The Lovers’ Chronicle 15 August – stay – art by Francesco Zuccarelli & Ferdinand Bac – verse by Sir Walter Scott – birth of Edna Ferber

Dear Zazie,  Here is today’s Lovers’ Chronicle from Mac Tag to his muse.  Follow us on twitter @cowboycoleridge.  Are you in the dark in MacArthur Park?  Rhett

The Lovers’ Chronicle

Dear Muse,

The Faces song with lyrics
by Rod Stewart was the first
to pop in my head;
“For tonight you’re gonna stay with me”
for tonight and many to follow
i have written about how
fallin’ is easier than stayin’
“Time for a different take on that”
yes, how the stayin’ is just
as easy as the fallin’

© copyright 2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

here with me as i wind my way through the tempo and rhythm, and maybe a rhyme or two, rollin’ free so not sure where we are goin’, the destination matters little, it is the way we git there that counts; warm humid twilight comin’ on outside, yes, this is the way to be

© copyright 2022.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

i found somethin’
i could call my own
somethin’ i had never known
the night i held you

‘neath the moonlight
slowly swayin’ to a standstill
your face turns upward
the look in your eyes
tells me all i need to know

it took so long to get here
tell me it does not have to fade

© copyright 2021 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

Pale Love, Pale Rider

should i or not
fascinatin’ question
to ponder by moonlight
not worth a damn at this
but the pull is strong
not immune to that
though the what-the-hell
feelin’ settles in more
with each passin’ day
a concequence,
well you know

the disappointments
finally tipped the balance

© copyright 2020.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

never was good at that
askin’ or tryin’
always made sure
i knew how to git
to the back door
before i got too far in

leavin’ was easier than not
had not the skill nor the will
and never met the one
who could help
git me there

best now to just focus
on stayin’ right here

© copyright 2019.2023 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

we dance ‘neath the moonlight
slowly swayin’ to a standstill
your face turns upward
the look in your eyes
tells me all i need to know

it took so long to get here
tell me it does not have to fade

© copyright 2018 mac tag/cowboy coleridge all rights reserved

another thunderstorm
i will pour the drinks
c’mon, sit down
listen with me

i promise;
not bipolar
but i am torn
i have been intimate
with wondrous desire
yet, i have plumbed
the depths of sadness

i found somethin’
i could speak to
somethin’
i could call my own
a place to rest my head
somethin’ i had never known
the night i held you

fallin’ asleep
to the sound
of the rain

will you stay

© copyright 2017 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Mighty wind with such wild frenzies, gifted
Her hair, sifted, shines in the mountain sun
All over, images, her skin glistens

© copyright 2015 mac tag/cowboy Coleridge all rights reserved

Francesco Zuccarelli
Portrait by Richard Wilson

Today is the birthday of Francesco Zuccarelli (Pitigliano, Italy 15 August 1702 – 30 December 1788 Florence); painter of the late Baroque or Rococo period.  Perhaps the most important landscape painter to have emerged from his adopted city of Venice during the mid-eighteenth century.  His Arcadian views became popular throughout Europe and especially in England where he resided for two extended periods. In 1768, Zuccarelli became a founding member of the Royal Academy of Arts, and upon his final return to Italy, he was elected president of the Venetian Academy.

In his will of 1787, Zuccarelli made his “beloved wife” Giustina his sole heir, and one and a half years later, he died. His lengthy obituary, which appeared in the Gazzetta Toscana, described his personality as “straightforward, humble, grateful, compassionate, generous, uniting these solid virtues in the most courteous tactful manner, with much grace in speaking”, and it also took note that since his youth, he possessed a “natural genius” for landscapes.

Gallery

Sir Walter Scott
Raeburn’s portrait in 1822

Today is the birthday of Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet, FRSE (College Wynd, Edinburgh 15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832 Abbotsford, Roxburghshire, Scotland); historical novelist, playwright and poet.  Scott’s novels and poetry are still read, and many of his works remain classics of both English-language literature and of Scottish literature.  Famous titles include Ivanhoe, Rob Roy, Old Mortality, The Lady of the Lake, Waverley, The Heart of Midlothian and The Bride of Lammermoor.

On a trip to the Lake District with old college friends he met Charlotte Genevieve Charpentier (or Carpenter), daughter of Jean Charpentier of Lyon in France, and ward of Lord Downshire in Cumberland, an Episcopalian.  After three weeks of courtship, Scott proposed and they were married on Christmas Eve 1797 in St Mary’s Church, Carlisle (a church set up in the now destroyed nave of Carlisle Cathedral).  After renting a house in George Street, they moved to nearby South Castle Street.

