Big Ben Celebrates 150th Anniversary

An excellent new website created by Parliament commemorates the 150th anniversary of its famous Clock Tower, Great Clock, and Great Bell ("Big Ben").

Construction on the clock tower began in September 1843; the clock first kept time on 31 May 1859.

The website offers a wealth of facts and figures about the clock tower, historical and contemporary images, a virtual tour, links to YouTube and Flickr resources, animations, and (of course) downloadable ringtones, banners, and wallpapers. There's even an online game for kids called "Race Against Chime" that requires players to clean the clock's face while dangling on a rope and dodging birds and gusts of wind.

UK residents (only) can arrange a tour of the clock tower through their local MP.

Shown above: "New Palace of Westminster," c. 1858, colour lithograph on paper, in Parliament's Works of Art Collection.

Darwin at Home

A full-scale replica of Charles Darwin’s cabin on HMS Beagle is one of the highlights of a new exhibition at Down House (shown above), the naturalist's family home in Kent, that celebrates his 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species.

"Uncovering Origins" charts the progression of Darwin's ideas and the controversy they provoked. Multimedia tours include the Darwins' living quarters and the extensive gardens that served as Charles's outdoor laboratory.

Can't get to Kent? The next best thing is a virtual tour of Down House created by English Heritage, which manages the property. You can explore Darwin's study, listen to Sir David Attenborough describe what the house meant to Darwin and his family, and page through interactive versions of his field notebooks and Beagle diary.

Darwin's life at Down House with wife Emma and their children will be the subject of two upcoming films. The first, Creation, is based on the book Annie's Box by Darwin's great-great-grandson Randal Keynes and was shot in part at Down House. It stars real-life couple Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connolly. (Visit the film's excellent website here.) This will be Bettany's second turn as a naturalist: in 2003 he played Dr. Stephen Maturin to Russell Crowe's Captain Jack Aubrey in the film adaptation of Patrick O'Brien's Master and Commander. (Below: Bettany as Darwin in Creation.)


The second new film is Mrs. Darwin, with Joseph Fiennes and Rosamund Pike, who says, "I'm definitely a Darwinist, but playing his wife has been a real eye-opener. She was very religious and his discoveries placed a heavy strain on their marriage. We are exploring different angles to his life story."

Resources

Darwin Correspondence Project (Cambridge University)

Emma Darwin's Diaries 1824-1896 (Darwin Online)

The HMS Beagle Project will launch a sailing replica of the ship, crewed by scientists and sailors, that will retrace the 1831-36 voyage of the original Beagle.

For What It's Worth . . .

Two economics professors, one from Maine and one from Illinois, have provided an invaluable service to those wanting to measure the relative worth of things over time, from the eighteenth century to today.

Their website, http://www.measuringworth.org/, features several calculators based on a variety of official UK and US government statistics and economic indicators, including the retail price index (the cost of goods and services purchased by a typical household in one period relative to a base period), average earnings, and three measures based on gross domestic product.

One calculator allows you to learn the present worth of a past amount (for example, the cost of Big Ben, the salary of the Archbishop of Canterbury, or the price of tea); another tells you what a historic price in British pounds is worth in US dollars today (and vice versa).

A quick crunch of numbers related to my own specialty, theatre history, reveals that Lillie Langtry's £250-per-week salary at the Haymarket Theatre in 1882 translates into a whopping £126,478 in purchasing power per week today. Of course, exorbitantly paid performers like Langtry were by far the exception and not the rule.

This site should come with a Surgeon General's warning about how addictive it is.

Shown here: The Royal Exchange and the Bank of England in an undated photo, c. 1890.

"The Young Victoria" Arrives

"The Young Victoria" has opened in London to a resounding . . . thud. This despite two very attractive lead actors in Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend (above).

