Mysterious Husband – A Novel. In Four Volumes. First Edition 1801. Photo: Courtesy of Chawton House Library.
Eye - 06 February 2015
From recipes to Light
Restoration and recipes
Quaker cookery books dating back to the 1700s are among thousands of volumes in need of restoration work.
Chawton House Library in Hampshire is a research and learning centre for the study of early women’s writing from 1600 to 1830. It is housed in the manor house once owned by Jane Austen’s brother, Edward Austen Knight.
The collection of around 10,000 books and manuscripts was recently surveyed by a library conservator, who said that ‘the books are looked after with great conscientiousness and care’.
However, historical damage (prior to the volumes arriving at the library) has meant that up to seventy-five per cent of the collection requires urgent attention.
The Alton Herald reported in December that the Library’s response has been to launch a Book Conservation Appeal.
The George Cadbury Fund contributed the first donation of £2,000 to the appeal. Due to this connection with Friends, some of the first books to be restored include Quaker texts such as the Richardson, Pease and Gurney family recipe books.
Information on the collection can be found at www.chawtonhouse.org
Quaker sightings
Eye readers have been glimpsing Friend-related mentions in the media recently.
A ‘back-handed compliment’ was spotted by Connie Hazell, of Bournemouth Meeting, amongst the leaves of Winifred Holtby’s novel The Land of Green Ginger, set in the 1920s. She writes: ‘A character, who today we would describe as being “right wing”, is scathing about the newly formed League of Nations, calling it “A Quaker imposition”.’
Meanwhile, Jenny Vickers, from Wells-next-the-Sea Meeting, got in touch after discovering ‘The last word’ in The Times of 12 January featured Isaac Penington’s words: ‘Our life is love, and peace, and tenderness; and bearing one with another, and not laying accusations one against another; but praying one for another, and helping one another up with a tender hand.’
Finally, Friends have been the unexpected inspiration behind a new comic novel by US congressman Steve Israel. In an article for The Washington Post, by Karen Heller, Steve revealed that the ‘spark’ for The Global War On Morris came when he learned that the NSA (National Security Agency) had accidentally done surveillance on a group of Quakers.
He said: ‘If it’s happening to this group of elderly Quakers, it has to be happening to other people. That night I went home to my apartment in Washington and created Morris Feldstein… because I don’t know about elderly Quakers, but I do know about Jewish guys on Long Island, whose whole philosophy is, don’t get into trouble.’
A different kind of Light
A recent news story piqued the interest of Geoff Pilliner, of Alton Meeting.
The story spoke of The Light ‘tempting back audiences that have been turned off by the generic multiplex experience offered by the market leaders.’
However, talk of ‘a café-bar concept’ and ‘showings of sport, opera, live theatre and music’ reveal that this is not The Light on the Euston Road in London but an independent ‘community’ cinema operator aiming to ‘bring personality back to city centres’.
The Daily Telegraph of the 30 January reported that The Light had recently raised over £5million to buy a muliplex cinema in Cambridge, in addition to the two other UK cinemas it currently runs.
