Birthday Girl: The Big Nine-Oh

Herself, as seen by Mr. David Bailey

There is, I think, very little that can be written about the woman that is in any way new or particularly insightful. 

Still Reigning

Well, she's done it, and if it the "it" is simply having lived this long, the manner in which she's done it comes as close as I can imagine one human's efforts could to actually deserving the global outpouring of praise and sheer affection that's coming her way.

Many Happy Returns to a Pretty Nice Girl

So now she's 89 and a day.  I was remiss in missing the big day yesterday, but it still seems worth noting.

Together Forever

Well, I don't know about you, but I think this is an awfully encouraging glance, shared as it is between two people married these 66 years.

When Queens Collide

Oh, Dame Helen - ought one really point at the sovereign?  Well, the lady herself seems unperturbed, as, for that matter, she mostly has for most of the past seven decades or so.

Lillibet Superstar

I have found myself entranced by the news out of London, both amusing and bemusing, that the Queen has taken a stab at broadening the Royal Collections a tad - by purchasing a set of four Warhol screenprints of her own august person. 

While their first stop as royal possessions will be a Jubilee portrait show at Windsor, once that's done, I like to think they'll go a long way to brighten up a room at Buck House.  One imagines herself in her cosy armchair of a quiet evening, the DoE dozing on the sofa; glancing up from her Racing Post she pauses for a moment to admire them, hung among the Winterhalters and Laszlos and Beatons of her nearest and dearest.  "One really was," she thinks to herself, "a pretty nice girl..."

Of the Queen and the Queens

As this apparently endless trip continues to unfurl, I'm working hard to remember how very marvelous so much of it was.  When an experience ends in a great deal of staring at blotchy institutional ceilings while unpleasant things are done to one, that can be a challenge.

Still, I'm hopeful that the takeaways from Summer 2012 will be mostly positive.  The crossing really was a remarkable experience, and not just because Queen Mary 2 is so chockablock with reminders of one of my favorite people, its formidable namesake, seen above presiding over the Queens Room (which one is repeatedly reminded features The Largest Dance Floor at Sea).

We really did have a fabulous time just watching the dancing (and occasionally joining in, the lessons imparted to my sister and me back when we were all going to be pillars of small town society somehow mysteriously still effective).  We loved the people-watching that the Queens Room encourages, and happily looked out for our favorites, after a day or two, out on the floor.

Leading that list was an extremely elegant, British-to-their-bones couple, perfectly turned out at all times of day and night (she in tweeds with pearls by day, and discreet taffeta numbers in the evenings, clearly Grandmama's diamonds glittering in a brooch or earrings), who made every number a real joy. Also of note were a Japanese pair, very endearing, who danced every dance, with a very high level of technical perfection, both with the most intense and solemn expressions, as if the whole thing were an onerous duty pressed upon that they were for some mysterious reason bound to carry out.

And then there were all the others, chief among them the dear ladies squired by the Dance Hosts, the retired gentleman hired by the line to ensure that singles and wallflowers get their turn.  One enthusiastic foxtrotter d'un certain age looked almost exactly like the late Dame Joan Sutherland (only, if possible, taller), and she always seemed to score the tiniest and most adroit of the Hosts, steering him across the floor in a way that called to mind the ship itself being escorted by a tug out of a particularly tricky harbor.

Now, of course, we are turning our attention to the Olympics, in a desultory sort of way, although I really don't think anything will top the opening ceremony unless they shoot the Princess Royal out of a cannon.  I'm still giggling from the astounding vision of the corgis trotting along next to the Queen, striding down a Buck House corridor with the impossibly attractive Mr. Craig.  In her late old age, Osbert Sitwell famously observed, Queen Mary developed a unique sort of "film-star glamour," and the same can now be said of her granddaughter, whose Jubilee apotheosis appears to be complete.

And I do think she's one-upped even her remarkable mother, whose love of the spotlight, however all-encompassing, never even distantly approached the concept of parachuting.  It's something, though, that I believe, after a certain amount of raised eyebrows, May Teck might have thought a wonderful joke...

Their Finest Hour

In our house, growing up, Winston Churchill occupied a place of reverence somewhere between Abraham Lincoln and the Big Guy Upstairs himself.  Statesman, author, gourmand - there was nothing that my Anglophile parents didn't revere about the Prime Minister who, in their view, forced "That Man" Franklin Roosevelt (never a popular figure chez nous) to man up and join the good fight in Europe.

