Tag: nancy mitford

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SABBATH PLUS ONE Louis Pasteur Street + The Jaffa Hotel Jaffa Tel Aviv

Love in a Hot Climate

“Now let my lord send his servants the wheat and barley and the olive oil and wine he promised, and we will cut all the logs from Lebanon that you need and will float them as rafts by sea down to Joppa. You can then take them up to Jerusalem.” II Chronicles 2:15 to 16

The sun stands still. Gazing across the Mediterranean shoreline (273 kilometres stretching north to Lebanon and tipping Egypt to the southwest), astonished by our own brilliance, mingling with the coastal elite, we are delighted how well the afternoon has turned out. “You will die! The Jaffa is gorgeous,” coos Parisienne Maud Rabanne, une dame cultivée. “Coucou! Have coffee on the roof terrace. It’s got the best view! The Jaffa is one of my favourite places. It’s fabuloso! C’est la vie! That’s what we say in Paris. We always mean it in a positive way. Montagne de baisirs. Remplie de joie d’amour et de bonheur. Tchin-tchin!” Cinq à sept. Coûte que coûte. Le paradis, c’est les autres.

Moshe Sakal describes a similar view in his novel The Diamond Setter (2018), “Tel Aviv sprawls out on the right, the rocks of Jaffa on the left, and straight ahead lies Andromeda’s Rock, a plain looking rock that juts out of the water with an Israeli flag billowing on its peak.” International architect John O’Connell hints, “Should you arrive at the hotel, go further up and down the hill, as the Roman Catholic church will be on your left, and nearly opposite it is a very fine and abandoned Ottoman building. A robust ensemble. Try to see the internal court, where I have failed to do so! Such supreme life and joy!” Ah, that will be the Old Saraya House taken over by clubbers, bats and thespians. Abandonment begone!

We’re enjoying a Mitfordesque moment (Love in a Cold Climate heated up from 1949) on that terrace: “So here we all are, my darling, having our lovely cake and eating it too, one’s great aim in life.” We’re feeling “very grand as well as very rich”. The pleasures of passing hours. It helps that this heroic hotel is emphatically designed by everybody’s favourite minimalist maestro, master of the monastic John Pawson, along with Israeli architect and conservationist Ramy Gill. Oracle of our own orbit, balancing on a notional pedestal, we don’t need a doctorate in aesthetics to appreciate John Pawson’s masterwork. John O’Connell is on a roll: “Mr P’s oeuvre is so restrained. Everything’s resolved.” It’s a breath of fresh air, or at least an intake of the coolest sea breeze imaginable. Soon we will be expounding riddles with the grand piano and dwelling on Gertrude Stein (Tender Buttons, 1914), “Cold climate. A season in yellow sold extra strings makes lying places.”

The 1870s Saint Louis V Hospital, built by French businessman François Guinet to the design of architectural practice Grebez and Ribellet and managed by the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Apparition, has been sharply reimagined under John Pawson’s crisply contained direction. Delamination of extant solid form – from the remnants of a 13th century Crusaders’ bastion in the lobby to the peeling paint of the dusky pink loggias – leads to a richly layered intertextual discursively informative spirited patina of the raw and the worked throughout the revelatory restoration and clever conversion and audacious augmentation and sensual solution. Faded lettering over the arched doorways lining the loggias reads: ‘Communaute’, ‘Tribune’, ‘Salle Ste Elizabeth 2me Don Blesses, ‘Salle Ste Clotilde 2me Don Fievreux’, ‘Salle Ste Marie Pensionnaires’, ‘Orphelinat’. As Hans Ulrich Obrist (Ways of Curating, 2014) would interject, “… conversations … are happening between various narratives”.

Beyond the lobby with its Ligne Roset corduroy sofas and Damien Hirst spin paintings and lacquered backgammon tables lies a courtyard garden of sacred and human geometry (an unflowered greenscape) linking the ancient with the old with the new with the futuristic. John Pawson venerates yet challenges the original architecture, creating an unfolding sequence of voids and vistas and virtuosic visions. There’s an endless tightly choreographed play between past and present, architecture and art: a nuanced paradox of togetherness and oneness. As Elizabeth Bowen contends in The Heat of the Day (1948), “To turn from everything to one face is to find oneself face to face with everything.” There lies the definite ascetism – to be freed from oneself. Not even an Israeli Frances Hodgson Burnett (The Secret Garden, 1911) could summon up such discreet walled splendour. Corrugations of percolated sunshine ripple across the stone floor, climbing over chairs, falling over tables. Beyond the courtyard lies the Chapel Bar. The beyondness of many things. This world is our oyster and ours alone. It’s all it’s cracked up to be. Postcard home material. We’re checked in; we’ve checked out. Being here; doing it.

