Day 2 -- Becky goes to Vanity Fair
Very lightly raining today, so I cracked out my lovely new reversible raincoat -- at least I hope it's reversible, otherwise I've been walking around London with my jacket inside out. "She's American, she doesn't know any better..."
Breakfast room very St. Margaret's-y -- charming middle-aged Italian ladies bid you to make free with the cornflakes and are flatly disbelieving when you refuse toast. Whatever gloominess folks have about the rate of exchange on the dollar affecting travel from the States, I've heard nothing but American accents from my fellow guests (or perhaps it's just that more Americans are needing to go to cheap-but-clean hotels like this...) Outside, it is the original Tower of Babel -- it's getting so that it takes me a minute to identify English when it's spoken near me -- there's so many Central European, Central Asian, South Asian languages going on around me every minute. (People concerned about immigration in the US: grow up. We don't have one tenth of the diversity in this city, and it's thriving...)
Have forgotten two things about really big cities (San Francisco being more of a name brand boutique city...) -- people walk very, very fast... and they are built on swamps. Lungs behaving nobly given the humidity, but skin continually coated with thin layer of clammy oil.
Headed down to old friend the National Portrait Gallery, where in honor of my visit, they have charmingly arranged to have both a Vanity Fair portrait exhibit, and portraits from the original Bluestocking circle in the late eighteenth century.
Went through Vanity Fair exhibit first. At the risk of sounding like a caricature of myself, portraits from the 20's and 30's much more interesting than contemporary ones... Yes, partly because we're not saturated with cheap images of Adele Astaire or Anna May Wong, hence anesthetized to the impact of these amazing faces... But this is what I kept thinking in the recent section: "Well, anybody can get naked."
I mean, we all have about the same amount of skin. As a subject, it doesn't take any character to take off your clothes, and as a photographer, there isn't as much skill involved in arranging limbs so that explicitly naughty bits won't show, as might be involved in observing and bringing out someone's (fully-clothed) character.
Then I flitted over to the "Brilliant Women : Bluestockings in the 18th Century" exhibit. Outside in the hall, there was a collection of photographs of "modern muses" done by Bryan Adams (yes, "Cuts Like a Knife", video in an empty swimming pool Bryan Adams) -- including Tilda Swinton in a white coat looking as if she's hearing voices the rest of us aren't, and a delightfully raddled Vivienne Westwood.
Inside, lots of great images of bluestockings -- pensively holding brushes or pens. Great portrait of Hannah More. Cartoons making fun of intellectual women, of course. Not the usual portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft -- looking incredibly focused. Lots about Catherine Macauley, who wrote a multi-volume history of England much admired in revolutionary America and France, and then married a man half her age who was the younger brother of a notorious quack James Graham (of whom we will hear more later). There's a letter from Wollstonecraft to Macauley, very early on in the former's career -- "...proud you are contending for laurels when many women are content with flowers." There's also a nine muses picture composed of all contemporary intellectual women. Also worst Vigee LeBrun portrait ever, Mme de Stael as Corinne -- supposedly gazing upward in sublime contemplation, but actually looking as if she thinks a spider might be dropping down on her.
Still had a bit of time before needing to leave for Highgate, so I toddled up to the Tudors-18th century floor. Found a delightful temporary exhibit of the miniatures of one John Kay, an Edinburgh barber who taught himself to make pen and ink caricatures of local figures, driving his poor wife batty when he started engraving them as well, to the neglect of the barber shop. We meet Polish dwarf Count Boruwalski, who the Scotch, in that adaptive way they have, renamed Barrel o' Whiskey... William Brodie, who killed a messenger in the course of a robbery and then came up with the cunning plan of wearing a steel collar on execution day to cheat the hangman. Uh, Bill... And that James Graham who was involved in bringing Catherine Macauley down into the dust, his "Temple of Health" advertised with scantily clad nymphs (the future Lady Hamilton, then Emma Lyons was one of them) who would cure whatever ailed you. A double portrait of a local porter and Voltaire, who were apparently separated at birth. All very droll.
