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Archive for the ‘Regency Life’ Category

Sermon or Romance: Which would a Regency Miss prefer?

Posted in 19th Century England, Georgian Life, Historic Publications, jane austen, Jane Austen Novels, Jane Austen's life, Jane Austen's World, Pride and Prejudice, Regency Life, Regency World, tagged , , , on July 11, 2012| 10 Comments »

“there seem to be very few, in the style of a Novel, that you can read with safety, and yet fewer that you can read with advantage.”- Sermons to Young Women, James Fordyce, 1766

It’s no secret that Jane Austen’s family were novel readers during an age when such books were considered frivolous and not worthy of reading. (Writing a novel was considered an even worse offense!) Enter Jane Austen and Pride and Prejudice. In her delightful book, Jane created a satiric scene in which Mr. Collins confirmed Mr. Bennet’s opinion of his young cousin’s foolishness. After he enjoyed the younger man’s inanity for a while, Mr. Bennet proposed that Mr. Collins read to the group. The girls chose a novel, of which Mr. Collins disapproved:

John Opie, "A Moral Homily"

John Opie, “A Moral Homily”

Mr. Bennet’s expectations [regarding Mr. Collins] were fully answered. His cousin was as absurd as he had hoped, and he listened to him with the keenest enjoyment, maintaining at the same time the most resolute composure of countenance, and, except in an occasional glance at Elizabeth, requiring no partner in his pleasure.

By tea-time, however, the dose had been enough, and Mr. Bennet was glad to take his guest into the drawingroom again, and, when tea was over, glad to invite him to read aloud to the ladies. Mr. Collins readily assented, and a book was produced; but on beholding it (for everything announced it to be from a circulating library), he started back, and begging pardon, protested that he never read novels. Kitty stared at him, and Lydia exclaimed.—Other books were produced, and after some deliberation he chose Fordyce’s Sermons. Lydia gaped as he opened the volume, and before he had, with very monotonous solemnity, read three pages, she interrupted him with—

“Do you know, mamma, that my uncle Philips talks of turning away Richard; and if he does, Colonel Forster will hire him. My aunt told me so herself on Saturday. I shall walk to Meryton to-morrow to hear more about it, and to ask when Mr. Denny comes back from town.”

Lydia was bid by her two eldest sisters to hold her tongue; but Mr. Collins, much offended, laid aside his book, and said—

“I have often observed how little young ladies are interested by books of a serious stamp, though written solely for their benefit. It amazes me, I confess;—for, certainly, there can be nothing so advantageous to them as instruction. But I will no longer importune my young cousin.”

John Opie, “A Tale of Romance”

One cannot but help enjoy the irony of the situation. During his lifetime, Dr Fordyce was considered an excellent orator and his sermons were much appreciated, but by the time Jane Austen began to write her novels his luster had dimmed and novel reading was becoming more acceptable. These wonderful paintings by John Opie represent both sides of the sermon/novel story. In the first painting the governess is reading boring homilies to her charges in the hope of educating them. She is completely unaware of their expressions. One girl yawns, another can barely keep her eyes open, and a third looks pensively at the viewer as if to say, “Can you believe this?” Two of the youngest children entertain each other by playing cat’s cradle, and the girl sitting nearest the reader is about to fall asleep. What a wonderful tableau! One can imagine that the Bennets must have looked much like this ensemble before Lydia blurted out her question.

The second painting depicts the delight that the ensemble takes in listening to a tale of romance. They are all engaged and smiling and hanging onto every word from the reader. A kitten is left to play with a wool ball by itself.

Jane Austen employed words to create an ironic tone; John Opie used images. Both used their respective mediums to make a memorable point. Today, Dr. Fordyce’s sermons are largely forgotten. The following excerpt from Sermon VIII, Volume 2 demonstrates why he was considered dull and stodgy even 200 years ago:

Sermons to Young Women, Volume 2, James Fordyce, 1767. You can download the volume as an ebook at this link.

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River Bathing in the Georgian Era

Posted in 18th Century England, 19th Century England, Jane Austen's World, Regency Life, tagged , , , on July 8, 2012| 16 Comments »

Gentle readers, I have been staying inside during this week’s heatwave, which shows no signs of letting up. As I showered, I wondered how people in days of yore dealt with their sweat and overheated bodies. Karl Philipp Moritz’s excellent and delightful travel journal from 1782, ‘Travels in England’, gave me a clue. Here are some excerpts from his account of wandering through the British countryside.

