Errant Thoughts
About Andrew Cusack
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Whitechapel Library
There are precious few suitable uses for former church buildings.
At the worst end of the spectrum is nightclub, though bar or restaurant often doesn’t fall terribly far behind either. To my mind, I can hardly think of a more suitable use for an elegant and beautiful former church than to be turned into a library.
An example: the former Anglican parish church of St Philip, Stepney, in Whitechapel. Designed by Arthur Cawston, of whom I know little, it reminds me of J.L. Pearson’s Little Venice church for the eccentric “Catholic Apostolic Church”.
St Philip’s was declared redundant in 1979, at which time the neighbouring London Hospital still had its own medical school. This has since merged with that of St Bartholomew’s into “Barts and the London” or “Barts” or “BL”, under the auspices of Queen Mary University of London.
As St Philip’s sat pretty much smack dab in the middle of the campus of the London Hospital (augmented to the Royal London Hospital from 1990) and the college was surviving in cramped accommodation, it was decided to restore the fabric of the church and convert it to a library and study centre. The crypt of the church was adapted to house computer, teaching, and storage rooms as well as the museum of the Royal London Hospital.
Rather than preserve it in aspic, the medical school decided to keep this as a living building by commissioning eight new stained-glass windows to replace plain glass. They are completed along rather forthright German modernist designs and are dedicated to such themes as Gastroenterology and Molecular Biology. They will not be to everyone’s taste, but it is admirable for a medical school to commission stained glass windows at the turn of the millennium.
The Survey of London’s Whitechapel Project has a typically thorough entry on QMUL’s Whitechapel Library / the former church, including these applaudable photographs the Survey commissioned from Derek Kendall.
Articles of Note: 29 January 2024
A lively Doubleyoo-Ess once took me to lunch at the New Club and, in whispered tones, pointed out a gentleman sitting at another table.
“He is the world’s leading expert on the Scots tongue,” my friend explained.
“But he was excommunicated by all the other experts on Scots when he pointed out that eighty per cent of Scots words are interchangeable with Northumbrian English.”
Scots is fascinating for its closeness to English and its distinction. Those who’ve had the pleasure of tarrying awhile in the Netherlandic world (whether in Europe, the Cape of Good Hope, or elsewhere) can detect the odd affinities to Dutch and Afrikaans — reminding you that the North Sea was once a highway, not a barrier.
Luka Ivan Jukic has written an enlightening exploration of how and why Scotland lost its tongue.
Jukic contends there are no signs of revival, which I dispute. There is a much increased interest in the use of Scots, but it feels contrived and falls somewhat flat. If you take a look at the Scots column in The National newspaper, it comes across as the ravings of a kook something akin to Anglish.
■ Amongst the many of Scotland’s joys is the pleasure of just looking at its buildings.
Witold Rybczynski pleads “Give us something to look at!” in his account of why ornament matters in architecture.
■ The New York Post — founded by Alexander Hamilton in 1801 and thus the Empire State’s oldest and most venerable newspaper — reports that the world’s oldest and most venerable forest has been discovered right in the heart of the Catskill Mountains.
This is one of the most beautiful places in America, especially when the leaves begin to turn in autumn, and features widely in the old stories transcribed by Washington Irving and others.
The name of the Catskills is believed to be from the catamounts that used to roam the woods and bergs when our Dutch forefathers of old first arrived in the valley of the Hudson. Our earliest record of it is on a map by Nicolaes Visscher père from 1656 — and pleasingly the local magazine retains the old spelling in its name of Kaatskill Life.
This fossilised forest within the Catskills is believed to date from 385 million years ago (for those who doubt the Ussher chronology — and we remain open-minded ourselves) and was discovered at the bottom of an old quarry.
■ As a precocious teenager I remember a visit to the maritime museum in Rochefort on France’s Atlantic coast that included a fascinating display of the intricacies and accomplishments of global shipping, housed in the long old ropeworks that kept France’s navy afloat in the era of sail.
