Flemington Racecourse: Melbourne Cup Day

Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne now looks very elegant. It has a crowd capacity of over 120,000 and contains three grandstands, but its origins were more humble.

Modern grandstands, Flemington.

The first official race meeting took place in 1838 at Batman Hill, close to today’s Spencer Street railway station. From March 1840, racing was moved out of the city to Saltwater Flat on the banks of the Maribyrnong River, with meetings held over three days. This new racecourse was set up on land owned by Robert Fleming and the property was used at the time for farming cattle and sheep. Apparently the property was known as Fleming Town, and the name soon attached itself to the racecourse on it. [Note that in the VCR history, they say the site was named after Flemington in Morayshire, Scotland].

Today Flemington Racecourse is on crown land, and covers 127 hectares. The racecourse is serviced by its own railway station, and is protected as a heritage site by the Australian National Heritage List.

The first racing club was the Port Phillip Turf Club, but within the decade (in 1848) the course was leased to the Victoria Turf Club. Its timing was excellent. With the great population explosion and wealth explosion in Melbourne and Victoria due to the 1850s gold rush, the Turf Club was onto a winner. One can imagine a lot of money earned from digging or mining being taken to Melbourne and immediately placed on bets, food and drink.

The first Melbourne Cup was run in 1861, attracting a crowd of some 4,000 people. Modest at first, but a tradition had been established that would later see it become Australia's most famous horse race, the race that stops a nation. Within 20 years, 100,000 people flocked to see the race. Since the total population of Melbourne in 1880 was only 280,000, horse racing fans must have been coming in from the country and from interstate. Even today, the interest never wanes. Malaysia-Finance Blogspot said The Melbourne Cup is in the same league as the English Derby, America's Kentucky Derby and the Dubai Cup. But in folklore terms, the Melbourne Cup is the biggest race in the world, full stop.

Derby day at Flemington, painted by Carl Kahler, 1890

Meanwhile, in 1864, the Victoria Turf Club merged with the Victoria Jockey Club to form the Victoria Racing Club. And with the passing of the Victoria Racing Club Act in 1871, the VRC was given state approval to legally control Flemington Racecourse.

And improvements were constantly made. Australian Heritage Database noted that the original winning post was located on the far river side of the track. By the late 1860s the Hill and its gardens had become so popular that the VRC relocated the winning post in front of it. Banks of tens of thousands of roses were planted from 1881 on. During the 1890s, the Hill was redeveloped, with a new stand being constructed and other facilities being provided for ordinary race-goers. For a small entrance cost, patrons could enjoy the comforts of the stand and the entertainment that took place on the Hill. Brass bands, side shows and carnival rides provided amusement, and refreshments were available from the Temperance Pagoda, Swiss Chalet or Chinese Teahouse.

The very classy Members' Grandstand was added in 1924-5. Tea Break blog in Flemington Race Course reported that from the stands, the scenery is great. Visitors can see Melbourne's skyline across the landscape.

Today the Melbourne Cup is promoted as part of an entire Spring Racing Festival, many of its features races being held at Flemington. Snippets of Life blog wrote Melbourne Cup 2008 was impressed that the entire nation stopped work, dressed up, laid bets on the horses, partied and drank. But she was most impressed with the tradition relating to fashion. For women going to a Cup Event, wearing a gorgeous spring dress and a fascinator or large hat is an absolute MUST, as we can see from the Fashions in the Field.

Church Parades in Hyde Park

I found Garden Visit blog a very useful reference. Together with Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park forms a continuous park of 600+ acres in London. Stretching in a curve diagonally across the centre of both Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens is the Serpentine, an artificial lake of 41 acres. Slightly separated are Green Park and St James' Park, so that these four royal parks were and are a gorgeous and huge green area in the centre of an otherwise huge city.

Hyde Manor had belonged to the monks of Westminster Abbey from the Conquest right up until the Dissolution, when Henry VIII seized it and converted it into a royal hunting-park. Under Charles I, the place began to be a fashionable resort, though the deer were hunted until after the mid C18th. The King was laid out in Charles I's reign. It was a circular drive and race-course, located between the present Ring Tea House and the Ranger's Lodge. It was very popular with families who owned fashionable carriages.

