Harriet Smart

I have a bit of a crush on Peter Lely. In fact I’m a bit confused about it.

Here is the gentleman of whom I speak – his self portrait of 1660, from the National Portrait Gallery. Not exactly my type. However I have now made his acquaintance in person.

Well, not really. An actor or an historian (I don’t know which) is doing a impersonation of this man at Hampton Court Palace and doing a devilish cunning job. My head is quite turned, I can tell you.

Now this impersonation is in support of the new exhibition at Hampton Court of voluptuous portraiture of the Restoration period (from about 1660 to 1680) which I highly recommend: The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned

It is brilliantly curated, with a bevy of sumptuous portraits hung in Queen Mary’s State Aparments, complete with opulent swags of silk and at one point a suggestively rumpled bed.  The pictures are hung at eye level so you can engage with the personalities of the era and also luxuriate in the beautiful colours, textures and general aura of tasteful eroticism. Even the pictures that pertain to virtuous beauty reek of sex. It’s a wonderful show – highly theatrical.

As we were wallowing in all this, a lady dressed in a period perfect shot taffetta gown appeared and  informed us that she would be undressing at 12 o’clock.  Now, I knew that there are costumed interpreters at Hampton Court and,  to tell you the truth, I usually give historical interpreters a very wide berth. However I had seen a snippet of one of those “behind the scenes” documentaries at Hampton Court and seen the costume department at work. It was obviously a very scholarly enterprise – and in fact just looking at this Restoration Beauty made it obvious that this was going to be very well done. So I put my silly prejudice aside and decided to go and see for myself.

What I didn’t realise was just how well done. I was entranced. It was a curious mixture of historical interpretation, improvised theatre and simple make believe.  The lady turned out to be Lady Castlemaine herself and Peter Lely had brought some undress gowns from his studio so that he could paint another sexy portrait of her and keep the King’s interest.  It was 1667 and neither of them would be strayed from that moment in time.  Before Lady Castelmaine  arrived  I had a long conversation with Mr Lely who was inclined to charming gossip.  He complained about the traffic in the Strand where the new maypole was and told me how many children Lady C. had had with the King. He had perfected a style of speech that was both contemporary, funny and slangy but had the flavour of the period to it, so that it was very easy to suspend my disbelief.  When small children interrupted with rather annoying questions he was patient but politely authoritarian with them, and seemed entirely a man of the seventeenth century. He never stepped out of character for a moment.  He was extremely interesting on the subject of his painting:  how he uses badger’s hair brushes to make the women’s skin beautifully smooth and how he employs a drapery painter for the satin and silk. I wish now I had asked him how much he paid the drapery painter and his other assistants.

As to the disrobing of Lady Castelmaine – this was an excuse for a sort of flirtation between them while we women became attendants on Lady C. I got the job of unlacing the back of her bodice and asked her to help me find a husband for my daughter, though I found myself wondering if it was really doing my reputation any good to be in the camp of the King’s mistress, who might not be his mistress for much longer.  This was how convincing it was – it was impossible not to get swept up into the story.  We were very fortunate that there were not many of us there in the room, and for added atmosphere we could hear someone playing the organ in the Chapel Royal a few doors away, while beyond the great windows, the spectacular formal gardens were shrouded in light English drizzle.

I would dearly have loved to give them both a round of applause when we were done but they never broke character and it would have spoiled the rather magical atmosphere if they had. But whoever they are in the twentieth century, I offer them an appreciative flourish of my hand and thank them heartily.

This is another painting from the Birmingham Museum Collection which riveted me during my teen years. It’s called Boer War and it’s by John Byam Shaw. Naturally as a melencholic adolescent I loved it for the rather stagy, sensual, wallow in death atmosphere. I could very much identify with the feelings of the young widow, forced to wear black. I had also just read “Gone with the Wind” where Scarlett revolts at the business of High Victorian Mourning.

But thinking about this now, this forced wearing of black seems quite a good idea, not some dreadful cultural imposition. We live these days in a culture where being depressed is common yet is not at all permitted. We are all supposed to be happy all the time.  The Victorians were not so silly. They fully acknowledged the fact that death would make you miserable and they formulated elaborate dress codes which permitted the wearer to signal publicly the state of their feelings.  Instead of having to pretend nothing was wrong, you could point out to others, from your hat to your shoes, and even with the black ribbons threaded through your underthings, that you were sad and would be for some time to come.  This seems to me to be honest in a way that we are not these days.

Mourning ensemble in the V & A. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O89496/mourning-dress-ensemble/

Dress fabric and wrapper from Peter Robinson’s mourning warehouse, also in the V & A. http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O59234/dress-fabric-and/

Worth noting too that a  dress length in 1892 was 7 yards long!

I have read Madame Bovary, honest gov, I have. Except that it was in French, so I haven’t really read it.

At one time my French was worth a B grade at A’level in the days of yore when hardly anyone  got A grades and results day never made the national news, with pictures of pretty girls jumping for joy. So I was reasonably accomplished and I ploughed my way through Madame B as an extra on the reading list. It took me forever and the feeling was of walking through thick Victorian fog. I got the gist of it but the reality of it? Non. So now I have a £1.00 Collins classic from the co-op (how utopian is that) waiting for me in what looks like a very clear and readable translation. Except it doesn’t tell me who the translator is.

This strikes me as monstrously unfair as it can’t be an easy book to translate.

But maybe that is the way of translators. They are unsung heroes and we should laud them more. I do know that they have a Society and probably an annual dinner and a few awards knocking about but that isn’t quite enough when you consider the time and trouble they save us. How could we have enjoyed the recent Scandi crime boom if it had not been for the ranks of so often un-named translators bringing us our Jo Nesbo and Stieg Larsson? I have a particular vote of thanks for the wonderful work of Elizabeth Porch who brought the delights of the Moomins to me as a child. And the only reason I have read Proust is because Messrs Scott Moncrieffe and Kilmartin did such a spiffing job of making Proust feel as if it had been written in English in the first place. Then there is Asterix and Tintin, just as funny and fresh in translations. The stuff of miracles, in short. It looks effortless but I am sure it is not.

So if you come across a lonely, humble translator, remember to tell them how wonderful I think they are.