Tag Archives: England

May 2, 2023

A Coronation Primer

By daseger

Time to put some of my day job perspectives out there: it’s not every day/year/decade/half-century that we get to see a British coronation! I’m kind of excited; I even dusted off some of my old grad school books about medieval monarchy and royal iconography last weekend. Over my career, I’ve taught about the interrelationships between spiritual and secular authorities pretty constantly in medieval and early modern courses, but I seldom have time to delve into all the expressions of these alliances and conflicts, and coronations are case studies in both symbolism and projection: in the distant past, the more recent past, and judging from all of the official imagery leading us to the coronation of King Charles III, even today.

Official Coronation “paper”: invitation by heraldic artist Andrew Jamieson, emblem by Sir Jony Ive KBE and his creative coalition LoveFrom, one of four thematic stamps produced from wood engravings produced by Andrew Davidson for Atelier Works.

I’ve always thought of King Charles III as a traditional man, primarily because of his preference for classical architecture, I think. The images above definitely reinforce this characterization for me, but they also reveal his interests in the natural world and diverse, hopefully harmonious communities. I love the tradition-embracing change aesthetic of these images, and I think the Coronation will have a similar tone. Coronations are absolutely traditional, but they are also flexible ceremonies which can embrace variant themes according to individual preferences: they evolved over time and reflect their historical contexts. Early medieval coronations seem to represent order, legitimacy, and the evolving sacred nature of kingship; later medieval coronations still embrace those themes but also a more independent divine authority of kings who were claiming unmediated mandates from God rather than through the Pope. This continues into the seventeenth century, but there were also increasing references to “the people” in both feudal fashion and a (slightly) more egalitarian manner. There were lots of changes in the 18th and 19th centuries: to accomodate and highlight the constitutional role of the monarchy and British and Imperial sovereignty. After the long reign of Queen Victoria, it was time for a “refresh,” but tradition sill reigned: this seems very similar to what we are experiencing now. Of course we enter the era of the intensifying power of both public opinion and public relations in the twentieth century, and the coronations of both Kings Edward VII in 1902 and George V in 1911 really reflect these developments. We get these great souvenir books (as well as a flood of material souvenirs) in the twentieth century too: one of my favorites, published by the Illustrated London News for the coronation of Edward III, features wonderful (though quite imaginary) images of previous coronations with Edwards past presented in color and gilt.

Images from The Coronation of King Edward VII, 1902, published by the Illustrated London News (cover against some great Queen Victoria wallpaper from the Victoria & Albert Museum.)

King Edward I, the Confessor’s role in coronation history derives principally from his commissioning of the Coronation Chair on which King Charles will be crowned, as well as the Crown itself, but I’m not sure that all of the other Edwardian coronations are singular, with the exception of that of King Edward II, in which he swore “to observe the future laws made by the community of the realm.” Those last three words constitute a very powerful phrase, and precedent. Most British historians assert that the first ceremonial coronation, or perhaps that which was recorded in detail, was that of Edgar “the Peaceful” at Bath Abbey in 973. This was orchestrated by the great Saint Dunstan and featured both an early version of the contractual oath and a coronation banquet (feasting is always associated with coronations). William the Conqueror was the first monarch to be crowned at Westminster Abbey, Tudor coronations featured a notable expansion of pomp and symbolism (particularly Arthurian symbolism) reflecting concerns of legitimacy after the Wars of the Roses and the new sovereignty over the English Church established by King Henry VIII, and Stuart coronations were more elaborate (and longer) still, particularly those after the Civil War. King Charles II’s coronation featured a mile-and-a-half-long procession and reconstituted regalia, as Oliver Cromwell had destroyed what he saw as profane objects. In the 18th century, King George I’s coronation oath replaced “Kingdom of England” with “Kingdom of Great Britain” after the Union with Scotland, and King George IV’s oath replaced “Great Britain” with “United Kingdom” in 1821. At the end of that decade King William IV seems to have desired to dispense with all the pomp and circumstance, bud did ride to Westminster Abbey in the 1762 Gold State Coach, establishing a “tradition” which continued thereafter. Queen Victoria “restored” everything in her coronation in 1838, which lasted for five hours and featured lots of mistakes, mandating rehearsals for the future.

Edgar the Peaceful among the Saints, c. 1050; Thomas More’s poem upon the occasion of the Coronation of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, 1509; Depictions of Queen Victoria’s Coronation looking back, 1897, Illustrated London News, all British Library.

