Another gloomy day and a joyful batch of rediscovered colour slides. The morning’s task – obviously – was to scan them.
These are from Nottingham’s Race for Life in June 2006.
Daughter-in-Law, Heidi is the tall woman in the centre of the throng gathering for the off.
Louisa, Gemma S, Heidi, and Emily raring to go; Gemma and Louisa taking on early refreshments.
Confident granddaughter, Emily, two months after representing Croydon in the Mini London Marathon, meant serious business.
Louisa and her friend, Gemma, were out to have fun, as well as
raise funds for Cancer Research in honour of Gemma’s Dad and Louisa’s mother who was also Heidi’s mother-in-law, and Emily’s grandmother.
Like her daughter, Heidi was comfortable throughout.
It was perhaps a little tougher for some.
Here, the ladies proudly sport their medals. Gemma was Gemma B on the day. She would soon marry Paul S, who stands beside her, as Louisa would soon marry Errol, standing beside her.
This afternoon’s scanning was of the next four ‘Little Dorrit’ illustrations by Charles Keeping.
‘Minnie was there, alone’, giving the artist an opportunity for a romantic, bucolic, scene;
while, in ‘She started up suddenly, with a half-scream’, and ‘Mr Flintwinch gravely pledged him’, we recognise the book’s most evil character (adopting an alias) and the elderly couple from their earlier manifestations.
‘She bounced across to the opposite pavement’ depicts the haughtiness of Little Dorrit’s sister taking offence at the humbler young woman’s escorting a pauper.
This evening we dined on well-baked pork chops topped with almond flakes; sage and onion stuffing; crisp Yorkshire pudding; roast potatoes and parsnips; firm carrots and cauliflower; tender cabbage and runner beans, with spicy gravy. The Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden and I drank Réserve de Bonpas 2019.
Barry of New Forest Chimney Sweeping & Repairs finished most of his work on our kitchen extension roof today. While he was doing so, I made him a set of A4 prints from my pictures of him from the last two days.
He sent me his own images of the new lead flashings and my mug. One of our problems has been the down pipe running rainwater directly onto the tiles. Barry will extend that on Monday.
Later, I read four more chapters of ‘Little Dorrit’, and scanned four more of Charles Keeping’s expressive illustrations.
Keeping has captured the rapt expression of this child-woman being read a story in ‘ ‘Lor!’, said Maggy, giving her knees a hug.’ Despite Maggy’s previous portrait having been full face, the artist has retained an instantly recognised likeness.
‘The private residence of Mr Pancks was in Pentonville’ where the artist could well have modelled these buildings on those still extant today.
‘Mr Henry Gowan seemed to have a malicious pleasure in playing off the three talkers against each other.’ The boy peeping over the group has been cleverly included in this picture – such is the artist’s attention to detail.
‘Parasite little tenements, with the cramp in their whole frame.’
This evening we dined on Jackie’s classic cottage pie; crunchy carrots and cauliflower; tender cabbage and runner beans, with tasty gravy. The Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden while I drank Chevalier de Fauvert Comté Tolosan Rouge 2019, a remarkably smooth low-priced Lidl find.
Barry, of New Forest Chimney Sweeping and Repairs continued today with his work on our kitchen extension roof.
Painstakingly he removed the spent lead flashing and prepared the surfaces for the replacement material.
Only when he was satisfied that he had firm bases did he begin to lay the new lead. This is tough work for one man. The care he takes is patent.
This evening Barry sent me his own photographs of his work, including his earlier project on the Velux window.
Just after lunch, Ronan from Tom Sutton Heating visited to fix a minor central heating problem.
Four chapters further into ‘Little Dorrit’ I have scanned four more of Charles Keeping’s exemplary illustrations.
Unusually, the text of the page containing ‘A dirty shop-window in a dirty street’, describes a different building, the home of the character in the next illustration. Here we have a poor man’s eating house, the Victorian equivalent of a greasy spoon, namely ‘a small, cheap eatery – either an American diner or coffee shop, or a British or Irish cafe – typically specialising in fried foods and/or home-cooked meals.’ (Wikipedia). During my running days I was a connoisseur of London’s wide-spread finest, such as The Martin Café
“Mrs Merdle was magnificent’ – and proud of it.
Tobacconists, such as ‘It was a very small establishment’ have all but disappeared from London’s streets except for the West End.
With ‘He was surprised to see a bonnet labouring up the step-ladder’, the artist has split his drawing, and consequently the text, into a diagonal across the spread. It is a measure of Keeping’s consistency that these three characters are each recognisable from their earlier appearances.
