Heather King's Blog, page 8

Spotlight on a Star

This is the first in a new, occasional series, where I spotlight someone I think has talent, or whose work I love and enjoy or respect.
The first post features a young friend of mine, Flora Barber, who goes to school in Malvern and is a budding talent in many creative arenas. She is artistic, articulate, intelligent and a poet of no mean ability, as you will see. I fully expect her to be Poet Laureate one day! I am honoured she has given me permission to post it here.
BBC Hereford & Worcester Radio held a competition recently to Search For The Poet. This is the winning poem in the 13 - 17 age category, the senior group.

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HOME - by Flora Barber
A cough, a wheeze, nothing more, just a normal day.
It’ll pass; fade in the absence of concentration.
It’s what they always say.
“Go out to play, you’ll be home soon.”
How many more steps can I bear?
I just want to sleep, find comfort and warmth
To feel safe, protected from the whirlwind outside.

I was drowning on air, screaming but not a whisper leaving my lips.
Can they not see me? Could they not hear me?
My chest is heaving, every breath choking;
Help please, help, I’m being crushed from inside.
My muscles seizing, trembling, heavy with no sensation.
I’m fighting, slipping away, each second a lifetime.
All those people staring, talking, pointing.
I just want to go home.


How did I end up here? All these cables and tubes,
Flashing lights in my eyes.
Why wouldn’t they just go away?
Let me go home, I’m crying, trying to say.
I just wanted to be left alone.
Their words, all this noise, like an orchestra in free-fall.
I just wanted to go home.


The whole world fades away, I’m falling.
I don’t want this struggle, this pain.
Falling down, deeper,
Faster, trying, gasping.
Their confused calm, panicked patience,
These flashes of consciousness, the effect of suffocation.
I just wanted to be left alone.
Begging then to stop, let in the silent darkness.
I just wanted to go home.


The stars, like fireflies, they dance through the midnight.
Like a phoenix, igniting, flaming, burning brilliantly.
The ashes fade, crinkling, crisply crackling.
Fading, burning out, we’ll disappear on a gasp of air.
Tossed onto a wayward wind.
It‘s pitch black and we’ll never see the sun again.
Our voices, just whispering echoes in the back of their minds.
All I wanted was just to go home.






Text © Flora BarberPhotograph © Heather King

The Gentlemen's Clubs ~ Part Two

In this second article, I look at some of the – perhaps – lesser-known clubs frequented by gentlemen in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Gentlemen’s clubs had existed since Shakespeare’s time, although the word ‘club’, to mean a place of conviviality, is more recent. Samuel Pepys writes, in his entry for 26 July 1660, of a visit to ‘Pell Mell’:


“We went to Wood’s (our old house for clubbing), and there we spent till ten at night.”

In these few words, the diarist provides us with not only an early reference to Pall Mall being known for ‘houses of entertainment’, but also an early employment of the term ‘clubbing’, to mean calling at one or more clubs. What is more fascinating, is that when John Timbs was writing of the London Clubs in 1864, Pall Mall had maintained (quoting Peter Cunningham), “what Johnson would have called its ‘clubbable’ character”, while even today there are clubs on that street and in the locality.

However, for the golden era of the Gentlemen’s Clubs, we must look towards the beginning of the eighteenth century. The original The Spectator, launched in 1711, (the political magazine dates to 1828 although the name was quite possibly revived by its founding editor) did, with wit and insight, keep the clubs’ stories for posterity. In the ninth edition, Joseph Addison records:

“Man is said to be a sociable animal; and as an instance of it we may observe, that we take all occasions and pretences of forming ourselves into those little nocturnal assemblies, which are commonly known by the name of Clubs. When a set of men find themselves agree in any particular, though never so trivial, they establish themselves into a kind of fraternity, and meet once or twice a week, upon the account of such a fantastic resemblance.”

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Rev. Joseph Spence, in his Anecdotes, Observations and Characters, relates an instance which reveals much about the men who frequented such establishments.

‘There was a club held at the King's Head in Pall Mall, that arrogantly called itself “The World.” Lord Stanhope, then (now Lord Chesterfield) Lord Herbert, &c. &c. were members. Epigrams were proposed to be written on the glasses, by each member after dinner; once when Dr. Young was invited thither, the doctor would have declined writing, because he had no diamond: Lord Stanhope lent him his, and he wrote immediately—’

“Accept a miracle, instead of wit;See two dull lines, with Stanhope’s pencil writ.”—Dr. Young.

 In his descriptive book of London in 1807, David Hughson refers to what, historically, is considered the first mansion to be used as a club for the entertainment of gentlemen. He wrote: “Adjoining to Carleton House Gardens, are those belonging to the residence of his Royal Highness, Henry Frederick, late Duke of Cumberland, brother to his present Majesty [George III].” He goes on to state that the house, having been built for Prince Edward, Duke of York, was sold following the death of the Duke of Cumberland. “…and is at present occupied by a subscription club, and called the Albion Hotel. The fronts of the above two houses are in Pall Mall.”

The Albion Hotel was Number 86 and became part of the War Office; its creation as a subscription club was the beginning of the ‘Club land’ which came to be centred around Pall Mall and St. James’s.

  The Kit-Kat Club

If you are partial to a certain brand of chocolate biscuit, you may be surprised to learn that the appellation of the club was, in all likelihood, derived from the name of a pie maker or the mutton pies he baked. Historical sources have varying opinions.

Formed probably around 1700, the titled members of the Kit-Kat (otherwise called Kit-Cat, Kit-Catt and Kit-Katt, with and without the hyphen) met originally at a tavern on Shire Lane. Running parallel with Bell Yard and by the Temple Bar, the lane has long been lost beneath the Royal Courts of Justice. The Cat and Fiddle was the house of noted pieman Christopher Katt (or Catt, or even Catling) and his mutton pies were known as ‘kit-kats’. Thirty-nine noblemen and gentlemen met to discuss literature, art and Whig politics, including ‘the Dukes of Somerset, Richmond, Grafton, Devonshire, and Marlborough’; ‘the Earls of Dorset, Sunderland, Manchester, Wharton, and Kingston’; the Earl of Stanhope; Viscount Cobham; Lord Halifax; Sir Robert Walpole and Sir John Vanbrugh; writers Joseph Addison, William Congreve and John Locke, as well as artist Sir Godfrey Kneller. Many of the latter’s ‘kit-kat’ portraits of the members are at Beningborough Hall in Yorkshire, courtesy of a collaboration between the National Trust and the National Portrait Gallery.

Christopher ‘Kit’ Catt’s pies became a feature of the Club’s suppers and in The Spectator, Joseph Addison clearly denotes them as the source of the nomenclature. In the prologue to a comedy in Volume 9, it says: “A Kit-Kat is a supper for a lord.” Nevertheless, Dr. King, in Art of Cookery, published 1708, considers the honour goes to the pieman himself:

His glory far, like Sir-Loins, Knighthood flies.Immortal made as Kit-cat by his Pies.

 This all seems fairly cut and dried, but there is yet another possibility. It is conceivable that the club stemmed from an earlier institutional practice. According to John Timbs, in 1699 one Elkanah Settle designated a manuscript poem thus: “To the most renowned the President and the rest of the Knights of the most noble Order of the Toast.” Timbs states that the verses assert “…the dignity of the Society; and Malone supposes the Order of the Toast to have been identical with the Kit-Kat Club…”

A further possibility is a purported ‘friendship’ between the pieman and bookseller Jacob Tonsen, whereby pastries were offered to poets and authors either by the one or the other. Did Tonsen have a first refusal on new works? Meetings apparently became weekly and since Christopher traded under the sign of the Cat and Fiddle, it is not beyond the bounds for one wag to have put the two together.

Whether or not those well-bred gentlemen deigned to pass ‘along the narrow and filthy pathway of Shire-lane,’ the Kit-Kat Club possessed a set of toasting glasses. Each was ‘inscribed with a verse, or toast to some reigning beauty; among whom were the four shining daughters of the Duke of Marlborough—Lady Godolphin, Lady Sunderland, Lady Bridgewater, and Lady Monthermer…’ The list also included the ‘witty niece’ of Sir Isaac Newton, the Duchess of Bolton, Lady Carlisle and Lady Wharton. It would appear from an epigram written by Dr. John Arbuthnot, the Queen’s physician, that he considered the name of the club to come from this after-dinner custom rather than from the celebrated maker of ‘mutton pyes’.

 “Whence deathless Kit-Kat took his name,Few critics can unriddle:Some say from pastrycook it came,And some from Cat and Fiddle.From no trim beaus its name it boasts,Grey statesmen or green wits,But from this pell-mell pack of toastsOf old Cats and young Kits."

The members of the Kit-Kat Club were middle-aged and respectable; Horace Walpole (whose father Sir Robert was a member) described them as ‘generally mentioned as “a set of wits”’, while Timbs declares they were ‘in reality the patriots that saved Britain’. Himself a member, as stated above, it was Joseph Addison’s view that “all celebrated clubs were founded on eating and drinking, which are points where most men agree, and in which the learned and the illiterate, the dull and the airy, the philosopher and the buffoon, can all of them bear a part.” To illustrate this point, he went on, “The Kit-Kat itself is said to have taken its original from a Mutton-Pye. The Beef-Steak and October Clubs are neither of them averse to eating and drinking, if we may form a judgment of them from their respective titles.”

