Georgian Travel Quotes

John Langdon lived to be seventy-eight years old (no small achievement at the time), and although he was exceptionally generous in financing the nation’s war, such contributions appear not to have threatened his prosperous way of life. George Washington was quoted as saying that Portsmouth had many fine houses, but “among them, Col. Langdon’s may be esteemed the first.” If you travel today to that picturesque seaside city, you may still visit Langdon’s stately Georgian mansion and surrounding gardens.

The place is an austere, wartime England. In the north Hampshire village of Steventon, Jane Austen was born in December 1775, and just 12 miles away in the cathedral city of Winchester, she died in July 1817. Such a short distance separates her birth and death, yet during her lifetime of forty-one years she travelled more than most women of this era, westwards as far as Dawlish in Devon, eastwards to Ramsgate in Kent, southwards to Portsmouth and probably as far north as Hamstall Ridware in Staffordshire. 1 England was the only country she knew, and for most of her adult life, that country was at war.

Edinburgh For those who like walking, Edinburgh reigns supreme. The Royal Mile runs through the centre of the tourist area connecting Edinburgh Castle with Holyrood Palace. It’s a little over a mile and, in addition to passing old Edinburgh historic sites, it is lined with independent shops, cafes and pubs along the way. For this is Edinburgh’s Old Town, all cobbled streets beneath the lofty castle. The New Town is less than ten minutes walk away and it’s far from new. Instead New Town is Georgian, built by the wealthy residents in the 18th century. Its wide streets and perfect proportions create a visual joy for walking. It’s tough to name Edinburgh’s main sites, but here goes: the castle, continuously occupied for more than 1000 years; Holyrood Palace, the Queen’s official residence in Scotland; Mary King’s Close, a preserved 18th century tenement on the Royal Mile and; the Grassmarket, a network of cobbled lanes with independent shops and cafes. I could go on. Edinburgh is particularly busy during the festival that takes place from August to early September. It began as a military tattoo, developed into a fairly high brow arts festival and has expanded to host off‐stage events from the clever to the bizarre. Edinburgh also hosts a massive Hogmanay, or New Year, celebration with music and dancing in the streets all through the night and often into the next day. The city is at its busiest during the August festival and again at New Year. Public transport by bus and tram is available from the airport to the city centre. Downside: It is an expensive place to visit at peak periods and it can be tough to find a place to stay. Your first visit should be at quieter times. To read: Edinburgh is a literary city and so many novels have

Thus I have tried, at tedious length, I fear, to answer some of the questions which I began by asking. I have given an account of some of the difficulties which in my view beset the Georgian writer in all his forms. I have sought to excuse him. May I end by venturing to remind you of the duties and responsibilities that are yours as partners in this business of writing books, as companions in the railway carriage, as fellow travellers with Mrs. Brown? For she is just as visible to you who remain silent as to us who tell stories about her. In the course of your daily life this past week you have had far stranger and more interesting experiences than the one I have tried to describe. You have overheard scraps of talk that filled you with amazement. You have gone to bed at night bewildered by the complexity of your feelings. In one day thousands of ideas have coursed through your brains; thousands of emotions have met, collided, and disappeared in astonishing disorder. Nevertheless, you allow the writers to palm off upon you a version of all this, an image of Mrs. Brown, which has no likeness to that surprising apparition whatsoever. In your modesty you seem to consider that writers are of different blood and bone from yourselves; that they know more of Mrs. Brown than you do. Never was there a more fatal mistake. It is this division between reader and writer, this humility on your part, these professional airs and graces on ours, that corrupt and emasculate the books which should be the healthy offspring of a close and equal alliance between us. Hence spring those sleek, smooth novels, those portentous and ridiculous biographies, that milk and watery criticism, those poems melodiously celebrating the innocence of roses and sheep which pass so plausibly for literature at the present time.

And bundles upon bundles of fresh ferny herbs in shades of pine green, pickle green and pistachio green-- a whole color chart of green. Dill, tarragon, parsley and coriander, in contrast to raisin-colored purple basil. In restaurants, what comes to the table? First, wine and bread--- in the shape of a slender Venetian gondola that has been baked in a round clay oven called a tone. The bread is crusty, but soft within, charred a bit on the bottom. Then, a dozen or more fragrant things. Rabbit soup made with walnut, pepper and garlic. Oyster mushroom and coriander soup. Beetroot quarters in sunflower oil and dill. Catfish in vinegar and coriander sauce. Bean stew and pickled vegetables. Chicken roulade in walnut sauce. Lobiani, which is a flatbread-- possibly the finest of all flatbreads-- filled with mashed kidney beans. Gebjalia, fresh cheese rolled in mint. Flowering coriander in hazelnut pesto and spicy green adjika. A whole stubby cucumber (peeled). Fermented forest jonjoli-- samphire-like, tasting of capers and with bell-shaped flowers, harvested in spring-- dressed with Kakhetian sunflower oil. Fried sulguni cheese, salty and chewy. Pink-hued Georgian trout. Tarragon panna cotta topped with blue cornflower. Matsoni, impossibly good homemade yoghurt, tart and cool, served with an inky and elegant black walnut preserve. And heaps of herbs. Always herbs. Herbs are flavor, herbs are a whole salad bar; herbs are medicine, a salve. Invasive, weedy and rampant, like mint and goutweed, they are also pagan charms to attract friendship or fortune. Free-growing and bountiful, they have been survival food during the darkest periods of war, and verdant ornaments during the happiest days.

Lusitania was born in the age of historicism, at a time when liners strove to attract impressionable travelers with luxurious, opulent decor evoking the past. Palladian lounges, Teutonic smoking rooms, Turkish baths, Parisian palm courts, and Jacobean dining saloons mingled side by side, in a jarringly abrupt mixture of conflicting styles and claustrophobic decoration. The interiors Scottish architect James Miller devised for Lusitania, though, were subtler in approach. Here, the understated elegance of the Georgian Era predominated: rooms paneled in dark mahogany, bedecked with carved pilasters and columns, ringed by deep ornamental friezes, and crowned with vaulted skylights or graceful domes. The effect gave passengers the “pleasurable hallucination” that they were enjoying a stay at a luxurious hotel like the Ritz in London or the Waldorf-Astoria in New York.(

There’s a good explanation for why the Georgian age’s greatest novelist spends so much time in her letters discussing tea and sugar, and the finer details of the trimmings of clothes. These were the things in their lives over which Jane and Cassandra had control. Where the sisters should live was not their choice. Major purchases like furniture were rare. Independent travel, higher education lay out of reach. What did fall within their grasp was the purchase and the use of household supplies, and the ability to give and accept occasional invitations for visits to friends and relatives. No wonder the letters devote so much attention to these matters.