The Christmas Photo Card

via The Telegraph

 Among others, The Telegraph has been poking Charles and Camilla a bit ever since the couple's holiday photo was revealed. This, I confess, is an entirely alien joke to the American. We have come to accept the "jolly stressful [rush]...to find a suitable picture each year." Few "make do with robins or holly or baby Jesus" anymore. After all, what good would a Christmas greeting be if it didn't include a little photographic reminder of who is sending the d-mned card in the first place? Oh, so that's Chuck's new wife...interesting choice.

Edward VIII

Edward as Prince of Wales, in Ontario, 1919

On December 11, 1936, Edward VIII publicly abdicated the throne of England and turned from his role as King of United Kingdom and its dominions and Emperor of India for love of the American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

The romantic relationship succeeded in capturing the imagination of America as it struggled to survive the Great Depression. So much so, in fact, that in 1936, America's weekly news magazine, TIME, chose Wallis Simpson to be the first female awarded TIME's "Person of the Year."  Edward VIII's relationship with Wallis defied both the wishes of his family and the British government. It soon became clear that Edward could have Wallis or the throne; but he could not have both. Presented with this choice, Edward, under what many felt to be the bewitchment of Wallis' stronger personality, opted for love and left the throne to his younger and quite unprepared brother, George VI (or "Bertie").

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor continued to make waves internationally in the days following their marriage in June of 1937. Relations between the Duchess and the royal family did not improve. Indeed, one could argue that they worsened. The royal family refused to allow the Duchess to assume a royal style.

Living in France, the Duke and Duchess made little effort to avoid accusations of pro-Nazi sympathies. The Duke gave dubious public statements, which left his sympathies up for interpretation. The Duchess was chummy with Diana Mitford, a well-known Nazi sympathizer. With the outbreak of war, PM Winston Churchill threatened the Duke with court-martial in order to persuade him to accept the wartime governorship of the Bahamas, a British colony.

Although the Duke succeeded in doing some good during his governorship, it is difficult to view the Windsors' time in the Bahamas without some distaste. The Duke and Duchess' prejudices were too often vocalized, and the governorship of the Bahamas often showcased the Duke and Duchess' racism. Nevertheless, the British government did succeed in limiting the Duke's damage to the British war effort by preventing him the means or opportunity to act on any pro-fascist sympathies. In his memoir, the Duke defended himself, emphasizing that his admiration for the Germans stopped short of sympathy for fascism.

The Duke in his library as pictured in The Windsor Style by Suzy Menkes

When the war ended, the Duke and Duchess returned to France where they lived a retiring life as celebrities. Their social calendar typified that of cafe society--they entertained in their gorgeous houses and the Duke published small works. To this day, the Windsor's personal sense of style is widely, and rightly, celebrated.

The Duke & Duchess of Windsor, 1964, via The Windsor Style

 

The Duke of Windsor via The Windsor Style

A tinkling piano in the next apartment... ♫

Bryan Ferry's airy, eclectic city digs

via WSJ

These foolish things remind me of you.
A tinkling piano in the next apartment
Those stumblin’ words that told you what my heart meant
A fairground’s painted swings
These foolish things
Remind me of you.
You came,
You saw,
You conquered me
When you did that to me
I knew somehow this had to be
The winds of march that made my heart a dancer
A telephone that rings but who’s to answer
Oh, how the ghost of you clings
These foolish things
Remind me of you

(excerpted from that ol' standard, These Foolish Things, famously covered by Bryan Ferry)

Thanksigiving

Well, the turkeys are pardoned (Thank you, Mr. President; can I retire to Mount Vernon too?), the pies are made, and freezing rain is washing my front steps. I buzz about in eager anticipation of the much-advertised, self-stereotyping NPR thanksgiving broadcast, featuring warm and fuzzy thoughts from Chopra Deepak and Thanksgiving cooking advice from Nigella Lawson. Clearly, NPR enjoys egging on angst-riddled, middle-class Americans, for whom Thanksgiving holiday is quite problematic.

Gobble, gobble.

