The Love of Learning

A new book arrived in my mailbox this weekend. I look forward to savoring it once life settles down a bit. Hope your weekend included a bit of reading, too.

The Big Elephant is Dead

MY TRIP TO NEW YORK last weekend included a first visit to the Morgan Library and Museum. I spent several hours on Saturday afternoon slowly enjoying the whole space and the thoughtfully acquired artworks and books.

My favorite exhibit was "In the Company of Animals: Art, Literature and Music at the Morgan". From the Morgan's website: "This exhibition examines the ways in which the artists, writers, and composers represented in the Morgan's collection used animals to think and create. What does the portrayal of animals in images, words, and music reveal about companionship, meaning, and morality?"

Imagine my pleasure when I discovered a delightful letter written by Miss Potter herself to a young friend, Noel Moore. The letter, dated 6 April 1896 from 2 Bolton Gardens, London, sums up, for me, the real value of her work as an author and naturalist. As the exhibit points out, Beatrix Potter addressed death in her work in a very simple and direct manner with children. She was so much more than an author of charming picture books featuring naughty rabbits. She used the deceptively pretty animal images of quarreling geese, crafty foxes and bumbling frogs to explore many dark facets of the human experience.

Here is the text of the letter, for your enjoyment. I copied it onto the back of the museum's floor plan. I didn't have a hard surface to write on, so I had to hold the folded paper in my hand and laboriously copy it, word for word. It took 20 minutes to copy these few words. It was very difficult work, as I had to continually move the paper along my right hand while I wrote with my left. The letter is illustrated with many delicate line drawings of the scenes as described. There are pictograms of a shovel and pail inserted where indicated, below.

My Dear Noel,

Thank you for your nice letter. I should like to see you riding the big dog - here is a picture of Tom Thumb on a mouse. We are going to Savanage next Monday; I am sure you must have enjoyed Felixstow. I daresay you had a [shovel] and a [pail]. I expect to find some shells. I went to the zoo and it rained. The seals seemed to like the rain but most of the animals were in their little houses. The big elephant is dead. What a pity! They went to Mr. Rhind, a chemist, for some medicine, but it died.

It is going to be put in the museum. There is a new lion at the Zoo, which is so savage, it made a great noise. I have got some pretty hyacinths in my garden. The sparrows are naughty. They pull off the flowers. There are two nests, just under the gutter at the top of our house. We see them flying up with grass to make the nest. We do not like it because the little birds fall out onto our door-steps. I hope that you and Eric will have a very good time and with love I remain 

aff. yrs. Beatrix Potter

ONE more little item in the exhibit that caught my fancy ....

William Blake's poem, "The Tyger (From Songs of Experience)", accompanied by a watercolor portrait [artist unknown] of the fierce animal. The opening lines of this poem hold great meaning for me, as I think of a particularly special person.

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Take a look at a few more of the featured works here on the Morgan Library's site. 

Time for a Change

West Elm

This image serves as an inspiration for my next living room. It's the combination of neutral plus blue, in dark and light tones. Very relaxed. Peaceful. Just what I'm looking for.

Ex Libris

Disgusted with Life, She Retired to the Society of Books, pen and ink drawing by Rosine Emmet Sherwood (1888), housed in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. Doesn't that say it all?

Let's see what this lovely young lady might find in her library.

This green book cart from ArtStuff would inspire me to keep my library tidy. It's a nice change from institutional grey.

I love the colors of these steel book supports from Demco, and the Deco-style silhouette.

Kik-Step Stools from University Products

Does she need custom bookcases? Not necessarily. Perhaps the Stairway Bookcase from CB2 will do the trick. It's 8-foot tall presence attaches to the wall. Gang three or more of these together and it will look as though you have installed custom carpentry.

Here's the Stairway Bookcase installed.

Reproduction antique bookplate:  "Improve Your Hours for They Never Return"

Our young reader can curl up on the Astrid Settee from Anthropologie

Since it's still February, she'll need to wrap up in a toasty blanket, like this Macauslands in French blue.

What to read? I received a great mystery for Christmas, and I'm getting
ready to dig in. Just need to fix a pot of Earl Grey.

White Lights

Hector Table Lamp from Peter Bowles for Original BTC, from DWR

All-white lighting seems so right to me now, here in the middle of winter. My advice is to keep this simple color interesting with unique textures and polished glass and porcelain shades. My favorite for many years has been the Hector, now reissued by Peter Bowles for Original BTC. It also comes in floor and wall versions. I'm also crazy about West Elm's Contour lighting collection; each model is all of one piece in powder-coated steel. Circa's Teri lamp features a big juicy globe of alabaster, a touch of bronze and a prim little shade. The PH5 Pendant by Poul Henningseen is a mid-century classic institutional fixture that thinks it's a UFO; Vaughan's Colvara hugs the wall with a stream of bubbles flowing up and through the half shade. And any child would have sweet dreams drifting off under Ikea's cloudy Skojig ceiling light. 

