ECHOS DU TEMPS PASSÉ ~ ECHOES OF TIME PAST~ LADY BURNE-JONES~GEORGIANA MACDONALD BURNE-JONES (21 July 1840—2 February 1920)

 

Georgiana Burne-Jones photographed by Frederick Hollyer platinotype cabinet card, circa 1882, NPG

 "I wish it were possible to explain the impression made upon me as a young girl whose experience so far had been quite remote from art, by sudden and close intercourse with those to whom it was the breath of life. The only approach I can make to describing it is by saying that i felt in the presence of a new religion. Their love of beauty did not seem to me unbalanced, but as if it included the whole world and raised the point from which they regarded everything. Human beauty especially was in a way sacred to them, I thought; and of this I received confirmation quite lately from a lady...who had been in her youth an object of wild enthusiasm and admiration to Rossetti, Morris, and Edward...I found that she kept the same feeling that I do about that time-that the men were as good as they were gifted, and unlike any others that we knew..."I never saw such men," she said, "it was being in a new world to be with the. I sat to them and was with them, and they were different to everyone else I ever saw. And I was a holy thing to them..." Lady Burne-Jones~Georgiana Burne-Jones (nee Macdonald)

I’ve always wanted to learn more about Lady Burne-Jones (nee Macdonald) ever since I discovered the paintings of her husband Sir Edward Burne-Jones. So, let’s go back to the beginning shall we!

Georgiana's parents: Rev. George Macdonald and Hannah Jones

 

Georgiana Macdonald was of Scotch-Irish descent born of true Celtic blood; one of eleven children born to Rev. George Macdonald and Hannah Jones. Bear in mind Georgiana’s father is not the author and illustrator George Macdonald.  George Macdonald became a member of The Methodist Society at the age of seventeen during the year 1823 throughout Hammersmith Circuit at Brentford, Twickenham, Richmond, Isleworth, Harrow and Hounslow in London, England. His father James Macdonald, a reverend himself gave his son the following advice, “Whenever you begin to preach you will need all the courage you can muster…Accustom yourself to speak with ease and propriety in private, and it will become habitual to you to do so in public.” 

Georgiana’s mother, Hannah Jones was George’s second wife and is described by her sister Edith as being, “of fair complexion and colour as her father. Her temperament was reserved and very sensitive to both pain and beauty. Her character was high-minded and honourable, brave, physically and morally deeply religious if rather sadly so having sensitive nerves. She was steadfast in her affections and tenderly kind and helpful to all around her.” Now, this sounds an awfully lot like her daughter Georgiana to me! George and Hannah were married on May 2, 1833, at Manchester’s Collegiate Church. She wore a Brussels lace veil over a Quaker-like grey satin bonnet. 

Fifth child Georgiana was born in Birmingham, England, on July 21, 1840. Thankfully, her mother, Hannah’s letters remain providing a glimpse of what Georgie’s life was like growing up as a little girl. The first entry describes a two and a half year old Georgie, “Georgie continues as sound as a pot and I am sorry to say is growing very vain; she has found it out that whenever she goes to the looking-glass there is a very pretty little girl there and she thinks it is her.” 

Hannah also recorded an interesting conversation between her three daughters, “Carrie: What is marrying? Georgie replied, “It is staying at home.” Carrie replied, “No, it is going out to breakfast and getting a husband.” Alice said, “No, it is not that for papa is married and has no husband, nor ever had.” Then Georgie ended the conversation with her sisters, “Well, I’ll do so; I’ll have a husband mytelp.” Carrie/Caroline was six years old, Alice was seven years old, and little Georgie/Georgiana was four years old. 

Georgie’s brother Fred described her best in his memoir, “Georgie was small-she was in fact very small indeed; all of them were small with dainty little hands and feet, rosy complexion, abundant hair, brown with bronze lights in it, and glorious dark-blue eyes. In that little frame, dwelt a noble spirit, ever reverencing the highest and seeking the beautiful. She seemed immune by nature from any small aims or self-conceit. She had not her sister’s readiness of faculty in all directions, but a capacity and taste for study unknown to her. She possessed a fine soprano voice, not light and flexible, but powerful and sweet. She had considerable natural gifts for drawing, but being thrown among artists of genius discouraged her from continuing to cultivate this gift. She shared with the rest of the family a keen sense of humour, sometimes rising to wit.” 
 