"The [film] is intended to blow away the cobwebby image of the grumpy old Empress in her widow's weeds and show us instead the vibrant, brilliant younger woman who was very much amused by the glorious freedom she suddenly assumed at the age of 18," says The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw. Instead, "a tone of celebratory reverence for Victoria predominates" and "the film sometimes tasted like a damp slice of Balmoral-heritage shortbread." Read the rest of Bradshaw's review here. The Daily Mail (click here for the full review) called it a "pleasant but plodding biopic of our longest-serving sovereign, mainly to be recommended for those with a limitless appetite for stately homes, lavish costumes, and Mills & Boon romance. . .It has more than a faint whiff of mothballs and antimacassars." The Times liked it better; click here to read the review and see the trailer. (Below: the film's poster.)

Apparently, the most egregious historical howler in the film is the depiction of Edward Oxford's attempt to shoot Victoria as she rode in a carriage down Constitution Hill with Albert on 10 June 1840. In real life, Oxford's two shots missed; in the film, Albert shields his wife with his body and is hit in the chest. Victoria and Albert had been married just four months at the time, and Victoria was pregnant with the first of her nine children, a daughter named Victoria (who would become the German Empress in 1888). Edward Oxford (Wiki bio here) was later tried and found not guilty by reason of insanity. (Below: detail from an 1840 engraving by J. R. Jobbins of the assassination attempt.)

I'll review the film after it's released here in the United States. In the meantime, visit the film's pretty website here (and try not to be distracted by the anachronistic music, which was also used prominently in the film Love, Actually). Sarah Ferguson discusses her fascination with Queen Victoria and her role as a producer of the film here. Emily Blunt talks with the BBC about corsets and court etiquette here.

Paxman's Partial View of the Victorians

Christopher Howse takes issue with the way the Victorians are presented in Jeremy Paxman's new series, which starts today (Sunday, 15 February) on BBC1. "To Jeremy Paxman, Victorian houses look grim," he says. "Grimness is a leitmotif . . . workhouses, gruel, industrial accidents, slums, the usual suspects of 'Dickensian conditions.' But that is all wrong. The Victorians were a fiery bundle of energy – noisy, voracious, partial to bright colours and bad jokes, fit, energetic, sentimental but hardy, unconventional but addicted to reform and liberty."

A. N. Wilson has another take on the series: "The programme is a meditation on the Victorian success story: how they invented the modern city and learnt to live in it. Behind each sequence is a pair of self-contradictory thoughts. As someone who has himself written about the Victorians, I completely sympathise with Paxman's dilemma. On the one hand, we recognise the sheer monstrous cruelty of it. On the other, how can you not admire the brilliance which constructed the London sewers, or the railway system, or the ever more ingenious machinery that spun cotton or smelted steel?"

Read more about the series and get broadcast times here; Paxman is interviewed by the BBC here. The book based on the series is reviewed -- er, savaged -- by The Times here and given the "Digested Read" treatment by The Guardian here. Read my previous post on the series here.

Shown here, two of the paintings featured in the series. Top: The Bayswater Omnibus (1895) by George William Joy (1844-1925), in the collection of the Museum of London (click for much larger image). Bottom: Eventide: A Scene in the Westminster Union (1878) by Hubert von Herkomer (1849-1914), in the collection of the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.

Salmagundi #10

Pathetic phallacy: Actress Emma Thompson and her husband, the actor Greg Wise, will reportedly travel to Majorca in March to begin work on "Effie," a film based on the marriage of John Ruskin, the Victorian art critic, and Euphemia ("Effie") Gray. Thompson and Wise wrote the script together and will co-star as the unhappy couple, whose marriage was annulled in 1854 based on the charge (attested to by physical examination and never contested by Ruskin) that, after five years, the marriage remained unconsummated. Ruskin was widely supposed to be impotent. Effie later wed the painter John Everett Millais, with whom she had eight children. Shown here: Millais's portrait of Effie from 1873.

UPDATE, 5 February: Here's one clue to how the marriage might be portrayed; Thompson is quoted as saying the film is "about the great Victorian art critic John Ruskin, who was married to this frightful woman named Effie." Hmm. Seems to me Ruskin was the more frightful of the pair.