Wearing White in America

When it comes to wearing white, Americans adhere to a peculiar code. Of course, this code alters with geography and culture; wearing white in Washington D.C. is very different from wearing white in New York City, Chicago, or Atlanta. And, before you read further, I must confess to not knowing much about the west coast as I've spent most of my life adhering to that one simple, possibly unfair, rule: "Limit your time in California."

The Hollywood Smile

1. White Teeth: We like our teeth as white as our paper, or so my German friends tease. You can never have teeth too white or too glossy. Teeth are no occasion for modest, matte tones.

2. Wear white shoes between Easter and Labor Day: This rule firmly continues to make its mark on America.  Whether or not you follow the rule speaks volumes about how you view yourself and your place in society. Wearing white shoes is synonymous with vacationing, an activity relegated to those months between Easter and Labor Day for most middle-class families. (This probably explains the reputation American tourists have for tromping about Europe in gleaming white tennies.)

Summer 2009 collection

3. Bright vs. weathered white clothing: Although there are exceptions, Americans, as a general rule, do not wear bleached, bright whites in urban or country settings but rather at the beach.  Our whites tend to be weathered or "dirty" to an outsider's eye, so our whites are not pure white, per say, but off-white, ivory, winter white, or "natural" white.  The one consistent exception to this is a professional one, wherein some business, medical, or political occupations beg for a crisp white collar as a part of the daily uniform.

Whitney White Linen Night (captured by Kevin Zansler)

4. One of many exceptions is White Linen Night: Every sultry summer, southerners (particularly those in Houston and New Orleans) don their white linen and stroll around the arts districts for an evening of cultural leisure. For some reason, this habit, as well as its cousin--Dirty Linen Night--which falls in step with the American tradition of mussed whites, has a way of popping up at any Southern art festival.

White Bucks

6. White Bucks v. White Tennies: These two staples of the American wardrobe probably represent the range of American dress better than anything else. The bucks fall into that mussed white category while the tennis shoes fall into the gleaming white category.

White Tennies

7. A girl & her pearls: I would be remiss to overlook the tradition of the Bostonian socialite and southern belle. A girl must always have a string of gleaming white pearls.
 

Of course, the list is far from complete. Perhaps there is something which you would add?

Dressed to the Kilt

The Oft-kilted Sean Connery
Photo: Source Unknown

Well, the word has made it all the way to the Washington Post: The Scottish Tartans Authority wants to put and end to the "childish and unhygienic" habit of going commando beneath one's kilt. Really. Yes, it was an official announcement. 

Parentalism is alive and well...

Queen Elizabeth I

'The Ermine Portrait' of Elizabeth I, c1585, by Nicholas Hilliard

On November 17, 1558, Elizabeth I acceded to the English throne. Edmund Spenser famously wrote of Elizabeth in The Faerie Queene. In his work, he names the queen Gloriana.

Sunne of the world, great glory of the sky,

That all the earth doest lighten with thy rayes,

Great Gloriana, greatest majesty!

When Elizabeth I heard the news of her accession that November, she allegedly quoted the twenty-third line of Psalm 118 in Latin: A Dominum factum est illud, et est mirabile in oculis notris. ("It is the Lord's doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.")

"Fox Pouncing"

British Wildlife Photography Awards (BWPA),

Animal Behaviour Highly Commended

& Urban Wildlife Winner: 

Dale Sutton of Sussex, "Fox Pouncing"

Another American Dream

Americans love a house. It's indispensable to the American dream. Of course, the houses in America are only, at the most, several hundred years old. Thus, Americans are quick to hire a decorator--arguably an American invention in itself--to make their new houses feel modern, "lived-in," fresh, or ancestral (to each his own) as soon (or often) as possible.

Making the client's house feel worn and familiar strikes me as one of the American designer's more difficult tasks.  The Badgley Mischka duo's Kentucky 1920s limestone-and-clapboard Dutch Colonial Revival qualifies, I think, as an "oldie but a goodie" in this regard. (The internet age has lowered the standards even further for admission to the American "oldie" category.) What's more? They are talented enough to decorate and develop the property themselves.

