THE wild adventures of Regency toffs and tarts in Bridgerton have entertained 63million viewers around the world.
But real-life Georgian England was even more raucous than the show suggests.
Rod McPhee reveals the parallels between London in the late 18th and early 19th Century and storylines in the Netflix hit drama.
Gossip
AT the heart of Bridgerton are Lady Whistledown’s writings on scandal and affairs in upper-class London.
And throughout the Regency era, magazines, “scandal sheets” and gossip columns in newspapers had similarly salacious tittle tattle.
Town And Country Magazine featured a monthly column profiling the love life and scandals of an unnamed “celebrity” couple who patrons of coffee houses and salons in London would try to guess the identity of.
In 1820, Theodore Hook launched Sunday newspaper The John Bull.
He kept his editorship secret and used his links in society to get as much gossip as possible.
Hook even used it against his political rivals and, in particular, his arch enemy Queen Charlotte, wife of George III.
Duelling
IN 1806, MP Humphrey Howarth took part in a duel wearing just his underpants.
It was a precaution he had learnt in his former job as a surgeon, where he saw how wounds proved fatal when they were infected by dirty clothing.
He needn’t have worried. Both men missed and patched things up.
But as Bridgerton shows, duels were a common way to solve arguments – Anthony Bridgerton and Lord Hastings settled their gripe with pistols in the drama.
Women got involved, too.
Lady Almeria Braddock and Mrs Elphinstone, known as The Petticoat Duellists, met in Hyde Park in 1792 with pistols after sniping about how old the other looked.
After missing one another with their guns, they both pulled out swords and tried to hack away at each other.
Multi-cultural
THE interracial marriage of Lord and Lady Hastings may seem far-fetched, but Georgian society was more diverse than we might imagine.
King George III’s wife Queen Charlotte was a descendent of 13th-Century Portuguese ruler Alfonso III and his lover Madragana, who is thought to have been African.
Dido Elizabeth Belle – the daughter of British naval officer Sir John Lindsay and African slave Maria Belle – was brought up as a lady in North London’s Kenwood House.
Meanwhile, British Army Colonel Edward Despard married a Jamaican woman called Catherine in 1785.
The aristocracy ensured she had a pension to survive on when her husband was hanged for treason.
Boxing
IN the show, Lord Hastings spars with professional boxer William Mondrich, who is based on real-life slave-turned-fighter Bill Richmond who fought for his freedom.
Born in 1763 in New York, he was spotted by Earl Percy fighting British soldiers in bars, so he paid for him to be released from slavery and taken to the UK to be educated.
After marrying a white woman in Yorkshire, with whom he had three children, he settled in London and became a superstar – the Georgian equivalent of Mike Tyson.
When European royalty visited London they were entertained by his boxing skills and he was even an usher at the coronation of George IV in 1821.
He died in 1829 and was buried in St James’s Church, Piccadilly, alongside the country’s highest-ranking aristocrats and knights.
Gambling
LORD Featherington runs up massive gambling debts, and in the late Georgian period gambling addiction was a national epidemic.
The poor would bet on anything – from how quickly someone could neck a pint or eat a live cat.
But aristocrats frittered thousands on odd wagers.
William Douglas, the 4th Duke of Queensbury, was once bet by a pal he couldn’t find a way to send a letter 50 miles in an hour.
So he stuck the note inside a cricket ball and arranged for a series of bowlers to throw it to one another until they had covered the required distance.
Georgiana Cavendish, the great-great-great-great-aunt of Princess Diana, ran up gambling debts equivalent to £4million today.
Gay underworld
THERE was a fine line between being a well-dressed dandy and a “macaroni”, a Georgian word to suggest someone was gay.
Like Bridgerton’s Henry Granville – the handsome, married painter who also sleeps with men – those who had same-sex frolics were usually discrete.
Homosexual sex was a crime punished with death during the Regency period.
So gay men would secretly congregate in “Mollie Houses” to have sex, socialise, dress up as women and carry out mock births for their own amusement.
In 1810, at the White Swan Mollie House in central London, Reverend John Church was said to have carried out the first same-sex marriages.
A raid on the venue was led by the Lord Bishop of Clogher, Percy Jocelyn – who was later caught trying to get his leg over with a soldier in 1822.
Affairs
ANTHONY Bridgerton agonises over whether an aristocrat like himself can be with lowly singer Siena.
But in Georgian high society, many toffs didn’t see it as a dilemma.
Kenneth Mackenzie, the 1st Earl of Seaforth, married prostitute Harriet Powell.
Before marrying the future Queen Charlotte, legend has it that King George III first wed Hannah Lightfoot, the daughter of a shoemaker from what is now London’s East End.
She had already tied the knot with a grocer, who abandoned her.
The then teenage king had her abducted and brought to him for his pleasure.
His son, King William IV, had TEN illegitimate children with Irish actress Dorothea Jordan.
Dandies
LORD Hastings is seen in some surprisingly outlandish outfits, but many Georgian toffs looked like punks by comparison.
Politician Charles James Fox once wore “red-heeled shoes and Paris cut-velvet, adorned with a pigeon-wing hairstyle tinted with blue powder”.
PM Benjamin Disraeli favoured silk stockings, silk gloves with rings on the outside, canary yellow waistcoats, and velvet green trousers.
Beau Brummell, the arbiter of men’s style, became famous for his ostentatious cravats, boots polished with champagne and taking five hours to get ready every day.
Sex, sex... sex
IN the show’s sauciest scenes, Benedict Bridgerton goes to a party where sex is everywhere – and even enjoys a threesome himself.
And in Georgian high society, randy punters turned to Harris’s List which ranked the women packing brothels in London’s Soho and Covent Garden.
Orgies like the one depicted by Hogarth in The Rake’s Progress were organised on a theatrical scale.
In 1778, notorious St James’s venue The Nunnery staged a performance of a Tahitian Feast Of Venus inspired by the journeys of Captain Cook.
The live sex show turned into an orgy, with the audience of “three and twenty visitors” joining in.
GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL exclusive@the-sun.co.uk
"gossip" - Google News
February 08, 2021 at 06:13AM
https://ift.tt/3jvjmvs
From sex to gossip — how real-life Georgian England was even more raucous than Bridgerton - The Sun
"gossip" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2QfcAx1
Shoes Man Tutorial
Pos News Update
Meme Update
Korean Entertainment News
Japan News Update
No comments:
Post a Comment