March - Kenwood House

Now, this may be too far back in the dim and distant mists of time now… but once Fran Cassidy wrote a fashion blog (of sorts). I know, it’s been A-G-E-S, and my infrequent attempts to revive Dressing Up In London always seem to be abortive, but I’ve been BUSY, OK?!

Anyway, I took the pictures for this post just over a year ago, in March 2017, with the aid of Delightful Boyfriend and the “help” of my taller-but-younger sister. Who mostly followed me around, mocking my poses and pulling daft faces. It’s amazing how little can change over 23 years…

The chosen venue for this piece was Hampstead gem, Kenwood House. I love ponceing about in heritage homes, I really do. And this was a particularly nice one to ponce in, set on the edge of glorious Hampstead Heath, surrounded by lovely park lands and absolutely hundreds of runners with dogs… at least on the particular Saturday morning that we picked.

To all intents and purposes (or, at least, my intents and purposes) Kenwood’s story begins in 1754, when William Murray, Lord Mansfield bought it as a country weekend villa (life goals right there, I can’t even afford to buy a windowless studio in Streatham). William Murray was, I have discovered, really a pretty cool character. A younger son of a good Perthshire family, he came to London for school when he was 13 and went on to become one of the greatest legal figures in UK history.

After studying at Oxford, Murray was so bright that he was sponsored to take the Bar and quickly made a name for himself as an excellent barrister. He became an MP in 1742 before earning his most prestigious title of Lord Chief Justice in 1754. Famous for his enlightened thinking, he thoroughly modernised English law and set England on the path to abolishing slavery – all in all, a bit of a dude.

Besides being a generally good man, there is one major reason why Murray might have had a particular stance on the slave trade, and it is one of the things I found most interesting about my trip to Kenwood. In 1766 a little girl called Dido Elizabeth Belle was brought to live with the Murrays and raised as one of the family. She was the “natural” daughter of Murray’s nephew, Sir John Lindsay and an enslaved woman from the Caribbean. Lindsay brought her back to England with him and left her at Kenwood, where the Murrays were already caring for their young niece, Lady Elizabeth Murray, who was roughly the same age as Dido.

At the time, it was almost unheard of for a daughter born out of wedlock to be accorded any sort of status – much less one who was mixed race. She was never treated exactly like Lady Elizabeth (for example, she would not dine with the family when they had company) but she was apparently much loved, and otherwise brought up in a similar way. She was taught to read, write and play music, and she was a clear favourite of Murray’s, who left her a small inheritance when he died.

The house itself is lovely – a Georgian Neoclassical dream, filled with pastel colours and beautiful art. Most of the paintings are from the personal collection of Lord Iveagh – a member of the Guinness family and the last official owner of Kenwood. Most of the furniture was sold but has since been bought back, and all in all it’s a real dream to explore.

The particular inspiration for this pink velvet ensemble was the library at Kenwood. Lordy, but this is a purdy room! This is the sort of space millennials lose their minds over – it was positively designed for ‘gramming. Not that I think that was what Robert Adam had in mind when he remodelled it in 1764 – but, perhaps, testimony to its lasting aesthetic appeal. (See how I turned that from total daft-ness to mildly sensible point? Go me!)

(Disclaimer: I must apologise for the state of my hair. I imagine it must have been windy… but frankly that’s no excuse. Please rest assured that I am much better acquainted with a hairbrush a whole character-forming year later.)

Entry is totally free and I can highly recommend taking a pootle around the Heath once you are finished at the house – a true oasis of calm in London. Recommended.

See you in a year’s time for the next installation of “Fran Tries to Blog!”

January - The Wallace Collection

New Year’s Resolution 2017: Get back into blogging. 

In my current job, I do a lot of blogging –somewhere in the region of 3000-7500 words a week…on top of everything else. So I have made the decision to have another crack at dressing up in London… with the slightly more realistic goal of writing one blog a month. Fingers crossed. To begin, I managed (finally) to visit a London landmark which has been on my list since I was at university, and I can’t believe I left it so long. The Wallace Collection in Manchester Square is an utter gem, and the more I explore it, the more I like it.

