Camus, Sartre and de Beauvoir

In this blog, I normally write the history of people I know well, having already admired their architecture, paintings,  books  or music. Yet my sole contact with Albert Camus came via his friendship with Sartre and de Beauvoir. Thus I am largely dependent on, and grateful to the Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy.

Albert Camus (1913-1960) was born in Algeria in 1913 with no father and a sick mother. So they moved to Camus' grandmother's apartment in Algiers, for the lad to receive a good education. Tertiary educati­on was interrupted and delayed by TB but he did eventually go back to uni in 1930. Mixing with young, progressive intellectuals, he co-founded the Workers' Theatre and co-wrote a play for their theatre. The group also produced plays by Dostoevski and other established playwrights, especially chosen to appeal to the workers of the city.

Travelling to Europe first became possible for Camus in 1936, and one year later his first collection of essays was published. In 1938 Camus became a journalist for a newspaper called the Alger-Republicain, clearly hoping for independence from France (which was not achieved until 1962).

Camus left Algiers in 1940 for Paris, seeking work as a reporter for the progressive press. But 1940 was the worst time in French history for an outsider to arrive, so he returned home to Algeria. He found a teaching position in Oran, writing openly against war in Europe - this put him in danger due to the political right's rise in power in both France and Algeria. Having been declared a threat to national security later in 1940, this young man in his 20s was advised to leave Algeria as quickly as humanly possible.

Of course back in Paris he found the German army had taken the French capital and most of Northern France.

Camus (left) and Sartre, Paris

Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus first met in June 1943, at the opening of one of Sartre's plays. Camus’ recently published novel The Stranger, was a big success, so they certainly knew who he was. Camus wanted to meet the French novelist, playwright philosopher whose fiction he had reviewed years earlier and who had just published a long article on Camus' own books. In November 1943, Camus moved to Paris to start working as a reader for his (and Sartre's) publisher, Michel Gallim­ard, and the trio’s friendship warmed. They met at Café Flore, Sartre and Beauvoir’s favourite drinkery and office-away-from-home. 

In 1943 Camus joined Combat, an illegal resistance cell and newspaper that had been founded in 1942 for sabotage of the German war-machine. Camus helped by smuggling news of the war to the Parisian public via copies of the Combat paper. He became its editor in 1943, and held this position for four years. His articles often called for action in accordance to strong moral principals, and it was during this period of his life that he was formalising his philosophy.

If modern readers know only one of Camus’ novels it would be The Stranger (1942) - on the theme of the alienated outsider. His polit­ic­al history and experiences in occupied France led him to search for a way to address moral responsibility. He expressed himself in works like Letters to a German Friend (1945), which was published with other political essays, in Resistance, Rebellion and Death (1960). Part of what made Camus different from other philosophers was his fascinat­ion for and acceptance of contradiction. But that is exactly what made Camus difficult to read.

Picasso's studio, 1944

I am very grateful to The Art Blog for this photograph by Brassaï. It showed important cultural figures gathered in 1944 in Paris after the private production of Picasso's surrealist play, Desire Caught By the Tail. Jean-Paul Sartre was seated on the floor with his pipe; Simone de Beauvoir held a book; Camus was staring at the dog; Picasso was in the middle; his paintings in the background.

By the end of the war, Camus had become a leading voice for the French working class and social change. In 1946 he visited Lournarin in Province with three fellow writers and decided to stay. He rented a house in this beautiful town that reminded him of Algeria, but could not afford to buy one until his Nobel Prize money arrived in 1958. Daughter Catherine now lives in the family home in Rue de l'Eglise, complete with its large terraces, rose filled gardens and views of the distant hills. But today the street is called Rue Albert Camus.

In 1949 Camus had a relapse of his TB and turned to writing in his bedroom. When he recovered in 1951 he published The Rebel, a text on artistic and historical rebellion, in which he laid out the difference between revolution and non-violent revolt. He criticised Heg­el's work, accusing it of glorifying power and the state over soc­ial morality. Camus preferred his moderate philosophy of Mediter­ranean humanism to violence. But the attacks on Hegel and Marxism in The Rebel had an alienating effect on Camus' peers and leftist critics. After Camus attempted to defend himself in a letter to the publication, the editor of Les Temps Modernes (Jean-Paul Sartre!!) published a very long, attacking letter in response. This marked the end of the two philosophers' friendship… what a tragedy for Camus.

I know Camus and Sartre had been intimate friends and collaborators until that point. But I cannot discover whether Camus and de Beauvoir had had a friendship, separate from the occasional coffee with the three of them together.

The Camus house in Lourmarin, Provence

Camus began to write for l'Express daily newspaper in 1955, covering the Algerian war. The violence was escalating in Algeria with the arrival of French troops, and Camus was devastated. He organised a public debate between Muslims and the Front Français, which fortun­ate­ly went without incident. Then Camus came back into favour with intell­ectual circles in 1956 with the publication of his novel The Fall.

Throughout his life, Camus continued to work for the theatre, taking on the various roles of actor, director, playwright and translator. State of Siege (1948) and The Just Assassins (1950) were two of his clearly political plays. He also did successful stage adaptations of novels like William Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun (1956) and Dostoyevsky's The Possessed (1959).

Melville House blog noted that the American FBI tracked Sartre and Camus via surveillance, theft, wire-tapping and eavesdropping. Appar­ently FBI agents were pursuing Camus, in particular, because he had been a member of the anti-German resistance in France. Needless to say Camus never returned to the USA after his monitored visit in March 1946.