I was interested, therefore, to note that today marks not only that highlight of contemporary British culture, the birthday of Sir Paul McCartney, but also the anniversary of Mr. Churchill's "Finest Hour" speech, delivered after the fall of France and just as Britain headed into the darkest days of the Great War.  Fortuitously, today also marks the posting of a trove of wartime art from the National Archive in London.  The Telegraph has a selection, and you can browse the whole gallery here.

There are some wonderful images, not least the resolute lion above.  I think I like him as much as the iconic (and now much abused) Keep Calm & Carry On.

Wartime artists were forthright about reminding their audience why they were fighting.  For the good of the fetching young lady seen here, for instance:

Remarkable to think she's still with us.  She trained as a mechanic, you know, and reportedly can still when called upon have a knowledgeable look under the hood.

The homefront greatly occupied people's minds, as did the role of women.  I for one would hate to have been the Nazi faced with these formidable creatures, even though they are armed only with paper, metal, and bones (and an especially stern Scottie):

There was a role for everyone in wartime Britain -

...even broad-shouldered, large-handed female impersonators.

Some of the images are affectingly existential -

This one makes me feel quite odd, imagining a wartime viewer imagining his Nazi counterpart - it's somehow vertigo inducing.

I still get sentimental about Mr. Churchill.  I think how terrifying it must have been to hear these words, coming over the crackling wireless, and yet stirring, too:

...The Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new dark age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, This was their finest hour.

Of course, in the end, it all turned out well. At the time, though, these were deadly serious words.  Like these images, they were meant to prop up the tottering morale of a vulnerable little island's people.  How lucky we are, from the comfortable distance of 72 years, to be able to appreciate Mr. Churchill's speech as rhetoric, and this wartime art as a curiosity, even as kitsch.  It could have turned out quite differently...

Ladies and Gentlemen...

Heeeere's Grace!

In a span of four days that took in everything from 1,000 ships on the Thames to a right royal RAF fly-past, she was the only thing that threatened, even for a moment, to steal focus from the Jubilee girl herself.

But only for a moment, for this was - Grace aside (not to mention Annie Lennox, Kylie, Dame Shirley Bassey, Sir Elton, Sir Tom - he is one by now, Mr. Jones, isn't he? - and many more) - entirely the trimph of Elizabeth II: indomitable, inexhaustible, as unlikely and fabulous in her own way as Grace is in hers.

Today, I thought, watching her stand - suddenly alone, temporarily without her Duke - at the end of the service at St. Paul's, she enters history.  I wonder what on earth she made of the hula-hooping Amazon who so enthusiastically celebrated on her behalf?

God Bless...

...Willis Marie Van Schaak.  If nothing else, the name she chose for herself scans better, as we learn at the climax of The Rocky Horror Show (not to mention its Picture Show).  Lili St. Cyr is one of those massive pop-cult phenomena who has more or less entirely disappeared as a person.  She was for a long time a big star in burlesque, a novelty star in Hollywood, and an entrepreneur who for a while rivaled Frederick as a peddler of naughty underwear.  Now she's a passing Rocky Horror reference and a puzzlement to many people who hear her name invoked in Pal Joey's strip-themed number, "Zip."  She would have have been 94 today.

There must some kind of powerful juju in this date.  For one thing, it figures in surprising ways in the lives of British Royalty.  Today, of course, Her Majesty celebrated, officially, her 60th anniversary, her Diamond Jubilee.  It rained (being England and all), but the river pageant was suitably grand.  I wonder if it passed through the Queen's mind, though, as she motored down the Thames on her stately barge, that today was also her Grandfather's birthday, George V having come into the world this day in 1865 (which makes one realize that she is someone who remembers, rather well, someone who was born the year the Civil War ended, but that's another story).  Beyond that, though, today also marks the anniversary of the formalization of the folie à deux that guaranteed her the Throne:  in 1937, her Uncle David married his divorcée, the erstwhile Miss Warfield (and Mrs. Spencer and Mrs. Simpson), at a rented chateau in France.  Today, certainly, was far more in the George V than the Edward VIII vein, and one can't help but think that's a very good thing.

