042012

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This time I have asked the wondrously talented Adrian Teal to write a guest blog for me:

The Reverend Henry Bate was a newspaper editor with a difference. Known as the ‘Fighting Parson’, owing to his love of duelling and amateur pugilism, he founded the Morning Herald in 1780 after he fell out with the partners at his previous newspaper, the Morning Post, and fought a duel with one of its proprietors. Bate took the world of Georgian print media by storm. His articles dripped with scandal, gossip, coarse humour, and actionable opinions. Samuel Johnson once said of him, “I will not allow this man to have merit; no, Sir, what he has is rather the contrary. I will, indeed, allow him courage, and on this account we so far give him credit.”

Always on the lookout for marketing opportunities, Bate once had forty men in gaudy uniforms distributing handbills in Piccadilly. The dust-up which made his name as a man not to be trifled with was known as The Vauxhall Affray, in which he defended the honour of his future sister-in-law from a gang of fashionable bullies in Vauxhall Gardens, and gave their bodyguard – a professional prize-fighter – a beating so terrible that the fellow left with his face ‘a perfect jelly’.

Modern-day tabloid editors are being censured for their questionable practices, and rightly so, but Bate knocks them all into a cocked hat. The 1700s saw a huge explosion of newspapers and topical caricatures, and the bon ton relished gossip, intrigue, and scurrilous comment as much as we do today, if not more. Men like Bate and the caricaturist James Gillray both created and fed this appetite. The parallels with today’s celebrity-obsessed media are startlingly and pleasingly obvious, and this is where I come in.

I am a national press cartoonist and caricaturist, and I am writing and illustrating a book about this period of our history. It is called The GIN LANE GAZETTE, and will be an exuberant, bawdy, journalistic romp through the second-half of the 1700s. The Gazette is a compendium of highlights from a fictional 18th-century newspaper dealing with entirely true stories from this age of scandal and bad behaviour: a kind of Georgian Heat magazine, if you like. Gossip columns, sports reports, book reviews, advertisements, and a ‘courtesan of the month’ slot will all feature within its pages, and my own Gillray-esque and Hogarthian caricatures will dance through the text.

In another pleasing parallel, the book will be published via the eighteenth-century method of subscription, which it pleases us to call ‘crowd-funding’ in the 21st century. The publishing venture Unbound was established last year, and allows authors make their pitches about the books they wish to write to potential readers. If the book garners enough support, it is published, and readers receive a beautiful hardback copy, and – depending on the levels at which they pledge – lots of fabulous perks. In my book’s case, you can have yourself caricatured as a Georgian lady or gentleman, join us for a Georgian pub crawl or a walking tour of Georgian London, or even appear in caricature within the pages of the book, if you wish.

Curious readers wishing to know more can watch my video, read my pitch, and pledge towards its publication by going to… http://www.unbound.co.uk/books/22

(Thanks for that Ade! I just echo how appropriate it is that your splendid effort is being launched by public subscription. I recall that Hogarth often pre-paid for his works to be engraved (an expensive process) by raising subscriptions. Subscribers would get a receipt which was in itself a Hogarth print and I am delighted that you offer your own version of incentives and inducements to your supporters! ).

His Teal-ship can be followed on Twitter at: : http://twitter.com/adeteal
and his work and C.V. can be seen at:

http://procartoonists.org/members/adrianteal/

THIS IS A CUT-AND-PASTE OF THE ARTICLE ON MY MAIN BLOGSITE AT

http://blog.mikerendell.com

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Writing in 1798 my ancestor Richard Hall notes: “July 1st publish’d. Price one shilling.Ornamented with an Engraved head of Miss Hannah More and two Ladies dressed in the Sutton Wrap and Curricle Robe, beautifully coloured according to the fashion. No 1 – The Ladies Monthly Museum – a polite Repository. Sold by Vernon & Hood, London”

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I confess: I have never been a particular fan of Toby Jugs, but the fact remains that they made an appearance in England in the Eighteenth Century and became hugely popular. Collectors will say that a true Toby Jug has to show the entire figure (if it is head-and-shoulders only, it is technically a ‘character mug’) and they emanated in the Staffordshire potteries of the 1780s.

Image courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library

In all probability the inspiration came from a popular tavern song by Rev. Francis Fawkes called ‘Brown Jug’ about a Yorkshire sot called Toby Fillpot (otherwise Sir Toby Philpot, a legendary 18th century drinker). The song was first published in 1761 and was popularised in an etching by Robert Dighton ( 1752 – 1814) showing the corpulent seated gentleman, foaming pint in hand, and with the words of the song below the picture. Toby was a popular word of the time to describe a thief (either ‘low Toby’ for a street thief, or ‘high Toby’ if it was used to describe a highwayman). The earliest Toby jugs appeared in the 1760s and there is some argument as to where the credit should go for the first one – likely candidates include Ralph Wood 1 (who made particularly well-modelled Earthenware figures with translucent coloured glazes) and Thomas Wheildon and John Astbury. Many of these early figures resemble the Dighton illustration. The jugs appear to have been used to carry the beer from the barrel to the table – they have stoppers in the form of a tricorn hat which are good for pouring, but difficult to drink from. The early jugs held about a quart (that is to say, two pints).

An ‘Ordinary Toby Jug’ dating from around 1800

After the ‘Ordinary Tobies’ came the different varieties – based on often fictional characters. You get the Thin Man, Squire, Hearty Goodfellow, Lord Howe, Man on a Barrel and my favourite, Martha Gunn. Martha was a real person, who lived in Brighton and had a job as a ‘dipper’ i.e. assisting bathers emerge from the bathing machines into the briny, where they would be unceremoniously dunked. Martha became notorious when she extended her duties to dipping the Prince Regent – then in his twenties. Cue much ribaldry, since men generally bathed in the nude.

The Thin Man, a style made popular in the 1770s

Martha Gunn, unusually with a beer mug rather than a gin bottle in her hand.

By the early 1800s dozens of potteries were churning out these jugs, tending to use enamel rather than a coloured glaze. Factories such as Wedgwood, Royal Worcester, and later Clarice Clift and of course Royal Doulton carried on the tradition. Royal Doulton are famous for their limited editions of different figures, and there is a museum at Evanston Illinois in the States devoted entirely to the genre (see http://www.tobyjugmuseum.com/history.php )

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If ever a man deserved the term ‘villain’ rather than ‘hero’ it was William Douglas, Third Earl March and later Fourth Duke of Queensbury. Born in 1725 (four years before Richard Hall) he outlived Richard by nine years, dying in 1810. The man was a disgusting old lecher, a rake who never married but had a penchant for young girls, particularly dark Italian ones. He was also a prodigious drinker, a keen follower of horse racing, and an inveterate gambler. He was 52 when he inherited the dukedom in 1778, his two cousins who were direct in line having predeceased him. Thereafter he became known as ‘Old Q’. Arguably the faults which would have been permitted in a younger man only became notorious with Old Q simply because he never did reform, or repent his wicked ways, or give up debauching young girls. He was nothing if not consistent, right into old age.

