Eugene de Blaas paintings

Eugene de Blaas paintings
Eduard Manet paintings
Edwin Austin Abbey paintings
leather gloves as he came into the room; part Gallic, part Yankee, part, perhaps Jew; wholly exotic. This, I did not need telling, was Anthony Blanche, the ‘aesthete’ par excellence, a byword of iniquity from Cherwell Edge to Somerville. He had been pointed out to me often in the streets, as he pranced along with his high peacock tread; I had heard his voice in the George challenging the conventions; and now meeting him, under the spell of Sebastian, I found myself enjoying him voraciously. After luncheon he stood on, the balcony with a megaphone which had appeared surprisingly among the bric-a-brac of Sebastian’s room, and in languishing tones recited passages from The Waste Land to the sweatered and muffled throng that was on its way to the river.
‘I, Tiresias, have foresuffered all,’ he sobbed to them from the Venetian arches;

Frederic Remington paintings

Frederic Remington paintings
Francisco de Goya paintings
Filippino Lippi paintings
The camp was left in a disgraceful condition’. Wherever I went I found evidence that officers are not doing their duty. The state in which a camp is left is the best possible test of the efficiency of regimental officers. It is on such matters that the reputation of a battalion and its commander rests. ‘And’ - did he in fact say this or am I finding words for the resentment in his voice and eye? I think he left it unsaid - ‘I do not intend to have my professional reputation compromised by the slackness of a few temporary officers.’ We sat with our note-books and pencils waiting to take down the details of our next jobs. A more sensitive man would have seen that he had failed to be impressive; perhaps he saw, for he added in a petulant schoolmasterish way: ‘All I ask is loyal cooperation.’
Then he referred to his notes and read:

James Jacques Joseph Tissot paintings

James Jacques Joseph Tissot paintings
Jules Joseph Lefebvre paintings
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres paintings
Browning” revolver and fire into the darkness ahead he fired again and saw a jet of flame shoot out of the car, he had fired the petrol! the car lurched and swurved; a dark form lept from it. Tom jumped from his bike and seized Braycaw by the coat. A swift turn and Braycaw was gone leaving Tom holding the coat. But Tom could see in the light of the blazing car something that made his heart leap with joy-out of the pocket petruded the confetion. Ralfe was safe!


The light streamed in at the window and Tom sat up his first action was to feel under the pillow and a sigh of relief broke from his lips as he felt the paper but he must get on the trial was tomorro and he had a long way to go. He looked at the clockit was 10 o’clock in 24 hours the trial would take place. He dressed and after a hasty meal hurried to the station the train was waiting and he got in. Five minutes later the train had started and was just getting up steam when a bearded gentleman rushed up the platform and leapt at the train. With

Pino Angelica painting

Pino Angelica paintingPablo Picasso Le Moulin de la Galette paintingPablo Picasso Gertrude Stein painting
Anti-Fascist Youth retrieved them. They were loaded on carts, taken to a barn near the General’s headquarters and formally impounded.

The war in Yugoslavia took a new turn. The first stage of German withdrawal was complete; they stood now on a line across Croatia and Slovenia. Marshal Tito flew from Vis to join the Russian and Bulgarian columns in Belgrade. A process of reprisal began in the “liberated” areas. The Germans remained twenty miles to the north of Begoy, but behind nothing except snow now closed the road to Dalmatia. Major Gordon took part in many Victory Celebrations. But he did not forget the Jews; nor did their friends at Bari. In mid-December Bakic one day announced: “De Jews again,” and going out into the yard Major Gordon found it full of his former visitors, but now transformed into a kind of farcical army. All of them, men and women, wore military greatcoats, Balaclava helmets, and knitted

