From socialism
There are certain facets we should expect from socialism. I see the State, not as a monolith, but as a site of class struggle between capitalists and proletarians. Once the working class becomes, en masse, a class for itself, it will substantially win that class struggle over the State and with that usher in socialism by eliminating class antagonisms, class distinctions, as well as amputating the repressive apparatuses, and thus transform the State (an instrument for the oppression by a ruling class) into a socialist Commonwealth (government subordinated to the needs and concern of society).
Among the facets I view as important are:

1. smashing / amputating the repressive forces of the military and bureaucracy—replacing standing mercenary armies and mercenary police with a Militia, self-service and community self-service government based in web APIs with programming code faithfully implementing statute code, fundamental rights genuinely enjoyed universally and not as mere façade (rights is the accused, rights of the convicted/sentenced, Militia rights, non-common/non-public sphere rights).
2. a democratic republic that stewards, operates, and acts as the proprietor for our common wealth (common resources such as common facilities and common services) in a distributed manner (global, nation-state, province/state, county, municipality, commune)
3. workers in control of the means of production, through cooperative enterprise, a.k.a. communist enterprise (where the enterprise is directed democratically, one-worker-one-vote instead of with the capitalist plutocratic enterprise with one-dollar-in-wealth-one-vote)
4. all rents—the revenues from selling natural resources—accrues solely to the public treasury for distribution equality as aN Unconditional Universal Basic Income (UUBI) social dividend
5. the implementation of Pigouvian subsidies and fees (from Fabian socialist Alfred Pigou from which the name derives) and usage fees for other common services that warrant neither subsidy (positive externality resources) nor excise (negative externality resources)
6. a heavily graduated progressive income tax to fund any remaining positive externality resource subsidies beyond the revenues available from excising negative externality resources (mostly needed for arming the Militia and for withering away criminal Justice mechanisms)
7. Facilitating the formation of residential communes with direct democracy town halls in our small scale and low population neighborhoods—facilitating also greater direct-production-consumption opportunities than we can achieve in our households

I focus on the US mostly and so I have insufficient knowledge of the intricacies of actually existing socialist countries to adequately evaluate them against this list of facets. In broad strokes though, many actually existing socialist nation-states accomplish facet item (2): even the Nordic nations and other European nations do fairly well on that front. As you say China has done very well on facet item (2).
The Nordic nations and Western European nations excel on item (1) beyond most of the overtly named socialist nations, but they often flounder in trying to ill-advisedly conform to US draconian demands (surrounding drugs and other Vice laws), though Portugal, ruled by a coalition of communist, socialist, and green parties, is in the vanguard in eliminating these Vice laws (these laws are used for entirely repressive purposes and do not belong in a republic). We see Nicaragua backsliding on personal rights by outlawing abortion. China deploys a collective punishment of Uighers prostrating itself to Global capitalists and the US capitalists who demand repression of Muslims by every nation-state.
Cuba has eliminated the death penalty since the early 2000s and compare very favorably with the rogue and repressive Guantánamo Bay human rights desert run by the US on what is supposed to be Cuban territory. Cuba also has a Militia but my understanding is that it is not as robust as we should expect within socialism.
Most all fail to universalize cooperative enterprise (with exceptions only for prudent carve outs for common resource socialist enterprise such as transport networks, insurance risk pools, money-payments and general credit, a common marketplace or allocation system otherwise, general applied research projects, and manufacturing the non-fungible resources needed by government by buying fully fungible resources from fair and equal auctions). This is the condition for the very control of means of production by workers.
Any other details regarding natural resource rents, Pigouvian subsidies and fees, and heavily graduated progressive income taxes are beyond my knowledge for the actually existing socialist nation-states (whether they proudly claim the socialist moniker or not).

I have been on the hunt for this item for longer than I care to admit.
I have been trying to track down a copy of the Kenny Rogers Home Guitar Course television ad (aka Quick Pickin', Fun Strummin') that aired numerous times in the mid 1970's and have had no success.
I contacted Alfred Permissions, the company that distributed the instructional records and tapes and they did release the product but have no copies in their possession. I've also contacted The Paley Center for Media, they do not have the ad in their archives. The Country Music Hall of Fame does not have the ad. Ira Gallen, who has storage bins and garages full of old videos, does not have the tape.
I've even tried a Kenny Rogers fan group and the Steve Hoffman web forum with no success.
Now the search has come here. Is there a copy that perhaps may be on a locally made VHS, Betamax, or other format of recording that shows this ad still exists somewhere in the universe?
Any assistance, advice, and insight would greatly be appreciated. Thank you for your time.

If you were given the chance/budget to make your own Batman film, who would you cast?
My choices….a little unconvential for some:
John David Washington as Bruce Wayne/Batman Adam Sandler as Jack Napiethe Joker Tessa Thompson as Selina Kyle/Catwoman Al Pacino as Alfred Jeremy Renner as Gordon Robert De Niro as Carmine Falcone Rebecca Hall as Vicki Vale Michael Imperioli as Harvey Bullock Rashida Jones as the Mayor
Shooting for an R rating

"Mission accomplished. The survival rate was 4% and valuable human resources were lost, but that is war. The mission objective takes priority over everything else. Holding to that principle is why I have never failed a mission. The Death cannot die…"
Very little is known of the Umbrella Security Service's best agent, save for his codename: HUNK. With a track record of being the sole survivor of dangerous operations, he’s earned the illustrious nickname The Grim Reaper(sometimes mistranslated to Mr. Death or The Death). The Raccoon City incident wasn’t much different, as HUNK was the only survivor of a mutated Birkin’s rampage and barely made it out alive. Always professional, HUNK didn’t let a little thing like a sewer and police station full of assorted B.O.W.s or the threat of a nuke keep him from completing his objective with a cool head.
Note: Since HUNK has one notable canon appearance done multiple times (The 4th Survivor scenario in both versions of Resident Evil 2, as well as Umbrella Chronicles) and half his existence is bonus modes like Mercenaries (RE4 and 3D) and Raid Mode (The Revelations games), this thread’s gonna involve some definitely noncanonical stuff, including Operation Raccoon City. Hover over feats to see what they're from.
Physicals:
Strength:

• Destroys a zombie's head with a stomp.
  
• Knocks back an attacking zombie with a spin kick before snapping its neck.
  
• HUNK loves snapping necks.
  
• Can launch several enemies with a kick.
  
• Splatters grappling Ganados heads with a kick or elbow to escape grabs.
  
• Kicks a door open, knocking over enemies on the other side.
  
• Can launch foes with elbow strikes.
  
• Stabs up through a zombie's head with his wrist blade before kicking them away.
  
• Kills a zombie with a backstab and twist.
  
• Can launch foes back with a thrust of his wrist blades.
  
• Can bust crates.
  
• Kicks open the gates of the police department.
  

Durability:

• Some time after Birkin attacked his squad, killing most of them with a strike, HUNK wakes up facedown in water no worse for wear.
  
• Fine next to an exploding car.
  
• Can get knocked over by a Ganado's shield bash but kips back up.
  
• Can take flaming arrows.
  
• Can take slashes from Garradors. Garradors can destroy a big metal bell and embed their claws in a stone wall with their strikes.
  
• Knocked down by an explosion but gets back up.
  
• Can recover from his own proximity mine going off.
  
• Sent flying by a strike from a pipe wielding mutated Birkin, though he recovers soon afterwards. Birkin can bring down a concrete wall.
  
• Thrown by Birkin after the BOW smashes through some metal security doors. When HUNK reunites with Delta Squad a little later, he's fine.
  
• Can get set on fire without much issue.
  
• Can take strikes from Mr. X. Mr. X is pretty strong.
  
  • Full Mr. X RT here just to be safe.
• Can take bites to neck and leg from zombies and shake them off.
  

Speed/Agility:

• Shoots two Hunters to death as they lunge at him, then dodges an Ivy’s attack before killing it.
  
• Jumps over a counter.
  
• Can shoot arrows out of the air.
  
• Leaps through a window like a cool dude.
  
• Flips to his feet after getting knocked down.
  
• Can pull off a spin kick in his combat gear.
  
• HUNK's iconic backflip.
  
• Umbrella Corps mercs can scale walls easily with their gear.
  

Skill:

• Headshots two Hunters at close range as they lunge at him.
  
• Forget double tapping, HUNK triple taps downed foes. Here's another example if you're tired of looking at the 3DS game.
  
• Quickly takes out two guards in close quarters with a knife to the chest and a neck snap.
  
• Takes out a guard's leg for an easy throat slit.
  
• Invented CQBZ (Close Quarters Quarantined Battle Zone), a combat style adopted by Umbrella Corps mercenaries. Here's some counterattacks involving avoiding strikes, a few funny little slides, gratuitous stabbing, and of course a neck snap.
  
• Will cram a grenade in your mouth, if he must.
  

Misc:

• Ate Tofu.
  
• Despite earlier showings having him pretty callous about his squad's lives, later games have HUNK show some concern for people under his command.
  
  • In a report to Alfred Ashford, complains about information being withheld from his squad and putting them at risk.
  • Gives Delta Squad advice mid combat.
  • Chews out a squadmate for killing Birkin despite their orders, but covers for him when it's time to report.
  • Orders Nighthawk to leave him behind when HUNK is unable to reach the extraction point. Lucky for him that's not an order Nighthawk follows.

Weapons/Gear: The Umbrella Corps gear isn't being used by HUNK, but was supposedly developed by him so I feel it's worth noting.
Blades:

• A combat knife.
  
• Retractable wrist blades.
  
• Seems to have a retractable blade built into his boots.
  
  • Here's HUNK showing off his hidden blades in his Reaper costume.
• The Brainer, a specialized ice axe made for zombie combat. The Brainer's blade can become heated, being hot enough to cut/burn through an Umbrella Corps Bite Guard/arm and helmeted head.
  

Firearms:

• In the on rails shooters, gunfire from any weapon is able to destroy environmental objects. This ranges from smashing through locked doors and busting a dresser to making cars explode or even busting the statue in the main hall of the Police Department.
  
• Custom TMP: A modified SMG.
  
• AK-74: An assault rifle.
  
• H&K P8: HUNK's 3DS sidearm.
  
• MUP: The standard 9mm handgun.
  
• Lightning Hawk: The trusty magnum, great for popping heads.
  
• LE5: Totally not an MP5, guys.
  
• W-870: A pump shotgun.
  

Explosives:

• Hand grenades
  
• Incendiary grenades
  
• Flashbangs in both throwable and launcher forms. These can instakill Ganados Plagas, super parasites which are sensitive to UV light.
  
• Proximity mines.
  

Special Gear:

• Active Camouflage: HUNK can briefly become invisible. HUNK can deactivate it at will, but the camo will also break if he attacks or takes damage.
  
  • The camo returns in Raid Mode, oddly enough.
• The Bite Guard: An arm guard that extends into a small shield that can deflect incoming gunfire. Couldn't find much footage showing it off clearly, so here's the promo poster featuring a bullet deflect. It's coated in a resin that sticks to zombies, preventing them from getting closer while making them into temporary meat shields.
  
• Terrain Spikes: Umbrella Corps boots basically have built in crampons good for climbing and zombie stomping.
  
• Zombie Jammer: This back mounted device generates an electromagnetic field that disorients zombies. While it's active you can even bump into them without provoking them. Of course, if the device is destroyed the horde will notice you.
  

“This is war, survival’s your responsibility.”

The source for all this information is the most recent calendar and the most recent content update.
 
All events begin at the daily reset unless otherwise noted.
 

Four hours before Tuesday reset

New Legendary Hero Trailer added to notification board
 

Tuesday 30th May

Arena Weekly Reset [1 streak orb]

•   Bonus Heroes: L!Claude, R!Chrom, F!F!Byleth, F!Maria, F!Anankos, F!Linus, Ewan, B!Ike, Ninian, Ver 6.0 Heroes
•   Elements: Fire / Earth

Aether Raids Weekly Reset

•   Bonus Heroes: Ashera, Seiros, R!Chrom, F!F!Byleth, F!Maria, F!Anankos, F!Linus, HS!Camilla, L!Seliph, Anna
•   Elements: Astra / Anima

Resonant Battles Weekly Reset

•   Bonus games: New Mystery and Binding Blade

Allegiance Battles this week
Arena Assault+ this week
Heroes Journey quest (2/4)

•   Reward: 3 orbs
•   Runs for one day

 

Four hours before the Wednesday reset

New Legendary Hero Content Update / Datamine
 

Wednesday 31st May

Legendary Hinoka summoning banner

•   Red: L!Hinoka, L!Nanna, R!Ophelia
•   Blue: L!Caeda, L!Myrrh, Alfred
•   Green: Dagr, Seiðr, L!M!Robin
•   Colorless: L!Corrin, L!Micaiah, A!Elincia
•   Runs through 17th June

Legendary/Mythic Hero Battles

•   Available battles: Hinoka, Nanna, Caeda, Myrrh, L!M!Robin, L!Corrin, L!Micaiah
•   New rewards: 9 orbs
•   End date currently unknown

Heroes Journey quest (3/4)

•   Reward: 3 orbs
•   Runs for one day

 

On Thursday reset

The update notification for Version 7.6.0 will be posted to the notification board
 

Thursday 1st June

June Quests

•   Rewards: 17 orbs total (7 from kill quests, 10 from Training Tower)
•   Runs through 30th June

Heroes Journey quest (4/4)

•   Reward: 3 orbs
•   Runs for one day

 

Friday 2nd June

Bridal Belonging summoning banner revival

•   Focus Heroes: B!Sigrun, B!Tanith, G!Pent, B!Fjorm
•   4* SHSR available
•   Runs through 11th June

Voting Gauntlet

•   Runs for six days

Voting Gauntlet Round 1

•   Runs for two days

Voting Gauntlet quest (1/3)

•   Rewards: 4 orbs / 40 Divine Code: Ephemera 5 / 45 Sacred Coins / 10 Refining Stones / 1,900 Battle Flags

 

Saturday 3rd June

Monica & Edelgard's Battle summoning banner

•   Focus Heroes: Monica, Edelgard, unknown third hero
•   Runs through 8th June

Bound Hero Battle: Monica & Edelgard

•   Rewards: 9 orbs
•   Runs through 8th June

Rival Domains Weekly Reset [1 orb]
 

Sunday 4th June

Weekly Revival banners

•   Focus Heroes (1): B!Lysithea, B!Edelgard, Bernadetta
•   Focus Heroes (2): Luke, Tana, Hector
•   Runs for one week

Flying Clash Quests

•   Rewards currently unknown (the previous Clash Quests gave no orbs)
•   End date currently unknown

Voting Gauntlet Round 2

•   Runs for two days

Voting Gauntlet quest (2/3)

•   Rewards: 4 orbs / 40 Divine Code: Ephemera 5 / 45 Sacred Coins / 10 Refining Stones / 1,900 Battle Flags

 

Monday 5th June

Bridal Bloom summoning banner revival

•   Focus Heroes: B!Tharja, B!Ninian, B!Sanaki
•   4* SHSR available
•   End date currently unknown

Pawns of Loki

•   Score Rewards: 2 Orbs, 10 Refining Stones, 10 Sacred Coins, 40 Divine Code: Ephemera 5, 16 Dragonflowers
•   Tier Rewards: 1-3 orbs, 200-4,000 Hero Feathers, etc
•   Runs for two days

 

This week's F2P orbs courtesy of Someweirdo237 & Unexpected_Miso

Tue May 30: 9 orbs

• 1 - Voting Gauntlet Log-In Bonus (3/10)
• 3 - Heroes Journey Quests (2/4)
• 3 - Hall of Forms (4/4)
• 1 - Arena Streak
• 1 - RB / AB Quests

Wed May 31: 13 orbs

• 1 - Voting Gauntlet Log-In Bonus (4/10)
• 3 - Heroes Journey Quests (3/4)
• 9 - Legendary Hero Battle

Thu June 1: 22 orbs

• 2 - Voting Gauntlet Log-In Bonus (5/10)
• 3 - Heroes Journey Quests (4/4)
• 7 - June Quests
• 10 - June Training

Fri June 2: 5 orbs

• 1 - Voting Gauntlet Log-In Bonus (6/10)
• 4 - Voting Gauntlet Quests (1/3)

Sat June 3: 12 orbs

• 1 - Voting Gauntlet Log-In Bonus (7/10)
• 9 - Bound Hero Battle: Monica & Edelgard
• 1 - Daily Quests on Saturday
• 1 - Rival Domains

Sun June 4: 7 orbs

• 1 - Voting Gauntlet Log-In Bonus (8/10)
• 4 - Voting Gauntlet Quests (2/3)
• 1 - Daily Login on Sunday
• 1 - Daily Quests on Sunday

Mon June 5: 8 orbs

• 1 - Voting Gauntlet Log-In Bonus (9/10)
• 1 - Pawns of Loki Quest
• 2 - Pawns of Loki Score Rewards
• 4 - Arena Tier

Weekly Total: 76 orbs
 

Useful Links:

• Datamine information by MrGengar123
• F2P Orb Counts by Someweirdo237
• Upcoming Legendary / Mythic Hero Appearances by tomo_no_miko
• Upcoming Legendary / Mythic Hero (Remix) Appearances by tomo_no_miko
• Upcoming Legendary / Mythic Hero (Regular and Remix) Appearances by RafaSceptile
• Upcoming Legendary / Mythic Hero (Remix) Appearances by Mina_7756
• Upcoming Hall of Forms skills & Past Hero History by tomo_no_miko
• Divine Code Ephemera Pattern & Predictions by Dabottle
• Upcoming Double Special Heroes Possibilities by icydragon0605
• Upcoming Double Special Heroes Possibilities by Mina_7756
• Weekly Revival calendar - text
• Weekly Revival calendar - graphic
• Upcoming Seasons by Kodeplay10
• Incomplete Sacred Seal families by dualbloodlines
• Upcoming Refinery Units by Greid_IX
• Book 1, 2, and 3 units without refines by RafaSceptile
• Most recent Heroes by game by Mina_7756
• Dedicated New Hero Banners by Mina_7756
• List of units and notable skills available in weekly Arena Summons, seperated by colour
• F2P Arena scoring options by u/TiniestManatee
• Most recent official calendar

