William John Locke

The Glory of Clementina Wing (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Unless you knew that by taking a few turnings in any direction and walking for five minutes you would inevitably come into one of the great, clashing, shrieking thoroughfares of London, you might think that Romney Place, Chelsea, was situated in some world-forgotten cathedral city. Why it is called a “place,” history does not record. It is simply a street, or double terrace, the quietest, sedatest, most unruffled, most old-maidish street you can imagine. Its primness is painful. It is rigorously closed to organ-grinders and German bands; and itinerant vendors of coal would have as much hope of selling their wares inside the British Museum as of attracting custom in Romney Place by their raucous appeal. Little dogs on leads and lazy Persian cats are its genii loci. It consists of a double row of little Early Victorian houses, each having a basement protected by area railings, an entrance floor reached by a prim little flight of steps, and an upper floor. Three little houses close one end of the street, a sleepy little modern church masks the other. Each house has a tiny back garden which, on the south side, owing to the gradual slope of the ground riverwards, is on a level with the basement floor and thus on a lower level than the street. Some of the houses on this south side are constructed with a studio on the garden level running the whole height of the house. A sloping skylight in the roof admits the precious north light, and a French window leads on to the garden. A gallery runs round the studio, on a level and in communication with the entrance floor; and from this to the ground is a spiral staircase.
From such a gallery did Tommy Burgrave, one November afternoon, look down into the studio of Clementina Wing. She was not alone, as he had expected; for in front of an easel carrying a nearly finished portrait stood the original, a pretty, dainty girl accompanied by a well-dressed, well-fed, bullet-headed, bull-necked, commonplace young man. Clementina, on hearing footsteps, looked up.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: eGriffo
• Erscheinungstermin: 16. Oktober 2019
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9788835317357
• Artikelnr.: 59051014

Autorenporträt

William John Locke was a British author, dramatist, and playwright who is best known for his short tales. On March 20, 1863, he was born in Cunningsbury St. George, Christ Church, Demerara, British Guiana. He was the oldest child of Barbados bank manager John Locke and Sarah Elizabeth Locke, who was also his first wife. His family relocated to Trinidad & Tobago in 1864. His half-sister Anna Alexandra Hyde (née Locke) passed away at age 25 while giving birth. Locke received an honors degree in mathematics from Cambridge University in 1884. When he was a teenager, he called math "an absolutely pointless and inhuman subject." He resided in London and served at the Royal Institute of British Architects' secretary from 1897 to 1907. His books The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne (1905), The Beloved Vagabond (1906), and At the Gate of Samaria (1894) were well-received in both Britain and America. Locke wed Aimee Maxwell Close (née Heath), the ex-wife of Percy Hamilton Close, on May 19, 1911, in Chelsea, London. James Douglas and Alice Baines both attended the wedding. On May 15, 1930, Locke passed away from cancer at 67 avenues Desbordes-Valmore in Paris, France.