Egyptomania by Rachel Louise Driscoll

 

When we think of the rise of Egyptology, I think our minds often turn to the Art Deco Egyptian Revival of the early 20^th century with Carter and Carnarvon’s hunt for King Tutankhamun’s tomb.  In truth, however, Egyptomania – the fascination for all things Ancient Egypt – actually goes back further than that to the 19^th century and beyond.  This was a time when the Rosetta Stone arrived at the British Museum, the hieroglyphs were deciphered in a race between Britain and France, Amelia Edwards published her travelogue about her journey through Egypt and Nubia entitled A Thousand Miles up the Nile, and characters like “Mummy” Pettigrew hosted their infamous ‘mummy unwrapping parties’.

Thomas Pettigrew, known by the sobriquet “Mummy” Pettigrew, was a 19^th century surgeon and antiquarian.  A founding member of the British Archaeological Association, he had a particular interest in mummies.  In fact, upon the association’s first meeting in 1844, he apparently unwrapped a mummy in front of his rapt audience.  At such events, Pettigrew was known to not only unroll the layers of cerement from the preserved corpse, but to also perform an autopsy.  His knowledge of Egyptian mummies was so vast that in 1834 he wrote a book called A History of Egyptian Mummies.  This work explored the ancient funerary rites of the Ancient Egyptians, including how sacred animals were worshipped and embalmed. 

Animals such as cats, dogs, ibises, crocodiles, and birds of prey were amongst the varieties of species that the Egyptians would embalm, usually through a connection to a deity.  For instance, Bast or Bastet had the head of a cat, and so cats were seen to be linked to the goddess.  Ibises were sacred and Thoth, the god of wisdom and writing, was often depicted with the head of an ibis.  Many of the Ancient Egyptian gods and goddesses had heads of animals, or were said to be able to change their form into animals – like Isis and Nephthys, the sister goddesses who could shapeshift into kites.  Mummified animals would often be buried at the sites that held particular worship for the deity that was associated with that animal, such as the many cats buried at Bubastis, the centre of Bast’s cult.

The term Egyptomania, from the Greek ‘Egypto’ for Egypt and ‘mania’ for madness, came into existence around the end of the 18^th and start of the 19^th century, and this was really when we see the increased interest in this ancient land and its rich history.  Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign helped Egyptomania take flight, inspiring the hunger for antiquities.  There was such a cry for mummies and relics when travellers came to Egypt, that supply could not meet demand, and mummy snatchers and forgers became commonplace.  New laws arose to halt illegal digs and export, but the black market of antiquities continued as more travellers sought to own their piece of history, and the mummy unwrapping parties continued.

Despite this, there were many who came to Egypt with permits for legal digs, amongst them the Scottish archaeologist Alexander Rhind, and Margaret Benson, the first woman to be granted a permit by the Egyptian Department of Antiquities.  In cases such as these, when the excavations were carried out in accordance with local law and with historical insight, provenance was not lost and knowledge increased.

I’m not sure that Egyptomania has waned so very much over the years.  Even today in the 21^st century, Egypt is consistently ranked as a top tourist holiday destination, the Egyptian exhibits are often the busiest in museums, and we still feel a thrill of excitement over the mysterious hieroglyphs on obelisks and papyri.  The age of Egyptomania is far from over, although I’m glad to say we no longer host mummy unwrapping parties or have powdered mummy in our paints like the Pre-Raphaelites did. 

If you’d like to read more about the 19^th century fascination for Ancient Egypt, then I highly recommend Amelia Edwards’ book A Thousand Miles up the Nile.  For fictional writings from the era, you might like Lost in a Pyramid; or, The Mummy’s Curse by Louisa May Alcott (quite a different read from her more famous Little Women series) and Some Words with a Mummy by Edgar Allan Poe.  And to investigate these themes further, especially those of mummy unwrapping parties and the preservation of Egyptian history, you might enjoy my debut novel Nephthys which explores the 19^th century fascination for Ancient Egypt in a gothic tale of adventure, mythology, and mystery.  Nephthys is available in hardback, with the paperback out with Vintage in February 2026, and you can purchase your copy here.  If you’re in the US, it is published by Penguin Random House under the title The House of Two Sisters, and is available here.

Instagram: @rachel.louise.driscoll

Dickens and the Ghost at Rockingham Castle by Judith Allnatt

In the summer I visited Rockingham Castle in Northamptonshire and was fascinated to learn that it was a source of inspiration for Charles Dickens. In particular, he drew on its ancient rooms and the story of its resident ghost in his novel Bleak House, a work of Gothic fiction and a satirical treatment of the English legal system. Its plot concerns the long running probate case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce in which, by the time it is brought to conclusion, the lawyers' fees have actually used up all of the money in the estate.  Rockingham Castle, was the inspiration for Chesney Wold, home of Lord and Lady Dedlock in Bleak House. 

