The Primera Revista Latinoamericana

We are of the opinion that the more publications, the merrier, and so we certainly welcome the foundation of the Primera Revista Latinoamerican de Libros. The PRL, which is a sort of Hispanic version of the TLS, started printing last September and is based right here in New York. The bimonthly is published in Spanish but reviews both books that are printed in Spanish and books printed in English. Again, like the TLS, it is not limited to book reviews but features other literary essays as well.

The head honcho at the PRL is Fernando Gubbins, who has earned a master’s degree in Public Affairs from Columbia here in New York and a philosophy degree from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. Mr. Gubbins previously edited the opinion & editorial section of the Peruvian newspaper Expreso, and has worked with the Economist Intelligence Unit.

Not being a hispanophone, I am not qualified to render judgement on the quality of the publication’s content, the PRL in print is well designed and has a very traditional but modern feel to it, and it was a pleasure flicking through its pages. The Primera Revista is a welcome addition to the literary world of New York, and of Latin America.

“Brideshead” Regurgitated

Well, the trailer for the film adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel “Brideshead Revisited” is out, and the film is slated for a summer release here in the States. (Trailer | Official Site). Waugh fans can but lament that, whereas Waugh said the book was essentially about “the operation of divine grace”, the screenwriter of this adaptation openly admitted that the script “turns God into a villain”.

Rather than being bold and creating a genuine work of cinematic art to match the novel, they’ve decided to take the easy and conformist route and do a God-hating rompy flick. (Because we can’t have too many of those!). A shame, of course, but entirely predictable. Shall we at least have a look at the cast?

(more…)

And for the man with $3,500 to spare…

Scoop, by Evelyn Waugh
Chapman & Hall, London, 1938

First edition, hardcover, very good condition.
Small octavo, 308 pages, dust jacket.

$3,500 on eBay

Rip van Winkle

POOR RIP van Winkle; I always felt bad for him. He falls asleep for twenty years, and returns to his own native village where is now unknown and taken for some strange vagrant. “I am a poor quiet man, a native of the place, and a loyal subject of the king, God bless him!” he exclaims, in blissful ignorance of the Revolution which took place during his slumber. “A tory! a tory! a spy! a refugee! hustle him! away with him!” cry the by-standers.

I have long thought that Washington Irving was trying to make a subtle traditionalist point here: the definition of a good citizen has been arbitrarily changed. If a man was a good New Yorker in 1765 and hasn’t changed, why is he a traitor in 1785? It’s clearly ridiculous, except to proto-Jacobins and ideologues.

Anyhow, the lesson of the story: drink not from the flagons of odd-looking personages playing nine-pins amidst the Hudson Highlands.

Previously: Rip van Winkle

Missal Mania

Baronius Press have reported a doubling in their sales of missals for the old Mass, or the “extraordinary form” as we are to call it now, since the release of the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum. Readers will be shocked to hear that I am actually a reactionary (however accidentally) because I only have a 1960 missal, not the 1962 missal which is the actual missal used at traditional masses. However, I would not object if anyone would like to gift me a brand spanking new 1962 daily missal from Baronius Press. The perfect gift for young Catholics: St. Nicholas Day is just around the corner! (Alright, over two months away, but still…).

Baronius Press are also coming out with the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which has received an Imprimatur and will be available from sometime in October.

The Men Who Saved Quebec

The British Crown’s toleration of Catholicism in Quebec was cited by the rebel colonists of the 1770′s as, ironically, an ‘intolerable act’. That the Church of Rome, that bastion of backwards conservatism and slavish hierarchy, could be tolerated in the lands under the power of the British parliament riled the Whigs—the enlightened liberal progressives of the day. Indeed, Benjamin Franklin was even so foolish as to go to Quebec as an emissary of the ‘Continental Congress’ to persuade the natives to rebel against the Crown; Congress’s proposals to ban Catholicism and prohibit the use of the French language ensured he was not successful.

The following review by Gary Caldwell was published in a Canadian journal in 2001.

WHY REVIEW A BOOK published twelve years ago? I will explain. But first, let me tell you what it’s about.

When Britain took possession of Canada at the Treaty of Versailles in 1763, it faced an “imperial challenge:” how to integrate into the empire a society fundamentally different from England – in language, religion, and legal and political institutions. At the time, England was vigorously intolerant of Roman Catholicism or “popery,” the religion of its major enemies, France and Spain. British Protestantism was closely tied to the dominant Whig political ideology born of the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89. This doctrinal legacy prescribed that all British subjects were possessed of very definite and equal liberties, liberties endowed upon and limited to those who conformed to the Whig-Protestant definition of being British.

