The Sound of Bells

I live in a noisy world: cars, trucks, planes, trains, machines of all kinds--indoors and out--and the ever-present electronic hum that is, it seems, our very being. But something I seldom hear is bells. Even church bells are very rare where I live in western Canada.

This was not so in the Regency era in England. A predominant sound on the air of Regency London was that of the bell.

If one was in a house, the ring of church bells still penetrated. If one considers how many church bells existed in the confines of the City and its districts like Mayfair, the din must have been continuous. In addition the servants heard, near incessantly, the call of the mechanical bell system, first advertised in 1744. There might also be a silver tea bell in the drawing room, or an invalid's bell beside a bed above stairs.

Within doors, one could still hear the other bells from the street. When a person stepped outside, the cacophony of bells must have been overwhelming. The muffin-man alone made such a racket that eventually his bells were silenced by law. Other street vendors--the scissors grinder, the rag picker and the peddler--might, in addition to their cries, carry a bell to attract custom.

There were also harness bells, like the 'beautiful sets of four or five that were put on the leading horse of a team, and were known as team bells'. There were warning bells on fire engines, and bells on the animals who trailed through the city to the markets. And there was the bellman or town crier, who plied his trade from the earliest days through to the Georgian era. He marked the hours with his bell and heralded his reading of proclamations, warnings, and news bulletins with it.

On the street the church bells could be deafening, depending on the size of bell. Their sound routinely carried three miles, and in good weather large bells could be heard for nine miles. They marked the hours, pealed for a wedding, beat out a death knell. There were Passing Bells, Sanctus Bells, and Alarm Bells and peals of bells to announce the new year..

The church bells rang in the country towns as well, with even more regularity. There were Harvest Bells and Market Bells, Fire Bells and even, in a few places, a Pancake Bell rung on Shrove Tuesday. The bells rang out across the fields, reminding those without watches or clocks of the hour, and perhaps the half, calling them to church, sending them news of their community and in many cases ringing out the curfew, or 'cover fire'--the time for all folk to be within doors.

In the countryside, the air was often a-quiver with the sound of animal bells. Sheep, cows, and even geese were belled, to keep track of their flocks and herds. Dogs as well wore bells to identify their whereabouts.

The materials used in bells' manufacture varied. Iron and bronze predominated but silver was not unknown and even wood might be used for animal bells.

The shapes as well were variable. Harness bells were often 'crotal' bells, technically not a bell at all, but a rattle. We call them 'jingle bells' nowadays, their rounded shape enclosing a loose clapper. They were used as well for hawk bells and morris dancers' bells.

From an old sampler comes a rhyme about bell messages:

"When we lament a departed soul, WE TOLL.
When joy and mirth are on the wing, WE SING.
To call the fold to church in time, WE CHIME.
When threatened harm, WE ALARM."

It could be a noisy place, the Regency world. But it was easier, I think, to find quiet there than it is in our current age. Seek out the quiet, if you will, but also enjoy whatever bells you can hear.

'Til next time,

Lesley-Anne

Grand Duchess Catherine of Oldenburgby Maggie MacKeever

Katharina Pawlowa von Russland

In the course of doing historical research, one encounters intriguing characters. One of my current favorites is the Grand Duchess Catherine of Oldenburg.

In June of 1814, the allied sovereigns of Russia and Prussia arrived in London on a visit to the Prince Regent. With them came the two sons of the King of Prussia and a large number of victorious field-marshals, generals, princes, dukes, barons and the like.

They were a colorful cast of characters. Among them was the Grand Duchess of Oldenburg, favorite sister of Czar Alexander of Russia. She had actually been in London since March. On her arrival, the wife of the Russian ambassador, Countess Lieven, immediately foresaw trouble. ‘The Grand Duchess has an immoderate thirst for authority and a very high, and possibly excessive, opinion of herself. I never saw a woman so possessed of the need to stir, act, put herself forward and eclipse others’.

In other words, the Grand Duchess was a pill.

She was also politically influential and during 1812-15 formed and paid to outfit a special regiment of chasseurs. She dominated a reactionary political group. In 1812 a group of conspirators unsuccessfully planned to depose Alexander and put her on the throne as Czarina Catherine III Pavlovna.

She was ‘seductive in glance and manner’, had ‘a dazzling brilliance and freshness of complexion, a bright eye, and the most beautiful hair in the world... She expressed herself directly, with eloquence and grace, but she never abandoned the tone of command. Her mind was cultivated, brilliant and daring; her character firm and imperious’.

Catherine had a fondness for personal adornment. ‘She was dressed in the most magnificent pearls I ever saw – scattered all over her head in large bunches and drops. She wore a necklace of egg-shaped pearls of enormous size.’

At the time of Catherine’s arrival in London, the Regent was anxious for a match between his daughter Charlotte and the Prince of Orange. Such an alliance was regarded with alarm in St. Petersburg. Some believe that the Grand Duchess had been sent to London on a secret diplomatic mission, and that she was instrumental in the match being called off.

Another theory is that she came to England to cement the Anglo-Russian alliance by a second marriage. However, though impressed by Britain’s material achievements (particularly the steam-engine) she was less enamored of its reigning house. The Dukes of Clarence and Sussex struck her as uncultivated boors. She and Prinny took each other in immediate dislike.

