Hans Hoffmann

Posted on 05/04/2018 by carolinemmurray

One of the benign prerogatives of the University of Cambridge is that department and faculty librarians needing to de-access duplicate or redundant books are required to offer them first to the University Library, then to other department libraries. What is left after this process is often offered to staff on a first-come, first-served basis, and thus it was that, a few days ago, I first heard of Hans Hoffmann. Continue reading →

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Preferences

Posted on 01/04/2018 by carolinemmurray

Or are they prejudices? Did I not warm to Bologna because of the oppressive feel of the red stone buildings and the gloomy arcades, or because I don’t much like the paintings of the Bolognese school, or because I lost a filling at the Ristorante da Ercole, and endured a terrible night with the jagged tooth rubbing against my tongue before I found a dentist who charmingly and efficiently put in a temporary dressing? Continue reading →

Posted in Art, Biography, Botany, Gardens, History, Italy, Natural history | Tagged , , , , | 10 Comments

Plant of the Month: March 2018

Posted on 27/03/2018 by carolinemmurray

The primroses are out in splendid fashion this year – two severe blasts of snow appear not to have cramped their style (let’s see what the third, allegedly due later this week, will do). Quintessentially plants of woodland and hedgerow, they seem to be remarkable adaptable, and will grown anywhere that isn’t too dry: which means that the damp problem in my back wall must be worse that I thought, as one is flourishing in the cement just under the doorstep… Continue reading →

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The Holwood Oaks

Posted on 22/03/2018 by carolinemmurray

It’s a complete truism that London used to be a relatively small place, with a great deal of naturally occurring ‘green belt’ both between the City and Westminster, and also between London and the surrounding villages, often used for market gardens (as at Lambeth, Bermondsey, Shoreditch, Whitechapel, Stepney, and Stockwell, to name but a few) to supply the metropolis’s growing population. At the two current Stuart exhibitions – Charles I at the Royal Academy and Charles II at the Queen’s Gallery (do go, BTW) – there are several opportunities to observe that in seventeenth-century views of Whitehall Palace from the opposite bank of the Thames, there are no buildings at all on the south side of the river. Continue reading →

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Burkat Shudi

Posted on 15/03/2018 by carolinemmurray

I had been vaguely aware for some time that there existed in London in the eighteenth century a harpsichord-maker called Burkat Shudi. On 12 March I noticed that his date of birth was 13 March 1702. On 13 March I learned that our own dear Fitzwilliam Museum is in the process of acquiring a Burkat Shudi harpsichord through the enlightened H.M. Government Acceptance-in-Lieu scheme. Since there is no such thing as coincidence, I have deduced that Providence is guiding me towards finding out more … Continue reading →

Posted in Biography, Cambridge, London, Museums and Galleries, Music, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Chapmen

Posted on 08/03/2018 by carolinemmurray

Looking the other day at the brief record of the bankruptcy of Christian Schindler, who may have been the ‘Honest Man’ commemorated by his friends at St Martin within Ludgate in 1830, I was struck by how many of the unfortunate businessmen from all over the country in the same straits (and in the same announcement in the London Gazette) were described as ‘X, Y and chapman’. I had believed that ‘chapman’ was a synonym for ‘pedlar’, an itinerant seller of goods, usually at a fairly low level in society – that is, not having the wherewithal to set up a shop. Continue reading →

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Elphamy

Posted on 02/03/2018 by carolinemmurray

Some of you may know that as well this blog, I also have a Twitter account (@Prof_hedgehog), via which I occasionally share thoughts with the universe, but more regularly tweet about things that happened #OTD, including a Saint of the Day, and a Word of the Day. I get the words from Thomas Wright’s 1857 Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English: Containing Words from the English Writers Previous to the Nineteenth Century Which Are No Longer in Use, or Are Not Used in the Same Sense; and Words Which Are Now Used Only in Provincial Dialects – and I need to point out immediately that Thomas Wright is not Joseph Wright. Continue reading →

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St Martin within Ludgate

Posted on 24/02/2018 by carolinemmurray

I occasionally potter up and down Ludgate Hill, usually in the context of an event at the St Bride’s Foundation, and never without thinking of that wonderful stanza, ‘The timid, inoffensive tapir / Is never in the morning paper. / He might be there, if he would dare / On Ludgate Hill to cut a caper.’ But I had never noticed the church of St Martin within Ludgate until a few days ago, when I was actually going there, for a really interesting day on ‘The “know” in knowledge’. Continue reading →

Posted in Archaeology, Art, Biography, History, London, Printing and Publishing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Plant of the Month: February 2018

Posted on 18/02/2018 by carolinemmurray

‘In regard to plants, no one has treated this subject [natural selection] with more spirit and ability than W. Herbert, Dean of Manchester, evidently the result of his great horticultural knowledge.’

Charles Darwin, in On the Origin of Species

I blinked slightly, when looking up the noble antecedents of the Hon.  and Very Rev. William Herbert (1778–1847), at the statement (in Venn) that he had an uncle called Caroline. Caroline Robert Herbert was born 1751. From Eton, he went to the University of Glasgow in 1770, and became an ensign in the 32nd Regiment of Foot in 1773 (up till that point he had been merely a ‘gentleman’), and ‘retired’ in 1775. He was admitted Fellow-Commoner of Clare College in 1780, and must have been ordained at some point, because, again according to Venn, he was Chaplain to the 1st Dragoon Guards between 1780 and 1782, while simultaneously holding the rectory of Saxmundham, Suffolk, 1780–3. Continue reading →

Posted in Biography, Botany, Gardens, Natural history, Printing and Publishing, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Mr and Miss Morris

Posted on 10/02/2018 by carolinemmurray

I did something the other week which I’d never achieved before: I went to the end of a London Underground line! I have to say that I was a bit disappointed that the Victoria Line remained resolutely Underground until Walthamstow Central – I had assumed that, like the District and the Central lines, it would pop up into the fresh air (like the Mole after spring-cleaning) once it was clear of the chartered streets close to the chartered Thames, but no such luck. Continue reading →

Posted in Biography, History, Literature, London, Museums and Galleries, Natural history, Printing and Publishing, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 8 Comments