This is such an interesting story. I hope I can do it justice. I originally saw it on BBC's "Fake or Fortune". As a genealogy and art history buff, some of the research gave me goosebumps.
Ok. Back in 1987, a fisherman, Tony Varney, found some art left lying around near the gate of a rubbish tip in the south of Ireland. Even though one of the pieces was signed Winslow Homer, Tony didn't know what he had. He didn't bother to research it at all and gave the painting to his daughter Selina who gave house room to other things her dotty old dad collected.
The small watercolour was of three white children wearing ethnic costume. Somehow in 2008, Tony and Selina got their wits together and took it to The Antiques Roadshowwhere it was confirmed by expert Philip Mould to be a work by Winslow Homer, one of America's most important 19th century artists and valued it at £30,000.
Philip Mould, art aficionado extraordinaire, cleverly knew that this painting would realize a higher price in US, where Winslow Homer is more highly esteemed. Mould had the painting packaged and sent off to Sotheby's in New York.
Phillip Mould's team of researchers went through the rest of the contents of Tony's cardboard portfolio. They found interesting things like a ticket to a costume ball at the Governor's Mansion in the Bahamas, a painting done by the Bahamian Governor's wife. They determined that Sir Henry Arthur Blake, the Governor of the Bahamas from 1884-1887, had his ancestral home in Ireland. Myrtle Grove, County Cork, was about three miles from the rubbish tip where Grandpa Tony found the painting.
Mould's lawyer was left to do due diligence and related to Mould, and the viewers, that the descendents who lived at Myrtle Grove were unaware of the painting and ignorant of the fact that they even owned it. They had never registered a burglary.
Philip Mould jetted off to the archives in the Bahamas where he found on microfilm newspaper details of the costume ball at the Governor's mansion. Who was in attendance? Mr. Homer. What were the children wearing? The same pseudo-Turkish costumes as in the painting. A later social notice said that Winslow Homer intended to paint the Blake children in their Turkish costumes. Eureka!
By this time, Sotheby's in New York had authenticated the watercolour and because of the provenance, had estimated that the picture would now reach at least $250,000 - about 5 times the original estimation.
So everyone back home in Coventry, England was very excited. The painting had been professionally cleaned and framed. It appeared in Sotheby's catalogue. Selina and her dad Tony went to New York for the sale. Twenty four hours before the sale, the Blake family in Ireland decided that "hey, that's our painting. We could use some of that lovely lolly to fix the roof of our ancestral home" (I'm paraphrasing).
Magnanimously, (I'm being sarcastic) they tell Selina she can go ahead and auction off the painting and she can keep 25% of the proceeds as a finder's fee OR auction it off and Sotheby's could hang onto the money until they could work out ownership later. Selina, rightly pissed off, said the sale should go on and ownership could be worked out later.
The next day, ten, ten minutes before her lot was going to come under the gavel, Blake's great-great grandson Simon Murray appeared in New York and said that Selina would have to take a 30% finders fee, but with out an agreement as to who owned the painting, he could not let the sale go on. Selina Varney rejected the revised offer and Sotheby's decided to withdraw the painting as they could not guarantee a good title to any potential buyer.
After this fracas at Sotheby's, the painting, now dubbed Children Under a Palm Tree, was placed on the Art Loss Register. Why, I don't know. Covering their behinds, methinks. They know where it is now - under lock and key in Sotheby's New York. The family believe it disappeared from Myrtle Grove after a series of robberies in the 1980s,although Philip Mould notes that there was no crime reported. According to Great Grandson Simon Murray, his family didn't know that the painting was stolen until it was put up for auction at Sotheby’s. Simon Murray conducted further research among his family's papers and found a letter which described in detail the circumstances under which the painting was produced. When the Fakes or Fortunes episode aired in June 2011 ownership was still the subject of a legal dispute.
"I think we would rather keep it," said Simon Murray, who, as a lawyer, is still representing his family's interests. "It is such a special picture. The colours are wonderful. It's a very significant part of my family's history and we really want it back." Riiight...
youghalonline.com
The Varney's had the painting in their possession for two decades with no claim on its ownership and no report of any burglary on the part of the Blake/Murrays. I say that unless they can prove that Grandpa Tony stole the painting then tough titty. I say Finders Keepers.
I'm repeating myself yet again, but it's worth it. Here's Dylan Thomas', A Child's Christmas in Wales. It makes me nostalgic for something I've never experienced. Reading it is a delight but we have an old snap, crackle and pop vinyl recording of Thomas himself that we listen to with friends every Christmas. Please check out the links if you need definitions. Click the youtube link at the bottom of the poem if you'd like to read along. Enjoy!
