Victorian Age – Page 2 – Elizabeth Hawksley

Every Picture Tells a Story: The Wounded Cavalier by W. S. Burton

This painting, ‘The Wounded Cavalier’ by William Shakespeare Burton, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1856, has something about it which has always intrigued me. What’s going on? Why is the young Puritan looking down so disapprovingly. Why is the Cavalier lying wounded in the middle of a wood?

‘The Wounded Cavalier’ by William Shakespeare Burton (1824-1916), the Guildhall Art Gallery, London

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Victorians: The Importance of Boys

I have a nineteenth century screen in my sitting-room. It comprises four hinged panels: one side has a scarlet background, and the other has a black one. It was a popular pastime for ladies to buy cut-out and varnished pictures to paste onto the screen, or perhaps into a scrap book, and create their own customized art-work.

The Spanish lovers

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Frances Hodgson Burnett: A Little Princess

Frances Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess (1905) was one of my favourite books as a child. The heroine, Sara Crewe, says early on: ‘Whenever I play I make up stories and tell them to myself.’ I, too, told myself stories, and I knew at once that this would be my sort of book.

Sara was born in India and, as was usual then for health reasons, was sent to England for her education when she was seven. We first meet her with her much loved father in London, being taken to Miss Mitchin’s Select Academy for Young Ladies. She will be a parlour border, that is, she will stay there during the holidays. I, too, was at a Primary boarding school – so that was another thing we shared.

‘Oh, Papa!’ she cried, ‘There is Emily.’

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Kate Greenaway’s Dream World

Kate Greenaway (1846-1901) was a late Victorian artist who specialized in beautifully designed paintings of children, mainly little girls, in Regency costume to illustrate stories and poems. ‘She created a small world of her own, a dream world, a never-never land,’ said one critic, and it was one which was, financially, extremely successful.

Illustration of ‘Jack and Jill’ from ‘Mother Goose’ (1886)

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Queen Victoria and Pepper’s Ghost

I’ve always loved Victorian magic shows with their sleights of hand and appearances that trick the eye. To my delight, this year’s exhibition, Queen Victoria’s Palace, at the Summer Opening of the Buckingham Palace State Rooms, offers a genuinely Victorian touch of magic with an optical illusion known as Pepper’s Ghost. I couldn’t wait.

But first, a bit of background…

*Queen Victoria by Thomas Scully, 1837-9. She’s Queen, she’s unmarried, and Life beckons*. Royal Collection Trust/ © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2019.

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Restoration House: from Charles II to Miss Havisham

This week I’m in Rochester, an important naval town on the River Medway which flows into the Thames. There is a huge amount to see in Rochester from Roman times onwards, but today I’m looking at one house.

Being a Charles Dickens fan, I have long wanted to visit Restoration House, supposedly Dickens’ inspiration in Great Expectations for Miss Havisham’s home, Satis House, that ‘large and gloomy’ place, full of dust, cobwebs and shadows and lit only by candlelight. It is here that the young Pip is entrapped by Miss Havisham’s desire to seek revenge, through him, for her lover jilting her so cruelly on her wedding day.

Restoration House

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The Royal Mews: Coaches and Landaus

Today, I’m re-visiting the Royal Mews, looking the various coaches and landaus, and, of course, the gold ‘Coronation’ coach. Landaus feature in Jane Austen’s novels; the obnoxious Mrs Elton, in Emma, boasts about her sister’s barouche-landau – which she takes every opportunity to mention (presumably because Emma doesn’t have one at Hartfield). But what exactly is a landau?

Queen Alexandra’s State Coach dates from 1865. It was used regularly by King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra

A carriage is the general term for any horse-drawn passenger vehicle, from the humble gig to the Gold Coronation Coach. A coach is simply a large carriage. Basically, all landaus are coaches but not all coaches are landaus.

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Sleeping in a Four-Poster Bed

I am lucky enough to sleep in a four-poster bed. It dates from around 1850 and is 5 ft 6 ins wide, 6 ft 8 ins long, and nearly 8 ft high. Fortunately, my terraced 1820 house has high ceilings. The bed has a roof canopy, a curtain behind my head, side curtains which remind me of sails on a tea clipper, arched pelmets around three sides at the top, and three lower valances which cover from the bottom of the mattress to the floor. Sleeping in it is like being on board a galleon.

My 1850s four-poster bed

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J. Singer Sargent: Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth

On Friday, I went to Tate Britain, one of my favourite places. I had two paintings in mind which I thought might make an interesting blog but, to my dismay, they weren’t hanging where they should have been. A gallery attendant told me that they were on loan to Canberra, and wouldn’t be back until October. Disaster. It was Friday and I needed a blog for Sunday.

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth 1889 by John Singer Sargent, Tate Britain

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John Ruskin: the Power of Seeing

John Ruskin (1819-1900), an art critic and a man who held strong views on what values a society should hold, was one of the most influential men of his generation. For example, when Lucy Honeychurch, heroine of E. M. Forster’s A Room with a View (1908) visits the church of Santa Croce in Florence, she’s desperate to know which tombstone was praised by Ruskin. This is her first trip abroad and she’s unsure of her own taste; she needs the reassurance that she’s admiring the right one.

However, I think it’s fair to say that Ruskin is not always an easy person to appreciate in the 21^st century. Nowadays, we like to view ourselves as liberal-minded and tolerant, particularly in sexual matters. An intellectually very gifted only child, Ruskin was brought up on strict Puritanical principles and cossetted by both parents. His mother had high moral standards and was a very controlling parent. It is not surprising that Ruskin turned out to be obsessive, sexually inhibited and highly-strung.

Watercolour sketch of a coastal scene with fortress by John Ruskin, 1841

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