Female demons, as opposed to incubas, succubuses (male names) tempt men during their sleep and make every effort to unite with them. The belief in sexual relations between a spirit and a mortal, man or woman, is very ancient and present in many peoples. Monks, anachoretes and shepherds claimed to be the object of the loving pursuits of succubi.All the dreamers and hallucinators of fasting and abstinence, were beset by their lascivious caresses and devouring ardour. These demons often animated a body torn from the sepulchre and the wealthy lover, or rather lost by passion, found between his arms, after a night of drunkenness, a corpse emaciated and stinking. The succubi also took on the appearance of the beloved person, in order to incite the boyfriend or chaste man to commit the sin of lust. A succubus is a Lilin-demon in female form, or supernatural entity in folklore (traced back to medieval legend) that appears in dreams and takes the form of a woman in order to seduce men, usually through sexual activity. The male counterpart is the incubus. Religious traditions hold that repeated sexual activity with a succubus may result in the deterioration of health or mental state, or even in death. In modern representations, a succubus may or may not appear in dreams and is often depicted as a highly attractive seductress or enchantress; whereas, in the past, succubi were generally depicted as frightening and demonic.

Les Cent Contes drolatiques d' Honoré de Balzac is a little-known work that appeared between 1832 and 1837. Balzac wrote only thirty of the one hundred stories, divided into three dizains. This work was conceived as the second pillar of the Balzacian edifice, facing La Comédie humaine. They are tales in the tradition of the fabliaux of the Middle Ages and written in a re-invented language of the 16th century. The archaic, anachronistic construction of this work made reception impossible, struck the critics, surprised and discouraged the public. This reception is still problematic today, as familiarity with medieval writing and syntax is reserved for an elite readership. ""

The word is derived from Late Latin succuba "paramour"; from succub(āre) "to lie beneath" (sub- "under" + cubāre "to lie in bed"), used to describe the supernatural being as well. The word "succubus" originates from the late 14th century.

According to Zohar and the Alphabet of Ben Sira, Lilith was Adam's first wife, who later became a succubus. She left Adam and refused to return to the Garden of Eden after she mated with archangel Samael. In Zoharistic Kabbalah, there were four succubi who mated with the archangel Samael. There were four original queens of the demons: Lilith, Eisheth, Agrat Bat Mahlat, and Naamah. A succubus may take a form of a beautiful young girl but closer inspection may reveal deformities of her body, such as bird-like claws or serpentine tails.Folklore also describes the act of sexually penetrating a succubus as akin to entering a cavern of ice, and there are reports of succubi forcing men to perform cunnilingus on their vulvas that drip with urine and other fluids. In later folklore, a succubus took the form of a siren.

Throughout history, priests and rabbis, including Hanina Ben Dosa and Abaye, tried to curb the power of succubi over humans.However, not all succubi were malevolent. According to Walter Map in the satire De Nugis Curialium (Trifles of Courtiers), Pope Sylvester II (999–1003) was allegedly involved with a succubus named Meridiana, who helped him achieve his high rank in the Catholic Church. Before his death, he confessed of his sins and died repentant.According to the Kabbalah and the school of Rashba, the original three queens of the demons, Agrat Bat Mahlat, Naamah, Eisheth Zenunim, and all their cohorts give birth to children, except Lilith. According to other legends, the children of Lilith are called Lilin.

According to the Malleus Maleficarum, or "Witches' Hammer", written by Heinrich Kramer (Institoris) in 1486, a succubus collects semen from the men she seduces. The incubi or male demons then use the semen to impregnate human females, thus explaining how demons could apparently sire children despite the traditional belief that they were incapable of reproduction. Children so begotten – cambions – were supposed to be those that were born deformed, or more susceptible to supernatural influences. The book does not address why a human female impregnated with the semen of a human male would not produce a regular human offspring, although after transferring the male semen to the Incubi it is believed the semen is altered to match the genetic material of the Succubus and the incubi before being transferred to a human female host. But in some lore the child is born deformed because the conception was unnatural.

King James in his dissertation titled Dæmonologie refutes the possibility for angelic entities to reproduce and instead offered a suggestion that a devil would carry out two methods of impregnating women: the first, to steal the sperm out of a dead man and deliver it into a woman. If a demon could extract the semen quickly, the transportation of the substance could not be instantly transported to a female host, causing it to go cold. This explains his view that Succubae and Incubi were the same demonic entity only to be described differently based on the tormented sexes being conversed with. The second method was the idea that a dead body could be possessed by a devil, causing it to rise and have sexual relations with others. However, there is no mention of a female corpse being possessed to elicit sex from men.In Arabian mythology, the qarînah (قرينة) is a spirit similar to the succubus, with origins possibly in ancient Egyptian religion or in the animistic beliefs of pre-Islamic Arabia. A qarînah "sleeps with the person and has relations during sleep as is known by the dreams."They are said to be invisible, but a person with "second sight" can see them, often in the form of a cat, dog, or other household pet. "In Omdurman it is a spirit which possesses. ... Only certain people are possessed and such people cannot marry or the qarina will harm them."To date, many African myths claim[citation needed] that men who have similar experience with such principality (succubus) in dreams (usually in form of a beautiful woman) find themselves exhausted as soon as they awaken; often claiming spiritual attack upon them. Local rituals/divination are often invoked in order to appeal the god for divine protection and intervention.In Arabian mythology, the qarînah (قرينة) is a spirit similar to the succubus, with origins possibly in ancient Egyptian religion or in the animistic beliefs of pre-Islamic Arabia. A qarînah "sleeps with the person and has relations during sleep as is known by the dreams."They are said to be invisible, but a person with "second sight" can see them, often in the form of a cat, dog, or other household pet."In Omdurman it is a spirit which possesses. ... Only certain people are possessed and such people cannot marry or the qarina will harm them."To date, many African myths claim[citation needed] that men who have similar experience with such principality (succubus) in dreams (usually in form of a beautiful woman) find themselves exhausted as soon as they awaken; often claiming spiritual attack upon them. Local rituals/divination are often invoked in order to appeal the god for divine protection and intervention.In India, the succubus is referred to as Yakshini and are mythical beings within Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain mythology. Yakshinis are the female counterpart of the male Yaksha, and they are attendees of Kubera, the Hindu god of wealth who rules in the mythical Himalayan kingdom of Alaka. They are the guardians of the treasure hidden in the earth and resemble fairies. Yakshinis are often depicted as beautiful and voluptuous, with wide hips, narrow waists, broad shoulders, and exaggerated, spherical breasts.In the field of medicine, there is some belief that the stories relating to encounters with succubi bear resemblance to the contemporary phenomenon of people reporting alien abductions,[which has been ascribed to the condition known as sleep paralysis. It is therefore suggested that historical accounts of people experiencing encounters with succubi may rather have been symptoms of sleep paralysis, with the hallucination of the said creatures coming from their contemporary culture.

Many, including King James[disambiguation needed], have also correlated the succubi to wet dreams, or nocturnal emission. During the time when succubus lore was created, any sexual activities that were not purposefully procreative were considered sinful. The succubi may well have been an explanation for men who could not control their biological function, yet wanted to stay faithful to their society.Church scholars have long debated about the true nature of the incubus and succubi and sin committed in contact with them. Some thought it was the same demon, sexually asexual at the base, who could become an incubus or succubus, as the case may be. He could gather the seed of a man and pass it on to a woman, which was a very simple excuse to explain an adulterous pregnancy.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succubus

The cover of the Israeli fashion-magazin "Silhouette/Силуэт", N7, July, 2006 with announcement of the interview with me (in the heading "Autograph"). "Silhouette" - is a monthly fashion-supplement to the daily "Week-News" (Publishing House "Novosti Nedeli")

(Svp, see my notes on the photo above)

=====================================================

 

Just a Note (Russian-language mass-media in Israel):

 

====================================================

 

In Israel are living near 1 million Israeli People who have

Russian background. So...

 

There are several Israeli TV-channels on Russian language.

 

There is a special State Israel Radio "REKA". "REKA" - Kol Israel

Radio Station in Foreign Languages with a huge

Russian department.

 

Besides, more than 28 Israeli newspapers (daily and

weekly) published in Russian Language - specially for

them. One in one like English-speaking Israelites have

their own English-language daily "Jerusalem Post "

 

As well there are many monthly magazins in Russian

Language, published in Israel. However, among them

there are only 2 fashion-magazines(monthly):

 

I.

Силуэт/.Silhoette - just a monthly

fashion-supplement to an Israeli Russian-language

weekly "Novosti Nedeli" (Publishing House "Novosti Nedeli")

 

II

Шарм/Charm

- a monthly fashion-supplement to an Israeli

Russian-language daily "Vesti" (Publishing

House "Ediot Achronot")

 

And what is more nice - both of them already published

interviews with me this year!

===================================================

 

Well, what"s the difference between Israeli

Russian-language mass-media and mass-media

from Russia?

 

This difference is enormous.

 

The main theme of Israeli Russian-language mass-media -

is specifically local, Israeli life, Israeli problems, Israeli

customs, culture and so on. Financial sources of this

mass-media are Israeli. Location - Israel as well.

 

While the main theme of mass-media from Russia -

is Russia by itself, specifically Russian life, Russian

problems, Russian policy, Russian foreign relations,

Russian customs, culture and so on. Financial sources

of this mass-media are Russian. Location - Moscow

as well.

 

You see, this difference is too evident!

==================================================

 

P.S.

 

Besides, every country has it's own foreign correspondents

and mass-media representatives in Israel. As for

example CNN and BBC have thier own Jerusalem or

Haifa correspondents etc... In order to have more

objective and more independant coverage of the

current Israeli events.

 

And Russia as well has its'own mass-media

foreign representatives in Israel (and vice versa!). They

are - 3 Moscow TV-companies have their own

commands in Israel.

 

Besides, 2 most big Russian

News Agencies have thier own

representatives in Israel.

They are News Agencies "ITAR-TASS"

and "RIA-NOVOSTI" (please, do

not mix up with local Israeli News Agencies!)

 

==================================================

 

N.B.

 

BTW, during a vast period of time I by myself was

working as an Israeli correspondent of the State

Moscow Radio-station "Voice of Russia"

(" Golos Rossii") and of a very huge Moscow

private daily "Moscow Komsomolets" (with a

circulation in Russia near 3 millions copies!)

 

And more than 60 of my interviews with celebrities,

stars and VIP-persons made in Israel for Moscow

mass-media appeared to be my first book DRESS FOR THE FIRST LADY.

NOTES by DIPLOMAT"s WIFE

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Created with fd's Flickr Toys.

Sacramento, California,

Sleep Train Ampetheater,

July 24, 2009,

 

Copyright www.RyanSelewicz.com

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K.BEAUTY - AMON LIPS - LELUTKA EVO - EVO X

 

Clothing:

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Accessories:

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[VERBOTEN] {dark} Ville Weights

PUNCH / Nose Piercing / Heart Diamond (LeL Prim)

~LF~ Zoya (LeL Evo - Prim)

The Watcher in the woods

 

Pursuing the Posh

 

A Cat Burglar Saga

 

From the files of Chatwick University Criminology Department.

 

C.B. Case Study 13 , File B

 

Subset Source: Journal

 

Subject “Harley Q” -- Real name?

 

ORIGINATION STORY:

flic.kr/p/BcnW2J

 

Synopsis:

 

The young lady was approaching sweet sixteen if I estimated accurately. She was clad in a tailored dress of bronze velvet that shone richly over her lithe figure. Her long blonde hair tied in back, flickered like a horses’’ tail. She had come bounding from a ladies powder chamber, one of several located at either end of the grand ballroom that sat off the formal dining rooms.

 

I fell in step behind her, watching as her splendid jewelry bounced merrily as she pranced along like some untried colt, sorry filly. Her pearls were lovely things, a matched set, double strands all, real diamond clasps, shone gleaming with a pristine whiteness that reminded me of fresh snow.

 

The pearls were a sweet lure, of that there was no doubt; but apologies if I am prattling n a bit about them, for after all, what is a jewel thief who fails to notice a ladies jewels? A starving bugger, that’s who.

Now I have found out during my times here on the earth that I can make quite a profit from burgling the safes of wealthy ladies whilst they slept peacefully within their fancy chambres. But I had started out walking my morally tainted chosen path by picking the pockets of the unwary along the way. It was my fate to eventually discover the delightfully chilling sensation that was experienced when lifting the very jewels displayed by unsuspecting female targets. And this was still my guilty pleasure, to the point that I would still take that far riskier venture of lifting worn jewelry whenever opportunity arose, which was quite often in my travelled circles.

 

So, that is why I habitually started to follow this meandering youth, only because of her jewels, which I found to be quite vexing. Especially her earrings, a dangling set held to her ears by genuine diamond studded hinge clasps. I had seldom attempted sets of worn earrings, not for the lack of desire, and with this one’s head just reaching me chest, it was a very tempting prospect to try and pluck em both off just to see?

 

Fortunately, for her (not me), this pretty miss was a bit too young for my standards to make any attempt to lift from her any of the swinging pearls, earrings or otherwise. I do prefer my marks to be a bit older, a bit wiser, a bit more of a challenge to my abilities, thank you very much! Besides, I had already had my eye on a few other, challenging female prospects wearing some rather nice pieces in their own right. Including one sapphire laden Lass in a silky frock that had greatly provoked my attentiveness.

 

So I just followed this young one while she skirted the ballroom and entered a dining area. There she rejoined, what were quite obviously, her parents.

 

There were, it appeared, just the three of them, no older jewel laden siblings in sight. But, speaking of appearances, the Mother certainly presented a rather nice one, and so I stopped to drink it all in.

 

The mother/wife was fluidly clad in an all so elegant purple satin number, poured rather snugly along her still quite lovely figure. Said figure had been made even more eye catching (especially for me) by being emblazon with a matching set of jewels, all set with small 1 caret white diamonds, encircling her neck, wrists and fingers with energetic ripples of fiery colour.

 

She was with her husband, a distinguished looking gent in tails who may have passed as a Barrister, for which all I knew he was. Now Sandwiched in between was their charming young daughter, who was happily chatting away without a care in the world. Her pristine pearls still dangling, mocking me it would seem, to just make the one exception and attempt to take them home with me. I just smiled to wickedly to myself, maybe someday I would I promised them, once their young mistress had grown up a bit, then we would see who was mocking whom from the wickets!

 

But I did not dwell too long on such thought’s , or on the pretty family either, for, like I have revealed, I had other fish frying, and only am mentioning this particular incident because of what would occur in two days hence. So after a bit I turned and began wandering off.

 

But then, speaking of starving jewel thieves, I observed at the precise moment I turned away, a most stunning red head wearing a long black gown that fluttered about, here and there, in a most alluring fashion. She was making a beeline towards the very same powder chamber I had just passed. She was obviously in a rush to reach it, and once I laid my eyes on the pearls she was wearing, I moved towards her in an equally purposeful stride. I intercepted her, letting her bump against me, as I stepped on the hem of her long gown. She stopped abruptly, and I momentarily placed an arm around her smooth waist, steadying her as I apologized and begged the ladies pardon for my clumsiness.

 

She begrudgingly accepted my apologies, and I watched as she scurried off, having already pocketed the pearled bracelet I had slipped from her red satin gloved wrist, and made my own path. I smirked to myself that the bracelet was some consolation for not having an unscrupulous go for the pearls that had hung around the young daughter’s throat, hung from her ears, and encircled one petite wrist, as I stole one last look back towards the pretty families’ table.

 

I walked away, turning my attentions back to relocating a certain lady elegantly wearing a silky frock, displaying those magnificent sapphires. I was watching, waiting for her to leave, in order to follow to her next stop, eventually hoping to be led to her last, having decided to acquire the fair damsel’s collection of jewels enmasse!

 

***** Two productive evenings later ****************

 

It was at a wedding reception the 2 evenings later that I again, quite un-expectantly, spied the Barrister and his entourage.

 

I had been having a delightful chat with the newly minted wife of the titled Scion of a rather old family. I had won the sweepstakes of receiving a dance with the charming Miss. But alas my chat was cut short as she was whisked away to dance with yet another admirer. I watched as she swept off, my hand reaching into me breast pocket, fingering a still warm diamond brooch. That jewel had been merrily dangling down from her satin gowns’ cleavage, over shadowed by her ample bosom. As we had danced, I had managed to work open its silvery clasp, and lift the brooch cleanly away. My hidden vest pocket also contained at the time a rather pretty ring with a blue carbuncle surrounded by sparkly diamonds. Said ring had been wrapped around the finger of a rather vexing long raven haired lass. I had admired the silken dress she was wearing, and as she had happily swirled and twirled to give me a better look, I had taken the opportunity to relieve her finger of its burden. Since I was only allowing meself a couple of prospects with an affair this small, I now made my way, leisurely, contentedly, towards an exit (stage right as they say in the trades).

 

But, no sooner had I put me back to the dance floor, than whom do I spy across the room? That rather delightful miss with a long blonde ponytail, who was now dressed elegantly in cream lace, that I had spied at dinner a few evenings back. It was the very same young lady, wearing the same set of mocking white pearls, and as I discreetly draw near, I soon spied her parents.

 

The “Barrister” was dapper in crisp white shirt and tux, with a fancy gold pocket watch and fob at his waist. The daughter’s look alike mother was now smartly encased in a fitted red gown that shimmered delightfully as it swished about. She was also wearing a nice display of brite emeralds to boot.

 

This time I took closer notice of the Mothers Jeweles. Between the emeralds today and the diamonds the night before, this lady in red could be a nice meal ticket if the stars were aligned properly. And so it turned out they very happily (for me) did.

 

With a few discreet questions from some acquaintances quickly garnered for just such information, I found out where my “Barrister” and his family were spending their late evenings asleep. It so happened that they were staying in a penthouse suite 3 floors above my own modest single. So instead of leaving the reception to scout out a way to gain easy access to their rooms, I could stay and enjoy myself, already being all too familiar with the place. Which I did, later acquiring a gold jeweled bracelet from a charming maiden attired delightfully in teal satin, who had kept flaunting her jewels in me face as she told me all about her perfect self. Another jewel added for my growing collection of the evening.

 

Now, don’t ask me why I was so familiar with my hotels’ penthouse suites, being a cat burglar, the reasons should be quite clear! So when the pretty family left the reception early, around 9 pm returning to their rooms, I was able to follow them with less discretion then I usually do, but still with growing eager anticipation. Also, even more remarkably, they were in bed and asleep by 10:30 pm, which allowed me a much earlier window of opportunity than I had grown accustomed to having.

 

And so it was, that soon after the stroke of midnight, with the happy family deep in their slumbers that I, wearing my black burgling attire, climbed onto the balcony of their rooms. After jimmying open the double glass doors with my Fairborn dagger, I found myself in a small sitting room. Carefully allowing my torch to search around I spied a door on the far end. Opening it cautiously, the first thing I see are the daughters pricey pearls piled loosely on a vanity by the bed where she lay sleeping, dressed in white, looking ever so like the angel she is. I picked up the necklace of pearls, eyeing them as I watch the slumbering figure on the bed. But I passed the pretty things up, for even though I am a thief by nature, I do possess some scruples, albeit maybe a little warped! Besides, those taunting pearls had led me to the small treasure trove that was awaiting me in her Mothers’ chambers. So with a silent thanks, I replaced them upon the vanity, and move off…

 

The parents were found in the next room, soundly sleeping off their alcohol induced haze. The mother was draped over her husband, fetchingly clad in a long satin nightdress that looked almost like an evening gown. Her vulgarly large wedding diamonds flickered pleasantly from her finger as I let my torch sneak up along her shimmering figure. On the bed stand laid the “Barristers” gold watch and a rather pleasing selection of his wife’s gold “day” jewelry, but I passed the lot up, my eyes looking for the good stuff that would be snuggled inside the small room safe that I knew would be behind a false door in one side of the oak dresser ( having already discovered that fact a year previously in a different room of the same hotel)!

 

I went directly to it, and opening the cabinet door, began to use my finely attuned skills to crack it. It was a simple American lock and only took me a minute to have open. I than emptied the small collection of jewel cases ( lovely things) placing them into my small sack. I also find inside the mothers small clutch purse made expensively of red silk and rhinestones, that had been at her side all evening. Out of curiosity (why in the safe?) I placed it inside my bag with the jewels. After checking that the parents were still out cold, I closed the safe, flickering my torch around one last time, it settles upon her red gown, and its emerald rhinestone clips coming blazing into lively flame. I passed on them, and headed back out towards the door. I had almost regained it, and my freedom, when the husband let out a loud snort, and I heard rustling going on in the bed behind me. I froze and carefully looked back. Neither had woken, but the wife had turned onto her side, and her left hand was now hanging limply over the side of the bed. I watched as the diamonds set in the gold ring encircling her slender finger blazed into life (the ring was somewhat loose I keenly noticed)! Blimey, there was enough dosh in the value of that ring that would have paid for all the expenses of the Cardiff C.C. for an entire season, perhaps 2! But, Bird in the Hand, I am always telling meself, so I left the pretty thing dangling there, and finished my careful retreat. I made it out without further incident.

 

Passing the daughters room ( and her pearls again), I checked in. The young filly was still was sound asleep in her own pleasant dreams, her taunting pile of pearls still on the vanity, where they would remain. I regained the balcony and slipping over, made my way down to the window of my own room.

 

Back in my room I empty my sack, the pile of jewels flickering in a frenzy of colours. I admire the little darlings briefly before stashing them. I than pick up the purse and open it. Inside amongst the usual feminy items, I found a letter. Looking at it my heart, already beating quickly from the exhilaration of being on the prowl, skipped one beat, for it was addressed to the lady whose jewels I now possessed, and it was an address of an area I knew quite well. I thought about her address, the house she presumably shared with husband and daughter, the house which should be empty seeing its owners were sleeping just three floors above me. A house that was little over an hour away, only about ¾ of that hour by driving my Lotus. It was a house that I figuratively knew; being in the same neighborhood (relatively speaking) of a house I had reconnoitered and quite lucratively burgled the previous spring.

 

It was perfect. While the family was asleep snug in their beds here, I could reach their abode, with its jewel laden safe ( they all had jewel laden safes in that area), ½ hour to creep the place, an hour to do the job proper and I would be back in time to catch a two hour kip and be checked out and on my way before the pretty family have had breakfast. It, bears repeating, was perfect.

 

I looked at the envelope, was its contents that valuable that she felt the need to lock it up. More than mildly curious, I pulled it out and read it. It was from someone named Samuel. In no uncertain terms, he was informing the lady that for only ₤5000 sterling he would leave for the States and never bother her Daughter Claire again. I thought of the young girl asleep in the suite I had just left. What kind of Scoundrel would lure a young girl like that into his clutches with the intent of extorting her parents! For a moment I pondered this bit of information, before deciding that the opportunity was too ripe to pass up just because I felt a small twinge of compassion. Besides, if the parents could afford to cough up a cool 5 thousand, they weren’t hurting in the financial department.

 

I changed, and quickly gathered my things and headed out quietly via a back entrance. Placing my burgle kit (containing the ladies jewels) into the boot of me two seater, I fired up the lotus’s engine and was off on my little undertaking!

 

A half hour away I turned down a little used rutty road/path. Pulling over I grabbed my burgle kit and headed down to some ancient stone ruins. Checking to make sure none of my warning snares had been tripped, I entered a small stone building. Going down into one of its old, crumbling basements, I uncovered a small cubby and added the jewels to the growing collection of my recent takings.

