Fine Dining: Etiquette at the Georgian Table

I am delighted to welcome, a now regular guest to All Things Georgian, Elaine Thornton and today she is going to tell us all about the dining etiquette at the Georgian table, the pleasant and not so pleasant aspects of it and with that thought I will hand you over to Elaine to explain!

For the lucky few at the top end of Georgian society, dining and entertaining lavishly was an everyday affair. Dinner was the main meal of the day, although the timing changed as the century progressed, moving from mid-afternoon to early evening. Few people ate a formal lunch. Most either missed the meal out altogether or had a small snack in the middle of the day, often consisting of cold meat and fruit.

There was a good deal of ceremony surrounding a Georgian dinner party. Seating was ordered by status: women took precedence over men of the same rank, while married women ranked above unmarried ones. Conduct books warned that ‘nothing is considered as a greater mark of ill-breeding, than for a person to interrupt this order, or seat himself higher than he ought’. Indeed, the seating etiquette was so rigid that the son of a French duke visiting England in 1784 remarked that ‘for the first few days I was tempted to think it was done for a joke’.

Once the guests had seated themselves in the correct places, the dishes were brought in by servants and placed down the centre of the table. Diners then carved and helped themselves from the dishes nearest to them. Servants were expected to efface themselves in the presence of their betters, ‘to tread lightly across the room, and never to speak, but [only] in reply to a question asked, and then in a modest under voice’. A badly behaved or ignorant servant was ‘a reflection on the good conduct of the mistress or master’.

Dinner would consist of at least two courses, heavily dominated by meat and fish dishes. A cookery book of the time gives the following as an example of a routine menu: First course: mock turtle soup, white soup, rump of beef, lamb pie, pigeons, ducklings, veal, boiled chickens, spinach; Second course: green goose, fried soles, boiled trout, stewed oysters, chickens [again], leverets, larks, macaroni and almond cakes.

Urbain-Dubois, The Household Cookery Book, 1871

Songbirds such as larks and thrushes were considered delicacies. A recipe of the time for ‘small birds in a savoury jelly’ emphasises that the birds should be put into the jelly with their ‘heads and feet intact’. Turtles were also considered a luxury item, and special turtle dinners were popular. Beef was, and still is, a traditional favourite, but the Georgian table included some animal parts we no longer eat, such as lambs’ ears and coxcombs. In 1763, after dining with the chaplain of New College, Oxford, Parson Woodforde remarked in his diary that ‘I shall not dine on a roasted tongue and udder again very soon’.

Carving could be a minefield for the inexperienced: ‘We are always in pain for a man, who, instead of cutting up a fowl genteely, is hacking for half an hour across a bone, greasing himself, and bespattering the company with the sauce.’ Some dishes were more difficult than others to deal with: ‘There are many delicate bits about a calf’s head, and when young, perfectly white, fat, and well-dressed, half a head is a genteel dish … In serving your guest with a slice of head, you should enquire whether he would have any of the tongue or brains, which are generally served up in a separate dish.’ Cod’s head was likewise considered ‘a very genteel and handsome dish if nicely boiled … Some like the palate and some the tongue [but] the green jelly of the eye is never given to anyone.’

John Trusler’s Honours of the Table, 1791

Gentlemen were advised to serve the ladies with their food, but not to be too generous with the portions: ‘As eating a great deal is deemed indelicate in a lady (for her character should be rather divine than sensual), it will be ill manners to help her to a large slice of meat at once, or fill her plate too full.’ Ladies were advised to eat something at lunchtime, to take the edge off the appetite. Otherwise, as eight or more hours could elapse between breakfast and dinner, the ‘half-famished beauty’ might be tempted to make a hearty meal. This could be disastrous for both health and looks: ‘How must the constitution suffer under the digestion of this melange! How does the heated complexion bear witness to the combustion within!’

Some of the advice on how to behave at table is only common sense and courtesy to others: ‘it is exceedingly rude to scratch any part of your body, to spit, or blow your nose, if you can possibly avoid it’. Other warnings throw an interesting sidelight on Georgian habits: ‘Pick bones clean and leave them on your plate; they must not be thrown down, nor given to dogs in the room’, and ‘In eating fruit, do not swallow the stones, but lay them and the stalks on one side of your plate’. Confusingly, advice could vary from book to book: one writer recommends that ‘You should bend towards your plate when you are eating, that prevents your dirtying the cloth’, but another maintains that ‘eating your soup with your nose in the plate is vulgar’.

Polite conversation at table was an important part of the ritual. Dr Johnson recommended that serious subjects should not be discussed at table, as ‘people differ in opinion, and get into bad humour, or some of the company who are not capable of such conversation are left out, and feel uneasy’. He added, ‘It was for this reason, Sir Robert Walpole said, [that] he always talked bawdy at his table, because in that all could join’.

