The Slow Breath of Stone: A Romanesque Love Story

by Pamela Petro

An absorbing travel book, a meditation on geology, photography, Romanesque art, and the romance of physical decline, The Slow Breath of Stone throws a mirror on Europe of the Middle Ages and its hold on us today. In the years following the devastations of the first world war, a brilliant, young American couple, Kingsley and Lucy Porter, traveled to south-west France to document the abbeys and basilicas of the Romanesque period. Their extraordinary photographs revealed some of the most feverishly inventive stonescapes in Europe, stories chiselled from the Bible and rams playing harps and devils eating men's brains; a female centaur pulling a mermaid's hair; women suckling snakes at their breasts. For the Porters, these were images of an imagined world that unlocked secrets of the 11th century but, menacingly, cast a dark shadow over their marriage. In The Slow Breath of Stone , Pamela Petro rents a car and, using the Porter's photographs and Lucy's journal as her map, retraces their journey through the wild landscapes of the Rouergue. She visits the beautiful and disturbing sculptures of monsters and animals devouring prey that adorn the cathedrals of Cahors and Carcassonne, and she explores a limestone quarry from where these great slabs of stone were hewn a thousand years ago. She walks the routes of pilgrimages, testaments to the tenacity of human hope, meeting people along the way and savoring the local food and wine. Above all, she journeys deep into the strange relationship of the sexually incompatible Lucy and Kingsley, following them to Donegal where their marriage was to end tragically and mysteriously on the cliffs of Inishbofin.

320 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2006

About the author

Pamela writes books and essays, takes photos--which she sometimes prints on rocks, or purposely shoots out of focus by moving her camera- teaches, and lives with her partner (and forthcoming puppy!) in Northampton, MA. Her new book is called The Long Field - A Memoir, Wales, and the Presence of Absence. It's about how the small country of Wales became a big part of her life. When she's not writing, making art, traveling to Wales--or just traveling--or reading, cooking, playing tennis, and writing emails, she teaches Creative Nonfiction on Lesley University's MFA in Creative Writing Program and at Smith College. She's also Co-Director of the Dylan Thomas Summer School in Creative Writing (open to everyone!) at the University of Wales Trinity St David, in Lampeter, Wales.

Here's her website: https://www.pamelapetro.com

Here's an essay she wrote that she really likes: https://www.harvardreview.org/content...

And here's another essay with some of her curious photos: https://www.guernicamag.com/shedding-...

Reviews

[Julie Stielstra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like Petro, I too fell in love with medieval architecture and sculpture in college. The bearded, serious chair of the art history department (a medievalist) made a point of teaching Intro to Art History 101 and 102. He got a standing ovation at the end of each semester. It was his affectionate guidance that led me into those stately aisles and naves, up among the carved capitals and buttresses, and the wide-eyed occupants of the voussoirs and jambs. While the soaring and slender Gothic arches and flickering finials were breathtaking, it was the somber, squat shadows of the older Romanesque demons and dragons, hefty rounded vaults, and tiptoeing saints that charmed me.
Dr. Olds also introduced us to the Porters, Kingsley and Lucy, art historians and creators of the massive multi-volume Romanesque Sculpture of the Pilgrimage Road. The abridged edition still sits on my shelves; I forked out ten dollars for it at the annual sale of public library discards in the mid 1970s, and felt like I had won the lottery. After spending years being chauffeured through Europe, studying (Kingsley) and photographing (Lucy) churches along that legendary route, they settled in an Irish castle, until one storm-ish day in 1933, Kingsley went out for a walk and never came back. Dr. Olds solemnly informed us that the word was that he might be occasionally spotted, roaming the pilgrimage road alone. We wished it was true!
Pamela Petro has honored the Porters with her attentive, thorough and loving biography of this bonded couple as they worked through their passion for the medieval world and its arts and for each other. She retraces parts of their journeys, visiting the villages tucked away in the hills and valleys of southwestern France, and the churches – large, small, cherished or crumbling. She carefully compares their present-day state with the 1920s-era photos taken by Lucy. Lucy kept notes on the quality of the hotels where she and Kingsley stayed; Petro does so as well – some of them even being the same hotels.
This leads to one difficulty with this book: it’s not quite sure what it wants to be. The best of it is the exploration of the Porters: their marriage, their projects, travels and travails. Petro has dived deep into archives, diaries, and letters. They write adoring notes to and about each other when they are separated. And then, after thirteen years, Kingsley finally admits to his homosexual yearnings, as aided and encouraged by Havelock Ellis, who finds him an obliging young man, who isn’t entirely on board. Kingsley sings the praises of Lucy’s patience, cheerfulness, and apparent acceptance of this menage a trois… while Lucy quietly leaves rather terse entries in her diary about being left alone again. What a sad, sad thing for everyone involved.
As it happens, in addition to their mainland castle, Lucy and Kingsley have a modest fishing cottage built on the island of Inishbofin off the west coast of Ireland – where my father spent numerous summers in the 70s and 80s. It was from there that Kingsley set off on his walk along the steep cliffs and vanished. As the search went out for him, Lucy was oddly calm, even remarking that she didn’t know that they would ever find him. I find Petro’s conclusion that he committed suicide convincing – his young man had withdrawn, his career was in jeopardy (gay relations were absolutely not tolerated by his boss), Lucy may have been deeply unhappy. Perhaps he set himself free.
Petro has done a fine job with the Porters, addressing their devoted and difficult life together. She also does a nice job with the geology of the region, the very stones of which this wonderful art was made. She clearly loves looking at the sculptures. She comments on how the anatomies of the human figures are tweaked so that we typically see a torso from the front, legs from the side, eyes prominent… the posture showing us body parts from the angle at which they are most recognizable. She seems a bit startled by this, but I would note that ancient Egyptian wall figures are posed in a similar fashion.
Where I found myself growing impatient with Petro is her insertion of herself throughout the narrative. Did we really need to know exactly what vintage of wine (and there’s a lot of it) she drank every night? Or what kind of snacks she had stuffed in her car’s glove box? Or a very long description of what she had for dinner? If you’re not a foodie, you can skip that part. Or desultory conversations with friends who came to visit? Or the guy who seemed to be hitting on her? The farther she gets from the sculptures and the churches, the less interesting she is. And *I* want to know about the art, not Pamela Petro's Food and Wine Blog. Too many writers forget to keep their eye turned outward, to the thing that they set out to write about. Like King Charles the First’s head, which could not be kept out of Mr. Dick’s memorial in David Copperfield, Petro’s head keeps sticking up where we don’t need it.
Finally, while there is an epilogue running over some of the books and sources she used to prepare this book, this librarian is somewhat appalled that this book does not include a proper bibliography or references.
Definitely worth reading (with judicious skimming) for people with an abiding love for medieval art, and a significant contribution to understanding the Porters. But Alex Woodcock’s King of Dust does it better on the British side. As a trained stonemason, his attention is firmly fixed on the art, on the stone, on how it looks and feels and is carved, shaped, and used – his is a hands-on intimacy that Petro’s lacks. She tells us all about how she feels about everything; Woodcock helps us understand how that world produced those interlaced serpents and winged faces that make us feel the way they do. His wonderful illustrations – and detailed bibliography! – send us in search of more to slake our appetite. Now, if only his book had included an index…