Fran Smith Writing
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This lady’s real name is Marietta Cotton. She was an artist as well as a model for William Merritt Chase. The painting, made in 1888, is in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
I was taken by the way Marietta directs her steady gaze at the viewer. Her beautiful hands are so delicately captured, as is the single rose on table beside her. The image is sombre and full of subtle detail. It was easy to imagine a stuffed crow, like the one below, on the table and another in a cage on the wall behind.
Left below is an example of a taxidermy crow of the sort I imagined the Earl and his ancestors would have collected.
In the centre is the painting of a poor dead kingfisher by William Henry Hunt (1839). The colour captures the astonishing dash of colour that you see in a kingfisher’s plumage, but (without wanting to be too critical) the beak seems too short if it is the same sort of kingfisher I see sometimes by the river Cam.
The photos to the right show Audley End House, near Saffron Walden in Essex. As you can see, it is not a castle at all, but a very extravagant private house, built in the early 17th century. It was originally a lot larger than it is now. These days it’s open to the public.
If you look very carefully, you might spot the crow sitting right at the top of the weather vane in the second picture. I was delighted when I managed to capture it in the photograph, and took it as a good omen for the book.
The kitchens, dairy and laundry are in a separate block, off to one side, hidden from the main house by a huge hedge. They’re enormous. Armies of servants would have toiled away there. It was easy to imagine a kitchen lad like little Billy Wagstaff being given a corner in one of the many storerooms to sleep in.
