Each Little World

Inspiration: A quartet of my favorite femmes

I am one of those readers of the New York Times newspaper who always turns to the obituaries first. The reason I always look at NYT obits is that they often include many people who I've never met but feel I know. 

Sometimes I feel a personal connection because the person opened up a new world to me via their own passionate interests like Mary Hunt Kahlenberg with Navaho rugs and Indonesian textiles. Or it may be because I've spent a lifetime enthralled by their bohemian style like Loulou de la Falaise. Sometimes I was charmed by their story-telling ability like Florence Parry Heide of Kenosha, Wisconsin. Or, like Phyllis Love, they embodied an imaginary character so totally that they have remained a capricious teenager in a role committed to film 55 years ago.

Suddenly, many of my quirky interests collided in one brief moment as these four women all looked out at me the last few days from their final stories in the Times.

. . .

In the 1970s, when Mary Hunt Kahlenberg was head of the costume and textile department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, she organized “The Navajo Blanket” with Anthony Berlant, an artist and textile collector. The exhibit — which I saw at the Elvehjem Museum in Madison when I was a textile student — stunned the art world as she presented American Indian blankets hung on the wall as works of art. Being in the presence of those wonderful creations was one of those rare moments when you know you are seeing something that will forever change how you look at the world. “The Navajo Blanket” was one of the first textile books I ever bought and it still has pride of place on my bookshelf today. For those who love textiles, a number of Kahlenberg's books on the subject are available locally through the South Central Library System.

For decades, Loulou de la Falaise was both St. Laurent's muse and collaborator; and as such, she was a fixture in the fashion pages in the days when I poured over them. Loulou was one in a long line of famous family beauties. But now I realize that what was perhaps most lovely about her is that she at once looked wonderful and her age.

LOULOU DE LA FALAISE

I discovered the books of Florence Parry Heide when I was an elementary school art teacher on the East Coast. It was a job that gave me access to new generations of children's books published long after I had stopped reading such things. My contact with young people — along with a wise school librarian — and brilliantly inventive book's like Heide's "The Shrinking of Treehorn," showed me that I would never be too old to enjoy kid lit! 

I've known and loved Martha True Birdwell since I first watched "Friendly Persuasion" with my mother when I was ten years old! Actress Phyllis Love played many more well-known and well-regarded roles during her career, but for me she will always be the young daughter — Mattie — in this story of a Quaker family on their Indiana farm during the Civil War. The cast has a pair of perfect parents: a rueful Gary Cooper matched with a feisty Dorothy McGuire. Anthony Perkins played the older son in a breakthrough role. The parents were a long-married couple who put up with each other's foibles out of both love and respect. And they watched with amusement and concern as their children struggled toward adulthood with a war and an outside world moving ever closer to tempt them from their Quaker — and pacifist — beliefs. In many ways it is a throwback 1950s movie, but one with such sweetness and charm that I never grow tired of watching it. Or watching Mattie/Phyllis fall in love with the soldier pictured below.

The Birdwell family with a soldier neighbor in the Civil War movie "Friendly Persuasion." Phyllis Love is on the far right.

Summer pleasures: Jane Austen

"Summer afternoon — summer afternoon;

to me those have always been the two most beautiful words

in the English language." 

 — Henry James —

James, of course, is entirely correct. The only thing that could possibly improve a summer afternoon is a little Jane Austen. Or even a lot of Jane Austen. Not long ago, I had the urge to watch the 2008 BBC adaptation of Austen's "Sense and Sensibility." (I much prefer it to the Ang Lee/Emma Thompson version.) Lucky for me there was a copy waiting on the shelf at the public library.

The production was as good as I remembered; perfect casting, costumes and scenery. There seemed to be only a modicum of invention and tampering with Austen's text; notably in setting of the Dashwood's cottage by the sea rather than deeper in the countryside. And I was annoyed again at the attempt to sex-up the off-stage seduction of a character we never meet and who is not even revealed until we're well into the story. 

