Victoria Hinshaw – Page 36 – Number One London

Jane Austen: Sense and Sensibility

Jane Austen (1775-1817) wrote to her sister Cassandra on Thursday, April 25, 1811, from Sloane Street, London, where she was staying with her brother Henry and his wife Eliza, the former Comtesse de Feuillide. Jane was in London to correct proof pages for the publication of her first novel, Sense and Sensibility. Cassandra was at their brother Edward’s estate at Godmersham, Kent.

Jane writes to her sister Cassandra of an assortment of subjects. Then she writes:
“No, indeed, I am never to busy to think of S. and S. I can no more forget it than a mother can forget her sucking child; and I am much obliged to you for your inquiries. I have had two sheets to correct, but the last only brings us to Willoughby’s first appearance. Mrs. K. regrets in the most flattering manner that she must wait till May, but I have scarcely a hope of its being out in June. Henry does not neglect it; he has hurried the printer, and says he will see him again to-day. It will not stand still during his absence, it will be sent to Eliza.

“The Incomes remain as they were, but I will get them altered if I can. I am very much gratified by Mrs. K’s interest in it; and whatever may be the event of it as to my credit with her, sincerely wish her curiosity could be satisfied sooner than is now probable. I think she will like my Elinor, but cannot build on anything else…”

The Mrs. K. referred to in Austen’s letter was Mrs. Catherine Knight, nee. Knatchbull. She and her husband Thomas “adopted” Jane’s brother Edward and treated him as their own son, sending him on a grand tour of Europe and leaving him their property. Indeed a few years after her husband died in 1794, Mrs. Knight passed on the two estates of Godmersham in Kent and Chawton in Hampshire to Edward. Godmersham is today in private hands, but the Chawton property now is the home of the Chawton House Library and the Jane Austen House Museum, both well worth visiting on your next jaunt to Hampshire. The picture to the left is a portrait of Catherine Knatchbull Knight about the time of her marriage in 1779.

For a closer look at the relationship of Jane Austen and Mrs. Knight, take a look at AustenBlog’s comments.

Jane’s suspicion that the novel would not be available even in June was prescient.

Sense and Sensibility was finally published 30 October, 1811.

The Omnipotent Magician: Lancelot 'Capability' Brown 1716-1783 by Jane Brown

Victoria, here. UK magzines, newspapers and blogs have covered the recent publication of a new biography of Lancelot Brown by renowned garden historian and biographer Jane Brown. John Phibbs in his Country Life review assures us that they are not related. But they certainly could be, for they share a remarkable knowledge of gardens and gardening. Ms. Brown will be making an appearance at Hay-on-Wye, among other festivals and meetings. Alas, I will not be able to see her in person. But I intend to send for the book, which can be ordered in $$ through Amazon.com or direct in pounds from many booksellers.

I looked in vain for an author’s website. Judging from the number of books she has written, I assume she has little time for websites, blogs or social media. Can’t say I blame her. One can spend (waste?) hours on Facebook, though I must say I enjoy (almost) every moment I spend writing blog posts. Below, since I haven’t read it yet, the description of the book from the publisher:

Capability Brown, by Nathaniel Dance
ca.1769 National Portrait Gallery

“Lancelot Brown changed the face of eighteenth-century England, designing country estates and mansions, moving hills and making flowing lakes and serpentine rivers, a magical world of green. This English landscape style spread across Europe and the world. At home, it proved so pleasing that Brown’s influence spread into the lowland landscape at large, and into landscape painting. He stands behind our vision, and fantasy, of rural England.

In this vivid, lively biography, based on detailed research, Jane Brown paints an unforgettable picture of the man, his work, his happy domestic life, and his crowded world. She follows the life of the jovial yet elusive Mr Brown, from his childhood and apprenticeship in rural Northumberland, through his formative years at Stowe, the most famous garden of the day. His innovative ideas, and his affable and generous nature, led to a meteoric rise to a Royal Appointment in 1764 and his clients and friends ranged from statesmen like the elder Pitt to artists and actors like David Garrick. Riding constantly across England, Brown never ceased working until he collapsed and died in February 1783 after visiting one of his oldest clients. He was a practical man but also a visionary, always willing to try something new. As this delightful, and beautifully illustrated biography shows, Brown filled England with enchantment – follies, cascades, lakes, bridges, ornaments, monuments, meadows and woods – creating views that still delight us today.”

