Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors
Page 52
For the reality is quite, quite different.
In 1800, London was the greatest metropolis in Europe, with a population of 1.1 million souls. Great Britain itself had a population of some 11 million. So roughly one-tenth of the population lived within the city boundaries of London and Westminster.
And, like all cities during all periods of history, London in the early 19th century was a place of transition, never static. It was a city in flux, a product of the Tudor, Restoration, and Georgian building, development, and neglect, a rambling amalgamation of the centuries which was only starting to give way to the ideas of the new century—ideas of adequate housing for the poor, proper sewage and drainage, safety....
The London fog—which is not a product of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s imagination, but rather the effect of burning coal for domestic heating—was pervasive, even in summer, an acrid, dull grey blanket hanging perpetually over the city, obscuring the dome of St. Paul’s, even often making it impossible to see across the street.
Gas-lighting in the streets wasn’t really introduced until 1814 and thereafter. The roads and streets were rarely cobblestone, but rather clay poured onto grit which turned to a glaucous soup of sludge during heavy rain—and would have been covered in horse muck. (As in Dickens’ day, there would have been sweeps, who, for a small fee, stood ready to clean the way across the road for pedestrians.)
There were somewhere around 30,000 vehicles in London in 1813, including 1100 hackney coaches for hire and about 400 sedan chairs. Some 400 coaches departed London each day for destinations all over the country too—most of them from Charing Cross. So London was a place of perpetual comings and goings, of bustle and hub-bub.
And the noise of it—all the people and horses and carriages and drays, the industry, the docks and dockworkers—was immense, unimaginable even. “A universal hubbub; a sort of uniform grinding and shaking, like that experienced in a great mill with fifty pairs of stones...” is how one visitor to the West End described it.
Visitors to the city were often by struck by two things—the beauty and magnificence of the great monuments, such as St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, and the “tumult and blaze”, or in other words, the noise and smoke and fog. As in Shakespeare’s day, London could still be smelled and tasted on the wind from as far away as 50 miles.
And even that area we associate with Regency society, the West End, was in a state of flux—only half built or only recently completed, and there were building sites and builder’s rubbish everywhere. Building in the 18th and 19th centuries was a slow process even at the best of times—builders were often speculators who went bust before completion. And there were, of course, no power tools.
St. James’s Square, the ultimate address (Viscount Castlereagh and his wife lived at Number 11), was only completed in 1792, though it had been begun in 1736. Berkeley Square was built and completed in the mid-18th century, as was Chesterfield St. (home to Beau Brummell until 1814). Hay Hill was under construction from 1760 until 1812.
Boodles’ Club on St. James’s Street was only completed in 1765 and Brooks’ in 1778, with some building works unfinished until 1826. So much of St. James’s Street was still brand spanking new, though it was, from the outset, a male enclave with all of a gentleman’s requirements and desires catered for within just a few minutes’ walk in one direction or the other. Hatchard’s the bookseller was and is just around the corner on Piccadilly; Lock’s, the hatter, still has premises just a few steps down from White’s Club. And St. James’s Street itself runs directly into King Street, a not-new neighbourhood, well-known for its high-class brothels and gambling hells.
And here, let me say that in the 18th and early 19th centuries, London was the sex capital of Europe. There have been several reprints of the notorious Harris’s List—an address book of prostitutes in the capital. The artist, Sir Joshua Reynolds, (founder of the Royal Academy) was known to have had at least one copy. Nor was he alone in this. The small book went into several printings (usually sold out within days)....
And just beyond the permeable boundaries of the West End enclave of the rich and aristocratic, rubbing shoulders with it, jostling it at every turning, the rest of London was not new, not pristine...quite the opposite.
It was Old London, slum after slum of the vilest, most notorious reputation—always well-earned. Or it was home to the industry which had made the city rich. A city of banking and mercantile interests that spanned the globe. Or it was dockland—for London was a great port as well as everything else.
The most notorious slum of Old London was the “Mint”, a ten-minute amble from London Bridge (present day Southwark)—a place of uninhabited buildings, unroofed and in ruins, many shored up by great beams propped up in the centre of the road, blackened timber houses, their upper floors leaning precariously over their foundations, or relics of once-fine mansions now falling down and surrounded by narrow courts and alleys—a place of unimaginable squalor where some 3000 families lived in cramped rooms where the sewage bubbled up through the floorboards—home to the most desperate of thieves, beggars, prostitutes, and outlaws.
Near Westminster Abbey was another notorious slum, the Almonry, which lay beside Tothill Fields—though many knew the area as “the Devil’s Acre”. Near St. Martin-in-the-Fields, at the west end of the Strand, was another warren of squalor. And beyond that, to the west, St. Giles, the most notorious of all, also called the Rookery or Little Dublin because of its predominately Irish population—conveniently located for those who followed thievery as a trade at the east end of Oxford St., which even 200 years ago was a mecca for shoppers. (There was a good reason for taking a tall, strapping footman to attend on one when one went to shop....)