J Edgar Hoover may have been furious but he could not stop Camus receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature for his essay Réflexions Sur la Guillotine in 1957. In fact the Nobel committee particularly cited the author’s persistent efforts to illuminate the problem of the human conscience in our time! It was largely as a writer of conscience and as a champion of imaginative literature as a vehicle of philosophical insight and moral truth that Camus was honoured after WW2 and is still admired today.

In 1960, Camus and his close friend and publisher Michel Gal­limard died in a car accident near the French city of Sens while returning to Paris. What a terrible shame that Camus a) died so young and b) died before he could see Algerian independence declared. Nonetheless visitors can see where his memory lives on. There is a Camus trail in Province that includes his family home in Lourmarin, his beloved football ground, the restaurant that he used as his office, the gardens where he wrote standing up, the chateau where he first lived in Lourmarin and the cemetery where both Camus and Francine were buried.

A lost Faberge treasure, now found

It will come as a surprise to no-one who reads this blog that I love Faberge art objects. Now we hear an amazing story. A London antique dealer says a gold ornament bought by an American scrap-metal dealer has turned out to be a rare Faberge egg!! The clock egg had been purchased at an ordinary antique fair for about $14,000. This seems a lot for a small clock, yet the buyer SAID he only began to suspect its true value after seeing an article about the 50 imperial Faberge Easter eggs made for Russian royalty. He contacted the Faberge expert who verif­ied it. The true value could be anything - in the last decade, Faberge eggs have sold for USA $15-20 million each.

The newly identified clock egg, 1887
Closed (above) and opened (below)

Clearly the gold marks on the object suggest it was an 1887 Easter gift from Czar Alexander III to his wife, Empress Maria Feodorovna. And in addition to the gold marks, the experts located written records in the Russian State Historical Archives. Described in the 1917 inventory of confiscated imperial treasure, the egg had to be moved from the imperial palace in Saint Petersburg (in 1922) to the Council of People's Commissars for safe keeping.

But here is the kicker. The egg, which contained a Vacheron Constant­in watch, seems to be the very first of the Tsar Imperial Fabergé eggs to feature a working clock; in fact it is one of the very few clock eggs that have been located at all. You can examine those that have been identified at Mieks Faberge Eggs.

Let's examine the imperial Blue Serpent Clock Egg 1887 made by Mikhail Perkhin, one of the most important Fabergé workmasters ever. This egg stood on a base of gold that was painted in opalescent white enamel. The panels of the base featured motifs of raised gold in four colours, representing the arts and sciences. A serpent, set with diamonds, coiled around the stand connecting the base to the egg and up toward the centre of the egg. The serpent's head and tongue pointed to the hour which was indic­at­ed in roman num­er­als on a white band. This band rotated within the egg to indicate the time, rather than the serpent rotating around the egg. The egg was enamelled in trans­lucent blue and had diamond-studded gold bands ringing the egg. On each side of the egg a sculpted gold handle was attached.

Blue Serpent Clock Egg 1887

The best coverage of this topic is The History Blog. That blog notes that  has been some confusion in the scholarly community over the missing eggs, particularly when they were made and what they looked like. "For many years experts thought the Blue Serpent Clock Egg, currently owned by Prince Albert II of Monaco, filled the 1887 spot on the timeline, but in fact it was made in 1885 and it’s one of those picture-less eggs, the Third Egg, that was gifted to Maria Feodorovna in 1887".

 Duchess of Marlborough’s Pink Serpent Egg, 1902

The Duchess of Marlborough’s Pink Serpent Egg 1902 was similar. Once again made by Mikhail Perkhin, this clock egg was made in enamelled translucent rose pink over a guilloche ground, the white enamel chapter ring with diamond-set Roman numerals between borders of seed pearls. The top of the Egg was applied with varicoloured gold floral swags and diamond-set ribbon bows.

The newly discovered clock egg will be on display at Wartski’s London showroom in the middle of April 2014, the first time it will have been seen in public for 110 years.

The legendary Chelsea Hotel, New York

"I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
you were talking so brave and so sweet
giving me head on the unmade bed
while the limousines wait in the street
Those were the reasons and that was New York

we were running for the money and the flesh
And that was called love for the workers in song
probably still is for those of them left…"

The Chelsea Hotel in New York is where Leonard Cohen lived when he wasn't at his home in Montreal. He chose the Chelsea because he hoped to meet people with similar artistic inclinations, which he did. When introd­ucing this 1971 song in concert, he would often tell a story about meeting a famous singer (Janis Joplin) in an elevator of the Chel­sea, which led to the sex he describes in this song.

I know a great deal about Leonard Cohen, Janis Joplin and 1960s music, but the Chelsea Hotel was a mystery to me. Enter Sherill Tippins’ book, Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Chelsea Hotel (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013).

The Chelsea Hotel was not created in the 1960s, as a centre of counter-culture or any other thing. It was actually built by as a very large block of flats in the Chelsea suburb of Manhattan in 1883! Architect Philip Hubert was already known for his socially aware, co-operative apartments and residential hotels, built at a time when the ordinary working families in NY were having a tough time economically. What I did not know about, before reading the book, was the Social Improvement Theory behind Hubert’s thinking, based on Charles Fourier’s utopian communities.

Chelsea Hotel, New York

The twelve storeys were converted into a hotel in 1905, perfectly located in a centre of the New York art, theatre and music world.

So the question Tippins had to answer was how did this respectable building, with its lovely Victoria cast iron balconies, red bricks, gables and grand staircase, become the largest artists’ community and bohemian hang-out in the USA? It seems that Philip Hubert wanted the hotel to be a utopian haven for communities of artists. So the managers were instructed to set relatively cheap rentals. If music­ians and artists learned to love this home away from home, they would encourage their arty colleagues to live in the Chelsea Hotel as well.

