Shenanigans at the Shore?

In Betrayal at Brighton, the eighth and newest addition to The Ladies of Almack’s series, Annabel and the Lady Patronesses are in Brighton to do the unthinkable: investigate one of their own.

Annabel has, much against her inclination, agreed to spend a few weeks in Brighton with her fellow Lady Patroness, Frances Dalrymple, and Frances’s brother Lord Glenrick, now the Duke of Carrick. But much of the time she expects to spend investigating Frances’s alarming actions in Windsor gets taken up by playing companion to Princess Charlotte, daughter of the Prince of Wales…until her investigation and the Princess intersect in a shocking way. And then there are the bathing machines, the hundreds of ghosts in the cellar…and, of course, Lord Quinceton.

Betrayal at Brighton is considerably longer than the previous installments; it just kept getting longer and longer, rather to my bemusement, and so is a book rather than a novella. My apologies if you preferred the shorter format of earlier stories—it took me by surprise as well. But there’s a lot going on here, including discovering at last just what it is that Frances and her brother are up to. And did I mention Quin? 😊

Betrayal at Brighton can be purchased directly from the publisher, Book View Café, in both EPUB and MOBI formats as well as from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Apple, GooglePlay, Smashwords, and elsewhere. Print versions can be found at Barnes and Noble and Amazon...or ask your local library to carry it.

In addition, Countess of Shadows: The Ladies of Almack’s Omnibus No. 1 is available everywhere after its initial release only from Book View Café. You can still find it at Book View Café as well as from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Kobo, GooglePlay, Smashwords, and elsewhere, and in print from Amazon and Barnes and Noble or from your favorite local bookstore...and don't forget your library!

 

Retro Blast: Bathing Place Evening Dress

With the temperatures that Britons are suffering right now, I hope most of them can manage a trip to the shore...in somewhat cooler bathing attire, though. As I'm just starting a Ladies of Almack's story set in Brighton in 1810, I'm having fun picturing Annabel in a similar outfit...including the gladiator sandals, still fashionable after more than two hundred years. This post first appeared in July 2017; enjoy, and keep cool. 

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Just in time for summer...

Isn’t this a delightful print, from the September 1810 edition of La Belle Assemblee?  I mean...she’s wearing what we would call pantalettes, complete with a triple lace frill round each leg...not to mention sandals. The dress itself is surprisingly simple, buttoning up the front. It’s cute as a bug, but certainly unlike any early 19^th century evening dress I’ve seen before. Since no text accompanied it. I dug around on-line and found this in Google Books:

No. 2.—A FASHIONABLE SEA-SIDE WALKING DRESS

A gown of white French cambric, or pale pink muslin, with long sleeves, and antique cuffs of thin white muslin, trimmed with Mechlin edging; made high in the neck, without a collar, and formed in points at the center of the bosom, with three rows of letting-in lace; confined down the front of the dress with small buttons; and hemmed round the bottom with three rows of deep Mechlin lace; made rather short, and worn over trousers of white French cambric, which are trimmed the same as the bottom of the dress. A cap composed of lace and light green silk trimming, tied under the chin, with a bunch of natural flowers in front. Hair in full ringlet curls, divided in the front of the forehead. A figured short scarf of pale buff, with deep pale-green border, and rich silk tassels; worn according to fancy or convenience; with gloves of pale buff kid; and sandals of pale yellow, or white Morocco, complete this truly simple but becoming dress.

And there you have it—the reason it’s unlike any other evening dress is because it’s actually a walking dress...and perfect for that. Evidently an engraver for La Belle Assemblee took a mental vacation while working on this print, and gave it an incorrect title. Can’t you see a fashionable young lady out in society, visiting Brighton at the end of the London season, tripping blithely down the sands (not that Brighton has a very sandy beach), kicking at the waves, picking up pretty seashells, and generally having a time of it?☺

 

Spa Day!

I’ll say it right up front—I’m not a spa person, at least not today’s version of a typical spa. I don’t do facials; massages make me uncomfortable. But I would have loved visiting a Regency spa.

A number of cities during the early part of the nineteenth century in England had risen to the position of being considered a spa, either because of the opportunity to bathe in the sea or the opportunity to partake of mineral waters, or both. While the prominence of the city of Bath in Somerset waned as the century wore on, it was still one of the most popular. Bath had the benefit of having actual hot water baths, built in Roman times. It also boasted the Pump Room where you could drink the water and visit with friends. With assembly rooms just up the hill and parks for promenading on a sunny day, Bath would seem to have everything one could want in a spa.

