Easter Tidings from this Corner of the Land

The View From the Last House in America: My Church Ladies and Me

The link just above this (and below this beautiful painting) is to a post I wrote last year about my dear old Methodist heritage. In keeping with our theme today, and with my recent posts on Paul Mellon, the National Gallery of Art etc., here is a a beautiful resurrection painting for your enjoyment. (From the National Gallery of Art by a follower of Rogier van der Weyden Christ Appearing to the Virgin, c. 1475 Andrew W. Mellon Collection).

Happy Easter!

Can you hear the words to this grand old hymn in your head as he rings them out on the bells? (The Bell Ringer is Australian Laurence Alex). Here's some help:

Christ, the Lord, is risen today, Alleluia!
Sons of men and angels say, Alleluia!
Raise your joys and triumphs high, Alleluia!
Sing, ye heavens, and earth, reply, Alleluia!

Love’s redeeming work is done, Alleluia!
Fought the fight, the battle won, Alleluia!
Lo! the Sun’s eclipse is over, Alleluia!
Lo! He sets in blood no more, Alleluia!

Vain the stone, the watch, the seal, Alleluia!
Christ hath burst the gates of hell, Alleluia!
Death in vain forbids His rise, Alleluia!
Christ hath opened paradise, Alleluia!

Louis Auchincloss at Dawn

Louis Auchincloss

The wind has howled for a full 24 hours. Good Friday here on the Vermont/Quebec border came and went in a blur of sideways snow. We barely left the house. School was cancelled. I started out in midmorning to Burlington for a meeting and turned back at Jay (about five miles down the road). Husband was supposed to go to Montreal (for some party at the Consulate or given by people from the Counsulate - I didn't get the whole picture). He turned back as well, though he hadn't attempted to leave until 3 PM.

The Last House is old and badly insulated so it is cold upstairs.With the exception of the bathroom the upstairs is "heated" only by rising hot air from the first floor - each bedroom has a hole in the floor covered by a register. The sun has just come up- the big pine tree in front of the house is tossing in the wind. In a few minutes the kids will be down and the task of feeding and occupying them for another long day with no school will begin. (Which will include a clamor for the computer).

In these quiet few minutes before they arrive I wanted to set down a few thoughts on Louis Auchincloss's Collected Stories, properly, The Collected Stories of Louis Auchincloss (Houghton Mifflin 1994). I picked up my copy, looking like new, at the booksale at the Waterbury Library this last summer. I thought I might give it as a present (a cheap one since it only cost a dollar). It has been taking up space around the house until last week when I was looking for something to read and stumbled over it. Strange coincidence. I had just read the profile of Auchincloss in The New Yorker a few weeks ago. Until then I had known nothing much about him - some connection to Jackie O as I recalled. I have had a chance to get through the first few stories. They are arranged chronologically and span Auchincloss's 50-year career. About an hour ago I finished the second story, "Greg's Peg." I am here to say, what a great story and what a wonderful writer. How odd that my own recent reading has plunged me again into the (lost) world of the eastern social establishment. Here's a link to an intelligent review of the book I just found on the web: http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/50s/auchincloss-review.html.

If I had been taking a course on the Literary Tradition of American Wasp Hegemony, I would have worked through the first quarter of the reading list in the last few weeks, between Wharton and Auchincloss. It was not by design but it is a happy coincidence. (Kid 2 has just emerged, sounding stuffed up, to ask about using the computer and coloring Easter eggs. I put him off by turning on Jimmy Neutron but there is not much time to write now!) I wanted to record a couple of the turns of phrase in "Greg's Peg" that struck me as particularly cogent. The story is about a social loser, an effeminate bachelor mama's boy, who attains a position in summer society for a season or two by making himself useful and amusing to a cluster of respectable but rapine women. This is Greg. His "peg" is a little dance he does when he is drunk. He is observed by a headmaster of an elite boarding school who has tried to lead him into a bigger world of thoughts, ideas, dignity. Greg figures the best he can do is to be a pet in society. The headmaster watches it all unfold.

It came over me gradually that Mrs. Bakewell [Greg's mother] was right. They were killing him. Their laughter was as cold and their acclaim as temporary as that of any audience in the arena of Rome or Constantinople. They could clap their hands and cheer, they could spoil their favorites, but they could turn their thumbs down, too, and could one doubt for a moment that at the first slight hint of deteriorating performance, they would?

Then one page later:

That he continued to drink too much when he went out, which was, of couse, all the time, did not, apparently, impair his social position. He was firmly entrenched, as I have said, in his chosen category of "character," and to these much is allowed.

