Supplement – March 2021
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Supplement – March 2021 Why a supplement? Not a month went by when, within a day or so of submitting my pieces to the David Parr House, I would stumble across additional information or a picture which would have been perfect. And, what to do with the interesting information that didn’t make my 2020 ‘Afterword’s? Moreover, new discoveries have come to light in the interim. The Boat Race, 9th April 1892 Great Ouse taken at Queen Adelaide – Oxford won by 2 ¼ lengths looking down stream, therefore at one end of Photographer: name not given the racecourse, and in the opposite direction. Collection: Hammersmith & Fulham Archives Note: the image is typical of the Fen landscape. Note: William Morris’s house is the largest property with Photographer: Bob Jones – 2008 the brilliant white door surround. Reproduced under creative commons licence ‘Boat Race Day’ Last March’s story was inspired by William Morris’s ‘Boat Race Day’ parties at his Hammersmith home on the Middlesex bank of the Thames. By happy coincidence, the Oxford v. Cambridge Boat Race was often staged on or close to his birthday (24th March). The Boat Race didn’t take place in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The break was significant as the race had been staged every year since 1946. This year, the Boat Race is scheduled to take place on Easter Sunday (4th April 2021). However, the race cannot take place along The Championship Course. Aside from the anticipated Covid-19 pandemic restrictions, Hammersmith Bridge is closed not only to road traffic, cyclists and pedestrians, but also to water traffic, which is not able to pass under it as a safety precaution after cracks were identified in its structure. Instead, the Boat Race organisers have settled on the Adelaide Course, which hasn’t been used since an unofficial race was staged in 1944. On that occasion Oxford won by three- quarters of a length. The Adelaide Course takes in a straight stretch of the Great Ouse between Ely and Littleport and covers a distance comparable to the Championship Course. However, unlike The Championship Course which sees average winning times of around 18 minutes, Oxford’s winning time on the Adelaide Course was 8.06 minutes. At least the race will be covered by the BBC. © 2021 Nicola Gifford 1 William Morris visited many churches and cathedrals in his lifetime. According to Fiona MacCarthy’s biography, he visited Ely cathedral in 1855. Later he visited the cathedrals of Lincoln and Peterborough (and Blythburgh Church) in the East of England, so he would have been familiar with the flat Fen landscape. Whether he would have approved of the Boat Race organisers settling for the Adelaide Course is hard to guess. Ely-based journalist, Graham Stewart, writing for The Critic, (as published on 28th November 2020), wasn’t overjoyed that the Boat Race organisers, having chosen between various ‘differently flawed options’, had decided Ely to be ‘the least dismal’, even though the Great Ouse at Ely ‘…is too lethargic for Pooh sticks’. ‘Since the 1840s it [the Boat Race] has been rowed on the same stretch of the Thames between Putney and Mortlake. Which cox finds the fastest line of the stream, which boat rides out the choppy squall at Chiswick Steps or makes the most of the alternating advantages of the Fulham, Hammersmith and Chiswick bends whilst also meeting the requirement to pass through the middle arch of Barnes bridge makes the race distinctive and interesting.’ Stewart contacted former competitors, who concurred. “I don’t’ think it should be at Ely” says Alex Story, the Olympic rower who was in the victorious Cambridge crews in the 1997 Boat Race and again in 1998 when the course record was set: “The water there is very calm, so there is no stream, no tide. There is always an unpleasant wind. The landscape has no distinguishing features – the cows are the only distractions from the green dullness. It’s narrow, it’s not exciting. It’s a long straight stretch which is good for training but lacks excitement…” “It is similar,” [cox Alistair] Potts suggests, “to the Grand National”. That steeplechase was designed “over massive, dangerous fences that would now be unthinkable”. The Boat Race, he believes, has a similar ethos: “nobody would invent today a twenty-minutes side-by-side struggle through bend and tide until you half-drop dead. It’s older, visceral. It’s a unique challenge the men and women train for, and the public enjoy.” He pauses, and then concludes, “of course Ely can’t substitute for that.” In last October’s ‘Afterword’, I wrote: ‘David Parr worked on the interiors at the Old Swan House. (F. R. Leach & Sons, his employer, was William Morris’s preferred firm of decorators). One suspects he would have taken pleasure in his