Politics in Late Georgian Art

by Caroline Miley

There was no political art in England in the 1790s and 1800s – no art ‘of or relating to the government or public affairs of a country’¹. It is a surprising assertion, given that the era was one of upheaval, change and scandal, and that the arts in general proliferated. It was a period in which exhibiting societies began to proliferate and mushrooming journals offered art criticism to a growing middle class. The annual exhibitions of the Royal Academy, the British Institution, the Society of Painters in Water-colours and their fellows were well attended. And these institutions were supported and patronised by the aristocracy, even royalty. The Prince Regent was noted for his support of the arts.

(1)

Among the contemporary and controversial topics which did not appear in the painting of the period were: The French Revolution; the Napoleonic wars; slavery (neither the ownership of slaves nor the Abolitionist movement), food riots, the Luddites, Irish home rule, the American war and the loss of the colonies, prison reform, the Highland Clearances, enclosures, Catholic emancipation, the Mary Ann Clark scandal (in which it was revealed that the Duke of York’s mistress was selling commissions in the army to officers who met with her approval); Peterloo – the list is endless. It was a period of wars, political, industrial and technological change, turbulence, and social scandals.

But look up the words ‘art’ ‘Georgian’ and ‘political’, and you will be pitched instantly into the world of the golden age of British satirical prints. The works of Cruikshank, Rowlandson and Gillray almost exemplify the era. Print shops such as that of the famous Hannah Humphrey abounded, their windows papered with the latest lampoons, with no holds barred as their creators excoriated or ridiculed everyone from the King down, through generals and members of Parliament, the aristocracy, leaders of the ton, famous actresses, and anyone who happened to be in the public eye. England, in fact, was notable for the lack of censorship of such productions.

There was plenty of overt politics, then, and plenty of satire – but it was confined exclusively to the medium of the print and the popular broadsheet. The sphere of the fine arts – painting, and especially painting in oils, the professional’s medium – was a completely different matter. There was a knife-sharp divide between the fine and graphic arts.

Nowhere was this more obvious than the way His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, was portrayed in each medium. In official portrait after portrait, painted carefully by the great and the good of the art establishment from Cosway to Lawrence, he appears as debonair, regal, handsome, a pillar of the monarchy and society (1). But he was also the favourite butt of satirists (2).

(2)

The nature of official portraits is, of course, to be official: to convey an image sanctioned by the establishment of the day. As such, paintings of men and incidents in public life can never altogether escape the taint of propaganda, and the agenda of the day was to celebrate the stability and growth of Empire. The death of Tipu Sultan, a Indian ruler who strongly resisted the encroachment of the East India Company into his territory, and was killed by the British at Seringapatam in 1799, might be thought today to have its controversial elements. John Singleton Copley’s painting of the event (3), an unabashed depiction of British expansionism at the point of the sword, is characteristic of the way such events were portrayed, and received by the public.

(3)

There were plenty of paintings which celebrated those in public life, such as Benjamin West’s ‘Death of Nelson’ (4), and they concurrently celebrated State patriotism, offering no challenge to or critique of the existing order. And leading artists were themselves part of the establishment: The Royal Academy was under Royal patronage, prominent artists were knighted, and Sir Thomas Lawrence, for instance, had a place in the procession for the coronation of George IV. The idea of artists as critics of society was not to come until after the Romantic era. In the Georgian period, they were solidly enrolled among its members.

There were strict limits, however, to what even a successful member of the Royal Academy could expect to get away with, and political subjects, even when cast in the past, were unlikely to meet with approval. Copley, for instance, trod too close to the edge in 1795 when he exhibited ‘Charles I Demanding the Five Impeached Members of the House of Commons’², an event which had happened in the 1640s. At a private viewing, Queen Charlotte, after a long and ominous silence, said to the artist, “You have chosen, Mr. Copley, a most unfortunate subject for the exercise of your pencil.”³ It didn’t sell.⁴ The canon of acceptability had been set out by Royalty.

Was this discrepancy a problem? Probably not. The fine and graphic arts existed side by side, and for a broad audience. The upper class saw both Academy paintings and the wares of the print shops. The middle classes bought at the print shops and saw the paintings at occasional exhibitions – those which were not in private hands, and even they were sometimes exhibited publicly. Among their purchases, though, would be engravings of the most popular of the fine art productions. The print dealers were selling reproductions of West’s ‘Death of Nelson’, for example, for a decade after Trafalgar. This multiple audience had ample opportunity to compare the two approaches. The disjunction between the two distinct art forms was not the result of the views of an elite being forced on the mass of the people; the people themselves shared these views.

