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Hutting”, in S. Gogolak (ed.), An Anthology of Neo-Creative Painting . Los Angeles, Markham and Coolidge, 1974
NAHUM, E.
   
Haze over Being. An Essay on Franz Hutting's painting . Paris, XYZ, 1974
XERTIGNY, A. de
   
Hutting portraitiste . New Art Review, Montreal, 1975,3

CHAPTER TEN
     

Servants’ Quarters, 4
     
    ON THE TOP floor, a tiny little room, occupied by a sixteen-year-old girl, Jane Sutton, who works as an au pair for the Rorschachs.
    The girl is standing by the window. Her face is lit up with joy as she reads a letter – or maybe, even, rereads it for the twentieth time – whilst chewing the crust end of a French loaf. There is a cage hanging in the window; it holds a bird with grey plumage, with a metal ring on its foot.
    The bed is very narrow: actually it’s a foam mattress laid on three wooden cubes which serve as drawers, and covered with a patchwork quilt. Fixed to the wall above the bed is a cork board, about two feet by three, on which are pinned several bits of paper – instructions for the use of an electric toaster, a laundry ticket, a calendar, an Alliance Française timetable, and three photographs showing the girl – two or three years younger – in school plays put on at Greenhill, near Harrow, where, some sixty-five years previously, Bartlebooth, following in the footsteps of Byron, Sir Robert Peel, Sheridan, Spencer, John Percival, Lord Palmerston, and dozens of other equally eminent men, had been educated.
    On the first photo Jane Sutton appears as a page, dressed in red brocade breeches with gold piping, light-red hose, a white shirt, and a short, collarless doublet, red in colour, with slightly puffed sleeves and edged with a yellow silk fringe.
    On the second, she is Princess Beryl, kneeling at the bedside of her grandfather, King Utherpandragon (“ When King Utherpandragon felt the sickness of death coming upon him, he had the princess brought to his side … ”).
    The third snapshot shows fourteen girls in a row. Jane is the fourth from the left (an X over her head shows which she is, otherwise it would be hard to recognise her). It is the last scene from Yorick’s Count of Gleichen :
     
    The Count of Gleichen was taken prisoner in a battle against the Saracens, and condemned to slavery. As he was employed in the gardens of the harem, the Sultan’s daughter espied him. She judged him to be a man of quality, was inspired with love for him, and offered to assist in his escape if he would marry her. He gave the reply that he was married already; which caused not the slightest scruple to the princess, accustomed as she was to the plurality of wives. They soon agreed on’t, set sail, and landed at Venice. The Count went to Rome, and told Pope Gregory IX his tale in every particular. On the Count’s promise to convert the Saracen, the Pope gave him a dispensation to keep both his wives.
    His first wife was so overcome with joy at her husband’s return, no matter what conditions were attach’d to it, that she acquiesced to everything, and demonstrated the full extent of her gratitude to her benefactress. History recounts that the Saracen had no children, and loved those of her rival as their mother did. What pity ’tis, that she did not bring into the world a being that resembled her!
    At Gleichen can be seen the bed in which these three rare individuals slept together. They were buried in the same grave, at the Benedictine monastery at Saint Petersburg; and the Count, who survived both his wives, ordered that their tomb, which was later to be his own also, should bear this epitaph, which he composed:
    “Here lie two rival wives who loved each other as sisters, and loved me in equal measure. One of them abandoned Mahomet to follow her husband, and the other threw herself into the arms of the rival who brought him back to her. United by ties of love and marriage, we had but one nuptial bed throughout our lives; and the same stone covereth us all after death.” An oak