Tag Archive for: Georgian

MONTHLY BLOG 157, HOW THE GEORGIANS CELEBRATED MIDWINTER (*)

If citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2024)

Variety was the spice of Midwinter festivities under the Georgians. There was no cultural pressure to conform to one standard format. Instead, people responded to diverse regional, religious and family traditions. And they added their own preferences too. Festivities thus ranged from drunken revelries to sober Puritan spiritual meditation, with all options in between.

It was the Victorians from the 1840s onwards – with the potent aid of Charles Dickens – who standardised Christmas as a midwinter family festivity. They featured Christmas trees, puddings, cards, presents, carol services, and ‘Father Christmas’. It’s a tradition that continues today, with some later additions. Thus, on Christmas Days in Britain since 1932, successive monarchs have recorded their seasonal greetings to the nation, by radio (and later TV).

Georgian variety, meanwhile, was produced by a continuance of older traditions, alongside the advent of new ones. Gift-giving at Christmas had the Biblical sanction of the Three Wise Men, bringing to Bethlehem gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. So the Georgians substituted their own luxury items. An appreciated gift, among the wealthy, was a present of fine quality gloves. But, interestingly, that custom, which was well established by 1700, was already on the wane by 1800 as fashions in clothing changed. Embroidered gloves, made of lambskin, doeskin, or silk, were given to both men and women, as Christmas or New Year gifts. These luxury items may be said therefore to have symbolised the hand of friendship.

Fig.1: Add MS 78429, John Evelyn’s Doe-Skin Gloves,
17th century, British Library. Public domain.

The first illustration shows a fringed and embroidered glove once owned by the diarist John Evelyn. It was presented to him by the young Russian Tsar, Peter the Great. He had, during his semi-clandestine stay in England in 1698, resided in a property at Deptford, owned by Evelyn. The headstrong visitor caused considerable damage. So Peter’s farewell gift to Evelyn might be seen not so much as a mark of friendship but as something of a royal brush-off.

Presents can, after all, convey many messages. In the Georgian era, it was customary also for clients or junior officials to present gloves as Christmas or New Year gifts to their patrons or employers. The offering could be interpreted as thanks for past services rendered – or even as a bribe for future favours. That was especially the case if the gloves contained money, known in the early eighteenth century as ‘glove money’.

For example, the diarist Samuel Pepys, who worked for the Admiralty Board, had a pleasant surprise in 1664. A friendly contractor presented Pepys’ wife with gloves, which were found to contain within them forty pieces of gold. Pepys was overjoyed. (Today, by contrast, strict policies rightly regulate the reception of gifts or hospitality by civil servants and by MPs).

Meanwhile, individuals among the middling and lower classes in Georgian Britain did not usually give one another elaborate presents at Christmas. Not only did they lack funds, but the range of commercially available gifts and knick-knacks was then much smaller.

Instead, however, there was a flow of charitable giving from the wealthy to the ‘lower orders’. Churches made special Christmas collections for poor families. Many well-to-do heads of household gave financial gifts to their servants; as did employers to their workers. In order to add some grace to the transaction, such gifts of money were presented in boxes. Hence the Georgians named the day-after-Christmas as ‘Boxing Day’ (later decreed as a statutory holiday in 1871). Such activities provide a reminder that midwinter was – then as today – a prime time for thanking workers for past services rendered – as well as for general charitable giving.

Innovations were blended into older Midwinter traditions. Houses interiors in 1700 might well be festooned with old-style holly and ivy. By 1800, such decorations were still enjoyed. But, alongside, a new fashion was emerging. It was borrowed from German and Central European customs; and the best-known pioneer in Britain was George III’s Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. In 1800, she placed a small yew tree indoors and hung it with decorations. Later, a small fir was substituted, becoming the Victorians’ standard ‘Christmas Tree’, as it remains today.

Overlapping customs were, however, feted in the cheery Christmas carol, ‘Deck the Hall(s) with Boughs of Holly’. It was an ancient Welsh ballad, Nos Galan, habitually sung on New Year’s Day. Child singers were then treated by gifts of skewered apples, stuck with raisins. ‘Deck the Hall(s)’ was later given English lyrics in 1862 by a Scottish bard. And it’s still heartily sung – long after holly has lost its decorative primacy.

Many famous Christian hymns were also newly written in the Georgian era. They included: While Shepherds Watched … (1703); Hark! The Herald Angels Sing! (1739); and Adeste Fideles/ O Come All Ye Faithful (Latin verses 1751; English lyrics 1841). These all appeared in the 1833 publication of Christmas Carols, Ancient & Modern, edited by the antiquarian William Sandys/ He had recovered many of these songs from the oral tradition. Now they were all recorded in print for future generations.

Notably, a number of the so-called Christmas carols were entirely secular in their message. Deck the Hall(s) with Boughs of Holly explained gleefully: ’Tis the season to be jolly/ Fa la la la la la la la la. No mention of Christ.

Similarly, the carol entitled The Twelve Days of Christmas (first published in London in 1780) records cumulative gifts from ‘my true love’ for the twelve-day festive period. They include ‘five gold rings; …  two turtle doves’ and a ‘partridge in a pear tree’. None are obviously Christian icons.

Fig.2: Anonymous (1780). Mirth without Mischief. London:
Printed by J. Davenport, George’s Court, for C. Sheppard, no. 8, Aylesbury Street, Clerkenwell.
pp. 5–16

And as for Santa Claus (first mentioned in English in the New York press, 1773), he was a secularised Northern European variant of Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of 26 December. But he had shed any spiritual role. Instead, he had become a plump ‘Father Christmas’, laughing merrily Ho! Ho! Ho! (Songs about his reindeers followed in the twentieth century).

Given this utterly eclectic mix of influences, it was not surprising that more than a few upright Christians were shocked by the secular and bacchanalian aspects of these midwinter festivities. Puritans in particular had long sought to purify Christianity from what they saw as ‘Popish’ customs. And at Christmas, they battled also against excesses of drinking and debauchery, which seemed pagan and un-Christian. One example was the rural custom of ‘wassailing’. On twelfth night, communities marched to orchards, banging pots and pans to make a hullabaloo. They then drank together from a common ‘wassail’ cup. The ritual, which did have pagan roots, was intended to encourage the spirits to ensure a good harvest in the coming year. Whether the magic worked or not, much merriment ensued.

Fig.3: A Fine and Rare 17th Century Charles II Lignum Vitae
Wassail Bowl, Museum Grade – Height: 21.5 cm (8.47 in)   Diameter: 25 cm (9.85 in).
Sold by Alexander George, Antique Furniture Dealer, Faringdon, Oxfordshire:
https://alexandergeorgeantiques.com/17th-century-charles-ii-lignum-vitae-wassail-bowl-museum-grade/

For their opposition to such frolics, the Puritans were often labelled as ‘Kill-Joys’. But they strove sincerely to live sober, godly and upright lives. Moreover, there was no Biblical authority for licentious Christmas revelries. Such excesses were ‘an offence to others’ and, especially, a ‘great dishonour of God’. So declared a 1659 law in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, specifying penalties for engaging in such ‘superstitious’ festivities.

Zealous opposition to riotous Christmases was especially found among Nonconformist congregations such as the Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists and Quakers. They treated 25 December, if it fell upon a weekday, just like any other day. People went soberly about their business. They fasted rather than feasted. Sober Christmases thus became customary in Presbyterian Scotland and in the Puritan colonies of New England. It was true that, over time, the strictest rules were relaxed. The Massachusetts ban was repealed in 1681 by a Royalist Governor of the colony. But ardent Puritans long distrusted all forms of ‘pagan’ Christmas excess.

