adorned a belle

We're still enjoying arranging and decorating our home. Warmth's latest find from Ebay is a wonderful bureau. It holds books, but open it up and there is space for stationery and to write letters.

'Amy's chief delight was an Indian cabinet full of queer drawers, little pigeon-holes, and secret places in which were kept all sorts of ornaments, some precious, some merely curious, all more or less antique. To examine and arrange these things gave Amy great satisfaction, especially the jewel cases; in which, on velvet cushions, reposed the ornaments which had adorned a belle forty years ago.' Louisa May Alcott Little Women

ornaments

I can't imagine Aunt March having any furniture like this, but I can imagine Amy admiring and desiring an such a piece.

full of light and silver

Are you enjoying the new series of Downton Abbey? Sunday evenings once more have a rhythm to them.

'I must agree with you when you speak of beautiful furniture. Who does not enjoy food upon shining tables with glass full of light and silver - Ah! ....'the sensation of the fingers of a well-polished silver-spoon!'
...
'But,' he said dramatically, 'what shall happen when the tables no longer shine, when those who clean them are taken from you and there is no time to sit and polish spoons?'... 
'Then how terrible to see the table dull, to see, perhaps scratches, to know you cannot preserve the beauty you enjoy, because there is no time in the day for so much. No, no,' he went on, 'that shall not happen, that must not. Silver and shining mahogany and bright glass must remain in memory beautiful, and not be seen in actuality smeared and unkept. I like better to have this table' - he smote the deal with vigour - 'which is so clean, and to see my good friend en casserole, rather than to have it made lordly and perhaps cold in a silver dish not well cleaned!' Jocelyn Playfair A house in the country

kitchen

I think this story line might be one hear more of this season. 

positively magnificent

The British weather this summer has not been good. There has been a lot of rain, so much that the hose pipe ban has been lifted. This passage from a birthday book made me smile.

"Have you observed," began Evelyn with a giggle, "that Mrs. Thatcham's one criterion of a beautiful day is whether or not it is possible to see across as far as the Malton Downs? 'Can you, or can you not, see across to the Malton Downs?' -that is the only question. For the farther you can see, - why, the more beautiful the day! And not the day only, either, for the beauties of the landscape, and the countryside also, hinge entirely on the answer to that question."

Evelyn sniggered, and continued, warming to her subject: "Thus, if it is possible for Mrs. Thatcham to see two counties at once from the top of the hill, then the view from there is a fine one, -the country exceedingly lovely. If three counties are visible at the same time, it is then more lovely than ever, - the country-side positively magnificent, and so on and so forth." Julia Strachey Cheerful Weather for the Wedding

view

What are your criteria for a beautiful day?

A haze of loveliness

To counteract our thoughts of dowdiness some beauty.

haze

'But she could never escape from her beauty; it clung to her like a mist, like a skin, so that she seemed to move in a haze of loveliness. Everything she touched, every word she used took on this quality of grace; her very gloves and handkerchiefs were romantic.' Antonia White Frost in May

Wishing you all a haze of loveliness weekend.

Warm delicious beauty

This weekend has just been glorious so this seems a perfect Monday post.

"The most thrilling day of the year, the first real day of Spring had enclosed its warm delicious beauty even to London eyes. It had put a spangle in every colour and a new tone in every voice, and city folks walked as though they carried real bodies under their clothes with real live hearts pumping the still blood through." Katherine Mansfield Something childish but very natural

spring 

How was your weekend?

Like nothing on earth

"I never was in Agatha's bedroom," said Hubert wistfully, "What was it like?"
"Like nothing on earth. A wonderful Elizabethan bed, all hung with old Italian tapestries... And a Louis Quinze dressing-table, and a crystal jug and basin from somewhere in Hungary. And, by way of pictures, a Gainsborough portrait, and a landscape... And a good deal of carved jade and ivory lying around. It was just like all the other rooms in the house, only she had seized on the very best things." Margaret Kennedy The Ladies of Lyndon

I'm not sure Agatha's bedroom would be my idea of nothing on earth, but this one might be... And when we gather ourselves to decorate our bedroom well then that shall be Like nothing on earth.

bedroom

How would you like your dream bedroom to be?

The Magic Season

I finally managed to find a second hand copy of The Third Miss Symon's. There are two pages that a previous reader has turned down. Both of them mention Jane Eyre. (I'm intrigued why?) At the same time I read two really good posts on the Brontes. All this is really making me want to re read it in 2012.

'...Henrietta discovered that heroines after the sixteenth birthday are likely to be pestered with adorers. The heroines, it is true, were exquisitely beautiful, which, Henrietta knew she was not, but from a study of "Jane Eyre" and "Vilette" in the holidays, Charlotte Bronte was forbidden at school owing to an excess of passion, Henrietta realised that the plain may be adored too, so she had a modest hope that when the magic season of young ladyhood arrived, a Prince Charming would come and fall in love with her.' F.M. Mayor The Third Miss Symons
beauty

Do the books we read when 'the magic season of young ladyhood arrives' help or hinder us?

