The subject, in collaboration with the local history group at Gallicano, had as its theme the uncovering of documents relating to five main areas of Turritecava life and was a starting point for further investigation into the hamlet. These subjects were:
The old ‘locanda’ or inn
The customs post
The farm of Turritecava
The social mobility of women.
Poets
The talks presented by Maria Stella Adami, (The farm of Turritecava), and Manuele Bellonzi (The old locanda or inn) were preceded by Mass in the local church and a supper provided by the locals both of which we were unable to attend.
Regarding the main themes it’s remarkable how many old documents are left in empty houses waiting to be found by historical detective work. The locanda, for example, uncovered several letters and information regarding the sale of bread and visitors to its bakery in past times.
The customs post shows how important excise dues were once for the local economy and how there were implicit agreements with the local officers for their collection. It should be noted that customs were not positioned only between different states in re-unified Italy but also between towns within those states. Incidentally there’s an example of a former customs post on the road between Pian di Coreglia and Ponte all’Ania. It’s the building with a columned facade one sees just before entering Ponte all’Ania. There our presenter uncovered an old plan showing how the different rooms were used in bureaucratic and protocol procedures
. I thought about how a principal theme in setting up a European Union was the abolition of the tedium of these customs posts and how a retrograde nation further north has allowed them to be set up again!
Mobility of women was another fascinating topic covered and showed how, even if they once had fewer freedoms and certainly no voting right until after the last war, women here did have considerable independence in several work spheres, one of which was the rearing of silkworm using local mulberry trees and supplying the Lucca market which was world-famous and enriched by its production of the finest silk.
The Turritecava farm received some revealing interjections from older members of the audience who remembered their own parents and grandparents ‘memories of the occupations carried out there. These accounts should be recorded as valuable pieces of oral history.
Poetry had been mentioned since it was customary for local bards to produce celebratory sonnets and odes for weddings, religious festivals and such-like.
The evening, therefore, concluded with a recollection of one of Turritecava’s most notable former inhabitants, Lamberto Pellini, a poet and song-composer of some distinction. The young violinist, Elena Pellini his descendant, played a piece of music.
Finally the presenter, Maria Elisa Caproni, read Lamberto’s exquisite poem ‘L’Altana’ right below the covered rooftop terrace which the poet describes.
All in all it was a fascinating evening which shows just how many more documents are waiting to be uncovered in our region. Further evidence of this I found the following day when at the customary end-of-month antiques market in Bagni di Lucca I came across some payment books relating to contributions for the building of the Controneria road in 1931, a thoroughfare which enabled locals for the first time in their lives to reach their villages by bus or car instead of by Shanks’s pony. I felt that these notebooks should more usefully have been stored in an archive rather than sold on a market stall.
I look forwards to future meetings with Turritecava’s local historians when further discoveries of documents and oral history will, no doubt, be revealed.
In the full summer season our area flourishes with a plethora of very varied events. Last Friday, for example, we attended a concert given by the winning quartet of the Adolfo Betti prize. Betti, a Scion of the same family which runs Bagni di Lucca’s Pharmacy was a violinist at the turn of the last century and founded a string quartet which, judging by the recordings they have left us, deserved all the praise that was given them. In memory of Adolfo an annual international competition is held which last year was won by a Japanese quartet.
This year it was a foursome from Mexico who stole the prize and for their performance chose Haydn’s Sunrise quartet and Shostakovich’s 8th.
With such a difference in musical language the Mexicans showed absolute poise, dynamic control, precision and virtuosity. Haydn’s little masterpiece from his late op 76 set was played with both lyricism and wit. The Russian’s war-echoing work was heart-rendingly played. A third piece by Silvestre Revueltas, a Mexican composer born in 1899 who died of pneumonia complicated by alcoholism in 1940, received an equally idiomatic performance.
Here is the programme for this captivating concert:
The only criticism I had about the evening’s concert was that to have a string quartet playing in Bagni di Lucca’s Town hall garden without any canopy hardly does the sound any justice. Furthermore there were snitches of background noise coming from another event in our town’s Friday night entertainment. This quality of playing deserves better. I hope that by next year the organisers will have realized this.
