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As you know I’ve long been fascinated by the history of the Foundling Museum, and am convinced it was partly due to its presence in Brunswick Square that Jane Austen effected the reconciliation of Robert Martin and the near foundling Harriet Smith there in Emma.
The Museum is a fascinating place, and its raison d’être of accepting unwanted children is poignant. Recently they have published a small booklet on the subject of their famous Tokens, which form part of the Museum’s collection. They very kindly sent me a copy and it is that copy which is under review here today.
The tokens are small items that were left behind with children when they were accepted into the care of the hospital, and were used as identifiers, should the child’s parent wish to reclaim it. We have looked at the fabric tokens before, in my account of the Musuem’s Threads of Feeling exhibition, curated by John Styles. This booklet does mention them, but concentrates on the other, mostly tiny objects, that were left with the children. As the director of the museum, Caro Howell, writes in the forward to the book:
In telling the story of the Foundling Hospital, which continues today as the children’s charity Coram, the Foundling Museum can draw upon a wonderful collection of art by Hogarth and his contemporaries; eighteenth century interiors, furniture and artefacts; archival material relating to the life and work of Handel; and the testimonies of both former pupils and looked-after children today. Yet for many visitors it is the tokens that leave the biggest impression.
The tokens were usually sealed within the billet , that is, the admission document written for each child. They were kept on deposit a the Hospital and were not opened again unless the child was claimed, and the token was used as a means of identifying the parent who had given the child up to the Hospital’s care. At the point when the child was accepted by the Hospital all its family links were severed, and it was given a new name, hence the need for its identifying object for future reconciliations. In 1858 John Brownlow, the then Secretary of the Hospital, brought the existence of these tokens to the notice of the Committee of Governors. They decided to take some of the tokens from the billets and place them on display. Interestingly Brownlow had once been a foundling at the Hospital, and it has been suggested that it was Charles Dickens’regard for him, that made him adopt the name of Brownlow for Oliver Twist’s benefactor, and the man who finally proved Oliver’s identity. Brownlow the foundling eventually rose above his humble beginnings to become the Hosptial’s Secretary, historian and archivist
Sadly, though this action brought the world’s attention to these tokens (and, of course, the stories of the children and their parents that the tokens represented) separating them from their billets meant that the original links with the children were broken and lost, and it has been a mammoth task for the authors of the booklet to try to reunite the tokens with their original billets, in order to decipher the human story and significance of the token donated with the child. So far it has taken them eight years,and the research into the tokens is on-going.
The tokens can be classified into three main categories- written, halved and tangible tokens. Some are combined into more than one category- for example, playing cards, often used as a token were tangible objects, something that could be written on and also something that could be halved( the parent keeping one half, the other was deposited with the Hospital). The authors of the book have researched the links back to the children and have also worked hard to identify the identifiers, some of which are very small, damaged or so obscure as to be virtually unknown to the modern eye.
For example, this engraved piece of mother of pearl was one identifying object. It was inscribed with the words:
James son of James Concannon Gent , law or now of Jamaica 1757
The authors have discovered that James’ billet entry reveals he was two months old when he was admitted to the Hospital.
“A note in educated hand writing states he was born on the 18th September 1757 , baptised and registered at St Sepulchre-without-Newgate, London on 4th september and “put in the house on 23rd November” his unusual surname enabled the record of his baptism at St Sepulchre to be found which names his parents as James and Elizabeth Concanon.
He may have been left behind while his mother accompanied his father on military service in the West INdes, for the authors of the book have discovered that a Lieutenant James Concannon served in the Royal Artillery at that time. James was renamed “Raymond Kent” and he survived and was placed by the Hospital as an apprentice with a Farmer and Slater at Thorpe Hesley in Yorkshire.
One of the more famous tokens which has some resonance for we Janeites- is the gambling fish, which Jane Austen mentioned in Pride and Prejudice.
The child connected to this ivory gambling token was a five week old boy, who was named John Cox by the Hospital. The authors of the book have had to become expert on these tiny objects- coins, jewels, fabrics, etc – in order to try and understand why they were left with children and what they might tell us about the parent and their circumstances. The research really does make for absorbing reading.
This booklet is a slim volume-32 pages long, but it is a fascinating story- part historical, part detective,-of the reuniting of these very moving tokens with the identity of the child whose parents deported them- for whatever reason-into the care of the Foundling Hospital. I can throughly recommend it to you.
You can purchase the book directly from the Museum Shop : go here to find all the details of this and other publications issued by the Museum, and for details of how to order by mail.
Last week I reviewed Vauxhall Gardens: A History by David Coke and Alan Borg. That book, while fascinating, gigantic in size and scope, and well worth its price, is rather expensive and I wanted to point you in the way of a more reasonably-priced soft cover book on the same topic, The English Pleasure Garden by Sarah Jane Downing, published by Shire.
This is not a very large book, only 64 page in all, but it manages to be a comprehensive overview on the subject of those lost pleasure gardens, which were such a feature of 18th /early 19th century life. It does not concentrate on one garden, but gives the reader a clear view of the rather short history of these gardens from their Stuart beginnings to their sad Victorian end.
There are chapters on the London gardens, and you may be interested to know that Vauxhall and Ranelagh were not the only gardens to visit. There were 64 pleasure gardens in London and its environs during this period. Here is a picture of one of the more rural pleasure gardens, Sadlers Wells, in Islington, then a small village just outside the city of London.
In the 18th century it was a place to take the waters, hence the name “wells” but today it is rather more well-known as the site of a theatre famous for staging dance in all its forms.
The seedier side of 18th century life that these gardens attracted is also addressed; here is an image from the late 18th century illustrating an intoxicated woman returning home very late (or, more probably, early in the morning!) from a masquerade. This type of image illustrated the growing concern for the immoral effect of masquerades, an entertainment that Ranelagh was famous for promoting.
A fascinating section of the book is its chapters on provincial pleasure gardens. Sydney Gardens in Bath is included, of course, and we all know that Jane Austen lived opposite them at Sydney Place when she first moved to Bath from Steventon in 1801.
But is it very interesting to read of other, less famous gardens in Norwich, Liverpool, Newcastle-upon-Tyne- so at least Lydia Wickham had one to attend to enjoy its weekly concerts!-and the lost pleasure garden of Duddeston in Birmingham, seen below, in a very rare image:
In so small a book something has to give: and that is first, the size of the illustrations. However they are many and varied and very useful. And the details can be easily seen by the use of a magnifying glass. Second, citations. It would have been helpful to have more sources listed other than the occasional acknowledgement to a museum or library. But, that would had added to both the size and cost of the book. Some things we have to forgive.
Overall, it is a very useful starting point for understanding these lost but once magical places. I can throughly recommend this book to you.
I have been bewitched by the idea of an 18th century pleasure garden for years. Too many years to comfortably remember, if I’m painfully honest. I’ve visited the only remaining one in England -the Sydney Gardens in Bath- where Jane Austen used to love to walk when she lived opposite them at Sydney Place. I’ve collected books on them, and visited exhibitions, notably The Muse’s Bower held at Gainsborough House Museum in Sudbury, in Suffolk in 1974…
and the Vauxhall Garden section of the Rococo Exhibition held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1984.
I’ve even visited the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, in an attempt to sample something of the atmosphere of the original. Vauxhall on the Surrey bank of the Thames was the first and the most famous of them all. In fact, the term “Vauxhall” became the generic term for a pleasure garden, and its successful format was copied all over England, Europe and even in early 19th century America. A new book, Vauxhall Gardens: A History has recently been published by Yale. It is published to accompany an exhibition on the garden, which will open later in the year at the Foundling Hospital Museum in Brunswick Square. Entitled The Triumph of Pleasure, I simply cannot wait to visit it ( and report back here).
This book is exactly what I have desired to find, after all these years. A comprehensive guide to EVERY aspect of the gardens: its history, the owners, The Tyers, shown below in a portrait by Francis Hayman…
The performers, especially the music and the musicians…
The art on show in the dining booths – it was the first contemporary art exhibit in the world open to the general ( paying) public…
The fashions worn there…
The way the gardens worked, the visitors..even details of the latrines or necessary houses……
it is all covered in exquisite detail, enough even to satisfy me. The book is co- written by David Coke past curator of Gainsborough’s House Museum (where he organised the Vauxhall Garden exhibit of 1978, and he also curated the Vauxhall Garden section of the Rococo exhibit at the Vand A in 1984), and by Dr Alan Borg.
They manage to capture the atmosphere of this magical place- lit by thousands of tiny coloured-glass oil lamps,where you could wander among the leafy groves, see and hear the latest art and music, and mingle with all classes of people who cloud afford to pay the entrance fee. The only exception being servants in livery- they were not admitted to teh gardens for as David Coke remarked to me yesterday,
Servants in livery were only excluded from Vauxhall because Tyers did not want any of his visitors to be seen as obviously subservient to any other visitor. Of course, it also meant that wealthy visitors could not use their own servants to serve them supper, and had to use the Vauxhall waiters, but I’m sure this was a minor consideration.
This is all very well, I hear you say, and all very interesting, but did Vauxhall have any association with Jane Austen? It did. She wrote about it in Lesley Castle when she was 16 years old in 1791. She may not have visited it personally, and there is no mention of it in her letters, but she may have known of it by repute or by reading other novels such as Evelina (1778) or Cecilia (1782) both written by Fanny Burney, one of Jane Austen’s favoured authors, and which both mention the pleasure garden. In Letter the Seventh from Miss C. Lutterell to Miss M. Lesley, Bristol 27th March, JAne Austen wrote:
In spite of all that People may say about Green fields and the Country I was always of the opinion that London and its Amusements must be very agreeable for a while, and should be very happy could my Mother’s income allow her to jockey us into its Public-places during Winter. I always longed particularly to go to Vaux-hall to see whether the cold Beef there is cut so thin as it is reported, for I have a sly suspicion that few people understand the art of cutting a slice of cold Beef so well as I do: nay it would be had if I did not know something of the Matter, for it was a part of my education that I took by far the most pains with…
This is one of the things Vauxhall was infamous for- the thinness of the cold meat served in the dining booths. As we find in the book under discussion:
It is impossible to discuss the food without again mentioning the famous Vauxhall ham; this, like the beef, was always served in notoriously thin slices. Many stores circulated about it ,and it even made its appearance in contemporary comic poetry….eventually the thinness of the ham once picturesquely described as “sliced cobwebs” became proverbial; at homes all over London if any diner was feeling abstemious they would ask for their serving of meat to be carved “Vauxhaully”…
(Page 198)
It would seem that, unlike this country gentleman, below, Jane Austen, living in rural Hampshire, had heard all about it…
I can thoroughly recommend this well-written, witty, informative and scholarly book to you, if you are at all interested in the pleasure garden, its history or how it prospered then eventually closed in 1859. I cannot envisage having to buy another book on the subject, so comprehensive is this one. I will be reporting on the Foundling Hospital Museum exhibit in the summer. But if you want to explore a little on line then do go to Dr Borg and David Coke’s website, here, to experience a little of the Vauxhall Magic.
