Want a book with elements of “Bleak House,” “Ripper Street” and “Downton Abbey?” Try “The Dead Duke, the Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse” by Piu Marie Eatwell.

At the base, it’s about paternity, inheritance and loneliness. But when you mix in the law, emigration and scams, and you have a really rich story to enjoy on cool winter evenings.

In 1898 a woman named Anna Marie Druce claimed that the reclusive eccentric 5th Duke of Portland had carried on a secret life from 1834-1864 as her husband, Thomas C. Druce, a noted businessman. Her son, Walter, was the first legitimate son of Druce (there were several illegitimate offspring) and, if Druce had been Portland, Anna wanted Walter to have the aristocratic name – and millions of pounds of income.

However, after the 5th Duke’s death in 1879, a relative, William Cavendish-Bentinck, had inherited the title as the 6th Duke. He was not eager to give up his inheritance and set out to refute Anna’s claims.

Thus began a series of legal wrangling, chronicalized in legal and police documents, famous previous murder cases, photographs and sensational penny press articles, that rocked a decade. Anna was only of the first to claim relationships with the Portlands.

Along the way, Eatwell gives a vivid and oft-unflattering view of Victorian/Edwardian society. This is not the well-ordered world of Sherlock Holmes; it’s more the grim, brutal and lonely world of the BBC’s “Ripper Street” with its dirt scrabble life of the lower middle-class and the poor house.

She does a brilliant job keeping the tension up while telling this story. She spent considerable time researching the family through the University of Nottingham library where “a combination of bequests, auction sales and transfers in lieu of death duties, the vast bulk of the archives of the Dukes of Portland… had ended up”.

First published in the UK in 2014, it has been updated with newly discovered information.  She has included a bibliography, list of persons and my biggest quibble with it is the clumsy cover design.

At dawn on September 11, 2015
Around the Washington Monument
Flags wave at half-staff in the warming air
Joggers run and stretch
And the buses go by wishing everyone a “Good Day”

September 11, 2001 was a beautiful day
A cool edging-towards-warm day with overtones of chill fall
The flags flew at the tops of their poles
The tourists walked over the grass to the museums
The homeless slept on grates where Metro’s heat kept them warm

Then came the World Trade Center attack.
Then an attack at the Pentagon.
Then a plane was crashed in a meadow in Pennsylvania

Washington writhed and emptied, first out the buildings, then onto the streets.
Babies in cribs enjoyed a trip outdoors not knowing why;
The governments’ daycares had closed
Soldiers on the streets with weapons, watching the frightened tourists trying to leave
The airports closed, the airplanes were grounded
At the end of the day, the sun shone with a reddish tint over a silent fearful city

It’s another beautiful September day in Washington

We don’t forget

We are ready now for what might come

***********

I wrote a story in 2011,  the 10th anniversary of 9/11 on changes in architecture because of terrorism attacks.

Also, in 2009, I was at Disney’s D23 convention and asked people if they remembered there at the happiest place in the world. Here’s the video

There’s a hidden treasure in Wilmington, Delaware.

It’s a collection of nineteenth century and early 20th century original illustration paintings for books, newspapers and advertising at the Delaware Art Museum.

Sounds dull or esoteric? Not at all. This was the Golden Age of Illustration and here are some reasons for why you should visit the museum.

Did you see Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean?” Then you’ll enjoy the bedrock of the illustrations – the work of Howard Pyle. When creating work for the widely read Harper’s Monthly Magazine, he had to imagine what the pirates looked like, which created our modern image of piracy – see Buccaneers from 1905.

(By the way, many of these paintings are still under copyright, so I will link to the museum’s website and their online collection when possible)

Back to Pyle.  His work was influenced by the great artists that came before him – such as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (which are also on display), and influenced future generations to come.

Besides being a great illustrator, he was a great teacher. Many of his students’ work are included in the exhibit – including N.C. Wyeth and Frank Earle Schooner.

Notably, many were women such as Ethel Franklin Betts Bains whose “Birds and Rooftop with Apple Blossoms” is on display, and her sister Anna Whelan Betts. Katharine Richardson Wireman who created paintings for Collier’s Weekly, Harper’s Bazar (spelled that way) and Cream of Wheat studied under him.

The now well-remembered Norman Rockwell who wrote in a 1927 letter to Ellen Bernard Thompson Pyle that her covers for the Saturday Evening Post were “dandy…and so full of color.”

Some paintings are for writers who are now little-known. An exquisite piece done in brown, cream, and black was done for a 1902 Jeannette Lee mystery for Scribner’s Magazineabout forged Albrecht Durer drawings titled “The day shall declare it.” Lucy Foster (Madison)‘s popular “Peggy Owen” series was set during the Revolutionary War.

There is nothing like seeing an original painting. There is beauty in the original, that often doesn’t come through in reproduction.

Besides the illustration exhibit, there’s also the “The Puzzling World of John Sloan.” Sloan’s decorative puzzles appeared in the Sunday newspapers supplements in the Philadelphia Press in the early 1900s. They show the influence of art nouveau and other modern art techniques. He also did other work for the newspapers.

The museum has Chihuly glass hanging in the foyer and provides public tours on Saturday and Sunday.

Delaware Art Museum, 2301 Kentmere Parkway, Wilmington, DE 19806. Phone: 302.571.9590, E-mail: info@delart.org. Blog” http://www.delart.org/blog/