Georgian London

Guest Post: The Gin Lane Gazette

That mischievous cartoonist and scribe Ade Teal is featured on pioneering publishing project Unbound at the moment with his most excellent Georgian miscellany The Gin Lane Gazette.  It’s all very exciting and today Ade is guest posting on what the Gazette is about and why he’s so in love with the Georgians.

In his declining, debt-ridden years, Beau Nash, the Master of Ceremonies at Bath, was looked after by his devoted mistress, the feisty and improbably-named Juliana Popjoy. When he eventually hopped the twig, she was so distraught that she lived for the rest of her days in a hollow tree. And there, in a nutshell, is what I love about the 1700s: everything was done with a great deal of commitment and panache. Today, a C-lister will leave her cage-fighter boyfriend, and inevitably it is splashed across the cover of a glossy rag: ‘So-and-So Tells of Her Pain.’ However much ‘pain’ they claim to be suffering, they don’t often renounce the world and live in a tree. 

The Georgians make today’s hell-raisers look like teetotal milksops. The eighteenth century gave us boozy Prime Ministers and party leaders who settled their political differences with duels in Hyde Park (when they weren’t gambling, or writing essays about farting); peers of the realm who had the unburied corpses of their cherished mistresses sat at their dinner tables; and celebrity courtesans who ate 1,000-guinea banknotes stuffed into sandwiches, simply to make a point. Before it was dashed from their lips by Victorian party-poopers, our Georgian forebears drank deep from the cup of life. 

So, how best to recapture some of the spirit of this gloriously dissipated and star-studded epoch? This question dogged me for some time, after it was suggested to me by John Mitchinson – co-creator of the BBC’s hit panel show, QI, the book spin-offs of which I have supplied with cartoons – that I should write and illustrate an historical tome. A lovely thought, but there is so much to enjoy about the 1700s that tying it all together in an original and exciting format seemed an impossible task.

Then, one day, I was reading a biography of William Cobbett, the Regency-period newspaper editor and author, when it struck me that a journalistic approach would be just the ticket. Why not illustrate and write about these disparate events as if they have just happened? The eighteenth century was both the first great age of newspapers and the golden age of caricature, after all. And books are still the best kind of virtual reality that we have, to my way of thinking. Could I generate virtual Georgian reality with words and pictures? An idea was born.

John was in the process of setting up his crowd-funded publishing venture, Unbound, and given the quirky, esoteric nature of the project I had in mind, it seemed the obvious road down which to push my newspaper cart. An accord was reached, and Unbound is now the book’s kindly and encouraging Fairy Godmother.

The GIN LANE GAZETTE will be a compendium of illustrated highlights from a fictional newspaper of the latter 1700s: a kind of Georgian Heat magazine, if you like. It will contain some of the most sensational headlines and true stories of the period, generated by many familiar figures from history during their more unguarded moments. The presses will be presided over by inky-fingered hack, Mr. Nathaniel Crowquill, the editor and proprietor, whose premises are located in Hogarth’s chaotic Gin Lane, and who has devoted fifty long years to sniffing out bawdy scandal and intrigue with which to titillate his London readership. His drunken acolyte, the rascally Mr. Jakes, supplies merciless caricatures and engravings, which disport themselves across every page. Sports reports, obituaries, fashion news, courtesans of the month, and advertisements for bizarre - and often alarming - goods and services will also feature in a riotous mélange of metropolitan mayhem. 

I have spent fifteen years producing cartoons for clients as diverse as The Sunday Telegraph, Jongleurs, and History Today, and have set out to combine my experience in journalistic caricature with my deep love of history in this – I believe - unique and evocative way. In the process, I hope to give readers an authentic flavour of the exuberance, self-confidence, debauchery, bravery, villainy, inventiveness, and eccentricity which characterize the Georgian world. 

Prithee honour this beguiling Endeavour, apt to adorn any ATHENAEUM of the Annals of Ages, with YOUR WORSHIPS’ most gracious Patronage. Or alternatively, buy it here.

Homeopathy: A Most Extravagant Conceit

The following is from medical doctor John Hogg’s book, London As It Is, published in 1837:

One of the most extravagant conceits ever promulgated in connexion with the healing art, was started by Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, at Leipsick, about fifteen years ago, under the name of HOMEOPATHY.

The acknowledge principle in medicine is - “Contraria contrariis curantur” - that fevers, for instance, require cooling remedies, and that cold and numbness should be met by warm stimulants.  This idea is declared to by Hahnemann to be utterly erroneous; his doctrine is, that every irregularity in the system is a natural effort, and ought to be encouraged; to give effect to his notion, he administers to the invalid such medicines as would induce corresponding symptoms in a healthy individual, in fact, alcohol is the remedy for fever, and ice for ague; he admits that the remedies must be employed very sparingly, that the millionth part of a grain or a drop, is a full dose; that a brain fever at Greenwich (after the fair) might be cured by making the patient drink out of the Thames, into which a glass of gin had been thrown an hour previous at London-bridge!  

