contra mundum
воскресенье, 24 июля 2011
суббота, 23 июля 2011
"I did not know it was possible to be so miserable and live but I am told that this is a common..."
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“I did not know it was possible to be so miserable and live but I am told that this is a common experience.”
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Evelyn Waugh (via contemporaryamericanpoultry)
After his divorce with She-Evelyn
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contra mundum
вторник, 07 июня 2011
contra mundum
“Sebastian Flyte describes his family as ‘social lepers’.”
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Mad World by Paula Byrne
Byrne is sometimes so annoyingly inaccurate when it comes to quoteng and interpreting Brideshead one could thing she really doesn’t know what she is investigating. This one quote is probably one of the best-known Brideshead quotes ever – the last part of it at least. How could one possibly get it wrong?
“He says he knows my father, which is impossible.”
“Why?”
“No one knows Papa. He’s a social leper. Hadn’t you heard?”
“It’s a pity neither of us can sing,” I said.
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“Evelyn [Waugh]’s favourite [of the Lygon sisters] was blonde Maimie. […] Photographs show her dressed in furs and cloche hat, carrying her ferocious one-eyed Pekingese, Grainger.*”
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Mad World by Paula Byrne
“Ah, Lady Julia, good morning to you, good morning. And how is the Peke this hunting morning?”
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I took this photograph when I went to see Oxford University last week, and Oxford Brookes University. The city is absolutely stunning and is thriving with classic coffee shops, expensive brands and Oxford students. I would love to study English Literature there.
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“[Hugh Lygon] was suffering from what his sisters called ‘second son syndrome’.”
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Mad World by Paula Byrne
“He wanted to be a priest, you know.”
“I didn’t.”
“I think he still does. He nearly became a Jesuit, straight from Stonyhurst. It was awful for Mummy. She couldn’t exactly try and stop him, but of course it was the last thing she wanted. Think what people would have said — the eldest son; it’s not as if it had been me.”
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“I though the Boom chapel at Madresfield the saddest thing I ever saw.”
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Evelyn Waugh
[via Mad World by Paula Byrne]
понедельник, 06 июня 2011
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contra mundum
“The whole interior had been gutted, elaborately refurnished and redecorated in the arts-and-crafts style of the last decade of the nineteenth century. Angels in printed cotton smocks, rambler-roses, flower-spangled meadows, frisking lambs, texts in Celtic sсript, saints in armour, covered the walls in an intricate pattern of clear, bright colours. There was a triptych of pale oak, carved so as to give it the peculiar property of seeming to have been moulded in plasticine. The sanctuary lamp and all the metal furniture were of bronze, and-beaten to the patina of a pockmarked skin; the altar steps had a carpet of grass-green, strewn with white and gold daisies.
“Golly,” I said.
“It was Papa’s wedding present to Mamma. Now, if you’ve seen enough, we’ll go.””
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“Golly,” I said.
“It was Papa’s wedding present to Mamma. Now, if you’ve seen enough, we’ll go.””
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Evelyn [Waugh] changes the gold triptych to pale oak and the sanctuary lamp and metal furniture to bronze, but otherwise there is no mistaking the Madresfield chapel.
Mad World by Paula Byrne
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"Madresfield was a red-brick, moated manor house with yellow stone facings around the doors and..."
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“Madresfield was a red-brick, moated manor house with yellow stone facings around the doors and windows. On sunny days one could see the golden carp and the blue flash or a kingfisher in the moat, which is twenty feet wide. (Charles compares Julia Flyte to a kingfisher.)”
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Mad World by Paula Byrne
That night and the night after and the night after, wherever she went, always in her own little circle of intimates, she brought to all whose eyes were open to it a moment of joy, such as strikes deep to the heart on the river’s bank when the kingfisher suddenly flames across dappled water.
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contra mundum
“Madresfield was special because it had been home to the same family for eight centuries. Like the mythical Brideshead, the real Madresfield had been remodeled several times. Parts were Jacobean, but there had been a major renovation in the style of Victorian Gothic.”
- Mad World by Paula Byrne
- Mad World by Paula Byrne
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"[When in 1931 Evelyn Waugh visited Madresfield for the first time, he] took the Great Western..."
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“[When in 1931 Evelyn Waugh visited Madresfield for the first time, he] took the Great Western Railway to Malvern Link. In future years he would travel to Worcester on a quicker train, where Maimie would pick him up in the car and drive him back to Madresfield: the experience of being a passenger driven up to a stately home by a beautiful flapper girl would be recreated in ‘Brideshead’.”
- Mad World by Paula Byrne
- Mad World by Paula Byrne
воскресенье, 05 июня 2011
contra mundum