Wine was usually drunk at dinner. The Georgians’ consumption of alcohol was sky-high by our standards: in its December 1770 issue the Gentleman’s Magazine listed over eighty ways of saying that a person was drunk, ranging from the familiar ‘intoxicated’ to ‘cup-stricken’, ‘bosky’, ‘Tipperary’, ‘on a merry pin’ and ‘cherry-merry’. However, while drunkenness in men was accepted, women were not supposed to become inebriated in polite society. Indeed, it was considered improper for a woman even to request a glass of wine at dinner: ‘As it is unseemly in ladies to call for wine, the gentlemen present should ask them in turn, whether it is agreeable to drink a glass of wine’.

British Museum

For the men, imbibing large quantities of wine at table had inevitable consequences, but while the ladies were still present, a certain level of decorum had to be maintained: ‘If you are obliged to leave the dining room at any time to relieve yourself, you should endeavour to steal away unperceived, or make some excuse for retiring … on your return, be careful not to announce that return, or suffer any adjusting of your dress’.

An American traveller in Regency England, Louis Simond, expressed his surprise and distaste at a custom he noted which took place at the end of the meal, when a glass bowl of water was placed before each diner, who proceeded to ‘stoop over it, sucking up some of the water and returning it, often more than once, and with a spitting and washing sort of noise, quite charming – the operation frequently assisted by a finger thrust elegantly into the mouth!’.

A Frenchman visiting Britain in the 1780s witnessed the same behaviour, which he described as ‘a custom which strikes me as extremely unfortunate’. He added that the more fashionable people washed their hands in the water instead of rinsing their mouths out with it, which he found equally unpleasant, as the water became ‘dirty and quite disgusting’ – which does not say much for the cleanliness of the diners’ hands.

At the end of the meal, the ladies retired, leaving the men to continue drinking for a while. Once they had left the room, standards of behaviour could slip drastically. Louis Simond noted in amazement that ‘in the corner of the very dining room, there is a certain convenient piece of furniture [a chamber pot] to be used by anybody who wants it. The operation is performed very deliberately and undisguisedly, as a matter of course, and occasions no interruption of the conversation’.

Decorum was restored, however, when the gentlemen re-joined the ladies, to spend the remainder of the evening in a more relaxed fashion, playing cards, listening to music, chatting and drinking tea. For those who still felt able to fit in a little more food, a light supper might be offered before retiring.

Sources

Anon, The Man of Manners, or Plebeian Polish’d, 1737

Anon, The Mirror of the Graces or The English Lady’s Costume, 1811

Anon, The Polite Academy, 1768

James Boswell, Life of Johnson, 2008

Gentleman’s Magazine, 1770

Francis Collingwood and John Woollams, The Universal Cook, and City and Country Housekeeper, 1792

Louis Simond (ed. Hibbert), An American in Regency England, 1968

Matthew Towle, The Young Gentleman and Lady’s Private Tutor, 1770

John Trusler, The Honours of the Table, London, 1791

John Trusler, Principles of Politeness, 1775

T.H. White, The Age of Scandal, 1986

James Woodforde (ed. Beresford), The Diary of a Country Parson, 1999

The Operatic Life of Nancy Storace, Guest post by Elaine Thornton

I am delighted to welcome Elaine back to All Things Georgian who previously wrote about Marylebone Gardens and the Trusler Family and today’s article is a follow on from that, so enjoy:

Ann Selina Storace, known as Nancy Storace, was one of the most famous opera singers of her time. She was born in London in 1765. Her mother, Elizabeth, was the daughter of John Trusler, a pastry cook who ran the pleasure gardens at Marylebone. Nancy’s father, Stefano Storace, was an Italian musician, a double bass player who performed in the orchestra of the King’s Theatre and acted as director of music at Marylebone during the summer months.

Storace married Elizabeth Trusler in 1761. Their two children, Stephen and Nancy, were both precociously talented musicians. Stephen, an aspiring composer, was sent to Naples as a boy, to study at the San Onofrio conservatory, where his father had trained in his own youth. Nancy made her first public appearance in 1773 at the age of seven, singing in a concert at ‘Mr Martin’s Long Rooms’ in Southampton. The next year, she made her London debut in a concert held at the Haymarket Theatre.

Stephen Storace. Wikimedia

In 1778, Nancy and her parents travelled to Italy, to join Stephen in Naples. She made her operatic debut in Florence in 1779 and spent the next three years singing in opera houses across Italy. It quickly became clear that comic opera (known as opera buffa in Italy) was her forte – she was a good actress with a fine soprano voice and a lively stage presence. In 1783 she was invited to Vienna to join a new Italian opera buffa troupe that was being created at the court of the Emperor Joseph II.

