Castles, Customs, and Kings: True Tales by English Historical Fiction Authors (58 page)

Here, under this dark sycamore, and view

These plots of cottage ground, these orchard tufts,

Which at this season, with their unripe fruits,

Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves

‘Mid groves and copses. Once again I see

These hedgerows, hardly hedgerows, little lines

Of sportive wood run wild; these pastoral farms,

Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke

Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!

And reading about it, reciting it, viewing the paintings of these landscape painters, all encouraged the 18th century population to look at nature and to embrace the landscape with an artistic eye and a new-found sense of gusto.

So what do they do? They start touring the country like mad...some visit the many famous landscape gardens, some make walking tours of the Lake District (Wales was popular too), and some travel farther to see the beauties of Scotland as did Dr. Johnson.

Obviously, it’s not just the landscape of Great Britain which has travellers so entranced—up until 1789 the beauties of France, Italy, and Greece are well within the well-heeled tourists’ reach. But with the coming of the French Revolution in 1789, and France’s rapid descent into turbulence and war, the natural wonders of the Continent cease to be viable destinations, and the British travellers turn inward, their journeys confined to their own little island.

Jane Austen writes of Elizabeth Bennet and her Aunt and Uncle Gardiner visiting the Peak District of Derbyshire, an activity many of her readers would have considered quite normal. She likewise sends Anne Elliot down to Lyme Regis to visit the seaside and walk along the Cobb to view the seething grey waves of the Atlantic coast. What are they doing? They are indulging in a very British pastime; they are—like everyone else of taste and discernment—indulging their passion for the picturesque.

And so much a part of the English psyche was this hobby of seeking out the lofty peaks, cascades, cliffs, woods, ruined castles by midnight, and other such scenic prospects, that beginning in 1809, William Combe and Thomas Rowlandson published a verse parody with pictures of the whole pastime in
The Poetical Magazine
, called
The Tour of Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque
.

The verse story tells the tale of Dr. Syntax—a down-at-heel scarecrow of a curate and schoolmaster in a rusty black suit and scratch wig—who conceives of a trip round England. Penny-pinched and hen-pecked, he aims to make money out of recording his experiences and the sights he encounters. As Syntax describes his plan:

I’ll make a TOUR—and then I’ll WRITE IT.

You well know what my pen can do,

And I’ll employ my pencil too:—

I’ll ride and write, and sketch and print,

And thus create a real mint;

I’ll prose it here, I’ll verse it there,

And picturesque it ev’ry where.

I’ll do what all have done before;

I think I shall—and somewhat more….

Syntax’s subsequent adventures bumbling through the English countryside on Grizzle, his equally dubious horse, make Don Quixote look like James Bond. The illustrated comic poem was a runaway success.

Still, even amidst the well-aimed mockery, the fashion for the picturesque was far from running its course. On the contrary. The new generation of Romantic poets—Keats, Scott, Shelley, and Byron—were busily adding to the picturesque canon in poetry.

And the new star of the artistic firmament, J.M.W. Turner, capitalised on the craze, embarking on painting a series of commissioned watercolours for
Picturesque Views of the Southern Coast of England
(completed in 1826). In 1818, he was again commissioned to paint a series of watercolours of Italian subjects for
A Picturesque Tour in Italy
.

Still later, from 1827-1838, he painted another 96 views for
Picturesque Views in England and Wales
. And all of the above were turned into engravings, which sold in their thousands—making Turner a very rich man...though this last group of works really signalled the end of the dominance of the picturesque.

Britain had a new, young queen, and, it would seem, a new outlook. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Rowlandson were old hat, remembrances of a bygone age. So at last, the craze that had captivated generations was at an end.

(Except, of course, we’re still at it...just ask to see the visitor numbers of the National Trust or English Heritage....)

The Must-have Garden Accessories for the Rich and Richer? A Glasshouse and Pineapples!

by M.M. Bennetts

O
ranges and lemons first made their way to the English plate and palate sometime during the reign of James I. They were the preserve of the rich. Obviously. Unsurprisingly, within a very short space of time, these citrus fruits—which we take quite for granted—were
the
status symbol.

In order to grow the fruits then, small conservatories were built to protect the potted trees over the cold English winter months. And they weren’t called conservatories. They were known as orangeries or orange houses.

