October Beginnings: "see thy treacherous guile outreach, And perish in the pit thou mad'st for me" *

 Passage du Pont-Neuf,  illustration by Horace Castelli, 1870

"At the end of the Rue Guenegaud, when you come up from the river, you reach the Passage du Pont-Neuf, a sort of narrow, gloomy corridor running from the Rue Mazarine to the Rue de Seine.  Thirty paces long and no more than two wide, this passageway is paved with yellowish flagstones, loose and worn, constantly oozing an acrid damp: the glazed roof that shields it, peaked at a right-angle, is black with grime.

On fine summer days, with a torpid sun scorching the streets, a  whitish brightness falls from the soiled panes and lingers miserably in the passage,  On nasty winter days, on foggy mornings, the panes of glass cast nothing but darkness on the sticky flagstones - a vile, sullied darkness.

Dug into the left-hand side are some dingy shops, sordid and squat, venting the cold breath of cellars,  Here there are dealers in old books, toy-sellers and pasteboard makers, whose dust-grey displays laid dim and sleepy in the shadows; the windows glazed in small panes cast a strange, shimmery green light over the wares; past the displays, the gloom-laden shops are so many mournful holes restless with fantastical shapes."

Thérèse Raquin   Émile Zola, 1866  © trans. Adam Thorpe

This description of the Passage du Pont-Neuf runs like a dark thread of desperation all through the psychological story of Thérèse Raquin. It is here that she lives above their damp haberdasher's shop with her Aunt, Madame Raquin, and the sickly cousin she has grown up with, now her husband,  Camille.  Into this repressing existence comes Camille's friend, the brutish lazy peasant, Laurant,
who  is painting Camille's portrait. Laurent and Thérèse,  a creature of  "burning blood and tensed nerves", develop a passionate affair, with daily assignations.

Une Olympia moderne - Le Pacha,   Paul Cezanne  1870 (wikimedia commons)

No longer able to meet, their thwarted desires drive them to murder Camille on a boating trip, planning to marry after a suitable time has passed, and to live off Madame Raquin's money. But both the lovers are haunted day and night by the drowned body of Camille, which Laurent had seen rotting in the Paris Morgue, and their physical passion turns to consuming fear and violence.

.

"Camille's ghost, thus conjured up, came to sit between the newly-weds…"  (wikimedia image)

Zola traces each tortured mental and physical stage of the depraved lovers' consuming guilt, in grotesque details, until the inevitable violent end is reached, with only the paralysed, silent Madame Raquin as witness.

He vividly presents the lives and mental torments of the characters in a cinematic, or painterly way, with multiple repeated adjectives, (such as brutal, nervous, abyss, yellowish glimmers, burning, foul, speechless, fearful)  but  described his novel as a portrayal of temperament, not character.  It was a forensic study of "the deep-seated disturbances of a sanguine nature brought into contact with a nervous one",  as they struggle to restore their daily equilibrium, and the murderous events which follow must take their course.

"the equilibrium was broken"

Still Life with Black Clock,   Paul Cezanne  1869-70  (wikimedia image)

 Zola  and Cézanne, both from Aix-en-Provence, were friends of long-standing, both looking for a new realism in their work. This still life painting shows Zola's black marble clock and the china inkwell, and Cézanne painted it for his friend, although later they fell out over Zola's critical portrayal of an artist (thought to be based on Cézanne) in The Masterpiece.

*  Christopher Marlowe, A Massacre at Paris,  possibly written 1593
For images of the Passage du Pont-neuf, see thecinetourist.net

An "entente cordiale" ? The Headless Spook

Whenever I travel on the London Tube

I stare at people, though I know it's rude,

To guess their thoughts, their kind of lives,

So it took me somewhat by surprise

When opposite me sat a pin-striped suit

Apparently worn by a headless spook.

"How careless," I thought, "to lose one's head."

"Try Lost Property," I almost said.

But it's unnerving to address an empty space

With collar and tie, but no actual face.

Was he in banking, insurance or law?

Was this a first visit? Had he been before?

