The Regency Review III, by Lady A~, Authoress of 'The Bath Novels of Lady A~'.

Having been quite stuck up a chimney in my last Regency review-of-two, it is fitting that my third little amble through the period should now wind its way down the more refined lanes of English architecture. Fashioned more out of individual taste than by popular demand, and largely owing to the singular style of its architects, the Regency became a landmark era of architectural design; and elegance was its very fitting catchword. From the modest houses of the 'residential squares' of spa resorts to the sweeping prospects of John Nash's grand terraces in town, the finessing of architectural detail spurned a host of theatrical effects. And from classical moldings and cupolas to 'vistas of white or cream-coloured stucco', the evolution of Regency architecture soon singled out its select group of architects-extraordinaire. John Buonarotti Papworth was one such gentleman early admitted to this group, and was renowned for both his views of elegance, coupled with an acute sense of social awareness. Here he expounds his novel theories upon the improvement of laborers' cottages in his work Rural Residences:

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"The habitations of the labouring poor may be rendered ornamental, and the comforts of them increased, at a very trifling charge beyond the cost of common buildings; towards this purpose the annexed plate is designed for four cottages, connected with each other, and under one roof; a mode of building that admits a considerable saving of expense...

The porch in which the husbandman rests after the fatigues of the day, ornamented by some flowering creeper, at once affords him shade and repose; neatness and cleanliness ... bespeak that elasticity of mind, and spring of action, which produce industry and cheerfulness..."

Whether or not the fatigued husbandman did indeed rediscover the 'spring' in his step from such commodious order, Papworth was soon bounding off in another direction, fashioning rural retreats for the gentry. Here he extols his thoughts upon a 'cottage orne':

"The cottage orne is a new species of building, ... and subject to its own laws of fitness and propriety. It is not the habitation of the labourers, but of the affluent; of the man of study, of science, or of leisure; it is often the rallying point of domestic comfort, and, in this age of elegant refinement, a mere cottage would be incongruous with the nature of its occupancy. The lawn, the shrubberies, the gravel walks, and the polish that is given to the garden scenery, connected with such habitations, require an edifice in which is to be found a correspondence of tasteful care: perhaps it is essential that this building should be small, and certainly not to exceed two stories; that it should combine properly with the surrounding objects and appear to be native to the spot, and not one of those crude rule-and-square excrescences of the environs of London, the illegitimate family of town and country."

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Other acclaimed architects associated with the Regency were George Basevi, Decimus Burton, Sir John Soane and Henry Holland. Though the latter died in 1806 (before the Regency began) he has a distinct association with the era. As the son-in-law of  'Capability' Brown, the celebrated landscape gardener, Holland built Claremont [in Esher, Surrey], the house in which Princess Charlotte spent her married life, and the famed Whig men's club, Brooks's, in St James's Street. It was through his association to Brooks's that he was introduced to the Prince of Wales and this brought about Holland's next commission: the rebuilding of Carlton House, the Prince's London residence. Holland also had a hand in redesigning the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, which was later designed again, and there his distinct cupola paid tribute to the 'Indian domes of Repton and Nash'.

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The nonpareil of Regency architecture is, undoubtedly, John Nash. As the architect to the Prince Regent, he began his illustrious career in the office of Sir Robert Taylor. After going bankrupt in 1783, he re-established himself designing country houses in 'classical, Gothic and picturesque styles', and in 1796 entered into a partnership with Humphry Repton, who became one of the Regency's most notable landscape gardeners. In 1798 Nash acquired the Prince Regent's patronage and in 1811, as one of his most significant works, he developed Regent's Park into a preeminent residential area. Incorporated into this grand scheme were 'Regent's Canal, churches, artisans' houses, shops and arcades, and the layout of many surrounding streets'.

