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?"

Dracula To Rise Again

From The Guardian (6 October 08):

"Van Helsing and his intrepid band of vampire hunters might have disposed of Bram Stoker's creation Dracula more than a century ago, but a sequel to the novel by Stoker's great grand-nephew will see them under attack from the undead once again.

"Dacre Stoker delved into his ancestor's handwritten notes on the original Dracula novel to pen his sequel, Dracula: The Un-Dead -- the original name for Dracula before an editor changed the title. The novel, out next October, draws on excised characters, existing character back-stories and plot threads that were cut from Stoker's original novel, first published 111 years ago.

"The new book is set in London in 1912, a quarter of a century after the Count apparently 'crumbled into dust.' Vampire-hunter Van Helsing's protégé Dr Seward is now a disgraced morphine addict, and Quincey, the son of Stoker's hero Jonathan, has become involved in a troubled theatre production of Dracula, directed and produced by Bram Stoker himself. The play plunges Quincey into the world of his parents' terrible secrets, but before he can confront them his father is found murdered, impaled in Piccadilly Circus.

"The original is written in classic epistolary form, alternating between different narrators; the sequel adopts a more direct storytelling route. '[This] makes it more immediately accessible to a modern thriller readership, while remaining faithful to the spirit and atmosphere of the Victorian original,' said publisher Jane Johnson of HarperCollins UK.

"The book has caused a storm in the publishing world, selling for more $1m to Dutton US, HarperCollins UK, and Penguin Canada. A film version is also in the works, with shooting expected to begin next June.

"Dacre Stoker, who formerly coached the Canadian Olympic Pentathlon team and now lives in the US, is writing the novel with Dracula historian Ian Holt, a screenwriter and member of The Transylvanian Society of Dracula. The Un-Dead is the first Dracula story to be fully authorised by the Stoker family since the 1931 film starring Bela Lugosi.

"Stoker, speaking to guardian.co.uk from a fishing trip in Tennessee, said he had initially been 'a little sceptical' about the project to resurrect Bram Stoker's original themes and characters, which was dreamed up by Holt. "Growing up, all the Stokers in my generation were pretty blasé about the fact we were related to this great horror writer. At Halloween we'd get all these comments about 'are we going to get bitten if we go round to the Stokers?'," he said, admitting that he only got around to reading his great grand-uncle's novel when he went to college. 'But Ian seemed to be the real deal.'

"Stoker and Holt say they have each written equal amounts of the novel. 'When we started I was worried because Dacre had never written a novel before, but he was great,' Holt said. 'I think I've got a little bit [of my ancestor's skills] in the bloodline,' said Stoker, who spent some time researching the London of 1912 in order to write the book. 'We really needed to do the detail the way Bram did - we owed it to him,' he said.

"'At times we felt in a weird way that Bram was there with us as a third author,' added Holt. 'We had his notes, and the stories and legends passed down through the family -- we were able to give him back his legacy -- reclaim Dracula for his roots.' Stoker agreed. 'Our intent is to give both Bram and Dracula back their dignity. Maybe even more important is to give the novel's legions of loyal fans what they have been waiting over a century for . . the return of the real Dracula."

"Stoker's original Dracula, the forefather of the wave of vampire novels currently flooding the bookshops, has never been out of print since it was published in 1897. The sequel will be competing with two other high-profile vampire novels published next year: film director Guillermo del Toro's debut The Strain, about a vampiric virus that invades New York, and Justin Cronin's The Passage, about a vampire plague spawned by medical experiments."

Shown here: Bram Stoker

Salmagundi #9

The weird and wonderful paintings of New York artist Travis Louie depict alternate Victorian lifeforms -- what he calls "human oddities, mythical beings, and otherworldly characters who appear to have had their formal portraits taken to mark their existence and place in society." His influences include sci-fi and horror films, circus sideshows, vaudeville, and the conventions of Victorian portraiture. "Jack Longfellow," shown at left, reminds me a bit of Gladstone. Check out the complete gallery of characters here.

Royal Holloway, University of London has announced that it is sending its world-famous collection of Victorian-era paintings on a two-year tour of the United States. The majority of the 60 canvases -- amassed in the late nineteenth century by self-made English millionaire Thomas Holloway -- have never been seen outside England. "Paintings from the Reign of Victoria: The Royal Holloway Collection, London" opens at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma, then travels to the Delaware Art Museum, the Yale Center for British Art, the Brigham Young University Museum of Art, the Huntsville (Alabama) Museum of Art, the Society of the Four Arts (Palm Beach, Florida), the Cantor Center for the Visual Arts at Stanford University, the Fresno (California) Metropolitan Museum, and the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia. Learn more about Royal Holloway's outstanding collection here.