One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
All the Christmases roll down toward the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.
It was on the afternoon of the Christmas Eve, and I was in Mrs. Prothero's garden, waiting for cats, with her son Jim. It was snowing. It was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, is white as Lapland, though there were no reindeers. But there were cats. Patient, cold and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the cats. Sleek and long as jaguars and horrible-whiskered, spitting and snarling, they would slink and sidle over the white back-garden walls, and the lynx-eyed hunters, Jim and I, fur-capped and moccasined trappers from Hudson Bay, off Mumbles Road, would hurl our deadly snowballs at the green of their eyes. The wise cats never appeared.
We were so still, Eskimo-footed arctic marksmen in the muffling silence of the eternal snows - eternal, ever since Wednesday - that we never heard Mrs. Prothero's first cry from her igloo at the bottom of the garden. Or, if we heard it at all, it was, to us, like the far-off challenge of our enemy and prey, the neighbor's polar cat. But soon the voice grew louder.
"Fire!" cried Mrs. Prothero, and she beat the dinner-gong.
And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house; and smoke, indeed, was pouring out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruin like a town crier in Pompeii. This was better than all the cats in Wales standing on the wall in a row. We bounded into the house, laden with snowballs, and stopped at the open door of the smoke-filled room.
Something was burning all right; perhaps it was Mr. Prothero, who always slept there after midday dinner with a newspaper over his face. But he was standing in the middle of the room, saying, "A fine Christmas!" and smacking at the smoke with a slipper.
"Call the fire brigade," cried Mrs. Prothero as she beat the gong.
"There won't be there," said Mr. Prothero, "it's Christmas."
There was no fire to be seen, only clouds of smoke and Mr. Prothero standing in the middle of them, waving his slipper as though he were conducting.
"Do something," he said. And we threw all our snowballs into the smoke - I think we missed Mr. Prothero - and ran out of the house to the telephone box.
"Let's call the police as well," Jim said. "And the ambulance." "And Ernie Jenkins, he likes fires."
But we only called the fire brigade, and soon the fire engine came and three tall men in helmets brought a hose into the house and Mr. Prothero got out just in time before they turned it on. Nobody could have had a noisier Christmas Eve. And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt, Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said,
"Would you like anything to read?"
Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the color of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlors, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed. But here a small boy says: "It snowed last year, too. I made a snowman and my brother knocked it down and I knocked my brother down and then we had tea."
"But that was not the same snow," I say. "Our snow was not only shaken from white wash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely -ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunder-storm of white, torn Christmas cards."
"Were there postmen then, too?"
"With sprinkling eyes and wind-cherried noses, on spread, frozen feet they crunched up to the doors and mittened on them manfully. But all that the children could hear was a ringing of bells."
"You mean that the postman went rat-a-tat-tat and the doors rang?"
"I mean that the bells the children could hear were inside them."
"I only hear thunder sometimes, never bells."
"There were church bells, too."
"Inside them?"
"No, no, no, in the bat-black, snow-white belfries, tugged by bishops and storks. And they rang their tidings over the bandaged town, over the frozen foam of the powder and ice-cream hills, over the crackling sea. It seemed that all the churches boomed for joy under my window; and the weathercocks crew for Christmas, on our fence."
"Get back to the postmen"
"They were just ordinary postmen, found of walking and dogs and Christmas and the snow. They knocked on the doors with blue knuckles ...."
"Ours has got a black knocker...."
"And then they stood on the white Welcome mat in the little, drifted porches and huffed and puffed, making ghosts with their breath, and jogged from foot to foot like small boys wanting to go out."
"And then the presents?"
"And then the Presents, after the Christmas box. And the cold postman, with a rose on his button-nose, tingled down the tea-tray-slithered run of the chilly glinting hill. He went in his ice-bound boots like a man on fishmonger's slabs.
"He wagged his bag like a frozen camel's hump, dizzily turned the corner on one foot, and, by God, he was gone."
"Get back to the Presents."
"There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths; zebra scarfs of a substance like silky gum that could be tug-o'-warred down to the galoshes; blinding tam-o'-shanters like patchwork tea cozies and bunny-suited busbies and balaclavas for victims of head-shrinking tribes; from aunts who always wore wool next to the skin there were mustached and rasping vests that made you wonder why the aunts had any skin left at all; and once I had a little crocheted nose bag from an aunt now, alas, no longer whinnying with us. And pictureless books in which small boys, though warned with quotations not to, would skate on Farmer Giles' pond and did and drowned; and books that told me everything about the wasp, except why."
Go on - the Useless Presents."
"Bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies and a folded flag and a false nose and a tram-conductor's cap and a machine that punched tickets and rang a bell; never a catapult; once, by mistake that no one could explain, a little hatchet; and a celluloid duck that made, when you pressed it, a most unducklike sound, a mewing moo that an ambitious cat might make who wished to be a cow; and a painting book in which I could make the grass, the trees, the sea and the animals any colour I pleased, and still the dazzling sky-blue sheep are grazing in the red field under the rainbow-billed and pea-green birds. Hardboileds, toffee, fudge and allsorts, crunches, cracknels, humbugs, glaciers, marzipan, and butterwelsh for the Welsh. And troops of bright tin soldiers who, if they could not fight, could always run. And Snakes-and-Families and Happy Ladders. And Easy Hobbi-Games for Little Engineers, complete with instructions. Oh, easy for Leonardo! And a whistle to make the dogs bark to wake up the old man next door to make him beat on the wall with his stick to shake our picture off the wall. And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it. And then it was breakfast under the balloons."
"Were there Uncles like in our house?"
"There are always Uncles at Christmas. The same Uncles. And on Christmas morning, with dog-disturbing whistle and sugar fags, I would scour the swatched town for the news of the little world, and find always a dead bird by the Post Office or by the white deserted swings; perhaps a robin, all but one of his fires out. Men and women wading or scooping back from chapel, with taproom noses and wind-bussed cheeks, all albinos, huddles their stiff black jarring feathers against the irreligious snow. Mistletoe hung from the gas brackets in all the front parlors; there was sherry and walnuts and bottled beer and crackers by the dessertspoons; and cats in their fur-abouts watched the fires; and the high-heaped fire spat, all ready for the chestnuts and the mulling pokers. Some few large men sat in the front parlors, without their collars, Uncles almost certainly, trying their new cigars, holding them out judiciously at arms' length, returning them to their mouths, coughing, then holding them out again as though waiting for the explosion; and some few small aunts, not wanted in the kitchen, nor anywhere else for that matter, sat on the very edge of their chairs, poised and brittle, afraid to break, like faded cups and saucers."
Not many those mornings trod the piling streets: an old man always, fawn-bowlered, yellow-gloved and, at this time of year, with spats of snow, would take his constitutional to the white bowling green and back, as he would take it wet or fire on Christmas Day or Doomsday; sometimes two hale young men, with big pipes blazing, no overcoats and wind blown scarfs, would trudge, unspeaking, down to the forlorn sea, to work up an appetite, to blow away the fumes, who knows, to walk into the waves until nothing of them was left but the two furling smoke clouds of their inextinguishable briars. Then I would be slap-dashing home, the gravy smell of the dinners of others, the bird smell, the brandy, the pudding and mince, coiling up to my nostrils, when out of a snow-clogged side lane would come a boy the spit of myself, with a pink-tipped cigarette and the violet past of a black eye, cocky as a bullfinch, leering all to himself.
I hated him on sight and sound, and would be about to put my dog whistle to my lips and blow him off the face of Christmas when suddenly he, with a violet wink, put his whistle to his lips and blew so stridently, so high, so exquisitely loud, that gobbling faces, their cheeks bulged with goose, would press against their tinsled windows, the whole length of the white echoing street. For dinner we had turkey and blazing pudding, and after dinner the Uncles sat in front of the fire, loosened all buttons, put their large moist hands over their watch chains, groaned a little and slept. Mothers, aunts and sisters scuttled to and fro, bearing tureens. Auntie Bessie, who had already been frightened, twice, by a clock-work mouse, whimpered at the sideboard and had some elderberry wine. The dog was sick. Auntie Dosie had to have three aspirins, but Auntie Hannah, who liked port, stood in the middle of the snowbound back yard, singing like a big-bosomed thrush. I would blow up balloons to see how big they would blow up to; and, when they burst, which they all did, the Uncles jumped and rumbled. In the rich and heavy afternoon, the Uncles breathing like dolphins and the snow descending, I would sit among festoons and Chinese lanterns and nibble dates and try to make a model man-o'-war, following the Instructions for Little Engineers, and produce what might be mistaken for a sea-going tramcar.
Or I would go out, my bright new boots squeaking, into the white world, on to the seaward hill, to call on Jim and Dan and Jack and to pad through the still streets, leaving huge footprints on the hidden pavements.
"I bet people will think there's been hippos."
"What would you do if you saw a hippo coming down our street?"
"I'd go like this, bang! I'd throw him over the railings and roll him down the hill and then I'd tickle him under the ear and he'd wag his tail."
"What would you do if you saw two hippos?"
