Celebrity Endorsements, Regency Style

In November we looked at a riding habit from La Belle Assemblée for June 1816. That was clearly a good month for fashion plates, because we’re going to have a look at the month’s other plate, The Cobourg Walking Dress.

(Does anyone but me think it funny to depict a walking dress on a seated model?) Here’s the accompanying text: Round dress of fine French cambric under a pelisse of amber shot sarsnet, elegantly ornamented in a novel style with blue satin ribband. Oatlands hat to correspond with the pelisse, tied with a chequered ribband of blue on white, and the hat surmounted with a bunch of tuberoses or Passion flowers. Morocco shoes or half boots of light blue the colour of the pelisse trimming. Limerick gloves; and the hair dressed forward in curls.

What’s going on here is a royal wedding: Princess Charlotte, daughter of the Prince Regent, married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (or Cobourg)-Saalfeld on May 2, 1816. This particular issue of La Belle Assemblée included lengthy articles on gowns in the princess’s trousseau and on the Queen’s Drawing-Room held in honor of the wedding, both copiously descriptive…which was hardly surprising given the magazine’s target audience and the large number of silk warehouses and other stores given to fashion who advertised with it. And of course, the inimitable Mrs. Bell, “inventor” of the fashions depicted in La Belle Assemblée’s plates, had to get in on the act…which is why we have a Cobourg pelisse and an Oatlands hat, Oatlands being the country estate of the Duke and Duchess of York, where Charlotte and Leopold spent their honeymoon. And of course Passion flowers…need one say anymore?

Let’s have a look at what can see of the outfit (can I say I’m very cross that we can’t see the front?) The back is very handsome, however, with what looks like ruched ribbon in a yoke over the shoulders and on the garment’s edges (and even sewn into the shoulder seams. The gathering at the back of the waist is attractive as well: I wonder if the garment is actually gathered by the ribbon, or if the gathers are sewn in.

I’m not quite sure what’s going on with the hat, however. It starts out as a conventional straw bonnet trimmed with the blue ribbon…but what’s going on at the back of the crown? It rather looks like a large bag has been sewn into it… Any thoughts on what’s happening here?

We all know that Charlotte’s happy marriage was short-lived—sadly, she would die in childbirth a year and a half later. Reading the account of her trousseau and the celebrations around her wedding make for melancholy reading: they’re so full of excitement, of fairy-tale magic “and they lived happily ever after”, and of hope—Charlotte was the heir presumptive to the throne after her father. I wonder if Charlotte herself ever paged over a copy of this edition of La Belle Assemblée and examined this plate, and the walking dress created in her new husband’s honor? Alas, we’ll never know.

What do you think of the Cobourg Walking Dress?

 

The Great Inverness Earthquake of 1816

The earth shakes in many corners of the world, wreaking havoc to homes and infrastructure alike. But the biggest earthquake ever to hit Scotland happened nearly 200 years ago today.

On August 13, 1816, the people of Inverness were mostly abed. It was a calm night. Moonlight filtered down through a misty haze that lay across the fields. At four minutes before 11pm, the ground heaved, for up to 1 minute, according to some reports. Those out in the country reported a sound like a rushing wind. Those in town thought someone was rolling a heavy object along the slate roofs. Slate stones tumbled to the street, chimney caps fell. Those houses with servant bells heard them all ring at once, with some wire jangling so hard it broke. Dogs howled. Chickens screeched. The 45-meter-tall steeple on the new courthouse and prison was twisted perpendicularly on its base. The Mason Lodge cracked from foundation to rooftop.

People, some of them naked, ran out into the street. Women were said to faint. Others screamed. Still others ran and kept running, hiding in the fields until morning. An aftershock at 11:30 only added to the pandemonium.

Historical evidence has led researchers to believe the earthquake was likely 5.1 on the Richter Scale. It was felt for more than 100 square miles. More aftershocks kept rumbling through for the next week.

Miraculously, no one was hurt or injured. The Masons helped villagers repair their chimneys and roofs. When consulted, the architect for the steeple advised leaving it the way it was as a “wonder” to be viewed for generations to come. Publications from the local paper to the Naval Chronicle reported the news. The stories only magnified with time. Later stories reported that the great bell of the town rang twice during the quake.

It seems even earthquakes improve with age.

Steeple photograph © Copyright Kenneth Allen and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1289365

1816: The Year Without a Summer

Whatever side you land on the climate change debate, there’s no question recent summers have been different, with higher than normal heat one place and greater than usual rainfall another. But two hundred years ago, people had reason to question the weather as well.

1816 was known as the year without a summer. Temperatures around the globe were much cooler than usual. Each day dawned dark and stormy. Buffalo, New York, saw frost through July. New England saw snowfall in early June. It rained so long in Ireland, the potato crop failed. Drought spread. More crops died. People across Europe rioted. The New Hampshire Patriot reported that things were so bad the poor were eating nettles, wild turnips, and hedgehogs!

People everywhere scratched their heads. How had this happened? Some newspapers blamed “sunspots”—vapors from Earth that had been transported to the sun and blocked part of its rays for a time. One joked that the War of 1812 had made Canada so mad it was blowing cold wind south.

Scientists today point the finger at Mt. Tambora in Indonesia. The eruption in April 1815 was one of the largest ever recorded. More than 10,000 people died immediately; 80,000 more died of starvation afterward. The eruption threw dust and ash 25,000 feet into the atmosphere, where it spread around globe.

But the dreadful weather had unexpected consequences beyond the crop failure and drop. One expert suggested that the bicycle was invented in part because horses had become too expensive to feed. Another pointed to the fact that New England farmers began moving West in droves. Congress was voted out of office because the members had raised their own salaries in times of distress rather than somehow “fixing” the problem. And on a dreary sojourn in Switzerland, Mary Shelley entertained herself by writing Frankenstein and Lord Byron penned the poem “Darkness.”

At least the world received something from all that wretchedness!