First full day in the Reading Room

The most extraordinary St. Pancras Train Station (left). Gorgeous inside and out...and live jazz playing for a function when I visited - hearing Take Five anywhere brightens one's day!


I was in London from July 3 to 6. I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Quilt Show that closed on July 4. The show was fabulous; a lovely mix of quilting from 1700 showing political and social developments through quilting, film, and audio documentary. The film was of a group of prisoners commissioned to make a quilt for the show and what stitching has come to mean to them...walk around the corner and there was their quilt. Beautiful! The audio docs were about the lives of former professional stitchers (who travelled from large house to large house to undertake custom quilting). The audio played as you made your way through that section of the show...multisensory! Loved it! Like most people, I was in tears with the powerful messaging imbedded in many of the works. The commemorative book is on my list to buy when I get home (too heavy to carry). After the show, I went upstairs to the Textiles area and photographed and filmed for a few hours until I had to go to meet my friend, Mary Anne Z, who had arrived that morning from Canada.

The Textile Study Room in the V and A Museum (right). Contents of each case are listed on the end (white notices); trays slide out and study carrels provided to look at pieces in detail. Photography allowed. Dreamy for a textilian!

One of the slide out trays, this one showing a 19th century English printed cotton.







Enroute to meeting MAZ I stopped at the famed Liberty Store (right) and bought the requisite piece of cloth (photo taken from the printed yard goods and carpet gallery with permission). Perhaps, like me, you have seen this shop in a movie?

On July 5 and 6, I attended the British Sociological Assocation Food Studies Group conference at The British Library. The highlight for me was meeting Claude Fischler from Paris whose writing has so influenced my research and thinking. Should you ever want to study at the British Library, the advice I got was this: apply online for a Reader Card, this Card allows one to access the online database. Search said database and order the titles you want about a week or two before you plan to arrive as this will give the BL enough time to assemble your order (the archived works are not on the shelves). Good to know!

Trained back to Alton, popped into three thrift shops to buy a shirt and dress to do my own bit of quilting while at Chawton. That laundry room with huge, well appointed sewing box has inspired ideas in my head to get stitching even though I haven't ever made a quilt!! I also snapped up a vintage, white cutwork luncheon cloth for 4GBP! The buy of the century...

As promised, when I arrived at the Reading Room this morning, a lovely collection of books on cookery awaited. I spent the entire day realizing I don't know anything much at all about the topic. I started making a list of terms I didn't recognize so I could decipher the recipes and by library closing time, my list was 9 pages long! Oh dear. I am here to learn and learn I will!

My work station in the First Floor Reading Room at CHL (left). Didn't realize until later I was not supposed to use a camera in the room. Oops...



Not to worry, this day of sleuthing helped me focus my research to understanding the rationale for all of these recipes. This sent me down the road of learning about the now outdated notion of the four humours and trying to achieve balance of these through diet, bloodletting, etc. A fine day's research indeed!

My 'wow' moment today was figuring out why cookery and recipe books (including Jane's own...yes, it turned out to really be hers) contained recipes for snail water (squashing garden snails and cooking in water along with various herbs, etc.) Turns out this was a substitute for asses' milk which in turn, was a breast milk substitute. Asses' milk and human milk are very close in composition (I did not know this before today) but asses' milk is hard to come by. So a substitute was sought and snail water was it. I also found a substitute for snail water based on pearl barley. The next part of my sleuthing will be to find out to what sort of person this was fed, and to try to do some calculating of the nutrient composition of these substitutes to see how close they really came to breast milk (even though the people who used them had no idea of this information at the time). JA's recipe book says it was for a weak child. I'll see if there were other uses.

Walked into Alton (1 mile away) for a pub meal, meeting up with Mary Anne who is staying at a fabulous B and B (St. Mary's Hall). I recommend googling SMH and watching their video. Absolutely charming and a deal at 50GBP per night!

These two photos show the kitchen in the Stable Block house looking toward what is called "The Snug"...a little room to snuggle up in to read, converse and enjoy a fire, and the conservatory/summer eating area that opens onto our private walled garden (kitchen to the left in that dark space). We all make our own meals; lots of refrigerator and other storage space. Haven't sorted out if anyone else is interested in shared cooking yet. Most VFs seem delighted to have a break from daily meal prep. I love this kitchen so don't mind puttering in it! Yesterday, we received CH fresh eggs from the rescued chickens, and the Head Gardener's homemade black currant jam! Lovely.

MA and I are going to Bath this weekend! Bought train tickets today online.

Until tomorrow...