I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
“Live the questions now.” Rainer Maria Rilke
Thank you for visiting this page. I’m Julia, and I work as a psychodynamic psychotherapist, relationship counsellor, and clinical supervisor. I’ve been in private practice in the City of London and in south-west London for the past three years; for the decade before that, I worked as a specialist psychotherapist for working age adults in the NHS (where I’ve also run staff groups).
This is where you will find the posts on my London-based blog, which I update constantly through the week, almost as a stream of consciousness. It reflects my interests, including psychotherapy, and my weekly experience outside – though not divorced from – my work. It’s a contemporary version of the commonplace book – one where the thoughts, responses, and comments of others are welcome.
“…new life in the form of Mathilde Freud had arisen on the spot where death had claimed so many.”
From A Nervous Splendor (1979), by Frederic Morton:
“The problem was that in Vienna the accomplishment of actual success did not count for as much as the accomplished gesture. A physician, for instance, was expected to make house calls in a two-horse fiacre. Freud could not afford a fiacre — not even a one-horse Einspänner…
…Still, in title-happy Vienna, Freud could now pronounce himself Department Head of a clinic as well as University Lecturer.
His own apartment-office was itself a gesture printed on his visiting card; the place was impressively beyond his means. Maria Theresienstrasse 8 constituted a prime address on the Ring. The very house had come into being as a gesture from none other than the Emperor. On this spot the famous Ring Theater had stood before it burned down on December 8, 1881, killing hundreds of Viennese, including an uncle of Mary Vetsera’s. Anton Bruckner and Freud himself had had tickets for the performance that night.
Both might have been among the three hundred and eighty-six charred bodies if they hadn’t been separately — they never knew each other — diverted to other engagements at the last moment.
Over the ashes of the disaster the monarch had ordered the construction of a stately new building. It contained a memorial chapel as well as some choice commercial and residential units. This had attracted Freud when he had looked for a “married” apartment. Vacancies were frequent at Maria Theresienstrasse 8 because of popular superstition surrounding this Sühnhaus (atonement house). The Freuds hesitated, too, but for a different reason. The rent amounted to no less than sixteen hundred gulden a month. In the end they decided to pay it. The sound of the location — in other words, the gesture – was the thing.
Indeed, residing here paid some very flossy fringe benefits. The Freuds’ first child, Mathilde, was also the first baby in the building. Two days after the birth an adjutant in plumed hat called from His Majesty’s Palace. He presented the gift of a vase from the Imperial Porcelain Works together with a signed letter from the sovereign himself. It conveyed the All Highest’s pleasure that new life in the form of Mathilde Freud had arisen on the spot where death had claimed so many.
Unfortunately the Emperor’s congratulations did not reduce the rent by one penny. And in the great fall of 1888, the pennies came in such trickles to Dr. Freud. He knew that the weather would soon turn raw. Four large and noble rooms would have to be heated. He still couldn’t afford to furnish them fully and their bareness made them look cold already. The prices of coal and kindling wood as well as sugar were going up. Every kreuzer counted. He didn’t have to pawn his gold watch again (as he had, soon after his honeymoon two years earlier) but life was awfully tight and getting yet tighter.
The doctor kept the habit he’d begun right after his engagement to Martha: he turned his income over to her for deposit in a cash box. Freud “borrowed” from the funds in the box, giving his wife a detailed written account of his expenses to curb what he considered his extravagance, especially his “scandalous” outlays for cigars. They cost him only about ten cents a day, but there was so damnably little in the funds box.
The smallest expenditure had to be weighed. He had long wanted to give Martha a gold snake bracelet, a status symbol distinguishing the wives of University-affiliated physicians from those of lesser doctors. In 1888 she still had to make do with a merely silver one — a minor but real humiliation. He owned all of two good neckties and was fortunate in his tailor, a family acquaintance indulgent about tardy installment payments…
…His ornate address, too, turned out to be of small help.
