Category: 1810s

The Waterloo Panorama

Source: Felix M’Donogh, ‘The Waterloo Panorama’, in The Hermit in London; or, Sketches of English Manners vol. 1 (London: H. Coulburn, 1819), pp. 159-167

Text: “I have just returned with my uncle, the General, from the Panorama of Waterloo,” said Lady Mary. “He described the action so well, that I really could see the Cuirassiers charge three distinct times, could in return hear the Scottish Royals and immortal Greys shout ‘Scotland for ever.” I could see them hew in pieces the steel-clad warriors of France, could see Napoleon’s countenance change at the operations of ‘ces terribles chevaux gris,’ and could behold its expression of consternation, as when leaning over the horse of his peasant guide, and discerning the columns of Prussians advancing like a cloud in the horizon, he exclaimed, ‘tout est perdu!’ […] I advise you to go and see it: it is well worth your while; and I trust that the scene will have interest for a Briton a century hence, when we and when our’s are no more. Our heroes have gathered their laurels in vain, unless the dews of immortality falling from on high preserve them; the brave but sleep, the coward perishes and is forgotten.” Here a glow of heroism lit up her countenance, and she appeared to me something more than woman.

I now prepared to follow her advice; and went directly to the Panorama. The room was crowded with company, and the representation was just what she had described. Luckily for me, I fell in with an officer of the intrepid Scotch Greys, who gave me much information on the subject: that corps covered itself with glory; and of course, no one was better able to describe the battle, than one who had so much contributed to its renown.

When the officer had concluded his observations, I retired to a corner in order to observe the company. In all assemblages of people, a spectator may learn much. The following is a roughly sketched outline of what struck me most.

There were groups of all classes, and feelings of as many descriptions: — The man and woman of quality, proud to distinguish on the canvass some hero who added lustre to their name,— the female of sensibility, who heaved the deep sigh for some relative or bosom friend left on the bed of glory,— the military spectator, who had been an actor in the scene, and who, pride beaming in his countenance, yet wrapt in silence, looked on the representation of that awful and eventful reality,— or the garrulous but worthy veteran, who saw his own deeds of arms live again in the pictured story, and who, bereft of an arm or of a leg, and leaning on a friend, indulged in the gratifying account of what his country owed him, whilst,

“Thrice he routed all his foes,
“And thrice he slew the slain.”

There also was the exquisite militaire, youthful and blooming, affected and vain, lounging with an air of sans souci, a toothpick or a violet in his mouth, a quizzing-glass either suspended round his neck or fixed in the socket of his eye, seeming to disdain taking an interest in the thing, yet lisping out, “Upon my thoul, it’s d–d like, d–d like indeed,— yeth, that’s just the place where we lotht tho many men, — it’s quite ridicttlouth, how like it ith.” What a contrast! so much valour, yet so much feminine conceit, starch and perfume, whalebone and pasteboard! It is however not less true, that these fops, who take so much care of their pretty persons out of the field, take no care of them in it.

Here were idlers looking at the action merely as a picture; and there were vacant countenances staring at nothing but the company:— in one place a fat citizen came in merely to rest himself; and in another, a pretty brunette of the second class, whose only business was to meet my Lord. In a third corner I could see a happy couple enjoying the short space previous to a permanent union, and who came here for fashion’s sake, or to be alone in the world, and thus to escape the attention of a smaller circle; for there exists a certain retirement or solitude in crowds, known only to the few. This couple took as much interest in the battle of Waterloo as in the fire of London.

At the entrance were some jealous painters looking out for defects in the piece; and in the doorway was a covey of beauties surrounded by fashionables, who seemed scarcely to know why they came there, and enjoying nothing but their own conversation. “What a squeeze at the Dowager’s last night?” drawls out a male coquette. “Monstrous pleasant party at Lord Foppinglon’s!” lisps another epicene-looking thing; “if,” continued it, “the fat Countess had less rage for waltzing, and the old Dandy would give up sailing through the quadrille;” “or,” (observed a British lady clad in everything from France, and covered with folds of drapery, circles of ribbons and tucks, tier over tier of flounce, and quillings of lace and puffings of all sorts, in the directly opposite extreme to the flimsy garments in which the ladies appeared a few years since, as if they were sewed up in a tight bag; not to forget her waist, which ended where it once begun, and the hump betwixt: her shoulders, so thick with wadding that it must be nearly bombproof)— “Or if,” exclaimed she, “the Duchess’s proud daughter, who seemed to doze through the figure of the dance, and to look upon all possible partners as beneath her, had been absent.”

