[London: Leonard Smithers, April 1896]

Collection of the author

I returned from my sojourn in America to find a lovely surprise waiting for me: a package of books sent by my dear friend Rose who decided to de-accession a few choice treasures from her library in the Brooklyn palais.  The enclosed note read, in part: "The Cadmus and the Gordon Merrick speak for themselves.  The Savoy may be speaking as well, but I'm not sure I know what it's saying.  I leave it to you, Ida, to translate." 

About the Cadmus (by Lincoln Kirstein) and the Merrick (The Strumpet Wind, and don't you love the title?) I'll have more to say another time, but as you might imagine (and as Rose suspected) The Savoy does indeed speak to me.  It's just the sort of book Sam might find himself explaining to Didier one day, as a wonderful example of decadence and bad timing, of courage and changing tastes, of loyalty to friends and guilt by association.

Leonard Smithers arrived in London in 1891 and proceeded rather quickly to establish himself as a printer and dealer in rare books and works of art, an upscale pornographer and a passionate bibiliophile.  He'd published Sir Richard Burton's Book of One Thousand and One Nights and works which, as he liked to boast, 'all the others' were afraid to touch.  "Almost single-handedly," writes Stephen Calloway (Aubrey Beardsley, Harry N. Abrams, 1998, p.146), "and at a time when no other London publisher would help them, [Smithers] published the works of Oscar Wilde, Ernest Dowson and Aubrey Beardsley, and thereby provided each with the means to live and carry on their work."  

Robbie Ross called him 'the most delightful and most irresponsible publisher' (Calloway, p.147); Max Beerbohm described him as 'strange and depressing.' Oscar Wilde said of Smithers, 'He loves first editions, especially of women: little girls are his passion.  He is the most learned erotomaniac in Europe.  He is also a delightful companion and a dear fellow.' (ibid).  As Calloway notes, perhaps no one else of the era was more damned by Wilde's praise.  Certainly The Savoy, appearing on the scene after Wilde's trial in 1895, suffered by association, but Smithers continued to publish Wilde's work, including "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" in 1898, and a number of other works, including Beardsley's Under the Hill in 1904.  

Leonard Smithers was found dead in a house in Parson's Green in 1907 at the age of 46, surrounded by empty bottles of Dr. J. Collis Browne's Chlorodyne.  He'd pawned or given away everything, his furniture and possessions and even most of his clothes in order to fund his projects -and probably also his dependence on drugs and alcohol.  Even his silk hat, kid boots and monocle were gone.  He was buried in an unmarked grave paid for by Lord Alfred Douglas.

Biltmore, Asheville, North Carolina

George W. Vanderbilt had Sargent paint his mother, himself, his architect Richard Morris Hunt and his landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted, but he had his wife painted by Boldoni, so she is that ethereal elongated study in swirling silver tulle and smoky black, hanging to the right of the doors to the library.  Whistler painted Vanderbilt too, but he was never happy with the result; Vanderbilt received the unfinished portrait in 1904, the year after the artist died.  His widow gave it to the National Gallery in 1959.

JAMES McNEILL WHISTLER

Portrait of George W. Vanderbilt, 1897-1903

oil on canvas

82.1 x 35.9 in.

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my tour of America.  I've been to Minnesota and North Carolina.  It's a selective tour, I grant you; I kept getting texts and emails from people insinuating I had traveled far too close by to where they lived not to have stopped and said hello, far-flung spots like Ohio and Winston-Salem, but as you may know, the space between Los Angeles and New York is quite vast.  And full of people and places.  There's just not time to see everything.  Like visiting Biltmore, which has 250 rooms, of which we saw only a handful.  And 43 bathrooms, of which we saw only one.  There's only so much you can see and do in a day.

And it's nice to be home.

Lumber baron T.B. Walker's art gallery, 1904

Sheep Chandelier

Lobby, Walker Art Center

In 1879 Thomas Barlow Walker added a room onto his house, hung twenty of his favorite paintings and invited the neighbors over.  When the Walker Art Center opened in 1927, it was the first public art gallery in the Upper Midwest.

I am enjoying my visit to America very much.  We went to the Walker, and then to the Zoo, and then yesterday we went to the Zoo and last night we went to Wayzata, on the shore of Lake Minnetonka to hear a choir concert by the Magnum Chorum of Minneapolis.  Magnificent.  Among the pieces performed was Benjamin Britten's "Hymn to St. Cecelia" with text by W.H. Auden.  You remember Cecelia; she was engaged to be married to a heathen and as a Christian woman she had not choice but to pray and so she went into the garden to sing her prayers and play on her organ, and it was so beautiful it woke the angels in heaven from their trance and lowered the temperature of the flames in hell.  My favorite part is the bit in the middle, when St. Cecelia speaks her piece:

I cannot grow,

I have no shadow 

To run away from,

I only play.

