You are currently browsing the monthly archive for January 2010.
“There could be worse places to spend the night than the Victor Hugo Museum,” muses private eye Aimée Leduc in Murder in the Marais by Cara Black. The page-turner is the first book in a series of mysteries, each of which is set in a different quarter of Paris.
The series is terrific and great fun for mystery buffs and armchair travelers. It has compelling characters, intriguing plots, and lots of historical trivia about writers, artists, and musicians. In each book Black weaves in details like an inside look at the Edith Piaf Museum, a shrine to the French singer, in Murder in Belleville and a mention of Emile Zola’s final resting place and George Sand and Frederic Chopin’s trysting place in Murder in Montmartre. (Check out Aimée’s Paris Guide on Black’s website.) 
In Murder in the Marais, intrepid Aimée joins a tour group at the Maison de Victor Hugo to elude some men chasing her and then hides out in the writer’s domain after hours. “The museum, laid out as it had been in his time, showed the daily life of Victor Hugo. Hugo’s bedroom, taken up with a canopied bed, overlooked Places des Vosges through leaded bubbled glass. Worn dark wood paneling covered the walls. A showcase held various colored locks of his hair tied with ribbon, labeled and dated. In the study was his escritoire and a sheet of half-written yellowed foolscap with a quill pen in a crystal inkwell beside it.”
The financial success that came with the publication of Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame allowed him and
his family to move into the grand residence in 1832. It’s located on Places des Vosges (above right), the oldest square in Paris, distinctive for its elegant red brick and white stone 17th-century buildings. The museum features re-creations of Hugo’s bedroom at his last Parisian residence at 130 Avenue d’Eylau and a Chinese-themed room (left) he designed for the home of his mistress, Juliette Drouet.
The Maison de Victor Hugo was on the Paris itinerary of bookseller Deb of Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C., who fittingly described it as “beautiful and mysterious.” We’re glad to know that Novel Destinations provided Deb with some inspiration on her literary travels abroad—and that she selected the book as one of her staff picks. –Shannon McKenna Schmidt
Edgar Allan Poe is making headlines–or rather a mysterious visitor who had been showing up at the writer’s gravesite each year is in the news, as reported by USA Today, The Huffington Post, and other media. For the last 60 years in the early morning hours of January 19th (Poe’s birthday), an unknown person has left red roses and a bottle of Cognac at the scribe’s grave–until today. The ”Poe Toaster” failed to show, leading to speculation about why and disappointing the three dozen bibliophiles who camped out near the cemetery to try and catch a glimpse of the birthday phantom.
In other Poe news, a portrait of the writer is going up for auction, reports the Associated Press. Unlike the well-known daguerreotypes taken later in his life, which depict a pale and haunted-looking Poe, this image, a watercolor, shows him in his earlier years–happier, more robust, and sitting at a desk with pen and paper in hand. “It actually represents Poe as he appeared to his contemporaries — a handsome, sophisticated young man on the rise,” said Cliff Krainik, a Poe scholar owner of the portrait. “The daguerreotypes show him in his rather dissipated state, where he has gone through the difficulties of his life.” (Click through to the article to see the portrait.)
The portrait will be on display this Saturday and Sunday at Westminster Hall in Baltimore. The one-time church is adjacent to the cemetery housing Poe’s grave. The portrait will be sold in June at Cowan’s Auctions in Cincinnati. It’s expected to fetch at least $30,000.
[Photo of gravesite: Rob Carr, AP]
“Miep looks like a pack mule. She goes out nearly everyday in search of vegetables, and then cycles back with her purchases in large shopping bags. She’s also the one who brings five library books with her every Saturday.”–The Diary of Anne Frank, July 11, 1943
The funeral service for Miep Gies was attended by hundreds yesterday in Amsterdam and condolences have been pouring in from all over the world on the Anne Frank Museum’s virtual condolence register. Gies, the last surviving member of the group who helped protect Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis, died on Monday at the age of 100.
She and other employees of Frank’s father, Otto, supplied food to the family as they hid in a secret annex above the business premises in Amsterdam. Ultimately, it was Miep Gies who discovered the pages of Anne’s diary on the floor after the family had been discovered and dispatched to a concentration camp.
In a 1998 interview, Gies recalled that after removing the pages, she did not read them immediately, telling herself at the time: “These may belong to a child, but even children have a right to privacy.” She saved them, hoping that one day she would be able to give them back, but after the young girl’s death, she returned them to Otto Frank. Miep and Otto eventually compiled the entries into the bestselling diary that was published in 1947.
