Stonyhurst College 1934

The Defiant Dandy: D'Annunzio Style

The Randy Dandy
New York Times
Man's Fashion Fall 2009
13 September, 2009
by Grazia D'Annunzio

Gabriele D’Annunzio was no ordinary fop. The father of Italian decadence was also a man of action — and quite a stud.

He was a patriot and a poet, a dandy and a war hero. In turn-of-the-century Italy, no one embodied the cult of beauty and the love of action like Gabriele d’Annunzio. He was the incarnation of the Nietzschean Übermensch: narcissistic, powerful and seemingly invincible. Soldiers applauded his epic adventures; literati exalted his vast output; women couldn’t resist his voracious sexual appetite.
...
But let’s admit it: d’Annunzio was not a handsome man. He was quite short, prematurely bald and pale as a vampire, and had a face punctuated by a goatee and upturned mustache. But he had a wild elegance and a perverse sex appeal. Rumors regarding his personal extravagances were rampant — including the infamous (and untrue) one that he had a rib removed in order to pleasure himself orally. It’s easy to see why people’s imaginations went wild: after all, he did wear shoes shaped like phalluses; had a robe outfitted with a hole for his penis; enjoyed nude horseback riding; and photographed himself naked, assuming poses reminiscent of Baron von Gloeden.
With the onset of World War I, d’Annunzio set aside his velvet robes and handmade shoes for an Italian uniform. "Il Comandante" inflamed the nation with ebullient speeches, favoring Italy’s entry to the war alongside the Allies. He distinguished himself in risky plane raids, lost an eye during an aerial accident and took the city of Fiume (now Rijeka in Croatia). When Mussolini marched into Rome in 1922, he used d’Annunzio’s popularity and political ideas to further his own goals, going so far as to make him a prince; but the so-called "poet-soldier" lay low during the fascist years and later opposed Italy’s alliance with Hitler. He lived a secluded life in the Vittoriale degli Italiani, the extravagant villa on Lake Garda that later became a museum, surrounded by Turkish carpets, Persian tiles, the airplane he used to pilot and Grecian statues that he dressed up with lapis necklaces and other jewelry.


http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2009/09/13/style/t/index.html#pageName=13slijperw

© 2009 The New York Times Company

Grammar Matters

Jeremy Hackett Presents

Mensur

Valhalla Rising

Mensur

où sont les barbares?

du crépuscule à l’aube

"Il ne faut jamais être fataliste. L’histoire est toujours ouverte et présente souvent des caprices et des retournements inattendus. N’oublions pas la formule de Guillaume d’Orange: «là où il y a une volonté, il y a un chemin». Pour l’instant, nous sommes dans une phase de résistance et de préparation à des événements très graves qui s’annoncent, par exemple la conjonction de guerres ethniques et d’une récession économique géante. Il faut donc dès maintenant penser à l’après-chaos et s’organiser en conséquence. Pour finir, voici le mot d’ordre que je diffuse souvent: «de la résistance à la reconquête, de la reconquête à la renaissance»"

Du crépuscule à l’aube: synthese d’une vision du monde, Guillaume Faye

To Aloysius, With Love

Aloysius the Brideshead bear
By Ewan Fletcher
02 June 2007

During his Oxford days, Lord Sebastian Flyte was seldom seen without a teddy bear firmly clasped to his richly waistcoated chest as he hurried from one drinking den to the next.

Seen by millions in the classic 1981 serialisation of Brideshead Revisited, that bear, Aloysius, became as much of a star as the effete leading men Anthony Andrews and Jeremy Irons.

In his Brideshead days with Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews
But now, with a big-budget, feature-length version soon to commence filming, an extraordinary hullabaloo has scattered the pigeons from literature's hushed cloisters.

One of the new film's scriptwriters, Andrew Davies, announced last week: "There will be no Aloysius. He's out."

John Mortimer, who adapted Evelyn Waugh's novel for the 1981 series, was horrified.