Peter Paul Rubens The Crucified Christ painting

Peter Paul Rubens The Crucified Christ paintingPeter Paul Rubens Samson and Delilah paintingJohn William Godward The Delphic Oracle painting
any moment with a message about something far more important than the matter under discussion; he was for all the world, Scott-King thought, like the clerk in the food office at Granchester. night. We shall walk from here. The taxis are so expensive—the double fare operates after nine o’clock.”
They walked. Dr. Fe ascended the steps of the Ministry. “Back to work,” he said. “I have had an urgent summons to report to my chief. We work late in the New Neutralia.”
There was nothing furtive about his ascent but it was swift. Scott-King caught him as he was about to enter a lift.
“But, I say, where am I to go?”
Scott-King’s had been lived far from chanceries, but once, very many years ago at Stockholm, he had been asked to luncheon, by mistake for someone else, at the British Embassy. Sir Samson

Thomas Kinkade Mountains Declare his Glory painting

Thomas Kinkade Mountains Declare his Glory paintingThomas Kinkade HOMETOWN MEMORIES paintingThomas Kinkade Evening Glow painting
Neutralia, or somewhere like that.”
“They’d never let you into Neutralia,” said Griggs. “Far too much to hide. They’ve got teams of German physicists making atomic bombs.”
“Civil war raging.”
“Half the population in concentration camps.”
“No decent-minded man would go to Neutralia.”
“Or to Ireland for that matter,” said Griggs.
And Scott-King sat tight.

Some weeks later Scott-King sat in the aerodrome waiting room. His overcoat lay across his knees, his hand luggage at his feet. A loudspeaker, set high out of harm’s way in the dun concrete wall, discoursed dance and official announcements. This room, like all the

Herbert James Draper The Water Nymph painting

Herbert James Draper The Water Nymph paintingHerbert James Draper Pot Pourri paintingHerbert James Draper Lancelot and Guinevere painting
waking, its and sickness, growth, death and immortality, its ignorance and knowledge, experiment and mastery—how can one relate this hooded stranger to the men and women with whom he keeps pace? It is a problem beyond the proper scope of letters.
In the criminal code of Haiti, Basil tells me, there is a provision designed to relieve unemployment, forbidding farmers to raise the dead from their graves and work them in the fields. Some such rule should be observed against the use of live men in books. The algebra of fiction must reduce its problems to symbols if they are to be soluble at all. I am shy of a book commended to me on the grounds that the “characters are alive.” There is no place in literature for a live man, solid and active. At best the author may maintain a kind of Dickensian menagerie, where his characters live behind bars, in darkness, to be liberated twice nightly for a brief gambol under the arc lamps; in they come to the whip crack, dazzled, deafened and doped, tumble through their tricks and scamper out again, to the

Juarez Machado Art Deco Evening painting

Juarez Machado Art Deco Evening paintingPhilip Craig Boboli Gardens - Florence paintingWassily Kandinsky Dominant Curve painting
Only in front. It’s as thick as anything at the back. How many overcoats have you got?”
“Four, I think.”
“Too many.”
We discussed it at length and decided it was possible to manage with three.
“Workers pawn their overcoats in June and take them out again in October,” Roger said. He wanted to talk about his play, Internal Combustion. “The usual trouble with ideological drama,” he said, “is that they’re too mechanical. I mean the characters are economic types, not individuals, and as long as they look and speak like individuals it’s bad art. D’you see what I mean?”
“I do, indeed.”
“Human beings without human interest.”
“Very true. I ...”
“Well, I’ve cut human beings out altogether.”
“Sounds rather like an old-ed ballet.”
“Exactly,” Roger said with great pleasure. “It is an old-fashioned ballet. I knew you’d understand. Poor old Benwell couldn’t. The Finsbury International Theatre are sitting on it now, and if it’s orthodox—and I think it is—they may put it on this summer if Lucy finds the money.”
“Is she keen too?”
“Well, not very, as a matter of fact. You see, she’s having a baby and that seems to keep her interested at the moment.”

