The history of the canary fancy in Great Britain has been shaped by many people, mostly authors, organisers and famous breeders, yet the man who instigated the biggest advance of all is barely known. He was Mr John Varley, a Nottingham surgeon, whose innovations transformed the avian exhibition world in the mid 1800s.  He introduced the first scale of points, and was the first person to write a book on canary show standards (1), but his greatest achievement was to promote the first ‘All-England’ show of cage birds (2) in his home city in January 1857.  He never claimed the credit for such an ambitious project, preferring to write to the local press under the title ‘A Subscriber’ or ‘JV’, but his pioneering style leaves no doubt that he was the man behind the enterprise.

Thanks to the expansion of the railway network, the show attracted entries from as far afield as London, Birmingham, Hull and Oldham.  It was a huge success and was quickly copied by other cities, culminating in the first Crystal Palace show (the forerunner of the National Exhibition) in November 1858.   In less than two years, bird shows had been transformed from small events held in a local pub to prestigious exhibitions with a nationwide appeal.

Where did Mr. Varley get his inspiration from?  The answer may surprise you: Belgium.  Yes Belgium, a nation that was just 26 years old at that time (3).  The Belgian is the only breed of canary that is actually older than the nation it is named after.

We know that Mr. Varley was an admirer of the way that canary shows were organised in Belgium because, at a meeting of Nottingham bird fanciers held in 1856, he announced his ambition “to establish an exhibition after the principle of that of Brussels” (4).  Furthermore, the canary classes were limited to just three varieties: the London Fancy, the Lizard and, yes, the Belgian canary.  

How was it possible that Belgium and the Belgian canary had such a big impact on the development of canary culture in Britain in the nineteenth century?  That is what I am going to explore in this series with the help of Gust Truyens, a Belgian enthusiast of canaries and their history.

When Gust and I started our research we immediately came across a major obstacle: contemporary Dutch or French publications provided scant information on the history of the breed.  Surprisingly, the best sources are all British.

Of these, by far the best is Blakston’s  Illustrated Book of Canaries and Cage Birds (1877-81).  Blakston had the good fortune to have corresponded with a person who was familiar not only with the Belgian canary in its homeland but also with the societies that catered for the breed.  Intriguingly, Blakston does not name him; he refers to him only as “our Special Foreign Correspondent”.  I will refer to him as the SFC in this series.

Fortunately the SFC had taken an interest in the history of the Belgian canary.  He remembered speaking to a man who had attended one of the first shows at Ostend ‘about thirty years ago’ (i.e. during the 1840s) 

“at which most of the prizes were carried off by the town of Courtray [Kortrijk], which at that time was of high repute in Belgium for canaries.  The gentleman to whom I am indebted for this information was a visitor at that show and he computed that the society at Courtray was at that time of not less than 30 years standing.”

That takes us back to the second decade of the nineteenth century, but it was an underestimate.  A society based in Gent named De Endracht (The Union) could trace its origins to 1804 (5).  This places the Belgian canary third only to the Lizard and the London Fancy in the establishment of societies catering for distinct breeds of canary.

The second of Blakston’s chapters on the Belgian canary is entitled ‘Canary Societies in Belgium’.  Almost all the text was provided by the SFC.  He started by setting out his credentials: “The present Society of Antwerp (of which I have just had the honour of being elected a member) was established in 1847, and remains unchanged with the exception of having moved its place of meeting two or three times”.  It was named Den Arend (the Eagle) (6).

He set out the ‘Rules of the Society of Canaries Known as Posture Birds’. Amongst its more interesting rules were:

• An annual show was to be held in January.  Only young birds from the previous breeding season were eligible.
• Members were obliged to show birds they had bred themselves.  Anyone found cheating was expelled from the Society, although how it could be proven is unexplained.
• Each member was permitted to enter four birds in the contest which was divided into four classes: yellow cocks, yellow hens, buff cocks and buff hens. (7)

There are some notable omissions: there is no mention of a show standard, just a brief reference to “the model adopted by us”; nor did the classification differentiate between clear, self and variegated birds; they were grouped together in each of the four classes.

