Albert Bierstadt paintings

Albert Bierstadt paintings
Andreas Achenbach paintings
Alphonse Maria Mucha paintings
The Marquis of Marchmain’s second boy. His brother, the Earl of Brideshead, went down last term. Now he was very different, a very quiet gentleman’, quite like an old man. What do you suppose Lord Sebastian wanted? A hair brush for his teddybear; it had to have very stiff bristies, not, Lord Sebastian said, to brush him with, but to threaten him with a spanking when he was sulky. He bought a very nice one with an ivory back and he’s having “Aloysius” engraved on it’ - that’s the bear’s name.’ The man, who, in his time, had had ample chance to tire of undergraduate fantasy, was plainly-captivated. I, however, remained censorious, and subsequent glimpses of him, driving in a hansom cab and dining at the George in false whiskers, did not soften me, although Collins, who was reading Freud, had a number of technical terms to cover everything. Nor, when at last we met, were the circumstances propitious

Jules Breton paintings

Jules Breton paintings
Johannes Vermeer paintings
Jacques-Louis David paintings
tie as it happened, a pattern of postage stamps ‘Charles - what in the world’s happening at your college? Is there a circus? I’ve seen everything except elephants. I must say the whole of Oxford has become most peculiar suddenly. Last night it was pullulating with women. You’re to come away at once, out of danger. I’ve got a motor-car and a basket of strawberries and a bottle of Chateau Peyraguey - which isn’t a wine you’ve ever tasted, so don’t pretend. It’s heaven with strawberries.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘To see a friend.’
‘Who?’
‘Name of Hawkins. Bring some money in case we see anything we want to buy. The motor-car is the property of a man called Hardcastle. Return the bits to him if I kill myself; I’m not very good at driving.

Claude Monet Sunset painting

Claude Monet Sunset paintingClaude Monet La Japonaise paintingClaude Monet Impression Sunrise painting
The in winter seemed smaller than they had done in full leaf. You could see right through them from fence to fence; snow obliterated lawns and beds; the paths were only traceable by bootprints. Major Gordon daily took a handful of broken biscuits to the squirrel and fed him through the bars. One day while he was thus engaged, watching the little creature go through the motions of concealment, cautiously return, grasp the food, jump away and once more perform the mime of digging and covering, he saw Mme. Kanyi approach down the path. She was carrying a load of brushwood, stooping under it, so that she did not see him until she was quite close.
Major Gordon was particularly despondent that day for he had just received a signal for recall. The force was being re-named and reorganized. He was to report as soon as feasible to Bari. Major Gordon was confident that word had come from Belgrade that he was no longer persona grata.
He greeted Mme. Kanyi with warm pleasure. “Let me carry that.”

Albert Bierstadt Bridal Veil Falls Yosemite painting

Albert Bierstadt Bridal Veil Falls Yosemite paintingDante Gabriel Rossetti Venus Verticordia paintingJohannes Vermeer The Guitar Player painting
“Then what do you intend to do?”
“If you approve, headmaster, I will stay as I am here as long as any boy wants to read the classics. I think it would be very wicked indeed to do anything to fit a boy for the modern world.”
“It’s a short-sighted view, Scott-King.” door—even to her there are forbidden places. Let us leave Scott-King then on the high seas and meet him again as, sadly changed, he comes at length into harbour. The hatches are off, the moment you got to move quick and quiet, that’s all.”
So, unprotesting, at nightfall, the strangely assorted party was hustled on board a schooner. Noah’s animals cannot
“There, headmaster, with all respect, I differ from you profoundly. I think it the most long-sighted view it is possible to take.”

Pierre Auguste Renoir After The Bath 1888 painting

Pierre Auguste Renoir After The Bath 1888 paintingJohn William Waterhouse Odysseus and the Sirens paintingThomas Kinkade xmas cottage painting
And we are happy to meet them. But just at the moment my friend and I are rather hungry.”
“Yes,” said the underling with compassion. “We have heard of it in our papers. Your rations in England, your strikes. Here things are very expensive but there is plenty for all who pay, so our people do not strike but work hard to become rich. It is better so, no?”
“Perhaps. We must have a talk about it some time. But at the moment it is not so much the general economic question as a personal immediate need —”
“We arrive,” said the underling. “Here is the Ministry.”
Like much modern Neutralian building the Ministry was unfinished, but it was conceived in severe one-party style. A portico of unembellished columns, a vast, blank doorway, a bas-relief symbolizing Revolution and Youth and Technical Progress and the National Genius. Inside, a staircase. On the staircase was a less predictable feature; ranged on either side like playing-cards, like a startling hand composed entirely of Kings and Knaves, stood ascending ranks of trumpeters aged from sixty to sixteen, dressed in the tabards of medieval