 

In a letter, Dickens described Rockingham as “a large old castle, approached by an ancient keep, portcullis, etc., filled with company waited on by six-and-twenty servants” and his time spent visiting as “the dear old Rockingham days.”

Dickens first met the owners of Rockingham Castle, Richard and Lavinia Watson, in 1846 on holiday in Switzerland, discovering shared interests in Liberal principles, art and theatricals. It seems to have been a lively and joyous friendship with reference made in letters to playing Tricks, Charades and Battledore  (similar to badminton). 

When staying at Rockingham he put on plays in the Great Hall  and wrote with gratification of ‘all the household headed by an enormously fat housekeeper occupying the back benches . . . laughing and applauding without restraint.’ On occasion the plays were followed by dancing until three in the morning.

When Richard died at the age of only fifty two, Dickens was shocked and saddened. He wrote to Lavinia “We held him so close in our hearts ... and we have been so happy with him”. He and Lavinia continued to be lifelong friends and correspondents.

 Dickens had a favourite room at Rockingham, on the first floor looking out along the gap between two yew ‘cloud hedges’. 

These enormous topiary creations are known as the Elephant Hedge and are cut to resemble elephants following each other, trunk to tail.  Looking out of his window Dickens claimed to have seen a ghost and the story attached to it caught his imagination.

 

In the Civil War, Sir Lewis Watson was a royalist but his wife espoused the cause of the parliamentarians. In Sir Lewis Watson’s absence, the parliamentarians conquered Rockingham and, so the guide told me, it was thought to be a bit too easy. In Bleak House, Sir Morbury Dedlock thinks that his wife is laming their stabled horses to stop the royalists being able to make use of them and in a physical struggle with her she falls and injures her hip. 

Dickens continues the story thus: 

She had been a lady of a handsome figure and a noble carriage. She never complained of the change; she never spoke to anyone of being crippled or of being in pain but day by day she tried to walk upon the terrace, and with the help of the stone balustrade, went up and down, up and down, up and down, in sun and shadow, with greater difficulty every day. At last one afternoon her husband (to whom she had never on any persuasion, opened her lips since that night), standing at the great south window, saw her drop upon the pavement. He hastened down to raise her, but she repulsed him as he bent over her, and looking at him fixedly and coldly, said ‘I will die here where I have walked. And I will walk here though I am in my grave. I will walk here until the pride of this house is humbled. And when calamity or when disgrace is coming to it, let the Dedlocks listen for my step!’ Bleak House, Charles Dickens.

The character that Dickens uses to tell this story is Mrs Rouncewell, who has been housekeeper for fifty years and  who is reminiscent of the ‘enormously fat housekeeper’ referred to in his letter. On my visit, the tradition of both housekeepers and ghosts was apparent in the comment of the guide to the grounds. She said that she and others had heard the sound of children playing when none were in the castle and that on one occasion when the housekeeper was hoovering, a back door had flown open and the plug was pulled out, as if snatched by an unseen hand! 

 

When being shown around the Long Gallery, I also learned that Dickens had a favourite chair, which is still there in the same position.  I pictured Dickens ensconced in this wing-backed leather chair, musing or writing, taking breaks to gaze down the length of the long room at theItalian glass chandeliers, low hanging and tipped with pink flowers, the red drapes hanging heavy and the busy gold and green wallpaper providing the rich, ornamented interior so typical of grand Victorian taste. Perhaps he would have imagined the shades of ladies past, making their promenade up and down the room, as was their wont when the weather outside was inclement. 

 

This idea of musing makes me think of the famous painting of Dickens  imagining his characters.

The painting, Dickens’ Dream by Robert William Buss, consists of a combination of painted and sketched characters because it was unfinished. However, when standing in front of it, I can’t help seeing it as a visual representation of the creative process of writing – the development of characters first as having the shady outlines of a ghost then filling out with life and colour as the author actually puts pen to paper and the story, drawing inspiration from a multitude of interesting fragments of experience begins to take shape. Rockingham is rich in such fragments and it’s no surprise that its people, atmosphere and legends lodged with Dickens and fed his remarkable creativity.

For those interested in finding out more, Rockingham Castle has lots of Dickens memorabilia  and the castle’s own long history is also fascinating.  https://rockinghamcastle.com

Acknowledgements: My thanks to David Shipton, Head Guide, Rockingham Castle for his excellent pamphlet ‘A Short Account of Charles Dickens, the Watsons and Rockingham Castle’, which is available from the castle, and to Mike Burton and the grounds guides for their help and informative comments.