 

Of course, those things sent me back to the book to see exactly what Austen said and how and where and when. It's at moments like this that I know why I have a matched set of Modern Library editions of Austen's novels on my bookshelf. (I'm only missing P&P to make it a complete set). My re-reading of the story of the Dashwood sisters showed me how subtle Austen can be in setting the scene. I imagined the duel between Willoughby and Col. Brandon was a screen addition but there it was in the book; high drama though less obviously so in Austen's hands. And I marveled again at how well the cast of "Sense & Sensibility" meshed with Austen's characterizations in the novel. 

While I was at the library picking up the Austen DVD, I took a quick look at the new books shelf where the title, "Jane's Fame," jumped out at me. I grabbed it on the assumption that there is only one Jane who is so famous she needs no introduction. (Well, maybe two if you count Tarzan's inamorta). And indeed the book looks at "How Jane Austen Conquered the World."

Part biography, part history and mystery, author Claire Harman looks at Austen from every angle and every era. There are so many versions and re-visions of Austen that this is an excellent way to discover what is fact, fiction and pure fantasy. Harman covers everything from likenesses of Austen, to all the different editions of her books, to who in the Austen family dealt with publishers and whether Jane cared about making money from her writing (the family said no, but Jane said otherwise in her letters). 

All of the backstory about Austen's immediate family and descendants, the years spent trying to get her books into print etc., can get a bit overwhelming. What I found of most interest as a contemporary reader of Austen is how she came to be part of the canon, or canonized to be more accurate. Harman looks at how changing tastes in both literature and literary criticism aided Austen's fame. Until about fifteen years ago all surges of interest in Austen were related to anniversaries or publication of newly discovered documents.

But the 1995 film version of P&P with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth sparked an interest in Austen that has not abated. We are in an era of all Austen, all the time. There's the multiplication of treatments of the novels on screen, the entire literary genre of Austen-influenced romance novels (think Georgette Heyer), Austen take-offs ("Clueless," "Lost in Austen"), Austen compilations on YouTube, and Austen herself and her fictional characters now appear in countless other novels. Though I admit to being an Austen addict, I draw the line at zombies. 

We are no longer particular, says Harman, where or how we get our Austen — as long as we get it! Reading "Jane's Fame" is not quite as much fun as reading Austen herself, but it will go a long way towards helping you understand your own Austen addiction.

 

If you've never seen Andrew Davies' adaptation of "Sense and Sensibility" here's the PBS trailer for the DVD which will give you a feeling for both the story and the production without giving anything away.

Victoria's Daughters

 

I had just watched the film "The Young Victoria" (above) when I discovered "Victoria's Daughters" at a neighborhood garage sale. Jerrold M. Packard's biography of the British Queen's family turned out to be very readable given that she had nine children. Though it ostensibly concentrates on the girls of the Royal Family, you can't really tell this tale without devoting space to the sons and everyone's spouses and children. Then there are assorted royals, politicians and court personalities across Europe who take the stage.

Packard thankfully includes a detailed family tree of the children, along with a list of other principal players, a critical addition given all the various Victorias and Alberts, Williams and Leopolds who appear in each generation.

I found Queen Victoria's first child, also called Victoria and known as the Princess Royal (above), the most fascinating. She was intelligent, lively and stubborn and her parents saw her marriage to the Prussian Crown Prince as a way to bring an English style government to that fragmented and militaristic part of Europe. 

Queen Victoria (front left above) with her eldest son, the future King Edward VII (far right), her daughter Victoria and Victoria's son, the future Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany (second from right).

Like her parents, Vicky made a love match. Like her mother, she had a contentious relationship with her son — the future Kaiser Wilhelm II.  Vicky and her husband were usually at odds with the intensely militaristic state that eventually became a unified Germany under Bismark. Her husband only ruled the country for three months before he died of cancer; their reign between two war-mongering monarchs was too short and too late to change the nation's mind set. Indeed, it was their son who plunged Victoria's heirs — along with everyone else — into World War I. 

