Things I learned last week
Aug. 8th, 2019 04:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustI am on the train to Bristol, for - well, I'll come to that later. We are now in Darlington, and it has taken me this far - and a change of browser - to persuade my notebook to allow me to connect to the wifi. Never mind, plenty of time to get caught up before we reach Bristol - fortunately, because I have a Post-in-Progress from last week. This time a week ago, then, I was admiring this monument:
It is dedicated to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in honour of her advocacy of inoculation against smallpox, a practice which she encountered in Istanbul where her husband was British ambassador. According to the National Trust, the monument is believed to be the oldest monument in the country dedicated to a living, non-royal woman, a superlative carefully hedged about with qualifications. Was there any personal connection? None that I can see, closer than that her husband's family came from not far away from Wentworth Hall, where the monument stands. I see it as a companion piece to the Temple to Vaccinia about whichsteepholm has posted, erected by Edward Jenner in his garden as somewhere local people could come to be vaccinated. Is it too Freudian an approach to be disconcerted by the grotto serving as a memorial to the man, the obelisk to the woman? Yes, I think it is. It's a needle, dammit, it should make you think of inoculations (not vaccinations, though I had to remind myself what the difference is when I got home).
The monument is in the gardens of Wentworth Hall, on the outskirts of Barnsley: the gardens are now in the hands of the National Trust, while the Hall itself is run by Barnsley Council as Northern College, and the Trust's information sheet is full of reminders of the glory days of the People's Republic of South Yorkshire (and the rather less glorious days of the '84 Miners' Strike). We were taking a break there en route to Malvern for the funeral of my aunt Phoebe.
Phoebe was my last remaining aunt; she was 102 (would have been 103 in September). This doesn't make the funeral any less sad, but it does take some of the edge off, though not, I'm sure, for her daughters, my cousins. But they were all three able to speak at her funeral with as much pride in her remarkable character as sadness for her loss (it's now, of course, after the funeral, that you become really aware of the gap in your life).
One of the things I learned - I can't now remember from which speaker - was that Phoebe's middle name was Clarissa (after an aunt). This struck me as remarkable. Given how fashions in names come and go, I should not be surprised at any name, but Clarissa was completely unexpected.
The other thing was - I knew that my aunt had had several sisters, and that there was a general expectation that some, at least, of these sisters would marry some, at least, of the family of five brothers of which my father was the youngest. (In fact the marriage of Phoebe and the middle brother was the only one.) It was the minister, I think, who alluded to this, and explained it by the close friendship between Phoebe's mother and "Mimo", my grandmother. This was the name by which we knew her, too, and I knew that some of my cousins used it; but I had assumed it was an alternative to 'Granny' or some such, not a nickname that other people might use. Its origin is now even more of a mystery.
Other than that, it was a beautiful sunny day, it's always a pleasure to spend time with the Bears, and with various cousins - and to swap news of those who weren't there. As always, we said how good it was to see each other, and how nice it would be to do it at something other than a funeral... And it would, but we are very scattered.
durham_rambler and I had booked a hotel near Stafford, the Moat House at Acton Trussell, in the hope that this would give us three days of not-too-arduous driving, and a pleasant couple of overnights. Up to a point this worked. The hotel itself was as pretty as it looked on the web, and rather larger, and I should have anticipated that this would make it a weddings hotspot. It was a curious mixture of quite flash and really not trying hard enough: an awful lot of steps with no obvious level access and, what I really can't forgive, terrible weak coffee at breakfast. We'd have liked it better, I think, if we'd had time to explore the canalside setting, but it served us well enough. The location was certainly about right; but we managed to make heavy weather of the travel.
From which we learn - as if we didn't already know! - that it is not enough to work out a route before setting off, and then rely on the satnav thereafter. Wentworth Castle Gardens made a very agreeable afternoon break, but the result was that we found ourselves driving straight through Sheffield in the rush hour. Why through, rather than round? I have no idea. The plan had been to skirt Sheffield and enjoy the drive through the Peak District - and the Peak was very beautiful, if wet, but overshadowed by the long drive through the city (which was fascinating in its own way, and I'd have liked to explore Abbeydale, but not just now). Despite the torrential downpours causing trouble at Whalley Bridge, close enough that we saw road closures at Buxton (not our road, fortunately) we saw nothing worse than rushing streams, so I can't blame the weather for the length of the journey.
Similarly, coming home. It was my own bad decision, I suppose, not to stop at that canalside farm shop and café. We'd barely been on the road an hour, but I could have done with a shot of coffee (see above, breakfast) and assuming there'd be another opportunity was foolish. But at least I understand how we made that mistake: how did we find ourselves skirting the walls of York? Eventually we lunched in Easingwold, and bought provisions in the Co-op there, and it turned out to be a perfectly good stop, but later than we had planned and we were frazzled by the time we got there.
