One of Casanova’s famous anecdotes dates to his time in Turin, where a milliner was fatally obsessed with her lover, the Comte de la Perouse. When she lay dying, the priest arrived to administer the last rites. Rather than take the Eucharist, the milliner swallowed a miniature of la Perouse. Casanova was inspired to write two poems about this gothic extravagance of romance.
I too wrote a poem about her. It was published in my first novel, Carnevale.
So, 25 years ago, I already earmarked milliners as women of interest.
I like a woman who can weaponize silk, art, gesture and love.
For the last few years I’ve been writing a milliner in early 19th century Venice. In doing so, I fell into my own obsession with hats and feathers. You won’t be beaten over the head with hats in my novel, The Puffin. But you won’t be able to finish the book without learning something about the historical millinery trade: its language, its tools, its colours, its creative and even military possibilities.
I have been lucky enough to have superb partner in this enterprise – Tina Giuntini, who is both a millinery historian and modern-day milliner. Tina and I met by chance – but meeting her changed my writing life. (Photo of Tina below right by Kelly Lemon).
Where do I begin to thank her? For the lessons in millinery
in person and in correspondence? For the antique and vintage millinery tools
she lent me so I could feel their weight and simulate their work? For the
lexicon of millinery – toliker, awl, egg iron and more.
Tina shared
her image library and directed me to the books I needed to read. She has also
made hats that substantiate the roles they play in my novel’s plot. She even
created little hats for the puffin who is the catalyst of the story.
She took a model puffin back to her studio in Seattle, where
she photographed it with her historic forms and tools.
Forget AI; I had Tina in 3D. Best of all, I knew she was checking my invented milliner
against her real self, and I felt that the works of my imagination were somehow
verified.
In The Puffin, the hats, tools and feathers in the book are not just decorative;
they are also plot mechanisms. They are used to thwart the vigilance of
Venice’s Habsburg masters. My protagonist Alva is a brimstone milliner making
combustible hats. But she can protect herself by trading on the notion that
hats are the merest feminine frippery and that no one needs to give them a
second glance – rather like milliners.
POEMS FROM HATS AND TOWARDS HATS
I started work on this book by writing poems about hats, straw,
feathers, feather-curlers (gleaned from their trade cards in the London Archives), female places
of work, colour. I used poems to explore ideas about the language and geography
of hats and about the women who created them. The character of Alva emerged from
somewhere between the lines of this poetry. So did the excellence of her
millinery. To protect her modesty, it became appropriate for the poet Tommaso
to explain the enchantment cast by Alva’s hats. Here is one of his
descriptions:
Poetry erupted out of Alva in hats. Her bonnets told
stories and sang lyrics in an irresistible accent. Like a storyteller, Alva
threaded pace through image. Like a poet, she could evoke the mist around a
spice-ship’s mast, using just a coil of net. She could swoop joy into the
contour of a brim. She’d sometimes let me sit behind a screen in her studio to
witness her recasting women’s biographies with her hats. Straw was the least
thing Alva worked with. She worked with luminosity, awling holes through brims
so light exploded like a blown dandelion on the skin. Like weather, she could
make the air different under a hat. A writer and the weather must bend the knee
to a milliner of Alva’s genius, for she also illustrated her tales in a whole
lexicon of colours: Dust of Ruins, Pomona Green, Barbel Blue, Nankeen Yellow
and a cavalcade of reds. She had texture. She had fantasy. What if everyone had
their own flower? – that’s what Alva made happen: scooping worlds into a single
face. Her hats could steal the breath of strangers. Isn’t that intimacy? Isn’t
that poetry? Stolen, intaken breaths?
Alva has a more pragmatic view of her profession, partly
because she has other things going on. She speaks thus of her studio in
Cannaregio:
Once upon a time the Calle della Pegola was the street of
the caulkers, the men who keep ships afloat, attending to the risk of leaks
with tar and wooden pegs. When I was sixteen, it became my street, where I
fashioned hats to set women at full sail, keeping them safe upon the salt-sweet
sea of encroaching age and lovelessness that might otherwise engulf them.
