Yvette Guilbert (1865–1944) - Cabaret Singer and Belle Époque Actress

'Yvette Guilbert' - Henri Toulouse-Lautrec (1894,  gouache)

Yvette Guilbert first came to my attention at university in the course of a Fine Arts degree ... as the subject of the above gouache by Henri de Toulouse Lautrec.

More recently and with my quite rabid interest in late C19 French music hall (where is that coming from?), I became aware that by 1890 the French cabaret singer and Belle Époque actress was headlining at Le Moulin Rouge, along with such 'luminaries' as La Goulue (Louise Weber).

Yvette Guibert 'Saluant le Public' ('Taking a Bow') Henri Toulouse-Lautrec 1898

In his memoires, English painter William Rothenstein described Yvette Guibert's debut at the famed venue:

"One evening Lautrec came up to the rue Ravignan to tell us about a new singer, a friend of Xanrof, who was to appear at the Moulin Rouge for the first time... We went; a young girl appeared, of virginal aspect, slender, pale, without rouge. Her songs were not virginal - on the contrary; but the frequenters of the Moulin were not easily frightened; they stared bewildered at this novel association of innocence with Xanrof's horrific double entente; stared, stayed and broke into delighted applause."

The singer herself expanded on this impression in this artistic mission statement:

"I was looking for an impression of extreme simplicity, which allied itself harmoniously with the lines of my slim body and my small head ... I wanted above all to appear highly distinguished, so that I could risk anything, in a repertoire that I had decided would be a ribald one ... . To assemble an exhibition of humorous sketches in song, depicting all the indecencies, all the excesses, all the vices of my “contemporaries,” and to enable them to laugh at themselves ... that was to be my innovation, my big idea."

Singing raunchy songs of tragedy and lost love rooted in the Parisian poverty from which she'd come, Guilbert was to appear in other noted Montmartre venues, such as Jardin de Paris, Divan Japonais, the Eldorado Club and 'Les Ambassadeurs' ...

... usually wearing her trademark black gloves ...

 

Yvette Guilbert - Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (Litho, 1894)

... and Marilynesque plunging necklines ...

Yvette Guibert 1891

Naturally I was drawn to the ribald vulgarity of her songs, one of the most famous being 'Madame Arthur' (c1850 by Paul de Kock):

The lyrics to the song, translated are:

Ms. Arthur is a woman
That made talk, talk, talk, talk to her long,
Without newspapers, without anything, without calling
She had a crowd of lovers,
Everyone wanted to be loved by her,
Each of the courting, why?
Is that without being really beautiful,
She had an indescribable!
Ms. Arthur is a woman
That made talk, talk, talk, talk to her long,
Without newspapers, without anything, without calling
She had a crowd of lovers,
Ms. Arthur is a woman
Who was talking about her long.

Its size was very ordinary,
Her eyes small but sémillants,
Snub nose, his clear voice,
Its curved legs and wriggling
In short, looking at his face,
Nothing you put in commotion;
But behind her figure
Promised an indescribable!

Stuck by her lovers,
It was she who sent them
She loved the new ardor,
An old love he disliked
And each grief at heart,
Find more lyrics on similar 

In his heart no longer use,
Said, alas! another woman
Will not have its indescribable!
You should have seen the dance;
His enthusiasm was unmatched
By his movements, his bearing,
She was the Queen of the Ball
The rider facing it
His foot touched the nose, my faith,
Everyone applauded his grace
And especially its indescribable!

So what this lady lived?
Showing a large retinue,
Common in vaudeville, drama,
Nothing at the forefront told
She saw for the ordinary
Come an end without fear,
For then the owner
Admired his indescribable!

Oh! woman who are looking to do
Conquests of morning and evening,
In vain you go to please you
Hours in your mirror,
Elegance, grace mischievous,
Look, sigh of genuine,
Velvets, perfumes and crinoline
Nothing beats an indescribable!

