The Lady in Gold by Anne-Marie O'Connor

The Lady in Gold

Anne-Marie O’Connor

Knopf, 2012

An account of how Klimt’s most famous painting, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, also known as Lady in Gold, came to be painted; what happened to Klimt and his circle, and what became of Adele, her family and friends – assimilated Austrian Jewish families in Viennese high society. The last part of the book tells the story of how in the 1990s Maria Gutmann, Adele’s niece, then living in America, successfully sued the Austrian Government for possession of the painting.

Anne-Marie O’Connor is a journalist by training and profession, as is evident from the style of her writing – a high proportion of one-clause sentences and one-sentence paragraphs. She has undertaken a vast amount of research into the lives of everyone even remotely connected to her main themes.

It’s a fascinating story, and one learns a lot about Austria and art; Austria and the Austrians before and during the Second World War; and, of course, the Bloch-Bauer family themselves. The story is told through events, following one after another, not as a narrative. Most of us found it quite hard to keep track of who was related to whom, especially as the author has a habit of referring to people by their first names only, so that even the (essential) index couldn’t help. However, we found it utterly fascinating, crammed with facts, packed with information and new lights on twentieth-century history – and art history ­–, and some simply couldn’t put it down.

It is intriguing to find that here, as in so many places, wealthy Jewish families are major patrons of culture. The answer has to be that, as Pieper famously explained, “Leisure is the basis of culture”.

One of the important lessons of the book is how, after the Second World War, Austrians denied they had invited German Nazis into their country at the Anschluss (the union between Nazi Germany and Austria in 1938) and instead claimed to be the “first victims” of the Nazis. Once again, the book shows how Nazis plumbed the depths of human cruelty. One reader was amused at the change it brought about in her attitudes: The Olive Grove made her hate Israeli Jews for what they did to the Palestinians; but now she hates Austrians for what they did to the Jews. It is not, of course, only the Austrians or only the Nazis: the tragedy of Viktor Gutmann’s death in the Croatia he was hoping to help rebuild, stays in the mind.

However, the Austrian establishment persisted in its refusal either to admit the truth of the Nazi era, or to return the stolen or appropriated art to its rightful owners. The fact is that in the immediate post-war period, a large proportion of those in management or positions of authority were former Nazis or sympathisers. This parallels the situation in ex-Communist countries after 1989.

The characters in the book provoke endless reflection. Adele, unable to have children, was a “modern” woman and became a socialist. Klimt, and his artist friends, raise the question of why they didn’t have any morals. Maria (nee Bloch-Bauer) and her husband Fritz Altmann, after a dodgy beginning, were obviously very much in love. After escaping to America, Maria “discovered that she liked work” !!!!!!!!!!!! Perhaps “the devil finds work for idle hands”. And the book explains that Randol (her lawyer) worked so hard because he had a wife and children to support. One of the original things that could be pulled out of the book is: HOW BORING IT IS WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE WORK TO DO.

Another question which remains unaddressed is: Where was the Catholic Church in all of this? Wasn’t Austria a Catholic country? Maybe there is scope for another book about this?

Sisters of Sinai, Janet Soskice

Janet Soskice, Sisters of Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Found the Hidden Gospels, Vintage Books, 2010.

This book was a chance suggestion that turned out to be one of the most successful books we have read so far in terms of enjoyment, discussion and “reader engagement”. Book-club members did various forms of research on the writer and on the subjects of the book and all of this was brought up at the meeting.

The two “lady adventurers” were the twins Agnes and Margaret Smith of Irvine, Scotland, born on 11^th January 1843. They were brought up as Presbyterians and both of them firmly believed and practised their faith all their lives. In a way their Presbyterian faith could be said to be what drives and inspires – rather even than simply guides – their whole lives. They inherited a large fortune, and as Soskice explains, their Presbyterianism told them that this was for a purpose: they could neither give it away, nor spend it on themselves. So they travelled, researched ancient manuscripts, endowed  a Presbyterian college (Westminster College) at Cambridge, and started the Boys’ Brigade.