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It is a curious thing, fate. Most people comply with the adage of Master Shakespeare (‘some are born great; some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them’) but then occasionally you get a person who lives a squalid, mean little life, and yet who is immortalised and lionised as a hero while nothing could be further from the truth. An example of the latter person was Dick Turpin. That he lived is not in doubt. That he was ever the derring-do hero who lived a life of passion and swaggering nonchalance is unlikely. That he owned a horse called Black Bess, or rode it from London to York in a day is not only false but a straight lift from the exploits of a much earlier criminal. Why, Turpin was not even a highwayman for most of his life. He was a thief, a sadistic torturer, a murderer and a thoroughly unpleasant guy. So how come he is immortalised as some kind of folk hero?

One suspects that Turpin would be the most amazed of all at the transformation. He had been born in Essex in 1706 the son of a famer John Turpin, who at one time was proprietor of a public house called the Crown Inn. He was apprenticed as a butcher, in Whitechapel, but apparently “conducted himself in a loose and disorderly manner.”
When his apprenticeship finished he reputedly married a local girl called Miss Palmer. He subsequently opened a butcher’s shop in Essex, but gained a reputation for dealing in beef and lamb stolen from local farms, and venison poached from the deer parks and forests of the neighbourhood.

Richard Hall’s version of a deer park.

He also tried his hand at smuggling, but failed miserably. He himself was not averse to a little cattle rustling, being caught in the act of stealing two oxen. He fled the scene and went into hiding and at some stage became a member of the notorious Essex Gang a.k.a. the Gregory Gang.

Their ‘speciality’ was raiding remote farmhouses, often late at night, terrorising the inhabitants before stealing their valuables. He was not averse to torturing his victims to help them remember where they kept their valuables – on one occasion holding his elderly female hostage over the open fire until she revealed the hiding place. On at least one occasion the gang raped a young servant. Hardly the stuff of legend…

According to the Newgate Chronicle ‘they fixed on a spot between the King’s-Oak and the Loughton Road, on Epping Forest, where they made a cave, which was large enough to receive them and their horses. This cave was inclosed within a sort of thicket of bushes and brambles, through which they could look and see passengers on the road, while themselves remained unobserved. From this station they used to issue, and robbed such a number of persons, that at length the very pedlars who travelled the road, carried fire-arms for their defence: and, while they were in this retreat, Turpin’s wife used to supply them with necessaries, and frequently remained in the cave during the night.’

The gang ventured further afield, becoming notorious throughout the Home Counties not least because of their ruthlessness and their willingness to resort to torture. Their offences were regularly reported in the Press and by 1735 the London Evening Post was reporting that the Crown had offered a reward of fifty pounds for the capture of the gang. Two of the gang were caught, but Turpin escaped through a window just as the constables arrived. For a while he lay low in the depths of Epping Forest. Here he met up with Tom King – a far more likely candidate for a person having a reputation as a swash-buckling ne’er-do-well.

The Newgate Calendar is a fascinating publication – albeit one not necessarily too worried about following strict truth. It was a sort of National Enquirer of its day. It started as a monthly bulletin of executions, kept by the Keeper at Newgate Prison, but the name was appropriated by others and became a byword for the sort of chapbook which delighted audiences in the Eighteenth Century, who could not get enough lurid prose listing the heinous exploits of rapists, thieves and murderers, particularly when they got their come-uppance. Who cared that the events described were not always accurate: they were thrilling tales of criminals, and by the middle 1770s it was described as being one of the three books most likely to be found in the average home (the other two being the Bible and Pilgrims Progress).

Meanwhile back in Epping Forest…The exploits of King and Turpin had led to the reward for their capture being increased by one hundred pounds – enough to tempt a gamekeeper in the forest called Thomas Morris to track Turpin down. Turpin was cornered, and shot Morris dead. The murder was reported to the Secretary of State and the Newgate Calendar takes up the story:

“It having been represented to the King, that Richard Turpin did, on Wednesday, the 4th of May last, barbarously murder Thomas Morris, servant to Henry Thompson, one of the keepers of Epping Forest, and commit other notorious felonies and robberies, near London, his Majesty is pleased to promise his most gracious pardon to any of his accomplices, and a reward of 200 pounds to any person or persons that shall discover him, so that he may be apprehended and convicted. Turpin was born at Thackstead, in Essex, is about thirty, by trade a butcher, about five feet nine inches high, very much marked with the small-pox, his cheek-bones broad, his face thinner towards the bottom; his visage short, pretty upright, and broad about the shoulders.”

Shortly after this, Turpin decided that he wanted to get rid of his own nag, and took a fancy to a fine horse belonging to a Mr Major. He stole the new horse at gunpoint (horse-stealing being a hanging offence, ranked as high as murder on the scale of felonies). Mr Major would not take the loss lying down: he had handbills printed and circulated around pubs in the London area; he described the horse and named Turpin as the perpetrator. In fact Turpin had stabled the horse at the Red Lion in Whitechapel, but it was Tom King who came to collect it and who was faced by two constables lying in wait. To follow the Newgate Calendar:

King … drew a pistol (and) attempted to fire it, but it flashed in the pan; he then endeavoured to draw out another pistol, but he could not, as it got entangled in his pocket. At this time Turpin was watching at a small distance and riding towards the spot, King cried out, “Shoot him, or we are taken;” on which Turpin fired, and shot his companion, who called out, “Dick, you have killed me;” which the other hearing, rode off at full speed.

King lived a week after this affair, and gave information that Turpin might be found at a house near Hackney-marsh; and, on inquiry, it was discovered that Turpin had been there on the night that he rode off, lamenting that he had killed King, who was his most faithful associate.”

Turpin fled North and settled near York under the identity of ‘John Palmer’. He continued to rustle cattle in neighbouring Lincolnshire and in 1738 became involved in an incident when he shot a rooster belonging to his landlord. When the landlord (named Mr Hall, but as far as I know no relation) remonstrated with Turpin, our hero replied that if he would give him long enough to reload his gun he would shoot him also. The constables were called, and people started asking questions about how Mr Palmer was able to finance his lifestyle. People had noticed that when he disappeared to Lincolnshire he invariably returned with a different horse and was flush with funds. The magistrates had him locked up on suspicion of horse stealing. And here the tale takes a curious turn. The Newgate Calendar reports:

“After (Turpin) had been about four month in prison, he wrote the following letter to his brother in Essex:

“Dear Brother,
York, Feb. 6, 1739.
“I am sorry to acquaint you, that I am now under confinement in York Castle, for horse-stealing. If I could procure an evidence from London to give me a character, that would go a great way towards my being acquitted. I had not been long in this county before my being apprehended, so that it would pass off the readier. For Heaven’s sake dear brother, do not neglect me; you will know what I mean, when I say,
I am yours,
“JOHN PALMER.”