Leopold (1791-1787), and Wolfgang Mozart (1756-1791); Royal College of Music

Vienna was a vibrant cultural centre: Salieri had moved there from his native Italy in 1766, while Mozart was a more recent arrival. Musicians from all over Europe were drawn to the city. Nancy quickly became a celebrity: the leading opera composers of the day – Paisiello, Martin y Soler, Salieri and Sarti – wrote parts specially for her. Most importantly, she created the role of the vivacious maidservant Susanna in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro.

Vandergucht, Benjamin; Anna Selina Storace; National Portrait Gallery, London

Nancy’s stage career was flourishing, but she was less lucky in her personal life. In March 1784, she married the English violinist and composer John Abraham Fisher, a widower twice her age, who was resident in Vienna. The marriage surprised her friends, who found it inexplicable. She may have been looking for a father figure: Stefano Storace had died around 1781.

John Abraham Fisher, violinist. Royal Collection Trust

Nancy regretted the rash marriage almost immediately. Fisher was an unpleasant character who was unkind to her, and there were persistent rumours that he beat her. The Emperor – who admired Nancy as a singer – was so concerned for her safety that he banished Fisher from Austria. Nancy had a daughter as a result of the brief marriage, but the child died when only a few weeks old.

Nancy left Vienna in 1786 to return to England. Mozart, who had become a friend, composed an aria for her farewell concert. Nancy is popularly supposed to have been Mozart’s mistress – romantic novels have been written about their supposed affair – but there is no real evidence that she was anything more to the composer than a friend and a musical inspiration.

By 1790, Stephen and Nancy Storace were working together at Drury Lane. Stephen was composing light operas in the English language, which appealed to the London audiences. His first work for Drury Lane, The Haunted Tower, caused a sensation and sold out for fifty nights running. Nancy took the leading roles in her brother’s operas, cementing both her popularity and her finances – she was highly paid, earning ten guineas a night.

In 1796, Nancy’s personal life took a turn for the better when she met a young tenor, John Braham. Braham’s precise origins remain obscure, although it seems most likely that he was born around 1774 into a Jewish family in London. As a boy, he sang in the choir of the Great Synagogue in Duke’s Place. He was trained by the Jewish tenor Leoni, and later by the castrato Rauzzini.

John Braham. Samuel de Wilde. National Portrait Gallery.

Stephen Storace was impressed by Braham’s voice and offered him the lead role in his new opera, Mahmoud, singing alongside Nancy. Braham was an instant success with both audience and critics, but the occasion was also a tragic one, as the premiere, in April 1796, took place just a month after Stephen’s sudden death from a fever at the age of thirty-three. He had left Mahmoud unfinished. Nancy and a friend, the tenor Michael Kelly, oversaw the completion of the work. It must have been an emotional and difficult time for her.

Braham and Nancy quickly became both singing partners and lovers. In 1797, the couple left Britain for the continent. They spent nearly a year in Paris, where they performed for the Empress Josephine and met Napoleon’s brother Jerome, then moved on to northern Italy, where they spent three years touring, singing in all the major opera houses. In 1801, they returned to England.

Both singers were at the peak of their powers, and at the top of their profession. Their personal life was happy, and although Braham encountered some prejudice – the essayist Charles Lamb habitually referred to him as ‘the little Jew’ – they were accepted in high society. Their friends included the Duke of Sussex (a brother of the Prince of Wales), the architect Sir John Soane, Lord Nelson and Emma Hamilton. Their son, Spencer, was born in May 1802 – he took his father’s surname.

Was this a ‘happy ever after’ ending for Nancy? Sadly not. Her voice roughened in the early 1800s – perhaps the long-term consequence of singing professionally from a very early age. She had always been a little plump, but she had grown stouter over the years, and the newspapers commented unkindly on her appearance; the Examiner described her as an ‘unwieldy matron’. She left the stage in 1808.

After her retirement, Nancy’s relationship with Braham deteriorated. Although Fisher had died in 1806, leaving her free, they had not married and Braham, nearly a decade younger than Nancy, appears to have had some sort of mid-life crisis as he turned forty. In 1815 he ran off with Sophie Wright, the wife of a friend. The relationship did not last long, but Mr Wright took Braham to court, and in July 1816 was awarded £1,000 damages.

Just four months after this public scandal, Braham married a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl, Frances Bolton. Nancy was devastated. It was a sad and humiliating end to a twenty-year relationship. Sir John Soane, a good friend to Nancy, mediated between them in the ensuing bitter disputes over their properties.

