Eggp > Recent Status Updates

B06 - CH01
Nick's inquisitive childhood and the servants' dramatic love lives just before WWI.

B06 - CH02
Having drifted apart, the Morelands & Jenkins couples are reunited for an evening at Stourwater. Templer introduces his high-strung nervy wife, and flirts with Sir Magnus' latest mistress. Everyone poses for the camera as a deadly sin, wifey freaks out. Widmerpool arrives in territorial uniform to talk business.

Wiki: "With only a month or two between our ages, some accumulation of shared experience was natural enough: the dog following Edward VII’s coffin, the Earls Court Exhibition, tents in Hyde Park for George V’s coronation – those all found a place."

B05 - CH03
The Morelands' lose the baby, Hugh debuts a symphony/falls for Priscilla. Mrs. Foxe throws an eventful party, Stringham charmingly crashes it, Tuffy takes him home without much fuss.

B05 - CH04
Erridge returns home with dysentery, Hugo steals his thunder. Maclintick loses his wife/job, commits suicide. Moreland works on his marriage, Priscilla gets engaged to Chips. Erridge inherits the lot from Clarke.

Wiki: "Do you remember when we used to talk about the Ghost Railway and say how like everyday life it was – or at least one’s own everyday life?"

Wiki: "...or become some terrifying legendary figure, fearful as the Glamis monster, about whom it was appropriate to joke as dreadful to behold, but at the same time a being past serious credence."

B05 - CH01
Skipping back to B02, a previously unmentioned close friendship with a musician named Hugh/his loves/social circle are explored.

B05 - CH02
Nick & in-laws get on well, the Spanish war is all anyone talks about. Their married life is unknown, Isobel convalesces after a miscarriage. Hugh is expecting, the Maclinticks are bitterly miserable. Widmerpool hints at great things to come, personally/nationally.

Wiki: "...androgynous mountebanks of the Blue Period..."

1. An itinerant quack who from an elevated platform appealed to his audience by means of stories, tricks, juggling, and the like, in which he was often assisted by a professional clown or fool.

2. An impudent pretender to skill or knowledge, a charlatan; one who resorts to degrading means to obtain notoriety.

Wiki: "...he remained a hopeless addict of what he used to call, in the phrase of the day, a ‘ princesse lointaine complex’."

B04 - CH05
Nick falls in love, courts, and successfully proposes to (the anonymous) Isobel Tolland entirely off-page. Mona leaves Quiggin and absconds to China with Erridge, overshadowing news of the engagement. Molly throws them a party, where Conyers tells Nick that Widmerpool got dumped because he couldn't get it up for Mildred. Widmerpool arrives with his pride (and bluster) intact, offering his marital advice.

B04 - CH03
Quiggin's invitation is actually in aid of Mona's potential film career, Erridge interrupts to talk politics, then invites all to dine. More Tollands appear in the form of two pretty sisters.

B04 - CH04
Nick spends time with the Jeavons', going to Dicky's nightclub with hubby. Widmerpool is dragged there by Mildred & Templer, but is too ill to stay. Nick manages to hear about Jean without flinching.

Word: "The Lewis gun may be sounding at the barricades earlier than some of your Laodicean friends think..."

1. Of or pertaining to Laodicea.

2. Having the fault for which the Church of Laodicea is reproached in Rev. iii. 15, 16; hence, ‘lukewarm, neither cold nor hot’, indifferent in religion, politics, etc.

B04 - CH01
Nick attends a party with his scriptwriting coworker. Featuring: family friend/brief acquaintance/their relatives. Inevitably, Widmerpool debuts as the fiancé of an older woman.

B04 - CH02
Widmerpool asks for romantic advice. Nick fails to be pumped for info by Widmerpool’s skeptical future in-laws, leading to a quick meeting with an old lesbian friend, Quiggin makes an appearance outside the cinema.

Wiki: "At last the attics were reached; and another battered door, upon which was fastened a brass knocker, formed in the image of the Lincoln Imp."

Word: "...but such an additional piece of information would sound at that moment too esoteric and genealogical: otiose in its exactitude."

1. At leisure or at rest; unemployed, idle; inactive, indolent, lazy.

2. That is unattended by action; having no practical result; unfruitful, sterile; nugatory, futile.
  b. Having no practical function; idle, superfluous, useless.

19. Dick Donovan - A Night of Horror, 3 stars. Friend is invited to stay at skeptic pal's spooky castle.
20. Vincent O'Sullivan - The Burned House, 3 stars. Stressed traveler has vision of man burning down a house.
21. Rosemary Timperley - Harry, 4 stars. [2018]
22. Michael Reaves - Make-Believe, 3 stars. Writer tells a story about playing with his childhood friends.

