Genêt: London before World War II

London Was Yesterday
by Janet Flanner

This book is a collection of essays, both short and long, that Janet Flanner wrote for The New Yorker magazine in the 1934-1939 which was the time of Edward VIII's abdication "for the woman that I love" and the run up to World War II.

When Miss Flanner's editor, Harold Ross, gave her the job of reporting on France and England in the late 1920s, he told her that he wanted to know what the natives were thinking about themselves and their cultures and their nations, not what she thought of them. And Miss Flanner produced that kind of viewpoint for the U.S. readers.

Miss Flanner reported from Europe for The New Yorker from the late 1920s to her retirement in the early 1970s.

Her essays range from three sentence paragraphs on the doings and dancings of Josephine Baker or the funeral of Anatole France (is he even read today in France?) to several long portraits of Wallis Simpson (that beloved woman) and the new Queen, Elizabeth the wife of George VI who was the father of the present Elizabeth II, after the abdication of Edward VIII. I know that this sentence reads like the boring genealogy of the Bible.

Miss Flanner was a writer with a dry and wry turn of phrase and wit and a detached (easy for her, she was a Yank), discerning view of her subjects and their concerns. She could also do slapstick:

When Lotte Lehmann, as the Marschallin, had a chill and walked out on the opening act of the first Rosenkavalier performance, a leg came off fat Baron Ochs' sofa. Furthermore, an anachronistic wirehaired fox terrier stole the eighteenth-century levee scene, and the lady spy's hoopskirt flew waist-high after the Presentation of the Rose episode.

It is the Marx Brothers all in one.

Eating Thoughtfully

Leonardo and The Last Supper by Ross King

The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci was an experiment in oil based paint on a plaster wall primed with a lead based white paint. Most wall murals of the time were frescos where the artist painted a very small part of the wall with pigments on a wet plaster.

Leonardo was in a creative mood after he had to give up his huge bronze horse cast statute and his flying machine design. He decided to do his art commission for a monastery wall in oil paints because no one else had ever done it that way. If you look at photos of The Last Supper as it is today, you see why no one had. The present mural is stripped paint and faint colors and indistinguishable characteristics of the figures and the food at the last supper.

Da Vinci also chose the wrong wall to paint. It was the north wall and prone to dampness  even in good weather. The Last Supper was a mural artwork experiment gone very wrong.

But on the positive side, Leonardo did finish the mural. And Leonardo was well known by all art patrons in Milan as an artist who did not start or finish his commissions unless they were small paintings of individuals.

Leonardo was a thinker of great ideas. His art was just a hobby or a palate cleanser while he tasted another idea with dreams of architectural or engineering glory.

This was a new one for me---an artist who really wanted to be an engineer.

Reading List

1. A Century of Dolls: Treasures From the Golden Age of Doll Making; Photographs by Tome Kelley; Text by Pamela Sherer
2. Forks over Knives: The Plant-Based Way to Health by T. Colin Campbell and Caldwell B. Esselstyn
3. 100 Dresses: The Costume Institute The Metropolitan Museum of Art
4. Da Vinci's Ghost: Genius, Obsession, And How Leonardo Created the World in His Own Image by Toby Lester

How Do You Know You've Been Poisoned?

The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum

I've always wondered back in the Golden Age of Poisoning, all those short-lived Roman Emperors and the Borgia's Way to treat their political enemies, just how did people know that the victim had been poisoned?

There were the hired food tasters, if they got sick, it was poison. But poison doesn't have to be fast-acting. How long did an important person who did not wish to be poisoned wait for her food? Did important persons who had to wait for their food to be proved "not poisoned" ever taste hot food? Did they develop a taste for cold food? This is not necessarily bad, I much prefer my pizza to be cold when I eat it. Could a person who did not wish to be poisoned ever develop their taste buds and really appreciate food? A person who did not wish to be poisoned had the money to eat the really good food, but not the time or even the inclination (if you know that you might be poisoned, you are reluctant to really eat for pleasure because you might not be pleasured by your food, you might be poisoned).