The First Celebrities: Five Regency Portraits by Peter James Bowman - book review

We all instinctively know what a celebrity is. They’re talked about. They’re a character. They stand out from the crowd.

Arguably, celebrities are as old as humanity. There have always been those who attract the majority of attention. Bowman’s title challenges this, positioning five Regency characters as among the first true celebrities. He opens the book with almost sixty pages justifying his claim, and he makes a good case.

In simple terms, celebrity is about being known for who you are. Fame is about being known for what you’ve done. It’s also of the moment. Byron was a celebrity. The Duke of Wellington is famous.

Celebrity, argues Bowman, also requires a sophisticated media. The media is the stage on which the lives of celebrities can be paraded, discussed, ridiculed and dissected in print and in pictures. The rise of the British press in the late eighteenth century, and the freedom it enjoyed, presented new opportunities for individuals to be promoted to celebrity, and indeed, for them to promote themselves.

Celebrity involves a relationship between an individual and their audience. The public are hungry for personal details of someone’s life, and the object of their attention has to choose how much to share. Give away too much and reputation is at risk. Reveal too little and there’s a danger of being overlooked.

Bowman has selected five individuals to wear the mantle of the first celebrities. They are:

●     Harriot, Duchess of St Albans

●     Princess Dorothea Lieven

●     Richard Grenville, Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

●     Lady Charlotte Bury

●     Sir Thomas Lawrence

The book tells their stories, with an emphasis on their relationship with the media and, thereby, with the public.

Bowman has clearly researched his subjects in detail, from letters, diaries, memoirs and particularly, newspapers. Their stories are engaging and entertaining, written in a style that keeps you thinking and occasionally has you reaching for the dictionary. He treats them sympathetically, even the feckless Duke of Buckingham.

Harriot, Duchess of St Albans

Harriot, Duchess of St Albans
from Memoirs of Harriot, Duchess of St Albans
by Mrs Cornwell Baron-Wilson (1840)

Harriot Mellon is the ultimate rags-to-riches tale. The possibly illegitimate daughter of a wardrobe assistant in an Irish theatre troupe, she became the richest woman in England. Wealth does not lead automatically to celebrity. It was her manner of obtaining it that provoked public interest and scandalised gossip.

In 1815, aged 37, she married a banker over forty years her senior. Having secured a fortune, she then achieved an aristocratic title. This came on her second marriage, this time to a man much younger than herself.

Harriot maintained her public profile through her generosity. As she and her husband travelled the country, church bells announced their arrival to excited crowds. The Brighton Patriot stated:

The liberality and benevolence of the Duchess made her presence at all times desired by all classes.₁

Harriot Mellon is one of the twelve women Rachel profiled in What Regency Women Did For Us. Bowman’s book tells her fascinating story in more detail.

Princess Dorothea Lieven

The only non-British celebrity portrait shared by Bowman is that of the wife of the Russian ambassador, Count Lieven. He arrived in London, with his elegant young bride, in 1812. During his two decades in post he became a prince.

In 1834, on the news that the Tsar was withdrawing his ambassador, The Times stated:

The recall of Prince Lieven, or, rather of Madame la Princesse, is an ‘event’.₂

This statement summed up how many perceived the Princess. She was effectively the ambassador for Russia, because she’d developed such close relationships with many British politicians. But she was no pawn in the male-dominated game of politics.

Rather, she entranced men into feeling so comfortable that they opened up to her, allowing her to play a significant part in the shaping of Europe once the Napoleonic wars were over.

Countess Lieven was one of the patronesses of Almack’s Assembly Rooms.

Richard Grenville, Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

Buckingham, says Bowman, gave the world something to talk about for thirty years, but achieved remarkably little. Inheriting a fortune, including the palace at Stowe, he enjoyed an annual income not far short of £100,000 a year.

His life encompassed politics, the military, mistresses and a Grand Tour in the 1820s. All this was against a background of extravagant living. His massive income wasn’t enough to support his even larger appetite for spending.

The press loved to follow the details of Buckingham’s life. Of a visit to Scotland The Edinburgh Observer stated:

Had the King himself been in the party, his motions could hardly have been more minutely dwelt on.₃

Lady Charlotte Bury

Born in 1775, the young Lady Charlotte was considered the epitome of female beauty, giving her an early celebrity status. Bowman’s biography then charts her decline in status and the alteration of her celebrity, through two marriages and her transition into a novelist.