To mark the 200th anniversary of its founding, the famous tour operator and travel agent Thomas Cook is opening its archives, housed in Peterborough, to the public. The company was founded by, er, Thomas Cook, a Baptist missionary and cabinet maker from Derbyshire who began offering breaks for Temperance campaigners in the 1840s. Visitors to the archives can consult destination brochures and handbooks dating back to 1845, issues of Cook's Excursionist newspaper (1851-1902) -- first issued to promote trips to London's Great Exhibition in 1851 -- and its successor, The Traveller's Gazette (1902-39), travelers' diaries, railway timetables, business records, photos, and film. Shown above: a detail of a map showing Cook's steamer and dahabeah service on the Nile, 1897.

Just after being married for the third time, the architect A. W. N. Pugin told a friend: "I have got a first-rate Gothic woman at last, who perfectly understands and delights in spires, chancels, screens, stained glass, brasses, vestments, etc." Rosemary Hill's biography of Pugin, God's Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain, has just won the 2008 James Tait Black biography prize. Read the TLS review by John Carey here.

Salmagundi #8

Victorian art: Jeremy Paxman is to present a new television series about his “first love”: Victorian art and culture. The four-part series will air on BBC1 next year. “All human life is there in Victorian paintings," Paxman says, "from the huddled poor in the workhouse to the queen at her court to the seamstress in her garret and the soldier reading letters from home. They show the Victorian world in all its moods -- swaggering self confidence and anxious doubt, cheery festivity, and aching loneliness." Paxman will use paintings such as The Derby Day by William Powell Frith and Work by Ford Madox Brown [shown above; click for a larger image] to evoke the great changes that took place in England during Victoria’s reign. He will also examine broader Victorian themes, including Gothic architecture, Mrs Beeton’s household manual, and the civic pride of Britain’s great industrial cities. Cultural landmarks include the arrival of the football league, the tabloid press, and fish and chips. Paxman will be seen travelling by canal boat and steam train, as well as pouring molten metal in a Victorian ironworks and wading through a Victorian sewer.

Charles in charge: Speaking of TV, Channel 4 in the UK is currently airing a three-part series called "The Genius of Charles Darwin." The website created in conjunction with the series is quite good, with video and audio clips, background information on the major figures in mid-Victorian debates on evolution, and an "Ask an Expert" page where you can submit a question to Professor Anthony K. Campbell, scientific director of the Darwin Centre for Biology and Medicine in Pembrokeshire. The series has a very specific point of view: it's presented by Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and author of The God Delusion.

Pistols at ten paces: The Honourable Henry Lytton Cobbold, of Knebworth House in Hertfordshire, will travel to the town of Lytton, British Columbia, Canada, later this month to debate the founder of the International Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, Professor Scott Rice. The contest seeks the opening sentence to the worst possible novel, inspired by Bulwer-Lytton's notorious "It was a dark and stormy night." Says the Honourable Henry, who is the author's great-great-great grandson: "Bulwer-Lytton was a remarkable man and it's rather unfair that Professor Rice decided to name the competition after him for entirely the wrong reasons. He was a great champion of the arts . . . [a] politician, writer, playwright, and philosopher." Rice, who founded the contest in 1982 at San Jose State University, is having none of it: "The evil that men do lives after them, in Lytton's case in 27 novels whose perfervid turgidity I intend to expose, denude, and generally make visible." That's Bulwer-Lytton, caught in the act of purveying the perfervidly turgid, on the right; you can visit the contest's website here.

Things that would have been sold on Victorian infomercials if the Victorians had invented TV: Through 10 November, visitors to the British Library's Business and Intellectual Property Centre can see "Weird and Wonderful Gadgets and Inventions," a small display of Victorian labor-saving devices from the collection of Maurice Collins, author of Eccentric Contraptions and Ingenious Gadgets. Included in the display are a "memorandum clock" (1890), used to indicate the end of a business appointment (or, as a label points out, the end of a session in a brothel), a two-handled self-pouring teapot (1886), a clockwork burglar alarm (1852), a grenade to put out fires (1890), and a mechanical page-turner (1890).

Time machine: A Victorian time capsule was discovered recently in Exeter. Dated April 1897, it contained newspapers and letters written by two builders working on the restoration of an old Devon coaching hotel. In one letter, the writer refers to the outbreak of war between Greece and Turkey. The items are currently on display at the Red Lion Hotel, Chulmleigh. Shown on the left: Rod Taylor takes off for the past in George Pál's science fiction film The Time Machine (1960), based on the 1895 H. G. Wells novel [click for a larger image].

Cheers: Beer and architecture experts Geoff Brandwood and Jane Jephcote have identified London's most important historic pub interiors, a list that includes six lavishly decorated late Victorian hostelries: the Princess Louise in Holborn, the Red Lion in St James's, the Black Friar in, er, Blackfriars; the Salisbury in Harringay, the Prince Alfred in Maida Vale, and the Falcon in Battersea. If you're interested in historic pubs, be sure to check out the Campaign for Real Ale's National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors, where you can find descriptions and images of these and other Victorian pubs. Shown here is my own favorite historic London pub, the Salisbury on St Martin's Lane. It's named for Robert Cecil, the third Marquess of Salisbury, who was three times the prime minister during Victoria's reign. Heaven on earth: shopping for used books up and down Charing Cross Road on a cold and rainy day and then slipping in here to warm up with cider and a traditional ploughman's lunch. (By the way . . . how does one go about becoming a "beer and architecture expert"?)