One consequence was that people sought other outlets for midwinter revelry. A great example is Scotland’s joyous celebration of New Year’s Eve or Hogmanay. (The name’s origin is obscure). One ancient custom, known as ‘first footing’, declares that the first stranger to enter a house after midnight (or in the daytime on New Year’s Day) will be a harbinger of good or bad luck for the following year. An ideal guest would be a ‘tall dark stranger’, bearing a small symbolic gift for the household – such as salt, food, a lump of coal, or whisky. General festivities then ensue.

All these options allowed people to enjoy the ‘festive season’, whether for religious dedication – or to celebrate communally the midwinter and the hope of spring to come – or for a mixture of many motives.

No doubt, some Georgians then disliked the fuss. (Just as today, a persistent minority records a positive ‘hatred’ of Christmas). All these critics could share the words of Ebenezer Scrooge – the miser memorably evoked by Dickens in A Christmas Carol (1843). Scrooge’s verdict was: ‘Bah! Humbug!

Yet many more give the salute: ‘Merry Christmas!’ Or on New Year’s Eve (but not before) ‘Happy Hogmanay!’ And, as for Scrooge: at the novel’s finale, he mellows and finally learns to love all his fellow humans. Ho! Ho! Ho!

ENDNOTES:

(*) First published in Yale University Press BLOG, December 2023: https://yalebooksblog.co.uk/2023/12/08/how-the-georgians-celebrated-christmas-by-penelope-j-corfield/

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MONTHLY BLOG 144, A YEAR OF GEORGIAN CELEBRATIONS – 12: Celebrating the annual late-November Jonathan Swift Festival in the City of Dublin, where the Anglo-Irish wit, satirist and cleric was born and where he served as Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral from 1713 to 1745.

If citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2022)

Marble Bust of Jonathan Swift (1749)
by Louis François Roubiliac (1695-1760):
displayed in Old Library, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
Image is probably based upon earlier portrait of Swift,
while the casual robes and bonnet
are similar to those depicted on a number of other Roubiliac busts.

Where does humour come from? It’s a great question to ask, when contemplating the life and times of the twelfth hero in my year of Georgian commemorations. The Anglo-Irish Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was an exceptionally sharp and witty man.1 Many jokes and wisecracks in circulation throughout the eighteenth century turn out, upon close inspection, to have derived from Swift.

Yet his position in life made him an unlikely public humourist. He was an Anglican clergyman, who rose to the position of Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin – dignified enough, albeit below the rank of a Bishop. At the same time, Swift was becoming renowned as an essayist, a political pamphleteer, a novelist, a poet, and a satirist, whose preoccupations included a scatological frankness that was unusual in any era. His unexpurgated verses on ‘The Lady’s Dressing Room’ (1732)2 hymn the disgust of the spying lover who discovers that his radiant Celia is an earth-bound mortal: ‘Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia, shits!’

Such eclectic interests and activities do not necessarily preclude a clerical career. Plenty of ministers of the faith have a kindly sense of humour. Yet the combination of a sharply irreverent laughter with a soberly reverent faith is comparatively unusual, to say the least.

Other than Jonathan Swift, the most celebrated clerical wit in Britain in the long eighteenth century – running from c.1680 to 1830 – was Sydney Smith (1771-1845). He too was an Anglican minister, who became famed as a wit, polemicist and preacher. Yet there were not many men like these two – and Smith, like Swift, was never promoted to a Bishopric.3

Sardonic humour was seen by ecclesiastical patrons as a risky companion to piety. ‘Promises and pie-crusts are made to be broken’, commented Jonathan Swift. Apt enough – but such a cheery dictum might not be understood as the words of the strictest Christian moralist.

In fact, Swift in the pulpit was an urgent and compelling preacher, whose sermons in Dublin on every fifth Sunday were very popular.4 He sought to expound religious precepts in plain terms, that all could understand. And Swift bluntly warned young men starting their clerical careers to avoid sallies of wit from the pulpit: ‘because … it is very near a Million to one that you have none’.

Nonetheless, he was too much his own man to make him an easy candidate for church patronage. Swift sought to tell the truth as he saw it – and he avoided empty pieties. Moreover, he often sounded like a secularist, far above the mundane struggles of the rival faiths. ‘We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another’, Swift observed in 1706.5 Apt again, but somehow cool and very definitely non-sectarian.

During his lifetime as a polemicist, indeed, Swift’s viewpoints were always robustly personal. In the 1710s he was aligned with the High Church-and-King political group in England, known as the Tories. Yet the pro-Tory Queen Anne, offended by Swift’s bluntness, denied him any substantial clerical promotion. Then in the 1720s and 1730s, the moderate reform Whigs took over. Swift had no further hopes of clerical advancement in England. He retreated to his Dublin Deanery, to live ‘like a rat in a hole’, as he wrote, ungraciously.

Residence in Ireland, however, brought significant new issues to his attention. Swift polemicised vigorously on behalf of Irish causes. Published in 1729, his Modest Proposal for Preventing the Poor Children in Ireland from being a Burden to their Parents or Country [by being eaten as delicacies] remains one of the most savage polemics, under the guise of sweet reason, ever written. Swift did not define himself as an ‘Irish patriot’. Yet it is no surprise to find that he has later become hailed as a nationalist hero.6

Swift faced life’s twists and turns with an intent intelligence and coruscating wit, which were allied (as he specified in his auto-epitaph) with a ‘savage indignation’. He’d had a disrupted childhood. His father predeceased the son’s birth, leaving Swift in the care of a paternal uncle. The mother returned to England, leaving the baby with a wet-nurse, who took him to Cumberland. Two years later, the child was parted from his nurse, and returned to his uncle’s care in Ireland. Later, as an adult, Swift had an unpleasant disorder of the inner ear, which gave him nausea and vertigo. He never married but he had fervent friendships with a few favoured female friends (how fervent remains debated). And he wrote and wrote, voluminously.

So where did the humour come from? His disturbed life experiences might have promoted both intensity and insecurity. But not necessarily humour. At the same time, it’s likely that the witty Anglo-Irish Swift, who was born in Dublin to English parents, would draw from the jesting cultures in which he was immersed. He was thus acquainted with English ‘deadpan’ humour and irony,7 as well as with the closely-related Irish traditions of whimsy and wordplay.

Cultural traditions provide fodder for the creative imagination. Think of Gulliver’s Travels. Could Lilliputia, with its diminutive citizens, have drawn some inspiration from traditional Irish tales of ‘little folk’ and leprechauns?8 Gulliver then visits Brobdingnag, a land of giants. Had Swift heard Irish tales of the exceptionally tall people of Antrim? (Interestingly, scientists today confirm that there is a ‘giant hotspot’ in that region, where an unusually high proportion of the population have a genetic predisposition to be very tall).9 And Gulliver later explores the flying island of Laputa, peopled by ‘mad’ scientists. How far did Swift’s sardonic improvisation rely upon his own familiarity with Stuart England’s lively culture of scientific experimentalism?10

But, of course, the creation in 1726 of an original masterpiece of world literature came from one man only. No doubt, there were some Anglo-Irishmen in these years, who had no sense of humour. And there may have been others, who were very jovial but never set pen to paper.

Jonathan Swift once remarked that: ‘Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others’.11 He had that gift. And he conveyed his vision in a memorably sardonic style. It’s appropriate therefore that the world should both commemorate his achievements – and laugh. After all, as Swift aptly noted in 1733 (extending his earlier jibe at novice clergymen):12

All Human Race would fain be Wits,

And Millions miss, for one that hits.