"Aloysius is remembered by everyone," he said. "He's an integral character to the book. Waugh wouldn't have put Aloysius in there unless he thought he was an appropriate symbol of Sebastian not growing up. I would never have dropped him."

Possibly fearing a mass boycott before filming had even started, Davies's co-writer Jeremy Brock then issued a statement saying that Aloysius would in fact make at least a brief cameo appearance.

And yet, as the rumpus raged, the ursine actor kept his head down.
Indeed, the great bear has not been seen in any of the usual celebrity haunts for many years.

While his co-star Anthony Andrews went on to forge a glittering career on the stage and small screen, and Jeremy Irons, who played Charles, became a Hollywood leading man with an Oscar under his belt, Aloysius simply disappeared.

Theories abounded as to his whereabouts. Some said he had followed his old master to Morocco where he drank himself to an early grave.

He was reportedly spotted walking arm in arm with an equally camp teddy in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris.

There was even a rumour that he'd spent his small fortune on plastic surgery to give him the assets of a polar bear.

But after an exhaustive search, The Mail on Sunday tracked him down, finding him safe and well and happily living out his retirement in the Teddy Bears Of Witney shop and museum - barely a dozen miles from his old Oxford stomping grounds.

I went to meet him, dressed suitably for the occasion in my grandfather's three-piece Savile Row tweed suit.

It does seem preposterous that Aloysius, who has just celebrated his 100th birthday, shouldn't at least be asked to reprise his role in the new film.

But age is catching up with him and he does look a bit threadbare.

He possibly wouldn't want to repeat the scene in the 1981 production when, already aged 74, he was thrown by Sebastian from an overturning wheelchair - unless, of course, a stunt double could be found.

Neither does he need the money.

Aloysius's life story is a complicated one. Made in 1907 by the Ideal Toy Company in America, he lived quietly in Maine with Euphemia Ladd, sitting for four decades on a shelf in her grocery store.

It was only when the swinging Sixties were almost over that he had his first taste of show business.

The actor Peter Bull, most famously the Russian Ambassador in Dr Strangelove, wrote a book in 1969 about his passion for teddy bears called Bear With Me.

On seeing an accompanying TV plug, Miss Ladd, who was closing down her shop, sent Bull her faithful teddy.

Aloysius, though, is really just a stage name.

For the ten years he was with Bull he was known as Delicatessen - after Miss Euphemia's profession.

But the role of Aloysius so defined him that the name stuck.

It was through his association with Bull that he was offered his careerdefining part.

The director Derek Granger was looking for "a large and rumpled bear".

He knew of Bull's collection and contacted him. The rest is televisual history.

Granger was more than pleased with his choice. He said: "Aloysius was marvellous. He was never late on set, he never bumped into other actors and was never drunk.

"Actually he continued to work when he was quite ill.

"At one stage during the 21 months of filming he bled a little straw and had to be rushed to hospital.

"Not the first time an actor has come apart at the seams."

Aloysius required still more repairs while promoting the film and, to cover his many patches, Anthony Andrews's wife Georgina, a Daks Simpson heiress, gave him one of her company's scarves, which he still wears.

After Bull's death in 1984 and a spell treading the boards of the Stratford Teddy Bear Museum, Aloysius was bought by wealthy American collectors and recrossed the Atlantic.

However, with Hollywood proving difficult to crack, his new owners - Rosemary and Paul Volpp -realised that his true home was among the dreamy spires of Oxford.

They decided to repatriate him and agreed to a $50,000 (£25,000) private sale to his present owner, Ian Pout.

Pout, a former stockbroker, whose teddy bear shop and museum was the first in the country, said: "It was a lot of money but I was very fortunate.

"Had he been sold at auction, I probably couldn't have afforded him. He is probably the best known real teddy bear in the world.

"I do love him because he is pretty battered and bruised.

"A bit of love gives bears extra character. It has with him. He looks a bit sad now but he has so much character."

However, Pout feels that the casting director of the new Brideshead should find a younger actor to play the role.

