Walking through Regency London

 

I've been trying to imagine what the streets of Paris and London looked like and felt like underfoot in the Georgian and Regency eras.

The fashionable streets of Mayfair are fairly easy to picture.  We have lovely paintings of these, for one thing. 

The wide, clean, quiet streets with expensive houses. The squares, with maybe a garden in the middle.  Yes.  I can see these.

I have some feeling of what the rookeries might have looked like too.  The grainy, mid-Victorian photos of the London slums give us an idea.  Hogarth illustrates the underbelly of London on one side of the era. Gustaf Dore on the other.

There be those who say that things and places have souls, and there be those who say they have not; I dare not say, myself.  H.P Lovecraft

But, what about the middling streets?  Not the privileged haunts of the nobility.  Not the stews.  The everyday streets and passageways of London and Paris.  My characters spend most of their time in this ordinary sort of place.  What did it look like?

We have pictures. 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And we can guess a lot about what the city looked and felt like from elements common to cities now.

Brick and stone and stucco work is still brick and stone and stucco.  The cobbles of then looked a lot like the cobbles of now.  They're still slippery to walk on.  I should imagine the horses hated them.  Streets still needed to drain.  In 1800 they were more apt to set the drain in the middle of the street with a central swale running down centrally.  See over there to the left and the first picture on top.  Sometimes the middle of the street was humped up a bit and water -- lots of other stuff too doubtless -- drained down both sides. 

Sometimes the road less traveled is less traveled for a reason. Jerry Seinfeld

Curbs and raised sidewalks or pavements are not so much universally in evidence as you can see by the various pictures.  But lookit here at Bond Street in Gilray's satirical print of the Bond Street beaux forcing the young ladies off into the muck of the road.  There's your curb and your raised pavement right there.

The London and Paris in contemporary paintings is a city of narrower streets, more intimate spaces, darker corners, low passageways and alleys leading to random dead ends.  The crowds and bustle, that hasn't changed much . . . but everywhere there would have been horses and wagons, pushcarts and pack animals to add to the confusion.  And, somewhat off the beaten track, the occasional pig.

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.  L.P. Hartley

Most of the physical city of London and Paris of 1800 is gone, fallen victim to . . . improvements.  You got your Victorian building like there on the left. A good bit of what escaped the Victorians fell prey to the Twentieth Century.  On the right we got . . .  Hmmm.  I think I do not properly appreciate modern either.

In the end, the character of a civilization is encased in its structures.  Frank Gehry

  

Paris, especially, has changed from the city my characters walked around in.  Great swathes were cleared out in two decades, between 1853 to 1870, by Baron Haussmann.  He gave us the splendid vistas, wide streets, and huge squares that are so typically 'Paris'.  He did it by plowing through the pre-existing buildings, destroying everything in his path, displacing 350,000 people.  Think Mothra and Godzilla on a particularly rambunctious day.  One of the advantages of working for a totalitarian government is never having to say you're sorry. 

When Haussmann was done, Paris was no longer a Medieval muddle of streets where disaffected citizens could throw up barriers and lob cobblestones at the militia.  Now it was an efficient highway for the deployment of government troops.  The armed uprising of Parisians against the central government in 1789, 1830, and 1848 had doubtless come to somebody's attention.

All this said, in quiet corners of London and Paris, there are still places we can follow our characters and walk the ordinary streets of 1800.

   



 
Pancras Station is cc talk2santosh. Pompidou Centre is cc positivenegative. Streets are cc Nigel cox, kaptainkobold, fredshu, 2is3.

 

O public road, I say back I am not afraid to leave you, yet I love you, you express me better than I can express myself.  Walt Whitman

 

So.  What places take you back to the past?  Where do you feel in touch with history?

Some lucky commenter will win a copy of Black Hawk and get to read about some of those Paris streets.

 

 

Comments

[Pageturner]

Churches are buildings that have often been left unchanged for a long time, so they can be quite evocative. And looking up, past big glass shop windows, can often reveal the older history of buildings. And films and TV are fabulous for letting you see live action coloured history in action.

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[Linda]

I live in a city which has been designated as a Unesco Heritage site. Whenever I'm in the old part of town with all the quaint buildings & temples it can almost picture myself living in the past.

[Jane O]

Near the cave of the Cumaean Sibyl outside of Naples is a small cliff overlooking the shore. This is the site where Aeneas first landed in Italy (at least, that is what my 1893 Baedecker said). When I stood on that cliff, there were no buildings visible, nothing that betokened the modern world. I could imagine that it was exactly as it had been almost 3000 years earlier when the Trojans arrived. It was a strange feeling.

[Susan/DC]

Not quite as long ago as the Cumaean Sibyl, but there is a palace in Mexico City where Maximilian and Carlotta lived. On the top is a terrace, and if you walk around there are several places where the walkway narrows and one can only pass single file. When I visited as a teenager, I felt a definite moment of connection to the past because I knew that poor, mad Carlotta had walked in that exact spot.