“Not so with Lady Evremont,” exclaimed a disdainful woman of quality, (whose short upturned nose, step à la Française, rapid delivery in discourse, and fiery eye, bespoke heat of temper and swelling of pride),— “not so with her ladyship! she thought herself the very loadstone of attraction, and considered dancing as a loss of time. I am sure if I were her husband —” “You would,” interrupted an elderly Exquisite of sickly composure but of satirical dissatisfied aspect,— “you would do just what her husband does, namely, not care sixpence about her, but leave her to herself.” This produced a general laugh, but in the moderate key of fashionable mirth; for the whole circle was composed of her enemies.— Why? Because she is beautiful.

“What brought you here, Sir George?” sighed out a languid looking widow of fashion. “The attraction of your beauty.” “Stuff!” exclaimed the widow, in a more animated tone, biting her lips (not spitefully but playfully) and twinkling her eyes. “And you, Major?” ” A shower of rain,” replied the Hibernian. “Oh! then I have nothing to do with your coming.” “Nothing, except (recovered Pat) that whilst it rains without, you reign within, in every heart and in every mind.” “None of your nonsense!” cried the Widow, putting her hand on his lips. “I hate flattery — blarney I believe you call it.” “Just what you please; truth is truth still, in English, Irish, or even Dutch,” concluded he. The lady appeared delighted; but turning round to a boarding-school cousin, endeavoured to hide her satisfaction by saying, “I do hate so many compliments.” I extricated myself from this buz of high life, giving and receiving acknowledgments from those of my acquaintance who formed a part of the circle; and on my exit, I perceived some wry faces and some discontented looks at the door. These were French people come over here, all with, a view of gain, in some shape or other, but who sickened at any thing which lowered France, avec ses armées victorieuses, which so long gave laws to the greater part of Europe, but could never dictate them to us. As much was said by the French, about their Légion d’Honneur and Napoleon’s Invincibles, as ever ancient history has trumpeted concerning the sacred battalion commanded by Pelopidas, but I did not stay long to listen to them.

Comments: Felix Bryan M’Donogh (1768?-1836) was an Irish soldier then essayist, who wrote a series of travel books under the name of ‘The Hermit’. The Panorama was an invention of the artist Robert Barker, who patented a means of exhibiting a large, highly realistic landscape painting on the inside of a cylindrical building. It was first exhibited in Edinburgh in 1788, and moved to London’s Leicester Square in 1793, where it remained a popular (and much imitated) attraction for seventy years. The Waterloo panorama was painted by Barker’s son Henry Aston Barker and was first exhibited in Leicester Square in 1816, a year after the Battle of Waterloo itself.

Links: Copy at Hathi Trust

Ancient Mysteries Described

Source: William Hone, Ancient Mysteries Described, Especially the English Miracle Plays, Founded on Apocryphal New Testament Story, Extant Among the Unpublished Manuscripts in the British Museum etc. (London: William Hone, 1823), pp. 230-231

Text: The English puppet-show was formerly called a motion. Shakspeare [sic] mentions the performance of Mysteries by puppets; his Autolycus frequented wakes, fairs, and bear-baitings, and ‘compassed a motion of the Prodigal Son’ On a Twelfth night, in 1818, a man, making the usual Christmas cry, of ‘Gallantee show,’ was called in to exhibit his performances for the amusement of my young folks and their companions. Most unexpectedly, he ‘compassed a motion of the Prodigal Son‘ by dancing his transparencies between the magnifying glass and candle of a magic lanthorn, the coloured figures greatly enlarged, were reflected on a sheet spread against the wall of a darkened room. The prodigal son was represented carousing with his companions at the Swan Inn, at Stratford; while the landlady in the bar, on every fresh call, was seen to score double. There was also Noah’s Ark, with ‘Pull Devil, Pull Baker,’ or the just judgment upon a baker who sold bread short of weight, and was carried to hell in his own basket. The reader will bear in mind, that this was not a motion in the dramatic sense of the word, but a puppet-like exhibition of a Mystery, with discrepancies of the same character as those which peculiarized the Mysteries of five centuries ago. The Gallantee-showman narrated with astonishing gravity the incidents of every fresh scene, while his companion in the room played country-dances and other tunes on the street organ, during the whole of the performance. The manager informed me that his show had been the same during many years, and, in truth, it was unvariable; for his entire property consisted of but this one set of glasses, and his magic lanthorn. I failed in an endeavour to make him comprehend that its propriety could be doubted of: it was the first time that he had heard of the possibility of objection to an entertainment which his audiences witnessed every night with uncommon and unbounded applause. Expressing a hope that I would command his company at a future time, he put his card into my hand, inscribed, ‘The Royal Gallantee Show, provided by Jos. Leverge, 7, Ely Court, Holborn Hill:’ the very spot whereon the last theatrical representation of a Mystery, the play of Christ’s Passion, is recorded to have been witnessed in England.

