Posted in Visited on June 16, 2007| 1 Comment »
Ah, England. One of the chilliest periods I ever spent in my life was April in London.
Be that as it may, when I saw this scene in Persuasion 2007, I realized how much the settings added to the drama in this film adaptation. The Cob seemed cold and forbidding, and the waves were ominous. Considering the state of Captain Wentworth’s and Anne’s feelings, and their anxiety (or fearfulness) of being rejected by the other, this scene was quite apropos.
Posted in jane austen, Regency Life, Regency Travel, Regency World, Travel, Visited, tagged An American in Regency England, Louis Simond, Salisbury, Salisbury Cathedral, Travel on April 23, 2007|
On July 6, 1810, Louis Simond wrote in An American in Regency England:
Salisbury is a little old city, very ugly, and of which there is nothing to say, except that the steeple of its cathedral, which is immensely high, and built of stone to its very summit, is twenty inches out of the perpendicular, which is really enough to take off the attention of the most devout congregation. We went to the morning service, and did not find a single person in the church except those officiating. It is not the the first time we have observed this desertion of the metropolitan churches–even where the steeples were quite perpendicular.
Well, I disagree with Louis Simond. We spent a pleasurable afternoon in Salisbury, gazing at the cathedral and visiting the town and found them charming. People are too picky at times: I enjoyed visiting an empty church. This allowed me to study its treasures up close and at leisure!
Posted in Architecture, jane austen, Regency Life, Regency style, Regency World, Visited, tagged Brighton, Brighton Pavillion, Prince Regent, Regency Brighton, Visited on December 3, 2006| 1 Comment »
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to manDown to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
–Samuel Taylor Coleridge
When I visited
Brighton Pavilion in Brighton, a charming seaside town in Sussex’s South Downs, I found it more beautiful and fantastic than the drawings, paintings, and photos I’d seen. The building, rebuilt between 1815-1822 by John Nash, the Prince Regent’s architect, is starkly white and stands in the center of town. Approaching it on foot, one is astounded by the intricacy of the architectural details, from the exterior domes, spires, and columns, to the interior with its gothic touches, fantasy rooms, and exquisite color combinations and patterns.
The Prince Regent was known for his excesses and expensive tastes, and his architect John Nash succeeded in fulfilling the Prince’s most outrageous wishes. The Gothic Revival was in full swing during the Regency Era, including the love for all things mid-Eastern, Chinoise, and Arabian. This Arabian Nights fantasy in stone has been well documented in picture books and on the web. I will merely point out a few spectacular rooms and some of the details that struck me as being particularly beautiful or unusual.
The kitchen, a cavernous room created to comfortably accommodate the Prince’s idea of an intimate dinner, is depicted on this web page. Click here and scroll down to the kitchen. You can also see a panoramic view of the kitchen on the page if you have a real player. It was not unusual for the Prince to throw a banquet with 36 courses, hence the kitchen was designed to accommodate the scores of cooks and enormous amounts of food stuffs and ingredients required to prepare these foods.
The long gallery is indeed long. The colors are riotous, and one feels as if one is traipsing through a fantasy land.
On the left is a picture of John Nash’s long gallery. On the right is a photograph of the long gallery today.
The banquet room also lingers in my memory, with its long, long banqueting table, the exquisite details in the ceiling, and the fantastic carved dragons peeping out from chandeliers disquised as palms.
Salon & Music Room
Images of Brighton in the 19th Century:
Evening Gathering at Brighton Pavilion in the Yellow Room
Brighton, a seaside resort
2025 AGM in Baltimore
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