Highbury Imagined (map for “Emma”)
Penny Gay’s “A Hypothetical Map of Highbury” has hit the JASNA website (although destined for Persuasions On-line late in 2015). Emma has been on my mind after reading a letter – written at the time of Edward Austen’s engagement to Emma Smith (and they were reading Emma about this time too!) by his great aunt Mrs. Leigh Perrot. She quite liked Mr. Knightley (who doesn’t) and Jane Fairfax, but I’m afraid she was not a fan of Emma Woodhouse – and had grown QUITE tired of Miss Bates. As to Frank Churchill: she would not have married him, had she been Jane Fairfax!
My paper for the 2015 JASNA AGM (‘Who could be more prepared than she was?’ True Tales of Life, Death, and Confinement: Childbirth in Early 19th Century England) looks into Mrs Weston’s pregnancy and delivery by talking about the confinements of Lady Compton (c1790) and Emma Austen (c1830). So to illustrate what a FABULOUS map Penny Gay has come up with I supply at peep at RANDALLS, the Weston home. CLICK on the map for the story and the “full picture”. And then pull your copy of Emma off the shelf…
Memento Mori
Although a bit of a morbid subject to contemplate, this hour-plus video tour of the cemetery known as The Dundee Howff, is quite fascinating.
For instance, I can’t say I ever realized an Hour Glass on its side indicated a person who hadn’t lived “a full life” (ie, 70 years). It’s a pity those monuments that are on the ground are hard to see, as the explanations make you wish to view them closely. Iain Flett and Innes Duffus are the two archivists showing us around.
Prinny’s Taylor now on Kindle
The ever-vigilant Charlotte Frost (Sir William Knighton: The Strange Career of a Regency Physician) — who is working on an exciting new project herself! — passed on word of a book we both have been anticipating with great pleasure:
Prinny’s Taylor: The Life and Times of Louis Bazalgette (1750-1830)
Louis’ descendant Charles Bazalgette has worked for YEARS to piece together the life of the man who tailored some of the wardrobe worn by the Prince Regent – Charles even gives insight into the story behind the nickname Prinny (which I never knew, since, like Charles, it isn’t a term I often seek to employ).
There are even several chapters about 18th-century tailoring, which should be of especial interest to those who sew and create. The fascinating story, however, is the rise of Louis Bazalgette. I mean, how DID he become a preferred tailor to the Prince of Wales?? If he existed nowadays, he’d be displaying a Royal Warrant of Appointment at his premises!
To quote the book synopsis: Prinny’s Taylor “presents a new angle on Georgian and Regency life, as seen through the eyes of a little French tailor who by his own efforts became a very wealthy propertied merchant”.
A little-known aside: my Emma mentions Mr Bazalgette in a letter, as a neighbor to a friend she visited!
Anna Atkins (Google Doodle)
Often I stare at any given day’s “Google Doodle” with a thought for the cute design. YESTERDAY I found myself thoroughly entranced by learning about a woman who lived during the lifetime of my Two Teens!
Anna Atkins was born in 1799 — the same YEAR as Emma’s eldest sister Augusta Smith; she died in 1871, five years prior to Emma’s own death. Right there, given the overlapping time-frame, I was captivated.
But there are also ties to Tonbridge (Kent) and Fox Talbot (an important figure in the early days of photography). And her images are GORGEOUS!
- Read Fox Talbot Letters online (for fun: search for COMPTON to find some ties to Two Teens [not ALL hits will be for Lord &/or Lady Compton])
I have to admit, that I am partly captivated by these Cyanotypes because of their “relationship” to the flower paintings done by the Four Sisters of Erle Stoke Park (ie, Emma Austen’s mother and three aunts).
Search for “Meen” to see some Erle Stoke floral drawings!
Two Teens actually HAS an “early photograph component to it too: Charles Spencer Scrase Dickins, son of Lady Elizabeth Compton and Charles Scrase Dickins. Some of his photographs of Italy are reproduced in the book PICTURING PLACE: PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE GEOGRAPHICAL IMAGINATION. (<-Yes, this book gets the ordering of his name incorrect; and this one incorrectly IDs his uncle as a “duke” ->) His biography appears in the text Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840-1860. (online preview)
Anna Atkins also provided engravings of shells to illustrate works. Of the Four Sisters of Erle Stoke Park, Lady Northampton (the eldest of the quarter) had an intense interest in shells, which included painting them with a similar attention to detail that one finds in the floral paintings!
I’m a bookworm, so will have to see what is available about Anna Atkins. Thrilling discovery! And a name I will now be on the lookout for in any of the later letters and diaries. Did any of “my people” meet Anna Atkins??
Vermont: Reclaim History thru Re-creation
click to enlarge
If you’re in Vermont, check out this Town BrainTap event in Twinfield, Vermont on 8 April 2015!