Apart from the climate the other big talking point in the Italian government is illegal immigration. Ever since the 1980s Italy has been a preferred landing point for persons fleeing from Africa and Asia. Before that decade there was little illegal immigration worth considering, even from Rom communities. Indeed in the 1930’s, under Mussolini’s re-settlement project, Italians were emigrating to their African colonies in Somalia, Eritrea and Abyssinia to set up new lives growing tomatoes and oranges, building railways and administering schools and hospitals. On my Italian side there is one relative who was born in the colonies: Asmara, capital of Eritrea, a city which is a monument to the finest Italian Art Deco architecture. Even after the Second World War Italy regained control of part of its former East African Empire, Somalia which it maintained as a protectorate until 1960. The father of one of my school friend’s wife, Endre Hevezi, and who graduated in architecture at the university of Budapest in 1945, specialised in ceramics and enamelling and decorated the Debra Libanos Cathedral in Ethiopia where he designed the mosaics on the exterior front facade and stained glass windows for the monastery.
So what went wrong? Why did immigration of Italians to Africa turn around to immigration of Africans to Italy? The reasons have been listed many times; the Dick Whittington dream of a better life in European cities paved with gold, civil war, famine, global heating, escape from persecution, people trafficking gangs and so forth.
Several labels have been applied to these huddled masses ‘invading’, according to Italy’s Prime Minister Meloni and her cabinet, the peninsula. Are they refugees, economic migrants, foreign mafia or do they just want to reach their relatives already established in Europe? Clearly the lands these souls have left must be in terribly dire straits in order for them to risk a journey which has already this year seen over five hundred drown in one single boat. However, I can optimistically see a time when life in their country of origin will again be liveable. Already some of the large and very industrious Chinese population of Prato is decanting to the People’s Republic which is offering far greater economic possibilities than ever before. Increasingly it’s rare to find new consumer goods in our homes which do not bear the initials PRC on them. Other Asian countries like Vietnam are following China’s lead in welcoming back populations which less than fifty years ago had to flee in small boats. Within Europe’s own populations the clichéd Polish plumber abroad is finding that he is more in demand in his birthplace and with better pay simply because that country has now a shortage of plumbers.
Meanwhile, with daily reports of distressed small boats packed with refugees not just across the Med but also, as that country’s foreign secretary laments, across the English Channel the Continent’s long-term residents are increasingly getting immured to the facts and figures. Indeed, these have become almost like daily litanies of road accident or drug overdose figures.
The saddest thing about refugees/economic migrants is that they are mainly young and educated. Precisely the sort of person that the country they are fleeing from needs! What’s the point of having a largely senile and diseased population in a nation which yearns to have an energetic and accomplished workforce to build up its economic life?
There will be a time when a young population will return to these countries – and I’m not talking about that ridiculous plan to export illegal immigrants to the country which has undergone the largest holocaust since Herr Hitler’s ‘final solution’.
So what will the morally correct ‘final solution’ be to illegal immigration in Europe from those countries with unfortunate life-styles which fail to control repression of women, religious persecution, unlimited pollution, unliveable temperatures, lawless gangs, endemic diseases, civil wars, massive illiteracy, primitive health care, gargantuan greed among the political classes: a life which in the memorable phrase of Hobbes is nasty, brutish and short.
I do not know. I’m neither a politician, an economist, a philosopher, a moralist nor a prophet. One thing is certain, however, our society is changing ever more at an exponential rate and it’s changing because of these three main factors
Global warming.
Digitalisation (this includes, obviously AI).
Emi/immigration.
Recently I noted the change wrought by factor 3 during a visit to London. An area near the North Circular road I remember, when we married almost fifty years ago, had its fair selection and range of shop owners and restaurants ranging from chippies to Italian trattorias to Indian curry houses but now has almost 90% concentration on customers from one global area. To eat a plate of ravioli I must turn further afield where there is also hope for a pub’s Sunday lunch of roast beef and Yorkshire pud. Why? It’s because whether it be legal or illegal immigration the rate of immigration should be properly controlled so that incoming populations are able to fully merge in with pre-existing groups. This has not really occurred. What I fear has happened to large chunks of London is a ghettoization on a massive scale. OK the word ‘ghetto’ is conventionally used to refer to the Jewish population. However, ‘ghetto’ is originally a word referring to a particular area of Venice which subsequently became peopled by Jewish refugees. In this respect the French government tries to oppose such ghettoization albeit with very limited success. In the UK a multicultural ideology is prevalent so that, for example, there are no laws preventing people from publicly manifesting their religious faiths and cultural values. One of the most curious sights in London was seeing a girl in a short-skirted light summer frock talking with her friend who is clad in black cloth from head to toe with only a couple of eyes peeping through her vestment. Admirable some would say. In France even the hijab is not allowed in public offices and schools for that country’s aim is to make a ‘decent’ French citizen out of any foreigner that settles there. Hence not knowing the Gallic tongue is almost a cardinal sin.