Apparently the brother declined to pay sixpence for the letter, since he knew nobody of the name Palmer in York, and the letter was returned unopened to the local Post Office in Essex. Here fate intervened: the letter was seen by a school-master by the name of Mr Smith. He had taught Turpin and amazingly claimed to reconize the handwriting, and he rushed off to tell the local magistrate. The letter was opened and the true identity of John Palmer was revealed. The Newgate Calendar continues:
“Hereupon the magistrates of Essex dispatched Mr. Smith to York, who immediately selected him from all the other prisoners in the castle. This Mr. Smith, and another gentle man, afterwards proved his identity on his trial.

On the rumour that the noted Turpin was a prisoner in York Castle, persons flocked from all parts of the country to take a view of him, and debates ran very high whether he was the real person or not. Among others who visited him, was a young fellow who pretended to know the famous Turpin, and having regarded him a considerable time with looks of great attention, he told the keeper he would bet him half a guinea that he was not Turpin; on which the prisoner, whispering the keeper, said, ‘Lay him the wager, and I’ll go your halves.’

When this notorious malefactor was brought to trial, he was convicted on two indictments, and received sentence of death.”

Only at this stage did Turpin begin to show the flamboyance and style for which he is now remembered. He reportedly bought himself a new fustian frock and a pair of pumps (so that he could look his best on the way to his execution) and paid ten shillings to each of five men to act as mourners. They accompanied him as he waved gaily to the crowds when he was placed in a cart and wheeled off to York racecourse on 7th April 1739. Or, as the Newgate Calendar put it:

“On the morning of his death he was put into a cart, and being followed by his mourners … he was drawn to the place of execution, in his way to which he bowed to the spectators with an air of the most astonishing indifference and intrepidity.When he came to the fatal tree, he ascended the ladder; when his right leg trembling, he stamped it down with an air of assumed courage, as if he was ashamed of discovering any signs of fear, Having conversed with the executioner about half an hour, he threw himself off the ladder, and expired in a few minutes.”

It wasn’t quite the end for Dick Turpin. He was buried six feet down but that first night body-snatchers exhumed the corpse and absconded with it. It was apparently found the next day in the garden of a local doctor, whereupon it was coated with quick lime and re-interred.

And the fables? They started immediately after his death with the publication of a book entitled ‘Life of Richard Turpin’ but only really gained credence when Harrison Ainsworth published his novel ‘Rockwood’ in 1834. He was the one who introduced Black Bess, and who attributed to Turpin a ride to York which was actually made thirty years before Turpin’s birth, by one John (‘Swift Nick’) Nevison. The tale was told and re-told, becoming more and more embellished in the re-telling, and slowly a charmless, cruel and murderous young man who killed his own partner was turned into ‘dandy highwayman, folk hero of his day’. But whoever said that life was fair?

The papercuts are all made by my ancestor Richard Hall, mostly dating from the 1780s (lots more are to be found in The Journal of a Georgian Gentleman).

THIS POST IS A DUPLICATE TAKEN FROM MY MAIN BLOGSITE at http://blog.mikerendell.com

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David Brewster, 1781 – 1868, an engraving by William Holl.

Occasionally I come across a scientist who suddenly steps off his academic perch and comes up with something totally unexpected. One such man was David Brewster, born in 1781 in Jedburgh Scotland. His range of interests included that of a physicist, mathematician, astronomer, inventor, and writer. He was a scientist who studied light – prisms, polarisation of light, mirrors, stereoscopes, lighthouse lenses, etc., He was a Member of the Royal Society, was showered with medals and awards, and was made a knight of the realm in 1831. He is also credited with having invented the sea thermometer. He was an eminent scientist yet in 1815 he came up with the kaleidoscope, an invention which he patented two years later.

He had originally intended it as a scientific tool. It consisted of a tube with two mirrors at an angle at one end and a translucent disc at the other through which diffused light could pass. In between he placed coloured beads. With two mirrors the beads were shown in multiple reflection, the patterns illuminated against a black background. Introducing a third mirror placed at 60° produced six duplicate objects, with eight if the angle was 45°. The three mirrors meant that the patterns filled the whole field of vision.

Brewster turned to a famous lens developer Philip Carpenter to develop his invention once the patent came through in 1817. It was a sensation, with over 200,000 kaleidoscopes sold within three months in London and Paris alone. Carpenter simply could not keep up with demand and Brewster was forced to seek his permission to bring in other manufacturers. He hoped to make a fortune from the invention, but unfortunately for him a mistake on the patent application meant that others were able to copy it with impunity.

In later years he was to become Principal of St Andrews University (1837 to 1859) and then of Edinburgh University (1859, up to his death nine years later). He was devoutly religious, highly strung and often highly irritable with people who disagreed with his views. His scientific works are sufficiently obscure as to be quite beyond my limited abilities to understand. Suffice to say that Encyclopedia Britannica delivered this obituary after his death in 1868.

“His scientific glory is different in kind from that of Young and Fresnel; but the discoverer of the law of polarization of biaxial crystals, of optical mineralogy, and of double refraction by compression, will always occupy a foremost rank in the intellectual history of the age.”

And the name kaleidoscope? Well for those of us who never woke up in time for Greek lessons it is a combination of three words from ancient Greece meaning ‘tool for observing beautiful shapes.’ In other words, it does what it says on the tin. Thanks Sir David, and many happy returns of the day! (His birthday was on the Eleventh of December).

NB This post echoes my main blog at http://blog.mikerendell.com (go there for up to date posts)

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It is interesting to see how many of the key names and traditions of modern horse racing date back to the second half of the eighteenth century. Think Jockey Club (founded 1750); think Tattersall’s (bloodstock auctioneers, founded by Richard Tattersall with headquarters off Hyde Park in 1766) ; think thoroughbred stud books (John Weatherby produced the first one in 1791 and it has been maintained ever since by the Weatherby family/company, meticulously recording every thoroughbred birth in England and Ireland). Add to these the fact that the Oaks was first raced in 1779 and the Derby in 1780.

The period also saw the introduction of racing colours, known now as silks, in 1762. Their use was adopted by the Jockey Club with the record as follows:

“For the greater conveniency of distinguishing the horses running, as also for the prevention of disputes
arising from not knowing the colours worn by each rider, the underwritten gentlemen have come to the resolution and agreement of having the colours annexed to the following names, worn by their respective riders: The stewards therefore hope, in the name of the Jockey Club, that the named gentlemen will take care that the riders be provided with dresses accordingly”

Nineteen owners were listed: seven Dukes, one Marquis, four Earls. one Viscount, one Lord, two Baronets, and three commoners.
The Duke of Cumberland chose: “purple”
The Duke of Grafton chose: “sky blue”
The Duke of Devonshire chose: “straw”
The Duke of Northumberland chose: “yellow”
The Duke of Kingston chose “crimson”
The Duke of Ancaster chose: “buff”
The Duke of Bridgewater chose: “garter blue”
The Earl of Waldegrave chose: “deep red”
The Earl of Oxford chose: “purple and white”
The Earl of March chose: “white”
The Earl of Gower chose: “blue”
Viscount Bolingbroke chose: “black”
Lord Grosvenor chose: “orange”
Sir John Moore chose: “darkest green”
Sir James Lowther chose: “orange”
Mr. R. Vernon chose: “white”
The Hon. Mr. Greville chose “brown trimmed with yellow”
Mr. Jenison Shafto chose: “pink”

Sir J Lowther proved indecisive and failed to make his mind up in time…

Originally, a black velvet huntsman’s cap was the only type used by the riders and was more or less associated with the colours listed above, but this gave way to caps varied in colour as we know them today. Of those listed, one family have kept the same set of colours throughout the ensuing two and a half centuries – the Duke of Devonshire with his straw colours.

