London Fashions for December 1819

Loretta reports:

Here's a nice little wool and velvet number for the fashionable lady of late 1819.

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London Fashions for December

PLATE 36.—WALKING DRESS.
A PELISSE composed of kerseymere: the colour is a peculiar shade of grey; it is lined with white sarsnet. The body is tight to the shape, the waist is rather long, and the sleeve is set in so as to just touch the point of the shoulder: the sleeve is wide, and falls very much over the hand. The skirt is moderately full, meets before, and fastens down on the inside. The trimming is composed of ruby-coloured velvet; it is of a new pattern, and exceedingly rich and elegant; it goes round the bottom, and up each of the fronts. The epaulettes and cuffs correspond with the trimming. High standing collar, trimmed in a similar manner. Head-dress, a bonnet composed of ruby velvet, intermixed with levantine: the crown is made of folds of these two materials, so disposed as to form a point in the centre, which has a light and novel effect: the brim is large, and of a singular but becoming shape; it is finished at the edge by a rich roll of ruby levantine, to which is attached a full fall of blond lace, set on narrow towards the ears, and broad in the middle of the brim: this style of trimming adds much softness to the countenance. A high plume of ostrich feathers, to correspond, is placed upright in front, and a rich ribbon ties it under the chin. Gloves to correspond with the pelisse. Half-boots, the lower part of black leather, the upper part grey levantine.

From the Repository of arts, literature, fashions, Vol. VIII. No. XLVIII, published by R. Ackermann, 1819
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Kerseymere—Fine woolen suiting, having two-thirds of the filling and one-third of the warp on the face.
Levantino—Four-leaf, double-faced, closely woven silk serge, having single or ply warp.  Comes mostly in solid colors but also in stripes.
Sarsenet— Plain, woven stout piece dyed English cotton cloth finished with high gloss, often calendered to give the appearance of a twill; used for lining, etc.

Definitions from the Dictionary of Textiles by Louis Harmuth, 1915

A Lady's Hat for Riding (Really), c. 1780

Susan reporting:

We've discussed here (and here and here) how 18th c. ladies dressed for riding. Their habits were crisply tailored and buttoned with a masculine, military flair, and featured a close-fitted bodice over a flowing skirt. Solid colors were the rule, again adding a uniform flavor. Many English ladies were skilled horsewomen, and even if they weren't, they believed in dressing the part.

Yet all that brisk horse-sense went out the window when it came to what they wore on their heads. Not for them the modern hard-shell protective helmets. No, the 18th c. lady crowned her riding attire much as she would with any dress for day: with a froth of feathers.

Regardless of the color of the habit, the most popular hats were monochrome black, with feathers, cockades, ribbons, and buttons in black as well. This replica, left, (from the Margaret Hunter milliner's shop in Colonial Williamsburg) is typical of the last quarter of the 18th c., and brings to life the jaw-dropping reality of the height and wafting excess that were typical. One can only imagine what the horses must have thought to see such a confection heading their way – and how many ribbons and hat pins were necessary to keep one in place.

While it's often the case that the most extreme examples of 18th c. fashion shown in satirical prints were exaggerations, in this case the plumed hats were very much worn by real ladies. This 1793 portrait by George Stubbs (1724-1806) of the infamous Lady Laetitia Lade (right) shows her nonchalantly sitting side-saddle on her rearing horse, her black-plumed hat nearly touching the branches overhead. Laetitia was scandalous for a good many reasons, but no one ever doubted her seriousness or skill where horses were concerned: she was wed to Sir John Lade, himself considered one of the best horsemen and breeders of the Regency era. If Laetitia rode in a tall, feathered hat like this one, then yes, it was definitely Done -– and done with style. (Look for a post soon about Laetitia, an Intrepid Woman if ever there was one.)

Right: Laetitia, Lady Lade, by George Stubbs, 1793, The Royal Collection

NHG Library: Costume in Detail 1730-1930

Loretta reports:

As my numerous posts from fashion magazines attest, I spend a lot of time these days studying and thinking about historic dress.  Thanks to NHG Susan’s many enticing suggestions, my collection of costume books has become what some might call excessive.  Today the spotlight is one of my most-frequently-consulted.

When I’m working on a scene where the characters’ clothes are very important for one reason or another, the book I’m most likely to open first is Nancy Bradfield’s Costume in Detail 1730-1930.

It isn’t a gorgeous book, like the coffee-table size V&A or university press publications.  Its pages contain not a smidgen of color.  It’s all text and drawings, fanatically detailed drawings in which every seam has been measured and noted, every button or hook accounted for…  In short, when Ms. Bradfield says "in detail," she means in detail.

According to her introduction, her “studies…are entirely from private collections; only a mere handful have ever been exhibited or seen by the general public.  Several are too frail or too soiled ever to be put on view.”  However, it’s easy enough to apply information from her book to the beautiful color photographs in other books, like Jane Ashelford’s The Art of Dress , or Lucy Johnston’s Nineteenth Century Fashion in Detail.  Now and again, I’ll find in these books one of the dresses she’s drawn.  She also might include on a page a little hand-drawn copy of a famous painting or fashion illustration that corresponds to the item she’s anatomized.  A page featuring shawls, for instance, includes her sketch of Ingres’ famous painting of Madame Rivière (below right).