Comments: William Hone (1780-1842) was a British satirist, bookseller and campaigner against censorship. A Galantee show was one provided by a travelling entertainer of the first half of the nineteenth century, whose entertainments could include magic lanterns, puppets, shadows shows etc. Autolycus is a character in William Shakespeare’s play The Winter’s Tale. Hone’s book Ancient Mysteries Described traces the history of the English miracle and mystery plays, and here finds traces of their survival in the magic lantern show performed for a child audience.

Links: Copy at Internet Archive

Labour and the Poor

Source: Unnamed lanternist, interviewed in Henry Mayhew, ‘Labour and the Poor’, Letter XXXIX, Morning Chronicle, 28 February 1850

Text: A very ingenious and intelligent man to whom I was referred, as the best in his trade, gave me the following account of magic lanterns. His parlour behind the shop – for he had risen to be a shopkeeper in some kinds of toys and other articles, known as the “fancy trade, was well furnished, and in a way that often distinguishes the better class of prosperous artisans. A fondness for paintings and for animals was manifested. On a sofa lay two very handsome King Charles’s spaniels. On a chair were a fine cat and kitten. Outside his parlour window was a pigeon colony, peopled with fine large birds, a cross between those known as a “carrier” and a “horseman.” Books, of no common class, were abundant enough, and his periodical was not wanting. He said:

“I have known the business of magic lantern making thirty-five years. It was then no better than the common galantee shows in the streets, Punch and Judy, or any peepshow or common thing. There was no science and no art about it. It went on so for some time – just grotesque things for children, as ‘Pull devil and pull baker.’ This is the old style, you see, but better done.” (He showed me one in which, to all appearance (for it was rather obscurely expressed), a cat was busy at the wash-tub, with handkerchiefs hanging on her tail to dry; Judy, with a glass in her hand, was in company with a nondescript sort of devil, smoking a pipe, and a horse was driving a man, who carried the horse’s panniers.) “Bluebeards were fashionable then – uncommon blue their beards were, to be sure; and Robin Hoods – and Robinson Crusoes with Fridays and the goats, and the parrot, and the man’s footmark on the sand – and Little Red Riding Hoods, as red as the Blue Beards were blue. I don’t remember Ali Babas and Forty Thieves, there were too many of the thieves for a magic lantern – too many characters; we couldn’t very well have managed forty thieves – it’s too many. There were things called comic changes’ in vogue at that period. As the glasses moved backwards and forwards, fitted into a small frame like that of a boy’s slate, a beggar was shown as if taking his hat off, and Jim Crow turning about and wheeling about, and a blacksmith hammering – moving his hammer. There were no theatrical scenes beyond Harlequins and Clowns. About thirty years ago the diagrams for astronomy were introduced. These were made to show the eclipses of the sun and moon, the different constellations, the planets with their satellites, the phases of the moon, the rotundity of the earth, and the comets with good long tails. What a tail 1811 had! and similar things that way. This I consider an important step in the improvement of my art. Next, moving diagrams were introduced. I really forget, or never knew, who first introduced those improvements. The opticians then had the trade to themselves, and prices were very high. The moving diagrams were so made that they showed the motion of the earth and its rotundity, by the course of a ship painted on the lantern – and the tides, the neap and spring, as influenced by the sun and moon. Then there was the earth going round the sun, and, as she passed along, the different phases were shown, day here and night there. Then there were the planets going round the sun, with their satellites going round them. How wonderful are the works of the Creator! The comets, too; that of 1811, however, with a famous tail, as he deserved. His regular course – if you call it regular – was shown. I saw him when a schoolboy in Wiltshire then. There has not been a comet worth calling a comet since. The zodiac made very pretty slides – twelve of them, each a sign. These things greatly advanced the art and the demand for magic lanterns increased, but not much for some years, until the dissolving views were introduced, about eighteen years ago, I think it was. But I should tell you that Dollond, before that, made improvements in the magic lantern; they called the new instruments the phantasmagoria. Mr. Henry, who conjured at the Adelphi Theatre some eighteen years ago, was one of the first – indeed I may say the first – who introduced dissolving views at a place of public amusement. Then these views were shown by the oil light only, so that the effect was not near so good as by gas, but even that created a great impression. From the period I date what I may call the popularity of magic lanterns. Henry used two lanterns for his views; but using them with oil, and not on so large a scale, they would be thought very poor things now. Then the Careys introduced the gas microscope, up in Bond-street. The gas microscope (the hydro-oxygen it’s sometimes called) is the magic lantern, and on the principle of the magic lantern, only better glazed, showing the water lions and other things in a drop of stagnant water. Thames water may do. I now introduce insects and butterflies’ wings in my lanterns – real insects and real wings of insects on the slides. I make such as fleas, bugs, pig-lice (an extraordinary thing, with claws like a crab, sir), and so up to butterflies – all between glasses, and air tight – they’ll last for ever if necessary. Here’s the sting, tongue, and wing of a bee. Here you see flowers. Those leaves of the fern are really beautiful – of course they are, for they are from the fern itself. This is one great improvement of the art, which I have given in a more simple form than used to be the fashion. You can magnify them to any size, and it’s still nature – no disproportion and no distortion. Butterflies may be made as big as the wall of this room, through one of my magic lanterns with microscope power attached – but the larger the object represented, the less the power of the light. Gas, in some degree, obviates that fault. No oil can be made to give a light like gas. After this the question arose as to introducing views with the lime light, but the paintings in the lanterns were too coarse, for the light brought them out in all their coarseness. Every defect was shown up, glaringly, you may say. That brought in better paintings – of course at a greater cost. The Polytechnic has brought the lime-light for this purpose to great perfection. For the oil-lights the paintings are bold, for the lime-light fine and delicate. Next the chromatrope was introduced, revolving stars chiefly – the hint being taken from Chinese fireworks. Mount Vesuvius was made to explode and such like. That’s the present state of the art in London. The trade is five or six fold what I once knew it. Landscapes, Fingal’s caves, cathedrals, sea views, are most popular now. In the landscapes we give the changes from summer to winter – from a bright sun in July to the snow seen actually falling in January. 1 make between 500 and 600 a year, say 550; 1 think I make one half of those made. The lowest price of a well-made lantern is 7s. 6d., and soon up to £20, dissolving and double lanterns. About a third of the lowest price are made, but people often go on from that to a superior article. I sold last year about 100 of the best of single lanterns, retailed at £10. Calculate a third at 7s. 6d., and 100 at £10, and the intermediate prices in – I think we may say – equal proportions – and you have the amount. Average the middle lot at 30s., suppose – that is £1,469 14s. I think that the other magic lanterns made, though they may be double my quantity, will not realize more, as so many lower-priced lanterns are made: so double the amount, and we have £2,939 8s for London-made magic lanterns. I think I can, and shall, introduce further improvements. There are slop magic lanterns; they are slops, made, I believe, but I am not sure, in French Flanders; and I believe more of them are sold than of our own. What is worse than slop art, sir? These slop lanterns are generally retailed at 1s. 6d. each, with 12 slides. The tin part is neatly made; but, altogether, it is sad rubbish. I have been told by persons who bought them – and I have been often told it – that they could make nothing of them. The only good that they can do is, that they may tempt people to buy better ones – which is something. The admission of foreign toys at a low rate of duty has not injured the magic lantern business, but has rather increased it.”

Comments: Henry Mayhew (1812-1887) was a British journalist and social investigator. His series of ‘letters’ entitled ‘Labour and the Poor’, based on detailed interviews with people living and working in the streets of London, were published in 76 installments in the Morning Chronicle, between 19 October 1849 and 12 December 1850. Publication continued thereafter by Mayhew himself under the title London Labour and the London Poor, first published in volume form in 1851, with two further volumes that same year. A fourth volume followed in 1861. A galantee show refers to a small-time, touring lanternist. The Chromatrope was a form of magic lantern that showed kaleidoscopic patterns.