Both William Douglas (1725-1810) who later became known as ‘Old Q’ once he became the 4th Duke of Queensbury, and the Honourable Richard Vernon of Newmarket chose White. In fact ‘Old Q’ reverted to using his black and red racing colours for an astonishing 57 consecutive years of racing between 1748 and 1805. He was an infamous old roué but a great supporter of Racing and a devoted gambler. No mean amateur jockey himself, on one occasion his chosen jockey informed him that bookmakers were offering him money to throw a race. The Duke advised him to take the money – and then on the day of the race inspected his horse in the parade ring before announcing that it was such a fine horse that he would ride it himself – and promptly removed his great coat to reveal his red and black silks underneath. He won the race.

An all-black strip has been associated with some of the great names of the horse racing world – first with Viscount Bolingbroke. Frederick St John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke (1732-1787) kept a stable of some twenty racehorses. He owned several famous horses including Gimcrack, who was painted by George Stubbs with the jockey in black colours. He also owned the great racehorse (and later great stud) Highflyer – who was undefeated in fourteen race starts. Highflyer had to be sold during his racing career because Lord Bolingbroke had racked up a huge gambling debt. The purchaser, paying £2,500, was Richard Tattersall, who made at least £15,000 a year out of stud fees for the heroic animal (enough to pay for the building of a fine mansion for Tattersall, appropriately called Highflyer Hall

Gimcrack on Newmarket Heath, painted by Stubbs in 1765

The black colours then passed to the Duke of Grafton before being adopted by the 9th Duke of Hamilton (1740 – 1819). Jockeys wearing his famous black silks won seven St Leger wins in the period between 1786 and 1814. A later all-black owner, John Bowes, won the Derby on no fewer than four occasions between 1835 and 1853.

In 1787 the then Lord Derby changed his colours from “green and white stripes” to the famous “black with white cap” which is still used by his successors today. Due to a superstition which followed Lord Derby’s Sansovino win in the 1924 Derby the jacket always has one white button amongst the black.

In 1799 the Grosvenor family dropped the all-orange and adopted “yellow with a black cap” colours which have been used by the Dukes of Westminster ever since.

For many years there was a free-for-all with horse owners choosing all manner of colours and combinations. Finally in 1971 the Jockey Club laid down a list of just 18 permitted colours. This means that in accordance with the rules of the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities there are 18 colours, 25 body designs, and 12 sleeve designs. This gives a huge number of permutations (Weatherby’s have over 19,000 combinations registered).Oddly you do not even have to own a horse to own a set of colours – some are bought as an investment – yes, there are people who buy ‘cherished’ colours as an alternative investment particularly if these have a particular historical connection. If any of the original ‘pure’ colours comes up for auction, expect to pay tens of thousands of pounds as with the plain emerald green strip sold in Ireland (for charity) in 1995. For a time these cherished colours were sold “under the counter” and so in 1996 the British Horseracing Board introduced a sale of currently unregistered colours. There were a dozen of them, and the sale fetched just under £130,000 with the highest figure (£28,750 ) going to a plain dark-blue set of silks. That is dwarfed by the £69,000 paid by stable owner John Fretwell for his plain lime-green colours or by the plain pink set bought by Mrs Sue Magnier. Mr Shafto, who had the registration for plain pink back in 1762, would have been amazed (and no, his jockeys didn’t wear silver buckles at their knees – that’s a different Shafto altogether…).

The Battenberg The Chocolatier

The Obama The Traffic Cone

The Cruella de Vil The Lighthouse

Pictures courtesy of the British Horse Racing Authority site at http://www.britishhorseracing.com/goracing/racing/racingcolours/default.asp showing racing silks supplied by Allerton & Co.

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A visit to Mrs Wright's Waxworks in Pall Mall.

Mrs Wright was an interesting character, and one who played a part in the American War of Independence. She was born into a particularly strict Quaker sect as Patience Lovell, in around 1725, probably on Long Island, New York. She was the fifth of nine daughters born to a farming family, and as a child she and her sisters apparently made model figurines out of clay and dough, which they then coloured and dressed in clothing.

In her twenties she ran away to Philadelphia and married Joseph Wright in 1748. She said of her husband that he had "nothing but age and money to recommend himself to her" but she bore him five children, one of them born after Joseph died. She then discovered that Joseph had left her (and the fifth child of whom he had no knowledge) virtually nothing in his will. She turned to her sister Rachel Lovell Wells for assistance. This sister had continued her childhood hobby of modelling and showed Patricia how to make life-sized sculptures in wax. These they exhibited in a travelling show, earning commissions to sculpt likenesses along the way. Eventually Patricia had her own permanent exhibition in New York, but a fire in 1771 destroyed most of the exhibits. With the help of her sister she re-stocked and opened in Boston, where she met Jane Mecom, who was the sister of Benjamin Franklin. Jane gave Patricia a letter of introduction to her brother, and Patricia came to England intending to use the connection as an entree into London society so that she could meet and sculpt prominent figures of the Age.

Portrait courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery.

London society flocked to have their likenesses made, including the King and Queen whom she addressed as 'George' and 'Charlotte' in true egalitarian fashion appropriate to a colonial! Well, she did until the King withdrew his support for her when she became too strident in her support for the Americans in the War of Independence. But by then she was famous and crowds clamoured to see her models, often full size, because of their uncanny likeness and life-like qualities. Apparently her party piece was to install one of her models in a reception room and then wait for people to realize that they were talking to a dummy! Walpole welcomed her into his circle of friends, calling her 'the artistress'

By all accounts she was no great oil painting, with sallow complexion and masculine features, but she soon became famous for her quick wit and coarse language. Not everyone liked her - the outspoken Abigail Adams, who later became the First Lady when her husband John became the second President of the United States (and a woman well known for a choice 'bon mot') succinctly called her "the Queen of sluts."

A London newspaper of the day reported that "the ingenious Mrs. Wright, whose Skill in taking Likeness, expressing the Passions, and many curious Devices in Wax Work, has deservedly recommended her to public Notice." Another described her as 'Promethean' and another as 'the American Sybil' because of her almost magical ability in seeming to catch the soul of the sitter. She made models of royalty, the nobility, scientists and politicians - and on her own admission would secrete plans and overheard gossip about British plans for America and its preparations for war, and put them inside the wax models before shipping them Stateside to her sister.

