The Paradine Case

The late Louis Jourdan came up in conversation yesterday during a chat on ye Fycetyme with friends, which led me to remark on his, um, forceful appearance in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Paradine Case, his first Hollywood film. One friend surprised me by saying he’d never seen it, so of course I will have to pour out a few thoughts now!

When people think of Alfred Hitchcock they think of Rebecca, Psycho!, Rear Window, The Birds, and all those movies he made with Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant, Grace Kelly, and Other Blondes Wearing Nile Green. My own two favorites are from “second string'“ Hitchcock films — notable, finely crafted films with stellar performances, but just not pushing themselves to the front of the Hitchcock pack. The other is Stage Fright, but The Paradine Case comes first.

Long story short: Allida Valli (also known as Valli), while playing the piano before dinner, is arrested for murdering her husband in the very recent past. The dignity and hauteur she displays through her arrest and arraignment could not be more stimulating. Her family solicitor, delightful Charles Coburn, meets her in prison and arranges for one of the brightest stars of the bar to take on her case, Gregory Peck. After meeting Valli in prison, it doesn’t take long for Our Boy to become completely infatuated with her, a fact not missed by his loyal and loving wife, Requisite Hitchcock Blonde Ann Todd (appearing by arrangement with J. Arthur Rank Organization). Hilarity ensues (as I’m fond of saying), especially when Peck obsessively visits Valli’s country house and ends up meeting her murdered husband’s valet . . . Louis Jourdan, with eyes of coal-black fire and skin like creamy velvet. Just how will his testimony affect the trial? I’m not telling!

Ann Todd, Ethel Barrymore, and Joan Tetzel.

Along for the ride are the judge, Charles Laughton; the wife he has browbeaten into twittery, fumbling, terrified submission, Ethel Barrymore; and Charles Coburn’s unmarried daughter, sharply observant Joan Tetzel, who also happens to be Ann Todd’s best friend. And it’s a pleasure to see Leo G. Carroll as the prosecutor and Isobel Elsom (best remembered as Mrs. Eynesford-Hill in My Fair Lady) as a country innkeeper who finds a dead owl in a chimney.

Valli is arraigned. Charles Coburn second from right.

There are many reasons to love this film, starting with the performances. Valli is vabulous; her performance is a gray rainbow of all the dark emotions, warm, majestic, contemptuous, despairing. This was her first Hollywood film, too, along with Jourdan, but she really spent most of her career in Europe. Jourdan, her co-debutante, displays marvelous intensity. I am especially fond of his scene at the inn with Gregory Peck, not least because of my love of double entendre.

While Peck and Laughton deliver performances up to their usual standard, I am most drawn to the women in The Paradine Case. Ethel Barrymore could not be more desperately wonderful, so deeply in love with a man whose faults she can’t help but see. But it’s really Ann Todd and Joan Tetzel who carry this picture over the threshold. Joan Tetzel fearlessly communicates unwelcome opinions to the men whether they like it or not (they usually don’t), and Ann Todd . . . oh, I just love her! Watch the movie and you’ll fall in love with her, too.

Then there are Travis Banton’s wonderful gowns. La Barrymore, dignified in grey lace, but just dowdy enough. All of Ann Todd’s ensembles (except for one of her courtroom outfits) speak of quiet good taste, and I love the way she wears a streamer on her white chiffon dinner gown in two or three different ways. Joan Tetzel looks sharps and sleep in high-necked form-fitting black, but by far and away Valli sweeps them all off the screen in the full-skirted black gown in which she’s arrested. With her high diamond earrings and Very Important diamond brooch on her bateau neck, and the contemptuous curves of her hair and features . . . wow!

Add a haunting, suspenseful score by Franz Waxman — be on the lookout for Appassionata No. 69 — and the stunning news delivered to the courtroom that changes everything, and you just can’t go wrong. Enjoy!

Charles Laughton creeping on Ann Todd after dinner.