"Aloysius just wouldn't fill the part any more," he said.

"He's too fragile and I fear he wouldn't have the strength. He's an old man now."

Http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-459461/Found-Aloysius-Brideshead-bear.html#ixzz0TPqLt86z

Beyond the Village

"Once beyond the village, where the cottages ceased abruptly, on either side of the road they could smell through the darkness the friendly fields again and they braced themselves for the last long stretch, the home stretch, the stretch that we know is bound to end, some time, in the rattle of the door latch, the sudden firelight, and the sight of familiar things greeting us as long-absent travelers from far overseas."

The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame

Be A Man Among Men: The Art of Manliness

I have long noticed that modern men do not seem very masculine. Certainly I find contemporary chaps are too meek, afraid to voice a potentially robust opinion or disagreement with current intellectual trends. Western men, in particular, appear to have suffered a wholesale loss of confidence, of identity.

Further sartorial evidence, for me, includes the preponderance of billowy shirts, baggy jeans, indiscriminate bling, the intense grooming regimens. Some American guys, especially, look like giant infants in their loose clothing and huge white sneakers. Personal comfort at all costs seems to be the supreme value.

Maybe notions of metrosexuality have permeated too deep. Or maybe various modern ideologies, such as egalitarianism, feminism, and consumerism, have worked their dark magic only all too well on a gullible, mass media-drugged populace. Perhaps modern men have been trained like obedient hounds to follow the latest fashions, however silly these fads may be, and to eschew an attention to classic, unchanging style as suspect, or square. Who knows?

All can agree, I think, that the ideas of masculinity, and of Man himself, have been under assault for decades. This book, therefore, by the husband and wife blogging team of Brett and Kate McKay, is a timely wake-up call.

Stand up and suit up, men of the West! Claim what is rightfully yours! Be a man among men. For tomorrow belongs to you.

Im Abendrot (Richard Strauss)

At Sunset

We have gone through sorrow and joy
hand in hand;
Now we can rest from our wandering
above the quiet land.

Around us, the valleys bow;
the air is growing darker.
Just two skylarks soar upwards
dreamily into the fragrant air.

Come close to me, and let them flutter.
Soon it will be time for sleep.
Let us not lose our way
in this solitude.

O vast, tranquil peace,
so deep at sunset!
How weary we are of wandering---
Is this perhaps death?

- Joseph von Eichendorff

World Weary (Noël Coward)

Hackett Style

Hackett. As I wrote here last year, I have been wearing Hackett since the 1980s. I support the brand. Why? Let me explain. To begin with, I simply like the clothing. It's classic and well-made. For a RTW brand, you could do a lot worse.

Plus, it represents a link to my youth, a reminder of Saturday afternoons sauntering down the King's Road in moleskin trousers, chelsea boots, Barbour jacket, Hackett shirt, and a pair of colourful Hackett socks. Ah, the socks! I am certain the selections of bright and cheery hosiery are placed near the inside entrance of Hackett stores to draw in passersby. If you walk by a Hackett store, you will know what I mean.

Finally, there is Jeremy Hackett. I have written elsewhere of my admiration. (This is not a man-crush, so please do not be alarmed). Mr. Hackett, I will argue, embodies a particularly confident English style. There is no need here to be loud and brash, to draw unwanted attention to oneself. Quietly comfortable in his own moleskin, he knows who and what he is and what he has accomplished. He possesses a degree of self-assurance, I think, that is exceedingly rare. If I were to choose a living sartorial inspiration, it would be Mr. Hackett.

To Hackett, I raise another glass of champagne.

Like Tears in Rain (Blade Runner)

Dr. Johnson's Bark

"I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark."

Samuel Johnson

Boss Trad: Alden Aficionado

Like shit-faced gatecrashers at your hot girlfriend's 21st birthday bash, certain life changes have in recent months impressed themselves upon me in a most untoward manner. I have written about some of them here.

