Back to Top

Category: Research

Posts in which we talk about research

A Wellington Poor Excuse For A Blog Redux plus the Olympics

Updated on by

Today I’m swamped with a writing deadline and a minor family delay and to top it off, I’m also a guest at USA Today’s Happy Ever After blog (Stop by and say hi–please!!!).

So I’m going to cheat a little here at Risky Regencies and give you a redux of a blog I wrote in 2009.

But I can’t start the week without saying a “WAY TO GO” to London and the UK for a fabulously done Olympics! I didn’t get to watch as much as I would have liked, but I kept up with the highlights and am proud of our USA team (especially the women) and of the British team, coming in THIRD in medal count. That is amazing. Something to add to that British pride so greatly showcased throughout the whole Olympics.

Back to my old blog….When in doubt (or on deadline) who can you turn to but Wellington? I mean, he saved the day from Napoleon, didn’t he?

Here’s the text of the 2009 blog:

As a certified Wellington Groupie (Kristine Hughes is the founding member) and in continuing honor of the Waterloo Anniversary, I thought I would simply share some of my Wellington-related photos and thoughts.

When I first fell in raptures about Wellington (or dear Artie, as Kristine calls him), it was at Stratfield Saye, Wellington’s country house. Of all the houses we saw on that 2003 trip to England, Stratfield Saye seemed the most like it was a home. It was a home. The present duke’s son and his family live there, but you could still feel the first Duke in every room. An outer building housed the funeral carriage that carried the Duke’s body through London. A recording played of all his honors, as had been read out during his funeral. I realized that this had been a truly great man.


On that trip we also got to go up to the top of the Wellington Arch in London, and of course we toured Apsley House, also known as Number One London. Apsley House felt more like a museum than a house and well it should. It was filled with wonderful art and artifacts.

Also in London we visited Lock and Co, a Hatters shop that has been in Mayfair since 1676. On display there are Wellington’s and Nelson’s hats, instantly recognizable.

I don’t claim to be an expert on Wellington. I’ve just read one biography (and can’t remember which one it was), but I think of him as a man with great integrity, courage and honor. As a boy he didn’t show much promise, but his mother sent him to a military academy in Europe (near Waterloo, I think) and he found his strength. As a military man he understood how to use his resources, he was clever, and he was brave. He rode the battlefield during Waterloo, was everywhere he could be and ignored the danger to himself. He cared about his men. One of my favorite Wellington quotes is: “Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.”

He was not a good husband, although he felt honor-bound to marry his wife, because she thought they were betrothed and had waited for him while he served in India. He had many dalliances throughout their marriage and one has to wonder how his wife felt as this man grew in greatness and increasingly left her behind. His sons could not match his success. Who could? I like this quote from his son after the Duke’s death, “Imagine what it will be when the Duke of Wellington is announced, and only I walk in the room.”

The Duke was a man who was very sure of himself and his opinions. I suspect he had a big ego, but he also had a sense of humor. In the display at Lock and Co. was a little caricature of Wellington, making fun of the term Wellington boot for the style of boot he favored. At Stratfield Saye there was a room papered with hundreds of caricatures of the Duke, which I thought was akin to a writer papering a bathroom with rejection letters. The boot one was was there, too.

What is your opinion of the Duke of Wellington? Pro and Con. Any favorite quotes or vignettes of his life?

Back to 2012…Or what was your favorite Olympic moment?

A Not So Respectable Gentleman? is still on sale! Get it while you can and enter my new contest!

Next week I promise something original….

Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged , | 8 Replies

Peterloo anniversary today

Updated on by

Today, August 16, is the anniversary of the Peterloo Massacre of 1816 when a peaceful meeting of people seeking reform of the Parliamentary system were attacked by the military, leaving eleven dead and over five hundred wounded.

Organized by the Manchester Patriotic Union Society, a large crowd of millworkers from all over Lancashire gathered in St. Peters Field, Manchester that day–anywhere between 30,000 and 153,00, depending on which source you believe–to hear Henry “Orator” Hunt and others speak. It was apparently a glorious summer day and there was a holiday atmosphere, with people wearing their Sunday best.