Italy wavers between Anglo-Saxon multiculturalism and French institutional nationhood. Sometimes Italians heartily accept third-worlders. Sometimes they don’t. And if someone wishes to learn their beautiful language then Italians (unlike the French) are usually all too willing to help. Regarding English which, despite the valiant efforts of Esperantists, is next to Chinese the most commonly spoken language on the planet (so much so that, despite the Italian equivalent of the Academie Francaise, the Academia della Crusca, there is a veritable assault of English words and phrase in the language), I remember a student from the Indian sub-continent attending my evening English classes in London. I asked him (in Hindi which I speak) ‘How long have you been in England now?’ ‘About ten years he answered. ‘But haven’t you learned English?’ I queried. ‘Oh because you know how it is. I work for my uncle’s company. I live in my aunt’s family. I go to my local temple. So I never needed to learn it or had the opportunity to use it.’
Actually the real danger of ghettoization in Italy may not come from third-world immigrants. I leave it to the reader to find which population may be most responsible for it. It has been described in the following words: introspective, patriotic, insular, xenophobic, brave, small-minded, polite, insecure, arrogant, compulsive gambler, humorous, reserved, conservative, reticent, hypocritical, racist, boring, a royalist, condescending, depressed, keen gardener, semi-literate, hard-working, unambitious, ironic, passionless, cosmopolitan, whinger, hard-headed, liberal, a traditionalist, couch potatoes, obsequious, masochist, complacent, homely, pragmatic, cynical, decent, melancholic, unhealthy, poor cook, pompous, eccentric, inebriated, proud, self-deprecating, tolerant, inhibited, shopaholics, conceited, courageous, idiosyncratic, mean (bad tippers), courteous, jingoistic, stuffy, overweight, well-mannered, pessimistic, disciplined, habitual queuers, stoic, modest, gloomy, shy, serious, apathetic, honest, wimpish, fair, snobbish, friendly, quaint, decadent, civilised, dogmatic, scruffy, prejudiced, class conscious and soccer hooligan…………
.
I leave myself out of this pageant of descriptions because of both my mother’s and wife’s nationalities.
Italy split in two! No, not politically, though with the current government it certainly appears to be. Neither regarding the chestnut of being in the EU: the ghastly errors perpetrated by the 2016 UK referendum have put a stop to that idea. No it’s the weather. While southern Italy, and particularly Sicily, is suffering Rhodes-style with forest fires blamed, probably rightly, on mafia instigated pyrotechnics the north is being whitened and wiped out by hail storms and tornadoes. Milan, for example, has had its transportation reduced by almost half with fallen trees crashing on its viali with some citizens and countless cars harmed and damaged.
What has caused all this? Another split emerges, an ideological one. Is it global warming or a cyclical manifestation of nature? In my mind it’s both. Italy is not only fragile geologically but also highly tenuous climatologically. Poised between alpine snows and desert winds, surrounded on both sides by seas of very different characters, Tyrhenian and Adriatic, with every kind of landscape ranging from vast wolf-inhabited forests to flamingo-paddled marshlands , Italy clearly has very climatically opposed regions so close to one another.
Surely Britain suffers from its contrasting regions? Yes but not quite to the same extent. The moderator of the sea, that immense natural matriarch surrounding these islands, a sea both calm and tempestuous, a sea so sonorously described in the four interludes from Britten’s ‘Peter Grimes’, tempers the British climate. I thought I’d never miss those BBC weather forecasts like ‘rainy with sunny intervals’ or (alternatively) ‘sunny patches with showers’ but I do now in a land where it’s either torrid sun or thunder and lightning for whole afternoons, where hailstones fall greater than the size of golf balls and where too much sun can drive one to a cancer skin clinic.
‘Land where lemon trees grow’? Yes, of course, despite the fact that Cornwall is now another peninsula where fine wines are produced. But I just wonder where all this will end. Will Italy still be that ‘bel paese’ or will climatic change increasingly press upon it and produce, in addition to its well-documented earthquakes, ever more cataclysmic hail storms in mid summer, devastating forest fires and disastrous landslides?
One thing is sure: I won’t be there to say very much more..