Photos taken by Roger Davies for Elle Decor

At War

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878-1962)

In elementary school, I could not get enough of Wilfrid Wilson Gibson's war poems. And I loved them for all the things that a young dreamer loves--their sentimentalism, mystery, agony, and romance. My tastes may have altered, but I'm loyal or nolstagic enough to return to Gibson each Veterans Day.

My first concept of modern war was, after all, shaped by "Breakfast," his ironic war poem:

We ate our breakfast lying on our backs,
Because the shells were screeching overhead.
I bet a rasher to a loaf of bread
That Hull United would beat Halifax
When Jimmy Strainthorpe played full-back instead
Of Billy Bradford. Ginger raised his head
And cursed, and took the bet; and dropped back dead.
We ate our breakfast lying on our backs,
Because the shells were screeching overhead. 

Later, in secondary school, I became fascinated with those Gibson poems paying tribute to the houses he would chance upon (I'm American, after all; so I love a house). Two of Gibson's references to houses I named favorites because of their juxtaposition in my mind. The first was "Tenants," a poem which reminded me of a cottage we would visit as a family each summer:

Suddenly, out of dark and leafy ways,
We came upon the little house asleep
In cold blind stillness, shadowless and deep,
In the white magic of the full moon-blaze.
Strangers without the gate, we stood agaze,
Fearful to break that quiet, and to creep
Into the home that had been ours to keep
Through a long year of happy nights and days.

So unfamiliar in the white moon-gleam,
So old and ghostly like a house of dream
It seemed, that over us there stole the dread
That even as we watched it, side, by side,
The ghosts of lovers, who had lived and died
Within its walls, were sleeping in our bed. 

The second, "Reveille," recalled those first impressions that Gibson's war poetry made on me in elementary school:

Still bathed in its moonlight slumber, the little white house by the cedar
Stands silent against the red dawn;
And nothing I know of who sleeps there, to the travail of day yet unwakened,
Behind the blue curtains undrawn:

But I dream as we march down the roadway, ringing loud and white-rimmed in the moonlight,
Of a little dark house on a hill
Wherein when the battle is over, to the rapture of day yet unwakened,
We shall slumber as dreamless and still. 

Melancholy & Funk

Hello. No, I've not disappeared. I've been in a funk. And now that I've relished its proportions, I  am going to put it behind me. But not before I alert you to this lovely piece in The Independent this morning:

[A]utumn has a peculiar personality of its own which is powerfully attractive.

Most obviously, the world rebeautifies itself: the autumn foliage becomes resplendent. I've never heard anyone remark on quite how curious this phenomenon is, in biological terms, given everything negative we know about ageing.

The leaves of trees are welcome and wonderful in their green iridescence when they burst out in April, but by June their bloom is gone, and by August they're plain dull. With most life forms, that would be it. We could expect no more. Instead, by a pure accident of organic chemistry, leaves are reborn, as they start to die, in an astonishing range of colours that puts their spring birth to shame.

It's as if they have another spring in another palette, the second one even more vibrant than the first: terracotta, russet, bronze, purple, gold. Even that subtlest of shades, old gold – gold with a burnished look, gold with a tiny hint of red, almost the quintessential autumn colour (look at Stourhead in Wiltshire, pictured opposite).

And this is decay. This is the winding-down of everything, towards death. Yet the great gift of autumn is that the beginning of the end doesn't feel like decay, at least on the surface, it doesn't feel like a crumbling and a rottening and a collapse from within; it feels like the arrival of a world of new sensations.

The first one is mist. To me, autumn mist is something you smell before you see it; it's the initial hint of a tang on the air as you leave the house in the morning, just creeping into the nostrils, and you know in your tissues at once that summer is over and the world is turning; then you notice that the sunshine is hazy. I've sensed it as early as the last week of August, but I would guess it's mainly a feature of September.

The next one's smoke. This is another tang that drifts to the nostrils after the summer, the smoke of wood fires (and coal fires in the past), the smoke of bonfires; you start to smell that in October, and see it hanging in the air on still days of high pressure. A third one is frost: different again. Not just a whitening, but a hardening and a sharpening of everything, yet welcome, when it first arrives, with the pleasant surprise of novelty.