Braham continued to move in high society. The scandals in his private life were soon forgotten as he settled down with his young wife. The couple had three sons and three daughters, one of whom, as Lady Waldegrave, became a well-known Victorian political hostess. John Braham sang professionally into his eighties, and is remembered as a great tenor, and the first English male singer to gain international fame.

Nancy lived for less than a year after Braham’s marriage. In the summer of 1817 she had two strokes and died on 24 August at the age of fifty-two. It must have been a sudden collapse, as the only will that could be found after her death was twenty years old, and did not mention her son Spencer, who had not been born when it had been drawn up. It did however include a large bequest of £2,000 to Braham, who transferred the inheritance to Spencer.

Spencer Braham – who changed his surname to Meadows in later life – became an Anglican clergyman, and a minor canon of Canterbury Cathedral. He had been fifteen when his parents had parted, and he maintained that his mother had died of a broken heart after Braham’s desertion. It was undoubtedly a traumatic event but should not overshadow the fact that Nancy Storace was a strong woman who had carved out a career for herself, earned her own fortune, and whose talents and character were admired by composers of the stature of Mozart and Haydn.

Sources

Jane Girdham ‘The Last of the Storaces’ Musical Times, vol 129, January 1988

Michael Kelly, Reminiscences, 1826

Philip H. Highfill Jr., Kalman A. Burnim, and Edward A. Langhans, A biographical dictionary of actors, actresses, musicians, dancers, managers & other stage personnel in London, 1660-1800, vols 2 and 14.

Betty Matthews, ‘The Childhood of Nancy Storace’, The Musical Times, vol 110, July 1969

Betty Matthews, ‘Nancy Storace and the Royal Society of Musicians’, The Musical Times, vol 128, June 1987

Mollie Sands, ‘John Braham, Singer’, Transactions (Jewish Historical Society of England), vol 20, 1959-61

National Archives, PROB 11/1597/149 (will of Nancy Storace)

The Examiner

Hampshire Chronicle

Guest post by Elaine Thornton – Riotous Nights at the Theatre

I do enjoy welcoming back guests and today is no exception, as I welcome back Elaine Thornton, who previously told us about Marylebone Gardens and the Trusler Family and today she is going to tell us more about the riotous nights at the theatre:

On a summer evening in June 1782, Karl Moritz, a German visitor to London, went to the Haymarket Theatre to see Samuel Foote’s play The Nabob. He described his astonishment at the chaotic scene that unfolded around him as he sat in the pit:

‘Every moment a rotten orange whizzed past me or my neighbour; one hit my hat, but I did not dare turn around in case one hit me in the face … In addition to this pelting from the gallery there is a continual racket of shrieking and banging with sticks until the curtain goes up … From time to time I also heard people in the circle quarrelling with those in the gallery.’

The Haymarket was one of three theatres in London authorised to stage ‘spoken drama’ under the Licensing Act of 1737. There had originally been only two such theatres, Drury Lane and Covent Garden, but in 1766, the Haymarket had been granted a licence to stage plays during the summer period, when the two larger theatres were closed. Theatres in the Georgian era were focal centres of urban social life, patronised by all but the poorest sections of society.

The Laughing Audience by Hogarth. British Museum

An evening out at the theatre would last for four or five hours, and consist of both a main play (a tragedy or comedy) and an afterpiece (usually a pantomime, farce or comic opera), interspersed with various entr’acte entertainments. Audience members ranged from the aristocracy in their private boxes to servants and apprentices squeezed into the cheap seats in the gallery. Unlike today’s audiences, however, who expect to sit quietly in a darkened auditorium and focus on the play, Georgian theatregoers saw themselves as participants in a spectacle.

The auditorium lights were kept on during the performance, allowing the more fashionable members of the audience to treat the evening as a social event, nodding and bowing to friends, chattering and exchanging scandal. People came and went during the performance. The rowdier element stamped and shouted their approval, or hissed, threw missiles, and demanded apologies from the actors if displeased.

It was not unknown for this boisterous behaviour to spill over into serious rioting. Theatregoers had a strong sense of their ‘rights’ – and an equally strong propensity to take offence when they thought that those rights had been breached. The resulting disorder often forced the theatre managements to cave in to the audience’s demands.

There had been disturbances at Drury Lane and Covent Garden in 1763, when both theatres had attempted to abolish the tradition of half-price admission for people arriving after the third act of the main play. Covent Garden’s management capitulated quickly enough to avoid any significant violence, but more than £2,000 worth of damage was done at Drury Lane. The Gentleman’s Magazine reported that on the evening of 25 January ‘the Benches were torn up, the Glass Lustres were broke and thrown upon the Stage, and a total Confusion ensued’. In the end, half-price admission was restored at both theatres. The concession was retained into the nineteenth century.