Alpinist, explorer, linguist, anthropologist, orientalist, poet, photographer. He was all these things and we were off to visit him, or at least his house, Fosco Maraini’s house, since sadly this great man, this mind-expanding person had died almost twenty years ago.
Born in 1912 Fosco had a particularly strong relationship with China and Japan. His book on “Secret Tibet” is a must-read and his second wife was Japanese. Indeed, when the square dedicated to Fosco was inaugurated in Alpe Sant’Antonio there was a significant Japanese presence.
The ‘Serchio delle Muse’ festival had informed me that there was going to be a ‘concerto Lirico’- an operatic concert – at Fosco’s house. It would be a great opportunity to hear some good music and visit his house.
Recently Maraini’s house has become part of a network of places called ‘case della memoria’. They are all locations where some of the greatest Italians lived ranging from artists to writers to social reformers to composers to political figures. We already have visited some of these houses in our area. Opera composer Puccini, for example has two dwelling devoted to him and Poet Carducci even three!
Our sat-nav placed us near the end of a spectacular road below that Queen of the Apuan Alps, the Pania Della Croce which at a height of above 6095 feet may not be quite the highest of these wondrous mountains but is certainly the most majestic.
‘’You have reached your destination’ said the navigator. In fact we had only reached the beginning of a footpath, named after the famous explorer, which descended steeply in a magical wood. Could Maraini only have reached his hideaway by this path?
Stupendous views surrounded us across the beech and birch trees. The path was well-kept and someone had even cut the grass! However, there was no-one else on it. Were we truly going to come across a dwelling in this arcane woodland? Our way ranged from rocky stretches to turfed ones with plenty of slippery leaves. Eventually round a corner we came across a little settlement of shepherds’ house used for transhumance in the summer season when the pastures would be able to fatten up their flocks of sheep which in these parts produce the excellent pecorino cheese.
Now these hamlets are largely deserted but this one had a house bought up by a family from Empoli who directed us to the concert. Indeed they were going to the event too.
Fosco’s retreat from the everyday cares of a city life in Florence consists of two houses, one of which he completely restored to form a very cosy literary sanctuary. It was enchanting to see where this speaker of Japanese and Tibetan had produced his enthralling books. The Olivetti Lettera-22 typewriter now stood unfingered on his desk and behind it his library containing so many of his writings including that best-seller ‘Secret Tibet, a country which we too had visited and which still, despite conquest by its neighbour, contained many secrets.
Outside the house in the yard the tenor and soprano duet were singing a whole scene from that bloodcurdling opera ‘Cavalleria Rusticana’ which is based on a short story by Giovanni Verga, greatly admired and translated by D. H. Lawrence. It was the final scene where Alfio finds Turridu drinking in the village square after church and challenges him to a duel—a challenge which is sealed by the peasants’ custom of embracing and biting the ear. Turridu is, inevitably, killed by his rival in true Sicilian fashion. The singers were accompanied by a brilliant quintet of brass from the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and the performances were applauded heartily by the audience of around a hundred souls.
But where had this audience come from? Which route had they taken to this bewitched place? We discovered that we had actually reached Fosco’s house by the most challenging route. There was also a private 4 X 4 road which was somewhat easier to use. Damned navigator! But we would not have missed our woodland walk and the views for anything!
The concert concluded not just with an encore from Verdi’s ‘Un Ballo in Maschera’ but with a nourishing buffet of Garfagnana delicacies including formaggio, prosciutto, salami and emigliaccio all nicely washed down by white and red wines. The local serving ladies did themselves proud!
Suddenly in the audience my wife noticed a very Japanese-looking veteran lady. Could she have anything to do with Fosco Maraini? Indeed! It was none other than his wife Mieko Namiki, with whom he lived in Florence at the family villa of Torre di Sopra near the Poggio Imperiale and who assisted him in organising his archive of photographs and rare books. It was a fortuitous meeting and Mieko and Sandra got on truly wonderfully. What a great lady is Mieko!
But how were we to get back? The thought of climbing back up that path was slightly daunting and it would soon be dark. This is when the mayor of Molazzana, Andrea Talani, stepped in. He drove us back to our car which had been parked near the chapel dedicated to martyred partisans of the last war and we had a good chat with him on the way.