Miss St. Cyr aside, other birthday boys and girls today only reinforce the strange power of June 3:  they range from the eternally fabulous Miss Josephine Baker to the televisual enigma and quasi-Vanderbilt Mr. Anderson Cooper, also taking in protean theatre legend Colleen Dewhurst (maybe the most present actress I've ever seen, albeit in two different basically mediocre plays), Hollywood heartthrob Tony "Yonda lies da castle of my Fadda" Curtis, silent superstar Mme. Alla Nazimova and 30s dynamo Paulette Goddard (of whom few have written better than our dear TJB), blowsy jazz diva Dakota Staton (whom I once saw on an off but still effective night in the Broadway revue Black and Blue - they rolled her on and off on a vast Deco set-piece), and the original riot grrrl, Miss Suzi Quatro (want to feel old?  She's 62), among others. 

So:  God bless, not just Lili St. Cyr, but all of them, with an additional, heartfelt, Good on You Ma'am for today's jubilee girl, too.

Merry Wives

Some days you sit around thinking, "oh, dear - whatever shall I write about today?" Inspirationless, you wanly wait... and then Dame Fortune smiles.

Or, at least, the @ClarenceHouse Tweeter points you toward this lovely image, saying "The Queen, The Duchess of Cornwall and The Duchess of Cambridge visited Fortnum and Mason earlier today."

Which sounds to me like the setup for a joke (punchline ideas welcome), but looks rather like a royal matryoshkha doll.  If nothing else, it's a reminder of how much taller people seem to be getting, although I suppose at 85, the dear Queen has likely lost a little height that even her charming topper can't quite offset.  And doesn't Camilla have surpringly nice gams?  I really think she looks well here (although I must confess we're fairly pro-Camilla in general here at the Café, never having had much time for her high-strung predecessor).

I do hope they enjoyed their little shopping spree.  I imagine the newest Duchess sending a nice hamper off to the Falklands, while perhaps Her Majesty found something in the heart-healthy section (for even, these days, Fortnum's has to toe the health line, I bet) to take home for tea with Philip.  He will have wanted clotted cream, but then again, don't we all?

Gloriana 2.0

Sixty years today; hard to imagine it, doing that job, day in, day out for 60 years. Let alone doing it so very well. Say what you will, she has a marvelous smile.

Her mother, of course, was famous for hers. I've always found it a rather practiced smile, determined to charm, at its least successful verging on the fixed.

No, I think the Queen's is more like that of her grandmother, the redoubtable Queen Mary. It's altogether a less predictable phenomenon, but all the more endearing for it.

One can't, I suppose, wish her sixty more. You know what I do wish, though? That she's with us for a good long time, long enough to see her first-born's first-born have his first. And that that child is a girl, the first ever British heiress apparent. She'd have a thing or two to learn from her great granny...

East Side, West Side...

...Her Majesty was all around the town yesterday. Yes, while we laze here by the sea, feeling only slightly less attenuated and elderly after several weeks of crushing leisure, that indefatigable woman - who even at my advanced age is nonetheless my senior by very nearly a factor of two - topped a demanding week in Canada with a whirlwind day in Manhattan.

She dressed for the heat in floral prints (the better to show up, too, against the imposing green marble backdrop of the United Nations podium, from which she spoke very nicely about the importance of that at times invaluable, at times infuriating body), but as always the focus of her toilette - and the real reason for this post - was her charming and highly decorative chapeau.

I say the real reason for this post because, while I do of course as always appreciate a Royal visit, what I really want to do is call attention to one of my favorite recent blog-finds, Mad Hattery! A lighthearted, possibly borderline-obsessive look at topper trends among the titled classes, MH! is presided over by the almost impossibly knowledgeable hostess Ella, and she and her coterie of fascinator-followers make for very good company indeed.

Among other things, we share a level of despair over the sartorial choices of the Princess Royal, a healthy disdain for Princess Michael of Kent, and an unbridled fondness for the slightly demented charms of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, a lady to whom the MH! generally refers to as "Cake," for reasons obvious to anyone who studies her very distinctive hatting tendencies. Further afield, MH! takes aim from time to time at the studiedly dull dressing of the Japanese Imperials, looks now and again at such regional favorites as Princess Haya of Jordan (and Dubai) and the colorful Sheikha Moza of Qatar, and is now gearing up for the August nuptials involving the erstwhile Greek royals. It's all in excellent fun, and I really can't recommend it enough.

