Tag Archives: History

Going on a summer holiday? 2: I write in haste

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It’s been a while since I updated you about William Harris Esq.’s continental exploits in 1821. As you may remember, he set out from Dover after having explored the castle and travelled to Calais in the company of two friends in June. I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that he had arrived safely at Paris by the beginning of July.

William and his friend Mr Brooks were staying at a William Hunter’s residence on rue de Sevres, in the St Germain district of the city. William Harris wrote to his father on 2 July to ask that his father might ‘inform Mrs. Adams and Mrs. Brooks of the Strand’ of Mr. Brook’s safe arrival. William added

“[Mr Brooks] had been so much engaged this morning he has not had time to finish a letter he had begun but he will take care to write in a day or two”

It seems that William was the more likely of the two to write home; in any case, a swift letter was the speediest method of communication in 1821. William comments on the end of his note that he had just received his father’s “kind letter (no. 1)”: this leaves a gap of just 8 days between his sending from Calais and receiving his father’s reply. I have to say I thought this wasn’t bad by modern standards!

William's letter from St Germain

William’s letter from St Germain

Paris in 1821 was still gripped by the instability of the political swings from the Napoleonic, in 1815, to the accession of Louis-Phillippe as king in 1830. During this time, Britain had formed part of a European coalition which restored the Bourbon monarchy, by military force, to a constitutional role. The monarchy was not consistently popular and after the second fall of Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815; although the government was elected to work alongside the Bourbons the two institutions did not always work together. Shifting political strengths throughout the decade of the 1820s must have made Paris an interesting place to be. The medieval city was still largely in existence, too; it was not demolished to make way for Haussmann’s vision of a modern city until the mid nineteenth century. It would have been a very different place to the modern tourist centre.

Of course, travel in the nineteenth century was never a straightforward or safe affair, as we’ll find out later in William’s journey. But for the time being, I will leave you with his brief note, in anticipation of the Parisian adventure to follow.

William's letter from St. Germain

William’s letter from St. Germain

 “I would have said more but the boy is just ready.”

Drop into the Templeman foyer to have a look at the original letter on display with a rare example of a nineteenth century passport.

Going on a summer holiday? 1: Dover to Calais

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So here is the summer, or what counts for it in Britain, anyway. Are you planning your holidays, looking forward to reading a good book on a long sandy beach, exploring new places or simply relaxing by the pool? Or are you stuck at your desk, wondering whether the sunshine is going to last? Well, wherever you are, spare a thought for the tourist of the early nineteenth century, for whom just crossing the Channel was a three hour voyage.

We’ve recently been lucky enough to have a volunteer who willingly trawled through a deed box containing nineteenth century papers, known by the mysterious name of ‘The Hansard Family Deed Boxes’. Among the assorted gems contained within are a series of letters written in 1821 by William Harris to his father (another William Harris) in London, while he toured around Europe. There are around a dozen letters extant in this Hansard Family Deed boxcollection, many tightly written and over-written, with William junior filling up every available space on the paper. So even if you’re not off anywhere this summer, join us for an adventure across Europe, nineteenth-century style!

William’s first letter is a sort of extended postcard, in which he details his journey from Dover to Calais with the breathless excitement of an enthusiastic explorer. At Dover, William (Junr.) took in the castle, the ‘souterrains’ or tunnels and the western heights. The castle he found rather underwhelming, “contains nothing admirable in point of architecture”, but he was evidently fascinated by the “many excellent contrivances for… defence” in the tunnels. These he described as “immense”, adding:

they were 11 years in [use] and discontinued only at the general peace – containing barracks etc. etc. to an amazing extent – all concealed from the view of an enemy and made bomb proof.

The Napoleonic Wars had ended only 6 years prior to his visit, when space had been needed for 2000  extra soldiers and supplies to guard the port. To date, these tunnels at Dover remain the only underground barracks in Britain.

First page of William's letter

The first page of William’s letter

In Dover, William met his friend Mr. Brooks, who had persuaded his friend Mr. I Winckworth to accompany them to Boulogne. William told his father, “this is very fortunate for us – Mr. W. having visited France before”. Despite being new to the cross-channel voyage, William described it as “a most delightful passage”, he and his friends having escaped the “dreadful malady” which most of the other passengers suffered. At Calais, he related how the three men and their baggage had been searched at the Customs House for any “contraband merchandise”, and their passports had been exchanged for temporary documents. He explained: “The passport obtained in England will be forwarded on and meet us again at Paris.”

