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 A weekend of snark
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| Peeking into Central Park from Fifth Avenue and 78th Street. 4:50 PM. Photo: JH. |
April 26, 2010. A beautiful, sunny Saturday with hints of rain late in the day, and spritzing after midnight into Sunday with more until mid-evening when the rains came.
I went to Swifty’s to dinner, guest of Shirley Lord Rosenthal. The conversation got around to the Medical Marijuana issue in California and drug abuse and who and what. One of the guests, Dr. Mitch Rosenthal is a founder of Phoenix House. There were two other doctors at the table as well as the asst. DA, and a variety of opinions.
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| Michael Douglas and his ex-wife Diandra Douglas leave a Manhattan federal court after the sentencing of their son Cameron Douglas in New York April 20, 2010. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton |
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Ironically the sentencing of the son of Michael Douglas did not come up. There are a variety of opinions about that out there also. Somehow the whole matter seems futile; a man has a very self-destructive habit, and for that he’s incarcerated. It’s a little like the olden days when if you had debt you couldn’t pay, you had to go to prison. Debt nowadays of course is quite another matter and if you can’t pay, maybe you’ll be Too Big To Fail and so Uncle Sam will keep you in marbles.
All of which speaking of, over the weekend we received this dispatch from our stealthy correspondent of matters Real Estate in Palm Beach, Augustus Mayhew (the PB Real Estate Roulette columnist, known to his friends as Clemmer). Appropos of nothing while on the subject of modern debt, however:
JPMorgan Chase extends Henry Kravis $62,000,000 mortgage
Henry Kravis has some spare change, made a little history and you might want to find out the name of his property appraiser. In what may become known as the largest residential mortgage in the history of Palm Beach, Mr. K's 700 North Lake Way LLC, the owner of record for his more than five-acre lakefront Palm Beach estate, has been extended a $62,000,000 mortgage as part of what reads like a much greater revolving marge de credit from JPMorgan Chase, according to recent Palm Beach county court filings. Appearing to have completed their renovation magnifique of 700 North Lake Way, Henry and Marie-Josee Kravis had purchased the landmarked house in 2006 for $50 million, now currently assessed and appraised for $43.7 million by the county's property appraiser. Mr. Kravis is ranked No. 201 on the Forbes 2010 B-list. Just a few blocks south at the slightly more economical 410 North Lake Way, US Marshalls are still waiting for $7.25 million for the former Madoff maison de plaisance.
The mortgage agreement itself is more than 50 pages long. Clemmer said it gets really interesting around about page 4. I looked at page 4 and almost fell asleep (see for yourself above). You had to be there (with Clemmer explaining). |
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| Page four of the $62,000,000 mortgage. |
Meanwhile back at dinner. We did not talk about Wall Street and Blankfein and Paulson and Bernanke. There is a prevailing opinion quite ripe in some circles that we may not be out of the woods yet but we’re definitely on our way. There are also strong contrary opinions out there also but these are generally not well received in polite company.
Over the weekend I read. I got my New York Review of Books on Thursday. This has been one of my favorite magazines since its inception -- always full of interesting, informative and thought-provoking articles by wonderful writers.
The first thing that caught my eye while perusing was “Paris: Notes from Underground” by Colin Jones. It’s a review of a book by Robert Darnton (University of Pennsylvania Press) called “The Devil in the Holy Water or the Art of Slander from Louis XIV to Napoleon.” |
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| Fom the New York Review of Books: Frontispiece of Pierre Manuel's La Police de Paris dévoilée (The Paris Police Unveiled), 1790, one of a series of sensational assaults on the Old Regime political establishment'; from Robert Darnton's The Devil in the Holy Water. |
In short: snark was around then too. And bigtime. Mr Darnton thinks the snark had lasting effects on the society and culture. After all, they dragged Louis XVI and his Marie-Antoinette through the mud and then finally beheaded them. Oh the things they said about Marie Antoinette.
So the snarky blogosphere that has infiltrated all kinds of writing today, is nothing new. Scandal, blackmailing, spying, surveillance; they had it all in spades. The genealogy of slander can be traced back to antiquity Mr. Jones explains: “The golden thread that unites them all – including more modern versions – is that they were adept at reducing “complex events to the clash of personalities. Their authors realized that ‘names make news…’”
They called them the libelles. The worse, the better, the more, the merrier. La plus ca change as the French have said. |
| Napoleon. |
Josephine in her style with her coiffure a la guillotine and her Empire fashion. |
The piece in the NYRB reminded me of a small book I picked up at Archivia awhile back called Walks through Napoleon and Josephine’s Paris by Diana Reid Haig. So I went hunting for it.
The French history of that time continues to fascinate. Josephine was an empress thanks to Napoleon, but before that she was a fashion queen and always a major shopper.
Before she met Napoleon she was married to a Vicomte Beauharnais with whom she had a son and a daughter. The couple were imprisoned during The Terror that came after the guillotining of Louis and M-A. Josephine was sent to a prison underground called the Carmes in 1794. There she befriended an English aristocratic lady named Grace Dalrymple Elliott.
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| Gainsborough portrait of Grace Dalrymple Elliott in 1778, sixteen years before her imprisonment at the Carmes. Elliott was a prison mate of Josephine during The Terror. It now hangs in the Met. |
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Mrs. Elliott was there because had been having an affair with the cousin of the king, the duc d’Orleans and that was a no-no to the Revolutionaries. Enough to send her to the guillotine. Ed’s note: Gainsborough’s portrait of Mrs. D. eventually was owned by William K. Vanderbilt in New York who left it to the Met.
Before the Revolution, fashion was quite grand, as you know; and over the top, even way over the top. At the court of Marie Antoinette, for example, women wore large panniers -- the hoops used to extend skirts to the right and left.
After the Revolution, Marie Antoinette gone, Josephine dressed more simply. She wore plain, fitted gowns of white muslin or tulle, diaphanous and practically transparent. The style was called (and still is) Empire -- deep décolletage and a high waist.
Before she married Napoleon, Josephine belonged to a group called the Merveilleuses who shopped the Palais-Royal. They wore bodystockings, gold ornamental bands around their legs, and even wigs tinted pale blue, blond, or light pink. No tattoos, however.
Hair styles were part of the change that Josephine influenced. Throughout the 18th century powdered wigs were the coiffure of choice. But during the Revolution, all prisoners facing the guillotine had their hair cut off before boarding the tumbrils for the final ride.
Josephine (then known as Rose de Beauharnais), while a prisoner at the Carmes, fully expected her day of shorning would come, and so she cut her hair herself to avoid the indignity of being shorn by the executioner’s assistant.
Miraculously she avoided the final moment thanks to the sudden political changes and the death of Robespierre, after which Josephine was freed. (Her husband had been guillotined shortly before the change.)
After her release from Prison, however, she kept her hair short as a reminder of what she had endured in those darkest of days. The style became popular and was actually called coiffure a la guillotine.
That little book (and it is small in size and thin) was full of information about J and N and the time. Did you know that Josephine kept a collection of Black Swans at her estate Malmaison? And this was two hundred years before Nassim Nicholas Taleb made it a fashionable economic theory and a best selling book.
Big heavy week ahead in New York with multiple events every day and every night. Stay tuned. |
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