An unremembered loss

As it’s Remembrance Sunday, here’s an image from the Anne S K Brown collection that rather startled me while browsing. This unsigned watercolour is attributed to Robert Dighton junior, and certainly has the look of his style. The collection’s cataloguer has tagged it as a staff officer in undress uniform circa 1805, which may or may not be right; at any rate, we no longer know who he was.

Dighton junior is better known for the light cavalry officers whose dandyism he details with almost homoerotic enthusiasm, but here the elegant white pantaloons terminate in an artificial leg whose inelegant form insults its living partner. Military images of the period avoid showing dismemberment; the dead and dying tend to fall gracefully and unbloodied, often in classical positions. Dighton’s matter-of-fact portrait is unusual. One wonders how an officer missing half a leg managed to continue in service, unless in an invalid battalion, but the alternative, I suppose, would have been the misery of half-pay.

It would be better if the world had found a way to enjoy the dandyism and avoid the dismemberment, but so far it hasn’t, and that’s a fact. In the final analysis, there’s nothing good about war.

New jackets for the artillery

(This post revamped and extended August 30.)

My revisionist trawl through the dress of the King’s German Legion (ten pages so far, artillery and engineers still to come – menu to your right) has thrown up some small surprises along the way; the more you think you know, the less you really do.

What jackets, for example, did artillery officers adopt with the great uniform shift of 1811-12? All the secondary sources seem to show something with an extended lapel and bags of heavy gold embroidery, often including a loop diagonally at the top, as here in what I think must be a photo from an old JSAHR.

Interesting then that three period tailor’s books show instead for “Foot Artillery” officers a blue jacket with a pointed “strap” lapel, with scarlet facings, turnbacks included, and gold Russia braid loops terminating in crow’s feet. Versions here [below] are from Stothard’s “Rigementals” (Anne S K Brown), a copy of the Hawkes pattern book, and the Buckmaster “Old Regulation” book (the last two at the National Army Museum, with thanks to Ben Townsend for sharing images). There are slight variations: Hawkes shows eight loops in the length of the lapel but the others nine, the scrappy Buckmaster sketch loses the outer two crow’s feet over the buttons at the rear hip, while Stothard alone shows both rear and side seams, and so on. But the broad extent of agreement is impressive. [Click images for slides / enlargements.]

Stothard (Anne S K Brown Colln, Brown Uny Liby)

Hawkes

Buckmaster

The relative economy of the braid means that this has to be an undress jacket, and it was indeed worn, as shown by this detail from an Occupation print (Le Bon Genre 83) – ten loops down the lapel, but otherwise a perfect match. Two other period images of what may be a variant version of this jacket are attributable to the KGL, and will be discussed on their forthcoming Artillery page.

Le Bon Genre

If this was the undress, what of the dress version? Of the three tailor’s sources, Hawkes alone appends this note: “The Dress Jacket richly Emb[roidere]d with Gold.” And indeed, I find in the Meyer ledger [see KGL pages and posts passim] that a lieutenant of a foot battery of the King’s German Legion ordered in 1814 “An embd Regtl jacket”.  “Embroidered” here has to mean hand embroidered gold loops, doesn’t it? An expensive option, which set our lieutenant back almost £20 – a cool £1280 in today’s money, according to one online historical inflation calculator.

Hamilton Smith

On a related tack, what’s this [above] that Charles Hamilton Smith shows in his 1812-ish chart for the Horse Artillery? Red lapels with braid loops – “unaccountably” according to the commentary by Philip Haythornthwaite, who rightly denies that such a thing was ever worn. Though the crow’s feet, or eyes or whatever, seem to be at the wrong edge of the lapel, this image has to be related to our foot artillery officers’ jackets above, even though it shows what Smith thought the other ranks were supposed to wear. Could it be that a proposed Horse Artillery pattern crept in, only to be dropped by the Clothing Board after Smith’s chart had gone to press?

So it seems, for William Stothard’s notebook also contains, without commentary, this fascinating drawing [below] of a new pattern jacket for officers of the “Horse Artilleory”[sic], in full 1811 light dragoon style, complete with rear pleats and fringe, and a strap lapel with braid loops as per the foot artillery. It becomes obvious that the light dragoon lapel (one button in the top strap, then a gap, then the rest) is the missing style link that explains the form of our foot artillery jacket lapels, both braided and laced.

