(Steam)Punk'd Model Trains

The blogosphere is abuzz over the steampunk-influenced model trains devised by artist Chris Walas, and no wonder. They just may be the coolest thing ever.

Shown here is Captain Nemo's "Seafood and Saltwater Salvage Railroad" with submersible locomotive, which Walas created from "the boiler from a Bachmann ten-wheeler" and "an Aristo-craft motor block." I have no idea what that means, but I know genius when I see it. (Plastic Easter eggs, a brass anchor, a drinking straw, and a seashell were also involved.) Its salt- and barnacle-encrusted exterior was created from sand and glitter mixed with acrylic paint.

From Journals of GMM: "Chris Walas makes model trains and creatures in his own alternate universe, consisting of vampires, terminators in rail wheelchairs, Victorian steampunk locomotives, Halloween skeletons, early sci-fi lunar rockets... I give up, if it is cool, Chris has modelled it."

From Table of Malcontents: "When steampunk crashes in head-on collision with model train enthusiasm, you get Chris Walas' rusty, corroded, and incredible creations. Walas' creations exist in a fictional micro-realm called Rogue County, where 19th century Americana meets the super-science villains, protagonists, and inventions of Victorian literature. Captain Nemo has converted his submarine into a locomotive in this universe, and someone appears to have captured Oz's Tock and put him on rails."

From Brass Goggles: "What that man does with blue foam, mustard seeds, and a hefty lick of paint puts a whole new perspective on what can be done with some ingenuity and inspiration! Please also take a look at the collaborative effort that he was part of to create Futuropolis - complete with ‘Verne Engine’ and a flying copper airship. More steampunk than a brass bucket of goggles."

Shown here: The "Jules Verne" engine.

Who Are You Calling "Nellie"?

Yesterday Sir John Major called on his successor to quit Downing Street and hand over power to Gordon Brown as soon as possible. In an interview with the Guardian, the former Tory prime minister criticized Tony Blair's drawn-out departure from office, mocking him for being "in the middle of the longest farewell since Dame Nellie Melba quit the stage."

Major's invocation of Melba, the great Australian soprano (1861-1931) who gave her name both to thin, dry toast and a dessert concoction of peaches and ice cream, was brilliant. Certainly he was right in using Melba as an example of "the long goodbye": in 1924, forty years after her professional debut, Melba announced her farewell to opera but continued to perform through much of 1928. There are additional unflattering parallels between the singer and politician: George Bernard Shaw initially found Melba "hard, shallow, self-sufficient and altogether unsympathetic," epithets that have sometimes been hurled at Blair by his opponents.

Major was also diabolically clever in his use of Melba instead of a contemporary example of the protracted retirement tour (Cher, say, or Barbra Streisand). Her first name, "Nellie," is a common euphemism for effeminate men and Major pointedly included the honorific "Dame." In one fell swoop, Major managed to cast aspersions both on his rival's seeming diva-like reluctance to leave the stage and on his masculinity. (For an amusing discussion of the wide range of negative slang meanings associated with the name "Nellie," see Michael Quinion's "Alas Poor Nell" at World Wide Words.)

Yet there are positive parallels between Melba and Blair, as well. One biographer has noted Melba's "splendid constitution and tenacity of purpose, allied with exceptional powers of concentration and attention to detail" as well as her "charismatic personality" that enabled her to stay at the forefront of her profession for so long -- traits shared by the soon-to-be-ex prime minister.

Major's remarks run against the British public mood. A Guardian/ICM poll published on Thursday showed that most voters think Blair should continue in his job until 27 June. Only 28% of voters said that they wanted Brown to take office now, with 71% of Labour supporters saying they were happy to wait.

Does Major's self-insertion into the public eye now have anything to do with the fact that he is on a book tour to promote his new history of cricket? (In 1997, following the Conservatives' worst electoral defeat in living memory, Major assuaged his disappointment by attending a cricket match at the Oval.)

Perhaps the one truly "doing a Melba" is Major himself.

Shown here: Madame Melba (1901-02) by Rupert Bunny, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

An Inside Look at Five Royal Weddings

Via the BBC and The Telegraph:

A new exhibition at Windsor Castle provides a rare glimpse into the world of royal weddings ... intimate occasions that have become spectacularly public events in recent years.

"Royal Weddings, 1840-1947" runs through 11 May 2008 in the Drawings Gallery. It tells the stories of five royal weddings – from the marriage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten – through photographs, documents from the Royal Archives, rare memorabilia, and charming personal gifts exchanged by members of the Royal Family.

Queen Victoria ascended the throne three years before her marriage to Prince Albert and was the first reigning queen to marry since the sixteenth century. (Shown here: Queen Victoria by Franz Winterhalter, 1840; this portrait, showing the queen in her wedding dress, was painted for the queen as a present to Prince Albert on their wedding day.)

In her journal, Victoria describes her joy when Albert agrees to marry her, saying how happy she is to "feel I was loved and am loved by such an angel."

For her engagement in 1839, she received a beautiful gold bracelet with conjoined amethyst hearts from her mother, the Duchess of Kent, and "a lovely brooch, a spray of orange flowers" designed by the Prince.

A sketch by Queen Victoria of how she imagined she would look in her wedding veil (shown here) is among the memorabilia on display. It was doodled by the young queen as she planned her wedding to Albert, a man she described as "excessively handsome," with "such beautiful blue eyes, and exquisite nose, and such a pretty mouth with delicate moustachios and slight but very slight whiskers."

