Those who have read Dickens, Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hardy, Robert Louis Stevenson or Henry James will be familiar in fiction with one of my favourite interesting places in London - for it is here that so many characters lived and where so much fictional action took place.
This is where the Invisible Man (of the H.G. Wells novel of the same name) ran through the streets leaving the wet footprints from invisible feet that drew the attention of two young lads who chased him, followed by a gathering crowd amazed at the phenomenon – but fortunately for the fleeing Invisible Man, were obstructed by the progress in the opposite direction of a Salvation Army Band – so he got away to contemplate the predicament in which he found himself.
It is also here that J.M.Barrie chose to locate the Darling family nursery from which Wendy and the other Darling children flew with Peter Pan.
Barrie said that he chose the location for the family because it was where Mr. Roget had lived – and as Roget’s Thesaurus had been Barrie’s sole companion in early days in London, he ‘wanted to pay him a little compliment’ by situating the story here – in Bloomsbury.
Bloomsbury is described in 1906 by E.V. Lucas in A Wanderer in London. as:
"a stronghold of middle class respectability and learning. The British Museum is its heart: its lungs are Bedford Square and Russell Square, Gordon Square and Woburn Square: and its aorta is Gower Street"
Today, the description remains valid, and when I wander its streets absorbing its history, I use the British Museum as my compass.
Across the road is The Museum Tavern, familiar to those who read Sherlock Holmes. In The Case of the Blue Carbuncle it appears as the “Alpha Inn”. The original pub here was built in 1723 and the character of the place remains the same with its woodwork and lovely mirrored bar.
Until 1762 it was called the “Dog and Duck” reflecting the patronage of duck hunters in what were known as ‘the long fields’ behind Montagu House –one of the grandest great houses of London, but then on the outskirts of the city.
What is now called Bloomsbury is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 as having vineyards and “wood for 100 pigs”, only becoming known as “Bloomsbury” in 1201 with the building of a Norman Manor.
Over ensuing centuries, ownership moved from the Crown to the church and back, finally being granted to the 1st Earl of Southampton and passing later to the Russell Family with the marriage of the heiress to the Southampton title to the 1st Duke of Bedford.
The influence of the Bedfords, whose family seat is Woburn Abbey, is what we have inherited today.
The original Bedford ownership has been reduced from 112 acres (a little over 45 hectares) to currently around 20 (about 8 hectares) – including the sort of addresses that even as Monopoly Players, we would be glad to own.
In 1854 the Duke of Bedford provided sewers along most of bLoomsbury’s streets and had them connected to the newly installed “water closets” (polite term for toilets) in the houses of the Bloomsbury estate.
It was later reported in The Lancet that this may have contributed to the low infection rate in the area during the cholera epidemic of the same year.
Donald Olsen, in his review of London’s town planning history in Town Planning in London states that the Bedford estate was far from typical and could have been the “the best managed urban estate in England”.
Now, on Bedford Square behind these almost duplicate entrances are establishments of suitably serious intent.
Many of the houses were designed by Thomas Leverton.
Leverton was a well-respected architect and on his death endowed a charity to annually support from the joint parishes of the area:
“six deserving females who may have fallen from affluence into distress”.
Josiah Wedgewood felt that there should be a thorough history of those who had participated in the political making of the nation, and started to document 75,000 of his parliamentary predecessors up to 1918 in a national dictionary of parliamentary biography
At first it was impossible to gain recognition and proper funding for this important documentary study, but eventually it was finally funded as a Trust in 1940, and received proper status and funds from Treasury in 1951.
"The History of Parliament" is a rigorous and ongoing work and comes with an overview of the times to set the context. It records so much to flesh out the character of the times and the changing face of British political involvement.
For example:
The Commons 1640-1660
This period includes some of the most turbulent events in the whole course of British history: the Civil War, the trial and execution of King Charles I and the interregnum regimes of 1640-1660.
The Short Parliament of 1640, the Long Parliament and `Rump’ (1640-53, 1659-60), the Nominated or 'Barebones' Parliament of 1653, and the three Cromwellian Parliaments of 1654, 1656-8 and 1659 were all difficult assemblies: the very legitimacy of some of them was contested.
It was an exceptional period in parliamentary history... Members of the Nominated Assembly of 1653 were not elected at all, but were appointed under the patronage of Oliver Cromwell.
Currently the surviving papers are being assembled in digital content in a partnership with the Bodlian Library.
Here is the link to the projects:
I was mentally comparing her plaque with those for more traditionally noted former residents. For example - this older plaque for the scientist Henry Cavendish who discovered the elements that comprised “inflammable air” or hydrogen.
(for readers with American English, the British English meaning of inflammable is “capable of being set on fire” ).
