Patum Peperium

Another Conversation

Hellfire Club

FLG

Previously...

There is a knock on FLG's door.

Mrs. FLG: Who do you think is out in this weather?

FLG: Probably those idiot Feds again.

FLG opens the door.

FLG: Speak of the devil. Good morning Agents Fitz and Mallory. What brings you out in the snowstorm?

Fitz: They've disappeared him.

FLG: Did what to whom?

Mallory: Try to keep up. They disappeared NBS.

FLG: They didn't disappear him.

Fitz: When was the last time you heard from him?

 

FLG: Christmas eve.

Mallory: That makes perfect sense. They got to him on Christmas. What was the last thing you heard from him?

FLG: Email's right here. He wrote, "Non Papist prayers headed your way for the health of Miss FLG and Mrs. FLG." Very nice of him. I was extremely concerned at the time.

Fitz and Mallory nod.

Fitz: That's it then.

FLG: Why can I never understand what you are talking about?

Fitz: We haven't been able to find NBS since Christmas Day. We think Sir Basil took him out on the way to visit you at the hospital. 

Mallory: We're not sure of the exact timeline, but he dropped off our radar after that. We weren't concerned about you, of course.

FLG: You think Basil whacked NBS, and you aren't concerned that he shows up at the maternity ward where my wife and baby are? 

Fitz: It's a heretic thing. Killing an Episcopalian, that's one thing. Taking down a heretic? That's another ballgame altogether. They're way out of practice.

FLG: Maybe, but Baz is old school with military training. He thinks the Spanish Inquisition was too timid. I think he called it a pillow fight. His nickname for Tomás de Torquemada is "the guy with the velvet gloves." 

Fitz: Yes, and you are a pirate and bull fighter with a huge heretical streak. They won't take you out without thinking long and hard about it. Plus, you were trained by the Jesuits. Who knows what you know. You might know enough to take down everything. Sure, they say the Jebbies are a different religion, but they know enough. Too much really. 

FLG: Are you concerned for my safety or not? Before you'd come by telling me to be careful. Now, you are entirely too blasé for my tastes. 

Mallory: Shouldn't have called me a monkey.

FLG: Correction. Chimp.

Fitz: Enough. We still want you to wear that wire.

Miss FLG begins crying.

FLG: I've got to get her. I'm sure you can find your own way out. Especially you, monkey boy.

Mallory: Hey, you said chimp!

.

That Damn Cowboy, II

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

Previously...

Cowboys were such a glut on the market, many dreamed of just getting inside a studio, a chance to be seen.  Impressing a secretary generally counted for little. But Valeria Belletti used every bit of influence she could to give her crush a break.  When she discovered Goldwyn was not interested in her opinion, she worked on everyone else, starting with the women.  She raved to Frances Marion and to Frances Goldwyn before Robert McIntyre, head of casting, and finally to Henry King.  The director ran Cooper's audition reel and said to McIntyre, "At least he can ride a horse."

Cooper, who had been loitering outside the casting office, got to meet King and said he wanted to play the role of Abe Lee in Barbara Worth. The director explained that the role had been filled but offered to take him to Nevada as one of the background riders.  When asked to list his previous credits on the Goldwyn questionnaire he filled out on June 13, 1926, he listed only that he had the "Male Lead" in Lightin' Wins.  He failed to note the lead was actually a dog.

Days before the Barbara Worth company moved to Nevada, Henry King had to film a scene between Barbara Worth and Abe Lee that requited at least the body of the actor.  Harold Goodwin had still not shown up.  King put Gary Cooper in Abe's costume. "All you have to do "is keep your eyes on Vilma Banky." 

  The Hungarian Rhapsody (with Ronald Coleman), Vilma Banky

From eight in the morning until noon, no matter where Vilma went -- "whether we were shooting or not" -- his eyes stayed glued to her. Cooper played a few more scenes with his back to the camera, until King thought to himself, "if he can do the scene at the hotel -- where he rides across the desert for twenty-four hours to bring the news to Mr. Worth -- then I'm not going to wait on the man from Warner Brothers."

King met Cooper on the set the next morning at seven and rehearsed him for his first big scene:

...the first thing I did was talk to the boy.  I wet his face and covered it with fuller's earth, and I walked and talked. Tired--tired---tired.  That was my subject.  Tired--tired--tired.  I walked around with him and I talked about how one feels when one is exhausted.  Why I wasn't exhausted, I'll never know.  I kept him walking in between scenes, then I'd go back on the set.  When I'd rehearsed those people, I'd go back to him.  I worked him an hour before I asked him on the set.

Just as King was about to shoot the scene, Irving Sindler, the property master, announced that Mr. Goldwyn -- who respected the set as the director's domain -- wanted to see him.  King went to the other side of a huge black curtain he had mounted to block off the playing area.  "Henry, the producer said, "when you're spending a dollar of my money, you're spending a dollar of your money.  You're going to put that damn cowboy in one of the biggest parts in the picture."

King said he had no choice.  They had finished every scene up to their leaving for Nevada, and waiting for another actor would only cost more money than the attempt with Cooper. "This is a big dramatic scene," Goldwyn insisted, "and no damn cowboy can play it."  He buzzed off, "mad as a hornet."  King called for "action" on the set and signaled Sinlder to tap Cooper off camera. "I didn't think he was going to make it," recalled the propman more than fifty years later.  "Cooper could barely knock on the door. The knock was so quiet they could hardly hear it on the other side."  Then Coleman stood up, opened the door and revealed "the most pathetic case I've ever seen in my life."  The actor gasped his line as he fell to the floor. Coleman grabbed him just inches from smacking his face.  King called "Cut," and for George Barnes and his assistant -- a twenty-one year old named Gregg Toland -- to move in with their equipment right away for Cooper's close-up.

Irving Sindler popped onto the set, announcing that Mr. Goldwyn wished to see the director again.  In exasperation. King walked around the huge black mantle. "Henry," Goldwyn said, "you're always trying to tease me. Why didn't you tell me that man was a great actor?"  King said, "Because he isn't.  He's a cowboy from Montana."

"Henry," Goldwyn disagreed, "he's the greatest actor I have ever seen in my life."

"How do you know," King asked.

"Because I was peeping through a hole in the curtain."

- Goldwyn, A. Scott Berg

,

 

That Damn Cowboy

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

Other than a sandstorm blowing away the Barbara Hotel one afternoon before its cue, the greatest mishap in the making of Barbara Worth occurred at Warner Brothers in Hollywood.  Ernst Lubitsch ran over schedule on his film The Honeymoon Express and did not release an actor named Harold Goodwin, who was cast in the role of Abe Lee.  There would have been a great to-do had not [Sam] Goldwyn's secretary not ridden to the rescue.

