Regency Snippets - Costume The Beau Monde 1807

January, 1807 a description of the clothing from "The Beau Monde" magazine 1807. 

"The return of the rigid season brings with it once more to every loyal bosom the happy occasion of doing honour to the birth-day of our gracious and aimiable Queen. Fancy and taste have been long busy in making preparations, and the condescension of a noble lady has enabled us to aniticpate some of the characteristics that are likely to distinguish the habilments of the day. The design which she has given us the honour to communicte brings the whole into a central point of consideration, and we have therefore only to describe it.

Illustration - Ladies - The hair dressed in natural curls round the face, with a coronet, bandeau or other ornament in gold - feathers of every kind. The body, sleeves and petticoat, of rich, full coloured satin or velvet the draperies of gauze or tiffany spotted with gold embroidery, the trimmings and false sleeves of the same, edged with rich lace, and the cords and tassels that festoon the draperies of gold. The bracelets round the sleeves, the zone and the binding of the petticoat to be of plate gold, we suppose in commemoration of the lately achieved conquest of South America.The petticoat is decorated with artificial wreaths of white thorn made in relief.

Illustration - 2 - Gentlemen - Dark green or other dark colour coat and small-cloaths of silk, velvet or fine cloth, covered with a small spot somewhat lighter of the same kind of colour, edged with silver lace, and embroidered with any kind of wild flower of acknowledged British growth:waistcoat of white satin, embroidered in a very light pattern of gold thread. Silk stockings perfecly white.

Regency Snippets - The Last London Frost Fair - 1814

It was and exceptional winter that caused 'Old Father Thames' to freeze solidly enough for people to walk across - rather than pay a boatman or the toll on the bridge - but the holding of fairs on such occasions had a long history. There were fairs in 1564, 1608, 1634, 1715, 1739 and 1789.


In 1811 the river froze hard leaving only a narrow channel so that people could walk on it from Battersea Bridge to Hungerford Stairs. But only three years later it froze hard again at the beginning of January after a week-long fog. The streets were piled high with snow, the ice on the river dirty and 'lumpy' but firm enough on the 30th for 70 people to walk across from Queenhithe to the opposite bank. More people soon ventured onto the ice and by Monday, February 1st the river was so solid from Blackfriars Bridge to some way below the Crane Stairs that thousands were tempted onto it.


By Tuesday the whole area was a fair. The 'main road' was named City Road and went straight down the middle of the Thames rather than across it. It was lined on both sides with about 30 stalls decorated with streamers, flags and 'signs', set up for the sale of porter, spirits, and other drinks (unlicensed) as well as for skittles, dancing, and a variety of games. The next day, Wednesday, was the same. In addition 8 or 10 printing presses had been erected, the typographers setting up their type for the printing or cards and broadsides to commenmorate the great frost...

On Thursday, to most people the ice seemed to be a solid rock. The fair continued to grow and attract more visitors. There were swimgs, bookstalls, skittles, dancing-booths, merry-go-rounds,sliding barges, just like Greenwich and Bartlemy Fairs. Friday the 4th brought even more, and scores of pedlars...

The Thames watermen far from being ruined made a huge profit by charging a toll of twopence or threepence to enter 'Frost Fair' - and demanding a tip on leaving. Some were rumoured to have made £6 a day...

In 1823 London Bridge was rebuilt upstream and the old one demolished in 1831. The new arches re-directed the flow of the river so that it was too swift to freeze.

Regency Snippets - 1814 The Last Frost Fair on The Thames

It was an exceptional winter that caused 'Old Father Thames' to freeze solidly enough for people to walk across - rather than pay a boatman or the toll on the bridge - but the holding of fairs on such occasions had a long history. There were fairs in 1564, 1608, 1634, 1715, 1739 and 1789.

In 1811 the river froze hard leaving only a narrow channel so that people could walk on it from Battersea Bridge to Hungerford Stairs. But only three years later it froze hard again at the beginning of January after a week-long fog. The streets were piled high with snow, the ice on the river dirty and 'lumpy' but firm enough on the 30th for 70 people to walk across from Queenhithe to the opposite bank. More people soon ventured onto the ice and by Monday, February 1st the river was so solid from Blackfriars Bridge to some way below the Crane Stairs that thousands were tempted onto it.

