I basically need to complain about how damp the streets were during Victorian times but I need to pretend I was from the Victorian times and write like one (posh)? How do I start it? Any ideas?
Chosen Answer:
I’m not an expert on this kind of thing, but here’s what I know:
Based on all the examples I’ve seen, you would address the envelope: “Dear Mr. Smith.” But you would address the letter: “Mr Smith.” This is opposite to how we do things today. You would be writing to a “Mr.” (not a Lord or Sir) because rich / powerful people weren’t involved with dirty jobs like taking care of the sewers.
Something that might interest you is that the people who DID deal with sewers were highly respected engineers. People loved them. Because that “damp” you mentioned is a polite word for toilet waste and it caused a lot of disease.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/trail/victorian_britain/social_conditions/victorian_urban_planning_04.shtml
As far as the content of the letter, I suggest you check out this book for ideas:
http://www.amazon.com/Dust-Mud-Soot-Soil-ebook/dp/B007O818BQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1359316246&sr=8-1&keywords=dust+mud+soot+and+soil
The author has a blog that might be useful:
http://catsmeatshop.blogspot.be/2012_03_01_archive.html
In the blog, scroll down just below the photo of the book’s cover and you’ll see some great material. There is a quote that might be fun to include, taken from a novel called “Bleak House” by the famous Victorian author, Charles Dickens (see below). Where he refers to mud in the streets as if the waters had recently retired from the face of the Earth, he is talking about Noah’s flood. So he is saying (poetically) that the streets are as muddy as after Noah’s flood. I’d include that line (and don’t forget to say you got it from Charles Dickens).
Quote from blog:
As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth … Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.
Charles Dickens, Bleak House, 1852
by: Antst
on: 18th February 13