Hence the problem of 1763. English law and constitutional practice allowed only for protestant public officials and elected representatives. This meant excluding the entire French-speaking population, some 70,000 to 80,000 (the “new subjects”) as compared to some 300 Protestants established in the colony (the “old subjects”).

There were two schools of thought as to what should be done. The Whig position, favoured by much of the English political leadership and commercial class on both sides of the Atlantic, was not to accommodate the new subjects. It amounted to an attempted destruction of the local culture and to exclusion of the French-speaking population from all juridical, political and social positions, the hoped-for consequence being assimilation in one, perhaps two, generations. In short, what had been imposed in Ireland with the “protestant ascendancy.”

The opposing school of thought, still marginal in 1763, believed such a policy both impracticable and undesirable. James Murray, Lord Shelburne, Lord Dorchester (Gary Carleton), H. T. Cramahe, Alexander Wedderburn, Lord Mansfield and William Knox not only held that a Protestant ascendancy in Quebec would ruin the colony, they also believed that Quebec society was deserving of being preserved. Murray and Dorchester, who knew Quebec and its people, were adamant: the Canadians were a good “race”—in Murray’s words, “perhaps the best and bravest race on the globe” (p. 48)—and if protected they and their society would flourish and be loyal to the Crown. As it happened, all of these administrators and Crown legal officers, with the exception of Cramahe, were Anglo-Irish or Scottish; not one of them was of English origin.

But how were the Canadians and their culture to be accommodated? There were, as Lawson demonstrates, three distinct dimensions to this accommodation. The first was to respect the prevailing legal code and custom in civil and property matters; the second, to refrain from putting into place an English representative assembly because it would be the instrument of the 300 or so English and American voters in the colony. By far the most important was the third dimension, tolerance in Quebec of Roman Catholicism, which meant the nomination of a Bishop, the tithe and the right of Catholics to hold public office. Dorchester and the others successfully won these concessions in London by 1770, and they were contained in the Quebec Act in 1774, to the horror of much of English public sentiment, and especially the Americans who were more resolutely against “popery” and more Whig than the English themselves.

When Benjamin Franklin arrived in Montreal in 1775 with the invading army of the Continental Congress, he carried secret orders to ban the popish religion and the French language. Fortunately, the Americans were stopped in Quebec by no other than Dorchester, back from getting the Quebec Act through Parliament. At the head of an army of old and new subjects he broke the 1775-76 siege of Quebec.

Lawson’s interpretation is insightful in putting the events into the context of the Irish question. The major players in promoting the accommodation that became the Quebec Act had in mind “the Irish Imbroglio,” and were determined not to repeat the error of the “protestant ascendancy” in Ireland. The Quebec Act emerges clearly as the culmination of thoughtful and courageous policy formulation, a model of generous statesmanship. Hence, as Lawson goes on to argue, the “toleration” of Roman Catholicism in the Quebec Act paved the way for the British Acts of Toleration of 1778.

Lawson also helps understand why Murray, Dorchester and the others came to the conclusions they did about the Canathan problem. These men were essentially empirical conservatives who found the answer “in the past”—Quebec society as they had known it in the 1760s—and the “elastic nature of the British Constitution.” And here Lawson runs smack into the prevailing wisdom in Canadian historiography.

Lawson is insistent on the coincidental nature of any link between the Quebec Act and the American Revolution, affirming that there is no evidence that the inspiration for the Quebec Act was to placate the Canadians so as to keep them apart from the Americans. As this alleged link is one of the most tenacious myths in the Canadian historical consciousness, it is worth citing Lawson:

What can be done to dispose of this myth once and for all? Fifty years ago both Coupland and Burt said that they could find no evidence to justify such an assertion with Lanctot repeating the message in the 1960s, and nothing has yet come to light to contradict them (pp. 123-124).

When I first read this book in the early 1990s and realized how revolutionary his thesis was, I contacted Lawson to talk about his work. In passing, I mentioned that I supposed that The Imperial Challenge must have created quite a controversy in Canadian academic circles. His reply was “No, it has attracted very little attention in Canada.” (I never saw him again. I had arranged to see him a few years later, but just before I arrived in Edmonton he was admitted to hospital for terminal cancer and died shortly afterwards.) In subsequent years, I have been to McGill-Queens Press in Montreal to buy copies of his book to give to friends. Inquiring as to sales, I was told that only a few hundred copies had been sold. And, so far, I have encountered only one reference to Lawson’s book (in Yves Lamonde’s Histoire sociale des politiques au Quebec).