It’s all been kicking off in the Red Sea, which inspired Wessie du Toit to write that the shipping container is an uncanny symbol of modern life
■ Some people claim there is no life outside of NW3, but as much a fan of Hampstead as I am, my first loyalty in London neighbourhoods is firmly lodged in Southwark. (Pimlico is high on the list, too.)
Many will pine for those precious late summer afternoons idly dawdling on the Heath, but Hampstead in winter has its distinct pleasures. For me, it’s curdling up with a pile of books beside the coal fire in the Old White Bear.
In the Christmas issue of The Oldie, Peter York wrote about the rise and fall of arty Hampstead.
■ One of our Hampstead mates is originally a West Country man and now finds himself even further west, studying law in California.
For a New Yorker, California is The Great Other. If not quite a rival, then certainly something we are always being compared against.
Naturally, one looks down on California, but also with a certain envy. If ever America had a golden moment when imperial might was combined with the simple goodness of life, it must have been coastal California from the 1930s to 1960s — with a hint of survival into the 1980s.
California’s decline is evident to all, though its power and influence is still vast (as the iPhone in your pocket proves). The Manhattan Institute recently devoted an entire issue to the question of Can California Be Golden Again?
I haven’t had a chance to read much of it, but I did enjoy Jordan McGillis’s article on how San Diego retains many of the qualities that once made California the envy of the world.
■ Peter Viereck ranks amongst the names of slightly neglected thinkers in the agora of American conservatism. Reading him always brings some insight, but I never knew much about the man himself.
Samuel Rubinstein supplies a fascinating account of the man and his thinking in Peter Viereck: Psychoanalyst of Nazism.
■ National treasure Peter Hitchens has spent his life hating the ogre Ted Heath, destroyer of worlds. I will never forgive him for what he did to England’s ancient counties and boroughs.
But Hitchens the Heath Hater, with his typically thoughtful approach, offers a reconsideration of the man.
■ All politics is local: Fred de Fossard writes about how EU-obsessed Lib Dems are ruining Bath rather than guarding one of the most precious jewels of English cities.
■ We leave you with this six-colour lithograph from the Pretoria-based artist Nina Torr entitled ‘Here we go again’ (an edition of thirty, available from the Artists’ Press):
Architectural Exhibitions
The Architecture Association is renowned as the most pedantic of training schools for the profession. Housed as it is in an immaculate set of Georgian townhouses in Bedford Square, its students are rigorously trained to avoid anything that might be beautiful, expressive of the inherited tradition of millennia, or pleasing to the human condition.
Nonetheless, I love architectural models, and the AA is having an exhibition of a handful of models of the various places in which the Warburg Institute has been housed across its peripatetic and tumultuous history until it found its thus-far permanent home in Woburn Square in Bloomsbury.
“Architecture and interiors were crucial for Aby Warburg’s interrogation of culture,” the AA opaquely tells us.
“Between 1923 and 1958, designs were commissioned for buildings, interiors, and exhibitions, as the Warburg Library and Institute moved through a series of homes, first in Hamburg and then in London,” they more helpfully inform.
“This exhibition, an itinerant archive of models and drawings that portray the seven different spaces the Warburg Institute has occupied, sheds new light on Warburg’s involvement with architecture.”
19 January 2024 to 7 March 2024
Mon-Sat, 11h00-19h00
Gallery, Architectural Association (free)
Connectedly, the University of London is hosting an exhibition looking at Charles Holden’s masterplan for that institution’s Bloomsbury campus.
This show “celebrates the architect’s vision of what a modern university could be through displays of detailed architectural models, archival documents, photo albums, and other mixed media”.
Senate House is an amazing building but I think we can be glad the full scale of its original plan — stretching all the way up towards Gordon Square — was never completed.
