© The London Journal Trust 2011 DOI 10.1179/174963211X13034705699171

the london journal, Vol. 36 No. 2, July, 2011, 109–39

The Nomenclature of Some French and Italian Fireworks in Eighteenth-century LondonLaura WrightUniversity of Cambridge, UK

This paper is concerned with 17 firework loanwords that were advertised in the London newspapers in the eighteenth century. In the preceding century, fireworks were largely restricted to warfare. In the early eighteenth century, they were fired locally for entertainment, but the practice of the public fire-work display really took off after the Green Park display of 1749. Firework displays then became a staple attraction in certain pleasure-gardens. The predominant expertise at the time was Italian, and Italian vocabulary filtered down to local fireworkers and into their advertisements. It is suggested that this technical vocabulary is unlikely to have been understood by many readers. It could easily have been translated, but the display-promoters chose to keep the foreign terms, presumably in order to align fireworks with other fashionable, non-essential commodities.

keywords entertainment, fi reworks, loanwords, pleasure-gardens, vocabulary

In the seventeenth century, the word fireworks occurred in British newspapers

mainly in the context of battle. Fireworks collocated in this semantic field with such

nouns as cannons,1 ordnance, mortar-pieces,2 granadoes, guns,3 fire pikes, fire hogs,

cartrages of pouder, shot, fowlers, demicannons, falcons, demiculverins, sacres,

minions, murtherers,4 bombs, and carcases.5 On the relatively few occasions that

the word fireworks occurred in the context of entertainment spectacle, it was on the

occasion of some public celebration such as the birth of royalty. On such occasions,

the word fireworks then collocated with far fewer nouns, such as bonfires,6

pitch-barrels,7 rockets,8 bells, and guns.9 On the scant occasions that such fireworks

were itemized, the nouns used had all long been present in the English language:

rockets, runners on the line, wheels, reporters, and Hercules club.10

This pattern changed around the turn of the century. From 1700 onwards, British

newspapers included the word fireworks mainly in the context of entertainment spec-

tacle, and, as the century wore on, the position of the word in the newspaper shifted

110 LAURA WRIGHT

from within the news columns (reports of battles) to the columns containing reviews,

announcements and advertisements for firework displays in pleasure-gardens. The

collocates shifted again mid-century, as hyponyms11 began to be listed. Whereas the

few itemized fireworks detailed in the seventeenth century had been of English

etymology, most of the new eighteenth-century firework hyponyms were of French

or Italian origin. Despite being highly restricted loanwords (‘restricted’ in the techni-

cal sense of not having developed a usage outside their original semantic field),

these foreign terms nevertheless appeared in the newspapers, day after day, in the

announcements of forthcoming attractions. As such, those concerned with marketing

the pleasure-gardens (via newspaper announcements and advertising bills) and selling

fireworks (via bill-heads and trade-cards) did their best to bring these foreign terms

to public consciousness, and to position the fireworkers as seasonal celebrities.

During the heyday of the London pleasure-gardens,12 as many as 20 individual

fireworks might be itemized in a single newspaper announcement, in language still

resonant of their military origin (order of firing, salute, division, cohorns, mines,

bombs, shells, and batteries).

The present paper seeks to establish the etymology and meaning of 17 of these

new eighteenth-century firework loanwords: pots d’aigrettes, pots de brins, caduceus

rockets, colombes, furiloni wheels, genouillieres, gerbs, girasols, girandoles, guillo-

chees, jumelles, jeux de la bague, maroons, rayonnant fire, saucissons, spiriali wheels,

and tourbillons. These 17 firework terms have been gleaned from collections of bills,

flyers, posters and newspaper-cuttings now housed in the Warwick Wroth Collection

at the Museum of London, from eighteenth-century newspaper advertisements,

reports and reviews retrievable from the British Newspapers 1600–1900 database,

and from fireworkers’ trade-cards housed at the British Museum and London Metro-

politan Archives. They have been cross-checked against historians’ writings on the

pleasure-gardens, and the reminiscences of firework-family members. These 17 loans

were selected for presentation here because either: (a) they are not yet listed in the

Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and are hence assumed to be not widely known;

or (b) they are listed in the OED but not in the sense of ‘a type of firework’; or (c)

the variants found in the newspaper announcements are such that their relationship

to their dictionary headword may not be obvious. Group (a) includes pot de brins,

le cinque colombe/pigeon wheel/fiery pigeon, furiloni wheel, le jeux de la bague,

rayonnant, and spiriali wheel. Group (b) includes pot d’aigrette, caduceus rocket,

genouilliere/water dolphin, girasole, guillochee, and jumelle. Group (c) includes

fourloon, jub, morron, pot de soussions, Sosison Vo Land, thurioni wheel, and tour

balloon. A further term, girandole, has also been included, because although it was

a common enough eighteenth-century borrowing, it appears to have had multiple

meanings even within the business: ‘[. . .] “girandole”, a term to which almost every

writer on pyrotechny [. . .] seems to have attached a different meaning’.13

Despite such heavy advertising, it seems that these exotic loans entered Londoners’

passive repertoires only (‘passive’ in the technical sense of being understood — that

is, recognized as a kind of firework when presented in that context — rather than

actually used spontaneously to create new utterances). There does not seem to have

been much effect on Londoners’ active vocabularies. For example, a search for these

17 firework terms in the Eighteenth Century Collections Online database14 returned

mostly hits to do with pyrotechnical treatises and performances, or the word in

111THE NOMENCLATURE OF SOME FRENCH AND ITALIAN FIREWORKS

entirely different sense altogether. A search of the literature of the day15 reveals

mention of pleasure-garden fireworks, such as the visit to see Torré’s display at

Marylebone in Fanny Burney’s Evelina or visits to Vauxhall in Thackeray’s Vanity

Fair, but, rockets apart, there is practically no mention of individual fireworks. I have

been unable to find uses of these terms in similes or metaphors, for example, nor

mention in song lyrics or play scripts, nor in any other semantic field than pyro-

techny. Characters in literature published in the eighteenth century whirl like chaff/

the dust/a potter’s wheel/lightning/a thunderbolt, but never like, say, a tourbillon.

They burst like the frog/a toad/an inundation/a storm/torrents/a deluge/thunder/

light’ning from a cloud/a Levanter/the morning sun/threads in flame/bellowing Aetna/

a gaudy bubble on the stream/new bottles/bottled ale/charged bombs, but never a

maroon. Furthermore, when it was essential that the meaning be understood, such as

in a report of a court order against the wanton throwing of fireworks, none of the

hyponyms used were recent loanwords (they were squibs, rockets, serpents, and

crackers),16 and nor were new loanwords used in an advertisement for the third

edition of Godfrey Smith’s The Laboratory or School of Arts (1750) — ‘The Art

of Preparing Rockets, Crackers, Fire-Globes, Stars, Sparks, &c. for Recreative

Fireworks’ — the appeal and practicality of which must have depended on the trans-

parency of the meaning of each term. These long-established terms were sufficiently

widespread to become used figuratively; that is, they had taken on a linguistic

role beyond their original function (e.g. ‘when I have degraded one Species of

Men into Bombs, Squibs, and Crackers, and another into Drums, Bass-Viols, and

Bagpipes’).17

Why, then, this vogue for listing highly selected foreign technical firework termi-

nology in such costly advertisements, well into the nineteenth century, when they

seem to have had so little uptake? Contextually, other semantic fields to be similarly

advertised in the newspapers, that is by lists of unglossed loanwords new to the

reading public, include, for example, types of silk, snuff, wines and card games,

and other foreign luxury goods. As new borrowings, these too would have been

semantically opaque to many readers, with one distinction: anyone wishing to buy

such commodities as rappee,18 latachia,19 quadrille,20 shrub,21 calcavella,22 rota tent23

or quintille24 need only have visited the premises of the advertiser to inspect the

goods. By contrast, the visitor to the pleasure-gardens would have had to peruse the

order of firing and closely observe the display in order to puzzle out which firework

was which.

Most of the 17 firework terms discussed here describe the firework in flight. French-

speaking readers would have had a sporting chance at being able to translate pot

d’aigrette ‘pot of spangles’, le cinque colombe ‘the five doves’, gerb ‘wheatsheaf’,

girandole ‘revolving firework’, guillochee ‘pattern of twisted ribbons’, jumelle ‘twin-

piece’, jeux de la bague ‘ring-game’, saucisson ‘sausage’, and tourbillon ‘whirlwind’.

Italian-speaking readers could have had a stab at the likely manifestation of the

girasol ‘sunflower’ and maroon ‘chestnut’, and a guess at the spiriali wheel. The pot

de brins ‘fireworks positioned on a plank’ and the genouilliere ‘knee-piece’ describe

the manner of firing. Readers who knew about heraldry could have interpreted

caduceus rockets and rayonnant fire, but the group (c) variants, including all the

many furiloni variants, would have been largely opaque even to readers of French and

Italian, and reveal the process of verbal transmission from fireworker to assistant to

112 LAURA WRIGHT

printer. The nuanced semantic content of a firework loanword must have been less

important than its pragmatic function, the visual presentation of which in print served

to align fireworks with other new, non-essential and fashionably French and Italian

commodities, comprehensible semantically only to those belonging to the educated

ranks — and not even then. The fireworkers and pleasure-garden promoters could,

of course, have published these fireworks in English as sunflowers, chestnuts, ribbons,

whirlwinds, twins, wheatsheaves, spangles, flying sausages, and so on, and referred

to the fireworkers as Mr rather than the more common Monsieur or Signor. As well

as exoticizing the goods, the fireworkers (the usual eighteenth-century term for those

who made, sold and displayed fireworks) were aggrandized as Director and Engineer,

presumably in an effort to give the illusion of socially elevated proceedings, in con-

trast to what must have been the everyday experience where individuals wantonly

threw squibs, rockets, serpents, and crackers, to the detriment of public safety.

The earliest newspaper announcements are simple statements that fireworks will

occur on a certain date (often, in the 1720s and 1730s, tied to a bull), or an unitemized

description of set-pieces,25 i.e. Jupiter discharging lightning and thunder,26 two glad-

iators combating with fire and sword,27 and Neptune finely carv’d, seated in his chair,

drawn by two sea horses on fire-wheels, spearing a dolphin.28 The other, later,

method was a display of the name of the pyrotechnist in capital letters shortly after

the name of the garden, followed by the order of firing, in which all of the fireworks

were enumerated, often in two columns. The earliest listing of individual fireworks

in an order of firing that I have noted occurred in 1741, in a report of a display at

Cuper’s Gardens.29 Given here as an illustration of an order of firing is an itemized

advertisement from The Times for the forthcoming attraction at Ranelagh, 1791:

A GRAND FIRE-WORK,

Under the Direction of M. CAILLOT.

ORDER OF FIRING.

1. A Salute of Twenty-One Maroons

2. Two dozen Water Rockets

3. Twelve Half-pound Sky-Rockets

4. An Air-Balloon illuminated

5. A large Verticle Wheel in brilliant Fire of different Colours, which terminate with

Aigrettes in Chinese Fire

6. A grand Mosaic with pointed Stars, and Chinese Jerbs

7. Two pieces composed of Eight Wings of Windmills Illuminated.

SECOND DIVISION.

8. Twelve Half-pound Sky-Rockets

9. An Air-Balloon Illuminated with blazing Stars

10. Twelve Tourbillions

11. Six Transparents, in two Mutations, with a Reprisee in Rayonnant Fire

12. A large Pots D’Aigrettes in Chinese Fire

13. A large Regulating Piece in six Mutations; first, a Vertical Wheel, with blue, yellow,

and brilliant Fires; second, a large fixed Sun; third, D’Aigrettes of fix’d pointed Stars;

fourth, a Star in Brilliants; fifth, Six Vertical Wheels; sixth, a large double Star in brilliant

Fire.

113THE NOMENCLATURE OF SOME FRENCH AND ITALIAN FIREWORKS

THIRD DIVISION.

14. Six one-pound Sky Rockets

15. One Air Balloon, illuminated with Comet Stars

16. Twelve Vertical Wheels illuminated, and intermixed with a Reprisee of Chinese Fire

17. Fifteen Horizontal Wheels, representing a Cascade

18. Two beautiful Pieces in Rayonnant, in two Mutations; first, two Vertical Wheels in

coloured Fire; second, the Rayonnant

19. A large Horizontal Wheel, which transforms itself to a Grand Illumination, with four

Verticals running after one another.

FOURTH DIVISION.

20. Six one-pound Sky-Rockets.

21. A Line Rocket in brilliant Fire.

22. A Grand Illumination of Bengal Fire.

23. Four Flights of Sky-Rockets.

24. Two large Pieces in Rayonnant Fire, with four Vertical Wheels Illuminated.

25. Two large Transparencies in three Mutations, to represent an eight pointed Star, and

to terminate with a large Brilliant Glory.

26. A Grand Double Horizontal Wheel, with Roman Candle Pots Debrines, and Vertical

Wheels running after one another.

27. A large Temple Illuminated and adorned with Vertical Wheels, spiral Wheels and

Globes, with the Crown and G. R. in the centre.

28. A Grand Display of Roman Candles.

29. To conclude with a large Bomb, one foot in diameter, with Comet and blazing

Stars.

