Invisibilities

In The Making of Home, quite early on in the book, Judith Flanders discusses spitting. And spittoons. Spitting was, until barely a hundred years ago, very common. Everyone spat, all the time. Outdoors, indoors, no matter. Samuel Pepys describes being spat on in the theatre but the woman was pretty so he didn't mind. Fair. and here I sitting behind in a dark place, a lady spit backward upon me by a mistake, not seeing me, but after seeing her to be a very pretty lady, I was not troubled at it at all. Don't get that in Bridgerton, hey. Because spitting is almost entirely absent from the narrative. Flanders calls the spittoon 'invisible furniture' - there are adverts, catalogue entries, house inventories featuring spittoons but they don't get shown in paintings or stories. Flanders talks about the Dutch Master portraits and house interiors. They show what we think of as 'typical' of the time for furniture, room arrangements, decorations, carpeting, and so on. Except it bears very little…