By Tuesday the whole area was a fair. The 'main road' was named City Road and went straight down the middle of the Thames rather than across it. It was lined on both sides with about 30 stalls decorated with streamers, flags and 'signs', set up for the sale of porter, spirits, and other drinks (unlicensed) as well as for skittles, dancing, and a variety of games. The next day, Wednesday, was the same. In addition 8 or 10 printing presses had been erected, the typographers setting up their type for the printing or cards and broadsides to commenmorate the great frost...

On Thursday, to most people the ice seemed to be a solid rock. The fair continued to grow and attract more visitors. There were swimgs, bookstalls, skittles, dancing-booths, merry-go-rounds,sliding barges, just like Greenwich and Bartlemy Fairs. Friday the 4th brought even more, and scores of pedlars...

The Thames watermen far from being ruined made a huge profit by charging a toll of twopence or threepence to enter 'Frost Fair' - and demanding a tip on leaving. Some were rumoured to have made £6 a day...

In 1823 London Bridge was rebuilt upstream and the old one demolished in 1831. The new arches re-directed the flow of the river so that it was too swift to freeze.

Regency Snippets - Waltz

"At Almack's, as elsewherein London, the day had passed when in the ball-room the minuet and other stately movements were fashionable;and during the early years of the Regency the dances in vogue were the English country dances,Scotch jigs and Highland reels, the last, introduced into London, it is said, by Jane, Duchess Gordon, and performed by her to the accompaniment of an orchestra from Edinburgh conducted by Niel Gow, the composer of  "Bonnie Prince Charlie". It was the introduction of a new dance that shook, not only Almacks, but all England to its foundations. In 1815 Lady Jersey and Count Aldegonde, Lady Harriet Butler and Mr Montgomery, Lady Susan Ryde and Mr Montagu, and Miss Montgomery and Mr Charles Standish (or some authorities say MrHaytey) danced the first set of quadrilles, which presented by such sponsors, at once became fashionable. The quadrilles evoked much interest, but this was nothing compared with the sensation that had been caused two years earlier by the introduction from abroad of the waltz.

Some such dance it appears, had been known in England nearly a score of years before, for in The Times of February 19, 1796, we read: "The balls at Southampton are exceedingly lively and well-attended. The young ladies are particularly favourable to a German dance, called the Volse: for squeezing, hugging, etc., it is excellent, and more than one Lady has actually fainted in the middle of it. The "Volse", however,had not penetrated to the metropolis, or at least to the fashionable circles thereof; and when in 1813 it was danced at Almack's for the first time - it was then in a slow movement in trow temps - by Madame de Lieven and "Cupid" Palmerston, and Princess Esterhazy and Baron de Neumann, it divided society into two camps:those who welcomed it with open arms, and those who resented the introduction of what appeared to them as a most indecorous proceeding. Lmpoon after lampoon was provoked by the new dance, and more than one of these has come down to posterity."

Lewis Saul Benjamin (1908)  The Beaux of the Regency

Regency Snipets - Princess Charlotte Heir to the Throne

Princess Charlotte Augusta born 9.45 a.m. 7th January, 1796

5th February, 1813. Princess Charlotte allowed to attend a proper grown-up function. A ball at Carlton House ostensibly given in her honour and to which some members of the Oppostion were invited. Dressed in white and silver and for the first time wearing in her hair the ostrich-feather plumes of full Court dress, Charlotte appeared handsome and self posessed and, rather ot her own surprise, really enjoyed herself, althhough she was disappointed not to see the young Duke of Devonshire, whom she had expected as her partner, and nettled by the way her Aunt Mary pushed in to claim the privilege of opening the dancing - 'always the couple above me, as jealous and ill-natured the whole night as she could be.'

Alison Plowden. Caroline and Charlotte.

I am enjoying revisiting all the snippets in my files, and some of them will be useful for my new Regency novel.