[Advertisement for Ranelagh, The Times (2 June 1791)30]

This technique really began in earnest after the Green Park firework display of April

1749 celebrating the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. It was not an innovation; a perusal of

newspaper advertisements of the first half of the eighteenth century reveals numerous

commodities listed, often in two columns, such as prints for sale, and lists of books

and chapters in books, of wines and types of cider, of types of cloths, of butter, of

books of tickets for sale, of exhibits of machines, of imported groceries, of goods for

auction, of types of tobacco, snuff, and more.31

The Green Park firework display of April 1749 was to prove pivotal in the history

of English pyrotechnic displays. It depended upon Italian expertise, using French

terminology — specifically, the vocabulary introduced via the publications of the

French pyrotechnist Amédée François Frezier, as transmitted by Gaetano Ruggieri

and Giuseppi Sarti.32 The Ruggieri brothers of Bologna had been brought to

Versailles by Louis XV, and Ruggieri and Sarti subsequently came to London to

create the Green Park firework display of April 1749, at which Handel’s Music for

the Royal Fireworks was played.33 Ruggieri and Sarti published a description of their

Green Park display, using much of Frezier’s vocabulary, and Italians and Frenchmen

subsequently came to dominate firework displays at the London pleasure-gardens.

Many bills and advertisements contained the word Italian embedded in the text well

into the following century: ‘a superb Display of Italian Fire-works’ (1786);34 ‘A feu of

Italian Candles and Spray of Gerbes’ (1840);35 and ‘A grand Italian piece’ (1842).36

Chinese expertise was also mentioned, but no borrowings seem to have entered from

114 LAURA WRIGHT

Chinese languages: ‘30 Chinese Flyers’ (1828);37 and ‘the Chinese Transparent or

Artificial Fireworks’ (1831).38 Despite the fact that a variety of firework loanwords

were borrowed from French, and French pyrotechnists were repeatedly named in bills

and advertisements, the ‘French style’, as such, was not puffed.

As well as in promotional material (newspapers, posters, bills, and flyers), firework

terms are also found on the bill-heads and trade-cards of London pyrotechnists.

Figure 139 shows Benjamin Clitherow’s trade-card:

fi gure 1 Benjamin Clitherow’s trade-card, London Metropolitan Archives, SC/GL/TCC/OS/CAL-JAB (Clitherow).Reproduced by kind permission of the City of London

115THE NOMENCLATURE OF SOME FRENCH AND ITALIAN FIREWORKS

The following is a transcription of Figure 1:

HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE

DIEU ET MON DROIT

Benjamin Clitherow

FIREWORKER

Who has had the Honour to Exhibit Several Pieces of Fire Works before His Royal Highness

the Prince of Wales & the Rest of ye Royal Family at Kew Likewise Real Engineer, to Cupers

& Mary Le Bone Gardens, At the Kings Arms in Rose & Crown Court Moorfields London

Makes & Furnishes Noblemen Gentlemen &c wth all sorts of artificial Fireworks after ye Italian

and China method in ye Neatest Taste at the Lowest prices Has the Real True & Genuine

China fire yt Represents a Beautifull fruit tree in full Bloom, will Throw its flowers from 10,

to 30 feet High. The small ones may be Fired in Rooms, without Danger. also Great Variety

of Beautyfull Changes for Wheels, Representing the Different Colours of a Rainbow &c. Sold

by no one else in England.

Flower Pots to fire in Rooms Pots de’ Brins Water PumpsFlower Pots Boxes Morrons Water WheelsSky Rockets Vertical wheels of various fires Water BalloonsCaducher Do Horizontal Wheels Water Pyramids wth fire PumpsHonorary Do Furiloni Do Regulated pieces of various sortsLine Do Globular wheels Illuminated Figure pieces Transparences &c.Air Balloons Spirali Do Do CascadesTour Do Double Spirali Do Balloon WheelsPots de’ Airgrets Water Rockets Fix’t Suns of Various sorts.Yew Trees Water Fountains Brilliant Fountains

NB Orders Directed as above, will be Compleated Carefully & Expeditiously sent to Any part

of Great Britain, by their most Humble Serv.t Benjamin Clitherow They are all Counterfiets

that has not this Mark

1 A Yew Tree Illuminated 11 A Furiloni Wheel 21 Brilliant Fountains2 A China Fountain or new fire 12 A Gold Flower Pot 22 A Yew Tree3 A Honorary Rocket 13 Crackers 23 Triumphant Arches wth Sun Stars &c4 A Caducher Do 14 Serpents 24 A Single Spirali Wheel5 Pot de Airgrets 15 A Fire Pump 25 Pots de Brins6 Sky Rockets 16 A Diamond Piece wth Stars 26 A Flower Pot & Box7 A Double Spirali Wheel Illumd 17 A Pyramid of Fire pumps 27 An Air Balloon wth Serpents8 A Regulating Piece 18 China Bounces 28 A Tour Balloon9 A Sun 19 A Line Rocket 29 An Air Do Illuminated10 A Vertical Wheel 20 A Balloon Wheel

Likewise Provides Music for Publick or Private Entertainments

Figure 2 shows a trade-card belonging to Samuel Clanfield, contempory, colleague

and perhaps rival to Benjamin Clitherow. Samuel Clanfield’s illustration is of the

Green Park set-piece temple of 1749.40

116 LAURA WRIGHT

fi gure 2 Samuel Clanfi eld’s trade-card, London Metropolitan Archives, SC/GL/TCC/CLA-COX (Clanfi eld).Reproduced by kind permission of the City of London

The following is a transcription of Figure 2:

Samuel Clanfield ORIGINAL ENGINEER to RANELAGH CUPERS and MARYBONE

GARDENS at the Royal Fireworks in Hosier Lane West Smithfield LONDON Makes &

Furnishes the Nobility, Gentry, & others, with all kind of Artificial Fireworks; after the

Italian and China Method, in the most Elegant Taste, at the lowest prices; he Likewise

has a most Curious new Invented China Fire, Which Represents a beautiful Fruit Tree in

full Bloom, & will extend it’s flowers from 10 to 40 feet High; small ones may be Fir’d

in any Room with Safety, it’s only Sold by me.

Sky Rockets, Caducher Rockets, Honorary Rockets, Line Rockets, Air Balloons, Tour

Balloons, Pots de’ Airgrets, Figure Pieces, Cascades, Vertical Wheels of Various Fires,

Horizontal Wheels, Furiloni Wheels, Globular Wheels illuminated, Spiriali Wheels illumi-

nated, Water Rockets, Water Fountains, Water Pumps, Water Wheels, Water Balloons,

Water Pyramids wth fire Pumps, Regulated Pieces of various sorts, Fix’d Suns of various

sorts, Flow’r Pots to be fir’d in Rooms, ITALIAN SUNS to FIRE upon PINS in the

HANDS with SAFETY

117THE NOMENCLATURE OF SOME FRENCH AND ITALIAN FIREWORKS

When read in the context of the newspaper announcements, reports and reviews of

the day, it becomes apparent that the pyrotechnical vocabulary on bill-heads and

trade-cards such as these was aimed at the general public as well as at the trade.

I will move now to a consideration of the fireworkers themselves. Table 1 lists the

eighteenth-century fireworking individuals and dynasties that I have been able to

trace via newspaper advertisements, reports, and reviews, with their seasonal residen-

cies. Only those fireworkers who specialized in pleasure-garden displays have been

included here, although there were other fireworkers in London at the time, notably

those theatrical acrobats who included fireworks in their feats of daring, and those

who baited bulls, dogs, and the like. Fireworkers formed a tight-knit body, in that

they were dependent on their households and co-workers. Although the fireworker

advertised was almost always a Mr (Signor, Monsieur), the occasional report of

explosions makes it clear that the fireworkers included wives, children, and servants,

and sometimes the head of household was a widow carrying on the family business

after the husbands had been blown up. Fireworkers were both dependent on each

other, and also competitors. They needed specialist training, they traded in specialist

raw materials, they needed a lot of outdoor space (fireworkers tended to operate from

open spaces such as Smithfield, Moorfields, and the Surrey side of Westminster

Bridge), and they relied on many hands to measure, weigh, pack, carry, and display;

and their work was dangerous, both in storage and in execution. They often suffered

fatalities. Fireworking was to a large degree seasonal, depending on the opening

hours and programme of the pleasure-gardens, as well as darkness and lack of rain

and wind, and although the smaller, suburban gardens could provide work when the

grander gardens were not employing, fireworkers were, to all intents and purposes,

chasing the same gigs. The better-known pleasure-gardens providing fireworking

employment were Cupers in the 1740s and 1750s, Marylebone41 from the 1750s

to 1770s, Ranelagh from 1761 to the end of the century, and Vauxhall right at the

end of the century. Of the lesser-known gardens, Hockley in the Hole advertised

animal-baiting with fireworks at the beginning of the century, and this was followed

by displays at the other Clerkenwell and Islington gardens in the first half of the

century, and displays at the Rotherhithe gardens in the second half. The lesser-known

gardens that employed fireworkers, in date of first performance noted order, were:

Hockley in the Hole 1710

Mulberry Gardens, Clerkenwell 1742

Cuper’s Gardens 1743

Sir John Oldcastle, Cold Bath Fields 1744

Lord Cobham’s Head 1744

New Gardens near Haberdashers Alms Houses, Hoxton 1745

New Spring Garden, near the Ivy House, Hoxton Fields 1745

New Wells, the bottom of Lemon Street, Goodman’s Fields, Islington 1747

Sadler’s Wells 1751

Artillery Ground 1751

Bowling Green, Southwark 1754

Star and Garter, Chelsea 1762

Jamaica House, Rotherhithe 1762

Prospect House, Islington 1769

118 LAURA WRIGHT

King’s Head Tavern, Islington 1770

Grotto Gardens, St George’s Fields 1772

Jubilee Gardens, Islington 1773

Three Tun Tavern, behind the Foundling Hospital 1773

St Helena Gardens, Rotherhithe 1775

Bermondsey Spa 1787

Royal Grove and Amphitheatre, Westminster Bridge 1789

Mermaid Gardens, Hackney 1812

Ben Jonson Tea-Gardens, Stepney 1816

Going by the newspaper advertisements, firework displays started around the

north-eastern suburbs of the City, that is, the territory served by the Islington-based

Brock family. It being the nature of ephemera not to last, however, it is assumed

that most displays advertised by flyer and bill are now lost, and that the number of

lesser-known pleasure-gardens employing fireworkers is likely to have been greater.

There may have been pleasure-gardens employing fireworkers in other suburbs in the

first half of the eighteenth century who simply did not advertise their displays in the

newspapers.

Who were the fireworkers and how did they come to join the profession? While

some of the fireworkers in Table 1 remain shadowy figures, and some dynasties have

published reminiscences (Brock and Angelo),42 a number came to pyrotechny via a

career in the circus or theatre. Domenico Angelo was an Italian fencing-master,

equestrian and dancer who, having learnt his trade in Paris, put on fencing displays

as well as firework displays. A friend of David Garrick and Thomas Sheridan, he was

briefly Master of Ceremonies at the Oxford Street Pantheon. Rudolphe Cabanel from

Aachen or Liège was a theatre designer as well as a fireworker, as was his father

before him. He designed the stages and stage-machinery at the Drury Lane Theatre

Royal, the Birmingham Theatre, the Royal Circus, Lambeth, Sadler’s Wells, the

Surrey Theatre, and the Royal Cobourg Theatre. Carlo Genovini, an Italian, claimed

to have presented his theatrical mechanical contrivances in most of the principal

courts of Europe. Charles Hengler, fireworker from Hanover, and his wife Sarah,43

tightrope walker and fireworker, created the Hengler theatrical dynasty, which

flourished throughout the following century. Hengler’s Circus was later to stand on

what is now the site of the London Palladium. Pietro Martinelli was another stage-

machinery designer, working at Savill’s Row, and also a fantoccini puppeteer at the

Theatre Royal Covent Garden, as well as partner to Monsieur Caillot at Ranelagh.

Joseph Rossi was an actor, dancer, and pantaloon, working at the Royal Circus,

Haymarket Theatre, King’s Theatre, Drury Lane Theatre, and Pantheon. Giovanni

Battista/Jean Baptiste/Morel Torré, Italian, former scene-painter and pyrotechnician

at Versailles, was invited to London by David Garrick, for whom he developed a

spectacular lycopodium torch. Torré worked with Brock at Marylebone, where his

firework displays consisted of theatrical set-pieces involving substantial architectural

scenery and musical accompaniment.44 He later earned a living with his son as a print

publisher.45 Tessier, a Frenchman, was an actor in country-house and palace produc-

tions rather than stage productions, a musician, a monologuist, a private theatre

manager and a publisher, who also knew Garrick.

119THE NOMENCLATURE OF SOME FRENCH AND ITALIAN FIREWORKS

TAB

LE 1

EIG

HTE

ENTH

-CEN

TUR

Y LO

ND

ON

PYR

OTE

CHN

ISTS

Mr

Good

ship

, Whi

te’s A

lley,

Cha

ncer

y La

ne. B

low

n up

16

June

172

2?

Lond

on Jo

urna

l, 16

Jun

e 17

22

The

Ange

lo f

amily

Rane

lagh

(17

64–1

767,

176

9)Pu

blic

Adv

ertis

er, 2

2 Ju

ne 1

764;

Wro

th (

1896

), 21

3; A

ngel

o (1

828)

, 3;

Broc

k (1

922)

, 33,

34;

Br

ock

(194

9), 6

1;*

BL R

anel

agh

(176

5, 1

766,

176

7);

ODNB

** D

omen

ico

Ange

lo a

nd s

ons

(but

with

no

men

tion

of f

irew

orks

)

The

Broc

k fa

mily

(c.

