PEERING THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY: Spectacles in the 1800s by Marisa Masterson

 

Portrait of Mrs. Antoine-Julien Meffre-Rouzan, 1839, by Jean Joseph Vaudechamp,

I squint. It is happening more recently since I no longer need my glasses to read. Inevitably, I lay them down somewhere and then need to search the house for them.

What a relief when I do find them! Imagine being unable to see well and needing to stay that way for your entire lifetime. A pair of glasses would be a huge relief--a sort of deliverance. This happened for my heroine in Hotfooting from Hawthorne:

Being a quiet person, she opted to keep her mouth shut. Marv and Deke talked while she tried on one pair after another. She stared toward them as she put on each new pair, hoping the men would come into focus. Miraculously, she lifted her face and could see them clearly, could see the anger Deke was controlling.

“What’s wrong?” She asked this as she rushed to stand by him.

When I wanted to write a scene about spectacles, I began to research. A few interesting facts surprised me.

• First, during the 1800s most spectacles did not curve around the ear. The bows were straight. Some had hinges in the middle. This allowed them to be adjusted to, hopefully, sit better on the ear. The Windsor eyeglasses came along in the 1880s. Those curved around a person's ears.
• Most lenses--especially in the West--were not round. Glasses had either rectangular or octogonal lenses. Oval lenses became popular during the middle of the century as well.
• 
  People had sunglasses in the West! Dark blue, black, or green colored glass was used in them. These would not have been corrective lenses--at least not usually. 
  

Here is a sneak peek at my description of spectacles in my next novel:

“How about this pair?”

Deke held up a pair made from steel and clear glass. He turned them and fidgeted with the hinges in the center of each part meant to sit next to the wearer’s temples. As his fingers worked the hinges, the spectacles’ bows curved very slightly. As was the fashion, none of the pairs available in the store curved behind the ear.

Taking the pair from him, Ginny worked not to shiver as his fingers brushed hers. Her silly infatuation should stop now that they were married.

The upside-down U was typical of spectacles of the time. The bridge curved. Notice that the nose pieces we have today were absent.

Portrait by Josef Abel

If you are interested in reading more, check out my source for this blog. Another good online article is https://www.trystancraft.com/costume/2018/04/17/a-brief-history-of-eyeglasses/.

She is a woman with trouble hot on her trail and a child at her side. He is a rancher who handles his Colt revolver with more skill than he does emotions.

Who can love orphans? Ginny struggles with this question even as she witnesses a murder that sends her on the run unwittingly toward the answer to her question.

Ginny Maxwell has one child left as she waits at a train depot in Hawthorne, Nevada. The others left one by one as the orphan train traveled farther west. She wanted to believe each had found homes where they would be clothed and fed. She could not hope for them to be loved. Growing up as a foundling, she knew adults rarely wasted affection on orphans.

While she and the unclaimed orphan wait for the eastern bound train that would take them back to Chicago, their lives change with one slash of a shiny knife. A man stabs a lone woman waiting on the platform. At Ginny's gasp, he realizes she and the little boy have seen him.

A frantic race to escape begins, and desperation sends them into the back of a tarp-covered wagon. Hiding there, she hears the whistle. They missed their train and are stuck with a killer on their trail.

Deke Ramsey struggles with the day to day needs of his new ranch. He has put his days as a bounty hunter behind him. The man does not want the trouble he discovers when he throws back the tarp and finds stowaways in his wagon. He is hard put to ignore the child's pleading gaze or the woman's tempting promise to keep house for him.

What starts as an innocent arrangement will put him in the path of a killer and a group of do-gooders from the surrounding ranches. Will a forced marriage end in a happy family or with a dead wife and child?

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