Originally, this discreet, underrated attraction was on my list when I was writing my third-year dissertation on Fashion and the French Revolution because the it houses one of the finest 18^th-century French painting collections in the world - including works which once belonged to Marie-Antoinette (meh) and Madame de Pompadour (quelle babe). But, my goodness, it does not stop there. This is the collection that keeps on giving – there is a fabulous range of 17^th-century Dutch and Flemish painting, one of the best collections of French furniture outside the Louvre, a whole room of gorgeous Canalettos, hung on pale Grand-canal-blue silk wallpaper, a vast array of arms and armour, and one of the world’s leading collections of Sèvres porcelain. And those are just the bits I paid attention to! This is the sort of place you want to keep coming back to, with more to discover and delight in every time.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  

Hertford House (where the Wallace Collection lives) was the London townhouse of the Seymour family – the Marquesses of Hertford. And a more confusingly-twisted family you’d be hard-pressed to find. I suppose such is the nature of old-timey aristocracy, but every time I tried to research a particular family member, I ended up getting hopelessly tangled in a web of people who all seemed to share permutations of the same name. Rather than bother trying to sort the Seymours from the Seymour-Conways and the Ingram-Seymour-Conways, or the Barons Beauchamp from the Dukes of Somerset from the Earls of Yarmouth (all of whom, by the way, seemed to be called Francis) I decided to pay attention to the only one who mattered – illegitimate son of the 4^th Marquess: Richard Wallace.

Behold Sir Richard Wallace - Modestly tucked away over a door-frame!

Despite having a skint nobleman (who refused to acknowledge him, but still made him work as his assistant) for a father, Sir Richard Wallace turned out to be quite a rich – and quite a lovely – man. Raised in Paris by his grandmother, the French capital became his spiritual home, providing him with a wife, a house, the perfect hunting ground for great art, innumerable opportunities to be charitable, and his final resting place. During the violence of the Siege of Paris and the Paris Commune in 1871, Wallace chose to stay in the city, rather than run off home to Britain or back to his nice, safe estate, and won the love and esteem of the Parisian people for setting up a hospital and ambulance system for the needy and the wounded. It is estimated that, by the end of the siege, he had personally contributed the equivalent of $6.5m by modern standards to helping those who needed helping. As thanks, he had a balloon and a boulevard named after him, as well as being awarded the Legion d’Honneur and becoming a Baron. He moved back to London in 1872, and spent the next 15 years doing up Hertford House and creating a suitable home for his magnificent art collection.

And what a job he did. Entering the house, on a grey January Saturday, you are immediately struck by the warmth and beauty of the place. I couldn’t believe it wasn’t packed – get on it people, you’re missing out! Each room is hung with beautiful, silk wallpaper and a recent rehang two years ago has seen the collection organised by nationality. The result is a seamless, flowing experience, with every room feeling like a beautiful capsule of the best of its time. My favourite rooms were the pastel-coloured chambers dedicated to Rococo Watteaus and frilly Fragonards (including one picture which Frozen fans might recognise…) as well as the ones with walls covered with daft De Greuze paintings of sad children holding animals. But the newly-refurbished Great Gallery is a joy as well. Flooded with natural light, the new ceiling has been returned to how it was during Wallace’s time in the 1870s, and does true justice to the Collection’s most famous pieces – such as Frans Hals’s famous Laughing Cavalier.

Anyway – enough about the art, more about the clothes! Well, a 50s-style swing dress may not be era-appropriate, but sure did match nicely with the wallpaper. And the pink velvet shoes went perfectly with the Wes Anderson-esque restaurant, originally named the Café Bagatelle after Wallace’s final home in Paris and where we enjoyed a superior lunch post-wander.

Apologies for the length of post, I really could ramble for hours about this lovely place – and therein lies its charm. The building itself is as lovely as the art displayed within it, it’s right in the centre of London and – most excitingly of all – it is absolutely FREE! Take a detour next time you’re on Oxford Street and experience an hour or two of true beauty.

Dress - The "Myrtle" dress, Lindy Bop
Shoes - ASOS
Necklace - EcclecticEccentricity

The Wallace Collection details

Opening times = Monday-Sunday, 10am-5pm

Admission = Totally free!

Closest Tube station = Bond Street