Oh, the Folly of It All - A Curious Architectural Genre

"Folly is the direct pursuit of happiness and beauty"
-- George Bernard Shaw

I was recently perusing one of those beautifully photographed, shiny-papered coffee-table books on the "Gardens of England." Prominently featured was the "folly," the quintessential piece of architecture that came into renown particularly during the Romantic and "picturesque" movement of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A folly is defined primarily as a building that has no purpose other than ornament, or one "so extravagant that it transcends the normal range of garden ornaments or other class of building to which it belongs." A folly must be eccentric and also intentional. A broken-down windmill does not become a folly. It must be purposefully constructed as an adornment, a sham - a tower without a staircase, a temple without a priest, a shrine without a worshipper.

[This construction in Pontypool, Wales is quite simply known as "The Folly Tower"]

The setting is key for the folly: ideally, it belongs to aristocratic grounds and to the countryside. It should peep out of a copse of forest, sit tidily in a clearing, or preside majestically on a tiny island in a man made lake. The folly becomes part of the landscape, its very uselessness making it an object not quite of a piece with the man made world. It somehow manages to represent aristocracy, grand wealth, and eccentric solitude at the same time. Many, of course, doubled as hunting lodges, the original gazebos, or even as glorified garden sheds with a touch of whimsy. It comes as no surprise that the majority of listed follies are to be found in England, also the home of "The Folly Fellowship" -- an organization dedicated to awareness and preservation of these artifacts. (Including a must-read magazine!)

One of the most famous of all follies is the "Temple of Apollo" (pictured below) at Stourhead in Wiltshire -- the estate also includes "King Alfred's Tower." The Temple of Apollo at Stourhead is the scene of Mr. Darcy's first, rejected proposal to Elizabeth Bennett in the 2005 film version of Pride and Prejudice. It is as if the filmmakers sought the locale of a "folly" to reflect Darcy's own rashness in proposing to the lady whom he has not yet adequately wooed. His more thoughtful effort, facilitated with the passage of time, is rooted quite literally on the soil of eternal, unornamented England.

[The "Temple of Apollo," Stourhead, Wiltshire]

The "folly" expresses our desires which are simultaneously fanciful and unfulfilled. It is of no surprise that the genre came of age at the epitome of rationality, represented by the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. But while "efficiency" was the new byword of the time, many felt the irrepressible urge to rebel against it. Hence, the Romantic movement, which was ironically made possible by the resources, tastes, and leisure that the changing world afforded. The "folly" expressed a hearkening back to some imagined ancient glory; the apparently "useless" object invoking something that was dearly longed-for but perpetually intangible.

The Downton Effect: The History of Domestic Service in Britain

The profound success of the historical-drama-cum-soap-opera Downton Abbey on both sides of the Atlantic has provoked a variety of reactions from the fawning to the revolted. Historian Simon Schama, in a rather colourful turn of phrase, has termed it "cultural necrophilia." Other critics point to the inherent conservatism of the show, and its possible correlation to contemporary politics. Underlying themes seem to emphasize deference to hierarchy, tradition, keeping one's place and, presumably, respecting one's "betters." In a previous "Eating Like an Edwardian" post I explored the mythology of the Edwardian country house in a grittier film, The Shooting Party, and what this paternalistic world really entailed.

All this aside, the show has certainly demonstrated a wellspring of nostalgia and prompted some historical reflection on what it might have been like to actually work as a domestic servant in Edwardian England. For one thing, it would have involved a great deal more backbreaking work than is depicted in the show, particularly for lowly scullery maids such as that of the character Daisy (later upgraded to kitchen maid). A real-life scullery maid would have been kept busy from dawn to sundown performing dirty, difficult, menial tasks. She would have had considerably less time at her disposal to moon over footman Thomas or discuss not wishing to marry the doomed soldier William. Nevertheless, the show is adept at demonstrating the range of servants employed by a country house in this period, and the subtle yet important gradations of rank -- levels of hierarchy which were as important below stairs as above them.

