#1760s Britain

[digitalfashionmuseum]

Yellow Silk Robe à la Française, 1760-1765, British.

Victoria and Albert Museum.

[jeannepompadour]

Eva Maria Veigel, Mrs David Garrick, with a mask, attr. to Johann Zoffany, 1752-63

[whats-in-a-sentence]

"Our bells are threadbare with ringing of victories," one well-placed Briton bragged in 1759, and in 1763 the exhausted French had no option but to sign away most of their overseas empire (Figure 9.8).

"Why the West Rules – For Now: The patterns of history and what they reveal about the future" - Ian Morris

[fatehbaz]

Travel back [...] a few hundred years to before the industrial revolution, and the wildlife of Britain and Ireland looks very different indeed. 

Take orcas: while there are now less than ten left in Britain’s only permanent (and non-breeding) resident population, around 250 years ago the English [...] naturalist John Wallis gave this extraordinary account of a mass stranding of orcas on the north Northumberland coast [...]. If this record is reliable, then more orcas were stranded on this beach south of the Farne Islands on one day in 1734 than are probably ever present in British and Irish waters today. [...]

Other careful naturalists from this period observed orcas around the coasts of Cornwall, Norfolk and Suffolk. I have spent the last five years tracking down more than 10,000 records of wildlife recorded between 1529 and 1772 by naturalists, travellers, historians and antiquarians throughout Britain and Ireland, in order to reevaluate the prevalence and habits of more than 150 species [...].

In the early modern period, wolves, beavers and probably some lynxes still survived in regions of Scotland and Ireland. By this point, wolves in particular seem to have become re-imagined as monsters [...].

Elsewhere in Scotland, the now globally extinct great auk could still be found on islands in the Outer Hebrides. Looking a bit like a penguin but most closely related to the razorbill, the great auk’s vulnerability is highlighted by writer Martin Martin while mapping St Kilda in 1697 [...].

[A]nd pine martens and “Scottish” wildcats were also found in England and Wales. Fishers caught burbot and sturgeon in both rivers and at sea, [...] as well as now-scarce fishes such as the angelshark, halibut and common skate. Threatened molluscs like the freshwater pearl mussel and oyster were also far more widespread. [...]

Predators such as wolves that interfered with human happiness were ruthlessly hunted. Authors such as Robert Sibbald, in his natural history of Scotland (1684), are aware and indeed pleased that several species of wolf have gone extinct:

There must be a divine kindness directed towards our homeland, because most of our animals have a use for human life. We also lack those wild and savage ones of other regions. Wolves were common once upon a time, and even bears are spoken of among the Scottish, but time extinguished the genera and they are extirpated from the island.

The wolf was of no use for food and medicine and did no service for humans, so its extinction could be celebrated as an achievement towards the creation of a more civilised world. Around 30 natural history sources written between the 16th and 18th centuries remark on the absence of the wolf from England, Wales and much of Scotland. [...]

In Pococke’s 1760 Tour of Scotland, he describes being told about a wild species of cat – which seems, incredibly, to be a lynx – still living in the old county of Kirkcudbrightshire in the south-west of Scotland. Much of Pococke’s description of this cat is tied up with its persecution, apparently including an extra cost that the fox-hunter charges for killing lynxes:

They have also a wild cat three times as big as the common cat. [...] It is said they will attack a man who would attempt to take their young one [...]. The country pays about £20 a year to a person who is obliged to come and destroy the foxes when they send to him. [...]

The capercaillie is another example of a species whose decline was correctly recognised by early modern writers. Today, this large turkey-like bird [...] is found only rarely in the north of Scotland, but 250–500 years ago it was recorded in the west of Ireland as well as a swathe of Scotland north of the central belt. [...] Charles Smith, the prolific Dublin-based author who had theorised about the decline of herring on the coast of County Down, also recorded the capercaillie in County Cork in the south of Ireland, but noted: This bird is not found in England and now rarely in Ireland, since our woods have been destroyed. [...] Despite being protected by law in Scotland from 1621 and in Ireland 90 years later, the capercaillie went extinct in both countries in the 18th century [...].

