I don't know if you have a bad hobby, and everywhere you go, you want to investigate the local real estate market. Travel abroad, go to Jeju Island, to see how much house prices there are, and when you go to London, also see how many house prices there are. I have this vulgar hobby and will examine the real estate market in books.
The author | Miaowei
When I read the biography of the British writer Angela Carter, I couldn't help but compare her writing income with the house price at that time. In 1973, Carter bought a small house in Bath, and the book didn't give much of the house price, I estimated it to be around £2,000, because she was looking at another house, which was listed at £2,500. The house prices were really cheap at the beginning of that year, Bath is a beautiful small city in the UK, the hot springs are very famous, and it is good to have a house there. Unfortunately, Carter's money to buy a house was lent to her by her father. She had already published two novels at the time, but her royalties that year were only £8, and she wrote for the media, and the income from the manuscript fee was £250.
Angela Carter (left) Angela Carter
Angela Carter house in Bath, England, Angela Carter Online
In 1976, Carter bought another house in London, the house price is 14,000 pounds, this should be a townhouse, townhouse, translated as a townhouse is more grade, translated as "townhouse" is not enough grade. The house has four floors, with Carter buying the upper two and her friends buying the lower two for £7,000 each. Four years later, friends moved away and Angela bought the two floors below, which was not something that could be bought for another £7,000, and the price went up, and half the house rose to £29,000. In other words, the house of fourteen thousand pounds has risen to more than fifty thousand in four years. So how much does Carter's most successful novel sell? In 1983, she copyrighted 26,000 pounds in hardcover and 25,000 pounds in paperback, adding up to more than 50,000 pounds. This should be her good year, the writer also has a good year and a bad year, and a good year can earn more.
Angela Carter houses English Heritage in London, England
In the late 1980s, the British publishing industry ushered in a big change, small publishing houses were acquired by large publishing houses, large publishing houses spent a lot of money to buy the rights of well-known authors, like the One who wrote "A Glass of Wine", a novel can sell for 150,000 pounds, like Rushdie, a copy of "Satanic Poems" is 520,000 pounds, Angela also pressured literary agents to sell her novels for 150,000 pounds. In fact, it is difficult for writers to support themselves with the copyright of their novels.
We look at a 2019 report in the British newspaper The Guardian, they surveyed the living conditions and economic income of more than 5,000 writers in the United Kingdom, saying that the median annual income of professional writers in the United Kingdom is 10,050 pounds, and the median total household income of writers is 50,000 pounds per year. From these two numbers, we can conclude that most British writers need to work part-time to make a living, which means that they write for the media, teach in school, or do some work that is not related to writing, or that their partners are richer. On a 35-hour basis, professional writers earn an average of just £5.73 an hour, £2 below the minimum wage for Britons over the age of 25. Many writers have called on publishers to raise their fees to make their incomes more decent. They say that if the writer's income is not high enough, only the family with good economic conditions can raise the writer, which will make the sound of the work monotonous. The Guardian reports that while writers' incomes are declining, publishers in the UK are making money.
Most writers, when they first started out in this business, followed the example of successful writers, saw them succeed, bought a house and landed, and fantasized that they could also support themselves by writing. In his early twenties, Camus was engaged in literature in Algiers, rented a house by the sea, and lived with a few girls, which he claimed to be "a room that could see the world". When you win the Nobel Prize in Literature in your forties, what do you do with the prize? The family looked around at the house. In 1958, he bought a house in a small village called Lumaran in the Provencal countryside, which at that time had only more than 600 inhabitants and now has only more than 1,000 people. How nice to buy a house in the Provencal countryside. But at the age of twenty, he engaged in literature, and when he got more than forty, he won the Nobel Prize, and the probability of success was extremely low.