[The servant cast of Downton Abbey lined up outside the great house -- ITV]

Co-incidentally I recently read Up and Down Stairs: The History of the Country House Servant by Jeremy Musson. The author charts the changes and continuities of the grand "household" from 1400 to the present. Although the book is heavy on minutiae and detail (albeit often fascinating in itself), Musson also strikes a balance with drawing out larger themes. He demonstrates how the composition of households among the landed classes showcased status, societal values, and changing notions of the private and public.

Tudor and Stuart households were distinct from more recent incarnations in two major ways: the majority of the household consisted of male servants, and there was little spatial distinction between masters and servants. The nature of work and the need to demonstrate a "visible and glorious household" lent itself to the employ of male servants. This was especially important as servants often doubled as bodyguards or soldiers -- the physical safety of the manor was still often in peril. These male servants might include young scions of aristocratic families who were expected to learn about the work of nobility - for them, certainly, "servant" would not have held the pejorative status that we associate with it. The "household" during this period was more likely to refer to all members living under the same roof, regardless of status and there was often little or no buffer of privacy between master and servants. Some commonly slept in the same room in case the latter were required. It was only after the Restoration period that ideas about personal privacy moved to the forefront, and with it the notion that money and privilege entitled a noble family to an existence in which the menial tasks of the household occurred out of sight.

The eighteenth and particularly the nineteenth centuries saw the full flowering of this "revolution" in privacy. New country houses were specifically designed with separate servants' quarters, back stairs, and amenities which would enable the serving of meals, the cleaning of rooms, and the general care of the "upstairs" household with maximum invisibility. Within servant's quarters extreme care was taken to separate classes of servants and male and female quarters, in keeping with the strictures of the new morality.

In the eighteenth century, the parading of servants became less about showing one's power (in a very survivalist, utilitarian sense as had been the case in previous eras), and more about "conspicuous consumption." The grandest houses employed only the tallest, best-looking footmen dressed in expensive livery -- they were items of display. Prior to the abolition of slavery young slave boys were also imported from the West Indies as exotic playthings, essentially novelties to be shown off at dinner parties.

The "long nineteenth century" -- the Victorian era running into the Edwardian era -- represented the "apogee" of the country house ideal. In fact it was an ideal with longstanding longevity. I recently watched an excellent series The Victorian Kitchen, filmed in 1989. Although the cook Ruth Mott, by then certainly in her late seventies, had worked in country houses in the 1920s and 1930s she was eminently qualified to present a true representation of a "Victorian kitchen." Dishes and methods of cooking did not change substantially for more than 100 years, until the advent of the refrigerator and postwar prepared foods.

This was the age of "propriety" in the household. Displaying wealth continued to be important, but so did appearances and moral conduct. The high moral standards expected by servants at Downton reflect this priority -- Ethel's illegitimate child might well have met with a less severe reaction two centuries earlier. The late Victorian era also represented the height of the wealth and power of the landed aristocracy. Although agricultural revenues and rents started to fall in the late 1800s, the true "credit crisis" for this class took a good fifty years to truly work itself out. As continues to be the case, connections and a good name count for much in easing the occasional financial distress. But serious shortfalls could not be papered over forever.

The First World War and most particularly the Second, wrought immense changes in the country house lifestyle. At the close of the second season of Downton there is little indication of the scale of these changes, as they would take some time to fully occur. Income taxes and death duties eroded the revenue of much of the landed gentry, and among those grand houses which escaped the wrecking ball, many were deeded to the National Trust. The labour-intensive lifestyle of the landed gentleman became unfeasible for another reason: a life of domestic service simply lost its appeal for the young. Whereas earlier generations saw service as a means to gain experience, perhaps rise in the world, and certainly benefit from a roof over one's head and a good supply of healthy food (in a time of rampant starvation in the industrial cities), a new generation saw greater opportunities in factory labour, the trades, or in cities. They had no interest in the long hours and lack of freedom represented by these occupations -- "service" became synonymous with being subservient in this new egalitarian age.

Further reading, in exquisite detail, from the blog "Jane Austen's World":

A link to descriptions of servant life and the servant's quarters.

