Ladies of Wellington

On a new topic, I’ve been writing a series of ladies’ loos, “Ladies of Wellington”. They’ve been published in a local newspaper, The Wellingtonian, on a fairly regular basis since February 2009. The reviews are “real” reviews of ladies’ loos — public loos and loos in cafés, cinemas, restaurants etc — but are slightly tongue-in-cheek. Each review is between 100 and 200 words, and so far, about 30 reviews have been published. According to the editor, the reviews are popular, quirky and well written. I’ve even received fan mail!

It’s a fun column to write, and gives me the perfect excuse to try new cafés. I’ve sat on some beautiful thrones (tiled mosaic floors, gold sinks, gold curtains), and some very grotty ones too (damp concrete floors, holes in the walls, not a shred of loo paper) — all in the name of research!

I would love the reviews to be published as a collection. (The book would make a fab xmas gift!) The newspaper confirmed that I retain copyright of the published reviews, which was a huge relief. So, after dithering about in my usual fashion for a few months, I finally started contacting publishers. As it’s bad form to contact more than one publisher or agent at a time (it’s seen as a sort of literary promiscuity — after all, you’re trying to sell yourself), so I’ll give the first one a week or two longer to get back to me, then I’ll cross them off the list and move onto the next one.

Contacting publishers and agents is such a thoroughly demoralising process. I may as well hang a sign around my neck that says: “Please form an orderly queue and take turns to reject me. Thank you for deigning to waste your valuable time.” I am so bad at the “trying to sell yourself” part of writing (it’s not really writing, it’s more the public relations side of writing) but there’s nothing for it, it has to be done if you want to be published.

Lettres à Missy — letters by Colette

“Lettres à Missy” edited by Samia Bordji and Frédéric Maget, published by Flammarion (Paris 2009).

Once or twice a year, I give myself the luxury of ordering some books from France. The most recent shipload included “Lettres à Missy”: a collection of letters written by Colette to her lover, Missy (Mathilde de Morny, the Marquise of Belboeuf). Colette never dated her letters, but the editors have given each letter an estimated date by finding out when Colette visited a particular town, or performed a play, that she mentions in each letter. This must have taken a lot of patience, dedication and detective work, so much credit is due to Bordji and Maget.

Colette’s first letter in the collection was sent from Le Grand Hôtel in Nice, and has an estimated date of February 1908. Colette has just arrived from Monte-Carlo, and gossips to Missy about the friends she saw there, and who won or lost in the casinos. Colette’s tone is friendly when she mentions Willy and Meg (her ex-husband and his girlfriend) — the famously tempestuous relationship between the literary ex-couple can’t have deteriorated yet.

Colette is on tour, miming in the play La Chair (Flesh). In wild Monte-Carlo, she ripped her dress completely as part of the play, and showed off one of her beautiful breasts, and most of a thigh. In conservative Nice, however, she was allowed only to unbutton the top of her dress. Colette describes to Missy how well the audience reacted to the play, and how pleased she is that the audience in Nice loved her, despite the lack of naked flesh in play with such a promising, titillating title.

Review of Chéri — the film

Two of my favourite Colette novels, Chéri and La fin de Chéri, have been made into a sumptuous, lavish film. I couldn’t wait to see it! Colette wrote the novels — novellas, really — in the 1920s, but they are set in the dazzling, glorious days of La Belle Époque, circa 1900. Most of the story takes place, it hardly needs saying, in Paris.

Léa, a courtesan of “a certain age” takes Chéri as her last lover before retiring from the boudoir. To complicate matters, Chéri is the pampered 19-year-old son of Léa’s best friend and fellow courtesan, Madame Peloux (Kathy Bates).

Rupert Friend is perfect as the pretty, feminine boy for whom Léa is both mistress and mother. Michelle Pfeiffer is wonderful as Léa, but is too thin and pretty to embody the role. I’ve always imagined Léa as plump and bosomy, mature but still attractive — Helen Mirren, perhaps. The American accents were a jarring discord, and the lack of female body hair another jarring note, as well as being anachronistic. A woman in 1900 would no more have thought to shave her underarms than she would have thought of shaving her head.

The costumes and sets are gorgeous, and evoke the period’s love of beauty, extravagance and the exotic. Some of the story is set and filmed in Biarritz, one of my favourite places in France. Biarritz is a chic, elegant town in the Basque area (near the Spanish border) on the beautiful but rough Atlantic coast. Biarritz was the place to be if you were rich and gorgeous in the 1900s. My grandmother used to take me there for creamy hot chocolate and hot, salty buttered toast in a lovely, old-fashioned tea-room… what I would give to go there again!

Paris apartment

Oh my god, look at these apartments, they are all so divinely beautiful. \r\n\r\nI want that one! No, that one. No, wait…. I can\’t choose, I want them all! \r\nLet\’s go and live in Paris, we\’ll have a gorgeous apartment in le Palais Royale, or rue Buci…… sigh…..\r\n \r\nhttp://parisapartment.wordpress.com/

La chambre de la Polaire

Thank you, Pam, for sending me the link to La Chambre de la Polaire, a gorgeous website dedicated to Polaire!
www.geocities.com/Paris/Lights/8473/polaire.html

The pictures of Polaire are stunning, and showcase her famously minuscule waist. If you’ve ever wondered why a small waist is called a “wasp-waist”, and what it would look like, this website is for you! It looks like the photographs were all taken at one sitting — I would guess that they were taken around 1902, when she made her first major appearance on stage (as Claudine, the 16 year old schoolgirl created by Colette). Polaire would have been 28 years old then, and Colette 29, when together, the women brought Claudine to life.

Polaire’s lingerie is sumptuously, sensuously frothy and lacy. The photographs are faded, of course, and not in good focus, as if they’ve been enlarged from very small originals. But it looks like her corset laces up at the front, which is interesting — I thought the French style was to lace up at the back? In one photograph she kneels on a chair, coquettishly showing a fair bit of stockinged leg, and giving us a good view of wonderful lace-up boots, tied at the top with a satin ribbon bow.

If you look carefully at the fourth photograph, where she’s facing away from the camera, you can see a shadow on the left of her waist and bust, as if her true, more generous silhouette has been erased. I’m sure Polaire’s waist wasn’t really as tiny as it appears in the photographs. There doesn’t seem to be anything else on the website, other than the photographs, but they are beautiful.

I love this desperately erotic description of Polaire on Wikipedia:
“Polaire! The agitating and agitated Polaire! The tiny slip of a woman that you know, with the waist slender to the point of pain, of screaming out loud, of breaking in two, in a spasmically tight bodice, the prettiest slimness … And, under the aureole of an extravagant masher’s hat, orange and plumed with iris leaves, the great voracious mouth, the immense black eyes, ringed, bruised, discoloured, the incandescence of her pupils, the bewildered nocturnal hair, the phosphorus, the sulphur, the red pepper of that ghoulish, Salome-like face, the agitating and agitated Polaire!”

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