Wednesday Etiquette

It's Wednesday, again. I swear it comes around every week. Here's a truly engaging spot of "etiquette" from none other than Philippe Jullian, collector, painter, illustrator, art historian, biographer, novelist, aesthete, and dandy. Clearly he knows a thing or two about etiquette. In the late 50's he wrote a satire published in France as Dictionnaire du Snobisme. In 1958, it was publish in English as The Snob-Spotter’s Guide. It has drawing by Jullian as well as posts by friends including Cecil Beaton and Salvador Dali. As a bonus, it is my favorite -- an abecedary.

America

New York has snobbery but no society.

Etiquette

Etiquette is the barrier which society draws around itself as a protection against offences the "law" cannot touch -- a shield against the intrusion of the impertinent, the improper, and the vulgar -- a guard against those obtuse persons who, having neither talent nor delicacy, would be continually thrusting themselves into the society of men to whom their presence might (from the difference of feeling and habit) be offensive, and even insupportable.

Food and Drink Snobbery

Food and Drink Snobbery is as old as civilization. It has squandered immense fortunes, produced terrible indigestion, nightmares and, at the worst, high doctors' bills and even death.

Kansas City

No American will admit to having been born there.

Literature

Tutoiement

The use of the second person singular or Tu was rare in French society, but is more usual today because a number of foreigners did not understand its rarity.

In England the equivalent of 'tu' is to be called by one's Christian name. Mrs. Keppel, furious at having to entertain a newcomer to her circle, said, 'Dear Maud, may I call you Lady Bloch?'

Quail In Aspic

After all that turkey and dressing, I thought you might like some Quail In Aspic. The legendary Cecil Beaton was given rare access to Count Charles Korsetz. After much prodding, Count Korsetz allowed Beaton to tape record the story of his life. According to Beaton, the Count had never written anything, "beyond his signature on checks."

The Count discusses his life at university:

Bedecked for Oxford

"My father sent one of his rare communications, a tophole piece of advice. I must admit. :"The big nobs won't pay you much attention at first, but it's no use throwing your money around too soon. Just wait until they come to you.""

The manly equestrian arts:

The Count apre polo

"An assiduous rider was count Larisch. His presence could not have been to display his powers of horsemanship for, unlike most Austrians, he was one of the worst damn exponents of the art I ever saw... The only time I saw him hunting with the Beaufort he fell off at the very first fence and appeared no more at day."

His later years:

An older Count

"...many of our old friends had developed what they call 'a social conscience.'... Apart from addressing a few polite words to gardeners, trainers, jockeys, gamekeepers, stalkers, ghillies and peasants this was my first contact with the 'lower-orders'."

The Count's honesty was unsettling to some. Some however, realized that they had never actually hobnobbed with Count Korsetz. And some thought he bore a striking resemblance to Cecil Beaton's friend, Elsa Maxwell.

Ah, that Cecil Beaton, what a cut-up! Enjoy.

Etiquette Wednesday -- Elsa Maxwell

Since it is the day before Thanksgiving and also Wednesday, we thought we would provide you with etiquette and entertaining as you approach the holiday. Actually, it might be more “entertainment” than entertaining. If you are facing a family fiasco or “your” friends are bringing “their” friends, just close your eyes and think, “What would Elsa Maxwell be doing…”

Simon Doonan wrote of Elsa Maxwell:

"Even if you took Martha Stewart, Julia Child, Two Fat Ladies, Regine, Suzanne Bartsch, Nigella Lawson, Diane Brill, Carmen D’Allessio, Pat Buckley, Amy Sacco, and Phyllis Diller and threw them all into a gigantic blender, you would still fall short of producing anyone as compelling and scrumptious as the late, great, über-hostess Elsa Maxwell."

While Miss Maxwell is no longer with us, she has left us with the blueprint in How To Do It.



Here is a typical seating arrangement at one of Miss Maxwell's parties.



It seems Stavros Niarchos wasn't invited to the above party, but he did make it to her Tiara Ball.



Here are just a few party pointers from Miss Maxwell that I have translated for Thanksgiving:

Avoid people with causes to boost or grievances to air.

(Since it’s Thanksgiving and you are probably having the family in, rest assured there are grievances and at least one PETA pushing adolescent. Sorry)

Avoid the very shy, uncertain, introverted types.

(Seat them at the kids table.)

I always make it a point, for instance, even in a predominantly eggheaded group, to have a smattering of beautiful women regardless of whether they are dumbbells or not (and
most beautiful women are not very bright.)

(Remember, Elsa Maxwell tipped the scale at about 300 pounds, so she might be bitter, still when you tell this story and your brother’s girlfriend asks, “Who is Elsa Maxwell? “, feel free to move them to the kids table.)

As for the limits of age, there are none.

(Bravo Elsa. Feel free to move two young folk from the kids table to the big table. Pick the boy who laughed when the girlfriend asked “Who’s Elsa” and the overweight niece who can program your Blackberry.)


Miss Maxwell called on some of her friends to provide the recipe selections in How to Do It. The ever-emaciated Mrs. T. Reed Vreeland (Deeeahhna to her friends) actually stole this recipe from Elsie de Wolfe.

