Читать книгу The Fatal Cup: Thomas Griffiths Wainewright and the strange deaths of his relations - John Price Williams - Страница 51

boudoir”, an octagon of 13 feet in diameter into which the light streams though rosy panes in the dome above, there being no other windows. Not a sound from the street reaches it. The walls are covered with very rich crimson French paper, formed into panels with gold mouldings and the oak floor is spread with a glowing Persian carpet on which rests a pomona-green Morocco chaise-longue. In this room are all his treasures.

Was Wainewright in these descriptions exaggerating his sybaritic lifestyle and striving for effect? Possibly, but there was no doubt about his extravagance. “Far from being prudent and thrifty, he loved carriages, majolica, rare prints, wines of unusual vintages, servants in livery and other sweet impoverishments”, wrote Carew Hazlitt disapprovingly.

It was at Great Marlborough Street that he entertained lavishly his literary and artistic friends and lived the life of a London dilettante which he related in one of his essays:

I enter with great gusto into the amusements of town. I see all new exhibitions; hear all new singers; frequent the sacred Argyll, the Cyder Cellar, the Opera, Long’s, Colnaghi’s and the Coal Hole. I rummage carefully the catalogue...for old bokes (sic), write articles and inspect one magazine (the London).

But the cost of high living in a lavish apartment in the heart of London’s West End and his magpie acquisition of expensive objets d’art was leading to crushing debts. Wainewright’s only income other

JOHN PRICE WILLIAMS

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