 

Packard details the background of the families that Victoria's children married into since that played an important role in what happened to each of them. He also looks at the strong Germanic history of the Queen's family and how that — including their name — changed over time. 

Among the most fascinating side shoots of the story is Packard's tracing of the genetic path of the hemophilia that ran through Victoria's family and descendants; where it likely came from and how it was passed along. Victoria's youngest son, Leopold, was a hemophiliac who married, had two children and lived until age 31. Apparently only a few female hemophiliacs have ever been recorded. Packard points out that they were daughters of marriages between first cousins — and none of them would have lived past puberty because they would have bled to death when they began to menstruate.

Helvetica

It must be the result of all my years of watching PBS; I love costume dramas and documentaries, as evidenced by my current Netflix choices: "Young Victoria" and "Helvetica." The former had a great cast, fabulous clothes and lovely gardens. And I am enough of an Anglophile that I knew the moment I saw those glorious lavender parterres that Ham House was where the scenes of Kensington Palace were actually filmed. Some gardens are too individual to be stand-ins. 

Much as I enjoyed "Victoria," it couldn't compare with Gary Hustwit's "Helvetica," an independent film about typography, design and global visual culture, with a cast of glamorous metropolitan locations (Amsterdam, Zurich, London), famed designers (Neville Brody, Massimo Vignelli and David Carson), and, of course, the classic Helvetica typeface. Some call it ubiquitious. Corporate. Democratic. Socialist. Boring. War-mongering. A lot of folks have a love-hate relationship with Helvetica, making for a lively film. If you read, if you blog, or text or tweet, or live in today's visual culture, this movie is a must. 

 

I should point out that I did take away one thought that the filmmaker probably did not intend: why were there only two women interviewed? Especially as designer Paula Scher and writer Leslie Savan added immeasurably to the story. A personal quibble with a fascinating cultural document.

 

Thanks to one of my favorite Madison bloggers (and font designer) — Outside the Line — for drawing my attention to "Helvetica," as well as "Objectified," another great Gary Hustwit film, about the people who "re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis." 

Other documentaries worthy of your time: "Carmen and Geoffrey," "The Rape of Europa," and "It Might Get Loud."

Aldo Leopold Weekend

There can be no doubt that a society rooted in the soil is more stable than one rooted in pavements.

— Aldo Leopold

 

This weekend — from Lodi to LaCrosse, and Baraboo to Glendale — folks in Wisconsin will be celebrating the influence of Aldo Leopold on our lives and landscape with walks and talks, reading and feasting and film-going. Leopold's life and work has had such a profound effect on this state that it officially acknowledges his legacy each year on the first weekend in March. 

There are assorted events all over Wisconsin, including "Reading Leopold," wherein whole communities gather to read the great man's words. But if readings are the most widespread of Leopold Weekend activities, New London's "Leopold Bench Building Workshop" definitely sounds like the most fun. His bench is ubiquitous; being simple to make as well as comfortable to sit upon. 

You can find the history of the event here, a list of statewide events here, with specifics on Madison's happenings, which run Friday through Sunday, here.

The "Leopold bench" outside "the Shack."

Inspiration: Eric Rohmer

Eric Rohmer, editor of the influential Cahiers du Cinema magazine from 1957 to 1963, one of the founders of French New Wave cinema, and the director of a series of memorable films, has died at age 89. That statement doesn't begin to give you a sense of the richness and subtlety of Rohmer's films. Or how they've remained in the memory of those of us who fell under their spell.

    

 

I clearly remember the first one I saw, "My Night at Maud's," as well as with whom and where I saw it. "Maud" was based on one of Rohmer's own stories — "moral tales" — perfect for a pair of young, Catholic, college students: a sexy movie without any actual sex. I immediately taped a magazine photo of the film's star, Jean Louis Trintingnant (above left), inside my bathroom medicine cabinet where I would see his sweetly smiling face every day. My copy of Rohmer's "Six Moral Tales," along with Trintingnant's photo, is still somewhere deep in the recesses of my bookcases. 

