Planet Century 19

Several Yorkshire news outlets echo the press release from Visit York which listed the best things in/from Yorkshire:

According to brand new research, Yorkshire is best known for its food and drink offering with the Yorkshire Pudding named as ‘The Best Thing to come out of York and Yorkshire’.
The survey, conducted by Visit York, polled over 4,000 people from all over the UK and overseas and found that almost half of all respondents put the classic Sunday lunch accompaniment within their top three choices of the best thing to come out of York and Yorkshire; second place went to Yorkshire Tea with 18% of the votes cast; closely followed by Wensleydale Cheese with 16% of votes.
Leading lady, Dame Judi Dench took centre stage in terms of the most popular person to have come from the region with 15% of votes, giving her fourth place overall. The Brontë Sisters meanwhile reached the wuthering heights of fifth place with 14%. Captain James Cook navigated his way into sixth place with 12% of the votes and Michael Palin travelled to seventh place with 11%.
The survey was conducted by Visit York to celebrate the opening of its new £900,000 state-of-the-art Visitor Information Centre, which acts as a gateway of services for the region, offering visitors plus local residents and businesses with the keys to unlock both York and the wider Yorkshire and Humber area.

Janice Card, the writer and director of the viral video Jane Austen's Fight Club is interviewed on Entertainment Weekly. Upcoming projects?

So does that mean that she’s planning on making a sequel? “People are asking, ‘What’s next?’ I think the first thing that comes to mind is Emily Brontë’s American Psycho. Because that’s what Heathcliff was. Except British.” (Keith Staskiewicz)

We read in the letters to The Guardian a response to Gabriel Josipovici's attack on modern British authors. The missive has a Brontë reference:

Writers from Charlotte Brontë and Dickens to Graham Greene and Kingsley Amis knew that if a truly gifted novelist is telling a story, he or she is already using language as magic. (Richard Cooper)

This article in the New York Times about the upcoming NFL seasons contains an unexpected Brontë mention. Talking about the player of the New Orleans Saints, Pierre Thomas:

Saints running back Pierre Thomas missed the start of camp, but Saints General Manager Mickey Loomis characterized contract talks as “cordial,” which would be ideal if they were negotiating with a Brontë sister. (Mike Tanier)

The Guardian reviews several books for children:

The Sky is Everywhere, by Jandy Nelson
Romance without any vampires makes a welcome change for teen readers. Not that death is entirely absent. When her gorgeous and successful older sister drops dead unexpectedly, Lennie has to learn to live again. Perhaps because of her passion for Wuthering Heights, she finds herself falling in love. How grief and love run side by side is sensitively and intensely explored in this energetic, poetic and warm-blooded novel.

The main character in that novel is described like this in the San Jose Young Adult Literature Examiner:

She is a band geek and a Wuthering Heights hopeless romantic. (Barbara Bell)

The property section of The Times has an article about Scarborough:

Other highlights include the impressive Victorian architecture of the Grand Hotel, and St Mary’s Church, where Anne Brontë is buried.

Also in The Times a top ten of spots by the river for picnic:

Hebden Water, West Yorkshire. Brontë moors. Walking by the river up this quiet cleft in the flank of the Brontë moors, it is hard to imagine the roar and clatter of milling that filled this dale scarcely more than a century ago. There is a café at the nearby National Trust-maintained Gibson Mill. Start & finish: Hardcastle Crags car park (OS ref SD987292). (Christopher Somerville)

David Gillett travelled around Derbyshire and chronicles it in The Globe and Mail:

We explored Chatsworth, lost in the endless corridors of Mr. Darcy's overblown Pemberley, gliding with reverence through the sculpture gallery, catching glimpses of Her Ladyship's chickens beyond the sash windows. We walked the misty shadows of Haddon Hall, that most perfectly preserved medieval pile, which stood in for Lizzie's bedroom, featured prominently in The Other Boleyn Girl, and played Thornfield Hall in the most recent Jane Eyre. (...)
On the way back down to the village, rain threatening, we passed isolated North Lees Hall, an Elizabethan manor house where Charlotte Brontë had Mrs. Rochester jump from the roof to her death in Jane Eyre.