ENDNOTES: 

1 See I. Ehrenpreis, The Personality of Jonathan Swift (London, 1958); D. Johnston, In Search of Swift Dublin, 1959); I. Ehrenpreis, Swift: The Man, his Works and the Age, Vols. 1-3 (1962-83; repr. 2021); D. Nokes, Jonathan Swift – A Hypocrite Reversed: A Critical Biography (Oxford, 1985; 1987); L. Damrosch, Jonathan Swift: His Life and his World (New Haven, Conn., 2013); D. Oakleaf, A Political Biography of Jonathan Swift (London, 2015); J. Stubbs, Jonathan Swift: The Reluctant Rebel (London, 2016).

2 J. Swift, ‘The Lady’s Dressing Room’ (1732; slightly corrected 1735); in unexpurgated version in website: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50579/the-ladys-dressing-room (consulted 30 Nov. 2022).

3 H. Pearson, The Smith of Smiths: Being the Life, Wit and Humour of Sydney Smith (London, 1934; and later edns); A.S. Bell, Sydney Smith, Rector of Foston, 1806-29 (York, 1972; Oxford, 1980); P. Virgin, Sydney Smith (London, 1994).

4 See website https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sermons_of_Jonathan_Swift (consulted 30 Nov 2022); and context in L.A. Landa, Swift and the Church of Ireland (Oxford, 1954).

5 J. Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting, in J. Hawkesworth (ed.), The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D. of St Patrick’s Dublin, Vol. 2 (1755).

6 O.W. Ferguson, Jonathan Swift and Ireland (Urbana, Ill., 1962).

7 H.J. Davis, ‘Swift’s Use of Irony’ in M.E. Novak and H.J. Davis (eds), The Uses of Irony: Papers on Defoe and Swift (Los Angeles, Calif., 1966), pp. 41-63. For contextual discussions, see also J.B. Priestley, English Humour (London, 1929); H. Nicolson, The English Sense of Humour: An Essay (London, 1946); B.J. Blake, Playing the Words: Humour in the English Language (London, 2007).

8 See e.g. H. McGowan, Leprechauns, Legends and Irish Tales (London, 1988).

9 See report in Daily Mail (October 2016), available in website: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3834804/Land-Celtic-giants-Northern-Ireland-revealed-hotspot-abnormally-tall-people.html (consulted 30 Nov. 2022). It was this part of Ireland that produced Charles Byrne, the ‘Irish Giant’, who was put exhibited in London in the 1780s as a human curiosity.

10 M. Hunter, Science and the Shape of Orthodoxy: Intellectual Change in Late Seventeenth-Century Britain (Woodbridge, 1995)

11 Swift, Thoughts on Various Subjects, in Hawkesworth (ed.), Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. 2 (1755).  

12 J. Swift, ‘On Poesy: A Rhapsody’ (1733), in H. Davis (ed.), Swift: Poetical Works (London, 1967), p. 569. This volume also contains an expurgated version of Swift on ‘The Lady’s Dressing Room’ (cited above, n.2), pp. 476-80.

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Sarah Siddons, née Kemble (1755-1831), in expressive pose, in print by J. Caldwell after W. Hamilton line engraving (1789): National Portrait Gallery NPG D10715

MONTHLY BLOG 143, A YEAR OF GEORGIAN CELEBRATIONS – 11: Celebrating annual Sarah Siddons Award for Distinguished Achievement, given annually, from mid-November 1952 onwards, to best performer on Chicago stage

If citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2022)

Sarah Siddons, née Kemble (1755-1831),
in expressive pose,
in print by J. Caldwell after W. Hamilton line engraving (1789):
National Portrait Gallery NPG D10715

The Chicago acting award for successful women on stage, named after the celebrated Georgian thespian Sarah Siddons (1755-1831),1 had a most unusual start in life. Over two hundred years had passed without any special move to celebrate her undoubted achievements.

However, in 1950 the film-maker Joseph Mankiewicz wanted to refer to a plausible acting award. His script for All about Eve (starring Bette Davis and Anne Baxter)2 featured the intensely feline rivalry between female actors of different generations, as an ambitious young newcomer wheedles her way into the life of a successful older star and tries to replace her. Among the film’s subtle mix of themes are those of ambition, duplicity, ageing, sexual proclivities, and gender roles. The Sarah Siddons award, depicted in the form of gold statuette, forms part of the story – referencing back to a spectacular eighteenth-century stage performer whose dramatic forte was tragedy.

All about Eve had an immense success. And it inspired a group of Chicago theatregoers to turn a least one element of Mankiewicz’s fiction into reality. In 1952 they founded their own Sarah Siddons Society. And they launched a sequence of annual awards, which rapidly became prestigious.3 Among the recipients were numerous stars who appeared in both film and stage versions of All about Eve. The film thus invented an award for its own female stars.

Fortunately, the Georgian celebrity whose name was borrowed to make a point in the film, was a figure with a reputation worthy of such attention. Sarah Siddons, née Kemble, was one of numerous female celebrities in Georgian Britain, who trod the boards with unabashed confidence. In an era when many jobs and professions were still reserved for men – but when female roles on stage were no longer automatically played by men – the theatre provided scope for gifted women to establish a respected public presence.

Siddons thus shone in a galaxy of female stars: from Nell Gynn (1650-87) and Peg Woffington (1720-60), onwards to Fanny Kemble (1809-93), Ellen Terry (1847-1928) and beyond.4 Their outstanding abilities dignified an occupation which, for women, had often been denigrated as akin to prostitution.

A further point of significance about Sarah Siddons was that she came from an ‘outsider’ family from mid-Wales. But her dramatic talents, combined with those of her brother John Philip Kemble (1757-1823), raised the clan from obscurity into theatrical aristocracy. Their father, Roger Kemble, was a strolling player and theatre manager; and their mother, Sally Ward, a female actor.

Five of the Kembles’ children gained fame on stage, as did many of their grand-children, and members of subsequent generations.5 Sarah Siddons – the oldest of the siblings – was the most famous of them all; and her success no doubt helped to pave the way for her younger brothers and sisters.

In that way, Siddons, who herself married an actor, contributed to a classic theatrical dynasty. Moreover, the Kembles were forerunners of many later famous acting families on stage and in films,6 although it’s important to note that no iron genetic rule means that every single member in thespian kinship networks will be dramatically gifted to the same extent – or even at all. Of Siddons seven children, one son, Henry Siddons, did go onto the stage, becoming a moderately successful actor, theatre manager and playwright.7 Meanwhile, four of her daughters died young, while one married happily. Nonetheless, the other son, George John Siddons, did not attempt to follow his parents’ profession. Instead, he became a customs official in India.

Sarah Siddons herself specialised in tragedy. She was tall and expressive, well able to command attention. Her own parents were initially cautious about her dramatic aspirations, being aware of the potential riskiness of stage life. Moreover, Siddons’ early performances were patchy. But, as she regularly toured on eighteenth-century England’s thriving theatrical circuit,8 she gained in experience and power.

Before long, her magnetic abilities became recognised. As Lady Macbeth, her signature role, she electrified audiences. She also played Hamlet, in breeches. As her fame grew, so did expectations that people would faint or become hysterical at her realistic performances. In scenes of high tragedy, ‘Siddons fever’ would sweep through audiences. Of course, not all succumbed. But such contagious responses added to her increasingly potent reputation.

Throughout, however, Sarah Siddons kept control of her public image and avoided scandal. She appeared on stage when visibly pregnant, and played up to her role as a mother of seven children. Siddons also developed close links with artists, who painted her, often in dramatic poses.9

Most famously Joshua Reynolds depicted Mrs Siddons as the Tragic Muse (1784). It made her, at the age of 29, into an iconic figure. Her career was authoritative. Some female actors might still be giddy and flirtatious. Scandals still surrounded life on stage. Yet Mrs Siddons was a serious player. She took her roles seriously. And she expected her audiences to do the same.

