excerpt: “in the frame” by helen mirren

I found In the Frame, Helen Mirren’s autobiography, at the bookstore recently and fell in love with it. It’s really more of a scrapbook of her life, great photos, juicy anecdotes, little scribblings alongside the old photos, all giving the sense that you’re just sitting with Dame Helen on her cozy couch as she turns the pages and walks you through her singular life. It’s lovely, so personal and inviting. In all honesty, I read the book in one sitting at the bookstore — for shame! — and wrote the following anecdote down on a scrap piece of paper.

(BUT! I always buy a least a coffee at the bookstore and I always clean up after myself and I’m writing all this so Kate P doesn’t get mad at me because, basically, I need constant approval. At every turn. All the time. Ad nauseum. To infinity and beyond.)

Proceeding apace.

This short excerpt is actually a little piece written by Mirren’s father, Basil Mirren, about his cat. (Speaking of anthropomorphizing.) Note the detail here — how much he reads into his pet’s personality — as anyone with a pet always does. It’s just human nature to do that. But this is charming to me. He seems to just revel in the separateness and the otherness of his beloved cat. I’ve read this several times and never find it anything less than delightful. I love the unselfconscious, almost childlike, insights.

My cat’s name is Flossie. I call her all sorts of other things at times, but Flossie suits her soft fluffiness. You couldn’t draw her with clear lines, her outline is too hazy, like a leafy tree, but she is full of strong flowing shapes from her pink ears to her ankle-length Victorian drawers. She is a golden-eyed long-haired white Persian Queen.

Flossie is an out-of-work or, rather, a retired actress who last appeared on TV with Sir Laurence Olivier in a new Pinter play. She worked well, but modestly, and didn’t upstage Larry. The play was a success and got an EMI award. But the lights, noise, bustle, and general backstage confusion put a severe strain on her sense and sensibility. Sanctuary in suburbia seem better for her than occasional caresses by the famous and she was fostered by us.

Away from the stage she still has a whiff of theatre about her. She understands ordinary Green Room talk like “There’s my darling pearly whirly girlie” or “Piss off” and responds correctly, her timing always absolutely right. She can show her feelings in every movement from her head to her drawers. But always a Lady — dignified, controlled, and fussy.

Our communication is mostly telepathic. I can recognize a range of body signals that give a lot of information. She can, for example, say, “Thank you for my dinner” by rubbing her head against my arm as I put the plate down or “I don’t like your cooking” by shaking her hind leg at it. But beyond that sort of thing, something in me can sometimes be in tune with something in her, the same strings vibrate, and there is an exchange of sympathy rather than information.

She has a lovely character, gentle but brave, loving but independent; since her operation no longer tortured by the lunacies of sex.

Flossie is also lazy, has fleas, and catches pigeons. But that is how she was made. She’s unpolluted by knowledge, thank God.