My 19th-century “blogger” Miss Frances Williams Wynn is today being the historian, exploring changing accounts of the practice of the monarch “curing the sick” over time.
She describes discussing analysis of the whys and wherefores with her brother – although later members of the family have a very gentry “‘huntin’ and fishin’ and shootin'” reputation, this generation was definitely hooked into the intellectual currents.
My 19th-century blogger, Miss Frances Williams Wynn, is today musing on how manners of the day have declined from those of the 18th century, and in the process reproduces a couple of little gems from that era.
The first expresses concern about the danger of the road between St Albans and London in 1714 – with word around that “Prichard the Highwayman” is on the prowl.
The second is from 1729, early in the reign of George II, when much scorn is being expressed about the “German” economies being practiced at court.
The family of my 19th-century blogger, Frances Williams Wynn, was clearly of Jacobite sensibilities in earlier times, but she did not retain any lingering favouritism for the Stuarts. Today she’s sharing some family gossip about an incognito visit to London by Charles Edward Stuart in the 18th century, and making comments (less than favourable) about his character.
My 19th-century blogger, Frances Williams Wynn, is tonight back at the theatre, with Macready’s Coriolanus, comparing it to that of another 19th-century great, Kemble.
“I should say that Kemble was more Roman, more dignified, and Macready more true to universal nature,” is her conclusion.
Interesting to compare it to the recent Globe production of the same play – I suspect the bull-headed military glory-seeking might have made more sense to her era than our own.
My 19th-century blogger Miss Frances Williams Wynn is today visiting the workshop of the sculptor Francis Legatt Chantrey, to see the finished version of the equestrian statue of Munro that was to be, and was, transported to Madras, having been paid for by local subscription there.
As ever, when you she is speaking in her own voice she sounds delightful, enjoying a conversation about the work of bronze casting with an “intelligent workman”, if someone irritated that the buzzing crowd (probably I’d suspect of socialites) made the talking difficult.
You can find images of the statue here (Scroll down for other views.)
My 19th-century blogger, Miss Frances William-Wynn, is today proving again her credentials as a theatre critic, commenting on a performance of Lear by one of the era’s great actor managers, William Charles Macready. That link has a couple of images of Macready, which suggests that he certainly wasn’t classically handsome – it also explains her comment about playing all of Shakespeare’s words, since apparently around her time there was a fashion for grand spectacle and long set-changes, which required cuts in the words to reduce length.
Miss Williams Wynn says:
It is Shakespeare’s Lear: not a word is added to the text; the painfully fine catastrophe is acted; and the play, in the regular theatre phrase, well got up, excepting in the female parts, which were almost as ill dressed as they were acted. I cannot conceive a better model for a painter of Lear than Macready exhibited in face, figure, dress, and apparent age.
The latter seems to me the leading point of his representation of the character, in which he substitutes the imbecility of age for insanity, which I have hitherto considered as the leading feature of Lear.
Wikipedia has a good roundup of Macready’s career, including his involvement in a performance of “the Scottish play” in New York at which 23 were killed and 100 injured in a riot. That’s what you call taking your theatre seriously.
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