Here are a few, linked by their titles, appearing courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library site. The first is entitled “An exquisite alias dandy in distress!” and shows our hero, thin as a rake, trying to retrieve his handkerchief despite the tightness of his trousers!

 It was published in 1819.

Another one, called simply “An Exquisite” from G M Woodward’s Hudibrastic Mirror, shows our hero admiring himself in the cheval glass:

Another reflective image is this one from 1818:

A  common theme in  these lampoons is that these precious dears are prone to a fit of the vapours and likely to be blown over in a breeze. Here we have Robert Cruikshank’s ‘A dandy fainting, or, An exquisite in fits : scene a private box opera’ from 1835

The gentleman on the left  declares “I must draw the curtain or his screams will alarm the house – you have no fello feeling my dear fellos, pray unlace the dear one’s stays, and lay him on the couch” Next to him a dandy remarks “I am so frightened I can hardly stand” while his colleague urges “Mind you don’t soil the Dear’s linen.” The next man comments “I dread the consequences! That last Air of Signeur Nonballinas has thrown him in such raptures we must call in Dr —– immediately” as he wafts a phial of Eau de Cologne under his nostrils.

Ah Beau Brummel, it may not have been what you wanted, but it is what you led to!

28 pounds of Lisbon Sugar (yes, 28 pounds of it, and it probably lasted Richard Hall about a month. Some of it was needed for the currant wine he was busy making…).

1 small loaf (probably a loaf of sugar, rather than bread, because he bought bread from the baker, not the grocer). The Lisbon sugar was soft and off-white in colour and would have been used for cooking. The loaf sugar would have been broken into lumps and served  at the table).

1 pound sugar candy – presumably in case he felt the need for a sugar rush.

Half a pound of mint drops (might have been handy for disguising bad breath, which I am sure he would have had from consuming so much sugar and therefore having rotten teeth!)

One ounce of candied orange peel - good sort

2 pounds of coffee – four shillings

2 pounds Bohea Tea (3 shillings and two pence)

3 pounds Souchong (4 shillings, last not so good as usual)

1 pound green tea (4 shillings). Armed with these various teas  Mrs Hall would have been able to be her own blending master, mixing the leaves according to her taste.

Half a pound of Hartshorn Shavings (made from the horns of the male red deer and containing Ammonia. Used in medicine – as sal volatile – as well as  in baking and as a detergent).

A quarter of Isinglass (used  in confectionery and desserts such as fruit jelly and blancmange – and possibly as a flocculent for Richard’s home made wine).

Half a dozen lemons

An ounce of cinnamon

1 quart of hemp seed (I suspect he used then for feeding his canary, although they did have culinary uses!)

1 pound of Gingerbread Nutts.

Unfortunately I cannot be sure where Messrs Johnson traded from – probably Stow on the Wold, in the English Cotswolds. Richard lived a couple of miles away at Bourton.

William Constable

Winifred Constable

I recently came across a painting by an artist I had never heard of – Henry Walton. Paraphrasing his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:

Walton was born in 1746, and was baptized on 5 January in that year at Dickleburgh, Norfolk. He was one of three children of Samuel Walton, yeoman farmer, and his wife, Ann Newstead. Father served as churchwarden and overseer of the poor. Little is known of Henry’s early schooling but the collection of books belonging to him at his death suggest that he could read Greek, Latin, and French, so presumably he had a very thorough education.

A Gentleman at Breakfast, painted in 1775

In 1765, aged nineteen, Walton moved to London, although it is not clear whether he had a trade or formal training at this stage. The first recorded painting by him was a husband-and-wife portrait dated 1768. In 1770 he enrolled at the Maiden Lane Academy, in Covent Garden, London, to study Art, and while there became a pupil of Johan Zoffany. By 1771 Walton was living at Great Chandos Street, Covent Garden, painting portraits in oil and miniatures, often featuring close friends and family. 1771 saw Walton elected a fellow of the Society of Artists, where he exhibited two portraits. In 1772 he was elected a director of the society, showing four works at that year’s exhibition. He exhibited there again in 1773 and 1776.

Thomas Inyon aged 70, painted in 1776

On 10 September 1771 Walton married Elizabeth Rust, the daughter of a wool draper and herself a miniature painter. She came from the Suffolk village of Wortham and shortly after the marriage Henry Walton purchased Oak Tree Farm, in the village of Burgate, near to Wortham, and converted one of the cottages into a house and studio. The marriage was to prove childless.