I have visited many of the country houses for which Brown created landscapes and though I love to look at them, I always feel my photographs are inadequate to show the sweep and grandeur of the landscape. It always looks so natural. Which is, of course, the point. As some of his contemporaries observed, Brown improved on what God had left a little undone. Though he came from a modest background, Brown advised kings and princes and dukes on how to arrange their estates. And in large part, his vision has remained intact at some of the UK’s most visited gardens, such as Stourhead, Blenheim and Stowe.

Ms. Brown has also written about some gardens we may see only very rarely. From its origins as a mulberry garden in the time of Samuel Pepys, this volume tells the illustrated story of the largest private garden in London, which, from time to time, is open to selected audiences and even concert-attendees. Hundreds of photos are included of the garden at all times of the year, by photographer Christopher Simon Sykes.

In The Pursuit of Paradise Gardening, published in 2000, Ms. Brown takes the broadest possible approach. ‘The most enchanting, erudite and thought-provoking book on the subject to be published for many years’ wrote Amanda Craig, in the Independent on Sunday when it first came out. Ruth Gorb, in the Guardian, wrote ‘Be warned. This is a rich brew, not to be taken in one gulp. Gardening in this book encompasses science and history, philosophy and art, literature and the military, politics and sex… it is all tremendous fun.’

Jane Brown writes about contemporary gardens too. This 2001 volume has been widely praised.
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Tales of the Rose Tree: Ravishing Rhododendrons And Their Travels Around the World, out in 2009, tells the story of how cultivation of these magnificent plants, which have more than a thousand variations, have spread around the globe. Anyone who has had the privilege of walking through a garden filled with rhododenrons in full bloom will be eager to find out more about this adaptable favorite.

Above is one of snaps I took at Bowood in Wiltshire of their extensive rhodenron gardens in May 2009. It was a perfect fairyland and we wandered for hours.

Finally, before I run out of enthusiastic adjectives to describe the wonderful books of Jane Brown, I will mention her biographies of Vita Sackville-West as a gardener and her enchanting garden at Sissinghurst. I can see I have a lot of reading to do…and pictures to enjoy. Jane Brown’s booklist is longer than I have presented, but I will leave further discoveries to your personal search for now.

On The Shelf – Discovering New Authors – R. F. Delderfield

Victoria, here. When starting a new post on Discovering New Authors for our readers, I decided to go back to one of my old favorites, R. F. Delderfield. And in doing so, I have found a bunch of novels he wrote that I haven’t read. Hallelujah!!! Lots of fun to come.

Ronald Frederick Delderfield (1912-1972) was born in London and was anything but an aristocrat. His father supported causes like women’s suffrage and temperance, becoming active in politics and eventually co-owner and editor of a newspaper in Exmouth, Devon. Delderfield started work at the paper in 1929 and had his first play produced in Birmingham in 1936. After the war, he wrote more dramas and continued his reporting.

His first novel, Seven Men of Gascony, published in 1949, is the story of seven soldiers in Napoleon’s army up to and including the Battle of Waterloo. Makes my eyes dance just to think of it.

Two Few For Drums (1964) tells of British soldiers in the Peninsular War in Portugal. A young and inexperienced officer must lead his squad through enemy territory to rejoin Wellington’s army. Oh, another joy awaiting.

I remember Delderfield’s books from the paperback library of my father, who prided himself on his English heritage and was always eager for more books by favorite English authors. I believe I read the Swann trilogy when they were high on the NY Times bestseller list in the early 70’s.

Recalling the titles from 1970-73: God is an Englishman, Theirs Was the Kingdom, and Give Us This Day, brings back some dim memories of long, enjoyable summer afternoons at the lake. These titles were recently re-issued by Sourcebooks.

In the year of his death, Delderfield’s autobiography For My Own Amusement came out. I am eager to read this, and from reports, it is written in his straight-forward, detailed and often funny style. So I will get busy at the library and/or on the used book sites to find these volumes.