So what else does Alva have going on apart from astonishing
millinery? She is also a member of the sect of the Carbonari, a
variant of freemasonry. The Italian Carbonari
plotted liberation from the Habsburg empire, which occupied Venice from the
early 19th century until 1866.
Alva hosts the secret ‘baracca’ of the Venetian Carbonari in her studio. She is more than their landlady. In fact Alva is the ‘Mother Tongue’, the musa ispiratrice of the Venetian movement. She makes hats for fashionable women who love to talk – and are happily indiscreet in front of a mere milliner, a tradeswoman, a person who is socially invisible. Information is life-and-death for an outlawed sect. So Alva makes sure her client include Austrians and aristocratic Venetians.
Her least favourite client is Portia Saukalt, the daughter of an Austrian banker.
I came to know her face as well as my own. La Sau’s
features were crude, like an imprint in a stale pillow. Her hair was dulled by
thirty Habsburg winters. Her voice grated. Portia Saukalt’s enormous ears
needed to be hidden inside bonnets and turbans of intricate inner construction.
A small thorough blue eye she had, with a great appearance of stoniness about
it. Missing: any trace of empathy. Yet I’ll never know anyone to match Portia
Saukalt for seeking out your glance and forcing it to stay on her. She confused
you with her singular intensity; your aesthetic sense was destabilized by her.
With her small head and lumpen shoulders, my newest client was a story even my hats struggled to tell gracefully. She was from the start a constant trial to me, not least because a woman who wore a hat of mine should look like a woman who deserved to wear that hat. And it was precisely for this reason that la Sau made me rise to the highest expression of my art, that is, of composing hats to make you forget an ugly face. More, Portia Saukalt needed hats to intimidate the enemy and everyone was the enemy.
As a
woman, laughably, she also hunted admiration and lovers. My hats expounded on
the structural differences between men and women, each of whom naturally craves
what he or she is not and has not. The more I succeeded with her millinery, the
more heat Portia Saukalt knew she could raise in men who wouldn’t understand
they were actually falling in love with a hat.
WOMEN’S WORK
Writing Alva gave me a chance to look at women’s work … how
it is persistently undervalued even to the point of being unseen. No one thinks
that Alva could be a member of the revolutionary Carbonari movement,
because her work has the ephemerality and triviality of fashion, and because it
is to do with women. The plot shows how
women and women’s work are underestimated … and not just by men. Women also
underestimate each other. By the end of the story this is going to prove deadly
to one of them.
FEATHERS & EMPIRE
Alva works with feathers obtained by her merchant brother at
the famous London auctions. Here Favaloro secures exotic sought-after
feathers such Quetzal tails from South America, which was at that time rising up to throw off the shackles of Spanish domination. So hats also gave me a path
into my other chief theme of Empire. Feathers also worked for me in the exploration
of the predatory, wasteful, misconceived relationships between humans (the word
‘humanity’ doesn’t work here) and birds – and indeed between humans and all too many animals.
The novel’s eponymous bird comes from Norway where it was and still sometimes is a perilous thing to be a puffin. Norwegians not only eat puffins but also use their feathers for soft furnishings, their leather for shoes and even burn their oil in lamps. And a raw fresh puffin heart is apparently still considered a delicacy in some parts of Scandinavia.
In my novel, the way people react to the puffin serves as a useful index of their humanity.
The villain captures the puffin, exploits it for commercial gain and even imagines the profit in a stuffed puffin as a hat ornament.
At a key point in the book, Alva has a close encounter with
the puffin. Lost in his eyes, she has an epiphany about her own place in the
complex international business of murdering birds.
I try to be less human, more bird.
… And that’s how I fall. That’s how I know.
In the puffin’s eyes I see dying ranks of egrets, their
heads and shoulders meat-raw to the bone from feathers ripped out. I hear the
slow, hoarse screams of ostriches as their throats are cut by Tuareg horsemen.
Until now, the birds died invisibly. If their dying moments had crossed my
mind, it was quickly and silently. I bethink my own stake – as a milliner – in
the life of birds. Literally it’s a stake in their hearts.
… How many birds
have died so I could give the illusion of lightness to a heavy piece of
womanflesh? Many, many. To lure the Contessa, I knowingly used the Barbary
plume of an ostrich that was murdered for it.