This evening we dined on breaded cod and oven chips; cod, asparagus, and pea fishcakes; petits pois; pickled onions and wallies; with which we both drank Western Cape Sauvignon Blanc 2020
In ‘He applied spoons to his eye’, Keeping has ably depicted that Young Barnacle had not exactly engrossed the assembled company.
As the artist shows with ‘Now or never was the time to speak to her’ never would have been preferable.
Charles Keeping will not be constrained by the blocks of type on his pages.
‘The brothers, walking up and down the College-yard, were a memorable sight’, gives him the opportunity for a double spread.
This afternoon I scanned and labelled another set of recently rediscovered colour slides. These are from France in April 2009.
During my sojourns in Sigoules I walked many miles in and around the town.
The blossom trees in the first picture were in the garden immediately across rue St Jacques from my front windows; the white blob receding in the far distance of the garden collecting tyres was on regular five mile circuit; for a while cattle in the field behind the supermarket were displaced for development; the church and war memorial are at Ste Innocence, near Eymet; I would pass the ploughed field on another circuitous ramble. What was built on the development site and the trip to Ste Innocence are described in https://derrickjknight.com/2012/06/10/le-code-bar/
I passed these rape fields on my fairly regular 8 mile walk to Eymet. It was probably a little after this particular time that I began to struggle with this one. The general advice when encountering the marathon runners’ “wall” was to run the through the pain. I had never experienced that particular difficulty, but surely, it seemed, the pain in my left hip would benefit from such an effort. Not so. 6 months later I was fitted with a new one. Although I continued walking very quickly after the operation, I never ran again.
Chris, Frances, and Elizabeth were staying with me that spring. We took the opportunity to visit Chris’s long-term friend Mike Ozga and his wife Oonagh who lived about 30 miles away.
A walk in the Dordogne woodland ensued. I wondered whose fossilised skull had been covered in moss.
This evening we reprised Jackie’s scrumptious beef pie dinner with similar beverages.
After two more chapters of ‘Little Dorrit’ I scanned two more of Charles Keeping’s excellent illustrations.
In ‘He ate all that was put before him’, Keeping has accurately depicted the character Christopher Hibbert described as the ‘one truly evil character in the book’.
‘You got out of the Yard by a low gateway into a maze of shabby streets’. Keeping has accurately represented the yard that Dickens knew.
‘Bleeding Heart Yard is a cul-de-sac leading off Greville Street, near Hatton Garden. The yard’s name probably derives from an old inn sign, the Bleeding Heart of Our Lady, which depicted the heart of the Virgin Mary pierced through by swords. However, the sanguinary imagery has inspired several colourful legends, which Charles Dickens summarises in Little Dorrit (1855–7) – where he also suggests that the name actually relates to “the heraldic cognisance of the old family to whom the property had once belonged.”
One tale has it that a lovelorn young lady, imprisoned in her bedchamber by her cruel father, pined away at her window, murmuring ‘bleeding heart, bleeding heart, bleeding away’ as she expired. Dickens says that this story was “the invention of a tambour-worker, a spinster and romantic, still lodging in the Yard.”
The goriest fable suggests that sometime in the early 17th century the much-wooed Elizabeth Hatton was murdered here by the Spanish ambassador – whom she had jilted – and was found at dawn with her heart still pumping blood onto the cobblestones. Another angle on this story, this time featuring Sir Christopher and Lady Alice Hatton and the Devil, was set to verse by Richard Barham in his Ingoldsby Legends.
“Of poor Lady Hatton, it’s needless to say, No traces have ever been found to this day, Or the terrible dancer who whisk’d her away; But out in the court-yard – and just in that part Where the pump stands – lay bleeding a large human heart …”
Richard Barham, ‘The House-Warming!!’ (1840)’ (hidden-london.com)
The Elizabeth Hatton story is thoroughly dismissed in https://d33c33.wordpress.com/elizabeth-hatton-and-the-legend-of-bleeding-heart-yard/
My own acquaintance with this historic street is detailed in https://derrickjknight.com/2017/12/06/changes/
The lamp in my photograph is very similar to that in Mr Keeping’s drawing.
This afternoon, the winds of three day storm Christoph having desisted, Jackie drove us to Ferndene Farm Shop. So smooth was the shop that my wait in the car was just a four page one, after which we diverted on our journey home via Forest Road, giving me the opportunity to wander among the ponies in
the soggy woodland alongside.
The damp, muddy, matted shaggy haired animals bore the effects of days in the wind and rain,
one adding the battle scars of torn out tufts.
Jackie photographed a helicopter flying overhead as I approached the ditch I needed to cross to enter the woodland.
