Clementina, Lady of the Manor

GRAND ALBERGO TIMEO  --Taormina, Sicily

Clementina 1978

       When I met Clementina La Floresta, she  had already been at the Timeo for nearly seventy years.  She was closing in on ninety and her mind had begun to waver, but she was often alert and retained a sharp memory for the distant past. 

She was the Timeo’s owner, at least she had been.  Her adoring daughter and son-in-law had long since taken over the day-to-day management, but Clementina was usually there, seated regally in the lounge, ready to chat with guests, effortlessly diving in and out of a number of languages.

She had arrived in Sicily shortly after her eighteenth birthday to marry the owner of the esteemed Timeo, already a Taormina landmark after several decades of activity.

Portrait of Marcel Proust 1892

“I remember as if it were yesterday,” she once told me.  “My very first week in the hotel, I had the formidable task of having to escort Monsieur Marcel Proust into the dining room for dinner.  I was shaking like a leaf.”

She soon accustomed  herself to being the Timeo’s official hostess, and found herself charming the likes of Andre Gide and D.H. Lawrence (who is said to have written much of Lady Chatterly's Lover there); later Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni.  Not to mention the Vanderbilts, the Rothschilds and the Krupps.

At a time when world travel was reserved for the privileged, the Timeo was for connoisseurs.

In the ensuing years when I would return at Christmas, she was less chatty, but she always greeted each guest graciously with a smile, still very much the lady of the manor.

On my last visit in the early eighties, her daughter told me, with tears in her eyes,  the hotel was being sold.   It was a family tragedy, she said.  She and her sisters were born there; it had been created in 1873 by their grandfather..

Interior of the Timeo today (photo Orient Express)

There had been tensions between the siblings, and two other sisters, long since expatriated to Rome and Milan,  had preferred their part in cash.  The property was now worth much more than the hotel, itself.  It had its loyal following, but theirs had been an old- fashioned management, often wary of the modern world.    They hadn’t even wanted a pool, fearing it would attract a less desirable clientele.   

The sale had one important stipulation: Clementina and her family were to remain on the premises, and the old lady was never to be told the Timeo had been sold. 

In less than a year the hotel had closed down.  The buyer ended up in prison, though I never knew why.  It remained shut for many years thereafter, before being purchased by the Orient Express company.

I like to think that Clementina died in her own bed.    

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

[Photos are mine, unless otherwise credited]

Next :  A Date With Destiny ... Florence, The Excelsior

Travelling On My Own

THE PICCADILLY,  New York City

Piccadilly Hotel 1929

     My first hotel all on my own  was New York’s Piccadilly in the Spring of 1968.  It was right in the heart of the theatre district, off  Times Square at West 45^th Street.  Its brochure boasted it as “the meeting place of the celebrities,” though the only one I ever saw there was Orson Bean, a television personality of the day.

  Another ad said the Piccadilly was “smartly located in the center of everything!”   I am pretty sure I could see Sardi’s from my window, and that was already pretty exciting for me.  It was big and booming and old fashioned.  Certainly not luxurious, but I loved what I perceived as its cosmopolitan atmosphere. 

(Photo Greensboro Record)

I was working for the Greensboro afternoon newspaper at the time, where I reported on school news and church notices, among other things.  Dottie wrote about show business, and her beat was needless to say more interesting.    

She was a bit of a local celebrity, seriously overweight and a dedicated drinker.  We worked together and we often did our drinking together.  We became great friends, and it was she who steered me to the Piccadilly as an inexpensive, conveniently located place to sleep. 

In the sixties and seventies it housed the ground-floor Scandia Restaurant known for its smorgasbord, adjacent to the Circus Bar.  I never ate there, because it seemed expensive and “smorgasbord” somehow sounded so foreign at the time.

I later learned that Ginger Rogers had lived there with her mother, Leila, when she was just starting out in the musical theatre in New York around 1930. I once had tea with G.R. when she was doing “Mame” in London, but I didn’t ask her anything about the Piccadilly.  