Friday Midday, 19 February -- Time Capsule

Over the last year or more — since before the pandemic, really — an accretion of unwanted stuff has built up in the small space between the piano and the kitchen door: lots of books from the last time I Konmari-ed my library, a stack of padded UPS envelopes that had been used as padding in a gift package, cardboard boxes in which to put those books, and other stuff. It’s almost all gone now, so three cheers for “Slow and steady wins the race.”

What took up most of my time was an orange (p)leather magazine basket that had more in it than I thought. Now almost everyone would have said to me “Robert, just throw it all out! You won’t need any of that.” And thank goodness they weren’t here to tell me that, ‘cause the original copy of my mortgage was in there, and who knows when that might come in handy. But what I don’t understand is what some 1959 correspondence relating to my parents’ mortgage was doing in there. Or why I even have it in the first place.

I expected to find a year or two’s worth of copies of a local magazine a friend used to edit and some theatre programs. And they were there. In addition, a number of other items brought as far back as 40 years, including:

• A small sheaf of birthday cards from my 25th birthday in 2003. ;-)

• Lots of real estate docs related to my move to JP the same year.

• Family reunion registration forms from 2009 and 2011.

• Evidence of every workplace I’d been in since 1986.

• Two memorial service programs for dear friends from different parts of my life.

• Alumni board materials from 2006.

• The menu from my 2011 Christmas luncheon in français de la garbage.

• The January 1994 issue of Tech Review in which my photograph appears in coverage of the Ig Nobel Prizes (which were then at MIT and on the Board of Governers of which I served).

• Drawings made specially for me by Niece Who Must Not Be Tagged when she was little.

• A map of the Estate of Marie Antoinette from my 2008 visit to Versailles.

• A very important high school casting notice.

• Travel postcards from three different friends.

• Several letters from Mother, including one 1986 note on a Postit: “On the television, a chiropractor: ‘Why live with pain?’ Bill chimed in: ‘Because I’m married to her!’”

• Photocopied newspaper obituaries of a couple family members.

• A pink plastic ring made to look like a gemstone.

Needless to say, this has been absorbing if not always pleasurable; in mining one can bring up diamonds, coal, and . . . something less solid and more unpleasant, all at the same time. And I know I’ll find more of these time capsules as my journey continues, and will enjoy them all.

President's Day 2021

1) My Valentine’s gift to myself was not to read the news after Saturday afternoon.

2) Today’s Bible verse, Proverbs 28:9-10: “He who closes his ears from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination. He who causes the righteous to go astray in an evil path shall fall himself into the pit; but the upright shall inherit good things.”

3) The fact is, Daddy needs a change of scene, and the pandemic has made that all but absolutely impossible.

Monday Morning, 8 February -- The Death of Mary, Queen of Scots

1) Thanks to the Royal Collection Trust on Instagram, I reminded that today is the anniversary of the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Fotheringay Castle. I became fascinated by Mary at the same time I discovered the Presidents and First Ladies in third grade. (Thanks Mom and Dad for that World Book Encyclopedia!) That’s no small reason why I sat her at Etiquetteer’s right in that list of 13 dinner guests from all history.

A sample of Mary’s embroidery I saw at the V&A in August, 2019.

2) Mary was beautiful, powerful, headstrong, emotional, devout, and a talented needlewoman. Unable to avoid execution, she at least stage managed it superbly, for History. Who else would think to wear a tawny velvet petticoat and sleeves so that the blood wouldn’t clash with her white linen underclothes?! Nor did she enter the room as a penitent, but as an anointed queen in a gigantic black velvet robe of state spangled with gold. As I’ve said before, it’s all about accessorizing!

2a) I may have to take some time today to reread the relevant chapters of her biography by Stefan Zweig.

3) Then of course there’s Monty Python’s eternal imagining of the scene.

Monday Morning, 1 February

1) “This is the day . . . to clear your mind” the calendar said two years ago, the day Mother died. I think about that so much.