Onto the business of the day.

More Art from the Woolfoot Collection

Here is another of my recent acquisitions. This is the original (!) art work for a poster which must have been printed in the early 1920s (dating based on the reference in the text to "Viscount Cave's report." More on that in a minute). It was painted by Frederick Hase-Hayden, who was best known as a glass painter. There must have been some estate-clearings recently over in the U.K.-- perhaps the painter's family and friends are dying off-- as a lot of his work has appeared on Ebay in the last few months. That's where I fetched this at a bargain price. I missed a fabulous original art poster for OXO. Darn. The sellers (I saw two) both referenced auctions in different parts of England as the source of their Hase-Hayden caches. A bunch of watercolors of rural England and Quebec also appeared. The prices they fetched were modest.

I bought a movie poster frame for this, et,voila it was ready to hang. (The picture shows it before it was framed). It is huge, 29 inches by 40. I'll admit I contacted a poster art gallery right after getting this home to see if it would pay off the mortgage. The owner said he thought it was nice but not "super valuable" and advised me to frame it archivally. One day... In a way that was lucky it wasn't "super valuable" because I love it and it adds great atmosphere to the house. It has a few tack holes in the corner and some minor paint loss - the outer dimensions of the printed poster are marked on the bottom of the sheet in pencil (a nice touch).

I have done some research on the fund-raising effort which this poster was designed to promote. (More joy of the internet). I learned the following from a book blurb for Philanthropy and the Hospitals of London: The King's Fund 1897-1990 by F.K. Prochaska (Oxford University Press 1992):

The King's Fund was the leading charitable institution for the support of the voluntary hospitals of London in the period before the creation of the National Health Service and today continues to seek to improve health continues to seek to improve health care and management. Prochaska's readable and scholarly study, with aforeword by the Prince of Wales, the Fund's patron, places the King's Fund in the wider context of the history of philanthropy and social provision. He provides an illuminating analysis of the evolution of the relationship between the voluntary and public sectors.

After I got this treasure home, I checked out the "King's Fund" website - the Fund is still up and running and quite an important institution. They dropped the reference to King Edward at some point. (He was the King in question, the son of Queen Victoria, who got the whole thing started). One of our recent visitors to the Last House works for the U.K. National Health. I showed her the poster, which she admired, perhaps even not just to be polite. She was well familiar with the King's Fund and had been to the offices on more than one occasion, chiefly, as I understood it, for meetings in what I understand to be a fabulous conference room. Of course, before they had a national health system in England they had to pay for health care somehow and voluntary hospitals were the mainstay. These didn't meet all the need, obviously, and after the first World War, in 1921, Viscount Cave was set to study the problem. This is, no doubt, the reference to Viscount Cave's Committee in the text here.

A Couple New Acquisitions

As promised in my last post, here are a couple of shots of the paintings I bought at the auction last Saturday at my beloved Degre Auction House in Westfield, just a few miles south of the Last House. I don't drink, smoke or gamble, but I have a weakness for auctions and for pictures - especially landscapes and almost any kind of print that looks like it dates from the 1920s or '30s. My taste is, I realize, arguably bad. I like a lot of contemporary art, but when it comes to things I actually buy for myself, I tend to the "chocolate box" end of the spectrum. I don't like the girly stuff - fields of flowers or turn of the century ladies in white dresses, shading their eyes against the glare of the sun. I like for my subjects animals, houses, buildings (e.g., churches,schools) boats, trees, occasionally kids, and an overall package (frame and picture) that looks old. These are my downfall. Total cost for these two paintings, both oil on board and unsigned as near as I can tell, was $50; I liked the one with the deer best but I bid $25 for choice and took the pair. The colors are very slightly garish. The blue of twilight tends to turquoise. I found a label, very old looking, on one frame identifying Kaufmann's Art Department. Kaufmann's started in 1877 in Pittsburgh but expanded throughout the northeast and eventually became part of the behemoth May Company. I got them home and hung them immediately. I was happy with the result. I bought another little watercolor of a house, very naive, but also dark with age and in uglyish frame and mat. I would like to get it cleaned someday. It has glass in front of it and wouldn't photograph well but if there is a mass clamor I'll try. In other news, there is the weather, toujours the weather. March went sunny and smiling for about 5 hours yesterday. We managed to get out into it with our friends who have a beautiful farm in Derby, Vermont. One must count one's blessings. Unfortunately, that changed overnight and it is as grim as grim can be right now - rain and wind and snow and sleet. Will this winter ever end? Spring, according to the calendar, arrives overnight tonight - along with six to 12 inches of snow. I am going to try and post a little video of our Derby farm visit yesterday. I have had mixed luck with the video function but, here goes.

