Rumors Swirl Amid Concern Over the Princess of
Wales
Prince William’s decision to bow out of a planned
appearance this week, citing an undisclosed personal matter, fueled feverish
speculation about his wife’s health online.
On
Christmas Day, Catherine, Princess of Wales, attended service at St. Mary
Magdalene Church in Sandringham, Norfolk, England, wearing head-to-toe royal
blue. She walked to church with her husband, Prince William, and their three
children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, much like she had
in years past.
Greeting
the gathered crowds and the cameras, “She looked lovely for the occasion,” said
Town & Country.
The
princess has not been seen in public since.
Three weeks
later, on Jan. 17, Kensington Palace announced that Catherine, 42, formerly
known as Kate Middleton, had been admitted to the London Clinic to undergo “a
planned abdominal surgery.”
The
surprise news about Catherine’s health was magnified by the fact that, just an
hour later, the palace announced that King Charles III, 75, would receive
treatment for an enlarged prostate the next week. Two of the most senior
members of Britain’s royal family were now facing health trials.
As news
started to return to normal — on Wednesday King Charles was photographed being
driven from his home, Clarence House, and he has resumed some official
business, including meeting with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak — rumors began to
surface again about the Princess of Wales. Although Prince William, 41, also
scaled back his royal duties during his wife’s recuperation, this week, he
bowed out of a planned appearance at a memorial service at St. George’s Chapel
in Windsor for his godfather, King Constantine of the Hellenes, who died in
January 2023.
That led a
palace source to address the latest twist in the saga, and perhaps try to stop
the rumors, in language that did anything but. The princess, the source told
People, “continues to be doing well.”
William’s
absence at the memorial, and the reason given by the palace — an undisclosed
personal matter — only fueled continued speculation around Catherine’s health.
Little is known about her medical procedure, leading to plenty of conjecture,
concern and conspiracy theories.
What kind of surgery did Kate Middleton have?
That
remains a mystery to the public. Abdominal surgery could be anything from an
appendectomy to laparoscopy. On Jan. 17, Kensington Palace said the surgery was
successful. It did not offer details on Catherine’s diagnosis or prognosis,
other than that her condition was “not cancerous.”
The palace
added: “The Princess of Wales appreciates the interest this statement will
generate. She hopes that the public will understand her desire to maintain as
much normality for her children as possible; and her wish that her personal
medical information remains private.”
The palace
issued another statement at the end of the month, telling the public that
Catherine had been discharged from the London Clinic.
Where is Kate Middleton?
At home,
according to a statement. The palace said the princess would recuperate at
Adelaide Cottage in Windsor Home Park after she left the hospital.
Her office
added that she was “unlikely to return to public duties until after Easter.”
How are Kate’s family faring?
Prince
William visited his wife shortly after her surgery and was photographed leaving
the hospital. But according to People magazine, Catherine’s three children did
not see their mother at the hospital. That follows the London Clinic’s visitor
guidelines, which state that “we do not permit any children or babies to
visit.” (Special requests must be approved by hospital staff.) Instead, the
princess is said to have connected with her children over FaceTime.
The palace
has called various conspiracy theories “total nonsense.”
The lack of
information around Catherine has given rise to wild speculation about her
health. A Spanish journalist named Concha Calleja claimed that she spoke with a
source within the Royal Family. The source supposedly told Ms. Calleja that
Catherine faced serious complications after surgery, requiring “drastic”
actions to save her life.
“The
decision was to put her in an induced coma,” Ms. Calleja told the Spanish news
show Fiesta. “They had to intubate her.”
In its
initial statement, Kensington Palace said it would provide updates on the
princess only when there was “significant new information to share.” But the
palace was moved to address Ms. Calleja’s claims, calling them “total nonsense”
and “ludicrous.”
Steven
Kurutz covers cultural trends, social media and the world of design for The
Times. More about Steven Kurutz
Developers Who Leveled ‘Britain’s
Wonkiest Pub’ Ordered to Rebuild
The Crooked House was knocked down last summer after a
suspicious fire. Local authorities have now ordered that the owners reconstruct
the site brick by brick.
The Crooked
House, a pub in England’s West Midlands that was demolished last year after a
suspicious fire, could soon be rising from the rubble after its owners were
ordered to restore the pub to its former lopsided glory.
The tavern,
known as “Britain’s wonkiest pub” for its slanting walls and floors, was sold
to a private developer in July 2023. Around two weeks later, the pub caught
fire in a suspected arson attack and the developers who had bought it brought
in the bulldozers. Locals were outraged. With the support of local politicians,
they launched a public campaign to see the building restored and someone held
accountable for its destruction.
Now, they
may be one step closer to those goals becoming a reality. South Staffordshire
Council, the local authority for the area where the pub once stood, on Tuesday
ordered the owners to rebuild the pub within three years, restoring it using
original materials and with its original character maintained.
The council
said in a statement that it had “engaged with the owners since the demolition,
but has reached a point where formal action is considered necessary.” An
initial attempt to reach the owners by phone and email went unanswered.
The pub,
located in Himley, a small village just west of Dudley, was not a listed
building, which would have given it legal protection. But it was considered a
“heritage asset” and registered on the Historic Environment Record as a
building of local importance, according to the council.
Roger Lees,
the leader of South Staffordshire Council, said in a statement that a “huge
amount of time and resources” had been put into investigating the unauthorized
demolition of the pub, and the enforcement order had not been taken lightly.