I cannot err;

There is no creature

Whom I belong to,

Whom I could do wrong.

I am defeat 

When it knows it 

Can do nothing

By suffering.

All you lived through,

Dancing because you 

No longer need it

For any deed.

I shall never be 

Different.

Love me.

Sometimes everything works out really nicely.  Even, dare I say it, perfectly.  Last night was one of those times.  Gloria and I had a little picnic repast in the walled grotto of the William Andrews Clark Library beneath a bust of Copernicus by the sculptor Archibald Garner (1904-1969), followed by a performance in the Library of Pierre Corneille's The Liar, translated by Richard Wilbur and directed by Martin Jarvis.  

Gloria makes everything she does sound marvelous, but in this case I can vouch for the veracity of her account (Here).  It was a magical evening.  The library was built in 1926 by the son of a Montana copper baron and the brother of the only recently deceased Huguette Clark, a recluse who lived the last 24 years in a hospital room at Beth Israel.  Huguette left behind an estate of some $300 million, penthouses on Fifth Avenue, mansions in Santa Barbara and Connecticut and an extensive doll collection.  Her brother, on the other hand, collected books and manuscripts by and about Oscar Wilde, Aubrey Beardsley and fin-de-siecle decadence.  As you might imagine, the brother's collecting taste was close to my own and so it was inevitable I'd be drawn to the Clark Library.  Books and manuscripts aside, I can tell you the interior does not disappoint:  the ceiling murals alone are worth the price of admission:

William Andrews Clark Library, ceiling mural.

Heaven.  But wait!  There was more, which brings me to the "Your Blog Not Mine" meme Gloria invented the other night.  Which is to say, some things are simply more perfect to one than to another, and when you're out and about with people who write and take pictures and care about many of the things you care deeply about, there may be some sorting out and sharing to do. Gloria's post, for instance, focused on the magical light, the garden, the roses, the teenage Tara Lynne Barr who played the role of Clarice.  For reasons best known to myself, I was drawn to the remarkable talents of the very appealling John Sloan in the title role of the irresistible liar Dorante and possibly even more so to the equally charming Mark Sullivan in the supporting role of Dorante's friend Philiste:

Mark Sullivan

You may recognize Mark as the adorable fellow in the recent Kindle ad. Needless to say, once I realized who he was, I was thrilled to see him in the flesh, and in an 17th century French comedy no less.

"OHMYGOD," I whispered to Gloria, who nodded in agreement and then added, 

"Your blog, not mine." 

Because some things, no matter how perfect, are more perfect to one than to another.

Every family has them, of course; the poor country cousins.  In some families there's not much else, nothing except for stories of the distant and better-off-relatives who made it to the big city, who weren't unlucky in love or didn't fritter away their inheritance and their good looks on too many off-spring or ill-advised investments, or who simply headed out and found fame and fortune far away from rural obscurity and humble roots.  You can do that in America.  Go West Young Man and Reinvent Yourself.  I had an aunt who managed to get away and marry very well, and she told everyone she was an orphan, which as you might imagine was something of a surprise to her siblings and family back home, although she did stay in touch, discreetly.  And let's face it: most families have at least a few relatives best kept out of sight, even if we don't like being the one being hidden.  But not in the attic.  There are limits.  

Of the Astors I've spoken before.

1904 was a busy year for the Astors:

The Astor Place subway station opened;

William Waldorf Astor opened the Astor Hotel on 44th and Broadway (demolished);

John Jacob Astor opened the St. Regis on Fifth Avenue;

Nancy Langhorne, late Lady Nancy, Viscountess Astor, having divorced her first husband in 1903, moved to England;

and Brooke Astor was already two years old.

Then there was the Astor heir John Armstrong Chandler - "Archie" - who fell madly in love with Robert E. Lee's ravishing goddaughter Amelie Riviere and ended up incarcerated in a mental hospital by his family.

My aunt did the same thing.  Paid a visit to her country cousins once upon a time when I was very young and impressionable. I believe you need moments like this in your life, when people who've gone and found happiness and success and have had memorable and glamorous adventures show up and offer you a glimpse of another way of life.  You realize that the world really is full of possibilities.  It gives you hope.  And no, they don't necessarily have to arrive in chauffeur-driven limousines and wearing haute-couture...

but it doesn't hurt.

PAUL CADMUS (1904-1999)

Portrait of George Platt Lynes, 1938

Private Collection, New York

"The first thing you must know, he was breathtakingly handsome."  George Platt Lynes' niece, quoted in David Leddick's Intimate Companions (St. Martin's, 2000).

