Shabby Chic – Choicest Colourways. The Bare Necessaries to Furnish a Cell for Solitude and Repose. Hadrian VII and Des Esseintes Share Know-How.

Drab.

Drab is, actually, a colour. It’s a dull, shabby, light brown. 

A Subfusc Aesthetic. 

And let’s not forget that it is from gris (grey) that we derive grisette, the 19th Century French working woman, traditionally classified by the humble grey fabric she invariably wore.

The grisette pictured below is from Fécamp in the Normandy region of France. Her modest counter-colours are very much in evidence, as you can observe.

Grisette de Fécamp  

Such are the caste colours of subjection . . . yet, perversely, the muted colours of this subfusc aesthetic once appeared conspicuously desirable to its two arch proponents – Joris-Karl Huysmans and Frederick William Rolfe – whose all-consuming hypersensitive preciosity bears the same relation to humility as the masquerades of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette bore to the mock-heroic shepherds and shepherdesses of their pastorale in the rusticised hamlet they made their pleasure-ground at Versailles.

The Unassuming Palette of Pseudo-Monasticism?

So let’s be clear. The romance of transcendental monasticism and ritualism – including a fascination with self-mortification and martyrology of the grossest sort – continues to have a strong appeal for masochistic sensualists; particularly it holds an appeal for certain literary adherents drawn to the theatrics of a penitential Catholicism whose credo often may be likened to the highly selective self-denying practices of a sybaritic hermitage.

Agreed, this is my own rather jaded view of so-called fin-de-siècle Decadents . . . but, please, compare the not unrelated narratives of these two writers, Huysmans and Rolfe (Baron Corvo) – two laundry lists of indulgently fulfilled desires, emblematic of a new genre of ‘narcissistic asceticism’ – separated by exactly twenty years . . . 1884 and 1904 . . . and it’s for you to decide. A husk-mattress, anyone?

Imitations d’Humilité.

    . . . he had hung a disturbing sketch by El Greco in his bedroom. It was a Christ done in strange tints, in a strained design, possessing a wild colour and a disordered energy: a picture executed in the painter’s second manner when he had been tormented by the necessity of avoiding imitation of Titian.

        This sinister painting, with its wax and sickly green tones, bore an affinity to certain ideas Des Esseintes had with regard to furnishing a room.

        According to him, there were but two ways of fitting a bedroom. One could either make it a sense-stimulating alcove, a place for nocturnal delights, or a cell for solitude and repose, a retreat for thought, a sort of oratory.

        . . .  For the second instance,—and now that he wished to put behind him the irritating memories of his past life, this was the only possible expedient—he was compelled to design a room that would be like a monastic cell. But difficulties faced him here, for he refused to accept in its entirety the austere ugliness of those asylums of penitence and prayer.

        By dint of studying the problem in all its phases, he concluded that the end to be attained could thus be stated: to devise a sombre effect by means of cheerful objects, or rather to give a tone of elegance and distinction to the room thus treated, meanwhile preserving its character of ugliness; to reverse the practice of the theatre, whose vile tinsel imitates sumptuous and costly textures; to obtain the contrary effect by use of splendid fabrics; in a word, to have the cell of a Carthusian monk which should possess the appearance of reality without in fact being so.

        Thus he proceeded. To imitate the stone-colour of ochre and clerical yellow, he had his walls covered with saffron silk; to stimulate the chocolate hue of the dadoes common to this type of room, he used pieces of violet wood deepened with amaranth. The effect was bewitching, while recalling to Des Esseintes the repellant rigidity of the model he had followed and yet transformed. The ceiling, in turn, was hung with white, unbleached cloth, in imitation of plaster, but without its discordant brightness. As for the cold pavement of the cell, he was able to copy it, by means of a bit of rug designed in red squares, with whitish spots in the weave to imitate the wear of sandals and the friction of boots.

        Into this chamber he introduced a small iron bed, the kind used by monks, fashioned of antique, forged and polished iron, the head and foot adorned with thick filigrees of blossoming tulips enlaced with vine branches and leaves. Once this had been part of a balustrade of an old hostel’s superb staircase.

        For his table, he installed an antique praying-desk the inside of which could contain an urn and the outside a prayer book. Against the wall, opposite it, he placed a church pew surmounted by a tall dais with little benches carved out of solid wood. His church tapers were made of real wax, procured from a special house which catered exclusively to houses of worship, for Des Esseintes professed a sincere repugnance to gas, oil and ordinary candles, to all modern forms of illumination, so gaudy and brutal.

À Rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans (1884) 

Let Us have all of the simplest, without ornament.

They went out into the corridor; and re-entered the apartment by the first antechamber. 

        ‘Cover all the walls and ceilings with brown-packing paper - yes, brown-packing paper - carta straccia,’ the Pope repeated. 