Camus's house in Lumaran, Provence, France, is French Riviera Travel
There is a book called "The Writer's Garden", the original English title is called "How the Garden Becomes a Source of Inspiration for Writers", it is written about British writers and their gardens, there is a house, there is a garden, allowing writers to write successful works, but how to earn money to buy a house with a garden? There is no solution to this problem. I read the book and found that Ruskin reached the peak of his writing career at the age of 52, finished writing the five-volume book The Modern Painter, bought a yard in Brantwood for £1500 in 1871, which was originally a lawn, with a small, damp two-story building, Which Ruskin remodeled, lived in in 1872, and then spent several years slowly cleaning up his garden, and by the time of his death, the garden left behind was 8.5 hectares. The garden mentioned in this book is not a house with a garden of several hundred square meters, but a piece of land on which gardens and houses are built. It says that Agatha's grandmother lived in several houses in her lifetime, including the house in Greenway, which she and her second husband lived in, which was bought in 1938 for 6,000 pounds for 14.5 hectares. It's a large piece of land. In contrast, the "Munch House" bought by Virginia Woolf and her husband was a small piece of land that cost only £700, and the garden covered 0.3 hectares, which was the price in 1919.
Ruskin is in brentwood yard PR in the United States
Anyone who has taken care of the garden knows that this is a professional job, hundreds of square meters you can barely cope with, really give you a few hectares of land, let you plant trees and flowers, then you need to hire a gardener to take care of it. "The Writer's Garden" said that Ruskin left 8.5 hectares of garden land, there are 22 gardeners and workers to help him maintain, the book does not explain clearly, these 22 people are not hired by Ruskin, hire 22 gardeners, that is not ordinary people can afford, hire 20 gardeners, then you may have 10 servants in your family. Although in the 1870s it didn't cost much to hire a servant to hire a gardener, it was unlikely that a writer would raise twenty or thirty servants.
Let's look at Maugham's villa on the Riviera, as written in The Biography of Maugham.
When old Maugham was alive, he was probably the richest writer alive. In 1926, he bought the "Villa Maresco" on the Southern Faliviera and, after six months of haggling, sold for £7,000 on 9 acres. Overlooking the sea, hidden in the middle of the woods, you can see the snow tops of the Alps behind you. Old Maugham hired an architect to renovate, the first floor to build a large living room and dining room, the second floor is a number of bedrooms, and then up is Maugham's study, the study has a wide view, can overlook the mountains and the sea, Maugham covered the windows looking at the Mediterranean Sea, always looking at the beautiful scenery will distract him. Why did Maugham want to land in Southern France? Because he divorced his wife, Maugham's wife Xili, who loves decoration, opened a decoration company, turned the home into a display space, came to the guests, looked at what furniture, bought directly, once she sold the desk that Maugham was using, Maugham looked, this day can not pass, divorced. XiLi is said to have great taste in the décor, Fashion magazine said, "She is the one who taught us to use white in the house." One of the few designers who remains calm in the modern trend and can blend the old and the new. ”
Maugham in the French Riviera's "Villa Marlesco" FLLL
Maugham was a gay and had to get married, so he gave the London house to Cyrel, with a Rolls-Royce attached, and had to pay a large amount of alimony every year. He regarded the villa in Nanfa as his home and his boyfriend's home and took care of it carefully. When the house was renovated, Maugham also began to tend to the garden, saying, "I did not expect the great temptation of this large area of unattended gardens." At first, the forest had pine trees, mimosa and aloe vera, rosemary and thyme on the surface, Maugham cleared weeds, planted camellias, hibiscus, bougainvillea, dug a lotus pond, planted citrus and lemon trees, and did something rare in the Mediterranean: paving the lawn. Maugham said it was a fool to do by the rich, because the lawn was in the Mediterranean sun and was finished in the summer. Hard-fitted and soft-fitted, Maugham has a collection of books in the villa and a large collection of works of art. The dining table is an antique from the louis XVI era, and the desk is custom-made from a seventeenth-century Spanish monastery. Each room is equipped with bath towels and toiletries, flowers and mineral water, and then opens the door to guests from all over the world to the "Villa Maresco", walking through the pine-lined driveway to the door of the white mansion.