Priya Ramani summarises in Live Mint (India) her favourite book, Daddy-Long-Legs:

When she goes to college she realizes that she’s missed out on a whole slice of life. She has never heard of Jane Eyre or Robinson Crusoe or Holmes or that Shelley is a poet and George Eliot a lady.
Jerusha and me clicked immediately. She’s the kind of girl who gets indignant when she hears a bishop preach that the poor were put on earth in order to keep the rest of us charitable; Wuthering Heights is her favourite book (I have yet to meet a woman who didn’t think Heathcliff was a hottie)[.]

Margaret Atwood is promoting her latest book, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, in India. The Hindu interviews her:

Even in the 19th century historical novel, money was important. In Jane Austen debt features consistently. In Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff goes away poor and comes back having earned a fortune to extract the house from its previous owner. (Bulan Lahiri)

We don't think that Wuthering Heights can be the best example for this discussion on New Zimbabwe:

In societies of past generations (African or Western), marriage was very much a vessel for stability as depicted in several literary works, think Pride and Prejudice and Wuthering Heights. (Mtshumayeli Ndebele)

Dick Wolfsie in The Shelbyville News makes the weird Brontë comparison of the year. Discussing the website I Write Like he says,

I took three of my recent newspaper humor columns and entered a few of the funniest paragraphs. Was I as wry as Buchwald or Bombeck? Apparently not. Instead, my style was likened to Charlotte and Emily Brontë, the Smothers Brothers of the 19th century.

A pity that the Smothers Brothers were only two, Anne is not included in the comparison.

The Nashville Gospel Music & Entertainment Examiner takes a (Christian) look at Twilight and doesn't forget the Brontës:

Twilight's teenage vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) is a handsome, brooding, hero much in keeping with old Brontë sisters and Jane Austin[sic] novels. (Kathryn Darden)

Le Monde interviews the composer and director of the Festival de Montpellier, René Koering. The journalist seems more interested in knowing why part of the audience deserted during the second half of the recently performed Bernard Herrmann's Wuthering Heights opera than in the quality of the piece:

Pourquoi, après vingt-cinq ans "d'éducation" de votre part, le public a-t-il déserté la salle en deuxième partie de l'opéra "Les Hauts de Hurlevent" du compositeur hollywoodien Bernard Herrmann, le 14 juillet ?
Je pense sérieusement qu'une partie du public imaginait que l'oeuvre s'arrêtait après une heure trente. L'autre partie a manifesté un dédain ordinaire pour la musique américaine (comme pour les musiques finlandaises, hollandaises ou portugaises, qui ne figurent pas ou plus dans les neurones lyricomanes ordinaires). A cela s'ajoute que le public "cultivé" pense qu'il est incongru d'offrir à un compositeur de musiques de films un fauteuil de velours rouge à l'Opéra. (Renaud Machart) (Google translation)

Fortunately, there are many who enjoyed and discovered Herrmann's opera:

C'est la première partie des « Hauts de Hurlevent » que Fletcher a choisi de raconter, celle traitant des amours de Catherine et d'Heathcliff pour ceux qui se souviennent du roman. Les cinéphiles auront reconnu certains thèmes musicaux de « Citizen Kane », de « La Mort aux trousses » ou de « Sueurs froides ».
Les autres auront découvert une musique ultralyrique, flamboyante et opulente, qui colle parfaitement à l'action de ce mélodrame passionnel : on ne s'ennuie jamais pendant les trois heures que dura la version concert donnée le 14 juillet au Corum de Montpellier. Herrmann y montre une science de l'orchestration inouië, et un talent manifeste à créer des surprises. Normal, pour quelqu'un qui a si longtemps travaillé pour le cinéma.
La révélation d'une chanteuse
Marianne CrébassaIl faut dire que ces « Hauts de hurlevent » était défendue par une distribution sans faille soutenue avec une merveilleuse science des voix par le jeune chef Alain Altinoglu. A noter la révélation de la jeune mezzo soprano montpelliéraine Marianne Crebassa dont c'était un des premiers rôles. Elle fit la surprise au public de jouer une partie de piano solo, puis de chanter en s'accompagnant elle-même. Instant magique. (Nathalie Krafft in Rue89) (Google translation)

