Author Archives: Angelyn

No one likes Twelfth Night cake

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Birch & Birch, London Confectioners

Vivien climbed the great Adams staircase at Northam House.  She had scarcely reached the top step when she met Diana, preparing to descend.  She was pulling on her York tan gloves with something like irritation, her bonnet jammed onto her curls as if it were to blame for some upset.  Margaret was behind her, trying to coax her mistress into putting on a pelisse.

Diana obliged, hunching down to accept her dresser’s assistance.  The shoulders and armholes of the garment had been carefully tailored by her modiste to fit the countess closely.  The modish pelisse was difficult to put on but the end result was worth it—the sleeves clung to Diana’s slim arms with no wrinkling, the back setting off her elegant shoulders to perfection.

“Surely you’re not thinking of going out,” Vivien remonstrated.

“I’m off to Cornhill,” Diana said, nodding her thanks to the maid.  Her green eyes dared Vivien to gainsay her.  “To get a Twelfth Night cake.  Birch’s makes the best in London, I’m told.”

Vivien quirked an eyebrow.  “You hate Twelfth Night cakes.  You never eat them at other people’s parties and you give your servants a week’s wages instead of their customary slice so you don’t have to bring one in the house.”

“Quite.  I despise the nasty things they put in them.”  Diana passed her, going down the stairs rapidly.  “But it’s not for me,” she called over her shoulder.  “It’s for Griffin.”

Vivien followed, her slippered feet making what sounded like a silly patter on the stone steps, hastening after the sound of Diana’s leather half boots.  She tried to keep her voice even although it echoed in the stairwell chasm topped by a decorative dome high above.

“You amaze me,” she said to Diana’s back that was by now far below.  “I’m his cousin and have never known him to have a penchant for it.”

The sound of male laughter rose from the foyer at the bottom of the stairway and filled its monumental space.  Vivien could see that Diana had stopped at the landing where she was confronted by her uncle and Griffin.  As she came to stand beside her friend, Vivien noted the exceptionally large box they had, bearing the stamp of Birch & Birch, Confectioners.

“Go ahead, my dear,” Russell said to Diana, winking at Vivien.  “See what Griffin has brought you.”

Diana opened the box and even Ingle, the housekeeper, was moved to express her astonishment.  Inside was a confection exquisitely decorated with delicate icing that was sculpted into swags and bunches of fruit.  In the center, there was no coat of arms nor earl’s coronet as one might expect would crown an offering for a countess.

The Twelfth Night cake was topped, very simply, with the name DIANA.

Griffin cleared his throat in the awkward silence.  “I don’t care for Twelfth Night cakes myself, but I was persuaded you might like this one.”

Vivien, not knowing whether he would receive thanks or a face full of iced confection, stepped into the breach.  “How very thoughtful of you, Griffin.”

She should have known Russell had no such compunction.

“Well, Niece,” he teased, “will you despise this Twelfth Night cake as you have all the others I’ve tried to bring home?”

“I think not.” Diana replied, looking directly at Griffin.  “Thank you for the cake, Sir.”

Vivien wondered at the undefined warmth filling the cold foyer.

Wedding cake of HRH Diana, Princess of Wales

The Chambers’ Book of Days of 1869 reports that Birch’s is one of London’s most celebrated confectioners–the shop being quite old by the the time its proprieter, Samuel Birch, served as Lord Mayor in 1815, the year of Griffin’s gift to Diana.  The shop was in Cornhill, a part of London’s City Center that crowns one of that metropolis’ three hills, the others being Tower Hill and Ludgate Hill.

The picture of another “Diana” cake seemed appropriate.  A slice given by the Queen Mother to her servant sold recently for almost two thousand pounds sterling.  Quite a bit more than a week’s wages, I’ll warrant.

Calennig – A Welsh New Year

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Vivien peered into the grand salon, sometimes called the saloon, at Northam Park.  The riotous interior that was a masterpiece of Rococco decoration was clearly at odds with its lone occupant.  The Countess of Northam stood pale and solitary, her tall figure slim as ever, outlined in sharp relief against a soaring Palladian window.  She sifted rapidly, as though unseeing, through a trove of invitations to attend various country pursuits afternoon teas, shooting lunches and hunting balls.

