The Past brought to Life
Love this monument in St Margaret’s Uxbridge to Dame Leonora Bennet.
She lies there resting on her arm with an insouciant air. She had three husbands before spending the rest of her life on good works. And the sculptors John and Matthew Christmas seem to me portray her as an attractive woman.
Love the contrast with the glimpse into the Charnel House below with the jumbled bones almost fighting to get out.
I didn’t know the full story of the birth of Athena until I went to the Feminine Power exhibition at the British museum.
So Zeus eats Athena’s mum, Metis, who is pregnant with her. Sometime later he has a cracking headache. Hephaestus, the disabled artificer God hits Zeus over the head to clear the headache.
Zeus gives birth to a fully formed Athena from the split in his head.
The point, I think, is that Athena being partially a clone of Zeus had both male and female virtues and is thereby the most powerful Deity.
And even the most elite families are deeply f***** up.
There is a lesson in there somewhere.
Posted earlier today on Facebook.
AKA the Elgin Marbles. All my life it seems as if we haven’t been talking to Greece about sending them home. Recently, there was a strong dismissal of any such hope. But today, I read that the British Museum is open to discussion. Statements from the Deputy Jonathan Williams and even the Chairman, ex Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, have expressed optimism that there is a ‘deal to be done’.
Reading between the lines, the position appears to be based on the ‘fact’ that we own them legally, and that, by discussion of mutual loan arrangements, some, if not all, of the stones, can go home on loan, in exchange for other loans from Greece coming to the UK.
Nearly, all ‘restitution’ cases are settled by the realisation that there are mutual benefits to be had for the return of items. The Horniman is leading the way with its announcement to return 72 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria.
The statement from Nigeria suggests that mutual loans are a part of the deal here too.
Abba Tijani, director-general of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), said: “We very much welcome this decision by the trustees of the Horniman Museum & Gardens. Following the endorsement by the Charity Commission, we look forward to a productive discussion on loan agreements and collaborations between the NCMM and the Horniman.”
As a keen boat user of the River Thames, I am distressed to read that the source of the River Thames has ‘dried up’ for the first time. It is now five miles further down the River than it was.
This is a graph by Flourish who make superb business graphics. Just watch as you see the composition of the Stoke Newington Church Street change year by year before your eyes.
Stoke Newington Church Street businesses by type 1847-2017
I wrote about the custom of Wife-Selling which appears as the main plot driver in Thomas Hardy’s 1886 masterpiece ‘the Mayor of Casterbridge’. Later in the book another folk custom brings the erstwhile Mayor to the brink of suicide. This was the Skimmity Ride, or Skimmington Ride.
The ride, which has deep roots in history, was designed to humiliate a member of the community and it consisted of a procession through the streets of the community with music or at least percussion instruments. Those being mocked, or an effigy of them or a local dressed up to look like them rode a horse or donkey or sat on a pole.
The illustration above is from the early 17th Century. It is in Montecute House, in Somerset above one end of the Great Hall of Sir Edward Phelips, who rose to the top of the legal profession becoming Master of the Rolls. And yet he choose to have a representation of popular justice in this prestigious part of his house. ( more information here)
The ‘offence’ is seen on the left – a neighbour sees the wife hit her husband over his head with a clog while he is trying to get a drink of beer at the same time as holding the swaddled baby. They live in a simple thatched cottage.
The normal interpretation is that she is ruling the roost and taking over the man’s role. It is he who is being punished for losing control to his wife and he is seen ‘riding the stang’, or pole either in person, or in effigy, or played by a stand-in. It would be nicer to think he is being punished for being drunk in charge of a child. The Skimmity Ride is heading from the couple’s home to the Church, and thus shown as involving the entire community.
In the fictional ‘Mayor of Casterbridge’ skimmity ride effigies of the ex-Mayor and his lover, Lucetta Le Sueur, are tied back to back on a donkey and paraded through Casterbridge. She has just married the Mayor’s rival and on seeing the skimmity ride has a seizure which kills her. Henchard, full of remorse, decides to kill himself in the local river, but as he looks down into Ten Hatches Hole he sees an image of himself which stops him jumping in. It turns out to be his Skimmity effigy but he, none-the-less, sees it as divine intervention.
William Hogarth also portrays a Skimmington Ride in his illustration for Samuel Butler’s ‘Hudibras’. It illustrates the cacophonous nature of the Skimmington with horns and percussion the main forms of ‘music’.
You might also like Cunning Men in Thomas Hardy’s fiction.
The Society of Antiquities newsletter ( Salon: Issue 494) reports on a restitution deal of one of the major collections of Benin bronzes back to Nigeria.
The Bronzes, which are actually Brasses, are from the Royal Palace of the Kingdom of Benin which was looted by the British during the Benin Expedition of 1897 as part of British subjection of Nigeria.
Wikipedia reports that ‘Two hundred pieces were taken to the British Museum in London, while the rest found their way to other European museums. A large number are held by the British Museum[ with other notable collections in Germany and the United States.’