This, we may assume, was the root from whence the gambling clubs of the Regency sprang.

The club met at the Upper Flask, Hampstead Heath, during the summer and moved to Barn Elms, the home of Secretary Jacob Tonson, when a special clubroom was built to house the Kneller portraits. It was still standing in 1817, but not long after that date was connected to a barn and converted into a ‘riding-house’. Some sources state that the club also met at the Fountain Tavern on The Strand.



The Club

Another renowned literary club and, indeed, called The Literary Club following the death of David Garrick, it originated in 1764 from dinners held at the Leicester Square home of Sir Joshua Reynolds. The regular meetings of artists, statesmen, wits, authors and scholars evolved into a society, suggested by Reynolds and seconded by Dr. Samuel Johnson, which met at seven o’clock on Monday evenings until 1772, when it was changed to Friday. Somewhere about this time it was decided that during the sitting of Parliament members would dine together only once a fortnight. Initially the club met at the Turk’s Head in Gerrard Street, the number of its members limited to nine.

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 The original members, in addition to artist Reynolds and essayist Johnson, were author, playwright and poet Oliver Goldsmith; Dr. Christopher Nugent; Topham Beauclerk; Bennet Langton; writer and future Member of Parliament Edmund Burke; author John Hawkins and Under-Secretary at War Anthony Chamier. The following year, they were joined by Samuel Dyer, who became the first elected member. It was decided to increase the membership to the optimal number of twelve and thus writers George Colman and Thomas Percy, with barrister Robert Chambers, joined the select group. The idea was that should two members meet, they might converse and pass an agreeable evening without the need of further company.


In 1773, the membership was increased to twenty, then to twenty-one by the latter part of 1775. The new members included David Garrick; author and diarist James Boswell; Charles James Fox; Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury; author Edward Gibbon; 1st Earl of Charlemont and economist and philosopher Adam Smith. By March 1777, the number had become twenty-six and in November the following year it increased to thirty; in May 1780, the club boasted thirty-five members and the decision was then taken on a maximum of forty.

In 1783 the landlord of the Turk’s Head died and the club removed to Prince’s in Sackville Street, thence to Baxter’s (later Thomas’) in Dover Street. After a sojourn at Parsloe’s on St. James’s, 1799 found them further along at the Thatched House. The members list recorded by James Boswell in 1791 included Lords Spencer, Palmerston and Charlemont; Charles Fox, Bishop Thomas Percy, Joseph Warton, Edward Gibbon and Joseph Banks.

Many famous names graced the members’ list during the nineteenth century, including Alfred Tennyson, but possibly the most celebrated one to be excluded is Sir Winston Churchill, who was ‘considered too controversial’.

The Savoir Vivre

 The Star and Garter Inn on Pall Mall was the base for many societies and clubs in the eighteenth century, including the Jockey Club. The Savoir Vivre Club also began life here in 1772 and was referenced in newspapers and periodicals, including The Macaroni and Theatrical Magazine(established in October 1772), which changed its name in April the following year to The Macaroni, Savoir Vivre and Theatrical Magazine, according to Sheppard’s Survey of London.


The club seemingly had a uniform, since the above source quotes a newspaper cutting:

‘These gentlemen have thought fit to decorate themselves with a Uniform of scarlet Cloth, with Velvet Collar and Sleeves of Bleu Celeste’ and also mentions the existence of ‘a print showing a member garbed in this uniform’, giving the date as 12 July 1772.

The club entertained lavishly at the Pantheon, was involved in the fêted masquerade and regatta at Ranelagh Gardens on 23 June 1775 and gave five prizes each year for the best painting, sculpture, engraving, poem and musical composition. This tends to suggest their chief desire was to flaunt their wealth. It was Horace Walpole’s opinion that the club ‘only shone by excess of gaming’ and Thomas, Lord Lyttelton, who led the society, was the ‘wicked Lord Lyttelton’.


Former assistant to Longchamp, ‘who then conducted the Jockey Club at Newmarket’, one Nicholas Kenney was the proprietor of the Savoir Vivre and soon after its conception, he moved the club to a house almost across St. James’s Street from the present Boodle’s Club. Three years later, when the lease expired, he took over the lease of three ‘old and very low houses’ on the other (east) side of St. James’s. These houses were demolished and architect John Crunden was commissioned to build a new clubhouse, which opened in the spring of 1776. It cost ‘£10,000 and upwards.’

A goodly proportion of this amount seems to have been spent on the décor, for Sheppard records it “is said to have been ‘furnished in a style beyond any preceding club: classical pictures, sofas and chairs covered with satin, etc.’” The Savoir Vivre was noted by Horace Walpole in his entry of 22 March 1776 as ‘a new club is opened in St. James's Street, that piques itself on surpassing all its predecessors’, and then, on 5 April, he stated that James Boswell ‘mentioned a new gaming-club, of which Mr. Beauclerk had given me an account, where the members played to a desperate extent. Johnson. “Depend upon it, Sir, this is mere talk. Who is ruined by gaming…?”’


While in the words of Richard Miles, Nicholas Kenney’s partner, ‘no club ever did or ever will flourish as this Club did for some years’, the Savoir Vivre’s success was short-lived. Nicholas Kenney fell into debt, possibly through unsuccessful money-lending to members, and mortgaged the lease to General Smith. Brooks’ had become established on the other side of St. James’s and the new Boodle’s Club (then in Pall Mall) was seeking larger premises. Richard Miles wrote that Kenney ‘was induced to offer his house to Mr. Harding who conducted Boodle’s.’ Boodle’s held a club meeting on 14 June 1782 and the motion was passed that ‘Harding do take Mr. Kenney’s house in St. James’s Street for their Use’. Since it was also decided to increase the membership by fifty, it seems likely some members of the Savoir Vivre stayed on with the new club.

Boodle’s has sojourned at 28, St. James’s Street ever since.

  Crockford’s

A renowned club, Crockford’s is not technically a Regency club, since it was not established until 1827. William Crockford was the son of a fishmonger and started work in his father’s fish shop in the Strand, adjoining Temple Bar. He had a taste for speculation and according to William Biggs Boulton in Amusements of Old London, began his gambling career ‘punting for half crowns at a low gaming house kept by a man named Smith in King’s Place’. He became a ‘table keeper’ with a quarter share in a ‘little hell at No. 5 King Street’ in partnership with three others named Abbot, Houldsworth and Austin. Their practices, it seems, were ‘not above suspicion.’

Crockford then held a French hazard bank at Number 81, Piccadilly – the address, curiously, of the old Watier’s Club, which had seen its demise in 1819. He and his partners are said to have ‘cleared £200,000 in a very short time’. Lord Thanet, Lord Granville, Mr. Ball Hughes and two other gentlemen apparently lost £100,000 to the establishment during one night’s play. False dice, purported to have come from there were exhibited in Bond Street, and accusations of cheating were ‘persistently’ made. If sued – and he must have been – Crockford avoided court action by settling before the hearing.


[image error]The Hazard Room at Crockford's, T.J. Rawlins 1837 courtesy Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection



Whilst keeping out of the limelight, he became ‘a sleeping partner in one of the more fashionable of the hells of St. James’s’ and decided to gather the cream of the gaming fraternity together. He commissioned Benjamin Wyatt to build his ‘palace of gentlemanly pleasure’ in 1827, at a cost of £94,000. Edward Walford in Old and New London, Vol. 4 gives this description of the clubhouse:


‘On the ground floor are the entrance-hall and inner-hall opening into a grand suite of rooms of noble proportions; on the principal floor are a suite of very lofty and splendid reception-rooms, gorgeously decorated à la Grand Monarque, approached from a superb staircase, itself an architectural triumph, and a great feature of the building.


[image error]Crockford's, later the Devonshire Club, Debonairchap

 
Rather than gentlemen playing other gentlemen for high stakes, Crockford instituted a ‘Gentlemen versus Players’ system. The players were the staff in charge of the French hazard table, Crockford’s objective being to win his patrons’ money. He operated an exclusive house with a low subscription charge, the only bar to membership being convincing the committee of eligibility. The finest wines and food were offered, the convivial company of the ‘most fashionable of male society’ could be met with in the elegant rooms, putting Crockford’s on a level with White’s and Brooks’. Admittance was made by a committee who conducted the ballots and made entry as difficult as it was to those two august institutions. It became almost a custom, therefore, for non-gambling members to toss a ten pound note on to the playing table at the close of the season in acknowledgement of the low subscription. As William Biggs Boulton puts it:


‘In exchange for the princely accommodation of his house, and such fare as was unobtainable at any other club in London for love or money, Crockford asked for nothing in return but that gentlemen should condescend to take a cast at his table at French hazard.’