After a week where we discussed the merits of a portrait of Jane Austen, I thought it highly appropriate to review this fascinating book, which has been recently published by Yale. It would make the prefect present for anyone interested in the history of the perceptions of female beauty, that ever-changing ideal that is almost impossible for any one woman to attain. Aileen Ribeiro, Emeritus Professor at the Courtaluld Institute, has written a thought provoking and carefully researched book on this most elusive of subjects. Though it deals with a long time period- from 1540 to 1940- the detailed chapter on beauty in the Enlightenment period is worth the cover price of the book alone.
Jane Austen lived though a period when ideals of beauty changed almost 180 degrees. When she was born, in 1775, powdered and pomaded hair, teased fantastically high, above a powered, rouged and patched face was the fashionable norm. The picture, above, taken from a fan made in the 1770s is a satire of a fashionable woman at her toilette. Jane Austen would surely have seen women who aspired to this type of beauty. Indeed, a small, delicate rouge pot is kept in the collection of the Jane Austen’s House Museum which is thought to have been the property of her fascinating cousin and eventual sister-in-law, Eliza de Feuillide . You can see it below in one of my own photographs.( Note, this is not included in the book)
However, by the turn of the century , 1800, that had all changed.
The more natural elegance of Justine Recamier, above, though no less artful, was more favoured after the upheavals of the French Revioluton and the overthrow of the old order:
Compared with the Renaissance, the eighteenth century was a period of personal comfort, of improved hygiene and of bodily intimacy, all of which turned the toilette into a high art, in which the theatre of dressing and undressing was an much an enjoyable entertainment as making up the face. The century regarded beauty as a whole, the body as well as the face…
Professor Ribeiro discusses in immense detail how (mostly) male writers sought to comment on women’s beauty and, by these means, also attempted to control their behaviour. Look at this passage about Jane Asuten’s favourite poet, William Copwer, with his somewhat familiar arguments agasint the over use of cosmetics:
The poet William Cowper pursued the idea of deceit in make up by asking how far the eye was really deceived if the face was overly made up. In France, according to his argument, woman’s use of paint was not intended to mislead because the artifice was too obvious; Englishwomen, however, tried to mislead by more subtle make up, for they wanted “to be thought beautiful and much more beautiful than nature has made them” and so they were “guilty of a design to deceive”
In the early 19th cnetury, neoclassicism and its emphasis on the natural look inspired by the Greek and Roman statuary , flourished, as personified by this portrait of Queen Louise of Prussia by Joseph Grassi ( 1804)
But it was a type of beauty that emphasised the young and the youthful. Professor Riberio notes that at this time:
Youthfulness was a crucial component of beauty-that is, a slim figure enhanced by light and simple dress and a youthful complexion that remained well beyond the juvenile age.
This print by Robert Deighton, Fashionable Lady in Dress and Undress dating from 1807 shows the sheer amount of work and artifice that was necessary to present this appearance of youthful beauty as a woman aged…
As Professor Riberio wryly comments:
Even when the vogue for the classical flourished at the turn of the century, not every woman abandoned face paint or cosmetics; make up, like certain favoured styles of dress, is so much a part of sense of self that it is often retained beyond youth, when no longer fashionable. Many women, especially those of a certain age, must have felt more comfortable when dress assumed a natural waist level, when the arms were covered and when, by using cosmetics, they could ‘ baffle time in his invidious warfare against comeliness”
What I particularly loved was the detailed documentary on the cosmetics that women have used throughout the period covered by the book. All in the hope , sometimes a desperate and dangerous hope given the ingredients used, of appearing youthful and beautiful.
The foundation for a healthy and glowing face was unblemished skin, which was softened with a scented oil or a wax-based pomade…
The pomades which would give the appearance of a youthful skin were prepared and bought by women, rather in the way we buy age defying formulas today. Fascinating.
I can wholly recommend this beautifully produced and sumptuously illustrated book to you. Professor Riberio has a great style which is entertaining, elegant and erudite. You will love this book, and reading it will give you some insights into why Caroline Bingley was so dismissive of Elizabeth Bennet’s tan ,and why, indeed, Darcy found her glowing complexion so compelling 
But in the meantime for Elegance & Ease & Luxury . . . I shall eat Ice & drink French wine, & be above Vulgar Economy.
So wrote Jane Austen from her rich brother’s home, Godmersham Park in Kent, in a letter to her sister Cassandra dated July 1st, 1808.
Ice creams, iced drinks and iced displays were only available to the wealthy and well to do in Jane Austen’s era. As Ivan Day writes in the book under review here today:
When ice cream first appeared in Britain in the seventeenth century, it was a luxury enjoyed solely by the inhabitants of royal palaces and noble households. For two hundred years it remained an upper-class treat…
Ices could only be made on estates that possessed the luxury of an ice house- a place where, in the cold winter months, ice from lakes was stored to use throughout the year to make cold drink, puddings ( ice creams and iced waters) and decorative iced table-pieces.
There, deep under the earth, the ice- the Harvest of the Winter Months- as Elizabeth David termed it, was stored throughout the year until it had all gone, usually in late summer. Note the lake/pond ice itself was not eaten, as that would have been disgusting. It was used, usually with the addition of salt, to make other things freeze and chill.
From the mid 18th century ices also could be bought- at a price- from smart confectioners in the larger towns in England, such as the famed Gunther’s in Berkeley Square..
It is really no wonder then that Jane Austen relished the ease and elegance and luxury of her brother’s home, drinking French wine( not their usual home-bred effort ) and eating those rare ices. Something she would not normally have had access to in her little village in Hampshire.
Today’s book under review is a concise but very well written history of the ice cream in Britain. Ivan Day, the author, is, as you know, one of the foremost food historians in England. I have been lucky enough to attend some of his food courses and have been spellbound each time we have made ice cream in the Georgian manner, without the need for any modern refrigerators.
Here we have my photograph of some strawberry ice cream we were making in the 18th century way, in Gunther’s own pillar mould, set to freeze in a mixture of ice and salt, within a wooden pail.
This book, published by Shire, is fascinating. It covers, of course, periods both before and after the Georgian era, but has enough material to interest us, and for its price( £6.99) is amazingly good value. The chapters on ice houses and how the ice was gathered and stored are clear and concise. The chapter on Georgian ices is fascinating, the range of flavours on offer makes today’s ice cream manufactures offerings seem tame.
Above in an illustration from the book, is Frederick Nutt’s handwritten list of ice cream varieties dating from 1780. They include sweet ices; Burnt Ice Cream( flavoured with caramel), Burnt Almond, and Damson, together with savoury flavours, for example, Parmesan Cheese.
Ivan gives copious amounts of information as to how these ices were made, served at tale and consumed. The history of the development of ice cream recipes is entertainingly written, tracing the developments from the first known English recipe, written by Lady Anne Fanshawe who lived from 1625-1680. Ivan has an immense collection of original recipe books from this era until the turn of the last century, and plunders them in this small book to provide vivid illustrations as to how these early ices were made. The book is well and appropriately illustrated and the examples of ices made by Ivan, from his truly astounding collection of ice cream moulds, are simply breathtaking:
A nice touch is the addition to the book of recipes taken from Frederick Nutt’s list, above, all adapted for use in modern ice cream makers. I can thoroughly recommend this detailed and well written overview of the history of creating and eating ice cream and I am sure that you will enjoy it.
This has recently become one of my very favourite books. I received it from the publishers about six weeks ago and I have read it, and re-read it, since then. It now resides on my bedside table and I frequently take it up when insomnia strikes. It is simply one of the most well written and engaging books on Mrs Delany I have ever read. But it is so much more than that…but before I get carried away in my enthusiasm, let’s first deal with the basics.
In this book, Molly Peacock, the esteemed poet (shown above)has written a very detailed, readable and affectionate biography of that most accomplished woman, Mrs Delany. You will recall that last year I wrote about Mrs Delany, her accomplishments and her legacy to us of her copious and fabulously detailed correspondence, a boon for anyone studying domestic life of the 18th century, here
Mrs Delany is of course, now best remembered for her paper mosaiks of horticultural subjects. These amazingly accurate and detailed paper collages, now kept in the British Museum, were the work of her old age. She began making them when she was 72 and planned to complete 1000 of them. Sadly, her eyesight failed her and she put aside her work in 1783 having completed 985 of these astoundingly beautiful and accurate pieces of work.
The book is an exploration and appreciation of Mrs Delany’s life in Georgian England and Ireland. We learn all about her two marriages, the first an arranged loveless thing; the second, to Dean Swift’s friend, Dr Patrick Delany, below, which was a happier, fulfilling and companiable relationship. And then the years of her long widowhood and how her artistic gifts enabled her to live a life that was, despite the absence of her beloved Dr Delany, fulfilled and satisfying.
Molly Peacock has a immediacy in her writing so that in her company we swiftly and seamlessly time travel to the 18th century,taking in delicious details of coronations, the perils of 18th century travel,the world of the Bluestockings, and the last , productive years of the life of Patrick Delany’s widow, sympathetically befriended by George III and his wife Queen Charlotte.
But the book is also part memoir, a journey into Molly Peacock’s own life, both professional and personal. We learn of its parallels with Mrs Delany’s and how Molly’s fascination with these bewitching images has shaped the course of her life since she discovered them in the 1980s. More importantly, perhaps, she reveals to us how researching these images has affected her own attitude to life, her family, work and art. Without intending to sound too sentimental ( for this book most certainly is not prissy or sentimental at all) it is one of the most uplifting books I’ve read in years. Positive and creative. Attitudes that both Mrs Delany and Molly seem to share, and which ought to be examples to us all. To be frank I’m reminded of Miss Bates’s excellent attitude to life, as Jane Austen portrayed in Emma.If only she had had some artistic talent and a comfortabel pension….then she would not have been overlooked or patronised by anyone in Highbury society, and even our heroine might have paid her more due.
In less talented hands this could have been a disjointed, difficult book to read. But we travel effortlessly between detailed appreciations of the paper mosaiks, on to reminisces of Molly’s life, family and her journeyings(both mental and physical ); then to the minutiae of life in 18th century England and Ireland on to philosophical musings on the nature of modern life and contentment. It is an entirely satisfying and stimulating experience.
The book is also beautifully produced, reproducing 35 of Mrs Delany’s marvelous mosaiks in full colour. Link Beatrix Potter’s perfectly proportioned books, it sits perfectly in the hand and is very tactile: even the hard cover has been embossed poppy in its corner.(see above) I have adored living with this book it.
The publishers were kind enough to send me a copy, for it has already ben published in the U.S.A. but I had already ordered my own and it will be delivered when the book is published in the UK in July. As I am sure you will love this book I’m putting the publishers copy into the pile for the next Austen Only Annual Give Away in October. In the meantime,if you can’t wait for that, I urge you to buy it and savour every beautifully written word.
Lovers of Rowlandson’s works are spoilt for choice at the moment. Not only is there a wonderful exhibition of his works currently on show in the United States entitled, Pleasures and Pursuits in Georgian England, but also two books have recently been published; the catalogue to the exhibition which I reviewed here, and another, Regarding Thomas Rowlandson: His Life Art and Acquaintance by Matthew and James Payne.
