Victoria's Day One in London, Part Two

As you might recall, in Part One, Ed and I were standing on Horse Guards Parade, watching a ceremony of mounted riders.  Instead of the familiar Red Coats, they were wearing black uniforms, which shocked me. What was the story?  Ed was probably thinking more about his sore foot, with its burst blisters and pain with every step.

Horse Guards Parade, in the background: the Old Admiralty Building

And behind us was the museum, with the hope of a seat where Ed could rest his aching foot.

Museum Entrance
 
We entered and paid our admission — and miraculously there were benches, several of them. One problem solved.  Now what about those uniforms?
 
The Guide explained that every summer the Household Cavalry has time away from Horse Guards  for maneuvers; their duties are taken over by the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery, usually stationed at Woolrich.  For more information, click here.
 
 
King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery
 
As you might be able to see in the above view, some members of the KTRHA are female.  That was a bit of a surprise, though a nice one.  This unit is responsible for all the artillery salutes in the park.  Click here for an account of the salutes to the new baby Prince George of Cambridge.
 
 
In Green Park, ©Getty Images 
 
 
So, the mystery of the uniforms was solved; I later found out that the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery uniforms are almost identical to those worn by their predecessor unit in the Battle of Waterloo. 

 
 
 
7th (King’s Own) Hussars, Waterloo Uniform
 
 
 
The more familiar Redcoat uniform
 
 
We found Ed several seats placed conveniently around the museum. Unlike Kristine and me, our hubbies (would you believe I actually wrote hobbies there?) do not necessarily read every word of every text panel in a museum like this. 
 
 
 
As you can see above (sorry for the reflections, but it was a bright and sunny day, a delight for London), the Household Cavalry wears various uniforms, including the kind of desert camouflage needed in Afghanistan.

 
 
Second in command of the British troops during the Battle of Waterloo was Henry Paget, Earl of Uxbridge (1768-1854) who led the cavalry.  In a famous incident at the very end of the battle, Paget and Wellington were side by side on horseback watching the action.  A cannon shot hit Paget in the leg.  He is reported to have said, “By God, sir, I’ve lost my leg,” to which the Duke responded, “By God, sir, so you have.”  Thus, the epitome of sang froid.
 
 
Paget’s Artificial leg
 
 
After the amputation of his leg, Paget recovered and led a long and illustrious career, his need for artificial limbs and his willingness to experiment leading to many advances in the science of prosthetics.  Click here for the story of his actual limb and its bizarre fate as told by Kristine.
 
 
 
Examples of stalls for the horses
 
For more information on the Household Cavalry Museum, click here.
 
 
Horse Guards
 
The Duke of Wellington for many years was the commander in chief of  the British Army.  As such his office was in Horse Guards, in the room directly above the arch.
 
 
 
Museum display
 
 
In the museum, a display tells the story of the Duke and his Armies, and shows a picture of him in  leaving Horse Guards for the last time.
 
 
 
After Ed’s foot was adequately rested and I had read every word of the descriptions and explored the small gift shop, we went back outside, where the original troops had been joined by a new set of horsemen and horsewomen. Their commanders seemed to be completing a changing of the guard.  With a glance at the crowds of onlookers, Ed led the way back to Whitehall where we grabbed a taxi en route to our next stop, Mallett at 37 Dover Street in Mayfair.  More about that in Part Three, coming soon.
 
 
 

Shoe Help Needed

I have a question regarding shoemaking. Many contemporary diaries and letters refer to highborn ladies making shoes as a pastime during the early 19th century. It seems that even the Duchess of Wellington got into the act sometime later but I can find nothing more concrete than this passage from Alice Morse Earl’s Two Centuries of Costume in America: “In Mrs. Gaskell’s My Lady Ludlow we are told that my lady would not sanction the mode of the beginning of the century which “made all the fine ladies take to making shoes.” Mrs. Blundell, in one of her novels, sets her heroine (about 1805) at shoe-making. The shoes of that day were very thin of material, very simple of shape, were heelless, and in many cases closely approached a sandal. . . . I have seen several old letters which gave rules for shaping and directions for sewing party-shoes of thin light kid and silk. It is not probable that any heavy materials were ever made up by women at home.”

