Mayfair Book Groupette

The Mayfair Book Groupette – The Secret Diaries of William of Normandy

by
The Mayfair Book Groupette – The Secret Diaries of William of Normandy

Date: August ‘25

Time: 7:00 PM , 11:20 PM

Location: The Red Room, Pimlico Wilde

Attendees:

• Julian Molyneux (Chair, Pimlico Wilde)

• Fiona d’Abernon (Co-Founder; Acting Secretary)

• Lord E. Northcote

• Dr. Xanthe Lorrimer (Cultural Historian)

• Hugo Van Steyn

• India Trelawney (Fashion Archivist)

• Max Duclos (Collector)

• Conrad Smithe (Full Member)

• Pascal (Afghan hound, unusually alert)

Book Discussed:

Conquer This! The Secret Diaries of William of Normandy (anonymous editor; self-published, 1067; vellum-textured boards with medieval illumination; based on newly discovered manuscripts found in a Normandy wine cellar).

1. Opening Remarks

Molyneux welcomed members, cautioning that the evening’s discussion might get heated. He summarised the book’s premise: the first-person diaries of William the Conqueror, blending battlefield accounts with intimate asides, political strategising, and,strangely,numerous jokes about oysters.

2. Discussion Summary

• Dr. Lorrimer opened with a warning that “the historical accuracy of this book is still being decided”. She admitted the passages on the harrowing of the North were plausible in tone, but she doubted the authenticity of William’s alleged fondness for garlic eclairs.

• India Trelawney confessed to enjoying the book purely for its sartorial asides, particularly the description of Harold Godwinson’s “baggy chausses.” She argued that even if forged, the text was “a valuable exercise in medieval fashion imagination.”

• Lord Northcote declared the diary “almost certainly a fabrication,” citing its suspiciously modern idioms and a reference to “winning hearts and minds” centuries before the phrase existed. However, he admitted the battle descriptions had “a salt-sweat specificity” rare in pseudo-medieval pastiche.

• Hugo Van Steyn took a contrarian position, proposing that the work could be “a palimpsest of genuine material, edited with malice aforethought.” He was intrigued by the consistent detail regarding food supplies, especially the recurring motif of smoked eels.

• Max Duclos found the book “too pleased with itself,” accusing the anonymous editor of using the Conqueror’s voice as “a vehicle for pub-level humour in illuminated manuscript disguise.”

• Conrad Smithe defended it as “an act of creative literary archaeology,” suggesting its outrageousness forced readers to reconsider what they take for historical truth.

• Fiona d’Abernon admitted to laughing aloud at William’s supposed marginalia in the Bayeux Tapestry (“That’s not my chin”, “The arrow in the eye is romantic nonsense”, “I thought we were invading Brittany, not Britain”, “I hope they don’t make a tapestry of this battle”). She argued that, authentic or not, and she tended to think it was, the text succeeded as a piece of self-conscious historical play.

3. Artworks & Objects on View

• A page of the Domesday Book (from Pimlico Wilde archives)

• A reproduction of a missing Bayeux Tapestry panel, hand-stitched by contemporary artist Elodie Varn depicting William doing a handstand next to a goblet of cider

• A forged medieval charter once sold at auction, brought by Van Steyn for comparison

• A model Norman helm, which Pascal briefly attempted to wear

4. Refreshments

• Aperitif: Calvados spritz with cinnamon

• Canapés: smoked beef pâté on rye wafers, miniature game pies, roasted chestnuts in paper twists

• Main wine: Côte de Nuits Pinot Noir 2018

• Dessert: apple tart with honey glaze, served alongside spiced mead “in the Norman style”

5. Other Business

• March Book: The Cartographer’s Melancholy by Jeroen van Holt (carried over from last month’s vote).

• Proposal for a future evening dedicated to “playful forgeries and invented memoirs”, with members to bring examples from their own collections.

• General consensus: whether real or fake, Conquer This! “would have been banned in the 11th century, and possibly in the 20th.”

6. Adjournment

Meeting adjourned at 11:20 PM after an unresolved debate on whether William’s diary entry for October 14th, 1066 (“Bit of a day. Might have overdone it.”) was authentic genius or pure invention. Pascal barked once, which some took as a vote.