1a) I’d forgotten about the “My train of thought derailed. There were no survivors” part, but that’s a powerful part of the impact this had.

2) Because I couldn’t get back to sleep (not unusual), I got up about 4:15. Candlelight parlor coffee and devotional. I asked Mother to direct me to some good advice in her Lamsa Bible, and it opened to the book of Zephaniah. The what? Who’s even heard of this book of the Bible? And the page had none of Mother’s notes on it, so perhaps she never read it either. But I smiled as I began Chapter 2, because it was without doubt a message from Mother: “Gather yourselves, bind yourselves together, O people without discipline; Before you become like the chaff which is driven away . . . “ That is definitely something she would say to me at this particular time.

3) These days I feel like I want to clear my mind with sleep, but that doesn’t seem to be working. When I clear the house . . . that may clear my mind, too.

Thanksgiving, 2013.

Sunday Night, 31 January

Apparently today is the 100th birthday of “that great Irish tenor, Mari O’Lanza,” so I want to share a few favorite clips.

“Be My Love” was my musical obsession about ten or 15 years ago. It doesn’t hurt that my beloved Kathryn Grayson is the soprano.

Somehow I remember seeing The Great Caruso on television at home, and Daddy just laughing and laughing at this scene of Caruso’s reaction to the birth of his first child during the famous Sextette of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. Because it is, it is, it is HILAROUS to see and hear him singing “I-I-I-I-I-I-I-T’S A-A-A-A-A-A GIRL!”

“Because You’re Mine” from the movie of the same name, was also a musical obsession for awhile. (Thank you, the Yewytybbe! When you bring me stuff like this, you’re doing your job!) Even more poignant, his partner here is Doretta Morrow, the actress who created the role of Tuptim* in The King and I. Her unique voice — there are very few singers who don’t sound like they could be someone else, and Doretta Morrow is one of them — was taken from us too soon by cancer. The movie itself . . . don’t bother.

*”Something young, soft and slim//Painted cheek, tapering limb//smiling lips, all for him//eyes that shine just for him//So he thinks, just for him.” I’m weeping.

Tuesday Morning, 19 January

1) Parlor coffee and devotional. Mother’s Lamsa Bible opened to I Timothy, chapter 2, which begins: “I beseech you, therefore, first of all, to offer to God, petitions, prayers, supplications, and thanksgiving for all men,//For kings and for all in authority; that we may live a quiet and peaceable life, in all purity and Godliness,//For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour//Who desires all men to be saved and to return to the knowledge of the truth.”

1a) Mother had underlined “we may live a quiet and peaceable life,” whereas today, almost 24 hours before the inauguration, I’d emphasize “return to the knowledge of the truth.” But it was very comforting to read this today, to begin the day.

2) Then in Baltasar Gracián’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom, #183 spoke immediately to the actions of the outgoing President and his wife: “Don’t hold on to anything too firmly. Fools are stubborn, and the stubborn are fools, and the more erroneous their judgment is, the more they hold on to it. Even when you are right, it is good to make concessions; people will recognize you were right but admire your courtesy. More is lost through holding on than can be won by defeating others.”

2a) With the benefit of hindsight, sadly, I see how I myself have used stubbornness to disadvantage . . .

3) I feel like after the nation gets through tomorrrow, I’ll be able to exhale and really throw myself into planning and activity for the rest of the year. But since the insurrection January 6 I’ve felt like I’m milling around in the theatre lobby during intermission of a play that’s not being produced very well, but that no one feels they can walk out on.

Sunday Night, 17 January

1) Feeling unsettled and unhappy in my writing this morning, I left the house a little after 10:30 for a vigorous walk through the cemetery. And I wore my cape. It’s one thing to walk through the wind, and quite another to walk through the wind pushing a sail. It certainly adds to the workout.

2) While I was there I saw a very small heart-shaped stone of dark gray granite, with a sort of 1960s hippie-dippie-looking inscription: “To Max.” I bent to clear some leaves away . . . and heard the soft gentle sound of the crotch of my khakis ripping. That’s the second pair this pandemic! Daddy has certainly put on the COVID-19.