Celebrating Darwin: The January 2009 issue of Scientific American is all about the 150-year-old theory that still drives the contemporary scientific agenda. Charles Darwin was born 200 years ago next month.

Cabinets of curiosities: England’s oldest university zoological collection, the Grant Museum of Zoology at University College London, is a treasure trove of skeletons, mounted animals, and specimens preserved in jars -- all crammed into a series of rooms lined with old-fashioned cabinets that recreate the atmosphere of a Victorian natural-history museum. Founded as a teaching collection in 1827 by the radical zoologist Robert Grant (one of Darwin's mentors), the museum is still used for teaching by the Department of Biology at UCL. Look out for the bones of a dodo, the skeleton of a quagga (a type of zebra), and the dissected corpse of a Tasmanian tiger. You can adopt one of the 55,000 specimens and have your name displayed on a label next to it.

Grueling: Earlier this month the Royal Society of Chemistry in London served gruel to members of the public after recreating the workhouse porridge made famous by Charles Dickens in Oliver Twist (see my post of December 27 here). The glutinous concoction of water, oats, and milk was prepared by a French chef in the society's kitchen and ladled onto pewter dishes for those brave enough to sample it. The event coincided with the premiere of Cameron Mackintosh’s revival of Oliver! at the Drury Lane Theatre (visit the show's amusing website here) and was a clever way to generate press coverage of the society's new report on sustainable food. "The part that food plays in our lives has perhaps never been more memorably portrayed in literature than in the workhouse scene [in Oliver Twist]," says RSC chief Dr. Richard Pike. "Thankfully in Britain matters have improved tremendously but it remains a daily threat in many parts of the world. This year we will be looking closely at food sustainability and the part that science and engineering play in this." Shown here: Lawrence Wright tries some of the gruel on offer outside the RSC office at Burlington House, Piccadilly. The apparent presence of Napoleon behind Mr. Wright is unexplained. Perhaps it is the French chef, who -- if he ever returns to France -- will be imprisoned for this crime against gastronomy, sans doute.

Speaking of orphans: The large cast of child actors who portray nameless workhouse inmates in the Mackintosh Oliver! are believed to be earning around £20 a night, less than the fee recommended for child performers by Equity, the actors' union. Children playing named characters are thought to be earning between £35 and £60 a performance. More than 150 children are employed in the £4.5m production, including three Artful Dodgers and three Olivers. Lewis Jenkins, a spokesman for the production company, said that the company was meeting all applicable legal requirements and explained that the children taking part are divided into three grades. "There are those playing Oliver and the Artful Dodger on one grade, and there are three gangs of children on another grade. And then there are 'the coach kids', as we call them, who are in the workhouse scene and have a little less to do." Hmm. It's enough to make one wonder who the real pickpockets are. Shown above: Some of the talented actors in Oliver! who could be making more money working at McDonald's.

The best London museum you've never heard of: The quirky Cuming Museum in Southwark houses one of the very few Victorian private collections to have survived intact to the present day. Opened in 1906, it’s the legacy of Richard Cuming and his son Henry Syer Cuming, who bought more than 25,000 artifacts from all over the world at London sales between 1780 and 1900. The collection spans the areas of archaeology, British social history, ethnography, decorative art, geology, textiles, natural history, prints, coins, ceramics, and ancient Egyptian and Etruscan objects. The many treasures include a nineteenth-century beaded apron from Guyana, a Hawaiian gourd bottle acquired during one of Captain Cook’s voyages, slippers belonging to Queen Anne and Queen Victoria, and a dentist’s cap embroidered with extracted teeth. You can also gaze at a small group of prints by Daumier, photos that document the development of the Elephant and Castle area of Southwark, and several items belonging to the experimental scientist Michael Faraday. The "Lovett Collection of Superstitions" features lucky charms and fetish objects that show the myriad ways in which the Victorians attempted to appease the Fates. The Cumings collected with abandon: important objects, worthless objects, fake objects . . . they didn't care. It all adds up to a wonderful testament to Victorian curiosity and acquisitiveness. Shown here: A bracelet of blue beads of a type worn in London by children under their clothes as a cure for rheumatism, c. 1870-1900.