(4)

A concept prominent at the time although not much in use today is that of decorum. There was appropriate conduct, appropriate dress, and appropriate relationships. One did not wear diamonds in the morning nor a cotton dress to a grand ball. Beau Nash, when Master of Ceremonies at the Bath Assembly Rooms, castigated a gentleman who turned up in boots rather than shoes with the immortal phrase: ‘Pardon me, sir, but you have forgot your horse’⁵. So, too, appropriate art.

Unlike popular art forms, the fine arts were the subject of canons of taste, which were no mere arbitrary principles laid down by a coterie of snobs. At this period, and for a very long time indeed, art was seen as the expression of a society and its natures and functions were debated and theorised, then as now. Art had its own rules of decorum. In the era in question, the greatest theorist was Johann Winckelmann, whose ground-breaking The History of Ancient Art (1764) swayed several generations. His ideas were absorbed and transmitted by, among others, Sir Joshua Reynolds, the Founder of the Royal Academy. They were the single greatest influence on the art of the Georgian era throughout Europe.

Winckelmann idealized Greek art for its ‘noble simplicity and quiet grandeur’. His central doctrine was that the point of art is beauty, which he elevated to the status of a general good. Beauty, in his view, could only be achieved by subordinating particular characteristics, for example of a nude, so as to depict an ideal type rather than a flawed individual (5). Total, overall harmony was the desired end. Or, as Reynolds put it, “the whole beauty and grandeur of the art consists, in my opinion, in being able to get above all singular forms, local customs, particularities, and details of every kind.”⁶

(5)

Art which adhered to this concept of grandeur was considered appropriate – appropriate to a civilised society, a cultured drawing-room. Controversy, scandal, impropriety, vulgarity, riot, revolution, and all such topics did not aspire to beauty, to ‘quiet grandeur’, to ‘noble simplicity’. They were deformities which must be brushed away, lest they injure overall harmony.

In some countries, political subjects were not uncommon. In a stark contrast, the era in France saw fine art come to the fore as a propaganda medium. A large number of artists – not only David, but Boilly and others painted overtly political subjects. Many were simply state propaganda, but others offered a distinct perspective or critique. The death of Marat (6), or the execution of the King, are subjects that could not have appeared in England. ‘French Revolutionary Art’, in fact, is a whole category, almost a genre.

(6)

In a characteristically pragmatic English manner, the proprieties were maintained. Fine Art continued – for a while – to exemplify all that was most uplifting, in the rooms of the Royal Academy and the British Institution, while around the corner at the print shops, the citizenry forked out their penny plain and twopence coloured for scandalous broadsheets that exposed every carbuncle on the behinds of the dignified gentry whose porcelain features graced the salons.

If the Georgian era was anything, it was a time of rapid transformation. So, too, in art. The taste for the Grand Manner was ebbing. In 1812 Benjamin West exhibited ‘Christ Healing the Sick’ to enormous acclaim. In the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of the same year, JMW Turner exhibited ‘Snowstorm – Hannibal Crossing the Alps’ (7) and Constable ‘A Water Mill’. Change was on its way, but it was necessary to wait until the Victorian era for Turner’s Slave Ship (1840) although the scandalous event it refers to took place in 1781⁷  and it was in the Victorian era that work, controversially, with its potential for critique of ruling-class politics, for the first time became a subject for art.

(7)

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Notes

1. Oxford English Dictionary

2. Exhibited at Wigley’s Rooms at Spring Gardens in 1795. “King Charles I accused five members of the House of Commons of treason and demanded their surrender. The House refused, considering this a breach of their rights, and the event proved to be the foundation for the civil war that led to the king's execution.” “Process and Paradox: The Historical Pictures of John Singleton Copley” http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/4aa/4aa382.htm

3. Brushes were called pencils at this period.

4. “No customer made his appearance for Charles and the impeached members.” Allan Cunningham The Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors and Architects, Volume 5, John Murray, London 1832, p. 181.

5.http://www.exclassics.com/nash/nashpdf.pdf

6. Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourse III.

7. The infamous Zong matter, in which over a hundred living slaves were thrown overboard to avoid financial loss to the owners. The subsequent court cases caused a scandal in England and contributed to the anti-slavery movement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zong_massacre.


