A Review of The Somnambulist by Essie Fox

Some secrets are better left buried...'
When seventeen-year old Phoebe Turner visits Wilton's Music Hall to watch her Aunt Cissy performing on stage, she risks the wrath of her mother Maud who marches with the Hallelujah Army, campaigning for all London theatres to close. While there, Phoebe is drawn to a stranger, the enigmatic Nathaniel Samuels who heralds dramatic changes in the lives of all three women. When offered the position of companion to Nathaniel's reclusive wife, Phoebe leaves her life in London's East End for Dinwood Court in Herefordshire - a house that may well be haunted and which holds the darkest of truths. In a gloriously gothic debut, Essie Fox weaves a spellbinding tale of guilt and deception, regret and lost love.
Every heart holds a secret...

The Somnambulist by John Everett Millais, 1871

 Millais’ painting was thought by some to be based on Wilkie Collins’ novel, The Woman in White, but others presumed it was inspired by Bellini’s opera, La Sonnambula. 

'The Somnambulist' has to do with sleepwalking. The subject of sleepwalking fascinated the Victorians and relates to their preoccupation with the occult. The Victorians became fascinated by contact with “the other world” through clairvoyance, séances, ghosts, poltergeists and with the phenomenon of sleepwalking. Here the woman is walking very close to the edge of a cliff and we as viewers are uncertain as to whether she may fall and possibly die, or whether she will keep to the path.

The subject matter of this beautiful Millais painting is crucial to Essie Fox's Victorian gothic mystery debut novel. 'The Somnambulist' is beautifully written broken into three parts as you would find in a play or maybe an opera...Yes, aspects of George Frideric Handel's operetta, 'Acis and Galatea' are weaved throughout 'The Somnambulist' with its themes of unrequited love, murder and betrayal! Especially, its chapter headings taken from the opera's libretto.

Add to this London 1881 setting, a sheltered seventeen year old main character Phoebe Turner who is painfully overshadowed by her religious mother Maud and her beautiful Aunt Cissy who sings on the stage of Wilton's Music Hall. A wonderful aspect of Victorian culture.

Two subplots concerning a mysterious dark, handsome older man who seems to not be such a stranger to Aunt Cissy or young Phoebe for that matter... a large mansion in Hertfordshire, family intrigue, ghostly happenings, lots of deaths and of course a laudanum addict...Come on it's the Victorian Era!

I don't want to reveal everything or go into much detail because it would ruin the fun for you!
I will say however, I was never disappointed reading 'The Somnambulist'. I enjoyed every minute of it and I took my time reading it because that rare feeling came upon me...
you know the one...it creeps up on you the longer you read chapters, get to know characters and settings seem familiar to you...you're not sure why, all you know is you have to keep reading to find out what the secrets are...you ask yourself questions and you must keep reading so you can discover if you are right or wrong...Let's just say I didn't always see the twists and turns that occurred but how I love any opportunity to return to Victorian, England.

A beautiful poem was featured in a chapter and I think it fitting to close with it. When you read 'The Somnambulist' you'll understand why I chose it...

To One in Paradise by Edgar Allan Poe

Thou wast that all to me, love,

   For which my soul did pine—

A green isle in the sea, love,

   A fountain and a shrine,

All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers,

   And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last!

   Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise

But to be overcast!

   A voice from out the Future cries,

“On! on!”—but o’er the Past

   (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies

Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! with me

   The light of Life is o’er!

No more—no more—no more—

   (Such language holds the solemn sea

To the sands upon the shore)

   Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree,

Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances,

   And all my nightly dreams

Are where thy grey eye glances,

   And where thy footstep gleams—

In what ethereal dances,

   By what eternal streams.

Please feel free to leave any questions or comments,

The Secret Marriage of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and Lettice Knollys

 
                

Lettice Knollys, Countess of Essex and Countess of Leicester, was an English noblewoman who was married twice. However, when for her second marriage, she decided to marry her close childhood friend, Elizabeth Tudor's, favorite Robert Dudley, she incurred Elizabeth's hatred. A small price to pay for love, right?
Well, sadly it did not end in happily ever after but let's concentrate on just their union shall we...
*One Interesting Sidenote: Lettice Knollys was a grandniece of Anne Boleyn.

The Secret Marriage
Lettice Knollys married Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester on 21 September 1578 at around seven o'clock in the morning. Only six other people were present at the Earl's country house at Wanstead, Essex; among these were the bride's father and brother, Francis and Richard Knollys, the bridegroom's brother, Ambrose, Earl of Warwick, and his two friends, the Earl of Pembroke and Lord North. The officiating chaplain Humphrey Tyndall later remarked that the bride wore a "loose gown" (an informal morning dress), which has triggered modern speculation that she was pregnant and that the ceremony happened under pressure from her father. The marriage was, however, in planning between Leicester and his wedding guests for almost a year. While Lettice Knollys may well have been pregnant, there is no further indication as to this. The marriage date coincided with the end of the customary two-years-mourning for a widow.

Leicester a widower since 1560 had for many years been in hope of marrying Elizabeth herself, "for whose sake he had hitherto forborne marriage", as he confessed to Lord North. He also feared Elizabeth's reaction and insisted that his marriage be kept a secret. It did not remain one for long, the French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau, reporting it only two months later.  When the Queen was told of the marriage the next year, she banished Lettice Dudley permanently from court; she never forgave her, nor could she ever accept the marriage. Even Lady Leicester's movements through London were resented by the Queen, let alone summer visits to Kenilworth by husband and wife. In 1583 Elizabeth asked a Scottish diplomat whether it was true that Leicester wanted to marry his younger stepdaughter Dorothy to James VI of Scotland; when the Scot denied this the Queen became so excited about it as to say that she would rather allow the King to take her crown away than to see him married to the daughter of such a she-wolf, and, if she could find no other way to repress her ambition and that of the traitor Leicester, she would proclaim her all over Christendom for the bad woman she was, and prove that her husband was a cuckold. She said much more to the same effect.

