St. James's Park: the Ton saunters...

Thomas Gainsborough, 'The Mall' (1783)

The Female Husband

'A woman marrying a woman according to the rites of the Established Church is something strange and unnatural. Yet did this woman, under the outward garb of a man, marry fourteen of her own sex.' [The Newgate Calendar]

Mary Hamilton, who went by the name 'Charles', was an itinerant quack doctor who had been habitually cross-dressing since trying on her brother's clothes when she was 14. By the time she reached public attention, in 1746 (when she was about 20), she had been living as a man some years; she was put on trial in Taunton for marrying a string of women, under the fraudulent pretence of being a man.

'Charles' had full sexual relationships with her wives (one testified that she 'had entered her Body several times', presumably with a dildo). Nonetheless Mary Price, said by some sources to be the fourteenth victim of this female Bluebeard, became suspicious after several months of marriage. At this point 'Charles' confessed, and was sent to prison. From here she did a roaring trade selling her patent medicines to the visitors who crowded to gawp at her.

'Great Numbers of people flock to see her in Bridwell... [She] appears very bold and impudent. She seems very gay, with Perriwig, Ruffles, and Breeches.' [The Bath Journal]

Her crime was considered as a form of fraud: the court determined that she was 'an uncommon notorious Cheat'. She was punished with six months hard labour, and public whipping in Taunton, Glastonbury, Wells and Shepton Mallet. Henry Fielding, magistrate and author, is the likely author of a fictionalised pamphlet on Mary, titled 'The Female Husband.'

Father of Cryptography

"The labyrinths of Cipher have frm Day to Day grown more difficult."

John Wallis (1616-1703) is considered to be the father of British codebreaking. A brilliant mathemetician of Emmanuel College, Oxford, Wallis preceded Newton in the development of integral and differential calculus, invented the symbol for and concept of 'infinity' ∞, came up with the germ of the binomial theorem and calculated pi by the interpolation of terms in an infinite series. He had a remarkable talent for mental arithmetic, but was also interested in language; writing a book on grammar with an appendix of the formation of speech-sounds, from which he went on to develop a system for teaching the deaf and dumb to talk.

With such an array of linguistic and numerical skills, it's perhaps not surprising to find that he was the Parliamentarian codebreaker who deciphered some of Charles I's letters, among others, and created a new cipher of his own.

Intelligencers

- aka - spies.

By the 18th century, three secret departments had been created within the General Post Office; these were: the Secret Office, the Private Office and the Deciphering Branch. All three departments operated out of the main post office building off Lombard Street (see 17 March post - 'From Horwood's Map.')

While the Secret Office was concerned with intercepting foreign correspondence, the Private Office covered domestic letters from suspects identified by principal parliamentary secretaries, and applied for by warrant. The Deciphering Branch was staffed by codebreakers, who 'can discover a close-stool to signify a privy-council; a flock of geese, a senate; a lame dog, an invader; the plague, a standing army; a buzzard, a prime-minister; the gout, a high priest; a gibbet, a secretary of state; a chamber pot, a committee of grandees' [Jonathan Swift].

Very few people outside government were aware of these departments' existence; at home and abroad, Britain was considered to be the freest country in Europe. Nevertheless, cumulatively they formed a genuine and highly organised espionage agency, used by ministers but with an entirely independent structure and personnel. Robert Walpole, Britain's first Prime Minister, employed a large team of 'intelligencers' - both men and women - drawn from aristocratic, literary and criminal circles. He was strongly suspected of using them to acquire privileged knowledge for his own commercial advantage.

Popular Drinks of the Georgian Era...

i: Bishop

A concoction of port wine mulled with sugar and a roasted orange or lemon: "Spicy bishop; drink divine". [Coleridge, Poems 1801]

'To bishop' is also to file down and tamper with the teeth of a horse, to make him appear younger. Later, it also came to mean 'to kill by drowning', after Bishop the murderer who drowned a boy in Bethnal Green in 1831; in order to sell his body for dissection.

Riding Out

Above: Horse and Rider (anonymous, 18thC Czechoslovakian)

Below: Osmington Chalk Rider (anonymous, 18thC British. This is the only 'white horse' shown with a rider: he is said to be George III).

Inside the coffee-shop:

Could it be Magical?

"The Chevalier Pinetti with his Consort will exhibit most wonderful, stupendous, and absolutely inimitable, mechanical, physical, and philosophical pieces, which his recent deep scrutiny in those sciences, and assiduous exertions have enabled him to invent and construct; among which Chevalier Pinetti will have the special honour and satisfaction of exhibiting various experiments of new discovery, no less curious than seemingly incredible, particularly that of Madame Pinetti being seated in one of the front boxes, with a handkerchief over her eyes, and guessing at everything imagined and proposed to her by any person in the company."

Advertisement, 1784.

Dangers of Writing, ii: Critical Reviews

"[The author affects] contempt of all newspaper strictures; though, at the same time, he is the sorest man alive, and shrinks like scorched parchment from the fiery ordeal of true criticism: yet he is so covetous of popularity, that he had rather be abused than not mentioned at all."