 

Included in the collection were sets of pearls burgled from a coach stop overnight room occupied by a pair of fairly insufferable spinster sisters. Other burgled items were a rather pretty , if not vulgarly large, diamond set obtained from a naive damsel who thought hiding them under the pillow she slept on was safer than a safe, (always happy to enlighten someone upon the error of their ways that’s me), and of course the sapphires that the lass in the silky frock had been wearing 2 nights previous ( along with some rather nice sets of rubies and diamond adorned amethysts that had lain in the same safe, located above her soundly sleeping figure! ) The rest of the lot consisted of items I had “picked up” while on the prowl: a nice collection of brooches, rings, bracelets, and an eye-catching sapphire pendent hanging from a diamonded chain.

I than closed everything up, rechecked my warning snares, and headed back to my Lotus.

 

Another 30 minutes and I had reached my destination.

 

The house itself was pretty secluded, located by an intersection of two lanes. I drove its perimeter than doubling back found a pull off. I backed up and turned down and off the road hiding the small sports car in a grove of pines.

 

Already wearing some of my burglar attire, (black military trousers and sweater), I placed a hood over my head, pulled out my small kit, fastening a torch and military knife to my belt, I was off. The house appeared to be deserted, I found the servants quarters located at the back of the house over a small barn, the only cars were a small sports car in a shed, and a roadster sitting out front. A large garden surrounded by hedges lay to the west of the house, a larger Tudor, with several porches and balconies. Using the hedges as cover, I shimmed up an old tree located by a balcony, and slipping onto the balcony proper, I made my way to the door. Shimmed the latch with my Fairborn commando knife, and then entered into a side bedroom. I was looking for the master suite, and this was not it, the daughter’s by all appearances. I spied a small ornate silver box on a table, but passed it up , on the search for bigger game!

 

Turning on my torch I opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. At the end was a set of double mahogany doors and this is where I set my sights. Along the hallway wall were several rather nice paintings (not copies) and I let the pool of my light flicker along them. Included in the lot was a small painting of a young fox, half asleep, eyeing something in the distance? I stood for precious seconds admiring it, and then turned my attention to the mahogany doors. They were not locked, and I cautiously, very slowly, opened one. Pay dirt! A large empty canopied bed stood in the middle of the room, a love seat to one side, a settee on the other, and directly across from the bed a large ornate sideboard with mirror. Along one side of the wall was a series of chains with different rooms labelled underneath, presumably connected to bells in those rooms. It definitely belonged to the mistress of the house, and, hopefully, her jewels.

 

I let my light flow over the room, avoiding the window and glass door that led out onto another balcony. I soon spotted the location of the safe; it was behind an old painting of a Harlequin. Said Harlequin was standing on a black and white checked tile floor, as he looked inquisitively into his own reflection from an ornate wall mirror. The painting was located on the wall between the corner and the intricately carved oak sideboard. I slid back the painting on its hinges, exposing the small safe.

 

It was exactly the same safe as their neighbors, the ones I had burgled clean in the spring. Quickly getting to work I spin the tumblers, listening intently for the correct paths of clicks. Bingo! , it opened up like a dream. Inside I found a bonanza of about a dozen small jewel cases handedly printed with the jewelers names (Cartier and Tiffany’s amongst them! ) I quickly open and empty their contents into my kit, pouring out a delightfully pricey array of colorful gems of all types and styles. Replacing the empty cartons, I rummage around, finding a small stack of gold and silver coins and a couple of bundles of notes, currency of the realm. I favorably pocket the lot.

 

Suddenly I freeze, hearing the unmistakable sounds of muffled giggling from down the corridor. Closing the safe and picture I back off and hide inside a closet, wishing I had had the foresight to have opened the balcony door to see if that had offered escape, but I had been so sure I would be alone that evening that I had let me guard slacken a bit. I hoped that whoever it was they were heading off to bed.

 

They were off to bed, problem was it was the bed in the room I was in for which they were heading. I heard the door open, and from the crack in the closet door, I saw a young couple come in, tipsy and fondling the heck out of one another. The female was obviously an older daughter of the house, a mini version of the mother and her sister. She was resplendent in a long flowing cream satin evening gown; her paramour was a beady eyed, weasely faced chap in loose fitting tux and tails. It must have been his roadster outside; the couple must have been snogging in the garden, and drinking wine, judging from the smell and the way they were acting. Again I kicked myself for not checking the grounds more thoroughly. But why hadn’t the bloody twit of a daughter been at the wedding with her family where she belonged? But a bit later I was to reason that if she had, I would have been tempted to lift a diamond bracelet, and me path may have ended there. Missing out entirely, the opportunity to burgle the contents of 2 bedroom safes, master and penthouse!

 

They headed right to the bed, (doing it on the parents bed, and old cracker that was) the lady not even taking off her long satin gloves, just falling onto the bed with her doe wide eyes gleaming, while her beady eyed lover was falling all over her. Oh god! Samuel, I heard her mummer in passion. My eyes were opened, this must be the daughter Claire, and the beady eyed bloke was the infamous Samuel. Now it made a little more sense, but not any less wicked. I watched them in a new light, my mind going a full mile a minute trying to see a way out of the situation. . “Si vous voulez faire rire Dieu , faire des plans” I muttered an old saying in French, chastising myself inwardly for taking on such a gamble rushed for time.

 

Now, I am certainly no voyeur, and my belief that some things private, are, well private! But actually, in this instance, there was no choice. I tried not to watch, but the couple’s raw, animal like lovemaking and all its trimmings were happening just feet away. I began to amuse myself by watching the flashy show put on by the daughter’s sparkling jewels and the fluidly movement of her shiny, slinking gown as they were caught in the moonlight that streamed thru the glass of the balcony door. It was the type of show that engrosses any jewel thief worth his salt (hell, any bloke worth his salt for that matter). My mind also kept going back to the letter that I had found in the red silk purse and I hoped that a way would open to cause “Mr.” Samuel some sort of grief.

 

Beady eyes comes onto her, driving her mind off everything but what he is doing, as her eyes are closed tight, his are open, looking about. I slink in a little more into the shadows, keeping his face in my view. Occasionally a white satin gloved hand appears, rings and bracelets sparkling in a frenzied flickering as her fingers grip his face. Suddenly his eyes open wide as he looks towards the painting of the Harlequin. Cripes I mutter as I look there also, for on the floor lies a diamond bracelet, the fancy bugger must have slipped out as I scurried to my hole. I prepare to bolt like a fox hiding close to where the hounds are heading (my mind went to the painting of the watchful fox in the hallway outside the bedroom).

 

But beady eyes says nothing..

 

He finished the job, with her squealing like a piglet, before she slumps back exhaustedly onto the bed. Her eyes were closed, her breathing became heavier as she lost all drink induced conscious. I watched as her lover’s half closed eye stayed focused on the bracelet, as he listened to her breathing become heavier. When he was sure she was asleep he slipped off and heading to the vanity scooped up the bracelet and placed it inside a pocket of his tux’s vest. He then crawls back next to her, gently fingering her diamond rings before (finally) joining her into heavy, wine induced sleep alongside.

 

It seemed like hours, but the whole episode, by me watch, lasted only a ¾ of hour, but it was a precious time I could ill afford to have lost atoll.

 

I was running late, but knew what I had to do next. Walking over to the pair I watched them for a few seconds, plotting my next course of action. Her jewels were flickering nicely in the moon’s light.

 

I reached down an lifting ever so gently one still gloved lifeless feminine hand, I slipped off a couple of sparkly rings from satin clad fingers, and unfastened a tight cuff bracelet emblazon with diamonds from around her wrist. Then I lifted the other hand, easily gliding off another brace of glistening rings from her fingers, and a second diamonded bracelet from her limp wrist. Than lifting her necklace of diamonds, I pulled it gently around admiring the way they rippled fire along her throat, till its jeweled clasp was exposed. Then I slowly pry open the jeweled clasp, and slipped the necklace away, watching it sway in the moonlight like a glistening snake. They were both still out cold, It wasn’t really very much of a challenge, not that I was complaining mind you.

 

I happily pocketed the lot, except for a cheaper ring. I swapped that ring for the diamond bracelet in Samuel’s vest pocket, hoping that the outcome would prove interesting. In the process of placing the ring in the Sammy boy’s vest, I came across his fat pocketbook, which I gladly lifted and added to the collection in my own now bulging pocket.

 

I then left the room, leaving quietly by stepping upon the soles of my feet. As I pass the small painting of the watching fox, I pull it off and stick it into my kit, a bonus for me extra worries. I than slip back through the daughter’s bedroom, its door now slightly ajar.

 

In a corner of the room lay the small silvery jewelry case I had passed up earlier thinking it was the younger daughters. But, I hesitated, wondering to which daughter the room belonged, for someone had slightly opened the door for a reason? I shook my head, no chances. But, wait a minute, I grinned as my thoughts grew ever more pleasing. I walked over to the small table that held the ornate silver jewel case (casket was what my Gram had called hers), above it was a small picture of the family daughters in full riding regalia, the older daughter, Claire, had a small pin of a fox in her shiny white satin caveat.

 

I bent down and opening the small case. There on top was the fox pin, glittering with brownish Sardonyx gemstones and bright red ruby eyes. I plucked it up and added it to my sparkling collection. Then I admired the shimmery collection of gold and pearled jewelry (no lowly silver for this lass). Selecting the better ones I placed them with the fox pin and the Mothers jewels in my kit, then scooping out the rest, I placed them in unceremoniously in a side pocket.

 

I then went back out the balcony and down the tree. I headed over to the roadster out front and taking out a few of the lesser jewels I had scooped into me pocket, and I began placing them in and underneath the passenger seat of the vehicle.

 

Finished I admired my handiwork, then looking leisurely around, let out a deep sigh of absolute relief, mixed with exquisite feelings of pleasure of an adventuer winningly pulled off, before melting off into the shadows of the woods. I soon reached my lotus, gunned the engine to life, and then proceeded to slowly drive off without headlights until I reach the main road.

 

I once again stopped at my hidden cubby and deposited my burglar’s kit and purloined jewels with the rest of my stash, reset my snares, and headed quickly back to the hotel.

 

I reached my destination just at cock crow, went upstairs and finished packing. It was later than I had anticipated, so no kip for the sinners. I just loaded my luggage into the boot of the two seater, checked my key in at the desk, settled my bill, and headed for a quick breakfast.

 

But I wasn’t quick enough, for about halfway through my breakfast The “Barrister” and his family came down to have the same. They appeared to be calm, so I knew that my activities earlier that morning had not been exposed yet.

 

I pushed aside my almost finished plate and standing, walked past them, allowing the daughter, who was clad in a silky skirt and matching satiny top, and wearing those taunting white pearls of hers, to bump into me as she pranced to their table. Steady girl I says, catching her as I eye for the last time her dangling jewelry. So sorry sir, she replied apologetically. I complimented her parents on their charming daughter. The father, in a formal suit and tie, grunts his thanks. The mother, in a scintillatingly swishing long red skirt, and heavy cream silk blouse, blushes prettily. I look over her plentiful “everyday” jewelry as I take their leave. What she was wearing for a normal day of activates was expensive enough to catch any thief’s desire to acquire.

 

As I walked away, a vision of her walking the streets, dressed as she was, back in Dickens London formed in my thoughts. She attracted the notice of a small street urchin, his devious heart pounding as he left huis vigil from the wall he had been leaning against too closely follow her as she swished by. Catching up to her in the hopes of brushing against her and with a sorry ma’am, walk away with some of it.

 

This was actually from a memory of mine ( long after Dickens time though) about an incident I had witnessed while working at my old uncles “eel and mash” shop.

 

A finely decked out young couple (the long haired lady wearing pearls as it so happened) had been inside the shop and finishing their meal, had walked out across the street. A street youth had been hanging out by the shop and had followed them across the street close on their heels. They all turned a corner, so I never knew what had happened, if anything ( which I sincerely doubted)! But that image had plagued many an unsettling adolescent dream with images of finely dressed ladies bending down to a begging young grimy faced lad, well ringed fingers and bracelets jangling as a coin was offered, gold lockets or pearls swaying out from tightly satin clad breasts to just within the reach of his grubby fingers….

 

I have come to believes that it was the seeds planted in my mind by those dreams that may have very well guided and nudged me onto the course I have continued following to this day.

 

So, naturally I guess, as I walked away my train of thoughts took a similar course as those dreams/nightmares. I imagined the mother I had just left, walking along a street alone, dressed as she was last evening, the jewels that were now in a cold small cubby, once again upon her figure, glittering their fiery beacon. Then suddenly her daughter, dressed as she was now, was strolling alongside her. The street urchin I had seen that morning so long ago was here also, following close, eyeing the ladies reflected jewels in a storefront window as they walked past……

 

But at that point in my daydream I realized that I had reached and was standing beside my two seater, and shaking my head clear of such thoughts (once again, sadly not seeing the outcome) I happily hopped over the door and into the driver’s seat, firing up the engine, and quite eagerly pulled away from the hotel and roared down the road.

  

I stopped by my secret cubby, and without haste, fully on the alert, made my way down to the basement. I collected my stash and made it back to the Lotus without incident. Lighting me pipe, I smiled to meself, promising a nice stiff one once I got back to the abode. I pulled away, slowly, cheerfully, driving down the warm sunlit road. I was now on to new quests, filled with promises of many lucrative acquisitions.

 

One of those quests was wrapped around a young lady in Soho, who recently had inherited a jewellery collection worth ₤25,000 which she loved wearing out in public, flaunting the richly jeweled pieces all about whenever she could. The quite, almost vulgarly rich, young lass had so many Beaus seeking her affections that she was being invited out almost weekly out to some special dress up affair. This all made her overly ripe for the plucking by some jewelry procurement minded thief. And being one meself, a jewel thief that is, I intended to be the first in line.

 

Once I returned home, I first visited my London banks strongbox to deposit my newly acquired ” glittering with fire” trophies to let them “cool” down a bit. Then I made sure the Yard received an anonymous post. Said post containing a red silk evening clutch, inside which was beady eyes’ pocketbook( sans money) along with the letter incriminating one certain rogish gent by the name of Samuel for attempting extortion of 5000 pounds sterling from the fair Claire’s Mother. I know how the chaps in the inspector’s squad so love a mystery!

 

And so, for now dear journal, I bid farewell, adieu.

************************************

 

Si vous voulez faire rire Dieu , faire des plans

 

Roughly translated:

If you want to make God laugh, Make plans

 

Courtesy of Chatwick University Archives

 

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Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.

 

For nearly a year Lettice had been patiently awaiting the return of her then beau, Selwyn Spencely, son of the Duke of Walmsford, after being sent to Durban by his mother, Lady Zinnia in an effort to destroy their relationship which she wanted to end so that she could marry Selwyn off to his cousin, Pamela Fox-Chavers. Having been made aware by Lady Zinnia in October last year that during the course of the year, whilst Lettice had been biding her time, waiting for Selwyn’s eventual return, he had become engaged to the daughter of a Kenyan diamond mine owner whilst in Durban. Fleeing Lady Zinnia’s Park Lane mansion, Lettice returned to Cavendish Mews and milled over her options over a week as she reeled from the news. Then, after that week, she knew exactly what to do to resolve the unpleasant issues raised by Lady Zinnia’s unwelcome news about her son. Taking extra care in her dress, she took herself off to the neighbouring upper-class London suburb of Belgravia and paid a call upon Sir John Nettleford-Hughes.

 

Lettice is now engaged to Sir John Nettleford Hughes. Old enough to be her father, wealthy Sir John, according to London society gossip enjoys dalliances with a string of pretty chorus girls of Lettice’s age and younger. As an eligible man in a aftermath of the Great War when such men are a rare commodity, with a vast family estate in Bedfordshire, houses in Mayfair, Belgravia and Pimlico and Fontengil Park in Wiltshire, quite close to the Glynes estate belonging to her parents, Lettice’s mother, Lady Sadie, invited him as a potential suitor to her 1922 Hunt Ball, which she used as a marriage market for Lettice. Although she did not become engaged to him then, Lettice did reacquaint herself with Sir John at an amusing Friday to Monday long weekend party held by mutual friends Sir John and Lady Gladys Caxton at their Scottish country estate in 1924. To her surprise, Lettice found Sir John’s company rather enjoyable. She then ran into him again later that year at the Portland Gallery’s autumn show in Soho, where she found him yet again to be a pleasant and attentive companion for much of the evening. Sir John also made a proposition to her that night: he offered her his hand in marriage should she ever need it. More like a business arrangement than a marriage proposal, Sir John offered Lettice the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of his large fortune, be chatelain of all his estates and continue to have her interior design business, under the conditions that she agree to provide him with an heir, and that he be allowed to discreetly carry on his affairs in spite of their marriage vows. He even suggested that Lettice might be afforded the opportunity to have her own extra marital liaisons if she were discreet about them. When Lettice’s understanding with Selwyn Spencely, son of the Duke of Walmsford, fell apart, Lettice agreed to Sir John’s proposal. Then, during the General Strike* that almost brought the nation to a standstill, Selwyn and Lettice were reintroduced, and she found out that Selwyn wasn’t engaged to another woman at all, as she was led to believe by Lady Zinnia, and it had all been a fabrication, leaving her in a quandary over what to do: break her engagement with Sir John and marry the man she truly loves and has never stopped loving, or remain engaged to Sir John, preserving his honour and the good name of her own family.

 

The General Strike that gripped the nation for nine days and caused major social as well as distribution issues is over, and with all but the coal miners up north back at work, life has returned to normal again in the metropolis. The railways and the London motor buses have resumed usual services, and the volunteer canteen** organised by Lady Edwina Mountbatten*** that Lettice was helping in has been disbanded. Lettice has resumed working as a society interior designer and has not long finished successfully completing the redecoration of several principal rooms in the Queen Anne’s Gate**** townhouse of Whig***** politician and Member for the constituency of Tower Hamlets****** Mr. Charles Hatchett, whose wife Dolly, has commissioned Lettice to redecorate for her.

 

Today, with that job complete, we find Lettice sitting comfortably in her favourite round backed Art Deco armchairs in her drawing room, sipping tea as she contemplates her latest acquisition from the recent liquidation sale of the contents of Sir Stuart Samuel’s******* Berkley Square townhouse, arranged by Hampton and Sons********. The beautiful Georgian Chelsea porcelain********* bowl with hand painted flower garlands and gilded edges gleams in the light now it is free of the tissue paper that protected it on its journey in Pall Mall to Cavendish Mews. Lettice moves the deep bowl around in her hands, allowing the fine fluted edges and delicate painting to seduce her. She glances up at her Chippendale china cabinet containing a selection of Eighteenth Century Limoges porcelain of a similar age to the bowl, and contemplates whether she should keep it, rather than sending it to be stored at her warehouse to be used in a later interior design scheme of hers.

 

Her ruminations are suddenly disturbed by the mechanical sound of the Cavendish Mews front door buzzer.

 

“Edith?” Lettice’s voice calls from the drawing room to her maid.

 

“On my way, Miss!” Edith assures her mistress in a harried tone as she hurries across the thick Chinese silk carpet to the front door.

 

She pats her cap and the hairpins holding her blonde waves neatly in place as she goes, hoping that she looks presentable as she opens the front door to whoever stands on the landing outside. To her surprise, she opens it to find the world famous British concert pianist, Sylvia Fordyce standing outside on the stoop.

 

Dressed in an oversized and rather striking black velvet turban with an aigrette********** of peacock feathers sticking out of it pulled low over her head and a luxuriously thick black velvet coat synched tightly at the waist with a wide leather belt with the collar turned up, Sylvia looks striking and almost androgenous as she towers over the diminutive maid. This look is perpetuated by the fact that she is wearing a pair of roomy Oxford bags*********** much to Edith’s horror.

 

“Hullo again, my dear,” she purrs a greeting to Edith as the poor maid stands in the entrance hall, eyes agog at the sight of a woman in slacks. “Err, I’ve forgotten your name.”

 

“Edith, madam.” Edith manages to stammer.

 

“Don’t worry, Edith my dear.” Sylvia assures her with a laconic raising of an expertly plucked eyebrow as she indicates to her trousers with a black leather glove clad hand. “Remember, I told you on my last visit, slacks all the rage in Berlin!”, as if that would allay Edith’s concerns. “I won’t scandalise your mistress, or the household. Now, may I come in?”

 

Edith is lost for words, but steps aside to allow the pianist to enter, her face flushing with a mixture of shock and embarrassment as she closes the front door behind her.

 

Lettice met Sylvia at a private audience after a performance at the Royal Albert Hall************. Sylvia is the long-time friend of Lettice’s fiancée, Sir John Nettleford-Hughes and his widowed sister Clementine (known preferably now by the more cosmopolitan Clemance) Pontefract, the latter of whom Sylvia has known since they were both eighteen. Lettice, Sir John and Clemance were invited to join Sylvia in her dressing room after her Schumann and Brahms concert. After a brief chat with Sir John (whom she refers to as Nettie, using the nickname only his closest friends use) and Clemance, Sylvia had her personal secretary, Atlanta, show them out so that she could discuss “business” with Lettice. Anxious that like so many others, Sylvia would try to talk Lettice out of marrying Sir John, Lettice was pleasantly surprised when Sylvia admitted that when she said that she wanted to discuss business, that was what she genuinely meant. Sylvia owns a small country property just outside of Belchamp St Paul************* on which she had a secluded little house she calls ‘The Nest’ built not so long ago by architect Sydney Castle**************: a house she had decorated by society interior designer Syrie Maugham***************. However, unhappy with Mrs. Maugham’s passion for shades of white, Sylvia wanted Lettice to inject some colour into the drawing room of her country retreat by painting a feature wall for her. Thus, she invited Lettice to motor up to Essex with her for an overnight stay at the conclusion of her concert series at The Hall to see the room for herself, and perhaps get some ideas as to what and how she might paint it. Lettice agreed to Sylvia’s commission, and originally had the idea of painting flowers on the wall, reflecting the newly planted cottage garden outside the large drawing room windows of ‘The Nest’. However, after hearing the story of Sylvia’s life – a sad story throughout which, up until more recent years, she had felt like a bird trapped in a cage, Lettice opted to paint the wall with stylised feathers, expressing the freedom to fly and soar that Sylvia’s later life has given her the ability to do, which delighted Sylvia.

 

“Hullo Lettice darling!” Sylvia calls as she removes her gloves, but does not pass them to Edith. “Are you at home for visitors?”

 

“Sylvia darling!” Lettice hurries into the flat’s entrance hall. “I wasn’t expecting you. What a delightful surprise!” She reaches out and embraces Sylvia very gently, catching a whiff of her exotic French perfume, intermixed with the smell of her beloved Craven ‘As****************. Suddenly gasping, Lettice goes on, “Or have I done something foolish and forgotten that we had made plans today? Oh Sylvia!” Her hand rushes to her mouth. “I’m so sorry if we have!”

 

“No, no, Lettice darling.” Sylvia assures her in a calming purr, her red lipstick coated lips curving up into a smile. “I was just passing by, and thought I’d stop in at Cavendish Mews to see you, if there was the slightest chance of me catching you.”

 

“Well here I am, Sylvia darling!” Lettice says with a sigh of relief, spreading her arms expansively.

 

“And here you are, my dear!”

 

“May I take your coat, madam?” Edith asks, now that her voice has been restored to her after her initial shock of seeing the concert pianist outside.

 

“What?” Sylvia queries. “And shock you with what I may be wearing… or not…” She smirks impishly as her dark eyes sparkle with mirth. “Underneath, my dear girl? I might give you an aneurysm!”