Fiona d’Abernon

Acting Secretary

Mayfair Book Groupette

The Mayfair Book Groupette – Minutes of the The Emigrants Meeting

by
The Mayfair Book Groupette – Minutes of the The Emigrants Meeting

Date: Thursday, 22nd August 2025

Time: 7:00 PM , 10:45 PM

Location: Green Drawing Room, Pimlico Wilde, Mayfair

Attendees:

• Julian Molyneux (Chair, Pimlico Wilde)

• Fiona d’Abernon (Co-Founder; Acting Secretary)

• Hugo Van Steyn

• Dr. Xanthe Lorrimer (Cultural Historian)

• Lord E. Northcote

• India Trelawney (Fashion Archivist)

• Conrad Smithe (Guest; now on probationary attendance)

• Dr. Leonora Athill (Guest Speaker; Novelist & Psychoanalyst)

• Pascal (Afghan hound; reclining)

Book Discussed:

The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald

1. Welcome and Introductory Remarks

Julian Molyneux opened the meeting with a short reflection on Sebald’s enduring appeal, particularly among “those drawn to a literature of ghosted memory and dust-silted loss.” A display of ephemera relating to pre-war German émigrés,passport fragments, handwritten recipe books, a child’s marzipan press,was set out in the antechamber, curated by Pimlico Wilde’s archivist.

Molyneux noted that the Pimlico Wilde summer show, Vanishing Points, had been loosely timed to coincide with this month’s reading.

2. Guest Lecture: Dr. Leonora Athill

Dr. Athill gave a brief, unscripted talk titled “Memory, Melancholy, and the Tyranny of the Image.” She spoke of The Emigrants as “not so much a novel as a service,” describing Sebald’s prose as “syntax haunted by silence.”

She warned against over-literary readings of the book, citing its power as lying “not in narrative coherence, but in psychic disintegration.” She proposed that the characters are not lost individuals but “cartographies of repression.” One member (Smithe) tried to ask about Freud; Athill sighed but answered generously.

Applause was murmurous and sincere.

3. Discussion Summary

• India Trelawney praised the imagery as “cool, bleached, but devastating,” comparing the narrative’s “faded photographs and cracked memories” to early Japanese photobooks. She passed around a small, cloth-bound 1960s folio by Shōji Ueda as reference.

• Lord Northcote shared personal recollections of meeting Jewish émigrés as a young attaché in Zurich in the 1950s. He said Sebald’s tone captured “the cultivated anguish” of that generation. D’Abernon was seen discreetly tearing up.

• Dr. Lorrimer brought a sharper edge, suggesting Sebald deliberately avoids character depth to foreground the landscape as the true subject: “Grief mapped onto trees, stations, sanatoria.” She argued the book’s melancholy “verges on aesthetic indulgence.” This sparked soft disagreement from Van Steyn.

• Hugo Van Steyn defended the book as “an ethical act of remembrance,” stating that its lack of resolution reflects “the impossibility of restitution.” He referred, for the third time this year, to Anselm Kiefer.

• Conrad Smithe questioned the accuracy of Sebald’s blurred genre boundaries, referring to the semi-fabricated photo captions. He suggested it was “dangerously post-truth.” Trelawney muttered, “Oh, not that again.”

• Julian Molyneux closed discussion by comparing Sebald to Aby Warburg: “Both archivers of ghosts. Both incapable of closure.”

4. Artworks on View

• A small pastel-on-paper portrait of a vanished émigré bookseller, Vienna c.1936, provenance unclear

• Fragments of German schoolbooks (1920s,30s) behind glass

• A contemporary commission: Negative Space by Pavel Markovic , carbon-transfer collage, railway ticket stubs + film stills, mounted under cracked glass

• Sebald’s Schwindel. Gefühle. on display, German first edition (not for handling)

5. Refreshments

• Canapés: smoked eel on rye, sauerkraut galettes, and beetroot-stained quail eggs

• Drink: Riesling Kabinett 2021 (Mosel), followed later by Kümmel (largely untouched)

• Dessert: poppy seed torte with whipped crème fraîche

6. Other Business

• September Book: The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington, proposed by Lorrimer, seconded by Trelawney. Enthusiastically approved.

• Discussion on establishing a sub-circle for “Obscure Memoirs” was postponed (again).

• Dr. Athill thanked the group, said she hadn’t “spoken so freely in years.” Molyneux proposed we invite her again in 2026.

7. Adjournment

Meeting adjourned at 10:45 PM, with guests lingering over late glasses of port and discussing the ethics of curation.

Respectfully submitted,

Fiona d’Abernon

Acting Secretary

Mayfair Book Groupette

The Mayfair Book Groupette – Death in Ultramarine

by

Date: July ‘25

Time: 7:05 PM , 11:15 PM

Location: The Green Room, Pimlico Wilde East

Attendees:

• Julian Molyneux (Chair, Pimlico Wilde)

• Fiona d’Abernon (Co-Founder; Acting Secretary)

• Lord E. Northcote

• Dr. Xanthe Lorrimer (Cultural Historian)

• Hugo Van Steyn

• India Trelawney (Fashion Archivist)

• Max Duclos (Collector)

• Conrad Smithe (Full Member)

• Pascal (Afghan hound)

Book Discussed:

Death in Ultramarine: A Botticelli Mystery in Three Pigments by Catriona Bellamy-Woodhouse (Privately printed, 1987; edition of 2200, illustrated with original pigment charts, each copy accompanied by a small phial of ground lapis).