It’s thus eminently fitting that the initially fictitious acting award in her honour has been turned into a continuing reality. She is by no means the only eminent Georgian to be commemorated in this way.10 Yet, among their ranks, she is an apt icon – exemplifying the emergence of female stage celebrities – and the advent of theatrical dynasties – and the powerful impact of great acting.

‘Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington’, quipped Noel Coward – years later, in 1935.11 > Here was the traditional view, lightly satirised.

Yet Sarah Siddons – and her ilk – had already implicitly countermanded any such tepid advice. Women should follow their dramatic stars; but, in today’s parlance, keep careful control of their public identities. And Siddons herself could hiss, with total verisimilitude, Lady Macbeth’s steely advice to all adventurers:12 ‘Screw your courage to the sticking place – and we’ll not fail’.

ENDNOTES:

1 F.M. Parsons, The Incomparable Siddons (1909); K. Mackenzie, The Great Sarah: The Life of Mrs Siddons (1968).

2 All about Eve (dir.  J.L. Mankiewicz; produced by D.F. Zanuck, 1950); and see also S. Staggs, All about ‘All about Eve’: The Complete Behind-the-Scenes Story about the Bitchiest Film Ever Made (New York, 2000; 2001).

3 For details, see http://sarahsiddonssociety.org/

4 G. Gibson, Performing Women: Female Characters, Male Playwrights and the Modern Stage (Ithaca, 1993); G. Perry, The First Actresses: Nell Gwynn to Sarah Siddons (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011).

5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemble_family, based upon information in Encyclopaedia Britannica (Cambridge, 1911).

6 See J.M. Bulloch, Hereditary Theatrical Families: Reprinted from Who’s Who in the Theatre (1930; 1933); and https://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2013/jan/26/10-best-theatrical-dynasties-clapp; https://www.yardbarker.com/entertainment/articles/the_most_famous_acting_families_of_all_time/s1__30829385.

7 See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Siddons#Marriage_and_children.

8 S. Rosenfeld, Strolling Players and Drama in the Provinces, 1660-1765 (Cambridge, 1939); idem, The Theatre of the London Fairs in the Eighteenth Century (1960).

9 R. Asleson (ed.), A Passion for Performance: Sarah Siddons and her Portraitists (Los Angeles, Ca., 1999); and context in L. Engel, Fashioning Celebrities: Eighteenth-Century British Actresses and Strategies for Image Making (Colombus, Ohio, 2011).

10 P.J. Corfield, The Georgians: The Deeds and Misdeeds of Eighteenth-Century Britain (2022), pp. 389-91.

11 For lyrics of Coward’s song, ‘Mrs Worthington’ (1935), see: https://genius.com/Noel-coward-mrs-worthington-lyrics.

12 W. Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act 1, sc. 7.

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MONTHLY BLOG 142, A YEAR OF GEORGIAN CELEBRATIONS – 10: Annual Commemorations UK ANTI-SLAVERY DAY ON 18 OCTOBER & THE LIFE OF OLAUDAH EQUIANO (c.1745-97)

If citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2022)

Olaudah Equiano (c.1745-97),
former child slave whose public testimony
made a strong contribution to the British
campaign to abolish the slave trade.

Georgian Britain is known for its historic participation in the transportation of captive Africans from their homeland to the New World. There the involuntary migrants were detained as slaves. Set to work in the sugar plantations, they were viewed by their ‘masters’ as an ultra-cheap labour-force. But familiar references to the ‘slave trade’ can blunt appreciation of the horrific reality. The financiers, merchants, dealers, ship’s captains and crews were all colluding in – and profiting from – a brutal demonstration of power inequalities. European traders and opportunistic African chiefs, fortified with guns, whips, and money, preyed upon millions of unarmed victims. They were exiled abruptly from everything that they knew: not only from families, friends, and communities but also from their languages, lifestyles, and belief systems. It was trauma on an epic scale.1

However, Georgian Britain was also known, especially as time passed, for a growing tide of opposition to the trade.2 The egalitarian Quakers were among the first to declare their repugnance.3 But, increasingly, others were galvanised into opposition. People were shocked to learn of the dire conditions in which the Africans were kept on board ships as they navigated the notorious Middle Passage across the Atlantic.4

One eloquent testimony came from the Anglican clergyman, John Newton (1725-1807). As a young man, he was involved in the slave trade, which he later abhorred. His resonant hymn Amazing Grace (1773, pub. 1779) explains that he once ‘Was blind, but now I see’. Newton was probably alluding to his spiritual awakening, which led him to take holy orders. Yet the phrase applied equally well to his change of heart on the slave trade.

Others found that their eyes were similarly opened, especially once the new Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade (founded 1787) began its energetic campaigning. Among those aroused to protest were numerous middle- and upper-class women. In this era, they had no right to vote; yet that did not stop them from organising petitions, lobbying ministers, and joining anti-slavery groups.5

In 1700 there was virtually no public debate in Britain about the rights or wrongs of the trade. Yet by 1800 opposition was strengthening amongst the wider public as well as within parliamentary circles. Supporters of slavery and the slave trade had some important assets on their side. Those included: tradition; profits; strong consumer demand for sugar and rum; and (before 1807) the law.6 However, the pro-slavers were forced increasingly onto the defensive.

An abolitionist tract in 1791 argued forcefully that: ‘We, in an enlightened age, have greatly surpassed in brutality and injustice the most ignorant and barbarous ages: and while we are pretending to the finest feelings of humanity, are exercising unprecedented cruelty.’7 People should ‘wise up’ to the injustices that underpinned their consumer lifestyles – and live up to the claims of the new Zeitgeist. The same case was made by the African abolitionist, Olaudah Equiano, himself a former slave. Freedom for ‘the sable people’, he declared, was essential in this era of ‘light, liberty, and science’ (1789).8

And legal changes did follow. Notwithstanding intensive lobbying from the slave traders and the West Indian plantation-owners, the British parliament legislated in 1807 to ban British ships from participating in the slave trade; and (a generation later) to abolish slavery as a valid legal status within Britain and its colonies. A separate act in 1843 extended the prohibition to India, whose governance was then overseen by the East India Company.

These declarations of principle were massively significant. And Britain was not alone in rejecting slavery. Personal unfreedom was increasingly held to be unjustifiable in any humane and civilised society. As is well known, it took a bruising civil war (1861-5) to abolish slavery in the USA. But the Southern slave-owning states did eventually lose.

Over time, moreover, world-wide opinion has collectively swung into line. In 1926 the new League of Nations agreed an international treaty to ban slavery and the slave trade. And in 1949, the United Nations General Assembly updated that commitment with a further emphatic rejection of all people-trafficking.9 In no country since 1981 has slavery been legal.10

Yet there was, throughout the nineteenth century, as there remains today, a gigantic problem with these radiant declarations of principle: enforcement.

Which authorities were to police these prohibitions, and with what powers? Nation-states can potentially check upon things within their own bounds. Yet cross-border people-trafficking raises complex practical and jurisdictional issues. As a result, slavery resolutely survives. There are problems of definition as there are many diverse cases of unfreedom, whether established through physical force, psychological or financial coercion, debt bondage, abuse of personal vulnerability, outright deception, or reliance upon customary practices.