The club closed soon after Crockford’s death in 1844, recalled by Thomas Raikes in his Journal without much sorrow:

‘That arch-gambler Crockford is dead, and has left an immense fortune. He was originally a low fishmonger in Fish Street Hill, near the Monument, then a ‘leg’ at Newmarket, and keeper of ‘hells’ in London. He finally set up the club in St. James’s Street, opposite to ‘White’s with a hazard bank, by which he won all the disposable money of the men of fashion in London, which was supposed to be near two millions.’

Many are the stories told about Crockford, most to his discredit. Various large sums are known to have been lost within the club’s palatial surroundings, yet no instances are recorded, states William Biggs Boulton, of substantial winnings. Nevertheless, the noble and great visited 50, St. James’s Street in vast numbers and gleefully donated their wealth and estates to the fishmonger of Temple Bar.

The building became a restaurant, described by Gronow as ‘a sort of refuge for the destitute, a cheap dining-house. How are the mighty fallen; those who remember Crockford’s in all its glory cast, as they pass, a look of unavailing regret at its dingy walls, with many a sigh to the memory of the pleasant days they passed there, and the gay companions and noble gentlemen who have long since gone to their last home.’After a brief tenure as a military and naval club, from 1874 until 1976 it was home to the Devonshire Club.


This is really the story of Number 69, St. James’s Street, now the home of the Carlton Club, and, ironically, it begins with White’s Chocolate House. When Francis White died, his widow Elizabeth took over the business until her (probable) death in 1729. John Arthur, assistant to Francis White, is then listed as the occupant of the house. He also appears to have occupied Numbers 68 and 70. In 1731 he is recorded as a chocolate licensee and the following year his son Robert is listed as occupying Number 69, along with Francis and Bartholomew White, although it is doubtful they were involved in the business at that time. In 1752, Robert Arthur is reported as White’s sub-tenant. The three houses burned down in 1733 and while rebuilt, with Robert Arthur once more in residence at Number 69, the other two houses were unoccupied by members of the two families until 1755.

 [image error]Numer 69, home of Arthur's and Miles' Club, later the Carlton Club Debonairchap


In 1755 Robert Arthur bought what are now Numbers 37-38, St. James’s, on the eastern side, from Sir Whistler Webster, and he was the occupant of that house the succeeding year. White’s has been there ever since.


The White family continued at Numbers 68-9 until 1785, when it came into the possession of Richard Miles, Nicholas Kenney’s partner at the Savoir Vivre. Following the closure of that club, Miles took the opportunity afforded by a house ‘of considerable magnitude, originally called White's Chocolate House’and refurbished it to the tune of two thousand pounds, thence to open ‘a club of the first importance...’ This seemingly flourished for thirty years in his hands.

In his Club Life of London, John Timbs mentions Miles’s in a quote from Pepys.

‘It met in New Palace Yard, “where they take water at one Miles's, the next house to the staires, at one Miles’s, where was made purposely a large ovall table, with a passage in the middle for Miles to deliver his coffee.”’


The house at Number 69 was taken over in due course by Arthur’s, founded in 1811 during a meeting held at Number 16, St. James’s Street, the site of a bank. The proposal was for a new club which would have three hundred members. It was the first members’ club, as opposed to proprietary clubs such as White’s, Brooks’ and Boodle’s. Numbers 69 and 70 were rebuilt in 1826-7 and the club remained there until its closure in 1940. The Pall Mall home of the Carlton Club was bombed in 1941, leading to their acquisition of Arthur’s clubhouse. In a strange twist of Fate, from being the domain of a non-political membership, the house then became that of one of the main parties.




All pictures courtesy Wikimedia Commons


 

The Gentlemen's Clubs ~ Part One

The Georgian aristocracy lived life to the full. They loved eating, drinking, carousing, partying, racing and… gambling. During the Regency, most – if not all – of these could be enjoyed in one of the growing number of gentlemen’s clubs which thrived in the fair city of London. According to Captain Gronow, in his Anecdotes and Reminiscences, written at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the West End of London was home to only a few, prestigious such establishments. These were White’s – the oldest and most elite – Boodle’s, Brooks’, Watier’s, the Guards’, Arthur’s and Graham’s. These bastions of male society sprang, in the main, from gatherings of like-minded gentlemen in coffee houses and taverns. The Jockey Club is said to have had its beginnings at the Star and Garter on Pall Mall, while Brooks’ and Boodle’s began at two neighbouring taverns owned by William Almack in the same area, and White’s originated as a chocolate house on Chesterfield Street, off Curzon Street in Mayfair.

[image error]Chocolate House


 White’s Originally called ‘Mrs. White’s Chocolate House’, White’s was opened in 1693 by Francesco Bianco (also known as Francis White), an Italian immigrant. At the time, hot chocolate was expensive and therefore a commodity enjoyed by the wealthy. From the start, White’s attracted the most influential members of the haut tonand it soon became better known as an exclusive gambling club. After occupying several locations on St. James’s Street, in 1778 it took up residence at numbers 37-38, its home to this day.

[image error]White's Club, by Debonairchap

 Fortunes have been won and lost within its genteel rooms, the play frequently being for high stakes. Cards were the medium of choice, the preferred game being whist. While the membership boasted most of the noblest names in the country, wealth, birth and wit did not guarantee acceptance to the hallowed rooms. When a new member was proposed, a ballot took place. At least twelve members voted with either a white ball (acceptance) or a black ball. One black ball meant the applicant was denied. It was soon the ambition of every young gentleman new on the town to be elected. That famed arbiter of fashion, Beau Brummell, who became a member in 1789, made the club into the haunt of the dandy set, whereupon the celebrated bow window and the table directly in front of it, became his preserve. He dictated whom might sit there and decreed that no gentleman should acknowledge anyone passing by in the street. However, it was not unknown for the dandies to pass pithy comments on any gentleman and ogle any woman bold enough to be walking by. This group of elite dandies included Lord Petersham, Lord Pierrepoint, 2nd Baron Alvanley, ‘Poodle’ Byng, the Duke of Argyll, Lord Worcester, Lord Sefton, Lord Foley, ‘Ball’ Hughes and Sir Lumley Skeffington. After Brummell’s removal to the Continent in 1816, Lord Alvanley took over the Beau’s seat and it was at this time he purportedly made the famous bet of £3,000 with a friend on the outcome of two raindrops running down the bow window. White’s Betting Book has seen many bizarre bets over the years, on social matters – marriages, deaths and gossip – sporting events and, in particular, developments in politics, both at home and on the Continent.
White’s was for some time a citadel of the Tory party, as Brooks’ was for the Whigs, yet many members of the club either belonged to the other party (and the other club) or had no political affiliation. From about 1832, the club renounced such leanings and has remained apolitical ever since.

Brooks’ Brooks’, Brooks’s or Brookes’s Subscription-House (as described in Ackermann’s Microcosm of London) started life at 50, Pall Mall, a tavern owned by William Almack, owner of Almack’s Assembly Rooms. When two gentlemen were rejected by White’s, they formed a private society. This later dissolved, the various members separating into two groups, the second later to evolve into Boodle’s.  [image error]Brooks', by Debonairchap

 The first group was initially called Almack’s and met at 49 Pall Mall, another tavern owned by William Almack, hence the name. Founded by several Whig noblemen, including the Duke of Roxburghe, the Duke of Portland, Lord Strathmore and Lord Crewe, in 1764, other prominent members were Charles James Fox (a precocious admission the following year, aged sixteen), the Prince Regent, the Dukes of Clarence and York, Lord Carlisle, William Lamb and Lord Robert Spencer. Less exalted, perhaps, in Society, yet nevertheless celebrated in other spheres, were Joshua Reynolds, Horace Walpole, David Garrick and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. Around 1777, the manager of Almack’s, wine merchant and money lender William Brooks, commissioned Henry Holland to build a house on St. James’s Street (now number 60). It was a bold move, but the members of Almack’s joined him at the new premises and Brooks’ was born. Limited to a membership of 450, a ballot was held during Parliament to decide on member nominations, a black ball system used as at White’s. For a subscription of eleven guineas per annum, members were entitled to admission to Miles’ and other respectable clubs, as well as clubs in Bath.
 [image error]The Great Subscription Room at Brooks', 37' long, 22' wide, 25' high