At the wedding ceremony on 10 February 1840, Victoria was attended by twelve train-bearers, all daughters of peers of the realm. Each girl received a gold brooch, designed by Prince Albert, in the form of an eagle and set with turquoise, pearls, rubies, and diamonds. The queen designed their dresses and recorded in her diary her first sight of the bridesmaids "dressed all in white with white roses, which had a beautiful effect."

Two pieces of the couple's wedding cake are included in the exhibition. John Mauditt, Queen Victoria’s confectioner at Buckingham Palace, made the cake shown here. It was on a vast scale, measuring three metres in circumference and weighing more than 140 kg. The allegorical figure of Britannia stands at the top blessing the symbolic figures of the bride and groom. On top of the cake were bouquets of white flowers tied with true-lovers-knots of white satin ribbon intended as presents for the guests at the wedding breakfast.

The exhibition also details the 1863 wedding of the Prince of Wales (the future King Edward VII) and Princess Alexandra of Denmark, the 1893 wedding of Princess Victoria Mary of Teck (the future Queen Mary) to Prince George of Wales (the future King George V); the 1923 wedding of the Duke of York (the future King George VI) and Lady Elizabeth Bowes Lyon (the future Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother); and the 1947 wedding of Princess Elizabeth (the future Queen Elizabeth II) and Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten (the future Duke of Edinburgh).

Royal librarian Jane Roberts says the display shows "how the Royal family really had the same sort of views about marriage and love and weddings as the rest of us."

The exhibition was mounted in celebration of the upcoming 60th wedding anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. Some reports say that Elizabeth will bestow the title of Prince Consort on her husband later this year. If those reports are true, he will join Prince Albert as one of only two prince consorts in British history.

An excellent online version of the exhibition is available here.

The exhibition is accompanied by the book Five Gold Rings: A Royal Wedding Souvenir Album, which is richly illustrated with images of wedding dresses and jewelry, gifts between bride and groom, engagement and wedding presents from friends and family, wedding cakes and flowers, invitations, menus, music, and photographs. Woven through the text are personal letters and diary entries from the Royal Archives, several of which are reproduced for the first time.
It can be ordered for £9.99 from the Royal Collection online shop.

Cutty Sark Damaged in Fire

A spectacular fire early today heavily damaged the clipper ship Cutty Sark, a British merchant sailing vessel built for the lucrative nineteenth-century tea trade with China.

The ship, which is moored in drydock at Greenwich, had been closed to visitors since last year for a four-year, £26 million ($50 million) renovation.

In a bit of good news, Ian Bell, manager of the restoration project, emerged from an inspection of the ship with soot on his cheeks but an optimistic message about the condition of its iron frame.

"Initial indications suggest we don't have any massive distortions of the ship," Bell said. "It is not as bad as it could have been."

More than half of the ship's structure, including the three 100-foot (33-metre) masts and 250 teak planks, had already been removed as part of the restoration work. Much of the damage was to a temporary wooden roof installed to provide cover for the 65 carpenters, shipwrights, fabricators, and other conservationists currently working on the project.

"I think the most disturbing thing for me is the smell in the air," said Richard Doughty, chief executive of the Cutty Sark Trust. "Anyone who has been on the Cutty Sark knows it has a very distinctive smell from the timber, from the rope. Tragically, that smell now pervades southeast London."

The Cutty Sark left London on its maiden voyage on 16 February 1870, proceeding around Cape Hope to Shanghai a few months later. The ship made only eight voyages to China before its usefulness was usurped by faster ships powered by steam.

Measuring 280 feet in length, the ship weighed 979 tons and its main mast soared 152 feet above the main deck. It was used for training naval cadets during World War II; in 1951 it was moored in London for the Festival of Britain. Shortly afterward, the ship was acquired by the Cutty Sark Society.

Says The Guardian: "The Cutty Sark was the one of the most refined of all ships, the Concorde of her day, fast, delicate and elegant. Her curved lines showed she was not some salt-crusted carrier but a whippet of the seas, designed to race from China with tea. Never quite the fastest, or happiest of ships - beaten for speed by the Thermopylae, the greatest clipper of all - she was nonetheless the last to survive. The sight of her great masts and sharp bow jutting towards the Thames in Greenwich was a reminder that London was once a great port."

So raise a glass of Cutty Sark whisky this evening, then go online and make a donation toward this unique ship's restoration. That's what I'll be doing.

Shown here: Associated Press photo of the Cutty Sark on fire (top); The Cutty Sark by Frederick Tudgay, 1872 (bottom).

"Jai Hind!" -- India Commemorates 1857 Uprising

From The Times, 12 May 2007:

Thousands of flag-waving patriots flocked to the Mughal-built Red Fort in Delhi yesterday [Friday, 11 May] to kick off a year-long celebration of the bloody uprising 150 years ago by Indian rebels against British occupation.

The Indian Mutiny, or the First War of Independence as it is known in India, brought to an end the Mughal empire and the rule of the British East India Company, and led to direct governance by Britain for 90 years.

What was subsequently played down in some British textbooks as a small insurrection by a faction of disaffected, underpaid Indian soldiers – dubbed sepoys by their British commanders – is now widely accepted as a much more significant event, sowing the seeds of nationalism that eventually led to independence in 1947.

India’s leaders have chosen to use the anniversary as a unifying event for a country still riven by religious and caste divisions.

