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Elizabeth I’s Hands in Portraits
The queen was very proud of her beautiful hands. She considered them her best feature and took pains to have them prominently displayed in all of her state portraits. (x)
“Dearest Mother,
[…] It is a great life. I am more oblivious than alas! yourself, dear Mother, of the ghastly glimmering of the guns outside & the hollow crashing of the shells.
There is no danger down here – or if any, it will be well over before you read these lines.
I hope you are as warm as I am, as serene in your room as I am here; and that you think of me never in bed as resignedly as I think of you always in bed. Of this I am certain you could not be visited by a band of friends half so fine as surround me here.
Ever Wilfred X”— Wilfred Owen’s last letter, 31st of October 1918. He died on the 4th of November, 100 years ago today, exactly one week before the signing of the Armistice.
Blue bird pumpkin, Paul Klee
Winona Ryder in Edward Scissorhands (1990) dir. Tim Burton
“P.S. My Mother’s address is Mahim Monkmoor Rd. Shrewsbury.
I know you would try to see her, if – I failed to see her again.”— from Wilfred Owen’s letter to Siegfried Sassoon (22 September 1918)
“Had a strange dream last night about Wilfred Owen. He had returned to life (à la ‘Mary Rose’). I was my young self, but was explaining to him all that happened about his becoming so famous. It was a pleasant dream, with Weirleigh background. Wilfred looked more like his brother Harold – had fair hair. It may have been induced by my thinking about my poems before falling asleep, and wishing I could get advice about them from Parnassian departed friends. But W. said nothing about my work, and I was merely happy at his return and taking charge of him. At the end of the dream we were leaving Weirleigh and going off abroad together. I have never dreamt of him being with me before, though he has been so often in my mind in the last thirty-five years. ‘O Wilfred, how wonderful, that you are back again alive!’ I exclaimed to him. During this dream I half-awoke more than twice, but the dream continued.”
— from Siegfried Sassoon’s diary; entry dated 7 February 1954
Stephen MacDonald, Not About Heroes
4 November 2018 is the centenary of Wilfred Owen’s death in WWI.
On November 4, 1918, Wilfred Owen (b. March 18, 1893) was killed in action. Owen wrote some of the best poetry on World War I, with imagery that unflinchingly details the terrors of trenches and gas warfare. Imbued with confidence from mentor Siegfried Sassoon, much of his poetry also refuses to shy away from his feelings as a gay man. A mere five of his poems were published during his lifetime. When Owen died one week before the Armistice, he was only 25 years old.
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