Desperate Romantics

     Exactly a week ago today, when I was in Washington D.C., I spent the afternoon at the National Gallery of Art. A friend of a friend had recommended I see the Albrecht Dürer exhibit, but when I arrived in front of the West Building’s main façade and saw the banner advertising another exhibit on the Pre-Raphaelites, I knew that Dürer didn’t stand a chance.

Exhibition catalogue.
(courtesy of the National Gallery website). The cover shows Millais’s “Mariana”, based on the heroine of Tennyson’s poem.

“Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Art and Design, 1848-1900″ is the first major exhibit on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood to be organised in the United States. It features 130 works of art on loan from the Tate Gallery – paintings, sculpture, photographs, and decorative artefacts – which reveal the imaginative power and scope of the group founded in 1848 by John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in open defiance of the Royal Academy.

     What mingled sensations of pleasure, privilege, and awe you experience as you enter a room and behold paintings which you have read so much about, which you have seen reproduced so many times (with varying degrees of success), but never before seen in the flesh, so to speak! What a pang you get as, again and again, in the faces of the subjects, you recognise the features of Elizabeth Siddal, Jane Burden, or even Rossetti himself! Millais’s Ophelia, Morris’s La Belle Iseult, Rossetti’s Proserpine, his Bocca Baciata, his Beata Beatrix… they were all there, every brush stroke as fresh and vivid as if the paint had just been applied.

“Bocca Baciata”, one of my favourite paintings, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1859).

     Scenes from the Bible, from Arthurian legend, from Shakespeare, Dante, and Keats vied for my attention; besides the more famous canvases, there were others, by friends and admirers – satellites, as it were, of the Pre-Raphaelites. I was interested, for example, in some small paintings by Elizabeth Siddal, which, with their glowing colours and great precision of detail, bore a strong resemblance to mediaeval manuscripts. Also of note was a large decorative screen, all three panels of which had been embroidered by Jane Morris. It was a very rich and varied exhibit, and I emerged three hours later, my head reeling with colours, patterns, and images of mysterious, elongated female figures. Washingtonians, the exhibit is on until May 19th, so you still have a chance to go and see it!

     The Pre-Raphaelites were to be a bit of a running theme for me this past week, for this weekend I came across a lovely blog called The Kissed Mouth. The title, added to the fact that the authoress writes under the pseudonym Fanny Cornforth (Rossetti’s model and mistress) makes it clear the blog’s subject is the Pre-Raphaelites – with a certain preference for Rossetti, it seems, which is far from displeasing to me! Though Miss Cornforth is perhaps a little too apt to swoon and drool over the smouldering sexiness of Mr Rossetti, which sometimes gives her blog the flavour of a teen fan page, she may be forgiven this in light of the many interesting topics she covers. I particularly enjoyed her recent article on May Morris, entitled “William’s Daughter”.   

     Fired with enthusiasm all over again, I knew there was only one thing to do: sit down to watch an episode (or two or three!) of the 2009 BBC mini-series “Desperate Romantics”. Focusing on the tight-knit group formed by Millais, Hunt, Rossetti, and the fictional art critic Fred Walters (a conflation of Frederick George Stephens, Walter Deverell, and Rossetti’s brother William), it tells the story of their friendship, their careers, and their rivalries, both artistic and amorous, from the moment when they first discover Elizabeth Siddal in a hat shop and convince her to model for them, to her suicide several years later.

     What I like so much about this series is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s meant to be fun, as you discover from the very beginning – as soon as you hear the title tune, in fact. It begins sweetly enough, but just as you are lulled into thinking that you’re in for another period drama in the grand BBC tradition of “Pride and Prejudice”, an anachronistic bass beat starts up and sweeps you up in its wake. For a split second, I hated it. Then I burst out laughing…and fell in love. I think that title tune tells you all you need to know about the film and what it aims to be: modern, energetic and audacious. Adjectives that could all be applied to the Pre-Raphaelites themselves, for these were men who longed – and indeed, did their very best – to shake their contemporaries out of their staid Victorian complacency.

 © Florence Berlioz 2013

Did you know…there were pirates in Savannah?