While he was initially drawn to landscapes, during the early to mid-1770s Walton seems to have concentrated on working as a portrait painter, presumably because it was easier to get commissions for these from the Suffolk gentry. He also painted Edward Gibbon on at least half a dozen occasions (including this one at the National Portrait Gallery).

Another was of Horatio Walpole, first earl of Orford:

In 1776 Walton exhibited his first genre subject, A Girl Plucking a Turkey (Tate collection), at the Society of Artists. This was followed by other genre subjects, notably A Girl Buying a Ballad (Tate collection), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1777.

                                         Girl plucking a turkey, 1776

A Girl Buying a Ballad

In November 1778 Walton was turned down for membership of the Royal Academy, allegedly because of his prior connection with the rival Society of Artists. Feeling snubbed, he showed only two more works there in 1779 after which he ceased to exhibit altogether. During the 1780s Walton devoted himself increasingly to his farm in Burgate. He also travelled to Yorkshire, where he painted portraits of important local families.

Country Maid

The Market Girl

By the early 1790s he was established as a picture dealer and adviser to some major private collectors, notably Lord Lansdowne, Lord Fitzwilliam, and Sir Thomas Beauchamp-Proctor, to whom he sold a Poussin from the collection of Sir Joshua Reynolds. Walton’s expertise was apparently such that ‘there was scarcely a picture of note in this country, with the history of which he was unacquainted’ . Walton continued to paint local Norfolk and Suffolk families well into the early 1800′s. By 1810 Walton was in poor health, having contracted a fever ‘which caused a great alteration in his appearance’. One evening in May 1813, on returning from a party to his London lodgings in New Bond Street, Walton complained of feeling ill. He was found dead in bed the next morning, the immediate cause of death being described as “hydrothorax and pleurisy” and he was buried near his parents in the churchyard at Brome, Suffolk.

So, to paraphrase the diaries of our dear King George III, might the monarch have written up the story of his day 213 years ago.

He had arrived at the theatre to a packed audience, who all stood for the playing of “God Save the King”. In the audience was a deranged former soldier who believed that, by dying, he would herald Christ’s Second Coming. His cunning plan to bring about his own death: shoot the king and be sent to the gallows for treason.

The man’s name was James Hadfield. The story goes that he had suffered a number of severe sabre wounds to the head while serving in the British army. Whatever the cause, he was clearly a total nutter, and not a very good shot. One of the slugs missed its target by 14 inches, the other brought down flakes of plaster from the ceiling of the Royal Box. Luckily one member of the audience – a David Moses Dyte – had the presence of mind to disarm the assailant before he could do any more damage to the building – or the King. Dyte’s reward? He was eventually made up to the exalted position of  ’Purveyor of Pens and Quills to the Royal Household’. Now that’s what I call gratitude!

An etching entitled Strong Symptoms of Loyalty courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library appeared shortly after the incident. It shows an imaginary scene before Hadfield was bundled over the rails and into the orchestra pit and dragged away to the music room. Charles James Fox grapples with Hadfield and shouts: “Shoot him, Kill him, Hang him, D—n him, Assassin – oh words where are you fled!!”

Theatre manager Sheridan exclaims “You D-d Jacobin scoundrel – Democratic Villain – You Republican Rascal, you Regicide you Traitor, you – you – Oh Heaven I fail for lack of words to Express my rage – to attempt – oh Devil – Fiend – A Monarch whom we love, A King whom we adore”

On the right, the snuff-taking George Tierney looks on unconcernedly. He casually remarks “Why, D-n me, you are as bad a Shot as I am.”

What actually happened was that  Sheridan came into the music room with the Duke of York and the prisoner apparently told the Duke “God bless your Royal Highness, I like you very well; you are a good fellow. This is not the worst that is brewing.”

It turns out that Hadfield had been an orderly working for the Duke, and he admired the Duke greatly. Hadfield was taken away and later charged with High Treason. To the great admiration of all present,the King insisted that ‘the show must go on.’ He apparently enjoyed the play so much he fell asleep in the second half…

Thomas Rowlandson: An audience watching a play at Drury Lane Theatre, 1785

The case against Hadfield came to trial in the Court of King’s Bench in June 1800. Various members of the public were called to give evidence as to what happened – the pistol was produced by a Mr Wright, who had picked it up off the floor. The Duke of York was called, which must have been a little embarrassing for him, with questions along the lines of “Do you normally employ complete madmen as your orderly?”

