Vanity by Gustave Léonard de Jonghe.

As a writer and art lover, I often find inspiration in the artwork of the general period in which I am writing.  18^th and 19^th century paintings, especially, can evoke a particular thought or feeling that is helpful to me in my creative process.  Perhaps an expression in a portrait triggers an idea for a trait in one of my heroines.  Or perhaps a landscape inspires me to set a scene in a park.  Often, inspiration is triggered by nothing more than a particular color – a red scarf or a pair of blue shoes.

A Playful Moment by Gustave Léonard de Jonghe.

Paintings, in their most basic role, can help us to visualize settings, fashions, the texture of fabrics, and even, if the artist is good enough, the emotional complexity of relationships between the artists’ subjects.  Sometimes, however, there is no naming what it is about a painting that strikes a spark of inspiration in us.  Is it the colors?  The textures?  The shadows and light?

Recently, while researching an article, I came across some extraordinary paintings by 19th century artists Alfred Stevens, Auguste Toulmouche, and Gustave Léonard de Jonghe.  These paintings were so stunning and so filled with luminous fabrics, rich colors, and fashionably elegant ladies surrounded by lush interiors, that I had to share a few of them with you here.  I will be posting an article on each artist eventually, but for today I hope you will enjoy the following selection of Gustave de Jonghe’s work along with a brief, biographical sketch.  Perhaps, if you are a bit like me, you might even glean a bit of inspiration for your writing!

Game Time by Gustave Léonard de Jonghe.

Gustave Léonard de Jonghe was born in the Belgian city of Courtray (Kortrijk) in 1829.  He was the son of renowned modern landscape painter Jan Baptiste de Jonghe and received his first art lessons from his father.  In 1844, he went on to study at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.  There, he was taught by Belgian neo-classical painter François-Joseph Navez.

In 1855, de Jonghe relocated to Paris.  He became a popular painter, his work well-received by both the public and the art critics.  An 1866 article in The Art Journal of London predicted a favorable future for him, stating:

“M. de Jonghe possesses a valuable quality, one which the schools of Antwerp and Brussels have sometimes too much sacrificed to the seductions of effect; we mean the quality of sentiment, without which Art is nothing more than a carcass grandly adorned.”

After a Walk by Gustave Léonard de Jonghe.

Over the next 30 years, de Jonghe’s works were frequently exhibited at the Salon of French Artists.  Though his early paintings tended more toward religious themes, the bulk of his career was devoted to portraits or depictions of families, with luxurious interiors often forming the background setting.  This style was similar to that of Belgian painter Alfred Stevens and, upon Stevens’ death, de Jonghe was considered by many to be his successor.

Afternoon Repose by Gustave Léonard de Jonghe.

Gustave de Jonghe is often referred to as a genre painter.  In Philip Hamerton’s 1895 essay Painting in France after the Decline of Neoclassicism, he describes the style of de Jonghe’s paintings as follows:

“The ‘historical painters,’ as they called themselves, evolved antique life in a great measure out of their own imaginations, but the painters of genre have set it before us with wonderful vividness and truth, so that, although they do not call themselves historical painters, they paint more historically than those who prided themselves upon that title.  Even the pictures of modern life which seem to us, what they really are, mere elegant trifles, will in future ages be trifles of remarkable interest and people will go to Toulmouche and De Jonghe to peep inside a lady’s boudoir of this nineteenth century and see the lady there taking off her glove, or putting it on, or looking at herself in the glass, or ringing the bell, – in short doing one of those unimportant little actions which afford pretexts for pictures.”

À la toilette by Gustave Léonard de Jonghe.

Hamerton describes de Jonghe’s paintings as being “sincere” and “in perfect taste.”  He also praises de Jonghe’s work for its “perfect avoidance of vulgarity.”  This was a huge compliment when it is considered that many other 19^th century artists who portrayed similar scenes, tended to be categorized by critics as bourgeois or vulgar.  As Hamerton writes:

“Very many painters attempt little scenes of this kind, and fall into the bathos of bourgeois sentiment and Philistinism, — the very conditions of intellect and feeling that are most hostile and dangerous to fine art.”

Mother with her Young Daughter by Gustave Léonard de Jonghe.

Gustave Léonard de Jonghe died in Antwerp in 1893.  Those paintings of his that are not now in private collections can be found hanging in some of the finest museums in the world, including The Musée d’Orsay in Paris, The Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, and The Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

The Convalescence by Gustave Léonard de Jonghe.

The Japanese Fan by Gustave Léonard de Jonghe.

Works Referenced or Cited in this Article 

Gustave de Jonghe Biography at Ary Jan Gallery, Paris.

Hamerton, Philip Gilbert.  Painting in France After the Decline of Classicism, An Essay.  Boston: Little Brown Co., 1895.

House, John.  Pierre-Auguste Renoir: La Promenade.  Los Angeles: Getty Museum Studies on Art, 1998.

“Modern Painters of Belgium.”  The Art Journal.  Volume 5.  London: Virtue, 1866.

Young, Marnin.  Realism in the Age of Impressionism: Painting and the Politics of Time.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015.

© 2015 Mimi Matthews

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“Properly trained and looked after, there is no pet which can be so interesting or amusing as a monkey.”  Hardwicke’s Science Gossip, 1889. 

The Monkey Who Had Seen the World by Edwin Henry Landseer, 1827.

Throughout most of the 19^th century, it was not at all uncommon for a family to keep a monkey as a household pet.  Monkeys were playful, mischievous, and adept at mimicry.  In short, they were amusing.  They were also human-like enough to be regarded by some affectionate owners as no more than naughty children.  Indeed, for some, the pet monkey may even have filled the vacant role of child in a childless family.

Green Monkey by George Stubbs, 1798.

A popular story, first seen in magazines of the 1820’s, relates the tale of a first-floor lodger.  Writing about the boarding house in which he is staying, the lodger relates:

“The mistress of the house entertains a pet monkey — failing all issue of her own.”

Those who expected monkeys to behave like domesticated pets or mischievous little children were often unpleasantly surprised to learn that monkeys exhibited the exact same traits as their relatives still living in the wild.  They were prone to aggression and tended to be destructive in the extreme.  In the same letter, the first-floor lodger goes on to write of the strange behavior he had observed one day while watching his landlady’s pet monkey:

“I am most nervous myself about the monkey.  He broke loose the other day.  I saw him escape over the next garden-wall, and drop down by the side of a middle-aged gentleman, who was setting polyanthuses!  The respectable man, as was prudent, took refuge in a summer-house; and then [the monkey] pulled up all the polyanthuses; and then tried to get in at the summer-house window!”

Young Girl Holding a Monkey
by Rosalba Carriera, 1721.

Novelist Georgette Heyer included a pet monkey in her 1950 Regency novel The Grand Sophy.  The title character presents a little monkey in a scarlet coat to her young cousins.  The monkey is named Jacko and he behaves just as one might expect – worrying the servants, destroying the linens, and scattering food about.  At the end of his rampage:

“Jacko suddenly erupted into the hall from the nether regions, gibbered at the sight of Tina, and swarmed up the window curtains to a place of safety well out of anyone’s reach”

One popular story of the early 19^th century, published in numerous British magazines of the day, tells the tale of an unfortunate Raja with a favorite pet monkey:

“This Monkey he sets to watch him, as he sleeps in a pavillion in his garden.  A troublesome bee settles on the Prince’s face, in spite of the Monkey’s pains to drive him off; till the latter, highly incensed, snatches up his master’s sword, and, making a blow at the bee, cuts off the Raja’s head.”

In many 19th century poems and children’s stories, monkeys were fitted out as little human beings and made to mimic human behavior to great comic effect.  A perfect example is an 1834 poem, The Pet Monkey by John Tenhaile.  It tells the tale of a particularly destructive pet monkey named Jack whose ability for mimicry has unfortunate results, especially when he attempts to ape his master in balancing the accounts.  It reads in part:

 

The day arrived, the way was clear,

Our trader was, I know not where.

Jack boldly stepped into the shop,

And on the stool did quickly hop;

And there he sat in clerkly style,

And leant him o’er the desk awhile.

 

His master’s spectacles he found,

And these before his eyes he bound;

Then oped the ledger, took a pen,

And viewed it o’er and o’er again;

Placed it, at first, behind his ear,

But did not choose to leave it there.

 

He dipped it next into the ink,

With many a sly grimace and blink;

Up to the stem he filled the quill,

Whence the ink trickled, like a rill,

Adown the ledger’s milk white page.

 

This did not discompose our sage,

Who gravely now his task began:

Like lightning swift his fingers ran,

And characters, whose shape or size

Had ne’er been seen by human eyes,

Upon the ledger’s length were traced,

Nor likely soon to be effaced.

 

Three Monkeys at Play by Henry Bernard Chalon, 1820.

Much as monkeys were sometimes likened to naughty little children, so too were badly behaved children often compared to monkeys.  In Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, Elinor and Marianne meet Lady Middleton’s high-spirited sons.  The two boys engage in all sorts of “impertinent encroachments,” including untying the ladies’ sashes, pulling their ears, searching their workbags, and stealing their knives and scissors.  Lady Middleton views the conduct of her children with complacency:

“John is in such spirits today!” said she, on his taking Miss Steeles’s pocket-handkerchief, and throwing it out of window—“He is full of monkey tricks.”

The tricks that real monkeys engaged in were not always so harmless.  They were wild animals and despite some of them having been raised by humans, they were still quite unexpectedly aggressive on occasion.  There are various accounts of monkeys biting their owners or attacking the cats, dogs, or birds with whom they shared their home.  As a result, the majority of pet monkeys were kept caged or chained.

The Monkey and the Cat by Abraham Hondius, 1670.

In some settings, the aggression of the monkey was actually encouraged.  Jacco Macacco was a famous fighting monkey during the early 19^th century.  A small monkey, weighing in at only 10 – 12 pounds, he was matched against dogs of similar weight in the fighting pits of Westminster.  Toward the end of his career in the 1820’s, he was forced to fight against dogs who were double his weight.  According to some accounts, it was in such a match that he was ultimately killed.  His death prompted a petition against animal cruelty in the House of Commons.  The May 1822 issue of The Monthly Magazine reports:

“In the House of Commons, Mr. Martin, of Galway, presented a petition from a number of respectable inhabitants of Camberwell, in support of the Bill now pending to prevent cruelty to animals.  The Hon. Member detailed the conduct of the man who keeps a place in Westminster, where Jacco Macacco, a monkey, has exhibited his prowess; ‘this unfortunate animal, (said Mr. M.) after having fought many pitched battles, was pitted against a dog of double its weight; Jacco, fought the dog for half an hour, and the battle terminated by the dog tearing away the whole of the monkey’s lower jaw, and the monkey’s ripping up the dog’s stomach.  Both animals died in a few minutes.’  Even the carcass butchers of Whitechapel, aware of the atrocious cruelties committed, have united in a petition for a Bill to restrain the unfeeling practices of mankind.”

Tom & Jerry sporting their Blunt on the Phenomenon monkey Jacco Macacco at the Westminster Pit
by George and Isaac Robert Cruikshank, 1821.

Though the public was certainly more aware of the cruelties perpetrated against monkeys in fighting pits and other venues, the unsuitability of monkeys as pets was not to be acknowledged anytime soon.  In 1888, Arthur Patterson published his popular book Notes on Pet Monkeys and How to Manage Them.  In their favorable review of the book, the following year, Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine proclaimed that:

“…after reading this little work on pet monkeys, one feels inclined to go and buy one.”

Illustration of a Monkey Cage from ‘Notes on Pet Monkeys and How to Manage Them,’ 1888.

And who of that era would not?  The book is full of “charming descriptions” and “amusing stories,” as well as practical tips on monkey management:

“To intending keepers of pet monkeys, the author’s practical items, how to build a monkey-cage cheaply with all its appendages and utensils, such as the trapeze, pole and barrel, ring and bell, swing, looking-glass, feeding-dish, sleeping-box, will be found highly useful.  So will his chapters on ‘Choice of Monkeys and what Kind to Buy,’ as well as ‘Where to buy them, lists of their prices, their diet and general management.’”

Illustration of Brown Capuchin Monkey from ‘Notes on Pet Monkeys and How to Manage Them,’ 1888.

We do get a little glimpse into the pervasive ignorance of monkey upkeep in the following section which outlines both the limited remedies available for monkey illness and a gruesome alternative for your pet monkey if he should happen to die:

“Pets are liable to fall ill, so there is a chapter on ‘Monkey Ailments and How to Cure them.’  Perhaps they can’t be cured and die: if so, Mr. Patterson gives us instructions how to stuff them.”

And Monkeys did fall ill.  History provides us with myriad examples, most of which tend to include a grain of monkey-esque hilarity in them.  It is yet another window into how monkeys were viewed by the 19^th century public – amusing even in illness and death.  An article in the 1820 issue of the Kilmarnock Mirror reports:

“A short time since an Officer who resides in the town of Athlone, had all his children in the hooping cough; there was a pet monkey in the house who absolutely took the disorder, and hooped so like the children, that it was impossible to discriminate between them.  All the little ones happily recovered, but the monkey notwithstanding the greatest care died of the complaint.”

Last Picture Show by Gabriel von Max, 1840 – 1915.

The overall impression of pet monkeys that one is left with from 19^th century literature and history is a mixed one.  There is undoubtedly humor in the monkey shenanigans that feature in the novels and poetry of the day.  However, behind that humor is the bleakness of a reality in which monkeys and their unique needs and behavior were widely misunderstood.  It would be some time yet before the plight of monkeys improved.  Some would argue that it has not yet done so.  As always, I leave you to be the judge.

Barbershop with Monkeys and Cats by Abraham Teniers, 1633-1667.

Thus concludes another of my Friday features on Animals in Literature and History.  If you are interested in learning more about primates, I would strongly advise you to read any of the fine books by primatologist Jane Goodall.  If you would like to donate money or resources to a primate sanctuary, I urge you to use caution.  Not every sanctuary is legitimate.  One I can personally vouch for, and have donated to myself, is Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest in Washington State.

Chimpanzee Sanctuary Northwest (United States)

Jane Goodall’s Author Page at Amazon.com

*Author’s note: During my research I encountered monkeys named Jack or Jacko more times than I can count.  I consulted author Sarah Waldock at the Renaissance and Regency Rummage Repository.  She kindly provided me with the following information:

The name Jack dates to mid-17th century as a Flemish approximation for the Bantu word for ‘Monkey’.  Jackanapes derives from Jack Napes, a playful name for a pet ape.  Jackanapes was used as a synonym for a pet monkey from 1526; from 1533 it was used in its current form as a coxcomb or upstart.  Jack is also a generic name for a male, animal or human, eg Jack-merlin, Jackdaw, Jack-in-office, Jack Tar, or Jack-a-dandy, which would tend to reinforce the usage.  (Sarah sourced this information from the Oxford Shorter Dictionary on Historical Principles and a quote from the Oxford English Dictionary.)

Works Referenced or Cited in this Article 

“Chronology of the Month.” The Monthly Magazine or British Register. Vol. LIII. Part I. Apr. – May. London: Sir Richard Phillips and Co., 1822.

Heyer, Georgette.  The Grand Sophy.  Chicago: Sourcebooks, 2009.

“Letter from a First-Floor Lodger.” Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine. Vol. XV. Jan. – Jun. London: T. Cadell, 1824.

“Monthly Register” The Kilmarnock Mirror and Literary Gleaner. Vol. II. Kilmarnock: Kilmarnock Press, 1820.

“Notes on New Books.” Hardwicke’s Science Gossip: An Illustrated Medium of Interchange and Gossip for Students and Lovers of Nature. Vol. XXV. Taylor, Dr. J. E., ed. London: Chatto and Windus, 1889.

Patterson, Arthur. Notes on Pet Monkeys and How to Manage Them. London: Upcott Gill, 1888.

Sclater, Philip Lutley, Ph.D. Guide to the Gardens of the Zoological Society of London. London: London Zoo, 1867.

Tenhaile, John. “The Pet Monkey.” Recreations in Rhyme. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longman, 1834.

Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Vol. I. London: Parbury, 1827.

© 2015 Mimi Matthews

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“Votaries and observers of fashion, but not her slaves, we follow her through her versatile path; catch her varied attractions, and present her changes to our readers as they pass before us in gay succession.” La Belle Assemblée, 1812.

Portrait of Elizabeth, Mrs Horsley Palmer, by Thomas Lawrence, early 19th century.

Somehow, I cannot picture Elizabeth Bennet reclining on the drawing room sofa, idly flipping through the pages of the latest issue of La Belle Assemblée or The Lady’s Magazine.  And yet, if she had indulged in a bit of frivolous fashion magazine perusal, what advice might she have read there and what images might she have seen?

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was first published in 1813.  The story itself begins in the year 1811 and concludes at the close of 1812.  In June of 1812, Elizabeth Bennet is home at Longbourn, anxiously awaiting the July arrival of her aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, who are to take her travelling in Derbyshire.  Whenever Mrs. Gardiner visits Longbourn, she delivers to her country relatives “an account of the present fashions” in London.

