wiki-illiam #105: q3

[dubdobdee]

In which city:
i: did Dizzy Mabel get drunk on gin?
ii: did George confuse the words for cushion and kiss?
iii: did Peregrinus bring Christmas presents to the poor bookbinder's family?
iv: did the enormous Olga address her guest, inappropriately, as her little turtle-dove?
v: was the Cardinal encouraged to forsake celibacy in favour of a Lutheran union to solve a financial crisis?
vi: did the dinner guests of the extended family include poet, physician, broker, wine-merchant, lumber-merchant and pastor?
vii: did the disguised head groom cause a fire to reduce 42 houses to rubble and ashes?
viii: was the annual subscription for the Blue Diamond 175 (in pre-euro money)?
ix: was the bearer of a pound of Raven mixture expected at 9.34pm?
x: did the people proclaim their Mayor a noddy?

Comments

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

not a bean from this quarter -- i assume the citynames have something in common once we get a couple

re x: was Noddy ever mayor of Toytown? This can't be right, though, bcz it would mean the only reason for having no cap letter on "noddy" would be malicious misdirection...

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

These sound like fiction!

[marnameow.livejournal.com]

Is i the lesbian from Stamboul Train? In which case 0 clue about the city. Koln? There is always a G Greene question.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

aaargh iv) rings such a bell - I'm sure I've actually READ this. Nabokov or Bulgakov, maybe?

[anatol-merklich.livejournal.com]

ii: German for cushion is "Kissen", while kiss is "Kuss" (noun) or "küssen" (verb).

[carsmilesteve.livejournal.com]

i surely the answer must be London? No one else drank gin like londoners ;) I'm also thinking about Mabel's Tavern off euston road and Gin Lane by Hogarth...

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

If it wasn't for "pastor" - which could be a cheeky anachronism - I'd have guessed a dinner with trimalchio for vi, ergo Rome. Are they all European cities I wonder? (viii must be, i is)

[(Anonymous)]

あのお家、買いましょうね。

[jeff-worrell.livejournal.com]

ix. is easily googleable, is from literature and the city is German. The preciseness of the expected arrival time is because the narrator goes there by train.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

I don't know how this suddenly popped into my head but x is HAMELIN: from browning's "the pied piper of hamelin"

(i think the "pound of raven" made me think of poe and poitry)

actual line checked and retrieved via google, though i could have got up and looked in a book, and typed it out by hand:
At last the people in a body
To the Town Hall came flocking:
"'Tis clear," cried they, "our Mayor's a noddy;
And as for our Corporation—shocking
To think we buy gowns lined with ermine
For dolts that can't or won't determine
What's best to rid us of our vermin!

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I was drawing a blank when I looked at these earlier, but isn't the family that Frankenstein's monster spies on a bookbinder's family? I really ought to know that since I used to have that as my safe 'favourite novel' choice. Off to check...

v

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Again I have no clue w/o googling, but I just wanted to bring up the excellent ecclesiastical venue WORMS as in 'diet of':



(not fictional nor financial as far as I am aware but definitely Lutheran)

[anatol-merklich.livejournal.com]

vi: Ah! "Extended family" plus Germany made me think of Buddenbrooks, and checking the book I found that yes, at the dinner party at the start there is a poet, a doctor and a pastor, at least.

Had to wiki the city though, leaving it open for a while in case anyone knows where the book is set.