Dropping in on Tennyson (again) (properly this time)

Those of you who have read this blog for a while might be able to cast your minds back to 2014 (when we were all so young and beautiful) when I wrote a post on visiting Farringford, home to Alfred Lord Tennyson.  At that time the hotel was under a great deal of restoration and the such-like but in recent years a transformation has occurred and now common folk, like what I am, can pay their shilling and have a good old shufty around the majestic home of the Laureate.  So I had a damn good wash and got on a ferry...

When I visited half a decade ago I was tempted to lurk in a hedge like a Tennyson groupie, but this time you are directed to a nicely appointed car park at the other end of the garden.  Having got myself booked in to my tour (there are a few every day and I went for the lunchtime one) I got to potter around a beautiful garden where some bumble bees were getting lushed on giant thistles.

Bumble bee, getting plastered in pollen and rightly so

Making my way towards the house, I skirted round to find the Watts sundial.  Designed by Mary Seton Watts as either a gift and/or a memorial, it reminded me naturally of the chapel at Compton.

One side of the wonderful sundial...

Oh look, it's time for my tour!

Well, that's just splendid and nestles in a little cutting just off the main path to the house.  I was fortunate that the day I visited was hot and sunny (unlike the rest of the week) so I got to see the garden in all its glory, but onwards I tramped, up towards the house...

Massive important tree!

I had to wait a bit before being collected for the tour and so I made my way onto the lawn rolling down from the front of the house and visited the massive Wellingtonia tree opposite the front door which bears a very battered plaque...

When Giuseppi Garibaldi, illustrious military leader and biscuit, visited in 1864, he planted the tree and now it towers grandly out the front, well part of it anyway.  I got to have a bit of a lounge on the front lawn before being admitted to the house itself...

You are let in as part of a small group so that you are neither hurried nor crowded.  We were escorted through to a small room by the conservatory in order to collect our audio guide and be relieved of bags and coats.  There is no photography in the house, so the photos of the interior below come from Farringford's own site...

Tennyson's study, with two globes, one terrestrial and one celestial

Actually, it's a bit of a relief not to have a camera because you are not worrying about taking images, nor getting in the way of anyone taking their own snaps. You are free to just immerse yourself and have a good wallow because what has been achieved in the interior of the house is stunning.  The first room you visit on the tour is a room of such breath-taking blue that it is almost overwhelming.  Seriously, the price of entrance is worth it for that room alone. Around the top is the Parthenon frieze from Julia Margaret Cameron, a fragment of the original still clinging on for dear life.

Precious fragment of the classical frieze

The Tennyson family lived in the house from 1853, when they fled London and the interest from growing groups of celebrity hunters, until Tennyson breathed his last in 1892.  Within the walls poems such as Maud were penned, children grew up and friends were entertained.  While this is undoubtedly the house of one of the 19th century's most imposing figures, it is also the home of a family who weathered a fair few tragedies.

Maud (1875) Julia Margaret Cameron

You tour the house with a little audio guide which gives you a description of each room with the option for more information if you want it.  A team of lovely guides shepherds you discreetly from one room to the next, at your own pace and you are never hurried, which is a blessing as the walls are absolutely covered in art.  Paintings by G F Watts and photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron are everywhere, not to mention the furniture, books and details such as Tennyson's pipes and smoking hat (I do love a smoking hat).  The poet's famous billowing cloak and 'wide awake' hat (it has no nap) are tucked in a little nook that scared the life out of me as I caught sight of a figure out of the corner of my eye, stood in shadow.

Yes, but which of us hasn't sidled up to a hot chap only to discover it was only a hat and cloak?

After going up and down stairs and ending up in the most magnificent study, I really felt I had an insight into the home life of the Poet Laureate and his family and it was a rather sweet and lovely insight too.  Rather than being left with the impression of an imposing but distant establishment figure, Tennyson came across as a devoted husband, delighting in games with his sons and being joyfully bullied by his rambunctious neighbour.  The fact that he seemed to have been liked immensely by people who came to his house was also telling.  He also didn't overpower the narrative of the house either with Emily's story coming through clearly as well as that of Hallam and Lionel (poor Lionel), and Audrey, Hallam's first wife.  I was delighted to find May Prinsep represented strongly as well as Watts and Mrs Cameron.  This is a house not of a single man but a series of relationships, all fascinating.  It is also a house in which you feel welcome, something I also suspect the Tennyson family would have approved.