There is room for variation and innovation in the order and elements of the Coronation ceremony as well as its overall presentation: to me, it seems to have evolved from a Christian and feudal ceremony to a secular and constitutional one, but there’s still quite a bit of religious overtone to it obviously, and more majesty than anything else. King Charles will maintain the four essential elements of every twentieth-century coronation: 1) the Recognition, derived from the recognition of the monarch observed by the Witenagemot, the Anglo-Saxon predecessor of Parliament; 2) the Oath, representing the contract between the monarch and the people; 3) the Annoiting (or Unction), representing the monarch’s consecration by the Church of England; and 4) the Homage: a feudal survival in which the “Lords Spiritual and Temporal” pledge fealty to the monarch. The King is crowned between the Annoiting (with the Restoration-reconstituted St. Edward’s Crown) and the Homage, and this is supposed to happen around noon, British time of course. But in addition to all this “tradition,” there will be some key changes, some very detailed, others rather momentous. King Charles and Queen Camilla will ride to the Abbey in Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee Coach, rather than the golden Georgian coach. A new “Greeting of the King,” which will precede the Recognition, in which two chorus boys will welcome the King (and the Queen) to the Abbey. The Annoiting of a monarch is a sacred ritual, not be broadcast in any way, so iconographer Aidan Hart and the Royal School of Needlework have produced a privacy screen featuring a tree design representing the 56 Commonwealth countries, but there is a new annointing oil recipe! The Homage will be much shorter than in coronations past, as the 1999 House of Lords Act curtailed the peerage (but not short enough for most Britons, I think). But most important of all, the Coronation service will feature prominent roles for Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist and Jewish leaders, as well as prayers and readings in other British languages (Welsh and Scottish and Irish Gaelic), and a woman will present the Swords of State and Offering for the very first time.

From Old England: A Pictorial Museum of Regal, Ecclesiastical, Municipal, Baronial, and Popular Antiquities, ed. by C. Knight (1860).

3 Comments | tags: Big Events, British History, British Library, Commemoration, Coronations, England, Great Britain, Iconography, King Charles III, Memorabilia, Monarchs, News, Rituals, Royalty, United Kingdom | posted in Culture, History

November 5, 2018

Fireworks for the Fifth

By daseger

I’ve been immersed in seventeenth-century English instructional texts during my sabbatical, so it wasn’t difficult to find directions for fireworks for Guy Fawkes Night. Whether it was the foiled Gunpowder plot or the aspirational magnificence of the Stuart court, clearly there was demand for some very fancy displays in the air, on the ground, and in the water. One imagines that these flagrant displays would have been one more thing to irk the Puritans, if they were ever produced. Lots of fiery dragons (to highlight St. George), serpents and dolphins. I just love the idea of fighting fire with fire by celebrating with gunpowder, the key ingredient in all of the firework recipes in John Bate’s Mysteries of Art and Nature (1634), John Babbington’s Pyrotechnia. Or a Discourse of Artificial Fireworks (1635, is there any other kind?) and John White’s A Rich Cabinet with Variety of Inventions in Several Arts and Sciences (first published in 1651). The “Green Man” wielding the “firecracker” introducing Bate’s fireworks chapter is one of my very favorite printed images. Remember, remember.

Bate 1

Dragons

Bate 9

Bate 16

All (embellished) illustrations from Bate (1634) with the exception of the Knight +Dragon (Babbington, 1635).

1 Comment | tags: Anniversaries, Bonfire Night, Commemorations, England, Guy Fawkes, Illustrations, Seventeenth Century | posted in Culture, History

October 7, 2018

Sugar and Sage in the 17th Century

By daseger

I’m working on three projects during my sabbatical this semester, but the one that has (re-)captured my attention, and to which I have devoted the most time so far, is an old study of the more utilitarian features of the long English Renaissance, including agriculture, medicine, home-keeping, construction (rather than architecture), engineering, navigation and other individual and collective “industrious pursuits”. Food and drink are at the intersection of several of these pursuits, so I’ve spent several weeks researching not so much what early modern people ate and drank but rather what they were supposed to eat and drink according to contemporary “authorities”. This is far more interesting than the basis of my other industrious pursuits, which is of course math. Eventually I must get into math but right now I’m enjoying reading about food. There are many opinions in the early modern regimens organized around the Galenic concept of the non-naturals, external and environmental factors which affect health: air, food & drink, rest & exercise, sleep & waking, excretions & repletions, and “affections of the mind”, but in this post I’m going to focus primarily–but not exclusively– on the advice of a physician-entomologist named Thomas Moffat, which was published posthumously as Healths Improvement: or, Rules Comprizing and Discovering the Nature, Method, and Manner of Preparing all sorts of Food used in this Nation in 1655, with “corrections and enlargements” made by Dr. Christopher Bennet. Moffatt wrote the original manuscript around 1595, and he segregated diet from all the other non-naturals in a manner that is more modern than early modern: it is an orderly and due course observed in the use of bodily nourishments, for the preservation, recovery, or continuance of the health of mankind.