17 Jan 2024 to 17 March 2024
Mon-Fri, 09h00-17h00
Senate House, University of London (free)
Articles of Note: 6 January 2024
■ I had the great privilege of studying French Algeria under the knowledgeable and congenial Dr Stephen Tyre of St Andrews University and the country continues to exude an interest. The Algerian detective novelist Yasmina Khadra — nom de plume of the army officer Mohammed Moulessehoul — has attracted notice in Angledom since being translated from the Gallic into our vulgar tongue.
Recently the columnist Matthew Parris visited Algeria for leisurely purposes and reports on the experience.
■ While you’re at the Spectator, of course by now you should have already studied my lament for the excessive strength of widely available beers — provoked by the news that Sam Smith’s Brewery have increased the alcohol level of their trusty and reliable Alpine Lager.
■ This week Elijah Granet of the Legal Style Blog shared this numismatic gem. It makes one realise quite how dull our coin designs are these days. I don’t see why we shouldn’t have an updated version of this for our currently reigning Charles.
■ Meanwhile Chris Akers of Investors Chronicle and the Financial Times has gone on retreat to Scotland’s ancient abbey of Pluscarden and written up the experience for the FT. As he settled into the monastic rhythm, Chris found he was unwinding more than he ever has on any tropical beach.
Pluscarden is Britain’s only monastic community now in its original abbey, the building having been preserved — albeit greatly damaged until it was restarted in 1948. The older Buckfast is also on its original site but was entirely razed by 1800 or so and rebuilt from the 1900s onwards. (Pluscarden also has an excellent monastic shop.)
■ An entirely different and more disappointing form of retreat in Scottish religion is the (Presbyterian) state kirk’s decision to withdraw from tons of their smaller churches. St Monans is one of the mediæval gems of Fife, overlooking the harbour of the eponymous saint’s village since the fourteenth century, and built on the site of an earlier place of worship.
Cllr Sean Dillon pointed out the East Neuk is to lose six churches — some of which have been in the Kirk’s hands since they were confiscated at the Reformation, including St Monans.
John Lloyd, also of the FT, reported on this last summer and spoke to my old church history tutor, the Rev Dr Ian C. Bradley. More on the closures in the Courier and Fife Today.
What a dream it would be for a charitable trust to buy St Monans and to restore it to its appearance circa 1500 or so, available as a place of worship and as a living demonstration of Scotland’s rich and polychromatic culture that was so tragically destroyed in the sixteenth century. You could open with a Carver Mass conducted by Sir James MacMillan.
■ And finally, on the last day of MMXXIII, the architect Conor Lynch reports in from Connemara with this scene of idyllic bliss:
Regnum, Ecclesia, Studium
The threefold division of the world
As such he might be expected to have ideas about the idea of a university, and he wrote about them in The Spectator in August 1983.
Mister Grimond (as he still was then, only just), suggested those interested in the subject “might turn to a lecture by Ronald Cant, sometime Reader in Scottish History in the University of St Andrews”:
[…]
A vital aspect of this tripartite organisation, as Cant says, was that each should serve and support the other. But the studium, while interacting with the regnum and ecclesia, must maintain its independence.
It was certainly the business of the studium to advance knowledge, but that was not to be the end of the matter. Knowledge was linked to public service. The learned man had a duty to the community as well as a right to pursue his intellectual quarry. In fact he pursued the quarry on behalf of the community.
The tripartite division of the world, although old-fashioned, seems to me a useful concept, emphasising that government, morality, and higher education are separate but intertwined.
It seems to me that if we expel the regnum and the ecclesia utterly from the world of the university we shall end up paradoxically with universities totally dependent upon the state… but as subservient as those in Rome.
The liberal spirit gave birth and sustenance to universities; if its progeny does not foster it in the regnum they may indeed end up as purely vocational colleges.
De Gaulle on the Market
It forces people to stretch themselves, it gives a bonus to the best, it encourages you to surpass others and to surpass yourself.
But, at the same time, it creates injustices, it establishes monopolies, it favours cheaters.