Stothard’s “Horse Artilleory” jacket (Anne S K Brown Collection, Brown University Library)

So what became of the “”Horse Artilleory” jacket? In the event and by whatever rationale, this slightly left-field idea of the Prince Regent’s was quietly kicked into the long grass, and the RHA kept a proud grip on their existing multi-looped dolmans, as retained even today by the King’s Troop.

As a postscript, here’s a related puzzle – a detail from a watercolour by Denis Dighton in the Royal Collection, dated 1813, showing gunners of the Royal Artillery in lapelled jackets modelled on those of their officers, complete with a diagonal loop of lace at the top. (The lace in this image has a goldish cast but can only be intended for yellow, surely? The shape of the loops – square ended, pointed or perhaps even bastion – is not really clear. The inverted lace triangle on the rear skirts is an odd touch, too.) Such jackets were never worn, so why does Dighton show them? As a record of a proposed pattern for the other ranks that never saw the light of day?

A new pelisse for the light dragoons

It’s usually a good idea to finish researching before posting, but my piece in June on that most mysterious of garments, the light dragoon pelisse of 1811, turns out to have been a bit lacking, so below is a new, expanded version, now with a new postscript and image added at the end on 30th August. (The original post is deleted.)

HRH Prinny’s scandalously Frenchified “plastron” uniform of late 1811 for the Light Dragoons is familiar from many images, and from surviving jackets. But here, from the Royal Collection, is something less familiar – a watercolour by Denis Dighton of a private of the 12th Light Dragoons with some sort of pelisse flying from his shoulder. [Click all images to enlarge.] The depiction is rather vague: dark blue, with a few white buttons and what looks like crimson fur lining and cuffs. Dighton squeezes the shape in awkwardly between cap cords, sabre, pouch and distant horizon, which I suppose might indicate a late addition to the painting. It’s all a bit odd. At the risk of attracting a heap of correcting emails, this is one of only two contemporary images of a light dragoon I know that show such a thing. But what exactly is it?

The ledger of tailor Jonathan Meyer contains entries for a number of pattern garments made for the Prince Regent in 1811. (My thanks to Meyer & Mortimer and to Ben Townsend for access to images of the pages.) For September 26 1811 an account is made for a pelisse, “pattern for Light Dragoons,” in superfine blue cloth, lapelled (i.e. double breasted) and of jacket size at 1½ yards of cloth. The body was lined with scarlet plush, the sleeves with scarlet silk, two dozen plated half ball buttons were used, the hips were fringed and necklines were attached. Side and sleeve seams, as on the more familiar jacket, were welted in scarlet cloth. While the Dighton image shows pelisses worn by privates, Meyer’s details indicate an officer’s garment, and the Board of Clothing was charged a whopping £8 12s for it.

Remarkably, we have a tailor’s drawing of just such a pelisse as Meyer describes – if not the very same one –  in William Stothard’s “Rigementals” book in the Anne S K Brown collection. It’s captioned “Pleece to the Princes Pattron [pattern]. 1813,” though that year seems to be the date of the drawing, not of the making of the garment. Again, Stothard’s entries are invariably of officer’s clothing. Though the nine button front is shown as if intended to be buttoned across, Stothard’s drawing shows the skirts, with fringe and pleats, entirely in the light dragoon style.

Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library

Shag (coarsely napped cloth in imitation of fur) or plush (finer and shorter napped) is shown on collar, cuffs, turnbacks and lapel facings; interestingly, the false pocket is also shown lined and/or edged with it. The double lines drawn on the side and sleeve seams confirm the piping in facing colour as mentioned by Meyer, though there is no sign of this in the Dighton image. The drawing does not show any necklines.

