Miss Fairfax

We have had a really heartening notice about Edwardian Opulence by Sylviane Gold in this morning’s New York Times, and it coincides with a small but fascinating discovery among my papers. One of the most beautiful sculptures in our exhibition is the marble bust of Miss Eve Fairfax by Auguste Rodin—known also as La Nature. The reason why we borrowed this bust is that it was the first of a string of notable British portrait commissions executed by Rodin through the Edwardian decade. Miss Fairfax was most probably Rodin’s lover, ca. 1902, or soon afterwards, but what I did not realize until after the catalogue went to press was that she was still alive in 1978. The following obituary was published in The Times on June 12 of that year:

Miss Eve Fairfax

G. writes: “This grand old lady passed away in her 107^th year on May 27 in York in which city or nearby countryside she had spent most of her long and fascinating life. A direct descendant of General [Thomas] Fairfax, she was born on October 10, 1871, at Bilborough, near York, where she spent her childhood. She rode her pony eight miles to school in York, winter and summer, taking tea most days at Bishopthorpe Palace with Archbishop Thomson’s family. As a young woman she spent many hours in the saddle following the fox-hounds round York. She was presented at Court to Queen Victoria at Windsor in 1888. The second Lord Grimthorpe commissioned Rodin to scupt her in 1902 and the result was a beautiful bust in marble, now in the National Gallery in Johannesburg; copies in bronze are in Paris and New York. That from Paris was shown several years ago in London and portrays superbly the fine figure and wonderful bone structure of Miss Fairfax. After the death of her parents she always lived in York and was a powerful figure in the Old Yorkshire Club and a frequent attender of the Snow and Summer Balls at the Old Assembly Rooms—long since discontinued. She became a welcome visitor to many great houses in England and Scotland, arriving for a few nights and frequently staying for several weeks complete with her huge autograph book of names, pictures and anecdotes of her life, and a voluminous sewing bag. A fine story-teller and avid bridge player (she played well past her 100th birthday), she was feared by children and grown-ups—but a friendly sparkle in her eyes charmed everyone. Latterly increasing infirmity of her legs prevented much movement and she was a patient for her last few years at The Retreat in York, where the devotion and wonderful kindness of the staff kept this often cantankerous and difficult old lady in high good humour. Only a few weeks before she died she was sitting up in bed reading her favourite newspaper without spectacles. Alas there will never be another Eve Fairfax, straight of back, her tall and stately figure surmounted by her beautiful nearly white hair, gave all the houses an added luster when she was around. To her few remaining friends and relations, she represented a fascinating chapter of history starting in the reign of Queen Victoria and ending after man had successfully walked on the moon.”

As obituaries go, this one takes many words to say surprisingly little. It was presumably the work of a friend or relation, who, while affectionate and admiring, also let slip some not entirely reassuring particulars. Feared by young and old alike? Cantankerous and difficult? Invited for a few nights, but stayed for several weeks? And what about that autograph album—evidence, perhaps, of the modern equivalent of scalp-hunting? The author is also muddled about the bust. Rodin carved no fewer than five versions in marble. She is right about one of them, which is indeed at Johannesburg Art Gallery (the South African National Gallery is in Cape Town). Another, the one we have here in New Haven at present, is normally to be seen in the galleries of the Legion of Honor (Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco). Another three, together with many related plasters and subsequent bronzes are mostly at the Musée Rodin in Paris. If Rodin’s preoccupation with Miss Fairfax was erotic, as seems likely, in due course it waned. Some time after he finished the San Francisco bust, the sculptor inscribed it on the reverse: “À Loïe [Fuller],” and signed it a second time. Perhaps Eve Fairfax was eclipsed by the celebrated danseuse, although satisfactorily “G.” points out that Miss Fairfax was for many years an enthusiastic dancer, but purely non-professional.

The gown

The day before yesterday we installed Lady Curzon’s spectacular white satin “orchid” gown, one of a number that were created for her by the House of Worth. We know she wore it on state occasions in Delhi when she was Vicereine of India. The train is fourteen feet long, and, together with the bodice and skirt the entire ensemble was richly embroidered by Indian craftsmen and women with gold and silver threads and further augmented with faceted crystal beading that with the bullion shimmer under the lights. This indigenous technique is known as zardozi. Watching our colleague from the Fashion Museum at Bath perform the operation of dressing the dress was slightly eerie, as this sequence of photos will demonstrate, because one gradually began to sense more and more Mary Curzon’s ghostly presence, while also witnessing something of what it must have been like for a skilled lady’s maid to help her to get dressed. It would be impossible to do this without assistance. Naturally we began with a customized dummy on a stand.

