1904

Going Places: Warter Priory

2010-03-13T15:36:00Z

Warter Priory, near Pocklington, Yorkshire, postmarked 1935, at which time the property was in the possession of the Hon George Ellis Vestey, younger brother of the 2nd Baron Vestey, sold on his death to the 4th Marquess of Normanby in 1968. In 1972 "the house was demolished, the splendid gardens bulldozed and the rubble used to fill in the nearby lake." [England's Lost Country Houses].

You go places and send postcards, or people used to. In this case the sender writes to her dear friend in Bramley, Leeds, that "I have just got this postcard which we have in Pock[lington] so you will know I am home safe when I post in Beverley."

In other words you could tell from the view of the landmark on the postcard where your friend had been or gone back to.

You will be interested to know that the Bramley Baths, built in 1904, have recently been restored and are an excellent example, even perhaps the only remaining example, of Edwardian swimming baths left in Leeds today.

Now I'm off to the gym, to the store, to LACMA and many other adventures and destinations. People to do, things to see, and so on.

Mais ou sont les neiges d'antan?

2010-03-12T14:21:00Z

There was snow on the mountains at the beginning of the week when this was taken, you can see it in the distance; it's gone now.

Francois Villon's poem "Ballade des dames du temps jadis"of course is really asking where the beautiful women have all gone. The refrain about where the snows of yesteryear have gone is just a substitute, a stand-in, like Pete Seeger's where have all the flowers gone, long time passing, preferably as sung by Marlene Dietrich.

I've been corresponding lately with someone who reminded me about the snows of yesteryear in Ohio. I have not been back in a very long time to see, but I do remember the winters there and yes, it could be pretty, for a while. In this case, however, I suppose you could say that it is not just the snow from the old days that is gone, but how much else is gone with it. You associate snow with a sense of loss because loss is a cold business. I think about going back but I'm told The Unionville Tavern was sold and turned into a martini lounge and then closed and now it is falling into disrepair. If you know what old white clapboard looks like in the snow in weak winter light against a gray sky, seen through the branches of old bare shade trees then you can appreciate why I hesitate at the same time I feel like I might want to see that again. Few things are that bleak and still beautiful. Black and white photography would not do it justice. Neither would color.

Lately everyone's been gone or off going to places, Greg to Palm Springs, Carlos to Atlanta, Eduardo to Cuba, my Montreal friends to Cuba too, Sophia to India, then Paris, Justin to Boston and back again to New York in time for lunch. Philip's still in Russia. I have not gone anywhere for a while now. My choice. Nowhere except Monday night when I went with Dave to the Valley, out past Woodland Hills, past Reseda, past Encino, look at the mountains in the picture, go out there and turn left and go off the screen for a million miles. Another world. Not Cuba or India, I admit, but definitely another world, trust me. "Where are we exactly?" I ask a friend of Dave's when we finally get there.

"The Valley," the lady replies, as if to be more specific would be really complicated.

Decorating Advice

2010-03-10T14:48:00Z

Herman Schrijver's clients:
Ernest Simpson with his second wife Wallis and her friend the Prince of Wales
Venice, 1934.

"All draperies must be heavily trimmed and fringed. If you cannot afford braids and fringes don't have draperies."

"Your pelmets or valances or draperies should always be at least two or three inches deeper than you think. More rooms are ruined in England by pelmets and draperies which are too skimpy than in any other country."

"Long curtains to the floor lined and inter-lined give an air of luxury to the room and help to keep you warm in winter. If you have lovely wooden or parquet floors let your curtains rest gently on the floor; even a few inches is not too much. Again it gives an air of luxury. "

"Always have your curtains, pelmets or draperies made and fixed by a professional upholsterer. If you must save money, choose a cheaper material."

- Herman Schrijver, (1904 - 1972), quoted in Herman & Nancy & Ivy, by Charles Burkhart, London: Victor Gollancz, Ltd, 1977

Odd Friends

2010-03-08T14:23:00Z

Fort Belvedere, interior as decorated for Edward VIII, (afterward the Duke of Windsor)
by Herman Schrijver (1904 - 1972)

While you were watching the Oscars, I was finishing Charles Burkhart's Herman & Nancy & Ivy (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1977) which I had eagerly awaited and which had just arrived in the weekend mail.   I was so looking forward to learning more about Herman Schrijver, Dutch-born bon vivant and decorator to so many interesting people including "Ernest Simpson, more than one of Ernest's wives (including Wallis), the King, assorted Guinnesses and Kesslers, Lord Stonehaven and Dame Marie Tempest." (p. 33).

Herman was also great friends, oddly enough, with Nancy Cunard and Ivy Compton-Burnett, and the point of the book Herman & Nancy & Ivy I think is to elaborate on just exactly how one person can have such different sorts of friends. Nancy, as you know, is famous today for the Beaton portrait of her wearing lots of ivory bracelets; she was also tireless in her work on behalf of various causes and was sexually insatiable. Understandably, Nancy was not especially fond of the novelist Ivy who was sexually almost certainly the very opposite of Nancy and seemingly uninterested in any causes. One would be hard-pressed I think, to find two more different women, but both were friends of Herman.

"If you have a personality," Herman wrote, "this must be expressed and recognized in all your rooms, in every corner of your house. If you don't have a personality steal or borrow one from the people you like or admire most." In an interview with Herman In a Cape Town newpaper in August 1936 he tells us that "King Edward likes clean, bright colours and colour contrasts, and he is fond of red and yellows. The walls of most of his apartments at the Fort are painted white." The question of course is whether the King really preferred this decorating scheme or borrowed it, perhaps from Wallis SImpson.   We may never know.