1700

–), I

slin

gton

Ro

adHo

ckle

y in

the

Hol

e (1

710)

; N

ew W

ells

, Is

lingt

on (

1740

); M

ulbe

rry G

arde

ns,

Cler

kenw

ell (1

742,

174

3, 1

744)

; Si

r Jo

hn

Old

cast

le, C

old

Bath

Fie

lds

(174

4);

Lord

Co

bham

’s H

ead

(174

4);

Mar

yleb

one

(175

0s, 1

770s

); Ra

nela

gh (

1792

); Be

rmon

dsey

Spa

(af

ter

1792

); M

erm

aid

Gard

ens, H

ackn

ey (

1812

); Va

uxha

ll (1

815)

; Be

n Jo

nson

Tea

-Gar

dens

, Ste

pney

(18

16)

Broc

k (1

922)

, 35–

37;

Broc

k (1

949)

, 57–

61, n

ote

that

Bro

ck’s f

amily

his

tory

say

s th

at B

rock

m

ay h

ave

prov

ided

the

fire

wor

ks f

or t

he s

ubur

ban

gard

ens

loca

l to

Isl

ingt

on, 1

710–

1744

–

the

new

spap

er a

dver

tisem

ents

do

not

spec

ify t

he f

irew

orke

r re

spon

sibl

e; H

ighf

ill e

t al

. Br

ock;

Cok

e (2

009)

;***

trade

-car

d (n

inet

eent

h ce

ntur

y) H

eal Co

llect

ion

62.3

;† Da

ily A

dver

tiser

, 20

Sep

tem

ber

1742

, 9 M

ay 1

743

Mr

Brun

n, t

he S

axon

(so

ld p

owde

rless

an

d sm

okel

ess

firew

orks

)Gr

eat

Room

, Pan

ton

Stre

et, H

aym

arke

tM

orni

ng C

hron

icle

and

Lon

don

Adve

rtise

r, 12

Mar

ch 1

777

The

Caba

nel fa

mily

. Rud

olph

e Ca

bane

l (1

762/

1763

–183

9), f

irew

orke

r at

Ast

leys

, liv

ed a

t N

o. 2

, Mou

nt G

arde

ns, L

ambe

th;

died

4 F

ebru

ary

1839

Roya

l Gr

ove

and

Amph

ithea

tre, W

estm

in-

ster

Brid

ge (

1789

)M

orni

ng P

ost

and

Daily

Adv

ertis

er, 1

0 Oct

ober

178

9; H

ighf

ill e

t al

. Cab

anel

; Co

ke (

2009

); OD

NB R

udol

phe

Caba

nel

Fran

çois

(Fr

anci

s) C

aillo

t (fl

. 177

1–18

00)

Rane

lagh

(17

71–1

774,

178

9–17

91, 1

793–

1800

); M

aryl

ebon

e (1

772–

1776

); St

ar a

nd

Garte

r, Ch

else

a (1

773,

177

4)

Mor

ning

Chr

onic

le a

nd L

ondo

n Ad

verti

ser,

9 Ju

ne 1

772;

Pub

lic A

dver

tiser

, 4 A

pril

1774

, 8

July

179

0; G

azet

teer

and

New

Dai

ly A

dver

tiser

, 19

May

178

9; T

rue

Brito

n, 1

0 M

ay 1

793,

22

Jun

e 17

95, 2

9 Ju

ne 1

796,

19

May

179

7, 1

8 M

ay 1

798,

14

June

179

9, 2

7 Ju

ne 1

800;

W

orld

, 26

April

179

4; W

roth

(18

96),

104–

5, 1

08, 2

15;

Broc

k (1

922)

, 34;

Bro

ck (

1949

), 58

–61

; Hi

ghfil

l et

al.

Caill

ot

The

Clan

field

fam

ily. S

amue

l Cl

anfie

ld,

Roya

l Fi

rew

orks

, No.

2, H

osie

r La

ne, W

est

Smith

field

. Son

Sam

uel w

as a

Fre

emas

on

and

mem

ber

of t

he T

urne

rs’ L

iver

y Co

mpa

ny i

n th

e 17

90s. S

amue

l Cl

anfie

ld

lived

at

No.

93,

Hol

born

Hill

in

1793

, and

at

No.

1, C

anon

bury

Lan

e, I

slin

gton

in

1801

; di

ed 1

813

New

Spr

ing

Gard

ens, H

oxto

n (1

745)

; Cu

per’s

(17

50);

Sadl

er’s W

ells

(17

51);

Mul

berry

Gar

dens

, Cle

rken

wel

l (1

752)

; St

ar

and

Garte

r, Ch

else

a (1

762)

; M

aryl

ebon

e (1

766–

1769

, 177

2, 1

773)

; Gr

otto

Gar

dens

, St

Geo

rge’

s Fi

elds

(17

72);

Thre

e Tu

n Ta

vern

, beh

ind

the

Foun

dlin

g Ho

spita

l (1

773)

; St

Hel

ena

Gard

ens, R

othe

rhith

e (1

775)

Daily

Adv

ertis

er, 8

May

174

5, 6

Jul

y 17

45;

Gene

ral A

dver

tiser

, 4 O

ctob

er 1

751;

Gen

eral

Ad

verti

ser,

6 Ju

ly 1

752;

Gaz

ette

er a

nd L

ondo

n Da

ily A

dver

tiser

, 15

Sept

embe

r 17

62;

Publ

ic

Adve

rtise

r, 27

Sep

tem

ber

to 6

Oct

ober

176

6; G

azet

teer

and

New

Dai

ly A

dver

tiser

, 1 J

une

to

12 S

epte

mbe

r 17

67;

Publ

ic A

dver

tiser

, 9 J

uly

1768

; Ga

zette

er a

nd N

ew D

aily

Adv

ertis

er, 1

9 Se

ptem

ber

1772

; Pu

blic

Adv

ertis

er, 1

2 Au

gust

177

3; D

aily

Adv

ertis

er, 2

9 M

ay 1

775;

Wro

th

(189

6), 1

04–5

; Br

ock

(192

2), 3

4, 3

5; B

rock

(19

49),

58;

High

fill et

al.

Clan

field

; tra

de-c

ard

Heal

Col

lect

ion

62.4

; Ba

nks

Colle

ctio

n 62

.3;‡ L

MA

trade

-car

d SC

/GL/

TCC/

CLA-

COX

(Cla

nfie

ld);

TNA

MS.

119

36/4

24/7

2560

4 (S

un F

ire O

ffice

); TN

A Pr

ob. 1

1/15

42;

Will

of

Sam

uel Cl

anfie

ld

of S

t An

drew

Hol

born

120 LAURA WRIGHT

The

Clith

erow

fam

ily. B

enja

min

Clit

hero

w,

King

’s A

rms, N

o. 1

0, R

ose

and

Crow

n Co

urt,

Long

Alle

y, M

oorfi

elds

; di

ed 4

N

ovem

ber

1775

. Wife

and

thr

ee c

hild

ren

blow

n up

on

2 N

ovem

ber

1791

. Son

su

rviv

ed;

late

r w

orki

ng f

rom

Fle

et S

treet

Hi

ll, Be

thna

l Gr

een

New

Spr

ing

Gard

en, H

oxto

n (1

745)

; Ar

tille

ry G

roun

d (1

751,

175

2);

Cupe

r’s

(174

0s, 1

750,

175

1, 1

752,

175

5);

Mar

yleb

one

(175

0–17

55, 1

766,

177

1–17

74);

Rane

lagh

(17

61, 1

764,

176

6, 1

771,

17

72);

Jam

aica

Hou

se, R

othe

rhith

e (1

762,

17

66, 1

767)

; Bo

wlin

g Gr

een,

Sou

thw

ark

(175

4);

Pros

pect

Hou

se, I

slin

gton

(17

69);

King

’s H

ead

Tave

rn, I

slin

gton

(17

70);

Jubi

lee

Gard

ens, I

slin

gton

(17

73);

St

Hele

na G

arde

ns, R

othe

rhith

e (1

778,

177

9)

Daily

Adv

ertis

er, 3

Aug

ust

1745

; Ge

nera

l Adv

ertis

er, 2

2 M

ay 1

751,

3 M

arch

175

2, 1

8 Se

ptem

ber

1752

; Llo

yd’s

Even

ing

Post

and

Brit

ish

Chro

nicl

e, 1

8 Oct

ober

176

2; P

ublic

Ad

verti

ser,

22 J

une

1764

; Ga

zette

er a

nd N

ew D

aily

Adv

ertis

er, 4

Aug

ust

1766

; Pu

blic

Ad

verti

ser,

5 Se

ptem

ber

1767

; Ga

zette

er a

nd N

ew D

aily

Adv

ertis

er, 1

5 M

ay 1

769;

Gen

eral

Ev

enin

g Po

st, 1

9 Ap

ril 1

770;

Gaz

ette

er a

nd N

ew D

aily

Adv

ertis

er, 1

9 Au

gust

177

1, 2

9 Au

gust

177

8; M

orni

ng C

hron

icle

and

Lon

don

Adve

rtise

r, 9

June

177

2; D

aily

Adv

ertis

er, 1

1 Au

gust

177

3; M

orni

ng C

hron

icle

and

Lon

don

Adve

rtise

r, 10

Jul

y 17

79;

Wro

th (

1896

), 10

4–5,

25

3; B

rock

(19

22),

33–6

, 61;

Bro

ck (

1949

), 59

, 61;

Hig

hfill

et

al. C

lithe

row

; W

arw

ick

Wro

th

Colle

ctio

n, v

ol. I

I (S

outh

Lon

don)

; tra

de-c

ard

Bank

s Co

llect

ion

62.6

; LM

A SC

/GL/

TCC/

OS/

CAL-

JAB

(Clit

hero

w)

Will

iam

Cro

wde

r, En

gine

er t

o th

e Ho

nour

able

Arti

llery

Com

pany

High

gate

Fai

r, Hi

ghga

te G

reen

Daily

Adv

ertis

er, 6

Jul

y 17

43

Carlo

Gen

ovin

i, fro

m R

ome,

No.

6, C

astle

La

ne, W

estm

inst

erSt

ar a

nd G

arte

r, Ch

else

a (1

762)

Broc

k (1

922)

, 36;

Bro

ck (

1949

), 62

; Hi

ghfil

l et

al.

Geno

vini

The

Heng

ler

fam

ily. S

arah

Hen

gler

, c.

1765

–184

5, s

uppl

ier

of f

irew

orks

to

Astle

y’s

and

Vaux

hall,

seco

nd w

ife t

o ci

rcus

per

form

er J

ohn

Mic

hael

Hen

gler

, liv

ed f

rom

179

5 at

No.

4, A

sylu

m

Build

ings

, Wes

tmin

ster

Roa

d, S

urre

y. D

ied

in a

fire

the

re o

n 9

Oct

ober

184

5

Rane

lagh

(17

96, 1

798)

; Va

uxha

ll (1

798)

Tele

grap

h, 6

Jun

e 17

96;

The

Tim

es, 7

Jun

e 17

98;

True

Brit

on, 6

Jul

y 17

98;

Broc

k (1

922)

, 33

; Br

ock

(194

9), 6

0; H

ighf

ill e

t al

. Hen

gler

, Han

gler

; W

arw

ick

Wro

th C

olle

ctio

n, v

ol. I

I (V

auxh

all);

◊ Co

ke (

2009

); So

uthw

orth

(19

41),

92;§ O

DNB

Sara

h He

ngle

r

The

Inve

tto f

amily

. Ant

onio

Inv

etto

(fl.

17

82–1

789)

, fro

m M

ilan.

Wife

and

son

bl

own

up, B

ath,

31

Augu

st 1

789

Vaux

hall,

eigh

teen

th c

entu

ryBr

ock

(192

2), 3

3, 6

1; B

rock

(19

49),

60;

Felix

Far

ley’

s Br

isto

l Jou

rnal

, 5 S

epte

mbe

r 17

89

J. T.

Mac

loud

(M

ackl

oud)

Rane

lagh

(17

96, 1

798)

Star

, 20

July

179

6; M

orni

ng P

ost

and

Gaze

tteer

, 11

June

179

8; H

ighf

ill e

t al

. Mac

klou

d

Piet

ro M

artin

elli

(fl. 1

780–

1798

)Ra

nela

gh (

1796

, 179

7)W

orld

, 14

Febr

uary

179

1; S

tar,

18 M

arch

179

6; D

aily

Adv

ertis

er, 2

9 Ju

ne 1

796;

Hig

hfill

et

al.

