The General Bonaparte, Returning from Jaffa, Enters Cairo, 1799, Gustave Bourgain

Transformations

On October 14, 1840, Napoleon's grave at St. Helena was opened. After nearly twenty years in the tomb, the Emperor, like an immortal vampire, was found to be incorrupt.

. . . an indescribable feeling of surprise and affection was expressed by the spectators, many of whom burst into tears. The Emperor was himself before their eyes! The features of the face, though changed, were perfectly recognized; the hands extremely beautiful; his well-known costume had suffered but little, and the colors were easily distinguished. The attitude itself was full of ease, and but for the fragments of the satin lining which covered, as with a fine gauze, several parts of the uniform, we might have believed we still saw Napoleon before us lying on his bed of state.
 
He kept his eyelids constantly closed, by which we had the opportunity of observing that the upper lids were garnished with eyelashes. Years and climate have effected upon the face of this great monarch only a trifling alteration; we may say, indeed, that Time has touched his Imperial and Royal Majesty with the lightest feather in his wing . . . The soldier of Marengo is among us again. His lips are thinner, perhaps, than they were before! how white his teeth are! you can just see three of them pressing his under lip; and pray remark the fulness of his cheeks and the round contour of his chin.

This is from The Second Funeral of Napoleon in Three Letters, to Miss Smith, of London. Published in 1841, it's an account of the disinterment at St. Helena, of the voyage from St. Helena to Paris, and of the elaborate procession and funeral ceremony in the Invalides. Written by one Mr. M.A. Titmarsh, it's a curious document, with reverence ironically represented, and reportage interspersed with sardonic commentary on vanity and human folly, on pomp, nations and glory.

Six years later, Mr. Titmarsh, who was actually William Makepeace Thackeray, published Vanity Fair, and loosed the irresistable adventuress Becky Sharp upon the world.

She proclaims her alliance towards the Emperor early in the book.
"Vive la France! Vive l'Empereur! Vive Bonaparte!"
"O Rebecca, Rebecca, for shame!" cried Miss Sedley; for this was the greatest blasphemy Rebecca had yet uttered, and in those days, in England, to say "Long live Bonaparte!" was as much as to say, "Long live Lucifer!"

Later, Rebecca's emerald eyes blaze across the water towards France.  

"How calm the sea is, and how clear everything. I declare I can almost see the coast of France!" and her bright green eyes streamed out, and shot into the night as if they could see through it.

Then, rather astonishingly, she transforms into a sea serpent.
In describing this siren, singing and smiling, coaxing and cajoling, the author, with modest pride, asks his readers all round, has he once forgotten the laws of politeness, and showed the monster's hideous tail above water?  No!  Those who like may peep down under the waves that are pretty transparent, and see it writhing and twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst bones, and curling round corpses; but above the water-line, I ask, has not everything been proper, agreeable, and decorous . . . When, however, the siren disappears and dives below, down among the dead men, the water of course grows turbid over her, and it is labour lost to look into it ever so curiously.  They look pretty enough when they sit upon a rock, twanging their harps and combing their hair, and beckon to you to come and hold the looking glass; but when they sink into their native element, depend on it those mermaids are about no good, and we had best not examine the fiendish marine cannibals, revelling and feasting on their wretched pickled victims.

Perhaps after all this is not so surprising. The voluminous skirts of the period hid many mysteries beneath a demure facade.

All these images were drawn by Thackeray himself, to illustrate the first edition of the book.

Paramount Theater, March 24

The curtains are parted without a sound, displaying side panels where the action unfolds with extraordinary scope and strength. The audience feels miraculously liberated. Reality and dreams no longer appear through a tiny casement; a whole wall grows transparent like crystal and opens up another universe. The spectators suddenly become a crowd watching a crowd. The onrush of this magical world causes an emotional shock of rare intensity. (from a review of Abel Gance's Napoleon, by Émile Vuillermoz, 1927)

St. George and the Dragon

We go into the church through a vestibule of utmost fantasy in stucco ornament, its overdoors in several shades of gold and silver, in jade green, and in vivid tones of white and coral.

The oval body of the church, opening beyond this, glitters across at us like a lit cave or grotto, and projects a gilded crown that fills the circle of the dome as with a cornice.

There are magnificent side altars, difficult to take in because of the drama and excitement, as we move in the direction of that grotto towards the scarlet and gold curtain over a projecting balcony that is surely a theatre-box, with another theatre-box and curtain facing it across the chancel, and overdoors below both that are like side entrances onto the stage with a motif above them that is a woman's bust in silver, with a head-dress  of silver plumes.