Today there are almost 50 million citizens world-wide living in conditions of slavery. Very many are women or young children, including those trapped into providing sexual services. Some 27.6 million individuals undertake forced labour, while another 22 million are caught in forced marriages (which are, legally, a different category of abuse). Countries with notably large numbers of modern-day slaves include, in Eurasia and the Far East: China, India, Indonesia, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia and the Philippines; as well as, in Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria.11

But no region of the world can be complacent. Heartless people-traffickers bring their human cargo everywhere, providing cheap labour and/or cheap sexual services. How does this infamous state of affairs still continue? People traffickers are motivated by the lure of high profits and enabled by the weaknesses of national and international enforcement.

Equally, however, the ‘open secret’ of modern-day slavery is aided by the ‘blindness’ of today’s consumers. They are as keen to acquire cheap goods and services as people in the Georgian era were to drink cheap Caribbean rum and to sweeten their tea with Caribbean sugar. Moreover, when many consumers today are suffering from the rising cost-of-living, they may obviously lack time and enthusiasm to give a stringent moral audit to determine the source of every item of food, clothing, housing, technology and services.

So that is where campaigners with energy for the abolitionist cause continue to play a vital role. In the early nineteenth century, reformers like William Wilberforce (1759-1833)12 were ridiculed for their ‘do-gooding’. Yet the Abolitionists’ campaigning successfully propelled the cause of anti-slavery from a minority issue to the forefront of politics.

Activists today try equally valiantly to highlight the predicament of people trapped in slavery – to urge better preventive action – and to help survivors who manage to break free. There are numerous admirable church groups and non-governmental organisations devoted to these tasks. The longest continually-surviving NGO is Anti-Slavery International, founded in Britain in 1839.13 It needs great reserves of optimism and persistence, as its hydra-headed foe is proving hard to eradicate. There are perennial arguments between vested commercial interests and the civic need to regulate the labour market, so that the workforce gets a fair deal from its labour.

Celebrating anti-slavery was boosted in the UK in 2010 by the introduction of 18 October as Anti-Slavery Day. (The UN’s international equivalent date is 2 December). Such events signal an official reaffirmation of principle – and a desire to educate the public. In the same spirit, a number of European and African governments (including the UK under Tony Blair) have publicly apologised for their country’s historic role in the slave trade. Some seaports, banks, and churches have done the same. And continuing discussions explore constructive and culturally-sensitive means of acknowledgement and reparation.14  (Far from all long-term outcomes of the trade are disastrous!)

Public attitudes are also stirred by direct testimony from former slaves. In eighteenth-century Britain, the Nigerian-born Olaudah Equiano15 was not the only African to support the Abolitionists. But he became the best known, o the strength of his personal message. Himself a former child slave, who had been taught to read and write by one of his ‘masters’, he managed to purchase his freedom. Eventually Equiano became a respectable rate-payer in the City of Westminster,16 where he voted in parliamentary elections. He married an Englishwoman and raised a family. And he bore public witness. He lectured in all the major cities of England, Ireland and Scotland; and in 1789 he published his best-selling autobiography, entitled, with clever understatement, The Interesting Narrative.

Furthermore, Equiano’s career and his calm demeanor carried a further implicit message. His evident fellow humanity refuted all those who mistakenly believed that sub-Saharan Africans were innately ‘savage’ – constituting ‘inferior’ beings, who merited treatment as disposable beasts of burden. The lectures and writings of the gentlemanly, God-fearing Equiano could not in any way be deemed the work of a ‘savage’.

Theories that divided humanity into separate ‘races’, all with intrinsically different attributes, have had a long and complex history.17 Some continue to believe them to this day. In fact, it has taken a lot of research and debate to refute so-called ‘scientific racism’ and to establish the properties of the shared human genome, or genetic blueprint.18

Equiano himself simply bypassed any racist attitudes. Instead, he agreed with those who, like the Quakers, firmly asserted the oneness of all people. He believed in fellow feeling and human sharing. Thus he asked, rhetorically: ‘But is not the slave trade entirely a war with the heart of man?19

Reflecting upon Equiano’s contribution to the Abolitionist cause prompts a further thought for today. The world needs to hear many more testimonies from people who have themselves endured modern-day slavery. It is known to exist but remains hidden – deliberately on the part of the perpetrators. They don’t all today wield guns and whips (though some do). But they prey heartlessly, with the aid of money, threats, and secrecy, upon the world’s least powerful people.

Step forward, all former slaves who have the freedom to speak out – like Sir Mo Farah, the British long-distance runner.20 Tell the world how it happens! Blow open people’s ears, eyes and minds! The more that is known, the harder it is to keep these things secret; and the greater will be public pressure upon governments to enforce the long-agreed global prohibition of enslavement. The old slave trade was a historic crime against humanity. Time now to stop its iniquitous modern-day versions.

Logo of Anti-Slavery International:
see https://www.antislavery.org.

ENDNOTES:

1 An immense literature, drawing upon generations of international research, now makes it possible to estimate the scale of the enforced African diaspora and its wider impact. See esp. J.K. Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800 (Cambridge, 1998): S. Drescher, From Slavery to Freedom: Comparative Studies in the Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery (Basingstoke, 1999); D. Eltis, ‘The Volume and Structure of the Transatlantic Slave Trade: A Reassessment’, William & Mary Quarterly (2001), pp. 17-46; H. Thomas, The Slave Trade: The History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870 (2015); and all studies cited by these authors.

2 For their divided world-views, see P.J. Corfield, The Georgians: The Deeds and Misdeeds of Eighteenth-Century Britain (2022), pp. 41-70.

3 B. Carey and G. Plank (eds), Quakers and Abolition (Urbana, Ill., 2014).

4 M.B. Rediker, The Slave Ship: A Human History (2007); F. Wilker, Cultural Memories of Origin: Trauma, Memory and Imagery in African American Narratives of the Middle Passage (Heidelberg, 2017).

5 C. Midgley, Women against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780-1870 (1992); A. Hochschild, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves (2005); re-issued as idem, Bury the Chains: The British Struggle to Abolish Slavery (2010); J.P. Rodriguez (ed.), Encyclopedia of Emancipation and Abolition in the Transatlantic World (2007; 2015); S. Drescher, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Anti-Slavery (Cambridge, 2009).

6 M. Taylor, The Interest: How the British Establishment Resisted the Abolition of Slavery (2020).

7 Anon. [William Fox], An Address to the People of Great Britain … (11th edn., London, 1791), p. [i].

8 O. Equiano, The Interesting Narrative: And Other Writings, ed. V. Carretta (1995), p. 233.

9 UN Resolution 317(IV) of 2 December 1949: also banned was any form of ‘exploitation or prostitution of others’.

10 The last country legally to abolish slavery (in this case, hereditary slavery) was Mauritania in West Africa, although the practice is believed still to survive clandestinely.

11 Estimates by the United Nations agency, the International Labour Organisation (ILO): https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang–en/index.htm

12 For Richard Newton’s satirical print of Wilberforce as ‘The Blind Enthusiast’ (1792), see British Museum Prints and Drawings no. 2007,7058.3; biography by J. Pollock, Wilberforce (New York, 1977); and sympathetic film Amazing Grace (dir. M. Apted, 2007).

13 Consult https://www.antislavery.org

14 M. Falaiye, Perception of African Americans on Reparation for Slavery and Slave Trade (Lagos, Nigeria, 2008); A.L. Araujo, Reparations for Slavery and the Slave Trade: A Transnational and Comparative History (2017).

