I did my duty by this one. Edmund de Waal‘s prizewinning The hare with amber eyes: a hidden inheritance (Chatto, 2010) was a book group book, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered. It’s all a bit rich and precious for me. Should I be annoyed that Ed thinks I should know from the off what netsuke are? Well I was. They’re intricate Japanese miniatures carved in mainly ivory or hardwood. I’ll grant they are fascinating objects, these stylish representations of living things, people included, and can fully understand what he means about touch, feeling them – de Waal is a potter – how they could get to you. Netsuke were originally decorative toggles with a practical purpose (not that that purpose was described in the book); they got more and more intricate in the hands of their craftsmen, and in the japonisme craze of nineteenth century Europe they became collectible objets d’art. Are we given any help in how to pronounce the word? No. Majority opinion on the web would appear to be netskay or netski, so for a long time I was reading it ‘wrong’. Other words he pissed me off by expecting me to know without explanation are: bibelots, vitrine, fiacre, redingote, feuilleton. Am I being unreasonable here?
No, sorry. This book brought out the class warrior in me. Talk about lifestyles of the rich and famous. The netsuke collection is an heirloom and Edmund de Waal is now the custodian. He is so attached to them (not unreasonable) that he wants to know and see the family places they rested in on their journey to him. So … a century and a half, Paris, Vienna, Tokyo, South London. The family history actually starts in Odessa; the Ephrussi dynasty grows from a business cornering the corn market in the Ukraine to a super-rich banking empire on a continental scale. Charles, who is one of the inspirations for Proust‘s Swann as per Swann’s Way, buys a job lot of Japanese stuff in beau monde Paris. De Waal does an awful lot of research in obscure cultural journals of the day, but in commenting on the clan’s marital mores can only offer, “I only know about Parisian marriages from the novels of Nancy Mitford …”
When Charles tires of the netsuke in his well hung cultural salon and the Impressionists are making their mark (he’s a patron), he gives ‘em as a wedding gift to one of the Vienna branch of the family. In Vienna the netsuke reside in young wife Emmy’s changing room: “She spent a great deal of time in it. She changed three times a day – sometimes more.“ Another beau monde, buddies of – it’s that man again – Maria Rainer Rilke, among others. (Rilke must be one of the most cited, though pretty much unread, poets of the early twentieth century, and I fully intend to read him one of the days).
Things go awry for the family with the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and they don’t have a good war; the fortune pretty much disappears and Edward’s parents-to-be end up in Tunbridge Wells. I’m not being facetious here; apart from the obvious, I was shocked at the specifics and individual rapaciousness of nazi art and wealth appropriation – my ignorance, hadn’t really given it too much thought. But here’s the thing. The netsuke are saved for the family by the brave subterfuge of Anna, the heroine of the tale – make no mistake – because without her actions this book could never have happened. Anna was a long-serving Aryan but loyal servant in the Vienna household who stayed in the house after the family had fled. While de Waal has spent weeks researching the minutiae of the beau monde:
I do not even know Anna’s whole name, or what happened to her. I never thought to ask, when I could have asked. She was, simply, Anna.
But then hardly anyone but the super-rich or subsequently famous are deemed worthy of a mention thus far anyway. The 264 strong collection of netsuke end up with a gay uncle in Japan who did actually have to work for a living – another story, with a certain amount of gloss – and now with the author in South London.
I can see how this narrative enchanted so many, but I cringed at stuff like “The lack of tactility makes me panic” and similar self-dramatisation.
I no longer know if this book is about my family, or memory, or myself, or is still a book about small Japanese things.
How about mid-life crisis? - I say, unkindly, no doubt. “There are things I cannot know,” he says early on, but he imagines a fair amount, puts thoughts in people’s heads. “Somehow I imagine …”; “I suppose Charles might go in a carriage, I worry, but I can’t time that.” And he even criticises some of Charles’s writing on art: “His prose becomes a little much here, a little breathless …” Surely not!
A few things I owe, though. I am surprised and disappointed to hear that Cezanne, Renoir and Degas are all on the side of the baddies when it comes to the Dreyfus Affair, and absent themselves from the salons of the jewish houses; anti-semitic Impressionists sound so wrong. I learnt a fair bit about aspects of European social history I’d previously taken for granted. And after this exposure, I shan’t be bothering with Proust; a long-held guilt of omission assuaged there, so thanks.
And thanks of a different kind to Danni Antagonist and Fay Roberts, our charming hosts at Poetry Kapow! (“Kapow!) on Friday night at Wolverton’s Madcap venue. Given the theme was Into the enchanted wood maybe I should say, our enchanting hosts. A fine night’s wide ranging poetic entertainment and a good natured and lively atmosphere. Storming performance again from Ian Freemantle with Jessica spectacularly clogging, but plenty of other good stuff, not least the slightly quirky songs of Nicky & Naomi, which get better with each hearing. And people continue to characterise Milton Keynes as a cultural desert. Bring on the Stony Bardic trials!
