1904

POV: The Beach

George Snyder — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:14:52 GMT

The Fire Island of the Midwest
Postcard: Oval Beach, Saugatuck, Michigan
Collection of the Author

At brunch with Todd and Christopher the other day I confess we indulged in a little gossip, but it was all about people who are, for the most part, long dead. I can't help it, I find there's something charming in a story of teenagers in Malibu in the 50s going down to the beach on Sunday morning to look at all the naked men passed out face down in the sand after the wild parties of the night before. Charming I suppose because it was Malibu and long ago, and because now you can rent the television series from Netflix those men face down in the sand used to star on, and try and guess which of the handsome young guests stars who show up in the episodes were guests at those parties. Why gosh yessir thank you I sure would like to be on TV.

Not quite the same as being a teenager on the beach in Saugatuck, because Saugatuck was not exactly Malibu. For one thing there weren't anywhere near as many television stars unless you counted Burr Tillstrom who created the children's program "Kukla, Fran and Ollie" and used to drive my cousin down to the beach in his Cadillac convertible. But "Uncle" Burr was never really in front of the camera.

Perspective is such a big part of it all, of course. Point of View. POV as they say in script lingo. How you see a situation, a time, a place and your place in it; what you call it, what they call you, how you negotiate the terms of your being there, being anywhere. Context, sensibility. What did Jane Austen mean by Sense and Sensibility, someone asked me recently. Such a good question. All good novels are about love. Who do you love? Are you sensible about love? Do you love with your head or your heart?

POV. They've made films and television productions of every Jane Austen novel for a reason. Sense and Sensibility for sure. But love in the film industry can be difficult. Working in the film industry certainly can be. "Cukor was a dictator of Nazi proportions," writes Cecil Beaton (1904 - 1980) (Beaton in the Sixties, p. 236) "with his henchmen thugs ruling over the whole unit with terror and menace. To be on the set was to be in the lobby of the gas chamber."

POV. Not on the beach because it's Kentucky, but I think of the poor fellow they found recently face down not in the sand but on the floor of a supermarket, naked except for boots and chocolate and peanut butter. Life can be difficult in Kentucky, never mind love or finding work. Before passing out he writes "Sorry" on the floor with Nyquil.

Looking for love in all the wrong places, I observe.

He said he was sorry, our friend Ronald points out.

That was just the Bath Salts talking, says Justin.

Changing Tastes

George Snyder — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 15:08:57 GMT

LEONARDO DA VINCI
Ginevra de' Benci
c. 1474
oil on panel
15 x 15"
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Yesterday was such a beatuiful day and I couldn't imagine why there wasn't any traffic as I drove out to Christopher and Todd's for brunch, hahaha of course I knew why, it was Super Bowl Sunday, the straight equivalent of the Oscars as Christopher calls it. Even our FedEx person had reminded me during the week.  "I am a HUGE Madonna fan," she explained.   Had I stocked up on Buffalo Wings, a friend who never asks about these things wanted to know on Saturday. Apparently Buffalo Wings are a staple at Super Bowl gatherings.

When I started working in the art business, the highest price ever paid for a painting was 5 million dollars, for Leonardo's portrait of Ginevra de' Benci which had been acquired in 1967 for the National Gallery. I think it is still the only Leonardo in America (citation needed), and it held the world record until 1987 when Van Gogh's Sunflowers sold for around 25 million pounds. Now the news has come out that the royal family of Qatar has paid 250 million dollars for a Cézanne.

"Is it a very nice Cézanne?" I ask.

"Iconic," my friend Jonathan who is an artist and knows about these things explains.

"Well, I don't expect we'll ever get to see it now," I observe, a little sadly.  I realize I should make a trip to see his lovely Château Noir (1904) at the National Gallery, and then I could visit the Leonardo too.

"Look at it this way," my friend Justin says. "The Oak Room at the Algonquin is closing to become a 'lounge' for Marriott Reward Members, the Super Bowl is the biggest cultural event of the year, Kim Kardashian wants to start a bible study group with her friends, and Snooki announces on television that she somehow got a urinary tract infection from anal sex.  Now ask yourself if America really deserves another Cézanne."

It did seem as though something has changed in the country.  A profound shift in taste or sensibility, from Leonardo to Jersey Shore.   Someone asked if they had Walmarts in Qatar. Someone else asked if there were any Buffalo Wings.

Notes on Sensibility: Hats

George Snyder — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 14:49:58 GMT

Audrey Hepburn (1929 - 1993)
in the costume for the Ascot scene in My Fair Lady (1964)
designed by Cecil Beaton (1904 - 1980)

From Cecil Beaton's The Glass of Fashion (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1954):

"The women who leaned over my crib (in 1904) had not yet forgone the llines of the hourglass and were laced into corsets... Perched on their heads, and elevated by a little roll just inside the crown, were hats which had grown as frivolous as the milliner's trade could make them - enormous galleons of grey velvet with vast grey plumes of ostrich feathers sweeping upwards and outwards, or they would be trimmed with artificial flowers and fruit."