 

THE LESSER KEY OF SOLOMON ... by Susan Stokes-Chapman

The eighteenth century in Europe saw a burgeoning fascination with the occult, a mystique born from a rich blend of Renaissance magic, medieval mysticism, and the inquisitive spirit of the Enlightenment. Among the most notorious grimoires of this era was The Lesser Key of Solomon, or Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis. This enigmatic text, a compilation of earlier magical manuscripts attributed to King Solomon himself, was believed to hold arcane secrets for summoning spirits, commanding demons, and unlocking divine wisdom. Though its roots trace back to the seventeenth century — and even further to writings from two centuries prior — its influence endured well into the 1700s, captivating secret societies and individual scholars eager to explore the realm of forbidden knowledge.

The Secret Seal of Solomon

The Lesser Key of Solomon is composed of five distinct books: Ars Goetia, Ars Theurgia-Goetia, Ars Paulina, Ars Almadel, and Ars Notoria. Each explores different facets of spiritual and supernatural interaction, weaving together strands of medieval demonology, Renaissance angelology, and astrological doctrine, elements that continued to captivate 18th-century esoteric practitioners.

The most renowned section, the Ars Goetia, catalogues seventy-two demons, detailing their ranks, powers, and the precise rituals required to summon and command them. From mighty kings to lesser spirits, these entities were believed capable of bestowing knowledge, wealth, or other supernatural boons ... provided they were properly invoked and bound. Though Goetic magic was condemned by religious authorities, it survived in secret, with some scholars maintaining that such spirits could be harnessed for purposes both benevolent and malevolent.

The 72 Demon Sigils

The Ars Theurgia-Goetia addresses a different category of spirits, often seen as more neutral than those catalogued in the Ars Goetia. These spirits were believed to inhabit the elements and could be summoned to offer guidance and aid. Eighteenth-century demonologists such as Antoine Augustin Calmet (1672-1757) debated their precise nature, with many considering them intermediaries bridging the realms of angels and demons.

Named after the Apostle Paul, the Ars Paulina organizes spiritual beings according to planetary hours and the zodiac. The first section details angels governing various hours of the day, while the second describes zodiacal angels linked to specific astrological influences. Given astrology’s central role in eighteenth-century mysticism, this portion provided practitioners with a structured framework for invoking celestial forces.

The Ars Almadel instructs magicians in the creation of the “Almadel,” a wax tablet used to communicate with angels from the four cardinal directions. These angels were believed to bestow divine wisdom and guidance, rendering this section more closely aligned with religious mysticism than with the demonic arts.

Finally, the Ars Notoria departs from spirit summoning, focusing instead on prayers, meditations, and sacred orations designed to enhance memory, wisdom, and eloquence. In the eighteenth century, this book was especially esteemed by those who sought intellectual enlightenment without venturing into perilous occult practices.

Because of the secretive nature of occult studies and the stigma attached to demonology, direct citations from these scholars are scarce. Nevertheless, it is widely believed that The Lesser Key of Solomon was either referenced by or at least known to prominent eighteenth-century figures such as Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), Alessandro di Cagliostro (1743-1795), Ebenezer Sibly (1751-1799), Martinez de Pasqually (1727-1774), and Francis Barrett (1774-unknown).

