As the year ends, I'm devoid of ideas. So, here's a few Christmas tree pictures, one minimilist in a chilly conservatory, the other, more ornate, in the warmth of the study with more presents (hopefully) to come
Will resume operations in the New Year but until then I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas.
It's been said that women speak more often than men—an average 20,000 words a day to the man’s 7,000. The figure’s disputed, but probably had more basis in the C18th and C19th when, but for the brief hiatus of the French Revolution, the ‘fan’ ruled in every fashionable salon. The phenomenon lent itself to satire:
“There is an infinite variety of motions to be made use of in the flutter of a fan. There is the angry flutter, the modish flutter, the timorous flutter, the confused flutter, the merry flutter, and the amorous flutter. Not to be tedious, there is scarce any emotion in the mind which does not produce a suitable agitation in the fan; insomuch, that if I only see the fan of a disciplined lady, I know very well whether she laughs, frowns or blushes. I have seen a fan so very angry, that it would have been dangerous for the absent lover who provoked it to have come with the wind of it, and at other times so very languishing, that I have been very glad for the lady’s sake the lover was at a sufficient distance from it...
(However) should any of my gentle readers desire to learn good news:
The fluttering of the fan is the last and indeed the masterpiece of the whole exercise; but if a lady does not misspend her time, she makes herself mistress of it in three months. I generally lay aside the dog-days and the hot time of the summer for the teaching this part of the exercise; for as soon as I pronounce ‘Flutter your fans’, the place is filled with so many zephyrs and gentle breezes as are very refreshing in that season of the year"
Joseph Addison The Spectator 1711
In the late C18th, two men, Charles Francis Badini and Robert Rowe, designed ‘communication hand fans.' Badini called his ‘Fanology or the Ladies Conversation Fan’ Rowe called his ‘The Ladies Telegraph, for Corresponding at a Distance.’ Printed instructions were written on the fans, and by all the angels and saints they were needed!
To give you a brief primer, holding the fan in the left hand and touching the right arm signified letters A to E
Conversely, holding the fan in the right hand and touching the left arm referred to the letters F – K. Touching the heart meant the letters L to P. And then there were the subdivisions, but I’ll stop before my brain melts.
Both sender and receiver would need razor-sharp and lightning-fast minds, the stress and mental anguish involved negating any thought of passion or romance. If this had been semaphore, the ship would have been sunk, the battle lost before the first sentence.
It’s hard to believe that any such language existed outside the minds of the men who conceived and designed these fluttering time-sucks, men with more time on their hands than sense.
But here’s the thing, other than ‘Mollies,’ men didn’t use fans, so they never got to answer back, never mind understanding what was being said to them. A perfect situation.
During the French Revolution fans lost their appeal especially amongst those fearing the guillotine. Frightened aristocrats would be scampering down streets thrusting them into the hands of the first peasant they saw.
After Napoleon’s fall and the Bourbon Restoration 1814 - 1830 there followed a fresh initiative in the use and language of fans. The best example was Duvelleroy, a fan maker and leather goods manufacturer; his firm founded in 1827 still exists.
Duvelleroy’s ‘fan language’ was relatively simple, one even I could master, though in the process I’d probably attract some wary glances from strangers, even some unwelcome advances.
Fans at the ready! After me! Here we go:
Carrying in the right hand in front of face = Follow me.
Carrying in the left hand in front of face= desirous of acquaintance
Placing it on left ear = I wish to get rid of you
Drawing it across forehead = You have changed.
Twirling in the left hand = we are watched
Carrying in the right hand = you are too willing
Drawing through the hand = I hate you.
Twirling in the right hand = I love another
Drawing across the cheek = I love you
Presented shut = Do you love me?
Drawing across the eyes = I am sorry
Touching tip with finger = I wish to speak with you
Letting it rest on the right cheek = yes
Letting it rest on the left cheek = No
Open and shut. – You are cruel
Dropping it – We will be friends
Fanning slowly = I am married
Fanning quickly = I am engaged
With handle to lips = kiss me
Open wide = wait for me
Carrying in left hand open = Come and talk to me
Placed besides the head = Don’t forget me
With little finger extended = Goodbye.