The Smithsonian has recently made a similar arrangement to restore their brasses to Nigeria, and UK collection The Great North Museum: Hancock, has followed suit joining Jesus College, Cambridge and the University of Aberdeen. (The Art Newspaper)The British Museum has refused and is indeed prevented from so doing by an Act of Parliament.
An interesting sidelight on the collection is that the wealth of the Benin Kingdom benefited from income from the slave trade.
This is what The Society of Antiquities newsletter ( Salon: Issue 494) says:
Last week, Germany signed a restitution agreement with Nigeria. The agreement covers 1,100 artefacts currently held by the Linden Museum in Stuttgart, Berlin’s Humboldt Forum, the Cologne Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, Hamburg’s Museum of World Cultures and the State Ethnographic Collections of Saxony. The agreement immediately puts these objects into Nigerian ownership; the affected Museums will then
The Society of Antiquities newsletter ( Salon: Issue 494)negotiate directly with the Nigerian Government whether they return to Nigeria, or remain in Germany under custodial agreements.
Lai Mohammed, Nigeria’s Culture Minister, described the agreement as ‘the single largest known repatriation of artefacts in the world’. It was marked by the return of two Benin Bronzes – an eighteenth century 35kg head of an oba and a 16th-century relief depicting an oba accompanied by guards or companions. German foreign minister, Annalena Baerbock, said ‘It was wrong to take the bronzes and it was wrong to keep them. This is the beginning to right the wrongs.’
Image credits: The returned Benin Bronzes, Martin Franken
I was in St Pauls yesterday on an exploration of London’s History. My group had headsets so they can hear me talking into my mic without disturbing others. We went in, sat down in the nave to find an orchestra set up in the crossing with a grey haired man, informally dressed, at the podium. I hate talking through music so wondered whether I would continue.
I began my introduction to St Pauls with a piece about Londinium and Christianity. A tremendous universe shattering cord erupted from the Orchestra deafening me. Then a pause, so I continued. I ascertained that my group could hear me, and I continued. I paused during crescendos and to some extent improvised what I was saying to the amazing drama of the atonal music. It was quite an experience and the music was amazing
This morning I had a chance to check it out and it turns out that I spoke through rehearsals of Olivier Messiaen’s Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AU7gVYM5bVE)
And the grey-haired man was none other than Sir Simon Rattle conducting the LSO.
I think I have the right piece of music. They are performing in St Pauls on 23rd June
https://www.stpauls.co.uk/whats-on/london-symphony-orchestra-triomphale-gala-concert
I’m slightly shamefaced about it but on the other hand the group really enjoyed both the music and the explanation.
Arise, O Sun!
Let the Darkness of Night
Fade before the beams of your glorious Radiance
Midsummer, astronomically, is 21st June. So, summer has started. But, meteorologically speaking it has been here since the beginning of June.
In Christian London celebrations were at their height on the Church’s Midsummer’s Day, 24th June, on the Vigil and Day of St John the Baptist (23rd, 24th June). Stow points the way:
‘every mans doore being shadowed with greene Birch, long Fennel, Saint John wort, Orpin, white Lillies, and such like, garnished upon with Garlands of beautiful flowers, had also Lampes of glasse, with oyle burning in them all the night, some hung out braunches of yron curiously wrought, contayning hundreds of Lampes, light at once, which made a goodly shew, namely in new Fishstreet, Thames Streets, &c’
Survey of London, John Stow
Bonfires from the night before were smouldering, where the ‘wealthier sort’ set out tables, furnished with ‘sweete beade and drinks plentifully’ where ordinary people could rub shoulders with the rich and ‘be merrie with them in great familiaritie’. There were large processions of ‘Captains, Lieutenants, Sergeants, Corporals, &c Wilfers, Drummers, and Fifes, ….Ensign bearers, Sword Players, Trumpeters on horseback, … Gunners, …. Archers, …Pike Men, ….Pageants, and, poor people in straw hats holding cresset lamps to make a show in exchange for a wage. All accompanying the Lord Mayor, Sheriffs each with their own Giants, Henchmen and Pageants from the Little Conduit in Cheape to Aldgate, and back via Fenchurch Street.
Midsummer was a mix of May Day, Halloween and a street festival with ‘Robin Hood games’, bale fires, the ‘summer pole’ dancing, merriment and pervading sense of the uncanny.
First published in 2022, revised and reposted in June 2024
The Perpetual Almanac of Folklore by Charles Kightly reminds us that
‘The water of these strawberries distilled is a sovereign remedy and cordial in the palpitations of the heart, that is the panting and beating thereof’
William Coles Adam in Eden 1657
Mrs Grieve tells that it is good against feverish conditions, for the stone, gout and dysentery. The fresh fruit removes discolouration of the teeth if the juice is allowed to remain on the teeth for 5 minutes (then clean the teeth with warm water and bicarbonate of soda).
Wiping the face with a cut strawberry will whiten the skin and remove slight sunburn. Tougher sunburn rub the fruit well into the skin, leaving it on for 30 minutes, wash off with warm water with a few drops of tincture of benzoin (a balsamic resin.
Warning, the remedies are ancient and I have no idea how effective they are!