Even though he was a practicing physician and an avid entomologist, Moffatt’s diet advice is more ancient Greek/biblical than empirical, though he does make the interesting distinction between “full, moderate, and thin” diets, which increase, repair, and lessen flesh, spirits and vapors in the body respectively. Most adults should follow moderate diets in alliance with their designated humoral complexion or temperament, representing the particular combination of humors (blood, phlegm, black and yellow bile) with their attendant qualities, or degrees (hot, cold, moist, dry). Everything and every substance has humors, not just bodies, so foods should be chosen to preserve health according to the rule that like is sustained by the like, or restore health by employing foods with contrary degrees. That’s all pretty standard for this time, but Moffat explores food to a greater degree than many of his contemporaries: its taste and distaste, its preparation, when to eat it—and when (and how) to kill it if it is a beast. All beasts are fair game, both domestic and wild (even hedgehogs) and all parts of all beasts (believe me). A few expressions of vegetarianism will emerge over the course of the seventeenth century, but Moffatt’s treatise is not among them. Nearly every food is good for someone at sometime, but the when must be considered along with the what, as for example, seemingly-harmless butter, which is best at break∣fast, tolerable in the beginning of dinner; but at supper no way good, because it hinders sleep, and sendeth up unpleasant vapours to annoy the brain, according to the old Proverb, Butter is Gold in the morning, Silver at noon, and Lead at night. It is also best for children whilst they are growing, and for old men when they are declining; but very unwholesome betwixt those two ages….a veritable lifetime of no butter! Thankfully, Moffatt seems to be the only one proffering this advice; most regimen writers assert that butter is just fine, especially when salted and mixed with honey and/or sugar, the universal panacea of the early modern era (for those who could afford it).

Making miraculous sugar in Nova Reperta (New Inventions of Modern Times), engraved by Jan Collaert I, after Jan van der Straet, called Stradanus, and published by Philips Galle, 1600.

Sweeteners make everything better—water, wine, butter–not just better-tasting, but better, according to all opinions: “Sugar agrees with all ages and all complexions”, wrote Thomas Cogan in his Haven for Health (1584). Water should be avoided at all costs, unless it was pure rain water or mixed with sugar or honey; ale, beer and wine were much preferred, especially “Rhenish” (white) wine. Writing several decades before Cogan, Philip Moore summarized his diet advice according to ease of digestion and engendering of “good juice” in his Hope of Health: partridges, pheasants, chickens, capons, hens, small birds, newly-laid eggs, rare or poached, young pork, veal, new milk, fresh fish from gravelly and stony rivers…bread made of the flour of good wheat, being well-leavened, sufficiently salted and well baked in an oven, being two or three days old. And also pure wine. Even though “meate” is often used to refer to all food, it’s not difficult to glean that meat (or flesh) was key to a healthy diet, and chicken and mutton were generally preferred, “boiled and eaten with opening (fresh) cordial herbs”, a beefed-up version of the pottage most people probably were eating.

Two calendar illustrations from Thomas Trevilian’s marvelous Miscellany, 1608: Folger Shakespeare Library MS V.b. 232 (formerly Folger MS 450517).

There is still a reticence about fruits and vegetables among seventeenth-century regimen writers, particularly the former, although that is changing: a terrible famine in the 1590s inspired a major reconsideration. William Vaughan, in his Approved Directions for Health, both Natural and Artificial (1600), asserts that fruits are eaten more for wantoness than for any nutritive or necessary good”, but he praises many vegetables, and gives us a recipe for the very best “sallet” made of pennyroyal, parsley, lettuce and endive, which “opens the obstruction of the liver and keeps the head in good plight”. Moffatt is more open to fruit, but like most of his contemporaries, he warns against the raw state: all apples are worst raw, and best baked and preserved (with rosewater, honey and/or sugar, of course). But by all means avoid “melomachia, the ‘apple-fight”; [as] cruel fluxes surprised the Army upon this, and many died of intolerable gripings. It seems as if most fruits are acceptable if they are baked, roasted, or “cunningly preserved”, with sugar, and taken with wine: figs, in particular, draw much commentary as a wholesome fruit, but only if consumed in the right way. According to Moffatt, figs are dangerous without wine, but wholesome with it. Vegetables can be nourishing as well, but only if you pick the “whitest and tendrest-leafed” and steep and cook them for quite some time. In addition to the application of fire, the accompaniment of wine, and sweeteners, garden herbs and spices, both “homebred” and imported or “outlandish”, can change the nature of everything, particularly sage, the versatile herb of salvation from time immemorial. Moffatt (and Bennett) leave sage to the herbalists, an indication of the increasing specialization of medical texts in the seventeenth century, but Vaughan gives us a “wholesome diet drink” for everyone, made of a variety of the most useful domestic herbs, processed in seventeenth-century style.

Leave a comment | tags: books, England, Folger Shakespeare Library, Food and drink, Herbs, Manuscripts, Research, Seventeenth Century | posted in History

September 27, 2017

Storms of the (Seventeenth) Century

By daseger

I’m only teaching two broad surveys this semester, a welcome departure from the more topical and graduate courses of the spring and summer. Surveys can be tricky: you can easily get lost—or lose the students–in a stream of narrative if you don’t impose an illustrative theme. The theme I chose for my Introduction to European History course —turning points—was not serving me well: it was simultaneously too loose (it was taking me forever to lay the foundation for my chosen turning points, which were not the predictable ones) and too constrictive, and also much too History-Channel-ish (cue dramatic music signally important EVENTS, primarily related to the rise and fall of the Third Reich, when the swamp people are not on, of course). So the other day I navigated a midstream change of course and plunged my students headfirst into environmental history: we were approaching the end of the Medieval Warm Period anyway! As we go forward into the devastating (weather-wise, and in other ways too) fourteenth century—and then further still into the seventeenth century, another time of dramatic climate change, I think this focus on environmental changes will highlight corresponding changes in how men and women viewed the world they lived in—plus I can take advantage of my students’ focused attention on all the weather in the news.