Charlotte enjoyed the confidence of royalty—the Prince Regent and his estranged wife, Princess Caroline—and mixed with the cream of society. But the high regard in which she was held was slowly stripped away over the 86 years of her long life.

Sir Thomas Lawrence

Sir Thomas Lawrence
from The Life and Correspondence of Sir Thomas Lawrence
by DE Williams (1831)

Of the five biographies in this book, that of artist Sir Thomas Lawrence feels the least like the tale of a celebrity. Deeply talented from childhood, and celebrated well before he was ten years old, the son of an innkeeper went on to become the leading portrait artist of the Regency.

Lawrence’s story, like all the others, is well presented. It describes his commitment to his work, his entanglements with the daughters of actress Sarah Siddons, and his inability to manage his finances. While the newspapers of the day were interested in what Lawrence was up to, there’s less of a sense that the public were hungry to hear it.

You can read our profile of Sir Thomas Lawrence here. 

Note

All quotes are from The First Celebrities by Peter James Bowman which is available from Amberley books here.

Read a review of another of Peter James Bowman's books, The Real Persuasion

Rachel Knowles writes faith-based Regency romance and historical non-fiction. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew, who wrote this review.

Find out more about Rachel's books and sign up for her newsletter here.

If you have enjoyed this blog and want to encourage us and help us to keep making our research freely available, please buy us a virtual cup of coffee by clicking the button below.

Were there finishing schools in Regency England?

Two young ladies wearing fashionable afternoon
and morning dress from The Lady's Magazine (1807)

One hundred years ago, in the early 1900s, thousands of single young women from wealthy families were sent to finishing schools. The very best were in Switzerland, but wherever the school was, its primary purpose was to turn out refined young ladies fully prepared to be a society wife.

Wind back the clock another hundred years or so to the early 1800s. Were finishing schools doing the same job of polishing a young woman in preparation for marriage?

The short answer is: sort of.

The finishing school, as we’ve come to think of it today, was not quite the same in the late Georgian and Regency era.

We’ve dug out early accounts and descriptions of finishing schools, in order to better understand them.

How a Regency finishing school differs

There are three huge differences between a Regency finishing school and those of the late Victorian era and the first half of the twentieth century.

Firstly, the schools weren’t in Switzerland. Now famous for its neutrality, Switzerland was invaded and captured by the French in 1798. This led to years of political instability until 1815.

Secondly, the young women who attended finishing schools were not drawn from the cream of society. Private tutoring, overseen by a governess, was the preferred method of educating girls and young ladies. This was expensive, making it exclusive to the wealthy. Finishing school was a second-best option.

Thirdly, the quality of education was patchy. Many thought that the students learned little, if anything, in such establishments.

Charles Dickens captures this sentiment in Sketches by Boz, in an episode first published in a magazine in 1834. He describes a fictional school:

Minerva House, conducted under the auspices of the two sisters, was a ‘finishing establishment for young ladies,’ where some twenty girls of the ages of from thirteen to nineteen inclusive, acquired a smattering of everything, and a knowledge of nothing; instruction in French and Italian, dancing lessons twice a-week; and other necessaries of life.₁

In his story, a Member of Parliament puts his daughter in the school to hide her from a potential suitor. It’s not long before she elopes, and the MP exclaims:

“I’ll bring in a bill for the abolition of finishing-schools.”₂

While Dickens’ story is fiction, and he liked to poke fun at many aspects of society, his poor opinion of finishing schools is shared by others—as we’ll see below.

There’s one final difference to note—the term ‘finishing school’ was not restricted to places where girls were educated. 

Theodosius is introduced to the new pupil by George Cruikshank
in Sketches by Boz by Charles Dickens (1836)

Regency finishing school wasn’t just for women

Words and phrases often change their meaning over time, and this is what’s happened to ‘finishing school’.

In its more general sense, a finishing school was a place where someone’s education was rounded off, or finished. This could apply as much to a man as a woman.