Clearly, however, Herman was drawn to people with personalities, sometimes even people with fairly difficult ones. Nancy was forever showing up chain-smoking and drunk, and Ivy always scraped the butter off the toast at tea. Nancy almost never ate, and Ivy liked very simple, very plain English food.  Ivy, in fact, disliked people speaking anything but English in her presence and would demand a translation when someone spoke French. Nancy, as Harold Acton told Duncan Fallowell (in To Noto, Bloomsbury 1989) "was an extraordinary woman. She always had to have enormous black men plunging into her morning, noon and night."  As for Ivy, it is unclear whether her long-term relationship with the English furniture expert Margaret Jourdain with whom she lived for many years was ever physical. Opinion is evenly divided.

Which I think proves the point that Herman preferred personality in rooms as well as friends.

To be continued.

More Mad Madresfield

2010-03-06T14:43:00Z

Madresfield Court, Malvern, Worcestershire
Scanned from the author's extensive collection of postcard views of stately homes

In the next issue of Vanity Fair, the one after the Oscar issue with the young starlets on the cover, the one with Michael Douglas on the cover instead, there will be yet another story on the relationship of Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead to the history of Madresfield and the Lygon family.

As you know, of course, I have already written extensively on Madresfield and Brideshead, but apparently there is still more to be said. And not surprisingly, since as you will recall, William Lygon, 7th Earl Beauchamp, had "a persistent weakness for footmen" [Source] which was inevitably bound to be noticed by his brother-in-law the fabulously wealthy and profoundly intolerant Duke of Westminster who did say something, rather unpleasant, and scandal ensued. Since Waugh had taken up with the doomed second son, the young and delicate Hugh Lygon, the banished Earl became the inspiration for Lord Marchmain, the Lygons for the Flytes, Hugh for Sebastian, and so on and so on.

The intersection of fiction and fact is an endlessly fascinating place to pin down, to map, to go and seek out and stand at the corner of and look about in every direction for yet more clues. They say we are in a time when the memoir and reality are especially important, but I think we've all just gotten terribly skeptical. No one believes what passes for truth so everyone wants to reveal their own personal version, hence all these blogs, confessional and othewise, these tell-all tales, all fodder for Oprah's book club. The problem is that one can never tell the truth without embellishing (at any rate, I can't). How far one goes in one direction or the other, for the sake of truth or for the sake of a good story, depends on so many factors, not least being the desire to keep your audience entertained. I happen to think since man first started grunting, he was shaping true reporting into enhanced and compelling narrative ("The wooly mammoth was how big? Really? Show us the little dance you did when you taunted him. Right before you killed him all by yourself with that little stick. Go on. Tell us again.").

It's in our nature. I don't know about you, but I can hardly get through the day without at some point re-imagining the scene around me, the various players, the setting, the dialogue re-composed into a new and improved reality. A funnier one, at least. And no, as a matter of fact my 'fictionalized' take is not always the one in which I come off looking good. Sometimes quite the opposite. You, on the other hand, invariably receive a flattering portrayal. I promise.

In Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead (London: Harper Press, 2009) the author Paula Byrne writes, "all Waugh’s fictional people and places are subtle transformations, not direct portrayals, of ‘reality’.” I should hope so. I should like to think fiction is more than the truth with the names changed. I should even like to believe that fiction does something the truth can't do. Something perhaps even better. I happen to believe there's a point to taking the raw material of this world and shaping it into something else, that there's even a useful purpose for not entirely telling the truth. But I'm old-fashioned. I love fiction. Fiction is, after all, not entirely true. Non-fiction is, by definition, non-not-true. Yes I adore finding out what supposedly really happened, what was really going on. But I think sometimes fiction gets to the truth behind the truth, the way non-fiction can get to the story behind the story. And yes, I know it sounds mad, trying to make the distinction. I know it is difficult, trying to tell the difference.

What Is Said, Unsaid

2010-03-03T14:31:00Z

Alain Delon, Le Samourai, 1967
Detail, television screen grab by the author

Jef Costello (Delon) is a man of few words. He says more just by looking at the bird he keeps in a cage in his apartment. His hands tell you more than most people say out loud. His eyes do the acting, the way he studies that bird to know if someone's been there when he was out.

Not saying things, what can't be said, is interesting. I had a lovely chat on Sunday with my dear friend Felix about just that, all the things one can't say in polite company or in print. I mean the people we've known we can't name, the things we've done we can't tell you, the jobs we've had we don't talk about, and not just because of those confidentiality agreements or the terms of that court settlement. Some of us, you see, are gentlemen. Some of us have learned that if you can't say something nice, it's better to have a little private chat about it later with your best friend when you can process the pain of holding in how you really feel by saying what you were rehearsing in your head all weekend to say but can't, shouldn't, won't, because you value your dignity, your pride, career, relationship, reputation, mental health and/or physical well-being.

Yes, some of us know when to keep quiet and not spill the beans, when to smile and nod and not argue. It's intuitive, I think, what we figure out can be said and not said, but it's also learned. Some of us studied with professionals. My mother could speak volumes without saying a word. She could make grass stop growing with a look. My father, on the other hand, simply didn't talk, which was also effective. Not saying anything can inspire fear. It can also be good for you.

Or bad for you. Which is why you run it by a friend, to figure out the distinction. The urge to say something and the effectiveness of saying it are two often quite different matters. You can have fairly base motives in life for saying things (ego, par example). There are also equally unattractive reasons for not speaking up (like, for instance, fear).

