Rude Songs of the Regency: The Plenipotentiary (from the archives)

The Plenipotentiary

Loretta reports:

Thanks to Vic Gatrell’s, City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London,* I was aware that the Prince of Wales (later the Prince Regent, then King George IV) bought satirical prints in vast quantities.  Every day he got a batch, to keep him in touch with public opinion.

It’s a miracle this collection survived.  Other historical documents did not:  “In a fit of witless vandalism in 1913, George V, his queen and his secretary one evening sat in a parlour at Windsor and systematically burned the contents of thirty-seven boxes of George IV’s love letters . . . on the grounds that George was ‘the meanest and vilest of reprobates’.”  King George V later sold 9,900 of his ancestor’s prints to the Library of Congress—to pay for his stamp collection.

Recently I made another interesting discovery:  Our Prinny’s favorite bard was Captain Charles Morris (1744-1838), to whom he paid a £200 annuity. Morris’s poems and songs were famous, reprinted repeatedly in collections such as The Festival of Anacreon, Containing a Collection of Modern Songs, written for the Anacreontic Society,***the Beef-Steak and Humbug Clubs (8th ed. c. 1810); and many, many others, including a collection the poet Robert Burns published in 1799.

A sample of Morris’s lyric powers: 

THE PLENIPOTENTIARY

The Dey of Algiers, when afraid of his ears,
A messenger sent to the Court, sir,
As he knew in our state the women had weight,
He chose one well hung for the sport, sir.
He searched the Divan till he found out a man,
Whose b******s were heavy and hairy,
And he lately came, o'er from the Barbary shore,
As the great Plenipotentiary.

. . .
When to England he came, with his p***k in a flame,
He shewed it his Hostess on landing,
Who spread its renown thro' all parts of the town,
As a pintle past all understanding.
So much there was said of its snout and its head,
That they called it the great Janissary:
Not a lady could sleep till she got a sly peep
At the great Plenipotentiary.

These are some of the more delicate verses.  You can read one version of the full poem here on page 36, or choose a version from here. Longtime 2NHG readers may recall a similarly bawdy epic by Lord Rochester.

*My quotations are from the Gatrell book.
**See a recent post for an illustration of a society members' meeting.
Illustration: Cruikshank, A Peep at the Plenipo-!!! Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Royal Waterloo Bath—from the Archives

Royal Waterloo Bath, London

Loretta reports:

A great many structures were named after the 18 June 1815 Battle of Waterloo, whose 200th anniversary we commemorate this week. Many still exist.  This doesn't.

~~~

Plate 34.—ROYAL WATERLOO BATH.

This very elegant floating bath is stationed near the north end of the Waterloo-bridge, and has recently been built and completed with entirely new and substantial materials, in a style of superior accommodation, at a very considerable expense: it contains a plunging-bath, 24 feet long by 8 feet wide, and two private baths, 10 feet long by 8 feet wide. The depth may be regulated at pleasure by machinery, which raises or depresses the bottom as required, secured by cross timbers, and bound with iron. To each of the baths are attached small dressing-rooms, commodiously fitted up, with proper persons to attend upon visitors. These baths are so constructed, that the water, being a running stream, is changed every two minutes. The advantage of bathing in a flowing stream is obvious, and gives a decided preference over a cold still bath, which is frequently dangerous from the violence of the shock. The terms of bathing, as our readers will see, are extremely moderate: they are—

                                             £     s.    d.
In the plunging-bath .  0     1     0
For the season . . . . . .  1    11    6
In the private baths .   0     1     6
For the season. . . . . .    2     2     0

Constant attendance at Waterloo-bridge to convey visitors to and from the bath.

Bathing is so essentially connected with health, that we cannot but congratulate the public on this new establishment. It is singular that so few of the kind should be known in London, while there is scarcely a street in the French metropolis that has not its cold, warm, vapour, Chinese, and Tuscan baths, with a variety of others, suiting the capricious tastes of the inhabitants. Yet how deficient they are in the most important article connected with bathing everybody knows, while we have a noble river filled with the purest and most wholesome waters in the world. The want of baths in London has led to the incommodious and indecorous practice of public exposure in the Thames.

~~~

—Ackermann's Repository, Vol. 7, June 1819

You can expect more about 19th century bathing in a future post.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will allow you to read at the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Friday Video: Battle of Waterloo in Legos

Loretta reports:

I was a little surprised, not long ago, to read the following:
“A recent survey of 2,070 people conducted by the National Army Museum indicated that 73 per cent of Britons had little or no knowledge of the Battle of Waterloo, believing variously that it was won by the French, involved Winston Churchill or the wizard Albus Dumbledore from the Harry Potter books.” It appeared in this piece on the recreation, for the 200th anniversary of the battle, of the Duke of Wellington’s victory banquet.

Still, I know that those of us who've written Regency and Romantic era fiction aren't the only ones for whom the battle of 18 June 1815 looms large. Here is the Battle of Hougoumont in Legos.

Here is a man who’s painted thousands of soldiers. Books and films and videos abound. But if you aren't clear about what happened and why it mattered, you might want to spend a few minutes watching this Epic History: Battle of Waterloo.

Update: Mea culpa!  I failed to give credit to Number One London, who called the Legos battle (and many other Waterloo objects of interest) to my attention.

Readers who receive our blog via email might see a rectangle, square, or nothing where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on the title to this post.

Update: The 1772 "Grippine" Mystery Solved

Isabella reporting,

One of our most popular blogs last month was The Hazards of Traveling by Chaise, which included a letter by Hester Pitt, Countess of Chatham, recounting the trials and setbacks that she, her daughters, and the rest of their party encountered on their journey to Hayes Place in Kent from their home at Burton Pynsent.

