June 13, 2010

The Daredevil Aeronaut and Miss Letitia Ann Sage

In 1766 Henry Cavendish's new work on hydrogen led to scientists and madcaps all over Europe experimenting with balloon flight. The concept of little hydrogen balloons for amusement or communication purposes wasn't new, but it took a series of adventurers to take man into their air. The most famous of all of these are the Montgolfier brothers with their balloon which ascended in Paris in 1783 and flew over five miles (they weren't the pilots) and in the autumn of the following year, the ballooning bug would hit London.

Vincenzo, or Vincent Lunardi came to England as a diplomat, but was more interested in flying. He was 22 and dashing and determined to gain Royal permission to 'demonstrate' a manned balloon flight with the help of his 'partner' George Biggin, which was to take place on the Artillery Ground near Moorfields in September 1784. It is recorded that more than 200,000 people turned out to see this demonstration - an almost impossible number, but safe to say the open ground was packed, and included Royals, a healthy chunk of the nobility and apparently a quarter of London. Lunardi, a great showman made everything very dramatic, and also packed his cat and dog into the basket with him for company before releasing the tethers, whereupon the balloon rose 'with slow and gradual majesty into the air' to the disappointment of 'the splenetic' suggesting Lunardi had his detractors. 'He appeared composed, and as the balloon went up, bowed most gracefully, and calmly waved his flag to the admiring and wonder-struck spectators'. It is hard to imagine the impact this flight had upon those who saw it. It was regarded as a 'novelty' to the 'untutored mind' and to 'the man of letters it was an occasion of the most rational delight - thus to see a new element subdued by the talents of man'. It wasn't all glamour though: the cat got sick and was let out when the balloon touched down briefly in North London before Lunardi finally landed near Ware, to a very surprised reception.

Lunardi bonnets, fans and garters became all the rage and the charming Italian had quite a fan club. One of his admirers was Letitia Ann Sage, and it appears the feeling was mutual for he offered her a trip in his next balloon attempt, in June 1785. This one left from St George's Fields on the south side of the Thames, in a balloon painted with an enormous Union Jack. George Biggin and a Colonel Hastings were supposed to joint the flight also, but the balloon was overweight and wouldn't take off. Lunardi and Hastings gallantly stepped down and the balloon went up, leaving Miss Sage and Biggin to a fine lunch as they sailed North-West. The balloon dropped into a field near Harrow, where Miss Sage and the Colonel were abused 'to a savage degree' by the farmer whose crops they crushed and they had to be rescued by a gang of boys from Harrow school who had come to see the balloon.

The balloon went on show in the Pantheon in Oxford Street, and aerostatic science became the wonder of the age. It is unlikely there will ever be another moment of human invention that will produce the sense of astonishment these first balloon ascents engendered in the watching population. Even to those who would never grasp the new and constant scientific discoveries of the age these balloons were visible, exciting proof that the world was changing and almost anything was possible.

June 9, 2010

Billy Ponsonby, Earl of Besborough-

The blog isn't generally concerned with the lives of the aristocracy as there's plenty written about them anyway, but I like Billy Ponsonby. On the surface of it, he was a typical aristocrat: a Whig politician, Lord of the Treasury and Admiralty, Postmaster General. Born in 1704 to an Anglo-Irish family, he followed in his father's footsteps career-wise, and then in July 1739 married Caroline Cavendish, sixteen years his junior. They had three children together (he was Caroline Lamb's grandfather through his eldest son), but Caroline died at 40. Billy Ponsonby lived on until 1793, a familiar sight on London's streets, and also living in Parkstead House in Roehampton built in 1750 and now part of the University there.

After his wife died, Ponsonby pottered here and there, and was much involved with art and London artists (his portrait here is by Reynolds). There is little to be known of him outside his political career, but a few small anecdotes about his character remain, and they paint a vivid picture of both a lonely widower, and a decent, approachable man.

Joseph 'Little Nolly' Nollekens was widely held to be the finest sculptor of 18thC London, and a famous miser. He had a dog called Daphne who was always thin and afflicted with mange, but the Earl of Besborough was 'so well-known to Nolleken's dog, that whenever the animal saw his Lordship's leg within the gate he (yes, I know, but dogs are regularly termed 'he' in 18thC London, unless they are referred to specifically as 'bitches') ceased barking, and immediately welcomed the visitor; who always brought a French roll in his blue great-coat-pocket, purposely for him, with which his Lordship took great pleasure in feeding him'.