---

Images, captions, and all text above by: Lee Raye. “Wildlife wonders of Britain and Ireland before the industrial revolution – my research reveals all the biodiversity we’ve lost.” The Conversation. 17 July 2023. [Map by Lee Raye. Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[arthistoryanimalia]

For #NationalTeaDay 🫖☕️:

Teapot with Fossil Decoration British, Staffordshire, c. 1760–65 Salt-glazed stoneware with enamel decoration 4 1/4 × 7 1/4 in. (10.8 × 18.4 cm) The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 37.22.6a,b

“Though it's got a surprisingly modern look, this teapot was made in the 18th-century in Staffordshire—the heart of Britain's pottery industry. The area’s limestone yielded prehistoric fossils, and potters often turned them into whimsical motifs for teapots.”

[jewellery-box]

Dress. Scotland, Glasgow (place of manufacture), circa 1863. Wool, cotton.

Glasgow Museum Collections

Woman’s dress in light purple wool embroidered with in purple and white thread in tambour-work in an abstract pattern. High round neckline trimmed with lace, bodice loosely pleated from shoulders to wide v-shape at straight waistline with two narrow vertical pieces of gauze with tambour-work centre front with fastening behind of nine metal hooks and thread eyes attached to lining. Full-length sleeves with short pointed frill at shoulder edged with tambour-work, applied narrow piece of gauze around lower arm to suggest folded back cuff, hem edged with white lace. Skirt, full-length, pleated into waistband with tambour-work border around lower half, opening at front fastened by two metal hooks and thread eyes with small watch pocket in waistband. Bodice and sleeves lined with glazed cotton, skirt lined with cotton.

This beautiful dress is made from light purple wool. The silhouette follows the fashions of the early 1860s with a softly draped bodice and wide, full-length skirt that would have been held out by a steel-framed cage-crinoline.

The dress is decorated with an abstract pattern in purple and white thread tambour-work. The stitch resembles chain-stitch but is worked with the cloth stretch over a hoop, known as tambour, using a small hook rather than a needle. The technique originated in India and reached Britain the 1760s. By the early 19th century the west of Scotland was a leading centre for manufacturing tamboured muslins, with up to 20,000 women and girls in total working in the British industry.

[ltwilliammowett]

What did masculinity mean to sailors in the Royal Navy in Victorian times?

uff that's a question that i can't just answer. Because there are whole academic theses that just deal with it, because there are many aspects involved. Masculinity was always an issue, but it became particularly important under Queen Victoria, because now a woman was in power and there were hardly any wars. Hence the focus on discovery and emphasising the growing empire.

At home, the man was still a gentleman and showed this in his appearance, but the soldier, sailor or officer is different, his appearance is designed for power and masculinity and is shown in the uniforms. Earlier in the 18th -early 19th century the man was a gentleman especially the officer, the Sailor a workhorse without uniform. Later we move away from wide coats and towards narrow waists, broad shoulders emphasised by wide epaulettes and the sailor himself gets a uniform, which forms a completely different image. Together with the way the world itself is changing, this appearance is also intentional. Politics is changing, the tone is getting rougher, the man is in demand again and this is also reflected in the armies, not necessarily in society itself, because there the man is an elegant gentleman. outwardly, however, you have to show strength and must not allow yourself any weakness, because even if you are ruled by a queen, it is her men who show and demonstrate their power to the outside world. This, let's call it men's behaviour, this proud, strong appearance continued until the Second World War, only from then on did it slowly diminish.

This is just a small outline of what research is concerned with and it is a really deep subject. If you would like to read more about it, have a look at Manliness in Britain, 1760-1900 and here.

https://scholarspace.library.gwu.edu/downloads/000000506?disposition=inline&locale=en

But I hope I have been able to help you at least a little further.

[catherinetheprincessofwales]

The Martineau Family | French Huguenots Norwich Maître Chirurgien (Master Surgeon), David Martineau (1726-1768) and his wife Sarah Meadows (1725-1800). David Martineau was the grandson of Gaston Martineau (c. 1654-1726), a surgeon in Dieppe, who moved to Norwich after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685; the edict had allowed French Protestants freedom of religion and the Huguenots left France for safety. The arrival of this large amount of new immigrants into Britain in the 1680s meant that a new word came into the English language to describe them: ‘rés’ or refugees. They are therefore considered the ‘first refugees’ to arrive to the British Isles.