“But we
believe that it is right to bring the owners, who demolished the building
without consent, to account,” he said. “And we are committed to do what we can
to get the Crooked House rebuilt.”
The
building, constructed in 1765 as a farmhouse, began to slouch in the 19th
century because of coal mining under its foundations. For generations, its
window frames had slanted sideways and its walls seemed to tilt at a near
gravity-defying angle, delighting both patrons and passers-by.
Despite its
wobbly looks, the building was structurally safe after being shored up by steel
bars and other supports. But its fate had become as precarious as its
appearance.
In recent
years, the pub had faced financial hardship like so many others across Britain
in the wake of the pandemic and amid a cost of living crisis. The developers
who bought the building planned to convert it for “alternative uses,” local
authorities said at the time. Then last August, a suspicious fire broke out one
Saturday night partially destroying the building. Before the locals even had a
chance to take stock, it was leveled.
Last year
Staffordshire Police said it had arrested six people on suspicion of conspiracy
to commit arson, but no one has been charged and those suspects remain on
conditional bail.
Marco
Longhi, a member of Parliament who represents the area where the pub was based,
Dudley North, said the demolition of the beloved pub “shook our community.”
“So it’s
fantastic news that an enforcement notice has been served on the owners for
demolition without consent,” Mr. Longhi said in a statement posted to Facebook
on Tuesday.
He added
that the owners would be required to “rebuild the site back its former glory,
and I will not rest until the Crooked House is built back brick by brick.” Mr.
Longhi concluded with a warning: “Let this serve as a warning to anyone who
wants to launch an attack on our heritage sites — you will not get away with
it.”
Those
involved in the awareness campaign were hopeful but realistic that it would
still be some time before the pub was restored.
Marie
Stokes, 62, who lives in nearby Wolverhampton, has taken part in protests at
the site since the pub’s demolition and said she was “over the moon” to hear
the news of its potential restoration.
“I am so
proud to have been a part of it,” she said through tears when reached by phone.
“It was a lovely pub, I had many great memories there with my husband who has
now passed.”
The order,
she said, was a testament to the power of a small group of committed people. “I
am in for the long haul, and we aren’t going anywhere,” she said of the locals
who demanded the return of the pub.
The
enforcement notice that ordered the owners to rebuild the pub can be appealed
within 30 days, and if the order is not appealed or the restoration completed
within three years, the owners could be prosecuted.
Campaigners
may find some hope from other communities that have fought similar battles
before. The Carlton Tavern, a 1920s pub tucked away between newer buildings in
London’s Maida Vale neighborhood, was also unceremoniously destroyed in 2015,
igniting local outrage.
After a
long public campaign, the developers who had knocked down the Carlton Tavern
were also ordered to rebuild brick by brick. They may have had a slightly
easier task, though.
Firstly,
the building was not slanting. Secondly, the preservation society English
Heritage had done an earlier survey of the Carlton Tavern as it was being
considered for historical status.
During that
process, the society had created a detailed record of the pub’s rooms and taken
molds of its distinctive architectural features. When it was time to rebuild,
there was a clear blueprint.
Six years
later, as Britain was emerging from a pandemic lockdown, the pub finally
reopened its doors.
Megan
Specia reports on Britain, Ireland and the Ukraine war for The Times. She is based in London. More about Megan Specia
Wicked Little Letters is a 2023 British black comedy mystery film
directed by Thea Sharrock and written by Jonny Sweet. The film stars Olivia
Colman, Jessie Buckley, Anjana Vasan, Joanna Scanlan, Gemma Jones, Malachi
Kirby, Lolly Adefope, Eileen Atkins, and Timothy Spall.
Wicked
Little Letters premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival on 9
September 2023, and was released in the United Kingdom by StudioCanal on 23
February 2024. The film received mixed reviews from critics.
Based on a
true scandal that stunned 1920s England, the story centres on neighbours Edith
Swan and Rose Gooding in the seaside town of Littlehampton. One day, a series
of obscene letters begin to target Edith and the other residents, with
suspicion falling upon Rose. As the outrageous letters continue to escalate,
Rose risks losing both her freedom and custody of her daughter. Police Officer
Gladys Moss is determined to find the real culprit, and along with a group of
other women, seeks to solve this perplexing mystery.
Review
Wicked Little Letters review – a deliciously
sweary poison-pen mystery
The true tale of a foul-mouthed scribbler in 1920s
Sussex is given nuance by a stellar cast including Olivia Colman, Jessie
Buckley, Anjana Vasan and Timothy Spall
Before X or
Twitter or even YouTube, if you wanted to vent your rage at an unjust world on
a blameless bystander you had to go to the trouble of actually writing a letter
and posting it. These were the days of the poison pen letter, an early
20th-century socio-criminal phenomenon here revived by comedian Jonny Sweet’s
gleefully sweary script and a competent ensemble of British comedy’s finest
directed by Thea Sharrock.
Swearwords,
you see, can be very funny – especially when primly pronounced by a pious
spinster such as Edith (Olivia Colman), who seems to be the letter writer’s
primary target. Or when spurting forth from a potty-mouthed slattern such as
Edith’s neighbour Rose (Jessie Buckley), on whom suspicion immediately falls.
And these swearwords are particularly funny – a collection of naughty non
sequiturs and rococo rantings that derive from the real letters of the
Littlehampton libels, a forgotten scandal that terrorised this small Sussex
town in the early 1920s. “Piss-country whore”? “Foxy-assed rabbit-fucker”?