3) Like many of us, I am longing to feel the heavy weights of the last four years fall from us, but I am very anxious about Wednesday. But I have my champagne ready, first to toast a departing helicopter, and then our next President.

Tuesday Morning, 12 January

1) Parlor coffee and devotional. I called on Mother’s spirit to direct me to something appropriate in her Lamsa Bible, and it came open at II Kings, chapter 11, which I never recall reading before. This is the story of Queen Athaliah, who slew all the members of her family in order to occupy the throne — except for one child, her grandson Joash, who was raised in secrecy until the age of seven. Then he was revealed as the true king. Athaliah, witnessing this in the temple, cried “Treason!” She was later executed.

2) How many of us just do not go back to the source material? In yesterday’s column I was advocating for everyone to go back on their own and read our Founding Documents for themselves, and not to treat the pronouncements of their Preferred Demagogues as “the pure milk of the Word.” It is really the same with whatever the established text of your religion is. We all need to make the time for individual study and do the work!

3) With freedom from a 9-to-5, I allegedly have all the time in the world for reading, which I very much want to do. Yet somehow the days pass, and I never get any further in the books I want to read, and the copies of The Economist loom larger and larger.

New Year's Eve Day 2020

1) Fast away the Old Year passes indeed! In a bit of a flurry since this morning preparing: laundry, dusting, tidying, dishwashing, finishing the 75th Etiquetteer column of the year, and putting 16 more Christmas cards in the mail. Anything sent after today will have to be a New Year’s card, but at least I’ve been able to mail a card to everyone who sent me one.

2) Tonight will be my first New Year’s Eve in my own home in over 30 years. So steak, baked potato, spinach, hollandaise, salad, poached pears, and a bottle of pink champagne at a formal table. I am not even going to attempt to get into my black tie. It was far too challenging last year; now that I’ve packed on the COVID19, it’s an impossibility.

2a) None of this is going to work unless I clear off this dining room table and find my blender.

2b) But I won’t be alone, because at 11 I’ll be zooming in with the bestest friends with whom I always spend New Year’s Eve. And it will be beautiful!

3) For A/V wallpaper, Dinner at Eight, Sunset Boulevard (of course!), and Noel Coward’s Cavalcade.

Wednesday Morning, 30 December -- 50+50=100

Fifty years ago today was the 50th wedding anniversary of my paternal grandparents, Ira and Mary Ella. Which means that 100 years ago today was their wedding, which took place in the parlor of Granny’s parents’ boardinghouse on Canal Boulevard in New Orleans. Granny wore a green traveling suit with a fur scarf, and Grampa was so poor he had to wear his doughboy uniform because he couldn’t afford a suit. (I should have thought about looking for the information sooner, but Heaven knows where it is in this house full of papers.)

Grampa in France.

He did provide an inexpensive gold ring, though, engraved inside “LOVE IS REFLECTED IN LOVE. To M.E.” Granny was not really much of a jewelry person, and she eventually gave this little ring to my father to use for himself when he married Mother. But Daddy was not much of a jewelry person either. He thought he had lost it. After Mother died, I remember turning his jewelry box upside down and giving it a vigorous shake. Among the basketball charms, never-worn cufflinks, and tie bars, Granny’s little ring revealed itself. I treasure it now.

The Evans sisters: Mary Ella (my granny), Fannie, Sister, Kate, Lal, and Johnnie. I believe they are outside the boardinghouse.

Aunt Betty once told me how they met. Granny was visiting friends in Opelousas, Grampa’s hometown. Grampa had a friend at the house where she was staying. While working in the kitchen, the girls saw Grampa coming up the walk. Granny took one look, turned to her friend, and said “That’s the man I’m going to marry.” And she did!