The Princess of Wales (b. 1982) is a descendant of the couple via their son Thomas Martineau, a textile manufacturer (1764-1826) and his wife Elizabeth Rankin (1772-1848) the couples second daughter was famed sociologist and abolitionist Harriet Martineau (1802-1876). Film Director Guy Ritchie (b. 1962) is a descendent of David and Sarah Martineau via their son Peter Finch Martineau, a businessman and philanthropist (1755-1847) and his wife Catherine Marsh (1760-1853). The Princess and Guy Ritchie are 6th cousins 1x removed.

[whencyclopedia]

Treaty of Paris of 1783

The Treaty of Paris, signed on 3 September 1783 by representatives from Great Britain and the United States, was the peace agreement that formally ended the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) and recognized the United States as an independent nation. The treaty was considered generous to the United States, fixing its border at the Mississippi River and thereby doubling its territory.

Background: The World Turned Upside Down

On 19 October 1781, the battered British army marched out of Yorktown, Virginia. Dressed in resplendent new uniforms freshly issued for the occasion, the British soldiers passed between the French and American armies to throw their muskets onto a steadily growing pile of surrendered arms. Emotions were running high; some British soldiers wept as they laid down their weapons, while others haphazardly threw their muskets onto the pile in the hopes that they would smash. Lord Charles Cornwallis, commander of the surrendering British army, was not present at the ceremony, having pled illness. It was left to his second-in-command, General Charles O'Hara, to offer his sword to American General George Washington, who refused, instead motioning for O'Hara to give the sword to his own second-in-command, General Benjamin Lincoln. According to legend, as the ceremony took place, the military bands played a tune aptly titled "The World Turned Upside Down".

As this dramatic scene suggests, it was immediately apparent that the Siege of Yorktown marked an important turning point in the war. But in the direct aftermath of the siege, few could have anticipated just how significant it had been. Despite Cornwallis' surrender, the British army certainly had the military capacity to continue fighting, as they still possessed sizable military presences in New York City, Charleston, Canada, and the West Indies. Indeed, King George III of Great Britain (r. 1760-1820) and Prime Minister Lord Frederick North, had every intention of planning a campaign for the upcoming 1782 season. The king and his ministers knew that the fledgling United States was on the verge of failing. The Continental currency issued by Congress was worthless, and many of the underpaid soldiers of the Continental Army were close to mutiny. To top it all off, the treasury of the Kingdom of France was running dangerously low, leading the French to hint that they would have to exit the war if peace was not soon concluded. All King George III and Lord North had to do was prolong the war for a year or two more, and the American rebellion would collapse in on itself.

But unfortunately for the king and his ministers, the British people had long been experiencing war fatigue, and the defeat at Yorktown was the final straw. This attitude was reflected in Parliament when it reconvened after its Christmas recess in January 1782. While many in Parliament did not necessarily approve of an independent United States, they were more concerned about the negative impact that the war was having on British resources and international prestige, particularly after the conflict had taken on a global scale with the entry of France and Spain in 1778-79. Year after year, members of Parliament had listened to Lord North give excuses as to why British arms had failed in North America during the previous campaign season, before promising that a British victory loomed just over the horizon. Now, when news of Cornwallis' surrender reached London, they had finally had enough. In February 1782, colonial secretary Lord George Germain was forced out of the cabinet, with Lord Sandwich, First Lord of the Admiralty, losing his position soon after. The house of cards finally collapsed on 20 March, when Lord North resigned rather than face the indignity of being removed from office by a vote of no confidence. George III himself even considered abdicating the throne but was persuaded against it.

North was replaced as prime minister by Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, whose political faction, known as the 'Rockingham Whigs', had opposed many of the policies of the North ministry including the war in North America. Supported by influential British politicians like Charles James Fox and Edmund Burke, Lord Rockingham immediately took steps to end the war upon coming to power; the king, who despised Rockingham – indeed, the two could not even be in the same room – could do nothing as the new ministry set about bringing seven years of war to an end. In April 1782, Rockingham sent a representative to Paris to begin informal peace talks. When Rockingham unexpectedly died the following July, the Earl of Shelburne became prime minister and took up the supervision of the negotiations.