Epithets this fruity are clearly beyond the wit of man to invent. (And there’s
your first clue to the letter writer’s identity.)
Some credit
should therefore go to Christopher Hilliard, author of the well-researched 2017
book that brought the case back to public notice. It’s Sweet’s script, though,
that successfully folds the true crime tale into an eminently exportable
period-drama package. And it’s the cast – notably Anjana Vasan as the county’s
lone female police officer and Timothy Spall as Edith’s domineering father –
who allow for deeper exploration of the underlying motives for such aberrant
behaviour. Swearing can be comic, but it might also be the way that a highly
pressurised, repressive and patriarchal postwar society lets off a bit of
steam.
The Littlehampton Libels
A
Miscarriage of Justice and a Mystery about Words in 1920s England
Christopher Hilliard
Recounts
the story of a poison-pen mystery that led to a miscarriage of justice in a
seaside town in the years following the First World War
Offers a
convincing account of a painstaking and ingenious police investigation into a
libel case
Recovers
the words and word-play of working-class people in the early twentieth century
Examines
the psychological dynamics of a working-class community
Provides
the most substantial interpretative account of criminal libel in the twentieth
century
Interview
Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley: ‘Never repress
a woman – because it will come out’
Claire
Armitstead
The actors star in a true-life 1920s tale of a
snobbish small town upset by poison-pen letters. They discuss falling in love
with one another, the f-word and the parallels with today’s internet trolling
On 23
September 1921, a letter arrived at the home of Edith Swan, a laundress in the
seaside town of Littlehampton, addressed to “the foxy ass whore 47, Western
Rd”. One of the milder letters that had been plaguing the Sussex community for
three years, it continued: “You foxy ass piss country whore you are a
character.” Swan blamed a neighbour, Rose Gooding. But the post-office clerk
and the local police had other suspicions, which drove them to rig up a
periscope to spy on deliveries to the town’s post box and marking postage
stamps with invisible ink.
The
combination of filthy poison pen letters and DIY sleuthing in a quaint
small-town setting is a gift for the star pairing of Olivia Colman and Jessie
Buckley. Directed by Thea Sharrock with a screenplay by Jonny Sweet, and
stuffed with classy character actors, Wicked Little Letters blows a raspberry
at the Agatha Christie tradition of cosy crime stories. It also undercuts the
Downton Abbey image of British social history which, says Buckley, “gives
everybody the idea that people are kind of lovely when actually there’s a
little bit of dirt under everybody’s pretty teacup. Everyone loves a good
swear, even the ones that say they don’t.”
Colman and
Buckley are in high spirits when we meet, having just spent half an hour
filming Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway, in which they discussed the
different forms of rudeness with a group of five-year-old boys. Colman,
familiar to them as the conniving innkeeper Mrs Scrubbit in Wonka, bounces in
first with a “fart” app, which she has installed specially for the occasion.
“It’s so good, I can’t stop,” she says, letting off a peal of whoopees, as
assistants scurry around ensuring she and Buckley have everything they need.
“Oh sorry, that’s too much,” she apologises, after miming along to a
particularly sonorous one. “OK, I promise I’ll stop,” she says, giving vent to
another as her co-star settles into the seat next to her. It’s an impromptu
improvisation of delighted gaucherie reminiscent of the one that propelled her
2019 Oscar acceptance speech for The Favourite into the best-ever league.
Colman and
Buckley became best friends after meeting through a Letters Live event at a
festival in Oxfordshire, at which Colman’s contributions included a humorous
letter from a 17th-century naval officer to a creditor, and Buckley read a
declaration of love from Maud Gonne to WB Yeats. “We stayed up late doing
karaoke,” says Buckley. “Yes, we just sort of fell in love with each other,”
adds Colman, who went on to recommend her new friend to play her younger self
in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s award-winning adaptation of the Elena Ferrante novel The
Lost Daughter. Though the separate timelines meant they didn’t have any scenes
together, they continued their after-hours bonding, “singing, playing guitar,
swimming in the sea and drinking rosé,” says Colman. “I’m sure we are kindred,”
adds Buckley. “Yes,” replies Colman. “It should happen more often – outside and
inside work.”
When Wicked
Little Letters came up, on which Colman and her husband, Ed Sinclair, are
producers, she suggested Buckley again, though this time for a character who is
the exact opposite of her own. While middle-aged Edith tends to the town’s
laundry and dutifully keeps house for a tyrannical father, Rose is a free
spirit who roisters with the sailors in the pub when she is not waging domestic
war on her sister and her seaman husband, who is known not to be the father of
her young daughter.
The
Littlehampton libels became a national sensation, debated in parliament and
filling the newspapers with prurient outrage. As filming began, the apparent
outlandishness of the drama was put into perspective by a more recent scandal:
the Wagatha Christie case – which pitted Coleen Rooney against Rebekah Vardy,
highlighting the offstage enmities of the footballing world – erupted into the
courts and the press with its own barely credible story of female betrayal and
amateur sleuthing. “Ooh, we were all gripped by that,” says Colman.
In the
film, as in life, it doesn’t take long to work out that Rose is not to blame
for the letters, which are gleefully recited at length from the originals that
were produced as evidence in the resulting court hearings. The mystery in both
cases is not whodunnit, but why – and how it could be possible for those
charged with upholding the law to be so snobbishly prejudiced that they refused
to believe the evidence in front of their eyes. When Edith Swan was put on
trial, the judge ordered a jury to “consider whether it was conceivable that
she could have written this document” given that her “demeanour in the witness
box was that of a respectable, clean-mouthed woman”.