Mar

tinel

li, pu

ppet

teer

Mas

teau

sM

aryl

ebon

e (1

776)

Publ

ic A

dver

tiser

, 23

Sept

embe

r 17

76

TAB

LE 1

CON

TIN

UED

121THE NOMENCLATURE OF SOME FRENCH AND ITALIAN FIREWORKS

Jose

ph N

eale

Vaux

hall

(178

9)Co

ke (

2009

)

Jose

ph R

ossi

(fl.

c. 1

769–

1812

)M

aryl

ebon

e (1

769–

1771

, 177

5);

Rane

lagh

(1

771,

179

0–18

00);

Berm

onds

ey S

pa

(178

7–17

96, 1

800)

; St

Hel

ena

Gard

ens,

Roth

erhi

the

(178

0, 1

781)

Gaze

tteer

and

New

Dai

ly A

dver

tiser

, 13

Sept

embe

r 17

87, 2

6 Au

gust

178

8; P

ublic

Ad

verti

ser,

2 Ju

ne 1

790;

Mor

ning

Pos

t an

d Da

ily A

dver

tiser

, 21

Sept

embe

r 17

91;

Mor

ning

Ch

roni

cle,

19

May

179

2; S

tar,

1 Ju

ne 1

793;

Mor

ning

Her

ald,

24

June

179

3; O

racl

e an

d Pu

blic

Adv

ertis

er, 4

Jul

y 17

94;

Mor

ning

Pos

t an

d Fa

shio

nabl

e W

orld

, 18

Augu

st 1

794;

Or

acle

and

Pub

lic A

dver

tiser

, 24

April

179

5; T

rue

Brito

n, 9

Sep

tem

ber

1795

, 17

Augu

st

1796

; St

ar, 1

3 Ju

ly 1

796;

Tru

e Br

iton,

28

April

179

7; O

racl

e an

d Pu

blic

Adv

ertis

er, 1

May

17

98;

Mor

ning

Pos

t an

d Ga

zette

r, 29

May

179

9; O

racl

e an

d Da

ily A

dver

tiser

, 13

May

180

0,

19 J

uly

1800

; M

orni

ng C

hron

icle

, 20

May

180

1; W

roth

(18

96),

215,

233

; Br

ock

(192

2), 3

2–6;

Bro

ck (

1949

), 58

, 61;

Hig

hfill

et

al. J

osep

h Ro

ssi;

War

wic

k W

roth

Col

lect

ion,

vol

s I,

II (S

outh

Lon

don)

Giov

anni

Bat

tista

Tor

ré [

High

fill et

al.

(199

3) lis

t hi

m a

s M

orel

Tor

ré, S

ands

(1

987)

as

Jean

-Bap

tiste

Tor

re]

(fl. L

ondo

n 17

51–1

792)

, liv

ed w

ith s

on A

ntho

ny a

t M

arke

t La

ne i

n th

e 17

60s.

Mar

yleb

one

(175

3, 1

772–

1774

); ?R

anel

agh

(177

2, 1

792)

Gaze

tteer

and

New

Dai

ly A

dver

tiser

, 5 A

ugus

t 17

72;

Bing

ley’

s Jo

urna

l, 25

Jul

y 17

72;

Mor

ning

Chr

onic

le a

nd L

ondo

n Ad

verti

ser,

1 Au

gust

177

4; W

roth

(18

96),

105;

Bro

ck (

1922

), 34

; Br

ock

(194

9), 5

8; S

ands

(19

87),

32; ¶

Hig

hfill

et

al. T

orré

; OD

NB G

iova

nni

Batti

sta

Torré

; Al

tick

(197

8), 9

6

Anth

ony

A. L

e Te

xier

, usu

ally

adv

ertis

ed a

s Te

ssie

r (c

. 173

7–18

14),

lived

in

Lisl

e St

reet

Rane

lagh

(17

89–1

801)

; Be

rmon

dsey

Spa

(1

787–

1796

, 180

0)Ga

zette

er a

nd N

ew D

aily

Adv

ertis

er, 1

3 Se

ptem

ber

1787

, 26

Augu

st 1

788;

Pub

lic

Adve

rtise

r, 2

June

179

0; M

orni

ng P

ost

and

Daily

Adv

ertis

er, 2

1 Se

ptem

ber

1791

; St

ar, 1

Ju

ne 1

793;

Mor

ning

Chr

onic

le, 1

9 M

ay 1

792;

Mor

ning

Her

ald,

24

June

179

3; O

racl

e an

d Pu

blic

Adv

ertis

er, 4

Jul

y 17

94;

Mor

ning

Pos

t an

d Fa

shio

nabl

e W

orld

, 18

Augu

st 1

794;

Or

acle

and

Pub

lic A

dver

tiser

, 24

April

179

5; T

rue

Brito

n, 9

Sep

tem

ber

1795

; 17

Aug

ust

1796

; St

ar, 1

3 Ju

ly 1

796;

Tru

e Br

iton,

28

April

179

7; O

racl

e an

d Pu

blic

Adv

ertis

er, 1

May

17

98;

Mor

ning

Pos

t an

d Ga

zette

r, 29

May

179

9; O

racl

e an

d Da

ily A

dver

tiser

, 13

May

180

0,

19 J

uly

1800

; M

orni

ng C

hron

icle

, 20

May

180

1; W

roth

(18

96),

215,

233

; Br

ock

(192

2), 3

3,

36;

Broc

k (1

949)

, 61;

Hig

hfill

et

al. L

e Te

xier

; W

arw

ick

Wro

th C

olle

ctio

n, v

ol. I

(So

uth

Lond

on);

ODNB

Ant

hony

A. L

e Te

xier

TAB

LE 1

CON

TIN

UED

122 LAURA WRIGHT

Wor

man

(W

arm

an)

(fl. 1

736–

1750

). In

17

43, h

is lat

e se

rvan

t, M

oses

Pat

ence

, w

as s

ellin

g fir

ewor

ks n

ext

door

but

one

to

the

Cro

wn

in S

kinn

ers

Stre

et, n

ear

Bish

opsg

ate

Stre

et

Cupe

r’s (

1741

, 174

9, 1

750)

Lond

on D

aily

Pos

t an

d Ge

nera

l Adv

ertis

er, 2

2 Au

gust

174

1; D

aily

Adv

ertis

er, 2

6 Se

ptem

ber

1743

; Br

ock

(192

2), 3

4; B

rock

(19

49),

59;

High

fill et

al.

Wor

man

; W

arw

ick

Wro

th C

olle

ctio

n,

vol.

I (S

outh

Lon

don)

The

tabl

e pr

esen

ts t

he n

ame

of t

he fi

rew

orke

r in

the

fi r

st c

olum

n, t

he p

leas

ure-

gard

ens

and

date

whe

n he

or

she

is k

now

n to

hav

e w

orke

d in

the

m in

the

sec

ond

colu

mn,

and

the

sou

rce

of t

his

info

rmat

ion,

whi

ch is

usu

ally

a n

ewsp

aper

or

trad

e-ca

rd r

efer

ence

, in

the

thir

d co

lum

n. T

he n

ewsp

aper

ref

eren

ces

are

not

exha

usti

ve;

they

hav

e be

en p

rovi

ded

in o

rder

to

fi ll i

n th

e ga

ps in

pre

vi-

ous

hist

orie

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123THE NOMENCLATURE OF SOME FRENCH AND ITALIAN FIREWORKS

Table 2 shows fireworkers who entered into partnership for particular seasons.

TABLE 2

LONDON PYROTECHNISTS’ PARTNERSHIPS

Clitherow & Clanfield New Spring Garden Hoxton, 1745

Angelo & Clitherow Ranelagh, 1764, 1769

Clanfield & Rossi Marylebone, c. 1769 (Highfill et al. Rossi)

Caillot & Clitherow Ranelagh, 1772

Caillot & Martinelli Ranelagh, 1796

Rossi & Tessier Ranelagh, 1790–1800Bermondsey Spa 1787–1796, 1800

Hengler & Macloud Ranelagh, 1796

Mackloud & Caillot Ranelagh, 1796

Masteaus ‘eleven years a pupil and for several years Principle Assistant to Sig. Torre’

Marylebone, 23 September 1776

Clanfield, Clitherow and Torré Interleaved the 1772 season at Marylebone

Caillot and Torré Interleaved the 1773 season at Marylebone

Rossi & Tessier and Caillot Interleaved the 1791 season at Ranelagh

With reference to Marylebone in the 1750s, Brock says ‘Some at least of these

earlier displays were fired by Brock, whose son, later on worked here in conjunction

with Torré. In 1769 the displays were under the direction of Rossi and Clanfield.’49

ODNB: ‘(Torré) first traveled to London in 1753 to work with the Brock family on

their firework displays at Marylebone Gardens.’ In particular, Rossi and Tessier had

a long and fruitful partnership, which included a nine-year period where they inter-

leaved displays at Ranelagh with displays at Bermondsey Spa (the advertisements for

the latter were worded so as to sound no less impressive than those for the former).

However, collaboration was not, perhaps, always fruitful and cooperative. Competi-

tion seems to have turned fireworkers into rivals, if announcements such as the

following are to be taken at face value:

SAMUEL CLANFIELD, Original Engineer to Cuper’s Gardens after the Italian Manner,

having broke up Partnership with Mr CLITHEROW: This is to Inform the Nobility,

Gentry, &c. that he still continues the same Business at the Royal Fireworks in Barbican,

London.46

The Fireworks at Marybone Gardens this Evening will be uncommonly elegant; Signor

Rossi, piqued at Mr Clitherow’s being employed there on Tuesday, intends to exert his

utmost Abilities to sustain his injured Reputation.47

Mr Caillot means in this Evening’s Firework to convince the Public how illiberal and

unjust those Attacks on him were which had their Origin in private Malice to another,

but might have done him irreparable Mischief.48

It is hard to know just how literally to take such announcements, as it is possible that

such public spats were manufactured to drum up trade, but Clanfield and Clitherow

124 LAURA WRIGHT

do not seem to have partnered together again, although they both interleaved at

Marylebone in 1766, 1772, and 1773. Nonetheless, the caducher rocket, the spiriali

wheel and the rayonnnant fire seem only to have occurred in relation to their produc-

tions, so it looks as though they influenced each other, or were both influenced by

the same master.

In terms of social networks, the fireworkers’ partnerships reveal that, as a whole,

eighteenth-century London fireworkers constituted a relatively stable, multiplex

network (as might be expected of a business in which father was followed by son and

mother by daughter), providing conduits for exchange of knowledge, commodities,

and vocabulary. Fireworkers of a generation are likely to have all known each other,

whether as rivals or as collaborators. The main employer of partnerships was

Ranelagh (Table 2), which employed partnerships consisting of Angelo & Clitherow,

Caillot & Clitherow, Caillot & Martinelli, Rossi & Tessier, Hengler & Macloud and

Mackloud & Caillot in the last 40 years of the century. Ranelagh was thus the main

nexus for international collaboration, as, although it had been late to pick up on the

trend of firework displays, it spent relatively lavishly on them when it did, followed

by Marylebone (where foreign and local fireworkers interleaved), and with the

Rotherhithe gardens providing alternative employment for the Ranelagh and Maryle-

bone fireworkers: Clitherow at Jamaica House, Clanfield, Clitherow and Rossi at the

St Helena Gardens, and Rossi & Tessier and Brock at Bermondsey Spa. Marylebone

alone provided employment for (at least) Caillot, Clanfield, Clitherow, Masteaus,

Rossi, and Torré.

In a wider context, these displays can be compared to the elite court entertainment

of the preceding century, as some of the fireworkers named in Table 1 performed

before royalty and the aristocracy. In particular, Benjamin Clitherow fired displays

for the Royal Family at Kew and Gunnersbury, and Tessier, as well as reciting for

Louis XV and George III, fired a display for the marriage of Princess Charlotte.

At the other end of the market, the set-pieces show a cultural continuation of themes

presented for popular consumption in the preceding century via the medium of

chapbooks. Chapbooks presented the public with stories set in a mythical past,

and they presented dramatized versions of real-life events; the earlier pyrotechnic

set-pieces included a fiery dragon (1744), a battle between Gog and Magog (1745), an

engagement between a ship and a castle representing the taking of Portobello/the siege

of Louisbourg/the storming of Cape Breton (1745, and many other battles as the

century wore on), and ‘Silenus and Bacchus triumphantly bestriding a tun, jovially

proceeding over the canal from a vineyard, burning on the mount. To which will be

added a sun beautifully display’d after the Italian manner. To conclude with Neptune

in his fiery chariot drawn by sea horses snorting fire out of their nostrils, which

together with the water rocquets, makes the grandest and most compleat piece ever

yet exhibited’ (1747). The set-pieces in the latter half of the century included natural

events such as volcanoes erupting as well as battle, and warfare continued as a

dependable staple both for pyrotechnic set-pieces and other commodities well into

the Victorian age for those seeking to market new, non-essential goods to the mass

public. Names of recent battles, for example, were applied to new dyestuffs: waterloo

blue (battle 1815, dye 1823), magenta red (battle 1859, dye 1860), and solferino

(battle 1859, dye c. 1865).

125THE NOMENCLATURE OF SOME FRENCH AND ITALIAN FIREWORKS

We were inundated this whole winter with a deluge of a dull ugly colour called Waterloo

blue, copied from the dye used in Flanders for the calico of which the peasantry made

their smock-frocks or blouses. Everything new was ‘Waterloo’, not unreasonably, it had

been such a victory, such an event, after so many years of exhausting suffering; and as a

surname to hats, coats, trousers, instruments, furniture, it was very well — a fair way of

trying to perpetuate tranquillity; but to deluge us with that vile indigo, so unbecoming

even to the fairest! It was really a punishment; none of us were sufficiently patriotic to

deform ourselves by wearing it.50

The kind of indoor pulling cracker still in present-day British use at Christmas

dinners was originally known as a waterloo bang-up (1826) and sold as a waterloo

cracker (1833). There were trafalgar chairs (battle 1805, chair 1822), trafalgar cottons

(1826), and trafalgar coaches (1848). Gibraltar rock (1831) and Wellington pillars

(1851) were types of sweet. In the 1860s, the word garibaldi was marketed as the

name of both a jacket and a hat, and then again from the 1890s to the present as a

type of biscuit.

