From Bushey to Budleigh: The life and death of painter and illustrator Sir Hubert von Herkomer (1849-1914)
I wrote the following piece in 2014, and it first appeared at http://fairlynchgreatwar.blogspot.com/ , hence my thoughts about the German-born Herkomer, split between love of his native Bavaria and his adopted country of England. Sir Hubert von Herkomer as caricatured by FG (Franz Goedecker) in Vanity Fair, Jan. 26, 1884. He died on 31 March 1914 while staying in Budleigh. I’ve never been to Bushey, in Hertfordshire. Unlike the peaceful coastal town of Budleigh Salterton it seems to be very much a domitory place for commuters to London, with a population some five times bigger than ours. But in the late 19th century it was “a sleepy, picturesque place” as one of its most famous former residents recalled. “It had no water laid on, and there was no sanitation except of the most primitive kind. The drinking-water was brought to the houses in buckets, for which the old people, who carried it round, charged a halfpenny a bucket. The one and o...