February 14, 2024 · 10:00 am

The Not So Romantic Regency

It is easy to think of the Regency as romantic – duels, elopements, dashing bucks and gorgeous gowns. But the slang of the period soon dispels that, as do the some of the images of the time, unlike Rowlandson’s The Embrace above. (I do love how he always includes a dog).

Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue pulls no punches with the slang for marriage – For a man it was to “be in parson’s mousetrap”, “to live under the cat’s foot”, “to be yoked”. The wife and children were “heavy baggage” (as this father below is finding) and, as like as not, the husband would be tied to a “buttock and tongue” or a “crooked rib”. There’s no indication of how the women involved thought of it – slang was for men.

Young ladies might dream of romance, like this one shown on a fan playing “loves me, loves me not” with daisy petals while a young man passes by.

They might send or receive love notes like these from the French print series Modes et Manières.

But there were plenty of warnings about how romance, or the lack of it, might end. This fan shows all sorts of dire situations – the horrors of being left a spinster with only cats for company, the fact that you can’t trust a young man as far as you can throw him or the risk that your romantic young husband recoils in horror from the responsibility of a family.

But perhaps it will all end with a kiss. Happy Valentine’s Day!

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January 9, 2024 · 1:05 pm

Iced Delight

It is cold outside as I write, which made me think about ice cream, one of my favourite treats.

It is easy to obtain now, but ice cream was a real luxury in the early 19thc. There was no way of making ice artificially and it had to be harvested and stored. This was was easy enough if you had a large estate with lakes and ponds that would freeze in winter and you employed staff to do the work. Slabs of ice were cut and packed in ice houses where they could be insulated with thick walls and straw to keep the ice right through the year. The building above is the ice house in the park of Holkham Hall in Norfolk. (© AJ Hilton)

In towns and cities loads of ice were brought in by wagon and would be stored in insulated pits. In 2018 MOLA (the Museum of London Archaeology) discovered a vast “ice well” when they were working on the site of the redevelopment of one of John Nash’s terrace close to Regent’s Park. The well had been constructed in the 1780s by Samuel Dash, connected to the brewing trade.

The structure is 7.5 metres wide and 9.5m deep, a red brick, egg-shaped chamber with an entrance passage, and vaulted ante-chamber. You can see an image of it on the MOLA website. The diagram below shows a similar pit, but unlike the Regent’s Park, example the “egg” is standing on its pointed end. The Regent’s Park design seems more logical to prevent melting – the greatest mass of the ice would remain deepest in the earth with as small an area as possible exposed at the top. However the other way up would make access to gather ice more convenient.

By the 1840s ice was being shipped in from Norway and from the Wenham Lake Ice Company in Massachusetts and was brought into the heart of London on the Regent’s Canal.

I own a copy of The Complete Confectioner or, the Whole Art of Confectionary Made Easy by Frederick Nutt (1815 and wrote about ice cream with a recipe from his book some time ago.

Looking at my copy of the 1829 edition A New System of Domestic Cookery…Adapted To The Use of Private Families by “A Lady” it is clear that she expected that the well-equipped cook would own an ice bucket and an “ice-pot”. Get a few pounds of ice, break it almost to powder, throw a large handful and a half of rock salt among it. You must prepare it in a part of the house where as little of the warm air comes as you can possibly contrive. The ice and salt being in a bucket, put your cream into an ice-pot, and cover it; immerse it in the ice, and draw that round the pot, so as to touch every possible part. She then gives instructions to stir it regularly – the method is exactly that used today in the absence of an ice cream maker.

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May 1, 2023 · 10:30 am

Errors To Avoid When Planning A Coronation

Planning a coronation must be a huge logistical operation. It would have been even worse in the days before rapid communications and computers.

Here are seven Westminster Abbey coronations with some lessons arising from their more difficult moments.

William the Conqueror: brief your bodyguard properly


William had a large force of Norman soldiers outside Westminster Abbey when he was being crowned on Christmas Day 1066. They were so alarmed by the shouts of acclamation from inside the building that they attacked the Saxons outside and set fire to houses. Not the best start to Saxon-Norman relations at the beginning of the reign…

The image from the Bayeux Tapestry shows William with his half-brother Bishop Odo on his right.

James II: Beware of bad omens

James, the younger brother of Charles II, was crowned on 23rd April 1685. Because he was a Roman Catholic he had been anointed and crowned the previous day during a Catholic ceremony in the chapel at Westminster Palace and there was no communion service as part of the Abbey ceremony.

It is said that the crown seemed very precarious on James’s head and was slipping – perhaps because it had been made for his brother and didn’t fit well. (Charles had a complete regalia made to replace the ancient one melted down or sold by the Parliamentarians.)

Another bad moment was said to have been the wind tearing the Royal Standard at the Tower of London at the moment of crowning.

How much of that was hindsight or pure fiction we’ll never know – but James reigned for only four years before being supplanted by his Protestant daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange. 

James II in coronation robes painted by Lely.