Roughly 7 years ago u/TheGreatZiegfeld did an experiment of a post to determine what the best films of each year would be from 1940 to 2011 (before the 2012 S&S polls).
With the recently updated TSPDT and the 2022 S&S list, I decided to do the same from 1940 to 2021 regarding what critics thought were the best of each year.
Keep in mind this is all from a critics' poll, not from one specific critic's list. Also no short films or miniseries (meaning no Twin Peaks or Meshes of the Afternoon), as well as those from 2022 and beyond because of the last S&S poll.
With all that in mind, let's begin.
1940
Winner: His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks)
Other nominees: The Great Dictator (Charlie Chaplin), The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford), The Shop Around The Corner (Ernst Lubitsch), The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor)
1941
Winner: Citizen Kane (Orson Welles)
Other nominees: The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges), Sullivan's Travels (Preston Sturges), The Maltese Falcon (John Houston), How Green Was My Valley (John Ford)
1942
Winner: Casablanca (Michael Curtiz)
Other nominees: The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles), To Be Or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch), The Palm Springs Story (Preston Sturges), Cat People (Jacques Tourneur)
1943
Winner: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell and Pressburger)
Other nominees: Day of Wrath (Carl Theodor Dreyer), Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock), I Walked with a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur), Ossessione (Luchino Visconti)
1944
Winner: Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder)
Other nominees: Ivan the Terrible, Part I (Sergei Eisenstein), Meet Me in St. Louis (Vincente Minnelli), A Canterbury Tale (Powell and Pressburger), To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks)
1945
Winner: Children of Paradise (Marcel Carné)
Other nominees: Rome, Open City (Roberto Rossellini), Brief Encounter (David Lean), I Know Where I'm Going (Powell and Pressburger) Les Dames du bois de Boulogne (Robert Bresson)
1946
Winner: It's a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra)
Other nominees: A Matter of Life and Death (Powell and Pressburger), Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock), My Darling Clementine (John Ford), Paisan (Roberto Rossellini)
1947
Winner: Black Narcissus (Powell and Pressburger)
Other nominees: Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur), Monsieur Verdoux (Charlie Chaplin), The Lady from Shanghai (Orson Welles), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
1948
Winner: Bicycle Thieves (Vittorio De Sica)
Other nominees: The Red Shoes (Powell and Pressburger), Letters from an Unknown Woman (Max Ophüls), Spring in a Small Town (Mu Fei), Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini)
1949
Winner: The Third Man (Carol Reed)
Other nominees: Late Spring (Yasujirō Ozu), Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (John Ford), White Heat (Raoul Walsh)
1950
Winner Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa)
Other nominees; Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder), All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz), Los Olvidados (Luis Buñuel), In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray)
1951
Winner: The River (Jean Renoir)
Other nominees: Diary of a Country Priest (Robert Bresson), Miracle in Milan (Vittorio De Sica), Early Summer (Yasujirō Ozu), Strangers on a Train (Alfred Hitchcock)
1952
Winner: Singin' in the Rain (Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly)
Other nominees: Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa), Umberto D. (Vittorio De Sica), The Life of Oharu (Kenji Mizoguchi), The Quiet Man (John Ford)
1953
Winner: Tokyo Story (Yasujirō Ozu)
Other nominees: Ugetsu (Kenji Mizoguchi), The Earrings of Madame de (Max Ophüls), The Band Wagon (Vincente Minnelli), Monsieur Hulot's Holiday (Jacques Tati)
1954
Winner: Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa)
Other nominees: Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock), Journey to Italy (Roberto Rossellini), La Strada (Federico Fellini), Sansho the Bailiff (Kenji Mizoguchi)
1955
Winner: Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer)
Other nominees: The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton), Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray), All That Heaven Allows (Douglas Kirk), Floating Clouds (Mikio Naruse)
1956
Winner: The Searchers (John Ford)
Other nominees: A Man Escaped (Robert Bresson), Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk), Aparajito (Satyajit Ray), Bigger Than Life (Nicholas Ray)
1957
Winner: Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman)
Other nominees: The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman), Nights of Cabiria (Federico Fellini), Throne of Blood (Akira Kurosawa), Sweet Smell of Success (Alexander Mackendrick)
1958
Winner Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
Other nominees: Touch of Evil (Orson Welles), Ashes and Diamonds (Andrzej Wajda), Ivan the Terrible, Part II (Sergei Eisenstein), The Music Room (Satyajit Ray)
1959
Winner: The 400 Blows (François Truffaut)
Other nominees: Some Like It Hot (Billy Wilder), North by Northwest (Alfred Hitchcock), Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks), Pickpocket (Robert Bresson)
1960
Winner: Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard)
Other nominees: Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock), La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini), L'Avventura (Michelangelo Antonioni), The Apartment (Billy Wilder)
1961
Winner: Viridiana (Luis Buñuel)
Other nominees: Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais), La Notte (Michelangelo Antonioni), West Side Story (Robert Wise, Jerome Robbins), Yojimbo (Akira Kurosawa)
1962
Winner: Lawrence of Arabia (David Lean)
Other nominees: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford), Jules and Jim (François Truffaut), Cléo from 5 to 7 (Agnes Varda), L'Eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni)
1963
Winner 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini)
Other nominees: Le Mepris (Jean-Luc Godard), The Leopard (Luchino Visconti), The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock), The Executioner (Luis García Berlanga)
1964
Winner: Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick)
Other nominees: Gertrud (Carl Theodor Dreyer), The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini), The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy), Black God, White Devil (Glauber Rocha)
1965
Winner: Pierrot Le Fou (Jean-Luc Godard)
Other nominees: Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles), Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Parajanov), Le Bonheur (Agnes Varda), Doctor Zhivago (David Lean)
1966
Winner: Persona (Ingmar Bergman)
Other nominees: Andrei Rublev (Andrei Tarkovsky), Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson), The Battle of Algiers (Gillo Pontecorvo), Blow-Up (Michelangelo Antonioni)
1967
Winner: Playtime (Jacques Tati)
Other nominees: Mouchette (Robert Bresson), Le Samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville), Belle de Jour (Luis Buñuel), The Graduate (Mike Nichols)
1968
Winner: 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
Other nominees: Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone), Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski), Memories of Underdevelopment (Tomás Gutiérrez Alea), Faces (John Cassavetes)
1969
Winner: The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah)
Other nominees: The Color of Pomegranates (Sergei Parajanov), Kes (Ken Loach), My Night at Maud's (Eric Rohmer), Army of Shadows (Jean-Pierre Melville)
1970
Winner: The Conformist (Bernado Bertolucci)
Other nominees: Wanda (Barbara Loden), Performance (Nicholas Roeg), Husbands (John Cassavetes), Tristana (Luis Buñuel)
1971
Winner: A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick)
Other nominees: Death in Venice (Luchino Visconti), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (Robert Altman), A Touch of Zen (King Hu), Out 1 (Jacques Rivette)
1972
Winner: The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola)
Other nominees: Aguirre, the Wrath of God (Werner Herzog), Cries and Whispers (Ingmar Bergman), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Luis Buñuel), Solaris (Andrei Tarkovsky)
1973
Winner: Amarcord (Federico Fellini)
Other nominees: The Mother and the Whore (Jean Eustache), The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice), Don't Look Now (Nicholas Roeg), Badlands (Terrence Malick)
1974
Winner: The Godfather: Part II (Francis Ford Coppola)
Other nominees: Chinatown (Roman Polanski), A Woman Under the Influence (John Cassavetes), Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Rainer Werner Fassbinder), Celine and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette)
1975
Winner: Jeanne Dielman (Chantal Akerman)
Other nominees: Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky), Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick), Nashville (Robert Altman), Jaws (Steven Spielberg)
1976
Winner: Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese)
Other nominees: News from Home (Chantal Akerman), Kings of the Road (Wim Wenders), In the Realm of Senses (Nagisa Oshima), The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (John Cassavetes)
1977
Winner: Annie Hall (Woody Allen)
Other nominees: Star Wars (George Lucas), Close Encounter of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg), Eraserhead (David Lynch), The Ascent (Larisa Shepitko)
1978
Winner: Killer of Sheep (Charles Burnett)
Other nominees: Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick), The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino), The Tree of Wooden Clogs (Ermanno Olmi), In a Year with 13 Moons (Rainer Werner Fassbinder)
1979
Winner: Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola)
Other nominees: Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky), Alien (Ridley Scott), Manhattan (Woody Allen), All That Jazz (Bob Fosse)
1980
Winner: Raging Bull (Martin Scorsese)
Other nominees: The Shining (Stanley Kubrick), The Empire Strike Back (Irvin Kershner), Heaven's Gate (Michael Cimino), The Elephant Man (David Lynch)
1981
Winner: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg)
Other nominees: Possession (Andrzej Żuławski), Blow Out (Brian de Palma), Mad Max 2 (George Miller), An American Werewolf in London (John Landis)
1982
Winner: Blade Runner (Ridley Scott)
Other nominees: Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg), The Thing (John Carpenter), The King of Comedy (Martin Scorsese)
1983
Winner: Sans Soleil (Chris Marker)
Other nominees: L'Argent (Robert Bresson), Videodrome (David Cronenberg), Nostalgia (Andrei Tarkovsky), A Nos Amours (Maurice Pialat)
1984
Winner: Once Upon a Time in America (Sergio Leone)
Other nominees: Paris, Texas (Wim Wenders), Love Streams (John Cassavetes), Amadeus (Milos Forman), Stranger Than Paradise (Jim Jarmusch)
1985
Winner: Shoah (Claude Lanzmann)
Other nominees: Come and See (Elem Klimov), Ran (Akira Kurosawa), Vagabond (Agnes Varda), Brazil (Terry Gilliam)
1986
Winner: Blue Velvet (David Lynch)
Other nominees: The Green Ray (Eric Rohmer), The Sacrifice (Andrei Tarkovsky), Aliens (James Cameron), Hannah and Her Sisters (Woody Allen)
1987
Winner: Wings of Desire (Wim Wenders)
Other nominees: Where is the Friend's House (Abbas Kiarostami), The Dead (John Huston), Withnail and I (Bruce Robinson), Yeelen (Souleymanne Cisse)
1988
Winner: My Neighbor Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki)
Other nominees: Cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore), Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies), The Thin Blue Line (Errol Morris), Grave of the Fireflies (Isao Takahata)
1989
Winner: Do the Right Thing (Spike Lee)
Other nominees: A City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-hsien), Crimes and Misdemeanors (Woody Allen), When Harry Met Sally (Rob Reiner), The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (Peter Greenaway)
1990
Winner: Close-Up (Abbas Kiarostami)
Other nominees: Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese), Days of Being Wild (Wong Kar-wai), An Angel at My Table (Jane Campion), Paris is Burning (Jessie Livingston)
1991
Winner: A Brighter Summer Day (Edward Yang)
Other nominees: Daughters of the Dust (Julie Dash), The Double Life of Veronique (Krzysztof Kieslowski), The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme), Raise the Red Lantern (Zhang Yimou)
1992
Winner: Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood)
Other nominees: The Quince Tree Sun (Victor Erice), Orlando (Sally Potter), Life, and Nothing More (Abbas Kiarostami), Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino)
1993
Winner: The Piano (Jane Campion)
Other nominees: Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg), Three Colors: Blue (Krzysztof Kieslowski), Groundhog Day (Harold Ramis), The Puppetmaster (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
1994
Winner: Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino)
Other nominees: Satantango (Bela Tarr), Chungking Express (Wong Kar-wai), Three Colors: Red (Krzysztof Kieslowski), Through the Olive Tree (Abbas Kiarostami)
1995
Winner: Heat (Michael Mann)
Other nominees: Underground (Emir Kusturica), Safe (Todd Haynes), Casino (Martin Scorsese), Dead Man (Jim Jarmusch)
1996
Winner: Breaking the Waves (Lars von Trier)
Other nominees: Fargo (Joel Coen), A Moment of Innocence (Mohsen Makhmalbaf), Secrets and Lies (Mike Leigh), Crash (David Cronenberg)
1997
Winner: Taste of Cherry (Abbas Kiarostami)
Other nominees: Happy Together (Wong Kar-wai), Lost Highway (David Lynch), Boogie Nights (Paul Thomas Anderson), Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki)
1998
Winner: Histoire(s) du Cinema (Jean-Luc Godard)
Other nominees: The Thin Red Line (Terrence Malick), The Big Lebowski (Joel Coen), The Celebration (Thomas Vinterberg), Flowers of Shanghai (Hou Hsiao-hsien)
1999
Winner: Beau Travail (Claire Denis)
Other nominees: Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson), The Matrix (Wachowskis), Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick), All About My Mother (Pedro Almodovar)
2000
Winner: In The Mood for Love (Wong Kar-wai)
Other nominees: Yi Yi (Edward Yang), The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda), Werckmeister Harmonies (Bela Tarr), In Vanda's Room (Pedro Costa)
2001
Winner: Mulholland Drive (David Lynch)
Other nominees: Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki), La Ciénaga (Lucrecia Martel), A.I: Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg), The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson)
2002
Winner: City of God (Fernando Meirelles)
Other nominees: Tie Xi Qu: West of the Tracks (Wang Bing), Talk to Her (Pedro Almodovar), Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sukurov), Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay)
2003
Winner: Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang)
Other nominees: Dogville (Lars von Trier), Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola), Elephant (Gus van Sant), Oldboy (Park Chan-wook)
2004
Winner: Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Other nominees: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry), The Intruder (Claire Denis), Before Sunset (Richard Linklater), Sideways (Alexander Payne)
2005
Winner: Caché (Michael Haneke)
Other nominees: The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu), Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee), The New World (Terrence Malick), Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog)
2006
Winner: Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Other nominees: Inland Empire (David Lynch), Pan's Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro), The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck), Children of Men (Alfonso Cuaron)
2007
Winner: There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson)
Other nominees: No Country for Old Men (Coens), Zodiac (David Fincher), Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas), 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu)
2008
Winner: The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel)
Other nominees: WALL-E (Andrew Stanton), Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman), The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan), Hunger (Steve McQueen)
2009
Winner: The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)
Other nominees: A Prophet (Jacques Audiard), Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold), Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino), Avatar (James Cameron)
2010
Winner: Uncle Boonmee (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
Other nominees: Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzman), The Social Network (David Fincher), Mysteries of Lisbon (Raul Ruiz), Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt)
2011
Winner: The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
Other nominees: A Separation (Asghar Farhadi), Melancholia (Lars von Trier), The Turin Horse (Bela Tarr), Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
2012
Winner: Holy Motors (Leos Carax)
Other nominees: The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer), The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson), Amour (Michael Haneke), Tabu (Miguel Gomes)
2013
Winner: Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer)
Other nominees: The Great Beauty (Paolo Sorrentino), Blue is the Warmest Color (Abdellatif Kechiche), Ida (Pawel Pawlikowski), 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen)
2014
Winner: Boyhood (Richard Linklater)
Other nominees: Goodbye to Language (Jean-Luc Godard), The Grand Budapest Hotel (Wes Anderson), Girlhood (Celine Sciamma), Interstellar (Christopher Nolan)
2015
Winner: Mad Max; Fury Road (George Miller)
Other nominees: Carol (Todd Haynes), Cemetery of Splendor (Apichatpong Weerasethakul), The Assassin (Hou Hsiao-hsien), No Home Movie (Chantal Akerman)
2016
Winner: Moonlight (Barry Jenkins)
Other nominees: Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade), American Honey (Andrea Arnold), Arrival (Denis Villeneuve), Certain Women (Kelly Reichardt)
2017
Winner: Get Out (Jordan Peele)
Other nominees: Zama (Lucrecia Martel), Phantom Thread (Paul Thomas Anderson), You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay), Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig)
2018
Winner: Roma (Alfonso Cuaron)
Other nominees: Happy as Lazzaro (Alice Rohrwacher), Burning (Lee Chang-dong), An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo), Shoplifters (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
2019
Winner: Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Celine Sciamma)
Other nominees: Parasite (Bong Joon-ho), Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino), Atlantics (Mati Diop), First Cow (Kelly Reichardt)
2020
Winner: Nomadland (Chloe Zhao)
Other nominees: Time (Garrett Bradley), Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hitman), Days (Tsai Ming-liang), Quo Vadis, Aida? (Jasmila Zbanic)
2021
Winner: Petite Maman (Celine Sciamma)
Other nominees: The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion), Drive My Car (Ryusuke Hamaguchi), Titane (Julia Docournau), Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)

If you’re looking to send your kid somewhere that isn’t an actual dumpster fire and doesn’t have 0.0001% acceptance rate (NCS), West Park Place Elementary School is a good option.
“Oh but it’s in Christina School District and CSD sucks dookie!” Yea CSD sucks but this school doesn’t!
I went there from 2011-2017 and it has great academics and well-behaved students, I only recall only like 1-2 trouble students there who were appropriately dealt with anyways. Academics follow CommonCore (bleh ikr! even my 5th grade teacher hated it!), students learn at the same pace in whole-classroom lessons; there’s 30 minutes each allotted for math and reading interventions where students split into groups to learn at individualized paces. In my experience I was placed in the Enrichment/Advanced group in which we learned topics a grade above and also did some fun special projects and competitions such as Science Olympiad. There’s also ESL programs for non-native English speakers. A majority of standardized test scores lie in the average or above average range across the entire school.
Not only does the school excel in academics/behavior it’s also really diverse. A lot of POC and minority groups attend the school and I remember a few international students attended each year. Along with that I’ve witnessed no bullying at the school during my time there (I did sometimes get teased though).
Now I know this was 6 years ago so admin has changed which I know nothing about, so you’ll have to research that yourself. But even then I can’t really give feedback on admin because a 8 year old kid wouldn’t pay attention to that anyways.
Extra notes: - The school is basically “on” the UDel campus, you can just walk anywhere nearby. We did walking trips to places such as UDairy Creamery and Mitchell Hall. - I’d say one con is that the school lacks non-academic resources. We didn’t have any clubs or an auditorium.
AMA if you want. But seriously don’t waste your money on private schools until Middle-High school if you can’t get your kid into NCS, there’s good alternatives. And if WPPES is your feeder pattern (like me) you’re in luck!

Looking to make plans for the rest of summer? Check out the Summer Events post here: Summer Events in the Denver Area : Denver (reddit.com)
I send this out as a newsletter which you can sign up for by clicking this link. There are no ads and it's free, so send it to your friends.
Enjoy your weekend and have a wonderful Memorial Day on Monday! Please add anything I missed down below.

THURSDAY- MAY 25

Two Friends @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre @ 7PM *With Wuki, Justus Bennetts, Charlie Wonder
Nate Amor @ Meow Wolf @ 7:30PM
Donna the Buffalo @ Bluebird Theater @ 8PM

FRIDAY - MAY 26

Chromeo & Hot Chip @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre @ 6PM *With CoCo & Breezy, Cimafunk
Flintwick @ Meow Wolf @ 8PM
Mareux @ Marquis Theater @ 7PM
Gasoline Lollipops @ Bluebird Theater @ 8PM
Gimme Gimme Disco @ Summit @ 8PM
CoCo & Breeze @ Larimer Lounge @ 9PM
Rockies vs NY Mets @ Coors Field @ 6:40PM

SATURDAY- MAY 27th

Rapids vs FC Cincinnati @ DICK's Sporting Goods Park @ 7:30PM
'Top Gun' Screening @ McGregor Square @ 1PM Movies at McGregor is the ultimate outdoor summer movie experience.
Upcycled Indigo Dyeing @ DAM @ 10AM You can transform your old garments with natural indigo dye at this workshop.
Art Crawl @ Clyfford Still Museum @ 10:30AM Experience art and find community with other families with infants.
Warbird Invasion Showcase @ Wings Museum @ 10AM Visit the museum to see various types of warbirds on static display at Wings Over the Rockies Exploration of Flight.
'Sleeping Beauty' Ballet @ Ellie Caulkins Opera House @ 1PM/ 6PM The Colorado Ballet Academy is thrilled to be able to share this full-length performance featuring its talented students.
Tommy James & the Shondells @ Paramount Theatre @ 8PM
Scary Kids Scaring Kids @ Marquis Theater @ 7PM
Whipped Cream @ Meow Wolf @ 9PM
VALLEY @ Summit @ 7PM
Taylor Fest @ Bluebird Theater @ 9PM
Son Rompe Pera @ Levitt Pavilion @ 6PM *With Brian Lopez
Top Flite Empire @ Gothic Theatre @ 8PM
Taste Around the World! Spring Wine Event @ Ironton Distillery @ 3-6PM
Rockies vs NY Mets @ Coors Field @ 7:10PM

SUNDAY- MAY 28th

Wild Workouts @ Denver Zoo @ 7:30AM The zoo's Wild Workouts include Barre, Zumba, Yoga with the Elephants, Senior Yoga and Senior Movement.
Thrift-Pop Market @ Denver Central Market Parking Lot @ 12PM Featuring 30 premier vintage clothing and collectible vendors, this thrift market is one of the city’s best!
Orkestra Mendoza @ Levitt Pavilion @ 4PM
YOB @ Gothic Theatre @ 7:45PM
Rockies vs NY Mets @ Coors Field @ 1:10PM

ALL WEEKEND

SATURDAY & SUNDAY - Old Dominion @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre @ 7:30PM *With Frank Ray, Greylan James, Kassi Ashton
SATURDAY & SUNDAY - Q BBQ Fest @ Empower Field The 5th annual festival features legendary pitmasters from the nation to serve award-winning BBQ, live music, cold beer and drinks, and BBQ tutorials/demonstrations.
SATURDAY & SUNDAY - Denver Arts Festival - @ Conservatory Green, Central Park
All weekend - Opey Olagbaju Stand Up @ Comedy Works South
All weekend - Jordan Jensen Stand Up @ Comedy Works Downtown
All weekend - Stravinsky's 'The Rite of Spring' @ Boettcher Concert Hall Enjoy an unforgettable sendoff of the Colorado Symphony concert season with an evening of triumph performances.
All weekend - 'Best Town' Play @ Buntport Theater A new play about stars, isolation, the magic of libraries, and Laura Ashley curtains.
All weekend - ‘The 39 Steps’ @ The Singleton Theatre The inventive and hilarious, this hit play combines a film masterpiece by Alfred Hitchcock with a juicy spy novel and a large splash of Monty Python humor.
All weekend - ‘Miss Rhythm: The Legend of Ruth Brown’ Cabaret Show @ Garner Galleria Theatre This intimate cabaret experience explores the life and times of R&B legend Ruth Brown through story and song, accompanied by a five-piece jazz band.
LAST CHANCE - 'Near East to Far West' Exhibition @ DAM

• In this exhibition, visitors are encouraged to compare the visual and historical aspects of French Orientalism and artworks of the American West and reflect on the impact of these representations into the present.

