I had never heard of box pews until I started writing the Lively St. Lemeston series! However, they were much more common in England during the Regency than bench-style pews. Wikipedia explains:

Box pews provided privacy and allowed the family to sit together. In the 17th century they could include windows, curtains, tables and even fireplaces, and were treated as personal property that could be willed to legatees. Sometimes the paneling was so high it was difficult to see out, and the privacy was used as a cover for non-devotional activity….By the eighteenth century it became normal to install formal box pews instead of random personal constructions. This provided a more classic line to the church, although Sir Christopher Wren objected to pews in his churches. With the mid-19th century church reforms, box pews were generally swept away and replaced by bench pews. However a number of examples still remain in various churches throughout the United Kingdom.

Part of the church reforms involved changing how clergymen were paid—fees from renting pews provided a good chunk of their salaries previously, so they resisted replacing them with more efficient seating.

Here’s what box pews look like with people sitting in them:

Now, I assumed that these blocked your view of the rest of the congregation but that you could still see the pastor in his raised pulpit. But then I became very confused, because I discovered that the pulpits in Anglican churches of this period were usually not at the front of the church near the altar, but about half-way down the aisle! Did some box pews face backwards? Then how did people see when stuff happened at the altar…?

Apparently this is because I’ve only been to synagogues and Catholic churches. Someone (Ros Clarke, was it you?) explained to me that Anglican church services of the 18th and early 19th century de-emphasized the altar to separate themselves from Catholics. Anglican ministers are not priests! They are just the first among equal congregants. And you’re not even supposed to look at the vicar!

So yeah. Apparently part of the whole we’re-really-really-not-Catholic thing in Georgian Church of England services is that instead of having beautiful services full of pomp, you are supposed to stare at the wall so you don’t get distracted from pure spiritual thoughts. The box pew is actually designed to block your view. (As well as keep the heat in, obviously.) And indeed, they don’t all face the pulpit. Look, in this Rowlandson drawing you can clearly see that the pews in this Church face both directions, some towards and some away from the pulpit, and few people are looking at the preacher.

Of course, the pastor could still see you, which presumably motivated you to not goof off too obviously.

Box pews were such an inefficient use of space (every pew-renting or -owning family got their own and no one else could sit in it even if that family didn’t come to church that week) that in many churches, most of the congregation (the poor people) had to stand up in galleries built partway up on either side of the church. (While I found photos of Georgian-built church galleries equipped with bench-pews, I suspect these were in the minority at the time, but have a higher rate of survival because they are still usable today.)

For example, you can see the box pews and galleries in this early 19th century illustration of St. Mary’s in Horsham, then see the same church in this 1864 photograph, and then how it looks today after extensive renovations, with new pews and the galleries removed.

More images:

Hogarth print showing church seating (and standing)

“St. Martin in the Field,” Rowlandson.

I also found this eighteenth century English evangelical church that was built backwards—the box pews for rich folk were on the second story and actually have their own separate entrances, while the poor people sat in benches on the ground floor.

(By the way, both my Lively St. Lemeston books are currently deep-discounted on Amazon: Sweet Disorder is 99¢ and True Pretenses is $1.99!)

Do you attend religious services? What kind of seating do you prefer?

February is Black History Month so I thought I’d go with the obvious theme. While I know a lot of you are familiar with the Chevalier Saint-Georges (champion fencer, friend of the Prince Regent, Marie Antoinette’s music teacher, forgotten composer [thanks to Napoleon banning his music!]), I thought Abram Petrovich Gannibal might be unknown. He certainly was to me until the brilliant Twitter account @medievalpoc introduced me to him.

 

Gannibal was kidnapped from what is now Camaroon when he was about seven and given as a gift to Peter the Great. The zar took a shine to him, noting his intelligence, and essentially made him his page. The boy was raised in the royal household and accompanied the zar on military campaigns. He was sent to Mez to be educated, spoke several languages, and was part of the intelligentsia in Paris in the early 1700s (supposedly, Voltarie himself called Gannibal “the dark star of the Enlightenment”).

Eventually became a powerful member of the Russian court under Peter’s daughter Elizabeth and was made a major-general in her army. He was given estates (complete with serfs) and raised to the nobility. He was married twice, once very unhappily to a Greek woman and then later to a woman from the nobility of Scandinavia and Germany. The second marriage was extremely happy, and produced ten children, from whom some very surprising people are descended: Most famously, Aleksandr Pushkin! Yes, that Pushkin. But many British aristocrats are also Gannibal’s descendants, including the wife of the 6th Duke of Westminster, the wife of the 5th Duke of Abercorn, and the current Marquesss of Milford Haven.

And of course this is really where my brain started ticking. I have a character in my current series who is based on the Chevalier Saint-Georges. His heroine’s race was determined entirely by which model showed up at the cover shoot. And the model who showed up first was black. I’d been toying with the idea of basing her on Belle, but this just seemed sooooo much cooler. A black, French fencing champion and the granddaughter of an Afro-Russian nobleman? Say it with me: OOOOOOH, YEEEAAAAAH.

Over organized. That is one way that I describe myself. Sometimes that’s good (I do know where almost everything is in our house) and sometimes that’s bad (I really do try my best not to fiddle with Paul’s stacks of stuff.)

So it may be that only over-organized types like me who see the value in a Book Diary. I first started keeping one in 1972 but stopped in 1974 when child #1 made all but the basics impossible. I came across it recently (while tidying, of course) and was intrigued by how much more literary my reading tastes were then. It was well before I discovered the pure joy of reading romance. That happended after child #2 was born in 1975.

It’s interesting (to me at least) that I started a book diary again when Paul retired and our life slowed down considerably, giving me more time to read and more time to keep track of what I read.

Most people complain that they do not have time for a book diary but anyone has time for the sort that I keep. It is nothing more than Date/Title/Author and one or two words about the book that will jog my memory if necessary. If it’s great I give it a star. I do one book per page in a small 5 x 7 notebook (see photo above for current edition) and if I do not finish the book I draw a diagonal line through the page with Date/Title/Author and one or two words describing why I tossed it across the room.

Once or twice I’ve thought about doing a spread sheet so I could look at the diary in different ways — by name of author or by date read but that begins to feel like work. Heaven knows I don’t need to find more ways to spend time at the computer. So it’s still the old-fashioned paper and ink method for me.

My last starred entry is THE WAR THAT SAVED MY LIFE – juvenile fiction. It’s the story of a girl and her brother who are evacuated from London at the beginning of WWII. Loved it, laughed and cried. My last literary entry is THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE HER by Junot Daiz (for my book club) My note says great writing, unlikable characters but I did not need my notes to remind me. It is a fascinating look at the Dominican immigrant culture and filled with bad language and sex which would not have bothered me a bit if I had actually liked any of the characters. My last unread entry is THE NEW YORK TIMES PRESENTS SMARTER BY SUNDAY which defines itself as “fifty two weekends of essential knowledge for the curious mind.” I can tell you the topics were not ones that I was curious about. My most recent romance is Lavinia Klein’s latest RAVISHING RUBY. Erotic is not my favorite romance subgenre but Lavinia’s are so clever and endearing that I enjoy every word.

So why keep a Book Diary? So you can remind yourself of books you’ve read. (Oh, yeah, I loved that book) So you know where to look when someone asks for a good book to read and you draw a blank. (Better than “Uhm.”)So you can congratulate yourself on how much you read.

What about you? Do you keep a Book Diary and if not can you tell me what was the last fabulous book you read, or the last literary book or the last one you did not finish. Oh and the last romance!