Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2023 November 1

= November 1 =

To what secret did Bacon allude?
In Ligeia by Edgar Allen Poe we read "It might have been, too, that in these eyes of my beloved lay the secret to which Lord Verulam alludes". What is, or was, the secret? Thank you, DuncanHill (talk) 03:14, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * It is the secret to beauty that Bacon gave, "There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion." Abductive  (reasoning) 04:34, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * It seems to be maladroitly phrased. I think the narrator means the secret of specifically Ligeia's exquisite beauty, which he surmises to lay in her (disproportionally large) eyes. In that case, Bacon did not "allude" to the secret, but gave the key with which the narrator unlocks the secret. --Lambiam 05:30, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * That's what they say about Poe a lot, his contemporaries even nicknamed him "The Maladroit Phraser". Abductive  (reasoning) 08:03, 1 November 2023 (UTC)


 * Thank you all, yes that's clearly it. Poe had misquoted Bacon earlier, but forgot to tell us it was a secret. His prose is less than pane-like at best. DuncanHill (talk) 13:08, 1 November 2023 (UTC)

Income/spending money in Northeastern US, c. 1887
Sources about Walt Whitman's lectures on Abraham Lincoln say that a $1 ticket would have been too expensive for the working class to afford. Can anyone find any stats that would help contextualize this, such as on average income/cost of living? Eddie891 Talk Work 15:25, 1 November 2023 (UTC)


 * A tiny bit of context is given here: The History Of What Things Cost In America: 1776 to Today. A pair of shoes cost a dollar and apparently one dollar wasn't too much for an opera ticket in San Fransisco, 1875, and it also amounted to a sizable percentage of a day's wages which ranged from "$1.60 per day (a fireman in Massachusetts) to $4.64 per day (a glassblower in New Jersey.)". Modocc (talk) 16:48, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Hm, so maybe what the sources really should really say is that it was more than what people were willing to pay, rather than could... Eddie891 Talk Work 17:54, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * One may have enough liquid assets to pay for some luxury item, but spending one's money on such items means less is left for much more necessary things (shoes for the kids, medicines for one's mother, ...). If there was hardly enough for these to begin with, it is reasonable to say that one cannot afford the luxury item. In doing online research for Wikipedia I run all the time into paywalls. If I'd routinely pay for each, I'd spend more on online access than my income, so I say I can't afford to pay for paywalled websites. I could pay for a few websites, but what's the point; just a few will hardly make a difference for the research. Opera lovers today may not be able to afford $125 tickets, which may be comparable to spending one dollar on a ticket in 1875. (For a day labourer earning $2 per day and working 300 days a year, $1 is 1/600th of their annual income. 1/600th of a median annual income of $75,000 is $125.) --Lambiam 21:58, 1 November 2023 (UTC)
 * Daily rates of wages in the Building Industry of New York City... from 1883 to 1903 says that in 1887, a bricklayer would earn $4 a day, while a labourer might only earn $2.50. I suspect that a labourer would have lived very close to absolute poverty and that very little of their salary would be disposable in those days. Alansplodge (talk) 12:32, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
 * You're right. I thought those were hourly wages for some reason, which in retrospect makes no sense. Eddie891 Talk Work 14:49, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
 * In contrast, in 1887 at the Bijou Theatre in Boston, you could see an edited-down version of the The Mikado for 10 cents, even for the best seats in the house. Alansplodge (talk) 15:11, 2 November 2023 (UTC)

Opposite of infeudation
You're a great nobleman, so the king grants you a tract of land in a process called infeudation or feoffment. Years later, you rebel against your lord the king, so the king revokes that grant. What's this process called? Escheat seems to be relevant only if you're convicted or attainted of a felony, and it's specifically a common-law concept; I'm looking for a more general term. Nyttend (talk) 18:26, 1 November 2023 (UTC)


 * "...you rebel against your lord the king..."! According to the Britannica here: "In the case of a tenant convicted of high treason, however, his land escheated directly to the crown, and the lord forfeited all rights he had in that tenant’s lands completely." In addition, a more general term is "forfeiture", such as with the Forfeiture Act 1870. Digging further back in time, I see that the Tenant-in-chief article uses the term "escheat". Also kings are and were known for abrogating their subjects' rights. Modocc (talk) 19:01, 1 November 2023 (UTC)