George II: wear manageable clothing

George and Queen Caroline were crowned 11th October 1727. Caroline’s gown was heavily encrusted with jewels – so heavily, in fact, that a pulley system had to be installed so that she could kneel down. As she had to do this several times in the course of the ceremony I am disappointed that I can’t find an image of this. It can hardly have added to the dignity of the occasion. The Coronation medal shown below clearly depicts the throne that will be used again for the coronation of Charles III.

George III: avoid sedan chairs

George III and Queen Charlotte were crowned on 22nd September 1761. They made the first part of the journey from St James’s Palace to Westminster Hall in sedan chairs, which must have lacked a certain something as far as the watching crowds were concerned, and must have been a dreadful crush considering the lavish clothes they were wearing.

They walked from Westminster Hall to the Abbey at 11am, so at least we know that Charlotte wasn’t as encumbered by her robes as her predecessor had been. Everything took so long that they were not crowned until 3.30pm, but the lavish coronation banquet in the Hall afterwards must have gone some way to reviving the guests. George and Charlotte are shown below in their coronation robes.

George IV: don’t make a spectacle of your wife

After long years waiting as Prince Regent, George was finally crowned George IV on 19th July 1821 in a lavish and incredibly expensive ceremony designed by himself. It even involved a brand new crown.

I have written about the procession here, but before the start of that there was a ghastly scene with his estranged Queen, Caroline of Brunswick. She had been barred from attending the ceremony but arrived in her carriage anyway.

She was accompanied by Lord Hood who escorted her to the door and announced to the doorkeeper, “I present to you your Queen, do you refuse her admission?”

 The doorkeeper said  he couldn’t let anyone in without a ticket. Lord Hood had a ticket, but for one person. Caroline wasn’t prepared to use it and enter unescorted.

At that point the situation deteriorated badly. The Queen shouted, “The Queen! Open!” and the pages opened the door. “I am the Queen of England!” she declared, to which an official ordered the pages, “Do your duty… shut the door!”

She was turned away from the west door of the abbey by a group of bouncers – professional bare-knuckle fighters – who had been hired to prevent her entry. Seriously obese, in great emotional distress and despite the great heat of the day, she ran from one door to another around the Abbey, hammering on them and screaming to be allowed in. “I am Queen of England!” she cried as door after door was slammed in her face.

Eventually she had to admit defeat and was driven away in her carriage. Nineteen days later she was dead.

William IV: avoid penny-pinching and don’t fall out with the family

William, George IV’s younger brother, was crowned on 8th September 1831. He was a bluff, no-nonsense naval man and wore his admiral’s uniform for the ceremony. Unlike his brother George, William was very careful with money and decided there would be no banquet as this was too extravagant – the event went down in history as The Penny Coronation.

The day was marred by a furious family spat. The Princess Victoria, the child of his late younger brother Edward, was the childless King’s heiress presumptive, but the King and her domineering mother, the Duchess of Kent, were at loggerheads. As a result he said that in the coronation procession the Princess must walk behind her uncles, the surviving Royal Dukes, and not immediately behind himself and Queen Adelaide. Her mother promptly announced that this was such an insult that neither she nor Victoria would attend.

“Nothing could console me,” Victoria wrote, “not even my dolls.”

Queen Victoria: rehearsals are vital

There appears to have been no rehearsal for Victoria’s coronation – at one point the Queen turned to Lord John Thynne and whispered, “Pray tell me what I am to do, for they [the officiating clergy] do not know.”

The Bishop of Durham handed her the orb at the wrong time: she found it so heavy she could hardly hold it. The Archbishop of Canterbury forced the ring on her wrong finger causing her intense pain.

Lord Rolle, an infirm 82 year-old, stumbled and rolled down the steps of the throne when he came forward to make his homage and had to be helped to his feet by the Queen. Later the Bishop of Bath and Wells turned over two pages in his Order of Service at once and told the Queen that the ceremony had finished and she should retire to St Edward the Confessor’s Chapel – she then had to be brought out again.

Lord Melbourne remarked that St Edward’s Chapel was “more unlike a Chapel than anything [I] have ever seen; for, what was called an Altar was covered with sandwiches, bottles of wine, etc.” (At the coronation of George VI, the late Queen’s father, many peers, clearly with tidier habits, arrived with sandwiches concealed in their coronets.)

The Archbishop of Canterbury then arrived to hand her the orb, only to discover she already had it.

Wearing the Crown of State, which she said later hurt her a great deal, Victoria then retired to the robing room and spent half an hour with her hand in a glass of iced water before they could get the ring off her swollen finger. (It can be seen in the portrait below.)

Despite it all Victoria wrote in her diary: “…I shall ever remember this day as the proudest of my life.”

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January 11, 2022 · 11:39 am

Plough Monday

This year Plough Monday, the first Monday after Twelfth-day, fell on the 10th January. Traditionally, especially in the North, the East Midlands and East Anglia, this marked the day when work resumed in the fields after the Christmas festivities, although I can’t imagine that every farm labourer was sitting about having a nice rest throughout the twelve Days of Christmas!