Continue reading...

[historia-vitae-magistras]

In “Choices” what is the agreement between England and Prussia that Mattie mentions??

So the famous one is the 1914 Christmas truce which was British and German soldiers. And all across the front similar smaller ones would happen. It was by and large British soldiers who would adopt live and let live mentalities. The Australians had similar situations in Gallipoli and also joined in on smaller rarer occasions with general British trends of being less murderous against German positions. The French have had a scattering. Usually between British and German soldiers. It's possible I've missed one but no Canadian unit is widely recognized as to have participated in any single incident and were often pushed into sections of the front line to lead aggressive raids into positions where truces had occurred to make full use of any unsuspecting German front line soldiers and kill them.

For all Britain likes to distinguish itself from Europe especially in the imperial 'splendid isolation' these are still people Arthur, Rhys and Alasdair have known for literally hundreds and thousands of years. They understand and specifically Arthur with all his German monarchs understands that things change and violence inflicted now becomes violence that could be turned and reinflicted later. He and Gilbert have been friends and lovers and supports and rivals across centuries. They aren't out to destroy each other to nearly the same degree Gilbert and Francis are.

All of it disgusts Matt. From his perspective, Arthur dragged him to France to kill Germans. Anything less than the hardest push to do that renders the entire exercise pointless. He's the First Dominion and eldest present son of the British Empire. His job is to keep his family safe. There's this very specific tenderness in Matt Arthur has been very uncomfortable with because it's just kind of awkward and vulnerable to see and receive and thus has spent centuries preferring his children disassociate rather than commit the ultimate anglo sin of making a fuss. But here he is often avoiding the killing blows because again, change is inevitable and he often couches it in affectionate language for Gilbert. Less so Ludwig but pre-WW2 Arthur has had a certain hesitancy to open fire on him. Matt lacks both some of the perspectives needed to restrain his violence but also has just a deep seated and terrifying well of rage he's been sitting on since at least 1760. It gets unleashed on Ludwig and Gilbert and anything or anyone who got in his way. It's hard to tell with Matt sometimes, if what he's done was done because he had an outlet his father sanctioned or out of loyalty. And at some point fairly early in the war, Arthur lost the ability to put Matt on a leash. It's not the first time Matt has not only disagreed with but defied an Arthur making pragmatic or less violent choices (which is a hell of a sentence to be writing about the British Empire but it has been occasionally true.) His actions undertaken during the Great War is by far the largest body count to result from it.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The Chronicle Herald :: Michael de Adder :: @deAdder

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 28, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Jul 29, 2024

Just a week ago, it seems, a new America began. I’ve struggled ever since to figure out what the apparent sudden revolution in our politics means.

I keep coming back to the Ernest Hemingway quote about how bankruptcy happens. He said it happens in two stages, first gradually and then suddenly.

That’s how scholars say fascism happens, too—first slowly and then all at once—and that’s what has been keeping us up at night.

But the more I think about it, the more I think maybe democracy happens the same way, too: slowly, and then all at once. 

At this country’s most important revolutionary moments, it has seemed as if the country turned on a dime. 

In 1763, just after the end of the French and Indian War, American colonists loved that they were part of the British empire. And yet, by 1776, just a little more than a decade later, they had declared independence from that empire and set down the principles that everyone has a right to be treated equally before the law and to have a say in their government.

The change was just as quick in the 1850s. In 1853 it sure looked as if the elite southern enslavers had taken over the country. They controlled the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court. They explicitly rejected the Declaration of Independence and declared that they had the right to rule over the country’s majority. They planned to take over the United States and then to take over the world, creating a global economy based on human enslavement. 

And yet, just seven years later, voters put Abraham Lincoln in the White House with a promise to stand against the Slave Power and to protect a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” He ushered in “a new birth of freedom” in what historians call the second American revolution. 

The same pattern was true in the 1920s, when it seemed as if business interests and government were so deeply entwined that it was only a question of time until the United States went down the same dark path to fascism that so many other nations did in that era. In 1927, after the execution of immigrant anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, poet John Dos Passos wrote: “they have clubbed us off the streets they are stronger they are rich they hire and fire the politicians the newspaper editors the old judges the small men with reputations….” 