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Tom Moore, the poet, wrote:

"[The Prince] is to have a villa upon Primrose Hill, connected by a fine street with Carlton House, and is so pleased with this magnificent plan, that he has been heard to say 'it will quite eclipse Napoleon'. "

The villa was never built, but Crabb Robinson, the noted diarist, recorded his opinion upon Regent's Park:

"I really think this enclosure, with the new street leading to it from Carlton House, will give a sort of glory to the Regent's government, which will be more felt by remote posterity than the victories of Trafalgar and Waterloo."

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Nash was made Deputy Surveyor-General between 1813-15, and had also become the Prince Regent's personal architect during that time. Between 1815-1823 he set to work on giving the Regent's palace at Brighton, the Royal Pavilion, an ornate makeover in the 'Hindoo' style, at a cost of nearly two-hundred thousand pounds. The extensions and additions incorporated the Great Kitchen and the Long Gallery (and its staircase). In 1817, the Music and Banqueting Rooms were added. After a 'new sixty-ton dome' was fashioned for the palace, and the entire center part of the building reworked, some critical commentary followed the progress. Mr. Croker of the Admiralty stolidly remarked:

"It is not so much changed as I had been told ... But in the place of the two rooms which stood at angles ... with the rest of the building ... have been erected two immense rooms, sixty feet by forty; one for a music-room and the other for a dining-room. They both have domes; an immense dragon suspends the lustre of one of them. The music-room is most splendid, but I think the other handsomer. They are both too handsome for Brighton, and in an excessive degree too fine for the extent of His Royal Highness's premises. It is a great pity that the whole of this suite of rooms was not solidly built in or near London. The outside is said to be taken from the Kremlin at Moscow; it seems to me to be copied from its own stables, which perhaps were borrowed from the Kremlin. It is, I think, an absurd waste of money, and will be a ruin in half a century or sooner."

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Fortunately Mr. C's foreboding of rack and ruin was itself waylaid to dust, and a Victorian critic made due account of the chinoiserie-styled music-room in proper praise:

"No verbal description, however elaborate, can convey to the mind or imagination of the reader an appropriate idea of the magnificence of this apartment...
 
The windows, which are so contrived as to be illuminated from the exterior, are enriched with stained glass displaying numerous Chinese devices, and similar decorations, in green gold, surround them...

At the [cupola's] apex, expanding in bold relief and vivid colouring, is a vast foliated ornament, bearing a general resemblance to a sunflower, with many smaller flowers issuing from it in all luxuriancy of seeming cultivation. From this, apparently projected from the calyx, depends a very beautiful lustre of cut glass, designed in the pagoda style, and sustaining by its chain-work an immense lamp in the form of the ... water-lily. The upper leaves are of white, ground glass edged with gold, and enriched with transparent devices derived from the mythology of the Chinese; the lower leaves are of a pale crimson hue. At the bottom are the golden dragons in attitudes of flight..."

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The erstwhile critic, Mr. Croker, did however set his seal of approval upon the Pavilion's new kitchens:

"The kitchen and larder are admirable -- such contrivances for roasting, boiling, baking, stewing, frying, steaming and heating; hot plates, hot closets, hot air, and hot hearths, with all manner of cocks for hot water and cold water and warm water and steam, and twenty saucepans all ticketed and labelled, placed up to their necks in a vapour bath."

In 1819, the last improvements to the Pavilion came in the additions of the King's Apartments, and in 1821, Buckingham House became Nash's next palatial project, never to be completed. After it was ordered that it be rebuilt as a royal palace, time ran out on George IV (formerly the Regent) and his personal architect. In 1830 the King died amidst a great groundswell of personal unpopularity, which likewise, and predictably, underwrote Mr. Nash's (regally affiliated) professional demise.

But fond friends despair not! Before dear Prinny goes up in a veritable puff of smoke in his palace, alongside his gifted architect and his glorious era, I shall, in my next review, continue to meander into the Regent's imaginative and extravagant world. I invite you all, most cordially, to join me there, at a later date, in unveiling the politics of  landscape gardening, the Picturesque movement, and the fashions and pleasures of the affluent in both town and country.