Edward Hopper Room in New York painting

Edward Hopper Room in New York paintingEdward Hopper Night Windows paintingEdward Hopper Lighthouse Hill painting
particularly, in its decay. It was a kind of nostalgia for the style of living which we emphatically rejected in practical affairs. The notabilities of Whig society became, for us, what the Arthurian paladins were in the time of Tennyson. There was never a time when so many landless men could talk at length about landscape ing. Even Roger compromised with his Marxist austerities so far as to keep up his collection of the works of Batty Langley and William Halfpenny. “The nucleus of my museum,” he explained. “When the revolution comes, I’ve no ambitions to be a commissar or a secret policeman. I want to be director of the Museum of Bourgeois Art.”
He was overworking the Marxist vocabulary. That was always Roger’s way, to become obsessed with a new set of words and to extend them, deliberately, beyond the limits of sense; it corresponded to some sombre, interior need of his to parody whatever, for the moment, he found venerable; when he indulged it I was reminded of the ecclesiastical jokes of those on the verge of religious melancholy. Roger had been in that phase himself when

Edmund Blair Leighton Stitching the Standard painting

Edmund Blair Leighton Stitching the Standard paintingPaul McCormack The Symbol of Man paintingEdmund Blair Leighton God Speed painting
with me. I am afraid I don’t remember it.”
“No, well, you see I thought we ought to have a yarn, and you know how suspicious these porter-fellows are at clubs. I knew you wouldn’t mind my stretching a point.” He spoke with a kind of fierce jauntiness. “I had to give up my club. Couldn’t run to it.”
“Perhaps you will tell me what I can do for you.”
“I used to belong to the Wimpole. I expect you know it?”
“I’m not sure that I do.”
“No? You would have liked it. I could have taken you there and introduced you to some of the chaps.”
“That, I gather, is now impossible.”
“Yes. It’s a pity. There are some good scouts there. I daresay you know the Batchelors?”
“Yes. Were you a member there, too?”
“Yes, at least not exactly, but a great pal of mine was—Jimmie Grainger. I expect you’ve often run across Jimmie?”

Jean Francois Millet Man with a hoe painting

Jean Francois Millet Man with a hoe paintingHerbert James Draper The Water Nymph paintingHerbert James Draper Pot Pourri painting
Loveday. He was busy at the time making a crown for one of his companions who expected hourly to be anointed Emperor of Brazil, but he left his work and enjoyed several minutes’ conversation with her. They spoke about her father’s and spirits. After a time Angela remarked, “Don’t you ever want to get away?”
Mr. Loveday looked at her with his gentle, blue-grey eyes. “I’ve got very well used to the miss. I’m fond of the poor people here, and I think that several of them are quite fond of me. At least, I think they would miss me if I were to go.”
“But don’t you ever think of being free again?”
“Oh yes, miss, I think of it—almost all the time I think of it.”
“What would you do if you got out? There must be something you would sooner do than stay here.”
The old man fidgeted uneasily. “Well, miss, it sounds ungrateful, but I can’t deny I should welcome a little outing, once, before I get too old to enjoy it. I expect we all have our secret ambitions, and there is one thing I often wish I could do. You mustn’t ask me what ... It wouldn’t take long. But I do feel that if I had done it, just for a

Pablo Picasso Girl Before a Mirror painting

Pablo Picasso Girl Before a Mirror paintingClaude Monet Sunflowers paintingJohannes Vermeer Girl with a Pearl Earring painting
Tomorrow this time I shall be at sea,” he said, twiddling his empty port glass.
“Cheer up, old boy,” said Beckthorpe.
Hector filled his glass and gazed with growing distaste round the reeking dining room of Beckthorpe’s club. The last awful member had left the room and they were alone with the cold buffet.
“I say, you know, I’ve been trying to work it out. It was in three years you said the crop was bound to be right, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right, old boy.”
“Well, I’ve been through the sum and it seems to me that it may be eighty-one years before it comes right.”
“No, no, old boy, three or nine or at the most twenty-seven.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite.”
“Good ... you know it’s awful leaving Milly behind. Suppose it is eighty-one years before the crop succeeds. It’s the devil of a time to expect a girl to wait. Some other blighter might turn up, if you see what I mean.”
“In the Middle Ages they used to use girdles of chastity.”