It is sad that the catalogue writers did not have the chance to see the book before it was published, and not merely just some papers relating to it, for this now has to be regarded as the definitive book on Rowlandson’s life and works.
Gathering facts about Rowlandson is a difficult task, as the authors of this book acknowledge:
The biographer of Thomas Rowlandson encounters from the outset a frustrating deficiency of source material. Few letters to or by Rowlandons have survived. He wrote no journals. His character and activities are touched upon in the diaries and memoirs of a mere handful of his contemporaries. He surfaces only occasionally in the newspapers and pubic records of the period…..
Due to years of diligent research and painstaking tracing of his thousands of drawings, prints and engravings, the authors have been able to provide this full and interesting study of Rowlandson’s life. By referencing and putting into context hundreds of his works they have been able to trace the journeyings of his life, and they have provided a vibrant portrait not merely of the artist but of the world he inhabited.
(Rowlandson by John Raphael Smith circa 1795)
Rowlandson’s sketches are some of his most interesting pictures and, to me, are far more valuable than any of his more polished satirical works.Why? Because they give us a glimpse into the world that Jane Austen knew, and he depicted sights she saw nearly every day of her life. His rough sketches-the work of moments- have a vibrancy and immediacy and capture intimate and insignificant ( to others perhaps, but not to me) moments such this sketch of The Delay or Accident in Popham Lane 1784
Or of this simple study of his old schoolmate and life long friend the famous comic/actor, Jack Bannister having his hair dressed in his dressing room at Drury Lane theatre in London:
Whilst the more careful studies, such as this of a review of the Isle of Wight Volunteers drilling in Newport circa 1797, below, also give a flavour of a past world, and in this case an indication of how the arrival of the militia in the town of Meryton would have looked to the Bennet sisters( not to mention their mother).
The book is profusely illustrated in colour and in black and white
and shows scenes with which Jane Austen would have been wholly familiar…indeed, of some to which her characters actually refer. This print, below, is one of Rowlandson’s studies of A Register Office, probably executed in 1803, and is precisely the type of place Jane Fairfax refers to in Chapter 35 of Emma when in conversation with Mrs Elton:
“Excuse me, ma’am, but this is by no means my intention; I make no inquiry myself, and should be sorry to have any made by my friends. When I am quite determined as to the time, I am not at all afraid of being long unemployed. There are places in town, offices, where inquiry would soon produce something — offices for the sale, not quite of human flesh, but of human intellect.”
“Oh! my dear, human flesh! You quite shock me; if you mean a fling at the slave-trade, I assure you Mr. Suckling was always rather a friend to the abolition.”
“I did not mean, I was not thinking of the slave-trade,” replied Jane; “governess-trade, I assure you, was all that I had in view; widely different certainly, as to the guilt of those who carry it on; but as to the greater misery of the victims, I do not know where it lies. But I only mean to say that there are advertising offices, and that by applying to them I should have no doubt of very soon meeting with something that would do.”
By giving entertaining explanations of some of Rowlandson’s more obscure works, the authors allow us to understand the society he portrayed and satirised. This cartoon, below, entitled The Road to Preferment Through Clarke’s Passage refers to the infamous Mrs Clarke, the mistress of the Duke of York. Their scandal which broke in 1809 was due to the Duke’s misuse of patronage and corruption under her influence. He had arranged the promotion of personnel in the army and the church on Mrs Clarke’s urging.
The book is for such a serious academic study,eminently readable and enjoyable. I really enjoyed meeting the characters who surrounded Rowlandson, both in his personal life and in his career, and I especially liked the vivid descriptions of the publishing world of the late 18th and 19th centuries, particularly in relation to Rudolph Ackermann. Here is how the book relates how the Microcosm of London was conceived and executed:
He(Ackermann-jfw ) invited William Pyne to write the letterpress. The colour plates were to be designed by Augustus Pugin and Thomas Rowlandson. Augustus Pugin was a small, forty-six year old Frenchman who had fled from Revolutionary France and settled to a career as an architectural draughtsman in London. He suffered from an inflated sense of status. His pedigree might have been according to family tradition, touched a long time ago by nobility, but its lustre had rather dulled in more recent time, and although he had good humour and charm enough to satisfy society he could exhibit a brusque pomposity as he intuitively played the Gentleman…..The series remained only an unrealized fancy until in about 1804 Augustus Pugin met Rudolf Ackermann. Ackermann was inclined to take under his wing talented foreign refugees in England. He listened to the proposals of Mr and Mrs Pugin and was soon persuaded of the viability and profitability of their scheme. He would direct, commission and publish. ….Ackerman’s brain wave was to entrust to Thomas Rowlandson the figures of all those Londoners who would be seen filling Pugin’s architecture….To partner the traditionally minded “Comte de Pugin” with the comic and unruly Rowlandson was a bold stroke”
(The House of Commons from The Microcosm of London, with architectural details by Pugin and figures by Rowlandson- my collection, not in the book)
This is a gem of a book: highly entertaining, readable and so informative of Jane Austen’s times, for her life overlapped with his. I can throughly recommend it to you.
First, a warning: I so enjoyed this book that I devoured it and cannot really be truly objective about it. It is a wonderful immersion into Brown’s world, with a fascinating list of well written characters, noble or otherwise.It is a page turner and a beautiful tribute to Lancelot Brown, the creator of many wonderful country house landscapes.
Jane Brown has long been one of my favourite writers on the history of gardening and gardeners. Her books on Gertrude Jekyll ( Gardens of a Golden Afternoon) and Vita Sackville West (Vita’s Other World and Sissinghurst) have long been in My Favourite Books pile, and so I was delighted when she turned her inquisitive eye and elegant prose to “Capability” Brown. (An epithet never applied to him during his lifetime, it ought to be noted)
Lancelot Brown was responsible for creating some of the most sublime country house landscapes made in the eighteenth century. His work, which achieved a timeless, effortless, natural effect, was distinguished from other lesser designers by allying beauty with practicality. He incorporated every need a great house possessed into the surrounding coherent landscape, providing forestry areas, lakes, drives and ornamental walks that abutted working fields.Ever practical as well as aware of the art of landscape, he was also known as an agricultural improver. He worked at most of the most famous and grand estates, and his work can still be enjoyed by visitors to these estates today. In fact so ubiquitous did his work become that many are under the impression that the effect was the result of nature, not his genius. Not so, as Griff Rhys Jones recently commented, in a BBC programme about Chatsworth. After viewing the Brownian landscape that surrounds the house which is so exquisite, he irreligiously and wittily noted:
This is what God would have done had he had the money
And while God didn’t have the money, Brown’s many aristocratic patrons did. One of the first was Lord Cobham at Stowe in Buckinghamshire,(shown below in an engraving from my own collection). Brown’s work and the methods he employed there are very satisfyingly described by Jane Brown in great detail. Visitors to Blenheim, Chatsworth, Harewood, Burghley,Warwick Castle, Charlecote, Lacock Abbey and Wimpole Hall to name a few, can still see his work, in the landscape that surrounds these great houses. And there are many many more examples too numerous to list here (but most are mentioned in the book)
Jane Brown tells Lancelot’s story with ease and with a vivacity that makes it as easy to read as the very best fiction. We not only follow his career, accompanying him on his ‘circuits’ around the grand estates of England and latterly in Wales, but we also are given insights into his happy domestic life, meeting his family and his circle, including his son-in-law the architect Henry Holland. My favourite character was his devoted Lincolnshire born wife, Bridget, known as “Biddy”, who ,while convivial enough with their friends, such as Pitt the Elder and the actor David Garrick, refused to be patronised by the grand dames who were the wives of Brown’s aristocratic patrons.
He began life in humble circumstances as as the son of a Northumbrian yeoman farmer but due to connections and advantageous commissions expertly executed he became the man who set the fashion and style of English landscape gardening, rising to become The King’s Master Gardener at Hampton Court.
My only gripe with the book is that it while it is copiously illustrated in black and white line drawing and with colour prints within the text, they are few large-scale illustrations to show exactly what effect Brown achieved. For those of us lucky enough to be familiar with his greatest creations Petworth, Blenheim, Harewood, Stowe,etc- it is not much of a problem. But for those who may not be so familiar, I think it does him a disservice. While Turner’s impressionistic view of Blenheim – the sweep from the gate at Woodstock to the house is the magnificent view shown (see below)is included – a modern photograph might have conveyed a little more of Brown’s legacy, an effect that now seems so “natural” it is often taken as such.
Here is a photograph of mine of Chatsworth, taken last summer, and the stunningly beautiful Brownian landscape can clearly be seen.(Please do click on this picture to enlarge it to see in detail how beautiful this landscape truly is)
Did Jane Austen approve of Brown and his works?Probably not. Her maternal family, the Leighs, had steadfastly refused to follow the fashion for landscape gardens at Stoneleigh, given their allegiance to the Stuarts and the old anti Hanoverian order. The 18th century was a time when adopting fashions in grand gardens was very much a matter of personal and court politics, and their refusal to update Stoneleigh until the early 19th century reflects their stance.
The title of the book, The Omnipotent Magician is taken from a passage in Cowper’s poem, The Task, wherein he directly criticises Brown and his profession:
He speaks. The lake in front becomes a lawn,
Woods vanish, hills subside and valleys rise,
And streams,as if created for his use,
Pursue the track of his directing wand,
Sinuous or straight,now rapid and now slow,
Now murmuring soft, now roaring in cascades,
Even he bids.
As we know that Jane Austen was an admirer of Cowper and one of her heroines, Fanny Price of Mansfield Park, “her Fanny”, loved him too, and furthermore despised ”improvers”, it is probably safe to assume that she would not have been enamoured of this book or its intriguing subject. But I have been and recommend it to you wholeheartedly.
The first edition of the Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, edited by Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster, which was published in 1997, has for a long time lived in my essential pile of books. This pile contains about 20 or so reference books I refer to constantly, and they sit in a slightly teetering pile on my desk in my study. They sometimes have to be replaced when they fall apart from overuse, as happened with my first copy of the Companion, which was held together with some pink legal tape till I succumbed and bought another copy out of shame.
It was more than a starting point for further research, a collection of seriously but clearly written essays by leading Austen scholars, which attempted to put Austen’s works into context, critically and historically. It was a great success, coming as it did in 1997 on the crest of the wave of the Austen boom in popularity, caused in the main by the very successful adaptations of the early 1990s.
A new edition has been recently published, again edited by Copeland and McMaster, and, like the first edition, I can highly recommend it, and would encourage even those who have a copy of the first edition to buy it, as there is so much new material within it to think about and internalise.
Old essays which have been retained are The Chronology of Jane Austen’s Life by Deirdre Le Faye, The Professional Woman Writer by Jan Fergus,The Early Short Fiction by Margaret Anne Doody, The Letters by Carol Houlihan Flynn, Class by Juliet McMaster, Money by Edward Copeland(possibly my favourite chapter in the book), Jane Austen and Literary Tradition by Isobel Grundy and Austen Cults and Cultures by Claudia L. Johnson.