The Pilgrim   Rene Magritte 1966  (Wikimedia Commons)

"Can I offer you dinner?" said a voice on my right.

The seat was empty! -- I turned in fright

And there like Alice and the Cheshire Cat,

Was this handsome face with a bowler hat.

"That would be nice,"  I dubiously said,

"But how can you manage with only a head?

Don't you think it might be better

If you and your body could get together?"

My heart gave lurch as he gave me a smile,

"That's been a problem for quite a while!

The waiters, they really haven't a clue,

For dining alone, I need a table for two!!"

"How did it happen?" I ventured to ask.

"I lost my head while passing through France.

My looks belie my age, my dear,

And time is timeless in my special sphere.

For years I've longed to return to my home

But over water I'm unable to roam,

I'm the very first spirit," he said with pride

"To use the Tunnel from the other side!"

"Your name?" I asked, and turned to him,

"Sidney Carton,"  he said with a disarming grin.

A Tale of Two Cities! I began to drool,

" I fell for you whilst still at school."

The Poet Recompensed   Rene Magritte 1956  (Wikimedia Commons)

Suddenly his features began to fade.

"Don't go yet!" I cried, dismayed.

He murmured gently, "Till another time.

You'd better wake up, it's the end of the line!!"

© Marion Kemp 1996 : from "In Praise of Hugs and other Poems.

Travels on the continent: The Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion 1764-65

The spirited writer of this diary is 20 year old  Cleone Knox,  taken off on a Grand Tour by her father and older brother Ned, from her  quiet home in Castle Kearney (near Portaferry, County Down).  This plan is prompted in particular by her unsuitable romantic attachment to a certain Mr. A. with his handsome black eyes.

Her abortive attempt to elope at  Mr A's urging  --  ("this is not a matter to be be decided all at once like buying a yard of watered tabby or a new gown")  could have taken place at Castle Blandings.  Already very late for the rendezvous, she knocks over a table of china ornaments in the dark, and has to cower underneath the table till her awakened relatives, fearing thieves, decide to blame the cat; but at last reaching the rendezvous in pouring rain, there is "Gemini!..not a trace of my Lover or Chaise or any damned thing!"

"Parental Anger and Disappointed Love has made me tremble in every limb. Made myself a roguish cap with lavender ribbons."

Setting off via family in Derbyshire, then London and Bath, the Knoxes arrive in France, where "I am delighted at the newness of it all," and in Amiens,  …"Two very genteel young officers escorted us around the Gothic Cathedral… Was gratified to notice that I can converse very Tolerably in French. Believe I shall be happy in this Country;  if Mr. A. were but here."

They spend August at Chantaloupe, guests of the Duc and Duchesse de Choiseul.
"...Our mode of life is sumptuous and we pass our days in Elegant Leisure.  Very dégagé except for Supper when we dress as Magnificently as if at Versaille."

"Last night our hosts held a fete champetre.  A magnificent affair.   The grounds all illuminated with torches and lanterns.  A sumptuous supper served in the hall and in the garden.  Sprightly music and a troupe of Opera Dancers performing on the lawn.

"There was even a flock of lambs festooned with blue ribbons to give a bucolic air.   The guests were all attired as Shepherds and Shepherdesses or Greek Gods and so on.    Madame de Brinoy had the goodness to assist me with my costume.  As Pomona, Nymph of  Gardens, I wore a green gown ornamented with flowers, grapes in my hair and a silver pruning knife in one hand.  Looked very passable indeed.  A party of gypsies hired by the Duchess to tell fortunes in the Rose Garden.  One swarthy hag seized my hand and poured out a stream of prophesy. …she declared that my fate was a handsome dark young man who loved me passionately, that there were difficulties in our path, but that if I wished for happiness, I must remain faithful to him.  This without any doubts points most clearly to Mr. A."

