#Lord Lyttleton

[thefollyflaneuse]

Earl of Plymouth Monument, Bromsgrove Lickey, Worcestershire

In 1833 Other Archer Windsor, 6th Earl of Plymouth, died. Almost immediately there were calls to erect a monument in his honour, and a public subscription was raised. With funds in place, the foundation stone was laid in May 1834. The chosen site was on Bromsgrove Lickey, a prominent eminence which would ensure that the obelisk would be an ornament to the landscape and visible from miles…

[maypoleman1]

27th November

The Haunting of Lord Lyttleton

Photographic Print of Lord Lyttleton Warning. Source: Media House website

Lord Lyttleton died on this day in 1799 in Epsom, Surrey, after receiving supernatural warnings from a ghost. Lyttleton was a nasty piece of work who had blackmailed a Mrs Amphlett to allow him to have his way with her three young daughters. Crushed by shame, the mother soon died but reappeared in ghostly form in Lyttleton’s bedroom to warn him of his own imminent demise, just three days hence. The scornful Lord laughed out loud on the night of the third day at the ghost of Mrs Amphlett’s false prophecy only to immediately drop dead. At that exact moment Lyttleton’s good friend, Miles Andrews, was was in his bed at home in Dartford in Kent when to his bemusement, a troubled Lyttleton strode in, muttering ‘It’s all over with me, Andrews.’ Andrews was momentarily flabbergasted by this unexpected visit, but soon worked out something spooky was afoot and flung his slipper at Lyttleton who retreated into the adjacent drawing room. Andrew pursued his friend only to find the drawing room empty. Andrews was saddened but not surprised to learn later that his friend had died at the very moment he had been apparently walking through Andrews’ bedroom.

[ninasarchive]

About Marat's 'Chains Of Slavery':

"None of the "disguised and secret attacks of the princes" can be contested by the public. Beyond impressive scholarship, real or exaggerated, these notes reveal an effective political conception of the role of history. History, for Marat, is the main vector of the image of power, an image that it must convey to the people. The despots are linked to corrupted historians, ready to celebrate their greatness (Marat is not unaware that historiography was made official for this purpose by Louis XIV, in France). Their main method is to distort reality. Despotism imposes itself on opinion, as covertly as possible, by words that misrepresent things. Marat attaches considerable value to the precision of language: perhaps he needs to see in this a new translation of the rigorous character of his spirit. A similar scrupulousness about language made him submit the manuscript of the Essay on the Human Soul to Lord Lyttleton's reading. Chains of Slavery, on the other hand, has not benefited from such a correction and, despite the attention given to political vocabulary, the work is in many parts written in very awkward English and full of Gallicisms. To counterbalance, therefore, the "false ideas about tyranny" (title of chapter 1.X1), the honest historian must only tell the truth, to which he must consecrate his life. Vitam impendere vero: such is the motto, borrowed from Rousseau, under which Marat places his reflection. Of this truth, the footnotes are one of the guarantees."

— Olivier Coquard in "Marat, The Friend Of The People: The formation of a citizen of the world", p. 71

[wisdomfish]

Determined to destroy the basis of the Christian faith...

Two professors at Oxford, Gilbert West and Lord Lyttleton, were determined to destroy the basis of the Christian faith. West was going to demonstrate the fallacy of the resurrection and Lyttleton was going to prove that Saul of Tarsus had never converted to Christianity. Both men came to the opposite conclusion and became ardent followers of Jesus. Lord Lyttleton writes:

The conversion and apostleship of Saint Paul alone, duly considered, was of itself a demonstration sufficient to prove Christianity to be a Divine Revelation. ~ George Lyttleton, The Conversion of St. Paul (New York: American Tract Society, 1929), p. 467.

He concludes that if Paul's twenty-five years of suffering and service for Christ were a reality, then his conversion was true, for everything he did began with that sudden change. And if his conversion was true, Jesus Christ rose from the dead, for everything Paul was and did he attributed to the sight of the risen Christ.

~ Josh McDowell, More Than a Carpenter, p. 87.

[irwonder]

Half-measures do nothing. He who desires to reform, must not be afraid to pull down.

Diogenes, in George, Lord Lyttleton’s Dialogues of the Dead [quoted in The Making of Modern Cynicism by David Mazella]

[likeaflowingriver1019]

Disability aesthetics

“she lived with two husbands instead of one, never knowing whom she should address her lamentations for fear of mistaking the object of her hatred for the object of her love” (100).

Tobin Siebers: “aesthetics tracks the emotions that some bodies feel in the presence of other bodies. But all bodies are not created equal when it comes to aesthetic response. Taste and disgust are volatile reactions that reveal the ease or disease with which one body might incorporate another. Disability aesthetics seeks to emphasize the presence of different bodies and minds in the tradition of aesthetic representation […] it refuses to recognize the representation of the healthy body and this body’s definition of harmony, integrity and beauty as the sole determination of the aesthetic (542-543)

Madeleine de Scudéry

Madeleine de Scudéry, (born 1607, Le Havre, Fr.—died June 2, 1701, Paris), French novelist and social figure whose romans à clef were immensely popular in the 17th century.

De Scudéry was the younger sister of the dramatist Georges de Scudéry. Madeleine de Scudéry moved to Paris to join her brother after the death of her uncle, who had cared for her after she and her brother had been orphaned. Clever and bright, she soon made her mark on the literary circle of the Hôtel de Rambouillet; by the late 1640s, she had replaced Madame de Rambouillet as the leading literary hostess in Paris and had established her own salon, known as the Société du Samedi (the Saturday Club).

Her first novel, Ibrahim ou l’illustre bassa (1642; Ibrahim or the Illustrious Bassa), was published in four volumes. Her later works were even longer; both Artamène ou le grand Cyrus (1649–53; Artamenes or the Grand Cyrus) and Clélie, histoire romaine (1654–60; Clelia) were published in 10 volumes. Contemporary readers, accustomed to such long novels, appreciated De Scudéry’s works both for their bulk and for the glimpses they provided into the lives of important society figures of the day. These individuals were thinly disguised as Persian, Greek, and Roman warriors and maidens; De Scudéry herself appears in Artamène as Sappho, a name by which she was known to her friends.

Other of her works include Almahide, ou l’es- clave reine (1660–63; “Almahide, or the Slave Queen”), Mathilde d’Aguilar, histoire espagnole (1667; “Mathilda of Aguilar, a Spanish Tale”), and La Promenade de Versailles, ou l’histoire de Célanire (1669; “The Versailles Promenade, or the Tale of Celanire”). Most of the novels were published anonymously or under the name of her brother Georges. They included long passages devoted to conversations on such topics as the education of women; these were excerpted and published separately.

Although her novels were exceptionally popular and were lauded by such notables as Madame de Sévigné, they also met with some criticism. The poet and critic Nicolas Boileau, for instance, satirized them harshly.

Michel de Montaigne

Michel de Montaigne, in full Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, (born February 28, 1533, Château de Montaigne, near Bordeaux, France—died September 23, 1592, Château de Montaigne), French writer whose Essais (Essays) established a new literary form. In his Essays he wrote one of the most captivating and intimate self-portraits ever given, on a par with Augustine’s and Rousseau’s.

Living, as he did, in the second half of the 16th century, Montaigne bore witness to the decline of the intellectual optimism that had marked the Renaissance. The sense of immense human possibilities, stemming from the discoveries of the New World travelers, from the rediscovery of classical antiquity, and from the opening of scholarly horizons through the works of the humanists, was shattered in France when the advent of the Calvinistic Reformation was followed closely by religious persecution and by the Wars of Religion (1562–98). These conflicts, which tore the country asunder, were in fact political and civil as well as religious wars, marked by great excesses of fanaticism and cruelty. At once deeply critical of his time and deeply involved in its preoccupations and its struggles, Montaigne chose to write about himself—“I am myself the matter of my book,” he says in his opening address to the reader—in order to arrive at certain possible truths concerning man and the human condition, in a period of ideological strife and division when all possibility of truth seemed illusory and treacherous.

Charles Perrault

Charles Perrault, (born January 12, 1628, Paris, France—died May 15/16, 1703, Paris), French poet, prose writer, and storyteller, a leading member of the Académie Française, who played a prominent part in a literary controversy known as the quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns. He is best remembered for his collection of fairy stories for children, Contes de ma mère l’oye (1697; Tales of Mother Goose). He was the brother of the physician and amateur architect Claude Perrault.