There was a large group of schoolchildren in my favorite bit, the Tudors, so I scooched over to the 16th-17th-18th century (this trip is starting to skew heavily toward the late 18th century, without me really willing it...) Saw Capability Brown (found out how he got his name), Mrs. Thrale looking steely-eyed, Peg Woffington, an early Regency actress who actually stabbed her rival Mrs. Bellamy during a performance (that would be a production of "School for Scandal" to see!) Snuck back into Tudors once the kids were gone -- happy I did, because they've acquired a new portrait, reputedly Lady Jane Grey (I'd forgotten that Edward did really make her his heir...)
"Oh, just a quick peek into the 20th century then..." The usual Bloomsburies, Roger Fry with the longest fingers in the world, Aleister Crowley looking ridiculous in a saffron robe.
Consumed a quick iced tea in the cafe, and then jumped on the tube to Highgate -- this being the third or fourth time I've set out to see this wonderful old cemetery, and each time failing. There's one tour of the Western, older side of the cemetery each afternoon at 2pm -- otherwise, there's no access. Miracle of God, I got out at the right stop (NOT Highgate, but Archway), got the right bus up the hill, got off at the right point at Waterlow Park, chose the right paths to walk through the park and come out on the side closest the cemetery.
This is the greatest cemetery in the world. Others abide our question, thou art free... Abandoned for decades, now brought back with a policy of "managed neglect" -- the folks involved in "restoring" it very soon realized that it was the overgrown vegetation that was holding many old grave fixtures together. They've cleared some paths through, as well as done some restoration on the biggest monuments like the Egyptian Avenue and the Circle of Lebanon, and left the rest as a lush and decadent nature preserve.
Very few burials in the historic West side now, but they do happen in special circumstances. We passed a fairly new grave with a picture of a vaguely familiar-looking Russian guy and a couple of candles in jars -- only realized when guide assured us that we would feel no ill effects from radiation, that it was Alexander Litvinenko.
Egyptian avenue was very posh indeed. There were lots of above ground burials since Victorians were particularly anxious about being buried alive. Everyone seems to have "fallen asleep" rather than "entered into rest" or "gone to heaven." Radcliffe Hall is with two other women in a menage au mausoleum. Blew right past Mrs. Henry Wood on our way to Nero the Lion. Also Crufts, the dog show guy -- wife refused to have dog in house as part of their pre-nup agreements. Frederick Warne, publisher of the Beatrix Potter books -- who knew they were a hot item at one time? Sorry we didn't get to see Christina Rosetti ("when I am dead my dearest") or Lizzie Siddal (first wife of Dante Gabriel Rosetti -- he was so inconsolable when she died, he put the manuscripts of all his poetry in her coffin. When he, um, felt better, he dug her up to retrieve them.).
(You also might want to google "Highgate vampire" for an amusing little tale of duelling Van Helsing wannabes in the 70's.)
Still plenty of time to do the Eastern cemetery after the Western tour. Doug Adams is on a nice little slope with a small dark green stone. Around Karl Marx's grave, rather a little coterie of bolshies -- lots of people described as beloved comrades. Astonishing number of Iraqi dissidents who died in exile from the Hussein regime. And of course, George Eliot. I took a little rosebud from the bush on her grave. (Who is Elena Stuart nee Fraser and why did George Eliot call her "daughter"? And what is the Salisbury system she invented? Answer comes there none.)
Hobbled happily home. Had a creditable little lamb kefta platter at Saffron Cafe and rested a bit before the theatre -- Noel Coward's The Vortex with Felicity Kendal.
I could see that it could be a powerful play in the right hands. Former productions have had Francesca Annis as Florence Lancaster, or Rupert Everett as her tragic son Nicky... Casting of the principals doomed this production from the start. Okay, I love Felicity Kendal -- the whole reason I went to see this was to see Felicity Kendal live on stage. But if you're going to be putting on a play about a gracelessly aging woman clinging to younger lovers with monstrous selfishness and poisonous charm, shouldn't you avoid casting someone who looks twenty years younger than her age and whose public persona breathes sweetness and light? (Didn't help that one of the characters was named Tom -- every time she inflected it, I thought of her husband on Good Neighbors.) And someone needed to tell the actor playing Nicky that you can portray a drug addict a little more subtly that having three espressos before the performance and clutching your hands together a lot. (Notice in the programme that actor was cast in many other Peter Hall productions. Good looking lad. Nudge nudge, wink wink.)