sending money to his wife and kids back home. Or that he worked in a variety of trades that either didn’t suit him or didn’t pay well. Or that selling dead bodies to Robert Knox was an easy way to make money. As for Hare, he had a pregnant wife and a stepchild to support and most of his wife’s tenants consisted of beggars and vagrants. And she ran her lodging house at a loss with her charges owing money.)

William Burke’s girlfriend knew nothing about the murders. (While there’s no direct evidence she was, Helen McDougal is widely assumed to be. However, we do know that she had seen many of their victims while they were alive and she had the clothing of one of them in her possession {though to be fair, Burke often passed victims’ clothes to others while Hare disposed them in the Union Canal}. Oh, and they killed her cousin. And that she tried to bribe a couple into keeping quiet about a dead body under a bed. But Burke claimed that she knew nothing and believed he and Hare were grave robbers. Then again, he might’ve been just trying to clear her name. Nevertheless, how much McDougal may have known of the murders and whether she was involved will never be known. Nevertheless, she got off on “not proven.”)

William Hare’s wife knew about the murders and was perfectly fine with them. (Yes, but that wasn’t all. Margaret certainly knew about the murders and there’s enough evidence to suggest that she might’ve assisted or even initiated some of them. We know this because when Burke and Hare split the money among themselves, she always got a cut “for the house.” But what role she played is unknown other than covering them up since many of the victims were her own lodgers.)

William Burke and William Hare were grave robbers before they turned to murder. (There’s no evidence to suggest they ever were. Besides, by then, grave robbing was so commonplace back then that relatives of the recently deceased were known to watch over their graves. And watchtowers were installed in cemeteries. Such developments sped the way for many grave robbers into committing anatomy murder with Burke and Hare’s being the most infamous.)

Dr. Robert Knox performed a sideshow act in America after the Burke and Hare murders. (Contrary to Burke & Hare, Knox continued to teach for many years, but his career and reputation were ruined since he’d always be known as the guy who bought bodies off of serial killers. His house would be frequently vandalized. He’d soon have to resign as curator of the museum he founded and students stopped taking his classes. He ended up working in a cancer hospital in London and writing various works. Still, I can forgive John Landis for that since the sideshow act was too good to miss.)

Dr. Robert Knox’s motivation for getting mixed up with Burke and Hare was that Dr. Monro had access to all the good cadavers and to receive a prestigious award from the King. (In reality, Knox was likely to already have an established network of body snatchers in Edinburgh as well as had agents in Glasgow, Manchester, and Dublin. All of these guys charged him the same as Burke and Hare. Yet, the bodies Burke and Hare sent were obviously in much better shape. Still, Knox was a very busy man at the time since he was aspiring to become a professor at the University of Edinburgh, was working on a research project of comparative anatomy,was Curator of the Museum of the College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, and was in the process of seeing several books through publication. Furthermore, he usually delegated responsibilities of his dissecting establishment at 10 Surgeon’s Square to his staff. This included his brother, his technician and doorkeeper, and 3 assistants. It was these guys who mostly dealt with Burke and Hare directly, not Knox. So to say that Knox was complicit in the murders other than being a paying customer who didn’t know he was getting into, is a bit of a stretch. Still, the idea of Dr. Monro hogging the cadavers makes sense since an act of 1823 saw a dramatic drop in crimes punishable by death which caused an extreme shortage of dead bodies legally available for medical schools.)

William Burke confessed to his crimes to save his friends and love. (Burke did no such thing. In fact, he was betrayed by William Hare who sold him out after they were caught. Hare agreed to testify against Burke and his girlfriend to escape persecution. This is mostly because the police had little hard evidence to convict both of them. Nevertheless, if given the chance, Burke would’ve done the same thing but he wasn’t offered. Hare was perfectly happy to do this. Nevertheless, Burke probably did try to clear his girlfriend by claiming she knew nothing about the murders, but he only confessed after knowing he was going to be hanged and there was nothing he could do about it.)

Most of Burke and Hare’s victims were men of various backgrounds. (The known victims consisted of 12 women, 3 men, and one child. All were very poor, often homeless {which doesn’t make for an entertaining black comedy}. To target men in fancy clothes, carriages, or fur coats would’ve been unthinkable to them since it would’ve led to an easy arrest {no matter how vulnerable these guys were at the time}. So like most serial killers, they preyed on Edinburgh’s poorest communities who were less likely to be missed or recognized. Nevertheless, this resulted in the two being charged with only 3 of the murders. And while Burke and Hare are said to have killed 16 people, the real total is likely to be a lot higher.)