Tyntesfield Treasure

So you think spring cleaning is a major undertaking at your house? Consider what National Trust staff are up against in their effort to catalogue the contents of Tyntesfield, a Grade I-listed property near Bristol that is thought to be the most complete Victorian Gothic Revival mansion in England.

From The Guardian (5 August 08):

"Cataloguing the clutter and everyday items that make up the contents of a family house is an unenviable task. But when the property in question is a 43-bedroom house that was occupied continuously by four generations of the same family 'who kept everything,' the task becomes that little bit harder.

"Since January 2004, National Trust staff and volunteers have been faced with just such a daunting project at Tyntesfield, a Grade I-listed Victorian property in north Somerset, near Bristol [BBC panoramic tour here; Wiki entry here].

"The cataloguers have just recorded their 30,000th item and expect that by the end of the painstaking process, which is likely to last another year, they will have recorded the details of more than 40,000 objects. So far the project has thrown up everything from the mundane--the plastic bags of the late Lord Wraxall, the last inhabitant of Tyntesfield before it was acquired by the trust after a remarkably successful public appeal--to the bizarre: item 29,999 was a sinister-looking coconut, hollowed out and with a face carved into it and plant fibres added for hair.

"The origin of the coconut, which sits in the gun room, only recently opened to the public, is unknown, but the Gibbs family, who occupied the house, were a well-travelled clan. Antony, who began the business empire on which Tyntesfield was built, was an international wool merchant. His sons made their fortune from importing seabird droppings for use as fertiliser from South America, while Wraxall (George Gibbs) served in the Coldstream Guards and the local Yeomanry regiment.

"Among other objects discovered at the property were a jewel-encrusted chalice, moth-eaten teddy bears, and unused Christmas crackers. A prime find has been a spare roll of original 19th-century flock wallpaper. The same design currently hangs in an anteroom and the discovery demonstrates how different the room would have looked when it was first decorated. Ruth Moppett, the inventory supervisor, described the change in colour as 'quite amazing,' from 'plush mink' on the unused roll to 'orangey gold' on the walls.

"Tyntesfield was saved for the nation in 2002 after Wraxall died and a public appeal saw more than 77,000 people donate £8.2m in 100 days. The project to buy the house also attracted the largest ever single grant, £17.4m, from the National Heritage Memorial Fund. [You can make an online donation here. -- KT]

"The spectacular Gothic revival house captured the imagination of the public, but there were critics who felt that it was not sufficiently old and distinctive to warrant the expense. However, for Tyntesfield's visitor services and enterprise manager, Rebecca Aubrey-Fletcher, the finds provide compelling justification for the purchase.

"'It's quite unique, four generations of the Gibbs family who kept everything--they really did keep everything,' she said. 'The interesting thing about it is the range of items, from the 19th-century objects to Lord Wraxall's 20th-century washing machine.'

"So far, the contents of 65 rooms have been recorded, with another 10 remaining, plus the stables and gardens. Among the items yet to be catalogued are parts of the textile collection. The plan is that eventually the fully photographed inventory will be put online so the public can view the miscellany on their computers. Conservation on the property is continuing, as is fundraising, with a target date for completion of renovation work of 2012. But the estate remains open to the public, who have flocked to Tyntesfield in increasing numbers since it was opened up weeks after being bought by the trust.

"Visitors can see almost all of the items catalogued, although there is one notable exception. An unexploded second world war bomb was found sitting on a shelf in the old servants' hall shortly after the inventory process began.

"'He [Lord Wraxall] was a soldier, so perhaps he wanted it as a souvenir,' said Aubrey-Fletcher. 'Unfortunately, that was taken away.'"

Addendum, 23 August:

According to Sarah Stevens, house manager, the conservation program has reached another milestone with the opening of two of the property's main bedrooms to the public for the first time. "We're still finding evidence of how the rooms would have looked in the past," she says. "So, for now, we're not plumping up the pillows and arranging the furniture. Instead we're showing them almost 'as found.'"

Pillow Talk

Further to my last post about the recent auction of some of Queen Victoria's undergarments...

Over the weekend Peeper reader Imelda Murphy of Nashua, New Hampshire, got in touch to let me know that she had been the high bidder for Queen Victoria's nightgown.

From The New Hampshire Union Leader (1 August 2008):

"In the scheme of things, Imelda Murphy's $10,000 nightie was a steal.

"Without it, her recently penned play, The Quane's Laundry, would just be another work of historical fiction about royal bloomers and the fallen women who washed them one fateful night in turn-of-the-century Ireland.

"In the heat of auction, Murphy, of Nashua, broke her budget but scored the lace-trimmed sleepwear, once worn by England's Queen Victoria, for 5,500 sterling -- about $10,800 U.S. dollars.

"'It was like I was in a trance,' Murphy said of her winning moment.