"Gin Lane," William Hogarth, and Moral Crisis in the 18th Century

The scourge of the "demon drink" gin on the poor citizens of 18th century London was best captured by the brilliant cartoonist William Hogarth (1697-1764) in his 1750 engraving Gin Lane. The image of the irresponsible, feckless, and often female gin addict was embedded in conflicts over class, law and order, religion, decorum, and ultimately the cause of moral regulation.

 William Hogarth's Gin Lane (1750)

Some time ago I read Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason by University of Toronto academic Jessica Warner (*). She describes the concern over the drinking of gin as the first in a series of modern moral panics, in which authorities ascribed blame erroneously. She concludes, in essence, that it was not gin that made people poor, rather it was poverty that caused them to drink.Warner constructs her narrative as a three-act play; in the second act "virtue triumphs over prudence." By this she refers to the ill-fated attempts to regulate the manufacture and sale of gin, including the highly divisive use of neighbourhood informant. These measures, by failing to address the reasons that gin was highly in demand, simply displaced the problem. Act three ("In which time passes and wisdom is gained") reflects the pattern of many phases of moral regulation, particularly the temperance and prohibition movements in Britain and North America. In modern terms, she explicitly references the "war on drugs," and how many of the policies currently implemented reflect the wrong-headed attempts to curtail the drinking of intoxicating liquors.

Such subjects are by no means simple, papered over with layers of public and private morality, appearance and reality, truth and hypocrisy. William Hogarth was among the first artists and cartoonists to elucidate these divisions in a way that was understandable and accessible to a wide audience. I have been fortunate enough to view many Hogarth originals, including the "Rake's Progress" series of painting that reside at the Sir John Soane's Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

Here is the incomparable modern day satirist Ian Hislop, a favourite of the Idle Historian, talking about the allure of the Soane Museum, and the elemental role of Hogarth as the "father" of English satire.





(*) N.B. Warner's book includes an unexpected segment in the acknowledgements which is one of the most shockingly frank non-acknowledgements I've ever read in a scholarly book: [Regarding the British Library]: "There I encountered a staff that was impervious to exploitation in any form; indeed, such was their fondness for reading The New York Review of Books that many could scarce find the time or energy to help readers humbler than themselves." (!)

Merry Christmas from the Idle Historian

After Christmas decorations have begun appearing in shops in October, and one hears "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" in November, it is easy to lament the early onslaught of forced holiday cheer. Yet the final event somehow still tends to come upon one rather quickly. Many of our cherished Christmas traditions are, as we know, of rather recent invention. Quite a few were popularized by the Victorians - Christmas trees (hailing from Germany, introduced to England by Prince Albert), greeting cards, decorations, and the extention of charity and a general feeling of goodwill. I recently, however, found an intriguing video on the BBC by an art historian - Dr. Spike Bucklow - on how the colours green and red came to be associated with Christmas. Long thought to have been one of the inventions of the Victorians, he believes that their roots actually lie in the Medieval period. Our traditions, like our carols, are a curious blend of both the ancient and modern.

 [An Image of Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their elder children

around a Christmas tree.]

The idea of a benevolent "spirit" with which one should enter the holidays is, perhaps, of a more recent vintage. Prior to the Victorian period, Christmas was but one of many religious holidays. It may have retained a special religious characteristic that set it apart from other Saint's days and the like, but I don't believe that there was the individual expectation of a merry disposition that we have come to expect. Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol did much to perpetuate this notion, setting out a stark dichotomy between the Scrooges and the jolly Fezziwigs of the world. The truth is that most of us lie somewhere in the middle - approaching the Christmas season with our own unique bundle of good wishes and simultaneous uncertainties weighing on our mind. But the longing for expressions of the superlative Christmas experience seems universal. Last year I wrote about the mythology of the "Christmas Truce" of 1914 along the trenches of the Western Front.

