Bute & Montmirail

This is a portrait of John, Lord Mountstewart, later 4th Earl and 1st Marquess of Bute. The portrait is now in the Getty and was one of the works in today's Artle. I hear "Bute" in the voice of Michelle Fairley who plays Princess Augusta in Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. Another of today's Artle works was a portrait of Charles Benjamin de Langes de Montmirail, Baron de Lubières. "Montmirail" was the noble name of the man who was obsessed by Dowager Countess Violet (Maggie Smith) in the second Downton Abbey film. He left his villa in the South of France to her. Perhaps I'm living too much in historical spaces as manifested in popular culture. Or perhaps the real world needs to be escaped from.
 

Jane Lapotaire

Every once in a while, there's a scene in some film or other program where an actor just shines. Jane Lapotaire is the actress that just knocked me off my chair. She plays Princess Alice (Battenberg), the mother of HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, in The Crown. She has been staying at Buckingham Palace after a coup made the situation in Greece precarious. Her brother, Lord Mountbatten, has just gotten a dressing down from Queen Elizabeth for conspiring (QE II's word) with others against Harold Wilson's government.

Lord Mountbatten goes to see Princess Alice in her room and their conversation resonated for me as I think about what to do about more Trump presidency. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZT6yUlDzkfs 

As I was watching that scene in The Crown, I realized that Jane Lapotaire also played Princess Kuragin in Downton Abbey.

I was wearing my t-shirt yesterday with a quote from Moira Rose of Schitt's Creek. "When one of us shines, all of us shine."

the Napier line

Lady Sarah Lennox by Sir Joshua Reynolds

(Art Institute of Chicago)

Lady Sarah Lennox was a favorite of King George III of Great Britain. I learned this while watching an interview with India Amarteifio and Corey Mylchreest who play Charlotte and George in the Shonda Rhimes and Netflix series "Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story." Lady Sarah married Charles Bunbury and later George Napier. She and Napier had eight children. One wonders if Evelyn Napier, a friend of Lady Mary in "Downton Abbey," was perhaps a grandson or great-grandson of Lady Sarah.

Radio Girls, before and after their time

There are all sorts of reasons why you buy and/or read a book. Sometimes it's the stack of books on the new releases table in the bookstore. Sometimes it's a review. Sometimes a friend recommends the book. Maybe the book is just in the social air. And sometimes the daughter of a friend and colleague is the author. It was this last circumstance that put Radio Girls by Sarah-Jane Stratford on my to-read shelf.

(image from Penguin-Random House webpage for the book)

Sarah-Jane Stratford is the daughter of my longtime art cataloging colleague Nancy Norris, now retired from UCLA. It took me a little while to get into the story but I'm awfully glad I got past that. The story is set in London, between the wars, as the fascist threat grows and people become more and more aware of the seriousness of the threat. The "radio girls" are working at BBC which is in its infancy.

The first printing of the New American Library paperback edition was in June 2016. It is amazing and terrifying how the story resonates with the situation in the United States from 2016 when Trump was running and then serving as president. Suppression of news. Officious bosses. Male date assumptions. Stratford must have had her fore-seeing glasses on.

Always looking for parallels, I was amused that one of the bad guys was a Mr Grigson. Not quite the same name as Michael Gregson, from Downton Abbey, but our heroine Maisie Musgrave's fiancé Simon does go to Germany on family business and get involved with Grigson on some corporate shenanigans related to making deals with the Nazi government. By the way, librarians are mentioned a couple times as being good with facts.

teardowns

I have been watching the 1981 version of Brideshead Revisited. Lady Marchmain has died and the London house has been sold by Lord Marchmain. Bridey has asked Charles to paint some views of the house before it is torn down, to be replaced by flats. But don't worry. The house will be saved and the flats will not be built. Charles will find his painting career with the success of the paintings. I know the house will be saved because it is also Grantham House, the London residence of the Crawleys from Downton Abbey.

This photo of the actual Bridgewater House, on the site of Cleveland House, is on Flickr, taken by jupiter1953.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/b1953/7616519714

I first watched the 1981 Brideshead at Judith Holliday's apartment in the Dewitt Mall Apartments in Ithaca. My then boyfriend Randy and I went over every Sunday night while it was on Great Performances on PBS. I had not had a television and bought a modest black-and-white television so we could watch the series. Randy also did not have a television. Judith had a color TV and it beat out my B&W model. I took along my copy of the book and it was amazing (and surprising) how much of the dialogue in the book made it into the telescript.

the things you learn in the credits

As you may know, I'm a bit obsessed with film credits, especially Loop Groups aka Crowd ADR. And filming locations, both cities and buildings.