Though Jane Austen is often associated with Bath, a family favorite was Lyme Regis in Dorset. The town along the seashore also had a fine set of assembly rooms and saltwater bathing. It also featured shops, tearooms, and bookstores. You can see why Jane liked it. 😊

Scarborough in Yorkshire had the best of both worlds, with saltwater bathing and mineral waters to drink. It also had a nearby castle being used as a barracks for soldiers. That red uniform can go to a girl’s head!

Other towns also made a play for the title of spa. Before he went mad, King George frequently took his family saltwater bathing at Weymouth in Dorset, and his son, Prince George, was inordinately fond of Brighton in Essex. 

Come back next Friday when I will tell you about one more special spa that I hope you’ll want to visit again and again, for I’m starting a new series set there!

Green and Pleasant Land, Part 6: New Forest and Brighton

Our next destination on the Doyle family tour of southern England was the seaside town of Lymington, from which we planned to spend the next day visiting the Isle of Wight. “Ferry reservations?” we cluelessly trilled. “Who’ll be going to the Isle of Wight on a Thursday morning?”

Um...well, as it turned out, a lot of people. The ferry was book solid until 4 pm, which meant our plans to see Cowes and Queen Victoria’s Osborne House were shot. It was time for Plan B. And you know what? As much as I was bummed to miss Osborne House, Plan B wasn’t so bad...not when it included a visit to a handsome stately home, Beaulieu (that’s pronounced “Bew-lee”, just so you know).

In addition to the current house, Beaulieu includes the remains of a large medieval monastery (here's a section of garden with bits of original stonework that have been found) and some lovely plantings (I especially loved this laburnum tunnel...as did hundreds of bees!)

We also did a lot of driving around the New Forest, another royal hunting preserve (this time dating to the time of William the Conqueror). Though much smaller and tamer than Dartmoor, there were small moors, also inhabited by lots of sheep and ponies. And while wandering around a section of forest, I heard my first cuckoo call.

The next day we were off to another long-awaited destination: Brighton, home of the Prince Regent's beloved Pavilion, where he would spend the summer enjoying the breezes off the English Channel. He first discovered Brighton (or Brighthelmstone, its original name as noted in the Domesday Book) in the early 1780s, when sea-bathing had become the latest health fad. Prinny was charmed and bought a modest farmhouse, which he commissioned architect Henry Holland to turn into a home worthy of the Prince of Wales. Holland built him one...but evidently it wasn't grand enough, for in 1815 Prinny hired architect John Nash for an upgrade. And what an upgrade he got!

The exterior of the Pavilion is made of chastely cream colored stone, in a fantastical dreamlike Mughal style with onion domes, pierced screens, and minarets--rather a contrast to the Georgian classicalism that had been the prevailing building style in the town for the last fifty years. And while it's beautiful in a fanciful way, it's only the beginning.

The interior is, quite simply, jaw-dropping. Where Indo-Islamic style prevails on the outside, within the decor is fantasy Chinese. There are dragons everywhere (include one of silver gilt clinging to the chandelier in the Banqyueting Room that must be at least ten feet long). In the Music Room, the central done is covered with hundreds of thousands of gilt cockles shells, which look like dragon scales. The colors are rich and saturated, and every surface is decorated; even the kitchens, which were state of the art in 1820, are beautiful.

What's even cooler about the Pavilion, though, is its history. After Prinny's (now King George IV) death in 1830, his brother King William used the Pavilion. But when Victoria came to the throne, she was not amused by the Pavilion and by Brighton in general, finding it far too crowded and the palace itself too small and lacking in privacy. She bought land on the Isle of Wight for her summer retreat of Osborne House, and the Pavilion was sold to the city of Brighton (after Victoria carried off anything that wasn't nailed down.) Decades of decline followed; Nash's creation was not built to last. But after World War I, partly spurred by the interest of Queen Mary (who began to donate back to the Pavilion things that Victoria had carried off) and a full-scale restoration of the Regency era palace was begun, hugely helped by the fact that all of Nash's original plans and detailed paintings of the rooms were available. Since then, despite fires and other calamities, work has been ongoing, and the result is just breathtaking. We sure as heck enjoyed it! If you ever, ever have a chance to see it--go!