Early Ginger circa 1930

 The hotel’s entire crystal chandeliered ballroom, dating from 1928, was bought by a Detroit plastics factory when the hotel was razed in 1982.  The purchase included eight turn-of-the-century portraits painted directly onto the room’s pine panelling.

The Marriott Marquis now stands on the site.

The main restaurant and ballroom

As for Dottie, she died of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 42.  I fully expected a similarly early demise, and I was certainly heading in that direction.  However, life rarely works out as you’d expect, so here I am, against all odds, healthy and happy forty years on.

-o- 

SIDEBAR:  Fan mail still coming in 

    When I started jotting down these memories, I checked Google to see what kind of photos I might unearth, wondering if anyone else even remembered the old Piccadilly.

     To my surprise, I discovered something akin to a parallel world where Piccadilly aficionados communicate on various websites about their experiences at this old Times Square landmark.

     I contacted a few, including the last Piccadilly owner’s granddaughter, to get permission to include their comments.  Here are some:

     Ricky says, “The first time I stayed at the Piccadilly, I can remember our room had wallpaper with huge yellow flowers on it and matching bedspreads. One night there was a horrible, very loud clanging noise that woke me up. I called down and the operator told me, very nicely, ‘That’s just the radiator, hon’. Being an innocent boy from the Midwest,  I said “Oh, thank you” ... and went back to sleep."

     Jo came to the Piccadilly at age 10 in 1975 with her Dad all the way from Australia.  It was part of what she described as an “epic trip to honor the wishes of my late mother” who had died the previous year.  “It was kind of run down like most of Times Square at that time, but I thought it was the most exciting place in the world.  I adored watching the Winston cigarette guy blow smoke rings from the billboard from our window.”

     Kate (speaking with Lisa, the hotel owner’s granddaughter):

     “My Dad was the Master Carpenter at the Booth Theatre right across from the hotel for over 40 years.   Since he had to work holidays, we always had Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners at your hotel. We were a family of 8 and we always loved the food, the atmosphere and knew all the wonderful waiters and bartenders !. We had so many fantastic times there and were heartbroken when we found out its fate. To this day I miss the Hotel Piccadilly sooooo much and will never forget our cherished times there.”

     Marilyn says:  "My sister was executive housekeeper and I worked in the laundry room on weekends with the nicest bunch of maids and housemen.  And especially the owner, Mr. K, he was so good to my two kids.  Carmen, I miss you and Sammy and Bernice.  Please find me on facebook.”

     I have saved the most touching for the last.  From a French site, I have translated these lines from Maugerie, a testimony to the Piccadilly as well as to a long lost love:

     “I have just discovered a book of matches from the Hotel Piccadilly, which brings back a flood of memories.  I was a young French man, visiting New York for the first time in 1974 with Helene, my girl friend, and we spent several nights at this hotel.  It was enormous and old and had seen better days, but it had a soul.

     “I retain an immense tenderness in my heart for Helene, who might have become my wife if our lives had not taken different directions … and remembering the Piccadilly today only intensifies my melancholy for a lost love.” 

Vintage bellhop-advertisement

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

Ginger Rogers was also mentioned in blog No. 28, "Ginger and Me!" 
(to access, click on above title).

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

Next Friday:  Back to Taormina, introducing Clementina La Floresta

Room Without Bath

HOTEL TIMEO, Taormina, Sicily

 

Taormina (photo Google archives)

     I took a package trip in the Spring of 1978, where I found myself at a modern resort built into the rocks on the Ionian Sea along the northern coast of Sicily.  Taormina was located about a mile’s walk up the mountainside.

While exploring the village, next to the magnificent ancient Greek theatre with Mount Etna in the distance, I stumbled across a discreet and beautiful hotel called the Timeo, almost hidden down a little tree-lined walkway.   At that time it was the most exquisite place I had ever seen, entirely surrounded by its lush Mediterranean gardens with a memorable smell of flowers and tangerines.

Rocco 1978

I went there for dinner, and was blown away by its Italian kind of understated elegance.   The tablecloths were pink, and Rocco, the maître d’hôtel, and his waiters were dashing around as though their life’s mission was to see that I was comfortable and contented.  There was no air conditioning, and the overhead fans complemented a warm evening breeze.

