On the way home from Scotland last year we stopped at Belton House to look round the house and garden. But what I really wanted to see most of all was the sundial, featured in Helen Cresswell’s novel, Moondial, where Minty ‘discovers its secret power and travels back in time to carry out a perilous task’.
Houses in children’s stories have captured my imagination for many years. My sister and I grew up leafing through illustrations in Joyce Lankester Brisley’s Milly-Molly-Mandy Stories: Miss Muggins’ shop, Billy Blunt’s father’s corn-shop, the blacksmith’s forge and teacher’s cottage. I used to trace the journey to school (the short cut across the fields) from ‘the nice white cottage with the thatched roof’ past the Moggs’ cottage where little-friend- Susan lived till I had worn the pages quite thin. Perhaps it is no coincidence that our older daughter (also brought up on these books) has moved to a similar village and lives in a thatched cottage too and that I moved to a house with railings not unlike the one by the crossroads where the little girl Jessamine lived. Nothing comes from nothing, it seems.
Another house that captivated me early on was the tall stuccoed house in Kensington featured in Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes, London home of the Fossil children and assorted lodgers they passed on the stairs. Much earlier memories were Beatrix Potter’s watercolour interiors: the untidy home of The Tailor of Gloucester or the doll’s house in The Tale of Two Bad Mice with its faux leg of ham and pastries made from wax.
As a young teenager I fell in love with a remote old house in Wales in Alan Garner’s The Owl Service. Its collection of owl-like plates and discovered panel of a beautiful young woman with a wreath of green oak leaves in her hair became ‘curioser and curcurioser’, to quote Alice, as the novel sped on until its final crescendo. And the room was full of petals from skylight and rafters, and all about them a fragrance, and petals, flowers falling, broom, meadowsweet, falling, flowers of the oak. It is therefore no surprise to reread that the author lived ‘in an old half-timbered house in the middle of a field in Cheshire, delving into his three passions – archaeology, history and the local folklore’.
At the same time I was visiting the local library and regularly borrowing little hardback books of essays by Alison Uttley, detailing the Elizabethan farmhouse in Derbyshire she wrote about in The Country Child. These books were a natural progression from her tales of Little Grey Rabbit I’d loved years before. I can still recall Margaret Tempest’s illustrations of Moldy Warp the mole, sitting in his armchair by an unearthed Roman mosaic or Grey Rabbit’s sitting room with its chintz-covered armchairs and festive decorations of holly and mistletoe.
Sylvanian houses and castles have featured in so many children’s tales from Snow White to The Sleeping Beauty: a gingerbread cottage covered in sweets in Hansel and Gretel or the grandmother’s cottage Red Riding Hood enters to be met by a wolf. How many children have peered through casement windows with Goldilocks to spy three bowls of steaming porridge or gazed on Hans Christian Andersen’s little fir tree, bedecked with shining candles for Christmas? We have entered palaces, worn glass slippers only to lose one on the steps outside. Our carriages have turned to pumpkins again on the stroke of midnight and we’ve wandered home, barefoot, in rags. And it all seems as real in our imagination as recalling summer holidays on forgotten beaches once upon a time.
Living these stories led us on to hide in wardrobes and re-enter magic lands as we grew older. I used to gaze out of our bedroom window watching soft snowflakes falling, illuminated by the lamp-post outside as if Narnia were just round the corner.
And now as a grown up I can’t explore a kitchen garden in the grounds of an old house without looking for a half-hidden door, expecting a robin to show me a key that would lead in me into another Secret Garden. Tom’s Midnight Garden or the sinister foreboding topiary trees of Green Knowe are but a step away through another door, in another direction.
Fact fuses with fiction in Lucy Boston’s The Children of Green Knowe. When I visited her medieval house and grounds in the Fens where she wrote her stories I saw not only all the beautiful quilts she had made but also Toby’s rocking horse, chest and Linnet’s carved mouse that feature in the story. It is as if the children who died in the Plague still live there and you can imagine you hear their grandmother singing, rocking the old cradle as she did centuries ago.
Ghosts and ‘time travel’ feature in many more stories: Charlottes Sometimes, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe and The Naming of William Rutherford.
War-time stories set in old houses evoke more suspense and danger: Carrie’s War and Goodnight Mr. Tom. Ann Frank’s Diary came alive for me when I stood by the top window of that tall house by the Amsterdam canal looking out on the overgrown forsythia as she must done in hiding fifty years before.
And then inevitably we grow up and read adult novels set in old houses and, in turn, show our children picture books with interiors by Shirley Hughes and Janet Ahlberg. We gaze at the crowded details, mesmerised like children once more and find ourselves clambering in search of dusty story books, unopened for years, with illustrations of mermaids holding mirrors studded with coral and shells in palaces long forgotten. Our reading journey has come full circle but may have only just begun. And if we have the time and patience we may consider writing our very own stories too.
Published in The Hedgerow
Tuesday 8 June 2010
Tuesday 18 May 2010
A la recherche du Grand Meaulnes
We drove to La Chappelle d'Angillon on a Sunday afternoon in early August, past fields of ripening sunflowers. There was little traffic on the roads; hardly a soul about. We had arrived in the Sologne the day before; the weather was warm and sunny. The deserted woodland roads were lined with tall firs, ferns and purple heather. So this was the Berry countryside: a place of wild flowers, lost ponds and ripening walnuts. It was not unlike Epping Forest or parts of Derbyshire: unfrequented, off the tourist trail. A nature walk the next morning confirmed my thoughts. We saw tracks of deer and wild boar; heard woodpeckers calling through lichen-covered trees and a buzzard far away. The hedgerows were abundant with white campion, vetch, wild basil, burdock, speedwell, scabious. Purple loosestrife edged the forest ponds but strangely, there was no meadowsweet. And all around us sparrows, more common than in England, twittered and criss-crossed our path.
