Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

tower, surmounted by, or rather ending in a low pinnacle constantly repeated.’ 64 Gurney also
used his knowledge of armour and costume, the fact that there is no heraldry in any of the scenes
and other instances of ‘manners and customs’, social details of the past borne out by the internal
evidence of the Tapestry itself and relied on that in preference to the documents that supported
de la Rue. He concluded by suggesting that further discussion would be fruitless until a reliable
copy of the Tapestry was published, all those available at present being ‘very insufficient’ and
deriving from the sketches made for Montfaucon. 65 Within days the Society of Antiquaries had
commissioned their draughtsman, Charles Stothard (1786-1821), to go to Bayeux and make
accurate drawings to be engraved.
Stothard’s work has been adequately discussed in the context of the Tapestry’s longer
history and the details do not require repetition here. 66 The project is revealing in this context for
what it shows in detail of the relations between antiquaries, which developed along personal,
intellectual and methodological lines rather than national prejudice. It shows, too, the way in
which the discussion reflected the growing interest in costume and customs of the past and, while
it was conducted on quite different principles from Lenoir’s arrangement of his museum, the
documenting of the Tapestry had a not dissimilar result in creating an artefact that owed as much
to early nineteenth-century sensibility and the prevailing interest in narrative as it did to the
historic evidence.
On the personal level the project got off to an uneven start. Such was the speed with
which Stothard was dispatched that nobody thought to tell de la Rue, now living once more in his
native Caen, that he was coming. The Abbé was predictably put out and assured Douce that,
misconceived as the project was, he would in no way interfere with it, he certainly would not be
giving Stothard any introductions, which might prove a difficulty since the Tapestry was now the
property of the town of Bayeux and the Mayor would be most unlikely to give permission to
draw it to anyone arriving ‘sans titre ni qualité [with no qualifications or locus standi ]. 67 Douce
hastily wrote a letter of introduction for Stothard to take to the Abbé who then graciously
64
Archaeologia, 18, (1817), p.359.
65
Archaeologia, 18, (1817), p.361.
66
See Hicks, The Bayeux Tapestry Chapter 11, and ‘Stitched Up: Eliza Stothard and the Bayeux Tapestry scandal’.
67
Douce/de la Rue letters, f94, 29 November 1816.
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