In a book on university education for doctors published in 1759, Richard Davies wrote:

After giving some public proof of a natural Genius, Students should be sent for instruction to the national Schools; there to pass thro’ all the discipline of a philosophic Education; to be afterwards improved  by due attendance as some public Hospital. Which ought to be the finishing school of the clinical Physician.₃

This usage appears in other documents around that time. A ‘finishing school’ wasn’t so much a specific institution as an environment where your education was completed. On leaving, students were equipped for a particular station in life.

In The Art of Teaching by David Morrice, 1801, that author writes:

What are called FINISHING SCHOOLS in London, are of very great service to young gentlemen designed for the commercial line, as they are there more particularly instructed with a view to that object, and by masters practically versed in the business.

Half a year’s instruction at one of these academies, after leaving a country school, will greatly benefit a youth, and prepare him for the counting-house with much advantage.₄

For late Georgian women, that final stage of education included the knowledge of running a household. Indeed, preparing them to be a good wife was the primary purpose of their education.

This emphasis is captured in A Picture of Manchester (1826), which states that in the same way that young men finish their studies at university:

...so the young ladies in those days completed theirs under the celebrated Mrs Blomiley, without which (provided the deficiency in education was known) it would have been vain for them to hope that any young man would deem them fit to be his wife.₅

A Regency finishing school was not a premium education

Those who could afford it usually educated their daughters at home. They sent their sons to boarding schools, such as Harrow and Eton, where they were harshly treated, but could get up to all kinds of mischief. Girls needed more protection—and less education.

There were boarding schools for girls, and plenty of them, often run in private homes, with relatively small numbers of pupils.

The students were usually drawn from middle-class families who wanted their daughters to improve themselves—or be ‘finished’.

In her finishing school, the celebrated Mrs Blomily of Manchester educated the daughters of merchants—very much the middle classes.

Lady Morgan (born Sydney Owenson)
from The Missionary by Lady Morgan (1811)

Sydney Owenson, daughter of an Irish actor, was one of those from a middle-class family. In her memoirs, she recalls how she changed school at age 12, in the 1790s. She wrote that her widowed father, guided by a female friend:

…placed us in the fashionable “finishing school,” as it was then called, of Mrs Anderson.

The pupils were the daughters of wealthy mediocrities, and their manners seemed coarse and familiar after the polished formalities of the habits of St Cyr.₆

In a letter to her father, preserved in the memoir, Sydney expressed her dislike of the ‘vulgar’ and ‘odious’ Mrs Anderson, and complained she learned nothing new in her time there.

Sydney Owenson later became Lady Morgan, a noted Irish author.

Another author, Thomas Hamilton, is equally uncomplimentary about a ‘finishing school’ education and its impact on a woman’s morals. In his novel The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton (1827), he uses his characters to describe the girls who attend such schools as “always pert, forward, ill-educated and ill-bred.”₇

Hamilton also has his character tell the story of a girl, “only lately returned from a finishing-school at Bath”, who marries an officer and soon elopes with another.₈

The attitude towards finishing schools was not particularly positive.

Smuggling Out or Starting for
Gretna Green by Thomas Rowlandson (1798)

Young ladies of quality did not attend a Regency finishing school

Our research suggests that the late Georgian and Regency idea of a finishing school was quite different from that we now associate with the phrase.

It was a term applied to any institution where any person’s education was considered to have been ‘finished’. That is, on leaving, they were ready for the duties for which the school had equipped them.

For women, that duty was to be a good wife. The wealthy employed governesses and tutors to achieve this finishing. The middle classes sent their daughters to a school where they hoped it would take place.

Many people had a low opinion of schools that promised to deliver this ‘finish’ for women.

Rachel Knowles writes faith-based Regency romance and historical non-fiction. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew, who wrote this post.

Find out more about Rachel's books and sign up for her newsletter here.

If you have enjoyed this blog and want to encourage us and help us to keep making our research freely available, please buy us a virtual cup of coffee by clicking the button below.

Notes

1. Dickens, Charles, Sketches by Boz (1836).
2. Ibid.
3. Davies, Richard, MD, The general state of education in the universities (1759).
4. Morrice, David, The Art of Teaching (1801).
5. Aston, Joseph, A Picture of Manchester (1826).
6. Morgan, Lady, Lady Morgan’s Memoirs Volume 1 (1862).
7. Hamilton, Thomas, The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton (1827).
8. Ibid.