Suspicion of Burke and Hare’s murders arose when medical body of a local crime boss appeared at Dr. Knox’s dissection table. (The bodies that were recognized by Knox’s students were of a prostitute named Mary Paterson and a mentally challenged young man with a limp but a familiar character named James Wilson also known as “Daft Jamie.” Nevertheless, the two wouldn’t be caught until a couple lodgers called the cops after discovering the body of Mrs. Mary Docherty {or Margery Campbell} under a bed. The body was removed when the police arrived. Burke and Helen McDougal were arrested under questioning. As for the Hares, they were arrested after police were given an anonymous tip-off to Knox’s dissecting rooms where the couple who turned the guys in positively identified Docherty’s body.)

William Burke and William Hare had a genial relationship throughout the murders. (Their relationship had disintegrated towards the end as Burke became suspicious that Hare and Margaret were cutting him and Helen McDougal out of deals with Knox. When they were arrested along with their women, each gave conflicting testimony and the two guys blamed each other.)

William Hare and his wife started a funeral business in Edinburgh after William Burke’s execution. (Contrary to Burke & Hare this wasn’t true. Rather, in reality, Hare and his wife along with Helen McDougal entered into the 19th century equivalent to “witness protection.” And for awhile they had to be taken into police custody and moved since their notoriety attracted mobs and threats to their safety. For the Hares, establishing a funeral business in Edinburgh wouldn’t have been possible for they had no peace afterwards. Nevertheless, McDougal was last seen in Durham, Margaret went back to her family in Ireland, and Hare was last seen fleeing an inn after being trapped by a mob. We’re not sure what happened to him since.)

William Burke and William Hare were likeable guys. (Contrary to Burke & Hare, neither were as nice as Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis portrayed them. Hare was said to be prone to violence while drunk and might’ve killed his wife’s first husband who mysteriously disappeared, conveniently leaving a boardinghouse and him a wealthier man. Burke left a wife and two kids in Ireland. He was working as a shoemaker at the time and could read and write. Yet, he was the more likeable of the two.)

The Duke of Wellington:

The Duke of Wellington spoke in an English accent. (He was Irish. Still, as prime minister, his main accomplishment would be granting Catholic Emancipation granted in Parliament.)

Sir Arthur Wellesley was the Duke of Wellington in 1810. (He was elevated to the Peerage after the Battle of Talavera and to a Dukedom in 1814. The post of the Duke of Wellington didn’t exist yet.)

The Duke of Wellington was an old man during the Battle of Waterloo. (He was in his forties around the same age as Napoleon.)

The Duke of Wellington was opposed to the judicial killing of Field Marshall Michel Ney and saw it as a vicious action of the Duchesse d’Angouleme (Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette’s only surviving child at the time). (As a friendly observer and adviser to King Louis XVIII, Wellington had no legal standing to get involved and most likely didn’t.)

Admiral Horatio Nelson and Lady Emma Hamilton:

Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson wore an eye patch after he lost his eye. (Most of the time he didn’t and at least That Hamilton Woman gets this right even though he wears it once. However, Lord Nelson never did look as hot as Sir Laurence Olivier {who’s a rather tall man while Nelson wasn’t} and neither was Lady Hamilton as pretty as Vivien Leigh and was actually kind of chunky in her later years.)

Admiral Horatio Nelson had “A Life on the Ocean Waves,” played at a victory party. (It was composed in the 1830s when Nelson was long dead.)

Admiral Horatio Nelson was a tall man. (Contrary to his Sir Laurence Olivier portrayal in That Hamilton Woman, he was 5’4″ and weighed about 100 pounds. This would make him built like James Madison. But this guy had the habit of showing his chest as well as covering it in official regalia, which made it clear to the enemy exactly who he was. This didn’t go personally well for him at Trafalgar since he was killed by a French sniper because of this. He also flaunted his small size and disabilities as proof of his bravery. And unlike the real 5’7″ tall Napoleon Bonaparte who was really slightly above average by 19th century standards, Nelson was basically the poster child of the Napoleonic Complex that we should call it the Lord Nelson Complex. Let’s just say That Hamilton Woman would’ve made much more historical sense if they cast Claude Rains in the role instead of Sir Laurence Olivier. Then again, Hollywood has a habit of making certain historical figures taller than they actually were, particularly men.)

