eaho.bsky.social
A Scottish/Florentine literary life; an extraordinary network of artists, writers, engineers, scientists; a micro-history of the East India Company and its overlooked influence on British culture Eaho.substack.com
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this later came to be known as the Picturesque, a style much appreciated by the Directors of the East India Company, some of whom would have been familiar with the villa gardens on the islands facing Canton, and who commissioned Repton in 1806 to design the gardens for the EIC college at Haileybury
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This would have been less of a surprise to English observers had they understood that Kent and Brown had borrowed from the Chinese appreciation of irregularity and naturalism in garden design which had first reached England in the late 17th Century, via Dutch traders and English diplomats in Holland
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Eliza is particularly partial to wild wadi. I hope you made it there.
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These were usually faithful copies indistinguishable in style or content from sketches by the Illustrated London News' war artist, Mr Wirgman. Beato's photographs had an immediacy & sense of 'being there' that was lost in the engravings. 3/3 full story here: eaho.substack.com/p/14-looting...
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The effect on the British public would've been lessened by the inability of newspapers to print photographs. That changed in the 1890s with the invention of halftone lithography. Until then photographs were copied by engravers on woodblocks or etching plates for publication in illustrated weeklies.
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Also called 'the Old Summer Palace’, this was a complex of dozens of palaces, libraries, temples, schools & gardens: 650 structures arranged in the landscape in 150 formal views over an area of 3.5 km2, looted, then burned to the ground over a week in October 1860. Eliza Ogilvy's brother was there.
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Stories from her life, her network & family are published on Bluesky and on Substack, where you'll find complete chapters (now 1-10). Good places to start are: eaho.substack.com/p/prologue or eaho.substack.com/p/1-patronag... or eaho.substack.com/p/introducin...
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Eliza’s Life spanned 90 years of the long 19th Century. She was from an East India Company family and deeply involved in the transmission of culture between Scots & English, Empire & metropolis, gentry & the new middle class, and the spread of new technologies of mass communication and travel
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Eliza is both radical & historical and would love to be included
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In February 1839, two months after WP returned to Calcutta, the Bengal Tea Association, a joint stock company, was founded by Carr Tagore and Co., it’s General Manager William Prinsep. 4/4
eaho.substack.com/p/9-william-...
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On his return, in the Pearl River delta, William was caught by Chinese customs police, 'with his hand in the tea bucket'. The plenipotentiary Charles Elliot 'removed his evidence during the quarrel with the Viceroy' that resulted, saving WP's bacon. 3/4
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Carr Tagore's opium clipper Water Witch may have also brought news of the Indian Government’s intention to offer up its experimental Assam tea gardens to private business, a nugget of inside information received via a friend in the know, George Gordon. 2/4
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Hi Amy, if you'd like to, please include Eliza on your list. I think she fits.
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In his journal Prinsep confesses to being 'caught with his hand in the tea bucket' by Chinese customs officials, and bailed out of a sticky end by Charles Elliot (the plenipotentiary, of Opium War infamy). WP is coy about the episode and I've allowed myself to speculate what happened and why.
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"[Chinnery's] former faults of exaggerated lights & shades were more prominent than ever & this was especially the case with his painted landscapes." William Prinsep memoirs Vol 3 p116 (there was bad blood, Chinnery had defaulted on his debts to Palmer & Co. where Wm had been a partner
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William Prinsep memoirs Vol 3 p70
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"We wondered through the crowded streets behind the
European Hongs. The variety & beauty of the shops were very attractive, some being highly ornamented with carved wood painted & gilded most gorgeously. We visited the famous curiosity shop of Mr Ming, the interior of which I attempted to sketch
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17.10 "Made the China coast at daylight - At 7 a comprador’s Boat came alongside while we are in full sail & though expertly done he carries away his foremast against our boat stanchions. He agrees to take up the outward mail to Dent’s house for 30 dollars" William Prinsep memoir Vol3 p56-7
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"a little trip to China would be both useful and pleasant & my wife not opposing I determine to act upon it at once, packing up my drawing materials & a moderate kit of clothes, I have one clear day for writing the many letters that must go in consequence" William Prinsep's Memoirs Vol 3
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Insert ‘appears to be’ literally …
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"...which had just been issued by the Commissioners, and which was so truly Benthamite and ingenious in its illustrations that is was called the Comical Code." [The Prinseps were united in their contempt for Utilitarian idealism and Macaulay's paternalistic work 'symmetrical in all its parts'.]
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...the other is the Prologue, a meeting between Eliza's grandmother and Edmund Burke MP and Henry Dundas, then Lord Advocate and William Pitt's political fixer in Scotland, in a wood near Pitlochry where it all began eaho.substack.com/p/prologue
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And sincerely hoping that Bluesky's friendlier to Substack links than X was!
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I didn’t go in there, never saw it, just despised what Meta had done to Instagram - how could it be better?
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…Good bye my dear Aytoun. I wish you a merry Xmas and to honest Johnny Blackwood. Thank him for the magazine…Yours ever WMT” EAHO's & Thackeray's mothers were friends in India. Eliza's friendship with WEA was lifelong. @victstudies.bsky.social @victorianmasc.bsky.social @scotlit.bsky.social