Our hotel was also worth mentioning; Brighton remained a popular watering hole long after Prinny went to the great Assembly Room in the sky, and a series of elegant hotels were built right along the shore, rather like a Victorian Miami Beach. The grand Brighton was indeed a grand old place, a little shabby in spots but oh so atmospheric.  We ate dinner at the Old Ship Hotel, mentioned in at least one Georgette Heyer novel that I remember, and then after dark looked out at the Brighton Pier, which is basically a small amusement park built over the water (it dates to 1899) before going to sleep for the last night of our trip.

The last installment: Hampton Court Palace, and where I'm going next time!

The Prince Regent, Part 2: The Most Accomplished Gentleman?

At the age of eight, like most other well-born lads of the age, George left the nursery and the kindly and sensible Lady Charlotte, and was set up in a separate household where his brothers would eventually join him. There they would be taught to be humble, virtuous, devoted and obedient to their parents and to their religion, and fond of simple living.

It didn’t work out that way.

As I said in the last part, George was intelligent and seems to have worked hard at his studies. Unfortunately, he was also a high-spirited boy, and his tutors had been commanded by the King not to tolerate any laziness or schoolboy silliness on the part of George or his brothers. Any of that met with immediate—and generally harsh—punishment. King George became concerned by the reports of his son’s governor Lord Holdernesse, who seems to have been as earnest and as ineffectual and clueless as the King. This resulted in a steady diet of parental lectures and thrashings, administered in the presence of George’s younger sisters—hardly treatment for a warm-hearted but highly-strung boy.

To make matters worse, in-fighting among young George’s various tutors led to a high turn-over and a lack of continuity. And to top it off, the King continued to make no secret of the fact that he was much fonder of George’s younger brother Fred. It was something of a miracle that the two boys remained devoted to each other, when any scrapes the pair got into were always blamed on the elder.

All of George’s younger brothers eventually got shipped off to join the army (or navy, in William’s case) and therefore had something to do, some focus and outlet. That route was not open to the heir to the throne—yet the King refused to start tutoring George in how to be a king and thereby give him some purpose in life. George had so little knowledge of his future kingly duties that when be became Prince Regent, he even had to be shown how to sign royal documents.

Is there really any wonder, then, that pretty soon there was a full-scale rebellion in the palace?

Though George was forced to remain living with his parents until he was 21, by age 16 he was already figuring out how to sneak out to go partying and how to get other people to cover for him. At 17 he became violently infatuated with the actress Mary Robinson, whom he called “Perdita” after the Shakespearean role in which he first saw her. Affairs with other women soon followed, to his parents’ dismay (and to the cost of their purses, buying these women off). Nor was womanizing the only problem; according to his (almost) lifelong friend, the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan, George spend most of the 1780s “frequently drunk”, and his friendship with the rather disreputable Sir John Lade led to daredevil exploits in his phaeton, including driving to Brighton from London and back in under ten hours. Other boon companions in partying too hard were the Dukes of Cumberland and Gloucester, George’s uncles and the King’s brothers, who had also suffered from too much restriction at the King’s hands.

Georgiana, the famous Duchess of Devonshire, left a perceptive word portrait of the twenty-year-old George:

“The Prince of Wales is rather tall, and has a figure which, although striking is not perfect. He is inclined to be too fat and looks too much like a woman in men’s clothes, but the gracefulness of his manner and his height certainly make him a pleasing figure. His face is very handsome, and he is fond of dress even to a tawdry degree, which young as he is will soon wear off. His person, his dress and the admiration he has met with…take up his thoughts chiefly. He is good-natur’d and rather extravagant…but he certainly does not want for understanding, and his jokes sometimes have the appearance of wit….”

So here we have it…a son who turned out to be the exact opposite of what his parents intended. The King tried to curb George by keeping him on a tight allowance; in retaliation, George became an outrageous spendthrift. Once he turned 21, the King could no longer force him to stay living at home, and George acquired his own homes—Carlton House in London (that's it at right), and a seaside villa in the village of Brighton. If the King had been despondent before, George’s next action would push him beyond despair.

Young George got married.

Stay tuned for The Prince Regent, Part 3: Mrs. Fitzherbert

Keep it Clean Part 3: Dean Mahomet, Therapeutic Massage, and Champi

It's hard to believe, when walking down the toiletries aisle at your local pharmacy or market, that all those colorful bottles of shampoo are a fairly recent innovation...like, 20th century recent. As I said last week, when you wanted clean hair, you lathered it up with the same soap you were using for the rest of you…which didn’t do your hair any favors. So where did our modern “shampoo”—a special soap for the washing of hair—come from?