In 1780 her daughter Phoebe married the English painter John Hoppner, and in the same year her son Joseph Wright (not to be confused with his namesake who chose to be known by the epithet 'Joseph Wright of Derby') had his first picture exhibited at the Royal Academy. It showed his mother, apparently making a wax effigy of the head of Charles 1st immediately prior to his execution, while casting a meaningful glance at portraits of King George III and his wife Queen Charlotte in the background. That didn't go down too well, and Mrs Wright hurried off to Paris to escape the fuss engendered by the portrait, taking her son in tow. Both made likenesses of Benjamin Franklin and after the war was over Joseph headed back to America to paint the portraits of the new leaders. His mother longed to follow but first of all returned to London in 1782. To her dismay she was no longer in demand, and people dismissed her as mad or bad, or possibly both. She made enquiries to see if her help as an informant i.e. in passing on British plans might be rewarded with a gift of a small piece of land back in her homeland. She also wrote to George Washington and gained his approval to the idea of her making a model of him. But alas for poor Patience it was not to be: she had a bad fall after visiting the American Embassy, and died in London on February 25th 1786.

Very few of her wax models survived her, but there is one of William Pitt the Elder, full-sized, still on display in Westminster Abbey, and this likeness of Admiral Howe is attributed to her and was made in about 1770. It is shown courtesy of The Newark Museum.

Admiral Richard Howe, 1726 - 1799

We may never know the truth about her espionage activities, but she was certainly well-connected as a result of her link to Benjamin Franklin: who is to say what indiscretions passed the lips of politicians and military men as they sat before her, while she moulded and scraped the warm wax which she kept covered by her apron?

The wall plaque in Patience Wright's home town of Bordentown, New Jersey

(This post is a copy of an article written by me for London Historians - do have a look at their website at http://www.londonhistorians.org/  )

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Writing in 1760 my ancestor Richard Hall records in his diary: “October 8 – went with Mr Crouch to see the British Musæum”, He would have been amongst the very first visitors to the museum (it opened on 15th January the previous year) and was based in Montagu House. This seventeenth century mansion house was situated on the current museum’s site and allowed free admission to ‘all studious and curious Persons’.

Well, Richard was certainly both of these, and would have loved what he saw. At its heart the museum housed two huge collections; one being the bequest from Sir Hans Sloane of some 71,000 items (natural curiosities, shells, fossils, books, coins medals and historical artifacts); and the other being the ‘Old Royal Library’ donated by George II (and with it the right to receive a copy of all published books).

Richard’s visit was before the wave of acquisitions of ancient sculptures which marked the Museum’s development in the first half of the nineteenth century, So, no Rosetta Stone, no ‘Elgin Marbles’ but the Museum was already exhibiting its first Egyptian mummy (bequeathed to it in 1759).

Visitors like Richard would have applied in advance for an entrance ticket. It would have entitled him to enter Montagu House at a stated time. Admissions were in small groups, which were escorted, so there would have been no idle roaming of corridors, more an escorted introduction to items of interest.

My guess is that Richard would have been less interested in the books, manuscripts and prints but rather more in the shells and fossils. About this time Richard started his own collections - his shells were mostly cowries brought back from the Indian and Pacific oceans. I still have some of them, ranging from shiny chestnut colours through rose to cream and fawn. They come in all shapes and sizes, some with stripes, some with spots, some plain. Unfortunately the Latin names, which Richard so carefully stuck on, have all become detached and form a pile of anonymous labels at the bottom of a large bread bin which still houses the bulk of the collection. Over the years other family members added their own hoard of objects collected from the beach on family holidays, so now it is almost impossible to distinguish 18th, 19th and 20th century items.

The exceptions are the glowing giant cowries, simply because there is no way they could have been collected within European waters and would have been bought from sailors returning from Far Eastern voyages, or acquired from surplus collections (such as Don Saltero’s – about whom I have written before, and who Richard also visited. He records spending thirteen shillings on that occasion, and since admission to Don Saltero’s was free if you bought a coffee it is fair to assume that the thirteen shillings was spent on acquiring some of the natural curiosities on display there, rather than on buying very expensive coffee! Many of Don Saltero’s items were available for purchase).

Picture (courtesy of Wikipedia) giving some indication of the type of shells which make up Richard’s collection. He also had two golden cowries, still prized in places like Fiji, where they were regarded as status symbols.

The golden cowrie – they can grow up to four inches long (Richard’s are half that size).

Richard noted his fossils in a pocket book – the word to him included ‘anything dug upon from the ground’ and hence included emeralds, topaz etc. He jotted down their descriptions and qualities, and often drew them.

Many more details of what Richard did, what he collected, and what he saw, are set out in the Journal of a Georgian Gentleman. Sounds like a pretty good idea for a Christmas present….

The above is a copy of the post made today on my main blogsite at http://blog.mikerendell.com

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(This is a duplicate of the article on my main blogsite - see below)

In the Seventeenth Century the longcase clock grew out of the brass ‘chamber clock’ or  lantern clock which had a removable wooden hood (it had to be taken off every time the clock was wound up). The introduction of the pendulum, linked to a change from a balance wheel to an anchor escapement, led to much greater accuracy of time-keeping. Early pendulum clocks had to accommodate a swing of 100º which necessitated the use of  ‘wings’ at the side of the clock. In time a standard 39 inch pendulum was introduced (known as the royal or seconds pendulum). This swung every second and needed an arc of between 4º and 6º, so clock cases could be narrow, but needed to be long enough to hold the pendulum. In time the cases moved on from being a plain box into being elaborate and beautifully embellished carcasses. In England their style was much influenced by craftsmen from Holland, who came over with William of Orange in 1685.

In the early years of the 17^th Century the time keeping devices had been known as horologues – the clock was simply the striking mechanism but over the years the term ‘clock’ was applied to the entire mechanism. The terms "grandfather", "grandmother", and "granddaughter" have all been applied to longcase clocks. Although there is no specifically defined difference among these terms, the general consensus seems to be that a clock smaller than 5 ft is a granddaughter; over 5 ft is a grandmother; and over 6 ft is a grandfather. Other names are tall-case clock, or floor clock.  

Typically these longcase clocks of the latter part of the 17^th Century were adorned with corkscrew or twisted pillars, and the cases were elaborately embellished with marquetry, The wood was usually pine or oak, often blackened to look like ebony, with fruitwood decoration. The early clocks only had an hour hand and there were double circles where the numerals were, dividing the hours into quarters, the half hours being indicated by an ornament of extra length, like an arrow-head or fleur-de-lis. The engraving on clock faces and on the brass plates at the back was highly decorative. Borders, intricate rings about the winding holes, birds and flowers, were all introduced into the decoration, and the spandrels or ornaments at the corners became incredibly ornate. Early dials often had a line of verse in each corner such as one form 1681 bearing the words 

 

 

   "Behold this hand,
   Observe ye motion tip;
   Man's precious hours
   Away like these do slip."  

In time verses gave way to angels heads, and cupids, and these made way for the scrolls and rococo designs of the 18^th Century. 