River Scene with Bathers, 18th century (oil on canvas), Vernet, Claude Joseph (1714-89) Image @Bridgeman

Now it is a pleasing exchange to find that in two hours I can walk eight miles.  And now I fancy I was about seventeen miles from London, when I came to an inn, where, for a little wine and water, I was obliged to pay sixpence.  An Englishman who happened to be sitting by the side of the innkeeper found out that I was a German, and, of course, from the country of his queen, in praise of whom he was quite lavish, observing more than once that England never had such a queen, and would not easily get such another.

It now began to grow hot.  On the left hand, almost close to the high road, I met with a singularly clear rivulet.  In this I bathed, and was much refreshed, and afterwards, with fresh alacrity, continued my journey.

A river landscape with bathers, Dutch 18th c. painting. Such scenes were common throughout Europe.

Karl, a romanticist, read Milton as he rested in between long walks. His account bears witness to his love of the British countryside, despite the poor manners of inn keepers, who were wary of a man on foot. (Those who traveled on horseback or in a carriage received preferential treatment. )The following description shows how people during the Georgian era were not as deprived of baths as we thought, or as adverse to bathing!

I went down into the coffee-room, which is immediately at the entrance of the house, and told the landlord that I thought I wished to have yet one more walk.  On this he obligingly directed me to stroll down a pleasant field behind his house, at the foot of which, he said, I should find the Thames, and a good bathing place.

I followed his advice; and this evening was, if possible, finer than the preceding.  Here again, as I had been told I should, I found the Thames with all its gentle windings.  Windsor shone nearly as bright over the green vale as those charming houses on Richmond Hill, and the verdure was not less soft and delicate.  The field I was in seemed to slope a little towards the Thames.  I seated myself near a bush, and there waited the going down of the sun.  At a distance I saw a number of people bathing in the Thames.  When, after sunset, they were a little dispersed, I drew near the spot I had been directed to; and here, for the first time, I sported in the cool tide of the Thames.  The bank was steep, but my landlord had dug some steps that went down into the water, which is extremely convenient for those who cannot swim.  Whilst I was there, a couple of smart lively apprentice boys came also from the town, who, with the greatest expedition, threw off their clothes and leathern aprons, and plunged themselves, head foremost, into the water, where they opposed the tide with their sinewy arms till they were tired.  They advised me, with much natural civility, to untie my hair, and that then, like them, I might plunge into the stream head foremost. Refreshed and strengthened by this cool bath, I took a long walk by moonlight on the banks of the Thames.  To my left were the towers of Windsor, before me a little village with a steeple, the top of which peeped out among the green trees, at a distance two inviting hills which I was to climb in the morning, and around me the green cornfields.  Oh! how indescribably beautiful was this evening and this walk!

Women Bathers by a River, Tharp, 1900. This painting was made over 100 years after Karl’s journey. Notice the segregation of the women from the men, which held true over a century before this painting was made.

About Karl Philipp Moritz (from Wikipedia): Karl was a German author, editor and essayist of the Sturm und Drang, late enlightenment, and classicist periods, influencing early German Romanticism as well. He led a life as a hatter’s apprentice, teacher, journalist, literary critic, professor of art and linguistics, and member of both of Berlin’s academies. Karl traveled through England in his 20s; he died young, when he was 37.

This scene in Pride and Prejudice 1995 might not have been in Jane’s book, but Darcy’s desire to cool off in his stream-fed pond made sense and was historically accurate.

You can download Karl Philipp Moritz’s book for free into your Kindle or Kindle app. [Moritz, Karl Philipp, 1757-1793. Travels in England in 1782 by Karl Philipp Moritz (Kindle Locations 987-992). Mobipocket (an Amazon.com company).]

Colin Firth in a wet shirt.

