Dreaming of Devonshire

On 2 March, Sotheby’s auction house will sell a few hundred items from the collection of the late Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire, who died in 2014 aged 94.

I became acquainted with Debo, the youngest of the spectacular Mitford sisters, through a friend of my friend Dick. You may recall that for a couple of years I’ve acted as Dick’s Pony Express as he and his wife sojourned through many adventures in middle Europe (in 2014) and Italy (last year). It was through this function that I “met” Florence, who in turn introduced me to the traveler, war hero, writer and bon vivant Patrick Leigh Fermor.

Fermor deserves one or more posts all to himself, as does Debo. Surrounded by a family full of what might charitably be referred to as “eccentrics”, she had no inclination for politics like her sisters (Diana married Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Union of Fascists; Unity was a fervent acolyte of Hitler; and Jessica carried far more than a card as a Communist) and claimed to have no intellect at all. This is belied by both her correspondence (holding her own against the likes of Evelyn Waugh and Fermor) and the many books she wrote. But what she most loved was country pursuits—being surrounded by animals—which is reflected in a number of the items up for auction.

She adored chickens, and restored or stabilized several breeds of cattle or sheep on her various estates. Possibly both; I disremember at the moment. She was also a remarkably astute entrepreneur and is largely credited with saving Chatsworth, the ducal seat, from being sent to the metaphoric knackers’ yard and ultimately turned into weekend houses, or worse. Under her management Chatsworth became a self-sustaining Stately Home and working farm. She oversaw all the operations, inside and out.

But today’s post isn’t really about Debo, or even her things, directly. It’s about Sotheby’s. Because when I heard about the auction, I went online to see what the collection might comprise. Sure enough—plenty of chicken tschatschkes, but also some furniture (well worn, from the looks of it), jewelry and other things. (Including at least some of her Elvis Presley ephemera. Yes, she was a fan.) And while I can’t afford to bid on any of it, I conceived a desire for having the catalog—it’s as close as I’m getting to any of her things unless I can make a trip to Chatsworth, which is not on the cards in the foreseeable future.

Well, I went through their process of registering, hit Submit, and then got an error message. Like most web error messages, it didn’t really give me any useful information, just said that something had gone terribly wrong, and if I cared at all about correcting it, I might call a number in New York.

Well, I did, so I did. And a very smooth woman (presumably in the web tech support department) with a posh English accent walked me through the process of getting a Sotheby’s account (not specific to any particular auction), and then said that if I wanted a catalog, she could connect me with someone in that department, who could take my order over the phone.

Well, hurrah—that’s what she did, and I spoke to another woman with what Nancy Mitford would have described as a “U accent” (for upper class), who happily took my details and told me I should have my catalog in a couple of business days.

But here’s what I wonder: what’s with the posh-sounding birds at Sotheby’s? Does the 212 phone number run VoIP to a call centre in Surrey? Do they only hire U-speakers? Or are they all somewhere in the Bronx but they’ve undergone mandatory training in the proper language and accent for an establishment such as this?

I dunno, although I will say that the Sotheby’s website is one of the least intuitive I’ve come across in a while, and it throws way too many error messages in what should be seemless navigation. (What’s with not recognizing either “Devonshire” or “Duchess of Devonshire” in your search engine and making me go out to Google to get back in to the right page? Plus: I keep getting emails congratulating me on my successful registration. One would have been sufficient.)

But speculating on the auction house’s hiring practices is almost as amusing as pretending I’ll be bidding in the three or four figures (GBP) on one of Debo’s Elvis memorabilia, broaches shaped like insects or various pottery chickens.

That's no kale

I’m wondering if there’s anything sadder than an ornamental cabbage that’s been hit by a blizzard? I’ve seen a few around here since our Snowzilla of last months.

Here’s one from my Sunday sojourn:

Here be dragons

Here’s some more yard art from my walk around the neighborhood.