I’ve seen another passage from a contemporary letter which relates how a group of women chipped in on the cost of hiring themselves a master in shoemaking to come to one of their houses in order to give the group lessons on the art. Does anyone have any more information about this unique occupation?  Victoria seems to think that the ladies worked on the decorative uppers, rather than actually constructing a shoe, but we’d be grateful for any information or research leads you can provide.

A Couple In England – The End

And so Hubby and I arrived at the end of our journey. We decided to have our last English meal at the Three Tuns, another of the historic pubs of Windsor that happens to be located directly behind the Guildhall. I wanted my last meal of bangers of mash. And enough rum to drown my sorrows.

“Are you sad about going home tomorrow?” Hubby asked once we were seated.

“I’m home now. I’m sad about going back to Florida.”

“Most people in England would love to trade places with you,” Hubby commented.

“Mad dogs and Englishmen,” I replied.

“Huh?”

“Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun,” I said, referring to our sub tropic Florida weather. Humid doesn’t begin to cover it. I expect that Gunga Din and Wellington felt the same about India.

“The grass is always greener,” Hubby went on.

“How droll. Actually, the grass does happen to be greener in England, where it isn’t scorched by the blazing midday sun on a constant basis.”

“Droll?”

I gave Hubby a scathing look and he dropped it. “What time do we leave tomorrow?” he asked instead.

Oh boy. Here we go. “About tomorrow . . . . “

Now it was Hubby’s turn to glare. “C’mon, out with it.”

I ordered another round from a passing waiter and forged ahead. “After we fly into Newark, we have a four hour layover before our three hour flight to Florida.”

“What?”

“Ssshhhh! Don’t get excited.”

“Excited? Is that what you think I am? Excited? Because I’m telling you right now, excited I’m not. Why would you do that to me?”

“It was either that or wait till the next day to fly home.”

“For Christ’s sake, why didn’t you wait till the next day?”

“I didn’t know which option to choose and then I decided that you’d have blown a fuse no matter which way I went, so I opted for the layover. But it’s okay because Brooke is going to come to the airport to pick us up. We’ll all go out to eat, then we’ll go back to her house for a while and then she’ll bring us back to the airport. So we won’t be stuck at the terminal for four hours.”

This mollified him a bit. A very little bit.

“Listen, the next time you plan a trip to England for us, do it in the summer, will ya? And don’t include London on the itinerary. London is too crazy for me. I liked Bath and I like Windsor. Think small. And when you come over here to look for houses, you’re coming by yourself. I’m not traipsing all over England looking at houses. Understand?”

I kept my counsel, wisely deciding that now was not the time to tell Hubby that when a man was tired of London, he was tired of life.

“Alright, then, I’ll just bring Vicky with me.”

“And that’s another thing,” Hubby went on. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that Ed and I don’t figure in the plans that you and Vicky have for living in England. I’m just hoping you two plan on letting us die natural deaths first.”

“Ideally you and Ed would be dead, granted, but I’ve got everything planned out in case you’re still alive when I move here.”

“Oh, brother. Go on. I can’t wait to hear this.”

“When we move to England, you’re going to raise chickens.”

“What?”

“I’ll take care of the sheep and you’ll raise chickens.”

“Are you nuts? Why would I raise chickens?”

“So that you can barter the eggs, of course. Just think about it, you’ll put on your tweed coat and make your way out every day to collect the eggs. Then you’ll take your basket and you’ll toddle your way down to the pub and trade your eggs for pints of beer. `Here are six fresh eggs in exchange for a pint of your best, my good man.’ I can hear you now.”

“It’s the twenty-first century. No one barters any more.”

“They do in England.”