"She was listening to the auction in Derbyshire, England, by telephone Wednesday morning. She could hear the sound of the competition -- and all the media buzz -- in the background as she relayed the auction action to her husband, Manchester lawyer Frank Murphy, who was within earshot clutching his wallet.

"Murphy said she learned of the historic auction items while surfing the Internet a few weeks ago.

"A native of Dublin, Ireland, Murphy felt like she already knew Queen Victoria intimately, having researched her life and her historic final trip to Ireland in April 1900. Owning the royal undies would be like icing on the cake -- sort of.

"Murphy's play was inspired by a newspaper clipping about the queen's trip to Ireland, during which Victoria's laundry was in fact sent out to be washed at the Magdalene Asylum, an institution designed to reform prostitutes by having them process laundry all day.

"'The Quane's Laundry' -- the word 'quane' meant to portray the Irish peasantry pronunciation of 'queen' -- focuses on one woman's story, Nellie Clifton, who after 39 years living at the laundry, finally comes clean about the incident that landed her there: a scandalous affair with the queen's eldest son, Bertie -- eventually to be known as King Edward VII.

"In real life, Nellie Clifton, an Irish actress, did indeed have a scandalous affair with the future King of England. The compelling story line involving the queen's laundry was conjured from Murphy's imagination.

"Amid the play version of the scandal emerges a story of a poor Irish girl, born during "The Night of the Big Wind" in 1839, orphaned during Ireland's famine, and taken in by the Wrens of the Curragh -- prostitutes who serviced military men.

"Innocent Nellie, through a twist of fate, ends up in Bertie's bed and is sent off as punishment to the Magdalenes at age 22, where she spends the rest of her life.

"So naturally, Murphy sees winning the nightgown as providence -- luck of the Irish, if you must.

"Luck or godsend, Murphy feels she was meant to own the nightgown just as she was meant to write this particular play.

"'That's what I told my husband -- it was meant to be. Of course, all day long, after winning the auction, friends were calling to ask if I'd managed to pick him up off the floor yet,' Murphy said of the aftershocks of the pricey peignoir.

"Pre-auction estimates for all three royal garments, auctioned by Hansons Auctioneers, were so low Murphy fully expected to bid on and win all three items -- a chemise, a pair of bloomers and the nightgown.

"'My husband and I thought, wouldn't that be lovely for my play? My thought was to have the garments in the foyer so when people come out of the theater at intermission they can have a look at her real clothes. I was going to swoop up all three of them, not realizing the rest of the world wanted them, too,' Murphy said.

"Murphy said during the six months she spent writing the play she found a unique way to connect with the spirit of the deceased monarch.

"'I only dressed in black. Queen Victoria was in mourning for most of her life and I felt better and more comfortable wearing black when I was writing the play in the evening, by candlelight,' Murphy said.

"She's already made progress toward her goal of seeing her play produced -- through recent connections made with some Irish actors in New York City, who are coming here next week to read through the play.

"She has enjoyed the creative process and is optimistic that her compelling story and juicy dialogue will be enough to propel her play from obscurity to -- who knows, says Murphy -- maybe the big screen."

Shown here: The royal nightgown won by Murphy.

Fit for a Queen

As reported by the Associated Press:

"A pair of Queen Victoria's bloomers, with a 50-inch waist, were snapped up for $9,000 by a Canadian buyer at a central England auction Wednesday.

"Auctioneer Charles Hanson said Queen Victoria's underpants belonged to 'a very big lady of quite small stature with a very wide girth.' She was said to be 5 feet (1.52 meters) tall. The handmade cotton knickers, which date to the 1890s, bear the monogram 'VR' for Victoria Regina. They are open-crotch style, with separate legs joined by a drawstring at the waist, a popular style in the late Victorian era.

"The royal drawers belonged to a family in western England whose ancestor was a lady-in-waiting for the queen.

"'These pants, considering their provenance and pedigree, are very exciting,' Hanson said. 'They are monogrammed and crested and we know that they are hers.'

"Also up for auction was Queen Victoria's chemise, with a 66-inch bust, which sold for $8,000. Her nightgown sold for $11,000.

"Before the auction, Hanson valued the underwear at $1,000, while the chemise and nightgown were valued at $600 each."

Additional information via The Globe and Mail (Canada):

The buyer, Barbara Rusch of Toronto, has collected Queen Victoria memorabilia of all kinds for about 25 years, but has never been able to bid on a pair of her bloomers before.

"This is a wonderful, wonderful find for me today and a great acquisition, a great treasure to add to my collection," she said.

Rusch also owns a pair of Queen Victoria's pink hand-embroidered stockings.

Read the BBC story here, The Guardian story here, and The Telegraph story here. The Mail Online previewed the auction here.

Shown here: Auction assistant Sam Rhodes models the royal bloomers.

Further Reading

Casey Finch, "'Hooked and Buttoned Together'": Victorian Underwear and Representations of the Female Body," Victorian Studies, Spring 1991, pages 337-363.