So don’t be blind to the market. You should not imagine that it will solve every problem on its own.
The market is not above the nation and the state. It is the nation, it is the state which must oversee the market. »
Horseshoe for Quebec’s Salon bleu
Refit will change seating plan in Quebec’s parliament chamber
An upcoming renovation to the Hôtel du parlement in Quebec City will also bring a change in the seating plan of the Assembly’s parliamentary chamber. Deputés agreed a moderate alteration to the current Westminster-style seating plan: a horseshoe shape will replace the crowded back two rows of desks with a curved arrangement.
The original clerks’ table designed by the building’s architect, Eugène-Étienne Taché, in 1886 will also be returned to centre-stage in the Salon bleu (formerly the Salon vert) of Quebec’s National Assembly. The room is also, I believe, the only parliamentary chamber to feature in a film by Alfred Hitchcock.
Renovations are scheduled to begin in January of next year, when deputés will start convening in the Salon rouge that formerly housed Quebec’s Legislative Council, abolished in 1968. (Quebec was the last Canadian province to abolish the upper house of its parliament.)
“The Salon bleu has a strong symbolic value for the Quebec nation,” claims Éric Montigny, professor of political science at Laval University (founded 1663).
“We must respect this tradition and evolve in a very, very gradual manner,” Professor Montigny told the Journal de Québec. “A parliament is not trivial.”
The Assembly numbered only sixty-five members when Taché’s edifice was completed in 1886, while today 125 deputés have to fit into the parliamentary chamber.
The new arrangement would make room for as many as 130 legislators, plus the Président in the speaker’s chair. It will also allow for a good number of the historic desks in the chamber to be retained.
Other potential arrangements were considered and rejected, including introducing a half-moon hemicycle akin to Paris, Washington, and other republican legislatures.
Prof Montigny dismissed claims that semicircular arrangements lead to more collaborative dialogue and constructive work between government and opposition parties:
“It’s an argument that is raised regularly, but I don’t know of any studies that will support this theory.”
The most significant change to the chamber in recent years was the removal of the crucifix from above the président’s chair, first installed in 1936 by the giant of Quebec politics, premier Maurice Duplessis.
That crucifix, and its 1982 replacement, were removed in 2019 and are now displayed as historical artefacts in an ancillary part of the parliament building.
[NDLR: I wrote about the crucifix back in 2008.]
The horseshoe seating plan seems a happy compromise: Westminster-style parliaments — even those that are unicameral like Quebec’s — are honest about the antagonism between government and opposition, and the horseshoe preserves the antiphonal arrangement conducive to this, while rounding it off with a curve at the end.
For my part, I will be happy to see the removal of the arbitrary trapezoid of the modern clerks’ table (below) and its replacement by its historic predecessor.
St Paul’s: Before and After the War
Wren’s post-Fire St Paul’s Cathedral was an icon of resistance to German aggression and an emblem of survival during the Blitz, but while the dome survived the church did suffer damage: A bomb fell threw the roof of the east end on the evening of 10 October 1940, tumbling masonry and destroying the high altar.
Despite the reredos remaining largely intact, as can be seen in the photograph above, it was decided to remove it and rebuild the High Altar under a baldacchino as Sir Christopher Wren had intended.
In 1958 the new High Altar, designed by W Godfrey Allen and Steven Dykes Bower, was dedicated with an American Memorial Chapel behind it.
This was proposed by the Dean of St Paul’s and General Eisenhower volunteered to raise money for it in the United States.
The Dean turned down the Supreme Commander’s offer, saying that this would be paid for by Britons as an appreciation of the American sacrifice during our common struggle.
A roll of honour lists the names of the 28,000 Americans who gave their lives while stationed from Great Britain.
Perhaps more intriguing than either view is the one below of the interior of St Paul’s before the Victorian scheme for the High Altar was executed.