Illustrations

(1) ‘The Prince Regent in Garter Robes’, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1816

(2) ‘The Prince Regent’ by George Cruikshank, 1816

(3) ‘The Last Effort and Death of Tipu Sultan’ by John Singleton Copley, 1800

(4) ‘The Death of Nelson’, from the painting by Benjamin West, engraved by James Heath.  Published 1 May 1811.

(5) ‘Cimon and Iphigenia’ by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1780

(6) ‘Death of Marat’ by Jacques-Louis David. Marat was one of the leaders of the Montagnards, the radical faction ascendant in French politics during the Reign of Terror until the Thermidorian Reaction. Charlotte Corday was a Girondin from a minor aristocratic family and a political enemy of Marat who blamed him for the September Massacre. She gained entrance to Marat's rooms with a note promising details of a counter-revolutionary ring in Caen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Marat

(7) ‘Snowstorm: Hannibal Crossing the Alps’ by J M W Turner, 1812

[All illustrations are in the public domain]
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Caroline Miley is an art historian and writer with a long-time passion for literature, art, the English landscape and history, especially the late Georgian era. She has published several non-fiction books on art, craft and social comment. The Competition, in which she brought together her enthusiasms for the Regency art world and the Industrial Revolution, is her debut novel.

Website and contact
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The Jilting Princess...

by M.M. Bennetts

Yes, she was a princess.  And yes, she had to marry for reasons of state rather than solely based on her personal fancy, but Princess Charlotte (1796-1817), daughter of the Prince Regent and Caroline of Brunswick was no pawn--kind of more the opposite...

Bearing in mind that at the time when ministers of state, and latterly her parents, were scanning the horizon for suitable royal consorts for her, the Napoleonic wars were heading towards, they hoped, a close.  Whilst at the same time, the remaining heads of state--those which had survived--were wondering how best to restore order to Europe and reinstate legitimate government (read monarchies) to those countries which Napoleon had annexed to France.  So the task of choosing a royal mate was a little more complex than usual.

Nevertheless, in 1812, the government hit upon a plan.  Wouldn't it be perfect if Princess Charlotte were to marry William of Orange?  He was of an age with Charlotte, not too old nor too young, he'd seen active service in the Peninsula, so he was a dashing military hero and he was a Protestant (a necessity). What could be better? 

William of Orange had been raised in exile in England (so he spoke English!), he'd spent two years at Oxford,and from 1811, he served in the Peninsula under Wellington by whom he was known as 'Slender Billy'.

Perhaps he wasn't great looking, but he was known to be amiable, there had been another hugely successful marriage between a Prince of Orange and an English princess...And, bliss of blisses, someday he would rule the Netherlands--so through him and any children they might have, Britain would regain a toehold on the Continent, moreover a toehold that was right across the North Sea, thus securing the sea lanes to the Baltic.  It was ideal!

There was only one problem:  Princess Charlotte.

Because you see, in the autumn of 1812, she had conceived a rather violent passion for a Captain Charles Hesse of the 18th Hussars, and whilst at Windsor had gone out riding with him every day.

And after that, she'd been meeting with him secretly at her mother's home in Kensington, where her mother, helpfully, would "let him into her own apartment by a door that opens onto Kensington Gardens...[then] leave them together in her own bedroom, [with the words] 'A present, je vous laisse, amusez vous'."  [For the moment I'm leaving you, amuse yourselves...]

As may you appreciate, when the Prince Regent discovered, he was incandescent with rage.

And Charlotte was pretty much locked away with a new governess and with very little company.  As the Prince said with some feeling (and almost in echo of Austen's Mr. Bennet):  "I know all that passed in Windsor Park; and if it were not for my clemency I would have shut you up for life.  Depend upon it, as long as I live you shall never have an establishment, unless you marry."  

Hence, when the proposed match with William was put to Princess Charlotte in February 1813, she was not keen.  As she said of him, "I think him so ugly, that I am sometimes obliged to turn my head away in disgust when he is speaking to me."  (Ouch!)  But the idea did eventually take hold--marriage would allow her her own establishment and financial independence.  And the princess was already in debt to the tune of £22,000.  (Over a million pounds in today's money.)

The Prince Regent was delighted and held a dinner at his home at Carlton House so that the two might meet on 11 December, and Charlotte was enjoined to give her father her "fair and undisguised opinion".  After the usual fits and starts, by the end of the evening, Charlotte told her father, "I like his manner very well, as much as I ever have seen of it."