Another little anecdote runs thus: 'His Lordship was once standing to see the workmen pull down the wooden railing and brick-work which surround the centre of Cavendish-square, when a sailor walked up to him and asked for a quid of tobacco: his Lordship answered, "My friend, I don't take tobacco." - "Don't you?" rejoined the sailor; "I wish you did, Master, for I have had not a bit of it to-day." As he was turning away, his Lordship turned to him and said, "Here my friend, here is something that will enable you to buy tobacco," and gave him half a crown.'

In another instance of kindess, the Earl once noticed a woman in widow's weeds curtsey to him in the street. She looked poor, 'but remarkably clean' and had two small children with her. He stopped, turned back and gave her money, but in the transaction, the coins fell into the dirty kennel, or channel in the middle of the road. Billy picked them up, cleaned them on his handkerchief, then handed them over to her. But by far my favourite story relating to Billy Ponsonby comes again from the miser Nollekens, who ran a very successful studio where the Earl came to see the works in progress and pass some time. Nollekens once asked his apprentices if they had noticed the Earl's diamond shoe-buckles. The buckles had belonged to Billy's wife Caroline, and since her death he had 'worn them in common', meaning every day.

June 1, 2010

The Noble Savage, also known as Wilson

I like the special diversity of the 18thC image: men, women, dwarfs, giants, the poor, the disabled, the sexual, the oh, you get it. Instead of generic 'desirables' of types, the eighteenth century sees the emergence of the individual in art as never before. Certain subjects, such as Hogarth's Shrimp Girl fascinate me, as does the male model in the picture from St Martin's Lane Academy life drawing class. Sadly, the details of the models' identities are almost always lost in the bustle of London's streets, but not Wilson.

Born in Boston, Wilson arrived in London in the summer of 1810. Arriving in the city, he sustained an injury and visited a doctor, Anthony Carlisle, who also happened to be the professor of anatomy at the Royal Academy. Carlisle immediately saw his patient's potential, and hauled him into life classes. Thomas Lawrence was particularly impressed, and declared Wilson 'the finest figure He has ever seen, combining the character & perfection of many of the Antique statues'. This is no mean praise: 18thC artists, particularly those of the early Royal Academy, studied the figures from antiquity in a mathematical fashion, rather like computer programmers now study the symmetry of models' faces. Lawrence would go on to compare Wilson to Antinous and Hercules. Soon, Wilson was earning 2 guineas a week, making him very well off, considering his previous occupation as a sailor.

Benjamin Robert Haydon, Wilson's greatest artistic patron, soon took him on for extended periods of time to further study his body and to make the extensive sketches which would inform an entire career. There can be no doubt Haydon's admiration bordered on the fervent, but his intensive study of Wilson's form is also a delightful commentary on the beauty of the Black physique. His notes include such gems as 'a perfect model of beauty and activity', a flexibility of the loins 'like whalebone' the fact that he could put his 'foot over his neck' and perhaps the most apposite: 'everything was packed in'.

Years later, Haydon would wistfully remember how, 'pushed to enthusiasm by the beauty of this man's form, I cast him, drew him and painted him till I had mastered every part.' He did cast poor Wilson, who, up to his neck in seven bushels of plaster began to suffocate and had to be broken out, but not before Haydon had obtained a perfect cast of his subject's bottom.

Sadly, Haydon was not so keen on his model's face, who apparently did not meet the standards of antiquity about the lower jaw and there is no record of his face, either by Haydon, or by anyone else, including George Dawe, who painted the image illustrating this post displaying Wilson in his glory. After 1811, and the 'buffalo' painting, little more is heard of Wilson but his astonishing physique would have continued to bring in work were he minded to pose.

Wilson's fleeting cameo in Georgian London is too short, and much of what it reveals does not reflect favourably upon the attitudes of artists or critics; he was at once beautiful, yet parts of his face and body corresponded to 'the animal'. Their admiration is often charming in its candour, then tripped up by its pettiness. In every modern sense, Wilson was an American man who came to London and made a small fortune in a short time: for him, her streets really were paved with gold. The image his body created, that of the noble savage, would endure to become an icon for abolitionists. Until the Nubians of the late 19thC harem pictures, his body-type dominated the image of the Black male in British and American art. The details of Wilson's life may be scant, but we are left with the image of an 'extraordinary fine figure'.

May 1, 2010

Notes on the Restoration of King Charles and the Flashing Whores of St James's Fair

It is easy to look at history as a set of dates with events chalked up next to them, but in a city as vibrant and organic as London, nothing happens out of the blue, as a commonplace book of the 1660s recently revealed, giving a tiny snapshot of the streets of Restoration London.

