May Morris 1862-1938 by Adèle Geras

This is May Morris, daughter of William Morris. You can see, I think, that she is a woman of considerable character and intelligence. The exhibition that's just finished at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow shows her to be also extremely gifted as an artist and embroiderer. A mere glance at Wikipedia will show you  that she was also a business woman, running her father's company with enormous competence, all the while careful of the conditions of the people (mostly women) who worked under her eye. She campaigned. She worked. She made beautiful things. She had friends. She married Henry Halliday Sparling, secretary of the Socialist League. She had a romance with George Bernard Shaw. Because the Art Workers' Guild didn't admit women, she founded  the Women's Guild of Arts. And to judge by the quotation below, this was what was expected of you if you were born a Morris. To say that William expected great things was an understatement. I have to admit I laughed out loud when I read the quote below and I'll reproduce it here for those with poor eyesight: If a chap can't compose an epic poem while weaving a tapestry, he'd better shut up, he'll never do any good at all." All I could think was: lucky for May that she could easily live up to such standards.

And to prove that she knew her worth, here's a quotation which I'll also reproduce: I'm a remarkable woman - always was, though none of you seemed to think so. This remark makes me wonder whether her father took her a little for granted.

But now she's appreciated in her own right. This exhibition showed off her many talents to the full. As well as the embroideries and  drawings, such as the one....

....shown below, which is part of a pattern that would later become a hanging, all  her gifts are amply demonstrated.  Everyone knows the famous quotation from William Morris about having nothing in your house that isn't beautiful or useful, and clearly May was brought up with this belief and made very many beautiful things, both in her own right and also supervising the work of the wallpaper business that changed the decorating habits of the nation. She lived in Kelmscott Manor in the Cotswolds, and from 1917 her companion was a woman called Mary Lobb. 

After walking through the exhibition, I was all ready to buy LOTS of postcards to remind me of May Morris's achievements. I had even hoped for a fridge magnet to add to my collection. This image, below and the photograph of May which I've used above were some of the very few images available. It was most frustrating, particularly because William's designs are more than ubiquitous. They are overpoweringly everywhere in every imaginable incarnation: notebooks, cushion covers, mirrors...you name it.

And yes, I understand that they can't produce a great deal of stuff  for an exhibition that's small and temporary, but still, I thought it ironic that the daughter was in the shadow of her father, at least as far as merchandising is concerned! A small quibble after such a wonderful show of a particular woman's talents.  May Morris fought to have embroidery brought out of the purely domestic sphere into the world of art and here it was, on display to hundreds of admiring people. I loved seeing these works and learning more about the woman who made them.  

Portrait of a Lady . A guest post by Philip Stott. Introduced by Adèle Geras

For some years now, the Stotts, (Philip and Anne) have been good friends of mine. The friendship began when Philip emailed my late husband,  Norman Geras, on  his blog (normblog).  Norm very quickly discovered that Anne Stott knew a great deal about many things, not least Jane Austen, and he often asked Anne to write for the blog, which she did with great style and erudition.  I'm hoping to ask her to contribute to the History Girls in the fullness of time but meanwhile, her husband, Philip Stott, is writing here about a forthcoming exhibition at Ightham Mote.

It's thanks to the Stotts that I have such a good working knowledge of National Trust Scones. I have visited NT properties mainly with them and what they don't know about almost everything isn't worth knowing. They're the best of guides and now Philip has found his true métier as a Volunteer at Ightham Mote. He's writing here about something I hope many History Girls and also many readers of this blog might find interesting.

“She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.”



The story of Elsie Palmer, and of her spirited mother, is worthy of a Henry James novel.

In April 1887, a still-young American woman, Mary Lincoln Mellen Palmer, Queen, brought her three daughters, Elsie, Dorothy (‘Dos’), and Marjory, to live at the late-Medieval moated manor house of Ightham Mote in Kent, England [https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/ightham-mote]. The family were to stay at the Mote until March 1890. Their father, William Jackson Palmer, the founder of Colorado Springs, a famous railroad engineer, Union Army General, and recipient of the Medal of Honor, would visit them from time to time, as work permitted, most notably for Christmas, 1887.

During her residence at the Mote, Queen, who had received her universally-used nickname from her maternal grandmother, entertained many distinguished people in the world of the arts. Her fascination with the Aesthetic Movement was why she had chosen to rent an English moated manor house in the first instance, and she soon began to turn it into a rural ‘salon’ visited by such luminaries as the great American writer, Henry James.