Italy was still cheap in those days.  Only now do I realize to what extent that dinner was a kind of awakening to the accessibility of some of the finer things in life.

This was in May, and I came back to Paris with such enthusiasm for Taormina and the Timëo that I began immediately preparing a trip there for the following Christmas.   

My friend, Ann, who started out briefly with me in the art business (and later committed suicide), wrote to the hotel for us months in advance.   She called one day, crestfallen, to tell me there were no rooms available except two connecting garden (i.e. semi-basement) singles without private bath.

I thank my lucky stars that we did not flinch.  Actually, we did flinch, but private bath or not, we ultimately decided to go ahead.

 Entrance to the Timeo today (photo G. Dall Orto)

 As it turned out, the adjoining rooms were delightful, opening directly onto a private terrace in the garden, brimming over with the aforementioned aromatic tangerine trees.

The absolute cherry on the cake was the bathroom, located directly across the hall about two and a half feet from my door, reserved for our exclusive use.  For that matter, the entire little hall was for our private use, as ours were the only rooms on it.

When we wanted a bath, we had a special cord to pull, and the chambermaid came literally running with an armful of plush towels and various little linen things which she placed strategically so our bare feet would never have to touch the magnificent, chilly marble floor. 

 And, yes, she ran my bath for me every day. 
  

Anne, Paris 1972

   [photos are mine unless otherwise credited]

SIDEBAR:  TRAVELING THROUGH ITALY ON THE TRAIN

Vintage train poster, Paris' Gare St Lazare circa 1948

      With the meager earnings from our first art show, Ann and I set out on the trip to Taormina in 1978.  It started a kind of tradition of making the 1500-mile trek by train every Christmas for the next few years.

En route for Venice (photo A. Gazères)

The second year to Sicily was the most exceptional, when we graduated to the rather pampered environment of the Italian rail’s wagone letto, the luxuriously old fashioned private sleepers still in vogue on long distance Italian trains at that time.

Simplon Express poster

We would invariably make the three-day journey in several stages, usually beginning with an overnight trip from Paris to Venice.  In those days there was still a formal dining room with two dinner services best booked in advance.  I have a memory of the whitest and most beautifully starched linen, and though the food was not magnificent, it was never less than a taste of special luxury.

After a couple of nights in Venice, we set out on the day trip south to Florence or Rome, or both.  From there, we would embark a few days later for Sicily on the Bellini Express.   Sometime around dawn, the sleeping cars would board directly onto a ferry boat at the Strait of Messina without our even having to awaken, let alone get out of bed. 


Coffee was served in our compartment a few minutes before pulling into the old fashioned Taormina station.  My most pronounced memory of that yearly trip is of the almost overpowering early-morning aroma of tangerine blossoms, even before leaving the train.  

Taormina Station today (Photo Google)

                                                                                                  

The trips were not always without incident.  On the notoriously lawless Simplon Express connecting Venice with Paris, robberies occurred weekly if not daily (particularly in a sort of legal no-man's land on the edges of both countries’ borders where police jurisdiction was hazy), and we were once dispossessed of our entire vacation funds. 

But even that bit of non-violent drama added another zest of adventure to our holiday, and a trip to the Venetian police station, located within the Santa Lucia train station, remains an exciting memory.

We naturally never recuperated our stolen money, but considered ourselves lucky to have sold enough paintings that year to reimburse ourselves.  It was before the time of withdrawing cash with credit cards, and we had to rely on friends to wire new funds.  And as future trips loomed on the horizon, it gave us an extra incentive to succeed in our new hobby-business.  

Night Train, painting by Belgian artist Paul Delvaux

Your input is welcomed:  hotel-musings@hotmail.fr

[Photos are mine, unless otherwise credited]


Next :  "Traveling On My Own, The Piccadilly"

A Two-Dollar Hamburger Under A Silvery Dome

THE WEYLIN and THE BERKSHIRE, New York City

Viennese postcard circa 1925

      My first real hotel memory springs from a trip to New York in 1954 with my Aunt Frances, her British friend Rose, and Grandmother Pleasants.

