‘Fashioning Regulation’ plus Shropshire Militia riflemen

It’s nice to be proved right occasionally. In December I predicted that the only thing better than Volume 1 of Ben Townsend’s Fashioning Regulation, Regulating Fashion, his in-depth study of British uniforms of 1800-1815, would be Volume 2. And so it is, with no insult intended to the first. A good hundred pages longer, this time the coverage is deepened, but the high standard maintained and exceeded. The transcribed documents of the yearly ‘Regulation’ chapters are even more fully and thoughtfully contextualised, while the alternating essay-type chapters are symmetrically packed with supporting documents. This is a real encyclopaedia of its
subject.

The central focus this time is the Prince Regent’s regulation of 1812, which, for better or worse, comprehensively Europeanised the appearance of his army. Every conceivable piece of evidence on this aspect has been included, and it’s fascinating, for instance, to see the Carlton House descriptions of pattern caps and helmets set against what was finally chosen.

Other discussions include undress clothing (highly useful), officers’ greatcoats and ‘long’ pelisses (ground breaking), the minefield of confusing legwear (excuse the mixed metaphor) and the revelatory evidence of the many prints of British soldiers produced during the Occupation of Paris – previously dismissed as fanciful satires but now opened up as a major new source on what was really worn.

Brilliant stuff, and available now from Helion Books. No doubt it will be discounted in due course – Helion’s books seemingly always are – but is it worth the lengthy wait? I didn’t think so, and I’m pleased I didn’t. I shall be referring to this book for years to come.

A final note – a page is now uploaded here with a fairly tight case study of the rifle companies of the Shropshire Militia, from their formation in 1810. Click here to find it, or try the usual links round the edge. The rest of the Shropshire regiment may follow at some point, but it’s a major task, as much of the evidence – all of it in the case of the rifles – is archival, and putting it together involves juggling an awful lot of snippets from correspondence, bills, invoices, returns etc. And not many pictures.

The Shropshire rifle companies are interesting. Hosting riflemen within an existing regiment may have influenced some aspects of dress, particularly that of the buglers. Or the ‘Bugle Blowers’ as Sergeant Jones the regimental tailor liked to call them …

“Whiskered tools of power”: Lord Grantham and The Black Dwarf

In his Fashioning Regulation (see previous post) Ben Townsend notes that in the British service of the eighteen-noughties and teens the alien moustache was generally regarded as a Germanic import. But it seems also that, for some, such foreignness could take on an oppressively political significance – at least judging by a curious episode first chronicled in Wooler’s British Gazette and The Black Dwarf, the papers of the radical satirist Thomas J Wooler, and then picked up widely by the mainstream press of the day.

At the termination of their spell of permanent duty in June 1819, Colonel Lord Grantham had made the customary speech to his regiment of West Yorkshire Yeomanry, lately re-branded as the Yorkshire Hussars (again, see previous post), remarking that –

He could not detain them long in alluding to a circumstance so trifling in itself, as the wearing mustachios on the upper lip, which had been stigmatized by certain persons as an attempt to Germanize them. The fact was, that he, as commander of the regiment, had no wish, nor issued any orders on the subject, but it had arisen from the right feeling and good sense of the corps; who when they had taken the name of Hussars thought they ought also to assume their appearance. He was perfectly aware the existence of such a regiment was not a very agreeable circumstance to certain persons in the neighbourhood …

Such persons, he warned his men darkly, would oppose them “by striving to impress upon their minds that they were the whiskered tools of power.”

But he trusted if ever they had to cut down those gentry, they would let them know that although they were hairy on the upper lip, they could shave close.

(Despite this, he concluded by suggesting that, as farmers, they might opt to lose the moustaches.) This provocation (coming just a few weeks before Peterloo) was promptly picked up by Wooler in The Black Dwarf of 30 June in a commentary couched in “the most insulting and irritating language, though perhaps … not … within the legal and technical character of a libel”. The freshly moustachioed yeomanry, declared Wooler, were –

… things who dare not be men, lest his Lordship should be offended … fawning dependants, or the subtle slaves of the great, with a few fools, and a larger proportion of coxcombs.

There was much more of the same. On 10 July an unidentified stranger appeared at Wooler’s Fleet Street office, demanding to see the writer of the offending article. Wooler “in his usually facetious manner [responded] lightly, and with indifference”. The stranger furiously demanded a published apology for the “scurrilously abusive” language. Wooler challenged him to prove that it was so.

Cruikshank’s topical cartoon [British Museum] has Grantham as a Herculean (and fully mustachioed) giant belabouring Wooler as the Black Dwarf

At this point things turned physical, the complainant aiming several blows with his cane, and Wooler making “a spirited resistance”. The noise of the fight brought up some compositors and printers from downstairs, who collared the attacker; he declined to give his name but offered a visiting card, revealing himself to be Lord Grantham of St James Square.