Francis Barrett was my first occultist inspiration for my sophomore novel THE SHADOW KEY, an idea I’d nurtured since 2006. While Barrett himself did not ultimately appear in the novel, his seminal occult work The Magus (London, 1801), along with his references to The Lesser Key of Solomon, were crucial in shaping the occult elements of my story. This led me to create an eighteenth-century scholar of my own, Julian Tresilian, who owns a copy of The Lesser Key of Solomon among his extensive library. Though THE SHADOW KEY is, of course, fiction, collectors like Julian often kept the Solomonic grimoire close at hand. Despite its reputation as a dangerous book of black magic—or as a misunderstood spiritual text—its influence endured throughout the eighteenth century and beyond. Even today, this grimoire continues to inspire literature, art, and popular culture. In the 1700s, as now, the quest for hidden knowledge — whether divine or demonic — remained a powerful force in human history.

~~~~~~

I explore 18th century occult thinking in my second historical novel The Shadow Key, publishing in paperback in February 2025. You can order a copy by clicking the image below:

www.susanstokeschapman.com

Instagram: @SStokesChapman

A Victorian Marital Disaster

by Stephanie Williams

In the 1850’s the public breakdown of the marriage of Edward Bulwer-Lytton and his wife Rosina filled the press with a scandal that resounded through the drawing rooms of Mayfair and the back-rooms of Westminster. It’s a case that makes Johnnie Depp and Amber Heard look like a walk in the park.

You only have to look at his portraits to know you are dealing with a rogue. That knowing gaze, the laid-back look, the ringlets and slightly unkempt auburn hair.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton © Henry Lytton Cobbold 

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, first Baron Lytton – of Knebworth Hall – member of parliament, and for a brief time Secretary of State for the Colonies, has a reputation for being a wit and a dandy. He is also a famous and prolific writer – in his time selling almost as well as his good friend Charles Dickens. To Bulwer-Lytton we must credit such phrases as ‘pursuit of the mighty dollar’, ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’, ‘the great unwashed’, and ‘it was a dark and stormy night'. The Last Days of Pompeii, published 1834, was a best-seller for decades; his melodrama inspired Wagner.

As a Cambridge student, his virginity is lost to Bryon’s famous lover, Lady Caroline Lamb, in 1824. He is 21, she is nearly 40. When their affair comes to an end, he consoles himself in Paris among the fashionable ladies of le beau monde.

On the day before his 23rd birthday, Edward returns to London. That evening, his mother takes him to what he fears will be a very boring soirée. There he sets eyes on green-eyed, dark haired Rosina Wheeler, a noted and well-educated Irish beauty.

© National Portrait Gallery, London

You could say it was doomed from the start 

 His mother wanted him to marry money. She forbade the marriage, cut off his allowance, refuses to speak to him and forces him to work. Rosina’s mother, Anna – who at this time Rosina finds slightly embarrassing -- is regarded as a dangerous radical: a socialist and one of the nation’s first campaigners for women’s rights. She thinks Edward is a worthless dandy.

In 1827 the couple set up home in an expensive house in Oxfordshire.

Edward, who had won the chancellor’s medal for English verse at Cambridge, has no choice but to write for his living. Once inspired, he is in a state of fierce concentration. When finished, he sinks into depression. In May 1828 Rosina is in the final weeks of her first pregnancy when half-way up a ladder in the library fetching a book for him, she tells him she feels faint. 

‘He stared at me blankly for a moment, and then suddenly sprang to his feet. A look of hideous fury filled his face. He made a vile curse and pushed me to the ground. The next thing he did, was kick me in the side with such savage violence that I fainted from the pain.’

The next day, he is all sweetness – brushing away any reference to what had happened. Rosina cannot believe his behaviour. Meanwhile, he tells the servants she merely had fall. When their daughter Emily is born a month later, she is immediately given to a wet-nurse. From that time Rosina is scarcely permitted to see her. With his literary career flourishing, they move to London. Edward adds politics to his workload. The birth of a son in November 1831 does nothing to rekindle the marriage. By his own admission, Edward, with his tendency to melancholy, has a vicious temper and voracious sexual appetite. And is now flaunting an affair with a society beauty, Mrs Robert Stanhope. 

In an attempt to repair the marriage, Edward and Rosina travel to Italy – to Rosina's surprise, Mrs Stanhope, with her husband in tow, appears on the Channel crossing to accompany them. Terrible scenes erupt in Naples, where Edward, accuses of her of infidelity with a Neapolitan prince. He attacks her again, this time with a knife. 

'I had frightened myself, as well as Rosina… I possessed a temper so constitutionally violent that it amounted to a terrible infirmity. She should, after all our years together have understood that it was inhumane to tamper with so terrible an infirmity as mine. '

Back in England, they agree to separate. Both are just 33. Edward awards Rosina an allowance that is pitiful. She is denied access to her children. Rosina is forced to write. She does not hold back. Her 1839 novel, Cheveley, or the Man of Honour, takes Edward apart revealing such physical abuse that The Age newspaper dubbed him ‘Wifewhack’.

They are now equally obsessed with loathing one another. In 1847, their daughter Emily, who had spent her life consigned to various governesses, died of typhus fever in poor lodgings, aged nineteen. Rosina, who had to force admission to her death bed, accused him of wilful neglect.

Emily, © Henry Lytton Cobbold

Now Rosina pursues him with embarrassing public pronouncements at every opportunity: writing to Prince Albert decrying the Queen’s support for such a scoundrel by giving a royal premiere of his play, Not So Bad as We Seem in 1851, and posting advertisements around Devonshire House for Even Worse than We Seem by 'Sir Liar-Coward Bulwer Lytton, who has translated his poor daughter into Heaven, and nobly leaves his wife to live on public charity.'

In June 1858, Edward canvasses for re-election as Colonial Secretary in Hertford. Rosina plasters the town with flyers denouncing him. She takes to the hustings herself to tell the world what a man he is. In response, he has her committed to a lunatic asylum. 

 The outcry against him – spearheaded by Rosina’s women friends -- will not be silenced. He has a chat with Dickens at his club who warns him this is a scandal he will not survive. Within three weeks, Rosina is released. 

