Untold lives blog

The author and actress Mary Robinson (1758-1800) became known as ‘Perdita’ following her appearances in that role in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale at Drury Lane in 1779.  She was briefly the mistress of George, Prince of Wales (later George IV), a liaison which gave her lasting notoriety. ‘The Perdita’ (as newspapers routinely styled her) was one of London’s leading celebrities during the 1780s.  She was also a fashion icon, as newspaper reports of the time attest.

Frontispiece from Mary Robinson. Poems. London, 1791.  

The Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser of 11 June 1781 recorded her ‘in a most becoming military attire (scarlet faced with apple green)’.  In the autumn of 1781, ‘Perdita’ went to Paris (the centre of the fashionable world) for the first time.  On 15 October 1782, the Morning Herald reported ‘The Perdita has received a dress from Paris, which was introduced this Autumn by the Queen of France’.  The same paper on 21 November 1782 identified it as the ‘Chemise de la Reine’, worn by Perdita to the opera.  The chemise de la reine was a flowing muslin gown without hoops, fastened with a silk sash, suitable for private and country wear – Marie Antoinette was portrayed wearing it by the painter Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun in 1783.  Was this indeed the fashion in which Mrs Robinson appeared at the opera? Or was it, perhaps, closer to the ‘morning dress’ worn by the Queen of France at Versailles, as described in some detail in the Lady’s Magazine for April 1782:

The robe is made of plain sattin, chiefly white, worn without a hoop, round, and a long train.  It is drawn up in front, on one side, and fastened with tassels of silver, gold, or silk, … this discloses a puckered petticoat of gauze or sarsenet, of a different colour. …

Such a gown was surely more suitable for an appearance at one of London’s most elite entertainment venues.  The use of satin and the elaborate trimmings of this gown distinguish it from the chemise de la reine, except that the Lady’s Magazine also tells readers that ‘the dress, … it is said, will be worn throughout the summer, made of lighter material’ suggesting that it might have been an earlier version of Marie Antoinette’s informal dress.

Moira Goff
Curator Printed Historical Sources 1501-1800 

Further reading:
Claire Brock. “Then smile and know thyself supremely great”: Mary Robinson and the “splendour of a name”. Women’s Writing, 9.1 (2002), pp. 107-124
Paula Byrne. Perdita: the life of Mary Robinson. London, 2004
Aileen Ribeiro. The art of dress: fashion in England and France 1750-1820. New Haven & London, 1995

Visit our new exhibition Georgians Revealed

Salim Rashid Suri (1910-1979) was an Omani Sowt singer and ‘ūd player who became famous as the ‘Singing Sailor’.  He developed a truly unique style which took influence from musical sources across the Middle East and India.

Suri’s passion for music was anathema to his family: his elder brother threatened to shoot him unless he stopped singing.  Fleeing to pursue the music he loved, Suri sailed with commercial ships to ports in East Africa, India and around the Middle East.  From the recordings and the testimonies of his children we can begin to piece together his life.

Salim Rashid Suri, drawn by an Omani artist in the 1980s, copyright Saeed al Suri

Salim Rashid Suri was born in Sur, Oman, though he spent most of his life in India, Bahrain and Kuwait.  He began by singing al maidan, a form of sung poetry, accompanying himself on a one-stringed drone instrument, but his reputation resides in his distinctive style of Sowt al Khaleej (‘Voice of the Gulf’), an urban form principally developed and performed by musicians from Bahrain and Kuwait.  Sur was a pivotal trade port connecting Oman with Yemen, East Africa, Zanzibar, India and ports along the coastlines of the Gulf and is still regarded as one of the main centres of traditional Omani music.  Undoubtedly, Suri’s development of the sowt tradition was influenced by the trade links animating the town.

Suri began working on commercial vessels in Sur, later visiting ports in Yemen, Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, India and East Africa.  He learned sowt from recordings of the singer Abd el-Latif al-Kuweiti (1901/1904–1975) and from other practicing musicians. His son, Sa‘id Salim Ali Suri, said of his father that ‘he left Sur with a good voice, but didn’t know how to sing’.  It was during his travels that Suri’s music developed and in Aden he first encountered the ‘ūd.

