The picture framers by the river is also a small gallery, selling paintings, sculptures, prints and cards. As I was passing one day my eye was caught by somebody looking at me from within. He was an old bear with a very direct gaze – as if he wanted to tell me something. I stood in the front of the window, taking in his comfortable, blue cardigan and his wet, black, shiny nose. I knew at once that his wise eyes, so penetrating, and his general demeanour would give me comfort as I sat writing at my desk.

So it was easy. I went in, bought him and took him home. I’m looking at him now, as I write. He was beautifully made by Victoria Coleman. www.victoriacolemanartist.com.

My friend’s birthday was coming up and I thought he would also love the bear. But in the end I couldn’t BEAR to let him go! I tracked down Victoria and asked her whether it would be possible for her to make me another bear who looked similar. I was lucky – she could.

In time jaunty bear number 2 was ready and one dark and stormy evening turned up at our front door – care of Victoria’s partner. The bears loved one another on sight and seeing them together was a satisfying treat.

Yesterday, following a delicious birthday lunch, bear number two went to his new home and now has a name – Bernard. I’m sure the bears will be reunited sometime in the future but for the moment bear number 1 keeps a close eye on my untidy desk – and me. He’s a wise character and a kindly soul, giving me both company and inspiration.

A promising start to 2023.

Thank you, Victoria. This has been a fun adventure. You have a huge talent for capturing personalities in your art.

A pre-Christmas present!

One minute I was suffering from rainsoaked doom and gloom. A split second later a sudden ‘ping’ heralded an unexpected invitation to Bordeaux. Ho ho, I thought – let’s go!

We are here already, staying at ‘Chez Dupont’ – a restaurant with rooms nearby. It’s sunny and warm and the long weekend stretches out ahead.

Our room is spacious with interesting antiques, a separate niche with a writing desk and a super modern bathroom. Two big windows look out onto ‘la rue Notre-Dame’. Outside it’s sunlit and warm as we make our way to the local ‘Jardin Publique’ and enjoy our first coffee abroad.

Moving on …

The city is a mix of old and new. Old fashioned narrow streets open out into large, sunlit squares, full of restaurants and fountains.

The air here is clear and fresh but I wondered why the Garonne river is the colour of ‘café au lait’. This is because it brings down a lot of sediment with it from its headwaters in the Pyrenees and when that mixes with the salty sea water coming in from the Gironde estuary that sediment is brought to the surface. The river finally meets with another, the Dordogne and the two flow out together into the Atlantic ocean.

A wide promenade now leads us along the river to ‘La Citè des Vins’, an extraordinary modern building upstream.

The walk along the river is very popular – it takes us about half an hour to reach the ‘ La Cité des Vins’. We are made very welcome – there’s even a sofa in the library, which I stretch out on for a few languorous moments …

Nearby is the former submarine base, built by the Germans and used by the Italians in WW2. It is massive, ugly and threatening, a dingy, merciless, concrete building which still holds the water for the submarine berths inside. The ceilings are four storeys high with classical arches between the rooms. The whole building has been converted into a huge centre for the arts, which show mind blowing ‘Bassins de Lumières’.

I hadn’t experienced this way of showing art before. You enter into darkness. We find ourselves in Venice during the Renaissance as flickering, moving images of the city flow over the walls, the high ceilings and the floors. I was somewhat disorientated, feeling as if I might fall into a canal as the water where the submarines were berthed also reflects the light. It was an intense experience.

Venice suddenly disappeared and our eyes were bombarded by the colourful, sometimes Sargentesque paintings of the Spanish artist, Sorolla. Little children ran around in the dark shadows calling excitedly to one another, like birds. I felt I was immersed in a dream world.

The paintings are blown up so that you feel you can just walk into them.

Back to reality and returning to ‘Chez Dupont’ was a different story. We waited endlessly for a bus in the twilight. Then we had a brainwave – could we get an Uber? Surprise, the answer was ‘Yes’ and a lovely lady soon hove into view. We enjoyed trying out our French on the way back and the restaurant was open for dinner. Sometimes things do work like a dream!

The waiter introduced us to a glamorous bottle of Bordeaux liqueur called Lillet. Dinner was excellent and we retired to bed for an early start next morning. We are off to the food market.

Awake to sunshine and blue skies – it’s a perfect day for exploring and we are soon bowling along on a modern tram to the ‘Marché des Capucins’.

It hasn’t been raining – the streets are all washed down at dawn. Merveilleux.

We found a table and enjoyed a delectable ‘petit déjeuner’ …

We needed a little sweetness now and made for the patisserie counter. What are these? They look delicious!

Small, round, light and airy ‘choux’ patisserie filled with cream – perfect!

