The Extraordinary Story of Dido Belle: Unlikely Georgian Heiress | Stitch In Time | Absolute History

i'm alice loxton and i present documentaries over on history hit tv if you're passionate about all things history sign up to history hit tv it's like netflix but just for history we've got hours of ad-free documentaries about all aspects of the past you can get a huge discount from history hit tv make sure you check out the details below and use the code absolute history all one word when you sign up now on with the show clothes are the ultimate form of visual communication by looking at the way people dressed we can learn not only about them as individuals but about the society they lived in i'm amber butchart fashion historian and in the words of louis xiv i believe that fashion is the mirror of history so taking historical works of art is our inspiration traditional taylor ninja michaela and her team will be recreating historical clothing using only authentic methods oh look at that it's changing color in the air and i'll be finding out what they tell us about the people who wore them i'm assuming the king wouldn't be dressing himself though right and the times they lived in and seeing what they'd like to wear [Music] for almost 200 years this painting was described simply as a portrait of lady elizabeth murray and it was assumed her unidentified companion was a maid [Music] only in the 1980s was it discovered that far from being a servant the other girl was in fact lady elizabeth's cousin dido elizabeth bell hers is a story that takes us from the slave ships of the mediterranean to the heart of georgian high society when i look back through the history of western art what i'm inevitably confronted with is a lot of faces that look like mine i.e they're white so what really drew me to this portrait of dido and elizabeth is the fact that it's so unusual to see a picture from this time that depicts a black subject and a white subject with equal status there's something about dido that i find incredibly human and really compelling and i also think that from the tiny amount i know about her backstory already that it's going to lead us into some much darker areas in the history of fashion and i'm really keen to confront those areas and to explore them further from what can be seen dido's dress appears both elegant and simple but i'm interested to find out from ninja what type of gown it may be this portrait dress-wise a little bit of an enigma isn't it it is it is quite difficult to work out exactly um what she's wearing what are your thoughts here there are so many possibilities with how we could interpret that garment unfortunately like so many portraits we can't see her back and it's particularly obscured by all these kind of layers of sashes and things in exactly the places where we would look for clues as to how it's constructed and this sort of basket of fruit that she's carrying as well yeah do we have any other portraits that we can sort of compare in terms of types of garment that we think she might be wearing yeah there are actually helpfully lots of paintings of 18th century women wearing these more relaxed exotic styles and um helpfully they're not all holding something in front of them like taito is great so this lady here for example you can see how very loose in cut this gown is it's a simple crossover and i do think that the neckline that dido's got there with this v-shape can only be achieved in the 18th century really by having a crossover yeah wrapping front this is very very similar isn't it yeah i think that's a real strong contender for how the front would would look if we could if we could see it now some of the reading i've been doing about this portrait describes it as silver and it's my understanding that at this time silver was quite a popular color for wedding dresses wedding dresses would have been a bit more formal than this what kind of fabric do you think this is well i don't believe it is silver i've got a sample here of some silk that has silver thread woven into it and it doesn't drape in the same way that i think the fabric dido is wearing drapes it's quite stiff because the only way to incorporate silver into a silk fabric in the 18th century was to weave actual threads of silver so it's it's metal right and although it's a soft metal it still changes the nature of the fabric yeah and i think this is too stiff for what we want to achieve with dido yeah it almost stays into the shape that you fold it it does yeah it's lovely it's beautiful and it would make a lovely formal wedding dress but that's not what we're doing so what i think we should be looking at is um satin silk satin is really a very very typical choice for these kinds of uh informal robe and wrapping gown and a la turk styles yeah um i think we definitely want a satin that's a you know very cool kind of ivory possibly or even a light grey which could be interpreted as silver but not actual silver we have very little information with which to piece together dido's story but what we do know is that she was born in 1761 the illegitimate daughter of captain john lindsay and maria bell an enslaved african woman on a spanish ship captured by lindsay at some point in her infancy dido was sent to live with her father's uncle lord mansfield britain's lord chief justice and one of the most powerful men of his day i'm keen to find out if the portrait can unwrap any secrets of dido's life so i'm meeting art historian vicky coltman at schoon palace lord mansfield's birthplace where the painting now hangs now i've completely fallen in love with this portrait um but i'm very interested to hear you contextualize this for me how unusual is this for a late 18th century portraits well in terms of later 18th century british art history this is a really atypical image mainly because we have these two women one with a black complexion one with a white complexion presented more or less as social equals and it's extremely rare to find that on canvas because what we're dealing with in this period is a long pictorial tradition of black servant portraiture in which they're shown as very much subservient to their female mistresses and what we see here is an image from that mid 17th