Along the Clarendon Way

Alongside the Clarendon Way, Winchester

The Murphys and the French Riviera

In a fascinating BBC documentary about the history of the French Riviera I learned for the first time of the role of the Murphys - Gerald and Sara - in creating the beach-loving life for which it's now synonymous. After marrying they lived at 50 West 11th Street in New York City, where they had three children. In 1921 they moved to Paris to escape the strictures of New York and their families' mutual dissatisfaction with their marriage. In Paris Gerald took up painting, and they began to make the acquaintances for which they became famous. Eventually they moved to the French Riviera, where they became the center of a large circle of artists and writers of later fame, especially Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, John Dos Passos, Fernand Léger, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, Archibald MacLeish, John O'Hara, Cole Porter, Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley. Prior to their arrival on the French Riviera, the region was experiencing a period when the fashionable only wintered there, abandoning the region during the high summer months. However, the activities of the Murphys fueled the same renaissance in arts and letters as did the excitement of Paris, especially among the cafés of Montparnasse. In 1923 the Murphys convinced the Hotel du Cap to stay open for the summer so that they might entertain their friends, sparking a new era for the French Riviera as a summer haven. The Murphys eventually purchased a villa in Cap d'Antibes and named it Villa America; they resided there for many years. When the Murphys arrived on the Riviera, lying on the beach merely to enjoy the sun was not a common activity. Occasionally, someone would go swimming, but the joys of being at the beach just for sun were still unknown at the time. The Murphys, with their long forays and picnics at La Garoupe, introduced sunbathing on the beach as a fashionable activity. From Wikipedia The painting by Gerald Murphy is titled 'Clocks' See also Farewell Robert Le Pirate about the famous nightclub at Cap Martin

Favourite Poetry - Stag's Leap

Unspeakable

Now I come to look at love

in a new way, now that I know I'm not

standing in its light. I want to ask my

almost-no-longer husband what it's like to not

love, but he does not want to talk about it,

he wants a stillness at the end of it.

And sometimes I feel as if, already,

I am not here - to stand in his thirty-year

sight, and not in love's sight,

I feel an invisibility

like a neutron in a cloud chamber buried in a mile-long

accelerator, where what cannot

be seen is inferred by what the visible

does. After the alarm goes off,

I stroke him, my hand feels like a singer

who sings along him, as if it is

his flesh that's singing, in its full range,

tenor of the higher vertebrae,

baritone, bass, contrabass.

I want to say to him, now, What

was it like, to love me - when you looked at me,

what did you see? When he loved me, I looked

out at the world as if from inside

a profound dwelling, like a burrow, or a well, I'd gaze

up, at noon, and see Orion

shining - when I thought he loved me, when I thought

we were joined not just for breath's time,

but for the long continuance,

the hard candies of femur and stone,

the fastnesses. He shows no anger,

I show no anger but in flashes of humour

all is courtesy and horror. And after

the first minute, when I say, Is this about

her, and he says, No, it's about

you, we do not speak of her.

from Stag's Leap, by Sharon Olds, who has won the TS Eliot Poetry Prize

The Joys of Bird Feeding

The old garden wall with the hazel tree on the left

I have never fed wild birds as I believed that once begun, one had to be consistent and continue to feed, otherwise the birds would starve in cold weather. I was probably wrong, but I now have a country garden where I can maintain regular feeding and have therefore set up some feeding stations on and beneath a fine hazel tree in my garden in Hampshire.

Old Swan House with the hazel tree hung with feeders, with the robin feeding station at its base The urn feeds the pigeons

The hazel tree is now a busy feeding station full of bird life with three bird feeders - two hanging and one - specially for robins - on the ground. Tits crowd the feeders and the garden robin hops delightedly on his wooden frame as he pecks the delicacies out of his special mix.

The garden robin with his feeder

And the urn in the foreground has been pressed into service as an additional feeder - for pigeons and doves. It remains to be seen whether the local squirrels will come and help themselves as well, but all are welcome.

The Wellbeing of Women Christmas Fair

The Wellbeing of Women Christmas Fair was held as is now customary at the Drapers' Hall, on 3rd December 2012. Click here for some photos from the event. 

More Frosty Walks

The Itchen at Gatersfield with St Catherine's Hill beyond

At the Drapers' Hall

Drapers' Hall set for a Livery dinner

On Tuesday 20th November, I had the pleasure of inviting the 'gentle author' of my favourite blog, Spitalfields Life, to the Drapers' Hall so that he could include it in his series on the cultural and business life of the east end of London. We were lucky enough to be shown round the Hall by the Archivist, Penny Fussell, who gave us a detailed tour of the principal rooms and artefacts and told us of their history. The 'gentle author' surprised us by bringing with him some marvellous old slide prints of the Hall dating from the early 1900s which he had obtained from the Bishopsgate Institute (which takes a splendidly enlightened attitude to sharing its treasures), and some of these have been incorporated into his article juxtaposed with colour photos of the Hall today. Some will recognise in the photos the rooms used in films like 'The King's Speech' (where it appears as parts of Buckingham Palace), but few will realise that the Hall was once the home of Thomas Cromwell, made newly infamous in Hilary Mantel's novels 'Wolf Hall' and specifically, 'Bring Up The Bodies'.

Click here to read the article.  

You can also visit the Hall on 3rd December 2012, for the Wellbeing of Women Christmas Fair