I was curious enough to go back recently to the reviews written when the book came out. There were 16 in Canada in French and English, in the United States and in the United Kingdom; all reviewers were quite positive except one (who wrote two of the reviews). They all commented positively on the extent and depth of the documentation, as well as the fresh reading from parliamentary debates, the personal archives of the principal players, and the press of the day. As for his interpretation of how the Quebec Act came to be, there is no suggestion that he was wrong in any respect. The negative reviewer suggests only that it is pretentious of Lawson to think he has added much to existing work on the Quebec Act. Of the 15 reviewers, a full half explicitly accredit Lawson with drawing out the intention of avoiding the error of Ireland.

Why, then, did a book, critically acclaimed by the author’s peers, which sheds considerable light on a pivotal period in the history of Quebec and Canada, drop out of sight in Quebec, and I suspect in the rest of Canada? Lawson calls into question the conventional wisdom on a very important subject in Canadian history, and no one takes notice. For instance, two prominent Canadians, Gerard Bouchard and John Raulston Saul, social thinkers who are presently reinterpreting Canadian history, make no mention, to my knowledge, of this book. A book that should have caused waves has generated scarcely a ripple.

Perhaps my assessment, as a non-professional historian, is faulty and I would welcome a demonstration of where I have erred. What are the factors that explain the untimely eclipse of Lawson’s work? Could it be simply that Canadian intellectual discourse is shallow, that a seminal work can be dropped into the water and hit bottom generating nothing more than a superficial ripple of perfunctory reviews and listings in compendiums? This is one possible explanation; a more certain explanation lies in ideology.

The ideological axe, starkly put, goes as follows. Quebec’s nationalist, republican-leaning contemporary intellectuals are loath to entertain the idea that a coterie of British Conservatives (half of them aristocrats) literally saved Quebec society by helping to keep it strong enough to withstand the renewed neo-liberal assault led by Lord Durham three quarters of a century later and, then, begin to rehabilitate the Quebec polity (under British institutions) in 1867. Such an idea being beyond the pale (again, the ghost of Ireland), they maintain the myth that the Quebec Act was political opportunism inspired by the American threat. What will it take for Quebec nationalist thinkers to recognize and appropriate the historical reality that Dorchester twice—in the Quebec Act and the siege of Quebec—saved Quebec? It is no exaggeration to assert that, had it not been for this one Anglo-Irish aristocrat, Quebec would likely have become anglicized and, subsequently, integrated into the American empire.

As for English-speaking Canada, the current crop of orthodox historians has long consigned our British imperialist past to the Marxist dust-heap of history: nothing good could possibly have come of it, all imperialisms being, by definition, bad. They are not about to disturb their orthodoxy that in contrast to Imperial Britain, which was incapable of any genuine sympathy for Quebec—only Canadian nationalist intellectuals are enlightened and respectful of Quebec society. So, they too maintain the “political opportunism” interpretation of the Quebec Act, despite its having been refuted by Lawson and his predecessors. Essentially, what we are seeing is a refusal to acknowledge a debt owed to dead white male Protestants (from Ireland and Scotland). But gratitude is not, as the contemporary French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut has pointed out, a hallmark of modern progressive thinkers.

I write this review knowing full well that it is too late for Lawson’s work to be rehabilitated. The Imperial Challenge is among the titles in this year’s McGill-Queen’s clear-the-warehouse sale.

Previously: Hitchcock in Quebec

A Morning’s Journey

I crossed the Harlem River into Manhattan today just as Patrick Leigh Fermor traversed the Danube in his brilliant book, A Time of Gifts, which has immediately become one of my favorite reads of all time. Settling into my seat on the train yesterday, I opened my knapsack to utter shock and surprise—I had left my reading at home. The Leigh Fermor and P.G.W.’s Cocktail Time were resting somewhere in my bedchamber while I stared into the compartment of my bag, bare but for a photocopied page from the Art Newspaper and two (already-read) issues of the Hungarian Quarterly. These are the times that try men’s souls. Getting out of the city late in the evening proved even harder, as the bridge carrying the railway over the river was actually up for once (“First time in my life, folks,” the conductor informed us), leaving a steady backlog of trains awaiting their northerly destinations.

But this morning there were no bridge-raising complications, and the sky was a delightful, clear blue (soon to change) as we entered Manhattan. Thankfully, I had my two books; a bit of Wodehouse while waiting in Bronxville station and then Paddy Leigh Fermor on the train. After crossing the river, the train stops at 125th Street (Harlem) before submerging at 96th, taking the passenger down to Grand Central, that well-kept remnant on 42nd Street, reminding us that we too were once civilized. There, after taking a stroll through the market (Nürnburger sausage! Kaiser ham! Norwegian salmon!) you switch to the subway and hop down just one express stop on the 5 train.

