Hello everyone, today I am blogging about the language of the fan. There is something about secret ways of communicating, don’t you think? I remember as a child making up codes with my friends so we could write secret letters to each other. The language of the fan was a bit like that only, not so secret. Like all good things we should start at the beginning.
The fan has been around for a long, long time at least 3,000 years. Records show that the Greeks, the Etruscans and Romans used fans. Early fans were not the folding type we recognize but the fixed version. The first folding fans were brought over to England from Europe. In the 18th Century the East India Company imported fans and both men and women used them. However, by the Victorian period the fan was purely for women only.
In a book by: Bennett, Anna G., and Ruth Berson it is mentioned that a 1740’s version of The Gentleman’s Magazine mentions the Speaking Fan (see link below to the magazine). This “speaking fan” didn’t actually make any noise but supposedly could be used to spell out messages from across a room, by using motions of the fan to translate into letters of the alphabet.
In the following example the alphabet, with the exception of “J”, was split up into five sections. These sections corresponded to one of the following movements.
- Moving the fan with the left hand to the left arm.
- Moving the fan with the right hand to the left arm
- Placing the fan against the bosom
- Raising the fan to the mouth
- Raising the fan to the forehead.
Here is an example of how it should work: In order to signal the letter D, one would use movement 1 – left hand to left arm (to signal the first segment of the alphabet), followed by movement 4 – raising fan to mouth (to indicate the 4th letter of the alphabet. Woe be told if the fan-er was a bad speller.
By contrast, The Language of the Fan, published by Pierre Duvelleroy (http://www.duvelleroy.fr/house_of_duvelleroy_origins.html) the Parisian fan maker, seems much simpler in that it conveys a whole phrase rather than letter by letter.
In the Regency period, the language of the fan was a way of communicating with the opposite sex in a social situation. Balls were often crowded, noisy, hot and smelly affairs where using your fan as a way to communicate was very effective. Fans became more than just a way of keeping cool in a crush, they were the must have fashion accessory. There were many different types of fans, some for the daytime, evening and there were even fans for when one was in mourning.
These desirable fans were made from all sorts of materials like wood, silk, ivory from Africa and sometimes even chicken skin or kid. Some of these fans were highly decorated with jewelry and or feathers and pretty painted scenes. Here are a few examples of the language of the fan:
Right hand in front of face: follow me
Left hand in front of face: desirous of acquaintance
Drawing across the forehead: you have changed
Drawing through the hand: I hate you
Drawing across the cheek: I love you
Twirling in left hand: we are watched
Twirling in right hand: I love another
Carrying in right hand: you are too willing
On left ear: I wish to get rid of you
On left ear: I wish to get rid of you
Presented shut: do you love me?
Shut the fully opened fan very slowly: I promise to marry you
Shut the fully opened fan very slowly: I promise to marry you
To watch some of the language of the fan in action click on this link
As a small aside I just wanted to mention a blog I came across while I was researching this article. A blogger on Mass Historia http://walternelson.com/historia/2006/05/pet_peevethe_language_of_the_f.html suggests that the language of the fan was not as widely used as we might think. In fact it is his pet peeve. Granted, he is talking more about the Victorian age in his blog, however, if his argument is valid, would it not have been the same for the Regency? His argument is that in order for the language of the fan to have actually worked – the gentlemen of the time would have had to study it too. He tends to think that they would not have bothered. What do you think? Do you think the men of the Regency and Victorian period would have studied the language of the fan?
If you would like to learn more about fans, their origins and their language check out some of the links below.
Sources:
1. ^ Bennett, Anna G., and Ruth Berson. Fans in Fashion. [San Francisco]: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1981. Print.