Valeria Belletti would have quit her job months earlier were it not for the perquisites. She especially enjoyed the premieres she often got to attend and chatting with the stars who dropped in the office. She was constantly falling for the handsome actors.  That summer, while walking on the lot, she caught sight of a cowboy who took her breath away.

He was six feet two inches tall, weighed a lean one hundred and eighty pounds,  had a rugged face softened by big blue sensitive eyes, a sensual mouth and an unruly hank of brown hair. He had been born in Helena in 1901, the second son of a Montana State Supreme Court justice. He later spent several years in England, where his mother convalesced from an illness, then returned to his family's ranch.  In 1921, he entered Grinnell College in Iowa; summers he was a guide at Yellowstone National Park.  In 1924, the young man's father resigned from the bench to administer the estates of two cousins in California. His son, named Frank, joined him and his mother there. 

After weeks of odd jobs, Frank encountered two friends from Montana ambling down Hollywood Boulevard in cowboy garb.  They told him they picked up as much as ten dollars a day riding and performing stunts in westerns.  The two friends began to take him along on their rounds.  They introduced him to casting directors and moseyed around Gower Street in Hollywood -- the section called "Poverty Row," where scores of small motion picture outfits regularly rounded up herds of drugstore cowboys to appear as extras in their cheap two- and five-reel westerns. He did have one great edge over the thousands of other desperados who stalked the streets of Hollywood: Women fell at his feet.

 

A stunt riding actress named Marilyn Mills got him cast in a picture she made in 1925, called Tricks.  She thought he looked interesting enough to recommend him to a woman named Nan Collins, who had worked in studio casting before becoming a motion picture agent.  Miss Collins thought she could scare up work for him if he would invest seventy-five dollars in a demonstration reel -- a screen test that showed off his equestrian skills. "He came down Poverty Row riding a horse, pulled the horse to a stop, made a very gallant dismount, threw the reins over the post, entered the saloon door, turned around, looked at the camera and walked in," was the way Henry King remembered it.  Because several local actors already shared the cowboy's name, Nan Collins urged Judge Cooper's son Frank to adopt the name of her hometown in Indiana -- Gary.

To be continued...

.

It Happened One Night

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

 

There was something, indeed, about It Happened One Night that defied description or analysis, even after Capra made the film.  For all the merits of its story and screenplay, and Capra's masterful direction, It Happened One Night might never have achieved its great success without Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert.  They are so apt a team that it is impossible to imagine anyone else in those roles.  Yet the characters were written with other actors in mind. 

 

 

Capra's first choice for the male lead was Robert Montgomery, whom Louis B. Mayer refused to loan to Columbia....After MGM's Myrna Loy rejected the lead female role (she explained later that "they sent me the worst script ever, completely different from the one they shot") Miriam Hopkins and Margaret Sullavan also turned it down.  Then Capra went to Constance Bennett, who wanted to buy it for herself, and to Bette Davis, who wanted to do it but was not allowed to by Warners, which was punishing her for insisting on being loaned to RKO for Of Human Bondage. [Harry] Cohn suggested Loretta Young, bu Capra Was not interested.  Then the studio cheif urged him to cast Carole Lombard, whose name he had brought up at the beginning.  Capra offered her the role, through Riskin, her current beau.  She turned it down, however, becasue of a conflict with the schedule of her next film, Bolero.

For a while the future of the film seemed to hang in the balance.[...]

 

It Happened One Night was rescued from the limob of unmade scripts by Louis B. Mayer.  After he refused to lend Montgomery, Capra asked for Gable. Cohn complained that Gable was not the "first-class" kind of actor Mayer had been promised Columbia, but Mayer and Capra prevailed. Gable's career had been faltering, and Mayer wanted to teach him a lesson for making what the MGM chief considered extravagant money demands.  So he sent him to Columbia for a mere $10,000.

 

Casting Colbert was Cohn's idea. After making For the Love of Mike in 1927, Colbert and Capra had "ended up hating each other," Joe Walker recalled. Colbert turned up her nose at Columbia's offer.  She had just finished a picture and was planning a ski vacation in Sun Valley, Idaho.  She also found the script unappealing.  She was accustomed to Paramount's glamourous settings and gowns and did not relish the prospect of roughing it on a bus at such a declasse studio as Columbia.

They were desperate enough to pay her $50,000 for a film whose total production cost was $325,000.  Not only that, her contract called for additional payments if the film went into overtime.  Colbert insisted she only took the part "mostly to work with Clark."  But Gable complained afterward, "She made more in overtime than I made for the picture."

It was worth it.  Gable and Colbert were a fresh romantic team that would guarantee box-office interest even if the studio thought the story would not. [...]

Though It Happened One Night was criticized by some for its supposed lack of social consciousness, it hardly could have been such an enormous success if it had been nothing but escapism.  The appeal of the film for the mass audience in America of 1934 was the profoundly satisfying and encouraging spectacle of the proletarian hero humbling, educating, and finally winning over the "spoiled brat" heiress, a story that not only provided a fantasy of upward mobility, both sexual and economic, but, more important represented the leveling of class barriers in the Depression.

Though Peter Warne in the Adam's story shares a common touch with Gable's character in the movie, he is not an out-of-work reporter in the story but a college-educated chemist reduced to odd jobs and frequent unemployment.  He is secretly one of nature's aristocrats, which blurs the class distinctions in his romantic pursuit of the runaway heiress. According to Capra, the script changed Peter to a highbrow artist, but after several actresses turned it down, Myles Connolly (a former newspaper reporter himself) suggested transforming Peter into the hard-boiled but idealistic reporter desperate to win his job back. [...]

