M&D - Chapter 16 - Peach and Silk

[Johnny Marr]

Sure enough, a piece in yesterday's Guardian on Aleppo

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/24/syria-war-citadel-aleppo-history-cities-buildings

On Tue, Mar 24, 2015 at 1:57 AM, Johnny Marr <marrja at gmail.com> wrote:

> We encounter Susannah Peach, the original apple of Mason's eye, and the
> daughter of British imperial conquest, clother solely in the silk that her
> merchant father imported from India. TRP's criticism of the exploitative
> nature of the British Empire is clear without becoming overstated - a world
> of plundered treasure, of foreign lands and customs assumed without
> question. TRP wears his learning lightly - three types of silk (Tussah,
> Pngee and Susannah's favourite Shantung) are mentioned with casual
> authority.
>
> TRP writes one of the most beautiful extended sentences you could hope to
> read. Shades of political critique and erudition, but both are subjugated
> to sheer aesthetic delight.
>
> "Savage flowers of the Indies, demurer Blooms of the British garden,
> striped and tartans, foreign colours undream'd of in Newton's prismatics,
> damasks with epic-length Oriental tales woven into them, requiring hours of
> attentive gazing whilst the light at the window went changing so as to
> reveal newer and deeper labyrinths of event, Velvets whose grasp of
> incident light was so predatory and absolute that one moved closer to
> compensate for what was not being reflected, till it felt like being drawn,
> oneself, inside the unthinkable countours of an invisible surface"
>
>
> Susannah's recommendation that Charles learns 'Silk' offers a career with
> great prospects, although he may have to move to Aleppo in Syria rather
> than India. A clever reminder from TRP that India was very much the jewel
> in the crown of the British empire in the mid-18th century, with America a
> vast, still mostly unexplored backwater. The mention of Syria can't help
> but resonate for readers in 2015 - the colonising powers just can't leave
> alone ...
>
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