Get carried away with historical fiction

Us Conductors by Sean Michaels

A couple of months ago Clara Rockmore was featured as the Google Doodle and it got me thinking about this book and how easy it is to get so swept up in historical fiction that you either A) forget that it's fiction, or B) forget that the characters in the fictional account were actually real, or perhaps some combination of A and B resulting in completely losing your grip on reality and slipping through the looking glass. Hasn't that happened to you? Anyway, historical fiction can be powerful stuff, approach with caution.

Winner of the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize, Us Conductors is the captivating fictional account of real Russian scientist, spy, and inventor of the theremin, Lev Termen (Leon Theremin) and his muse, electronic music pioneer Clara Rockmore. The story, told through correspondence and flashbacks, speculates about Termen's unrequieted love for Rockmore, and the circumstances surrounding his return to the Soviet Union. Once I finished this beautiful book I couldn't let the story go,  so I immersed myself in YouTube videos and audio recordings of Lev and Clara playing the theremin. Clara Rockmore was a classical violin prodigy from Lithuania. Suffering from tendonitis she was forced to give up her beloved instrument, but was later introduced by Termen to his invention: an electronic musical instrument controlled by gesture. She helped refine the instrument, and defined it as an art form, becoming its most prominent performer. I've included a couple of the videos to pique your curiosity.

The Anchoress 
by Robyn Cadwallader

The Anchoress is the fictional account of a (probably fictional) anchoress in 1255 named Sarah. What's an anchoress? Good question! Until a patron recommended this book to me, I admit that I didn't have a clue. Then I did some googling. In Medieval Europe, an anchorite was a religious recluse, someone who would lock themselves away, denying themselves all but the very minimum required for survival. They felt that through complete solitude and denial of all earthly pleasures they were "hanging on the cross with Christ". They would be enclosed for the rest of their lives in a tiny cell adjoined to a church and were a symbol of piety and a source of comfort for their communities, living out their days in contemplative prayer. Author Robyn Cadwallader takes the reader into Sarah's time and culture, her tiny cell, and delves deep into her mind and motivations.

An anchorites' cell in England

In an interview in the Sydney Morning Herald the author describes a point in her PhD research into the life of Saint Margaret: "I came across this word 'anchoress', wondered what it was, started to read a bit more and was absolutely horrified, fascinated, really thought it was just a terrible, terrible thing," she says. "I just kept reading and in a way, it wasn't essential to the thesis, but I was so fascinated by it that I just kept reading." That's what I'm talking about.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/interview-robyn-cadwallader-author-of-the-anchoress-20150207-1342fx.html#ixzz47EGOu3XA

Looking for more? Check out Thomas Mallon's recent, well-reviewed Finale: A Novel of The Reagan Years, or The Revenant by Michael Punke (I could go on all day). You'll enjoy exploring the real people or events behind these marvelous fictional tales as much as the tales themselves.

Richmond Upon James: An Unrivalled Landscape

You may know that our fair city, RVA, is believed to be named by William Byrd II after a view of the James River from Libby Hill reminded him a view of the Thames River from a village west of London called Richmond. The curve of the James as it begins its slope down the peninsula does indeed look like the curve of the Thames, as a quick tour of Google maps will confirm. But a tour of the library, its art books and novels, might yield more interesting glimpses of our city’s namesake than you can find in Google Maps, or even by flying to Richmond upon Thames itself. Here are a few works of art depicting the view that so impressed William Byrd. And if Byrd saw England when standing over the James, perhaps you can see Virginia in these portraits of the Thames.

Sir Joshua Reynolds painted The Thames from Richmond Hill in 1788. Reynolds (1723-1792) did not paint many landscapes, but he had excellent access to the view as he lived on Richmond Hill. He was the first president of the Royal Academy in London and delivered several lectures on art still celebrated today.

J.M.W. Turner, exhibited his England: Richmond Hill, on the Prince Regent’s Birthday in 1819. Turner (1775-1851) was a great admirer of Reynolds, requesting even to be buried beside him. He too lived close to the view and completed many drawings of it. Turner was recently the focus of a feature film, Mr. Turner, in which he stumbles his way through the gorgeous landscapes seen in his paintings.