Thomas Moran Monterey Coast painting

Thomas Moran Monterey Coast paintingThomas Moran Grand Canyon paintingThomas Moran Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone painting
is an inmate. It is rather an interesting case. He has been here for thirty-five years.”
“But I’ve never seen anyone saner,” said Angela.
“He certainly has that air,” said the doctor, “and in the last twenty years we have treated him as such. He is the and soul of the place. Of course he is not one of the private patients, but we allow him to mix freely with them. He plays billiards excellently, does conjuring tricks at the concert, mends their gramophones, valets them, helps them in their crossword puzzles and various—er—hobbies. We allow them to give him small tips for services rendered, and he must by now have amassed quite a little fortune. He has a way with even the most troublesome of them. An invaluable man about the place.”
“Yes, but why is he here?”
“Well, it is rather sad. When he was a very young man he killed somebody—a young woman quite unknown to him, whom he knocked off her bicycle and then throttled. He gave himself up immediately afterwards and has been here ever since.”
“But surely he is perfectly safe now. Why is he not let out?”
“Well, I suppose if it was to anyone’s interest, he would be. He has no relatives except a step-sister who lives in Plymouth. She used to visit him at one time

Pablo Picasso The Old Guitarist painting

Pablo Picasso The Old Guitarist paintingPablo Picasso Girl Before a Mirror paintingClaude Monet Sunflowers painting
make plans for the day. At first Hector sought, not unsuccessfully, to prevent these assignations by entangling himself in the wire, but soon a subtler and more insulting technique suggested itself. He pretended to telephone too. Thus, as soon as the bell rang, he would wag his tail and cock his head on one side in a way that he had learned was engaging. Millicent would begin her conversation and Hector would wriggle up under her arm and nuzzle against the receiver.
“Listen,” she would say, “someone wants to talk to you. Isn’t he an angel?” Then she would hold the receiver down to him and the young man at the other end would be dazed by a shattering series of yelps. This accomplishment appealed so much to Millicent that often she would not even bother to find out the name of the caller but, instead, would take off the receiver and hold it directly to the black snout, so that some wretched young man half a mile away, feeling, perhaps, none too well in the early morning, found himself barked to silence before he had spoken a word.
At other times young men, badly taken with the nose

Edgar Degas Woman Combing Her Hair painting

Edgar Degas Woman Combing Her Hair paintingFrederic Edwin Church Autumn paintingTitian Sacred and Profane Love [detail] painting
Suddenly the daze in which she had been moving cleared. Here on the stairs were the two women she had not invited—Lady Mockstock the draper’s daughter, Lady Gordon the American.
She drew herself up and fixed them with her blank, blue eyes.
“I had not expected this honour,” she said. “Please forgive me if I am unable to entertain you.”
The Mockstocks and the Gordons stood aghast; saw the mad blue eyes of their hostess, her crimson dress; the ballroom beyond, looking immense in its emptiness; heard the dance echoing through the empty house. The air was charged with the scent of chrysanthemums. And then the drama and unreality of the scene were dispelled. Miss Fleace suddenly sat down, and holding out her hands to her butler, said, “I don’t quite know what’s happening.”
He and two of the hired footmen carried the old lady to a sofa. She spoke only once more. Her mind was still on the same subject. “They came uninvited, those two ... and nobody else.”

Salvador Dali The Persistence of Memory painting

Salvador Dali The Persistence of Memory paintingSalvador Dali The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory paintingSalvador Dali The Crucifixion painting
insults to chemistry masters, escapades after dark when they had gone up to London to the “43.” What was the fellow’s name? It was clearly too late to ask him now. And anyway he would have to get on to Angela. He supposed that she had reached Aunt Martha’s house safely and had got his telegram. Awkward beginning to the honeymoon—but then he and Angela knew each other so well ... It was not as though this were some sudden romance.
Presently he was called. “Hounds are meeting near here this morning, sir. The Captain wondered if you’d care to go hunting.”
“No, no! I have to leave immediately after breakfast.”
“The Captain said he could mount you, sir, and lend you clothes.”
“No, no! Quite impossible.”
But when he came down to breakfast and found his host filling a saddle flask with cherry-brandy, secret threads began to pull at Tom’s heart.
“Of course we’re a comic sort of pack. Everyone turns out, parson, farmers, all kinds

