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Spinsters Abroad: Victorian Lady Explorers
‘Subtle, acute and fascinating’ – Sunday
Times
When I first started travelling, I wasn’t brave enough
to go on my own. I took a sturdy Victorian woman traveller with
me on each of my journeys – Mary Kingsley to West Africa,
Marianne North through North America and Isabella Bird up the
Yangtze. Instead of Lonely Planet, I used their published books
and journals as guides. Spinsters Abroad is a result of these
journeys. It’s not my story – it’s the Victorian
spinsters’ stories - Mary Kingsley
breaking free from the
confines of a darkened Victorian parlour to sail to the coast
of Cameroon, forging a new life for herself among the Fang
people; Marianne North, tucking her easel under her arm and restlessly
wandering around the world, capturing in vibrant oil colours
the exotic flora and fauna that so fascinated her. But it is
a faintly disguised description of my own longings. It’s
also a critical portrait of women who have been painted as perfect
rolemodels. Rather than angels in girdles, these women were as
greedy and ambitious as their male counterparts. I liked them
no less for discovering they were not unnaturally nice, but horribly
human.
Above: Taki Honda, a gardener from the
Royal School of Garden Design at Nagoya, whom Ella Christie employed
to transform her
estate
in Perthshire, Scotland, into a seven acre Japanese garden called
Sha-rak-ven, 'place of pleasure and delight', to remind her
of her travels. |
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