Prince Charles is played by Dominic West in Season 5 of The Crown. As I was watching the credits of an episode today, I noticed that the actor playing Prince William was Senan West and wondered if he was related to Dominic West. A little googling indicates Senan is Dominic's eldest son. Television imitating life.

Prince William and Prince Charles, The Crown, Season 5

(Senan West and Dominic West)

(photo: Keith Bernstein/Netflix)

(from the Netflix Tudum site)

Dominic West also played a role in Downton Abbey: A New Era, the second movie based on the television series. He played Guy Dexter, a silent film star, part of a film being made at Downton Abbey. Fictionally, he will rescue Thomas Barrow from his closet.

obsessions

In case you were wondering, Downton Abbey: A New Era has a credit for both Loop Group and Crowd ADR. The Loop Group again was Sync or Swim. But that's all I'll say here. No plot spoilers.

a smile for the new year

This little bookcase without many books has been sitting in this location since I moved upstairs in 2016 when Jeanette moved in downstairs. It had been out on the upstairs landing where it accumulated a variety of things, from old lace from grandmother's stuff to Aunt Dora's velvet-cased opera glasses to cups of pens and pencils to old eyeglass cases to miscellaneous parts for massage equipment. And a couple-three books. I thought (without thinking new year's resolution) that it was time to toss the detritus and take care of the good stuff. I picked up one of the books, plain medium blue hardbound, and opened it. It was the 1931 (4th) edition of Enduring passion: further new contributions to the solution of sex difficulties being the continuation of Married love by Marie Carmichael Stopes.

Mrs Stopes's book Married love comes up twice during Downton Abbey: once when Mrs Hughes's familiarity with Mrs Stopes's Married love is used to squelch Edna's tale of being pregnant (Season 4) and again when Anna helps Mary with birth control when she's off for an adventure with Gillingham (Season 5). I don't remember knowing about Mrs Stopes before Downton Abbey but my dad did have some book on married love that he shared at some point in my youth. I remember the book not looking very sensational and this book I came across today does not look very sensational either.

As I thumbed through Enduring passion, I noticed there was a newspaper clipping that had significantly foxed a couple pages in the "The 'change' in women" chapter (that chapter just precedes the one on "The 'change' in men"). The clipping looked a bit like the New York times and is headlined "'Liberty' heading for San Francisco." A production of Austin Strong's play "which has knocked for several years on Broadway's door" was headed for a production in San Francisco, to be produced by Catherine Sibley and Richard Aldrich and perhaps to star Pierre Fresnay (Lafayette), Olivia de Haviland (Mme Lafayette), and Charles Waldron (Washington). Cannot help but think of Hamilton with those characters.

The clipping is missing any date or context but I googled what I had and found the text in the New York times for January 19, 1939. The headlines in the version online are different perhaps indicating varying editions of the paper. The article is in the Amusements section. There is an "L" near the page number which may indicate the Late edition.

All this made me smile. I just turned over the clipping. Oh. The article on the verso is headlined "Birth control rift ended by merger." This turned the smile into a chuckle. That clipping made perfect sense. Now I wish that there was a sign of whose book this had been. Gram and Aunt Dora's folks had both died by 1939. Both Gram and Aunt Dora were widows in the late 1930s. It is possible that the book has not been in the family house all along. It may take longer to clear off that bookshelf than I imagined.

separated at birth: the lady doth not protest

When I saw Lady Rosse, Antony Armstrong-Jones's mother in Season 2 of The Crown, the actress was so familiar but I could not place her. She rides to Westminster Abbey with her son for his wedding to Princess Margaret. As they ride, he excoriates her for not loving him as much as her other son(s).

Checking the credits, I noted the actress's name is Anna Chancellor. Off to IMDb to look at her list of roles. But, of course, she played Lady Anstruther in Downton Abbey. 

Lady Anstruther stops by at Downton Abbey, partly for a tryst with her former employee Jimmy. He is now a footman at Downton Abbey. That is naturally the night that Lady Edith throws the book and her bedroom catches on fire. Lady Anstruther gently tells Lord Grantham that she'll leave before breakfast.

Ladies and abbeys. Both delightfully juicy roles, juicily played by Anna Chancellor.

sink or swim: words, words, words

Some years ago, I wrote a blogpost entitled "rhymes and homonyms" about watching film credits and the marvelous things you can find there. I specifically noted the credit in the movie "Being Julia" for Loop Group to Sync or Swim. The rhyme in the credit caption and the homophone in the company name were just delightful. I now watch for loop group credits and don't see them very often. Just a handful in the ten years since that cited blogpost. The loop group, by the way, creates the crowd sounds in post-production on a film.