A lawyer by training, Charles Perrault first worked as an official in charge of royal buildings. He began to win a literary reputation in about 1660 with some light verse and love poetry and spent the rest of his life in promoting the study of literature and the arts. In 1671 he was elected to the Académie Française, which soon was sharply divided by the dispute between the Ancients and the Moderns. Perrault supported the Moderns, who believed that, as civilization progresses, literature evolves with it and that therefore ancient literature is inevitably more coarse and barbarous than modern literature. His poem Le Siècle de Louis le Grand (1687; “The Age of Louis the Great”) set such modern writers as Molière and François de Malherbe above the Classical authors of Greece and Rome. His chief opponent in this controversy was Nicolas Boileau. Perrault’s stand was a landmark in the eventually successful revolt against the confines of the prevailing tradition.

Perrault’s fairy stories in Mother Goose were written to amuse his children. They include “Little Red Riding Hood,” “The Sleeping Beauty,” “Puss in Boots,” and “Bluebeard,” modern versions of half-forgotten folk tales, which Perrault retold in a style that is simple and free from affectation.

Bluestocking

Bluestocking, any of a group of ladies who in mid-18th-century England held “conversations” to which they invited men of letters and members of the aristocracy with literary interests. The word has come to be applied derisively to a woman who affects literary or learned interests. The Bluestockings attempted to replace social evenings spent playing cards with something more intellectual. The term probably originated when one of the ladies, Mrs. Vesey, invited the learned Benjamin Stillingfleet to one of her parties; he declined because he lacked appropriate dress, whereupon she told him to come “in his blue stockings”—the ordinary worsted stockings he was wearing at the time. He did so, and Bluestocking (or Bas Bleu) society became a nickname for the group. This anecdote was later recounted by Madame d’Arblay (the diarist and novelist better known as Fanny Burney), who was closely associated with (but also satirized) the Bluestockings.

The group was never a society in any formal sense. Mrs. Vesey seems to have given the first party, in Bath. After she moved to London, a rivalry developed with Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, who became the leader of the literary ladies. Others included Mrs. Hester Chapone, Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, Miss Mary Monckton, and Miss Hannah More, whose poem “The Bas Bleu, or Conversation,” supplies valuable inside information about them. Guests included Dr. Johnson, David Garrick, the Earl of Bath, Lord Lyttleton, and Horace Walpole (who called them “petticoteries”).

[samanthachowiln3001]

50 Berkeley Square (Final Text)

50 Berkeley Square is supposedly London’s most haunted house. Berkeley Square is located in Mayfair, Central London. Its popularity for being a haunted house stared in the 19th century, accompanied by a list of reports about people staying in the attic experiencing a ‘strange brown mist’, with many of them either going insane or dying. 

The legend of the story usually differs, but most versions has it that the house was haunted by the spirit of a young woman who committed suicide by jumping off the top floor window, after being abused by her uncle. The ghost takes the form of a brown mist, or sometimes, a white figure. Another version of the tale is that a man was once locked in the attic room, fed only through the hole in the door. Naturally, the man got more and more depressed. He slowly went mad and died. The last commonly accepted tale was of Thomas Myers. Thomas Myers lived in the house from 1859 until the early 1870s. He was rumoured t have been rejected by his fiancé. Devastated, he locked himself in the house and went mad until his death in November 1874.

Moving on to the victims who have experienced the hauntings, the first one was Lord Lyttleton in 1872. He stayed on the building’s attic for a night on a bet, bringing his shotgun with him. During his stay, an apparition of a white figure appeared and started zooming towards him. Panicking, he tried shooting at the figure and claimed hearing something fell to the floor ‘like a rocket’. In the morning, however, he could only find shotgun cartridges in the morning. 

Following Lord Lyttleton’s experience, the next was in 1879, when a maid who was making the bed in the attic room for a visiting guest, but no sooner had she gone upstairs, a scream was heard. When some of the other staff went to check up on her, they found her lying on the floor, muttering to herself “don’t let it touch me,” over and over. She passed away the next day. The guest, Captain Kentfield, decided to still spend the night in the room. After half an hour, there was another scream and the sound of a gunshot ringing through. He was found dead on the floor, with his face twisted in terror. 

Nonetheless, the most notorious story has it that there were two sailors from HMS Penelope who broke in, needing a place to stay. In the middle of the night, they were woken up from the sound of footsteps coming from the stairs. As the door slowly creaked open, they came face to face with a strange, formless creature with a huge gaping mouth. One of the sailors backed against the window, while the other ran past the figure, down the stairs until he reached the streets. The escaped sailor went out to find a police officer. When they returned, they found a smashed window and saw the lifeless body of his friend impaled on the railings below. 

Although the truth of the stories was still debatable, as the house has also inspired many writers to invent and exaggerate the spooky stories about the origins of the hauntings, it was still dubbed the most haunted house in London till today.

[awintersail]

New Zealand - Part Two

It is Tuesday, February 6 here.  We are in our second day of sailing the Tasman Sea between Dunedin, NZ and Melbourne, Australia.  We have had 36 hours of the roughest seas of the journey:  17-19 foot swells and a 40 mph headwind.  This area between 40 and 50 degrees south latitude is called the Roaring Forties because of the strong westerly winds found here.  There is much seasickness, but we have not been afflicted.  Last evening’s entertainment was cancelled because of concerns that the piano would not be stable on the stage.  Just walking has been an adventure.  

Other than not seeing Napier, our time in NZ was wonderful.  The people here have a refreshing irreverence and directness which we seem to have lost in the US.  Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin are each interesting in their own ways.  Wellington is a very compact city, not unlike Cincinnati, and also built on 7 hills.  Although to be honest it has much better waterfront views.  Also, it still has a working funicular, which they call a cable car although it has no cable.  It has a very smooth, quiet ride.  We elected to explore the city on our own and went to both the Wellington Museum and The Te Papa, the national museum of NZ.  Both were interesting.  The Te Papa has a huge exhibit on the WW 1 Battle of Gallipoli, in which the incredible British incompetence resulted in massive loss of life, especially NZ and AUS soldiers.  It also resulted in Churchill being sacked from his position. Spoiler alert:  he returns.  The story is told in a series of personal narratives of soldiers who were there.  Pretty grim.  It is literally larger than life, with gigantic versions of the men and a woman (nurse) in action.  We were told that Peter Jackson’s studio produced them.  He apparently felt the need to break free from the restraints of Hobbit dimensions, and did so in a really big way.  By the way, Hobbits and Lord of The Rings tours and activities are a big deal here.  If you wish, you can visit locations from the films and see costumes and other related materials.  Many on the ship did so.  There are some very devout fans aboard.  I, on the other hand, wasn’t even able to complete the Harvard Lampoon spoof,  “Bored of the Rings” in 1969.

We spent the day in Christchurch with Molly Van Hart and her partner, Jessea as our excellent guides to the city and surroundings.  Christchurch is still recovering from the devastating 2011 earthquake which destroyed much of the central city.  Much remains to be done.  Christchurch is the only city we visited in which the downtown is not directly on the water and is not built on hills.  It sits in a broad flat valley between a range of coastal hills which front the ocean, and another range of mountains to the west.  Of course, it has suburbs which are on the water, including Lyttleton, where we docked, and the Sumner neighborhood where Molly and Jessea live.  

Our last port of call in NZ was Dunedin, home of the University of Otago, the location of NZ’s only dental school and one of its two medical schools.  It has a population of 127,000.  Our tourbus driver said it used to have the worst weather in NZ, but that climate change has improved it.  So, score one for climate change.  As with everyplace we went, the natural beauty is amazing.  Dunedin is very Scottish.  Indeed, the name Dunedin is the Gaelic translation of Edinborough.  Its founders were Presbyterians who thought their Scottish co-religionists were too liberal.  They must have been a fun bunch.  The High Court Building is very impressive.  Unfortunately, we were there on Sunday, so I wasn’t able to see the inside.  The old railroad station is equally impressive.  Much of it is now devoted to shops and galleries.  It remains an operating station although perhaps more for scenic rides for tourists than other commerce.