century period which is absolutely typical we have here this black servant on the right also notice how he's looking up towards the female sitter and really he's there to say to you and i the external viewers direct your gaze to her so he becomes a kind of interlocutor for her beauty and so if we then leap forward over a hundred years what we can see immediately is how there's none of that subservience i think this is a image that speaks of things like sisterhood companionship one theory is that dido has maybe been dressed in clothes that aren't her own to highlight some kind of exoticism do you think that could be the case so dido's dress so what people have made of this and you're quite right is they've looked at the turban and they've suggested that her dress may be indebted to the idea of masquerades which are very popular at this time which are kind of fancy dress parties i'm not so sure but what we can say is that it looks to me to be very shiny and glimmery for a day dress so i think it's unlikely that she's going to be in the poultry yard or the dairy wearing this dress i personally am slightly skeptical of the sort of over exotic sized readings of this portrait a lot has been made at the turbine the turbine was very fashionable headgear at the time i think and definitely due to it being a sort of slightly exotic object but i think that that doesn't necessarily confer on dido this kind of exotic objectified status and that would also fit in with the style of dress from what we can work out from the actual portrait itself and the fact that it's more dynamic she's not wearing um any kind of panties or hoops under her skirt in the way that elizabeth is i find dido as a subject much more compelling she looks like the one who's fun the one who i want to hang out with the one that i want to spend time with i absolutely agree i think dido looks incredibly mischievous actually i'd much rather hang out with dido while i'm finding out about dido's life ninja is trying to discover more about the style of her dress what's really frustrating about dido is that her bowl of fruit and her sashes and her arm are all exactly in the crucial area in the point that would really tell us what's going on with that because the other possibility that you were playing with was it this one or the no this oh the back yes the back might be cut as a loose yes to give it a bit more fullness below and also because that's a fashionable element yeah you know why i don't think it can be a sackback i've just thought of this is that the way that this top edge of the of the pleats is covered up in the 18th century is with an extra strip which then goes down here and it's the roving isn't it and it's a classic it doesn't have it look and it doesn't it doesn't fit with anything else in the cut of that that twirl so yeah i was uncomfortable about that thank you the other um possibility is that something like yeah this jacket that's very simple isn't it yeah and actually quite loose if you imagine that as full length and and this gusset here it's done expanding out well i kind of had that thought too and i like that i did put that back onto this one oh that's that one yes it doesn't work it's kind of it's it's nice the back is nice and then the seams are nice but it the way it hangs down now it's neither one thing nor another that so um yeah doesn't work for me that garment is not a classic western garment like her cousin is wearing it is different and i think that's the point then they're making her different so we don't know whether she had that herself or whether it was part of the the painters clothing we don't know anything about it sadly do we don't know the story that led up to the painting and what her thoughts were and we assume she was put into that to make a contrast but she might have chosen it and what's this what this one that is a bed gown do you think that's a possibility it is i think you're going to have to do another 12. [Music] well we have the new 12. what i really like is this all in one yes sleeve i think it's just the most convincing yeah and and hers isn't actually huge some of them are very big but hers could probably make that a little bit smaller smaller and that's exactly that that's really yeah isn't it yes and it really rankles down it must have a little button or something there i think yeah three twills lucky though oh thank goodness [Laughter] raised by the mansfields alongside her cousin lady elizabeth dido grew up in luxury at kenwood house a world away from the experiences of most black people in england at the time s.i martin is an expert on black british history and i'm hoping he can tell me more about dido's life at kenwood this is you know a far cry from the way that most people in georgia and britain would have grown up but i would imagine that for a black woman it's especially unusual there was something very particular about dido's situation though it wasn't unique there were other black people particularly people of mixed background who had similar to dido's own parentage one white male father and usually a black enslaved mother who were lucky enough to enjoy some degree of the luxuries that dida would have enjoyed but it's true to say that her experiences overall were very different from the vast majority of black people living in britain at the time and she worked um within the grants as well doesn't she at the home was that usual yeah work of the sort that dido was engaged in um low-level household utis looking after the dairy uh working with nord mansfield note taking light accounts these would be the occupations of a gentlewoman of the period and perhaps dido considered herself as such but they wouldn't have been the duties with which the lady of the house would have bothered herself and i doubt very much if lady elizabeth would have had anything to do in those domains at all one interesting feature of the likeness of dido in the painting is that she is wearing both a turban and an ostrich feather yeah and although at the time the wearing of turbines had become quite fashionable among some parts of the upper classes it's also a signifier uh for a lot of young black people in domestic service so dido's life here at kenwood her family