The Prince Regent was rapturous.  Charlotte would later speak of the whole thing as "a dream".

Then, in early April, having been fought to a standstill in France, Napoleon abdicated.  Then followed another remarkable bit of news:  for the first time in centuries European royalty were to visit England!  Caught up in the euphoria of the moment, in early May, the government announced the intended marriage between Charlotte and William, the Hereditary Prince of Orange (who suddenly had a throne again!)...

William himself had already arrived in Britain, ahead of the other European princes--Tsar Alexander and Kaiser Wilhelm and their entourages.  But then, a spoke appeared in the marital-diplomatic wheel--the Grand Duchess Catherine, the Tsar's confidante and sister, who allegedly had designs on William herself--or rather Russia also wanted a toehold in western Europe.

The visit of the crowned heads that June offered an opportunity for endless rounds of parties, balls, dinners and diplomacy, but Princess Charlotte was not invited.  Instead, she remained cooped up in her residence at Warwick House, next door to Carlton House, sequestered away from the fun, even as Grand Duchess Catherine worked on her, visiting, taking tea, souring whatever remained of Charlotte's affection for Slender Billy--especially by recounting just what her fiance was getting up to.

While Charlotte was locked away, William was repeatedly getting drunk, attending all the social events, having a whale of a time...when he'd gone to the Ascot Races, he'd returned to London hanging off the outside of a stage coach.

And there was one other looming problem.  Where would the young couple live?  Charlotte feared that if she  left the country and her father obtained a divorce as he wished to do, her father might remarry and produce a new heir.  And where would that leave Charlotte?  So the demand made in the proposed marriage settlement that she should spend some time with her husband in the Netherlands, as she put it, "living in Holland amongst the fogs and dykes", each year proved the final straw.

(Though it's also said that she'd been secretly seeing the Prussian king's nephew, Prince Frederick, who was said to be very handsome and she was much enamoured...)

Charlotte therefore requested that William pay her a visit on 16 June.  Their consultation together ended with Charlotte's "positive declaration that she will not leave England now..."  And later that evening, Charlotte wrote to William informing him that she was jilting him, that their engagement was "to be totally and for ever at an end".

It was a public humiliation for William...and initially, it didn't work out so well for Charlotte either...though later, she did marry the rather spiffing Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg and he was her choice.

This is an Editor's Choice post, originally published April 23 2013

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M.M. Bennetts was one of the driving forces behind teh EHFA blog and contributed many wonderful posts before her early demise some years ago. She was a specialist in early 19th century European history and the Napoleonic wars, and the author of two novels, May 1812 and Of Honest Fame set during the period.  

John Nash, Designer of Regency London

by Regina Jeffers

John Nash was the man responsible for the shape and development of London. Under Nash's plan, Londoners embraced the concept of Regent's Park in the northern sections and St James's Park in the south, as well as Regent's Street, which connected the two. Trafalgar Square came into being, as did the reconstruction of the Strand. The Regent's Canal was cut, along with its branch to service Regent's Park.

According to most experts, the reversion of Marylebone Park from the Duke of Portland to the Crown in 1811 opened the door to the "metropolitan improvements."

The original idea for the development came from John Fordyce, who had been appointed to the Surveyor General of His Majesty's Land Revenues. Fordyce drew up several plans, but the one from 1809 suggests the need for a new street from Marylebone Park to Carlton House. Fordyce reasoned that the nobility and professional classes required a means to conduct business and that these groups would settle north of the New Road. His creation would provide easier access to Westminster, Parliament, the Law Courts, and the Public Offices.

Fordyce requested development plans from two pairs of architects: Messrs Leverton and Chawner, of the Land Revenue Office, and Messrs Nash and Morgan, of the Office of Woods and Forests. Leverton and Chawner's plans simply extended the Bloomsbury pattern of streets. Meanwhile, Nash and Morgan suggested a landscaped park with peripheral ring of villas and fine houses.

Nash's connection to the Prince Regent is not clearly defined. Nash caught the Prince's attention after he formed a partnership with Humphry Repton, a landscape gardener. Although his partnership with Repton ended in 1800, Nash's career bloomed. In 1806, the Foxite Whig, Lord Robert Spencer, helped Nash secure a position with the Surveyor of the Office of Woods and Forests.