Please feel free to leave any questions or comments,

Happy Birthday to Henry VIII's older brother Arthur, Prince of Wales (1486-1503)

Three Children of K. Henry VII and Elizabeth his Queen. 1. Prince Henry. II. Prince Arthur. III. Ps. Margaret. From the Royal Collection at Kensington Palace. To his Grtace the most noble Thomas, Duke of Leeds, this is most humbly Inscribed by Geo: Vertue.
J.Maubeugius Pinxit cir. MCCCCXCVI. G.Vertue Lond: delin et Sculp. 1748.
Engraving. 570 x 485mm, 22½ x 19". Some wear to edges. Uncut sheet.
Arthur, as heir to the throne takes the centre seat, with his younger brother Henry (later Henry VIII) on the left. On the right is Margaret, grandmother of Mary, Queen of Scots. 

This engraving is by George Vertue from a no longer extant painting of 1496 that shows the three elder children: Arthur, Henry and Margaret sitting at a table and playing with two apples and some cherries. The picture is ornamented at the top with the portcullis (the Beaufort emblem) surmounted with roses. In reality, Henry had little to do with his older brother, who was educated at Ludlow in the Marches of Wales, while Henry remained with his sisters at Eltham Palace in Kent (Starkey, 24).

On this day in 1486, the eldest son of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York was born at Swithun's Priory, Winchester. Arthur, Prince of Wales, was named after the mythical British King of Welsh descent, whom the Tudors claimed as an ancestor. In memory of Arthur, the baby prince was baptized in Winchester Cathedral, which some believed was the site of Camelot. When he was three years old, Arthur was dubbed a Knight of the Bath and invested as Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, but, when six, he was packed off to Ludlow and had little further contact with his family.

Far more attention was paid to Arthur's education than that of his younger brother. He was first taught by John Rede (formerly headmaster of Winchester College) and then by the blind French poet, Bernard Andre. His death in 1503 was a cruel blow to his parents, but they tried to comfort each other for their loss. He was buried in Worcester Cathedral (Starkey, 38).

Prince Arthur, Collection of His Grace the Duke of Northumberland

This is one of only two authenticated portraits of the Prince. In his hand is a gillyflower, or carnation, a symbol of purity or royalty. 

SOURCES
David Starkey, Man & Monarch Henry VIII, Exhibition Catalogue, (London, 2009)
David Starkey, Henry; Virtuous Prince (London, 2008)
Maria Perry, The Sisters of Henry VIII: The Tumultuos Lives of Margaret of Scotland and Mary of France, (London, 1998)
Arthur, Prince of Wales, Oxford DNB

Please feel free to leave any questions or comments,

A Review of Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature By Linda Lear

Book Synopsis
Beatrix Potter (1866–1943), creator of the immortal Peter Rabbit, is known as an avid writer of comical illustrated letters to friends and as an assertive marketer of her illustrations, and this lively volume also captures her energetic participation in Victorian-era natural history research and conservation. Environmental historian Lear (Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature) relates that, as a child in an upper-middle-class family, Potter sketched flowers, dead animals and live lizards, insects and rodents that she brought home. "Rabbits were caught, tamed, sketched, painted" by young Beatrix and her brother, Bertram. In 1893, while traveling with her pet rabbit, Peter Piper, and seeking unusual fungi with self-taught mycologist Charles McIntosh, Potter jotted an illustrated note "about a disobedient young rabbit called 'Peter' " to an ailing child friend and sketched Peter's nemesis, a McIntosh–look-alike farmer called Mr. McGregor, creating "two fictional characters that one day would be world-famous." Lear judges Potter "a brilliant amateur" naturalist who expressed strong convictions about land preservation. Potter's witty journals, with their close observations of people, animals, objects and places, serve as the basis for Lear's engrossing account, which will appeal to ecologists, historians, child lit buffs and those who want to know the real Squirrel Nutkin, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and Benjamin Bunny.

A PAGE OUT OF BEATRIX POTTER'S DIARY

For sixteen years Beatrix Potter kept a diary written in code and whose work dealt almost exclusively with the doings of small creatures whose fictional lives and homes were cunningly hidden in hedgerows, wainscots, woodlands, farmsteads and floorboards.

REMEMBRANCES OF THINGS PAST
One of my earliest memories is snuggling with my grandma at the age of three years old listening to her read this book that she says I repeatedly requested. If she did not, I would burst into tears. It was Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter. I remember laughing at Mr. Mcgregor even though he clearly wanted to harm Peter Rabbit for sneaking into his garden and eating all the vegetables until he got sick! Even Mrs. Mcgregor wanted her husband to catch Peter so she could put him in a pie! This certainly never scared me. I just thought it was funny! This is partly because my grandma would explain to me that it is a story or a tale and Peter really wouldn't get eaten in a pie but you shouldn't be 'naughty' and 'misbehave'. Apparently, I was worried about the rabbits getting cooked! I won't say anything about what happened when my mother and I went to see Fatal Attraction, years later...

Peter Rabbit, his sisters Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail, and his mother are anthropomorphic rabbits who dress in human clothing and generally walk upright on their hind legs, though they live in a rabbit hole under a fir-tree. Mother Rabbit has forbidden her children to enter the garden of Mr. McGregor: it was there that their father met his untimely end and became the ingredient of a pie. However, while Mrs. Rabbit is shopping and the girls are collecting blackberries, Peter sneaks into the garden. There, he gorges on vegetables until he gets sick, and is then chased about by Mr. McGregor. When Peter loses his jacket and his shoes, Mr. McGregor uses them to dress a scarecrow. After several close encounters with Mr. McGregor, Peter escapes the garden and returns to his mother exhausted and ill. She puts him to bed with a dose of camomile tea while his sisters (who have been good little bunnies) enjoy bread and milk and blackberries for supper. In a 1904 sequel, The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, Peter returns to McGregor's garden to retrieve his lost clothes...The scene when Peter and Benjamin fall down a hole in the ground while Peter is carrying a sack full of 'those beastly onions' still makes me giggle until my stomachaches

ON TO MY THOUGHTS ABOUT BEATRIX POTTER: A LIFE IN NATURE
While biographer Linda Lear gives Beatrix Potter's life its full due, she's also aware that there were only five years out of 77 in a life lived productively and to the full. Lear is an environmental historian, and while she is an enthusiastic if uncritical appreciator of Potter's books for children and unabashedly writes of Potter in her private and her public life, her main interest is in Potter's aptitude and skill for science and natural history and the way it transformed her in her later years into an expert in land management and sustainable farming.