He hustled from one chore to another. Had he held on to the white gloves and silk hat which went with his job at Professor Leidesdorf’s, he would have been much more in tune with Vienna’s splendid season in the fall of 1888.”
“An irresistibly cheering little dance…the infectious Spanish-inflected rhythms of this chaconne.”
See YEAR OF WONDER: Classical Music for Every Day (2017), by Clemency Burton-Hill: 16th May entry.
Unity Valkyrie Freeman-Mitford (8 August 1914 – 28 May 1948)
From The Spectator of 9.8.2014:
“On 8 August 1914, four days after the declaration of war, Unity Valkyrie Mitford was born, the fifth child and fourth daughter of David and Sydney Freeman-Mitford, who admired the actress Unity Moore.
Grandfather Redesdale suggested Valkyrie, after his friend Wagner’s Norse war-maidens.”
From Wikipedia:
“The 7th arrondissement of Paris (VIIe arrondissement) is one of the 20 arrondissements of the capital city of France. In spoken French, this arrondissement is referred to as le septième.
The arrondissement, called Palais-Bourbon in a reference to the seat of the National Assembly, includes some of the major and well-known tourist attractions of Paris, such as the Eiffel Tower, the Hôtel des Invalides (Napoleon’s resting place), the Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, as well as a concentration of museums such as the Musée d’Orsay, Musée Rodin and the Musée du Quai Branly – Jacques Chirac.
Situated on the Rive Gauche—the “Left” bank of the River Seine—this central arrondissement, which includes the historical aristocratic neighbourhood of Faubourg Saint-Germain, contains a number of French national institutions, among them the National Assembly and numerous government ministries. It is also home to many foreign diplomatic embassies, some of them occupying outstanding hôtels particuliers.
The arrondissement has been home to the French upper class since the 17th century, when it became the new residence of France’s highest nobility. The district has been so fashionable within the French aristocracy that the phrase le Faubourg—referring to the ancient name of the current 7th arrondissement—has been used to describe French nobility ever since. The 7th arrondissement of Paris and Neuilly-sur-Seine form the most affluent and prestigious residential area in France.”
From Nancy Mitford (1985), by Selina Hastings:
“…Next to come (to 7 Rue Monsieur, 75007 Paris) were Debo and Andrew (11th Duke and Duchess of Devonshire) the prospect of whose arrival filled Nancy with alarm, ‘rather like the Royal visit to me I must say & almost as alarming since all my friends are so much too old & so much too clever’. In fact it was a success, marred only by an embarrassing moment at dinner with the Windsors when Nancy, from head to foot in tartan, all the rage with the couturiers that year, was met by the Duke dressed in exactly the same: ‘It seems I was togged up in royal Stuart tartan,’ she wailed, ‘how can one tell?’ And after they had gone Evelyn (Waugh) arrived and behaved abominably, studiedly rude to the distinguished cleric Nancy had invited to luncheon at Evelyn’s own request, and then, when she took him down to spend the night at Chantilly with the Coopers, deliberately picking a violent quarrel with Duff.
In May Nancy had to break off again to go to England. Muv had been looking after Unity on Inch Kenneth when Bobo had suddenly fallen ill with meningitis. She was taken across to the mainland to hospital in Oban, and here she died. Her body was brought down by train to be buried at Swinbrook. Although never as fond of Bobo as she had been of her brother Tom, to Nancy her death was in some ways much sadder. Tom had had a happy life, whereas Unity’s had been so pathetic. ‘I have always found that one minds terribly when they are the ones of whom everybody else says far the best,’ she wrote to Jim Lees-Milne. ‘Lately she had been so very much better & had become quite thin & pretty again, & seemed to enjoy her life again. But her real happiness in life was over – she was a victim of the war as much as anybody wasn’t she.’