“A Talk and Trunk Show” by Justin Squizzero, with Eliza West – The aim is to showcase Early American Apparel, 1770 to 1815. I’ve seen Eliza West’s beautiful “Jane Austen” creations, and can say that anyone able to attend will not be disappointed. A $10 donation is suggested; a non-profit, proceeds are donated.
Check out the BrainTap website – as well as the recent 7 Days’ article: Reaping what was Sewn.
Allan Maclean, Jacobite General
In trying to give greater access to my launching series of “Online Articles”, I was searching for a paper I knew to be on Academia.edu, and in that search found a very interesting book: on the uncle of Margaret Maclean Clephane (ie, Lady Compton).
Allen Maclean: Jacobite General, by Mary Beacock Fryer (1987; 1996) is at the very least available on Kindle, though probably copies of the original printing are out there.
Anyone reading even a few posts on Two Teens will know that women’s history is more up my alley. BUT: Maclean not only has a slim attachment to my Smith & Gosling research, he also served in the United States (more correctly, “the Colonies”) – and I see mentions of Lake Champlain (VERY near to me) in the text.
Anyone who has read the book, don’t be shy – drop by, say ‘hello,’ and give your thoughts on the book, the man, anything really.
The blurb for the book (on books.google) begins, “Born on the Isle of Mull to an impoverished laird of the clan Maclean, young Allan fought his first battle — for Bonnie Prince Charlie at Culloden”. Maclean fled to Holland, then served during the Seven Years War (AKA The French and Indian War) here, in North America, and again during the American Revolution. Allan Maclean was born in 1725 and died in March, 1797.
Early in the book (page 123), MARGARET’s letter discussing the history of this uncle is cited:
“The adventures contributed to a fund of stories that delighted his niece Marianne [the mother of Margaret, Anna Jane, and Wilmina Douglas-Maclean-Clephane], growing up at Torloisk, which she later passed on to her daughters. The eldest, Margaret Clephane, wrote to a friend, a Miss Stanhope:
his history would make a novel; he once passed through the American Camp in the disguise of a quack doctor, and sold a whole box of physic to the Yankees, and reached the British headquarters.
This ruse occurred when Allan slipped through the rebel army surrounding Boston…”
What a FASCINATING thing for Margaret to envision, given her close relationship with Walter Scott — his books were often the subject of Clephane-Compton correspondence.
Announcing: Online Articles
As a writer – especially with as LARGE a project as Two Teens in the Time of Austen (<=click to see how the volumes break down) – articles have enabled me to hone little details into precise pictures-of-a-moment. Alas! readership depends on those who stumble upon the journals or magazines.
So I’ve decided to write “for myself”. These Online Articles will be much lengthier, more in-depth than blog posts, and cited (where appropriate) like journal articles. I hope you will enjoy them; and I invite comments on them.
I open the series with the original manuscript of artist Margaret Meen‘s “history” = Margaret Meen: A Life in Four Letters.
Miss Meen (like Cassandra Austen, she later employed the “brevet rank” of Mrs) is a fascinating woman. At the time of writing the article, my BIG surprise was to discover how much of a fan she had in author Richard Mabey; and by extension, Martyn Rix who reviewed Mabey’s book The Flowering of Kew (1988). The explosion of information on the internet meant _I_ could supply a lot of the biographical information unavailable to them in the 1980s — all thanks to the existence of four letters written by Miss Meen, saved from a conflagration of Chute correspondence!
But I’ll leave you to read about her letters – and her life – on my Academia.edu page. Check the site often for further articles (I’m working on one relating to Sense and Sensibility) in the future.
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March 7th: apologies for those viewing the page, who then could NOT then download the article without logging in to Academia.edu (although it does allow for log-ins via Facebook and Google).
Once articles are online a bit longer, they will search – but I want interested readers to have “access” now!
Here’s a current screen-shot [click pic to follow link] (the “info” button was toggled, which is why the upper portion shows the abstract &c):
“Margaret Meen: A Life in Four Letters”
I want people to see a “page” view, but also have the ability to download (and save, if you wish) the PDF. The link attached to the screen-shot enables the “preview” (the article runs four pages), but the “download” still asks for a log-in.
If I come across a better link, I’ll post it.
further info on Margaret Meen ILLUSTRATIONS:
I should also take the opportunity to add some links – there ARE images of Miss Meen’s wonderful Flower Paintings — combined with those from my Smith Sisters of Erle Stoke Park (as I’ve long mentioned on this blog). See Artwork Done By on this site; then click on the RHS pic. Or direct to the Royal Horticultural Society site, and either click on EMMA SMITH [who is “Aunt Emma” to my Emma Austen] or search for MEEN – which brings up all five artists.
You should “hit” on 48 images; and can either view them as larger thumbnails in a grid, or a row of images and descriptive text.
Two Teens in the Time of Austen 