 The Palladian style building was renowned for its gambling saloons and had its main suite of neoclassical rooms on the first floor. These were the Great Subscription Room, the Card Room and the Small Drawing Room. There was no billiard table and according to Ackermann, the game of Hazard was rarely played, the fashionable card games being whist, piquet, quinze and macao. It was a common occurrence for gambling to continue all night; sometimes play went on all day and all night, fortunes being lost and won in the process. As with White’s, many an unusual wager has been recorded in the Brooks’ Betting Book. One reads as follows: “[Ma]rch 11, 1774, Almack’s. Lord Clermont has given Mr. Crawford ten guineas upon the condition of receiving 500l. from him whenever Mr. Charles Fox shall be worth 100,000l. clear of debts.” In his book about Ian Fleming’s James Bond, John Griswold quotes another, far more shocking, wager from Dr L.G. Mitchell’s biography of Charles James Fox. It seems that in 1785, the 1stMarquess of Cholmondeley gave two guineas to the 12th Earl of Derby against five hundred guineas received when his lordship engaged in a certain activity with a woman (of ill-repute, one assumes) in a balloon one thousand yards in the air. It does, however, reveal the level to which even the titled could sink. One cannot help wondering if this was the beginning of the Mile High Club… While Beau Brummell was the leader at White’s, Charles Fox was the undisputed ruler at Brooks’, even though Brummell was a member. The emphasis on gambling declined during the early nineteenth century with Brooks’ becoming more an ‘association of noblemen and gentlemen, connected by politics…’
 Boodle’s Boodle’s began life at 50, Pall Mall in 1762. Founded by the future Marquess of Lansdowne, Lord Shelburne, it is the second oldest club in the world after White’s. The house was owned by William Almack and later Edward Boodle. It is thought they were partners. Boodle is variously described as the manager or head waiter. A board of six governed the club until 1879. The number was reduced to five from 1881 and fifteen years later it became a members’ club. Edward Boodle died in February 1772 and Benjamin Harding took over the running of the club. Sanctioned by a general meeting, he bought the house at 28, St. James’s Street, built by Nicholas Kenney in 1775-6 for the short-lived Savoir Vivre club. Boodle’s moved to the new house in 1782-3 and has remained there ever since.
 [image error]Boodle's, by Debonairchap

 Originally a political club, Boodle’s soon became renowned for its fine food, gambling and calm atmosphere and thus, in the main, was patronized by those gentleman from the country seeking convivial company and a ‘good, plain dinner’. Notable members were the Duke of Devonshire, the Duke of Wellington, the Marquess of Lansdowne, Beau Brummell, William Wilberforce and Charles James Fox. 
Watier’s Also known as the ‘Great-go’ and called The Dandy Club by Byron, Watier’s was established in 1807 at 81, Piccadilly, on the opposite corner from Bolton Street. It was chiefly a gambling club where, in the words of John Timbs, “…princes and nobles lost or gained fortunes between themselves; and by all accounts ‘Macao’ seems to have been a far more effective instrument in the losing of fortunes than either ‘Whist’ or ‘Loo’.”

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Captain Gronow had this to say about the club’s birth: ‘Upon one occasion, some gentlemen of both White's and Brookes' had the honour to dine with the Prince Regent, and during the conversation, the Prince inquired what sort of dinners they got at their clubs; upon which. Sir Thomas Stepney, one of the guests, observed that their dinners were always the same, “the eternal joints, or beefsteaks, the boiled fowl with oyster sauce, and an apple tart—this is what we have, sir, at our clubs, and very monotonous fare it is.” The Prince, without further remark, rang the bell for his cook, Wattier, and, in the presence of those who dined at the Royal table, asked him whether he would take a house and organize a dinner club. Wattier assented, and named Madison, the Prince's page, manager, and Labourie, the cook, from the Royal kitchen. The club flourished only a few years, owing to the high play that was carried on there. The Duke of York patronized it, and was a member. I was a member in 1816, and frequently saw his Royal Highness there. The dinners were exquisite; the best Parisian cooks could not beat Labourie. The favourite game played there was Macao.’ The house at 81, Piccadilly had originally been established for ‘harmonic meetings’ by Messrs. Maddocks and Calvert, along with Lord Headford, according to Mr. Thomas Raikes, himself a dandy and member of the club. ‘Watier's Club had a very short duration in London [It met its demise in 1819.] but it was a feature in the society of that day, which will long be remembered as a scene of dissipation and high play, attended with the most fatal and ruinous consequences.’ Thomas Raikes goes on to say that after Watier took over, the dinners became so popular and talked about, all the young men of fashion were clamouring to become members. ‘The catches and glees were then superseded by cards and dice; the most luxurious dinners were furnished at any price, as the deep play at night rendered all charges a matter of indifference. Macao was the constant game, and thousands passed from one to another with as much facility as marbles.’ All the most influential men of the day flocked to the new club. The Prince Regent had insisted on Beau Brummell being President of the club, and as with all things to do with the Carlton House set, the Beau held sway over members’ manners, dress and, indeed, even ‘those magnificent snuffboxes’: ‘Brummell was the supreme dictator, “their club’s perpetual president,” laying down the law in dress, in manners, and in those magnificent snuff-boxes for which there was a rage; he fomented the excesses, ridiculed the scruples, patronised the novices, and exercised paramount dominion over all. He had, as I have before said, great success at Macao, winning in two or three years a large sum, which went no one knew how, for he never lost back more than a fourth of it before he levanted to Calais. During the height of his prosperity, I remember him coming in one night after the opera to Watier’s, and finding the Macao table full, one place at which was occupied by Tom Sheridan, who was never in the habits of play, but having dined freely had dropped into the Club, and was trying to catch the smiles of Fortune by risking a few pounds which he could ill afford to lose. Brummell proposed to him to give up his place and go shares in his deal; and adding to the 10l. in counters which Tom had before him 200l. for himself, took the cards. He dealt with his usual success, and in less than ten minutes won 1500l. He then stopped, made a fair division, and giving 750l. to Sheridan, said to him, “There, Tom, go home and give your wife and brats a supper, and never play again.”’ Thus Watier’s became renowned for superb food and very deep play, but despite the ‘honourable feeling which prevailed among the members’ and the ‘good breeding and good humour’, in the words of Mr. Raikes, an ill-omen signalled the end when founder John Maddocks cut his throat with a razor at his Stratton Street home. ‘The club did not endure for twelve years altogether; the pace was too quick to last: it died a natural death in 1819, from the paralysed state of its members; the house was then taken by a set of blacklegs, who instituted a common bank for gambling. To form an idea of the ruin produced by this short-lived establishment among men whom I have so intimately known, a cursory glance to the past suggests the following melancholy list, which only forms a part of its deplorable results.’ He continued, ‘None of the dead reached the average age of man, and those who have survived may always look back to the life at Watier's as the source of their embarrassments.’ Brummell himself could be deemed one of these, since he lost a fortune at Watier’s and was forced to spend the rest of his life on the Continent.
 The Cocoa Tree From 1757 to some time between 1787 and 1793, Number 46, Piccadilly was the site of the Cocoa Tree chocolate house. According to a drawing by Coney, it was a late seventeenth century house with a four-storeyed façade. On the ground floor was a shop front, while each upper storey had a narrow recess on the western side and three tall, sashed windows. The club then removed to Number 64 until 1799. The Cocoa Tree Chocolate House was first referred to in manuscripts belonging to Earl Cowper in 1698 – ‘The Cocoa Tree in the Pell Mell’. In the early years of the eighteenth century, it appears to have become a Tory stronghold and it was probably around the start of George III’s reign that it changed to a proprietary club as had White’s. By 1780, however, Horace Walpole wrote, ‘Within this week there has been a cast at hazard at the Cocoa Tree, the difference of which amounted to an hundred and fourscore thousand pounds’, suggesting that in the intervening years the club had become a popular venue for high stakes gambling. In 1799, after a succession of proprietors, the latest, William Newton, moved to 64, St. James’s Street, where it seems likely the Cocoa Tree merged with a club which had been formed there in 1781. Soon notable for the extravagance of its entertainments and its gambling, it consisted ‘of young men who belong to Government’. Writing to the Earl of Carlisle in 1782, James Hare remarked on the feeling at Brooks’: ‘A young Club at Weltje’s begins to alarm us, as they increase in numbers, live well, and are difficult in their choice of members; it is almost entirely a Ministerial Club as Brookes’s is a Minority.’ A drawing of the street by Tallis shows the property with a garret above three main storeys and an iron balcony railing reaching around the first floor. The ground floor lacked symmetry, a modest, square-topped entrance door being set between a wide, similarly shaped passage entrance on one side (leading to Blue Ball Yard) and a sash window with three lights on the other. A focal point in one of the main rooms was a large golden, ornamental tree. Patronized by the Prince Regent, Lord Byron and Sheridan, the nineteenth century saw political affiliations lessen at the Cocoa Tree and its main notoriety seemed to be heavy drinking. William Newton continued as proprietor until 1810; in 1817 R. Holland took over, to be followed by members of the Raggett family from 1818 to 1835. After this date, much of the club’s history seems to have been lost, although a gunsmith’s shop occupied a large part of the ground floor during the twentieth century and the house was badly damaged by fire in 1926. The club closed in 1932.