The names of the streets perhaps evoke most effectively this London: Dark Entry, Cat’s Hole, Pillory Lane.... Beyond St. Giles lay Seven Dials and beyond that Clare Market—a maze of streets with an evil reputation into which wayfarers were said to vanish and from which they never emerged.
Beyond, to the east, lay Saffron Hill and Chick Lane—washed by the stinking River Fleet—a teeming thieves’ quarter with rooming houses where the freshly laundered (stolen) handkerchiefs would be suspended on poles across the narrow streets to ruffle and shimmer in the breeze.
And so it goes. Clerkenwell, which contained Jack Ketch’s Warren, leads on to Smithfield with its cattle market, Spitalfields, and another thieves’ quarter around Flower and Dean Street, and beyond, Petticoat Lane—the distribution centre for much of the city’s stolen goods.... And south of that, Whitechapel with its many slaughterhouses.
South of the river, around Lambeth were the suburbs of labourers—artisans, clerks, and tradesmen. Indeed tradesmen, merchants, warehousemen, and shopkeepers could be found living just about anywhere, for London was a teeming residential city, with many of its workers living “above the shop”, even in St. James’s.
And beyond? Beyond the city lay not countryside, but wasteland. Or something we don’t associate with European cites at all: shanty-towns.
Tomlin’s New Town, a vast spread of wooden hovels, had been growing up on what is modern-day Paddington for nearly forty years since the mid-18th century. Elsewhere, animal dealers lived in wagons and huts, surrounded by their dogs, rabbits, fowls, and birds. Over in Battle Bridge (what is now King’s Cross) there were “mountains of cinder and filth”, thousands of vast piles of horse dung, or the refuse of “waste-grains and hop-husks” dumped there by generations of London ale-brewers.
Amazing, isn’t it? And terrifying. And alarming and exciting. This then is the real London of the early 19th century, a roiling sea of humanity, all shouting, hawking, riding, running, buying, selling, banking, dealing, stealing, eating, laughing, praying, all caught up in the business of living in the new century, following all walks of life, from “St. Giles to St. James” as they used to phrase it.
Food for
more than one novel, wouldn’t you say?
The Hole in the Wall: Regency Dancing
by David William Wilkin
As noted elsewhere, I have spent some time teaching the dances that were done during the Regency era. I have spent the time doing this because I have found tremendous enjoyment performing them as well as guiding others through them. The advent of devices like the iPod and now our iPhones have allowed me to store some of these tunes on the device and carry them with me, as well as listen to them whenever I wish, even as I write my Regency novels, such as my latest, Jane Austen and Ghosts.
Regency dancing has been in vogue here in the U.S.A. for many years now. We owe its acceptance in the United States to the attendees of Science Fiction conventions, specifically the wives of the authors of Science Fiction and Fantasy.
These ladies, bored by not having much to do, took their love of Georgette Heyer’s Regency romances and asked one fan who was known for his ethnic dancing to choreograph dances that they had read about. The dances took off. Dancing spread to other venues, where attendees of Science Fiction conventions also were members of reenactment groups, specifically the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), which ends its study of previous times in 1600, well before our period.
Those interpreters of history, however, found a resource for dance from John Playford and the English Dancing Master. Though published in 1651, it is thought that all the dances he recorded and printed were also done before. A later dance, Hole in the Wall, made its way into many realms, that of the SCA and that of those dancing in the Regency genre at Science Fiction and Fantasy conventions and events solely concerned with the Regency.
Notes say that this dance, presented for you here, is from 1721. The music is from Henry Purcell and published in 1695 as Air VIII Hornpipe. The music was part of the incidental music in the revival of the 1677 tragedy of Mrs. Aphra Behn’s Abdelazer or the Moor’s Revenge. As far as we can tell, the name of the dance has little to do with the play. The orchestration of the music makes this piece related to the music of the French court of the late 17th century.
As mentioned, reenactment societies have taken this dance to the Regency and to the Renaissance. Many of those who dance it from those eras take the time to add embellishments believed to be found at those times. The dance, however, remains the same and is pleasant in any era.
Here is a technical description of the dance:
1) A couple honor each other, cast out and around B couple, meet below, pass through B couple to place; B couple honor each other, cast out and around A couple, meet above, pass through A couple to place.
2) A man, B lady bow and cross by right shoulders, exchanging places. B man, A lady bow and cross by right shoulders, exchanging places.
3) All 4 in set join hands, circle clockwise halfway to place. A couple cast around B’s, B’s lead up.
And now, let me break this down for you, first by giving you some definitions:
Set—The set is the group of dancers. In Hole in the Wall, men line up facing their partners. The first couple at the top of the line is the A couple, the next couple is the B couple, and these two couples are one set. The next couple, the third in the line, are A’s once more, and so on.
Honor—An honor would be for the man to give a short bow, and the lady a curtsy.
Cast—Casting out and around means that the A man turns over his left shoulder and walks behind the B man to the place vacated by the next A man in line as he has also cast and moved down the line. The A lady does the same, turning over her right shoulder and walking behind the B lady on her side of the set to the place vacated by the next A lady.