Although they had hoped to stay at Meurice’s Hotel, they group ended up lodging at the Hotel Dessin, immortalised in Lawrence Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy. Sterne (under the pseudonym Mr. Yorick) undertook this journey in 1765, although the book was not published until he was on his deathbed. Perhaps more famous than this was Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, yet Sterne’s travel piece helped to established the genre of travel writing and emphasised the importance of the personal, or sentimental, point of view. William noted “his name is written on the door of the chamber he occupied” – an early example of celebrity culture!

Sterne's 'A Sentimental Journey'

Title page of Sterne’s ‘A Sentimental Journey’, 1768

We occupy three apartments on the ground floor looking into an open court laid out as a flower garden – quite out of the noise of the street – the only approach to it being through the outer court into which the carriages enter under an archway – this I am told is the usual style[?] of a French Hotel – the garden is ornamented with statues and vases.

William Harris Junr., June 24 1821

William was evidently concerned at the level of Englishness which the foreign metropolis of Calais might provide. In the event, he was relieved to find that the town “presents a great many English characteristics”, and commented that his hotel had “adopted many good English customs”. One thing which was less familiar, however, was the Fête de Dieu, known in England as Corpus Christi, the Catholic celebration of the Eucharist. William wrote “there is to be a grand procession here at 11 o’clock this morning”, then resumed his letter at midday to describe the events to his father:

We have just witnessed the procession of the Fête de Dieu. The streets are hung with…carpets and white linen. The pavements thrown with rushes and a few flowers – white flags are suspended from the windows which are filled with well dressed women. A company of ‘Pompiers’ or Fire men who wear a military costume precede the procession with a band which is followed by priests with a portable canopy for the…principle and an amazing number of girls dressed in white. The priests halt at intervals and chaunt opposite temporary altars decked out with pictures, flowers and a great deal of finery. At our Hotel they had a superb one.

The Fete de DieuFollowing this excitement, William had little to comment upon but the weather, which he advised was “much the same as in England.”

The group planned to travel to Paris via Boulogne, Amiens and Beauvais; William advised his father to write to him at Paris, addressing his letters to “William Harris, Architect, Paris”; apparently architects were few and far between in the capital! With a sensible logic, William numbered his letter ‘1’ and asked his father to do the same with each one he sent, so that they could both work out which had been sent first if they all arrived at once.

Ending his letter with love to his mother and sister, kindest regards to Mr. Evans and “compliments to enquiring friends”, William intended to send his letter via first mail to England the following day. Since it is included in this small collection, we can assume that it reached its intended destination.

William HarrisThis one letter can tell us so much about nineteenth century attitudes towards travel, realities of tourism and the differences between France and England. But as much as anything if, like me, you like to do some armchair travelling, then these accounts provide an intriguing account of taking a holiday nearly 200 years ago.

And what happened next? Keep checking the blog to find out!

You can see William’s letter, a copy of A Sentimental Journey and some other travelling treasures on display in the Templeman Library foyer – but only for a limited time.

I’d like to say a special thank you to Marjolijn Verbrugge for her enthusiastic hard work on these papers and for beginning to  illuminate the mysteries within them!

Nothing new under the sun?

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Playbill from Theatre Royal, Hull, 1850

Hazel has recently been working on our Pettingell Collection of Victorian manuscript prompt copies, which includes the holograph of playwrights such as Dion Boucicault, Charles Hazlewood and G. D. Pitt. Many of these prompt copies, handwritten playscripts with multiple annotations relating to staging, scenery and production, came from the Britannia Theatre, Hoxton, and are annotated by Frederick Wilton, the Britannia’s stage manager during the latter half of the nineteenth century. These copies arguably offer  more realistic evidence about what was being performed on the Britannia’s stage than the copies which were sent to the Lord Chamberlain to be passed as fit for the stage (censorship on the British stage was only abolished in 1968). These copes are now held by the British Library as the Lord Chamberlain’s Plays.

In the course of checking the status of these manuscripts, Hazel came across some overhead projector slides of playbills advertising ‘Varney the Vampire’, which led to investigation of where these should fit with the collection. As usual, in Special Collections, a straightforward task became something of a voyage of discovery; I’ve tried to summarise some of our findings here.