But more distressing to Nancy that her sister’s death was a crisis involving the Colonel. The French edition of La Poursuite d’Amour had now come out, and as Gaston had feared the left-wing press immediately jumped on the dedication. Horrified, Nancy wrote to Diana, ‘a hateful weekly paper here has come out with enormous headlines “Hitler’s mistress’s sister dedicates daring book to M. Palewski”…He is in a great to do about it …You see he is such an ambitious man & you know how the one thing that can’t be forgiven is getting in their way politically – Of course it was madness, the dedication, & what I can’t tease him with now it was entirely his own doing. I said shall I put To the Colonel – G.P. & so on & he absolutely insisted on having his whole name. At the time I suppose he was powerful enough for it not to matter. Now with everything in the balance the Communists have pounced. He says the General will be furious.’
There was no alternative but for Nancy to leave Paris at once and wait till the fuss died down. Fortunately she had been offered some film-work at Ealing Studios (to revise the script of Kind Hearts and Coronets) which gave her a publicly acceptable excuse to go…”
“a rococo bauble…delicious arabesques of protocol.”
From A Nervous Splendor (1979), by Frederic Morton:
“If his subjects’ electrical frivolities frustrated the Crown Prince, so did their attitude toward the telephone. Rudolf admired the telephone’s use abroad, not least its facilitation of stock-market-business between widely separated cities. Particularly in America this let more and more of the common people participate in transactions heretofore limited to millionaires.
In Rudolf’s own country, though, the telephone could not seem to become a democratic utility. Austrians treated it like a rococo bauble. This summer long-distance service began between Vienna and the suburb of Baden near Mayerling. Calls were limited to ten minutes, of which at least six were taken up by delicious arabesques of protocol.
“Fräulein Operator in Baden?” said Fräulein Operator in Vienna.
“Might I have the honor to wish you a good morning? It is my privilege to establish a connection on behalf of His Excellency, the Privy Councillor Alfons Baron von Wieck, who presents his compliments. His Excellency would be grateful for the pleasure of conversing with …””
From the Smallweed column of The Guardian of Sat 4 Aug 2001:
“It seemed a safe bet that it would not be long before someone came up with Freud’s telephone number and sure enough someone has. It was HAM (for Hampstead) 2002. Sigmund, you may remember from this column last week, when 43 was allotted the Vienna telephone number 14362. Aha! he said to himself (I paraphrase, but not much). The number 43 is my present age. So the 62 which follows must be the age at which I am doomed to die. He was troubled enough to write to Jung about it. Just as well he wasn’t living in Hampstead at 20. He might have feared dying at two.”
Paul Roazen wrote in the Autumn 1978 issue of VQR:
“In their convictions Orwell and Freud had far more in common than one might suppose. Both were superlative rationalists who felt their intelligence oppressed by the weight of human stupidity. Religious belief seemed to them a particularly noxious species of nonsense. Politically, Orwell and Freud shared a suspicion of American power. Although Orwell made much more of his concern at the dangers inherent in machines, in his daily life Freud rarely relied on the use of the telephone; for both of them letter-writing was an art as well as a necessity. Although Freud was far older, born in 1856 instead of 1903, each came to feel that World War I marked a watershed after which the universe was barer and more dilapidated.”
John Dyer posted at j.hn on November 28, 2008:
“Freud had some great observations about how the technology of his day (wired telephones and railroads) were affecting his world. This quote summarizes his feelings:
“If there had been no railway to conquer distance, my child would never have left town and I should need no telephone to hear his voice.”
I love how Freud encapsulates one of today’s most fascinating phenomena: we create technology to help solve problems created by technology. This seems to beautifully capture the human condition.
(Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. New York: W. W. Norton, 1961, p. 38.)”
From A Nervous Splendor (1979), by Frederic Morton:
“”Fräulein Operator in Vienna?” Fräulein Operator in Baden said.
“The party whom I have the honor to serve at this end of the wire, University Professor Dr. Dr. Alois Zechner,* would like to convey to you and to your party a hand kiss for the courtesy of awaiting the completion of this connection. Fräulein Operator, if it is still convenient for His Excellency the Privy Councillor Baron von Wieck to entertain the connection, Herr Professor Dr. Dr.
