Table Talk

Miguel Mackinlay, Still Life With Eggs, 1923
(Acknowledgement to the MJ McKinlay Trust)

Do please pass me another egg, Mr P.

Edouard Manet, Oysters, 1864

[Later ... ] Yes, the oysters are delicious! 

Sarah Lamb, Bistecca ala Fiorentin, 2019

[Even later ... ] How would you like your chop, my dear?

... And there you basically have it, Dear Reader; nothing juicy yet to report on the new carnivorous régime about these parts. We're still alive and trundling along. Which all rather makes dull fodder for this blog's Something-to-Eat creed. Where are the thrilling anecdotes from the growing store of culinary adventures?, you may cry. Regretfully lacking at this juncture.

So, rather than continue with the monotonous litany of "oysters, eggs, chops, ... &c &c", which may only titillate the oh so curious, I shall instead, from time to time, steal some table talk from the literary world for these pages, such as may be found in Patrick White's marvellous 1981 memoir, Flaws in the Glass:

The kitchen stove, antique electric, had Queen Anne legs like so much of the furniture in the house. We had many cooking accidents before learning how: there was the day Rosemary Dobson Bolton brought her first baby to lunch and the oven in which I was grilling the baby's chop caught fire: the Christmas dinner during the heatwave when the pair of drakes (or swans) we had bought from Mrs Poulter bounced on the lino before I dished them up; there was the whole coq au vin I spilled on the floor, but mopped up, schnauzer hair and all, and served John Gielgud. Although I say it, that coq au vin was about the best I have tasted.*

Anyway, in other news, we went to the most excellent touring exhibition of Melbourne-born Art Deco printmakers, Ethel Spowers & Eveline Syme. As ever, the show has already moved on from Sydney, where it was held at the S. H. Ervin Gallery, but there is still opportunity to see it in Brisbane before the delicate prints get packed away again for some unknown more number of years in June. Spowers and Syme were friends and daring trailblazers of contemporary art and after studies in London's Grosvenor School with Claude Flight, embraced linoprinting to great effect. 

Ethel Spowers woodcut, Melbourne from the River, c. 1924

Ethel Spowers linocut, The Bamboo Blind, 1926

Spowers had a particular affinity for imagery of childhood, writing and illustrating children's stories.

Eveline Syme linocut, Skating, 1929

Both born into families of newspaper magnates, they were educated, independent and well-travelled. They both championed modern art and their work is instantly identifiable as of its time.

Ethel Spowers linocut, Wet Afternoon, 1930

Eveline Syme linocut, Sydney Tram Line, 1936

Ethel Spowers linocut, School is Out, 1936

The exhibition was a delight, not only to see their familiar images** but earlier works and the associated ephemera of the era, and linocuts by contemporaries who'd also fallen under the spell of the charismatic Flight. Fellow student Dorrit Black wrote of him: 'He is a very small man with very bright eyes, little bits of side-curls, and one feels instantly at one's ease with him. During the summer he lives in a cave in France, a very attractive cave, apparently, but still a cave; and in the winter he comes out of his cave to teach lino-cutting to students at the Grosvenor School.'

Nota bene: Not Claude Flight but a
Lenci porcelain, Squirrel and Acorns, 1929

Ethel Spowers linocut, Still Life, 1932

Sybil Andrews linocut, Speedway, 1934

In other news, the Musical Year has started for the Pipistrellos. Our beloved Utzon Series, the intimate recitals by visiting international stars, was a Casualty of Covid and looks not to be revived, but we got to sit in the gorgeous room again last week to hear the home-grown Australian Haydn Ensemble. A very pleasant change to the old routine is the ability to reserve seating when you book, and Mr P. nabbed front and centre seats, normally the domain of a gang of silver-haired Utzon Series stalwarts who'd stake this territory as an assumed right (and invariably fall promptly asleep after the complimentary tipple once the music started.)

Our repast consisted of a selection from Bach's The Art of Fugue; Haydn's String Quartet in A major (Sun Quartets); and Mendelssohn's String Quartet No. 2 in A minor Op. 13. Super delicious!

Lorna Singleton Oak Spelk Basket

Finally, do you love a basket with which to collect your comestibles from the shoppes? There are baskets to be found herein about the casa, and their usefulness is fully appreciated, however I was surprised to learn that there is a type of basket make from oak! Well, oak splinters not logs, obv. 

