A Certain Slant of Light

Day 09 - Best scene ever.

So many shows, so many scenes! But I still have Desperate Romantics on my mind, so I’m going to have to say the scene where Fred tells William Holman Hunt off for the way that he’s been treating Annie. I love this scene because it’s a sort of apotheosis for Fred, who transcends his usual nebbishiness by telling Hunt the exact truth about himself, and because it’s so rare for people (particularly men) on TV shows to be truly called on the extent of their assholishness.

Oh, man. But there’s also that absolutely fabulous scene in the first series of The Borgias, where Lucrezia rides across the battlefield between the French and Papal armies, with her long pale blue cloak fluttering behind her, to parlay with her brother and hopefully stop the French from sacking Rome. Oh God, that is the loveliest scene, it makes me catch my breath just thinking of it.

For my birthday, I acquired a copy of the miniseries about the pre-Raphaelites, Desperate Romantics, and at once came to three conclusions.

1. I must have my friends come over to watch this!

2. Clearly, these viewings must be accompanied by tea parties!

3. And said tea parties should be accompanied by pre-Raphaelite appreciation activities!

There are three disks, so I’m thinking three teas. For the first, clearly we will flip through a book of pre-Raphaelite paintings and admire them. I was stumped on the second, but Emma suggested a dramatic reading of Christina Rosetti’s “Goblin Market,” which is perfect.

But we don’t know what to do for the third.

Me: Is it bad that most of our party plans have an educational component?
Emma: Have you met us?

We have also been trying to plan a speakeasy party. We have all sorts of good ideas - secret password to get in! bottles of gin in the bathtub surrounded by ice! a cheat sheet full of twenties slang for everyone to employ! My life will not be complete until I call at least three people “the cat’s pajamas.”

But we keep getting bogged down on the recommended reading list. We are both agreed on The Great Gatsby - we may even agree on Tender Is the Night - but Emma thinks we have to include Hemingway, and I can’t stand Hemingway, and so.

Meanwhile, Caitlin and Rick swiveled their heads back and forth as they followed this argument. “You realize that you’re arguing about a reading list for a drunken bacchanalia?” said Rick.

“Drunk is the best way to read Hemingway!” Emma rejoined.

THOUGHT. We could have drunken readings of Hemingway short stories at the party! Hemingway drinking games! Take a shot every time Hemingway says something egregiously sexist!

Anyway, all this thinking has led me to my brilliant idea: POETRY TEAS.

So far, my best idea is for the William Blake tea. Apparently, he used to have tea with St. Peter occasionally; his wife would greet friends at the door with “I’m afraid he’s having tea with St. Peter right now,” and they would be all “Oh, all right, I’ll come back later.”

So clearly we would read William Blake poems - I call dibs on “The Tyger” - and leave a chair open for St. Peter.

Emily Dickinson tea! Everyone dresses in white and brings flowers - or leaves - or some other thing from nature - and of course, the invitations must have lots of dashes -

Haiku party. Rather than read haiku, we shall place a single flowering branch in a vase, and write poems about it.

These ideas seem much more doable than my excellent but nonetheless a trifle ambitious ideas for themed teas. (I still mean to have an Alice in Wonderland tea someday, though. Think of the tarts!) So watch this space! Things may be getting quite poetical.

Have you guys read Christina Rosetti’s Goblin Market? I’ve been going through pre-Raphaelite withdrawal (I realize they packed pretty much everything exciting that happened to the pre-Raphaelites into the six episodes of Desperate Romantics, and that’s one of the reasons why the show is so good, because there’s so much going on - but damn, I still want more), so I was reading “Goblin Market,” and man, it is brilliant.

It’s hard to pick out quotes for you, because it’s a poem that works by excess. It’s not that any one line is so brilliant, but that all together they add up to something overwhelming.

Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
“Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpeck’d cherries,
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheek’d peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries,
Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries;—

Guillermo del Toro would be the perfect director for an adaptation: think of the portrayal of temptation when Ofelia sees the table laden with food, so much of it and so beautiful. And the faun shows that del Toro could capture the goblins’ macabre fascination.

One had a cat’s face,
One whisk’d a tail,
One tramp’d at a rat’s pace,
One crawl’d like a snail,
One like a wombat prowl’d obtuse and furry,
One like a ratel tumbled hurry skurry

English used to have a number of words for things that are terrifying but beautiful, or beautiful in part because terrifying: sublime, wonderful, even awful (as in full of awe). All of them have lost the connotations of terror, and the language is impoverished for the loss.

“Goblin Market” tells a story of two sisters, Lizzie and Laura, who see the goblin market. Lizzie leaves; but Laura stays, and eats of the goblin fruit, then begins to waste away for want of it. At last Lizzie goes to the goblin market to get fruit for Laura: she doesn’t eat it herself, but stands there while the goblins smash it all over her to try and make her eat. At last they give up, and Lizzie rushed back to Laura, and cries:

“Did you miss me?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeez’d from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me.