Just half a dozen steps after emerging from Union Square station I saw a speck of white fall from the sky, and then another, and another. So it began: the first snowfall of the year. And, I might add, a New York record for the latest snowfall. (January 10th? No, there was no white Christmas for us this year). Two children on the swings in the playground ecstatically proclaimed their approval at the opening of the heavens. Wandering through the farmer’s market in the square, I picked up an herb focaccia bread I thought might be particularly enjoyable, and it complimented the exceptionally tasty Tuscan vegetable soup I had for lunch. The snowflakes swirled above the square and fell down on all the market-goers and the folks walking on Broadway as I marched up to work. And yet, how fleeting! In the few steps from the front door to the elevator, the white snow had already melted and merged into the green of my loden coat. Very well, Mother Nature. Very well.

Christmas Book List

Mr. and Mrs. Peperium over at Patum Peperium asked a few of their genial friends to come up with a Christmas book list, and we were more than happy to oblige. Interestingly enough, the only overlap was Guy Stair Sainty’s giant two-volume opus, which was both on my list and on Fr. M.’s list. I have reproduced my list below for your perusal.

Well, first up, the books you can’t even get yet, not because they’re out of print but, rather, because they’re not exactly in print yet.

The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn and Hal Iggulden has proved a roaring success amongst discriminating readers in the British Isles. The nifty book is basically a handbook for life, describing in detail how to win at conkers and learn the rules of cricket as well as providing information about major battles of history, NATO’s phonetic alphabet, the golden age of piracy, and that trickiest of all subjects:girls. The book’s out in Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, we North Americans will have to wait until May of next year.

Another book the Brits have already is Michael Burleigh’s Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics from the Great War to the War on Terror, the sequel to Burleigh’s brilliant Earthly Powers: The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe from the French Revolution to the Great War. In the first book, Burleigh brilliantly outlined the “long nineteenth century” as historians call it, depicting in detail the interplay between faith, reason, and power on the Mother Continent. Sacred Causes promises to bring us from the First World War all the way to the current so-called “War on Terror”, and we expect it will be done with the same precise, detailed, though occasionally light-hearted spirit which Burleigh has mastered. The book will be available on these verdant shores from March of next year.

While we’re traveling across the Atlantic, why not explore the British roots of our American society? In America’s British Culture, the late great Russell Kirk explores the Britannic foundations of the core of American culture and civilization. The book’s probably out of print, but can nonetheless be found here and there, and if not to purchase then there’s always the local library to try.

Far more perilous than a voyage cross the Atlantic is that most worrisome, tiresome, and pedantic of journeys: crossing the channel. To Belgium, or perhaps we should say “Belgium”, for after reading Flemish patriot Paul Belien’s A Throne in Brussels: Britain, the Saxe-Coburgs and the Belgianisation of Europe you will find the mere concept of “Belgium” repugnant. I picked up a copy of A Throne in Brussels and decided to give it a whirl despite finding the book’s title mostly uninteresting. After reading it, I also found the subtitle a little misleading. What Belien actually gives us is an overview of the history of “Belgium” which is both succinct and thorough, mostly focusing on the Belgian monarchy and its deep influence on the formation of this “nation” half-French and half-Dutch. It makes for a fascinating read of disgrace and debauchery as we’re told of the disgusting actions of, firstly the various kings of Belgium from the creation of the country ex nihilo in 1830, and then of astonishing Belgian cowardice and collaboration in the First and Second World Wars. However all this pales in comparison to the most telling, and the most disturbing, part of the book which tells us about modern, post-war Belgium. I will not reveal it’s contents but is truly, truly frightening. The point Belien posits as the crux of the book is this: I’ve told you about Belgium. Recall that the Eurocrats and their enthusiasts extol Belgium as the model for European unity; a single state in which communities of different blood and language live together in supposed harmony. If what I’ve written is true, then be afraid: be very afraid. And you will be.

Moving across the Continent, we stumble upon dear old darling Austria. The late Gordon Brook Shepherd was a devoted admirer of the Austrian people and nation, and this is exhibited in a number of the fine, well-crafted books he wrote. The Last Hapsburg is a very good biography of the Blessed Emperor Charles of Austria-Hungary, the last to rule over that many-peopled realm. It reads as a chronicle of simultaneous hope and decline, and the chapters detailing the Emperor’s two attempts to regain his Hungarian throne are action-packed and read like a spy thriller. Prelude to Infamy, meanwhile, deals with that last great figure of Austrian tradition and reaction, Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss. Brook Shepherd gives a splendid overview of Dollfuss’s early life and upbringing, his rise to power, and his eventual downfall at the hands of Hitler’s henchmen. Both these books are well worth reading, but I am also intrigued by the title alone of Brook Shepherd’s biography Between Two Flags: The Life of Baron Sir Rudolf von Slatin Pasha, GCVO, KCMG, CB, on which I have not yet been able to lay my hands.

