The Last Word on Jane Austen's Ring

Isabella reporting,

Last year one of the few pieces of jewelry known to have belonged to author Jane Austen was put up for auction by a descendant. The ring, left, is simple and unassuming in design - an oval odontalite (a less expensive substitute for turquoise) stone, set in gold - but it was the connection to that first owner that made it so special. Interest in the auction was high, and grew higher still when the final prize realized at the sale was £152,450 (or about $236,000), considerably more than the £20,000-£30,000 that was original estimate projected by the auction house. Our original post about the sale is here.

The winning bidder's identity wasn't known at first, (more about that here) but when it was finally revealed that American Idol winner and pop singer Kelly Clarkson was the buyer, the howls of outrage began in Britain. The government declared the ring to be a "national treasure," and a temporary export ban was put into effect. Ms. Clarkson was prohibited from taking the ring home to Texas, and the Jane Austen's House Museum - a disappointed bidder in the original auction - was given until the end of September to match the amount of the winning bid. A world-wide campaign successfully raised the funds, and graciously Ms. Clarkson gave up her prize - not that she had any choice. The Museum will soon be putting the ring on display, while Ms. Clarkson had an exact replica made to wear whenever and wherever she pleased - surely a somewhat bittersweet memento.

It's interesting to read how differently the story was presented by the media in America and the UK. While the facts are the same, the perspective certainly isn't. NBCNews.com's headline was Kelly Clarkson forced to sell $250,000 ring to Jane Austen museum, while the BBC.co went with Kelly Clarkson thwarted in bid to keep Jane Austen ring. 

The policy of designating and restricting "national treasures" is a complicated one; every major museum in the world contains national treasures removed from other nations, treasures that are never going to be returned to their one-time owners. So what do you think - should Kelly have been permitted to keep the ring she paid for, or does it belong on display in the Jane Austen's House Museum?

Breakfast Links: Week of September 30, 2013

Breakfast links time! All the freshest of our fav links of the week, leading you to other web sites, images, blogs, and articles, and all gathered from around the Twitterverse.
• Beyond the Jersey Shore: 1920s snapshots from a chorus girl's scrapbook.
• Early 19th c. recipe for portable soup, the Regency equivalent of the modern-day stock cube.
• Vintage image: men's smoking room in a Chicago theater, 1907; each top-hatted gentleman has his own enormous ashtray.
• Solitude and Sandaya: the strange history of pianos in Burma.
• A fashionable dressing case fit for travel, 1875.
• Desperate needlework in a 19th c. asylum: the mad knitter of Dent.
• Why cats were hated in medieval Europe.
• Chaos, confusion, bewilderment! What was the appropriate dress for the outbreak of WWII?
• Grave divine consequences for pilling and drying flax or playing at "foote-ball" on the Sabbath, 1671.
• Inside America's love affair with the artist Norman Rockwell.
• This is, indeed, a good genre: medieval portraits of elephants by people who'd never seen elephants.
• Blackbeard's 18th c. pirate ship emerges piece by piece off the North Carolina coast.
• The female entrepreneur who captured New York's early 20th c. theater in photographs.
• "I'll have a glass of the 1327, please": medieval drink of mead makes a comeback.
• Julia Child's list of discarded titles for the cookbook that became Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
• A peep inside an 18th c. bachelor pad.
• The slickenstone: from Viking to Georgian times, indispensible for "ironing without an iron."
• A concise history of clotted cream.
• New exhibition contends that Edgar Allan Poe was more complex and influential than his "spooky" reputation suggests.
• Thomas McDonogh, Britain's first consul in Boston, and his red broadcloth coat.
• "By God, sir, I've lost my leg!" "By God, sir, so you have!" Artificial legs in the 19th century.
• In honor of Michaelmas on September 29: dramatic 15th c. illuminated illustration of Archangel Michael defeating Satan at the beginning of time.
• A question worth pondering (or not): did 16th c. men keep oranges in their codpieces?
• In 1846, the Catholic Church builds an orphanage on low-priced Fifth Avenue land in NYC - soon to be engulfed by millionaires' mansions.
• Marjorie Bruce, daughter of Robert the Bruce and mother of the first Stewart King of the Scots.
• America's oldest apple pie recipe (from 1796) plus other apple lore.
• The scandalous, eccentric life of William Beckford.
• From the proceedings of the Old Bailey: gin and tobacco smugglers, 1807.
• Let them dry while you read: nineteen must-have literary manicures.
• Roman skulls that were once washed down lost London river now uncovered by new construction.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.

The Importance of a "Little Powder and Gauze", 1777

Isabella reporting,

It's easy to assume that youth, beauty, and a noble title would be sufficient to ensure social success in Georgian London. But as the following quote proves, that was only a start to becoming accepted as a member of the Beau Monde. Following the rules of fashion and knowing what was "done" was equally important.

When young Mary Theresa Fox-Strangways (née O'Grady), 2nd Countess of Ilchester, arrived in London with her husband in 1777, she was seemingly well-poised to make an entrance into society. She was attractive, titled, and well-connected through her husband's family and friends. The earl and his wife had recently acquired a grand house and a fashionable address in Grosvenor Square. But according to this letter by Lady Sarah Lennox - herself a daughter of the Duke of Richmond - Lady Ilchester made a grievous error by attending the Opera without powdering her hair white in the fashionable manner.

