Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851
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Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 Rosemary Hill Queen Mary, University of London Submitted for the degree of PhD March 2011 1 I confirm that the work presented in this thesis and submitted for the degree of PhD is my own. Rosemary Hill 2 Abstract The thesis concentrates on the work of fourteen antiquaries active in the period from the French Revolution to the Great Exhibition in England, Scotland and France. I have used a combination of the antiquaries’ published works, which cover, among other subjects, architecture, topography, costume history, Shakespeare and the history of furniture, alongside their private papers to develop an account of that lived engagement with the past which characterised the romantic period. It ends with the growing professionalistion and specialisation of historical studies in the mid-nineteenth century which left little room for the self-generating, essentially romantic antiquarian enterprise. In so far as this subject has been considered at all it has been in the context of what has come to be called ‘the invention of tradition’. It is true that the romantic engagement with history as narrative led to some elaboration of the facts, while the newness of the enterprise laid it open to mistakes. I have not ignored this. The restoration of the Bayeux Tapestry, the forged tartans of the Sobieski Stuarts and the creation of Shakespeare’s Birthplace are all considered. Overall, however, I have been concerned not to debunk but as it were to ‘rebunk’, to see the antiquaries in their historical context and, as far as possible, in their own terms. 3 Contents List of Illustrations 5 Acknowledgements 7 Chapter One: Don Quixote to Jonathan Oldbuck: the image of the Antiquary 9 Chapter Two: ‘To stones a moral life’: antiquaries and Gothic architecture 35 Chapter Three: Revolution to Restoration: cross-Channel antiquarianism 99 Chapter Four: The Antiquarian Interior 162 Chapter Five: ‘Nothing but a Popish cabal’: religion, politics and 199 antiquarianism Chapter Six: Walter Scott’s ‘mighty wizzard’: the antiquaries’ Shakespeare 230 Conclusion 272 Bibliography 276 Appendix 293 4 List of Illustrations 1 The Antiquary, by Richard Parkes Bonington, 1826 8 2 Don Quixote, by Richard Parkes Bonington, 1826 22 3 Don Quixote illustrated in 1687 23 4 Don Quixote, by Gustave Doré, 1863 23 5 The Eglinton Tournament, James Henry Nixon, 1839 24 6 Francis Grose 25 7 The Antiquary's Cell, by E.W.Cooke, 1835 27 8 Fungus the Antiquary, by Thomas Rowlandson from The English Dance of Death, 1815 28 9 Salisbury Cathedral after Wyatt's alterations 47 10 St Peter's Chapel, Winchester 53 11 St Peter's Chapel, Winchester, interior 54 12 Salisbury Cathedral from The Beauties of England and Wales 60 13 Salisbury Cathedral from The Cathedral Antiquities 61 14 Salisbury Cathedral cloisters in The Cathedral Antiquities 62 15 Salisbury Cathedral, by J M W Turner, 1802 62 16 Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows, by John Constable, 1831 67 17 The Slipper Chapel at Walsingham and Willson's church at Melton Mowbray 74 18 Toddington Manor, Gloucestershire 77 19 The New Palace of Westminster 78 20 St Mary's Wreay, West door 83 21 St Mary’s, Wreay 84 22 St Mary’s Wreay, apse, (with later wall paintings) 89 23 Le Musée des Monumens Français 109 24 Lenoir at St Denis 111 25 Lenoir's Jardin Elysée, the tomb of Abelard and Heloise on the right 113 26 The tomb of Abelard and Heloise at the cemetery of Père Lachaise 114 27 The Death of Harold in the Bayeux Tapestry 123 5 28 The Tapestry as illustrated in Montfaucon and as it is today 124 29 E H Langlois, self-portrait engraved by Mary Turner 132 30 The Duchesse de Berry as Mary Queen of Scots, by Eugene Lami 141 31 The Duchesse de Berry sailing into exile, unknown artist 142 32 The Intervention of the Sabine Women, by Jacques-Louis David, 1796-99 148 33 Hymne à la Cloche, colophon 150 34 Frontispiece to Langlois’s Les Danses des Morts 153 35 The oriel window from Les Andelys under demolition and at Highcliffe Castle, Hampshire 156 36 Sir Walter Scott in his study, by William Allan, 1831 169 37 John Britton's account of his home and collection 170 38 John Britton, mezzotint after John Wood, 1845 172 39 The Sobieski Stuart brothers, self-portrait 176 40 Charles Edward Stuart, calotype, c1843 181 41 Walter Scott in the hall at Abbotsford, c1830 187 42 The Honours of Scotland, the discovery of the Regalia, by David Wilkie, 1822 223 43 The Entrance of George IV at Holyrood House, by David Wilkie, 1828 224 44 The Marquis of Montrose from The Costume of the Clans, 1845 228 45 Shakespeare and his Friends at the Mermaid Tavern, by John Faed, c1850 231 46 Pillories, from Douce's notes on Measure for Measure 237 47 Douce's illustrations of fools and their accoutrements 241 48 Walter Scott and his Literary Friends at Abbotsford by Thomas Faed, 1849 258 49 Walter Scott at Shakespeare's Tomb, possibly by William Allan 