The Cities...

Smithfield Market before the buildings, 1855, in the Illustrated London News (Image source)

I really want to sit down and do a proper blog post as I do have several things up my sleeve. Unfortunately I've found myself terribly busy over the past month as I'm starting a new job! This means I have lots of things I'm having to get organised and finished, inside and outside of work hours, and I'm quickly running out of time...

I intentionally make sure to be quite obtuse about the specifics of my work on this blog, to keep things separate and to make sure that I don't step on the toes of professionalism, confidentially and all that. Though I can say that I am rather sad to be leaving my current job in Smithfield, where I have been based for over six years... But I am also terribly excited to be taking up my new job in Westminster, where I will now be based.

So, from offices in the historic City of London - the heart of England's commerce - to offices in the historic City of Westminster - the heart of England's parliament. What new streets and treasures will I discover on my lunchtime strolls, I wonder?

Westminster from the River, 1792, by Samuel Ireland (Image source)

Gentleman Provider-of-Ruins

My third monthly trip out of London for 2014 took place three long weeks ago, on the very first weekend of March, but I'm just getting around to writing about it now. I spent the weekend with a friend in Cambridge - the first day was spent in Cambridge itself and the immediate surrounds, while the second day entailed a trip out to Wimpole Hall.

This is the same friend who accompanied me to Sutton Hoo and we both took out National Trust membership there so we figured we'd make the most of it with another property. This one, however, entailed a short train trip from Cambridge and then a cycle ride. Fortunately Cambridgeshire is a flat county as we'd also done a lot of cycling the day before and I'm only an occasional weekend cyclist...

We were delighted to find our bikes matched the train

Upon arriving at Wimpole we got our energy back up with a cup of tea and a scone and then went exploring. We started out at the house but were both slightly underwhelmed by that experience. Yes, the grand country pile just wasn't right for us, darling.

But, in all seriousness, the period and style isn't the favourite of either of us and we found the experience a bit stuffy compared with our recent Sutton Hoo adventure. There were some wonderful spaces but it was a classic National Trust house with roped off rooms and a sense of moving rigidly through the set route. In fairness, this is somewhat fitting for a house of its type, as the eighteenth century saw the rise of country house tourism, where one would travel around to different manors, being met at each with a grand house designed with a definite sequence of rooms, through which one would move, admiring the collection of art and objects. And there was undoubtedly some fine architecture, art and objects at Wimpole:

The ceiling and lantern in the Soane room

I have a peculiar fondness for pineapples appearing in historic house settings

A stunning clock in the Soane room

Okay, it all looks wonderfully charming when I select out a few key photographs, and it was undeniably splendid in parts, but it just somewhat lacked atmosphere. (There was even a lady playing piano, like at Sutton Hoo, but it had a completely different vibe.) So, if that style of operating doesn't really do it for you then you want to at least learn something about the people who lived there, where their wealth came from, the trajectory of their fortune, and all that jazz. That's what gives these places a unique quality when they all have a similar look. Unfortunately, there wasn't much written interpretation, and sometimes you don't necessarily feel like having to ask the volunteers (as lovely as they are). So, I learnt a bit about the last inhabitants of the house but not much more about the generations before that, which was a shame.

Who is this lady? I'll never know...

Once out of the house, we went for a wander around the immediate grounds and the walled gardens. I do so love a walled garden, even when it isn't in bloom. It appeals to my longing to have a secret garden of my own one day.

The walled kitchen garden

The parterre

We then broke out from the genteel surrounds of the house and out into the wider estate to march our way up through the mud and the wintery landscape on a particular mission...

... The Gothick folly! For those who don't know, a folly is basically an architectural feature put in the landscape to look fabulous, but with no actual use. The quintessential folly is the ruinous folly - not actually the traces of a medieval building, as the wealthy estate owner would have us believe, but a structure deliberately built as a ready-made ruin. Unfortunately this fake ruin must now be in actual fact a true ruin, as it was fenced off with 'danger: do not enter' signs.