The dummy and its precious cargo migrated from place to place throughout this procedure, which added to a vague but growing sense of imminence, but it was in the beginning dressed with a long calico petticoat to give some support the very fragile skirt.

Naturally Lady Curzon wore additional foundation garments, including an up-to-the-minute boned and laced “s” corset, so this impression of the size of her waist (when so constricted) is actually quite conservative.

The skirt came first, fastened with hooks to innumerable hand-stitched eyelets. Lady Curzon presumably stepped into it, but we had to very carefully lower it over her head.

Then came the bodice, very tight fitting and, like the skirt, extraordinarily heavy for its size (because of the bullion-work)...

...and finally the train, which you see here folded in three between layers of tissue paper. The front end of the train was secured with tapes around the waist, and these double bows finally tucked inside the front of the bodice.

This is the view that none of our visitors will have because I took the photograph through the rear of the case before it was firmly shut (for environmental control and light sensitivity). But it is helpful to explain why the train had to be arranged in this fluid manner, for to extend it fully would cause too much tension along the left edge. We had decided that it would be best to orient Lady Curzon to the front, a slightly less than three-quarters view, and to allow the train to create for her a graceful arc. Notice also that the skirt itself is possessed of a short but ample “bell” train on its own, so all the bullion-work and embroidery on the back of it is therefore mostly covered by the removable train.

Here she is, making a graceful turn. Lady Curzon must have had at least one page to assist her with the train, possibly two, and it was only worn for the most formal ceremonies. The pungent Indian iconography of sprays of orchids dominates the decoration of the skirt and bodice, but the train adds to this the more squarely English clusters of oak leaves and other British vice-regal heraldic devices, and fuses both in a sequence of classicizing wreaths around the edges that culminate in three very large ones at the end of the train. It is a truly remarkable hybrid. Very few exercises in art museum display have taught me as much or given me as much pleasure and fascination over three or four magical hours as did this gradual re-animation of Mary Curzon’s spectacular white satin “orchid” gown. Do please come and see it for yourselves.

The diamonds

Diamonds are impossible to photograph. No image ever really captures the astonishing effects of color, fire, and light in motion that are produced by these most fascinating stones—lumps of pure carbon, compressed into atomic hardness by colossal pressure deep inside the earth’s crust and at huge temperatures tens of millions of years ago. A colleague recalls witnessing the funeral procession of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and the moment when, making the wide turn from Clarence House onto the Mall, hard by his office in St. James’s Palace, Her Majesty’s gun-carriage and catafalque, which was surmounted by the queen-consort’s crown, caused the famous Koh-i-noor diamond mounted in front to project an almost blinding searchlight-flash across the same wide arc, and caught him by surprise. Yesterday we installed and secured the Manchester tiara, and it was thrilling to observe a similar effect, but this time further exploited by the master craftsmen of Cartier, ca. 1903. For the central portions of the principal up-thrusting forms of this sumptuous jewel—actually flaming hearts of catholic dogma—consist of stones artfully suspended in groups of three so that the slightest motion will set the entire jewel alight. It is as if the light emanates from within each stone, instead of simply bouncing off or passing through it. In a world that especially for young people increasingly knows no tangible difference between physical reality and virtual substitutes, it is heartening to think that there is in the museum experience an opportunity to reach for the ungraspable, and enjoy a visual experience that cannot happen any other way. Magnificent jewels may also prompt ruminations upon the astounding excesses of elite consumption, but this is also healthy. I daresay many New Englanders will judge the Manchester tiara to veer dangerously towards a region of high vulgarity that is difficult to approach without the crampons and heavy lifting gear afforded by immense wealth. I tried to imagine what it must have felt like to wear this spectacular jewel, as the Duchess of Manchester undoubtedly did. At least satisfying, I should think, and probably exciting too. Good looks, decent teeth, clear skin are simply irrelevant when you have something as visually amazing perched on top of your head. However, I suspect I may be old-fashioned in attaching rather more importance to the purely aesthetic impact of this great jewel. It consists, after all, of hundreds of old-cut diamonds, dozens of them whoppers—strobing, glinting, flashing out of the colorless clarity of their hand-made facets bright and paradoxical little murmurings of green, orange, yellow, and blue. Nothing better captures the supreme self-confidence of a ruling elite than the Manchester tiara. Through the Edwardian decade that aristocracy knew it was dancing on the rim of a volcano, and I suppose there were no better or surer guarantees attaching to their self-confidence than today’s Wall Street plutocrats presume they too enjoy.