Returning to firework nomenclature, English fireworkers learnt French and Italian

terminology directly from Frenchmen and Italians, and transmitted them on to the

next generation. This means that transmission of loanwords occurred verbally and

not via a print medium. We see the process of anglicization of the loans via spelling

variations, be they those of the fireworker, family members, assistants, pleasure-

garden employees, or printers (see below under headwords for a full list of variants):

Frezier’s (1747) aigrettes became airgrets, airs grets, and airgreets; pots de brin was

rendered phonetically as pow de bran and pour de brans on advertisements for

Rossi & Tessier’s displays at Ranelagh. Clitherow (father and son) and Clanfield

(father; the word is not mentioned on his son’s trade-card) palatalized /sj/ word-

medially in caduceus, as in the spelling <caducher>. The furiloni wheel attracted

more variants than any other, but some subgroups can be detected among them. The

form <furiloni> only occurs from 1755 in advertisements for Clitherow and Clanfield

at Cuper’s Gardens, and on Benjamin Clitherow and Samuel Clanfield’s bill-heads

(it occurs also as <furilloni> in an unattributed Ranelagh advertisement of 1769).

Despite this low frequency, I have retained furiloni as the headword, rather than the

original spelling <frueli>, because subsequent commentators (e.g. T. Angelo 1816)

have also chosen this form, which possibly tells us something about subsequent

spoken transmission. The variant thurioni in an unattributed advertisement of 1769

is a hyper-correction, where the writer, knowing that Londoners subsituted word-

initial labiodental fricatives for dental fricatives (TH-fronting), has assumed that this

word belonged to that group. The -oon suffix is found to have been particularly

productive — maroon, balloon, fourloon, and tourbilloon — as is to be expected of

words coming from Italian through French at this date.

As mentioned previously, not all fireworkers used all seventeen terms, which is

helpful when trying to decode unattributed advertisements — that is, those that list

the order of firing, but not the name of the fireworker. Caillot and his partner

Martinelli alone used the terms genouillieres and water dolphins. Clanfield and

Clitherow alone used the term caducher, rather than caduceus, and they also used the

variant furiloni and the anglicizations airgrets and tour balloons. A search of the

126 LAURA WRIGHT

British Newspapers 1600–1900 database for airgrette reveals only hits for advertise-

ments for Cuper’s Gardens in 1752 — a season when Clitherow is thought to have

worked there, although he is not named in the advertisements. The pots d’airgrets in

advertisements for June 1763 also allow the possibility that Clitherow was working

at Ranelagh that season, although he is not named in the advertisements until the

following year. However, a note of caution is necessary: we know that Worman

(Warman) was working at Cuper’s Gardens in 1749 and 1750, and so was contempo-

raneous with Clanfield and Clitherow, but I am unaware of any orders of firings

attributed to him. It is possible that he, too, used such anglicizations, so it is safer to

speak of a sphere of influence with regard to the Englishmen’s uptake of French and

Italian terms rather than of individuals, as there were probably more fireworkers at

the time of which we are unaware. Nonetheless, if the following fireworks in a report

of an informal display are collated with Benjamin Clitherow’s bill-head, the likeli-

hood emerges that his household, or someone in contact with his household, supplied

the fireworks:

Tuesday last being the day appointed to celebrate the anniversary of her Majesty’s birth,

the Gentlemen of Islington met at the Red Lion in the broadest part of the town, where

they past the evening with the utmost joy and festivity: A fine firework was play’d off

before them in the following order, viz. 1. Seven cannon. 2. One dozen of rockets. 3. A

vertical wheel with a bright pan. 4. A yew fire tree, with a globe wheel. 5. A furiloni

wheel. 6. Six rockets. 7. A vertical wheel. 8. A spiral wheel. 9. Six flower pots. 10. A

balloon wheel. 11. Six rockets. 12. A furiloni wheel. 13. Six Chinese fountains. 14.

A horizontal wheel. 15. Twelve rockets. 16. A regulating piece, with six mutations. 17.

An arch illuminated with C. R. and a Crown at the top. 18. A large mine.51

Another note of caution is necessary, however: Islington was Brock territory, yet fir-

ings identified as having been organized by the Brock family are absent in eighteenth-

century newspapers. Presumably, they too played a role in the transmission of such

vocabulary.

With regard to the use of Italian, an advertisement for Marylebone in the Public

Advertiser of 17 July 1770 mentions razzis (Italian for ‘rockets’). We know that Signor

Rossi was working there that month,52 and indeed the word shows up again 12 years

later in an advertisement for Ranelagh of 1792, this time with Rossi and Tessier

named as the directors.53 The Italianized form <giocchis> ‘guillochees’ is another

spelling found only in advertisements of the 1770 season at Marylebone. With regard

to more extended use of French, an advertisement for Ranelagh of 1789 describes ‘an

Exagone Les Echesles d’Alcimede, composed of fourteen Wheels illumined, entre

lacee e l’une a l’autre’. Monsieur Caillot was the director.54

Here follows a consideration of the seventeen French and Italian loanwords.55 The

pyrotechnists’ manuals do not agree on what these terms actually meant:

In the first year of the present century a treatise was written by a Captain Jones,

which has been copied, in whole or in part, into almost every work since published. The

greater portion of it is absurd and impracticable, and shows that it was written by a

person who undertook to teach what he had not learnt.56

Note that not all printings of a variant have been noted, as advertisements often ran

for days or weeks at a time.

127THE NOMENCLATURE OF SOME FRENCH AND ITALIAN FIREWORKS

POTS D’AIGRETTES

pot a aigrette Frezier 1747: 483

pots d’airgrets London Gazetteer, 15 April 1749; Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 30 May

1763; Angelo & Clitherow, BL Ranelagh pamphlets57 (22 June 1769)

pots d’aigrettes Ruggieri and Sarti 1749: 6

pots de airgrets Clitherow, Cuper’s, General Advertiser, 20 August 1751; Trade-cards:

Clitherow sen. Harvard; Benjamin Clitherow Banks 62.6

pots d’airgretts Clitherow, Cuper’s, General Advertiser, 18 September 1752

pots degritts Clitherow, Marylebone, Public Advertiser, 20 September 1753

pots de airgreet Clitherow, Cuper’s, Public Advertiser, 2 September 1755

pot de airs grets Clanfield, Star & Garter Chelsea, Gazetteer and London Daily Advertise r,

15 September 1762

pots des aigrettes Jones: 1765

pots d’air greets Angelo, Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 21 June 1766

po’s dair greets Angelo, Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 21 June 1766

pots d’aigrets Angelo, Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 21 June 1766

pots d’agrettes Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 19 July 1769

pot d’egret Clanfield, Marylebone, Public Advertiser, 23 August 1769

pots de’airgrets Trade-cards: Benjamin Clitherow Banks 62.6, Samuel Clanfield Heal 62.4,

LMA

pots de air-grets Clanfield, Grotto Gardens St George’s Fields, Gazeteer and New Daily

Advertiser, 19 September 1772

pot d’agret Masteaus, Marylebone, Public Advertiser, 23 September 1776

pots daignettes Caillot, Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 20 May 1789

pots dargrettes Ranelagh, World, 19 May 1790

pow de grate Rossi & Tessier, Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 2 June 1790

pots d’aigrete Rossi & Tessier, Ranelagh, Oracle and Public Advertiser, 5 June 1795

pots de grats Rossi & Tessier, Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 22 June 1792

pots de grete Rossi & Tessier, Ranelagh, Oracle and Public Advertiser, 4 May 1798

pots d’aigrette Caillot, Ranelagh, Morning Chronicle, 6 August 1798

Context: ‘7. Two Balloon Wheels illumined and decorated with Pots d’air Greets.

8. Six Pots d’Aigrets, with Serpents, Crackers, &c.’ (Angelo, Ranelagh, Public Ledger,

30 June 1766); ‘A Discharge of Pots de Grats’ (Rossi and Tessier, Ranelagh, Star, 18

June 1792).

An aiglet (from French aiguillette, diminutive of aiguille ‘needle’) was an ornamen-

tal gold or silver tag on the end of a lace for facilitating threading through an eyelet

hole, which then came to signify any kind of ornamental metallic pendant. It might

be glossed in this context as a spangle. The term pots d’aigrettes comes from Frezier

(1747): ‘Aigrette, espece d’Artifice dont le flux des étincelles imite un peu les Aigrettes

de verre, on n’en parles guéres que lorsqu’il sert de port-feu à un pot qui jette

quantité d’autres Artifices, sous le nom Pot à Aigrette.’58 ‘POT A AIGRETTE, c’est

celui dont le milieu est occupé par un jet de feu, lequel en finissant fait partir plusieurs

Artifices.’59 The Scots Magazine, reporting on the 1749 Green Park display, explai-

ned: ‘Pots, in French, when applied to fireworks, usually signifies any large case of

paper which is not choaked, or has not its mouth contracted. Pots d’aigrettes is what

we usually call a mine; it containing, besides the composition, a quantity of stars,

serpents, &c. which are blown out of it at last with a great report. The explosion

128 LAURA WRIGHT

of the pots d’aigrettes was one of the most magnificent articles of the whole repre-

sentation.’60 Brock defines a pot d’aigrettes as a mine firework consisting of a small

quantity of stars, crackers or squibs blown simultaneously from a case or mortar.61

The term is treated in the OED under the headwords aglet, aiglet and also aiguilette,

but only in the ‘lace-tag’ sense, not as a firework. Frezier’s form shows that the l had

already shifted to r before the term was borrowed into English.62 The first syllable

was folk-etymologized as the English word air before the 1750s.

POTS DE BRINS

Brin Frezier 1747: 485

pots de brin London Gazetteer, 15 April 1749

pots de brins Ruggieri and Sarti 1749: 9–15, trade-card: Clitherow sen. Harvard

pots des brins Jones 1765

pots de’ brins Trade-card: Benjamin Clitherow Banks 62.6

pots de brinne Clitherow, Marylebone, Public Advertiser, 11 September 1771

pow de bran Rossi & Tessier, Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 2 June 1790

pots debrines Caillot, Ranelagh, The Times, 4 June 1791

pour de brans Rossi & Tessier, Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 22 June 1792

Context: ‘Two Horizontal Wheels with Roman Candles, and Pots de Brins’

(Clitherow, Marylebone, Public Advertiser, 16 September 1773); ‘A Piece on the

Water in Brilliant Fire, adorned with Roman Candles, China Jerbes in Pou de Brans,

&c.’ (Rossi and Tessier, Ranelagh, Star, 18 June 1792); ‘A double Horizontal Wheel

with Roman Candles and Pots de Brins’ (Caillot and Martinelli, Ranelagh, Oracle

and Public Advertiser, 29 June 1796).

‘The pots de brins are so called from the spars of wood [brins] on which they are

arranged’ (Scots Magazine 1749,63 in reference to the pots d’aigrettes at the Green

Park display). ‘[. . .] brin. This is the name given by the artificers to a wooden bar

prepared for holding a series of pots.’64 French brin, ‘sprig, twig’ (in this context,

‘plank’) is another of Frezier’s terms, transmitted by Ruggieri and Sarti as Pots de

Brins: ‘Brin, on appelle ainsi une tringle de bois de 3 à 4 pouces de gros, sur laquelle

on arrange les pots à feu en les plantant (par le moyen des chevilles attachées à leur

bases) dans les trous percés le long de cette tringle.’65 Not in the OED.

CADUCEUS ROCKETS

caduceus rockets Ruggieri and Sarti 1749: 9

caducher rockets Clitherow, Cuper’s, General Advertiser, 20 August 1751; trade-cards:

Benjamin Clitherow Banks 62.6, Samuel Clanfield Heal 62.4, LMA

Context: ‘Six Sky Rockets. Two Caducher Rockets. Four Tourbilloons’

(Clitherow, Cuper’s, General Advertiser, 21 August 1751).

With regard to the caduceus and girandole rockets of the Green Park display, the

Scots Magazine stated ‘These had a circulating motion as they rose.’66 Caduceus

rockets are described and illustrated in Maskell’s handwritten Artificial Fireworks

of 1785,67 and illustrated on Benjamin Clitherow’s bill-head. The name is derived

from the Latin caduceus, ultimately from Greek, signifying a herald’s wand. In Greek

mythology, the wand of the messenger Hermes was entwined with serpents.

129THE NOMENCLATURE OF SOME FRENCH AND ITALIAN FIREWORKS

‘Caduceus rockets in rising form two spiral lines, or double worm, by reason of their

being placed obliquely, one opposite the other; and their counterpoise in their center,

which causes them to rise in a vertical direction.’68 The spelling caducher indicates

that the /sj/ phonemes had palatalized, a sound-change that was stigmatized as vulgar

in the eighteenth century.69 Not in the OED as a firework. The word rocket comes

ultimately from the Italian word rocca ‘distaff’ (distaffs also being known in English

as rocks). The word rock in this sense is probably of Germanic origin, as it has

cognates in Middle Dutch and Old Norse, from which Italian rocca may ultimately

derive (OED rocket, n.3). Rocks were sticks about three feet long wound around with

flax or wool, used in spinning cloth. If one of these is lobbed into the air, the fibre

unwinds and streams out behind in a wobbling motion. The word rocket is first

found in English in Florio’s Italian/English dictionary of 1611, where Florio defines

rocchetti as ‘rockets, or squibs of wilde-fire’.

