“It is as futile to argue with a bridge club maniac as with an opium eater or an inebriate. The habit has outreached all rational discussion. Duty, common sense, reputation have become meaningless words before the victim’s devastated conscience.” So said the pseudonymous “Fra[...]
Archive for the ‘Amusements’ Category
June 5th, 2010 - 1:43 pm § in America, Amusements
Rhode Island exhibit focuses on Newport’s ties to tennis
More than a century before Roger Federer and Andre Agassi faced off in the U.S Open tennis finals in New York, players were donning fancier attire and taking to the courts of Newport to compete in championship matches. The earliest incarnation of the tournament, then known as the U.S. National Champ[...]
January 21st, 2010 - 7:55 pm § in Amusements
Smoking Etiquette
Smoking in the nineteenth century underwent many amusing changes, per the advice of etiquette books. Where once guides to modern behavior stressed how vulgar it was to smoke, when ladies took up the habit, it behooved these arbiters of social instruction to catch up with the times. From 1844′s[...]
The Season: Winter
For much of the nineteenth century, it was customary for Society to spend the winter months in warmer climes such as the Riviera, where the capricious weather of England or Russia was forgotten amongst the charms of sun, warmth and gambling. Some time during the mid-1890s, as the craze for outdoor s[...]
January 4th, 2010 - 6:00 am § in Amusements, Literature
The Martial Art of Sherlock Holmes
Contrary to popular belief, Sherlock Holmes was rather a cutting-edge Victorian gentleman. Guy Ritchie’s version of Conan Doyle’s immortal sleuth does err on the side of too much physicality, but otherwise, Holmes was a fighter as well as a deducer. The sport in which he indulged was bar[...]
Hallowe’en In the Gilded Age
Despite its roots in European paganism, Halloween is a thoroughly American holiday. During the Gilded Age, Americans took Halloween quite seriously, even going so far as to celebrate it wherever they happened to be–as German society soon discovered when the expatriates residing in Berlin shook[...]
July 29th, 2009 - 6:00 am § in America, Amusements
American Resorts: Newport
Newport, known as the Queen of Resorts, or as Elizabeth Drexel Lehr stated ironically in her memoirs: “the very Holy and Holies, the playground of the great ones of the earth from which all intruders were ruthlessly excluded,” was transformed each summer for the sole and very conspicuous[...]
June 28th, 2009 - 10:57 am § in Amusements, Sport
A Day at the Links
The Edwardian era saw the growth of golf into a worldwide sport. Despite a brief entry into English consciousness in the 15th and 16th centuries, the game became wildly popular outside of Scotland when Englishmen founded the Royal North Devon Club at Westward Ho! in 1864. There were golf clubs in Br[...]