 I had just turned twelve, and we took the overnight Silver Star from Southern Pines the day after Christmas.   Frances and Grandmother Pleasants shared one of those enormous double bedrooms (there was usually only one per train), while Rose and I slept in berth beds which looked directly onto the sleeping car corridor like Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe in “Some like it Hot.”  

 

Rose, circa 1955, with Dickie and Mickie

 (Rose, no less an aunt to me and my brothers than Frances, is buried in Aberdeen with the rest of the family.  Her place in the family remains somewhat of an enigma.)

Weylin Hotel (Google)

We stayed at the Weylin at the corner of 54th and Madison.  Built in 1921, the 16-story luxury hotel (unbeknownst then to anyone in our party)  was just about at the end of its life.  It would be converted into an office building in January of 1956.  At any rate,  I remember little about the hotel itself.

   We must have had a two-bedroom suite, with my foldaway bed set up in the living room.  What most sticks in my mind is the room service which Frances ordered for me as soon as we arrived.    I vividly remember the bellboy in his bright green jacket, setting up a special table onto which he reverently placed my late-morning treat.   He then ceremoniously  whisked away the silvery dome, unveiling the most elegant hamburger I could have  ever imagined (and a subject of family conversation for years to follow).

Frances grandly signed the check for a whopping two dollars, representing about ten times the cost of a hamburger back in Aberdeen. 

Today, I frequently have difficulty remembering a film or book from last week.  Yet, I recall in detail what must have been an exhausting Saturday for Frances those many years ago:  morning at FAO Schwartz (the biggest toy store in the world!) and the Empire State Building; lunch at Longchamps with banana split for dessert; matinee at the original Cinerama; and a memorable evening at Radio City Music Hall.  

This Is Cinerama 1954

  

I had made a thorough wish list of which only Coney Island (closed for the winter)  and the Stork Club (!) went unfulfilled (See sidebar:  Dorothy Ann at the Stork Club).

 * * * * * * *

  I didn’t return to New York with Frances again  until 1968, when I was on my way to relocate in Europe.  It’s hard to imagine that only 14 years had elapsed between those two trips. 

Frances with unidentified gentleman, at a Colorado Dude Ranch

The days of innocence had long passed.  Dickie, my younger brother, joined us, and it was a time in our lives of excess and reckless carousing.   Dickie was just beginning, I had been going full throttle for quite awhile, and Frances was a veteran.

Angry young man (photo Walt Howerton)

We all chipped in financially, but Frances paid the lion’s share for another two-bedroom suite, this time at the Berkshire on 52^nd Street.  I remember thinking, naively, this must be exactly the sort of place where one might run into the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

I’ve never stayed there again, but a few years ago I took a stroll through the lobby of what is now the Omni Berkshire, and I could partially re-feel the thrill of the first time at quite such an elegant place. 

The good-time Windsors

SIDEBAR:  Miss VFW 1951 at the Stork Club

The Stork Club 1949

       My wish to go to the Stork Club was not as idiotic as it might appear.  I did read Walter Wintchell’s column, and he was supposed to go there every evening.  Ditto Earl Wilson. 

With Dorothy Ann 1970

 My real connection, however, was my beloved cousin, Dorothy Ann, who had won a national beauty contest in the summer of 1951 which had temporarily thrown her, and by ricochet the rest of the family, into the outer fringes of celebrityism.  This was long before Andy Warhol coined the 15-minutes-of-fame expression, but it was precisely what he was talking about before he said it.

If I tell you the contest was Miss U.S. Veterans of Foreign Wars, you’ll undoubtedly think I am making a big to-do of nothing.  However, to get a sense of the event’s importance, you have to go back into the context of the recently-ended World War and the just-beginning one in Korea.  Not to mention the all pervasive, intoxicating national patriotism of the day.

Dorothy Ann was my favorite cousin, and I spent many weekends with her and her step-mom who was my great-aunt Ruth. 

When she was crowned, the VFW organization staged a full scale military parade down 5^th Avenue, led by Dorothy Ann, sitting on the rear of the back seat of an open-top Cadillac convertible.  Heady stuff, I’d say.

