Category: Victoria Hinshaw

Happy Birthday, George IV

On 12 August 1762, England rejoiced in the birth of a son to King George III and his Queen.  Later known as George IV, he was the King of Hanover and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death on 26 June, 1830.

Volumes have been written on the life of George, The Prince of Wales, known as Prinny.

Above, how the caricaturist George Cruikshank (1792-1878) celebrated the Prince Regent’s 50th Birthday in 1812; The Prince dances while outside the people suffer.
George Augustus Frederick was the eldest child of George III and Sophie Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, usually referred to as Queen Charlotte.
In this family portrait by Johann Zoffany (1733-1810) from about 1765, Prince George is on the right, his brother Frederick (Duke of York, 1763-1827) on the other side of their mother. They were the first of 15 children.

By 1770 when Johann Zoffany painted the family again, George (in red) and Frederick (in gold) had been joined by four more siblings: left, William (with parrot), Edward (center with dog), Charlotte and baby Augusta.
According to his biographers, young George was a good student, fluent in several languages and “very promising.” However, in the tradition of the Hanoverian kings, his father was disappointed in him, worried about his lack of obedience to the scriptures and his loose ways with the truth.

The miniature of George, right, was painted by the famed Richard Cosway about 1780 when George was nearing his majority.

John Hoppner (1758 – 1810) painted the Prince of Wales in 1792. The portrait hangs in the Wallace Collection in London.

 The portrait below also hangs in the Wallace Collection.

By the time he turned 21 in 1783, the Prince had already experienced several passionate love affairs, most notoriously with the beautiful actress Mary Robinson* who performed at the Drury Lane Theatre as Perdita in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. The Prince was smitten and wrote to her, signing his name as Florizel, and the affair was soon known to the general public. The King was very angry and their relationship never improved vastly.  But we shall leave the story of the Prince of Wales —  “First Gentleman of Europe,” collector of houses, furniture, paintings et. al., bigamist and serial adulterer, gambler and spendthrift, and father least likely to succeed — until a later blog.

For now we offer our felicitations on the 248th birthday of George IV, Prince, Regent and King.
* Mary Robinson’s life (1757-1800) was short and sad.  She retired from the stage after various afflictions and became a well-known poetess and novelist. For more details on the life of Mary Robinson, we recommend Hester Davenport’s biography published in 2006: The Prince’s Mistress Perdita: A Life of Mary Robinson.

The Incomparable Rufus Sewell

Victoria here. I have been watching a new series based on Ken Follett’s novel Pillars of the Earth.  It is on cable channel StarZ on Friday nights.  Here is the trailer. Sewell stars as Tom Builder, a master builder of the cathedral at the center of the book. Read more about Follett and the novel here.
Here is a review of the series and here is another. It is a gritty view of the green and pleasant hills of England, definitely more of the “dark satanic mills” * view, though it takes place long before there were industrial mills.
*playing on the words by Blake used in Jerusalem.
But I digress. The point of this blog piece is to celebrate the delicious talents of Rufus Sewell, an actor who has a distinguished career and versatility that must confound his rivals as one of England’s greatest actors.
I first encountered Mr. Sewell when I saw him as the tutor Septimus in Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia. What a brilliant play and what a brilliant actor. I was in London and really can’t say I knew anything more about it than I liked Stoppard.  Later, I found I loved Rufus as well as Tom. And I’ve seen the play two other times, including at the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre.

George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) wrote the brilliant novel Middlemarch in the 1870’s. It was a BBC miniseries in 1994, with Sewell starring as Will Ladislaw, the young love interest of the heroine toward the end of the novel.  Whether the two of them have a happy ending is more or less left to the reader’s imagination.
Who could resist happiness with this vision at her side?

Sewell played Seth Starkadder in Cold Comfort Farm, the wonderful 1995 film made from the Stella Gibbons novel of the same name, published in 1932. It is hilarious and a special treat for British movie fans, if you love the Merchant Ivory films and their like. Poor Rufus, he doesn’t like the “pretty face” type of roles, but he is SO good at them.
 
