New ways to travel, eat and shop

Lesson plan

4 class periods of about 45 minutes.

1. Day 1 · 45 min

   Post houses and restaurants

   1. 15 minutes: Read The Great Khan's post houses by Marco Polo, passages 98.2 to 98.5 and 98.8. Students note who stays at the posts, who keeps the horses, and who pays for them.
   2. 5 minutes: From the History tab, compare Polo's two hundred thousand horses and ten thousand palaces with the Chinese records: more than 1,400 stations and some 44,000 horses.
   3. 15 minutes: Read On restaurants, Paris, 1825 by Brillat-Savarin, passages 138.2, 138.3 and 139.2 to 139.8. Students list what was hard about eating well around 1770 and the four advantages restaurants offer, then explain what he means by a privilege of the rich and powerful.
   4. 10 minutes: Note from the History tab that historians name Mathurin Roze de Chantoiseau as the first restaurateur, while Brillat-Savarin's man of genius has no name. Students say which parts of the text are what he saw and which are his reasoning.

2. Day 2 · 45 min

   A hotel and a cruise

   1. 15 minutes: Read The Rooms of the Tremont House by Eliot, passages 1, 3, 5, 8 and 9. Students explain how a guest called for service and how the office knew which room was calling, and who could use the reading room for free.
   2. 5 minutes: From the History tab, note that Eliot was one of the owners and says almost nothing about the people who worked in the house.
   3. 15 minutes: Read the preface of A free ticket on an early pleasure cruise by Thackeray. Students list the objections Mr. Titmarsh raised and what ended them.
   4. 10 minutes: Students mark the claims in the last paragraph of the preface in two colors, one for claims a buyer could check and one for claims that rest on Thackeray's word. Remind them from the History tab that he was the company's guest.

3. Day 3 · 45 min

   The great sale

   1. 5 minutes: From the History tab of Opening day of the great sale, note that this is a novel by Zola, but that he studied real Paris department stores in 1882 to write it. Tell students the class will discuss his words “barbaric art” and “plundered.”
   2. 15 minutes: Read passages 1 to 4. Students list who came into the store early, who gathered outside, and the words of war and victory Zola uses.
   3. 15 minutes: Read passages 5 to 5.4. Students note who had sold rare carpets before and at what price Mouret sells them, and copy the words Zola uses for the carpets and the room.
   4. 10 minutes: Discuss who gains from the sale and who loses: the customers, Mouret, and the small shopkeepers across the street.

4. Day 4 · 45 min

   Who gained

   1. 10 minutes: Groups each take one source and list whom the new service was for, who paid, who did the work, and who lost out.
   2. 15 minutes: Groups report. The class fills a chart under three headings. Impact: who gained and who lost. Influence: how the new service spread, such as restaurants spreading from France all over Europe (passage 139). Change: what each one replaced, such as the inn's table d'hôte or the dealers in curiosities. The encyclopedia articles Inns before hotels, The first grand hotels and Department stores give background.
   3. 5 minutes: Read passage 141.2 of Brillat-Savarin aloud: his worry that eating alone makes people selfish. Students say whether any other source shows a cost of the new way.
   4. 15 minutes: Each student writes a paragraph answering the unit question, using two sources from different centuries.

Read these sources

In this order. Each opens in Hearth Library with the original beside plain English, and a History tab on who made it and how far to trust it.

1. 1

   The Great Khan's post houses

   Marco Polo, 1298. Moderate.

   Plain, though Polo repeats himself and gives many large figures.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   post

   a station on a road where official messengers changed horses and found food and lodging

   the Great Lord

   Polo’s name for Qubilai, the Great Khan of the Mongols, who gave his dynasty in China the name Yuan

   day’s journey

   the distance a traveler covered in one day, used as a measure of distance

   province

   a large region of an empire, with its own government under the ruler

   baron

   a noble who held land and power under a ruler

   gerfalcon tablet

   a tablet, called a paiza, carried by official travelers as a pass; this kind, marked with a gerfalcon, a large hunting falcon, was for urgent business

   1. Comprehension How far apart are the posts on the main roads and in remote places, and what do the messengers find at each one?
   2. Analysis Polo calls the posts the greatest grandeur of any ruler on earth, yet he says the Great Lord pays nothing for most of them. Who keeps the horses, and how is the number decided? How does this change your picture of the Great Lord’s grandeur?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Polo told this story years after leaving China, in a prison in Genoa, to Rustichello, a writer of romances. The headnote gives much smaller figures for the stations and horses in the lands Qubilai ruled directly. Which parts of his account would you trust most, and which least? Why?
   4. Connection In The Rooms of the Tremont House, William Havard Eliot, one of the hotel’s owners, describes its rooms and fittings. Compare his building with Polo’s post palaces. Whom was each meant to serve, and why might each writer want it to sound grand?

