Milton's Cottage In Chalfont St. Giles, UK

 

Can you find Chalfont St. Giles on this map?

This is the fireplace mantle in the room where John Milton completed Paradise Lost, and began Paradise Regained. The framed black and white engraving to your left was done by William Faithorne and shows Milton at the age of 62. This appeared as the frontspiece for Milton's History of Britain. 

Here's a view of the cottage from the side garden.

Here's another, same side garden vantage point.

 

Some front views of 21 Deanway in Chalfont St. Giles. Note the cottage has been linked to and nearly swallowed up by a Georgian-era home attached to it. The garden entrance is to the side and extends behind the cottage.

This is what the cottage would have looked like during Milton's stay. He fled London due to the Great Plague in 1665, and stayed at the cottage due to the Great Fire. This painting, Milton's Cottage In August, 1774, is by Thomas Jones.

Below are some shots of the garden taken with my phone during the final week of June, 2024.

Here is a link to the Milton Cottage Museum, which was established in 1887. https://www.miltonscottage.org/

Below are two images lifted from the Internet. 

This is the cottage kitchen, where the museum features locks of hair from Milton's head which were removed in 1790 along with his teeth, one hand, and some of Milton's jaw from his grave at St. Giles Cripplegate.

The kitchen also houses First Editions of the Aereopagitica, and my favorite Milton poem, Lycidas. 

The photo is by Tony Shaw. 

This is the type of period chair and desk that Milton would have used in the very room where he wrote Paradise Lost, keeping warm by the fire, and using the window light and candles to guide his quill.

The photo is by Quentin Wright.

Below is one copy of a first edition of Paradise Lost among many original manuscripts on display in the cottage. The museum's publshed guide claims it has twenty copies of different Firsts of this poem, including a second edition, which Milton edited, and a 4th edition with engravings by Medina which is the first illustrated poem in the English lanaguage. 

This particular image is the 7th printing of the First Edition, of which 1,300 were made between 1667-1669.  

The museum's collection has 25 different translations of the poem, including one in Serbo-Croation completed by Milovan Djilas, the Yugoslavian dissident who was once supported by Tito and then imprisoned by him. Djilas is alleged to have made the translation in prison onto thousanbds of sheets of toilet paper. 

I would like to share this moment experienced during my visit, one that reminded me that poetry in English, in all languages, is still very much alive. It comes from every kind of voice, every race, gender, ethniticy, you name it. Perhaps John Milton would have celebrated this. One can only hope. 

This is from the interior of a car on the Metropolitan train, taken while I was riding back home from my visit to Milton's Cottage. Poems On The Underground. Such a pleasant surprise, indeed. 

Here's the website for Nii Ayikewi Parkes https://www.niiparkes.com/.

 

Charleston Farmhouse, A Photo Essay, Part Four, Interiors, The Studio

 

"Making things -- visual or literary -- was Bloomsbury's dominating passion. It was also, in a paradoxical way, its link to the nineteenth century past that it was at such pains to repudiate."

Janet Malcolm from A House Of One's Own

Above, Stephen Tomlin's Bust Of Virginia Woolf

From the official Charleston website: 

https://www.charleston.org.uk/object/3128-2/

This bust of Virginia Woolf which sits atop the chest of drawers in the studio is by the British sculptor Stephen Tomlin – a friend of the Bloomsbury group. He was bi and enjoyed many love affairs within the group. Fellow artist, Duncan Grant, and the writer Lytton Strachey were among his lovers. Frances Partridge, a writer also closely associated with the group, described him as a heartbreaker.

He was a talented sculptor and made portrait busts of several of his friends. In 1931, he asked to sculpt a portrait of Virginia Woolf, but the process didn’t exactly go smoothly. Firstly, Virginia hated being looked at and needed much persuading to even sit for the portrait. Secondly, with so many demands on her time, it became – Vanessa Bell recalled – ‘quite impossible for her to get half an hour free from her friends and admirers.’ In the end a frustrated Virginia decided to call it a day. The original plaster bust remains here and despite the struggle, it captures a good likeness.

Tomlin died in 1937, aged only 35 – ill health exacerbated by alcoholism and poor mental health. Virginia remarked it was a ‘tragic, wasted life’. His busts of Lytton Strachey and Duncan Grant are also on display in the house, and his sculpture of David Garnett is in the Orchard.

Though the photographer is unknown, the larger photograph above, atop the shelf to the viewer's left, is of Vaslav Nijinksy.

"During my tour of Charleston, I had been struck by the amount of space Clive occupied in the house -- he had a downstairs study, an upstairs library, a bedroom, and his own bathroom. They are decorated with Duncan's and Vanessa's usual painted panels, windowsills, bed boards, and bookcases -- but they are more elegant and more luxurious. Clive had evidently wanted his little comforts and conveniences, and he had got them."

Janet Malcolm from A House Of One's Own

"We should have felt it to be not merely wrong, but unpleasant not to work every morning for seven days a week and for about eleven months a year. Every morning, therefore, at about 9:30 after breakfast each of us, as if moved by a law of unquestioned nature, went off and 'worked' until lunch at 1. It is surprising how much one can produce in a year, whether of buns or books or pots or pictures."

Leonard Woolf, Autobiograpy Volume 4