Granny and Grampa were both popular and loving people (but they could be stern with grandchildren), and they were “fruitful and multiplied:” five children and eighteen grandchildren. So somehow someone came up with the idea of a banquet for their 50th anniversary. (When you have just turned seven years old, these things just happen.) People came from near and far, and there was a play about their lives in which all the grandchildren had to appear as themselves. (I think Mother might have written it, but I don’t remember.) I remember us rehearsing at our house, and the crowd of people in our living room.

The banquet itself was held in one of the function rooms at the Chateau Charles on Highway 90, and it was at this event that I fell in love with an E-shaped banquet table. I don’t remember much about the evening (I talked to one cousin recently who doesn’t remember it at all), but I remember the bright lights, the smiling, everyone dressed in their best, and the occasion of getting to sit with all the grownups at that enormous, beautiful table.

Of course there were photos taken of family groups, and you already know how much I treasure the portrait above of all of us together. It makes me think of the hubbub of every Christmas Eve of my childhood, when everyone would be there, and everyone moving and talking at once. Granny, raised in a boardinghouse with six siblings, was always happiest with a crowd around, and I know Christmas Eve must have been the happiest night of the year for her. I’m the same way: I want everyone to be there.

And this is our little family that night. Daddy looks like he’s ready to go home to bed! And doesn’t Mother look beautiful? I remember that rust-colored suit; she would wear it to church on Sundays.

Today is not only a wedding anniversary. Four years ago this evening my father died, after a long decline. He had told me months before how much he wanted to see his parents. Today it is better for me to “ponder these things in my heart” rather than on the page. Tonight I’ll raise a glass in his memory, and to my family established throughout the nation, but who I hold close.

Tuesday Evening, 22 December

1) “To the gypsy that I was,” “And it all comes down to you.”

1a) “In the middle of my room I did not hear from you.”

1b) Oh dear.

2) I’m at the point in my life where I just love watching 42nd Street and identifying all the chorus girls who also appeared in Barbara Stanwyck’s Baby Face, and that one guy who was one of the principals in Reefer Madness.

3) Dentist tomorrow. Today I saw one of the unrecognized costs of the coronavirus; a couple of my lower teeth appear to be cracked.

Sunday Afternoon, 20 December

1) Sometimes we are given the gift of being able to see something again as if for the first time. And yesterday morning about 8:30 AM, walking home from the subway with three heavy bags of groceries, for the first time I saw snow glitter. Insert Every Cliché About What Glittering Snow Looks Like Here; I’m not going to try. I have no idea why my brain should have unfolded enough to allow that, but I’m so grateful I got to see that for the first time again.

2) I spend less and less time on ye Fycebykke. In fact, I’ve even come to dread it.

3) The hair is just getting longer and longer.

“Yes, yes . . . this! it’s wonderful!”

4) Two kitchen catastrophes, one of my own making: a) the garbage disposal broke after a metal measuring spoon made it in there (I feel like a fool, but the nice man from McMahon’s is coming tomorrow); and b) when my very first load of wash in the new washing machine got to the spin cycle it started thumping so much it nearly crashed through the wall.

4a) Other people manage adulting so well, and here I am in my mid-fifties, wandering about like a baby duck . . .

Thursday Morning, 17 December

1) Our first real snowstorm of the season dropped last night, creating the usual Winter Wonderland outside.

1a) Absolutely not setting foot into it! I’ll wait until it stops falling to start shoveling.

2) Mother once said that somebody once said that the definition of Eternity is one ham and two people. This year, for my second Noël seul, I ordered a ham (because all the turkey breasts were already gone). My sister’s family had already sent me a nice box of a dozen pears, so you can imagine my surprise at finding a second box of pears on the doorstep last night. Last night I surfed around for some pear/ham recipes, and found a relatively easy one for pear-glazed ham, and other hamless pear recipes that involve poaching, and an upside-down cake.

2a) So Daddy will be eating a lot of pears this Christmas, and sharing with the neighbors!

3) Next week in Christmas, and I still haven’t mailed one card. That needs to be corrected starting . . . now.