 

Edith blushes.

 

Turning her attention back to Lettice, she goes on, “In truth, I can’t stop for long, Lettice darling. I have my own assignation in Richmond,” Her eyebrows arch over her eyes as she gives Lettice a knowing look. ‘So I was just passing and thought I’d… pop in, as it were.”

 

“Well, you are very welcome, Sylvia.” Lettice replies with a joy filled smile. “Edith, could you make a pot of coffee for Ms Fordyce and myself, please.”

 

“Yes Miss.” Edith drops a quick bob curtsey as she glances from her mistress with an uncertain gaze towards Sylvia.

 

“Err, no coffee for me, thank you Lettice my dear.” Sylvia pipes up quickly. “It really is just a fleeting visit. I shan’t be staying for long.”

 

“Then just a fresh pot of tea for me, please Edith.” Lettice says. “Won’t you please come this way, Sylvia my dear.”

 

Lettice ushers Sylvia into the drawing room. “I was just wondering whether I should keep my latest acquisition for myself.” She indicates with a sweeping gesture to the Chelsea bowl sitting atop the box full of tissue paper.

 

“And here I am, bumbling in and disturbing you, Lettice darling!”

 

“Oh no, you’re a very welcome distraction, dear Sylvia. Please, do sit down.” She indicates to the armchair opposite her. “So, you have an assignation with the dashing, yet boorish, Lieutenant-Colonel then, I take it, Sylvia darling.”

 

“I do,” Sylvia replies matter-of-factly as she sinks into the creamy white seat cushions.

 

Sylvia’s black dyed sharp bob sits neatly about her angular face. She wears no necklace or earrings, and only the large aquamarine and diamond cluster ring on her left middle finger on her elegant pianist’s hands. Sylvia’s face is caked with its usual thick layer of white makeup, her red painted lips the only colour afforded her in her entire outfit aside from the cool blue of the aquamarine. As she lounges lazily, she almost blends into the armchair’s shades of white.

 

“Which as usual will end up with a fumbling, boorish and rough sexual encounter,” Sylvia goes on with a bored sigh as she rolls her eyes. “Which will undoubtedly leave us both feeling unsatisfied and unfulfilled, as we always know it will.”

 

“Sylvia!” Lettice gasps, feeling the sudden burning of a blush of embarrassment heat her cheeks.

 

“What?”

 

“Sylvia darling, you shock me.”

 

“Oh don’t be so horribly stuffy and English, Lettice darling!” Sylvia flaps her elegant hand in Lettice’s general direction, the aquamarine glinting cooly in the light. “Come now! There is no need to play the innocent jeune fille à marier***************** with me.” She scoffs purposefully. “You are a woman, just as I am, with needs and urges. You can’t pretend that as a woman, you are sexless and have no desires.”

 

Lettice feels awkward with the topic of conversation, so expertly, she tries to steer it in a different direction. “Come now Sylvia. You didn’t come here just to talk about my desires.”

 

“Well, I suppose that depends upon what desires we speak of.” Sylvia announces mysteriously, with a serious tone to her voice.

 

“Am I going to like this impromptu visit, Sylvia?” Lettice asks warily, suddenly sitting up a little more straightly in her armchair.

 

“It is only fleeting, my dear Lettice. I was only passing, so I shan’t hold you up for long.” Sylvia assures her.

 

“Yet Richmond is closer to you than me, being in Holland Park as you are,” Lettice opines. ‘And Mayfair is in the opposite direction.”

 

“Well I…” Sylvia stammers, her voice cracking as she does.

 

“Am I going to need something stronger than tea, in order for me to deal with whatever you are about to tell me, Sylvia?”

 

“Again, Lettice darling,” Sylvia replies with seriousness. “I suppose that all depends on how you choose to take what I have to say. All however, I will confirm that what I am about to share, comes from a good place in my heart, and as a friend to you.”

 

“This definitely sounds foreboding, Sylvia darling,” Lettice remarks with a feeling of foreboding curdling the warm tea in her stomach. “And I don’t like the sound of it at all. No. Not one bit.”

 

The two women face one another over the top of the low black japanned coffee table and the small wooden crate with the bowl perched precariously on the edge of it.

 

“You know me, Lettice darling.” Sylvia says without apology. “I’m not one for unnecessary social niceties.”

 

“Which explains the impromptu nature of your visit.” Lettice counters, reaching up and clasping the single strand of creamy white pearls lying across her throat.

 

“So, in the spirit of frankness, rather than what you may perceive as bluntness, I must tell you that I finally I saw Clemmmie the other day and visited her at Holland Park.”

 

“Aahhh.” Lettice replies, sighing with relief, but at the same time, questioning in her own mind as to where the conversation is going.

 

“And as is to be expected,” Sylvia goes on. “Conversation turned to you and your upcoming nuptials****************** to Nettie, or,” Her eyebrows arch and her eyes widen as her gaze intensifies. “Perhaps more to the point, the lack thereof. Clemmie told me that she had tea with you the other week at Gunter’s*******************, and that in her opinion, you seemed to be cooling towards your marriage to Nettie.”

 

“Sylvia… I…” Lettice’s voice cracks with emotion.

 

“No, no. Please let me finish, Lettice darling.” Sylvia raises her hand elegantly to stop Lettice from continuing. “Clemmie told me that she thinks it is simply a case of pre-wedding jitters. That’s a typical response from her, as she will always try and see the best in everyone. She always has.”

 

Lettice does not say anything, but lowers her hand to her lap and fiddles her manicured fingers.

 

“The fact is that, I’ve been an outside observer of your relationship with Nettie at close quarters,” Sylvia goes on. “And as a result of that, I can’t help but notice a definite reluctance on both your parts to even set a date for the whole blasted affair.”

 

“We’ve just been busy Sylvia.” Lettice defends quickly. “I’ve not long finished redecorating the suite of principal rooms at the home of Dolly Hatchett as you know. And John…” she blusters. “Well, John has been very busy too with running his business and estates.”

 

“You don’t have to make excuses to me, Lettice darling.” Sylvia quicky insists. “I’m not here to judge you, either one of you. It was simply an observation.”

 

“Then precisely why are you here, Sylvia.” Lettice asks with concern.

 

“Do you remember, when we first met at the Royal Albert Hall, I said to you that I was in no fit position to tell you what you should or shouldn’t do in relation to your romantic affairs with Nettie?”

 

“I do, Sylvia.” Lettice replies warily. “If I remember correctly,” she continues. “You told me that you don’t have the best record for marriages.”

 

“Quite so, Lettice darling. I don’t.” Sylvia smiles sadly. “But it is exactly for that reason, that I now want to talk to you.”

 

“Then best you get on with it, then.”

 

“I don’t claim to know what all the finer points of your arrangement with Nettie are, Lettice darling, and I don’t want to know. It’s not my affair, and therefore, none of my business.” She pauses before going on, sticking the tip pf her tongue out just a little between her red painted lips. “But I know it won’t be a conventional marriage by any means, judging by what took place at The Nest with Paula Young coming along.”

 

“I said you hadn’t done wrong by me to invite her, Sylvia darling.” Lettice replies with a resigned sigh. “And I meant it. John has always been very clear with me about his… his…” She struggles for a moment to find the correct phrase. “His needs, to use your choice of words. Besides, John says he is finishing with Miss Young, you know, Sylvia darling. He finds her altogether too clingy by far.”

 

“Yes, dependant and jealous women have never been Nettie’s style.” Sylvia opines knowingly.

 

“Yes.” Lettice chuckles a little hollowly. “He prefers to be unfettered.”

 

Sylvia gives Lettice a withering look. “And has he?”

 

“Has he what?”

 

“Has he finished with Paula Young?”

 

“Well, I don’t know.” Lettice admits. “It’s not really my place to ask him about it, is it, Sylvia? It’s his own private personal matter with whom he has liaisons.”

 

“How very accommodating of you, Lettice my dear. However, as Nettie’s future wife, Lettice darling, I should think it is entirely your place to ask him about such things, if you are going to pursue such a… a modern, style of marriage. You do realise that when he eventually tires of Paula and her predatory ways, which I know he will, that there are any number of women to take her place, who will be equally odious and irksome to you.”

 

“I may find Miss Young odious, but not irksome, Sylvia.”

 

“I disagree, my dear. Please pardon me for this also very frank observation. It does seem to me that this arrangement you have agreed to with Nettie, is somewhat imbalanced in Nettie’s favour, and it enables his philandering to continue unabated, and that sticks in your craw.”

 

“John has suggested that I can have… trysts of my own, if I so desire.” Lettice can feel the sting of tears at the back of her eyes, but steels herself, determined not to cry.

 

“Aha!” Sylvia crows. “But therein lies the imbalance I perceive, Lettice my dear. I don’t claim to know you anywhere near as well as Clemmie or Nettie, having only recently made your acquaintance, but I’d wager that you are not the type to have, trysts, as you so delicate put it.”

 

“How would you know that, Sylvia?” Lettice asks.

 

“Oh please!” Sylvia scoffs. “Even the way you say the word, I can see your mouth turn down with distain. You are not a philanderess. You are beautiful, and could easily flirt and be the coquette if you so wish. But you don’t, do you? You believe in love.”

 

“And in your jaded opinion, you think that is misplaced, Sylvia?”

 

“Yes! Yes I suppose I am rather jaded when it comes to affairs of the heart and love.” Sylvia chuckles in a mixture of bemusement and bitterness. “With Nettie, my dear Lettice, I do think you are misguided. Again, pardon me, but the walls at The Nest aren’t all that thick, and I couldn’t help but overhear a rather heated conversation between the two of you on your first evening. I know you have asked more of him in that respect than he is willing to give, and he has told you outright, that he cannot, or rather will not, give you what your heart desires most, which is a devoted husband.”

 

Lettice blushes, but does not reply to Sylvia’s revelation.

 

“As you know, my first marriage was a complete disaster, and whilst Nettie is as far removed from Josiah Pembroke’s inclinations as is humanly possible, the outcomes are still painfully the same. I remember what it was like to sit at home, alone, waiting for my husband to return from his shady and sordid evenings out on the tear in London with the fey boys with the mistrusting eyes. I, foolishly, did hope for a little love when I married him, however misguided that aspiration may have been, and it nearly killed me when I lay alone in a cold and empty bed night after night. I felt I was defective in some way, and very lonely. It consumed me. What did those men he pursued have to gather Josiah in their thrall? I know you must be thinking the same, not least of all after he rekindled his relationship with Madeline Flanton whilst you were both in Paris.”

 

“Good heavens!” Lettice gasps. “How did you know about that?”

 

“Because Nettie told me about it.” Sylvia replies matter-of-factly. “He confides in me quite a lot.”

 

“Oh!” Lettice exclaims.

 

“And he told me how much she makes his pulse quicken with a passion that probably has never truly died.”

 

“Oh.” Lettice utters, unable to disguise the bitter disappointment in her voice.

 

“And to be honest, I think if anyone is going to supplant Paula Young, it’s Madeline Flanton, and not you my dear.” Sylvia sighs heavily before continuing, “And even then, Nettie won’t be any more faithful to her than he would be to you as his future wife. It’s not in his nature. You know this. However, unlike Paula, or you, Madeline has the advantage of not making such a demand of him. She has liaisons as well, so the pair of them are well matched.”

 

“I’m not asking for John’s fidelity, Sylvia.”

 

“Yes you are, Lettice darling. Of course you are! You know you are. You did it at The Nest. You did it whilst waiting at Cricklewood Aerodrome******************** for your flight to Paris.”

 

“Did John confide in you over that too?” Lettice asks as she feels the tears stinging her eyes again.

 

Sylvia nods as she looks guilty at Lettice. “He did. I’m one of the few female acquaintances beyond yourself who hasn’t actually slept with him. I offer him an empathetic ear, and an unbiased opinion.”

 

“Oh…” Lettice reaches into the small discreted pocket in her navy blue cotton morning frock with white piping, and withdraws a small lace trimmed white linen handkerchief. Sniffing, she dabs at the corners of her eyes, and then under her nose.

 

“I’m sorry, Lettice darling.” Sylvia apologises. “I must sound so horrid and cruel to say these things out loud to you, but I assure you, I’m not trying to be. Believe it or not, all these things I am saying come from a very good place in my heart. You are my friend and I care for your wellbeing. I’m trying to be kind and spare you pain and heartache in the long run.”

 

Lettice simply sits in her seat, continuing to wipe at her eyes, and maintain as much composure as she can. The effort deprives her of the ability to speak.

 

“Look, I know that your previous paramour, the young future Duke of Walmsford has returned,” Sylvia says, gibing her friend an earnest look. “And furthermore. I know that he is unmarried.”

 

“So do I.” Lettice manages to mumble as the tears start to tun down her soft, pin k cheeks.

 

“If it is love you seek in a marriage, which I am positive you do, then pursue it with him, not with Nettie. You used to say in the society pages that you were waiting for him to return. I remember reading it when I was looking into you to design my interior for me. Now the young duke is back. Go forth and seek your quarry.”

 

“That’s easier said than done, Sylvia.” Lettice says begrudgingly.

 

“Of course it is, but isn’t the thrill of the chase half the fun, Lettice darling.” Sylvia enthuses.

 

“That isn’t what I meant. What about the fact that I have promised myself to John. My family will be outraged by the scandal of a broken engagement, especially considering the breaking will be done by me. Then of course, there are John’s feelings to be considered. He’ll be so disappointed, and Clemance too. How can I break her heart?”

 

“How can you deny your own?” Sylvia responds directly. “You and the young duke were made for one another. Anyone can see that. Now, I can’t speak for your family, and how they may react, but I think you will find Nettie very open and only too willing to accept the end of your ill considered and rash engagement. It was foolish of him to suggest it in the first place and he knows it. As for dear Clemmie, the longer you leave it, the more invested in your marriage she will become. If you truly love her as you say you do, and if you have the respect for John that I know you have, you’ll end your engagement sooner, rather than later.”

 

“Do you really think so, Sylvia darling?” Lettice asks in a barely audible whisper,

 

“I know so, Lettice darling.” Sylvia states firmly. “And I also know that everyone concerned will be better off for it too. No-one truly enjoys living a lie, believe me, I know better than anyone.”

 

“But I’ll be labelled a bolter*********************.” Lettice cries.

 

“Only for a very short while, Lettice.” Sylvia counters. “It’s a lady’s prerogative to break an engagement, every bit as much as it is a gentleman’s to propose marriage in the first place. Promises like this, are like piecrusts.” She gesticulates with her hand in a flippant way. “They are fragile, and are made to be broken easily enough. It is only your first engagement that you are ending. Society is a lot more forgiving now than it was when I was young, or even before the war, Lettice my dear. Yes, there will be some initial interest, gasps and exclamations from the older set as they tut their disapproval, but it will all blow over quickly as people tire of you and go in search of other, newer, salacious gossip to fill their rather dull lives with. Consider what I am proposing. You won’t regret it”

 

Lettice doesn’t answer, as her mind swims with thoughts about the pros and the cons to John’s very businesslike marriage proposal. She also smiles gently for a moment as she thinks of Selwyn, and the possibilities marriage to him would bring.

 

“Well, I must be off.” Sylvia says, standing up in her seat. “The Lea Francis********************** is raring to get on the road to Richmond, and I’ve said all I need to say. Oh, other than this one final remark.”

 

“Yes, Sylvia?” Lettice asks.

 

“After what I have said here today, you may never wish to see or speak to me ever again, and you must understand that Nettie is one of my oldest and dearest of friends, so I shall not be taking sides as it were, and nor will I be surprised if you don’t wish to remain friends with me.” She slips on her gloves over here elegant fingers. “However, if you ever wish it, my door shall always remain open to your friendship. You’re a bright, intelligent, plucky woman who isn’t afraid to make her mark on the world. We need more women like you.”

 

Lettice looks up at her from her seat with a mixture of surprise and admiration.

 

“Oh, and please don’t hold it against your dear Gerald and sweet Cyril and think badly of them if they remain friends with me. Gerald is your dearest friend, and greatest admirer. He’d never want to hurt you, and he’d do anything for you, and defend you to death.”

 

“I… I don’t really know what to say.” Lettice manages to say.

 

“Then best is to say nothing. Just think about what I’ve said, and give it serious consideration. Your actions will have serious ramifications for those for whom you love and care. Don’t waste your love, and do the thing you know is right.” She nods affirmatively at Lettice. “I’ll see my own way out.”

 

And with that Sylvia strides from the room without a backwards glance, and disappears through the door into the entrance hall. A moment later, the front door opens and then closes, and she is gone, leaving Lettice to consider all that she has said.

 

*The 1926 General Strike was a nine-day nationwide stoppage in the United Kingdom between the third and twelfth of May. It was called by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) to support over a million coal miners facing wage cuts and longer hours. Following "Black Friday" in 1921, miners faced a lockout after refusing "not a penny off the pay, not an hour on the day" wage reductions and longer hours. About one point seven million workers paralysed transport, printing, and heavy industries temporarily. Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin's Conservative government declared a state of emergency, using volunteers and the military to maintain essential supplies and transport. The government produced the British Gazette to counter the strikers' message. The TUC ended the strike on May the twelfth, 1926, fearing it was moving toward a revolutionary, anti-democratic action. The miners remained locked out until the autumn, eventually accepting lower pay and longer hours, without securing any concessions.

 

**During the 1926 General Strike, the volunteer canteens — often staffed by "titled ladies" to feed volunteers maintaining essential services — were largely organized and supported by the upper classes, society women, and the government's emergency volunteer network. Women from high society and the aristocracy, including Lady Louis Mountbatten, Lady Quilter, Lady Mary Ashley Cooper, and Lady Carmichael-Anstruther, participated in and helped manage these canteens. Canteens, such as those overseen by a "Mrs. Loeffler" at Scotland House and similar efforts in Hyde Park, provided food and refreshments to the thousands of middle-class volunteers, such as special constables, who broke the strike. These canteens were part of a coordinated effort by the Conservative government to maintain essential services and counter the strike's effectiveness. The focus of these efforts was to support the volunteer workforce—such as the "special constables"—to keep services running, as opposed to the soup kitchens operated in mining communities by workers' wives to support the miners.

 

***Born Edwina Cynthia Annette Ashley, she was the granddaughter of the wealthy financier Sir Ernest Cassel, making her one of Britain's richest women when she married Louis Mountbatten in 1922, a ceremony dubbed "the wedding of the year". Before marrying him, she was a glamourous socialite and society beauty, but once married, used her new position of influence to draw attention to her humanitarian work. When the Second World War broke out, Lady Edwina devoted herself to the St John Ambulance Brigade and the British Red Cross, eventually acting as Superintendent-in-Chief of the St John Ambulance Brigade, earning her high honours. As the last Vicereine of India, she was crucial in navigating the transition to independence, maintaining a close working relationship and friendship with Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Initially known as a rebellious and glamorous socialite, she transitioned into a dedicated humanitarian worker. She was known for her immense energy and, at times, controversial personal life.

 

****Queen Anne’s Gate is a street in Westminster, London. Many of the buildings are Grade I listed, known for their Queen Anne architecture. Simon Bradley and Nikolaus Pevsner described the Gate’s early Eighteenth Century houses as “the best of their kind in London.” The street’s proximity to the Palace of Westminster made it a popular residential area for politicians.

 

*****Historically, the British Liberal Party evolved from the Whigs. While Tories became the Conservative Party, the Whigs merged with radicals and Peelites in the 1850s to form the Liberals. The Whigs championed constitutional government and, over time, progressive reform, distinguishing them from the traditionally conservative Tories.

 

******The London constituency of Tower Hamlets includes such areas and historic towns as (roughly from west to east) Spitalfields, Whitechapel, Bethnal Green, Wapping, Shadwell, Mile End, Stepney, Limehouse, Old Ford, Bow, Bromley, Poplar, and the Isle of Dogs (with Millwall, the West India Docks, and Cubitt Town), making it a majority working class constituency in 1925 when this story is set. Tower Hamlets included some of the worst slums and societal issues of inequality and poverty in England at that time.

 

*******Sir Stuart Montagu Samuel, 1st Baronet was a British banker and Liberal politician who was Member of Parliament for Whitechapel. Samuel was the elder brother of Herbert Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel. He attended the Liverpool Institute and University College School, Hampstead, London. Born in October 1856, he was married with two daughters, Vera Evelyn and Eileen Victoria, and died in May of 1926. Sir Stuart Samuel’s residence at 12 Hill Street, Berkeley Square, held major contents liquidation sales through firms like Hampton & Sons in 1926 to cover his death duties.

 

********Hampton & Sons was a prominent London-based firm of high-end house furnishers, cabinet makers, and estate/interior auctioneers. Established around 1830 by William Hampton, later joined by sons George and William, on Pall Mall, they operated historically as major decorators and liquidators of fine furnishings.

 

*********The Chelsea Porcelain Factory (1745–1770) was England's first major porcelain works, famous for luxurious rococo-style vases, figures, and tableware marked by early red, triangle, and gold anchors.

 

**********An aigrette is a decorative ornament for the head or hat, specifically a tuft of feathers or a jeweled piece shaped like a feather plume.

 

***********Oxford bags were a loose-fitting baggy form of trousers favoured by members of the University of Oxford, especially undergraduates, in England from the mid-1920s to around the 1950s. The style had a more general influence outside the university, including in America, but has been somewhat out of fashion since then. It is sometimes said that the style originated from a ban in 1924 on the wearing of plus fours by Oxford (and Cambridge) undergraduates at lectures. The bagginess allegedly allowed plus fours to be hidden underneath – but the argument is undermined by the fact that the trousers (especially in the early years) were not sufficiently voluminous for this to be done with any success. The original trousers were 22–23 inches (56–58 cm) in circumference at the bottoms but became increasingly larger to 44 inches (110 cm) or more, possibly due to a misunderstanding of the measurement as the width rather than circumference.

 

************The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington in London, built in the style of an ancient amphitheatre. Since the hall's opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world's leading artists from many performance genres have appeared on its stage. It is the venue for the BBC Proms concerts, which have been held there every summer since 1941.

 

*************Belchamp St Paul is a village and civil parish in the Braintree district of Essex, England. The village is five miles west of Sudbury, Suffolk, and 23 miles northeast of the county town, Chelmsford.

 

**************Sydney Ernest Castle was born in Battersea in July 1883. He trained with H. W. Edwards, a surveyor and worked as chief assistant to Arthur Jessop Hardwick (1867 - 1948) before establishing his own practice in London in 1908. From 1908 to 1918 he was in partnership with Gerald Warren (1881-1936) as Castle & Warren. He worked on St. George's Hill Estate in Weybridge, Surrey with Walter George Tarrant (1875-1942). Castle was elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects (FRIBA) in 1925. He designed many buildings, including the Christian Association building in Clapham, a school in Balham and a private hotel in the Old Brompton Road, as well as many private residences throughout Britain. His firm’s address in 1926, when this story is set was 40, Albemarle Street, Piccadilly. He died in Wandsworth in March 1955.

 

***************Syrie Maugham was a leading British interior decorator of the 1920s and 1930s and best known for popularizing rooms decorated entirely in shades of white. She was the wife of English playwright and novelist William Somerset Maugham.

 

****************Craven A (stylized as Craven "A") is a British brand of cigarettes, currently manufactured by British American Tobacco. Originally founded and produced by the Carreras Tobacco Company in 1921 until merging with Rothmans International in 1972, who then produced the brand until Rothmans was acquired by British American Tobacco in 1999. The cigarette brand is named after the third Earl of Craven, after the "Craven Mixture", a tobacco blend formulated for the 3rd Earl in the 1860s by tobacconist Don José Joaquin Carreras.