And yet, just five years later, voters elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who promised Americans a New Deal and ushered in a country that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, promoted infrastructure, and protected civil rights.

Every time we expand democracy, it seems we get complacent, thinking it’s a done deal. We forget that democracy is a process and that it’s never finished.

And when we get complacent, people who want power use our system to take over the government. They get control of the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court, and they begin to undermine the principle that we should be treated equally before the law and to chip away at the idea that we have a right to a say in our government. And it starts to seem like we have lost our democracy. 

But all the while, there are people who keep the faith. Lawmakers, of course, but also teachers and journalists and the musicians who push back against the fear by reminding us of love and family and community. And in those communities, people begin to organize—the marginalized people who are the first to feel the bite of reaction, and grassroots groups. They keep the embers of democracy alive.

And then something fans them into flame. 

In the 1760s it was the Stamp Act, which said that men in Great Britain had the right to rule over men in the American colonies. In the 1850s it was the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which gave the elite enslavers the power to rule the United States. And in 1929 it was the Great Crash, which proved that the businessmen had no idea what they were doing and had no plan for getting the country out of the Great Depression.

The last several decades have felt like we were fighting a holding action, trying to protect democracy first from an oligarchy and then from a dictator. Many Americans saw their rights being stripped away…even as they were quietly becoming stronger. 

That strength showed in the Women’s March of January 2017, and it continued to grow—quietly under Donald Trump and more openly under the protections of the Biden administration. People began to organize in school boards and state legislatures and Congress. They also began to organize over TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and newsletters and Zoom calls. 

And then something set them ablaze. The 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision stripped away from the American people a constitutional right they had enjoyed for almost fifty years, and made it clear that a small minority intended to destroy democracy and replace it with a dictatorship based in Christian nationalism. 

When President Joe Biden announced just a week ago that he would not accept the Democratic nomination for president, he did not pass the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris.

He passed it to us. 

It is up to us to decide whether we want a country based on fear or on facts, on reaction or on reality, on hatred or on hope.

It is up to us whether it will be fascism or democracy that, in the end, moves swiftly, and up to us whether we will choose to follow in the footsteps of those Americans who came before us in our noblest moments, and launch a brand new era in American history.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[jeannepompadour]

Hand-painted Chinese silk robe and petticoat, probably English, c. 1760-1765. Tunbridge Wells Museum & Art Gallery.

[portrait-paintings]

Portrait of the Drummond Family, Peter Auriol Drummond (1754-1799), Mary Bridget Milnes Drummond (1755-1835), and George William Drummond (1761-1807)

Artist: Benjamin West (American-active Britain, 1738-1820)

Date: c. 1776

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States

Description

Born in Pennsylvania, Benjamin West moved to Europe in 1760, studying primarily in Italy before settling in London in 1763. One of his first important patrons was Robert Hay Drummond, the Archbishop of York. Drummond attempted to raise an annual salary for West so that the artist could devote his time to producing grand historical paintings, rather than be confined to the lucrative work of portraiture. When this effort failed, Drummond introduced West to King George III, who recognized the artist's abilities and eventually appointed him Historical Painter to the King. West achieved tremendous fame and financial success in London and helped establish the prestigious Royal Academy in 1768.

This family portrait depicts four members of the Drummond family. At far right is Peter Auriol Hay Drummond, the third son of the Archbishop and an officer in the 16th Light Dragoons. Next to him is his wife, the former Mary Bridget Milnes. On the left is the Archbishop's sixth son, George Hay Drummond, a clergyman in the Anglican church, who holds a painting of the fourth "sitter,", the archbishop. Some scholars have suggested this is intended as a memorial, and must date to after the archbishop's death on December 10, 1776. Others have suggested that the painting might precede his death, since none of the sitters give any indication of mourning. Perhaps the archbishop's duties in York prevented him from sitting for the portrait in London, so West included him with the clever conceit of representing a portrait painting in the work.

