Thomas and Blanch Sully in London - father and daughter spend time in London while Thomas completed portrait of Queen Victoria

Magazine Antiques, Sept, 2000 by Carrie Reboar Barratt

Sully painted a watercolor of the flat (Pl. IV), where father and daughter took their meals, bathed and dressed, entertained, played music, wrote letters and diaries, and generally kept each other company.

Blanch had apparently never been farther away from Philadelphia than New York City or possibly West Point, where her brother Alfred (1820-1879) was a cadet at the United States Military Academy However, she dove into London life with the gusto of a seasoned traveler. She was as sensible, gregarious, and charming as her father, and a keen observer of people from all walks of life. Not one to accept things at face value, she formed her own opinions, which she boldly expressed to her father and mother. In the absence of any explanation of why he brought Blanch along, it can be speculated that Sully must have known that they would travel well together Sully's biographers reported that the artist often used Blanch as a model for his portraits and that father and daughter often strolled together in Philadelphia, with Thomas Sully referring to her as his "walking stick." [11]

During her first week in London, Blanch wondered why the boys were constantly whistling as she passed, why people stared at her cape ("I'll bet they take me for a squaw," she wrote her mother), and she was amused that her new British acquaintances called her "the Yankee." [12] Each of her letters to her mother included the mention of some unusual aspect of life in London or a general statement on the state of affairs. She learned, for example, that it was inappropriate for a proper lady to escort her visitors to or from the door but quite acceptable to wear rouge. She gained most of her knowledge from women of her mother's age, who took her under their wing. Sarah Coles Stevenson (1789- 1848), the wife of the American minister to the Court of Saint James's, called on Blanch quite often, as did Harriet Stone Leslie, Lucy Bakewell Audubon (1788- 1874), and Emily Fitzhugh, a close friend of the actress Sarah Siddons, whom the Sullys knew through their theater connections. [13] The ladies took her walking. shopp ing, skating on the Serpentine, to tea and to dinner Many nights Thomas Sully returned from his evening's activities to find Blanch still out. If she came home first she made a pot of flaxseed tea and waited for him to return. She moved in elite circles but gained a sense of the larger city "I've discovered," she wrote her mother, "that the misery here far exceeds the splendor." [14]

In general, Blanch's impressions of London complemented those of her father, usually putting into plain speech what her polite father glossed over. Both Sullys were exhilarated by the lord mayor's procession on November 9. Thomas Sully wrote in his journal that "we had a perfect sight of the Pageant and for the first time saw the young Queen of England. She was everywhere greeted with bursts of rapture." [15] By contrast Blanch wrote a long description, commenting on the thousands of policemen lining the parade route: "by the way these men are the handsomest looking men we have seen--all young and athletic--dressed in uniform." [16] She then described in detail the entire procession, from the beefeaters ("great fat fellows dressed in red with standing ruffs") to the queen herself ("her hair quite plain, a tiara of diamonds was her only ornament--her dress pink satin embroidered with silver...her arms quite uncovered").