When we arrived in La Chapelle d'Angillon we decided to visit the Chateau of Bethune, a solitary, mysterious place on the outskirts of the village. Alain-Fournier often came here; there was an exhibition in the attic about Le Grand Meaulnes. Alas, the chateau did not open till later that afternoon; a priest was leaving after celebrating Mass in the chapel; the Count and his family were taking lunch on the terrace. So we picnicked in the grounds: butterflies flitted through cow parsley; no one was about; we had the place to ourselves. There was time to observe the chateau: a turreted, Gothic/ Renaissance structure. The brickwork was crumbling in parts; there was a large lake to the rear; a dried-up moat; little decoration save some scarlet geraniums in stone urns, a bay tree by the entrance.
Eventually, the huge doors opened and we were escorted round, the only English visitors in a small group of enthusiasts. Doors were unlocked; we crossed the courtyard and climbed turreted towers. Despite its outward appearance of austerity the chateau was welcoming; lived-in. Vases of tall, white gladioli stood on the altar in the Chapel; wine and sables were served in the huge kitchens at the end of the visit. And upstairs, through a secret passage lined with faded prints of Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI, were attics lined with memorabilia about the life and works of Alain- Fournier. There were wooden models of the schoolhouse at Epineuil, texts, photographs; and stills from the film by Albicocco which continued to line the walls on our descent down the spiral staircase. A little shop in the grounds sold postcards, books; some second-hand; and I bought a copy of Alain-Fournier's poems: Miracles and an out-of-print Promenades d'Alain-Fournier en Berry, filled with old photographs. The young gentleman behind the counter spoke little English but I was able to enquire about the museum at Epineuil-le-Fleuriel and when it might be open.
We spoke at length of the location of the 'lost domain' itself: the whereabouts of the Chateau de Loroy. This was the place Alain-Fournier had in mind in his novel when Meaulnes stumbled across a fete etrange and met Mademoiselle de Galais for the first time. The young writer remembered it as an empty, mysterious place; now it was abandoned again, though privately owned and barred to visitors. It stood next to a farm on the road to Mery-en-Bois. The young man showed me an aerial photograph of the chateau with its ruined Cistercian abbey close by. Without our detailed Michelin maps we could not have found it; there were no signs, no clues. But there it stood, back from the road, with its distinctive mansard roof identified from a sepia photograph I had seen reproduced in a book thirty years ago. Water mint and agrimony grew on the overgrown grass verges; a pool, covered in water lilies, glistened in the sunlight. A cockerel crowed from the nearby farm. And all was still. Further along the lane was a makeshift sign on a farm gate: Loroy. We found a gap in the tall hedge, could just make out the chateau and abbey ruins. Its inaccessibility made it all the more mysterious; its abandoned state, poignant, peaceful. I sensed Alain-Fournier would have approved, having stumbled across the place with his sister, Isabelle, so many years before, derelict and hidden, deep in the Foret-de-Palais.
And so back to La Chapelle to its quiet, empty streets to find the house where Alain-Fournier was born; where his grandparents lived. A main road has since spoilt its rural charm but the house remains as in a time-warp. Stone urns filled with extravagant purple flowers frame the green wooden gate where the writer and his sister were photographed as children more than a century ago.
A couple of days later we set off for Epineuil-le-Fleuriel, ninety miles south. By now the weather was blisteringly hot; the journey took longer than it had seemed on the map.
''It's just past Bourges,'' I told my husband, which was not strictly true.We reached Bourges by 10:30, it was mid-day before we arrived in Epineuil.
No one was about. It was a sleepy, 'Adlestrop' type of place; resembled John Clare's Helpston, slumbering in the afternoon sunshine. Even the hollyhocks looked familiar. Fortunately, the museum shop was open although everywhere else was closed for lunch. There were no other visitors but we bought our tickets, were given audio headsets (in English!) and directed along the dusty road to the iron gates of the schoolhouse for our tour to begin. It was a truly wonderful experience: one of the best museums I have visited, a nostalgic recreation 'a la recherche du temps perdu'. The audio-guide explained everything in great detail and included extracts from the semi-autobiographical novel set in the schoolhouse where Alain-Fournier had spent his boyhood. Le Grand Meaulnes came to life before our eyes as we stood in Monsieur Seurel's and Millie's classrooms, entered the shadowy Red Room with its velvet drapes, climbed the steep kitchen staircase to the attics where Seurel and Meaulnes slept, had first spoken in secret of the lost domain.
I would go back there again to observe its authentic details: a nightshirt laid out on an iron bedstead, a cupboard ajar filled with old bottles, the cooking range decorated with floral tiles, trunks of old-fashioned toys abandoned in the attic, washing draped on a wooden clothes horse, hand-written schoolbooks, blackboards chalked up in copper-plate handwriting. Virginia creeper edged the schoolroom window, a pile of fire-wood twigs was neatly stacked behind the benches in the schoolyard, the schoolboys' cloaks were still hanging there.
I had ''been there'' before of course; the school was used extensively for filming the story but now I could linger there alone; but not for too long, as we were a long way from Pierrefitte where we were staying.
After a picnic by the River Cher we returned to the sleepy village, entered the unlocked church where Alain-Fournier attended Mass as a child. It could have been a country church in England with its tiny interior, creaking door and faintly musty smell but here were the familiar vases of gladioli, pictures of Saints and rush-seated chairs that made it so distinctly French.