1. Opening Remarks

Molyneux introduced the book as “half technical treatise, half exciting whodunnit,” noting the rarity of works that can switch from analysing the cost of cinnabar in Renaissance Florence to a chase scene through the Uffizi without jarring. He suggested Bellamy-Woodhouse “has the soul of a connoisseur and the instincts of a pulp novelist.”

2. Discussion Summary

• Dr. Lorrimer admired the detailed breakdown of Botticelli’s palette, particularly the “Chromatic Appendix,” but found the murder plot “wildly implausible,” adding, “Even Vasari wouldn’t have put this unlikely stuff in his Lives.”

• India Trelawney thought the interplay between pigment lore and narrative tension “a triumph,” praising the heroine’s habit of storing forensic evidence in repurposed paint pots. She noted that the book’s design,linen boards the shade of weathered fresco plaster,was “spot on.”

• Lord Northcote was especially taken with Chapter 7’s reconstruction of the 1478 shipment of lapis from Badakhshan to Venezia, calling it “more thrilling than the murder itself.” He did, however, lament the “gratuitous gondola chase,” pointing out Botticelli “rarely travelled, let alone at those sort of speeds.”

• Hugo Van Steyn defended the melodrama, arguing that “art history needs more peril.” He claimed the book’s climactic poisoning with arsenic green was “perfectly plausible” and cited two historical precedents.

• Max Duclos grumbled that the author’s forensic pigment analysis could have stood alone as a monograph: “The murder felt like scaffolding left up after the building’s finished.”

• Conrad Smithe countered that the structural oddness was the point: “It’s a trompe-l’œil of genres,half fresco, half crime scene.”

• Fiona d’Abernon confessed that she laughed aloud at the scene in which the prime suspect tries to flush cochineal dye down a convent well, tinting the water supply pink for weeks.

3. Artworks & Objects on View

• Three microscopic pigment cross-sections from Botticelli’s Primavera (on loan in photographic form from a Florentine lab)

• A late 19th-century artist’s paintbox containing vermilion, orpiment, and malachite chips

• Contemporary work: Murder in Cobalt by Elodie Varn , abstract in ultramarine tempera, with faint hand-written confession embedded under glaze

4. Refreshments

• Aperitif: “The Primavera” , prosecco, violet syrup, and a drop of saffron tincture

• Canapés: saffron arancini, bruschetta with anchovy and preserved lemon, and tiny almond cakes dusted in “edible lapis” (blue spirulina)

• Main wine: Chianti Classico Riserva 2019

• Dessert: blood orange granita served in chilled ceramic bowls painted in imitation majolica

5. Other Business

• Next Book: The Cartographer’s Melancholy by Jeroen van Holt, proposed by Lorrimer, seconded by Smithe.

• Molyneux announced that Pimlico Wilde would host a one-night display of pigment samples mentioned in Bellamy-Woodhouse’s book, including natural ultramarine, lead-tin yellow, and verdigris (sealed for safety).

• General agreement that Death in Ultramarine was “both better and worse” than expected, which was taken as a compliment.

6. Adjournment

Meeting adjourned at 11:15 PM, after members attempted,unsuccessfully,to determine whether the phials of lapis accompanying each copy of the book were genuine or cunningly dyed chalk. Pascal appeared indifferent.

Fiona d’Abernon

Acting Secretary

Mayfair Book Groupette

The Mayfair Book Groupette – Minutes of the Book of Margery Kemp Meeting

by

Date: Thursday, 18th July 2025

Time: 7:00 PM , 10:30 PM

Location: Private Salon, 3rd Floor, Pimlico Wilde Townhouse, Mayfair, W1

Attendees:

• Julian Molyneux (Chair, Pimlico Wilde)

• Fiona d’Abernon (Co-Founder)

• Lord E. Northcote (Retired Diplomat)

• Dr. Xanthe Lorrimer (Freelance Cultural Historian)

• Hugo Van Steyn (Wrexle Auctioneers, Impressionist Department)

• Max Duclos (Collector; former gallerist, Paris)

• India Trelawney (Fashion Archivist)

• Conrad Smithe (Guest of d’Abernon; hatter)

• Pascal (Afghan hound, silent observer)

Book Discussed:

The Book of Margery Kempe , attributed to Margery Kempe, 15th century

1. Opening Remarks (Julian Molyneux)

Molyneux opened the meeting with a brief contextual note on the significance of The Book of Margery Kempe, positing it as “a proto-memoir, proto-feminist, and semi-visionary document in a time before genre consciousness.” He remarked that the decision to pair the reading with a small exhibition of devotional objects from the late Middle Ages was intended to “anchor the divine hysteria in something tactile.”

