[Vwoolf] Cabbages 'n' Kings

[Jeannette Smyth]

Dear Friends:

1.
King

According to Ferdinand Mount, Mad Jem Stephen, VW's first cousin (1852-1911) is to this day commemorated at Eton where he "remains an unblemished demigod."  While he is little remembered anywhere, Woolfians mostly know him as the scion in an earlier generation of madness in the Stephen family, and as Stella Duckworth's importunate suitor. He was, apparently, an immortal player of the Wall Game still remembered a century after his sad death. It is touching in a way, but also an insight into the heart of the patriarchy -- the very playing fields of Eton which form the character of the patriarchs -- this sort of sentimentalism around athletes dying young.

http://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/rarebook/exhibitions/images/stephen/large30.jpg 
http://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/rarebook/exhibitions/stephen/30.htm

As players of Eton's Wall Game passed the loving cup from hand to hand on St.Andrews' eve, in prep for the first game of the season, players in Mount's day each said In piam memoriam J.K.S. 

Fact-checking 50 years later, Mount found Jem was still being remembered with the same words, though now at the celebratory dinner after the game rather than before.

http://www.amazon.com/Cold-Cream-Early-Other-Mistakes/dp/0747595070, p. 81

2.
Cabbage

Anny Thackeray Ritchie (as well as The Nun, Caroline Emelia Stephen) had the room of her own and the 500 pounds a year, and wrote well-received novels Leslie serialized in The Cornhill. 

I didn't realize Anny and Leslie had lived together during Minny Thackeray Stephen's lifetime, and most unhappily for a time thereafter. Henrietta Garnett has written a bio of Anny of interest to scholars trying to trace the thread of Woolf's feminism, as well as Leslie's place in haute Bohemia. 

Thackeray was a huge rockstar, and one startling bit of info Garnett shares is the numerous prostitutes who attended his high society funeral. Also of interest to wonks is the Thackeray sisters' close relation to the even bigger rockstar Dickens' daughter Katie Collins (brother in law, Woman in White), in addition to Julia Margaret Cameron's establishment at Freshwater. Where The Nun introduced Minny to Leslie. The book also has a photograph of Laura Stephen as a little girl, and an account of her life I have seen nowhere else.
http://www.amazon.com/Anny-Biography-Thackeray-Ritchie/dp/0701171294


Take care,


Jeannette Smyth



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