THE Culloden Hotel in Holywood, Co Down, is renowned for many things and also the people who have stayed in this gracious dwelling built by William Robinson 1876 and named for his wife Elizabeth Jane Culloden.
However, there are strong connections with Scotland as the sandstone which built it was shipped from there to Portaferry and hence carried by horse and cart to the Craigavad site, near Holywood.
Since those days of gracious family living, it’s been a bishop’s palace and a five-star hotel developed by Sir Billy Hastings.
People have come from far and wide to stay at the hotel – the famous and the infamous, footballers, politicians, actors and entertainers; and people wanting a touch of that gracious living that has always been associated with the building.
And now, perhaps the most famous of all has come for a short stay, the Dutch spy Mata Hari, and you can meet her as she graces the lawn overlooking Belfast Lough.
Even in bronze she is a character who stirs emotions and the title Seven Veils sums her up. An exotic dancer, this Dutch courtesan was convicted of being a spy for Germany during the First World War.
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But was she? In October 1917 it was too late to challenge the accusation as she stood before a firing squad of 12 French soldiers; standing proud, refusing to wear a blindfold or to be bound, apparently she blew a kiss to the firing squad and it was this image that intrigued sculptor Paddy Campbell. The result can be seen at the Art & Soul exhibition at Culloden mounted by Oliver Gormley and his family.
His figure catches the woman in her death throws, stretching up and back, about to fall down riddled with bullets. When I talked to the sculptor he told me that when he began fashioning Mata Hari, initially in wax, it was during a very hot period of weather and in the heat she began to sag backwards and about to fall.
It gave him inspiration and the beautiful figure of the woman known around the world now celebrates her memory. It’s sad to think that, as Paddy explained, there was no evidence to say she was a spy. He seemed to champion her life story and has obviously put a lot of love into his work of this 41-year-old woman who, as she lay dying apparently, was shot in the head by an officer who pulled out his revolver and shot her in the head to make sure she was dead.
Her lifeless body was never claimed and was used for medical study. Her head was embalmed and kept in the Museum of Anatomy in Paris but it was stolen probably in the 1950s and remains missing.
There are many beautiful exhibits to view. One is Bob Quinn’s Best Night Ever, about two tipsy, elegant ladies on their way home and you wonder where they’ve been.
Ian Pollock’s The Champion caught my eye – it’s about a boy footballer holding aloft a cup and when I saw it I hoped the English girls would be celebrating their win too – but sadly not to be.
The exhibition of 250 items, runs until Sunday September 10 and includes sculptures ranging from £2,500 to £40,000 – all inside the Culloden walls boasting top class paintings.
The Banksy shows Dorothy with her dog Toto having her basket searched by an American cop – probably in Kansas. Damien Hirst presents enamel paint on handmade paper, a series of dots in blues, reds, yellows and green – not for me. Although Salvador Dali has painted a lovely elongated elephant; and another of a slender Alice in Wonderland, perhaps for my shopping list, but having said that, give me Northern Ireland painter Stephen Forbes’s Ice Rink, a drone-type shot of brightly coloured skaters swirling around on the ice; or Eileen Meagher’s Mountain Stream set in her home place in Connemara. It all goes to show beauty is in the eye of the beholder – and the bank balance.
This exhibition is a wonderful chance to see international work, most of which will never be seen in public again, and to wander through the rooms of Culloden to view the exceptional art work and then have afternoon tea and discuss your preferences.
More at www.gormleys.ie
Culloden details at cullodenestateandspa.com
TRUE OR FALSE
LIKE a lot of others, I believe this is worth talking about. If it’s true it’s a powerful story.
A professor is shopping in a New Jersey supermarket. He notices an elderly lady stretching up to reach a jar of jam. He offers his help and passes her the jam she wanted – Bonne Maman raspberry conserve.
She explains why it was her choice. During the Second World War, as a child of the Holocaust, she says, the family who owned the company hid her family in Paris. But there are doubts. What is accurate is the report: “There were posters on the walls from the Nazis and from the collaborators and they said that if you are found to help a Jew, a freemason, a communist, a socialist, or a pervert, you will be shot on sight.”
So, anyone who shielded these terrified men, women and children were the bravest of the brave.
The problem is that this 90-year-old woman talked about being shielded in Paris – but the company was based in Biars-sur-Cère in southern France, and the dates don’t match up, so did she know what she was saying?
Professor Michael Perino is convinced – as are many more who endured those tragic times. Bonne Maman have been asked but told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the family “prefer to maintain privacy and does not comment on inquiries about personal matters”.
Not surprisingly, the sceptics have jumped on the bandwagon, suggesting the little old lady was an actress going through the motions and setting up the professor who fell for the story and posted it in detail on Twitter.
Was he an unknowing part of a brilliant PR campaign which has brought this tasty jam to the fore? I hope not.
