Not Quite Trick or Treat, but Almost

I was in a large party supply store a week or so ago looking for napkins. I found them, eventually, after wading through the front two-thirds of the store that was entirely given over to Halloween-related goods, from 15-foot tall inflatable lawn ornaments to every conceiveable costume--for children, yes, but especially for adults. Am I the only one to notice that over the last several years, Halloween has morphed from a children’s holiday to one just as popular among grown-ups? I guess some things never change, because people in the 19th century loved dressing up in outlandish costumes just as much…only they didn’t do it at Halloween.

The 19th century was undoubtedly the century of the costume ball. Their popularity in England probably grew with our friend Prinny, the Prince Regent, who adored “dressing up”, first in military uniforms, then later in Scottish dress as he fell in love with the romanticized Scotland of Sir Walter Scott’s novels…and from there, it was a logical progression to adoring costume balls. A few years later, his niece Victoria was equally addicted to costume balls up until the death of the Prince Consort in 1861, and they remained popular at court (though she no longer participated) and in society at large right into the 20th century. Historical and cultural themes for costumes--dressing up as someone from the past or from a different land--were probably the most usual, especially earlier on, but as you'll see shortly, costumes weren't limited to Queen Elizabeth or romantic cavaliers.

Here are a few costumes from the first part of the century for your Halloween inspiration (a post on the costume balls of the later 19th century would require its own post, as another Prince of Wales, Victoria’s bad boy son Bertie, also loved to play dress-up). Enjoy!

This first one is a "Danish Fancy Dress Worn at the Prince Regent's Fete", from La Belle Assemblee, August 1819:

And a "Fancy Ball Dress" also from La Belle Assemblee, August 1820. Perhaps she was going for the milkmaid look?

The young lady on the left is dressed as one of the waiting women of Mary Queen of Scots in this March 1833 print from The Court Magazine:

I'm not sure what these costumes are supposed to represent, though the one on the right seems to have a somewhat Russian feel, with her vaguely slavic headdress and fur-edged boots (this from a French publication, Petit Courrier des Dames, March 1837):

Medieval themes were popular, as we see in this couple from 1838...interesting to see a male costume, and how a 14th century "gates of hell" surcoat could be adapted to a 19th century corseted silhouette (Journal des Modes):

Last are a pair of costumes from 1838...first, these from La Mode--perhaps a musketeer and a revolutionary?

And last, these "15th and 16th century" costumes, also from La Mode:

Are you dressing for Halloween? Would you want to borrow any of these costumes?

Trooping the Colour, or Happy Birthday, Your Majesty!

Today is Queen Victoria’s birthday! One hundred and ninety-two candles would make for a very bright cake, don’t you think?

We last celebrated Victoria’s birthday here, but did you know that for centuries, the Queen’s (or King’s) Birthday has been marked by a ceremonial parade known as Trooping the Colour? It was first celebrated in 1748 and periodically after that, and in 1820 became an annual event, cancelled only by bad weather or other extraordinary events (such as World Wars I and II)—leave it to Prinny to formalize the celebration of his birthday with an enormous parade!

Infantry regiments had “colours”—usually a standard or flag—which served as a rallying point for the members of regiments in battle. As such, they were of great symbolic importance; to lose one in battle was unthinkable, while to capture an enemy’s colours was the ultimate glory. When Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, three of his standards, or eagles, were sent post-haste to England, where they were presented to the Prince Regent at a dinner party to notify him of the Emperor’s final defeat.

So on the sovereign’s birthday, the Household infantry regiments who were permanently stationed in London to guard the royal family and perform other ceremonial functions, as well as any other regiments that happened to be in the vicinity, got gussied up and marched in procession on Horse Guards Parade near, flags waving, to be inspected by the King or Queen. As they still do--here's a clip from last year's Trooping:

If you'd like to know more, here's the official Trooping the Color website. This year's parade will take place on June 11, with the 1st Battalion Scots Guards. In the meanwhile, though, I'll be here celebrating another great Queen's birthday. Happy Birthday, Your Majesty!

Royal Weddings, Part 4: Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, and Princess Alexandra of Denmark

Our latest royal wedding wasn’t precisely a love match like Vicky and Fritz’s, but as royal marriages go managed, after a few rocky years, to be a successful one, based on mutual respect and affection. I’m talking about the match between “bad boy” Bertie, eldest son of Queen Victoria and Princess “Alix” Alexandra of Denmark.

Finding a bride for Bertie, the twenty-year-old future king of England, was of course a very important issue. Victoria was in the depths of mourning first for her mother, then for her beloved Albert who’d died in December 1861 (and whose death she partly blamed on poor Bertie's misbehavior with an Irish "actress"), so Bertie’s elder sister Vicky, now Crown Princess of Prussia, stepped in to find a suitable bride for her brother.
She found the young and beautiful Alexandra of Denmark, known as Alix to her family. Although their first meeting didn’t precisely result in sparks, neither outright refused to consider marriage, and a year later, on their second meeting (and after much behind-the-scenes discussion and negotiation), Bertie proposed in September 1862, with the wedding to take place on March 10, 1863. Though traditionally the marriage should have taken place in the bride’s home, Victoria would not hear of her heir being married anywhere but London, and so in London it was.