    

After Maud came "Claire's Knee," "Pauline at the Beach," and "Chloe in the Afternoon," to name a few. All instantly recognizable as Rohmer's work with their witty and intellectual dialog. Remembering these first movies, which morphed into his later seasonal tales, I realize why I like so little of contemporary cinema. Rohmer got me hooked early on stories; stories that felt true and were filled with talk, talk, talk and more talk. 

    

   

The last Rohmer film I saw was "The Lady and The Duke," based on the memoirs of an aristocratic Scotswoman living in France at the time of the Revolution (above). What set this film apart was that all the scenes of Paris were beautifully painted backdrops, specifically created to replicate 18th Century reality. The settings and characters were digitally combined in a film of sensuous details.

Rohmer wasn't trying to capture a particular moment on film, but an attitude. As a result, his work has a timeless quality which lets these tales of the intricacies of love, life, and loss continue to shine.

Lost in Austen

I'm not sure if anyone can pinpoint the moment when Jane Austen changed from an early 19th Century author to a contemporary one. Austen's new-found popularity has thrust her into the position of a media celebrity whose life is no longer her own. What Austen might have done or thought or written has spawned a whole genre of books and movies, like "Becoming Jane" and "Miss Austen Regrets." I found both heavy-handed and ultimately unsatisfying. 

  

Playing with Austen's stories is so much more fun than playing with her life — and allows for true creative license, whether one is using her novels as the catalyst in modern love stories like "The Jane Austen Book Club," or re-imagining them the way Amy Heckerling transformed "Emma" into the brilliant "Clueless."

As someone who enjoyed both of Laurie Viera Rigler's novels about Austen addicts and time travel, I was pre-disposed to like "Lost in Austen," the four-part 2008 British television series for the ITV network. Though released on DVD in the U.S. last spring, I just heard about "Lost in Austen" from a friend who'd also read Rigler's novels. 

The story centers around a young woman, named Amanda Price, who is so enamored of Austen's "Pride and Prejudice," so steeped in its plot, characters and classic love story, that she conjures up Elizabeth Bennet in the bathroom of her London flat. Lizzie shows her the door connecting that room and the attic of the Bennet family's home in Regency England. In a flash, Amanda's gone through the door — which closes while Lizzie is still on the wrong side. 

Amanda (above) explains her sudden appearance by telling the Bennets that she's a friend of Lizzie's, who has come to stay while their daughter spends time in the city; a more plausible and interesting set-up than the two merely exchanging lives. Knowing "Pride and Prejudice" almost as well as Miss Price, I found "Lost in Austen" a thorough delight.  Part of its charm is that while Miss Price knows the story intimately, no one else does. Indeed, they don't even know they are just characters in a novel — iconic though they and it may be. 

As a lover of the book, Amanda is thrilled to find herself in the midst of it — but her mere presence begins to affect the story. Without Lizzie, the Bennet family has lost its equilibrium, its center. Without her, the lives of Austen's characters begin to spin out of control — threatening the outcome of the novel that's held us in its spell for almost 200 years. 

George Wickham (Tom Riley, left) with the Bennet family: Lydia (Perdita Weeks), Kitty (Florence Hoath), Jane (Morven Christie), Miss Price (Jemima Rooper), Mary (Ruby Bentall), and Mrs. Bennet (Alex Kingston).

Writer Guy Andrews ("Prime Suspect," "Poirot," "Lewis") has crafted a witty, imaginative, intelligent — and very funny — take on Austen's beloved classic. The presence of Miss Price in "Pride and Prejudice" has set both the story and the characters adrift in uncharted waters. That means that the people we thought we knew well — Lydia Bennet, George Wickham, even Bingley — become alive and engaging in ways we're unprepared for.