A Director of Photography I worked with years ago told me the story of shooting a famous funeral scene on a certain popular prime time soap opera in the 80s. Or it might have been a courtroom scene, I'm not sure it makes a difference; in any event, the two lead actresses both got to wear hats, apparently quite large and fabulous ones, and consequently every other actress on the show wanted a hat too and berated Wardrobe and called their agents and managers and the producers and cried and refused to come to the set until they all got one.

"It was a fucking nightmare," the D.P. explained. "You don't realize how short these broads are until you try and shoot a room full of 'em wearing hats. And these were big fucking hats. Plus this is the 80s too, remember, with the 28 shades of eyeshadow and glycerine tears and mink eyelashes? So don't even ask how we managed to get the close-ups. You ever try lighting midgets with umbrellas? Well that's what it was like. A bunch of fucking midgets with umbrellas."

Michael Owen, (born 1979), professional footballer and striker for Manchester United, at Ascot.
Note the hat in the background.

Cecil Beaton was 60 when he defined the look of the Edwardian Age in My Fair Lady for a new generation. Directed by his contemporary George Cukor, (1899 - 1983) who would direct Rich and Famous over fifteen years later, both men were of the same generation and similar sensibility. And worlds apart in other respects: "Cukor's and Beaton's prickly collaboration is one of the storied aspects of My Fair Lady" (George Cukor: A Double Life, Patrick McGilligan, New York: St. Martin's, 1991, page 285 - 86): Cukor viewed Beaton's claim that he'd made love to Greta Garbo with, "to put it kindly" much skepticism. To Cukor, Beaton was "an effeminate dandy in affected Ewardian suits, enormous broad-brimmed panamas, and floppy fin-de-siecle hats."

To Cecil, (according to his biographer Hugo Vickers), who'd been to parties Cukor gave and "was sickened by the obscene language amongst the Impressionist paintings," Cukor was a disturbing collection of paradoxes, namely "his love-hate relationship with Britain, with homosexuals and with intellectuals."

Sensibility, like hats, can be very complicated.

Notes on Sensibility

George Snyder — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:13:14 GMT

Sensibility means having a response; it's an aesthetic, intellectual and also emotional reaction, determined or at least influenced by many variables: time, place, memory. It is about discrimination, which can feel and sound like judgment but in its best form transcends cheap shots at what's merely good and bad. Although cheap shots can be part of a certain type of sensibility too, if done right.

One definition of creativity is divergent thinking. A way of thinking that diverges from the norm. Divergent thinking is unexpected. It delights, it surprises, it amuses.

The Right is woefully unimaginative. It is all about convergent thinking. Anything that is different is dangerous and wrong. Diverge and be damned. That's why the Right has a hard time being funny.

In the old days we talked about camp, but camp is reportedly dead. Susan Sontag is dead, and now they say camp is dead because of assimilation. Camp worked because of difference; it diverged from the usual and expected interpretation, from the commonly accepted understanding, and in so doing it could offend and in offending be funny. But mainstream society has a way of cherry-picking what it likes from the divergent populations. Being good at sports, for example, is a good thing. Or possessing rhythmn. Or having an eye for detail and a wonderful fashion sense and great abs. But the rest? Not so much.

Sensibility has a context. An orientation to the world. It is influenced by the time before, and the time present. "My advent into this world," wrote Cecil Beaton (1904 - 1980) in The Glass of Fashion (1954) "coincided with horseless carriages and electric lights. Queen Victoria had died only three years previously, and Oscar Wilde was but recently buried in the cemetery at Pere Lachaise... The women who leaned over my crib had not yet forgone the lines of the hourglass and were laced into corsets..."

Cecil Beaton (1904 - 1980)
In love with, had affair with
Greta Garbo (1905 - 1990),
dressed by
Adrian (1903 - 1959)
in Camille 1936
reinterpreted by
Charles Ludlum (1943 - 1987).

Bill Vehr and Charles Ludlum, Camille, 1973

Margueritte: I'm cold. Nanine, put another faggot on the fire.
Nanine: There are no more faggots in the house.
Margueritte: No faggots in the house? Open the window, Nanine. See if there are any in the street."

Camille by Charles Ludlum, Opening Act III

To be Continued

Context

George Snyder — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:03:47 GMT

George Hurrell (1904 - 1992)
Working.
Source: Faded + Blurred

At a literary gathering in West Hollywood the other night, a young woman asked me what my blog had to do with my books.

"Sensibility," I replied. And then, because she tipped her head to one side and smiled in that polite but puzzled way people sometimes do when I say things, I added, "Cecil Beaton was born in 1904."

She tipped to the other side at this, but the smile remained. "Nancy Mitford was also born in 1904," I added with the same result. "And Oliver Messell, and Cary Grant..." And then, because it was dark and noisy and I could do so in this sort of setting, I waved to an imaginary friend in the distance and slipped away.