Audiences often objected to theatres hiring foreign artistes. French troupes were particularly unpopular, given that Britain was frequently at war with France during the eighteenth century. In 1738, a French company, newly arrived from Paris, were received on their first night in London with ‘hissing, catcalling, ringing small Bells, knocking out the Candles, pelting etc … notwithstanding the Guard of three Files of Musqueteers, they were forced at last to quit the Stage with precipitation’. The French ambassador, who had been present, had sensibly fled the theatre at the first signs of unrest.

David Garrick by Gainsborough. National Portrait Gallery

A similar incident took place in 1755, when the actor-manager David Garrick invited a troupe of dancers from Paris to perform a new ballet, The Chinese Festival, at Drury Lane. Britain was moving towards war with France, and anti-French feeling was running high. The ballet was received with hisses and shouts of ‘No French dancers!’ from the pit. On subsequent evenings the proceedings descended into fighting between audience factions. The disorder culminated in a chaotic brawl on 18 November, when a contemporary source reported: ‘Broken arms, legs and heads, people half-crushed under the benches, the Chinese dancers hiding in corners’. The crowd also smashed the windows of Garrick’s house. The debâcle cost the theatre around £4,000.

The Pit Door 1784 British Museum

Occasionally, a riot was sparked by the behaviour of rowdy individuals. During a performance at Drury Lane in 1776, two drunken army officers jumped out of their box into the pit, where they began a fight which spilled onto the stage, stopping the performance. The onstage brawl continued for a full half hour. William Hopkins, the Drury Lane prompter, observed in his notes that ‘I thought they would have pull’d the house down’. There was a sequel to this disturbance, however. When the two officers had sobered up the next day, they visited Garrick to apologise for their behaviour, which, they said, was ‘mere frolick, & that they meant no harm to ye author or manager’.

Covent Garden Theatre 1786 British Museum

The high point of theatre rioting came in 1809 with the so-called ‘Old Price’ or ‘OP’ disturbances at Covent Garden. The theatre had burned down the previous year and had been rebuilt quickly, and on a much grander scale. Audiences returning to the new theatre took exception to a number of changes that had been introduced, in particular the raising of admission prices, and the creation of an extra tier of private boxes for the wealthy, which had reduced the number of cheap seats. The situation was exacerbated by the engagement of a foreign singer, the Italian soprano Angelica Catalani, at a high salary.

Old Price Riots 1809 British Museum

The protests quickly became organised, even formalised. At every performance, placards and banners demanding the restoration of the old prices hung from the balconies, and audience members wore OP badges on their hats and jackets. The sound of bugles, horns and bells combined with the clattering of sticks against seats to create an ear-splitting cacophony. There was even an ‘OP dance’, which involved the rhythmical stamping of feet and chanting. The disturbances continued for sixty-seven nights, at varying levels of intensity. The management brought in professional boxers to menace the crowd, which had the predictable effect of inflaming them further. Remarkably, the performances continued throughout the chaos, although the actors could often scarcely make themselves heard.

The Boxes, Covent Garden, 1809 British Museum

The OP riots ended in victory for the protestors. Madame Catalani was dismissed, the number of private boxes reduced, and entry prices lowered. The OP disturbances were both the culmination, and the beginning of the end, of theatre rioting. Disorder became less common in the more sober Victorian era, as changes in theatre practice and in society in general produced quieter, more compliant audiences.

Sources:

Gentleman’s Magazine, vol 8, 1738; vol 33, 1763.

David Little & George M. Kahrl (eds.). The Letters of David Garrick, 3 vols, London, 1963.

Ian MacIntyre, Garrick, London, 1999.

Karl Philipp Moritz, Reisen eines Deutschen in England im Jahre 1782, 1783.

George Winchester Stone, The London Stage 1660-1800, Part 4, Carbondale, 1962.

Featured Image

Drury Lane Ackermann Rudolph Microcosm British Library

 

Marylebone Gardens and the Trusler Family

Today, I am delighted to welcome back to All Things Georgian, Elaine Thornton who has previously told us about ‘A curious case of criminal conversation‘ and ‘The mysterious Mrs Rudd’. Today’s article is about a completely different subject, so I will hand you over to Elaine to share more:

For around forty years, between 1737 and 1777, the pleasure gardens at Marylebone offered walks, refreshments, music and fireworks to Londoners looking for out-of-town entertainment and country air.