Diana was grieving.

HM Queen Elizabeth's mare Burmese

Vivien knew this because they had been bosom bows for over twenty years.  In that time she had come to recognize the signs of emotional turmoil in her beloved friend.  Signs that included a brittle laugh, sparkling green eyes, fluid, quicksilver movements.

Yet the mistress of Northam Park exhibited none of these now.  The only thing that betrayed her grief was the manner in which her long, elegant fingers rapidly sorted through the embossed cards, as if each one represented an irritation.

Diana looked up.  “Oh, my dear.  How good of you to come and relieve the tedium of my company.”

“I’ve come to give you a gift.”

“Good God.  I’ve been saving mine to give to you on Twelfth Night.  ‘Tis only New Year’s.”

“You’re forgetting I’m Welsh.”  Vivien joined her at the window and offered a polished wooden box.  “This is your Calennig, my dear.”

Diana put the cards down.  She took the box, her long, elegant fingers moving over the gift before opening it.

Inside was a highly polished, copper bit.

Diana snapped the box shut, a violent, angry motion.

“You’ve grieved long enough,” Vivien said, her own voice unexpectedly angry.  “Garnet has been gone for months.”

Diana met her eyes and looked away quickly, her mouth lifted up in one corner as if self-revulsion.  Vivien knew she despised showing any sign of weakness.

“How was the Boxing Day hunt?” she asked, her voice derisive.  “Did your new nag refuse any of the fences?”

“It would never occur to Bandula that she might ever refuse a fence,” Vivien replied.  “She’s as close to being my dear Thor reincarnated as I should ever like to see.  Even down to her grey coat.”

Diana set the box down on the window’s marble sill.  She crossed her arms over her chest, her long fingers clenching against the expensive silk that made up her sleeves.  “Do not bother to cozen me, Vivien.  I’m blue-devilled and shall be miserable company for anyone.  For a long time.”

“It’s the New Year.  What better time to look about for a new horse?”  Vivien insisted.

“Aye, you hardly gave a thought to poor old Thor, so fast did you seize upon your new pet. ”

It was a wounding thing to say, but Vivien did not mind.  She knew that it must come from a pain so terrible that it was positively eating Diana alive.   And so she leaned against her friend, even though her own head scarcely reached Diana’s shoulder.

“Oh, Vivien,” Diana groaned, her words wracked by the suspicion of a sniff, “I can’t seem to right myself.  Garnet must have been the most wretched mare alive.  I think she must have thrown me a dozen times or more.  Griffin never liked her, although I used to catch him giving her scraps from the kitchen.  Good God, she would eat anything, even roast beef if you offered it to her.  And do you remember the time, Vivien, when we first met and Thor put her in her place with that well-bred glance of his?”

Their glances locked, each remembering their horses now gone.  Predictably, Vivien felt her face crumple in a sob and it was Diana who was holding her close for comfort.

“I think I needed to see you grieve, Vivien, in order for me to get over mine.”

“You wretched creature,” Vivien replied, hugging her friend even closer.

The Calennig is the Welsh New Year’s gift.  Vivien, a marchioness, chose to give the Countess of Northam something rather more meaningful than jewels or fabric to demonstrate her love for her old friend.  A copper bit, brand new, was a gentle reminder we must all move on from the pain of the past year.

Vivien’s mother was born in Wales and converted to Methodism.  She had always schooled her daughter with a tenet remembered from a long remembered preacher.  “You must forgive the past year to live in the new.”

Christmas at Windsor Castle

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Lighted Christmas Tree - Octagon Dining Room at Windsor Castle

In 1844, long after the events in Notorious Vow and Notorious Match, Diana and Vivien attended the young Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, at Windsor Castle.  The countess and marchioness were astonished to see a tree suspended from the ceiling of the Octagon Dining Room, where the chandelier is normally hung.

A Christmas tree, the Prince Consort explained.

