Louis Simond's Impression of Wilton House's Park and Gardens

Wilton House, located in Wiltshire, is the ancestral home of the Earls of Pembroke. In 1811, Louis Simond wrote about his visit to the great house in An American in Regency England. Here is his description of the park and grounds.

I measured an evergreen oak (not a large tree naturally); it covered a space of seventeen paces in diameter, and the trunk was twelve feet in circumference. An elm was sixteen feet in circumference, and many appeared about equal. Beyond the water, which before it spreads out into a stagnant lake, is a lively stream, you see an insulated hill covered with wood. We went to it by a very beautiful bridge. The view from that eminence is fine, and its slope would have afforded a healthier and pleasanter situation for the house. The deer came to the call, and ate leaves held to them - too tame for beauty, as they lose by it their graceful inquietude and activity and become mere fat cattle for the shambles. Deer are a good deal out of fashion, and have given way to sheep in many parks.



Deer in Richmond Park

Learn More About This Topic By Clicking on the Following Links:

• The Great Estate Landscape Gardens

• Wilton House, UK

• Wilton House Garden

Veteran Oak, Windsor Park

Arial view of the Wilton House grounds

London Houses in Jane Austen's Day - 2

Louis Simonds continues to describe London townhouses in his book, An American in Regency England:
The plan of these houses is very simple, two rooms on each story; one in the front with two or three windows looking on the street, the other on a yard behind, often very small; the stairs generally taken out of the breadth of the backroom. The ground-floor is usually elevated a few feet above the level of the street, and separated from it by an area, a sort of ditch, a few feet wide, generally from three to eight, and six or eight feet deep, inclosed by an iron railing; the windows of the kitchen are in this area. A bridge of stone or brick leads to the door of the house.


The front of these houses is about twenty or twenty-five feet wide; they certainly have rather a paltry appearance - but you cannot pass the threshold without being struck with the look of order and neatness of the interior. Instead of the abominable filth of the common entrance and common stairs of of a French house, here you step from the very street on a neat floorcloth or carpet, the wall painted or papered, a lamp in its glass bell hanging from the ceiling, and every apartment in the same style - all is neat, compact, and independent, or, as it is best expressed here, snug and comfortable - a familiar expression, rather vulgar perhaps, from the thing itself being too common.

To read more about townhouses during this era, click on the following:

English Heritage Townhouses Selection Guide: Domestic Buildings

Here's an interesting historical detail, as described in The Hidden Dimension by Edward T. Hall:

...rooms had no fixed functions in European houses until the eighteenth century. Members of the family had no privacy as we know it today. There were no spaces that were sacred or specialized. Strangers came and went at will, while beds and tables were set up and taken down according to the moods and appetites of the occupants ... In the eighteenth century, the house altered its form. In French, chambre was distinguished from salle. In English, the function of a room was indicated by its name - bedroom, living room, dining room. Rooms were arranged to open into a corridor or hall, like houses into a street. No longer did the occupants pass through one room into another. Relieved of the Grand Central Station atmosphere and protected by new spaces, the family pattern began to stabilize and was was expressed further in the form of the house. p.104

See the illustration of a Georgian terraced house below.

London Houses in Jane Austen's Day

Louis Simond was a French emigre who lived in America. He spent over 6 months in London in 1810, describing the customs and manners of the British in a book that is now entitled An American in Regency England.

During his tour of England, Louis met and talked to people from all walks of life. He observed every day and momentous events of that era, and visited the countryside, describing with a keen mind what he saw and ate and who he met.

If you read French, you can click here for a short description of his life.

Here is Louis' description of a typical London Townhouse:

Each family occupy a whole house, unless very poor. There are advantages and disadvantages attending this custom. Among the first, the being more independent of the noise, the dirt, the contagious disorders, or the dangers of your neighbour's fires, and having a more complete home. On the other hand, an apartment all on one floor, even of a few rooms only, looks much better, and is more convenient. These narrow houses, three or four stories high - one for eating, one for sleeping, a third for company, a fourth under ground for the kitchen, a fifth perhaps at top for the servants - and the agility, the ease, the quickness with which the individuals of the family run up and down, and perch on the different stories, give the idea of a cage with its sticks and birds.
Bow fronts, Palladian windows, symmetry, graceful linesand neoclassical touches were the hallmarks of the Regency town house as depicted in the two illustrations above.
In this image of a Georgian townhouse, you can easily see the four to five stories that Louis Simond described, with part of the basement evident from the street.

Salisbury

On July 6, 1810, Louis Simond wrote in An American in Regency England:

Salisbury is a little old city, very ugly, and of which there is nothing to say, except that the steeple of its cathedral, which is immensely high, and built of stone to its very summit, is twenty inches out of the perpendicular, which is really enough to take off the attention of the most devout congregation. We went to the morning service, and did not find a single person in the church except those officiating. It is not the the first time we have observed this desertion of the metropolitan churches--even where the steeples were quite perpendicular.






