Mr Selfridge

When Wolf Hall was broadcasted on the German-French channel belonging to the public service, another - private this time - channel started showing « Mr Selfridge ».

As it is a private channel, and as the audience does not have to pay to have access to it, there are of course, a great number of adverts slicing the show. And I find this very appropriate to the main topic of this series. Mr Selfridge is an American businessman come to take London by surprise and to create the first modern department store in Britain. As a businessman always searching for new events making a “buzz” around its merchandise in order to sell them more and more, Mr Selfridge could have understood that “his” series be cut thrice an episode to leave space for adverts!

I was not impressed by the first episodes. Mr Selfridge was loud. Mr Selfridge was always beaming. Mr Selfridge was talking money. Mr Selfridge was vulgar – even according to my French and twenty-first century standards.

Mr Selfridge was arriving in London having concluded a partnership that was destroyed in the first minutes of the first episode. Meanwhile, he was advertising his presence, his “store”, his methods, being photographed by the press from which he curried favours, drawing on his cigar that Frenchmen would have called a “barreau de chaise” as it was so big and ostentatious, puffing the smoke, beaming with jocundity, and all there was behind the fence was a mighty hole and no money in the bank. Tsssss! Bad American capitalist juggling with no money or others’ money.

Of course, he realised what he had come to make: he found British patrons, made his way in the demi-monde and the monde, found investors, built his department store, found employees devoted to him (I wondered why: I would have hated the guy, his methods and his culture d’entreprise avant la lettre - a corporate culture before its time –, his sense of team while he clearly remained the boss), department managers even more devoted, had an impeccable family (his devoted mother, his devoted wife, his loving children – three girls and an heir), a music-hall singer and actress who was the coqueluche of London (the toast of London) to represent the esprit (the essence) of his store, becoming his mistress. In a few words, he was a wonderful character that I hated.

It did not help that the channel that broadcasted the series was showing four episodes at a time. One comes from such a sitting with a vague sense of indigestion. Too much chocolate is too much, even if you like chocolate. What if you DON’T like chocolate?

Therefore, I hesitated to go through this half ordeal the next Friday evening, a week later, but the French TV was not showing anything suitable for The Girls and interesting for me. I resigned myself to watch Mr Selfridge again with the proviso that if I did not like it, we would switch off the TV set long before the end of the fourth episode.

I had thought about the series during the week and remembered what had been said in English-speaking newspapers and magazine: it was directed by Andrew Davies, and Andrew Davies is la crème de la crème for series; it was in direct competition with “The Paradise”, which is based upon Zola’s novel “Au Bonheur des Dames”, the founding of a department store for ladies, during the Second Empire and under the reign of Napoleon III, in Paris, based in turn upon facts, as aways with Zola: the creation of Le Bon Marché. The novel belongs to the long sequence of novels called “Les Rougon-Macquart”, which is so ill understood by English speakers who read it without, or out of, context.

And there were vague similarities with the French novel in this series as well. Mr Selfridge was as self-assured as Octave Mouret. There was a young lady seller who might have passed for Denise Baudu, were not Mr Selfridge already married. The music hall singer was not without reminding me of “Nana”. The whole department store with its déballez-moi ça, its wealth of tempting goods and its play upon the “natural wish” of “ladies” to buy, was close to the Bonheur des Dames. It seemed as frankly and openly anti-feminist and capitalist, although Zola was anti-capitalist and did not allow Octave Mouret to go through his venture unscathed. What would happen then to our Mr Selfridge?

A little research on the internet told me that he was a real person and not a fictional character (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Gordon_Selfridge), and that his family was also well known (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_Selfridge). Therefore, Andrew Davies had to cling to facts. He usually clings to the plot of novels but here was no novel. Instead, there was a fictionalised biography by Lindy Woodhead called ”Shopping, Seduction & Mr Selfridge”. It was not a drifting scenario as “Downton Abbey” that was written to cater to the tastes of its audience and made a sort of soap opera after the first season. Unlike Fellowes, Davies had a spine for his story: the life and deeds of Henry Gordon Selfridge. Then he could embroider the facts but Davies is usually true to the periods he describes and well documented. From then onwards, it might – might, just – be less of an ordeal to watch.