This chap, illustrated by W H Pyne in his Rustic Figures (1817) is clearly well dressed up for a return to work in the cold and the mud.

In the Middle Ages the church had a role in this start to the agricultural year, although the Reformation put an end to that. In 1538, Henry VIII forbade “plough lights” in churches, and  Edward VI forbade the “conjuring of ploughs” – presumably their blessing by the local priest.

By the early 19th century, even where it survived, the custom seems to have lost all religious involvement and to have become an excuse for fun and games and collecting money as this image shows –

William Hone  in his The Every Day Book (1825) describes what went on:

The first Monday after Twelfth-day is called Plough Monday, and appears to have received that name because it was the first day after Christmas that husbandmen resumed the plough. In some parts of the country, and especially in the north, they draw the plough in procession to the doors of the villagers and townspeople. Long ropes are attached to it, and thirty or forty men, stripped to their clean white shirts, but protected from the weather by waistecoats [sic] beneath, drag it along. Their arms and shoulders are decorated with gay-coloured ribbons, tied in large knots and bows, and their hats are smartened in the same way. They are usually accompanied by an old woman, or a boy dressed up to represent one; she is gaily bedizened, and called the Bessy. Sometimes the sport is assisted by a humorous countryman to represent a fool. He is covered with ribbons, and attired in skins, with a depending tail, and carries a box to collect money from the spectators. They are attended by music, and Morris-dancers when they can be got; but there is always a sportive dance with a few lasses in all their finery, and a superabundance or ribbons. When this merriment is well managed, it is very pleasing.

That last comment suggests that the festivities could get out of hand. There is some evidence that they might deteriorate into an unruly version of ‘trick or treat’ –  in  1810, a farmer complained to Derby Assizes, saying that when he refused to give money the revellers ploughed up his drive, his lawn and a bench and caused twenty pounds worth of damage.

Hand-coloured aquatint by Robert Havell after George Walker (1781-1856) from his ‘The Costume of Yorkshire’ (1814)

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July 23, 2021 · 3:45 pm

The Perfect Regency Hero? Defender of the Common Man? The Saviour of the Scillies ? Pioneering Plant Collector? Or Sexual Predator? Who was Augustus Smith?

During a recent holiday on the Isles of Scilly I visited Tresco Abbey Gardens and discovered that they had been created by a man whose name was familiar from my childhood. Augustus Smith (1804-72) was the hero who defended the commoners rights in my home town of Berkhamstead when Lord Brownlow attempted to enclose the common land. Lord Brownlow erected steel fences, so Augustus Smith brought in a trainload of navvies who uprooted the barriers, rolled them up and dumped them on his lordship’s front lawn. Berkhamstead Common remains unenclosed to this day.

Then I read the quote under the picture of Augustus above – an image where he looks every bit the handsome and sensitive young Regency gentleman. Given that, amongst other things, I write Regency romance, I couldn’t help feeling that Lady Sophia Tower’s description of Augustus Smith sounded almost too good to be true:

“A man of good presence, above the middle height, lithe in figure, firm in step, upright in carriage, with well-cut, handsome features closely shaven (it was the English fashion then) and an eye cold, grey, observant; he looked as if he had been accustomed to command, or was born to be a ruler, whilst his gentlemanly address was prepossessing, conversation with him quickly added to the good impression he first made; nature had well moulded him, education and refinement aided him to please and to reform others.”

So, who was this paragon? Augustus was born in 1804 to a wealthy banker, raised in Berkhamstead in Hertfordshire and educated at Harrow and Oxford. He soon developed an interest in social reform and in education and these passions were allowed free rein when, in 1834, he acquired the lease of the Isles of Scilly from the Duchy of Cornwall. The islanders had suffered dreadfully from the neglect of generations of absentee landlords and were without education, support or resources. Agriculture was at a subsistence level and the only industry was the burning of kelp to create soda ash, although by the time Smith took over it has been almost overtaken by industrial processes on the mainland. A niche business supplying the very fine white beach sand for sanding wet ink was also foundering with the use of blotting paper. Most families existed on fishing and scavenging from shipwrecks.

Smith descended like an incoming monarch – his word became law on the islands, regardless of what the islanders had to say. He made education compulsory up to the age of thirteen, built a church and a pier, renovated dwellings and built himself a magnificent house on the island of Tresco next to the ruins of the 12th century abbey.

Harbour on St Mary’s with the church that Augustus Smith had built (copyright A J Hilton)

Undoubtedly he raised the living standards of the islanders, but he also created considerable controversy by what the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls his “mix of liberalism and authoritarianism….In public life his reputation was for over-persistent and often footling controversy.” Many applauded his approach, but John Stuart Mill described it as “detestable”.

Tresco & Smith’s Abbey (copyright A J Hilton)

He began work on the fabulous gardens on Tresco in 1834, importing plants from all over the world to create what is now an internationally famous collection.