Sources used include: 

Aston, Joseph, A Picture of Manchester (1826) 

Davies, Richard, MD, The general state of education in the universities (1759)

Dickens, Charles, Sketches by Boz (1836)

Hamilton, Thomas, The Youth and Manhood of Cyril Thornton (1827)

Morgan, Lady, Lady Morgan’s Memoirs Volume 1 (1862)

Morrice, David, The Art of Teaching (1801)

© RegencyHistory

Kissing under the mistletoe in the Regency

The Mistletoe in Popular Pastimes by FW Stephanoff (1816)

A Christmas tradition that romance authors love is kissing under the mistletoe.

But when did the tradition begin? Did young ladies of quality kiss under the mistletoe in the Regency? These are the questions I set out to answer in this blog.

What is mistletoe?

Mistletoe decoration (2022)

Mistletoe—sometimes spelt misletoe in old texts—is an evergreen plant with oval leaves that grow in pairs. It produces small white flowers, but is better known for its waxy, white berries which grow in clusters from October to May—right over the Christmas season.

It is an unusual plant because it is semi-parasitic. Rather than growing in the ground, it lives on the branches of other trees, such as apple, lime, pear, or oak.  

Although all parts of the plant are poisonous, mistletoe is used in medicines to treat certain disorders like epilepsy and cancer.

When was mistletoe first associated with Christmas?

In pre-Christian Britain, mistletoe was connected with the winter solstice. The Druids revered the oak, and this reverence spread to everything connected with it—including mistletoe that grew on oak. It was revered for its healing properties and gathered in a ceremony steeped with superstition at the winter solstice.

When Christianity was established in Britain, new traditions developed. Stephanoff wrote in Popular Pastimes (1816):

The custom of decking our churches and habitations with evergreens, has existed from the very establishment of Christianity, and was unquestionably derived from the like similar practice of our Pagan ancestors.₁

These evergreens included mistletoe, which is mentioned in Candlemas Eve, a poem written by Robert Herrick (1591–1674). He wrote about taking down the greenery, including mistletoe, on Candlemas Eve, signalling the end of the Christmas season:₂

Down with the rosemary and bays,
Down with the mistletoe;
Instead of holly, now up-raise
The greener box, for show.₃

Another early reference to mistletoe is in Art of Simpling, published in 1656. Coles wrote of mistletoe:

It is carryed many miles to set up in houses about Christmas time, when it is adorned with a white glistering berry.₄

When did people first kiss under the mistletoe?

Christmas Eve by J Burnett (1815)

The earliest reference to kissing under the mistletoe that I’ve come across is in a comic opera written in 1784 called Two to One:

When at Christmas in the hall

The men and maids are hopping

If by chance I hear ‘em bawl,

Amongst ‘em quick I pop in.

When all the men, Jem, John, and Joe,

Cry, “What good luck has sent ye?”

And kiss beneath the mistletoe

The girl not turn’d of twenty.₅

A poem quoted in Popular Pastimes (1816) is undated, but it hints at the possibility that the custom went back earlier:

The Misletoe hangs from an oaken beam,

The Ivy creeps up the outer wall;

The Bays our broken casements screen,

The Holly-bush graces the hall.

Then hey for our Christmas revelling,

For all its pastimes pleasures bring.

The Misletoe's berries are fair and white,

The Ivy's of gloomy sable hue;

Red as blood the Laurel's affect our sight,

And the Holly's the same with prickles too.

Then hey, & c.

Nor black nor ensanguined red for me: -

The Misletoe only is my delight:

For pure as love all its berries be,

And to kissing my Fanny's sweet lips invite.

Then hey for our Christmas revelling,

For thus its symbols pleasures bring.₆

Upstairs or downstairs?

Christmas Gambols by Thomas Rowlandson (1812)

Contemporary prints from the late Georgian period show mistletoe hung up in the kitchen—below stairs.

