Jun 10
Frances Howard by Nickolas Muray, 1922
seen from Austria
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Frances Howard by Nickolas Muray, 1922
Frances Howard
By Alexandre (1925)
Pearl Chanda as Frances Howard
Mary & George 1.03
Silent film star Vilma Banky, left, greets producer Samuel Goldwyn and his wife, the former Frances Howard, on the Goldwyns' arrival from the West Coast, December 1926.
Photo: Bettmann Archive/Getty Images/Fine Art America
Lady of The Day 🌹 Frances Howard ❤️
Frances Howard (June 4, 1903 – July 2, 1976)
prominent ladies named Frances in the Stuart court
A Diamond In The Dust
["A Diamond in the Dust - The Stuarts: Love, Art, War" by Michael Dean. 24 November 2022. Holland Park Press Ltd. Paperback. 225 pages. ISBN: 9781907320965]
The brutal murder of King Charles I was followed by the establishment of the Commonwealth of England, a brief republic. Reinstatement of the monarchy with his son Charles ll was accompanied by the execution of the judges - the Regicide Judges - who had condemned Charles I to death. Ten of them were hanged, nine of whom were hanged, drawn and quartered. The ringmaster Oliver Cromwell died naturally. His corpse was exhumed, hanged at Tyburn (in London, now Marble Arch), beheaded, and its head mounted above the building where Charles I had been tried.
They knew how to do things in those days.
Michael Dean's A Diamond in the Dust starts and ends with the show trial and execution of Charles I, with a second book - The King's Art - scheduled to take the story forward.
Shortly before his death, Charles I wrote a (very long and frankly dreadful, but yes, execution was going too far) poem titled (with capitals as written) Majesty in Misery, Or an Imploration to the KING OF KINGS. It's not known if God has read it yet, it could take a while. Mercifully Michael Dean only quotes three lines and then solely to explain the title of the book:
With my own Power my Majesty they wound, In the King's name the King himself's uncrown'd, So doth the dust destroy the Diamond.
Watch those capitals Charles. Upper Class OK, Upper Case seldom.
Michael Dean's delightful A Diamond In The Dust is a very exact account of many of the painters artists soldiers and male prostitutes who flourished around the courts of Europe. Charles emerges as worried about what he felt was his mis-shapen body until he finds he is good at something. That something, in what was perhaps his own language was f__king. And to give it context, music, sculpture, f__king, religious wars, wars, f__king, spending money he didn't have, f__king, and when at a loss for something to while away his sybaritic hours, not-surprisingly, more f__king.
This should not suggest that Charles I was promiscuous. On the contrary he and his wife Henrietta Maria seem, after a difficult start (there was a lot of religion, catholic and protestant, involved - all across Europe and all across their lives) to have been not simply in love, but profoundly in love. Charles I does emerge at times as a bit of a pr__k, but, as the English public of the time might well have said, 'at least he's our pr__k).
Art, politics, religion, shipwrecks. Michael Dean knows his controversies and A Diamond In The Dust is crammed to the gunwales with them. George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham is a superbly-drawn (he's real - all the people in the book are, and there are tons of them) character, sexually versatile on both sides, bold, generally courageous, a kind of World-War-II-We'll-Fight-Them-On-The-Beaches lad (he might well have turned up there for a cameo), hated, unfortunately by Queen Henrietta, and in the end murdered. The narrative does slump a bit when he exits, but it's coming to the end (for Charles I) when he leaves the story, and Charles is only going one way.
Michael Dean is expert with history and characters. His novel about the painter Marc Chagall, The White Crucifixion (2018) as well as being a fine novel is a smart piece of work, coming across - like A Diamond in the Dust - with the feel of historical accuracy (only God knows if it's extremely true, but He's tied up with Charles I's Majesty in Misery, possibly for eternity).
A Diamond in the Dust may be one for (1) history experts who long to pick holes in other historians' work while gloating at their superiority; (2) fanatical puritans (OK, Americans), protestants, catholics (it's got lots of all of them, entangled, not always religiously) (3) Republicans (4) Royalists (5) fans of art (yards and yards of art in 225 pages, lots of named works, very detailed biographies of big (and interestingly obscure) artists and patrons. And others who hate being categorised but read The Guardian flagrantly, with a fixed expression of disapproval.
[Image credit: book cover, with thanks to the copyright holders]
John Park
Words Across Time
19 May 2023
wordsacrosstime