 And it WAS good.

For all I know, it is still good as we entered the second season last Friday and shall be well into it this evening as I write on a Friday. The main facts are true. Then the plot has been fleshed in by “secondary” characters or fictional characters in real life who are protagonists in the series.

Yes, compared with short biographies of Harry Gordon Selfridge and Rose Selfridge, the main lines of their lives are respected. Yes, there are reminiscences of Zola in the system of the department store and in some characters or development of the plot, but they are not overwhelming. And it proves right that department stores and capitalism develop according to recurring facts and events that may be considered as patterns and axioms. One may disapprove capitalism, paternalism, corporate culture, but they existed and still exist. They are even expanding with the emergent countries such as China or the converted Russia. To demonstrate how they are born, they grow and develop, is also a way to recognise them, and to fight them if and when they go too far. Yes, there is anti-feminism: Rose and Harry are not treated equally when they are thought to have had, at least, wishful adulterous passions or consummated ones. And the music hall singer, Ellen Love, is treated as a Nana, and as a hero straight out of a play by Oscar Wilde. Yes, the suffragettes are within the store with Miss Ravilious and outside, demonstrating, and nothing shocking about their treatment is shown: the movement is less fierce than it was, the police forces and the repression are non - existent, but there is something of Marcuse’s thought in the treatment of the recuperation of the feminist movement to the benefit of both Selfridge and the store. It is unpleasant for women today and for feminists, but it did exist. Yes, the private soirée where la Pavlova danced before the Selfridges is true, but the story of Miss Towler clearly looks very much alike that of Denise Baudu.

But there are distinctive elements as well, and some are looking towards the new fashion in the English speaking series – mostly the British ones but that are loved by the Americans, Canadians and other ex-colonies or members of the British Empire. I mean the “upstairs-downstairs” trend.

There was the old “Upstairs-Downstairs”, the “Forsyte Saga”, which has undertones of the same period drama. There has been the new “Upstairs-Downstairs” that did not work well. There has been all Fellowes’ work up to “Downton Abbey”. There are now these new series that look up to the rich (and sometimes aristocratic and in any case upper-class) caste and the poor one (servants, shop sellers, secretaries, clerks, you-name-them - in any case lower class). There are your glamour and compassion for your average audience. “Gorgeous” (this is the epithet that comes again and again in the comments) costumes, lavish parties, grand houses and castles to make you dream, and male and female Cinderellas who either are allowed to grow into middle class (at least) or who stay contented with their positions. The audience is kept happy, dreaming, nostalgic, and most of the time identifying with the “upstairs” characters rather than with the “downstairs” ones, unless they are allowed to evolve socially to higher sphere. Well, there is a partial identification with the last category: they were never the “true” upper-classes”.

This is puzzling for a French person. First of all, we do not have that many costume dramas on TV, and we do not adapt our beloved authors as the English speaking countries do. There is no Balzac or Zola idolatry as there are Jane Austen, George Eliot, Charles Dickens or Anthony Trollope on pedestals with super fans. There is no real nostalgia towards the past. The past is almost always a place where the French people rebels against tyranny, not only the kings’ tyranny but also the money and the capitalist tyranny. “Germinal” (another novel by Zola) makes a large audience: it is the story of the rebellion of coal miners against employers. Aristocrats are not exalted, although the French are happy to have some sort of royal family with the Princes of Monaco – but Monaco is allowed to live because it is useful for financial reasons; it is somewhat French but not entirely; the princely family does not rule over the country and the French people; they are glamorous but slightly ridiculous as they seem to be straight out of an operetta as Ellen Love seemed to be straight out of “Nana” or an Oscar Wilde play. The French and Anglo-Saxon cultures are radically different.