Next on our list – la rue St-James – picturesque and full of interesting boutiques …

There are those sort of places that just spill over with a cornucopia of temptations – especially when you’re in a country not your own.

They also do a wonderful brunch. Don’t miss it.

We’re on our way again …

We didn’t eat here – just passed by and I liked their sense of humour!

We stopped for a coffee at ‘Paul’. There was a woman sitting with a boy near our table who reminded me so much of an actress in one of my favourite programmes – ‘Dix pour Cent’ or ‘Call My Agent’. I love that show! It can’t have been her though! Could it?!

Tomorrow it’s another very early start for ‘Le Marché des Puces’ at Place St. Michel. I am intrigued – what might we find?

There is something in the photo above which I bought for two euros – on show later!

Much as I love looking at paintings, they wouldn’t fit in my case. I was drawn to an old master portrait of an Italian gentleman – I even returned to have another look – but it had already gone. Just as well … sigh …

My companion fared better. She bought a wooden, carved and colourful cock-a-doodledoo. Vintage. She went back to the stall later on with it in her bag and heard a customer asking if the seller still had it. ‘Non, c’est déjà vendu’, he replied … it clucked softly in her bag.

My two euro buy intrigued me and I was able to find out more about it as there was an indented stamp on the back with the shape of a windmill plus the letters ORCHIES underneath.

It came from a factory in Flanders, opened by two brothers in 1886 and is listed as Old French Art Nouveau majolica. It’s so astonishing that you can find all that information so quickly on the Internet. And it’s such a very decorative plate.

Next on our list was the famous ‘Bourse’ reflected in the ‘Miroir d’Eau’. We had just about time to get there before making our way back to collect our things on the way to the airport.

A flying visit to a wine ‘cave’, where we chose a suitable Bordeaux Cabernet Sauvignon. I’m mentioning this partly because we had a long conversation with the proprietor, who complimented me on my French accent – probably being kind but definitely encouraging!

I haven’t mentioned the Bordeaux ‘Canelés’ which are sold in their own small shops around the city, along with shiny gold boxes of soft caramels, which are so bad for your teeth and so unputdownable.

The Canelés are actually more like a dessert – crisply caramelised on the outside and soft within. They are actually described as ‘un dessert onctueux’. A wonderful onomatopoeic word.

This turned out to be the last warm and sunny weekend in Bordeaux before rain set in. We were lucky. Next time we’ll try the Eurostar, as the TGV is super fast from Paris to Bordeaux . Meanwhile, this trip was a jewel, lighting up the end of 2022.

Adventures in the Dark Heart of the City

By Edward Chisholm

This is an unputdownable story of the author’s trials and travails in ‘The City of Light’ – Paris. The only other book I can compare it to is ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ by George Orwell, which was fascinating and utterly grim at the same time. Edward Chisholm manages both those things and adds a wonderful, self deprecating, noir sense of humour coupled with a sensitive understanding of his fellow waiters. I feel as if I am the fly on the wall, the voyeur who keeps on looking, unable to tear his eyes away from what is going on.

This all happened within the last eight years.

The book also reminded me of my own adventures in Paris. A different era, the early sixties. Looking back, it certainly forged parts of my personality that I still recognise as coming from being sent on my own, via the boat train from Victoria, on what was to become an eye opening experience at the age of sixteen.

Primarily, I was sent to learn French and ended up without the supervision my mother was expecting from a French lycée in the summer holidays.

Unlike the author, I did have ‘O’ level French, which both got me into and out of various risky situations. My mother didn’t like ‘abroad’ so I owe a lot to a friend of my father’s, a French woman called Ninette, who organised my first trip to the city she was born in and later left – to marry an Englishman. I regret that I never even thanked her because at the time I was a typical, navel gazing teenager. ‘J’ai eu de la chance’, even though I didn’t know it.

As well as enjoying the unexpurgated freedom of exploring Paris, I also realised that life was a lot more fun if you could speak French, so I’ve kept that up over the years. Everyone should be able to speak at least one other language. It opens so many doors.

This is Edward Chisholm’s first book (with a wonderful jacket photo) and I do hope it has success. I feel very much on his wavelength and impressed by his perseverance against multiple odds. I became absolutely obsessed by his story.

‘Chapeau’, Ed. A sparkling début – may your success continue.

Having been confined to these shores for so long I realised that although I longed to ‘cross the Channel’ I was also afraid of ‘spreading my wings’.

When my daughter said she had Eurostar vouchers and invited me to join her, I was thrilled – but could I do it? I hadn’t had Covid, I did have my booster – my worry was just filling in all the forms for Covid and trying to organise them on my phone. She knew what to do and ‘voilà’ – I’m sitting at a table on the Eurostar, waiting for take off! Coffee arrives, followed by lunch with a glass of wine and suddenly, we burst out of the tunnel into another country. Unbelievable!