Travelling deep within Europa’s belly are Patrick Leigh Fermor’s chronicles of his journey through Ruritania at the young age of twenty-two in the period between the wars when a great deal of the old order still remained. This meandering tramping trip, from London to Constantinople, is retold to us in Sir Patrick’s A Time of Gifts, considered a classic in the travel genre, and Between the Woods and the Water.

On his journey, Fermor came across a number of Europe’s aristocrats, nobility, and titled gentry. No doubt many-well, all really-of the honours and orders which bedecked their chests can be found in Guy Stair Sainty’s brand spanking new World Orders of Knighthood & Merit, out this year from Burke’s Peerage. The two volumes weigh in at twenty pounds imperial, containing two thousand pages and yours for a mere $375.

Cheaper, smaller, and infinitely more full of vim and moxie, however, is the delightful little picture book Simple Heraldry Cheerfully Illustrated by Sir Iain Moncrieffe of That Ilk, with truly cheerful illustrations by Don Pottinger. Both Moncreiffe and Pottinger served Her Majesty in the Court of Lord Lyon, Scotland’s heraldic authority, and the book is chock-full of delightful little explanations of the various aspects of heraldry, simplified and in digestible form.

But rememeber man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return. If you’re lucky, that dust will be guarding the covers of the splendid Very Best of the Daily Telegraph’s Books of Obituaries which contains myriad tales of those individuals whose lives have been compacted onto the obituary page of Great Britain’s quality daily. Even more interesting is the more specific Daily Telegraph Book of Military Obituaries, containing various anecdotes of mess, ball, parade ground, and battlefield. How sad are the days when the only place one reads of class, dignity, and wit are the obituary pages! Or, as a friend puts it rather more alarmingly: every day more and more war veterans die off, while more and more products of government schools are unleashed into the world.

Yet our end ought to be a cheerful one, so catch up with that Grand Old Man who has since gone to join the Choir Invisible. The brilliant writings of Peter Simple are collected in a number of different volumes, most notably Peter Simple’s Century, which I warmly encourage the reader to purchase at the nearest opportunity. Better yet, make it two and forward one to me.

A Book to Remember

Chumley’s Launch Party for ‘Forgotten New York’ Book

AS I GROW more and more cantankerous, my tolerance for evening trips down to Mannahatta declines, but on occasion there’s an event which would be a crime to miss. Last Thursday, Dawn Eden and I popped down to Chumley’s, the old speakeasy on Bedford Street in the West Village, for the shindig launching Kevin Walsh’s brilliant book, Forgotten New York: Views of a Lost Metropolis. (Kevin reports on the party here). I’ve been following Kevin’s Forgotten New York website for years now, and it has earned an unquestionable rank as one of my favorite sites ever (though, shamefully, I’ve never been on one of his legendary ‘Forgottentours’). The author himself was on hand, naturally, and I also enjoyed meeting a number of very kind people who are as fond of Forgotten New York as I am.

The Man of the Hour himself: Kevin Walsh (in glasses).

While Dawn and Kevin are familiar friends (she even gets a mention in the book’s acknowledgements), I had never before had the privilege of meeting this great chronicler of quinqueboronian miscellany. He is very much like his website: simple and brilliant. Happily, I got my complementary copy of the book personally inscribed, though I quite presumptuously upbraided him for only mentioning Audubon Terrace in passing (c.f. FNY: ‘I Can’t Drive 155′) while I believe it is worth a Forgotten page of its own. (Naturally, I have a post slowly developing on Audubon Terrace, which I believe is one of the most beautiful public spaces in all New York, as well as one of the most underappreciated).

No, the camera isn’t smudged; an angelic haze follows Dawn wherever she goes.

But enough of the fun, how’s the book? Well I love it. It’s emphasis is on breadth rather than depth, since it’d be impossible to reproduce the entire contents of the encyclopedic website in a mid-sized paperback book. I view the book in two regards: first, as a handy basic guide referencing the variety of forgotten, unnoticed, and underappreciated sites around the Five Boroughs; and second, as a good jump-start companion to the more thoroughly informative website.

Take, for example, the Lent Riker Smith House out in Queens. Browsing through the book we see the entry on the ‘Lent Riker Smith Homestead’ which gives us two paragraphs of information. Enough to whet the appitite and plant the seed of intrigue, but when we check out the website’s entry on the house we get much, much more… and in color, to boot. I hope readers not yet familiar with the website will use the book as a springboard, but I also hope that we will be gifted with updated editions of the book in years to come, with added features.