  

Gable's Peter is exasperated by the snobbery of Colbert's Ellen Andrews and too intimidated by class barriers to make anything more than a tentative romantic move until her Wall Street tycoon father (Walter Connolly) gives his approval. Burned before by his romantic view of women, he tries to protect himself emotionally by thinking of Ellie as "just a headline," a ticket back to his old job in New York.  He spends most of the time criticizing her for her wealth and privilege (teaching her how to dunk doughnuts, he scolds, "Twenty millions and you don't know how to dunk!"), but he is also criticizing himself for being attracted to someone from her class. And he is blind to Ellie's true personality, which is closer to his feminine ideal ("somebody that's real -- somebody that's alive")

Riskin and Capra portrayed the rich much more sympathetically in It Happens One Night than they did in Platinum Blonde, perhaps because they themselves were becoming wealthy men.  As Robert Stebbins wrote in his New Theatre review, It Happened One Night "was based on the notion dear to the hearts of a people reared in the school of wish fulfillment -- that if you stepped up to a grumpy plutocrat, who, of course, had a heart of gold despite it all, bawled him out, told him his daughter was a spoiled brat, he'd at once grow enamored of you and you'd come into his millions." There was an element of truth in that, yet the film's real dramatic climax is not the wedding scene in which Ellie deserts her decadent fiance at the altar to rejoin Peter but the preceding scene between Peter and her father, in which Peter presents the old man with a bill for $39.60, the exact sum it cost him to bring her from Miami to New York.  Her father is astounded and delighted when Peter disclaims any interest in the $10,000 reward offered for her return.  This demonstration of integrity is what makes Ellie finally realize that he is sincere in his feelings towards her.  She yearns for the simpler life Peter offers ("I'd change places with a plumber's daughter any day"), and much of the humor in It Happened One Night comes from watching the heiress being reduced to living on a subsistence allowance, strictly regulated by Peter, whose ability to stretch a dollar struck a sympathetic chord with the Depression audience.[...]

Despite their growing intimacy and partnership on the journey, they continually suspect each other of deceit, Ellie that Peter is only after her money or the reward, Peter that Ellie is just using him to get back to New York.  The root of their distrust is class difference, which Peter symbolizes with the Walls of Jericho, the blanket he pins up to separate their beds in the motel room.  Though he does so sarcastically, he erects the Walls more in self-protection than for any other reason: he is too insecure about his class status to believe that a woman from Ellie's background could love him or that a romance could last if she did.

It was a theme Capra knew well. 

It Happened One Night, like The Bitter Tea of General Yen, deals with the tantalizing lure of forbidden sexuality. Capra saw Colbert's character as the personification of all the rich, "classy," stuck-up women who ever gave him the brush-off.  "She wasn't looking for any man, she wasn't looking for any romance," said Capra, [...] But he thought Colbert had "the best figure of any actress in Hollywood," and demonstrated his appreciation of it by showing her stopping traffic with a shapely leg in the hitchhiking scene and by having her do a discreet striptease behind the Walls of Jericho.  She had to be coaxed into displaying her leg and she did not want to strip as far as he wanted for the Walls of Jericho.  Capra later recognized the scene he filmed was more suggestive as a result of her discretion.  In an article published shortly after the film's release, he wrote, "I do not argue against sex in pictures, provided it is handled cleverly.  But there is more sex in a flash of a pair of ankles than there is in a scene of a thousand bare legs; more allurement in what is not shown than in that which is blatantly and crudely smeared on the scene to the point of nausea."

There were some revealingly adolescent high jinks on the set during the shooting of the Walls of Jericho scene. "Colbert was in bed, and Uncle Frank hollered that he was going to attack her," Joe Finochio remembered.  "He jumped on her jokingly and rolled over her."

When there was a delay in shooting of the scene, Colbert, waiting on her side of the blanket, asked what was wrong.

"Well, there seems to be a slight problem here," Capra said, as she came around the side of the Walls. "Clark wants to know what can be done about this."

Gable lay on his back under the covers, smirking, with a large bulge rising from between his legs. He had taken a prop potato masher and propped it under the blanket.

"Awww!" Colbert laughed, "You guys!"

- Frank Capra, The Catastrophe of Success, Joseph McBride.

 

 

It Happened One Afternoon

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

Many moons ago I was invited to a proper afternoon tea with very proper ladies. Our hostess was from a Northwest family with strong ties in Washington D.C.  Since the make-up of the party, myself excluded, was the over-sixty, ladies-who-lunch-at-the-club crowd, the conversation naturally tended towards the discussion of physical ailments. In an attempt to discuss more pleasant things I turned to our hostess and asked,

"Have I ever told you about my tom?" 

"Your what?" asked our hostess.

"My tom cat" I repeated. And then, taking advantage of the stunned silence, I continued. "Well, he's not mine really. He's a feral cat with a little common law family residing in the garage of the home behind us.  He doesn't live with them; but he stops by every day on his rounds to say hello to the wife and kids, plus eat the food I put out for all of them. Some days, if the weather is nice, he and the wife will sit together on the stone wall and watch their kittens play. All things considered, Clark Gable is a good father.

"Clark Gable?" one of the ladies inquired, emerging from the stunned silence.

"Oh, yes.  This cat looks just like Clark Gable." 

"How can an alley cat look just like Clark Gable?" another asked.

"Oh, simple.  Really. He's black & white. And the black markings on his face are just like Clark's facial hair.  I just love Clark Gable, don't you?"

"Clark Gable the cat?  Or Clark Gable the actor?"

 "The actor."

"Phssh," our hostess said with a loud burst. "Why, before Clark made it in Hollywood he worked for my uncle on his ranch."

"Clark Gable worked for your uncle?"

"On his ranch." she answered with a nod.

"Clark Gable worked on a ranch?  He was a real cowboy? Not just one in films?"

 "Cowboy?" sniffed my hostess. She quickly amended my misstatement." He was a dirty ranch hand."

"Well, aren't ranch hands cowboys in a way?  They ride horses, chew tobacco...rope steers?"

"He lived in a bunk house on my Uncle's ranch with all the other ranch hands."

"He did?"

"Yes."

"Wow, he was a cowboy then.  I bet he was a marvelous cowboy. I mean, he had to be -- he was Clark Gable."

"He wasn't Clark Gable then. He was dirty."

"Do you think Clark Gable ever shook your uncle's hand?"

"Do I think he shook his hand?  What?  Of course, they must have shaken hands."

"Surely you must have shaken your uncle's hand?"

"What? Of course I shook my uncle's hand.  He was my uncle."

I jumped out of my seat and stood before our hostess. "Then would you shake my mine please?"

 "Why?"

"Because if you shake my hand then I can tell everyone that I shook the hand of a woman who shook the hand of a man who shook Clark Gable's hand."

The entire tea party burst out laughing, including our hostess. Then she extended her hand and we did a firm cowboy shake.  We were still laughing when the maid came in with a fresh tray of tea sandwiches and cakes. The maid stopped quietly at her mistress's side, waiting for her laughter to subside before receiving the slight nod of approval that signaled she could begin serving.  Our hostess, after dabbing her eyes with her lace-edged handkerchief, took a look at the tea tray and said to her maid in an audible whisper, 

"Oh, the heck with those. Bring out the drinks tray, please."

The tea party broke out in another gale of laughter, including the maid.

To be contiuned...