Now as you might imagine, I'm not telling you everything. The truth is it's not all that interesting. Trust me, you don't want to know. And if you really really do want to know, I promise I'll tell you later.

A Footman's CV

2010-02-28T15:39:00Z

Carden Hall, Clutton, Cheshire, burned 1912
Image: Lost Heritage - Demolished Country Houses of England

As you know, many a resume and curriculum vitae these days is an unlovely thing, a history of previous employers now renamed, merged, bought, dissolved, bankrupt, closed and in some cases simply ceasing to exist.  Rather the fate you might have wished for former lovers, but awkward when on the job search and being asked for references.

So before moving on from the memoirs of Frederick-John Gorst, Royal Footman (see previous entries below), I thought it might be useful if not also comforting to point out that, with the notable exception of Welbeck Abbey, everywhere Mr Gorst was employed is, in a word, gone:

St. Aiden's Theological Seminary, Birkenhead. Founded in 1847, closed in 1969. Gorst's first job in service, as a young boy in the 1890s, is here as a page boy carrying coal to the students' rooms, polishing shoes, running errands, working in the kitchen, and carrying pitchers of warm milk to the Rev. Beibetz in the evening.

Carden Hall, Cheshire.  Burned 1912.  The teenager Gorst, having outgrown his page boy uniform, learns to be a footman.

S.S. Germanic of the White Star Line. After suffering exhaustion by age 19, a physician advises Gorst that sea air might improve his health and the young man is hired by the White Star Line, serving on the S.S. Germanic from Liverpool to New York. Sold in 1904 to the White Star's sister company the American Line, subsequently rosold and renamed several times, the S.S. Germanic sees service in two world wars before it is cut up for scrap in 1950.

Court Hey. Disenchanted with life at sea as a saloon class steward, Gorst returns to shore and enters the service of the Gladstone brothers, nephews of the illustrious Prime Minister William Gladstone, at their stately Georgian home Court Hey on the outskirts of Liverpool. Demolished, 1956. Source

19 Rutland Gate, London.  Gorst is hired as travelilng footman to Lady Howard. The house is sold at the death of Lord Howard, and eventually demolished in 1932 to make way for a block of flats.

Welbeck Abbey, where Gorst is employed in the early years of the last century as a Royal footman to the 6th Duke of Portland. Still standing.

The world changes. In Hollywood if you're lucky your resume is a list of hit shows that are still in syndication; the sets, the offices, the props and the people who ran those shows long gone, of course, the crew dispersed, but the product lives on. In other lines of work the remaining evidence is less tangible. The name of the company you started with may even have changed a couple times while you were still there, before they asked you to clean out your desk. But a friend of mine experienced in these matters says no one ever survives more than three take-overs. Apparently more than that is simply too much for a normal human being to bear.

If you're like the young footman Gorst, however, you learn to keep moving. You change with the world. You are one step ahead of the fires, the scrap yard, and the demolition crews. You stay ahead of the game. And as my wise friend advises, you always want to be nice to the little people on the way up. Because you will surely meet them on the way back down.

Writing and Photography, Limits of

2010-02-26T14:52:00Z

Magnolia budding, Rustic Canyon, Sunday afternoon 21 February 2010

Hobbled by the limits of what a camera can do (and what I seem able to make it do, as you can see), I throw all my faith into words. And then I worry, possibly far too much. I admit it. What you think matters.

So to begin with, of course, let us remember that words are slippery and difficult and tend to repeat themselves. And people with cameras and words are fallible. And then there is so much to choose from, I mean in terms of the world itself and everything in it, so many elements to juggle and keep in the air at one time. What you can count on to carry the story and balance the composition, what details to keep and which ones to leave out. How it will all sound later when it changes, and it will certainly change because you will change; your perspective will. I don't know about you, but I go into a kind of trance in the process. The trance is the place you go where time doesn't go, and you are there, doing this juggling, this thinking, this composing, half enchanted, half dissatisfied, not quite dreaming but not where you will be later, afterward.

Later what happens is you start to doubt, or I do at any rate. Judging kicks in. The whole process is exhausting and I suppose is not even good for you, except not being good for you never stops anyone. The difficult part is everything you don't say. The part about the magnolia tree in Ohio that you can't even see but I was thinking of, the one that won't be budding for ages yet, the one that bloomed like something a young boy would find exotic and full of meaning, pink and white and faintly sexual right out there in the open after the snow was gone, not in sunny California but in the middle of Ohio, a very long time ago.

You were somewhere else, of course. You were thinking of another past entirely. Indians on horseback, not cowboys. Barefoot Indians.

You can't tell from this photograph how anxious I was to get to the next one, and how already disappointed I was with the the way the light was changing. And at the very same time, you can't see how happy I was to be with my friend, to be where I was, right there, right then.

You can't imagine how interesting it all was in that moment and place and then afterward, in the bliss of the trance. And how much I looked forward to telling you so, as soon as I got back.

House Beautiful

2010-02-24T14:11:00Z

"I'm coming to get you," Bianca called to announce on Sunday. "Lily's coming too."

Possibly as a ruse to get me out and away from my research on the servant problem (see previous posts), or because we had both seen A Single Man, my dear friend and co-conspirator Bianca had decided we needed a trip to Santa Monica Canyon where she felt sure she would be able to find the house where Christopher Isherwood used to live. Along the way, she took the opportunity to show me many other points of interest, since this part of Los Angeles was where she had spent her formative years.