[Quilt Lady]

My home comunity brings back old times for me. It had the oldest and largest railroad bridge in the world.

[Annrei]

When I was in college in Boston, the alleyways, narrow roads, and brownstones made me feel like I could have been walking on Beacon Hill in the 1800s. Those cobblestone sidewalks and the basement entrances to the Beacon Hill homes--I guess they were servants' entrances originally--evoked history for me.

[Barbara Elness]

Orlando, the city I live in isn't all that old, but we do have some historic areas that are being preserved and I love checking them out. Anytime I walk into a museum, I feel in touch with the history of the pieces on display, and I love that. The place I've been wanting to check out is St Augustine, since it's considered the oldest city in the U.S.

[joanna bourne]

Hi pageturner --

Very true. Of the 112 churches of London, 39 remain. The Great Fire of 1666 took down a goodly number. The Blitz of 1940-41 destroyed a few more. But most were lost in the Nineteenth Century to commercial expansion.

My favorite piece of old stained glass -- I don't suppose it's the oldest in England, but I'm fond of it -- is Adam Delving at the Canterbury Cathedral. It from about 1170.

http://www.sacred-destinations.com/england/canterbury-cathedral-photos/slides/h-8230c

[joanna bourne]

Hi Linda --

Well. There you are. We connect to the past, if we can manage to hold onto it. One of the things UNESCO is so good at.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Jane O --

That is so wonderful. I am so envious of that experience. Sometimes, rarely, we are gifted with a moment out of time.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Susan --

Now I want to immediately go look up poor, sad, mad Carlotta.

Yes. Putting your feet where you know someone else walked, on on stairs worn by thousands of footsteps -- nothing like it.

Do you get the impression a lot of historical royal folks were mad? I sometimes notice this.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Quilt Lady --

There's something otherworldly about bridges.

The Victorians, who were not . . . how shall I put this? . . . not noted for their subtlety of design, built the most beautiful iron bridges. Fairy bridges. Just lovely.

http://tinyurl.com/7nolvcm

[joanna bourne]

Hi Annrei --

I imagine you're looking at detail from about exactly the era I write in. Colonial architecture, which (I'm going to dodge brickbats from anyone who actually knows something about the period) looks to me pretty much like Georgian.

A brickbat, btw, is a piece of brick, preferably one used as a missile. This dates to 1579 and uses the word 'bat' in the sense of 'a lump or fragment', which seems otherwise to have fallen into abeyance or even desuetude.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Barbara --

I imagine it'll be of great interest to see the oldest bits of St. Augustine. I understand the oldest house dates to the early 1700s.

You're better off in Orlando than my nephews on the West Coast. They take me out to see the 'Historical Section' of town. 'That dates to 1905,' they say.

[Shanagalen]

Lovely blog, Jo. I enjoyed the pictures. I always felt the sense of history when I visited London. I need to go back soon.

[Diane D - Florida]

I really feel like I've gone back to the past when I visit certain parts of England when I go home for a holiday. When I still lived in England, I worked for a firm of Solicitors (Lawyers) in Banbury, Oxfordshire. The building that I worked in was very old,(at least 200-300 years) and I always felt like it was haunted. I wish that we could post pictures so as you could see for yourself.

You would be amazed how how many old houses, etc. are still standing in the towns and villages of England.

Ooops, I'm getting a bit carried away here. Sorry!! Thanks for this amazing opportunity. I'd love to read your book.

[Margaret]

Graveyards/cemeteries make me wonder about life during a person's lifetime. West Point's cemetary "screams" that the Civil War must've been agony for the classmates fighting each other.

I've read BLACK HAWK and it was WONDERFUL! I have one question - did Hawker and Caruthers ever form a bond?

[joanna bourne]

Hi Shana --

The universities let student lodgings out in the summer. I've always wanted to do that.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Diane --

The whole haunted thing would make me nervous, I admit. But the stones and walls do soak in something of the years. I really think so. The sheer age of some objects . . .

Or, as the Dear Daughter said on the recent trip to Paris -- "Mom. Will you stop hugging the walls."

[joanna bourne]

Hi Margaret --

You are so right about the American Civil War. In the Eighteenth Century, there would have been something similar as families split between loyalists and rebels in the Colonies. In France, between Monarchists and Reformers.

I haven't written anything about the relationship between Adrian and Carruthers after 1802, so far as I know. So it's not tacked down. I imagine a wary respect grew between them. *g*

[LilMissMolly]

Hi Joanne! I have several of your books and love all of them. Can't wait to read this one. The place that reminds me the most of history is Ireland. There's just something magical about it.

[Aretha Zhen]

Hi Joanne, I was born in a small part in my city that was near places called old town. Everytime I walk around these place I u feel in touch with history and going back to the past. There's an old church with dutch style, restaurant and some buildings that were left behind by the dutch people. Those buildings are absolutely stunning and always kept me wondering to the glory of the past. Thank you for the wonderful post. It reminds me of my small towN:)

[Lorraine Marwood]

Joanne,

I wish all those Regency layers were in regional Victoria(Australia) but I only have to visit the remnants and scars of the old local goldfields to become fascinated with the long gone lives of thousands of people from many countries and walks of life who left everything to seek their fortune on the gold fields- what rich pickings for atmosphere and story and research.