This is from the Royal Collection’s website at :

In the German tradition, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert exchanged gifts on Christmas Eve and presents were laid out on tables, each of which had a Christmas tree at its centre.  Two gift tables will be recreated with presents exchanged by Victoria and Albert.  Among the highlights is a painting by Sir Charles Eastlake commissioned by Victoria in 1844 as a gift for Albert, and a sculpture of Princess Beatrice as a baby lying in a shell, given to the Queen by Prince Albert for Christmas 1858.

In the Castle’s State Dining Room, the table will be laid for a Victorian Christmas feast with a magnificent porcelain dessert service by Minton of Staffordshire.  Known as the Victoria Service, the set was purchased by the Queen at the Great Exhibition in 1851 and includes four porcelain figures of the four seasons, ice pails, cream and bon-bon dishes, and a pair of silver-gilt sauceboats shaped like sleighs.

This special display has been recreated for the public’s viewing and ends on January 8th.

Porcelain Dessert Service - State Dining Room at Windsor Castle

Sweet Science

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           “Move aside, you fools,” Nigel shouted.

Diana jolted awake.  A cacophony of shouts and neighs sounded just outside the coach, made by what must be an inordinate amount of horses and men calling their greetings to one another.  The coach had stopped, presumably in the ostlers’ yard at the Maiden’s Crown, but the racketing around by jingling harnesses and stomping hooves did not call to mind the exclusive inn’s normally quiet order.

Diana told Selby and Margaret to remain where they were while she investigated.  As soon as she stepped outside, it seemed as though she were the only female left on earth amid males of every description from country yokels to London dandies.  Nigel had all six sets of reins bunched in one fist while directing the Northam outriders to hold the excited team.

Nigel called to her from his box.   “’Tis a blasted—begging your pardon, my lady—there’s a mill going on between the Black and Quentin Fosonby less than a mile from here.  Every inn and hostelry is crammed full with gawkers to watch the match.”

Selby and Margaret alighted, the former fixing an icy stare on one unfortunate  who gaped at them with a straw hanging out of his mouth.  At the dresser’s glare, the man took himself off.

“No matter,” Diana replied, “our rooms were bespoken in advance.  Have the horses seen too and I shall sort this out.”

She thought briefly of Griffin.  If he were here, it would be his province to deal with travelling upsets.  But as he was not, she would.  God knows she had enough experience.  She briefly wondered if he might have stopped to watch the boxing match, leaving his horses with some boy to look after for a guinea.  Men liked that sort of thing, the blood and violence of a good fistfight.  They also liked to ride their horses or curricles on the open road, without female companionship.

Poor Diana, my heroine in Notorious Match, had run smack-dab into the middle of a sport that was all the rage in the Regency.  Called the “sweet science” by noted sportswriter Pierce Egan, pugilism seemed a Godsend to males everywhere in the early nineteenth century.  .

The Jane Austen Centre does a lovely overview of the sport as it is confined to the early eighteenth century, including a nice excerpt from the movie Becoming Jane.

More specifically, pugilism, along with men’s only clubs, are examples of male homosociality during the Regency.

Homosociality.  Like the more recent term bromance.  A distinction, mind you, from those relationships that are of a romantic, or sexual nature.

One of the things my heroine wrestles with is the prodigious desire on the part of men to socialize with other men.

Why should it matter that men do things together?

Because Diana was curious.  As am I.

Regency Cicisbeo

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love that 60's cover!

When Hero “Kitten” Wantage enters the ballroom at Almack’s on the arm of Lord George Wrotham, a man who is decidedly not her husband, Miss Milborne finds this circumstance positively lowering.

You see, George was her beau.  Yet he was on the arm of a married woman.