The Ukrainians’ Secret Weapon
For those looking for an explanation as to the notable success of the Ukrainians on the battlefield in the current unpleasantness taking place in their country, look no further.
In a thread of tweets, the biblophile Incunabula reveals the Ukraine’s secret weapon: the Peresopnytsia Gospels (Пересопницьке Євангеліє).
“All six Ukrainian Presidents since 1991,” Incunabula writes, “including Volodymyr Zelensky, have taken the oath of office on this book: the sixteenth-century Peresopnytsia Gospels, one of the most remarkably illuminated of all surviving East Slavic manuscripts.”
“The Peresopnytsia Gospels were written between 15 August 1556 and 29 August 1561, at the Monastery of the Holy Trinity in Iziaslav, and the Monastery of the Mother of God in Peresopnytsia, Volyn.”
“This manuscript is the earliest complete surviving example of a vernacular Old Ukrainian translation of the Gospels. Its richly ornamented miniatures belong to the very highest achievements of the artistic tradition of the Ukrainian and Eastern Slavonic icon school.”
“The Peresopnytsya Gospels were commissioned in 1556 by Princess Nastacia Yuriyivna Zheslavska-Holshanska of Volyn, and her daughter and her son-in-law, Yevdokiya and Ivan Fedorovych Czartoryski. After its completion the book was kept in the Peresopnytsya Monastery.” (more…)
Irving’s Sunnyside
From the Westchester Herald (as reprinted in the Times of London, 24 April 1835):
On the premises just mentioned there is still standing an old stone house, built in the ancient Dutch style of architecture, during the French war, by Wolfred Acker, and afterwards purchased by Van Tassel, one at least of whose descendants has been immortalized in story by the racy pen of its present gifted proprietor.
It is the identical house at which was assembled the memorable tea-party, described in the legend of Sleepy Hollow, on that disastrous night when the ill-starred Ichabod was rejected by the fair Katrina, and also encountered the fearful companionship of Brom Bones in the character of the headless Hessian.
The characters in this delectable drama are mostly known to our readers; but time, that tells all tales, enables us to add one item more, which is, that the original of the sagacious schoolmaster was not the individual generally considered as such, who still resides in this country, but Jesse Martin, a gentleman who bore the birchen sway at the period of which the legend speaks, and who afterwards removed further up the Hudson, and is since deceased.
The location is a most delightfully secluded spot, eminently suited to the musings and mastery of mind; and it is the design of the proprietor, without changing the style or aspect of the premises, to put them in complete repair, and occupy them as a place of retirement and repose from the business and bustle of the world.
St Vincent Ferrer
This week marked the ninetieth anniversary of the consecration of the high altar of the Dominican Church of St Vincent Ferrer in New York — one of the most beautiful churches in Manhattan.
To mark the occasion, a sung requiem Mass was offered in the Dominican rite (under the sponsorship of the New York Purgatorial Society) for the benefactors of the parish.
The parish also shared this explanation of the art and symbolism of the high altar:
The Altar itself, the footpace of which is atop five steps from the presbytery, is in the form of a sepulcher. The Mensa is of Belgian Black marble inlaid with five crosses of Red Verona. It measures 15 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 6 inches thick, weighing about 2 tons.
The Altar Front consists of uprights of Belgian Black and Lepanto Marbles. The Frontal has five panels in a field of Tinos Green surrounded by a border of Mother-of-Pearl and Lapis Lazuli. The three principal panels, left to right, are: the arms of the Dominican Province of Saint Joseph (notice the carpenter’s T-square and the lilies, symbols of Saint Joseph); the shield of the Dominican Order in black and white marble surrounded by a carved inscription of the Dominican motto, “Laudare, benedicere, praedicare” (to praise, to bless, to preach), this is capped with a star; another Dominican shield with the crown, dog, lily, laurel, and star. The carving on the Mensa and the Altar Frontal is finished off in gold.