 

I'm now even more pleased to be able to perform my own small reverential  act of resurrection as today I came across two little bits of footage of this famous chanteuse in a French documentary - firstly with Guilbert posing for the camera, and then giving a speech and singing at a gathering ...

It's great to have a person up close and personal, even in the form of film footage, after the remoteness of all those art images from way back when.

Oscar Wilde Reaches Across Time

After recently posting on gay hero Quentin Crisp, there seemed a kind of follow on logic for one on Oscar Wild as recently I came across the only recording of the poet and playwright's voice. In which he recites nearly two verses from the fourth canto of 'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' ...

In Reading Gaol by Reading Town
There is a pit of shame,
And in it lies a wretched man
Eaten by teeth of flame,
In burning winding-sheet he lies,
And his grave has got no name.

[And there, till Christ call forth the dead,
In silence let him lie:]

No need to waste the foolish tear,
Or heave the windy sigh:
The man had killed the thing he loved,
And so he had to die.

As we all know, Wilde was imprisoned in 1895 for two years with hard labour after the follow-up trials to his failed attempt to sue the Marquis of Queensberry for the calling card libel of 'For Oscar Wilde, posing sodomite'.


'The Ballad of Reading Gaol' was written in France in Berneval or Dieppe on or about 19 May 1897 and was initially published under the the name 'C.3.3' - for cell block C, landing 3, cell 3 of Wilde's incarceration.

Wilde in Exile in France c1900

The poem was inspired partly by the hanging in 1896 of a fellow prisoner, Charles Thomas Wooldridge, for the throat-cutting murder of his wife - 'The man had killed the thing he loved, And so he had to die.'

I am fascinated to know the particular character of the poet and playwright's voice, as it must give a clue to the delivery of those deliciously paradoxical aphorisms we love to find occasion to remember and perhaps quote ...

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

A man's face is his autobiography. A woman's face is her work of fiction.

A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.

A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.

All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

Wilde seems much more theatrical and arch than I would have imagined, even taking into account the performance tradition of the time. In this context and in retrospect, Lord Olivier used to make fun of this earlier style of delivery, likening it to singing arias in opera.

Curiously and incidentally, Wilde's voice reminds me more than a little of the vocal manner of a particular group of older queans I knew as a kid in London and so has a further resonance for me.

This audio recording, imaginatively at least, lets me know this great writer just a tiny bit better. There is something of the quality of the living breathing human voice that reaches across time and emotionally connects up.

Into The Tardis Again - Berlin, 1900

Paul in NY just made some slight and wistful noises about my 'Berlin in 1900' post on the old blog - it was more than enough to provoke an instant re-post here!

Time to time travel again - I've already buckled up my seat belt and am set to go!

This particular journey is the result of seeing a most poignant piece of footage - Berlin between 1900 and 1910, just before the carnage that was World War One.

People seem prosperous and confident, a world of such seeming certainties - the ultimate calm before the storm.

There's the hustle and bustle of the streets - just a slice, across the social spectrum, of ordinary people going about their daily business ...

And images of individual people, close-ups of shadowy often unsuspecting figures, frozen in time ...

... people about whose lives I can't help speculating about!

There are snatched impressions of old and new forms of transport ...

... and famous landmarks ...

 
Brandenburg Gate

There are examples of new social activities, such as bicycling ...

... and new jobs, like directing traffic ...

...and those minuscule usually unrecorded commonplace business activities, such as paying for a cab ...

Finally, there's a bunch of folk out on that new-fangled contraption, the bicycle - performing a cute though perhaps not-quite-Busby-Berkley-standard routine for the camera ...

So, without delay, to the video ...

... which I hope you'll like.

Time Travel or Parallel Universes

Yesterday and quite without thinking about it, my family's old home phone number popped into my mind - WL 1833. It's of a form that doesn't exist today. And my parents haven't had the number for over 20 years.

I began to wonder what would happen if I dialed home. Now, at 4.30pm.

