"I thought they were a 1904 color," S explained of the lovely bouquet of roses she'd brought, "but now I see they match Rex Whistler."

I replied with not inconsiderable delight that it seemed to me to be quite the same thing, as I am sure you can agree.

"Standard and Poors have downgraded England," S. announced.

"Can they do that to a country?" I asked.  Apparently they can. 

"I met Lord ________," she said, referring to a nobleman whose surname is also a luxury brand.

"How's business?" I asked.

"I wondered  the same thing," S. admitted, "and so I said, 'Lord ________, who owns you now?' And at that he grimaced, and so then I asked, 'Americans?' somewhat rhetorically, but I could see he didn't care to pursue the subject.  He was very sweet, however, and I found myself admitting that I had never owned any _________ but that having now met him I would go and buy some. 'Oh,' he said very thoughtfully, 'that would help.' And he asked me to tea."

Then it was my turn to tell all the news which as you can imagine involved what in any other circumstance might be regarded as gossip, but that in the company of a dear friend can be more fully understood as involving a process of unburdening, wherein the friend helps one come to terms with the pain of knowing things one can not in good conscience breathe a word of to any other living being.  Therapeutic, in other words, possibly in a similar manner to the way confession is, minus the danger of being pressured for sexual favors or some sort of pennance.  Then quite naturally the conversation turned  to the string of losses we have suffered here of late.  And of course what we'd been reading.  Speaking of the new book by Geoff Dyer, about a man who dyes his hair and goes to Venice (dye/die/Dyer/Death in Venice) led inevitably to the subject of a rhyming Cockney expression which I had recently learned and was understandably eager to try out.

"Mutton," I said and waited for a response.  "As in, 'Mutt 'n' Jeff'' - deaf."  I was referring to someone known to both us for being profoundly hearing impaired.

"Bristols," S. countered.  "As in Bristol City's football team." She waved decorously at the air before her, as though delicately brushing invisible crumbs off her blouse.  When I responded rather blankly she elaborated.  "As in, an attractive woman walks by men of a certain brutish and common nature who will observe her passing and say to one another, 'hey mate, look at those Bristols..." 

It took a while but eventually, of course, I was able to think of a word that rhymes with cities and I must say Cockney slang is surely of only limited appeal since it requires so much research, although my efforts paid off for I can now report that Ashton Gate Stadium became Bristol City's permanent home in 1904.

But this is what friends are for, of course.  To help us learn things while at the same time allowing us to be ourselves, with our quirks and limitations.  Being comfortable, that is, with each other, being just the way we are.  Just being.  Lovely.

Yew hedges and gate, Uffington House, detail, Country Life, Dec. 31st, 1904

It takes some patience and skill, but one can eventually find, courtesy of Google Earth, what's left of Uffington House, the noble mansion which burned to the ground in 1904.  [See previous entry, "Nothing, & etc." below].  A stately hedge is quite plainly evident from above, two dark rigid fingers of green, perpendicular to the winding road and pointing to an open patch of park land and what might be the ghostly rectangular imprint of the foundations of the house itself, or else an unmowed patch of ground, or possibly a large garden plot gone untended; aerial photography can be so deceiving.

Of course we in Los Angeles are accustomed to stately hedges and gates and no sign of a house; young entrepreneurial urchins here do a brisk trade in maps to these gates and hedges on the weekends, luring the unsuspecting tourist into rather wild goose chases in search of the Doris Day or Rock Hudson or Jayne Mansfield parapet of wrought iron and brick and inpenetrable greeenery.  One almost never gets to see a house, of course, but this detail is of little real signficance, since frequently the original structure is long gone anyway, razed and replaced by something else, even more grand and imposing but still obscured by a wall of defense against prying eyes.

A friend has just started a blog of nothing but pretty and odd and novel pictures -- we all long to see something, don't we, whether it's a piece of the past or the curious and startling present -- and his visitor numbers are already triple mine.  I'm glad for him.  I really must make a note to myself to provide you with the link as soon as possible, for I would be very surprised indeed if you did not find it as entertaining as the many hundreds of other visitors to its constantly updated entries have already discovered. 

Meanwhile I am getting caught up on my reading.  I recently finished a very interesting article in the Evening Standard on the son of the Aga Khan, who sounds like quite the playboy ("The Playboy Prince," ES magazine, 11 April 2008), and I have also nearly gotten current on the latest passings and obituaries, with a fine tribute to Joan Wyndham in The Guardian (April 16, 2007).  So I think I can be said to have put paid to the notion that I am somehow hopelessly out of step with the times or stuck in the past.  