The Abbey Gardens on Tresco (copyright A J Hilton)

Smith certainly expected high standards from everyone else, but I wondered about his own character. He never married, but he had two children by islander Mary Pender who was twenty years younger than Smith and whose first child was born when she was seventeen. He is also reputed to have fathered children on his domestic servants. How consensual were those relationships, given that Mary was a shop girl and the servants probably had no other employment prospects? How do you say No to the King of the Islands?

So, not the perfect hero, certainly deeply flawed, but also the man who rescued the Isles of Scilly when their inhabitants were virtually starving. The image below (unknown artist or date) seems to show a man who had no doubts about his own rightness!

After my last visit to The Isles of Scilly I wrote a trio of books linked by the shipwreck of an East Indiaman: you can find the Danger and Desire series here.

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April 25, 2021 · 3:45 pm

Smithfield – Horror, Slaughter, Revelry, Fire, the Oldest Hospital in London and Pocahontas

Smithfield 1682 from William Morgan’s map

I am keeping my fingers crossed that I will be able to stay in one of the Landmark Trust’s properties in Cloth Fair, Smithfield, this summer. You can see Cloth Fair running off from the north-east side of Smithfield, just below Long Lane, in this map of 1682. The little street gets it name from Bartholomew Fair, founded by royal charter in 1133 for the benefit of the adjacent St Bartholomew’s Hospital. It became the greatest cloth fair in England and the Corporation of London held a cattle fair at the same time. Eventually it became one of the highlights of London life, running for three days in August and, by the 17th century, an entertainment, rather than a market. I wrote about it here in all its rowdy glory. By 1855 it was finally suppressed and Smithfield Market was built in the area at the top of Smithfield, covering the sheep pens and the open space to the east of them that you can see in the 1682 map.

Smithfield was originally the Smooth Field, an area for grazing horses outside the City walls. – you can see the Town Ditch in the lower right hand corner of the map above. It became a weekly horse market by 1173 and then sheep, pigs and cattle were added. Such a large open space outside the walls was convenient for tournaments and also for executions, allowing a large crowd to gather. The gallows was moved to Tyburn in the early 15th century but burnings of heretics and of women accused of witchcraft continued. Whereas a man might be beheaded or hanged, horrifyingly, women were also burned to death there for a number of offences termed treasonous, including forging currency and killing their husbands (seen as petty treason against authority). In 1652 the diarist John Evelyn recorded witnessing the burning of a woman for poisoning her husband.

The area was a rough one, notorious for duelling and less formalised fighting, but gradually the City authorities began to bring it under control. The area was paved and a cattle market established. The print below shows St Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1750 with the gatehouse and the church of St Bartholomew the Less and, in front, loose cattle, sheep and horses.

The view is of the south-east edge of Smithfield and the gate can still be seen today, although all the houses and shops on either side have been replaced.

By the time of Horwood’s map of London in the early 19th century (below) there were proper pens set out, but the market was still a chaotic, stinking, noisy and dangerous place, despite the development of the area all around with shops and houses. Animals were driven through the streets, even on Sundays, and beasts were slaughtered so that the gutters ran with blood or were blocked with entrails. In Oliver Twist Dickens wrote, “The ground was covered, nearly ankle-deep, with filth and mire; a thick steam perpetually rising from the reeking bodies of the cattle… the unwashed, unshaven, squalid and dirty figures running to and fro… rendered it a stunning and bewildering scene…”

Where that central diamond of pens was is now the “Rotunda garden” a patch of green sitting on top of the circular entrance to the underground carpark and the rectangular northern area is the London Central Meat Market built between 1851 and 1899. To the west is the Poultry Market, rebuilt in 1963 after a fire. The Museum of London is planning to take over the entire range of market buildings – what will happen to the current lively weekly market, I have no idea.

Probably the only parts of Smithfield that the pre-Victorian visitor would recognize today are the churches of St Bartholomew the Great and Lesser. In 1123 Rahere, an Augustinian, founded a priory and its church, St Bartholomew’s the Great, was built in stages, completed in 1240 with a long nave that was demolished in the 1540s after the Reformation. The choir was left as the parish church and the monastic buildings sold off. Now, the half-timbered entrance just to the south of Cloth Fair stands on the site of the original west door.

St Bartholomew the Less was a chapel for the priory, built in about 1154. Although ancient, it has had a chequered history. The print below shows the interior as remodeled by Charles Dance the Younger in 1789: the box pews have been replaced. It was heavily restored after bomb damage in the Second World War.

St Bartholomew the Less, looking towards the altar. From Wilkinson’s Londina Illustra (1834)

Rahere’s priory had a chequered life after the Dissolution. The crypt of St Bartholomew the Great became a coal store, the Lady Chapel was converted into houses plus a printer’s business where Benjamin Franklin was employed in 1725, the surrounding area held a blacksmith’s forge, a hop store, a carpenter’s workshop and stables. The Victorians restored it in 1864-56 and 1884-96 and it is difficult to imagine the state it must once have been in.