Partly through her books and partly through inheritance, Beatrix Potter Heelis was in her later years a very wealthy woman, and she became one of the largest landholders in the Lake District. Most of this land she managed and preserved with Britain's National Trust. Through what Lear calls "her passionate and imaginative stewardship of the land", she "created a singular moment in the recovery of nature in the 20th century: a paradigm of environmental awakening".

However, there are some long and impressive stretches that concentrate on Potter's life as a scientist and an artist, for the two were not separable in her work. Before the era of Peter Rabbit, Potter was already a trained artist, a skilled photographer and a gifted amateur naturalist, prolific and photographically accurate in her botanical drawings and profoundly knowledgeable about fungi.

For her biographer, the turning point in Potter's life was the late summer of 1893, when she was 27: "On 4 September, the very day after discovering and drawing the rare pine cone fungus, Beatrix sat down in the sunshine and wrote a picture letter about a disobedient young rabbit called Peter." The picture letter was to the older son of a former governess; fearing that his younger brother might feel left out, she then wrote one for him as well, about a frog called Jeremy Fisher: "In the space of two days she had found and painted a rare and important mycological specimen and created two fictional characters that one day would be world famous." In her picture letters to the various children she knew, Potter honed her storytelling skills; she experimented in them, says Lear, "with the intricacies of matching drawing to text, and with the structural elements of storytelling: they served as the medium for Potter's artistic transition between natural science and fantasy". She had considerable training as a child and teenager in drawing and painting, including some handy tips from her father's friend John Everett Millais, the most gifted of the Pre-Raphaelites.

There seems to have existed in Potter's parents a tendency to be repressive and controlling on the one hand, and generous and tolerant about Potter's love of drawing and of plants and animals on the other. As children, Beatrix and her younger brother Bertram had a permanent zoo in the family home, which seems to have been full of animals brought home - often smuggled - from country holidays.

The sense of Potter as a real, compelling artist in this book is very strong. At just 18 she wrote in her journal: "I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor the result, and when I have had a bad time come over me, it is a stronger desire than ever." At the other end of her life, now a north country farmer and sheep-breeder, she asked her manager to take up the next lamb that died, cut off its head and "skin it back to the shoulder". He did as asked, and the following day "he came to find the sheep's head pinned against a wall in the meadow and Beatrix sitting on a stone sketching it".

The great achievement of this book is the way it brings together Beatrix Potter's lifelong activities in art and science and shows how they are all part of an extraordinarily integrated life: how her feeling for plants and animals and her finely detailed observations of the natural world were the foundation stones of her children's books as well as her land management skills and environmental awareness. In the last year of her life, she wrote to her cousin Caroline: "As I lie in bed I can walk step by step on the fells and rough lands, seeing every stone and flower and patch of bog and cotton grass where my old legs will never take me again.

Please feel free to leave any comments or questions,

A Review of Desperate Romantics: The Private Lives of the Pre-Raphaelites by Franny Moyle

2009 UK Cover

         2011 US  Cover

BOOK SYNOPSIS

In conjunction with a major series for BBC2, this work presents the scandalous saga of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Their Bohemian lifestyle and intertwined love affairs shockingly broke 19th Century class barriers and bent the rules that governed the roles of the sexes. They became defined by love triangles, played out against the austere moral climate of Victorian England; they outraged their contemporaries with their loves, jealousies and betrayals, and they stunned society when their complex moral choices led to madness and suicide, or when their permissive experiments ended in addiction and death. The characters are huge and vivid and remain as compelling today as they were in their own time. The influential critic, writer and artist John Ruskin was their father figure and his apostles included the painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the designer William Morris. They drew extraordinary women into their circle. In a move intended to raise eyebrows for its social audacity, they recruited the most ravishing models they could find from the gutters of Victorian slums. The saga is brought to life through the vivid letters and diaries kept by the group and the accounts written by their contemporaries. These real-life stories shed new light on the greatest nineteenth-century British art. This title intends to tie in with a major television series on BBC 2. It features colourful characters, intimate lives, and it reads like a novel. It teaches about a major British Art movement through the medium of a cracking story. It contains gorgeous colour pictures that bring the characters and their art alive, and, Franny Moyle reveals the surprising truth behind Ruskin's public persona. The Pre-Raphaelites were the infamous, bad-boy celebrities of the late Victorian era and this book shows they are as compelling today as they were then. It brings together class, sexuality and morality in a scandalous saga.

Pre-Raphaelite Models

Annie Miller

Alexa Wilding

Fanny Cornforth

Jane Burden Morris

Lizzie Siddal -- The Infamous Ophelia

William Michael Rossetti, (Dante's brother) years later, remembered what the Pre-Raphaelites had looked for in their models: living people who, by refinement of character and aspect, may be supposed to have some affinity with those personages (that the painter intends to portray) - and, when he has found such people...he ought, with substantial though not slavish fidelity, to represent them as they are (Moyle, 98).

I cannot read a Pre-Raph themed fiction or non-fiction book without the mention and accompanying photo of One of the most infamous paintings and models to grace the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, namely, John Everett Millais', 'Ophelia', 1851-2, modeled by Elizabeth Siddal (Lizzie).