I love the whimsy of this piece, at both the head:

And the tail:

The householders obviously have eclectic tastes because here’s what was in the actual yard:

I would purely love to go to a cocktail party at this place. If I could remember precisely where it is.

Art in the 'hood

One of the Victorians in the neighborhood has an interesting bit of yard art:

I have no notion of what this represents, but the face and horns seem to indicate something fierce.

However, I was also quite intrigued by the messages at the base of it:

I couldn’t tell whether the chain around the leg is part of the artistic statement or an anti-theft measure. But it works either way.

Gratitude Monday: Not so mean streets

There was evidently some kind of inter-species animal sporting event on yesterday, but because I don’t much care about that sort of thing, I took myself off for a walk around the neighborhood of the Hill They Call Capitol.

Well—the greater neighborhood, away from the actual Capitol. As it turns out, it was Eastern Market to Barracks Row and back.

Eastern Market proper is a kind of food hall—boutique butchers, poulterers, fishmongers, fruiterers and bakers. I saw some very interesting things, although I wasn’t much impressed with the butcher I spoke with. I asked him what people do with the country ham skins they sell, and he had not a notion.

Still—I now know where to go if I need chicken feet.

On the weekends there’s also a flea market outside, with quite a few interesting food stalls. Let me say that I’m very glad I went there full, or I’d have started with the doughnuts and worked my way down from there.

After making a run past the stalls, I headed into a residential district. I love exploring neighborhoods with a history. By which I mean: years of lives intertwined with architecture and landscape. You can see it in any neighborhood older than about ten or 20 years.

Well, the Hill They Call Capitol certainly qualifies there. Here’s some of what I saw.

Most of the structures are either Federal or Victorian in style—whether original or relatively recent construction. So when I saw this one, on 9^th Street SE, I wondered how it ever got planning permission:

  

However, not only did it get planning permission, it won an award:

Then, there was this one, which is obviously a candidate for gentrification. Or replacement.

Here’s a political statement:

And here’s a use for those spiky iron fences you find all over here:

So on this Monday, I’m grateful for an exploration of this extremely interesting portion of the District.

You can keep your hat on

Non, non, non—qu’est-ce que on me dit? French publishers are moving away from the use of the accent circonflexe—you know, that little hat that sits on top of some vowels to give you a clue as to how to pronounce the word.

When I was studying French, back in the last century, l’accent circonflexe was a clue that another letter had once been part of the word (usually an S), but had disappeared. Château and fenêtre (castle and window) are the examples I recall; at some point in the mists of time, the words had once been chastel and fenestra.

In addition it lengthens the letter O in configurations where otherwise the sound would be shorter. My favorite example: Côtes du Rhône; without the circonflexe that gorgeous red wine would be more like “cot du run”. It probably would still taste wonderful, however…

But the diacritical mark also serves to distinguish a word from something with the same spelling but entirely different meaning. Examples would be jeûne (from jeûner, to fast, to refrain from food and drink) vs. jeune (young, or a young person).

The Académie française apparently proposed changes in the French language that included letting go of l’accent circonflexe (and hyphens in a bunch of words; but I don’t care so much about that) back in 1990, but only now have publishers of school books announced they’re implementing it.

And let me just say, this has unleashed such a social media tempête de merde that much of the world is under a brown-out. I mean—the tweets, the tweets!

Many of them are beyond my ability to convey in English, but here’s one I particularly liked:

Basically, “A joke 50 years from now: ‘Yo mama’s so old, she knew the accent circonflexe.’”

And this:

“It starts by suppressing the accents and finishes by writing ‘sa va’ [instead of ça va] in the dictionary…Welcome to illiteracy.”

The rallying hashtag is #JeSuisCirconflexe.

Here’s what I say: They can have my accent circonflexe when they take it from my cold, dead hands.

Point.

Meme like...

Okay, I think this “be like XX” meme that’s been making the rounds of social media has jumped the shark when it shows up on the sidewalk outside the local taco joint:

The cost of living

The Web is a wonderful resource for house hunting. And there seem to be many more sites that aggregate rental listings than the last time I was looking, which was in 2010.

