Is Belgravia the new Downton Abbey? Well... not judging by the first episode! More of a poor man's Vanity Fair if you ask me. Oh well, I expect I'll watch it anyway.
Nice to spot the cherry garden here pretending to be Brussels!

It's arrived ... and I only ordered it on Tuesday.  I have not allowed myself to unwrap it as I'm really supposed to be at work. What I'm actually doing is browsing Simnel cake recipes but, hey, we Waspi women need to get our priorities right!

Such a beautiful dancer and I haven't seen her dance since she left the Royal Ballet. I'm not sure that yesterday's bitty mixed programme at Sadler's Wells was wholly successful - but Alina Cojocaru would be lovely to watch, even if she were running round with the hoover. And a Saturday afternoon at Sadler's Wells surely beats a Saturday afternoon at Waitrose! She made a heartbreaking Marguerite but Armand couldn't measure up to her. Nice to see the film tribute to her old teachers at Kiev.

What with rain and storms and waiting for plumbers and waiting for deliveries, I've only been as far as the dustbin for what feels like days and days - so by 6pm tonight I was feeling cabin fever and fortunately it was late opening at Two Temple Place. Bliss, there was hardly anyone there ...
And this exhibition of women textile collectors turned up one lovely thing after another. Including this silk taffeta spencer that looked as if it should have been worn by Emma. Or maybe, given the military-style epaulettes, by Lydia Bennet.
Of seven collectors featured, five were unmarried ... no surprises there, with time and money to do their own thing.

I'd never heard of Edith Durham who travelled to the Balkans in 1900, when she was 37, to recuperate after years of nursing her invalid mother. She returned year after year, travelling on horseback with local guides, 'wearing a waterproof burberry skirt and a Scotch plaid cape,' collecting textiles and nursing wounded soldiers - and generally being an indomitable spinster! 

These are her peasant shoes, made of twine and oil-soaked hide, in which she walked many miles.



Olive Matthews (1887-1979) became interested when, as a child she inherited this huge linen handkerchief from her great-great-grandmother Susanna Pearce - commemorating a visit to Drury Lane Theatre on July 9, 1774 - along with Susanna's shoe buckles, black silk shoes and prayer book.
She began collecting at the age of 12, with her 2s6d weekly allowance from her father; which struck me as tremendously generous as 2s6d was still the going rate for pocket money when I was 12 in the 1960s. Olive was initially interested in collecting furniture but that was discouraged for reasons of space. Probably just as well, as her textile collection eventually numbered 3,000 items. Her treasures were found mostly on London markets and she prided herself on never paying more than £5. It did make me wonder what the person with an eye and a limited budget should be collecting today.
Lovely little exhibition - and it's free to get in. Cabin fever assuaged - though tomorrow I'm back to waiting for the plumber!

I wouldn't say that the mushroom exhibition - three small rooms at Somerset House - is terribly vaut le détour unless you happen to be in the courtyard already and it's a very short détour. (Though why would you be, until the Courtauld re-opens?)
But I did like the tiny display of Alice editions, especially this very anachronistic one from 1932.
Shoes and lampshades made from mushrooms, though, were hideous - and the lovely Beatrix Potter watercolours of fungi were hung too high, which was a shame.

Alas, not nearly enough Mrs Gaskell - and far, far too much of the deeply-uninteresting on-and-off love life of Nell Stevens. Sorry, Nell - but I just don't care!
Of course, I should have read the author's blurb before I started. You teach creative writing ... enough said!

Christina Georgina Rossetti in a Tantrum (Dante Gabriel Rossetti)

Has there ever been such a lethargic January! (There probably has!) Last Friday evening, I nipped out   for a loaf of bread, then on a whim - the Co-op is opposite the Tube station - thought I'd jump on a train and catch the last hour of late-opening at the National Portrait Gallery. What an inspired idea, though I'm not wild about the noisy music there on Friday nights. 

Loved this sketch of Christina Rossetti in a paddy ... quite a change from the usual Pre-Raphaelite stunners. (There's still time to catch Pre-Raphaelite Sisters, if you're quick.)

And after she'd calmed down ...

This is what Christina wrote about her brother Dante Gabriel's muse Lizzie Siddal, after Lizzie's death from post-natal depression and an opiate overdose.


One face looks out from all his canvases.
One selfsame figure sits or walks or leans:
We found her hidden just behind those screens ...

He feeds upon her face by day and night,
And she with true kind eyes looks back on him ...

Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dream.

It was sad to see a lock of Lizzie's dark, auburn hair, rather darker than in this portrait: 

The Awakening Conscience (William Holman Hunt)

Annie Miller met Holman Hunt when she was a 15 year-old barmaid and he paid for her to be educated in the manners of a lady, worthy of being his wife. He ended their engagement on the grounds of her frivolity - and offered her assisted emigration to keep her from going astray. (You're so pretty, you will lead men into temptation - so get thee to the colonies - they used similar arguments to imprison girls in the Magdalene laundries!)

But Annie carried on modelling and lived to be 90. 

 The Blue Bower, Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Lazy laughing languid Jenny, Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea ... 
wrote Rossetti, inspired by Fanny Cornforth's harvest-yellow hair. She also posed for this and this: one critic called her a 'nasty, common-looking creature.' When she put on weight, Rossetti called her 'my dear elephant' (but he was her 'old rhinoceros.' )

I was very taken by this photograph of a delightfully pretty Angela Thirkell in 1910, wearing a dress inspired by the one her grandmother Georgiana Burne-Jones wore here.  That must have been some dressing-up box!