A private paradise. A secret world. A hidden kingdom. Cloistered espaliered sequestered formal glory. The very essence of unexampled exclusivity. If luxury could be bottled … heaven’s scent. A multiple epiphanic realisation of complete beauty. It was as if Elizabeth Bowen was in The Jaffa and not The House in Paris (1935), “Heaven – call it heaven; on the plane of potential not merely likely behaviour. Or call it art, with truth and imagination informing every word.” Marilynne Robinson (When I Was a Child I Read Books, 2012) insists, “Call it history, call it culture. We came from somewhere and we are tending somewhere, and the spectacle is glorious and portentous.”

Ah – the Chapel Bar – from litany and liturgy to luxury and libation, à la carte over elegy, mixology supplanting doxology, heterodoxy replacing orthodoxy, every hour is happy in this soaring sanctuary for sybarites. The only blues are the saturated cerulean hues of the ribbed vaulted ceiling. Beautiful in its loftiness, this bar is an explosion of sizzling rarity, of dazzlingly dilettantish individuality. There are no equals. There were no prequels. There’ll be no sequels. The perfect pitstop to slake your thirst, it’s like being at a house party if all your friends are knowingly sophisticated distractingly gorgeous models or similar ilk rocking new threads inspired by Inès de la Fressange’s (Parisian Chic Encore: A Style Guide, 2019) “haute couture and street style” – Doron Ashkenaz shirts and skin fade haircuts – dancing in eternal graceful circles. In Tel Aviv, kitchen and club are often confused so dancing on tables is de rigueur. A real era catcher: the New Roaring Twenties. Here they come The Beautiful Ones, The Fabulists, The Found Generation, Our Milieu. As befits our subject matter, we’re looking just a little bit sparkly ourselves: all dressed up in Elie Saab attire with somewhere to go; we shall go to the ball. What Roland Barthes (The Fashion System, 1963) calls “the euphoria of Fashion”. All of life has been a dress rehearsal for tonight. For a hot minute we’re running with the fastest set in town. To reference Nancy Mitford’s Don’t Tell Alfred (1963), it’s “high-falutin’, midnight stuff”.

The hotel is all “courtesy clouds” and “honeyed luxury” in a “rococo harmony” straight from The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (Frances Scott Fitzgerald, 1922). Average doesn’t exist in The Jaffa: it’s Lake Wobegon for real and we’ve got a majestic waterside view. Such is the alchemic segue! And who should know better than us? We’re qualified connoisseurs of fabulousness with diplomas in decadence, bachelors in brio and masters in magnificence. Very Bright Young Things. We’re taking the advice of Frédéric Dassas, Senior Curator of the Musée du Louvre Paris. During the Remembering Napoléon III Dinner at Camden Place in Kent he guided us: “Be part of the room; don’t just go through it.” The Chapel Bar is full of “people one should know” to channel Dorinda, Lady Dunleath. She would say, “It’s wild!” The glitter of this mirage. “Every generation has to keep the party going,” Her Ladyship always remarked in her Belgravia meets Ballywalter accent.

Morning figs and evening chocolates bookend a day’s room service. “Upstairs is crazy with dreams or love,” purrs Elizabeth Bowen (The House in Paris again). Guest suites breathe and stretch and sprawl across six uncrowded unhurried unparalleled bedroom floors, arabesque honeycomb filigreed screens flung open to the birds tweeting roosters crowing leaves rustling church bells peeling Saint Michael’s Greek Orthodox School pupils singing car horns honking cacophony. Deliciously diffused light seeps through the open window conjuring up a crimson carpet of crushed rubies. Devoid of demanding garniture or frivolous flotsam and jetsam, passing on the passementerie, the sole artwork in our bedroom is an orange tree captured by Israeli photographer Tal Shochat. Scholar Rebecca Walker educated us at the Remembering Napoléon III Dinner: “Eugénie, Empress of the French, had a fondness for knickknacks.” The unfussy décor of our bedroom would raise her imperial chagrin. A slanted mirror doubles as a reflection of perfection and a television. The perfumed aroma of jasmine and honeysuckle intensifies in the dying heat of a balmy summer day. And so to bed. Looking back, much later, like Frances Scott Fitzgerald’s character John we “remembered that first night as a daze of many colours, of quick sensory impressions, of music soft as a voice in love, and of the beauty of things, lights and shadows, and motions and faces”. Elizabeth Bowen’s line in To The North (1932) haunts us still: “this evening had an airy superurbanity”.

“… and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills – to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood and to engage in all kinds of artistic crafts.” Exodus 35:31 to 33

(Extract with alternative imagery from the bestseller SABBATH PLUS ONE Jerusalem and Tel Aviv).