Pierre Auguste Renoir La Loge painting

Pierre Auguste Renoir La Loge paintingPierre Auguste Renoir Dance at Bougival paintingMary Cassatt Children Playing On The Beach painting
Centuries ago, in his dateless childhood, Ozymandias had sprung to the top of the toy cupboard tired of Adam’s game. It was a peculiar to himself and Ozymandias which Adam had evolved, and which was only played on the rare occasions of his being left alone. First, Ozymandias had to be sought from room to room, and when at last he was found, borne up to the nursery and shut in. He would watch him for some minutes as he paced the floor and surveyed the room with just the extreme tip of his tail expressing his unfathomable contempt for European civilization. Then armed with a sword, gun, battledore, or an armful of bricks to throw, and uttering sadistic cries, Adam would pursue him round and round the room, driving him from refuge to refuge, until almost beside himself with rage and terror, he crouched junglelike with ears flattened back and porpentine hair. Here Adam would rest, and after some slight pause the realof the began. Ozymandias had to be won back to complacency and affection. Adam would sit down on the floor some little way from

Caravaggio Adoration of the Shepherds painting

Caravaggio Adoration of the Shepherds paintingThomas Moran Forest Scene paintingThomas Moran Autumn Landscape painting
Max neared the blazing tip, proclaimed: "Dear Founder, pass our classmate Maximilian Spielman, who has finished his course in faith and would rest from his labors." Though no public-address system was in sight, his voice carried as if amplified. "A-plus," he said at the end, resoundingly, and from somewhere Mother's voice gave back the echo:"A-plus!"
The moment was at hand. As Max went waving to the peak I put the buckhorn to my lips and blew with all my strength.Teruah! Teruah! Teruah! My keeper, whose dear wise like this campus will not soon see again, combusted in a glorious flare -- by the light whereof I saw Tommy's Tommy's Tom race unleashed toward my semblance. His hand was high; joyously he bleat! Bray buzzed and flapped; literally he shed my guise (stick and horn attached), and holding his nose, flung the limp shed at Triple-T. Underneath he was gleaming black, his face hid under a cowl; seeing it was not I, T.'s T.'s Tom lowered horns and charged. Dreadful the hum, horrid the foetor Bray now gave out! He bounded mewards

John Collier Lady Godiva painting

John Collier Lady Godiva paintingCaravaggio Supper at Emmaus paintingCaravaggio Judith Beheading Holofernes painting
Even though you might be playing martyr?"
He shrugged. "So I'm playing. The for keeps."
I placed my fingertips on both his temples and declared him a Candidate for Graduation.
"Ach!"he said, hoarse with pride. "You know what's ahead for you, Georgie? At the end of the circle?"
I smiled and gently mocked his accent. "A circle has an end?Auf wiedersehen, Max."
Yet a moment he clung to my amulet. "One favor you can do me, Georgie: blow your horn when the time comes, I want to hear it on the Shaft."
I promised I would, thrilling again at the way all chance seemed fraught with meaning and instruction. The original shophar, no longer blowable, I'd left in the Belly with Mother's purse and all my collected tokens except the stick and watch, the rest having done their job; but its mate (old Freddie's left) still lay, I trusted, in a certain tool-locker out in the barns, where I meant to go anyway before the Shafting.
"I'll drive you out," Anastasia said firmly, turning from her husband. "We'll use one of Maurice's cycles." I glowed at the miracle in her words, and agreed. Unable to speak for rage, Stoker fired both pistols into the air and raced his motor. His troopers laughed