Verse 

The Lady of the Lake (1810)

• The stag at eve had drunk his fill,
  Where danced the moon on Monan’s rill,
  And deep his midnight lair had made
  In lone Glenartney’s hazel shade.
  • Canto I, stanza 1.
• With head upraised, and look intent,
  And eye and ear attentive bent,
  And locks flung back, and lips apart,
  Like monument of Grecian art,
  In listening mood, she seemed to stand,
  The guardian Naiad of the strand.
  • Canto I, stanza 17.
• And ne’er did Grecian chisel trace
  A Nymph, a Naiad, or a Grace
  Of finer form or lovelier face.
  • Canto I, stanza 18.
• A foot more light, a step more true,
  Ne’er from the heath-flower dash’d the dew.
  • Canto I, stanza 18.
• On his bold visage middle age
  Had slightly pressed its signet sage,
  Yet had not quenched the open truth
  And fiery vehemence of youth;
  Forward and frolic glee was there,
  The will to do, the soul to dare,
  The sparkling glance, soon blown to fire,
  Of hasty love or headlong ire.
  • Canto I, stanza 21.
• Soldier, rest! thy warfare o’er,
  Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking;
  Dream of battled fields no more,
  Days of danger, nights of waking.
  • Canto I, stanza 31.
• Hail to the Chief who in triumph advances!
  • Canto II, stanza 19.
• Some feelings are to mortals given
  With less of earth in them than heaven;
  And if there be a human tear
  From passion’s dross refined and clear,
  A tear so limpid and so meek
  It would not stain an angel’s cheek,
  ‘Tis that which pious fathers shed
  Upon a duteous daughter’s head!
  • Canto II, stanza 22.
• Time rolls his ceaseless course.
  • Canto III, stanza 1.
• Like the dew on the mountain,
  Like the foam on the river,
  Like the bubble on the fountain,
  Thou art gone, and forever!
  • Canto III, stanza 16 (Coronach, stanza 3).
• The rose is fairest when ‘t is budding new,
  And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears.
  The rose is sweetest wash’d with morning dew,
  And love is loveliest when embalm’d in tears.
  • Canto IV, stanza 1.
• Art thou a friend to Roderick?
  • Canto IV, stanza 30.
• Come one, come all! this rock shall fly
  From its firm base as soon as I.
  • Canto V, stanza 10.
• Respect was mingled with surprise,
  And the stern joy which warriors feel
  In foeman worthy of their steel.
  • Canto V, stanza 10.
• Who o’er the herd would wish to reign,
  Fantastic, fickle, fierce, and vain!
  Vain as the leaf upon the stream,
  And fickle as a changeful dream;
  Fantastic as a woman’s mood,
  And fierce as Frenzy’s fever’d blood.
  Thou many-headed monster thing,
  Oh who would wish to be thy king!
  • Canto V, stanza 30.
• Where, where was Roderick then!
  One blast upon his bugle-horn
  Were worth a thousand men.
  • Canto VI, stanza 18.

today is the birthday of Ferdinand Bac (Ferdinand-Sigismond Bach 15 August 1859, Stuttgart, Germany – 18 November 1952, Compiegne, France); cartoonist, artist and writer, son of an illegitimate nephew of the Emperor Napoleon. As a young man, he mixed in the fashionable world of Paris of the Belle Époque, and was known for his caricatures, which appeared in popular journals. He also travelled widely in Europe and the Mediterranean. In his fifties, he began a career as a landscape gardener. The gardens that he created at Les Colombières in Menton on the French Riviera are now designated as a Monument Historique. He also wrote voluminously about social, historical and political subjects, but his work has been largely forgotten.

Bac’s cartoons were often risqué and reflected contemporary Parisian attitudes towards sex. His 1892 drawing Femmes Automatiques for La Vie Parisienne depicted a collection of women in different roles who could be animated by inserting a coin. It implies that in addition to their legitimate roles as dancer, chambermaid, actress and so on, the women would provide sexual services at varying prices. An erotic illustration for the same journal in 1899 showed a woman wrapped in snakes. Bac often drew pictures of models posing for artists that suggested an intimate relationship.