At this weekend’s 24-hour birthday bash for Edgar Allan Poe at Richmond’s Poe Museum, Poe descendant Harry Lee Poe will finally settle the literary tug-of-war among the many places that claim the macabre master as their native son.
The author, born in Boston, later lived in Philadelphia and Baltimore, both of which are home to historic houses he once occupied. (The poet eventually died a mysterious death in the latter city, where he is buried, though today’s declaration raises the possibility his remains may be exumed and relocated.) He also spent a few years at a modest house in the Bronx, NY, which is today preserved as the Poe Cottage. But it was Richmond where he spent the longest period, including the formative years during which he embarked on his illustrious literary career.
Birthday festivities at the Poe Museum will continue until midnight tonight (Saturday), and will include a show- down between two Poe impersonators, a candlelight walking tour and a séance. Admission is $6.
A cache of items from the 1800s was found last month by a construction crew digging beneath a statue of Miguel de Cervantes in Madrid’s Plaza de España. The statue of Cervantes, at left, overlooks renderings of his famous characters, the errant knight Don Quixote and his faithful squire Sancho Panza. The metal box, a time capsule, contained several copies of Cervantes’ Don Quixote de la Mancha published in 1819, a newspaper from 1834, travel guides, and other objects.
A new time capsule is being planned to replace the old one, reported the Associated Press today. The Spanish government plans to conduct an online poll asking the public for suggestions on what to include, ideally things related to present-day Madrid or to Cervantes.
The items from the nearly two-decade-old time capsule will be put on display later this year.
[photo © Flickr/noziroh]
One of our favorite things about author houses is that they often have enviable libraries–cozy, book-lined rooms that we covet since we don’t have libraries of our own. In fact, when I’m working at the Dickens Museum in London, my favorite days are spent downstairs in the library (pictured above) doing handling sessions with our visitors. Although we have many cool objects in our handling collection (Dickens’s quill pen and ruler, to name just two), it’s usually the library that takes center stage with guests, who “ooh” and “ahh” over the shelves lined with dozens of first and early editions of his works.
One of Shannon’s favorite libraries is at Sir Walter Scott’s estate, Abottsford, in Scotland. The atmospheric room is virtually as he left it when he died in 1832. Known as the father of the historical novel, he knew his Scottish history and his collection of more than 9,000 rare books at Abbotsford reinforces that. The richly moulded ceiling in the room is copied from Rosslyn Chapel, which the author admired and wrote about in his poem “Rosabelle.” (Click here to take a virtual tour of Abbotsford.)
Across the pond in the United States, the abolitionist, writer and freed slave Frederick Douglass spent up to five hours a day studying and writing in his library at Cedar Hill. He was self-taught and continued to read and learn throughout his life. At his roll top desk Douglass wrote numerous speeches and his final autobiography, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass. His extensive library contained more than 1,000 volumes that included books on history, science, government, law, religion, and literature. The walls display portraits of people Douglass knew and admired such as Susan B. Anthony, William Lloyd Garrison, John Brown, and Wendell Phillips.
Edith Wharton’s 2,600-volume library at The Mount, in Lenox, Massachusetts, spans from her adult life to her childhood and includes a rare first of edition of Alice in Wonderland, which Wharton knew “by heart.” The books are a window on her life as a writer and the friendships she forged with other great intellects and artists, including an inscribed volume from Morton Fullerton, her journalist lover in Paris; a copy of Theodore Roosevelt’s America and the World War inscribed with the words: “To Edith Wharton from an American-American!”; and many volumes signed by her friend Henry James. One is The Golden Bowl, in which he wrote, “To Edith Wharton – in sympathy.” In her autobiography, Wharton proclaimed, “The core of my life was under my roof, among my books and my intimate friends.” –Joni Rendon
Yesterday The New York Times reported that an upcoming exhibit at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City will feature “framed 15th-century pages that staff members tore out of old books.” As reporter Eve M. Kahn explains, it wasn’t willful destruction of a literary work but rather that staffers “dismantled the bindings for the good of the illuminated parchment pages.”
The colorful and ornate pages are from The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, an illustrated prayer book commissioned by the Dutch royal around 1440. In the 1850s, the manuscript was taken apart by a French book dealer who then shuffled and re-bound the pages into two parts and sold them to different buyers. The deception endured for more than a century until The Morgan acquired the books in the 1960s. The pages had since been re-bound in a single volume in their original order, but that binding was removed to better preserve them.