I had always wanted to stay at the ‘Hotel des Grandes Ecoles’ – but it was always full. This time there was a chance, probably due to Covid and we were soon installed in ‘The Garden Room’. The hotel lies behind a massive door to the street. A cobbled road inside leads to the old fashioned hotel and garden.

One of my favourite places in Paris is the Ile St. Louis. Fifteen minutes walk downhill from our hotel, it’s now bathed in the golden light of late afternoon.

A favourite café, the ‘St. Régis’, is at one end. Very French, untouristy. Just the place to immerse ourselves for a while and enjoy the surroundings.

As we left, the sun was leaving too and the lights of the city were appearing. The bridge by the café seemed to be closed to traffic. There was a man sitting at a piano in the middle of the road, playing music which brought tears to my eyes. We stood there transfixed, along with others, including children and I could only believe that Paris had put on this show especially for us! We made a recording on the phone which I wish I could include here. It was just a very special moment and I was so happy to be here.

I looked around as we made our way to dinner and could hardly believe the Van Gogh sunset scene. ‘ Incroyable’!

We’d seen a restaurant – L’Ilôt Vache – on a corner as we came down to the Ile St. Louis and liked the look of it, so we retraced our steps. It was just opening for the evening, with a very tall, handsome man in charge. It turned out we’d made a great choice. ‘Confit de canard’ with ‘pommes de terre rôties’, followed by ‘crême brulée’ and ‘tarte aux pommes’. And a rich, red wine.

Breakfast at the hotel was delicious too. Lace ‘doilies’ grace the old, round wooden tables and the waitresses are buzzily welcoming, asking how we would like our eggs done – nothing is too much trouble for them and hot coffee is on hand.

There are two middle aged men at another table with roguish eyes, a family with small, sticky fingered children, a lone dowager dressed in black, wearing a hat – the dining room is full. A monstrously furry cat explores silently under the tables.

We have tickets for an exhibition of Vivien Maier’s photography at the ‘musée’ in the Luxembourg Gardens. The sun is shining. We make an early start, walking past the Panthéon on our way.

It’s so good to get to places early and the Gardens looked wonderful, even though it’s the beginning of November.

The weather is mild but it is Autumn and the trees are losing their leaves.

Vivian Maier, born in 1926, made her living as a nanny, mainly in New York, but her work as an amazing street photographer came to light when some forgotten storage lockers were found to contain over 100,000 photographs of ‘street life’ she had taken over many years.

A film called ‘Finding Vivian Maier’, has been made by John Maloof, the man who found these photos and Charlie Siskel. The exhibition we were going to see in the Luxembourg Gardens contained some of these.

The exhibition was fascinating and the way the photographs came to light after decades in a lock-up is astonishing. I bought some postcards and took a few photos but cannot for copyright reasons show them here. Looking up Vivian Maier’s life and work is really worth doing. Watch the film!

By this time we were thinking about a bite to eat and I really wanted to see if we could get into ‘Le Fumoir’, a restaurant opposite Le Tour St. Jacques by the Louvre. We had no reservation but were lucky. There’s a room which contains a small library at the far end but that was full. However, we sat under this painting and had ‘une assiette’, which satisfied our hunger. Much recommended.

We hadn’t had much time to look at the shops and decided to walk along the Seine, enjoy the river views and maybe come upon some small boutiques and galleries. It was interesting to see that many seemed to have survived ‘lockdown’.

We passed by one of the celebrated landmarks of Paris – ‘Les Deux Magots’. I couldn’t help being ‘touristy’ and took a photo.

Paris is always awash with small, quirky galleries. Time was precious, so leaving the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay for next time (!) we trawled through unknown streets, searching for windows catching our eye en route. It was probably lucky for my purse that some galleries were closed and we could only manage ‘lèche-vitrines’. Nonetheless, a little frustrating!

I’m not on Twitter but these enchanting birds ‘tweet’ when you pick them up. Fun presents for children …

All good things come to an end and our last evening is here already. And while our passenger locator forms are being processed by the lovely lady in reception, she recommends ‘Café Delmas’ – a restaurant just minutes away in ‘Place de la Contrescarpe’, where we are made very welcome.

It’s always a worry after Brexit but I think speaking French helps – we were treated with warmth and kindness everywhere. ‘Bonne nuit’ et ‘beaux rêves’ …

Time to return to ‘Le Gare du Nord’. It’s been a real treat but now the door closes on our little sortie to ‘the City of Light’. I hope we’ll be back soon …

by Lizzie Collingham – a big thank you for an inspiring and very enjoyable book …

If somebody had given me this book to read at school – ( obviously not even written then!) – I would have fallen in love with history. Corn Laws didn’t do it for me. But at this later stage in life, I’m giving ‘The Biscuit’ my personal ‘book of the year’ award for a riveting account of why biscuits played a major part in encouraging world trade. And how their delicious success continues apace today. They really do ‘take the biscuit’!