As we’ll see in a moment, the facings of the pelisse should have been in the regimental facing colour. Though the 12th had yellow, Dighton shows the pelisse faced in crimson, as if for the 9th or 23rd; red or scarlet as in the Meyer pelisse would suggest the 8th or 16th. It could be that Dighton was shown a pattern pelisse with crimson or red lining, and, taking that for a universal colour, put it into his image of a man of the 12th. In late 1811 the proposed men’s pelisse was clearly still enough of a live option for Dighton to include it in his documentation of the new uniform; in the event, along with some other enthusiasms of the Prince Regent, the idea was abandoned as too expensive or too impractical, and it was never issued.

But the pelisse was in general wear by officers; the General Order of December 1811 regulations authorised for officers “a short surtout … to be worn likewise as a pelisse on service.” Here are some examples:

The Meyer ledger also contains three orders for pelisses for officers of the 9th Light Dragoons, from 1811 and 1814. These are of superfine blue cloth with gold fringe and necklines, and one is noted as lined with crimson plush.

The Hawkes tailor’s book at the National Army Museum has a brief description of a pelisse of 1816 for the 11th Light Dragoons:

Short Pelesse of do [blue superfine cloth] to be lind with buff Shag Collar Cuffs lappels and turn backs Regl. Butts

Mollo and Haythornthwaite also cite Sir Thomas Reed’s recollection of officers of the 12th at Waterloo in blue cloth pelisses lined with yellow silk plush.

The Buckmaster tailor’s book at the National Army Museum has notes for a pelisse for an officer of the 14th, probably in 1814 (“strap” here meaning the top of the jacket lapel):

Pelisse same as Jacket, only no Point in centres of strap top facing, Lin’d & Facd with Orange shag

Lieut Col Luard of the 16th recalled:

… the officers were also instructed to wear a jacket called a pelisse, as an undress. It was very plain, double-breasted, without ornament of any kind, with a rough shaggy lining; the collar and cuffs of the same, and of the colour of the facings of the regiment. Certainly it was not brilliant in appearance, and there was nothing about it to denote the officer; indeed it was not so gay as the clothing of the private dragoon; but it was very comfortable, put on and off in an instant; and on the dreadfully wet night preceding the battle of Waterloo, was found to be a most serviceable jacket.

In 1813-14 officers of the Light Dragoons of the King’s German Legion [see page 10 of my KGL pages] bought from Meyer superfine blue regimental pelisses with gold fringe and necklines; the colours of the facings are not given.

Haythornthwaite’s version

Put together, all these examples confirm that the pelisse was cut exactly like the jacket apart from the form of the lapel tops, and that shag or plush was applied to the lining, lapels, collar and cuffs of the pelisse in the regimental facing colour. The mention in Meyer of a gold neckline for an officer of the 2nd KGL Light Dragoons, whose metal colour was silver, suggests that, like the light dragoon officer’s cap cords, the pelisse neckline may have been universally in gold.

As an afterthought, I’m left wondering why the 1811 officer’s pelisse is almost entirely missing not only from period images, but also from modern illustrations. There is, for instance, almost no sign of it in Carl Franklin’s pretty exhaustive compendium. It does show up, shorn of all detail and apparently with a white lining, in a Cassin-Scott figure taken from Dighton’s image of a man of the 12th in (I think) Philip Haythornthwaite’s Uniforms of Waterloo of 1986. The only remotely accurate portrayal appears in the Fostens’ The Thin Red Line of 1989, on an officer of the 13th in Plate XIII (see also below). This is copied wholesale (along with most of the rest of the plate) into the D Lordey page of light dragoons in the Quatuor Les Uniformes des Guerres Napoléoniennes of 1997 by Coppens, Courcelle, Lordey and Pétard. (Was this licensed? Or straight plagiarism?) More importantly, Lordey manages in the process also to alter the correct buff lining to white. Oh well. You can’t have everything …

The Thin Red Line original, and the Lordey copy with incorrect lining

Postscript

Langendijk’s original

And here, a bit late in the day, is the original source for the pelisse of the 13th, in a watercolour, apparently of an officer of that regiment, by Jan Anthonie Langendijk in the Royal Collection. (This has been published only in black and white.) The image shows the plush or shag facings well, though, oddly, it includes epaulettes and, below the rear fringe, old fashioned double turnbacks that look like a mistake, while the front lapels, as far as we can see them, appear to be of normal cloth. This pelisse is shown faced white with silver lace/metal; the “white” is an easy misapprehension for the actual pale buff of the 13th, but silver would be a definite error for the 13th’s gold.