When he died in 1810, Cavendish was one of the wealthiest men in the land – but he had been so secretive and socially inept during his lifetime, that it was not until the end of the century that a review of his papers revealed how insightful was his unpublished research.
By either discovery or preliminary experiments Cavendish had papers on what later was attributed to others who did publish. This included, according to Wiki:
“Richter's Law of Reciprocal Proportions, Ohm's Law, Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures, principles of electrical conductivity (including Coulomb's Law), and Charles's Law of Gases”.
Even unpublished, all that is worthy of a plaque.
To my very great surprise I found just how deserving a lady she was to be so remembered.
Although not as wealthy as those whom she supported may have thought, she was a generous patron of the arts who did a large amount of quiet good works and support for the artists of the time and whose force of character and uniqueness stays with us through literature.
Otteline Morrell had a remarkable circle of friends - including W.B.Yeats, T.S. Eliot (who was nearby in his Russell Square office over a forty-year period from 1922 - being poetry editor at Faber & Gwyer -later Faber & Faber) as well as many other intellectuals, artists and innovative thinkers from politics and commerce.
Her husband infidelities were many – and Lady Otteline’s subsequent lovers reputedly included Bertrand Russell, as well as some well-known artists of the period.
The Morrell town house on Bedford Square was also a regular gathering spot for the now famous Bloomsbury Set with their exploration of new ideas and of new concepts of morality. The group included a variety of other artistic and far- thinking intellectuals besides the more famous Virginia Woolf, E.M.Forster and John Maynard Keynes.
Individually their stories are fascinating – together, they must have been a most remarkable group.
Lady Otteline was photographed by the noted photographer Sir Cecil Beaton, her portrait was painted by many of the artistic greats of the era - and her legacy lives on in literature.
Many believe Lady Otteline Morrell to be the inspiration for D.H.Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley.
Hermoine Roddice in Lawrence’s Women in Love was said to be modelled on her- as well as Aldous Huxley’s Mrs Bidlake in Point and Counterpoint and Graham Greene’s Lady Caroline Bury in It’s a Battlefield -as well as several other characters in lesser known novels of the early 20th century.
She is also featured in film: Derek Jarman’s Wittgenstein and Christopher Hampton’s Carrington.
Lady Otteline Morrell is certainly not only worthy of her blue plaque, but her place in literature – and our respect. Her support of the arts has left us such a legacy, and as Benjamin Franklin said:
An investment in knowledge
always pays the best interest
This is what Bloomsbury is all about. It is peopled with the characters and the places of which history has been made, and dotted with suppliers to the arts of today - like L. Conelissen which has been supplying artists from their store in Great Russell Street since 1855.
Bloomsbury is know for its publishers – not just for the one of the same name who brought us Harry Potter.
Some are unobtrusive…
There are bookshops of every sort in the area, from occult…
The London Review of Books is something of an icon in literary circles – having produced a review of books, culture and ideas every two weeks over the last 30 years.
Here is the link: London Review of Books
(I am still looking for one - as it's an amazing camera)
An interest in artists and artistic products – and some wit - appear throughout Bloomsbury, as witness this shop with beautiful interior design fabrics - “where the immovable object meets the international lonely girl”.
If you enter the area from Holborn Tube Station and look up – on the corner of Catton Street and Southampton Row you will see John Bunyan, the author of The Pilgrims Progress, watching down on you. He died in Holborn in 1688.
There is Pushkin House, with its extensive collection of Russian literature - including copies of the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary.
Published between 1890–1906, this was a collaboration between publishers in both Leipzig and St Petersburg and comprises 35 volumes in the small version and 86 in the larger one.
It pre-dated its English cousin, the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
It now houses lawyers offices, being close to the four Inns of Court - to one of which each barrister in England must belong.
I was drawn to examine these friezes up close and found at their heart, appropriately for the area: a book - to which representations of the contents were attached..
Here there are presentations, models, forums, debates and explorations about the remaking of modern London.
The gallery is free and open to the public every day but Sunday.
Get involved!
Here is their website with program of events:
In Coriolanus, William Shakespeare wrote:
What is the city but the people?
Bloomsbury continues to draw me back, for it was the home of so many people who have influenced our lives and given literature so much colour and life. In its present day, it still holds fascination, not only because it has a sort of familiarity from literature - where it features so often.
It still has a feel of art, of inspired thought – and of being a haven of peacefulness in London - one of the world’s most loved and visited cities.
A walk through the streets of Bloomsbury is an adventure - not just of the day on which you travel – but into the past.
If you spend the time to pause and look – and imagine - in your exploration you can travel with some of history’s truly fascinating characters.
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