 

Another of his Beautiful People roles was as Marco Venier in Dangerous Beauty, 1998, the story of a Venetian courtesan and poetess. I could just sit here and enjoy uploading pictures of the handsome actor.  But that would belie his versatility and the depth of his acting ability.  Nevertheless, I can’t resist.                      
Sewell has done many Shakespeare roles, such as Fortinbras in Hamlet and Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew, below in modern dress.
  His television roles include an appearance as Alexander Hamilton in John Adams, here shown with the title character played by Paul Giametti. Rather a spcialist in costume roles, Rufus has also played Charles II in a BBC miniseries.

In the excellent film Amazing Grace about the end of the British slave trade, he played Thomas Clarkson, an ally of Wilberforce.
But he has also played a number of villains. In The Illusionist, he was the Crown Prince.
And in 2001’s A Knight’s Tale, Sewell was the evil count Adhemar (below with the late Heath Ledger on the left). I wanted the Count to win!! Or for Heath to wash and comb his hair.
Rufus Sewell was born October 29, 1967. There are many bios on the web, if you want the details of his education and personal life.  For me, it’s good enough to know he is out there being a great actor and trying new things. 
Last television season, he starred in  Eleventh Hour, a CBS series which ran for 18 episodes. The show had a loyal audience but apparently not enough to be renewed, so it has passed into DVD-dom and probably syndication some day. Sewell was Jacob Hood, a brilliant biophysicist who solved crime questions. He had a protector assigned by the FBI, Rachel Young.  I have to admit the scripts were not very compelling — being neither verifiable in science nor outright science-fiction. 
The acting was superb and the concept interesting, but it missed out in having unbelievable stories.  What a pity. 
In the meantime, I’ll have to be content seeing Sewell as Tom Builder. Rufus is also working on several new films.  See the list of info on the Internet Movie Database here.
Keep up the good work, Rufus, upholding the traditions of Kean, Olivier, Gielgud and so many other great British actors.

The Angela Thirkell Society Meets in Madison, WI

Victoria here, off to Madison, Wisconsin, in a few days for the meeting of the North American organization of the Angela Thirkell Society. At right, a drawing of Ms. Thirkell (1890 – 1961) by John Singer Sargent, 1918.

The Conference (August 13-15, 2010) will center on the theme
 “Upstairs/Downstairs.” Included will be a collection of cars of Thirkell’s period (1930’s-50’s), speakers on Thirkell’s novels, and a gala costume banquet. For more information, click here.

Many of Thirkell’s  novels are set in the fictional English county of Barsetshire and some continue the stories of characters introduced in the novels of Anthony Trollope.  Another author to whom she is often compared is Jane Austen, though Thirkell expanded the “two or three families in a country village” to a larger region and many families of various levels of society, including the servants.

Angela Margaret Mackail was born on January 30, 1890 in Kensington Square, London. Quoting from the website, “Her grandfather was Sir Edward Burne-Jones the pre-Raphaelite painter and partner in the design firm of Morris and Company for whom he designed many stained glass windows… Her grandmother was Georgiana Macdonald, whose … family which included among others, Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister, and Rudyard Kipling. Angela’s brother, Denis Mackail, was also a prolific and successful novelist.”
Angela Thirkell married twice and had sons with both husbands.  She moved to Australia with second husband George Thirkell (1890-c. 1940), but returned to England without him in 1929.
If you aren’t familiar with the 30+ novels of Angela Thirkell, you have a treat in store.  Many have been reprinted recently and ordering information is available on the website.  Or try your local library.  Mine has a wonderful set of well-worn, well-loved books that circulate frequently. The website also has a dictionary of characters and locations in Thirkell’s novels and a list of brief summaries. For even more information, try the website of the British Thirkell Society.

Above, a portrait of Thirkell in later life.

Angela Thirkell wrote gentle comedies of manners. Her characters are deftly drawn and manage to invlve themselves in many humorous situations that call for witty repartee — or perhaps for purposeful misunderstandings.

