Word: seigneurs
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...lovers. "It is almost impossible," said Stravinsky, "to describe the perversity of Diaghilev's entourage-a kind of homosexual Swiss Guard." He reminded one musician of a "decadent Roman emperor-possibly Genghis Khan or even a barbarous Scythian-and lastly, what he really was: a Russian grand seigneur...
...ivory and jade. Restored and main tamed by a crew of 1,000, it makes Versailles look like a nouveau riche country mansion. In the hills northwest of the city is the Summer Palace, which was largely destroyed hi 1860 by Britain's Lord Elgin, son of the seigneur who took the marbles from the Parthenon. Rebuilt hi 1888 by the dotty Dowager Empress Tz'u Hsi, diverting funds allotted for naval construction, the imperial plaisanterie occupies 700 acres and attracts huge numbers of Chinese rubbernecks. And then there are the Ming Tombs and, a few hours away...
...author traces the tumult of the period by following the career of a great feudal lord, Enguerrand de Coucy VII, the seigneur of some 150 towns and villages in Picardy. He was born in 1340, and he died in captivity in 1397, having been made a prisoner by the Turks. Coucy was the best of his kind, an able diplomat, a shrewd military leader and a man of good luck. His campaigns took him to England (where he married King Edward's daughter), Tunisia, Italy, Switzerland and Hungary. He died at century's end, appropriately for Tuchman...
...scarce in the last three-fourths of the book); testimonials work wonders (Ogilvy quotes verbatim an honorary degree citation awarded him by Adelphi University). The adman is now retired to a 37-bedroom medieval French chateau. There he continues to produce work that sounds less like a grand seigneur than a great copywriter: "How would you like to watch a Wall Creeper running up and down the apricot walls?" he writes. "You lunch in the garden in the shade of a seventeenth-century holly tree...
Hugo spent a good deal of his genius in the prone position: he fathered a sizable family, kept an adoring mistress for half a century, and found time for countless other sexual adventures. Yet he had enough spare energy to become the 19th century's grand seigneur of French literature, hammering out poems, plays, novels and essays as other men might manufacture horseshoes...