Richard Sheridan, The Critic

Well, Toto, I guess we're not in Starbucks anymore...

Members of the Royal Society (scientists, philosophers and artists, mostly) took their coffee at the Grecian Coffee House, just off the Strand in Devereux Court.

It was within its august walls that Isaac Newton and Edmund Halley once dissected a dolphin.

Try THAT tomorrow with your double-mocha half-fat decaf with extra chocolate sprinkles.

The Latest Thing

In the grounds of Alexander Pope's status-symbol Palladian villa at Twickenham, which he designed himself, were all the latest whims and fancies: a vineyard, orangery, hothouses for pineapples, hives for bees, rare varieties of French pear, and a large kitchen garden.

Beyond the domestic garden lay extensive landscaping: straight avenues, winding interlaced paths, dense woods, many different trees, a grove of cypresses leading to an obelisk, an amphitheatre, quincunxes, groves, arcades, a wilderness, a bowling green, a shell temple, three mounts, a panorama and a camera obscura built within a grotto.

A restless striving quarrel between ingenuity, variety and naturalism, all crammed into a bare five acres of ground - and as good a metaphor for the eighteenth century as you might care to find.

The Devil in the Detail

Diabolus in Musica - a tri-tone formed by C and F sharp played together.

It was long considered as having an ugly, eerie or even evil quality. Its use was forbidden to early ecclesiastical composers, who gave it this name.

St. James Park, daytime view

Not, sadly, showing the pelicans: in 1664, a Russian ambassador presented a pair to the king, a tradition which foreign ambassadors continue to this day.

St. James's Park, after Dark

Much Wine had pass’d, with grave Discourse
Of who fucks who, and who does worse ..

And nightly now, beneath their shade
Are Buggeries, Rapes and Incests made ..
Great Ladies, Chambermaids and Drudges
The Rag-picker and the Heiress trudges.

Carmen, Divines, Great Lords and Taylors
Prentices, Poets, Pimps and Jaylers,
Footmen, fine Fopps do here arrive
And here – promiscuously – they swive ..

James Wilmot, Earl of Rochester: A Ramble in St. James' Park (1672)


My Lord of London, chancing to remark
A noted Dean much busy’d in the Park
‘Proceed’ he cry’d, ‘proceed my Reverend Brother
‘tis Fornicatio Simplex and no other;
Better than lust for Boys, with Pope and Turk
Or other Spouses like my Lord of York’.

Alexander Pope: Imitations (1735)

From Horwood's Map

Showing the proximity of the Bank of England, the stock exchange, and the General Post Office:

Dangers of Writing, i: The Poignant Orange

Prodigious Madness of the writing Race!

Ardent of Fame, yet fearless of Disgrace.

Without a boding Fear, or anxious Sigh,

The Bard obdurate sees his Brother die.

Deaf to the Critick, sullen to the Friend,

Not One takes Warning, by Another's End.

Oft has our Bard in this disastrous Year,

Beheld the Tragic Heroes taught to fear.

Oft has he seen the Poignant Orange fly,

And heard th'ill Omen'd Catcall's direful Cry.

Yet dares to venture on the dangerous Stage,

And weakly hopes to 'scape the Critick's Rage.

Sam. Johnson - Prologue to David Garrick's Lethe (1740)

Courting Controversy

We hear that a certain Mrs. E-- B--, conjugally conjoined with one of Drury Lane Orchestra's finest exponents of the musical arts, has left her spouse to the chilly embraces of his double-bass, while she enjoys a far warmer welcome in the bosom of the Pr-- of W---...

The Rewards of Literature

Then as now, the 18th Century Literary Muse was a harsh mistress, whose amateurs knew little rest and less riches:

"I am every moment threatened to be turned out [of my lodgings] because I have not money to pay for my bed two nights past, which is usually paid beforehand... I hope therefore you will have the humanity to send me half a guinea for support, till I finish your papers in my hands. The ode on the British Nation I hope to have done today and want proof copy of that part of Stowe you'd choose for the present magazine, that it may be compressed as far as possible...

I humbly entreat your answer, having not tasted anything since Tuesday evening I came in here, and my coat will be taken off my back, for the charge of the bed. So that I must go into prison naked, which is too shocking for me to think of."

[Poet Samuel Boyse, written to a printer/publisher Edward Cave]

Boyse wasn't exaggerating his penury. Engaged in an almost constant circuit between his lodgings and the pawn shop, he often had to go shirtless: at which times he would cut paper into strips and bind them round his wrists and neck to resemble the collar and cuffs he was lacking.

As a young man Samuel Johnson, a friend of Boyse, once scrimped enough money to redeem all Boyse's clothes back - only to find that two days later, they'd been pawned once more.

Where I admire the man, is that he never lost a taste for luxury, or a sense that he deserved it. Johnson recalled of him that even when he was ill from hunger:

"And some money was produced to purchase him a dinner, he got a bit of roast beef, but could not eat it without ketchup, and laid out the last half-guinea he possessed in truffles and mushrooms, eating them in bed, too, for want of clothes, or even a shirt to sit up in."