“The fight for freedom united people from different religions and speaking different languages,” said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. “Hindus and Muslims stood together shoulder to shoulder. We cannot forget the Hindu-Muslim unity that 1857 represented and held out as an example for subsequent generations.”

A Government-sponsored march this week by 30,000 young people covering the 50 miles (80km) from Meerut to Delhi highlighted how Muslims fought determinedly in military units that were 85 per cent Hindu.

The soldiers were galvanised initially by reports that the British were using cow and pig fat – offensive to both Hindus and Muslims – to grease the cartridges of their rifles, but their dissatisfaction became a popular revolt because of the close ties between the army and civilians.

“While the sepoys were in the vanguard, the people of the country were behind them,” said Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the ruling Congress Party.

Mindful not to idolise one of the bloodiest chapters in Indian history, the Government has also tried to use the mutiny to focus public attention on the seminal moment of independence – won 60 years ago – without the use of force.

“As a nation inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s message of nonviolence, India has consciously abjured violence as an instrument of social and political change,” Dr Singh said in a speech to parliament.

[At Red Fort, colorful floats and a huge demon-shaped balloon with the Union Jack printed on it (shown here) depicted scenes from the conflict that glorified the mutineers' courage in the face of the might of the country's British masters.]

Tens of thousands on both sides were slaughtered in the uprising that was suppressed savagely in Delhi. The British took four months to quell the revolt and exiled Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor, to Burma.

William Dalrymple, the British historian and author of The Last Mughal, is in no doubt that the anniversary is worth celebrating. “For all that it was a failure and accompanied by some of the most ghastly bloodshed, it was undoubtedly the largest anti-colonial revolt in the nineteenth century – the high point of imperialism – and unequivocally a significant event.”

Links:

Several related news stories are available online at World News Network.

There's a great discussion of 1857 over at chapati mystery.

International Herald Tribune, 10 May 2007: "Letter from India: India's commemoration of 1857 mutiny overcomes some problems," by Amelia Gentleman

Read a dissenting view of the celebration by Tarun Vijay (Times of India): "That the Prime Minister forgot Mangal Pandey, the hero of 1857, in his Parliament speech but remembered Karl Marx shows the pressures and the stress he is working under to keep his government afloat. Most of the MPs and MLAs stayed home glued to their TV channels for the UP results rather than attending the 1857 function at Red Fort. It's a shame to see how the 150th anniversary has been turned into a sham sarkari jholawala function devoid of any life and vibrancy."

County Collection of Eliot Letters Goes Online

A new website celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of George Eliot’s first novel, Scenes of Clerical Life, has just been launched by the Warwickshire Library Service. It features facsimiles and transcripts of the county’s collection of George Eliot letters that are now made available online for the first time.

Eliot was born in 1819 at South Farm on the Arbury estate near Nuneaton in Warwickshire. The letters provide a fascinating insight into her everyday life and fall into two groups.

The first group includes Eliot's correspondence with the Sibree family, with whom she grew close while living in Coventry in the 1840s. Other letters in this group date from the 1870s and are addressed to Eliot's lover, George Henry Lewes, from his son Herbert, then living in Africa. Several letters addressed to Arthur and Alice Helps reveal telling details of the Eliot-Lewes relationship and touch on matters of contemporary concern, such as vivisection. Still others concern Lewes’ views of various science-related issues.

The second group relates largely to the family of Eliot's brother Isaac Evans and shed considerable light on how Eliot’s family, which had disowned her during her 24-year "marriage" to Lewes, responded to her in the decades following her death.

The website provides a number of useful links. A collection of Eliot’s works held at Nuneaton Library can be accessed via the site; the site also includes a biography detailing key points in Eliot's life, including her move to London after her father’s death; her dealings with Thackeray, Dickens, and Browning; and her relationship with Lewes. A list of Warwickshire events related to the 150th anniversary of Scenes of Clerical Life is also provided.

The digitization of the letters was funded by Museums Libraries and Archives West Midlands.

“The website is a wonderful opportunity to find out more about one of the county’s foremost figures," says Lesley Kirkwood, Warwickshire local studies librarian. "The letters are an authentic source of what was happening in her life at a time when she was among the nation's most prolific and talented writers and are of great importance to those interested in Eliot or to those who are just curious about society life in the nineteenth century.”

Shown here: George Eliot by François d'Albert Durade, 1849; the first page of a letter from Eliot to her uncle Samuel Evans of Millhouse, comforting him on the illness of his wife Elizabeth (the model for Dinah in Adam Bede).

The Queen's "Schoolgirlish" Scribbles

From the 6 May 2007 Scotland on Sunday:

Queen Victoria discussed the "horrid" Irish and Russians in private correspondence with Disraeli, according to papers of the Scots-born prime minister Arthur Balfour (1848-1930) held by the Brander family of Whittingehame, East Lothian.

Britain's longest reigning monarch also told Disraeli she wished she were a man so she could go and fight enemies of her empire.

In November 1919, a Buckingham Palace aide wrote to Balfour, then in the Cabinet as Lord President of the Council, asking for advice about the proposed publication of letters between the Queen and Disraeli.

The following month Balfour wrote back suggesting that a number of the Queen's remarks be removed from the letters, dating between 1875 and 1878, to protect her reputation. Balfour wrote: "There is a phrase used by the Queen in which she talks about giving the 'horrid Russians such a beating.' I rather like the Queen's passionate wish 'to be a man and go out and fight her country's enemies.' All the same, these are expressions which rather degrade sentiments which are in themselves wholly admirable."