The Reredos Wall, acting as a back to the Altar and a base for the Reredos, is of Siena Marble. The wall contains a carved inscription of the Eucharistic hymn “Panis angelicas” written by St. Thomas Aquinas, O.P. On each side of the inscription are carved two large corbels the subjects of which are the Last Supper and the Elevation of the Mass.
On the Mensa of the Altar there are also six large candle- sticks of gold-plated bronze. Each candlestick weighs eighty-five pounds. On each candlestick is a medallion containing a symbol of the Passion or the Holy Eucharist, from left to right: Crown of Thorns and Three Nails on a background of blue; silver Rooster; silver Chalice with a Host bering the emblem IHS; three fish on a background of red enamel representing the Holy Trinity; Veronica’s veil; money bag of Judas on a background of red.
The Reredos is a magnificent structure of wood carving which forms the setting for a central painted triptych by Alfredo Mira depicting the miracles of Saint Vincent Ferrer, twenty-four statuettes of saints, and thirty angels of varying sizes. Dominating the entire structure is a majestic figure of Christ the King, approximately eight feet tall. The Reredos, extending forty-four feet above the floor, is of Hungarian oak which is stained to preserve the natural color of the wood. The color work has been done sparingly since it was not intended to destroy the natural finish of the wood by complete polychroming; yet the figure of Christ the King and the tester or canopy above it have been elaborately colored.
The Tabernacle at the center of the Altar is of gold-plated bronze, with twelve panels of symbols and miniature Biblical scenes in colored enamels. On the left door are six images from the Old Testament in which the Eucharist is prefigured. On the right door is the fulfillment of those types in the New Testament and the early Church. The Tabernacle, with its triple crown, is intended to look like a medieval tent, the literal meaning of tabernacle.
The Altar and Reredos were imported from Belgium where they were constructed by Joseph Van Uytvanch of Louvain. Almost two years were required to complete the work. The scheme was conceived by Wilfred Anthony, Bertram Goodhue’s assistant on the project.
Gaullist California
A friend well conversant in my ongoing crusade to remind today’s centre-droit of the utility of the Gaullist experience writes in:
The Golden State once practised a very successful form of Cal-Gaullism, developing world-class infrastructure, research universities, new industries… and much of the place was solidly conservative.
Once upon a time, parts of Southern California (including Orange County) were deemed the most conservative places in America, from which Nixon, Reagan, and others sprang.
San Francisco, though still beautiful, is certainly now well past its prime; I remember that white tie and tails were still seen there regularly as late as the ’80s.
The Polish church in Los Angeles was built to serve the large number of Polish exile families (with fathers who were aerospace engineers trained in the RAF like mine) who came from the UK and Canada to work in what was then the world centre of the aerospace and defence industry — “the Gunbelt in the Sunbelt”.
A Night Litany for London
Wanderers in central London who find themselves in the whereabouts of Piccadilly Circus or Soho of a Tuesday evening can avail themselves of the devotions offered by the Guild of Our Lady of Warwick Street.
Every week, the Rosary is said along with other prayers at this statue in Warwick Street Church. They conclude with the rather beautiful and moving ‘Night Litany for London’ imploring God’s mercy upon the many inhabitants of our capital city.
Its original form is believed to have been composed by the Rev’d H.A. Wilson, vicar of the Protestant parish of St Augustine in Haggerston. Msgr Graham Leonard — in the days when he was Anglican Bishop of London — also published a version through the Church Literature Association (a High Church body) with an introduction he wrote himself.
The version used at Warwick Street is included here:
OUR LADY of Warwick Street,
we plead before Thee
to present our prayers before the Throne of Grace
for all in this great city of London
who tonight need Thy merciful love and protection.
ON ALL who work tonight —— Lord, have mercy.
On the police, fire, and ambulance services —— Lord, have mercy.
On hospitals, doctors, and nurses —— Lord, have mercy.
On clergy and chaplains called out tonight —— Lord, have mercy.
On the homeless and destitute —— Lord, have mercy.