Through it all, I need hardly tell you, I have maintained a stiff upper. I have pursued an unwavering course of acquiescence and non-sobriety with admirable persistence. It is our duty to accept our fate calmly and without rancor. We should embrace life as it really is--not as we wish it to be. Easier said than done, I realise, but it is a metric by which I have always discerned friend from foe.

Still, the worm does turn and one's fortitude is rewarded in the end. As you have probably heard by now, changes are afoot on the job front: I recently affiliated my firm with a large private bank, with a local office. The bank was keen to acquire access to hedge fund and private equity clients and willing to pay a pretty penny. And I was keen to collect a nice pile of dosh, as vulgar as that may sound to some.

One of the pleasantly surprising aspects of this new partnership is that one of the senior private bankers is a full-blooded Brooks Brothers aficionado, a veritable walking Ben Silver advertisement. He is a staunch trad for whom donning pin-striped suits, Alden tasseled loafers, BB OCBDs, horn-rimmed specs, grey flannels, and Alden cordovan loafers, seems to be second nature. Like all sound men, he has a predilection for Alden loafers, judging by how frequently he wears them in the office. He also wears them with his suits. Anyway, sensitivities prevent me from providing more details, as you can understand, but I interpret it as a good omen. We shall see.

I am fortunate then to be surrounded by sensible and well-dressed professionals. And just in time, as I have been craving a change of landscape. Events of the last few months have caused me to reassess priorities and to determine what is truly important in life, such as classic clothing and fine shoes. Because unlike your hot 21-year old girlfriend, your Alden loafers were created with a long-term relationship in mind. Allocate your affections accordingly.

Ted and Ralph (The Fast Show)

Suit You Sir ! (The Fast Show)

When thinking about the 1990s, I reckon there were three things, culturally-speaking of course, that got me through the decade: 1) alcohol, 2) Britpop, 3) alcohol, and 4) The Fast Show. These are two of my favourites from The Fast Show, for sartorial-minded readers:

Groundstroke

Do you play tennis? I do. Or at least, I did. In my youth I was club champion in my age group. My height and reach gave me an advantage. I wore a white Lacoste polo shirt, white shorts, and white tennis shoes. During the winter season I played under heated tents. In my mid-teens however I switched to squash, which, as you know, is an entirely different game. More on squash later.

In recent years in Southern California I have again taken up tennis. It is a sociable sport conducive to professional networking. Unlike golf, which in my opinion is for dead men walking, tennis actually demands a measure of physical fitness and mental alertness. Neglected middle-aged women desiring romance, I find, are particuarly drawn to tennis.

During a recent match I sustained a knee injury and damaged eye. I was sent to the doctor. In the course of the examination they measured my blood pressure. Not good. The doctor came in to see me.

"I don't want to scare you," he began--which had the immediate effect of scaring me--"but you have extremely elevated blood pressure. In fact you're in the top 5%."

Holy shit, I thought. "What does that mean?"

"It means you could drop dead at any minute, from a stroke," he explained.

That was all I needed to hear. Time to regroup. Drastic action is required. Long luncheons and cocktail hours, I am afraid to report, shall have to be curtailed. And alcohol and tobacco are to be rationed under emergency wartime conditions. I will continue going to the gym and participating in various games and physical activities, including tennis.

If I should collapse on the court, do make sure I expire in the arms of a beautiful woman.

White Car in Germany (The Associates)

Top Lads

Brideshead Revealed: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead

Sloane Rangers Awake!

The era of the Sloane Ranger now seems as distant as the Fifties
By Peter Whittle
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Amazing as it may seem, it was 28 years ago today that Prince Charles was exchanging vows with Lady Diana Spencer. There were a fair number of parties going on that day. Suppose William and Kate were doing the same thing today. Would we be rolling out the barrel?

That time seems as distant as the 50s. And there was also something very distinct, culturally, about the early 1980s. In his book The Triumph of the Political Class, Peter Oborne referred to Charles and Diana’s wedding as the centrepiece of a shortlived counterblast by an old Establishment which was soon to collapse. The Empire Strikes Back, if you like.

