The Decadent Cookbook by Jerome Fletcher Alex Martin Medlar Lucan Durian Gray
Book: The Decadent Cookbook by Jerome Fletcher Alex Martin Medlar Lucan Durian Gray
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her consultations had been quite explicit, and La Barnarina felt that she had been touched by Death’s cold hand. “You love that girl too much, madame,” they had said, “and the child in her turn has learned to love you too much; you are killing her with your caresses.”
Rosaria did not understand, but her mother understood only too well; from that day on she had begun to cut the child off from her kisses and embraces; desperately, she had gone from doctor to doctor - seeking out the celebrated and the obscure, the empirically-inclined and the homeopathic - but at every turn she had been met with a sad shake of the head. Only one of them had taken it upon himself to indicate a possible remedy: Rosaria must join the ranks of the consumptives who go at dawn to the abattoirs to drink lukewarm blood freshly taken from the calves which are bled to make veal.
On the first few occasions, the marquise had taken it upon herself to lead the child down into the abattoirs; but the horrid odour of the blood, the warm carcasses, the bellowing of the beasts as they came to be slaughtered, the carnage of the butchering…all that had caused her terrible anguish, and had sickened her heart. She could not stand it.
Rosaria had been less intimidated. She had bravely swallowed the lukewarm blood, saying only: “This red milk is a little thick for my taste.”
Now, it is a governess who has the task of conducting the girl into the depths; every morning they go down, at five or six o’clock, to that devils’ kitchen beneath the rue de Flandre, to an enclosure where the blood is drained from the living calves, to make the white and tender meat.
And while the young girl makes her descent into that place, where bright- burning fires warm the water in porcelain bathtubs to scald the flesh of the slaughtered beasts, La Barnarina stays here, by the window in the great hallway, perfectly tragic in her velvet and her lace, mirroring in her mode of dress the snow-whiteness of the narcissi, the frost-whiteness of the tulips, and the nacreous whiteness of the irises; here, striking a pose with just a hint of theatricality, she watches.
She keeps watch upon the courtyard of the hotel, and the empty avenue beyond the gate, and her anguish reaches into the uttermost depths of her soul while she anticipates the first kiss which the child will place upon her lips, as soon as she returns: a kiss which always carries an insipid trace of the taste of blood and a faint hint of that odour which perpetually defiles the rue de Flandre, but which, strangely enough, she does not detest at all - quite the contrary - when it is upon the warm lips of her beloved Rosaria.
The Glass of Blood by Jean Lorrain translated by Brian Stableford is published in The Dedalus Book of Decadence (Moral Ruins) edited by Brian Stableford (1990).
C HAPTER 6
C ORRUPTION AND D ECAY
One of Durian Gray’s favourite books, and one to which he returned time and again, was T.M. Heathcote’s The Lives of the Dandies . Not only was it an inexhaustible source of ideas about decor, costume and manners, but it had the ability to lift Durian’s spirits when he was feeling maudlin. A character he particularly admired was Sir George Margelle. The following passage describes Heathcote’s first meeting with the old man.
‘Whenever I hear mention of Sir George Margelle, I am invariably reminded of a particular quotation from Hamlet .
“… to live in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love over the nasty sty.”
These lines epitomise the state into which Sir George had sunk in his old age after a lifetime of dissipation. I remember particularly vividly the first visit I made to his Palladian house in Sussex. I arrived on a bitterly cold day in the winter of 1874. The door was opened to me by a small oleaginous man with sharp features and a disarming smile. He neither looked nor acted like a domestic servant, and I later discovered
Rosaria did not understand, but her mother understood only too well; from that day on she had begun to cut the child off from her kisses and embraces; desperately, she had gone from doctor to doctor - seeking out the celebrated and the obscure, the empirically-inclined and the homeopathic - but at every turn she had been met with a sad shake of the head. Only one of them had taken it upon himself to indicate a possible remedy: Rosaria must join the ranks of the consumptives who go at dawn to the abattoirs to drink lukewarm blood freshly taken from the calves which are bled to make veal.
On the first few occasions, the marquise had taken it upon herself to lead the child down into the abattoirs; but the horrid odour of the blood, the warm carcasses, the bellowing of the beasts as they came to be slaughtered, the carnage of the butchering…all that had caused her terrible anguish, and had sickened her heart. She could not stand it.
Rosaria had been less intimidated. She had bravely swallowed the lukewarm blood, saying only: “This red milk is a little thick for my taste.”
Now, it is a governess who has the task of conducting the girl into the depths; every morning they go down, at five or six o’clock, to that devils’ kitchen beneath the rue de Flandre, to an enclosure where the blood is drained from the living calves, to make the white and tender meat.
And while the young girl makes her descent into that place, where bright- burning fires warm the water in porcelain bathtubs to scald the flesh of the slaughtered beasts, La Barnarina stays here, by the window in the great hallway, perfectly tragic in her velvet and her lace, mirroring in her mode of dress the snow-whiteness of the narcissi, the frost-whiteness of the tulips, and the nacreous whiteness of the irises; here, striking a pose with just a hint of theatricality, she watches.
She keeps watch upon the courtyard of the hotel, and the empty avenue beyond the gate, and her anguish reaches into the uttermost depths of her soul while she anticipates the first kiss which the child will place upon her lips, as soon as she returns: a kiss which always carries an insipid trace of the taste of blood and a faint hint of that odour which perpetually defiles the rue de Flandre, but which, strangely enough, she does not detest at all - quite the contrary - when it is upon the warm lips of her beloved Rosaria.
The Glass of Blood by Jean Lorrain translated by Brian Stableford is published in The Dedalus Book of Decadence (Moral Ruins) edited by Brian Stableford (1990).
C HAPTER 6
C ORRUPTION AND D ECAY
One of Durian Gray’s favourite books, and one to which he returned time and again, was T.M. Heathcote’s The Lives of the Dandies . Not only was it an inexhaustible source of ideas about decor, costume and manners, but it had the ability to lift Durian’s spirits when he was feeling maudlin. A character he particularly admired was Sir George Margelle. The following passage describes Heathcote’s first meeting with the old man.
‘Whenever I hear mention of Sir George Margelle, I am invariably reminded of a particular quotation from Hamlet .
“… to live in the rank sweat of an enseamed bed, stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love over the nasty sty.”
These lines epitomise the state into which Sir George had sunk in his old age after a lifetime of dissipation. I remember particularly vividly the first visit I made to his Palladian house in Sussex. I arrived on a bitterly cold day in the winter of 1874. The door was opened to me by a small oleaginous man with sharp features and a disarming smile. He neither looked nor acted like a domestic servant, and I later discovered
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