Progress Sometimes Isn't

This unlandscaped bit of green space is what now sits on the site of Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. Who would ever guess that this under-resourced park in a nondescript South London neighborhood (near the Vauxhall train station) once attracted the highest in the land and was painted by great artists like Canaletto? Two hundred  years ago, it looked very different. The Gardens were at their best between 1785 (when admission was first charged) and 1840 (when its owners went bankrupt). New owners reopened the Gardens until 1859.



There were once structures for music, dancing and dining. Trees were hung with Japanese lanterns that were lit at night by means of fuses connecting them, making the lighting an amusing spectacle in its own right. Fireworks provided an exciting finale to the evening's entertainments. Many a historical romance heroine was ruined or nearly ruined along its darkened walks (Katherine Huxtable in Mary Balogh's Then Comes Seduction comes immediately to mind).

You can see some wonderful historical images of Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens on this Two Nerdy History Girls' Pinterest board and this terrific blog devoted to Early British & American Public Gardens & Grounds.

Now, no trace remains of its former glory. Perhaps someday the London Borough of Lambeth will at least plant some trees and put up a modest gazebo. I hope the construction activity currently going on has something to do with improvements to the park.

Christmas in Georgian England Included Christmas Trees and Turgoosen Pies

I am equally amused and frustrated by the annual kerfuffle over American holiday traditions. Amused because I can see humor in the absurd, and frustrated because I hear so many people defending the sanctity of particular Christmas traditions with no idea of their actual provenance.

So I am always fascinated to learn more about Christmas traditions in previous centuries. I had read many years ago that the Christmas tree was introduced into England by the German-born Prince Albert. While I had known that, by Albert's time, England had already been importing its royalty from various German states for a century, I assumed that the popularity of the young royal couple allowed the Prince Consort to introduce innovations in a way that his predecessors had not.

As it turns out, Prince Albert did not introduce the Christmas tree to England. Mass media coverage of the royal Christmas decorations in Victorian times (thanks to the proliferation of literacy and inexpensive magazines) made the Christmas tree popular among the common people for the first time, but the upper classes had been putting up and lighting Christmas trees in their houses since the first decade of the 19th century. The first documented English Christmas tree was set up by Queen Charlotte in Windsor in 1800. So if you read a Regency romance with a Christmas theme, and there is a Christmas tree, it is not an anachronism (assuming it is at an aristocratic gathering).

I was highly amused by this reference to a traditional Yorkshire Christmas pie from 1788. While it is not quite a turducken (because it features a goose rather than a duck nested between the turkey and chicken), it is superior to that modern symbol of excess, because inside the chicken is a pigeon inside a partridge. The pie also includes rabbit and miscellaneous game birds, but they are left outside the matryoshka fowl.

Here is another bit of 18th-century trivia related to German Christmas celebrations. Most Americans of a certain age remember (thanks to Schoolhouse Rock) that the continental army "surprised the Hessians in their lair" after crossing the Delaware "one night" but few realize that night was Christmas. The date chosen was likely deliberate, as one of General Washington's officers wrote "They make a great deal of Christmas in Germany, and no doubt the Hessians will drink a great deal of beer and have a dance to-night. They will be sleepy to-morrow morning."

The assumption about beer-drinking was likely incorrect, as another witness wrote afterward:  "I am certain not a drop of liquor was drunk during the whole night, nor, as I could see, even a piece of bread eaten." The element of surprise was sufficient to carry the day.

The 18th Century Fashion Revolution

The high-waisted, neoclassical women's gowns that we now associate with the Regency actually came into fashion during the last decade of the 18th century, following the French Revolution.

The radicals who toppled the ancien regime in 1789 deliberately rejected the aristocratic fashions of the day. Citoyens wore long cotton pantaloons rather than velvet knee breeches and silk stockings. Citoyennes turned away from stiff corsets and elaborate silk skirts supported by panniers and toward simple cotton gowns with neoclassical lines.

The new gowns were meant to evoke the days of the Roman republic. Ironically, the fashion developed at least in part out of a style that was favored by Marie Antoinette (and called the chemise a la reine in her honor).

French fashions, then as now, were soon adopted in other parts of Europe. The round gown, a garment made from a column of fabric gathered at the neckline and just below the bust, was the height of fashion in 1795. By the end of the decade, it was old-fashioned, replaced by the chemise dress (a more tailored version of the neoclassical gown). You can see several examples of round gowns on my Pinterest board for 1790s fashion.

The evolving political situation in Paris during the 1790s continued to impact fashion. An anti-Jacobin petit-bourgeois militia known as the Muscadins (for the musk cologne they supposedly favored) came to prominence in 1794-5. They wore bright, contrasting colors and coats with large lapels. Their fashion choices were taken up and exaggerated during the Directoire period (1795-1799) by the aristocratic subculture known as the Incroyables (for men) and Merveilleuses (for women).

Diaphanous gowns with scanty or no undergarments were worn in public (and were lampooned by British cartoonists at the time). Men's frock coats and waistcoats were shortened, and lapels became more popular. With the rise of Napoleon at the end of the decade, women's fashions became less risqué. New styles of corset, without boning, were introduced in the early years of the 19th century, after several years of less supportive fashion.

This is not to say that the older fashions disappeared completely. The two very different modes coexisted, with the younger generation preferring the radical new fashions and their conservative parents often clinging to the old. Knee breeches continued to be worn for formal occasions. The specialized costumes for court presentations preserved the longer waistcoats for gentlemen and skirts with hoops for ladies through the Regency (although these garments were only worn for court events).

So, while we are tempted to think of knee breeches and hooped skirts as Georgian and trousers and column dresses as Regency, the reality is that the two eras and two styles overlapped.

What to Wear in the Late 1780s

One of my current works in progress takes place mostly in London during the 1788 Season. I was aware that fashions evolved in the 18th century, with noticeable differences between decades and more radical changes after the French Revolution.

To help me visualize my characters and their social scene, I spent some time researching the fashions of the 1780s. When I first started writing, this would have involved a trip to the library and possibly a lengthy wait for an inter-library loan. Now, thanks to some excellent museum websites, I did not even have to leave the house.

Thanks to Pinterest (which I am only beginning to use), I have a handy place to gather my research for future reference.

While I enjoy oohing and aahing over the beautiful women's garments, I find the men's garments far more distracting. There is nothing like a well-tailored silk waistcoat with a dozen tiny buttons to make me think about undoing them.

How to Have Historical Hair

Over the years, I have dabbled in various types of historical re-enactment and attended retro conventions and theme parties that gave me the opportunity to experiment with the fashions of many different eras. I often tried to do something appropriate with my hair but lacked knowledge of the necessary techniques.

Thanks to "hairdressing archaeologist" Janet Stephens, I now know how to do those tight spiral curls (and loosely frizzed hairstyles) that were so popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. Check out her brilliant instructional video:


Stephens' area of specialty is ancient Roman hairstyles. I found those videos on her YouTube channel to be equally fascinating, and many of the braid-and-loop techniques are easily adaptable to Victorian hairstyles as well. Watch them and you will be the envy of your friends at the next Halloween party (or the other mothers at the next Latin Club gala).

You can find additional useful information about early-19th-century hairdressing here.