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SABBATH PLUS ONE Jerusalem + Tel Aviv

Diligent Hands Make Wealth

Achilles James Daunt CBE is not one to rest on his laurels. MD and reinventor of British bookshop chain Waterstone since 2011, back in 1990 the former banker purchased an Edwardian bookshop on Marylebone High Street (incidentally the US Ambassador to the UK Jane Hartley’s favourite London street), stocked it with the best titles, renamed it after himself, and the rest is literary history. The top lit three storey interior is lined with long oak galleries. Stained glass windows and William Morris wallpaper add to the period charm of what is now undoubtedly London’s finest bookshop. There are offshoots in Belsize Park, Cheapside, Hampstead, Holland Park Kentish Town, Oxford and Marlow.

We’re proud to announce Daunt Books Marylebone is the world exclusive stockist of the first book by Lavender’s Blue. You’re getting our dynamic: SABBATH PLUS ONE Jerusalem and Tel Aviv now takes pride of place in the Middle East travel section shelves. It’s about all our favourite places rolled into two: one of the newest and one of the oldest cities in the world. Brought to fruition by the genius of Digitronix, industry leaders in multi disciplinary design and print. Not forgetting Pete R’s invaluable direction. Beyond conventional categorisation, for we are more than mere phantoms, maybe it’s best to quote some readers’ reactions (from Royalty to Archbishopry to Clergy to Society) to the first edition. Time for some laurel resting.

“This is an outstanding achievement. A vivid creative expression of your wide literary interests and your strong visual sense — and particularly for this subject, your personal spiritual values. Being a person of no religion myself, I’m enjoying your quotations from Biblical sources, especially those expressed in 17th century language. Also the well chosen theological and historical quotes from leading writers of today which are thought provoking. Your rich text together with your wonderful illustrations gives the reader so much to understand and to appreciate about the places described. Congratulations! This is a very engaging book for the reader, it feels like the living experience of a journey with the many historical facts, associations and emotions that are stimulated by travel. In many ways your book makes me think of Jan Morris, who is the ‘grand master’ of travel writing — though she doesn’t offer the reader your richness of visual imagery! I should add that I’m also enjoying your Nancy Mitford references and I really love your quote from Min Hogg: ‘Visiting a hot country especially for those who are not native to it reawakens the senses.’ This is so true.”

“Super, you capture the essence of the Holy Land and Presentation A1, your Singular Contribution to Publishing today. The Slip Cover, so enticing as is the Midnight Blue Binding. So many thanks for the mention, and so apt the dedication to Brother and Prince Alfred. Vulcans must have carried you from desk to studio, as I have never seen a publication arrive at such speed, it is the works of you and the God of letters and images. Now congratulations, and press on now with the next Project, you have The Gift!”

“How wonderful, beautiful, how gracious. So with the packaging still on the floor the next hour was spend reading the text and looking at the gorgeous photographs. Thank you SO much it was so kind of you to think of me for such a beautiful book. I look forward to reading more.  I’ve noticed how the Biblical texts seem so comfortable on the page but also how they are vibrant or energy filled almost as if they jump off the page. You have chosen so well and carefully.”

“Just opened the sumptuous tome on Tel Aviv. What fabulous photographs – they really inspire me to visit and confirm all the wonderful things I have heard about the city. I shall study as the nights draw in and dream of sun kissed climes. You are a true artist of the lens! Straight to the top of the pile … after reading.”

“I was blown away by the stunning book … It is beautiful! I am in awe of the clarity and depth of each picture that speaks so vividly they draw you in … And the time, skill and story you have shared through this stunning piece of art! Thank you so so much (I particularly like page 180)!”

“AND – yesterday we opened a parcel with an amazing book in it – Sabbath Plus One is amazing – what a wonderful creation … utterly incredible and what a lovely gift – we were both enthralled. THANK YOU so much for sending us a copy – beyond that I am speechless! Just THANK YOU.”

“An Amazing Work – I really can’t believe it was the fruit of a lay weekend visit. It feels like you really got under the skin of the place – and had great fun in doing so. Your work is already drawing much attention from those coming into my office.”

“A very interesting book – amazing photos taken with an architectural eye. Brought back memories! I see Newtownstewart and Pubble got a mention on page 28!”

“Amazing photography accompanied by your usual descriptive style and excerpts from Scripture too. Wonderful!”

“Super Daunt Books reception! You follow in the paths of H V Morton and Mary McCarthy. Again, press on and on.”

“A total entity onto itself.”

“I like the book title.”

“A beautiful book.”

(Alternative imagery from the bestseller SABBATH PLUS ONE Jerusalem and Tel Aviv).

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The Hideaway Sloane Place Hotel Chelsea London +

The Zone of Influence

Sloane Square is “the centre of the world” according to Ann Barr and Peter York’s Official Sloane Ranger Handbook. This essential 1980s guide was in effect an expanded update of Nancy Mitford’s 1955 “U and Non U” essay on what is upper class and what is not. Linguistics were tricky back then: “chimneypiece” was U; “mantlepiece” Non U. We sat beside Peter York at Nicky Haslam’s private gig in The Pheasantry, King’s Road, and he did emphasise it was all a bit tongue in cheek.

