Happy Halloween!
Today also marks the end of the ELEGANCE OF THE ETERNAL auction held online through Bonham's. I thought I'd share some thoughts...
On Anne Rice's Facebook page, some of the items up for auction were shared with some wonderful stories and anecdotes from Christopher Rice. They gave glimpses into the things Anne loved and collected, and even gave some more insight into her as an author.
For example, despite having been photographed wearing some pretty fancy jewelry, Anne Rice did not typically prefer a lot of jewelry. And what jewelry she did prefer tended to be simple or to have some personal meaning to her. It didn't have to be terribly expensive jewelry, either.
One would think that, for a family of witches who managed to amass incredible wealth across nearly all thirteen generations, a certain piece of jewelry would have been more...fancy.
Nope.
The Mayfair emerald necklace was described in The Witching Hour as a rather simple piece of jewelry. A rectangular Brazilian emerald about the size of a thumbnail set in gold filigree on a gold chain. A pendant necklace. Simple, but carries a lot of meaning. It became the now popular AI-generated (I do my own talking, dam---AHEM. Always have.) "more than just an" heirloom necklace" when Deborah commemorated how she, an impoverished girl from Scotland, got it. Lasher.
Next...I had to check out the dinner and flatware. And again, it does take me right back to The Witching Hour. It's one thing to discover an old house owned by a wealthy family is full of old treasures. As Rowan and Michael explore this old butler's pantry, they find a lot of things I'm guessing were inspired by things Anne Rice loved.
Some of the flatware even had engraved initials that made me think of the things found in that butler's pantry that had a monogram on them--MBM, or Mary Beth Mayfair. That was when Rowan started to imagine all of this old dinnerware in service again, Mayfairs and Mayfairs...the way it was when Mary Beth Mayfair was still alive.
Funny how old traditions are able to be resumed. Some families used dinners on expensive dinnerware as a way to display wealth and prominence, and of course, family rules and traditions that were not to be broken.
For Rowan Mayfair, there would have been another component to it. To reconnect with a family she didn't know she had. She was separated from it without her consent or her knowledge until it was no longer possible to hide it from her. Being cut off from her family had meant being cut off from participating even in the most simple of traditions. Family dinners--a glue meant to hold families together. Whether they are holiday dinners or dinners at family gatherings, or just ordinary dinners on ordinary days, food and service make for some of the most powerful family traditions we have.
I've wondered if things that happened in Anne's life made these things so much more meaningful to her. So much so that they became a part of Rowan Mayfair. I think authors do put bits and pieces of themselves in their characters. Anne Rice stands out in how she was able to do that and bring something that we thought was so mundane closer to what they truly represent.
I do have to take a moment here to say that I had to check out the dinnerware and flatware to see if I did a decent job of guesswork for my 3D model of the Mayfair dining room. Yes. A 3D model I built in SketchUp. The house, everything in it, including furnishings and...dishes.
There is a set of Wedgwood I thought, "NICE!". I put together different sets of models, meaning to spend this year going down that rabbit hole--until this computer stuff decided to disrupt me. I'm pretty irritated about it still, which is saying it nicely. I'm still going to, but I digress.
What really made me smile a bit is because years ago, when I first began to see what I could find to give a pictorial idea of what might be found on a Mayfair dinner table, it wasn't that much. That has changed over the years, yes, but I managed to find some pretty interesting pieces. Some of which were flatware. Or what would be used for serving.
So, when I looked at the flatware in the auction, I would see this or that piece and think of that earliest of forays. It's on The Mayfair Witches Kitchen on the main website--or rather, a link to a little YouTube video with some tunes while you wonder, "What was THAT for?!". Some of the pieces in Anne's collection did make me think of that early compilation, though.
Now, the books.
I don't generally annotate paper copies of books, but for books I also have a digital copy of, I sometimes make notes. Still, I have my own ways of making notes. Basically, Anne Rice was my kind of reader.
I, too, do not have the resources to have put in a bid myself. However, I would be fascinated to see more examples of notes she made in the books she read. Her son described her as a reader who would have an ongoing dialog with the author as she was reading. To learn more about that would be a fascinating study.
Well, of COURSE I looked at the titles of the books about witchcraft. Some, I've heard of. One, everyone familiar with the less pleasant history of witchcraft has heard of at one point or another. And then, there was another title that made me drop my jaw.
Now, I do not recall where I got the idea for the new name of one page of the Parlor. It is one of the original pages and accessible from the main menu even now. It seems there is a book by the same title I changed the page name to (before adding "Mayfair" in a later modification).
The World of the Witches by Julio Caro Baroja.
I think this auction did, through things Anne Rice cherished in life, show more of who she was as a person and as an author. It's hard to put into words just how she could make things we see as so ordinary into something immersive and magnificent.