Maugham works in the "Villa Marlesco" Art.com
How many service personnel is there in Maugham's house? Thirteen people. Including a butler, two male servants, a housekeeper who takes care of female guests, a chef, a female kitchen worker, a driver and six gardeners. How does this list feel? It seems that there are fewer people in the kitchen and too many people in the garden. It's not easy to take care of the garden, but it's not easy to cook. Look, I've gone too far into the drama and have begun to think about how to hire chefs and gardeners. Then we might as well look at life in a british country mansion.
Ishiguro Kazuo's "The Long Day Will End" is a novel narrated by an English butler, at the beginning of the story, the butler Stevens talks to the new owner in the Darlington mansion, the new owner is an American, this is 1956, the afterglow of the British Empire is already very dim, the mansion has changed owners, the servants are also looking for other jobs, the new owner feels that the mansion can't hire too many people, there are three or four servants is enough, but the housekeeper Stevens said, I commanded 17 servants, at most we hired 28 people. Stevens's father once told him the story of a good butler, saying that this butler lived with his master in India, everything was served according to the highest standards in England, one afternoon, the butler went to the dining room to check how the dinner was arranged, found a tiger lying under the dining table, the housekeeper quietly returned to the living room, the living room was drinking tea with the guests, the housekeeper leaned over and said, "Lord, sorry, there seems to be a tiger in the dining room, maybe you will agree to use a twelve-caliber rifle?" A few minutes later, the host and guest heard three gunshots, and then the housekeeper reappeared in the living room to serve a new pot of tea. The host asked, is everything normal? The butler replied that it was perfect, and that what had just happened would never leave any perceptible traces. When Stevens's father told him this story, he always stressed that what had just happened would never leave any perceptible traces, which was the highest standard of butler service. Stevens said that his career has been modeled after the butler who played tigers, leaving no trace. He said that the large restaurant of Darlington House once hosted thirty people to eat, which is not difficult, the difficulty is to only entertain two people to eat, the host and a guest, two gentlemen sitting side by side in the center of the table, you have to be wholeheartedly attentive, but also to make the guest feel that you are not present, this is the essence of quality service, the guest feels that you are on the side, the conversation between the diners will be disturbed, so how the butler is in the shadows, is the subtlety of the service.
Stevens's goal in life is to be a good housekeeper, so even if his father dies around him, even if there is a love around him, he can abandon it. The novel won the Booker Prize in 1989 and has been adapted into a movie and is very good.
Stills from the movie of the same name (also translated as "Farewell to a Sentient Day") of the same name
A lot of novels and film and television dramas, are based on the British country mansion as the background, such as "A Lady's Portrait", "Atonement", "Downton Abbey", etc., we will know more, the British grandfather lives in the mansion, the kitchen is downstairs, the smell of the kitchen smoke can not drift into the restaurant, the British grandfather also has to hold hunting activities from time to time, invite guests to hunt, the grandfather must have a library and a smoking room, the hostess must have his own living room, although the house we live in is not large, how to live in the British mansion is a little bit of a thing. There is a book that says that the minimum configuration of a Country House in England is this: three or four living rooms, ten bedrooms, and a day nursery and a night nursery for children, that is, a play room for children, and housing for servants. Of course, there must be gardens, and there must be hundreds of acres of woodland around.
In 1930, a piece of property worth 500,000 to 600,000 pounds had to pay 34% inheritance tax, and more than 2 million pounds of real estate had to pay more than 50% inheritance tax. Therefore, many British country mansions are eventually owned by the government.