Links: Digitised copy at British Newspaper Archive (subscription site)
Transcription at Victorian London

Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography

Source: Harriet Martineau (ed. Maria Weston Chapman), Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography vol. 1 (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1877), pp. 11-12

Text: Of all my many fancies, perhaps none was so terrible as a dream that I had at four years old. The impression is as fresh as possible now; but I cannot at all understand what the fright was about. I know nothing more strange than this power of re-entering, as it were, into the narrow mind of an infant, so as to compare it with that of maturity ; and therefore it may be worth while to record that piece of precious nonsense, — my dream at four years old. I imagine I was learning my letters then from cards, where each letter had its picture, — as a stag for S. I dreamed that we children were taking our walk with our nursemaid out of St. Austin’s Gate (the nearest bit of country to our house.) Out of the public-house there came a stag, with prodigious antlers. Passing the pump, it crossed the road to us, and made a polite bow, with its head on one side, and with a scrape of one foot, after which it pointed with its foot to the public-house, and spoke to me, inviting me in. The maid declined, and turned to go home. Then came the terrible part. By the time we were at our own door it was dusk, and we went up the steps in the dark; but in the kitchen it was bright sunshine. My mother was standing at the dresser, breaking sugar; and she lifted me up, and set me in the sun, and gave me a bit of sugar.

Such was the dream which froze me with horror! Who shall say why? But my panics were really unaccountable. They were a matter of pure sensation, without any intellectual justification whatever, even of the wildest kind. A magic-lantern was exhibited to us on Christmas-day, and once or twice in the year besides. I used to see it cleaned by daylight, and to handle all its parts, — understanding its whole structure; yet, such was my terror of the white circle on the wall, and of the moving slides, that, to speak the plain truth, the first apparition always brought on bowel-complaint; and, at the age of thirteen, when I was pretending to take care of little children during the exhibition, I could never look at it without having the back of a chair to grasp, or hurting myself, to carry off the intolerable sensation.

Comments: Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) was a British essayist and sociologist, who enjoyed a considerable reputation as a social analyst in her lifetime. Her posthumously published autobiography goes into great detail about her childhood memories and their significance. Her childhood was spent in Norwich.

Links: Copy on Internet Archive

Harriet Martineau's Autobiography

Source: Harriet Martineau (ed. Maria Weston Chapman), Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography vol. 1 (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1877), pp. 11-12

Text: Of all my many fancies, perhaps none was so terrible as a dream that I had at four years old. The impression is as fresh as possible now; but I cannot at all understand what the fright was about. I know nothing more strange than this power of re-entering, as it were, into the narrow mind of an infant, so as to compare it with that of maturity ; and therefore it may be worth while to record that piece of precious nonsense, — my dream at four years old. I imagine I was learning my letters then from cards, where each letter had its picture, — as a stag for S. I dreamed that we children were taking our walk with our nursemaid out of St. Austin’s Gate (the nearest bit of country to our house.) Out of the public-house there came a stag, with prodigious antlers. Passing the pump, it crossed the road to us, and made a polite bow, with its head on one side, and with a scrape of one foot, after which it pointed with its foot to the public-house, and spoke to me, inviting me in. The maid declined, and turned to go home. Then came the terrible part. By the time we were at our own door it was dusk, and we went up the steps in the dark; but in the kitchen it was bright sunshine. My mother was standing at the dresser, breaking sugar; and she lifted me up, and set me in the sun, and gave me a bit of sugar.

Such was the dream which froze me with horror! Who shall say why? But my panics were really unaccountable. They were a matter of pure sensation, without any intellectual justification whatever, even of the wildest kind. A magic-lantern was exhibited to us on Christmas-day, and once or twice in the year besides. I used to see it cleaned by daylight, and to handle all its parts, — understanding its whole structure; yet, such was my terror of the white circle on the wall, and of the moving slides, that, to speak the plain truth, the first apparition always brought on bowel-complaint; and, at the age of thirteen, when I was pretending to take care of little children during the exhibition, I could never look at it without having the back of a chair to grasp, or hurting myself, to carry off the intolerable sensation.

Comments: Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) was a British essayist and sociologist, who enjoyed a considerable reputation as a social analyst in her lifetime. Her posthumously published autobiography goes into great detail about her childhood memories and their significance. Her childhood was spent in Norwich.

Links: Copy on Internet Archive