My approach to environmental history is more oriented towards human perceptions and responses than the scientific, structural changes which provoked expressions of the former–it is an extension of my academic interest in the concept of pre-modern wonder, or the physical manifestation of God’s power–and will. In the seventeenth century, for example, “wonderful” weather—storms, winds, floods—were all perceived as punishment for the sins of mankind, until, quite later in the century, they were not quite. The terrible floods in the west country in 1607 (possibly caused by a tsunami) were portrayed in quite a fearful manner in contemporary pamphlets, but the floods of 1674 were relayed in the form of a ballad, to be sung in the taverns and streets: still, lives should be “amended” lest a worse thing befall us. Then as now, the details of human suffering and responsive heroism are offered up: water-men were forced to row up and down the streets with their boats, to take men, women, and children, out at their windows, and to save little children that swam in their cradles. Nature gets a bit less mysterious and a bit more objective as time goes by, though maybe we are returning to a time which emphasizes its wrath–and our requisite amendment–yet again.

Famous English floods of the seventeenth century in 1607, 1651, 1655 & 1674: I found only freshets (a word I just learned last month!) on this side of the Atlantic (at least in NEW England).

Lamentable Newes out of Monmouthshire in Wales, 1607; More strange nevves: of wonderfull accidents hapning by the late ouerflowings of waters, in Summerset-shire, Gloucestershire, Norfolke, and other places of England, 1607; A True Relation of the Great and Terrible Inundation of Waters, 1651; A Sad and Dismal Year, or, England’s Great and Lamentable Flood, 1655; A True Relation of the Great Flood that happened in many part of England in December and January last, to the undoing of many the drowning of cattell and driving down of bridges and houses the drowning of people and washing up by the roots which was the means of rising the prices of corn in and about the City of London; with a warning for all people to amend their lives lest a worse thing befall us. The tune is, aim not to high, 1674, all accessed via Early English Books Online.

11 Comments | tags: England, environment, European History, News, Newspapers, Popular Culture, Teaching, weather, Wonder | posted in Current Events, History, Nature

May 26, 2017

Memorial Trees

By daseger

I’ve been thinking a lot about memorialization lately: the process and purpose, as well as its vehicles. Like most historians, I’ve always found public/collective memory fascinating (mostly in terms of what is remembered and what is not) but I think the combination of the pulling down of Confederate statues and our upcoming symposium on the Salem Witch Trials as well as the imminent dedication of the new Proctor’s Ledge memorial site to its victims has shifted my interest into overdrive at this moment. Given my penchant for the built landscape, it should be no surprise that my favorite (this word seems odd in this context) memorials are artistic and architectural: images of the Korean War Memorial in Washington and the “Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red” ceramic poppies installation at the The Tower of London in 2014 are forever etched in my mind. But last year, there was an even more moving memorial in Britain which piqued my interest in “living” memorials: the “we’re here because we’re here” commemoration of the centenary of the Battle of the Somme on July 1, 2016, during which thousands of volunteers played the part of “ghost soldiers” in remembrance of the 19,240 men killed on just that first day of the battle.

‘we are here because we are here’, conceived and created by Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller in collaboration with Rufus Norris, photo by Topher McGrilli.

The Great War inspired (again, the word seems wrong) all sorts of memorialization on this side of the Atlantic, primarily in its immediate aftermath and into the 1920s. I don’t see Americans yearning for a poignant remembrance of the doughboys now, but maybe next year? In any case, one of the most national initiatives of remembrance following World War I was the planting of trees, another form of “living” memorial. Across the United States, from 1918 over the next decade or so, communities planted trees in memoriam of their lost loved ones. This was not a spontaneous movement, but rather one that was vigorously encouraged by the American Forestry Association, which asserted that the The Memorial Tree, “the tree that looks at God all day and lifts her leafy arms to pray”, has become the tribute of the people of the nation to those who offered their lives to their country in the Great War for Civilization” and placed the article below in a parade of papers in January 1919.

Maybe there was some spontaneity in this campaign, or at the very least it catered to ingrained instincts; trees had long been symbols of personal mourning in American culture—think of Andrew Jackson’s White House magnolias, planted for his beloved wife Rachel, and all those weeping willow samplers. But I think World War I marks a moment when tree memorials became something more collective and more public. In Europe, trees had been utilized as memorials of collective achievement, not loss: the French were so inspired by Boston’s Liberty Tree (later stump) that they planted their own, “perpetuating the memory of Liberty” in 1789.