Wednesday Evening, 16 December

It’s been awhile. Let’s have some catch-up:

1) A week ago I got contacted by Mass. Contact Tracing that along around November 29 I had been exposed to someone who either had COVID or had tested positive for it. So last Thursday I headed back to ye Instytytte to a COVID test. Most interesting to see how the new skyscrapers are progressing in Kendall Square! This part of Cambridge is no longer Cambridge; it’s New York. Decidedly New York.

Old and New Kendall Square, now in Manhattan!

1a) Monday I got the news that my test result was negative, so of course I immediately ordered a heaping dose of Prognosis Negative.

1b) I shouldn’t even make that suggestion, since I’ve only seen Dark Victory once.

2) Today begins the last two weeks of his horrible, horrible year. With Repeal Day and my two Victorian Holiday Customs programs concluded (all successful, mercifully), I suddenly realized that I can use these two weeks completely for planning, organizing, purging, and preparing for the New Year. And that feels good.

2a) So I’m looking forward to the snowstorm coming, because that will contribute to this sort of energy!

3) In this morning’s bitter cold I walked briskly through the cemetery for an hour, for the first time in about a week. I was sure the cold would keep people away, but a knot of cars near the entrance indicated an interment taking place today. And wouldn’t you know it, a procession of more cars started through the gates almost as soon as I arrived. So I avoided the newer, sunnier section of the cemetery, but still observed seven other strollers.

3a) The place looks a bit bleak right now, and I expect a snowfall will improve it. But will I want to be walking through it then?

3b) The two Creepy Graves of Children have been specially sheltered from the incoming weather, which is a bit of a relief. Those graves are so beautiful (if creepy), but they would be deeply sad if they were damaged.

Tuesday Morning, 8 December

1) I had never heard of Hyllsyng or its celebrity pastor on the East Coast Cyrl Lyntz, but I was somehow absorbed by this article about the pastor’s dismissal last week after discovery of adultery and quite a few other lapses. This worship community definitely seems more style-over-substance entertainment rather than church — but then, I haven’t been an active churchgoer in 20 years, so who am I to judge?

1a) This story very much brought up for me Matthew 6:6, “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.” But on the flip side, also my father, dressing in his best every Sunday morning for Sunday School and church, and a conversation we once had about the value of public worship as part of a congregation. That meant so much to him, being part of a community of faith.

2) By the time I went to bed last night I was very surprised to discover that I’d polished off an entire bottle of merlot, but it was all in the cause of good conversation. As you know, cocktail hour is an important part of the daily schedule at Maison Robaire. Yesterday’s had to be a “working” cocktail hour, wrapping up a few packages for mailing in the dining room and other administrivia instead of just lounging the parlor and reading. But then before you know it the clock said 8:30 or so, and I had been in two extended but beautiful conversations — first with a couple dear friends passing through Boston, and then with one of my oldest friends from Lago di Carlo who I hadn’t actually spoken to in at least ten years, and possibly longer.

2a) The result this morning: happy memories tinged by, unusually, upper back pain, probably from the way I was sitting during Call #2.

3) A friend has twice posted images from Thomas Cole’s famous series of painting The Course of Empire, notably Destruction and Desolation. I share his concerns, but want so very much to be hopeful now.

Thanksgiving Eve, November 25

1) Right now I am using this cocktail hour to neutralize some frustrations with rye and The Wizard of Oz.

1a) I had to buy the latter again because my DVD is stuck in the external DVD player which does not recognize that there is a DVD in there! The internet, as usual, is entirely unhelpful in suggesting solutions.

1b) I feel like Tommy Lee Jones in Men in Black: “Now I’m gonna have to buy the White Album again!”

2) But it was lovely today to receive a package, get some nice feedback on today’s random column, and read an actual handwritten Lovely Note someone sent me in the mail.

3) For Thanksgiving I am fixing myself a nice turkey luncheon; thank goodness I started thawing out that bowling ball of a turkey breast on Monday! And in the afternoon at least two friends will be here for dessert al fresco. I hope the anticipated rains will have ceased by then.