Alas, the day of the fan has gone and what an opportunity lost. I’d love to see them on TV doing signage for the deaf. The language is more limited perhaps and might convey less information, but it would be nicely erotic.
Here is a video for slow learners or those afraid of scaring the horses.
Some weeks ago we went to visit the Gaia exhibition then installed in Wells Cathedral. Created by the artist Luke Jerram, it measures seven metres in diameter and is created from 120dpi detailed Nasa imagery of the Earth's surface. It allows us to see the world floating in three dimensions. Believe me, I take a dim view of installations in Cathedrals ever since one hapless bishop installed a helter-skelter. But this installation is truly inspired. If you ever want to see it, the tour dates are here. If you're unable to, what we have here is your best shot, and at least it will be hard to beat this setting.
The City of Wells is named after a series of streams which flow into the moat of the Bishop’s Palace
The palace was built by Bishop Ralph of Shrewsbury, a man despised by the citizens of Wells for his heavy taxation, hence the crenelated walls, drawbridge and moat. Ralph was no fool.
But now onto the star of the show, the cathedral itself.
Here, around 705 AD King Ina of Wessex built the first Saxon church, dedicated to St. Andrew. The font from this first church is still here.
The original Saxon font
In 766 AD, Cynewulf king of Wessex (I wish I’d been called Cynewulf. Cynewulf Keyton) endowed the church with eleven hides of land, and in 909 AD, Athelm, first Bishop of Wells, made the church a cathedral. Even before the Norman Conquest of 1066, there had been thirteen Bishops of Wells.
There are few traces of that original church now. By 1150, it was deemed too small and in 1175, work started on its replacement—one of the finest examples of the Early English Gothic style—and consecrated in 1239.
It continued to develop after 1300 AD culminating in the great central tower, which a few years after showed signs of subsidence. The medieval solution was to support it on three sides with ‘Scissor Arches’ below
The English Civil War did it no favours. Fighting destroyed some of its stonework, furniture, and windows. It also cost Walter Raleigh his life–– No, not that one. Dean Walter Raleigh was a nephew of the great explorer and inherited much of the great man’s poor luck and timing. He was placed under house arrest by the Roundheads. His gaoler, a cobbler and city constable, David Barrett, caught him writing a letter to his wife. When he refused to surrender it, Barret ran him through with a sword. Raleigh died six weeks later and was buried in an unmarked grave in the choir before the Dean’s stall.
The cathedral suffered a final crisis during the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685. Soldiers damaged the west front, tore lead from the roof to make bullets, broke the windows, organ, and smashed furnishings. Their horses were stabled in the nave. In my view they deserved all they got from 'Hanging Judge Jeffreys,' though that may be considered an extreme view.
The Lady Chapel has/had some glorious windows. The one damaged by said rebels has been patched together in no particular order. It's now a colourful jumble which bears more witness to the vagaries of history than Christ and his saints.
Various views of the Lady Chapel and its windows. See if you can spot the 'kaleidoscope window'
A melancholy memorial to the late Bishop Richard Kidder and his wife killed in the great storm of 1703 when two chimney stacks on the palace fell on them while they were fast asleep in bed. Bit of a nightmare.
Iconic steps leading up to the Chapter House where the Cathedral's governing body sat beneath brass plates. These record the parcels of land that paid for this and that in the Cathedral. It was completed in 1306, so those steps have had some use.
Like everything else in the Cathedral, it is a masterpiece of harmony and composition.
I have, in the past, referred to Will Cross as a truffle hound, ferreting out the hidden or obscure in the archives, and here again, the footnotes prove an evocative joy. In this book, however, Will Cross is less the truffle hound with a yen for the occasional ferret, more the rottweiler. Lies, Damned Lies and the Carnarvons is a ruthless demolition job on what a family might prefer to remain hidden. And yes, to play Devil’s Advocate for the moment, families do have a right to keep their skeletons tightly locked up, but only as much right as the researcher has to winkle them out.
The Fifth Earl of Carnarvon over the years. At least he died knowing it was his support and finance that revealed the tomb of Tutankhamen.