2. Discussion Summary

• Lord Northcote offered a nuanced reading of Margery’s visions, drawing parallels with medieval diplomatic language: “Her tears function as a form of spiritual negotiation.” He recalled attending Evensong at Norwich Cathedral, where “the air still feels a little damp with her presence.”

• Dr. Lorrimer noted that Margery’s intense inner life represents “a radical form of female authorship,” arguing that the book is “less mysticism, more proto-psychological realism.”

• India Trelawney compared Kempe’s flowing white robes to contemporary interpretations of purity in performance art, referencing Marina Abramović and, rather unexpectedly, a recent Loewe campaign. She brought a Margiela show catalogue to illustrate her point.

• Max Duclos was dismissive, describing Kempe as “shrill” and “more concerned with performative sanctity than spiritual depth.” He cited comparisons with Teresa of Ávila and found Margery “lacking discipline.”

• Hugo Van Steyn disagreed sharply, calling the book “an early precursor to the art of self-invention,” and drew a line from Margery Kempe to Tracey Emin. There was some laughter, though Trelawney agreed “in spirit.”

• Conrad Smithe, attending as a guest, questioned the book’s sincerity, suggesting a ghostwriter,“possibly a priest”,had stylised it for effect. D’Abernon countered, pointing out textual evidence of Margery’s resistance to ecclesiastical editing.

3. Artworks on View (Curated by Pimlico Wilde)

The adjoining drawing room featured:

• 15th-century pilgrim badges (Norwich and Santiago de Compostela)

• A Flemish diptych of the Madonna lactans

• A haunting small panel painting labelled “School of Geertgen tot Sint Jans” , reportedly not for sale

• A contemporary embroidery by Elodie Varn, Tears for No One, commissioned for the evening

4. Refreshments

• A medieval-themed aperitif of honey mead (well-received, if “a touch ironic”)

• Spiced lentil tartlets, anchovy toasts, and quince conserve

• Main pour: Domaine Huet Vouvray Demi-Sec 2016

• Late in the evening, chilled Tokaji Aszú was served alongside comfits and candied rose petals

5. Other Business

• Next Month’s Title: The Emigrants by W.G. Sebald, proposed by Van Steyn, seconded by Lorrimer.

• D’Abernon announced a possible joint evening with the Bibliophiles of Belgravia in October, pending vetting.

• Molyneux reminded all that the September session would feature a guest speaker,novelist and former psychoanalyst Dr. Leonora Athill,pending confirmation.

6. Adjournment

Meeting adjourned at 10:30 PM. Most lingered for Tokaji and murmured speculation about whether Margery had truly been celibate.

Respectfully submitted,

Fiona d’Abernon

Acting Secretary

Mayfair Book Groupette

From the upcoming Handbook of Lesser-known Artists

by
From the upcoming Handbook of Lesser-known Artists

To be published by Pimlico Wilde Publishing, the Handbook of Lesser-known Artists tells the stories of those less well-known artists who have not been favoured by the media coverage given to their contemporaries.

The Obscure Legacy of Aurelia Mendez: The Artist Who Painted with Mould

Art history, while vast, has always held blind spots for the unconventional. One such overlooked figure is Aurelia Mendez (1911,1984), a Spanish-born artist who abandoned pigment, ink, and charcoal in favor of a medium as unpredictable as it was reviled: living mould. At the height of mid-century modernism, when the art world clamored for purity of form and surface, Mendez quietly cultivated growth and decay on her canvases, transforming microscopic life into macroscopic beauty.

The Unlikely Origins

Born in Salamanca to a family of apothecaries, Mendez developed an early fascination with the invisible. Her father’s herbal remedies and glass jars of spores and tinctures became her first teachers in the properties of organic matter. “Colour,” she once said, “is already in the earth; we only need to coax it forth.” After studying chemistry briefly at the University of Madrid, she transferred to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, where she was trained in traditional painting.

By the late 1930s, Mendez had begun experimenting with biological growth on untreated linen, placing damp cloths in shallow wooden boxes and introducing selected spores. She nurtured the organisms with carefully measured light, temperature, and humidity, “painting” through conditions rather than direct mark-making. What emerged were lush, variegated spreads of green, yellow, black, and deep crimson, blooming into organic compositions that changed daily as the mould matured.

Scandal and Obscurity

When Mendez exhibited her first series, El Jardín Silencioso (“The Silent Garden”), in Madrid in 1941, the reaction was immediate and violent. Many viewers recoiled at the smell and the suggestion of contamination. Several works were confiscated by local health authorities. Critics dismissed her practice as “perverse,” and her refusal to sterilize or stabilize the pieces doomed them to literal decomposition.