Thomas Moran A Pastoral Landscape painting

Thomas Moran A Pastoral Landscape paintingThomas Moran View of Venice paintingJean Francois Millet Jean Francois Millet The sower painting
Verdummt,"the other driver reported, flashlighting his unconscious passenger. Dr. Eierkopf's head lolled over the side-car-wale, a new pair of eyeglasses hanging from one ear. "Out-passed." Hans held his nose and pointed to stains on the prisoner's lab-coat, not of blood. The company laughed. Croaker stirred under me and sniffed the air, but seemed not to recognize his old roommate in that fallen state.
"Drunk and disorderly in the Living Room," Stoker said. He cut his engine, dismounted, and aimed his torch to observe my expression. "Ate a kilo ofBlutwurst, tried to force my wife's virtue, and gummed the mustard off Madge's rear end till the blood came. Then he threw up and passed out. But your pal Rexford's still at it."
"Untruthness," Leonid Andreich said calmly from the side-car.
"Leonid's right, George," Peter Greene seconded -- his voice uncharacteristically quiet also. "It was her took advantage of Doc Eierkopf -- not that he give a durn. Lacey it was: the floozy-one."
Awed by the bloody pair, the troopers listened silently, their engines stilled

Caracalla and Geta

Caracalla and GetaSir Lawrence Alma-Tadema Welcome Footstepspromise of spring
quads -- all I could think of, strangely enough, was My Ladyship. I envisioned her beneath -- no, atop -- Peter Greene, or Maurice Stoker, or Eblis Eierkopf, or Lucky Rexford, in some lubricious exhibition on the Living-Room dais. No, no, after all it was none of them; or having serviced them to exhaustion, now she stood, slack-mouthed with love; expelled their mingled seed with a tricky jerk, and stretched forth her arms to her fated, fateful lover, who rose up glitter-eyed upon the dais and enfolded her body in his hard black cloak. And I was no longer jealous, no, I was relieved; joyous, even, for her sake, when I heard the muffled cry of her delight and knew she was infused for good and all with the germ of Passage. I wanted to die.
"You can't eat that!" a scholar shouted, clawing at the strips that hung likepasta from my jaws.
"He can shove it!" my grandfather snapped."Independence, he calls it!" He grabbed at his wrapper. "Where's my aides?" he demanded of his former receptionist. "Get this flunkèd hair-shirt off me!"
"Weren't they with you at the barns, sir?" she said.

Pino paintings

Pino paintings
Pablo Picasso paintings
Pierre-Auguste Cot paintings
woman she had been being! "I'm soglad You're out of Detention," she exclaimed, and although she added, "everything's so mixed up, I don't knowwhat to do!" I was pleased to believe her glad of my release apart from any aid she might require. And her recaptured warmth so gratified me that I kissed her mouth. Nibbled her even, ardently, whereupon she drew back with her usual wonder, but did not oppose my doing it again. "Don't justallow me!" I rebuked her -- still holding her against me. "Either stop me or join in."
She looked fretfully to Mother, who however regarded us with blank benignity and went on knitting.
"It doesn't comenaturally to me, George," she complained. "And I'm all upset just now. . ."
Bracing my heart I asked whether Bray had serviced her. More tears ensued, and blushes; she wrung in her hands the forgotten biscuits. He had not, she thanked the Founder, summoned her as yet, owing to his busy schedule of appointments for

Jean-Leon Gerome paintings

Jean-Leon Gerome paintings
Lorenzo Lotto paintings
Louis Aston Knight paintings
happy imperative!See Through Your Ladyship was more difficult, since the students knew nothing of my connection with Anastasia; but their whispers of "revisionist psychology" and "normal biSex," though meaningless to me, put me in mind of Dr. Sear and his fluoroscopic diversions. Should I literally make My Ladyship transparent? In any case, when I said, "I'll see Dr. Sear about that one," they laughed knowingly. In theory, the fifth task was also problematical:Re-place, because of its curious hyphen, seemed still to me to mean "Return the Founder's Scroll to its place" and not, as the students suggested, "Replace it with something better" -- though "its place" clearly meant itssource rather than its proper location in the Library stacks. However, by interpretingsource to mean, not the sandy Moishian cave where the Scroll was found, but the mind and body of studentdom whence its teachings sprang, I was able to satisfy both the students