Local magistrates, however, were convinced the meeting would become a riot, and had arranged for troop to stand by. They sent in the local militia, the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry, who attacked the cart that formed the speakers’ platform. The 15th Hussars were then sent in to “rescue” the Yeomanry and although at first people tried to stand their ground by linking hands, they were cut down and forced to flee–many were hurt by being trampled in the panic. The speakers and newspaper reporters were arrested and imprisoned.

The woman in the white dress on the platform is thought to be Mary Hildes, a passionate radical who formed the Manchester Female Reform Group, and was one of the main speakers at Peterloo. She was also an early proponent of birth control and when she attempted to distribute books on the subject she was accused in the local press of selling pornography. The women radicals didn’t campaign, though, for female suffrage, but supported the male radical cause. They weren’t taken seriously by the press (of course. Note the dirty implications in the drawin, the kneejerk reaction of a Georgian cartoonists). They weren’t even taken seriously by other women. As The Times reported that day:

A group of women of Manchester, attracted by the crowd, came to the corner of the street where we had taken our post. They viewed the Oldham Female Reformers for some time with a look in which compassion and disgust was equally blended, and at last burst out into an indignant exclamation–“Go home to your families, and leave sike-like as these to your husbands and sons, who better understand them.”

Many were outraged by the massacre, including local mill owners who witnessed it. James Wroe of the Manchester Observer was probably the first to call the massacre “Peterloo,” in ironic reference to Waterloo. The government supported the action of the troops, and by the end of the year had passed the infamous Six Acts that suppressed freedom of speech and of the press and made radical gatherings illegal. There wasn’t a public enquiry into Peterloo until 1820. It wasn’t until 1832 that the Reform Bill corrected some of the worst injustices of the electoral system and in 1918 all men, and women over 30, were given the vote.

This is based on a post I did five–aargh, five years ago. There’s now a campaign  to get an official memorial to the Peterloo Massacre since it was such a significant part of Manchester’s history. Here’s a picture from their Facebook page taken today of a demonstrator on the site–you can see how it’s changed–holding aloft a liberty cap.

So what was the situation before 1832? About one in ten men could vote, because the right to vote was tied in to income and property and the areas represented ignored population shifts. Over sixty “Rotten Boroughs,” scarcely populated areas, or “Pocket Boroughs,” shoo-ins for local landowners were represented, but the huge industrial towns like Manchester were barely represented at all. Also voting was not done by ballot, so the few who could vote could easily be coerced or bribed. Middlemarch by George Eliot is set in this period.

I commented in 2007 that we don’t see too many books about the “real” history of the Regency but I think that’s changed. On the other hand we also seem to have more dukes to balance things out. How do you think things have changed in romance and in the fictional depiction of the Regency?

Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged | 3 Replies

To The Sea – Brighton’s Royal Pavilion

Updated on by

When my children were young, this was the time of year we would always spend a week at the beach. My In-laws then owned a condo at North Myrtle Beach, SC, and every year we would vacation there. It was a great condo, right on the beach, on the third floor and facing the ocean. It had three bedrooms and two full baths, plus a screened in balcony. We went there so many years that it felt like home and North Myrtle Beach was nearly as familiar as our neighborhood.

During the Regency, the Prince Regent also owned a “beach house.” His house was at the beach resort town of Brighton and he, too, “vacationed” there.

The Prince first visited Brighton in 1783 at aged twenty-one, in the company of his fast-living uncle, The Duke of Cumberland, partly to escape the constraints of his father’s court and partly for health reasons. His physicians thought sea-bathing would ease the swelling of glands of his neck. By 1786 he purchased a modest Brighton residence and shortly thereafter he hired Henry Hollard to build him a grander residence, a neo-classical structure with a central domed rotunda surrounded by Ionic columns. His residence was nearby the villa where he’d installed Mrs. Fitzherbert, his secret wife.

The Prince’s presence in Brighton was a boon to the town’s economy. Soon the fashionable world followed him to Brighton, and more elegant residences were built for them. Brighton remained the fashionable place for the elite to spend their summers. During these years the Prince hired architect P. F. Robinson to expand the beach house. He also purchased the land around what was named the Marine Pavilion. The stable he had built between 1803 and 1808, in the Indian style, soon dwarfed the pavilion. There was nothing to do but make his beach house even grander.