One of the things that I actually did learn when I was in the manor house was that the folly was built by Sanderson Miller, who was a 'gentleman architect' (that is, he wasn't formally trained as an architect, didn't need to work for money but he just kind of fancied giving it a go). It took something ridiculous like 25 years to complete due to stops and starts. By the time it was complete, fashions had moved on - not from follies entirely but from landmark follies such as this. Instead of being set up as a prominent feature in the landscape, the trend had changed to secret follies that one would stumble upon in one's exploration of the extensive estate. Oh well, it's still good, despite being unfashionable.

Upon later looking up Wimpole Hall in the relevant Pevsner guide (otherwise known as the architectural historian's bible), I came across the description of Sanderson Miller as 'the celebrated gentleman provider-of-ruins'. Don't you just love that? I can totally see him as this charming dandy who not only designs follies for the gentry but also ruins the virtue of the young daughters of his clients when he comes to visit... And just let me clarify that is my concept for a bodice-ripper and if I come across anyone using my idea, I will sue.

Fashion & Gardens

The other weekend, I went along to the Garden Museum to see the current exhibition, Fashion & Gardens: Spring/Summer - Autumn/Winter. The exhibition traced the connections between garden styles and clothes fashion from the sixteenth century through to the modern day. As the blurb on the Garden Museum's website explains, 'Both gardens and dress aim to bring a sense of occasion to a season. Midsummer is more authentic if passed among organza and roses; russet velvet and gold-licked chrysanthemums concentrate our senses that autumn has arrived.' If you've followed either my posting of monthly personifications or my visits to Kew, you won't be surprised to hear that this exhibition immediately grabbed my attention.

Artwork by Rebecca Louise Law... If only I had a space in which to hang hundreds
of dried flowers...

It was a very... shall we say 'compact' exhibition but it was fascinating and I feel that I came out having learnt a whole lot more than I knew when I went in. And the advantage of smaller exhibitions is that you ultimately take more time to appreciate each item.

So what did I learn? I learnt about the correlation between the patterns in Elizabethan knotwork gardens and the patterns on their clothing and upholstery, demonstrated in the exhibition with the display of exquisite embroidery. I also learnt that, while floral patterns on fabrics were popular throughout much of the eighteenth century, there was a transition from sparser patterns to busier, more clustered patterns. So if I see someone in a period drama set in the 1780s, wearing a lightly patterned floral dress, I can now titter knowingly about how deeply unfashionable they are.

One of the things that I found particularly interesting, as someone quite affected by colours, was learning how trends in colours changed both in the fashion world and in gardens. The introduction of chemical (rather than plant-derived, natural) dyes made all sorts of rich, vibrant colours possible in the nineteenth century. As methods improved, production increased and prices came down, these bright colours entered the middle-class and lower-class markets. At the same time, the numerous new public gardens established in cities to provide the general public with green spaces within dense urban areas in the mid-nineteenth century were frequently planted with bright, hardy flowers. As a result, there was a backlash, and the upper classes made a return to soft, subtle colours for their clothes, achieved with natural, high quality dyes, while their private gardens and preferred flowers followed suit.

'None of those obvious, bright colours for us, thank you very much. We're ladies.'
Miss Martineau's Garden, John Sant, 1873 (Image source)

Also interesting was the development of garden fashions and country style, in which, as the exhibition proudly pointed out, the Brits lead the world (partly because of our love of gardens, partly because of our rubbish weather and the waterproof nature of garden and country wear, from Burberry macs, through Barbour waxed jackets, to Hunter wellies). This 'dressed down' style, which was still posh enough to differentiate the gentlemen from the labouring gardeners, began in the eighteenth century as a result of trends for connecting with nature, albeit in a highly controlled manner. Think the 'natural' but in reality highly structured Picturesque gardens with, for instance, cattle forming part of the vista from your French windows, but nicely kept at bay with a ha-ha so that they didn't actually come up and nibble and defecate on your carefully maintained lawn... Along with all this a slightly more casual 'outdoor' clothing style was adopted by the upper classes, to allow them to get down and dirty with a spot of poking around in the garden.

Kate Middleton effortlessly bringing the 'country chic' look
(Image source)

Even the French admit defeat by the Brits on the mac style front
(Image source)

Following the Fashion & Gardens exhibition, I had a wander around the rest of the museum. I've been here for talks and into the garden when the museum was closed for renovation a few years ago, but never properly explored the permanent collection. Again, it's small, but lovely. 