What do we know about De Arend?  Gust brought the KBR website to my attention (8) and in particular its digitalisation of Het Handelsblad (The Trade Journal), Belgium’s oldest Flemish newspaper published in Antwerp from 1842 to 1979.  De Arend crops up regularly in searches for canaries.  Some are notices of forthcoming shows, others report the results, but they tell us little about the birds, the breeders, or what happened at the shows.

Fortunately the SFC, perhaps because he was an outsider, noticed the details that local breeders took for granted.  He tells us:

“ The cages are of a uniform pattern and colour (Fig. 56) and are provided by the society or house.  The birds are brought in on the Friday, as per the rules, in travelling cages (Fig. 57) or in bags (Fig. 58).  The travelling cage speaks for itself, and is usually a well-made piece of furniture of mahogany, with several perches, just sufficiently high to keep the birds clear of the ground.  The bag is a circular disc of wood to which a linen top with worked holes is nailed, and an excellent contrivance it is.”

“The birds having been brought in, the bringer takes a small slip of paper and writes the name and address of the owner and exhibitor upon it, which, after he has placed the bird in a cage with seed sufficient to last for the three next days, he then places under the draw board [cage tray], and immediately a white piece of paper is gummed over the end, so that it is not possible to draw it out again without discovery.  The cages are then placed in a private room, where next day the judges visit them . . . and it takes the greater part of the day to go through the four classes, and very often the entire day . . .

Next day being the occasion of the prize distribution, a strong muster is present, . . . and the cages are brought in from the judging-room to the general meeting room, in which the President and other office-bearers are seated at a table.  One of the secretaries . . . hands the cage to another official who breaks the paper covering the draw board, draws it out, and taking the paper from underneath, during a period of intense excitement in which everyone is certain he sees his own bird in the distance, and with clear intonation suitable to so solemn an occasion, reads the name and address of the happy winner.  He, amid clapping of hands and other emphatic demonstrations, moves up to the table and bows to the President; who rises, shakes hands, and congratulates him, after which the address paper is gummed to the cage and the bird hung for inspection . . .

There is not the same strictness about touching the cages as in England, for anyone wishing to inspect a bird may take it down for the purpose, and I never saw the licence abused.  Nor does the incense from the ‘fragrant weed’ seem to affect the birds, for frequently it is nearly impossible to see across the room in this country of cheap tobacco.

From an £.s.d. [money] point of view the winners are often the greatest losers, as a custom strongly favouring of good-fellowship is usual on such occasions; the successful exhibitors providing a certain number of bottles of wine in honour of visitors, and as a solatium [solace] to less successful contestants . . .”

The shows attracted a large number of exhibitors and their birds.  A notice published in Het Handelsblad on 30 January 1852 claimed that over 200 birds were expected at the event. With exhibitors limited to just four birds each, it indicates that the society enjoyed the support of at least 50 breeders. 

Here it is in translation:

“The society de Arend, established by Mr. Van Dyck, innkeeper of Het Zand (9), here, has a beautiful prize competition prescribed for canary birds, where all enthusiasts from all over Belgium will be able to participate. This prize competition starts on Sunday February 1, at 8 o’clock in the evening.  Not less than about 200 birds have been sent to this competition. The birds and the prizes awarded will remain on display for the public in the said establishment until Monday, February 2, at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. We advise the enthusiasts not to let this opportunity pass without a visit to the mentioned room.”

Note the reference to ‘enthusiasts from all over Belgium’.  We see the same countrywide mission in a prospectus reproduced by the SFC (in English translation) for a show organised by the “Society of Canaries under the motto ‘Young and Willing to Learn’ to be held in De Roode Port, Kleine Turkeije, No 14, Ghent” for “Liefhebbers [fanciers] who are members of a Canary society in this country, which shall take place the second Sunday in January 1878”.  

De Roode Poort (the Red Gateway) was what we would call an inn in English.  Catering for travellers, it was a staging post for carriages and market wagons in the nineteenth century.  The building still stands, with a restored facade, at what is now 22 Klein Turkeije in the area around St. Niklaaskerk in the centre of Ghent.