"Hello, you've got the arrow," she reprimanded the car in front of us as we took a very hard right off San Vicente and plunged down the steep winding descent of Entrada Drive. "There's my school," she said, waving at a blur as we careened downhill. "That used to be a gas station where we'd go buy candy," she added as a small building swept by whose vaguely Art Deco lines hinted at a former existence. A scent of jasmine and ocean whipped our faces as I clutched Lily in my arms in case she might attempt to leap out the open window .

"She's had half a Benadryl," Bianca explained of the tiny creature who I then realized was placidly enjoying the ride with a slightly glazed look in her eyes. "There's the Uplifter Club," Bianca said after several more turns. "We would go there and order butterscotch sundaes. Butterscotch." She sighed. "Johnny Weismuller used to live over there," she added. A few more curves and bends and ups and downs and we came to a stop in a wooded glade.

We got out and Lily stumbled off to inspect some low-lying foliage. The afternoon light was flashing brilliant gold against the trees at the top of the canyon far above us. "It was always colder down here than anywhere else," my tour-guide and friend observed.

"A microclimate," I suggested. "The redwoods..."

"Cold," Bianca summarized. "Over there's a creek, where those houses are now." She regarded the structures with faint disapproval. "We used to ride our horses here and pretend to be cowboys." I looked around appreciatively, trying to imagine a teenaged girl in this shady woodsy place but with less houses. Living very far away from the places I grew up, I am especially curious about how it must feel to be an older self in the place where a young self used to live and play, and ride horses. And go to school barefoot, she tells me.

"How does it feel?" I ask. "To be here now?"

"Where's our house?" she asks instead of answering. She looks around to get her bearings, searching out landmarks. We walk a little further and she stops. "That," she says, indicating a clapboard edifice behind some shrubbery and a wall, "used to be the garage. And that," she adds, "was the guest house." We continue on our way and she directs my attention up the steep hillside. "There," she tells me. "That was the studio. That was my room."

A small shingled cottage sits above us, nestled in a thicket of trees against the slope. You can almost not see it. The main house is hidden behind the newer structure closer to the road where we are standing.

"Like a treehouse," I say. "And an artist's garret at the same time."

"It's where I did so many things, you know, for the first time," she observes, looking up at the little house perched in the trees. She does not elaborate.

"Beautiful," I say.

"And cold," she replies. "Come on, I'll show you where the bridge over the creek was, the one that washed out. A boy I went to school with lived over there. He was nice. Then one night his mother came home and tried to kill him. He was very quiet after that."

We find Lily and go back to the car and turn around and after a while we remember to look for Christopher's, but we disagree on exactly where it should be and wind up down at the beach instead, in time for the sunset.

Staffing

2010-02-23T14:44:00Z

Welbeck Abbey, principal residence of the Dukes of Portland

King Edward VII conferred the title of Master of the Horse on the 6th Duke of Portland which honor allowed the Duke to use the state carriages and have four matched Royal footmen in his household. Frederick John Gorst, author of Of Carriages and Kings, was one of those four in 1904.

Once upon a time I worked in that madcap business called television, in a position ambiguously referred to as "development," which meant periodically being engaged in something referred to as "staffing." Staffing meant you were at that stage in the development of a television series when you were looking for writers to write a new show that had been picked up for the coming season or else looking for fresh recruits for a show coming back for another season, and depending upon the nature of the show and the temperment of the creator and executive producers and the amount of interference from the network and studio, staffing could be an interesting process of reading scripts and meeting writers and having lunches with their agents. Or it could be a crap shoot. Or an empty ritual in a court society filled with intrigue, duplicity, and nepotism. I was lucky, though. I worked for a very nice man who was the talented creator of a great show. "Ever work on a really awful show?" someone asked me once, as if I would have had a very different attitude toward television and the industry euphemistically called entertainment if I had. But I had not. Plus, I didn't stick around long enough to get disillusioned and bitter. Like I said, I was lucky.

So was young Frederick Gorst, royal footman to the 6th Duke of Portland, according to his delightful memoirs which I have just finished. The Duke and Duchess of Portland certainly sound like very good and interesting people to have worked for. But talk about staffing -- consider just a portion of the numbers it took to run a place like Welbeck Abbey, at the turn of the last century:

Steward
Wine butler
Under butler
Groom of the chambers
Four Royal footmen
Two steward's room footmen
Master of the Servants' Hall
Two page boys
Head chef, Second chef
Head baker, Second baker
Head kitchen maid, Two under kitchen maids
Vegetable maid
Three scullery maids
Head still room maid, Three still room maids
Hall porter, Two hall boys, Kitchen porter and six odd (handy) men
Head housekeeper
Duke's valet
Duchess's personal maid
Lady Victoria's personal maid
Head nursery governess, Tutor, French governess, Schoolroom footman, Nursery footman, fourteen housemaids

And that was just the kitchen and household staff, which doesn't include those who worked in the stables and garages, estate management, gardens, home farm, laundry cottage (12 full-time laundresses), fire station, gymnasium, golf course, library, chapel, mechanical help (telegrapher, night watchmen, engineers, telephone clerk) and the window cleaners.

It takes a small army, of course, to make a television show. More than a few writers, obviously. But it's all fairly temporary, relatively speaking. Transient. 100 episodes, five or six seasons, it doesn't last forever. Plus you go on hiatus every once in a while too.

Running a stately home would be, on the other hand, a very serious business.