By the time
the truth was accepted, Rose had spent two spells in jail. Her only fault, says
Buckley, was her refusal to conform. “She was basically judged for being a
single mother, which is hard enough without having the whole rest of the world
condemn you for it. She wanted to be as uncompromisingly free and full and
joyful as she possibly could be, and that does come with consequences.”
Though the
language of the letters might appear startlingly extreme, it reflects a real
shift that social historians have attributed to the stresses of the first world
war. Swearing accelerated at a such a pace that, by 1930, the editors of a
collection of British songs and slang noted that, among soldiers particularly,
the word “fucking” was so common that it was merely a warning “that a noun is
coming”. The same licence was never given to women, and in many quarters still
isn’t. Buckley, who is 34 and grew up in Ireland, has an early memory of being
banished to the back step for swearing. “I remember feeling half ashamed and
half like it’s just a word and I probably meant it. I was going for gold: this
was my revenge, my revolt against the back step.”
Colman, who
has just turned 50, had a different experience growing up in Norfolk: she can’t
remember a time when she didn’t know the F-word. “My mum or dad always swore
and it was never in anger, just in normal conversation. Dad would say:
‘Where’ve I put the fucking car keys’, or mum would say: ‘Shall we have a cup
of tea? Yes, fuck it, let’s have a cup of tea.’ So I’ve got no time for people
who would happily watch a murder on telly but whose sphincters tighten at the
idea of some woman swearing in the 1920s.”
She does,
though, add a caveat: “If you hear someone in the street who’s really angry,
swearing at another person, of course that’s scary and shocking.” Wicked Little
Letters treads this line: the language might be funny, but the emotions
powering it are not. Though in some ways it tells a story of its time, which is
handled with “a dollop of artistic licence”, in other ways it is a startlingly
resonant portrayal of the rage unleashed in women who are subjected to coercive
control.
“Never
repress a woman – because it will come out,” says Colman. “Rose manages to
escape. But Edith is stuck in this place where she’s still under the thumb of
her father in her late 40s. And it was only through writing these letters that
she got some sort of a release. So it is serious. It’s the way women were
treated in that period. And how far we have come, I suppose, is open for
discussion.”
In
particular, Colman points out, there is a parallel with the internet trolling
of today. “I think Edith sees Rose and thinks: ‘Oh my God, life could be
different.’ And, you know: ‘Fuck you for being what I want to be.’ She probably
feels bad initially, but then it’s like a drug and she can’t stop. It’s so
gratifying. It’s trolling. She has anonymous power and a thrill from hurting
someone, which is awful. And it’s happening now on a much greater scale.”
People are
complicated, agrees Buckley. “I guess ultimately everyone wants to be seen. As
Frankenstein’s creature says: ‘I’m malicious because I’m miserable.’ If you
lock somebody up, they’re going to become lonely, and they’re going to cause
damage.”
Partly
because of a fear of trolling, neither actor uses social media. “I don’t want
to see all that. I don’t want someone I’ve never met to be unkind. I don’t
understand it, and I wouldn’t be able to cope with it. And I really feel for
our youth,” says Colman, who has three children. “As a teenager I was able to
make my mistakes in private, you know, but now, you’ve got to be so careful. I
feel sorry for them. And I want to tell them to just walk away from it.”
Which begs
the question, what exactly do two such successful actors think they might find
themselves trolled for? “We’re not going to tell you that,” they chorus, while
agreeing that doing work that makes them cringe is part of any performer’s lot
because mistakes happen all the time, even if nobody else notices.
Buckley,
whose first break was as one of the hopefuls in the TV reality show I’d Do
Anything, auditioning to play Nancy in the West End musical Oliver (she came
second and turned down the consolation prize of an understudy role), now
alternates between music, theatre and film. The soundtrack of the 2018 film
Wild Rose – which drew all her strengths together in the portrayal of a
Glaswegian wannabe country-and-western singer – reached the top of the UK
country albums chart. She won an Olivier award in 2022 as Sally Bowles in the
West End production of Cabaret, but is now on a film roll that will shortly
include a Frankenstein film, The Bride, directed by Gyllenhaal, and a screen
adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet. But it’s not all plain sailing, she
says. “You spend most of your time trying to convince people to give you a job.
And then you’re like: ‘Oh my God, I was terrible.’ Or: ‘This is awful’, but you
just keep going.”
Colman, who
became a national treasure with TV roles including DS Ellie Miller in the crime
series Broadchurch, and Queen Elizabeth II in The Crown, has developed such bad
stage fright that she thinks she may never act in the theatre again. Her last
appearance was at the National Theatre in 2017, as the stuck-at-home daughter
of an ailing mother in Lucy Kirkwood’s drama of science and sibling rivalry
Mosquitoes. “I started in theatre and loved it so much,” she says. But when her
children got to the “pyjama-time-cuddle-on-the-sofa-before-bed age”, she
stepped back. “And I think I’ve left it too long – the fear is too great. Oh,
God. I feel it’s so far to fall now. And then there’s my menopause brain, and
the fear that I wouldn’t be able to remember an entire play. When you’re
filming, you can look and learn on the day, get it wrong, and get to go again.