London Fashionable Walking Dresses, The Lady’s Magazine, 1812.

According to La Belle Assemblée, in June of 1812, winter garments such as the pelisse had given way to the spencer, the mantilla, and the scarf shawl.  Of these, it was the spencer jacket that was most in favor for walking.  The magazine states that:

“The most prevailing colour for spensers [sic] is pink shot with blue, and trimmed round the waist with a white gossamer kind of fringe.”

As for gowns, they were much the same as the previous months.  White was the general color for “both domestic and outdoor costume” and the fabrics consisted of:

“French cambrics or India muslins for half-dress; and coloured muslins, crapes, Opera nets, gossamer satins, and French sarsnets, for evening parties.”

Morning Dress, 1812.

A scarf or a shawl was a must have for dinner and dress parties.  Indeed, La Belle Assemblée declares it “indispensable.”  Such shawls were made of “black or white lace” or “fancifully worked in colors.”  They were worn “falling carelessly from the shoulders.”  An alternate style was the small white lace mantle, which was worn fastened to each shoulder “with a pearl brooch.”  The magazine advises that:

“…this kind of drapery hanging from the back of the shoulders is of peculiar advantage to a short figure, and looks graceful on any one.”

Shoes were an important consideration for any fashion conscious lady and La Belle Assemblée does not overlook them.  Addressing themselves to walking boots, half-boots, Grecian sandals, and Italian slippers, they include the following fashion advice:

“For walking, half-boots of nankeen, pale blue jersey, grey kid, fringed round the top, and laced behind, are much in favour, and for familiar visits, the Grecian sandal of black or very dark silk or satin, laced and bound with a very opposite light colour, has lately been much adopted, while, for full dress, the elegant Italian slipper, either of white satin, fringed with gold or silver; pale blue satin without fringe, and lilac, with white bugle roses, seems to retain an unrivalled pre-eminence.”

London Fashionable Full Dress, The Lady’s Magazine, September 1812.

The June style of bonnet did not require a great deal of alteration from the styles of previous months.  Bonnets were now worn “bent over the forehead” and the flower trimmings were transferred from “beneath to the front, or round the crown of the bonnet.”  The most popular ornament was, of course, a long white ostrich feather.  With so little required to trim out a bonnet in the latest mode, it is no wonder that even someone as silly as Lydia Bennet could easily pull an unsatisfactory bonnet to pieces and “make it up” new again.

Portrait of Henriette de Verninac
by Jacques-Louis David, 1799.
(Possible origin of hair ‘a-la-Henriette of France.’)

Amongst all the information about spencers, gowns, bonnets, and shoes, one might almost forget the importance of a lady’s coiffure.  Never fear!  La Belle Assemblée has words of wisdom on that topic as well, reporting that:

“The dressing and disposing the hair yet maintains its favour and preference in the style adopted by King Charles’s beauties, and seems peculiarly suited to the English countenance.  Flowers in half-dress and ostrich feathers in full dress, are now universally adopted.”

Morning Dress, 1812.

It is doubtful whether the Bennet girls had any fine jewelry to speak of, though various film and television adaptations do show them with simple jeweled crosses round their necks.  La Belle Assemblée does not address these sorts of ornaments, confining their remarks to the following:

“In jewellery, pearls, amethysts, sapphires, aquamarine, and agate, have taken place of gems of more ardent and refulgent appearance; large oval pieces of fine Macoa, or Egyptian pebbles, set at short distances, and relieved by spaces of gold chain, form a costly and elegant article for the neck.”

Those of you who are fond of Mary Bennet will be pleased to know that eyeglass wearers were not forgotten.  The magazine states that:

“Eye-glasses also, set round with pearl, are a very fashionable ornament.”

This broad advice for June of 1812 concludes by listing the favorite colors of the month, which are blue, jonquil, Pomona, and pale willow green.  A very pretty palette for any lady to work with when choosing her fabrics.  But how to put all of this advice together?  What type of gown with what type of bonnet?  And what color shoes?  And where to place your jewelry or your ostrich feather?  The early 19^th century lady need not despair, for within the pages of La Belle Assemblée lie images and detailed descriptions of beautiful ensembles for day or evening.

Evening Dress, La Belle Assemblée, June 1812.

The above color image of an evening dress is described as follows:

“A robe of Imperial blue sarsnet, shot with white, with a demi train, ornamented with fine French lace down each side the front and round the bottom, the trimming surmounted by a white satin ribband; the robe left open a small space down the front, and fastened with clasps of sapphire and pearl or a white satin slip petticoat: short fancy sleeves to correspond with the ornaments of the robe.  Parisian cap made open, formed of rows of fine lace and strings of pearl, the hair dressed a-la-Henriette of France, appearing between, and much separated  on the forehead.  Pearl necklace, and hoop earrings of the same.  Scarf shawl in twisted drapery of fine white lace.  White kid gloves and fan of ivory, ornamented with gold.  Slippers the same colour as the robe, with white rosettes.”

Fashion articles and magazines of the past can tell us a great deal about an era.  Whether you are a reader trying to better picture the setting of one of your favorite novels or you are a writer attempting to accurately describe the trimmings on a pelisse or the flounces on a gown, I encourage you to have a look through The Lady’s Magazine or La Belle Assemblée.  Elizabeth Bennet might never have looked through their pages herself, but the influence of London fashion was felt everywhere – even in the smallest corners of the 19^th century English countryside.  And yes, even at Longbourn.

Works Referenced or Cited in this Article

Austen, Jane.  Pride and Prejudice.  Ed. Donald Gray.  Norton Critical Editions.  3rd ed.  New York: Norton, 2002.

La Belle Assemblée. Vol. 5. London: J. Bell, 1812.

The Lady’s Magazine. 1812. Public domain images from The Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

© 2015 Mimi Matthews

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A Favorite Pug by Henry Bernard Chalon, 1802.

During my research, I have come across many fictional stories about Napoleon Bonaparte’s love of dogs.  One tale, widely circulated around the internet, claims that Napoleon was a lifelong lover of Dachshunds and that, upon his death, his favorites were entombed with him.  A romantic story, to be sure, but false nonetheless.  The truth is, Napoleon was no great lover of Dachshunds.  He had no bond with any particular dog at all.  However, there was one breed which featured prominently in Napoleon’s early married life.  That breed was the Pug.

Joséphine de Beauharnais had a beloved Pug named Fortune.  Fortune is probably best known for having carried messages for his mistress while she was imprisoned during the revolution.  A brave and noble action by any measure, but such nobility was not the sum total of Fortune’s personality.  Fortune was, in fact, a decidedly naughty and temperamental little Pug.  There is no greater evidence of this than Fortune’s behavior on Napoleon and Joséphine’s wedding night.

Napoleon Bonaparte age 23 by Henri Félix Emmanuel Philippoteaux, (1815-1884).

Napoleon and Joséphine were married in March of 1796.  Napoleon was only twenty-seven years old.  It was his first marriage.  Joséphine was a widow and six years his senior.  Upon joining her in bed that evening, Napoleon was surprised to learn that the two newlyweds were not to be alone.  Fortune was long accustomed to sleeping in his mistress’s bed and no exception had been made for her wedding night.  When Napoleon sought to have the dog removed, Joséphine stringently objected, insisting that Fortune remain not just in the bedroom, but in the marital bed.

Fortune was known to be “very suspicious of strangers” and had “a tendency to snap and growl when unfamiliar people approached.”  Apparently, Fortune still considered Napoleon to be a stranger, for as the consummation commenced, the little Pug lunged forward and bit him.  According to author Stanley Coren:

“It was a brief but painful assault, and Fortune sank his teeth into the calf of the naked and otherwise involved general.  The wound was sufficiently large and deep that he would bear its scars for the rest of his life.  This confirmed Napoleon’s low opinion of dogs, especially small companion dogs, and certainly left him with an intense dislike for Fortune.”

Joséphine de Beauharnais by François Gérard, 1800.

Fortune’s bad behavior on Napoleon’s wedding night was neither forgiven nor forgotten.  On one occasion when talking to Antoine-Vincent Arnault, Napoleon pointed at Fortune as the little Pug lay on the sofa and said:

“Do you see that gentleman?  He is my rival.  He was in possession of Madame’s bed when I married her.  I wished to remove him; it was quite useless to think of it.  I was told that I must either sleep elsewhere, or consent to share my bed.  That annoyed me considerably, but I had to make up my mind.  I gave way.  The favourite was less accommodating; I bear proofs on my leg of what I say.”

Napoléon, Joséphine et son carlin Fortuné,
early 19th century print.

Despite his own feelings, Napoleon was well aware of the deep affection that Joséphine had for her Pug.  He mentions Fortune in several of his subsequent love letters to Joséphine, closing one of them with the following sentiment:

“Millions of kisses, some even to Fortune, in spite of his naughtiness.”

Fortune was destined to meet his end in a most unfortunate way.  When the cantankerous little Pug tried to assert his dominance over the cook’s giant Bulldog, the larger dog killed him.  Napoleon was not displeased by this turn of events.  He promptly forbade Joséphine from acquiring another Pug.  However, one of Joséphine’s lovers, unable to bear the sight of her grief, lost no time in presenting her with a Pug puppy.

Sometime later, Napoleon crossed paths with the cook.  The remorseful servant apologized for his Bulldog killing Fortune and assured Napoleon that the larger dog had been sent away.  Napoleon allegedly replied:

“Bring him back.  Perhaps he will rid me of the new dog too!”

Mops by Carl Reichert Junger, 1918.

Thus concludes another Friday feature on Animals in Literature and History.  To learn more about Pugs like Fortune or to adopt a Pug of your own, I encourage you to visit the following sites:

The Pug Dog Club of America (United States)

The Pug Dog Welfare & Rescue Association (United Kingdom)

Works Referenced of Cited in this Article

American Kennel Club. The Complete Dog Book. New York: Ballantine, 2006.

Coren, Stanley, and Andy Bartlett. The Pawprints of History: Dogs and the Course of Human Events. New York: Free, 2002.

Levy, Arthur. The Private Life of Napoleon. Vol. I. New York: Scribner and Sons, 1894.

Rice, Dan. Pugs. Hauppauge, NY: Barron’s Educational Series, 2009.

© 2015 Mimi Matthews

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The Love Letter by Auguste Toulmouche, 1863.

Fashionable 19th century Parisian painter Auguste Toulmouche is best known for his depictions of richly clad women set against the backdrop of luxurious interiors.  His paintings have been called “elegant trifles” and the ladies who feature in them have been referred to as “Toulmouche’s delicious dolls.”  One critic even compared the interiors of a Toulmouche painting to daintily decorated jewel boxes.  Unsurprisingly, the 19^th century public had a great appetite for these visual treats.  Toulmouche’s paintings were popular, both with the upper and middle classes, and even with post-Civil War Americans.

Le Robe Bleu by Auguste Toulmouche, 1870.

Auguste Toulmouche was born in France, in the city of Nantes, on September 21, 1829.  He studied design with a local sculptor and painting with a local portraitist.  In 1846, he moved to Paris.  There he entered the studio of Swiss artist Charles Gleyre and, by 1848, was ready to make his Salon debut.  He was only nineteen years old.

In the Library
by August Toulmouche, 1872.

Toulmouche’s work was generally well-received, both by critics and the public.  He won a third class medal in 1852 and a second class medal in 1861.  In 1870, he was awarded the Legion of Honour.

In 1862, Toulmouche married a cousin of Claude Monet.  This alliance led to his being asked to mentor the young Monet.  Toulmouche advised Monet to join the art studio run by his own teacher, Charles Gleyre.  It was there that Claude Monet would meet other up and coming Impressionists such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Frédéric Bazille.  Some critics note the influence of Impressionism on Toulmouche’s own later work.

In describing the paintings of Auguste Toulmouche, art aficionados of the day inevitably focused on the beautiful female subjects.  Describing them, a critic in the 1874 issue of The Repository writes:

“Only a sweet doing-nothing engages this fair creature, and she lives to wear her beautiful dresses, and be painted by such artists as Toulmouche, Stevens, De Jonghe, and others of the same school.  These pictures are only to be studied in a certain way.  Examine each fold of the dress, and each figure of the lace pattern.  Admire the cabinetmaker’s skill in working out such charming designs, and the decorator’s in painting the walls.  Mark the exquisiteness of taste that gives one the very richest upholstery, and costumes of satin and velvet, instead of dull, plebian surroundings.  Become absorbed in the consummate execution of details, but do not look for expression, for the rendering of soul-beauty, for that is not truly Parisian in art.”

Dolce far Niente by August Toulmouche, 1876.

Coupled with the sumptuous gowns and rich interiors, the seemingly idle natures of the fashionable women in the paintings opened them up for harsh criticism from those who felt the depictions to be symbolic of a deeper societal ill.  In Philip Hamerton’s 1895 essay Painting in France after the Decline of Neoclassicism, he writes:

“The women in these pictures have no brains: they are sometimes pretty; they always have expensive tastes; but you never see them doing anything better than lounging, or looking in the glass, or receiving visits from other women as idle and expensive as themselves.  It is precisely the women of this kind, whether they live in marriage or in concubinage, who have given that lamentable direction to the public opinion of their own class by which it has come to be held a disgrace to them to do anything of any use.  They will not work with their hands; they are too ignorant and incapable for mental labor, and therefore, in the majority of cases, there is some male slave at work for them, who for his reward may see this luxury (which irritates him), and enjoy such conversation as may be carried on with a lady who neither reads nor thinks, nor has ever even acquired that homely wisdom which our equally illiterate grandmothers gathered in the kitchen and the farm.”

Young Woman in An Interior by Auguste Toulmouche, 1870.

The criticism of the women depicted had little impact on the popularity of the paintings themselves.  In 1888, the Detroit Art Loan Record reported that “among all the versatile and genial painters in France” none were more sought after and admired by American society that those of Auguste Toulmouche.  The same article goes on to declare that:

“Women of the world are fortunate to have found in three representatives of Parisian art men qualified to interpret them with unparalleled success.  [Alexandre] Cabanel enjoys the title of painter-in-chief to women, and Alfred Stevens and Auguste Toulmouche share a similar distinction.”

The Reluctant Bride by Auguste Toulmouche, 1865.

Auguste Toulmouche died in Paris on October 16, 1890.  Those paintings of his that are not now in private collections can be found hanging in some of the finest museums in the world.

*If you would like to see paintings in a similar style, my Art and Inspiration article on 19^th century painter Gustave Léonard de Jonghe is HERE.

Works Referenced or Cited

Brodskaya, Nathalia. Impressionism. New York: Parkstone International, 2014.

The Detroit Art Loan Record. One Volume. Sept. – Nov. Detroit: H.A. & K.B.Ford, 1883

Hamerton, Philip Gilbert.  Painting in France After the Decline of Classicism, An Essay.  Boston: Little Brown Co., 1895.

Radcliffe, Alida Graveraet. Schools and Masters of Painting. New York: D. Appleton, 1912.

The Repository. Vol. 51-52. Boston: Universalist Publishing House, 1874.

© 2015 Mimi Matthews

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Portrait of Olimpia Losiowa, 1818-1820.

From the Regency era to the end of the 1860s, there was no fashion accessory as versatile and ubiquitous as the shawl.  Available in all weights of fabrics, including silk, lace, muslin, and cashmere wool, and priced for all budgets, shawls graced the shoulders of women in every strata of society.  They were no less well-represented in art and literature of the day.  Shawls were referenced in the novels of such literary luminaries as Elizabeth Gaskell and William Makepeace Thackeray.  They were also featured in countless portrait paintings, draping the figures of fashionable 19^th century ladies of every age.

Portrait of an Unknown Woman
by Alexander Molinari, 1800.

The lightweight Empire-style gowns of the Regency era provided little protection against the elements.  As a result, shawls and wraps were a practical necessity.  In Jane Austen’s novel Emma (1815), Miss Bates insists that her mother wear a shawl when she goes visiting.  Miss Bates and her mother are not wealthy by any means.  For them, the shawl as an accessory is purely utilitarian.  As Miss Bates explains to her guests:

“I made her take her shawl—for the evenings are not warm—her large new shawl— Mrs. Dixon’s wedding-present.—So kind of her to think of my mother!  Bought at Weymouth, you know—Mr. Dixon’s choice.  There were three others, Jane says, which they hesitated about some time.”

For those ladies of means, a shawl could be as fashionable as it was eminently practical.  The 1806 edition of La Belle Assemblée describes the current fashion in shawls as follows:

“Large shawls of silk or mohair were also much worn, and in various shapes; some in the form of a flowing mantle, appending from the shoulders, with a hood; others à la Turque; others again square.  But the most elegantly simple style of either the shawl or Egyptian mantle that arrested the fancy, were those of plain or japanned white muslin, with a large Egyptian border of deep green, in tambour or embroidery.”