The minute I returned to the car heavy rain set in once more.
This evening we dined on roasted sturdy chicken thighs, extremely tasty parsnips, and crisp potatoes; Yorkshire pudding, sage and onion stuffing; firm carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli, and flavoursome gravy, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I drank vin de Bourgogne Macon 2019.
Just before I spent the week in Eymet with Maggie and Mike in September 2008, culminating in agreeing to buy their house in Sigoules, I enjoyed various locations with Mike and Heidi, Emily, Oliver, and Alice. One of these was at
Onesse in Les Landes. Oliver doesn’t seem to be in this family shot from the selection I scanned today from the recently recovered colour slides.
I am not sure where this beach was, but I remember picnicking on the bank in the foreground.
We took a number of walks in the sun-dappled forest with its tall pines, red-brown streams, and sandy banks of bright purple heather.
The farmhouse and its field; the nodding sunflowers; and the village perching above it are all outside Eymet, while the colourful garden and the church spire behind the rooftops are probably inside it. Without notes I am a little hazy after twelve years.
I really regret not being sure where this wonderfully sensitive sculpture of an unknown soldier adorns a war memorial. Maybe someone will enlighten me.
Having read another four chapters of ‘Little Dorrit’ I now present four more of Charles Keeping’s skilful illustrations.
Here we have a ruined uncle well portrayed by the artist;
‘My eldest daughter and my son Mr Clennham.’ The essences of one weak and one haughty captured by the artist’s pen;
‘Oh, Maggy, What a clumsy child you are!’ Drawn to perfection is Dickens’s portrait of this simple soul, including her clothing’s ‘general resemblance to seaweed’;
‘He seemed to have been sitting for his portrait all the days of his life’. Keeping has caught Dickens’s vivid description of the aptly named Tite Barnacle, down to his very clothing.
This evening we dined on a second sitting of Hordle Chinese Take Away’s excellent fare, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I finished the Recital.
This morning I received my Covid vaccine invitation in the post and booked my appointments at a centre less than eight miles away by telephone. The first jab will be in one week’s time. The whole process went very smoothly. The service has been quick and efficient.
I have now read the first 6 chapter’s of ‘Little Dorrit’ and this afternoon scanned five more of Charles Keeping’s drawings.
The artist faithfully describes Miss Wade’s appearance and aloof manner;
his rendering of the Clennam home is most evocative of a neglected edifice;
the diminutive Mr Flintwinch shakes his much taller wife out of a nightmare;
our first sighting of our eponymous character is rendered exactly as the author described;
‘the Father of the Marshalsea’ enjoys a good number of perks from departing residents.
This evening we dined on Mr Chan’s excellent Hordle Chinese Take Away fare, with which Jackie drank Hoegaarden and I enjoyed a Recital encore.
‘Little Dorrit’ is one of Charles Dickens’s great novels. My Folio Society Edition of 1986 is, at 834 pages with 72 of Charles Keeping’s exquisite illustrations, so great that I intend to deviate from my normal approach to books in this blog.
The tale has been reproduced so often in books and films and there are so many Internet pages on it that I think I do not need to refrain from any story spoilers, and my observations may or may not be superfluous.
Just as the author published the work in serial form I will do the same with my presentation of Mr Keeping’s drawings. I will write something about each picture as I make my leisurely journey through the weighty tome.
The frontispiece represents Marshalsea Prison.
Wikipedia tells us ‘The Marshalsea (1373–1842) was a notorious prison in Southwark, just south of the River Thames. Although it housed a variety of prisoners, including men accused of crimes at sea and political figures charged with sedition, it became known, in particular, for its incarceration of the poorest of London’s debtors.[1] Over half the population of England’s prisoners in the 18th century were in jail because of debt.[2]
Run privately for profit, as were all English prisons until the 19th century, the Marshalsea looked like an Oxbridge college and functioned as an extortion racket.[3] Debtors in the 18th century who could afford the prison fees had access to a bar, shop and restaurant, and retained the crucial privilege of being allowed out during the day, which gave them a chance to earn money for their creditors. Everyone else was crammed into one of nine small rooms with dozens of others, possibly for years for the most modest of debts, which increased as unpaid prison fees accumulated.[4] The poorest faced starvation and, if they crossed the jailers, torture with skullcaps and thumbscrews. A parliamentary committee reported in 1729 that 300 inmates had starved to death within a three-month period, and that eight to ten were dying every 24 hours in the warmer weather.[a]
The prison became known around the world in the 19th century through the writing of the English novelist Charles Dickens, whose father was sent there in 1824, when Dickens was 12, for a debt to a baker. Forced as a result to leave school to work in a factory, Dickens based several of his characters on his experience, most notably Amy Dorrit, whose father is in the Marshalsea for debts so complex no one can fathom how to get him out.[6][b]
Much of the prison was demolished in the 1870s, although parts of it were used as shops and rooms into the 20th century. A local library now stands on the site. All that is left of the Marshalsea is the long brick wall that marked its southern boundary, the existence of what Dickens called “the crowding ghosts of many miserable years” recalled only by a plaque from the local council. “[I]t is gone now,” he wrote, “and the world is none the worse without it.”[8]‘
In his introduction to my copy, Christopher Hibbert, speaking of Dickens’s childhood experience, states that ‘throughout his life thereafter Dickens had been obsessed with prisons, prisoners and imprisonment. In England, in America, Italy and France he found his way to the prison in each new town he visited in the way that another man might seek out a museum or a church.’
