We’re staying at Cumberland House, which, like all buildings with proper names, is delightful.
Well, perhaps not all buildings with proper names.
I once lived in a Theodore on 15th Street beneath a bachelor whose favorite drunken pastime was the 3am rearrangement of furniture. I still recall the sight of the bloody tissue he left outside our door the night his hall mirror got the best of him.
But Cumberland House, as such a dignified name suggests, is most assuredly delightful.
No bloody tissues here!
The Maestra of the domicile is Luke’s great-aunt Rosemary, a proper British woman with Socialist leanings and eleven types of cheese in her cheese drawer.
When Luke and I finally arrived last night, after twenty minutes confusedly pacing the same roundabout (those things we Americans call ‘circles,’ our powers of description limited to the basic shapes), Rosemary showed us to our cozy garret and bid us goodnight.
Thirteen hours later, we woke to builder’s tea and apricot Wensleydale. I’m starting to feel terribly, terribly British.
*Addendum: The author had previously stated the number of cheeses in Rosemary’s cheese drawer as seven. That number is, in fact, eleven.
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