leona schlutz

I don't really have anything to report so I thought you might like to hear some news from a century and two days ago, as published a century ago in the (South Carolina) Abbeville Press and Banner for 28 August 1921 p. 5. You have to love the last name 'Schlutz', well at least I do. 

fab

So as you can see I am fairly well advanced in this, my most recent audiobook experience, and yet another that proves that when it comes to me and audiobooks, it's all one big bedtime story (things like this - where I basically know the story already and only want a little remix or a few easter eggs - or crime fiction, which is similarly affirming, for some reason). 

I know you don't care but I'll just tell you, and I am the author of some pretty lazy, shitty opinionated twaddle which apparently at one time I allowed to go on the market with my name on and I probably thought 'this'll show 'em', but this has its fair share of that, full of schoolboys' pencil case bravado 'the best record he ever made', etc kind of stuff. The wikipedia entry on Sounes, which is unreliable reportage, claims that in an (unsourced) podcast Sounes conceded he had let his opinion of McCartney's music dominate this book and it does. That's one thing, but his opinions are so boring (and I note that his books have either been about true crime or white renegades of the 60s). 

Linda McCartney (79 years and 11 months old today except she died 25 years ago) doesn't need me to defend her by the way but Sounes is a prick about her (and Yoko) surprise surprise, and rather than have an interesting take on her, he has the same dull as ditchwater take on her as all the hoary musos who didn't understand why Paul McC didn't want to play with them but did want to play with her. However, Sounes does say that Linda had a good figure. 

So a lot jumps out at me from this but the thing that really shitted me the most was Sounes' description of the Maharishi as knowing which side of the pappadum his curry was on.* But I am sure there'll be more as I go. I was similarly surprised he said that Wild Life only had two good songs on it, as I assumed he would follow the tired line on this (eg that it has none). He gives Red Rose Speedway 3/5 as well which is surprising, because he clearly doesn't get Wings, generally speaking. 

On the plus side, he scrapes the sides of the barrel and actually does find a few people who no-one has spoken to yet from the late 60s/early 70s who have some kind of minor bystander stories to tell, though usually you end up thinking, there's a reason why these stories haven't been heard before. Fifty years on, let's be fair, people are mainly going to tell the story 'everyone knows' - with perhaps a tiny frisson of their own experience. I don't even really see the point of interviewing people decades later about things everyone knows about. 

Update: another thing about this particular production - the narrator's capacity with accents - well, there's nothing terrible about the accents I suppose at least they are fairly alright as accents (the Frank Ifield sucks a big turd in the mud). I dread Denny Laine's comments, of which there are many, because of the Birmingham accent, which is a bit of an abomination as executed here.

* The British tendency to typify people by the food they eat is as rank as the American tendency to describe people from 'foreign' countries by dint of the native animals. I don't know what kind of psychology this reveals but fuck both. 

Update final assessment: Look, I made to the end, so that's a thing. Once PMcC and LMcC became vegetarian (I really thought this happened earlier than the 80s but Sounes says nah) he cannot bear to avoid mentioning it constantly, it's like the man (Sounes) has a problem. Every time PMcC plays a show, he can't go on stage without 'sitting down to his usual vegetarian meal', etc. Heather Mills gets a lambasting of course and I suppose it's nice for Sounes to find a woman he can actually legitimately savage but I don't think it's necessary to non-ironically refer to her as a 'whore'. Well, anyway, I enjoyed the life, to the degree I would even listen to/read another PMcC biography, particularly one that was written by someone with some takes more interesting than the conventional ones (whether I agreed with them or not). 

mettle

Helmi spends her days cowering from the world or lashing out a la Bobbie when we first met her in Home and Away, 'rack... off!' If this was a proper soap opera her narrative arc would have resolved by now but she is resistant to conventional western storytelling tropes and won't be so easily pacified. Here she is looking out onto our balcony, fascinated by (I assume) the smell and sounds of the world, but very unwilling to step out. Well, we have to do these things little by little I reckon and if she had a few minutes at the balcony door every day, sometime in the next five years she might forget herself and accidentally put a foot forward. 

The weird woven cat figure which Carmel gave me did capture Helmi's attention briefly - I don't think she was fooled by it but I think she did sort of see it as one of those extra pieces of ambient interference sent by the universe to mess with her waking nightmare of a life. Paranoid. Still, I take heart from the fact that she did sit there and take an interest in the world for a brief time. I think perhaps there is hope for her yet, or at least, there's hope for me continuing to think there's hope for her. 

