Horace Walpole – Jane Austen in Vermont

This day I had the pleasure of spending time with Ron Dunning – we have in the past visited estates and famous houses, and this time the plan was to go to Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill

– alas! it was CLOSED [who closes a tourist site on a Friday??!] – but a few outside photos give you a sense of its grandeur – inside for another trip I am sorry to say – but you can visit it virtually here:

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But Marble Hill was a lovely surprise – home to Henrietta Howard, mistress of George II [for which George’s wife Caroline was most grateful] – apparently George spoke no English and Henrietta was deaf, so a perfect relationship that lasted until he took on another mistress [you can read the ever-interesting George’s mistress stories here.

Howard was unhappily married, separated, but a well-loved and respected woman of education, wit, and grace. She also had a “home of her own” – she designed and lived in Marble Hill beginning in the 1720s, one of the many villas built along the Thames – it remains a rare example of a house built for and by a woman in Georgian England, thankfully saved by an Act of Parliament in 1902. Unlike many such estates, it feels like a very real and livable home, not a museum – you can read more about Henrietta and Marble Hill here.

Love this dining room wallpaper:

View from the Thames:

And now a view of the modern Thames, not likely what Henrietta saw!:

Lunch at the Couch House café was an added treat.

[You can read more about Marble Hill at this post by Tony Grant from 2013!]

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We did go to nearby Orleans House, now really just the Gallery standing – I only took a picture of the exquisite ceiling, but here is also an exterior shot courtesy of Wikipedia:

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And to finish off the day, we took in the country home Sandycombe Lodge of J. M. W. Turner, where there was an inspiring watercolor exhibit of “Turner’s Kingdom: Beauty, Birds, and Beasts,” and very unlike the large and dramatic landscapes we associate with him. Celebrating Turner’s 250^th [just like Jane!], the house, designed by Turner, is a small retreat that Turner lived in with his father.

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And this just another window of interest – and wisteria EVERYWHERE! [just like in SC…]

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And another day “well-spent” – Thank you Ron for shepherding me around the sites of Twickenham!

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For your reading pleasure this week:

Just opened! A Bibliomania exhibit at the Beineke: https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/exhibitions/bibliomania-or-book-madness-bibliographical-romance

Kate Beckinsale – The Widow: https://www.denofgeek.com/uk/tv/54327/the-widow-kate-beckinsale-amazon-series-news

More on the Austen family lost (and now found) photographs: https://checknewyorktimes.blogspot.com/2019/01/lost-photographs-of-jane-austens-family.html

Making a William Morris Christmas at the National Portrait Gallery:
(from 2014) https://www.npg.org.uk/blog/making-a-william-morris-chirstmas

800 Medieval Manuscripts from England and France 700-1200: https://manuscrits-france-angleterre.org/polonsky/en/content/accueil-en?mode=desktop

More on mediaeval manuscripts: evidence of women’s work on illuminated medieval manuscripts (I love this!): http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/eaau7126

The LadyLike Language of Letters (and a lost art?): https://daily.jstor.org/the-ladylike-language-of-letters/?utm_term=The%20Ladylike%20Language%20of%20Letters&utm_campaign=jstordaily_01172019&utm_content=email&utm_source=Act-On+Software&utm_medium=email

You could spend weeks at this site: Gallica: https://gallica.bnf.fr/accueil/en/content/accueil-en?mode=desktop

Sign on for some Online Jane Austen – about Northanger Abbey – Hillsdale College – FREE: https://online.hillsdale.edu/courses/_austen/home/jane-austen-schedule

Must-read: an essay on early feminist criticism: https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/9E423C3E76FEB3656379E2FC9920AAE2/S1060150318001420a.pdf/dorothea_or_jane_the_dilemmas_of_early_feminist_criticism.pdf

The Grolier Club at 100: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/arts/design/book-lovers-grolier-club.html

London’s transit posters – the women artists [I bought a calendar of these and have framed my favorites – so beautiful]: https://www.citylab.com/design/2019/01/female-artist-poster-girls-london-transport-museum/579991/

You can view many at their online collection: https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections/collections-online/posters

Thomas Girtin. ‘Above Lyme Regis’ (Christies)

“Better than Turner? The brief and brilliant career of Thomas Girtin” (born in 1775, just like JA): three of his works coming up at auction at Christies on January 31, 2019 in New York: https://www.christies.com/features/The-Life-of-Thomas-Girtin-9651-1.aspx

18 movie/tv adaptations of books in 2019 – READ them before the movie!: https://www.buzzfeed.com/farrahpenn/tv-and-movie-book-adaptations-in-2019 (including Little Women, Catch 22 (with George Clooney…), The Goldfinch, Where’d You Go Bernadette…and more)

The Library of Burnt Books (with a video): http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20190117-the-library-of-forbidden-books

A sad loss to history trivia nerds the world over: “Two Nerdy History Girls” bid farewell (but will continue their own blogs, twitter and facebook pages, and of course their books!) http://twonerdyhistorygirls.blogspot.com/2018/12/in-which-loretta-susan-bid-farewell.html

I missed this, sad to say: Winnie-the-Pooh at the MFA – you can see a tiny bit of the exhibit here – scroll down for the preview: https://www.mfa.org/exhibitions/winnie-the-pooh

For fans of Horace Walpole: thru Feb 24, 2019: https://www.strawberryhillhouse.org.uk/losttreasures/

“This exhibition brings back to Strawberry Hill some of the most important masterpieces in Horace Walpole’s famous and unique collection for a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition. Horace Walpole’s collection was one of the most important of the 18th century. It was dispersed in a great sale in 1842. For the first time in over 170 years, Strawberry Hill can be seen as Walpole conceived it, with the collection in the interiors as he designed it, shown in their original positions.”

You can follow this blog in the ongoing search for more of Walpole’s lost treasures: https://www.strawberryhillhouse.org.uk/strawberry-hill-treasure-hunt/
This portrait of Henry Carey by Marcus Geeraerts is the supposed inspiration behind Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (a must-read for all dedicated Jane Austen fans…)

Some old news: Jane might be appalled (though I think more likely she would have had a copy herself…), but here is a more than interesting essay on Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and the copy that sold at auction in October 2018: https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/rowan-pelling-on-sex-obscenity-and-lady-chatterleys-lover …

This copy was owned by the judge in the obscenity case, the saucy bits dutifully annotated by the judge’s wife! It sold for £56,250 ($71,809), way above its £15,000 estimate: http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2018/seeger-cone-collection-l18320/lot.159.html

If you are watching Masterpeice’s Victoria, you might wonder about the real history behind it all: here is the pbs version: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/specialfeatures/victoria-s3-e1-history-in-images/#