history | Author, Jane Lark's stories

Having been away on holiday last week I have some aside posts I am going to intersperse between Harriette’s continuing story. I can’t wait any longer to share these facts I’ve discovered with you. So look out for more of Harriette’s story on Sunday, but today I am going to talk to you about spinning and weaving cotton…

We went to an amazing Georgian mill on holiday, Quarry Bank Mill. It was built in the late 1700s. I don’t know why, but I was really surprised to discover that the site was the family home, as well as the mill. Foolish really, of course they didn’t have cars to drive into work.

When we walked up the hill beyond the mill we walked into what was obviously a historically planted and sculpted garden, I said to my husband, this is really weird it’s like a proper garden, someone must have turned the mill into a home. But then we started seeing signs talking about what the garden had been like in the 1700’s and there was a large Georgian house to the side, which was I guess a couple of hundred yards up the hill from the mill. This was the family home.

We walked around the mill, and were shown how carding, spinning and weaving worked. Here’s a board showing the process.

But with my author’s brain, not that I’d necessarily include it in a story as I write about the upper class, but it was fascinating to be talked through family life in the early 1700s and before that, when many homes were part of the cloth making industry.

Before the days of factories weavers worked alone at home, and weavers were always men. Women did the carding and the spinning, and it took eight hours to spin what it took one hour to weave, so families wanted to keep their spinning wheel going constantly so it wasn’t just a mother’s task, but the from the age of 4-5 children, including young boys would be taught to card, separating the fibres of wool or cotton, ready for spinning, and then girls would be taught to spin from 7-8 and work on the spinning wheel in shifts to keep their fathers provided with thread for weaving – hence why women who did not marry became known as ‘Spinsters’ because they would then be left at home to keep spinning.

Looms in the home were wide enough for one person sitting at it to throw a shuttle through and be able to catch it the other end (so a stretched out arms width), and generally men would work alone at the loom, and their loom would be passed from father to son, and yes this is another historical origin of a word ‘heirloom’. I know – I love learning all these delicious little facts. It was a fab place. But I’m not done yet…

Did you know why broad cloth is called broad cloth? Well if you don’t you’ll know now. Broad cloth was more valuable because it was wider, which gave it more versatility for use, and it was wider because it was made on a two-man loom, so one person sat one side and threw the shuttle, the other caught it.

But then came the invention of the water powered looms. Which could produce far more cloth at a much greater speed, and this is what was built at Quarry Bank, a huge water powered mill to receive the cotton. I hate talking about the slave trade, it was a vile practice which creeps me out… but it was a fact, it happened, and at the time the mill was built, merchants would sail to Africa to capture slaves, take the slaves to America to farm the cotton, and then bring the cotton back to the Britain to stock the mills, and it was cotton Quarry Bank was built to process.

Of course then mills were in the situation that women could not spin the cotton fast enough to stock the looms, and calls were put out urging someone to invent a spinning machine. The spinning-jenny came into life. Initially it was a small number of spindle’s and some families bought one and still worked at home.

But then giant machines were developed ones that cottage industries couldn’t keep up with and this was the point when poverty began hitting the majority of the working class in the late 1700s.

More on Quarry Bank next week, I’ve a little more to share. And more on Harriette on Sunday…

Jane Lark is a writer of authentic, passionate and emotional love stories.

See the side bar for details of Jane’s books, and Jane’s website www.janelark.co.uk to learn more about Jane. Or click ‘like’ on Jane’s Facebook page to see photo’s and learn historical facts from the Georgian, Regency and Victorian eras, which Jane publishes there. You can also follow Jane on twitter at @janelark

This week let’s return to Harriette’s story, although I will be honest and warn you, that after she speaks of end of her love affair with Lord Ponsonby, her memoirs take on a new edge, which rings of half-truths and callous feelings.

First though, here’s the recap explaining the background of this series of posts, if you’ve read it before please read from the end of the Italics.

In 1825 Harriette Wilson, a courtesan, published a series of stories as her memoirs in a British broad sheet paper. The Regency gentleman’s clubs were a buzz, waiting to see the next names mentioned each week. While barriers had to be set up outside the shop of her publisher, Stockdale, to hold back the disapproving mob.

Harriette was born Harriette Debochet, she chose the name Harriette Wilson as her professional name, in the same way Emma Hart, who I’ve blogged about previously, had changed her name. Unlike Emma, it isn’t known why or when Harriette changed her name.

She was one of nine surviving children. Her father was a watchmaker and her mother a stocking repairer, and both were believed to be from illegitimate origin.

Three of Harriette’s sisters also became courtesans. Amy, Fanny and Sophia (who I have written about before). So the tales I am about to begin in my blogs will include some elements from their lives too.

For a start you’ll need to understand the world of the 19^th Century Courtesan. It was all about show and not just about sex. The idle rich of the upper class aspired to spending time in the company of courtesans, it was fashionable, the thing to do.