     Yesterday I was in Savannah, the last stage of a Southern road trip that first took me to Charleston and to several antebellum plantations. Unfortunately, the weather did not encourage tourism: what started out as a light drizzle swiftly turned into heavy rain which gusts of wind drove every which way, making umbrellas almost useless. Between the moment when my friend and I took refuge in a coffee shop for a late breakfast and the moment when we dashed into the “Bayou Cafe”, dripping wet and more than ready for steaming plates of jambalaya, the rain only let up for two short hours – a respite we hastened to take advantage of.

     Armed with a map and carefully avoiding the larger puddles, we made our way to the waterfront, walking from square to square: Monterey Square, Calhoun Square, Lafayette Square, Madison Square, Pulaski Square, Oglethorpe Square…we saw them all, with their monuments to American patriots, to Southern writers, or to James Oglethorpe, the eighteenth-century founder of Georgia. It is Savannah’s squares that make her beautiful: gigantic live oaks spread their twisting, sprawling branches almost to the ground, creating a dense, quasi-Amazonian canopy. Bunches of small emerald ferns grow along the bark and grey Spanish moss hangs in tattered ribbons from every branch. The waxy flowers of huge magnolias glow against the dark shiny foliage, and through the trees you catch glimpses of ochre or chocolate facades and delicate black ironwork. In fact, the recent rainfall accentuated the impression that the city had been hewn out of the primeval swamp: the brick paths glistened, the Spanish moss dripped, and it did not require a great leap of the imagination to picture an alligator slithering into the dark steamy undergrowth as an eighteenth-century plantation owner rode by in frock coat and tricorne.

     Further away, on the waterfront, tall brick warehouses (now converted into souvenir shops and trendy restaurants) recall the city’s past as a busy trading port, while enormous grey cargo ships still make their way up and down the river, dwarfing the old-fashioned white river boats, like the “Savannah River Queen”, which promise tourists dinner, music, and a cruise. This was the place that reminded me of a passage I had come across in John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (which I am reading, as per everyone’s recommendation):

In Treasure Island, Savannah is the place where Captain John Flint, the murderous pirate with the blue face, has died of rum before the story begins. It is on his deathbed in Savannah that Flint bellows out his last command – “Fetch aft the rum, Darby!” – and hands Billy Bones a map of  Treasure Island. ”He gave it me at Savannah,” says Bones, “when he lay a-dying.” The book had a drawing of Flint’s map in it with an X marking the location of his buried treasure. I turned to the map again and again as I read, and every time did I was reminded of Savannah, for there at the bottom was Billy Bones’s scrawled notation, “Given by above JF to Mr W. Bones. Savannah this twenty July 1754.”

     Like the narrator, I read Treasure Island as a child and could recall the thrill of danger and adventure aroused by the treasure hunt. Yet I had never noticed this tiny exotic detail, which linked these very English pirates to the pre-Independance world of the American colonies. I used to think of Savannah only as the elegant playing-ground of crinolined Southern belles, who flirted from behind their fans while black-skinned slaves ran to do their bidding. But of course, as a bustling port, Savannah welcomed a constant flow of people from all walks of life, and was probably the ideal hiding-place for a pirate who needed to lie low for a while. No doubt Captain Flint had not banked on the climate and his nasty little drinking habit getting the better of him…

© Florence Berlioz 2013

The Death of Lyndon Wilder and the Consequences Thereof, by E. A. Dineley (2013)

     Ridley Hall used to be a prosperous, well-maintained property, but since the death of the heir, Lieutenant Lyndon Wilder, far away on a Spanish battlefield, the house has stood shuttered and silent, and the estate has fallen into neglect. Bowed down with grief, Lyndon’s mother, Lady Charles, spends her days sitting alone in her darkened drawing-room, while her husband wanders aimlessly about the house, trying to make sense of what has happened. Tucked away in the schoolroom, Lyndon’s nine-year-old daughter Lottie, now orphaned, does her best to disguise her restlessness and to mourn a father she barely remembers.

