Happy (Belated) Birthday, George!

Today, I am reminded of birthdays.  For one, we have a little one who will be celebrating his first birthday shortly in my family.  For another, my grandmother would have been 102 today.  And August 12 marked one of the biggest birthday celebrations in the early nineteenth century, for it is the natal day of His Royal Highness George, the Prince of Wales, affectionately known as Prinny.
Marissa covered the interesting life of the man who would one day become George IV in several posts beginning here.  He could be as inquisitive and as capricious as a child, which is no doubt one of the reasons he sometimes insisted on a major blowout of a party on his birthday. 

For example, in 1814, he commissioned activities in all the public parks in London.  In Hyde Park and Green Park, he had booths and tents erected for a major fair with food, music, and dancing.  Little ships enacted a mock Naval battle on the Serpentine, and a balloon ascended from Hyde Park. The night ended with fireworks from an illuminated "temple." 

Meanwhile, over in St. James's Park, boats paraded in a regatta, and the military held an encampment through which the fashionable might promenade.  A Chinese pagoda built over the canal launched fireworks at the end of the night.

And while all this entertainment was open to everyone of any class for free, certain advertisements of the event stressed that the wealthy might purchase tickets:

"The rich may purchase the accommodation of a less occupied space, while the amusements of all will be equal and indeed universal," promised the Tradesman, an economic journal of the time.  "And the fund raised by the sale of the tickets (issued only, to be understood, for the due accommodation of certain classes) will be appropriated to some great and benevolent endowment, suited to the occasion and commemorative of it."

The rest of the cost, noted the Tradesmen, would be taken out of government funds, with each department contributing.  I guess that's one way to fund a birthday party!

And speaking of parties, Marissa and I will be doing something a little different than celebrating for the next two weeks as we prepare to tackle several important familiar milestones like the first year of college for two very special young ladies.  So, there will be no blog posts between now and September 6.

Time for a party, perhaps?

Public Spectacles, Amusements, and Objects Deserving Notice, June

June was the middle of the Season in London during the nineteenth century. Everyone who was anyone was in town, enjoying weather that tended to be more often on the pleasant side. And they had many choices for outdoor entertainments. For example, Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens generally opened in early June in the earlier part of the century, horse races popped up around the country, and the Thames was full of rowing matches and sailing regattas.

But the big event for most of the first two decades of the century was His Majesty’s birthday celebration, centered around June 4th. Even though George III was growing stranger and his son would end up the Regent and later king, every major city in England, many small hamlets, and every territory and embassy world-wide held events on the King’s birthday.

In London, tradesmen with royal warrants illuminated their shops in the evening. Special illuminations (painted panels with lanterns behind and between them) glowed in public places as well. Mail coaches paraded from the Post Office to the St. James’s Palace and back. Famous composers and musicians held concerts. The King’s Master of Music on occasion even composed a new Ode for the celebration (although that was falling out of favor). Those of particularly high rank and favor were invited to a grand drawing room at the palace.

On the Thames, rowing matches and regattas brought out the boats. Areas of the country where garrisons were stationed held military reviews; ports held naval maneuvers. Church bells rang throughout the nation. Can you tell it was a party? The English loved their “Farmer George”!

Now, more than 200 years later, one organization still celebrates. The students at Eton commemorate the birthday of George III with special lectures, cricket
matches, and a procession of boats on the river. According to the school, no monarch except the Founder (Henry VI) was more involved and took more pride in the school. Eton is located near Windsor Castle, and apparently George III invited students to visit from time to time and was known to pop into the school for a visit whenever he was passing nearby.

May your June be as memorable!

P.S.—I will be taking a short break next week, so look for a post from Marissa on Tuesday, but no post from me until June 22.

Quiz: Is It My Birthday?

Thank you all so much for your suggestions and encouragement around Nineteenteen's third birthday! We love hearing from you!


The nineteenth century saw the invention of many wonderful technologies and the birth of entirely new courses of scientific study, art, and literature. As part of our birthday bash, we thought you might have fun trying to figure out which of the following were first created in the nineteenth century. Because 100 years is a bit of a long span to consider, we’re narrowing it to things created anywhere from 1800 to 1820.

Figure out which of these items you think was “born” between 1800 and 1820, then check the answers in the comment section to see how you did. We’d love to hear how you scored, but please don’t tell where you found your answers. You might spoil the fun for someone else.

Remember, anyone who comments on this post or Marissa’s Tuesday post will be entered into a drawing for a $25 Borders gift card (it works online too, I’ve been told, so you don’t have to have one near you) and a genuine Nineteenteen faux-Regency fan. We’ll collect comments until midnight Monday. Good luck!

1. Submarine

2. Battery

3. Wellington boots

4. Tin can

5. Plastic surgery

6. Soda pop

7. Ice cream

8. The Gothic novel

9. Poker (the card game)

10. Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.

Happy Birthday, Dear Jane!

Pop quiz time!

Which author born in 1775 has her own store on Amazon.com in 2008?

Which author's name alone (not including the title of her six completed books) accounts for 6,810,000 results on Google?

Which author, a spinster who spent her entire life living quietly with her family in the English countryside, is today an action figure?

Okay, maybe it's not much of a quiz since there's a pretty major hint in the title of this entry, so let's just skip the grading part and sing a loud chorus of "Happy Birthday" to Jane Austen, whose birthday is today. We'll be spending the next few entries on Nineteenteen celebrating the divine Jane and her work, and we invite you to chime in...all commenters during our Janeian extravaganza will be entered in a random drawing to win an assortment of Jane Austen-inspired books and other fun stuff!
So who was the author of Pride and Prejudice, Persuasion, Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, Emma, and Mansfield Park (most to least favorite in my humble opinion--how about you)?