The Jockey Club There were two inns called the Star and Garter on Pall Mall in the 1750s. One, dating from at least 1740, stood on the site of Number 44, on the northern side. The other and far better known inn stood on the southern side and was probably originally two houses. A drawing by Coney shows a ‘four-storeyed building of early eighteenth century character’. Part of the site was later occupied by the Carlton Club. The origins of the Jockey Club have been lost in the mists of time. It is generally acknowledged, including by the club itself from its records, that it began around 1750 or 1751, since in John Pond’s Sporting Kalendar of 1751-2 there was a notice, quoted in Robert Black’s The Jockey Club And Its Founders viz.: In that publication it is announced that there will be run for, at Newmarket, on Wednesday, April 1, 1752, ‘A Contribution Free Plate, by horses the property of the noblemen and gentlemen belonging to the Jockey Club, at the Star and Garter in Pall Mall.’ Nevertheless, some authorities deem it conceivable that the club’s conception was much earlier. In a pamphlet of 1709, by Edward Ward (author of The London Spy), entitled The History of the London Clubs, there is mention of a Yorkshire Club and therein are described various persons – ‘Needle Pointed Inn-Keepers, Rich and Froth Victuallers, honest Horse Coursers, and pious Yorkshire Attorneys, the rest good harmless Master Hostlers’ – who met ‘together in the Room next the Market[Smithfield], Horse Flesh for certain is the first Subject that is started in the Company…’ Rebecca Cassidy, editor of The Cambridge Companion to Horeseracing states that: ‘Historians have long identified the formation of the Jockey Club as occurring either 1750 or 1751, and the earliest notice appears to be a notice in Pond’s Sporting Kalendar…’ Nevertheless, she goes on to claim: ‘In fact, the Jockey Club was formed a generation earlier in the 1720s…’Tattersall's, 1842

  The word jockeyrefers to the owners rather than riders of racehorses, and indeed, the Jockey Club has always been a body for the wealthy and titled to enjoy society at its upper levels. Perhaps its inauguration stemmed from the court of a very Merry Monarch and his love of both horse racing and lavish entertainment – Charles II. It is no coincidence that the Jockey Club took up its headquarters at Newmarket.

[image error]Hyperion statue outside The Jockey Club Rooms, Newmarket by Alarnsen

 It would seem that the club was active in ‘The Home of Racing’ by 1753. In the previous year, a plot of land was leased by the Jockey Club on the High Street in Newmarket – very likely because they wanted a base near to the racecourse – and a Coffee House was built as a private meeting-place for members. It is a reasonable assumption that it was run in a similar manner to White’s, the Cocoa Tree and other London chocolate and coffee houses. According to Amanda Murray, in her book All The Kings’ Horses, while the Coffee Room was being built, meetings were held at the Red Lion Inn. The New Rooms were added about 1771-2 and thus the club became established. When the lease expired, the club purchased the freehold, and the original Coffee Room, added to and altered over the years, became known as The Jockey Club Rooms. The elegant red-brick building remains the Newmarket headquarters of the Jockey Club to this day. Famous members from those early times were the Dukes of Cumberland, Devonshire and Marlborough; Lords Barrymore, Bolingbroke, Carlisle, Clermont, Grosvenor, Molyneux, Orford and Rockingham; Sirs, Thomas Charles Bunbury, Thomas Gascoigne and Henry Grey, to name but a few. The Prince Regent famously fell out with the Jockey Club when his horse Escape was deemed to have been held up in a race and His Royal Highness took the part of his jockey, Chifney. The election of members remained pretty well unaltered into Victorian times, irrespective of any early system. Candidates were proposed by members (an unspecified number initially, but later set at two) and elected by ballot. Nine members made up a quorum and two black balls excluded the applicant. Robert Black explains: ‘The rule for the election of members of the Coffee-room dates from 1767, when a Mr. Brereton made himself unpleasant, and it was resolved that nobody should be admitted but on the proposal of a member of the Jockey Club and after a ballot; and when the New Rooms were added there was a similar rule for admission to them. So that, after a while, membership of the Jockey Club Rooms by no means meant membership of the Jockey Club.’ © Heather King 2016All pictures courtesy of Wikimedia Commmons

HORSES IN ART ~ A SLEEPY AFTERNOON

SHOEING BY EDWIN HENRY LANDSEER

In the seventh in my series of horses in art, today I consider one of my favourites. This glorious oil on canvas hangs in the Tate Britain in London (England) and measures 56” x 44” (4’8” x 3’8”) or 142cm x 112cm.

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Edwin Landseer“Shoeing”© Edwin Landseer Estate, Photographic Rights © Tate 2016Available under Creative Commons Licence CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported)


http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/landseer-shoeing-n00606

I love this portrait of ‘Old Betty’, a favourite mare of Jacob Bell, who was one of Landseer’s patrons. I love the detail, the snapshot it represents of a country scene enacted 170 years ago which yet could very easily have been painted yesterday.

Too often, these days, there is an urge to ‘improve’ something which works perfectly just as it is. Fortunately for the age-old craft of farriery, no method of protecting a horse’s hoof from wear has yet been discovered that is better than the one used for centuries. Our understanding of the foot, its structures and the importance to the horse of hoof balance has increased, and rightly so, but the pincers, rasps, hammers, knives and anvils employed by farriers up and down the country (and across the globe) are much as they were in Landseer’s time. The farrier who visits the modern stable yard will wear a leather apron and strong work boots, just as the one in the portrait. Being stomped on by a horse is an occupational hazard and often very painful, so minimizing the risk is common sense. Although glue is now used in some instances, it cannot maintain the bond with the hoof as long or as efficiently in a working horse. A shoe is generally, therefore, still nailed on in the traditional way, with the farrier bent over and holding the horse’s foot between his legs. You can see why farriers are plagued by bad backs!
The one major difference between today and when this portrait was painted is the forge. Rarely nowadays do farriers have their own forge. The times when every village had its own smithy, with a blacksmith able to turn his hand to a variety of different commissions, from shoeing a horse to mending a ploughshare, are long gone. The modern farrier has a portable forge in his van and travels to his clients. He mostly uses shoes made by machine, which he shapes and adjusts to fit on a small anvil a quarter of the size of the one depicted. It would be a sweeping statement to suggest that the travelling farrier will have with him his badly behaved dog that his clients reprimand at their peril, but many do! The bloodhound portrayed in the painting is a study of polite concentration as she chews a piece of hoof and waits for the next bit.
Perhaps the donkey is wondering if Laura the bloodhound is crunching on a carrot as he gazes benignly down at her, his stirrup dangling from a saddle which appears enormous. The Tate’s caption on this painting informs us that incorporating a donkey was ‘a device popular with many other animal painters’, since the shaggy hide of the donkey provided a contrast to the glossy coat of the horse. The composition is balanced and charming, with the hunched figure of the farrier in perfect sympathy with those of the donkey and dog. It was painted some years after it was first commissioned, since Jacob Bell’s intention had been to paint Old Betty with her foal, but by the time it was actually produced, her two foals had both outstripped her in height.

Fellow horse owners might look at Old Betty, curving her head round as if to supervise the proceedings, her eye wide and kind and her ear back – not in ill-humour but to listen – and proclaim the omission of some form of tether. Jacob Bell wrote of the painting that the mare, ‘would stand to be shod or cleaned without being fastened, but had a great objection to being tied up in a forge or against a post or door’. On such occasions this was attempted, she was prone to jerking backwards and breaking her bridle. This is why, nowadays, we tie horses to a piece of string which will break first!


So the mare stands quietly, her gleaming coat drawing the eye to her placid stance and demeanour, while her animal companions, the blackbird in its cage, the litter of hoof parings on the floor, the sultry waft of smoke from the hot shoe being applied to the foot and the whole ambience of the painting give the viewer a sense of peace and serenity on a sleepy afternoon.
Do not make the mistake of thinking the farrier is the central figure in the composition, for that, most certainly, is Old Betty herself. It is written that Landseer had borrowed and ridden the mare on occasion and his affection shines in this portrait for all to see.

Stop Press!

Heather King – Proofreading

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Specializing in Historical Fiction and Romance, and with a lifetime’s experience of working with horses, I can help authors spot those little modernisms which creep in!


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Happy writing! Heather

Twelfth Night ~ The Revels Concluding The Festive Season

I tell of festivals, and fairs, and plays.
Of merriments, and mirth, and bonfire blaze;
I tell of Christmas-mummings, new year’s day.
Of twelfth-night king and queen, and children’s play;
I tell of valentines, and true-loves-knots,
Of omens, cunning men, and drawing lots—
I tell of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers,
Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers;
I tell of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes.
Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal cakes;
I tell of groves, of twilights, and 1 sing
The court of Mab, and of the fairy-king.

Robert Herrick
 Christmas in Georgian times extended from Saint Nicholas’ Day (6th December) to the Epiphany (6th January). The twelve days of Christmas concluded with Twelfth Night, the sixth of January being the twelfth day after Christmas and therefore also known as Twelfth-day. To quote my copy of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary:


Twelfth-day OE The twelfth day after Christmas: the sixth of January, on which the festival of the Epiphany is celebrated; formerly the closing day of the Christmas festivities.

Twelfth-night OE The night of the twelfth day after Christmas (6 January) marked by merrymaking. 

This edition was printed in 1973. The current internet entry states that the fifth of January is Twelfth Night, being the eve before Twelfth Day. Although some of the various sources I have consulted also consider the fifth to be Twelfth Night, my family have always taken decorations down on the sixth. It has become the custom to ‘undeck the halls’ on Twelfth Night; it is supposed to be bad luck to leave them longer and further, if an item is overlooked, it must remain in situ the whole year. In centuries past, it was considered safe to leave the decorations up until Candlemas (2nd February). 

