Review: Dickens’s London

This is a lovely little book, literally. Although hardback and lacking a dustjacket, it is covered in crimson cloth with smart, white embossed lettering, used sparingly. Set in the centre is a glossy image of  a very young Dickens. The inside front and back covers are decorated with 19th Century Ordnance Survey mappage from Putney in the West to Greenwich in the East. The book is four inches by eight inches, perfect for the coat or jacket pocket. This is important, because Dickens’s London is essentially a guidebook, with five Dickens-related walks in Central London, minutely described.

But that’s not all. The book has an impressive Introduction and – after the descriptions of the walks – a chapter on London suburbs and how they relate to Dickens and his life and works: Camden Town, Chelsea, Greenwich, Hampstead, Highgate and Limehouse.

Dickens’s London tells us all about the houses, factories, inns, streets, churches and offices that existed in the novelist’s lifetime and what exists in these places today. Sometimes they relate directly to Dickens’s life, but mostly they reference in scholarly detail the part played by these sites in the novels, how they affected and were populated by the dramatis personae of the books: there is hardly a character from the canon who doesn’t get a mention. The author quotes the relevant passages by Dickens, which are set in bold type. It is worth mentioning here that the content pages of the book, like the cover, are very nicely laid:  simply designed and set (in Garamond, for those interested in typography).

It is clear that author Peter Clark is no Dickens bandwagon-jumper. His knowledge of the works and how they relate to London geography is immense. But he wears his scholarship lightly, making the book both a joyful and easy read. It can be used as a reference work in its own right or – as intended – a book one can use on one’s own Dickens voyage of discovery. And it really doesn’t matter if, like me, you are a bit of a Dickens dunce: it makes you want to learn more about the great man. So for aficianados and L-plate drivers alike, I warmly recommend Dickens’s London as a fabulous companion guide.

Dickens’s London (130 pp) is published on 16 February by The Armchair Traveller at bookHaus, cover price £9.99, although available at around £7.00.

Free Dickens Walk
Author Peter Clark is conducting a free guided walk on 21 February at 2pm, starting at Lincoln’s Inn.

Update
The above-mentioned guided walk is done, and it was delightful. There were about 20 of us, great turn-out. Peter showed us around Lincoln’s Inn and Inner and Middle Temple. All the legal stuff, so plenty of Bleak House references. His guiding style, like his prose, is relaxed, accessible and engaging. Afterwards, we went to Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street for a bit of a social. Peter’s publisher presented him with a handsome bust of Charles Dickens. It was a pleasure getting to know the author. Turns out among other things Peter is an Arabic translator and an expert on Byzantium and the Near East, in particular Syria, where he lived for five years in the 1990s.

The Government Art Collection

Hidden treasure. Behind these buildings in Queen's Yard (entrance on right) lurks the Government Art Collection.

Thanks to a tip-off by Jo Moncrieff of Westminster Walking, I got myself a slot on last Wednesday’s visit to the Government Art Collection (GAC). It was arranged under the auspices of the Whitechapel Gallery‘s current series of exhibitions featuring art from the collections.

The Government Art Collection is based in Queen’s Yard  just of Tottenham Court Road, near Goodge Street Station. You wouldn’t notice it from the street, and indeed it has traditionally kept a low profile over the 113 years of its existence. It all began in 1898 when the government decided to catalogue and unify all the art it owned. It has come under various departments over the years, currently the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. From the early days, the government decided it needed to have a programme of acquisitions, providing GAC with a whole £300 and a few years later a further less-than-generous £250.

Today its budget is around £200,000, which though a big improvement, doesn’t go far nowadays. Hence, the GAC commissions from up-and-coming artists as well as acquiring work on the market. And occasionally it benefits from bequests.

A very partial list of artists in the collection includes: Thomas Lawrence, Francis Bacon, Thomas Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds, John Constable, William Hogarth, JMW Turner, Paula Rego, Peter Lely, Lucien Freud, David Hockney, Paul Nash, Stanley Spencer, Augustus John and yes, Tracey Emin. Search the full list here.

The collection comprises about 13,000 objects, mainly paintings, drawings, engravings and the like, but also antiques such as silverware. Most of these are distributed among government departments throughout the land, but importantly also our embassies and consulates abroad. At present, about a third of the stock is held at HQ. And this is what we came to see.

About 25 of us were shown around by Clive Marks, the collection’s Senior Administrator and curator Roger Golding. These two gentlemen really know their stuff and they clearly relished showing us around despite it being outside of their working hours. The GAC is broadly three areas: two rooms are for display; a further room is the archive, where all the “inactive” works are stored; and finally a large room is used for checking objects in and out, and importantly where works are repaired, conserved and prepared for despatch to their new homes.