Horatio Nelson died at sunset during the Battle of Trafalgar when his ship was fighting the French flagship Redoubtable under heavy fog. (The flagship was the Bucenature and the battle was fought on a perfectly clear day. But yes, they were fighting the Redoubtable and the Santasima Trinidad, too. Also, Nelson is said to have died around 4:30 in the afternoon.)

Horatio Nelson was rear-admiral of the Blue in 1798. (His highest rank vice-admiral of the White Squadron.)

Lord Horatio Nelson had to wait for Sir William Hamilton to die before he could shack up with Lady Emma Hamilton and the two of them kept their relationship under wraps despite having a child together. (Yes, they did let their daughter Horatia be raised by another couple {yet they adopted her later}. Yet, they did pose as her godparents at her christening. However, by the time Emma had Horatia, Nelson was already openly living with the Hamiltons in a ménage a trois. For God’s sake, Nelson was holding Emma’s hand at her husband’s death bed. This was no secret in Great Britain but Emma’s devotion to Nelson was notoriously flamboyant {and it helped that Nelson was a such a prima donna that he made George S. Patton look meek in comparison}. Also, unlike what That Hamilton Woman depicts, Emma was doing a performance art show in which she appeared as famous women from history. Emma Hamilton wasn’t a goody-goody wifelet but a crazy freewheeling nympho who’d put Miley Cyrus to shame. Guess 1940s Hollywood was more tolerant on adultery than threesomes.)

Emma Hamilton was surprised to see Lord Horatio Nelson’s eye patch and empty sleeve. (She probably wouldn’t have been surprised by his war wounds since his exploits were known all over Europe at this point. She would’ve known he couldn’t see from his right eye and had lost most of his right arm. Also, Nelson didn’t wear an eye patch {which he doesn’t in much of That Hamilton Woman save a few scenes}. He may have actually worn a less glamorous eye shade on his hat when it was sunny on deck.)

Lord Horatio Nelson had a full set of teeth throughout his life. (It’s said he lost most of his teeth when he and Emma Hamilton were reacquainted. Yet, his time in the Napoleonic Wars had seemed to prematurely aged him and he was afflicted by coughing spells. Oh, and did I say he was around 40 at the time?)

Emma Hamilton was 18 when she arrived in Naples. (She was 21. However, unlike what That Hamilton Woman implies, Emma had quite a life before she came there. She was a spokesmodel for the Temple of Health, a dodgy London health clinic that sold infertile couples sessions on an electrified Celestial Bed in which the shocks were said to aid conception. She was a mistress to Sir Harry Featherstonehaugh and had a child by him before moving on to MP Charles Greville. Also, she was the favorite subject of the painter George Romney. This was all before she went to Naples where she met her future husband Sir William Hamilton.)

Beau Brummel:

George “Beau” Brummel was booted out of the British Army when he criticized Prince George about the uniforms for his Dragoons. (Brummel resigned his commission in the Hussars voluntarily most likely because he didn’t want to go to war. Yet, there are theories that he couldn’t abide the 10th Dragoons formal hairstyle {long and powdered with a pigtail} and wanted to wear his hair in the Roman Emperor style {short but brushed forward}. There’s probably an understanding why screenwriters would go with the uniforms.)

Beau Brummel and George IV were around the same age. (They were friends around George IV’s wedding to Caroline of Brunswick but Beau was 16 at the time while George IV was twice his age.)

Beau Brummel was bisexual. (There’s no record of him having romantic relationships with anyone, though he spent a lot of time with courtesans and it’s been suggested {and he’s said to have syphilis}. However, he and George IV probably didn’t have a mutually romantic friendship since George IV was exclusively straight and a womanizer. Then again, Elizabeth Taylor {which she is in his biopic} would make an appropriate love interest for him since she has male fans from all sexual orientations.)

Beau Brummel asked Lord Byron, “Who’s your fat friend?” as an insult to Prince Regent George. (It was said to be toward a guy named Lord Alvanley not, Byron. Still, Brummel never protested against Prince George in public speeches.)

Beau Brummel contracted tuberculosis while on exile to Calais. (His French medical records say he had syphilis, which you can’t put in a 1950s biopic. So he may not have been romantically involved with anyone but maybe he might’ve had a few flings.)