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A Regency Gentleman’s Wardrobe: Thomas Coutts, Banker

Posted in 19th Century England, Georgian Life, Jane Austen's World, Regency Life, Regency style, tagged , , , , , , on July 2, 2012| 11 Comments »

Among the principle gifts in 1908 may be mentioned: – suit of clothes, &c., formerly belonging to Mr Thomas Coutts, the founder of Coutts Bank, died 1822, given by Francis Coutts, Esq., Announcement for The Victoria & Albert Museum

Shirt. Image @Metropolitan Museum of Art

This cryptic announcement does not tell the whole story of how a number of important museums around the world came into the possession of several portions of Mr. Coutt’s wardrobe. In her excellent book, Four Hundred Years of Fashion, Natalie Rothstein (curator of silks at the Victoria & Albert Museum) recounted how the clothes that had once been worn by Thomas Coutts, successful banker, came to be passed down for several generations in the family and divided among a number of major museums in 1908 and 1912.  The collection was unusual, for it consisted of the entire wardrobe of a gentleman who lived in the early 19th century, that included:

the considerable number of cloth costumes, articles of hosiery and underclothing left by Mr Thomas Coutts at the time of his death, 24th February 1822 . . . The cloth suits are all of a plain black and of precisely the same cut, so that only one is necessary for exhibition.”

One of the ten wigs in the “brutus” style. One wonders if Mr. Coutts is wearing one in the illustration below! Image @The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Top hat

Additional clothes in the collection include: 57 items of underwear made of linen or wool,  46 shirts made of a fine cambric and with and without frills, four spotted nightgowns, several plain nightgowns, 13 pair of leather and wool gloves, ten wigs and three beaver hats. Such a large, intact group of clothes from one source was rare and unique. Ironically for the museums, according to Strandlines, “Thomas Coutts seems to have been an eccentric man, who preferred to dress scruffily and to hide his wealth, rather than display it.”

Thomas Coutts. {From an engraving by R. W. Sievier of an oil painting by Sir W. Beechey, R.A.)

Coutts was not a wit himself or the cause of wit in others. There are, indeed, two or three anecdotes, ” duplications,” in the argot of the Higher Criticism of the same legend, which turn upon the piquant incongruity of his garb with his gear. He is dressed in a threadbare coat, “the costume of a decayed gentleman,” and a benevolent stranger of limited means presses a guinea into his hand, and then to his dismay learns that he has ” pouched ” the wealthiest man in England. It may have been so. A dean once complained to the present writer that he was often mistaken for the verger, and offered a shilling for his services as guide to the Cathedral. It is possible that before the days of Harriot Mellon, Coutts was sometimes ” attired in very faded, worn-out clothes,” but his wardrobe, which his widow preserved in camphor, was, like Alice Fell’s new cloak, as stout and ” warm as man can sell.” A select portion is preserved at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and may be inspected by the curious. He had, too, some five or six ” Brutus ” wigs, which were of the finest make and the costliest description. Even if these legends are founded on fact, they are hardly worth the re-telling.” – The life of Thomas Coutts, banker, Ernest Hartley Coleridge (1920).

Harriot Mellon Coutts and the future Duchess of St. Albans, painted by Sir William Beechey in 1817-1818. She preserved her husband’s wardrobe.

It was fortuitous that Coutt’s second wife, Harriot Coutts, nee Mellon, was the daughter of a wardrobe-keeper in a company of strolling players. One can only imagine that when she was made a widow the preservation of her husband’s wardrobe would come naturally to her. The Victoria & Albert Museum eventually acquired three suits, several sets of the underwear, two of the spotted nightgown, and some accessories. The rest of Coutts’s wardrobe was (sadly) divided among a number of museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Royal Ontario Museum, The Royal Scottish Museum, Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, and more. All but one of the museums would receive a black suit. With vast understatement, Ms. Rothstein (who laments the break up of such an intact collection) writes:

The clothes worn by Mr Coutts were probably not the height of fashion but rather conservative. There is no mention of any trousers for instance, in the full list of his clothes. All his suits had breeches. The cut of his coats is consistent with the current fashions: his tailor was probably as conservative as his customer. None of his coats had a waist seam. – Four Hundred Years of Fashion, Natalie Rothstein, p. 62

Black wool day suit. Image @ Victoria & Albert Museum

Since the late 16th century, middle-class professionals like doctors, lawyers, clergymen, academics, merchants, and businessmen have worn these stark black suits. This tradition continued through the 19th century and well into the 20th. “The sombre colour of this suit befits the sober profession of its wearer, Thomas Coutts (1735-1822), the founder of Coutts Bank., including the old-fashioned breeches, which suited his age. Top hat made in Great Britain, ca. 1800-1817. Cotton shirt, (1800-1820) made in England. (Text from the V&A.)