The house is open during the season from April to October and pre-booking is wise as it is popular.  Information can be found here and I can't recommend a visit enough.  I certainly shall be returning.

Monday 10th December - Jane Senior

Today might be a bit of a ramble, so bear with me.  I wanted to talk about Mrs Nassau Senior, Jeanie Senior, and that wonderful portrait of her by G F Watts, however she isn't exactly an unknown woman.  Famously, she was the first female civil servant, co-founder of MABYS (as discussed in Pinkie Ritchie's post), and a score of other worthy achievements, but what fascinated me was that given all her work, intelligence and achievements, he chose to portray her like this...

Jane 'Jeanie' Elizabeth Hughes, Mrs Nassau Senior (1857-8) G F Watts

Don't get me wrong, this is absolutely one of my favourite Victorian paintings, let alone one by G F Watts, and no illustration online or in a book can do it the justice that standing in front of it can offer.  It is luminous and glorious and thoroughly wonderful, but what does it say about the woman who, after all, was the inspiration for Dorothea in George Elliott's Middlemarch?

Jane Elizabeth Hughes, daughter of author John Hughes (1790-1857) and sister of Tom Brown's Schooldays author Thomas Hughes (1822-1896), came from a comfortable, privileged background.  Aged 20, she married Nassau John Senior, also the child of a famous father, this time controversial economist Nassau William Senior.  Surrounded by literary and intellectual figures, it seems to many commentators that it was natural that Jeanie Senior would embark on such a wide range of important work.  Not only that, she would also have time for stuff like this...

The Rescue (1855) John Everett Millais

One of the most striking aspects of Watts portrait is that satin-y, crinkled golden hair and here it is again.  Apparently, this was a bit of a controversial image when it was displayed, with the viewer feeling a little uncomfortable at the sight of a middle-class woman holding her arms out to a large, muscle-y fireman with no husband in sight.  However, here again is the sight of the passive Jeanie, this time a damsel in distress at the mercy of the elements and relying on a burly gent to sort her life out (chance would be a fine thing).  Mind you, in the 1850s Jane Senior had not achieved the works that we know her for today.  Also, her husband's career was not sparkling nor particularly lucrative and in the 1860s they lived in Battersea, Elm House, which they afforded through Jeanie's money rather than her husband's earnings through his involvement in his brother's wine business, as well as the money from her mother who lived with them.  The marriage was apparently not a happy one, so maybe the idea of being rescued by a large man in uniform seemed a jolly fine idea.  But then Jeanie was rather more useful than that.

Jane Elizabeth Senior (1864-66) Julia Margaret Cameron

As Anny Ritchie wrote in From the Porch (1913) 'Stately and charming people used to assemble at Elm House. It is an odd saying that people of a certain stamp attract each other. It was a really remarkable assemblage of accomplished and beautiful women who were in the habit of coming there, that home so bare, so simple yet so luxurious.'  Interestingly from this description it is easy to suspect that it was intentional minimalism on the decor front, yet something drew people to Elm House, and that was Jane Senior.  Even without her later (and sadly cut short) achievements, her list of friends hints at a woman with intelligence, wit and more than just the beauty which was captured in Watts' work as well as images by Millais and Julia Margaret Cameron.

Possibly it was her own uncertain financial situation that made her interested in those in more dire straights than herself.  In 1870, she was involved in gathering aid for the victims of the Franco-Prussian war, instrumental in the National Society for Aid to Sick and Wounded in War, which would later become the British Red Cross, for which she received the Red Cross medal.  She became Assistant Inspector of Workhouses in 1873, for which she wrote a report and this work led her to produce writings on the lives of girls living in poverty.  In 1875, she was a co-founder of the Girl's Friendly Society and then a co-founder of MABYS, but by this point she was suffering from the cancer that would kill her in 1877, aged only 48.