On all lost and vulnerable people —— Lord, have mercy.
On the lonely —— Lord, have mercy.
On the elderly —— Lord, have mercy.
On abused children —— Lord, have mercy.
On loveless marriages and broken homes —— Lord, have mercy.
On those who self-harm —— Lord, have mercy.
On the sick and suffering —— Lord, have mercy.
On the mentally ill —— Lord, have mercy.
On those undergoing operations —— Lord, have mercy.
On those who cannot sleep tonight —— Lord, have mercy.
On those who are depressed —— Lord, have mercy.
On those who misuse the internet —— Lord, have mercy.
On all prisoners and prison staff —— Lord, have mercy.
On all prostitutes and their clients —— Lord, have mercy.
On those addicted to alcohol and drugs —— Lord, have mercy.
On all immigrants feeling lonely and insecure tonight —— Lord, have mercy.
On all who live in fear —— Lord, have mercy.
On all victims of crime —— Lord, have mercy.
On those planning to commit a crime tonight —— Lord, have mercy.
On those who are driving tonight —— Lord, have mercy.
On all involved in accidents —— Lord, have mercy.
On those who are bereaved tonight —— Lord, have mercy.
On those for whom tonight will be their last on earth —— Lord, have mercy.
On those dying without the knowledge of Thy Love for them —— Lord, have mercy.
On those who are afraid to die —— Lord, have mercy.
On those tempted to suicide —— Lord, have mercy.
On the terminally ill —— Lord, have mercy.
On ourselves at our last hour —— Lord, have mercy.
ON BEHALF of all Londoners who today have said no prayers, let us say together:
Our Father …
Hail Mary …
℣. Most Sacred Heart of Jesus: ℟. Have mercy upon us. (thrice)
‘We trust no one would ever think of such a thing’
Ladies and gentlemen of ‘the left’, whether foreign or domestic, have long groaned over the earnest patriotism and lack of zeal for revolutionary destruction amongst the British working classes.
As this snippet from an 1848 issue of Punch shows, when the fighting power of Britain’s workers is unleashed, it’s usually channelled against the zealots and in defence of hearth of home:
Everybody knows the story of the French revolutionist lamenting the other day in Trafalgar Square the want of pluck of the British people, when a British butcher boy, taking off his coat, gave the brave républicain such a sound thrashing that its echo might have been heard half way down Charing Cross.
This treatment of a foreign Propagandist may have been a little too summary, perhaps; but at all events there can no harm in our expressing a hope that the hint will be good-humouredly followed up; and should any foreigner of any description begin to prate his revolutionary stuff, or doubt English pluck, why —
The Pale Blue Eye
Just as there aren’t enough films set in seventeenth-century Holland, we don’t get enough films set in God’s own Hudson Valley of New York. When I saw the trailer for ‘The Pale Blue Eye’, a semi-supernatural mystery set in 1830s West Point, I thought: yes, sign me up.
A cadet at the military academy is found hanged and, a day later, his heart carved out. USMA commandant Sylvanus Thayer enlists the help of Augustus Landor, a former detective from New York City — in the pre-NYPD days when crime was fought by an odd hodge-podge of the night watch, city magistrates, and a few dozen constables.
Conveniently for Thayer, the highly reputed Landor has retired to the Hudson Highlands. Thayer hopes his investigation will prevent any scandal giving impetus to the still-fledgling Academy’s enemies in Washington.
Conveniently for Landor, he is aided and abetted in this task by an eccentric bohemian amongst the “Long Gray Line” of cadets: Edgar Allan Poe. The paragon of American Gothick was indeed a cadet at West Point in 1830 under his own name, after having spent a few years in the Army as an enlisted man under a pseudonym.
It would be easy to reduce any film with Poe as a central character to a procession of campy retro-emo tropes, but the role is played by Harry Melling with surprising skill. Timothy Spall plays Sylvanus Thayer — rather unfairly, I thought — with Simon McBurney as the commandant’s sidekick Captain Hitchock.