A few generations of artists have been born, created their works and died since 1905. Yet most of the fascination about the re­sidents of the Chelsea Hotel seems to focus on the decades immed­iat­ely foll­ow­ing the end of World War Two. Young, creative and avant garde artists from the 1950s and 1960s experimented with modernity while getting drunk, getting high and getting laid. So I liked the reviewer who wrote “The Chelsea has had its high points and low, supreme artistic achievements and drug-addled suicides, sometimes in the same room”. Absolutely!

There were so many names, but I was most interested in Dylan Thomas, Mary McCarthy, Arthur Miller, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Gore Vidal and Andy Warhol – these were the names that most influenced my undergraduate years. 

Tippins is to be thanked. “Inside the Dream Palace” is there to remind Baby Boomers that the hotel certainly nurtured and inspired all the arts, as we had hoped. But those very same artists often bitterly disap­p­ointed Baby Boomers, something we tend to forget. What was Dylan Thomas thinking, drinking himself into oblivion in the Chelsea Hotel in 1953, far away from his loved ones at home, and not calling for medical care? Why did the supremely seductive Janis Joplin allow her body to fall apart and die at 27?

Janis Joplin on the Chelsea Hotel roof garden,

June 1970.

Photo credit: Celebrity Gossip Wall

I am not familiar with Legends of the Chelsea Hotel: Living with Artists and Outlaws in New York's Rebel Mecca, by Ed Hamilton 2007, although it is clear that Hamilton’s rugged title is more provocative that Tippins’ dreamy title. Perhaps Tippins located the ambiv­al­ence more clearly. The hotel was to be a fountain of cultural prod­uctivity yet it became a safe home for counter culture. Artists were to support and encourage each other to be their best creative selves, yet they often led their colleagues into appalling, destructive behaviour. The hotel was to inspire tolerance, but during the Vietnam war and other invasions, the artists were specifically targeted by the Establishment as un-American.

**

New York Times July 2011 wrote: Saturday night was, by all indications, the last night that the Chelsea Hotel on West 23rd Street would accept guests, though the duration of the closing, its first ever, was unknown. The building is to be sold for $80+ million to a developer. Extensive renovations are expected to take at least a year. The hotel’s 100 permanent residents will be allowed to stay, but they have been told nothing beyond what the startled hotel workers learned late last week: that all reservations after Saturday were cancelled. The developer is said to want to keep the Chelsea as a hotel, but the plans are unclear. The building, a looming Queen Anne that opened as a co-op in 1884, is landmarked. The architect hired to oversee the renovations, said the plumbing, ventilation and electrical systems and the lobby all had to be overhauled, but added that much of the hotel’s original charm, including the wrought-iron interior stairwell and the art, would be preserved.

The building has been a designated New York City landmark since 1966 and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1977. While National Register listings are mostly symbolic, their recognition of significance provides some financial incentive to owners of listed properties. Protection of the historically important property is not guaranteed.

Did the opening of the High Line have an impact on Chelsea. This urban park in the sky, which opened in 2008 and was extended in 2011, exactly bisects the Chelsea Historic District to the east and the Chelsea Piers to the west. 

1920s fashions - more than just flappers

Fashion in the 1920s was written by Jayne Shrimpton, to be pub­lished by Shire Publications in April 2014. The books says that the 1920s ushered in drastic changes; this happened as fashion abruptly changed from the corseted world of the 1910s to rouge, flapper dress­es, cigarette holders, bobbed hair, rising hemlines and the Anything Goes attitude of the Roaring '20s!

Louise Brooks, 1926

a very modern, very elegant actress

This was the birth of modernity, a hugely important mile-stone in fashion history. So the book examines the social history of the post-World War I generat­ion via photographs and illustrations of fashions and accessories which made the 1920s such an elegant and stylish time. Appropriately the author Jayne Shrimpton is a dress historian and portrait special­ist from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London.

Before the book is released, I was able to read Jayne Shrimpton’s own article “Puttin' on the Ritz”, in Inside History Magazine, Jan-Feb 2014. I am not that excited about whether one generation liked seams sewn on the bias or not, or whether tulle became old fashioned and jersey became popular. So it was lucky for me that Shrimpton wanted to exam­ine the wider social and cultural historical context as a backdrop to 1920s fashion. She also wanted to consider the special clothing worn for particular occasions, such as weddings and sports. I too want to know about whether universal suffrage was achieved, how unemployment affected returned-servicemen, were progressive or conservative social values dominant in post-WW1 society and what impact did cinema have on daily life?

The wedding party 1920s

Photo credit: State Library of Queensland

Written material included popular novels, letters, diaries and mem­oirs. Visual images ranged from newspaper and magazine advertise­ments, fashion illustrations and family photographs. Shrimpton summarised her top six sources for information about 1920s fashions thus:

1. Fashion plates, produced specifically for high-end magazines like Vogue. Artists worked closely with dress and textile designers like Paul Poiret.

2. Magazines and periodicals which showed advertisements for average clothes available to the general public. Many were from great, inter-war department shops.

3. Paper garment patterns, for sewing and knitting done at home. This became hugely popular after the troops came home from WW1.

4. Surviving dresses, in antique clothing companies, shops and museums. And in my case, from grandmother who married in 1923.

5. Images and memories from family picture collections. Some were formal studio portraits with people dressed up; others were casual amateur snapshots, relaxing in the garden or on the beach. Bridal photos were a very helpful source of information.

The evidence suggests that many women thought about things other than jazz music, smoking cigarettes and driving fast cars. Flapper dresses and the "anything goes" attitude of the Roaring '20s did not define and restrict the post-World War One generation.