A blogger should possibly refrain from quoting themselves in subsequent posts, but somehow this snippet from last year again seems appropriate:

We sympathize with the desolation of the soldiers - far from home, cold, lonely, uncertain of whether this may prove to be their last Christmas, suddenly aware (as we all become after a great crisis, loss, or change has taken us unaware) of all the normal Christmases with our loved ones that we took for granted. We can imagine their hesitation and uncertainty at crossing the battle lines, not knowing if they were walking into a trap. We may sense their longing to fully trust the promises of friendship of their fellow human beings. It must have been the conundrum of daily life writ large - the courage required to present ourselves as genuine and vulnerable to our fellow human beings with the hope that we will meet with genuine friendship in return, while simultaneously braving the possibility that we might not be.

A very Merry Christmas to all my readers from the Idle Historian, and always remember the classic line from the film It's A Wonderful Life:

"No Man is a Failure Who Has Friends"

December 6th: Itsenäisyyspäivä - Finnish Independence Day

And now for something completely different. The entries on this blog consist mostly of artifacts from British history, the speciality of the Idle Historian. But yours truly is also, improbably, half-Finnish, and as such Finnish holidays and traditions - though distant - form an important element of family memory.

Today, 6 December, is Itsenäisyyspäivä. The first Finnish Independence Day was celebrated in 1919. The first half of the twentieth century was marked by tumult and warfare for the the people of Finland. Finns are reluctant warriors but have a natural ability for it, sometimes frighteningly so. It is indicative that the highest confirmed sniper kill (505) in any major war belongs not to a trained special forces operative, but to a Finnish farmer, Simo Häyhä, who was nicknamed the "White Death" during the five month Winter War against the Soviet army (1939-1940). Self-trained as a marksman, following the war he claimed to want nothing more than to return to his farm and that his wartime accomplishments were merely a necessary duty.

The Winter War is full of mythology and still exerts a palpable influence on Finnish society. I have recently been following @RealTimeWWII on twitter - a project "live-tweeting" major events of the Second World War on the day they occurred, beginning in 1939 (as of this autumn) and with plans to continue for six years hence (!) Recently the feed has been filled with snippets from the first week of the Soviet invasion of Finland (a few selections in truncated twitter format):

The poignantly naive: "New Finnish government has appealed to the League of Nations to protect them from Russian aggression." (good luck with that)

The reflections of an enlisted man: "Kalevi Juntunen, Finnish soldier: 'We can only retreat. There is too little snow & Russians are as mobile as us. Our entire unit is 40 men.'"And the opposite sentiment from an officer: "[Col] Talvela: 'We must attack, no retreat. A Finnish soldier is better on the offense; it helps his sisu' [Finnish term for guts/spirit]."

The intense nature of the Finnish resistance: "Finns booby-trapping land as they retreat: floating mines tethered underneath frozen lakes, to smash ice as Soviet troops & tanks cross." "Villages have been filled with landmines, with detonators set under toilet seats, doorways & beds. Wells poisoned or fouled with sewage."

And, a slightly macabre sense of humour. The Finns, in fact, coined the term "Molotov cocktail." It stemmed from Finnish incredulity at the Russian foreign minister's claims that cluster bombs being dropped from Soviet aircraft were in fact packages of food for the Finns. The bombs were nicknamed a "Molotov Bread Basket" and the Finnish response was the Molotov cocktail: "As they smash bottle on tank's cooling vents (liquid drips in, setting fire to ammo/crew) Finns yell: 'Here's a drink to go with the bread!'"

[A "Molotov Bread Basket"]

But war, thankfully, is receding into the past, although modern Finns continue to prize military preparedness as a national value. Subsequent generations of Finns have used the benefits of peace and hard-won independence to build a quietly sensible society, based on equality and mutual assistance. Many Finnish families light two candles in the window on Independence Day, a symbol of past resistance to oppression, and a quiet reflection on the Finnish spirit of never giving up. It illuminates the winter darkness with an acknowledgement that we are all a complex amalgam of our ancestry and our present. While it may be counterproductive to unnecessarily dwell on the past, it is important to remember it.

Hyvää itsenäisyyspäivää to Finns everywhere.