Until next time.  The journey continues…..

[encyclopedia-victoria-blog]

History Behind the Story - Baroness Lehzen

Louise, Baroness Lehzen, (played by Daniela Holtz in ITV’s Victoria) was governess to Princess Victoria and remained with her as her companion after she became Queen. Victoria adored her, but Prince Albert clashed repeatedly with Lehzen over Victoria’s affections and control of the Royal Household.

Read more about Baroness Lehzen - and the argument that ultimately sent her packing - under the cut.

Baroness Lehzen - christened Joanna Clara Louise Lehzen - was born the youngest daughter of a German Lutheran pastor in 1784. She was employed by an aristocratic German family before traveling to England in 1819 to serve as governess to Queen Victoria’s half-sister, Feodore of Leiningen (from the Duchess of Kent’s first marriage). When Victoria was five, Lehzen became her governess as well.

In 1883 Victoria reminisced about her childhood, writing (in the third person) that Lehzen had been ‘very strict’ and that ‘the Princess had great respect and even awe of her’. But equally Victoria had held the ‘greatest affection’ for her governess:

She knew how to amuse and play with the Princess so as to gain her warmest affections. The Princess was her only object and her only thought [...] She never for the 13 year she was governess to Princess Victoria, once left her.

After Feodore left England in 1828 to marry the Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, Lehzen became the nine-year-old Princess Victoria’s closest friend. Lehzen was always on Victoria’s side and the Princess (and later Queen) adored her for it. At Kensington Palace, the household split into two rival camps - the Duchess of Kent and her comptroller, Sir John Conroy on one side, and Victoria and her devoted Lehzen on the other.

Conroy attempted to control Victoria and force her to become dependent on him. Even at the age of eighteen she was never allowed to be out of her governess’ sight, and had to have someone hold her hand on the stairs in case she fell. But Conroy’s plan to bully Victoria into submission failed and Victoria became completely dependent on ‘dear Lehzen’ instead.

Pencil sketch of Lehzen by Princess Victoria, dated 30th November 1833. (Royal Collection)

Victoria later confided in Lord Melbourne about ‘dreadful and inconceivable torments’ that ‘I and my angelic Lehzen had endured [...] my beloved Lehzen supporting me alone’ against ‘Ma and J.C.’. While the Duchess of Kent was simply “Ma”, Victoria had come to think of her governess as her true mother, writing emphatically in her diary of ‘my angelic, dearest Mother, Lehzen, who I do so love!’ :

My beloved and faithful Lehzen I cannot sufficiently praise; no words can express what she has done, what she has endured for me!! I can never never recompense her sufficiently for all, all what she has borne and done for me these 13 years! that she has been with me. She will always remain with me as my friend.

At Victoria’s insistence, Lehzen remained as part of her household after she became Queen while the Duchess of Kent and John Conroy were sidelined. At her coronation in 1838, Victoria looked for Lehzen in the crowd. They had won:

There was another most dear Being present at this ceremony, in the box immediately above the Royal Box, and who witnessed all; it was my dearly beloved angelic Lehzen, whose eyes I caught when on the Throne, and we exchanged smiles.

Lehzen was given the unofficial title “Lady Attendant of the Queen” and acted as a sort of private secretary. As a sign of her trusted position, she carried the household keys and her signature was required to authorize the payment of all tradesmen's bills. Victoria and Lehzen never spent a night apart until the middle of 1841, when Victoria was 22 and had already become a wife and mother. She wrote pitifully in her journal:

Albert went walking with the others, & I, rested on the sofa. Feeling a little low, at my 1rst real separation from my dear Lehzen, which, since my 5th year, has never occurred before.

Lehzen sent Victoria an encouraging little letter, illustrated with a picture of train with the words “I Am Coming” written underneath. At Buckingham Palace Lehzen had her bedroom next to the Queen’s, which she could access at any time of the day or night via a connecting door. Queen Victoria’s husband Albert found the situation intolerable.

Albert was frustrated by Lehzen’s meddling and the old-fashioned and inefficient way in which she ran the household. He hated Lehzen’s fondness for gossip (she had spread the rumours that Lady Fora Hastings was pregnant by Conroy, engulfing the Court in scandal in 1839), and was angry at the way she had come between Victoria and her mother. Most of all he was jealous that Lehzen - the ex-governess - was indispensable, while he - the husband - had no role or authority in his own home. 

‘All the disagreeableness I suffer comes from one and the same person [Lehzen]’ lamented Albert. His private secretary, George Anson, wrote that Albert was convinced that Lehzen had been trying to ‘undermine him in the Queen’s affections’. In letters to his brother Ernest Prince Albert referred to Lehzen as ‘die Blaste’ (the Hag). To Baron Stockmar (Uncle Leopold’s secretary and a close advisor to both Victoria and Albert) Albert wrote furiously:

Lehezen is a crazy, common, stupid intriguer, obsessed with lust of power, [who] now regards herself as a demi-god, and anyone who refuses to acknowledge her as such, a criminal.

Victoria, he continued, had a ‘naturally fine character’ but she had been ‘warped in many respects by wrong upbringing [...] There can be no improvement until Victoria sees Lehzen as she is, and I pray that this come’.

A miniature portrait of Baroness Lehzen, painted in Berlin in 1842 and sent to Victoria as a parting gift. Victoria thought it was a ‘very good likeness’.(Royal Collection)

A crisis was reached in January 1842 over the management of the royal nursery. One-year-old Vicky, the Princess Royal, had been struggling to put on weight for months and was now seriously ill. Prince Albert blamed the nursemaids and the royal physician Dr Clark, all of whom were managed by Lehzen. 

Victoria and Albert shouted and screamed at one another, leaving Victoria in tears. (Victoria had given birth to Bertie in November and was already feeling ‘low’ - she was probably also suffering from postpartum depression). She was convinced that Albert was trying to push her - the mother - out of the nursery and declared that she was ‘miserable I ever married’.

At his wit’s end, Albert retreated to his study and penned Victoria a vicious letter:

Doctor Clark has mismanaged the child and poisoned her with calomel [medicinal mercury] and you have starved her. I shall have nothing more to do with it; take the child away and do as you like and if she dies you will have it on your conscience.

Things became so tense between husband and wife that they resorted to communicating with each other in writing, passing letters to each other via Stockmar. ‘I feel so forlorn,’ wrote Victoria, ‘I feel as if I had a dreadful dream. I do hope you will be able to pacify Albert [...] I don’t wish to be angry with him.’ Unhappy at being caught in the middle, Stockmar threatened to leave Court unless Victoria and Albert could work things out. 

After four days of uncomfortable silence, Victoria apologised for the ‘cross & odious things’ she had said and agreed that Lehzen should no longer have control of the nursery. A new governess, Lady Lyttleton, was appointed and Vicky began to improve. But Victoria couldn’t bring herself to ask Lehzen to leave. ‘[E]verybody recognised Lehzen’s former services to me,’ she argued, ‘and my only wish is that she should have a quiet home in my house and see me sometimes.’

Unsatisfied, Albert took matters into his own hands privately approaching Lehzen, and making arrangements for her to return to Germany. Lehzen agreed to go quietly, so as to protect Victoria’s feelings, and told her that she was leaving because of her “health”. Victoria was unaware of the arrangements until the 25th of July. She wrote in her journal that Albert had:

told me he had seen Lehzen, who had expressed the wish to go to Germany in 2 months time [...] Naturally I was rather upset, though I feel sure it is for our & her best. I spoke to Stockmar, who greatly relieved me by assuring me that Lehzen herself felt she required rest & quiet for the sake of her health, but would be ready to come & see me, whenever I sent for her. After this, I went to see my dear good Lehzen & found her very cheerful, saying she felt it was necessary for her health to go away, for of course, I did not require her so much now, & would find others to help me, whilst she could still help me in doing little things for me abroad. She repeated, she would be ready to come to me, whenever I wanted, so that I can see her from time to time.

On the day she left, the 30th of September 1842, Lehzen could not bear to say goodbye in person. She slipped quietly away in the early hours of the morning leaving a goodbye letter for Victoria. Queen Victoria was ‘ much relieved at being spared the painful parting’ but ‘on the other hand [...] I so regret not being able to embrace her once more [...] the thought that she was far away now, & all alone, made me very sad.’ 