Into this sad household comes young Anna Arbuthnot, the latest in a long line of governesses who have undertaken to educate Lottie. What Anna lacks in experience, she makes up for in intelligence, willingness, and sympathy, and her cheerful no-nonsense manner soon wins over the lonely little girl. Anna privately disapproves of Lady Charles’s morbid wish to constantly remind the child of her loss, forcing her to wear black and to spend long hours in church. Crossing Lady Charles is not wise, however, and there is very little she can do, except encourage Lottie to make friends with a neighbouring boy and to spend as much time as possible outside.

Anna finds an unexpected ally when Major Thomas Wilder, Lyndon’s younger brother and now the heir to the estate, returns from the Peninsula, where he too has seen action against Napoleon’s troops. Major Wilder is quieter, graver, and more serious-minded than his brother, and has none of the gay charm that so endeared Lyndon to his mother. Lady Charles cannot forgive him for being alive when Lyndon is not, and bitterly resents his return, certain that he is secretly rejoicing at the misfortune that has made him master of Ridley Hall. As for Major Wilder, he is exasperated by his mother’s insistence on glorifying the memory of her dead son, making him out to be both a hero and a martyr. Nothing, Major Wilder knows, could be further from the reality of war – or from Lyndon’s character.

If Lady Charles thinks Major Wilder is unfeeling, then her husband thinks he asks too many awkward questions. Why, for instance, did Lyndon enlist, when he made no secret of how much he disliked army life? And why has the estate been allowed to run into debt, with large sums unaccounted for in the books? When an unsavoury former acquaintance of Lyndon’s arrives in the neighbourhood and starts sending Major Wilder threatening letters, he knows he must do everything he can to prevent his mother from finding out the awful truth about what really happened the day her favourite son was killed – even if that means putting his own life in danger.

For fans of Georgette Heyer and Jude Morgan, here is a lovely new addition to the genre, with gossip, blackmail, duelling, scandal, desperate nocturnal errands, and secrets a-plenty – not to mention courtship, with Major Wilder falling unobtrusively but deeply in love with his niece’s governess. Contrary to most Regency novels, however, the love story is not the main focus of the plot and it was very refreshing to read about a heroine who is not obsessed with getting herself a husband. The book is more concerned with the dynamics of family life and how the death of a family member upsets the existing order, causing an uneasy reshuffling of positions. Dineley adopts the point of view of each of the characters in turn, painting a comprehensive and multi-faceted portrait of the microcosm that is Ridley and its environs. Several flashbacks also take the reader back to Spain and Portugal, providing valuable insights into the lives of both the Wilder brothers. This not only helps to understand their characters and fit the pieces of the puzzle together, but reveals the gulf between the Napoleonic battlefield and the Regency drawing-room, between the reality of war and the perception of it by those back home – which is, in fact, the main issue raised by the death of Lyndon Wilder.

Despite the more dramatic elements of the plot, this is a quiet book; it records everyday happenings: words spoken in haste or anger which cause offence, well-meaning actions that are misinterpreted, small kindnesses, minor triumphs, petty reactions, unexpected pleasures… The slower rhythm of life at Ridley overtakes the reader, so that when something sensational does occur, it has a deeper, graver impact than it would in a faster-paced novel. Quiet does not mean boring, though; neither does the central theme of grief make this is a gloomy novel (the mock-serious tone, announced by the humorously pompous title, precludes gloom). I was drawn into the world of Ridley and followed the fortunes of its inhabitants with great enjoyment – so much, indeed, that it only took me two short days to finish the book’s almost six hundred pages. I thought it a very accomplished début and I know that I will be keeping an eye out for any future novels by E. A. Dineley.

© Florence Berlioz 2013

Love Letters from Rossetti

     Today, as many of you know, is World Poetry Day. I spent quite some time today wondering which poet I would choose to commemorate but I couldn’t make up my mind. Then, this evening, as I was sipping a glass of bubbly Crémant de Loire and listening to La Traviata (and actually forgetting to sip as I listened to this most beautiful, most beloved of operas), it suddenly seemed obvious I should choose a love poem. Two love poems, in fact. Both of them are by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, from his sonnet sequence The House of Life (1870).