New essays which have been commissioned are Northanger Abbey and Sense and Sensibility by Thomas Keymer, Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park by Jocelyn Harris, Emma and Persuasion by Penny Gay, Lady Susan, The Watsons and Sanditon by Janet Todd, Making a Living by David Selwyn, Gender by E. J. Clery, Sociability by Gillian Russell and a very intriguing essay Jane Austen on Screen by Katheryn Sutherland. The chapter on Further Reading originally written by Bruce Stovell has now been updated by Mary M Chan.
The Preface to the Companion has some interesting points, and it might be illuminating to consider them. One that did jump out at me and made me sit back in my chair with a little unease, intimates that the audiences at which the book is aimed- academics and the Janeites, of which I suppose I am one- are often separated /divided despite a common love of the subject:
Those people who gather to talk about Jane Austen, for example, still divide loosely into two friendly groups seeking mutual conversation, but often sailing past one another-enegertic non-academics with avid feeling for Austen and limited tolerance for bookish harangues and academics also with great love for Austen but certainly bookish and with perhaps less enthusiasm of the Janeite kind..
Hmm..I do hate the way the word Janeite has become ever-so-slightly a disparaging term….
Students who first encounter her works and even old hands who read her novels annually all sense that Austen’s culture recedes at unsettling speed. Younger readers for example can find themselves puzzled by the insistent economics of Austen’s novels or by her subtle class distinctions. They are startled to find that Austen’s works posses political resonance. The old Janeite enthusiasm “how do they make whip’t syllabub?” has altered almost universally to “why do they make whip’t syllabub”
Hmm…. I suppose here I show my amateur but lawerly colours and wonder if it isn’t better to ask both questions,and surely the answer to the former informs the latter? How sad that there is considered to be a great divide between the academic professional and serious amateur. I wonder what it says about us all….I have had little interaction with Austen academics, but I do have to say the divide between history academics and amateurs does not, in my opinion and personal experience, seem to be so marked or so jealously guarded. This does beg the question, what would Jane Austen make of it all ?
Enough of that.
Onto the new essays, my favourite being a very thoughtful chapter by Katheryn Sutherland on screen adaptations of Austen’s works. The proliferation of them in the mid 1990s is, of course, what prompted the rise in Austen’s recent popularity and was a prime reason the first companion was produced and, dare I say it, found a wide audience.
She makes the point that in the main, the adaptations do not reflect the subtlety of Jane Austen written world.When Jane Austen makes a point of mentioning a domestic object it is an alarm bell to the informed reader. Film cannot convey this. Also, modern adaptations tend to see the stories primarily as love stories, when obviously they are so much more than that. She also reviews the new packaging of Austen’s novels as modern chick lit and points out that while such books are more likely to be brought by younger Janeites, they will have first seen the adaptations, and do the adaptations colour their views of the novels, instead of the other way around? They probably do. But what now can be done, that the collective genii are out of their respective film canisters?
Her criticism of the re-invention of Darcy by the 1995 BBC adaption is very interesting and is an opinion I have long shared. And I very much like her appreciation of the new attitdue-the dirty hem look- of the 2005 film of Pride and Prejudice and of Persuasion from 1995. This adaptation, which is top among my favorites, gets special praise:
The sequence of mainly silent images suggestive of the turmoil of Anne Elliot’s inner life in the opening sequence of the 1995 Persuasion works so well because we are seduced into sympathy by Amanda Root’s reticent performance. There is no intrusive voice-over, no coy Hollywood style diary-writing or mirror-gazing to bring the viewer up to speed and when she looks camera-ward her gaze is inward.
The recent biographical TV film, Miss Austen Regrets, also a favourite of mine, recieves a special mention:
Played with great assurance by Olivia Williams, this is a complicated controversially adult Austen:tart and barbed, amusing, desperately flirtatious, lonely, by turns intolerant, dependant and afraid, a complicated biographical portrait that works because film unlike words can trade effectively in since.
Of course to all this I would add the practical caveat that filmmakers, in my experience do not make films with the Austen academic or Janeite in mind. They aim for a far wider audience, and this is all done, of course, to make a profit.
The second edition of the Companion is a very useful book. It contains interesting articles, ones that provoke thought and some that inform opinion. Like the first, it tries it educate so that a better understanding of Austen is acquired. Because of the major additions to this second edition, this is now a book Janeites( ought I use that term?) should strive to read or buy. Very good value. I wonder if I will have to purchase another due to overuse in a few years time…?
I posted a review of this book last year ,and I sadly had left it too late for you all to act on as the hardback edition was already sold out in the UK and became sold out in the USA a few weeks later.
The good news is that it has recently been released in paperback form and is now freely available from the your local bookshop, main internet book sites and the publishers,Phillimore. I should like to thank my good friend, Rae, for this information.
As I noted in my review, linked above, this is mainly a gazetteer of 190 houses and villas built as country retreats around London from the 17th century onwards, and is written with great authority and verve by the distinguished architectural historian, Caroline Knight.
If you possibly can, do not miss this chance to buy this really fantastic book. As with any gazetteer it is meant to be dipped into, not read at one sitting, and I have spent many an enjoyable evening virtually visiting some grand houses all situated within the confines of the M25 orbital motorway.
It puts into context areas of London that are now almost totally urban in character but in Jane Austen’s era were rural places, villages separated from London by great estates like Osterley and Syon . It is a great help when reading Mansfield Park and Emma: I can thoroughly recommend it to you. Get it while stocks last this time!
or so the saying goes…..
I am about to confess some recent antiquarian book purchases to you. In my defence, I will, of course, be sharing the contents of them with you in due course, so I’ve not been that extravagant. In truth I haven’t …I managed to purchase these books at quite amazing prices considering the contents. Of course some of them are not in very good condition,but as it is the content that I seek, I simply don’t care about aesthetics.
The first is a very good world gazetteer, Geography Illustrated on a Popular Plan for the Use of Schools and Young Persons by the Reverend J. Goldsmith
This is fabulously intact, still illustrated with many maps and engravings of places mentioned in the text.
Above is its view Kamskatchkan travellers. Kamskatchka was of course a place with which Jane Austen was very and amusingly familiar, using it as she did in her Plan of A Novel, as possibly the furthest place from England that she could imagine. She wrote her furious and funny attack as a result partly of receiving “helpful” suggestions of plots for novels from the Reverend Stanier Clarke etc etc
At last, hunted out of civilized Society, denied the poor Shelter of the humblest Cottage, they are compelled to retreat into Kamschatka where the poor Father, quite worn down, finding his end approaching, throws himself on the Ground, and after 4 or 5 hours of tender advice and parental Admonition to his miserable Child, expires in a fine burst of Literary Enthusiasm, intermingled with Invectives against holders of Tithes.
A real find in a local second-hand bookshop was this set of five volumes of the Middlesex volumes of The Beauties of England and Wales by Edward Wedlake Brayley and John Britton (1800-1815).
Ex-Library copies, their bindings are not the best, but they contain the most detailed descriptions of the topography and history of the counties of England. Middlesex is a marvellous county to have , for it included London and most of its environs in Jane Austen’s era, and so there are detailed descriptions of most of the places in London that Jane Austen knew and wrote about in these volumes. I’m enjoying dipping into them at the moment….
Amazingly, because they command reasonable prices on the print market, most of the engravings are intact in these volumes. Here is one of the Herald’s College.
And finally, the last volume to be added to the AustenOnly library is the Reverend Richard Warner’s book, Excursions from Bath (1801).
This is an immensely interesting book, delineating four excursions from the city of Bath, with very detailed and idiosyncratic descriptions of the interesting places to be found en route. Each of the four exclusions is illustrated by a charmingly naive map: this is the route of the first excursion:
It also has great significance for those of us interested in the contents of Jane Austen’s library, for she actually owned a copy of this book. David Gilson in his Bibliography of Jane Austen describes the copy now owned by the Jane Austen Memorial Trust at the Jane Austen House Museum, which was annotated bythe Reverend Geroge Austen and was probably given by him to Jane.
I shall enjoy reading these books with you here and I shall be posting about them from time to time over the next few months. Do join me, won’t you?
this is
It might at first appear strange that I am reviewing a book that was first published in 1948, but it has recently been re-printed in facsimile foom by Spire Books Ltd in association with the Bath Preservation Trust (whose property, Number 1 The Royal Crescent, is used to illustrate the cover of this book)
Walter Ison’s book is in fact an established classic and a deserves to be read and enjoyed by anyone who has visited Bath and has fallen under the spell of its Georgian Buildings; or, indeed, by anyone who has never been lucky enough to visit but has likewise fallen under its spell after reading about the city in such books as Northanger Abbey and Persuasion, where the buildings and city of Bath are essential elements of the book, the city being a character in its own right.
The first copy of this book that I owned was the edition that was revised and published in 1980 (see below) where the photographs were embedded in the text. The new edition is much more clearly set out, as was the original 1948 edition, with two distinct sections -text and line drawings in part one, then photographs and reproductions of contemporary engravings in part two: I much prefer it.
The new edition has an informative foreword by Michael Forsyth who is the Director of Studies in theConservation of Historic Buildings at the University of Bath and is also the author of another book on the architecture of Bath, the Yale Pevsner Guide to Baht, an excellent work, which was first published in 2003.
Walter Ison was born in another spa town, Leamington Spa in Warwickshire in 1908.He became a draftsman in an architectural practice in London where he first read Mowbray Green’s study of Georgian Bath, “Eighteenth Century Architecture of Bath“,which fired his imagination. It is no lie to say that he became obsessed with the city and the history of its development and its buildings. Bath degenerated as a spa town from the mid to late 19th century. It was not until the 1930s that it was realised that something had to be done to stop the city decaying completely and such treasures as the Assembly Rooms were at last recognised as being buildings of merit and, as such, were deserving of restoration and protection. In 1934 the Bath Preservation Trust was established and in 1936-8 the Assembly Rooms were restored. The Second World War then intervened and Bath was badly damaged by the so-called Baedeker offensive of 1942: 400 lives were lost and 329 buildings were destroyed in those air-raids, including the newly restored Assembly Rooms. A further 732 buildings were demolished as a result of damage in later air raids,and another 20,000 buildings were recorded by the City Engineer as having been damaged in some way as a result of the attacks.
Ison moved to Bath after his war time service with the air force ended, on the encouragement of his wife, Leonora. She also donated an important personal legacy to him, so that he had the funds with which to be able to research,write and finish his proposed book. Taking his inspiration from earlier histories of the buildings of Bath, including John Wood the Elder’s own version(see above) his resulting book is a comprehensive history of the building of the city and all its major buildings, and the architects responsible. The book was rather touchingly and appropriately dedicated to his wife.
The book is divided into chapters which deal with the development of the city, the pubic buildings,domestic buildings and representative buildings of the period 1700-1725, 1726-1750, 1750-1775, 1775-1800 and finally 1800-1830. The text of the book is also studded with magnificent plans and line drawings of the important buildings. Above is his ground plan, section and elevation of the Hot Bath where Mrs Smith in Persuasion went to receive her treatment, living close by in the lowly Westgate Buildings.