The 30’s-set books often reflect on the changes in post-WWI Britain. the 40’s books continue the quiet life of Barsetshire during the war along with the trials and tribulations of living in the difficult economy plus many local romances.  After WWII, the novels are often concerned with the trials and tribulations of living under the new Labour-ruled government, which is not a favorite of the local gentry. One of the new features of the neighborhood is a government agency called by most The Department of Red Tape and Sealing Wax. 

Here are two typical examples of Angela Thirkell’s style of humor, both taken from Love Among the Ruins, published in 1948, and set in Barsetshire of of the same period.

“…she went off to one of those sham organizations that are called by their initials, only no one knows what the initials stand for.”
    “It was the P.E.U.G.I.,” said Mrs. Birkett. “Pan-European Union for General Interference…”

Speaking of Scotland…”Though this description of what was evidently heaven was of a very sketchy nature, such was Mr. Belton’s enthusiasm and so pleasing his confidence in his hearers that they all felt deeply nostalgic for Scotland, which most of them had never visited.”

To conclude, here a few excerpts from an essay in the New York Times of January 4, 2008, entitled “Life, Love and the Pleasures of Literature in Barsetshire”  by Verlyn Klinkenborg.

“When I first came upon Thirkell, nearly 30 years ago, she seemed like a diverting minor writer. Minor now seems too slight a word to me for
the purveyor of such major pleasures. … Thirkell has often been called nostalgic because she is describing a kind of life — English county life — that was vanishing even as her books were appearing. Yet there is nothing nostalgic or sentimental in her tone… You read her, laughing, and want to do your best to protect her characters from any reality but their own.”

I concur.

Victoria Visits Woburn Abbey, Part 2


Woburn Abbey is the home of the Dukes of Bedford. When I visited in May, 2009, I thoroughly enjoyed the vast grounds, lovely gardens, deer park and most of all, seeing the house itself. At one point in our tour, the escort stopped just as we entered a room. “Excuse us, Your Grace,” she said to the Duchess of Bedford.  “Oh, come right in,” said Her Grace and continued her photo session with one of her two children.  We gaped a while, then slipped away for the tour guide to fill us in on what we should have looked at in that room. But we had been much too busy watching the photographer, the tot and Her Grace, to notice the furnishings. A picture of the present duchess and her family is at the end of this blog.

Which brings me to the many stories of the fascinating  women who were Duchesses of Bedford.  This is Henrietta, dowager Duchess of Bedford, mother-in-law of the duchess I saw at Woburn.  Born in 1940, she was a debutante of the year, a fashion model and remains a dedicated horse lover. She and her husband, Robin, 14th Duke, ran a prosperous and successful bloodstock operation at Woburn.  A wonderful blog called The Esoteric Curiosa has a collection of pictures of Henrietta throughout her life here.

Henrietta reminds me quite a bit of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy. The dowager duchess continues to live on the Woburn estate.  Reaching back a bit farther, at left, Georgina Gordon (1781-1853) was the daughter of the Duke of Gordon and his wife, Jane, a great rival of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, for social and political entertaining. Georgina was the third daughter of Jane Gordon to marry a duke. Georgina’s story is told on one of my favorite blogs, Scandalous Women, by Elizabeth Kerri Mahon here.

For a book length story of Georgina’s life, I recommend Rachel Trethewey’s 2002 Mistress of the Arts: The Passionate Life of Georgina, Duchess of Bedford.   Georgina was the second wife of John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford (1766-1839); his first wife was Georgiana Byng, Duchess of Bedford. Don’t be surprised if writers get them mixed up. That pesky A is a problem! Late in her life Georgina reputedly had a long affair with the artist Sir Edwin Landseer, who was one of Queen Victoria’s favorite artists.

A more refined story is that of Lady Anna Maria Stanhope (1783-1857), wife of Francis, the 7th Duke of Bedford (1788-1861).  It is to Duchess Anna that we owe the tradition of  afternoon tea. Since evening meals had been pushed later and later, she wanted a light snack in the afternoon, just tea and sandwiches or little cakes.  She often invited her friends for this repast and the custom spread to the middle classes.