I think about the
puffin-bellies in which Favaloro has always hidden our carboneria before
tucking it between cod flesh and its skin. I tell myself those puffins were
dead anyway; this way they too made their sacrifice for Venetian liberty. Yet,
looking at this living puffin, I fail to believe myself. I despise my own
sophistry. Guilt grows worms in my gut.
Still, there’s a road to goodness.
Palabra, my word on it – from this day forth, no bird on
this whole earth shall be killed again so I may decorate a hat. Not even for a
precious Barbary plume will another ostrich be hunted on my account.
I shall keep faith with feathers. It’s fitting that I do.
Alva’s solution: she stops using feathers and instead makes flowers from fish skins. (Thank you, of course, to Tina for alerting me to this practice.)
MILLINERY IMAGERY
The Puffin is a book built out of hat imagery.
The humble egg iron of the millinery trade is the novel's most visible murder weapon and is used in other ways too, including an attempt to rescue the puffin from captivity.
A hatbox hides the liberated puffin. Even the milliner’s etui, an ostrich shell holder for sewing implements, comes into play.
A dragonfly ornament on a hat warns people of a woman who is dangerous, relating to the Venetian superstition that the breath of the insect is fatal to humans.
Finally, hats are the heroes of a climactic scene towards the end of the book when Venetians gather to watch a poet and his poetry go to the scaffold.
A TALKING HEAD
When Favaloro was away, I practised the lingua franca on
my têtes à chapeau, the life-size busts on which I, like all the sister hood of
milliners, displayed my wares. The têtes were modelled in painted cartapesta
stuffed with horsehair. Ranked on hollow tree trunks fluttering with silk
shawls, these neat bodiless ladies were my own little army. I added one more
tête with each year of success, ordering them from Brussels. I myself animated
and made singular their bland faces with watercolours, adding highlights to
their eyes and character to their eyebrows.
Tommaso once observed that my favourite tête looked like
me, with her small mouth, light eyebrows and narrow cheeks. After that, I kept
a sharp eye on her pretensions to beauty. Her eyes were equally intent upon me
and were not uncritical. It was to this tête that I addressed my most
extravagant flights of the lingua franca. I knew what she was thinking. She
called me ‘Mistress Tongue’ or, in sarcastic mode after Tommaso visited, ‘Glass
of milk-water’ and ‘Afraid-of-your-own-heart.
I have owned an early marotte ever since I became interested in millinery. I have been known to address a few words to her. She sat on my desk keeping company with the model puffin (and yes, also the skeleton of a puffin) all through the writing of the novel. As a novelist, you need to know what lies beneath ...
Noble ladies in Venice had marottes made in their own likeness. I was delighted to discover one in the background of several Pietro Longhi paintings in Ca’ Rezzonico. The one below is called ‘la scuola di lavoro’ – see the marotte top right . (Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
A HAT FOR A SHIPWRECKED MARRIAGE
Here is the exotic millinery that inspired my character Tommaso, the poet. He’s at the centre of two painful love triangles in the book. Although he is passionately loved by good people, he throws in his lot with one of the worst, a hypervigilant narcissist who reels him in and spits him out, as they do.
Tommaso becomes a beggar, a mendicant, in his relationship
with his wife. She is deaf to his plea for heart-alms, so he wanders Venice by
night with a crude model of ship on crammed on his head. He wants to show the world the
shipwreck she has made of their marriage.
Tommaso, with his crutch and his ship, casts the shadow of a
monster in the moonlight. In fact, there is a real monster on the streets of Venice, an assassin called the
Hyena. (The Hyena is my invention. Extrajudicial murders were not
characteristic of the Habsburg regime, which was more focussed on order,
censorship, paperwork and taxation).
For the image of the ship hat (courtesy of Wellcome Images) I am indebted to a
contemporary text, Vagabondiana of Anecdotes of Mendicant Wanderers through
the Streets of London. Vagabondiana includes a beggar named Joseph
Johnson, once a seaman, who in later life walked with a crutch and carried a
model of the HMS Nelson on his head to signal his service to this country. Smith
characterises Joe Johnson as a creative and ingenious beggar, who knows how to
catch the imagination and engage the sympathies of those who behold him.
