Keeping warm in winter
From Oliver Goldsmith's letters:A Dutch lady burns nothing about her phlegmatic admirer but his tobacco. You must know, Sir, every woman carries in her hand a stove with coals in it, which, when she sits, she snugs under her petticoats; and at this chimney dozing Strephon lights his pipe.
And from Francis Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:SOOTERKIN. A joke upon the Dutch women, supposing that, by their constant use of stoves, which they place under their petticoats, they breed a kind of small animal in their bodies, called a sooterkin, of the size of a mouse, which when mature slips out.
Some foot-stoves. In use in paintings (last two links from a consideration of the footstove in Vermeer's The Milkmaid).
It is coming up to the half of the year where I need to wear tights or stockings or the like, and therefore have itchy legs; perhaps voluminous petticoats and a foot-stove would be a good solution.
And from Francis Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:SOOTERKIN. A joke upon the Dutch women, supposing that, by their constant use of stoves, which they place under their petticoats, they breed a kind of small animal in their bodies, called a sooterkin, of the size of a mouse, which when mature slips out.
Some foot-stoves. In use in paintings (last two links from a consideration of the footstove in Vermeer's The Milkmaid).
It is coming up to the half of the year where I need to wear tights or stockings or the like, and therefore have itchy legs; perhaps voluminous petticoats and a foot-stove would be a good solution.