Diary


“She may even use the matt black Hush – which reminds her a little of the Vermi- cious Knids in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator”


you could operate a bluetooth wireless remote- control sex toy with your smartphone, from many miles away, to best sate your beloved. All you need is the app and one of the new, modern breed of vibrators. Te website Lovense hosts four different kinds of toy – three for her, one for him. His looks perturbingly like a vagina in a can. I suppose you have to be able to smuggle it through airport security without too many questions, but you’d still feel they could make it look more alluring. Hers is like a more modish Rampant Rabbit, but in bright pink. Apparently, Nora and Lush have a truly astonishing range of speeds and versatility. Anyway, the Libertine has put in an order for 300. She’s a woman, so she can multi-task.


Climbing the pole


Te Libertine heartily recommends the Emma Hamilton exhibition at the National Maritime Museum, which is in its final weeks (closes April 17). We are a little in awe of Hamilton’s progress from uneducated daughter of a blacksmith, to servant, to prostitute, to courtesan, to nobleman’s wife, to Maltese Cross winner, to Nelson’s lover. But not everyone agrees. Te writer Anthony McGowan protests, “She makes an odd sort of heroine: she supported the aristos against the revolution in Naples; was on the side of the rich against the poor; wanted the revolutionaries all executed and supported repression in Ireland. Of course she was hot and badly treated by the establishment, but I’d like a little more than that from a contemporary of Mary Wollstonecraſt and the sadly neglected Elizabeth Inchbald.” Te Libertine tends to like it when a bloke is more of a feminist than she is, but she feels McGowan may be too harsh in his judgement. As the crime writer Christobel Kent puts it, “You can’t deprive women of all kinds of power bar one and then castigate them for not using it according to socialist principles.”


Lots of sex


High art and low necklines were everywhere at Sotheby’s launch last month for the inaugural sale of erotica – Erotic: Passion & Desire. Te Libertine spied star guest Pamela Anderson, erotic boutique Coco de Mer’s poster girl, sporting a Philip Treacy hat in the shape of suggestive red lips in close conversation with burlesque sensation Immodesty Blaize. Champagne, gin cocktails, an oyster bar, masked waiters and dancing girls supplied a memorable Valentine’s evening at the Bond Street auction house. Te sale itself, on 16 February, saw Georgina Gold, one of a small band of female auctioneers, wielding the gavel. Could it be that her purple bondage belt, from designers Fleet Ilya, was responsible for the heightening of pulses and therefore of bids, that contributed to the aſternoon’s record sales? A grand total of over £5 million – which


augurs well for a repeat of erotic sales in future – was partly down to Jacques Loysel’s beautiful sculpture, La Grande Névrose (1896). Tis marble, of a woman arching her body and throwing her arms behind her head, looked to the Libertine like a moment of sensual ecstasy, but in fact the title refers to a fin-de- siècle European obsession with female neurosis. Whatever Loysel’s intention in exploring this theme, the result sold for nearly £2 million –10 times the pre-sale estimate of £180,000. An extraordinary table, adorned with


sculpted breasts and penises, failed to meet its Steven Appleby


target of £15,000 despite being described as a possible copy of one delivered to Catherine the Great. Perhaps it didn’t suit what the Libertine imagined to be the semi-palatial homes of the auction’s bidders, although a dear friend and neighbour said he’d give a month’s rent on his council flat to eat his morning sausages off it. Discovery of the day was that celebrated


19th-century actress Sarah Bernhardt was also a trained sculptor. Her lovely marble bust of Ophelia was evidently deemed a good investment and went for over £300,000, aſter an already high estimate of £50,000-£70,000. Male nudes, Te Libertine noted, did not


fly off the hammer in quite the same wanton fashion as the female ones and it was while pondering this fact that she forgot where she was for a moment and stretched out her arms briefly, while stifling a yawn. She then went white with panic in case she’d just spent 200 grand on a Schiele sketch.


The Amorist May 2017 07


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22