Sloane Square Hotel on Lower Sloane Street is equator hot in Handbook terms. It’s the launch party of The Hideaway, a basement speakeasy under Sloane Place. The Peter Jones crowd are here but everyone is more diverse less shibboleth reliant these days. Jazz musicians Bandini not to mention gallons of Moët and Chandon (thankfully the Prohibition theme isn’t taken too literally!) mean the intimate dancefloor is soon filled. The goat’s cheese macaroons are definitely U.

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Paris + Literature

The Myth of Normal

Like Colette, we prefer passion to goodness. The great French novelist purrs in The Cat (1933), “The June evening, drenched with light, was reluctant to give way to darkness.” And, “June came with its longer days, its night skies devoid of mystery which the late glow of the sunset and the early glimmer of dawn over the east of Paris kept from being wholly dark.” She too was a lover of “The giddy horizons of Paris.”

Writer and poet Charles Baudelaire caused quite the stir in 1857 with his risqué poem collection Les Fleurs du Mal. One of the tamer pieces is The Swan. Roy Campbell translated it into English in 1952, including the line, “Old Paris is no more (cities renew, quicker than human hearts, their changing spell).” Two years later, William Aggeler also translated it. His version includes, “Paris changes! But naught in my melancholy, Has stirred! New palaces, scaffolding, blocks of stone, Old quarters, all become for me an allegory, And my dear memories are heavier than rocks.” All those Haussmannian boulevards must have seemed so sharply new.

Nancy Mitford, as always, is right. In Don’t Tell Alfred (1960), the Francophile novelist continues, “… past acres of houses exactly as Voltaire, as Balzac, must have seen them, of that colour between beige and grey so characteristic of the Île de France, with high slate roofs and lacy ironwork balconies. Though the outside of these houses have a homogeneity which makes an architectural unit of each street, a glimpse through their great decorated doorways into the courtyards reveals a wealth of difference within. Some are planned on a large and airy scale and have fine staircases and windows surmounted by smiling masks, some are so narrow and dark and mysterious, so overbuilt through the centuries with such ancient, sinister rabbit-runs leading out of them, that it is hard to imagine a citizen of the modern world inhabiting them.”

Frédéric Dassas, Senior Curator Musée du Louvre, told us at the Remembering Napoléon III Dinner in Camden Place, Chislehurst, Kent, “Walk through Paris with open eyes. We still have Paris in Europe!” We will. We do. We’re full of passion for this city. Especially riding through Paris with the wind in our hair. On the back of a motorbike, weaving through rush hour traffic, speeding down narrow streets, zooming round the uninsurable l’Arc de Triomphe roadway, this is life in the fast lane and the overtaking one too. Sporting Mary Martin London and Isabel Marant of course. Selina Hastings writes in her biography of Nancy Mitford (2002), “She found in beautiful Paris happiness of spirit …” Soon we will be deuxième étage living it up. We’re not always good but we’re always passionate.

Then there’s the Manifestation! We head up Montmartre for a hawk’s eye view of Montparnasse. Sacré Coeur.

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Dame Rosalind Savill + Madame de Pompadour + Sèvres Porcelain + 500 Years of European Ceramics Bonhams London

Reinette  

“Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, 1721 to 1764, became official mistress to Louis XV in 1745. Their patronage of the Vincennes / Sèvres porcelain manufactory, both jointly and individually, ensured its success. Its production is characterised by brilliant colours, daring design and an insatiable pursuit of novelty,” explains Nette Megens, Head of Department of European Ceramics at Bonhams. “Her purchases, which she made regularly, from 1747 until her death, and the factory’s products are the subject of a definitive new book by Dame Rosalind Savill: ‘Everyday Rococo: Madame de Pompadour and Sèvres Porcelain’.”

The Bond Street auction house gallery is aglow as Pol Roger Champagne and mince pies are served at an exhibition ‘500 Years of European Ceramics’ covering Italian, Meissen, Vienna and Sèvres porcelain to celebrate the book launch on the tercentenary of Madame de Pompadour’s birth. “This exhibition and book launch is organised by Bonhams and The French Porcelain Society,” introduces Nette. “If you’re not a member of the Society, shame on you! Ros wrote a seminal book 41 years ago on The Wallace Collection Sèvres and to her credit it has remained up there with the best of books on the subject. It’s sold out. This new book is of the same canon… ‘Ros’, as she is known to all, is exceptional, generous, charming, persevering and kind.” Addressing the author directly, “You are a demigod of competence darling angel, simply the best; we are all the keenest members of your fan club tonight!”