Courtesy of British Museum

At the beginning of the century Marylebone was still a village, probably originally called Marybourne, but commonly known as ‘Marybone’ or ‘Marrowbone’. The Rose Tavern, on the east side of what is now Marylebone High Street, was a popular inn, with grounds containing a bowling green surrounded by hedged gravel walks. Samuel Pepys went there in May 1668, noting

Then we abroad to Marrowbone and there walked in the Gardens … and a pretty place it is.

In 1737 Daniel Gough, the landlord of the Rose, formally opened the tavern’s gardens as a place of entertainment. He charged a shilling entry fee, which was intended to deter undesirables; an advertisement assured guests that care would be taken that ‘no Person of ill Repute should enter the Walks’.

Over the next few years, Gough extended the Gardens and built a bandstand and ‘an elegant Room for the better reception of the Nobility and Gentry’. During the summer season, the Gardens offered public breakfasts, nightly concerts, and firework displays on the occasions of royal anniversaries and wartime victories.

John Trusler took over Marylebone Gardens in 1746. Trusler was a cook by profession who had moved to London from Bath. Under his management the grounds were enlarged to around eight acres, and balls and masquerades were held.

One of his daughters, thought to be Bertha Trusler, took over the catering from 1756. Two large refreshment rooms, which could also be hired for private occasions, were built, and an advertisement announced that

Gentlemen and Ladies may every Morning breakfast on Tea, Coffee, or Chocolate, with the finest Butter, Cream and new Milk, Cows being kept for that Purpose; and Afternoons and Evenings be entertain’d with Coffee, Tea, Cakes, Pastry and all sorts of Wine and other Liquors.

Portrait probably of Bertha Trusler, 18th century pastry-cook

Miss Trusler developed a reputation for the quality of her baking; an advertisement in June 1758 informed the public that ‘Mr Trusler’s daughter continues to make the Rich Seed and Plumb Cakes, so much admired by the Nobility and Gentry … They are always kept ready made and will be sent to any Part of the Town when bespoke, at Half a Crown each’.

Courtesy of British Museum

In 1756, the construction of the New Road from Paddington to Islington made Marylebone more accessible. Nevertheless, any journey out of London was a dangerous undertaking, especially at night, when highwaymen and footpads haunted the main roads. The previous year, a newspaper had reported that

On Tuesday morning early a man, who appeared like a tradesman, was found in a ditch near Marybone-Gardens, with several wounds on his head: his breeches, stockings, hat and wig, and the buckles out of his shoes all taken away.

The Gardens’ proprietors provided guards and escorts during the summer season. An advertisement for a series of concerts reassured prospective patrons that the management had

doubled the Guard on the Road and in the Fields … There is a Guard appointed also to escort Company to Paddington, which will set out regularly from the Gardens as soon as the Performance is over, and at the stated Hours of Eleven and Twelve.

Marylebone Gardens were smaller and less fashionable than Vauxhall and Ranelagh, and appealed more to the gentry and middling classes than to the aristocratic ton. They were, however, patronised on occasion by royalty. The newspapers mention two royal visits in 1748, early on in Trusler’s tenure: in June, the Prince and Princess of Wales were there, and in September

his Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, Lord Bury, and several other Persons of Distinction’ visited the Gardens.

John Trusler’s son, also named John, was unimpressed by the Duke’s behaviour, remarking in his memoirs that Cumberland

used to amuse himself in the dark walks of this place and gave way to a variety of unbecoming frolics with the women, which would have disgraced one of the lowest class in society, and which to relate would disgust the reader.

The elder Trusler, although a cook by trade, had ambitions for his son, who graduated from Cambridge and became a clergyman. The choice of career was evidently his father’s; Trusler grumbled in his memoirs that, ‘in making me a clergyman, my father spoilt a good layman’.

He managed, however, to combine his career in the church with his entrepreneurial leanings by making a profitable business out of selling his sermons to other, less industrious, clergymen. He also became one of the proprietors of the racy Morning Post newspaper, and wrote a number of books, including a guide to London and several manuals on etiquette.

Courtesy of British Museum

In 1758, he collaborated with one of the Gardens’ musicians, the Neapolitan double bass player Stefano Storace, in the translation and arrangement of an Italian burletta, Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona. Burlettas were short comic operas with a small cast; La Serva Padrona had only two roles. A theatre was built in the Gardens, and on 8 June 1758 The Servant Mistress, as the translated version was called, had its premiere there, sung by Dominica Saratina, an Italian soprano, and Frederick Reinhold, an English bass.

Storace and Trusler’s adaptation was an instant hit. In July 1758 the newspapers announced that:

Their Royal Highnesses Prince Edward and Princess Amelia were at Marybone Gardens last Tuesday evening to see the Burletta which was performed there by their command at seven o’clock and were pleased to express great satisfaction at the performance.