16. G.G. Pendarves - Thing of Darkness, 2 stars. Rich pompous couple don't believe the house they bought is haunted.
17. Edward Lucas White - The House of the Nightmare, 3 stars. Man crashes his car and spends the night at boy's empty house.
18. Hector Bolitho - The House in Half Moon Street, 3 stars. Young man has a vision of murder his first day in the big city.

Wiki: "One Sunday, Benjamin Grinling waited upon Carlton House Terrace for almost an hour while his more agile nephew climbed the staircase within the pillar which had been erected in memory of the Duke of York."

Wiki: "He had clapped his hands in the echo room in the palace in Würzburg and he had seen the chattering apes climbing up the rocky slopes of Gibraltar."

Word: "Indeed, the little stretch of open country had been so treacherous in Benjamin Grinling’s boyhood that when he crossed it, he always walked in the middle of the road, peering hard at the shadows which might spring to life and become footpads in hiding."

1. A highwayman who robs on foot.

Word: "When my line of sight surmounted the rise I marked the tall stone on my right hand among the serried maples."

1. Of files or ranks of armed men: Pressed close together, shoulder to shoulder, in close order.

2. Of things likened to ranks of soldiers.

3. Of argument, etc.: Closely reasoned, compact in expression.

Word: "The dinner-table’s bravery of silver and glass mocked his distraught gaze."

3. Display, show, ostentation; splendour.
  b. Finery, fine clothes.
  c. An adornment, an embellishment.
  d. A thing of beauty or interest, a thing to exhibit.
  e. A fine thing, a matter to boast or be proud of.

4. Mere show, ostentatious pretence.

5. A gallant, a beau; grandees, chivalry.

13. Lafcadio Hearn - Yuki-Onna, 3 stars. Snow maiden promises to spare man's life in exchange for his silence.
14. Amyas Northcote - Brickett Bottom, 3 stars. Stubborn sister wanders off to meet strangers she spotted from afar.
15. E.F. Benson - How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery, 3 stars. Family estate in chock full of wandering ghosties, but the tiniest are the most feared.

09. R. Murray Gilchrist - The Return, 3 stars. Man returns home for his sweetheart 20 years too late.
10. Rudyard Kipling - The Phantom Rickshaw, 2 stars. Cruel man is haunted by ex-lover and her transportation.
11. Ambrose Bierce - The Moonlit Road, 3 stars. [2016]
12. Lafcadio Hearn - The Story of Ming-Y, 3 stars. Worthwhile young man falls in love with mysterious woman living under a peach tree.

Wiki: "In 1889, for instance, the entire city of Freiburg, in Germany, had to be evacuated when chemists let a bit of thioacetone escape."

Wiki: "...I was quite sure I should have been able to see myself reflected in their convex surfaces as clearly as Jan van Eyck was reflected in the bedroom mirror in his painting of the Arnolfinis’ wedding day."

05. David Morrell - But at My Back I Always Hear, 4 stars. Student thinks teacher sends her telepathic messages.
06. O. Henry - The Furnished Room, 3 stars. Man searches cheap lodgings for his lost lover.
07. Paul Ernst - Death's Warm Fireside, 3 stars. Repentant deadbeat husband trudges home in the snow.
08. Andrew Klavan - The Advent Reunion, 3 stars. Author reminisces about his college friends and girlfriend.

01. Conrad Aiken - Mr. Arcularis, 3 stars. Man goes on a cruise to England to recover from recent surgery.
02. William Fryer Harvey - August Heat, 2 stars. Artist draws unknown man, engraver chooses random name.
03. Ellen Glasgow - The Shadowy Third, 3 stars. New nurse is requested to care for doctor's wife.
04. Ellen Glasgow - The Past, 2 stars. House is haunted by husband's dead first wife.

Word: "They leaned, shoulders touching, on the deck-rail, and looked at the sea, which was multitudinously incarnadined."

1. Flesh-coloured, carnation, pale red or pink; but also used for various shades of crimson or blood-red; in mod. use sometimes = blood-stained.

2. To dye or tinge with incarnadine; to redden.

Wiki: "...playing the finale of Cavalleria Rusticana ..."

Cavalleria Rusticana > The Godfather Part III > Sofia Coppola > Phoenix (band) > Daft Punk

Wiki: "And the Empress of Ireland — all those poor people trapped in the smoking-room..."