I also remember reading Diana (1960-62), and another trilogy A Horseman Riding By (late 60’s): Long Summer’s Day, Post of Honour and The Green Gauntlet.

Now all I have to do is decide where to start, on the books I haven’t yet read or to re-read the old favorites. But wait!! There’s more!!

As I check around, I am finding that several of the books and series have been done on film or tv! Oh, wonderful. I can rent or buy them on DVD too. How did I miss them the first time around?

Here is my advice: If you haven’t yet sampled R. F. Delderfield, get cracking. Start with whatever you can can get your hands on fastest, and settle in for a comfortable read. These are not breathless thrillers nor passion-sparked eroticism, nor are they stories of princesses or sheikhs or billionaires. They are good, old-fashioned sagas with long descriptive passages and meandering plots. But if you love English history and a good meaty read, I predict you will love R. F. Delderfield.

Ronald Frederick Delderfield 1912-1972

Madame Tussaud – The Novel

Kristine’s post about the Duke of Wellington visiting the wax museum has inspired me (Victoria) to write about a book I recently enjoyed: Madame Tussaud by Michelle Moran. It is a fictional biography, well-researched but using the kind of emotional depth and intimacy of fiction. I found the book fascinating and very well-written. I admit I have never been to one of Madame Tussaud’s institutions; I would love to see the historical personages, but I have always assumed there was a lot more attention to current rock and film stars — and I wouldn’t recognize them much less care about them. I guess I have always classified wax museums as tourist traps. I know lots of people love them — but I’m not a fan of the institution.

However, reading the story of Marie Grosholtz and her family gave me a true appreciation of what they were trying to accomplish with their salon, including making a lot of money, and the lengths to which they went to conform to popular trends in a time of incredible turmoil.

Michelle Moran is the author of several historical novels. Click here for her website. The picture left shows Ms. Moran (r) with the figure of her subject, Madame Tussaud, at the Hollywood Museum. I have read reports of a film of the book in the works. And why not? Madame lived a long, event-filled life. Marie Grosholtz was born in 1761 in Strasbourg. Her widowed mother took her to Bern, Switzerland, where they lived in the household of Dr. Curtius, a physician who specialized in creating wax models, first for teaching purposes, eventually for exhibition. They moved to Paris in 1765 and Dr. Curtius began to exhibit his figures in lifelike settings. Marie was an eager student and by the time she was a teen, she began to mold and scuplt the heads of famous persons for their exhibit. She also spent time with the royal family at Versailles, teaching the king’s sister to scuplt saints. While she split her time between the sumptuous royal palace and Dr. Curtius’s house, associates of her family were involved in the tumult leading up to the Revolution.

The events of these days are well chronicled by Moran as seeen through the eyes of Marie, a young woman in her late twenties, searching for love, yet obsessed with perfecting her art and making money. During the Reign of Terror, she accommodated the mob by creating death masks from heads fresh from the guillotine. At right, one of the displays from the wax museum. Ugh. However, she felt some loyalty to King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, deploring the chaos when they fell.

Marie spent time in the prison that held the future Empress Josephine and Grace Elliot, mistress of the Duc d’Orleans. Though both Josephine’s first husband and the Duc lost their heads, the three women were among the survivors. While in prison, Marie met Francois Tussaud, and they married after the Terror came to an end. It was not a happy marriage; he succumbed to drink and gambling, and was a constant drag on her accomlishments. In 1802, Madame Tussaud and her elder son took some of their figures on tour to England, where they stayed and established the wax museum that still bears her name.

At left, wax figures of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI. Eventually, after her husband’s death, she was reunited with her mother and her second son. She ran her business with her sons until her death in 1850.

Going back to the proposed movie of Madame Tussaud, the costumes are already available, and they even won an oscar for the designers who worked on Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film Marie Antoinette. I remember my very ambiguous reaction to this movie. The youthful queen was such a Valley Girl, so frivolous and, frankly, stupid, I could hardly bear it. Yet I realize she might very well have been such a little fool. Certainly as portrayed by Michelle Moran, she made some very poor decisions. But the costumes and settings and the composition of the shots — all were brilliant.

I think I will get the DVD and watch it with the sound off. I not only
despised the dialogue and how it was delivered, but I seem to recall a quite jarring musical track. Please send in your views of this movie.