Erskine by Thomas Lawrence

The questioner was the great barrister Thomas Erskine. He had a field day defending his client, who had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. The problem was that in all other respects the prisoner appeared perfectly normal. According to the Newgate Calendar, seeing the Duke in court upset the prisoner greatly, causing him to exclaim in great agitation “God bless the Duke, I love him!” The Court immediately gave directions that he should be permitted to sit down; and Mr Kirby, the keeper of Newgate (who all the time sat next him), told him he had the permission of the Court to sit down, which he did, and remained composed during the remainder of the trial. The Newgate Calendar continues ‘When the prisoner was asked what could have induced him to commit so atrocious an act, he said he was tired of life, and thought he should have been killed’.

Erskine called various medicos to attest to the meaning of insanity and insane delusions, the problem being that up until that time the defence of insanity was only available if the insanity was so total that the accused was utterly irrational and had no control over his actions. That was clearly not the case here – Hadfield obviously intended to kill the King, and had brought along his pistol for the express purpose of firing it at the monarch. Eventually the judge halted the trial saying that the medical evidence meant that the verdict would inevitably mean an acquittal, because it was quite obvious that the guy was as mad as a hatter. But he added that “the prisoner, for his own sake, and for the sake of society at large, must not be discharged”.

The difficulty here was that in the past, the criminally insane were often handed back to the families to be looked after, but Hadfield could hardly be let loose to wander the streets. Parliament quickly passed new laws – the Treason Act and the Criminal Lunatics Act (both in 1800). The latter enabled prisoners who were found to be criminally insane to be locked up indefinitely, and Hadfield was carted off to Bedlam, or more correctly, Bethlem Royal Hospital.

When the asylum was rebuilt in 1815 (which involved moving it to St George’s Fields, Southwark) Hadfield moved too. Apart from one time when he escaped and headed for Dover, intent on catching a ferry to France, he finished his days in the asylum, eventually dying of tuberculosis in 1841.

Sheridan, painted by Reynolds.

Poor Sheridan: he was already stretched financially by the cost of building the new theatre, and running it was an expensive business.In 1809 disaster struck and the theatre was burned to the ground. It gave rise to the famous remark by Sheridan, when he was encountered wandering around with a wine glass in his hand, watching the flames destroy his project:  “A man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine by his own fireside.”

The loss of the theatre completed his financial ruin – he died in poverty in 1816 and was buried in Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.

“The phaenomenae of electricity, which has so many surprising properties, seems to be of two sorts, natural and artificial. The last is to be obtain’d from all bodies naturally susceptible of it, as glass etc in which the property lies dormant till excited to act by friction, or some other violent motion.

Natural electricity is common almost to all animals, especially those destin’d to catch their prey by night; cats have this property in the greatest degree of any animal we are acquainted with; their furr or hair is surprisingly electrical. If it be gently raised up it avoids the touch till it be forc’d to , and by stroking the backs in the dark, the emanations of electrical fire are extremely quick and vibrative from it, follow’d by a crackling noise as from glass tubes when their electrical atmosphere is struck. It appears to me of singular use to animals destin’d to catch their prey in the dark: they give a sudden and quick erection of their furr, raises the electrical fire, and this, by its quickness running along the long pointed hairs over their eyes, and illuminating the pupilla enables them to perceive and seize their prey. It would be worth while to enquire whether all the wild sort that catch their prey with the paw are not endow’d with the same vibrations of electrical fire; the cat is the only domestic animal of that species but such a discovery in the ferocious kind would still be an additional demonstration of that infinite wisdom so easily discoverable in the minutest executions of all his works, and so perfectly adapted to a proper end.”

The article is interesting in illustrating the 18th Century preoccupation and fascination with electricity, from its cause to its effects. I rather like the idea of cats seeing in the dark because of their ‘natural electricity’.

Mind you, while looking for illustrations to go with this post I came across a highly inappropriate, un-funny (and downright cruel!) picture of a cat piano, apparently designed in 1650 by one Athanasius Kircher a 17th century German Jesuit scholar.

According to the Neatorama site “The piano was designed to raise the spirits of an Italian prince who was too stressed out. The musician would select cats whose voices were at different pitches then arrange them in the pens accordingly. The piano delivered sharp pokes into the tails of the cats”. (No, not funny, definitely in bad taste, definitely worth including….). I mention it as an example of how cruelty to animals was endemic: more so because cats had always been associated with witchcraft.

According to the poem, Joe missed his shift because he chased after the dog which had stolen his bacon sandwich – thereby being spared the fate of being trapped and killed in the mining collapse.

I rather like the small drawing which accompanied the poem, showing the dog snaffling the bacon while Joe and his mate Tim Jenkins walk past the pit-head, where the pony labours to draw the water from the mine shaft….

