[Ads-l] The dainty motoriste, glove boxes, and horse carriages

[Joel Berson]

As Dorothy Levitt noted in 1909, ordinary tasks and repairs for a (perhaps hand-cranked) motor car might get the dainty motoriste's hands dirty or greasy (one of the items she puts in her glove box is soap).  That was perhaps the main reason for wearing gloves.  I suspect managing (horseful) carriages would not have the same risk; perhaps any necessary tasks would have been performed by the stable-boy.

Is "motoriste" the feminine form?


Joel

 

      From: Christopher Philippo <toff at MAC.COM>
 To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU 
 Sent: Sunday, January 31, 2016 8:16 PM
 Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Reflections/query on the term "glove compartment" (of a car)
   
Prior to automobiles, would carriages have had glove boxes?

Or could the term be a reference not to what it was to be used for but more to its size, similar to that of a box for gloves and perhaps put to miscellaneous uses as a literal glove box might also be?

E.g.:
There was a little table there — a very little table — which served as a counter, three or four pasteboard boxes full of reams of writing paper, of different sizes, an old glove box in which steel pens, quill pens, and bad pencils were all jumbled pell-mell together, six ink jars and four rules.
Aunt Ess. (From the French). Daily Alta California. March 9, 1884: 9 col 1.
http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=DAC18840309.2.86 [appears to be a syndicated item]
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org