I suspect the confusion over the date has arisen from the fact that the fifth is the eve of Twelfth-day and the appellation of Twelfth-day has been lost in the mists of time, now to be merged with Twelfth Night. It all depends on whether you believe the twelve days of Christmas begin on Saint Stephen’s Day (Boxing Day) or Christmas Day itself. To my way of thinking, if Twelfth Night is the twelfth day after Christmas, then counting begins the next day – the twenty-sixth. 

However— 

William Hone, in his The Every-Day Book of 1825, has this entry for the fifth of January: 

This is the eve of the Epiphany, or Twelfth-night eve, arid is a night of preparation in some parts of England for the merriments which, to the present hour, distinguish Twelfth-day. Dr. Drake mentions that it was a practice formerly for itinerant minstrels to bear a bowl of spiced-wine to the houses of the gentry and others, from whom they expected a hospitable reception, and, calling their bowl a wassail-bowl, to drink wassail to their entertainers. These merry sounds of mirth and music are not extinct. There are still places wherein the wandering blower of a clarionet, and the poor scraper of as poor a fiddle, will this evening strain their instruments, to charm forth the rustic from his dwelling, and drink to him from a jug of warm ale, spiced with a race of ginger, in the hope of a pittance for their melody, and their wish of wassail. 

He also includes the following in the same entry:

Mr. Beckwith relates in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1784, that "near Leeds, in Yorkshire, when he was a boy, it was customary for many families, on the twelfth eve of Christmas, to invite their relations, friends, and neighbours, to their houses, to play at cards, and to partake of a supper, of which minced pies were an indispensable ingredient ; and after supper was brought in, the wassail cup or wassail bowl, of which every one partook, by taking with a spoon, out of the ale, a roasted apple, and eating it, and then drinking the healths of the company out of the bowl, wishing them a merry Christmas and a happy new year. (The festival of Christmas used in this part of the country to hold for twenty days, and some persons extended it to Candlemas.) The ingredients put into the bowl, viz. ale, sugar, nutmeg, and roasted apples, were usually called lambs'-wool, and the night on which it is used to be drunk (generally on the twelfth eve) was commonly called Wassil eve." The glossary to the Exmore dialect has "Watsail—a drinking song on twelfth-day eve, throwing toast to the apple-trees, in order to have a fruitful year, which seems to be a relic of the heathen sacrifice to Pomona." 

For the sixth of January, William Hone details the Epiphany, when the three wise kings visited the infant Jesus in the stable in Bethlehem. He then goes on to describe the twelfth-day schedule of pastry cooks in London:
In London, with every pastrycook in the city, and at the west end of the town, it is "high change" on Twelfth-day. From the taking down of the shutters in the morning, he, and his men, with additional assistants, male and female, are fully occupied by attending to the dressing out of the window, executing orders of the day before, receiving fresh ones, or supplying the wants of chance customers.
Before dusk the important arrangement of the window is completed. Then the gas is turned on, with supernumerary argand-lamps and manifold wax-lights, to illuminate countless cakes of all prices and dimensions, that stand in rows and piles on the counters and sideboards, and in the windows. The richest in flavour and heaviest in weight and price are placed on large and massy salvers; one, enormously superior to the rest in size, is the chief object of curiosity; and all are decorated with all imaginable images of things animate and inanimate. Stars, castles, kings, cottages, dragons, trees, fish, palaces, cats, dogs, churches, lions, milk maids, knights, serpents, and innumerable other forms in snow-white confectionary, painted with variegated colours, glitter by " excess of light" from mirrors against the walls festooned with artificial "wonders of Flora."

So, if the cakes were made for twelfth-day and Twelfth Cake was the highlight of the Twelfth Night celebrations, it therefore seems reasonable to conclude that Twelfth Night is the night of the sixth of January.


Twelfth Cake 

According to tradition, a large, iced fruit cake (the forerunner of the modern Christmas cake) was baked with a dried bean and a dried pea inside it. Every person in the household was given a slice. The man who got the bean was declared the Twelfth Night King and the girl who got the pea was the Queen. They ruled until midnight, irrespective of their normal status, so for a few hours even servants could lord it over their masters. It was an opportunity for banter, foolish jokes, ridiculous orders and much merriment. Sometimes a coin was used in place of the bean and William Hone describes a method whereby revellers choose at random tickets and characters for the feast. Popular characters were Mrs. Candour (whom Jane Austen played in 1810), Sir Gregory Goose, Sir Tunbelly Clumsy and Miss Fanny Fanciful. The use of tickets became more prevalent as the nineteenth century progressed. 

The original ‘Lord of Misrule’ from the Middle Ages, who held sway over a wild court, and later metamorphosed into the ‘King of Bean’ is still upheld today by the British Armed Forces – officers and NCOs wait on and serve the men their Christmas dinner. 

As can be seen from the excerpt above, in the first part of the nineteenth century the Twelfth-cake became particularly elaborate, covered in sugar frosting and trimmed with gilded paper. It was frequently ornamented with sugar-paste or Plaster of Paris figures.

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Following the choosing of the King and Queen, the party began, with mummer’s plays, masquerades, dressing up, games such as Blind Man’s Buff and Puss in the Corner, story-telling, singing and dancing. A Twelfth Night ball was likely to be the grandest occasion of the year and often took the form of fancy dress or a masked ridotto. 

Wassailing and the Wassail Bowl 

Wassail or ‘waes-hael’ is a salutation meaning ‘be of good cheer’ and is used when drinking someone’s health or offering wine to a guest. The Wassail Cup or Bowl was similar to mulled wine and was made of ale, sugar, spices (especially nutmeg), toast and roasted apples. The Wassail Bowl (also termed ‘Lamb’s Wool’, from the corrupted La Mas Ubhal, meaning ‘the day of the apple fruit’) was offered to guests as part of the Twelfth Night celebrations. Groups of poor people would often go to the grand houses in the district and sing traditional wassail songs for drink or money. 

In counties famed for the production of cider, such as Herefordshire, it was the custom to surround the largest tree in the orchard and sprinkle it with cider whilst singing and chanting. The Herefordians had another ritual performed on this night. They would light twelve bonfires in a wheat field, along with one larger than the others. Surrounding this large bonfire, toasts were made to the company in old cider and the fires wassailed as above. The object of this was to ensure the health of the trees and thus the following year’s harvest.

[image error]Passing the Wassail Bowl after dinner




Christmas Traditions Ancient and Modern

Most of the Christmas customs we observe today have been in existence since medieval times, but there are some the Victorians were responsible for. 

William Sandys has this to say, in his Christmas Carols, Ancient& Modern, 1833: 

The commencement of this feast is on the eve preceding the Nativity, having been announced by the waits for several nights previous. The first ceremony, after having properly decked the house with evergreens, including the misseltoe with its pearly berries, is, or should be, to light the Christmas block, or Yule log, a custom of very ancient date. This is a massy piece of wood, frequently the rugged root of a tree, grotesquely marked, and which should burn throughout the holidays, reserving a small piece to light the fire for the Christmas in the ensuing year. 

Deck The Halls 

The tradition of bringing evergreen foliage into the house is centuries old. It probably stems from the need for light, warmth and greenery in midwinter. Holly, ivy and mistletoe have long been revered as emblems of gladness and for their spiritual connections. Other popular plants were bay, rosemary, laurel, cypress, myrtle and chrysanthemum. 

From Poor Robin’s Almanack, 1695:
With holly and ivy,
So green and so gay,
We deck up our houses,
As fresh as the day;
With bays and rosemary,
And laurel compleat,
And everyone now
Is a king in conceit.  

The Yule Log and Yule Candle

As aforementioned, the Yule Log was a ‘rugged root of a tree’ or a large branch. It was brought into the house on Christmas Eve and had to be large enough to burn for the full twelve days. A small piece of the log was retained to light the fire for the next year’s Christmas festivity. Nowadays, few people have a fireplace large enough for such a Yule Log, but the tradition continues in the form of a chocolate sponge roll covered in chocolate butter cream. 

[image error]Chocolate Yule Log, (C) Heather King



The Yule Candle was fairly new in the seventeenth century, but was lit on Christmas Eve and had to stay alight throughout Christmas Day. 

Kissing Bough 

The Kissing Bough (or Ball) was a round basket covered in evergreens. The most common plants used were holly, ivy, rosemary, laurel and bay, with mistletoe either intertwined among the other foliage or hung in a bunch underneath. Mistletoe has been revered for centuries and was considered so sacred it was cut with a golden sickle. Holly and other evergreen trees were also celebrated, as it was believed they provided a haven for woodland spirits while the deciduous trees had lost their leaves. Sometimes oat ears, apples, oranges, spices, small wax dolls or candles were added to the design, which was often completed with ribbons. 

[image error]Kissing Bough (C) Heather King


It was the custom to pluck a mistletoe berry from the Kissing Bough each time a kiss was taken beneath it. Once all the berries had gone, there were supposed to be no more kisses. One cannot help wondering how often that rule was adhered to!