You were envied if you were linked to one of the most popular courtesans or you discovered a new unknown beauty to be admired by others.

Courtesans were also part of the competitive nature of the regency period too, gambling was a large element of the life of the idle rich and courtesans were won and lost and bartered and fought for.

So courtesans obviously aspired to be one of the most popular, and to achieve it they learnt how to play music, read widely, so they could debate, and tried to shine in personality too. They wanted to be a favoured ’original’.

The eccentric and outspoken was admired by gentlemen who liked to consort with boxers and jockeys, and coachmen, so courtesans did not aim for placid but were quite happy to insult and mock men who courted them, and demand money for any small favour.

Since the end of her affair with Lord Ponsonby, it seems to me as though Harriette;s fame as a courtesan, has slipped to more of an echo of her fame, and perhaps as Amy and Sophia (who’ve I’ve written about the last couple of weeks), she had some desire for a respectable happy ending, though she never admits it, but the story I am leading into this week has suggestions of it.

This week I am merely painting the scene though, as Harriette speaks about one particular night in her theatre box, and this particular scene does have a ring of truth to me.

The implication immediately is that the men gathering about Harriette, now, are much younger. No longer the older most respected men, seeking to pour their wealth out on an experience with a coveted young beautiful courtesan, this group of adolescent men come up to town from university, to kick against the restraints of their fathers and families, seeking notoriety and the envy of friends, and what better way than to claim you kept company with a previously highly acclaimed scandalous courtesan.

The young titled, and heirs, of some of the most renowned families would travel from Oxford to London to be seen in her company and then brag about it to their friends, to the point that in the University there was a fashion to dress as Harriette preferred. – Seriously, I have said this so many times, human nature has not changed through the ages, teenagers have their trends now, and they had them then, and Harriette was the trend at Oxford.

One night she is sitting with a one of the men who comes to visit her from Oxford, and claims, he declares, in an agitated manner. ‘…my friend… is come up from Oxford on purpose to try to get introduced! I know he must return to college tonight, and I am, I confess, rather anxious that he should be disappointed.’

This tone struck me so much like any nineteen year old today, envious and angry of a friend trying to muscle in on his girl, but this is beyond that, being a friend of Harriette’s had a huge acclaim to it, that he didn’t want others to have. Of course Harriette being Harriette, just enjoys the game and slips in a spoon to stir the mix…

‘Is he Handsome?’

The young Duke of Leinster, declares his friend not handsome at all, but describes him when the women press for more. ‘He is a long, thin, pale fellow, with straight hair.’

Apparently his friend, the Marquis of Worcester, heir to a dukedom, had tried several avenues to obtain an introduction to Harriette, but everyone he had tried to persuade had refused to introduce him, as Harriette still liked to maintain her feel of exclusivity so discouraged gentlemen from introducing friends.

Leinster then looked down at the pit and pointed out, ‘a very tall young fellow, in silk stockings, looking steadfastly up at this box. Upon my honour, he won’t wear trousers or curl his hair, because he heard that you dislike it.’

Harriette, her sister fanny and her friend Julia, all look down at the young man, looking up at them, but of course being young he was disconcerted and looked away. Harriette says she thought no more of him then (a statement I would believe was written for the older Lord Worcester, in her memoirs, to make it clear that she had never really had any genuine feeling for him).

But the Marquis of Worcester obtained his introduction. It was Harriette’s sister’s former protector (using the word loosely) who brought Worcester up, as Lord Deerhurst had no care for sensibilities.

Under normal circumstances Harriette would have refused the unwelcome intrusion, but something must have touched her, and perhaps it was his youthful adoration, as she describes, ‘the young Marquis, blushed so deeply, and looked so humble, that it was impossible to treat him without civility.’

Harriette says he spoke very little, and his friend, who had not wanted him to have the introduction, claimed his higher status in Harriette’s company by taking the liberty of whispering in her ear, ‘What do you think of him?’ Harriette only answered him with a promise to tell him tomorrow, and then indulged in studying the Marquis more.

Harriette describes him as appearing nervous, and wishing to come across well, and speaks of him complimenting her hair, and other men saying she would not mind if he wished to touch, she then offered that he could. When he did, she said, ‘without vanity, and in very truth, let him deny it if he can, I never saw a boy, or a man, more madly, wildly, and romantically in love with any daughter of Eve, in my whole life.’ Again a statement written years later for the older Lord Worcester who may or may not have read her words. But Harriette clearly, surely, recognized possibility in this young man who was heir to a dukedom, so did she, or did she not, act like Amy, and go out to try to obtain a more permanent commitment?

I’ll continue Harriette’s and Lord Worcester’s story next week…

Jane Lark is a writer of authentic, passionate and emotional love stories.