Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain (71 page)

The upper classes also had specialized gear for hunting, shooting, riding in town and country - each had its own required dress. But for the middle classes and below it was really with the arrival of the Ordinary, and then the Safety Bicycle, that first clothes for men, then for women, saw great changes. For cycling, men began by wearing closefitting suits, usually made of flannel. In the 1880s Lewis’s of Liverpool was advertising ‘Lewis’s splendid bicycle suits’. When women began to cycle in the parks, appropriate wear was a skirt that could be turned up at the ankle and fastened, to give the freedom to pedal without the fabric becoming enmeshed in the wheels. But by the late 1880s more was considered necessary. Professor Hoffmann’s 1887
Tips for Tricyclists
insisted that ‘the only truly hygienic system of dress is the “all woollen”,’ and promoted for both men and women the clothes advertised by the CTC as ‘at once neat, sanitary and durable’. Tweed was best for the outer garments, with flannel underneath. Men might wear a jacket, knickerbockers or trousers, a waistcoat or a sweater, a flannel shirt, suspenders, gaiters, a helmet or a straw hat (with club ribbon), stockings, a handkerchief and a scarf. The Professor did worry that an ‘ordinary linen collar…usually becomes a limp and flabby rag before the rider has passed his fifth milestone’, while a flannel collar ‘has a rather slovenly appearance in the coffee room of a hotel afterwards. The wheelman may meet both conditions by wearing a woollen collar to match his shirt while actually riding and carrying in his bag a celluloid collar for evening use.’ For women cyclists, he suggested a ‘coat bodice’ or Norfolk jacket and a skirt, with knickerbockers or trousers to be worn underneath, wool combinations (all-in-one underwear), gloves, stockings, a hat or helmet, a handkerchief and that finishing touch, a 76-centimetre muffler.
¹¹³

By the 1890s, tailor-made suits for women were replacing dresses for everyday wear as well as for sport. These consisted of a shirt with a stiff collar and tie, a heavy leather belt, a long skirt, and an underskirt finished with leather to protect against the mud. In 1887
Woman’s World
recommended something similar for cyclists:

Practical experience has taught that the prettiest and most suitable dress is a skirt of tweed or flannel of some dark shade, made ordinary walking length and width, with a deep kilting, well taped down, and drapery stitched down to prevent its blowing into the wheels. This skirt should be worn with neither steels [stays] nor dress-improver [bustle], but be well tied back with
elastic, and fastened with buttons to the round bodice, to throw all the weight upon the shoulders. Shoes must be worn, not boots; and the hat should be a plain sailor straw, or a felt hat, without more adornment than a wing or a club ribbon…A plain Norfolk jacket for cold weather completes the whole. A linen collar, or tiny frill, fastened by a plain brooch, finishes this pretty and trim costume.
¹¹⁴

By 1894
Punch
was mocking that fearsome thing, the lady in bloomers: she wore knickerbockers, a Norfolk jacket, a trilby, black stockings, and a shirt and tie. All very worrying for those who wanted ladies to be ladies. But fashionable shops were not going to lose potential customers, and by the turn of the century Burberry was promoting a coat and skirt which ‘unites the freedom in the upper part of a Norfolk jacket with expanding pleats, and the smartness below the waist of a skirted coat’, while Harrod’s sold cycling and golf knickers, with a band below the knee and a back opening, lined in pink flannelette, calico, nainsook or ‘nun’s-veiling’. Cyclists were also offered black serge knickers with a chamois-leather seat, or the ‘Rideasy Skirt’, which was divided at the back, to hang down modestly when cycling.
¹¹⁵
(Hilda Wade was wearing something similar on her wild Rhodesian ride.) The market was large enough that shopfitting companies found it profitable to sell ‘position’ mannequins to display various types of sporting wear, or more specialized Cycle Figures, which could be mounted on a real bicycle in a shop window.
¹¹⁶

For it was now clear to everyone that the real money was not in professional sports. The great commercial market for sporting goods lay with the amateurs, the hundreds of thousands of consumers who were happy to purchase their leisure from the tens of thousands of manufacturers who were equally happy to supply them. Many sporting goods had been manufactured for decades, or even centuries, but almost all of them were improved by new technology, and were being made more cheaply by a shift to mass production. Others, like the bicycle, had emerged out of nowhere, and created an industry. Even the most cursory summary of the development of sports equipment gives an indication of the vast changes that had taken place and transformed the market over the last half-century. Gutta-percha balls, with better distance and more reliable flight, replaced feather-packed balls and altered golf out of all recognition, as did iron- and steel-working improvements for the

