It’s the 5th of February…my favorite day of the year! The number five brings back a special memory. I’m five years old, sitting on the floor in the living room of our rented trailer looking through an art book for children. I loved that book, but I had one favorite picture. I was entranced by this fractured image around a large number 5. I must have pestered my mother to read the description more than once because I knew it was about a fire engine. It’s been more than three decades since I saw that picture, but I’ve never forgotten it. I’ve always thought it was called ‘Fire engine no 5’, but I was wrong. This morning I looked it up on line. It’s called ‘The Figure 5 in Gold’. The artist was Charles Demuth who lived from 1883-1935. Looking at it after all these years I’m still entranced. It’s like someone fractured a glass into a story and the number 5 emerges as the hero. Demuth painted the picture after reading a poem written by his friend William Carlos Williams about a fire enguine he saw passing in the rain through the city. Share my memory…have a look… [Read more…] about Let the memory live again…
Tears in the Strand
I spent this morning cleaning my desk, changing some of my posters and straightening a bookcase. My work room is still a mess, but as I constantly tell myself, ‘to start is to finish’. Straightening the bookcase I pulled out this one book called A Book of Beauty an anthology of words and pictures. It isn’t very big, but it has poems and words from various eras and authors. There’s one I have to share. It’s part of a letter from Charles Lamb to William Wordsworth written 30th January 1801. This gives a fantastic peek through time at Regency London. It makes me wish I could time travel, if only to follow this man in his adventures.
I have passed all my days in London, until I have formed as many and intense local attachments as any of you mountaineers can have done with dead nature. The lighted shops of the Strand and Fleet Street. the innumerable trades, tradesmen and customers, coaches, waggons, playhouses, all the bustle and wickedness round about Covent Garden, [Read more…] about Tears in the Strand
What is she thinking?
After another night disturbed by tooth pain, I finally (this has been going on for weeks) walked into town bleary-eyed and made an appointment to be tortured by the dentist. I didn’t even ask how much it would cost. I don’t care as long as the offending tooth is obliterated along with the attendant pain, sleepless nights, and the need to eat mushy food. The green salad I had for breakfast required far too much chewing for comfort! By the end of the week I should be half a size smaller (fortunately I have lots of sizes to spare). After getting the appointment out of the way I walked over to my favorite charity shop to see if they had anything interesting. I found a box of old magazines entitled Discovering Art. One covering Japanese Medieval art had the picture below on the back (it doesn’t make any sense to me either).
It turns out this painting is in the Louvre (Paris, France) and was one of Thomas Gainsborough’s early bucolic double portraits. No one knows who these people are. It was originally thought to be the painter and his wife. I can see the resemblance, but his wife wasn’t a blonde and her cheek bones were more pronounced. The man could almost be Thomas, but he doesn’t quite look like him. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gainsborough made the painting as a conversation piece [Read more…] about What is she thinking?
Working…learning…laughing…
Knowledge is like one of those hideous sand sculptures that were really big in the late seventies; layers of coloured sand were poured into long strange shaped clear glass bottles and proudly displayed on window ledges…at least in the town I grew up in (we had lots of sand). If you want to learn about something you have to read numerous books from different perspectives and over time you build up a unique layered mental sand sculpture of whatever you study. Ever since I was a small child I’ve been fascinated by England and English history. For my fifth birthday one of my brother’s friends (who I didn’t know and whose mother must have put together the gift) gave me this small box with two tiny ceramic animals with the words ‘Wade England’ stamped on the base . I still have the seal, the bottom encrusted with childhood dirt. Even at the age of five, England was the land of fairytales and it fascinated me. It still does, but my interests have expanded. These past five years I’ve been studying various interests, one of them being French history. All this knowledge is poured into my mental bottle making new layers that flow together. [Read more…] about Working…learning…laughing…
The Absent Husband…
The Absent Husband; the words conjure up an 18th century adventure story where a married Casanova has abandoned his responsibilities and ended reliving the plot of Robinson Crusoe. In my last post I mentioned finding online an old book, The Lives and Portraits of Curious and Odd Characters. I was enthralled by one particular vignette, ‘Mr Howe, The Absent Husband’. I had to copy the article longhand into my Regency notebook. Later as I brushed my teeth for bed and made my hot water bottle (obviously not at the same time) I was still transfixed by this bizarre real story. Whoever the author of the original article, they manage to sound like Dr Watson writing up one of Sherlock Holmes’ unsolved cases. I shall transcribe my transcription and you’ll see what I mean. If you can think of a plausible reason WHY this man would do what he did that fits all the other facts…PLEASE share it…I beg you! (Most of the punctuation is original though I did add a few periods)
About the year 1706, I know, says Dr. King one Mr Howe a sensible well natured man, possessed of an estate of 700-800 pounds per annum; he married a young lady of good family, in the West of England; her maiden name was Mallet, she was agreeable in person and manners, and proved a very good wife. Seven or Eight years after they had been married, he rose one morning very early and told his wife he was obliged to go to the Tower to transact some particular business; the same day at noon the wife received a note [Read more…] about The Absent Husband…
Real Georgians…who were really weird…
As the English says, I’m feeling poorly. I’ve spent most of the day lying in bed with the onset of a chest infection so I decided to read something. A few weeks ago I found a book at the charity shop that dealt with how London’s growth has been affected by wealthy people over the centuries. If it doesn’t sound like something to read while ill, you’d be right! After opening it I sat there feeling terribly confused…so and so married so and so’s daughter who inherited such and such from her uncle who was so and so and they spent the money buying such and such to make this or that… I started skimming and came across a number of interesting people and one of them was John Elews, an eccentric miser who lived in the mid to late 18th century. On looking him up on Google I came across this fantastic free on line book that was published in 1852, The lives and Portraits of Curious and Odd Characters. I think the book was originally published in the early 1800’s as it comments on eccentrics living in 1801 and 1810 as being recent. [Read more…] about Real Georgians…who were really weird…