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

arranged everything and got Stothard a convenient room to work in, with, in due course, a fire to
keep off the winter chill. De la Rue was determined to defend his position on the Tapestry
‘envers et contre tous’ [towards and against everybody] 68 especially the ‘ignorant’ 69 Gurney,
though he was somewhat mollified by a letter from Gurney so ‘honnete et infiniment aimable’
[frank and infinitely kind] 70 that he could not but reply to reassure him ‘que si nous n’allons pas
par la meme route, nous tendons cependant au meme but qui est la verité’[that if we do not go by
the same route, we are nevertheless tending towards the same end, which is the truth]. 71 This
tone and attitude is, I would suggest, more typical of the way that the controversy over the
Bayeux Tapestry was conducted among antiquaries than nationalistic sniping.
Stothard worked on the Tapestry, taking wax impressions of it to increase the accuracy of
his representations, until March 1819, although some of his ‘striking and elegant delineations’
were on show at the Society of Antiquaries premises by February of the preceding year, sparking
more debate about the date and origin of the work. 72 Of these the most significant contribution
was Stothard’s own, read to the Society on 25 February 1819. He made many of the same points
as Gurney about facial hair, armour and heraldry. The use of this internal evidence was an
example not so much of what Hicks calls ‘minor feuds’ over trivialities, but of the increased
interest in treating artefacts, as Lenoir treated them, as pieces of social history. The Tapestry was
‘a true picture’ as Stothard put it, ‘of the time when it was executed’. 73 Stothard’s main point in
arguing that the Tapestry was Norman and was worked soon after the Conquest, was derived
from the details, which were much more specific he suggested on the Norman than the English
side as if the authors were more familiar with Normandy than Britain.
His subtlest argument, however, one which is as revealing of Stothard as it is about the
Tapestry, concerned the date. On this he observed that medieval art does not represent past
events historically, that it shows people and places at they looked at the time the work of art was
68
Douce/de la Rue letters, f100, 29 November, 1816.
69
Douce/de la Rue letters, f94, 29 November, 1816.
70
Douce/de la Rue letters, f111, 20 January, 1818.
71
Douce/de la Rue letters, f111, 20 January, 1818.
72
Archaeologia 19 (1821), p.88 ‘Observations on an Historical Fact supposed to be established by the Bayeux
Tapestry by Thomas Amyot esq. F.S.A. in a letter addressed to Henry Ellis esq. F R S Secretary’ dated February 24,
1818.
73
Archaeologia, 19, (1821), pp.184-91, p.186.
122