Leigh Summers, Bound to Please: A History of the Victorian Corset (Oxford: Berg, 2001).

It's Jelly, Baby

Sam Bompas and Harry Parr of London create unique sculptures of British architectural icons such as St Paul's Cathedral, the Millennium Bridge, and the Eden Project. Their medium? Why, that ubiquitous Victorian foodstuff: jelly.

Bompas and Parr say that their work occupies a niche "in the space between food and architecture . . . jelly is the perfect site for an examination of food and architecture due to its uniquely plastic form and the historic role it has played in exploring notions of taste."

The Victorian period was the golden age of jelly and other gelatin-based foods such as aspics. Mrs Beeton's Dictionary of Everyday Cookery (1865) includes four pages of jelly recipes, although she notes that jellies "are not the nourishing food they were at one time considered to be." Still, they looked spectacular on the table or sideboard.

Shown above is part of the Victorian breakfast with jelly created by Bompas and Parr for Warwick Castle's 2007 celebration of nineteenth-century Christmas traditions. The 12-course, 300-ingredient, 4000-calorie feast included Scotch woodcock (scrambled eggs made with egg yolks and cream spread on toast with anchovy paste) and haddock in puff pastry. Read the BBC report here and watch the YouTube video here.

Earlier this month, as part of the London Festival of Architecture, Bompas and Parr sponsored a jelly mould competition and workshop that led to the creation of 1000 wobbling jellies consumed at a banquet at University College London.

Resources:

Historic Food: Jellies and Creams

Victorian Writers' Rooms

One of my favorite features of the online version of The Guardian is a page called simply "Writers' Rooms." Once a week or so, a photo and brief description are provided of the writing den of a famous novelist, biographer, or literary critic. These used to be primarily living authors; recently some historical figures have been included.

Check out:

The spartan shed behind a modest house in Ayot St Lawrence, built on a platform that rotated with the sun, in which George Bernard Shaw churned out his voluminous correspondence.

The Jacobean beamed study lined with Indian rugs in which Rudyard Kipling wrote, watched by a stern portrait of his wife, Carrie.

Charles Darwin's study at Down House, Kent, in which On the Origin of Species first saw the light of day (shown above).

The "perfection of warmth, snugness, and comfort" that was the Haworth Parsonage parlour in which Charlotte Brontë wrote.

Contemporary writers profiled who are of particular interest to Victorianists include the novelists A. S. Byatt (Possession), Sarah Waters (Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith) and Colm Tóibín (The Master); the biographer Michael Holroyd (Bernard Shaw, vols. 1-4); and the historian Eric Hobsbawm (The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital, and The Age of Empire).

Salmagundi #7

Steampunk music? Hmm. Take a listen.

Times reporter Hannah Betts (left) plays Victorian housemaid for 24 hours under the supervision of English Heritage and lives (barely) to tell the tale.

Robert Downey Jr. will play Sherlock Holmes in Guy Ritchie's upcoming film of the same name. Reportedly inspired as much by Lionel Wigram's comic book as by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic stories, the film will begin shooting this October for a scheduled 2010 release.

The story of a murder case that gripped Victorian England has won Britain's Samuel Johnson Prize for Nonfiction. Kate Summerscale's The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: Or The Murder at Road Hill House tells the story of an 1860 child murder that tested the mettle of one of Scotland Yard's first detectives and inspired writers including Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle. Francis Saville Kent, the three-year-old son of a factory inspector, was stabbed in the chest and had his throat slashed. His body was found in a toilet at the family's country house. With jealous half-siblings, a dead mother who had gone mad, a cruel governess turned stepmother and a staff of gardeners, stable-hands, and servants in the mix, the crime scandalised Victorian society. Theories about the killing were debated at dinner parties and the murder fuelled the 1860s phenomenon of the "sensation" novel. Detective Inspector Jack Whicher, one of the original eight Scotland Yard detectives, was put in charge of the case and concluded that the murder was an inside job. Whicher was 45, shabby and grizzled, and the country went wild for him, but the case left him a broken man.

Jack the Ripper and the East End

Via EDP24 News (24 May 2008):

With gore tours all the rage -- and near-permanent queues outside the revolting London Dungeon, our very own theme-park chamber of horrors -- it was inevitable that the East End should finally capitalise on its most despicable attraction. So a big welcome to jolly Jack the Ripper.

The Museum in Docklands, distant satellite of the wonderful Museum of London, has struggled to win big audiences to date. But all that is about to change with the blockbuster exhibition "Jack the Ripper and the East End." And quite beyond the thrills for those who enjoy being chilled, this saga remains a compelling story and in the new museum survey it is very well told.

Inevitably dramatic, the Ripper show puts the East End centrestage -- and, truth to tell, that can be even more shocking than the gruesome facts of the Whitechapel murders between April 3, 1888, and February 13, 1891. Although at least seven other murders and violent attacks on women have been connected to Jack the Ripper by various authors and historians, only five victims are universally attributed to a single serial killer: Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelley -- the degree of mutilation becoming more marked with each cutthroat killing.

