ELIZABETH CRAVEN AND HER WORLD

When Elizabeth Craven travelled from London down to Southampton to visit the Isle of Wight, which she loved, she must have passed through Alton in Hampshire, and may even have driven right past the house, Chawton Cottage, where Jane Austen was living from 1809 until 1817. There was a family connection between them as Jane's sister Cassandra had been engaged to Elizabeth Craven's son's chaplain, who died tragically on a military expedition to the West Indies. And with the Austens was living Martha Lloyd, who was related to the Craven family. Her mother had been born a Craven. This red brick house on a corner in the village of Chawton was the property of Austen's wealthy brother Edward who also owned the local manor house. He provided a former bailiff's cottage on the estate for his widowed mother and two sisters, and it was here that Jane lived for the last eight years of her life, while she wrote most of her best novels. Nowadays the house is preserved as a tribute ...

How did Georgians wash their hair? Did they wash it at all? Didn't they just wear wigs, which were full of revolting powder? Well, it wasn't quite as bad as that. In Culpeper's English Physician; and Complete Herbal, one of the most frequently reprinted herbals of the period, we find this observation: "The hair washed with the lye made of the ashes of the [barberry] tree, and water, will make it turn yellow. " Elsewhere he claims that infusions of the herbs wall-rue and maiden-hair can be used to prevent hair falling out, and also observes of the Southernwood tree that its ashes will, if mixed with old salad-oil and used to wash the hair or scalp, cure baldness. [1] Whether or not any of these plants will have any effect on hair growth, the recommendation proves that people must have been using herbal infusions as well as lye mixed with ashes to wash their hair, in the absence of anything better. Why would anyone use ashes to wash their hair? Because the...

Newbury Theatre from the Theatric Tourist 1804 Under the Patronage of Her Serene Highness the Margravine of Anspach, by Whose Permission an Engraving of Her Elegant Theatre Will be Given as a Frontispiece to the Publication, this Day (December 1, 1804) is Published, No. 4, of a Work Never Before Presented to the Public, Entitled The Theatric Tourist being a genuine collection of correct views, with brief and authentic historical accounts of all the principal provincial theatres in the United Kingdom / by a theatric amateur. London : T. Woodfall, 1805....printed for Sylvester, Clement Chapple, Edward Kerby, William Lindsell, Henry Delahoy Symonds, Thomas Woodfall, Vernon and Hood. The Theatre at Richmond in Yorkshire. J ames Winston (1773 or 79-1843) was an English actor, artist and sometimes architect who started as a strolling player and became manager of the Drury Lane Theatre in London by 1819. He is thought to have written one play "Perseverance" (1802) and he co...

 "A French Dentist Shewing a Specimen of His Artificial Teeth and False Palates", drawing by Thomas Rowlandson, 1811. Did Georgians clean their teeth at all? The answer is yes... well at any rate they tried to. People were already aware that keeping teeth clean made them look and feel better and slowed down the onset of decay. Doctors recommended doing so and books and magazines offered advice. People who could afford it resorted to all sorts of methods to avoid toothache, early tooth loss, and dental misery. Toothpicks and mouth-washes were widely used in polite society and we also find references to tooth-brushes at quite an early date. In 1746, Medicina Brittanica by Thomas Short M.D. offered this advice: "Wash the Mouth often with a Decoction of Mouse-ear in small Beer; often snuff up the Nose Vinegar, wherein Primrose roots were infused ... To fasten the Teeth, chew often Roots of Brook-lime ; or rinse the Mouth often with a Decoction of Wild Tan...

Henrietta Vernon, Lady Grosvenor, by Thomas Gainsborough    When a Georgian woman got divorced, she was supposed to disappear into a twilight of disgrace and social disapproval. At the end of Mansfield Park , this happens to Maria Bertram, who elopes with Henry Crawford, is divorced by her husband Mr Rushworth, and ends up banished from England to live somewhere abroad "remote and private".    But did she really have such a terrible fate? I sometimes imagine that Maria Rushworth had a whale of a time in Paris or Brussels, far away from Mansfield Park. The life of Henrietta, Lady Grosvenor, suggests that divorce was not always such a disaster. There was in fact a flourishing Alternative Society in Georgian England, within which such women lived with impunity and they were very much in the public eye. Miss Caroline Vernon c.1780 by  François-Xavier Vispré from National Tr ust  collection, Attingham Park, Shropshire, the home of her sister Anna. ...