By this time (1815) the Prince had became Prince Regent, and he hired John Nash as the architect to redesign the exterior. The Prince Regent wanted the house built in an Indian style, like the stables. Nash had never traveled to India, but he was inspired by drawings in William and Thomas Daniell’s four volume Oriental Scenery and the result is the building as it appears today.

The interiors of the Pavilion were designed by Frederick Crace and Robert Jones and their rooms are a remarkable sight to see. I was lucky enough to visit the Royal Pavilion in 2003 and walked through those rooms. These images can’t quite do them justice. The house was completed in 1823. By that time the Prince had become King George IV.

The Royal Pavilion, in my opinion, is the perfect beach house, because it is decorated in a style you’d never live with at home. It just skirts the boundary between beautiful and tacky (but lands mostly on the beautiful side).

Amanda, remember that the Royal Pavilion does weddings! You could be married in the Grand Saloon and have your wedding sit-down in the dining room!! I’d so totally come for it!

Where is your favorite beach vacation? And do you think Amanda should be married in Brighton at the Royal Pavilion?

Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged , | 8 Replies

The Curious Peach

Updated on by

We broke our previous greed record yesterday by consuming all of the peaches, bought at a farmers’ market on Sunday, that were supposed to last the week. Yum. So I thought I’d talk about peaches.

Peaches have been around for a long, long time, from China to Europe via the Silk Road, to America in the seventeenth century and into commercial production here in the nineteenth century. There were peaches at Pemberley:

The next variation which their visit afforded was produced by the entrance of servants with cold meat, cake, and a variety of all the finest fruits in season; but this did not take place till after many a significant look and smile from Mrs. Annesley to Miss Darcy had been given, to remind her of her post. There was now employment for the whole party; for though they could not all talk, they could all eat; and the beautiful pyramids of grapes, nectarines, and peaches soon collected them round the table. Pride and Prejudice

Back to early times, the Romans regarded peaches as a good mix with the savory (I’ve broiled pork chops with smushed up peaches, wine, and mint in my more carnivorous days and they were great). Here’s a recipe from Apicius, a collection of 4th- 5th century AD recipes which might be terrific. I don’t know … the Romans really loved their fish sauce, but really, fish sauce? Try at your own risk, Sister Mairi Jean’s Peaches in Cumin Sauce.

Jumping forward a few centuries–people like me should take note that King John of England died in 1216, some say from overindulging in peaches at a banquet nine days before. Here’s a recipe from 1597 for Peach Marmalade.

To make drie Marmelet of Peches.
Take your Peaches and pare them and cut them from the stones, and mince them very finely and steepe them in rosewater, then straine them with rosewater through a course cloth or Strainer into your Pan that you will seethe it in, you must have to every pound of peches halfe a pound of suger finely beaten, and put it into your pan that you do boile it in, you must reserve out a good quantity to mould your cakes or prints withall, of that Suger, then set your pan on the fire, and stir it til it be thick or stiffe that your stick wil stand upright in it of it self, then take it up and lay it in a platter or charger in prety lumps as big as you wil have the mould or printes, and when it is colde print it on a faire boord with suger, and print them on a mould or what know or fashion you will, & bake in an earthen pot or pan upon the embers or in a feate cover, and keep them continually by the fire to keep them dry. The Second Part of the Good Hus-wives Jewell, (1597); Thomas Dawson. From theoldfoodie.com

I couldn’t find a whole lot about peach recipes in England in the Regency period. There’s a possibility that quinces were more popular than peaches, according to historicfood.com (great pics here!). A lot of the historic recipes I did find were of the use them up quick variety and/or preserve them and if you’ve ever visited a pick your own orchard you’ll know exactly what I mean.

Closer to our own time, Thomas Jefferson embraced peach cultivation with enthusiasm, growing thirty-eight varieties at Monticello, compared to only two varieties at Washington’s Mount Vernon. Jefferson made mobby, an alcoholic drink from peaches, claiming that “20 bushels of peaches will make 75 galls. of mobby, i.e. 5/12 of its bulk” (The Fruits and Fruit Trees of Monticello. Peter J. Hatch).

I’m fascinated by the wealth of varieties of peaches. Peaches are peaches, right? Unless they’re white peaches or doughnut peaches, which do have distinctive flavors. William Cobbett commented, “It is curious enough that people in general think little of the sort in the case of peaches though they are so choice in the case of apples. A peach is a peach, it seems, though I know no apples between which there is more difference than there is between different sorts of peaches.” (Quoted in Hatch, above).

