Anne had left her, and Mrs. Clephane, alone in her window, looked down on the new Fifth Avenue.  As it surged past, a huge lava-flow of interlaced traffic, her tired bewildered eyes seemed to see the buildings move with the vehicles, as a stationary train appears to move to travellers on another line.  She fancied that presently even little Washington Square Arch would trot by, heading the tide of sky-scrapers from the lower reaches of the city…

— Edith Wharton, The Mother’s Recompense (1925)

[Film: A Burton Holmes film about mid-town Manhattan in the 1920s.]

Posted Sunday, January 22nd, at 11:32 AM (∞).

“Jellachich and the Croats had saved the Austrian Empire. They got exactly nothing for this service, except the statue which stands in Zagreb market square.”

— Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

Posted Friday, July 1st, at 12:04 PM (∞).
“I felt impatient. I was getting no exhilaration out of being here, such as I had hoped for in coming to Yugoslavia. For a rest I went and stood on the steps of the statue in the middle of the square. Looking at the inscription I saw that it was a statue of the Croat patriot, Jellachich. This is one of the strangest statues in the world. It represents Jellachich as leading his troops on horseback and brandishing a sword in the direction of Budapest, in which direction he had indeed led them to victory against the Hungarians in 1848; and this is not a new statue. It stood in the market place, commemorating a Hungarian defeat, in the days when Hungary was master of Croatia, and the explanation does not lie in Hungarian magnanimity. It takes some Croatian history to solve the mystery.” — Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

“I felt impatient. I was getting no exhilaration out of being here, such as I had hoped for in coming to Yugoslavia. For a rest I went and stood on the steps of the statue in the middle of the square. Looking at the inscription I saw that it was a statue of the Croat patriot, Jellachich. This is one of the strangest statues in the world. It represents Jellachich as leading his troops on horseback and brandishing a sword in the direction of Budapest, in which direction he had indeed led them to victory against the Hungarians in 1848; and this is not a new statue. It stood in the market place, commemorating a Hungarian defeat, in the days when Hungary was master of Croatia, and the explanation does not lie in Hungarian magnanimity. It takes some Croatian history to solve the mystery.”
— Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon

Posted Friday, July 1st, at 12:01 PM (∞).
Undine Spragg’s hotel, the Stentorian, sits in exactly the spot where the Dakota was built in 1884. (More spots from The Custom of the Country can be found here.)

Undine Spragg’s hotel, the Stentorian, sits in exactly the spot where the Dakota was built in 1884.

(More spots from The Custom of the Country can be found here.)

Posted Sunday, May 1st, at 1:10 PM (∞). Available in higher resolution.

“Undine’s white and gold bedroom, with sea-green panels and old rose carpet, looked along Seventy-second Street toward the leafless tree-tops of the Central Park.

“She went to the window, and drawing back its many layers of lace gazed eastward down the long brownstone perspective. Beyond the Park lay Fifth Avenue—and Fifth Avenue was where she wanted to be!”

— Edith Wharton, The Custom of the Country

Posted Sunday, May 1st, at 1:09 PM (∞).

24 July. Whitby. — Lucy met me at the station, looking sweeter and lovelier than ever, and we drive up to the house at the Crescent in which they have rooms.  This is a lovely place.  The little river, the Esk, runs through a deep valley, which broadens out as it comes near the harbour.

— Bram Stoker, Dracula

Posted Tuesday, April 12th, at 9:35 AM (∞).
Right over the town is the ruin of Whitby Abbey, which was sacked by the Danes, and which is the scene of part of ‘Marmion,’ where the girl was built up in the wall.  It is a most noble ruin, of immense size, and full of beautiful and romantic bits; there is a legend that a white lady is seen in one of the windows. — Bram Stoker, Dracula

Right over the town is the ruin of Whitby Abbey, which was sacked by the Danes, and which is the scene of part of ‘Marmion,’ where the girl was built up in the wall.  It is a most noble ruin, of immense size, and full of beautiful and romantic bits; there is a legend that a white lady is seen in one of the windows.

— Bram Stoker, Dracula

Posted Tuesday, April 12th, at 9:31 AM (∞). Available in higher resolution.

“Have you ever been to the Seychelles?” he asked, and Frederick grinned at the unexpectedness of the question and at his unmistakably English inflection.

“No such luck,” Frederick said, relieved that it was not a Lutheran fanatic.

— Abdulrazak Gurnah, Desertion

Posted Thursday, October 28th, at 11:28 PM (∞).
It was a Monday in early September, and he was returning to his work from a hurried dip into the country; but what was Miss Bart doing in town at that season? If she had appeared to be catching a train, he might have inferred that he had come on her in the act of transition between one and another of the country-houses which disputed her presence after the close of the Newport season; but her desultory air perplexed him. She stood apart from the crowd, letting it drift by her to the platform or the street, and wearing an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised, be the mask of a very definite purpose. — from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

It was a Monday in early September, and he was returning to his work from a hurried dip into the country; but what was Miss Bart doing in town at that season? If she had appeared to be catching a train, he might have inferred that he had come on her in the act of transition between one and another of the country-houses which disputed her presence after the close of the Newport season; but her desultory air perplexed him. She stood apart from the crowd, letting it drift by her to the platform or the street, and wearing an air of irresolution which might, as he surmised, be the mask of a very definite purpose.

— from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Posted Saturday, October 23rd, at 12:57 PM (∞). Available in higher resolution.

— from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Posted Saturday, October 23rd, at 12:52 PM (∞).

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