England’s Memorial of the Glorious Revolution, or of ” its Wonderfull deliverance, from French tirany and Popish oppression. Performed Through Allmighty Gods infinite goodness and Mercy By His Highness, William Henry of Nassau The High & Mighty Prince of Orange 1688′, British Museum; The French Liberty Tree, Lesueur Brothers, (18th century); French. Medium: gouache on paper. Date: 18th Century. Perpetuating the memory of Liberty; plantation d’un arbre de la liberte; Provenance: Musee de la Ville de Paris, Musee Carnavalet, Paris, France / Giraudon.

And back across the Atlantic we go, a century and more later. President Warren G. Harding responded to the Memorial Tree campaign with a statement in May of 1919, in which he offered his approval and encouragement (“I can hardly think of a more fitting testimonial of our gratitude and affection than this”) and noted that these plantings were “one of the useful and beautiful ideas which our soldiers brought back from France. The splendid avenues of France have been among the great delights and attractions to travelers there, and a similar development would equally add to the beauty and attraction of our country”. And so it began: judging by the photographs at the Library of Congress, Mrs. Harding (Florence) spent a lot of time planting trees, as did both Coolidges after her.

Memorial Tree planting, 1919-1920: Boy Scouts, Mrs. Harding (2), President Coolidge, Mrs. Coolidge and Girl Scouts, Library of Congress.

As you can see very clearly in the Calvin Coolidge photograph, memorial trees were supposed to be registered with the American Forestry Association and have tags attached, but this didn’t happen everywhere and all the time: consequently there are memorial trees out there–“silent sentinels” in the words of the National Park Service–which are not recognized as memorials. Maybe someone remembers when they look at one of these tag-less trees, but a family memory does not a monument make!

American Forestry Association tree badge, Library of Congress.

I don’t know if any World War I memorial trees were planted here in Salem, but both memorials to the victims of 1692, the tercentenary memorial downtown and the soon-to-be-dedicated (I think July 19?) Proctor’s Ledge Memorial feature trees as integral features of their design and symbolism: black locust trees (on which the accused witches were purportedly hanged) for the tercentenary memorial and a single oak tree at Proctor’s Ledge. These trees are marked and will not be forgotten–nor will those they represent.

The Salem Witch Trials Memorial off Charter Street in downtown Salem, and the design for the new Proctor’s Ledge Memorial, Martha Lyon Landscape Architecture.

6 Comments | tags: Commemoration, England, holidays, Memorial Day, Memory, Remembrance, Salem witch trials, World War I | posted in History, Salem

March 24, 2017

Death Cushions

By daseger

In the early morning of this day in 1603, the great Queen Elizabeth I died at Richmond Palace, in a great royal bed befitting her station in life and history. But this was not her chosen place of earthly departure: she was forced into it after days of lying upon a pallet of cushions laid out in her privy chamber by her ladies-in-waiting. The Queen’s death watch was very focused on these cushions, as recorded by the oft-cited account of Sir Robert Carey, and imprinted in historical memory by Paul Delaroche’s famous 1828 painting, The Death of Elizabeth I. According to Carey, on the Sunday before her death the Queen did not go to chapel; instead she had cushions laid for her in the privy chamber hard by the closet door, and there she heard service. From that day forwards, she grew worse and worse. She remained upon her cushions four days and nights at the least. All about her could not persuade her, either to take any sustenance, or go to bed. The Queen grew worse and worse, because she would be so, none about her being able to persuade her to go to bed. My Lord Admiral was sent for, (who, by reason of my sister’s death, that was his wife, had absented himself some fortnight from court) what by fair means, what by force, he got her to bed. There was no hope of her recovery, because she refused all remedies.

Paul Delaroche, The Death of Elizabeth I, Queen of England (1828), Musée du Louvre, Paris;Queen Elizabeth I of England receiving Dutch Ambassadors (1570-75), Artist Unknown. Neue Galerie, Kassel, Germany.

Both the story and the image make me sad, not just because it’s a death scene, but also because they remind me of my favorite image of the Queen in her prime, the charming painting Elizabeth receiving the Dutch Ambassadors (above), painted in the 1570s by an anonymous artist. I just love everything about this painting: its accessibility and informality, the interior details (floorcovering, wallpaper, windows!), Thomas Walsingham’s skinny legs, the ladies-in-waiting lounging on the cushions–perhaps in the very place that Elizabeth herself reclined for the penultimate time. It’s very intimate, and so is the image of a very vulnerable Elizabeth at the end of her life. She is so tired, she’s done: why can’t she choose her own place of death? But no, her final dutiful act was to consent (???) to be carried into that big bed to die.

Elizabeth in her Last Hours. Illustration for the History of Queen Elizabeth by Jacob Abbott (Harper, 1854).

The public reactions to Elizabeth’s death (as far as we can tell from printed sources) seem to fall into two camps: relief that a secure succession was enacted (the Queen is dead; long live the King) and devout mourning. I think there must have been some relief in the latter camp too, because there was considerable anxiety about Elizabeth’s inevitable death and succession over the previous decade, if not longer. But this was the end 0f a long reign, likely the longest in historical memory for Englishmen and women, and when her long, choreographed funeral procession made its way through the streets of London a little over a month later (drawings of which you can see here) I have little doubt that those on the sidelines knew they were witnessing the ritualistic end of an era.