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Illustration from 'Melmoth the Wanderer' playscript by B. West

Vampire literature became popular in the early eighteenth century, although the first real mention of a vampire in English fiction occurred in 1797 with Robert Southey’s poem Thalaba the Destroyer. During the nineteenth century, the popularity of vampire fiction was still strong; Varney the Vampire; or, the Feast of Blood first appeared as a serialised ‘penny dreadful’ in 1845 and is attributed to James Malcolm Rymer. It was of epic length; when published as a book in 1847 it had over 200 chapters and almost 667,000 words. It was this tale which provided some of the most iconic pieces of vampiric lore to later writers of Gothic fiction, for example Varney’s fangs, hypnotic powers and superhuman strength. However, Varney had no problems with sunlight, crosses or garlic. Varney also represents a creature who is a slave to his condition, finding his vampirism repellent but unable to escape it. This idea of the reluctant vampire has been echoed in fiction ever since.

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Title page from Melmoth the Wanderer by C. Perkins

Varney was incredibly popular with his peers and was adapted for the stage (I can only assume in a shortened version). Another playscript which we hold (in manuscript prompt copy and printed text) is Melmoth the Wanderer, based upon Charles Robert Maturin’s 1820 novel. Although Maturin was commenting on contemporary society through this novel, it also contains some of the hallmarks of Gothic literature. In this novel, Melmoth makes a pact with the Devil to live for 150 years, and spends his life trying to find someone to make the payment for him. This, too, is an epically long tale, setting stories within stories and ranging between the New World and Europe. The connection between Melmoth and Varney? Well, it sounds a bit tenuous to me, but our manuscript copy of Melmoth has an alternative title handwritten on the cover: Varney the Vampire or the Unearthly Bridegroom.

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Title page illustration from The Phantom by Dion Boucicault

The popularity of vampires in performance was closely linked to the rise of melodrama. The first staged vampire melodrama was adapted by Charles Nodier from an unauthorised sequel to John William Polidori’s The Vampyre. (Incidentally, Polidori’s tale was inspired by Byron’s entry into the now infamous 1816 ghost story writing competition which also spawned Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.) Nodier’s version was then reworked and produced at the Lyceum Theatre in 1820, as The Vampire; or, the Bride of the Isles. Dion Boucicault also wrote a contribution to the genre, first produced at the Princess’s Theatre in 1852, entitled The Vampire: a Phantasm (later renamed The Phantom).

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Title page for Sweeney Todd by George Dibdin Pitt

This interest in Gothic horror and the supernatural did not go unmarked by those in authority. On Tuesday 13 November 1888, Mr Channing reported to the House of Commons on the case of ‘two boys’ awaiting their trial for murder in Maidstone Gaol and how they

had been addicted by their own confession to reading of such books as “Dick Turpin”, “Varney the Vampire: or, the Feast of Blood” and “Sweeney Todd”…and that there was an enormous circulation of criminal literature among the young…these stories attractively written were widely circulated and read by enormous numbers of children, and instigated many of them to the commission of crime

The Times, 14 November 1888, p.6

In the end, we housed the overhead projector slide with a set of negatives of a prompt copy, entitled The Feast of Blood, which looks close enough to Varney’s original incarnation to make sense. But this little bit of research has shed a whole new light, for us, on Gothic and vampiric fiction (which no-one can fail to notice has made something of a comeback in the last few years). So it seems that maybe there isn’t anything new in concerns about the effects of popular fiction/culture on young people or in popular vampires (however reluctant).

Another term over…

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It feels like time is rushing by more and more quickly: suddenly we’ve come to the end of another term! In some ways, it’s been a long time since Christmas – one exhibition, one lecture, several seminars, a new microfilm service and new plans hatching for the next academic year. Looking back on it all, as ever, I begin to wonder how we managed to fit it all in!

Title page of a script for Barnaby Rudge by Charles Selby, 1841

Title page of a script for Barnaby Rudge by Charles Selby, 1841

Well, we’re very proud of the Dickens exhibition – if you haven’t been do make the effort and let us know what you think by writing in the comments book. Webpages for the Dickens Collection are still under construction – their progress is being slowed a little by other commitments, but they’re getting there! The Dickens display case in the entrance hall has now been refilled with Rudyard Kipling materials; do take a look at this if you get the chance. We have several first editions of Kipling’s work in our Modern First Editions Collection, including the pamphlet containing two previously unpublished Christmas letters from Kipling to young readers, generously donated by David Alan Richards through Dr. Kaori Nagai.