COLOMBE

colombe Clitherow, Marylebone, Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 10 September

1770

columbia Clitherow, Marylebone, Public Advertiser, 27 July 1774

columba Trade-card: Clitherow sen. Harvard

columbe Caillot and Martinelli, Ranelagh, Morning Chronicle, 24 June 1796

Context: ‘Two large Wheels called Cinque Colombe’ (Clitherow, Marylebone,

Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 10 September 1770); ‘Two Vertical Wheels in

brilliant Fire, called Les cinq Columbe’ (Caillot and Martinelli, Ranelagh, Oracle and

Public Advertiser, 29 June 1796); ‘Le Linque Columba, or Pigeon Wheels’ (Clitherow

sen. Harvard) — either the printer or whoever wrote down the name misunderstood

the handwritten looped c of cinq.

The colombe lies, at a remove, behind the firework known as a fiery pigeon, e.g.

‘Two Line Rockets, representing Pigeons of Fire’ (Marylebone, Public Advertiser,

20 September 1769); ‘Flight of Fiery Pigeons’, part of ‘Mr T. Wells’ Monster Firework

Gala’ (St Helena Gardens, Southwark-Park, The Era, 30 August 1874 and also

part of Brock’s display, Crystal Palace, Pall Mall Gazette, 14 May 1874). However

the cinque colombe were wheels (‘pigeon wheels’), whereas the fiery pigeons were

line rockets, so the conceit has been translated and then extended. The word

colombe/columbe is listed in the OED, meaning ‘a dove’, but with no mention of its

use as a firework modifier. Neither pigeon wheel nor fiery pigeon is listed.

FURILONI WHEEL

wheels of frueli Ruggieri and Sarti 1749: 10

friulonies, friuloni Cuper’s, General Advertiser, 29 August 1750; Clitherow, Cuper’s,

General Advertiser, 20 August 1751

furiloni wheel Clitherow, Cuper’s, Public Advertiser, 2 September 1755; trade-cards:

Benjamin Clitherow Banks 62.6; Clanfield sen. Harvard; Samuel

Clanfield Heal 62.4; Samuel Clanfield LMA

fruilioni London Evening Post, 4 June 1761

fruiloni wheels Jones 1765: 198; Maskell 1785: 1–2

furilloni wheels Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 19 July 1769

130 LAURA WRIGHT

flurious wheels Marylebone, Public Advertiser, 26 July 1769

flurioni wheels Marylebone, Public Advertiser, 23 August 1769; trade-card: Clanfield jun.

Banks 62.3, 1781

flurione wheels Marylebone, Public Advertiser, 8 September 1769

thurioni wheels Marylebone, Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 11 September 1769

fourloon Marylebone, Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 20 August 1770

furilonii wheels Trade-card: Clitherow sen. Harvard

fourlony wheels Rossi & Tessier, Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 2 June 1790

furlony wheels Rossi & Tessier, Ranelagh, Morning Chronicle, 19 June 1792

fourloney wheels Rossi & Tessier, Ranelagh, Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 5 June

1793

forlony Rossi & Tessier, Ranelagh, True Briton, 1 May 1797

frailona wheel Trade-card: ?nineteenth century, R. Fenwick, Heal 62.7

Context: ‘2 Jerbs. 3 Tourbaloons. 1 Fourloon. 3 Rockets’ (Marylebone, Public

Advertiser, 16 July 1770); ‘Six Horizontal Furlony Wheels in Brilliant Fire, forming a

Cascade’ (Rossi and Tessier, Ranelagh, Star, 18 June 1792).

‘The spelling of “furiloni”, the origin of which I have been unable to discover,

varies in old programmes, advertisements, and books; furolona, forlona, forlone, and

even trouana are found, and berlino may, as seems probable, be intended to indicate

the same device.’70

‘A caprice, or furilona, according to the number of the cases. A caprice, from the

capricious manner in which it turns, up, down, and round about, now this way,

now that. A furilona, possibly, from the fury with which it plays, when 4 cases

are burning together, at the end: though some call it a fruiloni, said to be from the

name of its inventor. A furilona and caprice wheel are much the same; the former,

generally, has fewer cases on it than the latter.’71

This was a compound firework, although the details vary from source to source.

Jones72 describes furiloni wheels with 25 cases lit simultaneously; Brock73 describes

a wheel with two tiers of three cases each. Maskell74 and Benjamin Clitherow’s

bill-head provide illustrations; Plimpton75 shows a view of fireworks left over or

confiscated from the 1749 Green Park display that were set off three weeks later at

Whitehall, and that include a friuloni. This firework seems to have attracted more

spelling variants than any other. It is possible that Ruggieri and Sarti’s original frueli

is related to the Italian verb frullare ‘to whirr’. Not in the OED.

GENOUILLIERE

genouilliere Frezier 1747

water genouillieres Caillot, Ranelagh, Morning Post, 17 July 1793

water genouillere, or dauphins Caillot, Ranelagh, Morning Chronicle, 16 May 1798

Context: ‘2. Twelve Water Rockets. 3. Twelve Water Genouillieres. 4. Six Water

Balloons. 5. Twelve Water Fountains’ (Caillot, Ranelagh, Morning Chronicle, 17 July

1794); ‘Twelve Water Dolphins’ (Caillot and Martinelli, Ranelagh, Oracle and Public

Advertiser, 29 June 1796).

‘GENOUILLIERE, c’est un artifice aquatique qu’on appelle ainsi, parce que son

cartouche (contre l’ordinaire des autres) n’est pas droit, mais plie d’un angle fort

obtus, comme le genouil lorsque la jambe n’est pas tendue; c’est de cette figure que

provident le mouvement d’immersion & d’emersion de son feu dans l’eau, ce qui lui

131THE NOMENCLATURE OF SOME FRENCH AND ITALIAN FIREWORKS

a fait aussi donner le nom de Dauphin.’76 This ‘knee-piece’ firework does not seem

to have been advertised other than by Monsieur Caillot. It is probably the source of

the fireworks known as water dolphins that are occasionally mentioned (e.g. Caillot

and Martinelli, Ranelagh, True Briton, 25 June 1796). The OED lists genouillere as

a headword with two senses, neither to do with fireworks: one is a piece of armour

for the knee-joints, and the other a nineteenth-century sense meaning a knee-step in

a fortification.

GERBS

gerbes de feu Frezier 1706: 20877

jerbes London Gazetteer, 15 April 1749

gerbes Ruggieri and Sarti 1749: 9–15

jerbs Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 30 May 1763; Angelo and Clitherow, Ranelagh,

Public Advertiser, 22 June 1764; trade-cards: Clitherow sen. Harvard;

Clanfield jun. Banks 62.3 1781

gerbs Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 7 June 1764

jubs Angelo, Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 21 June 1766

jurbs Trade-card: R. Fenwick, Heal 62.7

Context: ‘Two Pyramids of Chinese Jerbs, and Pots d’Airgrets, containing two

each’ (Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 30 May 1763); ‘Jerbs or Chinese Trees of Silver

Flowers’ (Samuel Clanfield junior’s trade-card).

‘GERBE, se dit d’un groupe de plusieurs fusées que sortent en même tems d’un pot

ou d’une caisse, & par leur expansion représentent une vaste gerbe de bled.’78 From

French gerbe ‘wheatsheaf’.79 OED gerbe 2. b. ‘A kind of firework’ (first attestation

in a firework sense is in Jones, Artificial Fireworks, 101, so the above references

provide an antedating).

GIRASOLE

pots de gerisali Trade-card: Clitherow sen. Harvard

water gerisoly Rossi & Tessier, Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 22 June 1792

water-giriscoles Rossi & Tessier, Morning Chronicle, 20 May 1801

Context: ‘Pots de Gerisali, or twisted Serpents’ (trade-card, Clitherow sen.

Harvard); ‘Twenty-four Water Gerisoly’ (Rossi and Tessier, Ranelagh, Star, 18 June

1792).

Italian girasoli ‘sunflowers’. Clitherow senior died in 1775, so he may have learnt

about girasoles from Angelo, with whom he worked at Ranelagh in the 1760s. Not

in the OED as a firework.

GIRANDOLE

girandoles Frezier 1706: 215; Maskell 1785: 127

girandole Ruggieri and Sarti 1749: 9–15; Clitherow, Cuper’s, General Advertiser, 20 August

1751

Context: ‘The Grand Girandole consists of 6000 Half Pound Sky Rockets, headed

with Serpents, Rains and Stars’ (London Gazetteer, 15 April 1749); ‘Two Horizontal

Girandoles, each displaying 24 Rockets whilst turning, and finish with Fountains and

Pots d’Aigrette’ (Hengler and Macloud, Ranelagh, Telegraph, 6 June 1796).

132 LAURA WRIGHT

‘[. . .] “girandole”, a term to which almost every writer on pyrotechny [. . .] seems

to have attached a different meaning’.80 The OED has entries under girandole and

girandola 1., derived from French girandole, ultimately from Italian girandola, from

girare ‘to turn in a circle’. This firework term pre-dates the eighteenth century and

had comparatively few variants: ‘gironells, or fire wheeles’ are recorded in English

from 1634. The two contexts cited above do little to settle the matter, as it is not clear

that they are referring to the same thing.

GUILLOCHEE

guilochees Trade-card: Clitherow sen. Harvard

giocchis Marylebone, Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 20 August 1770

guillocha Clitherow, Marylebone, Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 5 August 1772

guillochee Caillot, Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 20 May 1789

gilliochee Rossi & Tessier, Ranelagh, World, 26 June 1790

gilloche Rossi & Tessier, Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 22 June 1792

guilloche Rossi & Tessier, Ranelagh, Star, 1 June 1793

Context: ‘Two New Pyramids in Roman Candles, with two very curious Giocchis’

(Marylebone, Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 20 August 1770); ‘A large piece,

called the Guillochee, representing a Rose of different colours’ (Caillot, Ranelagh,

Public Advertiser, 20 May, 1789); ‘A Piece, consisting of a Gilliochee surrounded by

five Spiral Wheels, and six Windmills, turning contrary ways, the whole illuminated’

(Rossi and Tessier, Ranelagh, World, 28 June 1790); ‘A Piece formed of Gilloche, and

five Spiral Wheels round it in Brilliant and Slow Fire’ (Rossi and Tessier, Ranelagh,

Star, 18 June 1792).

‘Guilloche is a repetitive architectural pattern used in classical Greece and Rome of

two ribbons winding around a series of regular central points. These central points

are often blank, but may contain a figure, such as a rose. Guilloche is a back-

formation from guilloché, so called because the architectural motif resembles

the designs produced by Guilloche techniques.’81 OED guilloche, n., from French

guillochis, the ornament itself, or guilloche, the tool with which it is made: ‘An

ornament in the form of two or more bands or strings twisting over each other, so

as to repeat the same figure, in a continued series, by the spiral returning of the bands’

(first attestation 1857). Not listed in the OED as a firework.

JUMELLE

jaivalle Trade-card: Clitherow sen. Harvard

Context: ‘Le Moulin the Jaivalle, being two Horizontal Wheels, turning the con-

trary Ways, the bottom one dropping down with Furilonii’ (Clitherow sen. Harvard

trade-card). This may be a printer’s error of French jumelle ‘twin’: ‘JUMELLE, c’est

un assemblage de deux fusées adosées sur une baguette commune’.82 OED jumelle, a.

and n. B. n. b. ‘Applied to something which consists of a pair of things joined.’ The

OED’s first attestation of jumelle (where jumelles means ‘opera glasses’) is 1865; the

firework sense is not listed. Clitherow senior’s trade-card must have been printed

before 1775, when he died, and so provides an antedating of this word (if it is indeed

133THE NOMENCLATURE OF SOME FRENCH AND ITALIAN FIREWORKS

jumelle) in English. The <-aiva-> sequence of letter-graphs in Clitherow senior’s

trade-card is perhaps the result of a printer attempting to make sense of a written

form <jamalle> and misdividing the three minims of the letter-graph <m>. <jaivalle>

may or may not be related to the ‘Two Javelin Wheels of various motions’ advertised

by Signor Invetto in the Bath Chronicle (16 July 1799), at the Sydney Garden

Vauxhall, Bath.

JEUX DE LA BAGUE

jeu de la bauge Trade-card: Clitherow sen. Harvard

jeux de la bague Caillot, Marylebone, Gazeteer and New Daily Advertiser, 11 August 1775

Context: ‘a most capital Piece, never performed in England (decorated with eight

Transparent Figures, moving in different Directions) called LE JEUX DE LA BAGUE’

(Caillot, Marylebone, Gazeteer and New Daily Advertiser, 11 August 1775).

Clitherow senior’s trade-card was probably printed before August 1775, as he died

in November 1775, but may perhaps shows Caillot’s influence, as le jeux de la bague

has not been noted elsewhere.