I had read that Alain-Fournier had attended a children's fancy-dress party at a local chateau, Conancay, which had inspired him to write about La Fete Etrange years later but it was hidden in the woods, prive, out of sight. But we did manage to locate the tiny, deserted chapel dedicated to Saint-Agathe, the name Alain-Fournier gave to Epineuil in his novel. The bumpy ride and over-grown track were more than compensated by the view from the hillside overlooking the Auvergne. A gentle breeze fanned the afternoon heat; butterflies fluttered around us: blue, yellow, copper-coloured.
Reluctantly we set off on our journey home. We broke the journey at Bourges; wandered past the Cathedral, through narrow streets reminiscent of Canterbury. We found a salon de the for much-needed refreshment; feasted on little pastries and cakes filled with cherries and raspberries.
And then home via Nancay in the evening sunlight. We had visited the village the day before: a quiet, self-contained place on the edge of the Sologne; had bought bread and provisions. I had asked in the boulangerie and the epicerie if they knew which shop in the village had belonged to Alain-Fournier's uncle. Again, fact merged with fiction: it was here that the writer had spent childhood holidays, had enjoyed fishing and shooting in meres and forests nearby. Later he was to write about it in his novel: it was in this very place that Seurel first encountered Yvonne De Galais.
I asked four people but no one knew. We were directed up the lane towards the local chateau where a modern art gallery housed a musee imaginaire inspired by Alain-Fournier's novel. It was closed. We rang the bell and a man came to the gate but was unable to help us. He did not know the location of the shop either.We walked back slowly trying to identify it by a copy of a 19th century photograph and there it was, standing opposite the church, with a little plaque on the wall, that evidently no one else had noticed! It was a gift shop, refurbished with carpet where there had once been bare earth. It had been an 'open all hours' type of place in Alain-Fournier's day: now it was closed. I peered through the casement windows imagining the friendly chatter by the light of oil lamps in days gone by.
And now, after another week spent further south in the Dordogne, we are home again: the washing machine hums and the garden needs weeding. The buddleia is spent; Michaelmas daisies take its place. But the same butterflies we saw in the Sologne dance in the late-summer sunshine: Speckled Wood, Meadow Brown, Cabbage White. And in the holly trees one or two sparrows twitter and fly free as they did in France.
A bag of postcards and books is still to be unpacked; there are photographs to be developed. So this has all been written down quickly before it fades, evaporates from memory like the land without a name: a hazy, distant dream that is never quite forgotten. The spirits of places we encountered are hauntingly memorable, have enhanced my understanding of Alain-Fournier, his life and work. Perhaps I am glad, though wistful, that we only saw the Chateau de Loroy from a distance; Uncle Florentin's shop was closed and no one seemed to know its whereabouts; Conancay was inaccessible; little English was spoken and my French was far from fluent. It all seemed elusive, just out of reach. I long to go back but realise perhaps I never shall.
''Have you read Le Grand Meaulnes?'' I ask friends at church, in the street. They look at me blankly.
''You should,'' I reply, hardly daring to reveal the treasures found there and my quest for the lost domain.
Originally published in Books and Company
When we arrived in La Chapelle d'Angillon we decided to visit the Chateau of Bethune, a solitary, mysterious place on the outskirts of the village. Alain-Fournier often came here; there was an exhibition in the attic about Le Grand Meaulnes. Alas, the chateau did not open till later that afternoon; a priest was leaving after celebrating Mass in the chapel; the Count and his family were taking lunch on the terrace. So we picnicked in the grounds: butterflies flitted through cow parsley; no one was about; we had the place to ourselves. There was time to observe the chateau: a turreted, Gothic/ Renaissance structure. The brickwork was crumbling in parts; there was a large lake to the rear; a dried-up moat; little decoration save some scarlet geraniums in stone urns, a bay tree by the entrance.
Eventually, the huge doors opened and we were escorted round, the only English visitors in a small group of enthusiasts. Doors were unlocked; we crossed the courtyard and climbed turreted towers. Despite its outward appearance of austerity the chateau was welcoming; lived-in. Vases of tall, white gladioli stood on the altar in the Chapel; wine and sables were served in the huge kitchens at the end of the visit. And upstairs, through a secret passage lined with faded prints of Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI, were attics lined with memorabilia about the life and works of Alain- Fournier. There were wooden models of the schoolhouse at Epineuil, texts, photographs; and stills from the film by Albicocco which continued to line the walls on our descent down the spiral staircase. A little shop in the grounds sold postcards, books; some second-hand; and I bought a copy of Alain-Fournier's poems: Miracles and an out-of-print Promenades d'Alain-Fournier en Berry, filled with old photographs. The young gentleman behind the counter spoke little English but I was able to enquire about the museum at Epineuil-le-Fleuriel and when it might be open.
We spoke at length of the location of the 'lost domain' itself: the whereabouts of the Chateau de Loroy. This was the place Alain-Fournier had in mind in his novel when Meaulnes stumbled across a fete etrange and met Mademoiselle de Galais for the first time. The young writer remembered it as an empty, mysterious place; now it was abandoned again, though privately owned and barred to visitors. It stood next to a farm on the road to Mery-en-Bois. The young man showed me an aerial photograph of the chateau with its ruined Cistercian abbey close by. Without our detailed Michelin maps we could not have found it; there were no signs, no clues. But there it stood, back from the road, with its distinctive mansard roof identified from a sepia photograph I had seen reproduced in a book thirty years ago. Water mint and agrimony grew on the overgrown grass verges; a pool, covered in water lilies, glistened in the sunlight. A cockerel crowed from the nearby farm. And all was still. Further along the lane was a makeshift sign on a farm gate: Loroy. We found a gap in the tall hedge, could just make out the chateau and abbey ruins. Its inaccessibility made it all the more mysterious; its abandoned state, poignant, peaceful. I sensed Alain-Fournier would have approved, having stumbled across the place with his sister, Isabelle, so many years before, derelict and hidden, deep in the Foret-de-Palais.