     The first one, “Silent Noon” (sonnet XIX), makes me think of the beginning of Act Two, when Alfredo sings of his happy new life with Violetta in the country, far from the cynical eyes and wagging tongues of their Parisian acquaintances. It encapsulates the drowsy contentment that overcomes lovers when the sated senses seek repose. It is easy to see why Rossetti’s verse so shocked Victorian audiences, for this is no decorous exchange of gallantries over the tea tray: the lovers are lying entwined in a “nest” in the middle of a field, and it is clear that if silence and lethargy characterize the present moment, it is only because the preceding half an hour was most erotically charged indeed. Note the mention of skirts and thread, innocently masquerading as descriptions of the landscape but slyly reminding us just how quickly the lovers divested themselves of their clothes!

     The second poem, “Barren Spring” (sonnet LXXXIII), introduces the literary topos of the return of spring, only to subvert it. The well-known image of spring as a laughing, teasing, frolicsome girl breathing warmth and hope back into the winter-bound world clashes with that of the poet, mourning the death of his beloved (I hope I may be forgiven for being sentimental if at this point I draw a parallel with poor Alfredo and suggest the poem might serve as an epilogue to the opera…). It is the second stanza which is the most powerful, for the merry girl seems cursed: everything she touches turns to dust or ashes, and she leaves a desolate landscape in her wake. The grief-burdened poet has made spring turn against itself and cannot rest until even the lily – that striking symbol of purity (cf Rossetti’s Madonnas and Annunciation scenes) but also of sensuality, and thus, of life – has shrivelled and died.

     It might be just a one-time thing, but I can’t help feeling that, for tonight at least, the visionary Pre-Raphaelite poet and Verdi’s consumptive courtesan go admirably well together.

__________

Silent Noon

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass, -

The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:

Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms

‘Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.

All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,

Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge

Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.

‘Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

 

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly

Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: -

So this wing’d hour is dropt to us from above.

Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,

This close-companioned inarticulate hour

When twofold silence was the song of love.

 __________

Barren Spring

Once more the changed year’s turning wheel returns:

And as a girl sails balanced on the wind,

And now before and now again behind

Stoops as it swoops, with cheek that laughs and burns, -

So Spring comes merry towards me here, but earns

No answering smile from me, whose life is twin’d

With the dead boughs that winter still must bind,

And whom to-day the Spring no more concerns.

 

Behold, this crocus is a withering flame;

This snowdrop, snow; this apple-blossom’s part

To breed the fruit that breeds the serpent’s art.

Nay, for these Spring-flowers, turn thy face from them,

Nor stay till on the year’s last lily-stem

The white cup shrivels round the golden heart.

D. Gabriel Rossetti                              

© Florence Berlioz 2013

When in Rome, by Nicky Pellegrino (2012)

     Rome has been very much in the public eye these past few days, what with all the goings-on in the Sistine Chapel. It needed not the dramatic abdication of one pope and the election of another, however, for my attention to be caught by the Eternal City. Ever since I first visited Rome in the summer of 2005 and fell in love with the Spanish Steps and the washing hanging from the windows of the houses in the Trastevere, the city has been branded on my memory and heart.

     So when, three weeks ago, my youngest brother and his girlfriend spent a long weekend in Rome, I determined not to be envious – Rome in February could not be that great, I reasoned. But a snapshot of them sunning themselves on a bench on the Forum swiftly disposed of my virtuous intentions. Suddenly I longed for Italy. Oh, for Roman sunshine and Roman voices, instead of wet snow and chilly winds!

     I had to be content with the next best thing: being an armchair traveller…

     Rome, in the 1950s. In the vibrant neighbourhood of the Trastevere, Serafina keeps house and takes care of her two younger sisters while their mother earns a meager living as a prostitute. Though the flat is cramped, not to mention sadly lacking in indoor plumbing, and feeding the family is sometimes a bit of a challenge, Serafina’s life is a happy one. Whenever she and her sisters have any spare time, they roam the streets and piazzas of Rome, busking for ice-cream money. Sometimes, there’s even enough money for movie tickets, and the sisters treat themselves to the latest Mario Lanza film. Serafina, in particular, loves the handsome Hollywood film star and singer, and often drives the neighbours mad by listening to his records for hours on end.

