Jack Arnold Writes…
The Outrageous Frankie and Dolores #4 — A Dutch Connection
‘Another kind of speculative frenzy’.
AUTHORS NOTE ABOUT THE CONTENT.
I hope you will enjoy this story.
It is appropriate toadvise readers
that ‘The Outrageous Frankie and Dolores’
does in parts contain details of explicit
sexualactivity, and transgressive
behaviour.
It also freely uses sexual and gender
stereotypical descriptions of the
characters and their behaviour.
All of the sexual activity is completely
consensual, and the characters who take
part are always over the age of consent.
If this is not for you, turn the page and
move on. But if you are curious to know
what happens next, then I encourage you
to give this series a read.
It might just surprise you!
Greetings Chums,
The Dutch have form when it comes to excessive behaviour, when the obsession to be the best, or to have the best, becomes all-consuming.
The Tulip Bubble (“Tulip Mania”), a speculative frenzy in 17th-century Holland over the sale of tulip bulbs, is an example of this. Collecting the bulbs of these delicately formed, vividly coloured flowers became a national obsession, and prices of the rarer varieties rocketed. At the height of “Tulip Mania,” one tulip bulb could be sold for enough guilders (Dutch currency) to purchase a large home. So this next story of another, but lesser known example of Dutch obsession, shouldn't be a surprise.
We are now a few episodes into this romp. (If you want to read from the beginning, and I suggest you do, then CLICK HERE)
Jack.
Frankie Papier is proud of his Dutch heritage. His Great Grandparents arrived in England in 1923, leaving their lives in Amsterdam behind. They were the unfortunate victims of their own success. This is their story.
Frankie’s Great Grandfather, Aart, was a photographer who ran a successful photographic studio in Amsterdam with his wife, Lena. She was a writer, a poet, and a photographic model. That’s how they met, when Aart was studying photography at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague, where Lena worked as a part-time model.
Together, Aart and Lena built a thriving business and gained a reputation for high-quality family portrait photography. Their customers were the rich merchant families who had thrived and prospered on foreign trade with the Dutch colonies. They would be photographed in their grand canal side houses.
With Lena as the dresser and makeup artist, Aart would capture these family dynasties, with two and sometimes three generations posed together surrounded by their wealth and opulence. The families allowed him to showcase his work in his shop window, which became essential viewing for Amsterdam society, and led to an increasing number of commissions, as these Merchant families vied with each other for position and status amongst the capital city’s rich and prosperous.
As Studio-Papier’s reputation grew, so did the rivalry between families in an effort to eclipse each other with every new set of photographs they had commissioned. Families began showing off, organising lavish private exhibitions of their photographs in their homes. Inviting all the other ‘society’ families to attend the viewing. These families commissioned Aart and Lena once or even twice a year. At each session, they were expected to improve and enhance the families’ reputation, with grander, more impressive pictures.
An obsession to be seen as the best took hold, and no expense was spared. The competition and rivalry between the families, as in their business affairs, became more and more intense. Aart and Lena found they needed to be more and more creative to satisfy their demanding clients to whom standing and reputation was everything.
They turned to photography that became more and more risqué and daring. Lena would dress and pose the families in the Greek, the Egyptian or the English Victorian style. The poses became more active and engaging, as these respectable conservative merchants showed a different side in their efforts to ‘out-pose’ their neighbours. As did their exhibitions, where they would dress their servants appropriately in the themed style of their masters and mistresses photographs. The Mistress of the household would often appear in her costume at these occasions.
Lena needed to use all of her writer’s imagination and inventiveness to satisfy their client’s needs. Her increasingly outrageous and shocking ideas were accepted and transformed into life. Costumes became more and more revealing, as did poses. The DeKlint family, the second wealthiest family in Amsterdam, sensationally appeared near to naked, frolicking in beach scenes, having taken Aart and Lena to the South of France for their photographs. Their later exhibition caused a stir, when the ladies of the household wandered amongst their guests in almost transparent beachwear, as their photographic images were admired.
It was too much for the Mistress of the Van Dorn family, the richest family in Amsterdam, to bear. Aart and Lena were summoned to her home to discuss how they could create a photography exhibition greater than any other ever seen in the city.