There is a mere slip of a girl living in the woodland in South Cumbria in England making a living from weaving these traditional baskets. Once a thriving craft, the resulting baskets were used for everything from charcoal scuttles on steam ships and trains to tatty and turnip baskets in the field to swilling cockles in the sea, whence comes the name oak swill baskets. There seems to be only a handful of weavers left, including the lissome Lorna Singleton. 

Here's a tantalising 15-minute documentary film on her and her work: Oak Swill Basketry.

* The take-away here, of course, is not that Nobel Prize-winning writers nor those who rub shoulders with the glitterati at the tea table have the best lines, rather it's schnauzer-lovers who seem to have all the fun!

** Stalwarts of ye olde Pinterest.

Image credits: 1: Miguel Mackinlay; 2: National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; 3: 1st Dibs; 4-12: Flying With Hands;, 13: Lorna Singleton; 14: Graphics Fairy

Carbs Are So Last Season

 

There have been some changes about the casa and I don't just mean the Christmas Tree has finally come down. Yes, we held out until Candlemas again this year, and the place is now looking somewhat lacklustre ... but I merely digress. The Pipistrellos have gone mad and have given up carbs.

It wasn't intentional, but in the way of such madcap adventures, it started with Your Correspondent falling over in the street. Cessation of Normal Activities until the gruesome wound to the leg (and the pride) healed meant time for catching up on some of the more obscure blogs that my catholic taste imbibes. I know, Bertrand Russell and the whole History of Western Philosophy should have been the natural solace for such catastrophes but I did instead get rather distracted on the youtubes. Which is where one such blogger had me tripping, hem hem, and, like Alice, I found myself in a Wonderland where everything was totally on its head: There are people out there, sensible adults, for whom fruits and vegetables, let alone the conventional notion of carbohydrates like bread and whatnot, never appear on the menu ... and are still alive!! Indeed, thriving. And since what such a diet looks like is basically meat-and-water, they're known as Carnivores. Who knew?? 

There are varying shades of low-carbs/high-fat and keto-this and zero-carb-that to this spectrum of dietary outliers and a whole new vocabulary to get stuck into. Think ketones, oxalates, lectins, Lipid Hypothesis &c. &c. What even are they? And as we've our own mini laundry list of Health Issues and a sense of scientific curiosity (viz. susceptibility to fads, as Dear Brother might say), we've hopped on board as an experiment. This may fall into Controversy Corner for you, Dear Reader, but perhaps just consider me as your guinea-pig and I shall report back from time to time on How It's Going. 

So far, after the first ten days, we've neither felt the urge to murder anyone nor commit carbicide.

Image credit: Flying With Hands

Nuggets Of Moonstone

Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone, 1868

Ah, the Victorian novel. It can really divide the masses. Mr P is reading Middlemarch for the first time and attends it with lots of oh dear, oh dear!-s and hearty guffawing & cannot help delightedly reading me passages, for it is a cracking good read. Ol' George Eliot really had her finger on the pulse with what made people tick. And the language! Right up Your Correspondent's alley*. And which has reminded me to finally crack on with some choice nuggets from last year's reading of Wilkie Collins's contribution to the early detective novel genre, The Moonstone. 

Nota bene: Ever the professional, WC wrote much of the book as a serial whilst delirious with opium for his gout pain and dealing with the death of his mother. What ho, Dear Reader, it's a recipe for fun!

This Victorian stalwart is told through first-hand reminiscences, epistolary-wise, of those on the scene of the Mystery of the Stolen Moonstone, a famous cursed diamond of Indian origin bequeathed to an heiress. A proselytising spinster and a household steward who confers soothsaying abilities upon Robinson Crusoe are the inadvertent comics among the narrators whose recollections form the book. A police detective, a louche gentleman, a dying opium-addict, a lawyer and a couple of others add their two-bob's worth, littering clues, red herrings and further suspects liberally about the pages while revealing more about themselves than their brief required. 

Viz. Drusilla Clack, our Proselytising Spinster:

 Here was a golden opportunity! I seized it on the spot. In other words, I instantly opened my bag, and took out the top publication ... entitled The Serpent at Home. The design of the book - with which the worldly reader may not be acquainted - is to show how the Evil One lies in wait for us all in the most apparently innocent actions of our daily lives. The chapters best adapted to female perusal are "Satan in the Hair Brush"; "Satan behind the Looking Glass"; "Satan under the Tea Table"; "Satan out of the Window" - and many others.

