It began with the railroads: The Europeans, by Orlando Figes
What began was the nineteenth century culture of worldly sophistication and high art described in this incredibly wide ranging volume. Along with the new ease of rail travel, cultural cross currents began to flow with increasing speed and receptivity, to and from numerous nations of Western Europe. The countries specifically referenced are Italy, England, Germany, Russia – to my surprise – and France, always France, the epicenter of it all.
The book’s full title is The Europeans: Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture. Figes chooses to tell his story through the lives of singer and composer Pauline Viardot, her husband Louis, and their friend and close associate Ivan Turgenev. (The great Russian writer was, in fact, in love with Pauline Viardot throughout his life. To an extent, she returned his affections, but would never leave Louis, with whom she had four children.)
Pauline Viardot, 1821-1910
Louis Viardot 1800-1883
Ivan Turgenev, 1818-1883
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I had gotten this far in composing this post before we left town for a few days. A recent photo in the Washington Post served as a reminder that I hadn’t yet finished it:
Putin signing visitors’ book in Turgenev’s house
Ages ago, when I was trying to get more classics under my belt, I read Fathers and Sons and First Love. I recall especially being moved by the latter. In The Europeans, Orlando Figes tells us how Turgenev’s early writings in The Sportsman’s Sketches first secured his authorial fame. As with many out-of-copyright classics, various editions of this work are available for download on Amazon. I’ve read several of the stories and very much enjoyed them.
As it happens, copyright law, both within nations and international, is an important subject covered by Figes in his book. And as happens sometimes in books like this, it slows the narrative down to a crawl. It’s a case of an important subject that needs in depth coverage and one that at the same time isn’t – well, for want of a better word, sexy.
Still, all in all, this was a fascinating book, filled with illuminating facts about the flowering of high culture – art, music, and literature – throughout nineteenth century Europe. What fabulous gifts these people bequeathed to us!
“The Little Donkeys with The Crimson Saddles,” by Hugh Walpole
THE little donkeys went past the shop-window at eight in the morning and seven-thirty in the evening, punctually, rain or shine.
Miss Pope christened them Percy and Emily. The old man whose donkeys they were she had long ago named Voltaire because he looked wicked, unChristian and clever – and because she liked literary allusions. One thing she often discussed with Miss Menzies, and that was why, being wicked and clever, he had not advanced further in the world. Miss Menzies suggested drink, and Miss Pope thought it probable.
Thus in its unassuming way, this story, the first in Hugh Walpole’s collection The Silver Thorn, begins.
As I began reading, my first question was, where are we? The presence of the donkeys made me think of Spain, but no, this is Silverton-on-Sea, a fictional seaside town in England. The owner of the animals, the so-called Voltaire, makes them available to children and their families for rides. Thus he ekes out a living.
Miss Pope and Miss Menzies keep a small shop in the town. The shop offers a variety of items for sale –
The fancy work was very new, the antiquities very old. The shop, when it was lucky, made a profit, and then they went away for a holiday. They had been to the Lake District, Paris, Vevey, the Isle of Man, and Lake Como. On the other years the shop had not made a profit.
At age forty-three, Jane Pope is thirteen years older than Alice Menzies. She is at peace with her lot in life. But Alice Menzies, seeing what she perceives as the approach of spinsterhood, does not share in this equanimity. She longs for the chance to be a wife and mother, before it is too late..
In the meantime, she and her companion continue to observe the punctual coming and going of the little donkeys. It is how their days are marked.
And then a man arrives, and with his arrival comes a moment of reckoning for Alice Menzies.
Alice, as she sat down beside him, wished (Oh, how she wished!) that he had not chosen just this spot in which to make his proposal. Had she thought of it (but when does one think of these things?) there could not possibly be anywhere worse – here where she could see all the familiar things – the little town white and shining in the sun, huddled together so happily as though cosily inviting her congratulation (she so old a friend) at its contentment, the great sweep of purple, green-striped sea, the silver beach, the cornfields and the singing larks. Yes – and then, surely she could see them quite clearly, Percy and Emily trotting bravely, little midgets of patience and determination, to their inevitable destiny.
“The Little Donkeys with the Crimson Saddles” is a short story dating from around 1928. Yet this gem of a tale has a timeless quality; it is strongly atmospheric, beautifully crafted, and immensely moving. I would rate it with the stories of Alice Munro. That is the highest praise I can give to a work of short fiction.
The Silver Thorn can be downloaded free of charge from the site The Faded Page. (A PDF download is of reliable quality.)
In the anthology Capital Crimes: London Stories, Martin Edwards says this about Hugh Walpole: “Today, his work is strangely underappreciated.” I’ve read several other stories by Walpole, and I agree wholeheartedly with this assessment.
Sir Hugh Walpole, 1884-1941
The Astonishing Marvel that is the Frick Collection
So, you enter the galleries and the first thing you see is this:
It is ‘Officer and Laughing Girl’ by Jan Vermeer, painted some time between 1665 and 1660.
The man beside me was also staring intently. I said to him, Isn’t it amazing to be standing here, in front of this? He smiled and nodded, unable to speak.
It was some time before I was able to move. But move one must; there is ever so much more to see….
For one thing, two more Vermeers:
Girl Interrupted at Her Music, c.1658-1659
Mistress and Maid, c. 1667
The light falls on her dress;
Words cannot express what this color means.
It seems as though the rays of the sun have settled on the fabric,
And are blazing forth anew.Yet she is oblivious of her own beauty,
Focused instead on this conundrum brought to her by a maid.
A moment of profound import?
A matter of some urgency, or a botched laundry order?We cannot know; will never know,
Can only wait, and stare, and wonder, at this moment in time
Captured forever by a genius artist.A mystery within a mystery.
Books to the Ceiling 