Iron-flanked and bellowing he-hippos clanked and battered through the scudding snow toward us as we passed Mr. Daniel's house.
"Let's post Mr. Daniel a snow-ball through his letter box."
"Let's write things in the snow."
"Let's write, 'Mr. Daniel looks like a spaniel' all over his lawn."
Or we walked on the white shore. "Can the fishes see it's snowing?"
The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travelers lost on the north hills, and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior." We returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-rutted snow and cat-called after us, their voices fading away, as we trudged uphill, into the cries of the dock birds and the hooting of ships out in the whirling bay. And then, at tea the recovered Uncles would be jolly; and the ice cake loomed in the center of the table like a marble grave. Auntie Hannah laced her tea with rum, because it was only once a year.
Bring out the tall tales now that we told by the fire as the gaslight bubbled like a diver. Ghosts whooed like owls in the long nights when I dared not look over my shoulder; animals lurked in the cubbyhole under the stairs and the gas meter ticked. And I remember that we went singing carols once, when there wasn't the shaving of a moon to light the flying streets. At the end of a long road was a drive that led to a large house, and we stumbled up the darkness of the drive that night, each one of us afraid, each one holding a stone in his hand in case, and all of us too brave to say a word. The wind through the trees made noises as of old and unpleasant and maybe webfooted men wheezing in caves. We reached the black bulk of the house. "What shall we give them? Hark the Herald?" "No," Jack said, "Good King Wencelas. I'll count three." One, two three, and we began to sing, our voices high and seemingly distant in the snow-felted darkness round the house that was occupied by nobody we knew. We stood close together, near the dark door. Good King Wencelas looked out On the Feast of Stephen ... And then a small, dry voice, like the voice of someone who has not spoken for a long time, joined our singing: a small, dry, eggshell voice from the other side of the door: a small dry voice through the keyhole. And when we stopped running we were outside our house; the front room was lovely; balloons floated under the hot-water-bottle-gulping gas; everything was good again and shone over the town.
"Perhaps it was a ghost," Jim said. "
Perhaps it was trolls," Dan said, who was always reading.
"Let's go in and see if there's any jelly left," Jack said. And we did that.
Always on Christmas night there was music. An uncle played the fiddle, a cousin sang "Cherry Ripe," and another uncle sang "Drake's Drum." It was very warm in the little house. Auntie Hannah, who had got on to the parsnip wine, sang a song about Bleeding Hearts and Death, and then another in which she said her heart was like a Bird's Nest; and then everybody laughed again; and then I went to bed. Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steady falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept
Neville Gabie, artist in residence at London's Olympic Park has paid tribute to the construction workers at the 2012 Games site by interpreting French post-impressionist Georges Seurat's Bathers at Asnieres in his own way.
Landscapers, engineers, designers and security staff inhabit the photograph recreating the 1884 painting.
From what little I know of Seurat, he was enamoured with France's industrial age. He makes an effort to include the factories and their bellowing smoke stacks in the background when he could just as easily glossed over them. I'm guessing Georges would be tickled with this "post-industrial" take on his "Bathers".
My family of Smiths is pretty messed up. My father was orphaned 2 days before Christmas 1936 and none of the multitude of available aunts and uncles took him in. He and his brother Ivan were sent to live in a "Children's Home", an orphanage, while his sisters were raised by their dead father's boss.
Back a further generation and my grandmother was shuffled off to be raised by her aunts while her birth mother and father went on to have more children. The 1901 English Census indicates that she was "deaf". I can only guess this is the reason they didn't keep her.
Not my Great-Grandfarther, but close - his brother Cecil
So my Dad grew up - and I grew up - knowing very little about his side of the family. Over the years I've dug about in Ancestry.com, following rumours and leads and confirming some of them. Smiths marrying Smiths, for example, a widowed daughter-in-law marrying her new step-father-in-law's unmarried son. The mind boggles. I did find out a couple of indisputable facts. My great-grandfather, Walter Alfred Thomas Penny Smith was a London bobby. In 1901 Constable Walter Smith lived at 55 Broadhurst Gardens in London's district of South Hampstead. I don't know how long he lived there, I just know from the 1901 Census that that's where he and his wife and one of my great-uncles lived.
The infamous artist Walter Sickert, prime suspect for the Jack the Ripper murders, once lived across the road at number 54 Broadhurst Gardens with his wife. From this article it looks as if he and his wife remained at 54 Broadhurst Gardens until they divorced in 1899 and he moved to Dieppe. My great-grandfather may have moved into Broadhurst Gardens after the Sickerts had moved away from the street, but boy oh boy, what a coup that would have been. I wish I could definitively prove that my ancestor, Walter Smith, twitched the curtains when Sickert walked by.