The Appendix includes some extremely beautiful drawings of items from Ms. Bradfield’s own collection—three from the Regency and one from 1913.

If you’ve ever wondered exactly how a Regency era spencer was constructed, how long a dress opening was below the waistline (Would one step out of it or pull it over one’s head?), how and where a dress fastened, how a lady’s parasol worked, or the size of various ladies’ feet, this is the book for you.


(In accord with some FTC rule or other—which probably doesn’t apply to us, since we're not reviewers, but never mind—readers are hereby informed that I bought this book with my own hard-earned cash.)

The Perfect Eighteenth Century Doll

Susan reporting:

With Christmas fast approaching and girls fine-tuning their wish lists for Santa, I thought I'd bring you a doll that must have brightened the eyes of her long-ago little mistress.

Known as "Miss Barwick" in honor of the West Yorkshire family that owned her for several generations, this elegant lady (left and below right) was carved from wood around 1760. She stands 24 inches tall on jointed legs in blue silk stockings and tiny leather shoes. Her gesso-covered head is artfully painted, her black enamel eyes sparkle, and her fair curls (a bit tangled, but what lady's would be after 250 years?) are genuine human hair.

She's still quite the fashion plate, too. She wears her original gown of blue silk brocade with a quilted, boned linen bodice, and a long hooded cloak of gold silk, all in the latest Georgian fashion.

But what truly marks Miss Barwick as A Lady is that she has her own sedan chair. Though the carrying rails are missing, the rest of the chair's appointments are there: brocade cushions for comfort and curtains for privacy, and studded trim for extra style points. And to let everyone in the street know that this chair belongs to her, the door is embossed with an ornate initial "B." Just as today's fashion doll has her pink Jaguar convertible, 18th c. counterpart had her sedan chair, and we're sure the fabulous Miss Barwick steeped from her chair to attend countless imaginary balls and frolics that would make even Barbie jealous.

These days, Miss Barwick has retired from society, and resides at the Ilkley Toy Museum in West Yorkshire. But there are other 18th c.-style dolls at play for the holidays. In the Margaret Hunter Shop of Colonial Williamsburg, the miniature millinery shop is once again on display for the Yuletide season (left), complete with the replica Georgian fashion dolls (or "babies") minding the store. The tiny milliner is trying to tempt her customer with everything from hoops to a calash bonnet, and has even served tea to help coax the sale. If you've visited the shop, you'll recognize how closely the miniature inventory follows the full-size one – and also how much fun playing with dolls can be, whatever the age or era.

Many thanks to Chris Woodyard for introducing us to Miss Barwick!


Top left: Miss Barwick and her sedan chair, photograph by Christie's Auction House.
Right: Miss Barwick, photograph by Ilkley Toy Museum.
Lower left: The Doll's Millinery Shop, photograph by the Margaret Hunter Shop, Colonial Williamsburg.

Ticket porters

Loretta reports:

Susan’s post about link boys reminded me of another vanished figure of the London streets:  the ticket porter.

I first encountered the breed in Dickens, in David Copperfield.  But more memorable is the ticket porter named Trotty Veck, the hero of Dickens’s 1844 Christmas story, The Chimes. 

They were something like today's messengers, but not quite.   They were cheaper, they carried just about anything, and they waited on the streets at "stands," rather like cabs.

 Those of us living in the world of historical romance are accustomed to the lives of the privileged, who send their servants to do the fetching and carrying.  But from the 17th through the 19th century ticket-porters served the rest of the public.  They were licensed to carry messages, documents, and goods for predetermined fees.  They were called ticket-porters because “they can produce a ticket or a document, showing that they are duly qualified, and have been ‘admitted and allowed to use the feate of a porter,’ by being freemen of the city and members of a porter's company or fellowship,”  according to Thomas Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor. 