But if you’re on stage, and you’ve forgotten your soliloquy … everyone knows
that fear, but I don’t know if I can face it again. Maybe when I’m in my 80s with
an earpiece …”
Both actors
are fiercely protective of the Edith Swans of this world – difficult women
whose circumstances have driven them to challenging behaviour. “What does that
even mean?” demands Buckley. “Are you challenging or difficult because you
actually want some autonomy and want to be part of a world that engages you
instead of putting you in the corner and pretending that we’re all parlourmaids
who witter away to each other and drink tea? Because that’s never been my
experience as a woman.”
Buckley has
the wind in her sails and is not going to stop there, as Colman looks
admiringly on. “First of all,” she pronounces, “we should all be able to take
space and stand up and educate our minds and have autonomy of our bodies and
feel like we are entitled to pleasure and desire that is ours and not bound by
a system that decides those things for us. And so if that is challenging to
you, it shouldn’t be, because the other option is crippling and actually causes
more damage across the board.”
For all the
pain and havoc caused by the Littlehampton libels, they did have a positive
outcome of sorts. Gladys Moss, the dogged PC who investigated the case and is
played in the film by Anjana Vasan, recently had a blue plaque dedicated to her
in the Sussex town of Worthing, in recognition of her pioneering work as the
county’s first woman police officer. Edith Swan was finally freed from her
father, even though it took a jail sentence to do it. This thought sends the
two friends off on a reverie about what sort of prisoner she would have been.
She would have been a mother hen who taught the younger prisoners how to read
and write, says Colman. “Yeah,” picks up Buckley, “she’d be like: ‘You know
that F-word? I want you to write it out a hundred times.’”
Wicked Little Letters is released in the UK on
23 February
Celebrated
for his striking portrait paintings, this exhibition sheds new light on John
Singer Sargent’s acclaimed works. It explores how he worked like a stylist to
craft the image of the sitters he painted, who he often had close relationships
with.
Sargent
used fashion as a powerful tool to express identity and personality. He
regularly chose the outfits of his collaborators or manipulated their clothing.
This innovative use of costume was central to his artwork – for example,
tugging a heavy coat tighter around a man to emphasise his figure or letting a
dress strap sensuously slip from a woman’s shoulder. It was these daring
sartorial choices that allowed him to express his vision as an artist.
Almost 60
of Sargent’s paintings will be on display, including major portraits that
rarely travel. Several period garments will also be showcased alongside the
portraits they were worn in. The show examines how this remarkable painter used
fashion to create portraits of the time, which still captivate today.
Lead
support with a generous donation from the Blavatnik Family Foundation.
Additional support from the Sargent and Fashion Exhibition Supporters Circle
and Tate Americas Foundation.
Organised
by Tate Britain and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Both MFA Boston and Tate
Britain received generous support for international scholarly convenings and
for the exhibition from the Terra Foundation for American Art
This is a terrible
and unfair review by Jonathan Jones, followed below by a send Letter
by Cally
Blackman, who takes issue with the ‘dismissive’ review by Jones.
TWEEDLAND
Review
Sargent and Fashion review – tragicomic travesty
is a frock horror
Tate
Britain, London
Sargent’s gloriously rich and subtle paintings can’t
be reduced to dreary facts about hats, dresses and opera gowns. Sadly, that’s
just what’s happened
This is a
horrible exhibition. The American painter John Singer Sargent is a great artist
of identity, fascinated with the nature of social being. He paints people not
in isolation but as players in a social world in a way that is startling,
modern and so truthful it hurts. Trained in 19th-century Paris, he brought
brushwork tinted by Manet and Monet to portraying late Victorian and Edwardian
British society, and was especially drawn to those who didn’t fit the old order
– such as the young Jewish women joyously proclaiming their individuality in
Ena and Betty, Daughters of Asher and Mrs Wertheimer. But was he, above all, a
painter of fashion, as this show claims? No way – what on earth are they
talking about?
This daring
artist of modern life is turned into a stuffed shirt by a show that puts the
dress before the face, the hat before the head and the crinoline before the
soul in an obsessive, myopic argument. A painter with much to say to us
becomes, here, a relic with no relevance.
The first
thing you see on walking in is an old opera cloak, magnificently preserved and
beautiful in its day. But this black lacy artefact is leaden next to the first
painting, Sargent’s portrait of Aline de Rothschild, Lady Sassoon, whose keen
face is full of life and wit. That’s the difference between a work of art and
an ancient frock: the painting is as old as the dress but in it, a person
lives.
Throughout
this show, Sargent’s scintillating works are wretchedly displayed. There are
clothes in glass cases everywhere obstructing sightlines, distracting from the
art instead of illuminating it. One hilarious example is his portrait of Lord
Ribblesdale, a positively Sadean image of an aristocrat in top hat, black coat
and boots holding a riding crop he might be about to use on a horse or
housemaid. Instead of letting this fascinating portrait speak for itself, it is
displayed next to a case containing a top hat, made in the late 19th century by
Cooksey and Co of London, as the pedantic label explains.
The
curators have gone to the trouble of borrowing this topper from the Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston, but I have no idea what its presence adds to our
appreciation of Sargent. Reconstructing the clothing his sitters wore seems as
perverse as digging up their skulls and displaying them complete with forensic
reconstructions of their faces to see how accurately he painted them. The
crinkled silks look as macabre as that to me. They belong in an attic with a
rocking horse that moves of its own accord.
