A Second Encounter With Dame Dorothy
Dec. 10th, 2021 04:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloI like churches. They don't scare me. I'm happy pottering around them on my own, even on gloomy winter evenings- and I've only once had a spooky experience. It occurred on 13 Feb, 2015- in St Peter's Ightham.
Here's an edited version of what I wrote at the time....
"It was dark in the church. I was taking pictures of the Selby monuments. There are two of them- extravagant things wedged into a corner of the chancel. One commemorates Dame Dorothy Selby- whose marble bust peers out of a circular aperture- as if watching life's show from a box in the theatre- and the other a couple of chaps both called William Selby, whose full length effigies lie stacked on shelves one above the other. Dame Dorothy figures largely in the history of Ightham- legend has it that she betrayed the gunpowder plotters (by sending a letter to her cousin Lord Mounteagle telling him to stay clear of the parliament building on November 5th) and as punishment was walled up alive in the big house- which is plainly absurd because she lived to a decent age and is buried in the church.
The two Williams are unskillfully carved, but Dame Dorothy is a powerful presence.
Disconcerting, even...
Anyway, I stepped back to take a picture that would include both monuments- and this is what I got...
A shadow is descending or- perhaps- emanating- billowing out- from Dame Dorothy's monument. What happened next is a bit of a blur. I took two more shots in quick succession- in both of which the monuments are entirely blotted out. I'm pretty sure the flash was working- I can remember seeing it fire- but I don't suppose it can have been. Or perhaps it was bouncing off a wall of darkness.
What did I feel at the time? It felt like I was in a dream- one of those dreams where you're interacting with what seems to be the physical world but things don't work- where, for instance, you flip on a light switch and nothing happens. But I wasn't going to be beaten. I sort of said to myself, or to the darkness, or to the camera, "OK this time everything is going to bloody well function properly" and I took another shot- and it came out fine..."
I hate using flash, but the conditions that day meant I had to. I'd been flashing away quite a bit before the manifestation took place: perhaps the spirits hated it as much as I did.
Today I went back to Ightham. The sun was shining, the church was hosting an exhibition of decorated Christmas trees and two women were curating it- and making sure no-one ran off with the baubles. All the lights were on and a recording of Christmas carols was playing. Things could only have been cheerier if Santa himself had been sitting in the corner by the Selby monuments handing out presents.
I hadn't expected to be spooked a second time and in this atmosphere of seasonal festivity there was next to no chance of it happening- which was good Because I hadn't managed to take satisfactory pictures of Dame Dorothy's memorial first time round and I've been wanting to ever since because it's fabulous.
The maker was Edward Marshall- master mason to the crown under King Charles I. His work has featured at least twice before in this blog- and the more I see of it the more I admire him. The Selby memorial is a richly coherent pile of imagery- a metaphysical poem in stone- and Dame Dorothy herself unforgettable.
Look how expressively he's carved her hands...
Dorothy Selby was famous for the quality of her needlework- and especially, as her epitaph says, for embroideries of the story of Jonah and the foiling of the gunpowder plot. An understandable misreading of the epitaph may have been what gave rise to the legend that she was personally responsible for thwarting Catesby and his gang.
The epitaph runs like this...
She was a Dorcas
"Whose curious Needle turned the abused stage
Of this lewd World into the golden Age
Whose Pen of Steel and silken Ink enrolled
The Acts of Johah in Records of Gold
Whose Art disclosed that Plot, which had it taken
Rome had triumphed & Britain's walls had shaken"
She was
In heart, a Lydia and in tongue, a Hanna
In Seale a Ruth; In Wedlock a Susanna.
Prudently simple, providently wary
To the World a Martha: and to heaven a Mary
Who put on Immortality in the Yeare of her Pilgrimage 69
I wonder if any of her wonderful needlework survives...
Here's an edited version of what I wrote at the time....
"It was dark in the church. I was taking pictures of the Selby monuments. There are two of them- extravagant things wedged into a corner of the chancel. One commemorates Dame Dorothy Selby- whose marble bust peers out of a circular aperture- as if watching life's show from a box in the theatre- and the other a couple of chaps both called William Selby, whose full length effigies lie stacked on shelves one above the other. Dame Dorothy figures largely in the history of Ightham- legend has it that she betrayed the gunpowder plotters (by sending a letter to her cousin Lord Mounteagle telling him to stay clear of the parliament building on November 5th) and as punishment was walled up alive in the big house- which is plainly absurd because she lived to a decent age and is buried in the church.
The two Williams are unskillfully carved, but Dame Dorothy is a powerful presence.
Disconcerting, even...
Anyway, I stepped back to take a picture that would include both monuments- and this is what I got...
A shadow is descending or- perhaps- emanating- billowing out- from Dame Dorothy's monument. What happened next is a bit of a blur. I took two more shots in quick succession- in both of which the monuments are entirely blotted out. I'm pretty sure the flash was working- I can remember seeing it fire- but I don't suppose it can have been. Or perhaps it was bouncing off a wall of darkness.
What did I feel at the time? It felt like I was in a dream- one of those dreams where you're interacting with what seems to be the physical world but things don't work- where, for instance, you flip on a light switch and nothing happens. But I wasn't going to be beaten. I sort of said to myself, or to the darkness, or to the camera, "OK this time everything is going to bloody well function properly" and I took another shot- and it came out fine..."
I hate using flash, but the conditions that day meant I had to. I'd been flashing away quite a bit before the manifestation took place: perhaps the spirits hated it as much as I did.
Today I went back to Ightham. The sun was shining, the church was hosting an exhibition of decorated Christmas trees and two women were curating it- and making sure no-one ran off with the baubles. All the lights were on and a recording of Christmas carols was playing. Things could only have been cheerier if Santa himself had been sitting in the corner by the Selby monuments handing out presents.
I hadn't expected to be spooked a second time and in this atmosphere of seasonal festivity there was next to no chance of it happening- which was good Because I hadn't managed to take satisfactory pictures of Dame Dorothy's memorial first time round and I've been wanting to ever since because it's fabulous.
The maker was Edward Marshall- master mason to the crown under King Charles I. His work has featured at least twice before in this blog- and the more I see of it the more I admire him. The Selby memorial is a richly coherent pile of imagery- a metaphysical poem in stone- and Dame Dorothy herself unforgettable.
Look how expressively he's carved her hands...
Dorothy Selby was famous for the quality of her needlework- and especially, as her epitaph says, for embroideries of the story of Jonah and the foiling of the gunpowder plot. An understandable misreading of the epitaph may have been what gave rise to the legend that she was personally responsible for thwarting Catesby and his gang.
The epitaph runs like this...
She was a Dorcas
"Whose curious Needle turned the abused stage
Of this lewd World into the golden Age
Whose Pen of Steel and silken Ink enrolled
The Acts of Johah in Records of Gold
Whose Art disclosed that Plot, which had it taken
Rome had triumphed & Britain's walls had shaken"
She was
In heart, a Lydia and in tongue, a Hanna
In Seale a Ruth; In Wedlock a Susanna.
Prudently simple, providently wary
To the World a Martha: and to heaven a Mary
Who put on Immortality in the Yeare of her Pilgrimage 69
I wonder if any of her wonderful needlework survives...
no subject
Date: 2021-12-11 12:39 pm (UTC)