Fairer than younger beauties, more beloved
Than many a wife,
By stress of Time’s vicissitudes unmoved
From settled calm of life;
Endearing rectitude to those who watch
The verdict of your face,
Raising and making gracious those who catch
A semblance of your grace:
With kindly lips of welcome, and with pleased
Propitious eyes benign,
Accept a kiss of homage from your least
Last Valentine.
By Christina Rossetti (1876)
| | |
|
Earlier this year I paid my first visit to 18 Stafford Terrace, the home of Punch cartoonist Edward Linley Sambourne and his wife Marion from 1875 to 1910 (you can read about that visit by clicking here), and I fell in love with the house immediately. Largely untouched by the passage of time, it is a wondrous place to visit if you have a fascination for interior decoration of the nineteenth century; it is the closest any of us is ever going to get to actually going back in time and visiting the Victorians in their homes. You might recognise the interior if you've ever seen Merchant Ivory's A Room with a View, as the house served as the set for the ‘well appointed home’ of Cecil Vyse.
The house is open from mid-September to mid-June and daytime tours take place on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. However, on the 11th and 12th of December this year, 18th Stafford Terrace opened its doors to visitors after dark for an evening of Victorian drama, mulled wine and mince pies. Ryoma and I visited on the 12th. It's a wonderful place to visit in daylight; it is truly magical after dark.
I was fortunate in being given permission to view the house without a tour party and to take photographs of all the rooms. So, in the interest of inspiring you to visit 18 Stafford Terrace after dark, the next time a twilight event is held, I thought I'd share a few of those photographs with you.
| | |
|
A blog by Gina Collia-Suzuki: Art historian, history nut, writer, artist, Victorianist, bibliophile, vegetarian foodie, child of the Enlightenment, friend of Charles Darwin, full-time rat fancier and part-time assassin.
'There are three difficulties in authorship;- to write any thing worth the publishing - to find honest men to publish it - and to get sensible men to read it.' - Rev. Charles Caleb Colton
'A house without books is like a room without windows.' - Horace Mann
'I never desire to converse with a man who has written more than he has read.' - Dr.Samuel Johnson