Regarding Lipstick

One of the lovely ladies I follow on Twitter referred to her 'Autumn wardrobe of lipsticks'. It made me smile. Then I read this passage in South Riding.

'I regard lipstick as a symbol of self-respect, of interest in one's appearance, of a hopeful and self-assured attitude towards life,' Winifred Holtby South Riding


lipstick
How do you regard lipstick?

Eyes surfeited with beauty

I'm enjoying reading Ripening Seed by Colette for passages like this. Although it is making me want to be on holiday, by the coast, in France.

'An off-shore breeze wafted the scent of the new-mown after-crop, farmyard smells, and the fragrance of bruised mint: little by little, along the level of the sea a dusty pink was usurping the domain of blue unchallenged since the early morning. Phillippe did not know how to express such a thought as: 'All too few are the occasions in life when with mind content, eyes surfeited with beauty, heart light, retentive, and almost empty, there comes a moment for the senses to be filled to overflowing: I shall remember this as just such a moment.' Colette Ripening SeedWhat moments are you remembering this month?

Rouge Coco

So, to get ready for Paris in July it feels as if one should look right.

'I strolled through a grove of dress material and found myself at a counter piled with jars of face creams and lipsticks. ...I caught sight of my own face, colourless and worried-looking, the eyes large and rather frightened, the lips too pale. I did not feel that I could ever acquire a smooth apricot complexion but I could at least buy a new lipstick, I thought...' Barbara Pym Excellent Women

And of course it has to be Chanel

Beautiful and Gracious

Not when I am an old woman I shall wear purple but when I grow old I would like to be like Lady Slane.


'She was a beautiful old woman. Tall slender, and pale, she had never lost her grace or her carriage. Clothes upon her ceased to be clothes and became draperies; she had the secret of line. A fluid loveliness ran over all her limbs. Her eyes were grey and deeply set; her nose was short and straight; her tranquil hands the hands of a Van-dyck; ...Looking at her, one could believe that it was easy for a woman to be beautiful and gracious, as all works of genius persuade us that they were effortless achievement.' Vita Sackville-West All Passion Spent

The Sartorialist

How are you hoping to be in your older age?

The Month of March

The month started well. A cold cold day. Home early due to a course and the door bell rang. My Brora clearance sale goodies arrived. Pink finger warmers and green bed socks. Spring like yet warm. Alas I'd double clicked and so then the next day another complete order arrived. Eeek. Managing to dress for World Book Day and not look out of place either on the train or more importantly when... Celebrating Great Uncle Henry's 100th birthday at The Crown A 60th birthday party just down the road... Operation Buy Home has expanded to Eltham now. We are determined and serious in trying to find somewhere. This included six viewings in one weekend. We now have an offer excepted on a house... Meeting a local fellow book blogger for tea at The Teapot. Exploring a new bar. Describing itself as a cross between a Victorian gin palace and a speakeasy. Purl. Book a booth, read the cocktail list and sit back... My hairdresser had a pop up shop. Oh if we had a home I would have bought. Celebrating a biggish birthday for Mama Warmth at Baltic. There will be more celebrations... Meeting Twin at Angel for a touch of shopping, peach bellini, supper and then to Sadler's Wells to see 'The Most Incredible Thing' Music by the Pet Shop Boys, one of the main reasons Twin arranged the tickets, and story by Hans Christian Anderson. It was incredible. A journey across to our old patch of London to see friends. It made me reflect on this post. A lovely walk along the river, drinks outside, wearing sunglasses. A Friday supper out just Warmth and I to Wine Wharf. We should do this more often. Celebrating dearest friend's Hen celebration with afternoon at The Lanesborough Nurses and teachers battling through the uncut marches to celebrate felt a little strange. Then to Barnes to meet up with the Warmth family who'd been celebrating The Boat Race. Reading Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Started Family album by Penelope Lively but have also bought American Wife by Curtis Sittenfield for Book Club read. Films watched - Frost/Nixon. Warmth watched The Hurt Locker, I read Vogue. Varnish - OPI Plunging into Plum. Hmm not sure a little too bright. A new Chanel - Black Pearl. A terrible broken nail - feels like it's so short it will never grow back...

The feeling that Spring has Sprung.

The Kitchen

Alot of the talking and thinking happens in the kitchen in A House in the Country.

"Cressida Chance, alone in the kitchen, slammed the oven door, filled a kettle and put it on the boiling-plate of the stove, scattered cups and saucers and plates on the big table at one side of the room and fetched bread and butter and homey from the larder."

are so happy

"The kettle began to sing on the cooker but memory would not be stopped."

"It is my experience,"... "that in the kitchen you make friends; in the drawing-room you make conversation."

it's mary ruffle

"If a kitchen is not homely it has lost its soul!"

Are so happy
Discussing women and cooking

"Hard? No!" he exclaimed brightly. 'It is a question of fashion only! When cooking shall become the fashion, of more effect than a new hat or a new shade of lipstick, then there will not be so many who hate it!'

