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How The Rich Lived Edward Lucierruth and Celestine Oars (Paddington Press 28.95)
Was this the scene? Co-authors having ncb with publisher—'We want to do a °F■ok of pictures', 'Good idea—what sort of Pictures ?', 'Pictures painted by both French and English artists in the years before The First World War', 'Why pick on them?"Because we like them', 'Insufficient motivation, ,Yll have to tie them up with something', 'them up with what, good Heavens?', I suggest the First World War.' Scene closes with co-authors looking at each other with a wild surmise! bl Is
urk that what happened ? Judging from the
k it seems most likely. I have always ,'een a great one for a study of the blurbbe'nre I read a book. It either puts me 'on, or Puts me off, although most frequently the tatter. The blurb on the dust-cover of How The Rich Lived adds, regrettably, to the 1;1.al°1-itY. Consider it : 'In How The Rich -.lived We examine how one class of people hate in one crucial period of history—the nale-century before World War 1—the event that rea , IlY began the twentieth century. The weanby People of the period lived in a kind of dream world. Their wealth enabled them t° I've idly and elegantly, trying to preserve a tn. Ode of life that was doomed. In the Paintings collected in this book we see them adt their Pleasures, eating, drinking, going to hanees and horse-races. This is a world that as gone forever.' ,IVIY immediate reaction, having read that, p-as that Jack Jones must have written it for ,,,addeington Press. Peruse it once againdrea il People of the period lived in a kind of
vvorld ... Ate and drank and went to
rices and horse-races.' What's so dreamy about doing those things ?Any four activities more mundane would be hard to pin-point. r TheY lived idly'. In an attempt to find corpborative evidence of this, I studied all the pictures (which is almost all the book conoists of). What did I find ? People eating, e°Ple drinking, people dancing, people sa,ein "g----'at their pleasures,' as the blurb thys. But no evidence of any kind to show i„at theY were 'idle' or that 'they were living e „" a world that is gone forever'. People still thatt still drink, still dance, still go racing in them leisure hours and still get painted in Wnt. got painted, for example, by John rapaircl some years ago, perusing the Times did-ngPage, one weekend. That, however, the rmt mean I had been idle for the re3t of aft We On the contrary, I was relaxing, (b et a.hard stint from Monday until Friday theoth Inclusive), as no doubt were many of Pe °131e in these pictures. Kaiser Wilhelm, for example, by Rocholl, watching maneuvers (sic) was not, alas, an idle man. Prince
Leopold (out hunting, by von Wagner) had, as history tells us, an extremely busy life; the lady riding in the Bois de Boulogne, by Jean Renoir, could have been an actress, or a housewife or a nannie on her afternoon off.
So much, then, for the blurb. What about the introduction (which is all the letterpress this book boasts)? It exudes a superficial view of politics, in my opinion, and a superficial view of life. In consequence, its frantic efforts to prove something founder in a sea of slogans. Why, one asks oneself, endeavour to associate a lot of charming pictures by a lot of artists, wholly innocent of politics, with an irrelevant and retrospective message of impending doom?
The last portentous statement in the introduction illustrates the point that I am making: 'Looking at the paintings, we cannot be surprised that the world which they reflected with such accuracy ended in a mighty explosion.' Oh dear!—'At The Sea-side', 'Flirting With An Older Man', 'The Honeymoon', 'The Royal Academy', 'The Tennis Party', 'The Bride's Farewell', 'Conversation Piece', 'The Picnic', 'A Church Wedding', 'Tea Leaves', 'Five O'clock Tea', 'Tea-Time', 'The Farewell', 'The Place Vendome', 'The Nursery', 'Morning Ride Along The Beach', 'The Croquet Party', 'The Chess Players', 'Family Group Reading'. What explosion did they bring about ? Not World War One, I'm certain.
All they brought about, as their creators meant them to, was artistic satisfaction and fulfilment. That, for those who can afford it, is the merit of this book. Regarding the 'explosion'—lest the writers of the blurb and introduction should feel thwarted by not getting one—let me conclude by blowing them a mild, but heart-felt, raspberry, as punishment for trying hard (albeit unsuccessfully) to harness art, in all its innocence and beauty, to a piece of specious and irrelevant political philosophising.
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