The book starts off on what seem relatively trivial, but even these small things—such as the Earl of Carnarvon’s near fatal car accident on an obscure German road, is meticulously researched, along with what at first seems to be a meaningless untruth in the official accounts—ie that the incident occurred in 1901, that Carnarvon recuperated in Egypt, and there discovered a lifelong interest in tombs and archaeology.
William Cross however proves beyond doubt that the car accident occurred in 1909 and conjectures the motive behind the shuffling of dates. Lord Carnarvon was in Hamburg in the Summer of 1898 for specialised treatment. A misspent youth had seen him riddled with ‘syphilis of the face, neck and mouth..’ That and severe lung disease made it highly unlikely that his son and heir, the Sixth Earl of Carnarvon born in 1898 and his daughter, Lady Evelyn, conceived in 1900 were actually his, especially since his wife, Almina, denied ever having sexual relations with him, not even kissing his mouth. What better way to obfuscate and explain Carnarvon's ill health and sojourn in Egypt than to blame it on a motoring injury that wouldn't occur for another eight years.
The book is a real potpourri—not all of it fragrant—of well researched tittle-tattle and gossip, totally gripping but too much to incorporate in a review.
I loved, for example the picture conjured up of the Earl and Countess at an archaeological dig
‘Even in the baking hot wilderness of the deserts of Egypt, Almina was like a beacon, radiating light.' One observer described her ‘dressed for a garden party . . . with charming patent leather shoes and a good deal of jewellery flashing in the sunlight.’
Neither deigned to do any digging. ‘They liked to watch, and sat under heavy canvas in the shade, protected from the sun and sandstorms, relaxing in idle comfort, reading and drinking mint tea. A native boy with a stick was on guard to deter snakes, with another to swat flies.’
Almina was an efficient and dutiful wife who found sexual relief where she could—even at the age of seventy with a heating engineer. By then, her husband, the Earl of Carnarvon was long dead; a victim of an insect bite and the curse of King Tut—a popular theory of the time and one that conveniently glossed over the more likely cause—the sins of the flesh having caught up with him at last.
As ever, Almina proved the dutiful wife. When in the last stages of his illness, she flew with an amenable doctor in a small plane to his sick bed and put him out of his misery.
An experienced nurse after World War I who had long advocated euthanasia and was conversant with morphine, it is suggested and hinted at by those at the time that she quietly and mercifully put her husband to sleep.
Unlucky with her choice of husband, though she made the best of it, Almina was equally unlucky with her children. Her son-in-law took a profound dislike of her and made it difficult for Almina and her daughter Evelyn to meet.
But the real rascal was her son, the new ‘Porchey’ and the future Sixth Earl who showed little love for his mother - possibly because she spent much of the money he hoped to inherit.
He was a bounder of the first order and ended up as the archetypal ‘dirty old man.’ Contracting mumps as a child, may or may not have made him sterile. His second wife the actress Tilly Losch strongly suggests he was, and rumours abound that his first wife, who he drove to alcoholism and a nervous breakdown, provided him with an heir with the help of artificial insemination and perhaps a willing butler. It was, apparently, a common practise at the time, at least amongst those aristocrats desperate for an heir. I’m surprised Evan Morgan didn’t try it, but there you go.
Sterile he may or may not have been, but an arrogant cad he was without doubt. One peeress was warned against spending a night at Highclere, the Earl’s castle, because of his propensity to appear stark naked from a wardrobe ‘brandishing his male member like a pirate’s cutlass.’ The peeress added that it was ‘exactly the same at Blenheim. Porchey Carnarvon and Bert Marlborough were alike, barrack room roughs, both together in the Hussars Regiment. They treated their women like their horses, and much worse.’
According to Michael Lewis, the Earl’s Chimney Sweep and one who knew the estate well, “His Lordship went around knocking and calling out at cottage doors – inside, the girls knew what he wanted and shuddered but conceded. Any refusal would have resulted in their family being thrown off the estate. . .It was horrible…The Earl was not a good man, he was vile."
He ended up as a rather sad nuisance, struck down by Parkinsons and housed in Edgecombe Nursing Home in Newbury where he continued to behave disgracefully to the end.
Poor old Almina, meanwhile ended up in a terraced house in Bristol—a far cry from her glamorous youth and chatelaine of Highclere —where she died aged ninety in 1969, the year of Woodstock and the breakup of the Beatles.