Consomme Vért-Pré

Make a very good rich bouillon. Add enough spinach to color it green, and just before serving add finely chopped fines herbes. Serve hot or cold.

(This is the perfect dish for PETA lovers and super-models. In a pinch, add one vegetable bouillon cube to a quart of hot water. When it is dissolved, add 1 oz. of green food coloring. Voilà, Consomme Vért-Pré. Don’t worry what people think. You know in your heart the model will dump your brother before Christmas.)


Now get out there and entertain!

Honest Scrap

Wow. Thanks, again, to little augury for thinking of us (and reading us.) The rules for this award are:
share 10 random facts about yourself and tap seven fellow bloggers in return.

About me...

1.

I am addicted to Tab.

2.

My IQ is 175; ironically, my income is $175.

3.

I have a collection of stuffed Tiggers. Many of them bounce.


4.

I once waited at a stage door to meet Vanessa Redgrave. She is remarkably tall and was very gracious.

5.

I am the seventh “Lucinda” in my family going back to the Civil War.

6.

The only Olympic sport I watch is fencing.

7.

I don’t always wear underwear, but I ALWAYS carry a “hankie”.

8.

In 6th grade, my favorite author was Andre Malraux. (Today, all my friends tell me that if they had gone to school with me as a child, I would have spent most of my time stuffed in a locker.) Later in life I found out Malraux was a bit of a sexist and I was bummed.




9.

My favorite fashion designer of all time is Elsa Schiaparellii. My mother had an old bottle of ”Shocking” with the perfume long evaporated. My mother was always dressed to the nines. On most days I am dressed to the twos.

10.

I am left-handed and dyslexic, therefore I spell like a demented and drunken Elizabethan typesetter. Those squiggly “PASSWORD” letters on comment pages are a disaster.

HERE ARE SOME INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT LEFT-HANDEDNESS

1.Left handed people are more likely to be on the extreme ends of the intelligence scale. Left-handed people have a higher portions of mentally retardation and they also have a tendency to have high IQ's. Left-handed people who have higher I.Q.s tend to have an I.Q. of over 140. (See #3)

2. Stuttering and dyslexia occur more often in left-handers. (See # 3 again)

3. 4 of the 5 original designers of the Macintosh computer were left-handed. I was not one of them. (See # 3 one more time.)

4. Left-handers excel at fencing. (See # 6)

I love food, the South, books, tunes and design, so here are a list of bloggers I love in no particular order; it was enough to be nominated.

Deep Fried Kudzu I lived for years in Alabama. Who knew there was such cool stuff there.
i suwannee Another Southern girl with high style.
Frognall Dibdin's Shelves: A Book Blog. Fine old books and a witty host.
Brilliant Asylum. Definitally brilliant.
Biscuits and Such. Food, food, food. Oh yeah and she's Southern.
ali mode. They have been busy lately, but we are hoping this will spur them along.
Late Greats. They always have great tune ideas.

Hunting Season

Today is the beginning of deer hunting season in West Virginia. Hunting is a polarizing issue.


One of the most vivid memories I have of being with my father was hunting with him. I was four-years-old and he got me up before dawn and we went off in search of pheasant. It was bitterly cold and the sun was blinding. The stood me in front of his body and aligned my shoulder to touch his thigh and braced my body. I had watched him enough to know how I was supposed to hold the gun, and being left-handed, mirrored his position. He checked everything with the gun and with me and told me I could fire when ready. Of course I fired immediately, because what I wanted to do, more than shoot an actual bird was to just shoot the gun. I bagged no pheasant that day, but I will never forget those moments with my father.


Last year a young man that worked for me off and on told me he was going turkey hunting. His cousin was going lend him a rifle so he could hunt. He wanted to shoot three turkeys, so he could give one to each of the mothers of his children and have his own Christmas dinner. He was hunting to put food on the table.
I don't believe that the NRA, with its lobbyist in Armani suits, speaks for my handyman, or for me. In Washington, D. C., a city with the strictest gun laws in the nation, barley a week passed that I didn't hear the fire of an automatic weapon. The people firing them were not looking to put food on the table.


In her introduction to Women on Hunting, Pam Houston wrote:

"To hunt an animal successfully you must think like an animal, move like an animal, climb to the top of the mountain just to go down the other side, and always be watching, and waiting, and watching. To hunt well is to be at once the pursuer and the object of the pursuit. The process is circular, and female somehow, like giving birth, or dancing. A hunt, at its best, ought to look from the air like a carefully choreographed ballet."

You don't have to go with me... but I thought I would share with you some of my favorite actresses and a former First Lady "packing" along with a lovely song from Hem...

A-Hunting We Will Go

Osbert Lancaster and Drayneflete Revealed

Osbert Lancaster was a cartoonist. That is kind of like saying Mrs. Beeton was a cook. Lancaster is best known for his work as a cartoonist, but he was also a student of architecture, a set designer, a bon vivant and wicked wit.

A large exhibition of his work, was organized in 2008 to commemorate the centennial of his birth, resulted in a biography/monograph, Cartoons and Coronets: The Genius of Osbert Lancaster.

