Bird On A Wire

Ever since I visited the Warner House in Portsmouth, New Hampshire a few years back and saw the evocative portrait of Polly Warner, I've been intrigued with 18th and 19th century paintings of women with birds.  And there are plenty of them.

In art, women are popular subjects especially attractive women in elaborate dress.  But I was unprepared for the number of paintings of women holding birds - even exotic and dangerous birds.  I wish I could say I discovered a reason for this but there seems to be very little said about the phenomena except to mention the deep connection between women and nature.  I never pretend to be an art expert but I believe I could imagine a few reasons why - one being that birds represent the freedom that often eludes women in life.  I would also say that it is in women's nature to protect small things, especially things that are vulnerable and frail.

The portrait of Polly directly below, appears both wistful and melancholy to me.  There is but a half-smile on her lips and the landscape behind her seems changeable and moody.  Yet a delicate thing rests upon her graceful upraised hand - unencumbered except for a long loose thread - where it seems quite content to be in her presence.

April, Come She Will

A dear friend sent me the most beautiful CD of clear lilting music.  She listens to it during facials and bought two copies, one for me.  Track two is particularly lovely - it's music I imagine as the backdrop to some of my favorite April films.  I hear it echo as I think of Maud Baily in Possession weeping on the floor near her running bath after realizing that her life has been nothing if not loveless.  It plays again as Beth Goodwin in See You in the Morning stands riveted beside the piano of her dead husband.  It is the eve of her second marriage and she relives in detail, her first.  Each heartrending strain arouses my sympathy for her enduring devotion to the man who abandoned her by suicide.  I hear it again as Linda Radlett travels alone by train from Italy to France where she is leaving Christian in a flood of tears only to meet Fabrice, the soon-to-be love of her life in Love in a Cold Climate.  These women are the exemplar heroines of my favorite April movies and my new CD has me thinking of them in the car on my way to work these early spring days.

Until Mary Haynes in The Women (1939) decides to reunite with her estranged husband Stephen, her face is suffused with a sorrow that no number of diamond bracelets on her graceful wrist can erase. The delicate flute on Track 3 nearly has mist gathering in my eyes when I think of Mary's ache as she gently tells her child about Daddy's disappearance.  And the same flute pipes poignantly as friends gather near for the spring brunch she bravely hosts amidst her secret pain.

When Lottie Wilkins and Rose Arbuthnot in Enchanted April step forth into the Italian countryside after their rainy English winter, my heart sighs along with theirs.  Track 6 plays on as I almost smell the hibiscus and bougainvillea that embrace them along with the reaching arms of the sun.  But it is solitary Caroline Dester I root for in the end as she changes the most - just as the winds and husbands blow in, she transforms from femme-fatale to generous friend.  And love finds her yet.

All my April heroines have things in common besides being exquisitely fashionable:  they are determined, hardy survivors who come back to life in spring.  They suffer and lose and then create new worlds to inhabit and flourish in. Just as the earth renews itself alongside them.  The very spindles that prick their dainty fingers have the power to take them out...but it only serves to make them stronger.  

Track 10's triumphant chords are perfect for the final scenes when we discover that new beginnings often don't come at the beginning at all...sometimes, they come at last.  In April.

CD:  The Silent Path ~ Robert Haig Coxon (Thank you Kay!)

The Warner House

I dragged three unwitting participants with me to the Warner House in Portsmouth, New Hampshire yesterday.  My goal was to see a bedspread.  Long on my unofficial bucket list was to view the Betsy Panhallow bedspread reproduced for this historic sea-faring house.  The beautiful coverlet first came to my attention via Piecework magazine in 1997.  It was recreated by a group of Portsmouth women based on Warner House letters and diaries written by some of the women that once lived there.  I had read that the Warner House had closed for the season a week or so ago but I called and asked if someone would give an afternoon tour to my companions and I and an enthusiastic and knowledgeable docent was dispatched to greet us and show off the house.

I was also particularly interested in the ethereal portrait of Polly Warner, above, age 11.  Many family members have occupied the Warner House from the 1700's to the 1930's, and it was difficult to keep track of the many ladies of the house so I am not quite sure who Polly was in the Warner lineage.  But she certainly captured my heart with her pet bird on a ribbon and her serene face. The painting was wall-sized and Polly peered deeply into my eyes as I stared back into hers.  She was painted by Joseph Blackburn, a famous English portraitist who excelled in painting women's lace sleeves and elaborate dress textiles.  He is especially well-known for capturing the beauty of shimmering silks, and was therefore, a favorite artist of fashionable women everywhere.  I was quite dismayed to learn that sweet Polly died at age 20 in childbirth.

The house is extremely livable in that it doesn't have the small low ceilings and narrow hallways one sees in early 18th century homes.  There was an airiness and expanse to the rooms and foyers and often I would glance down at the wooden floor boards and imagine the long sweep of a woman's skirt hem in flickering candlelight as she turned a corner from one of the many bedroom doorways that emptied into the large upstairs hall. 

Eventually I spotted the lovely cream bedspread and viewed up close and personal the level of craftsmanship that goes into making such a beautiful thing.  The knitting needles used must have been the very tiniest, the stitches so intricate and so abrupt in the turning and twisting pattern.  As a knitter, I cannot imagine the time it must have taken to create such perfection and loveliness. 

We moved onto the third floor where suddenly, my thoughts turned to Sara Crewe from The Little Princess and the cold attic existence she had to live when Miss Minchin banished her after Mr. Crewe was lost in the war.  The only interest in the blunt rooms were the string of brass and iron bells flanking the top of one wall, very much like the ones in Downton Abbey's opening credits.  It was clear, these frigid echoing rooms belonged to the servants.

I passed on climbing the curved and narrow stairs to the cupola, especially when I spied a bat's trap on the third step.  Two of our party climbed the claustrophobic passage and were rewarded with a stunning view of Portsmouth Harbor and environs.