[This photo was taken in1889 and shows Queen Mellen Palmer with her eldest daughter, Elsie, and the family dog, in the north-eastern corner of the Medieval courtyard at Ightham Mote, Kent. Ightham Mote Archives.] 

These notable Americans were joined by some of the leading lights of the English Aesthetic Movement, including:
the painter Edward Coley Burne-Jones; the doyen of the Arts and Craft movement, William Morris; the novelist and poet, George Meredith; the actress, Ellen Terry; and the costume designer, Alice Strettell (Mrs J. Comyns Carr).

Most important of all, however, Queen commissioned the controversial American portraitist, John Singer Sargent, to paint her eldest daughter, Elsie, against the antique linen-fold panelling of the Mote. This portrait is now regarded as one of Sargent’s masterpieces. It is known as A Young Lady in White, and it normally hangs at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center in the beautiful mountain resort established by her father.
However, from March 4 until 23 December, 2017, this stunning work has returned to the old house in which it was painted, where it will be displayed on a special stage in a room close to where Elsie took up her pose, and where it forms the centre piece of a major Exhibition entitled The Queen of Ightham Mote - an American Interlude: Queen Palmer, John Singer Sargent and their Circle.

1

[Miss Else Palmer, aged 17, A Young Lady in White, by John Singer Sargent, 1889-90, Colorado Springs Fine Art Center]

John Singer Sargent’s powerful portrait of Elsie Palmer [oil on canvas; 190.5 x 114.3 cm] was mainly painted when she was aged 17. Over the years, it has been given a number of titles, including A Young Lady in White, Portrait of a Girl in White, and Portrait of Miss Elsie Palmer. For the portrait, Sargent made a range of pen-and-ink/oil sketches of Elsie, including an exquisite full-length oil sketch of her wearing the same dress in the late-Medieval Great Hall of Ightham Mote [exhibited in the Oriel Room]. The final portrait is inscribed, lower right, ‘John S. Sargent 1890’, and it was first shown at Joseph Comyns Carr’s New Gallery, Regent Street, London, in 1891.

The family owned the picture until the mid-1920s, when it was purchased by a family friend, Col. Charles Clifton, and presented to the Albright [-Knox] Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y. It was finally acquired in 1969 by the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center with funds collected through public subscription. In 1998/99, it formed part of the important Sargent at the Tate exhibition in London.

Richard Ormond, Sargent’s great nephew and a world authority on the artist notes that:
 “.. the portrait remains one of Sargent's most compelling and original characterisations."
 He observes: “Elsie appears hauntingly beautiful, dressed in a costume that is both picturesquely antique and stylishly modern.
 The linen-fold panelling behind her plays up the feeling of past times and historical associations.  Because she has not ‘come of age’, she wears her hair long, and her dress, as we can tell from a preliminary study, is ankle-length, another sign of her youth.” He further adds that the “... frontal and symmetrical pose is often to be found in pictures of the Madonna by Renaissance masters.”

The Exhibition also features many other items relating to the Palmer family’s stay at Ightham Mote, including replicas of Elsie’s dress and of Ellen Terry’s famous beetle- wing costume in which she played Lady Macbeth in 1888/89. But most importantly, there is a second major work by Sargent. While he was engaged on the great portrait of Elsie, he also produced a large canvas of bowls being played on the North, or ‘Bowling Green’, Lawn. This is a classic conversation piece distinguished by the portrayal of a group of people engaged in civilized conversation and genteel activity out of doors. 



[A Game of Bowls, Ightham Mote, Kent by John Singer Sargent, 1889. Sotheby's New York]

Typically, the  group comprises membersof the family (Queen and Elsie), with close friends (Alma Strettell; Violet, Sargent’s sister; and the Jamesons). Amusingly, it has often been taken to be a comment on English weather. The Hon. Sir Evan Charteris wrote of the scene in 1927: “Here he has caught English scenery, not at its best by any means, but in a grave and dreary mood, low in key and tone, but not lacking in truth either of colour or general effect. Moreover, the game goes forward as though the players themselves were affected by the opacity of the atmosphere.” Elsie recalled later that the ladies were all expected to wear hats. A Game of Bowls has been generously loaned to Ightham Mote for the Exhibition by Sotheby’s, New York, with the option to buy this fine work permanently for the house. An appeal has been launched to raise the necessary funds. 