Lord Frederick Leighton Leighton Flaming June painting

Lord Frederick Leighton Leighton Flaming June paintingRaphael La Belle Jardiniere paintingRaphael The Holy Family painting
This is Algiers not very eastern in fact full of frogs. So it is all off with Arthur I was right about him at the first but who I am engaged to is Robert which is much better for all concerned really particularly Arthur on account of what I said originally first impressions always right. Yes? No? Robert and I drove about all day in the Botanic and Goodness he was Decent. Bertie got plastered and had a row with Mabel—Miss P. again—so thats all right too and Robert’s lousy girl spent all day on board with second officer. Mum bought shawl. Bill told Lady M. about his disillusionment and she told Robert who said yes we all know so Lady M. said it was very unreticent of Bill and she had very little respect for him and didnt blame his wife or the foreigner.
Love.
POSTCARD
I forget what I said in my last letter but if I mentioned a lousy man called Robert you can take it as unsaid. This is still Algiers and Papa ate dubious oysters but is all right. Bertie went to a house full of tarts when he was plastered and is pretty unreticent about it as Lady

Tamara de Lempicka Portrait of Madame painting

Tamara de Lempicka Portrait of Madame paintingEric Wallis Girls at the Beach paintingVincent van Gogh Starry Night over the Rhone painting
routine of University success by riding second on a borrowed hunter in the Christ Church “grind,” breaking furniture with the Bullingdon, returning at dawn through the window after dances in London, and sharing dingy but expensive lodgings in the High with young men richer than himself.
Angela, as one of the popular girls of her year, used to be a frequent visitor to Oxford and to the houses where Tom stayed during the vacation, and as the bleak succession of years in his accountant’s office sobered and depressed him, Tom began to look upon her as one of the few bright fragments remaining from his glamorous past. He still went out a little, for an unattached young man is never quite valueless in London, but the late dinner parties to which he went sulkily, tired by his day’s work and out of touch with the topics in which the débutantes attempted to interest him, served only to show him the gulf that was widening between himself and his former friends

Leonardo da Vinci da Vinci Self Portrait painting

Leonardo da Vinci da Vinci Self Portrait paintingLeonardo da Vinci Mona Lisa Painting paintingRembrandt Rembrandt night watch painting
he didn’t know Gabriel and he hadn’t been asked.”
“And Gabriel didn’t want him—did you, Gabriel?”
“Because you never know what he is going to do next.”
“And he brought in the most dreadful person.”
“Quite, quite drunk.”
“Called Ernest Vaughan, you wouldn’t have met him. Just the most awful person in the world. Gabriel was perfectly sweet to him.”
Dear boys, so young, so intolerant.
Still, if they must smoke between courses, they might be a little more careful with the ash. The dark boy at the end—Basil always forgot to introduce his friends to her—was quite ruining the table.
“Edwards, give the gentleman next to Lord Basingstoke another ash-tray.”
What were they saying?
“D’you know, Henry, I think that that was rather silly of you? Why should I mind what some poor drunk says about me?”
What a sweet girl Imogen Quest was. So much easier than her father. Mrs. Hay was

Titian Bacchus and Ariadne painting

Titian Bacchus and Ariadne paintingLorenzo Lotto St Catherine of Alexandria paintingTheodore Chasseriau Apollo and Daphne painting
Croaker, with Dr. Eierkopf aboard, was present in the visitors' stand. She could even smile, mournfully enough, at the irony of her rape: that when she'd tried to provoke him to it once before, in the Honeymoon Lodge Motel, he had rejected her in favor of an automatic soft-drink dispenser. There had followed her return to childishness, of which I'd heard, and when Croaker's path and hers had crossed again, following their separate releases in yesterday's amnesty, she had fled him with the fright of a five-year-old girl.
"Which is just what turned him on," she said ruefully. "He couldn't help it; he was just being Croaker. But poor Kennard --" She chuckled and wept. "In the old days he'd have taken pictures, and I'd have been showing Croaker naughty tricks. But Kennard's changed, too, since last spring -- the different things you've told him, and his cancer and all. . ." She blew her nose. Perhaps it was no more than a metastasis of the cancer to his brain, she said; in any case, he'd been escorting her from the Asylum to Great Mall (so he told

