A Day at the Huntington

 The Huntington Library and Gardens recently traded their famous Gainsborough's Blue Boy for a painting by Joseph Wright of Derby called An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump and I had been meaning to go and see it. Time was running out for the bird (and me) as the painting was returning to UK end of May so I decided to get out there for the Memorial Day weekend. The painting didn't disappoint. 

 

I first heard about Wright when my daughter studied Art History in high school. His pictures combined Baroque techniques with enlightenment ideas and depicted science in action. In this one we see an eager audience around a lecturer demonstrating the importance of air to life as he slowly sucks out air from a glass jar housing a cockatoo. I would like to think he will not kill the bird and will actually revive it. It is a riveting scene and you can see the anguish on the little girl to the right although I don't know what the two lovers on the left are doing at a science demo gazing at each other!

I loved this painting much more than the Blue Boy and felt this was more fitting for the Huntington which also houses a number of rare manuscripts and books. When I see the Ellesmere Chaucer, the Gutenberg Bible, the Tyndale Bible, Newton's Principia a Shakespeare's First Folio, Thoreau's Walden drafts, Whitman's hospital notes, Audubon's unbelievable bird sketches all under one roof, I get goosebumps. In an era where we are seeing ridiculous book bans some of these books remind us of the revolutionary power of the printed (or handwritten) word.

Ellesmere Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

Newton's Principia

Gutenberg Bible -only 48 survive of which 12 were made from vellum including this one

Tyndale's Bible - god's words in your own language!

First Folio opened to Midsummer Night's Dream

 

Thoreau's Walden draft

Audubon's larger than life book of bird drawings

The great thing about the Huntington is that it houses samples of extraordinary writing by women too. All my heroes are here - Mary Shelley, Revolution printed by Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, works of Octavia Butler and Hilary Mantel. I don't know if it is simply a matter of coincidence or whether my interests drive me towards certain things, but each manuscript here held a special place in my heart.

Mary Shelley's cross-written letter to her friend Marianne Hunt

One of my favorite biographies was "Romantic Outlaws" which was about the mom/daughter pair of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley told in alternate chapters. So I am a bit familiar with what Mary Shelley is writing about in this letter - an account of her personal tragedies.

Butler's notes for Parable of Sower

Here is a writer I came to late - maybe about a decade ago when I first read Kindred. Following that I read both Parable of the Sower and Talent followed by Lilth's Brood. It is only fitting that all her papers are in the Huntington as she was a Pasadena native.

Mantel's research for her Wolf Hall trilogy

The books that marked the last decade for me are absolutely Mantel's trilogy about the rise and fall of Cromwell. I loved the books so much that I am now reading Diarmaid MacCulloch's biography of Cromwell. This was a nice surprise as I didn't recall seeing Mantel's manuscript at the Huntington before. This wasn't the only surprise for me. 

From a distance I saw this bird on the grounds and for a second thought it was a Phainopepla but as I took a closer look it was unlike anything I had seen before. Merlin to the rescue and with both photo and sound id the bird was identified as a Red-Whiskered Bulbul, a native of India that had first found it way to Florida. Along the way some birds escaped the aviary and seem to have established themselves in places with exotic fruit plants. Made my life-list! 

That wrapped up an amazing day for me! On the ride back home we overheard a Proust quote on the radio "The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes." These past few years travel has been impossible but books remain the cheapest way to transcend time and space. It breaks my heart that we are living in times when books are banned but guns are not.