Downton Abbey

Germinal

There is something more in Mr Selfridge.

It is the first British TV series I see where a Northern American character takes over the British. And a male character as that. It has made me think and look for novels by Henry James, Edith Wharton, Frances Compton-Burnett, and Constance Fennimore Coulson who is the last fashion in gender studies. Even Louisa May Alcott sends one of her “Little Women”, Amy, and her hero, Laurie, to Europe. But mostly, only women and heiresses stay in Europe to be married – rather unhappily most of the time: look at “The Buccaneers”, “The Portrait of a Lady”, “The Shuttle”, for instance. The list is not limited, there are several more titles.

Rose Selfridge is not happy in her marriage and with her life in Britain. She goes back and forth between Chicago and London. Her daughters are educated in the United States. But her son goes to an English public school from which he is seen leaving at sixteen to walk in the footsteps of his father, and come to work with him in the department store, beginning with the most menial tasks, and facing the budding trade-unions. The father, Mr Selfridge, stays in Britain and suffers the ups and downs of his own life AND those of his adopted country that he has taken by surprise.

I draw no conclusion from this: after all, I shall watch part of the second season only this evening, therefore a lot may happen. Or I shall draw a provisional conclusion. This is costume drama with a twist. There is the nostalgia of a past world but the vision of the coming end of the British Empire, its last glowing lights across the world. Soon, so soon, other countries will rise and take its place in what the British thought as the epitome of culture and civilisation. Post colonialism is here. The Barbarians are at the doors.

First of them, the Americans who will take charge. Soon, very soon.

So soon.

In praise of libraries

I am decidedly posting  lots of people's blogs today. But I cannot resist one about the praise of libraries. And Serena is such a good blogger!

Source: In praise of libraries

Land Before Time

Another blog I would like to share with you. Again visiting Pakistan. This time, seeing a site that existed for a lost and past civilisation.

This is not so far from la Dordogne as we have a wealth of pre-historic caves. Some of you may know Lascaux and its famous drawings and the Cro-Magnon and Magdalenian men.

But here, we are visiting a real "civilisation" even if it was "before times". Enjoy.

Source: Land Before Time

Spring: A Wildlife Trust Anthology for the Changing Seasons

A blog by a fellow blogger for all people who feel spring coming and who like books, poetry, fiction, paintings, the arts. A little gem.

Source: Spring: A Wildlife Trust Anthology for the Changing Seasons

"Valentines" or "How easily life passes by me"

Last year, I received this painting as a Valentine.

And it was the first time I was receiving a Valentine. In France, Valentines are exchanged between lovers or people that love each other. It is no mean symbol. One would not send a card to a friend or an acquaintance or someone of his or her family. Well, I give The Girls Valentines but they are really inocuous. Teddy bears hugging a pillow or a lovely embroidered cushion. Gracious flowers. Swans or birds or butterflies. It is only to say: in this celebration, you are not forgotten; do think that you are loved and cherished; you are important persons. But I to receive a Valentine? Well, I was elated. Furthermore, it was a painting and a painter that my Valentine and I had discussed at some length before. I thought it was so much up-to-the-point. It was a wonderful day. Certainly one of my most wonderful days.

There is no Valentine this year. Well, I should not have expected any joy to last. There is no reason why it should: no one would dream to have a Valentine trailing behind her two, one, more, less, any, disabled person. That was asking too much. And I had forgotten that I was depressed with other side-illnesses. And bad tempered. That was a lovely mistake while it lasted but it was doomed since the beginning.

Instead of a Valentine, I have Lent this year. It began with Ash Wednesday last week, and is now in full swing with the first Sunday in Lent today. My picture for Valentine Day is certainly more spiritually up-lifting but is it as immediately happy? As I am no saint (see the reference to my bad temper above), I doubt I enjoy it as much as last year's... Here it is.