In 1879, Charles Dickens, Jr., eldest son of the Charles Dickens you’ve heard of, wrote in his Dictionary of the Thames: “Nothing in the neighborhood of London is better known or more delightful than the view from Richmond Hill and Terrace, and when Sir Walter Scott described it as an unrivalled landscape, he was hardly saying too much.” Dickens was referring to a passage in Scott’s novel The Heart of Midlothian, which was published a year before Turner exhibited his painting. In the novel, a young woman named Jeanie Deans walks from Scotland to London to appeal to the Queen on behalf of her wrongly-accused sister. Here, Jeanie steps out of the Duke of Argyll’s coach and admires the view that Turner, Reynolds, and William Byrd II had admired.

“The carriage rolled rapidly onwards through fertile meadows, ornamented with splendid old oaks, and catching occasionally a glance of the majestic mirror of a broad and placid river. After passing through a pleasant village, the equipage stopped on a commanding eminence, where the beauty of English landscape was displayed in its utmost luxuriance. Here the Duke alighted, and desired Jeanie to follow him. They paused for a moment on the brow of a hill, to gaze on the unrivalled landscape which it presented. A huge sea of verdure, with crossing and intersecting promontories of massive and tufted groves, was tenanted by numberless flocks and herds, which seemed to wander unrestrained and unbounded through the rich pastures. The Thames, here turreted with villas, and there garlanded with forests, moved on slowly and placidly, like the mighty monarch of the scene, to whom all its other beauties were but accessories, and bore on its bosom an hundred barks and skiffs, whose white sails and gaily fluttering pennons gave life to the whole.”

The Art of Berkeley Williams Jr.

From 1920 to 1975 the Richmond Public Library clipped and indexed every newspaper article it could find on local art exhibitions. The library may have stopped cutting and pasting, but the clippings, in 36 binders, are still available for perusal at the main library’s reference desk. The articles provide an immediate sense of the RVA art scene of the early 20^th century and can uncover fascinating, unheard of artists, sending you on a chase through the library’s collections.

After a quick thumb through one of the binders I stopped on this striking image:

The illustration--a sinister-looking dandy stalking the streets with cape and cane--is by Berkeley Williams, Jr., and it accompanied a review of Williams work shown on East Franklin Street in 1927. The write-up is glowing, almost equaling its subject in style: “whether one be artist or bootblack, poet or porter, one cannot look upon the pictures without getting the hunch that there is glamor in this living business.”

Williams, it turns out, makes a few appearances among the library’s early clippings. In 1930 Williams showed thirty of his paintings in Richmond, still-lives and landscapes painted in Southern France. A review of that show explained that Williams, a Richmond-native, studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts before spending 18 months in France. He then returned home with his work, giving Richmond one of its first tastes of modern painting. Another article just under two years later declared: “Mr. Williams has reached the point where he is convincing in everything he does.”

Portrait of Hunter Stagg (1931)

Still curious, I switched over to the library’s old file of local obituaries. With the help of a reference librarian I discovered that Williams died in 1977 at 72 years old. He attended St. Christopher’s School in Richmond and the University of Virginia. He married Alta Murdoch “Jerry” Williams, the garden columnist for the Times-Dispatch. And his creative output did not stop with the early 1930s paintings. Williams went on to work as an illustrator for children’s books, collaborating on two collections of Appalachian folk tales, both held by the library, The Jack Tales and Grandfather Tales.

So far I had learned about Williams’ drawings, paintings, and children’s book illustrations, hopping from one collection to another. But I wanted to see the artist himself, and a quick internet search retrieved not only a photo of Williams but brought me right back to First and Franklin. A 1936 Times-Dispatch article preserved online explained that Williams once kept a studio in what was then called Richmond’s Greenwich Village, four brick houses rented out to artists and standing opposite the main library.

For Richmond history, sparkling criticism, and arresting images, stop by the reference desk to see the library’s collection of exhibition clippings. And if you happen to have more information about Berkeley Williams, Jr. please drop us a line or a comment below. We’d love to keep filling in this portrait of a Richmond artist.