Florrie

Last Saturday off to Wimbledon to see Florence Foster Jenkins, too highbrow to last long at the Epsom Odeon. As it turned out, much bigger seats at Wimbledon than Epsom, which was nice. Maybe a couple of dozen takers for this matinée performance.

With Mrs. Jenkins turning out to be a very odd creature indeed. A rich New York socialite with musical talents and pretentions, whom everybody who was anybody loved and who thought that she was a good soprano - despite, certainly in old age, being rather a bad one. Bad enough to be very funny - but good enough to run to a regular series of semi-public concerts which were important society events in the twenties and thirties and usually sold out. Probably made her and her charities a fair bit of money. Complicated living arrangements with, in descending order of grandness, a hotel suite for public consumption, an apartment for marital bliss and some rooms elsewhere for her husband on his days off.

Four good central performances, one from Meryl Streep (whom I usually do like), one from Hugh Grant (whom I usually do not like, but was well cast here), one for the young accompanist (previously unknown to me) and one for the voice coach (a guest appearance by a regular from Midsomer Murders).

We dined at the Wimbledon All-Bar-One, in what was probably a branch of a bank. Busy at around 1800 with people of middle years, that is to say people mainly of working age but not teeny. Cheerful service (young & foreign), adequate food at reasonable prices. Reasonable choice of wine. Seats a bit uncomfortable.

Then, when we got home, intrigued by the whole business, I went off to Amazon to find the book at reference 1, seemingly knocked up by an enterprising journalist to go with the film. A rather oddly produced book, but a light and entertaining read. Hopefully, Mr. Bullock has been well rewarded for his enterprise.

The story in the book is rather more complicated than that of the film, but left me with the feeling that the film was a fair take on the truth. Also that Mrs. Jenkins must have been an interesting person to have been able to sustain her chosen role as a fine soprano: maybe someday someone will do a more learned job of the psychology of it all - both hers for doing it and ours for watching.

PS: I was intrigued by the publisher of the book, with Duckworth for me being the name of a publisher with a rather academic, not to say medical flavour. You would come across them in Dillon's (now Waterstones) or Lewis's (now vanished). But Google and Abebooks tell a rather different story. There was an academic publishing angle, but the publisher was better known for its stable of successful novelists - the likes of Barbara Cartland and D. H. Lawrence. Now a quirky independent at reference 2.

Also intrigued by her natal town of Wilkes-Barré, half named for John Wilkes, a true Brit - while she, like BH, claimed descent from one of the companions of that near viking, William the Conqueror. A town mixed up with anthracite and with the Wyoming valley, this last despite being on the Sesquehanna, a large river finding the sea near Baltimore. With Wyoming being a native American word to do with rivers and hills, with there possibly being lots of them scattered across the US.

Reference 1: Florence Foster Jenkins - Darryl W. Bullock - 2016 - Duckworth Overlook

Reference 2: http://ducknet.co.uk/.