 

The Fruit Didn't Fall Far From The Tree

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

Last week, CNN's gay anchor, Anderson Cooper caused quite the stir. In the midst of dismissing those who attended the Tax Day Tea Parties, he (on air) dropped a vulgar vulgarity.  How could a cool, sophisticated, and enlightened gay guy who went to Yale be so coarse? the (common) people wondered. But no one, even the common, should have been surprised. Anderson learned everything he knows at his mother's knee:

Gloria Vanderbilt, iconic New Yorker has gone from poor little rich girl to dirty old lady.

Gloria has been famous since the word was invented.  She's slept with everyone, married the others.  Now, at the ripe age of 85, Anderson Cooper's mother has reinvented herself again -- as the writer of pure, elegant unadulterated smut.

Smelling salts, please. This gives me the vapors. 

Her novel, "Obsession: And Erotic Tale," out in June from Ecco books, has found its way into my hot little hands, where it's burning a hole. Packed with four-letter words I don't think my mother knows, as well as innovative tips for employing garden vegetables, there's not much I can print.  But here goes...

For those of you not up on the inconsequential slice of American history that is called the Vanderbilt family, vulgarity has always been a family trait since their days on Staten Island.  In fact even though the Vanderbilts had amassed a huge family fortune, built stately homes on the island of Manhattan, had liveried servants, sent all the boys to Yale, heck even built buildings at Yale (oh that reminds me -chances are exceptionally good that Anderson Cooper is not actually intelligent enough to have attended Yale but got in thanks to his family's largess -ask him what his SAT scores were if you get the chance.), New York polite society would still have nothing to do with them.  The Vanderbilts were only finally (reluctantly) accepted by New York polite society when the scheming  Alva Vanderbilt tossed a $250,000 fancy dress ball on the same day Mrs. Astor held her annual ball.  Alva, always knowing how to toss a gaunlet down purposely did not invite the reigning debutante of the day; Carrie Astor.  Carrie was heartbroken as she and 3 of her fellow debs had planned to perform a quadrille with their hair adorned with the latest invention, the electric lightbulb.  Carrie's distress caused her mother, the matriarch of New York society, Mrs. Astor to not only rescheduled her annual ball but to finally accept the Vanderbilts as part of their social set.

Coercion is also a Vanderbilt family trait. Anderson Cooper and his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt spring from a branch of the Vanderbilts that if one could choose to spring from, one probably wouldn't choose. Anderson's grandfather, to cast him in his best light, is the dissolute Reggie Vanderbilt.  Reggie decided at an early age -like 12, that he was not made for working.  He was made for spending.  But his family sent him to Yale anyway.  I don't know if Reggie was caught cheating and this was why he never graduated.  But cheating is a possibility as it is also another Vanderbilt family trait.  Hey, you don't earn the nickname"Robber Baron" for nothing. While still at Yale, on the night he came into his father's inheritance of 7 million Reggie threw a party that cost him $70,000. By the time Reggie Vanderbilt was 42, he was long ago divorced, had blown through his 7 million, was suffering all sorts of maladies thanks to his insatiable appetite for race horses, gambling, loose women and brandy.  By this time New York Society had become so insane that Reggie Vanderbilt, though just 2 short years away from a self-induced death of exploding esophagus, was still considered the most eligible bachelor of the day. This distinction might give a window to the sane of today as to how it can be that Reggie's grandson, the gay Anderson Cooper, is often touted as a most eligible bachelor about town.

But I digress.  It came as little surprise that Reggie's path was eventually crossed by one of the "Magical Morgans". The "Magical Morgans were 17 year-old twin sisters, daughters of an American diplomat, who hit New York Society with the open intention of marrying wealthy men even though they were, due to a lack of funds, housed in a Catholic convent in Harlem. Anderson Cooper's great aunt, Thelma"Magical" Morgan married first. And rather beautifully though her wealthy groom was divorced and 10 years her senior.  After that marriage quickly went the way of sex before marriage with convent-educated girls did, Thelma married an English aristocrat and became a Lady though she had lost all right of being considered one. About 3 years into that marriage, after bearing a son, Thelma took up with David, the sexually-dysfunctional Prince of Wales.  She somehow maintained his affections for 5 years. Then Thelma decided to have a dear friend look after him while she visited her sister in the States for all of 3 months. She returned to England to be handed the lemon by the sexually dysfunctional David (ouch) as he, the future King of England was now firmly in the clutches of her dear friend, Mrs. Simpson.  England went to the brink and almost had a constitutional crisis. Thelma went to the brink and had a crisis.  Like the former Lady Diana Spencer did after she too was thrown off by a Prince of Wales, Thelma took up with a Muslim, Prince Aly Khan.  But it was short-lived. Unlike Lady Diana Spencer Thelma's life wasn't over when the affair was.  She lived to a ripe old age to be buried in a twin plot alongside of her twin sister, Anderson Cooper's grandmother, Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt.

Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt was 17 when she met the eligible and dissolute bachelor of New York society, Reggie Vanderbilt. After knowing each other just a few days, they decided to marry. Reggie's older brother, Cornelius Vanderbilt, had years before married the beautiful Grace Wilson.  Grace Wilson's older brother had married Carrie Astor, the debutante whose disappointment all those year earlier had paved the way for the Vanderbilts to finally be accepted by New York Society but this connection won little favor in the eyes of the elder Vanderbilts.  Grace was a few years older than Cornelius and she was part of Edward (Bertie) VII's "Marborough Set".  Bertie called Grace his "pet". Well that pet name was enough evidence of Grace's true character for Cornelius's mother "Alice of The Breakers".  She was against the match and Cornelius was disinherited when he finally married Grace Wilson.   When Gloria "Magical" Morgan took up with Reggie, "Alice of the Breakers" was convinced Gloria was another just another Grace Wilson and was against their match.  Since Reggie had gone through the fortune left him, he was not free to marry Gloria without his mother's approval. To make the marriage come about, Gloria Morgan took the unusual (demeaning) step of visiting Mrs. Vanderbilt's personal physician to have him declare in writing that unlike Grace Wilson, Gloria was still a virgin. So while Gloria came into the Vanderbilt marriage with a clean bill of health, she left the House of Vanderbilt declared contaminated goods.  Reggie, even though he and Gloria had brought a child into the world, "Little Gloria" (the Gloria who now writes dirty books) he was unable to give up his reckless living.  He passed away when Little Gloria was little more than one years old.  Over time reports from of the widow Gloria's immoral living from the widow Gloria's own mother were passed on to Reggie's sister, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney of museum fame.  Gertrude decided her late brother's child needed her protection. With Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt's mother as her ally, Gertrude Whtiney took the beautiful widow to court to prove her unfit as a mother and win custody. It took 3 years of a most public and sensational case but eventually the deed was done. 

