This is absolutely one of your best entries yet! A Brazil in that fabulous assortment of mixed nuts I mentioned yesterday. I was extremely interested in what happened to that poor old concierge which I imagined as doppelganger to my late stepmom's cleaning lady who never met a cobweb she couldn't ignore but would have been on the streets without the patronage of a half-dozen benevolent members of the Stratford Golf and Country Club in the 1970s.
But then! OMG! A romantic fraudster posing as nobility! The newspapers don't say, but I wonder how much of Marguerite and papa's wealth ended up in the hands of "Sir Donald Thursfield" before he disappeared on secret service business in Ukraine? Honestly, what was she thinking not consulting Burke's Peerage or Debrett's upon proposal?
Thanks also for the link and that first page ad about pyorrhea. To think that 80% of people over forty suffered its "pernicious presence" "spreading virulent poisons" through their systems. (This sent me down a rabbit hole where I discovered that, although only popularized in the 1940s, floss was invented in 1815, and written about soon after:
"In his 1819 book A Practical Guide to the Management of the Teeth , Parmly poetically laid out , with Roald Dahl- esque colour, what has come to haunt us for two centuries: “The relics of what we eat or drink, (without regard to its quality) being allowed to accumulate, stagnate, and putrefy, either in the interstices of the teeth, as is most commonly the case, or else in those indentures on their surface, favourable for the lodgement of food, is universally the cause of their decay.” I also discovered that they've found marking in ancient skulls that appear to show horse hair and twigs were used for the purpose in the days of cave dwelling!
Anyway, thank you for more daily fun! This is a terrific blog!
Oh my, following you wherever you may write is replacing my morning meditation. much more fun to embrace, rather than struggle with, Monkey Mind. Not sure I punctuated that properly.
Doubly gripping. I love too: "At any rate it was in the Ukraine at some unknown place that he died, according to a report received by a British service in London from a faithful old Hindoo retainer of the dead man." Can't reporters go back to writing like this?
this was such a riveting one this morning Bill ! thank you ! Honestly it would be a brilliant movie idea - Hugh Laurie just did a brilliant Agatha Christie adaption of Why Didn't They Ask Evans -I think you should reach out to him :) ( I only 1/5th jest lol) . I am loving this Blog
Bill this is an incredible story. I tried to find her article about the gay nineties but I didn’t see it when I cut and pasted the link? Also St Thomas Church is wonderful for so many reasons and attracts the very crème de La crème of dowagers in minks -- next time you’re here we must go
I'll look into the link and let you know if I can offer any advice. She also published an article somewhere that I lost sight of having to with the beauty of plastic, I think. Isn't she a find? Marguerite! I also want to know more about Marion Richardson, the unmarried artist sister with the link to St Anne's Church in Murray Bay - or so it would seem, why else would she have donated work to them? I think she was actually quite good, Marion. MG's father painted her a screen with mermaids...
She is truly a find and the stories about the family are riveting -- you plucked out the very best sentence hindoo retainer and unknown unnamed places -- it’s too good.
This is absolutely one of your best entries yet! A Brazil in that fabulous assortment of mixed nuts I mentioned yesterday. I was extremely interested in what happened to that poor old concierge which I imagined as doppelganger to my late stepmom's cleaning lady who never met a cobweb she couldn't ignore but would have been on the streets without the patronage of a half-dozen benevolent members of the Stratford Golf and Country Club in the 1970s.
But then! OMG! A romantic fraudster posing as nobility! The newspapers don't say, but I wonder how much of Marguerite and papa's wealth ended up in the hands of "Sir Donald Thursfield" before he disappeared on secret service business in Ukraine? Honestly, what was she thinking not consulting Burke's Peerage or Debrett's upon proposal?
Thanks also for the link and that first page ad about pyorrhea. To think that 80% of people over forty suffered its "pernicious presence" "spreading virulent poisons" through their systems. (This sent me down a rabbit hole where I discovered that, although only popularized in the 1940s, floss was invented in 1815, and written about soon after:
"In his 1819 book A Practical Guide to the Management of the Teeth , Parmly poetically laid out , with Roald Dahl- esque colour, what has come to haunt us for two centuries: “The relics of what we eat or drink, (without regard to its quality) being allowed to accumulate, stagnate, and putrefy, either in the interstices of the teeth, as is most commonly the case, or else in those indentures on their surface, favourable for the lodgement of food, is universally the cause of their decay.” I also discovered that they've found marking in ancient skulls that appear to show horse hair and twigs were used for the purpose in the days of cave dwelling!
Anyway, thank you for more daily fun! This is a terrific blog!
Oh my, following you wherever you may write is replacing my morning meditation. much more fun to embrace, rather than struggle with, Monkey Mind. Not sure I punctuated that properly.
Doubly gripping. I love too: "At any rate it was in the Ukraine at some unknown place that he died, according to a report received by a British service in London from a faithful old Hindoo retainer of the dead man." Can't reporters go back to writing like this?
this was such a riveting one this morning Bill ! thank you ! Honestly it would be a brilliant movie idea - Hugh Laurie just did a brilliant Agatha Christie adaption of Why Didn't They Ask Evans -I think you should reach out to him :) ( I only 1/5th jest lol) . I am loving this Blog
Bill this is an incredible story. I tried to find her article about the gay nineties but I didn’t see it when I cut and pasted the link? Also St Thomas Church is wonderful for so many reasons and attracts the very crème de La crème of dowagers in minks -- next time you’re here we must go
I'll look into the link and let you know if I can offer any advice. She also published an article somewhere that I lost sight of having to with the beauty of plastic, I think. Isn't she a find? Marguerite! I also want to know more about Marion Richardson, the unmarried artist sister with the link to St Anne's Church in Murray Bay - or so it would seem, why else would she have donated work to them? I think she was actually quite good, Marion. MG's father painted her a screen with mermaids...
She is truly a find and the stories about the family are riveting -- you plucked out the very best sentence hindoo retainer and unknown unnamed places -- it’s too good.