Another Langendijk image in the Royal Collection, of an officer of the 2nd Light Dragoons of the King’s German Legion, also shows the pelisse in wear. The plush or shag collar and cuffs are clearly shown, but again, an epaulette is worn, while the lapels appear to be of cloth, and are worn like those of the jacket, buttoned back and closed as if with hooks and eyes.

The turnback problem may account for why the Fostens and Carl Franklin choose to show this from the front only. These two images may include some doubtful features, but they are still good contemporary evidence for the use of the light dragoon pelisse.

An officer’s jacket of the Madras Native Infantry

Recently I’ve found myself dipping into areas of uniform beyond the auxiliary forces, thanks to access kindly given to some great primary sources. One is a tailor’s notebook in the Anne S K Brown Military Collection at Brown University: “Rigementals” is a collection of “Memorandoms” compiled around 1813 by the tailor William Stothard, with some fascinating drawings and notes.

One puzzling item is titled “Native India Regiment” and dated 1811: an officer’s jacket with silver vellum lace in pairs and facings of gosling green – a yellowish or brownish shade, depending on who you read, produced, according to one period encyclopedia, by blue dye followed by a dose of annatto or anatta, an orange colouring. Anyway, here’s Stothard’s description of the jacket, in his characteristic, but alarming, phonetic spelling:

A Jackit, made of superfine scarlit cloth. Gosling green facing, cuffs and coller 7 hooles of twist in the lapel by 2s one in the coller with a large button, three silver vellam holes top of the lapel Pointed flap with 4 lace holes. cross flaps 4 Lace holes on the cuffs. White Casemer turnbacks & skirtlining, Lace Back & front A dimond on top the Back slit Lace to go down to the ornaments. 1811
12 yards Lace.
Lapell made to button back. 1811.

Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library

It’s interesting that this is a battalion company jacket, rather than a coat, at this period, while the paired seven button arrangement, rather than the more usual eight or ten, is abnormal. However, in a preface on “Tailours Rules,” Stothard includes a seven button arrangement in pairs, where the tailor marks out ten singly spaced buttons and then omits three: “Every tailor knows these things, etc.” Most unusual of all are the double turnbacks – reminiscent of the style of a decade previously – and the lace “diamond” at the top of the rear fly. Note that just the top three button holes each side are laced, only the triangular upper parts of the lapel facings being intended to show.

Another item drawn in the book is tied to the workshop of Jonathan Meyer in Conduit Street W1, where Stothard may conceivably have been employed for a while. A surviving ledger of 1809 is still in the keeping of Meyer & Mortimer, and sure enough, a few pages in we find a corresponding entry for a jacket for an officer of the “Native India Regt” which may well be the item noted down by Stothard. (My thanks to Meyer & Mortimer and to Ben Townsend for access to images of the ledger.) The page is half destroyed, so that the client’s name, the date of the job and the opening words of each line are missing:

… scarlet Jacket Native India Regt         1¼        38/6      2  2  –
… & materials                                                                                2 16  –
[goslin?]g green facings                              ¼ yd     37/        –    9  6
… vellum holes                                              11 y         3/10      2  2  –
buttons sent
… up[?] turnbacks                                                                       –   6  6
… rattinette                                                    2½         4/6         –   11 3
… [turn]backs                                                                               –    8  –

While Meyer specifies eleven yards of silver vellum lace, Stothard gives twelve, but otherwise what remains is an excellent match. In total, the jacket cost £8 15s 3d, equivalent to well over £600 in today’s money.

So what was the “Native India Regiment”? No formation with the name is recorded, so Meyer and Stothard must be referring to an unspecified regiment of that character. Thanks to the distinctive gosling green facings, this can only be the 9^th Madras Native Infantry, whose buttons at the time were paired and whose officers wore silver lace. I know next to nothing about the dress of the armies of the Presidencies of the East India Company, so I’ve no idea how typical or how well documented elsewhere this unusual style may be.