A sad day for all involved.

As anyone who owns racehorses understands, it's all about breeding. Anderson Cooper with his little yet remarkable on air display of vulgarity is showing what little breeding he really has.

>

Thank God For Sir Basil Seal

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

I'll admit it.  It's been frustrating to be a woman for the last few years. Well, frustrating if you're a normal, healthy woman with a normal, healthy appreciation of all things manly. And the source of the frustration? President Obama, the dream world leader, is not a man.  

He's a girl.  

President Obama talks like girl, thinks like a girl, eats like a girl, spends money like a girl, fights like a girl, and is as self-centered as any self-respecting girl. He's so self-centered, he thinks he's God. Which is odd because God, by definition, is the opposite of self-centered.

In other words, God is not a girl.  He's a man and He gave us a man to prove this. No, I'm not talking about Jesus Christ; I'm talking about Sir Basil Seal. Unlike Jesus, Sir Basil does not wear sandals (thank God), nor can he walk on water. But there are days when a woman could almost start believing Sir Basil does.  Well, at least the women who read Patum Peperium.  Longtime female readers will recall that Sir Basil is the Headmaster of Sir Basil's School for Cads (TM)  (SBSSfC).  The President of France Nicholas "Sarko" Sarkozy is counted among SBSSfC's illustrious alumns.  Sarko, holding true to his hard-won '"man" status, has decided to show the world just what a girl President Obama is.

Thank God.  

Now, before we go any further, one needs to need to accept the reality that most graduates of SBSSfC are sex mad. Sarko, a Catholic cad by birth, tried to do something that rarely works for cads, even in France.  He tried (twice) to be both married and a cad. But that's an endeavor best left to the professionals; the English. Happily for Sarko he's figured out how to make the married cad thingummy work: He married his equal.  His sexual equal that is; the beautiful and slept-with supermodel turned songstress Carla Bruni. 

 

   

Ladies go first is one of the most important rubrics at Sir Basil Seal's School for Cads. Holding fast to his classical education, Sarkozy had Carla go first in exposing Obama for the girl he really is.  A few weeks ago the world press was set for the famous first kiss between Obama, who regularly sends tingles up the leg of the NYTimes 5th columnist David Brooks, and France's First Lady who regularly sends tingles up the leg of columns of men by composing sweet little love songs like "Tu Es Ma" (tranduction par moi) :

You are my dope I like your eyes, your hair, your aroma Come therefore that I taste you that I smoke you You are my nice love, my anagram You are my dope More lethal than the Afghan heroin More dangerous than the white Colombian You are my resolution in my soft problem You are my dope To you all my sighs, my poems For you all my requests it is the moon To you my disfavour and my destiny...

As we of the better element are all too keenly aware, all the world, until recently, was a stage. Now it's a photo op. With camera shutters ready to immortalize the big moment, Carla did not bestow a French presidential wife's kiss upon Barack Obama. Instead, she shook his hand.  

Poor First Lady Obama. To have her husband outed by a woman who once found the slender-hipped, lip-pouting, and cocaine snorting Mick Jagger man enough to share her bed has got to sting.  Actually Carla probably slept with Sting too. This has to be another presidential first for our First Couple of Liars.

But I digress. Nicholas Sarkozy, not to be outdone by his wife, has told a French newspaper exactly what he thinks of President Obama:

"Journalists have no memory! In 2000, George W. Bush was so popular that Jacques Chirac had arranged to dine with him before he was inaugurated. " 

Regarding Obama's return to France this June 6th to observe the 65th anniversary of the Normandy Landing, Sarkozy said,

"I will ask him to walk on the Channel, and he will... "

Ask Obama to walk on water?  Why Sarko, you magnificent cad.  You read Sir Basil's book...

Meanwhile...

Susan Boyle Is Much More Mildred Lathbury Than Jane Eyre

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

'You must be Miss Lathbury,' she said abruptly.  'I've seen your name by one of the door-bells."

'Yes, I live in the flat above yours. I do hope you're getting comfortably settled in.  Moving is such a business, isn't it? It seems to take so long to get everything straight.  Some essential thing like a teapot or a frying-pan is always lost...'  Platitudes flowed easily from me, perhaps because, with my parochial experience, I know myself to be capable of dealing with most of the stock situations or even the great moments of life - birth, marriage, death, the successful jumble sale, the garden fete spoilt by bad weather... "Mildred is such a help to her father,' people used to say after my mother had died.

'It will be nice to have somebody else in the house,' I ventured, for during the last year of the war my friend Dora Caldicote and I had been the only occupants, and I had been quite alone for the past month since Dora had left to take up a teaching post in the country.

'Oh, well, I don't suppose I shall be in very much,' said Mrs. Napier quickly.

'Oh, no,' I said, drawing back; 'neither shall I.' In fact, I was very often in, but I understood her reluctance to pledge herself to anything that might be a nuisance or a tie.  We were, superficially at any rate, a very unlikely pair to become friendly.  She was fair-haired and pretty, gaily dressed in corduroy trousers and a bright jersey, while I, mousy and rather plain anyway, drew to these qualities with my shapeless overall and fawn skirt.  Let me hasten to add that I am not at all like Jane Eyre, who must have given hope to so many plain women who tell their stories in the first person, nor have I thought of myself as being like her.  -Barbara Pym, Excellent Women

One cannot help but watch Susan Boyle and think Barbara Pym would be pleased...

(La!  Susan really is an eccentric excellent woman.)

Roping The Dopes

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

 

My little fuzzball, Rush Limbaugh...

Believe it or not dear readers, there is something you do not know about me. But, thanks to, as Basil so perfectly described him -"the Child-in-Chief"- or President Barack Obama, the time has come for me to finally come clean with you; Rush Limbaugh and I are pals.

Yup.

I love Rush.  And more importantly (to me at least) the feeling he has told me, with his 18+ million listeners listening, is mutual. I am the one caller to his radio program where even his own rules do not apply. (How's that for hot stuff?) Anytime Rush thinks I have something to say that would make good radio, he puts me on the air. Because as those who are on intimate terms with the Rush Limbaugh radio program understand, his show is all about good radio.  

