Victorian England. A world of rural fairgrounds and glamorous London theatres. A world of dark secrets and deadly obsessions…
Twin sisters Keziah and Tilly Lovell are identical in every way, except that Tilly hasn’t grown a single inch since she was five. Coerced into promoting their father’s quack elixir as they tour the country fairgrounds, at the age of fifteen the girls are sold to a mysterious Italian known as ‘Captain’.
Theo is an orphan, raised by his grandfather, Lord Seabrook, a man who has a dark interest in anatomical freaks and other curiosities … particularly the human kind. Resenting his grandson for his mother’s death in childbirth, when Seabrook remarries and a new heir is produced, Theo is forced to leave home without a penny to his name.
Theo finds employment in Dr Summerwell’s Museum of Anatomy in London, and here he meets Captain and his theatrical ‘family’ of performers, freaks and outcasts.
But it is Theo’s fascination with Tilly and Keziah that will lead all of them into a web of deceits, exposing the darkest secrets and threatening everything they know…
Source: Review copy Publication: 22nd June 2023 from Orenda Books PP: 300 ISBN-13: 978-1914585524
Many thanks to Orenda Books for my eArc!
'The evening nightingales are singing. The month of August lit with gold;
I still keep the rose you gave me,
I watch its red silk heart unfold.
The breath of rose, the sound of bird's song
Are ever tangled with romance.
Tis my pleasure to remember;
The day when you first came to me...'
The Fascination is filled with darkness and depravity at every turn where children like Theo and twin sisters Keziah and Tilly Lovell are at the hands of parents and grandparents who are supposed to care for them and guide them through life. Well, forget it. Throw all sense of sympathy, empathy and sensitivitiy out the window while you read this Victorian gothic kaliediscope of a novel.
After reading and reviewing all of the author's works, Essie Fox has done it. I am finally speechless and in awe of what she has created. The Fascination is beautifully written about two different families, The Seabrook's and The Lovell's living their lives without any real love and care from anyone around them. If only their loved ones could accept them for their differences instead of profiting off of them, it would be a different novel.
The Fascination was a very emotional novel to read. Definitely, a page turner. I loved the atmosphere and descriptions of the gardens and walking outside and around Lord Seabrook's home. In the end, all I wanted to do was scoop up all the children and take care of them. However, what made me smile was how Essie Fox used excerpts of Brothers Grimm, Snow-White and Red-Rose a beautiful fairy tale throughout chapters of the novel. I did not miss the description of a painting by Millais on the wall, mentions of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins' A Woman in White.
For more information or to pre-order a copy, Orenda Books
Hardcover ISBN 978-0-8214-2426-1 Retail price: $80.00 Release date: January 2021 81 illus. · 254 pages · 7 × 10 in
The Lady of Shalott by William Holman-Hunt
Engraved by the Dalziels /J. Thompson, 1857, Wood engraving
A new perspective on a book that transformed Victorian illustration into a stand-alone art.
Edward Moxon’s 1857 edition of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Poems dramatically redefined the relationship between images and words in print. Cooke’s study, the first book to address the subject in over 120 years, presents a sweeping analysis of the illustrators and the complex and challenging ways in which they interpreted Tennyson’s poetry. This book considers the volume’s historical context, examining in detail the roles of publisher, engravers, and binding designer, as well as the material difficulties of printing its fine illustrations, which recreate the effects of painting. Arranged thematically and reproducing all the original images, the chapters present a detailed reappraisal of the original volume and the distinctive culture that produced it.
Simon Cooke is the editor for book illustration and design on Victorian Web. He is the author of Illustrated Periodicals of the 1860s and coeditor of two collections of essays. He has published on Victorian book art, Gothic, Sensationalism, and the Pre-Raphaelites.
I've been reading my review copy from publishers Ohio University Press. It's a beautiful edition and seeing the gorgeous illustrations from all the illustrators not just the well-known Pre-Raphaelite painters has reminded me of the beauty of Tennyson's poems. It makes me want to sit down and read his beautiful words over and over again.
Stay tuned for my upcoming review. I just wanted to post this for anyone who might want to request a review copy or purchase it. Please know that it is expensive though.