It was not an unreasonable question, of course. Everything needs a context. Personally I don't like having everything explained to me, I'd rather find out on my own, but it's certainly fair to ask, and I will be the first to admit, shirtless boys may not immediately evoke the Edwardian era. So context is important.

Monday night Carlos had Eduardo and me over to watch Rich and Famous, the 1981 film starring Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen, written by our friend Gerald Ayres and directed by George Cukor. Based on the 1943 Bette Davis - Miriam Hopkins film Old Acquaintance, the story has to do with two old friends getting together after a long absence. One is a serious writer, the other the authoress of sexy pot-boilers. Eduardo naturally claimed the role of the serious Jacqueline who doesn't wear make-up and has an active sex life, whereas I was cast as the badly over-dressed Barbara Cartland-inspired Candice. Carlos was Cukor.

You see, the film is a pre-cursor for what in the next decade would become Sex in the City, which is to say a show about gay men in New York in which women play all the parts. In Rich and Famous Rupert Everett might just as easily have played Jacqueline's bitter effete and pretentious Brit, and as for Candice's down-home Southern girl, well, Leslie Jordan would have done the role justice. In fact, I urged Carlos to mount an all-male production of Rich and Famous as soon as possible.  I think it would be marvelous, don't you?

But back to context.  Look at Old Acquaintance, and consider for a moment how many of the contributors of that film came into this world at the turn of the last century:

Bette Davis (born 1908)
Miriam Hopkins (1902)
Anne Revere (1903)
Vincent Sherman (director) (1906)
Henry Blanke (producer) (1901)
John Van Druten (script based on the play by) (1901)

And so forth. You don't have to be a numerologist to realize that a film from the 40s that inspired a film of the 80s that inspired the sensibiilities of a whole generation of young movie goers was actually "born" over a hundred years and two world wars ago.  That's what I'm talking about. That's the context. That's the bigger picture, if you will. And let's not forget George Hurrell (1904 - 1992) who made those famous stars beautiful.

I hope this helps.  If not, you may want to look up Pauline Kael's review of Rich and Famous. We did, and 30 years later it still manages to pack a punch. Kael couldn't out the director, George Cukor, who wasn't publicly gay back then, but she could call Rich and Famous "not camp, exactly, but more a homosexual fantasy." Kael was referring to the camera lingering on Hart Bochner's blue-jeaned rear end, but as you know, Cukor also directed The Women, and if you've ever seen an all-male cast production of that film as I have, you will understand sensibility in a whole new way.

Speaking of context, the other day Little Augury helped place the new Valentino collection in proper perspective. Lovely. That's what I'm talking about. Valentino and the Belle Epoque. Valentino and Audrey.  George Hurrell and Cecil Beaton and beautiful shirtless boys. Like Matt Lattanzi, the exquisite gay-man-fantasy Jacqueline picks up in Rich and Famous. The original Didier.

Evidence

George Snyder — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:52:44 GMT

One door opens...
Photo: the author

"Last weekend I was in a foul moood. I was cursed with a violent headache as a result of writing too long. The weather at this bleak time of year made everything ugly outside and the beginnings of spring could not be seen anywhere."
Cecil Beaton (1904 - 1980), Diaries, February 1973.

I keep an evidence journal. Not to prove I was right but to remind myself of how often I'm wrong. Because I don't know about you, but unless I write it down I tend to forget the number of times whatever I thought was going to happen didn't. Like a week ago when I was pretty sure everything was going to hell, it was all downhill from there, pass out the handbaskets. No, I didn't say anything at the time, I didn't want you to worry, but by Monday I was so utterly convinced of the dire state of affairs I was racing through the Kubler-Ross stages of it all at break-neck speed, right past denial and straight into full-blown rage. Tuesday as you might imagine was especially grim. Wednesday tried my patience. Thursday was a day full of things I didn't want to do, Friday had filled up with a long list of stuff to dread, and yet all of a sudden here I am on the other side of it thinking, what was the fuss about? And I write: "Week not as bad as predicted. Did not send snarky email. Did not quit job, give away possessions and move back to Ohio."

Life changes, of course, but I forget that it isn't always for the worse. It can be a nuisance though, especially this business about one door closing and another one opening down the hall. No one has much to say about that hall in between, do they. I'm sure you hear people all the time talk about how they used to be living on the street and turning tricks and sharing dirty needles and now they're a high-profile attorney or a brain surgeon or the CFO of a major non-profit bringing relief to millions of needy people all over the world or in New Orleans at least. What happened in that hallway? A friend who used to be a terrific mess showed up last night and he looks completely amazing and says he just got back from Paris, Milan, New York and Miami, and I think, wow, and I paid my bills with checks that didn't bounce and let a guy cut me off in traffic. We've both come such a long way, haven't we. We both have changed, how did that happen? Let me check the evidence, let me remind myself that I didn't think it would work out this way. I didn't think I would wind up feeling anywhere near as good as I feel today.