15 J. Walvin, An African’s Life: The Life and Times of Olaudah Equiano, 1745-97 (2000); L. Walker, Olaudah Equiano: The Interesting Man (2017). The Nigerian-born Equiano was known in Britain for many years as Gustavus Vassa, a name which alluded to the Swedish Protestant hero Gustavus Vasa (1496-1560), as chosen by Equiano’s slave master. For further appreciation and commemoration, see the Equiano Society, founded 1996:  https://equiano.uk/the-equiano-society

16 A blue plaque at 67-73 Riding House Street, London W1W 7EJ marks the site.

17 E. Barkan, The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concept of Race in Britain and the United States between the World Wars (Cambridge, 1992); P.L. Farber, Mixing Races: From Scientific Racism to Modern Evolutionary Ideas (Baltimore, 2011).

18 For further details, see PJC: ‘Talking of Language, It’s Time to Update the Language of Race’ (BLOG/36. Dec. 2013); ‘How Do People Respond to Eliminating the Language of Race?’ (BLOG/37, Jan. 2014); ‘Why is the Language of ‘Race’ Holding on for So Long, When It’s Based upon Pseudo-Science?’ (BLOG/38, Feb.2014); ‘As the Language of ‘Race’ Disappears, Where Does that Leave the Assault upon Racism?’ (BLOG/89, May 2018); ‘Celebrating Human Diversity within Human Unity’ (BLOG/90, June 2018): all posted within PJC website: https://www.penelopejcorfield.com/global themes/4.4.

19 Equiano, Interesting Narrative (ed. Carretta), p. 110.

20 As revealed in July 2022: see https://www.antislavery.org/modern-slavery-and-human-trafficking-in-the-uk-sir-mo-farah-story-is-a-lesson-for-us-all.

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MONTHLY BLOG 137, A YEAR OF GEORGIAN CELEBRATIONS – 5: COMMEMORATIVE WALK IN HONOUR OF RADICAL (AND CONTROVERSIAL) IRISH HERO

If citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2022)

Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-98),
pan-Irish nationalist,
republican and
revolutionary leader

Continuing the story of through-time links from the Georgian era,1 this BLOG focuses upon a highly significant commemorative walk at Bodenstown (co. Kildare). It celebrates each summer the short life and visionary hopes of the revolutionary Irishman, Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-98).

He was known as a man of principle and valour. Yet his political views were highly utopian and equally controversial. He hoped to unite his fellow Irishmen, whether Anglican, Presbyterian or Catholic, through a shared commitment to Irish nationalism and republicanism.2 He did not, however, have any practical plans to overcome centuries of religious mistrust and the power imbalance between the contending faiths. (Not an easy task in any era).

In the event, Wolfe Tone chose alliance with revolutionary France. Nothing could be more likely to enrage the Irish Protestant establishment and the British government. When therefore in summer 1798 a radical alliance of United Irishmen launched a rebellion,3 the official response was quick and decisive repression. Wolfe Tone meanwhile sailed from self-exile in France, with a French raiding party, to support the uprising. But he was caught, identified, and convicted by court-martial as a traitor. Soon after, he died in a Dublin prison, the night before he was due to be hung. It may well have been suicide. It certainly was immediate political failure.

However, over time, Wolfe Tone became a paradoxical legend.4 There are today sundry public monuments to him as an Irish patriot. Catholics especially saw him as pioneer of separatist nationalism. That cause was certainly highly important to him. Yet Wolfe Tone’s desire for an associated process of reconciliation between Ireland’s contending faiths was publicly ignored.

It was Catholics who began, a generation after his death, to visit his grave at Bodenstown in tribute. From 1873 onwards (with gaps in some years) the commemorative format evolved into a communal walk. The route starts at Sallins station, thus allowing many Dubliners to attend by train. And the procession makes its way to the Bodenstown graveyard – a distance of about 2.5 km or just over 1.5 miles – where wreaths are laid and a prominent speaker gives an oration.5

Broadly, the atmosphere is both respectful and celebratory. However, there are sometimes tensions between rival political groups. And sometimes even rival processions. Moreover, when in 1934, a radical group of Belfast Presbyterians walked the walk, carrying banners saluting Wolfe Tone, they were met by punches and kicks from the Catholic crowd. This cold welcome was allegedly ordered by the IRA.6 It was not in the spirit of Wolfe Tone.

Co-walking in support of a common cause can promote harmony and rally support. Music adds a festive touch, and helps the walkers to maintain the pace. Flying flags and banners can meanwhile enlighten onlookers. Walks and marches are a flexible and democratic form of public affirmation. They do not require huge funds. Numbers participating may be tiny or huge, depending on the cause, the legal status of public gatherings, and, sometimes too, the weather.

Little wonder then that there are many varieties of communal walks. They range from protest marches, to commemorative walks, to sponsored fund-raising hikes, to organised parades, and on to military and high-school marching bands. Together, these peregrinations constitute a secularised update of traditional religious pilgrimages – which, of course, also continue.7 Within that global phenomenon, Ireland, where Protestants and Catholics have long sponsored rival marches, is a walking hotspot. And the Irish overseas also remain notable community walkers.

The full message of Wolfe Tone’s personal career and his legendary afterlife is, however, a sombre one. It takes more than goodwill and walking together to achieve real reconciliation between contending groups. Violence and counter-violence generate bitterness and resentments, which can often last for centuries. Reconciliation entails inculcating genuine toleration, confronting frankly past misdeeds, righting wrongs (on all sides), achieving a degree of power redistribution or readjustment, opening economic opportunities for all, and generating pan-community trust and love. Not an easy programme, at any time. Hard to achieve in one divided country (let alone globally). But as urgent today as under the Georgians, as no doubt Wolfe Tone would staunchly insist.

ENDNOTES

1 P.J. Corfield, The Georgians: The Deeds and Misdeeds of Eighteenth-Century Britain (2022), p. 390.

2 T. Bartlett (ed.), Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone, comp. W.T. Wolfe Tone (Dublin, 1998); S. McMahon, Wolfe Tone (Cork, 2001); M. Elliott, Wolfe Tone (Liverpool, 2012).

3 M. Elliott, Partners in Revolution: The United Irishmen and France (1982); T. Packenham, The Year of Liberty (1969; repr. 1998); J. de Cazottes, L’Irelande entre independance et révolution: Wolfe Tone, 1763-98 … (Paris, 2005).

4 S. Ollivier, Presence and Absence of Wolfe Tone during the Centenary Commemoration of the 1798 Irish Rebellion (Dublin, 2001); P. Metscher, Republicanism and Socialism in Ireland: From Wolfe Tone to James Connolly (Dublin, 2016).

5 C.J. Woods: Bodenstown Revisited: The Grave of Theobald Wolfe Tone, its Monuments and its Pilgrimages (Dublin, 2018).

6 ‘Our Feral Tribalism Unleashed’, The Irish Times (2 May 2022).

7 L.K. Davidson and D.M. Gitlitz, Pilgrimage – from the Ganges to Graceland: An Encyclopedia (2002).

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MONTHLY BLOG 136, A YEAR OF GEORGIAN CELEBRATIONS – 4: ENJOYING THE ANNUAL DUCK FEAST

If citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2022)

This BLOG resumes the theme of links between the Georgian era and the present.1 To do that, it takes one remarkable case-history, that of the Wiltshire poet, Stephen Duck (c.1705-56). [Yes, that was his real name] He was the son of an impoverished agricultural labourer. It’s likely that both his parents were illiterate. Yet Stephen Duck not only grew to gain poetic fame during his relatively short life but has been honoured ever since by an annual Duck Feast, held in his home village of Charlton, near Pewsey in Wiltshire.2

Undoubtedly, this convivial event must be the longest-running literary commemoration to be found anywhere in Britain. It is a manifestation of local community pride, as well as a tribute to creative poetic output from an obscure individual, whose merits helped him to rise in the world.