Zechner would be only too deeply pleased…”
The rococo kept rolling over the telephone during the warm months of 1888. Not everybody shared the Crown Prince’s impatience over it. Why hurry? This new season ahead, this newfangled autumn wasn’t here yet. In fact, right now fall seemed further off than ever. The rain stopped, the sun shone, and July flowed so radiantly into August that one might think that August would, with the same ease, flow back into July. One floated through a summer of reprieve.
It was during this reprieve that Dr. Freud added a day to his Alpine weekends with his family at Maria-Schutz. He picked mushrooms, climbed past fragrant dwarf larches to the Schneeberg peak, enjoyed the view of the Vienna Woods, and for once let the Grub Street deadlines for that medical dictionary go hang…
* (sic) In Austria, to this day, in addressing an academician, each of his doctorates is separately mentioned.”
“The text, ‘Verbe égal au Très-Haut’ (‘Word, one with the Highest’), is a paraphrase of a Latin hymn by the French playwright Jean Racine.”
See YEAR OF WONDER: Classical Music for Every Day (2017), by Clemency Burton-Hill: 15th May entry.
“She had been awakened by the alarm of fire…
…Her poor, dear master had certainly been murdered. Had he any enemies? Well, every man had enemies, but Mr. Oldacre kept himself very much to himself, and only met people in the way of business. She had seen the buttons, and was sure that they belonged to the clothes which he had worn last night. The wood-pile was very dry, for it had not rained for a month. It burned like tinder, and by the time she reached the spot nothing could be seen but flames. She and all the firemen smelled the burned flesh from inside it. She knew nothing of the papers, nor of Mr. Oldacre’s private affairs…”
(From The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905), by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
CHAPTER II: “THE ADVENTURE OF THE NORWOOD BUILDER”)
“Conan Doyle lived in South Norwood from 1891 to 1894, and so was very familiar with the area. There is however a good deal of ambiguity as to specific settings within the story. The Norwood where Oldacre lives for instance is called “Lower Norwood”, which until around 1885 would have been the term used for what is now West Norwood. The story however was penned some time after this date, and Oldacre is described as living in “Deep Dene House, at the Sydenham end of the road of that name”. South Norwood itself might be a logical candidate for Lower Norwood, however the only discernible connection between the story and South Norwood is that Norwood Junction railway station is used by Oldacre. McFarlane spends the night in The Anerley Arms, a pub that still exists and which has a derelict upper floor (no more overnight guests). It is now one of the Samuel Smith’s family of pubs and celebrates its connection with Sherlock Holmes…
…(see main image) West Norwood railway station was opened as Lower Norwood on 1 December 1856, as part of the West End of London and Crystal Palace Railway. It was renamed on 1 January 1886 by the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LBSCR), owing to the objections of an influx of new residents who objected to the “lower” prefix; they preferred the locale to be described instead as West Norwood.” (Wikipedia)
On 18th December 1921 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle addressed the congregation of Anerley Congregational Church…
From the Historic England entry:
“The Gothic revival style former fire station was probably designed by the architect Robert Pearsall at the Metropolitan Board of Works Architect’s Department and was built in 1881. It remains a rare example of a fire station built for horse-drawn tenders which still has the look-out tower and original doors in place. Its history as a fire station was short however, as motorised fire appliances, introduced in the early 20th century were too big for its doors, which could not be practicably extended, and the fire station ceased to function as such in 1917. Between 1917 and 1967, the building was used mainly as a church hall for the neighbouring St Luke’s Church.
The original design for the conversion to a theatre was by Owen Luder (later to become President of the Royal Institute of British Architects on two occasions). The original theatre was traditional proscenium arch in style, with a fly loft requiring the removal of a floor in part of the first storey. The auditorium had raked seating with a capacity of just under 100. The space was known as Bell Theatre.
In February 1975 a small studio theatre was added in a single storey extension at the South end of the building for “productions which would not fit into the usual theatre pattern.” This space was known as Prompt Corner.
Following refurbishment, the theatre now has one large theatre space and several rooms which are available to hire, when not in use by the community group.”