Joseph Lynes married Adelaide Sparkman in 1904; their son George, named after his great grandfather George Platt, was born in 1907.

There's not an unpretentious bone in my body - George Platt Lynes, 1907-1955

Bianca gave me a print of this which I've got framed (framed image of an image in a frame), one of my favorites from the series she did of her father's house. The drawing is by Cecil Beaton (1904-1980) of Richard Dorso's wife Betty, an editor at Glamour Magazine and Model of the Year in 1936.  

I got up this morning and for some reason started reading the letters of the Mitford sisters, then found myself at the part when Nancy (1904-1973) was sick and didn't want anyone to visit and had to put it down.  The letters during the War much funnier. 

Worn out from weekend.  Finished draft of a script, printed it, now can't look at it.  Paris Photo, Brewery Art Walk, crack-of-dawn meeting at the Lodge yesterday morning, then to the studio to unload pallets of electronic equipment (at my age, imagine); in the car on the drive home talked someone in off the ledge.  I do too much.  

Woke up to 46 "likes" on Instagram.  I love Instagram, it's pure popularity contest, whose pictures do you like? You like mine? I like yours.  The new rage, however, is Snap Chat, you set a timer on your image so it self-destructs, very Mission Impossible, young people adore it.  You send a picture of yourself sticking out your tongue at your friend (or sticking out something) and they can't save it and send it to everyone else in the school.  You might be more popular if they could, of course, but so it goes. 

Ah youth. 

PAUL CADMUS (1904-1999)

Reflection, 1944

oil on canvas

Sandy Campbell, a Princeton freshman Cadmus met in 1943, was not a dancer but posed for the one sprawled here full-length; Fidelma Cadmus Kirstein is the woman leaning against the wall, and the writer Donald Windham posed for the original figure in the foreground - that is, he is identifiable in the drawings, although his features were altered in the painting: before it was completed Donald had fallen in love with Sandy, a development which upset Cadmus.  (See Intimate Companions, pp 182-184).

Cadmus recorded scenes at the School of American Ballet, founded in 1933 by Lincoln Kirstein and George Balanchine (1904-1983).

I was thinking yesterday of Anthony Blum, (no relation to Irving, for whom see previous), principal dancer with the New York City Ballet in the 60s and 70s who died of AIDS in 2000.  There's a wonderful series of stroboscopic photographs (reproduced in Life Magazine, see Getty Images) of Blum in the production of Dances at a Gathering, choreography by Jerome Robbins in 1969.  

Cecil Beaton (1904-1980) writes in his diary for February 5, 1971 (Unexpurgated, 2002, pp 137-138) of having dinner with Lincoln and Fidelma Kirstein and going to the ballet.  He describes Anthony Blum as "the nicest dancer of the troupe" and adds that the young man had experienced the recent trauma of discovering his mother in her apartment, where she'd been raped and stabbed and beheaded.  

Attended Paris Photo at Paramount yesterday with the boys, off today to the Brewery Art Walk to visit the studio of Bianca Dorso.  Hope to see you there.

DENNIS HOPPER

Irving Blum and Peggy Moffitt, 1964

Reproduced on the exhibition notice for 

"Dennis Hopper. The Lost Album,"

May 7 - June 22, 2013,

Gagosian Gallery,

980 Madison, New York

I used to work at 980 Madison, a long time ago, but that's another story.

Peggy Moffitt (born 1940) was fashion designer Rudi Gernreich's muse. There's a wonderful portrait by Boris Chaliapin (1904 - 1979) of Rudi flanked by double images of Peggy in the National Portrait Gallery.

Irving Blum (born 1930) was an art dealer and part owner of Ferus Gallery and a major figure in the art scene in L.A. in the 60s and beyond.  No relation, as far as I know, to Anthony Blum, principal dancer for the New York City Ballet in the 60s and 70s.  

You should go see this exhibition.

Jean Marais (1913-1998)

Umberto II (1904-1983) was the last king of Italy, reigning from May 9 to June 12, 1946.  Reputedly homosexual, his custom of giving a fleur-de-lys made of precious stones to handsome favorites in his entourage was well-known; his lovers were said to have included Luchino Visconti and Jean Marais.

A few years ago Gus Van Sant was going to make a bio-pic film about Jean (Source) with Sean Penn playing Cocteau.  Did that ever happen, and how did I miss it?

Queen's Day, the end of this month, which traditionally has been celebrated to honor the birthday of the Queen of the Netherlands, will be the last and henceforth become King's Day with the abdication of Queen Beatrix in favor of her son, Willem-Alexander.  

It remains to be seen if King's Day will be as popular as Queen's Day.  

Speaking of the Dutch, today is Willem de Kooning's birthday (April 24, 1904 - March 19, 1997)