George IV and Beau Brummel bonded over the former’s impending and unwanted marriage to Caroline of Brunswick. (They were already friends by this point, though it’s pretty clear George IV didn’t want to marry Caroline of Brunswick and it was a miracle that he was able to sire a daughter from her {though Princess Charlotte’s death would send her uncles scrambling to produce heirs and make Queen Victoria’s existence and succession possible. If she didn’t die of childbirth, Victoria may not have never been born, let alone be queen}.)

King George IV and Beau Brummel had a tearful reconciliation at Brummel’s deathbed. (Actually King George IV died 10 years before Brummel did, so that wouldn’t happen. Also, there’s no record on them having met again after 1816. Not to mention, Brummel remained in France for the rest of his life.)

King William IV:

When King William IV insulted the Duchess of Kent, she sat several feet away from him, she left the room, and neither Princess Victoria nor anyone else reacted much. (The Duchess of Kent sat next to the king, she didn’t leave the room, and Princess Victoria cried in reaction to the king’s outburst, and the guests were aghast.)

Jane Austen:

Jane Austen had a romance with Tom Lefroy, who was the love of her life and a guy she almost married. (Yes, she and Tom Lefroy knew each other but there are plenty of scholars who are skeptical on whether the two were ever a couple. All that’s documented about her relationship with him was that they danced together in 3 Christmas balls. Lefroy may have said he was in love with Austen but at that time he was an old man who may have been willing to play up to his connection with the famous female novelist. Yet, he’s mentioned in only three of Austen’s letters that survive but her sister did burn most of the letters she sent so we’ll never know. Still, it may not have amounted to much contrary to what Becoming Jane implies. However, Austen did receive at least one marriage proposal but it was from a different guy named Harris Biggs-Wither who she turned down {maybe because she didn’t want to be Mrs. Biggs-Wither and a butt of many Monty Python jokes}.)

Jane Austen was a frustrated and mediocre writer until a man entered her life, introduced her to Tom Jones, and taught her about love. (I’m sure she was perfectly capable of telling her own stories without the aid of any men. Becoming Jane is probably an insult to a female writer who wrote with such genius and originality like Jane Austen did. Not to mention, she was already working on her first novel before she even met him and had already read Tom Jones, too. Still, Tom Lefroy may not have been the only man in her life and there’s some reason to believe that she may have actually chose not to get married due to how many of her family members died in childbirth at the time.)

Tom Lefroy proposed to Jane Austen. (Chances are he most likely never proposed to her because he wasn’t from a well-off family and she wouldn’t be what his folks would consider appropriate marriage material. He probably led her on during many occasion and their relationship probably never really went anywhere from a mere flirtation despite any mutual feelings for each other. He more likely never saw Jane again after leaving Hampshire the first time. Lefroy would later marry a woman with a large fortune with whom he’d have seven kids and would later become Britain’s Lord Chief Justice. Nevertheless, Jane Austen had a close relationship with his aunt who was her mentor.)

Jane Austen’s brother Henry was a guy who liked to drink, party, and screw around with prostitutes. (Actually he wasn’t like that but he was adventurous. He ended up marrying a cousin ten years older than him and became a clergyman after she died.)

Jane Austen’s parents didn’t get along. (It’s implied in their letters that they certainly loved each other. Also, while finances were tight in the Austen household, they were never in dire straits.)

Jane Austen was pretty. (There aren’t many contemporary portraits of her save probably one and she doesn’t look very flattering in that. However, we’re really not sure what she really looked like.)

King George IV:

King George IV was a well-meaning and clumsy man. (Many of the people who knew him personally would’ve said otherwise according to his eulogy, “there never was an individual less regretted by his fellow-creatures than this deceased king…If he ever had a friend – a devoted friend in any rank of life – we protest that the name of him or her never reached us.” )

William Pitt the Younger:

William Pitt the Younger was still alive after 1806. (He died that year.)

William Wilberforce’s illness caused a rift between him and William Pitt the Younger. (His illness actually strengthened their relationship.)

William Wilberforce was present at William Pitt the Younger’s deathbed. (Wilberforce didn’t make it in time.)

George Gordon, Lord Byron:

Lord Byron could walk perfectly fine on two legs. (He had a clubbed foot that plagued him throughout his life.)

Lord Byron was thin. (He wasn’t. Actually despite being a vegetarian and athletic most of his life, he was overweight since he wore several waistcoats to sweat the fat off. Still, he was an inspiration for the modern vampire. But he was no model of sexiness by our standards.)