While most of the letter described rutted roads, broken traces, and other travelers' mishaps, there was one passage that puzzled me, and many of you readers as well.

"...William [went] forward to fetch a fresh chaise from Amesbury to meet Bradshaw, who was to march on foot till they came to him with his grippine."

What could "his grippine" be? Reader suggestions included overshoes, a saddle, and a small suitcase, as well as another horse, but the correct answer was tantalizingly unknown.

But we Nerdy History Girls hate to leave a history-question unanswered, and fortunately for us, historian Jacqui Reiter (who provided us with the original quotation) is just as persistent. Since the version of the letter we were discussing had been transcribed and printed in a 20th c. biography (William Pitt, Earl of Chatham by Brian Tunstall), Jacqui decided to seek out the original letter to see what could be learned from the complete text, and made a journey of her own to the UK National Archives in Kew, where the Chatham papers are housed. The letter is several pages long, written in Lady Chatham's brisk hand, and the page with the "grippine" passage is above.

But as often the case with transcriptions, the one in the Tunstall book was not quite correct, nor was it complete. The actual words - underlined for emphasis by Lady Chatham -  in the letter are "with his favorite Gippine." The capital G makes it seem as if Gippine is a proper name, and a further passage in the letter leaves little doubt that Gippine is a horse, referring to Gippine as Bradshaw's "faithful attendant":

"The Fresh Chaise found Bradshaw got forward with his faithful attendant about a mile and a half, so he was quit for only a Comfortable perspiration."

Jacqui also found another letter that humorously refers to Bradshaw as "Gippine's travelling Friend." As she notes, "The way Lady Chatham refers to Gippine as nearly human is quite typical of the Pitts' attitude towards their horses. In fact I am still somewhat confused about which names in the correspondence refer to horses, and which to servants...not sure whether this reflects better on their attitude towards their animals, or worse on their attitude towards their staff!"

Incidentally, Bradshaw was a trusted upper servant in the Pitt household. As Jacqui notes, he was sufficiently literate and valued to witness Lord Chatham's will. And yet in the letters, he does indeed seem to take second place to the noble Gippine.

One final note: once we had the horse's name identified as Gippine, I wondered what, if anything, the name might mean. The "ine" ending seemed more French than English to me, and given the 18th c. penchant for phonetical spelling with foreign words, I tried searching for Jippine - and had success. While the name doesn't appear to have a translatable meaning (and if any of you know it, please share!), I did discover that today it's still a name used for French horses, as seen in this performance record for a pony called Jippine du Rietz.

Another history mystery solved!

Many thanks once again to Jacqui Reiter for tracking down this information for us.

Above: Excerpt from Letter from Lady Chatham to Lord Chatham, UK National Archives, Chatham MSS, PRO 30/8/9f 100, dated 9 April [probably 1772]. 
Below: A Saddled Bay Hunter, by George Stubbs, 1786. Private collection.

Vixen in Velvet—the story, the research, & other things

Dressmaker Book #3

Loretta reports:

Here on the blog we focus on the bits of history we encounter while doing research for our books—or just researching for fun.  Now and again we talk about the ways we connect our investigations to our main jobs of writing novels.  With the launch of Vixen in Velvet, I’ve had several opportunities to talk about the way I integrate my historical research (especially fashion) into my stories, as well as other topics.

Today I offer the lineup of Vixen in Velvet-related activities.  They include a short video, which is your Casual Friday Video.  Sorry.  It's me.   

Coming in late with another one, from the Kindle blog:  my Q& A with talented Avon author Sarah MacLean.

Lady Avon Interviews Loretta about Vixen in Velvet.  Even my publisher has questions.

Avon Loves Librarians—a video excerpt from the tea Avon hosted for Sarah MacLean and me during Book Expo America. 


My blog post for Heroes & Heartbreakers (their title because I forgot!—and yes, “flare” should probably be“flair” but it still works if you imagine fireworks.)

Isabella interrogates me here, in case you missed it.

Romance Unlaced: Interview with Loretta Chase—Madeline Hunter interrogates me at Happy Ever After.

My wonderfully nerdy interview at All About Romance.

Interviews at Writer at Play, Part 1 and Part 2.


And if you're not sick of me talking about me & my writing, or if you still have unanswered questions, please ask—or join me here next week for more about the things I've learned about the 1830s and what I do with them.

Update: A Happy Ending for Mavisbank

Isabella/Susan reporting:

Earlier this year, I wrote a post about Mavisbank, above, a tragically neglected country house in Midlothia, Scotland. Designed in 1772 by Robert Adam, Mavisbank was not only considered one of the most beautiful houses in Scotland, the first to employ Palladian proportions, but also served as a center of culture and learning in the Georgian Age of Enlightenment.

Successive centuries and owners were not kind, however, and the once-grand house deteriorated through use as a hospital and asylum as well as general neglect. A 1974 fire devastated the house further, leaving the remaining structure open to the elements. Though the ravaged shell of the house retained a melancholy beauty, its future seemed sadly doomed.

But this week, Historic Scotland and Midlothian Council signed an agreement to purchase Mavisbank, and a grant of £500,000 from the Scottish Government was also announced. The Mavisbank Trust will oversee additional fundraising, plus plans to restore the exterior of the building and convert the interior to a multi-purpose facility for community use. The surrounding lands will also be transformed into a park, again to benefit those who live in the area. It all seems like the happiest of solutions for the grand old house. See here for more details.

Above: Mavisbank photo (plus many others) via Undiscovered Scotland.