Andrea is a very pro-active mayor who has done much to encourage people to visit his spectacular part of Italy. He pointed out to us the new footpath signage, the refurbished mountain hostel where a school party was enjoying their time in natural surroundings and also the amazing work done on restoring the fortifications of the so-called Gothic line. This was the last defence of the Nazi regime n Italy, even further out than the standard gothic line of Borgo a Mozzano. The German soldiers held out during the severe winter of 1944-5 but when the Allies finally broke through the line with sufficient firepower it was a hasty retreat by the Axis powers, over the remainder of the Apennines, across the Po valley, up to the foothills of the Alps and all finishing with the hanging of the Italians’’ once beloved leader, upside-down, in Milan’s Piazzale Loreto.
We reached home through the courtesy of Andrea but our evening was not yet finished. Our late evening was charmed by the silvery voice of 22 year old singer Charlotte Potter happily back in Bagni di Lucca after her debut at the Villa Webb aged just 17 in 2018. Outside Bagni di Lucca’s Teatro Academico and with a repertoire ranging from Rogers and Hammerstein to Mozart and Puccini Charlotte, a versatile cross-over soprano, entranced us and provided a sweet ending to a particularly memorable day.
*******
Addendum:
Fosco Maraini died in 2004 and wished to be buried in a cemetery in the Garfagnana. The one at Alpe Sant’Antonio was chosen and here is Maraini’s tomb:
Isn’t it amazing how a little-known place like Alpe Sant’Antonio can reveal whole new areas of knowledge! The entire region is a trekker’s paradise and is now particularly beautiful with its high summery (and wonderfully cool) ambience.
Home sweet home. Yes it truly is. This Italy where I have been largely in residence for almost twenty years, for all its ups and downs has become my true country. Although I retain affection for my country of origin it has considerably decreased in my opinion, especially under the last thirteen years of Tory rule where the nation has been subject to corruption and lying on a scale which I only associated with Italy. Labour aren’t much better. Their motto seems to be ‘No talk about Brexit please, we’re British’ and the Lib Dem just lack more recent experience in handling a nation ever since they were ousted from that position of governance before the Great War.
After the unpredictable maritime climate of the UK with its almost hourly successions of wind, rain and sunny intervals we are now facing the remainder of the central Italian summer with trepidation. Grecian horrors await us what with Cerberus and Charon. Records have been broken and are being broken continuously. Not the shellac sort but the ones dealing with that death-sentence on our planet – global warming. Whether it be Man’s neglect or whether it be cyclic climatic change is beyond discussion before the essential fact: the Earth is getting warmer more quickly and more radically. Flying to the UK just a few weeks ago I was shocked to see how the Alps had far less snow on their Majestic peaks than I remembered previously. Glaciers seemed almost non-existent and only a few peaks retained their incandescent whiteness. Returning to Italy it was even worse. Just a few white streaks on the mountain chain. Perhaps it was because the plane flew close to the Maritime Alps ….but even then!
Arriving at passport control at Pisa airport it was two queues: EU citizens and non-EU citizens but with the unfortunate difference that Brits have to join the non-EU queue together with the rest of Third World countries including everything from Iraq to Somalia and Peru. I was worried in case my passport would be stamped but I needn’t have worried; I showed the officer my recently acquired Italian permanent residency card and my regional ID so was waved though. All that hassle and queuing to get these documents was really worth it!
The only difficulty we had in our journey to our Italian home was getting the car started at the Bagni di Lucca station car-park (on which progress has finally resumed to finish it). Thanks to the ACI rescue truck, the Italian equivalent of the RAC and AA, the engine’s battery received a welcome boost and we were off. Arriving home was a truly welcome treat and an even more longed-for retreat after the bustle of London.
Despite its large areas of open spaces the metropolis almost gave us social indigestion with the vast populace it harbours. We are not really used to meeting so many people everywhere on a daily basis after our secluded sylvan setting.
Thanks to valuable local help in feeding them during our absence our cats were in good condition. Of course, Cheeky had wandered off somewhere just before our arrival as she is wont to do but my wife knew exactly where the cat would be found: near the chapel of Our Lady of the Snows and went forth to retrieve her and so Cheeky re-joined the pack (or whatever one calls a collection of cats. .. perhaps ‘a whiskerful’ may do) of cats.
There is truly no place like home! We are so glad to be back after the enjoyable rigours of London life where in two weeks our activities ranged wonderfully from Evensong in Westminster Abbey to ‘La Traviata’ at Covent garden, from the National Gallery exhibition on Saint Francis to the one at the Tate Britain of Rossetti, from Boston Manor to Leighton House, from eating Vietnamese to Fish and Chips from an organ concert in a Templar’s church to a Quartet in Brentford and from visiting one set of cousins in Reigate to another set in Sittingbourne.