Thomas Tompion, known as the " Father of English watchmaking," had by 1658 attained much fame and status. He was succeeded by Daniel Quare, who had a shop at St. Martin's le Grand, London, in 1676. Then came George Graham, an apprentice and protégé of Tompion, and he succeeded to his business in 1713.  

The early clocks were thirty-hour mechanisms (i.e. they needed to be wound up once a day, with a six hour lee-way). Then came the eight day clock – much more expensive, and therefore immediately sought after. Eventually month and even one-year clocks were introduced. 

By the middle of the 18^th Century mahogany made an appearance, and then swept the board thanks to the efforts of men like Chippendale. Oriental styles were also popular, with lacquered painted decorations on an oak carcass. 

 

                                                         

The early clocks all had square faces, made of brass. In time more elaborate features – such as phases of the moon, date, silent/chime controls etc - led to an arc being added above the square (particularly after 1710). And then a total change came in – the vogue for painted dials. These started in the 1770s and within thirty years had largely replaced the brass dial. These early dials had simple decorations, such as birds or strawberries. By 1830 small painted scenes, in the corners and arch, were depicted on dials.  

  

 

 

 

Throughout the 1800’s the longcases got smaller. The finials disappeared and designs became simpler and less embellished. Manufacture in London slowed down and largely switched to Birmingham and the Midlands, and to Bristol and the West Country. Even worse, the vogue was for clocks with circular faces and hence rounded tops to their cases - a loathsome abomination which to my mind marked the end of the development of the longcase clock! 

 

All the clocks featured here come from P. A. Oxley Antique Clocks. They have an excellent site at www.british-antiqueclocks.com and I am grateful to them for setting out a  helpful history of the longcase clock on their site.

 

(This is a duplicate of the article on my main blogsite at http://blog.mikerendell.com  please go visit, so I can close this one down!)

 

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Born on 18 November 1787, Daguerre was a French painter and stage designer, who gave his name to the daguerreotype, the first practical and commercially successful photographic process.

Daguerre abandoned his architectural training in 1804, turning to scene painting at the Paris Opéra. In 1822 he developed the diorama, with help from Charles Boulton, and continued to make dioramas for 17 years. The diorama was a large-scale peep show in which a painting on a large translucent screen was seemingly animated by the skilful play of light on each side.

Daguerre used the camera obscura to make sketches for his stage designs and was looking for ways to avoid the tedious and repetitive tracing and copying which this involved. He surmised that it might be possible to achieve this chemically. In 1826 he got wind of the fact that J. N. Niépce was working toward the same end and had made some progress. Letters were exchanged and Niépce revealed to Daguerre his ‘heliograph’ process. In 1829 Daguerre and Niépce formed a partnership to develop the method.

The first commercial daguerreotype camera, from 1839.

Heliography depended on the hardening action of sunlight on bitumen and the subsequent dissolution of the soft shadow parts of the image. Using this method on a glass plate, Niépce had obtained and fixed a photograph from the camera obscura in 1826. He wasn’t satisfied with this – he wanted to fix a visible image on to a photo-engraved plate, from which he could take prints. Experimentation led him to use bitumen on silver-coated copper-plates.

Building on Niépce’s work, Daguerre discovered the light sensitivity of silver iodide in 1831. His problem was to obtain a visible image, but in 1835 he discovered that the image present on a silver iodide plate exposed for just 20 minutes could be developed with mercury vapour. This was a major advance. By removing the unreduced silver iodide with a solution of common salt (1837) he was able to fix the image and make it permanent.

The first daguerreotype, 1837, showing plaster casts on a window sill.

Daguerre approached the French Government in January 1839 with details of the process. The government agreed to pay him a pension for life and in return announced that the invention was free to the world. Well, other than in Britain. Here, a patent was taken out on behalf of Daguerre, leading to a period of litigation and stalemate with Fox Talbot who had come up with his own rather different method of recording pictures.

Daguerre was appointed an officer of the legion d’honneur and retired to Bry-sur-Marne in 1840 and died there on July 10, 1851. He had little more to do with the daguerreotype, leaving its improvement to others. It was perhaps the invention which most caught popular fancy in the mid-19th century, when millions of daguerreotypes were sold, but it proved to be a blind alley in the development of modern photography. In the end the Fox Talbot method, involving a negative image and a process whereby an unlimited number of positive copies could be made, was the commercial winner. I still have dozens of daguerreotypes of sturdy aunts and moustachioed uncles, edged in small brass frames and with red velvet covers. Hold the image at the wrong angle and you get a smudged mirror; tilt it correctly and a face from 150 years ago comes hauntingly to life.

So let us put aside mere feelings of national rivalry: happy birthday Louis! You played your part, and helped change the way we see our world.

This post is a straight 'lift' from my new blogsite at http://blog.mikerendell.com   - I will conintue to post things here while I remember, but your best bet is to go to the new site!

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15th November marks the 273rd  anniversary of the birth of Sir Frederick William Herschel, or, to give him his full Germanic name, Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel.

 He is one of my favourite characters of the century because he showed what ‘the ordinary guy’ could do simply by being observant. He did what no-one had done for thousands of years before him – he discovered a planet (later called Uranus) and in so doing set the whole science of astronomy on its head. The discovery doubled the size of the known solar system. He discovered that Saturn has two moons. He was the first to notice infra-red radiation. Not content with that he pesonally designed, made, and put up the world’s biggest telescope in his back garden – you don’t do that in our era because you would need a budget larger than Greece’s national debt to do so! Oh and he catalogued around 2400 new stars (which he called nebulae), and if that didn’t fill his nights sufficiently, he also composed a couple of dozen symphonies, a number of oboe concertos and a harpsichord sonata …

He had originally come to Britain as a 19 year old, following in the footsteps of the royal family and their entourages who had drifted across the Channel from Hanover to set up camp here in the mid 1700’s. He was an oboist in the Hanover Military Band and took a job in Bath teaching music and as resident organist at the Octagon Chapel. He was made Bath’s  Director of Public Concerts and in 1780 was made Director of the Bath orchestra. Somehow that didn’t fill enough hours and he was apparently spending up to 16 hours a day on his hobby, polishing his reflective mirrors and looking at the stars...

In this work he was aided by his sister, the diminutive Caroline Herschel about whom I blogged earlier this year. In March 1781 he identified the new planet which he called ‘Georgium Sidum’ (literally, George’s Star) even though he knew it to be a planet rather than a star, but it shows the lengths he was prepared to go to in order to flatter his monarch. It worked in the sense that George III made Herschel his personal astronomer (as opposed to the Astronomer Royal) and awarded him a pension of £200 for life, which enabled him to give up teaching and concentrate all his efforts on observing the universe.

In 1782 he and his sister moved to Datchet, moving on to Slough three years later. He was busy selling his polished mirrors to other astronomers throughout Europe, and building his own telescopes (he made some 400 during his life-time) The largest of all these ‘scopes was a forty foot monster which he constructed in his garden (no planning controls in those days!)…  

Herschel was the first person to work out that the solar system was moving through space, that the Milky Way was disc-shaped, and comparatively recent re-reading of his note books suggest that he actually noticed the rings around Uranus (many years before it was otherwise established).

