Sorry...

Sorry blogging has been thin lately - an unfortunate combination of a NigeCorp workstorm (liable to blow steadily for a few weeks yet) and technological breakdown at home. I did manage to contribute to The Dabbler's Remembrance anthology, and hope to be posting again during the week. By the way, the Wilkinson Protector 3 is still shaving well, with no change of blades...

Cecil, Cowper and Crown Constables

I've been reading The Stricken Deer, David Cecil's life of Cowper, reissued in 1933 as one of the Crown Constables series, handsome volumes aimed at 'enlightened folk whose taste for literature is as discriminating as their shelf-room. Crown Constables will occupy and enchant the finest minds, but will not overcrowd the smallest flat.' Golly!
The Stricken Deer is a typical Cecil biography - elegant, fluent, stylish and not overlong - a refreshing change from the clunky doorstop biographies of our day. Cecil's learning is lightly worn; he doesn't 'show his workings', rubbing the reader's nose in the depth and breadth of his research. He never loses sight of the fact that a biography is, above all else, a story, not a compendium of laundry lists. As a result, he is never less than readable.
Cecil - full name Lord Edward Christian David Gascoyne-Cecil is an interesting figure. He was an authentic aristocrat, the younger son of the 4th Marquess of Salisbury, and in the course of his career he evolved from gentleman scholar and man of letters to professional academic and, improbably, TV presenter and minor media celebrity - this despite a pronounced lisp and his caricature toff appearance (his son is the actor Jonathan Cecil, who specialises in posh silly ass roles). His books are easy to find - they often turn up in charity shops (as did The Stricken Deer) - and they are all worth reading. I'd especially recommend his two volumes on Lord Melbourne, his biography of Max Beerbohm, and his double-headers, Two Quiet Lives (Dorothy Osborne and Thomas Gray) and Visionary and Dreamer (Samuel Palmer and Edward Burne-Jones).
I see from the back pages of The Stricken Deer that among the already published Crown Constables are The Tale of Two Lovers, translated from the original Latin of Aeneas Silvio Piccolomini by Flora Grierson, and Philine, unpublished fragments from Amiel's Journal. How times change...

Over in Dabbler Country...

I report on the epic struggle between crows and squirrels. Go, crows!

The Perfect Razor?

Regular readers will know that I am a man forever in quest of the Perfect Razor. I have succumbed to the siren call of the space-age Azor, and returned, a sadder and a wiser man, to the five-bladed certitudes of the trusty Gillette
Fusion, but still, as I mowed away with the Fusion or from time to time switched to the lightweight Mach 3 (original version), I sensed that my life was lacking something, that I had still not found the object of my quest. Then, one day recently, happening to be in immediate need of a razor, I scanned the limited choice in a small branch of Boots and, with little thought (this was but a stopgap razor), selected a Wilkinson Sword Protector 3 (that's not me in the picture, by the way). I was immediately impressed by the weight and hand-friendly curvaceousness of the body - this was a razor with a bit of heft, something to get the hand round, and that's good to find. The blades - a mere three, but that really is enough - are nicely mounted on a floating head that rides the face's contours smoothly, and deliver a good close shave. What more could a man ask? And the beauty of it is that you can buy blades for the Protector 3 without having to take out a second mortgage - in fact, by the inflated standards of razor prices, they're cheap as chips.
Regulars will also know that I am an enemy of stubble. A man may grow a beard, if he feels he really must, or he may shave - no stubble, thank you, and no inbetween phantom beards a la Mark Thompson or Charles Clarke. However, it happened that this morning I unavoidably found myself with a two-day growth of stubble marring my features. Would the Protector 3 be up to the challenge? Gentlemen, it was - it made short work of it, without a nick or cut, and my face was soon restored to its customary smoothness. I was impressed. I do believe I have at last found it, the razor of my dreams.

On The Dabbler today...

it's Birdwatching Wednesday - Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! While Wednesday lasts. Posts include my uncharitable thoughts on twitchers.

Treasures from Budapest: A Skippers' Guide

The Royal Academy's Treasures from Budapest exhibition is a bit of a slog - 12 large rooms, a fatiguing prospect (is anything more tiring than gallery-going?). It amounts to a potted history of art from the 15th to the 20th centuries, combined with a potted history of Hungary. The paintings are, for the most part, second-rank works by first-rank artists, and first-rank works by second-rank artists, and there are altogether too many of them. However, by skimming the fillers and homing in on the gems, there are many pleasures to be extracted from this exhibition. The Esterhazy Madonna is a sweet and beautiful early Raphael (still quite Peruginesque, but with Leonardo rising), none the worse for being unfinished. This Madonna is the poster girl for the exhibition, along with Egon Schiele's Two Women Embracing, which, I was astounded to learn, 'explores the theme of lesbian love'. Lovers of Venetian art (yes please!) are soon rewarded by a sumptuous Jacopo Bassano, The Way to Calvary, all writhing bodies and saturated colours, the paint positively glistening - and a glorious Tintoretto, The Supper at Emaus, which is worth long, detailed attention. Further on, there's another Tintoretto - a bizarre 'comic' painting of Hercules Expelling Faunus from Omphale's Bed - and, still further on, some fine Tiepolo drawings and a brilliant small painting, The Virgin Mary with Six Saints. Also worth noting, a small, busy Canaletto, in his darker register, The Lock at Dolo - and a splendid Bellotto, of the Arno in Florence.
Hung, oddly, among still lives and genre scenes, is a typically luminous Saenredam church interior. Among the portraits, there's a beauty by Hals - such dash! - a charming Half Length of a Girl (looking upwards) by Jan Lievens, and a quite magnificent painting of a Sleeping Girl, painted by artist unknown (but clearly very gifted) in Rome about 1610-20. An extraordinary El Greco, all blue and silver, of St Mary Magdalen, bathed in moonlight, the penitent teasingly exposing a nipple as usual, is complemented by a much more sobre head of St James the Less. Goya is represented by a glittering full-length portrait of a lady, and two fine genre paintings, of a knife-grinder and a water-carrier. Towards the end of the exhibition, look out for a superb Bonyngton watercolour View of the South Coast, and a lovely little Corot, Nest Robbers. There's a good Toulouse-Lautrec of Women in the Dining Room, and, at the end of the trail, the Schiele is flanked by an early Chagall gouache and a lovely, tender Picasso Mother and Child, in watercolour.
But what, Nige, I hear you ask, is The One You Would Have Stolen? It is the Rembrandt drawing illustrated, of Saskia sitting at a window. There are rather too many drawings in this exhibition - but this one is breathtaking. A few lines sketched in, a bit of wash, and there she is, as fresh and vividly real as if she were sitting there, in that cool Dutch light, today. That is drawing.

For All Souls' Day...

Schubert's short, achingly beautiful Litany...
This rather silences all the discussion here, doesn't it? Such a beautiful vision, that touches us so deeply, must surely have some kind of truth in it. As Keats said (or hoped), famously, 'Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty'.