The Tate Britain exhibition dedicated to Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his circle is rich in details about his life and works. The son of an Italian Dante scholar (hence his adopted first name homaging a poet who greatly influenced him) and of a mother whose surname, Polidori, reminds one that her brother, together with the Shelleys and Byron, each wrote a ghost story on the banks of lake Geneva during that fateful summer of 1815, Rossetti was undecided whether to become a poet or an artist. He chose to be both and, particularly in his ‘House of Art’, combines both strains.
At first adhering to the manifesto of the Pre-Raphaelite painters who avoided both the academic strain of the Royal academicians and mannerist painters in favour of the purer forms and colours of early renaissance artists, Rossetti developed under the influence of Pater an ‘art for art’s sake’ philosophy and became an early prophet of aestheticism. He also hearkened back to mediaeval themes and in particular Arthurian legend, courtly love and chivalry.
Because the artist’s style went so much against high Victorian taste his paintings tended to be bought by a small group of connoisseurs and he never publicly exhibited.
Women, his muses, greatly influenced Rossetti’s art as inspiration and as models. Four of them were particularly important for his artistic development and they can easily be distinguished in his portraits. ‘Lizzie’ Siddal was an artist in her own right but sadly died just two years after they married of a laudanum overdose. Rossetti buried the manuscript of his poems in her tomb but re-exhumed her body when he decided he wanted to publish them Elizabeth Siddal haunted Rossetti for the remainder of his life as this portrait of her as Dante’s Beatrice shows.
Jane Burden was friend William Morris’s wife but a ex-marital relationship started between her and Rossetti. Her severe sculptural features were captured in photographs as well as in emotive paintings.
Another Rossetti muse, Fanny Cornforth, was perhaps the most beautiful of all but shocked his colleagues by her cockney accent and working class background.
All these women had sexual relationships with Dante Gabriel but a fourth muse, of whom very little is known, was just a model. She was Alexa Wilding and Rossetti painted more portraits of her than any of the others.
It’s ironic that Rossetti finished his life with an overdose like his wife. This time however it was chloral.
I enjoyed the exhibition very much and my appreciation of the painter/poet was considerably heightened. I cannot leave out another woman who perhaps more than any other inspired not so much his art but his poetry: his sister Cristina Rossetti. I am now quite ready to immerse myself into her ‘Goblin Market’ and discover yet more facets of a truly remarkable and formerly underestimated artistic movement.
Ruined abbeys in London? We associate other areas with these sad monuments to perhaps the greatest act of vandalism perpetrated in British history: Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in 1537. Yorkshire, in particular has some wonderful examples like Rievaulx and Fountains. But London too has its own abbey ruins although clearly not on the scale of other parts of the British isles.
I can think of three examples here:
Barking.
Bermondsey
Lesnes
On the other hand London has some fine examples of abbeys which are still continuing, either as whole or in part, as ecclesiastical buildings. Obviously Westminster abbey comes to mind; Britain’s supreme heart of all that is royal and of national importance. But there are others. In particular I love Saint Bartholomew the Great, Saint Helen’s Bishopsgate and Waltham Abbey. In addition there are new monasteries founded from the Victorian age. Ealing Abbey, belonging to the Benedictine order of monks, is one of these examples.
To return to London’s ruined abbeys. Why did that loathsome king destroy these beautiful buildings? Couldn’t he have adapted them for other uses instead of dismantling them stone by stone? Rather like the fanatics of Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant to see an abbey still standing could mean that it could again be used for its original purpose and if Islamic state fell or if the Papacy returned what then? That symbol of Papal hegemony or American imperialism must be destroyed at all costs…..
There are various degree of ruin. Sometimes, as with Tintern, enough of the abbey church survives to give a good idea of the grandeur of these buildings. Wordsworth was inspired by Tintern’s beauty to pen one of his greatest odes where he says that nature is “the anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, the guide, the guardian of my heart and soul of all my moral beings”.
With Lesnes abbey the ruins give a scanty idea of the splendour of the original monastery. But the beauty of nature displayed in the woods that surround it and which in spring time are filled with a sea of wild daffodils more than make up for the paucity of the remains. It’s, however, not difficult to make out the abbey church’s extent since all its pier bases survive.
The cloisters and monastic accommodation also survive sufficiently to give one an idea of their magnitude.