Achieving The Look

2010-02-22T14:31:00Z

I have not even gotten to the chapter in Frederick Gorst's memoirs (Of Carriages and Kings, Thomas Crowell, New York, 1956) when he arrives at Welbeck Abbey to work for the Duke of Portland. I am only at the part where he's about 20 years old and arrives in London to take up his duties as Lady Howard's traveling footman. In addition to livery, the footmen to Lord and Lady Howard in the early 1900s were required to powder their hair:

"It began with a shampoo and when I had soaped my hair thoroughly, instead of rinsing the soap away, I left it on my scalp and parted my hair neatly on the side. Then (fellow footman) Trowbridge took a big, thick, powder puff and doused my head with the 'violet powder' until it formed a pasty coating. After it dried, my head seemed to be covered with a white wig... Of course the purpose of this headdress was to have all the footmen look as much alike as possible and to create a picture of uniformity when we served together." (Gorst, p. 109)

The Howard dress livery for the footmen consisted of blue plush knee breeches, white stockings, pumps with silver buckles, a claret-colored, swallow-tailed coat with silver buttons, matching claret vest and white shirt with white bow tie.

I don't believe I could ever have pulled off this look, and yet I think you would agree that a group of tall and handsome young men all dressed and coiffed in this fashion must certainly have made an impression.

You may also be interested to know that 19 Rutland Gate, London, where Gorst served Lady Howard, would be sold in 1914 to an American millionaire and his wife who began extensive renovations to the house but never lived there, going down on the Lusitania. The property was subsequently sold to the 2nd Duke of Ancaster and later demolished in 1932, to be replaced by a block of flats. (Source)

In Service, Work

2010-02-21T14:56:00Z

Winifred Cavendish-Bentinck, Duchess of Portland (1863 - 1954) by Philip de Lazlo, 1912

As you know, I keep my copy of the 6th Duke of Portland's memoirs (Men, Women and Things, 1937) by my bedside, and so I am delighted to report that its companion volume, Of Carriages and Kings, 1956, the memoirs of the Duke's royal footman Frederick-John Gorst, has just arrived in yesterday's mail. It was at the Duchess's insistence that the Duke's four royal footman, hired for their looks and stature (all were well over six feet tall) should be required to work out twice a week in the gymnasium with a physical trainer, in addition to their other duties.  According to Gorst the Duchess's own traveling footman, a very handsome fellow named Hales, kept himself in shape with the housemaids, but that is another story.

A very busy weekend. Long walk on the beach with N. to discuss the book she is working on, which has in part to do with the 60s and so we had much to discuss as you can imagine (see below), then with A. to see the Polanski film The Ghost Writer which we both thoroughly enjoyed as it confirmed (in fictional form) all our worst suspicions about the corruption of the previous regime and about those in power generally.  Additionally the actress Olivia Williams (previously seen as Mrs. Darling in the 2003 Peter Pan and more recently as Miss Stubbs in An Education) is superb as the former prime minister's wife and could no doubt play the Duchess of Portland one day if she wanted to and incidentally unlike the Duchess reminds me of my mother when I was a very young boy, but I digress.

Also as an aside I might mention that another important addition to my postcard collection, a view of Welbeck Abbey, the country home of the Duke and Duchess of Portland, has arrived in the post, although I was cruelly outbid at the last moment for a view of Warter Priory, alas. More, however, on Welbeck Abbey will be forthcoming, as you might anticipate.

All of which is to say that I have been thinking about work as well as about relationships, not only between the aristocracy and their servants, but by analogy between a writer and his readers. The Duke, of course, was writing to his friends, but to whom, I asked my friend N. was she writing to?  She was quite clear in her response, which bodes well for her book. By contrast, In Polanski's film the ghost writer of the title played by Ewan McGregor talks about the lack of audience for the memoirs of political leaders, which as it turns out is not entirely true, but for different reasons which end up not boding well for him. In any case, rather like a footman to a duke, the ghost writer is a servant to a celebrated individual of power and importance.  Generally speaking, however, I should probably hasten to point out that a ghost writer is seldom hired for his looks or stature, although Ewan McGregor is certainly a good-looking fellow.

At the end of the day, however, a writer yearns to please his reader the way any good footman works to please his lordship. An intimacy may grow up between them. Feedback is useful and instructive. "Graceful," the Duchess murmured in reference to Gorst on his first interview with the Duke of Portland, which observation as you might imagine sealed the deal , so to speak, with him getting the job. Writers may aspire to such feedback.

Just the other day a reader wrote to say he found my writing "c'est plutôt dessiné en creux."

"Dude, your reader doesn't hold back any, does he," a friend who is more attuned than I am to the subtleties of the French language observed. "He means you are hollow and empty."

"I don't think he means me personally," I countered, sounding a little defensive.

"Oh. Sure. Well, if it helps any, I think your blog is, you know, pretty good," my friend replied unconvincingly.

Which proves my point, I believe. It is hard work being of service. Relationships are never easy.  It is not easy being a footman.

And it is a wonder why anyone ever wants to write.

'60s Radical

2010-02-16T14:30:00Z

Somewhere in Ohio, once upon a time in the 60s.

Say what you will about the Internet, it's a way for people to find people, no matter how many times you have moved, changed jobs or entered witness protection.  I received this image at Christmas by e-mail from an old acquaintance I haven't seen or spoken to since ninth grade.  A nice surprise. You can run but you can't hide, but it doesn't need to end badly.  Plus it's not like I went to Canada to dodge the draft and couldn't come back again.

I can't remember but I think this photograph was taken at some sort of end-of-summer picnic for members of the school orchestra. I'm the one in the middle of the back row.  I can't remember a lot of things but I remember a little. I remember John, Jim, and Karen, and I remember Jim played bass and Karen played violin. I remember the girls giggling a lot.  I remember thinking the guy in the white t-shirt and shorts seemed to know something he wasn't sharing with the rest of us. I remember wondering what it could be.

