Lansdowne

As advertised at reference 1, ten days ago to the Lansdowne Club for a piano recital offered by Blüthner of Baker Street in the ballroom there.

The first puzzle being that a Lord Lansdowne, or perhaps Viscount Lansdowne is familiar to me for some reason. First thought was Lillie Langtry, second thought was Osbert Sitwell. Perusal of Wikipedia gets me first to reference 2, for the house, and second to reference 3, the most likely familiar - a marquess rather than a lord or a viscount. However, it turns out that I have confused Viscount Lansdowne with Lord/Count/Earl Londesborough, another very rich man, but a rather more raffish one, a member of the circle of the Prince of Wales with whom Lillie was connected for many years. Their paths appear to have crossed from time to time. While he was much more closely related to Sitwell's mother. The one, that is, who did time in jail because her husband declined to pay her debts - despite his own extravagances.

The house was built in the middle of the eighteenth century, but was mostly let out from the middle of the nineteenth century. Then in 1931, the east front of the house was chopped down to make way for Fitzmaurice Place, connecting Curzon Street to Berkeley Square, with the current facade, presently covered in scaffolding, being built at that time. Some of the east front heritage rooms were dismantled and wound up in museums and such. Wikipedia says that the building has now been sold to Blackstone, but they, on their website at reference 5, admit to various property in the immediate vicinity, but not to this one.

I thought the concert was held in a ballroom, but inspection of references 2 and 4 suggest that it was actually part of the gallery suite, perhaps used for entertainments from time to time.

However, to start at the beginning, no longer being used to going out in the evening, I took a two hour siesta in the afternoon, which made it too late to walk to the station, so I had to take a lift from BH - the wait in the late afternoon traffic on West Hill not being as long as you might at first think. I also took some bread and butter for a snack, the bread being some of the fine white bloomer which I had bought from the bakery in Ewell Village. A chap called Sonder who has been there for a while now, in the shop that was the subject of the invisible mend noticed back at reference 6. He seems to do a modest trade in cakes, rolls and snacks, but I don't get the impression he sells a lot of bread - despite the loaf that I took being rather good. Much better than anything on offer at Sainsbury's or Waitrose.

The train was not quite what I was used to, with the 'press to open' button being in the middle of the doors rather than at the side of the doors. So I press the thing at the side of the doors which is something else altogether and the young chap next to me had to put me right. But a confusion which lives on, as I did the same thing a few days later.

In the event, I took the bread and butter standing at the top of Green Park, leaning up against a suitable railing, not having found a handy bench to sit on at that point. Crossed over to Bolton Street, where I was surprised to find much of the eastern side of the road more or less derelict.

Possibly to do with the massive building works at the Berkeley Square end of the street. That is to say, the massive hole in the ground.

While the front of the club was covered in a very neat sheet of scaffolding.

More hole in the gound.

The crane, bright and tall in the early evening sunlight.

But the square itself was as peaceful as ever, even if there were no nightingales - not that I have any idea what one would have sounded like. Not am I confident that spending quality time with the recording at reference 7 would do the trick: hearing a recording like that is not like being out in the square with all that is going on there. I associate to the difference between looking looking at a careful drawing of a plant in a book of botany and looking at the real thing out in the meadow.

A bit further on this palm tree caught my eye. Asking Google Images today, his first vote goes to Chamaerops humilis of reference 9, with the second to Trachycarpus fortunei of reference 10. I'm not yet convinced by either identification but further study is going to have to wait. Perhaps later on.

Three fancy doormen outside what I think is some kind of casino in the row of what were houses in the second snap above. Fancy doormen which brought to mind Simenon's fascination with the old-style rich of France, whose valets sported waistcoats with black and yellow vertical stripes. I wonder if he got one when he became new-style rich?

Wanting picture of same, I asked Bing using the key 'french valets waistcoats black and yellow vertical stripes' which did not work very well. Google did better, but not very well. I then tried Gemini with 'in his Maigret novels, Simenon goes on about valets to rich French people wearing waistcoats with black and yellow vertical stripes. Do you know anything about that'. His opening gambit was denial: Simenon does not write about that sort of thing. But then, with a bit of prompting he agrees with me. He does it quite nicely, but one does not know whether he has really read his Simenon or whether he is just going with the flow. Just as most, easy-going human interlocutors would.

Pushing on, he does not claim to have access to the text of the whole of the Simenon oeuvre, and he ducked the question about what language his text was in, but he does claim to know all about Simenon and his Maigret stories and is happy to help. I then dig up my copy of 'Les Caves du Majestic' and see how we get on. The answer being that he is very happy to make things up when he does not know, and then to agree with me when I correct him. It looks to me as if synopses of the plots of the Maigret stories were part of what he ingested during training, but not the texts. So atmosphere and general idea yes, details no. Which is fair enough, but it would be better still if he were able to separate fact from fiction in his answers.

Pushing back to Blüthner, in exchange for a modest fee inside the Lansdowne Club, I get the nicely produced programme snapped above and make my way into what looks like a ballroom of old, very Jane Austen, not big, but probably rather grander than what she was used to. A glass of wine while one waited. Seats for maybe a hundred, of which maybe two thirds were taken by the off. Some danger of my being mistaken for a munificent geriatric.

The master of ceremonies for Blüthner was terribly young, not long out of school by the look and sound of him, but to be fair, he did well enough. As did Alex Arenare: a bit loud and fast, but that is allowed when one is young and I quite enjoyed it on this occasion. Brahms Op.118, Liszt Sonetto 104 del Petraca from Années de Pèlinerage II, Bach/Busoni BMV 1004, Chopin Ballade No.1, Op.23.

The piano actually used did not look as grand as the one on the front of the programme. Perhaps foolishly, I was a bit diffident about going up front and inspecting it closely enough to score - but I didn't so I can't. I might also say that I was expecting wandering Blüthner salespeople to chat one up, but they didn't.

I also discovered that there was a Salle d'Armes in the basement, but I was a bit diffident about taking a look there too. Maybe it would have been locked!

Onto the tube and onto the Half Way House at Earlsfield where I took a little Valpolicella for a change. The dolls' house and games by the main door seemed to have gone. On the other hand there were a fair number of dogs, I fell into conversation and ended up staying longer and drinking more than I was expecting. But all good clean fun.

PS: I was reminded in the course of the outing that Samsung autocorrect can be a pain. But not so much of a pain that one turns it off. A bit like the spelling and grammar checking in Microsoft's Word.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/05/piano-83.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lansdowne_House.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Petty-Fitzmaurice,_5th_Marquess_of_Lansdowne.

Reference 4: https://househistree.com/houses/lansdowne-house-1.

Reference 5: https://www.blackstone.com/.

Reference 6: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2014/09/invisible-mend.html.

Reference 7: https://youtu.be/HVZVm_ReDe0.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valpolicella.

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamaerops.

Reference 10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trachycarpus_fortunei.