Choosing (1864) G F Watts

In Watt's portrait, Jeanie is bending over her flowers, watering the lily of the valley plant growing from the ornate pot.  Lily of the Valley, in the Victorian language of flowers, represented the return of happiness, but as Mrs Senior had been married for 10 years by this point, and not happily, it would seem that would be an odd meaning to apply.  There are cut, discarded flowers scattered around the floor including other lilies - I wonder if he wanted to imply that Jeanie had the sort of nature that made her continue to nurture while others destroyed?  That she could not help but to tend her blossoms despite the doomed nature of them?  Could it possibly be a comment on her marriage? Watts had used flowers in an arguably slightly less symbolic way in his portrait of Ellen Terry - she doesn't realise that the fragrance comes from the modest violets rather than the showy camellias implying Ellen is attracted to the showy rather than appreciating the quality.  Mind you, was he saying that she held love and faithfulness in one hand, while holding the camellia which represented 'my destiny is in your hand'?

Watts was a very close friend of Jane Senior.  I looked in Mary Watts' diary for mention of Jane, and on Saturday 2 July 1887 Mary wrote that she and her husband spent a happy morning looking over scrap books of his early sketches arranged by Jane Senior.  Watts declared that the scrapbooks were good specifically because Jane Senior had arranged them.  In her two-volume biography of her husband, Jane Senior gets more of a look in, with an interesting assertion that Watts had been drawn to Jane because of her 'bright and spontaneous out-of-doors nature', but seeing as Watts was not exactly the vigorous man of the countryside, this seem a bit doubtful.  Jane was a regular at Little Holland House (probably where she met Julia Margaret Cameron, and why she travelled to the Isle of Wight when she became ill) and although we now see the portrait of Jane Senior as being the portrait of a great campaigner and philanthropist, it isn't.  When that painting was created, Jane Senior was a young woman in an unhappy marriage, but she was also a bright woman, the woman who had the great work of her later life inside her.  Reading through the letters between Watts and Jane quoted in Mary Watt's biography, you get the idea of a woman who is involved in the social and cultural life of Little Holland House and that social circle is enlivened by her attendance.

When she died, Watts wrote 'I have lost a friend who could never be replaced, even if I had a long life before me; one in whom I had unbounded confidence, never shaken in the course of a friendship very rare during twenty-six years - Mrs Nassau Senior, who I dare say you will remember talking about with me ... when you read the biography of [Jane] ... very few canonised saints so well deserve such glorification.  For all that makes human nature admirable, lovable and estimable, she had very few equals indeed, and I am certain no superiors.'

Jane Senior, c.1870s

 Maybe then the point is this - the portrait Watts did of Jane Senior is not a portrait of the first female civil servant, the owner of a Red Cross Medal, the co-founder of charitable societies.  It's a portrait of his friend.

See you tomrrow.

Friday 16th December - the Angel of Compton

Blimey, we really are on the home straight now, aren't we?  This is my penultimate Friday before Christmas, which seems an odd thing to point out, but there you go. Today I have angels and a sneaky book review...

Interior of the Watts Memorial Chapel, Compton

If you have ever had the pleasure of visiting the Watts Memorial Chapel in Compton, near Guildford in Surrey, you will know it is heaven on earth.  One of the most beautiful places in Britain (in my humble opinion), it is a small and perfectly formed chapel in the heart of a steep sloping graveyard.

Splendid little building!

Anyway, not only are there angels inside the building, but they are also all over the graveyard on the graves...

Angels!

And all over the outside of the building too...

Wing-y Head Angels!

This was the vision of the artist Mary Seton Watts, who created the entire site with her band of local craftspeople.  The whole display defies pigeonholing into one particular style, being sort of art nouveau-ish, Arts and Crafts-y, Celtic Revival-esque and delivered in a vivid terracotta and jewel-coloured paint.  If you have never been to Compton, I urge you to go because it is unlike anywhere else.  If you are visiting London from abroad, it's not that far down to Guildford and then onwards.  It is unique and wonderful.  All this brings me to another reason for featuring Compton's angels...