Stockmar thought that Lehzen had only herself to blame. ‘[S]he was foolish enough to contest his [Prince Albert’s] influence’, he wrote, ‘If she had [not] done so and conciliated the P., she might have remained at the Palace to the end of her life.’ 

Daguerreotype of Baroness Lehzen c.1845. Facing away from the camera, she gazes lovingly at a picture of Victoria. (Royal Collection)

Baroness Lehzen was granted a generous royal pension and retired to Bückeburg, Germany, to live with her sister. She never returned to England, but she and Victoria continued to correspond regularly. They met  in Germany in 1845, and again 1862 after Albert had died. ‘She is grown so old’, wrote Victoria in her journal, ‘We were both much moved at seeing each other.’ Lehzen died in 1870, aged eighty-six. ‘I owed her much,’ wrote Victoria to Vicky after hearing the sad news, ‘& she adored me!’ 

Further Reading:

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/37665)

Victoria R.I. by Elizabeth Longford

Victoria the Queen by Julia Baird

Queen Victoria: A Personal History by Christopher Hibbert

Queen Victoria’s Journals

[theetonatheist]

Geneva Ghost Stories

Here are some of the ghost stories told at Geneva during the infamous Byron Summer of 1816, written down by Shelley! Some under the cut after the first story, due to length.

A Lady Minna in Germany had been exceedingly attached to her husband, and they had mad a vow that the one who died first, should return after death to visit the other as a ghost. She was sitting one day alone in her chamber, when she heard an unusual sound of footsteps on the stairs. The door opened, and her husband’s spectre, gashed with a deep wound across the forehead, and in military habiliments, entered. She appeared startled at the apparition ; and the ghost told her, that when he should visit her in the future, she would hear a passing bell toll, and these words distinctly uttered close to her ear, “Minna, I am here.” On inquiry, it was found that her husband had fallen in battle on the very day she was visited by the vision. The intercourse between the ghost and the woman continued for some time, until the latter laid aside all terror, and indulged herself in the affection which she had felt for him while living. One evening she went to a ball, and permitted her thoughts to be alienated by the attentions of a Florentine gentleman, more witty, more graceful, and more gentle, as it appeared to her, than any person she had ever seen. As he was conducting her through the dance, a death bell tolled. Minna, lost in the fascination of the Florentine’s attentions, disregarded, or did not hear the sound. A second peal, louder and more deep, startled the whole company, when Minna heard the ghost’s accustomed whisper, and raising her eyes, saw in an opposite mirror the reflection of the ghost, standing over her. She is said to have died of Terror.

A young man arrived at the parsonage on a Saturday night; it was summer, and waking about three o’clock in the morning, and it being broad day, he saw a venerable-looking man, but with an aspect exceedingly melancholy, sitting at a desk in the window, reading, and two beautiful boys standing near him whom he regarded with looks of the profoundest grief. Presently he rose from his seat, the boys followed him, and they were no more to be seen,

The young man much troubled, arose, hesitating whether he should regard what he had seen as a dream, or a waking fantasy. To divert his dejection, he walked towards the church, which the sexton was already employed in preparing for the morning service. The first sight that struck him was a portrait, the exact resemblance of the man whom he had seen sitting in his chamber. It was the custom in this district to place the portrait of each minister, after his death, in the church.

He made the minutest inquiries respecting his predecessor, and learned that he was universally beloved, as a man of unexampled integrity and benevolence ; but that he was the prey of a secret and perpetual sorrow. His grief was supposed to have arisen from an attachment to a young lady, with whom his situation did not permit him to unite himself. Others, however, asserted, that a connection did subsist between them, and that even she occasionally brought to his house two beautiful boys, the offspring of their connection. 

Nothing further occurred until the cold weather came, and the new minister desired a fire to be lighted in the stove of the room where he slept. A hideous stench arose from the stove as soon as it was lighted, and on examining it, the bones of two male children were found within.

Lord Lyttleton and a number of his friends were joined during the chase by a stranger. The gentlemen, when the chase was concluded, invited the stranger to dine with them. His conversation was something of a wonderful kind. He astonished, he interested, he commanded the attention of the most inert. As night came on, the company, being weary, began to retire one by one. They had been in bed about an hour, when they were awakened by the most horrible screams, which issued from the stranger’s room. Everyone rushed towards it. The door was locked. After a moment’s deliberation they burst it open, and found the stranger stretched on the ground, writing with agony, and weltering in blood. On their entrance he arose, and collecting himself, apparently with a strong effort, entreated them to leave him - not to disturb him, that he would give every possible explanation in the morning. They complied. In the morning, his chamber found vacant, and he was seen no more.

A gentleman on a visit to a friend who lived on the skirts of an extensive forest in the east of Germany lost his way. He wandered for some hours among the trees, when he saw a light at a distance. On approaching it, he was surprised to observe, that it proceeded from the interior of a ruined monastery. Before he knocked he thought it prudent to look through the window. He saw a multitude of cats assembled round a small grave, four of whom were letting down a coffin with a crown upon it. The gentleman, startled at this unusual sight, and imagining that he had arrived among the retreats of fiends or witches, mounted his horse and rode away with the utmost precipitation. He arrived at his friend’s house at a late hour, who had sate up for him. On his arrival his friend questioned as to the cause of the traces of trouble visible in his face. He began to recount his adventure, after much difficulty, knowing that it was scarcely possible that his friends should give faith to his relation. No sooner had he mentioned the coffin with a crown upon it, than his friend’s cat, who seemed to have been lying asleep before the fire, leaped up, saying, “Then I am the King of the Cats!” and scrambled up the chimney, and was seen no more.

[nellygwyn]

Covent Garden Lovers

courtesy of Hallie Rubenhold’s “The Covent Garden Ladies”

A list of the notable and famous frequenters of London’s brothels in the latter half of the 1700s. “Patrons du peche” (patrons of sin)

Look out for the royalty, and the great and the “good.”

Lord Chief Justice Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth

Admiral George Anson, 1st Baron Anson

Sir William Apreece

Sir Richard Atkins

Sir John Aubrey, MP

Richard Barry, 7th Earl of Barrymore

Allen Bathurst, 1st Earl of Bathurst

Sir Charles Bingham, 1st Earl of Lucan

Captain George Maurice Bisset (yes, THAT George Bisset, of Lady Seymour Worsley’s scandal)

Admiral Edward Boscawen 

Hugh Boscawen, 2nd Viscount Falmouth

James Boswell (diarist, great friend of Samuel Johnson)

Sir Orlando Bridgeman

Thomas Bromley, 2nd Baron Montfort

Captain John Byron (Lord Byron’s grandfather)

John Calcraft, MP

Archibald Campbell, 3rd Duke of Argyll

John Campbell, 5th Duke of Argyll

John Campbell, 4th Earl of Loudoun

George Capell, 4th Earl of Essex

David Carnegie, Lord Rosehill

John Cleland (writer of the pornographic novel “Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure”)

Henry Fiennes Clinton, 9th Earl of Lincoln.

Robert “Cock-a-doodle-doo” Coates

Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess of Cornwallis

Colonel John Coxe

William Craven, 6th Baron Craven

His Royal Highness, Prince Ernest, Duke of Cumberland

His Royal Highness, Prince Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland

His Royal Highness, Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland

The Honourable John Damer

Sir Francis Dashwood, Lord Despenser (founder of “The Hellfire Club” and Chancellor of the Exchequer)

Francis Drake Delevel

Reverend William Dodd

George Bubb Doddington, Lord Melcombe

William Douglas, 4th Duke of Queensbury

Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville

George Montagu Dunk, 2nd Earl of Halifax

Sir Henry Elchin

Richard Edgecumbe, Lord Mount Edgecumbe

Sir Charles Fielding, son of the Earl of Denbigh

The Honourable John Finch

John Fitzpatrick, 1st Earl of Upper Ossory

Samuel Foote (theatre manager and dramatist)

Charles James Fox (prominent Whig statesman, arch-enemy of William Pitt the Younger)

Stephen Fox, 2nd Baron Holland

George Fox-Lane, 3rd Baron Bingley

John Frederick, 3rd Duke of Dorset

His Majesty, King George IV (oh, what a surprise)

