Regency stylings

A few months ago, I noted with surprise that I was eagerly anticipating my next visit to a place I often describe as the most boring provincial town in all of Great Britain–the northwestern English city of Lancaster.

As blog readers will recall, my unexpected Lancaster-related excitement came in response to the news that a local museum was mounting an exhibition of Regency fashion inspired by Jane Austen’s work.

Now I can report that I have seen the exhibit, “Style and Sensibility,” which continues through Sunday, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

It’s not the largest or most lavish display of historical clothing I’ve ever seen, but it’s a charming assemblage of genuine muslin, silk, and cotton gowns, along with assorted fans, shoes, purses, and a couple of gentlemen’s waistcoats, all apparently borrowed from two other museums in the north of England. Fashion plates and pattern books further illustrate trends across the period covered, which extends a decade or so beyond the Regency, into the 1820s and -30s.

Maria Hulton's Dress, 1810-20

The exhibit is scattered through the rooms of the Judges’ Lodgings Museum, which occupies a 1625 townhouse that served, after 1826, as living quarters for judges presiding at the local Assizes Court. Rooms are furnished in period style, often with truly breathtaking pieces created by Gillows of Lancaster, the famed furniture-maker, which was founded in the eighteenth century. The museum is justly proud of what it says is the largest public display of Gillows’ work anywhere.

Spectacular Gillows sideboard, 1872

Alas, the museum also perpetuates what I believe to be a piece of Austen-related error: One of its explanatory boards asserts that Gillows is “mentioned in Jane Austen.” You’ll find this claim all over the internet, from Wikipedia to the web pages of auctioneers and antiques dealers (for example, here and here), along with claims that Gillows is also mentioned by Thackeray, Gilbert and Sullivan, and “the first Lord Lytton.”

The Thackeray claim is correct: Gillows turns up in chapter 37 of Vanity Fair. So is the Gilbert & Sullivan claim: Gillows appears in Act 2 of HMS Pinafore, where it is rhymed with “pillows.” Even the claim about Lord Lytton (better known as Edward Bulwer-Lytton) is correct, at least twice: Gillows puts in an appearance in chapter 12 of the 1841 novel Night and Morning and in chapter 19 of the 1853 novel forthrightly titled My Novel.

But Jane Austen? I searched online editions of the six completed novels: No Gillows. I searched the juvenilia, Lady Susan, and the novel fragments, via the Jane Austen’s Fiction Manuscripts website: No Gillows. I asked the Janeites on the Republic of Pemberley’s Facebook page if they knew of a Gillows mention—and no one did.

It’s just possible that Gillows turns up somewhere in Austen’s letters, which are difficult to search electronically in their entirety; if any blog readers know of a Gillows mention, please speak up! But at the moment, my guess is that this is yet another example of the internet’s error-amplification machine at work, repeating a mistake or misunderstanding so often that it soon becomes accepted as fact.

You’d like a museum to do better. But I really did enjoy the clothes.