And so back to La Chapelle to its quiet, empty streets to find the house where Alain-Fournier was born; where his grandparents lived. A main road has since spoilt its rural charm but the house remains as in a time-warp. Stone urns filled with extravagant purple flowers frame the green wooden gate where the writer and his sister were photographed as children more than a century ago.
A couple of days later we set off for Epineuil-le-Fleuriel, ninety miles south. By now the weather was blisteringly hot; the journey took longer than it had seemed on the map.
''It's just past Bourges,'' I told my husband, which was not strictly true.We reached Bourges by 10:30, it was mid-day before we arrived in Epineuil.
No one was about. It was a sleepy, 'Adlestrop' type of place; resembled John Clare's Helpston, slumbering in the afternoon sunshine. Even the hollyhocks looked familiar. Fortunately, the museum shop was open although everywhere else was closed for lunch. There were no other visitors but we bought our tickets, were given audio headsets (in English!) and directed along the dusty road to the iron gates of the schoolhouse for our tour to begin. It was a truly wonderful experience: one of the best museums I have visited, a nostalgic recreation 'a la recherche du temps perdu'. The audio-guide explained everything in great detail and included extracts from the semi-autobiographical novel set in the schoolhouse where Alain-Fournier had spent his boyhood. Le Grand Meaulnes came to life before our eyes as we stood in Monsieur Seurel's and Millie's classrooms, entered the shadowy Red Room with its velvet drapes, climbed the steep kitchen staircase to the attics where Seurel and Meaulnes slept, had first spoken in secret of the lost domain.
I would go back there again to observe its authentic details: a nightshirt laid out on an iron bedstead, a cupboard ajar filled with old bottles, the cooking range decorated with floral tiles, trunks of old-fashioned toys abandoned in the attic, washing draped on a wooden clothes horse, hand-written schoolbooks, blackboards chalked up in copper-plate handwriting. Virginia creeper edged the schoolroom window, a pile of fire-wood twigs was neatly stacked behind the benches in the schoolyard, the schoolboys' cloaks were still hanging there.
I had ''been there'' before of course; the school was used extensively for filming the story but now I could linger there alone; but not for too long, as we were a long way from Pierrefitte where we were staying.
After a picnic by the River Cher we returned to the sleepy village, entered the unlocked church where Alain-Fournier attended Mass as a child. It could have been a country church in England with its tiny interior, creaking door and faintly musty smell but here were the familiar vases of gladioli, pictures of Saints and rush-seated chairs that made it so distinctly French.
I had read that Alain-Fournier had attended a children's fancy-dress party at a local chateau, Conancay, which had inspired him to write about La Fete Etrange years later but it was hidden in the woods, prive, out of sight. But we did manage to locate the tiny, deserted chapel dedicated to Saint-Agathe, the name Alain-Fournier gave to Epineuil in his novel. The bumpy ride and over-grown track were more than compensated by the view from the hillside overlooking the Auvergne. A gentle breeze fanned the afternoon heat; butterflies fluttered around us: blue, yellow, copper-coloured.
Reluctantly we set off on our journey home. We broke the journey at Bourges; wandered past the Cathedral, through narrow streets reminiscent of Canterbury. We found a salon de the for much-needed refreshment; feasted on little pastries and cakes filled with cherries and raspberries.
And then home via Nancay in the evening sunlight. We had visited the village the day before: a quiet, self-contained place on the edge of the Sologne; had bought bread and provisions. I had asked in the boulangerie and the epicerie if they knew which shop in the village had belonged to Alain-Fournier's uncle. Again, fact merged with fiction: it was here that the writer had spent childhood holidays, had enjoyed fishing and shooting in meres and forests nearby. Later he was to write about it in his novel: it was in this very place that Seurel first encountered Yvonne De Galais.
I asked four people but no one knew. We were directed up the lane towards the local chateau where a modern art gallery housed a musee imaginaire inspired by Alain-Fournier's novel. It was closed. We rang the bell and a man came to the gate but was unable to help us. He did not know the location of the shop either.We walked back slowly trying to identify it by a copy of a 19th century photograph and there it was, standing opposite the church, with a little plaque on the wall, that evidently no one else had noticed! It was a gift shop, refurbished with carpet where there had once been bare earth. It had been an 'open all hours' type of place in Alain-Fournier's day: now it was closed. I peered through the casement windows imagining the friendly chatter by the light of oil lamps in days gone by.
And now, after another week spent further south in the Dordogne, we are home again: the washing machine hums and the garden needs weeding. The buddleia is spent; Michaelmas daisies take its place. But the same butterflies we saw in the Sologne dance in the late-summer sunshine: Speckled Wood, Meadow Brown, Cabbage White. And in the holly trees one or two sparrows twitter and fly free as they did in France.
A bag of postcards and books is still to be unpacked; there are photographs to be developed. So this has all been written down quickly before it fades, evaporates from memory like the land without a name: a hazy, distant dream that is never quite forgotten. The spirits of places we encountered are hauntingly memorable, have enhanced my understanding of Alain-Fournier, his life and work. Perhaps I am glad, though wistful, that we only saw the Chateau de Loroy from a distance; Uncle Florentin's shop was closed and no one seemed to know its whereabouts; Conancay was inaccessible; little English was spoken and my French was far from fluent. It all seemed elusive, just out of reach. I long to go back but realise perhaps I never shall.
''Have you read Le Grand Meaulnes?'' I ask friends at church, in the street. They look at me blankly.
''You should,'' I reply, hardly daring to reveal the treasures found there and my quest for the lost domain.
