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.

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.

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