     But the happy insouciance of childhood is coming to an end: Serafina is almost twenty and her mother is grooming her to follow in her footsteps, a prospect that fills Serafina with dismay. With no education (she was taken out of school at the age of fourteen) and no qualifications, Serafina doesn’t see any way out.

     Then comes the exciting news that her beloved Mario Lanza is moving to Rome with his family. And in a wholly unexpected turn of events, Serafina finds herself working in his household. Hardly daring to believe her luck, Serafina is determined that her employer should not regret his decision to take her on. Soon her entire life revolves around the Lanza family. But her deep admiration for Mario and her growing affection for his wife Betty are mingled with concern. For behind the glittering façade of glossy magazine photographs, glamorous parties, and holidays abroad lies another reality: Mario’s alcoholism, which is taking its toll on his health, his career, and his marriage; Betty’s bouts of depression, which cause her to retreat to her darkened bedroom for days on end, refusing to swallow anything but the pills she takes with increasing frequency; and four spoilt and confused children, caught between the two.

MGM still of Mario Lanza, c. 1949 (picture courtesy of Wikipedia)

     The years pass and Serafina is still devotedly serving the Lanzas. But there finally comes a time when she must decide where she belongs: with the family she left behind in the Trastevere? With the Lanza household, wherever its fortunes may take her? Or with Pepe, the talented and temperamental young chef who wants to marry her, and with whom she could start a life of her own?

     When in Rome is a pleasant enough book to read, though in no way remarkable. Serafina is a little too effaced as a heroine: she gives the impression of being no more than a convenient means for the author of describing the Lanza household from the inside. But then, of course, the real hero of the book is not Serafina but Mario Lanza himself, and it is when depicting both the glamour and the painful struggle with addiction that characterized his life – but also that of many other Hollywood stars of the fifties – that the novel is most (if still only moderately) successful. The bottom line is that the main merit of the novel is in bringing a largely forgotten artist once more to the attention of the public.

© Florence Berlioz 2013

Che Cosa è Amor?

     When both your brothers are dating pianists and one of them is a pianist himself, there’s bound to be a lot of music in your life. That suits me to a T: when they all start discussing concerts, competitions, or their preferences for Schumann or Debussy, I feel as if I’ve stepped straight into the pages of Henri Murger’s La Vie de Bohème. And when one of them gives a concert of their own, it is only natural for the whole group to turn up and lend moral support. So when one of the girlfriends told me she would be accompanying a group of singers in a show she had helped to create, I took the hint, bought my ticket and spread the word, and then hied me to the Latin Quarter, ready to applaud when occasion arose.

     Mingling literature and opera, “Che cosa è amor?”, or “What is this thing called love?”, is an exploration of love which alternates readings from Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments (1977) and some of Mozart’s most famous arias. While Mozart needs no introduction, perhaps Barthes requires a few explanatory lines: Roland Barthes (1915-1980) was a French literary theorist, critic, and semiotician whose work is frequently associated with Jacques Derrida and post-structuralism. He is best-known for the essays Writing Degree Zero (1953) and The Death of the Author (1967).

     To be perfectly honest, the sight of the word “semiotics” on a page tends to make me drop the book in a hurry, and my previous encounters with Barthes had not been of a nature to endear him to me. So I was all the more astounded to discover that A Lover’s Discourse was not just entertaining, but downright funny.

     As the title suggests, Barthes’ essay is a series of fragments of a lover’s point of view. Some of these are taken from literature (there are several excerpts from Goethe’s Werther, for example), while others are snippets of conversation or anecdotes based on personal experience. These combine with Barthes’ own philosophical thought to form a meditation on the workings of the human heart. The essay is not intended to provide the reader with a conclusive definition of love - it is not a how-to handbook – but rather with a meandering exploration of what it means to love, and how one uses language to express that love. For it must not be forgotten that Barthes was a linguist: as such, he is interested first and foremost in the link between emotion (love) and language (the lover’s discourse).