Mary Robinson’s poem, The Mistletoe – a Christmas Tale (1800) says:

‘Twas Christmas time, the peasant throng
Assembled gay, with dance and Song:
The Farmer's Kitchen long had been
Of annual sports the busy scene
…
It happen'd, that some sport to shew
The ceiling held a MISTLETOE.
A magic bough, and well design'd
To prove the coyest Maiden, kind.
A magic bough, which DRUIDS old
Its sacred mysteries enroll'd;
And which, or gossip Fame's a liar,
Still warms the soul with vivid fire;
Still promises a store of bliss
While bigots snatch their Idol's kiss.₇

Observations on Popular Antiquities (1841) stated that mistletoe

…was the heathenish or profane plant, as having been of such distinction in the Pagan rites of Druidism, and it therefore had its place assigned it in kitchens.₈

Stephanoff’s Popular Pastimes (1816) confirms this. He wrote mistletoe

…is still beheld with emotions of pleasurable interest, when hung up in our kitchens at Christmas; it gives licence to seize “the soft kiss” from the ruby lips of whatever female can be enticed or caught beneath. So custom authorizes, and it enjoins also, that one of the berries of the Misletoe be plucked off after every salute. Though coy in appearance, the “chariest maid” at this season of festivity is seldom loth to submit to the established usage; especially when the swain who tempts her is one whom she approves.₉

Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens (1836–7) suggests that though mistletoe was hung below stairs, the kissing was not restricted to the servants:

From the centre of the ceiling of this kitchen, old Wardle had just suspended, with his own hands, a huge branch of mistletoe, and this same branch of mistletoe instantaneously gave rise to a scene of general and most delightful struggling and confusion; in the midst of which, Mr Pickwick, with a gallantry that would have done honour to a descendant of Lady Tollimglower herself, took the old lady by the hand, led her beneath the mystic branch, and saluted her in all courtesy and decorum.

The old lady submitted to this piece of practical politeness with all the dignity which befitted so important and serious a solemnity, but the younger ladies, not being so thoroughly imbued with a superstitious veneration for the custom, or imagining that the value of a salute is very much enhanced if it cost a little trouble to obtain it, screamed and struggled, and ran into corners, and threatened and remonstrated, and did everything but leave the room, until some of the less adventurous gentlemen were on the point of desisting, when they all at once found it useless to resist any longer, and submitted to be kissed with a good grace.

Mr Winkle kissed the young lady with the black eyes, and Mr Snodgrass kissed Emily; and Mr Weller, not being particular about the form of being under the mistletoe, kissed Emma and the other female servants, just as he caught them. As to the poor relations, they kissed everybody, not even excepting the plainer portions of the young lady visitors, who, in their excessive confusion, ran right under the mistletoe, as soon as it was hung up, without knowing it!₁₀

Christmas Eve at Mr Wardle's by Phiz
from Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens (1836-7)

When was the mistletoe put up?

I’ve not found a definitive answer to this one, although I’ve read multiple times of a superstition that it was bad luck to decorate the house before Christmas Eve. I’ve not found any contemporary evidence as yet to support this, but it is possible that the church discouraged people from decorating before the winter solstice (21 December) to separate the Christian festival of Christmas from the pagan celebration of the solstice.

Also, as Christmas Day was the start of the Christmas festivities, decorating on Christmas Eve would make sense. In the excerpt above from Pickwick Papers, this scene took place on Christmas Eve.

When was mistletoe taken down?

Another superstition I’ve come across is that it was bad luck to leave greenery up after Twelfth Night (5 January). Traditionally, greenery was taken down on Candlemas Eve (2 February) but at some point this changed to Twelfth Night.

Some sources suggest the lower classes were keen to keep the celebrations going and clung onto Candlemas as the end of the festivities for as long as possible.

What was a kissing bough? 

The Mistletoe Bough by F Wheatley (c1790)

Mistletoe may have been incorporated into kissing boughs before it was hung up alone as a Christmas decoration. I’ve not found any references to kissing boughs in the books of customs and other contemporary records I’ve looked at, so my information here is based on secondary sources.

According to the English Heritage website, a kissing bough comprised two intersecting circles of greenery. It says:

It is not certain when kissing boughs were first introduced in England although they are often considered to have been a popular Christmas decoration in the Tudor period.₁₁ 

A kissing bough was hung on a wall or from a ceiling or in a doorway near the entrance of the house to welcome visitors. Visitors embraced the master and mistress of the house under the kissing bough as a sign of goodwill.

I’ve come across various other names for a kissing bough, though it’s unclear whether these were all the same: a kissing ball, a Christmas bough, a mistletoe bough or a holy bough, with a clay figure of the baby Jesus in the middle.