[Betty Hamilton]

I grew up in the suburbs of one of the most historical cities in the USA, Philadelphia. Touring the old sections of Philly is like visiting the past and "seeing" the birth of a Nation. One can sit in the same rooms as the people that designed out government and the documents that gave birth to our country.

[Kitty]

Charleston, SC, certain parts of Philadelphia and Boston, Old Warsaw, parts of London, Québec City, Arundel in West Sussex and some others.

[Ellie]

Having lived in a historical, major city and now living in a unique historical city I find it fascinating to wander into areas that are older and intriguing. The history and buildings are always appreciated and enjoyed.

[Madeline Iva]

Horses would have hobnail shoes at that time, with a leather "pad" to protect their feet, and to give them more traction in the winter. They still wear them today up north. The shoes look like regular horse shoes, only a little heavier. In addition they have raised 'hobnails' on them, little metal lumps around the arch that can dig into the ice and around the cobble. It's the same concept as 'hobnail boots' that men wore around farms.

[Decca]

The Old Town in Edinburgh. Sometimes I feel like I should be looking up and ready for some house maid to shout "Garde l'eau!" before pitching out the morning's slops. These streets were definitely a hazard for pedestrians!

[Artemisia]

Several have mentioned St. Augustine. The Castillo is something, reminded me of Ft Sumter. Yes. It's touristy in many places, but they took us out to an area - I do not recall the name of the park - where the Spanish first came ashore. There was a giant and impressively simple cross. Being a person who looks the other way sometimes, I turned around and looked out at the water and imagined the ships and the men seeing this place as it was after all those months at sea. I got chills I never felt in Williamsburg or Philly. The place that most wiped me out though was the Punchbowl Cemetary of the Pacific. You knew they were there. You could feel them.

[bn100]

Philadelphia and seeing Independence Hall and the Liberty Ball makes me think about America's history

[Jane O]

Desuetude.
I love that word.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Lilmissmolly --

I love Ireland. I'm perfectly certain I will never set a book there, but I love the place. I'd really like to go back some day.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Aretha --

Dutch architecture is quite distinct. I don't know how much is left in New York State -- that's the part of the US that had many Dutch settlers originally.

This is one of those houses. 1736, I think

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Quackenbush_House_2011_1.jpg

[joanna bourne]

Hi Lorraine

We have the same problem in the American West. Not so many old remains to see. That's why I'm so deeply affected when I visit Europe. I get to set my hands on stuff that's thousands of years old.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Betty --

Yes. It's not just the sheer age of something. It's the people who have seen it and handled it. When we preserve, or destroy, something old we erase some of the memory of those people from the earth.

(You can tell I'm mad about preserving stuff, can't you?)

[joanna bourne]

Hi Kitty --

I've been to Arundel. I toured the castle. So cool.

Whenever I read the history of the place I tick off on my fingers how many owners got beheaded for treason. It seems a dangerous house to own.

They shot an episode of Dr. Who there.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Ellie --

I'm living right now in the country, pretty much. We have some oldish places around, though. Two or three hundred years.

The expensive, well-built stuff is what tends to survive. Ordinary houses, not so much.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Madeleine --

And it would have been very cold in London and Paris in the Regency years. The Thames froze over in 1814.

I honestly don't know how the horses managed on those cobblestones. Just slippery as heck in the rain.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Decca --

A really beautiful city, Edinburgh. From a distance, it looks like a fairy tale.

They've been very wise in preserving the old parts of that town. Just lots of good decisions on the part of the managers. I gather the city has a larger ratio of buildings under conservation protection than any other major city in the UK. And they still have the Medieval street plan . . .

Oh, yes. I agree with you. A great feeling of history.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Artemisia --

I had not known of the Punchbowl Crater in Hawaii. In the pictures, it looks impressive and moving. Ancient too.

http://tinyurl.com/89npk7g

[joanna bourne]

Hi bn100 --

Lots of old streets and buildings in Philadelphia. And the Liberty Bell. That too.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Jane --

I keep looking for opportunities to use it. One finds so few ...

[Grace Burrowes]

Edinburgh's Old Town says "history" for me. York is another location I could explore for weeks. It's nice when bombs and barons will leave a place in peace for a few centuries. Great pictures.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Grace --

I last saw Scotland when I was a teenager. There I was, back-pack on, bopping through. Hey, lets go dancing. Let's go to a pub. Let's find some prehistoric megalithic sites.

I wish I had KNOWN I was going to write about this Georgian/Regency stuff someday. I would have paid more attention.

[Cathy P]

When I think of places steeped in history I think of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (the battlefields and museums), Houston, Maryland, Washington DC, Scotland, Ireland, England, and France.

[joanna bourne]

Hi Cathy --

I'm with you on all these.