The trouble with Cecil

Cecil C P Lawson’s five volumes of A History of the Uniforms of the British Army: it’s where I started, back as a kid in the local reference library, hunched over the vast wooden table before the high, glass fronted shelves on a summer afternoon, carefully studying each page of each volume. So I’m quite fond of the reactionary old buffer.

And yet … Nowadays, when I look at the murky, scratchy drawings of the later volumes, I’m painfully aware of the imperfections in Lawson’s work. But it’s not just the haziness of some of the specifics; sometimes there are odd, unaccountable errors of detail too.

A few previous posts on this blog have looked at the cavalry-influenced styles adopted by some light company officers of volunteers and militia. In a bid to find models for these among the regular regiments, I’ve recently been trawling period images, with near zero success. But I did come across one. In William Loftie’s album of eyewitness images appears an officer of the 21^st Foot or Royal North British Fuziliers in 1801. [Left below. Click to enlarge.] Given the wings and Tarleton (as opposed to a fur cap), this must be an officer of the light company. His jacket bears two rows of closely spaced buttons, extending well towards the shoulders – a good match for that of the Berkeley Volunteers shown here, and a confirmation that such styling was not confined to the auxiliary forces.

Loftie

Lawson

At some point Lawson was commissioned by Anne S K Brown to copy the Loftie watercolours for her own collection, now at Brown University; some of these “copies” were reproduced and described by René Chartrand in 1993-4 in Military Illustrated. Versions also appear in Lawson’s Volume V. Now Loftie’s Fuzilier clearly has at least thirteen buttons showing in each row above his sash, but in the Brown copy Lawson has reduced these to the regulation ten, reverting the jacket to a bog standard officer’s pattern. (If this were so, the buttons would be in twos, this regiment wearing them paired on their regulation coats.)

Look closer and there are other discrepancies: Loftie shows the collar, cuffs and facings edged with a narrow white cord or feathering, but Lawson has changed this to a broad gold lace. The Tarleton has all gilt furniture, but Lawson seems to give it a silver band, and Chartrand describes it thus. Lawson also heightens the shape of the pointed cuffs and adds fringes to the wings. In Loftie the breeches are properly white, but the gloves are buff; Lawson shows buff breeches and white gloves. Why? I’ve no idea.

Similar glitches affect other figures in the album. For example, Loftie shows the light company officer’s cap of the 38^th with a green band around the base, a silver cord and tassels, and a two-part silver plate with a crown over some sort of rayed star. Lawson’s copy for Brown adds a silver band around the top edge, while his version in Volume V of A History of the Uniforms changes cord and tassels to green and omits the plate. (The confusion passes through to the Fostens’ Thin Red Line, where the same cap – “after Loftie” – has a green cord, silver bands top and bottom and a plate with no star.)

Details, details, I hear you say. There are more important things in life to get upset about, and so there are, and no doubt uniformology is not an exact science. But how inexact can we afford to be?

School volunteer corps in the War against France

The volunteer enthusiasm of the decades each side of 1800 stimulated the formation of volunteer corps not only in the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, but also, more informally, in a number of schools. Details are hazy, but, for instance, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, as early as 1794, we find that:

“During the day [June 4 1794] the pupils of Mr Hodgson’s Academy paraded before the house of Alexander Turner, Esq., Mayor of Leeds, and, having learnt the military exercise, fired three excellent volleys.”

This “academy”, in Park Row, Leeds, was a school, and not a military academy as such. 

The Salopian Journal of September 28 1803 reports that:

“On Monday last the young gentlemen of the Royal Free Grammar School, who, with the approbation of Mr Butler, had formed themselves into two companies, under the appropriate title of THE ROYAL SHREWSBURY SCHOOL CORPS, had a Grand Field Day, in order to receive their Colours …”

These two companies consisted of a company of infantry, and one of “dismounted cavalry”.

The only image I’ve yet seen is a print portraying the school volunteer corps of Albemarle House in Hounslow, Middlesex. A foxed copy is in the Anne S K Brown collection and accessible online there. Another is described by C C P Lawson in Volume V of his uniform history.