 

*****************A jeune fille à marier was a marriageable young woman, the French term used in fashionable circles and the upper-classes of Edwardian society before the Second World War.

 

******************Nuptials is an alternative word for marriage. The term “nuptials” emphasizes the ceremonial and legal aspects of a marriage, lending a more formal tone to wedding communications and documentation.

 

*******************Gunter’s (officially Gunter’s Tea Shop) was London’s most famous and exclusive confectionery, catering, and high-society eatery. The business was founded in 1757 at numbers 7 to 8 Berkeley Square, in Mayfair, by an Italian pastry chef named Domenico Negri. He originally named it The Pot and Pineapple. The pineapple was chosen because it was the ultimate Georgian symbol of wealth, luxury, and exotic indulgence. In 1777, an Englishman named James Gunter entered into a partnership with Negri. By 1799, Gunter became the sole proprietor and rebranded the establishment under his own name. In the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, freezing technology was rare and expensive. Gunter’s became globally renowned for its exotic "ices," sorbets, and ice creams. They served dramatic flavours like pine, bergamot, maple, jasmine, and even Parmesan, often frozen into intricate pewter moulds shaped like fruits or meats. Gunter’s was famous for a unique social phenomenon. Because the shop itself was small, wealthy patrons would park their open-topped horse carriages under the plane trees of Berkeley Square. Waiters would dodge traffic to sprint across the road, bringing rapidly melting ice cream right to the carriages. Gunter's wasn't just a cafe; they were massive high-end event caterers. They provided the food, multi-tiered "bride cakes," and sugar architecture for royal balls and elite weddings, including making the wedding cake for Queen Victoria’s granddaughter in 1889.

 

********************Cricklewood Aerodrome was one of the first in London to handle international flights. The aerodrome was built to support the Handley Page aircraft factory, which was a major aircraft manufacturer at the time. In 1925, when this story is set, Cricklewood Aerodrome was a fully functioning airfield and aircraft production center in London, primarily associated with the Handley Page company. It served as an early international airport, with a London-to-Paris air service inaugurated in 1920. The aerodrome was adjacent to the Handley Page factory, which had been established in 1912. The aerodrome closed in 1929 due to suburban development, and the Golders Green Estate was built on the site. Some of the streets where the aerodrome was bear the names of Handley Page.

 

*********************A "bolter" is a traditional British slang term for a woman who repeatedly flees from relationships, commitments, or marriage proposals just as things become serious. Like a frightened horse that suddenly bolts and runs away out of control, a bolter chooses escape over emotional closeness or confrontation.

 

**********************Lea and G. I. Francis started the business in Coventry in 1895. They branched out into car manufacturing in 1903 and motorcycles in 1911. Lea-Francis built cars under licence for the Singer company. In 1919, they started to build their own cars from bought-in components. From 1922, Lea-Francis formed a business relationship with Vulcan of Southport sharing manufacturing and dealers. Vulcan supplied bodies to Lea-Francis and in return received gearboxes and steering gear. Two six-cylinder Vulcan-designed and manufactured cars were marketed as Lea-Francis 14/40 and 16/60 as well as Vulcans. The association ended in 1928 when Vulcan stopped making cars. The company had a chequered history with some notable motorcycles and cars, but financial difficulties surfaced on a regular basis. The Hillfields site was abandoned in 1937 when it was sold by the receiver and a new company, under a slightly different name, moved to Much Park Street in Coventry. It survived there until 1962 when the company finally closed.

 

This beautifully decorated 1920s upper-class drawing room is different to what you may think at first glance, for it is made up entirely of 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures, including items from my own childhood.

 

Fun things to look for in this tableau include:

 

The beautifully hand painted fluted porcelain bowl sitting atop the box is a hand painted artisan miniature by an unknown artist who has only initialled its base. This beautiful piece came from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House Shop in the United Kingdom. The box is made of wood, and comes from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.

 

Made by the Little Green Workshop who specialise in high-end artisan miniatures, the black leather diary with the sterling silver clasp is actually bound and has pages inside. The sterling silver pen with the seed pearl end is also from the Little Green Workshop. The red ledger comes from Mick and Marie’s Miniatures in the United Kingdom.

 

Lettice’s tea set is a beautiful artisan set featuring a rather avant-garde Art Deco Royal Doulton design from the Edwardian era.

 

On the tiered occasional table stands a black Bakelite and silver telephone is a 1:12 miniature of a model introduced around 1919. It is two centimetres wide and two centimetres high. The receiver can be removed from the cradle, and the curling chord does stretch out.

 

The vase of coloured roses on the Art Deco occasional table is beautifully made by hand by the Doll House Emporium.

 

Lettice’s drawing room is furnished with beautiful J.B.M. miniatures. The black japanned wooden china cabinet with its mirrored back is a Chippendale design. On its glass shelves sit pieces of miniature Limoges porcelain including jugs, teacups and saucers, many of which I have had since I was a child. All date from the 1950s and have green backstamps on them. They come from various Limoges miniature tea sets that I own.

 

The high backed back japanned chair next to the china cabinet is Chippendale too. It has been upholstered with modern and stylish Art Deco fabric.

 

To the left of the Chippendale chair stands a blanc de chine Chinese porcelain vase, and next to it, a Chinese screen. The Chinese folding screen I bought at an antiques and junk market when I was about ten. I was with my Grandparents and a friend of the family and their three children, who were around my age. They all bought toys to bring home and play with, and I bought a Chinese folding screen to add to my miniatures collection in my curio cabinet at home! It shows you what a unique child I was.

 

The green glass comport on the coffee table is an artisan miniature made from hand spun glass and acquired from Beautifully Handmade Miniatures in Kettering.

 

The carpet beneath the furniture is a copy of a popular 1920s style Chinese silk rug. The geometric Art Deco wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.

youtu.be/p0kjGOOZZog

 

Go-Go for a wild ride with the action girls! Russ Meyer, the king of exploitation, directs this lurid thrill-ride starring Tura Satana, Haji, and Lori Williams as a trio of dancers who turn to murder and mayhem on a road trip from hell. Varla is well-endowed, beautiful, physically powerful, savvy and conniving. She lives for kicks, but she's also got a serious mad on for the world, and anyone who crosses her finds out the hard way. Her job as a go-go dancer, supplemented by a part time career in petty crime has afforded her a sleek and fast sports car, which she enjoys riding in the desert with her fellow dancers. One of them, Rosie, has a crush on Varla, which she happily encourages, even if Varla is really more interested in the control it gives her over Rosie than in Rosie herself. The other dancer, Billie, is a little harder for Varla to manage, but Billie isn't bright enough to outmaneuver Varla.

 

When the little gang run into a square drag racer, he winds up getting into a fight with Varla, losing of course. Varla makes sure he never talks back again, then kidnaps his girlfriend and makes a run for it. BIllie and Rosie tag along, and they soon become involved in intrigue with an old letch in the desert rumored to have a stash of cash hidden away somewhere. When Varla starts to lose control of the situation, things (again) become violent, leading to a revved-up climax! Three strippers seeking thrills encounter a young couple in the desert. After dispatching the boyfriend, they take the girl hostage and begin scheming on a crippled old man living with his two sons in the desert, reputedly hiding a tidy sum of cash. They become houseguests of the old man and try and seduce the sons in an attempt to locate the money, not realizing that the old man has a few sinister intentions of his own.

synopsis

Exploitation maven Russ Meyer created a cult classic with this turbo-charged action film. Three curvaceous go-go dancers in a cool sports car go on a desert crime spree, led by Varla (the amazing Tura Satana), a busty, nasty woman dressed entirely in black. Varla's lesbian moll, Rosie (Haji) -- who has an extremely overwrought accent -- and reluctant bimbo Billie (Lori Williams) are along for the ride. When they meet a naïve young couple, Tommy and Linda (Ray Barlow and Sue Bernard), Varla challenges the man to a race then kills him by breaking his back. They take Linda hostage and drive to a house owned by a crippled old lecher (Stuart Lancaster) and his muscular but retarded son, Vegetable (Dennis Busch). Varla discovers that the old man has money hidden on the property, so the girls try to find it. Meanwhile, Vegetable's perverted father tries to trick him into assaulting one of the girls as he watches, but his other son (Paul Trinka) finally shows up to save the day. A great deal of bloodshed, campy catfighting, and funny dialogue fills the bulk of this fast-paced comic book of a movie.

Born 1946 Quebec,Canada

Passed on 2013

Birth Name - Barbarella Catton Nickname - Haji

Haji was a Cando-American actress renowned for starring in Russ Meyer's sexploitation classic Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), in which she made her theatrical film debut. Barbarella Catton was born in Quebec City, Quebec on January 24, 1946, and at the age of 14, began dancing topless. The renamed Haji caught the eye of cinema's "King Leer" while performing as an exotic dancer.

He also cast her as one of three go-go dancers who turn into avenging furies in "Pussycat", which was her theatrical film debut as it was released before Motor Psycho (1965). She also appeared in Meyer's potboiler Good Morning... and Goodbye! (1967), his big budget Hollywood sextravaganza Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), and his cartoonish amalgamation of sex and violence, Supervixens (1975).

Haji died on August 10, 2013 at the age of 67.

Was a fervent supporter of animal rights and environmentalism. Interviewed in the book "Invasion of the B-Girls" by Jewel Shepard. Began as an exotic dancer. Moved to California at the age of fourteen and was discovered by filmmaker Russ Meyer performing in a topless bar. Her only child, a daughter she had at age 15, is named Cerlette. Haji was of British and Filipino descent, and her nickname was bestowed on her by an uncle. Was a friend and co-star of former stripper and long-time Russ Meyer paramour Kitten Natividad.

Haji, an Actress Featured in Cult Films by Russ Meyer, Dies at 67

By DANIEL E. SLOTNIK

Published: August 17, 2013

Haji, a voluptuous actress who played one of three homicidal go-go dancers in Russ Meyer’s 1965 cult film “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!,” died on Aug. 9 in Southern California. She was 67.

Her death was confirmed by the dancer and actress Kitten Natividad, a friend, who said she did not know the cause. She said Haji had high blood pressure and heart problems in recent years and was taken to a hospital after falling ill at a restaurant in Newport Beach.Haji, a brunette of Filipino and British descent, met Meyer, the celebrated B-movie director, in the mid-1960s while she worked in a strip club in California. He cast her as the lead in his biker movie “Motorpsycho” (1965) even though she had no acting experience.Later that year Haji appeared in “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!,” the tale of three dancers who beat a young man to death, kidnap his girlfriend and flee into the desert. She played the lesbian paramour of the lead character, Varla, played by Tura Satana. The film has acquired a devoted following and has been embraced by the filmmakers John Waters and Quentin Tarantino and even some feminists, including the film critic B. Ruby Rich, who praised it in The Village Voice as a “female fantasy.”“You just didn’t see women taking over and beating up men in those days,” Haji said in an interview posted on Russ Meyer’s Ultravixens, a Web site devoted to Meyer, who died in 2004, and his films. “Russ did something no one else had the imagination to do. And he was smart to use three bodied-up women, so whether the picture’s good or not, you still sort of stare at it.”Haji played a scantily clad bartender in Meyer’s “Supervixens” in 1975 and appeared in “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” the story of an all-woman rock band’s descent into debauchery. It was the first of Meyer’s films produced by a mainstream studio. She also acted in John Cassavetes’s gritty drama “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” in 1976.

Haji was born in Quebec on Jan. 24, 1946. Ms. Natividad said that Haji’s last name at birth was Catton, and that she thought her given name was Cerlette. (The name Haji, she said, was a nickname given to her by an uncle.) Haji left school before finishing the sixth grade and began stripping at 14. She had a daughter, also named Cerlette, at 15. She lived in Oxnard, Calif. Her survivors include her daughter and a granddaughter. Haji’s last screen role was in the 2003 comedy “Killer Drag Queens on Dope.”

www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/arts/haji-an-actress-featured-...;

 

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Spanish postcard by CyA, Barcelona, no. 1047. Photo: 20th Century Fox / Radio Films, S.A.E. Stephen Boyd in The Inspector (Philip Dunne, 1962).

 

Handsome British actor Stephen Boyd (1931-1977) preferred to play character parts, but he had the looks of a leading man. Boyd appeared in some 60 films, most notably as the villainous Messala in Ben-Hur (1959), a role that earned him the Golden Globe Award. His other suvcccesses included The Bravados (1958),The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Fantastic Voyage (1966) and Shalako (1968).

 

Stephen Boyd was born William Millar in 1931 in Glengormley, Northern Ireland. Boyd was the youngest of nine siblings born to Irish/Canadian parents, truck driver James Alexander Millar and his wife Martha Boyd. Billy attended the local Public Elementary School and Ballyclare High School, but at the age of fourteen Boyd quit school to take up other jobs to help support his family. He worked in an insurance office and travel agency during the day and rehearsed with a semi-professional acting company at night during the week and weekends. He would eventually manage to be on the list for professional acting companies to call him when they had a role. He eventually joined the Ulster Group Theater where he learned the behind the scenes tasks of the theatre. He became well known in Belfast for his contributions as a gravel-voiced policeman on the Ulster Radio program The McCooeys, the story of a Belfast family written by Joseph Tomelty. Boyd eventually worked his way up to character parts and then starring roles. By nineteen he had toured Canada with summer stock companies. In 1950 he made a coast to coast tour of America with the Clare Tree Major Company In A Streetcar Named Desire, he played the lead role as Stanley Kowalski. Boyd would later recall this as “the best performance I ever gave in my life.” By the time he was twenty, Boyd had a wide range of theatre experience, but he longed for the big stage. In 1952 Boyd moved to London as an understudy in an Irish play, The Passing Day. Boyd nearly died during the great flu epidemic in London in 1952. He worked in a cafeteria and busked outside a cinema in Leicester Square to get money as he was literally close to starvation. Boyd caught his first break as a doorman at the Odeon Theatre. The Leicester Square Cinema across the street recruited him to usher attendees during the British Academy Awards in the early 1950s. During the awards ceremony he was noticed by actor Sir Michael Redgrave, who used his connections to introduce Boyd to the director of the Windsor Repertory Group. At this point Boyd’s stage career in the U.K. began to flourish with performances in The Deep Blue Sea and Barnett’s Folly. Boyd’s first role which brought him acclaim was as an Irish spy in the film The Man Who Never Was (Ronald Neame, 1956) with Cliffton Webb, based on the book by Ewen Montagu. Shortly thereafter he signed a ten-year contract with 20th Century Fox studios, who began prepping him for Hollywood. But it would be a while until Boyd actually set foot on a Hollywood back-lot. Boyd’s next stop was Portugal to make A Hill in Korea (Julian Amyes, 1956), which also featured future stars Michael Caine and Robert Shaw. In June 1956, Boyd was cast in the nautical, ship-wreck adventure Seven Waves Away/Abandon Ship! (Richard Sale, 1956) starring Tyrone Power. This was filmed in the summer of 1956 in London where the British Navy built a huge 35,000 gallon water tank for the film. In November 1956, Boyd traveled to the British West Indies as part of a large ensemble cast in Darryl Zanuck‘s racially provocative film Island in the Sun (Robert Rossen, 1957), based on the Alec Waugh novel.Boyd portrayed a young English aristocrat who becomes the lover of Joan Collins. Boyd would be loaned out to the J. Arthur Rank production of Seven Thunders (Beast of Marseilles), a World War II romance set in Nazi-occupied Marseilles. It was Boyd's most prominent starring film role yet.

 

After her success in Roger Vadim‘s Et Dieu... créa la femme/ And God Created Woman (1956), Brigitte Bardot was given the opportunity to cast her own leading man in her next film, the lusty romance Les bijoutiers du clair de lune/The Night Heaven Fell, (Roger Vadim, 1957). and she chose Stephen Boyd. Being in the Bardot spotlight added much to Boyd’s film credit, in addition to bringing him notice in Hollywood. Stephen Boyd finally arrived in Hollywood in January 1958 to take on his first true Hollywood role as the leader of a quartet of renegade outlaws in the Western The Bravados (Henry King, 1958), which starred Gregory Peck and Joan Collins. Even though this was a Hollywood production, the actually filming took place in Morelia, Mexico. After the filming of The Bravados was completed Boyd auditioned for the coveted role of Messala in Ben-Hur (William Wyler, 1958). Many other actors, including Victor Mature. Kirk Douglas, Leslie Nielsen and Stewart Granger had been considered for the part, but Stephen Boyd’s screen test convinced director William Wyler that he had found the perfect villain for his epic. Boyd was hurried off to join actor Charlton Heston in Rome in May 1958 to learn the chariot racing aspect of his role. Heston had already been practicing behind the chariot for weeks, so Boyd needed to learn the sport quickly. Later, Boyd described the filming experience of Ben-Hur in the Cinecittà Studios in Rome, as the most exciting experience of his life. Years after the film was released, interim Ben-Hur screen-writer and novelist Gore Vidal revealed that Boyd portrayed Messala with an underlying homosexual energy as instructed by Vidal when he greets Ben-Hur Charlton Heston in the opening sequence. In Gore Vidal’s autobiography Palimpsest, Vidal describes his discussion first with director William Wyler concerning Messala’s underlying motivation, that being that Messala and Judea Ben-Hur had previously been lovers. This was based on an idea by Vidal to enhance the tension between the two main antagonists. After Ben-Hur filming was completed, Boyd returned to Hollywood in early 1959 to star with Academy Award winner Susan Hayward in the Canadian-based drama Woman Obsessed (Henry Hathaway, 1959), and appeared in the adaptation of Rona Jaffe‘s novel The Best of Everything, (Jean Negulesco, 1959). Ben-Hur was released in December 1959 and made Boyd an international star overnight. His portrayal of the Roman tribune Messala brought in rave reviews. In early 1960 Boyd won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for his performance in Ben-Hur.

 

Stephen Boyd himself chose to do roles which he felt comfortable in. His next choice was The Big Gamble (Richard Fleischer, Elmo Williams, 1961), which featured Darryl F. Zanuck‘s current paramour and French icon Juliette Gréco. The adventure of making this film almost outdid the adventure in the film itself as the crew slept in tents in the jungle that were guarded by natives on parole for cannibalism. Boyd nearly drowned in the Ardèche river during the making of the film. Boyd was originally chosen to play Mark Antony opposite Elizabeth Taylor in the epic production of Cleopatra (1963) under the direction of Rouben Mamoulian. He began film work in September 1960 but eventually withdrew from the problem-plagued production after Elizabeth Taylor’s severe illness postponed the film for months. Cleopatra was later directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and the role of Mark Antony went to Richard Burton. After several months without active work, Boyd worked on The Inspector (Philip Dunne, 1962), renamed Lisa for the American release. It was based on the novel by Jan de Hartog and co- starred actress Dolores Hart. The film was made in Amsterdam , London and Wales during the summer of 1961. Boyd starred with Doris Day in the circus musical Billy Rose’s Jumbo (Charles Walters, 1962); the role earned Boyd a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. In Rome Boyd acted with Gina Lollobrigida in her long-time pet project Venere imperiale/Imperial Venus (Jean Delannoy, 1962), a romantic epic about the many loves of Pauline Bonaparte, the sister of Napoleon. This film was the first film to be banned by the Motion Picture Association of America for male nudity. Boyd appeared in a humorous bedroom scene, naked, but covered by a sheet. The suggestion of nudity was too much for the censors and the film was never released in the United States. In Spain, he appeared in Samuel Bronston‘s massive production of The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), directed by Anthony Mann. Boyd’s co-star was Sophia Loren. Although the film did well internationally when it was released in 1964, it was a box office failure in the United States and signaled the end of Roman epic. He then filmed the suspenseful The Third Secret (Charles Crichton, 1964) starring Jack Hawkins, Pamela Franklin and Sean Connery’s wife, Diane Cilento. In December, 1963, Stephen Boyd became a naturalized U.S. citizen. In 1964 Boyd continued to make films in Europe, traveling to Yugoslavia to star as the villain Jamuga in the epic Genghis Khan (Henry Levin, 1965). Boyd was the top billed and therefore the top paid star in the epic, and this apparently caused friction with up-and-coming star Omar Sharif. After completing Genghis Khan, Boyd trekked to Cairo for a brief appearance as the regal King Nimrod at The Tower of Babel in Dino de Laurentiis‘s production of The Bible (John Huston, 1966). Boyd returned to the United States to start work on the Science Fiction adventure Fantastic Voyage (Richard Fleischer, 1966), co-starring with Raquel Welch. Boyd then joined German star Elke Sommer and music legend Tony Bennett to film the Hollywood drama The Oscar (Russell Rouse, 1966), based on the eponymous Richard Sale novel. The film was a popular success, but maligned by film critics. In Iran he filmed his scenes for the United Nations film project Poppies Are Also Flowers (Terence Young, 1966) written by James Bond creator Ian Fleming. Two of Boyd’s projects were ranked among the top twenty-five grossing films of 1966; The Bible at number one and Fantastic Voyage at twenty-two. Next, Boyd starred in a spy thriller Assignment K (Val Guest, 1968) with Swedish model/actress Camilla Sparv. Boyd grew a full beard for his role as the iconic Irish playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw in the Off-Broadway play The Bashful Genius written by Harold Callen. This was Boyd’s first return to the stage since the mid-1950s, and he received excellent reviews.

 

In early 1968 Boyd was cast as the heavy opposite Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot in the Western adventure Shalako (Edward Dmytryk, 1968) based on the Louis L’Amour novel. Shalako was filmed in the early part of 1968 in Almería, Spain. After returning to the United States, Boyd took the role of the cruel slave master Nathan MacKay in the Southern 'Slavesploitation' drama Slaves (Herbert J. Biberman, 1969), also starring Ossie Davis and songstress Dionne Warwick. The film was loosely based on the famous Harriet Beecher Stowe novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Buena Vista plantation near Shreveport, Louisiana. Closely following Slaves, Boyd starred in another story about racial tension, this time a World War II made-for-television drama called Carter’s Army/Black Brigade (George McCowan, 1970), featuring a young Richard Pryor. Boyd began his interest in L. Ron Hubbard‘s Church of Scientology, which would make him one of the first Hollywood stars to be involved in it. Boyd would star and narrate a Scientology recruiting film called Freedom (1970). There is no documentation of his later involvement with Scientology after the early 1970s. During the 1970s the demand for Boyd in Hollywood diminished, so he focused his attention on European films and several television pilots and shows. He made three films in Spain with director José Antonio Nieves Conde, including Marta (José Antonio Nieves Conde, 1970) with Marisa Mell, Historia de una traición/The Great Swindle (José Antonio Nieves Conde, 1971), and Casa Manchada (José Antonio Nieves Conde, 1975). He worked with cult director Romain Gary in the drug thriller Kill! (1971). He also made several Westerns, including Hannie Caulder (Burt Kennedy, 1971) with Raquel Welch (1971), Un hombre llamado Noon/The Man Called Noon (Peter Collinson, 1973) with Richard Crenna, and Rosanna Schiaffino, Campa carogna... la taglia cresce/Those Dirty Dogs (Giuseppe Rosati, 1973) with Gianni Garko, and Potato Fritz (Peter Schamoni, 1976) with Hardy Krüger. His last acting stint was a guest star on the popular television show Hawaii Five-O (1977.) His most critically acclaimed role during the 1970s was as a colourful Irish gangster in the UK crime thriller The Squeeze (Michael Apted, 1977) with Stacey Keach and David Hemmings. Boyd died of a massive heart attack on 2 June 1977 at the age of 45 while playing golf with his wife Elizabeth Mills at the Porter Valley Country Club in Northridge, California. Boyd was interred in Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California. Boyd was first married in 1958 to Italian-born MCA executive Mariella Di Sarzana during the filming of Ben-Hur. They separated after just three weeks. Boyd lived as a bachelor for most of his life and was wary of marriage after his first experience. His secretary Elizabeth Mills was a permanent resident at his Tarzana home during these years though the two did not marry until 1974. Raquel Welch would claim in 2013 that during the filming of Fantastic Voyage in 1965, she became infatuated with Boyd, who rejected her advances. In her comments she would imply that Boyd was gay, however no evidence of Stephen Boyd being a homosexual exists.