Mary Shelley:

Mary Shelley’s only work was Frankenstein. (Wikipedia has quite a list of her works including novels, editorials, plays, short stories, and travelogues. She was a pretty busy woman. Yet, what’s she remembered for? Still, her dad was the political philosopher William Godwin and her mother was the famous philosopher and women’s rights proponent Mary Wollstonecraft. Her husband was the poet Percy Blysshe Shelley.)

Miscellaneous:

Charles Fox was known as “Lord Charles Fox.” (He was in the House of Commons until the day he died which was in 1806 so he wouldn’t have been able to make comments about Wilberforce after the abolition of the slave trade. Still, he was a younger son of a baron and known as the “Honorable Charles Fox.”)

Formal birth registrations were in place in this time. (The UK didn’t have any formal birth registrations until 1837. At this time the only formal records were baptisms from parish churches.)

The Royal Lyceum Theatre was around in 1828. (It was built in 1883.)

Greyfriars Bobbby died in the 1820s. (He was alive around 1855-1872.)

Edinburgh’s law enforcement was handled by a local militia in the 1820s. (Edinburgh was one of the first cities in Great Britain to establish a police department. But they relied on local residents to bring crimes to their attention and when they weren’t solving crimes, they were arresting poor people. This is why the Burke and Hare murders lasted for 10 months free from police inquiry until a couple of lodgers reported their discovery of Mary Docherty’s dead body.)

History of the World According to the Movies: Part 45 – 19th Century France

Posted by historymaniacmegan on May 1, 2014

As much as I love Les Miserables, if there’s a movie about the 19th century I should put on this post, it would have to be Gance’s 1927 silent epic Napoleon since this is seen as a very significant film chronicling the life of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte played by Albert Dieudonne. And there is no person who’s more important in France during this period than this guy who tried to conquer Europe but ultimately failed at Waterloo. Nevertheless, I know how the French take their movie industry seriously as well as their history and they probably wouldn’t like it if I put a picture of a film from their history which wasn’t made by them.

Of course, America wasn’t the only place making history in the 19th century. Nor was it just a century of imperialism and colonization either. The 19th century was a very important time in our history. For one, it’s a time of the Napoleonic Wars which would wreak Europe for the first 15 years until Waterloo where one 5’7″ Corsican from seemingly nowhere sought to conquer Europe to put it under his domain. Of course, I’m talking about Napoleon Bonaparte. It was a century of rebellions, revolutions, nationalism, and unification of Germany and Italy as well as the formation of a new country called Belgium. It was a century of great scientific and technological innovation with the Industrial Revolution, modern medicine, the discovery of fossils, and other things I can’t name off the top of my head. Furthermore, it was a great century of cultural contributions of writers, composers, painters, sculptors, and others. Let’s just say the 19th century is perhaps a very trans formative century in which the world would never be the same after all these developments. Not to mention, this is a time well represented in movies since there’s so many world changing things happening here.

While the French Revolution sought to get rid of kings once and for all, the French government wouldn’t get rid of them for good until the 1870s. From this they would be ruled by three dynasties such as the Bonapartes who called themselves Emperor like Napoleon from 1804-1815 roughly and his nephew Napoleon III who ruled from 1852-1870. Both of these guys actually seized power during France’s first two republics and thus put an end to them. You have the Bourbon monarchy that once ruled France prior to the French Revolution who were restored when Napoleon was exiled with the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X that lasted until the 1830s. Then you have the House of Orleans a Bourbon collateral branch with the 18 year reign of Louis Philippe. He would be overthrown when the monarchy was abolished in 1848. Nevertheless, because of all this, France now has three royal pretenders to this day, which puts them in such an unenviable position. Still, other than that, France would see other rebellions such the 1832 June Rebellion seen in Les Miserables which would end very badly for Marius’ friends. You’d also have authors such as Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, Gustave Flaubert, and other literary luminaries. Paris would be the place of great art movements like Impressionism and Post-Impressionism as well as others. France would also be the home of Louis Pasteur the famous scientist who would bring medicine out of it’s medieval stasis and the Curies who’d discover radium, win Nobel Prizes, and spawn a daughter who’d also win a Nobel Prize as well. Nevertheless, movies set in 19th century France have their share of inaccuracies which I shall list.