It's about staying current, you know, and staying connected.  As I learned just last night, a mutual friend of ours who moved to the desert has now gone missing, apparently for some weeks.  A great shock, of course, except that drugs may be involved, so upon reflection the situation is a good deal more explicable than anyone would like it to be. One naturally wants to be stunned by the unexpected; one longs to find the world as it reveals itself too horribly complicated and impossible to explain or understand.  How could this happen?  How could this be?  But if you wait long enough, quite often you realize there was something you couldn't see at first; there was something more to be revealed, some other part of the story that eluded you. 

  The Albert Memorial
                                                                                                            Postmarked Oldham, (illegible) 1904
                                                                                                            Love From Florrie to Master J. Butterworth
                                                                                                            of Andrew Mill, Greenfield, Local
                                                                                                            From a Private Collection

The inscription reads:  "Dear John, I know this is just in your line, Florrie"

1904 can be so mysterious sometimes.  What can it mean, "just in your line"?  Do you suppose Florrie was referring to "Line of work"?  Was J Butterworth an aspiring architect or a sculptor or some other variety of artisan with plans to devote his life to decorating memorials to the beloved dead?  Or could she possibly have meant "Line of sight"?  Could John see the Albert Memorial from where he lived or worked?  Or was it a place he enjoyed visiting, a favorite destination perhaps, a rendezvous spot for assignations with Florrie -- or someone else?  Or is "in your line" some kind of slang for "the sort of thing you fancy" or "a matter of taste" or "up your alley"?  And what does that say about Master Butterworth, that the Albert Memorial was the sort of place he preferred to loiter?  For what purpose?  What was he looking for?  Had Florrie discovered young Master Butterworth's real line of work?   

Did Florrie intend her message as a veiled threat perhaps, to expose the young Butterworth?  Or was it even more than that, political in nature, an anarchist's obscure and now long forgotten message in code?

So far I've been able to discover that Andrew Mill was a textile mill, or had been at one time.  And there were Suffragettes in Oldham around 1904.  Thank you, world wide web. 

Any additional information or light you may be able to shed on this mystery, however, would be deeply appreciated.  After all, it surely means something.  Don't you think?

 Uffington House, Stamford
                                                                                                                                                                      Country Life, Dec. 31, 1904

Montague Peregrine Albermarle Bertie, 12th Earl of Lindsey, succeeded his father and inherited Uffington House, the ancestral home, in 1899.  His aunt, Lady Charlotte Guest, (1812-1895) who may have had a brief flirtation with Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli but who is perhaps more famous for her translation of the Welsh medieval epic the Mabinogion had been born here.  Country Life was granted permission in 1904 to photograph the interiors of the house when fire forestalled arrangements. 

"Lord Lindsey, who had just arrived from London, made energetic efforts to save his house, and he and Lady Lindsey directed the measures for removing to the lawn a great many of the valuables," including family portraits, the library, and much of the furniture.  Considered one of the "most noble" of the mansions of Lincolnshire and Rutland, the magazine expressed "the universal hope" that Lord Lindsey would rebuild.  He did not, however.  In 1938, the Earldom passed to a distant cousin the 8th Earl of Abingdon while the Irish titles of Baron and Viscount Cullen, which the 12th Earl had never claimed, became extinct. [Source].

I have no doubt many of you will find England's Lost Country Houses worthy, as I have, of more than one absorbing visit, with sufficient material therein for hours of contemplation -- as many as 2000 structures according to the site, and counting, and that figure does not include those noble mansions and estates converted to other uses.  As you know, there is nothing quite like a grainy Victorian or Edwardian photograph of some magnificent (as well as unfashionable or awful) structure to stir the imagination.  What remains today? you ask yourself. What was the original builder thinking?  What went through the mind of the man who inherited this imposing property, or that ancestral home, a Palladian beauty, a faux-Tudor pile, or a sprawling mixture of both?  Did he see his heirs frolicking in the extensive gardens or gamboling on the expansive lawn one fine future golden afternoon? Did he say to himself, "This I will pass on to my eldest son; this is what will remain.  This is what will be here when I am gone"?    

As far as I have been able to determine, there is nothing where Uffington House once stood, besides some subsidiary structures. If you can check and let me know, however, I would be grateful.  In any case, of course, nothing is preferable to a lot of things. 

 Detail, Cover Portrait of Country Life, Nov. 12, 1904

Royals, titled ladies, great beauties, and the daughters, sisters and wives (frequently with offspring) of titled men once graced the covers of every issue of Country Life.  In this case the subject was Mrs. Harley with her child.  Mrs. Harley was the daughter of Sir William Henry Holland, M.P. 1st Viscount Knutsford.  Mrs. Harley's twin brothers Sydney and Arthur, (the little girl's uncles) succeeded their father as 2nd and 3rd Viscount, respectively, in 1914 and 1931. 

