User:Pacaman/BadBeginningLoc

In the children's book series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket, numerous locations are first mentioned in The Bad Beginning.

The Baudelaire Mansion


The Baudelaire Mansion is the former home of the Baudelaire family. The house was burned down in presumed arson. The movie implies that this was due to Count Olaf, using a massive refracting lens. The Baudelaire parents are said to have died in the blaze, leaving Violet, Klaus and Sunny orphaned.

The house is connected by a mysterious tunnel to 667 Dark Avenue, the home of Jerome Squalor and formerly Esme Squalor. The purpose of this passageway was to direct members of V.F.D. to safe places before the schism. This passage is likely the reason Jerome Squalor was urged by Jacques Snicket to buy the penthouse of 667 Dark Avenue and never, ever, sell it. For the same reason, Jacques Snicket urged Jerome Squalor not to marry Esme.

In the film, the Baudelaire Mansion is situated in 28 Prospero Place, Boston, Maryland.

Briny Beach


Briny Beach is a fictional beach in the A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket.

The beach’s name is a literary allusion to Lewis Caroll’s famous poem, The Walrus and the Carpenter (from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There), which relates the tale of how two chaps (a walrus and a carpenter) eat a bed of talking oysters to cure their melancholy over the fact that the briny beach is so sandy and unclean (unfortunately, this feast only serves to increase their melancholy). A verse from the poem goes as follows:


 * “O Oysters, come and walk with us!”
 * The Walrus did beseech.
 * “A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk,
 * Along the briny beach:
 * We cannot do with more than four,
 * To give a hand to each.”

According to the carpenter in the poem, the briny beach has boiling water (“The time has come to talk of many things: of ... why the sea is boiling hot...”), although it seems unlikely to be true of Briny Beach.

Brine itself is water heavily saturated in salt, such as that found in the sea, and is commonly used in pickling.

In the first novel, The Bad Beginning, Briny Beach is where the Baudelaire children, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, learn from Mr. Poe that their parents have died in a fire which destroyed their home. From then on, the series occasionally mentions the beach in referring to the orphans' ongoing misery and woe. In The Grim Grotto (the eleventh novel), the beach is where the Baudelaires meet Kit Snicket for the first time when she picks them up to take them to Hotel Denouement, leaving behind Mr. Poe, who had come to take the children to the police. This visit, the Baudelaires' second in the series, is alluded to in the "Author's Notes" section of the Rare Edition of The Bad Beginning. These notes also allude to Violet returning to Briny Beach alone for a third time in the series during Book the Thirteenth, or so it claim, as the book does not show them going to the beach.

Count Olaf's House
 Count Olaf's House is a fictional place in the series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. The house first appears in The Bad Beginning.

The exterior of the house looks very unclean. The bricks are all stained with soot and grime. The entire building sags to the side. Only two small windows are visible from the front. Above the windows, a dirty tower tilts slightly to the left. On the front door, which needs repainting, an image of an eye is carved.

The interior is similar to the exterior, in that the entire house is unkempt and filthy. The house includes a main hallway, a kitchen, a dining room, two bedrooms, and a room in the aforementioned tower. Every room that has been described in the book is dirty, dimly lit, and unpleasant to be in.



The main entryway has one bare light hanging from the ceiling, a stuffed lion's head nailed to the wall, and a bowl of apple cores on a small wooden table. The bedroom in which the three Baudelaire children stay in while living in Count Olaf's house is a small, dirty room with one bed, one cracked window, a pair of curtains, an empty refrigerator box (which the children keep their clothes in), and a small pile of rocks, for their entertainment (as Count Olaf states). The tower room has walls covered in nothing but pictures of eyes, a desk covered with various things, a few chairs, broken bottles of wine on the floor, and a few lit candles.

The Vile Village mentions that the Quagmires were hidden in the tower room for a short while before being hastily moved again.

No one seems to want to even go near the house, or at least not Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire, and the next door neighbor Justice Strauss.

Justice Strauss' house
 Justice Strauss' house is next door to Count Olaf's house. The house is very clean and inviting, especially in comparison to Count Olaf's. Her home has a garden where the Baudelaire children gardened with her during their stay with Coutn Olaf. The house also a library with books on a variety of topics, including law, which helped Kalus foil Count Olaf's marital scheme in The Bad Beginning.

Mulctuary Money Management
 Mulctuary Money Management is a bank located in the banking district of the city. Mr. Poe, executor of the Baudelaire estate, is Vice President in charge of Orphan Affairs. A teacher from Prufrock Preparatory School, Mrs. Bass, robs the bank prior to The Penultimate Peril.