[image error]Kissing under the Kissing Bough, 1800



Plum Pudding

The dark, sticky Christmas pudding of modern times evolved from a plum porridge of the Middle Ages. This was made from finely chopped beef and mutton, to which was added dried prunes, raisins or currants, spices and wine, plus breadcrumbs to thicken. Another medieval dish, called ‘frumenty’, was a sweet version, made from wheat (without the husk) boiled in milk and added eggs, sugar and spices. Gradually cooks thickened plum porridge further by the addition of eggs, shredded suet, more fruit and breadcrumbs. They also added such ingredients as rum or other spirits and beer, to increase the flavour. Towards the end of the sixteenth century it had changed from a light meal to line the stomach before the rich foods to follow, to a plum pudding and by about 1650 it had become the usual finale to Christmas dinner. 

In 1644, as part of the prohibition of Christmas, the Puritans specifically outlawed mince pies and plum pudding, the latter being decried as ‘the invention of the Scarlet Whore of Babylon’ and a ‘lewd custom’, with the ingredients being ‘unfit for God-fearing people’.

According to popular myth, the ‘Pudding King’, George I, is said to have asked for plum pudding in 1714 as part of his Christmas celebrations, and therefore is credited with its re-establishment in England. However, it is the Victorians who removed the meat and made plum pudding into a dish akin to the Christmas pudding of today, including dousing in flaming brandy! 

[image error]The plum pudding



Courtesy of my friend Elizabeth Hanbury, here is the recipe for George I’s 9lb plum pudding in 1714:

1lb of eggs1½ lb of shredded suet1lb raisins1lb dried plums1lb mixed peel1lb of currants1lb sultanas1lb flour1lb sugar1 lb breadcrumbs1teaspoon mixed spice½ grated nutmeg½ pint of milk½ teaspoon of saltthe juice of a lemona large glass of brandyLet stand for 12 hours 
Boil for 8 hours and boil again on Christmas Day for 2 hours
 Mince Pies


Legend says you should eat a mince pie a day for the twelve days of Christmas to enjoy twelve months of good luck.
Traditional Georgian mince pies were not like modern ones, though. They were made from minced meat, often ox tongue or whatever was available, with raisins, oranges, lemons, sugar and eggs. 

Carols
Some of the most famous carols were in existence long before the Regency; others are old folk tunes with words added later, mostly in the Victorian era. Such songs as ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’, ‘God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen’, A Child This Day Is Born’, ‘The First Nowell’ and ‘I Saw Three Ships’ have been sung by carollers for around three hundred years, whilst the perhaps less familiar ‘The Boar’s Head’ is ancient, being known before the seventeenth century. The first verse might ‘ring a few bells’: 

The bores heed in hand bring I,With garlans gay and rosemary,I pray you all synge merelyQui estis in convivio.

Carols and Christmas hymns have been sung for centuries. ‘The oldest printed collection of Christmas carols mentioned is that published by Wynkyn de Worde, in the year 1521. The colophon of this work is, “Thus endeth the Christmasse carolles, newely inprinted at Londō, in the fletestrete, at the sygne of the sonne, by wynkyn de worde. The year of out lorde, M.D.X.XI.”

Christmas Tree 

The Christmas Tree is popularly thought to have been introduced by Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, but this is not the case. While he certainly popularized the custom in the 1840s, it is much older, having its origins in pagan times when a branch of greenery was brought in. Nevertheless, it was Queen Charlotte, wife of George III, who first occasioned a tree to be decorated, for a children’s party on Christmas Day at Windsor in 1800. It was described by an observer as: 

“A fir tree, about as high again as any of us, lighted all over with small tapers, several little wax dolls among the branches in different places, and strings of almonds and raisins alternately tied from one to the other, with skipping ropes for the boys, and each bigger girl had muslin for a frock, a muslin handkerchief, and a fan, and a sash, all prettily done up in a handkerchief, and a pretty necklace and earrings besides.” 



Father Christmas


Saint Nicholas’ Day was celebrated with the exchanging of small gifts, but although the character of Father Christmas was recognized in the 1650s, he did not become the central figure of the festivities until Queen Victoria was on the throne.
Cromwell banned Christmas in 1652, an order by Parliament dated the 24th December of that year directing: 

“That no observation shall be had of the five and twentieth day of December, commonly called Christmas Day; nor any solemnity used or exercised in churches upon that day in respect thereof.”

However, Christmas continued to be practised, in secret and without any pomp and ceremony. In 1653, ‘A Vindication of Christmas’ mentions Father Christmas, complaining in mock terms of the past twelve years’ treatment and the cool reception to be met with even then. The author went on to describe a visit to farmers in Devonshire, including a merry carol. 

“Let’s dance and sing, and make good cheer,For Christmas comes but once a year:Draw hogsheads dry, let flagons fly,For now the bells shall ring;Whilst we endeavour to make goodThe title ‘gainst a King. 

“Thus at active games, and gambols of hot-cockles, shooing the wild mare, and the like harmless sports, some part of the tedious night was spent.”

‘Old Father Christmas' also gets a mention in a pamphlet of 1734 by Dick Merryman, entitled Round about our coal-fire or Christmas entertainments. This little book is a collection of ghost stories, rhymes and Christmas lore, focussing on the feasting and partying so central to a Georgian festive season. Father Christmas is invoked as ‘Shewing what Hospitality was in former Times, and how little of it there remains at present’. This was clearly aimed at miserly landowners and the gentry. 

Father Christmas appeared in various mummers’ plays and folk theatre, sometimes as ‘as a grotesque old man, with a large mask and comic wig, and a huge club in his hand’. The name ‘Father Christmas’ is the traditional English appellation and although he has now become synonymous with Santa Claus, originally they came from two separate fables. Just when the red suit became part of the folklore is unclear, but it is probable it pre-dates the Victorian images. 

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HORSES IN ART ~ A ROMANTIC INTERLUDE

 
MR. AND MRS. THOMAS COLTMAN by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734 – 1797)
 
Continuing my series on horses in art, in this article I look at a portrait the artist did of his parson friend, Thomas Coltman, in a composition depicting newly wedded bliss. 
The painting hangs in the National Gallery, is an oil on canvas and measures 50 x 40 inches (4’2” x 3’4”, 127 x 102 cm). It was completed circa 1770 – 1772.
 
[image error]Mr. and Mrs, Thomas Coltman by Joseph Wright of Derby
Courtesy of the National Gallery

 
I love this picture. I love the rich rose of Mrs. Coltman’s riding habit, the calm yet attentive demeanour of her grey horse and the playful attitude of the liver and white dog. I also love the jaunty angle of the lady’s hat, which suggests, that while she gazes adoringly at her husband, she is still her own woman. 
Thomas Coltman married Miss Mary Barlow at Mary’s home, Astbury in Cheshire, on 2nd October 1769. They were both about twenty-four and Joseph Wright’s portrait epitomises their mutual love and satisfaction with their marriage. The picture is set in the grounds of Gate Burton House, near Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, where the couple lived following their wedding. They rented the property, their ascendancy to the position of landed gentry being of a recent order, their money coming from Thomas’ successful London Coffee House. Behind them, a groom is leading up Thomas’ horse and the observer can see, from the way the horse is lifting its hooves and turning its head away from the handler, that it is a high-couraged, mettlesome mount. 
Thomas himself is displaying a similar attitude, for although he stands with hand on hip in a relaxed manner, he is gazing into the distance whilst casually resting his other arm across his wife’s thigh, demonstrating both his confidence in his achievements and their relationship. His pose suggests understated energy, as though he has but paused for a moment between bouts of activity. Indeed, he is said to have been a likeable, straightforward gentleman who enjoyed the life and pursuits of the country, and although he later held office as deputy lieutenant of Lincolnshire, overseen by the Duke of Ancaster, he was not given to pretension with regards his intellectual prowess. 
There is a certain intimacy to the painting, an undercurrent of sensuality. Seated side-saddle, with her right leg hooked over the pommel, the voluminous folds of her riding habit clearly allude to the way Mary’s limbs are disposed beneath the skirt, while her husband’s stance stretches his already tight breeches the better to display his manly attributes, neatly framed by the cutaway shape of his waistcoat. It is all discreetly done, without a whiff of anything unsavoury, but within the charming composition there is a warm, healthy thread of sexiness and conjugal harmony. 
Mary’s horse, while not the focal point of the picture, is nevertheless perfectly cast. His dove-grey coat, accentuated by the charcoal coloured mane, is the ideal foil for Mary’s rose habit with its gold braid and Thomas’ deep blue waistcoat frogged with silver – the subtle allusion to the female-male divide through the contrasting, traditional ‘pink for a girl and blue for a boy’. The horse is well-groomed and cared for, clean-limbed and calm tempered; the epitome of the perfect lady’s hack. His mistress’ position demonstrates her assurance, not only in her equestrian skills, but in her marriage and her freedom. Mary Coltman may be riding side-saddle, but in that supposedly restricting position, she has the freedom to gallop, hunt, jump, sit tall and in comfort, while maintaining complete charge of her horse. As she is mounted, she is also very much in command of the whole tableau. Without the horse, the dynamics of the portrait would be completely different.