The jailer of Marseilles Prison takes his little daughter on a tour of the cells.
During my brief spell of residence in Sutherland Place, W2 I served as a Committee member of the local Neighbourhood Association which enjoyed an annual gardens competition. In the summer of 2008 I toured the few streets around my flat making a series of photographic prints of likely contenders on which a small sub-group voted. A set of colour slides from the recently rediscovered cache dated July/August was my basic material. I scanned them this afternoon.
Although these West London properties are highly sought after and very expensive they mostly have negligible gardens. I was genuinely impressed by the ingenuity shown by the nurturing of colourful plants in all kinds of containers laid on paving and walls, on window sills, fixed to railings, and straggling down steps.
I wonder whether anyone will share my favourite. As a clue I will say it was not the stunning header picture.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s deliciously spicy pork paprika; roast potatoes, including the sweet variety, in their skins; firm broccoli; and tender runner beans, with which she drank Hoegaarden and I drank Languedoc Montpeyroux Recital 2018.
Early yesterday morning Jackie photographed some of our current garden blooms. Each is labelled in the gallery.
We decided to hold these back to today because of the quantity we had published of the St John the Baptist Cemetery photographs. Later, Elizabeth e-mailed me a selection of hers.
This is her take on the inserted death medals;
she also added her version of the House memorial carved lilies;
she was intrigued by the cremation plaques and their offerings from loved ones and from autumn;
I had refrained from photographing these daffodils, but she made the best of them.
I spent much of today finishing reading
Christopher Hibbert in his knowledgeable and informative introduction places this work in the context of Dickens’s time and his works. He tells us that this begins the writer’s focus on social ills.
This is a well wrought story which largely keeps a good pace and culminates in conclusions with surprises and revelations which I will leave open to anyone wishing to read the book for the first time. The descriptions are good. Despite the harshness of the theme the author’s wry humour is much in evidence. I felt that the dialogue of two characters was irritating enough for me to skim them. One was conveyed in the supposed vernacular; another wath ath thpoken with a thevere lithp. The first indicated the humble origins of the man; the thecond I imagine wath a clownith interval. (I do apologithe WP, but I ethpect you get my point).
Regular readers will need no introduction to the exuberant, animated, illustrations of Charles Keeping, ever faithful to the text, and unbound by the page formats.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s variation on Cottage pie, with the addition of mashed potatoes and cheese; crunchy carrots and cauliflower, with tender cabbage, firm Brussels sprouts and tasty gravy. The Culinary Queen drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Shiraz.
Yesterday I finished reading the fifth and final of Charles Dickens’s Christmas Books. This morning I scanned Charles Keeping’s faithful, first-class, illustrations.
Christopher Hibbert, in his informative introduction to my Folio Society edition, offers the insight that this work reflects painful experiences of the writer’s own life. Seeking freedom from his phantoms ‘The Haunted Man’ of the novella appeals for forgetfulness. The story reveals that forgiveness is really what is required. Once more this tale has been overshadowed by ‘A Christmas Carol’. It does, however contain much of Dickens’s splendid descriptive writing laced with his wry humour.
Highgate West Cemetery, in September 2008, when I produced the batch of colour slides scanned this afternoon, was nowhere near as oppressively gloomy as the heavy atmosphere that prevailed outside my workroom window.
John Turpin, who wrote the text for ‘The Magnificent Seven’, and I needed to join the above paying group to visit this fine example of London’s Victorian landscaped burial grounds. Although wealthy enough to have afforded these final resting places, I have gleaned no information about the various residents.
Steps lead down to these lower levels which also house the columbarium, from the Latin for pigeon-house, which contains niches for storing funeral urns.
I do not know who warranted this elaborate marker.