There were many such ‘shooting stars’ from modest backgrounds in eighteenth-century Britain. The expansion of towns and trade (and literacy) provided ample new opportunities for talent. Duck’s career was a classic case study in both opportunities and obstacles.

These Feasts (scheduled in early June) actually began during Duck’s lifetime. They were funded by a gift from a local bigwig, who gave a piece of land to the village in perpetuity. That provided a practical basis for the celebrations, initially confined to small numbers of men from Charlton village. A presiding host, known as the Chief Duck, welcomes guests and gives the toasts, while, over time, the format of the Feast has been adapted.

During the evening, verses from Stephen Duck’s first and most famous poem, The Thresher’s Labour (1730), are read aloud. His poetry has some elements of ornate diction. As a promising youth, he had been given access to the classics of English literature by his charity-schoolteacher and other local worthies. However, the striking feature of Duck’s most famous work was its gritty realism. The Georgian agricultural year relied upon intensive and monotonous manual labour. And, at the height of the harvest, threshing the grain was tough work, continuing unabated throughout a long summer’s day. Stephen Duck recalled the experience:

In briny Streams, our Sweat descends apace,

Drops from our Locks, or trickles down our Face.

No Intermission in our Work we know;

The noisy Threshal [two-handed flail] must for ever go.

Neighbours who toasted the man and his muse were happy to admire, if not necessarily to share, this hard toil. During the eighteenth century, a quiet re-evaluation of the importance of manual work was taking place. John Locke and, especially, Adam Smith explored the contribution of labour to the creation of economic value. And readers in their parlours appreciated verses by poets from varied walks of life, including the newly literate workers.

Duck was thus a portent of change. Another poet from ‘low-life’ was Ann Yearsley (1753-1806), the Bristol ‘milk-woman’.3 She flourished a generation after Duck, with the support of a literary patron. Another example was the little-known James Woodhouse (1735-1820), ‘the shoemaker poet’, who eventually made a living as a bookseller.4 And in the early nineteenth century, John Clare (1793-1864), a farm labourer’s son from Northamptonshire, wrote poems of anguished beauty.5

All found it hard to progress from early success to something more permanent. The one exception was Scotland’s brilliant balladeer, Robert Burns (1759-96), the son of an Ayrshire tenant farmer.6 Financially, he always lived from hand to mouth, never attaining great riches. He did, however, have some ballast from his post as an exciseman [tax collector]. That enabled Burns to pour out his evocative poems and songs – thus mightily extending his audience. Today, he is honoured by the now world-wide tradition of annual Burns Night festivals,7 on a scale far, far exceeding the Duck Feast in Wiltshire.

By contrast, Stephen Duck lacked a steady profession. For a while, he enjoyed royal patronage and a pension from Queen Caroline, wife of George II. Yet, after her death in 1737, his career stalled. Duck later took orders as an Anglican clergyman. After all, there were major literary figures within the eighteenth-century Church of England – Jonathan Swift and Laurence Sterne being two outstanding exemplars.

Nonetheless, the clerical life did not suit Duck. Quite possibly he found that the social transition from the fields into literary and professional society, without a secure income, was too psychologically unsettling. Stephen Duck was also, in this great age of satire, the butt of robust teasing for his plebeian origins. And his best-known poem was quickly parodied, as The Thresher’s Miscellany (1730) – penned by an anonymous author who called himself Arthur Duck.8

It’s not easy, however, to read another’s heart. Stephen Duck’s life continued. He married twice; had children. It was some time before his career ran definitively into the sands. But, in 1756, he committed suicide.

Ultimately, Stephen Duck became and remained a quiet symbol of social advancement and literary change. He was not the only impoverished Georgian labourer’s son to gain fame. Captain James Cook (1728-79), the global explorer, came from a similar background. Yet, in his case, the navy provided a career structure (and a route to controversy via the mutual meetings/misunderstandings of global cultures).9 Cook’s name is now commemorated in many locations around the world. There is even a crater on the moon, named after him.

Stephen Duck, by contrast, is celebrated in Charlton in Wiltshire, not with a name-plate but, aptly enough, with a Feast. Just what was needed after a long day’s labour in the fields, as Duck had specified:

A Table plentifully spread we find,

And Jugs of humming Ale, to cheer the Mind …

ENDNOTES:

1 For context, see P.J. Corfield, The Georgians: The Deeds & Misdeeds of Eighteenth-Century Britain (2022); and website: https://www.thegeorgiansdeedsandmisdeeds.com.

2 R. Davis, Stephen Duck, the Thresher Poet (Orono, Maine, 1926).

3 A. Yearsley, Poems on Several Occasions (1785; reissued, 1994); R. Southey, Lives of Uneducated Poets (1836), pp. 125-34; K. Andrews, Ann Yearsley and Hannah More, Patronage and Poetry: The Story of a Literary Relationship (2015).

4 [J. Woodhouse], Poems on Sundry Occasions, by James Woodhouse a Journeyman Shoemaker (1764).

5 E. Blunden (ed.), Sketches in the Life of John Clare, Written by Himself (1974); J. Bate, John Clare’s New Life (Cheltenham, 2004); S. Kövesi, John Clare: Nature, Criticism and History (2017).

6 I. McIntyre, Robert Burns: A Life (1995; 2001); R. Crawford, The Bard: Robert Burns, a Biography (2011); G.S. Wilkie, Robert Burns: A Life in Letters (Glasgow, 2011).

7 PJC, BLOG/ 133 (Jan. 2022), in https://www.penelopejcorfield.com/monthly-blogs.

8 A. Duck [pseud.], The Thresher’s Miscellany (1730).

9 J. Robson (ed.), The Captain Cook Encyclopaedia (2004).

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Joseph Grimaldi (1778-1837) in full clown costume, brandishing a bottle of port, his pockets bulging with comic props.

MONTHLY BLOG 134, A YEAR OF GEORGIAN CELEBRATIONS – 2

If citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2022)

Joseph Grimaldi (1778-1837) in full clown costume,
brandishing a bottle of port,
his pockets bulging with comic props.

Well, here is an unusual Georgian celebration but a congenial one. As part of the professionalization of many industrial and service occupations,1 the ancient trade of clowning in the eighteenth century came into its own. With population and urban growth, the number of theatres and circuses across Britain also multiplied. They provided evening and holiday entertainments for populations without TVs and radios, let alone without mobile phones and social media.

One who made his name as dancer, actor, comedian and all-round entertainer was Joseph Grimaldi.2 In 1778, he was born in London into an acting family, of Italian ancestry. He began performing as a child. And he threw himself into his roles with great physical energy, getting a number of injuries which took their toll in his later years.

The part that he made especially his own was the clown in the English Harlequinade, which was a theatrical burlesque upon the story of Harlequin and Columbine. Grimaldi was so successful and popular that other clowns were named after him as ‘Joey’. His trademark ‘whiteface’ also became much copied by his fellow artistes.

Grimaldi had the confidence, above all, to develop the art of comic interaction with his audiences. One of his famous catch-phrases was: ‘Well, here we are again’. Remarks of that sort indicated to his audiences that it was ok to sit back and be amused. Backchat augmented the collective sense of community and familiarity. It did not free the clown from the obligation to be funny. But it helped by getting audiences into a good mood – and into a state of expectation. Grimaldi’s clown mask and costume thus gave him a head start.

