Untold lives blog

Lady Anne Blunt née King (1837-1917) was a keen artist, horsewoman and traveller. She recorded her experiences in a series of diaries and in her beautifully illustrated sketchbooks, which are held at the British Library (Add MS 53817-54061).

Watercolour by Anne Blunt Add MS 54048 

Anne was born on 22 September 1837 to William King, first Earl Lovelace and his wife Ada, the only daughter of Lord Byron and his wife Anne Millbanke. After the death of her mother when Anne was only 15 her father took her on many continental travels where she learnt four languages and began sketching the scenery she encountered. It was whilst travelling that she met her future husband Wilfred Blunt. They married in 1869 when Anne was 32 and had four children, only one of whom, Judith survived into adulthood. In 1872 Wilfred inherited a family estate in Sussex and the couple built their home Crabbet Park.

 
  Wilfred and Anne Blunt Add MS 54085

The couple travelled widely including across Europe and to parts of India. It was however, the Middle East that sparked their interest with Wilfred the politics and Anne the horses. The couple began a stud in 1878 breeding only with horses with excellent confirmation and lineage. Anne’s diaries reveal their travels across the desert visiting sheikhs and providing critiques of the horses they saw. Anne had a good eye for confirmation and the extract below shows one of many assessments she made:

Diary of Anne Blunt from 1881, Add MS 53911 f.11 

   
Watercolour by Anne Blunt Add MS 54048 

In 1882 they opened a second stud outside Cairo called Shaykh ‘Ubayd. Anne was by now fluent in Arabic and had a good insight into the people and their customs.  She was also compiling a book on the Arabian horse, and her notes were later used in her daughter Judith’s volume, The Authentic Arabian Horse (1945).

Photograph of Anne (AB) and Wilfred Blunt (WSB) on horseback Add MS 54085

Anne’s marriage however was not happy and in 1906 the couple were legally separated after Wilfred’s mistress Dorothy Carleton (later adopted as his niece) moved in to the family home. She went to live with her daughter Judith and son-in-law near Crabbet Park and spent the winters at Shaykh ‘Ubayd. In 1913 she moved out to live in Shaykh ‘Ubayd permanently and died in Cairo in 1917.

Photograph of Anne Blunt on horseback taken by Gertrude Bell Add MS 54085 

Anne’s passion for breeding the Arabian horses she loved has had a huge impact on the breed itself and the majority of Arabian horses today would have at least one Crabbet ancestor. For this passion she became known and respected as the ‘noble lady of the horses’ by many of her friends.

Watercolour by Anne Blunt Add MS 54055

Laura Walker
Lead Curator, Modern Archives and Manuscripts 1850-1950

Further reading:
Lady Anne Blunt. Journals and Correspondence 1878-1917, edited by Rosemary Archer and James Fleming (Alexander Heriot 1986)
Oxford Dicionary of National Biography - Rosemary Archer, Blunt [née King], Anne Isabella Noel, suo jure Baroness Wentworth (1837–1917), traveller and breeder of Arab horses
A.V.F. Winstone, Lady Anne Blunt. A Biography (Barzan 2003)

Inspired by the TV drama Indian Summers, I decided to investigate the social life in Simla under British rule. Was it dominated by eating, drinking, playing cards, gossiping and arguing, interspersed with some amateur dramatics?

 
From The Delhi Sketch Book 1 January 1855

Simla was a hill station in the Himalayan foothills popular with convalescents. It then developed into the summer capital of the British administration in India. There was a variety of clubs in Simla to help the Europeans pass their time pleasantly. The oldest was the United Services Club founded in 1844, with membership restricted to commissioned military officers, army or navy chaplains, members of the Indian Civil Service and judges.  Indians and women were not permitted to join, although guests were admitted.  The Club boasted a racquet court and rooms for playing billiards and cards, as well as a reading room and a library packed with books for members to enjoy.

In the late 1880s the New Club opened as a rival attraction.  It had well-built premises with spacious rooms and a fine dining room with an excellent dance floor. Popular smoking concerts were held, where members of the Viceregal Council enthusiastically joined in the choruses.  However the United Services Club was stung into action by the competition. Extensive improvements were made, and private pressure was brought to bear on government officials to support the older club. The New Club was forced into liquidation and the buildings became a hotel.

From The Delhi Sketch Book 1 January 1855 

Men could also belong to one of several Masonic lodges which held meetings in Simla. The oldest of these was the Himalayan Brotherhood founded in 1838.

