Cowboy Toile

28 April 2025

I tried valiantly today to accomplish my review-translation of the middle portion of Chapitre 33 of L’AUBE (Chapter 33 of THE DAWN), but got very little accomplished.  Typically, I either plow through the chapter, or I dawdle, finding other things to do on the laptop.  My Muse is then informed that “It’s not happening.”

I’m then free to pursue my other creative endeavours!

The real stopper for today’s work was the discovery of faulty mechanics in four (4) consecutive paragraphs!

Camille is on the sofa, and, next thing, she’s running her hands along the heavy damask curtains on the large bay window!  Without having gotten off of the sofa!

Next, she’s stroking the damask of the sofa, without having walked away from the window to return to the piece of furniture (meuble), to sit down!

Having to correct what is known as “the mechanics”, in any language of fiction, is not a pleasant task; but I did so, quickly.  I then lost all interest in wherever and whatever Camille Richarde was doing next!

Here are the paragraphs in English:

Her mood then darkened and deepened.  She ran her hands along the heavy damask curtains that she’d hung just after Epiphany to block the cold night air.  That afternoon, she’d neglected to pull shut these curtains.  She gazed now at their exquisite fabric.  It looked like lustrous silvery blue gossamer in the hazy moonlight.

This damask was composed of a robin’s egg blue background with an ivory print from woodblock.  This pattern dated back to the 18th century.  It nearly matched the faded color of the sofa and was of a piece with the style of this room, a formal parlor that approximated a salon, albeit in Provence. Pierre Richarde had spoken correctly that this room, if placed in a château, would be called a salon, not a salle.

These heavy lined curtains gave a sumptuous, vintage ambiance to the room, one of an antique otherworld.  Camille wondered if this world which she presently inhabited would become as obsolete and outdated and precious as France of the 18th century.  As her fingers stroked the faded blue damask of the sofa, Camille was seized by a surge of sorrow, mixed with passion.  She believed that this world, her world, the world she knew, was not a world of future heirlooms and artifacts, with splendid sentiments to relive and review at leisure.

This world was a world crumbling as men and women tried fiercely and perilously to piece it back together with vestiges both venerable and vile.  As Camille contemplated the past months of chaos and wretchedness; as she envisaged this tearing away of a country from its moorings, she gave way to her own inner confusion, the fear and turmoil locked within her heart, and those quivering but vital emotions that had just been gently beckoned to come forth by this man, Artur.

Those splendid curtains in this scene of January 1941 in Roussillon, France, are, in fact, curtains that were hanging in my unfinished Writer’s Room in the Peach House in Newcastle, CA.  They’re gorgeous, made of linen and cotton, and, the print does, in fact, date back to a woodblock print from the 18th century in France.

My love of textiles blends supremely with my love of history, and my passion for excellence in many fields.  I always have a field day when it comes to describing, displaying and dreaming of the treasures of the past:  those tangible heirlooms were made in a world that was meant to last.

The casual, careless, nearly indifferent destruction of any object, any person, any world that was built, and meant to last — that vulgarity which presently parades as progressive thought, is, to me, the despicable decay that has been left to fester in America for decades.  That sickness has rotted, with impunity, the warp-and-woof of our society.  And I do believe that America has a society, and a culture, worth saving.

My august sensibility of the glories and the beauties of the past is the direct result of my very necessary leave-taking of places in my past, so that I was able to embark upon the never-ending journey — to find, once more, anew, or even for the first time, the quality of whatever it was I’d had to leave behind.

The Classics don’t ever go out of style — but the Classics have become mangled, if not entirely outlawed, by the more recent protagonists in the modern drama known as Saving America.

When I wrote those paragraphs for THE DAWN, sometime in 2010, I was living largely on faith:  faith that all would come right in a country where so much wrong was tolerated, encouraged, and, as I’ve come to realize, secretly subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer.

The recent bankruptcy proceeding of Macy’s, yet again, has brought to my mind the many times, during the past 30-40 years that I found incredible buys from a company that’s made a career out of declaring the need for yet another financial re-organization.

I went online last week and purchased from Macy’s a real onyx necklace — 70% off.  The package arrived today, and the necklace is beautiful.

As I looked at the trademark logo in the jewel-box, I recalled the phenomenal financial success that was born of the ambition of Mr. Rowland Hussey Macy.  Initially, Rowland, and his brother, Charles, opened a dry-goods store in Marysville, California, located at the confluence of the Feather and the Yuba Rivers.  That town, among many, was created because of the Gold Rush of 1850.

The store failed.  Charles stayed in Marysville, but Rowland headed East, opening four retail dry-goods stores, including the original Macy’s in Haverhill, Massachusetts.  Rowland was born on Nantucket Island, so this journey brought him full circle, to his roots.

Those stores all failed, but Mr. Macy was a wise man:  he learned from his mistakes.

In 1858, he moved to New York City to set up his latest spin on the mercantile roulette wheel:  R.H. Macy Dry Goods at Sixth Avenue on the corner of 14th Street, very far to the north of his competitors. This business took off:  growing; developing; innovating (Santa Claus publicity schtick), money-back guarantee; and offering custom-made clothing that was assembled in the on-site factory.  There were also clever window displays, along with new and newer departments to offer merchandise to emerging demands from customers.

This Macy store moved a few times before settling into its location at Herald Square in 1902.

I recall that store, and its Santa Claus, from when I was about four or five years of age.  There was photograph taken of me, sitting on Santa’s knee, screaming and bawling my eyes out.  The chair that we sat on was huge, ginormous.  I think the overwhelming size of the wings on that chair (threatening to enclose me forever) set off a claustrophobic reaction in Little Debra, because I was not a child to cry easily.

The horrendous business decisions taken by the corporations of the USA during the past 40-50 years should make any survivors of those idiotic greed-filled strategies cry, but lacking heart, those bloodless shills cannot.

The latest gimmick in clothing for women is toile.  I prefer to hang my toile on windows, but I have found a top of a muted print, one that’s more American than French.

The mania for American women to adorn their bodies with borrowed culture has always amused me. What I find less comical is the ghastly home-decorating that tries to ape Versailles, or, even more preposterous, the French farmhouse, aka French country.

The French farmer, le paysan, of yore did not live in a spacious abode, nor did he cook in a kitchen that’s roughly the size of Marie Antoinette’s bedchamber.  The American instinct for marketing, however, can take any commodity and change it into a potential cash-maker.

Cowboy Toile is the newest rage for Westerners who prefer a faded lone prairie.

As for me, I’ll happily rejoin Camille Richarde tomorrow, because, to quote Scarlett, after all, tomorrow is another day!