Celia Fiennes (1662-1741) was a seriously amazing woman. At a time before people travelled for pleasure, she set out, on horse back and accompanied by only a couple of servants, to traverse every county in England. And she wrote a book about her travels, noting down the normal rather than grand historical facts.
Celia was the fourth daughter of parliamentarian and puritan Nathaniel Fiennes. Being the fourth daughter meant she wasn’t likely to marry so, instead, she rode side saddle around England. As you do.
I found out about Celia tonight at Chawton House in an exhibition called Botanical Women. The house is currently closed (until next week) but this was a special viewing of the exhibition led by the curator, Katie Childs who also happens to be the CEO.
She met us at the door, and I was surprised that she knew I was Gary, having never met me before. It was quickly obvious why. I was the only male there.
Even more surprising was the fact that a few of the other attendees live in Chawton and have never been to the house. They’ve walked passed it, they said, but never into the grounds. At least they’ve corrected that now.
Katie led us upstairs, pausing in a few rooms to tell us some juicy historical facts before we arrived at the first room of the exhibition. She then told us a whole host of things about some pretty amazing women. Celia was just one of them.
There was also Elizabeth Blackwell (1707-1758) who drew the most amazing pictures of plants in order to make enough money to get her husband out of debtor’s prison. He wanted to be all manner of professionals but couldn’t stand waiting to learn things. He also spent all of their money and wound up, locked up.
She successfully had him released by paying off his debts. Upon gaining his freedom, he once more squandered everything they owned, including some of the printing rights of Elizabeth’s book, A Curious Herbal. He left, heading off to Sweden, where he got mixed up in local politics and was beheaded for treason.
I think she was much better off without him and her illustrations are just incredible.
Then there was the sad tale of Henrietta Knight (1699-1756) who, her husband believed, had had a couple of affairs, one with her son’s tutor. The evidence for this was from a couple of love poems the couple wrote to each other. The husband banished her from their home, stopped her seeing her kids and banning her from going to society places like Bath under threat of stopping a stipend he so generously granted her.
She spent the rest of her life at Barrell’s Hall. She transformed the 57 acres into an amazing garden, doing most of the work herself. She may have invented the term ‘shrubbery’. The first known instance of the word is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, from a 1748 letter she wrote where she said: “Nature has been so remarkably kind this last Autumn to adorn my Shrubbery with the flowers that usually blow at Whitsuntide.”
It should be noted that some people claim it was invented by the Knights Who Say “Ni”.
Pre-dating Capability Brown and Humphry Repton, Henrietta created a landscape garden to rival anything that had come before.
By the way, her husband’s father was the notorious cashier at the centre of the South Sea Bubble. He absconded to France with a fortune. He’d have been a banker in 2008.
It would be remiss of me not to mention the Weeder Women. They worked for head gardeners in the 17th century and weeded a lot of the big gardens. They were always women and were paid a pittance for removing weeds, slugs, snails and other pests from the plants of the wealthy.
They reminded me of the Japanese gardeners in Kanazawa, down on their hands and knees, weeding little patches of moss. Mind you, I doubt that the Weeder Women of 17th century England found much joy in their toil. It was probably back-breaking work in all weathers and with nothing to protect their hands which would then have to go home and cook dinner.
And speaking of dinner…it was then time to indulge in a Botanical Supper.
The last time I was at Chawton was for the night of the scary story back in October when we, again, had supper. This time, however, the meal was all botanical or, as people seem to call it these days, vegetarian. Which, as Mirinda pointed out, was the third time this week.
Carrot and coriander soup followed by an amazing feta and dandelion tart, finished off with a spectacular slice of orange and rosemary cake. All delicious.
Having eaten sufficiently, we then left by the back door and headed home to two delighted cockerpoos.
What an excellent night.
