Well, I Did Warn You!

Another post about the visit of that tapestry! The day that tickets went on sale [at 10am] for the exhibition at the British Museum  I logged on at 11.10, to this message

There are 70,564 people ahead of you in the queue.

That number has planted itself in my brain.The system was well organised. Having entered my email, I was given a personal link - throughout the day I clicked on and it told me the length of the queue and the estimated time till my 10 minute ticket-buying window. I knew from the start to would be sometime after 5pm, and that I'd be sent an email alert.. In the event., I actually got my tickets around 5.30pm. I'd hoped for the last Monday of September but there was but one ticket available at 3.30. So I opted for the Tuesday morning, 10.20am. I decided against the £35 exhibition guidebook! My friend from church logged in later in the day, and was advised that there were no tickets left, and she should apply again when the second tranche is released - there are no tickets left now between September 10th and January 1st. We have booked B&B with my SIL in Barnet.

Having decided against the official guide, I thought I should check out what Bayeux Books I had already. The Churchill tome, which sparked my interest as a child, just has a small section on the dustjacket. 
But for the first time, I looked inside the book. That was fascinating - it is a first edition! Because when it came out in 1956, my father was on the point of leaving Romford to go to another church. Two spinster sisters in his congregation bought him this book as a leaving present, knowing his interest in history. Inside the book is a lovely letter, thanking him for his ministry and assuring him of their continued prayers for 'you, your wife, and Angela. ..we shall miss you terribly, it will be a big gap in our lives' [I was aged 1½] But apart from the cover, not much info.

This book was more promising. £1 from a charity shop, it is a full length photograph, scaled down to one seventh of the original. Nearly 10 metres long. I unrolled it on the kitchen worktop.

What fun! It is accurate [there are no characters with added underwear!] I have treated myself to a 2nd hand book from World of Books by Silvette LeMagnen, who is curator of the  exhibition in France. This is one of their guidebooks [the English translation!]. 

It is well written, with details about materials, stitches and construction as well as content. She includes a note about the women, and the weaponry - as well as a general run through of the sequence of events depicted. When we go, I imagine there wont be a lot of time for dawdling, so I need to have a clear idea of any specific sections I want to see, and be ready to check them out. 

It would be no good to get to the end and say "Oh no, I missed Ælfgyva and Queen Edith!"

To that end I have borrowed a book from the Library. "What do you have on the Bayeux Tapestry, please?" I asked. The librarian pulled up a page from the catalogue. We agreed that the first on the list "The Bayeux Tapestry"  by Frank Rede Fowke seemed to be a good choice. That was the book I collected last week.  It was last borrowed in June 2000!

FRF was the son in law of Henry Cole. No not the biker guy from 'Find It, Fix It, Flog It' on Channel 4. The original Henry Cole, who took the profits from the Great Exhibition of 1881 and used them to build all those wonderful museums in Kensington. FRF married his daughter and helped with all sorts of historical projects and wrote a number of books. This book was first published in 1898, and this is the 1913 edition. It is not kept on the main shelves, it was retrieved from the county store for me. How cool is this!! 113 years old.

It tells the story from start to finish. I shall have to read it with my fold out book in front of me - sadly the black and white photographs at the end of the book are not really that helpful ! Fowke credits them to Count Ostrorog, a Polish chap who was Queen Victoria's personal photographer. Fowke also speaks of Mr Charles Stothard, an artist sent out to France in 1818 to paint a copy of the tapestry. The man brought a fragment home with him! His widow later claimed they were discarded scraps from the restoration work - they were subsequently returned to Bayeux.

Mia Hannson and Sylvette LeMagnen say there are 58 panels - Fowke lists 79.  I will wait to see how these discrepancies occur. 
There will be more posts, I promise! 

Elizabeth Wardle was in a question on University Challenge last night!!