This was nothing compared to the announcement the following day that Dorothy Ann would appear on the CBS television program “Live from the Stork Club,” an early talk show in which the owner circulated among the tables of his illustrious nightclub and paused to chat with the more recognizable patrons. 

Google photo circa 1951

As almost no one in Aberdeen had yet acquired a television set, our family arranged to see the event elsewhere.  I recollect  the house and the street, but not the owners.  I just remember my mother and me and Ethel, our maid, along with various neighbors crowded on the floor of a little living room on Poplar Street watching the fifteen minute program.

Ethel with the twins

I was only eight years old that summer.  But.  I always remembered the Stork Club, and I never forgot the excitement of seeing Sherman Billingsley stopping by Dorothy Ann’s table, however briefly.

Dorothy Ann and her little cousin

  Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

[Photos are mine unless otherwise credited]

Next :  "Room Without Bath ..."

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

Rose was also featured in blog No. 61, "Goodbye, Rose" ; Frances was mentioned in blog No. 51 "A Christmas Gift"  (to access, click on highlighted titles).

Peggy's Trip To Paris 1972

HOTEL MEURICE, Paris

Restaurant Dali, Hotel Meurice 2012

   
        I had another encounter with the Hotel Meurice in those early days.  There remain only a few memory fragments, it was so long ago.  I think the reason I haven’t completely forgotten is that making my life and learning about life in Paris was of inordinate importance to me at that time.  My dream from the earliest moments here was to somehow become a Parisian.

Martha circa 1970

 Aunt Martha (true to my father’s grim predictions about squandering money) had somewhat fallen on hard times by the 1970’s.  Having reached retirement age, she found herself sufficiently in need of money to go back to work in the accounting department of a local gift soap emporium where she befriended Peggy, a college student working there during summer vacation.

Soon afterwards, Peggy decided on a trip to Paris, and Martha insisted she look me up.

She was traveling with an older woman as sort of a traveling companion.  I didn’t quite understand their relationship, other than Peggy had a strong, loudish, not very appealing personality, and it was clear that the other lady was footing the bills. I wasn't very taken with either of them.   I was invited for drinks at the Meurice where they were staying, a world I was still singularly unused to, but no longer intimidated by either.

We had a drink at the Meurice’s rooftop bar.  I’m glad I went, because that open-air terrace no longer exists --except, I believe, in one of the presidential penthouse suites-- and I fondly remember the impressive view of the Tuileries Gardens and the Place de la Concorde.

Painting of the Tuileries Gardens by Jules Herve

I was still quite poor.  I had moved from my Champs Elysées room to a minuscule studio apartment with toilet on the landing; I was young, and I had  friends who were equally poor, and life in my adopted city seemed close to perfect. 

 (It’s odd how many times over the years bits and pieces of Peggy and of that evening have passed through my mind, even though I hardly remember her face anymore.) 

She suddenly announced she was so smitten with Paris that she, too, was going to find a way to move here.

Yours Truly, 1971 (photo Ann Gazères)

In the decades I’ve lived in France, I have seen so many Americans arrive to make their lives here, only to throw up their arms in exasperation or anger a few months or a few years later.  It is not easy to learn a new language and understand another culture, and accept such a different way of life all at the same time.  

I was just about to warn her that life might not be quite so glamorous in a more humble neighborhood far from the Meurice.  She preempted my comments, by adding:  “And I wouldn’t dream of living in any other neighborhood than right here on the rue de Rivoli, and I would need at least 1000 square feet to house my furniture, and …."

You can fill in the blanks.   I have forgotten the details, but she continued to list just about everything that would make  living comfortable in, say, Palm Beach, and assuming Paris would naturally have to accommodate all of those American necessities.

I realized I would never have to worry about seeing Peggy settle in Paris, and of course she never did. 

The Meurice Reception Staff 2012

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

[Photos are mine unless otherwise credited]

Next: " A Two-Dollar Hamburger Under A Silvery Dome" ... and "Dorothy Ann At The Stork Club"