the relationships that they had she was clearly cared for although we know that she was formed on and that she was a great favorite and confidante of lord mansfield dido is illegitimate she did not always dine with her blood relations as they were she is definitely outside family this would have been a very difficult issue just to negotiate socially and culturally to meet others outside the family even within the family it would have caused problems and that would have set her apart i'm starting to get more of a sense of dido's world but i feel that many of the details of her life are still hidden last time i saw ninja details of the dress were proving equally elusive so i'm looking forward to finding out what decisions have been made this is the pattern it's a very common style amongst various ethnic garments across the world it's it's the idea that you want to use as much of the material as possible have no wastage at all because materials are very expensive and time consuming to make and it's making the most of the materials as you cut so planning ahead so if you look at this this is um the neck it's going to come out of there yeah this is the sleeve and this is the body great and this piece that we cut out of there to make the sleeve fits very cunningly down here that's clever isn't it yeah to increase the size of the skirt i see the joy of it is because it's such a simple cut all the beauty is going to come from from the material itself and it is so beautiful this is wonderful excellent i cannot wait to see it wow so you can see how you could interpret that as silver yeah and it's not it's just pure silk but it does look silvery yeah doesn't it it really does it's very it's a very pale gray but it's it's pure silk and there's no actual metal thread in it so it's going to be ever so soft and drapey and gorgeous yeah it's just absolutely beautiful when it has wonderful depth yeah it really does it really does so this is looking very exciting yes i've done about six versions of this one but using muslin rather than the real silks so here i'm just um doing the draping of this line here so would you like to have a go at trying to emulate that yeah there so you want to pull this back on itself like that okay so and then will it all be pinned how is it going to be sort of secured once we've played around with it and draped it happily then i'll sew it so that you can't see the stitching i see right right which will also be helped with disguising it because of the jewels on her turban yeah and so if there are any stitches that can't be helped but to be seen then they'll be covered with jewels right so oh that looks fab i love those pleats so i'll just pin it a bit here so that um doesn't move now my instinct is to try to make it a bit more elaborate and use this to create some kind of like fan shape at the side or at the back but that wouldn't be quite accurate no this is quite a subtle little addition i think you don't always need so much accessorizing to i have to disagree so will this all form the lining will we be tucking this in on itself to create the lining and then once it's all pinned i'll sew around the outside and so it'll be like a proper brim yeah this is fun this this bit you can see immediate returns doing this it's quite satisfying i think that's rightly pinned so we'll just put it on there look at that lovely happy with that yeah very little written evidence of dido's life exists but she does appear in the household account book still held at kenwood house and i've been given special permission to see them well i'm here in the glorious surroundings this amazing neoclassical room which is the library that dido would have spent quite a lot of time in what i've got here is some of the household accounts and so in here we do get some very small glimpses of dido's life dido quarter allowance due october the fourth five pounds so she was given 20 pounds a year paid in quarterly installments towards the end of the 1780s dido's allowance was also supplemented by birthday gifts and christmas gifts as well we can see one here to dido at christmas um by lord mansfield's now this one is probably my all-time favorite washing and glazing dido's bed now what that tells us is that likely her bed was decorated with chintz hangings now chince was glazed fabric and was very very fashionable at this time as well so it does give us a sort of insight into dido's world into dido's life here well the account books give us a tantalizing peek into dido's home life we get a more tangible insight from the diary of thomas hutchinson an american visitor to lord mansfield a black came in after dinner and sat with the ladies and after coffee walked with the company in the gardens one of the young ladies having her arm within the other she is neither handsome nor genteel heard enough he calls her dido which i suppose is all the name she has he knows he has been reproached for showing fondness for her i dare say not criminal hutchinson's attitude highlights dido's position perfectly she was well loved by her family but as the daughter of a slave in 18th century england she was never going to be accepted as their social equal the fact is that when this portrait was painted britain's participation in the slave trade was at its height by the 18th century demand for english cotton was booming easily washable and colorful it was becoming the fashion fabric of choice for the middle classes and a valuable trading commodity driving the industrial revolution however the great wealth this brought the nation was built upon enslaved labour in britain's colonies to find out more i'm meeting historian alan rice so how important to the cotton industry around here was slave produced cotton from america well in the 1780s and 1790s slave produced cotton started exploding onto the scene here so a town like manchester and its environs becomes a kind of world center of cotton production and that kind of bursts through and helps to fuel what becomes the industrial revolution and how important was the cotton industry for the british economy very very important if you look at uh 1780 two or three percent of the exports from britain are finnish cotton goods by the 1820s 1830s it's gone up to 22 