The bill

Installation continues apace. This morning we unpacked, condition-checked, and hung the great self-portrait by Sir William Orpen entitled Myself and Venus that comes to us from the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. At once I realized I have made an error in the relevant catalogue entry. The picture is very close to the artist’s nearly contemporaneous Self-Portrait (Leading the Life in the West) in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which unfortunately cannot travel any more, and it contains the same conceit of the large, framed mirror facing the window of Orpen’s studio. In the New York painting Orpen showed various invitations, letters, opened envelopes, and other pieces of colored paper slipped between the vertical edges of the mirror and the wall, but in the Pittsburgh picture there is only one—which I took to be a newspaper clipping, perhaps a positive notice in one of the weeklies, or some such. That would be consistent with his steadily growing self-regard.

Instead I see now that this large piece of paper is a sizeable bill from The Café Royal, an itemized check, quite a long one, to which Orpen has added his notional and, I suppose, actual signature at the top, the souvenir of a bibulous evening spent with artist friends in that glamorous establishment at the bottom of Regent Street, hard by Piccadilly Circus, presumably in the opulent surroundings of the Domino Room. As it happens, we will have Charles Ginner’s view of the interior of that very room in the next bay but one, so this could not be a happier state of affairs. As well, the plaster cast of Orpen’s Venus is also present in his collegial group portrait from the Manchester City Art Gallery entitled Homage to Manet, but because in the Pittsburgh picture it is seen by Orpen reflected in the mirror with which he also sees himself it is naturally reversed. These two paintings will hang side by side, which is a rather neat curatorial stratagem, if I do say so.

Hello Dolly

These last stages of the process of putting on a big exhibition are by far the most enjoyable. The book has arrived from the printers in all its splendor. The construction of plinths, pedestals, cases, and other items of bespoke furniture is complete. There is a rich array of power tools, trolleys, dollies, tape-measures, spirit-levels, extension cords, fresh light bulbs, and carts laden with all sorts of screws, nuts, bolts, washers, hooks, and other carefully organized fittings. Such smooth wall surfaces as are, in this High Modernist building, permitted a color are now painted the necessary number of coats, and our choice of a powdery, dry pale blue produces exactly the effect we had hoped for. The signage, object labels, and wall texts have been edited, designed, and are now in production—their careful arrangement around the galleries has been decided. The illuminated vitrines outside the front door are almost done. The sound program is finished, thanks to the efforts of our colleagues in Yale Media. The films have likewise been chosen, and await the installation of the monitor and DVD-player at the end of the exhibition. Templates defining the exact position of every object in the show have now been placed around the galleries, together with stickies that indicate the correct orientation of the accompanying labels. All that remains is for the nearly two hundred objects to arrive, one by one, or in groups according to lender. And then we shall open, and start talking about it to our visitors, non-stop.

Hanging a loan show is for the responsible curators somewhat different from re-hanging the permanent collection because under the terms of most if not all loan agreements the placing and installation of other institutions’ works of art must be carried out in the presence of their representatives, and obviously to their satisfaction. That responsibility almost always rests with the couriers who accompany the shipments. To that end much advance planning is necessary, and very little last-minute adjustment is possible. Still, there are decisions to be made when we go ahead install a borrowed object, once they have been condition-checked: an inch or two up or down, left or right. The unexpected or unforeseen effects of sight-lines or adjacencies and even the friendliness or otherwise of neighboring picture frames sometimes require a little attention. Other small problems inevitably arise, and can usually be solved to the contentment of all. The director must be kept apprised of progress, and her views naturally also taken account of. Certainly we are greatly assisted by the expertise and judgment of our out-of-house exhibition designer the excellent Stephen Saitas; by the meticulousness and indomitability of our registrar, together with the professionalism, steady hands, and shrewd opinions of our installation crew. Their views are always worth soliciting and usually right.