A Lord! A Lord! escaped involuntarily, with a burst of laughter, from the bye-standers; and … in pity to the title, he was suffered to depart, amid the derision of the spectators …

Some papers expected the affair to be revived in court, but in the event Wooler printed a grudging retraction. On one of Grantham’s own images of his Hussars (above, and see previous post) appears a hint of fluff on an upper lip, though a painting of the period at the National Army Museum has distinct moustaches all round.

Various accounts of this incident appear in, among others, Bell’s Weekly Messenger of 12 July 1819, the Staffordshire Advertiser of 17 July, the Leeds Intelligencer of the 19th, and the Westmorland Gazette and Yorkshire Gazette of
the 24th.

‘Can we not fight without dying in tinsel?’ Plus new pages

Hostile reaction to the “muffeteer” styling of the newly converted Hussar regiments of the British army is knowingly and entertainingly discussed within Ben Townsend’s chapter on “The Rise, Wobble and Triumph of the Hussar Craze” in his excellent Fashioning Regulation, Regulating Fashion, Vol 1, published earlier this year by Helion. (Incidentally, if you’re into British uniforms of 1800-15 and you haven’t bought this book, do so. Right now. The only thing better will be Volume 2.)

This bizarre episode in military couture has much to offer researchers in historical gender studies, appearing to some as an outburst of “effeminacy”, and “foreign” to boot. But there are other interesting strands, too. Here’s a prolonged rant – or at least some selected passages – that I happened across while trawling the papers, by “AN OFFICER … and a decided enemy to extravagance”, submitted to the Editor of the Tyne Mercury, Northumberland and Durham and Cumberland Gazette for 28 January 1806:

Good God! are our Colonels, and even some of our Generals, fit for nothing but to be master taylors? Instead of studying military tactics, languages, or the geography of their country, they are inventing the pattern of a cuff or a pantaloon, or admiring (like a woman), their head-dress in the glass, at the same time ruining the fortunes, expectations, credit, and character of their inferior officers …

On [a light dragoon] officer joining now, he must provide himself, (can it be believed?) with no less than four different head dresses; namely, the real useful, but at present discarded and unfashionable helmet; a most expensive hussar cap; an immense cocked hat; and a fine superbly laced foraging or watering cap … how truly ridiculous it is to see our modern light dragoons strutting about with immense heavy dragoon cocked hats, like sparrows without tails …

… I will next proceed to the jacket, pelisses, and pantaloons. Look at an officer in them. Why, his fortune is on his back, or they are not paid for – one or the other. He is nothing but lace before and behind, up to the elbows and down to the knees … Then to be completely an hussar, an officer must have gold lace and embroidered cartouch belts and boxes, sabre or sabel tashes, and belts, expensive hussar sashes, two or three swords and sword knots, a pair of spurs for every pair of boots, shabrackes and rich horse accoutrements; and some regiments (can it be credited!) have their regimental pipes and tobacco pouches, and even the very whiffing of their tobacco is regulated by the movement of the commanding officer when they are on the parade, according to whichever flank he moves to; the same as eyes right, eyes left, it is, whiff right, whiff left …

… an officer now on joining one of those regiments, must have a ready money fortune of 3 or 400 guineas at least, to enable him to equip himself, or he will know the consequence in a short time … An officer of the old school would never comprehend, and would be astonished at the recapitulation of the jawbreaking names of our new fashioned foreign frippery. Can we not fight without dying in tinsel?

Let us resume our helmets like English dragoons. Let us cast off our foppery. Let us be armed for war, not for parade and show … Let us banish effeminacy far away … Then we shall not be ruined in our fortunes and our character … and we shall cast away all our superfluous articles, or make a present of them to the theatres. What else are they fit for?

The Hussar pipe craze is well documented, but was there anything behind the allegation of “whiffing” by numbers on parade? As for the charge of extravagance, Ben tabulates in his book numerous prices extrapolated from the Meyer tailor’s ledger that easily substantiate this: an officer of the 7th Hussars obliged to part with £57 in 1810 for just a jacket, pelisse, waistcoat, pantaloons and overalls, let alone all the rest of his necessary kit, would have to fork out £4,522 in today’s money, according to the Bank of England’s handy online inflation calculator. Nor were the auxiliaries immune to foppish posing, as suggested by the rather nice etching above by Colonel Thomas, Lord Grantham, of the court dress of the Yorkshire Hussars.

Speaking of Yorkshire, there are two more new pages on this site; they cover the North Yorkshire Militia of 1759-1820 (quite extensively), and (a bit more unevenly) Lancashire yeomanry and association cavalry of 1797-1828. The North York page touches, among other things, on the vexed issue of the regiment’s legendary (or urban legendary?) green clad “riflemen” of 1795. Were they or weren’t they? It’s a niche topic, but there’s no niche so tiny that no-one takes an interest.