The canvases are not only crowded by old clothes but
shouted down by intrusive labelling and hideously set against ever-changing
wall colours and lighting
The
meticulous sartorial scholarship is misplaced. A painting is a fiction, not a
jumble of facts, and no artist knew that better than Sargent. Born to American
parents living in Europe, he was cosmopolitan, ironic and sophisticated – like
a character in a Henry James novel. James, in fact, became a friend, and there
are subtle connections between their artistry. Both might be mistaken, by an
idiot, for conservatives. But James probes the tremulous complexity of the
human psyche and the nature of morality with a shimmering, yet heartbreaking
power. Sargent, too, is a portraitist of subtlety and mystery, bringing out the
“character” of his people – with inverted commas as James might put it – in
wisps and dashes of impressionistic brushwork. Sargent and James would make a
much better exhibition.
Instead,“Fashion
was central to John Singer Sargent’s achievements as a portraitist”, declares
the opening wall text. No it wasn’t. Painting is. It’s the way he paints that
makes his art breathe. Yet here it’s hard to see that. The canvases are not
only crowded by old clothes but shouted down by intrusive labelling and
hideously set against ever-changing wall colours and lighting. Worst of all
there, is no narrative logic. The display sacrifices any sense of Sargent’s
life as an artist to its essayistic theme.
This is all
the more tragicomic because so many of Sargent’s finest works have been lent.
If I was the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, I’d have a serious
complaint about the way its treasure, Madame X, is displayed. This portrait of
Virginie Amélie Avegno Gautreau in a shoulder-baring dress was daring for the
1880s, even in Paris, where its contrast of dark material and pale, slightly
blueish flesh horrified the 1884 Salon exhibition. But far from being given the
grandstand it deserves, it is shown under a forgettable quotation painted in
huge letters.
Worse, it’s
just dropped in without any buildup or history (other than fashion history). We
learn nothing about the Paris in which Sargent started his career: the capital
of the avant garde where Manet and the impressionists were locked in artistic
civil war with the conservative Salon. Sargent knew the modernist rebels, had
met Monet as early as 1876 and his later portrait of the impressionist at his
easel shows how attracted he was to such ideas. Madame X brings that knowledge
into the establishment Salon and plays on the border of respectability and
outrage.
Sargent
slightly miscalculated, and people were more upset than he hoped. Is it the
black dress that shocked the Salon? No, it was sex. Gautreau, not the frock, is
the star, as she exudes sophisticated glamour, knowingly self-possessed as she
turns her sharp profile away. It is a novel compressed into a portrait. Sargent
provokes us to wonder who this magnificent character is, where she’s been and
might go next. Gautreau collaborates with him in creating the fiction, inciting
the fantasies.
This
portrait of a lady shows how Sargent is as elusive and complex a fabulist as
his alter ego, James. Each painting in this exhibition is just as rich, but the
curators keep hammering home their narrow clothes-based interpretation. It’s
extremely hard to see past that in the chaotic non-narrative display. An artist
as good as Sargent needs space, decent light and not much more – certainly not
quotations and props.
If you love
historic millinery, this may be for you. If you love great art, stay at home
and read The Portrait of a Lady.
Sargent and Fashion is at Tate Britain,
London, from 22 February to 7 July
( This is the reaction from Cally Blackman to the
terrible review published above.)
Letters
Throw off the cloak of snobbery and treat fashion
as a serious art form
Cally Blackman takes issue with a ‘dismissive’ review
of the John Singer Sargent exhibition at Tate Britain
When I read
or hear the word “frock”, my heart sinks and my hackles rise: when will fashion
be taken seriously? As the most powerful form of non-verbal communication,
clothes tell us a lot about people – from their occupation, to religion, to
their Indigenous heritage. The now thriving academic discipline of fashion
studies rose from schools of anthropology, ethnography, sociology, philosophy,
curatorial scholarship and art history. The first postgraduate course in the
history of dress was set up in 1965 at the Courtauld Institute – a bastion of
the art establishment – to enable curators and art historians to date paintings
and describe garments in them accurately. Sadly, many of them continue to get
it wrong.
Jonathan
Jones’s review of the Sargent exhibition at Tate Britain (Sargent and Fashion
review – tragicomic travesty is a frock horror, 20 February) was typical of the
snobbish and dismissive attitude often taken towards anything to do with
fashion, including the multitrillion-dollar fashion industry that, for better
or for worse, ranks as one of the biggest in the global economy, a fact that is
seldom recognised. If it was called “garment manufacture” instead of “fashion”,
a complicated word freighted with negative connotations, it might be.
Museums
such as the V&A and the Tate well know the pulling power of fashion
exhibitions and can hardly be blamed, in their currently straitened
circumstances, for wanting to cash in on it: on Thursday this week, the Tate
exhibition was packed, demonstrating the level of public interest. However, the
exhibition is more than just an exercise in ticket sales. Sargent was a great
painter who had an affinity with dress and fabric, like Dürer, Holbein, Van
Dyck, Rembrandt, Velázquez, Gainsborough and Lawrence before him, and traces of
their influence resonate throughout his work.
Whatever
the distress caused to Jones the by lighting, wall colours and glass cases in
wrong places, it is a very rare thing indeed to see garments displayed next to
the paintings in which they are depicted, and a special joy to see these same
garments interpreted on the canvas with Sargent’s consummate skill and
aesthetic judgment. Some of the gowns on display are by Charles Worth, the most
prestigious couturier in Paris (not “designer” – the word had not been invented
then). Compared with these, Ellen Terry’s beetle-wing-embellished Lady Macbeth
stage costume (“costume” is the term for clothing worn for performance, not for
garments worn in everyday life) looked dull and lifeless, yet scintillated in
radiant, glowing colour from Sargent’s portrait, a testament to his quality as
an artist.