You might think that the subject is pretty mundane – a cup of tea, usually accompanied by a ginger nut or digestive biscuit, preferably dunked in the cup for extra indulgence. And drunk (mostly every day) by the masses. But there is much more to it than that.

Lizzie Collingham’s research is mouth wateringly more-ish. Starting off with the word biscuit coming from the French, ‘ bi-cuit’ (twice cooked), the origins of the first biscuits were from dried bread, used by travellers of all kinds, sailors and also the army, as it did not go mouldy en route. She also tells us that it was in the medieval Islamic world that sugar was added, eventually leading to the Empire’s global trading in biscuits which developed what is today a staple for entire nations, specifically the British.

I especially enjoyed the chapter on Huntley and Palmer’s biscuit tins with their colourful patterns etched onto the metal, making the biscuit tin into something of an icon. Packed full of biscuits, they were shipped all over the planet. Some people even put the empty tins on the mantelpiece as a decorative feature! I remember, as children, we filled the empty tin with the wooden animals which came with our Noah’s Ark in the toy cupboard.

These ‘large square tins’ (although they were to expand into all sorts of shapes and sizes) had much more fascinating uses.

In Uganda, bibles and other books were made to measure expressly to fit into these tins to save them from being destroyed by ants or similar creatures who ‘ate’ and destroyed books in the tropics.

In the Sudan a sword was found with bands of metal covering the scabbard, the name of Huntley and Palmer proudly displayed.

In Trinidad they were used as musical instruments and dustbin lids. In Bolivia a young mining engineer used an empty tin successfully to carry £1,000 across a dangerous mountain pass and fast flowing river to distribute his mens’ wages.

When Queen Victoria’s son-in-law died of malaria in Africa, the body had to be preserved in order to be taken back to Britain for burial. A coffin was constructed out of biscuit tins and filled with rum.

The writer, Thomas Hardy, apparently had his heart excised from his body to be buried in Dorset by the side of his first wife, Emma. The surgeon, having extracted the heart from the corpse, found he had nothing to transport it in. Someone came up with an empty biscuit tin.

WARTIME

In the First World War porridge was made over a fire using biscuit tins and they were also used as washbasins and, unpleasantly, even latrines. Soldiers used them as seats in the trenches. Temporary army camps made use of them filled with sand together with mealy bags to build most of the huts. During the Second World War the tins were used in an innovative (explosive) way to make tea or ‘char’. Obviously, given so many empty tins, the biscuits were very popular!

The author includes recipes for all kinds of biscuits – plain, iced and jam filled, followed by chocolate coated ones. The choice grew with the profits made. At first biscuits were the prerogative of the upper classes but with industrialisation biscuit factories brought the prices down to all and sundry.

Biscuits are a bridge between bread and cake – they last longer and with the addition of sugar have definitely carved out a tasty and nostalgic niche – comfort food, which we all desire from time to time.

Do read this book if I have whetted your appetite and find out lots more about the evolution of the biscuit across the world – and of social history, packaged in an original and unforgettable way – preferably taken in with a cup of tea to make a good match with a ‘ginger nut’, a ‘digestive’ … or even something more luxurious. The choice is endless, a welcome indulgence, wrapped into our daily lives.

“A stellar observer of the day-to-day and the mundane, a social historian of extraordinary talent” (New York Times Book Review’).

The book also has illustrations – some of which are in colour.

I’ve often tried to grow hollyhocks (alcea rosea) but with little success. And yet I’ve seen some growing eight feet high in places where you would think nothing would survive. For instance, against a high wall in full sunshine, their roots presumably finding water below a hard, arid, gravel surface.

The Anglo Saxon name was ‘holy-hoc’ or holy mallow. A plant from the Holy Land. Gerard, who wrote his Herbal in 1597 knew hollyhock as ‘Malva Hortensis’, part of the Malvaceae family, related to common mallow, rose of Sharon, lavatera and tropical hibiscus.

Hollyhocks were probably introduced to Great Britain in about 1573, although they are mentioned in a poem in a manuscript much earlier. Most likely they hailed from China, via the Silk Roads to Palestine. The seeds would have been brought to Britain during the Crusades.

In France they are known as ‘roses trémières’ – coming from ‘outremer’, meaning from ‘overseas’. Again, from China via the Middle East. The flowers range from shades of burgundy to scarlet red, pink, yellow and white.