A Slow Sunday and A Sweet Boy

An Old Picture of Kid 2, but still one of my favorites.


March plods on here at the Northern Edge of the country. Mud season is upon us. My only outing today was to the Degre Auction House in Westfield - a place I should avoid given our current financial situation. The parking lot was mud to the hubcaps. I bought three pictures: a watercolor and two oils from the 20s, I would guess, for $75.00. I'll try to take some pictures so you can see these latest treasures.

Kids were home with Husband all day. Finally, at around 3 PM, Husband and Kid 2 suited up for a walk over the crusty snow. It was the first time the Husband had left the house today. Sunday dragged on and finally, at dusk, the Monopoly Board was pulled out. (A sure sign of a deadly dull day). The game did its trick, however. Husband, in his Monty Burns mode, played advisor to Kid 2, whose math and reading skills are not quite up to Monopoly. My strategy of building hotels on those cheap, light blue properties near the jail bombed. Husband and Kid 2 got the railroads and some houses on the second corner of the board. Long story short, the men in the family did me in. I got out of jail and landed, promptly, on St. James place - where three houses cost me more than my total net worth. As I was hamming it up, saying goodbye, Kid 2 couldn't stop himself from crying. What a sweetie.

The National Gallery of Art & Paul Mellon & Me

J.M.W. Turner:
British, 1775 - 1851
Keelmen Heaving in Coals by Moonlight, 1835
oil on canvas, 92.3 x 122.8 cm (36 3/8 x 48 3/8 in.)
Widener Collection
National Gallery of Art

Strange though it may sound, on this day alone in the Last House I managed to do a half decent job cleaning the kitchen while also viewing a film on my iPod. This wouldn't be possible with most movies, but this one was made last year under the auspices of the National Gallery of Art in tribute to Paul Mellon and it is mostly made up of still pictures. The pictures are of the life, times and masterpieces of art collected by the Mellon family, with narration of a text written by PM (though not read by him). That is to say, the pace is sufficiently leisurely that you don't need to look at the screen every second. You can clean a sink and watch a family photo or a masterpiece by Reynolds flit by. That isn't to say it was boring. Coming so close on my finishing listening to The House of Mirth, I seem to be continuing in the gilded age. I downloaded the film as part of my quest for free material for my iPod. It's amazing what the National Gallery has available at its website. I'll post a link. All the great museums of the word are doing the same and isn't that mindblowing in a fabulous way?

Anyway, back to Mellon. I am a little surprised to say that, although the film dwelled a bit too long on his race horsing career (buyer and breeder thereof), it was a moving sort of documentary. Mellon is dead (he died in 1999) and though I have been to the National Gallery a few times and knew his connection vaguely, I didn't know much of anything about him. His claim to fame was that he was the Son of a Very Rich Man. It was surprisingly interesting to hear from him what he made of this position.

He clearly recognized the strangeness of his place in the world and yet, made a good thing of it. He used his wealth to enjoy himself and indulge his passions, but the passions were informed and intelligent and (aside from the racing) did much to benefit his fellow Americans. He was also drawn to British art, sports, country life. I, as you few faithful readers know, have the same interest - although it plays itself out in a less fabulous fashion here at the last house. (No masterpieces or throughbreds anywhere in sight). So, though I am not a Mellon, I feel him to be a kind of kindred spirit if not, unfortunately, an actual blood relative.

Here's what the website says about this film:

This film celebrates the spirit and philosophy of Paul Mellon. The narration is comprised of his own words drawn from interviews, speeches and a variety of writings. He takes us on a gentle journey into his passions and interests in life including family, art, collecting, horses, and racing. The film captures the gentle nature and wisdom of an extraordinary man.

I take my hat off to the NGA for producing this, now that there is no point in sucking up to the benefactor.

Back down here on planet earth, the sun is shining beautifully today though it is very cold for March. I drove the kids to Morrisville this AM in the Camry (15 years old 216,000 miles and no snow tires - proof of the distance between the Mellon family and yours truly, if any were needed). The weather forecast yesterday had been for dry cold weather over night. Wrong. We spent the last 20 miles of the trip on roads on which one might have skated. Kids were 1/2 hour late to school. Almost time to go get them again. Yikes.