As little Georgie grew up her attributes were noted by many artistic family friends. For instance, William De Morgan described Georgie as, “Her command of words was not inferior to that of her sisters, she never began a sentence without knowing just how she was going to end it.”  Her son-in-law J.W. Mackail said, “Her intellectual powers were expert in such matters as art and letters and were greater than her artistic and more eminent than her nobility of character.” She was known for her bell like deep voice when she read poetry aloud and all who knew her agreed that Edward Burne-Jones’s paintings of her captured her sweet face lit by smiles and eyes of light and frankness, a depth of feeling questioning and believing eyes. By the time poor brother Fred came along he looked back on his childhood thusly, “What a garden of girls it was in which my childhood and youth were spent.” 

The Macdonald’s spent six years in London, three in Chelsea and three in Marlybone between 1853-1859. Georgie would have been a teenager during these years and it is noted that the Macdonald family were friends with a young William Morris who designed an altar frontal for their church. His friend Edward Jones was there and they did spend days at Red Lion Square together. This is when young Edward first cast his eyes on the lovely Georgiana Macdonald it is thought. So, around 1853 at the Macdonald Family home located on 39 Sloane Square, London, England young Edward pays a visit to Georgiana. Edward Jones left Oxford without waiting to take a degree and began his painting career instead in lodgings opposite the chapel in Sloane Terrace where George Macdonald preached. During 1856 Edward helped Georgie begin taking painting and drawing lessons at Gore House and they including William Morris went to an exhibit at the Royal Academy together where William Morris viewed April Love by Arthur Hughes and he said it was his favorite! So much so he told Edward to, “Go and nobble that picture as soon as possible before anyone else should get it!” and he did. Oh, and within three weeks time, Edward and Georgiana became engaged to be married. 

In 1857 The Macdonald’s moved again into the house at 17 Beaumont Street which nobody liked. Georgie remembered, “Of course, Edward and Morris arranged to live together and by the time we came to Marlybone they had found rooms at No. 1 Upper Gordon Street, and we all settled down more or less contentedly in our dingy surroundings.”  Three or so years into their long engagement, Georgie records the moment Edward asked her parents for her hand in marriage, “One day early in June my mother called me into her room and told me that Edward had been to see my father and herself and they left the answer they should give entirely to my decision.”  

Edward and Georgie were married on June 9, 1860 at the Cathedral of Manchester the same church as her parents. Edward was twenty six years old and Georgie was nineteen years old. Apparently, their wedding night was a dreadful one; Edward had laryngitis and Georgie took care of him at a cheap hotel in Chester, England. They were supposed to join Gabriel and Lizzie Rossetti in Paris but they never made it. In a few days they were in their first home together in Russell Place.  

 Frederick Hollyer photograph of Edward Burne-Jones

"Rather tall and very thin, though not especially slender, straightly built and with wide shoulders. Extremely pale he was, with the paleness that belongs to fair-haired people,and looked delicate, but not ill. His hair was perfectly straight, and of a colourless kind. His eyes were light grey (if their colour could be defined in words), and the space that their setting took up under his brow was extraordinary; the nose quite right in proportion, but very individual in outline, and a mouth large and well moulded, the lips meeting with absolute sweetness and repose. The shape of his head was domed, and noticeable for its even balance; his forehead, wide and rather high, was smooth and calm, and the line of the brow over the eyes was a fine one. From the eyes themselves power simply radiated, and as he talked and listened, if anything moved him, not only his eyes but his whole face seemed lit up from within. He was hopelessly plain. His ordinary manner was shy, but not self-conscious, for it gave the impression that he noticed everything. At once his power of words struck me and his vehemence. He was easily stirred, and then his speech was as swift and clear as possible, yet well ordered and going straight to the mark. He had a beautiful voice...Epithets he always used wonderfully." Lady Burne-Jones

Fresh in the blush of the first year of marriage, Edward writes to his sister-in-law Louise nicknamed, ‘Louie’ describing his wife, “Don’t you love to be with her, Louie? Feel better, and dream more tranquilly, and wake more happily, and live more vividly when she is with you.” 

 

 Georgie Burne-Jones holding her son Philip, Pip!

The Burne-Jones’s moved from Russell Place to 62 Great Russell Street where Georgie gave birth to a baby boy born on October 21, 1861 named Phillip nicknamed Pip. In 1864 she caught Scarlet Fever and gave birth to a premature son Christopher that lived only a short time. In 1866, daughter Margaret was born. Later, family friend, Graham Robertson described Margaret as having “the Macdonald reticence and reserve developed to an abnormal degree. She is still as shy as she was when a child.”  