Detail of one of Coutts’s nightgowns. Image @Victoria & Albert Museum

Nightgown. Image @V&A

Nightgown. Image @V&A

Nightgowns were worn over shirt and breeches, in the privacy of home before noon or late at night.  The tufts of black wool on the cream wool fabric are meant to imitate ermine. These nightgowns come from the wardrobe of Thomas Coutts (1735-1822), the founder of Coutts Bank. (Text from the V&A.)

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Aquatic Theatre, Sadler’s Wells: Early 19th Century

Posted in 19th Century England, Georgian London, Jane Austen's World, Regency Customs, Regency Life, Regency society, tagged , , , , , on June 28, 2012| 6 Comments »

Sadler’s Wells Aquatic Theatre, 1813. copyright The V&A Museum. Click on image to view details.

Sadler’s Wells was a performing arts area located in Clerkenwell in the outskirts of London. Named after Richard Sadler, who opened a musick house there in the late 17th century, the region boasted well water thought to have medicinal qualities.

Sadler was prompted to claim that drinking the water from the wells would be effective against “dropsy, jaundice, scurvy, green sickness and other distempers to which females are liable – ulcers, fits of the mother, virgin’s fever and hypochondriacal distemper.” -Wikipedia

Six theatres have stood at this site since Sadler built his first theatre. A second theatre,  Sadler’s Wells, was constructed in 1765, which attracted summer theatre goers (the Theatre Royal offered performances only in the fall and winter.)

Interior of the theatre in 1810. One can see the water-filled tank on the stage.

In the early 19th century, Sadler’s Wells began to offer aquatic spectacles. The construction of a large tank (90x24x3 ft)  in 1804 by Charles Dibdin covered the entire area of the stage. It was flooded with water that was pumped from the nearby New River at the cost of 30 pounds per annum. This renovation allowed for the theatre to be used for naval melodramas, a popular theme, one imagines, in the days of the Napoleonic Wars and tales of Admiral Nelson’s heroism. The Siege of Gilbraltar, an ambitious spectacle, deployed 117 model ships created by the Woolwich Dockyard shipwrights and riggers, who used a scale of one inch to a foot in exact imitation of the slightest details, including the rigging. Children were cast as drowning Spanish sailors, and could be seen struggling in the waves.

Scenic artist at work, 1790. Image @British Museum

A beautiful drop scene that filled up all the area of the proscenium showed the English fleet drawn up in battle against France and Spain. The enormous painting was used to entertain the audience during a delay while preparations were made behind stage. In order to alleviate 20 minutes of boredom between scenes, the stage slowly rose to nearly the roof of the theatre in full view. A second water tank was built on the theatre’s roof to simulate waterfalls. (With the lack of temperature control in the 19th century and windows in the main area, one can imagine that the theatre’s interior developed a powerful moldy smell in the heat of summer!)

Audience watching a play at Drury Lane, Rowlandson, 1785

The behavior of the theatre goers at Sadler’s Wells left much to be desired. As early as 1711 it was observed that members of the audience were publicly drunk, and their behavior boorish and loutish. Karl Philipp Moritz, a German traveler in England in 1782, described in his travel diary the audience in a typical British play house. Not only was the crowd rowdy between scenes and before the performance (making a “noise and uproar”), but there was a constant pelting of orange peels, for oranges were “tolerably cheap”.

Besides this perpetual pelting from the gallery, which renders and English play-house so uncomfortable, there is no end to their calling out and knocking with their sticks till the curtain is drawn up…I sometimes heard, too, the people in the lower or middle gallery quarrelling with those of the upper one. Behind me, in the pit, sat a young fop, who, in order to display his costly stone buckles with the utmost brilliancy, continually put his foot on my bench, and even sometimes upon my coat. – Karl Philipp Moritz

Another view of the theatre. Fishing seems to have been a popular pasttime as well.

If the Sadler’s Wells theatre audience had a particularly rowdy reputation compared to theatres in central London, one can only imagine how truly awful the experience was. The theatre slowly lost its lustre during the first half of the 19th century, for it was located in the rural outskirts of London. Without street lights and an organized police force, travel at night was dangerous, and patrons of the theatre were provided escorts as they traveled back to central London.