Source: Richardson J., The Regency, (Collins, 1973.)
Images courtesy Wikimedia Commons

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The Regency Review II, by Lady A~, Authoress of 'The Bath Novels of Lady A~'.

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In my last review of the English Regency, amongst other diversions, we took a fine whirl about the pursuits of the Prince Regent in the lap of his London luxury, and as seen through the eyes of those partaking in the fare. In this little review, we continue our journey with those who actively indulged in the delights and novelties of this era, and left such colorful accounts of these that they live vividly in history today.

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It was well known how very fond of Brighton the Prince and his devotees were. His grand oriental palace, the Royal Pavilion, was a monumental tribute to the place and pleasures. Everything about the Regent's life in and out of London was elegant and lively. Thomas Creevey the notable diarist recorded a dash of it, while in Brighton:

"Nov. 1st. We were at the Pavilion last night -- Mrs Creevey's three daughters, and myself -- and had a very pleasant evening ... About half-past nine, which might be a quarter of an hour after we arrived, the Prince came out of the dining-room. He was in his best humour, bowed and spoke to all of us, and looked uncommonly well, tho' very fat. He was in his full Field Marshal's uniform. He remained quite as cheerful and full of fun to the last -- half-past twelve -- asked after Mrs Creevey's health, and nodded and spoke when he passed us ... The officers of the Prince's regiment had all dined with him, and looked very ornamental monkeys in their red breeches with gold fringe and yellow boots. The Prince's band played as usual in the dining-room till 12, when the pages and footmen brought about iced champagne punch, lemonade and sandwiches ...
     The Prince looked much happier and more unembarrassed by care than I have seen him since this time six years ... Now that he has the weight of the Empire upon him, he is quite alive ...
Nov. 2nd. We were again at the Pavilion last night ... The Regent sat in the Musick Room almost all the time between Viotti, the famous violin player, and Lady Jane Houston, and he went on for hours beating his thighs the proper time for the band, and singing out aloud, and looking about him for accompaniment from Viotti and Lady Jane. It was a curious sight to see a Regent thus employed, but he seemed in high good humour ..."

And what would a bird's eye view of the Regency be without the celebrated Irish novelist Maria Edgeworth's account of it. In 1813 she came to England and conquered it, queening it at every glittering social occasion:

"We have been to a grand night at Mrs Hope's ... rooms really deserve the French epithet superbe! All of beauty, rank and fashion that London can assemble I believe I may say in the newspaper style was there ... The Prince Regent stood holding converse with Lady Elizabeth Monck one third of the night -- she leaning gracefully on a bronze table in the center of the room ... About 500 people were at this assembly -- The crowd of carriages so great that after sitting an hour waiting in ours, the coachman told us there was no chance of our getting in unless we got out and walked."

In 1818, paying another visit to England, but in a very different round of engagements, Miss Edgeworth then found herself staying with Joanna Baillie, the authoress, in the village of Hampstead.

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"For 6 or 7 miles as we approached Hampstead the whole country seemed to be what you might call a citizens paradise -- not a fools paradise, though a fastidious man of taste or an intolerant philosopher might think them synonymous terms. No, here are means of comfort and enjoyment more substantial than ever were provided in any fools paradise. Then such odd prettinesses -- Such a variety of little snuggeries and such green trellises and bowers and vinecovered fronts of houses that look as if they had been built and painted in exact imitation of the cottages in the front and side-scenes of Drury-lane ...
     Joanna Baillie and her sister, the most kind cordial warm-hearted creatures, came running down their little flagged walk to welcome us ...
     Wednesday morning. Breakfast time in this house is very pleasant. These two good sisters so neat and cheerful when we meet them in the morning -- delicately white tablecloth -- Scotch marmalade -- Excellent tea and coffee -- Everything at breakfast and at dinner at all times so neat and suitable! ... They told us the history of Mrs Fry the quaker who goes to reform the people at Newgate. They know her intimately. She is very rich -- very handsome, a delicate madonna-looking woman -- married to a man who adores her and what is much more to the purpose, supplies her with money and lets her follow her benevolent courses (I did not say whims) as she pleases."