[fatehbaz]

There is a direct connection between the expansion of [...] new [coffee] consumer culture in Europe [...] and the expansion of plantation slavery in the Caribbean. [...] [S]lave-based coffee was more important to the Dutch [Netherlands] economy than previously [acknowledged] [...]. [T]he phenomenal growth of [plantation slavery in] Saint Domingue [the French colony of Haiti] was partly made possible by the export market along the Rhine that was opened up by the Dutch Republic. [...] [E]arly in the eighteenth century, the Dutch and French began production in their respective West Indian colonies [...]. [C]offee was still a very exclusive product in Europe. [...] From the late 1720s, [...] in the Netherlands [...] coffee was especially widespread [...]. From the late 1750s the volume of Atlantic coffee production [...] increased significantly. It was at that time that the habit of drinking coffee spread further inland [...] [especially] in Rhineland Germany [...] [and] inland Germany [due to Dutch shipments via the river].

Although its consumption may not have been as widespread as the tea-sugar complex in Britain, there certainly was a similar ‘coffee-sugar complex’ in continental Europe [...] spread during the eighteenth century [...]. The total amount of coffee imported to Europe (excluding the Italian [...] trade) was less than 4 million pounds per year during 1723–7 and rose to almost 100 million pounds per year around 1788 [...]. In 1790 [...] almost half of the value of [Dutch] exports over the Rhine [to Germany] was coffee. [...]

---

The rising prices in the 1760s encouraged more investment in coffee in Dutch Guiana and the start of new plantations in Saint Domingue [Haiti]. Production in Saint Domingue skyrocketed and surpassed all the others, so that this colony provided 60% of all the coffee in the world by 1789. [Necessitating more slave labor. The Haitian revolution would manifest about a decade later.] [...]

In French historiography, the ‘Dutch problems’ are considered to be the slave revolts (the Boni-maroon wars) [at Dutch plantations]. [...] France made use of the Dutch ‘troubles’ to expand its market share and coffee production in Saint Domingue [Haiti], which accelerated at an exponential rate. [...]

---

[T]he Dutch Guianas [were] producing over a third of the coffee consumed in Europe [...] [by] 1767. [...] The Dutch flooded the Rhine region with coffee and sugar, creating a lasting demand for both commodities, as the two are typically consumed together. [...] [T]he history of the slave-based coffee production in Surinam and Saint Domingue [Haiti] was pivotal in starting the mass consumption of coffee in Europe. [...] Slave-based coffee production was also crucial [...] in Brazil during the 'second slavery', where slavery existed on an enormous scale and was reshaped in the world's biggest coffee producing country [later] during the nineteenth century. [...] The Dutch merchant-bankers organised coffee investment, enslavement, and planting and selling; [all] while not leaving the town of Amsterdam [...].

[This market] expansion ends in crisis [...] - a crisis caused by uprisings and revolutions, most notably, the Haitian one. Yet Germans still liked coffee. And the Dutch colonial merchant-banker[s] [...] learned something about [...] production, and perhaps also something about the role of the state in labour control: as soon as they could, they sent Johannes van der Bosch [Dutch governor-general of the East Indies] to Surinam and Java in order to solve the labour issues and expand the colonial production of coffee [by imposing in Java the notoriously brutal cultuurstelsel "enforced planting" regime, followed later by the "Coolie Ordinance" laws allowing plantation owners to discipline "disobedient" workers, with millions of workers on Java plantations, lasting into the twentieth century].

---

Text above by: Tamira Combrink. "Slave-based coffee in the eighteenth-century and the role of the Dutch in global commodity chains". Slavery & Abolition Volume 42, Issue 1, pages 15-42. Published online 28 February 2021. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. All of that italicized text within brackets was added by me for clarity and context; apologies to Combrink. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism.]

[royalty-nobility]

Queen Charlotte (of Mecklenburg-Strelitz) (1744-1818)

Artist: Studio of Allan Ramsay (Scottish, 1713-1784)

Date: 1761

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Royal Collection Trust, United Kingdom

Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (Sophia Charlotte; 19 May 1744 – 17 November 1818) was Queen of Great Britain and Ireland as the wife of King George III from their marriage on 8 September 1761 until her death in 1818. The Acts of Union 1800 unified Great Britain and Ireland into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. As George's wife, she was also Electress of Hanover until becoming Queen of Hanover on 12 October 1814. Charlotte was Britain's longest-serving queen consort, serving for 57 years and 70 days.

