WOW ~ Word of the Week ~ Back Biter

In church we call them “parking lot committee members.” In social media we call them “tea spillers.” If you’re at work, people ask for the “scuttlebutt” or “dish.”

No matter the label, someone who gossips, especially with the intent to hurt or defame, is an untrustworthy, chin-wagging scandalmonger that you’d better not turn your back on.

Back Biter

One who slanders another behind his back, i.e. in his absence. His bosom friends are become his back biters, said of a lousy man.

Of course I must consult the artistic authority to illustrate my posts, James Gillray. Let’s find some Back Biters.

The Feast of Reason, & the Flow of Soul, i.e. The Wits of the Age Setting the Table in a Roar, by James Gillray, 4 February 1797, Trustees of the British Museum.

Gillray’s The Feast of Reason… presented five significant Whigs of the time: (from left to right) George Hanger, drinking buddy of the Prince of Wales; Charles James Fox, opposition leader (with back to the viewer); Richard Brinsley Sheridan, playwright and professional debtor; Michael Angelo Taylor, MP, and; John Courtenay, frequent fluent speaker of sarcasm in Parliament. The title of the print represented Gillray’s feelings on his subject: the first half came from Alexander Pope’s Imitations of Horace, II, while the second half came from Hamlet. The artist used these classic works to illustrate that the past was rich and full of wit and reason while the present day was full of feeble satire and weak constitutions.

Farmer Giles & His Wife Showing Off Their Daughter Betty to Their Neighbours on Her Return from School, by James Gillray, 1 January 1809, Trustees of the British Museum.

Farmer Giles and his wife were proud of their returned daughter…perhaps blindingly proud. From the expressions on the faces of the younger sister, dog, and servant, their eldest daughter’s skills on the pianoforte were not quite the thing. Gillray’s talent for drawing and satire were magnificently displayed in the writing of the sampler on the wall, “”Evil communications corrupt good manners,” which of course contrasted deliciously with the back-biting gossip sharing her juicy observations behind her fan.

Sophia, Honour, & the Chambermaid, by James Gillray, 1 August 1780, Trustees of the British Museum.

Here Gillray illustrated Tom Jones, specifically chapter five from Book X. Meeting upstairs outside the rooms at the Inn at Upton were the heroine of the novel, Sophia Western; her maid, Honour Blackmore, and; Susan, the chambermaid. The chambermaid related the gossip she heard below stairs from Partridge, the companion to Tom Jones, who was coincidentally staying at the same Inn. Unfortunately, her gossip – as gossip is wont to be – was no more than half-correct and entirely misleading.

He told us Madam (‘tho to be sure it’s all a Lye)
that your Ladyship was Dying for Love of the Young Squire,
and that he was going to the Wars, to get rid of you.

• Slang term taken from the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.
• James Gillray prints and their information culled from James Gillray: Caricaturist.

WOW ~ Word of the Week ~ Twitter

2021 edit: I’ve a family member who went into hospital rather suddenly this weekend, so no new post from me. Instead, a classic from the archives, with updated graphics.

I’m not the least bit superstitious or afraid of black cats, but I do love a good scare. Halloween is one of my favorite times of the year simply for the candy pumpkins, costume parties, and horror movies. Blood and guts aren’t spine-chilling to me: give me a good overnight camp in the woods, broken-down car, or haunted house, if you please. It’s one week til All Hallow’s Eve, so that means it’s time for nerve-wracking, suspenseful, alone in the dark movies!

Twitter

All in a twitter; in a fright.

A few years back I wrote a post about The Regency Era Horror Movie. I want to expound on it a bit this week. And anytime I get to use Disney gifs to illustrate the historical, well, game on.

Although still half a century from the inception of the moving picture, the Regency did have its own visual amusement: the Phantasmagoria. People gathered in parlors and drawing rooms with only a few flickering candles barely preventing the space from being entirely pitch. Mysterious noises without source began: rattling, scratching, whispering. The level of excitement and fear grew with each sound. Suddenly, a ghost swooped across the room while a skeleton gamboled in a corner. The crowd gasped and some screamed or swooned.

Les Fantasmagories d’Etienne-Gaspard Roberston, 1 January 1831.

The Phantasmagoria owed its attraction and success to two things: the magic lantern and Étienne-Gaspard Robert. The magic lantern had been around since the late 15th-early 16th century. It consisted of a box holding a concave mirror situated in front of a candle; the gathered light then passed through a decorated glass slide.

A magic lantern demonstration, from Wonders of Optics.

This lighted image was then reckoned through a lens, and a larger version of the likeness could be projected anywhere in the room. The darker, more menacing the image, the bigger the scare.

Étienne-Gaspard Robert was a Belgian physicist and stage magician (in addition to being one of the foremost balloonists of his day). He elevated the magic lantern to sublimity by turning a relatively simple parlor trick into an encompassing performance.

A Phantasmagoria: Scene, Conjuring Up an Armed Skeleton, by James Gillray, 1803, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

He wrote scripts with multiple scenes and employed actors to dd to the realism. He used smoke, multiple light sources, and even rear-projection magic lanterns to create a lifelike production that immersed attendees in the horror, and he loved to stage his events in abandoned buildings. By 1801, the Phantasmagoria was well-known in England, as theatres large and small began projecting Banquo’s and Hamlet’s ghosts about the stage.

It was a fantastic time to be alive to be scared: in an era of post-enlightenment realism, where phantoms and bogey-man were relegated to children’s tales, adults were lining up to pay good guineas to see unexplainable spectres, implausible ghosts. They clamored to experience irrational fear. Audiences did not care that the terrors were explained with scientific methods at the end of the evening; they took swings at imaginary wraiths and delighted in the spectals created by smoke and mirrors.

The Phantasmagoria at the Lyceum Theatre, The Picture of London, 1802.

Curious about the realistic nature of the Phantasmagoria? It’s alive and well – so to speak – at Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion attraction. A group of strangers are locked in a room whose walls promptly begin “stretching,” with the seemingly benign photos on the wall revealing tragicomic and sinister aspects as they “grow.”

Strolling deeper into the mansion reveals more creepy “living” pictures…

and a talking head inside a crystal ball.

Undead dancers waltz away their eternities…

while an eerie coachman can’t decide the best place for his head.

And the usually somber graveyard has turned into a “lively” playground.

Just remember not to pick up any hitchhikers on your way home.

• Slang term taken from the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue.
• Learn more about the Phantasmagoria, and especially the wickedly inventive Étienne-Gaspard Robert at J.A. Beard’s Unnecessary Musings, Metal on Metal, and Skulls in the Stars.
• The Picture of London, 1802, reveals all the comings and goes that great year, not just the Phantasmagoria at the Lyceum.
• It’s fascinating to read about the paradox of enlightened reason butting against the new love for the Phantasmagoria (a floating, severed head of Benjamin Franklin, anyone?) in The National Uncanny: Indian Ghosts and American Subjects by Renée L. Bergland.
• Just like all those pro athletes after their amazing sports wins, you must head to the one, the only, the original… Disneyland! It’s a bucket list item for sure.