René Koering rappelle les retombées économiques bénéficiaires du festival et fait aussi un bilan artistique. Il place en tête L'Étranger et Hurlevent et mentionne : la palme à Piramo, le choc à Berezovsky, le rire à Fazil Say, les honneurs au chef Juanjo Mena. (Michèle Fizaine in Midi-Libre) (Microsoft translation)

Dans ce dispositif, le Festival de Radio France à Montpellier "tient une place à part". "Les festivals de Salzbourg et d'Aix-en-Provence sont prisés mais le festival montpelliérain, original, est recherché pour ses oeuvres rares. Cette année, par exemple, l'opéra Les Hauts de Hurlevent de Bernard Herrmann, le compositeur fétiche de Hitchcock, a été très demandé". (Olivier Morel-Maroger talking with Valérie Hernandez in La Gazette de Montpellier) (Google translation)

Writer Ana María Shua suggests an interesting explanation on why Wuthering Heights is more widely considered a love story than Pride and Prejudice. In Clarín (Argentina):

“Sin desdicha, separación, pérdida, sufrimiento, no hay novela,” cuenta Ana María Shua. “Por eso no recordamos Orgullo y Prejuicio, de Jane Austen, como novela de amor (termina demasiado bien), y sí en cambio Cumbres Borrascosas, de Emily Brontë.”(Paulina Villegas Vargas) (Google translation)

AlCinema (Italy) reviews the Italian DVD release of Luis Buñuel's Abismos de Pasión:

Un film pieno di invenzioni surreali, sorrette da un portento ironico davvero invidiabile. Invece nella trasposizione di Cime tempestose di Emily Brontë, viene messa in luce la burrascosa storia d’amore tra Alejandro e Catalina. L’irrequieta ragazza cerca la serenità nell’amore, senza sapere cosa le porterà il destino. Quest’opera si presenta con un carattere duro, nell’esplicare l’amour fou nei suoi aspetti più pessimistici e profondamenti dilaniati, che lasciano un aurora di mistero intorno a questa pellicola dalla sua denominazione critica inclassificabile nel corpus creativo di Buñuel. (Maria Laura Platania and Matteo Merli) (Google translation)

And Film-Dienst reviews the German edition of Jane Eyre 1944:

Sie gehört zu den schönsten Schauerromanzen, die die britische Literatur hervorgebracht hat: Charlotte Brontës viktorianische Erzählung um die vom Schicksal gebeutelte, aber aufrechte Waise Jane Eyre, die ihr Herz dem mysteriös-düsteren Lord Rochester schenkt. Eine der besten Filmadaptionen des Klassikers bleibt Robert Stevensons Film von 1944, für den kein Geringerer als Aldous Huxley Brontës Roman in eine stimmige Filmdramaturgie übersetzt hat. Die Hauptrollen werden von der ebenso zarten wie unbeugsamen Joan Fontaine und dem jungen Orson Welles gespielt; die Schwarz-Weiß-Ästhetik erweckt kongenial das von verhängnisvollen Schatten der Vergangenheit heimgesuchte Anwesen Thornfield zum Leben. Die von Alive vertriebene DVD präsentiert den Film in guter Bild- und Tonqualität. (jög) (Google translation)

The Spenborough Guardian lists 'its Brontë heritage' as one of the attractions of Spen Valley, the New York Times reviews Lyndall Gordon's biography of Emily Dickinson and describes as 'highly regarded' her biography of Charlotte Brontë. 韓裴之隨筆 posts about Jane Eyre and Народная Газета discovers a "Belarusian Jane Eyre" The Sherlockian uploads a Jane Eyre book trailer on YouTube. Finally, the Brussels Brontë Group has an article about the repavement of the Rue Terarken, one of the few surviving stretches of the narrow cobbled streets of the Quartier Isabelle.

