Bourne Archive: People: Worth

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J.J. Davies’ Biographies: Frederick C. Worth.1

From J.J. Davies, Historic Bourne, First Edition, William Pearce, Bourne. 1909.

Transcript (pp. 30 – 31)

          Among the ranks of self-made men who have won distinction by their energy and ability, few deserve higher honour than Frederick Charles Worth, 2 (of the French Legion of Honour), the famous Parisian Milliner, 3 the Napoleon of the Beau Monde. His father was a local solicitor. Frederick was educated at the Grammar School,4 under Rev. Walter Scott. Family circumstances5 compelled the young Worth’s early start in business life. At thirteen he was working as a printer.6 At the end of six months,7 attracted by the spirit of adventure he went to London, and after some struggle, obtained work in the firm of Marshall & Snelgrove, (some say Swan & Edgar).8 Here he remained seven years.9 From a subordinate position he rose to a post of responsibility, where his genius for original ideas, and his wonderful skill in modifying French goods to suit English tastes, became early apparent. In a period of depression in the millinery trade, he found himself without employment. He therefore made his way to Paris. Here, among strangers, he had a hard struggle to secure employment, French milliners being almost amused at the idea of an Englishman possessing any artistic skill or originality in the world of taste that they regarded as peculiarly their own. But Frederick Worth had come to conquer his Gallic rivals on their own ground.10 He eventually secured a humble post in the firm of Gagelin,11 and it was not long before his master skill made itself manifest. The firm, however, suffered in a time of political convulsion.12  Worth was again out of employment, but by this time he had found his vocation.13 He started business in a small way. His unrivalled skill and faultless taste soon attracted universal admiration, and his unwearying application, and marvellous fertility of invention gradually made his business the world’s shrine of fashion. His fame attracted Mademoiselle de Montijo as a customer,14 and so delighted was she with his skill, that when she became the Empress Eugenie, she not only continued to employ him, but constituted him the arbiter of Court fashions and of taste. His factories and shop-palaces in Paris, and his silk factories in the South of France, afford employment to thousands. Many a clever and industrious English man and woman found in Worth a true friend and generous master.15 As a pioneer of the movement for establishing sanitary workshops under the best hygienic conditions, he deserves honor.16 From the first, as early as 1846, he set his face against the sweating system, and the success of his experiment was amply justified, by the loyalty and contentment of his employees. That all his industry and ingenuity should have enabled a Bourne man, English of the English17 to lord it in Paris, the capital and home of fashion is surely an extraordinary circumstance, full of encouragement to the rising generation.18 Up to the end, almost indeed to the last day of his life, the old Autocrat of Fashion persisted in going down the Rue de la Paix, supervising the great business now carried on by his two sons. The supremacy he won, he never lost. At his palatial villa at Versailles19 he was always delighted to welcome his old-time Bourne friends, the late Mr. R. M. Mills20 being several times his honoured guest.* When he died in 1895, his funeral was of civic magnificence, in imposing cortege being the President of the French Republic, many Deputies and Senators, the Mayor and functionaries of Paris. No citizen was held in greater respect or honour.

*        The second edition’s version ends: “He and his sons occasionally visited Bourne as the guests of Mr. S. W. Andrews.21 Tall, handsome, dignified, energetic, and invariably courteous, no citizen of Paris was held in greater honour. When he died in 1895, his funeral was of civic magnificence, in imposing cortege being the President of the French Republic, many Deputies and Senators, the Mayor and functionaries of Paris.”

 

Commentary

Joseph J. Davies was the head teacher of the Elementary School in Abbey Road, Bourne. In his book, Historic Bourne, he was writing a popular history of the district for the benefit of the townspeople and probably had his pupils in mind as he wrote it. This passage therefore reads like a journalist’s feature article rather than an historian’s study. Nonetheless, it gives a feel of the way in which Worth was seen in Edwardian England, fourteen years after his death. Though de Marly gives a much more complete and reliable view, the present piece does include one or two snippets of interest to an historian of Bourne.

1.^     The second edition of Davies’ book heads this section “Charles Frederick Worth”.

2.^    This version of Charles Frederick Worth’s name seems to have been current around 1900. For example, see FNQ 518. It may be that someone made a mistake and others copied him; a good reason for reading the present text with caution. See also, note 6.

3.^    In modern usage, a milliner deals rather more with the trimmings rather than with dressmaking design. (OED) It may therefore, be better to use the French term, couturier, which has by now, been adopted into English; or the English, dress designer but in Worth’s youth, milliner was the word for dressmaker.

4.^    By 1909, this had closed but in Worth’s boyhood, before the availability of railways took pupils daily to neighbouring towns, where facilities were better, it was still a going concern. The old school building still exists.

5.^   His father’s bankruptcy and desertion of his family..