Regncy Snippets - Christmas

Around Christmas 1814  a large family party was gathered at Blehheim* among whom were Lord Blandford, his wife and three of their children. Their days were passed in te traditional country way, with riding and wild duck shooting, and a good deal of eating and drinking.

The Profligate Duke by Mary Soames.

In the Iberian Peninsula.

"In every interval between our active services, we indulged in all manner of trick and amusement...We lived, united as men always are who are about to face death in the face on the same side, and, who, caring little about it to each new day added their lives as one more to rejoice in...We invited them every evening to a dance at our quarters...alternately...We used to dance the bolero, fandango and waltz and we wound up early in the evening with a dish of roast chestnuts."

Sir John Kincaid of the 95th Rifles which was in the light Division.

"Here for the first time in the Peninsula we kept Christmas. Every man contributed money, meat or wine. A sheep or two were bought and killed. Plum puddings were baked, etc., Plates, knives and forks, were not pelentiful. We managed to diminish the stock of eatables in quick time. For desert we had apples; and for a finish, two or three of the bandsmen played merry tunes, the men warmed their toes by dancing jigs and reels."

John Cooper of the 7th Royal Fusiliers, 1813.

Regency snippets - Population - London and other towns.

The Regency snippets which I have been uploading are taken from a file of notes that I compiled.

"Of England's own 10,000,000 a tenth lived in the capital. Apart from its suburbs of new villas it was really five towns, the mercantile City, the royal West End, the riverside port, the Borough of Southwark, and the slums.These last croweded out of sight though not always out of smell of the rich, behind the grander houses and spread ever futher eastwards into the Essex and Kentish meadows, leaving a string of low, dingy towns on either side of the Thames. They were still what they had been in the Middle Ages, fever-ridden haunts of vice and wretchedness:a maze of alleys and lanes fading into the unwholdesome vapour that always overhung them, of dirty, tumbledown houses with windows patched with rags and blackened paper, and airless courts crowded with squabbling women and half-naked children wallowing in pools and kennels (channels which carried refuse away.)

"Apart from London there were only two towns in England, Manchester and Liverpool with 100,000 inhabitants and five others - Bristol, Glasgow, Birmingham, leeds and Sheffield with over 50,000."

The Age of Elegance.
Chapter Five - Triumphant Island.
Arthur Bryant. 

Regency Snippets - Charity

."..visitors saw something too, of the great charities - the offspring of private benevolence - which the islanders had endowed their capital (London). They visited the Charterhouse, the Foundling Hospital in the northern fields, the palaces built for naval and military pensioners at Greenwich and Chelsea , and dined in the hills of the Goldsmiths and Merchant Taylors - reresentatives of corporations, which spent between them as much on relieving the poor as a Continental sovereign maintaining his Court. The British capital had 20 voluntarily supported hospitals, a hundred and twenty almhouses, fifty free dispensaries, forty-five endowed free schools and two hundred and fifty parochial schools, educating, clothing and feeding nearly 20,000 children. Though the palace of St James was the smallest and least imposing in Europe, her real palaces were hospitals. Wren's Greenwich and Chelsea, Gibb's St Bartholomews with its Hogarth staircase, St Thomas with its four great quadrangles treating and discharging 11,000 patients a year; the new "Bethlem" and "St Luke's" for the insame with their enormous classical facades were buildings that a king might have been proud to inhabit. In no other country was there so much voluntary corporate goodness towards the hungry and diseased and weak. When, on Holy Thursday 6,000 London charity children marched in procession to St Pauls the Prussian General Yorck delcared nothing had ever moved him so deeply."


Arthur Bryant.
The Age of Elegance.
Chapter Five. The Triumphant Island.