Yet among a small circle of avant-garde thinkers, Mendez’s work was recognized as revolutionary. The philosopher Miguel de Unamuno, a family acquaintance, praised her for “making visible what we pretend not to see: the soft empire of decay that rules all things.” But his support could not shield her from the conservatism of Franco-era Spain, where her work was viewed as a political affront. She relocated to Lisbon in 1946, working in obscurity while continuing her experiments.

Technique and Philosophy

Mendez believed that art should embody the same mortality as its creator. She refused to use preservatives, accepting that her works would eventually consume themselves. Each piece was a collaboration between human intention and microbial agency, with results that could never be fully predicted. Her notebooks from the 1950s detail hundreds of “recipes,” from cultivating Penicillium for icy blue blooms to introducing strains of Aspergillus for velvety blacks.

She often described her practice in agricultural terms. “I plant my canvas,” she wrote, “and I must accept whatever harvest comes.” The process could take weeks or months, with some compositions collapsing into slime before they could be exhibited.

Rediscovery and Legacy

It wasn’t until the late 1970s, when the conceptual art movement had softened the art world’s resistance to ephemeral and nontraditional media, that Mendez gained belated recognition. A 1979 retrospective in Paris, The Living Canvas, shocked and fascinated critics, even though half the works were already in various states of decomposition. She died five years later, largely unaware of the influence her ideas would exert on bio-artists of the 21st century.

Today, Mendez is regarded as a precursor to the likes of Anicka Yi and Eduardo Kac, who integrate living systems into art. Very few of her works survive, and those that do are maintained in sterile laboratory conditions, frozen in mid-bloom. Museums struggle with the paradox of exhibiting art that was never meant to last, but Mendez’s words resonate as a rejoinder: “To preserve my work is to betray it. It was born to disappear.”

The Mayfair Book Groupette – Minutes of the Raffaella Montesi meeting

by

May 2025

7:00 PM , 10:55 PM

Blue Parlour, Pimlico Wilde, Mayfair

Attendees:

• Julian Molyneux (Chair, Pimlico Wilde)

• Fiona d’Abernon (Co-Founder; Acting Secretary)

• Lord E. Northcote

• Dr. Xanthe Lorrimer (Cultural Historian)

• Hugo Van Steyn

• India Trelawney (Fashion Archivist)

• Max Duclos (Collector)

• Conrad Smithe (Full Member)

• Pascal (Afghan hound, curled beside the fire, tail occasionally thumping)

Book Discussed:

Notes Toward a Theory of Shadows in Painting by Raffaella Montesi (micropress, Rome, 2023; printed in an edition of 75, letterpress with hand-mixed inks, includes tipped-in monochrome plates).

1. Opening Remarks

Molyneux, clearly relieved to be “back among the familiar cadences,” opened with a wry nod to the joint meeting with the Bibliophiles of Belgravia: “No nettle bindings tonight, no unsolicited codex theories, just us, the book, and whatever Pascal is dreaming about.”

He outlined Montesi’s premise,that shadows in art are not mere by-products of light, but independent agents within the pictorial space, exerting aesthetic and psychological influence.

2. Discussion Summary

• Dr. Lorrimer praised Montesi’s historical sweep, noting her treatment of shadows in Piero della Francesca as “luminous absences” and in de Chirico as “claustrophobic presences.” She admired the way the book “reclaims the shadow as an active character.”

• India Trelawney focused on the reproduction quality of the plates, particularly a hand-tipped detail of a Whistler nocturne: “It’s as if the shadow is brushing back against you.” She also remarked that Montesi’s typography “feels like 1930s Italian modernism caught in a beam of torchlight.”

• Lord Northcote confessed to being “seduced by the chapter on diplomatic portraiture” in which shadows were subtly adjusted to flatter the sitter’s profile.

• Hugo Van Steyn related Montesi’s arguments to contemporary art, citing Idris Khan’s layered photographic works and their “compression of time into tonal haze.” He declared the book “the most elegantly impractical thing I’ve read all year, and that includes Faversham’s The Way Forward is a Step Backwards.”

• Max Duclos admitted admiration for the premise but questioned whether Montesi’s occasional speculative leaps,e.g., her claim that in Las Meninas, Velázquez paints “a shadow of the viewer”,were “critical insight or wishful poetics.”

• Conrad Smithe agreed with Duclos in part, but defended Montesi’s “willingness to court the improbable,” adding, “The shadow has always been half-imagination.”

• Fiona d’Abernon remarked that the book’s unindexed structure made it “a little like walking down a corridor lit only by the open doorways you’ve already passed.” Several members murmured approval of the metaphor.