23 so it's exceptionally important for the british economy in that it's a fifth of the economy also a seventh of the population the working population are working in cotton based industries in the mid mid 19th century we we don't tend to think of um britain as have been having such involvement in slavery because with america can still go and visit the old plantations and there's more of a sort of physical legacy but here what what we tend to forget i think is that there's such an economic legacy of slavery the late 18th century is that moment when britain is the most active slaving power liverpool is going into a frenzy of slave trading and it's the largest slave port in the world so dido's mother maria we don't know much about her we know she was on a spanish slave ship at some point what would life have been like for her well life would have been pretty grim um she'd be chained in the hold of a slave ship usually three or four hundred people in a very enclosed space often the women separated from the men so that they're available for the crew and the captain and they'd only been bought up from the um from their hold once a day maybe twice a day for exercise and they'd be made to dance at those point to keep their limbs from moving we don't know much about the specific ship that maria was on we know it was captured by captain lindsay and that he took maria under his wing now we we know nothing about that kind of relationship other than the fact that it ended up with um him having a black daughter with maria dido bell out of the millions of black women taken on board slave ships and their immediate descendants i think it's an incredible thing that we have a likeness and a portrait of one of those individuals most of those lives we have we have nothing to remember them by as lord chief justice dido's great uncle was one of the most powerful legal voices of the century his ruling granting freedom to an escaped slave james somerset is considered one of the most significant milestones of the abolition movement in his will as well as leaving her some money lord mansfield wrote i confirm to dido elizabeth bell her freedom despite his landmark ruling slavery wasn't abolished in the british empire for another 40 years no one was more aware of dido's precarious position than her great uncle at times learning about dido has been an emotional experience and i'm looking forward to seeing the gown of this once forgotten vivacious young woman be brought back to life oh wow oh my god the iridescence of the silk is just amazing isn't it it's like a pearl isn't it it's really beautiful i feel like i'm about to go to a costume ball in the 1920s i was not expecting that at all i was very skeptical of this idea that she may have been dressed with a specific costume purpose in mind whether it was being dressed by the artist or whether it was the idea that this wasn't her actual clothing but putting it on i feel very very differently about that idea and it's not just that i'm wearing historic clothing that it feels like a costume but it's the drapery and the fact that there is a kind of orientalized idea i suppose it's very non-functional isn't it that isn't a shawl to keep you warm it's there to just make it but it's also it's just very i i do wonder how much of an artistic affectation that shaw is i mean if we experimented for example with taking this off and then you'd see the lovely sleeves as well sleeves are so nice because actually in the painting that the blue is is very subtle it just touches isn't it which is slightly distracting but i think it's nicer does it feel less fancy dressy now does it does it still feel fancy dressy it feels slightly less fancy dressy but i mean it's beautiful the extra length it just means that you can see or see the ruching and you know the way that that would have sort of sparkled in candlelight creating something where there are creases shows off the satin to the best it really does it is a very beautiful satin you could just watch it drape for hours it's quite hypnotic anna how do you feel about the turban i think it was quite successful actually it's definitely got that hat like feel rather than a turban yeah there's so much in the painting that you can't see that i think all you can say is it's one of the possible solutions and it's definitely a successful solution and a plausible one but it's not necessarily what she was wearing in the painting she it could have been one of our other theories yeah couldn't it yeah i do want to just land around in this forever i just wish we had a ball to send you to [Laughter] why do i never have a ball to go to wearing this gown as we've interpreted it has actually changed my mind about my theories around dido and around what she's wearing in this portrait initially i was really quite certain that she was wearing a version of fashionable dress a version of dress that was just becoming fashionable um you know slightly more informal with these sort of orientalized elements to it however having worn the ensemble i'm not so sure that that's the case anymore it did feel quite like wearing costumes dido still remains tantalizingly just out of reach and in some ways i feel a bit disappointed that we haven't fully got to the bottom of this story i feel very close to dido and i feel like i've kind of let her down i do feel like it's sort of symbolic of wider issues within history at times especially reflecting marginalized histories that are more difficult to find out about there's more work that needs to go into this and i feel like we will get there with dido i feel like there is more information out there and it will just take a bit more time and a bit more research [Music]

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 146,881

Keywords: Absolute History, AbsoluteHistory, British heritage, London, London history, West Indian heritage, aristocratic life, art and fashion, enslaved, heiress, historical figures, influential figures, lesser-known figures, mixed-race history, mulatto woman, past civilizations, rare histories, social history, true stories, unconventional lives, unlikely heiress

Id: z0dPR25vNzI

Length: 28min 55sec (1735 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 12 2021