I'm writing a novella set in 1887 with three teenage girls as the main characters, and as a result I've been doing research into the slang & pop culture and so forth of the time period in New England. The 1880s are Not My Era, and I've run across a term-and-a-half that confuse me.
Here's the passage, from "The Familiar Letters of Peppermint Perkins", with the terms and phrases ***starred***. -------------- I did begin that very night by not ***doing up any crimps.*** I was going to wear my hair like Clara's. She never wears any crimps. Runover girls never do, though they have never advanced any sufficiently good reason to me for not crimping it, for they all look like old fuds with it so, and they spend just as much and more time brushing and smoothing it ***at night than I do on my "Fedoras."*** Well, I was going to say I didn't do up any; but about three o'clock I woke up and remembered that I had promised to go skating with Charlie Brood out to Jamaica the next morning, and I knew any amount of self-improvement wouldn't make up for the absence of crimps in his eyes, so I just snaked out of bed and ***up with two "Fedoras;"*** but no sooner had I got them up than my conscience began to reproach me for my weakness, and after I got back into bed I determined that even Charlie Brood's criticisms shouldn't influence me, and I began to take them down; but you see I was so sleepy, getting up so suddenly (it all was like a dream), that I only got one down before I dropped to sleep, and the next morning you ought to have seen what a fright I looked. You know how high my forehead is, and shiny. Well, there I was with all that shining expanse and ***one little bob on the left temple***, and I overslept on account of getting up so, and was late, and before I could do anything Charlie Brood was after me. -------------- The crimps part I only find partially confusing; I'm familiar with crimping as something one does to curl one's hair with hot irons, but not as an overnight treatment. Is this a reference to putting one's hair in rags? Leaving it in braids overnight for braid curls? Something with hairpins? Or...? The one that really confuses me, though, is the "Fedoras." What on earth are these? The context makes it seem pretty clear that this is either another method of creating curls overnight or another name for overnight crimps, but what is the actual method, and what does the result look like? Or, does the name perhaps refer to the location of the resulting curls, rather than the method? Any ideas? -E House _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