Sir John Graeme, 3rd Duke of Montrose

Charles Hamilton, Lord Binning

Charles Hanbury-Williams (British envoy to the court of Russia, introduced Catherine the Great to her lover, Stanislaw Poniatowski)

Colonel George Hanger

Count Franz Xavier Haszlang, Bavarian Envoy to London

Judge Henry Gould

Robery Henley, 1st Earl of Northington

Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 3rd Duke of Grafton (great-great-great-great grandson of King Charles II)

Henry Herbert, 10th Earl of Pembroke

Joseph Hickey

William Hickey

William Holles, 2nd Viscount Vane

Rear-Admiral Charles Holmes

Admiral Samuel Hood, 1st Viscount Hood

Charles Howard, 11th Duke of Norfolk

Thomas Howard, 3rd Earl of Effingham

Admiral Lord Richard Howe, 4th Viscount Howe

Thomas Jefferson (not that TJeffs; manager of the Drury Lane Theatre)

John Phillip Kemble

Augustus Keppel, 1st Viscount Keppel

William John Kerr, 5th Marquess of Lothian

Sir John Lade

Penistone Lamb, 1st Viscount Melbourne

William Longhorne (the poet laureate)

Lord Edward Ligonier

Field Marshall John Ligonier, 1st Earl of Ligonier

Simon Luttrell, 1st Baron Carhampton

Thomas Lyttleton, 2nd Baron Lyttleton

Kenneth Francis Mackenzie, 4th Earl of Seaforth

Charles Macklin

The Honourable Captain John Manners

John Manners, 3rd Duke of Rutland

Charles Maynard, 1st Viscount Maynard

Captain Anthony George Martin

James Macduff, 2nd Earl of Fife

Captain Thomas Medlycott

Isaac Mendez

Major Thomas Metcalfe

Sir George Montgomerie Metham

John Montague, 4th Earl of Sandwich

Alexander Montgomerie, 10th Earl of Eglinton

Arthur Murphy

Richard “Beau” Nash (famous dandy, popularised ballroom etiquette at the assemblies in Bath)

Francis John Needham, MP

Henry Nevill, 2nd Earl of Abergavenny

John Palmer (actor)

Thomas Panton

William Petty, 1st Marquess of Landsdowne

Evelyn Meadows Pierrepoont, 2nd Duke of Kingston

Thomas Potter

John Poulett, 4th Earl of Poulett

William Pulteney, 1st Earl of Bath

William Powell (manager of Drury Lane)

Charles “Chace” Price

Richard “Bloomsbury Dick” Rigby

Admiral George Brydges Rodney, 1st Baron Rodney

David Ross (actor)

Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford

Frederick John Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset

Sir George Saville

George Selwyn (politician and wit)

Edward “Ned” Shuter (actor)

John George Spencer, 1st Earl of Spencer

Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl of Harrington

Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Sir William Stanhope, MP

Edward Stanley, 12th Earl of Derby

Sir Thomas Stapleton

John Stewart, 3rd Earl of Bute

Frederick St John, 2nd Viscount Bolingbroke

Colonel Sir Banastre Tarleton

Commodore Edward Thompson

Lord Chief Justice Sir Edward Thurlow

Robert “Beau” Tracy

John Tucker, MP

Arthur Vansittart, MP

Sir Henry Vansittart, MP

Robert Vansittart

Sir Edward Walpole

Sir Robert Walpole (Britain’s first Prime Minister)

John Wilkes

His Majesty, King William IV

Charles Wyndham, 2nd Earl of Egremont

Henry Woodward (actor)

His Royal Highness, Edward, Duke of York

His Royal Highness, Frederick, Duke of York

Lieutenant Colonel John Yorke

Joseph Yorke, 1st Baron Dove

Extra information is my own

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Procopius, the Byzantine historian of the sixth century AD churned out dubious information, known as Anecdota, which he kept secret until his death, in order to smear the reputation of the Emperor Justinian after lionizing the emperor in his official histories. Pietro Aretino tried to manipulate the pontifical election of 1522 by writing wicked sonnets about all the candidates (except the favorite of his Medici patrons) and pasting them for the public to admire on the bust of a figure known as Pasquino near the Piazza Navona in Rome. The “pasquinade” then developed into a common genre of diffusing nasty news, most of it fake, about public figures.

Although pasquinades never disappeared, they were succeeded in the seventeenth century by a more popular genre, the “canard,” a version of fake news that was hawked in the streets of Paris for the next two hundred years. Canards were printed broadsides, sometimes set off with an engraving designed to appeal to the credulous. A best-seller from the 1780s announced the capture of a monster in Chile that was supposedly being shipped to Spain. It had the head of a Fury, wings like a bat, a gigantic body covered in scales, and a dragon-like tail. During the French Revolution, the engravers inserted the face of Marie-Antoinette on the old copper plates, and the canard took on new life, this time as intentionally fake political propaganda. Although its impact cannot be measured, it certainly contributed to the pathological hatred of the queen, which led to her execution on October 16, 1793.

The Canard enchainé, a Parisian journal that specializes in political scoops, evokes this tradition in its title, which could be translated figuratively as “No Fake News.” Last week it broke a story about the wife of François Fillon, the candidate of the center-right who had been the favorite in the current presidential election campaign. Madame Fillon, “Penelope” in all the newspapers, reportedly received an enormous government salary over many years for serving as her husband’s “parliamentary assistant.” Although Fillon did not denounce the story as a canard—he admits hiring his wife and says there was nothing illegal about it—“Penelope Gate” has pushed Donald Trump off the front pages and may ruin Fillon’s shot at the presidency, possibly to the benefit of France’s own, Trump-like, far-right party, the National Front.

The production of fake, semi-false, and true but compromising snippets of news reached a peak in eighteenth-century London, when newspapers began to circulate among a broad public. In 1788, London had ten dailies, eight tri-weeklies, and nine weekly newspapers, and their stories usually consisted of only a paragraph. “Paragraph men” picked up gossip in coffee houses, scribbled a few sentences on a scrap of paper, and turned in the text to printer-publishers, who often set it in the next available space of a column of type on a composing stone. Some paragraph men received payment; some contented themselves with manipulating public opinion for or against a public figure, a play, or a book.

In 1772 the Reverend Henry Bate (he was chaplain to Lord Lyttleton) founded The Morning Post, a newspaper that piled paragraph upon paragraph, each one a separate snippet of news, much of it fake. On December 13, 1784, for example, The Morning Post ran a paragraph about a gigolo serving Marie-Antoinette:

The Gallic Queen is partial to the English. In fact, the majority of her favorites are of this country; but no one has been so notoriously supported by her as Mr. W—-. Though this gentleman’s purse was known to be dérangé when he went to Paris, yet he has ever since lived there in the first style of elegance, taste and fashion. His carriages, his liveries, his table have all been upheld with the utmost expense and splendor.

Bate, who came to be known as “Reverend Bruiser,” went on to found a rival scandal sheet, The Morning Herald, while The Morning Post hired a still nastier editor, also a chaplain, Reverend William Jackson, known as “Dr. Viper” for “the extreme and unexampled virulence of his invectives…in that species of writing known as paragraphs.” The two men of the cloth, Reverend Bruiser and Dr. Viper, slugged it out in their newspapers, setting a standard for scandal that makes the Murdoch press look mild.

News of this sort—indeed, of most sorts—could not be published in France before 1789, but it traveled by word of mouth and underground gazettes, thanks to nouvellistes who fulfilled the same function as paragraph men. They picked up “news” from places where gossips gathered, such as certain benches in the Tuileries Gardens and the “Tree of Cracow” in the garden of the Palais Royal. Then, sometimes for the sheer pleasure of transmitting information, they scribbled the latest items on bits of paper, which they traded among themselves in cafés or (lacking the Internet) left on benches for others to discover.

The police did their best to repress the nouvellistes, although the demand for inside information about the secret ways of les grands (the great) kept attracting new, self-appointed “reporters.” When hauled off to the Bastille, nouvellistes were always frisked, and notes were sometimes discovered in the pockets of their waistcoats. I have found some examples of this incriminating evidence in the Bastille archives—crumpled scraps of paper covered with scribbling, testimony to a primitive variety of journalism two centuries before smart phones.