Balfour also called for the passage where the Queen referred to "these horrid Irish" to be removed before publication. He wrote: "No doubt the Irish party of obstruction in the House of Commons was horrible, but I cannot help feeling that this colloquial commentary might, with advantage, be omitted. It is somewhat schoolgirlish. If I have seemed to cavil at words, it is not because they are too vehement, but because I think they will be misunderstood and will injure rather than improve the general effort of this remarkable piece of political portraiture."

Balfour added: "Without being in the least clever, Queen Victoria was certainly a most remarkable personality. Unfortunately she wrote like a schoolgirl, incapable of seeing the reality behind the form."

Shown here: The Queen and Disraeli.

Brunel's Crystal Palace Towers to Rise Again

From the 29 April 2007 Observer:

Isambard Kingdom Brunel's water towers at Crystal Palace, once famed throughout the British Empire for their height and grandeur, are to be rebuilt in a remarkable plan that blends history with cutting-edge green technology.

A major redevelopment of the south London parkland site will see the towers again dominate the surrounding area, just as they loomed for nearly 80 years over the pleasure gardens once described by Queen Victoria as "a magical fairyland."

The original towers, which were 280 feet tall, fed hundreds of tons of water to showpiece fountains below and were completed by Brunel in 1855. The new structures will employ state-of-the-art engineering to draw in wind at their base to power internal turbines and generate electricity.

The vast glass conservatory that stood next to the towers for decades and became an icon of the Victorian age was designed by Joseph Paxton to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. Boasting nearly a million square feet of glass, the pavilion was quickly dubbed the Crystal Palace. After wowing the crowds in Hyde Park, where it was first erected, the whole building, along with much of its landscaped grounds and entertainments, was recreated on an even more impressive scale on Sydenham Hill in south-east London.

In order to feed Paxton's new fountains on the site, Brunel built towers with tanks at the top that could hold 1,200 tons of water. A year after the towers were finished, the fountains were unveiled. Visitors were reportedly astounded by their 11,788 jets of water, all flowing at 120,000 gallons a minute. Word of these delights spread speedily through Europe and the French emperor, Napoleon III, paid a visit with his consort, Eugenie. Influential concerts given there in those early years introduced Schubert, Schumann, and Sullivan to the British public. Now the London Development Agency is planning to regenerate the historic site and bring back some its former glory.

Shown here: Postcard showing the Crystal Palace in Sydenham, 1905 (top); the fountains on the Italian terraces were just some of the water features fed by water stored in a pair of water towers, one at each end of the building, which were designed by Brunel (bottom).

Related link:
Philip Delamotte photographs of the Crystal Palace, Sydenham (English Heritage)

Recording the Empire

A number of museums and archives with material relating to nineteenth-century Britain and her empire have made extensive collections of photographs available online. Here are two well-organized and visually striking web resources.

Roger Fenton Crimean War Photographs at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

The Crimean War photographs of Robert Fenton (1819-69) represent one of the earliest systematic attempts to document a war through the medium of photography. Fenton, who spent fewer than four months in the Crimea in 1855, produced 360 photographs under extremely trying conditions. He photographed the leading figures of the allied armies, documented the care and quality of camp life of the British soldiers, and recorded scenes in and around Balaclava and on the plateau before Sevastopol.

He did not photograph combat or its aftermath. Whether there was an explicit directive from the British government to refrain from photographing views that could be deemed detrimental to the government's management of the war effort, perhaps in exchange for permission to travel and photograph in the war zone, or whether there was merely an implicit understanding between the government and the photographer is not known.

Fenton photographs shown here: William H. Russell, The Times special correspondent (top); Cornet Henry John Wilkin of the 11th Hussars (bottom). Twenty-five letters written by Fenton to his family and friends while he was in the Crimea are available here.




"Images of Empire" at the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum, Bristol

More than 6,000 photographs and film clips representing almost 150 years of British colonial life are available online for the first time at this website maintained by the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum. Visitors can explore the site by ten thematic areas (domestic life, dress and adornment, hunting, landscapes and scenery, portraits, royalty and chiefs, street scenes, trade and industry, transport, and wars and conflicts) or search by collection or keyword.

Shown here: Group portrait (1902) featuring Raja Sikander Khan of Nagar and the Mir of Hunza dressed in ceremonial attire for the Coronation Durbar at Delhi (top); portrait of Osman Digna (c. 1887), general in the Mahdist army of Sudan from 1883 until his arrest by the British in 1900 (bottom).

Related link:
Photographic Exhibitions in Britain, 1839-1865: Records from Victorian Exhibition Catalogues

This is a research database containing individual records for more than 20,000 photographs drawn from forty exhibition catalogues published between 1839 and 1865. You can search by exhibition, photographer, and process.

A Victorian Girl and Her Mummy

It takes about twenty minutes to read The Professor's Daughter, a charming and gorgeously illustrated graphic novel by French artists Joann Sfar and Emmanuel Guibert originally published in 1997 and recently reissued in an English translation by First Second, an imprint of Roaring Brook Press.

That's more than long enough to become emotionally invested in this madcap love story featuring Lillian Bowell, the daughter of a famous Victorian Egyptologist, and Imhotep IV, a pharaoh a few thousand years her senior.

Along the way, subtle points are made about cultural imperialism, class inequities, the tyranny of fathers, and women's rights during the Victorian period. "I'm an antiquity," says Imhotep IV. "I belong to the country of the one who found me." Lillian complains that she sometimes feels like a possession of her father's.