The Seven Works of Mercy

(Caravaggio)

It has been painted around 1607 as altarpiece for the church of Pio Monte della Misericordia in Naples and is still there after four hundred years. It depicts the seven corporal works of mercy that are mentioned in the Gospel according to Matthew, which are traditional Catholic belief, and are also the set of compassionate acts concerning the material welfare of others. Some sort of complement to the Beatitudes of the Discourse on the Mount. 

I have better quote art critics about it.

The titular seven works/acts of mercy are represented in the painting as follows:

Bury the dead

In the background, two men carry a dead man (of whom only the feet are visible).

Visit the imprisoned, and feed the hungry

On the right, a woman visits an imprisoned man and gives him milk from her breast. This image alludes to the classical story of Roman Charity.

Shelter the homeless

A pilgrim (third from left, as identified by the shell in his hat) asks an innkeeper (at far left) for shelter.

Clothe the naked

St. Martin of Tours, fourth from the left, has torn his robe in half and given it to the naked beggar in the foreground, recalling the saint's popular legend.

Visit the sick

St. Martin greets and comforts the beggar who is a cripple.

Refresh the thirsty

Samson (second from the left) drinks water from the jawbone of an ass.

American art historian John Spike notes that the angel at the center of Caravaggio’s altarpiece transmits the grace that inspires humanity to be merciful.

Spike also notes that the choice of Samson as an emblem of Giving Drink to the Thirsty is so peculiar as to demand some explanation. The fearsome scourge of the Philistines was a deeply flawed man who accomplished his heroic tasks through the grace of God. When Samson was in danger of dying of thirst, God gave him water to drink from the jawbone of an ass. It is difficult to square this miracle with an allegory of the Seven Acts of Mercy since it was not in fact the work of human charity.

I know, I know. As a Christian and as a Roman Catholic, I should welcome Lent and I should be contemplating and seeking inspiration in this painting, which is strictly and artistically speaking a masterpiece for those who believe in God and those who do not believe in Him. So, why do I feel such a wretch when I compare my two paintings?

God knows, but I have an inkling!

https://youtu.be/YDOENZediM8

Psalm 50

also known as "Miserere"

Allegri

The Tallis Scholars

(legendary recording - 1980)

Wolf Hall on French television

So, at long last, Wolf Hall has been broadcast by the French television.

This simple statement cries out for corrections and explanations, as simple as it is. First, it has been broadcast on the French and German channel, ARTE, which belongs to the public service and is the cultural and intellectual warrant of the French television. Second, it was not certain that such a series would be broadcast in France. It was not to attract crowds and television channels are here with an eye on the audience. Panem et circences... The French are not gourmands of costume programmes. They like reality shows, documentaries about their own history, but not much about others' history. I guess it would be the same if the BBC, ITV or some US or Canadian or other foreign channel were to show some costume drama about French history. Except for some more or less exact rudiments about French history, like the prise de la Bastille and the existence of Louis XIV and Versailles, I do not expect that much is known abroad about François Ier or the Valois dynasty who reigned at the same time as the Tudors. As to Hilary Mantel's novels, they were translated in French but they were not a great hit as in English speaking countries for the same reasons: lack of historical knowledge.

Although Henry VIII is rather well known in this country where he is associated with Bluebeard and heretics, I cannot take The Girls as a valid example of the general knowledge: theirs is distorted, both less important in some matters and more in others. They certainly know more about King Henry than the majority of their fellow countrymen. Nevertheless they both hate him greatly for killing his wives and think him  both cruel and mad. That could summarize the French attitude about him. As to Cromwell, he is utterly unknown.

And so, we watched TV. 

The series came in two batches of three episodes each. Two weeks. I dislike this new format of an hour per episode but I understand that it is easy to divide them for publicity spots. Fortunately on channels still belonging to the public service there is no break and I feel lucky to have been able to watch twice three hours of Tudor England without being interrupted by adverts about sweets or washing powder.