Taking Pictures

George Snyder — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:19:43 GMT

Clockwise, From Top Left:
LISA ERF Lonesome (Yes) 1990
oil on two canvases, 11 x 13" framed
COUNTRY LIFE
various bound volumes including 1904 (partial year)
PAUL JASMIN
Portrait of Jensen, Los Angeles 2008
Photograph, 13 x 10"
MARIE YOUNGBLOOD
Portrait of a Young Man, undated, signed
charcoal and pencil
Photographed by the author,
Los Angeles, May 23, 2009
Collection of the author

We were talking the other day about copyright, and pirates, and stealing, and who an image belongs to.
A friend goes to an exhibition in London and takes pictures with his cell phone, posts them on FaceBook.
Two-Faced Book, Jeffrey calls it, but everyone goes on to see anyway.
An image of an image. A copy of a movie? Well. That's different.
How would you like it if someone downloads your book and then just gives it away.
Please. I should be so lucky.
It's stealing.
But I know these people. I know these artists. I own these things.
They're things; objects, they belong to me; they're images.
I go for a walk this afternoon with Bianca and Lily. It's so warm the cherry trees and magnolias have blossomed in January. They're too early, Bianca says. What will they do when it gets cold again.
They'll die, is what I say. And then start over.
I take out my iPhone.
Oh yes, says Bianca, seeing what I'm seeing and reading my mind. Take that. Take a picture of that.
It's taking, isn't it. It really is taking in every sense. After all, it's their magnolia tree, not mine. In their yard.
Take it. Before you lose the light.
Take it.

More on the Uptake, and Topanga

George Snyder — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 15:41:38 GMT

REX WHISTLER
"Then they were absorbed in their dance."
Illustration for The Last of Uptake by Simon Harcourt-Smith
London: Batsford, 1944, republished Solstice Productions, Ltd. 1967
Copyright Simon Harcourt-Smith

Perhaps I should have mentioned yesterday that The Last of Uptake is the story of the end of a country house; for some reason it didn't seem necessary. In any case, most of the action involves the aged Lady Tryphena, one of the two remaining occupants of Uptake Hall, taking a tour of the grounds with the estate's head gardener Titmarsh. There is a heavy mist hanging over everything, a "clinging sea-fog" that smothers the wind, and everything is "suffering a humid dissolution." A large piece of plaster falls at Lady Tryphena's feet, prompting her to wonder why the place has stood as long as it has. Yet as a show house people still come to gape, although most go over the hill to look at another property to which the owner has made improvements, having "given it back its castle aspect. Of the castle style much could be said, when it was a question of a family seat." By contrast, Uptake has a pagan air. And loads of follies and curiosities including a grotto, with a row of Sphinxes, a domed shell room, and a number of life-size mechanical automata scattered across the landscape: a woodsman fallen over on his side in a storm but still capable of chopping wood, two dancers in a mirrored pavilion, and an old sage in a cave who might have been lifted off the side of a Spode teapot (see below).

It's funny stuff, written to divert the author's wife during wartime. But also disquieting, ending as it does, like Rebecca (published in 1938 and so slightly ahead of its time) with [Spoiler Alert!] the survivor(s) watching the flames in the distance engulf the stately home, symbol of the end of an era and a way of life. One or two Molly Keane (1904 - 1996) novels end the same way as well, and an Elizabeth Bowen one too if I recall correctly, but those houses burn to the ground in Ireland, so not quite the same thing, although symbolically the point is made. I don't know about you, but personally I enjoy burning down things at the end of a novel.

War does make it difficult to be funny or ironic, however. Which I think accounts for the elegaic (some might say sentimental or even turgid) tone of a book like Brideshead Revisited (1945), as opposed to Waugh's more amusing work, and also contributes to the brittle and slightly bitter charm of Harcourt-Smith's tale of Uptake Hall's demise. The heirs to Uptake are dying like flies in the story or have already been despatched in terrible ways, off a cliff in Greece, in an ill-famed part of San Francisco after an incident in a gambling house there, but it's hard to find the death of heirs quite so hilarious when reality intrudes and you remember that the illustrator of the story would shortly die in the Normandy Invasion, his illustrations for this book his last work.

Yesterday Eduardo and I went to meet my friend Nancy in Topanga Canyon for the opening of the new Topanga Library and lunch. A lovely place, a spirited ceremony, the cub scouts trooping the colors, speeches by people who care about books, a string quartet, a bevy of handsome firemen from the adjacent firehouse. The rain stopped, the sky was blue, the air was bracing and crisp. No fires, no sad endings. A splendid outing in the country. Inspiring even, that in these difficult economic times, to see a community rise to the occasion for the Public Good.

The book I'm writing now (Book Three in the series of cautionary tales about life in the city of fallen angels) is set in part in Topanga, and thus part of the visit was for research. But like war, truly noble acts - the opening of a library, for instance, especially in the presence of so many children - makes being ironic or funny difficult. Not impossible - the cub scouts who kept bumping Eduardo's chair to run and play tag were amusing, and the one fiddling with the knob of the propane heater (there was a chill in the air) while his weary parent ignored him might have been good for a few laughs had the thing blown up. But that is probably just me, wanting to end the day with an explosion and things catching on fire.