The second part of the book is filled with contemporary engravings -such as this, above of the Pump Room and the new private baths from Stall Street and photographs( all in black and white) taken mostly in the late 1940s
Now, it has to be remembered that when Jane Austen knew Bath the buildings were not yet blackened with industrial grime. This photograph of Great Pultney Street from Ison’s book shows the buildings as I first remember them from my first visit to the city aged 5 in the early 1960s. The soot and grime of the Victorian era -coal fires and grime from the nearby industrial town of Bristol- had turned most of the buildings black, and it was only from the mid 195os that a programme of cleaning and the effects of the Clean Air Acts enabled them to be returned almost to the white glare of the newly recreated limestone buildings that so distressed Anne Elliot in Persuasion. But the photographs now have a period charm of their own-the cars and sometimes the 1940s fashions of the people shown in them are now as fascinating to me as the sedan chair and muslins of the inhabitants of the 18th century prints and engravings
(My photograph of Pulteney Street taken this summer)
Interior views are also inlcuded: not only of the great public buildings like the Guildhall, but of more domestic settings as such as this first floor drawing room of number 41 Gay Street: Jane Austen, remember, lived briefly at number 25 Gay Street after the death of her father, and in Persuasion it was the home of The Crofts.
The book is easy to read and comprehensively covers every aspect of the creation of the famed Georgian buildings in the city. Walter Ison died in 1997, and this new edition ensures that his book will live on as a classic, in his memory. I can highly recommend this magnificent book, and do hope that some of you are tempted by this review to rush out and buy it.
As Jane Austen knew well, a house in town (London) was the “pineapple of perfection”, “Everything that is charming!” to quote Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, a distinctive social marker of the most financially secure of her male characters and the highest social aspiration for many of her female characters( though I always feel that Austen herself preferred the safety and security of country society to that of town, that Scene of Dissipation of Vice). As Professor Edward Copeland writes in The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, in the chapter on Money:
In terms of consumer show any income over £4000 a year is characterised by its ability to provide a house in London for the social season, the beguiling consumer temptation that brings romantic disaster to both Mary Crawford and Maria Bertram.
After the devastation of old London in the fire of 1666, the development of the fashionable west end of London- Mayfair and its surrounding districts-far away from the fire devastated City- saw a major period of building of grand town house, squares and crescents, with which we visitors to, or inhabitants of London are now totally familiar. This building gradually spread northwards from the streets around St James’s Palace in the first decades of the eighteenth century, and by the mid 17690s there were extensive developments built to the west and north of Cavendish Square in Marylebone, in the streets bounded by Oxford Street, the New Road (which is now known as the Euston Road)to the north and Portland Place to the east. At the same time, the Bedford Estate was being developed with the establishment of the squares and streets of Bloomsbury, and there were other isolated developments, such as the Adelphi, south of the Strand near the river Thames, that were attracting fashionable tenants.
(Adam House Adam Street Adelphi,London a survivor of the ill-fated development designed by Robert and James Adam, circa 1770,and which the eaged -eyed amongst you will recognise as the location used for Mr and Mrs john Dashwood’s town house in the film adaptation of Sense and Sensibility 1995)
Much of the land was owned outright by aristocratic families –The Russell’s of the Bedford estates, the Grosvenors of Mayfair etc.,etc.,- and was therefore entailed and could not be sold, or it was in the hands of corporate landowners who developed it to provide a long-term steady income: a result of this prime ownership was that most houses were held on leases and building was large-scale and uniform, despite the occasional individual house built for a very rich patron.
Rachel Stewart’s book, The Town House in Georgian London addresses the development of this phenomenon from the view of the architect and his patrons, male and female. She explains with wonderful clarity the role of these houses, and why the location, planning, furnishing and finish of a house was of vital importance, something with contributed seriously to the image of the owners/lesees.
The finances involved in buying and affording a house in the West End is one of the most revealing and informative chapters in the book, and the financial crises of George III’s reign make for uncomfortable reading bearing in mind our current troubled times. She also includes fascinating chapters on 18th century architectural design and practices , explaining the use of pattern books and the development of the design of the town house as an architectural entity in its own right, complete with is own characteristics and formulae:
The typical town house in practice was never the country house built small, but many pattern book designs for town houses seem more or less interchangeable with those for country houses of equivalent size, both in external appearance and planning….A five bay house calculated for a large family town situation could easily be taken for a modest country house with its pedimented central section and balanced disposition of rooms either side of a corridor running backwards a form the central entrance…Where authors suggest that the same design can be used for a house in town or country, this interchangeability is often questionable.
The book is wonderfully produced by Yale Publishing and illustrated beautifully, generously and very appropriately. There are enough reproductions of plans of houses to satisfy even me.
(Ground and first floor plans of Wynn House 20 St James’s Square designed by Robert Adam, 1771-4)
This is a readable and enjoyable book, full of interesting detail, and for those of us who have ever wondered what Darcy’s house in town looked like, reading this book will enable our speculation to have some sound basis in fact. I highly recommend it.
Sophie Croft in Persuasion is one of my favourite of all Jane Austen’s characters. Intelligent, kind, humorous, a woman of sense, in love with her husband the Admiral, she is widely travelled and has an admirably positive attitude to life:
“And I do assure you, ma’am,” pursued Mrs. Croft, “that nothing can exceed the accommodations of a man-of-war; I speak, you know, of the higher rates. When you come to a frigate, of course, you are more confined; though any reasonable woman may be perfectly happy in one of them; and I can safely say, that the happiest part of my life has been spent on board a ship. While we were together, you know, there was nothing to be feared. Thank God! I have always been blessed with excellent health, and no climate disagrees with me. A little disordered always the first twenty-four hours of going to sea, but never knew what sickness was afterwards. The only time that I ever really suffered in body or mind, the only time that I ever fancied myself unwell, or had any ideas of danger, was the winter that I passed by myself at Deal, when the Admiral (Captain Croft then) was in the North Seas. I lived in perpetual fright at that time, and had all manner of imaginary complaints from not knowing what to do with myself, or when I should hear from him next; but as long as we could be together, nothing ever ailed me, and I never met with the smallest inconvenience.”
Did women like Sophie Croft really exist? Well, yes, they did….
(©Bath Spa University)
Elizabeth “Besty“ Fremantle nee Wynne (pictured above) was a real life Mrs Croft. For some years now, I have been advocating that people read her diaries to understand what life was like for an elite woman, married to an officer, on board a ship of Nelson’s navy while on active service.
Though now out of print, above is the frontispiece of the 1935 edition of Betsey’s diaries- which combined extracts from Betsey’s diaries with those written by Betsey’s sister Eugenia, shown below- edited by Anne Fremantle, are a fascinating read and you can still find secondhand copies easily enough.
( Source: Andy Boddington at dukesofbuckingham.org.uk on 17.9.10)
The daughter of a Lincolnshire squire, Richard Wynne of Folkingham,( see below for a picture of the parish church)
Betsey began her diary writing habit at the age of 11 ,and continued until her death in 1857. A Catholic family, the Wynnes lived mostly in Europe, visiting England only briefly partially due to pressing money troubles- Betsey’s father sold his Lincolnshire estate in 1786. Betsey was born in Venice, brought up mainly on the continent, and her family moved in courtly circles. She vividly describes her life amongst the glitterati of the Naples court and her diaries are full if very detailed information. Which makes them a delight to read.
(Source: Andy Boddington at dukesofbuckingham.org.uk on 17.9.10)
She met her husband, Captain Thomas Fremantle, shown above, when she was evacuated from Naples in 1796. Her marriage ceremony was arranged with the help of Emma Hamilton and she began life as an officer’s wife on board HMS Inconstant in 1797. Here are some extracts from her diaries (complete with her idiosyncratic spelling) to give you an idea of what she experienced:
Monday January 15th 1797 ( the day after her marriage to Captain Fremantle-jfw):
We sailed last night , had fair weather and pretty good wind all day. I find it quite odd to be alone here. I dare not think on those I left at Naples for it makes my heart swell with anguish , however I can make no complaints for I am as happy in my situation as it is possible to be. Freemantle is all attention and kindness.I have got a comfortable little cabin where I can do what I like.The Vice Roy and Colonel drinkwater are pleasant society for us.
Sunday 22nd January 1797:
We had a long and tedious passage. Very blowing weather …it did not affect me, it increased my appetite and I laughed at everybody else. We only came to anchor this morning at three o’ clock. I begin to get accustomed to the life I lead and find myself comfortable and happy….I spent the evening alone and amused myself very well with my Harpsichord and books.
Friday 27th January 1797:
I was quite miserable all the morning as the three Mariners were punished and flogged along side of every ship, some men flogged likewise on board.
Tuesday March 21st 1797:
We took a prize in the night a small Spanish ship with 9000 dollars who was going to Cicely (Sicily-jfw) for corn.
Eventually, Betsey’s life on board became rather more serious: she had to nurse both her husband and Nelson who had both been wounded in the disastrous Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Nelson had his arm partially amputated, and caring for him and her husband while returning to England on HMS Seahorse- Captain Fremantle appears from her entries in the diary , in my opinion, to have been suffering from what we would now term shell shock- could not have been an easy task for the newly pregnant Betsey. Her characteristically frank entry in her diary for 24th August 1797 indicates her feelings:
A foul wind which make the Admiral fret. He is a very bad patient
They returned to England where eventually Fremantle recovered. Betsey ran their estate while he was at sea-he served at Trafalgar and produced a family of children. Keeping her diary all the time.
And now to some very interesting news. Dr Elaine Chalus of Bath Spa University has recently been awarded a grant of £100,000 to write Betsey’s biography. She has,as I understand it, been granted access to Betsey’s papers by her descendants. I simply can’t wait . The original diary is wonderful to have and to hold but was crying out for more detailed annotation and furthermore, rather frustratingly ends in 1820. Betsey’s life as wife, on board ship and on land, as a mother, capably managing the family estate, and then after the wars as a well-connected elite woman of the early 19th century is fascinating and deserves to be explained and brought to a wider audience. I’m so pleased that Dr Chalus-whose interest in Betsey was sparked when she found a second-hand paperback copy of her diaries at a village fair- has the funding needed to provide us with a full and detailed biography of one of my favourite diarists of this era.
I shall keep an eye on publication dates etc and will of course review the book here when it is available. But in the meantime, do try and get hold of a copy of the out of print diaries: fans of Persuasion and Mrs Croft will not regret it.
Have you ever wondered what the great State Bed of Stoneleigh Abbey looked like, especially after reading Mrs. Austen’s atmospheric description of it contained in her letter to her daughter in law, Mary Austen, wife of James? She wrote the letter during her stay at Stoneleigh( along with Jane and Cassandra) in the summer of 1806,and the letter is dated Wednesday, August 13th 1806:
On the left hand of the hall is the best drawing room, within that a smaller; these rooms are rather gloomy brown wainscoat and dark crimson furniture; so we never use them but to walk thro’ them to the old picture gallery. Behind the smaller drawing room is the state bed chamber, with a high dark crimson velvet bed: an alarming apartment just fit for a heroine; the old gallery opens into it; behind the hall & parlours is a passage all across the house containing 3 staircases & two small back parlours.
I adore the way Mrs Austen lets her fancy run away with her, imagining Gothic Horrors of the Catherine Morland variety for the occupant of the great bed in the
rather alarming apartment
That bed no longer exists, so we are left to our own imagining. Would it look like this terrific creation, newly restored and returned to its original home at Boughton House, the Northamptonshire home of the Duke of Buccleuch?