 

Sources: Brigitte Ivory (IMDb), Stephen Boyd Blog, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Vintage card. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Stephen Boyd in The Best of Everything (Jean Negulesco, 1959).

 

Handsome British actor Stephen Boyd (1931-1977) preferred to play character parts, but he had the looks of a leading man. Boyd appeared in some 60 films, most notably as the villainous Messala in Ben-Hur (1959), a role that earned him the Golden Globe Award. His other suvcccesses included The Bravados (1958),The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Fantastic Voyage (1966) and Shalako (1968).

 

Stephen Boyd was born William Millar in 1931 in Glengormley, Northern Ireland. Boyd was the youngest of nine siblings born to Irish/Canadian parents, truck driver James Alexander Millar and his wife Martha Boyd. Billy attended the local Public Elementary School and Ballyclare High School, but at the age of fourteen Boyd quit school to take up other jobs to help support his family. He worked in an insurance office and travel agency during the day and rehearsed with a semi-professional acting company at night during the week and weekends. He would eventually manage to be on the list for professional acting companies to call him when they had a role. He eventually joined the Ulster Group Theater where he learned the behind the scenes tasks of the theatre. He became well known in Belfast for his contributions as a gravel-voiced policeman on the Ulster Radio program The McCooeys, the story of a Belfast family written by Joseph Tomelty. Boyd eventually worked his way up to character parts and then starring roles. By nineteen he had toured Canada with summer stock companies. In 1950 he made a coast to coast tour of America with the Clare Tree Major Company In A Streetcar Named Desire, he played the lead role as Stanley Kowalski. Boyd would later recall this as “the best performance I ever gave in my life.” By the time he was twenty, Boyd had a wide range of theatre experience, but he longed for the big stage. In 1952 Boyd moved to London as an understudy in an Irish play, The Passing Day. Boyd nearly died during the great flu epidemic in London in 1952. He worked in a cafeteria and busked outside a cinema in Leicester Square to get money as he was literally close to starvation. Boyd caught his first break as a doorman at the Odeon Theatre. The Leicester Square Cinema across the street recruited him to usher attendees during the British Academy Awards in the early 1950s. During the awards ceremony he was noticed by actor Sir Michael Redgrave, who used his connections to introduce Boyd to the director of the Windsor Repertory Group. At this point Boyd’s stage career in the U.K. began to flourish with performances in The Deep Blue Sea and Barnett’s Folly. Boyd’s first role which brought him acclaim was as an Irish spy in the film The Man Who Never Was (Ronald Neame, 1956) with Cliffton Webb, based on the book by Ewen Montagu. Shortly thereafter he signed a ten-year contract with 20th Century Fox studios, who began prepping him for Hollywood. But it would be a while until Boyd actually set foot on a Hollywood back-lot. Boyd’s next stop was Portugal to make A Hill in Korea (Julian Amyes, 1956), which also featured future stars Michael Caine and Robert Shaw. In June 1956, Boyd was cast in the nautical, ship-wreck adventure Seven Waves Away/Abandon Ship! (Richard Sale, 1956) starring Tyrone Power. This was filmed in the summer of 1956 in London where the British Navy built a huge 35,000 gallon water tank for the film. In November 1956, Boyd traveled to the British West Indies as part of a large ensemble cast in Darryl Zanuck‘s racially provocative film Island in the Sun (Robert Rossen, 1957), based on the Alec Waugh novel.Boyd portrayed a young English aristocrat who becomes the lover of Joan Collins. Boyd would be loaned out to the J. Arthur Rank production of Seven Thunders (Beast of Marseilles), a World War II romance set in Nazi-occupied Marseilles. It was Boyd's most prominent starring film role yet.

 

After her success in Roger Vadim‘s Et Dieu... créa la femme/ And God Created Woman (1956), Brigitte Bardot was given the opportunity to cast her own leading man in her next film, the lusty romance Les bijoutiers du clair de lune/The Night Heaven Fell, (Roger Vadim, 1957). and she chose Stephen Boyd. Being in the Bardot spotlight added much to Boyd’s film credit, in addition to bringing him notice in Hollywood. Stephen Boyd finally arrived in Hollywood in January 1958 to take on his first true Hollywood role as the leader of a quartet of renegade outlaws in the Western The Bravados (Henry King, 1958), which starred Gregory Peck and Joan Collins. Even though this was a Hollywood production, the actually filming took place in Morelia, Mexico. After the filming of The Bravados was completed Boyd auditioned for the coveted role of Messala in Ben-Hur (William Wyler, 1958). Many other actors, including Victor Mature. Kirk Douglas, Leslie Nielsen and Stewart Granger had been considered for the part, but Stephen Boyd’s screen test convinced director William Wyler that he had found the perfect villain for his epic. Boyd was hurried off to join actor Charlton Heston in Rome in May 1958 to learn the chariot racing aspect of his role. Heston had already been practicing behind the chariot for weeks, so Boyd needed to learn the sport quickly. Later, Boyd described the filming experience of Ben-Hur in the Cinecittà Studios in Rome, as the most exciting experience of his life. Years after the film was released, interim Ben-Hur screen-writer and novelist Gore Vidal revealed that Boyd portrayed Messala with an underlying homosexual energy as instructed by Vidal when he greets Ben-Hur Charlton Heston in the opening sequence. In Gore Vidal’s autobiography Palimpsest, Vidal describes his discussion first with director William Wyler concerning Messala’s underlying motivation, that being that Messala and Judea Ben-Hur had previously been lovers. This was based on an idea by Vidal to enhance the tension between the two main antagonists. After Ben-Hur filming was completed, Boyd returned to Hollywood in early 1959 to star with Academy Award winner Susan Hayward in the Canadian-based drama Woman Obsessed (Henry Hathaway, 1959), and appeared in the adaptation of Rona Jaffe‘s novel The Best of Everything, (Jean Negulesco, 1959). Ben-Hur was released in December 1959 and made Boyd an international star overnight. His portrayal of the Roman tribune Messala brought in rave reviews. In early 1960 Boyd won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for his performance in Ben-Hur.

 

Stephen Boyd himself chose to do roles which he felt comfortable in. His next choice was The Big Gamble (Richard Fleischer, Elmo Williams, 1961), which featured Darryl F. Zanuck‘s current paramour and French icon Juliette Gréco. The adventure of making this film almost outdid the adventure in the film itself as the crew slept in tents in the jungle that were guarded by natives on parole for cannibalism. Boyd nearly drowned in the Ardèche river during the making of the film. Boyd was originally chosen to play Mark Antony opposite Elizabeth Taylor in the epic production of Cleopatra (1963) under the direction of Rouben Mamoulian. He began film work in September 1960 but eventually withdrew from the problem-plagued production after Elizabeth Taylor’s severe illness postponed the film for months. Cleopatra was later directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and the role of Mark Antony went to Richard Burton. After several months without active work, Boyd worked on The Inspector (Philip Dunne, 1962), renamed Lisa for the American release. It was based on the novel by Jan de Hartog and co- starred actress Dolores Hart. The film was made in Amsterdam , London and Wales during the summer of 1961. Boyd starred with Doris Day in the circus musical Billy Rose’s Jumbo (Charles Walters, 1962); the role earned Boyd a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. In Rome Boyd acted with Gina Lollobrigida in her long-time pet project Venere imperiale/Imperial Venus (Jean Delannoy, 1962), a romantic epic about the many loves of Pauline Bonaparte, the sister of Napoleon. This film was the first film to be banned by the Motion Picture Association of America for male nudity. Boyd appeared in a humorous bedroom scene, naked, but covered by a sheet. The suggestion of nudity was too much for the censors and the film was never released in the United States. In Spain, he appeared in Samuel Bronston‘s massive production of The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), directed by Anthony Mann. Boyd’s co-star was Sophia Loren. Although the film did well internationally when it was released in 1964, it was a box office failure in the United States and signaled the end of Roman epic. He then filmed the suspenseful The Third Secret (Charles Crichton, 1964) starring Jack Hawkins, Pamela Franklin and Sean Connery’s wife, Diane Cilento. In December, 1963, Stephen Boyd became a naturalized U.S. citizen. In 1964 Boyd continued to make films in Europe, traveling to Yugoslavia to star as the villain Jamuga in the epic Genghis Khan (Henry Levin, 1965). Boyd was the top billed and therefore the top paid star in the epic, and this apparently caused friction with up-and-coming star Omar Sharif. After completing Genghis Khan, Boyd trekked to Cairo for a brief appearance as the regal King Nimrod at The Tower of Babel in Dino de Laurentiis‘s production of The Bible (John Huston, 1966). Boyd returned to the United States to start work on the Science Fiction adventure Fantastic Voyage (Richard Fleischer, 1966), co-starring with Raquel Welch. Boyd then joined German star Elke Sommer and music legend Tony Bennett to film the Hollywood drama The Oscar (Russell Rouse, 1966), based on the eponymous Richard Sale novel. The film was a popular success, but maligned by film critics. In Iran he filmed his scenes for the United Nations film project Poppies Are Also Flowers (Terence Young, 1966) written by James Bond creator Ian Fleming. Two of Boyd’s projects were ranked among the top twenty-five grossing films of 1966; The Bible at number one and Fantastic Voyage at twenty-two. Next, Boyd starred in a spy thriller Assignment K (Val Guest, 1968) with Swedish model/actress Camilla Sparv. Boyd grew a full beard for his role as the iconic Irish playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw in the Off-Broadway play The Bashful Genius written by Harold Callen. This was Boyd’s first return to the stage since the mid-1950s, and he received excellent reviews.

 

In early 1968 Boyd was cast as the heavy opposite Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot in the Western adventure Shalako (Edward Dmytryk, 1968) based on the Louis L’Amour novel. Shalako was filmed in the early part of 1968 in Almería, Spain. After returning to the United States, Boyd took the role of the cruel slave master Nathan MacKay in the Southern 'Slavesploitation' drama Slaves (Herbert J. Biberman, 1969), also starring Ossie Davis and songstress Dionne Warwick. The film was loosely based on the famous Harriet Beecher Stowe novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Buena Vista plantation near Shreveport, Louisiana. Closely following Slaves, Boyd starred in another story about racial tension, this time a World War II made-for-television drama called Carter’s Army/Black Brigade (George McCowan, 1970), featuring a young Richard Pryor. Boyd began his interest in L. Ron Hubbard‘s Church of Scientology, which would make him one of the first Hollywood stars to be involved in it. Boyd would star and narrate a Scientology recruiting film called Freedom (1970). There is no documentation of his later involvement with Scientology after the early 1970s. During the 1970s the demand for Boyd in Hollywood diminished, so he focused his attention on European films and several television pilots and shows. He made three films in Spain with director José Antonio Nieves Conde, including Marta (José Antonio Nieves Conde, 1970) with Marisa Mell, Historia de una traición/The Great Swindle (José Antonio Nieves Conde, 1971), and Casa Manchada (José Antonio Nieves Conde, 1975). He worked with cult director Romain Gary in the drug thriller Kill! (1971). He also made several Westerns, including Hannie Caulder (Burt Kennedy, 1971) with Raquel Welch (1971), Un hombre llamado Noon/The Man Called Noon (Peter Collinson, 1973) with Richard Crenna, and Rosanna Schiaffino, Campa carogna... la taglia cresce/Those Dirty Dogs (Giuseppe Rosati, 1973) with Gianni Garko, and Potato Fritz (Peter Schamoni, 1976) with Hardy Krüger. His last acting stint was a guest star on the popular television show Hawaii Five-O (1977.) His most critically acclaimed role during the 1970s was as a colourful Irish gangster in the UK crime thriller The Squeeze (Michael Apted, 1977) with Stacey Keach and David Hemmings. Boyd died of a massive heart attack on 2 June 1977 at the age of 45 while playing golf with his wife Elizabeth Mills at the Porter Valley Country Club in Northridge, California. Boyd was interred in Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California. Boyd was first married in 1958 to Italian-born MCA executive Mariella Di Sarzana during the filming of Ben-Hur. They separated after just three weeks. Boyd lived as a bachelor for most of his life and was wary of marriage after his first experience. His secretary Elizabeth Mills was a permanent resident at his Tarzana home during these years though the two did not marry until 1974. Raquel Welch would claim in 2013 that during the filming of Fantastic Voyage in 1965, she became infatuated with Boyd, who rejected her advances. In her comments she would imply that Boyd was gay, however no evidence of Stephen Boyd being a homosexual exists.

 

Sources: Brigitte Ivory (IMDb), Stephen Boyd Blog, Wikipedia and IMDb.

www.achariya.net/2013/11/piling-dominoes-into-towers.html

Pilladas in fraganti . Esta madrugada escondidas entre las callejuelas del barrio viejo , la Luna abrazaba a Venus , amores lesbianos que solo la salida del Sol ocultó . No sé lo que diran sus maridos Zeus y Vulcano ...

The Thames from Wallingford Bridge

 

This English Thames is holier far than Rome,

Those harebells like a sudden flush of sea

Breaking across the woodland, with the foam

Of meadow-sweet and white anemone

To fleck their blue waves, - God is likelier there

Than hidden in that crystal-hearted star the pale monks bear!

 

Those violet-gleaming butterflies that take

Yon creamy lily for their pavilion

Are monsignores, and where the rushes shake

A lazy pike lies basking in the sun,

His eyes half shut, - he is some mitred old

Bishop in PARTIBUS! look at those gaudy scales all green and gold.

 

The wind the restless prisoner of the trees

Does well for Palaestrina, one would say

The mighty master's hands were on the keys

Of the Maria organ, which they play

When early on some sapphire Easter morn

In a high litter red as blood or sin the Pope is borne

 

From his dark House out to the Balcony

Above the bronze gates and the crowded square,

Whose very fountains seem for ecstasy

To toss their silver lances in the air,

And stretching out weak hands to East and West

In vain sends peace to peaceless lands, to restless nations rest.

 

Is not yon lingering orange after-glow

That stays to vex the moon more fair than all

Rome's lordliest pageants! strange, a year ago

I knelt before some crimson Cardinal

Who bare the Host across the Esquiline,

And now - those common poppies in the wheat seem twice as fine.

 

The blue-green beanfields yonder, tremulous

With the last shower, sweeter perfume bring

Through this cool evening than the odorous

Flame-jewelled censers the young deacons swing,

When the grey priest unlocks the curtained shrine,

And makes God's body from the common fruit of corn and vine.

 

Poor Fra Giovanni bawling at the mass

Were out of tune now, for a small brown bird

Sings overhead, and through the long cool grass

I see that throbbing throat which once I heard

On starlit hills of flower-starred Arcady,

Once where the white and crescent sand of Salamis meets sea.

 

Sweet is the swallow twittering on the eaves

At daybreak, when the mower whets his scythe,

And stock-doves murmur, and the milkmaid leaves

Her little lonely bed, and carols blithe

To see the heavy-lowing cattle wait

Stretching their huge and dripping mouths across the farmyard gate.

 

And sweet the hops upon the Kentish leas,

And sweet the wind that lifts the new-mown hay,

And sweet the fretful swarms of grumbling bees

That round and round the linden blossoms play;

And sweet the heifer breathing in the stall,

And the green bursting figs that hang upon the red-brick wall,

 

And sweet to hear the cuckoo mock the spring

While the last violet loiters by the well,

And sweet to hear the shepherd Daphnis sing

The song of Linus through a sunny dell

Of warm Arcadia where the corn is gold

And the slight lithe-limbed reapers dance about the wattled fold.

 

And sweet with young Lycoris to recline

In some Illyrian valley far away,

Where canopied on herbs amaracine

We too might waste the summer-tranced day

Matching our reeds in sportive rivalry,

While far beneath us frets the troubled purple of the sea.

 

But sweeter far if silver-sandalled foot

Of some long-hidden God should ever tread

The Nuneham meadows, if with reeded flute

Pressed to his lips some Faun might raise his head

By the green water-flags, ah! sweet indeed

To see the heavenly herdsman call his white-fleeced flock to feed.

 

Then sing to me thou tuneful chorister,

Though what thou sing'st be thine own requiem!

Tell me thy tale thou hapless chronicler

Of thine own tragedies! do not contemn

These unfamiliar haunts, this English field,

For many a lovely coronal our northern isle can yield

 

Which Grecian meadows know not, many a rose

Which all day long in vales AEolian

A lad might seek in vain for over-grows

Our hedges like a wanton courtesan

Unthrifty of its beauty; lilies too

Ilissos never mirrored star our streams, and cockles blue

 

Dot the green wheat which, though they are the signs

For swallows going south, would never spread

Their azure tents between the Attic vines;

Even that little weed of ragged red,

Which bids the robin pipe, in Arcady

Would be a trespasser, and many an unsung elegy

 

Sleeps in the reeds that fringe our winding Thames

Which to awake were sweeter ravishment

Than ever Syrinx wept for; diadems

Of brown bee-studded orchids which were meant

For Cytheraea's brows are hidden here

Unknown to Cytheraea, and by yonder pasturing steer

 

There is a tiny yellow daffodil,

The butterfly can see it from afar,

Although one summer evening's dew could fill

Its little cup twice over ere the star

Had called the lazy shepherd to his fold

And be no prodigal; each leaf is flecked with spotted gold

 

As if Jove's gorgeous leman Danae

Hot from his gilded arms had stooped to kiss

The trembling petals, or young Mercury

Low-flying to the dusky ford of Dis

Had with one feather of his pinions

Just brushed them! the slight stem which bears the burden of its suns

 

Is hardly thicker than the gossamer,

Or poor Arachne's silver tapestry, -

Men say it bloomed upon the sepulchre

Of One I sometime worshipped, but to me

It seems to bring diviner memories

Of faun-loved Heliconian glades and blue nymph-haunted seas,

 

Of an untrodden vale at Tempe where

On the clear river's marge Narcissus lies,

The tangle of the forest in his hair,

The silence of the woodland in his eyes,

Wooing that drifting imagery which is

No sooner kissed than broken; memories of Salmacis

 

Who is not boy nor girl and yet is both,

Fed by two fires and unsatisfied

Through their excess, each passion being loth

For love's own sake to leave the other's side

Yet killing love by staying; memories

Of Oreads peeping through the leaves of silent moonlit trees,

 

Of lonely Ariadne on the wharf

At Naxos, when she saw the treacherous crew

Far out at sea, and waved her crimson scarf

And called false Theseus back again nor knew

That Dionysos on an amber pard

Was close behind her; memories of what Maeonia's bard

 

With sightless eyes beheld, the wall of Troy,

Queen Helen lying in the ivory room,

And at her side an amorous red-lipped boy

Trimming with dainty hand his helmet's plume,

And far away the moil, the shout, the groan,

As Hector shielded off the spear and Ajax hurled the stone;

 

Of winged Perseus with his flawless sword

Cleaving the snaky tresses of the witch,

And all those tales imperishably stored

In little Grecian urns, freightage more rich

Than any gaudy galleon of Spain

Bare from the Indies ever! these at least bring back again,

 

For well I know they are not dead at all,

The ancient Gods of Grecian poesy:

They are asleep, and when they hear thee call

Will wake and think 't is very Thessaly,

This Thames the Daulian waters, this cool glade

The yellow-irised mead where once young Itys laughed and played.

 

If it was thou dear jasmine-cradled bird

Who from the leafy stillness of thy throne

Sang to the wondrous boy, until he heard

The horn of Atalanta faintly blown

Across the Cumnor hills, and wandering

Through Bagley wood at evening found the Attic poets' spring, -

 

Ah! tiny sober-suited advocate

That pleadest for the moon against the day!

If thou didst make the shepherd seek his mate

On that sweet questing, when Proserpina

Forgot it was not Sicily and leant

Across the mossy Sandford stile in ravished wonderment, -

 

Light-winged and bright-eyed miracle of the wood!

If ever thou didst soothe with melody

One of that little clan, that brotherhood

Which loved the morning-star of Tuscany

More than the perfect sun of Raphael

And is immortal, sing to me! for I too love thee well.

 

Sing on! sing on! let the dull world grow young,

Let elemental things take form again,

And the old shapes of Beauty walk among

The simple garths and open crofts, as when

The son of Leto bare the willow rod,

And the soft sheep and shaggy goats followed the boyish God.

 

Sing on! sing on! and Bacchus will be here

Astride upon his gorgeous Indian throne,

And over whimpering tigers shake the spear

With yellow ivy crowned and gummy cone,

While at his side the wanton Bassarid

Will throw the lion by the mane and catch the mountain kid!

 

Sing on! and I will wear the leopard skin,

And steal the mooned wings of Ashtaroth,

Upon whose icy chariot we could win

Cithaeron in an hour ere the froth

Has over-brimmed the wine-vat or the Faun

Ceased from the treading! ay, before the flickering lamp of dawn

 

Has scared the hooting owlet to its nest,

And warned the bat to close its filmy vans,

Some Maenad girl with vine-leaves on her breast

Will filch their beech-nuts from the sleeping Pans

So softly that the little nested thrush

Will never wake, and then with shrilly laugh and leap will rush

 

Down the green valley where the fallen dew

Lies thick beneath the elm and count her store,

Till the brown Satyrs in a jolly crew

Trample the loosestrife down along the shore,

And where their horned master sits in state

Bring strawberries and bloomy plums upon a wicker crate!

 

Sing on! and soon with passion-wearied face

Through the cool leaves Apollo's lad will come,

The Tyrian prince his bristled boar will chase

Adown the chestnut-copses all a-bloom,

And ivory-limbed, grey-eyed, with look of pride,

After yon velvet-coated deer the virgin maid will ride.

 

Sing on! and I the dying boy will see

Stain with his purple blood the waxen bell

That overweighs the jacinth, and to me

The wretched Cyprian her woe will tell,

And I will kiss her mouth and streaming eyes,

And lead her to the myrtle-hidden grove where Adon lies!

 

Cry out aloud on Itys! memory

That foster-brother of remorse and pain

Drops poison in mine ear, - O to be free,

To burn one's old ships! and to launch again

Into the white-plumed battle of the waves

And fight old Proteus for the spoil of coral-flowered caves!

 

O for Medea with her poppied spell!

O for the secret of the Colchian shrine!

O for one leaf of that pale asphodel

Which binds the tired brows of Proserpine,

And sheds such wondrous dews at eve that she

Dreams of the fields of Enna, by the far Sicilian sea,

 

Where oft the golden-girdled bee she chased

From lily to lily on the level mead,

Ere yet her sombre Lord had bid her taste

The deadly fruit of that pomegranate seed,

Ere the black steeds had harried her away

Down to the faint and flowerless land, the sick and sunless day.

 

O for one midnight and as paramour

The Venus of the little Melian farm!