An area of flat land known as Annandale became the ‘public play-ground at Simla’.  Picnics, fairs and dances were held there, as well as horse races, gymkhanas, and dog shows.  Sports included polo, cricket, football, archery, rifle-shooting, golf, and croquet.  In 1911 there was a Simla Winter Amusement Club offering badminton, a skating rink, and toboganning.

Amateur dramatics were very popular.  In the late 1830s Emily Eden watched performances in a ‘small and hot, and somewhat dirty’ theatre in Simla.  She wrote of a falling-out amongst the gentlemen actors: ‘One man took a fit of low sprits, and another who acted women’s parts well, would not cut off his moustachios, and another went off to shoot bears near the snowy range’.

A major event of the Simla season was the annual Fine Arts Exhibition.  In the 1860s there was said to be ‘a galaxy of amateur talent in water-colour painting then at Simla’. Money prizes were offered and pictures were sent in from all over India.

The Simla United Services Club closed in 1947 and its collection of books was dispersed. A large number went to the House of Commons and the Empire Society, and the fiction was taken by the Punjab Club. There were thousands of non-fiction books on a wide variety of topics, some perhaps predictable, others less so.  Alongside works on history, government, politics, war, military and naval strategy were books about hypnotism, crime, psychology, psychotherapy, feminism, witchcraft, and spiritualism. The homesick reader of A lonely summer in Kashmir could seek solace in one of a number of works on life back in Britain, such as The Glory of Scotland, Irish bogs, The England I love best, or A dull day in London.

Margaret Makepeace
India Office Records

Further reading:
Edward J. Buck, Simla Past and Present (Calcutta, 1904)
India Office Private Papers: MSS Eur D 957 List of books in the reading room and library of the United Services Club Simla, 1947
India Office Private Papers: MSS Eur D 1236/4 Simla Winter Amusement Club  1911-1912

Bear’s grease, bonnets, bellows, biscuits and Bibles - a merchant in Simla in the 1850s

Edward Lloyd was born on 16 February 1815. He was a publisher and newspaper proprietor, and the founder of two large paper mills.  Here we give you a glimpse into his remarkable career.

Lloyd was a pioneer of cheap popular literature.  His ‘Penny Bloods’ were a great success with working class readers.  From 1835 he published titles such as Lives of the Most Notorious Highwaymen, Footpads etc, and History of the Pirates of All Nations.  He and writer Thomas Peckett Prest then produced imitations of the works of Charles Dickens, for example The Life and Adventures of Oliver Twiss the Workhouse Boy, and Memoirs of Nickelas Nicklebery.  These stories sold many thousands of copies each week.

 
From The Gambler’s Wife; or, Murder will Out

Lloyd issued works of history, horror, and romance.  Stories were published in instalments, and all featured plenty of drama and bloodthirsty action.  It was Lloyd who introduced vampires to a mass readership with Varney the Vampyre; or, the Feast of blood.

From Varney the Vampyre 

Lloyd’s Weekly Newpaper was founded in 1843. Lloyd put a good deal of effort into promotion and it was claimed in the 1890s: ‘The pictorial advertisements of Messrs. Lloyd’s journals  - themselves works of art – are prominent at all stations and throughout the country, and there is no village in England so obscure as to be unaware of the existence of Lloyd’s News’.  Circulation grew to a huge 930,000 copies weekly. Stories deemed to be of particular importance were illustrated by artists kept on the staff.  There was a successful ‘Lost Relative’ column: people wrote in from every part of the world and a shortened version of the letters was published for free.

By 1861 Lloyd was using so much paper that he started his own paper mill on the River Lea at Bow in East London. As it was becoming difficult to obtain sufficient supplies of rags, esparto grass was brought in as a raw material from Algeria and Spain.  Soon Lloyd’s mill was expanding to make paper for rival newspapers.

In 1877 Lloyd’s firm purchased the Daily Chronicle. Much of this newspaper was devoted to events in London, but it also gathered news from the rest of the UK, and from abroad via daily cables. Circulation was increased from 8,000 to 140,000 in the space of eight years, and to meet demand a second mill was opened at Sittingbourne in Kent which produced a wide variety of paper types.  By 1895, Lloyd’s were employing over 700 people at the mills and 500 at the newspaper offices and home and export departments.

 
From Miranda, or the Heiress of the Grange 

It has been claimed that having established himself in ‘higher’ publishing circles Lloyd then tried to supress the ‘Penny Bloods’, sending out agents to buy up and destroy the stocks at coffee shops and circulating libraries.  Whether or not this is true, many 'Bloods' have survived and a good number can be found at the British Library, some in digitised format.