Unfortunately, hollyhocks succumbed to a rust disease, which spread across Europe and cultivation was almost abandoned by the end of the nineteenth century. However, they have revived and are again an eye catching stalwart of English cottage gardens and even cityscapes. They seed themselves quite easily.

I found that mallow, a related shrub, also part of the Malvaceae family, symbolises health, love and protection. Mallow’s medicinal properties include guarding against TB and inflammatory diseases. It makes me happy to know that these shrubs have flowered magnificently in our front garden for over fifty years – a close cousin of hollyhocks with the same tendency to take on different colours. Another garden nearby has a beautiful blue one.

A couple of years ago I was in Dieppe with my sister and brother-in-law. I’ve never seen such a profusion of ‘roses trémières’ and other glorious flowers, which border the shingle beach – as prolific as all the parked cars. Should they have been triffids, the cars would have been swallowed up. Yet another reason to visit Dieppe, with its castle, picturesque ‘centre ville’ and a house and garden designed by Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll nearby.

Maybe hollyhocks flourish better in the sea air. Then what about the ones in Barnes? Well, the Thames is a few minutes away and is slightly salty …

Hollyhocks and ‘roses around the door’ spell out the epitome of English cottage gardens and cream teas – yet their origins are from so far afield.

Just as I feed my mallow shrubs on tea leaves and coffee grounds, which come from plants that continue to grow thousands of miles away … yet coffee and tea are now staples of our daily lives. How would most of us manage without them?!

About two years ago, I was walking along Bond Street and noticed a very pretty, small gallery at the bottom of Clifford Street – The Maas Gallery. The painting in the middle of the window which drew me in was of waves – spectacular but sadly, way above my price range. However, I was happy enough that they asked me to leave my email for future exhibitions they might have.

In lockdown last October I had a message to say the gallery was moving to bigger premises in Duke Street, St. James’s, after sixty years. Out of curiosity, I looked up the exhibitions they had shown in recent months – one was called ‘In Good Company’. Looking through it, I came upon a pencil drawing/watercolour of the actress, Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923), by Walford Graham Robertson (1866-1948).

On looking him up, I found that he was a contemporary and friend of John Singer Sargent, who had twice painted Robertson’s portrait – one of him in an elegant, long coat. Robertson himself was also a good friend of Sarah Bernhardt and another actress, Ellen Terry – he painted portraits of both women – the one of Ellen Terry is in the National Portrait Gallery, here in London.

It was as much these connections that motivated me to buy the Sarah Bernhardt painting – as well as being at a price I could afford. It’s a small panel painting – Sarah is looking romantic, standing in a fern filled garden with a dog at her feet. The framing is particularly suited to it.

As well as being an actress and sculptress, she acquired an amazing menagerie of animals, whom she adored. They included a lynx, a parrot, a boa constrictor, a lion, a tiger cub, three cats, several birds and dogs, a jaguar, six chameleons, a chimpanzee called Darwin and two alligators – one of whom died of a surfeit of champagne.

The other alligator was shipped to her apartment in Paris. As it was being unpacked in its drugged state, her Manchester terrier went to see what was going on. Its furious barking awoke the sleeping reptile, who unfortunately made short work of said dog.

Sarah Bernhardt ordered that the alligator be shot – she had the head stuffed and put on the wall of her apartment, with a notice underneath. ‘My beloved little dog – his tomb’.

Rupert Maas, the owner of the gallery, had told me that Walford Graham Robertson (WGR) had written a book – ‘Time Was’ – a collection of reminiscences of his famous and celebrated contemporaries in art and literature, many of whom were also good friends – John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, Oscar Wilde, Ellen Terry, Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sarah Bernhardt, Henry James, Henry Irving, Count de Montesquiou – to name a few … later on in his life, when Robertson moved for the most part to the Surrey countryside, he met Kenneth Grahame, of ‘Wind in the Willows’ fame. The links are so many.

Diverted by extraordinary stories of alligators, I now returned to tracking down ‘Time Was’ and a trawl through Abe Books threw up a copy in very good condition from Jacques Gander, an antiquarian book dealer. A lucky find.

Robertson comes over as a very likeable, observant and thoughtful individual, modest about his own talents – he was a prolific painter, illustrator and writer and did both sets and costumes for the theatre – and he was obviously dearly loved by many of his friends and acquaintances of the time. The more I got to know about him while reading ‘Time Was’, the more keen I was to own this painting he did of Sarah Bernhardt.

I would have liked to have known WGR. He was knowledgeable and curious about finding things out, a lover of art and books and the theatre but also somebody who was a good listener, interested in other people, kind, intelligent and not seemingly self centred. A joy to spend time with, in fact …

On the back of ‘Time Was’ are comments by critics. J.C. Squire of ‘The Observer’ writes, “His book is a delight to read and I think that it will leave many readers with a feeling that I have myself, namely, that one would rather go round the world with the author than with many of the famous people whom he writes about.”