In that same year our Miss E. also secured herself an invitation to the great country house, Bowood, which was very different to the rustic charm of Miss Baillie's 'snuggery':

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"Breakfast at 1/2 after nine -- Breakfast very pleasant tho a servant waits -- but he is an Italian, a Milanese -- seems like a machine who understands only what relates to his service -- stands by a round table placed in front of a stand of flowers -- on this table large silver lamp tea urn -- Coffee urn and all necessary for tea and coffee to be made by him. On the large round table at which we sit there appears ... mixed cut glass and beautiful china -- meat sweetmeats -- cakes -- buns -- rolls &c. in each or china basket -- numbers of cut glass ewers and cut glass sugar basins. Milanese watches all who enter -- salvers them with tea and coffee -- and cups are changed and all continually supplied without hands crossing or any I'll trouble yous. I am a convert which I thought I should never be to this system. Conversation goes on delightfully and one forgets the existence of the dumb waiter."

Undoubtedly the 'dumb waiter' had a great deal to say to his peers below stairs about Miss Edgeworth's high life above him, and some of it might have troubled her indeed! And some due thought to the classes that served the Regency gentry and the aristocratic hierarchy is starkly delivered in this exceprt from an essay on social consciousness, entitled The Praise of Chimney Sweepers', by Charles Lamb:

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" ... to see a chit no bigger than one's-self enter, one knew not by what process, into what seemed the fauces Averni -- to pursue him in imagination, as he went sounding on through so many dark stifling caverns, horrid shades! -- to revive at hearing his feeble shout of discovered day-light, and then ... running out of doors, to come just in time to see the sable phenomenon emerge in safety, the brandished weapon of his art victorious like some flag waved over a conquered citadel! I seem to remember having been told, that a bad sweep was once left in a stack with his brush, to indicate which way the wind blew."

One can only hope that that stack started to smoke all the indulged inhumane inside into oblivion. Poor little 'chit'! And chimney sweepers were but the least of the horror of child labor. During the Regency, and thanks to the coinciding effects of the Industrial Revolution, children were sent to work in the mines to haul trucks of coal that warmed the hearths, but evidently not the hearts, of the callous upper classes. Indeed, this indifference to the suffering of the indigent masses, eventually so spurred on social unrest amongst them that it did, very expediently, begin the course of popular education. Though the aristocracy and the middle class could avail themselves of public and grammar schools, and the privileges of Cambridge and Oxford, the working classes, too, were, at last, given the chance of a basic education. Mr. Rush the American Minister reported as much to the Secretary of State upon the last session of Parliament:

Photo: courtesy Arnoldius

"Education. I notice the report to the House of Commons, by which it appeared how this great work is advancing in England; for that, whilst in 1812, the number of schools, under the national school system, was only 52, and the pupils 8000, this report shows that the former had risen, in 1818, to above 1400, and the number of pupils to 200,000."

In my next review of this fascinating era, we venture into the bewitching houses and gardens that universally capture our imagination to this day. From landmark architecture and landscape gardening to furniture and fashion, the elegance of the Regency in all of its most popular glory will be revealed in very dashing detail!

Sources: Richardson J. The Regency (Collins, 1973.)
Images courtesy Wikimedia Commons

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‘Privy & Privation: A Handsome History of Health & Hygiene in Regaustenian* Times’ by Lady A~, Authoress of ‘The Bath Novels of Lady A~’ Collection.

*'Regaustenian'/ Lady A~'s novel term for Jane Austen's Regency England.






