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.

An Englishman in New York: Philip Burne-Jones (1861-1926) Dollars and Democracy!

Edward Burne-Jones in old age with his son, Philip

BIOGRAPHY

Philip Burne-Jones was the first born child of Sir Edward Burne-Jones and Georgiana Burne-Jones. He was born in London, England on October 1, 1861. His godparents were John Ruskin and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. 

His education consisted of Marlborough and later Oxford University but he didn’t finish his course, quitting after just two years. Instead, he agreed to study painting in a studio space arranged at home back in London. 

He focused on painting as a career eventually debuting an exhibit at the Grosvenor Gallery, London, in 1886. As well as exhibiting 11 times at the Royal Academy during 1898 and 1918. 

Sadly and inevitably, his art work was constantly compared to his father’s which took its toll on his fragile psyche; destroying his self-confidence.  He produced about 60 paintings, mostly portraits, landscapes. He painted Rudyard Kipling, Sir Edward Poynter and Henry James. He is best remembered not for one of his portraits, however, but a painting called, ‘The Vampyre' with a woman posed by theatre actress Mrs. Patricia Campbell and a man laying underneath her presumably her victim. A controversial painting exhibited at the New Gallery in London alongside some of his father’s paintings. 

When his father died, the baronetcy passed on to him in 1898 at the age of 37. It was Philip who took charge of overseeing the cataloging, photographing and dispersing of his father’s remaining works, finished and unfinished.

In 1902, Philip visited the United States travelling throughout New England (NY, Massachusetts mainly). One of the highlights of his American trip was meeting the then President Theodore Roosevelt at a commencement ceremony at Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts.  It was two years later that he wrote and illustrated a book of his impressions entitled, “Dollars and Democracy.” A year later, in 1905 he published another book, a story of touring through the north of France entitled, “With Amy in Brittany.” They both included his pen and ink illustrations. 

His niece,  Angela Thirkell, daughter of Philip’s sister, Margaret described her nephew in her book, “Three Houses” in this way, “He could have been a distinguished painter and would have been one under a luckier star, but two things told fatally against him. He never needed to work, and he was cursed with a sense of diffidence and a feeling that whatever he did would be contrasted unfavorably with his father’s work.” 

Philip Burne-Jones lived in London the rest of his days, passing away at the age of 63 on June 21, 1926. He was cremated and buried  at Golder’s Green Crematorium and Mausoleum, North London.

 

When I found Philip Burne-Jones book, "Dollars and Democracy" I read it immediately. Not too much is written about the children of Sir Edward Burne-Jones; at least not his son, Phillip. Being a native New Yorker, I am constantly fascinated about the history of my amazing city. I will be including excerpts of Philip's thoughts on the famous hotel, 'The Waldorf Astoria' and Central Park during 1904. I was pleasantly surprised that we both enjoyed feeding the squirrels!  I hope you enjoy reading his impressions. 

 

 

The Waldorf Astoria, NYC, 1904

 

“The Waldorf-Astoria, plays such an important part in the daily life of New York that any notes on life in America would be incomplete without some reference to it.  It is a huge red-brick pile, about fourteen stories high, with the frontage of a complete “block” on Fifth Avenue-a vast caravanserai, through whose doors pass in the course of the day thousands of men and  women of every imaginable type and condition.  I suppose a more cosmopolitan or motley crowd could be found in no other hotel upon earth.

 Front Entrance of The Waldorf Astoria, 1903 photograph. Isn't it just beautiful!

There is a large bar-room, devoted to the sale of cocktails, which is frequented, at certain hours of the day, by swarms of brokers, company promoters, touts, loafers, and men of affairs of every sort and kind; while in rows of chairs, arranged in long corridors the whole length of the building, sit men and women all day long whence coming and whither going who can possibly say?

Close to one of the entrances is a mysterious Moorish Room, dimly lighted by lamps, with settees and ottomans and armchairs, and a vague atmosphere of Oriental luxury about it, differentiating it in a marked way from the more prosaic portions of the hotel without.

I can only guess that this might be 'the moorish room' that Philip described. It is the Red Room or Library at the Waldorf Astoria in 1903. Hotel archives. 

Huge dining-saloons, of course, stretch out on all sides, while rows of servants wait about on seats, ready to carry cards to guests through the crowded rooms, bellowing the name of the individual sought through the length and breadth of the building; for finding  a friend at the Waldorf is very much like hunting for a needle in a bundle of hay.