The Workhouse Diet: A New "Twist"

An article published last week in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) is creating quite a stir in Victorianist circles. In it, dietitians conduct a nutritional analysis of workhouse diets in use throughout England in 1836 and find that although the food provided was dreary, it would have been adequate to support the health of inmates.

The popular belief that the opposite was true -- that the diets barely sustained life -- was fostered in large part by Charles Dickens' vivid depiction of workhouse life in Oliver Twist, published in 1838. In that novel, little Oliver gets by on three meals of gruel a day, an onion twice a week, and half a roll on Sunday. On feast days he's given an extra two ounces of bread. (Shown above: a scene from Roman Polanski's 2005 film Oliver Twist.)

Such a diet would have resulted in multiple nutritional deficiency diseases, including anemia, scurvy, rickets, and beriberi.

After studying a unique contemporary source, Jonathan Pereira’s Treatise on Food and Diet with Observations on the Dietetical Regimen, the researchers conclude that the diet described in Oliver Twist was not typical of that given to children in workhouses at the time and note that inmates usually received a ration that included bread, cooked meat, potatoes, rice pudding or suet, and cheese in addition to gruel, soup, or broth.

Historian Peter Higginbotham comes to a similar conclusion in The Workhouse Cookbook, published last August. (Read The Independent's review here.) Higginbotham discovered that at various times in the history of the workhouse, the fare included beer, chocolate, and cheesecake.

In fact, Oliver Twist is a polemic written in response to the passage of the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, which Dickens opposed. He seems to have exaggerated for dramatic effect.

(Shown at left: Oliver "asks for more" gruel in one of George Cruikshank's 24 illustrations for the first edition of Oliver Twist; click for a much larger image.)

The BMJ website includes an excellent video featuring interviews with the researchers and a group of modern-day schoolchildren who try the Oliver Twist diet, with mixed results.

Resources

The Dickens Project (University of California)

The Workhouse (Peter Higginbotham)

Gertrude Himmelfarb, “The Dickensian Poor” in The Culture of Poverty (1983)

Sheila Smith, The Other Nation: The Poor in English Novels of the 1840s and 1850s (1980)

Victoria's "Two-Horse Open Sleigh" on Display at Windsor

To mark the festive season, Queen Victoria’s sleigh has gone on display for the first time at Windsor Castle. Built by the carriage-makers Hooper & Co., the sleigh, which is painted in bright red and gold and lined with red velvet, will be on view in St George’s Hall until 12 January.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert spent many Christmases at the castle, and the queen often enjoyed sleigh rides around Windsor during the winter months. According to contemporary newspaper accounts, Prince Albert drove the sleigh, which was pulled by a pair of gray horses with harnesses decorated with ostrich plumes and silver bells. The grooms and outriders who accompanied the royal couple were dressed in scarlet livery. The royal children often travelled in a smaller sleigh, pulled by a pony.

Extracts from Victoria's journal reveal her enjoyment of sleigh rides. In the entry for 12 February 1855, the queen recalled an outing with Princess Clémentine of Orléans: "Another sharp frost and a fine day – Albert drove Clem and me out in the sledge … with the exception of 2 or 3 little places, we went beautifully and as smoothly as though we were on ice. The sun bright & the sky so blue. We were out for an hour!"

The Victorian Painting that Inspired Barack Obama

This is Hope by the Victorian artist George Frederic Watts (DNB entry here, Wiki entry here), an oil on canvas painted in 1885. It has been called the most influential, striking, memorable, and strange of all Watts’s works.

One copy (Watts painted several) was presented to the nation by the artist in 1897. It can be seen in Room 15 of Tate Britain, where it hangs next to other works depicting "Victorian Spectacle." Another copy is on display now through April as part of "GF Watts: Victorian Visionary" at the Guildhall Art Gallery in London. (A related exhibition, "GF Watts: Parables in Paint," opens at St Paul's Cathedral in London next week.)

