[CPS]∎ Download Gratis Our Hearts Were Young And Gay An Unforgettable Comic Chronicle of Innocents Abroad in the 1920s Cornelia Otis Skinner Emily Kimbrough Alajalov 9781579124366 Books

Our Hearts Were Young And Gay An Unforgettable Comic Chronicle of Innocents Abroad in the 1920s Cornelia Otis Skinner Emily Kimbrough Alajalov 9781579124366 Books

Download As PDF : Our Hearts Were Young And Gay An Unforgettable Comic Chronicle of Innocents Abroad in the 1920s Cornelia Otis Skinner Emily Kimbrough Alajalov 9781579124366 Books

Our Hearts Were Young And Gay An Unforgettable Comic Chronicle of Innocents Abroad in the 1920s Cornelia Otis Skinner Emily Kimbrough Alajalov 9781579124366 Books

"We were poisonously young." - Co-authors Skinner and Kimbrough

OUR HEARTS WERE YOUNG AND GAY is a travel essay that appeared in 1942. Within, co-authors and best pals Cornelia Otis Skinner from Bryn Mawr, PA and Emily Kimbrough from Indiana share the experiences of an independent trip to Europe made in 1920 when young, footloose and relatively free of parental oversight. Skinner's parents were traveling on a parallel but more or less separate itinerary.

The charm of this delightful narrative lies in the fact that it's a recollection of girlish innocence, naivete, and silliness told from the perspective of a more mature adulthood that achieves an engaging, self-deprecating wit. Had the two travelers been teenage boys, I doubt that such a retrospective tale would've been conceived and told by their grown-up counterparts; it's just not a Guy Thing.

From Montreal to London to Paris, our heroines' misadventures are myriad. Their passenger ship runs aground in the St. Lawrence Seaway. Cornelia contracts measles in the mid-Atlantic and must be virtually smuggled ashore on reaching England. The two get lost in the maze at Hampton Court. Misdirected to recommended lodgings in Rouen, they spend the night on the top floor of a brothel, to the bemusement of the house madam, and never have a clue. (Teenage boys would've noticed, you think?) At the Rouen railroad station, Emily's overstuffed purse looses its contents onto the tracks just as a train pulls in. Bedbugs attack Skinner in the City of Light. Lunch at the Paris Ritz proves mortifying. A treacherous hair net ("Venida double-mesh") manifests itself during Cornelia's introductory acting lesson with a French stage idol.

Of course, not all of the mini-Grand Tour was comprised of frivolous mishaps. It was, for Skinner and Kimbrough, the experience of a young lifetime. As the latter put it:

"You know, back in Indiana there's a lovely phrase of yearning. People say, 'I hope I get to go.' Well, I've gotten to go, and here I am ..."

Kimbrough's "here" was in front of Rouen Cathedral, after having walked down from the city's Market Place where the 19-year old Joan of Arc, a girl of Emily's and Cornelia's own exact age and their hero, was burned at the stake. I myself have thought "Here I am" when, my interest being English history, I've stood on the spot where Becket was murdered, when wandering the windy hilltop ruins of Salisbury Tower where Henry II imprisoned his Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and when gazing upon the field where Harold II lost a kingdom.

Oh, to be footloose and young again. I'd give anything.


Tags : Our Hearts Were Young And Gay: An Unforgettable Comic Chronicle of Innocents Abroad in the 1920s [Cornelia Otis Skinner, Emily Kimbrough, Alajalov] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. NO MARKINGS, NO TEAR, NO DOGEARS.THIS BOOK DON'T HAVE A DUST COVER,Cornelia Otis Skinner, Emily Kimbrough, Alajalov,Our Hearts Were Young And Gay: An Unforgettable Comic Chronicle of Innocents Abroad in the 1920s,Black Dog & Leventhal Pub,1579124364,General,Form - Essays,General Adult,HISTORY General,History,HistoryWorld,History: World,Humor,Non-Fiction

Our Hearts Were Young And Gay An Unforgettable Comic Chronicle of Innocents Abroad in the 1920s Cornelia Otis Skinner Emily Kimbrough Alajalov 9781579124366 Books Reviews