The first time, I had not re-read "Wolf Hall" and remembered the main features of the book but not the details. I found that Cromwell's portrayal by Mark Rylance was almost feminine. He had nothing of the traditional courtier going up the social ladder including walking upon living fellows or corpses, allying with some people to deny their friendship later, usefully forgetting and selecting his acquaintanceships. By contrast, Thomas More was almost too good a villain, "the sainted More" as he is sometimes disdainfully called. Probably, we, belonging to a historically mainly Roman Catholic country, see him as a saint martyred by his king, whereas Anglicans or proponents of the Reform will think him a traitor. This is  how History is written. And this is important as it is the way differences are made in reading and watching or listening from country to country or from individual to individual. "Only connect"! This time, "only connect" with people's general and individual backgrounds.

I thought Damian Lewis a good choice to play King Henry. He was the dashing young fellow courting Anne Boleyn, slowly maturing, putting on weight, ageing, wondering, pondering, still wilful and capricious, but being more dangerous and wild, more easily assuming his choices and quickly reaching his ends, be it in love and / or politics. But where is the difference between love and politics when you are king of England in the sixteenth century?

Anne Boleyn... Well, Anne Boleyn was never a favourite of mine. I understand she was beautiful, alluring, clever, religious in her own way, ambitious, misunderstood, in fact "a woman for all seasons" - to make a bad pun and a bad reference. It seems to me that she is mostly read backwards: as all know her end and the wrong that is done to her when the king becomes tired of her and falls in love with Jane Seymour, when she becomes an annoyance and does not gives the long-awaited heir that would comfort the dynasty - in a word when she is beheaded in order that another could take her place and have a "royal" son - as we all know this, she is either made a whore or a saint, a repulsive woman or an iconic woman. I have watched readings of "Wolf Hall" and "Bring Up the Bodies" made by feminists and watched them watching the TV series with their own reading grid: Anne had all and every qualities. She was lost in a men's world and her fate was sealed from the beginning. What about Katharine of Aragon then? She was at least as clever and desperate than Anne and she had even more legitimacy. She fought and endured. 

Therefore I was in two minds about Anne and I am still after watching the series. Claire Foy makes her as wilful and capricious as Damian Lewis makes the king. I would say that she is hard and cold as steel for her coronation and when at long last her path crosses the Spanish ambassador's, Chapuys. The ambiguity of her guilt is almost erased: she is NOT guilty. Henry only wants to be rid of her and asks Cromwell to find charges against her. It seems that all charges are wrong, falsified, played at dice so to speak in twisting words and evidences. Human beings are played with: they are pawns towards one goal only: to kill Anne. And in this way, she becomes the martyr that Thomas More is for the French.

And this is when I come to the second volley of three episodes. I found them more interesting than the first one, both as characterisation and filmic technique.

I have to say that I mostly dislike books turned into films or TV programmes. Films and TV programmes put a filter between me and the text, my reading of it, my understanding, my personal relationship with it and with the author. I have to follow a reducing (in time, text and mental images) of the intention of the author and of my freedom to read as I please - reducing done by a director, producers, actors, and all people involved in the making of the filmic venture. I live it as limitation and a violation of my reading space and my understanding.

Being conscious of this epidermal reaction, I try with all my might to turn it into something positive and to make "it" a thing disconnected from the novel. "It" becomes a new object that does not impair and injure my reading faculties, but enhances my knowledge although outside the scope of the written fiction. Some people have read the book and this is how they see it and make it alive in their brains. Well, this is interesting: how does it fit with my own vision? What and how is it as a separate object?

The first three episodes were elliptic and sometimes difficult to understand for people not having read "Wolf Hall". Scenes were standing alone where they were part of Cromwell's stream of consciousness in the novel. Characters were numerous, unrelated, coming from nowhere and sometimes going nowhere, whole linking scenes were cut off, others were savagely amputated. It was rather like a jigsaw puzzle. The masculine part of Anne was as prominent as the feminine part of Cromwell and the king was a rather more a play thing than a puppet master. Cromwell's climb was not that evident and his relationship with Wolsey was left somewhat in limbo.