So many puzzling features of their lives now made sense. Their money, for instance – never unwelcome, but what was it for? Giving it all away, St Francis-like, had never been a Presbyterian option. Riches (especially riches, like theirs, acquired almost accidentally) must be intended to play some part in the providential plan.

Now it was clear that they did have vocations, and ones for which their life experiences entirely suited them. (p. 252)

Some people found the book rather heavy going at the beginning, but soon became engrossed in the story. Agnes and Margaret’s father (their mother died two weeks after they were born) promised them that for every new language they learned, he would take them to visit the country where it was spoken. They made the most of their amazing gift for languages (and their capacity for serious study and hard work) to learn modern European languages and then went on to more exotic ones, Greek, Arabic, Syriac, and more. It was notable that they had no mother to teach them a woman’s place in the nineteenth-century world, i.e. to hold them back and limit their horizons...

The book covers the whole of their lives, but dwells especially on their journeys to St Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai Desert. They went there because they had been told by a friendly professor at Cambridge (where they had settled) that he had visited the monastery and seen a manuscript there which might prove to be extremely important, but had been unable to examine it. While they were there, Agnes discovered a battered old chunk of pages all stuck together, and realised it was a palimpsest of the Bible – a palimpsest being a manuscript whose original writing had been scraped or washed off and something else written on top. With careful examination and sometimes special treatment, the original writing can be made out. It turned out to be an extraordinarily early manuscript of the whole Bible in Syriac. Agnes and Margaret, helped by the monk-librarian, started to photograph the whole manuscript page by page. They had to come back a year later, this time accompanied by more scholars, to complete the work of making a good copy of the whole manuscript.

The whole story is fascinating and it takes a book to do it full justice. In addition, we hear about the travelling conditions for European visitors in the Middle East at that time. The story is told with no dramatization, but very clearly and vividly, and the difficulties they had to tackle all the way are very real, so much so that it is quite distressing. They quickly got used to riding on camels – and how the sisters got on with the Greek Orthodox monks. They were of course totally ignorant of this form of religion, and one Sunday when the monks were going by in solemn procession Agnes thought that she ought to shake hands with the Prior. Read the episode on p. 139! They were, nevertheless, open-minded and respectful despite their complete inability to understand. 

Another interesting feature that comes up in this extremely rich and eventful story is the terrible way that some academics treated others – nothing has changed in this respect, alas! Obviously there were also some who were kind, generous and helpful, though. Plus the atrocious plundering of manuscripts that went on – again, plus ça change...

As for the twins themselves, there is a lot more we would like to know about them but don’t, simply because the twins didn’t write about it. You get a real sense of their self-restraint, privacy, – from their point of view even decency – in that they don’t let it all hang out, or go in for either navel-gazing or self-advertising. That itself tells you a lot about them.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

Those who had read this book before found that it was more interesting on second reading, and in a way they got more out of it. Especially about the “second story”, Levin and Kitty, since the first time round one naturally focused more on Anna Karenina herself.

Tolstoy wrote the book as a serial. One of the reasons he wrote it was to send a new message to readers, about the relationship between work and education. It is a family story – all the main characters are connected. But between them they represent the whole range of levels of Russian nineteenth-century society. The Shterbatskys – the peasants – Nicholas Levin and Marya Nikolaevna.

Bookclubbers were surprised to find how easy the book was to read, compared with nineteenth-century literature in English. We had read different translations, but no-one had any difficulty in reading it and everyone had found it a compelling read. The chapters are very short, and the language and sentences are clear. The ideas are not necessarily so straightforward or easy to catch. In practically every chapter, there are phrases, sentences and episodes that are loaded with significance – anyone who had a copy of their own and who was in the habit of highlighting meaningful passages, would soon have virtually the whole book covered in yellow stripes.

One of the most fascinating things about the book is the picture it provides of the Russian world of the nineteenth century. It was a world in which money meant everything (as indeed it does in today’s world), whether at the peasants’ level or at that of the upper classes. What was noticeable was the sheer unreality of the lives lived by the nobility. There is a very strongly-marked contrast between the society men who went from soirée to theatre to club (yes, the men’s purposelessness is what strikes one most; I suppose we find it easier to accept the idea of upper-class women leading such a meaningless existence?) and the peasants, with their simple happiness and their farniente, the ability to persevere in hard, gruelling work while taking every opportunity that came along of doing nothing. The peasants are shown as leading happy, even carefree lives. They live on the land and have strong families, companionship, and folk traditions. However, they have neither education nor culture, so their level of happiness is limited and narrow.