Toby Jones is the academy doctor with Gillian Anderson as his scheming, driven wife, Lucy Boynton the beautiful daughter (apple of the eye of many a cadet) and Harry Lawtey as their smug son Artemis, also enrolled in the Academy.
It is a fundamental Cusackian principle never to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, so I won’t complain that ‘The Pale Blue Eye’ is actually filmed in western Pennsylvania rather than along the actual banks of the Hudson. Riparian overdevelopment makes it difficult to evoke the Hudson of 1830s effectively today, and the filmmakers have done well recreating the spirit of the gothic revival era in America’s Rhineland with the locations they chose and the set design. This is fiction, after all, and it needn’t be pedantically true to the time-period — so long as nothing jars.
As it proceeds, the plot is intriguing, fantastic, and absurd and it gives us a final twist in the end. Some strands develop a little two quickly — the connection between Poe and Lea — and Robert Duvall’s role as an expert in the occult is too much of a deus ex machina.
But this is simple fun, not high art, and as a gothick conjuring of a formative but under-explored time and place it is well worth a viewing. (more…)
Mexican Diplomats
Don Manuel Iturbe, envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary, sits wearing the full civil uniform of an ambassador while the two attachés, Don Miguel Iturbe and Don Juan Beistegui, stand wearing lower grades of diplomatic dress.
All three wear the Order of St Stanislaus — the Polish royal order incorporated into the Romanov orders in 1832.
The records of the Mexican congress shows that Manuel Iturbe was authorised to accept Grand Cross of the order while Miguel (who I presume was Don Manuel’s son though I can’t confirm) and Juan Beistegui had to settle for the ordinary Cross of St Stanislaus.
Emblem of the Valencian Courts
A friend has just brought to my attention how “incredibly, violently, sacredly based” the logo of the Corts Valencianes is.
St George slaying the dragon and the province’s Guardian Angel flanking Our Lady Seat of Wisdom is indeed an excellent sign for a legislature.
The graphic design studio of Pepe Gimeno was given the difficult job of taking a fifteenth-century engraving and somehow translating it into a modern scaleable image that could be reduced to a small size without losing clarity.
Originally they decided to focus on keeping just the Guardian Angel who bears the heraldic shield with the coat of arms of the province (technically an “autonomous community”).
When they did the work, they found the result was convincing enough to do likewise for the other figures in the engraving and include them together, preserving the historical integrity of the emblem.
The end result is an admirable modern reworking of something old. Well done.
Advent Missa Cantata at St George’s
St George’s Cathedral
Lambeth Road, Southwark, London SE1 6HR
LAMBETH NORTH (Bakerloo)
ELEPHANT & CASTLE (Northern, Bakerloo)
Buses: C10, 360, 12, 453, 138, 53
A collection will be taken to defray the costs.
The Lady Chapel is to the right at the end of the north aisle of the Cathedral (on your right as you enter).
Earlier in the morning, as every Saturday at St George’s Cathedral, there will be Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament from 10:00 to 11:00 am, during which time Confessions will be heard.
St Margaret Relic Heads to St Andrews
Students from St Andrews University have accompanied their Catholic chaplain to receive a relic of St Margaret of Scotland from the Archbishop of St Andrews & Edinburgh, Dr Leo Cushley.
The relic was put in the care of Canmore, the Catholic chaplaincy at St Andrews, whose chapel is dedicated to the Hungary-born English princess who became Scotland’s saintly queen.
When the relic in St Margaret’s Church in Dunfermline — the country’s royal centre in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries — were being removed from their reliquary the piece of bone fragmented.
The Archdiocese decided to make this an opportunity for the relics of the royal saint to be distributed further.
This relic of St Margaret will remain in Canmore where it will be available for veneration by students and other visitors.
SAINT MARGARET
QUEEN OF SCOTLAND
pray for us
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