"The figure of Hope is traditionally identified by an anchor," says the caption on the wall next to the Tate's version. "In this picture she is blindfolded, seated on a globe, and playing a lyre of which all the strings are broken except one. Watts wanted to find a more original approach to symbolism and allegory. But Hope’s attempts to make music here appear futile and several critics argued that the work might have been more appropriately titled Despair. Watts explained that ‘Hope need not mean expectancy. It suggests here rather the music which can come from the remaining chord.'"

Twenty years ago this painting was the subject of a now famous sermon delivered by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright at Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ. In the audience: a 27-year-old community organizer named Barack Obama.

"The painting's title is Hope," Wright told his congregation. "It shows a woman sitting on top of the world, playing a harp. What more enviable position could one ever hope to achieve than being on top of the world with everyone dancing to your music? As you look closer, the illusion of power gives way to the reality of pain. The world on which this woman sits, our world, is torn by war, destroyed by hate, decimated by despair, and devastated by distrust. The world on which she sits seems on the brink of destruction. . . . [yet despite all this] she had the audacity to make music and praise God . . . the audacity to hope." (Here's a link to one version of the complete sermon.)

That last phrase struck the young Obama and he adapted it both for the title of his speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 and for the title of his second book in 2006.

Obama was not alone in being inspired by the imagery of this painting; Nelson Mandela reportedly kept a reproduction of it on the wall of his Robben Island prison cell.

Resources

"Where There's Life, There's . . ." Paul Barlow on George Frederic Watts, from Tate Etc (August 2004)

Victorian Lives: Sarah Greengrove, Hopper

In case you were inclined to think that Dickens made up some of the more piteous episodes in his novels . . .

From The Times, 17 October 1844:

"Maidstone Petty Sessions ~ Sarah Greengrove, a girl about 15 years of age, was charged with stealing 10 turnips, value 4d., the property of Mr. Charles Frederick Baxter. James Smith, a man in the employ of Mr. Baxter, stated that on going into the field yesterday (Thursday) morning, about 6 o’clock, he observed the prisoner pulling turnips; he went up to her, when she dropped them and walked away, but was apprehended in the course of the morning.

"The girl denied taking 10, but stated that she had come from Marden that morning, where she had been hopping [i.e., harvesting hops -- KT], and being very hungry and thirsty, went into the field and drew four turnips.

"Mr. Ellis [the magistrate] said there was no direct evidence of her having taken 10 turnips, but from her own admission she had taken four under the circumstances stated. It did not appear that she was one of those that had committed depredations there before, and he should leave it for Mr. Baxter to use his own discretion in going any further with the case.

"Mr. Baxter said he wished to press the case, as he had lost a great many turnips, and had been subject to several severe depredations lately on his farm.

"Mr. Ellis thought this a very different case to that of an old offender.

"Mr. Baxter said they had a great difficulty in catching them, and he was determined to make an example of the first one.

"Mr. Ellis regretted very much that his appeal to Mr. Baxter had no effect, for he felt extremely sorry to be obliged to send her to prison; but, as Mr. Baxter seemed determined to press the charge, they had no alternative but to do that. She was then sentenced to pay 4d., the value of the turnips, 3s.6d. costs, and 6d. penalty.

"Prisoner said she had no money, and was ordered to sit down.

"Shortly after, a boy entered the court, crying bitterly, and on going towards the bench said that he had taken his shoes from off his feet and pawned them to pay for his sister. He then gave the money to the magistrate's clerk, Mr. Case, and the girl was discharged.

"We understand that the money was refunded to the boy, and he immediately went to redeem his shoes."

Shown here: Unidentified "Waif Girl," from Hidden Lives Revealed: A Virtual Archive ~ Children in Care, 1881-1918 (this fascinating website features unique archival material about poor and disadvantaged children cared for by The Waifs' and Strays' Society).