This 64-page fable moves at a cracking pace but you'll want to slow down to enjoy Guibert’s elegant ink and watercolor panels. The softness of his brushwork and the impressionistic wash of browns, grays, blues, and reds are a perfect match for the sweet, loopy story. Imhotep IV may be the most dashing pharaoh ever to grace the printed page: think King Tut crossed with Fred Astaire ("dancing by the Nile, the ladies love his style") and you get the idea. This book is a thing of beauty ... an absolute treat and a joy to read.

I've written a longer review of this book, with a plot summary, for Amazon:

Imperial Slapdash

"Victoria's Empire," a three-part series from BBC1 starting Sunday, April 29, takes viewers on a tour of former outposts of the British Empire.

In the first episode, presenter Victoria Wood travels to Kolkata, where she explores the remains of the British Raj and finds some very well-preserved Victorian buildings. She chats with resident Toby Sinclair and discovers how the British learned local languages. Then it's up to Darjeeling where memsahibs avoided the hot summer weather and where taking tea wasn't the only diversion. Wood also visits Hong Kong and Borneo, where she comes face-to-face with the descendant of a chief head hunter, bird's nest soup, and a baby orangutan.

In future episodes, Wood visits Ghana, Jamaica, Newfoundland, New Zealand, Australia, and Zambia.

No doubt this series will show up on American public television in the not-too-distant future. Not having seen it, I'm not in a position to judge it. It strikes me, however, that what is truly needed today is not a chirpy, whirlwind "highlights of empire" tour but an informed discussion of the British imperial legacy (both good and bad) and how it has fueled contemporary geopolitical conflicts. Not as riveting, perhaps, as watching Wood experience her first taste of bird's nest soup, but surely more important.

The Manchester Evening News has just published this more optimistic preview (26 April 2007).

Shown here: Imperial Federation "Map of the World" showing the extent of the British Empire in 1886. Click on the image for a larger version.

Big-Screen "Middlemarch," "Wolfman" Remake on Tap

Two new films in the works look very interesting ...

Middlemarch: "What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?" Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes has announced that he will make the first big-screen version of George Eliot's 1871 novel Middlemarch. Andrew Davies, who created the 1994 Middlemarch mini-series for the BBC, is currently writing the script; filming will begin next year. Says Davies: "It's strange to be revisiting [Middlemarch] again and trying to cut it down to two hours...I'm struggling with that at the moment. I think, though, it'll be like the last one I did but I'll make it more of a love story... I'm going to concentrate on the four main characters. It'll be much more romantic and emotional than the series. And I think Sam wants Kate Winslet [Mendes's wife] to play Dorothea. I don't think she'll be able to say no, will she?" Shown here: Rufus Sewell as Will Ladislaw and Juliet Aubrey as Dorothea Brooke in the BBC mini-series. Read more...

Wolfman: "Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright." It looks like Anthony Hopkins may be joining Benicio Del Toro in the cast of Wolfman, a remake of the 1941 Lon Chaney Jr. horror classic, which tells the story of a man who returns from America to his ancestral home in Victorian-era Britain only to be bitten by a werewolf and turned into one himself. Shooting starts this fall; Mark Romanek will direct; script by Andrew Kevin Walker. Read more...

"Dickens World" Revealed

Further to my posts of 28 March and 12 April, here are a few new photos (courtesy of the Associated Press) of Dickens World in Kent, now scheduled to open on 25 May.

Eddie Sampson in character as "Ned Fiendish," rat catcher.

An unnamed "Dickensian character" at Dickens World.


A view across the rooftops.

Visitors enjoy a boat trip.

Durbar Chairs Return to Osborne House

(Via 24 Hour Museum):

Four of the original Durbar chairs made for Queen Victoria in 1890-91 have been restored to their rightful place in Osborne House, Isle of Wight, after 100 years in private hands.

English Heritage helped raise £45,000 to buy the chairs after being tipped off when they appeared in a Midlands sale room. They join five other chairs from the original set of 36, bringing the total at Osborne House to nine.

“The chairs were disposed of shortly after Queen Victoria’s death when they were presumably thought to be of little interest," said Michael Hunter, English Heritage curator at Osborne House. "However, the chance for us to acquire them and bring them back home to Osborne after nearly 100 years is very exciting.”

The magnificent walnut and leather chairs were created by Bhai Ram Singh to complement the Indian-style Durbar Room (shown here), which was commissioned by Queen Victoria in 1890 to celebrate her role as Empress of India. The room, which was used originally as a banqueting hall, was designed by Singh and John Lockwood Kipling, father of Rudyard Kipling. Its walls are decorated with symbols of India, including Ganesh, the elephant god of good fortune; the deeply coffered ceiling is made of a fibrous plaster.

A photograph of the Durbar Room at Osborne House
taken in the 1890s and showing the Durbar chairs in place.

The four Durbar chairs secured by
English Heritage for Osborne House.

The intricately carved chairs have an
elaborate bird motif that is repeated on panels
in the door and door surrounds in the Durbar Room.

Salmagundi #3

My third collection of odds and ends ...

Fit for a king: The category: "Court Comestibles." The answer: Smoked haddock, scrambled eggs, cold cuts, kippers, roast pheasant, fruit, bacon, sausages, devilled kidneys, scones, and kedgeree. The correct question: What is breakfast for King Edward VII? (The Times, 12 April 2007). Shown here: The portly monarch.