SPODE teapot (detail), Blue Italian pattern
L to R: romantic pagan ruins, cow, dogs or lambs, man gesturing at fallen woman, old sage in cave, another dog, while in the distance, on the edge of the lake and in view of a castle, four little boys, possibly cub scouts, prepare to engage in mischief and perhaps start a fire.
Collection of the author.

The Last of Uptake, and Where it All Leads

George Snyder — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 16:45:31 GMT

REX WHISTLER
Cover illustration (detail) for The Last of Uptake by Simon Harcourt-Smith,
London: Batsford, 1944, republished Solstice Productions Ltd. 1967
Copyright Simon Harourt-Smith

Rex Whistler (1905 - 1944) couldn't have seen Foots Cray Place burn in 1949, but he might have had a chance to see another English Palladian stately home in flames when, in 1929 Nuthall Temple outside of Nottingham was doused with paraffin and set on fire to the delight of a large crowd: "the cupola of the great Octagon came down into the flames in a cascade of golden fragments. Swaggering among the smoking ruins, a group of boys from the village posed as conquerors." (Thrumpton Hall, by Miranda Seymour, 2007, p. 40-41).

In any case I was thinking of Whistler's image the other day in light (no pun intended) of other Palladian houses burned to the ground, (see below) such as Foots Cray Place, the site of which like that of Nuthall Temple now also lies beneath the M1, the latter's under one of the slip roads at Junction 26. The Last of Uptake is a lovely match up, Whistler's wonderful illustrations to Harcourt-Smith's story, written to divert his wife during the Blitz, "when she was lying a helpless invalid in plaster" (book jacket flap). Whistler died in the Normandy Invasion in 1944.

I wanted a Rex Whistler to do the cover illustrations for my book series, but I was talked into photographs of handsome young men instead. I don't regret the decision, but if you're a clever artist who works in a Whistler-Beaton-Oliver Messel style, please let me know. I could easily be talked into something for the boxed set edition.

Simon Harcourt-Smith's father was Sir Cecil Harcourt-Smith KCVO (1859 - 1944), archaeologist, appointed Keeper of the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities at the British Museum in 1904, and Director and Secretary of the Victoria & Albert from 1909 - 1924. Simon shows up periodically in the journals of James Lees-Milne (speaking of stately homes).

Simon's niece is Joanna Harcourt-Smith, a blogger on one of my favorite alternative on-line magazines Reality Sandwich. According to the Daily Mail Joanna grew up "a flower-power teenager in the Sixties, [who] lived with the Rolling Stones in France, cavorted with playboy Gunther Sachs, Salvador Dali and the Aga Khan, before falling in love with the LSD guru Timothy Leary, by whom she has a son, Marlon."

The story of Joanna's nephew, (son of her late sister Florence), the hedge fund tycoon Arki Busson who's dated great beauties like Elle Macpherson and Uma Thurman, will have to wait for another time. But needless to say, everything is connected. As you can see, even the most cursory sort of search for meaning winds up leading to fire and beautiful people, art and war, love and drugs. As a friend of mine used to say, "Someday I'd like to go on a date that doesn't end with one of us leaving in a squad car."

Haven't we all felt the same.

Foots Cray Revisited

George Snyder — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:05:44 GMT

Foots Cray Place, near Sidcup, Borough of Bexley
Constructed 1754, burned 1949
The M1 motorway now passes directly over the site
Postcard view, circa 1904
Collection of the author

Frederick George Loring (1869 - 1951) was an English naval officer, wireless expert and writer (Thank You Wikipedia and Google). In 1904 he accompanied Guglielmo Marconi to America for wireless experiments. Loring died in Foots Cray, (the area not the house), in 1951.

I always like me some Palladio, as they say. Which was the point of yesterday's post (see below), although the Second Church of Christ Scientist was built in 1910 and so not quite on the money as they also say, but Wikipedia was down for a worthy cause and nothing to be done except to take a chance and run with it. In 1904 an article appeared in the New York Times more or less accusing Mary Baker Eddy of stealing all her ideas from the spiritualist Phineas Quimby, but I couldn't find that yesterday either.

Mary Baker Eddy believed in the power of the mind to heal. Or Phineas Quimby did and she ran with the idea, same thing, basically. And like it or not, it worked for some people: mortal illness cured with mental discipline. So I asked an old-time Science of Mind practitioner why you didn't hear more about these kinds of healings these days; how come it seemed to have lost its popularity and never really caught on with a wider audience.

"Alternatives," she said. "There were less doctors around and not so many medical cures when I was young," she explained, and I believed her (this lady was old). So why would you go to the trouble to discipline your mind, focus your mental powers and spend your time studying, when now all you have to do is take a pill or get a shot? Current health-care costs aside, I think she had a point.