One of my favorite books of all time; I lend it out every so often & need to replace. This arrived quickly im perfect condition; very happy with transaction!
Laughter being the best medicine, I purchased this for a friend who is undergoing chemo. My mother, my daughter, and I have all read this book more than once, and still get the giggles every time. A wonderful mood lifter, and one of the funniest books I know.
The book is a "hoot" which I remember reading as a teen...and also seeing the film.
Classic text is the incident with one of the girls in the tub with a "geezer" [coin-operated hot water geyser] while the other is accosting people on the street for money to activate the water heater. Whenever I hear the phrase "My friend is upstairs naked with a geezer" I still fall off my seat when I read it.
Other incident is the safety purse which they wear under their clothing. It is hanging between their knees and the mental image of them walking down the street bow-legged never fails to hit my funnybone.
....
When I bought this, I remembered the book itself was a misprint with the embossed design on the back instead of front cover. I remember my lending library copy had the exact same flaw.
A classic then and now!
At least once a decade since I was fifteen, I have re-read OUR HEARTS WERE YOUNG AND GAY, and the pleasure which I find in it never has diminished. Of course, by now, it's more like visiting with old friends than it is starting out on a brand-new adventure. Yet with the passage of years, the simpler delights--and values--which OUR HEARTS WERE YOUNG AND GAY displays so matter-of-factly appear even more touching than they once had. There are many scenes which are hilarious, and I can state definitively that these scenes have withstood the test of time. While OUR HEARTS WERE YOUNG AND GAY undeniably is a sweet story, it remains the best read ever. And it is a book that anyone can share with a teenaged daughter or an 80-year old grandmother without a second's concern about exposing them to ideas that may be unseemly.
I read this book when I was thirteen and my mom and aunt thought I would enjoy it. I enjoyed it as a teenager and again when I read it recently. It was a fun retelling of a wonderful adventure of two friends who just graduated from college and were taking the Grand Tour of Europe. A very sweet and funny story about a more innocent period of time.
I read this book as a young girl and because of it I became a world travel. I decided to read it again and it was just as delightful. The best part is that now I have been to most of the places that they wrote about.
I found this book in the tiny public library of my small Texas town in 1946 when I was ten years old. Years later I hunted down a used copy for my four daughters to read and still more years later I'm hunting copies for my 8 granddaughters.

One of those granddaughters has her 14th birthday in a couple of weeks, and I came to today expecting to have to buy a used copy, not realizing that it has been reissued.

(OOPS! I see now a few months later that it's once again out of print. A used or remainder copy shouldn't be hard to find.)

So few books of this genre are truly interesting or truly funny. Most of them consist of anecdotes that leave you thinking, "I guess you had to be there". Not this one. Those two girls were disaster-magnets. I think only David Niven's "The Moon is a Balloon" has made me laugh out loud as many times, and it's a much longer book.

The writing is seamless and authentically witty, the line drawings are almost Thurberesque in the way they stay in your mind's eye forever after.

This is a true American classic. Don't miss it.
"We were poisonously young." - Co-authors Skinner and Kimbrough

OUR HEARTS WERE YOUNG AND GAY is a travel essay that appeared in 1942. Within, co-authors and best pals Cornelia Otis Skinner from Bryn Mawr, PA and Emily Kimbrough from Indiana share the experiences of an independent trip to Europe made in 1920 when young, footloose and relatively free of parental oversight. Skinner's parents were traveling on a parallel but more or less separate itinerary.

The charm of this delightful narrative lies in the fact that it's a recollection of girlish innocence, naivete, and silliness told from the perspective of a more mature adulthood that achieves an engaging, self-deprecating wit. Had the two travelers been teenage boys, I doubt that such a retrospective tale would've been conceived and told by their grown-up counterparts; it's just not a Guy Thing.

From Montreal to London to Paris, our heroines' misadventures are myriad. Their passenger ship runs aground in the St. Lawrence Seaway. Cornelia contracts measles in the mid-Atlantic and must be virtually smuggled ashore on reaching England. The two get lost in the maze at Hampton Court. Misdirected to recommended lodgings in Rouen, they spend the night on the top floor of a brothel, to the bemusement of the house madam, and never have a clue. (Teenage boys would've noticed, you think?) At the Rouen railroad station, Emily's overstuffed purse looses its contents onto the tracks just as a train pulls in. Bedbugs attack Skinner in the City of Light. Lunch at the Paris Ritz proves mortifying. A treacherous hair net ("Venida double-mesh") manifests itself during Cornelia's introductory acting lesson with a French stage idol.

Of course, not all of the mini-Grand Tour was comprised of frivolous mishaps. It was, for Skinner and Kimbrough, the experience of a young lifetime. As the latter put it

"You know, back in Indiana there's a lovely phrase of yearning. People say, 'I hope I get to go.' Well, I've gotten to go, and here I am ..."

Kimbrough's "here" was in front of Rouen Cathedral, after having walked down from the city's Market Place where the 19-year old Joan of Arc, a girl of Emily's and Cornelia's own exact age and their hero, was burned at the stake. I myself have thought "Here I am" when, my interest being English history, I've stood on the spot where Becket was murdered, when wandering the windy hilltop ruins of Salisbury Tower where Henry II imprisoned his Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and when gazing upon the field where Harold II lost a kingdom.

Oh, to be footloose and young again. I'd give anything.