  'Give your attention, dear aunt, to this precious book - and you will give me all I ask.' With those words, I handed it to her open, at a marked passage - one continuous burst of burning eloquence! Subject: Satan among the Sofa Cushions.

 Poor Lady Verinder (reclining thoughtlessly on her own sofa cushions) glanced at the book, and handed it back to me looking more confused than ever.

The book ranges widely (& wildly) from the scientific experiment of administering laudanum to novel police work (whereupon a famous detective dreaming of retirement and growing roses is paid to consult in the mystery); from the exotique of avenging Hindoos (sic) to do-goodery and charity work amongst the spinster class and religious evangelism. There's even deadly quicksand to contend with!

But a Romance, as it was once sub-titled? Well, Rachel Verinder the Dreary Heroine who is robbed of the Moonstone does have a couple of vying Suitors amongst the cast and a fair amount of tears, door-slamming and attendant petulant silence might indicate passions running high. There's also a housemaid Rosanna Spearman employed from the reform house who becomes an obsessive stalker of Franklin Blake, Rachel's louche suitor. Rosanna is generally meant to be a tragic, pathetic creature to be pitied for her misdirected unrequited love but I'm calling this out for what it is.

Love object Franklin Blake is himself also a prime suspect and enlists all the narrators to pen their observations to clear his name. He strikes me as an English take on the Russian Superfluous Man, his own narratives showing his Cosmopolitan Sensibilities at odds with the petty confines of his world:

 Trumpery little scandals and quarrels in the town, some of them as much as a month old, appeared to recur to his memory readily. He chattered on, with something of the smooth fluency of former times ... I submitted patiently to my martyrdom (it is surely nothing less than martyrdom to a man of cosmopolitan sympathies, to absorb in silent resignation the news of a country town?) until the clock on the chimney-piece told me that my visit had been prolonged beyond half an hour. Having now some right to consider the sacrifice as complete, I rose to take leave.

Much priceless Victorian wisdom, however, is dispensed from the loyal retainer, 70-something butler (house steward) Gabriel Betteredge, and far and away my favourite character. Blessedly, he gets around half the book. Feast your eyes upon some of our man Betteredge's nuggets of Moonstone:

On Traditional Enmities:

  'Let us finish the story of the Colonel first,' says Mr Franklin. ' There is a curious want of system, Betteredge, in the English mind; and your question, my old friend, is an instance of it. When we are not occupied in making machinery, we are (mentally speaking) the most slovenly people in the universe.'

  'So much,' I thought to myself, ' for a foreign education! He has learned that way of girding at us in France, I suppose.'

On Downstairs Duty:

'Speaking as a servant, I am indebted to you. Speaking as a man, I consider you to be a person whose head is full of maggots, and I take up my testimony against your experiment as a delusion and a snare. Don't be afraid, on that account, on my feelings as a man getting in the way of the duties as a servant! You shall be obeyed. The maggots notwithstanding, sir, you shall be obeyed. If it ends in your setting the house on fire, Damne if I send for the engines, unless you ring the bell and order them first!'

On the Iniquity of White-Collar Crime:

The upshot of it was, that Rosanna Spearman had been a thief, and not being of the sort that get up Companies in the City, and rob from thousands, instead of only robbing from one, the law laid hold of her, and the prison and the reformatory followed the lead of the law.

On Easy Governance:

 We, in the servants' hall, began this happy anniversary, as usual, by offering our little presents to Miss Rachel, with the regular speech delivered annually by me as the chief. I follow the plan adopted by the Queen in opening Parliament - namely, the plan of saying much the same thing regularly every year. Before it is delivered, my speech (like the Queen's) is looked for as eagerly as if nothing of the kind had ever been heard before. When it is delivered, and turns out not to be the novelty anticipated, though they grumble a little, they look forward hopefully to something newer next year. An easy people to govern, in the Parliament and in the Kitchen - that's the moral of it.

Finally, Betteredge on Women:

 On hearing those dreadful words, my daughter Penelope said she didn't know what prevented her heart from flying straight out of her. I thought privately that it might have been her stays. All I said, however, was, 'You make my flesh creep.' (Nota bene: Women like these little compliments.)

* And why I've read it twice just in the past several years.

Image credits: 1: Biblio; 2: Antique Maps and Prints; 3: Wilkie Collins Information Pages