Watts Gallery a museum in the heart of Surrey in England is the location of this Ellen Terry exhibit. The gallery was built upon the request of the artist himself, G.F. Watts to serve as a work space for fellow artists. G.F. Watts was the husband of a young teenage British nineteenth century theatre actress Ellen Terry who is depicted in Watts' painting above, 'choosing.' The gallery describes this exhibit, 'Ellen Terry: The Painter’s Actress will be the first exhibition
to explore how the influence of Britain’s most famous Victorian actress
reached beyond the stage to inspire generations of visual artists.
Bringing together paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography and film –
including material rarely or never previously exhibited – the show will
trace Ellen Terry’s journey from emerging teenage starlet to cultural
icon.' I wish they would have decided upon a more apt exhibition title. I mean she was so much more than 'The Painter's Actress' unless of course you are referring only to her years as Mrs. Watts! Not only will this exhibit be at Watts Gallery it is also happening as part of The Guildford Summer Festival.
She was superb in Ghosts, and in The Lady from the Sea she was perfection. There is none like her,
none!’ Dame Ellen Terry speaking on her friend Eleonora Duse, A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic
Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and their remarkable families by Michael
Holyroyd, Chatto & Windus, Great Britain, 2008
“Duse created characters with simplicity-no gesticulating or declaiming.
Small and unprepossessing, she had a soft voice but played tortured and betrayed
women.” Oscar Wilde speaking about Eleonora Duse, Oscar Wilde: A
Certain Genius by Barbara Belford, Random House, 2000
Eleonora was born to a traveling troupe of Italian actors called, the
Duse-Lagunaz troupe including her parents Alessandro and Angelica Duse who
found a room at the Inn of the Golden Cannon where she was born at two in the
morning on Sunday, October 3, 1858. Although, her father, Alessandro longed to be
a painter he didn’t pursue that lifestyle; instead, marrying Angelica who was already
acting with the troupe throughout Vigevano, Lombardy, Italy. Their first
child, a son, died in childbirth leaving Angelica with an ache that never healed.
She was very protective of young Eleonora and knew instantly that her daughter
had the talent to become an actress. She recognized that spark and told her
daughter she was meant to become a great actress one day!
Five year old Eleonora Duse with her mother Angelica Cappelleto Duse in 1863
At the age of only four, in 1892, Eleonora tottled out on stage as
Cossette in Les Miserables. Talk
about an acting debut for such a little one. She was frightened but her father
held her hand and said comforting words to her. She was expected to cry on cue
but didn’t know how to at that age, so someone in the troupe hit her on her
legs to make her cry. Her mother said, “Don’t
be afraid. You know it’s only pretend.”A year later and afterwards, through those early
troupe years her name appeared on the handbills. The troupe traveled and acted
throughout Italian villages even making it to Yugoslavia and Poland acting in
such plays as The Count of Monte Cristo.
Alessandro Duse, Eleanor's father, 1880s
Eleonora’s father, Alessandro, was distant and quiet spending time away
from his family while traveling with the acting troupe. It was her mother who
shaped the woman she would become as well as the actress. They bonded
immediately deepening their mother daughter nurturing instinct. It was during
the years when she was twelve years old that her mother began getting sick in
and out of hospitals. Sadly, nobody seemed to know what her mother’s illness
was.To deal with her parent’s strained
marriage, the pressure of acting and the worry and fear of her sick mother, she
lost herself in acting becoming other people thus beginning a cycle of coping
mechanisms when her life would become unpredictable.
I can only suppose that it was this happy childhood memory that Eleonora
flashed back to in her mind. It was May of 1873, at the age of 14, that she performed
the role of Juliet from William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet believing it was meant to be because of a charming
story her father told her as a little girl. The story of how her parents met in
a rural village near Verona, Italy. Alessandro wrote down in his notebook the
first time he saw a dark haired, dark eyed beautiful woman taking care of the
flowers in her window box. He wanted to go and talk to her but it took a long
while for him to find the courage. He
walked that same path passing her on the road day after day for months until finally
he walked up the stairs of her house that lead to the balcony. There he saw her
and asked her to marry him. Her name was Angelica Cappelletto. Eleonora thought
the name sounded so much like Capulet! Her parents were later married and the
rest is family history I suppose!