There are thirteen hundred bedrooms alone, and in the season a staff of fifteen hundred servants, with an average of fourteen hundred guests. With the daily floating crowd of visitors, loafers, etc., the inhabitants must amount to considerably over three thousand souls the population of a village.

A gallery in a gigantic billiard-room is entirely devoted to ping-pong, a game which has had a phenomenal vogue in America during the past year.

There is one long gallery on the ground-floor, where people sit in the afternoon, patiently waiting one cannot guess what for, and scanning one another with critical interest. It is commonly called “Peacock Row,” or “Rubber Neck Row” a “rubber neck” being an eager, craning, busy sort of neck, which is supposed to be possessed to a noticeable extent by the occupants of these chairs.

This is a photograph of Waldorf Astoria's 'Peacock Row,' 1903. I'm guessing it might be the one Philip described so aptly. Waldorf Astoria archives.

Of course, there is an orchestra playing at intervals in different places in the building all day long. “

What was the transportation system like in New York City around 1904? According to Philip Burne-Jones, “Another convenience for the traveling public is the “transfers” which the tram-car companies give you from one line of cars to another. Thus for the same fare, five cents (about 2d.), you can change into several different cars, and so accomplish a devious and complicated journey without additional cost.”  I can attest to the fact that our transportation system, here in New York City in 2013, still uses the ‘transfer’ letting you connect to another bus or train for free continuing you on your journey to your destination! 

 

 A photograph of Central Park, NYC, 1904, the main park entrance at the time

“Central Park is a wonderful example of American enterprise in overcoming natural difficulties that must at first have seemed almost insuperable, for it is entirely artificial. Thirty-five years ago (in 1869) the ground which it now occupies was nothing but swamp and rock. To-day (1904) it is perhaps the most beautiful park in the world.

How often I have ridden and driven round this enchanting demesne, and how I learned to love it in all the changing seasons of the year from winter, when the snow lay white upon the sleeping earth and the frost-bound paths crackled invigoratingly beneath one’s horses’ hoofs, to spring and summer, when cool lakes and waterways gleamed refreshingly among green leaves, and gray squirrels drifted like shadows among the arbours of purple wisteria!

These little fellows the squirrels make their homes by thousands in the shrubberies and trees of Central Park. No one dreams of hurting them, they are quite tame and will almost feed out of one’s hand. The children to whom Central Park stands in the same relation that Kensington Gardens does to us love them, and I expect they find life extremely agreeable.

The actual area of the park must be small some two and a half miles long by half a mile wide but owing to the skill with which it has been designed and laid out, it appears immense and I mean always to think of it as being so.  To compare our own Zoological Gardens produces a similar impression upon me to this day. As a child I used to wander among the cages and beast houses, along little mysterious paths that led one didn’t know wither, through the slightly alarming tunnel, across the little bridge that spans the canal, to the wonderful unknown land beyond, near the parrot house and to one’s childish imagination it all appeared illimitable. I now know that it can cover only a few acres; but I have taken good care in later years never to explore or become unduly familiar with that enchanted ground, and I still think of it as a garden of boundless possibilities and unexpected delights.

 

The Angel Fountain in Central Park photographed in 1903. Today, the lake and the boathouse are within walking distance and that angel fountain remains intact; very much the same!

And so it is with Central Park. The world would be the duller the day one had investigated the hidden glories of all its winding foot-paths and sylvan glades, and I left it as I found it-a beautiful mystery.”  I can attest to the year-long beauty of Central Park and those sometimes friendly squirrels who will indeed come up to you and wait for you to throw food to them!  Feeding the squirrels is one of my favorite childhood memories and what a wonderful surprise to read Phillip Burne-Jones description of the squirrels in Central Park!

Of course, the entire time I read "Dollars and Democracy," I couldn't help but hear one song playing away in my mind. Englishman in New York by Sting. A favorite of mine. I kept thinking how appropriate Sting's lyrics and perspective on what it was like being an Englishman in New York to Philip Burne-Jones's experience in 1904.  So, William Morris was right when he said, "The past is not dead, it is living in us, and will be alive in the future which we are now helping to make." 

  Englishman in New York by Sting (Vevo)

The past is not dead, it is living in us, and will be alive in the future which we are now helping to make.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/williammor391197.html#4dDh8hDCdcWK8iKR.99

The past is not dead, it is living in us, and will be alive in the future which we are now helping to make.
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/w/williammor391197.html#4dDh8hDCdcWK8iKR.99