Ophelia went on show in the summer of 1852 as part of the Royal Academy Exhibitition.
In the 22 May 1852 issue of Punch magazine, pp. 216-7, one critic writes,
Before two pictures of Mr. Millais I have spent the happiest hour that I have ever spent in the Royal Academy Exhibition. In those two pictures I find more loving observation of Nature, more mastery in the reproduction of her forms and colours, more insight into the sentiment of our greatest poet, a deeper feeling of human emotion, a happier choice of a point of interest, and a more truthful rendering of its appropriate expression, than in all the rest of those eight hundred squares of canvas put together...
Talk as you like, M'Gilp, eminent painter, to your friend Mr. Squench, eminent critic, about the needless elaboration of those water mosses, and the over making-out of the rose leaves, and the abominable finish of those river-side weeds matted with gossamer, which the field botanist may identify leaf by leaf. I tell you, I am aware of none of these. I see only that face of poor drowning Ophelia. My eye goes to that, and rests of that, and sees nothing else, till - buffoon as I am, mocker, joker, scurril-knave, streetjester by trade and nature - the tears blind me, and I am fain to turn from the face of the mad girl to the natural loveliness that makes her dying beautiful(Moyle, 99-100)

MY THOUGHTS
As someone who fell in love with Waterhouse, Burne-Jones, Rossetti and Millais' paintings, I have read as much correspondence as was available online, biographies written by so called 'experts' and finally recommended fiction. I wanted to find out what a painter's inspiration truly was? Was it their muse or model, was it their surroundings, upbringing, class status, education or just an excuse to have a nude woman pose for them?
So, what have I discovered...Well, underneath the gruff exterior of the men of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood lies the tortured lifestyle of an artist complete with the juxtaposition between a man's superego and crushing paranoia and insecurities! I quite like them these talented and neurotic painters, writers, and illustrators who have brought us some of the most realistic and painfully exquisite pieces of artwork based on poetry and literature of their day!
That is what you will find within the pages of Franny Moyle's 'Desperate Romantics' a tie in with a BBC television show of the same name!
Franny Moyle has written a sort of British Victorian soap opera. Yes, the painters and muses were real people who led interesting lives but because there is limited documentation throughout these artist's lives, we will never truly know every aspect of their inspirations for painting their subject's or why they pursued who they did! This is one of the weaknesses of 'Desperate Romantics'.
However, one of the strengths is the fact that it is well researched, well written and the pages are littered with lovely illustrations and excerpts of correspondence provide chapter examples.
So, I recommend it as pure enjoyment and escapism not part of your research. For that I would recommend Jan Marsh, Lucinda Hawksley, Josceline Dimbleby or Suzanne Fagence Cooper!

Please feel free to leave any questions or comments,

A Review of Tennyson's Gift by Lynne Truss

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins Pb (May 27, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0007355270
• ISBN-13: 978-0007355273

BOOK SYNOPSIS

From the bestselling author of 'Eats Shoots & Leaves', an unexpectedly moving, luminously wise and brilliantly funny novel about a Victorian Poet Laureate. In July 1864, a corner of the Isle of Wight is buzzing with literary and artistic creativity. A morose Tennyson is reciting 'Maud' to empty sofas; the photographer Julia Margaret Cameron is white-washing the roses for visual effect and the mismatched couple, actress Ellen Terry and painter G. F. Watts, are thrown into the company of the remarkable Lorenzo Fowler, the American phrenologist, and his daughter Jessie. Enter mathematician Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), known to Jessie as the 'fiendish pedagogue', and Lynne Truss's wonderfully imaginative cocktail of Victorian seriousness and riotous farce begins to take flight.


TAKEN FROM LYNNE TRUSS' WEBSITE SHE SAYS

Madness seems to be a recurrent theme in my novels. The greatest influence onTennyson’s Gift is not the poet laureate, or even his wonderfully enthusiastic neighbour, slaving night and day for Art, Mrs Cameron. It is the great Victorian children’s writer Lewis Carroll (real name, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), who made a real visit to Freshwater in July 1864, and thus supplied a real date for the book’s entirely invented action. Tennyson’s Gift is about love, poetry, the beauty of girls with long hair, the questionable sagacity of men with beards, the language of flowers and the acquisition of famous heads; but it is mainly about the insane Carrollian egotism that accompanies energetic genius.
All the main characters are real people who were really regulars at Freshwater: the solemn painter G.F. Watts; the burgeoning young actress Ellen Terry; the two maids; the Tennyson boys; even the little girl Daisy. They can all be found in Mrs Cameron’s pictures from that year. The only imports to the scene are the rather splendid American phrenologist Lorenzo Niles Fowler and his precocious daughter Jessie, who cannot be placed historically at Freshwater in July 1864, but were touring England in the early 1860s, which was good enough for me.

MY THOUGHTS ON THE NOVEL
It is rare for me to simply love 'an entire novel' and not want to stop reading midway through or give up altogether in frustration! You do not have to know all that much about Alfred Tennyson or any of the other literary cast of characters. All you need is an open mind and a sense of humor! This novel is pure fun to read and farce in the true sense of the word!
It seems that I am now mainly reading novels albeit fiction or nonfiction for research or analytical reasons that I rarely read just for the pureness of the mental escape. Novels like this one are ones that I linger over because I don't want them to end.
Author, Lynne Truss, is someone I am unfamiliar with so Tennyson's Gift was a wonderful foray into her wacky and witty world! If you find yourself smiling and bursting into throwing your head back with laughter while reading, I would say this is a good sign of things to come!

SOME FAVORITE FUNNY BITS
Does anyone remember the Disney movie Alice in Wonderland? Well, if you're of my generation you grew up watching the movie as a little girl then reading the book by Lewis Carroll whose real name was Reverend Charles Dodgson who was a mathematician as well.