Here are a couple of recipes from The Virginia Housewife by Mary Randolph, first published in 1825:

Peaches in Brandy. Get yellow soft peaches, perfectly free from defect and newly gathered, but not too ripe; place them in a pot, and cover them with cold weak lye; turn over those that float frequently, that the lye may act equally on them; at the end of an hour take them out, wipe them carefully with a soft cloth to get off the down and skin, and lay them in cold water; make a syrup as for the apricots, and proceed in the same manner, only scald the peaches more.

Peach Marmalade. Take the ripest soft peaches, (the yellow ones make the prettiest marmalade,) pare them, and take out the stones; put them in the pan with one pound of dry light coloured brown sugar to, two of peaches: when they are juicy, they do not require water: with a silver or wooden spoon, chop them with the sugar; continue to do this, and let them boil gently till they are a transparent pulp, that will be a jelly when cold. Puffs made of this marmalade are very delicious.

And here’s a Peach Pudding recipe from later in the century, adapted from Recipes Tried and True, compiled by the Ladies’ Aid Society of the First Presbyterian Church, Marion, Ohio, 1894.

peaches, cooked and sweetened
pint sweet milk
4 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon butter
a little salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 cups flour
cream

Fill a pudding dish with peaches, cooked and sweetened; pour over them a batter made of one pint of sweet milk, four eggs, one cup of sugar, one tablespoon of butter, a little salt, one teaspoon of baking powder, and two cups of flour. Place in oven, and bake until a rich brown. Serve with cream.


The title of this post, by the way is from Andrew Marvell. I do love the phrase “stumbling on melons”, and if I’d discovered these lines sooner I might have blogged about melons:

The nectarine, and curious peach,
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass

What are your favorite peach recipes? Do share! I’m off downstairs where a bowl of fresh peaches awaits…

Posted in Research | Tagged , , , , | 10 Replies

Extreme Weather, 1814 Style

Updated on by

Today the news will be filled with weather reports, as we in the US discover if Tropical Storm Isaac turns into a hurricane and if it will hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, where Katrina did such devastating damage in 2005.

For my blog today, I went looking for extreme weather during the Regency period. And I found it! What amazing synchronicity.

Almost 198 years to this day, a storm figured in the burning of Washington, D.C. during the War of 1812.

On August 19, 1814, British warships sailed up the Patuxent River. The British army disembarked in Maryland and defeated the American forces at the Battle of Bladensburg.  The British marched on to Washington, D.C. on August 24, while government officials and residents fled the city, including, at the last minute, the First Lady, Dolley Madison, who rescued the Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington.

Unfortunately for the British, there were no representatives of government left in the nation’s capitol to surrender, so, after eating a dinner meant for Dolley Madison’s party in the White House, the British admiral gave the order to burn the public buildings of the city. The White House and Capitol were still burning on August 25 when a severe thunderstorm struck. It is thought that a  tornado tore through the city, catching the British troops by surprise. Several soldiers were killed in the storm’s destruction, and the storm stopped the further spread of the fire.

Afterward the admiral asked a Washington lady, “Great God, Madam! Is this the kind of storm to which you are accustomed in this infernal country?”

“No, sir,” the lady replied. “This is a special interposition of Providence to drive our enemies from our city.”

The British left hours later, returning to their ships, which had also suffered damage in the storm.

There is a more detailed account of the storm here.

Interesting note for those of us who love books. The Library of Congress which was then housed in the Capitol, was destroyed by the fire. One year later, Thomas Jefferson sold his personal library to Congress to replace the lost books. More about Jefferson’s library here.

Are you in Isaac’s path? If so, stay safe. Do you have any storm memories? I remember driving in every direction after Hurricane Agnes, looking for a way to get home that wasn’t blocked by water.

I’ll select yesterday’s winner after midnight tonight. So there is still time to comment on guest Laurel Hawkes’ blog for a chance to win.

If you are near Raleigh/Durham, NC, on Wednesday Aug 29, I’m going to be doing a reading from A Not So Respectable Gentleman? at Lady Jane’s Salon. I’d love to see some Risky readers there!

Posted in Regency, Research | Tagged | 8 Replies