A Variety of ways of Wearing Shawls in early 19th century France, Lithograph, 1802-1814.

The fashion in shawls changed little over the years.  A plain background with a variegated border was still the ideal.  The 1812 issue of La Belle Assemblée reports that for winter dress fashions:

“…a fine cashemire [sp] shawl, with brown background, and richly variegated border, is generally thrown over the dress, in which is united both comfort and elegance.”

And for the spring dress fashions:

“…over these is thrown, in elegant drapery, a long Indian shawl of the scarf kind, the colour of the palest Ceylon ruby, the ends enriched by a variegated border…”

Portrait of a Young Lady in a Red Dress with a Paisley Shawl by Eduard Friedrich Leybold, 1824.

Throughout much of the 19^th century, cashmere (or Kashmir) shawls were at the forefront of elegant fashion in scarves and wraps.  Made from the wool of the sheep in the Kashmir region of India, they were as luxuriously soft as they were warm.  In William Thackeray’s novel Vanity Fair (1848), Amelia Sedley’s brother Joseph brings her back two white cashmere shawls from India.  These shawls are much coveted by Becky Sharp.  Thackeray writes:

“When Rebecca saw the two magnificent Cashmere shawls which Joseph Sedley had brought home to his sister, she said, with perfect truth, ‘that it must be delightful to have a brother,’ and easily got the pity of the tender-hearted Amelia for being alone in the world, an orphan without friends or kindred.”

Portrait of Carolina Frederica Kerst by Charles Van Beveren, 1830.

As the century progressed, ladies fashions evolved.  Skirts grew bigger and so did sleeves.  Waistlines lowered and instead of a single petticoat, a lady now wore several.  One might expect shawls and wraps to have become less popular.  Women were surely warmer now in all their layers.  However, as a fashion accessory the shawl continued to be as vitally important to a woman’s dress as it ever had – and those shawls and wraps from India still reigned supreme.

A lady in a white dress and shawl before a Viennese landscape by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, mid-19th century.

In Margaret Gaskell’s novel North and South (1855), Margaret Hale is asked to model her aunt’s collection of “beautiful Indian shawls.”  Gaskell writes:

“[Margaret] touched the shawls gently as they hung around her, and took a pleasure in their soft feel and their brilliant colours, and rather liked to be dressed in such splendour— enjoying it much as a child would do, with a quiet pleased smile on her lips.”

The shawls in North and South had been given to Margaret’s aunt upon her marriage and were now being given to Margaret’s cousin, Edith, upon hers.  A generation had not diminished their value.  As one guest says whilst admiring them:

“Helen had set her heart upon an Indian shawl, but really when I found what an extravagant price was asked, I was obliged to refuse her.  She will be quite envious when she hears of Edith having Indian shawls.  What kind are they?  Delhi? with the lovely little borders?”

Portrait of Elizabeth Wethered Barringer by Federica de Madrazo, 1852.

Shawls and wraps are well represented in all the works of Charles Dickens, from the “pinched bonnet and poor little shawl” of Miss Flyte in Bleak House (1852) to the grand aspirations of Herbert Pocket in Great Expectations (1860).  In the latter novel, Pip relates a conversation with Herbert which gives us some insight into the continuing popularity of the Indian shawl:

“‘I think I shall trade,’ said [Herbert], leaning back in his chair, ‘to the East Indies, for silks, shawls, spices, dyes, drugs, and precious woods.  It’s an interesting trade.’

‘And the profits are large?’ said I.

‘Tremendous!’ said he.

I wavered again, and began to think here were greater expectations than my own.”

Portrait of Fanny Holman Hunt by William Holman Hunt, 1866-1867.

By the 1870s, the popularity of the cashmere shawl was in decline.  This had less to do with the dictates of fashion and more with global politics and famine.  As Sir Walter Roper Lawrence writes in his book The Valley of Kashmir (1895):

“The shawl industry is now unfortunately a tradition – a memory of the past.  The trade received its deathblow when war broke out between Germany and France in 1870, and I have been told by an eye-witness of the intense excitement and interest with which the Kashmiri shawl-weavers watched the fate of France in that great struggle – bursting into tears and loud lamentations when the news of Germany’s victories reached them.”

He goes on to write that any hope of the shawl weaving industry being revived was dashed when famine visited the Valley of Kashmir in 1877-1879.  According to Lawrence, none suffered so greatly during that famine than the poor shawl-weavers.

This did not mean that shawls and wraps as a whole were unpopular.  Whether made of gauze, silk, or lace, a well-draped shawl was still an integral part of women’s fashions well into the 20^th century.  Even today, shawls and wraps have their place in the wardrobe of any well-dressed lady.  And as you can see from the portraits I have included, precious little about the patterns and draping of shawls has changed since the early Regency.

The Shawl by Charles Sprague Pearce, 1900.

In closing, I will add that for an author of historical romance a shawl can be a wonderful prop.  How many times has a critical conversation been overheard by a young lady who has returned to a room to retrieve the shawl she had left behind?  And how many times has a gentleman been sent out to the carriage or back into the house to fetch his lady’s forgotten wrap?  There are impoverished characters who disguise an old gown with a decorative shawl and wanton characters who greet their lover wearing a shawl and nothing else.  Classic literature provides us with countless examples of how to utilize a shawl as a prop or plot device and historical romance novels provide us with many more.  The only limit is your imagination.

Works Referenced or Cited

Austen, Jane.  Emma.  Ed. George Justice.  Norton Critical Editions. 4th ed. New York: Norton, 2011.

Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1977.

Dickens, Charles. Great Expectations. London: Penguin Classics, 2002.

Gaskell, Elizabeth.  North and South.  1855.  Project Gutenberg.  Web.

La Belle Assemblée. Vol. 1. London: J. Bell, 1806.

La Belle Assemblée. Vol. 5. London: J. Bell, 1812.

Lawrence, Sir Walter Roper. The Valley of Kashmir. London: Asian Educational Services, 1895.

Thackeray, William Makepeace.  Vanity Fair.  Ed. Peter Shillingsburg.  Norton Critical Editions. 1^st ed. New York: Norton, 1994.

© 2015 Mimi Matthews

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The Crystal Palace, London, 1910.

In 1871, at the instigation of cat fancier Harrison Weir, the first ever cat show was held in England.  The concept was a novel one.  At the time, there were no breed registries for cats and no precise standards on which to judge them.  However, Weir was nothing if not persuasive.  Within days of having first broached the subject with the manager of the Crystal Palace in Sydenham, London, Weir presented his full scheme, including the schedule of prizes, price of entry, number of classes, and even the points by which the cats would be judged.

The cats were to be divided into different varieties of color, form, size and sex.  Coat patterns such as tabby and tortoiseshell would also be represented.  All that remained was to find the cats to participate in the show.  With no breeders to approach and a lack of people willing to part with their pet cats for any length of time, Weir and the representatives of the Crystal Palace “went forth into the highways and byways on the lookout for presentable animals.”

Despite their efforts, the quota of cats necessary for the cat show had still not been met.  In an article in the 1891 issue of Pearson’s Magazine, writer G. B. Burgin relates how this shortage was resolved.  He writes:

“Then someone discovered that the Palace cellars were full of cats and kittens and mice, so a few workmen were set to work cat-hunting there.  The workmen also brought their own cats to the show.”

The domestic cats on display were supplemented by examples of cats both rare and exotic.  There was a Manx from the Isle of Man, a Persian cat “direct from Persia,” and an enormous English cat weighing in at 21 pounds who was, according to the 1871 issue of Harper’s Weekly, “the biggest in the show.”  Of particular note, the first two Siamese cats ever seen in the country were also on exhibit.  Harper’s describes them as:

“…soft, fawn-colored creatures, with jet-black legs – an unnatural, nightmare kind of cat, singular and elegant in their smooth skins, and ears tipped with black, and blue eyes with red pupils.”

Sketches made at the Crystal Palace Cat Show, Harper’s Weekly, 1871.
(According to Harper’s, the images represent two Siamese cats, a French-African cat, a Persian cat “direct from Persia”, an “enormous English cat,” and a Manx cat from the Isle of Man.)

Perhaps the most exciting addition to the cat show was a British wildcat exhibited by the Duke of Sutherland.  According to Harper’s Weekly, this variety of wildcat was almost extinct in the British Islands.  And the duke’s cat was truly wild.  Harper’s states:

“He behaved like a mad devil, and ten men could not get him into a wire cage out of the box in which he was sent.”

The 1871 issue of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine reports that there were 211 cats on exhibition at the cat show at the Crystal Palace – many of them “torn from their domestic hearths.”  Harper’s Weekly reports a lower number, stating that there were 160 specimens of cat at the cat show.  Regardless of the precise number, the event required that those 150+ cats remain in their cages and on public display.  Writing for Lippincott’s, Prentice Mulford relates:

“They were separately confined in two rows of tin cages wired in front.  We who came to gaze, being marshaled in line under the surveillance of a policeman, were made to march slowly up in front of one row of cats and down the other, the cages being placed back to back.  If any lingered by some more attractive cat, the man in authority cried out, as in the streets of London, ‘Move on!’”

Engraving of Harrison Weir, 1889.

Harrison Weir believed the cats to be perfectly content.  Describing the scene that met his eyes upon arriving at the Crystal Palace the morning of the cat show, he states:

“Instead of the noise and struggles to escape, there lay the cats in their different pens, reclining on crimson cushions, making no sound save now and then a homely purring, as from time to time they lapped the nice new milk provided for them.”

Other reports did not paint such a pretty picture.  It was the month of July and the summer heat had made the cats depressed and dull.  Many of them were sleeping with their backs turned to the public.  Those people who had come all the way to view the cats were not amused.  Determined to rouse the unresponsive felines, they poked them with their fingers, canes, and even their parasol points.  One magazine reports:

“…they kept stirring them up with their fingers and parasol-points till some people cried ‘Shame!’  On the whole, though, we agreed that the cats liked it; it prevented them feeling so dull.”

In addition to complaints about the cats being dull, there were complaints about the ordinary appearance of some of the cats.  The following paragraph is a particularly vitriolic report from Prentice Mulford of Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine.  Reading between the lines, one can’t help but think that his ire is directed as much at the working-class humans who attended the cat show as at their similarly plebeian cats.  He writes:

“Some were very shabby-looking cats, apparently more familiar with the cellars than the parlors of London.  They belonged to the lower feline orders.  They seemed of that class often to be seen in cities sleeping by day in the charred apartments of partly-burned buildings, fur rough and slovenly, eyes sore and watery, holding themselves in low estimate, lacking dignity and self-respect — rowdy cats, having neither home nor mistress, uncared for and un-petted in kittenhood, bred in vicious and vagrant youth, perishing miserably in old age, stoned and clubbed to death by boys on the same plane of disreputability; their corpses denied burial, being flung into the street or the filthy lakelets common to the outskirts of all large cities, where they float about for a time ghastly and gaseous lumps of bloated hideousness.”

The poor and working-class owners of these “shabby-looking cats” had no doubt been persuaded to enter their pets in the cat show in hopes of winning some of the more than £70 in prizes offered by the directors of the Crystal Palace.  The prizes were chiefly in money.  However, some ladies had offered special prizes “to encourage the poor to be kind” to their cats and to “feed them well.”  These prizes included such random odds and ends as a teakettle, a teapot, a mug, and a framed photograph of a cat.

Detail from a newspaper report on the award-winning cats at the First Cat Show at the Crystal Palace, 1871.

At the close of the cat show, Harper’s Weekly pronounced the event a “complete success.”  They predicted that it would soon be imitated, spawning cat shows throughout the country.  They were not wrong.  The cat show at the Crystal Palace would become an annual event with attendance and participation growing with each subsequent year.  Cat shows in other venues followed.  The shows did much to improve the public perception of cats.  Unfortunately, though many of the public saw much to admire in a fancy Persian or a sleek Siamese, the prejudice against the domestic cat was still quite strong.

Nevertheless, the very novelty of the first cat show caught the public’s imagination.  It caught the imagination of writers as well and many incorporated anecdotes about the cat show into their stories.  In the 1875 book Mrs. Brown at the Crystal Palace by Arthur Sketchly, one character relates his experience at the cat show, stating:

“And certingly, I never did see finer speciments as what the party as was showin’ ‘em called ‘the feelin’ specious.’”

The 1877 book Only a Cat by Mrs. Henry H. B. Paull is narrated by the cat himself.  In it, he relates the effect the cat show has had on his species:

“Only a cat!  Quite true, and yet I am about to try and interest you with the history of my long life.  I have more confidence in the attempt because I have heard great talk lately of the improved estimation in which our race is held by society in general.

“Instead of being treated with contempt, dislike, or even cruelty, as in days now happily gone by, there is a talk of our being exhibited in shows at the Crystal Palace, and those of us who are well fed and kindly treated, are standing proofs that we are not the spiteful, treacherous creatures our enemies so falsely represent.”

In 1887, Harrison Weir founded The National Cat Club.  It was the first cat registry of its kind in the world.  In the following years, many more cat registries would spring up, including the Cat Fancier’s Association (CFA) in the United States.  Today, cat shows are filled with pedigreed cats of every description – from Persians and Siamese to British Shorthairs and Maine Coons.  It is a very different scene from that at the Crystal Palace nearly 130 years ago.  And yet, without that first cat show, with its motley collection of workmen’s cats and cats found in the basement, who knows what the world of purebred cats would look like today.

Ring Class at the Richmond Cat Show from The Book of the Cat by Frances Simpson, 1903.

Thus concludes another Friday feature on Animals in Literature and History.  To learn more about purebred cat registries in The United Kingdom and The United States, I encourage you to visit the following sites:

The Governing Council of the Cat Fancy (United Kingdom)

Cat Fanciers’ Association (United States)

If you are interested in adopting a cat or if you would like to donate your time or money to a rescue organization, I urge you to contact your local animal rescue foundation or city animal shelter.  The below links may also be useful as resources:

The Cats Protection League (United Kingdom)

Alley Cat Rescue, Inc. (United States)

 Works Referenced or Cited in this Article

“About Cats.” London Society: An Illustrated Magazine. Vol. 21. London: William Clowes & Son, 1872.

“At the Cat Show.” Chatterbox. London: W. W. Gardner, 1872.

Burgin, G. B. “Show Cats.” Pearson’s Magazine. Vol. 5. Jan. – Jun. 1898. London: C. Arthur Pearson Ltd., 1898.

“The Crystal Palace Dog Show.” Baily’s Magazine of Sports and Pastimes. Vol. 22. London: A. H. Bailey & Co., 1872.

“The London Cat Show.” Harper’s Weekly. Vol. 15. Jul. 1, 1871. New York: Living History Incorporated, 1871.

Mulford, Prentice. “Character at a Cat Show.” Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine. Vol. 10. London: J. B. Lippincott, 1872.

Paull, Mrs. Henry H. B. Only a Cat; or The Autobiography of Tom Blackman. London: George Routledge & Sons, 1877.

Sketchley, Arthur. Mrs. Brown at the Crystal Palace. London: George Rutledge & Sons, 1875.

Weir, Harrison William. Our Cats and All About Them. Cambridge: The Riverside Press, 1889. 

© 2015 Mimi Matthews

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A Distraction from Chores by Auguste Serrure, 1903.

The townhouses and country estates that house the heroes and heroines of Georgette Heyer’s novels are not staffed by servants who fade discreetly into the background.  Instead, we encounter all manner of outrageous characters.  There are fighting valets, kleptomaniacal tigers, and nurses who preach fire and brimstone.  In real life, any one of these domestics would be let go without a reference.  In a Heyer novel, however, their hilarious hijinks are endlessly entertaining – and utterly unforgettable.

In Friday’s Child, we meet Lord Sheringham’s tiger, Jason.  Jason first comes to Sherry’s notice when he picks his pocket outside of a jeweler’s shop.  Though an inexpert thief, Jason quickly reveals himself as “an inspired handler of horses.”  From then on, he is in Sherry’s employ – continuing to steal when the mania hits him, but only too willing to return his ill-gotten gains as soon as his lordship demands it of him.

“Well, how was I to know you didn’t want him forked?” asked Jason.  “You never said nothing to me about it, guv’nor, nor I didn’t think he was a friend o’ yourn!”

In Venetia, Heyer introduces us to the character of Mrs. Priddy, otherwise known as “nurse.”  Nurse is an old retainer of the Lanyon family, forever giving “dark warnings” to her young mistress about the dangers of associating with the wicked Lord Damerel.  As Venetia informs Damerel:

“I never heard her say, even of the laundry maid, that she would be eaten by frogs!” 

He gave a shout of laughter.  “Good God, does that fate await me?”

Encouraged by the discovery that he shared her enjoyment of the absurd she laughed back at him, saying, “Yes, and also that your increase will be delivered to the caterpillar.”

The Cherry Girl by Joseph Caraud, 1875.