He coined the word asteroid to describe moons and minor planets. He also observed sunspots on the surface of the sun, speculating that this was evidence of life there (indeed he took it for granted that all the phenomena he observed featured their own life forms).

He was knighted in 1816.

He helped found the Royal Astronomical Society in 1820 and lived long enough to hand over the baton of astronomical discoveries to his son John.I am including a picture of John because quite simply, apart from Sir Patrick Moore I cannot think of anyone who looks more like a brilliant astronomer! Who needs a comb to search the universe… 

John was also the first person to photograph onto glass – this being a picture of his father’s 40-foot telescope at Slough taken in 1836 (original in Science Museum). 

               
                 Postage stamp from 1970 (Herschel's telescope in background).

And dont forget: my blogs are now to be found at http://blog.mikerendell.com and will not be available on this site for very much longer!

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NB This is a draft of the blog posted on my main blogsite, at http://blog.mikerendell.com

The artist George Romney died on the  fifteenth day of November 1802. His life spanned an almost identical period to Richard Hall. In his lifetime he became one of the most fashionable portrait painters of the Age.

He is perhaps best remembered for painting more than fifty portraits of Nelson's mistress Emma Hamilton. He first met her as Emma Hart in around 1781. He became pre-occupied by her, painting her over and over agin, often from memory, and often in heroic or historical guises such as Joan of Arc. He referred to her as his 'divine Emma'

A provocative little minx, to be sure, but I rather prefer Romney as the master of the 'Lady in a Flamboyant Hat' style of painting - to my mind, a fine hat makes for a fine portrait and you cannot get much better than some of these:

Mrs Musters

                                                         Miss Constable

Lady Edward Bentinck (born Elizabeth Cumberland).

                          Lady Milnes, painted in 1788   

He occasionally painted his sitters without a hat, sometimes making do with a tiara as here with his 1770 portrait of Mary White

But I prefer 'Mrs Tickell at Ascott' - this is what I call a hat.

                                                                  

Romney had a somewhat unusual family life - he lived apart from his wife for nearly forty years, maintaining her financially in the Lake District while he was based in London, but returning to her for the last two  years of his life when his health started to fail.

He steadfastly refused to have anything at all to do with the Royal Academy, despite beign asked to exhibit there on many occasions, possibly because of his aversion to anything at all which was connected to Joshua Reynolds, whom he loathed.

                         A self-portrait.

Farewell, George Romney, you faithfully recorded the Age in which you lived. Especially the hats. We remember you fondly, for tomorrow is the anniversary of your death.

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The artist George Romney died on the fifteenth day of November 1802. His life spanned an almost identical period to Richard Hall. In his lifetime he became one of the most fashionable portrait painters of the Age.

He is perhaps best remembered for painting more than fifty portraits of Nelson’s mistress Emma Hamilton. He first met her as Emma Hart in around 1781. He became pre-occupied by her, painting her over and over aagin, often from memory, and often in heroic or historical guises such as Joan of Arc. He referred to her as his ‘divine Emma’

A provocative little minx, to be sure, but I rather prefer Romney as the master of the ‘Lady in a Flamboyant Hat’ style of painting – to my mind, a fine hat makes for a fine portrait and you cannot get much better than some of these:

George Romney’s portrait of Mrs Musters

Miss Constable

Lady Edward Bentinck (born Elizabeth Cumberland).

Lady Milnes, painted in 1788

He occasionally painted his sitters without a hat, sometimes making do with a tiara as here with his 1770 portrait of Mary White.

But I prefer ‘Mrs Tickell at Ascott’ – this is what I call a hat.

Romney had a somewhat unusual family life – he lived apart from his wife for nearly forty years, maintaining her financially in the Lake District while he was based in London, but returning to her for the last two years of his life
when his health started to fail.He steadfastly refused to have anything at all to do with the Royal Academy, despite being asked to exhibit there on many occasions, possibly because of his aversion to anything at all which was connected to Joshua Reynolds, whom he loathed.

A self-portrait.

Farewell, George Romney, you faithfully recorded the Age in which you lived. Especially the hats. We remember you with fondness on the anniversary of your death tomorrow.

(This post also appears on my other website at http://blog.mikerendell.com)

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                               A Chippendale style chair, circa 1780                          

At the same time he took a wealthy Scottish businessman  called James Rannie into partnership, enabling him to concentrate on his masterpiece  The Gentleman and Cabinet Maker’s Director. It contained 161 engraved plates of “elegant and useful designs of Household Furniture in the Gothic Chinese and Modern Taste.”  It was a sell-out success, as was the second edition in the following year. A third edition, with additional illustrations came out in 1762. The Director is important because it was the first time a publication had appeared listing designs for others to copy, and because of the success the Chippendale name has been synonymous with the rococo style. It does not mean that all the pieces of ‘Chippendale’ were made by him, although it is true that he employed some fifty in-house carpenters and any number of outworkers. His role was as artistic director, dealing with wealthy clients and supervising the workforce. Ideally he preferred to be given a commission to design the furniture for a grand house, from top to bottom, (such as at Harewood House, situated between Leeds and Harrogate) but he also sold ‘off the peg’ items from the London premises to the passing trade.

His partner James Rannie died in 1766 but his share in the business was sold to their accountant Thomas Haig and for a time the business was known as Chippendale Haig & Co. With passing years Thomas the elder Chippendale had less to do with the business – he remarried in 1776 and had two more children, and by then his role had passed to Thomas Chippendale junior. The old boy had moved to Hoxton and died there of tuberculosis on 13 November 1778. He was buried at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London and various memorials have been erected in his memory including a statue in his home town of Otley and another outside the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. 

                                Chippendale ladderback mahogany chair circa 1800. 

                                                         Courtesy of http://www.antique-antiques-uk.com/     

This left the younger Thomas to soldier on until 1803. It must have been a difficult time for Thomas junior because Haig was the senior partner. When Haig died that year there were insufficient funds to pay his legacies and Thomas was forced to liquidate his assets and was declared bankrupt in 1804. He finally quit the St Martin’s Lane premises in 1813 and died in 1822. 

The above is an earlier version of today's post at my main blogsite which is at http://blog.Mikerendell.com

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Tuesday 9th November 1779 - Richard Hall noted "Saw the Lord Mayor's Show by water. Wet in morn'g. was fine at the time of the show, afternoon fair, not cold."

London had a mayor way back in the reign of King John, although there wasn’t a ‘Lord Mayor’ until the fifteenth century. The first mayors were appointed but in recognition of the support given by the good burghers of the City, the monarch granted them the privilege of electing their mayor – but on one condition: once a year the mayor had to present himself at Westminster to pledge allegiance to the Crown. And so it was that the new mayor, with his retinue of supporters from the various Livery Companies, made his way upriver from the City to Westminster. And for nearly 800 years each mayor has done the same, with a few breaks for the odd war or civil insurrection.