It came initially by way of British India and a very interesting person known as Sake Dean Mahomet (in his native Bengali, Shekh Din Muhammad). Mahomet was born in 1759 and served in the Bengal Army of the British East India Company as a young man, starting out as a trainee surgeon. He came to Ireland with his former Captain, settled down to perfect his English, and married an Irish girl. His language studies went well enough for him to publish a book about India called The Travels of Dean Mahomet—it was, incidentally, the first book published in English by an Indian writer. Mahomet and his wife moved to England in 1810 and accomplished another first—he opened the first Indian takeout restaurant in England!

But before he moved into the restaurant biz Mahomet had worked with a certain Basil Cochrane who had just opened a bathhouse specializing in vapor bath cures, popular with the British in India, as a way to promote the health of London’s poorer classes. When his restaurant (the Hindoostanee Coffee House in George-street) was taken over by unscupulous partners, forcing him out, Mahomet returned to the bathhouse idea as a way of earning a living. He moved to Brighton, the seaside town where the Prince Regent’s favorite house, the Pavilion, was located, and opened a new bathhouse which also offered vapor bath cures and other health-promoting treatments. One of these was the therapeutic massage technique called Champi (which sounds similar to what we know as massage therapy today).

Mahomet’s baths caught on like wildfire and doctors praised his Champi treatments…which eventually changed in pronunciation to “shampoo” and the treatments to massage of the shoulders, neck and scalp, especially the last. Mahomet eventually came to be called “Dr. Brighton” by the happy citizens of that town; doctors referred clients to him, and in time he was appointed “Shampooing Surgeon” to both King George IV (the former Prince Regent) and King William IV. Mahomet lived a long and prosperous life after that, and one of his grandsons became an early and important researcher in high blood pressure studies at the famous Guy’s Hospital in London.

According to etymological dictionaries, by 1860 the word “shampoo” had come to mean the act of washing one’s hair, and a few years later it also meant products used for hair washing—which generally consisted of soap boiled in soda water and mixed with fragrant herbs or oils…not much of an improvement over plain soap, really. Though chemists soon attacked the problem of finding a shampoo that didn’t turn one’s hair to straw (in 1898 that a German chemist and pharmacist made a few improvements and created a shampoo powder that became highly popular), it wasn’t until 1930 that a much less alkaline (and therefore less harsh on the hair) shampoo was introduced to the world by Dr. John Breck. 1930--just eighty years ago.

Next week: Bear fat, Stirachia’s Italian Oil, and Mochrikufsky and Prince’s Russian Oil

Brighton's Shining Star: The Royal Pavilion

So, imagine you’re a young prince, the heir apparent to the British Empire. Your father is old and stodgy, none of the government officials appear to be interested in a thing you say, and now you’ve been sent to bathe in the sea because your neck’s a little thick. Who’d blame you for wanting to escape from it all?

That’s the basic picture of George IV, darling Prinny, when he first arrived in Brighton. He rose late, went riding, and give a dinner party for as many friends as possible every few days. He had so much fun, in fact, that he decided to live there. So, he bought a simple farmhouse at the edge of town. Over the next 35 years, he lavished extravagant sums of money on the place, eventually turning it into an opulent pleasure palace (Neverland, anyone?).

You can see here the metamorphosis:


a) In 1787, George had renowned architect Henry Holland extend the original farmhouse into a faux-temple. At the time, it was known as the Marine Pavilion.


b) Between 1815 and 1823, Prinny’s favorite architect, John Nash, turned the temple into an Indian palace with domes and minarets over a cast iron framework. He even replanted the gardens with curving paths and picturesque views.

If the outside is amazing, the inside was designed to boggle the mind. An elaborate entry hall led to the Long Gallery, which linked the main state rooms. The gallery also served as a card room during larger parties. The walls were originally painted with a landscape against a pink background. Large, painted-glass lay lights in the ceiling lit the gallery during the day, and painted lanterns and chandeliers lit it by night.

One of the most magnificent rooms is the Banqueting Room. Prinny loved nothing so much as his food, especially when he could share it with a few hundred of his closest friends. Large painted canvasses covered the walls, and a dragon holds up the massive center chandelier.