Mist, smoke and frost; yet so much more. Tastes: the earthy taste of mushrooms; the rich soft crumble of roasted chestnuts; the dark pungency of game; the resinous bite of juniper berries. Sounds: the swishing of kicked leaves and their crunch underfoot; the roar of a gale; the metallic cough of a pheasant echoing through the woodlands. Sights: the foliage, of course, in all its glory, but less obvious things: the softening of the sunlight; the faded blue of harebells; the reddening of ripening apples; the understated dun shades of chrysanthemums.

All of this is gladdening, a source of the most enormous pleasure, but would you not agree that it doesn't quite lift the heart the way spring flowers or birdsong do?

For bluebells and birdsong have hope about them, a promise of what's to come, whereas the signs of autumn, for all their splendour, are the signs of a world that is dying; and there's no escaping that.

There's where the melancholy comes from: the subtext, the underlying, insistent theme beneath the year's last burst of beauty is that this is only occurring because the end is not far off, the end that comes to all living things, including us. If we look, in the autumn foliage we can see our own mortality: a beauty with a sadness never far away.

And, eat-my-heart-out Michael McCarthy draws all this pathos to a close by referencing one my favorite 19th century poems, "Spring and Fall," written by Gerald Manley Hopkins:

Margaret, are you grieving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leaves, like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! as the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you will weep and now why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sorrow's springs are the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It is the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

The Masculinization of Jane Austen

Not only has the digitization of Jane Austen's manuscripts pushed the digitization of literature forward, it has also reshaped the way scholars perceive their British darling. Original manuscripts suggest that Jane Austen was less the polished stylist that New Criticism made her out to be and more of an "unruly" and "experimental" writer at heart. As it turns out, Austen's editor deserves a bit more credit for her infamously tidy style; the discovery both dismays and delights scholars.

If I were a gender critic looking for my next book deal, "The Masculinization of Jane Austen" might just do the trick. (Hint.)

From Town to Country

Photo by Mary Bloom, The American Kennel Club, Inc.

 In the autumn, my thoughts turn toward the countryside. Habitually Chic found a gorgeous photo spread celebrating autumn on the Wall Street Journal's website this week. Lo and behold, the WSJ combined three of my favorite things--Peter Krause, Vizslas, and a country manor--with Ralph Lauren-like cleverness. Suspending cynical thoughts about the shoot's commercial nature, I relished it for a full ten minutes.

Arranging the Skin

"Here are some of the secrets of taxidermy. They were told me by the taxidermist in a mood of elation. He told me them in the time between the first glass of whisky and the fourth, when a man is no longer cautious and yet not drunk..." ("The Triumphs of a Taxidermist," H.G. Wells)

Primitive

via tartanscot

 

 

 

 
Aloof

via Marie Claire

  

"Antiquarian"

The Hollisters via The New York Times

Ecclectic

The Malplaquet House via Thomas Apolis

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

P.G. Wodehouse via The Guardian

Today is P.G. Wodehouse's birthday. The humorist produced 96 books with such ease that he is stilled shunned by some "serious" scholars.  The prose, by his own admission, was "light," its humor, ready. Although his novels were rooted in the Anglo culture, customs, and psyche, P.G. Wodehouse spent the majority of his life in America. "I have always been awfully fond of America. It always seemed like my own country. I don’t know why. I’d much sooner live here than in England, I think. I can’t think of any place in England I prefer to this." Below is an excerpt from Gerald Clarke's interview with the writer as published in The Paris Review's Winter 1975 issue: 

INTERVIEWER: What have you been reading most recently?

WODEHOUSE: I’ve been reading the old books, books that I’ve read before. The first time you read a book, you don’t read it at all carefully; you just read it for the story. You have to keep rereading. Every year or so I read Shakespeare straight through. But then I go to the latest by Agatha Christie or Rex Stout. I read every book of theirs. I do like a book with an elaborate plot. But I haven’t any definite plan of reading. I read almost everything, and I like anything that’s good. I’ve just reread a book of A. A. Milne’s called Two People, which I had read several times before. His novel is simply a novel of character. It’s not the sort of thing I can write myself, but as a reader I enjoy it thoroughly.