Or this one, used as Mr Darcy’s bed at Pemberley in the BBC’s1995 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and which can still be found at Sudbury Hall in Derbyshire, and is very stately as it was used by Queen Adelaide?
It certainly would not have resembled this one- used for Queen Victoria’s visit to Stoneleigh in 1858.
This room was not the State Bedchamber at Stoneleigh to which Mrs Austen referred: it was then the breakfast parlour and was frequently used by the party at Stoneleigh it was the only one of the rooms which afforded wonderful views down to the River Avon:
…on the right hand the dining parlour, within [that is, beyond the dining parlour-jfw] that the breakfast room, where we generally sit, and reason good ’tis the only room (except the chapel) that looks towards the river.
It may however have resembled one of these:
Queen Caroline’s State Bed of 1715 or this, below, the Raynham Hall State Bed which was acquired for Hampton Court Palace in 1993
And it has to be admitted that it looks very similar, in construction, to the bed in the Blue Bedroom at Belton House, used also as Mr Darcy’s bed at Rosings in the BBC’s 1995 adaptation:
Both of these beds -Queen Caroline’s and the Raynham bed- are written about in minute detail in the book I am reviewing today, State Bed and Thorne Canopies: Care and Conservation by Val Davies (which to be honest could have been alternatively titled: Everything You Have Ever Wanted to Know about State Beds But Were Afraid to Ask).
I do realise that recommending this book might be a step too far for some of you. It is a very,VERY detailed and specialised book about the care and conversation of state beds and throne canopies -which are all installed at Hampton Court Palace or Kensington Palace. More of a care manual than anything else. And of course not many of us have to care for these objects on a daily basis….But if you have ever seen one of these magnificent constructions and wondered how they are put together, how the sculpted head-boards covered with damasks, passementerie and feather are created, how the curtains and tassels are preserved and cleaned, then this book is for you.
Val Davies the author, worked in the Textile Conservation Studio at Hampton Court Palace for 20 years, and while there learnt how to care for the magnificent structures. And also how to restore them after the fire at Hampton Court in 1986 damaged some of them in a rather desperate way. The excellent text is clear, and the illustrations (particularly the line drawings in the glossary section) allow you to understand exactly how these beds were designed, made, dismantled and installed in the palaces.
A short history of the role of state beds in country homes and palaces is included but the majority of the book explains, example by example, and step by step, how the seven state beds and three throne canopies are made and how they can be preserved for the future. The photographs (which could have been a little larger-this is my only gripe about the book) are beautiful. And sometimes give you glimpse of the bed that only the occupant would have seen, as below, where we are shown a view of the inside of the tester in Queen Charlotte’s State Bed, which dates from 1772-78.
The factual basis to the fairy tale of The Princess and the Pea is finally revealed, with the revelation that many, many mattresses are used in these stately beds. This photograph from the book shows the four mattresses that make up the sleeping area of Queen Charlotte’s State Bed.
Bed bugs ( a common complaint of the late 18th /early 19th century housewife if the evidence of the remedies to deter them in my cookery books of this era is any thing by which to judge) are also dealt with. We learn that the Royal Household in 1814 employed one Mr Tiffin as
“Bug Destroyer to his Majesty and her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales.”
That does take the gilt off the gingerbread slightly doesn’t it? Ah, well…To conclude, this is a very different book from the norm, but a fascinating one and one I would recommend to any of you who have been entranced by these magnificent constructions still to be found in many an English country house today. Reading it will allow you to indulge your fancy and envisage which of these amazing beds the State Bed of Stoneleigh Abbey would have resembled.
Elizabeth Jenkins, the author and biographer has died aged 104. Her full obituary in The Daily Telegraph can be accessed here.
A founder member of the Jane Austen Society she also helped secure the purchase of Chawton Cottage, now the Jane Austen House Museum , in order to preserve it for ever. For that she ,and the other founder members of the JAS and the Jane Austen Memorial Trust will always have our thanks.
However, she will always be remembered by me as the writer of the best life of Jane Austen.
Hers was the first biography of Jane Austen that I read ( note my tatty fly cover, above,a result of much reading over the years!) I had received a copy of it as a Christmas gift from my old English Mistress in 1970: it was in fact her own copy of the 1959 edition which she had received as a gift from the author herself (as you can see, she signed it on the title page, below).
I have always cherished this book, not only for its worth, but as a reminder of the woman who introduced me to Jane Austen- we read Pride and Prejudice in class- all those years ago and encouraged me to carry on in the habit of reading All Six Every Year as she did. She died five years ago and I still miss our conversations.
For most of Jane Austen’s characters a parsonage or rectory was a familiar piece of architecture. As it was, of course, for Jane Austen , born into a clerical family at the Rectory at Steventon.
And she was used visiting them all her life: rectories near to home, as at Ibthorpe to see her friends the Lloyds, and those further apart in Devon, at Colyton
(Colyton Church, Devon, circa 1820 from my collection)
for example to visit the family friend, the Reverend Richard Buller the incumbent, and to those occupied by clerical relatives at Great Brookham in Surrey and Adlestrop in Gloucestershire.
A rectory was not as desirable as a Pemberley House perhaps, but when allied with a hero such as Henry Tilney, well then, a well-built ,well proportioned, modern rectory could become quite the object of much Austenian feminine interest (with the dishonorable exception of Mary Crawford)
(Yaxham Rectory,Norfolk from The English Parsonage in the Early Nineteenth Century)
Catherine Morland was innocently entranced by Henry’s substantial and newly-built stone rectory with its unfinished decoration at Woodston
Catherine’s mind was too full, as she entered the house, for her either to observe or to say a great deal; and, till called on by the general for her opinion of it, she had very little idea of the room in which she was sitting. Upon looking round it then, she perceived in a moment that it was the most comfortable room in the world; but she was too guarded to say so, and the coldness of her praise disappointed him…The room in question was of a commodious, well–proportioned size, and handsomely fitted up as a dining–parlour; and on their quitting it to walk round the grounds, she was shown, first into a smaller apartment, belonging peculiarly to the master of the house, and made unusually tidy on the occasion; and afterwards into what was to be the drawing–room, with the appearance of which, though unfurnished, Catherine was delighted enough even to satisfy the general. It was a prettily shaped room, the windows reaching to the ground, and the view from them pleasant, though only over green meadows; and she expressed her admiration at the moment with all the honest simplicity with which she felt it. “Oh! Why do not you fit up this room, Mr. Tilney? What a pity not to have it fitted up! It is the prettiest room I ever saw; it is the prettiest room in the world!”
“I trust,” said the general, with a most satisfied smile, “that it will very speedily be furnished: it waits only for a lady’s taste!”
“Well, if it was my house, I should never sit anywhere else. Oh! What a sweet little cottage there is among the trees — apple trees, too! It is the prettiest cottage!”
“You like it — you approve it as an object — it is enough. Henry, remember that Robinson is spoken to about it. The cottage remains.”
Northanger Abbey, Chapter 26
Fanny Price is first settled at 8 miles remove form Mansfield at the rectory at Thornton Lacey a place by no means as desperate for “improvement” as Henry Crawford would have us believe ,and then finally at the Parsonage at Mansfield Park:
On that event they removed to Mansfield; and the Parsonage there, which, under each of its two former owners, Fanny had never been able to approach but with some painful sensation of restraint or alarm, soon grew as dear to her heart, and as thoroughly perfect in her eyes, as everything else within the view and patronage of Mansfield Park had long been.
Mansfield Park, Chapter 48
Edmund Bertram and Henry Tilney are of course, lucky second sons who were able to improve their residences, using family funds (eventually, in the case of Edmund and Fanny). Mr Collins, however, is lucky too for, due to the superintendence of his noble patroness Lady Catherine, his rectory- his humble abode- has been fitted out with every modern convenience, even down to shelves in the closets
As for the odious Mr Elton in Emma, his vicarage at Highbury, save for the yellow curtains that entranced the stupid Miss Nash so much, seems to have been a pitiful place, in need of much redesign:
…about a quarter of a mile down the lane rose the Vicarage; an old and not very good house, almost as close to the road as it could be. It had no advantage of situation; but had been very much smartened up by the present proprietor; and, such as it was, there could be no possibility of the two friends passing it without a slackened pace and observing eyes.
Emma, Chapter 10
His new wife’s fortunes –as many thousands as will always be called ten- will no doubt be used to beautify and improve that place.
But what of the poorer parson ? With no wife’s pretty dowry to help improve his home and no family money and/or living as incentive to improve it either, what could he do?
Until the late 18th century there was little he could have done to improve his dwelling and many were in a parlous state.
However, a spate of legislation, beginning with the The Gilbert Acts, enacted from 1777 onwards, allowed the governors of the Church of England access to the fund known as Queen Anne Bounty in order to lend money to the clergy for the repair and/or rebuilding of existing parsonages, using their income from tithes as a security.
The rush to build new style parsonages also coincided with the social status of the clergy becoming more and more important, and the houses built in the early part of the 19th century, for those who benefited for Queen Anne’s Bounty and/or from their own family wealth, reflected this.
This situation was also echoed in Jane Austen’s family, for after her death, on his son becoming rector of Steventon, Edward Knight, Jane’s brother, commissioned the demolition of Jane’s birthplace and a replacement modern rectory, shown above, to be built on a site just across the valley (see this old AustenOnly post here for details)
This book, The English Parsonage in the Early Nineteenth Century by Timothy Brittain-Catlin, explores the extraordinarily rich archive of architectural pans and drawings this rush to build produced, and follows the development of the parsonage from the small Georgian villa of the period 1800-1820, to the large, grand, substantial gentleman’s residences they became during the middle of the 19th century.
The book is wonderfully produced, and is extremely well and clearly written. Profusely and well illustrated it has reproductions of ground plans to satisfy even me( for you do know I love to study a set of plans for a house).
Individual parsonages are studied in some detail, one of my favorites being Walkerinham Vicarage in Nottinghamshire, shown below.
Mr Brittain-Caltlin details the changes in architectural fashions during the first half of the 19th century as reflected by the designs for parsonages by such famous designers as Loudon, Blore and Pugin. This is a fine book, and a useful one for Janeites to refer to,the parsonage playing as it does so important a part in her life and in the lives of her characters.
Desirable residences still, this book is a fabulously detailed examination of the type of building-the parsonage- that has become an important part of English country life. And if you want to speculate on what Mr Elton did with his Augusta’s lovely money, then this book is the perfect place to start
A confession: I have had this book on my To Be Reviewed Pile for far longer than I ought to have done. For months and months in fact(as you can tell by the rather battered front cover which I scanned, above) The paperback version is soon to be released in the UK…Goodness..How tardy. I do apologise. As we have been gadding about too much recently I decided to give you a book review on serious topic today, and leave the country houses till later in the week. A change is after all, as good as a rest…
In fact, this book was transferred from my To Be Read pile some months ago, for as soon as it arrived I devoured it. I am a complete fan of Dan Cruickshank’s works. His book on the buildings of a Georgian town and how they functioned, Life in the Georgian City, co-written with Neil Burton, is one of my favourite books on this era.