Because the Queen was still in the deepest mourning, the wedding was held at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor. The small venue meant that only Alix’s closest family members were invited, and Bertie was limited to inviting six friends. Holding the wedding at Windsor also denied Londoners the spectacle of the wedding of the heir to the throne, but the Queen would not hear of a more public wedding. Court mourning also decreed that female guests could wear only secondary mourning colors like mauve or grey, which must have been a bit of a disappointment.

Alix’s dress was of white and silver satin, decorated with garlands of greenery; Bertie wore a general’s uniform under his Garter robes. But most of the eyes were on the Queen in a balcony overlooking the altar; she seems to have played somewhat shamelessly to the crowds, making it clear that witnessing what was supposed to be a joyous event was terribly painful to her (“I dread the whole thing awfully, & wonder even how you can rejoice so much at witnessing what must I should think be to you, who loved Papa so dearly, so terribly sad a wedding,” she wrote to her eldest daughter Vicky a few weeks before the happy event.) The Archbishop of Canterbury officiated, operatic star Jenny Lind sang, and Bertie’s nephew, Vicky’s eldest son, four-year-old Willy (later Kaiser Wilhelm II), behaved very badly, crawling about and biting people.

A wedding breakfast for five hundred was held under a tent (fortunately the weather was sunny at this point) with another enormous cake, and then the bride and groom went away to dress for their wedding journey to Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. “Ah, dear brother, what a sad and dismal ceremony it was!” the Queen wrote later to the King of Prussia.

Nineteenth Century Bad Boys Part III: The King of Bad Boys

The nineteenth century had some pretty memorable bad boys. Appropriately enough, the king of them all was, in fact, a king--Albert Edward (called Bertie by his family), who reigned in the United Kingdom from 1901 to 1911 as Edward VII. I mean, when a recent biography of his earlier years is titled Edward the Caresser (subtitled “The Playboy Prince Who Became Edward VII”, by Stanley Weintraub, The Free Press, 2001) you KNOW he must have been one very Bad Boy indeed.

It seems at first glance ironic that the uber-bad boy of the century should have been the eldest son of Queen Victoria, who remains such a symbol of prudishness to this day. But don’t forget what we discussed in some of the earlier posts here--that in her first two years as queen, Victoria was a total party princess like many of her Hanoverian forebears, dancing at balls till sunrise every chance she could. It wasn't until she married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who hated staying up much later than 9:30 pm, that she changed her ways.

Bad Boy Bertie was born November 9, 1841, eleven months after his sister Vicky and not even two years after his parents married. Of course the country went wild at the thought of having a male heir (there were still sinister rumors circulating that the Duke of Cumberland, Victoria’s uncle, was plotting against her to seize the throne if she had no heirs). As befitted the heir to the most powerful nation in the world, little Bertie’s upbringing and education were planned down to microscopic levels by his parents, who were determined to make a paragon of the future king.

Unfortunately, Bertie had other ideas. He was probably dyslexic and had other learning disabilities which made sitting down and learning for hours each day totally hellish…and which earned him punishments and stern lectures from mom and dad. He was also rather homely--weak-chinned, short, and with over-prominent eyes--taking after his mother rather than his handsome father (much to Victoria’s dismay). Had he been born the son of a country squire, none of this would have much mattered…but his parents’ extreme expectations of him meant that poor Bertie was never good enough.

So Bertie was crammed with everything from mathematics to military and legal history, showing proficiency (and then not much) only in foreign languages and dancing and deportment. As his father wrote of him, "Bertie has a remarkable social talent.... But usually his intellect is of no more use than a pistol packed in the bottom of a trunk if one were attacked in the robber-infested Apennines." Nevertheless, he was sent on trips around Europe and then to be lectured at at Oxford University. A tour of America was shoehorned in, where he was mobbed in an eerily modern media frenzy, as well as a stint in the Grenadier Guards training camp where over the course of 10 weeks he was to learn the duties of every position and end up by theoreticlly having the competence to command a battalion and manoeuvre a brigade in the field.

Pretty crazy expectations, huh? And of course Bertie failed miserably...but during his weeks in the army he discovered the delights of female companionship in the form of a prostitute named Nellie Clifden. Nellie was to be the first of a long (very long!) line of the Prince's "special friends", which would include the famous actress Sarah Berhardt and dozens of other actresses and opera singers as well as members of the nobility and the wives of his friends.

Unfortunately for Bertie, the discovery of his liaison with Nellie sent his father into a depression and, already plagued by poor health and overwork, Prince Albert died at age 42. Victoria blamed Bertie for Albert's death and decided that the best thing to do was marry him off and remove temptation (she thought)...so Bertie was duly married at age 21 to the beautiful but vacant Alexandra of Denmark. They became the center of the "Marlborough House set", a hard-partying group of aristocrats named after Bertie's London home.

I could go on at length about the scandals Bertie went on to be embroiled in, including being named as co-respondent in a few divorce trials and more...but honestly, it really does take a book to describe them all. Despite his weaknesses, though, Bertie remained a fundamentally decent person who was notably free of social prejudice (his friendship with several prominent Jewish families and with non-aristocrats helped break down several social barriers in late 19th and early 20th British society). It's interesting to speculate how he might have turned out if his early education and upbringing had been different.