NB! · Archive · Mores · Humour

1832: Charles Warren, a Dorset father of three and modest proprietor of an acre of potatoes, lately widowed, seeks a woman to tend the pigs while he is at work

Aristocracy · Mores · People · Humour

William, 5th Baron Byron, British nobleman, peer, politician and great-uncle of the famous poet, went down in history as the Wicked Lord or the Devil Byron: a dreadful scoundrel who beat his wife, killed his own cousin, stabbing him in a dark…

William, 5th Baron Byron, British nobleman, peer, politician and great-uncle of the famous poet, went down in history as the Wicked Lord or the Devil Byron: a dreadful scoundrel who beat his wife; the killer of his own cousin, whom he stabbed in a dark room and was convicted

Page of an old English dictionary with the entry Bonfire, a fire made for triumph or exultation, with quotations from Spenser, South and Gay.

NB! · Observations · Mores

Bonfire as a celebratory fire rather than fireworks, in an English dictionary entry

The bonfire is a fire made for triumph or jubilation, in other words not a firework but a festive blaze. And quite rightly: what is a holiday without one?

Aristocracy · Art · Books · Mores

“Morphinists” by Georges Moreau de Tours and the fashion for morphine among the aristocracy of the 19th century

Girls who wanted happiness. Happiness... Georges Moreau de Tours, The Morphine Addicts. I remind you that this pernicious dependence was extremely popular in aristocratic and bohemian circles in the nineteenth century. The fashion, which spread from England, is shown by Leo Tolstoy in the case of Anna Karenina, whose personality

A weathered bench carved from a massive log stands on a paved sidewalk beside a cast-iron post and a planter. Fallen autumn leaves lie around it.

NB!

Old bench carved from a single log on a city pavement

Architecture · Heritage · Society · Paris

Paris debates log benches and other decisions by Mayor Anne Hidalgo

Meanwhile in Paris, an angry debate is raging over the mayor, Anne Hidalgo, and her contentious decisions on urban improvement. Many are simply shocked by the new city benches, made of roughly hewn logs. Taken together with the installation of ungainly public lavatories, the removal of the railings around trees

NB! · Faith · Observations · Nature

A Nun Feeds the Cats on the Majolica of the Neapolitan Religious Complex of Santa Chiara

NB! · Archive · Observations

Is It Possible Not to Love Newspapers?

Art · Mores

Samuel Moon's child portraits and unisex children's fashion until the late 19th century

Children's portraits, Samuel Moon. The child in the peach-coloured frock is a boy, as the boyish toy, a gun, indicates. Right up to the end of the nineteenth century, children's fashion was to a large degree characterised by unisex clothing, though for some reason with

Art · Monarchies · Observations · People · Humour

In 1711 Cosimo III of Tuscany commissioned Bartolomeo Bimbi to paint a 53-kilogram pumpkin

Grand Duke Cosimo III of Tuscany is customarily regarded as an unproductive, dull and mediocre ruler. To me, it takes a fine sense of humour to commission the court painter to make portraits of one's own harvest. The tongue simply refuses to call it a still life, this

NB! · Archive · Observations · Humour

A Rather Fine Element for a Ladies' Halloween Costume from the 1920s

Books · Observations · Education

Given that the plot of Donna Tartt's novel "The Secret History" unfolds at a provincial college in Vermont, I immediately wondered how such a remarkable course in Ancient Greek could have crystallised there

Given that the plot of Donna Tartt's novel "The Secret History" unfolds at a provincial college in Vermont, I immediately wondered how such a remarkable course in Ancient Greek could have crystallised there. Immersion in the classical world seemed a privilege of the chosen few, a

Alexandr Radayev