Despite the Dissolution of the Monasteries Rahere’s great work, his hospital, survives to this day. It almost closed after the Dissolution through lack of funds, but somehow kept going until Sir Richard Gresham persuaded Henry VIII to re-found it in 1544 and it has been continuously rebuilt and developed since. Known as “Bart’s” it remains on site as a specialist cancer and cardiology hospital.

One curious feature of Smithfield is the Golden Boy of Pye Corner. On the map above you can see where Giltspur Street enters at the southern end of Smithfield and to the west is an angle known as Pie, or Pye, Corner. This is where the flames of the Great Fire of London (1666) finally flickered and died out. The fact that it began in Pudding Lane and ended in Pie Corner was taken to be a warning that it had been caused by Londoner’s sinful gluttony. Actually the name derives from the Magpie Inn that once stood here and has nothing to do with pastry!

Pie Corner in 1804 with the church of St Sepulchre’s behind.

Just south of Pie Corner, on the northern corner of Giltspur Street and Cock Lane, stood The Fortune of War inn. it was demolished in 1910 but had a particularly lurid history. The photograph below shows it just before demolition.

As well as being a ‘receiving house’, appointed by the Royal Humane Society as the location to bring bodies of those drowned in the Thames, it was also the chief hang-out for resurrectionists, or body-snatchers, providing bodies to the surgeons of Bart’s Hospital. It seems that many of the drowned found their way into the dissecting rooms along with corpses stolen from churchyards.

In the photograph you can see the small statue of a chubby child – The Golden Boy of Pye Corner. He was rescued when the pub was demolished and is now on the corner of the new building on the site. His inscription reads:

This Boy is in Memory put up for the late Fire of London
Occasion’d by the Sin of Gluttony.

And finally, the church of St Sepulchre’s, which can be seen in the background of the print of Pie Corner, was another of Rahere’s foundations and contains the tomb of Captain John Smith, one of the founders of Jamestown and of the State of Virginia, and famous for his relationship with Pocahontas of the Powhatan tribe.

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February 24, 2021 · 12:51 pm

‘Happily Adapted to Grace’: The Regency Lady Performs

My most recent novel has a pianoforte teacher as its heroine and this prompted me to look through my collection of Regency prints to find those showing musical instruments. I have reproduced some of them here, ranging in date from 1798 to the 1820s and from the clumsy, but charming, style of The Ladies’ Monthly Museum to the beautifully detailed prints from Ackermann’s Repository.

Young lady wearing ‘The Fatima robe’ , October 1798, from an unidentified journal.

The first is a very charming print of a rather young lady playing, I believe, a harpsichord. She looks informal and yet elegant, which reflects the strictures of ‘A Lady of Distinction’, author of The Mirror of the Graces (1811). This gave advice on ‘The English Lady’s Costume’ and also ‘Female Accomplishments, Politeness and Manners.’

On the subject of playing musical instruments it is clear that no opportunity must be lost to display the performer in the best possible light.

“Let their attitude at the piano, or the harp, be easy and graceful. I strongly exhort them to avoid a stiff, awkward, elbowing position at either; but they must observe an elegant flow of figure at both.”

Playing an instrument and singing were basic accomplishments for any young lady and she was expected to help provide the entertainment at family gatherings and social occasions. Not only was this (hopefully) pleasant for the listeners, but it demonstrated her taste and allowed her to be viewed at her best by potential suitors. The ‘Lady of Distinction’ makes this display function exceedingly clear. She considered the harp showed “a fine figure to advantage. The contour of the whole form, the turn and polish of a beautiful hand and arm, the richly-slippered and well-made foot on the pedal stops, the gentle motion of a lovely neck, and above all, the sweetly-tempered expression of an intelligent countenance; these are shown at a glance, when the fair performer is seated unaffectedly, yet gracefully, at the harp.”

Lady with harp. Unidentified print

A pianoforte or harpsichord, “is not so happily adapted to grace. From the shape of the instrument the performer must sit directly in front of a line of keys; and her own posture being correspondingly erect and square, it is hardly possible that it should not appear rather inelegant.” The performer is urged to hold her head elegantly and to move her hands gracefully over the keyboard.

Ladies’ Monthly Museum

The lady about to play the harpsichord (above) turns gracefully (or, at least, as gracefully as anyone ever does in these early Ladies’ Monthly Museum prints!) to display her gown and figure. Quite how her friend will manage to look elegant shaking the vast tambourine is not clear.

A harp and a keyboard instrument are shown in this print from a ladies’ memorandum book of 1809:

The Lady of Distinction also considers that “Similar beauty of position may be seen in a lady’s management of a lute, a guittar [sic], a mandolin or a lyre,” and fashion prints also illustrate those. In the next image, from The Lady’s Monthly Museum of 1800, the elegance is somewhat lost in the awkwardness of the drawing.

More successful is this charming scene from a memorandum book of 1819.

And Ackermann’s Repository has this from 1819. The guitar-player has a wonderful gauze overskirt and a very soulful expression.

