Peter the Great’s April Fool’s jokes
Of dwarves, arson, stammerers, and binge drinking.
Tag: dwarfism
January tweets
Organ-grinding tweets for December
Xmas &c.
Whatever became of Christian Lehmann, pioneering Petersburg Shrovetide zookeeper, Pierrot, illusionist, showman?
Newly uncovered evidence shows that, following the fire which destroyed his Russian theatrical business in 1836, he and his family pursued a career in London and Europe, before repeating their Petersburg triumphs in the USA and Australia. Also, a very curious copyright case.
On the French penchant for inventing things already in existence elsewhere
François Dominique Séraphin, Bourbon favourite and reputedly the father of ombres chinoises (shadow puppetry), began operating 15 years later than is generally thought, and may have copied his techniques from an itinerant Italian or a London Alsatian. Featuring the memoirs of the valet to the later Louis XVII, early descriptions of the delights of the renovated Palais Royal (including a pygmy show), jolly old Baron Grimm on the lamentable state of French opera, shadow plays, and marionettes, and William Beckford’s favourite designer of theatrical perversions.
Organ-grinding tweets for August 2017
The latest barrel organ news from Hackney, London.
Dutch words that sound obscene in English
The worst translator in the world? “Quoth she, so much I hate this nation, / I’ll damn this author in translation”
Rhyme vs reason
Restif de la Bretonne goes one step beyond Shakespeare and says that poetry is the language of Gods and beasts, and that reason speaks in prose.