Echo of Paris Pattern Book

c1927

Talking of the impact of cinema on real life, readers interested in fashion will remember that the Edward Steichen & Art Deco Fashion was shown at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne until March 2014. In 1923 Steichen was appointed Chief of Photography for Condé Nast, creating work for Vanity Fair, Vogue and an important advertising agency.The Melbourne exhibition included 200+ black and white photos taken by Steich­en of models, film stars, theatrical stars and other celebrities like the incomparable Marlene Dietrich.

John Monash - Australia's Greatest Living Citizen 1918-1931

My father, an engineer who studied at Melbourne University in the late 1930s, is 91. I asked him to select his greatest hero and it was a no-brainer: John Monash the engineer.

Well before the war, John Monash (1865–1931) graduated from the University of Melbourne: a Master of Engineering in 1893; a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Law in 1895. He made his career as a civil engineer, initially working for private contractors on bridge and railway construction, and as their advocate in contract arbitrations.

Monash and his friend JT Noble Anderson worked as civil, mining and mechanical engineers, spending time in Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia as required. Even better times were coming, once Anderson gained the patent rights in Victoria for reinforced concrete construction. In 1905 the Reinforced Concrete & Monier Pipe Construction Co. was created, to concentrate on the use of reinforced concrete in general building construction. The company undertook work on tanks, culverts, silos, country post offices, suburban banks and warehouses.

Sir John Monash

Largely monopolising concrete construction, their company under­took lots of jobs at a time and formed a South Australian reinforced concrete company as well. Monash was making a huge success out of this rather revolutionary building material; every engineering and architecture student understood the critical role played by Monash in introducing reinforced concrete to Australian industry.

Monash took a leading part in his profession and became president of the Victorian Institute of Engineers and a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, London, something we need to remember when he came back to Australia after WW1.

**

Now for a very brief mention of the war. Monash took charge of the new Australian 3rd Division in the battlegrounds of France and in May 1918 he was made commander of the Australian Corps, at the time the largest corps on the Western Front. In August 1918 the successful Allied attack at the Battle of Amiens, which helped end the war, was planned by Monash and spearheaded by British forces including Monash’s Australian Corps and the Canadian Corps. Monash was considered to be one of the best allied generals of the First World War.

Read about WW1 in John Monash: a biography by Geoffrey Serle (Melbourne U Press 1998).

Yallourn open cut coal mine, Gippsland, 1928

Photo credit: Radio National

He also had a full and valued life after the war. In May 1919, General Monash was asked by the Victorian agent general in London to help liberate technical secrets from German brown coal mining com­panies in the Rhine Valley. Monash sent a trust­ed colleague, Major Noel Mulligan. In just four weeks of secretive work, Mul­ligan amassed heaps of engineering drawings, photographs and technical data, including a working model of the latest German briquette press design. 

Later on, the information about Rhenish coal mining was to prove enormously valuable to the State Electricity Commission of Victoria in its role developing the brown coal resources in the Latrobe Valley. But did Monash know in May 1919 that the SEC was to be founded after the war? And did he realise he would be its first director?

Monash was appointed Director-General of Repatriation and Demobilisation, heading a newly created department to carry out the repatriation of the Australian troops from Britain and Europe. In Aug 1919, while still in London, he wrote the book The Australian Victories in France in 1918, although it was not published until mid 1920. He returned to Australia in Dec 1919 to a warm welcome.

Later, Monash worked in prominent civilian positions, the most notable being head of the State Electricity Commission of Victoria from October 1920. He was also vice-chancellor of the University of Melbourne from 1923 until his death eight years later.

Sometimes Monash’s war role overlapped, in the 1920s, with his civilian responsibilities. He was the natural spokesman for returned soldiers. He took command of the Special Constabulary Force during the police strike of November 1923 and chaired the subsequent royal commission. And from 1925 on, he led Melbourne's Anzac Day marches and became its chief organiser. From an important general in Europe.. to one of the principal organisers of the annual observance of ANZAC Day back at home in Australia!!

There had always been a proposal to build a beautiful shrine in Melburne, honouring those men and women who had left Australia to answer the call of the Motherland. The guidelines were set by 1922 when the competition was announced to architects everywhere. 83 architectural firms responded and two Melbourne ex-servicement-architects, Phillip Hudson and James Wardrop, were declared the winners. Five years later, Sir John Monash was still lobbying for governmental and public support for the Shrine of Remembrance.

General Sir John Monash leading the Anzac parade, 1931

Photo credit: National Archives of Australia

The foundation stone was laid on Remembrance Day 11th Nov 1927, but the timing could not have been worse. The depression led to mass unemployment and failed banks. Although both the state and federal governments gave funds, just over half the cost of the Shrine had to be raied by public contributions, with Monash as the chief fund raiser. Monash, still an engineer, took personal charge of the construction, which began in 1928 and was handled by local contractors. Alas the completed Shrine was not officially dedicated until Remembrance Day Nov 1934, too late for Monash.

Sir John Monash died in Melbourne in Oct 1931 and he was given a state funeral. 300,000 mourners, the nation's largest funeral crowd to that time, came to pay their respects. After a Jewish service, and a 17-gun salute, he was buried in a Melbourne cemetery.

The Australian Dictionary of Biography wrote that Monash was, in the 1920s, broadly accepted as the greatest living Australian. Especially by my father and every engineer who ever graduated from Melbourne University.

Marvellous Melbourne and temperance palaces

I have read Home Away From Home: celebrating 125 years of the Victoria Hotel (2007) by Katherine Sheedy. Marvellous Melbourne had gone through a period of amazing growth, based in significant part on the gold discovered in central Victoria in the early 1850s. By 1860, as we discovered looking at Hoddle’s carefully laid out city plan, the city had reached its final form - with the main N-S and E-W streets bisected by parallel lanes in between. The population had reached 140,000 and since no convicts were brought to this state, all of these citizens were free men and women.

