Royal Pages at Brighton Pavilion

The Silver Tea-Pot

A silver tea-pot by Robert Garrard, made in 1817, recently came up for sale at the Bonham’s Auction House, London. On the base was the following inscription:

Gift of HRH Princess Elizabeth to Joseph Ince,

Page to His Majesty George IV

Princess Elizabeth from an 1831 mezzotint. Copyright National Portrait Gallery, London.

The tea-pot was bought by Huon Mallalieu, who wrote about it in Country Life, (February 20, 2013, p. 92), which was how I first found out about it. The tea-pot fascinates me, not only as an object of regency elegance and taste, but because it was a trace of a life, now largely lost to us.  Sadly, my enquiries about its provenance came to nothing. The tea-pot arrived at Bonham’s as the result of a house clearance and the trail seems to stop there. But in spite of that, its appearance on the market aroused my curiosity and spurred me on to find out more about the role of George IV’s royal pages, who certainly would have worked here at the Royal Pavilion. Who were the royal pages and what did they do? And who was Joseph Ince? Here are my findings.

Pages, it turns out, were not simply pages. There were different types of page with different titles and different duties. There were Pages of the Backstairs, Pages of the Presence and Pages of Honour.

Pages of Honour

Pages of Honour were young aristocrats from some of the wealthiest and most influential families in the nation. Appointed at around the age of eleven or twelve, these Pages often went on to take up positions in one of the Household regiments. Highly sought after, these posts paid well at £120. Pages of honour did not live in the royal palaces and had no official duties in the royal household. They were just required for formal ceremonial occasions, when they would attend in full ceremonial livery. The next phase of my research will involve trying to establish exactly what they would have worn and if any of these garments survive. I’m off to visit the experts from the Royal Dress Collection at Hampton Court and Kensington Palace.

Pages of the Backstairs

Pages of the Backstairs were less well born and in the middling ranks of the royal household. Six pages of the Backstairs were employed and worked in rotation. Historically, they would have waited outside the doors of the King’s Apartments but by the early eighteenth century they had moved within the Chamber.

The Royal Bedchamber was a suite of the King’s private apartments where access was restricted to a select few. The most important duty of the Page of the Backstairs was to guard access to the Royal Body by policing access into the private apartments via the Back (private) stairs. Other duties of Pages of the Backstairs included serving the King’s private meals, attending to his royal needs, assisting with dressing and looking after the Bedchamber apartments.

Roles within the bedchamber were strictly defined. For example in the reign of Queen Anne the Page of the Backstairs would fetch the basin and ewer for washing but it was the woman of the Bechamber would set it before the Queen. And whilst it was the the Page of the Backstairs who would reach for the glass and pass it to the  Woman of the Bedchamber, it was the high-born Lady-in-Waiting who would actually hand it to the Queen. We cannot be certain that by the time of the Regency that these rigid rules were still strictly adhered to but the royal household is marked by a longstanding tradition of continuity and it is unlikely that roles would have been radically different.

Ground Floor Plan showing Servants’ Stairs used to Access King’s Private Apartment

The Pages of the Backstairs had bedrooms close to the King’s chamber so that they could be called on as necessary. On the floor plan illustrated a page’s bedroom can be identified close to the King’s Chamber in the north part of the building (on the left of the plan). There were at least two other page’s bedrooms close by. One Page of the Backstairs would be in waiting in the King’s Chambers and two would be in attendance upon the King during dinner.

So although not high-born like the Pages of Honour their power lay in their ability to restrict or admit access to the monarch and in their potential influence on the monarch by their close contact with him. In 1817 they were paid £200 a year.

Pages of the Presence

Pages of the Presence, (Joseph Ince was one), had the lowest status of the three types of page. The main role of a Page of the Presence was to wait on the aristocratic Gentlemen or Lords in Waiting who were the King’s close companions and attendants. Pages of the Presence would also wait on the King’s visitors at meal times. They worked in more public areas and were not permitted access to the Bedchamber at all which meant they would have to liaise closely with the Pages of the Bedchamber is order to arrange for a visitor or member of the Royal Household to see the monarch in his private apartments. In 1821 first class pages earned between £230-£260, and the second class between £140-£170. They worked in strict rotations on a month-on, month-off basis. During their months off they would be paid 7 shillings (35p) a day for board and lodging.

