January 2012
1 post
4 tags
July 2011
2 posts
1 tag
Watch“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
1 tag
May 2011
2 posts
2 tags
2 tags
Watch“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...
April 2011
2 posts
3 tags
Watch24 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
3 tags
October 2010
3 posts
Watch“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
Watch
— from The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
December 2009
5 posts
Watch“Heaven knows what the objects of his studies are. But here we are, and you must form your own impression about him.” As he spoke, we turned down a narrow lane and passed through a small side-door which opened into a wing of the great hospital. It was familiar ground to me, and I needed no guiding as we ascended the bleak stone staircase and made our way down the long corridor with...
Watch“To the Red-headed League — on account of the bequest of the late Ezekiah Hopkins of Lebanon, Penn., U.S.A., there is now another vacancy open which entitles a member of the League to a salary of four pounds a week for purely nominal services. All red-headed men who are sound in body and mind, and above the age of twenty-one years, are eligible. Apply in person on Monday, at eleven...
WatchOne summer evening in 1889, a young medical school graduate named Arthur Conan Doyle arrived by train at London’s Victoria Station and took a hansom cab two and a half miles north to the famed Langham Hotel on Upper Regent Street. Then living in obscurity in the coastal town of Southsea, near Portsmouth, the 30-year-old ophthalmologist was looking to advance his writing career. The magazine...
Watch“And mademoiselle’s address?” he asked.
“Is Briony Lodge, Serpentine Avenue, St John’s Wood.”
— Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, “A Scandal in Bohemia”
November 2009
3 posts
WatchAt the little town of Vevey, in Switzerland, there is a particularly comfortable hotel. There are, indeed, many hotels, for the entertainment of tourists is the business of the place, which, as many travelers will remember, is seated upon the edge of a remarkably blue lake—a lake that it behooves every tourist to visit.
— Henry James, Daisy Miller
October 2009
5 posts
WatchThe Grave of Keats
RID of the world’s injustice, and his pain, He rests at last beneath God’s veil of blue: Taken from life when life and love were new The youngest of the martyrs here is lain, Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain. No cypress shades his grave, no funeral yew, But gentle violets weeping with the dew Weave on his bones an ever-blossoming chain. O...
Watch“As Canterville Chase is seven miles from Ascot, the nearest railway station, Mr. Otis had telegraphed for a waggonette to meet them, and they started on their drive in high spirits. It was a lovely July evening, and the air was delicate with the scent of the pinewoods. Now and then they heard a wood pigeon brooding over its own sweet voice, or saw, deep in the rustling fern, the burnished...
September 2009
2 posts
Watch“The young people were all wild to see Lyme. Captain Wentworth talked of going there again himself; it was only seventeen miles from Uppercross; though November, the weather was by no means bad; and, in short, Louisa, who was the most eager of the eager, having formed the resolution to go, and besides the pleasure of doing as she liked, being now armed with the idea of merit in maintaining...
June 2009
26 posts
Watch“Under these unpromising auspices, the parting took place, and the journey began. It was performed with suitable quietness and uneventful safety. Neither robbers nor tempests befriended them, nor one lucky overturn to introduce them to the hero. Nothing more alarming occurred than a fear, on Mrs. Allen’s side, of having once left her clogs behind her at an inn, and that fortunately...
Watch“Le Baiser de Roxane.
“Une petite place dans l’ancien Marais. Vieille maisons. Perspectives de ruelles. À droite, la maison de Roxane et le mur de son jardin que débordent de larges feuillages. Au-dessus de la porte, fenêtre et balcon. Un banc devant le seuil.
“Du lierre grimpe au mur, du jasmin enguirlande le balcon, frissonne et retombe.”
—Edmond Rostand, Cyrano...
Watch“La Rôtisserie Des Poètes.
“La boutique de Ragueneau, rôtisseur-pâtissier, vaste ouvroir au coin de la rue Saint-Honoré et de la rue de l’Arbre-Sec qu’on aperçoit largement au fond, par le vitrage de la porte, grises dans les premières lueurs de l’aube.”
— Edmund Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac
WatchTour Jean sans Peur, 20 rue Étienne Marcel, Paris. The last surviving piece of the Hôtel de Bourgogne, a 16th and 17th century theatre.
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“Une Représentation à l’Hôtel de Bourgogne.
“La salle de l’Hôtel de Bourgogne, en 1640. Sorte de hangar de jeu de paume aménagé et embelli pour des représentations.
“La salle est un carré long; on la voit en biais, de...
WatchHalf Moon Street at Curzon Street, London W1J, UK.
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“We would begin fresh. We would lunch at a place neither of us had before. He remembered the Half Moon Hotel. It was small and quiet. He’d never lunched there but he liked the look of it and had heard good things about it.
“We were sitting in its pleasant high-ceilinged dining-room at a table near a window...
WatchBlenheim Palace, on which T.H. White based Malplaquet.
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“The house had 365 windows, all broken but 6, 52 state bedrooms, and 12 company rooms. It was called Malplaquet.”
— T.H. White, Mistress Masham’s Repose
Watch“We met next day as he had arranged, and inspected the rooms at No. 221B, Baker Street, of which he had spoken at our meeting. They consisted of a couple of comfortable bed-rooms and a single large airy sitting-room, cheerfully furnished, and illuminated by two broad windows. So desirable in every way were the apartments, and so moderate did the terms seem when divided between us, that the...
WatchChatsworth House, on which Jane Austen based Pemberley.
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Chatsworth is the Derbyshire home of the Dukes of Devonshire. The house dates from the Elizabethan era but the exterior was rebuilt under the 1st Duke around the start of the 18th century. The 4th Duke widened the Derwent River in 1760 and then engaged James Paine to build the three-arched bridge.
It is thought that Jane Austen...
WatchBakewell, on which Jane Austen modelled the town of Lambton.
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“It is not the object of this work to give a description of Derbyshire, nor of any of the remarkable places through which their route thither lay; Oxford, Blenheim, Warwick, Kenilworth, Birmingham, etc. are sufficiently known. A small part of Derbyshire is all the present concern. To the little town of Lambton, the scene...
Watch“Aunt Sadie took a furnished house for the summer near Belgrave Square. It was a house with so little character that I can remember absolutely nothing about it, except that my bedroom had a view over chimney-pots, and that on hot summer evenings I used to sit and watch the swallows, always in pairs, and wish sentimentally that I too could be a pair with somebody.”
— Nancy Mitford,...