clubs. Tennis, a sport that, like cycling, had been created from scratch in the 1870s, benefited from vulcanized rubber balls. Football used the new inner tube for its balls.
¹¹⁷
All three of these sports, and a dozen others besides, were transformed by improved rollers and lawnmowers, which produced even surfaces to play on. The breech-loading gun, copper percussion caps and self-contained, central-fire cartridges made guns more reliable, and shooting less dangerous.
¹¹⁸
Cyclists enjoyed innovations in metalworking that gave them stronger, lighter bicycles, and dozens of accessories of greater or lesser necessity: cycle lamps, cyclometers, bells, pumps, mudguards, gear-cases, brake sets, adjustable wrenches, tool bags, carriers, baskets. By the end of the century, 1 million cycles had been built; by the early twentieth century, golfers were spending £4.7 million a year on their sport. William Shillcock, whose company sold 40,000 to 50,000 footballs a year, said that football outfitting was ‘a great and profitable industry’.
¹¹⁹
Not a sport. An industry.

*
Weatherby’s continues to operate today as racing’s administrator, under contract to the British Horseracing Board, and also remains the publisher of
The General Stud Book.

*
It has been suggested that as much as 90 per cent of the world’s bloodstock today can be traced back to the Darley Arabian.

*
A sweepstake was a race where there was no purse provided by a third party; instead, each owner paid an entry fee, and the total of the fees was raced for.

*
In line with the northern bias in the development of the game, perhaps it was natural that Sheffield’s code was for the most part adopted, and thus the rules of the current game more closely resemble Sheffield’s code than the FA’s.

*
It is worth remembering the diet of the average millhand in the nineteenth century: bread or potatoes, a little butter and cheese or bacon, and sugared tea.
⁷⁶
The increase in protein alone, even for a week, must have made an astonishing difference.

†
He was also, in his spare time, a journalist, and president of Surrey FA, vice-president of London FA, secretary of the Surrey County Cricket Club, chairman of the Richmond Athletic Association and vice-president of the Royal Mid-Surrey Golf Course.

*
Holley was also involved with both Schweppes and Bovril: for cycling and refreshments, see below, p. 459.

*
Most lines charged 5
s.
for cycles to be carried for up to 400 miles, or 7
s.
6
d.
if they were classed as parcels; tricycles were between 10 and 20
s.
, tandems 50 per cent more per additional seat.
⁹⁶

T
HE CHRISTMAS FAMILY
-
PARTY
that we mean, is not a mere assemblage of relations, got up at a week or two’s notice, originating this year, having no family precedent in the last, and not likely to be repeated in the next. No. It is an annual gathering of all the accessible members of the family, young or old, rich or poor; and all the children look forward to it, for two months beforehand, in a fever of anticipation. Formerly, it was held at grandpapa’s; but grandpapa getting old, and grandmamma getting old too, and rather infirm, they have given up housekeeping, and domesticated themselves with uncle George; so, the party always takes place at uncle George’s house, but grandmamma sends in most of the good things, and grandpapa always
will
toddle down, all the way to Newgate-market, to buy the turkey, which he engages a porter to bring home behind him in triumph, always insisting on the man’s being rewarded with a glass of spirits, over and above his hire, to drink ‘a merry Christmas and a happy new year’ to aunt George. As to grandmamma, she is very secret and mysterious for two or three days beforehand, but not sufficiently so, to prevent rumours getting afloat that she has purchased a beautiful new cap with pink ribbons for each of the servants, together with sundry books, and penknives, and pencil-cases, for the younger branches; to say nothing of divers secret additions to the order originally given by aunt George at the pastry-cook’s, such as another dozen of mince-pies for the dinner, and a large plum-cake for the children.

On Christmas-eve, grandmamma is always in excellent spirits, and after employing all the children, during the day, in stoning the plums, and all that, insists, regularly every year, on
uncle George coming down into the kitchen, taking off his coat, and stirring the pudding for half an hour or so, which uncle George good-humouredly does, to the vociferous delight of the children and servants. The evening concludes with a glorious game of blind-man’s-buff, in an early stage of which grandpapa takes great care to be caught, in order that he may have an opportunity of displaying his dexterity.

On the following morning, the old couple, with as many of the children as the pew will hold, go to church in great state…When the church-party return to lunch, grandpapa produces a small sprig of mistletoe from his pocket, and tempts the boys to kiss their little cousins under it - a proceeding which affords both the boys and the old gentleman unlimited satisfaction, but which rather outrages grandmamma’s ideas of decorum, until grandpapa says, that when he was just thirteen years and three months old,
he
kissed grandmamma under a mistletoe too, on which the children clap their hands, and laugh very heartily, as do aunt George and uncle George; and grandmamma looks pleased, and says, with a benevolent smile, that grandpapa was an impudent young dog, on which the children laugh very heartily again, and grandpapa more heartily than any of them.