Everything changes; there are surprises everywhere. There's a highway where a house used to be; there's a faith in an idea that becomes so fashionable they build a Palladian villa to celebrate it, and then the idea loses its appeal because of easy alternatives. Something new comes along, something unexpected maybe, even surprising. A cure for cancer; the wireless; the Internet.

Looking Ahead

George Snyder — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 15:07:01 GMT

Second Church of Christ Scientist
Historic West Adams District, Los Angeles
Photo: the Author

Prediction of Mary Baker Eddy, February 22, 1904:

"In the year twenty-one hundred I think will be the end. At that time either the world will be saved through universal salvation, or those who now are working against us will burn up as the physical scientists say the world will be burned up, by volcanic action; we know what they call volcanic action is mortal mind destroying itself...God is making demands upon us." Divinity Course and General Collectanea, compiled by Richard Oakes, p.21; from information preserved by Gilbert C. Carpenter, CSB, a secretary to Mary Baker Eddy.

I never know what's coming. People ask, how do you do it? I wonder the same thing sometimes. What's the point? This is awfully silly, I tell myself; and that's how it starts. You would think it would be downhill from there, wouldn't you, yet still I do it and I am always surprised by what comes next. I may not be wrong about the silliness or the pointlessness, you understand, but I'm nearly always surprised. Which quite honestly is as good a reason as any for doing something, don't you think?

How it ends is anyone's guess, of course. 2100 seems good though. I can work with that, can't you?

Age Before Beauty

George Snyder — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 04:01:08 GMT

Beauty
Not in the collection of the author

Nancy Mitford (1904 - 1973) writing to her sister Diana, Lady Mosley (1910 - 2003), Venice, 12 August 1970:

Cecil [Beaton, 1904 - 1980] came back for a night. He is fearfully worried about a tiny wrinkle on his cheek. People gaze in the glass & don't realize that the general effect is 100. I saw the old soul from my balcony - didn't know he was coming - & wondered who the old gent was until I heard the voice. Nothing to do with the tiny wrinkle.

From The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters, Edited by Charlotte Mosley, 2007, p. 550

Why I Killed You

George Snyder — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 15:33:41 GMT

Was it because you were young and beautiful?
I don't think so.
Photo: X, Y and Z. Models gather for promotion of the new Abercrombie & Fitch store in Paris.
Not the collection of the author

"In any country there are only one or two people one likes. One has one's work or, if not, then life is made up of unimportant details." Cecil Beaton (1904 - 1980) Memoirs of the '40's, page 192.

"A writer has to be so careful, doesn't he," my friend X observed. "I mean, if he hasn't processed something, or hasn't dealt with some yearning or secret sorrow or trauma, well it is going to show show show on the page, isn't it."

"What do you mean?" I asked with trepidation, braced for the worst. We'd just been speaking of my new book.

"Oh, you know," X replied vaguely and scanned our surroundings, no doubt looking for something bright and shiny to point to and distract me.

"Writers always kill the ones they love," Y explained to me the other day as if I had asked him to. "They don't always realize they're doing it, of course, but they can't help themselves." We'd been speaking of my first book.

"You may be right," I said, which I always say when I've made up my mind to steer clear of a fight. It's something Gloria taught me.

"May I offer you some advice?" he asked.

My body language screamed no, every cell in my body cried out in silent paralyzed horror, but I heard myself mumbling words that oddly sounded like, "Oh how kind of you to offer." Then I held on while the great waves of white noise crashed over me. When it was all over I checked for signs of mortal wounds and bleeding while a voice in the distance inquired as to what the next book would be about.

"Helpful People," I said. "In fact I'm thinking of calling the whole series The Just Trying to be Helpful Adventure Series. Cautionary Tales of Life in the City of Fallen Angels."

It's what we do, you know. We try to be helpful to others. We don't want them making fools of themselves. We don't want them thinking they can figure it out on their own, without our help and guidance. We just want to be of service. We don't want you making the same mistakes we made.

It's why you so often want to kill us.

Pitchford Hall and What's at Risk

George Snyder — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:37:05 GMT

Pitchford Hall, Shropshire
Postcard view, undated
Collection of the author

The main structure dating from 1560-70 with elements of an earlier mediaeval building contained within the west wing, PItchford is one of England's finest Elizabethan half-timber houses, listed Grade 1. Queen Victoria visited as a young girl and described Pitchford as "a curious but comfortable house, striped black and white and in the shape of a cottage." King George VI and Queen Mary stayed in 1935 when they were still the Kents. Sold in 1992 after attempts to save it for the nation failed, it is now separate from the Pitchford Estate farms and listed on the English Heritage Register as "at risk."