Cross—The cross is when a dancer goes to the other side of the set. In Hole in the Wall the cross is done along the diagonal, so instead of facing one’s partner, the dancer faces and crosses with the person of the opposite gender who is standing next to his or her partner.
Hands Round—This is often called as four hands round, though all four people and all eight of their hands (two each) are used. Everyone joins hands in the square, making a circle. The circle now advances a certain number of places; in Hole in the Wall, it is two, or halfway around the circle. In this dance the dancers end up back where they started so this is often called as halfway to place.
Progression—This is the term for how couples move on to dance with new people, for advancing to their next set of partners.
Now that we have some definitions in place, let’s move on to the dance figures:
The first part of the dance
The A couple exchange honors, which is the man bowing and the lady curtsying.
The A man casts by turning over his left shoulder and walking behind the B man to the place vacated by the next A man in line as he has also cast and moved down the line. The A lady does the same, casting over her right shoulder and walking behind the B lady on her side of the set.
The A’s, who are now next to the B’s who have not moved, must meet below and pass through. This is often done with the active couple (the A’s) lightly touching inside hands at shoulder height. They walk back between the B couple and return to the place they started the dance. The entire figure is done without stopping.
The second part of the first figure is the B couple doing everything the A couple just did. The B couple is at this time the active couple. This, though, is somewhat the reverse of the A couple. The B couple casts out and walks behind the A couple going up the set to meet above the A couple and then walks between the A couple back to place.
The second part of the dance
This is now done on the diagonal. The A man honors the B lady and she him. They cross to each other’s place passing right shoulders. Again, many touch the fingers of their right hands to each other in our modern interpretation with a bit of flirtation. When they reach the place that was occupied by the other, they honor once more.
As there was repetition before, so too again. This time the B man and the A lady do what was just done by their partners.
The third part of the dance (the progression)
All four join hands and walk in a circle clockwise, halfway. This puts each person in the place where they started the dance.
As at the beginning of the dance, the A couple casts down, but not this time to where the other A’s were before. This time they go to where the couple they have been dancing with (the B’s) are standing.
Our B couple must get out of the way, and joining inside hands, as is done now, the B man leads his partner to the place that their A couple has vacated.
At the end of this, the B’s find themselves with a new A couple, and the A’s have a new B couple as well.
Please note that at each end of the line, after one time through, there are extra couples. The B couple at the very top of the line has no couple to dance with, and the A couple at the bottom of the line is in the same position. The solitary couples will wait one time through the dance and then return to dance, but this time as they go along the line to the other end, they are now the reverse couple of what they were before. If they started as an A, they are now a B, and vice-versa.
At the Regency Assembly Press pages there is one page devoted to Regency dancing, as you would find at the time and recreated for today.
Source
Keller, Kate Van Winkle and Genevieve Shimer. The Playford Ball: 103 Early Country Dances 1651-1820. Country Dance & Song Society of America, 1994.
Almack’s: It’s Not Quite What You Think...
by M.M. Bennetts
Almack’s. The name conjures up images of a glittering Regency ball attended by ladies in elegant silk gowns and gentlemen in the formal attire of the age, all dancing and bowing together—Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, only in polished London setting. Though this, I suspect, may be down to the frequency with which the late Georgett
e Heyer wrote of the place.
The reality, regardless of the fictional lore, was somewhat different.
Almack’s Assembly Rooms were located on King Street, St. James’s. The Assembly Rooms themselves had been opened in 1764 by a Scot by the name of MacCall who, allegedly, decided on an approximate anagram of his name for the rooms.
There was a large ballroom—some ninety to one hundred feet long and forty feet wide—which was decorated with gilded columns and pilasters, classic medallions, and very large mirrors. By the late Regency (post 1814-15) it was lit by gas in elaborate cut-glass lustres.
There was a balcony at one end where the small orchestra was seated. Refreshments (such as they were) were deliberately (revoltingly) mediocre: weak lemonade or orgeat or ratafia, dry biscuits, and day-old brown bread and butter. (Although good wine or alcohol was never served on the premises, many gentlemen would have arrived already drunk.)
There was also a dais or raised seat at the upper end, where the Lady Patronesses sat, “nodding acknowledgment as the invitees arrived.”
Balls were given once a week, on Wednesday evenings, for a twelve-week period during the Season—roughly from the beginning of March until early June. Until 1814, only country dances were permitted. Thereafter, quadrilles and the waltz were introduced to liven things up. No one was admitted after 11 p.m., but frequently the dancing went on well into Thursday morning.
By 1801, the required “uniform” for a gentleman was the look made famous and fashionable by George Brummell: a dark coat (navy or black), white cravat, and black knee breeches and silk stockings or tight black pantaloons with thin shoes (men’s black dancing pumps), and chapeau bras. Wider trousers or any introduction of colour were unacceptable and the wearer would be turned away at the door.