The police especially hunted out the semi-professionals who combined items, usually no longer than a paragraph, into manuscript gazettes known as “nouvelles à la main.” Some of these underground newspapers made it into print. Thus a typical entry from La Chronique scandaleuse:

The duke of…surprised his wife in the arms of his son’s tutor. She said to him with the impudence of a courtier, ‘Why weren’t you there, Monsieur? When I don’t have my squire, I take the arm of my lackey.’

One of the best-sellers in this genre was Le Gazetier cuirassé (The Iron-Plated Gazeteer) which was produced in London and probably was inspired by the scandalous London press, although its news was all French. A typical item was a one-sentence paragraph: “It is reported that the curé of Saint Eustache was surprised in flagrante delicto with the deaconess of the Ladies of Charity of his parish—which would be greatly to their honor, since they are both in their eighties.”” - Robert Darnton, “The True History of Fake News.” New York Review of Books, February 13, 2017.

[mutluluk-tariflerim-blog]

Kadınlar da, krallar gibidir. Bir türlü arkadaş edinemezler.

Lord Lyttleton 

Dünya’nın En Güvenilir 10 Havayolu Şirketi

[bobdowling]

Illustrated London News 29 April 1876 Pages 420, 421

Our Ironclad Fleet: H.M.S. Inflexible.

Artillery Practice before the Prince of Wales at Malta.

The late Lord Lyttleton.

Silver Kettledrums for the 5th Royal Irish Lancers.

The Rev. Dr. Ingram, of Unst, Shetland Isles, Aged One Hundred Years.

[wisdomfish]

Some possible motives that Paul could have had for deceiving the church... all found wanting.

Wealth

Paul wasn’t in it for the money. He worked with his own hands making tents in order to finance his missionary journeys. He said that while he had the right to financial support, he opted to forego this privilege so no one could question his motives.

We see plenty of evidence for this in Paul’s letters and in Acts. (Acts 18:3, 20:33-35, 1 Cor 4:11-12, 9:6-14, 2 Cor 11:7, 1 Thess 4:11, 2 Thess 3:8) If Paul was in it for the Benjamins he would’ve found a different line of work within his own tribe. (I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist making a lame pun.)

Honor of men

It’s hard to imagine that Paul was in it for his own personal reputation. Consider why he persecuted the church in the first place. A band of fishermen was saying that the Jewish Messiah was executed on a cross and that this Jesus was the Lord of all. He went from being schooled under Gamaliel and considered a reputable Pharisee to joining a band of illiterate preachers. (Acts 4:13) He said that the preaching of the cross was foolishness to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews. (1 Cor. 1:23)

He was persecuted in public and treated like a criminal, being repeatedly imprisoned. Paul obviously wasn’t in it for praises of men.

Power

What about power? Was Paul like so many modern-day “apostles”, lording over the churches? Nope. Paul said he wasn’t even worthy to be called an apostle because he persecuted the church. (1 Tim. 1:13-16, 1 Cor. 15:9)  

Even when people were proclaiming the gospel from wrong motives where he was imprisoned, he rejoiced.  (Phil 1:18) And when the Corinthians were arguing over who their favorite preacher was, he drew attention off himself and put it onto Jesus (1 Cor. 1:13) When the people of Lystra tried to worship him as a god, he quickly put a stop to it. (Acts 14:11-16)

Passion

Paul clearly didn’t convert to serve his own passions. He lived a celibate life. (1 Cor. 7:7, 9:5) He appealed to his own conduct as an example of what a holy life looks like. (2 Cor 7:2, 1 Thess 2:10) Cult leaders like Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and Mohammed had power and married multiple wives. In comparison, Paul clearly wasn’t in it for sex or other worldly passions.

Pious lies

Here Lyttleton appeals to the story of Paul’s conversion found in Acts. While no one else on the Road to Damascus saw Jesus, his traveling companions had some sensory experience of Paul’s encounter. Paul was also blinded and subsequently healed by the prayers of Ananias. (Acts 9:8-19) Before King Agrippa, Paul appealed to public facts that the king would be aware of. (Acts 26:23- 26)

Furthermore, if Paul was a liar then all of his miracles were tricks. Paul wrote of his own miracles to an audience that easily could have called him out. (Rom 15:19, 2 Cor 12:12, 1 Thess 1:5, 1 Cor 2:4-5)

So for these five reasons, Lyttleton concludes that the weight of the evidence is that Paul wasn’t a liar.

~ Erik Manning

[duncaninla]

New York, July 2017.

A few restful days in Paris and Barcelona restored my serenity.  No more searing heat, the weather more temperate, heavy clouds bursting over us.  The rain washing away the last of the red, Andalusian dust.  Well dressed men, once again, to look at on the streets of Paris and Barcelona. Mary’s spare room, decorated with Honiton lace and embroidered white linen.  We walked the length of Parc St Cloud with our dogs wearing gun boots and waxed jackets.  The Little Dog is almost fully restored, his eye closes once again, his sagging jowl looks perfectly normal to those who do not know.  One evening we helped friends of Mary move house.  TV Producer Etienne Alban, recently separated from his wife and kids, moving in with his super cute… yoga instructor girlfriend.  We carried a huge sofa 6 flights to their huge new attic apartment.   After the exercise we enjoyed a wonderful dinner at The Hotel Edgar.  The boudin noir… superb.

The following day I drove from Paris to Chamonix listening to an audio recording of the novel 1984.  It is a compellingly joyless book.  Because I am a ditz I arrived a day early. So I booked the Hotel Isabelle and slept fitfully thinking about my time in Carmona. More specifically I dreamt about my Carmona host and friend Ana Corbero, the chatelaine of an 11 acre estate called The Pajarita nestled outside the old city walls of Carmona beneath the The Hotel Parador and the Cordoba Gate.  I dreamt a huge storm roared as I looked north from Ana’s terrace toward the great plain which was once the sea.  I was pointing at something.  “Land ahoy!”  In the dream the waves returned after a thousand years and swept over the fields of sunflowers.  Sea monsters curled out of the petulant waves then crashed into the salty foam.

My time in Carmona with Ana had been stormy, her demeanor quite different from the beautiful girl I chanced upon 35 years ago.

I met Ana Corbero in 1985 or thereabouts introduced by gallerist and curator Celia Lyttleton.  Ana was showing a collection of unremarkable paintings at the Albemarle Gallery.  Celia introduced her as the daughter of a well-known Spanish sculptor, the girlfriend of a Lord.  She was tiny… gamine, scarcely a women.  Her queer and marvelous features delicately carved and flocked, her fierce and sparkling black eyes challenging those of us who dared contradict her.  She demanded respect.  Her flamenco gestures, her delicate collar bones.  She was beautiful.

I don’t remember a great deal about the beginning of our friendship other than the first night at the gallery.

Ana had been enjoying a fractious relationship with the absurdly handsome Colin Campbell, 7th Earl Cawdor.  I do not remember them visiting me in Whitstable but apparently they did.  I do not remember going to Wheelers Oyster Bar and eating crab but apparently we did.  I do remember Ana’s invitation to Brooklyn the following summer where I stayed in Colin’s huge apartment, the top floor of an abandoned school he and another had recently bought.  It was located just over the Williamsburg Bridge.  Brooklyn was very different then. Crack addicts sat on the stoop. The Puerto Rican community had not been replaced by Hasidic Jews and dumb looking hipsters.  The sky at night was regularly lit by flaming, abandoned buildings.  Some called these arson attacks: Jewish lightning.

The walk into Manhattan over the Williamsburg Bridge felt unnecessary.  We stayed close to the apartment.  Colin and I had a fairly raucous time.  Even then I felt contempt for toffs but they had all the best toys so one tended to accept the invitations whenever they came.  It was an eventful trip.  I had a brief affair with the artist Paul Benney.  I threw a bbq from the roof of Gerard Malanga’s apartment.  We were the only white people at an African-American block party and ended up in a black police captain’s humble house.  He looked very uncomfortable.  Years later, I understand why.  White, english people badly educated about slavery or the history of black people in the USA.  We must have seemed very disrespectful.

Ana and Colin’s relationship was passionate and destructive. I blamed Colin for his insensitivity toward Ana.  I excused Ana her eccentricities.  The last image I have of her at that time:  Ana is resting serenely in a nest of pillows, she has written in pen on her forehead one word… SILENCE.