Napoleon Bonaparte:

Napoleon was a near psychotic with dreams of world domination. (He was overreachingly ambitious and ruthless, but he was nowhere in Hitler’s league.)

Napoleon Bonaparte rose to greatness through the ranks. (Yes, but he was also a part of an ancient but impoverished aristocratic family as well as educated in the foremost military academy in France.)

Napoleon spoke with a thick French accent. (He spoke French with a Corsican accent because he was from Corsica and he didn’t learn French until he was 9. Also, he actually hated France when he was growing up and never forgave his dad for submitting to French rule as well as dreamed of liberating Corsica from the French. Heck, he’d be furious to see someone play him in a French accent because for a long time, he didn’t consider himself French. Nevertheless, his support of the French Revolution would get himself and his family thrown out of Corsica for the rest of their lives.)

Napoleon was short, even by nineteenth century standards. (His height was 5’7” which is considered short by our standard but by nineteenth century standards, this was considered about average. As a side note, Admiral Horatio Nelson was 5’4.” Still, Napoleon’s nickname “The Little Corporal” was a more affectionate moniker that had more to do with his humility than his height.)

Talleyrand was present at Napoleon’s reburial in 1840. (He had died 2 years before that.)

Napoleon was able to observe an entire battlefield and beyond from where he was sitting or standing. (Part of his defeat at Waterloo was contributed by the fact he didn’t know what the hell was going on during that battle since he had hemorrhoids. During the Battle of Hougoumont, most of Wellington’s army was hidden from French view among ridges, trees, and etc. and Napoleon was unable to see that Wellington didn’t move throughout the whole time. Also, according to one report, Napoleon was unaware that there was a fortified castle behind the wood of Hougomont when the battle began {the forest was chopped in 1816}.)

Napoleon always had the habit of putting his hand in his coat pocket. (He only had his hand in his pocket while posing for portraits as most men did at the time.)

Napoleonic Wars:

The French used American made frigates during the Napoleonic Wars. (American warships didn’t have a good reputation in Europe until after the War of 1812. The possible exception would’ve been the America the US gave France after the Revolutionary War.)

Napoleon was furious when Marshall Ney delivered a captured British flag from Quatre Bras to him because Ney didn’t launch troops in pursuit of the Duke of Wellington’s army. (Ney was too busy at Quatre Bras to run such an errand on June 16, 1815 and only met Napoleon the next day with the latter arriving at Quatre Bras with part of his force from Ligny. Also, Napoleon didn’t order his top commanders to pursue the allied armies before noon on June 17th, 1815 either.)

The French Army of the North crossed the Dutch border on the evening of June 15, 1815 during the ball in Brussels. (They actually crossed the border on the morning of June 14th and Wellington received news of it 8 hours before the ball in Brussels. He delayed action because he felt he still had to be concerned about a possible French thrust further to the west of the road through Mons.)

The French Army used rifles in the Napoleonic Wars. (Napoleon had discarded these weapons as too slow to reload since their barrels had grooves inside them. Washington wasn’t too fond of these guns either.)

Colonel Cambronne died in defiance of being forced to surrender to Colonel Halkett. (He actually surrendered to Colonel Hugh William Halkett, the commander of a brigade of lowly Hanoverian Landwehr {militia}. Though wounded, he was still well enough to manage an escape when an opportunity unexpectedly presented itself moments later. He died in 1842 of a ripe old age.)

Practically all of Napoleon’s Old Guard died at the Battle of Waterloo. (C’mon, there had to be some survivors.)

The French commander at Avila threatened local peasants to tell him where the cannon was shortly after the journey to Avila with the cannon started. (Avila was too far away from the cannon heading toward the town. The peasants could’ve never known where it was or even know anything about it. Communication was very slow in those days.)

François Louis Fournier challenged Pierre Dupont to their first duel when Dupont was sent to arrest Fournier for killing the Mayor of Strasbourg’s son in 1800. (Contrary to The Duellists, they had their first duel in 1794. Also, Dupont was actually sent to tell Fournier that he had really bummed everyone out by killing his opponent and was now totally not invited to the party that night. Yes, this triggered 19 years of vicious death matches between the two men. They would duel 17 times with their final battle being in 1813 {not 1816 as the film portrays}.)