What are your thoughts?

Dr. Zhivago

I'm joining in with the group read at Nonsuch Books.

I've seen the film many times but this is my first time of reading Dr. Zhivago. As ever when it's this way round I'm trying to make sense of the book with film thoughts often clouding in. The first time this happened was on reading

'Her [Lara] dark hair was scattered...'

but no this is Lara Antipov

Suddenly reading

'he owned an enormous estate in the Urals, near Yuryatin;'

'Yuryatin' a word which ones hears so much in the film and to suddenly see the word leap off the page sends shiver through me.

My main thought is from having read JoAnn's post on translation I'm wondering if I should be carrying the new hardback version around. Especially as I love collecting passages I feel I'm so missing out. I'm now reading it thinking "I wonder how this was translated in the new version?" At least I have a great reason to re buy (especially as I don't like the front cover but that's a whole other story) and re read Dr. Zhivago.

As this is the beginning of Dr. Zhivago group read I thought I'd end this post with.

"All these people were there, together, in this one place. But some of them had never known each other, while others failed to recognise each other now. And there were things about them which were never to be known for certain, while others were only to await another opportunity in order to reveal themselves." Boris Pasternak Dr.Zhivago (Tr.Max Hayward & Manya Harari)

How is this passage in your translation?

Beautiful Things

'The world' she thought ' is certainly full of beautiful things, if only I could come across them.'

E.M. Forster A Room with a View

To help Lucy Honeychurch out, because it's a Friday in November and because we haven't had any flowers for a while....

@

@

@

To be barefootedly beautiful

For an autumnal Wednesday morning....

'But they want tenderness as much as they want passion, they crave the feathered touch of softness, sweetness. They yearn... to be fond of each other, to be charitable, to be mild and merciful. To be barefootedly beautiful in each other's eyes.' Carol Shields Unless

barefootedly beautiful

This was the first novel by Carol Shields I've read. Which of her other ones do you recommend?

Forming People

So, the start of a new academic year. I've always liked this passage and today as we look ahead to our hopes and dreams for the next year it seemed appropriate. Who knows where this year will take us, what changes will happen. (I feel those who are making those decisions should read this passage.) This is what education means to me and why I'm looking forward to the year ahead.

'Education is about forming people who have the moral strength and spiritual depth to hold a course and weather its ups and downs.

It is about forming people who know that economic competition is not more important than family life and love of neighbour, and that technical innovation is not more important that reverence for beauty of creation. It is about forming people who. however academically and technically skillful, are not reduced to inarticualte embarrassment by the great questions of life and death, meaning and truth.'

Archbishop of Canterbury quoted in Lord Dearing's Report 'The Way ahead' quoted in The Daily Telegraph 31st July 2002

.'

@

Bathroom of the Vanities

Warmth bought me Christopher Reid's A Scattering for my birthday, it's a collection of poems he wrote after his wife died. Here's part of my favourite one, which seems appropriate as we pack up our flat. Thankfully we're packing up under very different circumstances to this poem.

Bathroom of the Vanities

The model mask, the mannequin moue,

the face I loved to catch her pulling

after sundry perfecting dabs

and micro-adjustments in front of the mirror

will never be seen, by me or the mirror, again.

......

Odd bottles in an orderly queue -

Issey Miyake, Parum, Tea Rose, the eternal billing

doves of L'Air du Temps - keep their caps

on, converse their last drops of essence and aura

and wait for no one.

Christopher Reid

@

How poignant thinking about all our lotions, potions, scents which we will leave behind.

The memories scents evoke...

Mighty Rivers

We've returned from our lovely holiday holidaying by the mighty Loire

'Human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth; it does not wait for beauty - it flows with restless force and brings beauty with it.' George Eliot Adam Bede

Flowers for Mrs Harris

Mrs Harris a lady after my own heart. A lover of dresses and flowers...

'As long as she had flowers, Mrs Harris had no serious complaints concerning the life led... These bright flashes of colour satisfied her. They were something to return to in the evening and something to wake up to in the morning.'

@

'Here were streets that were nothing but a mass of azaleas in pots, plants in pink, white, red, purple, mingling with huge bunches of cream, crimson, and yellow carnations. There seemed to be acres of boxes of pansies smiling up into the sun, blue irises, red roses, and huge fronds of gladioli...'

@
'All the beauty that she had ever really known in her life until she saw the Dior dress had been flowers. Now, her nostrils were filled with the scent of lilies and tuberoses. From every quarter came beautiful scents, and through this profusion of colour and scent Mrs Harris wandered as if in a dream.'

@
'dark, deep red roses by the dozen, cream white lilies, bunches of pink and yellow carnations, and sheaves of gladioli ready to burst into every colour from deep mauve to palest lemon. There were azaleas, salmon coloured, white, and crimson, geraniums, bundles of sweet-smelling freesias, and one great bouquet of violets...'

violets