INTERVIEWER: Do you read any contemporary novels?

WODEHOUSE: I’ve read some of Norman Mailer.

INTERVIEWER: Do you like his writing?

WODEHOUSE: I don’t like his novels very much, but he writes very interesting nonfiction stuff. I liked Advertisements for Myself very much.

INTERVIEWER: How about the Beats? Someone like Jack Kerouac, for instance, who died a few years ago?

WODEHOUSE: Jack Kerouac died! Did he?

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

WODEHOUSE: Oh . . . Gosh, they do die off, don’t they?

INTERVIEWER: Do you ever go back and reread your own books?

WODEHOUSE: Oh, yes.

INTERVIEWER: Are you ever surprised by them?

WODEHOUSE: I’m rather surprised that they’re so good.

INTERVIEWER: Of all the books you’ve written, do you have any favorites?

WODEHOUSE: Oh, I’m very fond of a book called Quick Service and another called Sam in the Suburbs, a very old one. But I really like them all. There are very few exceptions.

INTERVIEWER: Have you ever been envious of another writer?

WODEHOUSE: No, never. I’m really such a voracious reader that I’m only too grateful to get some stuff I can read.

INTERVIEWER: Have any other writers ever been envious of you?

WODEHOUSE: Well, I always thought A. A. Milne was rather. We were supposed to be quite good friends, but, you know, in a sort of way I think he was a pretty jealous chap. I think he was probably jealous of all other writers. But I loved his stuff. That’s one thing I’m very grateful for: I don’t have to like an awful person to like his stuff. I like Somerset Maugham’s stuff tremendously, for example, but I should think he was unhappy all the time, wouldn’t you? He was an unpleasant man.

INTERVIEWER: Was he unpleasant to you?

WODEHOUSE: No. He was all right to me. We got along on just sort of “how do you do” terms. I remember walking back from a cricket match at Lords in London, and Maugham came along on the other side. He looked at me and I looked at him, and we were thinking the same thing: Oh, my God, shall we have to stop and talk? Fortunately, we didn’t.

Have You Any Wool?

Dyed Sheep via DailyMail

In celebration of British Wool Week, Savile Row is hosting the Prince's Campaign for Wool Field Day. Sheep will graze on designated lawns in London to remind the world why wool "is revered as a sustainable, natural fibre."

This Teeming Womb of Royal Kings

An anonymous 16th century painting of Richard II

 If you've read Shakespeare, you've probably concluded that the Black Prince, Richard II, is the king that only his own mother loved. Shakespeare's history play dramatically chronicles the the defeat of Richard II, made to appear as dark in heart as he proved in mind, to the noble Hal, Henry of Bolingbroke. Even though Richard II contains a most vibrant and sentimental description of Britain...

This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd isle,
This earth of Majesty, this seat of Mars,
This other Eden, demi-paradise;
This fortress built by Nature for herself,
Against infection and the hand of war,
This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in the silver sea,
Which serves it in the office of a wall,
Or as a moat defensive to a house,
Against the envy of less happier lands;
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal kings,
Fear'd by their breed, and famous by their birth.

Richard II, Act 1

...Shakespeare's characterization of Richard is not a little unjust. (Hal, after all, was even more--if that's possible--unpopular and foolish.) Richard's reign abuts the economic aftermath of the black plague. The political and economic turmoil was more than a ten-year-old sovereign could have hoped to understand; a council ruled in his stead. Granted, coming of age while on the throne of England rarely does wonders for one's moral character. Yet Richard's faults were hardly unique. Yes, he lived a romantic fantasy (oblivious to the political risk of the divine right). And yes, he played favorites in a foolhardy fashion (What king hasn't?).  For these sins, the Black Prince, described as "the first casualty of the Wars of the Roses between the Houses of Lancaster and York," was harshly imprisoned after his usurpation and allegedly murdered.