Years passed.  Many years.  I remembered the word scrawled on her face.  Social media reintroduced us.  She married Nabil Gholam an arab architect and 18 years ago they had a baby girl. Sadly, their child is badly disabled with a rare genetic disease.  Against the odds, the child survives.  Ana fought to make her daughter hear and see.  She refused to accept the doctor’s bleak prognosis. Ana lived in Beirut during the Israeli bombardment.  Breastfeeding on her balcony as the bombs fell.  She adopted two more children.  A boy and a girl, both Lebanese.  The architect became successful.  They bought apartments in London, Paris and Seville. When her grandparents who raised her died she bought the Pajarita with a small inheritence.  The Pajarita, a modest finca surrounded by acres of scorched, brown earth and rock where the locals dumped their trash.   Ana set to transforming this barren place with many gardeners into the paradise she and her family enjoy today.

During the years I suggested to traveling friends I knew to be in Spain… meet Ana.  I sent the Australian furniture designer Charles Wilson who I believed might benefit from a stint in Andalusia. But Charles, another terrible drunk, ended up being thrown out of Xavier Corbero’s house in Barcelona because Ana’s step mother hated him.  Charles refused to leave so Ana’s husband threatened him with gypsies (a common, vaguely racist, threat from Nabil) who would break Charles’s legs if he didn’t pack his bag and leave immediately.

I sent Jenna and Stephen Mack’s brother John Jr., son of billionaire Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack.  Even though I did not know John Jr. I trusted they would be a great fit.  That introduction worked out very well.  Now it was my turn to meet Ana.  We communicated solely by text message.  After the long drive from Nice I called her and, for the first time in 35 years, I heard her voice. The deep and rasping voice of  somebody who smokes too many cigarettes or talks too much… or both.

“Why do you want to see me?” She asks over the phone.

I did not have an easy answer.

There was unfinished business between Ana and me.  It was not tangible, it was esoteric. I had no expectations of Ana.  I simply wanted to see her face.  Without the word SILENCE scrawled on it. We might have met that afternoon, had a coffee and left it at that.  I would have driven north.  I had no idea what to expect but I was compelled to see her, meet her again.  We arranged to meet at the small apartment she rented for guests in Carmona.

“How do you like your new digs?” She said as she got out of her huge silver Mercedes.

“Stay as long as you like.”

I gave her a long hug.  Her father, Xavier Corbero, had recently died.  I sniffed and she thought I was crying.  “I’m not crying,” I said, “I’m sniffing.”  Ana was back in my life. Her face was not the same as I remembered when I last saw her.  She has hidden herself on social media because, I now understood, she could not bear what age had done to her. Almost immediately she complained how old she was, how raddled.  She was embarrassed by her face.

“I’ve turned into a middle-aged Swedish woman.”  she said.  “I hope you’re not disappointed.”

It was true.  Middle aged and middle class.  Her face, bloated and pale, almost anemic. Her dry hair, she insisted she wanted to dye gray,  streaked with sun bleached golden locks.  Her eyes were just as fiery but no longer black.  There was something stone dried about her, something suspicious. I slowly recognised who she had become.  The reason I felt compelled to see her?  The reason why so many years ago she left something indelible in me?  It was something I recognized in myself.  Within a few hours my suspicions were confirmed.  Ana Corbero is an alcoholic of the most desperate kind.

We walked up the small cobbled hill from the apartment to the Casa Curro Montoya… her favorite restaurant.  She flamboyantly kisses the owners and lavishes us all with praise. We sat in the hot sun and drank white wine and ate greasy jamon.  Immediately, without prompting, she started telling me how her marriage was over.  Her husband was a liar, she said, and she didn’t know if she could stay married to him.

“He lies about his father and their relationship.  I am married to a stranger.”

I was baffled why this should be reason for divorce but Ana, it turns out, is obsessed with her version of the truth.  Under the parasol that dreamy afternoon I found her deeply personal over sharing electrifying.  I was being inducted into a tortured world of intrigue and family drama… it felt intoxicating.  She contemptuously described her adopted children, how her lazy teen son lied and failed at school.  Her pre teen daughter stole and refused to respect her Mother’s authority.  I ask about their eldest daughter.  “Oh, her.” she mused distantly.   A slight smile flickered over her face.  “She’s an angel.”

I do not remember driving to the Pajarita that afternoon.  I drove to her home so many times the next few weeks.  It is a dusty, pot holed road to Ana’s home.  Red dust gets into everything, into the car, my mouth, my heart.  During my stay the sharp red rocks rip into my tyres… twice.  Yet, once behind the sliding metal gates of the Pajarita… decorated with dragons and comic strip birds there is… the illusion of calm.  Beyond the painted blue iron gate a forest of pepper trees, oleander and citrus.  Terracotta pots filled with herbs and lilies. Vines, dripping with grapes grow over pergolas affording shade, respite from the searing heat. Down an exquisitely cobbled path the simple house reveals itself. There are huge windows covered with traditional Spanish blinds made of esparto… woven reeds.  Inside, rooms of various sizes at different levels filled with stuff.  Ana’s art covers the walls. Piles of art books and catalogues from Christie’s and Sotheby’s.  Broken china knickknacks. Buckets of architectural salvage.  Most of it inherited from her grand parents.  So much stuff.

Many staff run Ana’s estate and life. Annie the housekeeper and general fixer.  Three nurses look after the disabled daughter.  There are gardeners and flamenco guitarists, a governess for the adopted daughter and a masseur who comes daily.  On occasions Ana would marshal the staff and demand they sing songs of her own composition.  They did as they were told.

Annie, a simple local woman, the closest to Ana and (it became apparent) loathed by the son… was Ana’s most trusted servant. As well as dusting and ironing and making beds Annie, Ana told me, was being groomed to write Ana’s autobiography and mix her paints whenever she started painting again. Annie would also run the restaurant whenever Ana got around to opening it.  Annie, forced to kiss us all as per the ‘Andalusian way’.  I refused to kiss Ana’s staff.

“I can’t bear lies or exaggeration.” Ana says.  “I am never impatient, I am never angry.”

During the first few days of my stay we find a happy routine.  I have practical considerations.  I apply for my Spanish residency, open a bank account and get a phone. I take the dogs to the vet in Seville.  The vet is quite the most handsome man I ever met.  I decide to buy a house in Carmona.  They are cheap and plentiful.  Ana is incredibly helpful.  She introduces me to a lawyer, a realtor and makes every effort to ease me into Spanish life. We find a perfectly preserved 16th Century house near the Cordoba Gate.  I need an assistant.  She introduces me to Jose, her own assistant for five years but curiously tells me he is not welcome at her home.

Why she makes the introduction to Jose is a mystery.  And why is he unwelcome at the Pajarita? Jose is a charming, good man. Friendly and helpful.  I confide in Jose what I see at Ana’s home.  I am shocked by the way she treats her children, the contempt she has for her husband.  I rant at Jose about Ana.  She believes she’s always right, she’s never wrong, the interminable interruptions at dinner so conversations between adults become utterly fruitless and frustrating. Ana interrupts with shrill, ill-informed dissent. Blighted with a remarkable lack of insight and self-awareness Ana’s inability to see her part in any dispute caused me much incredulity.

Jose smiles and listens.

“I don’t have a problem, YOU have a problem.”  Ana insists.

Three days into my visit Nabil Gholam, Ana’s husband arrives with their son.  They are very pleasant but I have already had my mind poisoned against them.  Expecting the worse I’m surprised to find her husband kind and considerate, compensating for his wife’s excesses.  He is a gentle man and every day works hard to keep his marriage alive. Nabil shows me his watch collection, explaining how he transports his wealth around the world at times of war.  In the evening, when she is at her worse, Nabil makes excuses for her rapidly disintegrating behaviour.

Their handsome son is a perfectly ordinary teenage boy.  He has a girlfriend, he has thick black hair, he is interested in sport and fashion and making money trading sneakers… we went to the fashion outlet in Seville but it was closed.  He was funny and charming, house hunting one morning I paid him to translate for me.  He has a keen understanding of people.  He could read between the lines.  He enjoys his life at boarding school.