Charlotte was born into the ruling family of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, a duchy in northern Germany. In 1760, the young and unmarried George III inherited the British throne. As Charlotte was a minor German princess with no interest in politics, the King considered her a suitable consort, and they married in 1761. The marriage lasted 57 years and produced 15 children, 13 of whom survived to adulthood. They included two future British monarchs, George IV and William IV; as well as Charlotte, Princess Royal, who became Queen of Württemberg; and Prince Ernest Augustus, who became King of Hanover.

Charlotte was a patron of the arts and an amateur botanist who helped expand Kew Gardens. She introduced the Christmas tree to Britain, decorating one for a Christmas party for children of Windsor in 1800. She was distressed by her husband's bouts of physical and mental illness, which became permanent in later life. She maintained a close relationship with Queen Marie Antoinette of France, and the French Revolution is likely to have enhanced the emotional strain felt by Charlotte. Her eldest son, George, was appointed prince regent in 1811 due to the increasing severity of the King's illness. Charlotte died in November 1818, with her son George at her side. George III died a little over a year later, probably unaware of his wife's death.

[victoriansecret]

Vails

I haven't actually talked about it here a lot, partly because I try not to do heavy history stuff here - this blog is meant to be a hobby, after all - and it's something I'm frankly too passionate (obsessed) about, but my main area of historic interest and focus, especially when it comes to my own personal research, is the history of domestic service. It is not an exaggeration to say it is my life's work. Another reason I don't write about it often is I don't really know where to start. My breadth of knowledge on the subject is quite broad, so there's a lot I could say, but I think I'll try to write some small things about specific aspects of it. Vails were, in the 18th (and I believe also 19th) century, basically what we could today call tips, often paid to servants. And when you read things written by the 'master class' of people being served, while they're obviously biased and exaggerating, it does become clear that servants rather enforced them. There wasn't a guild system for servants like there were for trades, but there were informal clubs and groups, and this is one of the ways they seem to have acted together, almost as a form of unionization. There's a letter to a British newspaper where the write says that he estimates many servants are doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling their annual salaries through vails. I could write more but I'll just transcribe some of my favourite passages on this subject from the book Life in the Country House in Georgian Ireland by Patricia McCarthy: I will add too, while this is specifically talking about paid servants in Britain, you do see vails paid to enslaved people in America as well. Probably not as often, but Philip Vickers Fithian, who wrote a diary about his experiences in Virginia in the 1770s, writes about similar things of the enslaved people at the plantation he's staying at expecting their "Christmas boxes" of vails, although they weren't quite as beholden to the actual date of Boxing Day.

... The customary scene in the hall, as their guests waited for their carriages or horses to be brought to the door, embarrassed many. [Marshall, Domestic Servants] Hosts feigned ignorance of their guests' fumbling in their pockets to find shillings and half-crowns to distribute to the servants, who had lined themselves up expectantly. Whether the motive for allowing the practice was to salve the collective conscience of the employers at paying such low wages is not clear. [Bridget Hill, Servants: English Domestics in the 18thc.] It was not confined to great houses, but was also expected in more modest establishments, although the amounts given were less. It was also not only expected on departure from the house of a friend: vails were disbursed by 'house tourists' to whichever servant showed them around - in most cases an upper servant.

...

An army officer described how much his visit to the house of a friend would cost him: 'The moment your departure is known, all the domestics are on the qui vive; the house-maid hopes you have forgotten nothing in packing up, if so, she will take care of it till you come again; this piece of civility costs you three ten-pennies; the footman carries your portmanteau .. to the hall, three more; the butler wishes you a pleasant journey - his greate kindness in so doing of course extracts a crown-piece; the groom brings your horse, assuring you 'tis an ilegant baste, and has fed well' - three more ten-pennies go; the helper runs after you with the curb-chain, which he has 'till this moment carefull secreted - two more; making a total of seventeen, or, in English money, upwards of fourteen shillings. A heavy tax for visiting a friend!' [Benson Earle Hill, Recollections of an Artillery Officervol. 1]

...