    As mentioned earlier, Barthes frequently draws on literature to illustrate his text; but there are also many references to other forms of creative expression (painting, music, etc). So creating a show that associated operatic excerpts with Barthes’ writing was in perfect keeping with the spirit of A Lover’s Discourse. And Mozart was a particularly apt choice: for which composer has written more, or better, about love in all its forms? Adolescent yearnings (Cherubino’s “Voi che sapete”); conjugal jealousy (Donna Elvira’s furious tirade against her faithless husband Don Giovanni); happy lovers making plans for the future (Papageno and Papagena’s duet) – the singers leapt blithely from one to the other, playing up the comical aspect of each situation.

     Comedy is the watchword of the show. This much was clear from the first notes of the overture, which was the signal for the singers to engage in a silent game of musical chairs. As the music quickened, the game got livelier – and messier. Who would end up standing alone, or perched on some unlikely partner’s knees? It was Marivaux’s Game of Love and Chance all over again. The potential for heartache was there (as when Papageno, in despair at his lonely state, hanged himself) but disaster was always averted (the moment when Papagena’s voice was heard and Papageno’s head popped up again over the edge of the stage earned a big laugh). Barthes’ mocking words made even Donna Elvira’s shrill fury funny, as the audience recognised in her their own excesses. Nothing was to be taken too seriously, for this was first and foremost a divertissement.

    Considering there was no story-line, I had wondered how the production would be staged, and I must say I was very impressed by the ingenuity and imaginativeness of the troupe. They were clever enough to keep things simple, with regard both to the costumes and to the set, rather than opting for an eighteenth-century rococo look. There were no powdered wigs, hoop skirts, or gilt furnishings adorned with cherubs. Instead, the singers were dressed all in white, with garlands of vine leaves in their hair - a costume that was atemporal and yet managed to recall Greek gods and goddesses, or Wedgwood nymphs and shepherds. As for props, there was only one: a very long, foot-wide red ribbon.

     That ribbon was a stroke of genius. There was no end to its uses. It was a superb metaphor for “tying the knot”, and as such, became an integral part of the game played by the lovers on stage, binding them together or separating them as occasion arose. It acted as a blindfold (for is not “wingèd Cupid painted blind”?), doubled as a noose for Papageno’s suicide, and, stretched cross-wise from corner to corner of the stage, turned into a web in which poor Elvira became trapped. It also recalled the ribbons tied around bundles of love-letters. And last but not least, it served as a visual link between the text and the music, binding the disparate elements into a coherent whole. Who would have thought that it would bring together two such different men as Barthes and Mozart, and have them speak to each other in the language of love, for the space of a single night? And leave one, moreover, sighing to be in love oneself…

© Florence Berlioz 2013

Southern Belles and Books

     I’m afraid I’ve gone MIA these past few weeks. Miss Darcy’s Library hasn’t been far from my thoughts, and I do have a whole list of reviews on the way, but I just can’t seem to finish one.

     In the meantime, I’m busy planning my first trip back to the States since 2002 and am very excited! I’ll be going during the Easter holidays and will be staying with my best friend, in Washington D.C. We’re planning to get up to all sorts of wild shenanigans, but one of the things I’m looking forward to most is taking a short road trip down south, to see Charleston and Savannnah. I’ve been doing some research and I almost wish we were just doing that! It all sounds utterly magical: Spanish moss and honey-glazed ham; plantation houses and Civil War battlefields; Richmond, the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the coastline of the Carolinas… We’ll never cram it all into four days, and it breaks my heart to have to choose!

     Of course, I’ve already bought a guide book. But my friend and I would also like to read a couple of novels before we head off, and this is where I’ve stalled. For apart from Gone With the Wind, the only other titles I can think of are signed Sarah Addison Allen. And while I loved Garden Spells and found her subsequent novels very enjoyable, not to mention hugely atmospheric, they’re not exactly literature. Does anyone have anything else to recommend? (I have a nasty feeling you’re all going to say I have to read Faulkner, but please don’t! I’m prejudiced against dear William: he certainly qualifies as literature, but I just know he’s going to be dark and depressing!). I’d love to compile a really long Southern-themed reading-list to dip in and out of in the coming weeks, as I gear up for my big trip, so please be generous with your suggestions!

© Florence Berlioz 2013