Today's Borough was Waltham Forest. Walthamstow is the end of the Victoria Tube Line, so the name is familiar, but who would have guessed that the oldest part still looks like a classic English country village. Church in the middle, massive churchyard cemetery, ancient almshouse terraces, cottages with flourishing front gardens. The Georgian workhouse is now The Vestry Museum chock full of Walthamstow's past. Toys and ink and card catalogue cases and condoms from factories that are no longer. A unique exhibit is a car built by a local boy in 1892. The one-cylinder car was last powered up in the 1960s when it was entered into a London to Brighton Race and managed to finish in eight hours.
Modern Walthamstow is best known for the longest street market in Europe and for its dog racing track, but in the 19th century it was an affluent suburb on fringe of London, more countryside than city, and our reason for visiting today was to see the house where William Morris lived as an adolescent. The house is now managed by the Borough as the William Morris Gallery set in a park where the moat for an earlier medieval house stood.
Every once in a while we can give thanks for an upper class twit who chases dreams because Daddy's money is available to pay for it all. And William Morris fits the bill. The Gallery is a comprehensive chronological collection of the prodigious amount of work produced by Morris and his family and friends. The Gallery displays are nearly overwhelming as a feast for the senses. Fabrics, embroideries, stained glass, furniture, rugs, wallpaper, calligraphy, tiles, paintings, novels. The man was unstoppable.
An extra treat was an upper floor of work by early 20th century artist Frank Brangwyn who donated his work in order to establish the House as a museum devoted to Morris, for whom he had worked as a boy. Brangwyn was one of the muralists chosen by Rockefeller to decorate the huge Rockefeller Center development in the 1930s. By the time we reached the Brangwyn galleries, I was overwhelmed, so we must go back soon to pay them more attention. We also must go back to see the park behind the house. We finally had some rain today, which came in tremendous bursts, some accompanied by thunder, which is fairly unusual in England. So it was not a day for outdoor exploration, but a good day for the gardens.
On the subject of upper class twits, I have just discovered that The Guardian's art critic Jonathan Jones is horning in on staycation blogs. In his own blog for the paper, he explains how his childhood trips to the Continent established the idea that art is only worthy if you have to travel to see it — the farther the better. What a twit! He acknowledges that perhaps it's okay to stay in England to appreciate art instead of heading to France or Italy where they have real art. From the reader comments, I also see that many are offended by the hilarious US term staycation. As we all know, the English have holidays, not vacations. Wikipedia suggests the alternative of holistay. Now that is hilarious.
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