55 Broadhurst Gardens, found on Picasa, photographer unknown.
Whether Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper or not, I don't know. I know that he did have a penchant, easily found on Google, for painting of bosomy nudes sprawled uncomfortably on iron-frame beds.You're free to make up you own mind.
I watched the first installment of Vivienne Westwood's London on CTV on Saturday. Really, who has the TV at 7 on a Saturday? I had to rearrange my dinner schedule. Any way the show garnered a "nudity warning" and it made me wonder.
The aim of the program was to persuade visitors to London to eschew the tourist route of Madame Tussaud's, Buckingham Palace and Big Ben/Westminster Abbey.
It was great fun as slightly-barmy Westwood dragged us around to her favourite London haunts. She showed us incredibly famous art at a couple of less well-known institutes;The Wallace Collection and the Cortauld. At the Wallace she showed us one of her favourites whose name I've forgotten. Very dark, she said, but it contained all the colours in the world. It also contained a nipple. Was this the reason for the nudity warning at every ad break. She focused on Fragonard's The Swing, and said that the joke was that the girl didn't have her knickers on. Vivienne Westwood frequently goes about without her knickers on. Is this the nudity?
Then Westwood took us to the Cortauld where she waxed poetic about Renoir's La Loge.
Other places Westwood introduced us to were an outdoor market underneath the railway arches. It reminded me very much of Toronto's St. Lawrence Market. With the aid of her former muse and model, Sarah Stockbridge, we visited notorious White Chapel and walked down Brixton's Electric Avenue.
Vivienne Westwood loves the Barbican and carried on a bit about how important live theatre is. She loves Henry the VIII's Hampton Court and the authentic kitchen. Me too. She was also intrigued by one of the historical interpreter's cod piece. That must have been the annoying nudity even though he was covered in layers of red felt.
For somebody who is known as one of the architects of the punk movement, her being so enamoured with the past is strange. Over lunch at the Wallace Collection she said to the Globe and Mail's Elizabeth Renzetti,
"The 20th century was a mistake,” she says. “There was nothing produced in the 20th century, no ideas. There’s not one person alive who could paint one flower on that porcelain” – again, the hand flutters toward the Wallace galleries – “or anything that’s in there.”
Wow, that sort of negates punk, and grunge and the way clothing, music and art have evolved over the past 35 years. Hmm.
I never had much time for Westwood, being much too much of a flake. She has always been too outre for me. But watching this programme I grew to really like her. She had boundless energy for someone about to turn 70. She bikes all over London. Although I was mentally combing her bright red hair through most of the show I really admired her nutty, eccentric style.
Vivienne Westwood's had a major impact on the 20th Century despite that she now says "no ideas were produced in the 20th Century." She and her spouse of the time, Malcom McLaren made the Punk movement happen. Doc Marten owes her a debt of gratitude. Now I know that she loves good art makes me like Vivienne Westwood even more. Maybe she's one of my red-headed muses - Although with Vivienne I don't think the red hair will last.
I was able to find this video of VW at the Wallace. In this video she is actually much more subdued than the one I watched thanks to FashionTelevision.
A battered old trunk bought for ₤100 at an auction at Agatha Christie's former home revealed more than what was bargained for. Literally.
Christie enthusiast Jennifer Grant bid on a canvas trunk during a 2006 sale at Greenway House. Auctioneers Bearnes, Hampton and Littlewood presided over the auction in which Grant bid on the trunk. Unbeknownst to them, the trunk, marked with the initials CMM for Clara Margaret Miller who was Agatha Christie's mother, contained a locked stongbox without a key.
The strongbox was a talking point at dinner parties for the intervening years and Grant, obviously not as curious as one might think, finally opened the box in early 2010 and found treasure. In it she found a crocheted bag containing a hoard of gold sovereigns, a diamond ring and a buckle-shaped brooch.
Grant's research revealed that Christie's mother's jewelery did indeed consist of a "diamond buckle, diamond crescent, and diamond engagement ring."
Grant contacted the Antiques Road Show to help her with valuation and authentication John Benjamin from the BBC's Antiques Road Show valued the coins at ₤5,500, the ring between ₤2,500 and ₤3,000 and the brooch at ₤5,500 to ₤7,000. But he said the items could be worth much more if these treasures were proved to be the Christie diamonds. My little grey cells don't have strain too much to come to the conclusion that these are Christie family jewels.
I've been introduced to two websites offering worlds of information that tickle, exercise and expand one's mind. They make you think, and think some more, and give you the impetus to get off your duff and act.