Yes, some
of the objects displayed to accompany a painting seemed arbitrarily
helicoptered in, such as the top hat Jones mentions in his review, but this is
not an exhibition about “historic millinery” as he puts it, but one that offers
a new approach to a brilliant and prolific artist, just as the National
Portrait Gallery’s exhibition Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends in 2015
did. This generous, sumptuous array of Sargent’s work tells us much about
class, society and fashion at the end of the 19th century, an era of great
privilege for some, before the impending rupture of war. As the historian and
philosopher Thomas Carlyle wrote in his book Sartor Resartus (1831), one of the
first to address the significance of dress with any degree of seriousness:
“Clothes, as despicable as we think them, are so unspeakably significant.”
High
Victoriana meets modern luxury at the miraculously reinvented Fife Arms in
Braemar, unveiled for Christmas 2018 with much press and bagpiping after a
magnificent multi-million-pound makeover by art dealers Iwan and Manuela Wirth,
the Swiss co-presidents of Hauser & Wirth. (They own galleries in London,
New York, LA, Hong Kong, Zurich — and Bruton, Somerset, where they also have
proved their form in the hospitality business with Durslade Farmhouse). To find
such a luxury hotel in Scotland, let alone in the remote Highlands, is about as
rare as a budgerigar in the Arctic. This will be a huge boom to tourism and the
locale. With 46 eye-poppingly amazing rooms (individually themed and as
eclectically wonderful as is possible within the bounds of good taste and
design), and 95 staff to service the place, virtually the whole community has
been involved in some way or other. Local grandee Araminta Campbell designed
the house tartan and tweed (brilliantly used on walls, floors, uniforms and
curtains), the local deer horn specialist has created cornucopias of antler art
and practical objets, Picasso, Bruegel, Freud and HRH Prince Charles hang cheek
by jowl. No need to go to the National Gallery when you can stay here and
marvel at the masters up close and personal! Beware if you are frightened of
stuffed things, this is a taxidermist’s paradise – there is a red deer in the
dining room, a mobile of flying snipe in the stairwell, and every sort of
furred and feathered creature under glass – including a life-size waxwork of
Queen Vic herself settled in a wingchair in the library. (“Our mystery guest”
as front of house like to call her). There are grandiose suites, all royally
named and appointed, but also a number of less expensive rooms which are no
less luxurious. The Artist’s Studio room is a charming concept – up in the
eaves with a cosy box bed, pots and brushes on the windowsills and amusing
paint spatters on the floor. A very talented design team has been at work here.
It may be a little over the top and about as far from minimalist as you can
get, but the whole is expertly choreographed. You can eat smart in the Clunie
Dining room which features wood smoke ovens and cubist muraled walls by
Guillermo Kuitca, drink an inventive cocktail in the bar or try one of the
hundreds of carefully curated whiskies, or even have a pint of bitter and fish
and chips in the bustling Flying Stag pub. Come here to celebrate and relax, or
to walk, stalk or fish. Majestic mountains surround you and the River Dee
rushes past. Don’t be put off by the winding ascent past Scotland’s famed
International Ski Resort, Glenshee, the journey is all part of the adventure.
And why
might you ask would you ever want to come to Braemar (population 400) unless
tossing a caber at the Gathering? Well, a visit to this incredible hotel alone
will suffice. You will not be disappointed, whether with family, friends or
your own good self.
After 10 years at 14 Earlham Street, we are very sad
to announce the permanent closure of our retail store.
With our current lease ending this month, we have
taken the difficult decision not to reopen on the 12th of April or extend our
time at the property with a new lease.
Our main Showroom at Buspace Studios remains open for
appointments as usual. For details, please contact info@thevintageshowroom.com.
The Vintage
Showroom Ltd was formed in 2007 to house an ever growing archive of vintage
showroom and accessories collected by co-founders Douglas Gunn and Roy Luckett.
The Vintage Showroom has become one of the leading resources for vintage
menswear in the UK, with the archive covering the early mid 20th century and
specialising in international work, military and sports clothing, classic
English tailoring and country wear. In September 2012 a selection of the
archive was published in the title ‘Vintage Menswear – A Collection From The
Vintage Showroom’ for Laurence King publishing and “The Vintage Showroom – An
Archive of Menswear” followed in December 2015.
The
business and collection is divided into two parts – an appointment only
showroom situated near London’s Notting Hill and a retail outlet, with basement
showroom, located on Earlham Street in Covent Garden’ Seven Dials. The showroom
and studio resources are offered by appointment only and serve to inspire
design teams and stylists. The collection is available to purchase or hire and
the studio offers a number of bespoke services to clients for creative and
concept consultation. The shop, in Covent Garden, has quietly integrated itself
into Seven Dials proudly occupying the former ironmongery F.W. Collins &
Sons.
Ms. Carter
is the author of “George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the
Road to World War I.”
The most
surprising thing about the disclosure that King Charles III has been diagnosed
with cancer after less than two years on the throne is the fact that it’s been
disclosed at all.
Cancer is
common; candor about the British royal family’s heath, not so much. Over the
centuries, like many royal families, it has gone to great lengths to hide the
condition of the sovereign’s body. Charles’s honesty, as far as it goes, seems
to be a sign of his desire to be a different kind of monarch.
