I mean, the whole passage is just too too very very.
[He] had begun his education at the hands of the local priests who soon discovered in him a veritable genius for latinity. He was passed upward from school to school gaining in his progress all the prizes the Jesuits had to offer.
My sisters were reading a paperback version of The Bridge.. when we summered in 1948 with my aunt and uncle near Cape Cod. I remember one sister telling telling me the plot( I would read nothing on my own) and found it memorable. I still do.
As a metalsmith who uses cabochons in my jewelry designs, and is also a member of my local Lapidary Society, I'm so glad you came across those words and found them interesting! I'm more partial to the translucent stones like aquamarine and amethyst, or the iridescent opals, but lapis lazuli is a beautiful color too. And I love that the adjective "lapidary" can be used to describe writing, I have not seen that before, I'm going to have to find a way to use it.
Your observations are as entertaining and educational as ever, but I have to give special mention to the photo of Sallie on those marvelous striped sheets. How striking!
It may be taking you a bit too literally, but I am the happy possessor of a book, published in the 1920s, called Latine Loquamur, or Let's Speak Latin. It was written by two French priests, Jesuits if memory serves, who were missionaries in China, and it is conversational Latin for Chinese students. Conversation in mission schools in China is bizarre, apparently: one section, de Sudore (concerning sweat) tells them how to say "The sweat is running down my body" in Latin. Although in the heat wave we are presently having it is gaining new relevance.
“… written in an overheated hothouse lavender style” but not, sadly, by a dainty Alec Guiness in “The Lavender Hill Mob”.
Ah, love the “latinity”!
I mean, the whole passage is just too too very very.
[He] had begun his education at the hands of the local priests who soon discovered in him a veritable genius for latinity. He was passed upward from school to school gaining in his progress all the prizes the Jesuits had to offer.
My sisters were reading a paperback version of The Bridge.. when we summered in 1948 with my aunt and uncle near Cape Cod. I remember one sister telling telling me the plot( I would read nothing on my own) and found it memorable. I still do.
Thanks for the invocation of a lovely, unheralded Wilder one-act in your opening sentence.
(That was for the fans.)
(I love that play.)
Sort of besides the point, but what a gorgeous book cover, I'm betting the original was a linoleum block.
Oh gosh not beside the point at all. I love looking at that cover.
Well! Thornton was a bit of a looker.
Be aware that the written and filmed versions of Mrs. Palfrey are vastly different from (or to, as the Brits say) each other...You have been warned.
💙
As a metalsmith who uses cabochons in my jewelry designs, and is also a member of my local Lapidary Society, I'm so glad you came across those words and found them interesting! I'm more partial to the translucent stones like aquamarine and amethyst, or the iridescent opals, but lapis lazuli is a beautiful color too. And I love that the adjective "lapidary" can be used to describe writing, I have not seen that before, I'm going to have to find a way to use it.
That's a sockdolager of a paragraph. Thanks for sharing it.
The "great college" is, I guess, the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy on the Piazza della Minerva, next to the Basilica of Santa Maria sopre Minerva.
So Our Man was being groomed for Papal Nuncio status.
Your observations are as entertaining and educational as ever, but I have to give special mention to the photo of Sallie on those marvelous striped sheets. How striking!
It may be taking you a bit too literally, but I am the happy possessor of a book, published in the 1920s, called Latine Loquamur, or Let's Speak Latin. It was written by two French priests, Jesuits if memory serves, who were missionaries in China, and it is conversational Latin for Chinese students. Conversation in mission schools in China is bizarre, apparently: one section, de Sudore (concerning sweat) tells them how to say "The sweat is running down my body" in Latin. Although in the heat wave we are presently having it is gaining new relevance.