By LEO
DAMROSCH
An 1850s illustration of the French
cavalry and British soldiers at the Battle of Waterloo.CreditThe Print
Collector, via Getty Images
Most Americans probably have an indistinct idea of the warfare between
Britain and France at the turn of the 19th century. So far as Britain is
concerned, we are likely to recall that Admiral Nelson won a great victory in
1805 at Trafalgar, off the coast of Spain, and was mortally wounded during the
battle. In words that became famous, he had signaled to his fleet, “England
expects that every man will do his duty.” We are likelier to remember the Duke
of Wellington’s triumph at Waterloo 10 years later, which ended Napoleon’s
sensational career. A comment Wellington supposedly made afterward is also
frequently quoted, that the engagement had been “a damned close-run thing.” And
as a sidelight to the international conflict there was our own American War of
1812, during which Francis Scott Key was inspired to write his verses about the
rockets’ red glare and bombs bursting in air.
What we may not realize is that the fighting in Europe, and in far-flung
regions of the globe as well, endured for 22 years and affected life profoundly
for an entire generation. Boys who were born after it began in 1793 grew up to
fight in the wars their fathers had fought before them; a million British
soldiers served, nearly 10 percent of the entire population. Year after year,
the fighting waxed and waned. In 1794-95, for example, a British expeditionary
force mounted a futile campaign in the Low Countries and returned home after
accomplishing nothing but the loss of 20,000 men. By the end of hostilities,
two decades later, at least twice that many had died in the Caribbean, mostly
from yellow fever. There was land warfare in Egypt (after which the Rosetta
stone was brought to the British Museum); there was a British naval victory at
Copenhagen; and there was the protracted campaign in Spain that inspired Goya’s
great etching series “The Disasters of War.”
In her latest book, “In These Times,” Jenny Uglow traces what life on the
British home front was like during those fraught decades. New heroes and
scapegoats emerged, fortunes were made and lost, taxes on everything went up,
bad harvests provoked food riots, and there were strikes, stock market
disasters and bank failures. Her narrative is more or less chronological,
gathering a vast collection of names and facts into 60 chapters with titles
like “Invasions, Spies and Poets,” “Denmark, Egypt, Boulogne — Peace,” “Going
to the Show” and “Swagger and Civilization.”
Diaries and letters from 30 or so families are quoted repeatedly and lend
some focus. A typical entry, by a Norfolk brewer’s wife in 1794, illustrates
the interplay between sensational news and routine daily affairs: “May 23,
Friday. A cold Showry day. Mr. Hardy & Wm. at home all day. The
Girls walked up to Holt afternoon, drank tea at Mr. Jennis’s. From the News
Papers, the British Troops Defeated with great loss in France. Many people
taken up in England for Sedition & Treason, the Habeas Corpus Act
Suspended.” At times, the flow of anecdotes can seem rather casual. Uglow
writes: “In the middle of the Bay of Biscay Harriot’s daughter Sophia gave
birth to her third son, his arrival announced by the captain with a blast of
his trumpet. The refugees were just in time. When Soult sacked Oporto on 29
March, the piled-up bodies rose above the waters of the Douro.”
Now and then there is a surprising glimpse of a well-known figure. Samuel
Taylor Coleridge dropped out of Cambridge and, although utterly unfit to be a
soldier, enlisted as a private in the Light Dragoons. Not wanting to give his
real name, he identified himself as Silas Tomkyn Comberbache. He was discharged
after three months. After Nelson’s victory in the Battle of the Nile, “Jane
Austen abandoned her white satin cap and borrowed a ‘Mamalouc cap,’ modeled on
Egyptian fez work, adorned with Nelson’s emblem.” The unscrupulous George
Wickham in “Pride and Prejudice” is one of the officers quartered in southern
England against the threat of a French invasion, and the admirable Frederick
Wentworth in “Persuasion” is based on two of Austen’s brothers who were naval
officers (and eventually became admirals).
All along the way, Uglow has assembled interesting information. The
expression “lock, stock and barrel” refers to rifle components that were
produced in separate factories and afterward assembled by the Ordnance Board.
British sailors were called “tars” after their canvas jackets, waterproofed
with tar. To meet the enormous demand for military footwear, shoemakers
introduced standard sizes for the first time.
As the fighting dragged on and patriotic joy gave way to resentment of
expense and bloodshed, there were savage crackdowns on free speech. Any
criticism of the government could be prosecuted as seditious. The journalists
Leigh Hunt and William Cobbett each spent two years in jail, and a Scottish
radical was sentenced to 14 years’ transportation in Australia by a judge who
called the British constitution “the best that EVER was since the creation of
the world.”
The effects of war were felt especially in industry, which was evolving
rapidly to meet military demands. Steam engines were installed in collieries,
and street lighting was introduced in cities, fueled by “carbonic gas.” But the
human cost was great. “If you are not very sharp and wide awake,” a boy
employed in a cotton mill wrote, “you would be caught by the straps Drums
shafts Pulleys rollers or Cog wheels which may make you minus a limb or two or
perhaps your Life.” Inspectors visiting the Birmingham textile factory of
Robert Peel, whose son would one day be prime minister, were told the children
there were kept barefoot because “if they gave them shoes they would run away.”
The strength of “In These Times” is its copiousness, but the torrent of
names and facts grows exhausting. Pictures might help, but although there are
more than a hundred illustrations, most are tiny and few are discussed in the
text. Keeping one’s bearings is never easy. In one five-page sequence the
following are briefly mentioned: William Wordsworth’s stay in France, where he
left behind an illegitimate daughter (“his sadness would last for years”);
pantomimes starring “the young clown Joe Grimaldi,” not otherwise described;
Charles James Fox and Richard Brinsley Sheridan orating in Parliament (though
their words are not quoted) and Edmund Burke dramatically flinging down a
dagger there; Jane Austen’s cousin Eliza, whose French husband was guillotined;
Fanny Burney, who also married a Frenchman; John Keats, who was tutored in
French by still another émigré; a mention of dockyard guards in a letter to the
Rev. Reginald Heber’s cousin Mary by her friend Mrs. Drake; and a description
from the diary of William Rowbottom of the burning of an effigy of the
pro-French Tom Paine. That is only a partial list.
Most of all, one wishes for a fuller account of certain individuals who
appear briefly and then vanish. We hear that a Welsh cobbler known locally as
Jemima the Great, brandishing a pitchfork, captured 12 French soldiers during
an abortive invasion attempt, and that a deaf girl in Cornwall rescued her
father from a press gang “by smacking the ganger across the face with a
dogfish.” But why were the pitchfork and the dogfish so effective? We are not
informed. Still, the anecdotes are consistently entertaining, if best consumed
in moderate doses.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/books/review/jenny-uglows-in-these-times.html?_r=0
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