MAROON

marons London Gazetteer, 15 April 1749

marrons Ruggieri and Sarti 1749: 15

marroons Clitherow, Cuper’s, General Advertiser, 20 August 1751; Maskell 1785:

168–71

maroons Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 28 June 1769; trade-card: Samuel Clanfield

jun. Banks 62.3, 1781

morrons Trade-card: Benjamin Clitherow, Banks 62.6

Context: ‘Marons in Battery, 5000’ (London Gazetteer, 15 April 1749).

‘MARRON, est une sorte de petard ou de boëte cubique de carton fort & à

plusieurs doubles, qu’on remplit de poudre grenée pour faire une grande détonation

qu’on augmente comme aux saucissons, en fortisiant le cartouche par une envelope

de ficelle trempée dans de la colleforte, ainsi ces deux Artifices ont le même effet &

ne différent que dans leur figure.’83 ‘Marrons are bounces or reports. The explosion

of these marrons, pots de brins, &c. which were ranged behind the building, added

much to the grandeur of the whole, as they composed a continual thunder, which

lasted a long time, and resembled the repeated discharges of lines of infantry closely

engaged.’84 OED maroon, n.1 and adj.1 A. n.1 2.a. ‘A firework designed to make a

single loud report like the noise of a cannon (often with a bright flash of light)’,

derived from French marron ‘chestnut’ and its etymon Italian marrone. The OED

notes: ‘French marron is attested in sense A. 2 from 1752; Trésor de la Langue

Française explains that the firework makes the noise of a chestnut bursting in the

fire.’ The raising and lengthening of the final vowel occurred in words borrowed from

French with the suffix -on, especially where French had borrowed those words from

Italian words with the suffix -one. This sound-change occurred from the sixteenth to

the eighteenth centuries (OED -oon, suffix). C.f. tourbillon below.

134 LAURA WRIGHT

RAYONNANT

royonet fire Marylebone, Public Advertiser, 26 July 1769

rayonet fire Marylebone, Public Advertiser, 14 August 1769

rayonnant Clitherow, Marylebone, Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 5 August

1772

rayonant Clanfield, Grotto Gardens St George’s Fields, Gazeteer and New Daily

Advertiser, 19 September 1772; trade-card: Clitherow sen. Harvard;

Kentish 1878: fig 115

raisonnant Marylebone, Public Advertiser, 1 August 1775

Context: ‘Two Palm Trees in Rayonnant with Stars, a large Salamander climbing

up around the Tree, and Harlequin on the other Tree tries to defeat the Salamander’

(Ranelagh, World, 11 May 1790); ‘A Coup de Feaux of Seven Transparencies, the

Centre one representative of his Majesty’s Medallion, the others, Crowns of Royal

Oak, with a Reprise of upwards of 200 cases in Rayonnant Stars, with Maroons’

(Rossi and Tessier, Ranelagh, Star, 24 June 1793); ‘A Waterfall with Rayonant and

Chinese fire’ (Caillot and Martinelli, Ranelagh, Oracle and Public Advertiser, 29 June

1796).

Clitherow claimed to have invented the rayonnant: ‘Also an entire new Fire being

a white Ray, discharging long Streams of Fire of a Golden Colour, whose natural

Sparks are in the form of Wheat Ears, and is called Rayonant’,85 referred to in news-

paper advertisements as ‘the new Fire called the Rayonet’ (Marylebone, 1769, 1770).

Whether he did or not, the term was used by Clanfield and Caillot in the 1770s and

Rossi and Tessier in the 1790s. Not in the OED as a proper noun but as an adjective,

which explains Clitherow’s usage: ‘1775 Cross-Rayonnant, is that which has rays of

glory behind it, darting from the center to all the quarters of the escutcheon’ (OED

rayonnant, adj. 1. Heraldry). From French rayonnant, past participle of rayonner ‘to

beam’.

SAUCISSONS

saucissons Frezier 1706: 167

pots de saucissons Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 7 June 1764; Jones 1765: 127

pots de soussions Trade-card: Clitherow sen. Harvard

sosison voland Mackloud, Ranelagh, Morning Post and Gazetteer, 18 June 1798

Sosison Vo Land Hengler, Ranelagh, True Briton, 6 July 1798

Context: ‘A Royal Discharge of Sosison Volland’ (Hengler and Macloud,

Ranelagh, Telegraph, 6 June 1796).

‘SAUCISSON, c’est une sorte de petard fait avec un cartouche cylindrique

court, étranglé & fermé par les deux bouts, ce qui le fait ressembler à un saucisson

à manger.’86 ‘Pots de saucissons are generally fired out of large mortars without

chambers, the same as those for aigrettes, only somewhat stronger: saucissons are

made of 1 and 2 oz. cases, 5 or 6 inches long and choaked in the same maner

as serpents.’87 OED saucisson ‘A kind of firework, consisting of a tube of paper or

canvas packed with gunpowder’, from French, augmentative of saucisse ‘sausage’.

First attestation in English 1634.

135THE NOMENCLATURE OF SOME FRENCH AND ITALIAN FIREWORKS

SPIRIALI WHEEL

spiriali wheel Trade-card: Samuel Clanfield LMA, Heal 62.4

spiralis Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 7 June 1764

spirali wheel Trade-card: Benjamin Clitherow, Banks Collection 62.6

spriali wheel Clitherow, Marybone, Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 5 August 1772

Context: ‘two large Spirali Wheels of brilliant Fire, illuminated with white Lights’

(Clitherow, Marylebone, Public Advertiser, 11 September 1771).

This was a compound firework, consisting of a framework in the form of a cone,

round which was twisted a spiral of cane fitted with lances.88 The term is not in the

OED, but is described in Jones’s Artificial Fireworks: ‘Spirali wheels are nothing

more than double horizontal wheels.’89 A ‘Single Spirali Wheel’ and a ‘Double

Spirali Wheel’ are illustrated in Benjamin Clitherow’s trade-card (nos. 7 and 24).

TOURBILLON

tourbillon Frezier 1747: 495; Ruggieri and Sarti 1749: 16

tourbilloons Clitherow, Cuper’s, General Advertiser, 20 August 1751

tourbillions Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 7 June 1764

tour billion Trade-card: Clitherow sen. Harvard

tourballoons Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 28 June 1769

tour balloons Trade-cards: Benjamin Clitherow, Banks 62.6; Samuel Clanfield, Heal 62.4,

LMA

tourbillins Ranelagh, Public Advertiser, 17 May 1790

Context: ‘13. eight Half-pound Sky-rockets; 14, two large Tour-balloons’ (Clith-

erow, Marylebone, Public Advertiser, 11 September 1771); ‘Twelve Tourbillions, Six

Maroons illumini’ (Ranelagh, World, 11 May 1790).

From French tourbillon ‘whirlwind’. OED tourbillion, || tourbillon 3. ‘A kind of

firework which spins as it rises, describing a spiral’, first attestation the 1749 Green

Park display. ‘TOURBILLON: c’est un Artifice qu’on appelle aussi soleil montant,

dont l’effet est de s’élever en tournant par son mouvement intrinseque, sans être jetté

comme les balons.’90 ‘Tourbillions or Table Rockets’ are described and drawn in

detail by Maskell.91 An unfired Tour Balloon is illustrated in Benjamin Clitherow’s

trade-card (no. 28). The second and third syllables of tourbillon have undergone

folk-etymology to balloon by analogy with the fireworks on Benjamin Clitherow’s

trade-card known as water balloons and air balloons (which were themselves transla-

tions of French balons d’eau and balons d’air,92 anglicized in Ruggieri and Sarti as

air ballons93). However, these balloon fireworks were unlike tourbillons, as they con-

sisted of hollow globes of paper filled with ‘Stars, Serpents, Snakes, Rain-falls, &c’,94

fired from mortars, which burst when at their greatest altitude. Ruggieri claimed to

be the first to use a balloon carrying fireworks.95 The final syllable of the spelling

tourbillion has an epenthetic (or unetymological) i; this is relatively common in

London English (c.f. OED aeriated, adj., and the spelling spiriali above). Actually, the

word tourbillion is found in print in English earlier than the Green Park display, in

Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle’s The Theory or System of Several New Inhabited

Worlds of 1718, where it is used to cover all kinds of whirlwinds, hurricanes, and

whirlings of planets.96

136 LAURA WRIGHT

Acknowledgements

I am most grateful to three anonymous reviewers for their great help, and to Derek

Keene for discussion of set-piece themes.

Notes1 Perfect Diurnall of Some Passages in Parliament (31

March 1645). Unless stated otherwise, all newspaper

references are to the British Library database,

British Newspapers 1600–1900, http://www.bl.uk/

eresources/socsci/newspapers.html.2 Moderate Intelligencer (23 September 1647).3 Mercurius Pragmaticus Revived (10 June 1651).4 Mercurius Politicus Comprising the Summ of All

Intelligence (25 December 1651). A falcon was a

type of light cannon [Oxford English Dictionary

Online (OED) (http://www.oed.com/) falcon, n. 3],

a minion was a kind of small culverin (OED minion,

n. and adj. II. 4), a murderer was a type of small

cannon or mortar (OED murderer, n. 3), and a

carcass was a spherical iron shell filled with an

inflammable composition fired from a mortar (OED

carcass, carcase, n. 7). A sacre, also spelt <sakor>,

was a piece of iron ordnance used for throwing fire,

not listed as a noun in the OED but as a verb: see

sacre, v. 1 6. nonce-use. ‘To cremate as a religious

act’. 1665, Sir T. Herbert, ‘Their Funerals are of the

old stamp [. . .] sacring the Corps to Ashes in a holy

fire.’ I have been unable to trace fire-hog; it may or

may not be a form of, or an error for, fire-hook.5 Post Boy (14 December 1695).6 Mercurius Politicus Comprising the Summ of All

Intelligence (21 January 1658).7 Mercurius Politicus Comprising the Summ of All

Intelligence (4 May 1654).8 London Gazette (5 August 1669).9 Post Boy (7 November 1695).10 London Gazette, No. 2362/3 (1688), cited under

OED runner n.11 ‘Hyponymy is a less familiar term to most people

than either synonymy or antonymy, but it refers to

a much more important sense relation. It describes

what happens when we say “An X is a kind of Y”

— A daffodil is a kind of flower, or simply, A

daffodil is a flower.’ D. Crystal, The Cambridge

Encyclopedia of the English Language, 2nd edn

(Cambridge, 2003).12 Of the many writings on the history of the London

pleasure-gardens, the main works relevant here are:

W. Wroth, The London Pleasure Gardens of the

Eighteenth Century [Basingstoke, 1896 (1979

reprint)]; P. Borsay, ‘The Rise of the Promenade:

The Social and Cultural Use of Space in the English

Provincial Town c.1660–1800’, British Journal for

Eighteenth-Century Studies, 60:2 (1986), 125–40;

and J. Conlin, ‘Vauxhall Revisited: The Afterlife

of a London Pleasure Garden’, Journal of British

Studies, 45 (2006), 718–43.13 T. Angelo, The Art of Making Fireworks Made

Plain and Easy (1816), 218.14 Eighteenth Century Collections Online, http://

libsta28.lib.cam.ac.uk:2111/ecco/start.do?prodId=

ECCO&userGroupName=cambuni15 Eighteenth Century Fiction, http://collections.

chadwyck.co.uk/home/home_c18f.jsp16 Daily Courant, 27 October 1727.17 Tatler, 20 April 1710.18 Daily Courant, 16 February 1726. A type of snuff,

presumably from French râpé ‘rasped’, although

attested in French later than in English. OED

rappee, n. 1.19 Daily Post, 20 March 1729. Occurring in a list of

silks: Tripoly, Biroot, Mount Libanus, Antioch,

Aleppo Tripoly, Byland, Latachia; Latachia is

Laodicea in Syria. OED Latakia, first attestation

1833, as a type of tobacco only.20 Daily Post, 10 January 1724. A card game of French

etymology, known in England from 1710. OED

quadrille, n. 2.21 London Evening Post, 27 May 1735. Shrub was a

cocktail of rum, sugar, and citrus juice, from

metathesized Arabic shurb ‘drink’. OED shrub, n. 2

first attestation 1747, so an antedating.22 Daily Courant, 22 June 1711. A type of Portuguese

wine from Carcavelhos. OED Calcavella, first

attestation 1816, so an antedating.23 Spectator, 7 April 1712. A type of sherry from Rota,

near Cadiz. No OED entry.24 Daily Post, 4 February 1724. A card game. OED

quintile, n. First attestation ?1720. Unlike the new

firework loanwords, these new loans were reflected

in the cultural works of the day. Rappee appears in

Anonymous, Memoirs of a Coquet; or the History

of Miss Harriot Airy. By the author of Emily Willis;

or, the History of a Natural Daughter (1765).

Quadrille appears in J. Adams, The Flowers of

Modern History (1796). Shrub appears in Anony-

mous, The Miscellaneous and Whimsical Lucubra-

tions of Lancelot Poverty-Struck (1758). Calcavella

appears in R. Bage, Mount Henneth, A Novel

(1782). Latachia is found in many travel books, as it

was the name of a city; similarly, rota tent occurs in

Sir John Talbot Dillon, Travels through Spain

(1780), and quintille in letters, dictionaries and

books to do with gaming.

137THE NOMENCLATURE OF SOME FRENCH AND ITALIAN FIREWORKS

25 M. Lynn, ‘Sparks for Sale: The Culture and

Commerce of Fireworks in Early Modern France’,

Eighteenth-Century Life, 30:2 (2006), 81–2, discuss-

es. Ruggieri’s classification of set-pieces, which are

the fourth and fifth types of eighteenth-century dis-

plays, that is, ground fireworks and water fireworks.