O that some antique statue for one hour

Might wake to passion, and that I could charm

The Dawn at Florence from its dumb despair,

Mix with those mighty limbs and make that giant breast my lair!

 

Sing on! sing on! I would be drunk with life,

Drunk with the trampled vintage of my youth,

I would forget the wearying wasted strife,

The riven veil, the Gorgon eyes of Truth,

The prayerless vigil and the cry for prayer,

The barren gifts, the lifted arms, the dull insensate air!

 

Sing on! sing on! O feathered Niobe,

Thou canst make sorrow beautiful, and steal

From joy its sweetest music, not as we

Who by dead voiceless silence strive to heal

Our too untented wounds, and do but keep

Pain barricadoed in our hearts, and murder pillowed sleep.

 

Sing louder yet, why must I still behold

The wan white face of that deserted Christ,

Whose bleeding hands my hands did once enfold,

Whose smitten lips my lips so oft have kissed,

And now in mute and marble misery

Sits in his lone dishonoured House and weeps, perchance for me?

 

O Memory cast down thy wreathed shell!

Break thy hoarse lute O sad Melpomene!

O Sorrow, Sorrow keep thy cloistered cell

Nor dim with tears this limpid Castaly!

Cease, Philomel, thou dost the forest wrong

To vex its sylvan quiet with such wild impassioned song!

 

Cease, cease, or if 't is anguish to be dumb

Take from the pastoral thrush her simpler air,

Whose jocund carelessness doth more become

This English woodland than thy keen despair,

Ah! cease and let the north wind bear thy lay

Back to the rocky hills of Thrace, the stormy Daulian bay.

 

A moment more, the startled leaves had stirred,

Endymion would have passed across the mead

Moonstruck with love, and this still Thames had heard

Pan plash and paddle groping for some reed

To lure from her blue cave that Naiad maid

Who for such piping listens half in joy and half afraid.

 

A moment more, the waking dove had cooed,

The silver daughter of the silver sea

With the fond gyves of clinging hands had wooed

Her wanton from the chase, and Dryope

Had thrust aside the branches of her oak

To see the lusty gold-haired lad rein in his snorting yoke.

 

A moment more, the trees had stooped to kiss

Pale Daphne just awakening from the swoon

Of tremulous laurels, lonely Salmacis

Had bared his barren beauty to the moon,

And through the vale with sad voluptuous smile

Antinous had wandered, the red lotus of the Nile

 

Down leaning from his black and clustering hair,

To shade those slumberous eyelids' caverned bliss,

Or else on yonder grassy slope with bare

High-tuniced limbs unravished Artemis

Had bade her hounds give tongue, and roused the deer

From his green ambuscade with shrill halloo and pricking spear.

 

Lie still, lie still, O passionate heart, lie still!

O Melancholy, fold thy raven wing!

O sobbing Dryad, from thy hollow hill

Come not with such despondent answering!

No more thou winged Marsyas complain,

Apollo loveth not to hear such troubled songs of pain!

 

It was a dream, the glade is tenantless,

No soft Ionian laughter moves the air,

The Thames creeps on in sluggish leadenness,

And from the copse left desolate and bare

Fled is young Bacchus with his revelry,

Yet still from Nuneham wood there comes that thrilling melody

 

So sad, that one might think a human heart

Brake in each separate note, a quality

Which music sometimes has, being the Art

Which is most nigh to tears and memory;

Poor mourning Philomel, what dost thou fear?

Thy sister doth not haunt these fields, Pandion is not here,

 

Here is no cruel Lord with murderous blade,

No woven web of bloody heraldries,

But mossy dells for roving comrades made,

Warm valleys where the tired student lies

With half-shut book, and many a winding walk

Where rustic lovers stray at eve in happy simple talk.

 

The harmless rabbit gambols with its young

Across the trampled towing-path, where late

A troop of laughing boys in jostling throng

Cheered with their noisy cries the racing eight;

The gossamer, with ravelled silver threads,

Works at its little loom, and from the dusky red-eaved sheds

 

Of the lone Farm a flickering light shines out

Where the swinked shepherd drives his bleating flock

Back to their wattled sheep-cotes, a faint shout

Comes from some Oxford boat at Sandford lock,

And starts the moor-hen from the sedgy rill,

And the dim lengthening shadows flit like swallows up the hill.

 

The heron passes homeward to the mere,

The blue mist creeps among the shivering trees,

Gold world by world the silent stars appear,

And like a blossom blown before the breeze

A white moon drifts across the shimmering sky,

Mute arbitress of all thy sad, thy rapturous threnody.

 

She does not heed thee, wherefore should she heed,

She knows Endymion is not far away;

'Tis I, 'tis I, whose soul is as the reed

Which has no message of its own to play,

So pipes another's bidding, it is I,

Drifting with every wind on the wide sea of misery.

 

Ah! the brown bird has ceased: one exquisite trill

About the sombre woodland seems to cling

Dying in music, else the air is still,

So still that one might hear the bat's small wing

Wander and wheel above the pines, or tell

Each tiny dew-drop dripping from the bluebell's brimming cell.

 

And far away across the lengthening wold,

Across the willowy flats and thickets brown,

Magdalen's tall tower tipped with tremulous gold

Marks the long High Street of the little town,

And warns me to return; I must not wait,

Hark ! 't is the curfew booming from the bell at Christ Church gate.

 

Bluebird on a telephone line / How are you? I'm feeling fine / Sweetly do I whisper your name / Lonely solo taxi ride to a cheap motel / On the wrong side of the tracks / The facts are tricky to explain / Cold front bearing down / Blowing in from Birmingham / By dawn the window's wet with icy rain / Behind fourteen doors / A sad parade of paramours / Are throwing little white rocks at sorrow's window pane / Me, I've found someone to love more than the rain (Jim White)

 

© Oberfeld, Darmstadt, 2013, Florian Fritsch

 

see the original photograph on www.hobokollektiv.net

Henk and Tobi sharing a kiss in the rain.

And so to the weekend again. And what might be the last orchid-free weekend until well into June or even August.

 

So, enjoy the churches while you can.

 

Saturday, and not much really planned. We get up at half six with it fully light outside. The cloud and drizzle had not arrived, instead it was pretty clear and sunny.

 

No time for thinking about going out to take shots, as we had hunter-gathering to do.

 

In fact, we didn't need much, just the usual stuff to keep us going. That and the car was running on fumes. So we will that up first, and then into Tesco and round and round we go, fully the trolley up. It being Mother's Day on Saturday, we were having Jen round on Sunday, we were to have steak, so I get mushrooms.

 

And once back, we have breakfast then go to Preston for the actual steak, three ribeyes, all cut from the same stip. Jools had gone to look at the garden centre for ideas as we're going to dig up the raspberries, so just wondering what to put in their place.

 

By then the rain had come, and so we dashed back to the car, and on the way home called in at two churches.

 

First off was Goodnestone, just the other side of Wingham.

 

Its a fine estate church, covered in wonderfully knapped bricks, giving it an East Anglian feel. Before we went in, we sheltered under a tree to much on a sausage roll I had bought at the butcher, that done, we go to the church, which is open.

 

I have been here quite recently, five years back, and in truth no much glass to record, but I do my best, leave a fiver of the weekly collection and we drove over the fields to Eastry.

 

St Mary is an impressive church, with carved and decorated west face of the Norman tower, at its base an odd lean-to porch has been created, leading into the church, which does have interest other than the 35 painted medallions high in the Chancel Arch, once the backdrop to the Rood.

 

I snap them with the big lens, and the windows too. A warden points out what looks like a very much older painted window high among the roof timbers in the east wall of the Chancel.

 

I get a shot, which is good enough, but even with a 400mm lens, is some crop.

 

I finish up and we go home, taking it carefully along nearly flooded roads.

 

Being a Saturday, there is football, though nothing much of interest until three when Norwich kick off against Stoke: could they kick it on a wet Saturday afternoon in the Potteries?

 

No. No, they couldn't.

 

Ended 0-0, City second best, barely laid a glove on the Stoke goal.

 

And then spots galore: Ireland v England in the egg-chasing, Citeh v Burnley in the Cup and Chelsea v Everton in the league, all live on various TV channels.

 

I watch the first half of the rugby, then switch over when England were reduced to 14, so did enjoy the lad Haarland score another hat-trick in a 6-0 demolition.

 

And that was that, another day over with.....

 

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Set away from the main street but on one of the earliest sites in the village, flint-built Eastry church has an over restored appearance externally but this gives way to a noteworthy interior. Built in the early thirteenth century by its patrons, Christ Church Canterbury, it was always designed to be a statement of both faith and power. The nave has a clerestory above round piers whilst the east nave wall has a pair of quatrefoils pierced through into the chancel. However this feature pales into insignificance when one sees what stands between them - a square panel containing 35 round paintings in medallions. There are four deigns including the Lily for Our Lady; a dove; Lion; Griffin. They would have formed a backdrop to the Rood which would have been supported on a beam the corbels of which survive below the paintings. On the centre pier of the south aisle is a very rare feature - a beautifully inscribed perpetual calendar or `Dominical Circle` to help find the Dominical letter of the year. Dating from the fourteenth century it divides the calendar into a sequence of 28 years. The reredos is an alabaster structure dating from the Edwardian period - a rather out of place object in a church of this form, but a good piece of work in its own right. On the west wall is a good early 19th century Royal Arms with hatchments on either side and there are many good monuments both ledger slabs and hanging tablets. Of the latter the finest commemorates John Harvey who died in 1794. It shows his ship the Brunswick fighting with all guns blazing with the French ship the Vengeur. John Bacon carved the Elder this detailed piece of work.

 

www.kentchurches.info/church.asp?p=Eastry

 

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Above the Chancel Arch, enclosed within a rectangular frame, are rows of seven "medallion" wall paintings; the lower group was discovered in 1857 and the rest in 1903. They remained in a rather dilapidated state until the Canterbury Cathedral Wall Paintings Department brought them back to life.

 

The medallions are evidently of the 13th Century, having been painted while the mortar was still wet. Each medallion contains one of four motifs:

 

The trefoil flower, pictured left, is perhaps a symbol of the Blessed Virgin Mary to whom the church is dedicated; or symbolic of Christ.

 

The lion; symbolic of the Resurrection

  

Doves, either singly, or in pairs, represent the Holy Spirit

  

The Griffin represents evil, over which victory is won by the power of the Resurrection and the courage of the Christian.

 

www.ewbchurches.org.uk/eastrychurchhistory.htm

 

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EASTRY,

THE next parish north-eastward from Knolton is Eastry. At the time of taking the survey of Domesday, it was of such considerable account, that it not only gave name, as it does at present, to the hundred, but to the greatest part of the lath in which it stands, now called the lath of St. Augustine. There are two boroughs in this parish, viz. the borough of Hardenden, which is within the upper half hundred of Downhamford, and comprehends the districts of Hardenden, Selson and Skrinkling, and the borough of Eastry, the borsholder of which is chosen at Eastry-court, and comprehends all the rest of the parish, excepting so much of it as lies within that part of the borough of Felderland, which is within this parish.

 

THE PARISH OF EASTRY, a healthy and not unpleasant situation, is about two miles and an half from north to south, but it is much narrower the other way, at the broadest extent of which it is not more than a mile and an half. The village of Eastry is situated on a pleasing eminence, almost in the centre of the parish, exhiblting a picturesque appearance from many points of view. The principal street in it is called Eastrystreet; from it branch off Mill street, Church-street and Brook-street. In Mill street is a spacious handsome edisice lately erected there, as a house of industry, for the poor of the several united parishes of Eastry, Norborne, Betshanger, Tilmanstone, Waldershare, Coldred, Lydden, Shebbertswell, Swynfield, Wootton, Denton, Chillenden and Knolton. In Churchstreet, on the east side, stands the church, with the court-lodge and parsonage adjoining the church-yard; in this street is likewise the vicarage. In Brook-street, is a neat modern house, the residence of Wm. Boteler, esq. and another belonging to Mr. Thomas Rammell, who resides in it. Mention will be found hereafter, under the description of the borough of Hernden, in this parish, of the descent and arms of the Botelers resident there for many generations. Thomas Boteler, who died possessed of that estate in 1651, left three sons, the youngest of whom, Richard, was of Brook-street, and died in 1682; whose great-grandson, W. Boteler, esq. is now of Brook-street; a gentleman to whom the editor is much indebted for his communications and assistance, towards the description of this hundred, and its adjoining neighbourhood. He has been twice married; first to Sarah, daughter and coheir of Thomas Fuller, esq. of Statenborough, by whom he has one son, William Fuller, now a fellow of St. Peter's college, Cambridge: secondly, to Mary, eldest daughter of John Harvey, esq. of Sandwich and Hernden, late captain of the royal navy, by whom he has five sons and three daughters. He bears for his arms, Argent, on three escutcheons, sable, three covered cups, or; which coat was granted to his ancestor, Richard Boteler, esq. of Hernden, by Cooke, clar. in 1589. Mr. Boteler, of Eastry, is the last surviving male of the family, both of Hernden and Brook-street. Eastry-street, comprizing the neighbourhood of the above mentioned branches, may be said to contain about sixty-four houses.

 

At the south-east boundary of this parish lies the hamlet of Updown, adjoining to Ham and Betshanger, in the former of which parishes some account of it has been already given. At the southern bounds, adjoining to Tilmanstone, lies the hamlet of Westone, formerly called Wendestone. On the western side lies the borough of Hernden, which although in this parish, is yet within the hundred of Downhamford and manor of Adisham; in the southern part of it is Shrinkling, or Shingleton, as it is now called, and the hamlet of Hernden. At the northern part of this borough lie the hamlets and estates of Selson, Wells, and Gore. Towards the northern boundary of the parish, in the road to Sandwich, is the hamlet of Statenborough, and at a small distance from it is that part of the borough of Felderland, or Fenderland, as it is usually called, within this parish, in which, adjoining the road which branches off to Word, is a small seat, now the property and residence of Mrs. Dare, widow of Wm. Dare, esq. who resides in it. (fn. 1)

 

Round the village the lands are for a little distance, and on towards Statenborough, inclosed with hedges and trees, but the rest of the parish is in general an open uninclosed country of arable land, like the neighbouring ones before described; the soil of it towards the north is most fertile, in the other parts it is rather thin, being much inclined to chalk, except in the bottoms, where it is much of a stiff clay, for this parish is a continued inequality of hill and dale; notwithstanding the above, there is a great deal of good fertile land in the parish, which meets on an average rent at fifteen shillings an acre. There is no wood in it. The parish contains about two thousand six hundred and fifty acres; the yearly rents of it are assessed to the poor at 2679l.

 

At the south end of the village is a large pond, called Butsole; and adjoining to it on the east side, a field, belonging to Brook-street estate, called the Butts; from whence it is conjectured that Butts were formerly erected in it, for the practice of archery among the inhabitants.

 

A fair is held here for cattle, pedlary, and toys, on October the 2d, (formerly on St. Matthew's day, September the 21st) yearly.

 

IN 1792, MR. BOTELER, of Brook-street, discovered, on digging a cellar in the garden of a cottage, situated eastward of the highway leading from Eastrycross to Butsole, an antient burying ground, used as such in the latter time of the Roman empire in Britain, most probably by the inhabitants of this parish, and the places contiguous to it. He caused several graves to be opened, and found with the skeletons, fibulæ, beads, knives,umbones of shields, &c. and in one a glass vessel. From other skeletons, which have been dug up in the gardens nearer the cross, it is imagined, that they extended on the same side the road up to the cross, the ground of which is now pretty much covered with houses; the heaps of earth, or barrows, which formerly remained over them, have long since been levelled, by the great length of time and the labour of the husbandman; the graves were very thick, in rows parallel to each other, in a direction from east to west.

 

St. Ivo's well, mentioned by Nierembergius, in Historia de Miraculis Natureæ, lib. ii. cap. 33; which I noticed in my folio edition as not being able to find any tradition of in this parish, I have since found was at a place that formerly went by the name of Estre, and afterwards by that of Plassiz, near St. Ives, in Huntingdonshire. See Gales Scriptores, xv. vol. i. p.p. 271, 512.

 

This place gave birth to Henry de Eastry, who was first a monk, and then prior of Christ-church, in Canterbury; who, for his learning as well as his worthy acts, became an ornament, not only to the society he presided over, but to his country in general. He continued prior thirty-seven years, and died, far advanced in life, in 1222.

 

THIS PLACE, in the time of the Saxons, appears to have been part of the royal domains, accordingly Simon of Durham, monk and precentor of that church, in his history, stiles it villa regalis, quæ vulgari dicitur Easterige pronuncione, (the royal ville, or manor, which in the vulgar pronunciation was called Easterige), which shews the antient pre-eminence and rank of this place, for these villæ regales, or regiæ, as Bede calls them, of the Saxons, were usually placed upon or near the spot, where in former ages the Roman stations had been before; and its giving name both to the lath and hundred in which it is situated corroborates the superior consequence it was then held in. Egbert, king of Kent, was in possession of it about the year 670, at which time his two cousins, Ethelred and Ethelbright, sons of his father's elder brother Ermenfrid, who had been entrusted to his care by their uncle, the father of Egbert, were, as writers say, murdered in his palace here by his order, at the persuasion of one Thunnor, a slattering courtier, lest they should disturb him in the possession of the crown. After which Thunnor buried them in the king's hall here, under the cloth of estate, from whence, as antient tradition reports, their bodies were afterwards removed to a small chapel belonging to the palace, and buried there under the altar at the east end of it, and afterwards again with much pomp to the church of Ramsey abbey. To expiate the king's guilt, according to the custom of those times, he gave to Domneva, called also Ermenburga, their sister, a sufficient quantity of land in the isle of Thanet, on which she might found a monastery.

 

How long it continued among the royal domains, I have not found; but before the termination of the Saxon heptarchy, THE MANOR OF EASTRY was become part of the possessions of the see of Canterbury, and it remained so till the year 811, when archbishop Wilfred exchanged it with his convent of Christchurch for their manor of Bourne, since from the archbishop's possession of it called Bishopsbourne. After which, in the year 979 king Ægelred, usually called Ethelred, increased the church's estates here, by giving to it the lands of his inheritance in Estrea, (fn. 2) free from all secular service and siscal tribute, except the repelling of invasions and the repairing of bridges and castles, usually stiled the trinoda necessitas; (fn. 3) and in the possession of the prior and convent bove-mentioned, this manor continued at the taking of the survey of Domesday, being entered in it under the general title of Terra Monachorum Archiepi; that is, the land of the monks of the archbishop, as follows:

 

In the lath of Estrei in Estrei hundred, the archbishop himself holds Estrei. It was taxed at Seven sulings. The arable land is . . . . In demesne there are three carucates and seventy two villeins, with twenty-two borderers, having twenty-four carucates. There is one mill and a half of thirty shillings, and three salt pits of four shillings, and eighteen acres of meadow. Wood for the pannage of ten hogs.

 

After which, this manor continued in the possession of the priory, and in the 10th year of king Edward II. the prior obtained a grant of free-warren in all his demesne lands in it, among others; about which time it was valued at 65l. 3s. after which king Henry VI. in his 28th year, confirmed the above liberty, and granted to it a market, to be held at Eastry weekly on a Tuesday, and a fair yearly, on the day of St. Matthew the Apostle and Evangelist; in which state it continued till the dissolution of the priory in the 31st year of king Henry VIII. when it came in to the king's hands, where it did not remain long, for he settled it, among other premises, in the 33d year of his reign, on his new created dean and chapter of Canterbury, part of whose possessions it continues at this time. A court leet and court baron is held for this manor.

 

The manerial rights, profits of courts, royalties, &c. the dean and chapter retain in their own hands; but the demesne lands of the manor, with the courtlodge, which is a large antient mansion, situated adjoining to the church-yard, have been from time to time demised on a benesicial lease. The house is large, partly antient and partly modern, having at different times undergone great alterations. In the south wall are the letters T. A. N. in flint, in large capitals, being the initials of Thomas and Anne Nevinson. Mr. Isaac Bargrave, father of the present lessee, new fronted the house, and the latter in 1786 put the whole in complete repair, in doing which, he pulled down a considerable part of the antient building, consisting of stone walls of great strength and thickness, bringing to view some gothic arched door ways of stone, which proved the house to have been of such construction formerly, and to have been a very antient building. The chapel, mentioned before, is at the east end of the house. The east window, consisting of three compartments, is still visible, though the spaces are filled up, it having for many years been converted into a kitchen, and before the last alteration by Mr. Bargrave the whole of it was entire.

 

At this mansion, then in the hands of the prior and convent of Christ-church, archbishop Thomas Becket, after his stight from Northampton in the year 1164, concealed himself for eight days, and then, on Nov. 10, embarked at Sandwich for France. (fn. 4)

 

The present lessee is Isaac Bargrave, esq. who resides at the court-lodge, whose ancestors have been lessees of this estate for many years past.

 

THE NEVINSONS, as lessees, resided at the courtlodge of Eastry for many years. They were originally of Brigend, in Wetherell, in Cumberland. They bore for their arms, Argent, a chevron, between three eagles displayed, azure. Many of them lie buried in Eastry church. (fn. 5)

 

THE FAMILY of Bargrave, alias Bargar, was originally of Bridge, and afterwards of the adjoining parish of Patrixbourne; where John Bargrave, eldest son of Robert, built the seat of Bifrons, and resided at it, of whom notice has already been taken in vol. ix. of this history, p. 280. Isaac Bargrave, the sixth son of Robert above-mentioned, and younger brother of John, who built Bifrons, was ancestor of the Bargraves, of Eastry; he was S. T. P. and dean of Canterbury, a man of strict honour and high principles of loyalty, for which he suffered the most cruel treatment. He died in 1642, having married in 1618 Elizabeth, daughter of John Dering, esq. of Egerton, by Elizabeth, sister of Edward lord Wotton, the son of John Dering, esq. of Surrenden, by Margaret Brent. Their descendant, Isaac Bargrave, esq. now living, was an eminent solicitor in London, from which he has retired for some years, and now resides at Eastry-court, of which he is the present lessee. He married Sarah, eldest daughter of George Lynch, M. D. of Canterbury, who died at Herne in 1787, S.P. They bear for their arms, Or, on a pale gules, a sword, the blade argent, pomelled, or, on a chief vert three bezants.

 

SHRINKLING, alias SHINGLETON, the former of which is its original name, though now quite lost, is a small manor at the south-west boundary of this pa Kent, anno 1619. rish, adjoining to Nonington. It is within the borough of Heronden, or Hardonden, as it is now called, and as such, is within the upper half hundred of Downhamford. This manor had antiently owners of the same name; one of whom, Sir William de Scrinkling, held it in king Edward I.'s reign, and was succeeded by Sir Walter de Scrinkling his son, who held it by knight's service of Hamo de Crevequer, (fn. 6) and in this name it continued in the 20th year of king Edward III.

 

Soon after which it appears to have been alienated to William Langley, of Knolton, from which name it passed in like manner as Knolton to the Peytons and the Narboroughs, and thence by marriage to Sir Thomas D'Aeth, whose grandson Sir Narborough D'Aeth, bart. now of Knolton, is at present entitled to it.

 

There was a chapel belonging to this manor, the ruins of which are still visible in the wood near it, which was esteemed as a chapel of ease to the mother church of Eastry, and was appropriated with it by archbishop Richard, Becket's immediate successor, to the almory of the priory of Christ-church; but the chapel itself seems to have become desolate many years before the dissolution of the priory, most probably soon after the family of Shrinkling became extinct; the Langleys, who resided at the adjoining manor of Knolton, having no occasion for the use of it. The chapel stood in Shingleton wood, near the south east corner; the foundations of it have been traced, though level with the surface, and not easily discovered. There is now on this estate only one house, built within memory, before which there was only a solitary barn, and no remains of the antient mansion of it.