The staff of the GAC play an important curatorial role in the advice they give to ministers and civil servants about the most appropriate pieces for government walls, and where advice is not sought, make the actual selections themselves.

In addition to checking out what was on the walls, our hosts selected some pieces that may interest us. I don’t know how they knew I was coming, but on the conservator’s table was a series of four colour engravings which featured panoramic views of Central London across the Thames by Samuel and Nathaniel Buck dated 1749, one of which featured the brand new Westminster Bridge. Such treasure. I drooled. But there was another, done forty years later by Sayer which was an update of the Buck image, but had worked in the new Blackfriars Bridge. Here they both are.

View of Westminster by Samuel and Nathaniel Buck, 1749. © Crown copyright: UK Government Art Collection.

View of Westminster, Buck, updated by Robert Sayer to include Blackfriars Bridge, 1788. © Crown copyright: UK Government Art Collection.

Seeing the Government Art Collection.

• Between now and September Whitechapel Gallery are showing selections featuring choices by Simon Schama, Downing Street staff and new commissions.  Entrance is free.
• The GAC participates in Museums at Night and Open House London
• If you’re really patient and a member of London Historians, we’re visiting on 26 June 2013!

My thanks to Robert Jones for permission to use the above images.

Trial of the Pyx

Today was the opening ceremony of the annual Trial of the Pyx, held at Goldsmiths’ Hall. The trial lasts until May and about a hundred members of the public are allowed to spectate on the opening day. I managed to secure a small stash of tickets for London Historians, my thanks to the Company of Goldsmiths for that.

Goldsmiths' Hall. One of the lucky livery halls which survived the Blitz. By Philip Hardwick, 1835, who also designed the Euston Arch.

Goldsmiths' Hall, interior. Before the ceremony, the jury table, with the Remembrancer's chair at the far end.

The Trial of the Pyx is an ancient ceremony dating from the 1240s in which the integrity of the coins of the realm is examined and tested for size, weight, quality and composition. The number of jurors varies, but is usually between twelve and fifteen. So too does the number of coins examined, but in recent years around 188,000.

The ceremony is opened and closed by the Queen’s Remembrancer, the oldest judicial position in the land. He wears typical judge attire, except that on top of his wig is perched a small black tricorn hat. This can be disconcerting, because at first glance it appears not unlike when the death sentence is passed. But it is always satisfying to see ancient ritual and regalia being observed. Take note, Mr Speaker!

Once the Remembrancer arrives, each member of the jury stands up and announces his or her name. The entire jury then holds a copy of the Gospels and are sworn in to the affect that they promise to do a good job. The Remembrancer then gives his opening address. This year it was on the topic of the historical problem of the clipping of coins in an age when they still comprised precious metal; and how the authorities tried and failed to eliminate the practice. Very interesting it was too.

The Rembrancer then departed to leave the jury and officials of the Goldsmiths’ Company to get on with the job of sifting and examining coins. It’s an arcane and complicated process, which I’ll leave for another time.

Intrepid London Historians, after the ceremony.

More information on the Trial of the Pyx:
Wikipedia
Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths
The Royal Mint
Ian Visits (2009)
An article by Mike Rendell on London Historians web site. Scroll down a bit.

Immigrants of Note: Sir Marc Isambard Brunel

The other day I caught the East London Line train from Canada Water to Wapping, travelling through – I think for the first time – Marc Brunel’s tunnel under the Thames. Taking 17 years to complete, between 1825 and 1842, it was his crowning achievement, only made possible by the tunnelling shield, his own invention. The device hosted a team of miners digging and removing spoil while workers behind them lined the tunnel with a sleeve made from bricks or iron hoop lining. Construction commenced on the Rotherhithe bank in the south, eventually linking to Wapping on the opposite bank. Like most of these affairs, the project was dogged by financial and practical difficulties. In 1834 the government had to bail out the Thames Tunnel Company to the tune of £246,000. The tunnellers lived with danger every day, from flooding, from poisonous flammable gas, and seepage of pre-Bazalgette sewage-infested Thames water. Many lost their lives, almost including Brunel’s more celebrated son, Isambard. Unquestionably, the work adversely affected the health of both men.

Originally conceived as a road tunnel, the passage never served that purpose, eventually becoming a rail link for the East London Railway in the 1860s, a function it serves to this day.

Marc Brunel's twin bore tunnel today at Wapping Station.