The rules reassured visitors that there would be no ‘home advantage’.  The four judges were nominated by the four societies with the largest number of entries, with a fifth judge “who shall be a stranger to the town” nominated by the exhibitors to be given the deciding vote in the event of a tie. 

It is apparent that Belgian canary societies shared a nationwide outlook, whereas, for most of the nineteenth century, English societies tended to be much more parochial.  It helps to explain why the Belgian breeders were committed to a single breed of posture canary while Britain developed several varieties, each named after their home town or region (10).

The Belgian canary societies were also quicker to take advantage of the country’s new railway network to transport birds to shows in other parts of the country (11).  The first report of a nationwide canary show I have found in Het Handelsblad was published on 6 February 1848, nine years before Mr. Varley, inspired by the Belgian way of doing things, organised the first All-England show. 

“An association of breeders of canary birds, established in Brussels in the Swan hotel, had opened a competition for all the societies of Belgium. On Sunday the medals were distributed, namely the True Friends-Phoenix in Antwerp (a gilded medal); and the society The Eagle (silver medal) and the Eager to Learn society (silver medal). The birds that have won the prizes will be on display on Sunday in The Lion, (Lion Street).”

Was this the show that inspired John Varley to “establish an exhibition after the principle of that of Brussels” in 1857?  Probably not, because according to the SFC, a more ambitious project was planned in Brussels just three years before the Nottingham show:

“ An endeavour was made in 1854 to establish a chief society for the country, with Brussels as its centre, called ‘The Central Society for Emulation’; but although its aims and purposes were excellent, as established, it lived a very short time – not long enough to gain much sympathy at its death.” (12)

It may have been short lived, but it gave Mr. Varley a vision of what might be possible.  Bird shows in Great Britain would never be the same.

Acknowledgements & clarifications:

• My thanks to Gust Truyens for his contributions to this article.
• As this is an English blog, I have used the English names for Belgian cities such as Ghent (Gent or Gand) and Antwerp (Antwerpen or Anvers), with apologies to my Belgian readers.
• I have used two types of parentheses (brackets) in the text above.   Curved brackets clarify something I, or the original author, have written; square brackets signify my clarification of what someone else has written.  There are occasions when both are used in the same quotation.

Footnotes:

1. John Varley, ’Exhibition Canaries: their Special Properties and Mode of Judging Them by Valuation Points’, first edition 1859.
2. The canary show was actually held in conjunction with the first Nottingham Poultry show, but made a name for itself by attracting canaries from all over the country.  The honorary title of ‘the first All-England Show’ was bestowed by George Barnesby in his book The Canary (1877), p.13. Mr. Varley himself used the title First General Concourse, in deference to Belgian practice.
3. Belgium broke away from the Netherlands in 1830 and was formally recognised as an independent country in 1831.
4. Nottingham Review, 16 January 1857.
5. Claude St John, ‘Our Canaries’, published by ‘Cage Birds’, London, 1911 (p227 & 228).  Correspondence from James Dewar.
6. Den Arend is the old Dutch spelling.  It was known as de Arend from the 1850s, and this is the spelling I have used for this article.
7. For the benefit of readers who are not familiar with British terminology, ‘yellow’ = intensive, and ‘buff’ = non-intensive or schimmel.
8. KBR is an amalgamation of the initials of Belgium’s two national libraries: Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Royal Library in Dutch) and Bibliothèque Royale (Royal Library in French).  Here is a link to the search page.
9. Its modern address is at 9 St. Jansvliet, Antwerp. 
10. The only exception I can think of is the Lizard.  The Crest and the Cinnamon do not qualify because they were originally know as the crested Norwich and cinnamon Norwich respectively.
11. Belgium was second only to Great Britain in developing its rail network. The first line from Brussels to Mechelen opened in 1835.  A line to Antwerp followed a year later, and by 1843 almost every province had a railway station.  Source:  ‘History of rail transport in Belgium’, Wikipedia.
12. R.L. Wallace gives an English translation of the constitution of the national society in ‘The Canary Book’ (first edition 1875), but strangely doesn’t mention that it was defunct by the time he was writing.