Pino pino color painting

Pino pino color paintingPino Angelica paintingPablo Picasso Le Moulin de la Galette painting
Stoker flung back his head and laughed, again as if meaning to mock; but I thought I detected wet streaks among the dry. Catching sight then of us, he bellowed, "Wah! Wow!" leaped back upon his motor, and throttled off. The professor-generals took counsel with one another; one of them I saw slip aLight Up With Lucky button out of his pocket and repin it on his tunic, above the riot-ribbons. Stoker's men having left to try to overtake him, the white-helmeted escorts realigned their positions, discreetly raced their engines, and made ready to proceed. But the Chancellor had turned to me, with a kind of bright hesitation, as if certain of his desire but not of protocol. I dismounted and stepped towards him, whereupon with a grin he sprang from the Chancellory sidecar and met me halfway.
"Glad to see you without the rope," he said, and expressed his regret that my former keeper had chosen not to take advantage of the recent general amnesty, as his freedom would have been its one happy consequence. "The way the varsity

Lord Frederick Leighton Leighton Music Lesson painting

Lord Frederick Leighton Leighton Music Lesson paintingRaphael The Sistine Madonna paintingWilliam Bouguereau William Bouguereau Biblis painting
apparently not taken before Rexford's amnesty freed them both. And clinging to Croaker's trouser-top, half running, half dragging, was Dr. Sear himself, identifiable by his white tunic and gauze-bound head. He it was who cried "Rape! Rape!" At sight of the crowd Mrs. Sear stopped short, and as if smitten by modesty, pressed the rag-doll to the bosom of her gown and put a finger in her mouth. At once Croaker overtook her; to my further surprise, Dr. Sear fought -- heroically! -- in her behalf, but alas, succeeded only in facilitating the assault. For as the three tumbled campuswards his tugging brought down Croaker's detention-pants. Even so the doctor was not done; he picked himself up, and heedless of the difference in their strength and of his own safety, struck Croaker with both fists. The dread Frumentian had fetched up his quarry's gown and aimed his weapon; propped on one elbow, Mrs. Sear began to play with the doll, oblivious to her peril. One backhand swat felled the plucky doctor; he lay unconscious. Bucklike then, with a grunt and single slam that the tardy guards could not arrest, Croaker studded Mrs. Sear -- back into awareness, one gathered from her cry.

The Yellow Christ

The Yellow ChristThe Vision After the SermonPaul Gauguin The Siesta
complete self-reliance -- which thitherto he'd thought of as synonymous, had turned out to be contradictory. Managing the herd without the help of his aides, he'd found himself dependent absolutely on himself -- a dependence so oppressively time-consuming, he'd had no opportunity to "be himself" at all. Isolated from classmates and staff, absorbed from morning till night with the tending of goats, the preparation of his food, the maintenance of the barns, even the manufacture and repair of his clothing, he'd scarcely had time to roll himself a cigarette, much less assert his independence and enjoy his individualism.
"And that was when I hadtwo hands," he said.
"You poorthing, sir!" the receptionist exclaimed, touching the injured arm. "Let me tie it up for you."
But he refused permission, declaring he'd bind the wound himself, as he'd done more than once in time of riot, as soon as he located his goldbricking aides -- on whom obviously it was folly to depend; he pitied the goats, now he remembered he'd dispatched his aides to tend them in his stead. But no: Dunce flunk those stinking brutes!

Claude Monet paintings

Claude Monet paintings
Charles Chaplin paintings
Douglas Hofmann paintings
the press. At last he lost his temper, jammed his hat upon his head, and reached inside his coat. Reporters scrambled for cover; aides went for their weapons -- but it was an ID-card instead of a pistol that X whipped forth. He waved it at the Telerama lenses.
"Does it sayChementinski? Nyet!"
Those who were near enough admitted that only anX was visible on the card, though obviously that fact in itself proved little. Coming up behind, I flipped out the magnifying lens on my stick and thrust it over the shoulders of several reporters, bidding them look again closely.
"Nyet!"Classmate X snatched the card away, but not before two reporters saw, or claimed to have seen, imperfectly eradicated characters on both sides of theX. Moreover, examining his glitter-eyed, fierce-beaked face, for once publicly uncovered, a cameraman was moved to recall that though the features were otherwise much altered, Chementinski the traitor-scientist had had metal-capped bicuspids like Classmate X.
"The better to EAT you with!" X shouted, as impassioned