Vertumnus (in his disguise as an old woman) and Pomona,   

 Jean Ranc, c. 1710-22      Musee Fabre, Montpellier

After "Gay Cruel Paris"  where she was "astounded indeed at the swarms of ill-looking mob amidst all this splendour" and Christmas in Switzerland, the Knox family's Grand Tour ends in Venice in May: 

 "Apropos of the gondola, 'tis a most convenient mode of conveyance and takes the place of a chair.  One would be very uneasy without them with all this Plaguey Water."   A month later, after Carnival, balls, processions, gossip and more night-time escapades (masked and once in male attire), Cleone writes the last happy entry in her diary "Stupendous discovery!  Mr. A. is in Venice."

When this eighteenth century diary was published in 1925 by a 'descendant' of the Knox family,  it was likened to the discovery of Pepys' diary, and became a best seller and a cause celebre, since many critics doubted its authenticity.  It was in fact written by a modern young girl, Magdalen King-Hall, to alleviate the boredom of living in Hove, her first published historical novel.  She based Cleone's home beside the sea on childhood visits to her mother's Irish relatives, along with some family anecdotes,  and research in Hove public library.   Her best known novel, The Wicked Lady Skelton was made into a successful film, The Wicked Lady, starring James Mason and Margaret Lockwood, but for charm and wit  her young Cleone Knox is a wonderful creation who leaps off the page.

The Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion in 1764-65 Quotations from the Folio Society edition, 1982

December: Dinner with Emerald at the Dorchester

Friday, 1st December  1944

"Joan Moore lunched with me at Wilton's.  She brought a huge sack which the waiters filled with oyster-shells for her hens.  It was so heavy that we had to wait for a taxi to pull up at the door.  [Joan Moore, the pianist, now Countess of Drogheda]

Emerald, Lady Cunard  (1872-1948)

It was with much reluctance that I dined with Emerald again tonight, but I had promised to do so earlier in the week.  I had a hot bath and set forth in the worst form, taking three books for her to read.  Met Peter Quennell downstairs in the Dorchester*.  We drank whisky and soda together and went up.  As so often when one least  expects it,  the dinner was hugely enjoyable.  There were the two Chaplins, and Alice Harding and Peter.  Anthony Chaplin told us what it felt like in the rear of a bomber with a gun.  He said the cold was quite appalling.  You were numb all the time, and sick. But the spirit of loyalty and camaraderie among the crew was such that it could only be described as pure love.  He said that in 1940 many of our planes were destroyed by bombs dropped from above by our own planes.

We talked of George Moore.  Emerald showed us a letter from him to her, beginning 'Dearest Maud', comparing her to Christ and Sophocles, and acclaiming her genius.  She was very modest about it.  Then she brought from her bedroom a large cardboard box, shook it and said, 'These are all letters to me from George Moore.  I cannot tell you what they are about.'  Peter tried to persuade her to let him go through them with her, but she was reluctant, not wanting them published.  Then she talked of Paris before 1914 and the affectation of Robert de Montesquiou -- who Peter said was the prototype of Charlus - and how he loved to be pressed to recite his own poems, leaning against a marble pedestalled bust in an absurd posture.  While she was telling this story I realised wherein her genius lay, for she has a prodigious memory, and a wonderful gift of narrative, spiced with a frivolity and humour which are unique, and totally irresistible.  It was an enjoyable evening because conversation was not a denigration of contemporary socialites whom I did not know, but about the recent historic past."

Prophesying Peace  James Lees-Milne, 1944

*American-born Maud 'Emerald' Cunard, the  famous society hostess, moved into a suite at London's Dorchester Hotel in her seventies, where she continued to entertain.  Lees-Milne frequently visited her or escorted her to social occasions, and became friendly with the Chaplins.   He later married Alvilde Chaplin, who became famous for her gardening books in the 1950s, even designing Mick Jagger's garden at his home in Amboise, France.

October: John Evelyn - home thoughts from abroad

Friday 1st October 1943

"A taxi motored me to Wotton House where I lunched and spent the afternoon.  Today it belongs to John Evelyn, just as it belonged to the diarist John Evelyn in the seventeenth century.