Well, according to the author in this novel it is implied that Reverend Dodgson who while visiting his friends Alfred Tennyson and photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron found her staff outside her home, Dimbola Lodge, painting her red roses that were growing on the bushes white...Remember the scene in Alice in Wonderland where the queen's staff 'mistakenly' paint the red roses white and upon the discovery she shouts, "Off With Her Head"...Could Reverend Dodson have written that scene after Julia Margaret Cameron? Was Julia 'the queen' from Alice in Wonderland? Chapter One opens with...
" A blazing dusty July afternoon at Freshwater Bay; and up at Dimbola Lodge, with a glorious loud to-do, the household of Mrs. Julia Margaret Cameron is mostly out of doors, applying paint to the roses. They run around the garden in the sunshine, holding up skirts and aprons, and jostle on the paths. For reasons they dare not inquire, the red roses must be painted white. If anyone asked them to guess, they would probably say, 'Because it's Wednesday?'
'You're splashing me!'
'Look out!'
'We'll never get it done in time!'
'What if she comes and we're not finished?'
'It will be off with our heads!'
He pauses, tilts his head, and listens tot he commotion with a faraway, satisfied smile. If you knew him better, you would recognize this unattractive expression. It is the smirk of a clever dysfunctional thirty-two year old, middle aged before his time, whose own singular insights and private jokes are his constant reliable source of intellectual delight. 
'O-O-Off with our heads? he muses, and opens a small notebook produced with a parlour magician's flourish from an inside pocket.
'Off with our h---heads?' He makes a neat note with a tiny pencil. 
'H-H-H---Extraordinary.' 


 Have you ever wondered how to keep your poet laureate husband happy?
Here's what Emily Tennyson might have done...
At Farringford, Emily Tennyson sorted her husband's post. Thin and beady-eyed in her shiny black dress, she had the look of a blackbird picking through worms. She spotted immediately the handwriting of Tennyson's most insistent anonymous detractor and swiftly tucked it into her pocket.
Alfred was absurdly sensitive to criticism, and she had discovered that the secret of the quiet life was to let him believe what he wanted to believe -viz, that the world adored him without the faintest reservation or quibble. To this comfortable illusion of her husband's, in fact, she was steadily sacrificing her life. Emily had a large drawer of unopened letters in her bureau upstairs. She would never let Alfred know of their existence not while there was breath in her body, anyway.
She was pleased to reflect that she was well prepared for Alfred. As a matter of routine, he would ask three questions as he whirled dramatically through the door in his black cloak and sombrero, to which his wife's dutiful answers must always be the same.
'Did you check the boys for signs of madness, Emily?'
'Yes dear, I did.'
'Is there an apple pie baked for my dinner?'
'Yes. Cook has seen to it.'
'Is anyone after my head?'
'No, dear, nobody. As I have told you before, Alfred, that's all in your imagination.'

Ellen Terry, aged 17, photo by Julia Margaret Cameron

Portrait by Cameron of G.F. Watts, 1847

Lastly, one funny situation was a discussion between husband and wife G.F. Watts, painter (aged 47) and wife, actress Ellen Terry (aged 16)...that's right...During a dinner scene a conversation between the pair turned into a full blown argument. Watts, keeping calm, addresses Terry in a very direct tone saying, 'Stop being so dramatic'. Dramatic actress, Ellen Terry, loudly bellowing replies quoting Shakespeare's Twelfth Night to which Watts never losing a beat calmly tells her, 'My dear, if you continue with this, I shall have a headache'. I can just picture Watts sitting around his dinner table shoving food in his mouth while Ellen Terry does a scene from Shakespeare, exasperated by his calmness in full blown actress mode, standing before him draped in a lovely gown, too upset to eat! I just found it so funny and very realistic to human nature!


I find myself growing quite fond of Alfred Tennyson. Having read his works and his son's memoir and correspondence it paints a picture of a lovely, quiet, introspective, genius of a man who wants a simple life by the bay with his family. In closing is my favorite scene from Tennyson's Gift. It is Ellen Terry's view of the man after having a discussion with him while walking along the downs...

Alfred Tennyson photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron

Tennyson leaned into the wind. The thing about this man, she realized as she watched his cloak furl and crack behind him like a flag, was that he was rather like a cliff himself. His large white face looked down and shaped by centuries of rain and landslip; and all his life (even when it was quite unnecessary) he seemed to defy a gale, staunch on his stocky Lincolnshire legs, with his chest puffed out. Here was a man who would never discover a sheltered place in the world and then relax in it. Tennyson was a walking personification of the verb 'to buffet'. When Watts was cut up by a review, Ellen had observed that he would mend again by teatime. But Tennyson went all to tatters, and displayed his wounds perpetually, even to people who strenuously desired not to see them. Perhaps his Approbativeness needs looking at, thought Ellen. Tennyson's must be the size of a baby gnat.


Please feel free to leave any comments,

May and Amy: A True Story of Family, Forbidden Love, and the Secret Lives of May Gaskell, Her Daughter Amy, and Sir Edward Burne-Jones

Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Three Rivers Press (CA); Reprint edition (28 Mar 2006)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0307335895
ISBN-13: 978-0307335890

Always intrigued by Edward Burne-Jones’s portrait of her great-aunt, Amy Gaskell, Josceline Dimbleby’s chance meeting with the painting’s current owner encouraged her to explore the mystery of her own family’s past and the life and death of her beautiful great-aunt.

In her search, Dimbleby uncovered a passionate correspondence between Burne-Jones and her great-grandmother, May Gaskell, Amy’s mother, which continued throughout the last six years of the Pre-Raphaelite painter’s life.

As she delved deeper into their engrossing lives, questions emerged. What was the deep secret May had confided to Edward? And what was the tragic truth behind Amy’s wayward, wandering life, her strange marriage, and her unexplained early death?

Weaving together the threads of this tale, Dimbleby takes us through a turbulent period in English history and visits the most far-flung corners of the Empire. William Morris, Rudyard Kipling, William Gladstone, and prominent members of the Souls also play a part in this sweeping, often funny, and sometimes tragic story. Richly detailed and exquisitely told, May and Amy is a stunning account of hidden love and family secrets.

The portrait that started it all...As a special present for May Gaskell, Burne-Jones painted this portrait of her favorite daughter Amy, aged nineteen, 1893

MY THOUGHTS ON THE NOVEL

Pre-Raphaelite painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones was married to Georgiana Macdonald during his many friendships with sculptor Maria Zambaco which did become a full blown affair and May Gaskell.
This novel lovingly and respectfully, through family correspondence, tells the life stories of the author's family members: great grandmother May Gaskell, great aunt Amy Gaskell.
According to the author, Georgiana either looked the other way during Burne-Jones' many dalliances or simply 'put up with it' since this information is told by Burne-Jones himself!