Jane was born on December 16, 1775, the seventh of eight children of the Reverend George Austen and his wife Cassandra Leigh Austen, in Steventon, Hampshire (west and slightly south of London). The Rev. Austen was hardly wealthy, but he was able to give his large family a comfortable life--and what's more important, an intellectually stimulating one. The Austen family delighted in reading, writing, and amateur theatricals, and though Jane later called herself "the most unlearned and uninformed being that dared to be an authoress", it's clear that she was quite well-read in English literature, history, and French, and possessed a smattering of knowledge in other subjects. Along with her elder (and only) sister Cassandra she briefly attended school around the age of 10-11, but after that returned home to take up the duties expected of daughters of clergymen: helping around the house with sewing, gardening, preserving, and being useful to the rest of the family (over her lifetime she spent a LOT of time taking care of her many nieces and nephews).

She was known for her liveliness and wit and was very fond of dancing and assemblies (her letters in her late teens and twenties are full of descriptions of them) and even on occasion flirting; but as the daughter of a clergyman she was not possessed of a large enough fortune to make her marital prospects terribly attractive though she did receive a handful of proposals, mostly from other not-very-well-off clergymen. One love affair did seem to be more serious, but the suitor in question fell ill and died, and Cassandra removed all mention of him from Jane's letters that she saved so that his name is lost to history. The two sisters visited their married brothers and other relatives and took care of their hypochondriac mother (who would outlive Jane by many years) and mostly lived an unremarkable life...except that Jane had an unconventional hobby: writing.

She wrote several rather silly pieces as a teen, including a highly prejudiced history of England, but then settled down at age twenty to more serious writing: early versions of Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice date from these years. She got her first rejection from a publisher during these years as well; it wasn't until 1803 that Northanger Abbey (then titled Susan) was accepted for publication...and then it never actually came out. The experience seems to have daunted Jane, for though she continued to write, she would not submit or let any of her family submit her work to publishers for another seven years.

But in 1810, the tide turned and Sense and Sensibility was released. It did quite well; and since it was published anonymously--the author was simply listed as "A Lady"--society took great delight in trying to figure out who had written it. Pride and Prejudice followed in 1813 to even greater acclaim (her brother Henry couldn't resist telling everyone about his talented sister, so the authoress's name became known), Mansfield Park in 1814, Emma in 1815, and Persuasion and Northanger Abbey together in 1817, after her death. Her authorial years included trips to London to meet with her publishers and mingle ever so slightly with the literati of London, but growing ill health put a stop to this after 1815, and she died in July 1817, possibly from lymphona.

Stay tuned on Friday, when Regina will present a most delicious post.

Happy Birthday, Vic!

This coming Saturday (the 24th) will be Queen Victoria's 189th birthday. Pretty appropriate for Memorial Day weekend, isn't it? I'll be thinking of her as I plant my vegetable garden and herb pots.

Victoria took her birthdays very seriously and always discussed her personal goals for the coming year in her journals:

(on her 18th birsthday in 1837): "Today is my 18th birthday! How old! and yet how far I am from being what I should be. I shall from this day take the firm resolution to study with renewed assiduity, to keep my attention always well fixed on whatever I am about, and to strive to become every day less trifling and more fit for what, if Heaven wills it, I'm someday to be!..."

No mention of presents in this entry, but for her 16th Victoria certainly got a fair amount of loot:

"I awoke at 1/2 past 6. Mamma got up soon after and gave me a lovely brooch made of her own hair, a letter from herself, one from dearest Feodore [Vic's half sister] with a nosegay, and a drawing and a pair of slippers done by her...Dear Lehzen gave me a lovely little leather box with knives, pencils, &c. in it, two small dictionaries and a very pretty print of Mdlle. Taglioni [one of Victoria's favorite dancers]...At 9 we breakfasted. I then received my table. From my DEAR Mamma I received a lovely enamel bracelet with her hair, a pair of fine china vases, a lovely shawl and some English and Italian books. From dearest Feodore a lovely enamel bracelet with hers and the children's hair; from Charles [Victoria's half brother] some pretty prints; from Spath [one of her ladies] a very pretty case for hankerchiefs embroidered in silver; from Sir Robert and Lady Gardiner a very pretty sort of china vase; from Sir J. Conroy a writing case; from the whole Conroy family some prints; and from Mr. George Hayter a beautiful drawing done by him. I quite forgot to say that I received a beautiful pair of sapphire and diamond earrings from the King and a beautiful prayer-book and very kind letter from the Queen...."

Not a bad haul, I think, though the jewelry made from various people's hair is a tad eerie. On the other hand, the earrings sound pretty good.

Once Victoria became queen, she no longer had to submit her journals for her mother to read. So let's hear the report on Victoria's 19th birthday:

"...At 25 m. past 10 I went with the whole Royal Family into the other Ball-room through the Saloon [not what you're thinking--"saloon" was just another word for large receiving room] which was full of people....We then went into the other room, and danced a regular old English country dance of 72 couple, which lasted 1 hour, from 3 till 4!...It was the merriest, most delightful thing possible. I left the Ball room at 10 m. past 4, and was in bed at 5--broad daylight. It was a delightful Ball, and the pleasantest birthday I've spent for many years!..."

Not so different from a teen birthday today, really.

Happy Birthday, Vic!