No. The final film made by the late French New-Wave auteur Alain Robbe-Grillet, Gradiva (2007), captures some of the same style and sensibility—a nebulous search; present but imprecise menace; somewhat surrealistic & hallucinogenic. Also, the Gradiva legend, strange enough to have fascinated both Freud and Dalí, is dreamlike, much as the experiences that Sabrina undergoes. (See the accompanying tableau-vivant-like still from the movie: you can see how it would have appealed to those two dream-obsessed figures from the last century). But as an analog it soon breaks down—different stories, settings, underlying themes; Floreat Lux has other sources.
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Has Boyle’s Wish List been fully realized?
What Boyle actually meant by some of the items on his Wish List is not always clear, such as “Varnishes perfumable by Rubbing,” but here is an item-by-item accounting, assessing each in turn as having been achieved or not, with explanatory comments where appropriate.
The result: twenty items accomplished and four not yet. But all four not-yets are just variations on the same theme: making human beings physically more capable than nature created them. Now that we are on the brink of the era of genetic programming, it is reasonable to assume that these four will be achieved sometime in the near future, perhaps within a generation, thus completing a list that must have seemed to Boyle to be a wild dream, but most of whose items are so commonplace to us now that we don’t even think of them.
Photo: Portrait of The Honourable Robert Boyle (1627 – 1691), Irish natural philosopher. Courtesy of the Wellcome Collection.
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What was the inspiration for the “star journey”?
It is hard to say what lies behind an act of imagination, but Sabrina’s hallucinogenic voyage into deep inner/outer space has several identifiable sources. The fact of the scene being labeled “The Fire Sermon” points to two: Buddhism, by way of T.S. Eliot. Recent advances in the mathematics and physics of laser light—a field of study loosely labeled “nonlinear wave topology”—were also influential; these are manifested in Bronaryre’s description of the mechanism. And the imminent launch of the James Webb telescope, which promises to look back 13.5 billion years into the 13.8 billion years of the Universe’s existence, no doubt influenced the imagery at the end of Sabrina’s journey.
A vivid inspiration was the artist Marco Brambilla, whose work the author first became acquainted with in 2016 at The Standard High Line, down in New York City’s Meatpacking District. One of Mr. Brambilla’s video artworks—Creation (Megaplex)—is installed in the hotel’s elevators, otherwise darkened, and this has the effect of seeming to plummet passengers through cosmic spacetime as they journey up and down between the lobby and the rooftop bar—a clever way to display such art.
The accompanying photograph is a snapshot from the video inside those elevators, showing strands of DNA with life (including mermaids) emerging from the primordial swirl, but the full effect is inseparable from movement and needs to be appreciated in video form. So, if in New York, take a trip to The Standard High Line’s rooftop bar and enjoy the show along the way—or it can be seen here.
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What is the background photo at the bottom of the website?
The background of the Contact section is a shot from the interior of an E-Type Jaguar—the basis for Bronaryre’s—and is the same vehicle as on the rear jacket of FLOREAT LUX. The exact model is a 1969 Series 2 Roadster, right-hand-drive and British specification, which is to say that the 4.2-liter straight-six is equipped with triple SU carburetors—Sabrina’s “row of shiny little tea kettles”—not the dual Zenith-Stromberg units on American XKEs, fitted to meet US emission standards but reducing power. In this shot is visible “a lever to the left of the steering column” that Sabrina thinks of as “selecting flap for take-off” (in fact it chokes those triple SUs, enriching the mixture for a cold start).
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Is Temple Slaughter Preceptory based on a real place?
In its basic layout—Palladian structure, topiarized parterre, broad parade, clock tower, Neptune fountain, sounding room with a wonderfully ornate grille—Bronaryre’s estate is loosely based on Cliveden House. Sabrina’s room, too, was inspired by Cliveden’s Lady Astor suite, including the fanciful Jacobean fireplace that fueled Sabrina’s phantasmagorical dreams (pictured).
However, there are many differences: Cliveden is located on the Berkshire-Buckinghamshire border, just ten miles northwest of Heathrow, and sits on the mighty Thames rather than the modest Windrush. Also, although it has been home to a Prince, two Dukes, an Earl, and four Viscounts, as far as is known no one claiming to be the Lord of the Underworld has ever occupied the place. Nevertheless, there is a certain scandalous reputation to Cliveden that might appeal to that gentleman: the original house was built by George Villiers, the second Duke of Buckingham, son of a rogue and himself a rogue: he used the place to stash his mistress, and killed her husband, the Earl of Shrewsbury, in a duel over her; between the World Wars it was the scene of lavish parties on a Gatsbyesque scale, hosted by the Astors and whose guest lists included luminaries as varied as Charlie Chaplin, Mahatma Gandhi & Lawrence of Arabia; more lately, it was the setting for the key events in the Profumo affair.
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Is it true that “no two genuine democracies have ever gone to war”?
As far as the author is aware, Bronaryre’s assertion is correct. In the first Indo-Pakistani War (1947) both sides were technically democracies, but the partition had just occurred, there were still independent princelings deciding which if either nation they would join, and there had been no instance of the peaceful transition of political power that distinguishes genuine democracies. In the 1965 & 1971 wars, Pakistan was under military dictatorship (there had been an election in 1970, but the winner was imprisoned by the ruling general). In the fourth war, in 1999, both sides were again technically democracies, but the fact that there was another military coup in Pakistan that same year makes it hard to assert that democracy there was as yet genuine.