Both make extensive records of their feelings. As time goes by Rosina’s prose gets wilder and wilder. It may be the drink – of which he accuses her – speaking. But by now she has also realised the validity of many of her mother’s ideas on the rights of women. She will go on to publish a further 20 novels exposing the ill treatment of wives, haunting him for the rest of his life.

'The representative of Romance.'

Vanity Fair, Oct 29 1870

Bulwer-Lytton dies in 1873. Lonely and ill, still often mocked, he is covered in honours: a baronetcy and a peerage, knight grand cross of St Michael and St George and is buried with huge pomp in Westminster Abbey.

She lives on, still beautiful, troubled by pain, sorrow and debt. She dies in obscurity in 1882. Her own grave in Upper Sydenham lay unmarked for over one hundred years, until in 1995 when her great-great grandson arranged for a tombstone with the inscription she had requested: 'The Lord will give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve.'

Rosina’s most immediate legacy was passed to her granddaughter Lady Constance Georgina Bulwer-Lytton (1869–1923), who became one of the heroines of the Edwardian women's suffrage movement. 

But that’s another story.

'How to Fake a Dragon' by Karen Maitland

A Jenny Haniver
Photo: M.Violante

It is so important to take children to museums, I mean proper museums with real objects in glass cases, not ones simply filled with interactive computer screens.

I vividly remember a childhood trip to a museum where I became enthralled by a dry, brown creature in a case that looked exactly like a mummified imp with bat-like wings, spiky tail, and a demonic, human-like face. I felt I was staring at a grotesque that had come to life and flown down from the roof of a gothic Cathedral. The label stated that the dried imp was a 'Jenny Haniver', a fake, but it looked as real as any of those two-headed chicks, shark pups or goat embryos preserved in jars, which lined our biology lab at school.

And the sight of that creature fascinated me so much as a child that, decades later, the image would wriggle to the surface of my mind and become a clue to an assassination plot in my Jacobean thriller ‘Rivers of Treason.’

'Little Dragon' form of Jenny Haniver
(Made from a stingray in 18th Century)
Photo: Didier Descovens
Museum de Toulouse

The term Jenny Haniver is used to refer to the corpse of any real animal that is fashioned to resemble a mythological creature such as a demon or dragon. Jenny Hanivers started to be made in great numbers in 16th and 17th centuries, the centuries of exploration, when travellers and sailors were returning to Europe with tales of the wonderous animals they had encountered. Jenny Hanivers were usually fashioned from the carcass of a ray, skate or devil fish that had been tied into a monstrous shape and dried, resulting in a mummified specimen. Since these flat fish have eyes and mouths that resemble human or mammalian faces, the features could be moulded into grotesque expressions. They also have barbed tails and so was possible to make them look like demons or small dragons by cutting and shaping the body to create wings or limbs before drying the carcass. 

Face of a Ray fish
Photo: JoshBerglund19

These fakes were manufactured in great numbers in the ports of Belgium and Holland, where they were sold as curios to mariners and travellers to take back home, to show the monsters they’d encountered on their voyages. It has been suggested that one possible explanation of the origin of the name may be the French phrase jeune d’Anvers – Anvers being the French name for Antwerp– which English sailors corrupted into Jenny Haniver. 

Jenny Hanivers were crafted to look like imps, baby basilisks, newly hatched dragons, wyverns and even the legendary ‘sea monks’ and ‘sea-bishops’ which were believed to conjure storms at sea. 

Sea Monk & Sea Bishop
Illustrations from 1669
Taken from a woodcut of 1558
Carver: Conrad Gesner (1516-1565)

An illustration of a Jenny Haniver appeared in Konrad Gesner’s Historia Animalium in 1558, where Gesner firmly states that these are simply dried rays, and that people shouldn’t be tricked into believing they are dragons or monsters. However, the tales of the creatures encountered by European sailors visiting tropical islands, as well as the skins and often badly stuffed specimens brought back by those exploring the Americas, only served to convince a public who had never seen such animals before that these fakes might also be real.

Later, in the 19th century, people in Europe paid to view dried mermaids brought back by merchants and sailors from Japan. Japanese fishmen had learned to supplement their income by creating grotesque little mermaids from monkeys and fish. The fishermen would claim they had found a mermaid alive in their nets, who before she died, had warned of a terrible plague about to sweep the land from which people could only be saved if they wore a mermaid charm. Naturally the fishmen ensured that they just happen to have these charms for sale.

Mummified mermaid
Archivio fotografico 
Museo Civico di Modena

And it seems we are still just as willing to believe in strange creatures from distant realms as our forebears did. In 2023, two small mummified ‘alien’ corpses from Peru were subject to months of scientific investigation and journalistic speculation about whether these diminutive, three-fingered beings could possibly be real ‘aliens’ from outer space or an elaborate hoax. The consensus of most scientists in the end was they were composites of pre-Columbian human remains and animal bones coved in plaster or glue. But the question remained, were they created as part of an ancient Peruvian burial rite or mocked-up in our own century by someone out to make money, just like those creative Jenny Haniver makers of Antwerp? Human nature doesn’t change!

A Jenny Haniver
Photo: Vassil
Museum d'Histoire Naturelle de Geneve, 
Geneva

............................

Rivers of Treason, set in 1607, is the 3rd book in the Daniel Pursglove thriller quartet by KJ Maitland. Book 4, Plague of Serpents, is out now.

​A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF 18THC GWYNEDD ... by Susan Stokes-Chapman

‘To understand it,’ Linette begins, ‘you must know our history. Many of the Welsh estates have dwindled dreadfully in recent years, to the detriment of those who relied on the landowners for their care. I’m sure you’ve noticed there’s little to entertain here – many of the gentry took to the cities. As a consequence they left their estates under the care of agents who leeched money from tenants and the land into the purses of their employers, who then squandered it. Some could curtail their spending, like our neighbours Lord Pennant and Sir John Selwyn, but many others were plunged into debt and passed their estates on to English gentry. My grandfather was one of these men. He preferred the delights of London and spent so freely there it put Plas Helyg on the edge of ruin.’ ~ Extract from: The Shadow Key