5 Comments | tags: Art, England, ephemera, News, OTD, Queen Elizabeth I, Tudors | posted in History

March 10, 2017

A Tudor House in Salem

By daseger

How did I miss it? Here I am, a sixteenth-century English historian living in Salem, and I never knew about a reproduction sixteenth-century house built right here in 1927 by a mason named James H. Boulger. I’ve posted on “English” houses in Salem before, and often lamented the lack of Tudors in town, all the while blind to the existence of this interesting little house in South Salem. While I was researching the “Electrical Home” in this same neighborhood (with streets named for U.S. Presidents), I came across a story entitled “Salem Home and Garage Built in 16th Century English Style” in the November 21, 1927 edition of the Boston Globe. Yesterday I walked down from my office at Salem State to see this very house, hoping that it was still standing and bore some semblance of its sixteenth-century self and had not been turned into a ranch, or even worse, a “Colonial”. But as I walked down Cleveland Road and saw its pitched roof approaching, I got more excited, and there it was: an adorable, obviously well-maintained and well-loved, Tudor cottage.

My only basis of comparison is the grainy newspaper photograph, but it looks like the major alteration to Boulger’s original house is the integration of the originally-freestanding garage. I’m not sure my photographs capture the scale of the house and the interesting pitch of its roof: to me, (and again, for the thousandth time, I’m just an architecture buff) the house looks more Tudor than Tudor Revival. According to the article, all plans were by Mr. Boulger, who is a native of Manchester Eng, and a mason by trade. In designing the building, he was aided by a picture printed in a magazine showing a farmhouse in England during the 16th century. Like many English architects of centuries back, the designer has secured the typical English charm that marked the early, simple, unpretentious homes in England.

I made a limited search for the precise photograph that might have been Mr. Boulger’s inspiration, but contemporary periodicals in America are full of Tudor Revivals and those in Britain tend to feature either “great” Tudor structures or townhouses, like the famous Seven Stars pub in Mr. Boulger’s native Manchester, now sadly long gone. He seems to have invested as much effort into the interior as the exterior, as the Globe article goes into considerable detail about the “outstanding features” of the new/old house: an ‘English box seat’ window, a combination dining room and parlor, natural finished woods, low, wide arches leading to the various rooms, low situated windows and the ‘cold box’, so-called, where vegetables and wines were kept by the English farmer….. Mr. Boulger plans to install old-fashioned furniture in keeping with the exterior of the building. And no doubt he did.

Tudor 1

I’m sure that the Seven Stars, widely heralded as one of England’s oldest pubs in its day, was not Mr. Boulger’s inspiration, but wanted to inject a bit of old Manchester here!

5 Comments | tags: Architecture, England, great houses, Home, Interior design, Newspapers, Tudors | posted in Architecture, Houses, Salem

May 10, 2016

What Would Jane Think?

By daseger

My guilty pleasure-reward for making it through this particular semester is indulgence in a few Austen-esque books: Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible and Among the Janeites: A Journey through the World of Jane Austen Fandom by Deborah Yaffe. Eligible updates Pride and Prejudice by removing the story of Elizabeth and Darcy and their plot-driving families to the suburbs of Cincinnati, where they encounter complications brought on not only by their pride, prejudice, and genteel poverty, but also by a range of modern challenges (and opportunities): everything from artificial insemination to anorexia to a reality television wedding extravaganza. I think I got most of the updating, although I’m not quite sure of the significance of the spider infestation in the Bennet Tudor (Revival). Eligible is the fourth adaptation of HarperCollins’ Austen Project, which has commissioned contemporary authors to “reimagine” six Austen novels: I’ve also read Joanna Trollope’s Sense and Sensibility and am looking forward to the reimagined Persuasion, my favorite Austen. The Austen Project apparently aims not only to update but also to upgrade the usual Austen fan fiction genre, which has produced countless titles since Colin Firth/Darcy emerged from the Pemberley lake in the iconic 1995 BBC miniseries.

British covers of Trolloppe’s Sense and Sensibility and Sittenfeld’s Eligible; my stack of real and inspired Austens; my favorite recent editions, from the Folio Society.

I’m not quite sure that I represent the target audience for all these Austen adaptations, even though I was right there, holding my breath, when Elizabeth encountered a damp Colin/Darcy striding from the lake. I’m probably too old or too traditional or both: while I got Clueless and Bridget Jones’s Diary, I didn’t really understand the point of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies in either text or film form. But I am really interested in the culture–and the economy–of “Janeitism” because it seems like a very vibrant one, offering up many new and varied products every year. I haven’t started Yaffe’s Among the Janeites yet (I’ve been too busy with Eligible) but I’m hoping it will give me lots of insights into this world. You would think that the word “Janeite” is a new one, but actually it goes all the way back to the first big revival of her works, following the publication of her nephew’s Memoir of Jane Austen in 1869, which inspired the appearance of several illustrated and introduced editions in the 1890s. From then on, it wasn’t quite the Austenworld that we live in now, but she was regularly in print (you can see a nice succession of Pride and Prejudice covers here) and occasionally on the screen. Austen adaptations have clearly surpassed those mediums in the twenty-first century, and I can’t help but wonder, what would Jane think?