New Website!

Branching out...



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I have taken the plunge and created my own baby website! It would be wonderful if my readers here would also pay me a visit there!


https://heatherkingauthoruk.wordpress.com

Ghoulies and Ghosties and... Vampire Romance

Hallowe’en, or All Hallows’ Eve, is the night before All Saints’ Day, (1stNovember) when Christians honour those who have died and remember them by celebrating their lives. Hallow (or hallowed) means holy or sacred; ‘Hallowe’en’ is derived from the compression of All Hallows’ Even.

The celebration originates more than 2000 years ago, when the Celtic druids occupied Great Britain and some parts of Europe. They celebrated what is now called the pagan festival of Samhain, which signified the end of summer and the onset of winter. Dark and cold winter days often had associations with death.

It was believed that on the night of Samhain the cloak between the spirit world and the living was but a thin veil, allowing the dead to rise up and come forth from their graves. Huge bonfires were lit to assist the fading sun god and the people would disguise themselves so as not to be recognized. Gradually, witches, vampires, demons, werewolves and fairies were also thought to emerge with the darkness of winter to join the spirits of the dead in a night of revelry.

In a case of ‘if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’, the Church introduced, in 835, All Saints’ Day and thus Hallowe’en replaced Samhain. Certain superstitions around this magical night led to games and traditions long before the American creation of ‘trick or treat’. Girls would place hazel nuts on a hot grate and give each the name of a potential husband. She would recite, “If you love me, pop and fly; if you hate me, burn and die.” A variant decrees any cracked nuts indicated those suitors who were fickle.

Other games have their origins in Hallowe’en rituals, such as throwing the complete peel of an apple over a shoulder to reveal the initial of a girl’s true love. The practice of setting her shoes in the form of a ‘T’ (in Scandinavia a strong talisman representing the hammer of Thor, the god of thunder, agriculture and the home) on Hallowe’en, and reciting the words, “Hoping this night my true love to see, I place my shoes in the form of a ‘T’.” would ensure she dreamed of her future love. It was also on All Hallows’ Eve when a girl hoped to see in her mirror a candlelight reflection of her future husband.

A more sombre ritual was that of building a bonfire on a barrow or burial mound, since these were thought to be portals to the spirit world. Once it was blazing, the locals would hold hands and dance around it. Often as not, young boys took burning branches and ran across the fields, waving them like torches. Then, when the flames had died down, the lads would have a jumping contest over the glowing embers, all the children would bob for apples and the adults would dance until bedtime.

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A BERRINGTON DAY OUT

Having been drenched the previous day, on Tuesday 15thSeptember Susana Ellis, my dog Roxy and I went for a day out to Berrington Hall, near Leominster (pronounced Lemster) in Herefordshire.
 
Berrington Hall is a grand Georgian residence, built from red sandstone in about 1775 for London banker Thomas Harley, younger son of the 3rd Earl of Oxford, who had family connections in Herefordshire. The house was designed by Henry Holland, son-in-law of ‘Capability’ Brown, who was given the responsibility of landscaping the park. Spectacular views can be enjoyed towards Wales and the Black Mountains from the house’s magnificent setting.
 
All photographs © Heather King and may not be copied or reproduced without the expressed permission of the copyright holder.
 
[image error]Berrington Hall, showing the ha-ha
Harley was destined not to beget an heir, but Anne, his second daughter, married George, 2nd Baron Rodney, the son of Admiral George Brydges Rodney, celebrated naval commander of the 18thCentury. In the Dining Room hang four paintings depicting two of Admiral Rodney’s renowned victories at sea in the American War of Independence.
 
Thomas Harley died in 1804 and was succeeded by the Rodney family, who continued to live in the house for almost a century. The 7thBaron, also George, sold many of the family’s treasures, including excellent Gainsborough portraits, to fund a predilection for gambling which had already accounted for his inheritance. He eventually found himself constrained to sell the estate in 1901.
 
Berrington passed into the hands of Lancashire cotton magnate, Frederick Cawley M.P., who in time became the inaugurate Lord Cawley. Cawley refurbished Berrington with a sympathetic eye, removing hideous fire grates introduced in the Victorian age and replacing them with Georgian ones which were far more in keeping.
 
[image error]Fireplace in the Drawing Room


 
Henry Holland’s original, beautiful design was left mostly untouched, to Lord Cawley’s eternal credit. Following the death of the 2ndLord Cawley, in 1957 the estate then came into the hands of the National Trust, who do a fabulous job of managing both house and gardens. Lady Cawley, his widow, continued to live in the house until her death in 1978, having reached her own century.
 
It remains a ‘scene of elegance and refinement’ to this day, as declared by Lord Torrington in 1784, and indeed, his description of ‘commanding beautiful views [and] a fine piece of water’ has not changed in all those years.
 
[image error]The yew 'balls' on the approach from the gatehouse


 
When we first arrived, Roxy and I left Susana to tour the house and went for a walk round the park. Little girls are far happier snoozing in the car when they have had a ‘leg stretch’ first! We can vouch for the beauty of the views and the lake!
 
[image error]Parkland and lake

 
 
[image error]The lake and boathouse


 
Having ensconced Roxy in the car with a marrow bone, I headed off to join Susana in the house. We were really lucky that our visit coincided with an exhibition of costumes featured in television productions of Jane Austen’s works, such as ‘Emma’ and ‘Pride and Prejudice’, as well as some beautiful Georgian fashions, including a collection of surviving garments from the era!
 
[image error]Georgian gown


 
[image error]Costume worn by Billie Piper in 'Emma'


 
There are several rooms open to the public at Berrington, including the stunning Staircase Hall, which is a masterpiece of light and space. The staircase follows three walls of this secondary hall, rising beneath the spectacular domed skylight which dramatically illuminates the ironwork balustrades of bronzed lyres, the wall tapestries and the York slate/stone floor. The first time the visitor passes from the shadowed Entrance Hall into the Staircase Hall, it takes the breath away, believe you me!
 
[image error]Skylight


 
I love the Drawing and Dining Rooms at Berrington, but I think (surprise, surprise!) my favourite room is the Library. The bookcases are fashioned to represent pediments and columns of classical architecture and the furniture, although not belonging to the house, seem to fit perfectly. It is easy to imagine Mr. Darcy and Lizzie sitting reading in here.
 
[image error]The Library


 
[image error]The Library


 
Sadly, my photograph of the bookcases is too dark, but there is a matching pediment over the fireplace. Possibly inspired by his great-grandfather, Robert Harley, the 1st Earl of Oxford, creator of one of the finest collections of books in Britain, and his grandfather, the 2nd Earl, a friend of Pope’s, Thomas Harley also owned a fine library. This was unfortunately sold by the 7th Lord Rodney and the library was henceforth used by him as a billiards room.
 
After a tour of upstairs, including the Georgian fashions, White Dressing Room, Oval Room – dedicated to Sir Frederick and Lady Cawley’s three sons who were killed in the First World War – and the Corner Dressing Room and Bedroom, which celebrate the 7thLord Rodney and his bride Corisande following their honeymoon, the visitor steps down the Back Stairs and with a peek in at an ancient lavatory, can view the butler’s rooms on the way out. The laundry is now housed in a secondary kitchen, moved there in all likelihood in the late 19th Century and is Victorian in nature. The dairy, beautifully decorated in fine Louis XVI style by Henry Holland, has survived virtually unchanged since the 1780s. It has a classical Greek feel to it and contains niches too – not for statues, but bowls of cream to stand while separating.
 
[image error]Dairy


 
Of course, for a horse-mad girl like me, no visit to Berrington would be complete without a good snoop around the stable. The Regency stable block no longer exists, but the Victorian stables, situated in the former Steward’s House beside the carriage arch into the rear courtyard, combine my two great passions, because they are now home to the Book Shop!!
 
Stabling changed very little during the 19th Century, so the Regency author can still get a feel of equine comfort. To the far left of the picture is a loose box, while chains would have hung from the heel posts of the stalls to prevent occupants from ‘backing up’. Horses would wear a headstall, to which was attached a rope that passed through a hole in the manger and was fastened to a weight, thus keeping the rope taut. The horse therefore had a measure of movement and could lie down without getting entangled in the rope.
 
[image error]Stables




 
[image error]Walled garden


 
After a picnic lunch, Susana and I went for a wander around the Walled Garden. On previous visits, Paws had not been admitted, but on this occasion, Roxy could come into the original kitchen garden and I was really excited when I discovered the old apple trees. When researching A Sense of the Ridiculous, I came across the ‘Ribston Pippin’, which hails from Little Ribston, the village where Harry attends a ‘mill’ (boxing match). Lo and behold, there in the garden was a Ribston Pippin tree!
 
[image error]Ribston Pippin


 
It was the perfect end to what had been a wonderful day. Berrington Hall is a fabulous place for a day out and for the Regency author it provides a real feel of the era, too. My short story The Middle of the Day, is set here and features the 3rd Lord Rodney and his wife Charlotte.
 
I hope you have enjoyed this mini tour. Susana, Roxy and I certainly enjoyed our day!
 
 
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