Another gorgeous room was the music room, where Prinny could host concerts. Notice the glass chandelier, with painted Oriental ladies on each panel.





Prinny didn’t spare expenses for the less public rooms as well. The kitchen was one of the biggest, airiest, best lighted of its age, with the newest technology including steam heating. The ceiling is supported by four cast-iron columns surmounted with painted copper palm leaves.

Perhaps the most outrageous portion of the Royal Pavilion is the stables. Completed in 1808, the Royal Stables and Riding House were considered engineering feats for their time. The stables are topped with a dome 80 feet across and 65 feet high. Along the circular interior were stalls for 44 horses, who took their water from a gorgeous fountain in the center.



In 1822, Prinny had an underground passage built from the main pavilion to the stables, so he and his visitors could go visit the horses on rainy days without getting wet. Supposedly the passage was big enough to turn a carriage and four (wouldn’t want to walk to see the horses, would you?). A critic of the day declared, “The King’s horses (if they were horses of taste) would petition against such irrational a lodging.”

Yes, the pavilion was an amazing structure. Unfortunately, Nash’s designs weren’t very practical. By 1833 the roof was leaking, and drainpipes concealed in the walls were overflowing and causing dry rot. Queen Victoria first visited the place in 1837 and failed to find the same delight in it as her predecessors:

“The Pavilion is a strange, odd, Chinese looking place, both outside and inside. Most of the rooms are low, and I can only see a morsel of the sea, from one of my sitting room windows.” She only visited two more times before deciding to dismantle the place, sending various paintings, furnishings, and accessories to Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle.

In 1850, the city of Brighton petitioned the Queen, who allowed the city to purchase the pavilion and its grounds for 53,000 pounds sterling (close to 4 million in today’s pounds). It is currently undergoing extensive renovation to restore it to the glory Prinny imagined when he first laid eyes on Brighton over 200 years ago.

And Millysdaughter and ChaChaneen, you’ve both won fans in our final two giveaways for August! Contact me at La Petite Four with your land address, and I’ll pop those into the mail!

The Biggest Beach Ball of All: Brighton

As summer vacation draws to a close and students head back to school here, I wanted to close my series on seaside resorts with the one most celebrated in romantic literature: Brighton. This sleepy little fishing village on the Channel due south of London looked doomed to die in the 1700s. Storms had damaged buildings, waves eroded the shoreline, and entire neighborhoods had fallen into the sea. People left in droves, and, by early 1700, fewer than 1,500 people were living in the area.

That all changed with the publication of a medical book in 1750. Dr. Richard Russell of Lewes wrote a dissertation on the use of seawater to treat glandular diseases like gout, which was attacking any number of his wealthy, sedentary clients. He thought bathing in and drinking sea water (along with a number of other interesting concoctions containing woodlice, cuttlefish bones, and crabs’ eyes) was therapeutic. Those clients flocked to nearby Brighton to be dipped and bathed.

So did the Prince of Wales. The young prince first visited Brighton in 1783 when he was 21 years old and doctors thought sea bathing might help reduce the swelling in his neck glands. He found the diversions, which included a theatre, two assembly rooms, and a covered market by then, far superior to the stuffy court of his father. In fact, the man who dipped him in the sea, Smoaker Miles, bossed him around like a son, to the point of grabbing him by the ear and dragging him back to shallower water when the sea was rough.

Suddenly, Brighton was all the rage. Between 1770 and 1795, over 600 new houses were built. The 1800s saw first a steam ship running between Brighton and France (post Napoleon, of course) and then a railway from London to Brighton. The Chain Pier opened in 1823. Though it was meant as a place to dock ships from France, the towers supporting the chains housed little shops selling sweets and souvenirs, and the visitors loved to promenade along its length. By 1848, more than 250,000 people were said to visit Brighton each year. To serve them in various capacities, the resident population rose to more than 65,000. The Grand Hotel was built in 1864 to accommodate visitors. An aquarium, museum, library, and general hospital quickly followed.

But the shining star of Brighton, one of the reasons so many of the aristocracy made the trek, was the chance of being invited to entertainments at the Prince’s pleasure palace, Brighton Pavilion. Come back on Friday to discover some of the secrets of this Taj Mahal of England and learn the names of the final two winners of our Nineteen Teen fan contest!



And speaking of which, Melanie, please contact Marissa at her website, because you are the winner of last Tuesday’s drawing for a Nineteen Teen fan!