Lesnes Abbey was founded by Richard de Luci Chief Justice of England in 1178 as an act of penance for his part in the murder of Saint Thomas a Becket in 1170. De Luci died in 1179 and is buried in the abbey’s chapter house. The abbot was instrumental in helping to drain the marshland edging the Thames which runs close by. Part of this survives around the fish-pond where the monks reared their finned companions to grace the refectory table especially on Fridays.
Excavations around 1910 uncovered the abbey remains and it became a park open to the public in 1931.
Although a rough idea may be had of its appearance there are many questions I would ask of how exactly Lesnes abbey looked like in its heigh-day. What kind of vaulting was used to cover its nave? What shrines and statues were contained in its interior? Did it have a bell-tower or a spire? Were the windows stained? How many pilgrims came to it? What scrolls and manuscripts were contained in its library?
These tantalising questions must be answered by one simple phrase: ‘all things must pass’. Even our own contemporary times are subject to this eternal law. What if we store our data on a mammoth memory chip containing all literature, all knowledge, all music, all art, all science, all architecture that we hold dear? Will a future archaeologist from this or any other planetary world of the universe have the facility to decode its contents? Will it all lie undeciphered like an archaic Etruscan script?
Ruins for me lead to these melancholic thoughts. They truly concentrate one’s attention on the ultimate insignificance of human existence itself.
However, Abbey Woods and its monastic ruins have been a very happy part of our lives ever since we discovered them many years ago. When still young we came across its Triassic sand beds and spent hours of fun searching for sharks’ teeth there. The Green Chain walk traverses the woods and it gave us an opportunity to fully appreciate nature in an urban environment, its changing seasons and its fauna and flora. The woods became truly our playground from the earliest days of our marriage,
A pilgrim carved from a dead tree trunk looks out towards the abbey ruins. Humanity, history and nature are contained within his figure. He stands, impassive with primaeval wisdom and arcane insight.
There was a time when opera was anathema to me. To hear shrieking and warbling sopranos sing unintelligible words in tediously long pieces was near-torture when the summit of my musical pleasure was listening to chamber music. But tastes change and evolve through the years.
It was going to performances at Covent Garden’s Royal Opera House that strengthened my appreciation of what is known in Italy as ‘La Lirica.’ While I doubt that I would again attend a complete performance of Wagner’s ‘Ring’ I shall happily go to any Mozart opera umpteen times and also several nineteenth century warhorses for opera has for many years now become a staple dish of my musical dinner-table.
I am particularly glad to be living in an age where H(istorically) I(nformed) P(erformances) are standard for baroque music and where HIP tenets have influenced more recent works. Those quavering sopranos seems rarer these days thankfully
Last night’s ‘La Traviata’ at Covent Garden, conducted by Keri-Lynn Wilson and starring Kristina Mkhitaryan as Violetta was a rewarding interpretation of this radical opera. Radical because to glorify a hooker was considered immoral at the time. No approval of ‘pretty women’ in those days! Even Queen Victoria was not amused although the work’s transcription lay open on her piano. So Verdi, who wanted his opera performed in a modern setting, had to transpose the story historically to the seventeenth century. Radical because the music reaches a passionate intensity never before achieved in opera. Without ‘La Traviata’ (does this word mean a ‘fallen’ or does it signify a ‘misguided’ woman?), there would have been no Puccini or indeed any Italian operatic ‘verismo’. As soon as Verdi had seen Dumas junior’s play ‘La Dame aux Camelias’ he knew he had a potential libretto with intense dramatic emotion. Piave, his librettist was invited to the composer’s country estate near Parma to work on the text and ‘La Traviata’ was first staged at Venice’s ‘La Fenice’ in 1853. (Incidentally Dumas wrote his novella a few miles down the road from where we live in Italy).
For me, some of the opera’s most touching moments come when Verdi gets his Violetta to halt her song and speak against a soft instrumental background. This style known as ‘melodrama’ adds so much to the last heart-breaking moments of this, one of the most performed of all operas. She is after all at this stage too weak to sing because of her congenital tuberculosis.
Mkhitaryan was quite phenomenal in her title role. No slavonic waverings here. Coloratura and expression combine in her truly soprano-spinto voice which ranges from the quietest ‘sotto-voce’ plangency to the most dramatic outbursts. (I wonder if she, as a Russian, declared her opposition to the current leader of her native country in order to avoid being black-listed, like another of her professional colleages). Indeed all the principal singers were outstanding especially Liparit Avetisyan as Violetta’s screwed up lover Alfredo.