LAST CHANCE - 'Breakthroughs: A Celebration of RedLine 15' Exhibition @ MCA Denver This exhibition celebrates the Redline Contemporary Art Center and its 15-year long legacy of supporting local artists and creatives. The exhibition reflects the current creative practice of artists living in Colorado.
Ongoing through September 10th - ‘Awful Bigness’ Exhibition @ Clyfford Still Museum ‘Awful Bigness’ fills the Museum’s largest, skylit galleries and celebrates Clyfford Still’s biggest, most ambitious works.

https://www.cinemablend.com/movies/2023-new-movie-release-dates-full-schedule-of-upcoming-movies
Excerpts:
"For fans of costumed crimefighters, intergalactic odysseys, old school action serials, and creepy classics, 2023 is going to be a very important year at the cinema, with so many exciting upcoming movies on the way."
📽️
•Fast X: Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez. May 19, 2023
•Monica: Trace Lysette, Patricia Clarkson. May 19, 2023
•About My Father: Sebastian Maniscalco, Robert De Niro. May 26, 2023
•Kandahar: Gerard Butler, Bahador Foladi. May 26, 2023
•The Little Mermaid: Halle Bailey, Melissa McCarthy. May 26, 2023
•The Machine: Bert Kreischer, Mark Hamill. May 26, 2023
•You Hurt My Feelings: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tobias Menzies. May 26, 2023
•The Boogeyman: Chris Messina, Sophaie Thatcher. June 2, 2023
•Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld. June 2, 2023
[•APES TOGETHER STRONG: (Amazon Prime). Documentary by The Mulligan Brothers. June 5, 2023. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt17048778/ ]
•Transformers: Rise of the Beasts: Anthony Ramos, Dominique Fishback. June 9, 2023
•The Blackening: Antoinette Robertson, Dewayne Perkins. June 16, 2023
•Elemental: Mamoudou Athie, Leah Lewis. June 16, 2023
•Extraction 2 (Netflix Release): Chris Hemsworth, Tinatin Dalakishvili. June 16, 2023
•The Flash: Ezra Miller, Michael Keaton. June 16, 2023
•Asteroid City: Tom Hanks, Margot Robbie. June 23, 2023
•Harold and the Purple Crayon: Zachary Levi, Zooey Deschanel. June 30, 2023
•Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge. June 30, 2023
•Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken: Lana Candor, Toni Collette. June 30, 2023.
•Insidious: The Red Door: Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne. July 7, 2023
•Joy Ride: Stephanie Hsu, David Denman. July 7, 2023
•Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning - Part One: Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson. July 12, 2023
•Barbie: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling. July 21, 2023
•Oppenheimer: Cillian Murphy, Jack Quaid. July 21, 2023
•They Cloned Tyrone (Netflix Release): Jamie Foxx, Teyonah Parris. July 21, 2023
•Haunted Mansion: Rosario Dawson, Owen Wilson. July 28, 2023
•Sympathy for the Devil: Nicolas Cage, Joel Kinnaman. July 28, 2023
•Talk To Me: Sophie Wilde, Joe Bird. July 28, 2023
•The Meg 2: The Trench: Jason Statham, Sienna Guillory. August 4, 2023
•Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem: Seth Rogen, Shamon Brown Jr. August 4, 2023
•Challengers: Zendaya, Josh O'Connor. August 11, 2023
•Gran Turismo: David Harbour, Orlando Bloom. August 11, 2023
•Heart of Stone (Netflix Release): Gal Gadot, Jamie Dornan. August 11, 2023
•Last Voyage of the Demeter: David Dastmalchian, Nikolai Nikolaeff. August 11, 2023
•Back on the Strip: Kevin Hart, Colleen Camp. August 18, 2023
•Blue Beetle: Xolo Maridueña, Susan Sarandon. August 18, 2023
•The Hill: Joelle Carter, Dennis Quaid. August 18, 2023
•Strays: Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx. August 18, 2023
•Lift: (Netflix Release): Kevin Hart, Gugu Mbatha-Raw. August 25, 2023
•They Listen: Jon Cho, Katherine Waterston. August 25, 2023
•White Bird: (Wide Theatrical Release) Bryce Gheisar, Orlando Schwerdt. August 25, 2023
•The Equalizer 3: Denzel Washington, Dakota Fanning. September 1, 2023
•My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3: Nia Vardalos, John Corbett. September 8, 2023
•The Nun 2: Bonnie Aarons, Taissa Farmiga. September 8, 2023
•Satanic Hispanics: Efren Ramirez, Jonah Ray. September 14, 2023
•A Haunting in Venice: Kenneth Branagh, Kelly Reilly. September 15, 2023
•The Book of Clarence: Lakeith Stanfield, Benedict Cumberbatch. September 22, 2023
•Drive-Away Dolls: Pedro Pascal, Matt Damon. September 22, 2023
•The Expendables 4: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham September 22, 2023
•PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie: Dax Shepard, Taraji P. Henson. September 23, 2023
•Abandonment: Annie Malee, Richard Dreyfuss. September 29, 2023
•Killers of the Flower Moon (Limited Theatrical Release): Jesse Plemons, Leonardo DiCaprio. October 6, 2023
•Kraven the Hunter: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Russell Crowe. October 6, 2023
•True Love: Gemma Chan, Allison Janney. October 6, 2023
•Damsel (Netflix Release): Millie Bobby Brown, Angela Bassett. October 13, 2023
•The Exorcist: Believer: Ellen Burstyn, Leslie Odom Jr. October 13, 2023
•Ordinary Angels: Hilary Swank, Alan Ritchson. October 13, 2023
•Dumb Money: Seth Rogen, Clancy Brown. October 20, 2023
•Killers of the Flower Moon (Wide Theatrical Release): Jesse Plemons, Leonardo DiCaprio. October 20, 2023
•Five Nights at Freddy’s: Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail. October 27, 2023
•Pain Hustlers (Netflix Release): Emily Blunt, Chris Evans. October 27, 2023
•Saw X: Tobin Bell, Michael Beach. October 27, 2023
•Sight: Terry Chen, Greg Kinnear. October 27, 2023
•Dune: Part Two: Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya. November 3, 2023
•The Holdovers: Paul Giamatti, Tate Donovan. November 10, 2023
•The Killer: Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton. November 10, 2023.
•The Marvels: Brie Larson, Teyonah Parris. November 10, 2023
•Journey to Bethlehem: November 10, 2023.
•A Family Affair (Netflix Release): Joey King, Nicole Kidman. November 17, 2023
•The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: Rachel Zegler, Tom Blyth. November 17, 2023
•Next Goal Win: Michael Fassbender, David Kightley. November 17, 2023
•Thanksgiving: Jalen Thomas Brooks, Nell Verlaque. November 17, 2023
•Trolls Band Together: Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake. November 17, 2023
•Untitled Please Don't Destroy Project: Martin Herlihy, John Higgins. November 17, 2023
•Leo (Netflix Release): Adam Sandler. November 22, 2023
•Napoleon (Limited Theatrical Release): Joaquin Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby. November 22, 2023
•Wish: Ariana DeBose, Alan Tudyk. November 22, 2023
•The Holdovers: Paul Giamatti, Tate Donovan. November 22, 2023
•Leave the World Behind (Netflix Release): Ethan Hawke, Julia Roberts. December 8, 2023
•Magazine Dreams: Jonathan Majors, Harrison Page. December 8, 2023
•Wonka: Timothée Chalamet, Olivia Colman. December 15, 2023
•Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom: Jason Momoa, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. December 20, 2023
•Untitled Ghostbusters Sequel: Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon. December 20, 2023
•Migration: December 22, 2023
•Rebel Moon (Netflix Release): Charlie Hunnam Sofia Boutella. December 22, 2023
•The Color Purple: Taraji P. Henson, Halle Bailey. December 25, 2023
🎬
"...There are many other upcoming movies that are expected to come out in 2023...but on what day, exactly, still remains a mystery":
•American Metal:John Travolta, Ashley Benson; •Argylle (Theatrical and Apple TV+ Release): Henry Cavill, Bryce Dallas Howard; •Beverly Hill Cop: Axel Foley (Netflix Release): Eddie Murphy, Judge Reinhold; •Black Canary: Jurnee Smollett; •Carry On (Netflix Release):Taron Egerton, Jason Bateman; •Distant: Anthony Ramos, Naomi Scott; •Havoc (Netflix Release): Tom Hardy, Timothy Olyphant; •Here: Tom Hanks, Robin Wright; •The Last Train to New York; •Legally Blonde 3: Reese Witherspoon, Alanna Ubach; •Monkey Man(Netflix Release): Dev Patel, Sharlto Copley; •The Mothership (Netflix Release):Molly Parker, Halle Berry; •The Out-Laws: Pierce Brosnan, Nina Dobrev; •Red One (Amazon Prime Release): Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans; •Reptile (Netflix Release):Benicio Del Toro, Alicia Silverstone; •Salem's Lot:Lewis Pullman, Alfre Woodard; •Spaceman (Netflix Release):Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan; Spellbound (Apple TV+ Release): Rachel Zegler; Star Wars: Rogue Squadron; True Haunting:Jamie Campbell Bower, Erin Moriarty; Unfrosted (Netflix Release):James Marsden, Melissa McCarthy; The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (Netflix Release): Benedict Cumberbatch, Ralph Fiennes.
Note: Netflix, Apple+ titles may have limited releases/appear in movie theatres. TBD.

PODCAST: https://ayearofwarandpeace.podbean.com/e/ep1563-hail-and-farewell-george-moore-vale-chapter-5/
PROMPTS: Absolutely unbearable, inexcusable drivel.
Today's Reading, via Project Gutenberg:

V

The fire was now burning brightly, and I recalled my memories one by one till the three months we had spent in the studio became visible.
The first week my drawing was no worse than Lewis's; indeed, it was rather better, but the second week he had outstripped me, and whatever talent I had, the long hours in the studio wore it away rapidly, and one day, horrified at the black thing in front of me, I laid down my pencil: saying to myself, I will never take up pencil or brush again, and slunk away out of the studio home to the Galerie Feydeau to the room above the umbrella shop, to my bed, my armoire à glace, my half-dozen chairs; and on that bed under its green curtains I lay all night weeping, saying to myself: My life is ended and done. There is no hope for me. All I wanted was Art, and Art has been taken from me. Je suis fichu, fichu, bien fichu, I repeated, and the steps of the occasional passer-by echoed mournfully under the glass roofing.
The Galerie Feydeau had never seemed a cheerful place to live in; it was now as hateful to me as a prison, and Lewis was my gaoler. He went away every morning at eight o'clock, and I met him at breakfast in the little restaurant at the end of the Galerie Feydeau. After breakfast he returned to the studio, and I was free to wander about the streets or to sit in my room reading Shelley. He came home about five, and we went for a walk, and he told me what was happening in the studio. Everything that happened seemed to be for his greater honour and glory. He had won the medal and the hundred francs that Julian offered every month for the best drawing—an innovation this was to attract custom—and a little spree had to be given to commemorate his triumph. He organised the spree very well; of course it was my money that paid for it; and the best part of the studio came to the Galerie Feydeau one evening, and we sang and smoked and drank punch and played the piano. Lewis played the violin, and Julian, drawing his chair up to mine, told me that in ten years hence Lewis would be hors concours in the Salon, and living in a great hotel in the Champs Élysées painting pictures at thirty thousand francs apiece. Les grandes tartines we used to call the pictures that went to the Salon, or les grandes machines: I am forgetting my studio slang. Julian had a difficult part to play. If he were to depreciate Lewis's talent I might throw up the sponge and go away; he thought it safer to assure me that my sacrifices were not made in vain; but man is such a selfish and jealous animal that it had begun to seem to me I would prefer a great failure for Lewis to a great success. Not a great failure, I said to myself; for if he fail I shall never get rid of him. There will be no escape from the Galerie Feydeau for me, so I must hope for his success. He will leave me when he begins to make money. When will that be? and the cruel thought crossed my mind that he was laughing at me all the while, looking upon me as the springboard wherefrom he would jump into a great Salon success. It seemed to me that I could see us both in the years ahead—myself humble and obscure, he great and glorious, looking down upon me somewhat kindly, as the lion looks upon the mouse that has gnawed the cords that bound him. I think I was as unhappy in the Galerie Feydeau as I had been in Oscott College. I seemed to have lost everybody in the world except the one person I wished to lose, Lewis. I was a stranger in the studio, where I went seldom, for every one there knew of my failure; even the models I feared to invite to my rooms lest they should tell tales afterwards. At last the thought came of my sister's school friend, and at her home I met people who knew nothing of Julian and L'École des Beaux-Arts, and at a public dinner I was introduced to John O'Leary and his Parisian circle, and all these people were interested in me on account of my father. One can always pick one's way into Society, and three months later I was moving in American and English Society about the Place Wagram and the Boulevard Malesherbes, returning home in the early morning, awaking Lewis frequently to describe the party to him, awaking him one morning to tell him that a lady whose boots I was buttoning in the vestibule had leaned over me and whispered that I could go to the very top button ... if I liked. A very pretty answer it had seemed to Lewis, and it was clear that he was affected by it, though he resisted for a long time my efforts to persuade him to allow me to introduce him to my friends. I had intended only an outing, an exhibition of my cousin, after which he was to return to his kennel. But I had interrupted his life, and fatally; invitations came to him from every side; he accepted them all, and we started to learn the Boston before the armoire à glace. He learnt it quicker than I did, and when he returned from Barbizon, whither he had gone to meet the wife of an American millionaire, I told him I could live no longer in the Galerie Feydeau and was going away to Boulogne to meet some people whom I had met at Madame Ratazzi's, into whose circle I had happily not introduced him, and wishing to take him down a peg I mentioned that I had acted with her in La Dame aux Camélias. He flew into a violent rage. I was going away with swagger friends to enjoy myself, careless whether he ate or starved. He was right from this point of view. I was breaking my promise to him. But is there anybody who would be able to say he would not have broken his in the same circumstances? None! It was at once a shameful and a natural act; he was my friend; it was shameful, it was horrible, but there are shameful and horrible things in other lives beside mine. His presence had become unendurable. But why excuse myself further? Let the facts speak for themselves and let me be judged by them. They have already been published in The Confessions of a Young Man, but I wonder now if I told in that book enough of the surprise that I experienced on finding him still in the appartement in the Galerie Feydeau when I returned from Boulogne? He should have moved out of my rooms after the quarrel, but instead of that he had converted the sitting-room into a workshop, and his designs for lace curtains occupied one entire wall. He'll go tomorrow, of course, I said, but he did not go on the morrow or the day after, and at the end of the week he was still there, and annoying me by whistling as he worked on his design. At last, unable to bear it any longer, I opened the door of my bedroom and begged him to cease, and it is to this day a marvel to me how he restrained himself from strangling me. He looked as if he were going to rush at me, and on the threshold of my room indulged in the most fearful vituperation and abuse, to which I felt it would be wiser not to attempt an answer, for his arms were long and his fists were heavy; he was always talking about striking out, and it is foolish to engage in a combat when one knows one is going to get the worst of it, so I just let him shout on until he retired to his lace curtains, and I resolved to give notice.
He can't stay after quarter-day.
But the quarter was a long way off, and every day I met him in the Passage des Panoramas among my friends, flowing away in a new ulster past the jet ornaments and the fans; a splendid fellow he certainly was with his broken nose and his grand eyes, and the ulster suited him so well that I began to regret a quarrel which prevented me from asking him questions about it. He came and went as he pleased, passing me on the staircase and in the rooms, his splendid indifference compelling the conclusion that however lacking in character a reconciliation would prove me to be, I could no longer forego one, and after many hesitations I called after him and begged that he would allow bygones to be bygones. I think that he said this was impossible; he must have been counting on my weakness; however this may be, he played with me very prettily, forcing me to plead, practically to ask his forgiveness, and when we were friends again he related that he was looking out for a studio, and in the effusion of reconciliation I very foolishly asked him to tell me if he should happen upon an appartement that he thought would suit me, for live another quarter in the Galerie Feydeau I couldn't. He promised that he would not fail to keep his eyes open, and a few days after he mentioned that he had seen a charming appartement in the Rue de la Tour des Dames—the very thing that would suit me. As there was not nearly enough furniture in the Galerie Feydeau to fill it, he entered into negotiations with an upholsterer, and dazzled me with a scheme of decoration which would cost very little to carry out, and which would give me as pretty an appartement as any in Paris. He was kind enough to relieve me of all the details of un déménagement, and what could I do in return but invite him to stay with me until he had painted a picture?
We had a friend at that time who painted little naked women very badly and sold them very well, and it occurred to Lewis that if Faléro could sell his pictures there was no reason why he should not, so he borrowed a hundred francs from me to hire a model, and painted a nymph; but though better drawn than Faléro's nymphs, she went the round, from picture-dealer to picture-dealer, never finding a purchaser, which did not matter much, for Lewis began at this time to please a rich widow who lived in Rue Jean Goujon. She was not, however, very generous, refusing always de le mettre dans ses meubles, and he continued to live with me, wearing my hats and neckties, borrowing small sums of money, and what was still more annoying, beginning to cultivate a taste for literature, daring even to seek literary advice and help from Bernard de Lopez, a Parisian despite his name—Parisian in this much, that he had written a hundred French plays, all in collaboration with the great men of letters of his time, including Dumas, Banville, and Gautier.
I had picked him up in the Hôtel de Russie very soon after my arrival in Paris. He dined there every Monday, an old habit (the origin of this habit he never told me, or I have forgotten)—a strange habit, it seemed, for anything less literary than the Hôtel de Russie ... for the matter of that anything less literary than Bernard de Lopez's appearance it is impossible to imagine: two piggy little eyes set on either side of a large, well-shaped nose; two little stunted legs that toddled quickly forward to meet me, and two little warm, fat hands that often held mine too long for comfort. So small a man never had before so large a head, a great bald head with a ring of hair round it, and his chin was difficult to discover under his moustaches; roll after roll of flesh descended into his bosom, and, by God! I can still see in my thoughts his little brown eyes watching me just like a pig, suspiciously, though why he should have been suspicious of me I cannot say, unless, indeed, he suspected that I doubted the existence of the plays he said he had written in collaboration, a thing which I frequently did, unjustly, for he was telling the truth. He had collaborated with Gautier, Dumas, and Banville, and having assured myself of this by the brochures, I began to think that he could not have been always so trite and commonplace.
Men decline like the day, and he was in the evening of his life when I met him, garrulous about the days gone by, and in the Café Madrid, whither I invited him to come with me after dinner at the Hôtel de Russie, he told me that Scribe had always said he would like to rewrite La Dame Blanche. Rewrite a piece that has been acted a thousand times, Lopez would gurgle, and then he told me about la scène à faire. The morning he had brought Dumas the manuscript of Le Fils de la Nuit he had said to him: Nous aurons des larmes. He used to speak about a writer called Saint-George, whose rooms were always heavily scented, and scent gave the little man des maux de tête. There was another man whose name I cannot recall, with whom he had written many plays, and who had an engagement book like a doctor or a dentist, qui ne l'empêche pas d'avoir beaucoup d'esprit. It pleases me to recall Lopez's very words: they bring back the 'seventies to me, and my own thoughts of the 'seventies and the intellectual atmosphere in which these men lived, going about their business with comedies and plays in their heads—an appointment at ten to consider the first act of a vaudeville; after breakfast another appointment, perhaps at the other end of Paris, to discover a plot for a drama; a talk about an opera in the café at five, and perhaps somebody would call in the evening—no—not in the evening, for they wrote on into the night, tumbling into bed at three or four in the morning.
Of the wonderful 'seventies Lopez was le dernier rejeton; and talking about Le Fils de la Nuit, the first play that had ever run two hundred nights, we strolled back to his lodging in the Place Pigalle—a large room on the second floor overlooking the Place with a cabinet de toilette. And as time went on I learnt some facts about him. He had been married, and received from his wife the few thousand francs a year on which he lived, and the Empire bed with chairs and a toilet-table to match must have come from her; he would not have thought of buying them, and still less the two portraits by Angelica Kauffmann on either side of the fireplace. A man who had outlived his day! a superficial phrase, for none can say when a man has outlived his day. He had not outlived his when the managers ceased to produce his plays, for he drew my attention to literature, and it is pleasant to me to remember the day that I hurried down to Galignani's to buy a play, for one evening while we talked in the Café Madrid it had occurred to me that with a little arrangement Lewis and Alice would supply me with the subject of a comedy. But never having read a play I did not know how one looked upon paper. Congreve, Wycherley, Farquhar, and Vanbrugh (Leigh Hunt's edition) were my first dramatic authors, and my first comedy, in imitation of these writers, was composed and written and copied out and read to Bernard de Lopez within six weeks of its inception. His criticism of it was, I thought at first we were going to have a very strong play, a man that marries his mistress to his friend, and I understood at once that the subject had been frittered away in endless dialogue after the manner of my exemplars, and it was as likely as not in the hope of getting all this dialogue acted that I returned to England, remaining there some time, writing a long comedy which Lopez did not like. Drama was abandoned for poetry, and Lopez encouraged me to tell him of my poems, advising me as we ascended the Rue Notre Dame de Lorette or the Rue des Martyrs to choose subjects that would astonish the British public by their originality—for instance, if instead of inditing a sonnet to my mistress's eyebrows I were to tell the passion of a toad for a rose.
Not that, of course not that, but poems on violent subjects.
A young man's love for a beautiful corpse, I interjected.
He introduced French poetry to me, and through him I read a great deal that I might not have heard of, and wrote a great deal that I might never have written; and it was to him that I brought my first copy of my first book, Flowers of Passion, together with an article that had appeared in The World, entitled, A Bestial Bard. The article began: The author of these poems should be whipped at the cart's tail, while the book is being burnt in the market-place by the common hangman. It filled the greater part of a column, and the note struck by Edmund Yates was taken up by other critics, and, much impressed by the violence of their language, Lopez said: They seem to have exhausted the vocabulary of abuse upon you, and he began to sound me regarding the possibility of an English and a French author writing a play together for the English stage. Martin Luther seemed to us a character that would suit Irving, then at the height of his fame.
But shall we present both sides of the question impartially like Goethe? Or shall we write as ardent Protestants?
As ardent Protestants, I answered. Lopez acquiesced, and one day when I called to discuss a certain scene between Catherine Bora and Luther with my collaborator, I came upon Lewis reading a sonnet to him. Always thrusting himself into my life! are words that will let the reader into the secret of my annoyance. He rose abashed, and the sight of Lewis abashed was a novel one. Lopez continued to explain:
Mon cher monsieur, ce n'est pas pour vous contrarier, mais 'd'où suintent d'étranges pleurs' est un vers de sept; suintent n'a que deux syllabes.
C'est ma mauvaise prononciation flamande, Lewis said, and he bundled up his papers, adding: You have come to talk Martin Luther, so I'll leave you.
But what right does he come interrupting you?
He only came to show me a sonnet.
But what the devil does he want to write sonnets for? Isn't it enough that he should paint bad pictures?
He merely came to inquire out the prosody of a certain line, Lopez answered, and he tried to calm me.
No, there's no use, Lopez. I can't fix my thoughts. Perhaps after dinner. What do you say to the Rat Mort?
He raised no objection to the Rat Mort, but the moment we entered the café he rushed up to a dishevelled and wild-eyed fellow. I thought I had lost him. Let me introduce you, he said, to Villiers de l'Isle Adam. Lewis was forgotten in the excitement of dining with a real man of letters, in the pleasure of confiding to Villiers the scene that I had come to talk to Lopez about.
It is to Martin Luther himself, I said, whom she has never seen, that she confesses in a wood her love of Martin Luther.
I must introduce you to Mallarmé, said Villiers, and he wrote a note on the edge of the table. You'll find him at home on Tuesday evenings.
Mallarmé spoke to me of Manet, and he must have spoken to Manet about me, for one night in the Nouvelle Athènes Manet asked me if the conversation distracted my attention from my proofs. Come and see me in my studio in the Rue d'Amsterdam. And not very many evenings later Mendès was introduced to me between one and two in the morning. He asked me to the Rue Mansard, where he lived with Mademoiselle Holmès, whereupon, before I had time to realise the fact, I was launched on Parisian literary and artistic society, and six months afterwards Manet said to me, There is no Frenchman in England who occupies the position you do in Paris. Perhaps there isn't, I answered mechanically, my thoughts turning to Lewis, who was certainly going down in the world. I should have done better to have left him in the Mont Rouge to get his living as a workman, for he'll never be able to scrape together any sort of living as a painter, and my spirits rose mountains high against him. An old man from the sea, I said, whom I cannot shake off.
But the courage to fling him into the street was lacking, and I continued to bear with him day after day, hoping that he would leave me of his own accord. He was well enough in Julian's studio or in the Beaux-Arts or in English and American society, but he would seem shallow and superficial in the Nouvelle Athènes, and I always avoided taking him there; but one night he asked me to tell him where I was dining, and I had to tell him at the Nouvelle Athènes. He pleaded to be allowed to accompany me, and I will admit to some vanity on my part; or was it curiosity that prompted me to introduce him to Degas, who very graciously invited us to sit at his table and talked to us of his art, addressing himself as often to Lewis as he did to me. He opened his whole mind to us, beguiled by Lewis's excellent listening, until the waiter brought him a dish of almonds and raisins. Then a lull came, and Lewis said, leaning across the table:
I think, Monsieur Degas, you will agree with me that, more than any other artist among us, Jules Lefebre sums up all the qualities that an artist should possess.
My heart misgave me, and Degas's laughter did not console me, nor his words whispered in my ear as he left:
Votre ami est très fort.... Il m'a fait monter l'échelle comme personne. And a few days afterwards in the Rue Pigalle he said:
Comment va votre ami? Ah! celui-là est d'une force.
Mais, cher ami, le pauvre garçon n'a jamais su se dégager—
Pas du tout; il est très fort.
Son esprit n'a jamais su dépasser certaines bornes ... la Rue Bonaparte.
But no explanation pleased Degas as much as his own: Il m'a tiré les vers du nez ... et comme personne. I resisted this explanation till, feeling that I was beginning to show myself in a stupid light, I accepted it outwardly, though convinced inly that Lewis had been guilty of the unpardonable sin—lack of comprehension. He must go and at once, and as soon as I returned home I begged him to leave me. At the end of the month, when my mother sends me my money, he answered, and my heart sank at the thought of having him with me so long. I think I must have answered, For God's sake go! and a few days afterwards the concierge mentioned to my great surprise that Monsieur Hawkins had left, and had paid her the few francs he owed her. A good trait on his part, I thought, and my heart softened toward him suddenly, and continued soft until a lady told me that Monsieur Hawkins had been to see her and had borrowed a hundred francs from her.
I didn't dare refuse, she said, but I thought it rather mean of him to come to ask me for the money.
We sat looking at each other, the lady thinking no doubt that I should not have told Lewis I was her lover, and myself thinking that I had at length caught Lewis in deliberate blackmail; and, going round to the studio in which he had settled himself, I said, before looking round the walls to admire the sketches:
I have just come from Miss ——, and she tells me you borrowed a hundred francs from her.
If I did, you borrowed from Alice Howard, my mistress, he answered.
I had forgotten, and sat dumbfounded. But why had I borrowed this money? I never wanted for money. Perhaps to put Alice to the test, or to get back some of my own, for she had borrowed often from me, and finding her in affluent circumstances.... She asked me some days after to repay her, and I gave her the money that was in my pockets—a hundred francs; the other hundred I forgot all about till one evening at Alphonsine's I saw her rise up from her place and walk toward me, a vindictive look round her mouth and eyes.
Have you come, she said, to pay me the money that you owe me?
To admit that I had borrowed money from Alice at Alphonsine's was impossible; lies happen very seldom in my life, but they have happened, and this was an occasion when a lie was necessary. But I lied badly from lack of habit, and Lewis had heard from the women there that I had not stood up to Alice; and now to pass off the matter on which I had come to speak to him, I asked him how I should have answered Alice.
You should have answered her ironically: Toi, tu m'as prêté de l'argent? Où ça? Quand tu venais me trouver à l'hôtel de toutes les Russies et que tu pleurais pour un déjeuner? Quand tu n'avais pas deux mètres d'indienne à te coller sur les fesses? Non, mais vrai: y avait-il une maquerelle rue de Provence qui voulait de ta peau? Tu dis que tu m'as prêté de l'argent? C'est-il quand ton tôlier te reprenait ta clé tous les matins, ou quand tu demandais aux michés cinquante centimes pour aller aux chiottes?
Splendid! I cried.
Faut pas se laisser marcher sur le pied, dis. Je ne lui aurais par parlé autrement.
You have l'esprit prime-sautier, but any wit I have is l'esprit de l'escalier ... et de la dernière marche.
Je ne lui aurais pas parlé autrement.
Patter always excites my admiration; we get back to origins—to the monkey. And looking round the studio the number of sketches that I saw everywhere in oil and water-colour put the thought into my mind that Lewis must have discovered a patron and was living as comfortably as he had ever done with me. So all my sacrifices were in vain, I said to myself, and aloud to him: You are doing a great deal of work. I have discovered a patron, he answered, and he told me of an old man living in a barred house in a distant suburb who never opened his door except to a certain ring—an old man in gold-rimmed spectacles who would buy any drawing that Lewis brought him at a price: thirty francs for a flower in a vase, for an apple, a pear, for a street corner, for a head sketched in ten minutes. He is your banker? I said. Yes; it's just like cashing a cheque. And I left the studio hoping that the old man who looked at Lewis's drawings through gold-rimmed spectacles would live for many a year. His death would certainly bring back Lewis to me asking for fifty, for a hundred francs; and if I could not lend him so much he would ask for twenty, and if I could not manage twenty he would ask for ten, and if I could not manage ten he would ask for five, perhaps coming down to the price of his omnibus home. But the old man continued in the flesh, and weeks and months passed away without my seeing or hearing from Lewis. Years must have gone by before we met at Barbizon, whither he had gone intent upon investing all his savings on a Salon picture.
An old graveyard full of the lush of June had taken his fancy, and after many sketches he was still certain that he had hit on a good subject for a picture. A critic pointed out that two children looking at a gravestone would balance the composition; another said that a yellow cat coming from the cottages along the wall would complete it. Both were right; all that now remained for Lewis to do was to paint the picture. But he lacked touch, and his picture would have remained very tinny if Stott of Oldham had not arrived at Barbizon suddenly.
You mustn't rub the paint like that. See here; and taking the brush from Lewis's hand he mixed a tone and drew the brush slowly from right to left. Almost at once the paint began to look less like tin, and Lewis said, I think I understand, and he was able to imitate Scott sufficiently well to produce a picture which Bouguereau said would attract attention in the Salon if the title were changed to Les Deux Orphelins.
L'Amour renaît de ses Cendres is not a title that will appeal to the general public.
Lewis tried to explain that what he meant was that the love of the parents is born again in their children; but he allowed Bouguereau's good sense to prevail, and the picture drew from Albert Wolf an enthusiastic notice of nearly half a column in the Figaro, after which it became the fashion to go to the Salon to see Les Deux Orphelins and Monsieur Hawkins, un jeune peintre anglais de beaucoup de talent, for Lewis could not separate himself from his picture, and every day he grew bolder, receiving his friends in front of it and explaining to them, and to all and sundry, the second title, L'Amour renaît de ses Cendres. His conduct was not very dignified, but he had been waiting so long for recognition of his talent that he could not restrain himself. He sold Les Orphelins for ten thousand francs, and next year the Salon was filled with imitations of it, and there was a moment when it seemed that Julian's prophesy was about to come true. The hotel in the Champs Élysées was being sought for when Lewis's first patron, the old man to whom he had sold his sketches for twenty-five or thirty francs apiece, died suddenly; and for nearly two years Welden Hawkinses were being knocked down at the Hôtel de Vente for fifty and a hundred francs apiece.
Fifteen hundred or two thousand pictures thrown upon the market was no doubt a misfortune, I said as I stirred the fire, but if Lewis had been a man of healthy talent he would have painted other pictures. But his talent was the talent of un détraqué, and a recollection of a naked man looking at a naked woman through a mask was remembered. The hereditary taint was always there, I said, and I began to turn over in my mind all that Lewis had told me about his father. My father left mamma some three or four years after their marriage. I think I was twenty before I ever saw him. I was given an address of a lodging-house in St James's, and found my father in a small back room, sitting on a bed playing the flute. Oh, is that you, Lewis? Just a moment. Lewis had heard from his mother many stories of his father's eccentricities, and he had an opportunity of verifying these in St James's Street, for when the elder Hawkins laid aside his flute and engaged in perfunctory conversation with his son he allowed a fly to crawl over his face. Every moment Lewis expected his father to brush the insect away. It had been round one eye several times, and had descended the nose, and was about to go up the eye once again when Lewis, who could contain himself no longer, cried out:
Father, that fly!
Pray don't disturb it, I like the sensation.
My thoughts passed from Lewis to Jim, and I sat for a long time asking myself if Jim would have succeeded better than Lewis if he had gone to Paris in the 'fifties. He had more talent than Lewis, but his talent seemed still less capable of cultivation. There is a lot of talent in Ireland, but whether any of it is capable of cultivation is a question one can ponder for days, and my thoughts breaking away suddenly I remembered how, soon after my return from Ireland when I had settled in Cecil Street in the Strand, and was trying to make my living by writing for the papers, the desire to see Jim again in the old studio in Prince's Gardens had come upon me, and I had gone away one night in a cab to Kensington; but the appearance of the footman who opened the door surprised me, and I asked myself if Jim had sold some pictures, or had let the house. He had sold the house, and any letters that came from him were sent to Arthur's Club, where I could obtain news of him. The porter told me that any letter would be forwarded, but I wanted to see Jim that very night, and addressing myself to the secretary of the club, who happened to be passing through the hall at that moment, I begged of him to authorise the porter to give me Mr Browne's address, which he did: and I went away in a cab certain that the end of the drive would bring me face to face with my old boon companion. The cab turned out of Baker Street and we were soon in Park Road driving between Regent's Park and a high wall with doors let into it. Before one of these the hansom stopped and I saw a two-storeyed house standing in the midst of a square plot. A maid-servant took me up a paved pathway, mentioning that Mr Browne was on the drawing-room floor, and I found him waiting expectant in his smock, a palette and a sheaf of brushes in his left hand, the thumb of his right hand in his leather belt.
My dear Jim, I've been to Prince's Gardens.
We've sold the house and Pinkie and Ada have gone to live with friends and relations.
There was a feeling in the room that nobody had called to see him for many a month, and I noticed that a good deal of colour had died out of the thick locks of flaxen hair and that his throat was wrinkled.
And all your pictures, Jim?
Your mother was kind enough to hang them up in Alfred Place when we left Prince's Gardens, and when she left the house at the end of her lease the pictures were taken away.
And you didn't make any inquiries?
Well, you see, I haven't room for many canvases.
The moment had come when I must show some interest in his pictures, and turning from the one on the easel I picked one out of the rows, hoping that the design might inspire a few words of praise.
You must have painted a dozen or twenty times upon it. I don't know how you can work over such a surface, a thick coagulated scum. Why don't you scrape? Manet always scrapes before painting, and he never loses the freshness; his paint is like cream after twenty repaintings.
Jim did not know anything about Manet, nor did he care to hear about Monet, Sisley, Renoir, the Nouvelle Athènes and its litterati. He knew nothing of Banville's versification and had not read Goncourt's novels, so I told him that Catulle had thought well of my French sonnet, for having written a drama on the subject of Luther it was necessary to write a French dedicatory sonnet, and I recited it to Jim to revenge myself upon him for his having told me that he knew French as well as English.
My landlady's daughter, he said, pointing to a small portrait on the wall, and some time afterwards a young girl was heard singing on the stairs. There she is. Shall I ask her in?
I begged of him to do so, and a somewhat pretty girl with round eyes and a vivacious voice, came into the room and chattered with us; but her interest in the fact that Jim was my cousin was a little high-pitched, and it was obvious that she took no interest in his pictures, or indeed in any pictures; and it was a relief when she turned to Jim to ask him if he was staying to dinner.
Let us go out together and dine somewhere, I said.
Yes, ask him out to dinner. It will do him good. He hasn't been beyond the garden for weeks.
Yes, Jim; we will go up town and dine together.
I have no money.
But father will lend you any money you want. It will go down in the ... you can settle with father when you like.
She left the room and Jim spoke of the people in whose house he was lodging, a dancing master and his wife, and he gave me a mildly sarcastic account of Mrs —— coming up to see him in the morning to tell him that he might have the use of the parlour for ten shillings extra; my ears retain his voice still saying something about coals and gas not being included, and what tickled his fancy was the way the old lady used to linger about the drawing-room trying to draw the conversation on to his sisters, where was Miss Ada living now, and was Miss Pinkie still living with Lord Shaftesbury? He continued talking, moving the canvases about, and I was willing to appreciate the designs if he would only say that he would come out to dinner. At last he said:
You see, I haven't been to my tailor's for a long time, and my wardrobe is in a ragged and stained condition. I dare say they'll be able to find some cold beef or cold mutton or a sausage or two in the larder. You don't mind?
Of course I did not mind. It was for a talk about old times that I had come, and after the cold meats we returned to the drawing-room. Jim showed me all his latest designs and we discussed them together, mingling our memories of the women we had known. The names of Alice Harford, Annie Temple, and Mademoiselle d'Anka came into the conversation; I told him about Alice Howard, hoping he would ask me if she were as big as Alice Harford, and then, determined to rouse him, I said the great love affair of my life was a small, thin woman. Still he did not answer.
If a woman be sensual—
Beauty is better than bumping, he answered with a laugh, and it seemed that we were to have one of our erstwhile conversations about Art and that Jim would draw forth a canvas and say, This has all the beauties of Raphael and other beauties besides; but he seemed to have lost nearly all his interest in painting, allowing me, however, to search round the room and discover behind the sofa a new version of Cain Shielding his Wife from Wild Beasts, and I spoke of the design and the conception and the movement of the man about to hurl a spear at a great lion approaching from behind a rock. He took up his palette but forgot to roar like a lion, and when he laid it aside he did not sing Il balen or A che la morte, nor did he tell me that Pinkie had a more beautiful voice than Jenny Lind, and when we walked across the garden and he bade me goodbye at the gate, I felt that he had worn out himself as well as his clothes—his hopes, his talent, his enthusiasm for life, all were gone, an echo remained, an echo which I did not try to reawaken. I never saw him again; he was for me but an occasional thought, until one day I found myself sitting next a showily dressed woman at luncheon, the daughter of Jim's landlady, and it was from her I learnt that Jim had died about two years back in Park Road. She said he had become quite a hermit in the later years of his life, never leaving the house except for a stroll round the garden.
Painting always, I said.