...I might make them not sisters in a film adaptation, because really that sounds rather incestuous.

Anyway, it’s a splendid poem. A movie version is probably a pipe dream, but I figured I could share the poem with you, at least.

YOU GUYS YOU GUYS. How is everyone else in the world not watching Desperate Romantics? It is amazing and full of art and Victorian England and beautiful redheads and cute guys and more art and EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD I WANT IN A SHOW. It is a show about terrible people, but it knows it's a show about terrible people and it calls them on their terribleness and it is so, so funny.

So many historical shows leap at the opportunity to indulge in sexism - and the Victorian art world in general and pre-Raphaelites in particular offer so many opportunities (I'm not sure Rosetti quite saw women as people) - and this show just avoids that so effortlessly.

I have even forgiven it for its lack of Christina Rosetti, that is how much I love this show.

And did I mention it's hilarious? Seriously. And it has the most complicated and convoluted and interestingly difficult take on heterosexual romance - and on friendships - and really just relationships in general - you can tell they thought about every single relationship in this show. What makes it go? Where are its weak points? How do these two people - these two particular people - fit together?

So there are three main pairings in Desperate Romantics. John Millais/Effie Ruskin (who is now Effie Millais), who are rather effaced in this episode, though Millais is enjoying married life so much that he enjoins all his friends to the joys of matrimony with the rapturous comment that "the course of our physical intimacy takes us daily through new and enchanting landscapes" - oh, Millais, ILU. I hope here is more Effie & Millais in the next episode.

Then, Dante Gabriel Rosetti/Elizabeth Siddal, who are riding the True Love Train straight to...well, presumably an early death from consumption on her apart, although I'm holding out hope they'll ignore that inconvenient bit of history.

(In this episode, Ruskin is all, "Miss Siddal, you are so talented! You are an untutored genius! I've decided to give you a stipend so you can devote yourself to your art. And Rosetti, you're clearly a great teacher, I've found you a teaching post!" Rosetti's look of horror, barely gilded with an attempt to look delighted and supportive - he's supposed to be the untutored genius, not her! - is priceless.)

But today! Today I'm going to talk about William Holman Hunt and his disastrous relationship with his protegee Annie Miller, a prostitute/model who he has decided to raise out of the gutter and turn into a lady because...well, he's not clear why he's doing this, which contributes to the terribleness of their relationship. Hunt is forever saying things like "I admire your working class spirit, but until we change your voice and your walk and everything about you really, I can't possibly introduce you to my mother."

Annie is torn between being gratified to get a chance in life she never expected to have, and being insulted by the fact that Hunt claims he's in love with her while not seeming to actually like anything about her. "I am sick to death of being your experiment," she snaps at him, when yet again he's broken off their relationship; and he's so infuriated that he tries to convince Annie to move out of London, because he can't stand to be in the same city as her anymore, apparently, and obviously that's her problem.

He sends Fred to take the message. Fred is the only one of them who isn't based on any particular historical person, and his main role is to provide a sort of buffer so it's not all pre-Raphaelites trying to steal each other's girlfriends all the time. Mostly he's pretty dull; not in a way that detracts from the story, but in a "someone needs to be boring around here to make everyone else stand out all the more brightly" kind of way.

But Fred - Fred reaches his apotheosis in this episode. He tears Hunt a new one - and it's not even because Fred's in love with Annie; he's not, but he recognizes that she deserves better. I nearly fell out of my chair.

"I will no longer carry messages to a woman you are not worthy of, carry messages to a woman who has done everything you have asked of her, yet whom you still reject. A woman who deserves to be loved, and if not by you then by some other manm who will not demand of her that she be anything other than her loving and lovable self.

"You wronged her. It is your pride, not hers, that is the issue here."

And Hunt runs off to apologize to her - finally finds her in a tea shop - rather fails to do justice to how sorry he is (he should have just quoted Fred, but he was still too proud, perhaps) - and she tells him, gently but firmly, that's it's over. Years from now, they'll see each other, and he'll be a great artist and she'll be a matron with seven children, and they'll look back at this and laugh.

And he loses her. He acted like a complete jerk to her - and she doesn't forgive him: she half wants to, but she can't, because he's betrayed her trust too many times. They cry over the tea table, and it's sad and necessary and beautiful.

(And then the episode finishes off with Millais unveiling his sketch for Bubbles, which sends the pre-Raphaelites into hysterics. Always leave 'em laughing.)

...everyone should watch this. I plan to buy a copy just to make all my RL friends watch it. Hopefully they won't be too alarmed by the amount of sex in it.