His latest book, The Secret History of Georgian London is a fascinating and very detailed history of the sex industry in the long 18th century in Georgian London. It is thoroughly readable and enjoyable- if enjoyable is entirely correct word for what I think is a tragic subject. And being an architectural historian he takes a lively interest in the buildings that housed the Georgian sex industry and the areas of London where they were mostly congregated. I’m not completely sure that he really proves his premise that the city was shaped by the development of the sex industry, but some of his conclusions will startle; for example, the number of people involved in it will undoubtedly shock many of you. He give us a very detailed account of that world, one that it is all too easy to forget existed side by side with the glamour we often first associate with the Georgian era-the beautiful houses and dresses etc
But what does all this have to do with Jane Austen, I hear you ask. She was actually very aware of the dangers to poor, unprotected women of the predatory nature of the London sex industry. As is evidenced from her novels and letters. In Pride and Prejudice, the spiteful old ladies of Meryton were also well aware to the fate reserved for those who publicly strayed from the strict moral path and were most disappointed when Lydia, happily living in sin with Wickham in London, was retuned, safely married, to the Longbourn fold.
The good news quickly spread through the house, and with proportionate speed through the neighbourhood. It was borne in the latter with decent philosophy. To be sure, it would have been more for the advantage of conversation had Miss Lydia Bennet come upon the town; or, as the happiest alternative, been secluded from the world, in some distant farm house. But there was much to be talked of in marrying her; and the good-natured wishes of her well-doing which had proceeded before from all the spiteful old ladies in Meryton, lost but little of their spirit in this change of circumstances, because with such an husband her misery was considered certain.
The phrase “to come upon the town”, was of course referring to a woman involvement in prostitution, a fate to which many fallen women, without the support of the Bennet family and the perseverance and long purse of Darcy, were subject.
The melodramatic story of Eliza Brandon the sad, adulterous wife of Colonel Brandon’s less honourable brother in Sense and Sensibility, is one echoed in many tales of fallen women in this book.
Jane Austen was well aware of the reputation of London and its dangers: in her letter written to her sister Cassandra from London dated 23rd August 1796, she refers to London as
This Scene of Dissipation and Vice
And in her letter 18th September 1796, again written to Cassandra, this time from Rowling in Kent, Jane Austen makes this throw away remark, referring to her aborted plan to visit the Pearsons, the family of Henry Austen’s then fiancée, alone:
I had once determined to go with Frank tomorrow and take my chance etc; but they dissuaded me from so rash a step-as I really think on consideration it would have been : for if the Pearsons were not at home I should inevitably fall sacrifice to the arts of some fat Woman who would make me drunk with small beer…
She is here clearly referring to one of Hogarth’s prints of the seedier and dangerous die of London Life, as depicted in his series of prints The Harlots Progress
The first of these shown above depicts the arrival in London of an innocent country girl, here being befriended by, in Jane Austen’s own words, a fat Woman. This was none other than one of the most famous, or should I say, notorious procuresses of the Gregorian era, Elizabeth “Mother” Needham and this must be the source for Jane Austen’s interesting remark.
So, having established the London sex trade of the Georgian era as a legitimate topic of Austenian conversation, let’s now turn to the book in question.
There have been many ,many books on the Georgian sex industry published in the last few year, notably those written by Hallie Rubenhold,viz, The Covent Garden Ladies
and Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies: Sex in the City in Georgian Britain.
a fact ruefully acknowledged by Dan Cruikshank in his preface to his book.
His book adds, however, a different perspective, for being an architectural historian he has been able to research and describe the buildings and settings used by the sex trade. His chapter on Bagnios and how they operated is an eye opener. It is also very comprehensive, discussing moral and political attitudes towards prostitution as well as documenting the trade, its vicious ways, and the people engaged in it.
Though he is clearly primarily interested in the buildings , he never loses sight of the human stories trapped by the walls of these same edifices. He has a compassionate and vivid story telling manner and recounts the tale of many crimes, such as the stories of the murder of Anne Bellwith sense and compassion. He includes interesting chapters on mens’ then attitude towards women(very enlightening, indeed) and on the Evangelical campaign against prostitution. We are also shown the results of the trade on buildings and institutions: the human stories behind the founding of such institutions as the Foundling Hospital to take in the unwanted by-product of the trade-illegitimate babies, of the Lock Hospital for the treatment of venereal disease, and of the Magdalen Hospital built to house penitent ex-prostitutes.
The grand courtesans are not forgotten: we are given interesting descriptions of the lives and loves of Mrs Abington
and Kitty Fisher,
both associated with Sir Joshua Reynolds,who painted their portraits, above.
It is a marvelously detailed book, such as I have come to expect from Dan Cruickshank, and one that I can heartily recommend, as providing a vivid background to what we can often forget was a difficult life for the poor and the unfortunates: and was also the fate of those females-some elite women, note- who transgressed the strict moral code that prevailed in Jane Austen’s era and who had no supportive family or a Colonel Brandon or a Mr Darcy to rescue them, as well Jane Austen knew.
Laurel of Austenprose has kindly asked me to contribute some posts for her Pride and Prejudice Without Zombies Group Read. Today I am writing about Country House Tourism in the early 19th century,and next week will be writing about William Gilpin’s influence on Jane Austen’s writings…So let’s apply to the housekeeper, shall we? I’m sure she has some interesting tales to tell…
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Tourism in the United Kingdom, visiting grand country houses and the untamed countryside, developed apace in the 18th century. The diaries of the period reflect this trend containing as they do many, many accounts of visiting differing parts of the country, and of course, the trip that the Gardiners and Elizabeth Bennet make to Derbyshire in Pride and Prejudice is an example of the typical tour that those who could afford to would want to make. Their original destination,The Lakes of Cumberland, Westmoreland and Lancashire, were terribly popular.
The Gardiner’s second choice, Derbyshire, was almost as celebrated.
Why this growth in domestic tourism? First, because of the developments in travel: if you couldn’t “get” to a country house/pleasant vale easily you simply couldn’t visit it. Improved roads-both routes and road surfaces- and the system of posting horse and carriages for hire, made travel easier for those who could afford it. Secondly ,The Grand Tour of Europe , as undertaken by Edward Knight, Jane Austen’s brother, was tourism on a grand lavishly expensive and foreign scale, but it became impossible to complete. The wars with Napoleon curtailed safe travel to Europe to a large extent, and so people turned to touring England and Wales for leisure and educational purposes.
The interest in viewing country houses and their grounds increased as the concept of ‘taste” was taken up in England . Originating in 17th century France, taste, -le gout- and by that I mean the idea of expressing one’s superior education and good breeding by one’s possessions, house and gardens, was taken up rather rapidly by the English, of nearly all classes.
If you were unsure as to what actually constituted good taste help was at hand. Edmund Burke, in his book, “Philosophical enquiry into the Origins of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful “(1757) and Jane Austen’s favourite, William Gilpin, with his series of books on The Picturesque-the correct way to view landscape and country houses,as compositions for pictures,- led the way in explaining what was de rigueur.( More on Gilpin from me next week, by the way)
As Adrian Tinniswood comments in his wonderful book on the history of country house tourism, The Polite Tourist, when talking about visiting Lord Scarsdale’s magnificent house, Kedleston House, also in Derbyshire:
It is no coincidence that Kedleston Hall should have been the most consistently praised of all new houses in the later 18th century. It conformed absolutely to the educated classes’ conception of what modern architecture ought to be : costly, but not showy; elegant but not effete; convenient and in line with the accepted canons of classical taste, but at the same time spectacular enough to stand out from the mass of country houses. Together with its collection to became a symbol of the ideal: and by noticing and approving of the paintings, the proportions and the grandeur of the whole, tourists could share in the owner’s statement of his culture and taste. They were able to demonstrate that they belonged to that collective elite which constituted polite society at the end of the 18th century.
Provided people were correctly attired, polite and genteel and could travel, then, by the early 19th century the cultural world of the English country house was open to them. The English began to explore their own country and its contents, equipped with these sophisticated guides for the evaluation of art, architecture and the natural scenery around them. It gave people an opportunity to develop and exhibit their own sense of “taste”, something Elizabeth Bennet quite naturally does while walking around Pemberely House and its grounds.
The housekeeper came; a respectable-looking elderly woman, much less fine, and more civil, than she had any notion of finding her. They followed her into the dining-parlour. It was a large, well-proportioned room, handsomely fitted up. Elizabeth, after slightly surveying it, went to a window to enjoy its prospect. The hill, crowned with wood, from which they had descended, receiving increased abruptness from the distance, was a beautiful object. Every disposition of the ground was good; and she looked on the whole scene — the river, the trees scattered on its banks, and the winding of the valley, as far as she could trace it — with delight. As they passed into other rooms these objects were taking different positions; but from every window there were beauties to be seen. The rooms were lofty and handsome, and their furniture suitable to the fortune of their proprietor; but Elizabeth saw, with admiration of his taste, that it was neither gaudy nor uselessly fine; with less of splendor, and more real elegance, than the furniture of Rosings.
Pride and Prejudice Chapter 23
In order to be able to criticize Darcy’s taste Elizabeth needed to be able to understand what was acceptable and correct,and more importantly, what was not. Something she did with ease, though she found criticising oil paintings in the Pemberley gallery rather more difficult. An example of Mrs Bennet, yet again, failing her daughter in her education: even if masters were to be had, they had patently failed to provide Elizabeth with an education in the appreciation of art.
I’ve dealt with some aspects of opening these country houses to the pubic in the 18th and early 19th centuries -the problem for visitors and owner alike and the role of the housekeeper in an old post here on Austen Only, which I do invite you to read, for in this post I want to concentrate on a different aspect of country house visiting: the practicalities of such tourism, and to answer such questions as how did the visitors find out about these houses and estates? And what was on show once they were there?
To the first question. Obviously the houses in one’s locality would be known to the prospective country house visitors, but when travelling how did the traveller know where these places were to be found, especially if you were not in the company of a knowledgeable former resident like Mrs Gardiner?
The answer again is to be found in books. Detailed publications like John Britton and Edward Baylake Bayley’s The Beauties of England and Wales; or, Delineations, Topographical, Historical and Descriptive of each County ,
Or, John Cary’s Traveller’s Itinerary,
proliferated in the early 19th century to guide the determined traveler, and are one of my favourite types of antiquarian books collect. The one probably of more use to us today was written by a woman, Georgiana Kearsley whose Traveller’s Entertaining Guide Through Great Britain is a favourite of mine.
Cary’s book is a masterpiece detailing all the roads and cross roads in England and Wales ( with some of the main routes in Scotland)
and he does give some descriptions of houses –the seats of Noblemen and Gentlemen – to be seen along the route you are taking while riding in your comfortable carriage or hired post-chaise. Both books, note, contain a chapter amounting to 60 pages each, giving details , set out alphabetically, of most of the known country houses in the kingdom
(Do note that you can enlarge all the photographs of the pages of the books in order to be able to read the detail:
I do recommend it as I find them fascinating.)
But Georgiana Kearsley’s book is far more detailed. For example, on this page we have her version of part of the route from London to Manchester, passing through the towns of Matlock, Darley, Rowsley and Bakewell in Derbyshire.