John Whitehead, authority on 18th century decorative arts and Committee Member of The French Porcelain Society, continues, “Ros is the greatest scholar blessed with an extraordinary talent for communicating. Her events at the Society are always a sell out and her enthusiasm is infectious.” Back to Nette: “The tone of this book is all about hearing her talk. It feels so personal and lovely… Now it’s time for the Dame!” Dazzling in a Sèvres pink coloured dress, Dame Rosalind Savill discusses her book. She was of course Director of the Wallace Collection London, 1992 to 2011, and is a specialist in French decorative arts, especially Sèvres.

“We are here to celebrate the 300th birthday of Madame de Pompadour. She kept youth on her side, right to her death,” notes Rosalind. Nancy Mitford rhapsodises in her 1968 biography, “Madame de Pompadour excelled at an art which the majority of humans being thoroughly despise because it is unprofitable and ephemeral is the art of living.” Rosalind again, “This book covers her daily routine and what she bought each year in court. The pieces vary from simplicity to embracing the wildest extravagance – a gamut of some of the best ever produced. You can’t help but be drawn into these beautiful but useful pieces. It is their quality, their specialness, that makes them exquisite. The colours are so unbelievable and unlike textiles they haven’t faded. This is the 18th century staring you in the face!” She points out the beauty of one piece decorated with peacock feathers resembling the Christmas street decorations outside on New Bond Street. And the functionality of another: a cup with a deep wide saucer for drinking hot milk in bed. “Madame de Pompadour was worn to a frazzle trying to keep the whole show on the road. Louis XV couldn’t bear not to have her by his side.”

Pierre Arrizoli-Clémentel, Directeur Générale du Châteaux de Versailles, summarises in his Forward to the book, “In these beautiful volumes Rosalind Savill has had the inspired idea of recording the annual calendar of Sèvres manufacture for the marquise’s incessant orders which reveals her true love of French porcelain.” Rosalind entices the reader with her opening line, “Imagine being 23 years old and suddenly isolated in the competitive, combative world of the royal palace of Versailles.” Such an imagination is brought vividly to life in two volumes totalling 1,232 pages weighing 7.5 kilograms. She elaborates, “It is possible to trace her annual purchases from the factory, month by month, revealing how these were often intimately connected to events in her life.” Intriguing chapter subtitles range from ‘Dairies and Milk Mania’ and ‘Washing, Hygiene and Health’ to ‘Pets: Dogs, Birds and Other Animals’ and ‘Letter Writing: Embroidery and Knotting’.

The work is polished and academic yet entertaining and full of fascinating anecdotes from “Madame de Pompadour helped make bathing popular” to “She remarked on the King’s tenderness towards his children, though she was critical of their looks.” Rosalind writes movingly of the impact of her female subject’s death: “Louis XV outlived Madame de Pompadour by 10 years, but nothing could replace his 19 year relationship with her. Voltaire wrote of how surprising it was that ‘a beautiful woman should die… in the midst of the most dazzling career in the world.” In the words of Nancy Mitford, “After this a great sadness fell upon the Château of Versailles.” The last paragraph pf ‘Everyday Rococo’ sets the scene for the title of these volumes, “She was perfectly in tune with the rococo period in which she lived, and enabled it to evolve and flourish. But mostly she was buying exceptional objects to enhance her everyday life.” Dame Rosalind Savill dedicates her brilliant publication to “my darling daughter Isabella Dove Savill.”

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Parc Morceau Paris +

Oh Em Gigi

“You have to live near the Parc Monceau,” opined Nancy Mitford. “Well, they live up by the Parc Monceau. We must all meet up one day soon.” David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding Prime Minister, established his Paris headquarters at Hôtel Le Royal Monceau last century. Parisienne Maud Rabin remarks, “It’s so beautiful; lots of movies have been made here.” The park is surrounded by gorgeous townhouses and apartment blocks with penthouses and attics catching glimpses over the high treeline of the flights of fancy immortalised by Claude Monet.

The public park was established by Phillippe d’Orléans Duc de Chartres, a cousin of King Louis XVI, following the Duc’s marriage to the Princesse de Penthièvre. He commissioned the writer and painter Louis Carrogis (better known as Carmontelle) to design the gardens – they still retain a painterly quality. Carmontelle subcontracted the Duc’s architect Bernard Poyet and a German landscape architect Etickhausen to design a series of follies in an informal layout. An Egyptian pyramid on a lawn and a Roman colonnade reflected in a pond of waterlilies and an English bridge over a stream continue to delight visitors.

It’s not Paris if there’s no hint of Haussmannia. Monsieur Georges Eugène of course managed a spot of 19th remodelling of the park under Napoléon III. Set in an exclusive quartier of the 8th Arrondisement, wealthy Jewish banking families such as the Camondos, Rothschilds and Péreires established residences skirting the perimeter of the park. You really do have to live near the Parc Monceau.