So, four weeks from now we will be up and running. The opening week’s festivities will be behind us. The exhibition will have taken on a life of its own. There is already an enormous 15-second advertisement running roughly every half hour or so on the CBS David Letterman screen at Times Square and Forty-Second Street, with an estimated audience of 1.5 millions. I wonder whether this will generate more than average foot traffic from New York. I hope so. Yale University Press, meanwhile, has high hopes for the publication, which in so many respects seems just now to converge strangely with the recent Downton Abbey phenomenon. It seems that something in the zeitgeist is focusing some attention on my beloved Edwardians. What a very satisfactory state of affairs!

Edwardian Opulence

Last Wednesday morning a hefty, air-freighted object of astonishing beauty plopped onto my desk. Edwardian Opulence: British Art at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century is now a glorious reality. Our heartfelt thanks must go to everyone for their supremely generous efforts on our behalf. Every exquisitely typeset line, every page, every opening, every illustration is a work of art, and all other aspects of the book a positive joy to us, the co-editors and co-curators, up to and including the snappy gold stitching, and the wonderful ending (this last illustration before the endpapers—just superb). So, three cheers to wonderful Ellie Hughes and her team in exhibitions and publications here at the Yale Center for British Art; the meticulous Elisa Urbanelli, our copy editor; the patient Daphne Geismar, designer extraordinaire, and to our publisher Sally Salvesen and to all her sterling colleagues at Yale University Press in London. Our thanks must also go to Julie Allred of BW&A Books, wizards of the fine art of typesetting, and, above all, gli eccellentissimi Signori Conti Tipocolor SpA, master printers of Florence. Noi ringraziamo loro! All of them deserve a flashy gold medal in the Queen’s Birthday honours list (where else?). And now, full steam ahead with the installation of the exhibition itself, no small undertaking—there are fifty-five lenders from ten countries spread across four continents that straddle the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Indian Ocean, one of the largest and most complicated projects the Center has ever undertaken.

More bonds

Last night I dreamed I was having a lively discussion with someone about the merits of the graphic work of Saul Steinberg. Dad was much intrigued by Steinberg’s fine covers for The New Yorker and I rather think his own line drawings were at times influenced by him, though not quite as much as they followed the prompts of Daumier’s gens de justice series, with a dash of Doré and even Goya thrown in for good measure. Certainly there were large-format, lavishly-illustrated books about Steinberg at 18 Denham Place, and I remember as a child poring over them with real fascination, and trying my best to imitate his style. Only now do I realize that Steinberg must have played an important part in steering me towards art in the first place, thanks above all to our wonderful father, and maybe also latterly towards old bond certificates. For in the frigid light of this morning it struck me with sudden force that Steinberg must have studied them closely. Throughout The Passport (1954) for example, he paraphrased portions of their stylistic vocabulary with rare wit, capturing that overinflated Neronian pomposity and plutocratic flamboyance in controlled fits of high Modernist, steel-nibbed satire. There is the neurotically minuscule “small print,” the showy signatures, the cartouches, sunburst striations, the trophies, the armorial bearings, the banner-swoop arabesques, and the flutter of all those intricate marginalia. The bonds were not his only source, however, for Steinberg threw in the posturing habits of more recent forms of official documentation. This portion of his restless mindscape embraced the certified public accountant, the university registrar, the consular section, and rubber-stamp customs and excise officials with every bit of the enthusiasm with which he took aim at the banks and brokers responsible for pumping up the Gilded Age bond market. Still, this is a source and, now, an essentially Edwardian residue, that I never recognized before this morning, thanks to that strange dream. Visual memory is evanescent, but apparently jogged powerfully by sleep. Come to think of it, there is something tangibly Edwardian about that too.

