The Hay Festival, a literary festival in Wales that I’ve been to a few times (because I is well intellectual) has been doing a virtual version this year, because of you-know-what. I watched one sesh with Greg Jenner, writer and historian extraordinaire, where he briefly mentioned the origins of the word ‘tawdry’. And turns out it has an interesting backstory, which I’m now going to share with you, you lucky people.
St Audrey in her glad rags
If you describe something as ‘tawdry’, you’re saying it’s showy, and cheap or crappy quality. You can also use it to describe something that’s immoral, like a ‘tawdry extramarital affair’. So, where did it come from?
Allow me to transport you back to 7th century England. The daughter of the king of East Anglia is a young princess called Etheldrida, who’s known as Audrey (and who can blame her with a name like Etheldrida? Although spare a thought for her sisters, who were called Wendreda and Seaxburh). After a life which basically consisted of not having sex (she took a vow of virginity, despite having two husbands), Audrey died in the year 679 of a throat tumour. The Venerable Bede recorded this as a just punishment because poor old Audrey liked a lace necklace, and this vanity apparently meant she deserved to die from cancer. Wow. Nice one, Bede.
Despite this, Audrey still managed to get beatified (AKA saintified) as she founded an abbey in Ely (just up the road from where I’m writing this, and today the site of the gothic gorgeousness that is Ely Cathedral). Fast forward to the 16th century and admirers of St Audrey are buying saintly merch in the form of lace necklaces, called St Audrey’s laces. Over time, this gets shortened to ‘taudrey laces’.
100 years later, the Puritans are everywhere, and Audrey’s statement necklaces are now seen as old-fashioned and cheap. So it’s not long before the word ‘tawdry’ comes to mean the same. This meaning was cemented by Shakespeare in ‘A Winter’s Tale’ – the character Mopsa, who’s a bit of a country bumpkin, has the line: ‘Come, you promised me a tawdry-lace and a pair of sweet gloves’, which shows how unsophisticated she is.
I can’t help feeling a bit sorry for Aud. The woman hung on to her virginity through two marriages, then founded an abbey, and this is what she’s remembered for? Shame.