Nowadays the Lord Mayor is met by the Lord Chief Justice rather than by the monarch in person, but for centuries it has been a pageant, with much finery on display, with tableaux and floats (indeed the name ‘float’ originated form the elaborate displays which were brought up-river on decorated barges)

Some time in the fifteenth century the Lord Mayor , then a draper called John Norman, decided to make at least part of the journey by boat, and the livery companies vied with each other for grand barges to accompany the procession. It became the ‘done thing’ to view proceedings from the water – hence Richard’s reference to it in his diary. It would have been a grand spectacle, with music, singing and great displays.  No wonder Canaletto, on one of his visits to the City, painted a couple of views of the pageant, viewed from the Thames.

London Westminster Bridge From The North On Lord Mayors Day

Just twenty or so years before Richard’s diary entry a decision was made to use a formal carriage to enable the Lord Mayor to make the journey in style. An earlier mayor had fallen from his horse when being barracked by a woman variously described as a flower seller and a fishwife. Maybe she was both, but it was a serious case of lèse-majesté and a coach was accordingly ordered to be made. It cost over a thousand pounds to be built in 1757 – and each of the aldermen had to cough up some sixty pounds  (nearly £5000 in today’s money). It is a wonderful sight, with its side panels decorated by the Italian painter Cipriani.

In Richard’s day all the apprentices would have been given the day off to follow the procession and to see the tableaux and wonder at the sheer glitter of it all. London was indeed a city of huge wealth, just as much as it was a place of grinding poverty.

Historically the show was held on 29 October each year but when the calendar changed  in 1752 it moved on by the 'missing' 11 days to 9th November. Since 1959 it has been moved to the second Saturday in November, and hence this year will be on 12 November.

A REMINDER : from now on most of my blogs will appear on http://blog.mikerendell.com   (this  present site will simply include a few copies from time to time)

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Yes, there have actually been other things which happened on 5th November besides Mr Guido Fawkes and his failed plot ! This day in 1743 Richard Cosway was born in Tiverton, Devon. He was educated at Blundell’s School before being packed off to London as a twelve-year old. He quickly showed his exceptional talents as an artist, opening his own business as a painter in 1760. Before he was thirty he was sufficiently established to be one of the founder members of the Royal Academy – an extraordinary achievement.

His specialities were portrait miniatures. This is a self-portrait done in 1770.

and this one, from the National Portrait Gallery, shows him in a slightly less dandy-ish pose:

In 1781 Cosway married the Anglo-Italian artist Maria Hadfield. It is far from certain that their marriage was more than a sham – he was twenty years her senior, a notorious libertine, but someone who took a keen interest in her career. He drew her on several occasions, including this lithograph.

The pair led somewhat separate lives, to the extent of travelling abroad with other partners, but when they were in London together their salon in Pall Mall became extremely fashionable. His wife was nick-named ‘the goddess of Pall Mall’. Someone else gave him the epithet of ‘the little monkey.’ Their marriage was eventually annulled.

Cosway was a close friend of the future King George IV and in 1785 was reportedly awarded the title ‘Painter to the Prince of Wales (the only person to receive the title). In his later years Cosway suffered from mental health problems, spending time in various institutions. He died in 1821. Here are a few examples of his works:

Oil painting attributed to Cosway Miniature, ‘unknown gentleman’

(With his miniatures Cosway was unusual in using transparent water colours on ivory, allowing the tone of the ivory to shine through).

He also did pencil sketches, as with this one of Emma Hamilton.

Portrait of Lady Almeria Carpenter, oil on canvas.

And finally his portrait of Mrs Joseph Smith

Happy birthday Richard, may your exquisite work never be forgotten entirely!

N.B.!!! These blogs are now to be found at a new site -  http://blog.mikerendell.com

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Writing in the first week of November 1783 Richard Hall gives a snapshot of what he and his family got up to in their spare time.

On the Tuesday 4th November he "Went with Wife, Daughter (and son Francis who met us later) & Sophy to see Sir Ashton Lever's Collection of Natural Curiosities - and curious they indeed are. Din'd at a Beefstake House. Fine day, mild"

Richard would have been in his element at the museum, also known as the Leverium, and sometimes even as The Holophusicon. Based in Leicester Square the museum opened in 1775 and remained there for over twelve years. Entrance cost half a crown a head and for this visitors could see some 28,000 exhibits (mostly natural history items such as shells, fossils, etc but including various items brought back by Captain James Cook). It is to be hoped that Francis got there in time to share his father's enthusiasm for shells and fossils, and that 'Wife Daughter & Sophy' were not too bored with cabinet after cabinet of exhibits. Good to know that they worked up an appetite and that there was a 'stake house' nearby - a reminder that establishments where hot pies could be bought ('eat in or take-away') are nothing new.

I still have Richard's own collection of fossils and his shells - many of them still meticulously labelled with their Latin names. Richard also kept a little book in which he drew pictures of fossils (here, 'an Ophiomorphite'). Pre-Darwin it was believed that these creatures were in fact long worms, coiled up in death, before being turned to stone. Coming across a dead centipede rolled up in a spiral, I can inderstand the belief.

On the fifth of November there was no mention of Guy Fawkes or bonfires - rather a more serious note of fears over a conflagration which broke out nearby ("Rose early this morning on account of a great fire in Aldersgate Street. Blessed be the Lord who kept me and mine from the like Calamity"). The entry is a reminder that although the Great Fire of London was a century earlier, Richard's home at One London Bridge was only a hundred yards or so from the Monument, marking where the Great Fire started. Fires were a great concern to Richard - his diaries are full of similar reports. No wonder he went out and checked that he had renewed his fire cover with the Bird in Hand Insurance Company, raising the sum assured a short time afterwards...

On the sixth Richard noted that it was fine in the morning and that his son "William returned from his Sussex and Kent journeys, through mercy, in safety".

The entry reflects the fact that the Hall haberdashery business was expanding - rather than simply waiting for clients to come to Town for the season, family members would take it in turns to tour the Home Counties, no doubt armed with swatches and material samples and examples of new fashions, drumming up orders before 'returning to base' to have them made up, ready to be returned at the next visit. Indeed the only reason Richard was up in London was to provide 'cover' at the shop at One London Bridge. He stayed up for the Lord Mayor's Show the week afterwards and then returned to his home in the Cotswolds. It "remained fine, but very cool".

I like Richard's final entry on this page. It looks as though he started to say that he' took tea' before remembering that tea was off the menu, and instead he records that he "drank milk and water with Wife and Daughter at Mrs Reynolds". No explanation is given as to why there was no tea, but my guess is that Richard's digestive system was playing him up and a diet of milk and water was called for. Either that or Mrs Reynolds had committed the faux pas of failing to send the servants out for new supplies of the precious leaves....

(THE ABOVE IS A DUPLICATE OF THE BLOG POSTED AT MY NEW SITE AT http://blog.mikerendell.com  - the new place to go to for witterings, musings and oddments of 18th Century tittle-tattle.)

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