The bonds

For some time I have been interested in the sub-branch of numismatics known as scripophily, the art of Gilded Age stock and bond certificates. In most cases these were listed in the conventional way and publicly traded in many jurisdictions. Owners of such financial instruments fell into two main groups—registered holders and “bearers.” Bearer status meant that the bond in question could change hands in transactions that were not necessarily known to the issuer, but could be redeemed later by whoever legally held the scrip. Obviously the methods of engraving the designs on steel plates and then printing them on high-quality paper ran exactly parallel with the production of bank notes. Their complexity was primarily driven by considerations of security, i.e. protection against forgers. The art form certainly reached its apogee in the Edwardian age, but unlike many bank notes the art of stock and bond certificates has since then declined. Those of us fortunate enough to own a modest number of such investments today hold them, relatively speaking, in the ether, and breathe silent prayers that such an arrangement is sufficiently secure. We have seen in recent years that there are no absolute guarantees, and the current price of gold reflects a correspondingly hot desire for intrinsic value. A precious certificate or bill is, of course, only intrinsically valuable in the sense that it stands for what we like to think is a legally binding promise to pay the bearer. I suppose it is better than nothing.

The scarcity of these splendid old bond certificates is simple to explain. Bond markets flourished in the second half of the nineteenth century when impecunious governments raised capital by selling promises to pay back more at fixed interest rates maturing in ten, twenty, thirty, or however many years. Incidentally, this is how the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C., is currently keeping the United States afloat, but 100 years ago there was a massive public infrastructure rationale. Peru, Ecuador, Brazil and Argentina wanted railways. So did China and Japan. Bankers such as N. M. Rothschild and Sons in New Court, St. Swithin’s Lane, in the City of London, negotiated the terms of the bond issue. They also engaged one of a handful of respectable firms of bank-note manufacturers to create the bond certificates, and then sold them to investors. The bank charged a commission (at both ends) but generally bought a stack of bonds also, so they profited in several mutually sustaining ways. With luck Peru and the rest got their railways, and many other multinational mining companies, property developers, and railway builders prospered. Rothschilds invested in all such concerns. It was a whirring financial steam engine. When redeemed by the investor, the bond certificate was afterwards cancelled or destroyed. However, in a number of celebrated instances when the issuer of the bond defaulted, and defaulted spectacularly, as did the Imperial Chinese government in its death throes, bond holders were left holding the certificates. There was nothing to stop the continuing, highly speculative trade in these, and for many years they were bought and sold, drifting poisonously around the markets until history proved their worthlessness, except, of course, as mementoes mori, and, these days, as oftentimes quite astonishing works of the art of master printing and engraving. 

The finest examples exploited the skills of a handful of skilled artisans specializing in attenuated and at times barely legible letter-forms, a froth of curly-cues or, for various dignified headings, the blocky silhouetted typographical equivalents of Stonehenge or the Parthenon. Others worked solely on decorative figures, ghostly bas relief arabesques, medallions, rosettes, garlands, cornucopias, stamps, quatrefoils, and Rococo cartouches containing scenes and motifs directly relevant to the investment for which the certificate stood in loco. There was simply no limit to the decorative vocabulary. Most exempla were conceived as precious hand-illuminated addresses, couched within a wide border strongly reminiscent of the most opulent carved and gilded Louis Napoleon picture frames. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century an ingenious method was invented for producing these mechanically with a sharp chasing wheel controlled by a smooth gear system. This produced the dizzying spirals and intricate guilloche swirls that, it was presumed, no forger could possibly hope to replicate. Thenceforth the border exchanged the pomposity of the picture frame for an equally pompous abstract ornament, proudly technological. There were, in addition, distinct layers or registers of detail produced by the application of up to five or six subtly different colors laid down on separate plates in exact conformation, and, crucially, watermarks also, meaning that the design of the certificate penetrated into the fabric of the paper itself, exactly like bank notes. Black, pea green, plum, rose, eau de nil, chartreuse, and Naples yellow. These were extremely sophisticated techniques of manufacture, and, in the case of Chinese and Japanese bonds, calligraphy and even seals were reproduced even to the point of taking account of the imperfection with which the issuing signatories applied their brushes to the original documents, or the sticky red ink from their jade or hardstone seals.