 

HERONDEN, alias HARDENDEN, now usually called HERONDEN, is a district in this parish, situated about a mile northward from Shingleton, within the borough of its own name, the whole of which is within the upper half hundred of Downhamford. It was once esteemed as a manor, though it has not had even the name of one for many years past, the manor of Adisham claiming over it. The mansion of it was antiently the residence of a family of the same name, who bore for their arms, Argent, a heron with one talon erect, gaping for breath, sable. These arms are on a shield, which is far from modern, in Maidstone church, being quarterly, Heronden as above, with sable, three escallop shells, two and one, argent; and in a window of Lincoln's Inn chapel is a coat of arms of a modern date, being that of Anthony Heronden, esq. Argent, a heron, azure, between three escallops, sable. One of this family of Heronden lies buried in this church, and in the time of Robert Glover, Somerset herald, his portrait and coat of arms, in brass, were remaining on his tombstone. The coat of arms is still extant in very old rolls and registers in the Heralds office, where the family is stiled Heronden, of Heronden, in Eastry; nor is the name less antient, as appears by deeds which commence from the reign of Henry III. which relate to this estate and name; but after this family had remained possessed of this estate for so many years it at last descended down in king Richard II.'s reign, to Sir William Heronden, from whom it passed most probably either by gift or sale, to one of the family of Boteler, or Butler, then resident in this neighbourhood, descended from those of this name, formerly seated at Butler's sleet, in Ash, whose ancestor Thomas Pincerna, or le Boteler, held that manor in king John's reign, whence his successors assumed the name of Butler, alias Boteler, or as they were frequently written Botiller, and bore for their arms, One or more covered cups, differently placed and blazoned. In this family the estate descended to John Boteler, who lived in the time of king Henry VI. and resided at Sandwich, of which town he was several times mayor, and one of the burgesses in two parliaments of that reign; he lies buried in St. Peter's church there. His son Richard, who was also of Sandwich, had a grant of arms in 1470, anno 11th Edward IV. by Thomas Holme, norroy, viz. Gyronny of six, argent and sable, a covered cup, or, between three talbots heads, erased and counterchanged of the field, collared, gules, garnished of the third. His great-grandson Henry Boteler rebuilt the mansion of Heronden, to which he removed in 1572, being the last of his family who resided at Sandwich. He had the above grant of arms confirmed to him, and died in 1580, being buried in Eastry church. Richard Boteler, of Heronden, his eldest son by his first wife, resided at this seat, and in 1589 obtained a grant from Robert Cook, clarencieux, of a new coat of arms, viz. Argent, on three escutcheons, sable, three convered cups, or. Ten years after which, intending as it should seem, to shew himself a descendant of the family of this name, seated at Graveney, but then extinct, he obtained in 1599 a grant of their arms from William Dethic, garter, and William Camden, clarencieux, to him and his brother William, viz. Quarterly, first and fourth, sable, three covered cups, or, within a bordure, argent; second and third, Argent, a fess, chequy, argent and gules, in chief three cross-croslets of the last, as appears (continues the grant) on a gravestone in Graveney church. He died in 1600, and was buried in Eastry church, leaving issue among other children Jonathan and Thomas. (fn. 7) Jonathan Boteler, the eldest son, of Hernden, died unmarried possessed of it in 1626, upon which it came to his next surviving brother Thomas Boteler, of Rowling, who upon that removed to Hernden, and soon afterwards alienated that part of it, since called THE MIDDLE FARM, to Mr. Henry Pannell, from whom soon afterwards, but how I know not, it came into the family of Reynolds; from which name it was about fifty years since alienated to John Dekewer, esq. of Hackney, who dying in 1762, devised it to his nephew John Dekewer, esq. of Hackney, the present possessor of it.

 

THIS PARISH is within the ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION of the diocese of Canterbury, and deanry of Sandwich.

 

The church, which is exempted from the archdeacon, is dedicated to St. Mary; it is a large handsome building, consisting of a nave and two side isles, a chancel at the east end, remarkably long, and a square tower, which is very large, at the west end, in which are five very unmusical bells. The church is well kept and neatly paved, and exhibits a noble appearance, to which the many handsome monuments in it contribute much. The arch over the west door is circular, but no other parts of the church has any shew of great antiquity. In the chancel are monuments for the Paramors and the Fullers, of Statenborough, arms of the latter, Argent, three bars, and a canton, gules. A monument for several of the Bargrave family. An elegant pyramidial one, on which is a bust and emblematical sculpture for John Broadley, gent. many years surgeon at Dover, obt. 1784. Several gravestones, with brasses, for the Nevinsons. A gravestone for Joshua Paramour, gent. buried 1650. Underneath this chancel are two vaults, for the families of Paramour and Bargrave. In the nave, a monument for Anne, daughter of Solomon Harvey, gent. of this parish, ob. 1751; arms, Argent, on a chevron, between three lions gambs, sable, armed gules, three crescents, or; another for William Dare, esq. late of Fenderland, in this parish, obt. 1770; arms, Gules, a chevron vaire, between three crescents, argent, impaling argent, on a cross, sable, four lions passant, quardant of the field, for Read.—Against the wall an inscription in Latin, for the Drue Astley Cressemer, A. M. forty-eight years vicar of this parish, obt. 1746; he presented the communion plate to this church and Worth, and left a sum of money to be laid out in ornamenting this church, at which time the antient stalls, which were in the chancel, were taken away, and the chancel was ceiled, and the church otherwise beautified; arms, Argent, on a bend engrailed, sable, three cross-croslets, fitchee, or. A monument for several of the Botelers, of this parish; arms, Boteler, argent, on three escutcheons, sable, three covered cups, or, impaling Morrice. Against a pillar, a tablet and inscription, shewing that in a vault lieth Catherine, wife of John Springett, citizen and apothecary of London. He died in 1770; arms, Springett, per fess, argent and gules, a fess wavy, between three crescents, counterchanged, impaling Harvey. On the opposite pillar another, for the Rev. Richard Harvey, fourteen years vicar of this parish, obt. 1772. A monument for Richard Kelly, of Eastry, obt. 1768; arms, Two lions rampant, supporting a castle. Against the wall, an elegant sculptured monument, in alto relievo, for Sarah, wise of William Boteler, a daughter of Thomas Fuller, esq. late of Statenborough, obt. 1777, æt. 29; she died in childbed, leaving one son, William Fuller Boteler; arms at bottom, Boteler, as above, an escutcheon of pretence, Fuller, quartering Paramor. An elegant pyramidal marble and tablet for Robert Bargrave, of this parish, obt. 1779, for Elizabeth his wife, daughter of Sir Francis Leigh, of Hawley; and for Robert Bargrave, their only son, proctor in Doctors Commons, obt. 1774, whose sole surviving daughter Rebecca married James Wyborne, of Sholdon; arms, Bargrave, with a mullet, impaling Leigh. In the cross isle, near the chancel called the Boteler's isle, are several memorials for the Botelers. Adjoining to these, are three other gravestones, all of which have been inlaid, but the brasses are gone; they were for the same family, and on one of them was lately remaining the antient arms of Boteler, Girony of six pieces, &c. impaling ermine of three spots. Under the church are vaults, for the families of Springett, Harvey, Dare, and Bargrave. In the church-yard, on the north side of the church, are several altar tombs for the Paramors; and on the south side are several others for the Harveys, of this parish, and for Fawlkner, Rammell, and Fuller. There are also vaults for the families of Fuller, Rammell, and Petman.

 

There were formerly painted in the windows of this church, these arms, Girony of six, sable and argent, a covered cup, or, between three talbots heads, erased and counter changed of the field, collared, gules; for Boteler, of Heronden, impaling Boteler, of Graveny, Sable, three covered cups, or, within a bordure, argent; Boteler, of Heronden, as above, quartering three spots, ermine; the coat of Theobald, with quarterings. Several of the Frynnes, or as they were afterwards called, Friends, who lived at Waltham in this parish in king Henry VII.'s reign, lie buried in this church.

 

In the will of William Andrewe, of this parish, anno 1507, mention is made of our Ladie chapel, in the church-yard of the church of Estrie.

 

The eighteen stalls which were till lately in the chancel of the church, were for the use of the monks of the priory of Christ church, owners both of the manor and appropriation, when they came to pass any time at this place, as they frequently did, as well for a country retirement as to manage their concerns here; and for any other ecclesiastics, who might be present at divine service here, all such, in those times, sitting in the chancels of churches distinct from the laity.

 

The church of Eastry, with the chapels of Skrinkling and Worth annexed, was antiently appendant to the manor of Eastry, and was appropriated by archbishop Richard (successor to archbishop Becket) in the reign of king Henry II. to the almonry of the priory of Christ-church, but it did not continue long so, for archbishop Baldwin, (archbishop Richard's immediate successor), having quarrelled with the monks, on account of his intended college at Hackington, took this appropriation from them, and thus it remained as a rectory, at the archbishop's disposal, till the 39th year of king Edward III.'s reign, (fn. 10) when archbishop Simon Islip, with the king's licence, restored, united and annexed it again to the priory; but it appears, that in return for this grant, the archbishop had made over to him, by way of exchange, the advowsons of the churches of St. Dunstan, St. Pancrase, and All Saints in Bread-street, in London, all three belonging to the priory. After which, that is anno 8 Richard II. 1384, this church was valued among the revenues of the almonry of Christ-church, at the yearly value of 53l. 6s. 8d. and it continued afterwards in the same state in the possession of the monks, who managed it for the use of the almonry, during which time prior William Sellyng, who came to that office in Edward IV.'s reign, among other improvements on several estates belonging to his church, built a new dormitory at this parsonage for the monks resorting hither.

 

On the dissolution of the priory of Christ-church, in the 31st year of king Henry VIII.'s reign, this appropriation, with the advowson of the vicarage of the church of Eastry, was surrendered into the king's hands, where it staid but a small time, for he granted it in his 33d year, by his dotation charter, to his new founded dean and chapter of Canterbury, who are the present owners of this appropriation; but the advowson of the vicarage, notwithstanding it was granted with the appropriation, to the dean and chapter as above-mentioned, appears not long afterwards to have become parcel of the possessions of the see of Canterbury, where it continues at this time, his grace the archbishop being the present patron of it.

 

This parsonage is entitled to the great tithes of this parish and of Worth; there belong to it of glebe land in Eastry, Tilmanstone, and Worth, in all sixtynine acres.

 

THERE IS A SMALL MANOR belonging to it, called THE MANOR OF THE AMBRY, OR ALMONRY OF CHRIST-CHURCH, the quit-rents of which are very inconsiderable.

 

The parsonage-house is large and antient; in the old parlour window is a shield of arms, being those of Partheriche, impaling quarterly Line and Hamerton. The parsonage is of the annual rent of about 700l. The countess dowager of Guildford became entitled to the lease of this parsonage, by the will of her husband the earl of Guildford, and since her death the interest of it is become vested in her younger children.

 

As to the origin of a vicarage in this church, though there was one endowed in it by archbishop Peckham, in the 20th year of king Edward I. anno 1291, whilst this church continued in the archbishop's hands, yet I do not find that there was a vicar instituted in it, but that it remained as a rectory, till near three years after it had been restored to the priory of Christchurch, when, in the 42d year of king Edward III. a vicar was instituted in it, between whom and the prior and chapter of Canterbury, there was a composition concerning his portion, which he should have as an endowment of this vicarage; which composition was confirmed by archbishop Simon Langham that year; and next year there was an agreement entered into between the eleemosinary of Christ-church and the vicar, concerning the manse of this vicarage.

 

The vicarage of Eastry, with the chapel of Worth annexed, is valued in the king's books at 19l. 12s. 1d. and the yearly tenths at 1l. 19s. 2½d. In 1588 it was valued at sixty pounds. Communicants three hundred and thirty-five. In 1640 here were the like number of communicants, and it was valued at one hundred pounds.

 

The antient pension of 5l. 6s. 8d. formerly paid by the priory, is still paid to the vicar by the dean and chapter, and also an augmentation of 14l. 13s. 4d. yearly, by the lessee of the parsonage, by a convenant in his lease.

 

The vicarage-house is built close to the farm-yard of the parsonage; the land allotted to it is very trifling, not even sufficient for a tolerable garden; the foundations of the house are antient, and probably part of the original building when the vicarage was endowed in 1367.

 

¶There were two awards made in 1549 and 1550, on a controversy between the vicar of Eastry and the mayor, &c. of Sandwich, whether the scite of St. Bartholomew's hospital, near Sandwich, within that port and liberty, was subject to the payment of tithes to the vicar, as being within his parish. Both awards adjudged the legality of a payment, as due to the vicar; but the former award adjudged that the scite of the hospital was not, and the latter, that it was within the bounds of this parish. (fn. 12)

 

www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-kent/vol10/pp98-121

Need a caption contest for this one.

 

I was joined by Sandelion & her paramour when shhexy decided to make her voice heard.

 

Photo by Kellie Rae photography, bitches!

I'm not quite sure what Ms. Della Roux is doing in these photos, she's either waiting until the last minute to get dressed, so her clothes don't get wrinkled, or she's patiently (or impatiently) waiting on her paramour to arrive. He did send flowers ahead of the date.

 

This was an impromptu shoot, but I love how it came out.

 

This is the first time I've taken Della out of the box since I got her in 2023. I never know why it takes me so long, especially when the doll is as gorgeous as this one. I couldn't help but take several photos.

Sacramento, California,

Sleep Train Ampetheater,

July 24, 2009,

 

Copyright Ryan Selewicz

Entrance to the Lyric Theater in NYC. What a treat, going to Cirque du Soleil's PARAMOUR. It certainly was a "spectacular and eye-popping" show.

 

iPhone photo.

 

If you want to use this image, please email me at images@johnbald.net

Italian postcard by Foto Ebany (?), no. 72.

 

Antonio 'Tony' Moreno (1887-1967) was a Spanish-born American actor and film director of the silent film era and through the 1950s. In his early films, Moreno was often typecast as the suave, smouldering 'Latin Lover' and was seen as a serious rival to Rudolph Valentino. He was equally adept at romance, melodrama or comedy and is best known for films such as The Spanish Dancer (1923) with Pola Negri, Mare Nostrum (1926) with Alice Terry, The Temptress (1926) with Greta Garbo, and It (1927) with Clara Bow.

 

Antonio Moreno was born Antonio Garrido Monteagudo in Madrid in 1887. He came to America at the age of fourteen. Although he claimed to have attended Williston Northampton School in Easthampton, Massachusetts, the school's archives have no record of his having done so. His working life began as an employee of the Northhampton Electric Light and Gas Company. He first acted on stage under the tutelage of Maude Adams whose theatre he had initially visited in order to fix the lighting. From the repertory stage in Massachusetts, he then made his way to Hollywood where he arrived in 1912. Having made his film debut in The Voice of the Millions (Stanner E.V. Taylor, 1912) at Rex-Universal, Moreno then featured as a top draw card for Vitagraph until 1921. In 1914 Moreno appeared in major films such as Judith of Bethulia (D.W. Griffith, 1914), The Dust of Egypt (George D. Baker, 1915), and John Rance, Gentleman (Van Dyke Brooke, 1914) with Norma Talmadge. Within a short time, he became a star through his appearances opposite Talmadge. Alongside Ramón Novarro and above all Rudolph Valentino, Moreno rose to become one of the most popular Latin lovers of the silent film era because of his southern good looks. In the process, he acquired a large female fan base. He proudly held the sobriquet "King of the Cliff-hangers" because of his prolific work in serials as co-star to Pearl White. In the early 1920s, Moreno joined the cinema company Cineplex Entertainment and became one of its highest-paid performers. The pinnacle of his career came a few years later under contract to Famous Players Lasky/Paramount (from 1923 to 1924) and at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (in 1926). His film partners included Bebe Daniels in the Broadway comedy The Exciters (Maurice Campbell, 1923), Pola Negri in The Spanish Dancer (Herbert Brenon, 1923), Greta Garbo in The Temptress (Fred Niblo, Mauritz Stiller, 1926) and Clara Bow in It (Clarence G. Badger, 1927). The comedy It in particular was a huge box office success and featured Moreno as a department store heir who turns the heads of all the shop assistants.

 

In the 1920s, Antonio Moreno was one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood. With the advent of sound pictures, his career suffered a sharp decline, in no small measure due to a heavy Spanish accent. He made only a few films in Hollywood during this period and instead worked increasingly in Mexican productions. During the early 1930s, he also directed several films there, such as the first Mexican sound film Santa (Antonio Moreno, 1932) and the drama Águilas frente al sol/Eagles across the Sun (Antonio Moreno, 1932). Moreno tried to rebuild his Hollywood career as early as the 1930s, including an appearance in the Laurel and Hardy film The Bohemian Girl (James W. Horne, Charley Rogers, 1936) where his character has an affair with Oliver Hardy's wife. But it wasn't until the mid-1940s that he returned to better roles in American film, including as a character actor in The Captain of Castile (Henry King, 1947) starring Tyrone Power. In 1954, the veteran star took the lead role in the cheaply produced horror film Creature from the Black Lagoon (Jack Arnold, 1954), which became a cult classic over the years. His last significant appearance was in John Ford's Western epic The Searchers (John Ford, 1956), where he played a Mexican who showed John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter the way to an Indian chief. Nonetheless, he eventually segued into character parts and remained gainfully employed in the industry until the late 1950s. He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6651 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California in 1960. Moreno was married in 1923 to Daisy Danziger, the daughter of an oil millionaire. Their lavish mansion, called 'Paramour', was one of the largest in Hollywood and the site of many famous parties. Ten years later, Daisy died in 1933 in a tragic car crash near Mulholland Drive. Antonio Moreno passed away in 1967 in Beverly Hills. Following his death from heart failure, he was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.

 

Sources: I.S. Mowis (IMDb), Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb,

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Spanish collectors card in the second Romantica series by Foto-Ficha. Photo: M.G.M.

 

Handsome British actor Stephen Boyd (1931-1977) preferred to play character parts, but he had the looks of a leading man. Boyd appeared in some 60 films, most notably as the villainous Messala in Ben-Hur (1959), a role that earned him the Golden Globe Award. His other suvcccesses included The Bravados (1958),The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Fantastic Voyage (1966) and Shalako (1968).

 

Stephen Boyd was born William Millar in 1931 in Glengormley, Northern Ireland. Boyd was the youngest of nine siblings born to Irish/Canadian parents, truck driver James Alexander Millar and his wife Martha Boyd. Billy attended the local Public Elementary School and Ballyclare High School, but at the age of fourteen Boyd quit school to take up other jobs to help support his family. He worked in an insurance office and travel agency during the day and rehearsed with a semi-professional acting company at night during the week and weekends. He would eventually manage to be on the list for professional acting companies to call him when they had a role. He eventually joined the Ulster Group Theater where he learned the behind the scenes tasks of the theatre. He became well known in Belfast for his contributions as a gravel-voiced policeman on the Ulster Radio program The McCooeys, the story of a Belfast family written by Joseph Tomelty. Boyd eventually worked his way up to character parts and then starring roles. By nineteen he had toured Canada with summer stock companies. In 1950 he made a coast to coast tour of America with the Clare Tree Major Company In A Streetcar Named Desire, he played the lead role as Stanley Kowalski. Boyd would later recall this as “the best performance I ever gave in my life.” By the time he was twenty, Boyd had a wide range of theatre experience, but he longed for the big stage. In 1952 Boyd moved to London as an understudy in an Irish play, The Passing Day. Boyd nearly died during the great flu epidemic in London in 1952. He worked in a cafeteria and busked outside a cinema in Leicester Square to get money as he was literally close to starvation. Boyd caught his first break as a doorman at the Odeon Theatre. The Leicester Square Cinema across the street recruited him to usher attendees during the British Academy Awards in the early 1950s. During the awards ceremony he was noticed by actor Sir Michael Redgrave, who used his connections to introduce Boyd to the director of the Windsor Repertory Group. At this point Boyd’s stage career in the U.K. began to flourish with performances in The Deep Blue Sea and Barnett’s Folly. Boyd’s first role which brought him acclaim was as an Irish spy in the film The Man Who Never Was (Ronald Neame, 1956) with Cliffton Webb, based on the book by Ewen Montagu. Shortly thereafter he signed a ten-year contract with 20th Century Fox studios, who began prepping him for Hollywood. But it would be a while until Boyd actually set foot on a Hollywood back-lot. Boyd’s next stop was Portugal to make A Hill in Korea (Julian Amyes, 1956), which also featured future stars Michael Caine and Robert Shaw. In June 1956, Boyd was cast in the nautical, ship-wreck adventure Seven Waves Away/Abandon Ship! (Richard Sale, 1956) starring Tyrone Power. This was filmed in the summer of 1956 in London where the British Navy built a huge 35,000 gallon water tank for the film. In November 1956, Boyd traveled to the British West Indies as part of a large ensemble cast in Darryl Zanuck‘s racially provocative film Island in the Sun (Robert Rossen, 1957), based on the Alec Waugh novel.Boyd portrayed a young English aristocrat who becomes the lover of Joan Collins. Boyd would be loaned out to the J. Arthur Rank production of Seven Thunders (Beast of Marseilles), a World War II romance set in Nazi-occupied Marseilles. It was Boyd's most prominent starring film role yet.

 

After her success in Roger Vadim‘s Et Dieu... créa la femme/ And God Created Woman (1956), Brigitte Bardot was given the opportunity to cast her own leading man in her next film, the lusty romance Les bijoutiers du clair de lune/The Night Heaven Fell, (Roger Vadim, 1957). and she chose Stephen Boyd. Being in the Bardot spotlight added much to Boyd’s film credit, in addition to bringing him notice in Hollywood. Stephen Boyd finally arrived in Hollywood in January 1958 to take on his first true Hollywood role as the leader of a quartet of renegade outlaws in the Western The Bravados (Henry King, 1958), which starred Gregory Peck and Joan Collins. Even though this was a Hollywood production, the actually filming took place in Morelia, Mexico. After the filming of The Bravados was completed Boyd auditioned for the coveted role of Messala in Ben-Hur (William Wyler, 1958). Many other actors, including Victor Mature. Kirk Douglas, Leslie Nielsen and Stewart Granger had been considered for the part, but Stephen Boyd’s screen test convinced director William Wyler that he had found the perfect villain for his epic. Boyd was hurried off to join actor Charlton Heston in Rome in May 1958 to learn the chariot racing aspect of his role. Heston had already been practicing behind the chariot for weeks, so Boyd needed to learn the sport quickly. Later, Boyd described the filming experience of Ben-Hur in the Cinecittà Studios in Rome, as the most exciting experience of his life. Years after the film was released, interim Ben-Hur screen-writer and novelist Gore Vidal revealed that Boyd portrayed Messala with an underlying homosexual energy as instructed by Vidal when he greets Ben-Hur Charlton Heston in the opening sequence. In Gore Vidal’s autobiography Palimpsest, Vidal describes his discussion first with director William Wyler concerning Messala’s underlying motivation, that being that Messala and Judea Ben-Hur had previously been lovers. This was based on an idea by Vidal to enhance the tension between the two main antagonists. After Ben-Hur filming was completed, Boyd returned to Hollywood in early 1959 to star with Academy Award winner Susan Hayward in the Canadian-based drama Woman Obsessed (Henry Hathaway, 1959), and appeared in the adaptation of Rona Jaffe‘s novel The Best of Everything, (Jean Negulesco, 1959). Ben-Hur was released in December 1959 and made Boyd an international star overnight. His portrayal of the Roman tribune Messala brought in rave reviews. In early 1960 Boyd won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture for his performance in Ben-Hur.