Mr. Collins (Guy Henry).

Some characters appear to be the same as they ever were; Mr. Collins is as foppish and obsequious as always. But as this story unfolds, there is an undercurrent of malevolence to him that is new and unnerving. Lindsay Duncan, however, may be the best embodiment of Lady Catherine de Bourgh committed to the screen: intelligent, cunning and deliciously domineering. She offers neither caricature nor star turn; her Lady Catheine has passion and purpose.

And, yes, there are anachronisms and inconsistencies but I did not let them trouble me. Instead, I enjoyed the bits of trivia, references to Colin Firth and Miss Price chiding Bingley using the words of Mr. Knightly in "Emma." I watched the entire three hours in one go and then did it again the next day! 

Elizabeth Bennet (Gemma Arterton), Amanda Price (Jemima Rooper) and Mr. Darcy (Elliot Cowan).

Available to buy, to rent through Netflix or to reserve through the South Central Library System which currently has ten copies and 82 hold requests. 

100 abandoned houses

Hold on, dear house,

‘gainst the long hours

of emptiness, against

the wind’s tearing force.

You are my mind

made particular,

my heart in its place.

— from Robert Creeley’s “This House”

What happens when the day comes when you can no longer hold on, nor can your dear house? How does a showplace slide into such disrepair that suddenly it's in danger of collapse and total ruin? Those are the kind of questions that the recent HBO broadcast of "Grey Gardens" has raised again. 

If you missed the docudrama, the Broadway musical and the famed documentary by the Maysles brothers, it's the tale of a once-wealthy mother and daughter who become so isolated and live in such dilapidated squalor in their large East Hampton estate — Grey Gardens — that the health department is about evict them and raze the house. Wealthy relatives (Jackie O and her sister) come to the rescue, but the situation reverts in short order. 

Joni at Cote de Texas has done an amazing post offering dozens of images of the house and grounds which have been transformed by Ben Bradlee and his wife, Sally Quinn, who bought the property in the late 1970's. Rescuing a house like Grey Gardens, when you have time and money, was not impossible, just expensive.

The "Grey Gardens" films look at two women whose situation and story is strange, titillating and creepy all at the same time. Their ruined house — like the ones above — is the magnet that draws us in. This house, a model of craftsmanship that is rare in today's building industry but was the standard in the late 19th and early 20th century, has the same appeal for us. 

But what happens when huge swaths of a city are filled with veritable Grey Gardens? When neighborhoods resemble those historic photographs of Richmond after the Civil War; all brooding and burned-out. When you hardly have to turn around to snap the photos needed to create a blog featuring "100 Abandoned Houses." That's where all these images — taken in Detroit over the last ten years by Kevin Bauman — originated. (He notes that Detroit actually has about 12,000 abandoned houses).

As I looked at house after house captured by Bauman, I kept returning to all the concern over the renovation of Grey Gardens, as reported by Joni. The outrage when the front porch columns were replaced without a curve at the top where they met the bracing as in the original. "Whoa Nelly," as the late Molly Ivins would say. The porch posts above have a nice curve and the house is for sale, too.

This house made me think about all the blog chat because Sally Quinn painted the trim on Grey Gardens blue. This house is already blue; no need to worry about what colors to choose. If I am reading this little building correctly, it is a classic American residential style: business below and residence above. Bauman's abandoned houses are a veritable lesson in vernacular architecture.

Not all of the abandoned houses are off by themselves. This one is hemmed in by two buildings in good shape and clearly occupied. Though I am a bit surprised that those homebodies have not cleaned up the property and used the space for gardening! 

I looked at every house on Bauman's site; mesmerized by a kind of horror at the private tragedies all those empty buildings imply. Dreams, lives and a whole city abandoned along with the houses.

Thanks to Kevin Bauman for permission to use his photographs and to Nibsblog for alerting me to his site.

