It’s Sandy again. After telling you all about the joys of  Rhenish carnival in Germany in my last post, I’d like to take you back to nineteenth-century London, home of many heroes and heroines in historical romance, in today’s post.

We might like to think that our traffic woes  — traffic jams, incomprehensible bus routes, or mad drivers – are a product of our modern age, but we couldn’t be more wrong. Traffic, the state of the roads, and, later, public transport caused already the people in the nineteenth century countless woes. Londoners in particular were well acquainted with traffic jams.

Partly, this problem was caused by the sheer numbers of carriages, carts, and cabs that drove on London’s streets each day and that were joined by countless pedestrians, all kinds of street sellers, and livestock.  Add to that some omnibuses, which became a common sight in London from 1829 onwards, when George Shillibeer’s first two horse-drawn buses took up their service. Thanks to Shillibeer’s success, other companies followed and within two decades serval bus services and routes had been established in London. Bus drivers and passengers were the butt of the joke in many Punch cartoons – and many points that the magazine ridiculed are certainly familiar to modern users of public transport.  🙂

The traffic problem in London was not helped by the state of the roads: many of them were unpaved and / or full of holes (the cartoon is again from Punch).

But even as more and more roads became paved in the course of the century, they did not necessarily become easier to navigate. For example, in the 1840s the newspapers were full of reports of accidents caused by the slippery wooden pavement in some parts of the metropolis. The following snippet is from Lloyds Weekly London Newspaper, Sunday, 11 May 1845:

Indeed,  accidents on the Strand became so numerous that one month later, in June 1845, it was decided that the wooden pavement between Bedford Street and Charing Cross should be replaced by granite.

Large society events could also prove disruptive for traffic. Don’t we all love those splendid ball scenes in Regency romances? Ah, but how do our heroes and heroines (not to speak of the countless other guests) get to those balls? They come by carriage, of course. And if 100 or 200 or even more people try to get by carriage to the same place at the same time, you inevitably end up with an interesting traffic situation.  In addition, the following cartoon by Richard Doyle (also from Punch) (yes, I do love Mr. Punch *g*) suggests that the arrival of guests for a ball provided a nice spectacle for common people (which couldn’t have helped with the traffic):

And as to the parking situation, London’s inns might have had underground stables,  but multi-storey car parks nineteenth-century London did not have – alas. During a ball or other great events carriages were thus often simply left standing in the streets and created major obstructions.  For example, in July 1839, when the dress rehearsal for the Eglinton Tournament was held in the garden of the Eyre Arms in St. John’s Wood, about two thousand people (most of them members of the aristocracy and the gentry) came to watch the spectacle. “To give some idea of the number of persons present,” the Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser writes, “it is but necessary to state, that the whole of the adjacent roads and streets, for nearly half a mile round, were lined by carriages three or four deep.” What joy!

You are invited to a tournament. In Scotland no less! There will be a few men in kilts, lots of people in medieval costume, knights in shining armor, and a multitude of shawls and bonnets that are, alas, neither waterproof nor color-proof. (Btw, you might want to bring an umbrella!!!)

“A tournament?” you might wonder. “Are we talking medieval romance now?”

Nope. We are talking about a tournament in 1839. That summer ten thousands of people — ultra-conservative members of the British aristocracy and gentry as well as people from all around the world — flocked to Ayrshire in Scotland and overran several small, sleepy villages (the traffic jams in the area were dreadful and unlike anything anybody in Ayrshire had ever witnessed) in order to watch young Lord Eglinton’s medieval spectacle. He and some of his friends were to don medieval armor (commissioned from Messrs. Pratt in Bond Street, London) and joust like medieval knights. You know, just like the characters in Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe!

The noble knights had rehearsed for weeks in the garden of the Eyre Arms in St. John’s Wood (the “dress rehearsal” was watched by about 2000 people, which gives you some indication of the interest the tournament elicited), and they had given themselves proper chivalric names; names like The Knight of the Dragon (= the Marquis of Waterford) or The Knight of the Dolphin (= the Earl of Cassillis) or even The Knight of the Burning Tower (= Sir F. Hopkins). Lord Eglinton was Lord of the Tournament, and his stepfather Sir Charles Lamb acted as Knight Marshal of the Lists. As every tournament needs a Queen of Beauty to crown the victors, this role was given to Lady Seymour, who was allegedly one of the most beautiful women in all of Britain.

But why would anybody want to give a tournament in 1839?

From the late 18th century onward, the Middle Ages had garnered new interest in Britain. The upper classes put medieval follies and fake ruins into their gardens or built themselves castles. Many of these neo-gothic buildings were invested with political symbolism, for medieval architecture became increasingly regarded as a symbol of Old England, where democracy was an unheard of thing. In addition, there was a flood of studies on all aspects of medieval life; portraits of people in medieval armor became all the rage; and Regency ladies amused themselves by painting medieval scenes on blinds.

But to spark the frenzy for all things medieval which emerged in the 19th century, it needed something more. It needed fiction written by an author who filled the imagination of his readers with images of noble knights and heroic deeds and whose imitators would feed and ever-growing audience with ever more glorious tales of the days of old when knights were bold. This author was Sir Walter Scott.

Numerous adaptations of Scott’s novels as well as his imitators increasingly presented audiences with an indealized version — a Disneyfied version, if you like — of the Middle Ages. The feudal age was transformed into a happy, glorious time when everybody knew their place and men were still men (hey, those knights fought against evil! and all kinds of monsters!! DRAGONS!!!!) and women stood helpless around, waiting to be rescued by a noble knight.

So when the old king died and a new queen was about to be crowned, everybody was looking forward to those age-old customs: the public state banquet for the Peers in Westminster Hall after the coronation service and that most wonderful ceremony of the King’s Champion riding into Westminster Hall and challenging all present to deny the queen’s right to the throne. It was going to be wonderful! Fabulous! And Sir Charles Lamb (Lord Eglinton’s stepfather) as Knight Marshal of the Royal Household was to marshal the Champion for Queen Victoria.

But then, alas, it was announced by the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, that the young queen was to be crowned without antiquated medieval pomp and circumstance. There would be no banquet. No Queen’s Champion.

The Tories were incensed. There were protests in the House of Lords against this “Penny Coronation,” yet despite heated arguments, the Prime Minister stood firm. Poor Sir Charles and his whole family were utterly disappointed. To cheer Lord Eglinton up, one of his acquaintances suggested that he should add some kind of medieval party to the next annual private horse race at Eglinton Park. And soon a rumour spread like wildfire: Lord Eglinton was going to give a tournament at his country estate in Ayrshire! How romanti! How exciting! And because Lord Eglinton was a bit of a young fool, he finally announced that the rumour was true and thus embarked on what Ian Anstruther has called “the greatest folly of the century.”

——

You’ll hear more about the Eglinton Tournament next month when I’m going to launch a new series of novellas set in the early Victorian age. In the first story, THE BRIDE PRIZE, my hero and heroine are going to meet at the tournament. In medieval costume, of course, but sans umbrella, alas.