Well, I disagree with Louis Simond. We spent a pleasurable afternoon in Salisbury, gazing at the cathedral and visiting the town and found them charming. People are too picky at times: I enjoyed visiting an empty church. This allowed me to study its treasures up close and at leisure!

Great Assemblies, Routs, and Parties: One Traveler's Perspective

Jane Austen's characters attended assemblies, routs, and parties so often that one is left to wonder: Did these people never stay home?

When the social whirl was in full swing during the London social season, a well-connected, rich, well-born, or idle person could attend several gatherings in one night. Here is a first-hand description of an assembly by Louis Simond, a transplanted Frenchman in America, inveterate traveler, and author of An American in Regency England (p. 31):

"Great assemblies are called routs or parties; but the people who give them, in their invitations only say, that they will be at home such a day, and this some weeks beforehand. The house in which this takes place is frequently stripped from top to bottom: beds, drawers, and all but ornamental furniture is carried out of sight, to make room for a crowd of well-dressed people, received at the door of the principal apartment by the mistress of the house standing, who smiles at every new comer with a look of acquaintance. Nobody sits; there is no conversation, cards, no music; only elbowing, turning, and winding from room to room; then, at the end of a quarter of an hour, escapting to the hall door to wait for the carriage, spending more time upon the threshold among footmen than you had done above stairs with their masters. From this rout you drive to another, where, after waiting your turn to arrive at the door, perhaps, half an hour, the street being full of carriages before the house--then every curtain, and every shutter of every window wide open, shewing apartments all in a blaze of light, with heads innumerable, black and white (powdered or not), in continual motion. This custom is so general, that having, a few days agao, five or six persons in the evening with us, we observed our servants had left the windows thus exposed, thinking, no doubt, that this was a rout after our fashion."

Indeed, with such a throng of people inside an enclosed space and candles blazing on hot spring and summer nights, the rooms would have been stifling. Had the windows and doors not been kept open, the heat and lack of fresh air would have been insufferable. People often needed to step outside to the terrace or gardens to gain some relief from candle smoke, body odor, and fetid air.

As you can see from this illustration of the Assembly Room in Bath by Thomas Rowlandson, the public assemblies also provided opportunities for dancing. One must surmise that private and public assemblies differed in character. The size of a hostess's house and her budget must also have dictated whether she could also provide music and dancing at her gathering.

An English Meal

Louis Simond, An American in Regency England, describes a meal with his host and hostess as thus:

"The master and mistress of the house sit at each end of the table--narrower and longer than the French tables--the mistress at the upper end--and the places near her are the places of honour. There are commonly two courses and a dessert. I shall venture to give a sketch of a moderate dinner for ten or twelve persons. Although contemporary readers may laugh, I flatter myself it may prove interesting in future ages."

First course (not in order)
Oyster Sauce, Fish, Fowls, Soup, Vegetables, Roasted or Boiled Beef, Spinage, Bacon, Vegetables

Second Course (not in order)
Creams, Ragout a la Francoise, Pastry, Cream, Cauliflowers, Game, Celery, Macaroni, Pastry.

Dessert (not in order)
Walnuts, Raisins and Almonds, Apples, Cakes, Pears, Raisins and Almonds, Oranges

"Soon after dinner the ladies retire, the mistress of the house rising first, while the men remain standing. left alone, they resume their seats, evidently more at ease, and the conversation takes a different turn--less reserved--and either graver, or more licentious."

Click on more links to food in the Regency Era:
Historic Food Links
The Food Timeline
Food and Drink in Regency England
The Art of Cookery
History of Tea in Britain

About the Art of Cookery: 'The Art of Cookery', written by Hannah Glasse, was published in 1747. It was a best seller for over a hundred years, and made Glasse one of the best-known cookery writers of the eighteenth century. As Glasse explains in the preface, the book was intended to be an instruction manual for servants - 'the lower sort' as she called them. During the 1700s there was a fashion for books of this kind, which were designed to save the lady of the house from the tedious duty of instructing her kitchen maids."

An American in Regency England: From Richmond to Hyde Park Corner

From 1809 to 1811, Louis Simond, a French emigre who lived in America, spent 21 months in England. He chronicled his trip in journals, which he published as The Journal of a Tour and Residence in Great Britain.

I have in my possession a copy of his book, which has been retitled "An American in Regency England." Occasionally, I will post Simond's observations, as they seem as fresh now as the day he recorded them.

"January 11.--We arrived yesterday at Richmond. This morning I set out by myself for town, as London is called par excellence, in the stage-coach, crammed inside, and herisse outside with passengers, of all sexes, ages, and conditions. We stopped more than twenty times on the road--the debates about the fare of way-passengers--the settling themselves--the getting up, and the getting down, and damsels shewing their legs in the operation, and tearing and muddying their petticoats--complaining and swearing--took an immense time. I never saw any thing so ill managed. In about two hours we reached Hyde Park corner; I liked the appearance of it; but we were soon lost in a maze of busy, smoky, dirty streets, more and more so as we advanced."

Click here to find the Royal Parks, including Hyde Park and Richmond Park.