The Servant Mistress was performed seventy times in the Gardens that summer alone and was produced at the Haymarket Theatre in London in 1759.

Stefano Storace became the younger Trusler’s brother-in-law when he married Elizabeth Trusler in 1761. Over the following years, Storace successfully adapted two more burlettas for the Gardens, and designed an elaborate firework display, put on in 1769 by the Gardens’ pyrotechnicians Rossi and Clanfield.

Stephen Storace

The Storaces’ children, Anna Selina (or Nancy) and Stephen, both had distinguished musical careers. Stephen was a respected composer, whose English operas, popular in their time, were performed at Drury Lane. He died young, at the age of thirty-four. Nancy Storace became one of the most famous sopranos of her time. She appeared in her brother’s operas in London, but also sang on the international stage. She was admired by both Haydn and Mozart. Mozart wrote the part of Susanna in The Marriage of Figaro for Nancy; she took the role at the opera’s premiere in Vienna on 1 May 1786.

Ann-Selina-Storace British Portrait Gallery

The Trusler family left Marylebone Gardens around 1763, when the management was taken over by the actor and tenor Thomas Lowe. They moved into London and established a bakery shop at the Gold Lamp, in Boyle Street, off Savile Row, where Bertha Trusler continued to sell her pastries and cakes.

By the mid-1770s Marylebone Gardens had changed hands several times, and was fast losing its rural attractions, as the city swallowed up the surrounding area. Despite the discovery of a spring, and an attempt to turn Marylebone into a spa, the Gardens closed in 1776. Many of the effects, including furnishings, china, musical instruments, and ‘about 40 Puppets, belonging to the favourite Entertainment The Comick Mirror’ were sold off at an auction the following year.

Sources:

Highfill, Philip H. Jr. et al, A biographical dictionary of actors, actresses, musicians, dancers, managers & other stage personnel in London, 1660-1800, vol 14

National Archives, Will of Elizabeth Trusler, PROB-11-932-89

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

Sands, Mollie, Marylebone Gardens, Society for Theatre Research, 1987

Trusler, John, Memoirs, Bath, 1806

Gazetteer and London Daily Advertiser

General Advertiser

Public Advertiser

Whitehall Evening Post

Header Image

A View of Marybone Gardens – British Museum

A Curious Case of Criminal Conversation

I am delighted to welcome a new guest to All Things Georgian, Elaine Thornton who trained as a linguist, has lived and worked in Germany, Russia and Cyprus. She has had a varied career, as an army officer, project manager, and development officer.

Her first book, a biography of the German-Jewish opera composer Giacomo Meyerbeer, Giacomo Meyerbeer and his Family: Between Two Worlds, was published by Vallentine Mitchell in 2021.

She is currently researching the life of Sir Henry Bate Dudley and is going to tell us more about a certain crim. con that he was front and centre of. It was a case that doesn’t make for a pleasant read – You have been warned!

In 1788 the Reverend Henry Bate Dudley, known as the ‘Fighting Parson’, found himself facing a charge of adultery, or ‘criminal conversation’. A clergyman, journalist, dramatist and duellist, Bate Dudley had been ordained in the Church of England, but had soon realised that his talents and temperament were better suited to the rough and tumble of the flourishing Georgian newspaper industry. He had been editor of the Morning Post from 1772 to 1780, when he had founded his own newspaper, the Morning Herald.

A modern history of journalism, the Encyclopaedia of the British Press, describes Bate Dudley as ‘undoubtedly, the star of his day’. The Georgian writer and wit Horace Walpole was less flattering, calling him ‘the worst of all the scandalous libellers’. Bate Dudley’s newspapers specialised in high-class scandal and ‘celebrity’ gossip, and at the time of Walpole’s comment, in 1780, he had been convicted of libelling the 3rd Duke of Richmond, by accusing him of treason. He was subsequently sentenced to a year in the King’s Bench prison.

The King’s Bench Prison from Ackermann’s Microcosm of London (1808-10)

The charge of adultery against Bate Dudley concerned the wife of a Mr Edward Dodwell. Mrs Dodwell’s first name was never revealed publicly, but documents held in Lambeth Palace archives, relating to a later application by her husband for a legal separation, identify her as Frances Dodwell, née Jennings. Edward Dodwell was demanding £3,000 in damages from Bate Dudley for ‘alienating his wife’s affections’ (adultery was treated as a case of trespass on another man’s property, as a wife was considered a ‘chattel’ in law).