‘Punch’ writes “His whimsical and sensitive impressions of studio and stage are the unique commentary of an artist, and dramatist sufficiently masterly to be loved as one of themselves by painters and actors and sufficiently the ‘prentice to return the love with a certain self-effacement and veneration.”

Others mention his humour, his ‘bouquet of wit and kindness’ and “as for good stories the book bubbles with them.” He may not be remembered himself today but John Singer Sargent asked to paint his portrait. Whistler, who was known for his faint praise of other artists – and I quote from Robertson’s book, ‘Once – only once – he (Whistler) really liked a painting of mine, a small portrait of Sarah Bernhardt, and I remember him carrying it about the room, putting it in various lights and ejaculating at intervals – “No, but I say – eh? – isn’t it – eh? – isn’t it – pretty?” – and the word ‘pretty’ was not used opprobriously.’

I wonder if that is the portrait I now have? I like to think so. I found it difficult to get a good photo and, like Whistler, carried the picture around, looking for the best lighting. He probably did a better job …

I was also interested in the fact that Robertson became obsessed with William Blake and collected many of his drawings and paintings. Blake was born in 1757 and one of his books ‘The Songs of Innocence and of Experience’ still sells today.

Blake was a creative polymath and poet, a philosopher whose thoughts on scientific understanding made him prophetic about such discoveries as the atom. He would also have experimented with all types of drugs and was wildly extreme with an unusual sex drive. He often read aloud to his wife in the garden, both of them naked. I remember a story about two women who used to race around Soho with large pairs of scissors, cutting off anyone’s long locks who came into view. Blake would have found this eccentricity very entertaining.

Most of all, he was a ‘futures’ man, who instinctively saw ahead of his time.

And the fact that WGR loved Blake and collected so much of his work makes me find him even more fascinating as a person. Robertson bequeathed his collection of Blake’s work to the Tate Gallery on his death in 1948.

As all this was coming together, I spoke by chance to someone I worked alongside at Oxford University Press in the early 1970s. She recommended reading ‘The Man in the Red Coat’ by Julian Barnes, which is about Samuel Pozzi (1846 – 1918), a French society doctor and pioneer gynaecologist, born in Bergerac, France, who lived out his extremely successful professional and complicated personal life against the backdrop of the Parisian Belle Epoque.

And the first reason for including him here is, like Robertson, he also had his portrait painted by John Singer Sargent, wearing a glamorous, long, red robe, which Julian Barnes analyses in a very entertaining way. And, secondly, Pozzi and Robertson both knew Sarah Bernhardt.

I wondered if Robertson and Pozzi ever met, although there is nothing to suggest in ‘Time Was’ that Robertson ever went to Paris, even though Sarah Bernhardt lived there most of the time. But Pozzi did come to London. Julian Barnes starts off his book recounting a time when Pozzi and two friends (Count Robert de Montesquiou and Prince Edmond de Polignac) came to Liberty’s in London – Pozzi to buy both furnishings for his house in Paris and tweed material for his suits.

WGR became good friends with Sarah Bernhardt. In Paris, Samuel Pozzi also became good friends with her – she called him ‘Docteur Dieu’ as he did at least one operation on her. She often called on him for medical advice and it’s more than possible that he became her lover for a short while. Moreover, they continued, like WGR, to be friends for life.

But what really intrigued me about Pozzi was the rich and full life he led and, surprisingly, how few enemies he made during his life in this age of the ‘belle époque’, as he moved confidently among the ‘glitterati’ of the art and theatre world.

As a doctor/surgeon, he was talented, admired and celebrated by his peers. He was tall and handsome, had married into money, his wife, Thérèse Loth-Cazalis, being the daughter of a railroad magnate. He was also a collector of paintings, sculpture, tapestries, books, fine furniture and interesting objects from around the world. He had good taste. And overall, he seemed to be blessed with a very well balanced personality, using all his talents and charm to great advantage. He advanced the progress of medicine in many ways and he should be remembered for that alone.

I became more and more intrigued by Pozzi. In his desire to learn more about and improve medical procedures, he made trips both to the U.S. and to Brazil and Argentina to visit hospitals and was astonished by the quality of medical care in those countries. He was curious, outward looking and determined to find cures for all kinds of illnesses, so as to relieve human misery. He also kept in touch with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, New York, set up initially by two brothers from Lancashire, England.