And finally a very flowing print and a very elegant instrument from the Lady’s Magazine – I love the paw feet!

My piano teacher heroine in The Earl’s Reluctant Proposal can be found here.

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February 2, 2021 · 12:53 pm

The Story of a Square 10: Portman Square

“This square is esteemed the next in beauty, as it is in extent, to Grosvenor-square. It is built with more regularity than the latter: but the very uniformity of the houses, and the small projection of the cornices, are not favourable to grandeur and picturesque effect.”

This modified rapture comes from the beginning of the article in Ackermann’s Repository of August 1813 accompanying this print of the north side of Portman Square.

The square was begun in 1764 as a speculative development by John Berkely Portman, MP, for whom it is named. It rapidly became one of the most fashionable addresses in London and ‘The residence of luxurious opulence,’ according to Priscilla Wakefield, the Quaker philanthropist and writer of children’s non-fiction books.

Amongst its residents was Lord Castlereagh, 2nd Marquess of Londonderry, closely associated with Lord Liverpool’s repressive government. The portrait below is after the original by Lawrence. Shelley wrote of him in The Mask of Anarchy,

‘I met Murder in the way –

He had a mask like Castlereagh.’

At the time of the Peterloo Massacre in 1819 a furious mob attacked his house and smashed the windows.

Considerably more liberal was Mrs Elizabeth Montagu who lived in the house built for her 1777-82 on the north-west corner, now replaced by the massive block of the Radisson Blu hotel. Mrs Montagu was an intellectual – a ‘blue stocking’ – and philanthropist.

Elizabeth Montagu. Print after the portrait by Joshua Reynolds.

Every May Day she gave a roast beef and plum pudding dinner to chimney sweeps and their apprentices, the unfortunate ‘climbing boys’.

As the Ackermann article reports, these were children “doomed to a trade at once dangerous, disagreeable, and proverbially contemptible, the chimney-sweepers.”

May Day appears to have particular significance for chimney sweeps. In Brand’s “Observations on Popular Antiquities…Vulgar Customs, Ceremonies and Superstitions.” (1813) he notes “The young chimney-sweepers, some of whom are fantastically dressed in girls’ clothes, with a great profusion of brick dust by way of paint, gilt paper etc, making a noise with their shovels and brushes, are now the most striking objects in the celebration of May Day in the streets of London.” The little lad holding his brush in the centre foreground of this print by Cruickshank certainly seems cheerful enough.

At Mrs Montague’s feast tables were set out in the gardens and “servants in livery [waited on] the sooty guests, with the greatest formality and attention.” Great crowds watched the gathering, “highly diverted with the many insolent airs assumed on the joyful occasion by the gentlemen of the brush, who, bedizened in their May-day paraphernalia, would rush through the crowd of spectators with all the arrogance of foreign princes.”  

The reality of their everyday lives is more honestly seen in another Cruickshank print which shows how a boy trapped and suffocated in a chimney was removed. (The Chimney-Sweeper’s Friend, and Climbing-Boy’s Album. Arranged by James Montgomery. Illustrations by George Cruickshank (1824)).

In the south-west corner was the residence of Monsieur Otto, negotiator for the French of the Peace of Amiens, signed 27 March 1802. He displayed illuminations in the square to mark the event and they can be seen in a print in the British Museum collection.

Ackermann’s also records that the residence of the Ottoman ambassador to the British court was on the west side of the square and, “Whilst the ambassador continued here, this square was the resort of all the beauty and fashion of this district of the metropolis.”

The square has suffered from bombing and redevelopment but number 20, Home House designed by Robert Adam, survives. In the print of the square above it is the tallest block.

Orchard Street leads southwards out of the square in the south-east corner. This is where Jane Austen’s aunt Mrs Hancock and her cousin Eliza were living in August 1788 when Jane dined with them during her first recorded visit to London.

Going east from the same corner was Edwards Street, now included in Wigmore Street, the location of Society caterer Parmentier.

From the north east corner Baker Street runs north. In the guide book The Picture of London, Baker Street was described as “perhaps the handsomest street in London.” It can no longer be said to be of much interest, except to record that it led to the Hindoostanee Coffee House in Baker Street, the site of the first Indian restaurant in London. It was opened in 1810 by Sake Dean Mohammed who became famous in Margate for his lavish bath house. The coffee house was less successful and closed within the year. You can read more about him here.

The area around Portman Square forms Walk Two in my Walking Jane Austen’s London.

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January 8, 2021 · 4:39 pm

Secrets Worth Knowing, The Bleeding Nun and the Fatal Marriage – Drama in a Provincial Playhouse

This rather undistinguished-looking building is Hull’s third theatre, and second Theatre Royal, in Humber Street, built in 1810 to replace the original of 1769, situated in Finkle Street.