        ‘Stain all the woodwork with a darker shade of brown. The gilding of the cornices can remain as it is. No carpets. These small greenish-blue tiles are clean; and they soothe the eye. Curtains? You may hang very voluminous linen curtains on the doors and windows, greenish-blue linen to match the tiles, and without borders. Furnish all those ante-chambers with rush chairs and oaken tables. Remember that everything is to be plain, without ornament - In this room you may place the usual throne and canopy: and that crucifix from downstairs - (how exquisite the mother-of-pearl figure is!) - and the stools, and twelve large candlesticks - iron or brass - Now this room is to be a workshop. Let Us have a couch and three armchairs, all large and low and well-cushioned, covered with undyed leather. Get some of those large plain wooden tables which are used in kitchens, about three yards long and one and a half wide. Put writing-materials on one of them, there, on the right of the window. Leave the middle of the room empty. Put three small bookcases against that wall and a cupboard here - Make a bedroom of this room. Let the bed be narrow and long, with a husk mattress; and let the back of the head be toward the window. Put one of the large wooden tables here and a dozen rush-chairs -’ (He spoke to the bishop) ‘Do you know that there is no water here at all, except in little jugs?’ (He continued to the Major-domo) ‘Line the walls of this room with greenish-blue tiles, like those on the floor. Put several pegs on both doors. In this corner put a drainpipe covered with a grating; and, six feet above it, let a waterpipe and a tap project rectangularly two feet from the wall. Yes. Six feet from the floor, two feet from the wall; and let there be a constant and copious supply of water - rain water, if possible. Do you understand?’ 

        The Major-domo understood. The Master-of-the-Chamber shivered. 

        ‘And lamps. Get two plain oil-lamps for each room, with copper shades: large lamps, to give a very strong light. Paint over both doors of the bedroom, on the outside of each, Intrantes excommunicantur ipso facto. When We have finished here,’ He addressed the Master-of-the-Chamber again, ‘you will parade your staff; and We will select one person and provide him with a dispensation from that rule as long as he behaves himself well. He will have charge of the bedroom and the sole right to enter it.’ (The Pope passed into the next room: paused, and whispered explicit directions to the Major-domo; and moved on to the farther room.) ‘The clothes-presses from downstairs can be moved into this room. They will serve. And you had better make a door here, so that it can be entered from the corridor.’ (He went on again.) ‘This room is to be the vestry - and this the oratory. Let Us have a plain stone altar and the stations, and the bare necessaries for mass, all of the simplest. Let everything, walls, floor, ceiling, everything, be white - natural white, not painted; and make a door here, also leading into the corridor, a large double door convenient for the faithful who assist at the pontifical mass. The rooms beyond - you will take order about them at a convenient occasion.’ 

        Hadrian and the bishop returned to the pontifical apartments downstairs. 

        ‘Your Holiness will excuse me -’ 

        ‘Yes?’

        ‘- but have You ever contemplated the present situation?’’

        ‘No. Why?’

        ‘Well, Your Holiness seems to have everything cut and dried.’

Hadrian the Seventh by Frederick Rolfe (1904) 

•

The Psychopathology of Hedonistic Abasement.

The interior decorator manqué, His Holiness, claims he has not contemplated the ‘present situation’!? My eye! 
        Good artists borrow, great artists steal. This is almost certainly the case in Rolfe’s theft (from Huysmans) of the Psychopathology of Hedonistic Abasement to colour the idée fixe of his novel‘s eponymous hero, an undisguised self portrait.

The fetishisation of monastic self-denial, we might imagine, also displaces for both authors the anxieties of a co-existing obsession by substituting the psychical pain of libidinous neuroses with a convenient sublimation. 

I will not mention the present day pontifical inclination to shun residence in the apostolic apartments in favour of modest quarters in a sort hostel for visiting clergy, some distance from the papal palace, on the other side of the Vatican city state. 

Product Placement . . . the Keys of Saint Peter are British-Made.

However, Shabby Chic apart, I will note here that, according to Hadrian the Seventh, the Keys of Saint Peter, the symbol of papal authority, are manufactured to the highest specification by London's oldest and most prestigious lock manufacturer.

        ‘A master key, Holiness, I have just got one too.’ The bishop shewed his own ring.
        ‘‘Capital! Where do you get those things made?’
        ‘At a place in Band Street [sic] —Brahma [sic] I think the name is.’  
        ‘Tell your Brahma people to fit all the doors upstairs with locks which have separate keys, . .  and also to send a man who is capable of making an episcopal ring for Us which shall contain a master key to all those locks.‘
        ‘Very well, Holy Father.’

Note: After 103 years in Piccadilly and Bond Street, Bramah Locksmiths have moved to 7 Goodge Place, Fitzrovia, London, W1T 4SF. 
The present Managing Director is a member of the Bramah family.
http://www.bramah.co.uk/Chronological%20History.pdf

Sham Pain.

For The Pallette of Pain, an account of painter Francis Bacon’s use of ‘violence as an activity’, the ‘sham pain’ he proposed for his friends and rendered on canvases, regarded by the cognoscenti as transgressive art – yet expressive of a consummate passive-aggressive masochist with a bent for self-abasement – see also :
https://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.com/2014/05/i-am-serial-killer-diarist-unremarked.html

•

Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Within these disciplines Eisner’s fictions seek to explore variant literary forms derived from psychotherapy and criminology to trace the traumas of characters in extremis. Compulsive recurring sub-themes in her narratives examine sibling rivalry, rivalrous cousinhood, pathological imposture, financial chicanery, and the effects of non-familial male pheromones on pubescence, 

see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

and Listen Close to Me (2011)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html 

and A Bad Case (2014)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/a-bad-case-and-other-adventures-of.html