The Child-in-Chief, President Obama is not on intimate terms with Rush or his radio program. He's on intimidating terms with both. Early into what is obviously now shaping up to be his one and only term President Obama decided Rush Limbaugh's radio program needed to be done in if he, Obama hoped to have a second term. So, holding true to his Chicago community organizer roots, President Obama used the power of his office, that would be the Oval Office, in the very first few days he occupied it to push through his own (very) personal stimulus plan for the Rush Limbaugh Show. Except the stimulus President Obama was looking for was not an increase in Rush's audience numbers but a decrease. A decrease as in no more listeners. The good news is that  before President Barack Obama's Very Targeted Stimulus Program For The Rush Limbaugh Show (PBOVTSPFTRLS) was underway, Rush's audience was somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-20 million strong. Since PBOVTSPFTRLS was passed on to Obama's friends in the media, Rush's audience is now somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 million. In other words,  thanks to President Obama's skillful community organizing talent, Rush has seen a net gain of nearly 10 million in his listening audience in less than 100 days.

* Sigh *

If only we could get Obama to use the same tactics on the economy he used on Rush. Ah well, where was I ?  Ah yes, Obama's tactics. Well polls are always a key part of any of Obama's tactics, aren't they?  So it was no surprise to see a few weeks into PBOVTSPFTRLS, out popped out a poll indicating the Rush Limbaugh radio program suffered a large gender gap.  Men loved him.  Women hated him. ( Is it any surprise, dear readers, that I would be found where the men are?)  So, Rush being a fun man, decided to have some fun with this.  He held his first-ever EIB (Excellence in Broadcasting) Network Female Summit, complete with breakout groups and homework assignments.  The goal was for him to learn why he, Rush, has such a large gender gap. On the day of the EIB Female Summit Rush gave out the instruction that only women who do not like him were to call in. Then they were free to tell him why they do not like him.  But remember, dear readers, as this is key when it comes to Rush and me - the rules do not apply.  Since I know why a certain type of women -ie; most- do not like Rush I rang up Mr. Snerdley (Rush's call screener) and told him what I knew. As a result, I was the final participant on Day 1 of the EIB Network Female Summit :

That's me talking to Rush...

Janet in _________.  Welcome.

CALLER:  Hi, Rush.  I have three things you can do to close your gender gap by at least 15 points.

RUSH:  Thank you.  I want to hear what they are.

CALLER:  Okay, get your pencil.  First one.  Make women believe you care more about them than their own husbands do.

RUSH:  Hmm.

CALLER:  Second one.  You need to project an air of vulnerability.  You need to let women think they can roll you.

RUSH:  Well, wait a minute.  Rule me?

CALLER:  Roll.

RUSH:  Roll or rule?

CALLER:  Roll.  Well, one and the same.  One and the same, very clever!  You can do this!  It's not beyond you!

RUSH:  All right, so I gotta make women believe I care more about them than their own husbands do, and I am vulnerable, I can be hurt.

CALLER:  Yes.  They can roll you.  And you can do that by just marrying an Ivy League woman from Chicago, Ivy League-educated woman from Chicago, that's how most Democrats do it.  And the third thing to do is stop saying abortion is the sacrament to liberalism.  You can still say that liberalism is a religion because women like to think they're religious, just drop the sacrament of abortion.

RUSH:  Janet, you're trying to emasculate me here.  You're trying to get me to shred every vestige of my identity here, to act like I can be hurt?  Everybody can be hurt, but vulnerable?  Vulnerable?  Leaders run around acting like they're vulnerable?  I get the point, I get the point, you gotta be like Bill Clinton. (doing Clinton impression) "That means you gotta be able to lie.  I don't know how to lie."

Rush is a funny guy, isn't he? As you can read I did not begin my call with any ditto language indicating I was a fan of the program.  (For those who are not listeners to the program, "Dittos Rush" is code for I-love-your-show. It does not mean what President Obama would tell you he thinks it means "I-believe -everything-you-tell-me-because-I-am-a-mindnumb-robot.) This was done on purpose as my call was a classic rope-a-dope for the enemies of Rush. Since I was flying under false colors of a woman who did not like Rush by participating in the Female Summit if you were not a regular listener to the show (the regulars know me), you would have (hopefully) fallen for our rope-a-dope.  

Take a look at who fell for it (all excerpts - key parts in red):

Dopes No. 1

The Lollipop Guild

or

 The Daily Kos

The ranking head of the Republican party, Rush Limbaugh, was shocked to find that in a recent survey by the firm Public Policy Polling, only 37% of women had a favorable opinion of him. [...] Being a diplomat at heart, Rush called for the first EIB Network Female Summit to get to the bottom of why women just aren't into him.  Being a man of action, he held the "summit" on his February 25th radio show. [...] Anyway, the "summit" went on with mixed results, with female callers telling Rush he can come off a bit pompous and sexist.  Sadly, this hurt El Rushbo's feelings and he got a tad defensive with such great responses as

"I would say they need to lighten up, for crying out loud! Why do I have to change who I am?  Why can't they just lighten up?"

And :

"Janet, you're trying to emasculate me here.  You're trying to get me to shred every vestige of my identity here"

You'd think since he was the one holding the "summit", whose sole purpose was asking women to criticize him, he might have been better prepared for the negative response....

Dope No. 2

Mrs. Danvers

or 

Pulitzer prize-winning, Creators syndicated

columnist, married to a U.S. Senator

 Connie Schultz 

 Really, Rush, We're Not That Scary

Rush Limbaugh can't understand why so many women don't like him.
That's what he says. Far be it from me to suggest he might be claiming this just to get attention.
The right-wing radio talk show host says that for the life of him, he can't understand why a recent study by Public Policy Polling shows that 49 percent of women have a negative view of him. Apparently, he is shocked to learn that not all women think alike and that nearly half of those who think at all take a dim view of a guy who makes millions while regularly referring to women as "babes."[...]Claiming a deep desire to understand what women want, Limbaugh issued an invitation last week for women to chime in.

"What could I do to attract a higher favorability rating among more women in America?" he asked on the air. "I own the men, and what must I do now to own women?"

What must he do to own women?

And here I am, with only 350 words to go.The transcript of this hourlong chat with women is illuminating. [...]

Another caller suggested Limbaugh dump the know-it-all routine and show a little vulnerability. He accused her of trying to emasculate him.

"You're trying to get me to shred every vestige of my identity here, to act like I can be hurt? Everybody can be hurt, but vulnerable? Vulnerable?"

Ah, he's afraid of us. How sweet...

Dope No. 3 

 

The Wolf

or

 The HuffPo 

The ranking head of the Republican party, Rush Limbaugh, was shocked to find that in a recent survey by the firm Public Policy Polling, only 37% of women had a favorable opinion of him.