Buy the book. Aficionados of forgotten-ny.com will appreciate a version of the familiar in dead-tree form, while the uninitiated will find it extremely useful as a foundation for appreciating Gotham’s numerous nooks and crannies. Kevin Walsh has done a great service to all those who have a love for the Big Apple.

La Fallaci is Dead

Leftist Italian Writer, Atheist, Defender of the West, Sometime New Yorker, Once Made the Ayatollah Laugh

Oriana Fallaci, that indomitable and cantankerous Italian, has finally succumbed to cancer in her native land. When she first learnt of her cancer years ago, she kept smoking and refused to treat it because she had “too much writing to do”. Later, when it became difficult to eat solid foods, she drank champagne instead. Her 1972 interview with Henry Kissinger was described by him as “the single most disastrous conversation I have ever had with any member of the press”.

While an ardent leftist, she was an unrepentant foe of what she saw as the Islamic colonization of Europe. Her diatribes against the Muslim immigrants who habitually pissed on the walls of Florence cathedral earned her the ire of many, and legal proceedings were initiated against her in France. The liberal commentator Christopher Hitchens described her work as “an example of how not to write about Islam”. She began writing her infamous The Rage and the Pride, a book teeming with passion and righteous indignation, on September 11, 2001 at her home in New York.

Fallaci said she felt encouraged when Cardinal Ratzinger, another thinker who warned against Western self-loathing, was elected pope. “I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger,” she wrote. The Telegraph reports that the Holy Father granted her a private audience a number of months ago, on the condition that never disclose its contents.

Oriana Fallaci will be buried tommorrow in the family tomb in the Protestant Cemetery in Florence. There will be no funeral; I hope a priest will say a mass for the repose of her soul.

Daily Telegraph obituary
Times of London obituary
‘La journaliste Oriana Fallaci est morte’, Le Figaro

The New Yorker featured a good profile of Fallaci in its June 6, 2006 issue, ‘The Agitator’ by Margaret Talbot.

Bronxville Library

I do miss my library. In a perfect world, I would spend half the day wandering through various libraries of lower Westchester and the City. Of course we have a university library here in St Andrews, but its selection is fairly poor, especially in the subjects in which I am particularly interested. (more…)

Chesterton Remembered

SIR: Your article on G.K. (This England, Summer 1986) brought back a happy personal memory of that great and kindly man. It was 1930 in Rome, where I was a pupil at a “finishing school” – in this case an English convent. G.K. sometimes came to visit our Reverend Mother; we knew him by sight and, once seen, who could forget the huge man in the big black cloak?

Part of our “finishing” process was to be taken round the museums and galleries of the Eternal City. One day we were being shepherded through the Vatican Museum. My friend and I somehow managed to get separated from the rest of our party and in one of the galleries whom should we see but Mr. G.K. Chesterton. He was about to leave so we followed him down the stairs in the hope of being able to get his autograph. At the foot of the stairs he turned. “As we had such young legs”, he said, “could one of us be so kind as to run back to the gallery where he had left his cloak, and would the other see if she could find him a carrozza [a cab, lit. 'carriage']?” We needed no second bidding. I raced back up the stairs, found the familiar black cloak where he had left it and triumphantly returned it to its owner. Meanwhile my friend had found a vacant carrozza. G.K. thanked us both, climbed into the carrozza and drove off. In the excitement we had forgotten about the autographs! Next day a letter arrived at our convent. He addressed it to “The Young Ladies suffering education at the convent at No. 10 Via Boncompagni.” Inside was a sheet full of auto-graphs and a little poem.

I have the precious autograph still and what a strange Chinese-looking affair it is!

— MRS. L. RIPLEY, BRIGHTON

Rip van Winkle

When was the last time you read the story of Rip van Winkle? If you’ve never had that pleasure, then you are all the worse for it, my friend. The tale was handed down to us through the ages by the munificence of one Diedrich Knickerbocker, though some sore-minded rapscallion later credited the ever-capable Washington Irving with its invention. Anyhow, it is one of my favorite tales in all the history of New York. It’s a short story, and worth a read online if you haven’t a printed copy immediately at hand.

The tale, of course, revolves around “a simple good-natured fellow”, namely Rip van Winkle, and his encounter with “odd-looking personages” whom still to this day show themselves around the Hudson valley. We merely have ceased to hear reports of them because thoroughly unimaginative types are in control of the world these days. (The “monotony monitors” as my Latin teacher monikered them, enforcing boredom and mediocrity at every possible opportunity).