Dupont was willing to duel Fournier with pistols. (Dupont avoided fighting Fournier with pistols because the latter was known as an excellent shot famous for shooting clay pipes out of the mouths of Hussars riding past him while smoking. To fight a pistol duel with such man would’ve been a death wish. Also, pistol duels were more fatal in general as in the case of what happened to Alexander Hamilton. Yet, Andrew Jackson did manage to survive one with a bullet in his chest that remained in there for the rest of his life.)

Andoche Junoit said about not needing a sign when the artillery shells dump soil where he was painting one. (This was based on an actual incident, except that Junoit was writing a letter to Napoleon, not painting a sign.)

French troops marched in step when the moved across country. (They used a route step which put the troops in a loose formation but not in step because marching in step was too tiresome and inefficient. Of course, if they were in an American high school marching band instead of a 19th century European army, it would be a different story.)

Franco Prussian War and the Paris Commune:

Paris was a nice place to live in 1870 and 1871. (No, it wasn’t. Paris was actually under siege, battered soldiers anxiously discussed the Franco-Prussian war in the coffee shops, people ate their own pets and even elephants at the zoo just to stay alive, students manning the barricades, beggars dying of starvation in the streets, monocle German officers peering down cannons from just beyond the city limits, and after the city had fallen to the Germans, a revolutionary Commune set up ending the Communards being shot dead by firing squads. In short, this would be a scene that makes Paris in Les Miserables look pretty nice.)

The Dreyfus Affair:

The Dreyfus Affair had nothing to do with anti-Semitism. (It’s like saying that the American Civil War didn’t have anything to do with slavery. Yes, the Dreyfus Affair was one of the nastiest cases dealing with anti-Semitism in which a Jewish military officer named Alfred Dreyfus was accused and convicted of treason before being sent in a Devil’s Island prison in French Guiana. When they found out it was a different guy who committed the crime Dreyfus was accused of, there was a large scale cover-up with the real culprit being pardoned by the French government. Nevertheless, Dreyfus’ Jewishness made him an easy target.)

Alfred Dreyfus was officially exonerated when Emile Zola recently died. (He wasn’t finally exonerated of all charges by a military commission in 1906 as well as reinstated and made Knight of the Legion of Honor. Zola died in 1902. Still, despite being pardoned in 1899, he would again be convicted of treason in a second trial despite overwhelming evidence he was innocent.)

Louis Pasteur:

Louis Pasteur’s daughter Annette married a man named Matel. (Actually his daughter’s name was Marie Louise and she married a man named René Vallery-Radot. She was one of two of Pasteur’s five kids who survived into adulthood as well as his only surviving daughter. His three oldest daughters died of typhoid, which served as his prime motivation for curing infectious diseases. Still, Pasteur is a significant figure since he’s known as the father of modern medicine.)

Napoleon III and Louis Pasteur didn’t get along. (Napoleon III was his patron who built him a laboratory with all the resources he needed for his research only halting it when he became gravely ill since he didn’t want to waste money on a laboratory for a person who may soon be dead. Yet, even when Pasteur was sick, Emperor Napoleon III personally visited him and assured him that he’d get his lab. He’d even bring court members to admire Pasteur’s projects. Still, unlike in The Story of Louis Pasteur, Napoleon III wasn’t a stupid reactionary nor did he exile the scientist but a guy with an ego that got France into disastrous wars and foreign misadventures, which would get him to fall into Otto von Bismarck’s trap in the Franco Prussian War. I mean there’s a reason why Napoleon III was France’s last monarch. Louis Pasteur was Emperor Napoleon III’s favorite scientist and Pasteur’s main worry had more to do with the French Emperor seeing him as a miracle worker who could do almost anything. This led to Napoleon III assigning Pasteur tasks always outside his experience but the scientist always came through. The two would remain friends even after Napoleon III was overthrown and Pasteur would refuse to say a bad thing about the Emperor as well as remained grateful to him towards the end of his life. Nevertheless, I wonder what it would be like to have Louis Pasteur visit a hospital during the American Civil War.)

Moulin Rouge:

The Moulin Rouge was a haven for Bohemian artists animated by the chance to live out their four tenets: Truth, Beauty, Freedom, and Love. (Actually the Moulin Rouge was driven by commercial success like any other club in its day. Still, it’s commercial success has a lot to do with a dirt little dance of the time called the can-can. Nevertheless, it wasn’t really Henri Touluse-Lautrec’s favorite place in the world but they basically hired him to do posters for it and he had his own table there.)