The intermittent “Cod Wars” between Iceland and the United Kingdom (1958-1976) resulted in some ships being damaged in collisions, but there were no deaths and these conflicts cannot count as real wars.
More recently, in the Russia/Georgia and Russia/Ukraine conflicts both sides were nominally democracies, but the assertion that Russia under Putin remains a genuine democracy is not credible.
Any counterexamples would be interesting to hear. In their absence, Bronaryre’s observation makes a compelling argument for a political system so effective in bringing peace to such a belligerent species, and should encourage the democracies to more resolutely close ranks against today’s global rise of authoritarian regimes.
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Where can Ravenscroft’s “magnesium-bronze monstrosities that…seem to shimmer” be seen?
All four of the SS United States‘ propellers are on display on the East Coast of the US. The inboard pair were five-bladed—one of them is located at the Mariner’s Museum at Newport News, VA, where the ship was built; the other at the State University of New York Maritime College in the Bronx. The outboard pair were four-bladed—one is at the museum adjacent to the US Merchant Marine Academy at King’s Point, Long Island; and the other (pictured, courtesy of the SS United States Conservancy) is at Pier 76 on Manhattan’s westside.
For those doing a transatlantic crossing on QM2, she carries a spare propeller on her fo’c’sle that has a similar machined effect, and which can be inspected close-up.
The Conservancy’s website, ssusc.org, has much more detail about the SS United States, including a paper discussing her propellers.
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Can the Tate Rothkos—just colored rectangles, after all, & originally intended to decorate a restaurant—really be disturbing art?
In 2012, one fellow found the Tate Rothkos sufficiently disturbing to physically attack them. He spent a year and a half in prison as a consequence, the same amount of time it took the Tate Modern to complete the restoration.
Whatever one’s opinion, the Tate Rothkos are certainly epic, despite being as brooding & brutal as the building that now houses them, the chimney of which appears in this photograph, dirty brown & windowless, rising like a malignant tower of Sauron on the South Bank—contrasting, as Sabrina notes, with the pale purity of St. Paul’s on the other side.
Also captured in this panorama is Bronaryre’s “unattractive hodgepodge of oddly-shaped modern buildings” downriver. The limestone structure in the left foreground is Somerset House, and on its flagstaff can be seen a glimpse of the same red-and-gold blazon of the house of Plantagenet that Sabrina scrutinized.
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Is there a Riviera villa like the one to which Baker invites Sabrina?
Now known as “Villa X,” the Villa Bloc at Cap d’Antibes on the Côte d’Azur was designed by Claude Parent for the sculptor André Bloc and finished in 1962. This photograph, taken when the author stayed there in 2018, captures the sense of optimistic modernism underlying the design, including the fabulous top floor, Baker’s “big glass box looking out over the Mediterranean”—reminiscent of Bronaryre’s Manhattan sky-cell, and echoing the light/enlightenment-seeking theme of FLOREAT LUX.
Also shown is the external staircase—helical rather than spiral, as in the Templar staircase of the Unburying the Dead scene. Watson & Crick revealed the helical nature of DNA in 1953, just a few years before Villa Bloc was conceived, and so perhaps the helical design in this case was not a coincidental foretelling but a conscious acknowledgment of that epoch-changing event.
Although privately owned and not open to the public (even the road to it is restricted, apparently due to French naval control of the neighboring lighthouse) the history & details of the villa’s design are available in the abundantly illustrated book La Villa Bloc de Claude Parent (Editions Imbernon, Marseilles, June 2011). In the original design the middle floor was open, spatio-dynamisme having strict rules for the proportion of open to enclosed space, but a later owner had it filled in. In La Villa Bloc de Claude Parent, the architect’s views on this can be seen in his angry scrawl across the blueprints: “Idiot et voyou [thug].”
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Can Bronaryre’s Manhattan “sky-cell” be visited?
For the first time in half a century, the penthouse at 70 Pine Street is open to the public. Floors 63-66 have been converted into a restaurant—Saga, opened just 4 weeks prior to the publication of FLOREAT LUX, and fittingly the site of a celebration for the book’s launch. The 66th floor—Bronaryre’s “sky cell”—has been preserved, including the pint-sized pinion-driven elevator emerging through the floor.
This photograph was taken from the terrace on the 63rd floor. The Empire State Building’s spire is brightly lit, center-left, emerging in Midtown taller than all the others. The Chrysler’s spire is also visible, although it appears squared off by the tall building behind it (the Citigroup Center). The catenary curves of the “noble Triborough” are visible to the right and, further right, a span of the distant Whitestone, where the East River becomes Long Island Sound. The golden triangular top in the center of the shot belongs to the Foley Square US Courthouse, site of many famous trials, from the Rosenbergs to Osama bin Laden (in absentia), and a place a little too well known to the many Manhattanites who, like the author, have become acquainted with it via jury duty.
In New York, no restaurant will long survive on location alone, but Saga has food & service to match the panorama and is destined to be listed among the finest in the city—thus, for the cost of a (superb) meal, anyone can see the same view that fascinated Sabrina in the sky-cell.