Victorian shrunken heads redux: Blogger Maria Grasso takes another look at the hand-wringing over one of the most famous exhibits in Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum. (Spiked, 28 March 2007; read my 7 March 2007 post on this topic).

Out of pocket: The pocket handkerchief was a useful tool that helped genteel ladies in the nineteenth century artfully highlight a blush or a tear. (Common-Place, January 2007).

New resource in women's history: Genesis, an online guide to sources for women's history in the British Isles sponsored by The Women's Library in London, has been relaunched with a new site and expanded content. It now includes a searchable database of women's history collections in museums, libraries, and archives throughout the UK and a "Guide to Sources" that provides access to a wide range of international web resources on women's history. Type "Victorian" into the database and up comes everything from the personal library of Mrs George Linnaeus Banks, nee Isabella Varley, the Manchester schoolmistress and author of The Manchester Men (1876) to the papers of Mary Eliza Haweis, arbiter of Victorian taste and author of The Art of Decoration (1881).

Movin' on up: A new exhibition at the American Museum in Britain (Bath) recounts the triumphs of the many beautiful and famous American heiresses who married into British aristocracy in the late nineteenth century and offers insight into an era characterized by money, love, infidelity, and ruthless social climbing. "Dollar Princesses – American Heiress to Peeress in Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain" runs through 28 October. The American Jennie Jerome (shown here), wife of Randolph Churchill and mother of Winston, is among those featured. Fascinating details emerge about her life at the highest echelons of British society – including her affairs with Edward VII (he of the 3,000-calorie breakfast described above), her job as a magazine editor, and the tattoo of a snake entwined around her wrist. These "dollar princesses" were feisty women who loved life and lived it to the fullest, often in direct opposition to the social mores of their day.

Conductor Costa Gets Blue Plaque

Sir Michael Costa (1808-1884), pioneering conductor and orchestral reformer, was commemorated today with an English Heritage Blue Plaque at 59 Eccleston Square, London.

Costa was the dominant figure in England's musical advancement during the mid-nineteenth century and it was during his career that England largely shed the reputation of being a "land without music."

59 Eccleston Square is a particularly significant address because it was here, between 1857 and 1883, that Costa spent half of his 55-year career in London. He entertained some illustrious guests at the house, including the Anglo-Italian opera singer Adelina Patti; the leading music critics, for whom he gave an annual dinner; and the Prince of Wales, who called on Costa several times when he was ill in the 1880s.

Costa organized most of the Royal Family's private concerts at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle and was regularly invited to sing and play with Queen Victoria. His preeminence as the first professional conductor in England was recognized in 1869 when he became the first person to be knighted for his services as a conductor.

Maestro Antonio Pappano, music director of the Royal Opera, unveiled the plaque.

Shown here: Michael Costa

Duleep Singh: The Last Maharajah of Punjab

This week a marble bust of the Sikh maharajah Duleep Singh by celebrated sculptor and Royal Academician John Gibson (1790-1866) will be auctioned by Bonhams. Singh was one of the nineteenth century's most intriguing personalities; the bust, showing him at the height of his fame, with pearl necklace and embroidered tunic, is expected to fetch as much as £35,000.

According to The Times of India: "Punjabis have begun exploring ways to have the community hold on to [the bust]. Taking a lead is the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbhandhak Committee (SGPC), which has decided to send a representative from Amritsar, or elsewhere, to stand guard during the April 19 sale. 'The bust is our pride,' said SGPC president Avtar Singh Makkar. 'We will either send a buyer or have someone else, it could even be a company, buy it for us. We will leave no stone unturned in our effort to get such a precious thing back.'"

[Update: The bust sold for an astonishing £1,500,000 plus premium and tax. The buyer was a private UK collector. Bonhams issued this press release on the auction results. There's also this analysis in The Times of India.]

The last Maharajah of Punjab, Singh led an eventful life that included becoming the ruler of his northwestern Indian state in 1843 at the age of five. Deposed six years later when the East India Company annexed his territories, he was placed under the tutelage of Dr. John Spencer Login and efforts to "Anglicize" him began in earnest. (Login had served as the first governor of Lahore Fort when the British annexed the Punjab in 1849.) Singh was more or less forcibly converted to Christianity in 1853; the following year, he was packed off to exile in England.

He quickly became a society favorite and a familiar presence at court. Queen Victoria doted on him and became godmother to Singh's first son. (It was she who commissioned the portrait shown here, by court painter Franz Winterhalter, in 1855.) The queen appears to have been taken with him from the start. Singh is "extremely handsome and speaks English perfectly," she wrote, "and has a pretty, graceful, and dignified manner ... I always feel so much for these poor deposed Indian princes." In 1858 she noted that Singh "looks so handsome and well – and is talkative and agreeable ... Those eyes and those teeth are too beautiful.” Under tutors appointed by Prince Albert, Singh learned science, music, and German.

In 1863, he left London and settled at Elveden Hall in Suffolk, where he entertained the Prince of Wales and other members of the aristocracy. Under his care the 17,000-acre estate became a well-managed game preserve that was the site of lavish hunting and shooting parties, or shikar. For the house itself, Singh hired architect John Norton to add an overlay of oriental splendor in the form of a minaret; a domed water tower; ceiling and wall panels in elaborate Indian designs; marble fireplaces; embroidered Indian wall hangings; and a set of six upholstered chairs with "peacock" backs. In the process, Singh racked up a considerable amount of debt and his pleas to the British government to return to him the personal treasures his father Maharajah Ranjit Singh had bequeathed him fell on deaf ears. Among those was the famous Koh-i-Noor diamond, which had been surrendered to Britain in the same Treaty of Lahore that had ended the younger Singh's reign in Punjab. (Shown here is the statue of the maharajah in nearby Thetford, which was unveiled by Charles, Prince of Wales, in 1999).