The proscenium, itself, is framed in by four very tall Salomonic columns of elegant twisting shape, with gilded capitals, linked together by chains of gilded flowers. They carry a cornice which embodies, and to purpose, a trophy of the coat-of-arms of the Bavarian Order of St. George, in chequers again, of blue and white, crowned with the ducal hat, this touching in its turn upon a burst of clouds, and on a host of angelic figures upon a nimbus that vanishes in a blinding gliitter of golden rays into the heavens.

Below this, and filling the centre of the stage, the life size figure of St. George, a knight in golden armour on a silver stallion, rides out into the light. His high-plumed helmet is like that of the cavaliers in the court masquerades of Le Roi Soleil, and with a courtly gesture of his right-hand he despatches the dragon. His lance, like the tournament lances, is given the same Salomonic twist as the twisted pillars upholding the proscenium.

The maiden, but it its difficult not to think of her as Andromeda, is dressed like a peasant girl, and holds up her hand before her eyes at this blinding vision. At the side of the pillars, in front of the stage, two saints are commenting upon the stage action. St. Martin in golden robes takes off his biretta in homage; and opposite him St. Maurus points to the audience, while the golden goose at his feet takes the action from the stage into the church by hissing at the dragon.

The ineffable grace of St. George's horsemanship, his attitude of arrival to the rescue, are rendered in a wonderful blaze of inspiration, yet with all the intensity of a ghostly vision.  

When I read this passage in the book Monks, Nuns and Monasteries, by Sacheverell Sitwell, I too must have been blinded by this vision of utmost fantasy. Like the maiden (whether she is a peasant girl or Andromeda) I almost held up my hand before my eyes in surprise at the vision of this building - a building with an altar with panniers, like an 18th century dress - like the bust of a woman's body - like a feathered head-dress - like a theater box - like a grotto - like the heavens - like the sun.

Blinded, surely, for what other than color blindness could explain the image on the following page.

Well, it's an old book, written in 1965, and the illustrations are all in black and white.

St. George and the Dragon. Man and Lizard. St. George, always wearing armor, and seated on a horse, which makes him a kind of dragon himself. St. George and the Dragon - both carapaced, both scaly, one rearing, one slithering, in recognition. Where do their encounters take place? In Sitwell's book it occurs on the altar of Weltenburg Abbey, in Bavaria. There's also somewhere in England where it is said to have happened, in a village appropriately called Wormingford, in Essex - there's a stained glass window commemorating the encounter in St. Andrew's Church, and a mound in the village where perhaps the dragon is buried.

Where else? My house. Both St. George and the Dragon, on the wall of my living room, present present trophies. And to purpose.

Statues and Pigeons

"Take that statue away. It is not for me to erect statues to myself." 
Napoleon, to Pierre Fontaine.

There's only one statue in the neighborhood where I live (and it isn't very heroic.) It commemorates Harry Culver, the founder of Culver City.

Nearby is "The Lion's Fountain,"  meant to reference two MGM studio lions–Leo the Lion, and the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz (which was filmed in Culver City). The only interest this stiff, ungainly piece of public art possesses (left) is a strange resemblance to Moses in the Fontana dell'Acqua Felice in Rome (right).

Both gain in this comparison, for "The Lion" appears to be preparing for crucifixion, while Moses acquires a swaggering insouciance undetectable in conventional depictions of the prophet.

With the dearth of statues, hence the lack of their inevitable auxiliary, pigeons. Seeking this combination of statues and pigeons, I look through "The Statues of Paris: An Open-Air Pantheon, The History of Statues to Great Men," an impressive book with 588 photographs, published in 1989 by Vendome Press. Not a single pigeon to be found. Surely that can't be because there are no pigeons in France.
 
Turning to another picture book, "The Fountains of Rome," published in 1996 with photographs by Francesco Venturi, also Vendome Press, I was glad to see that a really surprising number of pigeons have crept into the photographs.

 I enjoy the unintended dynamics created by the conflux of statues with the birds. It's difficult enough to decipher the vanished narratives of some of these statues, their meanings so obscure to modern eyes. Pigeons muddy the waters even further.

For instance, here an eagle seems to be used as a shield to protect a lamb from the weight of two pigeons, or from their droppings. (my photo)

But of course it's Ganymede, a shepherd, preparing to soar to heaven in the talons of the eagle.  

Pigeons provide, at least, a semblance of companionship for statues. Two very large pigeons (photo, The Fountains of Rome) seem to be entertaining this maenad.

A pigeon observing what is going on below (photo, Fountains of Rome).