The entry for Bakewell, is very useful for the traveler, and tells him all he really needs to know:
Bakewell is the best town on the north side of the Peak, on the Wye. It is supposed to have been a Roman town, because of altars dug up near it at Haddon-house. Three miles on the r. is Chatsworth a magnificent seat of the duke of Devonshire. It is reckoned among the wonders of the Peak. It is a most magnificent house, built of stone dug on the spot and is a most beautiful structure. This was one of the prisons of Mary queen of Scots. On the road, three miles on the r. is Hassop, F. Eyre esq.
Inns: George, New George.
Let’s deconstruct this entry.
She tells us a little of the ancient history of the place, important for the early 19th century traveller as interest in antiquities was then a very gentlemanly pursuit. Then she informs us of the direction to Chatsworth, with details of what might attract us there and a little of its history.
And finally Georgiana points out another house where we might want to apply to the housekeeper to see its gardens and contents. Then once we have decided to linger in Bakewell to see these attractions we are told of the two inns where we can stay overnight, or refresh ourselves and our horses on the way. All very useful information, I’m sure you will agree.
Once the travellers arrived at a country house, what would they see? Well, of course, the route and content of such a tour depended on the owners of the house or the housekeeper’s patience or desire for a gratuity. We know that Elizabeth Bennet’s tour of Pemberley House included viewing the hall, dining parlour,other rooms,including Georgina Darcy’s sitting room, the picture gallery and some bedrooms.
Was this typical?
Lets compare it to a tour of Osterley House just outside London, the home of the wealthy banking family, the Childs, which was made by Sophie von La Roche, the German authoress in 1786. The house was originally a Tudor building which was aggrandized in the 18th century by Robert Adam. Her account is full of delicious detail and prefect for our purposes today and here are some extracts from it, illustrated with pictures of the rooms she is describing:
Today we made a pleasant trip to Osterley Park, Madame Child’s country seat, widow of the late banker of this name, whose property amounted to 500,00 guilder. We would never have imaged such a place had we not seen it It lies eight miles from London, in the county of Middlesex almost opposite the Duke of Northumberland’s fine property Sion House, and indeed they are the joint owners of equal shares of the Sion Monastery estate….
As friendly Mr Burth, whom I met at Count Reventlow’s had sent us a ticket admitting five people, we were led into the breakfast room until the caretaker arrived. Where we looked at some nice pictures, had a view on to the park and the very portion of the wood where the fallow deer were and had the pond on one side and some field and Richmond hills in the distance on the other.
Fr0m here the friendly woman conducted us into the magnificent library….the dining room is very large with delicious decorations and looks out onto flower beds…
From here we came through a fine tapestried apartment into a gallery 130 feet long with large windows onto the garden…
This gallery led into the drawing room, where are some superb hangings and chairs of Gobelin Tapestry
We entered a green bedroom next,
Then one where all the draperies and curtains are richly yet prettily embroidered. Another lovely room follows and yet another called the Etrurian cabinet since its wall paintings are copied from one similar found in Pompeii…
Upstairs we saw Mrs Child’s apartments; she is away in Switzerland at the moment. These are dainty boudoirs contining all the most delicate porcelain, gold and silver ornaments and miniatures. More especially a collection of enamels being the portraits of the Child family and a number of them by the famous Petitot.
I was pleased to find my “Sternheim” in English translation amongst Mrs Child’s book and on the fly leaf I wrote down something of the joy and pleasure I had experienced at Osterly Park- in English too as well as I was able…
We went down to the very lowest floor where are all the sevants quarters-kitchen,
bake-house, laundry housekeeper’s lodge- all as spruce and clean as I myself could have desired my whole life long
The dairy and milk room however surpassed all my expectations. There was an entrance in which milk and milking pails and butter tubs stood in splendid array al white with brass rings gleaming like gold; then down a step into the dairy where the milk was standing in large flat china pans, especially made with broad spouts for pouring off the milk, around the four walls on grey marble tables….we were brought each a glass of cream with bread and butter in it…
And the housekeeper led us on though the poultry run and across a fine spot reserved for the washing, bleaching and drying back to her own part where we had to partake of some cherry brandy and very good cakes so that the milk should not chill in our stomachs..
We visited the garden especially the Chinese summer-house where all the furnishings come from China…
Into a vegetable garden there again were whole hosts of a thousand different flowers besides the vegetables; hot houses containing hundreds of pineapples of unusual size; one for growing rapes…Beehives made with particular care so that their work should always be visible.
Sophie’s tour was long and more detailed than Elizabeth’s. Viewing the domestic offices is an unusual thing to do for the time, as was being offered refreshment. But I can’t imagine Mrs Reynolds allowing visitors -even celebrated authors- to deface her mistresses’ book….In the last few years many people has asked me if bedrooms would really have been on show at Pemberley, as they felt that this would have been too intrusive. I think you can see that it was clearly not an outrageous thing to have done when compared to the extensive tour of Osterley house,which included both state and private bedrooms,and so the answer is, “yes’.
So there you have it-the practicalities of touring a grand country house in the early 19th century. Sophie von La Roche’s tour compared rather well with Jane Austen’s imaginary tour of Pemberely as experienced by Elizabeth Bennet, but of course it had one vital difference: she didn’t manage to marry the intriguing owner of the estate…. I do hope you have enjoyed this post and it will add a little something when you tour Pemberley in the company of the Gardiners and Elizabeth Bennet in Chapter 42.
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If you are intrigued by this subject and want to know more I can do no better than recommend my Twitter Buddy and fabulous historian, Adrian Tinniswood’s great and entertaining book( to which I referred above ), The Polite Tourist.
Sadly, it is currently out of print and quite hard to find secondhand, but Adrian tells me he has six copies of the book and he is willing to sell his remaining copies to the first comers.You can contact him here: he is a wonderful author and a smashing chap so do try and get his book (s) if you can. You wont regret it 
I love visiting old assembly rooms. The large and glamorous sets, like the ones at Bath
or Lord Burlington’s magnificent set at York ( now part of the chain of Ask restaurants-they are very kind and will let you in for a peep without you having to buy a meal)
and smaller ones such as my local set, Stamford
(the Assembly Room is the building with the very pointed roof and tall chimneys)
(The entrance to the Assembly rooms – you can just see the magnificent chandeliers )
Teeny- tiny compared to the first two. But still built on the same plan,as you can see:-a long room for dancing plus a tea room where refreshments were served and a card room for those not wanting to dance:
It is the oldest surviving set in England.
But we can never visit the Assembly Rooms at Lyme Regis which Jane Austen visited in 1804, for they were demolished in 1928.
Jane Austen famously danced there on her visit in 1804:
The ball last night was pleasant, but not full for Thursday. My father staid contentedly till half-past nine (we went a little after eight), and then walked home with James and a lanthorn, though I believe the lanthorn was not lit, as the moon was up, but sometimes this lanthorn may be a great convenience to him. My mother and I staid about an hour later. Nobody asked me the two first dances; the next two I danced with Mr. Crawford, and had I chosen to stay longer might have danced with Mr. Granville, Mrs. Granville’s son, whom my dear friend Miss A. offered to introduce to me, or with a new odd-looking man who had been eyeing me for some time, and at last, without any introduction, asked me if I meant to dance again. I think he must be Irish by his ease, and because I imagine him to belong to the honbl. B.’s, who are son, and son’s wife of an Irish viscount, bold queer-looking people, just fit to be quality at Lyme
(Letter to Cassandra Austen dated 14th September 1804)
I’ve been scouting round my books and have found the following images and descriptions for you, so that we can try to piece together exactly what they were like:
Here is a description of the rooms from my copy of John Fletham’s early tourist guidebook, A Guide to all the Watering and Seabathing Places dating from 1803, which is slightly apologetic in tone:
Lyme has a small Assembly-Room, Card-Room and Billiard-Table all conveniently ranged under one roof ; and had the Library been joined to it, all the amusements which the place can furnish would have been comprised in one building. The situation for this edifice is happily chosen, as it commands a charming marine view as far as the Isle of Portland, eight leagues off, and the interior is compact and well arranged. Magnificence is not essential to enjoyment: often more happiness is found in a cottage than in a palace; and the rooms at Lyme frequently exhibit as cheerful countenance as are to be seen at Bath or Brighton.
Here is a 1825 map of Lyme which shows you the position of the Assembly Rooms at the bottom of the town ( note, Jane Austen was staying at Mr Pyne’s house which is also shown on the map)
And here is a close up of the part of that map that allows you to see the position of the Assembly Rooms in more detail:
We have one description of the interior of the rooms, by Constance Hill in her book, Jane Austen :her Homes and her Friends first published in 1902. She managed to visit the Assembly Rooms at Lyme before they were demolished, and recorded her impressions as thus:
The Assembly Rooms used formerly to be thrown open to company during the season twice a week, namely on Tuesdays and Thursdays…The ball-room is little changed since Miss Austen danced in it that September evening nearly a hundred years ago. It has lost its three glass chandeliers which used to hang from the arched ceiling, but these may still be seen in a private house in the neighbourhood. The orchestra consisted, we are told, of three violins and a violoncello. We visited the room by day-light, and felt almost as if it were afloat, for nothing but blue sea and sky was to be seen from its many windows. From the wide recessed window at the end, however, we got a glimpse of the sands and of the harbour and Cobb beyond.
Just outside this recessed window there is a steep flight of stone steps which leads from the Parade down to the beach. In former times this flight was much longer than it is now, part of it having been removed to make room for a cart track. On these steps the author of “Persuasion” effected the first meeting of Anne Elliot and her cousin, when his gaze of admiration attracted the attention of Captain Wentworth. Anne and her friends were all returning to their inn for breakfast, as the reader will remember, after taking a stroll on the beach.
The Assembly rooms were extended in 1866 . These are some old photographs of the exterior of the Rooms taken in the late 19th century:
Here the rooms are shown on the left of the photograph: you can clearly see the bay window as described by Constance Hill, and which looked out onto the sea. The rooms eventually ceased to function as assembly rooms and by 1900 they became a tea room:
If you enlarge this photograph you can see that all sorts of delicious confectionary was on sale here.
Here is a picture taken of the rooms as they were being demolished
The site where the rooms were is now a car park (here is a picture of the site with filled construction plant)
And in this picture you can clearly see the gap where the assembly rooms once were:
The above photographs were taken from a smashing book, Lyme Regis Past and Present by Jo Draper: it is filled to the brim with very atmospheric photographs from the extensive collection held by the Lyme Regis Museum. It is available to purchase from Lyme Regis Books, a marvellous resource for books on the town and its literary history:
and it is a book I can highly recommend.
I find it so sad that we can no longer visit these rooms,where Jane Austen was accosted by her “Irish” gentleman….I do love to visit these smaller provincial sets of rooms as I feel they give a very different impression of the assemblies of the 18th century, than the glamorous and large sets in the large cities. For the majority of people who attended assemblies they were visiting much smaller places and I think we ought to remember that not every set as was glamorous or as large as the exiting set in Bath or York.
I do hope you have enjoyed this little reconstruction of the Lyme Assembly Rooms.