Does the ‘drawing-room’ trap of Jane Austen’s Regency world lure you, time and time again, to the romantically alluring? How often have you positively dribbled over a delicious adaptation of one of her novels, dreaming of an escape to the elegant harmony of some great, green country estate to be waited on by scores of underlings and pursued by creatures with Osbaldeston cravats and ‘ten thousand’ a year? It is so easy to escape to that fantasy, is it not (?)—and is very probably why we do it time and time again, ad nauseam. Being an Anglophile with a number of self-confessed quirks, I must admit to another, I don’t ever think of the romance without considering first the privations of the English Regency. What really lay below the surface of all of that harmony? Indeed, what was it really like to live, love and ‘lolleth’ in a time when proper indoor sanitation and electricity were as far-fetched as a mission to Mars? Although some elite, modernist households did have bathrooms and ‘water closets’, Jane Austen’s cousin, Eliza Austen (née Hancock), very likely being one of them, the ‘luxury of piped water’ was just that, pure luxury.

Photo by Mjroots

Although Albert Giblin’s ‘Silent Valveless Water Waste Preventer’, a siphon-like discharging system, helped flush away waste woes rather woefully in 1819, the trend in homes, especially those in the country, was to have one’s ‘loo’ stashed under the bed in the form of a ‘potty’ (chamber pot) or, as in Jane’s Chawton Cottage, a ‘long-drop’ or privy with an (improved!) cesspit. The idea of suffering with any colonic disorder or, as Jane’s brother Edward so euphemistically called it, ‘Bowel complaints’—in such primitive conditions—quite defies decorum! I once spent some time with friends in their seaside cottage along the southern African coast and was treated to the joys of just such a ‘privy’—ooh! Ne’er again! Now swoop back 200 years and imagine what the poor servants had to face in their daily duties and what the area around the outhouses must have smelled like! Though they were often built a good deal away from the house, or had sweet-smelling herbs or shrubs planted thereabouts (e.g. lilac), there was little to ably mask the stench of these privies' overflowing cesspits. And when homes were privileged enough to have what resembled a ‘toilet’, the piping systems were often so ineffectual that even Elizabeth Bennet’s ‘country town indifference’ must have taken a dint from the resulting emanation of egregious fumes!

Personal hygiene was also quite a challenge and is evidenced, for example, in Jane Austen’s wincing remark about a common acquaintance’s very bad breath. From head to foot, what was one to do about being an appealing hero or heroine in the blood sport of Regency courtship? Dental hygiene must have been a topper amongst those concerns because how sweet could those stolen kisses really have been? Gentlemen, in particular, were known to overindulge in everything from spicy food to alcohol and the accumulation of such hedonism on their breath, combined with a popular indifference to full-body bathing, when coming to fraternize with the ladies, after dinner or supper, must have been dizzying indeed. Added to that, the odor of tobacco from their regular partaking in snuff (sniffing tobacco) might also have put the ladies in a swoon. In fact, if one had any fear of such malodorous maladies, it would have been better to hit on a dandy—a gentleman Georgian fashionista. Beau Brummel, a renowned dandy who once famously disparaged the Prince Regent over his rather ‘too-full’ figure, was generally acknowledged as encouraging his followers to a daily bathing regime and other practices of cleanliness. At least with a dandy like Beau the chances of a sweeter breath, ameliorated body odor, and the like, were greater on a scale of one to ‘phew’! Given that the dandy probably would have been at his toilette (the task of titivating one’s person) a good deal longer than any lady, perhaps, however, not as attractive in his raw appeal as the Regency ‘Buck’!

William Holland's Copper Bateau Bath

This brings me directly to the scene in the BBC’s ‘95 adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. Darcy arises out of a copper bateau bath as fresh as a dandy, but still quite manly, as he proceeds to keenly observe a playful Elizabeth outside (whilst drying off). I couldn’t help thinking how that scene must have been inserted deliberately to enhance the palpable sexual tension, but also to wipe away any concerns we modern lovers of Austen might have had over the personal hygiene of our fabulous hero. It almost goes to the quick of his character, doesn’t it? A metaphor to reveal all the superlative ‘spangles’ of Darcy’s progressive, heroic, noble nature.