   Activity The class runs a relay. Students stand at stations around the room or field, and a slip of paper is passed from runner to runner as Polo describes, while a timekeeper records how long the whole chain takes. Afterward students use Polo’s own figures, runners every three miles covering ten days’ journey in a day and a night, to list which of his claims the relay makes seem possible and which it makes seem doubtful.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

2. 2

   On restaurants, Paris, 1825

   Brillat-Savarin, 1825. Moderate.

   Witty and often ironic, with French food words explained in the notes.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   restaurateur

   the keeper of a restaurant; Brillat-Savarin also uses the word for the place itself

   carte

   French for the menu, the list of dishes with their prices

   table d'hôte

   the "host's table," one shared meal at an inn, served at a set hour and price, with no choice of dishes

   traiteurs

   caterers, cooks whose guild gave them the right to sell cooked dishes such as ragouts

   gastronomy

   the knowledge of eating well, which Brillat-Savarin treats as a science

   gourmet

   a person who knows a great deal about good food and enjoys it

   league

   an old measure of distance, about 4 kilometers (2.5 miles)

   1. Comprehension According to Brillat-Savarin, what was hard about eating well in Paris around 1770, and what four advantages do restaurants offer?
   2. Analysis Brillat-Savarin says restaurants destroyed one of the great privileges of the rich and powerful. What does he mean? Using his own details, who could and could not reach the finest food?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Brillat-Savarin had eaten in Paris restaurants for many years, but he wrote his story of the first restaurateur some fifty years after the date he gives. Which parts of this text work best as evidence of what he saw, and which need more care? Why?
   4. Connection In Opening day of the great sale, Émile Zola's store owner sells rare carpets for almost what he paid and puts cheap rugs in a corner, from fifteen francs. Compare this store with Brillat-Savarin's restaurants. Who is each business trying to attract, and what does each writer seem to think of it?

   Activity Each group takes one table from the dining room scene, such as the lone diners, the traveling family, the married couple, the lovers, the regulars, or the English. The group writes the bill (the carte à payer) that table might receive, inventing items that fit the clues in the text and underlining the clue behind each item, and reads it aloud while the class guesses which table it belongs to. The class then discusses which of the portraits seem drawn from life and which seem to be stock jokes.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

3. 3

   The Rooms of the Tremont House

   Eliot, 1829–1830. Moderate.

   Building terms explained in the notes, and many exact sizes.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   rotunda

   a round hall or room, often with a domed ceiling

   counting room

   an office where a business keeps its accounts and handles its money

   porter

   a worker who keeps the door of a building and carries visitors' baggage

   piazza

   a covered walk or porch along a building, supported by columns

   pilaster

   a flat column set into a wall, used for decoration in classical-style buildings

   Ionic columns

   columns in one of the Greek styles, with scroll-shaped tops

   patent

   a government grant that gives an inventor the sole right to make and sell an invention for a set time

   1. Comprehension How did a guest call for service from a room, and how did the office know which room was calling?
   2. Analysis Eliot says the dining room was thought to deserve the richest decoration, and then defends that choice. Why does he feel he must defend it? What does his answer suggest about what the hotel was offering its guests?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Eliot was one of the hotel's owners and published this book, without his name, the year after it opened. Which of his statements would you trust, and where should a reader be careful? What does he leave out?
   4. Connection In Receive every guest as Christ, Benedict gives the guests and the abbot a kitchen of their own. Compare the way Benedict arranges his monastery to receive guests with the way Eliot describes the Tremont House. What problems is each arrangement meant to solve, and for whom?

   Activity Students use Eliot's measurements to mark out the dining room, seventy-three feet by thirty-one, on a playground or gym floor with tape or string, and the dining space inside it, sixty feet by twenty. Standing inside, they estimate how many diners could fit and discuss why the owners wanted so large and richly decorated a room. They finish by writing one sentence an 1830 advertisement might use to describe the room.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

4. 4

   A free ticket on an early pleasure cruise

   Thackeray, 1845–1846. Moderate.