"I thought she had too much sense not to make a proper figure if she undertook to make any at all;...[W]hat I heard was a little circumstance that made me see more than ever the absurdity of prejudice among fine people and on the other hand the necessity of attending a little to it if one lives among them; I hear she appeared at the Opera without powder dressed in a poking, queer way...and caused great speculation to know who that queer but pretty little vulgar woman could be that Lady Sefton brought with her. [N]ow to be sure it requires nothing but a short examination to find out that the Genteel Lady Sefton is in nature a most compleat Vulgar; to my certain knowledge her gentility never went further than her dress, and that the pretty Vulgar Little Woman has more true real gentility about her than most people I know...but such is the World that a little Powder and Gauze properly disposed secures a proper respect and the neglect of it gives a mauvais ton [unfortunate tone] which is sometimes a little troublesome to overcome; but I fancy a good House and good suppers will soon recover the faux pas of going to the Opera sans powder."

Perhaps Lady Ilchester didn't enjoy the challenge of becoming a noted hostess giving "good suppers", or the financial cost of life in London proved too much, or Lord and Lady Ilchester decided the demands of such a life simply weren't for them; in any event, the fine house in Grosvenor Square was sold two years later, and the pair spent most of their time in the country. Perhaps the portrait, left, of Lady Ilchester with her two daughters in 1779 shows the lady preferred a happy family life to worrying about being a "little vulgar woman" in London.

Above: Mary Theresa, 2nd Countess of Ilchester, and her daughters, mezzotint by George H. Every (1868) after a painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds (1779). National Portrait Gallery.

Return Engagement: 18th C Girls Gone Wild

Loretta reports:

(With apologies, another rerun, this time Women Behaving Badly.)

Though I’ve blogged about Lady (Seymour) Worsley before (here and here), I only recently read Hallie Rubenhold’s book, The Lady in Red.  In it we find not only a more detailed picture of the lady, her strange marriage, and the sensational 1782 crim. con. trial, but insights into the world of the 18th century English aristocracy.  We're familiar with aristocratic Men Behaving Badly.  But in Rubenhold’s book you’ll find episodes of Girls Gone Wild. 

On 14 January 1779, Lady Worsley, age 21, and her friends, the two Misses Cramer, unable to persuade their host to lend them a coach for a trip to Leeds, rode off with his cart horses.

“En route the ladies ‘stopt at one of the inns and ordered the waiter to show them into such a room, which he told them he could not do, as it was kept for the officers of the Militia and their colours, etc., were there’.  Upon hearing this, Seymour and the Miss Cramers became ‘determined to go in and took the pokers and broke open the door, then they heated them red hot and pop’d them into the colours which set them in a blaze’ . . . ‘How do you think they quenched the flame their own fair selves had caused?  The did not call water!  Water!, it was more at hand . . .’  These three well-bred young ladies . . .lifted their silk skirts ‘and fairly pissed it out . . .’”

After which they had fun at the windows.  “One of their victims . . . had the misfortune of sauntering by in ‘his best coat & wig & laced waistcoat’.  As he passed beneath them ‘they threw some water,  I really don’t know what sort upon him, and immediately a large bag of soot which covered him entirely over’ . . . After they had thoroughly raised terror at the inn, the gang proceeded on their cart-horses to  . . . the home of Walter Spencer Stanhope, where ‘they broke upon his library, threw all his books about, and  . . . took away a pockett book full of Bank Notes’.”

The girls went on like this for three days.

Illustration:  Thomas Rowlandson. Two Girls Tippling.  Courtesy Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Social Climbing on "The Quality Ladder", 1793

Isabella reporting,

Social climbing is nothing new. But while a quickly made fortune can translate into a gaudy Kardashian-esque lifestyle and celebrity, the super-superiority of a noble title has generally been more difficult to obtain.

True, some titles can be bought, but those fail to have the cache of being a true member of, say, the British peerage. Consider the American millionaires of the Gilded Age, who trotted their marriageable daughters across the Atlantic in hopes of bartering Yankee dollars for an aristocratic title.

It has to be a daughter, too. Men can't acquire titles through marriage. While a man who weds a duke's daughter will be His Grace's son-in-law and nothing more, a common-born woman can rise to giddy heights through marrying the right gentleman – as Miss Catherine Middleton has most recently proved.

The wonderful caricature, left, by Isaac Cruikshank (1757-1811) features a group of English women attempting to rush up the social ladder. (As always, click on the image to enlarge it.) They're all eager to be with their "betters", and quick to scorn those below them. On the pinnacle is a duchess, pointing to the coronet this is the ultimate prize; tumbling indelicately off the bottom step (and of course showing her bared breasts in the process) is the lowly mistress. Since the captions for each woman are a bit difficult to read even after enlarging, I've copied them here, from bottom to top.

Mistress: "Whenever I try's to mount I always miss my hold."
Baronet's wife: "These Mistresses are allways following Quality."
Baroness: "Here comes Sir John's wife, but she shan't get up."
Viscountess: "Baroness, you've lost your Breath, you lag a little."
Countess: "The Viscountess is very Nimble today."
Marchioness: "I'll be up with Your Grace, but the Countess is allways at my heels."
Duchess: "Come along Marchioness make one of us."

Above: The Quality Ladder, by Isaac Cruikshank, printed in London, 1793. Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.