Regency Snippets - Charity

."..visitors saw something too,  of the great charities - the offspring of private benevolence - which the islanders had endowed their capital (London). They visited the Charterhouse, the Foundling Hospital in the northern fields, the palaces built for naval and military pensioners at Greenwich and Chelsea , and dined in the hills of the Goldsmiths and Merchant Taylors - reresentatives of corporations, which spent between them as much on relieving the poor as a Continental sovereign maintaining his Court. The British capital had 20 voluntarily supported hospitals, a hundred and twenty almhouses, fifty free dispensaries, forty-five endowed free schools and two hundred and fifty parochial schools, educating, clothing and feeding nearly 20,000 children. Though the palace of St James was the smallest and least imposing in Europe, her real palaces were hospitals. Wren's Greenwich and Chelsea, Gibb's St Bartholomews with its Hogarth staircase, St Thomas with its four great quadrangles treating and discharging 11,000 patients a year; the new "Bethlem" and "St Luke's" for the insame with their enormous classical facades were buildings that a king might have been proud to inhabit. In no other country was there so much voluntary corporate goodness towards the hungry and diseased and weak. When, on Holy Thursday 6,000 London charity children marched in procession to St Pauls the Prussian General Yorck delcared nothing had ever moved him so deeply."

Arthur Bryant.
The Age of Elegance.
Chapter Five. The Triumphant Island.

Regency Snippet - Buckingham Palace

This snippet is pre-Regency but I think it deserves a mention.

In May 1762 King George III and Queen Charlotte moved into Buckingham House, which was called Queen's House.

In 1800 Wyatt built a new grand staircase with a central and two branching flights....Although the palace was being gradually adapated for ceremonial use, Queen Charlotte continued to find nostalgic pleasures around her. The royal 'Bookbinders Shop' was there and in the Queen's Garden she had carnation stages, and evergreens as in earlier years. Her elephant and zebra were gone, but the King's flocks and herds remained, and the patoral scene, enlivened in due season by haymaking and harbvesting of crops from plantations of fruit trees, preserved unchallenged the tradition of the Duke of Bucking ham...

Queen Charlotte by Olwen Hedley.

Writing and Gardening

I have been busy with many writerly matters but had set myself a deadline to begin a new novel today - Monday's Child - the sequel to my Regency Novel, Sunday's Child - and kept to it. I've spent so much time thinking about it that the first few pages flowed well.

I didn't have time to write for as long as usual because the gardener who works for me once a fortnight arrived and I needed to give him some instructions etc. We removed my peach tree from a large container and planted it in the the garden. He then laid wee suppressent over an 5 foot by 8 foot vegetable patch bordered by fir trees. The trees drain the soil and nothing flourished in the patch so we put two four by four foot raised beds over the weed suppressant which will filter the water.

After the gardener left I finished cleaning the greenhouse and repotted more of my orchids in a special growing medium.

All in all, a very satisfying morning.

Gardening

At long last, some decent weather her in S.E.England. Yesterday, I cleaned my greenhouse and potted up pumpkins, winter squash and courgettes which were growing indoors in a heated propagator. I also potted up my orchids. I removed all the old compost, trimmed the roots, repotted the plants in orchid compost and fed them with a special liquid feed. Hopefully, they will thrive and flower for months.

Yesterday, I sowed sweetcorn,sweetpeas,basil and other seeds in seed-tray. Today, I transplated four clumps of rhubarb to a well-manured sunny spot, planted a dessert gooseberry and nearly finished tidying up my  greenhouse.

Regency Snippets - Bazaar

John Trotter, an army contractor, became rich during the Napoleonic Wars. Afte the war ended he turned his warehouse in Soho Square, London, into a bazaar, which opened in 1816. He intended the bazaar to provide a space in which the wives and daughters of army officers could sell their handiwork. The bazaar was entirely encolsed. The stalls were for hire fore three pence a foot.

Guest Blogger at Fresh Fiction.

Today, I am a guest blogger at Fresh Fiction.

The link is: http://freshfiction.com/page.php?id=4898

Regency Snippets - Birth

Ladies were allowed to participat in social functions from the beginning to the very end of their pregnancies.

The birth of a child, particularly when an heir was expected, took place in the paternal family's house.

During the last weeks of pregnancy, aristocrats usually went to London for the confinement, especially when an heir was expected.

While getting ready to give birth, more often than not an accoucheur was hired to deliver the baby, and so was a monthly nurse. Her duty was to deliver the baby if the accoucheur did not arrive in time and to look after the mother for a month.