“You’re nuts. You do realize that, don’t you? Explain to me why I wouldn’t just get in the car, drive to the pub and pay money for a pint of beer. You know, the way normal people do.”

“See, this is why you don’t figure into my plans for living in England. If I asked Vicky to collect the eggs and trade them in at the pub, she’d do it without an argument.”

“Because she’s as nuts as you are, that’s why. You’ll be known as the two crazy American women.”

“Widows.”

“Huh?”

“We’ll be known as the two crazy American widows.”

“Listen, all joking aside, dead or alive, I am not raising chickens. Got it?”

Our dinners arrived and we ate silently for a while. Then I asked, “Did you enjoy anything at all about the trip?”

Hubby looked at me. “Sure. Sure I did, Hon. I enjoyed all the parts that weren’t London, that didn’t involve walking, or rain or being sick.”

As near as I could figure, that left the plane ride over. And Burger and Lobster. And Café Nero.

“I wish you loved England as much as I do.”

“I don’t have to love England. I love you and that’s all that matters.”

I smiled at him as we joined hands across the table. “Next time, I promise we’ll go somewhere warm.”

“It doesn’t matter, as long as we’re together.”

“You mean that?”

“I do, my good man. Now tell me what in the Hell you think you know about raising sheep.”

THE END

Victoria's Day One in London, Part One

After our two weeks in the Czech Republic and Germany last July, my husband Ed and I flew to London.  I had been preparing for months to cram our days in England with a maximum of activity. But Ed was of another mind.  He was limping on a very sore foot, and no matter what advice the Boots pharmacist gave us, the only way Hubby was comfortable was sitting down. Or prone on the mattress.

I was undeterred.  We checked into our hotel, the Pullman London St. Pancras, 100 Euston Rd.  On my various trips to London, I try to find hotels in different parts of the city, so I can get to know more of various neighborhoods.  Until recently, the Pullman was part of the French chain, Novotel; it’s had extensive renovation since its purchase by the Pullman chain. It is located immediately west of the British Library which is just west of the St. Pancras Hotel and Station, where the Eurostar operates.  Above, looking east from our floor.

The little bistro where we had dinner featured a gnome on the table.  LOL.
 
Alongside the hotel, Charlton Street has an abundance of pubs, bistros and other small shops, many of which I suspect are under some threat from the extensive gentrification going on around there.  Since the Eurostar moved to St. Pancras, the entire neighborhood has been upgrading, with all the positive and negative features of the process. 
 
Before leaving for Cambridge, we had one full day in London. In the morning, we started by taking the tube to Charing Cross station and waving our greetings to Charles I as he looks down Whitehall.
 
 
 
Charles I
 
The bronze statue has an interesting history. Charles I (1600-49) took the throne of England after the death of the first Stuart King, his father James I, in 1625.  Hubert Le Sueur, a French sculptor, cast the statue in 1648, but before it was erected, the Civil War broke out and Charles I was beheaded.  The statue was sold for scrap, but the purchaser never broke it down, instead hiding it until after the Restoration in 1660 when Charles II was welcomed back as the new monarch. Charles II purchased the statue of his father and had it installed where it now stands, looking toward the site of his beheading in front of the Banqueting House, about halfway down Whitehall toward Parliament.
 
 
At the junction of The Strand and Whitehall
Charles I is behind the traffic light at the right
 
As Ed limped along, we made our way to Horse Guards.
 
“We’ve been there before,:” he reminded me, as if I needed to be told.
 
“Yes,” I replied, thinking if you only knew how many times.  “But we’ve never been to the Household Cavalry Museum.”
 
“Do they have places to sit down?” he said between clenched teeth.
 
“Of course,” I said, not really knowing if there was anything resembling a bench within 500 feet of the place.
 
Horse Guards on Whitehall
 
I tried to divert Ed from his painful left foot by pointing out the Palladian style of the building, completed in 1753  to the plans of William Kent.  “Remember the Kent name,” I said to Ed.  “We’ll run into him later in Norfolk.”
 