In his personal life, Nash attempted to obtain a divorce from his first wife after he went bankrupt in his business dealings because Mrs Nash did little to economize. His case was refused, but he remarried in 1798, presumably after the first Mrs Nash's death. It was with this second marriage that Nash came to notice of the nobility. He became a member of the Carlton House set.

John Summerson in Georgian London says, "On the strength of a scurrilous cartoon dated 1820, in which the new king [George IV] is shown making love to Mrs Nash on the royal yacht, it has been supposed that a liaison existed  between the two and that Nash's marriage twenty-two years earlier had been arranged for the prince's convenience. Speculation has even gone so far as to suggest that the Pennethorne children whom Nash adopted were in fact the progeny of the prince. All this can safely be discounted, but Nash's accession to wealth and princely favour at a period coincident with his second marriage in 1798 does remain something of a mystery."

Nash's plans sparked the Prince's interest. The future king had grand schemes to outshine Napoleon's Paris. From 1809 - 1826, Nash worked largely for the Prince.

Nash's original plans showed a rectangular layout of streets, anchored by Marylebone Park and St James's on either end. Eventually, the master plan for the area stretched from St James's northwards and included Regent Street, Regent's Park and its neighboring streets, terraces and crescents of elegant town houses and villas.

Nash did not design all the buildings himself, in some instances, these were left in the hands of other architects such as James Pennethorne and Decimus Burton. Nash re-landscaped St James's Park, reshaping the formal canal into the present lake, and giving the park its present form. Regent Street, which linked Portland Place in the north with Carlton House, followed an irregular path. Park Crescent, which frames Portland place, opens into Nash's Park Square. With terraces on the east and west, the north end of the plan opens into Regent's Park.

Around Regent's Park, Nash designed terraces, which conformed to the earlier form of appearing as a single building, as developed by John Wood, the Elder. However, Nash ignored the earlier examples and did not employ orthogonality in relationship to one another.

In Park Village East and Park Village West, completed between 1823-1834, Nash placed a mixture of detached villas, semi-detached houses, both symmetrical and asymmetrical in their design. They are set in private gardens railed off from the street, the roads loop and building are both classical and Gothic in style. No two buildings were the same, and or even in line with their neighbors. The park Villages are often considered a prototype for the Victorian suburbs.

Set up in 1812, Nash became the director of the Regent's Canal Company, which was to provide a canal link from west London to the River Thames in the east. Nash's design had the canal running around the northern edge of Regent's Park. His assistant James Morgan executed the plan, and the Regent's Canal was completed in 1820.

As part of his new position as an official architect to the Office of Works in 1813, Nash advised the Parliamentary Commissioners on the building of new churches from 1818 forward. He produced the design for ten churches, each estimated to cost £10,000 and offered seating for 2000. The plans for these ten churches incorporated both classical and gothic styles. Nash oversaw the building of both the classical All Souls Church, Langham Place (1822-1824) at the northern end of Regent Street and the gothic St Mary's Haggerston (1825-1827), which was bombed during The Blitz in 1941.

Nash was also involved in the building of The King's Opera House (now rebuilt as Her Majesty's Theatre) and the Theatre Royal Haymarket. Nash and George Repton remodeled The King's Opera House between 1816-1818. They added arcades and shops around three sides of the building, the fourth being the still surviving Royal Opera Arcade. The Theatre Royal Haymarket, which was finished in 1821. Although Nash's interior no longer survives, the Theatre Royal Haymarket sports a fine hexastyle Corinthian order portico, facing down Charles II Street to St James's Square.

Nash oversaw the remodeling of Buckingham House to create Buckingham Palace from 1825-1830 and the Royal Mews from 1822-1824, as well as the Marble Arch in 1828. Originally designed as a triumphal arch to stand at the entrance to Buckingham Palace, the Marble Arch was moved at the request of Queen Victoria, who had commissioned Edward Blore to build an addition to the east wing of the palace to meet the needs of her growing family. Marble Arch became the entrance to Hyde Park and The Great Exhibition.

With the death of George IV in 1830, the Treasury began to question the extravagant cost of Buckingham Palace. Nash's original estimate of the building's cost had been £252,690, but by 1829, the cost had risen to £496,169. Although unfinished, the actual cost was £613,269. Nash was denied the Knighthood promised to him. Finally, he retired to his home, East Cowes Castle, on the Isle of Wight. He died on 13 May 1835 and is buried at St James's Church, East Cowes, where the monument to him takes the form of a stone sarcophagus.
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Regina Jeffers loves all things Austen and is the author of several novels, including Darcy’s Temptation, Captain Wentworth’s Persuasion, The Disappearance of Georgiana Darcy and Second Chances: The Courtship Wars .

