History: March 2020 Archives

My trouble has always been that I find too many different things interesting. The vast collection of printed material in the public domain and available on the internet is like a time machine that beckons one to enter and explore.

A Pocket article (originally from Narratively), advertised on a new browser tab, about the man who popularized a low-carb diet in 1860s London led me to his 50-page pamphlet (Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public, by William Banting, 3rd edition (1864)). Searching for a magazine article mentioned by Banting led me to the Internet Archive's collection of The Cornhill Magazine, published monthly in London starting in 1860, and bound into semi-annual volumes.

Cornhill Magazine, Volume 5, January-June 1862, contains nearly 800 pages of prose, poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. The diversity of topics on display in the table of contents reminds me of Reader's Digest, except that these are full-length articles.

• The Adventures of Philip on his Way through the World
• Chapter 27. I Charge you, Drop your Daggers.
• Chapter 28. In which Mrs. Mac Whirter has a New Bonnet.
• An Election Contest in Australia
• The Fairy Land of Science
• To Esther
• The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson. By One of the Firm
• Chapter 16. Showing how Robinson walked upon Roses.
• Chapter 17. A Tea-Party in Bishopsgate Street
• Chapter 18. An Evening at the Goose and Gridiron.
• Liberalism
• At the Play
• The Quadrilateral
• Dining down the River
• Agnes of Sorrento
• Chapter 18. The Penance.
• Chapter 19. Clouds Deepening.
• Roundabout Papers -- No. 18. On Letts's Diary
• The Adventures of Philip on his Way through the World
• Chapter 29. In the Departments of Seine, Loire, and Styx (Inferieur).
• Chapter 30. Returns to Old Friends.
• What are the Nerves?
• Frozen-out Actors
• The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson. By One of the Firm
• Chapter 19. George Robinson's Marriage.
• Chapter 20. Showing how Mr. Brisket didn't see his Way
• Chapter 21. Mr. Brown is taken ill.
• Fish Culture
• The Winter in Canada
• Belgravia out of Doors
• Commissions of Lunacy
• Agnes of Sorrento
• Chapter 20. Florence and her Prophet.
• Chapter 21. The Attack on San Marco.
• Chapter 22. The Cathedral.
• Roundabout Papers. -- No. 19. On Half a Loaf. -- A Letter to Messrs. Broadway, Battery and Co., of New York, Bankers
• The Adventures of Philip on his Way through the World
• Chapter 31. Narrates that Famous Joke about Miss Grigsby.
• Chapter 32. Ways and Means.
• The Winter Time. -- A Peep through the Fog
• The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson. By One of the Firm
• Chapter 22. Wasteful and Impetuous Sale.
• Chapter 23. Farewell.
• Chapter 24. George Robinson's Dream.
• A Vision of Animal Existences
• Covent Garden Market
• Gentlemen
• Life and Labour in the Coal-Fields
• Recent Discoveries in Australia
• After Dinner
• Agnes of Sorrento
• Chapter 23. The Pilgrimage.
• Chapter 24. The Mountain Fortress
• Chapter 25. The Crisis.
• Chapter 26. Rome.
• The Adventures of Philip on his Way through the World
• Chapter 33. Describes a Situation Interesting but not Unexpected.
• Chapter 34. In which I own that Philip tells an Untruth.
• The Brain and its Use
• Fire-damp and its Victims
• A Fit of Jealousy
• Inner Life of a Hospital
• Irené
• First Beginnings
• On Growing Old
• Roundabout Papers - No 20. The Notch on the Axe. A Story a la Mode. Part 1
• The Adventures of Philip on his Way through the World
• Chapter 35. Res Angusta Doma.
• Chapter 36. In which the Drawing-rooms are not Furnished after all.
• Superstition
• The Great Naval Revolution
• Six Weeks at Heppenheim
• Rotten Row
• Book I. of the Iliad translated in the Hexameter Meter. By Sir John Herschel
• Agnes of Sorrento
• Chapter 27. The Saint's Rest
• Chapter 28. Palm Sunday
• Chapter 29. The Night-Ride
• Chapter 30. "Let us also go, that we may die with him."
• Chapter 31. Martyrdom.
• Chapter 32. Conclusion.
• The Wakeful Sleeper. By George McDonald
• Roundabout Papers -- No. 21. The Notch on the Axe. -- A Story a la Mode, Part 2
• The Adventures of Pliilip on his Way through the World
• Chapter 37. Nec plena Cruoris Hirudo[???]
• Chapter 38. The Beaver of the Bowstring.
• At the Great Exhibition
• Courts-Martial
• May : In Memoriam
• Is it Food, Medicine, or Poison?
• The Shallowell Mystery
• The Home of a Naturalist
• A Conceit
• What are the Oil Wells?
• Roundabout Papers -- No. 22. The Notch on the Axe. -- A Story a la Mode, Part 3

Unfortunately, few of the articles carry an author's byline. The Roundabout Papers are essays by the editor, William Makepeace Thackeray.

You will notice a number of serialized novels: Agnes of Sorrento by Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin; The Adventures of Philip on His Way Through the World, the final novel by William Makepeace Thackeray; and The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson, by Anthony Trollope, a satire of dishonest advertising.

"What are the Oil Wells?" describes the initial stage of petroleum exploration in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Canada. The question "Is it Food, Medicine, or Poison?" is asked of alcohol. "Covent Garden Market" paints a portrait of London's vegetable and flower market, likely little different from its character as the Edwardian setting for My Fair Lady.

"The Inner Life of a Hospital" describes medical care and convalescence as it was at St. Bartholomew's Hospital. This depiction of patients facing lengthy stays in the hospital may provide some inspiration in this time of indeterminate confinement:

Now and then comes a patient of more sense than his fellows, who, feeling that he will be confined to the hospital for several months, sets boldly to work and tries heartily to improve his mind or learn some new art. Such patients are most grateful for a word or two of help, and it is very pleasant to find them asking the surgeon or the chaplain to lend them books of a higher class than those which are supplied to the wards. Latin and French grammars, books in those languages, and Euclid have repeatedly been lent, and have always been honourably delivered to the sister before the borrower has left the ward. A few years ago one patient amused himself with oil paint, and after decorating all the flower-pots and saucers in arabesque patterns, became ambitious and tried to copy landscapes. Being a persevering man, with some taste for colour and a good eye for form, he succeeded marvellously well, and actually sold his productions as fast as he could paint them.

The article mentioned by Banting is in Volume 7, in the April 1863 issue, and titled "Obesity." The same volume includes several chapters of George Eliot's novel Romola (a popular book that became a 1924 silent film, starring Lillian Gish, which served as the namesake for the rural Tulsa subdivision Romoland and a number of other places across the country). There is also a sketch of the final years, death, and funeral in Westminster Abbey of James Outram, an officer of British India, whose career and retirement had been detailed in the January 1861 issue.