It would be wonderful if some of the History Girls were able to come to see Elsie and the Exhibition during the year, especially as Adèle Geras will be assisting Helen Craig, the creator of Angelina Ballerina, in an Angelina Ballerina and Henry workshop and trail. Helen is the great granddaughter of Ellen Terry, the fond friend of both Queen and Elsie, while her grandfather, Edward Gordon Craig, the famous theatre designer, was the childhood playmate of the three Palmer sisters during their stay at Ightham Mote.

[ from The Gardeners’ Chronicle, Saturday, February 2, 1889, pp.135-136]

Ightham Mote is open daily throughout the Exhibition. See here for full details: https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/ightham-mote/openingtimes.

Philip Stott is Emeritus Professor in the University of London, where he taught at SOAS. Since his retirement, he has been a volunteer room guide and researcher at National Trust Ightham Mote. He has a long-term interest in early music and art. He is married to the historian and biographer, Anne Stott.

The David Parr House. by Adèle Geras

In November, 2106, I was invited by my old school friend, Carolyn Ferguson, who's an expert on historical textiles and quilting in particular, to join a small party of friends who were going to look around the David Parr House  (http://davidparrhouse.org)  We were shown round by Tamsin Wimhurst, who was previously education officer at the Museum of Cambridge. She is in large part responsible for bringing this amazing place to the attention of the proper authorities. Thanks to her, her committee and others like Sheila Crane (who lived in Gwydir Street and knew David Parr's granddaughter, Elsie Palmer) the house has received a grant from the National Lottery which will ensure its restoration as a place of enormous fascination for students of 19th century art and craft. 

 The photos accompanying this piece are of the postcards I bought on that day and they do not do the house justice. There was a very good piece  about it by Michael Hall, which appeared  in Country Life magazine of January 4th, 2017  and that may well be on the Country Life website, but (and I'm not sure how they did it) the photographs are very light and saturated with colour. This was not my impression of the house, when I saw it last year on a dreary, damp day, quite unlike what Cambridge days usually  are: bright and light and blowy.

To sum up in brief, David Parr was a painter/workman for the painting and decorating firm of Frederick Leach, which did a lot of work in the city and indeed all over the country. 

Parr began working in the firm when he was no more than a boy. He moved into 186 Gwydir Street in 1887. In the 1920s, after the death of his wife, his granddaughter, Elsie Palmer, moved into the house to look after him and stayed there till 2012, when she moved into an old people's home. 

This above is Elsie's bedroom, which was once the dining room. She turned out to be the perfect person to live in the house,  because throughout her long life, she was careful to preserve the   work her grandfather had created in the property.

What  he did was cover almost every single surface with most beautiful patterns,  painted by hand and often by candlelight. These were the William Morris-style designs that he'd been painting on the walls and ceilings of college chapels, big houses and other grand edifices during the working day. 186 Gwydir Street is tiny: a standard two- bedroom terrace. The house is very near Cambridge Station and Elsie's husband worked on the Railway. His coat is still hanging in the house, and looks as warm as it ever was: thick, navy blue wool.

When we visited,  we sat in the front parlour (the first picture, above).  There were six of us in the room and it was a bit of a squash. It was also very dark indeed. We peered at the beautiful painting on the walls and ceiling, and I was ...there is no other word for it....gobsmacked. When I tried to compute the hours that David Parr must have put in, I felt quite exhausted. Fortunately for us, and for future visitors to the house who'll be able to come and look around it when it's restored and made safe for visitors, David Parr was a tidy and organised person who kept a record of everything, so that you can read how long it took him to paint particular bits of each room. He listed paints and materials and his tool box is still there, for anyone to see.  It's clear from some of the decorations that he'd picked up bits and pieces from the sites he worked on during the day and brought them home to add a bit of luxury to the rooms.  The window, below, might have been made by others in Frederick Leach's firm.

Another touching and fascinating thing about the house is the layer of 1950s décor that speaks of Elsie and her husband's life in 186, Gwydir Street. She preserved her grandfather's work brilliantly, only covering up bits of it and not ripping out a single thing. If you look closely, the top three pictures show family photographs in frames on the wall or on the mantelpiece. There are also pictures in frames hanging on  the painted walls, which Elsie and her husband must have been fond of. 