The Finkle Street building had a ‘piazza’ at the front and separate entrances for each section of the house. Inside, the  boxes were fenced off from the pit, and linked by a gallery

The season ran from October to January, which was longer than most, but no summer season was attempted because most of the likely customers moved out of town and, as the then manager Tate Wilkinson recalled,  ‘seafaring persons, who are keen supporters are abroad’. The actors were mainly provincials but occasionally London stars would appear. In 1786 Mrs. Siddons took to the boards in Hull for a week, but the cost of promoting her season was so great that from the gross receipts of £450 the profit was only £130.

In 1803 John Wilkinson succeeded his father as manager and was soon in financial difficulty.  There were complaints of the narrowness of the street and the dangers of fire and the stage was too shallow for the elaborate melodramas then in fashion. Critics called the theatre ‘dirty, ill-lighted, and incommodious’.

The oldest playbills I have are for November 1803, the period of these complaints. By 1808 John Wilkinson was planning a new theatre.

The prices range from 3 shillings for a box to one shilling in the upper gallery. A place in the pit (the area immediately in front of the stage) costs one shilling. In 1809 there were riots at Covent Garden Theatre when the price of pit tickets was raised to half that – 6 pence – so this seems expensive. For the same money you could buy 20 pounds of potatoes. The note about the admission of servants probably refers to the habit of theatre-goers of sending their servants along to occupy seats until such time as they decided to arrive.

The tragedy, Isabella, or, the Fatal Marriage was an immensely popular work by Thomas Southerne, first performed in 1694. Isabella, mourning her dead husband Biron, is ravished and marries Villeroy. Then Biron reappears, is murdered and Isabella kills herself. To cheer the audience up after that is The Agreeable Surprise, a farce by John O’Keefe. The image below is from a later edition illustrated by Cruickshank and shows the dairy maid Buttercup with the character of Lingo in the centre.

The next evening many of the same actors were appearing in a comedy followed by a one-act farce.

John Bull was a five act comedy by John Colman the Younger. Here’s the opening few lines. I feel sorry for the poor pig with the measles.

ACT THE FIRST.

SCENE I.

A Public House on a Heath: over the Door the Sign of the Red Cow;——and the Name of “Dennis Brulgruddery.”

Enter Dennis Brulgruddery and Dan, from the House. Dan opening the outward Shutters of the House.

Dennis. A pretty blustratious night we have had! and the sun peeps through the fog this morning, like the copper pot in my kitchen.—Devil a traveller do I see coming to the Red Cow.

Dan. Na, measter!—nowt do pass by here, I do think, but the carrion crows.

Dennis. Dan;—think you, will I be ruin’d?

Dan. Ees; past all condemption. We be the undonestest family in all Cornwall. Your ale be as dead as my grandmother; mistress do set by the fire, and sputter like an apple a-roasting; the pigs ha’ gotten the measles; I be grown thinner nor an old sixpence; and thee hast drank up all the spirity liquors.

Dennis. By my soul, I believe my setting up the Red Cow, a week ago, was a bit of a Bull!—but that’s no odds. Haven’t I been married these three months?—and who did I marry?

Dan. Why, a waddling woman, wi’ a mulberry feace.

The farce, The Spoil’d Child was a popular piece that crops up in several of the big London theatres.

My next playbill is for December 1804, the next season and, irritatingly, it does not give prices for tickets – I was hoping to see if Mr Wilkinson was reducing them in the face of criticism. It is, however, a benefit performance in aid of Mrs Wilkinson, one of the actors and, I assume, John’s wife.

The comic opera is followed by a song by Thomas Arne, performed by Mrs Wilkinson with another of the cast on the trumpet.

The soldier tir’d
of war’s alarms
for swears the clang of hostile arms
and scorns the spear and shield

But if the brazen trumpet sound
he burns with conquest to be crown’d
and dares again the field

The Duenna was written by Richard Brisley Sheridan in 1794. The pantomime, Raymond & Agnes seems to derive from a Gothick tale of haunting by a bleeding nun in a German castle. I can’t find any of the script unfortunately, but the song, The Bleeding Nun, begins:

On each fifth day of each fifth year

The Bleeding Nun she doth appear

And slowly walks the castle round with steps that mark the trembling ground…

The Theatre Royal was renowned for its pantomimes and, in true pantomime tradition, often included local references.

In February 1804 the double bill was a comedy (Lovers’ Vows; Or, the Natural Son) “to which will be added a Melo Drame” [sic] A Tale of Mystery. The second act was enlivened by a garland dance.

To quote British History On-Line:

“The new theatre was completed by 1810 to the designs of Charles Mountain, the younger. It contained three tiers of boxes, two galleries, and a pit, with accommodation for 1,700. The stage was 54 feet deep. There was a domed ceiling over the pit and orchestra, connected to the sides of the building by a circle of groined arches, and an elliptical ceiling over the proscenium. The house was decorated in pink, yellow, white, and grey, and the boxes were lined with scarlet cloth. The cost of building aggravated Wilkinson’s financial difficulties, and summer seasons in 1810, 1812, and 1813 were expensive failures. He retired from the management in 1814 but his successors fared no better. When a fire destroyed the theatre in 1859 it was noted that ‘latterly the managements have changed almost yearly’ and that ‘the prestige of the property has lamentably decreased’.”

