Today’s Snapshot is looking back to when I was 16 and my friend and I had just been presented with the Queen’s Guide Award. For some reason, which I can’t remember we were photographed with the Girl Guides District Commissioner and the Town Mayor as though we were giving them a cup of tea and biscuits!
I’m the Girl Guide on the right, next to the District Commissioner.
Beata Beatrix by Dante Gabriel Rossetti c. 1863, (Tate Britain)
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was one of the original members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Beata Beatrix was inspired by Dante’s poem La Vita Nuova about his love for Beatrice, but it is actually a painting about Rossetti’s wife, Lizzie, mourning her death.
In 1850 Rossetti had fallen in love with Lizzie Siddal, a milliner’s shop assistant, who had agreed to pose for William Deverell, another member of the Brotherhood. She became a favourite model of all the members, including posing for hours in a tepid bath as Millais’s Ophelia. Rossetti, though, became increasingly possessive about her and they lived together and eventually married in 1860. But he gave her a hard time, neglecting her and was unfaithful. They lived in dark, cold and damp rooms at Chatham Place, near Blackfriars Bridge. Lizzie’s health deteriorated. She was frail and depressed, and became addicted to laudanum. After her child was stillborn, Rossetti came home late one night in 1862 he found her dead, with an empty phial by her side. The official verdict was accidental death but to Rossetti it felt like suicide (which was illegal and immoral at the time and would have barred her from a Christian burial).
Rossetti’s portrait mourns Lizzie’s the death, showing her in a ecstatic, trance-like state. The haloed red dove, the messenger of Love, carrying a flower has become the messenger of Death and the flower is a poppy, the symbol of sleep and death and also the source of opium (laudanum), the drug which killed her.
I think this is such a beautiful, powerful painting ‘“ Rossetti described it saying Lizzy was ‘˜rapt from earth to heaven‘.
Linked to ABC Wednesday.
Diane at Bibliophile By the Sea hosts this weekly meme. The idea is that you post the opening paragraph (sometimes maybe a few ) of a book you decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s).
A friend lent me this book, saying she’d really enjoyed it. It’s
The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell and it begins:
Listen. The trees in this story are stirring, trembling, readjusting themselves. A breeze is coming in gusts off the sea, and it is almost as if the trees know, in their restlessness, in their head-tossing impatience, that something is about to happen.
The garden is empty, the patio deserted, save for some pots with geraniums and delphiniums shuddering in the wind. A bench stands on the lawn, two chairs facing politely away from it. A bicycle is propped against the house but its pedals are stationary, the oiled chain motionless. A baby has been put out to sleep in a pram and it lies inside its stiff cocoon of blankets, eyes obligingly shut tight. A seagull hangs suspended in the sky above and even that is silent, beak closed, wings outstretched to catch the high thermal draughts.
I can visualise the scene, feel the breeze and find myself holding my breath copying out these paragraphs from the book, waiting with bated breath to find out what is going to happen.
On a grey, dismal day in May we visited Smailholm Tower in the Scottish Borders. It’s a four-storey tower house on a base of volcanic rock, a stark feature on the skyline between Kelso and Selkirk in the Tweed Valley.
(click on the photos to enlarge)
It was built in the 15th century by the Pringle family on Smailholm Craig, providing protection from the elements and from raiding parties of English reivers (raiders).
Standing 650ft (200m) above sea level, it’s walls are 9ft (2.5m) thick and 65ft (20m) high and it has one small entrance in the south wall and tiny windows.
Inside it’s quite dark and most of my photos inside aren’t very good. There’s a spiral staircase giving access to all five floors and the battlements.
In 1645 the Pringle family sold the tower and Smailholm Craig to the Scott family. Sir Walter Scott lived at Smailholm for a while with his grandmother and Aunt Janet after he’d had polio because they thought the fresh country air would be good for him. It was his aunt who told him tales of the Border countryside which gave him his passion for folklore and history.
The three upper floors house an exhibition of costume figures and tapestries to illustrate Sir Walter Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Borders, his collection of ballads. The photo below is of the Queen of the Fairies:
and below is one of little Walter Scott and his Aunt Janet:
I was fascinated by the roof of the tower, because it’s covered in turf, making a living roof:
There are spectacular views of the surrounding countryside on the way up. Below is the view of the Eildon Hills through a window:
and even more panoramic views from the battlements:
For more Saturday Snapshots see Alyce’s blog At Home With Books.
Another round of ABC Wednesday began today. Amazingly it’s been going for around 5 years and this is Round 11.
A is for The Artist’s House at Argenteuil by Claude Monet, one of my favourite Impressionist paintings. It’s oil on canvas painted in 1873, now held in the Art Institute of Chicago.
Monet moved to Argenteuil in 1871 and lived there until 1877. This was a prolific period for him – he was happy and well-off during that time. It was whilst he was living there that he developed a passion for gardening, influenced by fellow artist Gustave Caillebotte. This painting shows the first house he lived in at Argenteuil, with beds of red, white and blue flowers in front of the house, a creeper covering much of the wall and potted plants in large blue and white tubs on the gravel drive.
I especially like this painting because of the colours and also the figures adding personality – the little child with a hoop is Monet’s five-year old son, Jean, whilst his wife, Camille is seen in the doorway.
Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibilophile by the Sea posts the opening paragraph (sometimes maybe a few) of a book she’s decided to read based on the opening paragraph (s). Feel free to grab the banner and play along.
I must be one of the minority who didn’t love The Time Traveler’s Wife (it irritated me), but still when I saw Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffennegger and read the opening paragraphs, I thought maybe I’d read it.
The first chapter is called The End and begins:
Elspeth died while Robert was standing in front of a vending machine watching tea shoot into a small plastic cup. Later he would remember walking down the hospital corridor with the cup of horrible tea in his hand, alone under the fluorescent lights, retracing his steps to the room where Elspeth lay surrounded by machines. She had turned her head towards the door and her eyes were open; at first Robert thought she was conscious.
In the seconds before she died, Elspeth remembered a day last spring when she and Robert had walked along a muddy path by the Thames in Kew Gardens. There was a smell of rotted leaves; it had been raining. Robert said, ‘We should have had kids,’ and Elspeth replied, ‘Don’t be silly, sweet.’ She said it out loud, in the hospital room, but Robert wasn’t there to hear.
If you’ve read this book what do you think? I’ve looked on Amazon and the verdict is split almost 50/50 between 5/4 stars and 1/2 stars!
BooksPlease 