I remember thinking that some day I would be very far away from where I was then, and I would be doing exactly what I wanted to be doing. And it would be great. I remember thinking I was clever, and also wondering just how clever I really was. Which is the point of life, of course, to find out just how much of something -- cleverness, ambition, stamina, conviction -- you've really got.

At some point last week I posted my five-hundredth blog entry here. I can assure you it was not my plan when I was in the orchestra in the ninth grade to be doing this, or in fact to be doing pretty much any of what I am doing now.  I don't think I had an actual plan back then, but if someone had told me how things would turn out I think I might have tried to come up with one. Tried to, at least.  Maybe.

Maybe not.  I was something of a rebel in those days believe it or not, different drummer, my own beat, path less taken, that sort of thing. As I remember it at any rate. I was also fairly convinced that I was right about the way I saw things -- that the Vietnam War was a bad thing, that the Equal Rights Amendment was a good thing and we'd be sorry some day if we didn't get it passed.  Not everybody agreed with me, as you might imagine (it was Ohio) but I was pretty certain I was right.  Looking back, I still think so.

Of course I underestimated the opposition. The wife of my high school health and civics teacher spit on me for something I said, either about the War or about equal rights for women, I don't remember which. I don't think she knew her husband who was also the basketball coach was sleeping with one of the cheerleaders, but then you never know. Maybe she did.  Everybody else knew.

I was reading this morning about the tea-bag people. It is very hard sometimes to have compassion for people with whom you disagree, and I'm sure they feel the same way. I think it's because you have to wait so long to see how things turn out, in order to know who's really right. What seemed radical in the 60s seems like common sense now. But not then. Speak out against the war back then and you got spit on. Or killed. Four dead in Ohio, as you may recall.

I don't know what happened to all of my brave comrades in the orchestra. I wonder if they are ever surprised by the way things have turned out. I wonder if they have found out yet just how much of what they thought they might need for the journey they already had. And I wonder if they know yet who ended up being right about the way things would be when we got to where we were going.

Looking, Books

2010-02-14T04:45:00Z

The California International Antiquarian Book Fair is in town this weekend, at the Century Plaza Hotel on the Avenue of the Stars. I spent the day there and saved a fortune not buying what I wanted, as follows:

The Four Quartets, first editions, each signed by the author. £ 20,000. I feel as if I would be a better person if I owned these.

The 1923 auction catalogue for the contents of 40 Sussex Square, Brighton, belonging to Victoria Lady Sackville, Vita Sackville-West's notoriously difficult mother, the catalogue fully priced and annotated and inscribed both "V. Nicholson" and "Vita Sackville-West" on the cover. The sale took seven days. A "fierce" asking price of £ 5300 for this "rare Bloomsbury" association piece. As I have a well-known taste for auction catalogues, especially those of the contents of vanished stately homes, (I believe 40 Sussex Square is now converted to flats), I was sorely tempted. But what I'm really looking for, of course, is the sale catalogue for the contents of Warter Priory. If you run across it, do let me know.

The most coveted item of the day, however, was a breviary (Paris, 1659) with an exquisite red morocco gilt binding by Antoine Ruette with the royal arms of Marie-Therese of Austria (1638-1683), queen consort of Louis XIV, offered by Librairie Walden, Paris, for 10,000 Euros Imagine:

"Maroquin rouge au décor 'a la fanfare' a compartiments quadrilobés dessinés au double filet, ornés aux petits fers en pointillé, armes au centre des plat et chiffres MTA répétés dans les quatre compartiments qui entourent les armoiries, dos a nerfs orné de filets et poincoins dorés, chiffre MTA et lys couronnés alternés..."

Doesn't it sound divine? Holding the precious piece in my hands as the charming young French book dealer explained the finer points, I was reminded of the enduring appeal of French Catholic devotion, especially the royal variety. Plus, as you well know, I have a weakness for persuasive, darkly handsome young Frenchmen. You could almost hear the pounding of my checkbook in my jacket's breast pocket.

And yet, for reasons which perhaps only a passing glance at my bank balance would make clear, I resisted all temptation -- this time, at least, since "Insufficient funds" has not always been a deterrent to satisfying my desires. There was a time when you could distract me with a vague promise and a fleeting glimpse of physical beauty and I would forget all about paying the rent. But I digress.

In the end, having run into a few old friends and wandered and browsed and perused and thoroughly enjoyed myself I came home not much poorer than I'd started out. And richer for a day well spent.

Connected, Continued

2010-02-13T11:58:00Z

Petworth, the photogenic west front. By contrast, the east front is an asymmetrical jumble sale of styles. ["The back of the house," as James Lees-Milne describes it, "is really very ugly."]

...searching for -- what was it? [See yesterday's post]. Ah, yes. An issue of The World of Interiors with Petworth on the cover. Well it doesn't exist, in case you were about to rush off to look and as I came to realize with a slight twinge of disappointment. Memory is cruel sometimes, as you know. It teases, then disappoints. Yet I clung to the notion that I was not yet entirely delusional and persevered. With success of a sort, because the February 2008 Interiors (with the Milanese home of the very handsome and talented design team of Salci and Moran on the cover) does contain a lovely piece on life below stairs and the recently restored Petworth kitchen which in its heyday served 30,000 meals a year to staff and residents and house guests. Speaking of the servant question.

Meanwhile, however, you will recall that I am still on the phone murmuring reassurances to my dear writer friend. "This will be your best ever," I say of the book he's working on. "One has a feeling about these things." I sound very convincing. I like to think my words may bring him some small comfort and solace. Writing is a lonely pursuit. Not to mention being rarely pretty to watch.

