#wimbledon common

[iggyinuit]

A new year, a new Iggy picture

In the sixties, Ray Stevenson started his career in the studio of Roman Kochalski, an unknown Russian-Australian photographer. Visiting the clubs, he made pictures of David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Marc Bolan and... Iggy the Eskimo.

A new article at the Holy Church of Iggy the Inuit: A new year, a new Iggy portrait.

[aneverydaything]

Day 2143, 5 May 2024

[the-october-country]

[more-relics]

Pink Floyd photographed on Wimbledon Common, circa February 1970. Photos by Mike Randolph/Paul Popper.

[marryat92]

Another antique book for my collection: an 1838 edition of Marryat's Jacob Faithful—the book he called his personal favourite of all his works—from publisher Richard Bentley with illustrations by John Cawse, engraved by William Greatbatch. This copy has beautifully marbeled endpapers and cover. I am trying to put together the publisher's whole Marryat series: rare contemporary illustrations executed in Captain Marryat's own lifetime.

The frontispiece has a nice group of many of the major characters together in the waterman Tom Stapleton's house, with Jacob at far right. He is recognisably the same character, with his friend Tom Beazeley, in the title page illustration, which is a much darker scene.

In this chapter, Jacob and Tom have gone shooting on Wimbledon Common. No sooner do they finally bag a hare, but they run into the common-keeper, who demands both their gun and their illegal meal:

“I should rather think not,” replied I. “The gun belongs to us, and not to you;” and I caught up the gun, and presented the muzzle at him.

“What! do you mean to commit murder? Why, you young villains!”

“Do you want to commit a robbery?” retorted I, fiercely; “because if you do, I mean to commit murder. Shall I shoot him, Tom?”

“No, Jacob, no; you mustn’t shoot men,” replied Tom, who perceived that I was in a humour to keep my word with the common-keeper. “Indeed, you can’t,” continued he, whispering to me; “the gun’s not loaded.”

“Do you mean to refuse to give me up your gun?” repeated the man.

“Yes I do,” replied I, cocking the lock; “so keep off.”

“Oh! you young reprobates — you’ll come to the gallows before long, that’s certain. Do you refuse to come with me?”

“I should rather think we do,” replied I.

“You refuse, do you? Recollect I’ve caught you in the fact, poaching, with a dead hare in your possession.”

“Well, it’s no use crying about it. What’s done can’t be helped,” replied I.

“Don’t you know that all the game, and all the turf, and all the bog, and all the gravel, and all the furze on this common belong to the Right Honourable Earl Spencer?”

The young men barely escape from the common-keeper and a group of his henchmen. Captain Marryat has a lot of sympathy in his stories for both smugglers and poachers—as much as he also supported the society that created them. Jacob, the hero, retorts, "A hare on a common is as much mine as Lord Spencer's. A common belongs to every body."

Darkness, stormy weather, and snow beset the boys as they hide from the angry common-keeper, and then Jacob sees a horrifying sight: a dead body, swinging in chains overhead.

As soon as I recovered from the shock which the first view occasioned, I pointed it out to Tom, who had not yet moved. He looked up, started back, and fell over the dog — jumped up again, and burst out into as loud a laugh as his frozen jaws would permit. “It’s old Jerry Abershaw,” said he, “I know him well, and now I know where we are.” This was the case; Abershaw had, about three years before, been hung in chains on Wimbledon Common; and the unearthly sound we had heard was the creaking of the rusty iron as the body was swung to-and-fro by the gale. “All’s right, Jacob,” said Tom, looking up at the brilliant sky, and then taking up the hare, “we’ll be on the road in five minutes.”

— Frederick Marryat, Jacob Faithful. 1838 illustrations by J. Cawse and W. Greatbatch.

[luxobnubilata]

Thomas Blinks (1860–1912)

Walter Winans on the running deer range, Wimbledon Common, 1888

[dubmill]

Wimbledon Common, London; 31.7.2018

[kunstmull]

The sultry angels of Putney Vale Cemetery Honestly, I only went for a bike ride on Wimbledon Common. Popped out of the woods and found myself suddenly surrounded by Victorian angel graves!