Old Dominion, New Mace

VIRGINIA IS THE birthplace of Anglo-America, and as such it has managed to maintain higher standards of propriety than most other places in the States, including its long-time rival, New England. Governors, for example, still wear morning dress for their inaugurations rather than the lamentable business suit which has usurped events even so high and mighty as the inauguration of the President of the United States. (Carter abolished morning dress for the inauguration, Reagan wore it for his first with a stroller instead of tailcoat, but since then it’s been suits all around). Roger Scruton, Britain’s greatest living Conservative thinker, recently moved with his family to Virginia to enjoy the fruits of American freedom since one of his favorite pasttimes, outlawed back in the Mother Country, thrives in his new home. The origin of Virginia’s traditional nickname, ‘the Old Dominion’, is from King Charles II who granted the Colony that title of Dominion as a recognition of its steadfast loyalty to the Crown during the trying days of the Interregnum.

Some traditions, however, have been mournfully discontinued. Virginia’s House of Burgesses was the first legislative body in the New World but its name was changed to the House of Delegates during the Revolution. (North Carolina, meanwhile, kept its House of Commons until it was defeated by the United States in the Civil War). Nonetheless, the House sat in the antiphonal pattern akin to the British and Commonwealth parliaments until 1904 when it adopted the dastardly French republican semicircular seating plan. To my knowledge, it was the last American legislature (outside of Canada, of course) to arrange its seating in the traditional way. (more…)

Soggy Manhattan

Ah, Manahatta. Even on a day as soggy as this, the Upper East Side still charms me. It also retains a fair number of buildings from the days when New York had higher tastes, mostly to be found between Fifth and Park Avenues. It is a fact to be mourned that we have probably destroyed most of what was good in New York’s built environment. Nonetheless, we should of course be glad for the beautiful things which remain from our great city’s golden age, and thankfully they are not a mere handful.

Stumbling down East 82nd Street this afternoon amongst puddle, gloom, and rain I emerged onto Fifth Avenue to see the beautiful mass of the Metropolitan Museum of Art revealed in all its glory. The façade of the Met has recently been cleaned and glancing at it today, despite the cloud and percipitation, one could almost imagine the year as 1902 when the wing designed by Richard Morris Hunt was completed. This is doubly so because the Metropolitan currently lacks her usual ungainly vexillic adornments pronouncing the exhibits shown in her distinguished galleries. These banners add nothing to the Met’s façade, and if there is a more clever and handsome way of announcing what is within without – and surely there must be – the Museum does not seem to have found it.

Still, the situation is not as reprehensible as across Central Park at the American Museum of Natural History. The AMNH enjoys two façades, one of which commands the view over Central Park West and the park itself beyond. The main portion of the Museum’s Central Park West front is a brilliant triumphal arch which is in fact the State of New York’s monument and memorial to Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States and Governor of New York during his earthly life. Shamefully, the Museum disrespects this great monument to this great man by covering it in advertising banners akin to those which usually mar the Metropolitan. The American Museum of Natural History should be ashamed of itself for sullying such an august and dignified locale for the purposes of selfish marketing.

What brought me to plod up the splendid elevating staircase of the Metropolitan was to catch – just barely, for this was its last day – the special exhibition entitled Prague: The Crown of Bohemia 1347-1437. I had first gotten wind of this showing flipping through the mail whilst I was still interning at the New Criterion at the end of the summer and duly noted in my diary that though it opened while I was away in Scotland it would still be open upon my return for the Christmas holiday. Anyhow, I finally took advantage of it today and it was much enjoyed. What a remarkable land is Bohemia. The exhibit served only to augment my interest in the country and I must be sure to spend some time there sooner or later.

In addition to the Mother and Child above, the exhibit presented the tabernacle shown below (photographed in its actual home). There were also many, many reliquaries, some of which appeared to still have relics in them. One would have thought a museum’s interest in a reliquary was purely artistic and thus that the relics involved would be removed and handed over to those who would give them the care they deserve. Does the Museum have a consultant to advise on these cases, I wonder? Anyhow, I was sure to touch the glass and ask the saints to pray for us, just in case. The Bohemians clearly knew how to treat relics, would only that New Yorkers did – though to be fair I am told that the Tour of the Relics of St. Thérèse of Liseux which made its way to New York just a few years ago was well attended in the Metropolis and even up in Westchester round my neck of the woods. There is a relic of our dear Thérèse available for veneration in St. Patrick’s Cathedral which I occasionally drop in on when in the neighborhood.

At any rate, had I attended Prague: The Crown of Bohemia 1347-1437 earlier I would’ve enjoined the reader to pay it a visit, but since it has finished its run I instead enjoin our dear readers to at least saunter down Fifth and stop to savor a glance of the cleaned-up Metropolitan sans banners. No doubt it will not be free of them for long — unless they who direct the Museum have had a moment of grace.

Previously: The Remarkable Hapsburgs | Brünn

Bully!

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone welcomed the New Year in style while I lounged at home.

Poor Hogarth, I made him drive the past year’s worth of andrewcusack.com (specially bound) to the Cusack archives at the New-York Historical Society first thing in the morning.