All Things Georgian: Tales from the Long Eighteenth Century

Chapter One

Doggett’s Coat and Badge

Opinions on the new German king were inherently divided but George I’s supporters were vociferous in their support, and one very odd way of celebrating the new reign started a tradition that continues to this very day: the annual Doggett’s Coat and Badge race on the Thames which has been held every year since 1715, originally on the anniversary of George’s accession to the throne.

Thomas Doggett, a successful Irish comedic actor and theatre manager born c.1650 who had played at Drury Lane and the Haymarket was the instigator of the race. Doggett, a lively little gentleman whose gift for dry humour enlivened many a dinner table, was ‘a Whig up to the head and ears’ and ardent in his praise for the new king. Honouring George I may have been the sole rationale behind Doggett’s plan, although it is also said that one stormy evening the actor was struggling to find a waterman who would take him up river against the tide. At last a young man fresh out of his apprenticeship volunteered his services and this prompted Doggett with the idea of showing both his gratitude to the young waterman and his loyalty to his monarch. The theatres and the watermen relied on each other for their business and it was natural that Doggett should pick this trade to benefit from his wager.

The men who ferried the barges on the Thames were the first public servants to wear a uniform: a pleated coat, knee breeches and a hat, together with a badge or plate on their arm which either denoted their employer or that they had the freedom of the river and were licensed by their guild at Watermen’s Hall (all watermen had to serve a seven-year apprenticeship). Informal wagers and races had always been common among the watermen (in 1661 Samuel Pepys recorded one which took the same route as Doggett’s) but it was only for the men just out of their apprenticeship that Doggett instigated his Coat and Badge contest; the winner would be granted their freedom by the Watermen’s Company and presented with an orange-coloured livery and a silver badge representing ‘liberty’. Doggett insisted that the race would be run on the first day of August ‘forever’ as a commemoration of George I’s accession.

The race was open to six watermen who met the qualification and they were to row – against the tide – from the White Swan Tavern by London Bridge to the Old White Swan at Chelsea, a distance of almost 5 miles. London Bridge, in 1715, still had houses and shops along its length and was a congested thoroughfare from Southwark into the city (it was not until the middle of the century that these buildings were demolished). On the day of the race, spectators began to assemble throughout the afternoon, congregating on the riverside and in the parlour of the Old Swan Tavern which stood next to the Old Swan Stairs (the watermen’s stairs which dotted the Thames provided access to and from the barges) and just ‘above bridge’. The swift current underneath London Bridge was dangerous and ‘shooting the bridge’ was rather like going down the rapids; most people crossed the bridge by foot and took a boat again when on the other side.

View of London Bridge, Claude de Jongh. (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund)

The race did not begin until the tide against which the men had to row was at its strongest and it could take up to two hours of back-breaking toil before the rowers made the finish line. The winner of the first race was John Opey, a waterman from Bermondsey who plied his trade from St Saviour’s Stairs. In 1720, there was contention over a false start to the race and it had to be re-run a few days later; the winner’s name has been lost and all is known is that it was a ‘below bridge’ man from St Catherine’s Stairs who won both times. During that race, a spectator fell from the bridge into the river and was drowned. Thomas Doggett was among the huge, pressing crowds and met with his own misfortune:

As I was making my way through the ’Friars intending to take water at Temple Stairs, in order that I might witness the race for my Coat and Badge, one of those rake helly fellows that so beset the town, stopped me, and cocking his hat with arms akimbo cried ‘Whig or Tory?’ He did not care a Queen Anne’s farthing for my politics but made it the pretext for a quarrel. I whipped out my hanger [a short sword] in a trice, set my back to the wall and cried, ‘Hurrah for King George and long life to him’, and yet I had liked to have fared scurvily, had I not be thought me that my own name for the nonce would stand me in even better stead than the King’s. So when being surrounded by a host of tatterdemalions and pronounced a rat that must bleed, I said be it so my masters and though you fail in the recognition, know that I am Dogget [sic], whereat the varlits laughed; true, I escaped with a whole skin, but at the expense of a guinea, this is the gist on’t – so now to dinner and afterwards to the White Swan there to drink a cool tankard and shake hands with the winner.

View at Chelsea of the Annual Sculling Race for Doggett’s Coat and Badge, Edward Francis Burney. (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection)

Doggett married Mary Owen, an heiress from Eltham, and retired from the stage. He died – childless – in 1721 and was buried in Eltham churchyard alongside Doggett’s Coat and Badge 5 his wife who had predeceased him. Doggett’s legacy was his race for which he left provision in his will, determined that it would take place every year; the Fishmongers’ Company took over the running of it from 1722 onwards.