 “The dreadful suspicion that the passion her admirers declared themselves to feel for her was nothing more than an evanescent emotion, soon recovered from, could not be stifled, and made Miss Milborne wretched indeed.  She waited for George to come across the room to her side, which he would surely do as soon as another man relieved him of the charge of Hero.  Hero was led on to the floor by Marmaduke Fakenham to dance the waltz; George strolled away to exchange greetings with a group of his friends.  Miss Milborne, too mortified to remember that she had refused to receive him when he had called to pay her a morning visit, could only suppose that his passion for her had burnt itself out…

‘I observe,’ said Mrs. Milborne on the way home, ‘that our little friend (Hero) has lost no time in acquiring a cicisbeo!  Well!  I wish her joy of young Wrotham!  He seemed to me to be quite epris in that direction….’

— Friday’s Child, Georgette Heyer

What is a cicisbeo?

They are sometimes called cavalier servente.  That is, a gallant servant.

The Archetype of a Cavalier

Hmmm.  I quite like the boots.  Are they expensive?

The first usage of the term cicisbeo was found in some correspondence from the British ambassador’s wife during her travels.  In 1749, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote to Lady Pomfret (which is also the term for a species of fish) of an unknown lady and her escort, an abbot from Genoa.  He was both witty and learned “in a very ugly form.”  Not quite the compliment one initially expects but there is much worse to come:

“I hear (he is) declared her cicisbeo in all forms, poor man!  He must be in the same situation with Mr. Southcote, when my Lady Townshend figured him in the body of old Cleveland, like Van Trump, lost in an ocean neither side nor bottom!”

Good heavens.  I daresay her ladyship of Pomfret was confounded by the ambiguous nature of this correspondence.  I know I was.

After some study, I divined the following meaning:  cicisbeo is the male attendant of a female who stands in the place of her husband.  The man of the cloth was considered more than just the unknown lady’s acquaintance.  And Southcote was apparently Lady Townshend’s man while in public, hence the term “in the body” of her living husband, the second duke of Cleveland.

Leaving aside further speculation on that particular emphasis on body, we can also deduce that this occupation was rather frustrating.  For the man.

Indeed, what can be more pointless or exhausting than being lost in a body of water that has no bottom or end?

I find it ironic that the romantic poet Byron should hate the notion of the cicisbeo.  Yet apparently he had experience in the matter.  He was cicisbeo to an Italian contessa.

This is an excerpt on the matter from his poem Beppo.

Besides, within the Alps, to every woman, ( Although, God knows, it is a grievous sin, )

‘Tis, I may say, permitted to have two men; I can’t tell who first brought the custom in,

But “Cavalier Serventes” are quite common, And no one notices nor cares a pin;

And we may call this ( not to say the worst ) A second marriage which corrupts the first.

Two men at once.  The very idea!  Dashed bad ton, you may be sure.

Regency dogs

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Jane Austen’s World and Regency Ramble both give comprehensive discussions on dogs of the early nineteenth century.

In this post, however, I would like to draw attention to the changing nature of how persons viewed their dogs during the Regency.

Of course one valued his canine friend for his practical traits which aided such pursuits like hunting.  But the dog was also becoming prized for those qualities that were lauded in the romantic literature of the period–noble characteristics that were always evident in Man’s best friend, but never appreciated fully until now:  bravery, loyalty, humility, etc.

Boatwain’s Monument – licensed by Johnson Camerface

Byron wrote a poem eulogizing his own Newfoundland, which had contracted rabies and died in 1808.  The poet nursed his dog throughout the illness, never minding that he himself might contract the disease.  Boatswain was buried on his lordship’s estate at Newstead Abbey.  His monument is larger than that of his owner.

The last line of the Epitaph for a Dog are particularly affecting:

“To mark a friend’s remains these stones arise; I never knew but one – and here he lies.”

Regency owners also saw their dogs as an extension of their own personality and their tastes in the exotic.  It became particularly fashionable among the ton to own a dog with a background that inspires one to think of faraway places in the Orient.

The author Georgette Heyer demonstrated just this very aspect in her delightful Frederica.

In this novel, the jaded hero makes an elaborate representation to an irate cowman, two park-rangers and one hatchet-faced lady that the heroine’s family pet, which had caused some riot and rumpus, is actually a rare speciman from Asia.  He succeeded in fooling me as well.  There is no such thing as a Baluchistan hound.  What manner of breed Lufra was is up to conjecture, but the Marquis of Alverstoke demonstrates an insightful perspective into Man’s best friend in the early nineteenth century.

