Saturday 12 November 2016

German Hours

Baden-Baden, the summer capital of Europe, is a destination of choice for many a Victorian literary personage. Lady Glencora and Plantagenet Palliser honeymoon there in Can You Forgive Her? Baden-Baden features in Confidence, a minor James novel, which I haven't read. It is renamed but identifiable in the opening pages of Daniel Deronda.

Today, more than a century afterwards, one imagines those long ago days as not so very distant. In fact all has changed, much separates then and now, and what remains is a mere simulacrum (great Brooknerian word).

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