• Victor Stone/Cyborg- Trevor Jackson
• John Constantine- Dan Stevens
• Black Adam- Dave Bautista
• John Stewart/Green Lantern- John David Washington
  
• Carter Hall/Hawkman- Garrett Hedlund
  
• Martian Manhunter- David Oyelowo
  
• Oliver Queen/Green Arrow- Austin Butler
  
• Diana Prince/Wonder Woman- Eiza Gonzalez
  
• Hal Jordan/Green Lantern- Glenn Powell
  
• Arthur Curry/Aquaman- Alexander Skarsgard
  
• Mera- Emilia Clarke
  
• Bruce Wayne/Batman- Karl Urban
  
• Damian Wayne/Robin- Aidan Gallagher
  
• Lois Lane- Lily James
  
• Alfred Pennyworth- Malcolm McDowell
  
• Ryan Choi/The Atom- Henry Golding
  
• Sinestro- Luke Evans
  
• Barry Allen/The Flash- Jack Quaid
  
• Billy Batson/Shazam- Alan Ritchson
  
• Clark Kent/Kal El/Superman- David Corenswet
  

PODCAST: https://ayearofwarandpeace.podbean.com/e/ep1563-hail-and-farewell-george-moore-vale-chapter-4/
PROMPTS:
Today's Reading, via Project Gutenberg:

IV

As soon as Teresa had removed the tablecloth my eyes went to a bulky volume, The Brothers Karamasov, and, determined to break the back of the story, I threw myself into an armchair, saying: If I read fifty pages every evening I shall soon get through it. And I read on and on through the fifty pages that my conscience had stipulated for, and might have read to a hundred if the endless corridors down which I had been wandering and the great halls through which I had passed had not suddenly seemed to dissolve into vapour. A talent, I said, that appeals to the young men of today. The pigmy admires the giant, however loosely his frame may be put together, and our young writers lift their pale etiolated faces to Dostoievsky. We've had enough of art, is their cry, give us Nature, and this book fulfils all their aspirations. It is impersonal and vague as Nature, I said, returning to the consideration of the book, finding myself obliged to admit that I could detect a dribble of outline in Aloysha, as much as may be detected in the ikons on the walls. A man of genius without doubt, on a different plane from our miserable writers of fiction, but inferior to his own countrymen, to one at least, Turgenev, and on the whole inferior to Balzac. Some rough spots there may be in Balzac, some rocks, but rocks are better than marsh, and my thoughts went to the philosophical studies, to Louis Lambert, Seraphita, Jesus Christ in Flanders. These books affected me times past, but to read them again would be to run the risk of a great disillusion. So why read them? As I took a cigar from the box my thought returned to Paris, and I remembered that in about a year I had begun to pine for London, for the English language, English food, for my mother's house in Alfred Place. Close by it I had rented a studio, in Cromwell Mews, and Millais used to come to see me there, and Jim of course came and talked to me of his compositions; but his influence was a declining one, for in London Lewis was always by me in spirit controlling me, exciting in me a desire to be loved for myself, prompting the conviction that for a young man to go to Cremorne Gardens or the Argyle Rooms, armed with a couple of sovereigns, was merely to procure for himself a sensual gratification hardly on a higher level than that which schoolboys indulge in. But if he go there with only a few cab fares in his pocket he will be obliged to reconsider himself physically, and those negligences in dress which were the despair of his parents will vanish, his boots will begin to improve in shape and quality, a pin will appear in his necktie, or maybe he will wear his scarf in a ring, his shoulders will take a finer turn, and his head will be upreared above them proudly. And if he would be loved for himself he must cultivate an interesting attitude of mind, he must be able to slough himself at will (his outer skin, I should have said), and take part in wider humanity, in dreams, hopes, aspirations and ideals not strictly his own, only his through sympathy with the lives of others.
The only one who knew me in the days of the Cremorne and Argyle Rooms is dear Edward, and it always interests me to hear him say that I began myself out of nothing, developing from the mere sponge to the vertebrate and upward. I should have liked another simile, for Nature has never interested me as much as Art, perhaps I should never have paid any attention to Nature if it hadn't been for Art. I would have preferred Edward to have said that I was at once the sculptor and the block of marble of my own destiny, and that every failure to win a mistress in the Cremorne Gardens was a chipping away of the vague material that concealed the statue. But the simile would perhaps not have been so correct, for to say that a man is at once the sculptor and the block of marble means that he is a conscious artist, and I was not that in those days; I worked unconsciously. Yes, Edward is right; I developed upward from the sponge, returning to Paris about eighteen months later a sort of minor Lewis, having not only imbibed a good deal of his mind, but even fashioned myself so closely to his likeness that Julian, who caught sight of me on the boulevard soon after my return, thought for a moment that I was Lewis.
On arriving at the Gare du Nord, the first thing to do was to find Lewis, for without him the evening would never wear away; but the concierge told me that Monsieur Hawkins had left, and that he did not know his present address.... Julian took his coffee every evening at the Café Vivienne, but never came before eight; I waited till half past, and then bethought myself of Alphonsine's. Monsieur Hawkins and Madame Alice had not dined there for some weeks. Alphonsine did not know their address; the dinner seemed worse than usual, and the chatter of the women more tedious. At last somebody said that she thought Marie Pellegrin knew Madame Alice's address, but Marie was not at Alphonsine's that evening.... She came in, however, a little later, and told me that Madame Alice was living in the Rue Duphot, No 14, an appartement au rez-de-chaussée, and away I went. Madame was at home, but she had a gentleman dining with her.
Monsieur Hawkins.
Yes, the servant answered timidly, and I burst in.
Lewis was glad to see me, and Alice welcomed me with hard empty laughter. Was she glad to see me back again? Or did she fear that painting would distract Lewis's attention from her? However this may be, she welcomed me, and was certainly pleased at my admiration of the fine suite of apartments that I found her in. Yes, I have been going ahead, she said, leading me through the windows into a strip of garden where tall trees were trained up a high wall. She liked my question, Who is the fellow who pays for all this? and I heard the name of Phillipar for the first time, a great name it was then in the Parisian financial world. After going bankrupt for a dozen millions or more, he bought an island in the Mediterranean, and it was he or one of his associates that kept Alice, never coming to see her oftener than once a week, and then only in the afternoon.
So when you hear the servant whisper, Monsieur est ici, you'll just skip round to the café and wait.
And I shall find Lewis there, I added.
The remark did not please him, for he was trying to carry off the life he was leading with great airs; and when I went to him a few days after, seriously alarmed for his artistic future, saying that I had heard in the studio that he had not been there for months, he answered that I had a fixed income, but he had only four hundred francs a month from his mother, and it was not easy to abstract Julian's fees, one hundred francs a month, from four. He had counted upon selling the landscape which we were looking at—a flowering glade in the woods of Ville d'Avray; but the customer had been called away to South America suddenly. He would come back, but in the meantime.... The picture was not finished; he would like to have done some more to it, but he was so hard up he could not afford the train fare; and my heart melting at the thought of so much genius wasted for the sake of a train fare, I went away with him to Ville d'Avray, and we found motives and painters in the woods, and strayed under flowering boughs, and returned with two pictures in time for dinner in the Rue Duphot, and a great deal of art talk that was continued during and after dinner till Alice said:
You two have been away all day in the woods, and have no doubt had a very pleasant time, but where do I come in? you come back here merely to talk painting, and she flounced out of the room, leaving us wondering at her ill temper and how long she would remain away. She appeared in the doorway ten minutes after, and turning on her heel, said, I don't know what you two are going to do; I am going to the Bois. And you, Lewis, what are you going to do? I asked, and as Lewis did not dare tell her that he would prefer to spend the evening lounging in her drawing-room, we had to accompany her to the Cascade and sit with her in the café till midnight watching the celebrated courtesans arriving and departing in their carriages. So-and-so is now with So-and-so; he gives her a hundred thousand francs a year et elle le trompe tout le temps avec le petit chose. She was interested in these details, and not unnaturally, for she was now very nearly in the front rank, and to keep her there we had to take her out every evening. If we did not go to a theatre we went to a music-hall; the Folies Bergères was coming into fashion at that time, and we were often there till it was time to go to the Mabile. A tedious place of amusement the Mabile always was to my thinking, and the dinner that had cost over eighty francs, and the box at the Folies Bergères which had broken into a second hundred-franc note, did not cause me as many pangs of conscience as the five-franc entrance-fee. Ladies entered the Mabile free, and Alice sometimes paid for Lewis, but very often before she had time to slip five francs into his hand some friends engaged her in conversation, and then he would beseech me to lend him the money, and it angered me to see him fling the coin down with the air of un grand seigneur. Half an hour is the longest time that anybody remains in the garden, and as we walked round the estrade in silence, I often thought of my poor Ballintubber tenants.
I wonder how much longer Alice intends to keep me waiting?
Sometimes she joined us, sometimes she went away with her aristocratic connections, and as we walked home Lewis would rail against her, swearing that he would never see her again, turning a deaf ear to my pleading. Now it amused me to plead for her, and to soothe him I agreed that she should not have left his arm as abruptly as she had done; but her position was a difficult one, torn between love and necessity. He would answer that he wasn't going to be made a fool of before all Paris, and it delighted me to see him put on the grand air, though if I had been Alice's amant de coeur I should like to have been treated frankly as a ponce, one that has to make way for the miché qui happe le pot, as in Villon's ballade. To be an amant de coeur as Lewis was, en cachette, would have filled me with shame, my instinct being always to be ashamed of nothing but to be ashamed, and it was from the day that Lewis confessed himself ashamed of the rôle he was playing that he lost caste in my eyes. I began to catch myself wondering how it was that he did not scruple about wasting all his life with Alice; he seemed to have abandoned painting altogether, and it was with some unwillingness that I followed them one night to a masked ball dressed in the fantastic costume of Valentine in Le Petit Faust. Was it at Perren's I met la belle Hollandaise? I think it was at Perren's, the great cours de danse, where on week-days young girls from the Faubourg St Germain learnt their first steps, and on Sunday nights all the demi-mondaines assembled—Léonie Leblanc, Cora Pearl, Blanche d'Antigny, Margaret Byron, Hortense Schneider, Julia Baron, and how many others? It was at Perren's that I met her, and not at the commoner bal in the Rue Vivienne; she was sitting by Cora Pearl watching me, attracted no doubt at first by the red and yellow tights that I wore, and recognising in her eyes a quiet look of invitation, I summoned up all my courage and crossed the ballroom to inquire if she would dance with me; which she did, passing into my arms with a delightful motion, making me feel her presence without any vulgar thrusting of her body upon me. The music ceased, and she said: You're with friends? Then my heart misgave me, and I answered: Would you like to be introduced? She said she would, and it was plain that Alice was jealous of my new friend; like myself, she believed that it could not be me, but Lewis, that she sought; but as soon as she was assured that this was not so, her attitude toward la belle Hollandaise became friendlier, and we four at the close of the bal drove to a fashionable restaurant, and afterward to the Rue Duphot, Alice proposing a grand bivouac, for she did not care to sleep in her bed while her guests slept upon the floor. But we would not accept her bed; and my heart again misgave me, thinking that the evening, like many an evening before, would prove platonic ... for me. As if reading my thought la belle Hollandaise asked me at what moment in the evening I had begun to love her.
When you kissed me.
But I haven't kissed you at all yet, she said. Wait a little while. And leaning her cheek against mine, she whispered strange incomprehensible things in a low, quiet voice that drove me mad, her eyes, curious and enigmatic, fixed on me, her pointed face lifted to mine, her chin enticing, and her soft brown hair brushing my cheek. I can recall the sweet moment when she drew her bracelets from her wrists. But cannot call to mind any part of her undressing, only that she was always beside me, curled serpent-like, a serpent of old Nile, for a woman can coil like one, and during the night I often cried out in terror, awakening Lewis and Alice, who lay asleep in the rich imperial bed.... She must have kissed me in the morning and gone to Alice's bathroom and dressed and done her hair, but I remember none of these things, only that we once stood before a large picture by Diaz in her house in the Avenue Victor Hugo. In those days I prefaced my love affairs with a copy of Mademoiselle de Maupin; I held one in my hand with a famous passage marked for her to read, and can still hear her telling me that she had been offered three hundred thousand francs to go to Russia. But if you go I shall never see you again. I don't know whether I shall go or not. I don't know what's going to happen to me, were the last words of la belle Hollandaise, the last words she addressed to me, and if I relate the incident of our meeting it is because we never forget her who reveals sensuality to us. She is now as old as the fair helm-maker, but on that memorable night Alice and Lewis seemed perfunctory lovers. A few evenings later he offered Alice to me, for they had outlived their love for each other, and were now seeking to maintain it in excess and orgy. Her face wore an odd smile when he proposed her to me, so the thought may have come to her rather than to him, the instinct of every woman being to turn to him who has witnessed her love as soon as she wearies of her lover. So if she had begun to weary of her lover about this time, we may acquit her of any deep plan to involve me in a quarrel with my cousin when on my coming to invite her out to dinner, she answered that she would dine with me, but she was not yet dressed and I should have to wait in the drawing-room till she had had her bath, unless indeed I did not mind following her into the cabinet de toilette—a proposal gladly accepted, for I did not doubt that I should discover in her a more beautiful model than any that had posed in Julian's studio, even if her breasts were too large for a nymph's. On stepping out of her bath she dried herself in many picturesque attitudes whilst we talked of her perfections, the length of her leg from the ankle to the knee, and the spring of her hips. But of love not a word was spoken, for I was not certain that Lewis might not have hidden himself behind a curtain between the tester and the ceiling unbeknown to her.
She would not believe me at first, he said three months later, after telling me that he had left Alice for good; she would not believe me at first, and all she could find to say to persuade me to remain was: You couldn't leave such a pretty pair of breasts! Soon after, I heard from him that the rupture was confirmed by Alice herself, who had passed him in her carriage in the Champs Élysées. She had looked the other way, and there was such scorn in her face that he had vowed he would prove to her that in losing her he had not lost everything. A few days after, he introduced me to a pretty blonde Swede, a woman who was well thought of, but with hardly a tithe of Alice's reputation. I never heard from Lewis why he left her, but one day a carriage drew up by the pavement on which I was walking. The glass was let down, and the Swede told me that she had been obliged to send Lewis away because she found a voiture de remise indispensable.
Les voitures de remise et les amants de coeur sont la ruine des femmes, she said; comme combinaison, c'est aux pommes. And the wisdom of this second-rate light-o'-love, begotten no doubt of many experiences, called my thoughts back to Alice, who, since she had thrown out her amant de coeur, was rapidly becoming one of the celebrated demi-mondaines in Paris. Whilst she went up in the world Lewis sank lower, attaching himself to women who could barely afford him three hundred francs a month, the price of a grisette in the Quartier Latin; the occasional bank-note that his mother used to send him she could afford no longer; his sister was a great expense, and he came to me one day to tell me that he had decided to earn his own living.
Vanderkirko, you know whom I mean, he said, has a small china factory, and he has agreed to take me as an apprentice. I am going to live with him in the Avenue d'Italie près de la barrière.
But you'll see nobody. You'll be exiled.
I am weary of the life I have been leading; and you'll come and see me sometimes, though it is a long way off.
I'll come every Sunday, I answered, and a few Sundays later I found him and Vanderkirko building a wall.
So you've come at last! and he took me into the house and showed me some of his first attempts at painting china, and interested me in the manufacture, in la cuisson au petit et au grand feu.
Vanderkirko was an ex-Communist, and Lewis told me how a door had opened at the last moment when the Government troops were at his heels. He had rushed through it, and through the house, and he was now married et très rangé, and that was why he had refused my invitation to dine and to go to Constant's afterwards. Lewis advised me that the restaurants in the quarter n'étaient pas trop fameux, but we could get some simple food au coin de la rue de la Gaieté, and afterwards at Constant's he would introduce me to some very dangerous criminals, and he talked to me of the thieves he knew and the robberies they planned and were planning; he talked to me about their mistresses, exciting my imagination, for their nicknames were odd and picturesque. If he be not the lover of a great demi-mondaine, he likes to live among thieves and ponces, I thought; one extreme or the other of society for him. A somewhat unreal person. But, why is one person more unreal than another? I asked myself, deciding that a man without a point of view always conveys the impression of unreality. The long street that we used to walk up together rose in my vision, and Lewis growing more confidential from lamp-post to lamp-post, telling me that it was not idleness, as I supposed, that had kept him out of Julian's studio, nor was it because he had no money to pay the fees—Julian would have let him work for nothing—but he could not accept favours from Julian. The tone of his voice in which he said this surprised me, and then becoming still more confidential, he said that he could not go to Julian's studio because his sister was Julian's mistress. I don't know why I should have been so surprised, but I was surprised that such a thing should have happened and that he should have told me; and, very much concerned, I begged of him to tell me how it had all come about. Apparently in the simplest way. He had introduced her to Julian, and—my memory has dropped a stitch, something and something. He had called at her hotel, and the concierge had told him that Madame had gone away to the country, and the next time they met he asked her where she had been; she answered that she had been to the country with Julian. But you didn't come back that night. Where did you sleep? With Fatty, she had answered coolly. He did not think it right, and he did not think it wrong, that his sister should live as it pleased her; he was always un peu veule de nature, without a point of view; and returning from the coal-box, for the fire had sunk very low, I picked up the thread of my thoughts again. He had told me that it was on account of debts he had given up work at the studio, and I remembered that he had confessed to owing Renouf one hundred francs; Julian had lent him fifty, he had had a bit off Chadwick, he had borrowed from Julian's bonne, and it was this last debt that had convinced him that sooner or later he would have to earn his own living. And my heart warmed once more toward this handsome fellow who could take the rough with the smooth, and was as light-hearted in the Avenue d'Italie as in the Rue Duphot, and I praised him to Julian as we drank our coffee at the corner table, until one night, after listening in silence, Julian asked if it had not occurred to me that in losing Lewis Art had suffered a great loss. Lewis's defection from the studio had never struck me in quite so serious a light before, and I asked Julian if he thought that a great genius was being wasted at the Barrière d'Italie. As if he did not hear me, Julian said that casual loans of money were no use, and that it would be better for me not to see Lewis any more unless I could do something definite for him.
Why shouldn't you invite him to live with you for a year, eighteen months?—two years will be sufficient.
But I live in the Hôtel de Russie.
The proper thing for you to do is to take an appartement give him a room and let him be certain of his breakfast and his dinner, and pay for his washing. His mother will send him a little pocket-money, and he can work at my studio.
But the studio fees?
Of course I couldn't take your money.
Julian had caught me, and feeling that I lacked courage to say No, and bear the blame of allowing a great genius to wither unknown down by the Barrière d'Italie, I wrote to Lewis telling him of Julian's proposal to me, and next day he came up to thank me and to assure me that he would try to justify the confidence that we placed in him. He did not give me time to consider the wisdom of the sacrifice I was making, and very wisely, but set out at once to find an appartement that would suit us, coming next day to me with the joyful tidings that he had seen one in the Passage des Panoramas in the Galerie Feydeau. But I don't think I could live in the Passage des Panoramas, and I begged him to look out for another appartement.
But this one is on the first floor, he urged; we shan't have to go up many stairs, and we shall only have to run round the galleries to Julian's studio. That will save us getting up half an hour earlier in the morning and walking through the wet streets. We shall never see the sky nor feel the wind blowing, and I looked up at the glass roofing through which trickled a dim sordid twilight. The sky and wind are well enough out of doors, he said, but once we are within doors the more we are within the better. I have seen other appartements, but nothing as suitable to our convenience. You are going to work, aren't you? And if you are, nothing else matters.
It was with such specious argument that I was inveigled into my prison, and more or less feebly I agreed to forgo light and air for eighteen months or two years.

Sorry for the late post! Enjoy your weekend and please add anything I missed down below.

THURSDAY - MAY 18

Nuggets vs LA Lakers @ Ball Arena @ 6:30PM
Ben Roy Stand Up @ Comedy Works South @ 7:30PM
Kali Uchis @ Fillmore Auditorium @ 6:30PM
Trash Panda @ Marquis Theater @ 7PM
Bi-2 @ Summit @ 7PM
Sparta @ Bluebird Theater @ 7PM

FRIDAY - MAY 19

Rocky Horror Picture Show @ Denver Performing Arts Complex @ 9:30PM Join Colorado Elusive Ingredient for a night of absolute pleasure with an interactive shadow cast performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Brandt Tobler Stand Up @ Comedy Works South @ 8PM
Muna @ Mission Ballroom @ 8PM
First Aid Kit @ Fillmore Auditorium @ 7PM
Dreamers & Robert DeLong @ Marquis Theater @ 7PM
Gasolina @ Summit @ 8PM
Son Little @ Levitt Pavilion @ 6PM
Will Clarke @ Meow Wolf @ 9PM
Fruit Bats @ Ogden Theatre @ 8PM
Alexandra Kay @ Bluebird Theater @ 8PM

SATURDAY - MAY 20

Rapids vs Real Salt Lake @ DICK’S Sporting Goods Park @ 7:30PM
RiNo Spring Bazaar @ Zeppelin Station @ 12PM Denver BAZAAR returns to Zeppelin Station in RiNo for their Spring edition!
Vinnie Montez Stand Up @ Comedy Works South 8PM
Franco Escamilla Stand Up @ Bellco Theatre @ 8PM Popular Mexican comedian and standup performer, Franco Escamilla stops at Bellco on his GABY Tour.
Author Talk: R.F. Kuang @ Trinity UMC @ 6PM Best-selling author R.F. Kuang discusses her newest book ‘Yellowface’ in conversation with Kali Fajardo-Anstine.
Currents @ Marquis Theater @ 6PM
Placebo @ Fillmore Auditorium @ 7PM
Amtrac @ Meow Wolf @ 10PM
Ella Mai @ Ogden Theatre @ 8PM
Slim Cessna’s Auto Club & Native Daughter @ Summit @ 7:30PM
GBH & D.R.I. @ Gothic Theatre @ 7PM
The Slackers @ Levitt Pavilion @ 6PM
Fenne Lily & Christian Lee Hutson @ Bluebird Theater @ 9PM
Coldplay Tribute @ Soiled Dove Underground @ 8PM

SUNDAY - MAY 21

CommuniTea Party and Vendor Market Sent to me by GabriellaKoala . Looks like a fun event.
Nacho Redondo @ Comedy Works Downtown @ 7PM
Andrew Orvedahl @ Comedy Works South @ 7PM
Shania Twain @ Ball Arena @ 7:30PM
The Interrupters and Frankfurt Turner & The Sleeping Souls @ Fillmore Auditorium @ 6PM
The Moth Project @ Meow Wolf @ 3PM
Atreyu @ Gothic Theatre @ 6PM
Rico Nasty @ Bluebird Theater @ 8PM

All weekend and ongoing events

THURSDAY & FRIDAY – A Tribute to John Williams @ Boettcher Concert Hall @ 7:30PM Colorado Symphony celebrates the music of the legendary John Williams, including selections from his celebrated scores from films such as Star Wars, Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, and more!
All weekend – Shane Torres Stand Up @ Comedy Works Downtown
All weekend - ‘Treasure Island’ Musical @ Aurora Fox Art Center Excitement runs high in this new musical adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's thrilling tale of pirates, treasure maps, and mutiny on the seven seas.
All weekend - Les Misérables @ Buell Theatre LAST CHANCE- The brilliant Broadway adaptation of Victor Hugo's timeless story of sacrifice, love, and redemption plays at Buell theatre for a limited time.
All weekend - ‘The 39 Steps’ @ The Singleton Theatre The inventive and hilarious, this hit play combines a film masterpiece by Alfred Hitchcock with a juicy spy novel and a large splash of Monty Python humor.
All weekend - ‘Miss Rhythm: The Legend of Ruth Brown’ Cabaret Show @ Garner Galleria Theatre @ 7:30PM This intimate cabaret experience explores the life and times of R&B legend Ruth Brown through story and song, accompanied by a five-piece jazz band.
Ongoing - 'Near East to Far West' Exhibition @ DAM In this exhibition, visitors are encouraged to compare the visual and historical aspects of French Orientalism and artworks of the American West and reflect on the impact of these representations into the present.
Ongoing - Contemporary Indigenous Photography Exhibition @ DAM'Speaking with Light: Contemporary Indigenous Photography' is one of the first major museum surveys to explore the practices of Indigenous photographers working over the past three decades.
Ongoing - 'Breakthroughs: A Celebration of RedLine 15' Exhibition @ MCA Denver This exhibition celebrates the Redline Contemporary Art Center and its 15-year long legacy of supporting local artists and creatives. The exhibition reflects the current creative practice of artists living in Colorado.
Ongoing - ‘Awful Bigness’ Exhibition @ Clyfford Still Museum ‘Awful Bigness’ fills the Museum’s largest, skylit galleries and celebrates Clyfford Still’s biggest, most ambitious works.

I said in my last post, about Théoden's funeral, that I would follow it up with a discussion of the ceremony by which Éomer ascended to the throne of Rohan. Here is the account:

When the burial was over and the weeping of women was stilled, and Théoden was left at last alone in his barrow, then folk gathered to the Golden Hall for the great feast and put away sorrow; for Théoden had lived to full years and ended in honour no less than the greatest of his sires. And when the time came that in the custom of ´the Mark they should drink to the memory of the kings, Éowyn Lady of Rohan came forth, golden as the sun and white as snow, and she bore a filled cup to Éomer.
´Then a minstrel and loremaster stood up and named all the names of the Lords of the Mark in their order: ... And when Théoden .was named Éomer drained the cup. Then Éowyn bade those that served to fill the cups, and all there assembled rose and drank to the new king, crying: ‘Hail, Éomer, King of the Mark!'

There is no mention of a crown here, which is why I have not used the word “coronation.” Internet sources say that the European tradition of crowning kings was instituted by the Church, to assert ecclesiastical control over royal succession. Though images found online show Anglo-Saxon kings wearing crowns, going back at least to Alfred the Great who took the throne of Wessex in 871, the earliest reference to a coronation ceremony is that of Edgar in 973. (But Théoden wore “a thin golden circlet” when Gandalf came to Meduseld.)
It is clear (to me at least) that Tolkien tried to stick to historical sources in depicting the culture of the Rohirrim. If, as it seems, no record of an English accession ceremony survives, where did he get this scene?
Here is a passage from the Heimskringla, Snorri Sturluson's legendary history of the kings of Norway:

It was the custom at that time that he who gave an heirship-feast after kings or jarls, and entered upon the heritage, should sit upon the footstool in front of the high seat, until the full bowl, which was called the bragafull, was brought in. Then he should stand up, take the bragafull, make solemn vows to be afterwards fulfilled, and thereupon empty the beaker. Then he should ascend the high seat which his father had occupied; and thus he came to the full heritage after his father.

This is not the only source for the custom of the bragafull; see this Wikipedia page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbel
According to this:

The Fagrskinna (a 13th-century history of the Kings of Norway), has a similar account in respect to Svein Forkbeard, mentioning first ceremonial drinkings dedicated to the greatest of one's kindred, then to Thor or others of the gods. Then the bragarfull was poured out and when the giver of the feast had drunk this, he was to make a vow, to be also sworn by those present with him, and only then to sit himself on throne of the deceased.

These sources do not say who brought out the cup. But the role of cupbearer at feasts (ealu bora "ale bearer") traditionally belonged to the highest-ranking woman of the house -- such as Éowyn, Lines 612 ff. of Beowulf describe how Hrothgar's queen Wealhtheow serves the ceremonial drink at the feast which her husband gives for the hero: “Wealhtheow came forth,/greeted, gold-adorned, the men in the hall/and then the noble lady gave out full cups,/first to the East-Danes' homeland-guardian,/bade him be blithe ...”
These sources agree that the making of vows was an essential part of the ceremony. Éomer does not do this; what vow would have fit the story? But Tolkien made use of this theme elsewhere, in Théoden's account of how Baldor son of Brego came to attempt the Paths of the Dead: “A rash vow he spoke, as he drained the horn at that feast which Brego made to hallow new-built Meduseld, and he came never to the high seat of which he was the heir.”
A note about the phrase “minstrel and loremaster.” An Anglo-Saxon king might employ a scop, whose duty it was to compose and perform songs at feasts (often in the king's praise). I suspect that Tolkien would have liked to use this word instead of “minstrel,” but doubted that it would be sufficiently familiar to his audience. But the king might also have a þyle (“thyle” in modern spelling) who among other things was in charge of remembering the king's genealogy and reciting it when called on. Tolkien used “loremaster” in a number of other contexts; but it seems likely that when he wrote “a minstrel and loremaster” here, he was thinking ”a scop and þyle.” Evidently one person was filling both roles at this point – not Gléowine, it would seem; possibly he was too emotional to perform.
One more thing: In Beowulf, the character Unferth is Hrothgar's þyle. Tolkien acknowledged that he modeled Wormtongue on Unferth; did he think of that as Wormtongue's original position, from which he insinuated himself into Théoden's confidence? Something we will never know.