Ed looked skeptical.  “I thought we were in Kent a couple of years ago. What do you mean, run into him?”
 
“This time I mean William Kent, the 18th century architect, not the English county.  And definitely nor the cigarette brand I remember from college.” 
 
 Ed shrugged. 
 
 
Entering Horse Guards
Museum Poster at the gate
 
Though I’d visited many times, I had not known about the museum until Kristine and Greg went there (click here) and I had no idea where it was, though I didn’t dare admit it at that moment, not wanting to drag Ed one more step than he needed to make… but what was this?  In the place of the two red-coated guards always on either side of the gate, were riders in Black jackets. What was going on?
 
 

For a moment I wondered where I was,  But there were crowds of people pouring into the parade grounds behind the building.  Something was up.  We followed along and sure enough, there was a group of horses and riders in formation.

 
I think Ed even forgot his aching foot for a few minutes as we watched other riders join in. Below, the bugler arrives.
 

 

    

A good shot of the back of the uniforms.
 
 
There were scads of tourists and hundreds, perhaps thousands of cameras clicking away.  The riders formed up in a line headed by an officer.  Nothing more happened except that the horses stamped and tossed their heads. The riders stayed as motionless as possible.
 
 

 

Horse Guards Parade is the location of the annual Trooping the Color when the Queen reviews the Household Cavalry; it was the tiltyard for jousting of the old Palace of Westminster. During the 2012 Olympics, it was the scene of the Beach Volleyball competition.

 

Beach Volleyball at Horse Guards Parade, 2012

 

2nd Footguards on parade, by John Chapman, 18th Century
 
Quite a contrast among the views of Horse Guards, isn’t there?  I was happy to say that it showed no bad effects from the Olympics — looked just the same as it had the last time I saw it for the Trooping of the Color in 2011.  For that story, start by clicking here.

Household Cavalry Museum Entrance
 
 

As we stood there watching the unmoving tableau, I looked around for a place for Ed to sit and rest his foot.   Aha!!  The Museum entrance.  Certainly they’d have a bench!

In the next adventure, we solve the mystery of the unusual uniforms on the riders and complete our visit to Horse Guards.  And does Ed find a place to sit??  Coming soon.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 

 

A Pinterest Post

The theme of this Pinterest Post is “things that might appear in an historical novel set in London.”

Date : c.1850 The Orchestra Stand at Vauxhall Gardens in the centre of the grove. The organ seen immediately below the roof with the orchestra seats below it and the supper-boxes on the ground floor. This is the first photograph I’ve ever seen of Vauxhall. If you know of others, please share. I must say, the image below paints a much more romantic view of the Gardens. Note: Vauxhall Gardens closed for the last and final time in 1859.

 
 
 

 
 
 
From what I can tell, this was pinned from author Jo Beverly’s Flicker page – small world, isn’t it?
 
 
 
 
 

 
The Crystal Palace fire, November 30, 1936 and the ruins of the Palace below.

 
Lamplighter, c.. 1930
 
 
 

This water gate stood at the river’s edge, fifty yards from Samuel Pepys’ house. Built in 1626, as the triumphal entry for the Duke of Buckingham to York House, since the Victoria Embankment was completed in 1870 it has been marooned a hundred yards from the Thames. From  “In Search of Relics of Old London” at Spitalfields Life.

An Edwardian housemaid
 
 
 

 

1920’s chimney sweep
 
 

 

Coachman and Footmen of the 3rd Lord Egerton of Tatton outside 9 Seamore Place, Mayfair.
Before the Coronation of George V. Cheshire County Council/National Trust.

 

 
 
Aida Overton Walker dazzled early-twentieth-century theater audiences with her original dance routines, her enchanting singing voice, and her penchant for elegant costumes. One of the premiere African American women artists of the turn of the century, she popularized the cakewalk and introduced it to English society.

London Cabmen: c.1877, John Thomson
 
 
 1920’s – sheep grazing beside the Serpentine, Hyde Park
 
 

You can find all of my Pinterest boards here.