Austen Love & Friendship

Stills from Austenland (2013), which was not very good, Death Comes to Pemberley (2015), which was quite good, and a film opening this week, Love & Friendship, based on Austen’s posthumously-published epistolary novel, Lady Susan; Jane thinking, illustration from the 2013 Folio Society edition of Pride and Prejudice by the Anna and Elena Balbusso.

5 Comments | tags: books, England, Film, Jane Austen, Popular Culture, Shopping | posted in Culture

March 25, 2016

Hooked on Hawksmoor

By daseger

Well, I am very late to this party but I became absolutely obsessed with the works of British Baroque architect Nicholas Hawksmoor (1661-1736) on my recent trip to London. Hawksmoor’s professional reputation was overshadowed in his own time–and long afterwards–by his association with two more prominent “gentlemen” architects, Christopher Wren and John Vanbrugh, but in the last few decades he seems to have emerged from their shadow. His oeuvre is impressive: under Wren he worked on St. Paul’s Cathedral, the naval buildings at Greenwich, several buildings at Oxford University, Hampton Court and Kensington Palaces and Westminster Abbey, the west towers of which were constructed according to his own design during his tenure as Surveyor General, and he collaborated with Vanbrugh on both Castle Howard and Blenheim Palace. I’ve been to all of these places, but I never associated any of them with Hawksmoor, or thought about Hawksmoor at all, until I saw his Christ Church, Spitalfields, early last week. From that point on the week belonged to Hawksmoor: I scouted out his six surviving London “Queen Anne” churches commissioned by the New Churches in London and Westminster Act of 1710, really looked at the Abbey’s west towers for the first time, and looked on the stately buildings of the Royal Naval College at Greenwich with a new appreciation.

Christ Church, Spitalfields, shining like a beacon at the end of very busy Brushfield Street, afternoon and early evening (after its long restoration, completed in 2004), and in the 1950s and 1909; John Piper, Christ Church, Spitalfields, London: by Nicholas Hawksmoor, 1964, Presented by Curwen Studio through the Institute of Contemporary Prints, Tate Britain.

I just can’t stop looking at Christ Church! And I’m not alone: it has inspired scores of artists and photographers, and authors such as Iain Sinclair, Peter Ackroyd, and Alan Moore. In the poem Lud Heat (1975), which inspired Ackroyd’s (crime? suspense? mystery? not sure how to categorize it) novel Hawksmoor (1985), Sinclair envisions a “psychogeographical” alignment between all of the Hawksmoor churches, and later calls them “eternal” as opposed to the “shimmering trash” of the Docklands (in this great video). Sinclair is absolutely right; these churches do stand out, all of them, not just because of their stature and their distinctive spires but also because they present a rather odd combination of classical austerity and weight.You also have the sense that Hawksmoor was building temples rather than churches: these houses of worship don’t look precisely Christian! One of his six surviving London churches, St. George’s, Bloomsbury, is essentially a classical temple with a steeple on the side rather than the center, at the top of which is not Saint George but King George (I–in Roman dress, presumably he is the Saint), accompanied by a lion and a unicorn. It’s no wonder that our modern secular age admires Hawksmoor, the architect and the Freemason.

Hawksmoor’s St. George’s Bloomsbury, completed in 1730; restoration completed in 2006.

Well, I do believe St. George’s was Hawksmoor’s last London church; his earlier ones do appear a bit more traditional/ecclesiastical but still display that distinctive Hawksmoor edge of composition and detail. Here are the rest of his churches, plus two more that he collaborated on with John James: St. Luke’s Old Street in Islington (which features an obelisk steeple!) and St. John’s Horsleydown in Bermondsey, which was demolished after sustaining bomb damage during World War II.

St. Alfege Church, Greenwich, 1712-1714 (with window details); St. Anne’s Limehouse, 1714-27 (on the grounds of which there is a pyramid); St. George in the East, Wapping, 1714-1729 (I did not have time to make it out to Wapping, so I have “borrowed” a picture from here and a drawing of the facade from the George III topographical collection at the British Library. Next time!); St. Mary Woolnoth, 1716-27, right in the center of the City of London (very wide and narrow steeple); Two collaborations with John James, 1727-33: St. Luke’s, Old Street and St. John’s Horsleydown, demolished after World War II (from the Collections of the Metropolitan Archives of London). Similar fluted spires, but St. John’s had a comet on top!

So we have all sorts of classical elements, combined with more whimsical ones: columns, pyramids, obelisks, unicorns, comets. Mathematical precision and clocks. I don’t think this adds up to anything particularly pagan, much less sinister (somehow Hawksmoor acquired the moniker “the Devil’s Architect”–I’m not sure if this is a creation of his time or ours): I just think he was a man of his time, which was of course the Enlightenment. Quite a modern man, who ascended to the heights of a gentleman’s profession on his merits alone and worked primarily for institutions rather than patrons. He was impressive and his work remains impressive. I’m not precisely sure what his creative contributions were relative to those of his mentor, Christopher Wren, but I really felt Hawksmoor’s presence at Greenwich, almost as much as Christ Church, Spitalfields: maybe I’m getting a bit “psychogeographical” myself! Unfortunately we don’t seem to have this particular field of inquiry in the States: we’re just not that attached to our built environment to get that introspective about it.

