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Encyclopædia of the sublime

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Bedaux Canadian subarctic expedition

The Bedaux Canadian subarctic expedition has been described as one of the strangest journeys in the history of modern exploration. The brainchild of Charles Bedaux, a French-born naturalized American millionaire, it centred on an implausible scheme to drive five Citroen half-tracks and fifteen tonnes of supplies--including bottles of champagne and candied fruits--through the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, following a trail that had not been attempted since Alexander Mackenzie in 1793. Bedaux was to be accompanied by an eclectic entourage that included: his wife, Fern; an Italian countess thought to be his mistress; an Academy-award winning Hollywood cameraman; a Swiss skiing instructor; a host of wranglers and cowboys; a dental student; an unemployed bush pilot; guides; geologists; and a British Columbia provincial surveyor.

Hetty Green

Hetty Green nicknamed "The Witch of Wall Street", was an American businesswoman, remarkable for her frugality during the Gilded Age, as well as for being the first American woman to make a substantial impact on Wall Street. There are many tales about Hetty Green's stinginess. She never turned on the heat nor used hot water. She wore one old black dress and undergarments that she changed only after they had been worn out. She did not wash her hands and rode an old carriage. She ate mostly pies that cost fifteen cents. One tale claims that she spent half a night searching her carriage for a lost stamp worth two cents. Another asserts that she instructed her laundress to wash only the dirtiest parts of her dresses (the hems) to save money on soap.

Athanasius Kircher

Athanasius Kircher was a Jesuit priest and scholar, sometimes called the last Renaissance man, important for his prodigious activity in disseminating knowledge. To illustrate his belief in the magnetic relationship between the sun and the vegetable kingdom, Kircher designed this heliotropic sunflower clock by attaching a sunflower to a cork and floating it in a reservoir of water. As the blossom rotated to face the sun, a pointer through its center indicated the time on the inner side of a suspended ring.

Max Emden

When Antoinette Saint Leger was forced to sell her beloved Isles of Brissago in 1927, the islands were bought by the multi-millionaire Jewish German business man Max Emden.  Emden had built a profitable empire with department stores spread across all of Germany, including the world famous KaDeVe in Berlin. By the late 1920s he had decided that he had had enough of the business world. It was time to turn his mind (and body) to the delights of the world. Happiness could only be found by turning back towards a more natural way of living. The magical Swiss shores of Lake Maggiore, with Alpine scenery, a Mediterranean climate, a lively arts scene and experiments in alternative ways of living, seemed perfectly suited to his designs. Emden, deciding to start a radically new life, divorced his wife and sold his 150 department stores. He bought the islands and, while preserving the marvelously exotic botanical garden that Saint Leger had so painstakingly created, he had a thirty-room neo-classical palazzo built, together with a Roman style outdoor bath. From this point until his death in 1940 he lived in the palazzo on his own island and indulged to the full in what he called "the Art of Living".

Harry Crosby

Harry Crosby was the godson of J. P. Morgan and a friend of Ernest Hemingway. Living in Paris in the 1920s and directing the Black Sun Press, which published the works of James Joyce and others, Crosby was at the center of the wild life of the Lost Generation. Drugs, drink, sex, gambling, the deliberate derangement of the senses in the pursuit of transcendent revelation: these were Crosby's pastimes until, in 1929, he shot his girlfriend, the recent bride of another man, and then himself.