In the early 1930s Suri settled in India.  He lived in the port area of Bombay working first as a ‘boiler controller’ on a steamship before becoming a broker and translator helping Arab merchants to buy goods in Bombay and transport them to the ships.  He recorded twelve shellac (78 rpm) discs with HMV, which sold for around 50 Indian Rupees apiece.  Their commercial success was assured partly by the Arab population in Bombay, but also by his interest in Indian music and the use of Urdu in his songs.

Suri left India in the late 1940s and settled in Bahrain where he became a sought-after freelance artist.  By the 1960s, his own record label, Salimphone, recorded widely in the region with musicians such as Abd el-Latif al-Kuweiti and Mahmud al-Kuweiti.  However, because Suri’s records were only suitable for gramophones, the advent of vinyl records (45 rpm) in the early 1960s damaged his business prospects and he returned to Oman in 1971.  There he found work with the Sultan who made the singer a consultant for cultural affairs. Suri performed songs eulogising the ruler and his family which were widely broadcast on Oman’s recently established TV and radio stations.

Suri had come full circle.  As traveller and seafarer his music encapsulated the centuries-old cultural exchange of the Indian Ocean and Arabian Peninsula.  By the time he died in 1979, Suri was being hailed as an icon of the Omani nation for his contribution to sowt al-Khaleej.

Rolf Killius
Gulf History Curator Oral & Musical Culture

British Library Qatar Foundation Partnership Programme

Qatar Digital Library

This story is based on an interview with Salim Rashid Suri’s son, Sa‘id Salim Ali Suri conducted by Edward Fox on 21 November 1990 and subsequent email conversations between Rolf Killius and Sa‘id. 

Sa‘id Salim Ali Suri is also a versatile musician and singer. He was born in 1954, received his main education in Bahrain and presently lives in Oman where he moved with his parents when he was eighteen years old. From 1975 to 1978 he studied music in Egypt.

Listen to recordings of Sa‘id Salim Ali Suri.

Today's story about little known printer Charles Clark has been contributed by guest bloggers Dr Mary O'Connell & Dr Carrie Griffin.

Inside the cover of BL MS Egerton 2433 is an unusual bookplate poem.  The poem is printed, dated by hand ‘1859’ and is entitled ‘A Pleader to the Needer when a Reader’.  The poem is a humorous warning to prospective readers not to deface the book:  ‘This Book, too, friend, take care you ne’er with grease or dirt besmear it; / While only awkward puppies will continue to “dogs-ear” it!’.  The author identifies himself as ‘one Charles Clark’, living in Great Totham, Essex.

BL MS Egerton 2433 

Clark used the poem as a mark of ownership but he also saw it as a way to materially connect his name to his books and to ensure that he would not be forgotten. The first line of the poem makes this wish clear:  ‘As all, my friend, through wily knaves full often suffer wrongs, / Forget not, pray, when it you’ve read, to whom this Book belongs.’  The poem served Clark’s purpose.  While working on Egerton 2433, Carrie Griffin saw the poem and sent it to her colleague Mary O’Connell.  Both decided to try to find out more about the man who wrote it.

 
Charles Clark - reproduced by kind permission of Essex Record Office

Clark was born in Heybridge, Essex in 1806.  He described himself as ‘a bibliographic farmer’ who loved nothing more than collecting books.  He invented a portable printing press, wrote satirical verse and songs, and spent much more money than he could afford on rare books.  In 1834 he wrote a poem in the Essex dialect, John Noakes and Mary Styles, which was published by the London bookseller John Russell Smith.  This collaboration inaugurated decades of correspondence between the men.  Clark’s side of this correspondence (well over 300 letters) is preserved in Essex Record Office and has been transcribed by Griffin and O’Connell.

Sketch of Clark's home, Great Totham Hall -reproduced by kind permission of Essex Record Office

Clark’s letters to Smith show he was a man who was deeply engaged with the literary marketplace.  While he often lamented living in Essex ‘a shire at which all laugh’, he was dedicated to preserving local knowledge, customs and dialect.  He particularly loved poets who celebrated the rural landscape, and corresponded with John Clare.  The British Library holds letters from Clark to Clare, and also to Clare’s wife (BL Egerton 2249).  Clark felt compelled to write to Clare because he wanted to promote ‘the cause of suffering genius’, and later offered to print an edition of Clare’s unpublished texts – entirely at his own expense.

Tiptree Heath in Essex, one of Clark's favourite places  - authors' photograph April 2013

We are chronicling our attempts to find out more about Charles Clark - Finding Charles Clark .  When Clark died, his library numbered almost 2,500 books, and we know from his letters that several hundred more passed through his hands.  If you have found Charles Clark we would be delighted to hear from you!