He combines his love of architecture, his art and his wit in my favorite of works, Drayneflete Revealed,

a parody of the architectural development of an imaginary English hamlet. The endpapers feature a current map of the village attributed to the students of the Drayneflete School of Arts and Crafts,




no doubt a reflection of his memories of the Slade School. The rather elaborate joke moves from the early bronze age, to present day.

"There was a temple of Castor and Pollux occupying the site of the present Parish Church ... another temple standing on ground now covered by the offices of the Drayneflete and district Electric Light Co., that was probably dedicated to the worship if Venus suburbia, the Suburban Aphrodite, a cult very popular in Roman Britain. In the center of the market square there stood a gigantic statue of an Emperor, of which the head ( now in the Museum) was discovered by a Mr. Brickworthy in 1885, when clearing out an old cesspool in the Vicarage garden."

Gigantic head of an Emperor (Claudius? Caligula? Nero? Trajan? Vespasian?)

Drayneflete suffered considerably during the Medieval era:

"Gone is the exquisite old Custard Cross where the market price of custards (or costards) was regularly fixed by the masters of the Custard Makers' Guild....gone is the beautiful old Moot Hall, wantonly destroyed... to make way for the a heavy and ill-proportioned building in the Renaissance style, gone the fine fourteenth-century hall of the Worshipful Company of Drumstretchers. "

After the bombing in 1944 one shard of the medieval masonry remained standing. In my favorite cartoon we find a before and after illustration of a fifteenth-century wall-painting of St. George. The first panel purports to be the painting at its' discovery and the second, after a careful cleaning by a professor Isolde.



For anyone who has ever been appalled at a poor restoration, this image should leave you laughing.

The Young Visiters

Blogging is very fascinating to me. I follow about 20 blogs and I am always pleasantly surprised when they post about an item that is on my mind or on my bookshelf. For several week now, I have had my copy of Daisy Ashford's The Young Visiters on my desk. This week, The Persephone Post, posted about Ashford's book. It was one of the books they had wanted to re-publish, but a reprint already existed. Daisy Ashford wrote this novel in pencil when she was nine-years-old.



Young Daisy loved to talk to adults and read Victorian novels and both are evident in her slim novel. In 1952, an edition was published with an introduction by J. M. Barrie and the drawings of William Pène du Bois.



Pène du Bois was born in Nutley, New Jersey. At eight his family moved to France, only to return to Nutley when he was fourteen. At nineteen, he sold his first book, The Great Geppy. He abandoned college to continue his career as a writer and illustrator. Thought of as a children's writer, his books are wildly imaginative. The Great Geppy is a striped horse -- NOT a zebra, but a striped horse who solves crimes at a circus. My favorite, Squirrel Hotel, is about a squirrel hotel, elaborately appointed with doll furniture, electric lights and a circular staircase. When the builder disappears, a reporter looks for him by tracing his purchases for the hotel, including 48 four-poster canopied doll beds.



In 2003, a quirky adaptation of The Young Visiters was filmed starring Hugh Laurie, Jim Broadbent and Bill Nighy. It is well worth adding to your Netfilix queue.

Wednesday Etiquette

Today's etiquette tip goes out to you men who are in the market for seducing women. Now I am the first to admit that Quentin Crisp might not be the first name to come to mind when thinking of seduction (well the seduction of women), but his advice is spot on:

However feeble the excuse that may be given for saying 'no', a gentleman always accepts it. If a woman says, "I can't invite you in, the place is too untidy,' he does not say, "Oh I love untidiness,' because he ought to know damn well what she means. A gentleman doesn't pounce ... he glides.

If a woman sits on a piece of furniture which permits your sitting beside her, you are free to regard this as an invitation, though not an unequivocal one. If she sits in a chair, you are not really free to sit on the arm; the words, 'Surely you would be more comfortable over there,' mean "go away,' although whether they mean go away for ever or only go away for the time being you will have to work out later.

The Pounce is desperate; The Glide is calm. The Pounce is clumsy with frustration; The Glide is airborne with sangfroid.

Remember, "No" means "No." Now get out there and brush up on your sangfroid.

The Old Barber Shop

With considerable help from the many residents of Shirley, we have been sprucing up downtown. For those of you who have never ventured to downtown Shirley, WV, here are some highlights. This building used to house the barber shop. It is now empty. I rent the double red doors to a neighbor to park his tractor.

We have had a few complaints that the red is simply too bright. We disagree!

Wallpaper?

I know most of you follow An Aesthete's Lament, religiously. One of my favorite features is, "Why Aren't These Still Made? Well, I saw this design and thought, why wasn't this ever made?

The (badly reproduced) design is from the endpapers of The Gun Club Cookbook, featured earlier this month on Cookbook Of The Day. I just think these endpapers with their bright yellow background and crossed guns over a salt shaker would make a terrific wallpaper.

Though such a thing might have been unthinkable in the days of Elsie de Wolfe, today anyone, including me, can be their own wallpaper designer. In Canada, a company named Rollout Custom Wallpaper will produce wallpaper from your design.

I wonder if the The Gun Club Drink Book has crossed guns over a martini glass?