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Nancy Mitford + 7 Rue Monsieur Paris

Love in a Temperate Climate

She adored Derek Hill (the painter) and couldn’t stand Le Corbusier (the architect). She wrote the biographies of Madame de Pompadour, Voltaire and Louis XIV. She was the cousin of Clementine Lady Beit, last doyenne of Ireland’s great house Russborough. Her nephew Desmond Guinness co founded the Irish Georgian Society. She had a pet chicken and cat. She wrote bestselling novels Highland Fling, Love in a Cold Climate and The Pursuit of Love among others. And she loved Paris. Enter Nancy Mitford, our favourite female English novelist.

She lived in the 7th Arrondisement on the Left Bank. “A very charming flat between the courtyard and the garden,” was how she described her French home. “The days go by and I have no desire to move from my house and garden.” Her sister Diana Mosley said, “As soon as possible, in 1945, she got a flat in Paris, where she lived for 20 happy years.” She never lived in England again. Nancy wrote to her mother, “I am so completely happy here… I feel a totally different person as if I had come out of a coalmine into daylight… Oh my passion for the French!”

It was a charmed existence. “The houses she visited ‘glittered like miniature Wallace Collections’ and the women were generally ‘glittering with jewels’,” records Harold Action in his 1975 biography of Nancy Mitford. He offers tantalising glimpses into her Parisian life: “Highly diverted by the difference of French and English social conventions, full of admiration for General de Gaulle, enchanted by the details and incidental episodes of the Parisian scene, she became ardently Francophile, yet she remained English to the core.”

“For the next 20 years, the happiest of her life, Nancy settled in Paris. Even before settling there she had put these words into the mouth of her hero Fabrice: ‘One’s emotions are intensified in Paris – one can be more happy and also more unhappy here than in any other place. But it is always a positive source of joy to live here, and there is nobody so miserable as a Parisian in exile from his town. The rest of the world seems unbearably cold and bleak to us, hardly worth living in…”

“Always a strenuous walker, Nancy was able to familiarise herself with the intimate old Paris behind the boulevards and the Hôtel de Ville, the quays and narrower streets with high roofed buildings, with the venerable Place des Vosges and the classical mansions on the left bank of the Seine so long inhabited by French nobility whose names had inspired Balzac and Proust. Balzac’s Madame de Sauve might even have suggested Nancy’s Sauveterre. The British Embassy was full of her friends. Our Ambassador Duff Cooper and the glamorous Lady Diana made it sparkle as never before with poets, painters and musicians.”

“Before the end of 1947 she had the good fortune to discover an ideal apartment, the ground floor of an old mansion between courtyard and garden in the Rue Monsieur, which she referred to henceforth as ‘Mr Street’. ‘I’ve got a perfectly blissful and more or less permanent flat,’ she informed in December 1947, ‘Untouched I should think for 60 years. I spent my first evening removing the 25 lace mats with objects on them mostly from Far Japan (dainty). The furniture is qualité de musée – such wonderful pieces, now you can see them.” Her character Cedric sounds positively autobiographic in Love in a Cold Climate: “In Paris I have an apartment of all beauty. One’s idea of heaven.”

Little wonder Nancy was a Francophile and honorary Parisian. Aren’t we all? Rue Monsieur is the Lad Lane of Paris. A tranquil oasis surrounded by all the action. Where Rue Monsieur tips the louche sounding Rue de Babylone to the north of Nancy’s pied-à-terre is the intriguing looking La Pagode. Under wraps for now, this oriental building was built as a community hall in 1896 to the design of architect Alexander Marcel before improbably becoming a cinema in the 1930s. Presumably our favourite female English novelist caught the odd matinée at La Pagode.

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Bohemia Restaurant + The Club Hotel + Spa St Helier + Lavender Farm Jersey

Eternally Rhapsodising | Love in a Warm Climate

St Aubin Bay Jersey © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

“So here we are…having our lovely cake and eating it too, one’s great aim in life.” Nancy Mitford

The Club Hotel and Spa Jersey © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

We’re up Green Street. Chasing stars, potentially flickering, preferably established, Michelin stars. Steve Smith, Head Chef of Bohemia Restaurant, has held a Michelin star for more than a decade. Bohemia is the first restaurant in the Channel Islands to be awarded five AA rosettes. This ranks it among the 15 highest rated restaurants in the UK, joining the galaxy inhabited by the likes of Raymond Blanc’s Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons and Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck. Country Life recently listed Bohemia in its top five Jersey restaurants, calling it a “Michelin starred restaurant perfect for a treat”.

The Club Hotel and Spa St Helier © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

The restaurant takes up the street level of The Club Hotel + Spa in St Helier. The interior of the five star hotel and restaurant is all modern elegance infused with the inherent chilled vibe of the island.

