Lady Maxwell's Scrapbooks
Earlier today I went for another walk to Pollok House to get some Christmas gifts and to take some interior shots of the house. Sadly I'd forgotten that the National Trust doesn't allow photography inside it's properties, but never mind. The house was filled with kids running around looking at the house's incredible Christmas displays and it was all very cheerful in a slightly manic kind of way!
In one quiet corner of the house though I found something very interesting that I'd never seen before - Lady Maxwell's Scrapbook. This extraordinary scrapbook is one of five or six volumes kept by Lady Maxwell between 1766 and 1820 (I think). The volume I saw was huge and was open at a page filled with cut out fashion plates of very dashing Victorian gentlemen and newspaper clippings that I couldn't get close enough to read. I spoke to one of the guides who explained that the volumes cover everything from fashion, politics, gossip and scandal and include contemporary news paper cuttings and original watercolours and sketches by Lady Maxwell. The single volume I saw looks to be the most incredible social document, the kind of thing Amanda Vickery would have a field day with, and a quick search of jstor and google books seems to suggest that these journals have not been widely studied, if at all. I asked the house guide if it would be possible to view the books for research purposes and she seemed to think that it would be possible if the volumes aren't too fragile.
This would be a bit of a sideline from the research that nodbear and I are doing but I am very curious to know what Lady Maxwell recorded about the political events of the day. And to have such an incredible original resource right on my doorstep and not investigate it would seem like a sin! Now if only I had unlimited free time... ;)
In one quiet corner of the house though I found something very interesting that I'd never seen before - Lady Maxwell's Scrapbook. This extraordinary scrapbook is one of five or six volumes kept by Lady Maxwell between 1766 and 1820 (I think). The volume I saw was huge and was open at a page filled with cut out fashion plates of very dashing Victorian gentlemen and newspaper clippings that I couldn't get close enough to read. I spoke to one of the guides who explained that the volumes cover everything from fashion, politics, gossip and scandal and include contemporary news paper cuttings and original watercolours and sketches by Lady Maxwell. The single volume I saw looks to be the most incredible social document, the kind of thing Amanda Vickery would have a field day with, and a quick search of jstor and google books seems to suggest that these journals have not been widely studied, if at all. I asked the house guide if it would be possible to view the books for research purposes and she seemed to think that it would be possible if the volumes aren't too fragile.
This would be a bit of a sideline from the research that nodbear and I are doing but I am very curious to know what Lady Maxwell recorded about the political events of the day. And to have such an incredible original resource right on my doorstep and not investigate it would seem like a sin! Now if only I had unlimited free time... ;)