The Visits of Constance (Three Albums)

Jardine, [Annette] Constance (1876 - 1963), compiler, writer, artist. Contributions by Charles Crombie, Henry J. Ford, etc.

Publication Date: 1920

About this Item

I: 25 by 31 cm, oblong, 58 pp. Covering years 1898 to 1901. II: 32 by 43 cm, oblong. Covering years 1902 to 1905. 61 pp. III: 33 by 43 cm, oblong. 60 pp. following by blank card leaves. Covers years 1907 to 1920s (latter part is more scattered). Among the watercolors are two by Charles Crombie, both of the rules of golf, a few years before he had similar work published in his "Rules of Golf", and two by Henry J. Ford. With approx. 67 watercolors, 38 pen and ink and 6 pencil drawings. (These elude a precise count since the images are sometimes a collage and thus a matter of opinion whether they represent discrete illustrations. In just one instance, we counted as a single pen and ink drawing a group that might as easily be regarded as a dozen individual drawings. Some of the items might appropriately be described as vignettes or cameos; when there are a few of these, all somehow related, on a single page, we count them as just one. When a picture carries over onto two pages, we count that as one. The watercolors generally have some pen and ink work, but the result reads as a watercolor painting. Among the works tallied as pen and ink illustrations are a few with a small quotient of color, including watercolor. Since in our judgment the pen and ink aspect of these pieces dominates, we treat them as pen and ink.) These are a remarkable set of three albums chronicling weekend visits to numerous grand country homes during the Edwardian Age. The compiler, Constance Jardine, was a cinch as a popular guest, blessed with good looks, connections, talent, and one can surmise, charm and an ingratiating personality. She was clearly someone who reveled in the comforts and privileges that were a part of the whole way of life that was soon to unravel with the upheavals brought on by the First World War, death taxes and the whole reordering of society that went along with "modernity". These disruptions figure into the latter part of the third album, as the entries change in character and the organizing principle no longer centers around particular weekend jaunts. But until that point, the albums can be enjoyed by us as pure escapism to Jardine's milieu. If you ask us, Jardine invites us to do that, just as she must have enthusiastically shared her albums with her hosts and fellow guests. One can picture her producing the album in progress at tea, or perhaps by a fireside on a rainy day, letting others leaf through its pages, and exhorting them to contribute a clever verse, a funny drawing, or simply their autograph. Hers was the rarefied world now popularly recreated with the hit serial series, Downton Abbey. Or was it? Downton Abbey and other fictional works like it offer a very loose parallel, since there were layers and divisions within that "world". Never do we encounter Royalty in the albums, nor were the parties overflowing with dukes, viscounts, prime ministers or other ranking cabinet members. Constance's itinerary did not take in the most magnificent and storied of estates - places like Woburn Abbey, Chatsworth, Castle Howard or Blenheim - and some of the homes look comparatively modest. Rather, the album covers what we might regard as the more ordinary rich at play. There are a handful of the genuinely fame, but most could probably have walked across Trafalgar Square without causing heads to turn. In the context of social history, this is part of the value of these albums; they offer us a glimpse on the upper class of that time and place akin to what we might find in a Henry James or John Galsworthy novel, but without being mediated by an author who has molded the material to fit his own literary ends. In this far more expansive layer of the upper crust it was not conceivable that everyone knew everyone else, even by reputation, but the pleasures of social life were just as great, if not more so, than the pageantry of a weekend where the guest list was culled down to the "cream" of society, and where some of the fizzle was from the d.

Seller Inventory # 003339

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Visits of Constance (Three Albums)
• Publication Date: 1920
• Seller catalogs:
  • England
  • Albums and Sketchbooks