Carrie Griffin & Mary O’Connell
University College, Cork, Ireland

In 1936 the United Kingdom had three different monarchs.  King George V died on 20 January 1936, and his oldest son, Edward VIII, succeeded him.  But Edward abdicated on 11 December of that same year, and his younger brother, George, ascended the throne.  George VI (r.1936-1952) became the last British monarch to be Emperor of India.

The unexpected and rapid chain of events raised many questions regarding the design of India’s banknotes.  When a new monarch came to power, he or she would traditionally be shown in profile, facing the opposite direction from the previous monarch.  On India’s colonial currency, George V had faced left.

Portrait of Emperor George V of India on a specimen bank note. (F5064) 

The next king, Edward VIII, should have faced right, but there hadn’t been time to issue Indian banknotes with his portrait.  Should his brother, and successor, George VI, face left or right?  Both designs were considered, as can be seen in these photo montages of George VI’s face, pasted over the print design for George V’s portrait.

  
   Left and right facing portraits of George VI.   Photo montage of a possible design, showing George VI’s face pasted over a portrait of George V in ceremonial attire.  (F5145)

Another suggestion was to not bother showing George VI in profile at all.  Instead, he could be shown staring straight out of the banknote.

Frontal portrait of Emperor George VI of India wearing ceremonial attire. Detail from a specimen bank note. (F5112) 

In 1944, some notes with this frontal portrait were printed.  Another proposed design, which was a further departure from tradition, was a frontal portrait of George VI without the ceremonial crown and collar worn by the Emperor of India.  This portrait was never used.

Frontal portrait of Emperor George VI of India without his crown. Detail from a specimen bank note that was never issued. (F5119) 

In 1938, the most conservative, predictable portrait of George VI was used, showing him facing left, wearing full ceremonial gear, just like his father, George V.  Most Indian banknotes during the final years of colonial rule showed this portrait.  Some of the bank note portraits also showed him seated inside a stylised window, just like a Mughal Emperor.

Portrait of Emperor George VI looking left, wearing ceremonial attire, and framed by an ornate window. Detail from a specimen bank note. (F5092) 

Jennifer Howes
Curator Visual Arts  

Further reading:

All of the portraits shown here are from the British Library’s India Office Currency Collection.
Giordano, J.S. Portraits of a Prince: Coins, Medals and Banknotes of Edward VIII. London: Spink, 2009.
Razack, Rezwan and Kishore, Jhunjhunwalla. The Revised standard reference guide to Indian paper money. Mumbai: Currency & Coins, 2012.

Katie MacIntyre was a fashionable middle class lady of the eighteenth century, and one who was excited by the goods imported from India and China by the East India Company.  These consumer products comprised fine silks, tea of several types, coffee, spices, silks, cottons, muslins and fine porcelain, all expensive items highly prized for personal and domestic use.  Katie was able to secure these luxury wares from her husband John who was in the service of the East India Company.  Letters written to Katie between 1776 and 1777 certainly indicate that he was able to send her a great quantity and variety.  As a merchant John would have been permitted to purchase a certain amount of goods for his own purposes.

IOPP/MSS Eur F 558  ff.20-20v

A letter of 1776 addressed to Katie when she was living in Pimlico, London, refers to the 'cart load of china' John will send.   Chinese blue and white porcelain, or ’China’ ware, was especially prized for its thin, transparent, eggshell like quality and for its delicate hand painted decorations that represented traditional scenes of Chinese everyday life, interpreted for the export trade.  If Katie had a cart load of porcelain, her collection is likely to have included pieces of varying qualities, suitable for both everyday and special use.

IOPP/MSS Eur F 558 ff. 23-23v

In a letter written the following year, John made a shopping list of the ‘necessarys’ Katie had requested.  He carefully noted the quantities and different types of Chinese tea – Hyson (a green tea with a particularly pleasant aroma and colour) and Souchong (a black tea with a much stronger, smoky flavour and aroma) – along with the silks, cottons, gingham, Madras and Nankin (or Nankeen) cloth, he sent home.  The initials along the left hand side indicate which member of the MacIntyre family these gifts were intended for.