Categories: Books, Brussels, In the News, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Opera, References, Wuthering Heights

The Ventura County Star interviews singer Stevie Nicks and about her new solo album (no release date yet) she says,

What can fans expect from the new album?
It’s very diversified. There is an Italian love song I wrote when I was in Italy last summer. There is a crazy, wild rock ’n’ roll song called “The Ghosts Are Gone.” There is a song about a novel called “Wide Sargasso Sea,” the precursor to Jane Eyre. It was a crazy movie in the ’80s that I loved. (Marjorie Hernandez)

The Independent reviews Between the Sheets by Leslie MacDowell.

Among the nine women writers of the first half of 20th century analyzed by the author we found the author of Wide Sargasso Sea: Jane Rhys.
Nor is it necessarily true that they needed the pain in order to get published. Jean Rhys owed her late success with Wide Sargasso Sea to the kind intervention of Francis Wyndham. (Diana Souhami)

After UK politics Australian politics may be the next target of the put-a-Brontë-in-your-news campaign. In The Australian:

There's a famous scene in Charlotte Brontë's Gothic melodrama Jane Eyre where the heroine relates to her betrothed her awful experience of the previous night, when a ghastly figure of a woman invaded her sleeping-chamber and rent apart her bridal veil, trampling it to the floor.
As the reader soon discovers, the figure is no spectre: rather, she is the hero's unacknowledged wife Bertha, the famous "madwoman in the attic", whom Rochester has kept confined while he woos Jane as a bachelor. In the novel -- following the laws of poetic justice -- fate resolves the issue as it must.
The mad, embittered wife sets fire to the house and destroys herself, thus removing herself both from the story and the heroine's memory, while Jane is reunited with her injured but chastened lover. Real life, as we know, is not always so merciful.
We suspect that Brontë's point was quite simple. The dark secret, suppressed against its will, soon enough comes to light. The regretted association will eventually assert itself. Better to share your embarrassments and failings frankly with those you are trying to woo. Better to let in the light.
Right now the Prime Minister -- playing Rochester to the general public's Jane Eyre, if you like -- has her own "madwoman in the attic" problem, and she is evidently uncertain how to deal with it. (Julia Gillard)

The Times lists 50 ways to say 'you're fat'. Charlotte Brontë is quoted:

36. “A woman of robust frame, square-shouldered and strong-limbed ... stout” (Charlotte Brontë).

The actual phrase comes from Jane Eyre (Chapter IV) and is a description of Mrs Reed:

Mrs. Reed might be at that time some six or seven and thirty; she was a woman of robust frame, square-shouldered and strong-limbed, not tall, and, though stout, not obese: she had a somewhat large face, the under jaw being much developed and very solid; her brow was low, her chin large and prominent, mouth and nose sufficiently regular; under her light eyebrows glimmered an eye devoid of ruth; her skin was dark and opaque, her hair nearly flaxen; her constitution was sound as a bell--illness never came near her; she was an exact, clever manager; her household and tenantry were thoroughly under her control; her children only at times defied her authority and laughed it to scorn; she dressed well, and had a presence and port calculated to set off handsome attire.