About this child I find nothing else recorded.  I wonder what happened to her, don't you?  Burke's Peerage is silent on this element of the family line.  However, as I said to my upholsterer yesterday, just look at those pillows.  Look at the vibrant rich sprawl of color cascading away beneath her little legs.  Those wonderful metallic Edwardian hues, the gold and silver thread applique, the coppery brown against the grayish arsenic green, with the subtle undertones of celadon and cerise --

"This is a black and white photograph," he observed somewhat cautiously.

Needless to say, I decided not to argue the point and resorted to my collection of swatches instead, to make my point:



Also yesterday Bianca took us to see the work of Eugene Richards at Fahey Klein on LaBrea.  Breathtakingly bleak.  Then B. and I went to a design show at the old Robinsons May in Beverly Hills and topped it off with a late lunch at Mel's on Sunset.  

After that I returned home and watched the rest of Season One of TrueBlood and ended up feeling as though I had just about run the gamut of seeing.  Or something close.

  "More Trouble," Ch. 8, Blue Willow by Doris Gates
                                                                                                                    illustrated by Paul Lantz
                                                                                                                    New York: The Viking Press, 1940

The two young and not unattractive assistants who came by yesterday with Arturo the handyman for some maintenance work in my kitchen could not help admiring my extensive collection of diminutive Blue Willow china, which having only recently arrived and as recently been unpacked was out on display, inviting comment.  Regrettably, however, even had I taken the opportunity to pursue this interesting subject with these two charming and attentive young men, none of the words I know in Spanish seemed suitable nor pertinent to a discussion of the trials and tribulations of collecting doll china, even if conducted on the most superficial level.

Moving a Copper Beech, Country Life, Dec. 24, 1904 

Friends and acquaintances often ask, "how do you do it?"  And I must admit, there are times when I wonder the same thing.  Single, working full-time and running a household without a staff except for Esther who comes in every once in a while to clean up the worst of it and rearrange everything so it takes until her next visit to find where she put everything (Note to Self: where is the toaster?).  I also wonder how my mother managed with five children.  I wonder how any of us do it, these days, quite frankly.    

The beauty of the past was all that lovely cheap and available man-power.  

Legend has it that when Bryanston House (Dorset, now a school) was built, "Lady Portman landscaped the garden from an upstairs window; signalling with flags where she wanted the trees in order to obscure the view of [the local village of] Blandford." [Source].

Haven't you wished sometimes you had a tree you could move to blot out some unfortunate eyesore?  We all have.  The landscape and the view would be the better for it, unquestionably, and we would all certainly be happier.  As you can see, however, it takes at least 18 men and two rather smartly attired supervisors. 

Of course I realize you may still be able to wave a handkerchief out the window and have 18 men do your bidding, but I find myself in reduced circumstances these days.  It's a simpler existence, but I get by.  It's a living.  I'm grateful.  And yes, I have a very nice view.  

Fostoria amber coin glass raised-hub "double" ashtray (for cigars and cigarettes), early 60s, with Ronson, Zippo and Imco lighters, and meerschaum pipe

Searching for a 1904 association today, Gentle Reader, and I'm afraid the best I can do is come up close.  

Fostoria Glass Company began operations in Fostoria, Ohio in 1887 but moved to Moundsville, Virginia in 1891 and certainly manufactured glassware in 1904 and in fact did so for roughly 90 years until the company was sold in 1986 and the factory closed. 

All American presidents from Eisenhower to Reagan ordered Fostoria glassware for the White House.  My sister and I bought this ashtray for our dad sometime, I believe, during the Kennedy administration.  We thought it covered all the bases: it was "colonial" in the much admired Colonial Williamsburg aesthetic of the time -- we had been taken to see them make candles and soap there one summer vacation -- and it was also functional.   Even then we had learned the rule that form should follow function but in a beautiful way.  Or at least I had acquired this design truth and talked my sister into splitting the cost and then pleaded with my mother to make up the difference when we came up short.  And yes, tastes change, but you can still find similar pieces on e-bay with BuyItNow! prices ranging from $19.00 to $45.00, not including shippping. 

The lighters are my dad's and his dad's; Ronson was a company active in 1904 but not until the 20s was it famous for its lighter, and then ironically during World War II while all the Ronson factories switched to ammunition production, Zippo lighters were issued to the GIs; Zippo remains a popular brand to this day.

Imco is an Austrian brand which started making lighters in 1918.  Still more ironically, duiring the War the Germans called the American Sherman tanks "Ronsons" because of the ease with which they caught fire. 

Meerschaum pipes were certainly in use in 1904 and well before and after, and is a handy excuse to introduce you to the archives of The Nonist blog, which continues to be a source of much that is fascinating and arcane and beautiful.