The can-can was created at the Moulin Rouge. (It had actually been around since the 1830s but it was a far more respectable dance before the Moulin Rouge opened in 1889. It originally started as more of a rowdy as well as reckless high-spirited and high kicking working class jig which didn’t show much flashing knickers. However, the Moulin Rouge took this dance and supercharged it for all the world to see using it to help advertise their courtesan dancers {yes, most of their dancers were whores}. Still, contrary to many movies, the can-can at Moulin Rouge wasn’t a kind of dance you’d want your kids to see since it became more crude and explicit as time went on. Nevertheless, the scandalous can-can put Moulin Rouge on the map.)

Moulin Rouge’s sign read “L’amor.” (It read “Can-Can” which was what it was known for.)

Can-can dancers always danced in a line during the 1890s. (They were semi-professional solo dancers. And it didn’t become a highly choreographed dance until the early 20th century.)

Vincent van Gogh:

Vincent van Gogh went mad and sliced off his ear after a fight with Paul Gaugain. (He only sliced up a portion of his left lobe which he gave to his favorite prostitute Rachel at a local brothel in Arles. Later on 30 townspeople would make a petition to get rid of him.)

Vincent van Gogh shot himself in a wheat field while working on his last painting. (This is depicted in Lust for Life, though there weren’t any witnesses to van Gogh’s shooting so we really don’t know whether he was in a wheat field or a barn. Still, he probably wasn’t working on Wheat Field with Crows, which has been seen as his last work but it’s not since he completed at least two other paintings after it. Also, in 2011 two of his recent biographers contested whether van Gogh committed suicide due to the upbeat deposition of his paintings right before he died, his view that suicide was immoral and sinful, the fact that he traveled a mile between the wheat field and the inn after sustaining a fatal stomach wound {though he died from complications two days later}, how the bullet entered his stomach at an oblique angle {and that it was brown with a purple halo that meant the gun was fired at some distance}, and the possibility of him and the unlikelihood of him of being able to obtain a gun despite his well-known mental health problems {as well as the public knowledge of his destructive tendencies}. The authors contend that a couple village teenage boys might’ve shot him by accident and that he claimed he tried to kill himself so the kids wouldn’t get in trouble. Of course, this theory has recently stirred considerable controversy though there’s some reasonable evidence on both sides. Either way, he didn’t get shot while working on Wheat Field with Crows.)

Miscellaneous:

Alexandre Dumas was white. (He was biracial and had a black grandmother. Father was one of Napoleon’s generals who also became the highest ranked person of color in any European military and was born in Haiti to a French nobleman and his slave. Quoted as saying to a guy who insulted him because of his mixed-race, “My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends.” Still, he’s played by Gerard Depardieu when Lenny Kravitz would’ve made a better choice {at least Kravitz is biracial despite not being French}.)

The June Rebellion of 1832 was a French Revolution. (Not like the one that took place in 1789. Yet, this was set off by the death of one General Jean-Maximilien Lamarque who was a political opponent to French King Louis Philippe. Now this should shed some light on why Marius’ friends were all killed. Still, this is a relatively small and not quite significant event in French history as well as an outright failure.)

Antoine Nicolau was deeply in love with Bernadette Soubirious and vowed to remain unmarried when she entered a convent. (No such relationship was ever said to exist between the two of them.)

Vital Dutour was an atheist who didn’t find faith until he suffered from cancer of the larynx. (He was a devout Catholic who simply thought Bernadette was hallucinating. Also, it was a different guy who suffered the cancer of the larynx in the novel The Song of Bernadette who’s probably an expy of the freethinking Emile Zola who denounced the industry that sprang up at the miraculous spring at Lourdes.)

Henri de Toulouse Lautrec’s drink of choice was cognac. (It was absinthe which was said to be an alcoholic psychoactive drug of the 1890s but it’s actually about as dangerous as any highly alcoholic and it’s psychoactive properties were highly exaggerated. So no it’s not like an 1890s LSD with booze.)

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The Lone Girl in a Crowd

The thoughts and perceptions of an aspiring writer on life and the world around her

Monthly Archives: May 2014

History of the World According to the Movies: Part 49 – Life in 19th Century Europe

History of the World According to the Movies: Part 48 – The German-Speaking World of the 19th Century

History of the World According to the Movies: Part 47 – The Victorian Era

History of the World According to the Movies: Part 46 – Late Georgian Great Britain

History of the World According to the Movies: Part 45 – 19th Century France