Church Parade, Hyde Park by John Sanderson Wells, ? year
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During the Puritan Commonwealth, the park was sold and the public had to pay for admission; but at the Restoration it reverted to the crown and soon became the scene of fashion and frivolity so graphically described by Pepys. Rotten Row was established by William III at the end of the C17th. William wanted, for his own travelling comfort, a broad track on the south side of Hyde Park, leading from Hyde Park Corner to the west. In William’s time, Rotten Row was a fashionable place for upper-class Londoners to be seen. On weekend evenings and at midday, people would dress in their finest clothes in order to ride along the row and be seen.

So Hyde Park was always lovely, but by Queen Anne’s time and after, the most fashionable hours at which to visit it were 5-7 PM in the Season, and between 12-2 PM on Sunday during something called the Church Parade. What was the Church Parade?

In Hyde Park, its history and romance (1908), Ethel Alec-Tweedie said that although Queen Anne did not herself encourage people to waste their time in the Parks, her reign saw Society considerably broadened, somewhat to the disgust of the older families. The City merchants, with their fine ladies, moved into the park to join their friends, and the Church parade of well dressed, well heeled families became an important function. The footpaths on either side of Rotten Row were the chief rendezvous sports for Church Parade. Society spent most of its Sundays there in the season, meeting and chatting, and so began the custom of sitting out on sunny Sunday afternoons. Church-going seemed to be an opportunity for show, of bowing to acquaintances who were present at the prayer-meeting, and probably making arrangements for later social arrangements. The fashionable service was in the afternoon, after which people again repaired to the Park.

London Society, Hyde Park Church Parade, by Marchetti 1898 (engraving)
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I found many mentions by foreign visitors to the Church Parade during the Edwardian era. In The American Woman Abroad 1911 Blanche McManus reported that Hyde Park on Sundays had that peculiar English society function, the Church Parade. This is a more intimate occasion, for everybody hastens here after church to promenade, prayer-book in hand, among the budding crocuses and narcissi in a silver-grey spring noon. There is none of the contagious gaiety of the French crowd, but the decorous, well-bred English throng is able to hide any dubiousness under a Sabbath-day varnish. Friends sit in groups on the penny chairs, discuss plans for the coming week, engagements, temporary and for life, are manoeuvred by mammas, and the Sunday church parade is often used to introduce a daughter to the social world. After this every one goes home to a roast-beef dinner. By five o'clock the carriages are so densely massed that it is only by courtesy it could be called driving. Royalty drives out with the rest.

Edwardian Promenade  was very helpful. Society returned to London in late May and the traditional starting signal for the Season was the Private View at the Royal Academy where the latest frocks could be seen as ladies and gentlemen strolled about examining works of art and discussing them with their artists. From this point on was the height of the season. With late dinners and later balls, visits to old friends and acquaintances, the Sunday Church Parade at Hyde Park (another event in which to see and be seen), attendances at Covent Garden, charity bazaars, and young ladies and new wives of qualified gentlemen making their curtseys in Court Drawing Rooms, days and nights were packed to the brim. London was packed with not only Britain’s brightest and wealthiest, but Americans and colonial millionaires desiring entree into society and a bevy of European aristocrats.

The P.S.A. and Brotherhoods were very impressed South Africans, even during the nightmare of WW1. A noteworthy occasion in connexion with the campaign was our visit to the Southall Brotherhood. We can hardly forget the day; it was on Crocus Sunday when thousands of Londoners went to Hampton Court in crowds to see the crocus bulbs in bloom. It was a glorious day and we remember it as the second day in 1915 on which the European sun shone through a cloudless sky from sunrise to sunset. Thousands of people attended at Hyde Park to witness the Church Parade, and still more thousands took advantage of the glorious spring day after a strenuous winter to flock to Epping Forest and other popular resorts.

Charles II recipe book by Robert May

The Daily Mail 18th Dec 2009 reported that auctioneer Charles Hanson was stunned to unearth a copy of The Accomplisht Cook, Or The Art And Mystery Of Cookery, published 1665. It was in a trunk full of books that he was examining when clearing a house in Derby.