Her brother agreed. Alexander called the Regent ‘a poor sort of prince’.

The Grand Duchess derived great pleasure from putting Prinny in positions of acute embarrassment. She stirred up trouble with regularity and created countless scenes; for example, leaving the room immediately the Prince’s orchestra struck up. She was also subject to fainting fits. Her nerves had allegedly been ruined during the burning of Moscow, during which she was confined in a palace along with her youngest child.

The Grand Duchess outdid herself during a banquet held by the City of London at the Guildhall on June 18th. The occasion was supposed to have been exclusively masculine, but Catherine insisted on attending. When the musicians struck up a tune, she threatened to pitch one of her fits. Prinny was forced to beg that she allow the national anthem to be sung. At length she conceded, causing Lord Liverpool to remark that if people didn’t know how to properly behave, they should stay at home.

No one was unhappy when the Grand Duchess departed English shores.

Catherine Pavlovna of Russia was the fourth daughter of Czar Paul I of Russia and Princess Sophie Dorothea of Württemberg. In 1809, she married Duke George of Oldenham, who died of typhoid in 1812. While in England she met Crown Prince William of Württemberg, who was married to Princess Charlotte of Bavaria. He divorced his wife and married Catherine in 1816, thereby making her the Queen of Württemberg.

She had two sons with her first husband and two daughters with her second.

Catherine died in January 1819 of a bacterial skin infection complicated by pneumonia. She was forty years old.

Maggie MacKeever is, under various pseudonyms, the author of forty-three novels, most of them set in Regency England. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two very spoiled housecats, and takes great pleasure in the fact that they share their back yard with a family of feral felines, a pug-nosed possum, and several raccoons.

Her newest book, THE TYBURN WALTZ, will be published by Vintage Ink Press in November.

Julie expects she will end up dangling on Tyburn gallows, hanged as a thief.

Ned expects he will die on the battlefields of the Peninsula, hanged as a spy.

But then Julie takes on the trappings of a lady, and Ned unexpectedly becomes an earl, both players in a deadly game that will take them from the heights of London society to the depths of the Regency underworld — a game in which not only necks are risked, but hearts as well.

According to Romantic Times Book Reviews: ‘MacKeever expertly combines romance, humor, passion and mystery to create a gripping and entertaining novel. The primary and secondary characters are well developed and will elicit multiple emotional responses from readers throughout the novel. This book is a keeper you’ll want to re-read often.’

Mr. Chawleigh, Mr. Driffield and Mr. Luckcock: the new middle class

Mr. Jonathan Chawleigh and Mr. Josiah Driffield are fictional characters; Mr. Luckcock is an historical figure. They were all of the new middle-class that arose in the Regency era. They were all manufacturers; men born in modest circumstances who rose to business and community prominence through their own efforts and skills.

Mr. Chawleigh is a creation of Georgette Heyer--a caricature of a man: bluff, raw, and uncouth. He is a model for all the middle-class manufacturing men in the Regency fiction that followed Heyer's book "A Civil Contract". The middle-class became a class without elegance, without delicacy and without understanding.

When I began to formulate my book "Daughter of Trade", I was thinking about this unforunate characterization. I did not believe that all of the new middle-class were crass bumpkins, and started to create a family of charming, educated, thoughtful people, happy with their lot in life, caring of their dependents, and proud of their origins and their accomplishments. The Driffield family was born, with Josiah Driffield the patriarch of seven children, ably partnered by his lady.

The above drawing by Jean-Auguste Ingres illustrates the sort of middle-class family the Chawleighs, the Driffields, and the Luckcocks embody.

The other day I began to read a book that has been in my research library for a year or two. "Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850" is an in-depth study of the role of gender in creating the middle class of the industrial age. In the prologue, I discovered Mr. James Luckcock of Birmingham, a manufacturer of jewellery, who was born in 1761 and died in 1835. He might have been the prototype for my Josiah Driffield.

James Luckcock was born in humble circumstances, apprenticed at a young age, rose to manager, and finally to owner of his own manufactory. Like Josiah Driffield, he was a Dissenter in religion, a radical in politics, and a beneficent employer who ran Sunday Schools and Brotherly Societies for his workers. He was a respected member of the community, wrote poetry, and desired nothing more than security for his family, and a pleasant old age. Josiah Driffield was, like James Luckcock, "committed to anti-slavery and to defense of the weak and of animals, and to representation of the people."

These middle-class gentlemen were as worthy of respect as the aristocracy so beloved of Regency fiction authors. In a genre over-loaded with dukes and rakes, I think it can be a good thing for authors to look beyond the cliches and the obvious to take on the realities of the new classes of society that the Regency saw develop. Readers appreciate the change, and I know my fellow authors have risen to the challenge with great books like The Weaver Takes a Wife by Sheri Cobb South. I'd like to hear about your favourite middle-class Regency characters!

~~Next week, Regency author Maggie MacKeever will join us to discuss the Grand Duchess of Oldenburg, favorite sister of Czar Alexander of Russia. Maggie MacKeever is, under various pseudonyms, the author of forty-three novels, most of them set in Regency England. Her new release, The Tyburn Waltz, will be published in November by Vintage Ink Press.~~

'Til next time,
Lesley-Anne

Reference: Davidoff, Leonore and Catherine Hall. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.