Above one of the many grand marble staircases within the east wing of Burlington House, the great Palladian mansion on the north side of London's Piccadilly, hangs a pair of huge sky blue velvet curtains, twisted and tasseled silk ropes beside them. (Prologue)
The last day of August 1819, a Tuesday, dawned gray, showery, and refreshingly cool in London, promising a welcome end to a weeklong spell of close and muggy weather that seemed to have put all the capital's citizens in a nettlesome, liverish mood.
Quotations
Last words
The hundreds who pass by each day seldom glance up at it - and even if they do, few of them ever ask to see it, and fewer still ever stop to wonder who created it, and why, and exactly how.