Glaring as this absurdity is, it has found some proselytes in London, but they have principally been among the aged of the softer sex.  

Art: Why I’m Proud to be a Shuffler

‘Every major art exhibition is always the same.  The ticket holders go in with their expensive tickets, and with their guide-books and ear-phone sets, and they look and they stare, and then they shuffle along and look and stare again.’

When the lovely @davidallengreen posted about the dreary didacticism of London’s expensive art gallery exhibitions yesterday I read with interest and thought hard.  I am exceptionally lucky: I live in central London and have the opportunity to attend the exhibitions which take my fancy.  Some are better than others, but I go for the ‘Art’ and to see what I think.  
 

When I go to an exhibition I get the audio guide.  Having spent my wallet-stabbing 10-15 Great British Pounds I might as well.  And let’s not beat about the bush: ‘Art’ in the drying brushstroke or the horrifically-expensively-insured-flesh has never been for people who cannot pay to see with either in money or patronage.  Vermeer’s domesticity was not for the people, but his patrons and sometimes his friends. Their viewing of his pictures was influenced by what they knew of his household, and their own comparable set-ups.  They knew about the troublesome wife, the money problems, even down to the exquisite light of Delft’s famously clean and minimalist interiors.  They did not need the caption.
 

Likewise, one of David’s favourite portraits, that of Cecilia Gallerini by Leonardo da Vinci.  Cecilia was the mistress of Ludovico Sforza, one of Leonardo’s patrons and Duke of Milan.  She was educated in law, politics and art and held salons for Italy’s elite with her lover, twenty years her senior.  She was fifteen when Ludovico asked Leonardo to paint this portrait.  She would have to make way for his career and spend much of her life shunted from pillar to post but the ermine represents her purity, her elegant hand art, her face intelligence and a conceived idea of beauty.  It was displayed in her household during her lifetime, long after the affair was over.  This is a picture of a girl, like Elizabeth I at the same age, who understood men of ‘much wit but little judgment’.   It never fails to make my heart ache.

This picture demonstrates why knowledge is the key.  David is a lawyer, steeped in years of learning and experience of what comprises the law but art is no different: talented artists are born but it takes years to become proficient at drawing and painting.  Modern art claims a moment in time caught in swathes of paint which our gut identifies as positive or negative, and one to which we are all entitled.  It is largely conceived by men and women who did not need but wanted art.  This mechanism is notionally selfish and so, as invited voyeurs we might take what we want from it.  But the art of the ‘masters’ is one which asks for knowledge of who they were and what they hoped to gain from their work.  Smudges of Leonardo’s fingerprints have been identified in Cecilia’s face and hair.  They cannot be seen by just gazing at the picture, nor can the heartbreak of her life been seen in her fifteen year old face.  Older art tells a story to which we are not entitled, but might catch a glimpse if we are told.  We need the captions. 
 

They might be written by dry, disconnected curators or earnest interns with no idea what we might want to see on the wall.  Often, they are.  The internal workings of museums can make chronic hiatus hernia look like a holiday.  Frequently, the headset drones on with the voice of a twenty-first century patron, dispersing monotone largesse to the grunts who file through in their obedient masses.  

When looked upon as such, these exhibitions and that headset are shit value for money; they are the rich and entitled establishment doing their bit.  But their bit involves liaising with the museums, curators, shippers, insurance companies, banks, trusts, porters, interns, guides and visitors.  It involves people who know the minutiae of what there is to know about Cecilia Gallerani’s life trying to write a caption for people with only the barest understanding of the Renaissance.  That 20 quid, give or take, lets you into another world for the few hours you want it.  Those captions might not provide an instant and visceral connection to the cracked and oil-daubed piece of canvas in front of you but our interior worlds are private and precious, and who is to say what the middle-aged shuffler in front of you gains from Cecilia’s face.

Which in turn leads to my other main bone of contention with David’s article: ‘Any artist who puts any effort whatsoever into writing the caption, or the catalogue or sales “explanation” of their work, has no business calling themselves an artist’.  Total horseshit.  Leonardo had to explain himself to Cesare Borgia and Raphael to the Pope.  On a slightly more recent note I have hugely enjoyed Grayson Perry’s exhibition at the BM, Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman to which he has contributed not only his own art but multi-media ‘captions’.  Artists who do not, or cannot explain themselves are usually of the most mediocre order.  

To decry these exhibitions, and those who pay their money and file around the course is to sneer at anyone who wants to learn, to understand why great art was made and why.  It’s like sneering at the girl who queued up to see the Mona Lisa twenty years ago, heart in her mouth, garbage translation of the Musée du Louvre’s catalogue clutched tightly in her hand.  

Book Review: The Music Trade in Georgian England

I have been lucky enough to receive a review copy of The Music Trade in Georgian England, edited by Michael Kassler and published by Ashgate. 