“Demons and Devotion: The Hours of Catherine of Cleeves” opens April 22nd and runs through May 2nd. The display features 93 of the 157 surviving pages.
["Mouth of Hell" image courtesy of The Morgan/Faksimile Verlag Luzern]
If you’re up for an all-nighter, the New Bedford Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts, is hosting its annual marathon reading of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick this weekend. More than 100 bibliophiles will read passages from the novel. The event begins on Saturday, January 9th, at noon when a young sailor decked in 19th-century garb utters the opening lines of the story (“Call me Ishmael”) and concludes about 24 hours later. Much-needed coffee and snacks will be served throughout the night.
On January 3, 1841, Herman Melville sailed from New Bedford aboard a ship headed for the Pacific. He later featured the historic whaling port, which was burned by British forces during the Revolutionary War, in Moby-Dick. “The town itself is perhaps the dearest place to live in, in all New England,” declared Melville in his epic tale.
If the current frigid weather in New England is a deterrent, plan a visit to the seaside town during the warmer months. “In summer time, the town is sweet to see; full of fine maples—long avenues of green and gold,” wrote Melville. “And in August, high in air, the beautiful and bountiful horse-chestnuts, candelabra-wise, proffer the passer-by their tapering upright cones of congregated blossoms. So omnipotent is art; which in many a district of New Bedford has superinduced bright terraces of flowers upon the barren refuse rocks thrown aside at creation’s final day.”
The museum, whose mission is to illuminate the interaction of humans with whales, has a guide listing 38 of its artifacts and how they relate to Moby-Dick.
Lodging options in New Bedford include the bed-and-breakfast Melville House (rig
ht). The restored Italian Empire-style house was once owned by Melville’s sister, Katherine, who often had her sibling to stay. You can slumber in the Herman Melville Room, where a portrait of the scribe hangs above an antique writing desk. –Shannon McKenna Schmidt
[Photo © Melville House]
350 years ago this week, Samuel Pepys, a member of the English Parliament and a naval administrator, began keeping his now-famous diary. He started his chronicle on January 1, 1660, writing: “Blessed be God, at the end of the last year I was in very good health, without any sense of my old pain, but upon taking of cold…. My own private condition very handsome, and esteemed rich, but indeed very poor; besides my goods of my house, and my office, which at present is somewhat uncertain.” (The full text is available at ProjectGutenberg.org.)
Pepys’ diary includes accounts of major events of the era, such as the Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of London in 1666. The diarist is thought to have watched the city burn from the Anchor pub (34 Park Street ; 44 207 407 1577) on the south side of the River Thames. ”When we could endure no more upon the water, we [went] to a little alehouse on the Bankside…and there staid till it was dark almost and saw the fire grow,” recalled Pepys.
Still serving pints to thirsty travelers and locals alike, The Anchor has a prime riverside location next to Shakespeare’s revitalized Globe Theatre. A sprawling beer garden offers patrons spectacular views of the City of London and the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
[Photo of The Anchor: ©Flickr/Ewan-M]
When Mark Twain wanted to escape the winter chill in Connecticut, he boarded a steamship and headed for the balmy climes of Bermuda. “Life continues here the same as usual. There isn’t a flaw in it. Good times, good home, tranquil contentment all day and every day, without a break. I shouldn’t know how to go about bettering my situation,” he wrote in a letter in January 1910, during his last visit to the Caribbean island.
Twain made eight trips to the tropical paradise and could often be spotted at the elegant, harbor-side Fairmont Hamilton Princess hotel, which opened on January 1, 1885, and was referred to as the “Pink Palace” after a visit by Princess Louise, a daughter of Queen Victoria. Today a life-size bronze statue commemorates Twain, who enjoyed smoking cigars on the hotel’s veranda and reciting poetry to fellow guests.
Three decades after Twain’s final Bermudian voyage, naval intelligence officer Ian Fleming slumbered at the Pink Palace after it became a British counterintelligence outpost during World War II. The scribe later set portions of the James Bond page-turner For Your Eyes Only on the island and is said to have taken inspiration for the predator-filled aquarium in the villainous Dr. No’s headquarters from the enormous fish tanks that once graced the Hamilton Princess’ bar. –Shannon McKenna Schmidt
[Photo ©Fairmont Hotels & Resorts]