Saturday Night, November 21 - Recipes

1) In the larder I had two chicken breasts that I had to cook today, plus new potatoes I’d gotten for a failed attempt to cook vichyssoise on National Vichyssoise Day (no leeks in the neighborhood), and of course garlic. An internet search for those ingredients yielded this recipe on ye Fydde Nytwyrke for Garlic Chicken and Potatoes, and it may become a new go-to recipe.

1a) I had in the house almost everything else almost exactly: olive oil, cumin seeds (I had powdered cumin), salt and pepper, light brown sugar, lemon, red pepper flakes (I used cayenne pepper), and chopped fresh cilantro (I used powdered cilantro). The results were actually quite tasty!

2) A friend sent along this recipe for a bourbon cocktail that also uses ingredients I already have in the house — Lillet Blanc and Aperol — so I’ll have to give that a go tomorrow night.

3) Lastly, a very saucy discussion took place on ye Fycebykke about a particularly campy favorite, candlelight salad. I may have to have a fight with Etiquetteer about whether or not we do an instructional video.

Early Thursday Morning, 19 November

1) My rule is, if I’m awake after 5:00 AM, I start the day. Often I break this rule, now that I don’t have to leave the house by 8 to make the office by 9, but not today.

2) Mother’s Bible opened to Galatians 3, which begins with a question that many Americans would have trouble answering: “O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you from your faith after Jesus Christ, crucified, has been pictured before your eyes?”

2a) And in Gracián’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom, #165: “Wage a clean war. the wise person can be driven to war, but not to a dishonorable one. Act like the person you are, not the way they make you act. To behave magnanimously towards your rivals is praiseworthy. You should fight not only to win power but also to show that you are a superior fighter. To conquer without nobility is not victory but surrender. [emphasis mine] . . . don’t take advantage of the trust that was once placed in you. Everything that smacks of treachery is poison to your reputation. Noble people shouldn’t have even an atom of baseness. Nobility scorns villainy. You should be able to boast that if gallantry, generosity, and faith were lost in the world, they could be found agian in your own breast.”

3) Variations on routine become gemstones of excitement, and this morning I have a 9 AM call with a friend and former colleague, and that is most pleasant to consider!

Wednesday Night, 18 November

1) Such chaotic dreams in the night: going through what was basically a crowded labyrinth of white office furniture and finding my mother in the way (!), and then later, running up an escalator after discovering my luggage had been stolen, hearing my name being called out over a public address system, yelling that I was on my way, and then hearing such a long, complicated question for me that I realized I had no idea where in the building that voice over the public address system was coming from . . . and where was my luggage?!

1a) Wouldn’t you rather wake up than deal with all that? I think you would!

2) Now here is a piece of music for a victorious winter holiday season: Rachmaninoff’s Prelude Opus 23, No. 2.

3) This evening I listened in on a Massachusetts Historical Society presentation via Zoom on Penelope Winslow, Plymouth Colony First Lady: Reimagining a Life, because the author, Michelle Marchetti Coughlin, is also the House Administrator at the Gibson House and I wanted to show my support. Well . . . a very interesting program on a seemingly daunting project: determining someone’s life story based not on written or recorded words, but through what is called “material culture:” surviving property, belongings, and archeological discoveries. I feel like I learned a lot.

3a) And as if that wasn’t enough, the program was introduced by the Society’s president, Catherine Allgor. “Catherine Allgor?” I asked myself. “That couldn’t possibly be the author of Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government that I just quoted in a recent column, could it?” Well, yes! Yes, it could be the same Catherine Allgor who wrote Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government! Such an excellent book, and I should reread the whole thing again, but she goes into so much of Dolley Madison’s brilliant strategy to forge a robust society in the new Washington City, and also why there are public galleries in Congress, among other things. So, from an a academic research standpoint, it’s been a VERY exciting Wednesday night.