262 50 Shakespeare's monument at Stratford 265 51 The house in Henley Street before restoration 269 52 The restored Birthplace in the 1860s 269 6 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor Anne Janowitz for encouraging me to undertake a doctoral thesis in the first place and for continuing to support it and I am grateful to Queen Mary, University of London for a Studentship which made it possible. At Queen Mary Markman Ellis, Chris Reid and Bill Schwartz were reliable sources of friendly encouragement and advice. I am grateful to the Warden and Fellows of All Souls College, Oxford, for a two- year fellowship during which I was able to present my work in progress in a series of seminars. I would thank all who attended, particularly those who asked questions and made suggestions: James Adams, Paul Brand, Colin Burrow, John Drury, Caroline Elam, Patrick Finglass, Noel Malcolm, Richard Marks, Geoffrey Tyack, Michael Sheringham and William Whyte. Colin Kidd and Keith Thomas took particular trouble to draw relevant material to my attention and to encourage my endeavour. For valuable conversations and advice on the subject of antiquarianism over several years I am most indebted to Rosemary Sweet. Christopher Barker allowed me to study the papers of his ancestor Dawson Turner which are still in his possession. Megan Aldrich, Alexandrina Buchanan, Charlotte Gere, Julian Pooley and Diana Scarisbrick were generous in making available their unpublished research. On the difficult subject of Scottish history and mythology Hugh Cheape and Ian Gow offered sage advice and information. Gavin Stamp discussed the architectural history with me and the librarians of the Society of Antiquaries were unfailingly helpful. Humaira Erfan-Ahmed kindly provided technical and moral support. 7 Figure 1: The Antiquary, by Richard Parkes Bonington, 1826 8 Chapter One Don Quixote to Jonathan Oldbuck: the Image of the Antiquary Definitions By 1628, when John Earle in his Micro-Cosmographie defined him as ‘one that hath that unnaturall disease to bee enamour’d of old age, and wrinckles’, the antiquary was already a figure of dubious appeal and obvious comic potential.1The New Dictionary of the…Canting Crew in 1699 had him down as ‘a curious Critick in old Coins, Stones and Inscriptions, in Worm-eaten Records…also one that affects and blindly doats, on Relicks, Ruins, old Customs Phrases and Fashions’.2 By the end of the eighteenth century, on the eve of the period with which this thesis is concerned, it seemed to the antiquary Francis Grose that it had ‘long been the fashion to laugh at the study of Antiquities, and to consider it as the idle amusement of a few humdrum plodding fellows, who, wanting genius for nobler studies, busied themselves in heaping up illegible Manuscripts, mutilated Statues, obliterated Coins, and broken pipkins!’3 When it came to the antiquarian personality Johnson’s Dictionary defined an antiquary in neutral terms as ‘a man studious of antiquity; a collector of ancient things’.4 Yet in a letter to Boswell Johnson remarked that ‘a mere antiquarian is a rugged being’5 and he defined rugged as ‘full of unevenness and asperity…not neat, not regular…savage of temper; brutal… turbulent… sour, surly, discomposed…shaggy’.6 These accumulated 1 Earle, Micro-Cosmographie, p.13. 2 Johnson, Samuel, Dictionary, London, 1755. 3 Quoted in Brown, Hobby-Horsical Antiquary, p. 11 and see pp 15-17 for a survey of parodies from Earle to Pope. See also Sweet, Antiquaries, p. xiii. 4 Johnson, Dictionary, 1755. 5 Boswell’s Life of Johnson, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, new edition, 1953), p.937. 6 Johnson, Dictionary, 1755. 9 characteristics were all still present in the romantic period. They can be observed in varying degrees in Walter Scott’s Jonathan Oldbuck, the eponymous Antiquary, with whom, in 1816 this peculiar figure might be said to have broken the surface of the popular imagination.7 There was more to Oldbuck, as there had been to his predecessors, than the caricature, but its salient features merit consideration. So does another equally long- standing if less often and less pithily expressed image of the antiquary which casts him as an altogether more subversive figure. From John Stow, author of the Survey of London, first published in 1598, who had his library searched by the authorities and was reported to Sir William Cecil for the possession of ‘thirty-nine objectionable titles’8 to Sir James Clerk of Penecuik, who in 1779 found his house surrounded by an angry mob threatening to smash his antiquities as ‘an abomination of the scarlet whore’, the antiquary’s access to arcane knowledge, where it was not ridiculous, might seem sinister.9 My thesis concentrates on the work of fourteen antiquaries active in the period from 1789 to 1851.10 I have chosen them to represent as wide a range of types and subject matter as possible and the definition I have applied is that of a man or, most unusually, a woman, who studies the past by means of its material remains.