The print is not dated, but the style of dress gives an overall impression of an armed association of the 1798-1802 era. The boys wear round hats with white feathers, blue jackets or perhaps coats with red collars and cuffs, white pantaloons and white belts. Older boys, as officers or sergeants, wear blue pantaloons with long black gaiters and red sashes. Officers wear gorgets. The master standing at the left, as commanding officer, wears a coat with white turnbacks and a cocked hat. The band are in short jackets without skirts and wear mirliton style caps with red bands. The corps carries a King’s and a regimental colour, both with red fields, but no other details are visible. [Click for enlargements.]

Lawson’s description suggests that small details of the colouring may have varied in different copies of the print. Despite his assertion that “records” describe this institution as a military academy, I can’t find anything to back this, and rather think that this is a school volunteer corps. At any rate, it’s a great snapshot of a vanished moment in time, and of one forgotten aspect of the great volunteer movement of the War against France.

‘A nearer resemblance to our Brethren in Ireland’

I know this has been flagged up elsewhere, but I can’t help posting about this wonderful print recently acquired for the Anne S K Brown Military Collection, which portrays:

“An exact representation of the whole of the PROCESSION of ALDERMAN KIRKMAN’s FUNERAL, taken as it passed thro’ the City to St. Michael Bassishaw Church, – together with the Procession on Foot to the Church, – the Funeral Exercise with all the Motions which the Association Companies went thro’, correctly drawn; – the Uniform Dresses of the Captains of the Horse, Infantry and Light-Infantry and the Drill-Dress of the LONDON ASSOCIATION and of the other City Associations which attended upon this Solemn Occasion.”

Titles were certainly comprehensive in 1780, and quite rightly too. Italics were also italics, and capitals capitals. And the City of London was an inhabited community, not a heap of desolate skyscrapers.  Kirkman had been prominent with the volunteers during the recent Gordon Riots, and the useful background provided here, on the Anne S K Brown blog, suggests that the display of military force may have had a deeper purpose than mere pomp and circumstance. (Click the image above for some eye watering enlargement.)

The hundreds of tiny marching figures, fluently and economically drawn by one T Bonnor, include the infantry, light infantry and light horse of the Loyal London Association (in scarlet, faced black velvet, silver officer’s lace, drill dress white faced blue);  the Bishops Gate Street Association (blue faced buff); the Castle Baynard Ward Association (colours not given); the Newgate Street Association (white faced orange), and the Cheap Ward Association (Kirkman’s own, red faced green). Orange facings must surely have had a political-religious significance at this time? This is the “6 Pence plain” version of the print; the “1,S. Colour’d” version must have been splendid, but labour intensive for the poor underpaid hand colourer.

The volunteers of 1779 to 1782 were the precursors of the mass movements of 1794, 1798 and 1803, but have received relatively little study. The London Association is also shown in Francis Wheatley’s painting of the riot in Broad Street, which I can only find online in print form. Wheatley also portrayed Henry Grattan and a number of scenes of Irish volunteers, which points up an interesting connection. The correspondence of Thomas Taylor of the Liverpool Military Association of 1782 (among the Memoirs & Proceedings for 1900 of the Manchester Literary & Philosophical Society) contains these significant comments:

“I have been sorry to hear some reflections lately thrown out by some Townsmen of yours and those friends to the Association, that the Officers in your Companies [the Manchester  Military Association] have gone to expence in their dress, and have made a shew and parade by no means consistent with the true spirit of the institution, and I heard the names of several Gentlemen mentioned who had left the Corps on that account. I wish these insinuations may have been wrong or exaggerated, for I shall always wish to hear you shall proceed on right principles.

[We] shall go to no further Expense this winter as we have resolved that the present Jacketts are sufficient uniforms till the Spring … It is necessary for us to be economical, we have no fund to recur to to furnish the extraordinaries but I do not think us the less respectable on this account. It gives us a nearer resemblance to our Brethren in Ireland, whose Conduct I wish us to imitate in all respects.“

(My italics.) Talk of “true spirit” and “right principles” shared, in Taylor’s view, with the Irish volunteers implies a strong Whiggism that finds its visual expression in an economy of dress that keeps distinctions of rank to the necessary minimum. (This argument would surface again in the more polarised atmosphere of twenty years later – see this post.) Alignments between the English and Irish volunteers of this era could well deserve further attention.