Footnotes on Friday

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Go Georgian Architecture hunting in London

Just a short post this week to share a few resources on Georgian townhouses.

Here’s a site I found that explores Georgian architecture in London, with lots of examples, useful labels and fun explanations.

https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/a-spotter-s-guide-the-early-georgian-townhouse/kAIy8l4S5n_gKA

This takes us inside:

https://janeaustensworld.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/characteristics-of-the-georgian-town-house/

As does this:

https://austenauthors.net/peak-inside-the-typical-regency-era-townhouse/

Enjoy! And if you want more, look for architectural pattern books from the era! They were resources for builders, and are great fun.

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A word from your King and more

Have you seen the Georgian Papers Programme website?

The GPP is a ten-year interdisciplinary project to digitise, conserve, catalogue, transcribe, interpret and disseminate 425,000 pages or 65,000 items in the Royal Archives and Royal Library relating to the Georgian period, 1714-1837.

Wow. Just wow!

As you would expect, the archive, the research papers based on the archive, and the blog based on the research papers are a treasure trove for anyone interested in the era. For example, who knew that Prince Frederick, the Prince of Wales, went truffle hunting?

When I think of truffle-hunting (which is not that often), I think of pigs rooting around in Italian forests, not dogs in the English countryside. Indeed, most of the recent literature on truffle-hunting dogs implies that the use of dogs to find truffles is a relatively recent development. Frederick, Prince of Wales’, rental of two truffle hunting dogs for three months in 1750-51 tells us that using dogs to find these valuable fungi is a much older idea than most modern truffle-hunters realize.

Frederick’s account books do not mention the breed of these rental pups. The Italian Lagatto Romagnolo, a curly-haired water retriever, is renowned for its truffle-hunting abilities, but Labrador retrievers, poodles, and even Chihuahuas can be truffle-hunters. Indeed, dogs are better for hunting truffles than pigs, because dogs are far less likely to eat the truffle once they’ve found it!

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Inspiration for lovers

Back in the Regency, before printed cards became affordable and readily available, people still sent cards on Valentine’s Day–home made cards, as fancy as the person’s imagination and purse could manage, usually enhanced with a hand-written saying or poem.

And if you couldn’t write a poem to save your soul?

Then you were in luck, for a number of enterprising people put out pamphlets and even whole books with poems for your valentine.

This one is sweet:

Was there ever an urchin like Cupid so sly?
Well armed and mounted aloft in the sky;
He wounds, and we love, and then off he does fly.

That I am wounded, alas, is too true,
And that I can only be healed by you;
Is likewise a fact. Ah! What shall I do?

I’ll rely on thy pity, dear charmer of mine.
Sure you’ll not break the heart of thy poor Valentine!

You could find a poem addressed to the trade of your beloved:

So nice you dress your Lamb and Veal,
My passion I cannot conceal;
But plainly must declare to you,
I wish that you would dress me too.

When at your shop you take your stand,
Your knife and steel within each hand;
I listen to your pleasing cry,
Which sounds so shrill, d’ye buy, d’ye buy.

Now February shows his face;
And genial Spring comes on apace;
Like birds, ah! prithee let us join,
Upon the day of Valentine.

The books also provided suitable answers, also in rhyme–either a yeah or, as in the valentine to the nursery maid, below, a resounding nay.

So fond of children you are grown,
I wish you had some of your own,
I think my dear, if you’ll consent,
That I in that could give content;

How charming it would be to see,
A little baby, just like thee;
Say if you like this plan of mine,
As you’re today my Valentine.”

The Nursery Maid’s Answer:

“Pray Mr. Smack drive on, gee-ho,
With me our courtship will not do,
Your face is ugly, but your mind
Is ten times uglier, I find;

I am a girl that’s very nice,
And won’t be bought at your price;
Your Valentine I will not be,
So prithee think no more of me.

Buy Valentines From Bath for 99c, until Valentine’s Day only

To help you celebrate this lover’s day, we’re keeping the Bluestocking Belles’ 2019 collection of Regency novellas, https://bluestockingbelles.net/belles-joint-projects/valentines-from-bath/, at 99c until after Valentine’s Day. Follow the link for more details and buy links.

 

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Maps of Regency London

I set out to read about the slums of London in 1814, and found myself with two wonderful maps. The one above was produced in 1812, and shows the city a couple of years before my work-in-progress. Look at the parks and wide streets to the west of the ancient heart of the city. To the east we see industry and docks. That was the way the wind blew. Even when Shakespeare was alive, the city’s stink reached noses fifty miles away. It wasn’t any sweeter in Regency times, what with coal fires and the smell of a million people, all their associated animals, and the sewage they collectively produced. Of course the rich preferred to live to the West.

The second map was the last to show every single building in London, and was drawn in 1799. You’ll find a digitised, fully scaleable, version of it here. As the characters in my 3rd and 4th Mountain King books venture into the slum kingdom of my villain, this is going to be extremely useful. Now to decide precisely where to put my imaginary Devil’s Kitchen.