They had solid roofs because the plants are dormant in the winter months anyway, and featured glass windows (or French doors as we’d call them) along one side—usually the south side—so that the sunshine through the windows from February onwards would help restart the growth until the trees could be taken out into the garden once danger of frost had passed.

Queen Henrietta Maria had such a structure built at Wimbledon Manor House in the 1630s.

By the 1650s, despite the deteriorating political situation which might have taken their attention off such frivolities, the well-heeled were for the most part installing heating into their orange houses, usually in the form of free-standing charcoal-burning stoves. Which occasionally proved unreliable and sometimes poisoned the plants with charcoal fumes.

So the famed garden writer John Evelyn suggested a new kind of stove—this was fixed outside the glasshouse and the heat was conducted into the conservatory through pipes. It sounds obvious to us, but to them, this was innovation! Not only that, but Evelyn was the first to call these orangeries “conservatories”.

Within fifty years, even as the range of plants and fruits to be grown in them had expanded, so too the technology had advanced. In 1710, the Duke of Chandos’ new conservatory was heated by flues, with the central glass section flanked by two walls into which were built coal fireplaces.

Which meant that through the winter months, the tables of the rich and nobles featured not only the citrus fruits, but a wide range of vegetables. And, as well as stocking their conservatories with other plants such as jasmines and pomegranates, they were producing the ultimate symbol of status—largely because they did require a conservatory and were so difficult to grow—the pineapple.

Which incidentally weren’t just eaten. Generally, for at least a fortnight or so before eating, the pineapple would be on display on the dining table as part of a centrepiece.

But, by this time, the conservatory had outgrown its simple original function and was being viewed more as an architectural accessory rather than a horticultural one. They were garden features now and were often being built as a focal point in a garden, rather like the Tudor banqueting houses had once been. Hence, they now often contained a degree of furnishing and, like at Dyrham Park near Bath, were used during the summers as an extra room, when all the plants were outside.

Lady Hertford wrote in 1739 of the Earl of Bathhurst’s greenhouse at Riskins in Buckinghamshire, describing it as
“a very agreeable room; either to drink tea, play at cards, or sit in with a book, in a summer’s evening...”
for it was filled with a
“collection of orange, myrtle, geranium, and oleander trees”.

As the range of available seeds grew, so too did the building of specialist greenhouses. By the early years of the 19th century, it was not unknown for larger households to have a specialist “melon house” which was also used for growing cucumbers, strawberries, and salad greens year-round in raised hot beds.

The technology for heating the glass structures continued to advance, though it remained somewhat experimental. And by the end of the 18th century (due to the wars with France), glass was heavily taxed, so on the whole glasshouses remained prohibitively expensive.

Yet the true test of a skilled horticulturist remained his ability to grow pineapples. (It was also a measure of one’s wealth that one could afford the wages of a head gardener who could grow pineapples.) So in addition to the melon houses and the conservatories which were now attached to the house and used as a summer room, special “pineries” were built.

In 1777,
“two hothouses full stocked with pine apples and plants”
were built at Knole for the sum of £175.

By 1805, garden designer and painter Humphry Repton was outlining his plans (in paint) for vast greenhouses for Woburn Abbey which he called “The Forcing Garden” and that promised fresh exotic fruit and vegetables throughout the winter. It was also Repton who suggested that the conservatory should be connected to or built off the library (which was by the early 19th century the most used public space of a house) as a natural transition between the house and the garden outside. And it was this which gave rise to the Victorian tradition of building conservatories for the next several generations as garden rooms attached to libraries.

Still, the prize for the greatest pineapples—and thus the greatest conservatory building and the most lavish spending—probably goes to the Marquess of Hertford in 1822. For it was his gardener, Thomas Baldwin, who sent several pineapples to an anniversary dinner of the Royal Horticultural Society—the largest of which weighed 8lbs 14oz.

Late Georgian and Regency Era (1800-1837)

The Extraordinary Clandestine Activities of a Nineteenth Century Diplomat

by Maggi Andersen

P
art diplomat and part spy, relatively little has been written about Charles Stuart, Lord Stuart de Rothesay, later 1st Baron Stuart de Rothesay (1779-1845). In his book
Private & Secret,
Robert Franklin writes:

Headstrong, daring and never lacking personal courage or conviction, Charles Stuart was in many respects a product of his age, but in others he, and his like, also helped to shape that age, and consequently the face of Europe as we know it today.