His first trip to Britain in 1876 was to attend the British Medical Association’s conference in Edinburgh, where he met Joseph Lister and learned about the sterilisation of wounds, operating theatres and of surgeons’ hands. This opened up a lifelong series of exchanges with European and American colleagues. Pozzi worked for thirty five years at the public Lourcine-Pascal hospital in Paris, putting all the information he gained into practice. At another hospital, the Broca, he got his artist friend, Georges Clairin, who incidentally was also a close friend of Sarah Bernhardt, to make a huge wall painting. Today, we try and make hospitals more friendly to patients. Pozzi maybe planted the seed of this idea. The results of all his researches made him very well known in his field and he was fêted and celebrated during his latter trips to the U.S.

As a surgeon, he went on to specialise in gynaecology. It was rumoured that he had affairs with many of his patients but there is no hard evidence to support this. Pozzi was discreet about his private life although, especially through his daughter’s diaries, we hear that his marriage was not happy and that during the latter part of his life his house in Paris was divided into two parts. He lived in one and his wife, her mother and the children in the other. They never divorced. However, Pozzi was seen with his mistress, Emma Sedelmeyer Fischoff, on many occasions as they travelled around Europe together.

Pozzi was a Darwinist, a man of science and reason. His wife was from a deeply religious Catholic family and much influenced by her mother, who lived with her and found Pozzi unacceptable. Perhaps that is why the marriage was bound to fail. I like to think though that Thérèse’s fortune was put to good use by her husband. He was a phenomenon and I would very much liked to have met him.

A two volume treatise on ‘Gynaecology’ which Pozzi wrote was very well received and probably helped to make him the first person to be awarded the First Chair in Gynaecology in Paris in 1884. Later on he became a military surgeon in the First World War. He was also for some years mayor of Bergerac in south west France, where his family came from. He seems to have possessed enormous energy and drive, along with all his other talents – a trait I envy!

And yet this man also made time to enjoy the good things in life to the full and I feel, unlike many men of his type, who are often too egotistic to have true friends, he did have close relationships with both men and women and appreciated their various creative talents. He looked out at the world, he wanted to make a difference for good in his field and he also seemed approachable and relaxed – he loved life, he embraced opportunities and gave as much as he took.

Robertson and Pozzi are quite different personalities but I find I am drawn to both of them, even as they were both drawn to Sarah Bernhardt … and John Singer Sargent was himself drawn to paint the portraits of both men.

‘The Man in the Red Coat’ by Julian Barnes is beautifully produced and is full of fascinating characters and anecdotes. A much recommended read.

Singer Sargent’s father was an eye surgeon, his mother (née Singer), an artist. They lived in Gloucester, Massachusetts and ended up living in Paris and other European countries, leading an itinerant and peripatetic lifestyle. This move from the U.S. happened initially because of a girl child that died aged two years old and led them to have a change of scene.

John Singer Sargent was born in Florence, Italy. Ultimately, this decision would be advantageous later on, given both his artistic talent and the connections he was able to make. Singer Sargent was also a good linguist.

I’d love to go back to that period as an invisible onlooker, tracking down all these people and their professional and personal links to one another. Impressionism was on the rise and in later years Singer Sargent left portraiture, which had made him a good living, for landscapes painted in oils and watercolours.

Evan Charteris wrote of Sargent’s watercolours in 1927 – ‘To live with Sargent’s watercolors is to live with sunshine captured and held …’ These pictures have also captured and held me ever since I saw them first. I know who I am when I look at these paintings – Singer Sargent is my ‘Docteur Dieu’!

I bought a painting – and it unlocked a treasure trove. It’s in my bedroom to remind me that we all have our short time in the light and to remember others of a different era, who shone brightly for a short time – some of them for longer.

After watching Chris Packham (Springwatch) on television, we decided to let our (small) lawn grow wild this year – except for a narrow path, (which I snipped with scissors), running through the middle, so I could get to the washing line. It meant that in the morning my feet and ankles were covered in dew – I got to like this, knowing we were offering a home to lots more insects. For the first time in ages I saw an earwig – it fell from one of the drying sheets on the line into the grass. Just as well I didn’t meet it in bed!

Insects have declined by 75% in the last fifty years. Without them, the planet ecosystem will not survive and that means we won’t either. In 1963 Rachel Carson’s book, ‘Silent Spring’ warned that the amount of pesticides being used was destroying not only insects but soils too. More recently, climate change has highlighted this.

To know more, read ‘The Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse’ (£20) by Dave Goulson, who is a professor of biology at the University of Sussex. He has also written a book on the different types of bees and founded the ‘Bumblebee Conservation Trust’.

We are slowly waking up to the reality of our depleting ecosystems but we need to act much faster. There is still hope as long as we manage to convince most people of the danger in time and get many countries involved in regeneration. Nature doesn’t recognise man made borders. We have a difficult task ahead but more and more people, both young and old, are taking up the challenge. A programme to watch on Sunday evenings is ‘Countryfile’, which really helps to understand what is going on and how we can all make things work in new ways.