Originally published in Books and Company
Tuesday 4 May 2010
Chelsea Mornings
"Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning…" sang Joni Mitchell. Last year my sister and her family were staying in Cheyne Walk for nine months while their home was being torn apart by builders. I took the opportunity to stay with them and get to know the area better. I was amazed to discover that it was the very spot where both Whistler spent his last years and Epstein had a studio. The Art Nouveau properties (72 –74) were destroyed in an air raid in 1941. Chelsea Old Church, next door, was also badly bombed, but its chapel, commissioned by Sir Thomas More in 1528 survived, close by where More’s demolished mansion once stood. In 1965 a sunken garden was created on the site of the old orchard, appropriately called Roper’s Garden with a sculpture by Epstein overlooking the Thames.
However, a lot of the street remains in tact and I have listed houses worth seeing if you are in the area. Apart from Thomas Carlyle’s house in nearby Cheyne Row, owned by the National Trust, none of them is open to the public but it is fascinating to imagine the comings and goings of artists and writers, let alone canvases and manuscripts, over the years.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti lived at Number 16, the Queen’s House, built in 1717; Swinburne and Meredith also stayed there for periods of time. George Eliot lived at Number 4, William Leigh Hunt at 22 and Mrs. Gaskell at 93. Joseph Mallord William Turner lived further along at 119, close to Battersea Bridge, as did Sylvia Pankhurst. Turner had iron railings installed on the roof of Reach House so he could admire the sunsets across the river.
Close by, in Cheyne Row, William de Morgan, the potter, started his own tile kiln in 1872, at Number 30. Oscar Wilde lived at 34, Tite Street where John Singer Sargent and Augustus John had studios at Number 33 in 1885 and 1940. The White House, opposite, built for Whistler - one of several houses in Chelsea he lived in – was pulled down in 1961.
Unlike today, Chelsea residents were often far from wealthy: Leigh Hunt’s family of seven children sometimes went without bread. Edith Holden, who wrote what was to become ‘The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady’ and her sculptor husband lived at 2, Oakley Crescent. William Holman Hunt’s address, 5 Prospect Place, was demolished for the construction of a hospital for sick and incurable children in 1875 and has now been converted in flats.
Over the years, many interesting houses have been lost including that of Doctor Phene in Upper Cheyne Row, demolished in 1924 and elaborately decorated with dragons, busts and armorial bearings, all painted in brilliant colours. Street numbers have changed and not every house mentioned is identifiable by a blue plaque. I am still looking for Lindsey House where Marc Brunel, and later, Whistler, lived and trying to imagine Linda’s fictitious house in Nancy Mitford’s "The Pursuit of Love" with all her couture clothes stashed in trunks in the basement.
Waterstone’s, in the Kings Road, has a good selection of books on the area. Treat yourself to one and enjoy strolling round Chelsea one sunny morning, gazing at the same stretch of river Turner, Whistler and others once painted years before.
(Originally published in INSIGHT magazine a few years back)
However, a lot of the street remains in tact and I have listed houses worth seeing if you are in the area. Apart from Thomas Carlyle’s house in nearby Cheyne Row, owned by the National Trust, none of them is open to the public but it is fascinating to imagine the comings and goings of artists and writers, let alone canvases and manuscripts, over the years.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti lived at Number 16, the Queen’s House, built in 1717; Swinburne and Meredith also stayed there for periods of time. George Eliot lived at Number 4, William Leigh Hunt at 22 and Mrs. Gaskell at 93. Joseph Mallord William Turner lived further along at 119, close to Battersea Bridge, as did Sylvia Pankhurst. Turner had iron railings installed on the roof of Reach House so he could admire the sunsets across the river.
Close by, in Cheyne Row, William de Morgan, the potter, started his own tile kiln in 1872, at Number 30. Oscar Wilde lived at 34, Tite Street where John Singer Sargent and Augustus John had studios at Number 33 in 1885 and 1940. The White House, opposite, built for Whistler - one of several houses in Chelsea he lived in – was pulled down in 1961.
Unlike today, Chelsea residents were often far from wealthy: Leigh Hunt’s family of seven children sometimes went without bread. Edith Holden, who wrote what was to become ‘The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady’ and her sculptor husband lived at 2, Oakley Crescent. William Holman Hunt’s address, 5 Prospect Place, was demolished for the construction of a hospital for sick and incurable children in 1875 and has now been converted in flats.
Over the years, many interesting houses have been lost including that of Doctor Phene in Upper Cheyne Row, demolished in 1924 and elaborately decorated with dragons, busts and armorial bearings, all painted in brilliant colours. Street numbers have changed and not every house mentioned is identifiable by a blue plaque. I am still looking for Lindsey House where Marc Brunel, and later, Whistler, lived and trying to imagine Linda’s fictitious house in Nancy Mitford’s "The Pursuit of Love" with all her couture clothes stashed in trunks in the basement.
Waterstone’s, in the Kings Road, has a good selection of books on the area. Treat yourself to one and enjoy strolling round Chelsea one sunny morning, gazing at the same stretch of river Turner, Whistler and others once painted years before.
(Originally published in INSIGHT magazine a few years back)
Sunday 28 March 2010
Every Sampler Tells a Story
As I write, I gaze up at a framed sampler that hangs in the dining room: a square piece of linen embroidered with gaily-coloured flowers, trees, birds contained within a rich border. A large house and garden edged with trees take up most of the space; cattle and sheep graze on the lawn. A little verse has been painstakingly stitched in black: O God, our help in ages past...It adds a moral tone, a note of severity to the rural scene with which I have become so familiar. Who was Phoebe Beeston? How old was she in 1832 when she stitched this sampler? Is the house with its square windows still standing? Do long-horned cattle still roam past? And whom do the initials, D and W, represent?