I was rewatching the "Downton Abbey" movie last night. Fade out. Cue the credits. Imagine my surprise to see there, there, was the Crowd ADR credit for Sync or Swim. It will not surprise you to learn that I had to look up what ADR meant: automated dialogue replacement.

This little revisit to Sync or Swim led me to study the distinction between homonym, homophone, and homograph. "Sync" is a homophone but not a homonym. And, besides, "homophony" is apparently only used in music. I was going to use "homophony" in the third sentence of the first paragraph.

P.S. Of course, the next day, I saw a Loop Group credit for The Loop Squad, in season 1, episode 1 of "The Chair" on Netflix. And 38 drivers!

P.P.S. Two months later, I decided to watch the final episode of "Downton Abbey" again (season 6, episode 9) and guess what. The Crowd Artists were Sync or Swim.

Anne Durham, Lady Flintshire

I was watching a clip from Maurice in which Clive and his fiancée are talking to Maurice on the telephone. Clive is played by Hugh Grant and Anne is played by Phoebe Nicholls. I had watched Maurice not too long ago as well as a few times over the years since it was made in 1987. I hadn't made the connection of this with a recent role played by Phoebe Nicholls. She is also Susan, Lady Flintshire, mother of Lady Rose, niece of Violet, the dowager countess of Downton Abbey. The ingenue becomes the odious mother. Her depiction of the odious mother is quite delicious but I'd be happy to leave her alone at the London house.

oops, continuity issues in Schitt's Creek

 When you've watched a television series a gazillion times, you notice some funny things like ...

• When Moira gets the proposed contract for the Crows movie and David is reading the terms, he mentions that her pay will be in Baltic money. Make that Balkan since they're filming in Bosnia. I do forgive them because I really have to think about Baltic/Balkan. Moira does later correctly say Balkan Peninsula or some such thing when she's referring to the filming.
• When the family is at the Amish family's house, Alexis is sitting at a picnic table. The conversation continues and, all of a sudden, she's on the other side of the table.
• Bob's got raw milk for his coffee. Johnny "borrows" some. When they're talking about it, the lid is on the bottle and then off the bottle and then back on the bottle.
• In the "Bachelor Party" episode, Alexis's pen jumps around on her journal/calendar. She is pretty agitated and the jumpiness may be contagious.
• Stevie sets her glass down twice on the table at the "Surprise Party" before she and David dance together.
• Roland's name tag wiggles around on his jacket when he and Moira are at the RAMC conference.
• Sebastien Raine says Room 5 would be just fine. Stevie gives him the key. When Moira comes to the door to challenge Sebastien, the door has the number 4.
• Johnny and Moira are arguing in "The Motel Guest" about the little quirks that might drive each other crazy. There's a white bottle cap or something next to Moira's teacup after a while.
• Ken borrows a pen and paper from David to write down Patrick's number. When he leaves and Patrick comes over to David and Alexis, Patrick has the paper but the pen has disappeared.
• I think the only time anybody is in Room 8 at the motel is during the "Moira Rosé" episode when Patrick is watching the game with David before David runs off with his mother.
• In the episode about Ted's coded booty call from Heather, Alexis says that Lisa called about stopping over after work. It's confusing whether the name is confused or both a Lisa and a Heather live at the farm.

None of this is a problem for me. It's more fun than disappointment that these things happen. It's a little like LC cataloging copy or the New York times. There used to be layers of proofreading of such things as cataloging copy or newspapers. Now, the cataloger or journalist writes and types the copy and mistakes are more likely to happen without an extra pair of eyes looking over the copy. No more layer of typesetter eyes.

Since I've been known to draw parallels between Schitt's Creek and Downton Abbey, I probably should mention that Thomas's collar escapes for part of the episode wherein he hides Lord Grantham's dog Isis. The flyaway collar happens when he meets Lord Grantham on the front walk after the dog has been found.

When I ordered my rosy peach t-shirt from Etsy, it came with a Rose Apothecary shopping bag.

Italians and Jews in Odessa

Episode "Traveling to Eat" was on The Splendid Table on NPR as I drove home from Wegmans this morning. One of the stories was a talk with Caroline Eden who has traveled around the Black Sea, investigating places and food. She did a couple road trips but visited Odessa and Istanbul as specific destinations. She considers Istanbul the most grand food place in the world.

Caroline Eden mentioned the significant evidence of Italian and Jewish food in Odessa. Though there were ancient and medieval settlements where Odessa now is, its modern origins date back to 1794 when Catherine the Great established the city and port on the shores of the Black Sea, now in the Ukraine. It was a free port from 1819 to 1858 and the fourth largest city in the Russian Empire, after Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and Warsaw. There were Italians among the planners and developers and a large Jewish community developed in the 19th century. The Italians were mostly a legacy of Genoese colonies in the Crimea in late medieval times.