 Margaret Mackail (nee Burne-Jones)

As the years progressed Edward became one of the greatest painters of the nineteenth-century not only exclusively Pre-Raphaelite Art. His friend, true brother and artistic partner became another artistic genius in the art and craft movements as well as the printing press. Sadly William Morris passed away on October 3, 1896 and Georgie had this to say, “We said to each other it is no weeping matter. It almost frightened me at first to see how he flew at his work; I need not say that Edward works through everything. We are not broken, either in body or spirit, by the death of our beloved friend. Edward is slowly but steadily gaining ground, and goes out every day. Now, he works less feverishly.”  

It was back in 1880 while Georgie was walking across the downs from Brighton to Rottingdean that she found an empty cottage which Edward bought immediately. Margaret Burne-Jones married Jack Mackail here in September, 1888. She had a daughter, Angela in 1890 and a son Denis in 1892. Edward and Georgie were now grandparents! A role both of them treasured with grandbabies they so lovingly cherished as evidenced in surviving photographs taken by Henry and Richard Stiles in 1895.

 

 Grandpa Burne-Jones with his grandson Denis and granddaughter Angela who both became authors.

 

At the age of sixty four in 1898 Edward died in his wife’s arms of angina; a failure of the coronary arteries. He was surrounded by his grown children and loved ones.  Of the death she only said, “Edward changed his life as Friday morning dawned.” 

Annie, house maid to the Burne-Jones’s kept a diary recording Georgie’s final moments, “My lady caught a cold and cough and was in bed when Dr. Mills ordered Oxygen to help her breathing which made her laugh. She was in and out of consciousness but spoke of seeing ‘a man that was good and pious in her bedroom.”Around 3 O’clock on the afternoon of Monday, February 2^nd, 1920, Widow Georgiana Burne-Jones, Lady Burne-Jones (nee Macdonald) breathed her last. 

 SOURCES

The Macdonald Sisters by A.W. Baldwin Earl Baldwin of Bewdley, Illustrated, London: Peter Davies Ltd. by The Windmill Press Ltd., Copyright 1960.

Victorian Sisters: The remarkable Macdonald women and the great men they inspired by Ina Taylor, Published by Ellinham Press, Great Britain, Copyright 2006. 

Memorials of Burne-Jones by Lady Georgiana Burne-Jones, Volumes I and II, New York, London, The Macmillan Company, Copyright 1904.

Angela Thirkell and Three Houses (1890 - 1961)

ANGELA THIRKELL (1890 - 1961) Angela Margaret Mackail was born on January 30, 1890 at 27 Young Street, Kensington Square, London. 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 - seven of which are in St Margaret's Church in Rottingdean, West Sussex. Her grandmother was Georgiana Macdonald, one of a precocious 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's mother, Margaret Burne-Jones, married John Mackail - an administrator at the Ministry of Education and Professor of Poetry at Oxford University.

Angela married James Campbell McInnes in 1911. James was a professional Baritone and performed at concert halls throughout the UK. In 1912 their first son Graham was born and in 1914 a second son, Colin. A daughter was born in 1917 at the same time her marriage was breaking up. In November 1917 a divorce was granted and Angela and the children went to live with her parents in Pembroke Gardens in London. The child, Mary, died the next year. 

Angela then met and married George Lancelot Thirkell in 1918 and in 1920 they traveled on a troop ship to George's hometown in Australia. Their adventures on the "Friedricksruh" are recounted in her Trooper to the Southern Cross published in 1934. In 1921, in Melbourne Australia, her youngest son Lancelot George was born. Angela left Australia in 1929 with 8 year old Lance and never returned. Although living with her parents in London she badly needed to earn a living so she set forth on the difficult road of the professional writer. Her first book, Three Houses, a memoir of her happy childhood was published in 1931 and was an immediate success. The first of her novels set in Trollope's mythical county of Barsetshire was Demon in the House, followed by 28 others, one each year. 

Angela also wrote a book of children's stories entitled The Grateful Sparrow using Ludwig Richter's illustrations; a biography of Harriette Wilson, The Fortunes of Harriette; an historical novel, Coronation Summer, an account of the events in London during Queen Victoria's Coronation in 1838; and three semi-autobiographical novels, Ankle Deep and Oh, These Men, These Men and Trooper to the Southern Cross. When Angela died on the 29th of January 1961 she left unfinished the last of her books, Three Score and Ten which was completed by her friend, Caroline LeJeune. Angela is buried in Rottingdean alongside her daughter Mary and her Burne-Jones grandparents. 