Jack Broughton, the boxer, John Hamilton Mortimer. (Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection)

Jack Broughton, who later gained fame as the era’s foremost pugilist, known as the father of English boxing, initially worked as an apprentice on the Thames and he was the winner in 1730. After gaining his ‘freedom’ he worked as a waterman from the Hungerford Stairs until able to make his living from his fists instead. Over the years, changes were made to the rules and from 1769 the six men were drawn by lots. Specifications for the barges were standardized as the watermen cunningly began to adapt them for race-day to make their crafts lighter and therefore faster and easier to row. Nowadays, the men and women are chosen by preliminary heats and row with the tide in modern sculling boats. The old London Bridge has been replaced but the race still starts where the Old Swan Stairs were located but, despite Doggett’s instructions, the event is no longer held on 1 August, the anniversary of George I’s accession to the throne, but instead takes place during the month of July.

Chapter Two

The Venus of Luxembourg

Marie Louise Élisabeth d’Orléans, Duchess of Berry, was born in the summer of 1695 in the Palace of Versailles. Her parents were first cousins; Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, was the son of Louis XIV’s younger – and bisexual – brother, Philippe, Monsieur , and his second wife, Elizabeth Charlotte of the Palatinate (known as Liselotte) and Louise Élisabeth’s mother was Françoise Marie de Bourbon, the youngest illegitimate daughter of Louis XIV and his maîtresse-entitre (chief mistress), Françoise-Athénaïs, Marquise de Montespan. Louise Élisabeth was, therefore, both granddaughter and great-niece to the ageing Sun King.

Portrait of a Woman, according to tradition Marie Louise Élisabeth d’Orléans, Duchesse de Berry, as Flora, Nicolas de Largillière (school of). (Rijksmuseum)

Philippe of Orléans was besotted by his young daughter, nursing Louise Élisabeth through a serious childhood illness and indulging her every whim and wish: his devotion would later lead to slanderous gossip. Her practical and down-to-earth grandmother, Liselotte, the Dowager Duchess of Orléans, disapproved of Louise Élisabeth’s lax behaviour but noted that the girl was intelligent, eloquent and had a good heart. She was also tall, handsome and haughty.

In 1710, aged 14, Louise Élisabeth was married to her cousin and the king’s grandson, Charles, Duke of Berry who was, for seven years, heir presumptive to the Spanish crown. A year after her marriage, the young Duchess of Berry gave birth to a stillborn daughter. Louise Élisabeth had been advised by her doctors to remain at Versailles but the king would have none of it and insisted she travelled by barge with the court to the Palace of Fontainebleau. It was a traumatic journey: the barge hit a pier and the duchess almost drowned. By this time the marriage between the duke and duchess had also hit the rocks and the duchess had – reputedly – begun to hit the bottle and was gaining a reputation as a glutton:

The duchesse de Berry fainted dead away. We thought it was a stroke, but when the duchesse de Bourgogne poured some vinegar over her face she returned to her senses and began to vomit abominably. Small wonder, after hours of continuous stuffing during the play – pêches au caramel, chestnuts, a confection of redcurrants and cranberries, dried cherries with quantities of lemon – and then she ate some fish for supper and drank on top of that.

On paper, the marriage had been a good match, and the stout but handsome blond-haired duke had been thought a good catch for several of the royal daughters of France, but Berry bon cœur (‘Berry good heart’ as Liselotte termed him) was weak-willed and easily dominated by his headstrong and spoilt young wife. Liselotte was under no illusions as to the state of her granddaughter’s union. Three months after their marriage, the duke had fallen in love with a femme de chambre (chambermaid), an affair quickly discovered by Louise Élisabeth who blackmailed her husband: if he treated her well, she would turn a blind eye but if he behaved badly she would tell the king and have the maid dismissed. This arrangement suited all very well and held fast almost until the duke’s death. Shortly before he expired, the duke had arranged a marriage for his mistress but on the condition that her husband refrained from exercising his conjugal rights. He left both the chambermaid and his duchess pregnant; Louise Élisabeth retained the woman in her service and took care of her and her child.

Louis XIV, after Hyacinthe Rigaud. (The J. Paul Getty Museum (Open Content)) Elisabeth Charlotte (Liselotte) of the Palatinate, Duchess of Orléans, workshop of Hyacinthe Rigaud. (© User: LittleFrog/Wikimedia Commons/CC-BY-SA-3.0)

The child that the duchess was carrying at her husband’s premature death – the result of a fall from his horse – was her third; in 1713 she had produced a sickly son who lived a mere three months.