Her website is: www.rjeffers.com

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

As the English Regency is probably the little spot in history where I most oft lodge myself, I thought I would write a series of blog-pieces to take it to review, vignette by vignette, and through the eyes, ears and exploits of its contemporary players.

The English Regency began in 1811 when George III's heir, George, Prince of Wales (aptly nicknamed 'Prinny'), took the presumptive sovereign reigns as Prince Regent. While the 'much-enlightened' Prince let King George sink privately into the perennial 'madness' of porphyria, Prinny as proxy took the helm of a rapidly expanding empire. With England, at its center, the country was still largely an agrarian nation with its social strata clearly defined by hierarchy. Though still at war with Napoleon, England remained yet untouched by 'Boney' and his mighty military machine, while leaving any sense of the outside world, beyond France, in the jurisdiction of the sole 'mass medium', the English Press. Transport was slow and largely dependent on the stage coach and mail coach, and here, Richard Rush, the American Minister to the Court of St. James's accounts for his views of just such a 'picture', on his way from Portsmouth to London:

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"At noon, I set out for London. We were soon out of Portsmouth, and went as far as Godalming that day, a distance of 38 miles, over roads like a floor.
     I was surprised at the few houses along or near the road side. I had been full of the idea of the populousness of England ... We rarely met wagons, carriages, or vehicles of any sort, except stage coaches. We did not see a single person on horseback. The stage coaches illustrated what is said of the excellence of that mode of travelling in England. These, as they came swiftly down the hills, or were met in full trot upon the plains, the horses fine, the harness bright, and inside and out filled with passengers, not only men but women, all well dressed, crowding the tops, had a bold and picturesque appearance. The few peasants whom we saw, were fully and warmly clad. They wore breeches and stockings, a heavy shoe, which lacing over the ankle, made the foot look clumsy; a linen frock over the coat, worked with plaits [braids], and stout leather gloves, which they kept on while working."

Rush then details the changing landscape just before reaching London:

"All within our view grew more and more instinct with life; until at length, evening coming on, at first villages, then rows of buildings, and people, and twinkling lights, and all kinds of sound, gave token that the metropolis was close by. We entered it by Hyde Park Corner, passing through Piccadilly and Bond Street, beholding the moving crowds which now the town lights revealed."

Regency London was large and handsome and Charles Lamb best describes it:

"The lighted shops of the Strand and Fleet Street, the innumerable trades, tradesmen and customers, coaches, waggons, playhouses, all the bustle and wickedness about Covent Garden, the very women of the town, the Watchmen, drunken scenes, rattles, -- life awake, if you awake, at all hours of the night, the impossibility of being dull in Fleet Street, the crowds, the very dirt & mud, the Sun shining upon houses and pavements, the print shops, the old book stalls, parsons cheapening books, coffee houses, steams of soups from  kitchens, the pantomime, London itself a pantomime and a masquerade ..."

And if in Regency London, who better to experience its pleasures than with the Regent himself. The Morning Chronicle gives this report of the Regent's entrance at a garden supper for two-hundred guests of the nobility and gentry:

"His Royal Highness the Prince Regent entered the State Apartments about a quarter past nine o' clock, dressed in a scarlet coat, most richly and elegantly ornamented in a very novel style with gold lace, with a brilliant star of the Order of the Garter ... The conservatory presented the fine effect of a loft aisle in an ancient cathedral ... The grand table extended the whole length of the conservatory, and across Carlton House to the length of 200 feet ... Along the centre of the table, about six inches to above the surface, a canal of pure water continued flowing from a silver fountain, beautifully constructed at the head of the table. Its faintly waving artificial banks were covered with green moss and aquatic flowers, gold and silver fish, gudgeons, etc., were seen to swim and sport through the bubbling current, which produced a pleasing murmur when it fell, and formed a cascade at the outlet. At the head of the table, above the fountain, sat His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, on a throne of crimson velvet, trimmed with gold."

The cost for this frilly fete of finery at Carlton House came to over one-hundred-thousand pounds. In an effort to recoup the expense to the Empire the apartments, housing the party, were opened to the public for the price of a ticket. On the final day of reviewing just how very properly the beau monde could waste money, there was such a rush at it that some "delicate and helpless females who were present ... were thrown down, and ... [were] literally trod upon by those behind, without the possibility of being extricated".