Such expensive imports could indeed be necessary luxuries for the upper and wealthy middle classes who desired them all the more for the sense of exotic style they evoked.  However technological progress during the eighteenth century allowed British manufacturers to produce goods in greater quantities than before and, inspired by imported products, they were able to create consumer wares of equal style and luxury that were much more affordable to a larger section of the population.

Helen Peden
Curator Printed Historical Sources 1801-1914 

Georgian Britain - discover prints, drawings, documents and articles which delve into the lives of the Georgians.

Studying medieval manuscripts, one comes across some fascinating characters, particularly among the manuscript scholars and collectors of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.  While researching the provenance of a medieval calendar thought to be from East Anglia, I came across a festschrift for Alan Gradon Thomas (1911-1992), made up of short essays by his customers.  Each tells the story of a rare document, book or manuscript which they purchased from him during his long career as an antiquarian bookseller, both in Bournemouth and London.


Add MS 61887, f. 1. Calendar page for January with two roundels depicting a robed figure stirring a cauldron over a fire and Aquarius pouring water. 

The foreword to the book is by Lawrence Durrell.  Naturally his sketch of Thomas’s character and career is a delight, not least for what it reveals about the quirky Durrell family and their book-collecting habits.  Lawrence describes his friend’s early book collection of four or five choice volumes ‘housed in a large suitcase under his bed’ and reveals that ‘he was going short of food in order to save money for this secret vice’.  Lawrence asked Alan to lunch and Mrs Durrell’s immediate reaction was, ‘That young man needs fattening up’.  She proceeded to do her best, but to no avail as he retained ‘the figure of an Elizabethan courtier’.

   Another manuscript discussed in the festscrift: Add MS 59616 f. 12 The Customary of the Shrine of Thomas Becket, 1482.     

Lawrence Durrell, with the help of Thomas, managed to build up a small library of Elizabethan texts, a collection of which he was justly proud.  However, while he was away on a trip to Greece, his brother Gerald came across the books and sold them off as a job lot, using the funds to build up his own collection of zoological books! Lawrence was justifiably annoyed, and the next time Gerald went away on an expedition, he promptly sold the ill-gotten zoological books.  But all ended well as, luckily, the buyer in each case was Alan Thomas, who ‘simply housed both collections until we returned to base, and after many an acrimonious discussion, sorted the matter out’.

Thomas developed a wide and faithful clientele among both major institutions and private collectors, combining scholarship and erudition with a wry sense of humour. Christopher De Hamel tells how as a schoolboy with £5 to spend, he wrote to various booksellers saying that he would like to purchase fragments of medieval manuscripts. Naturally, he received some rather dismissive replies, but Alan Thomas sent a ‘friendly letter of advice’, with extracts from some of his catalogues and notes about leaves he had for sale at around £5.

The affection and admiration of Alan Thomas’s colleagues comes across again and again in their tributes. He had a ‘huge appetite for life and experience’ and conducted his business as a true gentleman.  In the words of Lawrence Durrell: ‘Money and honours mean little to him; he uses them to further his quest for more life. And it is this life-giving quality that makes him treasured by his friends’.  One of Thomas’s last acts before his death in 1992 was to donate his Lawrence Durrell archive to the British Library.

Chantry Westwell

Further reading:

Christopher de Hamel and Richard A. Linenthal (eds), Books and Manuscripts acquired from Alan G. Thomas and described by his customers on the occasion of his seventieth birthday (Leamington Spa: James Hall, 1981)

Despite the media’s promotion of Black History Month every October, every month is BHM here in the British Library.   As the curator in charge of our UK publications in this regard, I’ve uncovered numerous books and magazines that you wouldn’t find with obvious keyword searches of our catalogue. 

Orlando Patterson’s The Children of Sisyphus (1964) is about Jamaican novelists, while David Katz’ People Funny Boy (2000) is a biography of the famous reggae producer, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry.   Even some local government agencies have done their share of documenting the African Diaspora in Britain too : London’s Wandsworth Council published Gloria Locke’s Caribbeans in Wandsworth (1992), while the Nottinghamshire Living History Archive printed up Louise Garvey’s Lives of Black Nurses in Nottingham (2002).

From Tropic August 1960 (P.P.7615.kf)

But it’s the magazines and newspapers that are special.  In 1948, Edward Scobie published Checkers – “Britain’s Premier Negro Magazine,” presenting a mix of music, stage, literature, politics and fine art.  That year the Empire Windrush docked in Tilbury with almost 500 Jamaican émigrés, launching decades of immigration from the Caribbean.  But although the community presence in Britain goes back centuries beforehand, there wasn’t yet a big enough readership to support such a magazine.  So Checkers folded after five issues, in January 1949.