 

Stephen Boyd himself chose to do roles which he felt comfortable in. His next choice was The Big Gamble (Richard Fleischer, Elmo Williams, 1961), which featured Darryl F. Zanuck‘s current paramour and French icon Juliette Gréco. The adventure of making this film almost outdid the adventure in the film itself as the crew slept in tents in the jungle that were guarded by natives on parole for cannibalism. Boyd nearly drowned in the Ardèche river during the making of the film. Boyd was originally chosen to play Mark Antony opposite Elizabeth Taylor in the epic production of Cleopatra (1963) under the direction of Rouben Mamoulian. He began film work in September 1960 but eventually withdrew from the problem-plagued production after Elizabeth Taylor’s severe illness postponed the film for months. Cleopatra was later directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, and the role of Mark Antony went to Richard Burton. After several months without active work, Boyd worked on The Inspector (Philip Dunne, 1962), renamed Lisa for the American release. It was based on the novel by Jan de Hartog and co- starred actress Dolores Hart. The film was made in Amsterdam , London and Wales during the summer of 1961. Boyd starred with Doris Day in the circus musical Billy Rose’s Jumbo (Charles Walters, 1962); the role earned Boyd a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy. In Rome Boyd acted with Gina Lollobrigida in her long-time pet project Venere imperiale/Imperial Venus (Jean Delannoy, 1962), a romantic epic about the many loves of Pauline Bonaparte, the sister of Napoleon. This film was the first film to be banned by the Motion Picture Association of America for male nudity. Boyd appeared in a humorous bedroom scene, naked, but covered by a sheet. The suggestion of nudity was too much for the censors and the film was never released in the United States. In Spain, he appeared in Samuel Bronston‘s massive production of The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), directed by Anthony Mann. Boyd’s co-star was Sophia Loren. Although the film did well internationally when it was released in 1964, it was a box office failure in the United States and signaled the end of Roman epic. He then filmed the suspenseful The Third Secret (Charles Crichton, 1964) starring Jack Hawkins, Pamela Franklin and Sean Connery’s wife, Diane Cilento. In December, 1963, Stephen Boyd became a naturalized U.S. citizen. In 1964 Boyd continued to make films in Europe, traveling to Yugoslavia to star as the villain Jamuga in the epic Genghis Khan (Henry Levin, 1965). Boyd was the top billed and therefore the top paid star in the epic, and this apparently caused friction with up-and-coming star Omar Sharif. After completing Genghis Khan, Boyd trekked to Cairo for a brief appearance as the regal King Nimrod at The Tower of Babel in Dino de Laurentiis‘s production of The Bible (John Huston, 1966). Boyd returned to the United States to start work on the Science Fiction adventure Fantastic Voyage (Richard Fleischer, 1966), co-starring with Raquel Welch. Boyd then joined German star Elke Sommer and music legend Tony Bennett to film the Hollywood drama The Oscar (Russell Rouse, 1966), based on the eponymous Richard Sale novel. The film was a popular success, but maligned by film critics. In Iran he filmed his scenes for the United Nations film project Poppies Are Also Flowers (Terence Young, 1966) written by James Bond creator Ian Fleming. Two of Boyd’s projects were ranked among the top twenty-five grossing films of 1966; The Bible at number one and Fantastic Voyage at twenty-two. Next, Boyd starred in a spy thriller Assignment K (Val Guest, 1968) with Swedish model/actress Camilla Sparv. Boyd grew a full beard for his role as the iconic Irish playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw in the Off-Broadway play The Bashful Genius written by Harold Callen. This was Boyd’s first return to the stage since the mid-1950s, and he received excellent reviews.

 

In early 1968 Boyd was cast as the heavy opposite Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot in the Western adventure Shalako (Edward Dmytryk, 1968) based on the Louis L’Amour novel. Shalako was filmed in the early part of 1968 in Almería, Spain. After returning to the United States, Boyd took the role of the cruel slave master Nathan MacKay in the Southern 'Slavesploitation' drama Slaves (Herbert J. Biberman, 1969), also starring Ossie Davis and songstress Dionne Warwick. The film was loosely based on the famous Harriet Beecher Stowe novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Buena Vista plantation near Shreveport, Louisiana. Closely following Slaves, Boyd starred in another story about racial tension, this time a World War II made-for-television drama called Carter’s Army/Black Brigade (George McCowan, 1970), featuring a young Richard Pryor. Boyd began his interest in L. Ron Hubbard‘s Church of Scientology, which would make him one of the first Hollywood stars to be involved in it. Boyd would star and narrate a Scientology recruiting film called Freedom (1970). There is no documentation of his later involvement with Scientology after the early 1970s. During the 1970s the demand for Boyd in Hollywood diminished, so he focused his attention on European films and several television pilots and shows. He made three films in Spain with director José Antonio Nieves Conde, including Marta (José Antonio Nieves Conde, 1970) with Marisa Mell, Historia de una traición/The Great Swindle (José Antonio Nieves Conde, 1971), and Casa Manchada (José Antonio Nieves Conde, 1975). He worked with cult director Romain Gary in the drug thriller Kill! (1971). He also made several Westerns, including Hannie Caulder (Burt Kennedy, 1971) with Raquel Welch (1971), Un hombre llamado Noon/The Man Called Noon (Peter Collinson, 1973) with Richard Crenna, and Rosanna Schiaffino, Campa carogna... la taglia cresce/Those Dirty Dogs (Giuseppe Rosati, 1973) with Gianni Garko, and Potato Fritz (Peter Schamoni, 1976) with Hardy Krüger. His last acting stint was a guest star on the popular television show Hawaii Five-O (1977.) His most critically acclaimed role during the 1970s was as a colourful Irish gangster in the UK crime thriller The Squeeze (Michael Apted, 1977) with Stacey Keach and David Hemmings. Boyd died of a massive heart attack on 2 June 1977 at the age of 45 while playing golf with his wife Elizabeth Mills at the Porter Valley Country Club in Northridge, California. Boyd was interred in Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California. Boyd was first married in 1958 to Italian-born MCA executive Mariella Di Sarzana during the filming of Ben-Hur. They separated after just three weeks. Boyd lived as a bachelor for most of his life and was wary of marriage after his first experience. His secretary Elizabeth Mills was a permanent resident at his Tarzana home during these years though the two did not marry until 1974. Raquel Welch would claim in 2013 that during the filming of Fantastic Voyage in 1965, she became infatuated with Boyd, who rejected her advances. In her comments she would imply that Boyd was gay, however no evidence of Stephen Boyd being a homosexual exists.

 

Sources: Brigitte Ivory (IMDb), Stephen Boyd Blog, Wikipedia and IMDb.

German cigarette card by Ross Verlag in the 'Künstler im Film' series for Zigarettenfabrik Monopol, Dresden, Serie 1, image 1. Photo: Ufa.

 

Beautiful Lída Baarová (1914-2000) was a glamorous Czech film star who worked in Prague, Berlin and Rome. A dangerous affair with Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister of the Third Reich, first enhanced and later seriously damaged her career.

 

Lída Baarová was born Lidmila Babková in Prague, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic) in 1914. Her father was a civil servant, her mother appeared in several theatre plays and her younger sister, Zorka Janů, also was a film actress. From 1927 on, Lidmila studied acting at the State Conservatory in Prague. At the age of 17, she made her film debut as Lída Baarová in the Czech comedy Kariéra Pavla Camrdy/Pavel Čamrda's Career (Miroslav Josef Krnanský, 1931) starring Vladimír Borský. The film was a success but Lída had to leave the conservatory while students were not allowed to accept film roles. It did not matter. The following year she played the lead in the comedies Madla z cihelny/The Brickmaker's Daughter (Vladimír Slavínský, 1932) with Hugo Haas, and Lelícek ve sluzbách Sherlocka Holmese/Lelícek in the service of Sherlock Holmes (Karel Lamač, 1932) featuring Martin Fric as Sherlock Holmes. Director Lamač a.k.a. Carl Lamac and Baarová reportedly had an affair. The exceptionally beautiful actress starred in a dozen more Czech films, performed on stage and recorded some songs, before she was discovered by a talent scout for the Ufa in 1934. Baarova left Prague for Berlin, where the Ufa studio groomed her as a star. At the set of the drama Bacarole (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1935), she met German actor Gustav Fröhlich, who became her new lover. The film was a success and the couple starred in several films together, such as Leutnant Bobby, der Teufelskerl/A Devil of a Fellow (Georg Jacoby, 1935) and Die Stunde der Versuchung/The hour of trial (Paul Wegener, 1936). After Fröhlich had divorced his wife, the Jewish operetta star Gitta Alpár, he and Baarová moved to a villa on the picturesque Wannsee. There they lived near to the residence of Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels was the propaganda minister in Adolf Hitler's National Socialist government, with a decisive voice in the German film production. Baarová met Goebbels at the Olympic Games of 1936. He ardently pursued her, entertaining her in his villa and lavishing her with expensive gifts. They started a relationship that lasted over two years. In 1937, she received a job offer from Hollywood but turned it down. Later she would regret it and claimed to her biographer Josef Škvorecký: "I could have been as famous as Marlene Dietrich." For a while, her affair with the Propaganda Minister did her career no harm. She starred as an exotic vamp in such films as Patrioten/Patriots (Karl Ritter, 1937) with Mathias Wieman, Die Fledermaus/The Bat (Paul Verhoeven, Hans H. Zerlett, 1937) with Hans Söhnker, and the Fyodor Dostoevsky adaptation De Spieler/The Gambler (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1938). She also had stage engagements at the prestigious Deutsche Theater and the Volksbühne. However, the liaison caused serious complications between Goebbels and his wife Magda. Hitler was furious, refusing Goebbels permission to divorce Magda and marry Baarová. Instead, he commanded Goebbels never to see his mistress again. Through the head of the Berlin police, Hitler ordered her extradition. Baarová was barred from appearing in films or plays and even from attending social functions. She was pursued by the Gestapo, who organised hecklers to shout ‘Whore’, when she defiantly attended the premiere of her film, Der Spieler.

 

In 1939, Lída Baarová fled to Prague and there she continued to play in films like Ohnivé léto/Fiery Summer (Frantisek Cáp, Václav Krska, 1939), Dívka v modrém/Girl in blue (Otakar Vávra, 1940), Maskovana milenka/Masked Paramour (Otakar Vávra, 1940) with Edwald Balser, and Zivot je krásný/Life Is Beautiful (Ladislav Brom, 1940). But the Germans invaded Prague in March 1939, and soon she could not continue to film in her homeland. In 1942, she moved on to Mussolini’s Italy, where she starred in such films as La Fornarina (Enrico Guazzoni, 1944) with Anneliese Uhlig, L'ippocampo/The Sea-Horse (Gian Paolo Rosmino, 1945) with Vittorio de Sica, and Vivere ancora/Still Alive (Nino Giannini, 1945) starring Gino Cervi. After Allied troops occupied Italy, Lída Baarová returned to Prague. There she dated her old friend, German film idol Hans Albers. In April 1945, Lída Baarová left Prague for Germany, to join Albers in his country house on the shores of Lake Starnberg. On the way, she was taken into custody by the American military police, imprisoned in Munich, and later extradited to Czechoslovakia. Baarová was taken into custody on suspicion of collaboration with the Germans during the war. After a police hearing, Baarová’s mother got a heart attack and died. Zorka Janů, who never had any ties to the Nazis, got as Baarová’s sister also a Berufsverbot to make films and committed suicide in 1946. After 18 months of custody, Lída Baarová was released due to a lack of evidence. While in custody, she was often visited by an admirer, theatrical agent Jan Kopecký. He was a close relative of the Czech Communist Minister of the Interior and hoped he could arrange Baarova's release from custody. Kopecký's prominent relative did not approve of this and Kopecký himself faced persecution. Kopecký and Lída Baarová married in 1947, formed an itinerant troupe playing marionettes and fled to Austria. From there, Kopecký immigrated to Argentina, leaving Lída behind to recuperate in a sanatorium. In Austria, Lída attempted a comeback, but Anton Walbrook withdrew from a film where he was cast with her. To escape the resulting negative media, she left for Argentina, where she lived in poverty. In 1950, she decided to return to Italy. Her husband stayed in Argentina and they were divorced in 1956.

 

Back in Italy, Lida Baarová appeared in several films, including La bisarca/The transporter (Giorgio Simonelli, 1950) with comedian Peppino De Filippo, and Gli amanti di Ravello/The Lovers of Ravello (Luigi Capuano, 1951) opposite Gabriele Ferzetti. Her best-known film is I Vitelloni/The Loafers (Federico Fellini, 1953), where she played the wife of a rich merchant. Later films include Pietà per chi cade (Mario Costa, 1954) starring Amedeo Nazzari, and the Spanish production Miedo/Fear (León Klimovsky, 1956) in which she played the wife of Antonio Vilar. Her final film was the war film Il cielo brucia/The sky burns (Giuseppe Masini, 1958) with Amedeo Nazzari and Antonella Lualdi. In 1958, Baarova moved to Salzburg. In 1960, she began her theatrical comeback at the Theater an der Berliner Allee in Düsseldorf in a play by Claude Magnier. She married Swedish physician Kurt Lundwall in 1969 (some sources say 1972), who was 20 years her senior. By 1975 she was appearing in the German stage version of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant. In the 1990’s, after the fall of Communism, Baarová reappeared on the cultural scene of the Czech Republic. With the help of the Czech author Josef Škvorecký she published in 1983 the autobiography Útěky (Escapes) and in 1991 followed Život sladké hořkosti (The Sweet Bitterness of My Life). In this memoir she described life in the Nazi upper echelons, where elegantly dressed ministers mingled with the film world elite. The short documentary Sladke horkosti Lidy Baarove/Lída Baarová's Bittersweet Memories (1995) won an award at the 1996 Art Film Festival in Trenčianske Teplice, Slovakia. Baarová suffered from Parkinson's disease and she died in 2000 in Salzburg, Austria. She was 86. She lived alone on the estate she inherited after the death of her second husband, Dr. Lundwall, who had passed away in 1972 (some sources say 1980). In her autobiography, she stated that later in her life she had regretted that she had been mixed up in ‘the history’. But at that time she was very young and ‘foolish’ and couldn't help seeing Goebbels. However, it is doubtable that she ever felt guilty about her past. "There's no doubt that Goebbels was an interesting character," she observed in 1997, "a charming and intelligent man and a very good storyteller. You could guarantee that he would keep a party going with his little asides and jokes." Her ashes were interred in Prague's Strašnice cemetery, where she rests with her parents and sister Zorka Janů.

 

Sources: Peter Conradi (The Sunday Times), The Guardian, Wolf Oschlies (Shoa.de) (German), Wikipedia (German and English), and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

youtu.be/p0kjGOOZZog

 

Go-Go for a wild ride with the action girls! Russ Meyer, the king of exploitation, directs this lurid thrill-ride starring Tura Satana, Haji, and Lori Williams as a trio of dancers who turn to murder and mayhem on a road trip from hell. Varla is well-endowed, beautiful, physically powerful, savvy and conniving. She lives for kicks, but she's also got a serious mad on for the world, and anyone who crosses her finds out the hard way. Her job as a go-go dancer, supplemented by a part time career in petty crime has afforded her a sleek and fast sports car, which she enjoys riding in the desert with her fellow dancers. One of them, Rosie, has a crush on Varla, which she happily encourages, even if Varla is really more interested in the control it gives her over Rosie than in Rosie herself. The other dancer, Billie, is a little harder for Varla to manage, but Billie isn't bright enough to outmaneuver Varla.

 

When the little gang run into a square drag racer, he winds up getting into a fight with Varla, losing of course. Varla makes sure he never talks back again, then kidnaps his girlfriend and makes a run for it. BIllie and Rosie tag along, and they soon become involved in intrigue with an old letch in the desert rumored to have a stash of cash hidden away somewhere. When Varla starts to lose control of the situation, things (again) become violent, leading to a revved-up climax! Three strippers seeking thrills encounter a young couple in the desert. After dispatching the boyfriend, they take the girl hostage and begin scheming on a crippled old man living with his two sons in the desert, reputedly hiding a tidy sum of cash. They become houseguests of the old man and try and seduce the sons in an attempt to locate the money, not realizing that the old man has a few sinister intentions of his own.

synopsis

Exploitation maven Russ Meyer created a cult classic with this turbo-charged action film. Three curvaceous go-go dancers in a cool sports car go on a desert crime spree, led by Varla (the amazing Tura Satana), a busty, nasty woman dressed entirely in black. Varla's lesbian moll, Rosie (Haji) -- who has an extremely overwrought accent -- and reluctant bimbo Billie (Lori Williams) are along for the ride. When they meet a naïve young couple, Tommy and Linda (Ray Barlow and Sue Bernard), Varla challenges the man to a race then kills him by breaking his back. They take Linda hostage and drive to a house owned by a crippled old lecher (Stuart Lancaster) and his muscular but retarded son, Vegetable (Dennis Busch). Varla discovers that the old man has money hidden on the property, so the girls try to find it. Meanwhile, Vegetable's perverted father tries to trick him into assaulting one of the girls as he watches, but his other son (Paul Trinka) finally shows up to save the day. A great deal of bloodshed, campy catfighting, and funny dialogue fills the bulk of this fast-paced comic book of a movie.

Born 1946 Quebec,Canada

Passed on 2013

Birth Name - Barbarella Catton Nickname - Haji

Haji was a Cando-American actress renowned for starring in Russ Meyer's sexploitation classic Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), in which she made her theatrical film debut. Barbarella Catton was born in Quebec City, Quebec on January 24, 1946, and at the age of 14, began dancing topless. The renamed Haji caught the eye of cinema's "King Leer" while performing as an exotic dancer.

He also cast her as one of three go-go dancers who turn into avenging furies in "Pussycat", which was her theatrical film debut as it was released before Motor Psycho (1965). She also appeared in Meyer's potboiler Good Morning... and Goodbye! (1967), his big budget Hollywood sextravaganza Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970), and his cartoonish amalgamation of sex and violence, Supervixens (1975).

Haji died on August 10, 2013 at the age of 67.

Was a fervent supporter of animal rights and environmentalism. Interviewed in the book "Invasion of the B-Girls" by Jewel Shepard. Began as an exotic dancer. Moved to California at the age of fourteen and was discovered by filmmaker Russ Meyer performing in a topless bar. Her only child, a daughter she had at age 15, is named Cerlette. Haji was of British and Filipino descent, and her nickname was bestowed on her by an uncle. Was a friend and co-star of former stripper and long-time Russ Meyer paramour Kitten Natividad.

Haji, an Actress Featured in Cult Films by Russ Meyer, Dies at 67

By DANIEL E. SLOTNIK

Published: August 17, 2013

Haji, a voluptuous actress who played one of three homicidal go-go dancers in Russ Meyer’s 1965 cult film “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!,” died on Aug. 9 in Southern California. She was 67.

Her death was confirmed by the dancer and actress Kitten Natividad, a friend, who said she did not know the cause. She said Haji had high blood pressure and heart problems in recent years and was taken to a hospital after falling ill at a restaurant in Newport Beach.Haji, a brunette of Filipino and British descent, met Meyer, the celebrated B-movie director, in the mid-1960s while she worked in a strip club in California. He cast her as the lead in his biker movie “Motorpsycho” (1965) even though she had no acting experience.Later that year Haji appeared in “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!,” the tale of three dancers who beat a young man to death, kidnap his girlfriend and flee into the desert. She played the lesbian paramour of the lead character, Varla, played by Tura Satana. The film has acquired a devoted following and has been embraced by the filmmakers John Waters and Quentin Tarantino and even some feminists, including the film critic B. Ruby Rich, who praised it in The Village Voice as a “female fantasy.”“You just didn’t see women taking over and beating up men in those days,” Haji said in an interview posted on Russ Meyer’s Ultravixens, a Web site devoted to Meyer, who died in 2004, and his films. “Russ did something no one else had the imagination to do. And he was smart to use three bodied-up women, so whether the picture’s good or not, you still sort of stare at it.”Haji played a scantily clad bartender in Meyer’s “Supervixens” in 1975 and appeared in “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls,” the story of an all-woman rock band’s descent into debauchery. It was the first of Meyer’s films produced by a mainstream studio. She also acted in John Cassavetes’s gritty drama “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” in 1976.

Haji was born in Quebec on Jan. 24, 1946. Ms. Natividad said that Haji’s last name at birth was Catton, and that she thought her given name was Cerlette. (The name Haji, she said, was a nickname given to her by an uncle.) Haji left school before finishing the sixth grade and began stripping at 14. She had a daughter, also named Cerlette, at 15. She lived in Oxnard, Calif. Her survivors include her daughter and a granddaughter. Haji’s last screen role was in the 2003 comedy “Killer Drag Queens on Dope.”

www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/arts/haji-an-actress-featured-...;

 

Just this morning, this delightful linocut portrait arrived from Maureen Nathan. As you can see, it's completely altered my attitude. I'm simply astounded at the fine print qualities present here -- the sparkling facets of light and dark which dance across the page, the lightly grained snow white proofing paper. The image itself evokes youth and the jauntiness of a young matelot whistling a sea chantey.

 

Dear Maureen -- when I'm up to snuff once again, I shall do just that......and just for you!

 

I've been away for a while due to what I thought could never happen. Despite all my precautions over the decades with uncountable paramours, the inevitable happened. I was secretly sequestered away to a private clinic where with the help of 4 surgeons guiding the venerable Dr. Da Vinci through 6 and half hours of abdominal jousting, I was spared untolled embarrassment. Of course, it was never a question of keeping the thing -- good heavens, what a thought. Harvard and the Smithsonian are the two top bidders for my "miracle" -- I stand to gain some well earned venture capital from my little indiscretion. My abdomen looks like the aftermath of spirited target practice. The four surgeons obviously had a jolly go of it -- 6 stabs until finally one of them got lucky and hit number 7 -- the bullseye. I had such a lovely "innie" before. I'm a sure candidate now for some tastefully understated naval embellishment -- a 5 carat ruby solitaire should just about do. Oh, Stanley -- did you hear that?

 

Stanley is taking excellent care of me. His loving care and nutritious meals have me already back on my feet after 1 week. And my faithful companion Piccolo never leaves my side. His deeply resonant purrings and the soulful cello playing of Jordi Savall playing Sainte-Colombe viol music channel healing energies through my inner shakras. If you've never seen Tous les matins du monde, see it for a soulful venture into the deepest recesses of heart and soul. Jimmy Rowles' piano playing and singing have also been great helps. As well as Duke Ellington's sophisticated jungle cross rhythms and sui generis compositions. Johnny Hartman's lustrously soothing baritone is also part of my healing therapy.

 

I've missed all of my Flickr pals and apologize for not being in touch with many of you since Thanksgiving of last year. Since then, it's been a whirlwind of high tech scans and tests -- not to mention countless doctor's fingers. Well, it was hardly boring -- I can assure you that.

 

Thank you, again -- dear Queen Boudi -- for your wonderful gift of artistry!

 

Johnny Hartman and John Coltrane -- Lush Life

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7d6_LUDa_Zw

 

Tous les matins du monde -- excerpt

www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnriefsHKsQ