Something different

The establishment I work in turns 250 this year. I have often wondered what it would have been like to work here then, how it would have been run and what life in general would have been like in 1762. I am intrigued by Hogarth's "A Rake's Progress", a most fascinating social record from the same era of what happens when it goes wrong, how easy it must have been to fall by the wayside, corrupted and misguided by those out to take advantage. It charts the descent into eventual madness of a young gentleman, given too much money and not enough advice on how to manage it. In certain respects, life hasn't really changed that much. The glossy magazines of today are full of such stories, only in this day and age those fallen from grace are from different social circles and the Priory has replaced Bedlam! I just wonder who would be commissioned to paint the 21st century version?


The Heir - The first in Hogarth's series of paintings "A Rake's Progress"

I am thinking about starting a sub-blog, writing about a character of the age, periodically dipping in to the life of my Georgian alter ego.

For the purposes of this exercise I will give this character every possible advantage, somewhat similar to the the kind of gentry who would have been a member of a Gentlemens' Club back then. However, I have not decided if he will be a kindly soul or a bounder and a cad!

He is the third son of His Grace, The Duke of Hardenwaye, the family having been ennobled countless times through the generations for vanquishing the foes of which ever Monarch reigned at the time. He is titled and privileged certainly, however not in line to inherit anything except for a collection of Elizabethan chamber pots handed down from a previous third son so that all future third sons may still have the proverbial pot to piss in!

As is the way in noble families, the eldest son stays in the shadow of the father, learning all the necessary skills to be able to take over the reins and run the various estates and the house. Quiverin' Thigh Hall sits in the middle of 80,000 glorious acres spread over Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, on the edge of the picturesque and staunchly Royalist village of Greater Thrustwell, from where the family takes its name. A further 30,000 acres of grouse moor and deer stalking in Scotland, swathes of central London and the obligatory coffee and sugar plantations in the West Indies ensure that the Thrustwells are one the foremost families in the land. Piracy and criminal endeavour of any kind has always been frowned upon. Great-Uncle Percival, however, was cut from altogether a different kind of cloth. "Bloody Percy" as he was known, died on the gallows for an unrecorded crime, riddled with syphilis, in some heathen backwater of the Orient. He was indeed the sort of miscreant who would have turned his privateering hand to most things dubious for the price of glass of port and a women of low morals! Every family must have its black sheep!

The second son has always had a life in the forces. The Thrustwells have always favoured the land, becoming renowned soldiers, leading by example. The collection of standards, eagles and other war like trophies festooning the walls of the Great Hall is testament to the family feelings for Johnny Foreigner, regardless of which corner of the world he is from. The daring heroics of the local regiment are the very actions that get poets all excited and women all breathless and reaching for the smelling salts whilst at the same time, loosening their corsets. Young men throughout the Empire will be shouting "Up the Thrusters! Huzzah!" Home is laden with portraits by the very finest artists of the day, portraits of proud men on sturdy horses, slaughtering countless heathens in foreign lands with nothing but cold steel and an elevated eyebrow! Sometimes, when wandering the long halls at Quiverin' Thigh, one could easily be mistaken for thinking that these ancestors were just on one long jaunt around the known, and sometimes unknown, world to collect furniture and paintings and other trinkets to grace the trophy cabinets, butchering the shopkeepers and market traders for having the sheer audacity to charge for their wares!

The third son is usually expected to join the cloth, hopefully to serve as Archbishop in a cathedral city but in reality, far more likely to settle for administering to the family and estate workers in the local church on Sundays. The rest of the week spent in the arms of which ever serving wench is closest! The estate is full of the bastard offspring of many previous Reverends Thrustwell, without exception all well known lovers of the ladies and regular visitors to the milking parlour to ravish the young maidens employed within!

So, you can well see that Lord Rufus Thrustwell could end up going either way. What will he become? Will he be a sainted individual, all pious and with the well being of his fellow man at heart or is he to become the Flashman of his day?



Please leave any suggestions you may have for this chap, that is of course if you want the saga to continue? I will also be including recipes and other interesting, and yet at the same time totally useless facts from the era in future posts. I hope you enjoy.