Joseph Ince 

Joseph Ince was a Page of the Presence for 23 years, whilst George IV was Prince of Wales and then Prince Regent. But he may well have worked for the Prince of Wales before that, in the kitchens. There was a confectioner employed between 1790-96 and a cook between 1799 and 1803.  They are both named Joseph Ince. It seems very likely that these might have been one and the same.

A marriage between one Joseph Ince and a Victoire Lantonne took place in 1784 at St. George’s, Hanover Square. Seven years later on 17 February 1791 a son Charles was baptized in the same parish.  In 1816 a Charles Ince is  appointed as ‘Purveyor of Wine to the Prince Regent in Carlton House’. The baby son born to Joseph and Victoire Ince would have been 25 years old by this time. Son following father into the Royal Household perhaps?

In October 1820, a few months after the accession of  George IV, Joseph Ince retired. He received a ‘compensation’ payment of £47.10s a quarter, making a total of £190 per annum, not a bad pension by any standards. Thirteen years later on  6 April 1833 Joseph Ince died.

Quite why Princess Elizabeth gave Joseph Ince a tea-pot we might never know. If anyone out there can shed some light on this please do get in touch. But the tea-pot and the inscription upon it is a poignant reminder of the life of a servant, who once climbed the stairs of the Royal Pavilion in the service of the Regent. The tea-pot should be valued, as much for the traces of the lives that keeps alive, however shadowy, as for the understated elegance of its form.

Tracy Anderson, post-doctoral researcher

The History of Brighton Museum and Library

Twentieth Century Art & Design Gallery at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, 2008, RG001116

Although the history of the Royal Pavilion has been thoroughly researched by several writers, the history of Brighton’s unique Museum and Library has rarely been explored in detail.

On 15 August 1872, the Brighton Gazette devoted its most lyrical sentiments to the new Museum and Public Library, labelling it “the pride of Brighton”: ‘No Acts of Parliament can so well shape, fashion, or restrain men’s minds and inclination as the beautiful and true in life – we have become wealthy in a few moments as it were – rich in art, in science, in the mysteries of the world…The old stables have disappeared, the court yard, where high-mettled royal steeds have pranced, is gone, and thereon stands the metamorphosed building which is now a fit sharer in which is justly called “the pride of Brighton”.’

The site selected for the Museum and Library was in Church Street, beside the Royal Stables and Riding House (now the Dome and Corn Exchange) which were completed in 1808 by William Porden. At the lower end of Church Street Porden had built only a screen wall, with no building behind it. A tennis court was intended for this space, but never built. Instead, Jospeh Good (the architect of the North Gate) built further stables and coach houses here for Queen Adelaide in 1831. After the purchase of the Royal Pavilion Estate by the town in 1850, this area was used by the Army until 1871, when the Council resolved that a new Library, Museum, and Picture Gallery should be built on the site.

1871-3 

Expanding Art Collections

Design by Philip Lockwood for the Picture Gallery, c.1871. The gallery as built corresponds with design in all respects except the roof, which was constructed in the form of a shallow barrel-vault. CAIL000011.36

Art exhibitions had been held in the Great Kitchen of the Royal Pavilion since 1852, and in 1859 rooms on the first floor of the Pavilion were adapted as a museum. However, as the collections increased it became obvious that new galleries were needed. The work was directed by the Borough Surveyor, Philip Lockwood, who created an entrance which led into a small hall, at the side of which was a Post Office. At the rear of this hall was the large Picture Gallery (now the Twentieth Century design gallery) which, as the Brighton Gazette commented on 15 August 1872, ‘is the room of the building in which “Art” takes its seat’. The gallery was originally top-lit through a double roof, the lower part being glazed with ground glass.

Moderate Moresque

The Church Street frontage remained much as it had been in 1808, but Lockwood altered the windows and the main entrance, which became an archway supported by columns with ‘Moresque’ capitals. The Brighton Gazette commented on 16 November 1871: ‘The style adopted of course could be no other than that in which the Pavilion was originally conceived, though forms of a more moderate and strictly Moresque character have been maintained.’ The work cost £6,289, and was executed by the well-known Brighton builders, Cheesman & Co. The Clerk of the Works was Maurice B. Adams, later to become editor of the Building News and a successful architect in his own right. The Art Gallery was opened to the public in January 1873, and the Museum and Library eight months later.

1901-2 

It soon became apparent that the accommodation created by Lockwood was too small – especially when the Lending Library was opened in October 1889. Remodelling was finally begun in 1901 under the direction of F.J.C.May, Borough Surveyor, and the total cost amounted to £50,000.