More can be found here, but for those who wish to avoid the Daily Mail’s ‘sidebar of shame,’ there is of course the book.
The Rothschilds bear the brunt of many conspiracy theories, but the builder of Waddesdon was a remarkable man. Ferdinand de Rothschild, born in Paris in 1839, married his second cousin, Evelina de Rothschild, and assumed British nationality in 1865. On December 4th, 1866, Evelina gave birth to a son, and one can only imagine Ferdinand’s happiness—and despair when mother and child died the same day. Ferdinand himself died on his 59th birthday, thought to be the result of a cold caught when visiting his wife’s tomb.
Even so, a marble Conservatory must compensate to some extent, along with the rest of this Ali Baba's Cave.
An organ clock portraying Orpheus with internal mechanism that plays tunes circa 1785
Close up of one corner of the dining room
Walking along the West Gallery to the West Hall below you will see:
More clocks and Sèvres porcelain than you can shake a stick at, treasures and tapestries galore.
Ferdinand, I think, illustrates a life well spent. In memory of his wife’s death, he endowed the Evelina Hospital for Sick Children in Southwark, pursued other works of charity and became an obsessive collector of art. As a Trustee of the British Museum, he bequeathed his ‘Renaissance Collection’ to the institution on his death.
In 1874, he bought land in the village of Waddesdon from the Duke of Marlborough, levelled a substantial hill, and built Waddesdon Manor in order to house his collection. Built between 1874 and 1889 its design was based on Chateau de Chambord in France. It was very much a labour of love—as it was for us traipsing round room after opulent room.
A bathroom with its own fire
How successfully did a Jewish financier fit in the largely antisemitic English culture of the time?
It’s likely Trollope borrowed aspects of Ferdinand Rothschild in his creation of his fictional financier Melmotte, in The Way We Live Now, a man who comes to a sticky end when trying to establish himself as a landed gentleman. But the brunt of Trollope’s attack – as it is on Ferdinand Lopez in The Prime Minister—is not on their ethnicity but on the character's lack of roots—the foundation stone of Trollope’s world. In all his books, the villain, irrespective of religion or race is the one who lacks or undervalues duty and a rooted community.
For those who go for the knee-jerk reaction that Trollope was anti semitic, it's worth pointing out that Rothschild was a close friend of Trollope, along with John Everet Millais, Sir Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame) Robert Browning, and the American Ambassador in London. He was friendly with Gladstone and Disraeli, and also the Prince of Wales. In other words Rothschilds were accepted—money perhaps—but in Ferdinand’s case because he hunted, put down roots and accepted the concept of duty.
Towards the end of his life, he became keenly aware of dying without a male heir, and bequeathed his estate to his younger sister, the formidable Alice who had no hesitation in telling off Queen Victoria for stepping on one of her flowers. Well worth reading about, here and here. As I said, formidable and would have seen off Harvey Weinstein.
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Lady Alice
Lady Alice's spectacular collection of arms and armour. She positioned it here to create an appropriately masculine approach to the Smoking and Billiards Rooms used by male guests.
The Bachelor's Wing has ten bedrooms for single male guests, 15 bedrooms for permanent male staff and visiting servants and two rooms dedicated to masculine pastimes of smoking and billiards. The leather coated sofa is on a raised platform, incorporating heating grills, for better viewing of the game.
And finally, and possibly of less interest to hard smoking, hard drinking bachelors, other treasures of Waddesdon. Raffles, eat your heart out.
The melancholy returned with a vengeance a year before his death:
‘...future generation may reap the chief benefit of a work which to time has been a labour of love, though I fear Waddesdon will share the fate of most properties whose owners have no descendants and fall into decay. May the day yet be distant when weeds will spread over the garden, the terraces crumble into dust, the pictures and cabinets cross the Channel or the Atlantic, and the melancholy cry of the night-jar sound from the deserted towers.' Ferdinand Rothschild, 1897.
I think he
'The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,' 'Frankenstein,' and Sherlock Holmes.'
If this is an overlong post, it was harder on our feet, minds, and iPhone batteries, but worth it, I hope.
