Secret Tributes

Yes, I have this blog, and yes, I'm on Twitter, but in my everyday life I'm practically a secret fan. This is probably the only way to be. In numerous ways I honour the Brooknerian life, but my tributes are clandestine.

• I travel to Brooknerian places, and to hidden corners of those places. In Paris to St-Sulpice, in Switzerland to Vevey, in London to certain little gardens where characters, in defeat, have sat and read Henry James.
• I visit galleries and particular pictures. In London, M. Blauw and the Titian Ariadne. In Vienna, Susanna and the Elders. In Ghent, a kleptomaniac.
• I sometimes wear Eau Sauvage, because George Bland wore it.
• I drink herbal teas and call them tisanes.
• Away from Brookner, I let Brookner guide my reading. I read the whole of Dickens, James and Trollope, because of Brookner.
• I often listen to the Shipping Forecast, though I haven't yet taken to playing the World Service through the night.
• As followers will recall, I once walked the length of the rue de la Loi, Dolly's Brussels hideout. A punishing trek.
• I must, I really must, read Buddenbrooks and more of Proust.

As Maffy knows at the end of Incidents in the Rue Laugier, we all, the living and the dead, have our mysteries - and one day we may be called upon to explain them, if only to ourselves.

(The Brooknerian is not
sponsored by Dior.)