 Mary (1865-1937), known as the Flying Duchess, had an adventurous life. She married Herbrand Russell, then aide-de-camp to the Viceroy of India, at Barrackpore in 1888. When her husband’s brother died without issue in 1893, the couple and their son returned to England as the 11th Duke and Duchess with son Hastings, then Marquess of Tavistock as the heir to the dukedom is styled.  Mary and her husband were avid ornithologists and travelers. During WWI she established a hospital at Woburn where she worked with wounded soldiers. She learned to fly airplanes in the 1920’s and after many long trips, some showing considerable daring, at age 71 she and her plane were lost over the North Sea in March 1937.  Three years later, her husband passed away and her son Hastings (1888-1953) became the 12th Duke.

Presently, Andrew Ian Russell is 15th Duke of Bedford.  He and Louise, the present duchess, have (at last report) two children, Lady Alexandra Lucy Clare, born in 2001, and Henry Robin Charles, Marquess of Tavistock, born in 2005.

According to Wikipedia, Duke Andrew has a fortune of about 490 million pounds. Like most families owning a huge country estate, he must see that the properties continue to make an income adequate to support repairs and projects, not an easy task. Some, but not all of the original Bedford Estate in Bloomsbury remains in the Bedford’s hands.

Tavistock Square was the site of some of the terrorist bombs in London in 2005.

But not to end on such a depressing thought, we’ll have a last look at Woburn Abbey, a magnificent treasure house and a joy to visit.

Tenth Anniversary of the Death of Sir Alec Guiness

Ten years ago today, Sir Alex Guiness, an exceptional British actor, died at age 86.  He was, to me (Victoria) the very personification of Englishness, from his portrayals of Dickensian guttersnipes to an obsessed British officer.

I’ve been writing about British movies on this blog from time to time and casting about for more info on old favorites has led me in some interesting directions and lots of orders from Netflix. I simply had to see Kind Hearts and Coronets again. And then Lavender Hill Mob.  I can’t remember when I first saw these films — perhaps when I was in college studying great film comedies (I was a radio-tv-film major at Northwestern University).

But both remained with me to the extent that I couldn’t wait to see them again. Both films owed their brilliance to Guiness (1914-2000), even though other actors were also outstanding.  Then I got to reading about Guiness, who wrote several autobiographies retelling his life stories.  He had worked with the greatest of British actors such as Sir John Gielgud and Sir Lawrence Olivier.  I’m planning to write about them soon.

Sir Alec appeared in many Shakespeare plays on the stage and on film. He won an Oscar for his performance in The Bridge on the River Kwai, 1957.  If you have never seen this brilliant film about Americans and British soldiers who were Japanese prisoners during WWII, find it on TV, rent or order it immediately. Directed by the brilliant David Lean and also starring William Holden, you are bound to find it a memorable experience.

Guiness also appeard in David Lean’s films Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and Passage to India.

Beginning in 1971, Guiness appeared in the the Star Wars films of George Lucas as the seer Obi-wan Kenobi. Reportedly, he hated the role and his notoriety coming from it. However, he had believed in the first film so much that his salary included a percentage of the gross profits, which made him a very rich man.  Apparently what he disliked was the autograph- seeking children who pestered him mercilessly.  He is also quoted as saying that he suggested Obi-wan be killed off because he hated speaking “those bloody awful banal lines.”

To the right are pictures of the eight roles Guiness played in Kind Hearts and Coronets,  a most excellent film. Sir Alec was a master of multiple appearances and characters. As a matter of fact, though he played leading men and in various Noel Coward roles as a sophisticated gentleman, he is mostly known for his character parts. An Arab shiek, a Communist party official, an obsessed colonel, an earnest spy — he could do almost anything.
 Author John LeCarre, who wrote the novel Soldier, Sailor Tinker, Spy, was so impressed by Sir Alec’s performance in a television version of his work (see left) that he used the portrayal as an inspiration for further stories about MI5  agent George Smiley.

Guinness wrote three volumes of his life story: Blessings in Disguise (1985), My Name Escapes Me (1996), and A Positively Final Appearance (1999). He recorded each of them as an audiobook.  His wife of 62 years followed him in death just two months later in October 2000.