Four months later, in September of 1873, Eleanor’s mother was in
hospital in Ancona on the Adriatic and Eleanor was in Tuscany when a knocking
came at her door. Eleanor remembers, “Mama dead” were the words she read on a
telegram. Her mother Angelica Duse died alone in her hospital room and Eleanor
fell into grief, “A sound like something was broken in the air a silence, all
an emptiness.” Her father grieved alone at the age of fifty-two. He did not
understand his daughter’s depression and she had no girlfriends to talk to. She
kept her mother’s picture with her always showing it to nobody. Following Angelica’s death the acting Duse
troupe disbanded. Her father acted in minor parts and Eleanor lived nomadically
acting in supporting roles sporadically during 1874 to 1878.
Without her mother
she now truly felt alone. She had nobody waiting for her after her performances,
nobody sought her company out and nobody wanted her or so she thought. She
began acting again with the Ciotti-Belli-Blanes troupe where she met a director
and actor named Giovanni Emmanuel. He was not romantically interested in her but professionally loved the way she acted and
performed on stage, “She was an actress who gripped your heart an crushed it as
if it were a handkerchief.”Giovanni
asked her to join his theatre production company as a leading actress and leave
her acting troupe for good. The problem was she was contracted with the troupe
but against her father’s wishes, now an independent adult, she joined Giovanni
at his company. The troupe sued Eleonora, a battle which played out in the
newspapers. Giovanni’s company countersued the troupe paying them 5,000 lire to
be rid of them. All press is good press and in this case it worked in their
favor. Eleonora Duse starred in fifteen different repertory plays at Teatro dei
Fiorentini, Giovanni’s company in Naples.
Eleonora Duse undated during her acting years. The photograph reminiscent of Julia Margaret Cameron
Eleonora Duse played Electra in Oreste by Vittorio Alfieri on April 26,
1879. She wore a revealing tunic made of wool.When she played Ophelia in Hamlet, she wore her thick dark hair in two
braids over her lace collar of her white dress carrying a bouquet of flowers.
Using flowers as a prop would become her signature in many of her roles. After
Ophelia’s mad scenes during the fourth act, she received five curtain calls.
The critics said, “An Electra to be
sculpted. An Ophelia to be painted.” Later
that year, she was in Paris, France, to act in Alexandre Dumas’ Le Demi-Monde.
She played Marcelle, an innocent young girl who after being dumped by her
husband became a prostitute searching for another husband. This was the belief
in French society since there were no divorce laws. For the author and
playwright, Dumas wrote this pay after having an affair with a courtesan. According
to Eleonora’s first biographer, Olga Signorelli, “Eleonora herself was also pure and virginal at this time.” Indeed,
she was portraying a very sexualized prostitute and fighting off overly amorous
young men at the stage door looking for a conquest.
Life was about to imitate art for Eleonora in meeting her first real
female friend, Matilde Serao. She wrote stories and articles for local
newspapers and worked in a telegraph office in Naples. Back in Italy, Matilde
was very outgoing, very sexual and dated a lot. She took Eleonora out on the
town and became her confidante. They had lots in common and it would be Matilde
who would introduce Eleonora to the man who would become her first lover and
husband, Martino Cafiero. She was just twenty years old and he was twenty years
older than she. He was considered unattractive, with a receding hairline, bushy
eyebrows, a sharp nose and a thick mustache. He worked for a local newspaper
with Matilde where he organized concerts, festivals.
Now no longer the doomed Desdemona she starred in Emile Zola’s new play Therese Raquin, adapted from his earlier
novel.It was July 1879 and Eleonora
Duse was a hit according to critics starring as Therese in Zola’s play. Sadly,
happiness was to come to an end for the actress known simply as Duse. Becoming
pregnant with her lovers child, the acting company sponsoring the play fell
into bankruptcy and Eleanor left Naples after her lover Cafiero told her he did
not want to marry her. She begged and pleaded with him still deeply in love and
carrying his child, “Save me from this
frightening enemy that follows me and oppresses me. Save me from the solitude
of my silent room.” She went to the town of Turin, in Italy still pregnant,
showing, and still acting. She wrote letter upon letter to him all of which he
ignored. It is said that Duse contemplated suicide as her baby moved inside her. With her pregnancy progressing she longed for her Martino asking herself 'is
this what love truly is?'