At first glance this is a very unpreposessing-looking book.  The cream cover is decorated with a small woodcut, but otherwise it looks fairly plain.  Inside, however, it is one of the most fascinating and illuminating books I have read for a long time.  These are the diaries of Mary Seton Watts between 1887, just after she had married George Frederick Watts, to 1904, Watts' death and Mary's withdrawl from her diaries.  She called them  'Fatima', each little fat book where she wrote her days out in tiny writing, and through these diaries we get to know Mary and her life with Watts.  What is immediately obvious is that she idolises him.  What becomes apparent is that he is very lucky to have met such a gem of a woman...

Mary Watts by Frederic Hollyer

It's not that Mary doesn't record exactly what sort of man she married.  I have a lot of time for G F Watts and his art, but the more I know about him the more of an enabled child I feel him to be. This Mary knows and reflects in her reports of him.  She quotes her Aunt Mela - 'He has kept his soul like a little child's.  Who can fail to love him as one does a darling child, & reverence him as a great intellectual being with a life's experience behind him.' (June 17, 1887).

The reading niche in the Red Room at Limnerslease, designed by Mary Watts

This is in no way just a domestic diary of a doting wife.  I enjoyed reading the accounts of her work and how well they contrast with her accounts of her husband.  She is fierce vitality, he is more fragile: 'Worked like a tiger at my ceiling all moring, the glass door wide open & the sun streaming in ... He is still feeling tired & low, the effect of the beef diet only.' (February 10, 1891)

Self Portrait (1882) Mary Seton Watts

I was immediately scurrying around the index finding mentions of all the people in Mary's life.  I was interested in people like May Prinsep (who naturally is very present in the lives of the Watts), but also people like Lord Leighton, Burne-Jones, Holman Hunt and Oscar Wilde are part of the couple's wide social circle.

Mary Seton Watts in the 1920s

I can't think of anyone who wouldn't find Mary's diary fascinating.  She touches on London high art circles, the Pre-Raphaelites, the Freshwater crowd and all points in between.  If you love Victorian art and literature, you have a friend in Mary Watts as she and her Fatimas recorded in tiny detail life at the centre of the cultural scene in the latter part of the Victorian age.

Mary's Studio, with the fireplace she designed

One of the unexpected delights of the book are the photographs, some of which you might know but some I had never seen before. They also are helpful illustrations to the depth and skill of Mary's work which often gets overshadowed by her husband's reputation.

George and Mary Watts outside Limnerslease

Each year in the diary is prefaced by a summary of the events, which is helpful, and Desna Greenhow, the editor of the volume, has done a wonderful job of adding footnotes and an introduction which places Mary in context before we meet her though her own words.

Mary Watts at work...

I think you deserve to buy yourself a Christmas present as I'm sure you have all been very good.  This is the sort of gift that keeps giving and you too can spend time getting to know Mary Seton Watts and her world.  It will be time extremely well and pleasurably spent.

To buy The Diary of Mary Watts 1887-1904 visit here (Amazon UK) or from a bookshop near you, or of course from the Watts Gallery!  It will be released in America in May 2017 and can be pre-ordered here.

Six Degrees of Agnes Mangles

As I have said before, I have a particular fondness for this photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron...



Vivien and Merlin  (1874)

It seems very apparent from Cameron's photographs that she found older men very attractive (and who doesn't?) but I think the photographs of Vivien and Merlin are a very overt referrence to this.  In the images she shows her husband, Charles Hay Cameron, falling under the spell of the beautiful, twenty four year old Agnes Mangles.  In one image, she is seen beguiling him, her arm outstretched.  Charles Cameron has closed his eyes, the sourcerer Merlin caught in a web of magic.   The more powerful of the two images shows Vivien pressing her fingers into the old man's beard.  He looks down at her, seemingly comfortable in his superiority, unwary of how he is no match for her.

Now, you know me, I like a dig to find out things about the models and so was interested to find out more about Agnes Mangles, placeholder for Mrs Cameron, and what I found made me realise what a small world it is...

Vivien and Merlin (1874) Julia Margaret Cameron

 Miss Agnes Mangles was born in 1850, the youngest of a large family that numbered almost a dozen children.  Her father, Captain Charles Mangles had political aspirations in Southampton but these were never realised as he failed three times to get elected as an MP.  From a long line of gentlemen of daring and fortune, Captain Mangles was a director of the West India Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, whose home port was Southampton. In 1869, The Hampshire Chronicle reported on the launch of the RMSPC  ship 'Nile' from the Northam Ironworks, in front of 'an immense concourse of spectators'.  The ceremony of naming was performed by Agnes, daughter of the chairman of the company.