I have one more playbill, for 1812, one of those disastrous seasons.

As well as the comedy there are five comic songs – all with mentions of the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, as if to add lustre to the programme – and a musical farce: The Farmer; Or, The Macaroni Staymaker.  The name of the stay (or corset) maker is Jemmy Jumps and for an explanation of stays, corsets and jumps, please see the post immediately preceding this one. Unfortunately I cannot locate any of the script of that one – I would love to see some corset jokes!

 

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November 9, 2020 · 1:00 pm

Lace Up Tight – In Corsets, Stays or Jumps?

I was puzzling the other day over whether it would be more correct for my heroine to be wearing a corset or stays – or what exactly jumps were – so I did a little research.

To begin with Stays: the Oxford English Dictionary has “Stays (also a pair of stays). A laced under-bodice, stiffened by the insertion of strips of whalebone (sometimes of metal or wood) worn by women (sometimes by men) to give shape and support to the figure: = CORSET.”

The word is used in the sense of ‘staying’ something – securing it or holding it firm.

The earliest use given is 1608 and the use of the plural “is due to the fact that stays were originally (as they still are usually) made in two pieces laced together.” Presumably in the same way that we speak of a pair of drawers, which used to consist of two separate legs tied at the waist.

As for the Corset, the OED goes back to 1299 for the first use of the word, although that was a medieval outer garment. The earliest example they give for it as an undergarment is in The Times for 1795 – “Corsettes about six inches long [presumably this means the depth top to bottom], and a slight buffon tucker of two inches high, are now the only defensive paraphernalia of our fashionable Belles.” From the spelling and the timing it would appear that this term comes via the French and relates to the light, often uncorsetted, Empire fashions of the Revolution. They also quote a patent application of 1796 for “An improvement in the making of stays and corsettes.”

And finally Jumps. A jump was man’s short coat (17th & 18thc) also used generally, in the plural, for clothes, especially in country areas. But also a “kind of under (or undress) bodice worn by women, esp. during the 18th century, and in rural use in the 19th; usually fitted to the bust, and often used instead of stays. From c.1740 usually as plural jumps (a pair of jumps).” Oxford English Dictionary.

They seem to have been laced at the front, often had shoulder straps and were only lightly boned, if at all. This made them particularly suitable for women performing manual work and for nursing mothers.

A pair of jumps can be seen here c. 1770. The jumps are on the far left, with a corset hanging next to them.

For those British ladies not following extreme French fashion, the ‘long stay’ was the most used until about 1810. It is well illustrated in the satirical drawing at the top of the page: Gilray, Progress of the Toilet: The Stays published in February 1810. It laces right up the back (with one lace), covers the hips and is made to cup and support the bust. Unusually for this early date the lady is wearing knee-length drawers.

The fabric for long stays was jean (a strong twilled cotton) or buckram (a stiff cotton or linen soaked in a size such as wheat starch).

At this period, before the mass production of metal eyelets, the lace holes were simply strengthened with buttonhole stitch and would not take the strain of ferociously tight lacing. Shape therefore depended a great deal on the original cut of the garment and on its stout cloth and boning.

Many styles of stays were invented, experimenting with various fabrics for more flexibility, support and comfort and some stay-makers advertised more than fifteen varieties.

The extreme compression of the long stay gave rise to various health concerns, to say nothing of discomfort, and from about 1810 the short stay came into fashion, along with the ‘Divorce Corset’ designed to push the breasts apart.

Even with the short corset, there were critics. C. Willett Cunnington quotes one (unfortunately without attribution) as ranting in 1811: “…in eight women out of ten, the hips squeezed into a circumference little more than the waist; and the bosom shoved up to the chin, making a sort of fleshy shelf disgusting to the beholders and certainly most incommodious to the wearer.”

By September 1813 Jane Austen was writing to her sister Cassandra with the latest fashion news from London. “I learnt from Mrs Tickar’s young Lady [presumably her lady’s maid], to my high amusement, that the stays are now not made to force the Bosom up at all: that was a very unbecoming, unnatural fashion.”

The short stays were much more like a modern bra and did nothing to restrain the stomach or hips. A French pair from 1810 are shown above in a print designed to show how easy they were to put on.

This pair, for which I do not have a source, are laced up at the front.

The advertisements in La Belle Assemblee show how stays were promoted, with makers striving to differentiate their products.

In February 1809: “The much approved entire new Cotton and Brace Corset, invented and made only by Misses Linckmyers, No.12, Frith-street, Soho-square….entirely obviate every inconvenience frequently attending long stays…”

In April the same year these two adverts appeared:

Mrs Barclay is also operating in Frith Street, a short distance from the Misses Linckmyers. Not only are her corsets ‘fashionable’, but they are also ‘cheap’ and the increasing desire for comfort can be seen in the reference to ‘the simple vest’.

After all that my heroine is definitely opting for a short corset, if not a nice comfy pair of jumps!

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