The genealogists amongst you will be interested that Mr. Knickerbocker notes this van Winkle was “a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of Fort Christina.” Now, for want of fast-paced action, you may not have any particular desire to read about a simple, good-natured fellow like Rip van Winkle, but desires aside you must read “the Most Horrible Battle Ever Recorded in Poetry or Prose” (Chapter VII of Book VI of the same Diedrich Knickerbocker’s A history of New York, from the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch Dynasty). The record of the siege of Swedish Fort Christina by the good New Netherlandish is the most hilarious and enchanting chronicle of any battle anywhere.

‘The Pope: A Portrait from Life’

LAST NIGHT I finished reading ‘The Pope: A Portrait from Life’ by Constantine, Prince of Bavaria, about Pope Pius XII (who I thought had already been beatified, but not yet). It is definitely one of the biographies I have most enjoyed, perhaps even most enjoyed. The book’s strength lies not in academic depth nor in attention to detail but in giving the reader a great insight into the great man who Pius XII was. From his brilliant diplomacy, working for peace during the First World War under Pope Benedict XV, warning of the dangers of National Socialism as nuncio to Germany under Pope Pius XI, his own accession in 1939, and his tireless efforts to give shelter to all who were in need: Socialists, Communists, Jews, Christians, Atheists, Liberals, Royalists, Republicans, escaped Allied prisoners of war, and after the war, fascists, collaborators, Germans, and others whose lives (and souls) were equally in danger. There was no barrier of race or religion or party or ideology. Indeed, the Grand Rabbi of Rome, sheltered by Pius XII during the war was so inspired by him that three years after the war ended, he became a Christian, taking the name ‘Eugenio’, Pius’s birth name.

‘The Pope: A Portrait from Life’ tells the story of Eugenio Pacelli with anecdotes and stories from all the people surrounding this, the most lied-about figure in the history of the twentieth century. I strongly recommend this book to anyone interested in the life of Bl. Pius XII. It is almost cinematic as it moves from scene to scene, from the present (Rome 1954) to the past, in Rome, in Germany, in America over the years of Eugenio Pacelli’s career as priest, churchman, diplomat, and finally pontiff.

Constantine himself (pictured above) is interesting in his own right. Born in 1920, with all the Royal House of Wittelsbach he was kicked out of the German Army by Hitler and, in 1944, arrested by the Gestapo. Liberated by the French, he went on to work for the International Red Cross, until 1947 when he went to work in the Munich office of the Associated Press. In 1950, he became editor of Germany’s Revue magazine, and was later elected to the Bundestag. Unfortunately, he died in an air crash in 1969. This book as evidence of Contantine’s adroitness in the journalistic profession. It is no longer in print, sadly, and so hard to find, but if you do ever happen to come across it, buy it, read it; you will not be disappointed.

Warner on the Gotha

Whilst rummaging through my room at home in New York last week, I came across this article which I had cut out of the ill-fated European in 1998 written by none other than Mr. Gerald Warner, KM. I was fourteen years old in 1998 and the European folded about a year later. Click here to read in jpg form. (A large file, some browsers may require resizing to view the text at a readable size).

The Oldest Library in New York

When one thinks New York and thinks libraries, the obvious place which comes to mind is the New York Public Library, one of the largest libraries in the world with one of the most beautiful homes in Bryant Park on 42nd St. The Public Library was formed in the mid-19th century by a merger of the private Astor, Lennox, and Linden libraries. The great metropolis, however, is home to a much older bibliotheca called the New York Society Library, founded in 1754.

In that year, six ‘civic-minded individuals’ formed the New York Society with the aim of founding a library which would be “very useful as well as ornamental to the city”. The ‘city library’ was given a room in the old City Hall (later, as Federal Hall, home to the United States Congress), and received a charter from H.M. King George III in 1772. Unfortunately the Library was looted during the Revolution, but survived and was restocked afterwards, receiving a second charter from the Assembly of the State of New York.

The Society Library is still, as it was then, a subscription library which operates almost like a private club, though open to all who will subscribe (and the Society Library’s membership fee is much more economical than a club). The N.Y.S.L. merged with the New York Athenaeum in 1840, and having been located a various locations around lower and mid Manhattan, in July 1937 moved its collection of one hundred and fifty thousand volumes into 53 East 79th Street (seen at top), where it continues today.

I’ve never been to the Library myself, though it seems a suitably comfortable and private location to read or research, and not expensive to boot. Perhaps I will strike up a subscription when I am next in New York as a full-time resident. They even have a Children’s Room which would be useful when progeny appear.

Knickerbocker

Perhaps you should join me in reading A history of New York, from the beginning of the world to the end of the Dutch Dynasty by Diedrich Knickerbocker, Washington Irving’s superb masterpiece of New York mythology. Above is an old rendering of Sunnyside, Washington Irving’s home in Tarrytown.