3. Artworks on View

• A chiaroscuro woodcut by Ugo da Carpi, on loan from a private collection

• Small oil study, Shadow of a Balustrade (attributed to Sickert)

• Contemporary ink wash drawing Five Minutes Before Sunset by Ananya Patel, created in response to Montesi’s text

• A photograph from Van Steyn’s own collection: anonymous 1920s street scene, the shadow of the photographer long and central, subject absent

4. Refreshments

• Aperitif: The Piero , white vermouth, lemon zest, single green olive

• Canapés: black sesame crisps with whipped goat’s cheese, miniature cep tartlets, and anchovy fillets rolled with lemon peel

• Main wine: Barolo 2017, poured in large-bowled glasses “to let the shadows breathe”

• Dessert: dark chocolate torte with salted fig compote, served on matte black plates

5. Other Business

• Brief discussion on possibly issuing a Groupette “Occasional Papers” pamphlet series, beginning with member essays on books read in 2025.

• Molyneux confirmed no further joint meetings “until at least the following decade,” to general approval.

6. Adjournment

Meeting adjourned at 10:55 PM after a final toast “to the shade that makes the light worth noticing.” Pascal was observed sleeping deeply.

Fiona d’Abernon

Secretary

Mayfair Book Groupette

Culture & Capital: Inside the Mayfair Book Groupette

by
Culture & Capital: Inside the Mayfair Book Groupette

In a genteel Georgian townhouse just off Mount Street, beneath a chandelier that once belonged to a minor Habsburg archduchess, Mayfair’s most discreetly cerebral gathering convenes on the fifth Thursday of each month. It is the Mayfair Book Groupette,an assembly of collectors, consultants, and the culturally acquisitive,quietly sponsored by Pimlico Wilde, one of London’s most enigmatic boutique art dealerships.

Pimlico Wilde is known less for its press releases than for its whisper network: if you know, you know. Specialising in contemporary and early-late painting, the firm has long blurred the lines between patronage and performance. With the Mayfair Book Groupette, it extended its reach beyond the salon wall to the salon itself.

The book group, founded in 1865 by Pimlico Wilde’s quondam director Jag Mole and collector-turned-literary philanthropist Fiona d’Abernon, was conceived as an “antidote to panel fatigue and performative erudition,” as Mole put it in his famous diaries, “We wanted to create a space where taste could speak without shouting.”

Each month, a single title,selected via an opaque, vaguely oracular process involving Pimlico Wilde’s in-house archivist and a whisky-fuelled shortlist dinner,is read and discussed over Comté gougères and 2015 Puligny-Montrachet. The choices are eclectic but rarely random: the group has moved from Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red to Teju Cole’s Open City, and from the essays of Walter Pater to the letters of Vita Sackville-West.

“This is not your average book club,” member Deidre C notes with a wry glance. “We had someone attempt to bring The Midnight Library once. It was dealt with humanely but firmly.” The group’s unofficial motto,Nothing too recent, nothing too obvious,is embroidered in needlepoint on a cushion that lives on the chaise longue in the reading room.

Discussion is unfailingly civil, but not without edge. A recent session on Fleur Jaeggy’s Sweet Days of Discipline veered unexpectedly into a debate on the aesthetics of austerity, with a hedge fund director citing Cistercian architecture and a fashion curator countering with 1990s Helmut Lang. There are no “star readers,” but regular attendees include a Heckle’s specialist, a former Booker judge, and a member of the House of Lords who occasionally contributes sotto voce commentary on 19th-century French literary decadence.

That the group is sponsored by an art dealership is not incidental. Each gathering takes place amid a rotating exhibition of works loosely themed to the month’s reading. When the group read Death in Venice, the drawing room was hung with Arnold Böcklin prints and an enigmatic oil of a boy on a Lido beach, possibly by von Stuck. During a discussion of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, the walls featured mid-century Harlem sketches attributed to Beauford Delaney, on loan via private collection.

“It’s a form of curatorial dialogue,” Mole explains. “We’re interested in the crosscurrents between text and object, intellect and visual form.” It is also, naturally, a soft-power play in the secondary art market,several guests have left the townhouse with a signed first edition and a watercolour under their arm.

What distinguishes the Mayfair Book Groupette from its more performative peers is not just its taste but its tempo. It is unhurried, sceptical of consensus, and uninterested in clout. Phones are discouraged, attendance is by invitation (or via a long, quietly monitored waitlist), and there is no social media presence,unless one counts the Instagram account of the group’s Afghan hound, Pascal, which is private and locked.

In an age when cultural engagement is often measured in metrics and impressions, the Mayfair Book Groupette offers an older, rarer model: reading as a form of aesthetic connoisseurship, discussion as an extension of collecting. It is elitist, of course,but with an elegance that makes the charge feel beside the point.