Crowned Head

Much as one adores the Queen, one must feel a tinge of sympathy for the journalists assigned to cover the Royal Beat, an assignment of ceaseless routine, implacable structure, and rigourous protocol, all centered around a woman who has not made a public misstep since the height of the Jazz Age.

Which makes it all the more admirable when a photographer is able to come up with any kind of innovation, even something as simple as a new angle. Her Majesty is seen here during the recent opening of Parliament, and the nameless Reuters shutterbug has really made rather an interesting picture - a backstage glimpse, as it were, at the person of the monarchy.

She's wearing one of her grandmother Queen Mary's diamond necklaces and what is more or less her travelling crown, the George IV State Diadem, familiar not only from its regular appearances worn to and from state occasions, but from its perennial presence on stamps and banknotes from around the realms. She has lovely hair, don't you think?

A King and Two Queens

Here at the Café, you will have observed, except when deeply exercised, we generally steer clear of things political. When those matters are of local concern, that seems to me only a combination of sensitivity to local feeling and common sense. Still, I can't help calling attention to a story highlighted by sterling local blogger Muscat Confidential, although not really for the reason he's picked up on it.

It appears, you see, that some perfectly dreadful-sounding jumped-up member of Parliament has, over the years, occasionally visited our quiet little corner of Arabia, which the deeply trashy Daily Mail has seized upon to include in his catalogue of otherwise quite dull transgressions. Like all official visitors, he has departed with a trinket or two, which is apparently Not Allowed, or at least the cause for some holier-than-thou finger-wagging.

But all of that, some fascinating personal details (which do cast the local travel industry in a more than usually interesting light) aside, that's all rather dull. The real interest of the story comes in the illustrations, which show for no evident reason the Sultanate's remarkable sovereign at various stages in his life, most thrillingly here posed between two of our favorite people. Look carefully and you'll note the wild-eyed creature in the background, who was also, for a while, you may remember, of some note. This was 1983, and HM is still fetchingly salt-and-pepper, and between his gold braid and his orders, almost able to challenge these merry wives of Windsor in terms of bling.

Even in such formidable company, I think he more than holds his own.

Famed Psychic's Head Explodes!

Well, there goes the last shred of my free time. The good folks at Google Books have now made available 25 years worth of America's greatest periodical, the fabulous Weekly World News. I can't tell you how much I've learned in just the past few hours about apparitions of Jesus, the continuing survival of Hitler, Elvis, and Bigfoot, and, of course, the life and loves of Jackie O.

The WWN also featured two of my very favorite writers: editorialist Ed Anger, who never met a news item that didn't make him madder than a cocktail waitress at a Mormon convention, and the world's bitchiest advice columnist, Dear Dotti, who never hesitated to tell a despondent correspondent that she really might be better off dead. I had had high hopes that I would get through a couple of Trollope novels this summer, but now I know better.

The only disappointment is that the archive, at least at the moment, doesn't extend quite far enough back to include either the legendary headline referenced in the title up above or my other favorite, "Toilet Baby Miracle." I can only hope they're coming soon.

The Ascot Gavotte, 2009 Edition

Just because we're running around the capitals of Europe discovering how many different ways there are to eat foie gras (answer: many, and they're all delicious) doesn't mean that I'm not doing my best to keep an eye on the critically important developments in this troubled world of ours. Fortunately, I'm also still able to gloss over those and focus on what really matters.

Yes, it's that time again already - the annual festival of Royal-watching that is race week at Ascot.

The older folks are looking well this year, although the Duke is starting to get that tell-tale old man expression that may just be bemused absence or may in fact be a genuine lack of any idea at all where he is.

Personally, I always like Her Majesty better in bright colors, as here in fuschia. That is, by the way, a single stone there in the middle of that brooch - I believe it may be a piece of the Koh-i-Noor diamond.

The York princesses remain wholly regrettable, the Countess of Wessex gives every indication that she's well aware she's in the midst of an only middling bargain, and the Duchess of Cornwall is looking well. The real news, though, is that the Princess Royal is, after a long era of rather disastrous appearances (all too many of them in uniform drag), making an effort.

She looks jaunty in orange, and certainly seems pleased with herself...

...and while I think we may have seen this yellow-and-blue number before, it has a classic appeal.