It was a great pleasure to welcome the University’s Melodrama Research Group into Special Collections this term and to discuss the possibilities of future research projects based on the Melville and Boucicault Collections. Lecture two in our three part series, given by Dr. Charlotte Sleigh at the Cathedral, was well attended and thoroughly enjoyed by all – we hope to purchase Dr. Sleigh’s new book ‘Frog‘ for the collection.

Image of a church porch from the W.B. Muggeridge Collection

Image of a church porch from the W.B. Muggeridge Collection

Of course, the day-to-day work is continuing apace, with the invaluable support of our small team of volunteers who are investigating various collections in our care. One of these is the Hendrie Collection, research notes by Andrew Hendrie, who completed his PhD ‘Coastal Command, 1939-1945 : the Cinderella service‘ at the University in 2004 and later published this as a book. The collection is full of interesting and moving anecdotes from Second World War pilots across the world, and we have just begun to catalogue it. More news on this soon, we hope! Work on the Renfrew Collection is gradually edging towards public access, too and we hope to complete some cataloguing on the Donald Muggeridge Rural Collection in the next few months.

On top of that, there are some germs of ideas including colloqia, Twitter feeds and online payments which we will be investigating throughout the next year. Still to come, of course, are two more Dickens exhibitions and no doubt a summer getting involved in research while hopefully carrying on with our cataloguing and digitisation plans.

So that’s all for the next term, and the next year. For the time being, as we await the launch (in our very own reading room) of sixteen books self-published by the sixteen students of The Book Project module, we would like to wish you all a very happy, peaceful and relaxing Easter.

As ever, if you have any queries, please do get in touch.

 

The Press, the Petition and the Priest

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Following on from the excitement of the Dickens Exhibition, we’re now back to our everyday work of cataloguing, organising and assisting researchers in the reading room. But don’t assume that this is a boring part of the job: it’s in this way that many of our discoveries happen! How about this, for example, about the Red Dean?

A few weeks ago, we were contacted by John Drew a former King’s School, Canterbury pupil. He asked about a petition in the archive, signed by boys at King’s School, which called for Hewlett Johnson, the Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, to condemn the Russian invasion of Hungary. Johnson had been – and remained – a stalwart supporter of Stalin’s regime throughout the twentieth century. Imagine our delight when John told us that he was the co-instigator of the petition, and the first signatory. He has very kindly given us permission to reproduce his recollection of the events.

Hewlett Johnson c. 1930s

Hewlett Johnson c. 1930s

In all the penny newspapers I was quite shocked to see
A long harangue against our Dean, professedly signed by me.
But I swear I didn’t sign it, this article obscene,
This vile and cheap attack upon Our President, the Dean.

Are God and Russia then at strife and crypto-communists?
Surely in all this universe some compromise exists
Where God can keep his court amid cold, swirling, darkling mists
And leave a little outpost here where tolerance persists?

He’s Our Dean, the Red Dean, and when the R.D. dies
I hope to see a thousand tears well from a thousand eyes
For one who held his principles through venom and the lies
Of the obscurantist leaders in the Councils of the Wise.

 –         David Buchan, Grange House, 1956.

A recent biography of the Red Dean of Canterbury makes one of those slips of pen that bedevil all who write. It mentions that in November 1956 300 boys at the King’s School,Canterbury, signed a petition deploring the refusal of the Dean, Chairman of the School Governors, to condemn the Russian invasion ofHungary. Actually 186 boys signed.  The slip is so minor it would not be noticed – except perhaps by someone who had tramped round the Cathedral Precincts to get the signatures.

Copy of original petition text

Copy of original petition text

There was a great deal of concern everywhere in Europe as the Russians sent their tanks into Hungary in the autumn of 1956 to depose the reform Communist leader, Imre Nagy, and so many Hungarians, having bravely fought to stop them, poured over the Austrian border. Oliver [Ford] “Orf” Davies, the well-known actor, drafted the text of a petition that was put together by several sixth-formers in Linacre House (neighbouring on the Deanery). I still have that draft, with amendments suggested (I believe) by the Headmaster, “Fred” Shirley, since (having rewritten it in clearer handwriting) it was I who, with Paul Niblock, had to collect the signatures and deliver it to the Dean.We got a good response to our petition until we reached the Grange, where we were rather nonplussed to run into quite a number of boys who refused to sign.  Grange was something of a warren of dissidents (though the avant-garde composer Cornelius Cardew had left by then) and it was typical that when the History Master, Ralph Blumenau, wrote a somewhat impassioned editorial for the Cantuarian at the end of term beginning: Hungary bleeds… and dealing with the rape of Hungary, the Grange House Newsletter came back with a parody: Grange House bleeds… bewailing the theft of the house bath plugs.