So now I’m home, with only a few Hawksmoor books to sustain me. I need more: so now I’m going about collecting more texts, and some images that rival, or at least capture, the magnificence of Hawkmoor’s buildings. I really like the work of Andrew Ingamells, who has rendered several of Hawksmoor’s churches in aquatint etchings, and I would almost kill for Pablo Bronstein’s Four Alternate Designs for a Lighthouse in the Style of Nicholas Hawksmoor (Bronstein also designed and commissioned the construction of an actual Hawksmoor beach hut in the form of a lighthouse at Folkestone, which you can see here).

Aquatint etchings of Hawksmoor churches by Andrew Ingamells, from a selection here; Pablo Bronstein’s “Four Alternate Designs”, Herald Street Gallery; Architectural and historical analysis from Owen Hopkins and Mohsen Mostafavi and beautiful black and white photographs by Hélène Binet; just finishing up Ackroyd’s engaging Hawksmoor this morning!

6 Comments | tags: Architecture, Art, books, England, Historic Preservation, London, Nicholas Hawksmoor, Photography | posted in Architecture, History, Travel

March 21, 2016

Londonopolis

By daseger

I have returned from my whirlwind tour of London, which is itself a whirlwind, continuing and even intensifying the dynamic expansion (up and out) that I witnessed the last time I was over there, with no cessation in sight! There’s nothing new about this: the metropolis (Londinopolis, according to the title of James Howell’s 1647 survey Londinopolis an historicall discourse or perlustration of the city of London, the imperial chamber, and chief emporium of Great Britain: whereunto is added another of the city of Westminster, with the courts of justice, antiquities, and new buildings thereunto belonging) emerged in the later sixteenth century and just kept growing all the way up to the twentieth century, when wars stopped and then resuscitated its regular redevelopment. London remains the “chief emporium” of Great Britain, but also of the world. It was difficult to take a picture anywhere in the city without capturing a crane in the background: construction zones abound in every district. And even where there are no cranes there are constant contrasts between old and new–some quite shocking–and some more subtle. But London remains an amalgamation of neighborhoods, and I do wonder what its citizens think of the relentless development pressure. You hear complaints of “blackened” Belgravia, where wealthy foreigners have purchased flats in which they will never live, and “iceberg houses” with hugely built-out basements below ground, but what looks like folly architecture to me seems okay to Londoners. I purchased a book by Rowan Moore, the architecture critic for the Observer, to give some insights into London’s 21st-century building boom during the long flight home, but Slow Burn City was more about anecdotal building than perceptions of planning, for the most part.

I did complete my planned itinerary (including Botticelli Reimagined at the Victoria & Albert, which was ok, but from my perspective presented in backwards order; the Pepys exhibition at the National Maritime Museum, which adhered to its one man’s life and times format without fail, and the AMAZING sixteenth-century Sutton House in Hackney, which will get its own post), and took students to Hampton Court, Westminster, Greenwich, and the Tower of London. The rest of the time I spent in the east end–in Spitalfields and Shoreditch– exploring bustling neighborhoods that I didn’t know very well, inspired by the wonderful blog Spitalfields Life and steadfastly avoiding the Salem-like Jack the Ripper Museum, which was supposed to be about the lives of the female victims (and working-class women in general) but is somehow not. Spitalfields is surrounded by modern buildings but its core is eighteenth-century, and it has been a long-time refuge for immigrants: French Huguenots in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Irish and Jews in the nineteenth, and Bangladeshi today. It is home to the Old Spitalfields Market, which is probably the best market in London, a city of great markets. I fell hard for an architect there, and I don’t mean my husband (who came along): one sight of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s Christ Church, Spitalfields and I was a goner–so he’s going to get his own post too.

Some of my favorite places and photographs: more focused posts to follow all week.

Real Tudor and Faux Tudor: Two of my favorite buildings in London: the Staple Inn in Holborn and Liberty of London; busts from Liberty, the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, and the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Troops trooping near Buckingham Palace; In the Tower yard; armour in the White Tower; “graffiti” on window frames in the Tower and at Hampton Court Palace; The view from the White Tower–fortress against modernity! In the garden at the Victoria & Albert; the view south across the Thames from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.

The amazing St Pancras train station and adjoining hotel, saved from demolition by Poet Laureate John Betjeman, whose statue is prominently situated inside; Marylebone streets; a few blue placques.

Very Vibrant Spitalfields: Nicholas Hawksmoor’s STUNNING Christ Church, Spitalfields (completed 1729) with which I am OBSESSED; the view from the Church: old and new buildings encasing the market; a few items from the market (thanks Carol!), the beautiful Fournier Street; an effigy of London Mayor Boris Johnson (or Donald Trump)?