Happy Christmas Everyone!

 

Happy Christmas everyone! I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and New Year. 

Image: A lady in evening dress - perhaps in mourning. Ackermann's Repository, December 1818. Courtesy New York Public Library. 

Jane Austen 250: Happy Birthday Jane!

 

Willoughby asks Elinor to stay.

Today is Jane Austen's 250th birthday! Pop over to my Jane Austen blog so see my highlights of her bicentenary year. 

Illustration by Charles Brock for Sense and Sensibility. Willoughby asks Elinor to stay. 

A Visit To Thiepval

 

Thiepval Memorial. 

Over ten years ago, we paid a visit to Loos Memorial so that I could pay my respects to my great-uncles Harry and Herbert Dickman, who died in 1916. This year, I was lucky enough to visit Thiepval Memorial, where one of my 'cousins', John William Dickman, is commemorated, and to pay my respects.

 

J W Dickman, Thiepval. 

John was the son of John and Mary Dickman, of 38, Kay St., Lower Openshaw, Manchester, and he served in the 8th Battalion of the East Lancashire Regiment. He was only 24 years old when he died on 15 July 1916 - just two weeks before my great-uncle Harry was killed. (Herbert died earlier that year). 

What a terrible year that was for my family. 

Photos copyright Sue and Nigel Wilkes. 

'Scarlet Sin'

 My latest feature for Jane Austen's Regency World magazine (Nov/Dec issue) is on the ancient craft of dyeing. 

In 1814, Jane Austen wrote to Cassandra to complain about the local dyer: ‘My poor old muslin has never been dyed yet. It has been promised to be done several times. What wicked people dyers are! They begin with dipping their own souls in scarlet sin’.

Dyes were used for many different fabrics: wool, worsted, linen, cotton, and silk. 

The secret of Turkey-Red dyeing (from the Far East), was much sought after in Britain, but it was not until the 1780s that it was successfully accomplished in Britain, in Manchester and the Glasgow area. 

The late eighteenth century also saw the introduction of new dyes from metals, like 'iron buff' and orange from antimony. 

Image from the author's collection: Costume Parisien, Journal des Dames et des Modes, 1803. A ‘Robe de Mousseline Turque’ [Turkey muslin]. 

8 College Street, Winchester.

No 8, College Street, Winchester. 

 A few weeks ago, I was very privileged to see inside No 8, College Street, Winchester, the house where Jane Austen spent her last few weeks. 

Her family hoped that a town doctor, Dr Lydford, might be able to effect a cure for her illness (the cause of which is still not known for certain). 

Jane wrote to her nephew James Edward Austen, 'Our lodgings are very comfortable. We have a neat little drawing room with a bow window overlooking Dr Gabell’s Garden'. 

The bow-window at 8 College Street. 

The left image is the current view through the bow window on the first floor; on the right is the view of the same room from the far end. 

Below you can see how the room looks at the far end; there's a fireplace at both ends of the room.

Jane was still writing almost until the end; her last composition was a comic verse on Winchester horse races. 

She died on 18 July 1817. 

I was very moved to finally see inside the house; I have often seen it from the outside over the years. Of course, I was more sad than excited. How young Jane was! She was still only 41 years old. 

After Jane's death, her sister Cassandra wrote mournfully to their niece Fanny Knight: 'I have lost a treasure, such a sister, such a friend as never can have been surpassed. She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow; I had not a thought concealed from her, and it is as if I had lost a part of myself'.

Winchester College has renovated the interior, and carefully matched the paint on the walls to traces found during the restoration. The house is currently open to visitors until the end of August (although you may have to wait for a cancellation). 

'Your Irish' Linen

My latest feature for Jane Austen's Regency World (July/August issue) is on linen manufacture. 

Flax-drawing and flax-breaking. 

In a letter to Cassandra, (16 September 1813), Jane Austen wrote, ‘Fanny bought her Irish [linen] at Newton’s in Leicester Square, and I took the opportunity of thinking about your Irish, and seeing one piece of the yard wide at 4s…it seemed to me very good’.   

Linen was made from flax; it required a great deal of processing -  'dressing' - to turn the plant's woody stems into yarn for weaving. In the late 1780s, the first flax-spinning factories appeared in Britain. Scotland and Yorkshire were important linen manufacturing areas. 

An enormous flax mill was also opened near Shrewsbury. Ditherington Flax Mill (1796) was the first ever fireproof mill in the world. 

Ditherington Flax Mill

Linen was used for items like ladies’ shifts, nightwear, underwear, and dressing-gowns, and of course, table and bed 'linen'. 

Images:

Top: Flax-drawing in a factory (left) and flax-breaking (right). Charles Knight, Knight’s Pictorial Gallery of Arts, Vol. 1, London Printing and Publishing Co., c.1858. Author’s collection. 

The Spinning Mill at Shrewsbury Flax Mill Maltings, built c.1796. Formerly Ditherington Flax Mill, it was converted to a maltings in the late nineteenth century. © Sue Wilkes. 

The Power of the Press

My latest feature for Jane Austen's Regency World (May/June issue) is on the advent of printing newspapers and books by steam-power, instead of a printing press worked by hand. On 29 November 1814, the first ever copy of The Times newspaper entirely printed by machine appeared. 

The new printing-press, invented by Frederick Koenig, required just two child workers to tend the machine and feed it with paper, instead of two highly trained printers.

By the late 1820s, an improved version of Koenig's press, designed by Edmund Cowper and Augustus Applegarth, could print 5,000 newspaper pages every hour. 

Image: An Applegarth and Cowper printing machine, with child workers. This machine was used for printing books. Luke Hebert, The Engineer’s and Mechanic’s Encyclopedia, Vol. II, Thomas Kelly, London, 1836, Nigel Wilkes Collection.