Gardening: It's all about relationships

Taking pictures gives one the chance to mull on a moment that would otherwise be too fleeting to register. It's amazing how often Mark and I "see" things in a photograph for the first time. Take a shot from a low angle or an odd location — a view that would rarely be noticed — and suddenly you find you've captured the essence of your garden vision.

We've been watching this clump of bamboo all winter as it bleached from green to a washed-out tan. Today we were crouched under the adjacent spruces in search of the spring ephemerals that grow there. No sight of them; instead we looked up to discover the winter-burned bamboo no longer pale but glowing. The sunlight streaming through the trees also lit up the tiny Iris reticulata while casting the nearby rocks into deep shadow. 

A new angle and new juxtapositions. In a split second, new relationships were revealed between things we thought we knew well. 

All Passion Spent

What if Knole, that fairy tale of a castle given to Thomas Sackville by Elizabeth I in 1566, had not been entailed? What if it had passed on to the little girl who grew up there — Vita Sackville-West — instead of going to a distant male cousin who inherited it from Vita's parents? 

KNOLE HOUSE/COMMONS.WIKIMEDIA.ORG

Knole, with its seven courts, 52 staircases, and 355 rooms, is the largest private house in England. It sits there still, surrounded by a deer park of 1,000 acres. It is its own world; a world apart. When she lost Knole, Vita — like a jealous lover — left, never to return.  

Instead she spent her life writing about the land, about houses, about home; creating fictional embodiments of the dream of Knole. Until she finally made it flesh at Sissinghurst: her own world apart, surrounded by what may well be the most famous garden of the 20th century.

KNOLE HOUSE/COMMONS.WIKIMEDIA.ORG/BRITANNIA ILLUSTRATA 1709

Virginia Wolfe transformed Vita and Knole into "Orlando," while Vita herself used the historic house to great effect in her 1930 novel, "The Edwardians." But it is in "All Passion Spent," the story of the "quietly defiant" Lady Slane and the house she's held in her memory for thirty years, that Vita creates a home suited to the rest of us. She calls that little house "an entity with a life of its own." 

The life of the house and the old woman who retreats there after the death of her diplomat husband, make "All Passion Spent" a charmed tale. Vita's subtext, as always, is a subtle anger at the way her world treated women. But mostly this is a book full of irony, humor and warmth; the traits of the engaging Lady Slane.

"When can one please oneself if not in old age?" asks 88-year-old Lady Slane? 

My mother-in-law is exactly that age, which may be one reason why the book resonates with me; that and having come of age during the second wave of feminism in the 1970s. I've clearly crossed that invisible line where I find an old lady more fascinating — and more worthy of my time — than the young women who populate so many contemporary books and movies.  

And certainly if that lady comes to the screen in the person of Dame Wendy Hiller. Yes, she of the elegant diction and the gorgeous cheekbones, played Lady Slane in the 1986 BBC production of "All Passion Spent." The performance earned Hiller a BAFTA nomination as Best Actress. The production was seen here in the U.S. on Masterpiece Theatre, though I don't recall it. 

But I am currently in a Hiller phase and watched the film twice: the first time to enjoy Hiller herself; the second to enjoy the marvelous triumvirate of Lady Slane's admirers: Mr. Bucktrout, Mr. Gosheron and Mr. FitzGeorge. One could equally concentrate on her awful children and their spouses; but it's Lady Slane's attitude to life — and death — that makes one think that reaching 80 may be something to anticipate rather than fear. 

The film is quite faithful to Vita's book; the main departure it makes is giving Lady Slane's great-granddaughter more of a role than in the book. Here she serves to convey much that Vita offered in the book as inward commentary. And perhaps the producers were concerned that there was not a young person among the remaining cast members!

The back of the DVD calls the film "a beautifully realized portrait of a complex woman reflecting on choices made, lost, and regained." It's a perfect description of both the film and Vita's book.