1967 Edition -- blame the gay nineties look on Avon!

1967 Edition — blame the gay nineties look on Avon!

You see, all except for the hatchet-faced lady were only too ready to believe that a nobleman had taken a fancy to owning an exotic dog.  In the Regency, anything attached to one’s person that spoke of the Orient gave a fellow distinction.

I also was unaware that persons under royal license were allowed to graze cattle in London’s Green Park.  That famous Regency denizan Beau Brummel had the distinction of being related to two aunts who held such a license to graze their milch cows in the park.

I love dogs and I love Regency romance.  This passage combines the best of both:

“Really, Cousin, you are too shatterbrained.  He is a hound, not a collie; and what I told you was not Barcelona, but Baluchistan!  Baluchistan, Frederica!”

“Oh, dear!  So you did.  How–how stupid of me!” she replied unsteadily.

Neither of the park-keepers seemed to find his lordship’s explanation unacceptable.  The elder said wisely that that would account for it; and the younger reminded the company that he had known all along that the dog wasn’t Spanish.  But the cowman was plainly dissatisfied; and the hatchet-faced lady said sharply:  “I don’t believe there is such a place!”

“Oh, yes!” replied his lordship, walking towards the window and giving one of the two globes which stood there a twist.  “Come and see for youself!”

Everyone obeyed this invitation; and Frederica said reproachfully:  “If you had only told me it was in Asia, Cousin!”

“Oh, Asia!” said the elder park-keeper, glad to be enlightened.  “A kind of Indian dog, I daresay.”

“Well, not precisely,” said Frederica.  “At least, I don’t think so.  It’s this bit, you see.  It’s a very wild place, and the dog had to be smuggled out, because the natives are hostile.  And that’s why I said he was very rare.  Indeed, he is the only Baluchistan dog in this country, isn’t he, Cousin?”

“I devoutly hope he may be,” returned his lordship dryly.

“Well, all I have to say it that it makes it so much the worse!” declared the hatchet-faced lady.  “The idea of bringing wild foreign animals into the park!  Smuggled, too!  I don’t scruple to tell you, my lord, that I very much disapprove of such practices and I have a very good mind to report it to the Customs!…I am speaking of the English Customs, my lord!” she said, glaring at him.

“Oh, that wouldn’t be of the least use!  I didn’t smuggle the dog into the country; I mrerely caused him to be smuggled out of Baluchistan.”

Regency Painters – Part Three

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Painting during the Regency could never permanently leave behind Classicism and its successor, neo-Classicism, until a bridge could be formed to woo the remaining adherents of the old style (read old money) to Romanticism, the new style.

That bridge was provided by the young French painter Theodore Gericault (1791 – 1824).  The legacy left behind by his tragically short career is marked by classical subjects rendered in urgent emotion.  He took the human and animal forms of the old French masters and placed them against burgeoning tapestries that Turner was later known for.  Gericault pitted the orderly and the structured against the unrestrained violence of nature.

Gericault’s work reduced the gulf between the raised swords of David and the suffering of Delacroix.

He certainly looks like a classical romantic, doesn’t he?

A year after the events in Notorious Match, Emma Montgomery came to a momentous decision to travel abroad.  She had never been beyond England’s borders, having grown up the penniless daughter of a sheep herder only to become widowed at age sixteen with an infant daughter she named Vivien, the heroine of Notorious Vow.  Thanks to a timely investment from an unknown benefactor, Emma’s brother reaped a fortune in the wool trade.  This gave her the means to travel abroad, but not the desire to do so.  At least, not yet.  That only came about when her nephew Griffin, the hero of Notorious Match, arrived homeless from France.  She took him in and listening to his vivid descriptions of the France of his youth, she slowly conceived a longing to see it for herself.

It was 1816 and the Bourbon dynasty had been restored in France with Napoleon’s defeat.  It seemed the perfect time to go to Paris and Emma announced her imminent departure for that city, and places beyond, insisting on going alone.  Neither Vivien nor Griffin liked this sudden impulse she had conceived.  But they were helpless to dissuade her.