Gold had funded the lavish spending on public buildings, public gardens, private houses and flats, schools and churches. Banks and businesses commissioned impressive buildings for themselves, while theatres and music halls commissioned less impressive but more glamorous centres for their audiences. Then in 1880, Melbourne invited the world to visit this city’s World Fair and its spectacular home, Exhibition Building. A member of royal commissions on employment and tariff protection, ex-Scotsman James Munro was largely responsible for this enormous and successful project. We will come back to him shortly.

The Melbourne World Fair was attended by a million people, not all of them locals. Sheedy says the city was so flush with gold, wool and wheat money that citizens saw themselves as living in the wealthiest city in Australia (probably rightly) and the equal to London and Paris (probably wrongly). 

The first Victoria Coffee Palace in Collins St

with covered verandas on the facade.

Later demolished

Two things happened in the 1880s that changed the face of Melbourne. Firstly the manufacturing and construction sectors of the economy boomed, land prices rose rapidly and the state government poured money into urban transport infrastructure. Secondly anti-alcohol sentiment was getting organised. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, for example, was a powerful voice in the temperance movement where alcoholism was seen as largely a male problem

This is exactly when the Victoria Coffee Palace Co. opened for business. This hotel was next to the Town Hall, then in the city’s main street, Collins St. Sheedy has a photo of their first building, a three storey place with decorative lacework veranda across the façade, and tall trees in the front. It was modest and elegant. In 1883 electric lights were installed in the hotel's public rooms, to replace gas.

The newspaper of record in 1886, The Argus, wrote glowingly of how the Victoria Coffee Palace was being modernised. The long article suggested that the other colonies would soon follow the lead of Victoria in the establishment of gorgeous coffee palaces.

It had been the next state’s premier, treasurer and successful businessman, Hon. James Munro, who had been a driving force behind Melbourne’s temperance organisations. He used his power to build and finance temperance hotels where travellers could stay without being tempted by the demon drink. Munro was a director on the Victoria Coffee Palace, the Grand Coffee Palace (Grand Hotel) in Spring St and the Federal Coffee Palace (Federal Hotel). Munro also had shared in similar places in Geelong and Broken Hill.

These later coffee palaces became fine, family-friendly environments that were the cornerstones of the Victorian temperance movement in Australia. Any existing liquor licences were surrendered. But this trend was not invented in Australia, as Ms Sheedy had mistakenly suggested in her book. By the 1850s it was possible for the teetotal business traveller to stay at a temperance hotel in any large city in Britain, and the great majority of the smaller towns as well.

The well designed Victoria Coffee Palace enjoyed full occupancy rates, with pleasant bedrooms, a great entrance lounge and a handsome staircase. To celebrate the opening of the first Australian Parliament after Federation in 1901, the hotel was enlarged and modernised. Even the plumbing was everything that the modern Edwardian business person could hope for. Then another enlargement was needed by June 1912 to accommodate the ongoing demand. 

WW1 was a tragedy for individual families, of course, but it was also a tragedy for the city’s economy. Business slowed down; and people spent less on luxury goods and services. Nonetheless a new and larger hotel building was required which opened in Jan 1915. And the Roaring Twenties meant refurbishment was needed yet again.

By 1924, the concept of temperance was passe’ so the hotel’s name was changed to The Victoria Palace, to be more modern, more jazzy, less moralistic. By this time, the hotel had 250 employees, including porters, bellboys, chefs, kitchen staff and dozens of housemaids. 

By the late 1920s, the hotel had two splendid dining rooms and two less swish cafeterias. Then in the mid 1930s, there were three faster, cheaper meal areas and one lovely, old fashioned dining room for leisurely socialising all evening. Porters journeyed by cable tram to meet guests at Spencer Street Railway Station and by train to Port Melbourne to meet overseas liners.

Hon. James Munro

was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly in 1874,

 ran his companies: the Federal Bank and the Federal Building Society,

opened the coffee palace in 1880,

and became state premier in 1890.

Hotel business was brisk at night when late suppers attracted Melbourne’s theatre-goers from the Athenaeum and from nearby concert halls. And on very Special Occasions, business was brisker still. When King George VI was crowned in 1937, the celebrations in this country were held at the Victoria Palace. When Queen Elizabeth II visited, a state reception was held at the same hotel for 1,700 important guests. During the Spring Racing Carnival in Melbourne each year, there were so many guests that people had to be turned away. In 1956, when Australia had the Olympic Games for the first time in history, the hotel accommodated hundreds of overseas visitors. It was the main meeting place for the I.O.C., including its formal functions and banquets.

In 1967 the restaurant gained a liquor licence. The Hon James Munro and the other original directors must have been rolling in their graves. Later the Liquor Control Commission approved the company's application for a residential licence and the Cocktail Room on the mezzanine floor commenced the service of drinks to hotel guests and their friends.

The Windsor Hotel in Melbourne was completed in 1884 and sold on to James Munro who doubled the size of the hotel in 1888. Like the Victoria Hotel, Munro operated the Windsor as a centre of temperance and renamed his new institution The Grand Coffee Palace. He spared no money making the staircase and sculptural programme very posh, but alas Munro was declared bankrupt in February 1893. A new owner had to take over the Windsor Hotel, to help pay off some of Munro’s debs.

**

I enjoyed Home Away From Home: celebrating 125 years of the Victoria Hotel, (by Katherine Sheedy with Sarah Rood and published by Carolen Barripp in 2007) enormously and found the photographs to be very valuable. Only two elements irritated me. Firstly there is no index of key words at the end of the book, something I rely on. Secondly the chapters are set out by theme (eg food, drink, staff etc), not in chronological order. So the reader is forced to go back through the hotel's history anew, in every chapter.

