Today a third assistant came with Molly Maids to clean the house. Usually there are two, always the same team and one, as you will know if you have been reading my earlier account of Mrs Gainsborough’s life here in No. 17, is clearly a favourite of Gainsborough’s ghost because he arrives to greet her, and disappears as soon as she leaves the house.
This morning, as she entered the room that used to be his studio the ghost, in his usual form of an unpleasant odour, was there. The new member of the team entered the room, sniffed the air and came running downstairs to tell me that “that smell” sent her back to pre-school days when she used the glue pot with the brush fixed to the lid to paste pictures onto paper. Unwittingly, she confirmed the opinion of my friend the former director of the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery who said, when he first smelled it, that the odour reminded him of the glue 18th C artists used to size their canvases before they applied paint.
When I went upstairs a moment ago Mr Gainsborough was still there. Will he leave as usual when the Molly Maids depart?
LATER: Yes. He did.
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LIVING WITH MRS THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH IN THE CIRCUS, BATH, 18TH /21ST C By VIVIENNE RAE-ELLIS The following is a work in progress, to be published here in instalments. The manuscript has not been submitted to any publisher. References and bibliography will be published following the final chapter. 1) go to the Manuscript below right.. 2) Start from the top entry.. 3) Read down through the manuscript
The Circus
About Me
- Vivienne Rae-Ellis FRGS
- I am an ex-pat Tasmanian author who has lived in England since 1987. I have had eleven books published in seventeen editions by publishers who include Faber&Faber, Heinemann, Hamish Hamilton, Robert Hale, University Of Melbourne, University of Yale, Angus Robertson and the Australian Institute Of Aboriginal Studies. Subjects include biographies of three famous Australians: Trucanini, the last Aboriginal Tasmanian to live and die on the island; Louisa Anne Meredith, Australia's first resident female author, and George Augustus Robinson, Chief Protector of the Aborigines in the 1830's. Published work includes books for adults and for children based on the history of Australia; the paranormal;and Public Libraries.