Southend-on-Sea c1822. British Museum

The Dodwell’s and Bate Dudley’s lived near each other in the Chelmsford area. The chief witness for the prosecution, Mrs Dodwell’s servant Elizabeth Serjeant, claimed that in September 1780, Mrs Dodwell had gone to Southend for a holiday without her husband. Bate Dudley had followed her there and had visited her frequently in her lodgings. One night, Serjeant claimed, she had opened her mistress’s door at two in the morning and had seen ‘Mr Bate and Mrs Dodwell on the floor in an act of adultery’.

Mrs Serjeant added that the affair had continued after Mrs Dodwell’s return to Chelmsford, citing an instance in February 1782, when Mrs Dodwell had returned from a carriage ride with Bate Dudley, and Mrs Serjeant, ‘having seen certain parts of Mrs Dodwell’s linen, was enabled to judge of her conduct that night’.

Bate Dudley submitted a plea of ‘not guilty in two ways’. In the first place, he claimed that he was innocent of the charge. The second part of the plea was related to the legal time limit on prosecutions for adultery. A charge could not be upheld if the alleged offence had taken place more than six years prior to the commencement of the action and Bate Dudley’s second plea was that he was not guilty ‘within six years’. Bate Dudley’s defence counsel, James Mingay, referred to October 1781 as the relevant date, so this would presumably exclude the evidence dating from 1780.

James Mingay (NPG)

Mingay opened the defence by revealing that Edward Dodwell had a very strange hobby. He was passionately interested in the dissection of dead bodies, which he carried out in the couple’s home. A visitor to the Dodwells’ house testified that

‘Mr. Dodwell had a room near his bedchamber, which was called a dissecting room, where he [the visitor] once saw an arm half dissected.’

According to the defence, Dodwell did not bother to clean himself up before making advances to his wife, but ‘approached her with his hands covered with all the nauseous filthiness of such pursuits … while his hungry hounds were quarrelling over the flesh he had been slicing’.

The prosecution’s response to these revelations was the perfectly reasonable one that, even if Dodwell had

‘a laboratory wherein he dissected dead bodies … this surely could hardly give any other person a right to commit adultery with his wife’.

Bate Dudley’s next line of defence was that Mr Dodwell had positively encouraged his wife to take lovers. After she had had an affair with a baronet, Dodwell had sent his wife abroad, where she lived ‘in open adultery’ with a British army officer. On her return to England, he had installed her in lodgings in London, where he visited her for sex ‘as if she had been his kept girl’. Dodwell later introduced her to a retired military man, a General Desaguliers, whose mistress she became.

In defence counsel’s view, Dodwell had been ‘an accessory to the prostitution of his own wife’ and was in no position to accuse Bate Dudley of alienating Mrs Dodwell’s affections by breaking up a happy marriage. Dodwell himself unwittingly contributed to this defence, by suggesting that Bate Dudley was only one of many: ‘I have stuck the fork in the dung-hill, up came Mr. Bate, and it is his chance, and I cannot help it.’

‘A baite. For the devil’. 1779. British Museum

Bate Dudley’s final submission was a knock-out blow. He produced a witness to testify that he had actually been confined in the King’s Bench prison, undergoing his sentence for libelling the Duke of Richmond, in February 1782, when Elizabeth Serjeant claimed to have seen him consorting with Mrs Dodwell in Chelmsford. The King’s Bench books were brought to the court to verify the fact. The prosecution’s star witness had lost all credibility, and the jury took twelve minutes to find in favour of the defendant.

‘The Fighting Parson’ had triumphed in court, but was he really innocent? His wife, Mary, seems to have had her suspicions. One day in 1781, she had arrived at her husband’s room in the King’s Bench prison – where, characteristically, he was holding a musical party for his friends – and had met Frances Dodwell, who was just leaving, on the stairs. The unexpected encounter had resulted in a lively quarrel between the two women, and a temporary coolness between Mary and her husband.

Legal opinions on the case differed. A year after the King’s Bench trial jury had found Bate Dudley not guilty, the ecclesiastical Court of Arches granted Edward Dodwell’s application for a separation – based on his wife’s adultery with Henry Bate Dudley. Two years after that judgement, the Court of Doctors’ Commons, after several days considering the evidence for a divorce, ‘finally dismissed the suit of Edward Dodwell Esquire against his Lady’.

Sources:

Anon, Adultery Trial, in the Court of King’s Bench … between Edward Dodwell, Esquire, Plaintiff, and the Rev. Henry Bate Dudley, Defendant, for Crim. Con., H. D. Symonds, 1789

Dennis Griffiths (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of the British Press 1422-1992, Macmillan, 1992

Lambeth Palace Library and Archive, Arches D611

Lloyd’s Evening Post

Town and Country Magazine, 1788, supplement

Horace Walpole, Last Journals, Bodley Head, 1910