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Mary’s career extended over about ten years as a professional puppeteer, with a variety of types of puppets: shadow, hand, stick and marionettes.  She began writing fantasy fiction and soon was published and winning awards. 

Major Monty Twydall paced back and forth across the broad terrace of Saxon Lodge, ignoring the handsome view of the park, focusing on nothing but the dark clouds hovering at the edge of his life. Monty was unaccustomed to rumination of any sort whatsoever, and he particularly had disdained self-examination.  But a crisis loomed if he could not think of a solution to his shortage of ready cash.

An objective observer could have listed for Monty the many times in which his continual good luck smoothed his way.  From being born to a wealthy family as a younger son, thus relieving him of duty due to the ancestral estate….to Life Guards postings which brought a certain degree of cache while Monty had only to stand upon the fringes of military action…to a welcome legacy from a distant aunt…Monty’s life thus far had been one in which his dark good looks, fine manners and impressive sense of humor took him everywhere. Above all the supplemental income provided by his skills at the card table and eye for fine racing horseflesh allowed him to frequent the fitting rooms of the finest tailors and paid the cost of his lease on the Lodge where he could entertain his friends and sport with the Naxians without limit.

Until now. Monty stopped and leaned against the corner of the house.  Nothing had come up for him lately, not the cards, not the runners, not the cocks, and not even the boxing mills.  His debts of honor added up to an inconceivable amount.

Almost all of the legacy had gone for the Lodge. Its furnishings put him in contact with a number of men who were happiest on dark nights which allowed them to bring ashore a considerable number of undeclared items from across the Channel. These proved quite lucrative for Monty, who sold these items on to well connected friends. Everyone loved French cabinetry, it seemed. The older the piece, the more Monty could realize. At first the smugglers thought he was daft, wanting the oldest objects they could find.  But he also took a large share of their primary product – the rich, red clarets so prized at a gentleman’s table.

As Monty stood deep in thought, his mind settled upon the few remaining pieces of furntiture that stood in a storage room behind his stables.  When the shipment had first arrived, Monty had given  the members of the Naxians their choice of the pieces, much to the delight of their wives, as Monty had he’d heard afterwards. It was time to sell what he had left, but the pieces were of fine quality and would benefit from being placed in surroundings which suited their quality. Monty needed a place to invite guests of a different sort than his raffish friends who came to the Lodge.

It was time, Monty chided himself, to call upon his most influential, and potentially profitable, contacts.  If he called upon his friend, the Dowager Baroness Bloxley, might he be able to persuade her to invite some of her own set to her home in order to show off a few of his pieces?  He needed to pique Louisa’s interest and to appeal to her sly sense of humour. Perhaps he should frame the party as a caper that would make for a tale she could tell many times over at the tea or dinner table.  Wouldn’t it be amusing for her to tell everyone how she, Lady Louisa, the imperious baroness, daughter of an earl, had dabbled in trade? 

The more he thought about it, the better Monty liked the idea. The suggestion was just outré enough to appeal to Louisa, who had, as Monty had learned to both his chagrin and amusement, a decidedly naughty side. An aristocrat Louisa may be; a pillar of the community and matriarch of a distinguished family. But as Monty well knew, Lady Louisa could also be a bit of a minx. Monty smiled. Oh, but he was a naughty boy. However, needs must as Shakespeare had so rightly pointed out.

As we drove home to Milwaukee from Naples, FL, last month, we took a long detour to visit Bentonville, AR, to see the Crystal Bridges Museum of Art (website here), and I tried to think of an excuse to write about it on this blog — a connection to London. 

The Crystal Bridges Museum

Indians of Virginia by James Wooldridge, ca. 1675

 I was really excited when we started through the galleries and found one of the first pictures was done by an Englishman, James Wooldridge, ca. 1635-1695.  It is the earliest painting in the collection.  The label tells us: “…Wooldridge spent his career in London, and never himself encountered Native Americans.”  He worked from sketches and engravings made by others.  Success!!  A REAL connection with Number One London!! Hooray.

Cupid and Psyche, by Benjamin West, 1808

Of course I needed have worried.  The museum displays a number of works by Americans who spent parts of their careers in London.  Benjamin West  (1738-1820) was born in Pennsylvania, moved to London in 1765 and became Historical Painter for George III in 1772. Twenty years later West became the second president of the Royal Academy of Art; he is buried in St. Paul’s Cathedral.  

Mrs. Theodore Atkinson, jr. (Frances Deering Wentworth), 1765

John Singleton Copley 1738-1815

Copley was born in Boston and became well established in colonial America as a portraitist.  He left his family to study in London and Italy. He and his wife and children settled in London in 1775.  He enjoyed successes and disappointments, the latter particularly in regard to a painting he made of the Prince Regent which Prinny declined to purchase, perhaps assuming it was to be a gift.  Mrs. Atkinson (above) is sumptuously attired, showing the wealth of colonial society.  She holds a gold chain attached to a tame squirrel.

View of Mark di Suvero sculpture from the gallery

Alice Walton, daughter of the founder of the WalMart empire, founded the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and worked closely with the architect Moshe Safdie to integrate the buildings with the hilly woods of the Ozarks.  She is active in many philanthropies.

Robert Louis Stevenson and His Wife (Fanny Osborne), 1885

by John Singer Sargent 1836-1925

Though the museum is growing rapidly and filled with fascinating art, I will close with two paintings by another American who ended up making much of his career in Britain.  The label points out the contrast in the active figure of Scottish author Stevenson contrasted with the ease of his wife.  Sargent carried on the great portraitist tradition of Van Dyke, Reynolds, Gainsborough and Lawrence, below in the portrait of Mary Crowninshield Endicott Chamberlain.

Mrs. Joseph Chamberlain, 1902

by John Singer Sargent

Mary Chamberlain was born in the US and married in 1888, as his third wife, Joseph Chamberlain, a member of Parliament who also held several important positions in the British government.  She was the daughter of the U.S. Secretary of War, William C. Endicott.  Sargent’s work was particularly admired for his treatment of the “shimmering” satin of her attire.

Yield, 2011, by Roxy Paine

If the crowds  at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art on the Sunday we visited is any indication, I would say Ms. Alice Walton has been very shrewd about what would bring tourists to this quiet spot in the middle of the continent.