In recent weeks I have written about both paper-hangings and the private display of art during the Regency. Those divergent topics intersected during the second half of the eighteenth century and through the decade of the Regency to produce a unique phenomenon which occurred in the decoration of rooms in many private houses. However, this phenomenon was restricted primarily to England, though there were some instances of it in Ireland and America at about the same time.

The phenomenon of the English Print Room ...

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Last week I wrote about the rapid rise of the craze for the velocipede in Regency England. Introduced first in London, early in 1819, by the enterprising coachmaker, Denis Johnson, the velocipede was all the rage by the early spring of that year. It quickly spread to other cities and towns across the country, and was particularly popular with young men of leisure.

Yet, by the end of that same year, 1819, the craze for the velocipede was over. How did this near mania for a human-powered two-wheeled vehicle fall nearly as quickly as it rose?

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      ... it was Jessamy who plunged him, not many days later, into the affair of the Pedestrian Curricle.

     Boy enough to wish to startle his family with his unsuspected prowess, Jessamy had said nothing to them about his new hobby. Once he had perfected his balance, and could feel himself to be master of the Pedestrian Curricle, he meant to ride up to the door, and call his sisters out to watch his skill. ...



Of course, anyone who has read Frederica knows that the Pedestrian Curricle which Jessamy was riding was smashed to bits in an accident involving a pair of dogs, a man mending a chair and landaulet drawn by a pair of high-stepping horses. Fortunately, the Marquis of Alverstoke was able to sort everything out, and "the affair of the Pedestrian Curricle" resulted in a "command" from the Marquis to Jessamy to ride his horses, much to the young man's delight.

"Pedestrian curricle" was just one name for vehicles like that from which Jessamy took his tumble. They were also known as "velocipedes," "draisiennes," "hobby-horses" and "dandy horses," among others. The grand fashion for these contraptions flourished briefly at the very end of the Regency. This week I will tell you about the meteoric rise of the Regency craze for the velocipede ...

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With jealousy!   Because he did not write it.

Initially published anonymously in the last year of the Regency, this racy novel telling the tales of a young Greek's adventurous travels through the Levant was a runaway best seller and remained in print for thirty years. Yet few today even know of its existence. It was originally attributed to Lord Byron, but in the second edition, published the following year, the shy yet cultured man who wrote it admitted his authorship. And practically no one believed him.

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Last week I wrote about the display of paintings in public galleries. This week my topic is how paintings were displayed in large private homes during the decade of the Regency. Some of the methods for the display of art in public galleries were also employed in private homes, especially the homes of royalty and the aristocracy. But there was more leeway to deviate from these practices in private galleries, and many wealthy connoisseurs indulged their whims as they pleased. Not only in how they displayed their art, but in the type of art they chose to collect, some of which was not suitable or appropriate for display in mixed company or for public viewing.

The secrets of the display of art in the private spaces of the Regency ...

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What could there possibly be to say about the hanging of paintings? One simply hangs them on the wall, ensures they are relatively straight and is done with it. Not really. The way paintings were hung in public art galleries during the Regency is not the same as the way paintings are hung in art galleries and museums in modern times. Should someone from the Regency walk into a museum today, they would be shocked at what they would perceive as the poor use of the space. However, most artists from the Regency would much prefer the way paintings are now typically hung in most galleries and museums.

The display of paintings in Regency art galleries and the now antiquated practice of skying ...

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Though I have not yet read a Regency novel in which an orrery has been introduced, these complex and often exquisite objects were very popular during that decade. Many cultured gentlemen, or gentlemen with pretensions to culture, would have had an orrery on display in their library or book room, often alongside a terrestrial globe, usually paired with a celestial globe.

A brief history of the orrery and some personal recollections of these elegant devices ...

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The garden maze has made numerous appearances in a plethora of Regency novels. Often it is the setting for a clandestine romantic tryst or sometimes it is the secret meeting place for the villain and his or her henchman. But regardless of its use, the Regency garden maze was the end of a long tradition of mazes and labyrinths dating back to that very first one, at the Palace of Knossos, designed by Daedalus, in which Theseus vanquished the Minotaur.

A brief tracing of the path of the labyrinth and the maze from Crete to the English Regency pleasure garden ...

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Which is not to say that the celestial body we know today as Uranus had not been discovered by 1811. In point of fact it had, thirty years before the Prince of Wales became Regent, by a German-born composer working as the director of the orchestra of Bath, England. But this new planet was not called Uranus in Regency England, though that name, among others, was used on the Continent.

The seventh planet, its name(s) and its discoverer ...

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Really! Hardly anyone in the Regency cared about minutes. Nor had anyone, anywhere, cared about these small measurements of time, throughout all of time, until just a few short years after the death of George IV, the erstwhile Prince Regent. Since then, nearly everyone pays attention to the minutes.

A brief summary of the measurement of time, what that meant for denizens of the Regency, and when and why the minute became important.

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The pocket-knife which we know today has its roots in the pen knife, or scribal knife, of the Middle Ages. But not only did those early knives not fold, few of them would safely or conveniently fit in a pocket, even in their protective leather sheaths. For centuries, people of lesser means might only have one knife, which they used for everything, including mending the nibs of their quill pens, while the wealthy, or professional scribes, would have specially-made pen or quill knives to be used for only that purpose.

By the Regency, most people owned a pen knife, and many of those knives did fold. They could therefore be safely carried in pockets or reticules. But there were also other knives which looked very like pen knives, but served different purposes. A bit about pen and other specialty folding knives of the Regency ...

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There is no doubt that Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, was in command of the allied army during that gruelingly hellish day. But at that time, he had yet to be dubbed the "Iron Duke." In fact, that epithet was given to him many years later, long after the Regency was over.

There are a number different stories about how the Iron Duke acquired his sobriquet. In addition, there were other noble military men who had been called Iron Duke, long before Wellington was born.

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The "mirror" to which Wordsworth refers was the Claude mirror, an optical device used by many artists and devotees of the picturesque during the Romantic period, which includes the decade of the Regency.

Wordsworth did not approve of the use of either the Claude mirror or the Claude glass, both of which rendered views of the natural world in a manner he considered unnatural. But both of these devices had been popular in the later part of the eighteenth century and continued to be so in the first decades of the nineteenth century.

So just what are Claude glasses and mirrors?

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As with many other curious things which have been chronicled here, the decade of the Regency saw the last lingering use of the Long S, at least in print. Most people continued to use it in those documents which they wrote by hand, regardless of its demise on the printed page.

The Long S, what it was, its origins, its rules of usage and how it passed into history ... almost.

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Perhaps abandoned is a more appropriate description of the fate of this live-saving practice by the medical community in the early years of the Regency.

Surely I must be mistaken, as mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, that which the English call mouth-to-mouth ventilation, was not known until the mid-twentieth century? Sadly, there is no mistake. How this happened ...

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