In fact Carlton House was London's party-central. Anybody who was anyone tried to get an invitation to its most memorable events and royal fetes. Here Lady Elizabeth Feilding describes, in hyperbolical terms, one of these glittering occasions to a correspondent:

"I am afraid all my powers of description would fail to give you an idea of the oriental air of everything in that Mahomet's Paradise, Carlton House. I do not know whether we looked like Houris, but I for one was certainly in 77th heaven ...
     Imagine yourself ascending a flight of steps into an immense saloon lighted up to the ceiling with a profusion of candles and a display of gold plate on either hand that dazzled the eye while a sonorous band of turbaned slaves played 'God Save the King'.
     The sight and sound were both animating, the kettle-drums and cymbals, the glitter of spangles and finery, of dress and furniture that burst upon you was quite eblouissant.
     Then you turned to the right through a suite of rooms, some hung with scarlet and gold, others with blue and gold, and some decorated with portraits of all our great commanders. At last you arrived at the ballroom, where sat the Queen at the upper end, with the Princess de Conde on her right hand, and the Russian Ambassadress (Comtess de Lieven) on her left. This last was a most singular figure; she was in black velvet up to her chin, with a huge ruff like Queen Elizabeth, or rather Mary Queen of Scots, for she is very handsome. She had no ornaments whatever but a long chain of very large diamonds, and a picture that hung on her back. Her head was dressed quite flat, and she looked like something walked out of its frame in an old picture gallery ..."

And gastronomy was no less impolitic in the Regency than its stampedes over royal post-party exhibits or Lady Elizabeth Feilding's '77th heaven'. In June 1814 this arrangement of hedonistic delights was laid before the visiting Allied Sovereigns:

"The Dinner was as sumptuous as expense or skill could make it, and was served entirely on plate ... Samuel Turner, Esq., one of the Directors of the Bank of England, very handsomely presented a fine Turtle for the occasion, which was the first imported in the season, and arrived in time to be served ... A large Baron of Beef, with the Royal Standard, was placed upon a stage at the upper end of the Hall, in view of the Royal Table, attended by the Serjeant Carvers and one of the principal Cooks, in proper Costume."

Poor 'Turtle'! After 'fifteen toasts' and a 'flourish of trumpets', it was clear that what life was left in the poor creature on arrival, was vanquished in voracity by noblemen and gentry with dreadfully epicurean tastes. But the Prince wasn't done for the Season and he then proceeded to host a sumptuous ball for the Duke of Wellington, as Lady Harriot Frampton details quite minutely:

"The supper laid out in one room for the Queen was very handsome, as the ornaments were quite beautiful. There were fifty covers, and the plateau down the middle of the table was covered with exquisite groups in silver gilt. The centre group was above three feet high, and each one of the figures was so beautifully executed that they might have been ornaments in a drawing-room, and everything else, even the salt-cellars, was in the most excellent taste. All was in gold or silver gilt, which made the silver plate, set out in the deep-recessed windows, look cold and poor, although in reality it was very massive and handsome.
     The plates only were of china and I recognised them as a set of the finest Sevres porcelain which Lady Auckland had once shown me at Beckenham, as having been a present from Louis XVI to the late Lord Auckland, when he was Ambassador at Paris, and I regretted that they should have been obliged to part with them. Each plate had a large bird painted in the centre of it.
     All the rooms were studded with Ws in honour of the Duke of Wellington, who, however, seemed to do all he could to avoid notice."

 Photo courtesy Siren-Com

One can only think the Duke a very wise man for all of his Ws at such an occasion! And such was the novelty of London, and the extravagant influence of the Prince Regent (whom Shelley appositely describes as the 'overgrown bantling of Regency'), that excess in the metropolis took on the veritable hallmarks of fashion. Though the darker side of a dingier London played nefarious host to the 'Lunar races', as Robert Southey put it, the Prince and his People did true justice to the everything that shone 'Solar'.

In my next review of this extraordinary era, we go onwards and upwards to shining hedonistic heights with its celebrity extraordinaire, the Prince Regent, and to his most darling of places, Brighton. There contemporary witnesses will paint a picture of the Prince and his period that waxes nothing shy of uncommon, exotic and, at the very least, everything that was very 'elegant and lively'.

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

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