The first, offering solutions for multi-talented people, is the DaVinci Dilemma. Co-authored by a schoolmate of mine, Liisa Kyle and her colleague Lisa Rothstein provide tools and useful resources to help you discover,enjoy and organize your many talents. While I'm not professing to be one of the multi-talented, I know many of you are (if not just "well-rounded").
The biggest problems facing me daily are procrastination and lack of motivation. At the DaVinci Dilemma, one can find hints, strategies and models on how to deal with these bugbears. The subheading Direct your Talents helps you harness your talents by offering real concrete ideas to organize, prioritize, motivate and obviate blockages. If you're like me and don't know what you want to be when you grow up, click on Discover Your Talents and Liisa and Lisa will help you find your passion and take inventory of your talents.
Liisa has also co-authored a recently-released book entitled Happiness Awaits You. Worth a look.
The second website belongs to the London-based The School of Life. Offering good ideas for everyday living, The School of Life offers a variety of programs that allow you to breathe deep and think intelligently about a variety of themes from philosophy to to literature to the visual arts.
Some weekend classes have included contemplating clouds, urban gardening, or visiting behind the scenes at Heathrow. It kind of reminds me of what would happen had Aldous Huxley met The Learning Annex. The smart people at The School of Life have a bibliotherapy service pointing you in the right direction to the books you should discover.
The facility also offers Conversation Dinners at some of London's nicest restaurants and a Breakfast Club where participants can enjoy coffee and muesli along with full-bodied advice on how to handle the stresses of the working day. Like Pam Beesley's "The Finer Things Club" except you get to eat out in London. I believe if I lived in London I would participate. It sounds like something an Iris Murdoch heroine would do.
To get our imaginations going is Carpe Diem Daily, an adjunct of The School of Learning that features a series of daily to-dos that can be thought-provoking, random, or light-hearted. Today's to-do was to invent and define a new word, whereas yesterday's prompt asked "what one thing would you change in the world?", and the day before - show us your scars.
The School of Life posts big thoughts to my Facebook wall too to make me think or shrink depending on the topic.
I went to see Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law in Sherlock Holmes last night at the local rep theatre. Once I resigned myself that this wasn't going to be anything Jeremy Brett would be proud of, I relaxed and enjoyed the ride.
I thought the film was very good, but being a 47-year-old mum, too violent. The dialogue was a little hard to hear at points. Although not a Conan Doyle story, the plot was exciting. The bad guy, Lord Blackwood, looks like a cross between Dracula and Andy Garcia and has a really gnarly pointed eye-tooth. He wants to retake America.
I thought the acting and relationship between the actors was good. I suspect Robert Downey is rather clever in real life. Maybe he's perfect to play Holmes - easily bored and ready for chemical stimulation. Jude Law is believable as Watson. He's handsome where Downey is splendidly debauched - like a party animal coming home barefoot in his tuxedo at the break of dawn.
The sets - the parts that were not CGI - were a feast for the eye - well-designed, detailed, and layered. Just keep the camera still for a second, Guy Ritchie, let me look. The art direction was stunning - right down to the titles. London was made to look oh-so-grimy. Not the antiseptic Victoriana we are sometimes exposed to on Masterpiece Theatre.
Some of the shots featured a half-finished Tower Bridge. Because I have an inquiring mind I found out that Tower Bridge opened in 1894. Like the Eiffel Tower, I forget sometimes that these structures haven't been around forever. Anyway here's a picture of Tower Bridge under construction. It's completely feasible that this building project would have been a feature of Conan Doyle's London.
Another technicality: My son was put out that the actress playing Irene Adler didn't even try to hide her American accent. I had to remind him that Adler, the only woman that Holmes had ever admired, was from America.
And Holmes' costumes. I had to keep my husband still in his seat. Lots of layers of corduroy and tweed, check and stripe. I imagine that the G-pup will have his waistcoat on this morning, ( Here he comes. Yes. Waistcoat and checked trousers. You rock the casbah!).
Has anybody else noticed that with the rapidly-edited modern action movies that there are no scenes to actually sink your teeth into. I find this with the X-men movies, Iron Man and Batman that the next day I can hardly remember a single scene. Is this because of all the quick takes I wonder? Where as with Jeremy Brett's Holmes I can still see the action unfolding in my mind 20 years later.
Despite my complaints the family as a whole gave Sherlock Holmes an 8 out of 10. The movie ended primed and ready for a sequel which I believe is going to happen in 2011. In the meantime, I'll rent the DVD and catch the dialogue I missed.
I know very little about this guy. He's my great-grandfather on my mother's side. Some people just seemed ashamed or oblivious of their past and my own Grandfather was guilty of that; he never said much about his own dad or mum. This is the only image I have of him.
