"Back in History, Things were Dirty and Loud" by Julia Ridley Smith

summer 2002  vol. 54, no. 3

One day in the library at Alexandria, a couple of guys were arguing about some scrolls that had been misplaced.  The first guy thought the other guy had done it, but the second guy didn't know what he was talking about!  The next year the whole place burned to the ground and people have been talking about it ever since.

In the spring of 13-something, a boy and a girl fell in love.  It was a bad time to be young and in love because the streets ran with offal and everybody was getting the plague.  But they didn't let that discourage them, because they had each other.  Their mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters died, but they still had each other.  They had a lot of sex because there was no TV and life was very depressing.  They didn't have tampons or rubbers.  The girl got pregnant and was worried about how she would conceal the problem, because even though she didn't have parents to scold her, she still had an old aunt and gossipy neighbors.  Fortunately the pregnant look was in that year.  She was also very concerned about the state of her soul, having committed so much carnal sin, but before she could convince herself of God's forgiveness, she caught the plague and died. 
            Her boyfriend moved to another village and when the plague was over he was making a good living as a miller.

In the late eighteenth century a rice planter in South Carolina ordered a set of twelve fancy chairs from England, but when the boat finally showed up, there were only eleven.  So he had a slave of his named Cincinnatus make one to match them, and it turned out pretty good.

One thing that was gross about living in Bible days was having to wash visitors' feet and anoint them with oil.  Because a visitor's feet were really filthy by the time he showed up at your house in his leather sandals, what with all the dirt and shit he'd stepped in.  Plus he probably hadn't bathed in a while anyway.

A doctor's wife was walking down a London Street in 1877, going to visit her sister, when her bustle fell off.  One of the strings had broken, and since she was sickly and thin, and didn't have any bottom to speak of, it just slid right down her petticoat and fell out from under her skirt, right in the street.  She could feel it happening, but she decided to ignore it and kept walking.  It was a cheap bustle anyway.  A rag girl picked it up later and started wearing it and all the people living in her hovel made fun of her and called her "Duchess."

A Parisian printer's boy came down with the flu.  He was so sick all he could do was lie down on his straw-filled pallet in the back of the shop and suffer.  The printer's wife brought him some soup.  Then she put on her hat and said she was going to see the execution of some aristocrats.  It was only a few streets away, but the boy was too achey and cold and weak to go.  One of the people being guillotined was a Marquis who the boy particularly hated.  The boy's mother had once worked for the Marquis as a maid and she said he was a very stingy man who begrudged his servants their bread.  Also he had raped her sister, who was a laundress in his house at the time.  His wife was incredibly bitchy, and his children petulant and cruel.  It was truly a service to France for him to be dispatched.
            The boy could hear the crowd chanting and screaming.  He imagined the carts rolling over the rough streets.  He imagined throwing a rotten potato at that shithead Marquis.  Imagined it hitting him right in his stingy face.  He blew a great wad of snot from his nose and held his poor, racked chest, and imagined the Marquis pissing his velvet breeches as he mounted the platform.  The bony old knees hitting the wood, too proud to pray, and the stringy neck like a chicken laid across the block.  And the boy thought he could tell which cheer of the crowd was for the head of the Marquis, but it still wasn't as good as being there. 
            It was so unfair that he had to be sick that day.

In ancient Rome a Senator's wife caught a social disease from her husband's cousin, who was just a ne'er do well and hanger on in her husband's house.  But because her husband was such an unfaithful dog, she was able to convince him that he had given it to her.  He was mildly ashamed and bought her some really nice jewelry and a pair of charming houseboys.  Pretty soon the houseboys were experiencing a burning sensation when they urinated, and she was still screwing the ne'er do well, but her husband didn't pay any attention.  Eventually she went crazy and died at the age of forty.  She left her daughter a lot of nice jewelry, which was fortunate because the daughter had a harelip and needed a good dowry.

A little Russian girl lay awake into the bitter cold night.  The fire had died in the one room hut, and the other nine people and the dog and the pig sleeping there couldn't keep it warm.  Outside, the moon reflected off the snow so that a lot of bright light came through the chinks in the walls.  On one wall hung a painted ikon, of which the girl's parents were very proud.  It was by far the nicest thing they had and the little girl knew she was supposed to revere it, but the way the light was striking it in the dark made the ikon look creepy.  She squeezed her eyes shut and buried her head under her stinky blanket but she could still feel its creepy eyes on her.

One night a young poet was hanging out in a coffeehouse in England.  It was dark and filthy with spilled ale, smoke and mutton bones.  He wasn't a very good poet and his father was having him educated to become a priest, which the young man didn't especially want to do, but he had to make a living somehow.  As he was drinking and feeling sorry for himself and wondering what had become of his friend who was supposed to meet him there, a fight broke out.  Some furniture was broken and a man was stabbed.  The young man helped some others lift the dying man onto the table.  Somebody ran for a doctor but they all knew it was probably hopeless because there was blood everywhere.  It was all over the young man's clothes, which sort of sickened him, but he tried to feel charitable about it, since after all, a man was expiring before his eyes.
            Later it turned out that his friend had been confused and had gone to the wrong coffeehouse.  A fight had broken out there as well, and the great playwright Christopher Marlowe had been stabbed to death.  The young poet felt very cheated that he had ruined a good suit of clothes for some nobody, while by accident his friend had witnessed the demise of a great talent.  It was very ironical and he tried to write a poem about it, but couldn't really come up with anything.
            After he took orders and was given his church, the people in his parish found him a very dull and indifferent priest, nothing like the man they'd had before.

In the 1830's in Kentucky a young woman married a good steady religious man who owned a farm.  They were hardworking and loving, their children were healthy, and the farm prospered.  They had a good life together, except for one thing.  The husband believed that you shouldn't do anything on the Sabbath except pray and think about God.  The wife dreaded Sundays beyond anything because she hated to sit still.  On Sundays the children weren't allowed to play but had to sit and pray or read the Bible all day long.  The wife had to give them cold biscuits and chicken to eat, if there was any, or salad greens and apples, because her husband didn't even want her to cook.  The nearest church was ten miles away, so the husband refused to go, on the grounds that it was too far and driving that far was work.  He didn't want her to sew or write letters or even get up too often to poke the fire.  About all these things he was adamant, while the rest of the week he was mild. 
            She got so she dreaded Sundays, all of them sitting around, not talking for the most part, because her husband couldn't bear frivolous talk or laughter on the Sabbath.  She got so she could barely enjoy Saturday, she was dreading Sunday so much.  She thought she would go out of her mind with boredom. 
            After twenty-seven years together, her husband died of a tetanus infection he got from a rusty nail going through his shoe.  She grieved terribly, and when one of her daughters married and began to raise a family there on the farm with her mother, the grandchildren were miserable because their grandmother wouldn't let them run or holler on Sundays.

Houses in Tokyo were built out of paper and wood.  You had to keep all your favorite stuff in a wooden chest that you could put on your back because your whole neighborhood could immolate at any time.

In Italy, if you had enough money, you could buy your sinful relatives entry into heaven.    Nobody was sure if places like Africa and South America really existed because they were very hard to get to.  Maps were inaccurate, outhouses were unsanitary, poor people couldn't vote.  When you killed an animal you had to use every part. 

Back in History, things were dirty and loud.  Germans were always moody.  People thought that God was angry and women were stupid.  They had bigger trees and brighter stars.

All over the world, surgery was extremely unpleasant.

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 © 2003 The Carolina Quarterly