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An odd snippet of history

I’ve started thinking about my newsletter story for February. My inspiration this time is the Seekers song, The Carnival is Over.

When I looked up the lyrics to see if I’d remembered them correctly, I found out that Tom Springfield, who wrote the lyrics, had adapted a tune to a Russian song, written in the late nineteenth century, about a Cossack revolutionary and robber. In the original, the Cossack Stenka Razin is wedding a Persian princess, captured during a raid down through the Caspian Sea. After one night, his followers accuse him of allowing his woman to make him soft. So he picks her up and throws her into the Volga River in order to keep peace within his band.

What a chilling little tale as background to a lovely song!

See a video clip of the Seekers singing The Carnival is Over. For the original lyrics to the Stenka Razin song and a translation, scroll through the Wikipedia article, here.

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Fact, Historical fiction, Fantasy

As the eighteenth century ended in revolution and war, fashions changed. Woman began wearing the simpler style of women’s clothing, known now as empire line, after the empire of Napoleon Bonaparte whose wife Josephine popularised the fashion.

But in the court of Queen Charlotte, queen of Great Britain, the hoops of her youth still prevailed. Which led to the bizarre fashion pictured above — an empire silhouette for the bodice, with a hoop, petticoat, and overskirt below. As if hoops weren’t enough to handle, the poor debutante of the time also had to handle a train, plus between three and eight ostrich plumes in her hair. Probably not pinned in place by a tiara, since tiaras were only for adults, and the girls being presented to the queen for the first time were generally too young to be regarded as adults. (Old enough to marry, though, since the purpose of their debut was to signal their availability as brides.)

All of which is by way of saying that, in the first episode of Brigerton, I picked up six historical errors before the first titles. The non-court style dress, the lack of ostrich feathers, the presence of the younger children in the audience at court… it goes on and on. By the time Anthony Brigerton dropped his pants, quite unnecessarily, since unbuttoning his fall would have been sufficient, I had quite sensibly given up.

The story Julia Quinn wrote was Fiction. The Shondaland version was Fantasy — a delightful froth with a mashup of fashions, practices, and historical miscellany. I loved it. I recommend it. It’s a delightful romp. And I hope it will lead to a greater interest in the genre I love. But if you’re going to watch it, leave your historical research knowledge at the door.

 

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A Tale of Two Princes

The handsome young pair above are Prince George, the Prince of Wales, and his next youngest brother, Frederick, Duke of York and Albany. They were fifteen and fourteen respectively when this was painted. Prince George was two years off his much-publicised affair with the actress Mary Robinson that marked the transition of his strained relationship with his father from sullen obedience to open rebellion, and that gave him the moniker ‘Florizel’.

Poor George was stuck with the role of Prince of Wales–fundamentally king in waiting and by all that’s holy boy, you’d better wait patiently. Frederick, on the other hand, was gazetted as an officer in the army the following year. So the age of seventeen was momentous for both of them: one set out publicly on a life of hedonism, display, emotional excesses and rebellion, and the other began a career in the army, and is credited with accomplishments that include carrying out the major reforms that fitted the army for the Peninsular campaign of the Napoleonic wars, founding Sandhurst, a military school which promoted merit-based training for future officers.

Yes, he had an expensive gambling habit, but he was also a hardworking military officer and later served in the House of Lords.

The Prince of Wales, on the other hand, had to invent his own role. Patron of the arts, pain in his father’s rear end, lover, entertainer, home renovator extraordinaire… poor George.

 

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Cravats, Kerchiefs, and Neck Ties

One of the great benefits of leaving his last office job, according to my personal romantic hero, was that he could get rid of most of his neckties. Ghastly things, he reckons, with no practical purpose. He kept a couple for formal occasions, and the rest went to the charity shop, to torture some other poor fellow.

I was thinking about that the other day, as a friend and I looked at a period inappropriate book cover. According to the artist, the male model was Victorian, but that’s a period of more than six decades. Men’s neckwear changed in that time, so I went looking to find out how and when.

First, let me take you back to the beginning. Neck scarves of some kind were worn in ancient times. We can see them in the Terracotta Warriors, in Roman soldiers on Trajan’s Column,  and in pictures of medieval knights and Mongol warriors. A likely purpose was as a practical garment to tuck round the edge of armour to stop chafing, or to perhaps to stop sweat from rolling down the neck and setting up an itch, or to keep the neck warm, or even for multiple purposes, not the least of which might be battlefield medicine.

Their evolution from a practical garment to sartorial elegance dates back to the Thirty Years War. This was a conflict fought in Europe in the first half of the seventeenth century, as part of the struggle for dominance between the Austro-Spanish Hapsburgs and the French Bourbons. The French hired mercenaries from Croatia, and they wore a neck scarf to tie the top of their tunics shut. The look caught on among the French and spread from there. Of course, the aristocrats who adopted the fashion wore lace cravats (La Cravatte was the name given to the neckwear by Louis XIII; a nod to the Croatians).