The little parlour we sat in while we listened to Tamsin Wimhurst telling us David Parr's story was dark and shadowy. The blinds were down in order to preserve the colours of the paint but even so it was clear to us that the painted walls are most beautiful. They will be even lovelier when they're cleaned up, and restored to their original glory. I can't wait to visit this place again. It's truly magical. The traces left by David Parr and Elsie Palmer bring us very close to knowing and understanding this fascinating bit of the past.  I have every intention of revisiting this place in a novel one of these days....

Simple Charm by Julie Summers

This autumn I went to visit the National Trust's Nuffield Place, the home of William Morris, Lord Nuffield, from 1933 until his death thirty year later at the age of 85. William Morris was one of the wealthiest men in Britain and yet he lived frugally and privately with his wife who he met at a cycle club in Oxford before he was 20.

He started life mending bicycles and was himself a winning rider. His workshop was soon turned over to motor cycles and he designed by Morris Motor Cycle in about 1902. At this stage he moved into buildings in Longwall Street, Oxford, opposite Magdalen College, where he repaired bicycles, operated a taxi service and repaired and hired out cars. In 1912 he designed his first car, the bullnose Morris. His work was interrupted by the First World War but in 1919 he sold 400 cars and by 1925 he was selling 56,000.

At the height of his career he was reputed to be earning £2,000 per day (about the same in dollars given the woeful state of sterling at the moment!). When asked about his great wealth he replied 'Well, you can only wear one suit at at time.' What struck me about this lovely 1930s house was its modesty that reflected its owners'. No ostentatious decoration or chandaliers, no leathery portraits of ancient ancestors dragged up from a past that didn't truly exist, and no extravagant gold bath taps.

For me the most exciting discovery was that the cupboard in his bedroom was not full of clothes but was in fact a miniature workshop. It was a vignette into his life that I had not expected. Apparently he was a light sleeper and would often 'worry out'a problem in the night. I had a vision of him sitting in his pyjamas in front of his cupboard, allowing his mind to rest on the various objects in there that might provide an answer to his questions. Lord Nuffield was famous for his philanthropy. There are well-known foundations that bear his name, such as the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, which was established in 1931 or the Nuffield Foundation (1943) which he endowed with a capital sum of about £10,000,000 'to provide medical and social relief'. This grew out of his work in the 1920s and 1930s to help relieve the 'sick, crippled and the poor and to alleviate social injustice.' But what really interested me were the smaller donations made with aforethought and great generosity that would go almost unmentioned and at times almost unnoticed. On his 62nd birthday, on 10 October 1939, he put a cheque into a nurse's collecting box at the Mansion House. The logo on the poster she was holding read 'Give freely' to the Lord Mayor's Red Cross Fund. When the cheque was unfolded it was in the sum of £100,000 (about £4 million in 2016).

My favourite donation he made is even less well-known than the Red Cross cheque. During the five and a half years of the Second World War he donated sanitary towels to the women's forces. This was the most thoughtful thing I could think of and I was deeply touched by his concern for the comfort and reassurance of a steady supply of these vitals items, known by the recipients as 'Nuffield's Nifties'. You really couldn't make it up. William Morris, Lord Nuffield, gave away £30,000,000 (or over £2 billion in today's money) over the course of his life. He will remain the most famous of British philanthropists for all time but for me he will be the modest millionaire who knew enough about the real world to know what was really needed.

Life Patterns - Celia Rees

I will admit here, I am no quilter, although I know some of my fellow History Girls are and I'm sure we will number quilters among our followers.

Quilt, Jen Jones Welsh Quilt Centre, Lampeter

When I was in the Sixth Form there was a craze for quilting. In those days, Liberty's would send swatches of material to anyone who asked for them. I remember being entranced by the beauty of the Liberty patterns, the richness of the William Morris designs, but unlike some of my friends, I never actually made a quilt. One of my friends from those days still has the quilt she made. The Liberty pieces are mixed with humbler fabrics, bits of school shirt and summer dresses. When I see it, it takes me straight back to that time.

I might not have actually done any sewing, but quilts and quilting stayed with me. Like many writers, I'm often asked where my ideas come from. They are often just there in the ragbag of past enthusiasms and passing interests waiting to be plucked out and worked up into something. So it was with quilts and quilting. I've blogged about my visit to the American Museum, Bath and its connection to Witch Child  Witch Child at the American Museum, Bath - Celia Rees . On my original visit, I didn't go there to look at quilts. I went to see the quilts on display because they interested me anyway. If I hadn't had that interest, I might not have bothered and I would not have had the idea that allowed me to write Witch Child.