Inspired by the Martin Schauder's case, Charlotte Hofton in the Isle of Wight County Press demands equal rights:

I spend at least 20 minutes getting dressed before I can write so much as a word.
First there’s the special T-shirt, bearing the slogan "Deadline? What deadline?" and my crinoline skirt, modelled on a design originally worn by the Brontë sisters. (...)
I am sure the County Press will understand the pressure this puts me under and will be delighted to make the necessary adjustments to my remuneration.

Belief.net talks about making comics based on the Torah:

The stories of the Torah are incredibly rich, and it's no wonder that authors, like myself, are inspired to try to turn them into great children's literature. Just as we are cautious and humble about adapting Shakespeare and Brontë for the five year old set, kal v'chomer we should be extraordinarily careful about how we retell the stories of the Torah. (Homeshuling)

A quote of Emily is the Daily Quote of The Fairport-East Rochester Port, Stuck in a Book and Rule of Three visited the Brontë Parsonage, Kevin Jackson's Theatre Reviews posts about Polly Teale's Brontë performances in Sydney, Teaching and Technology is reading Jane Eyre, missmarvellous loves Jane Eyre 1996(?) (in Swedish), Seriously..., Annie Speaks Her Mind, *Tristi Pinkston, LDS Writer, Tangled Words and Dreams, The Write Blocks, For the Love of the Written Word, Why Not? Because I Said So! review Chocolate Roses by Joan Sowards.

Finally, The Chronicle of Higher Education publishes an article about Sex & Romance Expert Emily Brontë, inspiration of the WWES (What Would Emily Say?) group. In the words of Gina Barreca, founder and for the moment only member of the group:

Please can we start a group called "What Would Emily Say?" I mean, Emily Brontë's birthday is July 30th and heartsick lovers everywhere need to celebrate—or at least consult.
Members of WWES already exist, even if they don't have an official name or offer official T-shirts (yet). This was proven to me by the fact that I was asked to complete a series of questions concerning love and romance in Wuthering Heights for a popular online dating site. With an eye towards making my comments revelant to what are somtimes called "singles" in today's world, I accepted the challenge because it was too funny to pass up. (Read more)
7. What do we learn from Emily Brontë's book? Wuthering Heights teaches us that: 1. You shouldn't marry only for money; 2. You shouldn't marry only for passion; 3. You shouldn't depend only on your significant other for self-definition; 4. You need to get away from the moors, out of the rain, and into a warm circle of good friends who will laugh you out of your depression before you start yelling somebody's name on the moor.
Happy birthday, Emily Brontë, wherever you are.

Joining this wish: Inside Google Books, Dawn Schreiner Illustration (who posts an original portrait), A Cineaste's Bookshelf and Readaholic (also celebrating the 75th anniversary of Penguin Books with a giveaway of Wuthering Heights and Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair, this one only on the first blog), Les Brontë à Paris (in French), Anne Bustard, Blogue do Sítio do Livro and Abaciente (in Portuguese), Wonder and the Wooden Post, the Brontë Sisters, The Diary of a Dead Moth, The Educated Imagination, January Magazine, Enslow Publishers and not a tribute post per se, but also related to, Much Madness is Divinest Sense reviews Denise Giardina's Emily's Ghost.

Categories: Books, Emily Brontë, Fiction, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, Wide Sargasso Sea, Wuthering Heights

Portrait of the artist's wife

In April this year, Mongoose Press released the “first ever” anthology of contemporary chess fiction. Subscribers to our Yahoo news group will already know that one of the stories was written by LCSNA-member and novelist Katherine Neville. Neville’s story featuring Alice Liddell and Charles Dodgson sits alongside other stories diverse in genre and inspiration. Other contributors include Steven Carter, author of the New York Times best-seller Emperor of Ocean Park, and Paul Eggers, former United States Chess Federation master.

A lengthy review of the book, written by Sean Gonsalves, is now available on ChessCafe.com. In Howard’s Gambit, Gonsalves provides some interesting back story to the book and its editor Howard Goldowsky. He also reviews some of the contributions. For serious chess aficionados, let down in the past by implausible fictional chess, Gonsalves offers the following reassurance:

… for all you expert chess players out there, the icing on the cake with MOT is the realistic description of actual chess moves in each of the twelve stories, unlike the impossible positions found in lots of pulp chess fiction.