Edward Lloyd died on 8 April 1890 having amassed a fortune from his various business ventures. The value of his estate at death was £563,000.

Margaret Makepeace
India Office Records

Further reading:
Edward Lloyd Ltd, A glimpse into paper making and journalism (1895)
John Medcraft, A bibliography of the penny bloods of Edward Lloyd (1945)

Further reading:
Edward Lloyd Ltd, A glimpse into paper making and journalism (1895)
John Medcraft, A bibliography of the penny bloods of Edward Lloyd (1945)
Varney – an early vampire story
Edward Lloyd

Did a Christmas card from the intelligence services drop through your letter box this year? No? Disappointed? Well, here is one sent by MI5 to Sir Malcolm Seton in 1923. 

Mss Eur E267/224 Papers of Sir Malcolm Seton, India Office official 1898-1933

Happy Christmas from Untold Lives!

In the last of this series on William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), I look at his development of photoglyphic engraving the forerunner of what we today know as photogravure. The photogravure process involves the printing of a photographic image onto paper with ink using a plate onto which the image has been etched.

Talbot started his photoglyphic experiments primarily because he wanted to produce a photographic image which was not subject to fading as sometimes happened with his Calotype photographs. There had already been limited experiments with printing photographic images. As early as 1826, the Frenchman, Nicéphore (Joseph) Niépce (1765-1833) developed a process called héliogravure and there were some attempts to use Daguerreotype plates, the work of Hippolyte Fizeau (1819-1896) in particular being noteworthy. In both cases the results were extremely variable. The primary problem with reproducing a photograph as a printed image was the reliable reproduction of the intermediate tonal areas on the plate (known as halftones). In order to overcome the technical issues Talbot initially sought advice from master-engraver George Barclay (b. 1802) and in later years received advice from Thomas Brooker (1813-1885) and William Banks (b. 1809).

 
 ‘Proposed method of transferring Photography to Steel Engraving’. (28 November, 1847). Early notes regarding photo-engraving. (Add MS 88942/1/350). 

Talbot developed his process gradually taking out two patents, for photographic engraving (1852), and photoglyphic engraving (1858). It was this second patent that established the basis for photogravure. Talbot’s innovations included the use of potassium bichromate sensitized gelatin for fixing the photographic image to the plate and perhaps more importantly the use of a screen to enable the accurate reproduction of the halftone areas within an image. Both of these innovations are still used in non-digital reprographics today.

After encouragement from the editor William Crookes (1832-1921), Talbot allowed a series of his photoglyphic engravings to be published in Photographic News (22 October, 1858) although he used images by the French photographers Soulier and Clouzard, rather than his own. This increased public awareness of the process and drew praise from many people including Prince Albert (1819-1861). Talbot was asked to exhibit his work and won medals at the 1862 International Exhibition of London and at the 1865 Berlin International Photographic Exhibition.

One of two of Talbot’s photoglyphic engravings published posthumously in the second edition of Gaston Tissandier’s A History and Handbook of Photography (Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1878). (Add MS 88942/3/1/21).

Unfortunately like many of his other ideas Talbot failed to develop photoglyphic engraving into a business and from 1865 he increasingly turned his attentions to Assyriology and mathematics instead. However Talbot’s work was instrumental in the development of the modern photogravure process, perfected by Karl Klíč in 1879 and still known to this day as the Talbot-Klič process.

  Part of a letter, with examples of photoglyphic engraving, sent by Paul Dujardin to Charles Henry Talbot (William Henry Fox Talbot’s son) in 1880. In his letter Dujardin praises Talbot’s process as superior to others and laments the fact that his name is not more widely known. (Add MS 88942/2/173).

Jonathan Pledge
Cataloguer, Historical Papers 

Further reading on William Henry Fox Talbot:
William Henry Fox Talbot; Pioneer of Photography and Man of Science (Hutchinson Benham, 1977) by H. J. P. Arnold.
William Henry Fox Talbot: Beyond Photography (Yale University Press, 2013), ed. by Mirjam Brusius, Katrina Dean, and Chitra Ramalingam.

 
Last Movember we brought you the cautionary Lay of the Red Moustache. This year we have found more tragic verse in the British Library collections to alert our readers to the dangers of becoming too fond of the splendid moustaches now sprouting forth.  A warning - parts of Mr Newton’s poem are not for the squeamish.