From the Historic England entry:
“Fire station with flats above. Built 1914-15 by London County Council Architects’ Department.
The original West Norwood fire station (originally named Norwood) was built 1881-2 at No 2a Norwood High Street (qv), now the South London Theatre. Drawings entitled ‘LCC West Norwood FBS’ show the 1914-15 building much as it is today, with room for three appliances, watch room, reading room, wash house and services at ground floor, and three flats (one-, two- and three- bedroom at each floor) to each of the floors above.
HISTORY: Fire services in London emerged principally from the need for insurance providers to limit their losses through damage to property in the period after the Great Fire of 1666. Initially, each insurer maintained a separate brigade that only served subscribers until the foundation of an integrated service in 1833, funded by City businesses. In 1866, following an Act of Parliament of the previous year, the first publicly-funded authority charged with saving lives and protecting buildings from fire was founded: the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, initially part of the Metropolitan Board of Works.
The earliest MFB fire stations were generally plain brick and few pre-1880 examples survive. In 1880s under the MFB architect Robert Pearsall, fire stations acquired a true architectural identity, most notably in the rich Gothic style typical of Victorian municipal buildings such as Bishopsgate.
It was the building boom of the 1890s-1900s however that was to transform fire station architecture and give the Brigade some of its most characterful buildings. In 1889, the fire brigade passed to the newly-formed London County Council, and from 1896 new stations were designed by a group of architects led by Owen Fleming and Charles Canning Winmill, both formerly of the LCC Housing Department, who brought the highly-experimental methods which had evolved for designing new social housing to the Fire Brigade Division (as the department was called from 1899), and drew on a huge variety of influences to create unique and commanding stations, each built to a bespoke design and plan. This exciting period in fire station design continued to the outbreak of WWI, although there was some standardisation of design in the period.”
Postbox topper, George Street, Richmond upon Thames
“‘When our little Mathilde-baby chuckles, we think it the most beautiful thing that could happen to us.’”
Mathilde Freud (1887–1978), named after Josef Breuer’s wife, was the eldest of Sigmund and Martha Freud’s six children. She married Robert Höllischer (1875–1959); they had no children. In 1938 Mathilde and her husband, her parents, three brothers and two sisters moved to England after Hitler annexed Austria. Mathilde Höllischer opened ‘Robell’, a women’s fashion store on Baker Street. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/403614146131
From A Nervous Splendor (1979), by Frederic Morton:
“…the Freuds had been entitled to think that their investment in a good address would pay off. Maria Theresenstrasse 8 lay right by the Ringstrasse, a neighborhood of arrived doctors and distinguished professionals. Anton Bruckner, for example, lived opposite at Hessgasse 7 and could afford the rent, having only himself to support on his joint salaries as instructor at the Conservatory and organist at the Palace Chapel. But if the old musician ever troubled to look down from his fourth-floor clutter to the young doctor’s orderly household on the second floor across the street, he would have seen precious few patients in the waiting room.
Greatness, or at least great success, hovered somewhere around the corner, but it did not enter here. Freud was as stymied as anyone else in Vienna. At the start of his career he had tried a cocaine cure on depressives — disastrously. Some patients became addicted. And though young Dr. Arthur Schnitzler — as it happened — published an article praising Freud’s cocaine experiments, the medical establishment turned against him. Now he was using bath cures, rest cures, electrotherapy and, finally, hypnosis in partnership with Josef Breuer.