Harlech Castle, from Twgwyn Ferry, Summer's Evening Twilight (1799) - Joseph Mallord William Turner

Gwynedd, a county stretching across North-West Wales, is defined by its dramatic mountainous landscape and an extensive western coastline that gazes out over the Irish Sea. Renowned primarily for Snowdonia National Park — recently restored to its original Welsh name, Eryri — this region is home to Wales’s highest peak, Yr Wyddfa, more commonly known as Snowdon. Rich in history, boasting countless castles, stunning beaches, abundant wildlife, and vibrant culture, Gwynedd is today a celebrated destination for travellers and tourists alike.

However, the eighteenth-century Gwynedd was a very different place.

At that time, the area was known as Meirionydd, a land largely isolated from the rest of Wales and England by the rugged mountains of Eryri and a scarcity of easily navigable routes. Travel was predominantly on foot or horseback, following ancient drovers’ roads—pathways used to move livestock across the hills. Many of these routes traced back to medieval times or even earlier, winding treacherously through rocky terrain and offering little in the way of safety or comfort. As a result, the people of Meirionydd were often viewed as living in a remote backwater, with customs and ideas deemed ‘backward’ by outsiders.

This perception was actively reinforced through the spread of English culture by landowners who sought to ‘tame’ their Welsh tenants. Many estates, having fallen into disrepair due to irregular income, were acquired by absentee English proprietors who treated these properties merely as summer retreats. By the mid-eighteenth century, only a handful of the great Welsh estates remained in the hands of their original families. The incoming English gentry imposed sweeping modernisations on these estates, often with little regard for the impact on local tenants. Many native inhabitants were displaced, left without work or even shelter.

Unsurprisingly, this bred considerable resentment, particularly as language barriers compounded the difficulties in communication. Throughout the eighteenth century, English was the language of power, governance, and opportunity — an essential tool for anyone wishing to ‘advance in life.’ Consequently, the remaining Welsh gentry adopted English, while many among the lower classes faced the enforced imposition of a foreign tongue, fuelling discord and occasional uprisings, especially in matters of church and religious reform.

This linguistic and cultural divide lingers in some communities even today — a lingering echo of a troubled past where the Welsh endured harsh treatment at the hands of the English, making such tensions all the more understandable. [For further reading, see Hope and Heartbreak: A Social History of Wales and the Welsh, 1776– 1871 by Russell Davies, Welsh Gothic by Jane Aaron, and The Remaking of Wales in the Eighteenth Century edited by Trevor Herbert and Gareth Elwyn Jones]

The primary sources of income in the region were varied: shipbuilding thrived in Barmouth, fishing flourished along the coast, farming sustained the inland communities, and the mining of slate, copper, lead, iron, and gold fuelled industrial growth. Mining, in particular, experienced rapid expansion during the Industrial Revolution, and eventually, North-West Wales became home to some of the largest mining quarries in the world. These sites have since been recognized as World Heritage Sites and are renowned internationally. Notably, the famous jewellery brand Clogau traces its origins to the gold mine nestled in the hills just outside Dolgellau.

Yet, it is important to acknowledge that these mines were typically owned by the gentry, while the men who laboured within them endured grueling conditions. Miners were often compelled to purchase their own tools from their meagre wages and worked over ten hours a day — six days a week — with only Christmas Day as respite. The work was brutal and unforgiving, carried out in hazardous environments that resulted in a frighteningly high death toll.

Moreover, the influence of the Pennants of Penrhyn Castle serves as a stark reminder of the darker side of this wealth. The Pennants were involved not only in mining but also in the slave trade, owning several plantations in Jamaica. This connection underscores how the Welsh gentry amassed their fortunes through the exploitation of those they deemed ‘the lesser man.’

Despite these harsh realities, Meirionydd remained (and still is) a breathtakingly beautiful corner of Wales that drew visitors from near and far, helping to put the county firmly on the map for future generations. Among those captivated by the region was another member of the Pennant family, the naturalist Thomas Pennant. Between 1778 and 1781, he undertook an ambitious journey across Wales, culminating in the publication of two volumes celebrating his travels. His The Journey to Snowdon, featured in Volume II, offers a richly detailed and lyrical eighteenth-century portrayal of his native land, capturing the essence of Wales with both affection and keen observation.

Wales also drew many pilgrims of a literary and spiritual nature. Among them was the Reverend Richard Warner of Bath, who documented his travels in A Walk Through Wales (1799) and its sequel, A Second Walk Through Wales (1800). Even the renowned Romantic poet William Wordsworth harboured a deep affection for the country. During his first visit in 1791, he traversed much of North Wales, an experience immortalized in his Descriptive Sketches. Wordsworth vividly recalled ascending Snowdon by night to witness the sunrise, a moment so powerful that echoes of it can be found within his seminal work, The Prelude:

[...] When from behind that craggy Steep, till then
The bound of the horizon, a huge Cliff,
As if with voluntary power instinct,
Uprear’d its head. I struck, and struck again
And, growing still in stature, the huge Cliff
Rose up between me and the stars [...]

Gwynedd/Meirionydd is a county steeped in history. We often celebrate its rich tapestry of myths and legends — like those immortalised in The Mabinogi — and its pivotal Medieval chapter, notably Edward I’s conquest between 1277 and 1283, marked by the construction of the formidable castles at Harlech and Caernarfon. Today, Wales is widely cherished as a beloved summer holiday destination, yet it is equally important for those who cherish the nation to reflect on the often-overlooked “middle years.” These centuries, though less frequently examined, played a crucial role in shaping the Wales we know and revere today.