To wit, from Patrick Somerville’s short story, The Game I Once Enjoyed:

“There was a fork on his next turn – king and bishop – but I had to get my queen out of the way of the long diagonal he’d opened up in his last turn, another little something I had missed. He’d be up a piece, whichever way I went to save my queen. So be it, I thought. Been here before. I reached forward to move, but stopped.” More…

Masters of Technique: Mongoose Chess Anthology of Chess Fiction (Hardcover) can be purchased from the Mongoose Press ($24.95) or from Amazon ($17.96). Proceeds from the book will go to support chess schools and clubs.

Rose, alas!, at 8, και ημισι αρροζος.¹ ―

Worked very hard at the 2 Nuneham outlines ― & at 11 or 12, took my Cedar=drawing ― &c. &c. in a cab to Hansens, ― this being over the second week I am daily expected ― & ever paying for the room. ― Of course, I find the room all upside down ― chimney sweepers & the devil knows what. They certainly are wrong in this ― for they had time enough ― before. ― Bounced I out in a gt. rage, & cab back to Stratford Pl. ― & then to Foords, & sent a van for the picture. ― Then I returned & saw Gush, who lets me have his back room. Mrs. H. ― & Hansen diversely came ―but I saw neither, for Morier & Burnet M. came too.

At 4 ― or 3½ ― went across the Parx to Daddy H.: he is still at work on the Cairo picture. Δεν εμπορω να γραψω δια αυτον.² ― ― Miss Martineau, & Miss Hunt there. ―― Walked back: ― & began the Cedar canvass ― by measuring & Squaring. J. Edwards had called, wh. I am sorry for. … Dined at 8.30. Chops & Ps. ―

Read. In Memoriam ― & other matters ―

If one works less, & improves less ― at least one suffers less than in last year.

I wonder how Γεωργιος Κοκαλι is, και τα παιδια του. Να τα φυλαξη ο Θεος!³

― XX13

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

1. And half [].
2. No dealer to write [by him].
3. Giorgio Cocali … and his children. God spare them! (GT).

French artists Marguerite Gerard (1761-1837) painted this domestic scene of a mother about to breast feed her child.  The subject is unusual in that breasfeeding one’s baby was unfashionable for aristocratic and upper classes,  and the act had become associated with the poor and lower classes. Generally, wet nurses were paid to feed the babies [...]

Today, July 31 BBC-Radio 7 offers another chance to listen to Martyn Wade's play Gondal:

Gondal
First broadcast 21st December 1992 BBC Radio 4

Sat 31 July 2010 13:00
Sun 1 Aug 2010 01:00

Martyn Wade's play about Emily Bronte parallels her life at Haworth with a dramatic reconstruction of Gondal, her epic fantasy world set on a Pacific island from which the ideas for 'Wuthering Heights' evolved.

Nathaniel Parker............Fernando
Janet Maw.....................Emily Brontë
Diana Quick..................Augusta
John Rowe....................Lord Eldred
Clive Francis.................Alfred
Linda Polan...................Tabitha
Moir Leslie....................Angelica
David Thorpe................Alexander/Douglas
Keith Drinkel.................Parry/King Julius
Annabelle Lanyon..........Young Emily
Eric Allen......................Gerald
Bernadette Windsor.......Young Charlotte/Young Augusta
Jill Lidstone...................Young Branwell

Categories: Audio-Radio, Fiction

A curious proposal comes from Sordevolo (Piadmont, Italy).