PODCAST: https://ayearofwarandpeace.podbean.com/e/ep1561-hail-and-farewell-george-moore-vale-chapter-31/
PROMPTS: George Moore: Racist, misogynistic, and into incest. Coooool!
Today's Reading, via Project Gutenberg:

III

Our advancements are broken or delayed by unexpected returnings to our beginnings, and my story is that a young man whom I had known at Jurles's asked me to visit him for the hunting season, and that I met a man at his house who had a horse running at Croydon but was without a jockey. So it was natural to me to propose myself, and rely on Joseph Applely's promptitude to send me my father's racing breeches and boots, which he did; and the farce was gone through of taking them down to Croydon, though the owner had written saying that he intended, or half intended, to scratch the horse, his warning serving no purpose, for we are all mummers, and life being but a mumming, it was pleasant to think of myself taking all the jumps, the water-jump especially, in front of the stand. But to do this it was necessary to go down prepared, the breeches and boots in a brown-paper parcel under my arm, the parcel helping me to realise myself as a steeplechase jockey. No doubt that with some luck I should have got the horse round the course as well as another, but the owner having scratched the horse, and the day being wet and the Ring a couple of inches deep in mud, the result of that Croydon meeting was for me a severe cold that prevented me from taking my driving-lesson from Ward, one of the great coachmen of that time, a lesson that I sorely needed, for I had engaged to drive a coach down to Epsom.
All the same, on four lessons this feat was accomplished, the horses meeting with no serious accident, and, encouraged by my luck, a few weeks afterwards the same party was invited by me to a great gala dinner at Richmond, and while the coach was being led over several hillocks through the furze bushes on to the dusty road, for in the darkness we had wandered into Wandsworth Common, one of my guests said to me: You mustn't think of giving up driving; your luck will never desert you. But four horses galloping on Wandsworth Common in the middle of the night! Margaret Gilray whispered to her cousin, Sally Giles. I wish we were safely at home.
These excursions passed the summer away, and in August Sally and Margaret were bidden goodbye. Belfort's brother, who was going to be married and wished to make a splash before doing so, had hired a lodge in Ross-shire. He had invited his brother, and his brother had been allowed to invite me; a great event this was, and hours were spent at the tailors' considering different patterns; at the hosiers' turning over scarves, neckties, and shirts of many descriptions, frilled and plain; and when my mother said that I could not have both a dressing-case costing fifty pounds and a pair of guns, I decided to have the dressing-case and to send to Moore Hall for my father's muzzle-loaders, and though forty years have gone by, I can still smile at the astonishment that the guns inspired in the Ross-shire shooting-lodge. And when it was noticed that the locks were noiseless, Captain H——, who had been told off as my companion on the morrow, was soon interested in them, and spent most of the evening with a toothbrush trying to clean them, succeeding at last in producing a faint clicking, but not enough to convince him that he would be safe while shooting with me. It were better, he thought, to lend me one of his guns, and the breech-loader, the first that I held in my hands, was held fairly straight, and my bag was numerous for a boy of my appearance and conversation. Captain H—— had begun to feel that if by chance my bag were the bigger, he would be wickedly chaffed, and this misfortune might have happened to him if the boots that had won my fancy in the Sloane Street shop-window had not begun to break up, the pretty clasps and buckles being unable to resist the tough Ross-shire heather.
I can't think how you ever came by such boots. Where did you get them? They are as wonderful as your guns! How do you contrive to hit off the extraordinary?
And I told him that it was not until the last moment, between six and seven in the evening, that I remembered I had forgotten to order any shooting boots. My feet, you see, being as small as a woman's, the ready-made shooting boots in the Brompton Road were too large for me; all the shops were shutting, I was getting frantic when I saw a line of boots in a shop-window in Sloane Street marked Ladies' Boots for the Highlands! They'll fit me, I said to myself. You see they do, only—
I shall have to take you round tomorrow to the local cobbler.
The noiseless locks, the ladies' boots, and the admission that I was always in love supplied the Ross-shire shooting-lodge with matter for humorous conversation, and as I sat before my fire in Ely Place I heard my nickname, Mr Perpetual. To be ridiculous has always been ma petite luxe, but can any one be said to be ridiculous if he knows that he is ridiculous? Not very well. It is the pompous that are truly ridiculous. A random thought carried me out of Ely Place across the years to Lodge Road, and I can see myself and the company and the room: a round table on which are beef and salad, Cheshire cheese and beer, the supper provided by the fair cousins. Canaries are shrilling in their cages, and the bow-window is hung with rep curtains, and the sofa, too, is rep. There is wax fruit on the sideboard, and Sally and Margaret wear the tight bum-revealing dresses that succeeded the pious crinoline. Side-whiskers have not disappeared altogether; Belfort and myself, Humphries and Norton—two cavalry officers—are shaved only to mid-cheek. Incident after incident rises up and floats away like cigarette smoke, one incident retaining my attention a little longer than the others—the evening that Belfort refused to smoke one of my cigars, saying that he preferred to smoke one of his own manillas. He lighted one, and it was just beginning to draw when, impertinently, I tore it out of his teeth and flung it into the fire. A joke it had seemed to me, but he rushed for the poker and would have brained me with it if I had not slipped round the table and seized Colville's sword and, unsheathing it in a moment, warded off the blow aimed at my head, and seeing another coming, it occurred to me that the best way to save myself would be to run Belfort through, and he would have received a thrust that might have done for him if one of the cavalry officers had not armed himself with a chair. The sword sank in the upholstery, and by that time Belfort had recovered his temper, and a few minutes after he was smoking one of my cigars in token of reconciliation. One of the cavalry officers asleep on the sofa is another memory that Time has not rubbed away, and Margaret coming to sit on my knees, perhaps because she had been warned not to inflame Mr Perpetual. Her dressmaker had brought home a beautiful blue tea-gown that evening; she was wearing it for the first time, and its folds of corded silk floated over my knees. The very weight and shape of her are remembered, and our inquietude whether the officer was shamming sleep or was asleep. The tea-gown had seemed to me the very painting robe that I needed, for art was never altogether out of my mind, and I had been thinking for some time of Saturn sitting in the shady sadness of a vale as a subject for a picture that my poor dead Oliver would have liked to paint. It would have been of no avail to offer it to Jim Browne, for he could not draw from Nature. A few months later I discovered another which he would have carried out if he had lived: the Witch of Atlas calls to Hermaphroditus, and I could see his wings catching the fainting airs bearing the boat up the shadowy stream to the austral waters beyond the fabulous Thamondacona, without, however, being able to arrange the figures so that they filled the canvas—the sinuous back of the witch, her arm upon the helm, looking up at Hermaphroditus; and one day Jim Browne was implored to say what was wrong with the composition.
Give me your palette and go upstairs and dress yourself. Take off that ridiculous garment, he added, thereby humiliating me, for Margaret Gilray's tea-gown had seemed an excellent painting robe, an advance on the smock which Jim wore in his own studio. But it would be henceforth discarded, for Jim was now my mentor, my hero, my boon companion. It was my pride to be seen in Piccadilly with this fine Victorian gentleman whom I recall best on a wintry day; he never wore an overcoat, but buttoned his braided coat tightly about him and swung a big stick. Long flaxen locks fell thick over the collar, and his pegtops blew about in the wind; he was known to everybody as Piccadilly Jim or Piccadilly Browne, I have forgotten which. We met everybody between Hyde Park Corner and St James's Street, and Jim saluted his acquaintances with a How are you? never a How do you do? He very rarely stopped to speak to any, but strode on quickly, mentioning the name of the passer-by, and I could but try to fix in my memory the appearance of the notable, regretting that Jim did not stop, that I had not been introduced. He liked to quiz me, and sometimes there was plenty of reason for mockery, and sometimes there was none, but in either case he quizzed me, turning some simple phrase into ridicule, as when I mentioned, regretfully—perhaps it was the note of regret in my voice that caused him to laugh at me—that my hair was yellower than his. How he used to drag out the word yellow, making me feel dreadfully ashamed of myself, until at last summoning up courage, I asked him if there was anything foolish in what I had said, and to my surprise he answered no. Then why had he been laughing at me all this while? and I listened to Jim again, for he was now asking, out of politeness—he always decided these questions—whether it would be more amusing to dine at the St James's or at Kettners' or at the Café de la Régence. It did not matter which. In whichever he might choose I could learn his taste in food, and my hope was that with practice I might acquire it; his taste in everything seemed essential, especially in women, and to make myself more perfectly acquainted with it, I drew his attention to the ladies dining at the distant tables, never daring, however, to hazard an opinion unless one seemed to realise all the ideals of beauty set forth in his pictures, and if he deigned to approve of any woman's face and figure at Cremorne Gardens or in the Argyle Rooms, I used to mark her down for future study. My mistakes were numerous, and I was ashamed if he caught me talking to a woman whom he did not admire, and very proud if my choice met his approval, as it happened to do one day in the Park. I had stopped to speak to Kitty Carew, letting his walk on in front, and on overtaking him half-way down the pathway, he said: Yes, indeed, a very pretty woman. You were in luck, George, when you picked her up.
Jim's satellite I was, but given to wandering out of my orbit. There were other companions whom Jim looked upon contemptuously—the Maitlands—and Jim's contempt was shared by my gaunt Irish servant, William Mullowney, who used to enrage me when he came into the drawing-room with his Sor, Mr Dhurty Maitland has called to see you. It was quite true that Sydenham presented a somewhat neglected appearance, but however just William's criticism might be, he could not be allowed to speak to me of my friends with contempt. This Derrinanny savage must be sent back to Moore Hall, I said. But a moment's indignation does not add much to my story; I must tell how I made Sydenham's acquaintance.
When we arrived from Mayo we had gone to live in Thurloe Square, in the house of a very genteel lady who did not let lodgings but who might be persuaded, so the house agent had said, to let us have her drawing-room floor and some bedrooms for five or six guineas a week. She often asked me into her parlour and talked to me about her connections and the neighbourhood, and, seeing I was at a loose end without companions, inspired by some connection of ideas, she said one day she would introduce me to the Maitland boys, the sons of a retired stipendiary magistrate from Athlone. The mother was a wonderful pianist, the boys were all clever, the three younger sons had a room to themselves at the bottom of the house where they painted scenery, wrote verses, and composed music. William and Dick, the two elder brothers, had taken the Lyceum Theatre, and were going to produce Chilperic, a comic opera by Hervé. She tapped at the window and Sydenham came in, and his news was that a letter had arrived that morning from Hervé. He was coming over to play the title-rôle himself. Everything is relative, and at that moment of my life it was very wonderful for me to go to the Maitlands' house and to hear the scores of Chilperic played by Sydenham and his mother. We received boxes and stalls from the Maitlands, and after a run of nearly six months, Chilperic was taken off to make way for the composer's later opera, Le Petit Faust. But it did not please as much as its predecessor, and the theatre had to be closed. Dick had, however, managed to escape bankruptcy; half a success guarantees that another door shall be opened to the retiring manager, and in the 'seventies, a few months after my father's death, he brought over the entire company from Les Folies Dramatiques to play in French, Chilperic, L'Oeil Crevé, Le Canard à Trois Becs, and possibly Le Petit Faust. He sent me seats whenever I asked him, and I used to sit in the stalls learning all the little choruses and couplets night after night, admiring Paola Mariée, a pretty and plump brunette, who sang enchantingly as she tripped across the stage, and Blanche d'Antigny, a tall fair woman who played the part of a young shepherd. She wore a white sheepskin about her loins, and looked as if she had walked out of Jim's pictures. I learnt from Dick that she was a great light-o'-love, sharing the Kingdom of Desire with Hortense Schneider and Léonie Leblanc.
It was well to sit in the stalls as Dick's guest, and it would have been wonderful to accompany him through the stage door on to the stage, and be introduced to the French actresses to whom he spoke in French every night. But I could not speak French, and I vowed to learn the language of these women, who disappeared suddenly like the swallows, leaving me meditating what lives they lived in Paris, until Dick's new theatrical venture, a translation of Offenbach's Brigands, put them out of my head. For he had collected in the Globe Theatre the most beautiful women in London to form the corps of the gendarmerie that always arrived an hour too late to arrest the brigands; and one of the attractions of the piece was Mademoiselle d'Anka, a beautiful Hungarian, who sang Offenbach's little ditties bewitchingly, and a song that Arthur Sullivan had written for her, Looking Back. Madame Debreux, a pretty brunette whom Dick had brought over, for he loved her, was in the cast, and Nelly Bromley, who was loved by the Duke of Beaufort, was in it too. A lovelier garland was never wreathed, and there was no lovelier flower in it than Marie de Grey, who never kissed any one except for her pleasure, and yet managed to live at the rate of three or four thousand a year. There was a woman who wore a green dress in the second act; her nose was too large, but her thighs were beautiful; and there was a pretty, tall, fair woman, whom I ran across in Covent Garden on her way to the theatre, and whom I took to lunch. She would have loved me if my heart had not been engaged elsewhere, but, as usual, I abandoned the prey for the shadow. And the shadow was the stately Annie Temple, who dared not listen to my courtship for dread of the rage of her fierce cavalry officer, a stupid fellow who snarled at me once so threateningly at the stage door that Annie must fain refuse me her photograph. Dot Robins's mother sold me one for a sovereign, and from it I painted many portraits. Jim painted one from memory, mentioning again and again while he painted it that Annie was as tall as Mademoiselle d'Anka, whose acquaintance he had made on her arrival in London, before the theatre opened. It was he who introduced me to her, and he was glad now that I was able to get free seats at the Globe, and disappointed that Dick would not allow me to bring him behind the scenes. I should have liked to chaperon him, but it was a feather in my cap to leave him sitting in his box and skip away to the dressing-rooms, and when I returned we would lay our heads together trying to discover which was the handsomer woman, Annie Temple or Marie de Grey. Annie, in his opinion, was the finer woman, being as big, in fact, as Alice Harford, and he confided to me then and there that he used to meet Alice in a most romantic nook at the end of a little paved alley off the Fulham Road. He believed her to be in keeping and unfaithful only with him; all the same, she proposed one night at Cremorne to meet me at the nook; and delighted with my success, I could not refrain from telling Jim all about it, just to take him down a peg. But the result of this indiscretion was that Alice did not come to the nook at the time appointed, and I walked down the paved alley meditating that once again I had missed the prey for the shadow. And, as if my punishment were not enough, Jim continued to talk of her beauty, telling that her legs were shapelier than Mademoiselle d'Anka's; they did not go in at the knee, and this great beauty, or this great fault, formed the theme of many conversations in the studio in Prince's Gardens; Boucher's women did not go in at the knee, but Rubens's did, and laying his palette aside, Jim would throw himself on the sofa and tell me for the hundredth time that the only women worth loving were tall women with abundant bosom and flaxen hair, the only women that men with a sense of the beautiful could admire.
But long before this my guardian, Lord Sligo, wrote Jim a letter which brought him round to Alfred Place, and sitting on the edge of the table he read it to my mother, saying that if she agreed with Sligo's strictures, there would be nothing for him to do but to refuse to see George any more, and if she didn't agree with Sligo, the best thing would be to write to him saying that she thought Sligo was mistaken. Foreseeing that Lord Sligo would read any such letter from her as Please mind your own business, my mother hesitated, but I insisted, feeling that Jim's friendship was necessary to me. All the same, Lord Sligo's letter was not without avail. It stimulated Jim to moralise, and when I called in the afternoon to ask him if he would come up to Piccadilly to dine somewhere, and go on to the Argyle Rooms, he would read me a long lecture on the dangers of women.