A ruling
monarch has always been the embodiment of the state, a living metaphor of its
health. Just look at Hans Holbein’s 1537 portrait of the six-foot-plus Henry
VIII, a robust giant bestriding the world at the peak of his powers. Healthy
king, healthy country. It works in reverse, too. Shakespeare — never above a
little Tudor propagandizing — turned Richard III, the king from whom Henry’s
father grabbed the throne in 1485, into someone with a hunchback, a man so ugly
that dogs barked when he passed. Examination of Richard’s body, discovered in
ruins under a car park in the English city of Leicester in 2012, showed he
simply had scoliosis.
When your
body is the state, how do you speak of its inevitable weaknesses and frailties?
Historically, you didn’t. Four hundred years after the Tudors, in 1859, Kaiser
Wilhelm II, the last German emperor, was born with a withered arm (and probably
some brain damage) as a result of a complicated delivery. The idea of a
physically disabled heir was unthinkable, especially in a country where the
aristocracy defined itself by its military prowess. Wilhelm’s grandfather asked
if it was even appropriate to offer congratulations on the birth.
Desperate
and frankly weird attempts were made to make the limb work. Wilhelm’s
functioning arm was bound to his body when he was learning to walk, in an
attempt to force him to use the other one: predictably he fell over a lot.
Electric shocks were passed through it. The arm was placed inside the warm
carcass of a freshly killed hare, the idea being that the heat of the dead
animal would transmute itself into the child’s arm. At the age of 4, as his
mother wept, he was regularly strapped into a machine to try to stretch the
muscles. Nothing worked. Wilhelm grew up to be difficult, anxious and
resentful, though ironically he adapted very well to having only one
functioning arm.
Wilhelm’s
cousin, Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia, went to extreme lengths to hide
the hemophilia of his son and heir, Alexei, and refused to explain the presence
of the notorious faith healer Rasputin, whose exploits became a metaphor for
the Russian state’s corruption.
Such
suppressions almost always came at personal, emotional and political costs. The
source of Alexei’s hemophilia gene is believed to be none other than King
Charles’s great-great-great-grandmother Queen Victoria. Victoria passed the
gene on to her son Leopold, who died at 30 in 1884, after suffering a brain
hemorrhage after a fall, and to two of her daughters. As a result of Victoria’s
energetic royal matchmaking, the gene passed into the royal family of Russia,
through her granddaughter Czarina Alexandra, and some of the royal families of
Germany, through her daughter Alice. After the queen’s death it passed into the
Spanish royal family, through her granddaughter Victoria Eugenie, known as Ena,
who married King Alfonso XIII in 1906. Her husband’s discovery that she was a
carrier helped to destroy their marriage, and her oldest and youngest sons
would both die young of bleeding after minor car accidents.
Victoria
may also have been a carrier of porphyria, the illness to which some historians
have attributed George III’s madness and which produces physical symptoms
including agonizing abdominal pain, skin rashes and purple urine. The queen’s
eldest daughter (also named Victoria, the mother of Kaiser Wilhelm II) may have
had porphyria, too; DNA testing on the exhumed body of her daughter, Charlotte,
found a gene mutation related to the disease.
That both
illnesses may well have run in the British royal family were closely guarded
secrets at the time, and the question has still never been publicly
acknowledged by the monarchy.
One might
have expected that as the British royal family became a ceremonial institution
without power, it would become more open. In fact, the opposite was true. If
appearance is the only power you have, appearance matters very much. Just
before midnight on Jan. 20, 1936, the royal doctor Bertrand Dawson injected
George V’s “distended jugular vein” with a cocktail containing enough morphine
and cocaine to kill him at least twice. Lord Dawson gave the ailing king a
comfortable exit, but just as important, guaranteed his death would be reported
in the reputable morning papers, rather than in the “less appropriate evening
journals.” The story finally came out 50 years later in 1986, not via the royal
family but through Lord Dawson’s biographer.
George VI,
the current monarch’s grandfather, smoked two packs of cigarettes a day and had
already undergone the removal of his whole left lung by the time he died.
Nonetheless, the cause of his death was reported as coronary thrombosis, a
disease with less social stigma than the cancer that actually claimed him.
According to a recent biographer of Queen Elizabeth II (Gyles Brandreth, a
close friend of her husband’s), even her stated cause of death — “old age” —
was a euphemism for multiple myeloma, a kind of bone-marrow cancer.
So there’s
been widespread sympathy and praise for King Charles’s honesty. “His Majesty
has chosen to share his diagnosis,” the official statement explained, “to
prevent speculation and in the hope it may assist public understanding for all
those around the world who are affected by cancer.”
It was,
however, arguably the minimum amount of disclosure that the king could get away
with, given that any withdrawal from public duties would immediately be
noticed. Moreover, it did not specify which cancer he has — there are many
kinds — nor how advanced it is. As Richard Smith, former editor of the British
Medical Journal, wrote, whether the king might “be either right as rain or dead
in a few weeks.”
That said,
it’s probably asking too much to expect full candor from any head of state
about his or her health. American presidents are just as prone to keep their
medical information to themselves: Franklin Roosevelt hid the effects of his
polio; John Kennedy’s perma-tan distracted the world from his Addison’s disease
and probable celiac disease. A president’s physical and mental condition has a
tangible effect on both American politics and those of the rest of the world.
There will continue to be intense speculation about this question for the
septuagenarian and octogenarian candidates in the coming U.S. presidential
election, but no one expects either of them to tell the full truth.
The King’s
illness is surprising and unwelcome news. But at least British citizens can
take comfort in the fact that the monarchy is a ceremonial institution with a
clear and uncontroversial line of succession.
Miranda
Carter is the author of “George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and
the Road to World War I.”
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