A Royal Visit

In 1730, the British papers recorded with great interest the visit of a delegation of Cherokee Indians who had been enticed over by the Scottish baronet Alexander Cumming.

12 June - Daily Journal

Seven Kings or Chiefs of the Chirakee Indians, bordering upon Carolina, are come over in the Fox Man of War, Capt. Arnold, in order to pay their duty to his Majesty, and assure him of their attachment to his person and Government, &c.

After being dismissed from the Mermaid Tavern, Windsor for fighting, they moved to central London. While seeing the sights they lodged with Mr. Arne, an undertaker in King street by Covent-Garden, who'd been recommended to them by four chiefs who had visited Britain twenty years before.

In English dress, walking in St. James's Park.

3 October - Daily Journal

Yesterday about 8 o’clock in the morning the Indian Chiefs set out from their lodgings in King-Street, Covent-Garden, for Portsmouth, where they will go aboard his Majesty’s Ship the Fox, Capt. Arnold, which is to carry them to Carolina.

We are told that on Tuesday evening last, when the time of their departure drew near, Oukah Ulah, the Chief of them, expressed a great inclination to stay with Sir Alexander Cuming; and when Sir Alexander told him that it would not be proper, he wept, and said he should mourn always till he saw him again, and that he had not slept for three nights, but walk’d about the streets, for thinking on parting with Sir Alexander, for whose sake he had left both his wife and children.

But Sir Alexander telling him, that he would be of more service to his Majesty King George and the English, by returning to his own country, he answered, That as Sir Alexander desired it, he would do as he bid him.

Although they reached Charleston safely in mid-December, they arrived in the middle of a war between the Cherokees and the Americans which delayed their return home.

Sorry for the silence

Sorry about the lack of postings - I've had problems accessing the internet for the past few days, but will make up with a mega-posting bonanza now that these have been sorted.

... Gone Tomorrow

In Captain Lord George Graham in his Cabin (1745) we see in one gathering all the different options for masculine coiffure:

A dark bob-wig:Short hair (with naval uniform beret):


Short hair (with cook's cap):


A shaved-headed nobleman in velvet hat:

And a Pug in his Perruke:

Hair today...

The Hogarth exhibition is superb, and I urge you all to go. He is a gift to the researcher because his observation is so detailed - like a reportage photographer of today, he was so anxious to direct his satirical beam into every dark corner of human behaviour that he inevitably captured mundane life in all its complexity and absurdity. Rituals and routines are preserved - often in some unimportant corner of a scene - that would otherwise be lost to us.

In the 18th century, there was a choice: to wear a wig or to wear your own hair. A wig was of course practical - especially when the shorter bob-wigs replaced the full head-and-shoulders Restoration-style perrukes, which persisted into the first decades of the C18th. Nevertheless, even short curled wigs required styling by barbers or hairdressers, and when powdered hair became de rigeur it could be quite a messy business.

If you wore a wig, then you shaved your head, and wore some sort of soft cap or head-covering while at home.



If you wore your own hair, you still had to have it styled. This nobleman with the luxuriant ponytail (from The Countess's Morning Levee) has had his front-curls set in papers.


Below, we see the process in action on the countess herself, and the tongs (often heated in a small portable brazier) which are used to fix the curl.

Down the Boozer

I gain'd the Barr by several Essays,
Where Mourning Widow sat with doleful Face...
I turn'd to the Left, and did amongst them squeeze,
There heard some Belch, some Fart, and others Sneeze,
Buzzing and Humming like a Hive of Bees.
This Room I did for ease and cleanness chuse,
The Chappel call'd, from having Seats like Pews,
Where grizzled Sots sit Nodding oe'r the News...
One Gapes, a Second Nods, a Third he Winks,
A fourth he Smoaks, a Fifth blows Pipe and Drinks,
Not one in Ten that either Talks or Thinks,
Thus seldom speak, unless 'tis to complain
Of Phthisick, Stone, the Gout, or some old Pain,
That grieves them sorely, when the Moon's i'th'Wane.

Ned Ward
Sot's Paradise or The Humours of a Derby Ale-House (1700)

An Enlightened Insult:

"I think her an ugly, ungenteel, squinting, flirting, impudent, odious, dirty Puss."

Henry Fielding, The Modern Husband

Fielding's Choice

Henry Fielding was a man of many parts: novelist, playwright and (later) co-inventor of London's first professional police force, the Bow Street Runners.

Nevertheless, as a youth born to an impoverished but aristocratic family, he had felt that his choices in life were limited.

'I will have to become,' he declared, 'either a Hackney Writer or a Hackney Coachman.'

Quiet, please!

Found, in the British Library:

MS Add. 70963 ff. 80-81

Lock of Hair of Miss Thistlethwayte, with note, dated 1775.

If you look on the British Library catalogue at http://www.bl.uk/ you will see Miss Thistlethwayte's hair listed among the manuscripts. It was found tucked in a pouch at the back of an 1816 diary.

Let no-one say that librarians aren't deeply romantic!

The question is: shall I request it and read her note, and see her hair? This is not the real lock above, but my recreation. My feeling is that, unopened - like the box containing Mr. Schrodinger's cat - it prompts mysteries and stories that would only disappear in the light of its reality.

SHE-TRAGEDY:

A play, central to whose plot is the suffering of a female protagonist.

Stage Fright

When Charlotte first appeared on the stage, full of youthful exuberance, she "had no Concern at all" and mocked her fellow actors for their nerves.

Her sister-in-law, the actress Jane, rebuked her for her arrogance: "When you have stood as many Shocks as others have done, and are more acquainted with your Business, you'll possibly be more susceptible of Fear."

After a few years at her profession, now given lead roles ('capital parts'), Charlotte found that Jane's prophecy came to pass:

By this Time I began to FEEL I FEARED; and the [former] want of it was sufficiently paid home to me, in the Tremor of Spirits I suffered in such daring Attempts. However, Fortune was my Friend, and I escaped with Life; for I solemnly declare, that I expected to make an odd Figure in the Bills of Mortality --

DIED ONE, OF CAPITAL CHARACTERS