Post script: I am most grateful to Sarah Waldock for taking the trouble to google in the words “Patient Joe, or the Newcastle Collier”and for pointing out that it is a tract written in 1795 by Hannah More, the social reformer and educator.  The Abe Books site shows it to be scarce – it can be found in fewer than half a dozen public collections and is therefore quite collectable.

The story goes that after the funeral they traipsed back to the family home and set to with a fervent zeal, destroying every single bottle of wine to be found in the cellars. The whole lot was opened and poured down the drain.

I tell the story to indicate that the family may be weird, but we are not all the same! But what I like about the 18th Century is that it was a century of excess, not of moderation. The Temperance Movement really didn’t get going until 1833 when the word ‘teetotal’ was coined, and then had a renewed lease of life in the 1880’s. But none of their killjoy activities impinged upon the century which saw Hogarth rail against Gin, (as in Gin Lane) but condone and promote the consumption of beer (as in Beer Street). The earliest cartoon I can find giving a temperance view of the world is this one from 1828. It is entitled “The two fishermen : a dedication to the temperance society” and is by A Ducôte. It appears on the Lewis Walpole Library site.

On the left, under the banner of Habitual Drunkenness, the fisherman is in a spot of bother: his kids are fighting, his front door is falling off its hinges, his wife is embracing another man, and he has caught a fish marked ‘Sickness’. He cries out “The Devil”. Other fish in the sea are identified as Starvation, Hatred, Murder, Malice, Discontent ,Seduction, Rebellion, Atheism, Beggary and Enormous Taxation.

Contrast this unhappy scene with the prosperous happy family on the right blessed with Constant Sobriety, catching fish for their dinner. The waters abound with such delights as Civil and Religious Liberty, Peace & Quietness, Chastity, Happiness, Health, Wealth, Moderate Taxation, Cheap Bread and Contentment.

Just in case we haven’t got the message, the man on the left fishes in Gin, and on the right the supercilious young man with two ghastly children fishes in Water. The moral to me is quite clear: if you want ghastly kids and cheap bread, try being abstemious; if you want a bit of fun before you die, take another slug from the bottle.

For my distant ancestor Richard Hall, being a devout Baptist never seemed to prevent him from enjoying a prodigious quantity of wine (his tipple of choice). But he also brewed beer, and cider, as well as bringing a quarter Pipe of Port down from London whenever supplies ran short.

Late 18thCentury wine bottles – courtesy of Christies.com

But where I find his stamina truly remarkable is where he lists his household expenses for 1797 (when he was 68 years old). His account books show that he was spending roughly three times the amount on wine as he did on taxation. Way to go, Richard!

So I have written a book. Not a very long one, but packed with full-colour photographs to give an idea of the beautiful rich translucent blue.

It is a history of how and where the blue glass was made (not necessarily in Bristol, which just happened to be the port where smalt – cobalt oxide – was imported). And it is also the story of the men behind the spectacular boom in popularity of Bristol Blue.

I wrote it because I could not find anything which told me about the origins of the glassware – or if it did it was as part of a large dictionary of glass, usually printed in black and white (which frankly is a bit pointless when it comes to picturing coloured glass!). Also, I found it fascinating visiting one of the glass factories which is still producing ‘Bristol Blue’ in Bedminster, Bristol, on almost the exact site where glass was being produced 250 years ago. There is precious little of Bristol’s industrial heritage still standing, so what there is is worth remembering.

Anyway, a harmless hobby, and I brought the book out on Amazon where you can find it here if in the U.K. and in the States here. I am hoping that it will also be available on kindle, although at present they are not playing ball and I would be the first to admit that this is not my favourite platform for displaying pictures of the gorgeous blue glass. The images appear courtesy of the V&A Museum, and the Bristol Blue Glass South West Glass Museum.

The quotation gave rise to a number of Eighteenth Century illustrations, and here are three:

The first one, by John Collet, appears on the Port Cities site and was first published in November 1773. The original is with the National Martime Museum.

It shows an apparently innocent scene of a couple sitting at a table eating bread and cheese. Things start to get amorous, and the sailor is slipping coins into the lady’s pocket – buying her favours. In the background on the wall a picture of two ships side by side has the caption “The Free Briton closely engaged with the charming Sally”.

Version Number Two appears on the Library of Congress site:

The site gives the explanation:

“Print shows a man, seated at a table, embracing and kissing a woman; around the table are seated three women; a fourth, carrying a tankard of beer, enters through a door on the right; on the table are bread and cheese, a visual reference to a quote by Jonathan Swift, ‘Bachelors fare; bread and cheese, and kisses.’ Two illustrations are on the wall in the background, one of a church, and the other of a swarm of bees around a hive”.