That same year, 1981, a large part of the country was in thrall to that lavish saga of doomed aristocracy, Brideshead Revisited, which was showing on ITV - yes, astonishingly, ITV. In the cinema, Chariots of Fire and its tale of gentlemen runners competing for King and Country was a home-grown hit which went on to win the Best Picture Oscar. In the pop charts, the new romantic Prince Charming himself, Adam Ant, was standing and delivering, a celebration of the traditional British penchant for dressing up and eccentricity.

Peter York and Ann Barr published The Sloane Ranger Handbook and had a massive bestseller. A sub-division, known as the ‘Young Fogeys’, made a brief appearance. Jeremy Hackett realised there was quite a market in clothes of the tweed and four-button cuff variety and so started a little sceond-hand shop selling them on the Kings Road. The ‘Season’ had a major revival, and with it reappeared black tie and ballgowns.

So what was it all about? Not, as yet, Thatcherism; in 1981 the ‘loadsa-money’ city yuppy had yet to make an appearance on the scene. With its strong aristocratic and nostalgic aesthetic, the cultural scene of that year could hardly be seen as a celebration of a new competitiveness and entrepreneurialism. It was instead perhaps a reaction to the grim uniformity and utilitarianism of the 70s, the nihilism of punk, and the general ropey, dingy quality of public life. We were looking upwards at the aristocracy, and backwards at our past.

Well, Brideshead came back last year, this time in a new cinema version, but proved dead on arrival. The New Sloane Ranger handbook was published too, and sunk without trace. Looking upwards now, there is hardly an aesthetic inspiration to be had in a class of disconnected Russian oligarchs. And for the young in particular, the past, which has been gradually erased from the popular imagaination, is no longer an option. As we stumble through this recession, and watch as the social fabric melts away, where do we avert our eyes this time?

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peterwhittle/100004961/the-era-of-the-sloane-ranger-now-seems-as-distant-as-the-fifties/


Sloane Rangers arise... quietly.
By Henry Cave Devine
Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Peter Whittle of The New Culture Forum has written a pointed and poignant submission to the Telegraph yesterday titled: "The era of the Sloane Rangers now seems as distant as the Fifties". I submit the following observations:

The numbers appear to have vastly dwindled with the passage of time as they grew older and blended into a world of books, gardens, children out in the world, smaller cars, activities less expensive and labour intensive than owning horses... and adapted quietly to a changed UK and world.

Their children inherited a less-secure existance (which they may be concerned about), and cocaine use along with binge drinking have grown and taken a painful toll. Many of their parents have passed to the next world taking dignity, WW II memories and Norland nannies with them, except the few that are now plain-clothes and non-Scottish, as have all but disappeared many of the valuable ceremonies such as lunch with wine at Boodle's or White's, CofE attendance and Barbour coat shopping as a rite of passage with lessons on ownership to follow.

But the SR's are out there, and where they have survived are still quietly congregating with friends and dogs, walking the paths through Surrey and Oxfordshire, Bombay Sapphire and the Macallan 18 on the sideboard with a few splits of soda and quinine water and an ice bucket slighly dented but well intact, and headscarfs to keep in the frizz and keep peeping eyes from viewing gray hair roots. And some are actually able to talk to their children about the mistakes they made and the time they wasted on events with nothing to show not even recountable memories.

SR's know not to raise their heads above the parapet in NuLabour's view and to keep their class quiet while others of lesser education and breeding but much more money give loud demonstrations of how "classy" money has made them when they unlike the SR's are clueless on anything having to do with dignity, family and how to mix a G&T to the right proportion before discussing the number of birds on the last walk-up.

http://my.telegraph.co.uk/henry_cave_devine/blog/2009/07/29/sloane_rangers_arise_quietly

It's Your Britain

Jeanne (Air et Françoise Hardy)

My father: in memoriam

My father died three weeks ago. He succumbed struggling with numerous complications after a three-month fight following open-heart surgery. At the end his body simply shut down. His final fading was accompanied by family members and a joint recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. When I touched his head and said: 'Go well father,' it was cold.