Charles Hanson found a Restoration treasure

Readers might not expect me to have a post on cook books. But I found many blogs who were delighted with the May book and its recipes eg Gherkins & Tomatoes blog, Save the Deli blog, lostpastremembered blog and The Old Foodie blog.
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This book was the first substantial recipe book to be published in England and ran to 5 editions. So it was special back in the 1660s, and is even more special now. Few books were published during the Civil War so when this book was printed after the 1660 Restoration of Charles II, it would have been read by the upper classes and used within court and for important social occasions. The book boasts a number of illustrations, also a rare feature for the time.

Robert May might have been a professional cook who specialised in preparing grand dishes for the great and the good, but even so, the variety of May’s dishes was huge. Other cookery books in that era were almost entirely focused on fruit, conserves and confections. Some household books were largely medicinal.

What is known about Robert May 1588-1685? He was the son of Edwarde and Joan Mayes and came from a family of noted chefs. His father Edwarde was the chief cook at Ascott Park, working for the Dormer family, so Robert was "bred up in this Art". Lady Dormer obviously placed great value in food; at the age of 10, she sent young Robert to France to train for 5 years. 

Cheesecake recipes

Why would anyone send a 10 year old abroad? Note that the Dormers were Catholic, a family able were able to successfully retain their faith with minimal persecution during a very troubled century. Perhaps she thought she could protect Robert’s Catholicism better in a Catholic country. Perhaps she though that French food was the standard to which young chefs should aspire.

Upon his return to England he finished his long apprenticeship in London working for Arthur Hollinsworth, then returned to the village of Wing in Bucks, becoming one of the five cooks reporting to his father at the Dormer family’s estate at Ascott Park. After Lady Dormer's death, Robert moved around the country serving in other aristocratic households. His was a long life and a long professional career.

The Accomplisht Cook, Or The Art & Mystery of Cookery was first written in 1660 when May was already 72 years old, and in it he shared his experiences and many secrets of his profession. May acknowledged the end of the Puritan Commonwealth, noting that his recipes 'were formerly the delights of the Nobility, before good housekeeping had left England.' His books give directions for many extravagant meat dishes, including a pastry stag filled with blood-like claret, a tortoise stewed with eggs, nutmeg and sweet herbs, and a 'pudding of swan' made with rose water and lemon peel.
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Bird pie recipe
May’s book is consciously a book for the upper class gourmet, but he was clearly aware that many of his readers were not rich enough afford such luxuries. Very cleverly, I thought, May specifically ensured that many of the dishes were relatively modest.

Along with recipes and general technical commentary, the book contained Robert’s effusive record of his indebtedness to the Persons of great Honour in whose households he had been privileged to serve.

The author wrote the book in Sholeby in Leicestershire. He identified himself as an Englishman who profited much in his cooking by living in France and by consulting Spanish cookery. As well as French recipes, he added recipes from Britain, Spain and other nations.

The British Library’s page said that although May was clearly indebted to French master chefs cooking in French aristocratic courts, he was careful not to overplay their influence, and thus run the risk of offending his English readership. So in the book’s preface he had a few digs at the French. “To all honest well intending Men of our Profession, or others, this Book cannot but be acceptable, as it plainly and profitably discovers the Mystery of the whole Art; for which, though I may be envied by some that only value their private Interests above Posterity, and the publick good, yet God and my own Conscience would not permit me to bury these my Experiences with my Silver Hairs in the Grave: and that more especially, as the advantages of my Education hath raised me above the Ambitions of others, in the converse I have had with other Nations, who in this Art fall short of what I have known experimented by you my worthy Country men. Howsoever the French by their Insinuations, not without enough of Ignorance, have bewitcht some of the Gallants of our Nation with Epigram Dishes, smoakt rather than drest, so strangely to captivate the Gusto, their Mushroom’d Experiences for Sauce rather than Diet, for the generality howsoever called A-la-mode, not worthy of being taken notice on. As I live in France, and had the Language and have been an eye-witness of their Cookeries as well, as a Peruser of their Manuscripts, and Printed Authors whatsoever I found good in them, I have inserted in this Volume.”

