Day 18 of Rose Advent

Today: here’s a smattering of Proust and a hint of Bloomsbury to set your Monday off in a literary fashion.

Vanessa Bell - a worthy name for a worthy rose; cool colours yet with an overall warmth coming through. For those who are still hovering on the ‘do I like yellow’ fence, perhaps Vanessa Bell is just the one to give you a nudge and just tip you over it.

Yellow by any other name:

Daffodil, buttermilk, magnolia, saffron, lemon, sunflower, yellow, mustard, yellow, fluorescent yellow, gold, canary yellow, sulphur, primrose, wax yellow, Gamboge, King’s yellow, gallstone, honey, straw, wine yellow, sienna yellow, ochre, cream, blonde, lead-tin yellow, acid yellow, Naples yellow, chrome yellow, orpiment, imperial yellow.

Deriving from the Old English ‘geolu’, yellow is the bringer of feelings of happiness, optimism and confidence, cheerfulness, dignity. It conjures up light and sun; it’s dynamic, spiritual, stimulating , highly visible, and luminous. It is hope, it is maturity.

In the last volume of A la Recherche de Temps Perdu, a yellow wall is the last thing Bergotte sees as he struggles to the exhibition to see the tiniest of details in Vermeer’s View of Delft , like ‘a priceless specimen of Chinese art, of a beauty that was sufficient in itself’. ‘That’s how I ought to have written,’ he thinks. ‘My last books are too dry, I ought to have gone over them with a few layers of colour, made my language precious in itself, like this little patch of yellow wall.’