Aristocracy · Archive · Mores · People · Humour
The Comte de Guiche asked Vincent Voiture, a man renowned for his wit, whether it was true that he was married. Voiture gave no answer. But he came to the count after midnight, woke him and said: "I have come to tell you that I am married". De
Aristocracy · Art · Museums · Mores · Paris
James Tissot, "Women of Paris: The Circus Lover", 1885, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Tissot's "Woman in Paris" series consisted of 15 large canvases in which the artist portrayed Parisian women of different classes and occupations: a shop girl, a bridesmaid, a society lady
The East · Aristocracy · Archive · Books · Education · People
The American writer Shen has written an essay about her great-great-great-grandfather Duanfang, a prominent Manchu dignitary of the Qing dynasty who founded a university, travelled to America, spoke out against foot-binding and collected ancient Chinese bronzes; his collection was considered one of the finest in China.
NB! · Aristocracy · Archive · The East · People
The Orientalist Grigory Alexandrovich Kozakov, surrounded by his relatives, his daughter-in-law Countess Anna Nikolayevna Tolstaya, the children and their tutor, at a picnic near the village of Zhikharevka in 1903
Aristocracy · Art · Monarchies · Museums · Science
The Getty Museum in Los Angeles has acquired a newly discovered painting by Diego Velázquez. The work is the first piece by the seventeenth-century Spanish master in the museum's collection. Velázquez painted the bust-length portrait around 1626; it depicts Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares.
Aristocracy · Observations · Education · Pop Culture
Just learned that Tilda Swinton and Diana Spencer were in the same class at West Heath Girls School, a boarding school near Sevenoaks in Kent. Tilda Swinton remembered boarding school as a very lonely place. West Heath Girls School was a prestigious, though not first-rank, private school for girls.
Aristocracy · Monarchies · Observations · Society
Kunwar Dhruv Raj Singh of Dungri Marries Countess Maria Ghislaine von und zu Eltz in the Parish Church of Pauli Bekehrung. If you are wondering why you should be burdened with this pile-up of strange names, I shall say that, true, these persons are of no great importance, but
Aristocracy · Books · London · Museums · Observations · Society
Chatsworth, one of Britain's best-known country houses and seat of the Dukes of Devonshire, the Cavendish family, since 1549, launches a scheme of free admission through libraries. The mechanics of the project are as follows: a library reader in Derbyshire borrows a "community card" just
Aristocracy · Monarchies · Mores · Ethnography
The Queen Mother's dolls' house from Glamis Castle in Scotland, the ancestral seat of the Earls of Strathmore, where Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the future wife of George VI and mother of Elizabeth II, spent her childhood. Inside the future Queen Mother's house there are two
Aristocracy · Art · Monarchies · Museums
Interestingly, the painting "Allegory of Hearing", executed in 1617–1618 by the Flemish artists Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens, captures not merely the collection of curiosities and luxuries belonging to the rulers of the Netherlands, Archduke Albert VII and his wife Isabella, but also music
Aristocracy · The East · Monarchies · Mores · People
Who Was Olga, Queen of the Hellenes? The title "Queen of the Hellenes", rather than "Queen of Greece", is not diplomatic courtesy but a political declaration. Olga Konstantinovna Romanova was a granddaughter of Nicholas I and a daughter of Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich. In 1867, at
Aristocracy · Archive · Monarchies · Observations · Society
The Russian publicist Prince Vladimir Petrovich Meshchersky, a Kammerherr (chamberlain) of Emperor Alexander II, wrote in 1870 to Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich and Maria Feodorovna: All those who are not at court, all who work honestly for the good of the government and of Russia, who are selflessly devoted to