In The Unknown Ajax, we meet the characters of Mr. Crimplesham and Mr. Polyphant, two rival valets that Hugo Darracott first encounters in his bedchamber “confronting one another in a manner strongly suggestive of tomcats about to join battle.”  However:

“Before he had advanced one step into the room, all trace of human passion had vanished, and he was confronted by two very correct gentlemen’s gentlemen who received him with calm and dignity.”

In The Foundling, we cross paths with Nettlebed, the elderly valet of Gilly, the Duke of Sale.  Nettlebed alternately nags, badgers, and mollycoddle’s Gilly and, when the young duke “slips his leash” at last, Nettlebed goes off in pursuit of him.  As Heyer explains:

“[He] considered himself privileged to speak his mind to his master whenever he was out of earshot of other, less important, members of the household, before whom he invariably maintained the Duke’s dignity in a manner that daunted the Duke far more than the affectionate bullying he employed in private.”

Finally, we have Henry, Lord Worth’s diminutive, cockney tiger in Regency Buck.  Henry is “a sharp-faced scrap of uncertain age” who, before coming to Lord Worth, had been a chimney-sweep’s boy.  Early in the novel when Peregrine Taverner and Lord Worth exchange words after a carriage accident, Henry leaps to his master’s defense, shouting:

“You shut your bone-box, imperence!  He’s the very best whip in the country, ah, and I ain’t forgetting Sir John Lade neither!  There ain’t none to beat him, and them’s blood-chestnuts we’ve got in hand, and if them wheelers ain’t sprained a tendon apiece it ain’t nowise your fault!”

The Ironing Maid
by Thomas Harrington Wilson, 19th century.

Cast your vote for Georgette Heyer’s Most Unforgettable Servant.  There are no limits on how many times you can vote and, as always, if you have a preference for another Georgette Heyer servant, I encourage you to write in your choice below.

The Poll is Now Closed.

The Results:

 1st Place: Nurse from Venetia with 31%.

2nd Place: Jason from Friday’s Child with 26%.

3rd Place: Crimplesham & Polyphant from The Unknown Ajax with 22%.

4th Place: Henry from Regency Buck with 9%.

5th Place: Nettlebed from The Foundling with 5%.

Honorable Mentions: Jem from Arabella; Sarah Nidd from Cousin Kate; and Marston from Venetia with 2 votes each by write-in. Keighly from Sylvester and Miss Muker from Sylvester with 1 vote each by write-in.

 Thank you for voting!

Only 4 Georgette Heyer Polls left!

Next month’s will be posted on September 2.

© 2015 Mimi Matthews

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Reception at Malmaison in 1802 by Francois Flameng, 1896.

In the early 19^th century, the beautiful Château de Malmaison in Paris was the home of Napoléon Bonaparte and his wife, Joséphine.  It was also home to a veritable menagerie of rare and exotic animals, all of which roamed free in the gardens.  Some of these animals had come to Malmaison as diplomatic gifts.  Others were the result of a natural history expedition to Australia during which French zoologists and botanists gathered native flora and fauna to bring back to France.

Amongst the native Australian creatures transported on the return voyage to France in 1803 were two black swans.  Unlike many of the animals who perished during the journey, the black swans acclimated themselves with relative ease, both on the ship and, later, in the gardens of Malmaison.  There, they sailed with majestic splendor in the central lake and “marched proudly” along the bank.  According to one contemporary observer:

“This species is far more beautiful than the white swan, has a red beak, and is deep black everywhere, except for its white wingtips…Its voice is also much nicer than the squawking call of the white swan.”

Early Painting of a Black Swan
by Port Jackson Painter, 1792.

At Malmaison, the black swan reproduced for the first time in captivity.  Swans mate for life and show exceptional care toward their young (called cygnets), fiercely protecting them from predators.  At night, the cygnets sleep under the mother’s wing and, during the day, if they have grown tired or cold, they often ride on the mother’s back as she sails through the water.  The father keeps a constant guard, both before and after the hatchlings emerge from the nest, ever watchful lest some harm come to his family.

Swans in general are extraordinarily long lived, with some accounts documenting a lifespan as long as 32 years.  Black swans are no different.  Those at the Château de Malmaison outlived the Empress Joséphine.  At the time of her death in 1814, there were seven black swans still remaining in the garden.  Some of these went to the Museum of Natural History.  Some went to Prince Eugène at Munich.  Eventually, only one pair of black swans was left.  It is not entirely clear from historical records, but it appears that this remaining couple was the original pair that had come from Australia in 1803.

Sometime later, the female of the pair died.

In an attempt to console the grieving widower, “the most beautiful white swan that could be found” was brought to Malmaison and put into the canal.  The widower’s subsequent reaction to this replacement mate has been recorded in countless newspapers and magazines of the 1820s and 1830s.  The following is the account given in an 1833 issue of The Magazine of Natural History and Journal of Zoology.  It reads:

“On the canal sailed, in sullen isolated pride, the majestic black swan, the “rara avis” of Juvenal.  He had lost his mate; his offspring had been transported to Munich.  It had been attempted to console him, by presenting him with the most beautiful white female swan that could be procured, but he would not be comforted: her embraces revolted his pride, he considered it would be a mésalliance to consort with a being on whom nature had not lavished the beauty of sable plumes.  The gardener informed me that he would not suffer her even to approach him, or come into his sight; and, in fact, we found her on the turn of the canal, at the distance of two hundred yards from the mate who despised her snowy charms.”

Black and White Swans in the Park, Tête d’Or, Lyons, France, (Library of Congress lithograph, 1890-1905).

The passage of time did not soften the widower black swan’s heart.  The writer of the piece for the Magazine of Natural History, returned to Malmaison some years later and, as he relates:

“I visited Malmaison sometime afterward, and found the sable monarch still a widower, faithful to his first love, and still refusing the consolation of beauty, because her colour varied from his own.  What a lesson for man!”

Several other magazines reported the same turn of events, with one writing:

“Neither time nor the snow-white charms of his new companion have had the least effect on the pride of the sable monarch; he turns from her with disgust, will not suffer her to approach him, and prefers living in perpetual widowhood to forming a mésalliance.”

The Black Swan by John Gould, 1840-1848.

Inevitably there were those publications that sought to turn the black swan’s loyalty to his original mate into a sort of morality lesson.  As one columnist concludes:

“Though they have now inhabited the same piece of water for years, he still preserves his sullen dignity, and never suffers the white swan to approach him; giving thus a valuable lesson to man, that it is possible to live in a perverted state of society without suffering our principles to be contaminated.”

Beneath the romantic and moral embellishments of 19^th century writers is simple biology.  Swans mate for life because a bonded pair has greater success at raising their hatchlings, finding food, and defending themselves from enemies.  However, according to The Audubon Society, upon the death of a partner, the remaining swan usually finds a new mate in as little as 3 weeks for females and one year for males.  This makes the behavior of the widower black swan at Malmaison entirely uncommon.  Was he truly mourning his lost love?  Or was he unwilling to accept the white swan or to seek out another mate for some other unknown reason?  Like much in history, we can only guess at the answer.

The Château de Malmaison (image by Frank Schulenburg CC BY-SA 3.0).

Today, the Château de Malmaison is open to the public for sightseeing and even available for weddings.  On a tour of the house, one might view such luxurious swan-themed furnishing as swan chairs, swan carpets, and the golden swan, tent bed in which Josephine died.  As for black swans themselves, they are no longer the rarity that they were in the early 1800s.  They can now be seen in zoological gardens all over the world and in the wild not only in Australia, but in small populations in the United States and England as well.  I have no doubt that many of these beautiful creatures are the distant relatives of those first two swans brought to Malmaison so many years ago.  Descendants of the widower black swan and his long lamented spouse.

Thus concludes another Friday feature on Animals in Literature and History.  To learn more about black swans, I encourage you to visit Birdlife Australia.

Works Referenced or Cited in this Article

Belozerskaya, Marina.  The Medici Giraffe: And Other Tales of Exotic Animals and Power.  New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006.

Berger, Michelle. Till Death Do Us Part: Birds that Mate for Life. The Audubon Society Website. Feb. 2012.

“The Black Swan.” The Portfolio.   Vol. IV. London: William Charlton Wright, 1825.

Byerley, J. “The Pride of Colour in Swans.” The Magazine of Naturel History and Journal of Zoology Botany. Vol. VI. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman, 1833.

Cruikshank, Robert. “The Black Swan.” Spirit of the Age Newspaper. London: A. Durham, 1829.

“The Gardens of Malmaison.” The Minerva, Or: Literary, Entertaining, and Scientific Journal. Vol. 1. New York: J. Seymour Press, 1824.

Giblett, Rob. Black Swan Lake: Life of a Wetland. Bristol: Intellect, 2013.

© 2015 Mimi Matthews

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A Toy Spaniel, A Pomeranian, and A Maltese Terrier at a Basket by Johann Friedrich Wilhelm Wegener, 1855.

In the present day, it is not at all uncommon to make provisions for your pets when writing out your will.  This is not a modern conceit.  In the 18^th and 19^th century, there were many who provided for their beloved animal companions in just such a fashion.

Renowned beauty Frances Teresa Stuart, Duchess of Richmond, spent the final years of her life in seclusion with only her cats for company.  When she died in 1702, her will stated that those cats still living were to be divided amongst several female friends, each with legacies for their support.  This posthumous generosity to her feline companions is generally understood to be the inspiration for Alexander Pope’s famous lines:

Frances Teresa Stuart, Duchess of Richmond, by Sir Peter Lely, 1662-65.

“But thousands die, without or this or that,

Die and endow a college or a cat.”

Eighteenth century British statesman Philip Stanhope, 4^th Earl of Chesterfield, was also a cat lover.  When he died in 1773, he left life pensions to his cats and their offspring.  Today, even those who are ignorant of the details of his political career, are familiar with his quote:

“A novel must be exceptionally good to live as long as the average cat.”

John Scott, Earl of Eldon, was Lord Chancellor of Great Britain from 1801 – 1806.  When Lord Eldon’s son, William Henry, died in 1836, he asked his father on his deathbed to “please take care of poor Pincher.”  As Eldon recounts in one of his letters:

“The dog was brought home to me when all was over: and in a short time he was missed.  He was immediately sought for, and he was found lying on the bed beside his dead master.  Poor Pincher!  I would not lose him on any account.”

Pincher, a German Spaniel, would become Lord Eldon’s constant companion and, upon Eldon’s death in 1838, he bequeathed to his daughter, Frances, an annual sum of £8 for Pincher’s food and maintenance.  Pincher would live on to be painted by renowned animal portraitist Edwin Henry Landseer, who called him “a very picturesque old dog with a great look of cleverness in his face.”  He died “at a great age” in May of 1840 and was buried at the Eldon Seat at Encombe.  An inscription there commemorates him as the Lord Chancellor’s favorite dog.

Encombe House by John Preston Neale, 1824.

The nobility were not the only figures of the 18^th and 19^th century to provide for their pets in their wills.  According to an 1895 edition of The Living Age:

“A gentleman who died in 1805, at Knightsbridge, left a pension of £25 to four dogs, descendants of a faithful animal who saved his life when attacked by brigands while travelling in Italy.”

Another account tells of a wealthy London widow who bequeathed an annuity of £200 to a pet parrot that had been her faithful companion for nearly twenty-five years.  A shrewd woman, who was no doubt well aware of the temptation a caregiver might have to abandon (or kill!) the bird and pocket the money, her will specified that the pet parrot must be produced twice a year or else all payments to the caregiver would cease.

And then there is the tale of a lady who died in 1828 leaving the sum of £10 to her pet monkey and £5 each to her cat and dog.  Her will specified that if any one animal should die, the remaining money would be divided amongst the surviving pets.  If all the pets died, the remaining funds were then to revert to her daughter.

Madame du Deffand’s Snuff Box with Portrait of Tonton, 1777.
(Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.)

By far my favorite tale – and certainly one worthy of an article all on its own – is of Tonton, the ill-tempered dog bequeathed to Horace Walpole, 4^th Earl of Orford, by his close friend Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, Marquise du Deffand, upon her death in 1780.  Along with the dog, Madame du Deffand willed Walpole a stipend for Tonton’s upkeep as well as a gilt snuffbox with Tonton’s portrait on the lid.

Tonton was a “famously vicious” little spaniel, especially when in the presence of his mistress.  In one letter, Walpole recounts an incident that occurred while Madame du Deffand was still alive:

“T’other night [Tonton] flew at Lady Barrymore’s face, and I thought would have torn her eye out; but it ended in biting her finger.  She was terrified; she fell into tears.  Madame du Deffand, who has too much parts not to see everything in its true light, perceiving that she had not beaten Tonton half enough, immediately told us a story of a lady, whose dog having bitten a piece out of a gentleman’s leg, the tender dame, in a great fright, cried out, ‘Won’t it make my dog sick?’”

Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford,
by John Giles Eccardt, circa 1755.

After the death of Madame du Deffand, Walpole took Tonton home with him.  The initial period of adjustment was, predictably, a difficult one.  In a letter dated May 6, 1781, he writes:

“I brought [Tonton] this morning to take possession of his new villa; but his inauguration has not been at all pacific.  As he has already found out that he may be as despotic as at Saint Joseph’s, he began with exiling my beautiful little cat; — upon which, however, we shall not quite agree.  He then flew at one of my dogs, who returned it, by biting his foot till it bled.”

In time, Tonton did adjust – at least to Walpole, who grew to love the little dog enormously.  Unfortunately, he was still aggressive with everyone else.  Letters abound in which Walpole writes of Tonton’s various misdemeanors.  He bit people’s fingers.  He destroyed their furniture.  Walpole was even obliged to equip him with a “privy purse” whenever they traveled in order to bribe servants not to reveal the damage that Tonton had done to his host’s furnishings.  In a 1781 letter to the Countess of Ossory, Walpole writes:

“Do not be afraid, you shall not be plagued with Tonton, though I assure you he has a very decent privy purse for his travels; but I recollect that my uncle Horace used to say that Mademoiselle Furniture does not love dogs; which makes me allow Tonton handsomely, that he may silence such tattling housekeepers as Margaret.”

Tonton would become the last of Horace Walpole’s favorite dogs.  In February 1789, he passed away at Walpole’s side “without a pang or a groan.”  In a letter to the Countess Ossory, Walpole declared:

“I have had the satisfaction, for my dear old friend’s sake and his own, of having nursed him up, by constant attention, to the age of sixteen, yet always afraid of his surviving me, as it was scarcely possible he could meet a third person who would study his happiness equally.”

Tonton was buried behind the chapel at Horace Walpole’s Twickenham estate, Strawberry Hill.  When asked by the Countess of Ossory if she could give him another dog to replace Tonton, Walpole declined.  As he wrote to her in a letter:

“I shall miss [Tonton] greatly, and must not have another dog; I am too old, and should only breed it up to be unhappy, when I am gone.”

Strawberry Hill from the Southeast by Paul Sandby, 1731-1809.

Thus concludes another Friday feature on Animals in Literature and History.  To learn more about legal mechanisms for providing for your pets after you are gone, I recommend the following links:

Providing for Your Pet’s Future Without You (The Humane Society of the United States)

Estate Planning Issues Involving Pets (The American Bar Association)

  Works Referenced or Cited in this Article

Cunningham, Peter, ed.  The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford.  Vol. VIII & Vol. IX.  London: Henry G. Bohn, 1859.

Pope, Alexander.  Essay on Man.  1734.  Project Gutenberg.  Web.

Stanhope, Philip Dormer, 4^th Earl of Chesterfield.  Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to his Son in Three Volumes.  Vol. I.  London: J. Walker, 1810.

Twiss, Horace.  The Public and Private Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon.  Vol. II.  London: John Murray, 1846.

“Wills.”  Littell’s Living Age.  Sixth Series.  Vol. VII.  Jul. Aug. Sept.  Boston: T. H. Carter & Company, 1895.

© 2015 Mimi Matthews

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Equestrian Portrait of Mademoiselle Croizette by Carolus-Duran, 1876.

Riding habits of the 19^th century were both fashionable and functional.  They were designed to flatter the figure, camouflage the dirt, and withstand the physical rigors of horseback riding.  These basic, practical considerations did not change a great deal from season to season.  As a result, the favored fabrics, cuts, and colors of riding habits at the end of the century were, in general, not hugely dissimilar from those at the beginning.  As an 1842 issue of The Lady’s Companion states:

 “While carriage and walking-dresses are continually changing in fashion, there occurs but little or no variation in the style of riding habits.”

This does not mean that every riding habit was identical.  There were, in fact, significant changes in the placing of the waistline over the century, as well as in the preferred styles for buttons, trims, and hats.  In 1806, La Belle Assemblée decreed that, for the summer, a bonnet with the peak made of straw and the crown made of white silk was “always worn by ladies who indulged in the pleasure of horseback riding.”  As for the rest of the riding costume:

“Nothing is more fashionable for riding on horseback than an ash-coloured habit.  Green, however, is somewhat prevalent; the buttons are either worked or covered with the same as the habit.”