 The Moustache Murder
Or, the Cruelly Commercial and Lugubriously Lyrical Legend of Noddlekins and Jemima

 Now all ye good people, pray listen to me well,
‘Tis of a young bank-clerk I’m going for to tell;
His name it was Noddlekins, rather reckless and rash,
Who wore upon his upper lip a very fine moustache.

Now as Noddlekins was a-standing in the counting-house one day,
The Manager came up to him, and thus he did say,
“Go, get a sharp razor, and remove all that hair,
For mustachers the Directors are determined you shan’t wear.”

“My dear sir, my dear sir,” young Noddlekins replied,
“I’ll oblige you in any other mortal thing beside;
But before I will lose one hair out of my moustache,
I will see the whole place go to everlasting smash.”

“Now go, boldest Noddlekins,” the Manager he gasped,
“If you will not consent that your face shall be rasped,
You must leave – for I’ve promised, and my promise I will keep,
To make a separation of the goats from the sheep.”

Now Noddlekins had a sweetheart, Jemima by name,
She suggested the moustache, and she doted on the same;
And her feelings experienced a terrible crash,
When she heard that her Noddlekins thought of shaving his moustache.

She most viciously jibbed like a foal at a fence,
And she wouldn’t hear a word of poor Noddlekins’ defence;
But she said, “if you mean to act like a little boy at school,
Recollect, Mr Noddlekins, I won’t wed a fool.”

As Jemima was walking near her father’s abode,
She spied her dear Noddlekins a-lying on the road,
Half-shaved, with his throat cut, and a billet-doux to prove,
That his suicide was occasioned by moustachios and love.

On his dear half-denuded mouth she deposited one kiss,
And she said, “It’s my tantrums have brought you to this.”
The she slit her carotid with more spirit than sense,
And their lives are both in the pluperfect sense.

Now all ye young bank-clerks who wish to cut a dash,
Never quarrel with the governor on account of a moustache;
And ye maidens be careful lest you come to act in time a
Sad tragedy like the razor-slaughtered Noddlekins and Jemima.

At twelve the next night, by the Manager’s bed-side,
The ghost of Jemima with weasand slit wide,
Arm-in-arm with her Noddlekins, whose throat was cut too,
Said, “Serene might our gullets be if it hadn’t been for you!”

Now the Manager no longer in the bank dare remain,
So he slipped on his cloak and popped off to the train;
But standing on the platform he felt rather queer,
And he died with a gurgle like a bottle of beer.

Now this is the moral or epilogue to the play,
(The other was an interlude put in by the way,)
You may learn from this song, which is true, I declare,
That this here only happened on account of that hair.

If you would like to read more of John Newton's verse, here is the source -

Title page of John Newton The Shavers Shaved or The Fatal Moustache (1858) 11649 e.36 

Margaret Makepeace
India Office Records

The picture of the man with a moustache is taken from Cook's Handbook for London (1894) 10347.h.23  - available on the British Library flickr photostream.

After our post on the fascination of newspaper notices, we turn to the gems found in the pages of official directories. The Calendar for the Royal Engineering College at Coopers Hill 1902-1903 has copious advertisements for clothing and equipment thought likely to appeal to young engineers embarking on a career in India. It also contains a list of books issued by Harrison and Sons, the publishers of the Calendar. This is a splendid assortment, including

• Bicycle Gymkhana and Musical Rides

• Crecy and Calais from the Public Records

• Dress Worn by Gentlemen at His Majesty’s Court

• The Service for the Consecration of a Church and Altar, according to the Coptic Rite

• Nightingale’s Notes on Nursing for the Labouring Classes

• Peeps at Portugal

• Protoplasm, Physical Law and Life

• The Waste-Paper Basket – a book of humorous verse by H J Jennings.

This last book caught my eye. Favourable reviews were quoted:

“The work is smart, learned in some places, and in almost every instance amusing and laughable” – Dundee Courier

“Mr Jennings is the possessor of a pretty wit” – The Outlook

“Clever fin de siècle poems” – The Citizen

“The contents of ‘The Waste-Paper Basket’ are wonderfully clever, and should make London chuckle and even roar with glee. Whoever is out of sorts should take a dive into it and be healed” – Glasgow Herald

 Cover of The Waste-Paper Basket by H J Jennings

How could I resist looking at this book? Let me share with you the titles and opening lines of a few of the poems in The Waste-Paper Basket. 

Lines to a Boarding House Egg
Thou dubious feature of the morning meal!
Thou hesitating link ‘twixt new and old!
Not always downright bad like those that make
The candidate his nasal organ hold,
Or fragrant asafoetida suggest;
Yet never fresh as taken from the nest;
But hovering round uncertain age, -
Loath to assume too juvenile a look,
Or lag upon the gastronomic stage,
Filling with mirth the grim sardonic cook.