Facetiousness aside, at the time of the petition David Buchan spoke for others in Grange (and perhaps elsewhere in the school) when he wrote the poem celebrating the dear old Dean and excoriating those who did him down. David was perhaps the one boy who could out-face Fred during daily Assembly in the Chapter House (Fred later spoke of the way that while all the other boys had their heads bowed in prayer or prep or a penny dreadful, David alone stared unflinchingly ahead). David saw better than I did that the petition was as much the outcome of a battle going on between Fred and the Dean as between the two sides in the Cold War.

I was naively unaware of Precincts politics and was actually nervous of missing Sunday Matins in the Cathedral, as Paul and I had to on account of delivering the petition to the Dean. The Dean was charming and, with his wife Nowell in attendance, sat us down to a salutary lesson in 20th century history, spiced with personal reminiscence. He did regret that the situation in Hungary had come to an armed intervention but he reminded us that, as we spoke, Britain and France were still acting in a 19th century imperialist style by attackingEgypt inSuez. The Dean left us with plenty to think about and ended by regretting, in a memorable metaphor, that an Iron Curtain had been erected between him and the boys at the King’s School.

I soon had more to be nervous about. My father was News Editor of Beaverbrook’s Sunday Express and, after I had told him that the boys were upset by the Dean’s refusal to condemn the Russian invasion of Hungary, he had sent a reporter down to the school on the Saturday to find out what was happening. An (accurate) report of the petition appeared in the paper the next day (November 18th) under the banner headline: BOYS OF THE UPPER SIXTH REBUKE THE RED DEAN.

Copy of Sunday Express article

Copy of Sunday Express article

I went out on a family exeat to Folkestone that day, blissfully unaware that reporters from every national newspaper except the Daily Worker were descending on the Precincts to follow up the story, eleven accounts appearing on the Monday (with a couple in local papers later in the week). I returned in the evening to hear that Fred wanted to see Paul and I. Fred appeared to be furious, though I now suspect (apart from snobbery about the gutter press) he was only rattled not to be in total control of a scenario that was (in fact) unfolding much as he would have wanted it to.

Shirley and Johnson on Speech day, 1962

Shirley and Johnson on Speech day, 1962

Paul and I returned from the dressing-down by Fred to face our tall, bespectacled and slightly gawky house-master at Linacre, Humphrey Osmond, and apologize to him for the disturbance to his day he had experienced. To our surprise, dry as he usually was, he said it had all been rather fun. Good old Humph, bless him.

Fred got Miss Milward, his secretary and very much right-hand woman, to write a stinker to my father for dragging the name of the school through the press in a way likely to put off prospective  parents from choosing the school. My father replied, repudiating the charge with his usual aplomb and good humour. His schooling had been in the world of newspapers and he could respect, without deference, both the Headmaster and the Dean. He recognized that King’s had been transformed under Fred – academically, aesthetically and athletically – and he also had a healthy regard for the Red Dean’s take on Christianity, often referring to his work in Manchester and his record of being one of the first to go and take a look at Red Russia and Red China.  [I have a picture of him talking with the Dean on the Green Court the following summer].

Years later, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, I was appointed British Council lecturer in British Studies at ELTE, theUniversityofBudapest. Among other things, I organized a lecture series at the university whereby distinguished Hungarians who fledHungaryin 1956 and became British citizens, told their stories based on the theme of being Inside Two Cultures. By then, having visited Plot 301, the grave of Imre Nagy, I had a far greater appreciation of Hungarian history and understood that, while the 1956 refugees feared the return of a Rakosi-style Communist reign of terror, the Dean was haunted by the even more dreadful oppression of the Fascist thugs in 1944. Each day inBudapestI waited for my bus home across from the building where, in their District XIV HQ, the Arrow Cross mashed in the faces of those who had bravely hidden Jews. The events of 1944 and 1956 are as alive today inHungaryas are those of the 1848 uprisings R.W. “Duffy” Harris made central to his lectures to us on European history.

If you want to find out more about Hewlett Johnson, or any of our collections, have a look at our website. Please contact us with any enquiries which you may have.