Charles's return to England would come in late May, 1660, when he was sure of his welcome, but the signs were on the streets much earlier. In March, an odd event occurred on the Royal Exchange, when a 'kind of painter' appeared in broad daylight with a ladder, which he erected next to the statue of Charles Ist. The writing on the statue was thus: Exit Tyrannus, Regnum Ultimus Anno Libertatis Anglicae Anno Domini 1648, Jan 30. With a pot and brush, the painter 'washed the writing quit out, threw down his pot and brush, and said he should never do him any more service in regard it had the honour to put out rebell's hand wrightinge out of the wall'. The painter then came down, took down his ladder and went away, 'not a word said to him'. Imagine everyone stopping to stare on the busy Royal Exchange, with someone defacing a public monument: quite a thing. Later that month, the Thames watermen were seen wearing their large arm badges bearing the coat of arms of Charles Ist, a united act of defiance. From the 13th of April, members of the aristocracy who had been living abroad were seen on the streets in London. I love the fact that they were recognized, and also knew they would be recognized. On the 8th of May, with Charles not not even in the country, he was 'proclaimed in Westminster', and 'Bow Bells could not be heard for the noise of the people'.

Charles returned to England on the 29th of May, on what became known as Oak Apple Day. The following night, one John Adler puts on such a display of fireworks over London that he is knighted. Aubrey recorded maypoles being erected all over London as a mark of celebration. The largest was in the Strand, near St Mary-in-le-Strand church, where is remained for over a decade as a reminder, before being felled by the high winds of 1672. The theatres re-opened and by November, playwrights could not keep up with demand for new material.

By the following year, London was back into the heady swing of things, and Charles's fun-loving reign was underway. St James's Fair, which had suffered during the Interregnum, was returned to its appointed place in the summer calendar and ran for the full fortnight. The London fairs were boisterous places, with everyone across the classes clustered together, but this particular fair went down in the book as one to remember, with arrests for lewdness and infamy. My absolute favourite are the whores Charles ordered the Lord Chamberlain, who in turn ordered a Robert Nelson Esq., to detain: Tory Rory, Mrs Winter, Jane Chapman, Rebecca Baker, Anne Browne, Elizabeth Wilkinson, Rachel Brinley, Mrs Munday, Alice Wiggins, Nell Yates and Betty Marshall were arrested for 'impudence' and 'discovering their nakedness' to the crowd, including the King and his party when drunk, 'which they often were'. There is no record of the subsequent fate of these ladies, but knowing Charles they were probably let off with a stiff warning, after he'd stopped laughing.

March 24, 2010

Margaret Bryan, the Blackheath astronomer-

As well as being Dark Skies 2010 Week, it's also Ada Lovelace Day, when bloggers the world over celebrate women in science and technology in the name of Byron's pioneering daughter Ada and today I'd like to celebrate Margaret Bryan, working between 1797-1816 in the fields of astronomy and mathematics.

Margaret ran a school for girls in Blackheath, at Bryan House where she lived with her husband and her two daughters (pictured). She believed mathematics and astronomy were important subjects for girls as well as boys, and the girls who attended her seminary were schooled in what she termed 'natural philosophy'. Her method of education was so popular amongst the children and their parents Margaret felt encouraged to publish by subscription, in August of 1797, her Compendius System of Astronomy. This engraving of Margaret and her daughters was also used as the front cover of the book, which was a pleasing success. Charles Hutton, Copley Medal winning mathematician recommended Margaret's lectures, adding to her popularity. She became a recognised name in the field of mathematics and went on to publish more works, including Lectures on Natural Philosophy in 1806, which included lectures on hydrostatics, optics, pneumatics and acoustics. Other achievements include creating a game for children based upon astronomy and writing advanced and practical texts for classroom teaching which were also used in schools for young gentlemen.

Mrs Bryan's work has largely been forgotten, and during the 19thC she was dismissed as a 'schoolmistress', but she was clearly a great deal more: bright, beautiful and a blessing to the girls lucky enough to be taught by her. The continued popularity of Margaret's school (which included opening a Hyde Park-based seminary) proves there were clever girls with parents who actively encouraged their daughters to engage in a broad and intelligent education. Many myths pervade the gender history of the Regency period, but Margaret Bryan goes a long way to proving social and intellectual, if not legal, equality was out there for those with the wit to grasp it.