I've never known a great deal about Odessa though we did hear about it when Atticus Aldridge was explaining his origins to Rose and the Jewish refugees in York.

Atticus mentions to one of the refugees that his family came to England from Odessa in 1859 and 1871. The former nobleman says that he's not Russian, he's Jewish. There were several pogroms in the mid-later 19th century, including 1859 and 1871.

I hadn't known much about Genoa beyond art history classes until visiting it twice in 2018. I really enjoyed the city. The landscape is tremendous, the hills rise sharply from the harbor. The food is delicious. The art nouveau villas are stupendous, as they are all across Italy. Italians call art nouveau Liberty, from the store in London.

I probably don't need to mention how disappointing the pandemic-related travel restrictions are. It is soul numbing to not even feel that planning a European trip (or Canadian) is feasible.

merrily we roll along

This time of in-person social isolation takes us down some quirky paths. I had heard of the television show Schitt's Creek but hadn't watched any of it until Mark posted the clip of "I'm Jake. Oh, of course you are" on his Facebook page. That caught my fancy and now, just a few weeks later, I've been around the first five seasons three times. That's all that is currently on Netflix and I don't have cable so no Pop TV for Season 6. The characters are deep in my thoughts and being with them is considerable distraction and solace in my alone time. Who knows (or cares) if it's a healthy diversion?

One manifestation of the S.C. penetration into my quotidian life (that use of a $10 word is for Moira and Roland) is its resonance as I'm reading about something else entirely. I was reading The New York Times Book Review for last Sunday (12 April 2020) as I ate lunch. In the review of Lady in Waiting: my extraordinary life in the shadow of the Crown, a memoir by Anne Glenconner, the reviewer Alida Becker quotes the first post-coma words of Glenconner's son who had been in a motorcycle accident: Lamborghini. The reviewer then says "Truly, the rich are different." Lamborghini also plays out in Schitt's Creek: in the words of "A little bit Alexis" and in the Christmas medley that Moira and David sing.

Another review in the same issue of NYTBR is on a book entitled The undocumented Americans by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio. The author relates a story about a trip through a wealthy Miami subdivision on the way to a club. One of her friends says the big houses stress her "because it makes her think about having to clean them." The opening moment of episode 1 of Schitt's Creek is of a Latina in servant uniform answering the doorbell. It's not immigration but revenue agents to dispossess the family of most of their possessions. "Mrs. Rose, there are people here from the government."

But the most amusing resonance (sometimes, at least) is imagining the chapters of my dissertation in comparative literature "Downton Abbey and Schitt's Creek: a comparative study of the daily life of the rich in late Victorian and Edwardian England and in contemporary America." There will be chapters on raising children (spending an hour or two with the children when it's possible), Christmas specials, inter-class commingling, the power of language, and of course the predictable stuff like fashion. Some folks have said that Schitt's Creek works because its stereotypes aren't mean and I think that may be part of why Downton Abbey also worked in that even the villains like Thomas and O'Brien were sympathetic. Or maybe it's the script, in both cases.

There will also be a chapter on place. Though Downton Abbey was mostly shot on location in southern England, the fictional setting is Yorkshire and local information comes up pretty regularly. Also, some outside scenes are actually shot in York, like when the Dowager goes to visit Kuragin. Or maybe it's CGI. According to the creators of Schitt's Creek in various interviews on YouTube, the location of Schitt's Creek is intentionally ambiguous, not specifically U.S. or Canada. The Roses did apparently live before in downstate New York or Long Island. The bicycles were discarded in the Hamptons. David asks if it looks like he shops on Canal Street. The aerial view of the house is not Manhattan but could be outer Queens. The only time that there is anything remotely specific about the location of Schitt's Creek is when Mutt and Tennessee are going on a trip "up the coast" to look for pine cones.

That said, it's probably more likely that I'll go around Schitt's Creek again unless I break down and somehow get access to Season 6 so I can have the resolution of all the situations and close the book.

separated at birth: everyone knows how to make tea and fold in cheese

Flemish farmhand

Rose and Anna went to a thé dansant in York. Rose danced with Sam Thawley, a gardener at an estate near Downton Abbey. He was smitten with Rose. I was rather smitten with the actor that played the role, Jonathan Howard, and couldn't figure out exactly why when I watched the episode. And, then, aha. He's a candidate for a portrait by Hans Memling or Hugo van der Goes or Dirk Bouts.

The scene at the thé dansant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaowBaLkjNc
The scene in the kitchen yard, in which Sam visits Rose and she plays the maid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIiSYwJaKh4