The angel in my house, the alluring Catherine Stephens, countess of Essex, painted by Sir Martin Archer Shee, PRA.

by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author’s program note. Do you believe in fate? Do you believe that there are people on this planet we are meant to meet? That we will meet… no matter how unlikely that seems at this moment? When I contemplate the matter objectively as my training as a social scientist demands, I come to the obvious, the expected, the empirical conclusion that the idea of fate is superstitious hokus-pokus… then a chance encounter with Catherine Stephens occurs and challenges my logic, for surely this is kismet indeed.

Some background.

I am that most uncomfortable and difficult of beings, a connoisseur; that is a person who is engaged in the strenuous, never-ending search for rapture; a state which occurs whenever I see a thing and know that thing must be mine, cannot go anywhere but to me… for my well-being, the very completion of myself depends on my acquiring it.

Every connoisseur knows this unsettled state for each of us goes through it, especially (it seems) when money is in short supply, possibly due to having only recently been so touched and agitated… by something else.

But there’s the rub. Whenever one enters this condition, it is as if for the very first time, so intense, so unsettling are the pangs. And this can happen anywhere at anytime. Be warned.

In the matter of Catherine Stephens they occurred as I perused the pages of the Dorotheum auction catalog for The Prince Kinski Sale, February 28, 2012. Lot 96. Given my interest in the nobility and royal families of Europe, it was inevitable I should consult this catalog… and perhaps find something; but by no means inevitable that thing would be a portrait of a lovely actress and singer elevated into the highest echelon of the English aristocracy. Yet just as Catherine Stephens captivated and in 1838 married the octogenarian fifth earl of the ninth creation of Essex, the Right Honorable George Capell-Coningsby (1757-1839) … so she captivated me… and so (I warn you) she will captivate you, too.

Some facts about Miss Stephens.

Catherine Stephens (1794-1882) was the daughter of Edward Stephens, a carver and gilder in Park Street, Grosvenor Square, London. Theirs was a musical family… and her musical talent was encouraged. Thus, on 23 September 1813 she appeared at Covent Garden as Mandane in the opera “Artaxerxes” by Thomas Arne (1710-1778) . He was the celebrated composer who wrote “Rule, Britannia!” and even a version of “God Save The King”, which became the British national anthem. She was in very good company indeed…

… and (I warned you) she enchanted them all. The aria that launched her career was  “The soldier tir’d of war’s alarms”, and it was theater magic.

You’ll want to hear it. And you can. Go to any search engine where you can hear Joan Sutherland’s 1960 performance. Now imagine the lovely very young Catherine’s candlelit debut and the dulcet tones which made each member of the restive audience believe — no, not just believe but know — she was singing just for them. That was always to be her secret…

That quality was instantly apparent in this circa 1838 portrait by Sir Martin Archer Shee (1769-1850). This was the most sympathetic face I had ever seen. And it was instantly clear that he, too, for all that he was consummate master of his craft, knight of the realm and President of the Royal Academy (PRA) had felt the power of her serene radiance.  Thus perforce did I stop to regard.

Most pictures of grand ladies, particularly titled ladies, say, “Look at me and be honored to do so. For I am worth the viewing.” Such pictures may awe and dazzle… but they do not warm or beckon us. They are about the subject, not the viewer. But Shee’s inviting portrait makes you feel certain about your reception, certain she wants to meet you and will be good to you. Above all that she will be good to you…. for that is what we all need.  And if that quality is immediately apparent in the sitter it is not just because Shee is a master, supremely confident in his skill, but because it was there for all the world to see in the lady herself.

Hard times for the Kinskis. Hard times for the painting.

To understand the fate of this picture you must understand something of the noble families of Mitteleuropa, families which were the foundation of the Austro- Hungarian empire. When it fell in 1918 families like the Kinskis lost the fruits of their hundreds of years of advancement. Their lives ceased to be glamorous but rather one lawsuit after another, largely futile attempts to regain property — and self-esteem. Throughout the declension of their lives and fortunes, the princes Kinski kept this picture. And it was in the old prince’s drawing room when he died. It was, remember, always comforting…. even when its condition was dire… as it was when I saw it and asked Simon Gillespie to give me his opinion.

Miss Stephens charms Mr. Gillespie of Cleveland Street.

London England-based Simon is my chosen conservator, the man who has restored over 30 of my pictures and upon whose informed opinion I rely, picture after superbly restored picture. As much a master of his craft as Arne and Shee in theirs, he, like them, felt the enduring charm of Catherine Stephens and wanted to restore the picture as much for her sake as for mine.

Thus he and his talented staff set to their important work, removing the dirt of time and poor maintenance, old varnishes and over paint applied by less careful and discerning hands. When this was finished, the now pristine canvass yielded a considerable secret using radiology, namely that Shee had originally positioned the sitter quite differently, for a full frontal pose with both shoulders visible. But as Shee painted he came to see his subject better and divine the source of her undeniable allure. And so he started again, his flamboyant technique very apparent in the repositioned result that captivates … and makes such an entrancing vision and desirable painting.

This is the image not just of one particular woman but of what the Victorians wanted from Woman in general, kindness, courtesy, sweetness of face and of manner, a willing ear, sympathetic at all times, generous of spirit — in short the celestial ideal advanced by Coventry Patmore (1823-1896) in his important poem “The Angel in the House” written in stages from 1854-1862.  It was an image that swept the world..

“Now she was there! Within her face/Humility and dignity/ Were met in a most sweet embrace/She seem’d expressly sent below/ To teach our erring minds to see/ The rhythmic change of life’s swift flow/ As part of still eternity.”

This is why this portrait of a lady and exalted countess is so important. You see, it makes clear what Woman may choose to be and of her profound significance in our often sore afflicted and troubled lives. I know, for when in my own life such troubles emerge, as troubles can do, I look up at this soothing, welcoming image now here before me in Cambridge and find comfort, peace and the kindness we all need.

‘A-one, an-a-two,’ the ‘wunnerful, wunnerful’ world of Lawrence Welk and his Champagne Music.

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. It’s a Saturday night in 1955, and you’re looking for entertainment. You want it bright, cheerful, positive, and free; the kind of program that taxes you intellectually not at all… but makes you smile with feel-good music delivered by feel-good people. You spin the dial and find a guy called “Lawrence Welk” and his Champagne Music. You give a listen… you like what you hear and thence forward every Saturday night is dedicated to the ultimate feel-good- guy Lawrence Welk, so expert at creating just the soothing ambiance you need.
This is the man and his music we’re celebrating today. Go now to any search engine and find his signature tune “Bubbles in the Wine”. Lay back, enjoy, and leave the cares of the real world far, far away… Born March 11, 1903 in Strasburg, North Dakota…
Lawrence Welk is arguably the most celebrated individual ever from the rolling hills and punishing climates of North Dakota. And he hated every single aspect of the state that remembers him so fondly now.
He hated Strasburg, a German-speaking community in the middle of nowhere.
He hated his father Ludwig… he hated his mother Christina… emigrants who started life in Odessa, Ukraine, then a part of imperial Russia… arriving in America in 1892…
He hated the sod house in which he grew up.
He hated farming, its backbreaking, never-ending chores and obligations.
He hated the bleakness of it all… and so he bided his time, daydreaming about a place over the rainbow that was anywhere other than where he was. A place where there were happy people, people with a song in their heart and some insistent, cheerful melody on the brain. He knew such a place existed… and he was sure he would find it.
His ticket out was a mail-order accordion. It sold for $400, a fortune in those days. He borrowed it from his unrelentingly pragmatic father, who essentially indentured him to the farm he hated until his 21st birthday or until this headstrong son paid off this astronomical sum. Part of the deal was that Lawrence take on extra paying work on other farms, too, every penny to go to his father. He did, with vengeance in his heart…
Punctilious in his obligation, young Welk on the occasion of his 21st birthday left everything he knew and hated, turning his back resolutely on his detested past. He and his accordion never looked back; they couldn’t. They had burned every bridge and outraged every familial tie. Failure was not an option…
There was hardship ahead…. lots of scheming and hopeful connivances… even days of despair as he strove to find his way…. But every moment that was less than perfect became the fuel to create this always happy, always perfect place of his imagining.
Welk in those early days of the 1920s was a blur of activity. He performed with bands lead by Luke Witkowski, Lincoln Boulds, George T. Kelly… and led the big bands of the dancing Dakotas, the Hotsy Totsy Boys… and the Honolulu Fruit Gum Orchestra. Then he did what he’d always been destined to do… he created his own band and started to craft the lighter-than-air sound that made him rich and famous worldwide. It was a style scoffed at by learned folks, discriminating folks, folks of hubris, condescension and arrogance… but a style embraced by the millions who knew a good thing when they heard it.
A ball of energy, always immaculately turned out, his dancing pumps oiled and shined, baton at the ready… and the celebrated smile about to be delivered with mega- watt brilliance, this was the Lawrence Welk of WNAX Radio, Yankton, South Dakota… and beyond… Always an optimist in hot pursuit of perfection and the better life he took time to study at the MacPhail School of Music in Minneapolis, Minnesota, from which he graduated in 1927.
This was the height of America’s gift to the world, the Jazz Age when a gyrating generation showed their disapproving parents how a body in motion could move in hepped up ways, contorted, nimble, thrilling to watch, soaring to dance. You probably never knew, or even imagined, that the Lawrence Welk of your memory in November, 1928 cut a popular ragtime record with his Novelty Orchestra, for Indiana-based Gennett Records. It was called “Spiked Beer” and it moooooooooved!
But jazz was not his metier; dance tunes and “sweet” music was… and he became a recognized master of an undemanding, smoothie sound that attracted real people, too often burdened by their difficult realities, especially during the Great Depression Welk and his trademark sound helped an often desperate, despairing nation get through… whistling and dancing, forced to move on, move out, move up… optimists all, down perhaps for a minute, but wisecracking as we got back on feet set in motion by the facile tunes of young Mr. Welk.
He kept Amerca dancing in the dark days America needed to dance more than ever… let’s hope that his parents (now a distant memory for Lawrence) came to recognize the swan they had brought forth amongst the chickens… maybe even on one-never-to- be-forgotten night dancing at the Farmstead to his lolly-pop confections, and smiling… If so, it was the only time champagne in any form entered what is now called the Ludwig and Christina Welk Farmplace, an attraction you can visit when next in Strasburg.
The Lawrence Welk Show.
In 1951, after cutting several records (including Spade Cooley’s popular “Shame on You” in 1945) and appearing in many motion pictures, where his increasingly inimitable sound became the perfect background for what were then called “Soundies”, Welk moved to Los Angeles, the most superficial metropolis on earth, where they welcomed him with open arms and where he launched The Lawrence Welk Show on KTLA radio, where it was broadcast live from the Aragon Ballroom at Venice Beach. What a piquant image that is… the smoothly oiled muscular bodies on the beach…. the even smoother sound of Lawrence Welk emanating from on high like so much star dust.
The show was a great hit… and was the proximate cause the ABC network picked up Welk for national distribution in June, 1955. It was here the family of Walt and Victoria Lauing, my maternal grandparents, enter the scene. It is because of them and their obsession with Lawrence Welk and his sound that I wrote this article at all, for they and millions like them were the reason he succeeded.
Walt and Vic, young and attractive, were South Dakota people, who probably heard Welk in his early days. By the time I was 10 or so (1957) they had imbibed a lifetime of champagne music. Minutes before the program began, every child present was hushed and bribed to stay that way… and all was ready for the imperial entrance of Walt and his lady, recliners at the ready. No sound but the bubbles in the wine was even allowed or tolerated for the next 60 minutes. The congregation was ready… the Maestro could commence.
I laughed, of course, and derided, as youngsters of smart-aleck tendencies will do but amongst the cascading effervescence there was love, veneration and gratitude. He was their sound…
That was why my grandmother wrote away for tickets to the program when she and Walt flew to California to see my mother, their daughter, and family . You see she meant to dance with Welk on air. Every week she saw a myriad of other blue-haired ladies stand in line for the chance of whirling in her favorite’s arms on nationwide television. My grandmother wanted that, too…
And so one Saturday night we witnessed her televised struggle to get to the head of the queue, only to discover that the other ladies were as determined as she was… and despite our cheers, she failed.
She didn’t blame her idol, of course; it wasn’t his fault he was so popular and desired. But we all felt it keenly. It was probably the only time he ever let a fan down, until in 1982, when as the nation’s oldest television host, he at last retired, age 79. His legacy and bouncing music live on in the Lawrence Welk Museum, Escondido, California. I’m sure the spirits of Walt and Vic visit… for he made them so very happy for so very long.

The most beautiful place in the world to die. Tyler Clementi… Dharun Ravi… the George Washington Bridge… and the necessity for remembrance.