William Brooker was born in 1874. When he was 17 he was working as a lathe worker at the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich. He had brothers who were twins, Alfred and Harry. One or some combination of the three brothers fought at the 2nd Boer War.
William married Mary Ann Sturman who had been born in Barbados as her father was a sea-captain and through some twist his wife traveled with him. Mary Ann's sister was born in Nova Scotia. According to records, William and Mary Ann were married in the March quarter of 1900. On December 31, 1900 my granddad was born. I'm guessing the portrait above is from his wedding day.
In 1901 William was living with his in-laws at 35 Hill Street Woolwich and working in the Woolwich Dockyards as an arsenal machinist. By 1911 he was an Engine Fitter, probably at the Royal Naval Dockyard in Chatham. I find Google Street Maps a lot of fun when I'm researching my family in England. Don't tell, but I walk right up to my ancestors houses and have a look. Unfortunately in William's case, the street addresses I have for him are long gone.
My Great Grandfather was an excellent amateur boxer. This was a fact he kept hidden from his children until they were grown lest they want to follow in his footsteps.
I think he's handsome.
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Oh, dear. Sepia Saturday's got me hooked. Genealogy is a true passion of mine, one that's been obsessing me since I first got my computer and discovered Ancestry.com.
I do have pictures of ancestors that go further back than Joseph Plewis. I have a hilarious one of his father and I have one of his mother-in-law that must date from around 1860 because she's dressed like Mary Todd Lincoln. But she's CREEPY. But Joseph Plewis born 1853 is the oldest ancestor I have information on so you'll have to bear with me again this week.
Here's a picture of my Great Great Grandfather circa 1893 when he was with the fire brigade and working on his facial hair.
Here's a much later picture, probably around 1922-23 of Joe and his lovely wife Harriet. Family lore has it that after Queen Victoria died in 1901, Harriet wore black for the rest of her days, that is, except for special occasions when she was feeling especially frivolous and wore a really nice shade of eggplant. If you are able to zoom into the picture, I now am in possession of the brooch Harriet is wearing at her neck. (Sorry for the blue in the picture - it was very dark).
Joe's dad Edward Plewis, spent most of his life as a farm labourer in and around the village of Hoo, mostly as labourer at Mackay's Court Farm. Joe's youngest sister Elizabeth married a chap named James Mugeridge Bridger, (sometimes he used the Bridger, sometimes not). Anyway, at some point, Elizabeth became the lady of the house at Mackay's Court Farm, where her father had worked for so many years and her sister had worked as a nursemaid.
Mackay's Court Farm is the location of the next two photos. They show the celebration of Joe and Harriet's Diamond Wedding in 1932.
Here's Joe with Harriet on the left - maybe she's wearing aubergine today - and his daughter Ada on the right. My own grandfather (from the other side of the family) managed to get in the picture between them.
Here they are again sitting with their sisters.
I've seen the guest book for this special occasion. It's great to read because not only does it contain the names of the dignitaries that attended, it has the childish scrawl of the aunts and uncles that I can only remember as old folks. My grandfather signed my mother's name on her behalf. She was three and a half and what she remembers about this party is getting stuck under the barn!
Here's Joe, at age 87, at the dedication of the fire engine that was to bear his name and carry his flag-draped coffin to his own funeral. I think that's a bishop.
An aside - one of Joe's nieces, I think her name name was Nance, lived on a nice old farm called Shakespeare Farm on the Hoo peninsula. My mother remembers visiting it and loved it. She remembered the views over the River Medway and she rembered the porcelain toilet hand-painted with violets. When I Googled it I found that it was one of the largest landfill sites in England. Nice view though.
And that's all she wrote. But maybe if you twist my arm I'll remember something else.
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This is my Great Great Grandfather, Joseph Plewis. He's the father of Ada from my previous post. He was born in Hoo (yes, Hoo) just north of the Gillingham, Chatham, Rochester area in Kent, England in 1853.
He started his adult life as an agricultural labourer and by the 1880s he and his wife Harriet went on to run their own Cook Shop/Eating House in Gillingham's High Street. Unfortunately no one in the family could remember what the name of it was.
Although he was known for being teetotal, his wife's father was later recorded living in both the Staff of Life, and The Beehive - both pubs on the Hoo Peninsula. His daughter ran a pub called The Two Sawyers and her husband's family ran a nearby pub called the Plough and Chequers. This must have made the temperance gods very angry.
Somehow along the way, Joseph became the High Constable of Gillingham ( which I believe is like a mayor or reeve). He held that esteemed position for 1898-99.