Richard Griffith from Bennetsbridge, Co. Kilkenny, complained in c.1760 in a letter to hise wife that 'an heavy and unprofitable Tax still subsists upon the Hospitality of this Neighbourhood .. in short while this Perquisite continues, a Country Gentleman may be considered but as a generous Kind of Inn-holder, who keeps open House, at his own Expence, for the sole Emolument of his Servants .. this Extravagance is not confined, at present, solely to the Country .. ; for a Dinner in Dublin, and all the Towns in Ireland, is even in a Morning, with a Person who keeps his Port, you may levee him fifty Times, without being admitted by his Swiss Porter. So... I shall consider a great Man as a Monster, who may not be seen, 'till you have fee'd his Keppers.' [R. and E. Griffith, A Series of Genuine Letters Between Henry and Frances, vol. 4]

...

Swift gives similar suggestions in Directions to Servants: 'By these, and like Expedients, you may probably be a better Man by Half a Crown before he leaves the House.' He further urges those servants who expect vails 'always to stand Rank and File when a Stranger is taking his Leave; so that he must of Necessity pass between you; and he must have more Confidence or less Money than usual, if any of you let him escape, and according as he behaves himself, remember to treat him the next Time he comes.'

...

Card money was particularly lucrative for butlers and footmen - so much so that, in London at least, such menservants refused service in houses where gaming parties were not held. [Marshall, Domestic Servants - Two footmen at the court of Queen Anne, Fortnum and Mason, used this perquisite as capital to begin their grocery business in London. Country House Lighting 1660-1890, Temple Newsam Country House Series No. 4] But it was vails that finally undermined the authority of the employers, who virtually allowed servants to dictate whom should be received, and then pretended not to notice when the servants extracted money from the departing guests.

...

In the London Chronicle a correspondent wrote in 1762 that 'Masters in England seldom pay their servants but in lieu of wages suffer them prey upon their guests'. George Mathew of Thomastown, Co. Tipperary, a man famous for his hospitality, was one of the first employers to ban the 'inhospitable custom' of giving vails to servants, and to compensate them by increasing their wages. This was apparently as early as the 1730s. His servants were warned that, if they disobeyed, they would be discharged. He also informed his guests that he would 'consider it as the highest affront if any offer of that sort were made'. [Anthologia Hibernica, I - No date given for this account, by 'Grand George' Mathew, who died in 1737, was the man described, who was host to Jonathan Swift at Thomastown in the 1720s, a visit described by Thomas Sheridan in A Life of the Rev. Dr. Jonathan Swift] A crusade against the giving of vails began in 1760 in Scotland, where seventeen counties issued appeals to abolish them. Four years later the movement had spread to London, resulting in riots there by footmen, the servants who stood to lose the most. [Marshall, Domestic Servants] It was probably at about the same time that employers from a number of counties in Ireland agreed among themselves to abolish vails. [Griffith, Series of Letters..., IV, 'An Agreement entered into among the Gentlemen of several Counties in Ireland, not to give Vails to Servants'] Like George Mathew before them, they decided to increase staff wages in an effort to compensate them for loss of earnings. One of them was Lord Kildare: in March 1765 he issued a directive from Carton to members of his household, stating that 'In Consideration of Vails &c, which I will not permit for the future to be received in any of my Houses upon any Account whatsoever from Company lying there or otherwise I shall give in lieu thereof... five pounds per annum each to the housekeeper, Maitre D'Hotel, cook and confectioner; three pounds per annum each to the steward at Carton, the butler, valet de chambre and groom of the chambers, and two pounds to the Gentleman of Horse. ...

And I will conclude with this funny account, about the penalty for being known amongst the staff to be a spendthrift, from the same book: ...

An unfortunate guest in England in 1754 found his punishment [for not giving vails] truly humiliating. 'I am a marked man,' he wrote, 'if I ask for beer I am presented with a piece of bread. If I am bold enough to call for wine, after a delay which would take its relish away were it good, I receive a mixture of the whole sideboard in a greasy glass. If I hold up my plate nobody sees me; so that I am forced to eat mutton with fish sauce, and pickles with my apple pie.' [Quoted in Marshall, Domestic Servants]

feel free to tip here (and yes the irony of this is not lost on me, although it did not occur to me until about halfway through writing this)