Readers may also enjoy a book that covers James Munro's projects, The Land Boomers by Michael and Stephen Murray Smith, Melbourne University Press, 1988. Plus there is a wonderful paper on the build heritage of the temperance movement in Britain that was written by Andrew Davison.

The Windsor Hotel, Spring St Melbourne

after 1888.

The arrogance of wealth - no justice in a USA court

Aspiring singer Blanche Chesebrough had talent and beauty, but no money, so marriage to handsome Roland Molineux might have solved her problems. Son of a politically powerful New York family, Roland enjoyed a wealthy bachelor's life: rooming at an exclusive club, yachting in Bar Harbour, partying with America's rich and famous. But Blanche was falling in love with Roland's best friend. And the stage was set for murder.

Blanche Chesebrough had dated Molineux at several Knickerbocker Club functions where he introduced her to Henry Barnet, a successful New York City stock broker and member of the Knickerbocker Club. Barnet, instantly infatuated with the beautiful young woman, asked her out. She accepted, and when she did, Henry Barnet went from Molineux’s friend to his bitter rival.

In Oct 1898, Molineux asked Blanche to marry him. She said no because she was in love with Henry Barnet. About a month later, Henry Barnet took ill and suddenly died. The official cause of death: cardiac asthenia induced by diptheric poisoning. Eight days after Barnet’s death, Molineux again proposed to Blanche. This time she said yes. They were married in November 1898.

Actually TWO people died mysteriously and in excruciating pain: 1. Roland's rival Henry Barn­et, as noted, and 2.  Mrs Katherine Adams, the landlady/aunt of another man Roland hated, Henry Cornish. Harry Cor­nish, a director of the Knickerbocker Athletic Club, bare­ly survived cyanide poisoning himself.

The handsome, young, wealthy and athletic

Roland Molineux 

35-year-old Harry Cornish was athletics director of Manhattan’s posh Knickerbocker Athletic Club, an "uncouth, incompetent man" loathed by Molineux. On the day before Christmas 1898, Cornish received via the post office a blue tiffany pasteboard box containing a silver toothpick holder enclosed around a small, blue bottle of seltzer.

Harry Cornish lived as a tenant in a NY flat that was owned and occupied by his landlady/aunt Mrs Katherine Adams. After Christmas Mrs Adams awoke with a severe headache. To alleviate her headache, Cornish retrieved the remedy he had received anonymously in the mail just two days earlier. Mrs Adams doubled up in pain and collapsed; a few minutes later she was dead. The next day, Harry Cornish reported his land­lady’s violent death to the New York City District Attorney’s office.

Mrs Adams’ autopsy revealed traces of cyanide of potassium in her throat and stomach. Toxicologist Dr Rudolph Witt­haus had been a professor of chemistry and physiology at New York University for decades, and had testified in dozens of criminal courtrooms. When the press learned of Mrs Adams’ mysterious death, the case be­came headline news across the country. The secretary of the Knick­er­bocker Athletic Club thought he recognised the parcel’s hand­writing as belonging to a former member of the club, Roland Molineux, an elite athlete.

Detectives switched their attention to Roland Molineux. Roland’s father was wealthy, very well connected in the army and the Republican party, and was the president of a huge dye making company. Roland had followed his father into the dye business by studying chemistry, and then working as director of a dry colour factory in New Jersey. Roland hated to work, but mostly he loathed Henry Cornish.

Detective Carey believed that Roland Molineux, in an attempt to kill Henry Cornish, had accidentally poisoned Katherine Adams. The detective noted the following:
Mol­ineux hated Cornish (motive);
Molineux had training in chemistry (means);
Dr Witthaus had found that Mrs Adams had been killed by cyanide of mercury, used in the blending of dry colours in the dye factory where Molineux had been employed (means); and
the secretary of the Knickerbocker Club identified Molineux’s handwriting as being on the fatal package (opportunity).

When detectives learned of Henry Barnet's death, and of Barnet’s connection to Molineux’s wife Blanche Chesebrough, they became VERY interested in Molineux indeed! The links were powerful. The powder next to Barnet’s bed had been laced with cyanide of mercury, the same poison that would later kill Kath­erine Adams. The press ran with the story, linking Barnet’s death to the Katherine Adams case. The intended victims in both cases, Cornish and Barnet, had both been enemies of the same man, Roland Molineux!

Knickerbocker Club in NY where Roland Molineux, Harry Cornish, Henry Barnet and Blanche Chesebrough met each other, played sport, socialised, proposed marriage and fell into bitter rivalries. 

Detective Carey called in heaps of qualified handwriting experts to examine the evidence, to prove that Roland Molineux had written the address on the Seltzer package and two offensive letters.

The coroner’s inquest into Katherine Adams’ death began in Feb 1898 and lasted three weeks. The coroner’s jury ordered that Rol­and Molineux be tried for murder ONLY in Adams’ death. He was was NOT charged with killing Henry Barnet.

In Nov 1898, with national reporters in the courtroom, the Molineux trial started, focusing for weeks on the hand­writing evidence. In the meantime Molineux was beaut­ifully dressed and appeared to be disinterested in trivial matters... like the court case. In Feb 1900, after three months and a cost to the state of $200,000, the longest and most expensive trial in USA history till then, the jury found Roland Molineux guilty of murder in Katherine Adams’ death.

Molineux’s lawyer Mr Battle immediately filed an appeal for a new trial. In 1902, after serving two years in Sing Sing gaol, Molineux was granted a new trial. In the second trial, presided over by a dif­ferent judge, most of the questioned document evidence was excluded.