Stills from Downton Abbey
How many servants do you have to hire when you live in a big mansion? According to the book "The Long Weekend", there was a cook named Lucy, who managed the kitchen in Belvo castle in 1924, with four servants in charge of cooking and washing dishes, and two maids in charge of the refreshment room, which was separate from the kitchen, which was responsible for baking, making bread and cake, and the kitchen was responsible for cooking. In 1926, Lucy got married and ran to Agatha to work as a maid, she was a kitchen maid, her husband was a housekeeper, at that time Grandma was still living with her first husband, in Lucy's view, Agatha's family had fallen, there were too few people hired, she was a cook, her husband was a housekeeper, in addition, there was only one maid who worked as a handyman, a nanny who took care of the children, and a gardener, and the gardener's wife had to come from time to time to do hourly work. Lucy said that at that time, I was really pitiful, I had to cook, I had to wash the dishes myself, and my husband not only had to serve them to eat, but also had to help me clean up the dishes. We only worked for four months before we quit. You see, the maid is very temperamental, you only hire four servants and one gardener, then your family is down. Looking back at Maugham's house on the Riviera by this standard, there were only two people in the kitchen, which was really frugal.
In the 1920s, the Astor family's Cliveden estate employed 33 employees, a butler, a deputy butler, and three male servants. Two maids take care of the hostess, one housekeeper and four maids. Two refreshment servants, a cook, three kitchen maids, a dishwasher and a handyman. 4 laundry maids, two handymen and a hall attendant. A telephone operator, a carpenter, a night watchman. It was the interior staff, and the estate outside had more than 70 workers, including gardeners, game keepers, electricians, boatmen, and more. Yes, there were electricians, the 1920s was the era when British mansions began to have electricity, and during the two world wars was the era of a surge in British electricity users, only 750,000 in 1920 and 9 million in 1938. You see, it's not good to live in a big house, to hire more than thirty people, like managing a small company, hire two people, then the housekeeper has nothing to take care of.
The Crevedon Estate of the Astor family, the National Trust
The Astor family certainly has more than just this house, they have a total of five properties in the UK, one of which is a "small house" with 14 bedrooms. Of course, rich people can't just hold back in the country mansion, they have to have a Rolls-Royce to walk around, and the rich people have built private airports and have nothing to fly around. In the summer, I want to go on holiday on the Riviera, flying from London to Marseille via Paris, a 7-hour journey, and a plane ticket of £18. At that time, the money, can not be seen from today's point of view, Silly Maugham's income in 1931 was 2,000 pounds, which is a lot of money. The first year, a diplomat named Harold bought a country house for £12,000 and then spent it on renovations, for a total of £30,000, more than £4 million today.
The English country mansion is the setting of the warm old England story, and the warm old England story is a major selling point of British literature. In fact, we have no shortage of real estate stories in literature here, many people watch "Dream of the Red Chamber", and they will also secretly draw a map, where is Yihong Courtyard, where is Xiaoxiang Pavilion. I thought these stories had happened in the distant past, but in the year the Suzhou Museum was completed, I went to Suzhou to interview, and a local interviewee said, you should go to the Humble Administrator's Gardener to talk, I asked, is this garden not a national? Where else is there a host? Locals say that yes, descendants live in Shanghai. He gave a phone a address, I ran to Shanghai, went to the door, an old lady greeted me in, it was a two-bedroom apartment, the living room was about ten square meters, the door of one bedroom was closed, it was a descendant of the Humble Administrator's Garden, it should be eighty or ninety years old, it was not very convenient to meet guests, the old lady was his daughter, poured me a glass of water, told the story of listening to the play in the Humble Administrator's Garden when I was a child, I sat there listening, half-convinced. Later, a colleague chatted with me, saying that the Pei family's garden in Suzhou was a lion forest, smaller than the Humble Administrator's Garden, and Pei's design of the Suzhou Museum must occupy a corner of the Humble Administrator's Garden, which shows that the Pei family still came to the top. Such a story sounds good, and someone should make it up.
The Humble Administrator's Garden in Winter China Discovery
Typesetting | Yu Bingru
This article is reproduced from the WeChat public account with permission: City Home City+
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