And that’s the poet’s playbook too, of course.
LANGUAGE
OF COLOUR
The
Puffin is a book
about several different languages – even the puffin has his own lexicon. Alva
is obsessed with the lingua franca, the language of the free world, as
she sees it – the language of equals as opposed to the pidgin that infantilizes
the subjects of empire. Alva smelts brief, shattering poems from the lingua
franca. (Who is the better poet, Alva or Tommaso? – the reader will decide).
Alva’s work as a milliner gave me access to another language too, namely the fashionable colours of the day. Again, Tina made me a felt colour chart of the kind Alva would show her customers.
I chose the colours in the book for their edible loveliness:
Pomona Green – apple & emerald with a touch of
lemon
Drake’s Neck – a cerulean blue mixed with bottle
green
Spanish Fly – a rich, blue-tinged green
Barbel Blue – the colour of a clement sky
Celestial Blue – an exalted cobalt
Maiden Blush – pale young flesh like the inside of a
shell
Blossom or Rose Pompadour – a rosy pink
Aramanthine – a rich, purplish red
Pomegranate – a simmering terracotta
Coquelicot – poppy or puffin-beak red
Puce – a brownish purple made from blood-fed fleas
Parma Violet – a warm amethyst
Stifled Sigh – a faded despairing lavender
London Smoke – a pale choked grey
Skimmed Milk – the luminous white of the human
eyeball
Isabelline – a dirtied cream
Oeil de Mouche – a slick sepia brown
Nankeen – a muddy wolfish yellow
Feuille Morte – a strident pumpkin-flesh amber
Orpiment – the orange of the neck ruff of the Golden
Pheasant or the belly of the Warty Newt
Dust of Ruins (or camelopard) – a dull brassy
gold
Jonquil – a fresh pure daffodil yellow
Habsburg Yellow – calamine and pus
REAL HATS FOR IMAGINED SCENES
Alva makes hats that carry secret maps and bullets in special compartments. She also makes the death caps for those who appear to have fallen foul of the Habsburgs: the anonymous drowned are rescued by the Company of Christ and the Good Death and given decent funerals. In the novel, the Company is part of the Carbonari conspiracy.
While Alva is imagined, her most important client is a real
woman who was implicated in the brief, disastrous Carbonari uprising that occurred on the Venetian mainland in 1818. Her name was Contessa Elena
Cecilia Monti d’Arnaud. She was once lady-in-waiting to Marie-Louise, who was
both Napoleon Bonaparte’s second wife and also the daughter of the Habsburg
Emperor Francis. Contessa Monti was devoted to her mistress even after she
ceased service, speaking of her constantly. Arrested by the Austrians after the uprising was betrayed and suppressed, she was
sent into exile but was found dead in Bologna not long afterwards under
unexplained circumstances. (For information about Cecilia Monti, I am indebted
to Christian Rossi, for his transcription of her interrogation in
his doctoral thesis, MAGISTRATURA E GIUSTIZIA PENALE NEL VENETO DELLA
RESTAURAZIONE (1813-1819).
Tina recreated two hats for Cecilia Monti that are
particularly important in the plot.
The second
hat is a pliable Milan straw. Its brim could be tipped upwards at the back to
create a secret compartment for revolutionary matériel. Tina built a
secret code into this hat. The colours of the ornaments are those of the Carbonari.
HATS & PUBLICATION
Tina and I have been enjoying ourselves on Instagram, doing
a series of stories about our collaboration. Meanwhile, I have also been
enjoying contact with the modern community of hat creators in London. I am
looking forward to attending a Discovery Event in October as a guest of the 422-year-old
Worshipful Company of Feltmakers.
I shall myself be talking about hats, feathers, puffins and revolution at an event at Southwark
Cathedral on October 26th:
See you there perhaps ...
Michelle Lovric’s website www.michellelovric.com
Instagram @apuffininvenice and @Bea-Evie
Other hattish links:
www.ballardmillinerystudio.com
Feltmakers
Today & Our History – The Worshipful Company of Feltmakers of London
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