She saved the real fireworks, though, for day three, with this pleated crêpe jacket, gorgeous black gloves, and a hat that must have added almost a foot to her height. Already the hardest working woman in royal business, she may have an eye on finally dressing the part. Brava!

All in all, it seems to have been a thoroughly satisfactory week all around, although at times...

I do suspect the Queen must wonder how it happens that she has to spend time with some of the people thrown her way. Yes, that is indeed Sheikh Mo of Dubai in top hat and morning coat. Oh, dear...

I Do Want to Go to Chelsea

This, in case you didn't know, is Chelsea Flower Show Week in London, an occasion our British friends treat with the seriousness (and column inches) more usually associated with natural disasters or another Madonna divorce.

In any case, the Flower Show always calls forth a healthy showing of the Great and the Good, as well as a great deal of the Silly. And why not? It's spring in London after their godawful winter, the flowers are in bloom, and some of our favorite people are out and about:

Isn't she just the kind of person who, when you think of her, you automatically feel better? I believe Joanna Lumley should be recognized as the (inter)national treasure that she is.

Much in the way that the somewhat more astringent, but equally fabulous, Dame Helen (seen here holding, apparently, the flower of her secret) has been of late. And she would seem to be wearing an article of clothing I thought as vanished as the bustle, a spring coat. Good on her!

Stopping to smell the roses is the ever dapper Mr. Stephen Fry. Why is it that only British men can get away with floppy bangs after 25?

Helen Bonham Carter is always good for a fashion moment; here she seems to be channeling one of her more rumpled outfits from Room with a View. You know, for someone who always complains about getting stuck in corset pictures, she wears an awful lot of Edwardiana...

It being London, hats are much and quite festively in evidence; here we have someone called Claudia Leigh - whom the Daily Telegraph seems to think we'll know all about, although I doubt she's any relation at all to the late Lady Olivier - in a really rather wonderful creation.

Although others have a significantly less-developed sense of proportion. Or, perhaps, far greater access to drugs. I only wish the lady in the towering garden trellis looked more pleased to be there...

Royalty is a regular presence at the Flower Show; the Prince of Wales, in fact, won a prize this year. In a retrospective of royal visits, I especially liked this lovely if enigmatic snap of a regal foot ("believed to be Queen Elizabeth II", the caption oddly tells us) treading a flower-strewn lawn. Such a pretty shoe, don't you think?

I keep meaning to be in London for the Flower Show, but somehow it never works out. I think of gardening like cooking; I may not be all that involved in the process, but I do like the results.

On This Day...

...57 years ago, in Kenya of all places, she found out that her father had died, and the rest of her life fell into place. It must be odd to be 25 and know, relatively suddenly, more or less exactly what you will do (barring revolution or other nuisances) until, like your predecessors for a millennium or so, you breathe your last.

Whatever one thinks about the form of government of which it has turned out to be her lot to be the latest (and I, at least, doubt the last) figurehead, it would be hard to deny that she has done a bang-up job.

Given her family history, it's not at all unlikely she'll keep on for another decade or more, like her mother moving ever more slowly and getting ever tinier. There is something moving in that, and somehow comforting.

A Royal Day Out

So yesterday was the State Opening of the British Parliament, meaning that for the fifty-oddth time in her reign, the Queen was obliged to dress up, ride across town, and read a speech that someone has written for her as if she meant it.

It may be something of a silly little ritual, but as with everything she undertakes, no one does it better.

Like her grandmother, the late Queen Mary, I think the Queen, as she enters really old age, is gaining a remarkable aura. Writing about Queen Mary, Sir Osbert Sitwell described "the particular sort of film-star glamour that in advanced age overtook her appearance, and made her, with the stylization of her clothes, such an attractive as well as imposing figure." Precisely.

It makes her, I suppose, somewhat less purely endearing than her late mother, whose considerable stateliness was always leavened with a certain joie-de-vivre, a cosiness that promised (and likely frequently delivered) gins-and-tonics and catty remarks. At the same time, it gives her a quality that is hers alone; one that someday I expect we will rather miss.

Apparently the venerable ceremonies that took place yesterday at Westminister included some sort of traditional Running of the Yeomen, here seen poised at the starting point.

Prince Philip aside, the only other member of the Royal Family who seems to have attended was the Princess Royal. Now, I love me some Princess Anne, but I have to say - I really do wish she'd wear a dress. She's starting to scare me. And it's such a waste of good jewelry.