An 1812 edition of The Edinburgh Annual Register describes an elegant habit made of blue cloth and trimmed down each side of the front and on the hips with Spanish Buttons.  A “small woodland hat, whose colour corresponds to the dress,” buff gloves, and half-boots (of either buff jean or leather) complete the picture.

Emma Powles on her Grey Hunter accompanied by her Spaniel in a River Landscape
by Jaques-Laurent Agasse , 1767-1849.

The coat, vest, and skirts that comprised the typical riding habit were a striking combination.  They were also a peculiarly masculine one.  So much so that many women preferred to have their riding habits cut by a tailor instead of by the modiste or seamstress who made their gowns.  Elegance and simplicity reigned supreme and any efforts to decorate the riding habit with an excess of feathers or a tasteless display of trim was frowned upon by the fashion magazines.  An excerpt from the 1821 issue of The Dublin Inquisitor says it best:

“Blue riding habit and ostrich feathers! – In the name of taste and fashion, and all that you used to admire, how are you so much perverted?”

The years between 1820 and 1830 saw what one magazine describes as the “ugliest fashions” in riding habits.  Bearing a resemblance to women’s ordinary dress, the habits of that period consisted of long, gathered garments, “monstrous stove pipe” hats, and gauze veils which “fell loosely to the waist in front.”  This was a period of transition into the elegant, more masculine riding habits of the middle and end of the century.  As an article in the 1889 issue of The Women’s World states:

“Here we have the germ from which, in the evolution of fashion, has been developed the completely appropriate costume of today.”  

General Krieg of Hochfelden and his wife on horseback by Marie Ellenrieder, 1832.

According to The Lady’s Companion, styles in riding habits from the 1830s to the 1840s underwent no material change.  In both decades, the riding habit could be worn “buttoned up to the throat,” “left half open at the chest,” or “thrown entirely open to display a smart and handsome vest.”  Skirts were long, reaching well below the feet.  And as for the color:

“The color of the habit, to be in good taste, should never be light.  A clear blue (royal blue) has always been, and will probably continue to be the favorite color.  It is a well-known fact that George II caused the naval uniform to be changed from scarlet to blue, in consequence of his majesty having admired a splendid blue riding habit, worn by the Duchess of Bedford.”

The color green and the color purple were also worn, but as the magazine declares “neither looks so well as blue.”  This does not stop the beautiful Blanche Ingram from donning a purple riding habit in Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel Jane Eyre.  As Brontë writes:

“Her purple riding-habit almost swept the ground, her veil streamed long on the breeze; mingling with its transparent folds, and gleaming through them, shone rich raven ringlets.”

There were, of course, exceptions to the rule.  The Duchess of Rutland, for example, was fond of a sky blue habit with silver buttons, a white hat, and a very high-shirt color.  However, as The Lady’s Companion explains, “her grace was gifted with personal attractions that might excuse any eccentricity.”  In other words, a singularly beautiful lady might be permitted to stray from the preferred colors in riding habits, but for an average mortal, eccentricity was generally discouraged.

Portrait of a Woman as an Amazon, with their Greyhound by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, 1839.

No matter the color, in the mid-century, the collar of the riding habit must be velvet.  The cuffs were often velvet as well.  The vest was usually buff or light blue and “small shirt-collars with some showy color” were considered to be more becoming than even the finest lace.  As for the buttons, The Lady’s Companion states:

“Purple and green habits should be trimmed with stuff buttons; but blue habits should always be ornamented with small gilt buttons, very rich in luster, perfectly plain on the surface, and set closely together in the rows.  These buttons are always worn on the vest, when the bodice is thrown open.”

As a general principle, the habit must have a close bodice, tight sleeves, and a long skirt.  The only variations were in the style of the bodice.  According to The Lady’s Companion, there are three distinct bodice styles:

“First, the military form, (buttoned up to the neck); second, the half-chest, or jacket form; third, the open form with a vest underneath.”

Portrait of Russian actress Vera Samoylova by Eugène Pluchart, 1840.

Hats were expected to be in good taste.  A neat cap of velvet or cloth equipped with a veil was preferable to a Leghorn or cottage bonnet (which might prove troublesome by flapping about in a high wind).  Gloves were purely practical items, with worsted gloves being superior to those made of kid.  Kid gloves were known to chafe on the reins.

From the date of Queen Victoria’s ascension to the throne to the mid-1860s, The Women’s World magazine states that “low crowned hats with flowing plumes seem to have been almost universally worn.”  Otherwise, the tight bodice and “full, floating habit-skirt” had not altered at all from the style of habit popular in the 1840s.

Meanwhile, elegance and simplicity were still the last word in riding habits well into the 1880s, with an 1887 equestrian manual stating:

“A riding habit should be distinguished by its perfect simplicity.  All attempts at display, such as feathers, ribbons, glaring gilt buttons, and sparkling jet, should be carefully avoided, and the dress should be noticeable only for the fineness of its material and the elegance of its fit.”

By the end of the century, solid, plain cloth riding habits had given way to colored waistcoats and a variety of hats ranging from “the round felt and the soft wide-awake to the jaunty little sailor hat for summer mornings.”  As The Women’s World magazine reports:

“Everything, indeed, tends to a rational form of riding-dress.  Habits are not so short as they were last year, neither is it considered necessary to exhibit an ‘hour-glass’ waist in the saddle, while the form of head-covering is left widely to the fair rider’s taste.”  

The drift toward greater functionality and freedom of personal expression in riding habits was reflective of changing public views, not just of women, but of exercise and athletics.  Accomplished equestriennes were beginning to be appreciated as much for their skill in the saddle as for the cut of their coat.  Of course, an elegant riding habit must always be admired, but as the 19^th century drew to a close, no longer could it be said of the female equestrian that “graceful as may be the style of her riding, there is little that is interesting in her appearance unless she is properly attired.”

Scene Dexposition de la Maison Lavigne, 1867.

 Works Referenced or Cited in this Article

Brontë, Charlotte.  Jane Eyre.  Ed. Richard Dunn.  Norton Critical Editions.  3^rd ed.  New York: Norton, 2000.

“Fashions for Ladies.”  Edinburgh Annual Register.  Vol. V. Part 2.  Edinburgh: John Ballantyne, 1812.

Fletcher, J. A.  “Equestrian Attire.”  The Columbian Lady’s and Gentlemen’s Magazine.  New York: Israel Post, 1846.

“Fragments of the Correspondence of a Lover.”  The Dublin Inquisitor.  Vol. 1-2.  Dublin: C. P. Archer, 1821.

Karr, Elizabeth.  The American Horsewoman.  Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1884.

La Belle Assemblée. Vol. 1. London: J. Bell, 1806.

La Belle Assemblée. Vol. 5. London: J. Bell, 1812.

“Lady Equestrians.”  The Lady’s Companion.  Vol. XVII.  New York: William Snowden, 1842.

Dixon, Ella Hepworth.  “Women on Horseback.”  The Woman’s World.  London: Cassell and Co., 1889.

© 2015 Mimi Matthews

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A Lady with a Parrot and a Gentleman with a Monkey by Caspar Netscher, 1664.

In the late 18^th century, Horace Walpole sent a letter to his friend Lady Ossory containing an entertaining anecdote about the two rival lovers of their mutual acquaintance, Françoise-Thérèse de Choiseul-Stainville.  Madame de Choiseul was the daughter of nobleman Jacques Philippe de Choiseul-Stainville.  Described as a “fair, young French lady,” she was being pursued by both Monsieur de Coigny and Prince Joseph of Monaco.  Both were anxious to win her affections – and each was very jealous of the other.

Madame de Choiseul longed for a pet parrot that would be “a miracle of eloquence.”  Such a creature was not difficult to obtain as, at the time, there were an abundance of shops in Paris which sold macaws, parrots, cockatoos, and the like.  One of Madame’s lovers swiftly took himself off to just such a pet shop, where he obtained for his beloved the desired bird.

Françoise-Thérèse
de Choiseul-Stainville.

But Madame de Choiseul “had two passions as well as two lovers.”  In addition to desiring an eloquent parrot, she had also become enamored of General Jackoo, a famous chimpanzee at Astley’s Amphitheatre.  Her second lover attempted to purchase General Jackoo from Philip Astley, but the sum Astley demanded was far too dear.  Madame’s lover immediately went in search of a comparable monkey which he might present to his lady.  As Walpole writes:

“[He] fortunately heard of another miracle of parts of the Monomotapan race, who was not in so exalted a sphere of life, being only a marmiton in a kitchen, where he had learnt to pluck fowls with an inimitable dexterity.”

This monkey was not as costly as General Jackoo and the second lover easily negotiated his purchase.  He presented the monkey to a delighted Madame de Choiseul, who promptly christened this new pet General Jackoo II.  As Walpole relates:

“Her caresses were distributed equally to the animals, and her thanks to the donors.”

The first time Madame de Choiseul left the house, her pet parrot and her pet monkey were locked up together in her bedchamber.  When she returned, she found Jackoo, but her parrot was missing.  After a search, the poor bird was:

“Found at last under the bed, shivering and cowering — and without a feather, as stark as any Christian.”

The first lover concluded that the second had given Madame the feather-plucking monkey with just such a result in mind.  He challenged his rival to a duel.  They fought and both were wounded.  According to Walpole, “an heroic adventure it was!”

Madame de Choiseul married Prince Joseph of Monaco in 1782.  She met the guillotine in 1794, executed only one day before the fall of Robespierre at the end of the Reign of Terror.

There is no more information available about what became of the parrot and the monkey.

Parrot watching a Boy holding a Monkey by Jacob van Oost, 1603-1671.

Thus concludes another Friday feature on Animals in Literature and History.  To learn more about pet parrots and pet monkeys of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, I recommend the following articles:

The Pet Parrot: As Depicted in 18^th and 19^th Century Art, Literature, & History.

 The Plight of the Pet Monkey in 19th century Literature and History

Works Referenced or Cited in this Article

“Monaco.”  The Cornhill Magazine.  Vol. X.  London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1864.

Walpole, Horace.  Horace Walpole and His World.  London: Seeley, Jackson, and Halliday, 1884.

© 2015 Mimi Matthews

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The Empress Eugénie Surrounded by her Ladies in Waiting by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1855.

It is no great mystery why MGM made the controversial decision to garb Elizabeth Bennet in Victorian gowns for their 1940 production of Pride and Prejudice.  Or why Samuel Goldwyn chose to dress Catherine Earnshaw in classic Victorian style for his 1939 production of Wuthering Heights.  There is just something visually captivating about the tiny, corseted waist and wide, impractical profusion of skirts that was so popular in the 1850s and 1860s.  The silhouette was both impossibly feminine and, considering the enormous size of the gowns, surprisingly dainty.  To achieve it, one naturally needed a substantial corset.  However, the primary component of the mid-Victorian shape was the crinoline. 

Women’s Cage Crinoline, 1865.
Cotton-braid-covered steel, cotton twill and plain-weave double-cloth tape, cane, and metal. (Image Courtesy LACMA.)

A crinoline is essentially a petticoat, made of horsehair or some other stiffening material which holds the skirts of a gown out from the body.  The horsehair petticoat was in use in England as early as the 1820s.  By the 1840s, however, the skirts of gowns had grown to enormous proportions and the horsehair petticoat was often not strong enough to support them in the fashionable shape.  As a result, ladies were forced to wear several layers of very heavy petticoats or crinolines in order to achieve the desired effect.  This was far from ideal.

Fortunately, the difficulty was remedied by the 1856 invention of the wire cage crinoline.  As author Karen Baclawski states in her book, The Guide to Historic Costume, this lightweight crinoline was made of “a series of hooped wires secured by sturdy fabric tapes.”  The wire cage crinoline could accommodate skirts that were fuller and heavier and, as a result, during the years from 1856 through 1866, skirts grew to their widest proportions of the 19^th century.

An unforeseen benefit of this was that ladies of the era no longer had to resort to tight lacing of their corsets.  In proportion to skirts of this magnitude their waists inevitably appeared smaller by comparison.  In her book, Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body, Anna Krugovy Silver writes:

“Although the waist remained the focal point during the next decade, increasingly wide skirts after the invention of the wire (cage) crinoline in 1856 made the waist look proportionately smaller, so that the practice of tight lacing probably decreased until the 1860s, when it again revived in popularity as a result of shrinking crinolines.”

Cutaway View of A Crinoline, Punch, 1856.

This benefit was likely offset by the limitations imposed by the size of a lady’s skirts.  Not only did the crinoline make a lady wider and less mobile than she had been in previous decades, it also impacted the lives of everyone in her wake – as evidenced by countless articles, pamphlets, cartoons, and even a one act crinoline play of the era.  According to the anonymous author of the 1858 one penny pamphlet “The Dangers of Crinoline, Steel Hoops, &c”:

“No one can deny that an evil of the greatest magnitude has for some time been making serious inroads into the health, morals, and happiness of this country, in the shape of an absurd and preposterous fashion, dignified with the incomprehensible designation of CRINOLINE.  This monstrous innovation, like a restless spectre, invades the domestic hearth, and stalks abroad in the streets, a gaunt and grisly phantom, whose ‘bones are marrowless.’”

The author goes on to address (in the same quite unintentionally hilarious, melodramatic language) the pervasiveness of the crinoline in Victorian society:

“Old women tottering on the verge of the grave, enshrine their decrepit bones within it; young children, not long released from the trammels of swaddling clothes, jerk their little forms about in it; ugly women, pretty women, dark women, fair women, are all under the diabolical influence of CRINOLINE.”

The Dangers of Crinoline, 1858.

True to the title of the pamphlet, after ridiculing the appearance of short, fat women in crinolines, and tall, thin shapeless women in crinolines, the author begins to present the multitude of dangers associated with the wearing of this “scaffolding” of wire and horse-hair “with puffs inserted, and, at intervals, hoops of steel or cane.”  The dangers range from rheumatism, cold, and colic caused by the “cold currents” and “clouds of dust” that blow up the wide skirts, to horrific accidents caused by the crinoline catching in doors, bursting into flames, or (my personal favorite!) causing its wearer to be blown off a cliff.

Amongst these heartrending tales, is the story of a “beautiful maiden” in 1857 Yorkshire who went for a walk with her sweetheart whilst wearing a crinoline made of steel hoops.  A thunderstorm was brewing and, predictably, the young lady’s metal crinoline attracted a bolt of lightning, which struck her and nearly killed her.  She awoke many days later vowing to never wear crinolines again.

Another gruesome tale, aptly titled “Shocking Case of a Lady of Title being nearly Burnt to Death,” relates the story of Lady B__, “the acknowledged queen of fashion.”  Whilst warming herself near the fire at a high society party, Lady B__’s skirts briefly brushed into the flames and she went up like the proverbial torch.  The burns on her face, hands, and body were so disfiguring and severe that Lady B__ refused to ever see any of her friends again.  She withdrew completely from the world, living out the rest of her miserable days in a convent in Italy.

Portrait of Princess Tatiana Yussupova by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1858.

Sentiment against crinolines was strong – especially male sentiment.  An 1883 publication, titled The Great Anti-Crinoline League, begins with the following quote from the Pall Mall Gazette:

“We can suggest nothing better than an Anti-Crinoline League of eligible men who should bind themselves by fearful oaths never to dance, drive, dine, or enter into any tenderer relation with any wearer of ‘stiffeners,’ ‘wires,’ or ‘whalebone,’ in whatsoever form.”

And the 1866 tract, The Glories of Crinoline, is somewhat condescendingly dedicated:

“To Those Numberless Ladies throughout the civilized world who are wise enough to avoid extremes, and who prefer to be the possessor of a modest modicum of moderate charms rather than the bearers of an immodest mountain of immoderate monstrosities.”

Even in newspapers, such as The Illustrated News of the World, men bemoaned the encroaching effect of the crinoline.  It crowded them out of omnibuses, cabs, and carriages.  It crowded them out of pews in church.  And it even prevented them from enjoying their “fair share” of the public sidewalk.

Caricature of Men being Squeezed by expansive Crinolines.

Meanwhile, despite the limitations of their skirts, women of the mid-19^th century were beginning to feel empowered.  In 1857, The Married Women’s Property Bill was first discussed in parliament.  In 1858, The English Women’s Journal was founded, followed in 1859 by the formation of The Society for Promoting the Employment of Women.  Women’s colleges were springing up all across Great Britain and Victorian ladies were concerning themselves not only with women’s education and employment, but also with suffrage and the rights of wives.  In the 1864 publication, Crinoline in its Bissextile Phases, a lady responds to the male demand that females give up their crinolines with a verse which speaks volumes for feminine feeling in the Victorian era:

“They tell us, again, in a bustling street

Our Crinolines hurt their poor legs or feet.

Not badly, I trust, — ’twere the doctor to pay,

My recipe is, keep out of our way.”