 

more honore bowlby-gledhill - her disappearance in early 1926

I know you couldn't stand to wait, neither could I. This is a picture of Honore Cecilia Paget in the 9 May (Sunday) 1926 edition of the Atlanta Constitutional about young British girls who had mysteriously disappeared and reappeared. It was a phenomenon in 1926, apparently. 

'Mystery of London's Vanishing Beauties' Sunday Constitution Magazine 9 May 1926 p. 10

The article details a few troubling stories of young women disappearing, apparently under their own volition, some of whom were never heard from again (at least as of May 1926). It then gets to HCP. Note this article has undergone a process that I remember from my time in publishing in the 80s, i.e. some hotshot consultant has been engaged to tell everyone how to give news stories extra excitening by the addition of an exclamation mark to the end of almost every paragraph:

Perhaps more amazing than the disappearance of these young girls was the vanishing of Admiral Paget’s nineteen-year-old daughter and her return!  

Honor was an orphan. Very pretty and belonging to one of the most distinguished families in Great Britain, she was already quite a personage in society. It was tacitly understood that she was to lead the younger set. She was invited everywhere, and went about a great deal, but although a host of well-connected and wealthy young men were constantly at her side, she favoured no one man more than another.   

Two of her friends, the Misses Fenwick, invited her to come and stay with them at their home in Hay Hill, Berkeley Square, and Honor acccepted the invitiation. She and the two Fenwick sisters spent a good deal of time together.   

All the greater was the shock when upon their return home from a party at the fashionable Hyde Park hotel at midnight – Honor vanished!  The Fenwicks had left the drawing room for a moment, in search of a book they wanted to show their young guest and when they returned – the girl had gone!  

For a few minutes they thought she was in her room. But as the minutes lengthened and first the clock struck the quarter and then the half-hour, still all was silent. They made a room-to-room search, fearing that unwittingly they had offended her and that she might have gone to other friends. They phoned to their acquaintances and to those of Honor. But none had seen her or received from her any word.  Greatly as people of the Fenwicks’ caste abhor publicity, no course was open to them but to notify the police! 

Rumours of every kind were circulated – Honor had eloped and married secretly, Honor had gone into a convent, Honor had hidden her identity and gone on the stage, and so on and so forth.  Then her solicitor, Mr. Martin, went to Paris, where he believed he would find her. But after what was said to be a frantic search, aided by the French police, involving visits to well-known and unknown Places in Paris’ “tenderloin” he returned – alone!   

Three days after Mr. Martin arrived back in London, a startling announcement was made.   Honor Paget had come home!  But she refused to reveal a single thing concerning her absence and could not be induced to tell where or with whom she had been!  

Is it possible that this girl, highly cultured, sensitive, proud, descendant of a noble line, was afraid to speak out? Did she fear dire consequences to herself, or did she feel that the whole world would regard her with different eyes if it realised all that she herself now knows and that the other two girls, not so fortunate as to escape, perhaps, are learning by bitter experience? (p. 11, p. 19)    

That last paragraph is a bit obtuse for the present-day but it I’m just going to assume it’s rude.     

Another article, this time in the Manchester Guardian (4 February 1926 p. 10) is arguably useful:     

No authentic information was available yesterday concerning the disappearance of Miss Honor Cecilia Paget, the nineteen-year-old ward in Chancery, who has been missing since the middle of last week.   Miss Paget, who is related to the Marquis of Anglesey, left her flat late at night with little if any luggage, and did not leave any message as to where she had gone. The family solicitors were informed of her disappearance, and the matter was placed in the hands of private detectives, but up to the moment she has not been found.  The relatives did not consider it advisable to seek the aid of publicity in endeavouring to trace the missing girl, and in fact have refused any official help.  

A press representative learned from other sources that the view is held that Miss Paget has gone for a short holiday and will write to them later in the ordinary way. Apparently the family have no misigivings that Miss Paget has come to or will come to any harm.         

Honor’s whereabouts were ultimately explained by her in another article, through United News and published in the Miami Herald 1 March 1926 (p. 3). When I say ‘explained by her’, there are probably as many questions raised as answered, but anyway:    

Find Missing Heiress: Re-appearance in San Sebastian Clears Up Speculation in Inner Circles of British Society  

San Sebastian, Feb 28 – The recent disappearance of Miss Honor Cecilia Paget, 19-year-old ward in chancery and only child of the late Admiral Sir Alfred Wyndham Paget, and of her subsequent reappearance here, cleared up the wild speculation in the inner circles of British high society.  Miss Paget is a high-spirited girl, fond of attempting the unusual, and very wealthy. It was thought she might contracted some foolish marriage or been the victim of foul play.  When interviewed exclusively by The United News, Miss Paget laughingly turned down these rumours.  