While giving birth, relatives and friends would wait, drinking caudle, a hot spiced wine also given to the mother in labour to strengthen her.

After the baby was born aristocratic visitors paid calls on the mother during her lying in, which ended when the mother was churched and the christening, an important occasion, had taken place. 

Most ladies, who had recently given birth, took between a month and six weeks to leave the confinement of their bedrooms and houses.

(I think most of these notes were taken from In the Family Way by Judith S. Lewis.)

Regency Snippets - Barristers

The differences between solicitors and barristers were greater in the Regency period than they are now. The terms are still  in  use but the words sarjeant and attorney were used more often than barrister. In the early decade of the 19th century the training and work of barristers and solicitors was being standardished. To this day barristers are called to the bar at one of the four Inns of Court. In the Regency they were sometimes called pleaders and were hired by solicitors.

Regency Snippets - Solicitors

Solicitors dealt with wills, land conveyances, trusts, marriage settlements, employment contracts, leases - and dealing with the bank. They were often retained as a family's man of business.

In many criminal cases, as well as civil suits, the injured party had to prosecute the case against the alleged perpetrator. Those who could afford it hired a solicitor who briefed a barrister to act for the plaintiff.  Because of the cost, merchants banded together to share the cost of prosecuting shoplifters and those who charged for goods but did not deliver them.

Regency Snippets - Baby Carriage

Charles Elliot, cabinet maker and upholsterer, designed for the baby a cushioned chaise, with a white carpet, a large lustrine umbrella and a mahogany turned stick for the front of the chaise.

Extract from Queen Charlotte by Olwen Hedley

Regncy Snippets - Almacks

In James Grant's book The Great Metropolis published in 1837 he lists the following patronesses of Almacks.

"The commitee consists of six ladies-patronesses. Formerly there were seven; but since the Princess Lieven, the celebrated Russian politician and beauty, quitted this country the number has been only six. They are the Countess of Jersey, the Marchioness of Londonderry, Lady Cowper, the Countess of Brownlow, Lady Willoughby D'Eresby and the Countess of Euston. These ladies are self-elected."

* * * *

D'Orsay, who was in London for a first visit in April 1823 and went to France later that year, not to return before 1829, wrote.

"At the upper end, on a raised seat or throne, sat the all powerful dames. There might be seen the splendid figure and handsome face of the Countess of Jersey; by her side the slim yet graceful form of the female representative of the Court of the Czar; there the good-humoured enbonpoint Lady Castelreagh, all smiles and good humour; the ladylike aristrocratic Lady Gwydir; and the dark-haired daughter of France, Lady Tankerville.

"On the side benches, the lovely nieces of Rutland's Duke - the peerless Eliza, afterwards Hon. Mrs Smith; the fascinating Isabella, who married George Anson, and Anne, now Countess of Chesterfield. Mark the magnificent aristocratic and beautiful sisters, Ladies Caroline and Jane Paget. The Fitz Clarences - Sophia, afterwards Countess of Errol; Mary, still Lady M.Fox."

A list of distinguished men present follows as wekk as mention of other female beauties."

When writing my new Regency novel, Monday's Child, the sequel Sunday's Child, if I mention a patroness or patronesses of Almacks I shall be very careful to make sure who they were in 1814.

Research for My New Regency Novel

I plan to begin the sequel to my novel Sunday's Child which ends when Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from Elba.

My research will begin when re-reading Dancing into Battle A Social History of the Battle of Waterloo by Nick Foulkes.

I am browsing through a very large file of notes and cuttings about the period and intend to share some snippets from it. The first ones are from notes I made on Regency advertisements.

"Rowland's Essence of Tyre will produce a brown or black hue for hair."

"Anodyne Necklace - for use of children cutting teeth. Sugar plums for worms for children and grown up persons. Necklace 9 shillings. Sugar plums - box 2 shillings and eight pence."

"At Repositaire a la Mode. Dresses for Christmas balls for 12 shilings and swansdown muffs for 1 pound ten shilings."

"Need to learn the latest dances for the Christmas ball? Only 2 guineas a quarter at Mr Leiven's select Evening Academy.

(Unfortunately I did not note the source of these ads.)