Burne-Jones letter to May Gaskell's daughter Amy mentions Georgie. This is well into the friendship between May and Burne-Jones, "Georgie is a brick about troubles and sorrows and as wise as the Delphi Sybil. Georgie loves damsels and is the best company in the world for them-you will write to her won't you. I want her to feel you have some friendship for her, and would trust Amy to her-she shall not have a dull time either-Phil(BurneJones son) and I will take her to amusements and the days shall not depress her. And somehow I will get a little of her confidence (Dimbleby, Page 132)

Burne-Jones writes further to May about Georgie saying, "It makes me so happy that Georgie welcomes you-some day come to see her for her own sake-she is the wittiest company, and very pious-I say pious because all things are serious to her-only she is bitter upon folly-she is not a Christian any more and yet she hates to be approached except on bended knees(Dimbleby, page 105)

Burne-Jones' wife Georgie - seen here in a portrait painted by her husband. Their children, Phil and Margaret are in the background. 

MARIA ZAMBACO AND BURNE JONES

His first portrait of Maria Zambaco

The Beguiling Of Merlin, the most recognizable painting of Sir Edward Burne-Jones. He paints her as the sorceress Nimue.

Here she is in The Tree of Forgiveness which Burne-Jones painted towards the end of the affair.
The dynamics between the men and women in these two paintings just about says it all doesn't it?

As his model, Maria Zambaco's dramatic Greek looks had inspired Burne-Jones to produce some of the best paintings and drawings he had ever done. The affair resulted in inevitable pain and misery and with Maria's volatile temperament, in a public drama. There was rumor of a suicide pact and then she did indeed attempt suicide. The affair shook Burne-Jones deeply and permanently changed his relationship with his wife, Georgie, although she was to stand by him devotedly, even if at times somewhat sternly, to the end.
Burne-Jones alludes to this affair in a letter to May,

"the one who hurt me was not wicked a bit-it was a hard life to lead and she broke down-that's all-she minded so much and so much feared to hurt that it drove her to cheat-she thought I couldn't like her if I knew she was passionate so she hid it always-but I should have liked it all the more you see, for it is the one thing that is beautiful to me, and pardons all-but there it was-for the first years it must have been an unbearable life to her-it was to me-who can be a wicked hell of passion if I let go-and I never forget hearing of her crying all night or walking about in rain outside the house when I was ill, for hours(Dimbleby page105)

BURNE JONES AND MAY GASKELL

May Gaskell met Edward Burne Jones at the start of the 1890s. He was nearly fifty-nine years old. She was just thirty-nine. Burne-Jones, both in his painting and in his life, had always searched for perfection and beauty, most often in female form. Later he was to explain to May:(Dimbleby, P.89)

'I mean by a picture a beautiful romantic dream, of something that never was, never will be — in a light better than any that ever shone — in a land no-one can define or remember, only desire'

Portrait of Helen Mary Gaskell(May)

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1893

Last drawing of May Gaskell by Edward Burne Jones, 1898

Helen Mary Gaskell (May) was the great grandmother to author Josceline Dimbleby
NOTE: Lily of the Valley pinned to her blouse over her bosom. Lily of the Valley symbolizes a return to happiness, purity of heart, sweetness, you've made my life complete, humility, love's good fortune (Language and Meaning of Flowers)

The first letter Burne-Jones wrote to May Gaskell says it all really...
O my God how I love you-it's terrible that one creature should have such power over any other-and I lie under your feet-and have no will or strength against you. Why did I leave you today-I left all my happiness with you-a poor thing came back here, a poor shell, and my heart was away-my heart nestles under your feet, so tread softly...I shall lie and think of you and wake and think of you and of the sweet comfort we shall be to each other over our life days-you are not to mind if I have been hurt-it is such sweet pain and it's all for you (Dimbleby, page 8).

THE DEATH OF EDWARD BURNE-JONES
17 June 1898: Burne-Jones spent a quiet evening with Georgie. They played dominoes and then Georgie read aloud by lamplight, as she often did now that her husband's eyes were so bad. Finally, they went up to their separate bedrooms. Burne Jones undressed, settled himself on his bed into the position of King Arthur in his painting, and waited for sleep to come.
Between their bedrooms was a speaking tube. In the early hours of the morning, Georgie heard her husband cry out that he had a pain in his heart. She hurried to him. It was a fatal heart attack. The man with the scythe had finally come to him. Georgie could do nothing; within a very short while Sir Edward Burne-Jones was dead. He was sixty-five years old.
Burne-Jones had always felt his painting provided, like a transcendental experience, a link with another world. Dying as he did, after working all day on the death scene of King Arthur at Avalon, it was as if he had finally entered the world he loved most, the legendary world of his paintings (Dimbleby, page 178).

In closing, at the end of May Gaskell's life, she summed up her friendship with Burne Jones,
"His friendship to me was like a benediction through the storms of life--his love a safeguard--his influence a continual help to the present hour"(Dimbleby, page 7)

If you would like to get better acquainted with the man behind the glorious paintings, then I highly recommend this novel. It is available online worldwide.

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A Review of Tudor biography Henry VIII by David Loades

Hardcover: 448 pages
Publisher: Amberley (July 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1848685327
ISBN-13: 978-1848685321

A major new biography of the most infamous king of England. 'Means to be God, and do as pleases himself', Martin Luther observed. It was a shrewd comment, not merely on the divorce in which the King was then embroiled, but upon his whole career. Henry VIII was self righteous, and convinced that he enjoyed a special relationship with the Almighty, which gave him a unique claim upon the obedience of his subjects. He subdued the church, sidelined the old nobility, and reorganized the government, all in the name of that Good Lordship which was his God-given responsibility.
As a youth, he was a magnificent specimen of manhood, and in age a gargantuan wreck, but even in his prime he was never the 'ladies man' of legend and his own imagination. Sexual insecurity undermined him and gave him an irascible edge - fatal to Anne Boleyn and Thomas Cromwell. Several times he took out his frustrations in warfare, but succeeded only in spending vast sums of money. He dominated England during his life, and for many years thereafter, but his personality is as controversial today as it was then.
Professor David Loades has spent most of his life investigating the remains, literary, archival and archaeological, of Henry VIII, and this monumental new biography book is the result. His portrait of Henry is distinctive, he was neither a genius nor a tyrant, but a man' like any other', except for the extraordinary circumstances in which he found himself.