With exhibits such as Charles Booth's meticulously drawn poverty maps, previously unseen photographs of late-Victorian Whitechapel, and oral history recordings from local residents growing up at the time of the murders, the Museum in Docklands display shines a piercing light into East End slums and the grim lives of their inhabitants. It also reveals how the sensation of the murders shocked public opinion and galvanised politicians into finally doing something about the hellish slums in the shadow of the world's richest city.

We follow the tale through police files, newspaper reports, and letters from members of the public both well-intended and malicious. Before our forensic era -- and with such things as criminal profiling and fingerprinting poorly understood or else unknown -- the detective hunt used a range of pseudosciences, philosophies, and superstitions, including spiritualism. The scapegoating of immigrants, and Jews most particularly, was a dire diversion in an investigation that famously saw no killer, or killers, convicted. In view of the diligent savagery of the knifeman (or men), lunatics, medical students, doctors, and butchers were also targeted. Bloodhounds were brought in, but the police still had a great deal to learn.

The media too was in serious need of reform, with fierce competition between newspapers producing flights of fantasy that would shame even today's tabloids. The name of Jack the Ripper was signed on a letter sent to the Central News Agency, one of many thousands received by the police and the papers. Many were well-intentioned, but some were deliberate hoaxes. The worst letter "From Hell" contained half a kidney and the claim that the other half had been fried and eaten. Just such an organ was missing from the corpse of poor Catherine Eddowes. DNA testing would have solved that macabre mystery.

While "Jack" has been identified variously as a deranged member of the royal family, a Blackheath medic, and now, thanks to American crime writer Patricia Cornwell, the painter Walter Sickert, he exists in the same legendary world as Jekyll and Hyde and Sherlock Holmes. The new show splendidly sorts horrible facts from some frightful fiction.

"Jack the Ripper and the East End" is at the Museum in Docklands until 2 November.

Shown here: An illustration from Le Journal Illustré (13 February 1891) depicting the murders of prostitutes by Jack the Ripper in London; image: Museum in Docklands.

Resources

Casebook: Jack the Ripper

"The Enduring Mystery of Jack the Ripper" (Metropolitan Police Service)

Survivor: Ujiji

Couldn't stop laughing as I read this . . .

From The New York Times, 24 April:

"If we can presume that David Livingstone — he of the 19th-century expedition to find the source of the Nile — was the original survivor of popular imagination, then why shouldn’t Mark Burnett — he of the television phenomenon Survivor — find common ground with him?

"In an intriguing new example of unscripted television, Mr. Burnett will recreate the expedition of Henry Morton Stanley to find the missing Dr. Livingstone [shown here] in a series he will produce for the History Channel.

"'This is really a return to my roots,' said Mr. Burnett, who first broke through in television producing the nature race Eco-Challenge. 'This is taking the element of nature in the raw and adding the truth of history.'

"Abbe Raven, president of A&E Television Networks, which includes the History Channel, will announce the Stanley-Livingstone show next week when her company presents its programming plans for next season.

"The plan, as Mr. Burnett described it in a telephone interview, is to take five accomplished adventurers and set them off in Stanley’s footsteps, using only the technology available in the 1870s. 'That means old compasses, old maps,' Mr. Burnett said.

"But the team will otherwise be contemporary. 'They’re not dressing up in the clothes of the old days,' Mr. Burnett said. The adventurers will not be named for a while, though Mr. Burnett did disclose that one will be 'a well-known, serious journalist.' That replicates Stanley, who Mr. Burnett noted, 'was a newspaper guy looking for the big score.' He said he would try to document lesser-known facts about the journey, including 'whether their motives were pure or whether it was partly about ego.'

"And, of course, 'Did Stanley really use the words ‘Dr. Livingstone, I presume?'

"The expedition will start, as Stanley’s did, in Zanzibar, where the team will take on supplies and probably include the typical scene with 'the local African guide warning these interlopers,' Mr. Burnett said.

"The team will trek 700 miles into territory that Mr. Burnett said 'has not really changed that much' and where lions and Cape buffalo roam.

"'I think one of the big questions will be: Are we as tough as they used to be?' Mr. Burnett said. If we are, he intends to come back with further expeditions. 'I’d love to do Ghengis Khan,” he said. “Or Hannibal. Imagine crossing the Alps today with elephants.'"

Victorian Things: Stained Glass Window by Henry Holiday

"Moses Leaving the Court of Pharaoh," a stained and leaded glass window by Henry Holiday (1839-1927), was created in honor of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee in 1891. A larger copy of the same design was among the first windows installed in St Paul's Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia.

The window is illustrated in A. L. Baldry's Henry Holiday (London, 1930). Baldry notes that Holiday (DNB bio here; Wiki bio here) first travelled to America and Canada in 1890 where he "found many admirers who gave him the heartiest welcome, and where commissions sufficient to keep him busily engaged for a long time were offered him."

