The Hare with the Amber Eyes

The Palais Ephrussi in Vienna via

"There are things in this world that the children hear, but whose sounds oscillate below an adult's sense of pitch. They hear the green-and-gold clock in the salon (which has mermaids on it) tick every slow second as they sit in starched immobility during visits from great-aunts. They can hear the shuffle of the carriage horses in the courtyard, which means they are finally off to the park. There is the sound of rain on the glass roof over the courtyard, 

which means they are not.

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 There are things that the children smell that are part of their landscape: the smell of their father's cigar smoke in the library, their mother, or the smell of schnitzel in covered dishes as it is carried past the nursery for lunch. The smell behind the itchy tapestries in the dining-room when they creep behind them to hide. And the smell of hot chocolate after skating.

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Emmy makes this for them sometimes. Chocolate is brought in on a porcelain dish, and then they are allowed to break it into pieces the size of a krone and these dark shards are melted in a little silver saucepan by Emmy over a purple flame. Then, when it is glaucous, warm milk is stirred over it and sugar stirred in."

This is an extract from The Hare with the Amber Eyes, a beautifully written memoir by Edmund de Waal, the pre-eminent British potter. An investigation of his uncle's collection of netsuke leads him down a path of family and European history. I loved the concept and the content of this book; I especially loved the way he writes, of which the above passage is an example. Many times I stopped and re-read a piece several times over, for the beauty of the words and the images they conveyed.

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