As one long-time member quipped between sips of Armagnac: “If you’re asking who it’s for, it probably isn’t for you.”

The Mayfair Book Groupette & The Bibliophiles of Belgravia: Joint Meeting

by

Date: 22rd April 2025

Time: 7:15 PM , 11:40 PM

Location: The Upper Library, The Royal Travellers and Explorers Club, Pall Mall

Attendees:

Mayfair Book Groupette:

• Julian Molyneux (Chair, Pimlico Wilde)

• Fiona d’Abernon (Co-Founder; Acting Secretary)

• Lord E. Northcote

• Dr. Xanthe Lorrimer (Cultural Historian)

• Hugo Van Steyn

• India Trelawney (Fashion Archivist)

• Conrad Smithe (now granted full membership)

• Pascal (Afghan hound, in discreet charcoal wool coat)

Bibliophiles of Belgravia:

• Lady Hortense Blyth (President)

• Giles Ashcroft-Symonds (Archivist)

• Clarissa Montjoy (Rare Book Dealer)

• Edward “Ned” Parmenter (Critic-at-Large)

• Dr. Basil Uxley (Retired Museum Director)

• Mrs. Cecily Thorndon (Private Collector)

Book Discussed:

Voynich Illuminata: The Herbal Codex as Surrealist Object by Dr. Mireille Artois (limited edition, self-published, 2024, print run of 150 copies, hand-bound in nettle fibre with marbled endpapers).

The Club staff had laid out original pages of the Voynich manuscript on velvet-covered trestles for inspection prior to discussion.

1. Welcome & Context

Lady Hortense opened proceedings by welcoming members of the Mayfair Book Groupette and hoping that they would have an enjoyable evening. Turning to the evening’s study, she noted that Voynich Illuminata “exists somewhere between scholarship and dreamwork,” and warned against “falling into the trap of treating the Voynich Manuscript as a puzzle rather than a mirror.”

Molyneux added that Dr. Artois’s thesis,namely, that the manuscript should be read as a proto-Surrealist artefact,was “provocative and more plausible than one might expect from that drunkard”. He was asked immediately to apologise, which he did. Lady Hortense said that the Belgravia Bibliophiles had certain standards that she hoped the Mayfair Book Groupette would attempt to satisfy. Fiona d’Abernon looked like she was about to riposte, but she bit her tongue.

2. Discussion Summary

• Dr. Lorrimer praised Artois’s interweaving of Surrealist theory with medieval herbal iconography, though she questioned the leap from alchemical diagrams to “intentional proto-automatism.”

• Clarissa Montjoy enthused about the book’s physical form, especially the lithographic misalignment which she felt “evoked uncertainty.” She passed around one delicate page, advising members to note the unusual smell of the nettle fibre papier.

• Lord Northcote admired the “cheek” of placing the Voynich among the Surrealists, but cautioned that “the true pleasure lies in not knowing,” likening the manuscript to “a king’s addiction,everyone suspects, no one confirms.”

• Hugo Van Steyn invoked Max Ernst’s Histoire Naturelle, claiming the Voynich’s plant-forms anticipate Ernst’s frottage techniques. He mused whether the manuscript could be read as “an proto-artist’s book,” drawing an arch look from Dr. Uxley.

• Mrs. Thorndon expressed scepticism about Artois’s chapter on lunar calendrics, calling it “a poetic indulgence, not evidence.” She admitted, however, that the chapter on “phantasmic botany” had caused her to dream of blue thistles for a week.

• Ned Parmenter was the most combative, suggesting the book was “art-world conspiracy theory for the bibliophilic set.” He was met with gentle but audible scoffing from both groups.

3. Artworks & Ephemera on View

• Three large-format photographic prints of Voynich folios by artist Samira Kelmar, overpainted in egg tempera and gold leaf

• A 1936 issue of Minotaure featuring Surrealist interpretations of herbal forms, on loan from Lady Hortense

• A herbarium of fictitious plants by contemporary artist Elodie Varn, pressed and mounted in vellum sheets

• A glass dome containing a small, spiralled root labelled “Unknown, c.1420,?,” provenance unverified

4. Refreshments

• Aperitif: elderflower-and-vermouth spritz with sprigs of rosemary

• Canapés: wild mushroom tartlets, anchovy-leaf crisps, nettle gougères

• Main wine: Château d’Yquem 2005 (donated by Van Steyn, to audible gasps)

• Dessert: pistachio and cardamom semifreddo served with candied angelica stems

5. Other Business

• Proposal for a Voynich Illuminata field trip to the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library in New Haven, pending logistical feasibility.

• Bibliophiles of Belgravia extended an invitation to the Mayfair Groupette for a January meeting on The Codex Seraphinianus.

