The Victoria and Albert

Thomas Hardy, while still married to his first wife Emma, but arranging assignations in London with Florence, his second-wife-to-be, used to ask her to meet him at the Victoria and Albert Museum by the great, towering plaster cast of Trajan’s column. Really, Thomas? Trajan’s column? How obvious can a man be? Knowing what I know about Hardy’s column, and with the added burlesque of the modesty fig leaf that was cast for Michelangelo’s plaster David, I cannot now keep a straight face in the Cast Courts at the V&A and have to take myself off upstairs to look at silver salt-shakers the minute I get the sniggers. What a lot of things the Victorians had. Today’s tidiness maniacs would have fainted at the bits and bobs and cruets and clutter of the Victorian sideboard: sardine forks and asparagus tongs, walnut pickers and nut crackers, crumb scoops and egg coddlers, grape scissors and crab crackers — and special ‘moustache spoons’ with nickel-plated whisker guards to keep bristles dry while slurping soup.