Resources

"Hopping Down in Kent," The Museum of Kent Life

"The Hoppers of Kent," BBC Legacies

Charles Darwin on Display

Next year the world will mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species and the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth with several blockbuster exhibitions and events. Here are a few; you can find a comprehensive list (more than 100 so far) at Darwin Online. If you attend any, please feel free to provide a short review in the comments.

I've added a special set of Darwin links in the right-hand sidebar that includes selected events and online resources.

While you're thinking about Darwin, why not donate to the HMS Beagle Project, which will launch a sailing replica of the ship next year? Crewed by scientists and sailors, it will retrace the 1831-36 voyage of the original Beagle.

In the UK

Now through 31 January at University College London: "Charles Darwin of Gower Street" ~~ Darwin lived in a house on the site now occupied by UCL's Darwin Building from 1839-1842, just over two years after his return from H.M.S. Beagle's second voyage. The exhibition illustrates Darwin's life, work, and the influence of his ideas about inheritance and evolution on his contemporaries and successors. UCL's long association with the development of genetics stems from this period, and several items come from the personal libraries and papers of Sir Francis Galton, Darwin's cousin, and Karl Pearson, first Galton Professor of Eugenics. An online exhibition is available here.

Now through 19 April at the Natural History Museum, London: "Darwin" ~~ This "biggest-ever" exhibition about Charles Darwin celebrates his ideas and their impact. Discover the man and the revolutionary theory that changed our understanding of the world. See incredible, revealing, and rare exhibits, some on display for the first time. There's a cool slideshow here and an interactive map of the Beagle voyage here.

Summer 2009 at Christ's Church College, Cambridge: "Darwin at Christ's" ~~ Darwin attended Christ's College from 1828 to 1831. This exhibition, which will be held in Darwin’s former rooms in the College, will feature rare letters, paintings, and the university diary of William Darwin Fox, a second cousin of Darwin and the person who introduced him to beetle collecting.

In the US

Starts 12 February at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut (and then moves to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge University, on 16 June): "Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science, and the Visual Arts" ~~ Science meets art in this groundbreaking exhibition exploring Darwin’s interest in the visual arts and the vast range of artistic responses to his ideas in the later 19th century. "Endless Forms" considers how Darwin’s ideas penetrated the consciousness of the great artists of the era, inspiring visual representations of the struggle for existence, of natural attraction and sexual selection, and the origin and descent of man. This will be explored through paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculpture, taxidermy, and fossils, many of which will be on public display for the first time. Among the artists featured will be Monet, Degas, Cezanne, Turner, Church, Landseer, Tissot, and Rossetti.

Great Ball of Fire in County Durham, 1855

From The Times, 12 December 1855 (click for larger image):

Life in Broadmoor Hospital Revealed

The Berkshire Record Office in Reading has recently made nineteenth-century patient records from Broadmoor Hospital available for the first time, enabling researchers to get a better picture of life inside England's first "criminal lunatic asylum," which opened in May 1863.

The archives tell the stories of some of the hospital's most famous patients, including William Chester Minor (DNB entry here; Wiki entry here), the "Surgeon of Crowthorne" and amateur lexicographer who supplied entries for the Oxford English Dictionary while a patient at Broadmoor, and Richard Dadd (DNB entry here; Tate Britain bio here; Wiki entry here), murderer and celebrated painter of fairies and other supernatural subjects. Roderick MacLean, who shot at Queen Victoria at Windsor Station in March 1882, was sent to Broadmoor after being found not guilty by reason of insanity.

(Concerning the last, there's a famously awful poem by the even more famously awful Victorian poet William McGonagall, one stanza of which goes: "MacLean must be a madman / Which is obvious to be seen / Or else he wouldn't have tried to shoot / Our most beloved Queen.")

Some of the newly released records are included in an exhibition that runs through 22 February at the Reading Museum. "The Secret World of Victorian Broadmoor" features documents and artifacts never before seen by the public, revealing the hidden lives of the hospital's patients, doctors, and staff.