This extraordinary man died in 1685, aged 97. His book will be auctioned at Hanson's of Lichfield, early in 2010. A facsimile of the 1685 edition, incorporating Robert May's last amendments from 1665 and a great deal of biographical information, can be bought, or read on-line.

A Dylan Thomas literary pilgrimage to Swansea

Dylan Thomas 1914-53 was born in Cwmdonkin Drive in the wealthy part of Swansea, South Wales and his childhood was largely spent there. His education was at a Dame School not that far from home and then onto Swansea Grammar School. He left school at 16 to become a reporter for the local newspaper and soon joined an amateur dramatic grp in Mumbles, but still continued to work as a freelance journalist. When he wasn’t writing, Thomas spent his days visiting the cinema and theatre in the Uplands, walking along Swansea Bay and drinking in all of Swansea's pubs.

Cwmdonkin Drive, Dylan Thomas' childhood home

Thomas was also a regular patron of Kardomah Café Castle St in the centre of Swansea, a short walk from the local newspaper where he worked. It must have been a very exciting place for a young, want-to-be writer, particularly as a literary and artistic circle started to meet in the Kardomah Cafe in c1930. The poets, musicians and artists who gathered there became The Kardomah Boys. Dylan Thomas’ footprints are all over Swansea.

Why did it take so long for Swansea to recognise its most famous son in monuments, theatres, houses and pubs? Firstly from 1932 on, Thomas was outside Swansea more than he was in Swansea. As he became more famous, he lived in London. Later he had a house in the village of Laugharne in Carmarthenshire, West Wales. A number of times he went on extended visits to New York.

Secondly, in February 1941, Swansea was bombed by the Luftwaffe in a 3 nights' blitz. Rows of shops, pubs and buildings, including the iconic Kardomah Café, were destroyed. Thomas later walked the bombed-out shell which was once his home town centre; he himself thought that his old Swansea was dead. Fortunately for Swansea historians, the Kardomah Café later reopened on Portland St, not far from the original location.

Uplands Tavern, Swansea

Finally Dylan Thomas was a difficult citizen and my guess is that the good burghers of Swansea had had enough of his antics. By the time his highly acclaimed first poetry volume, 18 Poems, was published in December 1934, Thomas was already a heavy drinker. Even when he married Caitlin MacNamara and had three children (born 1939, 1943 and 1949), he and Caitlin binged and brawled their way around any pubs that were open. The children raised themselves in neglectful chaos. The young couple spent an inordinate amount of time and money in the late 1930s and 1940s drinking, so there was never enough money for ordinary family expenses. Needless to say, at the outset of WW2 Thomas was classified as too sickly to fight, suffering from chronic bronchitis, asthma and alcoholic damage.

But alcoholic or not, Thomas really did become famous, within Britain and elsewhere. Thomas was well known for being a dynamic speaker, best known for his poetry readings. His powerful voice captivated American audiences during his speaking tours of early 1950s. He made 200+ broadcasts for the BBC, including his best single work, Under Milk Wood, a 1954 radio play based around the inhabitants of a boring small Welsh village. Thomas' poems, And death shall have no dominion (pre war) and Do not go gentle into that good night 1951 became very well respected. When Richard Burton starred in the first broadcast of Milk Wood in 1954, the audiences couldn’t get enough of sexy Welsh males.

Dylan Thomas died in a New York hotel in November 1953, just after his 39th birthday. His body was brought back to Wales for his burial in the village churchyard at Laugharne, in the presence of his mother and his wife.

Thomas wrote half of his poems and many short stories while living at 5 Cwmdonkin Drive Swansea. The house has been recently restored to the tastes popular when bought by the Thomas family, and is available for house tours. Another monument stands in Cwmdonkin Park, one of his favourite childhood leisure areas, close to his birthplace. The memorial is a small rock in a closed-off garden, inscribed with poetry and set within the park.

Walk or ride along Swansea Bay's 8ks promenade which is still lovely to look at, and breathe the invigorating sea air. The tax payers of Swansea started creating a Memorial Thomas Walk in this very Maritime Quarter. The yacht marinas, museums, art galleries, a theatre, bars, restaurants, an observatory should all be visited. Stone sculptures and bronze statues dot the area, including a statue of Thomas’ seafaring Captain Cat and a statue of Thomas himself in front of his theatre. For great images of the port area, see Contested Terrain blog. For a very useful guide to 3 days in Swansea, see Wales Cymru blog.