by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. Tyler Clementi was a young violinist who with his obliging instrument produced sounds that touched the heart. Given world enough and time who knows where this undeniable talent, showcased in the Ridgewood Symphony Orchestra and Bergen Youth Orchestra, would have taken him?  But because he was attracted to men rather than to women, he was never to know. And so today, I sit here in Cambridge starring at a photograph of a dead boy we cannot afford to forget, for to forget would be the real crime…
… but memory is sharp, hard, remorseless, exquisitely painful…
And so we must have Mozart. Mozart who so well understood life… and who with such grandeur enables us to cope with death…
Thus, as the occasional music to this tale I give you the Master’s Requiem Mass in D Minor (K. 626), composed in Vienna (1791) available in any search engine…  Focusing on his life, whilst never forgetting his death and uneasy spirit…
The thousands of pages dedicated to the matter of Tyler Clementi focus on when he died, how he died, why he died, and, above all, who is responsible that he died… and I shall also deal with these crucial questions. But, first and foremost, we must never lose sight of the boy at the center of this matter… for this is above all his story…
Tyler was born in 1991 in Buffalo, New York and raised in  Ridgewood, New Jersey. He was a good student and like so many other aspiring musicians found life, beauty, meaning and sustenance in the celestial purity of sound, often so intense as to produce exaltation, apotheosis, catharsis, ecstasy. Tyler was one of the gifted who took mere notes on a page and produced beauty… and whenever he picked up his violin that beauty was his to command…. and to give…
… and he gave freely, liberally, with the exuberance and trust of youth and a heart that sought love and meant no harm to anyone…
And so Tyler Clementi went to Rutgers, to test himself against the best of his peers… He was just 18 years old… with a mere handful of days to live.  What happened next is now a matter of detailed record… why it happened will always require the judgement of Solomon and perhaps more… for the person we long to ask — Tyler himself — cannot tell us.
Dramatis personnae.
Now come the principal actors…
Tyler, his roommate Dharun Ravi, fellow hallmate Molly Wei… and the gaping worldwide community found on the Internet and without which there would have been no story, no tragedy, and a happier life for all.
Here is what happened….
On the nights of September 19 and 22, 2010 Clementi texted Ravi about using their room for the evening, a thing college students have been asking their roommates forever. On the first occasion Ravi met Clementi’s friend, an older man whom Ravi did not like. Nothing so far meant very much; surely no one thought that Tyler would be soon dead. But the mad chemistry of  tragedy had started… and it fermented in the brain of Dharun Ravi.
Ravi now says, as well he might, that he wasn’t  the agent provocateur for what happened, but as he stands convicted before the world, this is not surprising.
Fact: He thought it fitting and proper to use a webcam to view  a portion of Clementi’s dorm-room liaison with another man… and immediately tweeted it to his list of 150 people, thus beginning its viral dissemination.
Fact: Ravi posted text messages saying “Yeah, keep the gays away” and “People are having a viewing party with a bottle of Bacardi and beer in this kid’s room for my roommate”, along with directions on how to view it remotely.
Fact: Ravi set up his webcam and pointed it toward’s Clementi’s bed, where it was found by police, still so pointed.
All this Tyler learned…  and acted responsibly, complaining to his resident assistant and two other college officials. He also wrote in detail about these events on the “Just Us Boys” message board and  the Yahoo message board. He asked for a new room, a new roommate, and for help. He was doing what he had to do and he was doing it responsibly.
But here is where things went so very wrong…
“Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.” (Hamlet)
But something gnawed at Clementi and so 38 times following his first webcam viewing he returned… returned… and returned again and again to that bit of video that he became convinced had destroyed his life, his future, his peace of mind. He was wrong, so very wrong, but he was young, inexperienced, and, he thought alone. And that is the real tragedy…
Thus did his dark purpose commence.
8:42 PM September 22.
The cast of characters was growing now. College administrators were now involved.. Ravi was back peddling as quick as he could, minimizing what he did, why he did it, stating over and over again that he meant nothing by it, didn’t mean it, apologized for it.
But already Tyler had his foot upon a very different  path… He was Hamlet now, without even knowing it:
“To be, or not to be: that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or take arms against a sea of troubles.”
He had solved this conundrum…. tragically, finally, unnecessarily… an act of passion from a mind in turmoil.  “The George Washington Bridge over the  Hudson is the most beautiful bridge in the world.” Le Corbusier
And it was here Tyler Clementi came to die, that is to say to do the extremest thing in his power… to embrace oblivion. What made him do this deed of rashness, to end everything and remove the future and every joy to come? We can never know, for his final words, sent on his cell phone from the great marvel towering above him, picked out in the brightest of lights, was brief, inadequate, far too little for such an epochal event:
“Jumping off the gw bridge sorry.”
And so he jumped, alive for seconds still… already gone from the living, en route to eternity, the last things he saw, the dark waters of the Hudson, the explosion of light that was Manhattan. Then nothing… a dead boy of enigmas and secrets which I so long to know but never shall.
Envoi.
On March 16, 2012 now 20 year old Dharun Ravi was convicted of invasion of privacy and bias intimidation, a hate crime. Wherever he goes in life, however long he lives, every day he will think on young Tyler Clementi, whose vivid memory and restive spirit will be ever present… “To die, to sleep/No more… Be all my sins remember’d.”