I grew more interested with the three last episodes.

Characters were at last endowed with some "roundness" - as EM Forster (again) says of flat and round characters -. Cromwell was gaining mostly in depth and "thickness" by flashbacks returning to his childhood and youth. I mean here the flashbacks to his relationship with his father in Putney, the famous opening scene of "Wolf Hall" the novel where he is pummelled and thrashed by his father with a violence that takes away the reader's breath. Or the scene where his father teaches him to fight pain. His relationship with Wolsey was also seen in flashbacks. His relationship with his wife and daughters; his relationships with the Boleyns and their court of flatterers. The way he made up to being the King's confident and the dangers that induces. His relationships with his son, Gregory, and the young men with whom he surrounded himself as help and spies. The networks that are needed to be a true courtier and a man of power - hidden power being better than showy. 

I write both in present and past tenses as then the story and history blended, as the individual story of Cromwell took tones of the universal story of power and how to gain it, to make it grow, to live with it, to manoeuvre it, to use it, not to be eaten by it and its lures. There came Niccolo Machiavelli and Baldassare Castiglione. There came at long last la Renaissance and its men as bridges between a world that was not entirely dead and another that was being born. 

I was re-reading "Bring Up the Bodies" at the time and was able to play more aptly between novel and film. Although, the latter remained a singular object in its own right, I could see more clearly the work that had been done by the people involved in its making. The actors were allowed more span and they stretched themselves and their abilities. Henry expanded and became king though with tinges of mania. Anne shrank. In the end, when going to and standing upon the scaffold, she looked no more the steel woman but the delicate and broken puppet doll. The Duke of Norfolk, her uncle, had chaired the court where she had been judged and her menfolk, helped by her sister-in-law had turned against her. Jane Seymour was no saint but a scheming young woman, as Anne had been, drawn into the game by her family and her own will. Cromwell played the king's pleasure and met his debts.

Most of all, the director and the film editor were at juggling with cameras and images masterfully. This was definitely not the novel but it was as good an object as the novel itself. People watching would still need to know the story that was told before us, and it was made easier by having read the books, but it was really and truly a separate object of beauty in its own right.  

If I am to sum it up, did I like these series? Yes. Did I find them faithful to the novels? Yes and no. But the no is positive. No paradox here. Just the acknowledgement that the reading made by the director suited me and that it suited me better in the last three episodes than in the three first ones. Why did this reading suit me? Because it was clever and used the text in a compact way, slicing through it, but keeping the essentials, and showing them with filming techniques that have no equivalent in literature. In this sense, it was another grammar, another vocabulary, serving the core of the story and History. 

From the stories of individual men and women, a universal history of power was unfolded before us.

Please, come in and have a cup of coffee or tea...

Bonjour

and come in quick!

This is a foul weather so do not stand in the rain and the wind. Last week, we thought it was almost spring: there had been a turn in the light, something intangible and frail - a transparency in the baby blue sky, a light with a powdery grain that was the very texture of the sun, a tinge of yellowy green on the trees, or od brighter russet, a new sparkle over the winter jasmine flowers, the candour of the swnowdrops, and the first shy little daisies. And now, all is gone and it is damp, soggy winter again. Leaden skies, fat drops of rain stopping only to give place to a continuous insinuating drizzle, pools of water in the fields, blasts of wind, splashes when the cars pass by on the road.

We have turned on the lights inside the house again and here they stay, all day long while we cough and sneeze, and have tears in our eyes. No real colds, only chills, weariness, despond. It is so dull.

So we are all happy to see you and to have some fresh news from the world outside our little world! Tell us: what is happening to you? Is the weather better at your place? What are you reading? What are you doing? We need our friends and their chatter to bring us some hope and joy. I shall make some tea or coffee. Meanwhile, please, tell me about you... Please!