Family history says that Joseph Plewis initiated the development of the Gillingham Volunteer Fire Brigade. In 1920, he received the Order of the British Empire for "conspicuous courage and devotion to duty at fires caused by hostile aircraft" while Chief Officer of the Gillingham Fire Brigade.
He and Harriet lived on Priestfield Road, a street that dead-ended at Priestfield Stadium home of the Gillingham Football Club . Sundays were very hectic on that street. The house stayed in the family for a while - my brother was born there in 1953. My own father had to deal with the final moments of Joe's odious son-in-law Fred as he lived in the flat below.
Chief Officer Plewis held the medal of the "Life Saving Society of France." Tere was also some exchange program between the fire brigades of France and the County of Kent, hence the picture above.
It says, roughly:
"Captain Plewis
Brigade Commander of Gillingham (Kent County), is also very experienced in the world of fire-fighters. His brigade is also the well-organized winner of the main competition. They are highly trained in fire and ambulance service. Captain Plewis is an Honorary Member of the National Federation of Fire Brigades and the French Federation Belgium. Honorary Member of the Union of the Corps of the Fire Brigade of the Lyonnaise Region. Holder of a Medal of Honour of the French Government and honourary member of the Lifeguard of the Aisne. Gillingham is a town located in Kent County and most important country(?) in this county of a population of about 40,000 inhabitants."
When he died, his coffin was transported on the Plewis Engine, a fire truck that was dedicated to him. Just today I found online a picture of my Great Grandfather, yes that's him front and centre with a chest full of medals. The picture was taken circa 1929 which means he was around for the "Fireman's Wedding Disaster" at the Gillingham Park Fete.But more about that later. I hope that didn't blot his copy book.
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Here's a picture of my Great Grandmother and Grandfather on their wedding day. They were married in the spring of 1898 in the Medway region of Kent.
Ada Elizabeth Plewis was born in 1880 into a teetotal household. Her new husband, George Cleaves had been born into a pub-owning family. The Cleaves family managed the pub, "The Plough and Chequers" in Gillingham since about 1850. That must have lead to an unusual wedding reception!
They themselves went on to manage a pub near the Chatham dockyards called "The Two Sawyers". Apparently they had a good reputation with the sailors stationed nearby because the couple didn't turn them in if they were out past curfew. They made them comfortable in the pub for the night. Some sailors of the time, circa 1903, thanked my Great Grandparents buy buying them a new "time gentlemen please" bell. Around 25 years ago my Grandmother and my uncle visited the pub, probably for her 85th birthday. They told the current landlords the story and they ceremoniously took down the bell and handed to her to keep. Unfortunately I think the bell was sold along with her other possessions when she died.
Poor George died in 1909 of tuberculosis. But before that - in the 11 years Ada and George were married - they had 8 children but only 2 lived. May, Percy, Harold, Doris, Leonard, Ronald, Ivo and Cyril. Apart from my Grandmother Doris and her brother Ron, all of them died before they reached 9 months of age. Despite the shocking fact that she may have been pregnant with the twins May and Percy before they were married, Ada never let her husband see her naked.
A year after George died, Ada married one of his friends. Frederick Godfrey Walkefield Oakley Holmes had been a piccolo player with the Royal Engineers since he was 15 years old. Mr. Holmes was a rotter (at least in my books). Poor Ada had been through 7 pregnancies and the death of her handsome husband, but Fred Holmes didn't want her children around - therefore my Grandmother and Ron were raised from the ages of 7 and 5 respectively by their grandparents. Luckily for them, their Grandfather was a wonderful man. More about him in a future post maybe.
Ada and her new husband Fred had a baby of their own within the year - the intensely spoiled Freda.
Ada, Fred and Freda moved to Dover where she owned and managed the local post office and gift shop.
She was around to see both World Wars. In the years between the wars Ada welcomed her grandchildren to the seaside town. Buckets and spades were bestowed upon my Mum and Uncle Ken. Probably some Rupert books too.
Ada died in 1953. Both pubs thrive today. The Plough and Chequers' Petanque team has a world class reputation and is known for it's live music. Maybe one day...
Did I ever mention that I like Rupert Bear? Could you guess? Rupert Annuals were a part of my early childhood with my English Grandmother sending them to us in Canada. "Ruperts" were what I read in bed Christmas morning before the rest of the older folks got up.
So colourful, magical and innocent - I couldn't wait to go back to Nutwood again. I started collecting them for myself in my 20s and then subsequently acquiring them for my son.
Here are some of my all-time favourite covers. Do you think I have a penchant for Chinese lanterns and brightly coloured fish?!
Thanks Daily Express!