Emma was quite Determined.

While she was travelling, Emma wrote frequently to her daughter in crisscrossed lines that was her usual fashion to save on postage.  In June, several months after her departure, the letters stopped, the last one not only difficult to read but puzzling as well.  Who was this Medusa?

Then news of a maritime disaster riveted people on both sides of the Channel.  The Meduse was a French frigate that had seen action in the Napoleonic wars.  Much of her artillery had been removed when she was made to ferry officials to the French colony of Senegal in a convoy of ships whose names read like a cast of characters in the Iliad.  Faster than her companions, the Argos and the Echo, Meduse outsailed the other ships and ran aground 50 kilometers off the coast on a sandbank under the cowhanded command of a political appointee.

Her launches were put in the water with as many survivors as they could hold and given the task of towing the remaining passengers–146 men and one woman–on a hastily constructed (and entirely unnavigable) raft.  A gale arose and fearing mutiny, the launches cut the hapless raft adrift.  The raft became a gruesome scene of suicide, cannibalism and despair.

It was a tale of incompetence, cowardice and negligence.  A national disgrace for France.

For Gericault, the Wreck of the Medusa unmasked human frailty that had been heretofore disguised in military glory and order, leaving it bare and naked before the unbridled and destructive forces of nature.

Imagine the horror Vivien and Griffin must have felt, believing Emma had become a victim of shipwreck.

Their only hope of finding her alive rested upon a man whose own disgrace was as monumental as that of France’s.

It is the story of a Notorious Affair.

Regency Painters – Part Two

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Young Woman Drawing - Villiers 1801

‘Only–If there did happen to be a gentleman who–who wished to marry me, do you think he would be deterred by that, Freddy?’

‘Be a curst rum touch if he wasn’t,’ replied Freddy unequivocally.

‘Yes, but–If he had a partiality for me, and found I had become engaged to Another,’ said Kitty, drawing on a knowledge of life culled from the pages of such novels as graced Miss Fishguard’s bookshelf, ‘he might be wrought upon by jealousy.’

‘Who?’ demanded Freddy, out of his depth.

‘Anyone!’ said Kitty.

‘But there ain’t anyone!’ argued Freddy.

‘No,’ agreed Kitty, damped.  ‘It was just a passing thought, and not of the least consequence!  I shall seek a situation.’

‘No, you won’t,’ said Freddy, with unexpected firmness.  ‘That’s what you said last night.  Talked a lot of stuff about becoming a chambermaid.  Well, you can’t, that’s all.’

‘Oh, no!’ she assured him.  ‘Upon reflection, of course I perceived that wouldn’t answer.  And also I shouldn’t wonder at it if Hugh was quite at fault, and I might do very well as a governess.  To quite young children, you know, who don’t need instruction in Italian or Water-colour painting.’

‘Can’t do that either,’ said Freddy.

‘Well, really, Freddy!’ cried Miss Charing indignantly.  ‘Pray, what concern is it of yours?’

‘Good God, Kit, of course it’s my concern!’ retorted Freddy, moved to express himself strongly.  ‘You don’t suppose I’m going to have everyone saying you’d rather go for a governess than marry me, do you?  Nice gudgeon I should look!’

— Cotillion, Georgette Heyer

No discussion of art during the Regency period can possibly omit the fine landscape painter J. M. W. Turner (1775 – 1851).  I’ve posted an example of his work here on the subject of Crichton Castle in Scotland.  His art, decidedly Romantic, elevated the medium of watercolor.  Without it, one could argue the Impressionist movement would not have been possible.  In any event, he brought about a decided preference for the liberating, poignant strokes of the finely executed watercolor.

It is no wonder that young ladies of the period, already steeped in gothic novels, should try to excel in this aspect of the fine arts. Indeed, in my earlier project, Notorious Vow, the heroine was rather self-conscious that the earl of Northam managed to catch a glimpse of some half-finished examples of her work in the medium.  She could not be certain, but he appeared to be rather amused at the sight of her abandoned canvases stacked neatly in her mother’s conservatory, as if in silent witness to the artist’s lack of focus and direction.  It was not quite the impression Vivien wanted to leave with the handsome earl.