The Nile, launched in 1869

Captain Mangles and his family lived at a very well appointed house called Poyle Park in Surrey (now demolished, typical).  The Captain died in 1873, leaving less than £7,000 to his widow Rose, who was by that time living in France in the Chalet de Violette in Cannes.  Although Agnes was still quite young and unmarried when her father died, her eldest brother, a solicitor, was almost twenty years older than her and so the loss of Captain Mangles does not seem to have affected the family's social position, despite the relatively modest amount he left to his widow.  It seems likely that the family was staying on the Isle of Wight when Julia Margaret Cameron seized her chance to photograph Agnes as both Vivien and also Tennyson's heroine Mariana...

Mariana (1875-6)

It is unclear whether Cameron's photographs were taken during one season or over two years, 1875 and 1876.  From the works involving Mary Ryan and May Prinsep and their respective partners, it is clear that Cameron loved women on the brink of marriage and Agnes married in September 1876.  Her husband was Arthur Wakefield Chapman (later Sir Arthur), a partner in a jute company in Calcutta, later JP and unsuccessful MP (not unlike her father).  Much like Mary Ryan and Julia Margaret Cameron, Agnes became a colonial wife, going with her husband first to India where their eldest son Paul was born in 1877, then to Italy where younger son Michael followed in 1880.  Arthur Chapman was a close friend of Edwin Lutyens who designed a home for them in 1890...

Crooksbury House, nr. Farnham (thank you, Country Life)

 The seven bedroom house near Farnham was sold last summer apparently, for £2.5M.  Very nice too.  The Chapman family settled into life in Surrey society and Michael married Lilian Mackintosh in 1906.  Lilian's name might well be familiar to some of you...

Lilian (1904) G F Watts

Lilian Mackintosh was the orphaned daughter of friends of George Frederick and Mary Watts.  She was the love-child of Major General Henry Dyer Abbott and Alice Maud Mackintosh, and her mother died when Lilian was three. Lilian was befriended by the Watts' in 1889 and following her father's death in 1892, she became their adopted daughter or ward (how very Gilbert and Sullivan).  Maybe it was because of the connection to Julia Margaret Cameron or maybe it was just chance but Agnes and George Frederick Watts became family through the marriage of their children in 1906. It seems a shame that neither of them lived to see it, as Agnes died only a few months before Watts, in May 1904, at home in Crooksbury House, aged 54.

Much like most families of their generation, the Chapman family was not left untouched by the First World War.  Michael and Lilian lived in Toronto for a while before he went away to fight, and subsequently die in April 1918 in Nieppe, Nord-Pas-de-Calais.  His wife was left with two children, Anthea and Ronald, who remained close to Lilian's family in Compton.  Mary Watts designed the War Memorial in Compton where he is remembered on the first panel.

Compton War Memorial, unveiled in 1922

Agnes' grandson, Ronald, shared his mother's love of G F Watts and his work and published The Laurel and the Thorn in the 1940s. It seems a coincidence that two of Julia Margaret Cameron's models would become related through the marriage of their children but I suppose it is just indicative of how small social circles could be.  I like to think of it as a little bit of Cameron magic weaving together her muses from beyond the grave and I'm sure it would have made her happy to know how the extended family of her art remained together, after a fashion.

The Other Fraser Tytler Girl...

I find it very interesting how certain people are lost in time.  A poet for example can just be forgotten, whereas another flourishes, despite being celebrated in their own time.  It is particularly curious when the poet is related to someone else who remains in the cultural consciousness.  Today's post is about just such a person.  This is the life of Christina Catherine Fraser Tytler...

Mrs Edward Liddell (Christina Catherine Fraser Tytler) (1877) Mary Seton Fraser Tytler

Now, before we start, let me just mention her name and its variations.  She is alternately known as 'Christina' and 'Christiana' and sometimes there is a hyphen in her surname.  For the sake of consistency I am sticking with Christina, but I'll explain Christiana later.  I'll leave the hyphen out, although it seems to be something the family used or dropped as they felt like it.  Right, on with the story...