“Sweet Violets”
They talk of the perfume of roses, of jasmine and eau de Cologne,
But where is the perfume, my Onion, that ever surpasses thy own?
Distil me no ottos and extracts if I, with olfactory pride,
Can inhale thy beneficent odour, au naturel, roasted, or fried.

In Praise of Baldness
“Call no man fortunate until he’s dead,”
Or knows, at least, the joy of a bald head.
Luxuriant hair has had its vogue, no doubt,
And been by silly poets raved about;
‘Tis even true, that inexperienced girls
Will sometimes dote on hyacinthine curls;
Indifferent to the brains that cogitate,
They spurn the merits of a shiny pate.

Are you chuckling?  Feeling inclined to roar with glee? Or perhaps a baffled smile?

Margaret Makepeace
India Office Records

Further reading:

Calendar  -Royal Indian Engineering College, Coopers Hill

H J Jennings, The Waste-Paper Basket (1901)

Henry James Jennings (d.1921) was a newspaper editor and the author of a variety of books ranging from biography to poetry.  See Explore the British Library for his work.

The contribution of women during the First World War, whether as munitions workers, members of the Women’s Land Army, determined knitters or sustaining correspondents, is commemorated in our current exhibition Enduring war: grief, grit and humour. One of the individual women featured is Albinia Wherry (1857-1929) whose collection of posters and postcards, donated to the Library, includes material relating to the Women’s Emergency Canteen in Paris which you can see in the exhibition.  (Now extended until 26 October!)

During the First World War she worked at the Women’s Emergency Canteen beneath the Gare du Nord in Paris. Opened in April 1915, initially as an initiative of the Women’s Emergency Corps (a suffrage organisation), with a staff of mostly British women, it was also known as the Cantine Anglaise.

These women are doing their bit: learn to make munitions. Poster [London, 1916]  

Over the course of the war, it provided meals, drinks, cigarettes, magazines, washing facilities and sleeping accommodation for Allied troops. An illustrated account of the canteens in France compiled by Josephine Davies (Work of the Women’s Emergency Canteens in France) gives a flavour of what life was like and the hectic nature of the work especially in the period when the ambulance trains were routed through the Gare du Nord. The chapter on the Paris canteen includes a description of the wonderment of a soldier when he descends the gloomy stairs to find a huge hall, hung with flags and bunting, the inviting smell of sausages and a ready welcome. This sense of the warmth of the welcome is also reflected in the comments quoted by Davies from the Visitors’ Book which include the following accolade: “the most homely place I’ve been in since leaving my home in 1914”.

Albinia Wherry worked at the Paris Canteen from 1915 to 1918 and is recorded in Davies as one of the Paris workers who had been awarded a badge for her service there. Postcards from her collection relating to that period feature both in Enduring war and in the related display Postcards, stamps and covers from the First World War (in the Philatelic Exhibition space on the Upper Ground Floor) and colleagues have posted in our European Studies blog about some of the French posters and Russian postcards from her collection.

Albinia was the daughter of Robert Needham Cust the orientalist (whose diaries are held by the Library: Add MS 45390-45406) and Maria Adelaide Hobart. In 1881, she married George Edward Wherry, a surgeon at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge and a member of the Alpine Club. Her own wide range of interests is reflected in her pre-war publications, including several about art which were aimed squarely at both school children and the lifelong learner. Some biographical material, including a photograph and a family tree, can be found in The Albinia book (about women named Albinia descended from Albinia Cecil), a work she compiled with her cousin Albinia Stewart but which was published posthumously, with the assistance of her brother Robert Henry Hobart Cust, following her death in a car accident in 1929.

See our blog about Sophia Duleep Singh to learn about another remarkable woman who worked for the welfare of soldiers during the First World War.

Alison Bailey
Co-Curator, Enduring war    

Further reading:

The Albinia book…Compiled by Albinia Lucy Cust (Mrs. Wherry). Illustrations and genealogies collected by Albinia Frances Stewart. London: Mitchell Hughes and Clarke, 1929. British Library shelfmark: 10824.b.7.

The Work of the Women’s Emergency Canteens in France 1915-1919. Compiled by Josephine Davies. [London]: [Women's Printing Society], [1919] B.L. shelfmark: YA.1989.a.3456.

Explore over 500 historical sources from across Europe, together with new insights by World War One experts in our World War I online resource