They say God moves in mysterious ways well he sent an angel to Duse in
the form of her long lost father, Alessandro. He saw her walking to the
theatre, held his hands on his head and said, “So it’s true.” As her father he could have contacted Martino and
demanded he do right by her and marry her but of course he didn’t. He did
nothing. He asked her how many months she was and she answered seven. Later
that month he moved to Pisa with a touring group. Eleanor was again left alone;
another form of abandonment weaving a thread through her life but what did the
fates exactly have in mind for her? It is not known exactly when but soon after
she suffered a miscarriage. While recuperating and being looked after by her friend
Matilde, she received a visit from Martino who wanted to have sex with her. She
refused him and he left in a rage.Abandoned by her father and her former lover, she suffered the same
maternal loss and pain as her mother; the loss of a son. As she lay in bed she pressed
two tiny rose leaves close to her heart taken from the ground where her son was
buried. She kept them in a gold locket she wore underneath her dress along with
a photograph of her mother.
Tebaldo Checchi, husband of Eleonora Duse
By 1880 her health is recovered and she is back
acting. Her father keeps tabs on her from afar. It is while acting with The
Rossi Company that she meets fellow actor, Tebaldo Checchi. He courts her and
they marry on September 7, 1881. She is already five months pregnant with their
daughter, Enrichetta. He truly loves her but admits to having some sorrow for
her previous treatment by Martino. He is never away from her side and loves her
completely. For it is four months later on
January 7, 1882, in Turin, Duse gives birth to Enrichetta. She writes her
father, “It is today that I had my Enrichetta. At the moment I’m writing you
the little one has left with her father for a small town nearby. Everything
went well. I’m writing you from bed but I feel fine. My Enrichetta is darling
and healthy as a flower and is my benediction-I ask your benediction-I asked
her Grandmother Enrichetta to bless her and she did.”
Eleonora Duse with her daughter, Enrichetta 1887
As with any tale, nothing good
lasts forever and in the case of Eleonora’s marriage their dynamic as a couple
changed. They acted as the years went on, they doted on their daughter but Checchi
travelled a lot and was rarely home. She acted all the time and he would not
let her rest for long.It was a accepted
marriage by the end of it. She was bitter and neglected by him sexually, he was
having open affairs and she finally snapped splitting from him upon finding him
in bed with a fellow actress. She wanted him sexually but he for whatever
reason no longer desired her once she had their child.This is quite common now but during the
nineteenth century was not discussed or was looked upon as solely the woman’s
fault.
Eleonora Duse in Venice, Italy, 1894. Guiseppe Primoli photograph
Duse created her own company
with actor, Flavio Ando, named compagnia della Citta di Roma. She had an affair
with Arrigio Boito, a playwright. She and her daughter lived in Venice and over
the years, she gained much recognition and was making a lot of money for the
time. By 1892, she toured in major cities, such as New York and London. She met
Gabriele d’Annunzio a poet and playwright in 1895 where she would perform one
of her most well known roles as ‘La Citta
morta’ The Dead City. When they broke up, he wrote a scandalous account of
their relationship called The Flame il
fuoco causing a great scandal. This did not affect her acting in any way
although, it did start a rivalry with actress Sarah Bernhardt. In 1909 Duse
retired. She was 46 and wanted to focus on her health and her daughter.
During her retirement she took
time off to co-write and star in a silent Italian film, ‘Cenere’ (Ashes) by Febo Mari in 1916. She played Rosario Derios an
unmarried woman in a small village whose lover abandons her before the birth of
their son. She gives full possession of her son to her one time lover believing
she will not be able to take care of him. She gives the boy a sacred amulet
before he leaves and when he grows up he tries to locate her haunted by her
absence.
It was not until 1921 that
Eleanora Duse stepped onto a stage at the age of 63. Two years later, in 1923,
she toured America with her last touring company.Her final performance was in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania, on April 5, 1924 but she took ill after the show. Eleonora Duse died on April 21, 1924 of
pneumonia in her hotel room at Hotel Schenley.
To anyone who wants to watch Eleonora Duse's 1916 silent Italian film it is online,
.jpeg)