6.^   De Marly (p.4) hazards that this was the printer known as Sang. A Sang print of 1860, depicting Bourne Market Place, shows that this shop was in the premises now occupied by Norwich and Peterborough Building Society but Pigot’s Directory of 1841 mentions only William Daniell, Bookseller, stationer and printer, in Bourne, though he too, was in the Market Place. This is corroborated by White’s, 1842. It looks likely therefore, that Sang was Daniell’s successor in the shop and that the latter was Worth’s employer. Charles was born in 1825 and the bankruptcy occurred in 1836, so he will have been nearer eleven years old than thirteen. The Sang print is reproduced on the cover of Dr. McGregor’s book of Bourne photographs.

7.^   De Marly (p.3) has him placed with the printer for twelve months.

8.^    It seems fairly obvious that Davies used the Daily Telegraph report quoted in FNQ 518 as a source. In view of the local interest and his position as an educator, he probably saved a cutting from the newspaper. Other sources suggest that Worth went to Lewis and Allenby or Swan and Edgar. For reasons given by de Marly (p.4), the latter is the likely one. His apprenticeship there will have begun fairly soon after Easter 1838. (de Marly p.4)

9.^    This was the term of his apprenticeship. This was a time when shop apprentices would live in the shop, sleeping under the counter. He would have been free to leave the firm by mid 1845, having learned about the properties of the various textiles, their sourcing and the demeanour required for selling them to wealthy ladies. The National Gallery had reopened in its present Trafalgar Square premises in 1838, within a short walk of the shop. Entrance was free, so that he was able to use any free time to inform himself of period costume designs and the artistic use of drapery. (de Marly p.8)

          He moved on from high to highest standards; to the court drapers, Lewis and Allenby, in Regent Street, only a few steps further from Trafalgar Square. (de Marly pp.6-7)

10.^  Davies’ rationale for Worth’s move to Paris may be spurious. According to de Marly, (p.10), he went there because he had seen how to develop his accumulated knowledge of textiles by designing garments. He saw Paris as the centre for ladies’ fashion so, in late 1845, he went there.

11.^   After a year of penury, he had learned enough French to be able to converse with customers in a humble shop then, after a further year, in a very grand shop, la Maison Gagelin.

12.^  1848 was the year of revolutions but Worth remained with Gagelin until 1858. (de Marly p.15) From 1852, France was reconstituted as an empire. This meant there was an imperial court, hence court dresses.

13.^   The firm did have a couple of changes of ownership but continued and the new dressmaking department flourished. From Worth’s point of view, the trouble was that he was not given enough credit for this. (de Marly p.30)

14.^  She was in fact, a countess before she became the French Empress. She first came across Worth late in 1852, through Gagelin’s supply of materials for the trousseau for her marriage in January 1853. But as a dress designer, Worth was drawn to her attention, early in his independent career, which began in 1858, after she had become Empress, by Valerie, (de Marly p.209) the wife of the novelist, Octave Feuillet. (de Marly p.34) At that stage, being dressed by a man was too avant garde a thought. This objection was not overcome until after 1860, when Princess Pauline de Metternich, the independent-minded wife of the newly-arrived Austrian Ambassador, patronised his establishment. She was already talked about because she had married her uncle and was soon noted as an independent spirit but one with the weight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire behind her. She and the Empress Eugénie got along well.

15.^   Whether or not Davies is overstating his case numerically, these will not all have been Worth’s direct employees. However, it was at Worth’s instigation that the Emperor encouraged use of textiles from places like Lyons and Tulle, so as to bind the French provinces economically to his regime. (de Marly p.40) Later in the century, much more of the wealth passing through the Worth firm came from outside France and into the hands of its employees in Paris and suppliers more widely in France. Davies’ emphasis on the English beneficiaries is interesting but not much mentioned elsewhere. De Marly (p.206) does mention Annie Chapman, from Godalming.

16.^  This spelling is sometimes used by classicists, since it is the form found in Latin but here it seems to have been a mistake as in the second edition, it is spelled in the normal British manner, as honour. The health and safety aspect is an insight obtained by Davies, presumably by oral reports. It difficult to follow up using other sources, which are generally more concerned with the products and their promotion.

17.^   Again, this betrays the influence of the Daily Telegraph article (FNQ518) on Davies’ thinking.

18.^  Here writes the schoolmaster, encouraging his pupils to greater heights by means of an object lesson.

19.^  The house was at Suresnes, (de Marly p.198) about half way between the centre of Paris and Versailles.

20.^  Mills was a prominent businessman in Bourne, where he had arrived in the 1840s, after Worth had left. He was a pharmacist and from 1864, (Birkbeck p.87) a purveyor of bottled waters.

21,^  Andrews was the successor at some remove, in what had been William Worth’s law practice. A Mr. Andrews bought it in 1852. (de Marly p.2)  Worth did return to England late in life, when he stayed in the Isle of Wight and visited Farnborough, the home of the former Empress, in exile. De Marly goes on to make a point of saying (p.205) that Worth never returned to Bourne. Davies lived among people who would have known and those same people will have been prominent in his target readership. Furthermore, this statement appears only in the second edition: apparently, someone had drawn the fact to Davies’ attention between editions. Perhaps the visit was unpublicised and on this point,  he is the better-informed authority.

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