Certain types of butterfly lay their eggs on the underside of nettles. We imported a few plants and they have multiplied – somewhat aggressively!

Not exactly wild – but a great favourite of bees and a strongly fragrant perennial.

Some plants are seen as weeds, partly because they arrive unannounced and grow so freely that they become invasive – like alkanet. The bees love the intense blue flowers but their rough and hairy leaves, tough tap roots and greedy nature need a firm hand. Plants like herb robert and the frothy white blossoms of the herb, sweet cicely, come back each year and are welcome, as is the evening primrose, a tall and sturdy plant with creamy yellow flowers. Lady’s mantle loves to spread too, often with a dewdrop in the middle of its fan shaped leaves. They just choose where to show up, wherever suits them. I like that.

Someone gave me a few seeds of quaking grass, also known as rattlesnake grass because of the shape – like a rattlesnake’s tail. They have interwoven themselves with the geraniums. Nipplewort flew in and found itself a place under the apple tree. There is now an App on your phone which will give you the Latin and common names of any plant you happen to come upon. Brilliant!

Our mallow shrubs in the front garden were here before us, so must be at least fifty years old. They continue to produce hundreds of flowers in August/September, visited by bees. I give them tea leaves and coffee grounds, a prune in the Autumn and they reward me ten times over.

Different types of poppies have appeared at random, their seeds blown in on the wind from other gardens, or from further afield. We had scarlet ones with black centres, huge mauve, pink and purple ones and the ubiquitous, smaller, yellow ‘Welsh’ poppy, which sews itself all over the place and doesn’t mind growing in between the paving stones.

I’d like to have enormous swathes of poppies – reminding me of paintings by the Impressionists. Opium, which they produce, and which is a powerful drug, shows the darker side of their history. Opium Wars. Addiction.

The poem, ‘In Flanders Fields’ by Lt. Col Macrae, describes the poppies that grew on the battlefields after the First and Second World Wars, remembering those who gave their lives so that we might have better ones. The symbol of Remembrance Sunday is the red poppy.

This also reminds me of the famous lines from Rupert Brooke’s poem: ‘If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field, that is forever England.’ The ephemeral beauty of poppies which return each year in the French landscape are a timely reminder of thousands of senseless deaths. Poppies incite powerful emotions. And opium is addictive.

At this point, on a more cheerful note, I’d like to recommend Michael Pollan’s latest book, ‘This Is Your Mind on Plants: Opium – Caffeine – Mescaline’. The book is divided into three parts. The first chapter is about the poppy, ‘papaver somniferum’, from which he makes a tea and, unbelievably, tells the story of the criminality of growing poppies in the U.S.A. Ten plus years in jail! Just don’t fiddle with the pods …

It’s a great read – like having a conversation with the author. Caffeine, which concerns the second part of the book, has him sitting down outside his favourite café, with his ‘addictive’ cup of coffee. I’d love to join him but he then ‘goes cold turkey’ for three months, as an experiment.

Mescaline comes from certain cacti – I probably wouldn’t use this myself but after I’d read the book I knew so much more about poppies, coffee and tea and what certain cacti can produce – all of it fascinating.

Pollan’s also a bit of a wizard with words and a good communicator. He reminds me of an English journalist, Hunter Davies, whose book, ‘Happy Old Me’, made me want to invite him out to lunch. I find them both very entertaining and I’m sure would be welcome companions – in completely different ways.

I don’t have pictures of red and pale mauve poppies but there are plenty on the Internet. That’s partly because the flowers come and go so quickly and I didn’t have many. However, I dried the petals when I found them on the ground.

Mind you, not only the petals. The dried seed pods look very good in flower arrangements. Some pods are huge, the ones in the photo below are tiny by comparison. It’s what you might do with the seed heads that concerns the U.S. government. Floral decorations are happily exempt!

That was something of a digression from wilding my garden but I hope it opened up some doors of perception …

I passed a neighbour’s house and gloried in the blue of her ceanothus in the rain. Not wild but again, perennial.

It’s interesting to see what plants flourish and what disappear when left to their own devices … the monsoon rains this July, causing flooding in neighbouring houses with basements, followed by 30 degree heat, have made everything larger and more feral than usual. And the ancient apple tree is bowed under the weight of the fruit this year.

I hope we’re increasing our pollinators and making our garden more friendly for the diverse lives of insects.

Below is a photo of our roses, which have flourished in this wilder place, despite the advances of bindweed and nettles. A colourful and hopeful note to end on this ‘wilding’ ramble.