According to author Julie Wosk, fashion historians of the day called the invention of the wire cage crinoline “the first great triumph of the machine age.”  In her book, Women and the Machine, Wosk goes on to state that the various satirical images that sprang up of ladies of the era in their wire crinolines revealed as much about the century’s ambivalence toward new technologies as about their feelings toward frivolous female fashions.  The public was equally ambivalent about the changing role of women in society.  Their giant crinolines were, at face value, a silly conceit, however those very garments made women formidable and difficult to ignore.

Lady at a Window Feeding Birds by Alfred Stevens, 1859.

The crinoline passed all class boundaries.  It was as common to see a housemaid in an enormous skirt as it was to see a wealthy lady of leisure.  As author Mary Eyre writes in her 1863 book A Lady’s Walk in the South of France:

“Our wiser grandmother’s only wore their hoops in full dress.  We, and our servants, wear them at the washing tub and the kitchen fire; our mill girls wear them in the manufactories, and sad and horrible have been the many accidents of all kinds this hideous, inartistic, ungraceful fashion has caused!”

Horrific accidents were not the only problems.  Victorian houses were cluttered with trinkets and knickknacks that could easily be knocked over or broken by a wide skirt.  In addition, the very nature of the wire cage crinoline made it virtually impossible for maids to bend or kneel in a manner required to scrub the steps or clean out the fireplace grate without exposing their legs – or worse!

Empress Elisabeth of Austria with Diamond Stars in her Hair by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1864.

By 1866, the popularity of the crinoline had decreased and, by the middle of the 1870s, fashions in ladies’ dress had moved toward a slimmer silhouette, accented by draped fabric and a bustle.  Skirts would never again reach the epic proportions of the 1850s and 1860s.  Nevertheless, the crinoline has not been forgotten.  One need look no further than wedding gowns or the recent productions of fairytales, like Cinderella and Snow White, to see that the ultra-feminine contrast of small, corseted waist with magnificent flowing skirts is still as much the reigning vision of ideal beauty and proportion as it was for our mid-19th century fashion forbears.

Works Referenced or Cited in this Article

Anonymous.  The Dangers of Crinoline, Steel Hoops, &c.  Pamphlet.  London: G. Vickers, 1858.

Baclawski, Karen.  The Guide to Historic Costume.  New York: Drama Book Publishers, 1995.

“British Women’s Emancipation Since the Renaissance.” www.historyofwomen.org.  Web.

“Crinoline.”  The Illustrated News of the World.  London: Emily Faithful, 1863.

Cunnington, C. Willett.  English Women’s Clothing in the Nineteenth Century.  London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1939.

A Doctor of Philosophy.  The Glories of Crinoline.  London: Dalton and Lucy, 1866.

Eyre, Mary.  A Lady’s Walk in the South of France.  London: R. Bently, 1865.

Hock, Leichter.  Ed.  Crinoline in its Bissextile Phases.  London: Robert Hardwicke, 1864.

Lescribleur, V.  The Great Anti-Crinoline League.  London: Wyman & Sons, 1883.

Silver, Anna Krugovoy.  Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Wosk, Julie.  Women and the Machine: Representations from the Spinning Wheel to the Electronic Age.  Baltimore: JHU Press, 2003.

© 2015 Mimi Matthews

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Mossgiel Farm, The Life and Works of Robert Burns, 1856.

In the present day, the phrase “Of Mice and Men” calls up images of John Steinbeck’s eponymous novella and the now legendary characters of Lennie and George.  The phrase did not originate with Steinbeck, however, but with 18^th century Scottish poet Robert Burns.  In his 1785 poem To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough, Burns writes of an experience he had while plowing the fields at Mossgiel Farm in the parish of Mauchline, East Ayrshire.

Robert Burns and his brother, Gilbert, had removed to Mossgiel upon the death of their father in 1784.  They worked the farm in order to provide for their widowed mother and five younger siblings who still remained at home.  Burns took the role of peasant farmer seriously.  In preparation, he read books on agriculture and cultivating crops.  But Burns would never be a strictly ordinary farmer.  Even as he toiled the earth at Mossgiel, his thoughts were consumed by poetry.  Verses composed while out of doors working the land were transcribed each evening when he returned to the farmhouse and, according to an 1859 biography:

Robert Burns by Alexander Nasmyth, 1787.

“At Mossgiel were rapidly produced a large proportion of those genuine native strains by which his fame was earned, and in which is specially unfolded the most original trait of his genius— a feature almost new to poetry in general, that has especially influenced our literature through Wordsworth and his school.  We mean, above all, its sympathetic tenderness for dumb life or obscure beauty in nature and the lower creatures, as sharers and companions in human emotion.”

This sympathetic tenderness was never more evident than in the reaction Burns had upon turning up the nest of a little field mouse with his plow.  Burns plowed with four horses, a method which required an assistant, called a gaudsman, to drive the horses whilst Burns himself held and guided the plow.  On this particular day, his gaudsman was a young man named John Blane.  As stated in Robert Chambers’ 1856 biography The Life and Works of Robert Burns:

“John Blane, who had acted as gaudsman to Burns, and who lived sixty years afterwards, had a distinct recollection of the turning up of the mouse.  Like a thoughtless youth as he was, he ran after the creature to kill it, but was checked and recalled by his master, who, he observed, became thereafter thoughtful and abstracted.  Burns, who treated his servants with the familiarity of fellow-labourers, soon after read the poem to Blane.”

That poem, composed as he stood beside the plow, was titled To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough.  I have included it here in its entirety:

To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough

By Robert Burns

“Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie,
Oh, what a panic’s in thy breastie!
Thou needna start awa sae hasty
Wi’ bickering brattle!
I wad be laith to rin and chase thee
Wi’ murd’ring pattle.

“I’m truly sorry man’s dominion
Has broken nature’s social union,
And justifies that ill opinion,
Which makes thee startle
At me, thy poor earth-born companion,
And fellow-mortal!

“I doubt na whyles, but thou may thieve;
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live!
A daimen icker in a thrave
‘S a sma’ request:
I’ll get a blessin’ wi’ the laive,
And never miss’t.

“Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin!
Its silly wa’s the win’s are strewin”!
And naething now to big a new ane
O, foggage green,
And bleak December’s winds ensuin’
Baith snell and keen!

“Thou saw the fields laid bare and waste,
And weary winter coming fast,
And cozie here, beneath the blast,
Thou thought to dwell,
Till crash! the cruel coulter passed
Out through thy cell.

“That wee bit heap o’ leaves and stibble,
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble!
Now thou’s turned out for a’ thy trouble,
But house or hald,
To thole the winter’s sleety dribble,
And cranreuch cauld!

“But, mousie, thou art no thy lane;
Improving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o’ mice and men
Gang aft a-gley,
And lea’e us nought but grief and pain
For promised joy.

“Still thou art blest, compared wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee;
But, och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
And forward, though I canna see,
I guess and fear.”

The years that Robert Burns spent at Mossgiel Farm are generally considered to be the “most brilliant period of poetic development” in his career.  Not only did he write To a Mouse, he also wrote The Twa Dogs, To a Mountain Daisy, The Jolly Beggars, and many other poems, as well as some of his best-known love songs.  Today, Mossgiel is a working, privately owned farm.  As for the field mice who inhabit it, one can only hope that amongst their numbers are a few descendants of the tim’rous beastie unearthed by Robert Burns so long ago.

Robert Burns Commemorative Stamp, Royal Mail, 1996.

Thus concludes another Friday feature on Animals in Literature and History.  To learn more about poet Robert Burns, I recommend the following link:

The Robert Burns Birthplace Museum (Scotland)

**If you would like to hear a reading of To a Mouse, the Edinburgh Libraries’ YouTube Channel has a very good rendition of it available HERE.

Works Referenced or Cited in this Article

Burns, Robert.  The Poetical Works and Letters of Robert Burns.  Edinburgh: Gall & Inglis, 1859.

Chambers, Robert. Ed. The Life and Works of Robert Burns.  Vol. II.  Edinburgh: W. R. Chambers, 1856.

© 2015 Mimi Matthews

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Louise de Guéhéneuc, duchesse de Montebello by Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, early 19th century.

The 19^th century cap was a modest necessity.  Worn by spinsters and matrons both young and old, it neatly covered a lady’s hair while she was at home and abroad.  At face value, such a basic article of clothing seems to have changed little throughout the century.  However, a closer look at the fashionable caps of women of the 1800s reveals that styles did in fact subtly evolve.  Through lace, ribbons, and trimmings, ladies of the age continually reinvented the cap, transforming it from what might otherwise have been a merely utilitarian scrap of fabric into a fashionable, feminine confection that said as much about a woman’s personal style as her French bonnets, cashmere shawls, and India muslin gowns.

Caps of the early 19^th century are loosely divided into three basic styles: the lace cap, the draped cap, and the mob cap.  The lace cap and draped cap are fairly self-explanatory, with the latter being composed of fabric that drapes back from the face, over the head, and down the shoulders rather like a flowing veil.  The mob cap is a large soft hat which covers all of the hair and is typically bordered by a broad ruffle or decorative frill.  There is some crossover between these three varieties of caps.  For example, mob caps might be composed, at least partly, of lace.  An 1800 issue of The Lady’s Magazine reports:

“The mob cap, cut into points, and richly ornamented with lace, is a late modest invention.” 

Portrait of Nadezhda Dubovitskaya by Vladimir Borovikovsky, 1809.

And in the 1817 account of Princess Charlotte’s wedding clothes, provided by Hone’s Authentic Account of the Royal Marriage, amongst the Princess’s millinery, we see the following itemization:

“Six elegant English lace caps, trimmed with the most beautiful English laces that could be procured. 

“Two Valenciennes lace caps trimmed with Valenciennes lace, forming a coronet round the top, which has a very pretty effect. 

“A Brussels point lace mob cap, with beautiful rich trimmings of point lace. 

“A very superb cap of Brussels point, quite a new shape: this cap is most elegantly trimmed with a point, and the new double-sided satin ribbon. 

“A Mechlin lace cap, beautifully trimmed with Mechlin lace, and lined with white satin. 

“An elegant Mechlin lace mob cap lined and trimmed.” 

But just because a lace mob cap looked well on Princess Charlotte was no reason to think it would be becoming to the average early 19^th century lady.  By 1820, new variations of the three basic styles were introduced, made to flatter a range of face shapes and sizes.  According to an 1820 issue of The Ladies’ Monthly Museum:

“These caps are, in general, of the cornette, that is to say, mob-shape; but, as mobs do not become everybody, and as round caps are not comme il faut in undress, a style of cap has lately been introduced, which partakes a little of the form of both; and which is called a demi-cornette.  Undress caps are, therefore, at present, of the cornette and demi-cornette kind. –The first are most in favor with the oval-faced belle, the latter is generally adopted by those ladies whose round or full faces render a mob-cap unbecoming to them.”

Portrait of Elizaveta Olenina by Alexander Varnek, 1820.

These variations on the mob cap were generally composed of fine muslin and trimmed with narrow lace.  The cauls (the circle of fabric that covers the back of the head) were always low, with some “quartered like an infant’s cap” and others decorated with “puffs of muslin let in.”  The Ladies’ Monthly Museum goes on to state:

“The majority are ornamented with embroidery at each side of the caul; and a few caps, made of cambric muslin, or perkales, as the French call it, have the cauls so covered with embroidery, that you can hardly discover the materials of which they are made.”

As for the cornettes and demi-cornettes:

“The cornettes have the ears, in general, cut small, and placed very far back; they just meet under the chin, where they fasten with a bow of riband; the demi-cornettes also fasten under the chin with a riband; the head-pieces of both are of a moderate breadth, and there is always a full border of lace, which goes all round, and is frequently double, and even sometimes triple, over the face.”

This double and triple full border of lace served a specific purpose, being generally worn by ladies whose “large and harsh features” rendered it necessary for them to “study how to throw a little softness into their countenances.”

Mrs. Thomas Linley by James Lonsdale, 1820.

For 1820, caps worn at home, such as breakfast caps, might be trimmed with “knots or cockades of riband, or close wreaths made of riband, or rosettes composed of a mixture of riband and lace.”  Flowers, however, were never worn in complete dishabille.  The authority for this?  The French, of course!  As The Ladies’ Monthly Museum declares:

“I am sure, in this respect, all my fair readers will agree with me, that French taste is correct.”

You will note that I have mentioned a distinction between caps worn at home and caps worn out of doors.  There are many today who believe that caps were only worn in the home.  This is untrue.  Caps were worn outside underneath a lady’s bonnet or hat.  They were also worn with full dress, though naturally the style of cap worn whilst eating your breakfast would not be the same style of cap worn for an evening at the theater.  An 1829 issue of La Belle Assemblée reports the changes in fashionable caps for the season, as well as the differentiation between those caps for home costume and those for full dress:

“Caps for home costume, and for half-dress, are now more of fine lace than of blond.  They are certainly too large, especially when worn at dress dinner-parties, yet the style in which they are made is truly elegant: the lace, which is of a cobweb fineness, is beautifully intermingled with the puffs of satin ribbon, which is generally of pink, marsh-mallow-blossom, or some other lively tint; a few ornaments of ribbon tie on the hair, from where the lace turns back, and a loop-string of the same ribbon descends over the breast.  A cap of fine lace, for home costume, is made something in the same style, but the lace is narrower, the cap smaller, and the border falls over the hair; bows and ornaments of ribbon adorn the crown, and two long lappets of lace float over the shoulders.  The blond caps for the theatre, and other evening spectacles, are made with very broad, full borders of rich blond.  These turn back, and a half wreath of flowers is placed underneath, lying on the hair.”

Princess Catherine of Wurttemberg by Franz Seraph Stirnbrand, 1820s.

In the early 1830s, caps made of blond lace were all the rage for evening dress, though English lace was still “not as fashionable as it ought to be.”  As for home dress, the 1832 publication Maids, Wives, & Widows declares:

“The prettiest are of plain tulle, with the trimming of the front turning back as usual at the sides, but partially descending in the center of the forehead, where it is crossed by a bandeau of ribbon, which terminates in a full knot behind the trimming on one side.  A very light knot composed principally of ends is placed on the trimming in the front.” 

During this time period, Maids, Wives, & Widows reports that a “neat and close style” of morning cap was gradually superseding the “winged edifices” whose borders were “more appropriate to full dress than to dishabille.”  And that:

“We see with pleasure that British washing net, of extreme fineness and clearness, begins to be used by very genteel women for morning caps.”

Portrait of a Lady in a Blue Dress by Christian Albrect Jensen, 1824.

By 1840, styles in caps had changed yet again, in large part to accommodate the early Victorian hairstyles.  According to The Ladies’ Cabinet of Fashion from 1840:

“The caps (if caps they may be called) are composed of lace lappets of a large size: one is attached on each side of the front hair and tastefully intermingled with a sprig of flowers, which droops over it; there is no caul, consequently while these pretty coiffures ornament the hair in the most graceful style; they also display it in all its luxuriance.”

This new style, with its large lappets hanging down on either side of the head, scarcely resembled the simple mob caps of the early 19^th century (which were now worn mainly by female servants).  It was nonetheless popular.  In an 1844 issue of Littell’s Living Age, a poem titled “The Song of the May Fashions” referenced these stylish caps in the most flattering language.  An excerpt reads:

Say, first what cap shall head of beauty wear,

Though seldom cap should be admitted there.

Tulle chiffonée, with heather blossoms gay,

Or any other tiny flowers of May.

Plain on the forehead are the caps in vogue,

A matron’s air they give each charming rogue;

Broad at the back a pretty curtain placed

With flowery wreath is elegantly graced

And where on each side at the ear it closes,

Deck it with bunches of the same small roses;

Or place a point, with fluted tulle, surrounded,

Or with raised lappets, “à la paysanne” bounded,

And held in bonds of double-tinted gauze,

Lest in “the pride of place” it break through Fashion’s laws.

Woman in Black Dress and Lace Cap, mid-19th century.

Flowers as decoration remained popular throughout the decade, as did the ever popular blond lace.  An 1846 issue of La Belle Assemblée declares:

“The prettiest caps for very youthful matrons are of a very small size; they are composed of rows of blond or lace, each divided by a very small wreath of red clematis: this style of garniture has the effect of the hair being strewed with flowers.

By the next decade, the caps for evening dress had become even busier.  They were now comprised of a combination of many different materials.  As Blackwood’s Lady Magazine of 1857 reports:

“One is composed of blonde, chequered with rows of narrow cerise-colour velvet; it is trimmed with quillings of blonde and loops and ends of velvet.  A cap composed of frills of white blonde and black lace, is very tastefully trimmed with loops of amber-colour ribbon.  This cap has flowing strings of amber-colour ribbon, and a large bow of the same is placed at the back, above the curtain.”

Caps of the late 1860s were a bit simpler.  The following illustrations from an 1867 issue of Harper’s Bazaar show a dress cap and a breakfast cap.  The dress cap (figure 1) is composed of puffed muslin mounted lace and:

“The crown simulates a single puff, and is encircled with mauve ribbon, and trimmed with bows on the front and back.  The whole cap is bordered with guipure lace and narrow mauve ribbons, the ends of which form strings, and are tied beneath the chignon.”

