Point I order - I wrote/typoed thigns - even later historians lisped!Seeing mysterious thighs is quite distracting for late victorians...
Point I order - I wrote/typoed thigns - even later historians lisped!Seeing mysterious thighs is quite distracting for late victorians...
When Josef Hoffman, one of the early pioneers of Art Deco, tried to enter his designs into competition for a proposed new building on 55 Broadway, the Royal Institute of British Architects sent him, what for architects constitutes, a threatening letter.
The existence of the pedestal afforded to Howards End though, is also an excellent show of the way war changed the image people had of the era. Upon publication, the novel was about a divided society. Today, it is seen as a book about simpler times of relatively genteel class conflict and property inheritance.
the British are an inherently nostalgic people
Glass and steel is not a tectonics of imperial might – not the British sort, anyway.
The.
Crystal.
Palace.
Yes. And the hothouse at Chatsworth.
Not saying Britain doesn’t do glass, just that it’s understandable why there wasn’t a British Louis Sullivan.
As a whole though, the West End remained relatively static throughout the era. The Mikado and H. M. S. Pinafore were each performed more often from 1904 to 1909 than Shaw and Galsworthy’s entire output combined.
Poetry too, experienced a type of stagnation. With the passing of Tennyson in 1892, Kipling was left as the towering figure on the scene. Even the young poets who would later embody the renaissance for British poetry of modernism showed little inclination to experiment; D. H. Lawrence’s early work, for example, shows little of the later continental influences and innovation of his wartime and post-war poetry, this despite his literature showing much of it.
When Josef Hoffman, one of the early pioneers of Art Deco, tried to enter his designs into competition for a proposed new building on 55 Broadway, the Royal Institute of British Architects sent him, what for architects constitutes, a threatening letter.
Obligatory shudder at *war poetry*, truly the greatest horror to emerge from the conflict.
tragedy of the bridge collapse comes to mind.
Hoffman gives derivate hacks a bad name
Good old Topaz. So many stanzas, so few different rhymes.
The horrible history audio book does a fantastic reading of him.
Hahaha I will have to dig that one out.
Villainous victorians. Terry deary also sings the hit song: they're moving fathers grave to build a sewer.
They could all sense a Fall coming, and were quite aware they probably wouldn't be able to stop it without compeltly changing the world as they knew it. Hence, melancholy and nostalgia at minimum and full-blown depression and defeatist thinking at worst.
Reminds of some lines from Evita
"When you're ontop to the world, the view is not precisely clear"
"Don't Look down - it's a long long way to fall"
Both from the same song.
One has to wonder though how much of this is with hindsight: knowledge of the decline magnifyning hints or concernrs of it, or even seeing thigns where none is there?
Seeing mysterious thighs is quite distracting for late victorians...
Point I order - I wrote/typoed thigns - even later historians lisped!
Presumably, the RIBA summoned up their entire lack of self-awareness and sent him something to the effect of “none of that foreign crap please”.
Glass and steel is not a tectonics of imperial might – not the British sort, anyway. As much as the engineers might get a kick out of it, it’s perfectly understandable why the people commissioning buildings were less than keen to adopt an idiom that was more or less Franco–American (even if that’s probably less of a cultural obstacle here than OTL).
there are industrial and economic considerations too, of course, which arguably don’t kick in quite yet.
I do love Howard’s End, but yeah, it’s substance is not in its cast-iron historical depiction of class conflict.
Quite. The grass was always greener, etc etc.
Enjoyed this, @BigBadBob. As much as I try to avoid Kipling like the proverbial, the verse you include here does convey the overall Cassandra-like sensibility very well. Plenty of turmoil even before the War.
The.
Crystal.
Palace.
Yes. And the hothouse at Chatsworth.
Not saying Britain doesn’t do glass, just that it’s understandable why there wasn’t a British Louis Sullivan.
We like throwing bricks more than building greenhouses.
Obviously. The West End has to actually make money unlike, say, the Royal Opera House, so has to put on productions people actually want to see. The number of people who would willingly pay money to see a play by Shaw or Galsworthy is vanishingly small and such people probably need locking up rather than being allowed out in public.
An interesting choice of phrasing. "I don't stick my hands into mincing machines" apparently means I am stagnating and not experimenting. Perhaps people were resisting continental influences for damned good reasons? Obligatory shudder at *war poetry*, truly the greatest horror to emerge from the conflict.
Good work RIBA, keep it up. Hoffman gives derivate hacks a bad name, if I was describing his work as badly detailed bland boxes with twirls ineptly nailed on I would be being overly generous.
Could be worse, could be Scots poetry post-rabbie burns. Or pre-burns for that matter...tragedy of the bridge collapse comes to mind.
Good old Topaz. So many stanzas, so few different rhymes.
Derivative of what exactly? Adobe brick houses?
The horrible history audio book does a fantastic reading of him.
Hahaha I will have to dig that one out.
Villainous victorians. Terry deary also sings the hit song: they're moving fathers grave to build a sewer.
I love it.
I definitely should come to you once I have to touch on architecture again. It's not exactly my specialty, but at least I seem to have got the gist of things.
The 2012 Olympics seem to be taking on a similar quality in the popular mind, at least for some demographics.
In recent years, I've found that a surprising amount of the historical titbits in my brain are from Horrible Histories.
having to concede the Americas to the USA
Floor of the London Stock Exchange, 1897
Taken the morning of the Diamond Jubilee, Charlie Clarke (informal Master of Ceremonies for the Exchange on great occasions between 1890 and 1922) prepares to lead the floor in renditions of God Save The Queen and Rule, Britannia!
The Bill was a mechanism by which world trade was lubricated through the reliability of the City and Bank of England. In essence, the bill of exchange was a promise to pay at a later date. Endorsed by a merchant bank in London - one that was part of the famed Accepting Houses committee - for a small fee, it could be sold forward on the discount market, most likely to one of the two great Discount Houses (National and Union Discount). The bill would then be bought by a third bank as a self-liquidating investment. Through this, the problem of payment not arriving until goods did was solved; the bill of exchange, backed by the might of London and the Bank’s promise to maintain Sterling on the Gold Standard, was as good as gold.
There they engaged with banks like Rothschilds or Kleinworts, which spoke German, but were very much part of the City’s ‘gentlemanly class,’ business with them protected by the social pedigree that assured the Etonian ethos embedded in the top banks would see their debts and claims honoured.
It seemed that a financial apocalypse was at hand.
Taste. What you are detecting is hints of taste and discernment.Am I sensing a hint of conservatism in this response, Pip? Never would have thought such a thing from you.
I've had a very similar experience while trying to catch up with bits of your Echoes of a New Tomorrow. So I both feel your pain and feel you deserve experiencing it yourself.Very well written as ever, even if much of what you were writing about made me want to prise my eyes out with a rusty chisel.