My favourite, with a fascinating amount of detail of the interior of an Eighteenth Century tavern, is the final one, a cartoon by Rowlandson. It appears on the Lewis Walpole site and was first published in 1813, but is an almost mirror-image of his earlier version entitled “A kiss in the kitchen”.

The site describes the scene as  ”A young man with a grotesquely long chin sits in a high back chair, kissing a pretty young woman who stands between his legs. Behind him a dog has his paws on the cloth-covered table on which is laid cheese and bread; a cat drinks from a pitcher on the ground. Through the door on the right, a fat older man sits on a stool, smoking his pipe as he looks up at another pretty girl. On the wall hangs his gun and game; above them hangs a bird in a cage”.

The young man with the grotesquely long chin reminds me of a younger Bruce Forsyth (surely he wasnt around THAT long ago!).

He declined to join either the Whigs or the Tories and in his maiden speech on the thorny topic of Ireland he upset nearly all his parliamentary colleagues by declaring that that the government was guilty of the “oppression of an enslaved and impoverished people”.

In 1797 he became the Fifth Baron of Foremark following his grandfather’s death that year.

Burdett strongly opposed William Pitt’s suspension of the writ of Habeas Corpus in 1796 and was highly critical of the government’s efforts to suppress the rights of the individual. As he himself later declared “The best part of my character is a strong feeling of indignation at injustice & oppression and a lively sympathy with the sufferings of my fellows.” A less endearing quality was his melancholia, pedantry, and quick temper. Also, despite fathering six children by his long suffering wife he appears to have had several more by his mistress Lady Oxford.

Burdett denounced Great Britain’s war with France, and was one of the few members of the House of Commons who supported the idea of parliamentary reform in the early years of the 19th Century.

In 1802 he was elected to Parliament as Member for Middlesex but later elections were rigged against him and Burdett spent a fortune (estimated at £100,000) successfully contesting the results. In 1807, following the death of Charles James Fox he stood for Westminster on a Reform ticket and was returned with a huge majority – gaining more votes than all the other candidates put together.

In 1810 he spoke in the House against the imprisonment of a radical by the name of John Gale Jones and then compounded his unpopularity with the government by “leaking” the entire speech to  William Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register (a clear breach of Parliamentary privilege). The authorities were outraged. He was arrested, charged, and ordered to be imprisoned in the Tower of London. He responded by barricading himself in his home for two days. Soldiers forced their way in and carted him off to prison. Later (1820) he was charged with seditious libel, heavily fined and again imprisoned for criticising the government’s handling of the Peterloo Massacre (in which eleven people died and hundreds were injured when the army fired shots into a crowd of activists).

Burdett campaigned for parliamentary reform and in particular called for universal male suffrage. He wanted reform of the Parliament so that all constituencies had the same number of voters. He opposed corporal punishment in the army, sought strenuously to stamp out corruption and nepotism, and supported the abolition of the Slave Trade. He also supported Catholic Emancipation. But as he got older his enthusiasm for radical ideas started to fade, and he ended up representing the Tories as MP for North Wiltshire until his death.

His wife, Lady Burdett, to whom he had eventually become devoted, died on 13 January 1844. Sir Francis simply lost the will to live – gave up eating and drinking, and died ten days later just two days short of his 74th birthday. He and his wife were buried at the same time in the same vault at Ramsbury Church, Wiltshire.

The man was certainly a thorn in the side to the Government on many issues, and his opponents  did all they could to smear his name and ridicule his ideas. Take this caricature from 1810:

“A Rough Sketch of the Times as Deleniated by Sir Francis Burdett” appears courtesy of the Lewis Walpole Library site and invites the viewer to decide whether the true character of Frances Burdett is the fine upstanding gentleman on the left, or the duplicitous rogue on the right. The figure on the left is described as The Genius of Honour and Integrity and sports such attributes as:

A sound mind, an eye ever watchful to the welfare of his fellow citizen, a tongue that never belied a good heart. He bends a knee to religion, is a staunch supporter of the Bill of Rights, an advocate of fair representation for the people [well, the males at any rate] and is a lover of peace.

Contrast that with his alter ego wearing the collar of corruption, with hands of extortion holding a bag containing Pensions Reversions and Perquisites of Office. He carries secret service money in his back pocket and has a cringing soul, while sitting for a rotten borough. He has an eye to interest and a pampered appetite, legs of luxury and goes under the heading The Monster of Corruption.

Take  your pick!