…A hesitating double knock at the street-door, heard during a momentary pause in the conversation, excites a general inquiry of ‘Who’s that?’ and two or three children, who have been standing at the window, announce in a low voice, that it’s ‘poor aunt Margaret’. Upon which, aunt George leaves the room to welcome the new-comer; and grandmamma draws herself up, rather stiff and stately; for Margaret married a poor man without her consent, and poverty not being a sufficiently weighty punishment for her offence, has been discarded by her friends, and debarred the society of her dearest relatives. But Christmas has come round, and the unkind feelings that have struggled against better dispositions during the year, have melted away before its genial influence, like half-formed ice beneath the morning sun…

As to the dinner, it’s perfectly delightful - nothing goes wrong, and everybody is in the very best of spirits, and disposed to please and be pleased. Grandpapa relates a circumstantial account of the purchase of the turkey, with a slight digression relative to the purchase of previous turkeys, on former Christmas-days, which grandmamma corroborates in the minutest particular. Uncle George tells stories, and carves poultry, and takes wine, and jokes with the children at the side-table, and winks at the cousins that are making love, or being made
love to, and exhilarates everybody with his good humour and hospitality; and when, at last, a stout servant staggers in with a gigantic pudding, with a sprig of holly in the top, there is such a laughing, and shouting, and clapping of little chubby hands, and kicking up of fat dumpy legs, as can only be equalled by the applause with which the astonishing feat of pouring lighted brandy into mince-pies, is received by the younger visitors. Then the dessert! - and the wine! - and the fun! Such beautiful speeches, and
such
songs, from aunt Margaret’s husband, who turns out to be such a nice man, and
so
attentive to grandmamma! Even grandpapa not only sings his annual song with unprecedented vigour, but on being honoured with an unanimous
encore
, according to annual custom, actually comes out with a new one which nobody but grandmamma ever heard before; and a young scapegrace of a cousin, who has been in some disgrace with the old people, for certain heinous sins of omission and commission - neglecting to call, and persisting in drinking Burton Ale - astonishes everybody into convulsions of laughter by volunteering the most extraordinary comic songs that ever were heard. And thus the evening passes, in a strain of rational good-will and cheerfulness, doing more to awaken the sympathies of every member of the party in behalf of his neighbour, and to perpetuate their good feeling during the ensuing year, than half the homilies that have ever been written, by half the Divines that have ever lived.
¹

Should one want to find the ultimate Christmas celebration, the oldest traditions, the most cherished customs, surely Dickens is the author to turn to. The problem is that when Dickens described Uncle and Aunt George’s Christmas in 1837-8, most of these traditions were barely traditions at all. Dickens described a festival of continuity (it was ‘an annual gathering’) even as he noted the newness of his traditions (the celebration had only recently moved to Uncle George’s, which had immediately become the place where it ‘always’ is). Some of the standard markers of the festival were already in place: family parties, mistletoe and holly, churchgoing and benevolence to poor relations, entertainment, and food - turkey, plum pudding and mince pies. Yet just as many traditional Christmas symbols were missing: there was no tree, no carols, no cards, no stockings, no crackers, no Father Christmas and, perhaps most surprisingly, no presents, apart from those given to servants, and tokens to the children.

Dickens was, in fact, on the cusp of the great changes that were coming, and when he began to write (and the above extract is from one of his very earliest works) the ‘traditions’ for this ‘traditional’ festival were still in the process of being created. From the seventeenth century, Christmas had been in hibernation. A few magazines and journals had references to the festivity in the eighteenth century, but the holiday was of little importance in the secular calendar. Between 1790 and 1836
The Times
made no mention of Christmas at all in twenty of those forty-seven years, and in the other twenty-seven the references were cursory.
²
In 1824 the
Gentleman’s Magazine
dismissed Christmas as for the ‘middling ranks’ alone.
³
Certainly the upper class seemed to disregard the importance of the day. In 1833 a routine meeting of the Committee of the Carlton Club was scheduled for Christmas Day: only three members attended, it is true, but the absences were not marked down as the result of the day. In 1837 the Court Circular listed a meeting between the Commander of the Forces and the Colonial Secretary on 25 December - once more, an entirely routine engagement, not an emergency session.
⁴