There are no more clues, details to take me any further. Like many samplers they begin to tell a story, detailing fragments of time lost with the passing years. Penelope Lively in her novel, A Stitch in Time, weaves a children's story round a sampler displayed in a Victorian house in Lyme Regis, interleaving past and present. It seems every sampler has the potential to stir the imagination and intrigue us.
So who was Mary Hemming whose intricate map embroidered on silk hangs on the other side of the fireplace? She has stitched 1816 but I have seen identical pieces dated 1790. How long did it take her to finish? Not that long, surely?
What of Jean Souter, aged 9, Ann Ravenhill, Alice Amore, Katie Herbert or H.M. Aves whose diligent handiwork lines the stairs? One sampler is unfinished. Did its seamstress die or just give up? Who knows?
However, there are many samplers in museums and collections across the country that are well documented from those in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge to the Goodhart Collection at Montacute House in Somerset.
The earliest known, dated sampler was embroidered in coloured silks, metal threads and seed pearls on linen by Jane Bostocke in 1598 to include animals, flowers and strawberries. The stitches used included satin, back, Holbein and cable. It is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Samplers take their name from the Latin exemplum meaning something that may be copied or imitated and were originally used for reference by needle-women perfecting their skills.
Throughout the centuries the general appearance of samplers changed. 17th century samplers were long and narrow, known as band samplers and could be rolled on an ivory stick or a rod of parchment. As many as thirty different patterns of lace and cut and drawn work could be shown on one piece of fabric.
In the 18th century samplers were generally square with a border, a variety of motifs such as houses, flowers, birds, trees. A crown or coronet was a common motif and a verse was usually included.
Embroidered maps were fashionable at the start of the 19th century; the pattern was printed on silk or linen.
As the century progressed there was less individuality. Many samplers were taken from pattern books and often worked in schools showing the alphabet in cross-stitch.
The fashion for Berlin wool work saw the demise of the sampler. However, an interest in embroidery was revived by William Morris towards the end of the century. One of his panels, embroidered by his daughter, May, is on display in the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow.
Samplers have regained popularity and a revival in the 1970s produced kits available based on traditional designs, often stitched to commemorate family occasions such as weddings or christenings,as in years gone by. Jane Bostocke's early sampler notes alice lee was borne the 23 of november being tuesday in the afternoon 1596. A sampler worked by S.Stearn in 1826 details the marriage of Thomas and Elizabeth Markham and the births of their eight children, two of whom died in infancy. It is presumed that S. Stearn was a nurse or governess but who can tell?
One sampler that has intrigued me has connections with my local parish church, St Mary's, Woodford. Our local historical society was contacted by a gentleman from Nottinghamshire who had recently purchased a sampler from an antique dealer. It was stitched by Mary Anne Wade in 1835 and includes a poem by Samuel Wade in memory of ''my much lamented friend, John Viney who met instant Death by falling from the scaffold inside Woodford Church Essex March 18th 1817 in the 23rd year of his Age''. Parish records cofirm that John Viney, a workman from London, was buried on 20th March 1817. It remains a mystery why the sampler took 18 years to embroider. Who were Samuel and Mary Ann Wade. Perhaps we may never know.
Anothe sampler with Essex connections can be found in the Victoria and Albert Museum: a map of the Farm called Arnolds in the parishes of Stapleford Abby and Lambourn in the County of Essex being part of the estate of... Although the late 18th century sampler includes animals, birds and details of the surrounding area there is no mention of the farm owner's name.
One sampler, that is particularly well documented and researched, was stitched by Eliza Gibbons in 1839 of Chieveley Church in Berkshire, containing many references from the Bible.
I cannot help imagining the lives of those who stitched samplers so diligently in years gone by, including a six year old who completed: This I have done I thank God without correction from the rod. Many 19th century samplers stitched by young girls included 'improving' texts. Isaac Watts' Divine and Moral Songs for Children 1720 was still popular in Victorian times. O God our help in ages past, the verse chosen by Phebe Beeston on my sampler was also composed by Isaac Watts, who lived from 1674 - 1748.
Old paintings reveal that samplers were stitched by both rich and poor across the kingdom. The sampler features in Victorian cottage interiors by artists such as Thomas Webster and William Bromley and in a much grander portrait of Miss Hawkins by George James from the second half of the 18th century. It is as likely that samplers were stitched by Jane Austen's Georgina Darcy, Emma Woodhouse and Elizabeth Bennett in their younger days and by Hardy's Tess and Dickens' Little Emily, albeit on coarser linen in simple cross-stitch.
Literary associations with samplers include those displayed in the Parsonage Museum, Haworth. These practical, plain examples stitched on rough linen are the work of Charlotte. Anne and Emily Bronte. They are hardly flights of fantasy but who knows the thoughts 'wuthering' in their heads as they stitched patiently by candlelight, surrounded by the desolate Yorkshire moors?
Or those of a girl from Cardiff who stitched The Life of the Happy Man in 1780, compromising of 250 words in addition to: Mary Dudden were 12 years of age when this sampler were worked and some part of it by moonlight?
Samplers cannot help but remind us of the swift passage of time and of our own mortality, as illustrated by these lines stitched by Anne Hooper, aged 9:
Our life is never at a stand
'Tis like a fading flower
Death which is always near at hand
Comes closer every hour...
The fragments that survive into the 21st century are a tribute to the Moral Children who stitched them for posterity.