Five years later, A.P. Pulleyn-Holden published, Bronze (PP.5939.BFA), with editorial help from Mr Scobie and the dance teacher Buddy Bradley, who’d helped everyone from film star Fred Astaire to bandleader Ken ‘Snakehips’ Johnson.   Although they kept readers up to date about Black progress in politics, sports, and finance, the team at Bronze excelled in featuring popular musical acts, including singer Lena Horne, calypso artist Marie Bryant, the best-selling pianist-singer Winifred Atwell, and even the future Avant Garde jazz saxophonist Joe Harriott.  Still, this periodical lasted just six issues (1954–1955).

By 1960 the prospect of publishing appealed to Charles I. Ross and so, with Edward Scobie (again), Patrick Williams, and Molly Douglas, he established Tropic.  This title was more ambitious, with African and West Indian politics in an increasingly post-colonial world, Black cinema, the BBC Overseas Service, and even short stories. Almost two decades before Rock against Racism they were campaigning for Music against Apartheid.  And in the spirit of friendly competition, they promoted Claudia Jones’ West Indian Gazette (1958-1969).  Although Jones established what we now refer to as the Notting Hill Carnival, Tropic didn’t get to push it.  Their role was replaced by Flamingo (PP.5109.bq), with Edward Scobie again at the helm, which published 1961-1963.

From Tropic April 1960 (P.P.7615.kf) 

This was an era of journalism demanding that movie makers “Cut Uncle Tom films,” railing against “Landlords’ Terror Tactics” and BBC TV’s demeaning Black and White Minstrel Show, and asking “Why not a coloured Miss Universe?”  Niche mags came later, such as Grass Roots (1971), Black Echoes : Today’s Music Weekly (1976-), Wealth : The Black Business Magazine (1986-), and Vibes & Voices (2006-). 

But as the mainstream Black press didn’t re-appear until The Voice, in 1982, we are grateful for these earlier ventures.

Andy Simons
Curator, Printed Historical Sources 

In the 18th century the most fashionable dancing masters must have been very visible members of society. Not only did they teach the beau monde, but they held and officiated at public balls and they advertised their services assiduously in the newspapers and elsewhere. For all that, they can be maddeningly elusive when it comes to discovering even the most basic details of their lives.

                     Portrait of  Kellom Tomlinson from The Art of  Dancing  

One such dancing master was Kellom Tomlinson. He is the author of one of the most beautiful dancing manuals of the Georgian period – The Art of Dancing published in London in 1735. The list of subscribers to this publication, some of whom must have been his pupils, includes many members of the aristocracy and gentry as well as professional dancers and fellow dancing masters. Yet, we have no record of his birth and until recently the date of his death was unknown.

A chance discovery in the Burney Collection of newspapers, held by the British Library, gives us Tomlinson’s date of death. The Whitehall Evening Post, or London Intelligencer for 18-20 June 1761 reports:

Tuesday died, of a Paralytick Disorder, in Theobald’s Court, East Street, Red-Lion-Square, Mr. Kenelm Tomlinson, Dancing-Master, in the 74th Year of his Age.

from The Art of  Dancing

The notice provides more than just Tomlinson’s date of death, Tuesday 16 June 1761. It also suggests that he was born in 1687 or 1688, some years earlier than was previously thought. Tomlinson himself tells us, in the Preface to The Art of Dancing, that he was apprenticed to the London dancing master Thomas Caverley between 1707 and 1714. Boys were usually first apprenticed at the age of 14, so Tomlinson was assumed to have been born around 1693. If the notice is correct about his age at death, he did not enter his apprenticeship until he was around 19 years old. This was late by most standards, but particularly for an aspirant dancer. Perhaps this was why Kellom Tomlinson never pursued a stage career.

Moira Goff
Curator Printed Historical Sources 1501-1800

Kellom Tomlinson's The Art of Dancing will feature in the British Library's forthcoming exhibition Georgians Revealed, alongside other rare dance manuals, notated choreogaphies and prints.


Further reading:
Kellom Tomlinson, The Art of Dancing. London, 1735

Jennifer Thorp, ‘New Light on Kellom Tomlinson’, Dance Research, 30 (2012), pp. 57-79.