~~~~~~

I explore Welsh eighteenth-century social history in Gwynedd in my second historical novel The Shadow Key, published in hardback in April 2024. You can order a copy by clicking the image below:

www.susanstokeschapman.com

Instagram: @SStokesChapman

Art, Colonialism and Change by Stephanie Williams

If you move fast, you can just catch the fabulous exhibition Entangled Pasts 1768-Now, Art, Colonialism and Change at the Royal Academy in London which ends on 28 April.

Yinka Shonibare CBE RA used the banisters of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire for his magnificent piece, 'Woman Moving Up'.  Slowly, but steadily, her head a globe of the world, she heaves herself and a suitcase full of heavy baggage, up a splendid marbled staircase. Photo Stephanie Williams

Moving round this exceptional exhibition, I was struck by how much more powerfully a single work of art – rather than any number of words -- can express the pain and contradictions of history. Yet at the same time, offer a fresh perspective on the brutally contrasting and intimately entangled pasts of Africa, India, Britain and the Americas.

Of which we still know so little.

Bust of a Man by Francis Harwood, 1758,
John Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

 

You enter the RA’s central rotunda to be greeted by a handful of fine portraits of Black men. Strong, handsome, elegant – among them works by Gainsborough, Reynolds, and John Singleton Copley. Each is accorded all the care and dignity, of any of their white sitters of their time. In the centre stands a black stone bust of a man from 1758 by Francis Harwood. Wonderfully lit, it is reflected up on a series of mirrors to alternate with busts of famous white men beneath the dome. The normal order of the white world has been subverted.

This is a show that makes its points with a light touch. Huw Locke’s Armada imagines the flotillas of craft engaged in the servicing of the plantation economy. At first these look magical. Mesmerising, tiny craft: fishing boats and lighters, miniature Spanish galleons. Look closer. High-rigged slaving ships, their sails, blackened and tattered, like the death ships they were. All are realised from abandoned lengths of string and cloth, plastic, wood and rubber and are suspended like flotsam and jetsam on uneven waves from the ceiling.