   Playful, with long sentences and a mock-solemn voice in the preface.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   berth

   a sleeping place on a ship; to be given a berth was to be given a place on the voyage

   excursion

   a trip made for pleasure, often by a group, returning to where it started

   claret

   the English name for red wine from Bordeaux, in France

   Russia ducks

   clothes made of Russia duck, a strong linen cloth once used for summer wear

   memoir

   a written account of a person's life; Thackeray jokingly writes about himself as if he were someone else's biographer

   dogwatch

   one of the two short watches, or work shifts, on a ship in the late afternoon and early evening; most watches last four hours

   the Service

   the Sunday morning service of the Church of England, here read by the ship's captain

   1. Comprehension What objections did Mr. Titmarsh raise before agreeing to go, and what finally ended them?
   2. Analysis In the first chapter, Thackeray moves from the moans of seasick passengers to the stars, the Sunday service, and champagne at dinner. How does this order shape the reader's picture of the voyage?
   3. Analysis (reliability) Thackeray was the company's guest, and his preface thanks its directors and recommends the trip. His preface also gives dates that differ from those a study of his letters gives. How far should a reader trust his picture of the cruise, and why?
   4. Connection Read The Program of the Grand Pleasure Excursion. Compare what Thackeray's preface promises with what Charles C. Duncan's program promises. How might each writer's position, a guest of the steamship company or the man who chartered the ship and managed the excursion, shape what he promises?

   Activity Students turn the last paragraph of the preface into a one-page newspaper advertisement for the excursion, using only claims Thackeray makes. They then mark each claim in two colors, one for claims a buyer could check and one for claims that rest on Thackeray's word. The class discusses whether a reader should treat the preface as a travel account or an advertisement.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

5. 5

   Opening day of the great sale

   Zola, 1882–1883. Moderate.

   Rich, crowded description, with many carpet place names explained in a note.

   Questions, key terms and an activity

   plate glass

   large, flat sheets of clear glass, used for shop windows

   livery

   a uniform worn by the servants or staff of one house or business

   frock coat

   a man's formal coat reaching to the knees

   Levant

   the lands of the eastern Mediterranean, then mostly ruled by the Ottoman Empire

   prayer rugs

   small rugs used in Muslim prayer; the design has a pointed arch, which the person praying turns toward Mecca

   pasha

   a high Ottoman title, given to governors and generals

   Orient

   an old European name for the lands of Asia, from Turkey and Arabia to India; the word carries European ideas about those lands

   1. Comprehension Who came into the store early that morning, and who gathered outside instead?
   2. Analysis Zola describes the store opening with words of war and victory, such as "under arms." Why might he describe a sale this way? What does it suggest about how Baudu and the other small shopkeepers see the store?
   3. Analysis (reliability) This is a novel. The headnote explains when Zola studied real Paris department stores and when he set this scene. What can this passage tell a historian about stores, and what can it not?
   4. Connection In A free ticket on an early pleasure cruise, Thackeray's tour promises visits to Smyrna, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Cairo. Zola's store brings carpets from Smyrna and other eastern places to Paris. Compare how each text presents these places to customers in Western Europe. What does each customer get, and what words make it appealing?

   Activity Students list every place name in the carpet room and match each to its modern name (from the note where given), then mark it on a map of western and southern Asia, using an atlas. Beside the map they copy the words Zola uses for the carpets and the room, such as "barbaric art" and "plundered." The class discusses whose view of these places the display sells, and what the map shows that the display does not.

   For teachers · Worksheet for this source

To finish

Come back to the question: Who gained from new ways of serving travelers, diners and shoppers, and what changed for them? Ask students to answer it with evidence from at least two of the sources, and to say which source they trust most and why.

Standards

Students run Polo's relay, write a Paris restaurant bill, mark out the Tremont House dining room, test Thackeray's claims as advertising, and map Zola's carpets.

Go further

Other units

From inoculation to vaccine · Counting and mapping disease · Imagining space travel · Fixing the calendar

Encyclopedia

Department stores · Inns before hotels · The first grand hotels

Collection

Every source in Innovation in History