'There is always in our minds the hope that we may find again those golden unhastening days and wake up and dream'

 In this beautifully nostalgic memoir, eminent author Angela Thirkell recalls in rich detail the three houses in which she grew up. Focusing first on 'The Grange', where her grandfather, the celebrated painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones, set the cultivated tone, Thirkell also reminisces about her parents' home in Kensington Square and the Burne-Jones' seaside retreat, where Angela's cousin, Rudyard Kipling, lived across the green in a house called Rottingdean from 1897-1903. A tale of forbidden explorations, Punch and Judy shows, and adventures in the garden, Three Houses is beautifully evocative of the innocent quality of childhood. From the busy literary centre of London to the English coast, this stunning memoir is both reminiscent of the golden days of youth and an interesting vision of a writer and the early influences that informed her later work. 

Rottingdean:  She spent much time at the home of her Burne-Jones grandparents, North End House.  It is lovingly described in her Three Houses (1931) as is The Elms, also in Rottingdean.  She was of course a cousin of the Kiplings and the Baldwins, and there is quite a lot of material on this at The Grange, Rottingdean. (Kipling lived in Rottingdean from 1897 to 1903 before moving to Burwash because of a lack of privacy). Angela Thirkell died in 1961, still writing, and is buried in the churchyard of St. Margaret's Church in Rottingdean next to her daughter, Mary, who died young.

NORTH END HOUSE: In 1880 Prospect Cottage and Aubrey Cottage were purchased by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Sir Edward Burne-Jones. He then merged the two into one house, which he named North End House after his London residence, and lived there until his death in 1898. In 1920 the house was bought by another artist, Sir William Nicholson, and then in 1923 by Sir Roderick Jones and his wife, the writer Enid Bagnold (1889-1981). Jones also purchased the adjacent Gothic House, and combined it with the other two to form one very large residence still known as North End House. In the 1980s the buildings were restored again into three separate houses, but Gothic House has retained the name North End House.

All three are listed buildings and date from the eighteenth century. Prospect Cottage bears a plaque to Burne-Jones, while Aubrey Cottage is an unusual building with a wooden balustrade and many windows. North End House is an elegant building with a Doric porch and is faced with black glazed mathematical tiles.

Why did Mr. and Mrs. Burne-Jones move into 'The Grange?'  According to Burne-Jones biographer, Penelope Fitzgerald, in an article she wrote for the Morris Society she explains, 'North End contained two brewers, a horse-dealer, and a private asylum for ladies. This in itself shows how remote the place was, since private asylums had to be as far as possible from any form of transport, and although the Thames Junction Railway ran through the fields below The Grange, trains didn't stop there. Milk was still delivered in pails and there were briar roses in the lanes (but Burne-Jones was never a countryman anyway - the country, he complained, was so noisy). The north house, which was the onc they chose of the two, had the advantage of a good north light and an indoor studio, but even with two children it was too big for them, and the rates were high in Fulharn. They had in fact to share it at first with an old Birmingham friend, Wilfred Heelcy, and his wife, who were waiting to go out to India, or they could never have managed the rent at all. 

The Grange, then, had almost nothing to recommend it to Georgie except inaccessibility. The directions were said to be 'Go down the Cromwell Road till your cabhorse drops dead, and then ask someone.' But, as it turned out almost immediately, it was nor inaccessible enough.'

The Grange dining room painted by T.M. Rooke

 ln Three Houses The Grange appears as a children's paradise even more paradisal than it had been to Rudyard Kipling (Ruddie) in the 1870s, partly because while Kipling was understood and most kindly treated, Angela was grossly spoiled. When she was born Burne-Jones was having a rivalry with Gladstone as to which of them could spoil their granddaughters the most. Angela
always sat next to him at lunch, blew the froth off his beer, had her bread buttered
on both sides, rushed into the kitchen to talk to Robert the parrot. The children
were free to roam the whole house, except the studio, and yet she saw William
Morris only once, in Georgie's sitting room. She saw him as 'an old man (or so I
thought him) with the aggressive mop of white hair who was talking, between fits
of coughing, to my grandmother.'
And yet Morris was often in the house. Having become a printer, he assumed
that Burne-Jones would be the chief illustrator for the Kelmscott Press. The Sunday morning breakfasts returned and seem to have been times of heroic and unwise eating on Morris's part - sausages, haddock, tongue and plover's eggs, according to Rooke, 'and then he would go to the side-table and wish he had had something else.' And then, in the February of 1896, Morris suddenly leant his forehead on his hand in a way that Ned and Georgie had never seen before - never, in all the time they had known him.'

portrait painting of Angela Thirkell by Sir Edward Burne-Jones

Sir Edward Burne-Jones with grandson and granddaughter, both became authors

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