At the same time, of course, I am leafing through Caves of Ice, the 1946-47 volume of the diaries of James Lees-Milne who worked for the National Trust and visited Petworth in 1947:

"...Lord Leconfield, now indeed slow, old and blue-faced, waddled to meet me, clad in yellow gaiters and followed by a black retriever who seems to be his only friend. He is a pathetic old man, extremely courteous and over highly bred... Said in fact he was convinced he was wise in handing over to the N.T. We lunched together (I was not sent to the servants hall)...."

On the next page, back in London J L-M dines with Loelia (Duchess of Westminster): "I took her to Lady Frederick, the Somerset Maugham play. Not good. L. told me that the Duke, her husband, was married again this morning. I believe she was feeling rather sad for she said she did not care whether she lived or died. I expect she feels like a dethroned sovereign. She should not seek happiness through pleasure. She is too clever."

Rather wise advice, at least for some of us, as I think you would agree. For as you will recall this is the same Loelia Duchess of Westminster with whom Barbara Skelton spends Christmas Day in 1952. [See an even earlier post if you don't believe me].

And finally, coming full circle as it were, I am reminded of Loelia's own memoirs of her life with 'Bendor' 2nd Duke of Westminster, [Grace and Favour, 1961], with endpaper designs by Rex Whistler and a foreword by Noel Coward, who was a very dear friend to the duchess before and after her marriage. And now you know why Noel Coward was in the back of my mind the whole time during this connecting of the dots.

"'They were married and lived happily ever after' is an assertion, [writes Coward in his Foreward] "that I have always viewed with distrust. Even as a child, admittedly a theatrical child from whose eyes the scales of illusion had fallen at an early age, I remember wondering cynically what happened after Cinderella had tried on the shoe and married her Prince Charming.

After all we have never been given any precise psychological information about Prince Charming. All we know for certain is that he was handsome, liked hunting and wore a lot of rhinestones..."

See how it all falls together?

I will confess: sometimes I think I know more about what was going on in 1947 (or 1952, or 1904) than I do about what happened this past week.

I believe I may be forgiven, however, for not thinking this a bad thing.

After all, ultimately, everything's connected.

Connected

2010-02-12T15:16:00Z

Everything's connected. It just takes a little time to see it. And explain it, of course, but since the Lambda Literary Society is having its luncheon today, as you might imagine I can't possibly go into detail right now. Plus I know how you feel about very long posts and so I'm afraid in this case you will simply have to be content with the installment plan, as it were.

Where I'd like to begin is with Noel Coward, (who wouldn't?), but although Noel was in the wings, urging me on, what happened last night had a great deal more to do with a phone call from Eduardo, who is currently deep into the revision process of his latest book, and as I happen to be not at that stage in my own writing it was clearly my turn to be supportive and encouraging which I was more than happy to do, at the same time leafing through whatever was readily at hand as one also does in these circumstances. In this instance what presented itself was the 1968 National Trust publication on Petworth House, home of the Percy-Wyndhams conveyed to the Trust in 1947 by the 3rd Lord Leconfield. Normally, of course, Eduardo and I might have been on adjoining treadmills or stairmasters for a good thirty minutes worth of sweaty repartee but alas, one more time a scheduling conflict precluded an enjoyable working-out together, possibly with Fox Sports or CNN with clumsy closed-captioning playing overhead, alas.

And so instead, phone to ear and while interjecting the occasional insight into the writing process and in general commiserating about the untold discomfort involved, I read:

"The exterior of the late seventeenth-century house remained little altered until 1869-72 when Salvin replanned and rebuilt the south front with marked success and also, less successfully arranged a new entrance on the east front..."

at which point I recalled something James Lees-Milne had observed about the east front of this important stately home, which reminded me of something Barbara Skelton had said in her memoirs to which, as you will recall, I referred the other day and in the next moment even while offering my friend some fairly valuable advice I was rifling the shelves looking for ...

To be continued.

Chic

2010-02-10T14:43:00Z

Barbara Skelton (1916-1996), memoirist, novelist, socialite, femme fatale, and the model for Anthony Powell's character Pamela Flitton in A Dance to the Music of Time.

From a diary entry for Christmas Day, 1952, in Tears Before Bedtime:

"It was a delicious sunny crisp morning and we enjoyed the drive to the Flemings [Ian and his wife Ann]. Arrived on time for once. Everything very Christmassy... Everyone very subdued. The Duchess of Westminster, wearing a black suit with gold flecks, was sitting alone in a far corner...They all appeared smug, confident and spiritless. We listened to the Queen's speech. Someone said how middle-class the Royal family were. Cyril [Connolly] told me afterwards that it's the chic thing to say. The Queen Mother, they said, was the most middle-class of the lot. The Duchess of W put on a special voice when talking of the lower classes, implying riffraff or rabble."

There is something wonderfully compelling about Barbara Skelton's account of her "rackety highbrow life" (as Anthony Powell describes it) among the literary and political set in England in the 40s and 50s. A slightly heady mix of champagne and squalor, of being chic and constantly being overdrawn at the bank which I suppose is, after all, what the bohemian life is all about. Nowadays, however, it also strikes me as just a little sad. Which I realize makes me terribly middle-class. And old. As you know, when I was younger it would have sounded like enormous fun.

Being young is key, though. Being broke and having a fabulous time is part of the fun when you're young.

As you will remember, of course, being clever and very very attractive at the same time also helps.