Anyway, I’d love to see those brilliant costumes again. Haven’t we learned that in all the Jane Austen films and tv series, the British reuse the costumes over and over? I seem to recall a fun blog post by someone listing which dress was worn where. Did I mention the sets? And the gardens. Much of the movie was actually filmed in Versailles and in its gardens.

One of the books Michelle Moran used as a resource for her novel
Madame Tussaud is Antonia Fraser’s Marie Antoinette. As a long-time admirer of Fraser’s books, both her historical works and the detective series, I think I will briefly turn my back on British bios and try this one.

And just to prove that everything on this blog really can be traced back to the Duke of Welllington, Lady Antonia was born into the family Pakenham, one and the same with the 1st Duchess of Wellington. Fraser is the daughter of Elizabeth Longford, biographer of the Duke, whose two-volume work has never been surpassed for insight into the life of the great man.

The Birthday of Jane Digby el Mezrab

Today, in the midst of turbulent international events, we have a great deal of curiosity and concern about the middle east. So did the British of the 19^th century, dealing as they did with the Ottoman Empire and its 600-year rule over a large part of the world. By the 19^th century, its eventual disintegration was well underway…think of Byron fighting for Greek independence, for example. Though trade and commerce continued, the middle east was not an area familiar to most of 19^th century Britain. The stories of intrepid women travelers who went there to live are particularly fascinating.

Mary S. Lovell has written the story of our birthday girl’s adventurous life, published in 1998, and titled in the U.S. Rebel Heart.

BBC Photo

Lovell is the author of many biographies: Bess of Hardwick, Beryl Markham, the Mitford Sisters, and Amelia Earhart.

Her book about the Churchills will be released this month in the UK and in May in the US.

For her website, click here.

Jane Elizabeth Digby, Lady Ellenborough (1807-1881), moved to Damascus in the early 1850’s, following a path forged by Lady Hester Stanhope (1776-1839) after the death of her uncle, Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger in 1805. Lady Hester’s story will be forthcoming on this blog in the future.

Jane Digby was exceptionally beautiful but apparently unlucky at finding enduring love for many years. She was raised in the wealthy and aristocratic household of her father, Admiral Sir Henry Digby, and her mother Mary Coke, daughter of the lst Earl of Leicester. Before she was 20 years old, Jane married Edward Law, second Baron Ellenborough, later the Earl of Ellenborough, who was Governor General of India 1842-44. Jane was Ellenborough’s second wife and bore him (supposedly) one son who lived only two years. They were divorced in 1830, after undergoing the almost-impossible process of ending a marriage in those days, proving her adultery through several through several decisions of legal and ecclesiastical courts and culminating in an act of the House of Lords.

1831 Painting of Jane Digby, Lady Ellenborough
by Joseph Karl Stieler

Jane had many affairs, often with very prominent men, including (but not limited to) King Ludwig I of Bavaria, King Otto of Greece (son of Ludwig), Austrian statesman Prince Schwarzenberg, and her cousin, George Anson. In all she married four times and had several children, most of whom died very young. Her daughter by Schwarzenberg was raised by the Prince’s sister in Basel.

To follow the progress of her many affairs and marriages is like reading a scandalous travelogue She finally settled in Syria with her fourth husband, Sheikh Medjuel el Mezrab, who was two decades younger than she was. She wore Arab dress and spent part of each year living a nomadic life in the desert with her husband’s tribe. In Damascus, they lived in an elegant villa and entertained many Europeans, including the famous traveler, explorer and author Richard Burton and his wife.

It is often noted in connection with Jane Digby that her great great grandniece was Pamela Churchill Harriman, nee Digby (1920-1997), U. S. Ambassador to France 1993-1997, whose life of romance with world statesmen could be considered a 20^th century version of Jane’s own story. Her three husbands were Randolph Churchill, Leland Hayward, and Averill Harriman.

She was also linked in the popular press with many other prominent men, among them Edward R. Murrow, Prince Aly Khan, Baron Elie de Rothschild, William S. Paley, Gianni Agnelli, and Stavros Niarchos.

Though we might, while wishing her happy birthday, call Jane Digby “one of a kind,” but she obviously left a legacy to her descendants.