The Lady of Shalott
A few years ago, my wife and I stayed in a flat (apartment) in Prince Edward Mansions, a quaint block of Victorian-era apartments in Cape Town, South Africa. The flat was comfortable, if modestly furnished, with a large framed print on the wall, depicting the vaguely tragic scene of a sorrowful young woman in small boat on a river or lake. Her melancholy expression captured my attention. Why was she so sad?
After a bit of Googling, I discovered that English artist John William Waterhouse painted the original in 1888, in his Pre-Raphaelite period. Titled ‘The Lady of Shalott,’ Waterhouse was inspired by Lord Tennyson’s 1832 poem of the same name. According to Wikipedia, “[the painting] depicts a scene from Tennyson’s poem in which the poet describes the plight and the predicament of a young woman, loosely based on the figure of Elaine of Astolat from medieval Arthurian legend, who yearned with an unrequited love for the knight Sir Lancelot, isolated under an undisclosed curse in a tower near King Arthur’s Camelot.”
Further Googling revealed that the original oil on canvas was hanging in the Tate Britain gallery in London. Fortuitously, a 10 hour layover at Heathrow on our return flight from Cape Town to Vancouver allowed me to visit my lady in person!
And sure enough, after a short train and Tube ride from Heathrow to the banks of the Thames, I found my before my tragic lady, in all her glory and sorrow:
If you find yourself in London with some time to spare, please pay a visit to my lady, to give her my regards and cheer her up.
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