Angered by his treatment, Singh tried to return to India but was stopped in Aden and sent back to Britain. Eventually he settled in Paris in substantially reduced financial circumstances and died there in 1893. Today he lies in the yard of the Suffolk parish church he restored, next to his first wife and one of his three sons. Shown here: Singh's gravestone at the Church of St Andrew and St Patrick, Elveden, Suffolk.

Recommended links:

Peter Bance: http://www.duleepsingh.com/
Anglo-Sikh Heritage Trail

The Koh-i-Noor Diamond

The Times, 14 March 2007:
"Duleep Singh: Prince Charming of the Punjab"

The Times of India, 27 March 2007:
"Sikhs want royal bust, at any cost"

Recommended books:

Peter Bance, The Duleep Singhs — The Photograph Album Of Queen Victoria’s Maharaja (2004)

Christy Campbell, The Maharajah's Box: An Exotic Tale of Espionage, Intrigue, and Illicit Love in the Days of the Raj (2002)

Au Naturel

Following on from yesterday's post (15 April 2007)...

Who needs a court painter, sculptor, or wax model maker when you've got 64 million years of erosion working on your behalf?

Shown here is the very famous Queen Victoria hoodoo in Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. See her standing there, facing right, in crown and voluminous dress?

This naturally occurring spire of soft, ancient limestone consists of sediments deposited by the repeated advancing and retreating of sea and lake over millions of years.

It's the same material -- formed in exactly the same way -- used to build many of Britain's most beautiful stately homes and public buildings.

"Bless the geology of Britain, in all its astonishing variety," says Clive Aslet in a recent Independent article on the use of limestone for building in Britain. "Owners of stone-built houses across the country inhabit a world unimaginably older than man."

It's the same world inhabited by this naturally regal queen.

Waxing Victorian

Not all modern incarnations of Queen Victoria are executed in stone (see previous posts of 2 March and 12 March). Here are a few fashioned of softer material.

Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, London: Wax model maker Marie Tussaud moved to London from Paris three years before Victoria ascended the throne. Her "museum" in Baker Street, which initially focused on French figures such as Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Marat, and Napoleon, was an instant success, and Tussaud became one of the leading women entrepreneurs of nineteenth-century London. Tussaud soon added figures from British history to her display, emphasizing verisimilitude. When Queen Victoria married in 1840, for example, Tussaud obtained her permission to have the same dressmaker create a replica of her wedding gown for £1,000.

Brading Wax Works, Isle of Wight: In the "Great British Legends" room you'll find the queen mourning her husband in a version of the Durbar Room at Osborne House. Originally called the Isle of Wight Wax Works Museum and Animal World, this attraction located between Ryde and Sandown was founded by Graham Osborne-Smith in 1965. The queen shares the room with Titus Flavius Vespasian; Lord Louis Mountbatten; Diana, Princess of Wales; and Sir Winston Churchill.

Queen Victoria Building, Sydney: The Queen Victoria Building has been described as "the most beautiful shopping center in the world." Built in 1898 to replace the original Sydney Markets, it occupies an entire city block. In 1984 it was completely refurbished as a shopping center. A hanging clock displays a series of mechanically moving tableaux of British kings and queens every hour on the hour. This "exhibition" is heralded by loud trumpeters and ends with the beheading of Charles I. Permanent and temporary exhibitions are featured on each level and include this wax model of Queen Victoria and replicas of the British crown jewels.

Royal London Wax Museum, Victoria, British Columbia: The queen receives Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in her tartan-lined drawing room. Disraeli, a Tory, was PM for nine months in 1868 and then again from 1874 to 1880. Victoria approved of Disraeli's conservatism and enjoyed his charm. Disraeli famously noted that "everyone likes flattery, and when you come to royalty, you should lay it on with a trowel." When Disraeli died in 1881, Victoria was devastated and reportedly cried for days.

Potter's Wax Museum, St. Augustine, Florida: In the heart of historic St. Augustine you can find this rendition of the queen. Founded by George L. Potter in 1949, this attraction claims to be the first wax museum in the United States. The general consensus among those reviewing it on tripadvisor.com is that it is also the lamest wax museum in the United States. Clue #1: the elasticized neckline in the queen's polyester blouse.


National Railway Museum, York: In 2003, Queen Victoria's favorite royal train carriage, or "saloon," went back on public display at the National Railway Museum in York after a £100,000 restoration. Built by the London & North Western Railway in 1869, the saloon was originally two separate vehicles. It was converted to a single carriage in 1895 and lavishly finished in silk, ivory, satinwood, and bird’s eye maple. In this photo, actress Prunella Scales, who portrayed the queen in the BBC docudrama Looking for Victoria, visits the saloon before it is sealed for display. (Here the queen is portrayed by a live person; for a blurry -- or is that "artsy" -- photo of the current wax doppelganger, visit Carlos62 at Flickr.)

When East Met West in New Bond Street

"Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet," said Rudyard Kipling. Yet a new exhibition of photographs suggests otherwise--that, in fact, the East and the West met each other in surprising and profound ways during the Victorian and Edwardian periods.

