Casual Friday: Royal Bedchamber

Loretta reports:

A friend recently returned from London reported happily on an exhibition at Hampton Court Palace, “Secrets of the Royal Bedchamber.” 

As one who only a few years ago discovered Hampton Court Palace’s delights (blogs here and here and here, and here and here, for instance) and who spent some time studying the royal bedrooms (and the lavatories), I was very excited to visit online.  The Historic Royal Palaces website offers several wonderful, short videos about the exhibition, as well information about how to conserve your own precious objects.

This made it hard to choose among the riches.  But I thought our Nerdy History readers would be as fascinated as I was by the painstaking methods used to conserve a bed rail.








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.

More Textile Treasures from Colonial Williamsburg's Collections

Isabella reporting,

Last week I shared photos of several of the 18th c. men's coats from the textile storage facilities of Colonial Williamsburg that I saw thanks to an informal tour with curator Linda Baumgarten. Obviously, the collection includes more – much more! – than just those coats. Here are a few other items to show the range of the treasures hidden away in those aluminum drawers. As usual, please click on the images to enlarge.

Most museums have many more items in their collections than they can exhibit at any given time. Displaying textiles, however, is a bit more complicated. Old textiles are fragile; they're susceptible to damage from light, water, heat, and even the stress of gravity. Many can't be on constant display in a gallery and survive. Storing them flat, away from light and temperature changes, is a way of preserving them and extending their lives – a kind of "vacation" from display.

For every piece that still has the vibrant colors of those 18th c. coats, there are others that, even with well-intended conservancy, have over time changed or become impossibly delicate. As an example, Linda Baumgarten showed another coat of elegant pale grey silk. Then she flipped up the hem to show the silk's original color – a brilliant purple that had nearly faded away while on display earlier in the 20th c.

Since they're in storage, the items shown here didn't have identifying placards, so I'm afraid I can't supply any exact details about their age or provenance. From top to bottom: detail of an early 18th c. English crewel-work hanging; samples of 18th & 19th c. ribbons and other trimmings, stored and tied on spools; an 18th c. English embroidered linen petticoat, lined with a printed linen; a 19th c. American quilt, lined with an earlier, worn embroidered textile; and a detail of an embroidered squirrel from a 17th c. English box embellished with a raised-work panel.

All items from the textiles from the collections of Colonial Williamsburg. Photographs copyright 2013 by Susan Holloway Scott.

Indian Jugglers in Pall Mall, 1813

Loretta reports:

If you were in Pall Mall in 1813, you might have seen these jugglers.  Unfortunately, the article doesn't say where in Pall Mall they performed. I find one specific reference in John Wilkes's Encyclopaedia Londinensis,
where he indicates that the jugglers were in a temporary exhibition space near Christie's.

Indian Jugglers inspired a lengthy essay by William Hazlitt.  But this account from Ackermann's Repository for October 1813 offers, I believe, more than enough food for thought.

Warning to the squeamish:  There is definitely an ick factor.

Read online here

Read online here

From the Archives: Men Behaving Badly: Sir Charles Sedley, 1663

Isabella reporting,

Because today is a "travel day" for me, returning home from Colonial Williamsburg, I'm sharing one of my more lurid posts from the past. My five historical novels (written as Susan Holloway Scott) were all set in Restoration England, during the reign of King Charles II (1660 -1685.) This was a very good time for very bad gentlemen, when just about any excess could be explained away if one had a title, or at least was friends with the King.

Sir Charles Sedley (1639-1701) was a wealthy, well-connected baronet who wrote witty plays and poetry, played tennis with the King, dabbled in diplomacy, and eventually became a respectable politician in the House of Commons. He looks innocuous enough, left, but in 1663, he was best known for often being "rhetorically drunk", and also for one particularly bad example of bad-boy-dom, so scandalous that Samuel Johnson was still sputtering over it a century later:

Sir Charles Sedley, Lord Buckhurst, and Sir Thomas Ogle, got drunk at the Cock [a notorious tavern] in Bow Street, by Covent Garden, and going into the balcony exposed themselves to the populace below in very indecent postures. At last, as they grew warmer, Sedley stood forth naked, and harangued the populace in such profane language, that the publick indignation was awakened; the crowd attempted to force the door, and being repulsed, drove at the performers with stones, and broke the windows of the house.  For this misdemeanour, [the three gentlemen] were indicted, and Sedley was fined five hundred pounds....Sedley employed [his friend Harry] Killigrew [groom of the bedchamber to the King's brother, the Duke of York] to procure a remission from the King, but (mark the friendship of the dissolute!) they begged the fine for themselves, and exacted it to the last groat.

For a far more frank telling of these frat-house-style shenanigans, see Samuel Pepys's diary entry – scroll down to the first annotation/comment at the bottom by Terry F., and hold on to your coffee cup.

Above: Sir Charles Sedley, 5th Baronet. Engraving after a painting by Michael Van der Gucht, published 1722.

Victorian Children in Folk Art

Boy in a Blue Plaid Dress

Loretta reports:

Though it’s not a huge museum, the American Art & Carousel Gallery at the Heritage Museums and Gardens (more here, here, here) offers plenty to look at and think about. I have my likes and dislikes when it comes to folk art.  Some of it can be puzzling if not downright weird.  This painting of a little boy in blue was a bit jarring to our modern sensibilities.  Though aware that boys and girls wore dresses in early childhood, I still find it tricky to see a boy in images like these.  For instance, in this 1846 painting of Queen Victoria’s family, does the child on the far left look like a boy or a girl?

Portrait of Mary Louisa Bird

Long curls are unisex, in these works, and the off-the-shoulder look, which may strike the modern viewer as a little creepy sexually, had no sexual connotation to the supposedly uptight Victorians.

Apparently, one way you can tell the gender is the hair part.  Girls’ hair is parted in the middle, boys’ on the side.  Other clues are in the props.  Dogs and riding crops tend to appear with boys.  Girls tend to hold dolls and purses. Books and flowers aren’t necessarily gender signals, since they appear with both boys and girls. I hadn’t been aware of these clues previously, and trying to guess which was which without looking at the labels was fun.

The girl in purple struck me for a number of reasons.  The quality of the painting is above the common run, for one thing.  But equally important, though she's only nine years old, she’s very fashionably dressed for 1837, with her puffy sleeves and her pink reticule.

Paintings:  Boy in a Blue Plaid Dress, unidentified artist, c 1830-1860.
Portrait of Mary Louisa Bird, unidentified artist, 1837