Remembrance Day: The Great Silence and the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior

Let us resolve that we shall place loyalty to the land we love first and last, the land whose efforts on sea, in the air, and on the earth have done so much to redeem the world from a scourge that was menacing its liberties... We sank all our sectional interests, all partisan claims, all class and creed differences, in pursuit of one common purpose.

 -- British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, Armistice Day, 11 November 1918

I believe that my people in every part of the Empire fervently wish to perpetuate the memory of the Great Deliverance and of those who have laid down their lives to achieve it. To afford an opportunity for the universal expression of this feeling it is my desire and hope that at the hour when the Armistice came into force, the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, there may be for a brief space of two minutes a complete suspension of all our normal activities... in this simple service of Silence and Remembrance.

-- Announcement from King George V at Buckingham Palace, 7 November 1919

BENEATH THIS STONE RESTS THE BODY
OF A BRITISH WARRIOR
UNKNOWN BY NAME OR RANK...

THUS ARE COMMEMORATED THE MANY
MULTITUDES WHO DURING THE GREAT
WAR OF 1914-1918 GAVE THE MOST THAT
MAN CAN GIVE LIFE ITSELF
FOR GOD
FOR KING AND COUNTRY
FOR LOVED ONES HOME AND EMPIRE
FOR THE SACRED CAUSE OF JUSTICE AND
THE FREEDOM OF THE WORLD THEY BURIED HIM AMONG THE KINGS BECAUSE HE
HAD DONE GOOD TOWARD GOD AND TOWARD
HIS HOUSE

 --Inscription, Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, Westminster Abbey

For last year's post on Remembrance Day I discussed the contemporary meanings of the day in Canada, and what the day comes to represent as we grow older and the "Greatest Generation" fades.

This year, I will reflect on the first two Remembrance Days in Britain, although they were not termed so at the time: those of 1919 and 1920. I recently read Juliet Nicolson's absorbing book, The Great Silence, 1918-1920: Living in the Shadow of the Great War, and this post takes its inspiration from the idea of "silence" that followed the shattering experience of the First World War. Britain had suffered military deaths of 886,939 soldiers, 2.2% of the total population. The numbers of the dead were so vast that if they were to be paraded marching abreast down Whitehall, the procession would have taken four days. While the end of the war was framed by politicians as a great "victory" and final vindication of the just cause, the people of Britain were still filled with shock, disbelief and anger at the years of hardship and the slaughter in the trenches that had occurred during the "war to end all wars."

Quite fittingly, two ideas of solemn remembrance, which are still observed and resonate to this day, came from rather ordinary individuals. These practices joined that of a focal point of remembrance -- the Cenotaph -- which had already been designed in Whitehall by Sir Edwin Lutyens. The idea of a two-minute silence was first observed on 11 November 1919, having been proposed in a letter to a newspaper editor by Edward Honey, an Australian journalist and solider living in London. The following year an army chaplain, Reverend David Railton, alighted upon the notion of repatriating the body of just one of the thousands of unknown British soldiers who were buried in Northern France. As Nicolson explains:

Perhaps one single body could be brought out of the mud of France, never to be identified but to fill the gap left by a father, brother, husband, son, fiancé, lover, uncle, grandfather, friend -- a loved one who could be made to symbolize and fill that void. His invisible face could be invested with thousands of familiar faces, all much missed and much loved. [Nicolson, p. 266]

These seemingly small gestures were intensely profound. They evoked both the entire nation and the everyman, both communal purpose and personal reflection. The first great silence was so complete, and so unexpectedly moving in so many British cities and towns, that The Times deemed it "a glimpse into the soul of the nation." The following year the dedication of the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey caused similar reflections as thousands of people, mostly dressed in mourning, watched the procession of the coffin containing the remains of the unknown soldier wind its way towards the Abbey on a crisp autumnal morning. The general hush was broken only by the muffled hooves of the horses, or the occasional sob as the familiar sight of the soldier's webbing belt and steel helmet atop the coffin reminded onlookers of their own loved one's military kit. The final hymn was particularly poignant -- "God of our Fathers," written for Queen Victoria's Jubilee by the Bard of Empire Rudyard Kipling (from his poem "Recessional"). Initially a staunch advocate of the war as the epitome of everything he believed in, Kipling suffered greatly when his only son, Jack -- whom he had encouraged to go to war -- disappeared on the Front.

