Last year I was very fortunate to hear Dr MacKenzie speak at the NMMC as part of their autumn lecture series. The topic that night was a well known Cornish character, Mary Bryant, and her extraordinary life, a story I thought I knew reasonably well. But the insight and detail that Dr MacKenzie presented really brought it all to life for me and added a different dimension. This is what academia brings – added nuance, more knowledge and a new perspective.
They say that the devil is in the detail, but for me the delight is in the detail!
“Cornwall and the Peace“, her latest book, looks at travel and travellers in Georgian Cornwall, those coming and going for various reasons and also focuses on life in Penzance during a brief window in time. A moment of peace when for a few months between March 1802 and May 1803 we were not at war with France.
“Cornwall and the Peace explores individual choices in Georgian Cornwall. Living in Georgian Cornwall. Choosing to leave. leaving home in Georgian Cornwall. Choosing whether or not to return. Lodging in Georgian Penzance. Travelling with relations. Travelling alone. Choices interwoven with individuals identities and circumstances over time. It focuses partly on life in Penzance during the brief interlude, from March 1802 to May 1803, in the quarter century of wars between Britain and France. And draws on Charlotte MacKenzie’s extensive archival research on Georgian Cornwall.” – Dr Charlotte MacKenzie – Cornwall and the Peace, 2024
The book explores the literary and intellectual networks and new ideas that swirled around the region – the political radicals, writers, actors, musicians and diarists living in Cornwall, holidaying, convalescing or passing through – recording their impressions of the places they saw and the society in which they lived for a time.
There are chapters focusing on the musician Joseph Antonio Emidy, the author Eliza Fenwick, the socialite Hester Piozzi and the diarist Katherine Plymley.
As a young woman Katherine Plymley had developed a love for natural history and painting and although she doesn’t seem wholly enamoured by her stay in Penzance (she and her niece Jane moved lodgings four times) it did have it’s advantages for her hobby. MacKenzie writes:
“These were activities that there were opportunities to enjoy and develop in Cornwall. In Penzance Jane Plymley aged 15 does not appear to have been following an organised or structured home education. She walked or rode less than her aunt or sister and went on fewer excursions. Nonetheless, Jane Plymley bought shells and rocks, had conversations with her family’s friends and acquaintances about geological collections and botany, and completed watercolour paintings of flowers at home. Katherine Plymley noted in her diary ‘It was my dearest Jane’s love for natural history that led me to paint insects, I intended my collection for her . . .'”
Combined in this volume all these various voices paint a valuable picture of life in Cornwall, and in particular life in Penzance.
Hester Piozzi, who was an 18th century writer and associate of Samuel Johnson, spent around a year living in Penzance, just a few months before her death in 1821. She gives her time there rather mixed reviews – she thought St Michael’s Mount “disappointing” and the countryside “poverty-stricken” but she enjoyed the parties and the shops were “splendid, while the streets odious – too filthy, too mean to be endured . . . “.
But she did admit that:
“If my stomach will reconcile itself to clouted cream I shall come home as fat as the pigs of the country and such pork did I never see. Our own garden affords potatoes for us all and onions etc, besides the flower plot perfuming the very air with carnations of every hue, myrtles of every form and exotic shrubs . . .”
This book is for those that love detail and looking at the familiar through someone else’s eyes.
It is printed in an A4 format and covers some 184 pages, and it again illustrates Dr MacKenzie’s extensive research, knowledge of and passion for this period of Cornish history.
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To purchase this book please FOLLOW THE LINK
Further Reading:
Review: Cornish Mysteries – Charlotte MacKenzie
Review: ‘Cornish Legends’ by Charlotte MacKenzie
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