Observing buttterflies fluttering in my garden I remembered the story of Margaret Fountaine, a Victorian butterfly collector, from Norwich.
Margaret Fountaine, age 24, photograph (Wikimedia commons)
Margaret was born on May 16th 1862 in Norfolk and after her father’s death in 1877, her family moved to Norwich. At the age of 16, Margaret, who was educated at home, began keeping a diary, which she continued until her death. She thought about a career as a painter, she was quite talented, as her sketchbooks show, and spent some years in Milan studying voice. Apparently she was just as talented a singer, but what she really loved was travelling.
A page from Margaret Fountaine’s sketchbooks (Natural History Museum, London)
Strong-minded, eager for adventure and disdainful of convention, she often travelled by bicycle which was quite daring in those days. She started hunting butterflies as a way of making a living. While a lady’s maid could earn 90 guineas a year, a single quality example of a rare butterfly species could fetch three guineas so Margaret could earn enough to have a more than decent life.
Part of the Fountaine/Neimy butterfly collection at Norwich Castle Museum
She visited over sixty countries in her collecting career. After Margaret died in 1942, while collecting butterflies in Jamaica at age 78, her sketchbooks were left to the Natural History Museum in London and her collection of about 22000 butterflies and a sealed metal box went to theNorwich Castle Museum, with instructions that the box remain sealed until 1978. Together they provide an important insight into a Victorian female naturalist who collected, and wrote about, sixty countries on six continents over fifty years.
The collection was put on display, and remains so today. When the box was opened, it was found to contain her 12-volume diary, which she had begun exactly 100 years earlier. The diaries are not only informative but beautiful, adorned with images, pressed flowers and insects. Two volumes of selections from Fountaine’s diaries have been published under the titlle : Love among the butterflies
This article was written thanks to the following sources you can consult online if you want to know more about Margaret Fountaine :
A partir de Jeudi 21 mai à 20H heure française, une pièce de Tennessee Williams, jouée pour la première fois en 1947 et pour laquelle il a gagné le prix Pulitzer en 1948. On se souvient bien sûr de l’interprétation de Marlon Brando dans le rôle de Stanley Kowalski
Marlon Brando photographié sur scène en 1948 par Carl Van Vechten
Cette pièce a été reprise en 2014 par le National thetre et vous pourrez la voir en ligne gratuitement à partir de ce soir.
Pendant, deux semaines, vous pouvez voir cette comédie-romance qui fait partie des dernières œuvres de Shakespeare. Voici le lien vers le trailer et vers la pièce entière:
View of the Great Pavilion filled with visitors at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2019 RHS/Georgi Mabee
The world’s most prestigious horticultural event will still take place – in a digital format.
The ‘Virtual’ RHS Chelsea Flower Show will run from 18-23 May. The RHS is hoping to ‘share the joy of gardening’ with the nation and will be collaborating with growers, designers, landscapers and tradestands for the virtual show.
There’s a hint of a plot about a group of cats competing to rise into the ionosphere on a giant tyre, but the musical is essentially a revue. It is quirkily based on Eliot’s poetry collection ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’, an exercise in high silliness that sits at the classy end of an anthropomorphized-cat-comedy genre
One day. Six cities. A thousand stories.Newsroom, political platform, local hot spot, confession box, preacher-pulpit and football stadium. For generations, African men have gathered in barber shops to discuss the world.
Le Carnaval de Notting Hill est un carnavaltrès populaire qui se déroule le week-end précédant le dernier lundi d’août, le dimanche et le lundi (férié au Royaume Uni), dans le quartier de Notting Hill à Londres.
Ce carnaval fut initié par les immigrés noirs issus des Caraïbes, en particulier de Trinidad qui représentent une forte proportion de la population du quartier. La première édition eut lieu en 1966.
Pour avoir une idée de l’ambiance de ce festival, une vidéo à 360° de l’édition 2019