Hew Locke RA, Armada, 2017–19, Tate.
Photo © Royal Academy of Arts, London / David Parry. 

Benjamin West’s The Death of General James Wolfe – celebrated in my Canadian past as one of the nation’s great heroes – was painted twenty years after his death after defeating the French on the Plains of Abraham in Quebec in 1759. At his feet sits an idealised First Nation man. In fact he is a Delaware, rather than any of the native tribes to be found in the locale.

Benjamin West, The Death of General James Wolfe (1727-1759) 1779.
National Gallery of Canada

As edition after edition of prints and copies of this painting, conceived as record of a great patriotic victory, were reproduced and circulated around Britain and the world, this image laid the ground for the ideal of the ‘noble savage’ — the admiring onlooker, which recurred in similar works again and again. Here it is challenged by the work of Robert Houle, a Saulteaux Anishinaabe artist, whose Lost Tribes, 1990-1991 can be seen in the next room.

Similarly, Barbara Walker’s Vanishing Point series combines print-making and drawing to make the white figures who dominate well-known classical paintings, such as Titian, recede into the background, mere outlines impressed into paper, while traditionally marginalised Black figures rendered in graphite come vividly to life.

Each of these contemporary works force the viewer to assess well-known paintings from the white European canon afresh.

The Royal Academy itself comes under scrutiny for the works of art that were displayed at its Annual Exhibitions. And consider Johann Zoffany’s family portraits. A founder member of the Royal Academy, he had fallen out of favour with his royal patrons and sailed for India in 1783. Colonel Blair and His Family and an Indian Ayah shows an officer of the East India Company listening to his daughter Jane play the piano, fondly holding hands with his wife. To the right of the picture, his younger daughter, Maria, plays with a cat held by an Indian girl of about the same age. She is too young, surely, to be an ayah, the child’s nurse? Much more likely, she is the offspring of Blair’s Indian mistress.

Johann Zoffany, Colonel Blair and His Family and an Indian Ayah, 1786. Tate 

Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) Poems on Various Subjects,
 religious and Moral, 1773.  The British Library

I make many new discoveries.

I had never heard of Phillis Wheatley, kidnapped from the Senegambia region of West Africa and enslaved by a family in Boston, who became a poet. Writing as confidently as any white male of the time, she bitterly protested the painting made by Richard Wilson of Niobe, — in Greek mythology the archetypal bereaved mother, who weeps throughout eternity for the loss of her 12 children, murdered by the gods. Niobe was made in 1761, the same year in which Wheatley was captured.

Nor did I know Shahzia Sikander, whose Promiscuous Intimacies 2020, knits together the Mannerist tradition of the west with classical Indian art to highlight the contradictions of a one-sided history.

 

Shahzia Sikander Promiscuous Intimacies  
Photo © Royal Academy of Arts, London / David Parry

And have fun unpicking the rich symbolism of the Singh Twins in Indiennes: The Extended Triangle from the ‘Slaves of Fashion Series, 2018. 

 

The Singh Twins, Indiennes: The Extended Triangle 
from the 'Slaves of Fashion series, 2018, © The Singh Twins 

I have always been struck by the bombastic power – and incongruity -- of British architecture set down, often by Royal Engineers according to pattern books, in every former colony from Jamaica to Hong Kong. In Primitive Matters: Huts Karen McLean projects a series of large European style homes once owned by wealthy merchants and plantation owners in Port of Spain in Trinidad onto seven huts replicating the local vernacular.

Karen McLean, Primitive Matters, Huts 2010

There is much, more more to see.  Sit for a moment in front of Isaac Julien's film, Lessons of the Hour, about the abolitionist Frederick Douglas, who questioned, What to the Slave is the 4th of July?'  Consider Edwin Long's The Babylonian Marriage Market of 1875 shown not far from El Antsui's poignant Akua's Surviving Children 1996.    University of London, Egham. Photo © Royal Academy of Arts, London / David Parry

The counterpoint between past and present is a potent device indeed.  What a waste it is this show is not on for longer.

 

Entangled Pasts, 1768 - NOW 

Art, Colonialism and Change is at the Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, London W1 

until 28 April 2024

Photo Bill Knight

Stephanie Williams is a Canadian writer based in London and delighted to be writing for the History Girls, a blog she has often investigated when doing historical research.  Author of BBC Book of the Week, Olga's Story, the life of her Russian Grandmother, her most recent book, Running the Show, was based on an 1879 questionnaire which revealed the extraordinary characters who were Queen Victoria’s colonial governors. She is now at work looking into the back-offices of the East India Company in London to find out  exactly what went on there. See more at www.stephanie-williams.com