This time the defence decided to put Molineux on the stand. Beautifully groomed, Molineux denied any connection to the poisoned Seltzer or renting the mail boxes. In Nov 1902, after a very short process, the jury found him not guilty. But Molineux’s life fell apart. The gorgeous Blanche Chese­brough Molineux divorced him. Then in 1913, Molineux succumbed to the ravages of cerebral syphilis infection and was committed to a New York state mental hospital. Four years later, in 19l7, while still a raving maniac, he died at 51.

In 2014 the case might be forgotten. But Roland Molineux, whose sordid secrets exploded in the scandal of the century, had participated in a stun­ning courtroom drama where the arrogance of wealth could/did set a killer free!

Jane Pejsa's book, The Molineux Affair

1983

My data about The Molineux Affair comes from 3 sources:

- Jim Fisher's Document Examination, 

- Jane Pejsa's book, The Molineux Affair  and

- “Murder by Mail in Gilded Age New York”, written by William Grimes in the New York Times 24th Oct 2007.

sculpture - the Divine Sarah Bernhardt

There was a great to know about the French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923). Consider her:

1. rather tragic childhood with an unknown father and her half absent mother
2. being sent to a Catholic school and converting from Judaism to to Catholicism
3. connection to Duc de Morny and Alexandre Dumas, and growing passion for the stage
4. training at the National Cons­ervatory of Music
5. travel around the world with her troupe

6. love affairs, the men she wanted to marry and the men she did marry
7. diverse roles as an actress, tragedienne and entrepreneur
8. art nouveau posters
9. use of modern technology including photog­raphy, mechanised printing procedures and then the intro­duction of colour etc etc

But something I knew nothing about was the Divine Sarah’s skills as a sculptor and painter. The National Museum of Women in the Arts in Wash­ing­­ton DC noted that while acting, 25 year old Bernhardt began studying sculpture in 1869 with Mathieu Meusnier and Emilio Franchesci, and became passionately devoted to the art. 

By 1874 she was exhibiting her work at the very prestigious Paris Salon, a pleasure that she continued to fulfil for 12 years. Exhib­itions of the art­ist’s sculpture were held in London, New York and Philadelphia. Bernhardt later partic­ip­at­ed in the World’s Columbia Expos­ition in Chicago in 1893 and at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900.

Sarah Bernhardt, 

After the Storm c1876
76 cm high
National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC

After the Storm showed a heartbroken Breton peasant woman cradling the body of her dead grandson who had been caught in a fisherman’s nets. Sarah Bernhardt had seen this woman on the seashore and was moved by her tragic story. The artist studied anatomy, specifically to convey the intensity of the subject. Her ability to render textures from smooth skin to rough nets added to the naturalism of the piece. Had Bernhardt studied Michelangelo's Pieta where the Virgin Mary supported the dead Christ on her lap?

Four years later Bernhardt sculpted a less classical, more fantasy-based bronze inkwell. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston noted that the mysterious Self-Portrait of the Artist as a Sphinx was perhaps a metaphor for her ability to transform herself, on stage and in life. The combination of the body of a griffon, bat wings and a fish tail seemed to be inspired by contemporary Art Nouveau ornament­ation. Note the Tragic and Comic masks as epaulettes on the sphinx’s should­ers, presumably depicting the model’s profession as actress. In any case, Bernhardt was at that stage rehearsing for Le Sphinx, a melo­drama by Feuillet. 

Sarah Bernhardt

Self portrait as a sphinx
bronze ink well 1880
32 cm high
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Borrowers and Lenders Journal agreed about the Bernhardt’s changing priorities. She became so caught up in the creation of sculptures that she was tempted to give up her stage career. In 1873, unhappy about her work at the Comédie Française and physically unwell, she decided to take a studio and devote herself to sculpture. As she explains in her memoirs: "As I was not able to use my intelligence and my energy in creating rôles at the theatre as I wished, I gave myself up to another art and began working at sculpture with frantic enthusiasm".

Clearly she recovered from her grim mood. When the Comédie Française appeared in London in 1879, the exhibition at the William Russell Galleries on Piccadilly showed 5 of Bernhardt's sculptures. The ex­hib­ition was popular, and the art critic for The Times wrote a satisfyingly positive review. Among those who attended the Lon­don exhibition were the Prince and Princess of Wales, Sir Fred­er­ick Leighton, President of the Royal Academy, and William Gladstone who was prime minister, on and off.

Bernhardt excelled at modelling, and the majority of her sculptures were portrait busts, though she also made smaller objets de vertu. Indeed Bernhardt must have been very busy sculpting – the sphinx self portrait was one of six complex pieces she exhibited at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Fifty of her artworks have been documented but apparently only 40 can be located today. Where are the others; shut away in private collect­ions?

What does not surprise me is that, since Bernhardt was passionate about all forms of the visual art, she took the time to paint or supervise sets, design dresses and direct her own theatre company for her productions - non acting roles. We have many early 20th century examples of people in theatre companies hopping from one of the visual arts to another. The Ballets Russes was particularly keen to encourage the collaboration of modern artists like Leon Bakst, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse in the design of sets, costumes and posters.

Paris and Baron Haussmann: what happened to the city's gorgeous arcades?

I love Paris’ gorgeous shopping arcades, built in the late 18th century. But I couldn’t understand why so few survived.

Here is an article written by Spud Hilton and published in the San Francisco Chronicle. Then I will come back to my theory about Baron Haussmann and the modernisation of Paris.

Hilton wrote that the idea of arcades in Paris was sound. City planners in the late C18th developed covered pedestrian arcades for shopping as an escape from foul weather, an alternative to foul streets that at the time had too many horses, too few footpaths and too much sewage in a city with non-functioning sanitation. Of the 150-200 arcades, about 20 remain today. They fell out of favour, especially after the city's move toward grand boulevards later in century, and most were demolished or reused.