While doing the research for this post I was reminded of the life of another lovely young woman, May Prinsep, to whom Christina and her family had links.  Christina was born 13 February 1848 in Bombay, India, the second daughter of Charles and Etheldred Fraser Tytler.  Charles worked in the East India Company's Madras Civil Service and was an associate of Thoby Prinsep.  When Etheldred died after giving birth to Mary Seton Fraser Tytler in 1849, Charles sent Christina, her older sister Etheldred and baby Mary back to live with their grandparents William and Margaret Fraser Tytler in Aldourie Castle on the shores of Lock Ness...

Well played, Aldourie Castle publicity chaps, well played...

The girls spent a decade growing up in the Highlands before their father retired and returned to his native Scotland with his second wife Harriet, in 1861.  They brought their sons Charles (1854-77), Edward (1856-1918) and William (1861-1935) as well as sister Eleanor (or Nelly) (1855-1909).  Another half sister Eva (1857-1859) had died in infancy in India.  Charles moved his wife and all of the children to a new home, Sanquhar, in Forres.

Sanquhar House (also known as Burdsyard)

Fraser Tytler family and friends outside Sanquhar, 1865

Although the family had land and decent connections, they were not wealthy and so it fell to the sisters to make good marriages. Etheldred never married, dying a spinster barely a year after her half-brother Edward, in 1919, both at their grandparents' castle by Loch Ness. Christina and Mary had other things but love on their mind.  Christina wanted to be a writer and her sister, an artist, but the usual round for girls of their class continued.  On Wednesday 23 Mary 1866, Christina was brought to St James' Palace in London and there presented to the Princess of Wales in the Queen's Drawing Room as one of many debutantes coming out into society.  Making their way in society seemed inevitably to lead the Fraser Tytler girls to Freshwater...

Christiana Fraser-Tytler (1864-5) Julia Margaret Cameron

Christina and Etheldred (known as Ethel) went to stay in Freshwater and obviously fell into the hands of Julia Margaret Cameron.  The photograph of Christina (or 'Christiana' as Julia called her) shows a beautiful young woman in a meditative pose.  When the sisters visited London in 1867 they visited Little Holland House and met G F Watts.  Christina and Ethel returned to Freshwater in 1868 and brought Mary and Nelly with them, again calling at Dimbola Lodge...

The Rosebud Garden of Girls (June 1868) Julia Margaret Cameron
(Nelly, Mary, Christina, and Ethel - unknown girl in foreground)

The Rosebud Garden of Girls (June 1868)
(Nelly, Christina, Mary and Ethel)

The Three Sisters / Peace, Love and Faith (1868) Julia Margaret Cameron
(Christina, Nelly and Ethel)

On 20 June 1868, the sisters visited Dimbola in Freshwater and Cameron photographed them in images inspired by Tennyson's Maud.  Each sister is representing a flower:

The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near;'

And the white rose weeps, 'She is late;'

The larkspur listens, 'I hear, I hear;'

And the lily whispers, 'I wait...'

 

The sisters are bowed together like flowers, their similar faces emphasising their sisterhood.  I love The Three Sisters as it most clearly highlights the age difference between Ethel and Nelly, a decade between them, but also the deep love between them all, Mary not in the edited shot, but her sleeve seen on the far right. The poet and diarist William Allingham visited Dimbola on the day of the photograph and remembered the Fraser Tytler sisters - 'Meet girls going up the stairs in fancy dresses, Mrs C. has been photographing a group, and appears carrying glass negative in her collodionised hands. 'Magnificent! To focus them all in one picture, such an effort!'' When the poet Henry Longfellow met the Fraser Tytler girls in July 1868 he declared 'It was worthwhile coming to England to see such young ladies.'