Turner focussed strongly on emotional painting, using weather, fire, shipwrecks and other interactions with nature as primary subjects.  He is often called the painter of light.

Indeed, he was reported to have declared on his deathbed that “the sun is God.”

The Chapter House - Salisbury Cathedral (J. M. W. Turner)

Regency painters – Part One

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Oath of the Horatii - Jaques-Louis David, 1784

At the time of my story Notorious Match, painting, along with the other fine arts, was transitioning toward Romanticism.  Think Turner and Constable.  In the next few posts, the blog will concentrate on painters of the Regency period and how their visual interpretation of subjects greatly affected their audience in England.

Neo-Classicism was in full force by the time of the Regency in England.  Paintings were eschewing the rococo manner so beloved by the ancienne regime to become more commonly executed in a formal, restrained manner, using classical subjects ranging from mythological figures to Corinthian columns.

Like previous styles of painting, and future ones to come, neo-Classicism was eventually taken over by the political movement of the times.  At the height of his power, Napoleon discovered an affinity for the symmetric, incisive nature of the classical heroic movement and used it to demonstrate his own personal power and that of the Republic.

He chose for his portrait painter Jacques-Louis David, a major contributor to the stylistic painting of this period both in France and England.  David had rejected the earlier passion for indolent aristocrats riding beribboned swings, pursuing love and other nonsense among flowers.  He hated rococo, you see. So much better to paint great gods of Olympus and sturdy mortals of Rome imposing order by sword and mighty oaths.

By Jove, it makes one want to get to one’s bootmaker and demand a pair of dashed sandals.

David was an ardent supporter of the French Revolution and had been favored by Citizen Robespierre, before the fellow got himself guillotined.

Napoleon at the St. Bernard Pass - 1801

It was David who executed the famous, but dreary pencil sketch of a grim Marie Antoinette awaiting Madame La Guillotine.  He voted as a member of the General Assembly to have Louis XVI executed.  It was alleged he participated in the death of the young dauphin after the boy was forced to testify against his mother on several crimes, including incest, to secure her execution.

It was not as easy to execute women in those days, you see.

One of David’s great friends was the revolutionary Paul Murat, an architect of the Terror.  The artist was so distraught when Murat was found murdered in his bath, he painted one of art’s great masterpieces, immortalizing him and the revolutionary for all time.

“(It was) a moving testimony to what can be achieved when an artist’s political convictions are directly manifested in his work.”  Boime, Albert (1987), Social History of Modern Art: Art in the Age of Revolution, 1750-1800 volume 1, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, ISBN

Napoleon commissioned David to create the giant Coronation mural as well as the famous Marengo painting (above).  The painter died an exile from France after Napoleon’s defeat, run over by a carriage.

From Notorious Match:

Diana asked Griffin about his family.

“My father left Wales for France after some scandal,” he told her.  “A scandal I’m sure your grandmother, Lady Nellie, can better explain than I.  In any case, I never knew him.  He married my mother, the daughter of a minor noble, but left her for Paris after I was born.”

“Who raised you?” Diana probed.

“Mostly my grandfather.   My mother was killed when I was ten.  During the Revolution.”

Diana’s eyes widened.  “Oh, Griffin.  Was she—”

“No, she was not a victim of Madame la Guillotine,” he explained, matter-of-factly.   “Instead, my mother was hung.  For conspiring to murder the revolutionary Jean-Paul Murat.”

“Good God.  Wasn’t it Charlotte Corday who stabbed him in his bath?  The one they call the Angel of Assassination?”

Griffin nodded.  “My mother and Charlotte were schoolmates in Caen.  When Charlotte was arrested for killing Murat, my mother went to Paris to beg for her freedom.  She was warned to stay away on penalty of death.  But she could not.  It seemed incomprehensible to her, you see, that her beloved friend should be executed for killing one man to save one hundred thousand.”