• Molyneux floated the idea of commissioning a limited artist’s book inspired by the evening, to be co-published by both groups in 2026.

6. Adjournment

Meeting concluded at 11:40 PM, after a spirited but unresolved debate over whether the Voynich bathers were “ritual participants” or “early performance artists.” Several members lingered to compare the texture of nettle fibre bindings under lamplight.

Fiona d’Abernon

Acting Secretary

Joint Mayfair Book Groupette / Bibliophiles of Belgravia Meeting

The Mayfair Book Groupette – Minutes of the Hearing Trumpet Meeting

by

Date: 4th March 2025

Time: 7:00 PM , 11:05 PM

Location: The Yellow Salon, Pimlico Wilde, Mayfair

Attendees:

• Julian Molyneux (Chair, Pimlico Wilde)

• Fiona d’Abernon (Co-Founder; Acting Secretary)

• Lord E. Northcote

• Dr. Xanthe Lorrimer (Cultural Historian)

• Hugo Van Steyn

• India Trelawney (Fashion Archivist)

• Max Duclos (Collector)

• Conrad Smithe (Probationary member; status under review)

• Pascal (Afghan hound, wearing a small silk scarf in “muted ochre”)

Book Discussed:

The Hearing Trumpet by Leonora Carrington

1. Welcome and Context

Molyneux opened with a remark on Carrington’s “polymorphic surrealism,” noting that the book’s anarchic humour and geriatric heroine offer “a reminder that the avant-garde need not be young to be dangerous.” The evening’s staging included an arrangement of Carrington-inspired objects: a gilt teapot shaped like a fox, a small egg-shaped reliquary filled with pomegranate seeds, and a taxidermy raven (on loan, not for sale).

2. Discussion Summary

• Dr. Lorrimer praised the novel’s subversion of patriarchal tropes through “feminist absurdity,” pointing out that Carrington “lets old women lead revolutions without apologising for it.” She compared it to the writings of Remedios Varo and Leonor Fini, sparking a brief sidebar on Surrealist domestic spaces.

• India Trelawney focused on costume: “The knitted balaclavas, the strange cloaks,they’re not just eccentricities, they’re political garments.” She drew a parallel to a recent Comme des Garçons collection, producing a lookbook from her Pimlico Wilde tote bag.

• Lord Northcote confessed to “not quite trusting” the narrative’s leaps into alchemy and lunar colonisation but admired its “camaraderie among the disobedient.” He likened the reading experience to “being on a train whose timetable one has accidentally burned, leaving one bereft of any arrival information.”

• Hugo Van Steyn was uncharacteristically playful, calling the novel “utterly unserious and therefore, in its way, profoundly serious.” He drew comparisons with Jean Dubuffet’s notion of “art brut as spiritual insurgency.”

• Max Duclos dismissed much of it as “Surrealist whimsy” and claimed Carrington’s visual art “does the work better.” Trelawney retorted that “Max prefers his magic on canvas where it can’t answer back.”

• Conrad Smithe questioned whether the satire risked obscuring the emotional core. D’Abernon countered that “emotion is what the satire is made of,” and a brief silence followed, broken only by Pascal sighing audibly.

3. Artworks on View

• Self-Portrait (Inn of the Dawn Horse) reproduction with Molyneux’s annotations on Carrington’s symbolic lexicon

• A 1970s Surrealist deck of cards, believed to be a collaborative prototype between Carrington and Alejandro Jodorowsky (disputed)

• Two small ink drawings from the estate of Ithell Colquhoun, placed discreetly by the drinks table

• Contemporary ceramic sculpture Lunar Soup Tureen by Saskia Hoekstra, created for the occasion

4. Refreshments

• Pre-discussion cocktail: “The Trumpet Call” , gin, elderflower, sage, and a whisper of absinthe

• Canapés: blue cheese gougères, smoked almond pâté on oat biscuits, beetroot hummus in endive leaves

• Main wine: Château Simone Palette Blanc 2018

• Dessert: poached quince with rosemary cream, served in mismatched teacups

5. Other Business

• Next Book suggestion: Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir, proposed by Northcote, seconded by Lorrimer. Approved with the condition of a supplementary reading of the first chapter of The Second Sex.

• Decision taken to proceed with the Bibliophiles of Belgravia joint evening next month, venue to be neutral territory.

• Molyneux raised the possibility of an off-season “Ephemeral Pamphlets” weekend retreat in Rye; members expressed cautious enthusiasm.

6. Adjournment

Meeting adjourned at 11:05 PM after a spirited post-discussion toast “to lunacy, longevity, and the liberty of old women.” Members lingered, inspecting the card deck under low light.

Respectfully submitted,

Fiona d’Abernon

Acting Secretary

Mayfair Book Groupette