The lace got steadily more extravagant through the early part of the eighteenth century, and matched with lace cuffs made a spectacular show.

Then came the French Revolution, which affected fashion as well as politics. The revolutionaries affected a less ostentatious style of dress, and — in fashion — where the French led, the rest of Europe followed. The cravat we know from Regency movies and books was born. The cravat covered all but the collar of the shirt, and often that, as well — a shirt being regarded as underclothes at the time. A long rectangle of fabric was folded and intricately knotted to the specifications of the wearer (or his valet, but a gentleman with pretensions to elegance would not trust such an important detail to his valet).

At the turn of the century, Beau Brummell dictated that the cravat should be a crisp white as should the stockings, the breeches and coat black, and only the waistcoat in colour. Of course, not everyone agreed, and cravats of all colours can be seen in paintings of the time.

The simplest and most casual way of tying a cravat was to wrap it around the neck several times and tie a bow, and this became highly fashionable as the nineteenth century wore on. By the 1850s, gentlemen were wearing a black cravat or bow tie, simply folded and pinned so that the shirt showed between the bottom of the tie and the top of the waistcoat. A thinner piece of material became the Ascot tie, so called because it was casual wear for events such as race meetings–recognisably a necktie like those still worn today, but much wider, and pinned to the shirt.

The next evolution was the club tie, purportedly created in the 1880s, when the rowing team of Exeter College, Oxford, took the striped bands off their hats and tied them around their necks.

The modern necktie was invented by an American in the 1920s — three pieces of material cut on the bias, thus eliminating wrinkles. My husband’s least favourite item of men’s clothing had arrived.

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The farmhouse that grew

Once upon a time there was a prince who liked to go to the seaside. One of his favourite uncles lived in Brighton, and George found the seaside resort very much to his taste. He rented a rather pleasant farmhouse, Brighton House, from a member of his staff, and later entered into a lease that let him make the changes he wanted.

The architect he chose, Henry Holland, built a rotunda over the grand dining room, and added a new wing. Brighton House became Marine Pavilion.

But it didn’t stop there. Next came extensive stables, with room for 60 horses. The stables were even bigger than the house.

But soon, that wasn’t enough. I guess the prince was having fun. The interiors were originally neoclassical, but the prince was soon having them all converted to the new oriental style, and then he had some even grander ideas. The original architect built on again, adding more rooms, but that still wasn’t enough. By 1815, a new architect, John Nash, was working on the building we have today–little is left of the first two incarnations of the building, apart from the room under one of the new domes, once the dining room, then the grand saloon.

The building was finally finished in 1823, and by then our prince was king, and too busy for more than two more visits to the farmhouse that grew.

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I was looking into this because I had my heroine in my latest book visit the Royal Pavilion, and I suddenly thought to check whether it had been built yet. It hadn’t. It was still the Marine Pavilion.

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The long shadow of war

The battle of Waterloo was touch and go; one of those victories where so many people die, that even the side that wins still loses. The casualty rate (dead, wounded and missing) was around 45% (of a total 185,000), and this was only the culminating battle in a long war with the French that lasted, with only small breaks, from 1789 until that great battle in 1815.

One of the most moving museum exhibitions I’ve ever been to was the Maori Battalion exhibition at the Rotorua Museum. The exhibits included diary notes and letters from military personnel, and video clips of interviews with them. In World War 1, over a third of those who served in the Battalion were killed or injured. In World War II, of 16,000 men who enlisted, 3,600 joined the Maori Battlion. Close to two-thirds were killed, wounded, taken prisoner or reported missing. The impact of the loss of two generations of young leaders (to death or to the after-effects of war) has been argued about for most of my lifetime. I remember one clip where the soldier interviewed talked about how, in the heat of war, he didn’t think about the number of his brothers-in-arms left behind buried in enemy soil. Then he came home, and saw the gaps in his community; saw the memorials in his wharenui (meeting house).

Deaths attributed to that long war involving France, the British and the rest of Europe are somewhere in the region of three plus million (military and civilian). What did that do to Europe, an area that, in 1800, had an estimated population of 150 million? Great Britain wasn’t fought of over, but it lost a staggering number of military personnel. It started the nineteenth century with not quite nine million people, and lost more than 300,000 soldiers and sailors in the next fifteen years. Think of it like this. Out of every 15 men, one died. That number doesn’t include the ones that keep turning up in my books–maimed, scarred, afflicted with nightmares.

My own generation was raised by people who went through the second world war, and theirs by the survivors of the first. On 11 November, when the military were left fighting right up to the time appointed for the armistice–even though peace had been more or less agreed for three days and signed for six hours–we do well to remember that the long shadow of war continues after the war ends.