And imagined my mother would answer, asking when I'd be in for dinner. Was I still at school? I needed to be back soon to at least start my homework. What would I answer? She'd been an economist and wouldn't readily receive a call from the future! So I'd probably have to pretend I was still 10 years old. Would I be able to carry it off? The challenge excites me, now. My voice has deepened - I'd need to raise it to be convincing. And use a less sophisticated way of speaking. Without sounding too studiedly juvenile.

What was I doing at that age? Still at primary school - Grade 6.

Miss Hartigan was teaching me history. She had introduced me to Marco Polo and his travels to China. James Henry Breasted 'Ancient Times, A History of the Early World'. She had a funny way of clicking her hips side to side when she walked. Equally fascinating with the history.

And Mr Ackford for Maths - the school cutie. Very pretty in exactly that Randy Wayne way. But blokey. With beautiful muscular hands. Covered with a network of pulsating veins. And chalk. Who was being aggressively pursued by the highly-painted over-padded Miss Someone or other - funny what you remember and what you don't!

And Martin Davies for sex after school in the Old Boys Library. He was more developed than me - solid hairy legs, and furrier crotch. Just touching his hard hot thick dick and firm fat buns was overwhelmingly erotic. We'd only stop to go home - at 10, no ejaculation, premature or other wise to reduce our libidos.

...

But what if I get caught out? How would I explain the unexplainable?

And what if I answered - parallel universes? Remember in movies or somewhere there is an immutable truth that if you confront your different selves there'll be some kind of cataclysmic annihilation.

So I haven't dialed yet - I don't wanna be disappointed! But I will. The urge is becoming irresistible!

‘Remembrance of Two Favourite Restaurants – ‘Chartier’ (Paris) and ‘Family Li’s Chinese Court Dishes’ (Beijing)

These are two treasured souvenirs of long-loved eating establishments: one in Paris, where I lived in as a teenager, and the other in Beijing, where I worked a year at Beida University.

The menu of ‘Chartier’, 7 Faurbourg, Montmartre:

This restaurant was an old converted C19 library, with its card catalogues still in place in their long wooden drawers attached to the walls. And the floors covered in sawdust, to be swept up at the end of each meal sitting to clean the wooden boards.

It was the first place I had (cliché of cliché) ‘escargots’ (snails), laced with overpoweringly aromatic garlic sauce at 3.50 francs a half dozen. When the rate was four to the dollar. I was addicted to ‘cervelle de veau meuniere’ (veal brains) as the entrée. And ‘gigot d’agneau’ (lamb liver) for the main course. Accompanied by seriously rough ‘rouge de table 11°’, at 1.20 francs for a half carafe. Followed by my fav ‘fraise a la crème Chantilly’ (strawberries in cream) for desert - at a mere 2.80.

The business card of ‘Family Li’s Chinese Court Dishes’, 11 Yang Fang Hutong, De Nei Da Jie, Xi Cheng, Beijing:

The proprietor of the Li Family’s restaurant was the grand-daughter of the cook of the last Manchu Dowager Empress of China, Tz'u-hsi.

The Dowager Empress, Tz'u-hsi

Miss Li Li, grand-daughter of the cook of the last Dowager Empress of China, Tz'u-hsi

You needed to book Miss Li Li's entire establishment of around 20 places months in advance. And we all sat at one huge table. Each of the 12 courses of Chinese Court cuisine was described in terms of content and preparation prior to being laid on the table. The taste was milder and subtler than anything I'd experienced in the country.

The famous person appeared with great ceremony at the end of the meal for the photo opportunity shown above. This however was preceded by a talk from a relative who, among other things, drew our attention to some calligraphy on the wall by Pu Jei, brother of the last emperor, Pu Yi.

Pu Jei, brother of the last Emperor of China’s brother, Pu Yi

Years later, Miss Li Li made it super big time with a much grander but similar venture in the States, where she could also capitalise on her peerless connections with Qing dynastic history.