Manchester 10th January 1840 The carriage came to a stop outside a red brick house with an octagonal tower rising above the entrance. Two gas lamps flickered either side of the door. At least he is rich enough to buy himself a new coat , Faith thought to herself. But she already knew that. The…
Seated on the train, Erich stared out the window at the passing countryside and caught himself thinking back on the changes the past year had brought. He felt older. He was moving further and further away from the past and he knew it. Though he was not yet a man, he could no longer identify…
I sit before the small mirror, running a brush through mylong hair and dreaming about tomorrow night. Our holiday ball. Mother and Father have been planning it for months, and the neighborhood is all abuzz with talk. The invitations were sent a month ago, the replies have all been received, seating charts have been made….
Vienna, 6th August 1900 My Dearest Kathi, Kindest thanks for your moving lines from 20th July. They were highly stimulating and have been a great comfort to me on more than one lonely night. Please forgive the lateness of my reply but it is only today that I have sufficiently recuperated from the events which I…
Chapter the First In which businesses prosper, families meet and a marriage is arranged, but no improprieties occur. It was a large house, set in a small park, but it could never look like a house of the gentility. It shouted aloud to anyone of sensibility, in this year of our Lord eighteen-fifty, that this…
Victoria married her 50 year old husband back when he was in his early 40’s. She was 18, innocent, and full of hope about her future. Now, seven years and one son later, Victoria was unhappy, unsure, and at a total loss about what to do about it all. But in late 1800’s, women had…
Stefan was a first-year violin student referred to me by my professor. A rather average posh kid of limited talent, he was only admitted into the conservatory because his father had called in a favour from a brother in-law who happened to be on friendly terms with the head of one of the departments. That…
Vienna, 1899 “Gustav!” a warm and familiar voice called and I turned to find a fellow student smiling at me, hands buried deep in his coat pockets to stave off the chilly April breeze. “Ah, Christian!” I called back, returning the smile as he approached me and shook my hand. After the customary comments on…
Vienna, 1899 We turned the corner and arrived in the notorious Spittelberg Alley. I knew the place by reputation, but the thought of visiting it had never crossed my mind before that evening. My friend, on the other hand, seemed perfectly at ease. And he was not the only one, I noticed as I spotted…
The year was 1901; the final year of my music studies at the conservatory. Franz was about ten years older than me and occasionally visited our class to lecture or give instruction as he was too young to acquire the position of a professor at the time, though he was on good terms with all of…
HER VICTORIAN BOTTOM PLUNDERED: In 19th century London, Henry Chambers was a man of note and some means. Left a not inconsiderable estate by his late father, he had speculated wisely in the city and had become a respected authority on the whims and fate of the money markets. Such was his status, his advice…
[My thanks to http://www.mookychick.co.uk for all the delightfully dirty Victorian sexual slang.] It was a dark and stormy night upon the blasted moors of Nether Scrotum as detective Scrimshaw and his sister, Amygdyla, who swore that she had never known a man in the biblical sense, meandered from one tussock of sawgrass to another in…