Paupers and Prisoners

May’s task was to develop the site to the west of the Museum, which had been occupied since 1856 by the Brighton Board of Guardians, who were responsible for providing poor relief. When the Guardians moved out in 1892, their quarters were used as a Magistrates’ Court. The Brighton Herald of 1 November 1902 observed that ‘Brighton’s Home of Art was freed from the weekly procession of applicants for poor relief and from the proximity of the parish bread van…[but] for a while the procession of paupers was only exchanged for a procession of prisoners.’

The ‘west entrance’ to Brighton Library and Museum in 1905, CAIL000011.11

May completely remodelled the library in a style that the Brighton Herald called ‘Persian’. Windows were encrusted with Islamic ornament and the building was surmounted by two copper domes. Two new porches provided entrances to the Library and the Dome: they were highly elaborate and fitted with splendid wrought iron gates. All the wrought iron in the building, including the remodelled staircases, was designed by May and made by W. Saunders of Kemp Town. The entrances were filled with tiling designed by George Elphick and executed by Craven Dunhill & Co. from 1894 onwards. Inside the porch were panels ‘recalling the Moorish design on the Alhambra in Spain’. The staircase and walls were lined with a geometric dado in greens and blues crowned by a rich frieze. The walls of the entrance hall were also decorated with cool green scale-pattern tiles. The screen in front of the staircase, again in the words of the Brighton Herald, ‘must represent the highest degree that faience work has reached in its application to the constructive parts of a building.’

Poisoned Arrows and Poetry

May added several new galleries to the museum. One large room was devoted to ethnography. The Brighton Herald patronisingly commented that ‘it comprises a collection of the war clubs, poisoned arrows, and more peaceful implements of savages.’ Three new exhibition galleries upstairs were given ceilings of vaguely ‘Renaissance’ plasterwork and an advanced system of top-lighting through the sides of the roof.

The new Reference Library on the first floor was admired by the Herald for its ‘specially handsome ceiling, distinguished by three glass domes. The mouldings have that Elizabethan touch that the bookworm likes to see in a library along with old calf bindings and antique bookcases.’ The Lending Library was also praised. When the borrower presented a ticket, ‘the attendant presses a pedal; a wicket gate opens and admits him into a charmed circle, where he can roam at will up and down shelves marked “Theology”…”History”….”Poetry”.’

Critical responses 

Repellent?

The Church Street frontage of Brighton Library, Art Gallery and Museum, as it appeared c1905, CAIL000011.08

The new Library and Museum was opened on 5 November 1902, and although the Library has since switched venues, the design of the Museum in Church Street has remained substantially intact. Modern critics have questioned the building’s architectural worth: Goodhart-Rendel, writing in the Architect and Building News in 1933, remarked that ‘The eastern style…began by Porden, and luxuriated in by Nash…re-appeared, in a rather repellent form, to take possession of the Public Library and Art Gallery.’ Today, perhaps, we are better able to appreciate the architecture of the Museum and Library, and to declare, with the Brighton Herald of 1902, that ‘it adds yet another to the varieties of oriental architecture of which the Pavilion estate is in itself quite a museum.’

Gods with Feet of Clay

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Henry Willett was one of the founding fathers of Brighton Museum. Among the many things he gave to the Museum was a collection of popular pottery, the cups and plates and mantelpiece ornaments used by everyday people at the end of the 19th Century.

Henry Willett divided his pottery collection into 23 themes, one of which was Religion.

‘On the mantelpieces of many cottage homes …. [are figures] which the inmates admire and revere … an unconscious survival of the Lares and Penates [household gods] of the Ancients.’

Henry Willett

Gods and Mythology 

Scholars and artists in Renaissance Italy began the rediscovery of Classical Greece and Rome. Of course they had never been completely forgotten; there are numerous references to Roman gods in Boccaccio’s Decameron (1350) and Chaucer borrowed many of his stories for the Canterbury Tales (1370). Saturn, Mars, Venus and Diana all figure in The Knights Tale.

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From around 1450, as more people explored ancient history and literature they reacquainted themselves with the mythology of Antiquity.

These pieces inspired contemporary painters and sculptors and engravers, who copied them or used their poses and draperies for other subjects. There is a lead figure of Neptune in Bristol, based on a classical model, dating from the 16th century. Many classically-inspired lead statues were made in the 17th century and installed in gardens and parks. Classical figures were also carved in marble for country houses or civic and church monuments. The general population became familiar with them when they appeared in public spaces.