Stitch and Write American Museum, Bath

Though researching and writing Witch Child, I learnt a great deal about quilts and quilting. Quilts at the time Witch Child is set (17th Century) would have been all of a piece (as the one shown above), not patchwork, with which we are more familiar. There could, however, I reasoned, have been quilts made out of pieces of material. This was mostly because I wanted one in the book, but it made sense to me, woman sense. My mother, my grandmother, her mother before her kept scraps of material and made bed covers, cushion covers, by piecing them together, nothing would be wasted. That was relatively recently, how much more precious would cloth have been in 17th Century America?  The fact that there are none of these kinds of quilts from this period doesn't mean that they never existed. It just means that they were worn out with every day use, not precious enough to be preserved.  

These pieced quilts are my favourites. I can admire and appreciate the beauty and intricacy of patchwork quilt designs: Tumbling Dice, Log Cabin, Rose Wreath, String of Flags (even the names are wonderful); the striking originality of the Amish and Mennonite quilts; the ancient symbolism contained in recurring motifs of flowers, fruits, cups, the tree of life. Above all, I can celebrate and admire the women's work, the artistic creativity expressed through the designs. Even so, the quilts I love best are those that are made from every day materials, from clothes that have been worn and worn again: shirts, waistcoats, even pyjamas. Stiff flannel softened by wear and washing to the smoothness of heavy silk, the colours faded, one pastel shade blending into another.

Jen Jones  “Early to Bed” Exhibition, Welsh Quilt Centre, Lampeter 

This example is from the 2014 "Early to Bed" Exhibition of Folk Art and “Make-do and Mend” in the work of the rural quilters of 19th century Wales at Jen Jones wonderful Welsh Quilt Centre in Lampeter, West Wales: http://www.jen-jones.com . Quilts like these provide not only a palimpsest of rural economy and thrift but a record of working people's lives.

Shirts provide many of the patches in these kinds of quilts. The shirt is personal to the wearer, carrying his scent, retaining his shape.  In the past, to sew and launder a shirt was an act of love.

As I did the washing one day


Under the bridge at Aberteifi,


And a golden stick to drub it,


And my sweetheart's shirt beneath it--


A knight came by upon a charger,


Proud and swift and broad of shoulder,


And he asked if I would sell


The shirt of the lad that I loved well.

No, I said, I will not trade--


Not if a hundred pounds were paid;


Not if two hillsides I could keep


Full with wethers and white sheep;


Not if two fields full of oxen


Under yoke were in the bargain;


Not if the herbs of all Llanddewi,


Trodden and pressed, were offered to me--


Not for the likes of that,

I'd sell 
the shirt of the lad that I love well.....

The Shirt of a Lad - Anonymous (tr. Tony Conran)

Artist and friend Julia Griffiths-Jones chose this poem to include in her body of work, Unwinding the Thread, translating words into the images that might be embroidered on such a shirt,  re-producing the designs in aluminium wire, pewter and enamelled copper wire.

Shirt of a Lad - Julia Griffiths-Jones

In the folk song, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, the making of a shirt without no seams nor needlework is one of the true love tasks impossible to achieve. So shirts gain significance, personal and sentimental. Shirts are so much a part of what a person is, or was. Another friend, Barbara Crowther, describes in a Guardian article how she has found a way to use the shirts left by her husband, Dick, who died suddenly and tragically three years ago. Dick was a man who loved his shirts, especially striped shirts, stripes of all kinds and colours: thick, thin, bright, dark and pastel.  Instead of leaving his shirts shut away in the dark, in a suitcase in the attic, Barbara brought them out into the light again and took them to her friend Louise Charters, an upholsterer and soft furnisher, who has turned them into something beautiful for Dick's daughters, Eleanor and Georgia, to remember their father by. 

Barbara Crowther and her daughter, Georgia Leith
David Sillitoe for the Guardian

David Sillitoe for the Guardian

This blog seems to have turned into a bit of a patchwork itself. I'll finish with an odd piece of serendipity. The day after I wrote  this blog, I went to Modern Art Oxford to see an exhibition: Love is Enough, William Morris and Andy Warhol. A young woman artist, Diana Taylor, had just finished a textile workshop. 

Now here's the odd thing - my maiden name was Taylor and the beautiful hangings filling the foyer were made, in part at least, from William Morris designs. 

Celia Rees

www.celiarees.com