Other sources suggest a kissing bough was the top part of a tree, hung upside down as a symbol of the Holy Trinity.

The inclusion of mistletoe in a kissing bough may have given rise to the tradition of kissing under the mistletoe.

In John Leech’s illustration of Mr Fezziwig’s Christmas party in A Christmas Carol (below), there appears to be a kissing bough hanging from the ceiling as well as mistletoe being held by hand over a girl’s head. 

Mr Fezziwig's Ball by John Leech from A Christmas Carol
by Charles Dickens (1920 reprint of original 1843 edition)

 Was mistletoe used to decorate churches?

There seems to be some debate whether mistletoe was used to decorate churches or not.

John Gay (1685–1732) wrote in his poem The Approach of Christmas:

When Rosemary and Bays, the poet's crown,

Are bawled in frequent cries through all the town;

Then judge the festival of Christmas near,

Christmas, the joyous period of the year!

Now with bright Holly all the temples strew,

With Laurel green, and sacred MISLETOE.₁₂  

This seems to imply that all these evergreens were used to decorate churches at Christmas.

Observations on Popular Antiquities (1841) disagreed, stating that mistletoe

…never entered those sacred edifices, but by mistake or ignorance of the sextons.₁₃

However, Popular Pastimes quoted Dr Stukeley as saying that the druids had a custom of laying mistletoe, which they called “All-heal”, on their altars, and that this custom still continued in the north, at York Minster.

Stephanoff added:

We learn that it [mistletoe] is still suffered to be put up (without scruple by the incumbent) in many of our churches at Christmas, where it remains with the other evergreens, till Candlemas-day.₁₄

You can read more about Regency Christmas celebrations here.

You can read about Christmas trees in the Regency here.

Rachel Knowles writes faith-based Regency romance and historical non-fiction. She has been sharing her research on this blog since 2011. Rachel lives in the beautiful Georgian seaside town of Weymouth, Dorset, on the south coast of England, with her husband, Andrew.

Find out more about Rachel's books and sign up for her newsletter here.

If you have enjoyed this blog and want to encourage me and help me to keep making my research freely available, please buy me a virtual cup of coffee by clicking the button below.

Notes

1. Stephanoff, Francis William, Popular Pastimes, Being a Selection of Picturesque Representations of the Customs & Amusements of Great Britain, in Ancient and Modern Times: Accompanied with Historical Descriptions (1816).
2. Candlemas is on 2 February—40 days after Christmas—and celebrates the day Mary was purified according to Jewish law after giving birth to Jesus.
3. Vizetelly, Henry, Christmas with the poets (1851).
4. Quoted in Brand, John, & Ellis, Henry, Observations on Popular Antiquities (1841).
5. Arnold, Dr, Two to One, a comic opera (1784).
6. Stephanoff op cit.
7. Robinson, Mary, The Mistletoe - a Christmas tale (1800).
8. Brand & Ellis op cit.
9. Stephanoff op cit.
10. Dickens, Charles, The Pickwick Papers (1836-7).
11. English Heritage website
    
12. Vizetelly op cit.
13. Brand & Ellis op cit.
14. Stephanoff op cit.

Sources used include:

Arnold, Dr, Two to One, a comic opera (1784)

Brand, John, & Ellis, Henry, Observations on Popular Antiquities (1841)

Dickens, Charles, A Christmas Carol (1843)

Dickens, Charles, The Pickwick Papers (1836-7)

Hone, William, The Everyday Book (1826)

Newcomb, G, History of the Christmas Festival (1843)

Robinson, Mary, Lyrical Tales including The Mistletoe - a Christmas tale (1800)

Stephanoff, Francis William, Popular Pastimes, Being a Selection of Picturesque Representations of the Customs & Amusements of Great Britain, in Ancient and Modern Times: Accompanied with Historical Descriptions (1816)

The Kaleidoscope: or, Literary and scientific mirror (1821)

The New Monthly Magazine and Universal Register (1817)

Vizetelly, Henry, Christmas with the poets (1851)

English Heritage website on Tudor Christmas decorations 

English Heritage website on Christmas greenery 

Photograph © Rachel Knowles regencyhistory.net