Capt Cat statue, Swansea Marina

Dylan was a member of Swansea’s Little Theatre in the early 1930s, when they were based in Mumbles. The Little Theatre has its own exhibition as a tribute to Thomas. Apart from this theatre, performances of his work can also be seen at the Dylan Thomas Literature Centre (formerly the town's Guildhall and reopened in 1995) and during an annual festival each October. The Swansea Museum has a permanent exhibition on Dylan Thomas and his life, as well as a bookshop filled with his works. The Dylan Thomas Theatre is at the edge of Gloucester Place/square at the marina. In 2004 a new literary prize, Dylan Thomas Prize, was created in honour of the poet and is awarded to the best young published writer. Following this, in 2005, the Dylan Thomas Screenplay Award was established, run by the Dylan Thomas Centre and given at the annual Swansea Bay Film Festival.

Dylan Thomas Literature Centre

Several of the pubs in Swansea also have associations with the poet. The Queen’s Head claims it is one of the few remaining traditional pubs in Swansea, and was a favourite haunt for Thomas when he worked as a cub reporter at the South Wales Evening Post newspaper. The Uplands Tavern boasts the Dylan Thomas Snug, where the writer used to sit.  One of Swansea's oldest pubs, the No Sign Bar, was another of his favourites and was mentioned in his stories. The seafront pub, Antelope, which stands in the famous Mumbles Mile, is looking decrepit. This old pub, complete with its open fire and 1930s architecture, will be renovated with its Thomas memorial material in situ. Having a Thomas association is very good business for a Swansea pub.

Amazing botanical artist II: Marian Ellis Rowan

Marian Ellis Ryan (1848-1922) was born in Melbourne and grew up near the Strathbogie Ranges. She was raised in a family which had an appreciation of natural history, gardens and art, but like Marianne North, she had no formal art training. Nonetheless her favourite subject was Australian wildflowers.

Ellis made her first trip abroad at 21, basing herself in Britain. In 1873 Ellis married Frederic Rowan, a British Army officer and settled in New Zealand. The couple, and their only child, then moved to Melbourne and while living there, she further developed her skills as a wild flower painter. Talented and enthusiastic, she emerged as a decent artist and won important art prizes in Australia and overseas. I don’t suppose the professional male artists were very pleased with her success.

The couple returned to Victoria 1877, exhibited her work in international exhibitions in Australia, India, England, Europe and the USA 1879-93, winning more medals. In an age when most middle class women did not work outside their own homes, Ellis travelled widely.

From the 1870s on, Ellis painted thousands of largely watercolours. Like Marianne North, she travelled extensively, relishing settings which were both difficult to get to and dangerous. Her images ranged from the large, boldly coloured and carefully detailed flower studies to small, more intimate garden scenes and bird studies. And she confidently publicised her own adventures, visiting Queensland’s rain forests, West Australian arid goldfields, New Guinea and New Zealand mountains. She had become a fine painter of wild flowers, insects and birds, combining scientific accuracy with freshness.

Christmas bells and wildflowers, Western Australia, 1879

Ellis visited Western Australia a number of times during her life. It was in Albany in 1880 that Ellis met the English painter Marianne North, and after a few years, they went on a painting tour together. North was generous with her younger student. She shared ideas about writing her adventures and also of how to house and promote her works for posterity.

Anyhow the fast fading nature of a newly picked flower meant working quickly, often out in the bush. Most of Ellis’ original water colour studies were painted in less than optimum conditions, in the heat of the Australian bush. Yet her ability to compose a complex image, use of colour and her quick painting skills, without preliminary sketches, were often commented on.

The 1880s was a highly productive era for Ellis: she painted rare species for one scientist’s work and she made several versions of her more popular subjects for sale in exhibitions. This was a wise career move. Many engravings of her flowers and scenes were published, her watercolours became bolder in colour and presentation, and she began to paint in oils as North had encouraged.