The exhibition marks the completion of Berkshire Record Office’s project to catalogue and conserve Broadmoor’s archives, and includes paintings by Dadd on loan from Bethlem Royal Hospital.

"Broadmoor is one of those collections where every page tells a story," says Dr Peter Durrant, county archivist of Berkshire. "There are many sad tales of lives destroyed by mental illness, of families broken up and never mended, of fear and paranoia.

"It is not history for the fainthearted. Yet at Broadmoor's heart is a community of patients and staff, and it is the history of this community that is now available to all."

Broadmoor, in Crowthorne, still operates as a secure psychiatric unit.

Shown here: Broadmoor Hospital (top), Minor (middle), Dadd (bottom).

Resources:

Patricia Allderidge, The Late Richard Dadd, 1817-1886 (Tate Gallery Publications, 1974).

Simon Winchester, The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (HarperCollins, 1998).

Halloween Grotesquerie at Balmoral

From The Times, 4 November 1869:

"Halloween at Balmoral Castle. – This time-honoured festival was duly celebrated at Balmoral Castle on Saturday evening in a manner not soon to be forgotten by those who took part in its enjoyments.

"As the shades of evening were closing in upon the Strath, numbers of torch-lights were observed approaching the Castle, both from the cottages on the eastern portion of the estate and also those on the west. The torches from the western side were probably the more numerous, and as the different groups gathered together the effect was very fine. Both parties met in front of the Castle, the torch-bearers numbering nearly 100.

"Along with those bearing the torches were a great many people belonging to the neighbourhood. Dancing was commenced by the torch-bearers dancing a “Hulachau” in fine style to the lilting strains of Mr. Ross, the Queen’s Piper. The effect was greatly heightened by the display of bright lights of various colours from the top of the staircase of the tower. After dancing for some time the torch-bearers proceeded round the Castle in martial order, and as they were proceeding down the granite staircase at the north-west corner of the Castle the procession presented a singularly beautiful and romantic appearance.

"Having made the circuit of the Castle, the remainder of the torches were thrown in a pile at the south-west corner, thus forming a large bonfire, which was speedily augmented with other combustibles until it formed a burning mass of huge proportions, round which dancing was spiritedly carried on. The scene at this juncture was one to be long remembered by those who witnessed it. The flames of the bonfire shot up to an immense height, illuminating the Castle wall with a ruddy glare, while the figures of the dancers in their agile and grotesque movements were shown to great advantage.

"Her Majesty witnessed the proceedings with apparent interest for some time, and the company enjoyed themselves none the less heartily on that account."

Shown here: Balmoral Castle, Deeside, Scotland

Delicious Autumn

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns." -- George Eliot

OK, OK, I hear you. A few Peeper readers have written to point out the similarities between Cardinal John Henry Newman (see post below) and the Crypt Keeper from the old HBO series Tales From the Crypt, and to beg me to replace that image in their minds with something, er, prettier.

So, as an antidote, here's one of my favorite paintings, the beautiful and serene Chill October, painted by John Everett Millais in Scotland around 1870. It's currently part of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's spectacular and priceless collection of Victorian art.

Millais attached the following note to the back of the painting:

"Chill October was painted from a backwater of the Tay just below Kinfauns, near Perth. The scene, simple as it is, had impressed me years before I painted it. The traveller between Perth and Dundee passes the spot where I stood. Danger on either side -- the tide which once carried away my platform and the trains which threatened to blow my work into the river. I chose the subject for the sentiment it always conveyed to my mind, and I am happy to think that the transcript touched the public in a like manner, although many of my friends at the time were at a loss to understand what I saw to paint in such a scene. I made no sketch for it, but painted every touch from nature, on the canvas itself, under irritating trials of wind and rain."

Another Millais work, Autumn Leaves (at left) seems perfect for this Friday, surrounded as I am (in Michigan) by crisp air and flaming autumn trees. Millais wanted this painting to inspire "the deepest religious reflection" in its viewers. Today, it's putting me in mind of caramel apples and candy corn. Sorry, Sir John.