(Article originally published in The Essex Countryside)
There are no more clues, details to take me any further. Like many samplers they begin to tell a story, detailing fragments of time lost with the passing years. Penelope Lively in her novel, A Stitch in Time, weaves a children's story round a sampler displayed in a Victorian house in Lyme Regis, interleaving past and present. It seems every sampler has the potential to stir the imagination and intrigue us.
So who was Mary Hemming whose intricate map embroidered on silk hangs on the other side of the fireplace? She has stitched 1816 but I have seen identical pieces dated 1790. How long did it take her to finish? Not that long, surely?
What of Jean Souter, aged 9, Ann Ravenhill, Alice Amore, Katie Herbert or H.M. Aves whose diligent handiwork lines the stairs? One sampler is unfinished. Did its seamstress die or just give up? Who knows?
However, there are many samplers in museums and collections across the country that are well documented from those in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge to the Goodhart Collection at Montacute House in Somerset.
The earliest known, dated sampler was embroidered in coloured silks, metal threads and seed pearls on linen by Jane Bostocke in 1598 to include animals, flowers and strawberries. The stitches used included satin, back, Holbein and cable. It is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Samplers take their name from the Latin exemplum meaning something that may be copied or imitated and were originally used for reference by needle-women perfecting their skills.
Throughout the centuries the general appearance of samplers changed. 17th century samplers were long and narrow, known as band samplers and could be rolled on an ivory stick or a rod of parchment. As many as thirty different patterns of lace and cut and drawn work could be shown on one piece of fabric.
In the 18th century samplers were generally square with a border, a variety of motifs such as houses, flowers, birds, trees. A crown or coronet was a common motif and a verse was usually included.
Embroidered maps were fashionable at the start of the 19th century; the pattern was printed on silk or linen.
As the century progressed there was less individuality. Many samplers were taken from pattern books and often worked in schools showing the alphabet in cross-stitch.
The fashion for Berlin wool work saw the demise of the sampler. However, an interest in embroidery was revived by William Morris towards the end of the century. One of his panels, embroidered by his daughter, May, is on display in the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow.
Samplers have regained popularity and a revival in the 1970s produced kits available based on traditional designs, often stitched to commemorate family occasions such as weddings or christenings,as in years gone by. Jane Bostocke's early sampler notes alice lee was borne the 23 of november being tuesday in the afternoon 1596. A sampler worked by S.Stearn in 1826 details the marriage of Thomas and Elizabeth Markham and the births of their eight children, two of whom died in infancy. It is presumed that S. Stearn was a nurse or governess but who can tell?
One sampler that has intrigued me has connections with my local parish church, St Mary's, Woodford. Our local historical society was contacted by a gentleman from Nottinghamshire who had recently purchased a sampler from an antique dealer. It was stitched by Mary Anne Wade in 1835 and includes a poem by Samuel Wade in memory of ''my much lamented friend, John Viney who met instant Death by falling from the scaffold inside Woodford Church Essex March 18th 1817 in the 23rd year of his Age''. Parish records cofirm that John Viney, a workman from London, was buried on 20th March 1817. It remains a mystery why the sampler took 18 years to embroider. Who were Samuel and Mary Ann Wade. Perhaps we may never know.
Anothe sampler with Essex connections can be found in the Victoria and Albert Museum: a map of the Farm called Arnolds in the parishes of Stapleford Abby and Lambourn in the County of Essex being part of the estate of... Although the late 18th century sampler includes animals, birds and details of the surrounding area there is no mention of the farm owner's name.
One sampler, that is particularly well documented and researched, was stitched by Eliza Gibbons in 1839 of Chieveley Church in Berkshire, containing many references from the Bible.
I cannot help imagining the lives of those who stitched samplers so diligently in years gone by, including a six year old who completed: This I have done I thank God without correction from the rod. Many 19th century samplers stitched by young girls included 'improving' texts. Isaac Watts' Divine and Moral Songs for Children 1720 was still popular in Victorian times. O God our help in ages past, the verse chosen by Phebe Beeston on my sampler was also composed by Isaac Watts, who lived from 1674 - 1748.
Old paintings reveal that samplers were stitched by both rich and poor across the kingdom. The sampler features in Victorian cottage interiors by artists such as Thomas Webster and William Bromley and in a much grander portrait of Miss Hawkins by George James from the second half of the 18th century. It is as likely that samplers were stitched by Jane Austen's Georgina Darcy, Emma Woodhouse and Elizabeth Bennett in their younger days and by Hardy's Tess and Dickens' Little Emily, albeit on coarser linen in simple cross-stitch.
Literary associations with samplers include those displayed in the Parsonage Museum, Haworth. These practical, plain examples stitched on rough linen are the work of Charlotte. Anne and Emily Bronte. They are hardly flights of fantasy but who knows the thoughts 'wuthering' in their heads as they stitched patiently by candlelight, surrounded by the desolate Yorkshire moors?
Or those of a girl from Cardiff who stitched The Life of the Happy Man in 1780, compromising of 250 words in addition to: Mary Dudden were 12 years of age when this sampler were worked and some part of it by moonlight?
Samplers cannot help but remind us of the swift passage of time and of our own mortality, as illustrated by these lines stitched by Anne Hooper, aged 9:
Our life is never at a stand
'Tis like a fading flower
Death which is always near at hand
Comes closer every hour...
The fragments that survive into the 21st century are a tribute to the Moral Children who stitched them for posterity.
(Article originally published in The Essex Countryside)
Shells
Years ago, I bought a Victorian glass dome displaying a beehive surrounded by flowers made from shells. It sits comfortably on the mantel piece in the sitting room and there it will stay. A collection of pretty shells in the bathroom was bought at a museum in La Rochelle and I look forward to making pictures from miniature shells, bought specially and kept in jam jars, when I have time.