Eighteen year old King Henry VIII after his crowning in 1509

Pastime with good company   

For my pastance          

Hunt sing and dance                                  

My heart is set 

All goodly sport 

To my comfort 

Who shall me let? 

The best I sue

The worst eschew 

My Mind shall be 

Virtue to use 

Vice to refuse 

In order to understand the newly crowned, adolescent, King of England, Henry VIII, during this time,"The King was as avid for intellectual stimulus as he was for physical exercise, and he did not find that among his jousting companions. Above all, he was a talented and enthusiastic musician, who took his minstrels with him wherever he went; on progress, on campaign, even on hunting trips. Most of the evidence dates from later, but the 'king's musik' was noted for its excellence from the very beginning, and in 1516 he tempted the distinguished Venetian organist Dionisio Memo into his service. He played the lute and the virginals well, although he was less sure on the organ, and his greatest asset was his singing voice, which was strong and steady, although we do not know what his register was. Later in the reign one of his favourite occupations was part singing with the Gentelmen of his Privy Chamber, and he seems to have written such songs, perhaps even while he was still prince. One of the earliest was 'Pastime with good company', which expresses the whole philosophy of the young Henry" (Loades, Henry VIII, page67).

This is not the first Tudor biography I've read on Henry VIII but it is the first that I feel has been the most thorough and thoughtfully put together. I do understand that this is a reissue of an earlier biography David Loades has previously published with 'newer information' thrown in. That being said, Loades has done what Eric Ives has done with his Tudor biography of Anne Boleyn. Before having read this biography, my main source of reference on 'strict' biographies and not a fictionalized novel would have been Jack (JJ) Scarisbrick to which Loades agrees!
I have read David Starkey and Alison Weir's books of course and highly recommend them. However, the best source is always the plethera of available Letters and Papers found on online international library websites. The best feeling is the ability and freedom to read the original sixteenth century documents and letters by not only the kings and queens but their privy council members as well!

Not only did Historian, David Loades cover Henry's life and reign as King of England (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) but through Appendixes and Notes he summarized the historical events of the children of Henry VIII: Mary I (Bloody Mary), Elizabeth I and Edward Tudor. He included, wives and husbands of said monarchs and threw in Mary Queen of Scots as well! What more do you want?

I highly recommend this Tudor biography. It is written in a style that is clever, humorous and informative without being pompous and dry. I never felt as if I was listening to a lecture or being reprimanded! I enjoy Tudor biographies when they are well written and humour is important. It should be fun after all. For me, I always am curious to know more about these men and women who not only ruled countries and counties but were mere mortals, flawed humans with immeasurable superegos and waning sexual prowess! Something I love to do when reading biographies is too go directly to the biography list at the back of the book to see how many sources I've also read and how many I want to read!

Henry_VIII,_drawing,_workshop_of_Hans_Holbein_the_Younger

As I walked along

and mused on things

That have in my time

been done by great kings

I bethought me of abbeys

that sometime I saw

Which are now supressed

all by a law.

O Lord, (thought I then)

what occasion was here

To provide for learning

and make poverty clear.

The lands and the jewels

that hereby were had

Would have found godly preachers

which might well have led

The people aright

that now go astray

And have fed the poor

that famish every day.

SOURCES
Henry VIII by David Loades
Henry VIII by Jack (JJ) Scarisbrick

POEMS AND MUSIC
Henry VIII and Crowley, Selected Works

Please feel free to leave any questions or comments,

A Review Of Dracula In Love By Karen Essex

London, 1890. Mina Murray, the rosy-cheeked, quintessentially pure Victorian heroine, becomes Count Dracula’s object of desire. To preserve her chastity, five male “defenders” rush in to rescue her from the vampire’s evil clutches. This is the version of the story we've been told.

But now, from Mina’s own pen, we discover a tale more sensual, more devious, and more enthralling than the Victorians could have ever imagined. From the shadowy banks of the river Thames to the wild and windswept Yorkshire coast, Dracula’s eternal muse—the most famous woman in vampire lore—vividly recounts the joys and terrors of a passionate affair that has linked her and the Count through the centuries, and her rebellion against her own frightening preternatural powers.

He did not speak but I heard his voice in my head and recognized it as the voice from my dream.

The power is yours, Mina. I come to you when you call to me, when I feel your need or desire.
Every moment that has ever existed in time is still here, Mina--every thought, every memory, and every experience. You and I have gone by many names. It does not matter what we call each other. What matters is that you remember. Do you remember, Mina?
We are physically and psychically attuned, you and I. Everything that exists in this material world also exists on the other side of the veil. On the etheric plane, you and I are eternally united. You have read the philosopher Plato? You must do so sometime. What he said of the twin souls is not far from accurate. We are twin souls, so to speak. You know this, but it frightens you.

MY THOUGHTS ON DRACULA IN LOVE
I am a romantic at heart. A fool for love. An all encompassing, heart pounding, breathless love. The kind one seems to find in Victorian Gothic novels where the men are not all cads and the women...well, let's get back to that shall we!

Dracula In Love reunites us with those star crossed lovers...NO, not Jonathan Harker and Mina Murray. Have you ever heard of Dracula? The vampire! Yes, he exists didn't you know!
He takes many forms albeit human or animal; whatever your imagination can conjure.
However, the real man, exists within these pages. He calls himself Count Vladimir Drakulya but that is all you get to know now. You must read the book to find out more.
For the tale Karen Essex weaves is more than Bram Stoker ever could have dreamed!

I grew up on Dracula you could say. I was weaned on Hammer Films, a child of the seventies!
For most of my childhood Christopher Lee was a vampire! While most children were being read fairy tales, I was being read Peter Rabbit and Ellery Queen watching Hound of the Baskervilles and wondering where The Moors were!