Until the mid-1830s Christmas had not taken hold of the popular imagination. When it did, it was rather like those mythic sports of the rural past. The holiday was presented as a re-creation of what in fact had never existed: an idealized, prettified past was summoned up for nostalgic appreciation. Some of this was an attempt - perhaps not entirely conscious - to eradicate a few of the rougher elements of Twelfth Night, the Feast of Epiphany on 6 January, which had previously been the winter festival that was more commonly celebrated. Twelfth Night was for many a family feast, when all gathered to eat together. A bean and a pea were traditionally baked into the Twelfth Night cake, and the lucky recipients of the tokens became the King and Queen of Twelfth Night, harking back to the earlier custom of choosing a seasonal Lord of Misrule for the winter festival. Some remnant of that idea was still, occasionally, to be found on the streets. As late as the 1820s one writer warned:

Let all idle gazers in the streets of London, beware Twelfth Night! There is then, that spirit of mischief abroad which carried on without the superintending power of the Lord of Misrule, exhibits itself in the catching of the coat tails, of the unsuspecting passer-by, and fixing them to a nail, or such like as may be available on the frame of a door or window…[with] some
other part of the garment of a person of the opposite sex, so neither can be freed.
⁵

But, while a few may have enjoyed these pastimes, the population at large no longer participated.

For many, much of the increasing fondness for Christmas as a holiday depended on an equivalent increase in leisure time. As was discussed in Chapter 6, the early part of the nineteenth century at first saw a contraction of the number of days given over to religious festivals. By 1871 the Bank Holiday Act gave bank employees Boxing Day off; the Holiday Extension Act of 1875 extended bank holidays from bank employees alone to many government offices. Much of the population happily followed suit. Until then, Christmas was largely still a festival for those who controlled their own working hours. Even so, the upper classes were slower to take this festival to their hearts. Through the diary entries of Lady Amberley for 25 December one can track the gradual creeping of Christmas upwards long after it had become the central family festival for much of the population.
*
In 1868 Lady Amberley recorded, ‘the same as usual, a rainy afternoon so we did our work first till 5 and then had a nice long talk the whole evening.’ In 1870 things were ‘just the same as any other day; except that we had a plum-pudding’; yet by the following year Lord Amberley was ‘dressed up as Knicht [
sic
] Ruprecht in an Inverness coat, conical hat and long grey beard, birch rod and green…bag full of toys on his shoulder’.
⁶
†
Quite a journey in three years.

Although Knecht Ruprecht was an unusual representation of Christmas, it was perhaps significant that the Amberleys chose a German custom to mark the festival, because the most important, and most long-lasting, representation of Christmas was also German: the decorated pine tree. Possibly the first surviving reference to a Christmas tree in the British Isles appears in
Court and Private Life in the Time of Queen Charlotte, being the Journals of Mrs Papendieck
, published in 1789. Mrs Papendieck, the wife of a minor court official, mentioned that there had been a
discussion about having a lighted tree, ‘according to the German fashion’. Given the still strongly German atmosphere of the Hanoverian court, this is perhaps not a surprising place for the custom to bob up, but for the next forty-two years nothing more was heard of decorated trees. Then there was a mention in 1831 that a Swiss governess had introduced the custom into the house of her employers in Durham. And around the same time the German merchants in Manchester (whose descendants would later in the century hire Charles Hallé to conduct for them) were becoming famous for putting up trees in their own houses. One observer mentioned ‘pine tops being brought to market for the purpose, which are generally illuminated with a paper for every day in the year’. By 1840 the Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford told a friend that he knew of someone who was ‘going to have a Christmas tree at Roehampton tonight’, and he did not feel any need to explain what a ‘Christmas tree’ was: he expected his correspondent to be familiar with the custom.
⁷

By 1844 a pamphlet called
The Christmas Tree
was promoting ‘the great event celebrated in the cheerful festival of the Christmas Tree…The German form of celebrating Christmas Even [
sic
], by an illuminated tree, has long been well known to a few in England; especially to persons in any way connected with the old court. It now seems likely to become a naturalised plant.’
⁸
This blithe reference to the custom having ‘long been well known’ was, nonetheless, still fairly wide of the mark. Victoria and Albert, who were to push the Christmas tree into the forefront of seasonal celebrations - to the point where Albert is often mistakenly assumed to be the man who introduced the tree into Britain - had their own tree for the first time in 1840. In 1845 the
Illustrated London News
, very
au courant
with the fashions of the world, thought it necessary to explain the custom: a party at the London Mission Hall was

crowned by the exhibition of a German Christmas Tree or Tree of Love…This is the usual mode of celebrating the Eve of the birth of Christ, in Germany and on the Continent. In almost every family is set up this pleasing figure, having the resemblance of a growing tree, loaded with a profusion of fruits and flowers; and upon its branches, the different members of the family suspend the little presents which they intend for those they love best; and on the Exhibition of the Tree, the presents are claimed by the donors, and handed, with compliments, to their friends.
⁹