We have visited houses and follies studded with shells: a cavern in Ramsgate worthy of Aladdin, a summer house in Ireland and a round house in Devon, to name a few. The scallop shell reminds me of pilgrimages I have made and I chose to have two shells carved on our four poster bed accordingly.
I love looking for shells on deserted beaches, at home and abroad, and have bought necklaces decorated with shells from all over the world: Peru, Mexico, Thailand, Barbados, reminding me of clear lapping azure sea and pale velvet beaches. My quest continues as we travel to Bali, Hawaii, the Barrier Reef and Tahiti in search of shells and the serenity they represent. When we returned from Barbados in 1981 we set out a collection of shells in a miniature Victorian chest of drawers. On moving house it was stored in the hayloft where it has remained ever since. Perhaps it is time to look for it once more.
(from In Search of Shells)
We have visited houses and follies studded with shells: a cavern in Ramsgate worthy of Aladdin, a summer house in Ireland and a round house in Devon, to name a few. The scallop shell reminds me of pilgrimages I have made and I chose to have two shells carved on our four poster bed accordingly.
I love looking for shells on deserted beaches, at home and abroad, and have bought necklaces decorated with shells from all over the world: Peru, Mexico, Thailand, Barbados, reminding me of clear lapping azure sea and pale velvet beaches. My quest continues as we travel to Bali, Hawaii, the Barrier Reef and Tahiti in search of shells and the serenity they represent. When we returned from Barbados in 1981 we set out a collection of shells in a miniature Victorian chest of drawers. On moving house it was stored in the hayloft where it has remained ever since. Perhaps it is time to look for it once more.
(from In Search of Shells)
Sunflowers
Driving to Arles one summer, in search of Van Gogh’s yellow house (sadly destroyed by a bomb in the last war) we came across fields of sunflowers, their heads turned to the sun as their French names, tournesol, implies.
When Vincent came to live there, he wrote to his brother, Theo: ‘Gauguin was telling me the other day he had seen a picture of Claude Monet of sunflowers in a large Japanese vase, but he likes mine better'.
He had started painting sunflowers in1887 from cottage gardens on the outskirts of Montmartre. When he arrived in Arles he began a series of paintings to decorate Gauguin, his friend’s room: ‘great pictures of sunflowers, 12 or 14 to the bunch.’ He had to work quickly ‘for the flowers fade so soon, and the thing is to do them in one rush’. Unable to complete the series, he painted three more canvasses inspired by his earlier paintings and from memory the following winter. Less than two years later his tragic life was over. His doctor friend, Paul Gachiet, brought a magnificent bunch of sunflowers to the artist’s funeral because ‘ Vincent loved them so much’ and his coffin was covered in masses of yellow flowers, sunflowers, included.
‘The sunflower is mine in a way,’ Van Gogh had written, finding ‘consolation in contemplating them’. Since then, many artists including Gauguin have painted sunflowers in homage to him, about whom Gauguin wrote: ‘those glimmers of sunlight rekindled his soul, that abhorred the fog, that needed warmth’. Perhaps that need is in all of us, as Albert Camus wrote, to find ‘an invincible summer’ in the ‘depths of winter’.
I have a large china jug with Dr. Johnson’s words inscribed: ‘When a man is tired of London he is tired of life.’ I enjoy filling it with rustic flowers, home-grown in Woodford. As summer fades and autumnal leaves start to litter the pavements, I look forward to packing it full of sunflowers once more.
(Article first appeared in St. Mary’s Parish Magazine)
When Vincent came to live there, he wrote to his brother, Theo: ‘Gauguin was telling me the other day he had seen a picture of Claude Monet of sunflowers in a large Japanese vase, but he likes mine better'.
He had started painting sunflowers in1887 from cottage gardens on the outskirts of Montmartre. When he arrived in Arles he began a series of paintings to decorate Gauguin, his friend’s room: ‘great pictures of sunflowers, 12 or 14 to the bunch.’ He had to work quickly ‘for the flowers fade so soon, and the thing is to do them in one rush’. Unable to complete the series, he painted three more canvasses inspired by his earlier paintings and from memory the following winter. Less than two years later his tragic life was over. His doctor friend, Paul Gachiet, brought a magnificent bunch of sunflowers to the artist’s funeral because ‘ Vincent loved them so much’ and his coffin was covered in masses of yellow flowers, sunflowers, included.
‘The sunflower is mine in a way,’ Van Gogh had written, finding ‘consolation in contemplating them’. Since then, many artists including Gauguin have painted sunflowers in homage to him, about whom Gauguin wrote: ‘those glimmers of sunlight rekindled his soul, that abhorred the fog, that needed warmth’. Perhaps that need is in all of us, as Albert Camus wrote, to find ‘an invincible summer’ in the ‘depths of winter’.
I have a large china jug with Dr. Johnson’s words inscribed: ‘When a man is tired of London he is tired of life.’ I enjoy filling it with rustic flowers, home-grown in Woodford. As summer fades and autumnal leaves start to litter the pavements, I look forward to packing it full of sunflowers once more.
(Article first appeared in St. Mary’s Parish Magazine)
Saturday 20 March 2010
The Strand of the Seat
It is enough to sit on a rock on the north shore of Iona on a warm September morning, totally alone and lost in thought. Green waves are pounding on to the pale velvet sand and there is no one in sight. I toss four pebbles into the foam and let go their weight as empty shells fill my pockets with grains of sand to remind me to return.
Iona’s pale beaches, green waves and stony paths replenish me with love, abundant as the shells strewn on its shores, and embrace me like a healing rainbow after the storm.
Iona’s pale beaches, green waves and stony paths replenish me with love, abundant as the shells strewn on its shores, and embrace me like a healing rainbow after the storm.
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