There was a time when, avoiding the city’s heavy traffic we would ride to Covent Garden on my motorbike. Our tickets then cost a mere £2 for an upper slip seat on a somewhat flimsy and vertiginous bench. Those days, together with my Honda Transalp, have long since gone. Yet my love for opera whether it themes a heroic baroque battle between eastern potentates, a sly conspiracy between rococo servants or a passionate death in a biedermeyer salon remains inviolate.
Like a fish and chips lunch in Greenwich an operatic evening at Covent Garden for me is an essential ingredient in any menu of events when staying in London.
There can be no more sublimely English way of spending a Sunday afternoon than attending Evensong at Westminster Abbey. Formally named the collegiate church of Saint Peter at Westminster the Abbey has been the scene of coronations (40), royal weddings (16) and funerals for almost a thousand years. It is, indeed, the heart of the highest ceremonial moments of this island kingdom’s history. Its very stones speak of pageant, despair and hopes.
Founded as a Benedictine monastery in the tenth century Westminster Abbey is the burial place of over twenty members of royalty including the following monarchs: Edward the Confessor, Henry III, Edward I, Edward III, Richard II, Henry V, Henry VII, Edward VI, Mary I, Elizabeth I, James I, Charles II, Mary II, William III, Anne and George II. In addition the Abbey is also the pantheon of British greats, over four thousand of them including Britain’s most noteworthy artists, men of letters and scientists.
Within the French-inspired Gothic architecture of the building (few other cathedrals in Britain have a curved Chevet, for example) we were guided to the choir and seated in one of its pews in readiness for an hour of the finest words and music the Anglican tradition can provide.
Much of the music sung by the choir was by Herbert Howells, the doyen of twentieth century English church music. The words from the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer and the sermon instilled reflection and peace in us. One evening prayer has always captured my attention. It’s the one containing the words ‘defend us from all perils and dangers of this night’. Every time I hear them I get goose pimples!
Westminster Abbey has a rather strict policy regarding photography. It doesn’t allow it. Clearly taking pictures during a service here would be a bit like attending the monarch with chewing gum in one’s mouth. However, at the abbey’s entrance I managed these:
Where does the scone in my title enter? In the Coronation chair on which our latest monarch was crowned just a couple of months ago. The stone of Scone is the sacred sandstone slab on which Scottish kings were crowned and upon which monarchs of the United Kingdom are now made kings and queens. The stone is sacred because it is supposed to be the pillow the ancient patriarch Jacob placed his head on at Bethel when he saw a vision of angels. I prefer my own duck-feather cushion myself!
Barely an hour later we entered a very different scenario. In the Royal borough of Richmond the artists’ studios of Eel Pie island (named after an inn which once sold these delicacies beloved of true cockneys) had opened their normally private doors to the public.
I admit I had never been to the island before. Were we to reach it by swimming across or via a ferry? No problem, for since the 1950’s a footbridge has joined this Thames islet to the mainland.
Although enjoying my teeenage romps in the sixties I missed out on the jazz and rock bands of this archetypally ‘hippy’ island which is home to around 150 souls. I, thus, missed out on such legends as John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, George Melly, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and the Pink Floyd. Luckily I made up for this in later years. George Melly was, for example, a regular artist at Woolwich’s legendary Tramshed and the Pink Floyd even played at our college May Ball.
Eel Pie island was a very different kettle of fish from the pomp of Westminster abbey. Here among its spread of cottages and chalets lived such luminaries as the first Doctor Who, William Hartnell, and the inventor of the wind-up radio, Trevor Baylis.
We had mixed views about the art being produced by the Eel Pie island denizens but their ambience was rather charming and reminded me a little of the laid-back atmosphere of a Caribbean island. Here no cars disturbed the peace and even cycling was forbidden along its High Street or should I say High Footpath.
Where does the Pho of our title come in? We found this typical Vietnamese soup, which consists of broth, noodles, herbs and beef or chicken, in a friendly restaurant of the same name in King Street near Ravenscourt Park which is one of London’s green spaces for which it is famous.
The park is also near the heart of the city’s Polish community and sadly we came across this memorial stone.
At the Pho restaurant a very convivial get-together of a trio of ex-Dulwich boys (me included) with their tolerant spouses and sisters brought to a conclusion what can only be termed as a perfect day for me, a part-time Londoner, ever in awe at the variety of life and places this greatest of cities offers humanity.
