Ham House Part 2

Ham House, Richmond

Note: If you receive this post as an email, and can’t see the videos, please click on this link to my blog.

I’ve offered a few views of the North Drawing Room in the previous blog post, but reels give a better sense of the environment. The tapestries show farming activities during the year. Milking in April, Sheep-Shearing and Hay-Making in June & July, Reaping in May and August, Plowing and Sowing in September, and Wine-making in October. Though they were woven between 1699 and 1719, they were not hung in this room until early in the 20th century. According to the guidebook, the tapestries hanging in this room in the 1600s depicted the story of Phaeton, and “Tapestry was then the ultimate form of luxury room decoration.”

The Queen’s Bedchamber gets a reel, too. It stopped being a bedchamber and turned into a drawing room in the 1740s.

The Queen’s Closet did not get that kind of makeover. It’s very much as it was originally. The oval image is on the ceiling. Only the most honored guests would be invited here. I don’t know whose shoes these are—the guidebook is silent, because things get moved around, and this layout is a little different from the guidebook—but I assume they date to the 17th century.

The ebony cabinet stands in the Duke’s Dressing Room. The other two images are of the Duke’s Closet, a much smaller and more private room. The original upholstery and wall hangings were, according to the guidebook, “black and olive damask with a scarlet fringe and silver and black edging.”

People are always curious about cleanliness in past times. While they didn’t bathe according to our standards, our ancestors kept as clean as they could, given their circumstances. They changed their undergarments frequently, because these could be easily laundered. People took daily sponge baths—if they could. Cleanliness did depend on economics. If you’re a pauper, your first concern is staying alive. If, on the other hand, you’re a duchess, you’ve got servants to fill your bathtub and make everything pleasant for you. And certainly, as is the case today, some people simply won’t bother. For instance, the 11th Duke of Norfolk (1746-1815) had an aversion to soap and water. The servants had to wait until he was dead drunk in order to bathe him. One of his wives died in childbirth and the other one went insane. But he had mistresses! They must have had strong stomachs.

Ham House

Ham House, Richmond

Ham House, Richmond, was a revelation. I’ve often used 16th and 17th century houses for my characters. Sutton Place in Surrey became Camberley Place in all three books of the Difficult Dukes series. Northumberland House became Clevedon House in Silk is for Seduction. Holland House became Castle de Grey in “Lord Lovedon’s Duel” and My Inconvenient Duke.

I’m drawn to these houses because they tend to be complicated. They’re built around courtyards; they have great halls and long galleries and they’re loaded with nooks and crannies where my characters might steal a private moment or two. Over the years, they acquire accretions, and they tend to sprawl over vast acres.

But many of the houses I used in my books have either been demolished or converted into something that isn’t a house. Ham House is still very much a house, and very much a 17th century house. It’s seen some changes over the years, but not very many, considering its age. Wikipedia points out that “Ham House is unusual in retaining much of its original 17th-century interior decoration, offering a rare experience of the style of the courts of Charles I and Charles II.” This was what knocked me out. Apparently, I’m not the only one, as the interior was considered over-the-top, even in its time, when aristocrats were not shy about displaying their wealth. The ebony staircase is a good example.

If you are reading this post in an email, and the video does not appear, please follow this link to the blog.

The ebony staircase.

Because I have so much to show and tell, you can expect at least two blog posts.

Video of Loretta Chase in the Round Gallery of Ham House, Richmond

The Round Gallery was originally the Great Dining Room. Early in the 18th century, most of the floor was removed. The remaining room displays portraits, while the Great Hall was made grander, with better lighting.

The marble fire place is in the North Drawing Room, as is the Ivory cabinet. On the day we visited, the cabinets were open, which is not usually the case. The harpsichord is believed to have been made in England about 1730. The open doorway leads to the Long Gallery, which is lined with more portraits, of which I offer a sample.

Kensington Palace Part Two

Gates of Kensington Palace, 2017

My previous post focused on Queen Victoria’s childhood. Though she left Kensington Palace as soon as she could after becoming Queen, its displays do offer glimpses of her adulthood.

The portrait of her at the theater, in the year she ascended to the throne, was new to me, and I absolutely love it. This is not a shy and retiring young woman. Though she’s only eighteen, she absolutely knows who she is. She needed to be strong-willed to get to this point. As Gillian Gill puts it in We Two, “while the Princess Victoria was weak , feverish, and confined to bed, Conroy and the duchess tried to browbeat her into signing a document appointing Conroy as her personal private secretary in the event of her accession to the throne.” She was only sixteen at the time. She refused to do it.

If you’d like a sharper image, which you can zoom in on, the portrait of Victoria wearing the emerald set is here at the Royal Collection Trust.

Below are a few notes on the photos of other items on display at Kensington Palace.

Mourning dress had specific stages, with the later stages allowing for a few colors. For the rules in Queen Alexandra’s time, you might want to take a look at these pages of Manners and Rules of Good Society (1913 ed).

The diamond tiaras speak for themselves.

We’ve all seen so many photos and films of Queen Elizabeth in her girlhood, but it was an altogether different and enlightening experience to see her and Princess Margaret’s dresses, and to learn that they were altered in order to last a long time.

Court dress is something I’ve mentioned in a few books. It did not always keep up with fashion, or else did so with its own special rules and additions. The gentleman’s court suit of 1780 is a good example of the level of expenditure. Even the detail shots can’t fully convey the richness and sparkle. The men gathered at the Court of St. James must have been quite a sight, no doubt vying with the ladies for splendor. Not that the ladies faded into the background. Their dresses would be embellished with diamonds, pearls, and other precious gems. The Lord Chamberlain, on the monarch’s orders, would issue rules about court dress, and these could change. However, ostrich feathers, lappets (those lace things dangling from the back of the headdress), and trains continued into the 20th century, as the 1928 dress shows. This painting of Queen Adelaide’s 1834 Birthday Drawing Room gives a good idea of a Court gathering at the time of my recent stories.

I’ve included the short video of Lady’s Holcroft’s court dress because a still photo simply doesn’t do the job. You can find several photographs of Lady Holcroft in her court dress here at the National Portrait Gallery. If you are unable to view the reel in your email, you can view it here on my website blog.

A short video of Lady Holcroft’s court dress