‘My sole reason for acting as I did was to escape the unjust discipline of my tutor,’ she said. ‘I left London at night, after amusing myself at some night clubs, with a little trunk containing four hats, three pairs of stockings, face powder and two pairs of shoes. I was penniless.  

‘I raised some money for transportation and took a train for [Paris?] in France. From there I took another train going to San Sebastian. I intended to go to Madrid, as I had heard that that city was the gayest city in the world.  

‘My money had become exhausted, however, and I was forced to remain here. In order to obtain food I sold my overcoat for less than $2, and subsequently the remainder of my meager wardrobe. I am now going back to London.  

‘I have been hungry in Spain,’ continued Miss Paget, ‘but my suffering was less than the ordeal of my ordinary, routine life in London.’  Asked whether she desired to get married, Miss Paget replied negatively, adding that marriage nowadays was mostly followed by separation from the husband.  

Cecilia is a coquette. As she was recounting her adventures she was continually powdering her face and rouging her lips.   

During the 10 days of her escapade, Miss Paget stayed at four hotels, each more economical than the other.  Miss Paget, as a ward in chancery, is under the direct control of the lord chancellor of England, so far as matters affecting her well-being are concerned. This situation comes when a wealthy orphan is under age and difficulties arise regarding a suitable guardian. The British judicial authorities step in and make the lord chancellor responsible.

Strikes me that it's going to be a hell of a lot easier to find out what happened to her after the end of her third marriage than it is to find out what she was doing in Spain in February 1926 but surely someone, somewhere knows more. 

Also I don't know when she went from 'Honor' to 'Honore' and whether that's a change she made somewhere between leaving Britain for the US, or whether that's an ongoing mistake made by the US press. The first seems more likely. 

honore bowlby-gledhill again

I am always being rude about genies but my goodness they accidentally serve their purpose sometimes like silkworms or yeast. I mentioned last week or the week before my desire to know more about Honore Bowlby-Gledhill and expressed my assumption that she was lost to/in South America (I implied Brazil) in the mid-1940s but no. A random family tree online revealed she was married a third time in 1952 to  François Hurault de Vibraye (1914-1977), aka Ludovic-Régis-Henri-François Hurault de Vibraye, but better known (if known at all) as François Valorbe, a man who apparently 'wrote fantastic and humorous tales close to surrealism', according to French wikipedia. There is one of his books, above. The Huraults were/are proper French nobility, it would seem, and still retain their chateau in Cheverny. None of the Valorbe material seems to have been published in English which is a shame for me (or: it's a shame I can't read French) but what I really want to know is what happened to Honore after 1957. 

There has to be a story there. Her parents died when she was young, but she was very wealthy, you'd assume, then she married Vivian Bowlby in 1928 (she was 21), then Ralph Gledhill about five years later (1932-3), and if she was not actively spending the next decade trying to divorce Gledhill then at least she publicly expressed the ambition to do so within months of the wedding. Presumably she achieved this by 1952 when she was 45 and married Hurault/Valorbe, who was seven years her junior, and who must have been rolling in it (by this time she was known as Honor Cecilia Paget, by the way). Of course what is most interesting to me is her bohemianism - the proprietorship of the Dead Fish Cafe, the shooting at the Coit tower, the marrying of a reasonably unknown (?) but respected humourist/surrealist from a rich and established family. I bet she was a squeal. 

I found a picture of the building that was to become the Dead Fish Cafe. It's the building with the person standing out the front, but this picture is from 1920 not 1933 when HBG was shooting out its front window/from outside it in the street at the Coit tower. It's from p. 48 of San Francisco's North Beach and Telegraph Hill By Catherine A. Accardi. The story of HBG shooting at the Coit Tower is legend in quite a few San Francisco history books but no-one takes it any further than that one incident. And why would/should they. 

Right SO I have just found out more about HBG aka HCP but I can't waste anymore time today I have a conference paper and a lecture to write. Stay tuned. 

chased through town

Clearly, illustrations for something (and judging from the first it might have been intended to be a book called Chased Through Town). I have no recollection of any of this, which seems to be something I say quite often these days. This was in a box (not a box I would have typically considered to be one of the boxes of crap, but maybe it is/was) with a printout of a phd thesis draft from someone I haven't spoken to or thought about really for over a decade, and who I barely knew, and I can't imagine why I had it. 

john? go to church?

Harrisburg (PA) Courier July-August 1911.