Breuer, however, was a leading physician in town, doctor to the city’s most distinguished neurotics, summer resident of a spacious house on the Gmundner Lake. Freud, younger and much less deft with patients, spent the first July weekend of 1888 in a little pension which made do as a summer resort for his family. Because of his train phobia during those years the doctor took the horse coach to the village of Maria-Schutz in the Semmering Alps, just beyond the Vienna Woods, but only twenty miles from Mayerling. He arrived drenched by the same rain as Rudolf’s hunting lodge, brushed at by the same breeze that hissed through the twigs of the black fir. Among the rootwork of these pines grew large tangy mushrooms, the Herrenpilze which Freud liked to eat and loved to hunt during damp weather. But when could he find time? His mind was already swarming with great surmises. They all went against the dogma of the University Psychiatric Clinic. Freud was kept from an appointment there by his own ideas, though he had little leisure to explore them that summer. In the city he spent himself with his nerve-doctor chores. On his country weekends he did medical hackwork. Right now, in July 1888, he was grinding out anonymous articles for Villaret’s Medical Dictionary together with a translation of a French alienist’s treatise. He had (as he confessed later) the temperament of “a great adventurer, a conquistador, a Pizarro.” Yet that summer he maintained a drudge’s resignation and pretended to an iron fatalism.
“Life goes on tolerably well here,” he wrote to his most intimate friend, Wilhelm Fliess. “We live in constantly increasing unassumingness. When our little Mathilde-baby chuckles, we think it the most beautiful thing that could happen to us. Otherwise we are not very ambitious. … My practice grew a little in the winter and spring and is now dropping off again, but it just keeps us alive. Such time and opportunity as there has been for work has gone on… matters not worthy of note. … In short, life goes on, and life is known to be very difficult and very complicated, and, as we say in Vienna, many roads lead to the Central Cemetery.” Freud’s mood may have been colored by the inclemency of that early summer of 1888…”
“outstandingly good music that still has to fight to be heard.”
See YEAR OF WONDER: Classical Music for Every Day (2017), by Clemency Burton-Hill: 14th May entry.
No. 3 in E flat major: Andante soave by Fanny Mendelssohn (1805-1847)
“My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time.”*
*from Brideshead Revisited (1945), by Evelyn Waugh.
From Nancy Mitford (1985), by Selina Hastings:
“…Evelyn encouraged her not to give up. ‘It is good news that you may take up the pen again. Please give the results to Chapman & Hall. They love losing money and I will get you a substantial over advance.’
He himself had just finished Brideshead Revisited, which he had sent Nancy to read in proof. ‘A great English classic in my humble opinion,’ she told him. ‘Oh how I shld like to chat about it, there are one or 2 things I long to know. Are you, or not, on Lady Marchmain’s side. I can’t make out … One dreadful error. Diamond clips were only invented about 1930 you wore a diamond arrow in your cloche. It’s the only one, which I call good – the only one I spotted at least.’ When it came out in May 1945 he asked her to report back on its reception. Colonel, she was able to tell him, had telephoned from Paris to say that ‘people are giving luncheon parties to discuss the book & the Windsors have given it to everyone for Xmas. Rather low-brow circles I fear but still!’ And she herself had ‘a great deal to say – 2 air letters (1/-, agony) if necessary & the whole evening before me… I am answering your letter about Brideshead. I quite see how the person who tells is dim but then would Julia & her brother & her sister all be in love with him if he was? Well love is like that & one never can tell. What I can’t understand is about God. Now I believe in God & I talk to him a very great deal & often tell him jokes but the God I believe in simply hates fools more than anything & he also likes people to be happy & people who love each other to live together – so long as nobody else’s life is upset (& then he’s not sure). Now I see that I am absolutely religious. I also see this because what is a red rag to a bull to several people about your book is the subtle clever Catholic propaganda & I hardly noticed there was any which shows I am immune from it Now about what people think:
Raymond: Great English classic
Cyril: Brilliant where the narrative is straightforward. Doesn’t care for the “purple passages” ie death bed of Lord M. thinks you go too much to White’s. But found it impossible to put down (no wonder)
Osbert: Jealous – doesn’t like talking about it ‘I’m devoted to Evelyn – are you?’
Maurice: showing off to Cyril about how you don’t always hit the right word or some nonsense but obviously much impressed & thinks the Oxford part perfect.
SW7 (European royal quarter) Heaven darling
Diana Abdy: like me & Raymond, no fault to find
Lady Chetwode: Terribly dangerous propaganda Brilliant
General view: It is the Lygon family. Too much Catholic stuff.’”
Julia Upton 