Rush immediately sprang into action. Well, he sprang as much as a man of Rush's girth could reasonably spring. On-air, he asked

"I own the men, and what must I do now to own women?"[...]

"Janet You're trying to get me to shred every vestige of my identity here"

You'd think since he was the one holding the "summit", whose sole purpose was asking women to criticize him, he might have been better prepared for the negative response...

Dope No. 4

Rosa Klebb

or 

the cum laude graduate of Radcliffe College and

Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist

who can also grow heirloom tomatoes in the garden 

of her summer home in Maine,

Ellen Goodman

Sorry Rush, But You're No Oprah

...Now a touch of reality here. Women don’t tune in to talk radio as much as men. Talk radio has been the forum of the “angry white man” since the 1990s. Women have had quite enough men yell at them, thank you, and Rush is more than vaguely reminiscent of the boss from hell. This one can fire. But Rush, who brags “I own the men,” asked “what must I do now to own the women?” Well, sweetie, Oprah owns the women. If Rush talks at women, Oprah talks with women.

More to the point, remember that Oprah is all about change. Rush, however, is the prototype of the Man Who Won’t Change.

What finally happened at that Female Summit? When women callers who love Rush told him how to woo women who didn’t, he balked. Pompous? “I’m not changing that.” Stop with the “babe” talk? “Why do I have to change who I am?” Be more vulnerable? “You’re trying to emasculate me here.” He was the commander in chief of the conservative crouch...

Thanks Rush. As usual, that was fun...

...

Read what some men I like have to say about Rush.

Trust me, they're all good reads :

The Limbaugh Appeal by Victor Davis Hansen

More on Rush by Victor Davis Hansen

The Rush wars by Mark Steyn

The Rush to Judgement by Mark Steyn

The Ransom-Note Method by R.S.McCain

The Final Word? by R.S. McCain

And here's the latest

on President Obama being unable to understand 

the U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican 

cannot be a pro-abort.

President Obama has tried to appoint 

3 pro-aborts to the position. 

Doesn't he know anyone who is pro-life?

Yup, he's a one termer....

And 

Don't forget, it's Tuesday!

...

Patum Peperium is now shuttered for the Easter holidays.  

H A P P Y   E A S T E R

Back April 21th....

.

All-You-Can-Eat Clied Frams

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

Were you one of the lucky children who got to go to Howard Johnson's on Friday nights for the all-you-can-eat fried clams? 

 I hope so.

I was.  So was Mr. P.  We both loved Howard Johnson's.  How could any kid not? From the die-cut children's menu that you could wear on your head like a baseball cap after you ordered your dinner to the sugar packets with the printed photos of Howard Johnson's of hot cakes with sausages and Blueberry Toastees, the fresh dinner rolls that were served with the butter pats you had to peel the wax paper off the top of, the basket of assorted cellophane-wrapped crackers the waitress brought to the table because your mother had ordered the Welsh Rarebit, the rolls of smooth pink wintergreen mints in a Howard Johnson label located next the cashier register and the cola that was unlike any cola you had ever tasted. It was awful. 

Howard Johnson's fried clams were, in some ways, a lot like their cola: Completely unlike any fried clam anyone who was on intimate terms with the Atlantic steamer clam knew. I can still remember the night I was at last old enough to see that the Howard Johnson's fried clams were different from the fried clams we got from the clam stands in Maine. After looking carefully at my plate, I asked "Mommy, what's wrong with these?"  

"There's nothing wrong from them. They're not made from whole clams like the ones in Maine are.  They're clam strips made from deep sea clams ."

"Deep sea clams?"

"Look at them.  See? There are no stomachs."

I looked at them and Mommy was right.  There wasn't a stomach in sight. No stomachs is a good thing because there are few things more revolting on this earth than looking at the interior of a clam's stomach. "What happened to their stomachs?"

"Snow's makes clam chowder out of them."

"Oh. (I loved Snow's clam chowder.) How big are deep sea clams?"

"Oh big."  And my mother held her hands about a foot apart.  

So, it was sometime after that I took to calling Howard Johnson's fried clams "clied frams" because they weren't the real thing made from whole clams.  But this did not mean the clam strips were not delicious. They were.  They just were not the whole fried clams I was used to.  So you can easily imagine my sincere delight when many years later I was prepping Mr. P, over a dinner date, for his first trip to Maine which was just a few days away.  "You like clams don't you?"

"When I was a kid we used to go to Howard Johnson's for fried clams. I love clams."

"You used to go to Howard Johnson's?  Me too!"

And then Mr. P and my conversation slid into reminiscing about how great Howard Johnson's was. He had never had the Blueberry Toastees either.  His favorite ice cream flavor was chocolate.  Mine was buttercrunch.  He wore the menu on his head because he liked baseball.  I did not because I was a girl and back then girls did not wear baseball caps. And this conversation was all just further proof that Mr. P was perfection on earth.  So, imagine my surprise when a few evenings later in Maine I set before him a soup plate brimming over with steamers my grandmother had especially steamed for him, Mr. P visibly shrunk back from the table, hands up in the air and said, "My gawd, what are those?"

"They're clams."  I said.

"No. They. Are. Not." he responded not trying to regain his composure one little bit.

My grandmother was already seated at the table and she had seen everything.  There was no way to hide this. I thought Mr. P was a goner.  No one had ever turned down my grandmother's steamed clams and lived to tell about it.  Well, more truthfully, were invited back for another visit.  My grandmother waited a few seconds and, then she broke out laughing.  The laughter didn't calm my nerves. I still thought Mr. P was a goner.  And I liked him too much for him to be a goner.  I looked at her for direction.  She took pity on him and said, "Take them away.  It really wouldn't be nice of us to make him eat them."  So I took them back into the kitchen.  By the time I returned to the table my grandmother and Mr. P were in a deep discussion about Howard Johnson's.  She loved Howard Johnson's too. She was telling him how one of her brothers had gotten a job there as a teenager. He was quickly fired because he put rubber hot dogs in the hot dog pot and they were served in the lunch rush.   Howard Johnson's was famous for its hot dogs and to mess with them was sacrilegious.  But that brother, after several more good pranks around town, went on to distinguish himself as a flying ace for our country so, in the scheme of things what's a rubber hot dog (or 12) purposely dropped in the hot dog pot at a Howard Johnson's in Massachusetts just in time for the lunch rush?