proximity to the Thames and walking along the, then, new Embankment. ‘ This supplement provides the perfect opportunity to explore what life by London’s great waterway was like when David Parr was deployed to the capital. Frederick Leach provided a quote for work at Old Swan House, in Chelsea, London, in March 1881. As noted in Parr’s diary, he returned to Cambridge on 23rd May 1882 after working on eight named commissions and two stints at the Old Swan House, suggesting his work in London had spanned 1881 and 1882. © 2021 Nicola Gifford 2 Old Swan House Chelsea Embankment, London Designed by the architect (Richard) Norman Shaw and built in 1876. Left: image by Edwardx (cropped) – used under Commons Licence Right: George P. Landow Victorian Web - public domain Left: The illustration of the Albert Bridge and Chelsea Embankment under construction was published in the Illustrated London News on 14th June 1873 – artist not credited. The bridge opened on 23rd August 1873 and the Chelsea Embankment opened on 9th May 1874. Given the proximity to the bridge, the row of houses on the right must form the eastern stretch of Cheyne Walk. The Old Swan House, which hadn’t been built at the date of the illustration, would have been constructed just a spit behind the viewer – the Embankment allowed it to be built closer to the river’s edge than the Cheyne Walk properties. Left: Tudor House, Rossetti’s home, has an ‘A’ above the chimney pot. Source and date not known. When David Parr worked at the Old Swan House, (no. 17 Chelsea Embankment), less than 230m separated him from Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s home. Rossetti lived at Tudor House, (no. 16 Cheyne Walk), on the same side of the Albert Bridge. Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s niece, Helen Rossetti Angeli, wrote in her ‘Dante Gabriel Rossetti: His Friends and Enemies’, ‘At the same time Rossetti was becoming more and more of a recluse. When his brother married in 1874, he could not bring himself to attend the big reception overnight at Fitzroy Square, - after 1877 he ceased visiting outside his own family, and in the last years practically never left his house except when compelled to go away for his health.’ Even so, Rossetti was rarely on his own. He craved company. © 2021 Nicola Gifford 3 19th – 21st September 1881, Rossetti, Hall Caine and Fanny Cornforth travelled to St. John’s Vale, near Keswick in Cumberland, where they strode out on walks. Rossetti was back at Tudor House by 10th November. The relief of being back in London was short lived. He suffered a sudden attack, resulting in the temporary paralysis of his limbs. Re-occurring spells, resulted in him becoming increasingly bedridden. On 4th February 1882, he was accompanied to Birchington-on-Sea where he died on 9th April 1882 (Easter Sunday). In ‘Chelsea Reach: the brutal friendship of Whistler and Walter Greaves’, Tom Pocock wrote, ‘His [Whistler’s] respect for Rossetti lasted until the latter’s death in 1882 when Whistler said simply, “Rossetti was a king”.’ When he was well, Rossetti had enjoyed taking daily walks,‘…mostly towards evening, as his wont was’, Helen Rossetti Angeli wrote in her 1949 biography of her uncle. By the time Parr was deployed to the Old Swan House, Rossetti was mostly housebound. If Rossetti had managed to go for a stroll, maybe Parr had chanced to see him? Or, on a sad note, maybe he had witnessed Rossetti’s effects being removed from his house? Regardless, Parr had taken in the same stretch of the Thames that Rossetti had enjoyed. An impromptu dance – Frederick Brown – self-portrait a scene on the Chelsea Embankment - 1883 1911 Frederick Brown - Private collection Collection: University College London Art Museum > Given the picture was completed in 1883, did From 1877-1892 Frederick Brown was David Parr see Brown making preliminary sketches headmaster of the Westminster School of Art the previous year whilst working in Chelsea? where Aubrey Beardsley was a pupil. If David Parr had headed East along the Embankment towards Chelsea Bridge, beyond the Physic Garden and Swan Walk is Tite Street, where Oscar Wilde was living with Frank Miles and the houses E. W. Godwin had designed for James McNeill Whistler and Frank Miles had been completed in the late 1870s. Left: Frank Miles’s house at no. 44 (formerly no. 1), which he shared with Oscar Wilde. Image: Edwardx - used under Commons License Right: Oscar Wilde’s house at no. 34 (formerly no. 16) from 1884 to 1895. Image: Spudgun67- ditto © 2021 Nicola Gifford 4 Left: The Dancing Platform at Cremorne Gardens 1864 Phoebus Levin Collection: not known – public domain Right: Hammersmith Bridge on Boat Race Day c. 1862 Walter Greaves Collection: Tate Note the advertisement for Cremorne Gardens on the side of the omnibus nearest the viewer.