Sir Charles Stuart, as he was known from 1812 to 1828, was no ordinary diplomat. His story is also the story of the British intelligence service coming of age in the modern era. Although as old as time itself, and reaching unparalleled sophistication under Walsingham in the late 16th century and again under Charles II in the 17th, Britain’s modern secret service came of age in the 19th century, when it was developed as a key weapon against French power in both politics and war.

It’s not difficult to understand how Stuart chose his profession. His paternal grandfather, John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, was one of the two Secretaries of State in the days when those great functionaries controlled the country’s Secret Service, chiefly through the agency of the Post Office. As Prime Minister, Lord Bute’s greatest achievement was to bring the Seven Years’ War to an end, bribing Members of Parliament, it’s reputed, from secret funds. (All secret service funds were discretionary at this time.)

Charles’ father, General Sir Charles Stuart, a distinguished soldier, could not rely on official sources for intelligence as the Army had no official intelligence service until 1803 when the Depot of Military Knowledge was set up. He learned the ways and means of intelligence-gathering when he saw active service in the American War of Independence.

Young Charles was at Eton until sixteen years of age in 1795. Two years later he went up to Christ Church, Oxford. During those two years he traveled with his father and kept a journal:
Travels in Germany and the Imperial Hereditary States, 1795-1797
. At Weimar he sat at the feet of German thinkers, Goethe and Schiller, and penned descriptions of these great men in letters. His letters to his father revealed his burgeoning interest in the political situation:

…the Prussians are exceedingly busy in fortifying all their frontier places towards Galacia in the newly acquired part of Poland. Some people say war is declared; I must confess it appears to me very odd that the House of Austria should take such a step after being so weakened as she certainly has been in the French war. Everything in this country has a very war-like appearance though few people seem to know how it will turn out.

His travels left him restless. After a year at Oxford, he moved to Glasgow University. In 1801 his father died. Admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, Charles began to read for the Bar, but was unable to settle. He considered politics and proposed himself as Member of Parliament for Poole, in Dorset, a borough that his father had represented for many years. But Lord Hobart found him a place as a diplomat under the auspices of the Foreign Office. He was to be Secretary of Legation at Vienna, seat of the Austrian Empire, but he had time to spare and decided to see something of Russia.

It was the summer of 1801, and Europe was in a state of suspended animation—the French Revolution was over, Napoleon was First Consul, but the Peace of Amiens had not yet come into being.

When the Second Coalition against France crumbled in 1801, England was alone. Charles set out in July traveling through Prussia, Berlin, a partitioned Poland, and on to St. Petersburg. In Vienna, he kept a journal again,
Journal, Northern Europe 1801
, and this time he recorded what he saw and heard as a budding diplomat, rather than a student or the dutiful son of a British officer.

Between 1810 and 1814 he served as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Portugal and Brazil. In 1812 he was appointed a Knight of the Order of Bath (KB) and was sworn into the Privy Council in 1814.

In 1815 he was made Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath and appointed British Ambassador to France. Stuart is suspected of having been involved in the escape of the Comte de Lavalette from the prison of the Conciergerie in Paris, the day before he was to be executed.

During Napoleon’s Hundred Days, he left Paris and was in Brussels at the start of the Waterloo Campaign. After the fall of Napoleon he returned to Paris as the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Portugal and Brazil. One of the English visitors to Paris, Lady Granville, observed of him:
“He discovers what others are about or would be about to a degree that must be very useful to him in his present situation.”

Sir Charles Stuart felt some responsibility for the safety of the Duke of Wellington and Viscount Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary—which was made more difficult due to the fact that neither man was over-concerned for himself. There were at least two attempts on Wellington’s life during this period, and others may have been prevented by Stuart’s vigilance. Nobody was punished for either of the best-known attempts on Wellington’s life.

One attempt was carried out by an old soldier, devoted to Napoleon. He was arrested, but was not convicted, despite the fact that there was no doubt of his guilt. The court held that the evidence was not strong enough. Stuart suspected a political motive and sent one of his agents, a man called Darby, to the trial. He took notes, which were sent to Castlereagh, and whether or not on the Foreign Secretary’s instructions, he lodged an official complaint.