Resources:

"Poetic Encounters: Kathleen Jamie on Millais's Chill October" (Tate Britain)

"Sir John Everett Millais's Landscapes -- The Pursuit of Truth and Beauty in Nature" (The Victorian Web)

The Case of the Missing Cardinal

Some red tassels from his galero are apparently all that remain of Cardinal John Henry Newman's remains.

Newman (1801-1890; DNB entry here; Wiki entry here; shown at right one year before he died) was a leading cleric in the Church of England until 1845, when he converted to Roman Catholicism. His grave in a cemetery in Rednal was opened last week at the request of the Vatican, which wanted his body transferred to the Oratory in Birmingham as part of a plan to beatify Newman next year.

Newman had been buried--at his express wish--alongside his close friend, companion, and fellow convert, Father Ambrose St John, with whom he had shared a house. The two men have a joint memorial stone that is inscribed with words chosen by Newman: "Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem" ("Out of shadows and phantasms into the truth").

Gay rights activists, including Peter Tatchell, have called the exhumation an "act of religious desecration." Says Tatchell: "Newman repeatedly made it clear that he wanted to be buried next to his lifelong partner, Ambrose St John. No one gave the Pope permission to defy Newman's wishes. The re-burial has only one aim in mind: to cover up Newman's homosexuality and to disavow his love for another man." The Vatican, naturally, dismisses such claims; in August, the UK government gave permission for the exhumation to proceed.

However, when the cleric's grave was opened last week, it was found that his body had decayed completely.

From The Times, 4 October 08:

"The bones of the Victorian cardinal who is in line to become Britain’s first saint for almost 40 years have disintegrated, hampering plans to turn his final resting place into a centre of Christian pilgrimage.

"Church officials exhuming the body of Cardinal John Henry Newman were surprised to discover that his grave was almost empty when it was opened on Thursday. All that remained were a brass plate and handles from Newman’s coffin, along with a few red tassels from his cardinal’s hat.

"The discovery will not affect Newman’s case for sainthood. But officials have had to abandon plans to transfer his bones from a rural cemetery in Rednal, Worcestershire, to a marble sarcophagus at Birmingham Oratory, which Newman founded after converting to Catholicism from the Church of England.

"Thousands of worshippers were expected to descend on the Oratory from the end of this month to pay their respects to Newman and seek his intercession. Now the Oratory is left with only a few locks of his hair. Some of his remains were also to have been sent to the Vatican.

"Newman is expected to be beatified in December following claims that he was responsible for a miracle in which an American clergyman was 'cured' of a crippling spinal disorder. This would gain him the title 'Blessed,' one step short of sainthood, which will require the Vatican to verify a second miracle.

“'I have been visiting that grave since I was a very young boy,” said Peter Jennings, a spokesman for the Oratory. “I will never forget how I felt, standing there last Thursday, looking at this deep hole which had been dug out. This was the greatest churchman of the 19th century and there was nothing there, only dust.'

"There is no conspiracy theory over what has become of Newman’s remains: experts believe that damp conditions led to their complete decomposition.

"The decision to exhume Newman’s body had been fiercely resisted by gay rights campaigners because the priest had asked to be buried close to the body of Father Ambrose St John, a lifelong friend. With Newman’s grave now lying empty, the controversy is expected to fade away, sparing the Vatican any possible embarrassment over claims that the priest was a closet homosexual.

"Newman, who was born in London, was ordained in 1824 and led the Oxford Movement in the 1830s to draw Anglicans back towards their Catholic roots. He shocked Victorian society when he converted to Rome in 1845. A file on Newman’s 'cause' for sainthood was opened in 1958, but the miracle attributed to him took place only in 2001."

Resources

BBC Radio 4: "In Our Time: The Oxford Movement" (excellent; from 2006; 43 minutes)

Commonweal, 8 October 08: "The Empty Tomb: Cardinal Newman's Last Laugh?"