Dirck Bouts paintings

Dirck Bouts paintings
Dante Gabriel Rossetti paintings
Daniel Ridgway Knight paintings
"If nobody minds," I said, "I want to be called George from now on."
Max nodded. "That's good as you could do."
I found myself then unspeakably fatigued, and proposed we go. Standing was one thing, walking another; Max fetched George Herrold to help, but even with their joint support I got no farther than the drinking-fountain before I was exhausted. Still I refused to go on all fours.
"So let your namesake carry you," Max suggested. And when I was fetched up in the black man's arms he said, "Now wait: I do something important." He wet his fingers at the running fountain. "When the Enochists name a child," he said soberly, "they take it to a Founder's hall and spritz some special water on its head; and they say a thing likeDear Founder please drive out the old goat from this kid, and keep the Dean o' Flunks off him, and help him pass the Finals and sit with you and Enos Enoch on Founder's Hill for ever andever. Well, so, this is just good drinking-water here, and instead of a Founder's hall we got a library. With a crazySchwarzer for your Founder-father and a tired old Moishian

Pablo Picasso Gertrude Stein painting

Pablo Picasso Gertrude Stein paintingTamara de Lempicka Portrait of Madame paintingEric Wallis Girls at the Beach painting
dreams might be my torment. But they saw me stir; Max hurried to me; real tears dropped into his beard and onto mine; material the arms that hugged me, mortal the hand that felt my brow, and I learned I was alive, in Main Detention. Leonid, though we'd met only once before, embraced me also, in the Nikolayan manner, and seemed as pleased as Max to see me wake. They had become friends, it appeared -- as were too the Nikolayan and his former adversary Peter Greene, who saluted me glumly from the next cell!
"Thank the Founder you're okay!" Max cried. His late reserve with me was gone; beside my cot he closed his eyes and thumped his forehead against my chest.
"Nothing's okay," grumbled Peter Greene, and was cheerily bid by Classmate Alexandrov to go flunk himself.
"I didn't meanhim," Greene said. "Y'know durn well what I mean."
Ididn't, nor cared just then to learn. Enough to be alive and on campus, however incarcerate and disgraced. Responsibility! Remorse! Dishonor! I welcomed their sting now as evidence that, among my other failures, I had failed to pass away.

Vincent van Gogh Self Portrait painting

Vincent van Gogh Self Portrait paintingVincent van Gogh Sunflowers paintingVincent van Gogh The Starry Night painting
Oh. Well. Yes. Well. All this commotion lately. . ." Lady Creamhair clucked and fussed, not incordially, but as if permanently rattled. She seemed indeed in less possession of her faculties than formerly, and with rue I wondered how much hurt my ignorant assault might have done her. The two women exchanged commonplaces for a while -- rather formally it seemed to me, for a mother and daughter, but at least with none of the ill-will that had rejected Anastasia in her childhood. Then presently, with apologies for "bringing up a sore subject," Anastasia declared that the recent appearance in New Tammany of two claimants to the title of Grand Tutor had revived many people's curiosity about the old Cum Laude Project and brought up again the unhappy matters of the "Hector scandal" and her illegitimate paternity --
"That's nobody's ," I heard Virginia Hector say firmly. From the sound I guessed that Anastasia went to embrace her then and declared affectionately that indeed itwasn't the of anyone outside the family; but that she herself, of age now and a married woman, was surely entitled to the whole truth of her begetting.
"Youknow I've always loved you, Mother, and youmust know