Of course Lena had an idea, but it was so outrageous that she never thought it would be acceptable, but it was. She told Mistress Van Dorn that it was the only way she could think of to improve on what they had already achieved with the DeKlint family. Lena asked her how far she and family were prepared to go? The Mistress replied that there was no limit, they must be the best.
So she explained their idea. She told her that the photography and the exhibition to display the work would go far beyond what high-society in Amsterdam had ever seen before, and that a scandal might result.
Mistress Van Dorn’s eyes lit up. She asked them to wait and summoned her family to hear. Soon, the immediate family was assembled. Her husband, their three sons and two daughters, their grandparents and two maiden aunts. As Lena explained again her idea for their next photographic presentation, there was gasps, expressions of shock and surprise, then some laughter, and finally spontaneous applause. It was agreed.
The finished photography and exhibition did cause a sensation. The families invited to the viewing were stunned by the images on display, the like of which had never been seen before.
The collection of photographs was entitled ‘The Van Dorn Family at their Leisure and Pleasure.’ Using the palatial surroundings of the family home, Lena had begun by arranging the whole family, first in formal groups, dressed in their fine clothes. She progressed, posing them in less and less clothing, until finally the whole the family was naked for all to see.
But that wasn’t enough for the Van Dorn family, they had to be better than the DeKlints.
Aart and Lena went on to photograph the whole family together in the French style, producing a variety of ‘ tableaux vivants’, a style pioneered by French photographers. These were ‘Living pictures’. Large static scenes containing many participants, carefully posed, with props scenery, and theatrically lit. It combined aspects of theatre and the visual arts. It mirrored the works of the great Medieval and Renaissance painters.
The results were sensational. The whole family was posed together and arranged by Lena into wild scenes of an incestuous orgy which Aart photographed in beautiful detail. The Mistress Van Dorn, at the centre, was seen naked in various poses, being attended enthusiastically first by her three sons' cocks, and then by her own father, and father-in-law. This lewdness in the centre is surrounded by the rest of the family grouped around them. The Master of the household is seen laughing wildly, whilst impaling his eldest daughter, who is a picture of ecstasy as she receives his manhood, much to the delight of her grandparents, whose hands and mouths are captured fondling their Grand-daughter. Her expressions of delight were captured in close up by Aart in several stunning separate portraits.
In another tableau’s three generations of Van Dorn men, Grandfather, father, and sons are lost in their lust for each other as the ladies and servants of the house look on in awe.
The exhibition continued going further than any fantasy the genteel ladies and gentlemen who came to view could have ever imaged. Aart and Lena had done what was asked of them. They had created the ultimate family portraits. Every photographic montage was a perfect representation of the joy clearly experienced and shown on the faces of the family as they indulged in wilder and wilder acts. It was lewd, erotic, and daring, but it was stunning in its execution.
The exhibition continued building to its climax. One final picture, hung in the family ballroom on its own. An image several feet high, set in an enormous Italian Renaissance gold frame. It was of the whole family together. Carefully arranged by Lena into one amazing pile of incestuous writhing bodies all together in the large fountain on the grounds of Van Dorn’s magnificent house. Torrents of water cascade over them as the sunlight catches the water pounding over their naked flesh.
Photographically, the show was a triumph. Aart had captured the generations of the family enthusiastically posing in every combination possible.
It caused an absolute sensation in Amsterdam society. Mistress Van Dorn had been determined to establish her family as the undisputed leaders of Dutch society. She had one final surprise for her guests as she led them from room to room, where she presented her family not only in photographic form, but in the flesh as they recreated their various acts of incest in front of the guests. She was triumphant, and she gloried in her family’s exhibitionism.
Almost all of her visitors were enthralled by the captivating scenes before them as the family performed enthusiastically, but it was too much for the DeKlint family to bear. Their beach poses now looked tame. The Mistress DeKlint was inconsolable.
The next day, Master DeKlint tried to persuade the city magistrates to bring prosecutions for lewdness against the Van Dorn family and Studio Papier. But the Van Dorn’s wealth and position prevented any prosecution or scandal. The magistrates concluded that the activity had taken place on private land away from public gaze, and all of the family appeared enthusiastically by consent.
For Aart and Lena, however, it was a different matter. If they were seen as the ‘perpetrators’, they feared the worst outcome. Abandoning Amsterdam, they began their lives again in England.