The question of religious faith runs through the whole book – it is a question, a problem. It is evident in Karenin, a cold fish who has never really thought about how he ought to treat his wife, or whether their relationship could be different. He has been living an artificial life made up of official duties and official responsibilities, but with no real human relationships and no actual friends at all. He undergoes a religious experience when Anna seems to be dying after giving birth, while still in his house, to Vronsky’s daughter. Karenin finds that he can humble himself, and forgive her and even Vronsky, totally, in a Christ-like way. However, this conversion, real though it is, does not last. Karenin ends up being fascinated by the Christian-Scientist-type teachings of Countess Lydia Ivanovna, even though he realises, deep down, that this new version of Christianity is false and shallow.

Levin himself, who seems to be an autobiographical character for Tolstoy, wrestles much more deeply with his faith, as he does with everything in the intellectual realm. To begin with he tries to make sense of the Russian social set-up as it is at that time, and to rationalise and improve the agricultural work done by the peasants – recently liberated from serfdom. He is foiled by the peasants themselves, who are one and all convinced that any change or innovation must necessarily be bad, and, if proposed by a landowner, must be a trick to get something out of them. Levin is a man of integrity and natural humility, and continues questioning, reading, and arguing about the purpose of life and human nature. However, it is noticeable that again and again, he tries to engage people in discussion about these things unsuccessfully, even when he is sure they have very interesting viewpoints to contribute; and when he argues, he never manages to convince anyone of his point of view.

Levin goes to confession to a Russian Orthodox priest before his wedding, as Church rules require. And, with characteristic honesty (unlike Oblonsky), he says frankly that he doubts the existence of God. The priest is not scandalized, but really does help him to look towards faith instead of away from it. When Kitty has a difficult labour, Levin finds himself praying with real faith, but experiences it more as a feeling that doesn’t last (there is an obvious parallel here with Karenin). However, he keeps on trying to find his way to faith in order to make sense of his life, and human existence. In the end he realises that in all his philosophising, reading and arguing, he has been “seeking food in toy shops and tool shops” – determinedly looking for spiritual sustenance in all the wrong places – and that he really does have a faith on which he can construct his life.

Vronsky and Anna are the main characters of the “first story” in the book, as Levin and Kitty are of the “second story”. Vronsky’s philosophy of life, which seems to be characteristic of his class and generation, was merely a set of hard and fast rules for getting on in society. Practically every time he is mentioned, his “even white teeth” also feature. The most extensive and detailed episode involving him is the horse race where he literally rides his horse to death in an unsuccessful attempt to win; he destroys Anna as he had destroyed the horse. There is an astonishing passage when he and Anna first become lovers, where Tolstoy describes Vronsky’s attitude towards Anna in terms of the attitude of a murderer towards his dead victim. The last time Vronsky comes into the book, on his way to find death at the battlefront, he is suffering from a severe ache in all his teeth.

Anna is, of course, a much more interesting character, and we come much closer to her than we ever do to Vronsky. What ruins her life is firstly her inability to love her husband, and secondly, her pathological jealousy. Neither of these is entirely her fault, but she never had any help in tackling these problems. Nowadays she is generally seen as a tragic heroine. It is easy to see how this view can do a lot of harm: a woman who is not entirely happy in her marriage for some reason, reads Anna Karenina and thinks, “Ohh how romantic – just like me – I’m just like her…” and looks for a way of escape, instead of looking to see where the problem lies (including in her own behaviour) and trying to solve it and put her marriage on a better footing.

There are masses of other characters in the book, all of whom are compellingly realistic even though they are relatively “minor parts”.

It is a fascinating book to read from all sorts of different angles. At the level of sociology, it is worth comparing with books about other societies – most obviously, of course, Dickens, Gaskell, and other nineteenth-century English writers who describe the whole range of society; and writers of similar scope in other countries.