Nonetheless, there was a certain pressure in performing regularly and being always expected to provoke laughter. Grimaldi, who constantly played the London theatres and also toured extensively, was caught in an all-consuming professional role, calling upon both intense physical agility and a keen sense of social satire. He fused traditional slapstick with an urban knowingness and irreverence. It was a demanding combination; and it was not surprising that, from time to time, Grimaldi fell out with theatre producers – and eventually with his own family. He retired from the stage, reluctantly, in 1823 (in his mid-forties), although he returned for occasional benefit performances. In his last years, he was often depressed, physically ailing, and short of money.

Yet Grimaldi on stage epitomised the joy of unbridled laughter. He became the ‘quintessential’ clown. A sort of secular patron-saint of the role. By the mid-nineteenth century, his comic qualities had become almost proverbial. Oldsters would shake their heads and say: Ah! You should have seen Grimaldi!’

Professional clowns who followed in his footsteps were glad to have such a sparkling role model. In Islington, a small park bearing his name is located just off the Pentonville Road. It lies in the former burial grounds of an Anglican Chapel, where Grimaldi is buried. A new public artwork there is dedicated to him and to Charles Dibdin (1768-1833), the dramatist and theatrical proprietor.

Moreover – and here is the February link – on the first Sunday in February each year an Annual Clowns Service is held in Holy Trinity Church, Hackney, East London. The event has been held annually since the mid-1940s. And it is attended by hundreds of clowns, all in full costume.

What a tribute to the power of memory, to the joy of shared laughter, and to the impact of a pioneering life. Today, there are many brilliant comedians – on stages, in circuses, in print, and on all forms of social media. All praiseworthy, some truly hilarious! Ah! [but] you should have seen Grimaldi!’

ENDNOTES:

1 For context, see P.J. Corfield, Power and the Professions in Britain, 1700-1850 (1995).

2 H.D. Miles, The Life of Joseph Grimaldi, With Anecdotes of his Contemporaries (1838; and later reprints); A.M. Stott, The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi: Laughter, Madness and the Story of Britain’s Greatest Comedian (Edinburgh, 2010).

 

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MONTHLY BLOG 63, THE VALUE OF VOTING – AND WHY THE PRACTICE SHOULD NOT BE MOCKED

If citing, please kindly acknowledge copyright © Penelope J. Corfield (2016)

Many more voters than previously realised cast their votes in local and national elections in eighteenth-century England. They were thereby creating – sometimes riotously and casually, but generally decorously and seriously – a culture of constitutionalism. It amounted to an emergent proto-democracy. It was not yet a full democracy, in which all adult men and women have a vote. Yet it was a culture which, importantly, chose to decide certain key disputes by casting equal votes and by then accepting the verdict of the majority.
2016-03-Election-placard1784

Satirical sketch of election placard in Westminster (1784), showing opposition candidate Charles James Fox as a wily fox with his slogan ‘the Rights of the Commons’.
Despite the brickbats and satire, Fox won.

This procedure was much safer and more rational than deciding by fighting; much more effective in winning wider consent than deciding by bribery; and much more involving for all participants than deciding by the casting of lots. Even if not all the eligible electorate actually chose to use their vote (and there were invariably some non-participants), they always had the option.

A proto-democratic culture of constitutionalism promoted public debate about the candidates and the issues, as well as a basic respect for other points of view, which might turn out to have majority support.

In the eighteenth century, the franchise was unfair and unequal, which made it a valid target for reformers. Nonetheless, in a few large constituencies with ‘open’ electorates, the number eligible to vote, via an urban freeman or rate-payer franchise, was very great. The key examples were the cities of London, Westminster, Norwich and Bristol. They had many voters (all men in this era), from a wide range of social backgrounds: from aristocrats to artisans, shopkeepers, and even some labourers. Votes were cast publicly – which meant that votes were open to challenge if the witnessing crowd doubted the eligibility of the voter – and the results were taken as registering public opinion, in the nearest the eighteenth-century constitution offered to a serious test of the views of political ‘outsiders’.

Historically, the fact that Georgian England already had a voting tradition helps to explain how the country later made the transition into full democracy so bloodlessly. Already in the eighteenth century the rudiments of the electoral process were evolving: candidate speeches; party manifestoes; electoral slogans and placards; party colours; door-to-door election canvassing; ward organisations; celebrity endorsements; shows of public support in rival demonstrations and mass meetings; close scrutiny of the voting process; declaration of the results with, upon occasion, a formal challenge and recount; and, finally, acceptance of the outcome. (The Georgian custom of chairing the successful candidate around town was not always implemented then and is today not considered obligatory).

Not only were parliamentary and civic elections contested in these large open constituencies, but during these years the practice of constitutional voting was becoming adopted in many other, different circumstances. It pointed away from the troubled civil wars of earlier times towards a calmer, safer society. Many different non-governmental institutions used the mechanism of voting, for example to determine their own membership.

For example, in numerous private clubs and societies, potential recruits had first to be nominated by one or more existing members. Then votes were cast secretly, for or against; and any candidate who was ‘blackballed’ (negatived) was declared to have lost. This practice continues in some private clubs to this day. It was (is) a particularly severe test, since the excluded candidate might have won a large majority of all votes cast. In that case, it could be accused of being anti-democratic, allowing a small group to negative the will of the majority. The moral, in all cases, is that the rules for voting are crucial in framing how each voting system works.

Other non-governmental organisations which used some version of balloting in the eighteenth century included bank management boards and charitable institutions like London’s Foundling Hospital, established in 1739. That body used voting by its Trustees to recruit new Trustees, when existing ones died or retired. Clearly, these were socially exclusive bodies. But they were upholding the convention that each vote from a valid voter has equal value and that the will of the majority should prevail.

Importantly, too, it’s known that some middling- and lower-class groups used the mechanism of voting to resolve disputes over appointments. For example, a number of Nonconformist churches chose their ministers by such means. The Congregationalists in particular valued this procedure. Potential candidates would appear before a congregation, preach a sermon, and then submit to a vote, no doubt after further behind-the-scenes canvassing and enquiries. In these ways, many people had the experience of participating equally in a collective decision to find out what the majority (including those who were not so vociferous) really wanted.

So what follows? Firstly, the culture of voting is one to be appreciated – and used. Secondly, the constitutional rules for each system of voting really matter. They should be clearly framed to allow each system to operate fairly within its remit – and the rules, once established, should not be tampered with for partisan advantage. And lastly, electors should not be summoned frivolously to the polls. That way, disillusion and apathy develop.

Look at the low turnout for elections to the European Parliament. And there’s a good reason for that. Electors know that the institution has no real power. It is not a supreme legislative or tax-raising body; and, unlike a national Parliament, no executive government is either constituted from its ranks or is scrutinised closely by it. The current arrangements do no good for either the European Union or participatory democracy. Sham elections are destructive of a genuinely civic process, which needs to be cultivated, valued, and made real – not mocked.

1 P.J. Corfield, ‘Short Summary: Proto-Democracy’, section 1.7, in E.M. Green, P.J. Corfield and C. Harvey, Elections in Metropolitan London, 1700-1850: Vol. 1 Arguments and Evidence (Bristol, 2013), pp. 55-67; also in www.londonelectoralhistory.com, section 1.7.

2 See P.J. Corfield, ‘What’s Wrong with the Old Practice of Open Voting: Standing Up to be Counted?’ BLOG no. 53 (May 2015).

3 BLOG illustration from Rowlandson’s Procession to the Hustings after a Successful Canvass (1784) in http://www.magnoliasoft.net/ms/magnoliabox/art/547698/procession-to-the-hustings-after-a-successful-canvass-no14 (detail).

4 Over time, however, the clergy’s professional qualifications tended to be emphasised over the power of congregational election: see J.W.T. Youngs, The Congregationalists: A History (New York, 1990; 1998), pp. 69-70.

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