  Pen drawing of Wotton House, by Evelyn 1640.  © British Library, Evelyn Archive

It is a long rambling, untidy house.  The nucleus of it is Jacobean, and a few rich doorways of that period survive upstairs.  But the present Evelyn's grandfather spoilt the house in every conceivable way in the 1870s. In the hideous Ruskin-style library are many rare books, including some 200 of Evelyn's own; also royal seals, miniatures and nineteenth-century busts.  There are innumerable family portraits , including three of John Evelyn, of which the Kneller is the most remarkable.

John Evelyn, c.1687  by Sir Godfrey Kneller  © The Royal Society 

There is a table carved by Grinling Gibbons, whom Evelyn discovered, and an Italian ebony cabinet* in which Evelyn's manuscript diaries were found.  The army have occupied most of the house during the war.  They allowed a fire to blacken the original door cases, walls and ceiling of the dining-room.  Could Evelyn have called in Wren to design this room?.  The garden, now a wilderness, has a mound cut into terraces by Evelyn, and below it a temple on Doric columns, which he built.  All the trees are magnificent, and the beeches are said to have been planted by him."

Ancestral Voices   James Lees-Milne 

John Evelyn travelled extensively in France and Italy as a young man during the Civil War.  In his Diary he records (exhaustively) all the palaces, gardens, churches and art treasures he saw in France and the great cities of Italy:  visiting Genoa, Pisa, Lucca, Florence, Leghorn, Rome and Naples. Full of interesting insights, describing the people and customs,  he only occasionally mentions the food and weather, unless it affected his progress. He travelled by coach, on horse-back, and felucca (subject to storms) and by horse-drawn barge and boat from Bologna and Ferrara along the Po marshes to embark for Venice.  From Venice he journeyed home via Switzerland (he was ill with smallpox in Geneva) and France, where he married the English ambassador's young daughter, Mary Browne, in June 1647.  He left Paris for Calais at the end of September 1647, where he had first arrived four years before, and reached London late on 2nd October.

John Evelyn in 1648  by Robert Walker  © National Portrait Gallery

Having only just returned myself from Bologna airport, after several long days of amazing sightseeing in the Emilia-Romagna, I was struck by this poem Evelyn wrote in Naples in February 1645, well before his travels were ended.  Was he remembering the tranquil family home and its gardens at Wotton? 

"I left this Ode, …as the Non ultra of my Travells; sufficiently sated with rolling up and downe, and resolving with my selfe to be no longer an Individuum vagum, if ever I got home againe;...

Happy the man who lives content
With his own Home, & Contintent:
Those chiding streames his banks do curb
Esteemes the Ocean to his Orb;
Round which when he a Walke dos take,
Thinks t'have perform'd as much as Drake:
For other tongues he takes no thought
Then what his Nurse or Mother taught:
He's not disturb'd with the Rude Cries
Of the Procaccio's Up & Rise;
But being of his Faire possess'd
From Travelling sets up his rest:
In her soft armes no sooner hurl'd
But he enjoys another World,
Scornes Us who Travell Lands & Seas,
Thinkes there's no countries like to his:
If then at Home, such Joyes be had,
Oh, how un-wise are We, how Mad!"

Diary of  John Evelyn  edited E.S. De Beer

*I wrote about Evelyn's Italian ebony cabinet in an earlier blog (Jan 2016): see  "A Collector's Cabinet"

The Weather in June, 1681 and more

Very unseasonal weather in June is nothing new.  On 24th June, 1681, James Tyrrell writes to his friend from their student days at Oxford,  John Locke:

"as for news all that wee talk of here is of the rain and are still praying for more, I think it were worth your enquiry to write to your Friends in France whether they have had the same weather there, since I hear at Oxford, that the Drought hath bin so great about Paris, that the fear of Famine had raised Corne to well near a pistol a bushel: the truth of which I should be glad to know.  in the mean time you may furnish your Paris vertuosos with this observation concerning weather: that for the honour of our Northern Climate, there hath bin seen several times this month ice of the thickness of half a Crowne, and the last time I was told of it was just after I writ my last to you, which was about the 11th. or 12 instant. God be thanked wee are now like to have a seasonable after spring, and in hopes of it I am hayning [fencing grass to protect from cattle] my ground againe as if it were but Lady day having had almost no hay yet; "

This must be small comfort to today's Paris 'virtuosos'.  But dipping into Geoffrey Grigson's  The English Year, extremes of weather seem not uncommon (or perhaps more often recorded) in June.  