The arcades also are lesser known in part because most are in the portions of Paris' 2nd, 9th and 10th arrondissements that hold few other attractions for tourists. So few tourists see Galerie Vivienne, built in 1823, which is among the most-refined and best-preserved arcades. Note the rows of faux-marble columns, the fashionable storefronts, sculptures of goddesses and the elegant glass canopy. Note the floor with its wall-to-wall neoclassical mosaic designed by Italian artist Giandomenico Facchina in the mid-1800s. Visit Librairie Jousseaume, an antique bookstore that opened to the public about the same time as the arcade itself.

Cairo Arcade, Paris

opened 1798 and remains open today

The similarly upscale Galerie Colbert runs a parallel L-shaped course next to Galerie Vivienne, but is home to exhibitions, university ann­exes and a back door to restaurant Le Grand Colbert, a chi-chi brasserie.

After walking from the Latin Quarter and crisscrossing the 2nd Arr­on­dissement untold times, Hilton welcomed the variety of cuisine and the opportunity to relax and Parisian-watch in Passage des Panoramas. First built in 1799, Passage des Panoramas is the oldest remaining arcade, as well as the first building in Paris equipped for gas lighting. It rests on the site of the former Hotel de Montmorency Luxembourg, and was named for two enormous panoramas inside rotundas that were torn down in 1831.

The arcade is the poster child for the romance of early shopping arcades, something that French author Emile Zola used repeatedly in the short story Nana, about a young Paris prostitute in 1867 who becomes a stage performer. Zola wrote "She adored the Passage des Panoramas. The tinsel of the Article de Paris, the false jewellery, the gilded zinc, the cardboard made to look like leather, had been the passion of her early youth. It remained, and when she passed the shop-windows she could not tear herself away from them.”

By design, Passage Jouffroy and Passage Verdeau continue the same line as Panoramas. Stroll through Paris from the 2nd Arrond­issement to the 9th, and only step into the open to cross Blvd Montmartre and Rue de la Grange Bateliere. Built in 1846 based on the popularity of Panoramas, Jouffroy is mentioned in the 1852 Illustrated Guide to Paris listing of passages as "one of the most frequented in Paris. Inside is the front door to the Hotel Chopin. The hotel, with surprisingly inexpensive rooms that run from tiny to tinier, opened in 1846 as one of the first tenants.

Hilton continued to the far end of Jouffroy and across the street to Passage Verdeau, where the architecture and design are essentially the same, but the businesses seemed smaller.

Verdeau Arcade, Paris

opened in the early 19th century and remains open today

More so than any other covered arcade, Passage du Grand Cerf gives the impression of the height, design and grandeur of a European train station but without the width of even a single platform. Grand Cerf is the only covered arcade left constructed just of iron and glass (gilded in dark woods), reflecting the more industrial nature of the Saint-Denis district, which in the 1830s was filled with small fact­ories and workshops. It is also the tallest of the arcades, increas­ing the train station illusion. From Grand Cerf, Hilton exited onto Rue Saint-Denis, one of the oldest (Roman) streets in Paris.

**

Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte became Pres­ident of the Republic in 1848 and Emperor Napoléon III of the Second French Empire in 1852. He wanted action!! Baron Haussmann was presented to the Emperor by the Minister of the Interior, with the recomm­end­ation that Haussmann was exactly the man needed to carry out the renewal of Paris. Napoleon III made Haussman Prefect of the Seine in June 1853, and quickly gave Haussman a huge project: to make Paris less medieval, heal­thier, less congested and much, much grander. The plan was to take the unplanned medieval lanes into modern boulevards, extending far beyond the limits of the old medieval city walls.

From 1852 on, Haus­s­mann rather ruthlessly dem­ol­ish­ed irreg­ularly shaped medieval roads, rep­l­ac­ing them with wide, tree-lined boulevards and elegant buildings. The long strip of land north of the Seine, marked at one end by the Arch de Triumphe and by the Louvre at the oth­er, was link­ed by a wid­ened Champs Elysees, Place de la Con­c­orde and Tuil­eries Gardens. In 1862, work started on one of the largest, most decorative opera-house of all. It seated 2000, had a huge st­age and a VERY de­corated interior. Sacre Coeur Basilica was built by nat­ional subscription in 1876. The massive white structure, with an en­ormous flight of steps up the side of the hill, looks vaguely Byzant­ine. The paintings are mosaics of the interior are also very el­abor­ate. On the edge of Haussmann’s new city, people were en­couraged to love and use the huge parks - Bois de Vincennes in the east and Bois de Boulogne in the west. Smal­ler green spaces throughout Paris meant buildings had to come down.

Paris

Note the 2nd, 9th and 10th arrondissements

By the end of Baron Haussmann’s redesigning of Paris in 1870, anything old and unplanned lay in rubble. Or was rebuilt in a more modern style. Late C18th arcades, which had been considered the height of modernity at the time they were built, had mostly disappeared 100 years later.

I would still like to know why the surviving arcades tend to be found in the 2nd, 9th and 10th arrondissements, NW of central Paris. Were these more working class suburbs, and therefore of lesser concern to the energetic Baron Haussmann? I doubt it. Grands Boulevards and Opéra 2nd-9th-10th arrondissements were clearly very popular cultural and recreational areas after the modernisation of Paris. On the boulevard Haussmann, close to the Opera House,  Le Printemps (opened 1865)  and  Les Galeries Lafayette (896) were, and are, the most delightful department stores of the French capital.  Café de la Paix, the Opéra, the Folies-Bergère and Olympia could not have been more famous.