Contour Semi-Flush Fixture from West Elm

Large Teri table lamp in alabaster with bronze accents from Circa Lighting

PH5 Pendant Lamp Poul Hanningseen for Louis Poulsen, from DWR

Colvara Wall Light from Vaughan

Francis flush mount from Rejuvenation

Drop 2 Pendant by Peter Bowles for Original BTC, from DWR

Elena Floor Lamp by Ballard Designs

Insulator Pendant by CB2

Loren Table Lamp from Crate and Barrel

Artecnica Grand Trianon Pendant Lamp from Velocity Art

Torna Table Lamp from Ikea

Sfera 16 from Rejuvenation

Skojig Ceiling Lamp from Ikea

Cold December Flies Away

Just now getting caught up on December's many events. The month started off with niece Maggie's wedding to her beau Tyler at Salvage One in Chicago. Here are my three angels, posing in front of one of the Michigan Avenue Bridge's bas relief sculptures (note the black Cambridge Satchel). It was a rainy weekend, but unseasonably mild. Later in the month, we enjoyed a week of fun with cousins Brock, Jacob and Emily between the Christmas and New Year's holidays.

The German Christmas market. Festive, but no elbow room. Must. Get. Out. Now.

The groom and bride on the dais, listening to toasts given in their honor.

The kids sit still, just barely long enough, for a family Christmas portrait.

The trip to the National Building Museum's Lego exhibit was a big hit.

Fooling around with a Triceratops at the National Zoo.

Emily loved Candy Cane City.

Cousin Peter looks better with moose ears.

Taking Liberties with Miss Burnett

No self respecting Anglophile could possibly be less enthusiastic about season two of Downton Abbey than I. And it seems that Downton-o-philia is everywhere these days. Reviewers all over the Internets are gushing over the escapades of the Grantham-Crawley-Carson family saga (Carson, the butler, being the stand-in for head of household among the downstairs servant family).

But I have a bit of a revelation about Downton that I've being suppressing for several months now. And it's time I tell you all about it.

Two years ago I discovered Persephone Press, a small independent publisher devoted to reissuing long lost late nineteeth and twentieth century authors - mostly British and nearly all women. The first (and so far, only) Persephone book I purchased is The Shuttle by Francis Hodgson Burnett, the same Ms. Burnett who wrote The Secret Garden. I selected the title mostly because of my familiarity with the author, but also because of the enticing plot description:

"The Shuttle, Persephone book no.71, is about American heiresses marrying English aristocrats; by extension it is about the effect of American energy, dynamism and affluence on an effete and impoverished English ruling class." But beyond this, the publisher says, "It is mainly about American energy and initiative and get-up-and-go; this is symbolised by G Selden, the typewriter salesman on a bicycling tour of England, who meets, and charms, Bettina [Van der Poel] and her sister and, back in New York, their father."

Sound familiar? Remember Downton's season one housemaid Gwen, who longed to break free from servitude by enrolling in a mail-order typewriter course? And plucky Gwen does eventually manage to succeed with the help of the youngest Grantham daughter, Lady Sibyl. Gwen's typewriter, along with electrified lamps and the telephone, are early markers in the series of modernity overtaking the Abbey.

The Shuttle, published in 1907, mainly concerns the lifeline provided by young American heiresses to the destitute English landed gentry. Their fortunes were essential to maintaining the great baronial estates.

But what's really interesting to me is the number of similarities between the Burnett novel and Sir Julian Fellowes' version. I wonder whether Mr. Fellowes had wandered into Persephone's shop on Lamb's Conduit Street and picked up a copy of The Shuttle, cocked his head, and thought, "Now here's an idea that I can work with."

So, while I wait for a reply to my question, please take a look at the beautiful piece of machinery above, which is more or less contemporary to The Shuttle and Downton Abbey.

The typewriter shown is The Empire 1 by Williams Mfg. Co., Montreal, Canada. 1892. This model originally sold for $75.00.

And how just modern was this turn of the century iPad? Here, the American G Selden describes the many features of the "Delkoff" typerwriter:

"It's the most up-to-date machine on the market. It has all the latest improved mechanical appliances. You will see from the cut in the catalogue that the platen roller is easily removed without a long mechanical operation. All you do is to slip two pins back and off comes the roller. There is also another point worth mentioning—the ribbon switch. By using this ribbon switch you can write in either red or blue ink while you are using only one ribbon. By throwing the switch on this side, you can use thirteen yards on the upper edge of the ribbon, by reversing it, you use thirteen yards on the lower edge—thus getting practically twenty-six yards of good, serviceable ribbon out of one that is only thirteen yards long—making a saving of fifty per cent. in your ribbon expenditure alone, which you will see is quite an item to any enterprising firm."

If only it was still that easy to save money on printer ink.

Sure, Sir Julian may claim that the structure of Downton was inspired by NYPD Blues and any number of other fast-paced American dramas. But the story line? Plenty of inspiration from other sources, including an obscure novel from one of Britain's best-loved authors.

In the meantime, it's only fair to give Ms. Burnett credit where it is due. Were she alive today, I believe she would be a first-rate and very successful television dramatist.