I guess what I wanted to say today was something about fathers and how a father connects you to the world in ways nothing else in your life does.  Or, how the associations you have with fathers and fatherhood and men are often things like ashtrays and cigars and wide-striped neck ties and very starched white dress shirts and boxer shorts and Iron City Beer and Old Spice and ham radio sets (those are my dad's call letters on his Zippo) -- things that in some cases you might not even want in your home today, but which can still evoke powerful memories.  Articulating those memories and associations, however, is another matter.

Which is why I try and use a framework or reference, like 1904, to explain, although it  doesn't quite work in this instance.  You could argue it's because my dad (1916-1971) died when I was very young, but I am still working on the relationship.  I think everybody does.  I think even if you are an orphan, you have a relationship with your dad or some idea of a dad or a father figure to work on and work out and come to terms with. 

But to be specific:  Mack Gordon (June 21, 1904 - March 1, 1959), American composer and lyricist, was born today.  He won an Oscar for "You'll Never Know."   My dad loved songs like that, and the singers who sang them and the big band stuff from the 40s, so there is a connection here, I think, which will make sense or not, depending.  Mack Gordon also wrote "At Last."

Happy Father's Day.

The Drawing Room at Clouds, Country Life,  Nov. 19th, 1904

Henry Yorke (1905-1973) wrote novels under the nom de plume Henry Green with titles like "Loving," "Living," and ""Party-Going" but none called "Working" although I suppose he could have.  "Are you working, darling?" however, is no longer just an amusing title of a novel by a once very handsome and still very clever actor.

The news blackout in Iran is quite real, of course, but sometimes it feels as though another sort of news filtering is going on closer to home.  Or perhaps anecdotal evidence is simply more compelling, more real somehow, than the so-called statistical reports in the mainstream media which can seem so at odds, so unrelated to one's daily reality.  

How, in other words, does one interpret what one sees and hears?  All up and down Robertson and Melrose, for instance, old stores are being pulled down and shiny smart new ones are going up in a kind of mad parlor game of show-room musical chairs.  Waterworks was there, Rose Tarlow used to be there, now Donghia is here, Heritage is no longer there, Rose is there, Waterworks is there, Waterworks is bankrupt --

What?

"Darling, they filed Chapter 11 last month," a friend informs me with a hint of impatience. 

"So did Z Gallerie, Hendricks Furniture, Shabby Chic and Fortunoff's," another member of our little social club pipes in, eliciting looks of confusion from some, disdain from others.

"We were not talking about malls, darling."

"Fortunoff's is sad, though," someone else admits, as a sort of compromise.

"Everyone's out of work," my designer friend announces.

"But they're expanding the Pacific Design Center," I naively counter. 

"Business is dead," a club member snaps at me.  Others join in. 

"All the important clients are cutting back --"

"-- cancelling jobs altogether --"

"-- closing their country house --"

"-- cut the moorings on the yacht and let it drift out to sea --"

"-- still hasn't paid me for the kitchen redo in Tahoe."

"D________ has a warehouse full of furniture he was just about to ship to (name inaudible in dramatic sotto voce) right when they lost everything to Bernie."

Everyone gasps in unison.  There is even a choked sob.  A devout member of the group crosses himself. 

"But I just drove by the old Chandler mansion," I try to explain.  "They're gutting it -- "  

I am cut off with the wave of a hand.  "They had no choice.  You should have seen what S__________ did to it.  So unbelievably tacky."

"So some people are still working," I argue.

"No one is working," they assure me.

"They say the unemployment numbers are stabilizing," I point out, but I become dizzy from the eye-rolling.

Far from being better informed, by the end of the conversation I am dazed and confused.

I have decided to reread Henry Green this weekend. 

Now, tell me.  What have you heard?

  Paul Cadmus [1904-1999]
                                                                                                                                Jerry, 1931
                                                                                                                                oil on canvas
                                                                                                                                20" X 24"

Jared French often served as the model for figures in the works of Paul Cadmus, but the artist "produced only two full-scale portraits of his lover, neither of which was exhibited during the 1930s" (Richard Meyer):

     "We might note that Jerry's bedside reading is James Joyce's Ulysses, a novel banned at the time on grounds
     of obscenity.  As Cadmus recalls, Luigi Lucioni, an Italian friend and fellow painter, smuggled a contraband
     copy of the book into the United States as a gift to the couple.  Jerry's outlawed practice of reading Ulysses,
     connected as it is to his frankly sensuous gaze and recumbent body, may stand in for other, less easily
     representable acts of bedtime transgression."  

    - Richard Meyer, Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art,
      Boston: Beacon Press, 2002.

The painting was recently acquired by the Toledo Museum of Art [Source] for their permanent collection, and is now the best reason for visiting Toledo.

Today is June 16th and the second anniversary of 1904.  Happy Bloomsday.

Yes.