Scripophily has grown into a vigorous branch of connoisseurship practiced by retired stockbrokers, bankers, and other people interested in the history of finance. Yet I think these ostentatious relics of Gilded Age commerce offer historians of art something more profound. Bond certificates aspired to the dignity of a royal charter, a high warrant, letters patent, even a papal bull. They seem determined to endow the mechanisms of international credit with the awesomeness one might expect from the design of a baroque basilica, and even something of the mystique. Instead of the great seal of the prince, the chancellor, or the pontiff, we find their fin-de-siecle equivalent: the signs manual of now-forgotten ministers of finance, the haughty imprimatur of bankers and brokers who carried almost equal authority but had at their disposal far more money and credit than had ever existed. The bonds are imposingly large. They represent a shift in emphasis from a form of capitalism in tune with Rossini to something more akin to Wagner. Their imagery trumpets a vast expansion in synthesized credit, and, at times, a pig-iron weight of seriousness. The bearer of a one-hundred-pound bond for the 5% Hukuang Railways Sinking Fund Gold Loan of 1911, for example, was possessed of rather more than £100 (plus 5% in due course). It was as if he, she, or it (in the case of institutional investors) were granted a coat of arms, a personal impresa of knighthood in the chivalrous pursuit of that Holy Grail of potentially unlimited profit, as yet unimpeded by the hideous impostures of tax.

In the equivalent, bleak pursuit of pure profit today, all we have to pass back and forth are pitiful shards of plastic, cash, and data.

The Dame

I knew Dame Elisabeth Murdoch not well, but slightly. When I was no more than an extremely callow undergraduate, barely aged seventeen (1982), I served for a bit on the committee of the friends of the library of the National Gallery of Victoria, of which Dame Elisabeth was naturally president. She was exceedingly kind to me then. Later, when I worked at Government House in Melbourne, Dame Elisabeth was—I do not think that this is an exaggeration—a favorite luncheon guest of Dr. McCaughey, whom she obviously worshipped. She was usually seated to the Governor’s left, and always responded to this compliment, even as she approached the age of eighty, with disarming girlishness—a quality I gather otherwise she strictly rationed. Just before she died my mother filled a vacant spot in a regular four who played bridge at Cruden Farm. This was, I think, the last social engagement Mum ever fulfilled and it was clearly too much for her—though she thoroughly enjoyed those intense afternoon rubbers, and was only mildly critical of Dame Elisabeth’s chicken sandwiches. The late and much lamented Jack and Elizabeth Kennedy, who were dear old friends of my parents, took a kindly interest in all the affairs of Dame Elisabeth; they shared a passion for the meticulous cultivation and cross-pollination by hand of violently colored zinnias. I have a feeling that Jack was Dame Elisabeth’s accountant. The Dame was patron of the Victorian Tapestry Workshop, where Mum wound bobbins with Nancye Cain and many other volunteers. The Dame was also interested in the welfare of Trinity College in the University of Melbourne, where occasionally I bumped into her in the early 1990s. So the connections were many and varied. As Rupert Murdoch pointed out in his tribute last week in St. Paul’s Cathedral, Dame Elisabeth’s life ran parallel with, and for almost the whole extent of, that of the Commonwealth of Australia thus far. I gather she was also popular at the Palace. May she rest in peace.

As we get older I suppose that point about many and varied connections becomes truer of life itself. Looking back over the past year’s blogging, I am struck by the number and variety of regretful reminiscences of the fallen that I have felt compelled to scatter like rose petals among more frivolous musings about art, scarlet heels, and other ephemera—Ronald Searle, John Gage, Dame Joan Sutherland, Pope Shenouda III, the King of Tonga, Margaret Whitlam, Peter Steele, Jean McCaughey, Richard Warren, and, now, Dame Elisabeth Murdoch. No doubt this is symptomatic of advancing years. Yet I am no obituarist. In fact, notwithstanding the restorative hours before dawn that I often spend devouring two whole pots of tea in my bloggy haze, I have been busier this year than at any time in the past ten. Our huge book and exhibition are essentially finished, and merely await the arrival of the crates. We open on February 27. I should say that Edwardian Opulence: British Art at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century has been, is, and will probably remain, the central episode of my working life, and I am mighty proud of it. Please do come and see the show. I suspect the blog has kept me sane, though not as much as my wonderful Lyolik. And now I must go to New York for Christmas.