A depiction of the White Hart, the personal emblem of King Richard I

Ironically, this oft-maligned monarch is unintentionally memorialized through two mundane aspects of modern culture: one, culinary, and the other, sartorial. Neither bolsters the modern eye's confidence. Although Richard was far from being the first to daily consume "salat," court descriptions of Richard's favorite dish are among the first to parallel our modern salad: "Take parsel (parsley), sawge (sage), garlec, chibollas (young onions), leeks, myntes, fennel, ton tressis  (watercress)...waishe clene..myng (mix) wel with rawe oile. Lay one vinegar and salt."

Richard is more often recognized for the introduction of the handkerchief, which came into fashion in his royal court. The court ledger from this period chronicles that it became the custom to have "clothe supplied in little pieces for giving the King for carrying in his hand to wipe and clean his nose." Call me anachronistic, but I can't imagine that either idiosyncrasy did anything to negate history's depiction of the Black Prince's whimsical, even wimpy nature.

Irish Linen Handkerchiefs via Orvis

Pink for October

via Turquoise, Tulips, & Bliss

For two decades,

Evelyn Lauder and Elizabeth Hurley

have been reminding us

to be aware.

"Beauty is an attitude."



White House 2008 (HT: Grant Miller)





For Everything a Season

For everything there is a season. The first week of October is the season for unpacking and repacking. Out of the box: wool sweaters, leather boots, tartan blankets, houndstooth pillows. In the box: linen shirts, cork-lined sandals, gauzy throws, floral pillows.

Which leads me to a moment of confession. I am once again contemplating the purchase of a sheepskin rug; and it's a perennial contemplation. In the Autumn, this idea gnaws at the corners of my consciousness. No matter how my personal taste evolves, there is always room for the idea that a sheepskin would do very nicely. After all, a noteworthy rug (faux or otherwise) compliments so many frames of mind.

The Rational

via simply seleta

The Romantic

via marie claire maison

The Primitive

via Suzy Hoodless

The Opulant

via Elle Decor

 

The Sophisticated

via la belle vie

The Serene

via my ideal home

The Zealous

via Decar Pad



Autumnal Grace

Although insistent, autumn is graceful. Autumn may tear through your hazy, summer stupor with little mercy, but no one can claim she does so without grace.  She comes bearing gifts...

via junkgarden

No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace
as I have seen in one autumnal face.

John Donne

Like Sleep

W. H. Auden via Poor William's Almanack

"Sincerity is like sleep. Normally, one should assume that, of course, one will be sincere, and not give the question a second thought. Most writers, however, suffer occasionally from bouts of insincerity as men do from bouts of insomnia. The remedy in both cases is quite simple: in the case of the latter, to change one's diet, in the case of the former, to change one's company."

W. H. Auden

February 21, 1907- September 29, 1973



Green Goddess

Ernesta Drinker Ballard has an answer for my every question. Last week I found a copy of Garden in Your House, her small volume on indoor gardening, at a local bookstore. I've fallen--head-over-heels--in love.

Although I descend from a long line of successful, amateur horticulturalists, somewhere along the way the family's DNA mutated. The proof is in the pudding. I'm the nightmare amateur. Every mistake to be made has been made. Over-watering is my credo.

Then along came Ernesta. And for the first time in my life, I now understand why one soaks absolutely all the soil in the pot if watering a potted plant. I discover my Kimberly Queen is rootbound. I repot. I stop watering some plants. I increase my watering of others. I move the Kimberly Queen to a different windowsill. I water. Then I wait. And, all the while, I keep reading. And learning.

My recovering nephrolepis obliterata (aka Kimberly Queen)

Don't be fooled though. I may speak as if Ernesta is my green goddess, a diety benefiting myself alone, but you should be aware that her influence is vaster. Once head of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and savior of the Philadelphia Flower Show, Ernesta's ambitions far exceeded the garden.  I've relished her influence every time I visit downtown Philadelphia. Thanks in part to Ernesta's political clout in Philadelphia, the historic Fairmount Water Works were restored.


Philadelphia Water Works

 So I am truly humbled that in small, windowsill ways Ernesta continues her saving and restorative work in my house. Her little volume on house gardens has changed life as my Kimberly Queen knows it. So, onward to page 36. We tackle leaf cuttings next.