Bac was a romantic, inspired by Watteau and Fragonard. He travelled widely through Europe, visiting Turkey, Sicily, Spain and Norway. In 1880 he was in Morocco with the artists John Singer Sargent and Charles Daux, where the three men rented a small house in Tangier. He had a particular love for Germany, Austria and Italy. He was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1913, and recognized by the Académie française.

gallery

Today is the birthday of Edna Ferber (Kalamazoo, Michigan; August 15, 1885 – April 16, 1968 New York City); novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels include the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big (1924), Show Boat (1926; made into the celebrated 1927 musical), Cimarron (1930; adapted into the 1931 film which won the Academy Award for Best Picture), Giant (1952; made into the 1956 film of the same name) and Ice Palace (1958), which also received a film adaptation in 1960.

Giant stars Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean and features Carroll Baker, Jane Withers, Chill Wills, Mercedes McCambridge, Dennis Hopper, Sal Mineo, Rod Taylor, Elsa Cárdenas and Earl Holliman.

Giant was the last of James Dean’s three films as a leading actor, and earned him his second and last Academy Award nomination – he was killed in a car crash before the film was released. His friend Nick Adams was called in to do some voice dubbing for Dean’s role.  In 2005, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film egistry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

Ferber was a member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of wits who met for lunch every day at the Algonquin Hotel in New York. Ferber and another member of the Round Table, Alexander Woollcott, were long-time enemies, their antipathy lasting until Woollcott’s death in 1943, although Howard Teichmann states in his biography of Woollcott that their feud was due to a misunderstanding. According to Teichmann, Ferber once described Woollcott as “a New Jersey Nero who has mistaken his pinafore for a toga”.

Ferber collaborated with Round Table member George S. Kaufman on several plays presented on Broadway: Minick (1924), The Royal Family (1927), Dinner At Eight (1932), The Land Is Bright (1941), Stage Door (1936), and Bravo! (1948).

Ferber never married, had no children, and is not known to have engaged in a romance or sexual relationship.  In her early novel Dawn O’Hara, the title character’s aunt even remarks, “Being an old maid was a great deal like death by drowning – a really delightful sensation when you ceased struggling.” Ferber did take a maternal interest in the career of her niece Janet Fox, an actress who performed in the original Broadway casts of Ferber’s plays Dinner at Eight (1932) and Stage Door (1936).

Ferber was known for being outspoken and having a quick wit. On one occasion, she led other Jewish guests in leaving a house party after learning the host was anti-Semitic.  Once, after a man joked about how her suit made her resemble a man, she replied, “So does yours.”

The quality of her work was so high that many reviewers believed a man to have written her narratives under a pseudonym of a woman.

And today is the birthday of a great songwriter, Jimmy Webb.  He has written so many classic songs it was difficult pickin’ one for the song of the day.  I finally narrowed it down to this one.

MacArthur Park

Spring was never waiting for us,  girl / It  ran one step ahead / As we followed in the dance
Between the parted pages / And were pressed in love’s  hot, fevered iron / Like a striped  pair of pants

MacArthur’s Park  is melting in the dark / All the sweet, green icing flowing down / Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don’t think that I can take it / ‘Cause it took so long to bake it / And I’ll never have that recipe again, oh no

I recall the yellow cotton dress / Foaming like a wave / On the ground around your knees / The birds like tender babies in your handsAnd the old men playing checkers, by the trees

MacArthur’s Park is melting in the  dark / All the sweet, green icing  flowing down / Someone left the cake  out in the rain
I don’t think  that I can take it / ‘Cause it took  so long to bake it / And I’ll never  have that recipe again, oh no

There will be another song for me / For I will sing it / There  will be another dream for me / Someone will bring it
I  will drink the wine while it is warm / And  never let you catch me looking at the sun / And  after all the loves of my life / After all the loves of my life, you’ll still be the  one
I will take my life into my  hands and I will use it / I will win  the worship in their eyes and I will lose it / I  will have the things that I desire / And my passion flow like rivers through the sky
And after all the loves of my  life / Oh, after all the loves  of my life / I’ll be thinking  of you and wondering why

MacArthur’s Park is melting in the dark / All the sweet, green icing flowing down / Someone left the cake out in the  rain
I don’t think that I can  take it / ‘Cause it took so long to  bake it /And I’ll never have that  recipe again / Oh no, oh no, no, no,  oh no

After all the loves  of my life, I will be thinkin’  of you and wonderin’ why.  I do not think I can take it.

Mac Tag

thanks for stoppin’ by y’all

The song of the day – Waylon Jennings’s version of ‘’MacArthur Park’’