The final lines of the hymn have passed into common usage as a reflection of remembrance -- "lest we forget, lest we forget." The gesture of burying an "unknown soldier" has also passed universally into the language of military observance, and more than 40 such tombs are to be found in nations on almost every continent. This includes the Canadian Tomb of the Unknown Solider at the National War Memorial in Ottawa, dedicated in 2000. The two-minute silence is another ingrained notion used to commemorate not only the war dead, but accidents or tragedies of any sort. Silence, the act of being alone with one's thoughts, serves as a common and uniting human experience. Like the unknown soldier, it is touchingly personalized.

The plea of "lest we forget" acknowledges that the fact of war, and past wars, fills us with a range of extremely complex emotions. The unique ideas of one former soldier and one army chaplain -- invented in a time when people were rather uncertain of how to remember -- have helped ensure that we do.

"Eccentric Sports" and Britishness

Two things have put me in mind of "eccentric sports" as of late -- a recent BBC article on the subject entitled "The Lure of Eccentric Sports", and the attention paid to the "Extreme Ironing Bureau" in April 2011 after an enthusiast was spotted practicing the "sport" when the M1 was temporarily closed. (All the video clips of extreme ironing that you never thought you needed to see are available here.)

 A Lone Enthusiast Practicing the sport of "Extreme Ironing" -- from the story in The Guardian

Eccentric sports represent something quintessentially British, as reflected by those who participate in a wide variety of unusual endeavours: pea-shooting, wife-carrying, black-pudding throwing, woolsack-racing, worm-charming, egg-throwing, mud-racing, snail-racing, and cheese-rolling. Anything, apparently, which can be hyphenated may qualify as an eccentric sport.

For a few of these "sports" -- activities for feast days and holidays, some of which date back seven centuries -- the prospect of injury is part of the appeal. Take, for example, the various incarnations of "cheese rolling," primarily practiced in Gloucester. This event features men (and participants in such events are almost entirely male) essentially running/tumbling down a steep hill in pursuit of a large wheel of cheese. Broken bones are common, in fact they are almost expected. In the era of health and safety and (as critics would name it) "cotton-wool Britain," the world of dangerous and eccentric sport serves as a means of rebellion, a way to get one's inner Jeremy Clarkson in gear (pun intended).

The "eccentric" moniker of these sports is also seen as the epitome of Britishness. The inventiveness, sense of the ridiculous and sheer buffoonery somehow represents the opposite of the sensible and the boring. As an outsider to Britain, it is still surprising to the Idle Historian just how much of modern British life continues to be framed in opposition to, well, the Germans. If one can't quite imagine Germans engaged in cheese-rolling, then it must be truly British. Benedict le Vay, author of Eccentric Britain, explains the elements of British identity in this way:

It's part of British eccentricity. We get wonderful humour, off-the-wall explorers, wacky inventors and bonkers aristocrats out of the same tin, and we have a heck of a lot of fun... People are wedded to tradition and will always find a way. World War II didn't even stop Gloucester townsfolk from cheese-rolling, who [with] rationing, used a wooden model cheese instead. It doesn't matter what we're doing or why, people get carried away in the enjoyment, and return again and again, daft or not...

Don't mention the war. Another point most often unspoken is the old question of whether loudly proclaiming eccentricity negates the very notion thereof. Is not some of the charm of the true eccentric that they cannot fathom why others might deem them in the least bit out of the ordinary? The "Eccentric Club" of London, for example, highlights this very conundrum. All in good fun, of course, but how authentic can a highly self-conscious "eccentric" event truly be? Instead we doff our hats to the snail-racers and motorway ironing enthusiasts who believe it is all in a normal day's activities. In the end it is just a spot of amusement to brighten a dull world.