That delectable diversion aside, the Bucks were a tawdry lot. Relieving oneself in a potty, placed right inside the dining room (behind a screen), following excessive bouts of after-dinner drinking, for instance, was just one of the less-than-hygienic practices for which the Bucks were infamous.

But this is not to say that, in the arena of hygiene, these fashionable hellraisers could not be very prettily rivaled by the ladies! Just as a combination of testosterone and primitive sanitation brought out the worst of robust male humanity, the gender of the fairer sex formed a rather lethal combination with similarly bad science. Indeed how was a lady to make herself attractive and feminine in trying to ameliorate the likes of rank body odor, rotten teeth and pock-marked skin? Unlike the lovely fresh gals portrayed in Austen’s novels, these distasteful realities, facing all Regency ladies, were prevalent detractors in the art of attraction.

Austen’s sister-in-law, Mary, for example, was badly scarred from a bout of smallpox; not an uncommon blight amongst the gentry who were just as susceptible to the disease as were their poorer counterparts. Thus, to combat what was quite naturally nasty, some rudimentary ‘innovations’ helped fill in the proverbial cracks for Mary, and gentleladies in general. In keeping with a trend to move away from the dastardly and startling effects of lead-paint powders to whiten the skin, foundations with natural and pearlized tints became the rage and palliative skin care was encouraged with the likes of ‘Gowlands’ (so memorably mentioned by Sir Walter in Persuasion). His reference too, to ‘rouge’, pink- (derived from safflower and alkanet) and red-tinted (derived from carmine) blushes, to spice up Lady Russell’s pasty colored cheeks, was also ‘trending’ in Bath at the time. And for the lips—‘Rose Lip Salve’ was a winner for plumping and adding color. Eyeliner, mascaras and eyebrow tint were becoming similarly fashionable, but were extremely garish thanks to their being invariably fashioned out of soot dust and oil—or even burnt cork! (At least this beat the rage of the Rococo era where rodent hide sufficed very well for false eyebrows!). All in all not much to beat a defacing brush with disease.

Napoleon Bonaparte's Toothbrush-The Wellcome Collection

But what then was a girl to do? Well, a lady’s ‘ring of confidence’ wasn’t anything much to fall back on, I assure you! Rotting teeth were dealt with upon an extraction-only basis, while tooth powders/gums, toothpicks and tooth-brushing (with unsanitary toothbrushes or sponges) were the only solutions to prolific gum disease; and chewing mint or comfits the only hope of alleviating the associated bad breath. Dentists of the English Regency were literally ‘smithys’ of the mouth and Jane Austen affirms this by declaring, quite candidly, that she would not have one look at her teeth ‘for a sixpence, or double it’!

Body odor was yet another ‘hum’-dinger in the Regency. Being a more problematic and sensitive condition for women, and because of the very ‘femininity’ that they strove to portray, sweaty armpits might have done very well for the sport-hungry Bucks, but the lasses wanted none of them. The solutions? Lemon juice was employed as an underarm deodorant, and, if there was a bath in the house, and one was lowest on the scale of genteel ladies present, that gal would find herself bathing in the (cold) dirty water used by several ladies before her; all while dressed in a linen tunic! Shampoos were comprised of rum, eggs and ‘rose water’, and when it came to the ‘menarche’ as Eliza Austen so delicately put it, sometimes a week’s confinement to one’s room with a ‘headache’ was the only solution to cope discreetly with monthly periods and the primitive, reusable ‘napkins’ (resembling rags) provided to stem them!

In retrospect, if any of we spoiled, self-confessed, modern 'Georgians' were to properly recapture the decided lack of hygiene of our Regency predecessors, the experience would, in Jane-speak, be nothing less than 'amazing horrid' (as evidenced in the marvelous Regency House Party)! So the next time you unfurl those delicious pages of Austen's most sparkling novel, you might dare to conjecture what Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy might really have looked and smelled like. Pride and Prejudice—zombies?

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