As a general rule I try to confine myself to collecting images of stately homes that have been demolished or at least severely altered and converted to drug rehab centers or religious institutions, but "at risk" sounded dire enough to include Pitchford Hall. The new owner is rumored to be American and won't let anyone in to visit, which does sound rather dire, and anyway the place reminds me of Carden Hall, another half-timbered house of great age which burned in 1912 (see previous post, below), when someone dropped a cigarette. Let's hope the American over at Pitchford doesn't smoke.

Everything's at risk of course; all the time, everywhere. "Reduce your risk," they say. "He's a high risk," they tell you. "That's risky behavior," they warn. Getting out of bed is a risk, if you ask me. But then not getting out of bed can be just as dicey.

Lately it seems to me the truth is at risk, but then of course telling the truth can be a dangerous venture too, so look out.

"Scientists are not after the truth," wrote Dr. Karl Schlecta (1904 - 1985), translator of Nietzsche, and quoted at the beginning of The Gates by John Connolly. "It is the truth that is after scientists." I wonder if that's as valid a statement about writers as it is about scientists, what do you think? If truth is after anyone, should it be a scientist or a novelist? I know which I'd prefer, but in either case, there's bound to be some risk involved.

Or maybe that's the risk you take.

Ashburnham and What is Left Behind

George Snyder — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:58:06 GMT

Ashburnham Place, East Sussex, 1959
The 17th century structure (built on the cellars of a 15th century building) largely rebuilt in a Neo-Palladian style in the 18th century, with neo-Gothic additions in brick in the early 19th century, the whole refaced in stone at a later date and then refaced a further time in brick in 1853.
Largely demolished 1959.
Postcard view, collection of the author

Ashburnham was home to the Ashburnham family from the 12th century. When the Earldom became extinct on the death of Thomas Ashburnham, 6th Earl of Ashburnham, in 1924, the house was inherited by his niece, Lady Catherine Ashburnham. Damaged when a Marauder bomber crashed nearby during the Second World War and dry rot set in, the estate was inherited by Rev. John Bickersteth on Lady Catherine's death in 1953. The contents of the house were sold at auction at Sotheby's in June and July 1953 to pay the death duties, and the house was mostly pulled down in 1959, reducing the central section to two floors and the wings to a single story. Ashburnham is now a Christian prayer and conference center.

Algernon Charles Swinburne's mother was Lady Jane Henrietta, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Ashburnham.
You probably have the 6 volume set of the poems of Swinburne published in London by Chatto & Windus, 1904.

The lakes and grounds designed by Capability Brown still remain, (as does Humphry Repton's work at Panshanger), but I'm not sure it wouldn't be better sometimes to pull the whole place down, rather than leaving just enough behind to let you know what was lost, don't you think?

A friend is going to London so I gave him a copy of something sensational [Buy It Here] to read on the trip with the understanding that he will shamelessly promote it and leave it behind for his English hosts for them to read and in general help pump up UK sales. "Not leave it behind on the plane?" he asked. "Lots of people do that."

What is it about people reading and traveling? Another friend said she was going to read my book just as soon as she went on a trip. "The sooner the better," I urged her. "Otherwise my fame will be posthumous."

"The sooner the better," she replied.

Edwardian Soap

George Snyder — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 15:25:21 GMT

Unidentified staff, circa 1904

Best line of the evening from Downtown Abbey:

"Edith, you're a lady, not Toad of Toad Hall."

Does anyone else see a resemblance between Lady Edith and Agatha Runcible of Eveylyn Waugh's Vile Bodies? Agatha, you may recall, also got behind the wheel, with tragic consequences.

I'm worried about the new addition to the staff, the redhead named Ethel. Redheads are always trouble.

In Service

George Snyder — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 16:10:41 GMT

Carden Hall, Carden Park, Cheshire, seat of the Leche family, constructed early 17th century
Photograph circa 1904
Burned 1912
Now Carden Park Hotel, Golf Resort and Spa

Around 1895 at the age of 14, Freddy Gorst arrived at Carden Park to begin his service as a footman. His first week was spent polishing silver until his livery arrived: "a dress suit made of plum-colored wool with a matching vest trimmed with silver buttons. With it I wore my first dress shirt, a round collar and a white bow tie."

Next he was taught how to set the table: "The dinner table was alwways laid with a thick baize underlining with a white damask cloth over it. Directly in the center of the table was placed a large bowl of dark red geraniums which had been especially raised in the hothouse. Two silver baskets of fresh fruit and two pairs of five-branch candlesticks, with each candle covered by a fringed silk shade... Then the flat silver and the Crown Derby china with insets of the Squire's crest, the same lush red as the geraniums, were arrranged..."

Young Fred's favorite room at Carden Park was the drawing room, "with priceless Queen Ann furniture covered in exquisite gold brocade matching the draperies. They cascaded from golden valances which held them in place above the twenty-foot windows to the floor where they were carefully arranged in fan pleats. These draperes were so fragile from age that they could not be dusted by hand. When Margaret, the parlormaid, cleaned them, she had to use a hand bellows to blow off the dust."

Fred was in service at Carden Park for 3 years; he would later serve as a royal footman to the Duke and Duchess of Portland.