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By the 18th century most educated middle and upper-class people spoke Latin and Greek and were familiar with illustrated editions of classical works such as Ovid’s History of the Gods. Many young aristocrats undertook a Grand Tour of Europe, visiting the important classical ruins and admiring the statuary. They bought volumes of engravings and souvenir statuettes in bronze, which they brought home to Britain. In Germany, from the 1740s, some of the best-known classical figures inspired innovative modellers, such as J.J. Kaendler, at the Meissen porcelain factory, outside Dresden. These Meissen figures were widely collected by the British upper classes. English porcelain factories, such as Bow, Chelsea and Derby then copied them, often casting exact replicas. In turn, the Staffordshire potters made their own copies of these figures from the English porcelain versions. They were usually issued in pairs such as Apollo and Diana or Minerva and Mars. Venus shared her favours with Neptune, Bacchus or Mars.

Elements and Allegories

Much of the ancient statuary so admired by Grand Tourists represented only minor gods and secular figures from mythology. Many of these came to be used to personify abstract concepts and moralities. Artists, and later the potters, were inspired by emblem books. The best known was the Italian, Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (1593), first published in English with illustrations in 1644. Ripa defined Virtues, Vices, Passions, Arts, Humours, Elements and Celestial Bodies.

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These illustrated books led to the production of many sets of paintings and sculptures of figures representing the Muses, the Continents, the Senses and the Seasons as well as the Vices and Virtues. By the mid 18th century groups were being produced at the Meissen factory and before long groups of such figures became popular products of the English porcelain factories and the potteries. They looked well ranged along a mantelpiece or in a display cabinet.

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Sets of the Continents closely followed the German prototypes but the sharply defined distinctions between the British Seasons led to more original designs for these pottery figures. They are modelled either as young women or children, warmly or scantily dressed, each bearing appropriate fruit or grain.  The taste for personifying moral qualities was peculiarly British. The trio of Theological Virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity, were more popular than the Cardinal Virtues, Prudence, Temperance, Courage and Justice. More obscure virtues, such as Purity were also produced.

Britannia

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Under the Romans, Britannia was the major part of that island off the northern shores of Europe, first invaded by Julius Caesar in 55 BC. It shared a northern border with Caledonia (Scotland) and lay adjacent to Hibernia (Ireland) to the west. The emperors Claudius and Anoninus Pius issued coins adorned with a female figure labelled Britannia. It was the first personification of the British Isles, developed, ironically, to characterise a conquered country.

Britannia then lay dormant until she was reawakened by Henry Peacham in his Minerva Britanna, (1612) the first English emblem book. Here she is described,

‘With haire disheveld, and in mournfull wise

Who spurns a shippe, with scepter in her hand

Thus BRITAINEs drawen in old Antiquities’

King Charles II had her likeness cast on the humble copper farthing, minted in 1672. Based on her Roman forbear, she sits in profile on a rock, swathed in draperies, holding an olive branch in one hand and a spear and shield in the other. The shield is adorned with the crosses of St George and St Andrew. Samuel Pepys believed that her appearance was a portrait of Frances Stewart, Duchess of Richmond, one of the King’s mistresses.

James Thomson wrote his famous poem, Rule Britannia! as the finale of his masque, Alfred,  commissioned by Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1740. It was set to music by Thomas Arne but became the prince’s funeral ode when he died suddenly in 1751. Some of the earliest English porcelain figures, issued by the Chelsea and the Girl-in-a-swing factories were of Britannia mourning the Prince. Soon afterwards, the Worcester factory used printed likenesses of Britannia to frame portraits of George III as she steadily gained popularity. Minerva had been a popular choice for early lead statues. Minerva, the Roman equivalent of the Greek Athena, was goddess of both wisdom and warfare. Eventually, as the potters transformed her into Britannia, the head of the monstrous gorgon (a gift from her protégé, Perseus) impaled on the centre of her shield, was replaced with the crosses of the Union flag.

50p

Britannia has appeared consistently on British coins and banknotes since the time of Charles II. Christopher Ironside, designer of the 1971 heptagonal 50 pence piece, reinstated her olive branch, lost since the Napoleonic wars. Her appearance had been very similar to that of the war-like Minerva, championed by Napoleon, who menaced Britannia from across the English Channel. It is ironic that Britannia and Marianne (the personification of France who followed Minerva) symbolised the aspirations of modern, democratic nations at a time when citizenship remained a male monopoly.

This text originally accompanied the Gods with Feet of Clay exhibition at Brighton Musem & Art Gallery.