 Pinero’s play Trelawny of the ‘Wells’ (1898), portrays Sadler’s Wells as outmoded by the new fashion for realism. The theatre declined until, by 1875, plans to turn it into a bath house were proposed and, for a while, the new craze of roller skating was catered to, as the theatre was converted into a roller-skating rink and later a prize fight arena. The theatre was condemned as a dangerous structure in 1878. – Wikipedia

Anglers at Sadler’s Wells.

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Jane Austen’s Cabochon Ring: to be auctioned July 10th

Posted in jane austen, Jane Austen's World, Popular culture, Regency Life, tagged , , on June 22, 2012| 19 Comments »

I am jumping a bit late on the Jane Austen bandwagon with news of this ring. Coverage by Austen Authors and Austenonly is quite detailed and interesting, and I have very little to add to their information other than to offer the text of the PDF document put out by Sotheby’s. The ring, as well as original editions of Jane’s books, will be auctioned on July 10th.

I will say that this cabochon ring is lovely and made of a semi-precious stone, which makes sense, considering Jane’s economic situation. Amazingly, no one knew of this possession until quite recently, when it came time to be sold. The £30,000 price tag will be realized quickly, no doubt, and the number of people who will bid on this rare item will push the price well past its original estimate. Does anyone want to bet for how much this ring will eventually go? Let’s hope it will find a home in a British museum.

PROVENANCE
Jane Austen (1775-1817); her sister Cassandra (1773-1845); given in 1820 to her sister-in-law Eleanor Austen (née Jackson), second wife of Rev. Henry Thomas Austen (d. 1864); given in 1863 to her niece Caroline Mary Craven Austen (1805-1880, the daughter of Rev. James Austen); her niece Mary A. Austen-Leigh (perhaps first to her mother Emma Austen-Leigh, née Smith); her niece Mary Dorothy Austen-Leigh; given to her sister Winifred Jenkyns on 27 March 1962; thence by descent

LITERATURE
W. Midgley, ‘The Revd. Henry and Mrs Eleanor Austen’, Collected Reports of the Jane Austen Society: 1976-85 (1989), 86-91

CATALOGUE NOTE
An intimate personal possession of Jane Austen’s, hitherto unknown to scholars, that has remained with the author’s descendants until the present day. The stone is probably Odontalite, a form of fossilised dentine that has been heated to give it a distinctive blue colour, which came into fashion in the early 19th Century as a substitute for turquoise. It is an attractive but simply designed piece, befitting not only its owner’s modest income but also what is known of her taste in jewellery. Fanny Price, the heroine of Mansfield Park, is given a gold chain by her cousin Edmund “in all the niceness of jewellers packing”, with the comment that when making his choice “I consulted the simplicity of your taste” – in contrast to the more elaborately decorated chain that she had been given by Mary Crawford. Similar sentiments are found in one of Austen’s letters when she informed her sister Cassandra that “I have bought your locket … it is neat and plain, set in gold” (24 May 1813).

On Jane’s death her jewellery, along with other personal possessions, passed to Cassandra, and she appears to have given a number of pieces as mementos. After Jane’s death Cassandra wrote to Fanny Knight that Jane had left “one of her gold chains” to Fanny’s god-daughter Louisa (29 July 1817), and she appears to have given the best-known piece of jewellery known to have belonged to her sister, the topaz cross given to her by her brother Charles in 1801 (see her letter to Cassandra, 26 May 1801), to their mutual friend Martha Lloyd.

Three years after Jane’s death, Cassandra gave the ring to Eleanor Jackson, on hearing the news that she was about to marry her brother Rev. Henry Thomas Austen. Henry had been Jane’s favourite brother and was closely involved in getting her novels into print. He lived locally to Cassandra and was by this time a clergyman (curate of Chawton from 1816, appointed perpetual curate of nearby Bentley in 1824), having previously gone bankrupt as a banker. Eleanor, his second wife, was the niece of the rector of Chawton, Rev. Papillon, and seems to have been known to the Austen family for many years.

Eleanor kept the ring for many years, bequeathing it to her niece Caroline shortly before her death. Caroline’s brother, James-Edward Austen-Leigh, wrote A Memoir of Jane Austen, and Caroline herself assisted this project by committing her own childhood memories of her aunt to paper, for her brother’s use. Caroline never married and the ring passed in turn to James-Edward’s daughter Mary, at which point it passed beyond the generation who had personal memories of Jane.

Click here for the PDF document

Also for sale:

Pride and Prejudice, Edgerton, 1813

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