Time for a visit ti The Works to buy an up-to-date road atlas, I think.
It is dedicated to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in honour of her advocacy of inoculation against smallpox, a practice which she encountered in Istanbul where her husband was British ambassador. According to the National Trust, the monument is believed to be the oldest monument in the country dedicated to a living, non-royal woman, a superlative carefully hedged about with qualifications. Was there any personal connection? None that I can see, closer than that her husband's family came from not far away from Wentworth Hall, where the monument stands. I see it as a companion piece to the Temple to Vaccinia about which
steepholm has posted, erected by Edward Jenner in his garden as somewhere local people could come to be vaccinated. Is it too Freudian an approach to be disconcerted by the grotto serving as a memorial to the man, the obelisk to the woman? Yes, I think it is. It's a needle, dammit, it should make you think of inoculations (not vaccinations, though I had to remind myself what the difference is when I got home).The monument is in the gardens of Wentworth Hall, on the outskirts of Barnsley: the gardens are now in the hands of the National Trust, while the Hall itself is run by Barnsley Council as Northern College, and the Trust's information sheet is full of reminders of the glory days of the People's Republic of South Yorkshire (and the rather less glorious days of the '84 Miners' Strike). We were taking a break there en route to Malvern for the funeral of my aunt Phoebe.
Phoebe was my last remaining aunt; she was 102 (would have been 103 in September). This doesn't make the funeral any less sad, but it does take some of the edge off, though not, I'm sure, for her daughters, my cousins. But they were all three able to speak at her funeral with as much pride in her remarkable character as sadness for her loss (it's now, of course, after the funeral, that you become really aware of the gap in your life).
One of the things I learned - I can't now remember from which speaker - was that Phoebe's middle name was Clarissa (after an aunt). This struck me as remarkable. Given how fashions in names come and go, I should not be surprised at any name, but Clarissa was completely unexpected.
The other thing was - I knew that my aunt had had several sisters, and that there was a general expectation that some, at least, of these sisters would marry some, at least, of the family of five brothers of which my father was the youngest. (In fact the marriage of Phoebe and the middle brother was the only one.) It was the minister, I think, who alluded to this, and explained it by the close friendship between Phoebe's mother and "Mimo", my grandmother. This was the name by which we knew her, too, and I knew that some of my cousins used it; but I had assumed it was an alternative to 'Granny' or some such, not a nickname that other people might use. Its origin is now even more of a mystery.
Other than that, it was a beautiful sunny day, it's always a pleasure to spend time with the Bears, and with various cousins - and to swap news of those who weren't there. As always, we said how good it was to see each other, and how nice it would be to do it at something other than a funeral... And it would, but we are very scattered.
durham_rambler and I had booked a hotel near Stafford, the Moat House at Acton Trussell, in the hope that this would give us three days of not-too-arduous driving, and a pleasant couple of overnights. Up to a point this worked. The hotel itself was as pretty as it looked on the web, and rather larger, and I should have anticipated that this would make it a weddings hotspot. It was a curious mixture of quite flash and really not trying hard enough: an awful lot of steps with no obvious level access and, what I really can't forgive, terrible weak coffee at breakfast. We'd have liked it better, I think, if we'd had time to explore the canalside setting, but it served us well enough. The location was certainly about right; but we managed to make heavy weather of the travel.From which we learn - as if we didn't already know! - that it is not enough to work out a route before setting off, and then rely on the satnav thereafter. Wentworth Castle Gardens made a very agreeable afternoon break, but the result was that we found ourselves driving straight through Sheffield in the rush hour. Why through, rather than round? I have no idea. The plan had been to skirt Sheffield and enjoy the drive through the Peak District - and the Peak was very beautiful, if wet, but overshadowed by the long drive through the city (which was fascinating in its own way, and I'd have liked to explore Abbeydale, but not just now). Despite the torrential downpours causing trouble at Whalley Bridge, close enough that we saw road closures at Buxton (not our road, fortunately) we saw nothing worse than rushing streams, so I can't blame the weather for the length of the journey.
Similarly, coming home. It was my own bad decision, I suppose, not to stop at that canalside farm shop and café. We'd barely been on the road an hour, but I could have done with a shot of coffee (see above, breakfast) and assuming there'd be another opportunity was foolish. But at least I understand how we made that mistake: how did we find ourselves skirting the walls of York? Eventually we lunched in Easingwold, and bought provisions in the Co-op there, and it turned out to be a perfectly good stop, but later than we had planned and we were frazzled by the time we got there.
Time for a visit ti The Works to buy an up-to-date road atlas, I think.
