George and fork

On Saturday evening I watched the first half of a television film about George Sand. It was beautifully done, filmed on location, costumes, Chopin’s music (she lived with him for 10 years) and all the best from a costume drama. It is about George bringing a peasant girl into the house and teaching her to read and write (something that she did do in real life was teach local children to read). Poor George, she had so much to cope with, a nasty daughter , a dreadful money grabbing son-in-law, Chopin, who was pathetic and childish and then bad tempered servants. I don’t know where she found the time to write. I must confess that I was having difficulty with the name of the peasant girl. I though that her name was Fourchette (fork) but in fact it was Fanchette. I haven’t been able to find out if she really existed as searches on Google just bring information about trhe TV Film – and a picture. The first part ended with George dressed as a man dragging Fanchette off to Paris away from the temptation of her son

George Sand and the history of photography

I was preparing a semi-modern postcard the other day of La Vallée Noire, photographs of George Sand surrounded by some of the places she had written about. This got me wondering about the dates of the first photographs in existence. So with the help of Google and Wikipedia I did a little research and found this site, which shows several firsts in the history of photography. Images have been captured since as long ago as 965. The first photograph as we think of it required an 8 hour exposure back in 1826 (that would limit the admissions to flickr albums). Anyway back to George, her photograph was taken in 1864. Now I must start reading her books

Rob wondered about photographs of Charles Dickens a few days before. I found one taken in 1867/8