Because of her fame, Ellis became an important example of the independent Australian woman artist. Of course male artists may have dismissed her paintings as Not Real Art. And they may have been right in one small way: her work was at the boundaries of art and natural history illustration. More than simply recording the physical appearance of plants, each painting revealed a strong sense of design and colour. Her flowers and birds images were often set in an environment which was done in an impressionist style. Her images of New Guinea moths and butterflies showed her draughtsmanship and accuracy.

Flower Hunter in Queensland and New Zealand was published in 1898. Flushed with success, Ellis left to visit America and stayed for 7 years. In New York, she met another young female botanist and together they travelled the USA and West Indies, collaborating on 3 books which became standard texts for botany students: A Guide to the Wildflowers 1899, A Guide to the Trees 1900 and Southern Wildflowers and Trees 1901. Her book illustrations were hugely successful.

Tropical jungle flowers, Johnston River Qld, 1887

Ellis returned to Australia 1905 and set a new goal for her art: to find and record every species of wildflower on the continent. Even during the hardships of WW1, when she was nearly 70, Ellis set off to New Guinea for seven months. The Royal Worcester Porcelain Company had commissioned her to paint flowers and birds of paradise in New Guinea. During these New Guinea visits, Ellis found and illustrated many unclassified flowers, birds and butterflies. Ever mindful of the importance of publicity, many of these 1,000 paintings were later exhibited in Sydney in 1920.

After her husband’s death, Rowan returned to Christchurch in New Zealand where she was delighted to discover the work of Margaret Stoddart. What a brave and unconventional woman Ellis was. The trips were discomforting in terms of her health and safety, but later she said that they were also extremely exciting and stimulating for her art.

Rothschild's Bird of Paradise, Papua New Guinea c1917

Ellis Rowan died in Oct 1922. This prolific artist left 3000+ paintings of scientifically accurate native flora, birds, and insects. The Australian government bought 947 of her wild flower works in 1923; the National Library of Australia now holds the largest collection of Ellis' work. Queen Victoria received three of her paintings in 1895, the South Australian government bought 100 and the Queensland government bought 125. For a good selection of Ellis’ beautiful flowers and birds paintings, see Peintures Musique et Poésies blog.

What might have started off as a genteel wifely pastime turned into a profitable, respected public career. This was no mean achievement in Victorian and Edwardian times, as Paluma Print blog attests. But when art historians say she was a very ambitious woman, I wonder if it is damning Ellis with faint praise. Pencil and Leaf blog said Ellis Rowan was a self opinionated, obsessive, vain and gritty artist and a tireless self publicist, who painted more species of Australian and international flora than any other artist then.

The book, The Flower Hunter: Ellis Rowan, published 2002

Amazing botanical artist I - Marianne North

Marianne North (1830-1890) was the eldest child of an MP in the British Parliament. She had shown an interest in painting and writing, proper accomplishments for a young Victorian lady and suitable hobbies, but not career, for the daughter of an upper middle class family.

North, Jamaican cultivated flowers, 1871

Her father Frederick North certainly introduced her to the great and the good in the world of politics and of science. Frederick travelled throughout Europe and the Middle East, on both business and pleasure, and Marianne would often accompany him. On these trips, she learned to improve her skills as an artist, being taught first by a Dutch woman artist, and later by Valentine Bartholomew, a flower painter connected to the royal court. While visiting Kew, she met Sir William Hooker who presented her with specimens to sketch. But she had little formal training in drawing and painting.

North, Tobacco Plants

With her father’s death in 1870 and having never married, Marianne received much of her father's very pleasant estates in Lancashire and Norfolk, and now sought to use it in her passion: painting flowers in their natural settings. She clearly had the means, funding her own trips to the far corners of the world to find her flowers in their natural environment.

Her first journey alone was in 1871, when she travelled via Jamaica to the United States and Canada. Being well connected from birth, she of course had suitable letters of introduction, so initially it would seem that her travels were comfortably looked after. However sometimes she had to make her way through rough landscape, scaling cliffs and enduring swarms of insects.

North learned to paint in a fast, impressionistic style that was seen as either a feminine weakness or a scientific triumph, full of vitality. She understood plant taxonomy, being a keen naturalist herself, and had a number of species named after her.