Marc Isambard Brunel (1769 – 1849) lived a life of extraordinary highs and lows. He was born of Normandy farming stock, trained as a cabinet maker, then as a young man, went to sea. As a Royalist in post-Revolutionary France, Brunel was forced to emigrate to the USA, but not before having met an English girl, Sophia Kingdom, who years later became his wife. The self-made engineer spent most of the 1790s making a name for himself on large-scale projects such as canal construction, eventually becoming chief engineer of New York City. The opportunistic Brunel  then invented a method of mass-producing wooden pulley blocks for the Royal Navy, settled in London and married Sophia, who had in the meantime returned to England. Collaborating with some of the leading engineers of the day, the ambitious engineer undertook many projects, many for the army and navy throughout the wars against his homeland. But during the years after Waterloo he overstretched himself on the business side and ended up in debtor’s prison in 1821. The resourceful Brunel saw an escape route by offering his services to the Tsar of Russia. Only then did the government swing into action, led by the Duke of Wellington, deciding to pay £5,000 to release the man who’d been so instrumental, in his way, of defeating Napoleon.

Marc and Sophie had three children, the youngest of whom – Isambard Kingdom Brunel – became our most famous engineer.   Prompted by Prince Albert, Brunel senior was knighted by Queen Victoria in 1841. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1814. Marc Brunel died in 1849 after a number of strokes and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.

The Brunel family mausoleum, Kensal Green Cemetery

Marc Isambard Brunel has been overshadowed in history by his remarkable son. But everything IK Brunel achieved was done on the shoulders of his father, a man who carved his engineering career from scratch not just through his genius and energy, but with huge dollops of self-belief, vision, ambition and chutzpah. As a city and a nation, we owe a debt to this remarkable Frenchman.

One Horse or Two?

In our February Members’ Newsletter, we have an article by Hannah Renier on Victorian animal rights campaigner Lewis Gompertz. It features an 1865 photo of a horse-drawn ominbus, reproduced below. I captioned it as a single horse vehicle, although one of our members wrote in, convinced there are two horses. There is what appears to be the back of a horse’s neck, but no sign of a second horse’s legs, harness, tracery etc. Hannah things a second horse is possible, explaining that long exposure times required in early photography, sometimes rendered things that were moving almost invisible.

What do you think? By observation or specialist knowledge, please comment.

Review: Fern Fever

A Guest Review by Val Bott

FERN FEVER: The Story of Pteridomania by Sarah Whittingham

Mike Paterson handed me a weighty package, asking me to review the contents for London Historians. Knowing my interest in horticultural history and that I was unable to attend the launch of Sarah Whittingham’s handsome new book, he knew this would be a treat!

Fern Fever is a substantial hardback book with 256 just-bigger-than-A4 pages. The richly-illustrated layout makes this a tasty book to browse but it is the contents which are really impressive in their substance. The author describes herself as an architectural historian, but in her guise as ‘Miss Frond’ she has been amassing wonderful material on ferns since at least the 1990s. Her comprehensive study is sure to have lasting value, and is full of detailed information.

This delightful account is the product of a wealth of research with a full bibliography. A wide range of disciplines underpin the story it tells – botany, horticulture, social history, medicine, the fine and decorative arts and even mythology. The book explores a mania for ferns which quickly came to hold a fascination for all kinds of people and which lasted throughout the Victorian period.

By the late 18th century hardy native ferns were being noticed and named, and exotic ferns were arriving from the colonies. At first the prospect of trying to grow these flowerless, seedless plants was daunting but two discoveries made a real difference – first, that ferns could be propagated from spores and, secondly, that protecting them under glass bottles, then purpose-made glass cases, ensured success. But this alone does not account for the public enthusiasm for ferns, which could have remained the preserve of wealthy collectors with fine greenhouses and private ferneries.

Fern Fever records how public awareness was fuelled by publications, lectures and the creation of ferneries in commercial pleasure grounds and municipal botanic gardens. As ferns were identifiable and classifiable, this made their study a respectable form of enjoyable self-improvement for individuals or groups to pursue. Cheap colour printing, the growth of railway travel and the British enthusiasm for creating societies also played their part. And the mania took hold when it was possible to visit sites to dig up samples of ferns to grow in Wardian cases in suburban homes and in their gardens– there was profit as well as pleasure in this.

The elegant, delicate and recognisable form of ferns made them a perfect motif for glass engraving, lace making, transfer-printing on wooden souvenirs and applied sprigs on earthenware. The fact that women could collect and document ferns as easily as men probably made them a receptive market for the production of such genteel wares. But ferns in glass cases were also seen as therapeutic and were installed in the windows of hospitals and asylums.