A day or two after the steamed clam disaster, I took Mr. P out (him paying naturally) to a local restaurant that is known for putting forth a decent fried clam. My grandmother has said if Mr. P was accustomed to fried clams, then he should have some because when "you're in Maine you have to have clams". We sat outside on the deck enjoying the afternoon sun on the ocean.  Mr. P sipped his bourbon and Coke while I had an ale.  The waitress brought out the fried clam platters we had ordered and placed them before us, just like waitresses always do. Mr. P (perhaps because he had been so relaxed and enjoying himself) jumped out of his chair.

"What are those?"  he demanded to know, pointing at the plate.

"Fried clams." I calmly replied.

"No. They. Are. Not!" he responded.

"Yes they are." I said in my sweetest voice.

The waitress was so stunned, she stood there speechless, clasping her tray.  I turned to her. Doing my best Basil Fawlty impression said, "You'll have to forgive him. He's from the Mid West."

"Oh, is that the trouble, is it?  He's never seen a fried clam?"

"He's only seen clam strips at Howard Johnson's. Not whole fried clams."

"I understand completely, sir," she said. "Would you like something else?"

"Mr. P had slunk back into his seat and had his hand over his eyes as if he had a terrific headache.  "Yes, I'll pay for these but just bring me a hamburger when you can."

Seeing Mr. P's sincere horror, the waitress took pity on him. "Oh you don't have to pay for these.  You're from the Mid West so you're excused.  They'll be my lunch.I love them."

"Me too." I chimed in.

 "Can I get you another drink?"

"Yes. Two if you can manage it." and Mr. P picked up the one he had.  His hand was still slightly shakey.

"Maybe you should rub his back." the waitress advised me before leaving to fetch him what was now a purely medicinal bourbon.  And I did.

And now, dear readers, you have learned how I have learned to live a life without real clams.  Because to make Mr. P eat real clams would really not be nice of me. He'll eat clams that come out of a can.  I thought perhaps when our children came along, I might be able to out number him, but I had forgotten how strong some things are, hereditarily. After prepping both children during the winter months on frozen clam strips and popcorn shrimp while telling them the tales of the fried clam feasts I had as a kid, we took them to a drive -in clam stand (in Maine)  to do 'what Mommy used to do'.  Before  Mr. P ordered he solemnly asked both of them if they really wanted to do this.  Both nodded yes in excitement.  He order the three of us fried clams and himself a hamburger.

The clams came.  And they looked spectacular. Little Bertie bit into his first.  I will never forget the look of complete horror on his face.  His mouth just fell open and the clam fell out. "Mom? "  he said, almost falling over.  Thankfully the seat belt held him in place.  RKFDIL's reaction was almost identical. Except she actually looked at the clam's stomach as she had caught it in her hand as it fell out of her mouth.  Looking at the stomach, she got the dry heaves.

"Kids, you have to learn that there are some things you should never listen to you mother about.  Like clams. Stick to the clam strips from the freezer and the ones that come out of the cans and all will be okay."  Mr. P said.  He ordered them two hamburgers and blueberry crisp with vanilla ice cream to make up for their emotional distress. 

If only Howard Johnson's was still around.  My 3 midwesterners would love to go there tonight for the all-you-can-eat clied frams.  I'd like to go there too.  Their Welsh Rarebit would certainly hit the old Lenten spot.

.

The Girls Can't Resist The Guy In A Uniform

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

The boys of summer have arrived, the red winged blackbirds.  I've been watching them along the lake the past few weeks.  They are great fun because they arrive before the girls do and have some jolly good fights as they stake out their nesting areas. This morning it looks as if the boundary lines have been decided upon as amicably as possible and the girls have arrived. 

How do I know?  

Easy.  This morning I saw several of the boys firmly perched on the old reeds, with their wings fluffed a bit showing off their marvelous soldier boy-like epaulets of bright red with just the right touch of golden yellow at the top, singing their best mating songs at full throttle.  This means the girls are here, all fresh from their long flight up from the south with their feathers nicely primped. After checking out the guys for a few days, the girls will make their choice of a mate for the season based on the size and fullness of his epaulets. His voice does factor in.  How much it does factor in, is debatable as these are simple girls : It's all about his wingspan.  As he sings, she approaches him. If he likes what he sees, then hey, it's a go as birders say. The 2 birds will get to work doing what must be done to keep their species going.  Some of these lucky boys will even bring forth 3 broods with the same lady before summer is out.  Ask yourself, how many birds can do that?

From what I've witnessed over the last 20 years, only the male Cardinal can come close to rivaling the red wing blackbird as far as his enthusiasm for masculinity and, keeping the species going. And even then, it requires the rare male Cardinal. A few years back when the kids were still small, we had a very nice Cardinal family in our hedge in the backyard. A mom, a dad, and 3 little eggs which soon became 3 little ones. It didn't take long for me to notice that Dad was constantly on the go, flying in and flying out with food for his wife as she sat on the nest and then later, his little ones.  This man impressed me completely. Puffed up with my knowledge of birds, this excellent example of a feathered father and still in the early bloom of motherhood, I decided this was a teachable moment.  I showed him to the kids with a "look-at-what-a-great-Daddy-he-is". They thought he great and we named him Arthur. For a day or two all was swimming.  Then I figured out Arthur's secret. And it was not really a secret.  I should have seen it all along as the Dad constantly being on the go, to and from the nest, and and in a heightened agitated state which, naturally, shows his magnificent feathers off to his best is the only sign more experienced birders need.

Arthur was a two-timer.  

He had another nest with a wife and two children directly across the street from us in a lilac tree. You could tell he was an old hat at two timing because he knew the shortest distance between two points was a straight line. He wasn't even hiding his two timing.  Instead he minimalized his efforts, so he wouldn't exhaust himself before the season was done and, more importantly, keep his strength up for the next mating season by settling his two women into nests that were directly across from each other, with about 150 ft between them.  The beauty of this was it gave him a bird's eye view as to what was going on at his other nest.  He could fly in at a moment's notice should any male Cardinal try to move in one of his ladies when he was attending to the others' needs.  And believe it or not, a few tried.  

Arthur was quite the bird.  And the rascal.  His women not only loved him but were quite happy to share his splendor. But what would you expect?  

They're birds.

Mad For A Hatter

Madame's Nightshirt

Mrs. Peperium

I'm mad 

about men in hats.  

Real hats 

made by real hatters.

Not mad men. 

A hatter like 

Lock & Co.

 

 

Evelyn Waugh was their customer.

 I'm mad about him too.

* Sigh *

...The world has gone mad today 
And good's bad today, 
And black's white today, 
And day's night today, 
When most guys today 
That women prize today 
Are just silly gigolos 
And though I'm not a great romancer 
I know that I'm bound to answer 
When you propose, 
Anything goes...

HAPPY APRIL FOOL'S DAY!