Raphael paintings

Raphael paintings
Sally Swatland paintings
Steve Hanks paintings
questionable,he unquestionably had none at all. Too late then to shoot; the doors clicked shut and I was lofting.
Though I dreaded what I'd find of Eblis Eierkopf, I was prepared this time for the din and spectacle of the Clockworks. But when the lift stopped, all was silence. The gears, large and small, were still; the awful pendulum hung fast before my nose, perpendicular between Tick and Tock. Round about was a strew of papers, eggshells, calipers, and lenses: the birdlimed, dusty ruins, I feared, of oölogical research. High in the center of the works, struck face-on by the rising sun, sat Dr. Eierkopf -- dead or alive, I could not at once tell, but at least not quite a skeleton. He was perched -- one might even say poised -- on the escapement, just under the butt of the weathervane-shaft: one shriveled leg hung on either side of the knife-edged pivot, and the crown of his head thrust up into a smallish bell, as far as to his browless eyebrows. Had he been planted there by Croaker, or climbed there to escape him? His lab-coat and spectacles were smeared with droppings of the blackbirds

William Merritt Chase paintings

William Merritt Chase paintings
William Blake paintings
Winslow Homer paintings
affirm the miscarriage? Or could it be, as Max himself chose to think, that while some influential personage or personages wanted me dead, some other of comparable influence did not, so that, the attempt having failed and come to light, my secret enemies were prevented by my secret friends from finishing the job -- perhaps even from knowing it was unfinished? It was no coincidence, Max argued, that prior to my discovery he'd been a mere helper about the goat-barn, which was scheduled to be razed and the herd disposed of to make room for more poultry-pens; then not a month after he'd received me from George these plans had been changed without explanation: the Senior Goatherd was given a vice-chairmanship in Animal Husbandry, and Max had been allowed, almost unofficially, to manage the barn and herd until the Rexford administration took office and dignified his position with titles and a modest research-budget.
"So you see, Bill, you got a momma and a poppa someplace; anyhow you did once. And it's not any poor scrub-girl, that her boyfriend got her in trouble and she

Wassily Kandinsky Improvisation painting

Wassily Kandinsky Improvisation paintingVincent van Gogh The Sower paintingVincent van Gogh The Night Cafe painting
evidence of student-opinion polls, the complaints of his party-leaders and lieutenants that he'd never win the next election, the declining wattage of the Light House itself -- nothing much troubled him.
"He's not right bright these days," Stoker said. But he said it languidly, with none of his old high-spirited contempt, and though he had regrown his beard and reverted to his motorcycle-costume, his hair was barbered, his leather jacket greaseless -- and a curly black forelock hung upon his brow. "I'm glad he's no kin of mine."
This as he returned me to my cell -- tosome cell, anyhow -- from one of his offices, early in my confinement. I had testified in Max's behalf during his trial for the murder of Herman Hermann and conversed afterwards with Stoker for several hours, during which he told me most of the foregoing and other things as well, with a kind of bored persistence. He had been convinced, he said, that I was as much a fraud as Bray; for that very reason he'd taken my advice and ceased to define passage by his wholesale flunkèdness. His aim -- which he pursued because he had no faith in it -- was, I gathered, to lead the Chancellor

Vincent van Gogh Sunflowers painting

Vincent van Gogh Sunflowers paintingVincent van Gogh The Starry Night paintingFrank Dicksee La Belle Dame Sans Merci painting
next; how, for the man of sure vocation, nothing is gratuitous, and the merest happenstance is fraught with meaning. Dr. Sear's observation about the Library's classification-problem, now I considered it, pointed clearly to the sense of my task -- a sense altogether harmonious (as Sear could never have guessed) with the rest of the Assignment. What had my day's work proved, if not the necessity of clear distinction? And what were my labors but a series of paradigms, or emblems of this necessity? To distinguish Tick from Tock, East Campus from West, Grand Tutor from goat, appearance from reality (or whatever contraries were involved in seeing through My Ladyship) -- all these tasks, like my sundry concomitant advisings, were but ways of saying, "Passage is Passage, Failure Failure: let none confuse them." All that was wanted to put the Founder's Scroll in its place was sharper definition, I was confident -- and eager to tackle the problem, I grew impatient at the little delay, for it began to seem not impossible that I might request Examination that same evening, and thus complete my Assignment in a single day -- as close to "no time," surely, as anyone could demand!