I have now begun to think that I might be suffering from incipient pteridomania. There are ferns in our conservatory which I have had since the 1970s, when I bought my copy of British Ferns & Their Allies by T Moore (1881), a pale blue Dudson earthenware pot sprigged with white ferns stands on my window ledge and Victorian tiles with ferns are used as pot stands …

Val Bott

Val Bott is a museum consultant and distinguished West London historian, particularly but not least in the area of historical market and nursery gardens.
http://valbott.co.uk
http://nurserygardeners.com
http://williamhogarthtrust.org.uk

Dr Sarah Whittingham is an academic and author based in Bristol.
http://www.sarahwhittingham.co.uk 

Fern Fever is published today by Frances Lincoln, ISBN 978-0-7112-3070-5. It has a cover price of £35 but can be obtained for £22 – £24

Mr Punch in London Town VIII

Another record month for the blog, deep and humble thanks for your support. Let’s wrap it up with some more funnies from this series of early 20C cartoons from the New Punch Library. The blurb in the frontispiece says:

Presenting the cream of national humour contributed to “Punch”  by our leading draughtsmen and humorous writers from the year 1900 to the present.

LONDON LIFE A Professor of Deportment giving a lesson to Members of Parliament in the art of "Crossing the floor of the House". by George Morrow

Now then, Mr Three-a-Penny, wot d'yer mean by knockin' the bottom out of the bloomin' market? by Philip Baynes

TRADES UNION OFFICIAL: How many men have you got working here? FOREMAN: About 'arf of 'em. by Frank Reynolds.

The King’s Army Parade, 2012.

Today being the last Sunday in January, the English Civil War Society held its annual parade to commemorate the regicide of Charles I on 30 January 1649. Only the Royalist half participates; the Parliamentarians get their turn later in the year. Their task today was to serve as stewards in hi-visibility yellow bibs, and they did a great job, not intrusive or bossy at all, as one might expect from Puritans! Fiona and I took well over 250 pictures. Here is a selection. I’ll dump more on Flickr later along with some movie footage which I’ll put on YouTube.

It’s a pleasure to be able to write so little and just let the pictures do the talking. Such a fun and interesting parade to watch. Hearty congratulations to the ECWS for putting on such a superb show: hugely impressive.

The Lion’s Tail

Doing some casual swotting on architects and London, I found this drawing, which I recognised as being the so-called Lion Gate at Syon Park, Isleworth, just up the road: I’ve driven past it hundreds of times. It’s sometimes referred to as a screen and you’ll find very little information on it, even on Syon Park’s own web site. But it’s by Robert Adam, from 1769. He also decorated many of rooms at the house.

And here it is, this afternoon: the pixels are still wet. You can see it’s very much the same as Adam’s drawing. The only real difference is that Adam’s lion has a realistic wavy tail, whereas on the actual gate, the lion has the bizarre-looking stiff  horizontal tail, the emblem of the Percy family, who have owned the estate for many centuries.

Overall, the gate appears to be in good condition, but could do with a little TLC to bring it up to scratch. Perhaps the Duke of Northumberland might invest a little from the new Waldorf Astoria hotel which was opened on the estate last year.

Immigrants of Note: John Julius Angerstein

John Julius Angerstein (1790) by Sir Thomas Lawrence. National Gallery, London.

Here’s a name I’ve found cropping up frequently as I meander aimlessly through the corridors of London history. First time was about a year ago at the fabulous Sir Thomas Lawrence exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Angerstein was a patron and friend of the portrait genius, and sat for him several times. Amazingly, he was also remembered in oils by Sir Joshua Reynolds almost thirty years earlier in 1765 – some feat.

John Julius Angerstein (c1732 – 1823) was born in Russia, nobody seems quite sure when. He arrived in London in his teens and got a job in the counting house of Andrew Poulett Thompson, a Russia merchant widely believed to be the lad’s father.

Like many a London magnate, Angerstein made his fortune in marine insurance. He became well-established as a successful broker in the 1760s. During his career he was a partner in many brokerages and by the time he retired in 1810, he was handling over 200 accounts. He was instrumental in securing premises for the New Lloyds Coffee House at the Royal Exchange, an institution normally not particularly welcoming to brokers. In fact, it was largely thanks to Angerstein that marine insurance emerged from its murky past of coffee house operators of dubious practice to respected pillars of the financial community.

Angerstein was a very sociable man. Despite lacking the classical education of most contemporary movers and shakers, he was well-liked and a frequent fixture in the salons of London society: money talks. Although sober of habit and dress, he didn’t mind splashing the cash. He had handsome properties in Pall Mall and Blackheath, but more important than this he was a collector of fine art and a patron of artists. Angerstein’s collection, which included masterpieces by Titian, Poussin, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Velázquez, and Van Dyck, was acquired by the government in 1824 to form the ballast of the new National Gallery.

He lived to a very ripe age of 91. Ish. He is buried at the lovely Hawksmoor church of St Alfege in Greenwich, where he had served as a churchwarden.

Quite interesting aside: Angerstein put up most of the reward money to apprehend the so-called Newgate Monster in 1790.

Source: Dictionary of National Biography (subscription required), profile by Sarah Palmer.