 

 

Sweet Violet and Other Stories (1868-9) illustration by Mary Fraser Tytler

In December of 1868, Christina published her first book, Sweet Violet and Other Stories, which contained 6 illustrations by her sister Mary (who remained anonymous using her initials, M. F-T).  It was published as part of the 'Christmas books' section, intended as gift-books for girls and young ladies.  The Edinburgh Evening Courant reviewed it well, commenting that Christina 'has no inconsiderable power of portrait painting and for drawing suitable distinctions of character. We feel most readers will feel compelled to fall in love with "Sweet Violet".'  In one of the adverts for the book Christina is listed as 'Christiana' which I would have thought was a spelling mistake, but in the photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron she is also often listed as Christiana.  I can only guess that it was either an affectionate variation or an effort to make her name more poetic at the beginning of her career.

 

It was around this time that Christina met and fell in love with Edward Liddell, a vicar (to become Canon of Durham Cathedral) to whom she became engaged.

 

Christina Fraser Tytler (1870) Mary Fraser Tytler

Edward fell gravely ill in April 1870 and almost died.  It would be almost 18 months until he was well enough to marry Christina, on 26 September 1871 at St John's Church, Forres.  They were married by the Bishop of Moray and Ross and the church was filled by local people and gentry.  Edward was related to the Liddells of Oxford but also to the Duke of Wellington's family (his mother was a Wellesley) and so the guests included lords, ladies, a countess and a member of parliament.

 

Christina Liddell (nee Fraser Tytler) (September 1871) Mary Fraser Tytler

As a respectable married woman, Christina continued with her career, publishing novels Jasmine Leigh (1871), Mistress Judith (1875), Jonathan (1876) and poetry collections Songs in Minor Keys (1884) and Songs of the Twilight Hours (1909), as well as appearing in different publications such as Good Words for the Young, the Good Words Annual and  the Sunday Magazine. She is sometimes listed as 'C. C. Fraser-Tytler' and sometimes as 'Mrs Edward Liddell', as well as simply 'Fraser Tytler'

 

Note that she also played with the name 'Fraser Tytler' avoiding the woman-novelist stigma

Marriage suited her - a family friend Francis Jenkinson wrote in a letter home that he had seen Christina in March 1879 looking 'so plump and well, you would hardly have known her.' Christina wrote on religious subjects, much of her poetry using Christian themes and tone which may explain why her work is not better known today.  It is obvious that she found a great deal of comfort in her faith, channelling such traditional Victorian subjects as art through a Christian eye.  For example, in 'Love and Art', a male narrator tries to understand the woman he loves by beseeching a poet, a painter and a composer to replicate her in their art form but nothing could match the wonder of God's creation, the woman herself. In a very Tennysonian poem, 'Crossing the River', published in Songs in Minor Keys, Christina considers how it would be to cross the river that separated the living from the dead:

 

Ah, could we follow where they go

And pierce the holy shade they find,

One grief were ours - to stay behind!

One hope - to join the Blest Unseen -

To plant our steps where theirs have been,

And find no river flows between!

 

George and Mary Watts at Limnerslease, Compton



 Of all her siblings, Christina seems to have been especially close to Mary, and to her husband George Frederick Watts, whom she had met prior to Mary's meeting with him. Watts admired Christina's poetry, writing that he envied her gift of words - 'Words won't come to me! If I try to come at them they seem to fly over the waste and I only see a whisking tail!'.  In Emilie Barrington's G F Watts Reminiscences (1905) she quoted a letter he wrote in 1886 that he felt Christina's poems had 'a waft of sweet air in them'. It might have been this closeness that brought Christina and Edward to move to Puttenham, a neighbouring village to Compton, after his retirement.  They lived out the remainder of their lives in Birdshanger, which miraculously still stands today (you know my track record with people's houses) and I got to linger outside their massive gates and hedge on a recent visit up to the Watts Gallery...

I lowered property values just by my presence...

Edward died in 1914 and Christina in 1927, Christina leaving almost £6,000 to her sister Mary (equivalent to £300,000 in today's money).  Both of them are buried in a grave just outside the memorial to George and Mary at the Compton Cemetery...

Edward Liddell - Priest (and his dates)
and his wife Christina Catherine (and her dates)

Christina's work is not well known now and not many copies of the original books seem available to buy, at least not at an acceptable price.  You can download a lot of her work for free however -  Jonathan is available here, Songs in Minor Keys is here, plus others can be found through the Hathi Trust Digital Library. I hope to return to the subject of Christina and her sisters later in the autumn...