Well, where to start?  The depth of knowledge displayed by the contributors to this book is impressive and the reader comes away with a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms of music production, sale and reproduction in Georgian England.  Make no mistake, this isn’t for anyone wanting a light read: it’s 576 pages of densely packed and heavily footnoted information.  But what GEMS.  From self-publishing artists like Purcell to the complexities of the musical instrument market, this book has it covered.  Mr Kassler is to be congratulated on the production of such a rigorous and readable work, for the bombardment of detail doesn’t lapse into the tedious or showboating.  It’s clear, decently illustrated (black and white) where appropriate and with explanations about music which if the reader is at all musical will make perfect sense.  

There is only one fault with this book and that’s the price, which is £60 on the cover.  I want to be very clear in saying that I think this book is well worth the money.  It’s the best book on music in Georgian London (it is Londoncentric) I’ve encountered.  If you were to buy one, this one should be it. But £60 is a lot of money.  It’s available for £57 from the necessary engine of Mr Amazon and if it sells well the price will drop.  I hope so, as this work deserves a wide audience amongst historians and musicians alike.

An Epitaph, by a Friend

Tomorrow I’m giving a walkie-talkie at Sir John Soane’s Pitzhanger Manor-House for Open House Weekend 2011.  I have lots of thoughts about Soane and his ruthless pursuit of success and his cold perfectionism, but the memorial to his wife, which was created as a marble tablet for his house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields never fails to move me.  There’s just the small, niggling voice in the back of my head that hopes she knew how he felt before she died.  Or was it, like everything else in the house, just for show?

‘An eccentrical lady’: Mrs Griggs of Bloomsbury

‘Died, 16th January 1792, at her house, Southampton Row, Bloomsbury, Mrs. Griggs. Her executors found in her house eighty-six living and twenty-eight dead cats. A black servant has been left £150 per annum, for the maintenance of herself and the surviving grimalkins. The lady was single, and died worth £30,000. Mrs Griggs, on the death of her sister, a short time ago, had an addition to her fortune; she set up her coach, and went out almost every day airing, but suffered no male servant to sleep in her house. Her maids being tired frequently of their attendance on such a numerous household, she was induced at last to take a black woman to attend and feed them. This black woman had lived servant to Mrs. Griggs many years, and had a handsome annuity given her to take care of the cats.’

Tottenham: Never do anything when you are in a temper, for you will do everything wrong.

Tottenham developed rapidly from a small village during the Georgian period, into a place of cheap housing for ordinary workers in the Victorian period. It was much influenced by the railways and built to be inhabited by people who were never far from the breadline. They did, however, live in a time when there was an abundance of work for the unqualified and unskilled, even if it was poorly paid. As a predominantly Victorian settlement Tottenham has many buildings typical of Victorian England’s sturdy efforts at public architecture and some of the commercial buildings date from early in Tottenham’s history.  Tottenham has continued to attract people because of cheap housing and the chance to live amongst familiar voices whilst remaining close to central London and it saw diverse ethnic groups arrive before the end of the nineteenth century. Many of the communities which settled and continue to occupy these traditionally poor areas are those which have the strongest internal ties. And many of these communities are now struggling with unemployment and the consequences of poverty and poor education.  

One of the early residential/commercial terraces is the burnt out shell pictured here. There are still some of this type of building in Hackney and Dalston, but they don’t fit with modern requirements and have been phased out over the last thirty years along with some of the traditional housing, making way for new developments. Developments such as the experimental Broadwater Farm Estate, the likes of which scar many of London’s Windrush settlements.

It’s unlikely, I know, that the people who took part in burning these shops and homes last night will care about the effect their actions will have on the heart of Tottenham. What does it matter to them if ugly boxes replace the many buildings from different periods which made up a street as varied as the people who shopped there? The majority of the buildings destroyed last night which have appeared in the news are the older ones (1840-1930). They informed Tottenham’s built history and looked back to a time when Tottenham, though always a low income area, was a place full of working families and a large community living in attractive if modest housing with decent municipal buildings.  Recent investment from English Heritage in the restoration of some Tottenham High Road shopfronts reflected the presence of buildings important to our knowledge of commercial architecture, but also the history of people in Tottenham. Last night’s riots will not only fragment the community in the short term, but increase a sense of dispossession and alienation in the long term. The importance of the built environment to people’s investment in their communities is consistently underestimated.

I hope the people left homeless, without their premises or injured by the riots are soon back on their feet, both physically and financially. But the urban fabric is not unimportant and its loss shouldn’t be neglected, no matter how lowly. Listening to the news today, all I am hearing is how the work of the past 25 years has been undone. Wrong, the work of the last century and a half has been undone. I don’t mourn the loss of these buildings as a sentimental lover of old bricks, but I see their destruction and know it to be a loss to the spirit of Tottenham itself.