portrait-photo

The Wunderkammer of the Mild Colonial Boy, Esq., a Reactionary Tory Gentleman, who armed only with a Steampowered Babbage Engine and Pure Intentions, wanders the Time Streams and Aetheric Plane gathering an Eccentric Hodgepodge of Curiousities, Frivolities, Whimsicalities and Nonsense.

Q. Why is your Tumblelog called "My Ear-Trumpet Has Been Struck by Lightning"?

A. Because "My Grandmother's Ear-Trumpet Has Been Struck by Lightning" wouldn't fit in the available space.

"You know,” [the headmaster] said, “we are starting this year with fifteen fewer classical specialists than we had last term?”

“I thought that would be about the number.”

“As you know I’m an old Greats man myself. I deplore it as much as you do. But what are we to do? Parents are not interested in producing the ‘complete man’ any more. They want to qualify their boys for jobs in the modern world. You can hardly blame them, can you?”

“Oh yes,” said Scott-King. “I can and do.”

“I always say you are a much more important man here than I am. One couldn’t conceive of Granchester without Scott-King. But has it ever occurred to you that a time may come when there will be no more classical boys at all?”

“Oh yes. Often.”

“What I was going to suggest was – I wonder if you will consider taking some other subject as well as the classics? History, for example, preferably economic history?”

“No, headmaster.”

“But, you know, there may be something of a crisis ahead.”

“Yes, headmaster.”

“Then what do you intend to do?”

“If you approve, headmaster, I will stay as I am here as long as any boy wants to read the classics. I think it would be very wicked indeed to do anything to fit a boy for the modern world.”

“It’s a short-sighted view, Scott-King.”

“There, headmaster, with all respect, I differ from you profoundly. I think it the most long-sighted view it is possible to take."

— from the “scathing Evelyn Waugh satire entitled “Scott-King’s Modern Europe” wherein the protagonist – a curmudgeonly classics instructor named Scott-King – is called in for a meeting with his school’s headmaster. The headmaster vainly tries to convince Scott-King to get with the times”
Paris Review | Evelyn Waugh, The Art of Fiction No. 30

Paris Review | Evelyn Waugh, The Art of Fiction No. 30

Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

(Source: lemaldusiecle)

nobilior: Beautifully written. Anyone with a feeling for tradition - amongst very many other things - ought to read this wonderful, poignant novel. And choose a copy such as this, with a classic cover  - or would you rather read it, de-aestheticised, on your boring-grey Kindle machine?

nobilior:

Beautifully written. Anyone with a feeling for tradition - amongst very many other things - ought to read this wonderful, poignant novel. And choose a copy such as this, with a classic cover  - or would you rather read it, de-aestheticised, on your boring-grey Kindle machine?

(Source: crookedusage)

dreigroschenoper:

The “Victorian Blood Book” from the Library of Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh, whose manuscripts and 3,500-volume library are now at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, was an inveterate collector of things Victorian (and well ahead of most of his contemporaries in this regard). Undoubtedly the most curious object in the Waugh library is a large oblong folio decoupage book known affectionately as the “Victorian Blood Book.”

Since it arrived here in the late 1960s, the “Blood Book” has fascinated everyone who has seen it. Its decoupage was assembled from several hundred engravings, many taken from books of etchings by William Blake. The principal motifs are natural (birds, animals, and especially snakes) and Christian (images of the cross, scenes from the Bible, and crusaders). Drops of red india ink and extensive commentary have been added to many of the images. The craftsmanship is exquisite, and the adhesion of the decoupages is still perfect. The book bears an inscription by one John Bingley Garland to his daughter Amy dated September 1, 1854.

All 41 plates of the book can be seen here.

( via )

f***yeahhistorycrushes: Quintessential smarmy Brit, Evelyn Waugh was a writer of massive volume and style. He is perhaps best know for his novel Brideshead Revisited, which was beautifully adapted for the screen in the 1981 miniseries starring Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews.

f***yeahhistorycrushes:

Quintessential smarmy Brit, Evelyn Waugh was a writer of massive volume and style. He is perhaps best know for his novel Brideshead Revisited, which was beautifully adapted for the screen in the 1981 miniseries starring Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews.

"Literature is the right use of language irrespective of the subject or reason of the utterance. A political speech may be, and sometimes is, literature; a sonnet to the moon may be, and often is, trash. Style is what distinguishes literature from trash."

—

from Evelyn Waugh. Essays, Articles and Reviews of Evelyn Waugh (1983)

(HT Anecdotal Evidence)