Having established his own glass works in January 1891, Holiday indulged his interest in Egyptian art and the life of ancient Egypt with the design for his memorial to Lee. The window may be intended as an allegory of Lee's reluctant abandonment of the Union, which had trained him, in order to serve as a leader -- and ultimately as general -- of the Confederate Army. Another version, without inscription, can be seen at Ponsonby Church, Cumbria.

The window is 111 cm high by 55.5 cm wide (approximately 3' 7" by 1' 9"). Formerly the property of guitarist Jimmy Page, it sold at a Sotheby's auction in March for £22,100. Click on the image to see an enlargement.

Resources:

Holiday's Stained Glass Windows in Cumbria

Victorian Things: Embroidered Panel by Walter Crane

The design of this embroidered wool panel by Walter Crane (1845-1915) originates from one of the artist's illustrations for the children's book The Story of The Tempest from the Play of Shakespeare Retold by Alice Spencer Hoffman published in London in 1894 (shown below).

The eight famous engravings included in this book had appeared the year before as an unbound portfolio in 650 numbered copies and were sold as a separate art collection signed by both Walter Crane (DNB bio here; Wiki bio here) and the printer/engraver Duncan Dallas.

Measuring 85 cm by 113 cm (approximately 2' 9" by 3' 8"), this panel shows Miranda and Prospero in Act I, Scene 2. Prospero's line "By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune / Now my dear lady, hath mine enemies / Brought to this shore" appears at its foot. Click on the image to see an enlargement.

Resources:

The Wonderful World of Walter Crane (Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester)

Walter Crane, Reminiscences (London, 1907)

Isabel Spencer, Walter Crane (London, 1975)

Victorian Things: Tiles by William Burges

Today seems like an excellent day to bring a few beautiful examples of Victorian art to your attention. Herewith the first of three new posts in my ongoing "Victorian Things" series.

This stunning thirty-piece tile panel by William Burges (1827-1881) for W.B. Simpson & Sons was created around 1880. (We've met the eccentric "parrot-keeping, rat-hunting, opium-eating Freemason" Burges before: here's my post on a wine decanter he designed in 1865 and his connection with guitarist Jimmy Page.)

Burges designed these earthenware tiles, each 15.5 cm square and hand painted in shades of green, blue, and white, for Castell Coch, one of the residences of the 3rd Marquess of Bute, where they were installed in the drawing room fireplace. The panel includes twelve tiles depicting the signs of the Zodiac and eighteen border tiles featuring roundels, bands, and stylized flowers. Apart from the Castell Coch tiles and another set at Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute, this panel is the only complete set known to exist. Photographs of the tiles in situ can be seen in J. Mordaunt Crook, William Burges and the High Victorian Dream (1981, pl. 163), and David McLees, Castell Coch (1998, pp. 35-36).

The panel sold at a Sotheby's auction in March for £28,000.

Click on the image for an enlargement.

The Return of King Arthur

The last and (some say) greatest work by Edward Burne-Jones, The Sleep of Arthur in Avalon (detail shown below), has returned to the UK from Ponce, Puerto Rico, for the first time in 40 years.

This enormous painting, measuring over six metres in width, is on loan to Tate Britain through March 2009, along with Frederic Leighton’s masterpiece Flaming June (1895), from the Museo de Arte de Ponce while its galleries undergo renovation. These important paintings will be shown alongside other masterpieces of late-Victorian art from the Tate Collection.

Often described as Burne-Jones's magnum opus, The Sleep of Arthur in Avalon was originally commissioned by his patron, George Howard, Earl of Carlisle, to hang on a wall in the library of Naworth Castle. It was started in 1881 and Burne-Jones (DNB bio here; Wiki bio here) worked steadily on it for 17 years -- even moving into a studio large enough for the purpose -- but died before it was complete. The painting became increasingly autobiographical for the artist as he withdrew into himself. Toward the end of his life he wrote, “I need nothing but my hands and my brain to fashion myself a world to live in that nothing can disturb. In my own land I am king of it.”

Following the artist’s death the painting passed to a neighbour of Burne-Jones’s whose descendants, John and Penryn Monck, sold the work at Christie’s in April 1963 to Don Luis Ferré, Puerto Rico's governor and founder of the Museo de Arte de Ponce. Even at a time when Victorian art was unfashionable, the sale was considered a significant loss to Britain.

Flaming June (shown at left) by Leighton (DNB bio here; Wiki bio here) was last on display in the UK in 1996. It's one of the artist’s final works and shows a woman as she sleeps in the heat of the Mediterranean sun. The themes of sleep, death, and unconsciousness were important to both Burne-Jones and Leighton.

Related links:

"King Arthur Comes Home: How a Key Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood Painting by Edward Burne-Jones Ended Up on a Caribbean Island" (New Statesman / BBC Radio 4)

"Pre-Raphaelite Painting of Arthur Returns, Temporarily, to Britain" (Guardian)

"A Visionary Oddity: Fiona MacCarthy on Edward Burne-Jones" (TATE etc)

Where to Find the Pre-Raphaelites (via 24 Hour Museum)

"Never Was Known Such a Wonderful Year!" ~ 1851

London theatre managers must have been thrilled when they learned, in 1849, that the capital would host a "Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations" in two years' time. They eagerly anticipated a steep rise in attendance (and box office receipts) as visitors from all over the world poured into London.