He was retired. Ten years ago he left as head of a Wall Street investment firm. After college he had risen from salesman to managing director in charge of business development. He also handled investor relations. He managed the New York headquarters as well as offices in London, Europe, and the Middle East. His success has been attributed to uncommon drive and talent, which he certainly had in abundance, but I suspect luck also played a part. As an ambitious, educated white man with connections starting out in the 1960s--before the era of racial quotas, feminism, and mass immigration--he would have been a total idiot not to have achieved something of note.

He was an extremely generous man with an abiding dedication to family. His was a lively spirit with a mischievous sense of humour. He was much given to practical jokes and pranks. His bad temper was notorious. Even now his former colleagues and subordinates talk about it.

My father and I never met. We were strangers. We were too different, with opposing views of life. He ridiculed my accent, combativeness, bookish inclinations, cultural interests, financial conservatism, and taste in girlfriends. Where my father was sociable always seeking a party, I was a loner most comfortable with two or three close friends. He was not an athlete by any means, though he was a sports addict, especially of football, including the Harvard-Yale game; indeed his example has led me to theorise that a man's athletic inaptitude is directly proportional to his enthusiasm for televised sporting events. He loved watching baseball, basketball, and football, none of which he could play, whereas I preferred rugby, tennis, squash, surfing, and polo. He was a decent tennis player and keen fisherman.

Partly for this reason, I believe, as well as a few others yet undiscussed here, today I have murder in my heart. It stays there like a mussel glued to wave-washed rocks. I attribute it in part to his neglect and pure bloody-mindedness. Over the years I have suppressed it by an irregular course of self-medication and isolation, the results of which, I suppose, can occasionally be seen here. But I am not one to blame others or to point fingers; they do the best they can and for that we must be grateful.

He was descended from an English Catholic family in the North of England whose roots can be traced back to the 11th C.. In his family tree can be found farmers, knightly landowners, Catholic and Anglican priests, and, in recent decades, classical musicians, portrait painters, and surgeons. His father—my grandfather—was an international oil company executive who arrived in the US via Toronto, Canada. His mother was a titled Baltic German, alcoholic, and drug addict.

The burial itself was an exercice in simplicity and grace, attended by about 25 family members and close friends on a sun-filled day overlooking the ocean. A Roman Catholic priest officiated, to the well-suppressed consternation, I am sure, of my WASP mother. The memorial service last week, attended by about 400 family and friends, also occurred without incident, though I was tempted to add a bit of colour; when the moment came, however, I did not act. I am not given to ornate displays of emotionalism. For my father I would much rather have liked a funeral pyre in the style of the Vikings, from whom our family is descended. For myself I prefer a simple grave in a plain field. Memorial rituals are for the benefit of the living as much as for the dead.

Every family is a ruin. It is left to the survivors, the living, the walking wounded, to pick our way through rotting legacies and crumbling memories as best we can. If we are fortunate enough we will have found in time a healing love, a blessed connectedness, that eases our God-provided mission.

Lutetia Dandy Club

Prescience of Immortality

"A mother's love for the child of her body differs essentially from all other affections, and burns with so clear and steady a flame that it appears like the one unchangeable thing in this earthly mutable life, so that when she is no longer present it is still a light to our steps and a consolation.

It came to me as a great surprise a few years ago to have my secret and most cherished feelings about my own mother expressed to me as I had never heard them expressed before by a friend who, albeit still young, has made himself a name in the world, one who had never known a mother, she having died during his infancy. He lamented that it had been so, not only on account of the motherless childhood and boyhood he had known, but chiefly because in after life it was borne in on him
that he had been deprived of something infinitely precious which others have--the enduring and sustaining memory of a love which is unlike any other love known to mortals, and is almost a sense and prescience of immortality."

Far Away and Long Ago: A History of My Early Life, WH Hudson (1918)