These three are memorable for their animals. His mastiff guards the remains of Thomas Sayers.
This is what Wikipedia tells us about him: ‘Tom Sayers (15 or 25 May[1] 1826 – 8 November 1865) was an English bare-knuckle prize fighter. There were no formal weight divisions at the time, and although Sayers was only five feet eight inches tall and never weighed much more than 150 pounds, he frequently fought much bigger men. In a career which lasted from 1849 until 1860, he lost only one of sixteen bouts. He was recognized as heavyweight champion of England between 1857, when he defeated William Perry (the “Tipton Slasher”) and his retirement in 1860.
His lasting fame depended exclusively on his final contest, when he faced American champion John Camel Heenan[2] in a battle which was widely considered to be boxing’s first world championship. It ended in chaos when the spectators invaded the ring, and the referee finally declared a draw.
Regarded as a national hero, Sayers, for whom the considerable sum of £3,000 was raised by public subscription, then retired from the ring. After his death five years later at the age of 39, a huge crowd watched his cortège on its journey to London’s Highgate Cemetery.’ His origins are also related in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Sayers
John Atcheler, commemorated by a horse on a plinth, was reputedly horse-slaughterer to Queen Victoria. Maybe someone was indulging a wry sense of humour.
Menageries were popular in Regency and early Victorian England. The lion resting above the remains of George Wombwell represents a favourite exhibit of that individual who, according to Wikipedia
‘was born in Wendon Lofts, Essex in 1777. Around 1800 he moved to London and in 1804 became a shoemaker in Soho. However, when a ship from South America brought two boas to London docks, he bought them for £75 and began to exhibit them in taverns. He soon made a good profit.
Wombwell began to buy exotic animals from ships that came from Africa, Australia and South America, and collected a whole menagerie and put them on display in Soho. In 1810 he founded the Wombwell’s Travelling Menagerie and began to tour the fairs of Britain. By 1839 it totalled fifteen wagons, and was accompanied by a brass band.
Wombwell bred and raised many animals himself, including the first lion to be bred in captivity in Britain; he named it William in honour of William Wallace. In 1825 Warwick, Wombwell, in collaboration with Sam Wedgbury and dog dealer Ben White’s assistant Bill George,[1]arranged a Lion-baiting between his docile lion Nero and six bulldogs. Nero refused to fight but when Wombwell released Wiliam, he mauled the dogs and the fight was soon stopped.
Over the years, Wombwell expanded three menageries that traveled around the country. Wombwell was a regular exhibitor at the annual Knott Mill Fair in Manchester, a venue he sometimes shared with Pablo Fanque‘s circus.[2][3] He was invited to the royal court on five occasions to exhibit his animals, three times before Queen Victoria. In 1847 the Queen Victoria noted the bravery of the “British Lion Queen”, the nickname of Ellen Chapmanwho appeared with lions, leopards and tigers. Chapman married Wombwell’s business rival George Sanger in 1850.[4]
On one occasion Prince Albert summoned him to look at his dogs who kept dying and Wombwell quickly noticed that their water was poisoning them. When the prince asked what he could do in return for this favour, Wombwell said, “What can you give a man who has everything?” However, Wombwell requested some oak timber from the recently salvaged Royal George. From this he had a coffin fashioned for himself, which he then proceeded to exhibit for a special fee.
Wombwell frequented Bartholomew Fair in London and even developed a rivalry with another exhibitor, Atkins. Once when he arrived at the fair, his elephant died and Atkins put up a sign “The Only Live Elephant in the Fair”. Wombwell simply put up a scroll with the words “The Only Dead Elephant in the Fair” and explained that seeing a dead elephant was an even a rarer thing than a live one. The public, realising that they could see a living elephant at any time, flocked to see and poke the dead one. Throughout the fair Atkins’ menagerie was largely deserted, much to his disgust.
George Wombwell died in 1850 and was buried in his Royal George coffin in Highgate Cemetery, under a statue of his lion Nero.
The book George Wombwell (1777 – 1850): Volume One recalls the lion and dog fight in Warwick with well researched evidence, but questions whether it ever actually took place. George Wombwell (1777 – 1850): Volume Two covers Wombwell’s life as the most famous showman, from his arrival in London around 1800 to his death in 1850.[5]
In 1851 a tapir broke out of its den at Wombwell’s Menagerie in Rochdale, causing panic among the spectators.[6]
The cedar of Lebanon in the second and third of these pictures is one of the cemetery’s original plantings.
This evening we dined on Jackie’s substantial, wholesome, chicken and vegetable stoup and crusty bread with which she drank Hoegaarden and I drank more of the Fleurie.