The index

For the past few weeks I have been compiling the index to our next book, Edwardian Opulence: British Art at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century. Hence the radio silence in the early hours, when, at times, I am active. My apologies to concerned readers. The first index I created was for my first book, and, to my astonishment, that was almost twenty years ago. It earned me a certificate of accreditation to the Australian Society of Indexers in Melbourne, which I still cherish. Indexing a book is a wonderfully absorbing task, and nowadays under-appreciated. Not that serious bibliophiles do not appreciate a good index. Rather, it is becoming a widespread misconception, even among some editors and publishers, that somehow keyword searching and computers or even, God forbid, book indexing software, can somehow take the place of an indexer with a brain, a measure of judgment, and a beating heart. This is simply not the case. Many concepts, ideas, and themes that recur in a book do so rather subtly, and lurk beneath sentences and in chapters that require deft herding, and much discrimination—in the best sense. Indeed they may only swim into particular focus when the indexer has had the good sense to identify and collate them under clear and simple headings: food; Jewry and Jewishness; florists, court; Fashoda Incident (1898); or servants, ubiquity of, see also butlers, chauffeurs, valets, and maids, house-, ladies’, scullery, still-room, etc.; whatever. At times the author is only partly aware of their very existence. This is especially true when the volume contains the work of many hands, as in this case. The indexer’s art is therefore to join many, sometimes hundreds of dots, mindful that the resulting reference tool may open for potential readers a rewarding vista of possibility. You can never know what people will try to find in an index, but obviously the more and better points of access you create, the wider the vista that will open before them, like a glorious Persian carpet: Tabriz, Kashan, Herat, see also Kerman. I suppose the word create is key here. Book indexing is a deeply creative process, and can even embrace humor. Admittedly, these days indexes are inclined to be starchy. I have noticed lately that many indexers loftily declare their firm intention to disregard titles and honorifics when listing names. How foolish! In the present context, such an approach would be almost insulting because it flies in the face of Edwardian social usage, whose nuances can be extremely revealing, for naturally “Vincent, Lady Helen (later Viscountess D’Abernon)” floated effortlessly several social notches above “Clarke, Marguerite, Lady,” but not nearly so high as the stratospheric “Gower, Millicent Sutherland-Leveson-, Duchess of Sutherland.” This is not to exclude the special claims of “Wettach, Charles Adrien, called ‘Grock,’ clown,” or even “‘Toby,’ performing dog,” far from it, but the indexer has a palette and brushes, and would be ill-advised not to resort to them liberally. Such an approach admittedly requires a good number of wordy cross-references such as “Cranborne, Viscountess, see Cecil, Marjorie Olein Gascoyne-, Marchioness of Salisbury,” or “Minto, fourth Earl of, see Kynynmound, Gilbert John Elliot-Murray-, fourth Earl of Minto.” Never mind. It’s worth it. In the end, when the almost defining issue of space raises its ugly head, as it surely must, these things can afford to bite the dust. But, with luck, there will be enough space, so they can stay for the edification of future inquirers into the vanished universe of Edwardian pecking order.

What do you need to be a good indexer? You need time and patience. You need to switch off the media, ignore e-mail, and concentrate for long periods, because you are, in a sense, reading and re-reading the book in question more closely even than the authors. You need a sense of proportion, such that a single passing reference to this or that does not cut the mustard as regards the special form of acknowledgment that is a discrete entry in the index. You need an excellent library of reference books (above), trustworthy ones—none of this wiki nonsense. You need a good chair, a strong bottom, broad shoulders, and a wide desk. You need to care enough about consistency to be able to render at times vital, last-minute assistance to overworked copyeditors and typesetters, but also to be flexible enough to allow for subtly revealing forms of creative inconsistency within the parameters of the index itself. You need to be a good note-taker, and to have an eye for detail, as microscopic as possible, whilst keeping hold of the larger vista. These are not insignificant skills, and it is a tragedy for this little profession, this calling, that publishers are no longer in a position to pay fair market rates for the invaluable service an indexer provides.

In the end, a further factor may strengthen the usefulness of an index: luck. After the job is done, and the index itself is read for the usual editorial double-checking, one suddenly becomes aware of arbitrary but stimulating adjacencies, a simple consequence of alphabetical order. Thus:

Morgan, John Pierpont (1837–1913)

Morgan, William de (1839–1917)

Morland, George (1763–1804)

Morrell, Lady Ottoline (1873–1938)

Morris, William (1834–1896)

Morris and Company

Morris dancing

motor tourism, see also chauffeurs, problems of etiquette

That’s just a random sampling, and I’m only up to page 360.