More Victorian Love Letters and the Basics of Postage Stamp Flirtation

It’s been two long weeks since I last posted an excerpt from The Mystery of Love, Courtship and Marriage Explained by Henry J Wehman.  I feel a sadness in my heart that only a love letter from Mr. Wehman can dispel.  Gentle reader, I have a terrible confession to make: I have missed a very important detail in the art of Victorian love letter writing and that is postage stamp flirtation. My letters might have said, “I love you,” but my straight up and down stamps said, “Goodbye, sweetheart.”  Luckily, Mr. Wehman has set me straight on this count.

Once again, I have included images from Cassell’s Family Magazine published in 1886, four years before the The Mystery of Love. I just adore Cassell’s.  In the very near future, I will include one of its short stories on this blog.

 

Excerpt of sample love letters from  The Mystery of Love, Courtship and Marriage Explained:

From a poor young man to a rich young lady whom he had only seen but a few times:

 Dear Miss W— ;

 You will no doubt be surprised to receive a letter from one who is almost a total stranger to you, but I hope you will pardon me for my boldness when I tell you how truly, how deeply I love you. Perhaps prudence would dictate that I should, for the present, at least, withhold this confession, but my heart is impatient and will not be quieted until I have made you acquainted with its secret. I am aware that the suddenness of my passion may awaken the suspicion that it is only a shallow and transient feeling, but I am sure that you have won my whole heart, and what more could you do were those charms of yours, which have so easily captivated me, to shine before me for years? Love is not a vegetable that it must grow nor is it a thing of logic that it must depend upon sequences and conclusions; but it is a passion of the soul, which may, like thought, be born in an instant, especially in the presence of beauty and accomplishments such as you possess.

All I expect in answer to this, I fear, imprudent note, is some intimation that I may dare to hope that I do not live without hope. Give me but an opportunity to prove myself worthy of the infinite happiness which your love would bestow, and there is no impossibility I would not achieve to obtain it. Indeed, since the first night I saw you, the perfection and the constellation of charms that shine in your person have filled my heart and brain so full that I can do nothing but think of you all day and dream of you all night. I cannot imagine any happiness for myself in the future which is not identified with you.

If your heart is yet free, and if you do not find objections to answering this note, I entreat you to deal with me with the same direct frankness that I have used in addressing you.

I am, with great respect and devoted love,

Henry B—.

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In Search of Regency Era Almack’s

The other evening I was browsing through old books and periodicals when I stumbled across an article on Almack’s in “The Illustrated London News,” 1843.  The text was hopelessly blurred and had run off the edge of the scanner. I lowered my screen resolution, squinted at my monitor and tried to transcribe some of the article, putting question marks where the text was lopped off.

 

This was the best I could do:

The plan of the establishment [Almack’s] is briefly as follows. To the left of the entrance-hall is a spacious supper-room, with orchestra-gallery, &c; it is tastefully decorated and to give stability to the dancing salon above, are several supports, in the picturesque forms of palm-trees. From the hall, you ascend by a handsome stone staircase to the suite of rooms, four in number, an anti-room, tea-room, and the ball-room, to the right of which is a large card-room. The ball-room is one of the most spacious salons in the metropolis, its dimensions being about 100 feet in length, ? feet in width; it is chastely coloured – white and straw, relieve  ? and medallions of classic design; the draperies are blue  ? and the vast apartment, when fully illuminated (with 500 wax lights) has a most brilliant appearance.  The greatest number of persons ever present in this room upon one occasion ? at 1700.

Curiouser and curiouser. What did Almack’s really look like?

Exterior


So, rather than do laundry, dishes or boring web work, I ran searches through old internet archives.  And this is what I found:

From Club Life of London, by John Timbs, 1872

Almack’s large ball-room is about one hundred feet in length, by forty feet in width; it is chastely decorated with gilt columns and pilasters, classic medallions, mirrors, etc., and is lit with gas, in cut-glass lustres. The largest number of persons ever present in this room at one ball was 1700.

From Survey of London

Architectural description

There are two sources of information about the interior, one being the view of ‘The Ball Room, Willis’s Rooms in Old and New London, and the other being Cruikshank’s lively illustration in Life in London (1821). Different as they are in spirit, the two representations are not incompatible; in fact, interpreting the first by the second, a fair idea of Mylne’s interior can be formed. The illustration in Old and New London almost certainly shows the great room after its redecoration by Kuckuck in 1860, but under the heavy Victorian overlay can be seen the elegance depicted, rather vaguely, by Cruikshank. It seems clear, therefore, that the walls were divided into bays by a Composite order, with paired pilasters between the windows or panels of the long side walls, and single columns between the five bays of each end wall. Cruikshank suggests that the unfluted shafts were marbled or of scagliola. Between the capitals the bays were decorated with a frieze of festoons and paterae, and below these were oblong panels with relief subjects. In Cruikshank’s time the windows were furnished with elegant scrolled pelmet-heads of gilt wood supporting swagged draperies, and Rococo looking glasses filled some of the wall panels. He shows the orchestra playing in a balcony with a gilt trellised railing, but in a position it can hardly have occupied, and two-tiered crystal chandeliers hang from the ceiling. In the Old and New London view, these have been replaced by huge lustres of cut glass, hanging from a flat ceiling with a shallow segmental cove, the general form of which was probably original.

According to the Survey of London, Almack’s was destroyed by “enemy action” in WWII.

Cruikshank’s depiction of Almack’s from Life in London

 

 

Image of ballroom from Old and New London

From Old and New London

Close by the St. James’s Theatre are “Willis’s Rooms,” a noble suite of assembly-rooms, formerly known as “Almack’s.” The building was erected by Mylne, for one Almack, a tavern-keeper, and was opened in 1765, with a ball, at which the Duke of Cumberland, the hero of Culloden, was present.

The large ball-room is about one hundred feet in length by forty feet in width, and is chastely decorated with columns and pilasters, classic medallions, and mirrors. The rooms are let for public meetings, dramatic readings, concerts, balls, and occasionally for dinners. Right and left, at the top of the grand staircase, and on either side of the vestibule of the ball-room, are two spacious apartments, used occasionally for large suppers or dinners.

As far back as 1840 it was pretty evident that “Almack’s” was on the decline.

The amazing Nancy Mayer sent me the floor plans of Almack’s from the Beau Monde archives. This is the ground floor

Almack’s First floor

Alas, after all this armchair research (procrastination) and emailing questions to Nancy, I feel the descriptions of Almack’s are too scant and confusing and we can’t depend on the accuracy of the images. So I suggest we do what authors and readers do best: just imagine it. Make your own private Almack’s.