I’m in the midst of Book II, the more interesting part. However, reading books online is rather irritating, and a strain on the old eyes, so I might give in sometime soon and get Ottakar’s to order it in. (Actually, I might be able to get a nifty ‘thift edition’ on Amazon.co.uk). Sadly, Ottakar’s don’t believe in stocking the classics of New York literature. And so we must mourn for them.

St Andreans were all quite intrigued by the arrival of an Ottakar’s branch, but it’s turned out to be all in vain. Though it is bigger than any other bookshop in town, that’s not saying much, and the rumours that it would be two floors have turned out to be woefully untrue. Give me the Strand and it’s eighteen miles of books (used to be just eight miles) any day of the week.

Chain bookstores are atrocious anyhow and are best avoided when it comes to purchasing. Whenever I feel like book browsing in Westchester, if I don’t feel satisfied by the Womrath Bookshop on Pondfield Rd in Bronxville then I will browse Border’s on White Plains Road in Eastchester (or Scarsdale, as it claims), find something interesting, and order it from Womrath’s. The Strand is the best because it gives you 1) the varied selection usually only available at massive chain stores, 2) the quality of service of independent bookshops, and 3) the added bonus of used books, which are quite often better editions than more recent reissues. Eighteen miles of books, people! That’s insane.

Greetings from Andrewland

Well folks, another entry is long overdue, and it will surprise you not that my computer is still out. As such, the unanswered emails are piling high, but I promise they will be taken care of.

Reading.

I’ve finished Buckley’s Miles Gone By and I have to say I found it immensely enjoyable. It is a collection of biographical musings from across the years, akin to his previous Nearer, My God. The former, I’m glad to report, avoids the slight haphazardness of the latter, perhaps because it is much longer and the selections included are well grouped. One of the tales which I particularly enjoyed was of WFB and Brent Bozell (whose brother is in Solesmes) at Yale. WFB and some cronies had piled there money together to purchase an aircraft, which Buckley and Bozell one day landed on the great lawn of the Ethel Walker School, where Buckley’s younger sister was studying. Upon disembarking the aircraft, they were promptly invited to tea with the headmistress. The audio CD which accompanies the book is a mere fancy.

Of Paradise and Power was particularly enlightening. Though Mr. Kagan’s general supposition about the difference in American and European worldviews (as well as Europe achieving a Kantian perpetual peace only by existing under the wing of the United States, a Hobbesian leviathan) seems quite well thought out, I did find myself disagreeing with one or two of his conclusions. Plus it irritated me when he referred to Britons as Europeans. Such silliness.

Speaking of silliness, I’ve started reading Wodehouse. Bought Young Men in Spats, a collection of tales from the Drones Club, and a volume of three of the Jeeves-and-Wooster novels. So far, both are thoroughly enjoyable.

et cetera…

I was very pleased to catch up with Mr. Nicholas Merrick last night, via whom I also ran into Mssrs. Simon Tuchman and Steven Lagotte. Good old Nicholas, I’m very pleased to say, is not a Buddhist as was previously thought for some unknown reason, and Deo gratias Simon is no longer of the Marxian persuasion in terms of economic thought and whatnot. Floreat Thorntona!

Michael Ulsterman (as he is known to me), our favourite Oirishman, was in town recently and I was very pleased enough to take him out for a bite at Café Lalo, one of Manhattan’s finest eateries (as well as the locale where I inadvertently stood up Brearley girl Buffy Breed on accounts of my not knowing what day of the week it was). Michael, though a liberal, is a Unionist through-and-through, and has a very sharp, sardonic wit that I hope will soon grace the pages of the Mitre. I think the first time I went to Lalo’s was with Jessy Lewis, Jessie Smyth, and Peter Scott (and was the other Peter there as well?). Jessy is now at Brown, which I’m informed she is enjoying much more than her premier year at Barnard; I just spoke to young lady Smyth (Univ. of Penn.) a week or so ago; and last I heard of Peter Scott he was on the May Ball committee at King’s College Cambridge. Not bad, not bad at all.

Particularly enjoyed the recent Kens Club correspondence.

Got to chat with Nicholas Vincent on his birthday (Aug 1) whilst he was minding Japanese children in Oxford with the indefatigable Dickon Prior. Athiest Mr. Vincent threatened to don shorts to evensong at Christ Church Cathedral, but Mr. Prior threatened a walloping and Nicholas was brought into line. (I know! Shorts at evensong! What will they think of next?)

Lastly, and mournfully…

Our prayers go out to Lindsay Mucka, whose father died only a few days ago. Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace. Amen.