The first type is military fireworks, the second

theatrical fireworks, and the third type aerial

fireworks as in present-day displays.26 Daily Courant, 19 August 1712.27 Daily Post, 30 August 1742.28 Daily Post, 28 July 1743.29 London Daily Post and General Advertiser, 10

August 1741.30 Times Online, http://archive.timesonline.co.uk/tol/

archive/31 Signor/Monsieur Torré, who organized set-pieces in

Paris (Lynn, ‘Sparks for Sale’, 86), was anomalous

in that, for some reason, he overtly protested against

listing fireworks [‘too tedious to particularize’; ‘Sig.

Torre’s Reputation being so well known, makes it

needless to particularize any Pieces he will exhibit’

(1772)].32 Amédée François Frezier, Traité des Feux d’Artifice

pour le Spectacle [Paris, 1707 (2nd edn 1747)]; G.

Ruggieri and J. Sarti, A Description of the Machine

for the Fireworks, with all its Ornaments, and A

Detail of the manner in which they are to be exhib-

ited in St James’s Park, Thursday, April 27, 1749, on

account of the General Peace signed at Aix-la-

Chapelle, October 7, 1748 (1749).33 A. St Hill Brock, Pyrotechnics: The History and Art

of Firework Making (1922), 21–9, 33–5.34 Bermondsey Spa (2 September 1786).35 Royal Brunswick Gardens (20 July 1840).36 Vauxhall (12 August 1842).37 Vauxhall (9 July 1828).38 St Helena Gardens, Rotherhithe (22 August 1831). A

brief excursus is in order here on the name of the St

Helena Gardens, Rotherhithe, as the name does not

appear to have been treated before: the gardens

flourished between 1766 and 1881 (Wroth, London

Pleasure Gardens, 238) in what was then a remote

corner of East London, although an enterprising

proprietor advertised it for a while as the ‘Eastern

Vauxhall’ [Museum of London Library, Warwick

Wroth Collection, Pleasure Gardens of South

London, Unpublished scrapbook, vol. II (c. 1830].

The garden was opened to the public in May 1766

as ‘St Helena House’, and advertisements from the

1780s show how the name was marketed:

Island of St Helena Tea-Gardens, Deptford

New Road, Rotherhithe.

Governor Medhurst returns his sincere

Thanks to his Friends and the Public in

general for their kind approbation of the

FIREWORKS. On Monday the 21st Instant,

and by particular desire the same will be

played off on Monday the 28th August, with

an Addition to the WATER-PIECE, by

Signor ROSSI, never performed in England

before. Tickets One Shilling each. The

Order of Firing may be had at the Bar. The

Grand Salute of 21 Guns, and Music, at Six

o’Clock; and Fire-works at Nine. A genteel

Cold Collation, and good Attendance. N. B.

Those Ladies and Gentlemen who had

tickets for the 21st, and could not get in, will

be taken at the Gate this Night.

Museum of London Library, Warwick

Wroth Collection, Pleasure Gardens of South

London, Unpublished scrapbook, vol. II

(26 August 1780).

A couple of years later, an announcement tried to

turn the remoteness of these pleasure-gardens to

advantage: ‘this little Island of St Helena, from its

advantages and improvements, is capable of afford-

ing all that solace and retirement the most distant

situation can bestow’ (Wroth, Pleasure Gardens of

South London, vol. II, c. 1782). These advertise-

ments suggest that the St Helena Gardens were

named after the remote island of St Helena in the

South Atlantic, which was governed by the London

East India Company — if not so named originally,

when the house was first named before 1766, then

at least subsequently, by 1780, when it came to be

advertised as a public house. The St Helena Gardens

were isolated, situated in the middle of marshy

fields, intersected by dykes, and dominated by the

nearby River Thames and the Surrey Commercial

Docks. Within half a mile’s radius were such taverns

and buildings as China Hall, Jamaica Hall, Cape of

Good Hope, and Providence Island [Greenwood’s

Map of London, 2nd edn (1830), viewable at http://

www.motco.com/map/81003/imageone-a.asp?

Picno=81003000]. The main visitors would have

been dockworkers and their families, and these

names would have had significance for a commu-

nity used to ships, sailors and cargoes from distant

places, and also apt for dwellings isolated in the

middle of marshes, as they all were. From c. 1816,

eight cottages named Lemon Valley were built in the

gardens: ‘Lemon Valley near St Helena first occurs

on Dec. 24, 1816’ [E. J. Beck, Memorials to Serve

for a History of the Parish of St Mary, Rotherhithe

(Cambridge, 1907), 114, and also marked on Green-

wood’s map of 1830]. Lemon Valley is a genuine

place-name on the island of St Helena in the South

Atlantic, and was so called at least as far back as the

1680s [British Library, MS. St Helena Consultations

(1676–1696), IOR G/32/2, 23 December 1684]. The

date of 1816 is significant, because Napoleon was

exiled to the island of St Helena in October 1815,

so presumably St Helena place-names became

topical in London at this time and thus available as

signifiers of remoteness and isolation.

138 LAURA WRIGHT

39 There is another copy at British Library, Outsize

Banks 62.6, viewable online at http://www.british

museum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/

search_object_details.aspx?objectid=3041530&parti

d=1&searchText=trade+card+Benjamin+clitherow

&fromADBC=ad&toADBC=ad&titleSubject=on

&numpages=10&orig=%2fresearch%2fsearch_

the_collection_database.aspx&currentPage=1.

Registration number: D,2.2276.40 S. Werrett, ‘From the Grand Whim to the

Gasworks: Philosophical Fireworks in Georgian

England’, in P. Dear, L. Roberts and S. Schaffer

(eds), The Mindful Hand: Inquiry and Invention

from the Late Renaissance to Early Industrialisation

(Amsterdam, 2007), 332; see G. Plimpton, Fireworks

(New York, 1984), 42–5 for an illustration of the

temple with fireworks in mid-explosion.41 J. Stevens Curl, Spas, Wells, & Pleasure-Gardens of

London (2010), 148 remarks that Torré drew the

crowds from 1772 to 1774 with his firework

‘performances around a narrative’, but that the

gardens then went into decline.42 Brock, Pyrotechnics; H. Angelo, Reminiscences of

Henry Angelo, with memoirs of his late father and

friends (1828).43 S. Hengler (see Oxford Dictionary of National

Biography online, http://www.oxforddnb.com/

public/index.html) long outlived her husband.

Living above the ground-floor firework showroom,

she percipiently took out fire insurance in 1820. In

1845, there was an accident with an oil lamp and the

fireworks exploded. Although Hengler managed to

make her way to the window, she was too stout to

get out, and got stuck, even with the help of the

firemen, and thus met her end. Her grandson,

Charles Hengler, opened Hengler’s Circus in 1871.

He only went into circus administration because he

was too tall to join the family acrobat team with his

brothers, but died a rich man in 1887 at his home in

Fitzjohns Avenue, Hampstead. His daughter, Agnes,

carried on the family profession, and married a

circus performer called John Henderson, who had

also worked at Vauxhall. He was born in London

in 1822, and after a career as a trampolinist, clown,

vaulter, and somersaulter, he became a ringmaster

and manager of the circus at the Agricultural Hall

in Islington. In their youth, Agnes Hengler and John

Henderson performed as man-and-wife team The

Hendersons, wire-walkers, trampolinists, and circus

horse-riders. In 1967, John Lennon bought a circus

poster dating from 1843, which, advertising a circus

performance in Rochdale, advertises the Hender-

sons on tour. The words of the advertisement fea-

ture in the lyrics of the album that he was working

on at the time: ‘The celebrated Mr K./Performs his

feat on Saturday at Bishopsgate/The Hendersons

will dance and sing/As Mr Kite flies through the

ring/Don’t be late’ (Being for the Benefit of Mr

Kite).

44 R. Daniel Altick, The Shows of London: A

Panorama History of Exhibitions, 1600–1862

(Cambridge, Mass., 1978), 96.45 Now fine art dealers Colnaghi.46 General Advertiser, 25 February 1750.47 Public Advertiser, 15 September 1770.48 Public Advertiser, 1 August 1775.49 Brock, Pyrotechnics, 34.50 Written in 1815–1817, E. Grant, Memoirs of a

Highland Lady (1898).51 London Evening Post, 20 January 1763.52 British Library, A Collection of Newspaper

Cuttings, Advertisements, Songs, Views, etc. relat-

ing to Marylebone Gardens (1750–1850?), General

Reference Collection 840.m.29, July 1770. I have

been unable to track this unlabelled advertisement

outside the British Library’s book of cuttings, but

can locate him at Marylebone in the preceding

month: Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, 18

June 1770.53 Star, 18 June 1792.54 British Library, A Collection of Tickets, Pamphlets,

MS Notes, Engraved Views and Portraits, Music,

and Extracts and Cuttings from Books and

Periodicals relating to Ranelagh Gardens originally

made by Jacob Henry Burn (1743–1841), General

Reference Collection Cup.401.k.8, July 1789.55 Variant spellings are presented in date order but

with no attempt at exhaustion, as advertisements

ran repetitively for months at a time. Similarly, ref-

erences are not made to every mention in firework

manuals. The name of the fireworker is given if

mentioned in the advertisement. The 1747 edition of

Frezier’s firework treatise referred to is the ‘nouvelle

edition’, which included a new ‘Explication de

Termes’ section, organized under headwords. Spell-

ings are assumed to emanate from the household

stipulated, but errors may have been introduced by

the printers.56 T. Kentish, The Pyrotechnist’s Treasury: Complete

Art Of Making Fireworks (1878).57 British Library, A Collection of Bills, Advertise-

ments, Pieces of Music, Views, etc. relating to

Ranelagh Gardens (1742–1820?), General Reference

Collection 840.m.28.58 Frezier, Traité des Feux d’Artifice (1747), 483.59 Frezier, Traité des Feux d’Artifice (1747), 494.60 J. Boswell, The Scots Magazine, 11 (May 1749),

242, Col. B.61 Brock, Pyrotechnics, 111.62 For the relatively common interchange between l

and r in French, see, for example, I. Short, Manual

of Anglo-Norman (2007), §22.2.63 Scots Magazine, 11 (May 1749), 242, Col. B.64 H. B. Faber, Military Pyrotechnics (Washington,

1919).65 Frezier, Traité des Feux d’Artifice (1747), 485.

139THE NOMENCLATURE OF SOME FRENCH AND ITALIAN FIREWORKS

66 Scots Magazine, 11 (May 1749), 242, Col. A.67 J. Maskell, Artificial Fireworks (1785), 131. Manu-

script handbook: Getty Research Institute, http://

www.archive.org/stream/artificialfirewo01mask#pa

ge/n9/mode/2up68 R. Jones, A New Treatise on Artificial Fireworks

(1765), 130.69 R. Lass, ‘Phonology and Morphology’, in R. Lass

(ed.), The Cambridge History of the English

Language, vol. III, 1476–1776 (Cambridge, 1999),

65, 121–2.70 Angelo, Art of Making Fireworks, 227.71 Kentish, Pyrotechnist’s Treasury, Fig. 112.72 Jones, Artificial Fireworks, 198.73 Brock, Pyrotechnics, 133.74 Maskell, Artificial Fireworks, 1–13 provides

detailed instructions for building a Fruiloni Wheel.75 Plimpton, Fireworks, 46–7.76 Frezier, Traité des Feux d’Artifice (1747),

genouillier e.77 Amédée François Frezier, Traité des Feux d’Artifice

pour le Spectacle (Paris, 1706 — but note that there

is an alternative title page engraved, bearing the

date 1707).78 Frezier, Traité des Feux d’Artifice (1747), 489.79 Jones, Artificial Fireworks (1765), 101.

80 Angelo, Art of Making Fireworks, 218.81 Wikipedia, guilloché.82 Frezier, Traité des Feux d’Artifice (1747), jumelle.83 Frezier, Traité des Feux d’Artifice (1747), 491.84 Scots Magazine, 11 (May 1749), 242, Col. B.85 Trade-card, Harvard Theatre Collection, in P. H.

Highfill, K. A. Burnim and E. A. Langhans (eds),

A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses,

Musicians, Dancers, Managers and other Stage

Personnel in London, 1660–1800 (Carbondale and

Edwardsville, 1973–1993), 339.86 Frezier, Traité des Feux d’Artifice (1747),

saucisso n.87 R. Jones, Artificial Fireworks, 2nd edn (1777), 67.88 Brock, Pyrotechnics, 134.89 Jones, Artificial Fireworks (1765), 193.90 Frezier, Traité des Feux d’Artifice (1747), 495.91 Maskell, Artificial Fireworks, 145–79 provides

detailed instructions for building tourbillions.92 Frezier, Traité des Feux d’Artifice (1706), 191, 279.93 Ruggieri and Sarti, Description of the Machine for

the Fireworks, 9.94 Jones, Artificial Fireworks (1765), 106.95 Brock, Pyrotechnics, 103.96 B. Le Bovier de Fontenelle, The Theory or System

of Several New Inhabited Worlds (1718).

Notes on Contributor

Laura Wright is a Reader in English Language at the University of Cambridge. She is

a historical sociolinguist who works on the history of the London dialect.