Brighton
View of The Pavilion, Brighton, post-marked Dec 30, 1904, from "I.T." to a Miss D. Lambert of Bolton Hall, Alnwick, Northumberland, expressing thanks for the gift of the "sweet hankies" and delight in knowing Miss Lambert enjoyed the Hunt Ball.
As you might imagine, Brighton is one of my favorite places in the world -- on the water, infrequent good weather but mild, with a pebbly beach like the one I grew up on, plus crumbling Edwardian piers, and The Royal Pavilion is on the top of my list of Best Royal Residences, Ever. Intimate yet grand, silly yet elegant, Omar Khayyam meets Puccini / Rubaiyat meets Butterfly. As far as I'm concerned, the wallpaper alone is memorable, in particular a delicious Chinoiserie design of Blue Willow birds and branches against a blushing pink ground which makes a most effective impact in the Long Gallery -- heaven.
Queen Victoria never cared for The Pavilion, for obvious reasons (too playful, too frivolous too gay), so the place escaped the "improvements" of her era; as a consequence, a visitor in 1904 would have seen this exotic pleasure palace pretty much as it had appeared in Nash's Views published in 1820 -- at least on the exterior. Not so much "old" in other words, but certainly out-of-fashion and out-of-date. By comparison it would be as if you or I were to come upon a Craftsman bungalow circa 1904 which hadn't been altered since World War I. No mid-century make-over; no ill-advised modernizing, no enclosed porch with aluminum siding or Formica counters in the kitchen, acoustic tile ceilings or walls with holes punched in them for sliding glass patio doors. Of course Americans make a fuss about anything "over one hundred years old" (visit e-Bay if you don't believe me) but really, we're not exactly talking ancient here. Not old like Mount Vernon or Williamsburg.
Sometimes, as you know, what remains of the past is strictly a result of neglect. Which is a good thing, because we need time and distance to appreciate the aesthetic of an era, and often an era not so distant from our own; just close enough to make it hard to focus.
In a similar vein, they say our recreations of the past are myopically tied to our own -- that we're blind to what gives our efforts at historical recreation away, what dates our best attempts at period accuracy. Which is why Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra looked so marvelously authentic at the time, and so dated to our critical eye now. Whereas HBO's Rome looks far more in keeping with what life in ancient times must really have been like. And of course, speaking of HBO, we now know how dirty life for John and Abigail Adams must have been -- poor Laura Linney, covered with mud. None of that tidy, cleaned-up 1950s Colonial America for her, poor thing. We see it so much more clearly now, or so we think.
This inability to see through our present-tainted view of the past is the reason forgeries often reveal themselves only later. Our eye is so accustomed to the taste and sensibility of our own time, it's only when the artist active in the 1920s is long dead that we realize how obviously fake his inventions of 15th century miniatures appear. And still collectible -- the Spanish Forger's work passed muster for a generation of art critics, and yet from our "modern" vantage point, his "medieval" faces have an unmistakable Art Deco flavor which instantly gives them away. Ditto for the fellow who fooled the Nazis with his phony Vermeers. "Bamboozled" says the NYT. And so it goes.
So, what my postcard-writing lady really saw on her visit to Brighton in 1904 is tantalizing to try and envision, but how can I really know what she saw? How do I know what anyone sees? I'm not even sure what I was looking at yesterday. Let alone what I might see tomorrow.
What do you see?
What do you see?
ok, i haven't finished reading yet but i need to know where i might find the wallpaper you describe. i am
very serious about this and i know you know.
so pass on the info, please.
xxx
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