The Death of Murat, 1793

Ignominious Burial

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In Notorious Match, the hero uncovers the truth behind the carriage wreck that killed the Earl of Northam and his wife.  See this post for further detail.

Diana shook her head at the pity in Griffin’s expression.

“My uncle always blamed himself for my parents’ death,” she explained.  “He still did, even after the evidence all pointed to murder-suicide.  Of course, it was all very hushed up.  But the state of the earldom’s finances could not lie.  My father was under a mountain of debt and about to lose everything.  So he took my mother with him and left me.”

Griffin stepped forward and cradled her face in his hands, his shoulders strangely hunched up as if she were something fragile.

Poor little rich girl.

 She pulled away, feeling the revulsion against herself coming up from her stomach to gag her.  “Don’t do that, please.  It’s quite unnecessary.”

“Good God, Diana, why shouldn’t I?  You’ve—”

“Don’t pity me, for God’s sake,” she interrupted, her voice quavering so much she wanted to choke herself.  “Please.  I’ve done absolutely nothing to deserve your pity.”

Griffin remained silent, inviting her to continue.

“I wasn’t glad that they died,” she said.  “Not even I could be so heartless.  But I was ever so glad they left me behind.”

Robert Stewart, Marquess Londonderry

Suicide deaths were condemned right through the Regency.  Diana’s uncle, the Marquess Wimberley, did everything possible to shield the truth of his older’s brother’s death from the ton. 

Why?

To avoid the horror of the ignominous burial.

Case in point:  Marquess of Londonderry, 1822.

Robert Stewart served as Chief Secretary for Ireland and was known as Viscount Castleraugh for most of his life before succeeding to his father’s title as marquess. He was a force to be reckoned with in British politics.  The Napoleonic Wars required extraordinary skill in diplomacy and his lordship provided ample support as a member of the Ministry of all the Talents (yes, that was a real ministry).  See an earlier post on the matter.  He was Lord Secretary of Ireland, securing union with that land to prevent it from becoming a French satellite as Scotland had been three hundred years before.  He became Secretary of State of War and the Colonies and later Foreign Secretary, an illustrious diplomatic career that culminated in the Congress of Vienna.

His wife was Amelia (Emily) Hobart, daughter of the second Earl of Buckinghamshire.  Regency lovers know her as a Patroness of Almack’s.  The couple had no children but remained devoted to one another.  She was there to support her husband when he fell in a deep depression from his widespread unpopularity.  Even the poet Shelley excoriated him:

I met Murder on the way/He had a face like Castlereagh

The marquess had the unfortunate destiny of being reviled for effecting decisive policies for the kingdom.  It is a fate which no politician, even to this day, can escape.

In any case, his sovereign, George IV, was so alarmed at his condition His Majesty took it upon himself to notify Stewart’s doctor.   It was too late.  Robert Stewart used a penknife, left forgotten in a desk drawer, to slit his throat.

It was a terrible scandal.  Were the marquess declared a suicide, he would have commited a felo de se, or crime against the self.  It was an old common law offense that bedevilled prosecution until a more horrible penance could be devised–one that was extracted from the survivors.  The body of a suicide was denied burial in consecrated ground.  Worse, it would be consigned to an ignominious burial in a highway crossroads where all manner of cartage and transport may occur over the body.  A demeaning location of anonymity where the remains would suffer the indignity of offal and every kind of refuse, to be trampled and mingled with the earth that held the body of a person once kissed, caressed and held.

Worse, the decedent’s body would be staked through the heart.  Presumably to prevent removal by the family.

Even Byron was relishing the prospect of this suicide’s burial:

Posterity will ne’er surveyA nobler grave than this:Here lie the bones of Castlereagh:Stop, traveller, and piss.[16]

And you thought you knew Shelley, Byron and Stoker.

Lady Castleraugh was desperate–enough to have her husband declared insane.  Without intent, as the requirement of common law demands, a suicide had not occurred.  And his lordship could be given a proper burial.

Today you can see his lordship’s grave near his mentor, William Pitt, at Westminster Abbey–the graveyard of England’s greatest.