I read Bram Stoker's Dracula during my early adolescence and it scared me silly! I love that novel and have since 'devoured' a strict diet of Anne Rice. You will not find any Twilight love here! No teenage angst for me just good old fashioned Gothic suspense with some Victorian uptight, fragile women waxing on about love will do me fine!

Karen Essex has let Mina tell her story before and after meeting her husband Jonathan Harker. She doesn't quite understand who this man's voice is that calls to her in her dreams, visits her eliciting such desire! Once she discovers who this count is the real story begins!

Karen Essex's writing style is descriptive and compelling. The story is luscious and inviting. However, although the usual suspects and familiar faces are here...Mina's friend Lucy and Dr. Von Helsinger, I found myself losing some interest toward the last half of the novel.
Putting the romance aside, Karen Essex drives the base of the novel with an undercurrent of feminism that is unusually refreshing at first but too many weakened females being sent to asylums sent me over the edge! I found that part of the story predictable and it was too many chapters. Just when I was about to lose interest completely Mina and the story of who the Count truly was took off and the author enraptured me again!
Also, some readers might be put off by the erotic writing. Yes, it is graphic but I think beautifully written and only enhances the love story! Just let your imagination run wild and enjoy this escape...I did!

The novel is available at all bookstores and downloadable as well!

Please feel free to leave any comments,

Tales of Farringford on The Isle of Wight Home of Alfred Lord Tennyson

Farringford, Isle of Wight, Home of Alfred Tennyson

An original Victorian print dated March 22, 1884. This engraving shows Alfred Lord Tennyson, the Poet Laureate, in his study on the Isle of Wight. From a series of prints entitled 'Celebrities of the Day

Farringford
Tennyson first came to the Isle of Wight in 1846 with Edward Moxon to visit James White of Bonchurch.
On that occasion he rowed around the Needles, and found the view unforgettable. He returned to the island in 1849, and again in 1853 when he was on the lookout for a house. He heard of Farringford, and fell in love with the view from the drawing room, which persuaded him to make Farringford his home. He summoned his wife Emily from Twickenham. Her diary records her impressions of that fateful trip to see Farringford for the first time:

'The railway did not go further than Brockhurst then and the steamer, when there was one, from Lymington felt itself in no way bound to wait for the omnibus which brought as many of the passengers as it could from the train. We crossed in a rowing boat. It was a still November evening. One dark heron flew over the Solent backed by a daffodil sky... Next day we went to Farringford and looking from the drawing-room window I thought "I must have that view," and I said so to him when alone.' Tennyson himself said 'we will go no further, this must be our home.'

On 11 November, 1853, Tennyson agreed to rent Farringford, furnished, on a three-year lease for £2 a week. The lease came with an option to buy. On 25 November Alfred and Emily moved in and their staff which consisted of a housekeeper, butler, cook, page, lady's maid, parlour and kitchen maids, gardeners, grooms and a coachman. In March 1854 their second son, Lionel, was born in Farringford.

By 1856 Alfred Lord Tennyson's income from his writings was over £2,000 a year and he bought the house, park and farmland of Farringford for £6,900. During his time at Farringford he wrote many of his most famous works, including The Charge of the Light Brigade and Maud, while another, Crossing The Bar, was written on a voyage between the mainland and his home.

On 13 May, 1856, on the arrival of Tennyson's own furniture, pictures, boxes of books and other assorted ornaments and antiquities, Prince Albert called. Tennyson, flustered in the middle of arranging the unpacking, is reported to have forgotten to offer Prince Albert a chair. Despite this, Albert remained standing, talking pleasantly, and took a bunch of cowslips home for the Queen. Tennyson did not meet Queen Victoria herself until April 1863. Queen Victoria's diary described the event as follows: 'I went down to see Tennyson who is very peculiar-looking, tall, dark.'

Alfred Tennyson is reported to have been so emotional at the event that his eyes were filled with tears and he could not stand still. He was also unable to remember the Queen's words, and wrote 'I only remember what I said to the Queen - big fool that I was... Why, what an excellent king Prince Albert would have made.' Queen Victoria however was impressed and asked Tennyson to return and bring his family with him. Hallam Tennyson, then ten, wrote 'Observations: You must always say 'mam' when in Her Majesty's presence. You must stand until the Queen asks you to sit down. Her Majesty does not often tell you to sit down...'


From April 1862, Queen Victoria summoned him to court several times. In 1883 he finally accepted his barony title on Queen Victoria's insistence, having declined the invitation from Prime Ministers Disraeli and Gladstone. He became First Baron Tennyson of Aldworth And Freshwater, and first took his seat in the House of Lords in March 1884. Alfred, Lord Tennyson died on 6 October, 1892 at the age of 83 and is buried in Westminster Abbey.

Haunted Farringford
Few buildings of such historic age and importance escape tales of ghosts and hauntings, and Farringford is no exception. Perhaps through being a hotel, where guests are able to stay overnight within its haunted rooms, the chances of visitors to the site coming across something other-worldly are increased. Or perhaps its inspiring views and gothic appearance encourages the imaginations of those who sleep there to run wild in flights of frightening fancy. Perhaps we will never know for certain, but one thing we do know are the tales that those who stay there have told.

Alfred Tennyson, Wife Emily, and two children walking the grounds of Farringford

Chief among the tales of Haunted Farringford are those of Emily Tennyson, who is said to have loved life at Farringford so much that she remains there to this day. She is said to haunt the hotel bedroom that was her nursery, looking after and watching any children that stay, and rocking an invisible cradle.

Emily Tennyson is also supposed to have been seen walking on the lawn, and Alfred Lord Tennyson himself has been reported to have been seen smoking a pipe and relaxing in a chair in the library as well as walking on Tennyson Down, the nearby hill named after him.

Tennyson. Illustration from Cassell's Book of Knowledge (c 1910) by Dudley Tennant.

There are also tales of a phantom horse-drawn carriage seen around the grounds and the road outside Farringford...


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