Pigeons also, in their uncomprehending way, provide a "Look upon my works ye mighty, and despair" sort of effect. For who is higher than Lord Nelson, solitary on the very pinnacle of fame? A pigeon. Who defaces, not with the malicious intent of a iconoclast, but with a godlike imperviousness to the strivings of mankind after glory? A pigeon.

True, statues of heroes are at risk from more than birds. The scribblings and droppings of a certain kind of human pigeon can have the same result.

 

Pincio Park, in Rome, has the air of a park which has seen better days–much like the reputations of hundreds of great men whose statues throng it's walks. Many of the statues are defaced, for the park is plagued with vandalism (evidently noses are broken so often that the park retains a mold of each.)

 

Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, known as Metastasio, (1698–1782),  Italian poet. 

Raimondo, Count of Montecúccoli or Montecucculi (1608–1680), Italian military general and prince of the Holy Roman Empire.

Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni (1707–1793),  Italian playwright. 

Giuseppe Parini (1729 –1799),  Italian satirist and poet.

There is one great man in the park, however, whose statue remains undefaced–Napoleon.

Come Immediately to Culver City!

The year is 1925.  Lucille LeSeuer, in Kansas City, has just received a telegram from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. "Come immediately to Culver City!" 

Lucille is 21 years old - a pretty girl, short and plump, with huge eyes, freckles - and with lots of pep and determination. She borrows $400 from her mother, spends it on a new wardrobe, and takes the train west. At the station a publicist meets her and escorts to her hotel. It's the Washington Hotel, at 3927 Van Buren Place.

This hotel was constructed just two years earlier, in 1923. It has three stories and 53 rooms, and is in the Zigzag Moderne style - which means the plain E-shaped building boasts a jagged, angular false front.

"I was happy there" she recalls later. "I didn't really want to go to sleep at night, and I was anxious to wake up early every morning because every new day held promise. It wasn't until months later that I noticed that the Hotel Washington was, as you might say, sort of a dump. It hadn't changed, so I guess I had."

Now, 86 years later, the Washington Hotel is still a dump. The streets around it have been rerouted, and the building was renamed the West End Hotel at some point. The structure has been deemed historic and therefore of value and it thus survived, though hemmed in all sides by Linwood Elementary School. The plainest side of the building is now prominent, and is bordered by the school's parking lot.

I walk by this hotel every morning on my way to work, and I walk past it again on my way home.

In 1927, two years after Lucille arrives at the hotel, Hal Roach film studios team an unlikely pair of actors in a comedy short, filmed on the streets of Culver City. This, the first film Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy make as a team, is called "Putting Pants on Philip."  Or "Uvadzanie Nohavice na Philip" as it was titled when I found it on YouTube.

On my walk to work, I encounter the sites in that film.

At the Culver Hotel . . .

I see the door where Stan Laurel stood . . .

and now . . .

On Main Street, you can see the sign for the Washington (West End) Hotel, on the roof, in the distance, past the Culver Hotel. And faint oil derricks on Baldwin Hills.

Finally, I reach my goal. I see the windows of the Museum of Jurassic Technology. In 1927. . .

. . . and today.

Interestingly, the clip of "Putting Pants on Philip" that I found on YouTube has vanished. A company claiming ownership has requested that it be removed from the internet. This seems to be in line with a possible larger plan for the cultural erasure of Laurel and Hardy in Culver City. For instance, the back of Stellar Hardware, on Main Street, once featured a mural of the two men, comically wielding tools. But with the demise of Stellar Hardware, Laurel and Hardy too began to disappear, a disemboweling reflected with horror in Oliver Hardy's face.

Although some people still do remember who they are.

And what became of Lucille LeSeuer? She soon moved out of the hotel. She says: "There were many young men who had been asking me out, but I thought I should only think about my work, even when I didn't have any. I wasn't very fond of spending so many nights alone in my hotel room, in this hotel that was looking less and less glamorous to me. I started saying yes instead of no."

Her story has a happy ending. Lucille soon found work in the movies - and as it turns out, she was one of the immortals. MGM gave her a make-over, and changed her name to Joan Crawford.

He Returns To Us Now

The long-awaited Napoleon bottle stopper has arrived.

In clear plastic, the Emperor is suspended against a cloudy blue sky - as if he was affixed atop the Vendome column - rather than balanced on a column of cork.

The back of the package is interesting too. The text explains, in English and in French, that Napoleon Bonaparte was a political and military genius . . .  and then goes on to say, with undeniable truthfulness, that "though exiled, he returns to us now as a brilliant bottle stopper."

Then there are instructions:
To use, gently press cork into open bottle. Twist to remove.