The breakfast cap (figure 2) is described as being “peasant” style.  The description reads:

“This cap is composed of a large crown, made of guipure insertion, and a small border trimmed with narrow guipure.  The border is trimmed in front with loops of blue ribbon set on similar ribbon laid flat, and the ends of which form strings that tie behind.”

The trend for simpler styles in caps continued into the middle of the next decade.  Godey’s Lady’s Book of 1870 describes a “small lace cap, trimmed with rose-colored ribbon.”  Smaller still, they report a coiffure accented with nothing more than a “small fancy piece” of Valenciennes lace and green satin ribbon.  Morning caps, however, sound little different from earlier decades.  Godey’s describes a simple morning cap of muslin, trimmed with lace and “cherry-colored ribbon” which one can imagine as easily on the head of Jane Austen’s Mrs. Bennet as covering the Victorian curls of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mrs. Hale.

Clockwise from Top Left: Brussels Lace, 1875-76; Guipure Lace, 1875-76;
Valenciennes Lace, 1875-76; and Mechlin Lace, 1903.

An example of Blonde Lace , France, 1830s.
(Image Courtesy of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.)

Looking at the trends of the first three quarters of the century, it is little surprise that The Warehousemen and Drapers Trade Journal of 1876 declares blond lace to be “particularly admired at the present moment.”  They also describe, in some detail, the desired composition of shapes, fabrics, and colors in caps – as well as inadvertently revealing their new demographic:

“Old ladies’ caps are now exactly the shape of young ladies’ bonnets known as Bébé bonnets, only, instead of being made of velvet, or any other thick material, they are made of white, black, and ecru lace…Ecru lace caps are considered to be the most dressy of all.  It is almost sufficient to wear a little ecru on the head to be in full and elegant toilette.”

The reference to “old ladies’ caps” is indicative of the changing fashions.  No longer was a lace cap de rigueur for young matrons and spinsters.  Instead, by the early 1890s, day caps were largely worn only by the elderly.  At the close of the century, even bonnets were beginning to fall by the wayside.  As fashion historian C. Willett Cunnington writes:

“The bicycle also helped to destroy the bonnet which was becoming more and more the headgear of the elderly.”

Caps were seen throughout most of the 19^th century.  Whether on a young spinster or an old maid, a newly married lady or an elderly dowager, the cap was a symbol of that stage of female existence when frivolous youth had passed and sober adult living had begun.  Such a garment could easily have ended up a sad, drab bit of fabric which robbed its wearer of her femininity and youthful charms.  Instead, the 19^th century cap was an imminently stylish accessory, the beauty of which owes as much to women’s innate ingenuity as it does to fashion.

Jane Austen wearing Cap.
(Colorized version of a posthumous engraving published in the 1869-70 Memoir.)

Works Referenced or Cited in this Article

Cunnington, C. Willett.  English Women’s Clothing in the Nineteenth Century.  London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1939.

“Fashions.”  The Lady’s Book.  Vol. 80.  Philadelphia: L. A. Godey, 1870.

“Fashions for December.”  The New Monthly Belle Assemblée.  Vol. XXV.  London: Norfolk St, 1846.

“Coiffures.”  Harper’s Bazaare.  New York: Hearst Corporation, 1867.

De Courcy, Margaret. Ed. “London Fashions for the Month.”  The Ladies’ Cabinet of Fashion.  Vol. III.  London: Geo. Henderson, 1840.

“General Observations on Fashion and Dress.”  La Belle Assemblée: Or, Court and Fashionable Magazine.  Vol. X.  London: Whittaker, Treacher, and Co., 1829.

“The Guide to Dress.”  The Lady’s Book.  Vol. 6.  Philadelphia: L. A. Godey, 1888.

Hone, William.  Hone’s Authentic Account of the Royal Marriage.  London: W. Hone, 1816.

The Ladies’ Monthly Museum.  Vol. XII.  Vernor & Hood, 1820.

“Lingerie.”  The Warehousemen and Drapers Trade Journal and Review of the Textile Fabric Manufactures.  Vol. V.  London: Wine Office Court, 1876.

Littell, Eliakim. Ed.  Littell’s Living Age.  Boston: T. H. Carter & Co., 1844.

The Maids, Wives, and Widows Penny Magazine, and Gazette.  Vol. 1.  London: G. Berger, 1832.

“Paris Fashions for June, 1857.”  Blackwood’s Lady Magazine.  Vol. XLII.  London: A. H. Blacwood, 1857.

“Parisian Fashions.”  The Lady’s Magazine.  Vol. XXXI.  London: G. G. and J. Robinson, 1800.

© 2015 Mimi Matthews

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The Thick of the Plot by George Goodwin Kilburne, 1924.

Filled with sparkling wit, frothy romance, and impeccable period details, every single one of Georgette Heyer’s Georgian and Regency novels has something to recommend it.  There are runaway balloons, devoted rescue dogs, kidnappings, duels, brooding Yorkshire heroes, and “that Greek fellow.”  How can a Heyer fan choose only one favorite?  It would be unfair of anyone to ask us to do so.  Nevertheless, it seems only fitting that for the final Georgette Heyer poll we address ourselves to the difficult task.

Below, I present to you the contenders for Georgette Heyer’s Most Beloved Novel.  There are no limits on how many times you can vote and, as always, if you have a preference for another of Georgette Heyer’s novels (The Talisman Ring, perhaps, or The Corinthian), I encourage you to write in your choice below.

I will reveal the winner of the poll next Wednesday, both here and via twitter

@MimiMatthewsEsq

Thank you for participating in the Georgette Heyer polls!

© 2015 Mimi Matthews

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Greta Hall in Keswick by Johann Jacob Weber, 1843.

Born of humble origins in 1774, Robert Southey went on to become Poet Laureate of England from 1813 until his death in 1843.  A contemporary of 19^th century Romantic poets like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, he was an incredibly prolific writer, both of poetry and of prose.  He was also a great lover of cats, as evidenced in his vast correspondence with friends and family.

In The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey (1850), Southey’s son, Charles, who edited the volume, writes of his father’s fondness for cats.  Their home at Greta Hall in Keswick (also home to the family of Samuel Taylor Coleridge) was home to many cats over the years, cats whose names exhibited the full breadth of Southey’s creativity.  According to his son:

“He rejoiced in bestowing upon them the strangest appellations; and it was not a little amusing to see a kitten answer to the name of some Italian singer or Indian chief, or hero of a German fairy tale, and often names and titles were heaped one upon another, till the possessor, unconscious of the honour conveyed, used to ‘set up his eyes and look’ in wonderment.”

Robert Southey by John James Masquerier, 1799.

Southey’s friend, Grosvenor Bedford, had “an equal liking for the feline race” and the two often exchanged letters about their favorites.  In 1833, Southey wrote a particular letter to Bedford alerting him to the death of one of “the greatest.”  The letter is a wonderful example of not only Southey’s great love for cats, but also his humor and creativity.  The letter reads:

“To Grosvenor C. Bedford, Esq.

“Keswick, May 18, 1833.

“My dear G.,

“…Alas, Grosvenor, this day poor old Rumpel was found dead, after as long and happy a life as cat could wish for, if cats form wishes on that subject.

“His full titles were: —

“The Most Noble the Archduke Rumpelstiltzchen, Marquis Macbum, Earl Tomlemagne, Baron Raticide, Waowhler, and Skaratch.

“There should be a court mourning in Catland, and if the Dragon * wear a black ribbon round his neck, or a band of crape à la militaire round one of the fore paws, it will be but a becoming mark of respect.

“As we have no catacombs here, he is to be decently interred in the orchard, and cat-mint planted on his grave.  Poor creature, it is well that he has thus come to his end after he had become an object of pity.  I believe we are each and all, servants included, more sorry for his loss, or rather more affected by it, than any one of us would like to confess.

“I should not have written to you at present, had it not been to notify this event…

“God bless you!                                                                     

“R. S.”

Robert Southey is buried at Crosthwaite Church in Keswick.  Greta Hall, once the gathering place of such literary luminaries as Lord Byron, John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Sir Walter Scott, is now a Lake District Bed and Breakfast.  If you are at all curious, you may view it HERE.

Greta Hall and Keswick Bridge by William Westall, 1840.

Thus concludes another of my Friday features on Animals in Literature and History.  If you are interested in adopting a “Most Noble the Archduke Rumpelstiltzchen” of your own, I encourage you to use the following sites as resources:

Alley Cat Rescue, Inc. (United States)

The Cats Protection League (United Kingdom)

Works Referenced or Cited in this Article

Southey, Robert.  Southey, Charles. Ed.  The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey.  Vol. VI.  London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans: 1850.

© 2015 Mimi Matthews

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The Bibliophile’s Desk by L. Block, 1848-1901.

As a young girl, I read Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women several times over.  Back then I was already writing seriously, finishing my first book at the age of thirteen and signing with a literary agency at the age of seventeen.  Alas that first young adult novel did not sell (though my first agent, the late, great Helen McGrath kept me under contract until her death some years ago).  I write in a different genre now and am represented by a different literary agency, but whatever you write, whether you are published or not, agented or not, if you are a writer you simply keep writing whenever the muse should take you.  If you are one such writer, you know how precious the hours are when that muse finally makes an appearance.  Nothing else matters then.  Friends, family, and the necessities of life are often neglected and even the slightest interruption – however well intentioned – can mean catastrophe.

Recently, I was rereading Little Women for a research article I wrote on Victorian Crinolines.  I came across the following passage which perfectly sums up exactly what happens when the muse strikes.  Why it did not resonate with me as a young person, I’ll never know.  Perhaps, when you are young you feel you are the only one experiencing the overpowering drive to be creative?  Perhaps you are unwilling to accept that other artists are driven by the same mad muse?  In any case, I have included the passage here for the enjoyment of other writers (and for the edification of their friends and families!):

“Every few weeks she would shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit, and ‘fall into a vortex’, as she expressed it, writing away at her novel with all her heart and soul, for till that was finished she could find no peace.  Her ‘scribbling suit’ consisted of a black woolen pinafore on which she could wipe her pen at will, and a cap of the same material, adorned with a cheerful red bow, into which she bundled her hair when the decks were cleared for action.  This cap was a beacon to the inquiring eyes of her family, who during these periods kept their distance, merely popping in their heads semi-occasionally to ask, with interest, ‘Does genius burn, Jo?’  They did not always venture even to ask this question, but took an observation of the cap, and judged accordingly.  If this expressive article of dress was drawn low upon the forehead, it was a sign that hard work was going on, in exciting moments it was pushed rakishly askew, and when despair seized the author it was plucked wholly off, and cast upon the floor.  At such times the intruder silently withdrew, and not until the red bow was seen gaily erect upon the gifted brow, did anyone dare address Jo.

“She did not think herself a genius by any means, but when the writing fit came on, she gave herself up to it with entire abandon, and led a blissful life, unconscious of want, care, or bad weather, while she sat safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh.  Sleep forsook her eyes, meals stood untasted, day and night were all too short to enjoy the happiness which blessed her only at such times, and made these hours worth living, even if they bore no other fruit.  The divine afflatus usually lasted a week or two, and then she emerged from her ‘vortex’, hungry, sleepy, cross, or despondent.”

All this to say that I am currently emerging from the vortex after a week of particularly productive writing.  I expect (hope!) to fall back into that vortex shortly.  As a result, there will be no new research articles until next week.  I apologize for the delay and encourage you all to sift through some of the old articles for your reading pleasure.

See you next week!

Works Referenced or Cited in this Article

Alcott, Louisa May.  Little Women.  1868.  Gutenberg Press.  Web.

© 2015 Mimi Matthews

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Ranging from the desperately passionate to the treacly sweet, historical love letters are as informative as they are entertaining.  But who amongst our favorite figures of the 19^th century penned the most heart melting missives?  Naturally, one would assume the honors for this would go to Byron, Keats, or Shelley.  Their love letters were sublime, there is no doubt.  However, if you have a yen to read truly smoldering love letters, might I suggest a gentleman who, when not busy conquering the world, expended his time writing scorching hot letters to his wife?

Napoleon Bonaparte was no romantic poet, but one would certainly not know it from his copious correspondence with Joséphine de Beauharnais.  In February of 1796, one month before their marriage (and after being made Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Italy), he wrote the following:

“Seven o’clock in the morning.

“My waking thoughts are all of thee.  Your portrait and the remembrance of last night’s delirium have robbed my senses of repose.  Sweet and incomparable Joséphine, what an extraordinary influence you have over my heart.  Are you vexed?  do I see you sad?  are you ill at ease?  My soul is broken with grief, and there is no rest for your lover.  But is there more for me when, delivering ourselves up to the deep feelings which master me, I breathe out upon your lips, upon your heart, a flame which burns me up ah, it was this past night I realised that your portrait was not you.  You start at noon; I shall see you in three hours.  Meanwhile, dolce amor, accept a thousand kisses, but give me none, for they fire my blood.  N. B.”

Josephine de Beauharnais by François Gérard, 1800.

Napoleon and Joséphine were married in March of 1796.  Napoleon was twenty-seven years old and Joséphine was six years his senior.  It was his first marriage and her second.  One month after the nuptials, they were parted again.  Napoleon wrote to her:

“…Every moment separates me further from you, my beloved, and every moment I have less energy to exist so far from you.  You are the constant object of my thoughts; I exhaust my imagination in thinking of what you are doing.  If I see you unhappy, my heart is torn, and my grief grows greater.  If you are gay and lively among your friends (male and female), I reproach you with having so soon forgotten the sorrowful separation three days ago; thence you must be fickle, and henceforward stirred by no deep emotions.  So you see I am not easy to satisfy; but, my dear, I have quite different sensations when I fear that your health may be affected, or that you have cause to be annoyed; then I regret the haste with which I was separated from my darling.  I feel, in fact, that your natural kindness of heart exists no longer for me, and it is only when I am quite sure you are not vexed that I am satisfied.  If I were asked how I slept, I feel that before replying I should have to get a message to tell me that you had had a good night.  The ailments, the passions of men influence me only when I imagine they may reach you, my dear…”

“To My Sweet Love…” Napoleon’s Letter to Josephine, April 24, 1796.
(Courtesy of Project Gutenberg.)

The next month brought Joséphine another letter of note.  This one is lengthy, but I include it here in its entirety to illustrate how consumed Napoleon was with both passion for his new bride and with doubt that she loved him as much as he loved her.  Only imagine the length of this letter when handwritten!  And the amount of time it must have taken for him to write it, when all the while he was on the brink of battle with two armies in motion.  The letter reads:

“I have received all your letters, but none has affected me like the last.  How can you think, my charmer, of writing me in such terms?  Do you believe that my position is not already painful enough without further increasing my regrets and subverting my reason.  What eloquence, what feelings you portray; they are of fire, they inflame my poor heart!  My unique Joséphine , away from you there is no more joy away from thee the world is a wilderness, in which I stand alone, and without experiencing the bliss of unburdening my soul.  You have robbed me of more than my soul; you are the one only thought of my life.  When I am weary of the worries of my profession, when I mistrust the issue, when men disgust me, when I am ready to curse my life, I put my hand on my heart where your portrait beats in unison. I look at it, and love is for me complete happiness; and everything laughs for joy, except the time during which I find myself absent from my beloved.

Napoleon Bonaparte age 23
by Henri Félix Emmanuel Philippoteaux, (1815-1884).

“By what art have you learnt how to captivate all my faculties, to concentrate in yourself my spiritual existence it is witchery, dear love, which will end only with me.  To live for Joséphine , that is the history of my life.  I am struggling to get near you, I am dying to be by your side; fool that I am, I fail to realise how far off I am, that lands and provinces separate us.  What an age it will be before you read these lines, the weak expressions of the fevered soul in which you reign.  Ah, my winsome wife, I know not what fate awaits me, but if it keeps me much longer from you it will be unbearable my strength will not last out.  There was a time in which I prided myself on my strength, and, sometimes, when casting my eyes on the ills which men might do me, on the fate that destiny might have in store for me, I have gazed steadfastly on the most incredible misfortunes without a wrinkle on my brow or a vestige of surprise: but today the thought that my Joséphine  might be ill; and, above all, the cruel, the fatal thought that she might love me less, blights my soul, stops my blood, makes me wretched and dejected, without even leaving me the courage of fury and despair.  I often used to say that men have no power over him who dies without regrets; but, today, to die without your love, to die in uncertainty of that, is the torment of hell, it is a lifelike and terrifying figure of absolute annihilation I feel passion strangling me.  My unique companion! you whom Fate has destined to walk with me the painful path of life! the day on which I no longer possess your heart will be that on which parched Nature will be for me without warmth and without vegetation.  I stop, dear love! my soul is sad, my body tired, my spirit dazed, men worry me I ought indeed to detest them; they keep me from my beloved.