Scarecrow in cute cat form, c.1920s

'Seeds for sale'

The carrots are only intermediate...

... but the rhubarb is GIANT!

But they both pale in comparison to this prize tomato

The museum is located in a disused church, and on the way out of the building I noticed the memorial below in the entrance porch. Unfortunately, the bottom of it was covered up but I was suitably intrigued - 'killed by thunder and lightning'? At the tender age of 34? There's got to be more to that story, surely?

To the memory of William Bacon
of the Salt Office, London, Gent.
who was killed by thunder & lightning
at his window July 12th 1787
Aged 34 years

Merveilleuse Quatorze Juillet

Happy Bastille Day, dear readers!

I actually have a lazy, indoor day planned today but thought I would share with you my outfit I wore to an event a couple of years ago. Prepare yourself... (for lots of words and some philosophy)

Not content with cliches (stripy shirts, berets and baguettes, I'm looking at you), my friend and I went for semi-political, surrealist-inspired outfits. I was dressed as a "merveilleuse", one of the members of the aristocracy or nouveau riche who reacted against seeing hundreds of their kind beheaded in the French Revolution by becoming all the more extravagant. In addition to sticking two fingers up at the Revolutionaries, I suppose it was similar to the hedonism and devil-may-care attitude of wartime, when you know you could be next so you may as well party hard until you meet your fate.

The merveilleuses favoured an "a la Grecque" dress style, like Greek goddesses with simple, flowing white dresses and Empire lines, often with their hair in a loose, natural style. They would sometimes wear a red choker to symbolise their solidarity with those that had been beheaded, or have their hair cut very short, in reference to hair being hacked off before someone went to the guillotine. They were aristocratic punks, basically, dressing in a way that intentionally riled the system and expressed their discontent - but the system that was coming in, rather than the established one.

(Image source)

My only problem was that, when I got the outfit together, I felt like I was perhaps doing the "a la Grecque" thing too well, and just kind of looked like I was dressed up as a Greek goddess and had got my national days confused... So, to counteract that, I got some lipstick and wrote across my chest: 

... which fans of surrealist art may pick up as being a reference to Magritte:

Rene Magritte 'LaTrahison des Images', 1929 (Image source)

Of course, put very simply, Magritte's point was that the image you see before you may appear to be a pipe but is, in reality, only a representation of the object; hence, "this is not a pipe". So, in using it in a costume, the same question was being posed. Yes, I am dressed as a merveilleuse so you could say I was one, but I am really just dressed up so I am merely a representation. Also, it made a question of whether I was an anti-monarchist or a pro-monarchist. Is the statement about the fact that I am in costume or is it saying that I don't agree with the merveilleuses?

Finally, the "R" was left out of "merveilleuse" because they often left this letter out in referring to themselves, as a statement against the Revolution. Aware that it might just look like a spelling mistake if I left it out, I put the dash in there... which just added an extra layer of meaning as it became an allusion to Hang Man, the game where you come closer and closer to execution (albeit of a different kind) with each incorrect guess of a letter. The game puts much more significance on single letters than is normal, like the significance placed on "R" as the first letter of the Revolution.

Are you sufficiently reeling from the explanation of my outfit yet? This was all encouraged and nurtured by my amazing friend, who is very knowledgeable on philosophy and psychology. She is also a big fan of French Rococo, so had an amazing outfit of pastels and bouffant, but wearing a Sex Pistols "God Save the Queen" t-shirt. So, her outfit, like mine, became an enigma - she was basically dressed in the aristocratic style of the Revolutionary period, but it was deconstructed and punked up. The statement on her t-shirt appeared, at surface level, to support the monarchy but, as a Sex Pistols t-shirt, may have equally been ironic.

(Image source)

Although I'm now feeling tempted to go out and buy some La Duree macarons and visit the Wallace Collection in celebration of the day, I'm going to stick to my plan of visiting my local French cafe and watching The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec tonight (thanks, Hannah, for making me think of that idea!).