Coming over all Mitfordesque, it’s time to treat ourselves. The menu is a polished blend of Saxon and Norman influences, reflecting the archipelago itself. Even the mineral waters are British Hildon and French Badoit. Cheese is served with English biscuits and French bread. Steve Smith polished his skills under Lavender’s Blue favourite Jean-Christophe Novelli – another Anglo-French success. We want our lovely cake and we want to eat it too, but first there’s:

Bohemia Restaurant Jersey Lunch © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Bohemia Restaurant Jersey Pudding © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Strawberry pannacotta with Jersey yoghurt is our cake of choice. Steve explains, “The menu is driven by the seasons and also driven by what we can get consistently and in good supply. Recently, we had a great week for getting hold of John Dory and halibut so those items were on the menu. We will work around what we can get in good supply.” We’re impressed by some seriously synchronised sauce pouring and cloche lifting. It’s a wrap. Pure rhapsody.

Lavender Farm Jersey © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

Ok, here goes, we’re off for lavender chocolate treats at Jersey Lavender Farm in St Brélade. Nancy would approve.

Lavender Farm St Brelade Jersey © Lavender's Blue Stuart Blakley

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Hidden Ireland + Clonalis Roscommon

The Portrait of a Lady and Gentleman and Artists as Young Men

Dia dhaoibh ar maidin. There really aren’t many left. A study of the 39 (what an odd number, why not 40?) country houses featured in the book Irish Houses and Castles with its strangely coloured plates, published in 1974, reveals just 13 remain in the hands of the same families. So which ones have been so lucky? Ballinlough Castle, County Westmeath | Bantry House, County Cork | Beaulieu, County Louth | Birr Castle, County Offaly | Dunsany Castle, County Meath | Glin Castle, County Limerick | Kilshannig, County Cork | Lismore Castle, County Waterford | Lough Cutra Castle, County Galway | Mount Ievers, County Cork | Leixlip Castle, County Dublin | Slane Castle, County Meath | Tullynally Castle, County Westmeath. Like Hen’s teeth.

Not so much “Where are they now?” as “What are they now?” They’re not all sob stories. Some have never looked better. Sir David Davies has brought a new lease of life to Abbey Leix. Crazy but true. The London launch of a book by William Laffan celebrating the estate’s rebirth was held with great pomp and happenstance at Lindy Guinness’s Holland Park villa mansion. Nancy Mitford’s cousin Clementine Beit’s old house Russborough looks in pretty good nick, even if restoration comes at the price of paintings disappearing. And nobody’s blaming terrorists this time… John O’Connell has worked his magic at Fota Island, the first residential restoration of the Irish Heritage Trust. And there are high hopes that the Hughes brothers, the new owners of Westport House, despite contending, conflicting lights, will preserve one of the last Richard Castle designed houses for the nation. It’s hard to keep up with Bellamont Forest: it’s seriously serially for sale. Luttrellstown Castle might be corporately owned but Eileen Plunket’s ballroom would still give Nancy Lancaster’s Yella Room a run for its money. Christie’s recently told us Stackallen, which appears in later versions of the book, has been “enriched” since it was bought by the billionaire Naughtons in 1993.

Although Clonalis in County Roscommon doesn’t feature in Desmond Guinness and William Ryan’s book, it has been associated with the same family for millennia rather than centuries. Clonalis is the ancestral home of the O’Conors, Kings of Connacht and erstwhile High Kings of Ireland. The most ancient royal family in Europe, no less. Just to be sure, their ancient limestone inauguration stone dating from 75 AD stands proud outside their front door. While the O’Conors’ possession of the land can be traced back over 1,500 years, the house is relatively recent. No surprise they call Clonalis the ‘New House’. In the very grand scheme of things it’s practically modern. Construction was completed in 1878, the year its English architect Frederick Pepys Cockerell (yes, a descendant of the Clapham diarist and a friend of the O’Conor clients) died aged 45. Like most Victorian practitioners he was versatile, swapping and entering epochal stylistic dalliances with ease. Eclecticism ran in Fred’s blood: his grandfather Samuel Pepys Cockerell did design the batty and bonkers Indocolonial Sezincote in the Cotswolds. A rummage through the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography one evening in the O+C Club reveals the architect’s Irish connection: he married Mary Mulock of King’s County (Offaly). “A genial, charming, and handsome man, knowledgeable in literature and the arts, his premature death was widely regretted,” records author David Watkins.

Tráthnóna maith daoibh. Fred’s 1 South Audley Street, 1870, the Embassy of Qatar for donkey’s years, is an eclectic Queen Anne-ish Mayfair house with just about every ornament imaginable thrown at its burnt red brick and terracotta façade. Arabesques, brackets, corbels, friezes, masks, niches, putti… he really did plunder the architectural glossary… augmenting the deeps and shallows of the metropolis. If, as architect and architectural theorist Robert Venturi pontificates, the communicating part of architecture is its ornamental surface, then the Embassy is shouting!