“I am at Port Maurice, near Oneille; tomorrow I shall be at Albenga.  The two armies are in motion.  We are trying to deceive each other victory to the most skillful!  I am pretty well satisfied with Beaulieu; he need be a much stronger man than his predecessor to alarm me much. I expect to give him a good drubbing.  Don’t be anxious; love me as thine eyes, but that is not enough; as thyself, more than thyself; as thy thoughts, thy mind, thy sight, thy all.  Dear love, forgive me, I am exhausted; nature is weak for him who feels acutely, for him whom you inspire. N. B.”

Napoleon at the Battle of Friedland by Horace Vernet, 1809.

The frequency and fervor of Napoleon’s letters to Joséphine were not impacted by the toils and tribulations of a military campaign.  He wrote to her even when he was exhausted both in body and in spirit.  And his letters were anything but bloodless, perfunctory communications between a powerful man and his absent spouse.  In the following excerpt, written at the end of a particularly dispiriting day, Napoleon begs Joséphine to write to him:

“Soul of my life, write me by every courier, else I shall not know how to exist.  I am very busy here.  Beaulieu is moving his army again.  We are face to face.  I am rather tired; I am every day on horseback.  Adieu, adieu, adieu;  I am going to dream of you.  Sleep consoles me; it places you by my side, I clasp you in my arms.  But on waking, alas! I find myself three hundred leagues from you.”

Interestingly, Joséphine does not appear to have written as frequently to Napoleon.  When she did, her letters were often not up to the future emperor’s passionate standards.  “I am not satisfied with your last letter; it is as cold as friendship,” he complains in one letter.  He begs her to come to him soon, telling her that “fatigue and your absence are too much for me at the same time.”  He even arranges an escort for her, proclaiming that:

“You will soon be beside me, on my breast, in my arms, over your mouth.  Take wings, come quickly, but travel gently.”

Portrait of the Empress Josephine
by Firmin Massot, 1812.

Predictably, Joséphine continued to disappoint.  Napoleon was a fearsome military leader, a man who inspired loyalty and devotion in countless others, but he never seemed to be entirely certain of how his wife felt about him.  Though his own ardent letters were penned with regularity even as he marched across Europe, Joséphine was apparently often too busy to reply.  “Joséphine, how can you remain so long without writing to me?” he asks in one letter.  “Your last laconic letter is dated May 22.”  In another letter, he commands her to send a reply at once, writing:

“Do not keep the courier more than six hours, and let him return at once to bring me the longed for letter of my Beloved.”

Another letter is signed with “A thousand kisses as burning as you are cold.”  And in yet another he berates her for failing to write again:

“You, to whom nature has given a kind, genial, and wholly charming disposition, how can you forget the man who loves you with so much fervor?  No letters from you for three days; and yet I have written to you several times.  To be parted is dreadful, the nights are long, stupid, and wearisome; the day’s work is monotonous.

“This evening, alone with my thoughts, work and correspondence, with men and their stupid schemes, I have not even one letter from you which I might press to my heart.”

Another letter is much in the same vein, though a bit more reproving in tone:

“My Dear, I write very often and you seldom.  You are naughty, and undutiful; very undutiful, as well as thoughtless.  It is disloyal to deceive a poor husband, an affectionate lover.  Ought he to lose his rights because he is far away, up to the neck in business, worries and anxiety.  Without his Joséphine, without the assurance of her love, what in the wide world remains for him.  What will he do?

“…Adieu, charming Joséphine; one of these nights the door will be burst open with a bang, as if by a jealous husband, and in a moment I shall be in your arms.”

Napoléon premier consul by François Gérard, 1803.

In subsequent letters, he chides her for her indifference, telling her that he would prefer that she hate him than that she be cold to him.  He alternately sends her thousands of kisses and fervent embraces, assuring her that “I love you passionately at all times.”  Occasionally, he loses his temper, writing in one letter:

“I don’t love you an atom; on the contrary, I detest you.  You are a good for nothing, very ungraceful, very tactless, very tatterdemalion.  You never write to me; you don’t care for your husband; you know the pleasure your letters give him, and you write him barely half a dozen lines, thrown off any how.  How, then, do you spend the livelong day, madam?  What business of such importance robs you of the time to write to your very kind lover?”

Though even this angry letter is closed with the following heated wish:

“I hope that before long I shall clasp you in my arms, and cover you with a million kisses as burning as if under the equator.”

Napoleon’s letters to Joséphine are written with almost alarming frequency, many of them interspersed with the death and injury tallies of his men.  One wonders that, considering her lack of response, he continued to write her so often and with such burning intensity.  The jealousy in his letters is apparent – and with good reason.  However Napoleon is not only jealous of Joséphine’s lovers, he is jealous of her Pug, Fortune.  He writes:

“You ought to have started on May 24th.  Being good-natured, I waited till June 1st, as if a pretty woman would give up her habits, her friends, both Madame Tallien and a dinner with Barras, and the acting of a new play, and Fortune; yes, Fortune! whom you love much more than your husband, for whom you have only a little of the esteem, and a share of that benevolence with which your heart abounds.  Every day I count up your misdeeds.  I lash myself to fury in order to love you no more.  Bah, don’t I love you the more?  In fact, my peerless little mother, I will tell you my secret.  Set me at defiance, stay at Paris, have lovers let everybody know it never write me a monosyllable! then I shall love you ten times more for it; and it is not folly, a delirious fever! and I shall not get the better of it.  Oh! would to heaven I could get better!”

Napoléon at the Battle of Eylau by Antoine-Jean Gros, 1808.

Do all great military leaders write such wonderful love letters?  What about the Duke of Wellington?  Did Napoleon’s famous counterpart ever send a lady a million kisses that burned as hot as the equator?  Sadly, no.  According to Sir William Fraser in his 19^th century biography, Words on Wellington:

“A real love letter of the Duke’s would be priceless.  I cannot imagine his writing one.  Lord Byron, who found it very troublesome work, copied his out of ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses’; and whenever a fresh innamorata appeared on the scene, she unconsciously received facsimiles of previous epistles.”

The closest we get to love letters from the Duke of Wellington exist within the lengthy correspondence Wellington engaged in with Anna Maria Jenkins, known in her letters as “Miss J.”  Miss J. was a young woman of about twenty years of age at the time she met the 65-year-old hero of Waterloo.  She was also a bit of a religious zealot.  Nevertheless, Wellington does seem to have developed an affection for her.  He gave her a lock of his hair and sent her his likeness.  He visited her.  And over the course of nearly two decades, he sent her almost 400 letters.  Many were letters of apology for some small offense he had given, such as failing to sign his letters with his full name instead of an initial.

Letter to Miss J. from the Duke of Wellington.
(Image Courtesy of Digital Scholarship Services at Fondren Library, Rice University.)

According to Miss J.’s journal, Wellington clutched her hand and proclaimed his love for her upon their very first meeting.  The letters from Wellington that followed, however, are as different from Napoleon’s love letters as night is to day.  One of his earliest letters, written shortly after their first meeting, reads:

“London, Jan. 10, 1835.

“My dear Miss J.,—I have received your letter and enclosures.  I beg to remind you of what I said to you the second day that I saw you; and if you recollect it you will not be surprised at my telling you that I entirely concur in the intention which you have communicated to me.

“I am obliged to you for what you have sent me; and I am

“Ever Yours Most Sincerely,

“Wellington.”

A bit dry, do you think?  A bit bloodless?  Perhaps.  Though if one reads the bulk of the letters that Wellington wrote to Miss J., one can see that they follow a vaguely similar arch to those that Napoleon wrote to Joséphine.  Wellington’s letters are never passionate, but they often verge on the irritable and almost teenager-like – ranging from letters bordering on intimacy to letters where (when angry) he writes to her in the third person.

Portrait of the Duke of Wellington by Sir George Hayter, 1839.

There is also a long-suffering element to Wellington’s letters to Miss J.  She never hesitates to upbraid him for some imagined offense, and yet the duke is rarely put out with her.  In fact, the majority of the time Wellington writes to Miss J. apologetically, claiming he would never offend her as long as he lives.  In the following letter, he responds to her complaints about how he has signed his previous letters as well as to her threats that she will return every letter he ever wrote to her.  It reads:

“My dear Miss J.,—I always understood that the important parts of a Letter were its Contents.  I never much considered the Signature; provided I knew the handwriting; or the Seal provided it effectually closed the Letter.

“When I write to a Person with whom I am intimate, who knows my handwriting I generally sign my Initials.  I don’t always seal my own Letters; they are sometimes sealed by a Secretary, oftener by myself.

“In any Case as there are generally very many to be sealed; and the Seal frequently becomes heated, it is necessary to change it; and by accident I may have sealed a Letter to you with a blank Seal.  But it is very extraordinary if it is so, as I don’t believe I have such a thing!  You will find this Letter however signed and sealed in what you deem the most respectful manner.  And if I should write to you any more; I will take care that they shall be properly signed and sealed to your Satisfaction.

“I am very glad to learn that you intend to send back all the letters I ever wrote to you.  I told you heretofore that I thought you had better burn them all.  But if you think proper to send them in a parcel to my House; I will save you the trouble of committing them to the Flames.

“Believe me Ever Yours most sincerely

“Wellington.”

I am no doubt doing a disservice to the Duke of Wellington here.  He was an older man by this point.  He was an Englishman and a gentleman with a very strong sense of the proprieties.  He was writing to Miss J., a single woman who was young enough to be his granddaughter.  To compare him to Napoleon, a young Frenchman writing to his wife, is probably unfair.  Would their letters have read the same, all things being equal?  I tend to doubt it.  Frankly, even if he were young and writing to his bride, I cannot imagine the Duke of Wellington ever writing love letters that bear resemblance to those written by Napoleon Bonaparte.

In closing, I will just say that I often come across historical love letters in my research.  And while there is certainly a lot to be said for the romantic missives of Keats, Byron, and Shelley, if you are looking for passionate inspiration for your novels (or your personal life!), I thoroughly recommend the writings of Napoleon Bonaparte.  He may have lost the war to Wellington, but when it comes to romance, the Little Corporal still reigns supreme.

Works Referenced or Cited in this Article

Fraser, Sir William.  Words on Wellington.  London: John C. Nimmo, 1889.

Hall, Henry Foljambe.  Napoleon’s Letters to Joséphine .  London: J. M. Dent, 1901.

Herrick, Christine Terhune.  The Letters of the Duke of Wellington to Miss J.  London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1889.  Gutenberg Press.  Web.

© 2015 Mimi Matthews

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Unknown Title by Henriette Ronner-Knip, (1821-1909).

If we are curious about the origin and characteristics of an animal today, we look it up on the internet.  Decades ago, we would have used an encyclopedia for such research.  In the early 19^th century, however, there were handy books like Peter Parley’s Tales of Animals: Comprising Quadrupeds, Birds, Fishes, Reptiles, and Insects (1835).  In this fascinating book, the early 19^th century researcher could learn about such animals as the “Ourang-Outang” and become acquainted with what the author declares are “astonishing facts” and “deep and important reflections.”  As can be expected, these reflections were anything but flattering to that most treacherous and conniving of mammals – the domestic cat.

Samuel Griswold Goodrich, a.k.a Peter Parley, circa 1844.

Parley leaves one in no doubt of his feelings.  When describing the character of the domestic cat, he writes:

“The Cat is assiduous to please, but is sly, distrustful, and treacherous.  She will take advantage of your inattention to steal your breakfast; and if by chance you tread on the tail of one that has been the favourite of years, she will turn on you with teeth and claws, and retaliate the accident with the fiercest spite.  Their affection is only apparent; they are not attached to persons, but to places.  They do not easily exchange their residence, but they forget their old friends and form a new attachment, in cases where one family leaves a house and another enters it, with great facility.”

You will note that Parley refers to cats in the feminine.  One might even infer that he considers the traits he describes to be essentially female traits.  This supposition is further strengthened as he continues to write of the “curious particulars” of the domestic cat:

“Notwithstanding these unamiable traits, her grace, beauty, softness, and insinuating manners, make Puss a general favourite, particularly with ladies.  If Peter Parley had any friends among them, he would whisper in their ear, not as reproach, but as warning, that Puss resembles some of their other favourites, possessing more grace of manner than sincerity of heart.  I hope none of my readers will learn to value beauty and accomplishments more than truth and virtue, because some people attach superior importance to them.”

Image of Domestic Cat from Animal Tales by Peter Parley, 1835.

This may, of course, be nothing more than a typical, early-Victorian morality lesson.  It is not at all uncommon to see authors of this era drawing parallels between some aspect of animal behavior and human nature.  Often, the connections are tissue thin, but that has not stopped a 19^th century moralizer yet.  In this case, attributing human emotion to the instinctive actions of a feline does the domestic cat a huge disservice.  For instance, instincts for hunting, are viewed as “a ruling desire for destruction.”  And a previously tame cat who instinctively lashes out after an injury is seen as being “spiteful.”

Are kittens to be judged as harshly as adult cats?  Parley does not think so.  He writes fondly of the “playfulness of kittens” and admits that “nothing is indeed more amusing than their happy gambols.”  However, he deeply laments that such gentle youngsters should ever grow into such vicious adults, writing:

“Alas! that they should ever cease to be kittens, and get to be old Cats; that they should lose their gentleness and vivacity, and become grave, cunning, selfish, long-faced prowlers, going about seeking what poor rat they may devour!”

Based on this passage, one might be led to believe that Parley feels more sympathy for the rat than the cat!  Later, Parley clarifies his feelings, confessing that “to do Puss justice” the human race could not do well without her.  He states:

“But for her, our houses would be overrun with rats and mice, and our very food would be stolen and carried away by these greedy creatures.”

Playing Cat and Mouse by J. H. Dolph, (1835-1903).

On the topic of feline intellect, Parley is a bit more complementary – even if his praise is somewhat backhanded.  He explains that cats may be taught to perform tricks, like leaping over a stick, but he is sure to remind his readers that “they always do such feats unwillingly.”  As an example, he cites a recent exhibition of cats in Regent Street, London:

“…where the animals, at the bidding of their master, an Italian, turn a wheel, draw up a bucket, ring a bell, and, in doing these things, begin, continue, and stop, as they are commanded.  But the command of their keeper is always enforced with a threatening eye, and often with a severe blow; and the poor creatures exhibit the greatest reluctance to proceed with their unnatural employments.  They have a subdued and piteous look; but the scratches upon their master’s arms show that his task is not always an easy one.”

Parley wisely continues his article on domestic cats addressing such topics as the electrical properties of cat fur and the probability of a cat sucking the breath from an infant.  He ends the article reminding us that cats are no different from their wild cousins the lion and the tiger.  He states:

“The invariable characteristic of the race, of whatever form, of whatever colour, of whatever physical power, the individual variety may be, is a ruling desire for the destruction of animal life.  In some species this desire is carried into action with more boldness, in others with more cunning; but in all there is a mixture of cunning and boldness, more or less mingled with a suspicion which assumes the appearance of fear, the unchanging property of all treacherous natures.”

The Comparative Size of Various Animals, from the Elephant to the Mouse.
Chart from Animal Tales by Peter Parley, 1835.

Was Parley as severe on the domestic dog?  The answer is no.  According to Parley, the dog is endowed with all the “fidelity, courage, and intelligence” that the cat lacks.  Not only that:

“They even display traits of character from which mankind themselves might draw examples worthy of imitation.” 

In the following brief passage, in which the dog is predictably assigned a male persona, Parley describes the domestic dog’s estimable character:

“Always assiduous in serving his owner, and only a friend to his friends, he is indifferent to everyone else.  Constant in his affections, friendly without interest, and much more mindful of benefits than injuries, he is not alienated by unkindness, but even licks the hand that has been just lifted to strike him, and eventually disarms resentment by submissive perseverance.”

Peter Parley was the pseudonym of American author Samuel Griswold Goodrich.  He was born in 1793 and died in 1860.  Did he dislike domestic cats?  Or was his prejudice merely a reflection of the general ignorance of the age?  Certainly fear and hatred of felines was nothing new.  Cats have been viewed with negativity since the middle ages.  But considering that his book was a resource for those seeking information on animals, it is a prime historical example of how ignorance and prejudice begets more ignorance and prejudice.  One wonders in such circumstances how common sense and scientific knowledge ever prevailed.

The Chimney by Henriette Ronner-Knip, (1821-1909).

Thus concludes another of my Friday features on Animals in Literature and History.  If you are interested in adopting a cat or if you would like to donate your time or money to a rescue organization, I urge you to contact your local animal rescue foundation or city animal shelter.  The below links may also be useful as resources:

The Cats Protection League (United Kingdom)

Alley Cat Rescue, Inc. (United States)

Works Referenced or Cited in this Article

Parley, Peter.  Tales of Animals: Comprising Quadrupeds, Birds, Fishes, Reptiles, and Insects.  London: Thomas Tegg, 1835.

© 2015 Mimi Matthews

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