Her second solo journey took her to the jungles of Brasil, where she stayed for 8 months and completed 100+ paintings. Then in 1875 she travelled across America on her way to Japan and Ceylon, then she returned home. In a very short time, she was on her way again, this time to India. She remained in India for 15 months and produced a remarkable 200 paintings of mostly plants, but also of the local buildings she liked. Upon her return to London in 1879 she exhibited her work at The Conduit Street Galleries, where visitors seemed to enjoy her work.  LITTLE AUGURY and Squidoo blogs have image after image of North’s beautiful work

Marianne North Gallery, Kew Gardens

In 1879 she wrote to the Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens Sir Joseph Hooker, suggesting that she bequeath her collected works, along with a building suitable to house them, to his Gardens at Kew. There was only one extra request: that this site should serve as place for garden visitors to rest. Her donation was accepted and Kew gained one of it most significant components, The Marianne North Gallery. Her friend, architectural historian James Fergusson, designed the building after her favourite Indian colonial sites. Later (in the 1880s) she carefully arranged all her 832 paintings in a dense mosaic on the walls, sorted according to geographical location of subject.

Charles Darwin, a close friend of old Mr North, encouraged Marianne to travel to Australia and New Zealand, to paint Antipodean native plants in oils. In that expedition she met and befriended the younger artist, Marian Ellis Rowan, an important meeting, as we will see next post. In the meantime it is of interest to note, according to Laura Ponsonby, that North considered Darwin the greatest man living and had hoped that he would open her Gallery in 1882. Sadly he died some weeks before the event.

In 1883 North was in the Seychelles and in 1884 in Chile, still painting. After a life time of travel, no mean feat for a woman of that era, having lead an adventurous and productive life. She retired to Gloucestershire, where she died in Aug 1890.

Her book, published 1892, two years after her death

After her death, Marianne’s extensive journals were edited down and cleaned up by her sister, Catherine North Symonds, and published in two volumes in 1892 as Recollections of a Happy Life: Being the Autobiography of Marianne North, London, Macmillan, 1892.

Marianne North was the best connected and the most intrepid woman artist of this era, but was her oeuvre considered popular and talented during her own life time? I can find a few contemporary references to her work by admiring women activists, but none by male artists.

Florilegia, collections of flower paintings, have been done since Sir Joseph Banks depicted and published images of plants he collected on the Endeavour in the 1760s. Yet it is only now (1995) that Chelsea Physic Garden established its own Florilegium Society whose primary aim is the portrayal of the Garden's entire collection. These modern scientific artists would have loved having North as part of their team.

In the next post, I will write Amazing botanical artist II - Marian Ellis Rowan.

Boscombe beach pods, Bournemouth

I had been fascinated by the popularity of beach huts in Australia and Britain, and wrote up a history of the humble huts with a sense of nostalgia. It seemed inevitable that the huts, so hugely popular after WW1, would never increase in number and could well decrease.

Overstrand Building, with pods to both sides of the central facilities

Now an alternative has been brought to my attention. Retro-style beach pods offering panoramic views across Bournemouth's artificial surf reef appeared for the first time in the BBC News in April 2009. 400+ people registered interest in buying the lovely pods within the Boscombe Overstrand complex. Boscombe Blog was of course very excited about the new lease of life for the area. Half of the pods will be sold on a 25-year lease, with the remaining pods will be reserved for casual hire from the council.

Pod interior

Proleno Blog noted that Wayne and Geraldine Hemingway were commissioned by Bournemouth Borough Council to revive the dilapidated 1958 Overstrand building and Grade II listed Boscombe Pier of 1889. Not surprisingly, seaside regeneration was always one of the favourite goals of the Hemingways. You can see that the centre of the Overstrand will be the public areas: shops, restaurant and surf school. On each wing, to the left and right, stretch the rows of pods.

A single beach pod will cost a fortune (£90,000) but unlike the old beach huts, will have mains electricity, hot and cold running water, kitchen units and French doors leading onto a small private balcony overlooking the beach, but no fridges. To prevent people sleeping overnight in the pods, power will be switched off at night. Each pod has one wall that is a piece of retro, coastal art in its own right.

Boscombe has indeed reinvented the beach hut.