His country houses show more restraint. Predating Clonalis by a few years, his first Irish one was the neo Elizabethan Blessingbourne in County Fermanagh. Clonalis is loosely Italianate. Terribly civilised; a structure raised with an architectural competence, spare and chaste. Happens to be the first concrete house in Ireland, too. A few years earlier he’d a practice run in concrete construction at Down Hall in Essex. A strong presence amongst the gathering shades of the witching hour, a national light keeping watch. Every house has a symbolic function, full of premises, conclusions, emotions. Clonalis rests at the far end of the decorative spectrum from 1 South Audley Street. Venturing a Venturesque metaphor: it talks smoothly with a lilt. Symmetrically grouped plate glass windows, horizontal banding and vertical delineation are about all that relieve its grey exterior. An undemonstrative beauty. Rising out of the slate roof are high gabled dormers, balustraded parapets and tall chimney stacks. The central chimneys are linked by arches – whose identity lie somewhere between function, festivity and topography – creating a two dimensional Vanbrughian temple of smoke. Clonalis isn’t totally dissimilar albeit on a grander scale to another late 19th century Irish champion, Bel-Air in County Wicklow. Especially the three storey entrance towers (campaniles, really) attached to both buildings.

Pyers and Marguerite O’Conor Nash accept paying guests (heir b+b?) under the auspices of Hidden Ireland. Furnishings read like a chapter from Miller’s Guide to Antiques: Boulle | Limoges | Mason | Meissen | Minton | Sheraton. If painting and art measure the refinement of sensibility, as Isabel Archer believes in Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady, we’re in good company. Who needs money when you know your Monet from their Manet? Ding dong dinner gong. Variations of Valkyries veer toward Valhalla. Suavity bound by gravity. A patrician set of gilt framed ancestral portraits, provenance in oil, punctuate the oxblood walls of the dining room. Plus one (romantic dinner). Plus three (communal dining). Plus fours (we’re in the country). Plus size (decent portions). “Farm to fork,” announces our hostess. A whale of a time. Tableau vivant. Our visceral fear of dining on an axis is allayed by a table setting off centre. Phew. Triggers to the soul, spirit arising, the evening soon dissolves into an impossibly sublime conversation of hope and gloss in the library, while at arm’s length, Catherine wheels of a pyrotechnic display implode and disintegrate like embers in the fire. Beyond the tall windows, a flood of summer light had long waned, and the heavy cloak of dusk, to quote Henry James, “lay thick and rich upon the scene”.

“Yes, that’s the bore of comfort,” complains Lord Warburton in The Portrait of a Lady, “We only know when we’re uncomfortable.” We’re happy to embrace boredom in that case. Like the other three guest bedrooms, ours is light and airy thanks to a cream carpet, summery colour scheme and deep penetrations of natural light. Touches of 19th century grandeur (a marble chimneypiece reassures us this was definitely never a servants’ wing) blend with 21st century luxury. Our bedroom would meet with Lord Warburton’s chagrin: carefully curated completely accomplished comfort. Actually, the niches for turf set into the marble fireplaces of the dining and drawing rooms suggest the O’Conors always had one eye on grandeur, the other on comfort. “Blessingbourne has similar fireplaces,” shares Marguerite. “This season is opulence and comfort,” Kris Manalo, Heal’s Upholstery Buyer, informs us at a party in 19 Greek Street, Soho. Clonalis is bang on trend, then. “And £140 Fornasetti candles to depocket premium customers.” They do smell lovely. We’re digressing.

Donough Cahill, Executive Director of the Irish Georgian Society, reminded the London Chapter of the recent fire at the 18th century villa Vernon Mount in Cork City. “’A study in curves’ is how the Knight of Glin described this classic gem,” lamented Donough. “A great loss. The community are heartbroken and we too are heartbroken.” It’s a reflection on the rarity and fragility of Irish country houses and makes the flourishing survival of Clonalis all the more remarkable. A former billiard room is now a museum of letters and papers from family archives, one of the best collections in private ownership in Ireland. Correspondence from the likes of William Gladstone, Samuel Johnson and Anthony Trollope is displayed in mahogany bookcases next to the harp of Turlough Carolan, a renowned 17th century blind musician. Oh, and a pedigree of 25 generations of The House of O’Conor Don hangs on the wall, starting with Turlough Mor O’Conor, High King of Ireland, who died in 1150. One ancestor brought a certain captive named Patrick to Ireland. And the rest, as they say, is history. Our patron saint. A Catholic chapel is discreetly located to the rear of the house. “There are only three such private chapels in Ireland,” remarks Marguerite. “The other two are at the Carrolls’ house in Dundalk and Derrynane, Daniel O’Connell’s house . Tread carefully. Thin places. “There is really too much to say.” Henry James again. Tráthnóna maith daoibh.