The Bowes Museum: A Love Story (Lynn Kerstan)

After the miserable odyssey in the Yorkshire dales (reported last Friday), I mentally swore never to set tire there again. The very next day Alicia Rasley, Judith Stanton and I climbed into the $#*&!* Mercedes and headed out for Teesdale. So much for my oaths! But our destination, the lovely town of Castle Barnard, was only half an hour from our cottage, and we had good reason to dip our toes back into the dales. NYT Bestseller Jo Beverley, whom I “met” online way back in 1992 and have admired, respected, and liked ever since, was staying in the area and suggested we join up for lunch and a tour of the Bowes Museum.

As you can see from the picture, it’s a pretty spectacular place. But how did this French-style chateau filled with an amazing collection of art and antiquities come to be in an obscure, rural area of north-east England? As it turned out, we later discovered, this was the perfect place for four romance authors to get together. Like so many good things in fiction and real life, the Bowes Museum began with a love story. The bastard son of an English earl! A French actress in a Parisian theatre! A fortune spent to bring art to the local people of Teesdale. You can’t make this stuff up.

Well, yes we can, and we do. But in this case, the story is both compelling and true. Also sad, despite the remarkable memorial the protagonists did not live to see completed.

John Bowes, born in 1811, was the only child of the 10th Earl of Strathmore and Mary Millner, a commoner. Although they lived together for many years, the earl didn’t marry her until a few hours before his death in an attempt to secure the inheritance for his son. Court cases ensued, and while John was not recognized as heir to the Strathmore title, the estates passed into his hands. A good businessman, a sportsman (he bred four Derby winners), and a lover of the arts, he spent a lot of time in France and even bought the Theatre des Varietes in Paris. Good for him. But what's with those facial whiskers. Really, what were men thinking back then?!

Josephine Coffin-Chevallier, fourteen years his junior, was an actress at the theatre and also a talented painter who shared John’s passion for art. They married in 1852 and immediately began to amass a remarkable collection of paintings, ceramics, textiles, and furniture. But the children they longed for did not appear, and as their hopes for a family diminished, the idea of a different legacy took root. They resolved to create a world-class museum in the coal-mining, sheep-breeding area of Teesdale so the local people could have access to the all beautiful things they’d loved and collected.

Both John and Josephine were deeply involved in plans for the building itself, and Josephine laid the foundation stone in 1869. They also launched themselves into a virtual orgy of acquisition, purchasing more than 15,000 items for the collection between 1852 and 1874. But in that year, Josephine died and John lost his heart for collecting and the museum project. The building continued, though, and seven years after John’s death in 1885, the Trustee-managed museum opened to an enthusiastic response from the public. It continues to thrive, and deservedly so.

I had never heard of the town or the museum before Jo Beverley spoke of them, but I will never forget the day we spent there. After a morning combing through the ground floor exhibits, we enjoyed a lingering lunch in the café and had to hurry upstairs to snag a spot for the daily 2pm performance of the Silver Swan, which lasts a grand total of about 40 seconds. Created in 1773, the swan is an automaton purchased by John Bowes a hundred years later and has become the emblem of the museum. Mark Twain saw it at the Paris Exhibition in 1867 and wrote about it in his book about his travels, Innocents Abroad:

“I watched the Silver Swan, which had a living grace about his movement and a living intelligence in his eyes—watched him swimming about as comfortably and unconcernedly as it he had been born in a morass instead of a jeweller’s shop—watched him seize a silver fish from under the water and hold up his head and go through the customary and elaborate motions of swallowing it....”

Like Mark Twain, I was fooled by the swan and thought he had indeed seized a fish from among the metallic fishies undulating in the shallow waters and swallowed it. In fact, the fish was in the swan’s throat all along. The machinery powering the automaton brought the fish forward when the swan went hunting for lunch and let us see it in the swan’s open beak before the bird tilted back his head and appeared to swallow. As P.T. Barnum noted, a sucker is born every minute. And for once (other than a sense of humor and our mutual concern about adverb abuse) I have something in common with Mark Twain! For Jo Beverley, the swan inspired her to give her most famous character (Rothgar) an interest in automatons, one of which played an important part in her “Malloren” books. For writers, just about everything of interest we do winds up in our “research” or “inspiration” files. This is a good thing.

I could have spent another two or three days at the Bowes. But all too soon it was closing time so Alicia, Jo, and I bade farewell to the gargoyle on the terrace while Judith snapped a picture. Then it was back to Arrow Cottage where I confessed to having changed my mind about the Yorkshire dales. I can hardly wait to return . . . so long as I’m driving a smaller, less fancy car.
And to John and Josephine Bowes, wherever your spirits may be: Thank you for the glorious gift you gave to the people of Teesdale and to all of of who visit there. To me, your love story and your generosity have been a true inspiration.