Part 1
Part 2
“So….we’ve somehow ended up sixty-one years in the past”
Paula spoke in a voice which betrayed the bundle of nerves she’d become ever since she’d seen the date on the newspaper I’d bought. It currently sat on the glass coffee table in our hotel room as quiet as a church mouse, and yet the picture of a man who’d be assassinated only a year later might as well have had a tornado siren growing out of it. To say our lunch, as delicious as it had been, had been permeated with an awkward, strained silence would be an understatement of massive proportions. As soon as we’d finished eating and paid the bill, the two of us had practically dashed back to the relative safety and privacy of our room to talk and try and get our heads round our current predicament.
Paula finally stopped pacing back and forth and looked at me, wrapping a lock of her hair around her finger and biting her lip. “But…how?” she finally asked. I shook my head, unable to give her the answer she so desperately sought for. I’m not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination; hell, I’m barely qualified to work as a manager for my company in the first place. “I honestly don’t know, honey” I said quietly, “Up until today, I thought time travel was impossible. Something only talked about seriously by people nostalgic for an era they could never return to, or by those without both feet in reality. But…it seems they were right the whole time…” I trailed off, shaking my head as my mind fought to push away what I could plainly see in front of me to be true.
I stood up from the couch and walked across to the balcony door. It faced out onto the main drag, and looking down, I watched the endless procession of vintage cars move up and down the boulevard. No, not vintage cars, Danny, my mind whispered to me. They’re modern day cars for everyone. Everyone but you. I turned away and back to my wife, who was now perched on the edge of the couch. She looked up at me, a mixture of confusion and worry filling her face. Crossing back over, I sat down next to her and wrapped her in my arms. I sighed. After a moment, she pulled away and looked at me, nodding in appreciation. “Look, however we’ve ended up in this situation, we need to keep a level head here” I said to her, “We need to keep calm and make sure, above all else, we stay okay” Paula stayed quiet for a moment, then nodded. “I agree” She stood up from the couch and began pacing again, a trademark sign she was deep in thought.
“Okay, the first thing we need to do, is make sure we don’t stand out anymore than necessary” she continued, “So, we’ll call down to reception and ask them where the nearest clothing store is. We’ll get ourselves some clothes to blend in with everyone else” She suddenly looked up at me. “But what are we going to do about money?” she asked. I searched my mind for older facts about the past I learned from hours of scouring the internet. “Well, we’re already very well set for money, because if I remember correctly, after what we spent on the hotel room and lunch, we still have about the equivalent of eight or nine grand left. But, I know that won’t last forever, so, I say, with a lot of caution, we try and bet a little money here and there on things such as horse and greyhound racing. Maybe even try some of the slot machines. But not too much, though. Vegas in the sixties was still as rigged as Vegas in the 21st Century, after all”
Paula nodded, seemingly satisfied with my answer. “Well, that’ll possibly help. We have two weeks booked here, so we’ll be able to, hopefully find a way to get…” she trailed off and looked at me. “Danny, how are we going to get back to our own time?” I ran my fingers through my hair; she’d asked the very question I’d been pondering over since lunch. I sighed. It’d be so much easier if we knew how we’d gotten here in the first place. Then we could simply do the reverse to return…if that’d even work. “I honestly don’t know, sweetheart” I admitted, “But, we’ll cross that bridge when we do” A lightbulb suddenly went off inside my head, and I shot up to my feet like I’d been struck by lightning. “The elevator operator!” For a moment, Paula’s face remained blank, then realization crossed her face. “Of course!” she exclaimed, “He’d mentioned how others dressed like us had shown up before. That means others have accidentally traveled back in time, and it means they may have found a way back!”
A smile crossed her face. “If we can talk to him, maybe others who’ve seen them before, we might be able to figure out what they did” I nodded, already having come to the same conclusion as her and returned her smile. And that is why this woman is my wife; she has both beauty and brains. “Until we’re able to, though, I say, let’s try and enjoy our time here. We’re in a time neither of us thought we’d ever see outside of pictures and films. So, let’s take it in while we can. Go to the shows, see the sights, do all we can while we can” Paula grinned. “Took the thought right out of my head, darling” she said, crossing to me and wrapping her arms around my neck before pressing her lips to mine. “We always heard about the swingin' sixties. Time to find out how swinging they really were”
Unfortunately, it turned out that the elevator operator we’d seen that morning had the next week off, and wouldn’t be returning until the following Friday. So, in the meantime, Paula and I did our best to enjoy ourselves. It really wasn’t that hard; In fact, 1962, especially in Vegas, was extremely fun. The two of us each bought several sets of period clothing as we’d planned. Wearing a suit outside of company meetings felt incredibly weird, I must say. But man, did Paula look stunning when she walked out of the woman’s clothing shop, clad in an ornate white dress with straps which criss-crossed underneath her neck and a pair of high heels. “Wow” I breathed as she stepped outside and twirled around for me to see, causing her face to turn red.
My plan to try and make money off the casino games and betting actually worked out better than I thought it would. Paula had always been amazing at card games such as poker and blackjack, while thanks to my old man and his love of visiting the horse and dog tracks in the nineties and early 2000s when he was still alive, I’d picked up on how to more often than not pick up on the contestants most likely to win. Between the two of us, we made over $3,000 in three days; more than enough to cover what we’d need.
And to say nothing about the amazing shows we went to see. Watching legends of the previous generation such as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. perform at The Sands was nothing short of amazing, sitting in the huge room which filled with a hazy cloud of cigarette smoke as Old Blue Eyes and company belted out some of their biggest hits. The shows which The Dunes had on were amazing as well. Arthur had been right when he said that Diana Dors had an amazing singing voice. When we sat down at our table and saw her walk out onto stage that first night, Paula gasped aloud. For my part, so did I; The singer and actress looked uncannily like my wife. “You could be her younger freakin’ sister” I whispered to her as the lights went down. She simply looked at me, laughed softly and nodded. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones to have that thought; after spotting us in the audience, I saw Diana do a double take at my wife, before continuing with her performance like the professional I could tell she must be. After the show, she came over to us to introduce herself.
“My dear, you and I are almost dead ringers for each other!” she exclaimed to Paula with an accent that instantly gave her away as British. Almost instantly, the two women seemed to connect and develop an friendship with one another, to the point it ended up with us being invited to dinner with her and her husband. Who, to my shock, turned out to be Richard Dawson of Hogan’s Heroes and Family Feud fame. I’d grown up seeing reruns of both shows on TV when I stayed home sick from school. Of course, seeing as neither of those things had happened yet, I had to keep my mouth shut and pretend I didn’t know who he was. After an amazing dinner, Diana personally extended an invitation for us to attend her shows, and the whole of La Parisienne the entire time we were staying at the hotel at a specially reserved table, as her guests. And so, we made a ritual for the next twelve days or so out of ending our days watching her sing her heart out. To this day, I can still close my eyes and hear her voice echoing in that room. I likely will the rest of my life. The two of us had an amazing time. Everything seemed almost too good to be true, too amazing and fun.
Except for something I never told Paula about. Something I know she would have flipped out over.
I only really noticed it on the fourth day. I’d pushed the terrifying incidents from the parking lot and the elevator out of my mind in an effort to enjoy myself. In fact, I’d managed to half convince myself that the elevator incident had, in fact, been a hallucination, and I’d simply lost my cell phone somewhere else. But that illusion was shattered when we stepped off the elevator and waved to Arthur. Because someone…or something, stepped out from the shadows behind him. Just long enough for me, and me alone to see, before stepping back and seeming to melt away in the darkness.
It was one of the black clad figures. From my nightmare dash through what I could only describe as the hellish, nightmare version of the hotel. And almost as if to drive home the point that it hadn’t been a dream, I saw it raise its hand and wave something at me. Something which I immediately recognized, and made all the blood drain out of my face. It was my smartphone. Oh, fuck me, my mind quietly whispered to itself as the figure vanished back into the black.
After that first encounter, I began to realize that the two of us were being followed almost everywhere we went. Whoever they were, were extremely good at not standing out. They always acted so inconspicuous, always blending in with the crowds around them. I only caught onto to them when I began to see the same hats and coats filtering through the crowds. But they were always careful enough to never let me see their faces. They’d always duck their heads, shielding their features with the wide brims of their hats. But they were always there. To say I began to feel paranoid and fearful would be the understatement of the century. I felt like a character in an old Alfred Hitchcock film, a mouse stalked by a cat which didn’t want to catch and eat it yet, but wanted its prey to know it was there. I would manage to push it out of my mind when Paula and I began to have fun, but whenever I would catch sight of them, the happy atmosphere would pop like a child’s balloon.
By the next Thursday, my nerves were completely fried, and as much as I enjoyed the fun times we had, all I wanted was to speak to the elevator operator the next day and find a way to get back home. Paula noticed, and when she asked me what was wrong, I did something which I still regret. I lied. I told her it was just the stress of getting back to modern times, not wanting to freak her out by telling her we were being tailed by God only knew who. I will always count that as one of my biggest mistakes, something done out of some fucking ridiculous sense of wanting to protect her. If I hadn’t been so stupid, it might have saved us a lot of the horror still to come.
The two of us had just stepped off the elevator, heading for what might very well be the final show in The Dunes we’d ever attend when we heard a voice call out to us. “Mr. and Mrs. Clements!” I turned to see Arthur beaming at us and waving us over to him. “You two are due to check out soon, I see” he said, looking down into the guest ledger on the counter in front of him. Paula and I exchanged a pensive look at each other before I spoke. “Well, we’re not exactly sure whether we’ll be leaving on Sunday or not, Arthur” I said. Paula spoke up. “Yeah, you see, we may end up having more time we’re able to spend here, and we may just end up extending our stay another week or so ago. That is, if we’re able to” I silently prayed we wouldn’t be told that our room wasn’t reserved; if it was, we had another problem to add onto our plate.
But Arthur simply gave us his trademark smile. “Absolutely, you two! We have no other reservations for your room for the next two weeks, at least. Just let me know before Saturday night if you’d like to extend your stay!” We thanked him, and with that problem solved, hurried to catch Diana and the rest of the performance. Even after seeing it so many times I’d mentally mapped exactly when and where everything would happen, we still enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. When it ended, Diana came over and told us, not without a slight trace of sadness in her voice, that she and her husband were flying back to Los Angeles the following morning. Apparently, she was going to be appearing on a game show called Stump the Stars in a few months time. It was a bit of a bittersweet parting, to say the least. Paula and her shared a hug goodbye, and so did I a moment later.
“Don’t forget about us, okay?” I said to her after stepping back from our embrace. I hadn’t intended for the words which I'd whispered in my head to slip out, but they had. I saw Paula shoot me a bit of a concerned look out of the corner of my eye. Diana let out a laugh, but I could see a bit of a curious look enter her eyes. “Why, I don’t think I could ever forget either of you two” she said, “Especially not where you’re married to my doppelganger!” I laughed back, but for a moment, I internally debated about telling her the truth. About where Paula and I were from, when we were from, and everything in between. But I held my tongue, knowing it could end badly if I did. And so, the two of us bid her a safe flight and watched her leave the auditorium for the last time.
“Come on, darling” Paula said, taking me by the arm, “Let’s get back up to our room and get some sleep. We have a busy day tomorrow” I nodded, allowing her to lead me back through the lobby to the bank of elevators. Along the way, though, I made my head swivel around like an owl’s, searching in all directions for any sign of our stalkers. But I saw no one. No men in coats and hats. In a way, it filled me with a bit of a relief. But it also made me feel more on edge than ever. Not seeing hide or hair of them made it feel like something was up. I pray to God it’s not. I just want to get up to our room to sleep.
The elevator let out its now familiar ding, and the doors slid open. To my shock, the man who’d been manning the elevator controls the last few days was gone. Instead, the young man who we’d been waiting to return was running the controls. Paula and I shared a surprised look, then both entered the elevator quickly. According to Arthur, the kid shouldn’t have been working again until tomorrow. I don’t know, maybe he came back on a day early to cover someone else’s shift or something, I thought to myself. Who cares, anyways? This is your chance to talk to him!
The doors closed, and the elevator began its climb up to our floor. I waited for a few seconds before turning to the man. “Uh, ‘scuse me?” I said. The man turned to look at me, and after a few seconds, his blank look was replaced with one of recognition. “Ah, hello you two!” he said cheerfully, “I see you managed to wrangle yourself up some normal looking clothes, huh? Have you two enjoyed your time here?” Both of us nodded. “Yes, we did, thank you for asking” I said, then pressed on before he could say anything. “Look, you said you’ve seen others like us before, right? People who seem out of place, dressed funny and all that?” The man nodded. “Yes, sir. Ever since I started working here three or four years ago, every once in a while we’ll get, well, pardon my saying so, but odd looking folks showing up occasionally. Management told me it’s happened ever since this place opened seven years ago”
I felt a pang of surprise shoot through me. Ever since seven years ago…1955? People have accidentally wound up in the past from the present for that long? But…why did no one ever say anything about it? Another thought crossed my mind, one which worried me. Maybe they were never able to get back. I pushed that thought away; I needed to keep my head to keep asking the man questions. But Paula jumped in before I could open my mouth again. “Well, we just wanted to know…what happened to them? How long did they stay here? Did they check out and drive off like everyone else?” The man rubbed his chin as he thought. “Honestly, ma’am, I can’t answer all of those questions. I only work the elevators” Shit. I saw a look of disappointment fall over Paula’s features. But then the man continued.
“However, I do know that many of them stayed only a week or two at most. Fourteen days was the longest I saw any of them stay. I did ask the management a time or two the same questions you asked me. And I always was told they did check out and left. The guys running the valet always told me their odd looking cars always left the parking lot. So, I can only assume that they did drive away” Now he gave us a bit of a puzzled look. “If I may be so bold as to ask, why did you want to know?” Paula and I quickly exchanged a look. Both of us immediately realized we’d accidentally walked into a situation we couldn’t easily explain away. Especially with our specific questions. She shrugged at me as if to say I don’t know what to say to that.
For a second, I mulled over our options in my head, trying to decide what to do. But then, a single thought swam forward. The hell with it. It’s time to come clean. I turned to the man. “To be honest sir, I’m not sure if you’d believe me if we told you the true reason we asked them” I felt my wife grab my forearm, hard. The elevator operator raised an eyebrow. “Why don’t you try me?” he said, “I’ve heard all sorts of wild things in my time here. How wilder could what you say be than all of it?” Paula tugged on my arm harder. “Danny, don’t, we don’t know what’ll happen if we tell someone the truth!” I turned to her. “Paula, this may the only way to find out how to get back” I said quietly, “As long as we only tell one person, I think we’ll be okay” She bit her lip apprehensively, but eventually nodded. I returned the gesture, then turned to the man to my right to start talking.
And then the elevator’s lights went out again, plunging us into almost pitch blackness. Instantly, my heart began to pound furiously in my chest as the memory I tried so desperately hard to push away surged forward, memories of appearing alone and being chased by the black clad figures. But this time was different. I could still hear Paula breathing, now in a slightly panicked, shallow way. I felt her grab onto my arm, and a slight amount of relief passed through me. “Stupid piece of junk” I heard the elevator operator mutter to my right, and then he raised his voice. “Just give me a moment, you two. This happens every once in a while” I heard him step away and begin to fumble with something. “It’s alright, sweetheart” I whispered to Paula as I felt her press against my side.
Before she had a chance to reply, though, another sound reached us. I couldn’t tell what it was exactly, or where in the elevator it came from. But it made my already anxiety ridden mind swirl with nightmarish images. Images of a black clad figure raising an axe to plunge into my skull. Please, God no, Please, God no I began mentally whispering. A moment later, my prayers seemed to be answered as the lights came back on and the elevator began to move upwards again. I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding in and turned to my wife. “See, we’re okay” I said, smiling at her. Her blue eyes locked with mine, and she returned the smile.
But only for a moment.
I watched her eyes slide away from me and look somewhere behind me. I saw her face suddenly turn pale, and a look of utter terror slide over her features like a mask. She began breathing rapidly and backed up until her back was against the elevator wall. A colossal tidal wave of fear and dread surged through me at her reaction. I was beyond terrified to turn around. The woman was someone who didn’t scare easily, a quality of hers I always loved. So, to see her like this, only meant something horrible was now behind me. But I knew whether or not I wanted to, I had to look. Swallowing hard, I slowly turned around.
It only took a split second to notice the two things she had seen. The first was that the elevator operator lay on the floor of the elevator on his back. His arms and legs were splayed out, and for a moment, I feared the worst. But then I saw his chest rise and fall, and realized he was merely unconscious. The realization brought a microsecond of comfort and relief to me. But it was shattered by the second detail, which made me rapidly back up to stand just in front of my wife, arms protectively held out as if to shield her.
We were no longer alone in the elevator.
A massive figure in a black coat and hat, one which had been tipped down to hide the wearer’s face stood almost exactly where I’d last seen the operator. Whoever it was had to be at least 6’4 or taller. It was perfectly still and unmoving as the elevator continued towards our floor. To make matters worse, I couldn’t hear the figure breathing, which sent another lightning bolt of fear coursing through me. I shot the floor indicator over the doors a quick sidelong glance, seeing we were only three floors away from ours.
And then, as the last floor passed, it spoke.
“Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. Clements” It was clearly a man, one who spoke with a deep, gravelly voice as though he’d smoked two or three packs of cigarettes a day for years. My heart practically stopped. Our names…they know our fucking names… “What….the fuck…?” I heard Paula breathe out behind me. Her words apparently amused the man, because he began to let out a chuckle, one which sounded like nails on a chalkboard. “Yes. What the fuck, indeed” he muttered, raising his hat just enough for us to see he wore a truly wicked smile, but not enough to see his eyes. I felt the elevator come to a stop as it reached our floor. I remained where I was, but I slowly reached my hand behind me for Paula’s. We have only one shot to get out of this elevator alive. Thankfully, I felt her grab it a moment later.
“What the fuck do you people want?” I finally demanded. For a few seconds, there was silence, until I heard the elevator ding. And then, the figure spoke, all trace of humor gone from his voice. “I think you know, Mr. Clements” he said. Oh, shit…
Before I had another moment to think, the figure suddenly turned and lunged for us, letting out a cry. A cry I’d heard before; it was the same voice I’d heard from the black clad figure last week.
But I’d already anticipated the man’s lunge and had been lying in wait. The second he exploded into motion, so did I. The biggest saving grace for us was that the elevator doors had begun to open as the man had spoken, and provided us an avenue to escape. I pulled hard on Paula’s arm, practically shoving her out of the elevator ahead of me into the hall. The man tried to course correct as we dodged his attack, but he was far too tall to do so at the very last moment. He crashed headfirst into the wall of the elevator with a rather sickening crunch of wood paneling and fell to the floor, his hat tumbling off his head and revealing his identity to us. I heard Paula let out a gasp as she stumbled to her feet.
“The fucking bellhop?!” she almost screamed. Indeed, the man who turned to look up at us with a mixture of frustration and hatred was the same bellhop who’d pulled our luggage from the trunk of my car the night we’d arrived. You gotta be fucking kidding… But I had no time to think anything more beyond that. The man had begun to scramble to his feet. I dashed forward again, reaching around the inside corner of the elevator with a frantically searching hand. The raised round edges of the floor buttons met my fingers, and I slammed my palm down, hitting as many of them as I could. The elevator let out another ding, and I leapt backwards as the doors rapidly closed. The man leapt for us, but a second too late; we both heard him slam into the closed doors and scream out in frustration. It was the same “Gah!” he’d made when I’d dodged him in the black, empty version of the hotel.
The thought suddenly made me whirl around. I feared I’d suddenly see nothing but darkness around us, that we’d been sent to that hellish alternate version when the lights in the elevator had gone out. To my relief, however, I saw only the same regular hallway we’d become well accustomed to the last eleven days. As I stared, I saw a door open down the hall and a sleepy, annoyed man poke his head out of the room. “Keep it down, will ya? I’ll call security if you keep that damn racket up” he said, then slammed the door shut. Paula and I exchanged a look, and then dashed for our room. Jamming the key into the lock, I practically wrenched the door open, then slammed it shut behind us and locked it. Finally, I grabbed one of the sturdy chairs from the sitting area, and wedged it under the doorknob. I knew it wouldn’t keep anyone out for long, especially if they really wanted to get in here, but at least it would give us a warning.
I turned around to find Paula staring at me. “You recognized his voice” she whispered simply, “I saw the look on your face. You recognized it” For a moment, I was unsure about what to say. But I knew I couldn’t hide anything from her anymore. Not where things had now progressed to her being in danger. I should’ve told her from the start. So, I brought her over to the couch and sat her down, and proceeded to tell her everything. From exactly what had happened in the parking lot the first night we’d arrived, to the nightmare hotel I’d experienced the second day. And about the figures which had followed us the entire time we’d been out and about. I saw a mixture of fear and anger cross her face as I told her. I knew she was upset at me for not telling her sooner. But, happily, she held back on giving me a tongue lashing.
“So, what do we do now?” she asked after I’d finished, her voice shaking slightly. I shook my head. “I can only think of one thing to do” She looked at me. “Call down to reception, have them call the cops, and…tell them…well, not tell where we’re from, but that we’ve been followed and attacked. In a way they’ll believe. We can’t deal with this on our own anymore” She began to play furiously with her hair and stayed silent for a few seconds, then slowly nodded. “You’re right. We can’t deal with this alone” She locked eyes with me, “But, while we wait for them to arrive, you and I are going to have a serious talk about hiding things from each other from now on” I sighed and nodded; I fully deserved what was about to come my way. “Alright, let me call downstairs” I said.
Crossing to the bed, I sat on the edge and picked up the handset from the phone’s cradle. Punching in the single number for the front desk, I heard it begin ringing. After the third ring, the line was picked up. “Hello?” Instantly, I felt a wave of relief flash through me. It was Arthur. I never thought I’d be so happy to hear another man’s voice. “Arthur, this is Danny Clements in room 614” I said quickly. “Ah, Mr. Clements, I hope you and your wife enjoyed Ms. Dors’ last show!” he said jovially. “Yes, we did, thank you very much” I said, “But, I need to urgently speak to you” The jovialness seemed to deflate out of Arthur’s voice immediately. “Why, whatever’s the matter, young man?” he asked, his voice filled with concern. “We were just attacked in the elevator up to our room by one of your bellhops, the one who brought our luggage inside the night we arrived” I heard the man let out a surprised breath on his end of the line.
“My, my, that’s serious, Mr. Clements” he said. “Yeah, you’re not joking. Listen, Arthur, I hate to do this, but I need you to call the police. Have them come to our room right away, please” A sudden dizzy spell struck me, and I put my free hand to my forehead to try and study myself. I must be panicking too much, gotta stay calm. But Arthur’s next words almost seemed to intensify my dizzy spell. “I don’t think we need to involve the police in such matters, Daniel”
I felt a wave of confusion and shock wash over me. “Ex-excuse me?” I stammered out. Arthur’s voice spoke again, seemingly more authoritative than I’d ever heard it before. “I said, I don’t think we need to involve the police in such matters, Daniel. Not when we can solve them ourselves” I stood up from the bed, feeling my legs almost give out from under me and the room seem to spin around me. “The hell are you talking about, Arthur?!” I said weakly.
“Exactly what I said twice, Daniel” he said, then laughed softly before continuing, “I thought you folks from the 21st Century were supposed to be so much smarter than us?” The biggest surge of terror flooded through my veins at his words, seemingly quicker than everything else. He knows…? “I think, what you two need, is a good night’s sleep. We’ve already sent something up to help you do so, compliments of the management” As his words reached my increasingly sluggish mind, I suddenly became aware of two things. The first was that Paula had collapsed onto the bed face first. For a moment, I feared she was dead. Then I realized, she was unconscious. The second, was that I heard the soft, hissing sound of something entering the room through the ventilation duct over the bed. Gas…sleeping gas…or something….fuck…
Still holding the receiver, I began moving towards the sliding door to the balcony. One which now seemed miles away. I need to…open it. My legs gave out from under me, and I dropped to my knees on the carpet. Behind me, I heard the clattering sound of the phone’s cradle toppling off the desk, and I fell onto my side on the floor. Darkness began to envelop the edges of my vision and rapidly move inwards.
“When you and your lovely wife wake up, you’ll understand everything” Arthur’s voice, now filled with an almost sadistic tone filtered into my ears from what sounded like miles away, and he let out another laugh. It would become one I would hear often in my nightmares after we made it back, even months later. Blackness overcame me, and as I slipped away, I heard him say two final words in a mocking, sing-song manner.
“Sweet dreams!”
Final

PODCAST: https://ayearofwarandpeace.podbean.com/e/ep1560-hail-and-farewell-george-moore-vale-chapter-2/
PROMPTS:
Today's Reading, via Project Gutenberg:

II

Myself, an elderly man, lying in an armchair listening to the fire, is a far better symbol of reverie than the young girl that a painter would place on a stone bench under the sunlit trees; myself trying to remember if it were on our way back from Prince's Gardens or a few days afterwards that I begged money from my father to buy drawing materials, remembering everything but the dates-that a pencil was never out of my hand, and that as soon as family criticism was exhausted, professional criticism was called in. Jim was invited to dinner. But a bad cold kept me in bed, terrified lest my drawings should be forgotten. As he descended the staircase, voices reached me, and when the front door closed I listened, expecting somebody to come up to tell me what Jim had said. But nobody came, and when I went shyly to my mother next morning her news was bad; after dinner my sketches had been shown to him, but he did not seem to think much of them, and on my pressing my mother to tell me more I dragged the truth from her that he considered girls riding bicycles showing a great deal of stocking a low form of art.
He only likes Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Rubens, my father said, and he invited me to come to the National Gallery, and I followed him from masterpiece to masterpiece, humble and contrite, but resolute in my persuasions that he must come with me to Drury Lane and buy some plaster casts. He seemed to look upon the money thus expended as wasted, and when he came to the bedroom that I had converted into a studio he glanced round the walls shocked at my crude attempts to draw the Venus de Milo, the Discobolus, and some busts. He did not refuse to send me to the Kensington School of Art, but he sent my brother with me, and this jarred a little, for I looked upon my wish to learn drawing as a thing peculiar to myself, and my brother was so subaltern to me and seemed so utterly unlikely to understand a work of art that I looked pityingly over his shoulder until one day the thought glided into my mind that his drawing was as good as mine, if not better. And if that were so, what hope was there for me to become an artist, an exhibitor in the Royal Academy? an exhibitor of pictures like Jim's Julius Caesar overturning the altars of the Druids? For even if I did learn to draw and to stipple, it did not seem to me that I should ever be able to imagine figures in all positions as Jim did, and I despaired.
Youth is a very unhappy time, Art and sex driving us mad, and our parents looking upon us with stupid unconscious eyes. My father must have been ashamed of his queer, erratic son, and could have entertained little hope that eventually I would drift into a respectable and commonplace end. We all want our children to be respectable, though we may not wish to be respectable ourselves, and as he walked to the House of Commons, a short, thick-set man with a long, determined mouth set in a fixed expression, his hands moving in little gestures to his thoughts, he must have often asked himself what new caprice would awaken in me. Would I tell him that I had decided to take up literature or music as a profession? There was no knowing which would be my next choice, and either was equally ridiculous, for in me at that time there was as little idea of a tune as there was of a sentence. It was impossible for me to grasp the different parts of speech or the use of the full stop, to say nothing of the erudite colon. As he turned me over in his mind he must have remembered his own brilliant school-days, coming sadly to the conclusion that I must go into the Army, if he could get me into the Army, that very sympathetic asylum for booby sons. So that our soldiers may not be altogether too booby, the War Office has decreed a certain amount of ordinary spelling and arithmetic and history to be essential, and to get such as I through examinations there are specialists. Somebody must have exalted Jurles above all men, for my father came home one evening with the news that Jurles had pushed men through who other tutors had said would never be able to pass any examination, and would never get their livings except with the labour of their hands. The record of this thaumaturgist was seventeen hundred and fifty-three, and my father reflected that if there were miracles that even Jurles could not perform, he would at least redeem Alfred Place from the annoyance of seeing me trick-riding on a bicycle up and down the street. And Jurles would also save me from the Egertons, and daughters of a small tradesman living in Hammersmith, whither some other wastrels and myself were wont to go to sup on Sundays. Alma and Kate were on the stage, and photographs of Alma in tights and Kate in short skirts were left about the house, and disgraceful letters turned up in the blotting-book in the drawing-room; he was a man of action rather than words, and putting a season-ticket into my hand he bade me away to Jurles's in the Marylebone Road, to one of the little houses lying back from the main road.
As I passed up the strip of garden under the aspens I often caught sight of Jurles's old withered face blotted against the bow window, and very often met his wife, a tall and not ill-looking woman about thirty; she seemed to be always going up and down the pathway, and at that time almost anything was enough to waken an erotic suggestion, and I began to wonder if she kept trysts with any of the young men sitting on either side of the long mahogany tables bent over their books and slates. It seemed to me that there was warrant for the supposition, for as soon as old Jurles finished a lesson he went to the window and stood there, his bald head presenting an irresistible attraction for flies, a dangerous attraction, for Jurles was quick with his hands. It is probable that Mrs Jurles's trysts were with the butcher, baker and grocer, for besides the half-dozen young men who arrived at ten o'clock every morning, Jurles took in several boarders, and there were never less than ten men sitting down to the midday meal, among them Dick Jurles. We all respected old Jurles, a distant, reserved gentleman and knowledgeable beyond the limits of his craft, but we laughed at Dick for his long red whiskers and moustaches, and his vulgar and familiar manners. We used to charge him in private, on what foundation I know not, probably none, with being a money-lender's tout, and no one cared to take a lesson from him, feeling him to be a fake, one who had acquired just enough education to overlook our sums or to construe a Latin text with us, feeling that if he were to ask a question we might place him in a quandary. The seventeen hundred and fifty-three young men that Messrs Jurles had passed into the Army owed their success to the diligence of his brother and to the solemn Swiss who taught modern languages in the back room. Out of it he came every hour, a red handkerchief hanging out of his tail pocket: I will trable you now, and, my chair tilted, I used to watch him, wondering the while what kind of death each one of his pupils would meet on the battle-field, worried by the thought that my lot might be to die in defence of my country, or be wounded in her defence, which was worse still. It seemed to me that myself was my country, but having no alternative to propose to my father I accepted the Army. All professions were equally repugnant to me; I could not see myself as a doctor or as a barrister, or anything except perhaps a gentleman rider. I did not dare to tell my father that I would not go into the Army; it did not occur to me to say to him: You went to the East for five years, and when you returned home did little else but ride steeplechases. In many little ways I lacked courage and preferred procrastination to truth. I could not be put into the Army unless I passed the examination, and I realised that to miss passing no more was necessary than to read the Sportsman under the table, and spend most of the afternoon at the tobacconists's round the corner—an affable man with a long flowing moustache like Dick Jurles's, and some knowledge of betting, enough to have a book on the big races, laying the odds in shillings with his customers, cabbies from the rank; and while he teased out the half-ounces of shag we discussed the weights, the speed, and the stamina of the horses; we laid the odds and took them, and at the end of the half-year I had won five or six pounds. One day Lord Charlemont mentioned a horse as certain to win the Derby—Pretender, wasn't it? The tobacconist bet in shillings, half-crowns, and dollars, but he would take me round to the public-house and introduce me to the great bookmaker who came there to meet his customers on Thursdays and Fridays. Pretender won, and the Monday after the race the great bookie invited me behind the urinal and took ten five-pound notes out of his pocket, fifty pounds, a sum of money that enabled me to eat, drink, and smoke on terms of equality with Colville and Belfort, two young men who were fast becoming my friends—Belfort, a handsome, high-class, little fellow, bright brows and brown hair, a high-bridged nose, the mouth a little pinched, the chin a little too forward, sharp teeth, a pale complexion, and a high voice. He was going into the cavalry, and lived with his mother and sister at the top of the Albert Road, and as I lived at the bottom of the Exhibition Road it made very little difference whether I took Exhibition Road or Albert Road; there was a short cut at the end round by some cottages with thatched roofs, which have long ago disappeared. We made friends in this walk, and he asked me to dine with him, and we went to the theatre; later he introduced me to his mother and sister, and a very distinct picture these two women have left upon my mind: the mother frail, reserved, and dignified, with fair hair, about to turn grey, parted in the middle and brushed on either side of her thin temples. She must have worn a long gold chain, and she was always in black. The daughter had her brother's high-bridged nose, and her manner was showy—the opposite of her mother's—and I liked to find them sitting on either side of the fireplace after dinner. Now Colville was quite different from Belfort, a south Saxon if ever there was one, his ancestors having been on the land probably since Hengist and Horsa came; a man of medium height, of good trim figure and military bearing, for his thoughts were always on the Army, and his talk was of tunics and of buttons and epaulets, and very proud he was of his great military moustache which he stroked pensively with his little crabbed hand. He was often at Truefitt's getting his hair shampooed and cut closely about his small well-turned head and narrow temples, and from Truefitt's he often walked to his tailor's; he had thirty-six pairs of trousers when I first knew him, and his charm was his cheerful disposition and his somewhat empty but merry laugh.
He was the first man I had ever met who kept a woman, but that was a secret, and Belfort used to wonder how he did it on five hundred a year; he told us that he gave Minnie Granville three, reserving two for himself, and if he ran short he returned to Buckingham and lived free of cost till his next quarter's allowance allowed him to return to the clandestine little home in St John's Wood. We envied him his lady, and on fine afternoons used to leave the confectioner's shop where we had luncheon and go forth to St John's Wood for an hour before returning to Jurles, and the two of us would loiter, admiring the greensward shelving down to the canal's edge, wondering if Minnie Granville were true to Colville; we wished Colville well, but we remembered that if she remained faithful to him she would never become a celebrated light-o'-love, and we should be deprived of the honour of having known her in her early days. We had heard that Mabel Grey lived in Lodge Road, and turned into it wondering which house was hers, and, not daring to inquire, we searched South Bank and North Bank, and, talking of her ponies, we gazed at the pretty balconies, hoping to catch a sight of her or her great rival, Baby Thornhill. Everybody knew these two ladies by sight, for photographs of Baby Thornhill and Mabel Grey were everywhere, in every album; and many other beautiful women were famous. Lizzie Western, the sheep, as she was called—a tall woman with gold hair and a long mild face—and Kate Cook, too, was as famous perhaps as any, Mabel Grey always excepted; Kitty Carew, Margaret Gilray, and Sally Giles her cousin, lived in South Bank, and were often on their balconies tending their birds, giving their canaries and finches seed and water; a favourite bird was a mule goldfinch and canary, a green-brown bird that would take seed from his mistress's pretty tongue. Belfort brought opera-glasses one day, and that day we were happy boys; the pony carriage was at the door. We shall see them get into it if we wait. Belfort wanted to get back to Jurles; and I should not have been able to persuade him to remain if the ponies had not presented a peculiar attraction—fiery chestnut mares, foaming at the bits, and swishing their long tails, a dangerous pair for ladies' hands to drive through crowded streets; and the longer they were kept waiting the more restive they became, rearing over against the little groom, or striking out with their hind legs. And as soon as the ladies stepped into the carriage, before Sally was seated, they bounded forward, overthrowing the groom and what disaster might not have happened if we had not rushed forward to their heads it is impossible to say.
The ponies have not been sufficiently exercised, that is all, Miss Gilray, and I begged Belfort to soothe Miss Giles, who was very much frightened. It would have been splendid to offer to drive the ponies into Regent's Park and bring back Spark and Twinkle chastened, but Belfort said that we must be getting back to Jurles, and we regretfully bade them goodbye. It seemed to us the merest politeness to call next day to inquire, and we were received by the cousins, platonically, of course. But even boys get their chances, and the idea came to Sally Giles to invite Belfort and me to supper, and to come to Jurles's herself with the invitation, stopping the ponies before Jurles's establishment and sending her little groom up the pathway with the note. I was at the window, and how my heart beat at the sight of him! Wearing the livery of his mistress proudly, he stopped Mrs Jurles, who was coming down the pathway at that moment with her white Pomeranian dog, and after a talk with her, old Jurles called me aside and began his lecture: he could no longer consent to waste my father's money, and felt constrained to inform him of the company I kept. But, Mr Jurles, the ponies were kicking, my father would never have spoken to me again if I had not gone to their heads, and Miss Giles was so frightened. Old Jurles seemed to accept my excuse as valid, and, although it was quite out of the question that such ladies should send their grooms with notes to his front door, still the incident might be overlooked were it not that I showed no disposition to learn anything since I came. He reminded me that he had frequently to take the Sportsman out of my hand. I was glad to hear from him that there was no chance of my passing for the Army, but I wished him to withhold this opinion from my father; and after some debate he promised me that I should have another chance. You must mend your ways, he added. But it was only by reading the Sportsman under the table that I could escape from the horrid red tunic with buttons down the front, and the belt, and if I were caught with it again Jurles would write to my father, and every day I expected to see him coming toward me with threatening brow, and to hear him say, I have received a very bad account of you from Jurles. There was some justification for my fears, for he wore a troubled look, and I caught him in whispered talk with my mother frequently; they ceased talking or spoke of indifferent things suddenly, and one night after dinner I heard him say that he was going to Ireland by the Mail. The reason of this sudden departure was not mentioned, and my mother was so often agitated that her fluttered voice caused me no alarm; my father's sudden return from the front door to give me a sovereign did not awaken a suspicion; it seemed, however, to strike my mother's imagination, and a few days later a wire came from her brother summoning us to Moore Hall.
Something dreadful must have happened! she kept repeating to herself, and her talk was full of allusions to a letter she had received from my father. At last she confided to me that he had written to her saying if she did not get a wire from him on a certain day she was to come at once. We got the morning papers coming off the boat, and there was nothing about him in them, but the absence of news was not enough to reassure her, and I felt there was something on her mind of which she did not dare to speak. She does not appear again in my memory till we arrived at Balla. Her brother was waiting outside the gate, and I saw him take her aside and heard him say: Mary, prepare for the worst; George is dead.
We climbed on the car—Joe and my mother on one side, the driver sat on the dicky, and I remember his back showing all the way against a grey sky and my mother wrapped in a brown shawl. Joe Blake is not so distinct to me, only his yellow mackintosh. Every now and again I heard the wail of my mother's voice, and I sobbed too, thinking of my father whom I should never speak to again. At the same time I was conscious, and this was a source of great grief to me, that my life had taken a new and unexpected turn. In the midst of my grief I could not help remembering that my father's death had redeemed me from the Army, from Jurles, and that I should now be able to live as I pleased. That I should think of myself at such a moment shocked me, and I remember how frightened I was at my own selfish wickedness, and a voice that I could not restrain, for it was the voice of the soul, asked me all the way to Moore Hall if I could get my father back would I bring him back and give up painting and return to Jurles? I tried hard to assure myself that I was capable of this sacrifice, but without much success, and I tried to grieve like my mother. But I could not.
We never grieve for anybody, parent or friend, as we should like to grieve, and are always shocked by our absent-mindedness; at one moment weeping for the dead, at another talking of indifferent things or asking casual questions as to how the dead man died. And we only remember certain moments. At will I can see myself and Joseph Applely in my father's bedroom standing together by the great bureau at which he wrote, and in which he kept his letters, and I remember how my eyes wandered from Joseph to the empty bed. He had been removed to the next room, or perhaps he had died in the marriage bed; however this may be, Joseph Applely told me that when he came to call the master, he was lying on his back breathing heavily, and thinking that it would be better not to disturb him he had gone away; closing the door quietly, and when he returned an hour later the master was lying just as he had left him, only he could catch no sound of breathing. So much do I remember precisely, and somewhat less precisely, that Joseph Applely told me he had sent for the doctor. A dim thought hangs about in my memory that the doctor was in the neighbourhood; be this as it may, the reason assigned for death was apoplexy. Two, three, or four days went by and I remember nothing till somebody came into the summer room to tell my mother that if she wished to see him again she must come at once, for they were about to put him into his coffin, and catching me by the hand, she said, We must say a prayer together.
The dead man lay on the very bed in which I was born, his face covered with a handkerchief, and as my mother was about to lift it from his face the person who had brought us thither warned her from the other side of the white dimity curtains not to do so. He is changed, she said.
I don't care, my mother cried, and snatched away the handkerchief, revealing to me the face all changed. And it is this changed face that lives unchanged in my memory, and three moments of the next day: the moment when Lord John Browne bade me goodbye on the way from Carnacun (the body had been brought there for High Mass and was being carried back to Kiltoome, a cold March wind was blowing over the fields, and he feared the journey round the lake); the moment when Father Lavelle called upon the people to hoist him on to the tomb for him to speak his panegyric; and the moment when the mason's mallets were heard closing the vault where the dead man would remain with his ancestors, one would like to say for centuries, but nothing endures in this world, not even our graves. I cannot remember who spoke after Lavelle, and afterwards the multitude began to disperse through the woods and along the shores of the lake, a great many lingering on the old stone bridge to admire the view. Of course I was very principal, and as I passed up the road I felt many eyes fixed upon me, and conjectured that they were all wondering how much of my father's talent I had inherited, and if I would take up the running at the point where he had dropped out of the race. Among the hundreds of unknown there was here and there a known face; our carpenters, sawyers, gardeners, and stablemen—all our servants from Derrinanny and Ballyholly, the villages beyond the domain over the hill along the lake's edge. And of course, I did not escape the inquisitive gaze of the men that used to row me about the islands when Lough Carra was my adventure, and they were probably thinking what I would do for them when I came to live in Moore Hall; and after these men were other faces known to me, but not so well known, the beaters whom I had seen rousing the woodcock out of the covers of Derrinrush, and it seems that when I turned from the Dark Road and walked up the lawn some of the old tenants spoke to me. I have some recollection of being spoken to at the sundial, and I think their questioning eyes reminded me that the house on the hill was mine, and they who spoke to me and those who did not dare to speak were mine to do with as I pleased. Until the 'seventies Ireland was feudal, and we looked upon our tenants as animals that lived in hovels round the bogs, whence they came twice a year with their rents; and I can remember that once when my father was his own agent, a great concourse of strange fellows came to Moore Hall in tall hats and knee-breeches, jabbering to each other in Irish. An old man here and there could speak a little English, and I remember one of them saying: Sure, they're only mountaineymen, yer honour, and have no English; but they have the goicks, he added with unction. And out of the tall hats came rolls of bank-notes, so dirty that my father grumbled, telling the tenant that he must bring cleaner notes; and afraid lest he should be sent off on a long trudge to the bank, the old fellow thrust the notes into my father's hand and began jabbering again. He's asking for his docket, yer honour, the interpreter explained. My father's clerk wrote out a receipt, and the old fellow went away, leaving me laughing at him, and the interpreter repeating: Sure, he's a mountaineyman, yer honour. And if they failed to pay their rents, the cabins they had built with their own hands were thrown down, for there was no pity for a man who failed to pay his rent. And if we thought that bullocks would pay us better we ridded our lands of them; cleaned our lands of tenants, is an expression I once heard, and I remember how they used to go away by train from Claremorris in great batches bawling like animals. There is no denying that we looked upon our tenants as animals, and they looked on us as kings; in all the old stories the landlord is a king. The men took off their hats to us and the women rushed out of their cabins dropping curtsies to us until the 'seventies. Their cry, Long life to yer honour, rings still in my ears; and the seignioral rights flourished in Mayo and Galway in those days, and soon after my father's funeral I saw the last of this custom: a middle-aged woman and her daughter and a small grey ass laden with two creels of young chickens were waiting at my door, the woman curtsying, the girl drawing her shawl about her face shyly. She was not an ugly girl, but I had been to Lodge Road and had seen Jim Browne's pictures.
Everything was beginning for me, and everything was declining for my mother. She would have liked to linger by her husband's grave a little while, but I gave her no peace, urging the fact upon her that sooner or later we should have to go back to London. Why delay, mother? We cannot spend our lives here going to Kiltoome with flowers. An atrocious boy as I relate him, but an engaging manner transforms reality as a mist or a ray of light transforms a landscape, and my mother died believing me to have been the best of sons, though I never sacrificed my convenience to hers. It will be admitted that that is the end we should all strive for. But the means? Ah, the means! An ancient saw this of ends and means which it will be well to leave to others to disentangle.
Awaking from a long reverie, I asked myself where I had left off, like an absent-minded old woman telling a child a story. At the part where every day spent in Moore Hall after my father's death was like a great lump of lead on my shoulders. My mother's grief increased day by day; and if her health were to break down we might be kept at Moore Hall for months. It was important to get her back to London, and I think it must have been in the train that she heard the Army had never appealed to me; I had only consented to accept the Army because I had nothing else to propose to my father; it was painting that interested me, and a studio was sought as soon as I arrived in London. My aspiration did not reach as high as a private studio; the naked was my desire, and a drawing-class would provide me with that. No examination was required at Limerston Street. Barthe, a Frenchman, ran the little show, of which Whistler was the attraction, and as soon as the model rested I picked my way through the easels and stood at the edge of the crowd that had collected round the famous artist. His drawings on brown-paper slips seemed to me to be very empty and casual, altogether lacking in that attitude of mind which interested me so much in Rossetti. His jokes were disagreeable to me; he did not seem to take art seriously, but I must have disguised my feelings very well, for he asked me to come to see him; any Sunday morning, he said, I should find him at 96 Cheyne Walk. The very next Sunday I went there, but there were few pictures in the studio, and I was left to look upon the melancholy portrait of his mother which he had just completed, and gathering nothing from it I turned to another picture, a girl in a white dress dreaming by the chimney-piece, her almost Rossetti-like face reflected in the mirror. Swinburne had translated her languor into verses; these were printed round the frame; and while I read them Whistler discoursed to his friends on the beauty of Oriental art, and his praise sent me to the Japanese screen, but I could discover no correct drawing in it, and begged one of the visitors to tell me how faces represented by two or three lines and a couple of dots could be considered to be well drawn. He gave me a hurried explanation, and returned to Whistler, who laughed boisterously whilst rattling iced drinks from glass to glass; and I think that I despised and hated him when he capped my somewhat foolish enthusiasm for the pre-Raphaelite painters with a comic anecdote.
I left his house irritated, and somewhat ostentatiously neglected him at the class, allying myself openly and defiantly to the next celebrity, for our class boasted of another, Oliver Madox Brown, son of the great Ford Madox Brown, a boy that came from Fitzroy Square, bringing with him such a reputation for genius that he paid no attention whatever to Whistler-a strange boy, stranger even than I: a long fat body buttoned in an old overcoat reaching to his knees, odd enough when upright, but odder still when crouching on the ground in front of his drawing-board, his right hand sketching rapidly, his left throwing black locks of hair from his face, of which little was seen but the great hooked nose. I could not keep him out of my thoughts, for he seemed to me even more unfortunate than myself, less likely to win a woman's love. At last my passion to know him overcame me, and I dared to speak to him. He engaged immediately in conversation just as if he wished to become my friend, and agreed to walk back to South Kensington with me. I remember the care with which I picked my words during this walk, and my object being to win him it seemed to me to be perfectly safe to ask if he were in the life-room in the Academy. My surprise was great when he answered that he had no time to spare for the Academy, all his mornings being employed upon his six-foot canvas, the Deformed Transformed, and wondering how he managed to give visible shape to an idea so essentially literary, I asked if he could explain his composition to me. He said that he would prefer to show me his picture, and I promised to call at Fitzroy Square, but delayed going there from day to day lest too much desire to see him and his picture might wean him from the willingness he had shown for my acquaintance; and it was not till he asked me why I had not been to see him that I summoned sufficient courage to take the tram to Gower Street. Before me on the doorstep was a handsome middle-aged man, somewhat thick-set, with greying hair and beard, who said to me, You have come to see Oliver, haven't you? divining one of Oliver's friends in me.
We met at the class in the Fulham Road, and he asked me to come and see his picture. And you are Oliver's father? I added, the great painter. For I recognised Oliver in the handsome and kindly eyes. Yes, yes, and he turned on the landing to ask me if I would care to come into his studio before going to see Oliver. Does he, then, think so much of Oliver that he puts him before his own pictures? I asked myself whilst he pulled the easels forward and showed me his pictures. If I may make a remark, I said aloud.
Pray do, he said.
Your hands always seem a little heavy, but perhaps that is your style, as long necks are Rossetti's.
He laughed in his beard, and we ascended that great sloping staircase. He paints in the morning, said the adoring father, and writes in the evening when he doesn't go to the class. A volume of poems was mentioned, and I asked if the manuscript had gone to the publisher. Oliver hesitates about sending it. Swinburne and Rossetti are publishing poetry, and all the literature of the pre-Raphaelite movement has hitherto gone into verse. He drawled on, telling me that Oliver had finished a prose romance of about three hundred and fifty pages and was about to begin another, and a volume of short stories was mentioned. I ventured an inquiry, and the great painter quoted from his advice to his son: Oliver, don't waste your time on short stories. You have your six-foot canvas in the morning and your novels and poems in the evening.
I was too overwhelmed to give any answer, and Oliver paid no heed to his fond parent's admonishment. He seemed to take it for granted that he was not like other men, and I understood that having heard himself so often spoken of as a genius he had accepted the fact of his genius as he had come to accept the fact that he could speak and hear and walk. But I, who had been brought up in the belief that I was very stupid, was astonished at my extraordinary good fortune in having met Oliver and won his good opinion. After all, come what may, this wonderful father and still more wonderful son had thought me worth speaking to for a while, and then, remembering that Oliver was writing a novel, I begged him to read me some of it if he weren't too busy. He hesitated and might have been tempted if his father had not reminded him that luncheon would be ready in a few minutes. Father and son were condescending enough to ask me to stay to lunch, but I did not dare to say yes, and descended the stairs regretting my shyness. On the doorstep, while trying to summon up courage to say, On second thoughts I'll come back to lunch, I besought Oliver to bring his manuscript down to the class and read it to us during the rests. He promised to do so, and the following day when Mary Lewis left the pose and wrapped herself in a shawl (a shapely little girl she was, Whistler's model; she used to go over and talk to him during the rests), Oliver began to read, and Mary sat like one entranced, her shawl slipping from her, and I remember her listening at last quite naked. And when the quarter of an hour had gone by we begged Oliver to go on reading, forgetful of Whistler, who sat in a corner looking as cross as an armful of cats. At last, M. Barthe was obliged to intervene, and Mary resumed the pose.
Après tout, je ne veux pas que mon atelier devienne un cours de littérature, he muttered.
But we were thinking of the story, and begged Oliver to take up the reading again at the end of the sitting, and Whistler went away in high dudgeon, for Mary stopped behind to hear how the story ended. And a few months later we crowded together, forgetful of the model, telling how typhoid had robbed England of a great genius; and after Oliver's death my interest in the class declined.