"Neither East Nor West - The Lafayette Collection: Asia in the Age of Monochrome," which runs through 10 September at the Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur, features 45 photographs drawn from the extensive Lafayette photo archive at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

For more than two decades, the world's rich and famous trooped to 179 New Bond Street to have their portrait taken by James Lafayette, the most commercially successful photographer of the day. He photographed the most prominent people at court, in society, the arts, the armed forces, and the professions, as well as a stream of foreign visitors, from Japanese diplomats to African princes.

The IAMM exhibit notes that "the sitters in the Lafayette photographs keep their identity while participating in a newly emerged global environment ... The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries may have been oppressively ‘Victorian’ for many, but for the elite this was a time of openness and international understanding. The Lafayette Studio is a symbol of this dual role: a force that brought people from many parts of the world together for their mutual benefit."

The exhibit's curators believe that this convivial mingling of the elite from East and West ("not only did they use the same photographic studio; they also attended the same events and often dressed in the same way") played a role in Malaysia's relatively peaceful transition to independence.

Can't make it to Kuala Lumpur? The exhibition's catalogue is available online from the museum's shop.

Shown here: Junku Mahmud, President of State Council of Kedah, Malaysia; part of the Lafayette Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

1857-2007

The Government of India announced this week that several programs are being organized to mark the 150th anniversary of the Uprising of 1857 (or, if you prefer, the Sepoy Rebellion, the Indian Mutiny, or India’s First War of Independence).

Officials say the programs are part of "a national tribute to the martyrs who lost their lives for the cause of independence of our country from the clutches of the British raj."

In its 2007 budget, the Government of India set aside an amount of Rs. 10 crore for the celebration (about $2.3 million or £1.2 million if I've figured the conversion correctly).

Among the plans: a national youth rally in May in which 30,000 young people will walk from Meerut to Delhi, covering a distance of 80 kilometers in five days, in a modern version of the sepoys' march between those two cities.

For those who would like to mark the occasion with a bit of Bollywood, I recommend The Rising: Ballad of Mangal Pandey, starring the very handsome Aamir Khan as Pandey, a sepoy in the 34th Regiment of the Bengal Native Infantry of the British East India Company in Barrackpur. Pandey goes berserk (perhaps under the influence of bhang) on hearing rumors that a new bullet cartridge is greased with pig and cow fat. He attacks his British sergeant, setting off the chain of events that leads to the wider rebellion.

This film broke Indian box office records when it was released in 2005. Its historical inaccuracies (huh...go figure) caused rioting in Uttar Pradesh, Pandey's home region.

Read the review in the blog "chapati mystery" here.

Related link: The Financial Express, 8 April 2007: "Accidental hero or a forgotten martyr? The controversy surrounding his intentions apart, Indian history has failed to give sepoy Mangal Pandey due credit"

Great Expectations or Hard Times Ahead?

Further to my previous post on Dickens World (28 March 2007):

"Great Expectations for Dickens Theme Park"

CHATHAM (Reuters), 12 April 2007 - Literary purists may quake at the prospect of a Charles Dickens theme park complete with a Great Expectations boat ride and Ye Olde Curiosity Gift Shop.

But Dickens World, a £62 million ($115 million) complex built in the naval dockyard where his father once worked as a clerk, is confidently predicting 300,000 visitors a year to this new attraction dedicated to the Victorian author.

"We are not Disney-fying Dickens,'' insists manager Ross Hutchins as he dons hard hat and fluorescent jacket to tour the site, a hive of activity as the Fagin's den playground and Newgate Prison's grimy walls are given their finishing touches.

"If Dickens was alive today, he would probably have built the place himself," Hutchins said of the theme park in Chatham, once a big unemployment blackspot in southeast England after the dockyards closed in the 1980s but now a major regeneration target.

"In fact, if Dickens was alive today, he would probably have been working for television as a scriptwriter. He was very much a populist,'' he said of the author of classic tales like Oliver Twist.

Some critics may have been scornful of the project in the lead-up to its opening on April 20. But Hutchins insists the attraction -- a dark, dirty, and dank London is populated by thieves, murderers, and ghosts -- has the air of authenticity as it was built in consultation with experts from the Dickens Fellowship.

"Is the world ready for a Dickens theme park?'' The Observer newspaper asked of the giant indoor attraction.

"There is a lot to fear here,'' The New York Times said. "There is the prospect that characters from Dickens' novels -- Mr Pecksniff and the Artful Dodger, Mr Pickwick and Uriah Heep -- will wander through Dickens World the way Goofy and Mickey walk the streets of Disneyland.''

Hutchins retorted: "If we were Disney-fying Dickens we wouldn't be talking to people like the Dickens Fellowship to ensure the correct historical facts.''

He talks with crusading zeal about the project, proudly showing off the interactive screens in the mock schoolroom or checking the boat ride that takes visitors from "the sewers to the rooftops of London.'' But he is the first to recognize Dickens still has a lot of catching up to do with Shakespeare in literary popularity.

"If you asked many people today under 30 to name five Dickens novels, they probably couldn't. We are going to bring Dickens to life,'' he promised.

There was certainly no shortage of job applicants with 950 people chasing up to 60 jobs in the theme park.

Hutchins said: "One man was so mad about Dickens that he applied for the job despite living on the west coast of America near Seattle. I did e-mail him back and said don't you think 4,800 miles might be a bit of a long commute for you?''

---end of Reuters article---

Shown here: Image from Dickens World publicity materials