They all have different ways of slicing and dicing the data, of course, so it’s still a slog, especially when you’re covering three state jurisdictions.

The District They Call Columbia is actually a whole thing. As you can imagine in any urban locale, space is at a premium. This means that buildings dating back from the Age of Decent Construction do not come with parking spaces, and those dating from the Age of Internal Combustion charge you extra if you want to park your car on their premises. So you have to figure on an extra $125-$200 per car if you don’t want to play parking roulette on city streets.

This I do not care to do.

At any rate, I realized this was serious business when on one of these rentals sites I came across a listing for an off-street parking slot, all on its own in Dupont Circle:

And then another in the hip-and-trendy U Street corridor:

Having back in the last century seen a healthcare provider in Dupont whose clearly marked patient parking spot was often usurped by people who felt that the restriction didn’t apply to them, I would not have a lot of hope that either of these “properties” would be secure from interlopers. So it’s not clear to me that you’d get your $175 worth.

But that’s not what I’m writing about. What stopped me in my tracks was the fact that if you are so inclined to fork over your money in hopes that you’ll get a decent ROI, you have to also cough up $175 in “security deposit” and pay a $75 application fee for the privilege.

That, in my opinion, is just taking the piss.

Tepid time in the Old Town

Sunday I resumed neighborhood-hunting and hauled myself off to Alexandria, Virginia. Well, Metro hauled myself, after a manner of speaking, which is to say: it did so at half speed, but that’s life in the city.

As I was walking down King Street, I realized that I haven’t been to what the good citizens of Alexandria are pleased to call Old Town for a long time. Possibly in this century. But it really hasn’t changed all that much.

By which I mean it still retains its mixture of snobbery and tackiness, as it balances cheesy tourist businesses and way too many high-end children’s toy shops, clothing shops and whatever else is deemed critical to raising the next generation of high-end conspicuous consumers.

Seriously: the two words that kept cropping up in my mind were "chi" and "chi".

It was a bit of a blast to see a couple of restaurants that I ate in back in the 80s. And I had a good old time in the Torpedo Factory—which started out life as an actual manufacturer of arms in the 19^th Century, but has for several decades been an enclave of artists, with studios, galleries, the Art League School and (now) the ubiquitous coffee bar.

(Speaking of coffee, I had quite a nice latte at Misha’s, but I’ve seen less frightening toilets in Turkey. Does Alexandria have no health inspectors?)

The Torpedo Factory had a couple of these out, soliciting donations:

It occurred to me that if they were serious about separating people from their money they should install a water feature, but maybe this works for them.

If you’re wondering, yes, I did look around at residential areas, but was not encouraged. For one thing, there’s the infestations of tourons, which is year-round but gets worse in good weather. For another, there’s a serious lack of parking, and I’m a fourth-generation Californian. They can pry my car from my cold, dead hands.

And then there are all the lovely historic houses, with their historic plumbing. I saw several that had not weathered Snowzilla well. Viz.:

Which was separated from:

And a neighboring house:

This is the sort of thing that gives me the serious willies.

Gratitude Monday: Vehicular mobility

One week after Snowzilla, permit me to be mildly petty in my gratitude:

Friday evening I was able to dig away enough of the snow crust next to my car to be able to get it out on the road Saturday morning so I could drive to Virginia to have breakfast with a friend. We hadn’t been able to get together for two weeks, and we really needed a catch-up.

I was also able to make a grocery run; perhaps not as vital as the breakfast, but still needed.

Not only that, but my electronic lock on the driver’s side door, which had packed it in the last time I used the car, cranked up again. This is mega-petty, but once you’ve become accustomed to keyless entry, it’s a pain in the butt to have to use your key. I expect I’m still going to have to have it replaced—the car is, after all, 15 years old. But it’s nice to have the capability back.