Of Carriages and Kings, A Royal Footman's View of Edwardian Elegance, Frederick John Gorst, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1956

Panshanger Redux

George Snyder — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 12:48:07 GMT

Panshanger House, Hertfordshire.
Chief Residence of the Earl Cowper
Country house of Lord and Lady Desborough from 1913
Demolished 1954
Postcard View, circa 1904
Collection of the author

Whoever said 4 AM was the hour of death and debts wasn't kidding. You can add fog and a vague, restless low-grade anxiety to the list as well. Or not. But I've been waking up at this dark hour and not able to go back to sleep.

And probably because of feeling lousy lately, my thoughts have turned to Ettie, Lady Desborough, (1867 - 1953) about whom I have written previously: the quintessential Edwardian hostess and epitome of all things 1904. The last of the great Whig hostesses, she entertained the Prince of Wales, flirted with Oscar Wilde, lost both her golden-haired sons in the War and lived to see the house she loved crumble and decay around her, a Miss Havisham of a Vanished Time and Place. My friend J was with me when a new addition to my extensive collection of postcard views of lost stately homes arrived in the mail.

"Ah yes," observed J, tapping the image with a forefinger knowingly. "There's your problem."

"It is?"

"All that ivy," he explained. "So picturesque. So destructive. Used to visit Ashburnham Place with my parents when I was a boy. Had to tear down entire wings of the place because of the damage the ivy had done."

"Oh dear," I said.

"And the dry rot too, of course," he added. "It's a Christian prayer center now."

"I must look it up," I said and sighed, feeling a twinge of envy for my friend's up close and personal experience with the relentless, voracious power of time and history and ivy.

"You really are taken with all things English, aren't you," my friend said, not without a touch of mild disbelief.

"No, not all things," I quickly explained. "Just the demolished bits."

Which was not entirely true, but close.

Faringdon House

George Snyder — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:23:20 GMT

Postcard view of Faringdon House, Oxfordshire
Home of Lord Berners, Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, 14th Baron Berners (1883 - 1950)
Postmarked 18 Aug 1920 with annotation in a later hand:
"This is where my sister was maid to a lady."
Collection of the author

As you know, the composer, writer and aesthete Lord Berners had the fantail pigeons at Faringdon dyed in rainbow hues. They must have looked like living confetti as they puttered on the lawn, occasionally fluttering off on the breeze, or scattering at your approach.

Daphne Fielding (née Vivian) (1904 - 1997), wife of the 6th Marquess of Bath until she divorced him in 1953 and married Major Alexander Fielding, writes in her memoir Mercury Presides of her neighbor Lord Berners as a "mixture of sweetness and malice." Her younger son Lord Chirstopher Thynne recalled a visit he and his father made to Lord Berners:

"When I was a schoolboy, my father and I went to have lunch with him at a pub where we were in a private room." The Marquess of Bath thought the room 'quite nice,' but Lord Berners insisted the colors clashed. "They seemed to argue about it, and in desperation Berners turned to me for confirmation. At the age of ten I had no idea what a clash of colours meant, but I did realize that Lord Berners probably knew more about such things than my father."*

Meanwhile, another blasted head cold, my third this season, and I'm beside myself. I've now resorted to the advice of faith healers and witchdoctors. Drops of oregano oil at the back of the throat. It heats you up and supposedly burns out the cold. It seems to have helped, but then, I'm desperate. I would dye birds bright colors if it would help.

*Peter Dickinson, Lord Berners: Composer, Writer, Painter (Boydell Press, 2010)

Ojai

George Snyder — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 14:50:46 GMT

Ojai, California
December 31, 2011

I always wonder when I visit a place whether I would like to live there. Some I decide are nice simply to visit; other places feel as if they could be more permanent. Ojai has a very nice feel to it. According to Gloria, Krishnamurti said that if he could be anywhere in the world he'd choose being under an orange tree in Ojai. I can understand why. New Year's day we had breakfast at the Ojai Spa where the 1 percent go to golf and play tennis and relax. It is, as you can imagine, very nice indeed. The view from there is the one they used for the backdrop to the Frank Capra 1937 film Lost Horizon, the story of Shangri-La. Ojai also has a very fine bookstore, and I always say a good bookstore is essential anywhere I might decide to live. In any case Ojai was exactly the right place to say adieu to the old year and hello to the new one.

I have a few resolutions. One is to become more mobile. Gloria can post on the go; I find the iPhone just a teeny bit small for what I like to do, I don't really want an iPad, and my current lap top is not as light as air and actually pretty cumbersome. Time for an upgrade.

It was a perfect holiday away. Now I'm home and easing my way into the new year, restored and refreshed. In 1904, the spiritualist Annie Besant, who raised Krishnamurti from an early age, gave a series of talks on Higher Consciousness in India. That's one of my other New Year resolutions: more higher consciousness. Being more awake and aware. More conscious. And mobile.

Happy 2012.