June 3rd:  "Since which till last week we had hot dry weather. Now it rains like mad."  Thomas Gray 1760;

June 9th:  "Everything seemed parched and dried up by the two months' drought except some brilliant patches of crimson sanfoin which lighted up the white hot downs and burning Plain."  Francis Kilvert, 1874;  and

June 11th:  We have had an extraordinary drought, no grass, no leaves, no flowers; not a white rose for the festival of yesterday!  About four arrived such a flood, that we could not see out of the windows: the whole lawn was like a lake, though situated on so high an Ararat  [at Strawberry Hill]… You never saw such desolation.…It never came into my head before, that a rainbow office for insuring against water might be very necessary."   Horace Walpole, 1775

The Blind Girl  John Everett Millais, 1856

Birmingham Museums Trust

Painters of porcelain - John Singer Sargent

It is a Victorian portrait painter who has given us one of the most striking images of oriental porcelain,  John Singer Sargent in his portrait of the four young daughters of Edward Boit.  They are seen in the family home in Paris, with two giant Japanese porcelain vases from Arita.

The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit    John Singer Sargent, 1882
© Boston Museum of Fine Arts

Treasured but familiar - Detail of above 

Here you can see some of the design on the vases, made in Arita for export to Europe in the nineteenth century, so quite modern pieces but very fashionable at the time.  The wealthy Boit family regularly travelled between their homes in Boston and Paris, taking their favourite furnishings with them, particularly this pair of vases.

Rarely enough for ceramics shown in paintings, the two vases have survived, despite crossing the Atlantic sixteen times.  The four daughters gave their portrait to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in memory of their father, Edward Darley Boit, and the next generation later gave the famous vases to the Museum to stand alongside Sargent's evocative painting.

© Boston Museum of Fine Arts 

'Place Pigalle' - at the LSE

"Allan Kingsbury, Entertainments Officer ... plotted a coup in the Michaelmas Term of 1949, a coup which he called a 'Smoking Concert',  and because I drew funny cartoons, he assumed I could write funny material.  It just so happened that from the age of 16, with a guitar bought for me by my mother, who encouraged everything I ever did, I had been composing awful tunes.  And in cahoots with an old friend, Maurice Bentley, I had moved on to writing parochial point numbers on the sexual proclivities of the Grange Park bourgeoisie.  So I submitted a few ideas.   Allan decided I should perform in them, and I cannot remember my reaction to that at all. Except perhaps, fear?  But somehow it all went ahead.  The smoking concert grew into a full scale revue, and I suggested it be called 'Place Pigalle', because that summer I had made my first trip to Paris and had still to recover from the breathless excitement, the vibrant magic, of my introduction to Montmartre, Sacre Coeur, and Pigalle!  I had made a vow that one day I would grow a beard, go back to Montmartre, and paint -- for the time being I stayed clean-shaven, and daubed the scenery for the show.

I was, of course, quite mad!  With nine months to go before Finals, I plunged impetuously into the all the time-consuming, life-involving, wildly fascinating activities that go into putting on a show.   John Hutchinson and Len Freedman were to do their brilliant double act at the piano; Al Bermel, then Editor of CMR was to write and perform; Cyril Wiseman, a law student who should have been a concert pianist, was to compose and accompany; and Bernard Levin was to impersonate Harold Laski and compere.  I first met Levin one evening, as he was walking ahead of me towards Holborn station.  I caught him up and said, for no reason whatsoever: 'Did you know that Finsbury Park, spelt backwards, is Y-RUB-SNIF-KRAP?  He pointed out that KRAP-Y-RUB-SNIF might be more accurate, and I had found a fellow lunatic."

Ron Moody, in My LSE  edited Joan Abse