Yet almost without exception, theatres lost business during the first few months the Exhibition was open. They simply couldn't compete with the riches on offer at Hyde Park. From May to July 1851, as theatre historian Richard Foulkes has noted, the Exhibition emerged as the clear victor in this battle, "absorbing [both] the public's appetite and its financial capacity." Things turned around in mid-July, however, as the steady stream of tourists from the English provinces turned into a torrent; all places of public amusement benefited from the increased traffic on city streets, including the theatres.

To capitalize on the Exhibition's popularity, some managers offered plays, revues, and burlesque-extravaganzas on Exhibition themes or short pieces set at its magnificent purpose-built home, the Crystal Palace. The texts of many of these ephemeral works are now accessible online thanks to The Victorian Plays Project at the University of Worcester, which has produced a digital archive of selected plays from T.H. Lacy's Acting Edition of Victorian Plays (1848-1873).

Among the treasures available in PDF:

Novelty Fair; or, Hints for 1851 (anonymous, probably Tom Taylor and Albert Smith, 1850), in which a character called "1851" (who exclaims "never was known such a wonderful year!") presents tableaux of previous historical events and explains why the Great Exhibition will trump them all: "The Brighton Pavilion was famous of old / But twenty of it, our Pavilion will hold / With its square miles of canvas, its acres of ground / 'Twill take one hard walking, a month to get round." The figure of Britannia ("With useful arts henceforth our fight shall be / And not with troops on shore, or ships at sea") and the British Lion take center stage.

Apartments, "Visitors to the Exhibition May Be Accommodated" (William Brough, 1851), which premiered at the Princess's Theatre two weeks after the Exhibition opened; a travelling salesman returns home to find that every nook and cranny of his house has been let to unusual visitors from all over the world (a theme often taken up by the comic serials, including Punch; click here for John Leech's classic "No. 1, Crowded State of Lodging-Houses").

The Exposition: A Scandinavian Sketch (Shirley Brooks, 1851) in which Odin, Thor, Freya, and other assorted mythological worthies, led by a character called "The Spirit of the Age," visit the Exhibition and promptly find much to amuse (and annoy) them.

The Mandarin's Daughter! Being the Simple Story of The Willow-Pattern Plate (anonymous, probably Thomas Talfourd, 1851) reflected the high level of public interest in the Exhibition's China Court; household items imported from the Far East were widely available -- and wildly popular -- in London.

A Shilling Day at the Great Exhibition (William Brough and Andrew Halliday, 1862), a one-act farce of mistaken identities that takes place at the Crystal Palace.

Racial, ethnic, and national stereotypes are on full display in these works, giving the reader an uncensored taste of the times in which they were created. Puns and topical allusions to contemporary events and personalities fly thick and fast.

Shown above: John Absolon (1815-95), "Part of the China Court" (1851), watercolour and gouache over pencil on paper, Victoria & Albert Museum. Because China did not respond to the invitation to submit work to the Exhibition, the China Court comprised samples from the stock of a number of importers of Chinese goods, including Hewett & Co. of Fenchurch Street.

Resources:

Richard Foulkes, "Charles Kean and the Great Exhibition," Theatre Notebook, Vol. 58, No. 3 (2004): 141-153. Foulkes argues that the theatre successfully harnessed the English public's fascination with the past to an educational role for itself, thereby attracting new audiences and enhancing its respectability and status within Victorian society.

The Great Exhibition Collection, Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Watercolours of the Great Exhibition, Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Blunt Talk About Queen Victoria

The New York Times recently interviewed actress Emily Blunt about her upcoming turn as Queen Victoria in the film Young Victoria. (You can read my previous posts about the movie here: 11 February 07, 16 February 07, 23 February 07, 4 March 07, and 13 October 07.)

NYT: ". . . You just finished playing the young Queen Victoria, where you had to wear a corset."

Blunt: "It is painful to wear a corset for 15 hours a day. They only loosen you up for lunch, and you would think that you would lose weight, but somehow you don’t. Movie sets are like 30 people grazing all day, eating sandwiches."

NYT: "Does the corset help you to get in character?"

Blunt: "Absolutely. You immediately feel regal. In this movie, we tried to combat the stuffy costume-drama approach. We see the private side of Victoria, when she was young and rebellious. She had a very overprotected childhood — she wasn’t allowed to walk down stairs without someone holding her hand. But she had a great sense of her position: at 10, she told her governess, 'I will be good.'"

NYT: "Did you have to learn proper royal manners?"

Blunt: "We had an etiquette coach on the set at all times. He is very close to the royal family, and he watched everything we did and said. He wanted us to be correct but vivid: after all, the royals go to the toilet, they have sex, they are human beings."

Above -- A scene from Young Victoria: Blunt with Rupert Friend as Prince Albert.