I find him in his room trying to write.  Ana has asked him to write a fifty year plan for his life.  He looks helpless.  An absurd request he knows he must fulfill.  When, after several weeks, the 50 year plan arrives Ana is outraged.  Why does the plan does not include Spain and by inference… her?  Why should it?  Ask a boy to map out the next fifty years is abuse enough.  But this was just one of many abuses, her plan to punish him for not appreciating how lucky he was that she had taken the time and money to adopt him. He could never be grateful enough.  She confided that she planned to take him out of the boarding school he loved and punish him for his lack of sensitivity by sending him to his paternal grandfather… who Ana hated.  Nabil, when we are on our own, desperately whispers an appeal to me, “Please help me, can you make her see sense?”  It was no use, Anna is always hell-bent on revenge, riven by some resentment with some poor sap. Ana reminded both children how lucky they were to have her as their adopted mother. These scenes pulled straight out of the movie Mommy Dearest. But Joan Crawford, bless her tortured soul, was a saint in comparison.

We drive to Seville for lunch with John Mack Jr. who mocks Ana’s constant, inebriated interruptions.  John Mack Jr has his own demons but I wanted to hear everything he had to say. I had been become very close with his brother Stephen and worked with his sister Jenna.  Both relationships had come to nothing.  Of course John claims he knows nothing of his sister’s appalling arrogance… he is his father’s son.  He knew everything.  He had his own brush with addiction, a failed marriage and traumas only the son of a billionaire would understand.  Stephen Mack told me once their father would say of his enemies, “I’ll make them hurt.” His father wasn’t called ‘Mack the Knife’ for no reason. Jenna was very eager for me to meet her parents but I knew it would turn out badly, getting dragged along to events I had no reason to be at.  I met Mack senior, who one couldn’t help respecting, several times.  I had dinner with Jenna and her father at The Mercer Hotel and again at a High Line charity event.  Jenna, Stephen and John’s parents are a great team,  they donate millions to charity, they delight in taking pictures of couples in the street who don’t have selfie sticks.

I knew my father was the same as John Mack.  Cruel and kind in equal measure.

When I said goodbye to John Mack Jr. after lunch (he cycled off into the hot, congested Seville streets) I knew I would never meet him or any member of his family ever again.

As I grow closer to my assistant Jose it becomes apparent that he doesn’t merely dislike Ana, he hates her.  He hates her with a shocking vengeance.  It is painful for him to carry such hate in his heart.  He warns me to think carefully about staying in Carmona, he cautions if I buy a house in Carmona I will end up hating Ana.  He warns me people very close to Ana hate her.  The owners of the restaurant hate her, he warns she has fallen out with everyone who lives in Carmona, accusing them of crimes and disappointments, their relationships blighted with unrealistic expectations.

Jose describes Ana’s tantrums, how she would regularly reduce him to tears with her demands and mendacity.  His impersonation of her clawing at her own face demanding that she wanted what she wanted… NOW!   Nothing would placate her.  He tried helping her but failed.  He still finds it hard to forgive himself for walking away.  Walking away from the children he loved and cared for.

I took the adopted girl to meet Jose.  They hadn’t seen each other for years.  They cried and hugged.  We wandered the streets of Carmona until midnight.  Jose kept thanking me for bringing her to see him.  We ate ice cream and sat in the forum.  When we returned to the Pajarita Ana looks quizzically at me. Taking the child to meet Jose could be construed as an act of betrayal.  I apologize for bringing her home so late.

The following day Ana is screaming at her children, “Why don’t you bring your friends to the Pajarita?” It is obvious why… to those of us who are the children of abusive parents.  There’s a lot of shame and fear around alcoholism and the unpredictability of an alcoholic parent.  Neither child want their friends to meet Ana. Neither want to explain her behaviour.  I saw the fear in their eyes when Ana looked as if she was going to lose her temper.  The night she couldn’t make the ancient iPod work and began blaming her daughter.  The panicking child wrestled with the iPod, willing it to work. Finally she managed to make it play and disaster was averted.  I’m sure the little girl didn’t want to be reminded once more why she should be grateful Ana adopted her and how easily she could be sent back to the children’s home.

The daughter dances, she entertains Ana’s guests with gymnastics, endless cartwheels and overtly sexual dance moves she learns from TV shows like Glee.  Playing the same track over and over.  I was asked to judge endless dance routines.  She was desperate to impress.  Yet, however hard the child tries to please… it is never good enough.

“Hold your hands like this” Ana demands.  “No!  Not like that… like this.”  Ana lunges beside her daughter and demonstrates what she wants to see.  Ana demands we all dance.  I dance for a moment then I sit down and watch the scene unfold.  The dance with her daughter becomes violent, twirling the child around until finally it is no longer a dance but a fight… Ana body slams the girl onto the floor.  The child is crying and Ana falls badly into the television.  She mocks the child for crying, mocks her use of a hearing aid.  She swears at the child and accuses her of making sexual advances to Nabil.  Once, in the pool, Ana tore off the child’s bathing costume, tossing it out of the pool.  Ana is laughing like a maniac, the child is pleading. I throw the costume back into the pool. Then I walk away, saving the kid the embarrassment of being seen naked.  Jose, when I tell him… is not surprised.  There were times when he wanted to report her to the police for child abuse.  The following day Ana wonders why her back hurts so badly.  I remind her but she doesn’t remember the fight.  She has no recollection.  How much of the time is she blacked out?

“Time for drinkypoos?”  She says.

Like an infirmed english aristocrat the pronouncement comes when Nabil is at home… otherwise she’s opening bottles all day.  She’s already stoned long before she starts drinking.  I learned not to go near the house until she is drunk or stoned enough not to be a total bitch.  Waiting for an invitation to join her.  If I stayed at the Pajarita I would slip away before she woke up.  When her interest in me cooled her morning emails and text messages were filled with vile insults and personal attacks.  By then I was employing every technique Alanon afforded me.  Let go with love, they say.  Every day I let her go… with love.  Soon I would have to let go of her forever.

The night Nabil left for London and Beirut I was sitting by the pool with Ana enjoying a rare, balmy evening.  We spent a lot of time talking about her future, her work, galleries and retrospectives.  I was convinced she was capable of making the huge changes in her life necessary for her to be recognised as an important artist.  We talked about male artists who were commanding huge sums in galleries and at auction.  We discussed how women artists have been impoverished by men.  After meeting her disabled daughter my understanding of her work swelled.  The cute sculptures of girls looking heavenward meant something.  Ana has spent years working out her feelings toward her disabled daughter using her art, especially her sculpture.  Her work, like so many women… unlike the work of so many men, has never been contextualized.  The story is never told. “Your work is beyond the vagina.”  I said.  She laughed.  Ana is not easily complimented.  So, we concentrate on her potential.  I liked mulling over future possibilities with her.

Without warning she rolled toward me and laid her head on my chest.

She said, “I find you overwhelmingly attractive. I want to grow old with you.”

At that very moment I knew our friendship was over.  I shifted in my seat.  If I rebuffed Ana I risked her unconscionable wrath.   She repeated the words.

“I want to grow old with you.”

Finally, I affected my most affable self and said,”Oh, silly… what would Nabil say?”

She lifted her head.  She was not going to be fobbed off with that.

“I don’t put my head on anyone’s chest.” She began, her voice becoming defensive.  She continued speaking but I could not hear her… I was in a blind panic.  I knew it was over, at that moment I knew my time around Ana had come to an end.

The following days she called me names by text (fat and old) and generally took time to insult and belittle me.  She denounced me as a traitor to the Pajarita.  I found myself drifting to the house knowing full well what reception I would receive.  She warned me, I was no longer ‘drama free’ I was accused of bringing stress and ‘baggage’ into her life.   Thankfully, her friend Alfonso and his daughter arrived.  Perhaps he would grow old with her?  I slipped out of the pre arranged parties to which I was tacitly expected to attend.  I had no interest in being around her.  It was over.  Soon I was packing up the car and headed north.  My time in Carmona but not Spain… had come to an end.

Ana Corbero signs all her emails or text messages with ‘Luv and Light A xxx’.  It is ironic because she has a dark soul.  A monster for whom no cage will ever be built… unless of course she embraces sobriety and thereby solves her chronic addiction to resentment.

Ana Corbero New York, July 2017. A few restful days in Paris and Barcelona restored my serenity.  No more searing heat, the weather more temperate, heavy clouds bursting over us.