Most of them wore their tickets as badges, carried a cane, and wore white aprons. 
~~~
TICKET PORTER'S RATES.
SETTLED BY ACT OF COMMON COUNCIL, SEPTEMBER 25TH, 1823.
For the porterage or delivery of any letter, message, packet, box, package, parcel, truss, or other thing whatsoever.


N.B. When any ticket porter shall carry and deliver any letter, message, or parcel, not exceeding fourteen pounds weight, and to return and bring any other letter, message, or parcel, not exceeding fourteen pounds weight, for such last mentioned letter, message, or parcel, one half of the above sum authorised to be taken.  —From Cruchley's picture of London, 1834

“We are told that by the custom of the City, no parcel, however small, can be carried for hire from one part of the City to another except by a ticket porter, but the rule is of course continually evaded.”  —From The Westminster review, Volumes 39-40, 1843




According to the Morning Post of 23 December 1844, Trotty Veck isn't typical:  "[He has] no monopoly to carry goods at fixed high prices [nor] impunity to knock down all living obstructions to his way...instead of being 'up to a thing or two,' poor Toby Veck is ready to do anything for anybody at anybody's price." —from my no-longer-available Penguin edition of Charles Dickens's The Christmas Books Volume 1.

Link Boys as Cupid

Susan reporting:

As I've written here before, Katherine Sedley, Countess of Dorchester (1657-1717), was not a typical royal mistress. Considered plain, even ugly, by her contemporaries, Katherine relied not on beauty to make her way at court, but on her scathing wit.

She also made her share of enemies, including Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset (His Lordship has last appeared here before, too, with Katherine's father, both Men Behaving Badly). Dorset asked Katherine to become his mistress, suggesting she was too homely to expect any better offers. Not surprisingly, she declined, and the earl retaliated by publishing a series of scurrilous lampoons about her, including these lines:

   Love is a calm and tender joy,
   Kind are his looks and soft his pace; 
   [Katherine's] Cupid is a blackguard boy
   That runs his link into your face.

Seventeenth century gossip-hounds would have understood the snark factor here as clearly as their modern counterparts devour Perez Hilton. Most court beauties would have had a rosy-cheeked Cupid to guide their love affairs, but Katherine deserved a much less adorable version: a malicious link boy.

Link boys were a necessary evil in London before street lights. Poor boys carried lighted torches, called links, and loitered outside taverns and playhouses, hoping to be hired to light the way through dark streets –and, often, to lead unsuspecting gentlemen into a dark alley with waiting thieves. But link boys were also known to be victims themselves, child prostitutes catering to wealthy pederasts. In the unsentimental 17th-18th c., link boys were seen as despicable creatures: poor and dishonest, perverted and untrustworthy, their faces blackened by their sooty links. If you were a respectable Londoner, you likely believed the soul of a link boy was equally as black. Lord Dorset chose his words to be insulting, and they are.

Which brings me around to this curious painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92). Painted a century after Lord Dorset's slander was written, this picture also portrays a link boy as Cupid. Instead of the white-feathered wings that Cupid usually sports, the link boy version has black bat's wings, as befits a creature of the night. He is also holding his link in a most suggestive manner, making his role as a sexual plaything abundantly clear. As a classical Cupid, his phallic link could also be ready to fan the flames of love in the unsuspecting. Beneath his tattered coat, he appears to be wearing an ancient tunic instead of an 18th c. shirt, and across his chest is a strap that could hold a quiver of arrows, those "love darts" that cause so much amorous mischief in mythology.

Yet although the elements for a satiric print are all there, the mood isn't. While Reynolds was famous for his society portraits, he also painted smaller "fancy," or fanciful, pictures like this one for his own amusement. For these he drew his inspiration not from great ladies, but from common people he glimpsed in the street. This Cupid must have been one of those, some unknown link boy whose face captured Reynolds' imagination, and whose poverty is indicated by his tattered clothes and the derelict buildings in the background. But instead of a traditionally impish Cupid, this boy's expression seems dark and introspective, and almost too sensitively painted by Reynolds. Did the painting begin as a ribald dirty joke, only to have the conventional smirking Cupid waylaid by the poignant reality of the young model?


Above: Cupid as a Link Boy, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, c. 1771. For more about Reynolds' painting, check out this audio post at one of our fav fellow-blogs, Georgian London.

Miracle remedies of 1807

Loretta reports:

The ladies' magazines include some interesting advertisements for "unmentionable" problems.
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BELLS MONTHLY COMPENDIUM OF ADVERTISEMENTS FOR DECEMBER 1807
SIR HANS SLOANE'S RESTORATIVE AND RE-ANIMATING PILLS.

For those distressing Debilities which prevent, or render unhappy the Marriage State (but cannot, with a due regard to delicacy, be mentioned in a public Magazine), long experience has proved Sir Hans Sloane's Restorative and Re-animating Pills to be the most certain and sovereign remedy.

A Pamphlet, containing a more particular description of their virtues, and much useful information to the afflicted, may be had (price 1s.) at Mr. Perrin's, No. 23, Southampton-street, Covent-Garden, London; where they are sold wholesale and retail; and retail by all the principal Medicine Venders in London.—To persons in the country (inclosing payment and postage to Mr. Perrin, as above) they will be immediately forwarded, price 10s 6d.

SOLOMON'S GUIDE TO HEALTH.
Females are certainly liable to many Diseases that render their condition truly wretched and unequal, when compared with the other sex. If they enter the wedded state, even from that source of pleasure something bitter arises, and pregnancy brings with it a length of loathing, &c; if they remain single, they will scarcely avoid Labouring under some infirmity, because they are strangers to a mother's pangs.

Solomon's Guide to Health, price 3s. contains a complete Treatise on those Secret Infirmities of Nature, which delicacy often forbids to disclose, even to their nearest relatives: and a Treatise on Female Diseases, Nervous, Hypochondriac, and Consumptive Complaints.

Also, the Cordial Balm of Gilead, 10s 6d. is the best Medicine for Relaxations, Debility, Lassitude, Tremors, Sinking of the Spirits, and all those Nervous Affections which harrass and oppress the weak, sedentary, and delicate.
The family £33s.bottles contain four half-guinea ones, and are sold by Matthews and Leigh, No. 18, Strand, London.


From  La Belle assemblée, Volume 3, 1807