Castles and Caravans

2010-02-08T14:37:00Z

Barmoor Castle, now the center of a caravan park. Go to North of the Tyne for more pictures.

The recent passing of Joan Castle, the American actress married to William Reresby Sitwell, a distant cousin of Sir George and Lady Ida Sitwell, drew my attention to the state of affairs at Barmoor Castle, where Joan and William were the final residents. Now in ruins, I think you might agree that there are sometimes worse fates in store for the English country house than the wrecking ball. Or possibly not. It is all a question of perspective.

Still, I know how many of you enjoy stories about Hollywood actresses, and I think Joan qualifies. Speaking of actresses, last night I was reading Barbara Skelton's memoir Tears Before Bedtime (London, Hamish Hamilton Ltd. 1987) in which she quotes Zsa Zsa Gabor: "A woman who has never been hit by a man has never been loved." I don't know who that says more about, Barbara or Zsa Zsa, but if someone could please explain to me why any woman would marry Cyril Connolly, I would be much obliged. I have read Barbara's account of her marriage to him and I remain mystified.

By the way, I have added The Persephone Post to my list of favorites and I encourage you to visit their book shop. Beautiful re-issues of wonderful books. I have just ordered Lytton Strachey's niece Julia Strachey's Cheerful Weather for the Wedding, first published in 1932. '[A] brilliant, bittersweet upstairs-downstairs comedy' according to Shena Mackay in the Guardian. As you can imagine, I can't wait for it to arrive.

Unsettled

2010-02-06T23:23:00Z

Warter Priory, Yorkshire, circa 1904. Demolished 1972.
Postcard from the collection of the author.

It's hardly any wonder why Warter Priory is gone.   With nearly a hundred rooms -- and over thirty of them bedrooms -- imagine the work it would take to keep it all going.  Before some of those time-saving gadgets we have nowadays, like electricity and central heat. And dishwashers. It's exhausting just to think about.

Lord Muncaster sold Warter Priory in 1878 to Charles Wilson, the Hull shipping magnate, subsequently made Lord Nunburnholme in 1906. He died here in 1907 (incidentally, his grandson the subsequent third Baron Nunburnholme was born in 1904); Lady Nunburnholme maintained the estate until 1929 when it was sold to the Hon. George Ellis Vestey, second son of the first Baron Vestey who had been raised to the peerage in 1922 for services rendered to the nation during the war.

[Vestey "had ostensibly rendered great service to his country in war by placing his cold storage depots at the disposal of the government free of charge. In fact, the company had been paid, he had moved his meat business to Argentina to avoid paying Biritsh taxes, and English people had thus been put out of work" (Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, p. 317), but I digress.]

In fact it took a village full of cheap labor to maintain the great Victorian and Edwardian country houses like Warter Priory. Then, as William Lanceley recalled in his memoir From Hall-Boy to House-Steward (1925), cited in Jeremy Musson's Up and Down Stairs, (2009):

The Great War undoubtedly upset service and this is not to be wondered at by those who know the servant question. The war called for hands to help, and many servants responded to the call. The work they were asked to do was a novelty to them, the pay was big and they had short hours, hundreds being spoilt for service throught it. It made those who returned to service unsettled.

Unsettled indeed. The Great War wasn't any day at the beach, but there's no question it opened the eyes of many young people to the bigger world beyond the servants hall. A disinterested work-force wasn't the only factor in the demise of the great country house lifestyle, of course, but it certainly had an unhelpful effect.

After all, who hasn't felt at times that there has to be more to life than cleaning and cooking and doing laundry? I don't know about you, but I can see the fate of Sisyphus in a sink full of dirty dishes.  And so there are weekends like this one when I say, chores be damned, let that rock roll down the hill without me, let the dust gather, let the dirty clothes pile up, I have better things to do than worry about a spotless house.

On the other hand, sometimes nothing cheers me up like ironing sheets. Go figure.

Dinner Conversation

2010-02-02T15:19:00Z

Paradise Garage. Where did you go dancing?

Our circle may have dwindled, our ranks may have thinned, but when members of my generation gather and meet and get acquainted, the same questions end up being asked:

When and where did you live in Manhattan (Paris, London, San Francisco, LIttle Rock)?
When and where did you spend your summers (Fire Island, Provincetown, Russian River, Saugatuck, Lake Como, the south of France)?
With whom did you work, play, live, sleep?
Where did you dance?
Who was your dealer?

And if to this last question you say "The Cowboy, and he delivered." we have clearly known each other in a previous life.

At dinner the other night, in this game of less than twenty questions and far less than six degrees, a name came up, as names inevitably do. Let's say it was "John."

"'John' was one of the other house guests that summer on Fire Island," announced the gentleman on my right. "The Pines," he added, to clarify.

"Oh my dear."

"Exactly. Our host warned us, of course. 'No matter how charming and distinguished you may find John,' he said, 'under no circumstances should you allow yourself to go off alone with him.'"

Another guest leaned in. "What John likes to do," he explained to the uninitiated, "requires a room with a drain in the floor."

"But he'll improvise," continued our other dining companion, "and in this case one of the house guests -- a very attractive but hopelessly naive young fellow -- let curiosity get the better of him. So off he went one night for a stroll on the beach with John."

"Oh dear god. What happened?"

"Well, it certainly wasn't like that scene in A Single Man. Hardly a frolic in the waves, although the pounding surf must have muffled the screams. I don't want to be too graphic, but let's just say that once we got the poor thing to the mainland, an ambulance was waiting."

A pause.

"Where did you go dancing?" someone else asked, to change the subject.