I Parchi Letterari® Franco Antonicelli
Villa Cernigliaro Dimora storica
X Anno culturale 2010.
I Viaggi sentimentali ®

Zero gravità presenta
Villa Cernigliaro,
Saturday, 31 July 2010, 21.00 h

Cime Tempestose
by Emily Brontë

Wuthering Heights, unico romanzo di Emily Brontë, pubblicato nel 1847, è come un diamante grezzo, racconta le passioni senza levigarle. C'è qualcosa di selvaggio che riporta all'archetipo. Il mio amore per Heathcliff somiglia alle eterne rocce nascoste e immutabili; dà poca gioia apparente ma è necessario - dice Catherine. La forza diabolica con cui viene scolpito questo sentimento è un vero mistero. Emily Brontë non ha vissuto e ha raccontato la vita.

con
Raffaella Boscolo (Signor Lokwood, Signora Dean, Cathrine, Heathcliff)
Maia Bertoldo (Heathcliff, Hareton cugino di Cathy)
Anna Leda Perinotto (Cathrine Linton, figlia di Cathy e di Edgar, Edgar Linton, suo padre)
Alice Violaine (Cathrine Earnshaw da giovane, lo spirito di Cathy)

ai fuochi Chef Alex con Rosanna & Lò
direzione artistica Carlotta Cernigliaro
produzione Zero gravità
collaborazione tecnica Teatro Out Off

“La notte scorsa sono stato alle soglie dell’inferno. Oggi sono in vista del mio paradiso. Lo fisso con i miei occhi”

note di regia:
La passione per il romanzo “Cime tempestose”, la suggestione del posto, la frequentazione della Villa, hanno alimentato in me visioni, tanto che ho sentito l'esigenza di rappresentarlo. La mia lettura scenica è da lettrice; ne ho estrapolato e drammatizzato alcune parti. Sono gli occhi di un lettore che interpreta quello che sente e per questo che chiedo allo spettatore di poter credere che io sia più personaggi di età diverse e anche maschili.. Una libertà della fantasia a volermi credere ora il Signor Lokwood l'affittuario, ora la Signora Dean, la domestica che racconta la storia, e soprattutto l'eroina del romanzo Cathrine e poi lui, Heathcliff, unendo questi due protagonisti ancor più per l'indissolubile e struggente legame delle loro anime. Cathrine dice:- io sono Heathcliff..-. Infine, ma non ultimo, ho coinvolto le tre ragazze, splendide nella loro freschezza, che ho sempre visto abitare la Villa, correre o trattenersi in quelle stanze colme della loro innocenza da rendere prezioso il loro essere per la prima volta in scena. Esse interpretano i protagonisti nella loro giovane età. Le ringrazio per aver condiviso questa speciale avventura. (Raffaella Boscolo) (Google translation)

Categories: Theatre, Wuthering Heights

Madame X by John Singer Sargent

Painting of the Day Archive

This article in The Guardian about Sally Hawkins insists on the idea that Jane Eyre 2011 will be premiered at the upcoming Venice Film Festival:

The actress, who won a Golden Globe for her lead role in Mike Leigh's 2008 Happy-Go-Lucky, is also to appear in a new version of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre due to premiere at the Venice film festival in September[.] (Vanessa Thorpe)

EDIT: Nevertheless the official selection of the 2010 Venice Film Festival doesn't list the film.

The Guardian also publishes a list of the ten best movie cameos. The philosopher and literary critic Roland Barthes made an appearance on André Téchiné's 1979 film Les Soeurs Brontë as W.M. Thackeray (in the picture):

André Téchiné, a leading member of the second wave of Cahiers du Cinéma critics to become auteur-directors, is the dedicatee of the essay "Diderot, Brecht, Eisenstein" by his mentor and one-time lover, the influential and charismatic critic Roland Barthes. In this film starring Isabelle Adjani, Isabelle Huppert and Marie-France Pisier as the Brontës, Téchiné returns the compliment by giving Barthes the cameo role of William Makepeace Thackeray, who escorts Charlotte to Covent Garden. Perhaps Michael Winner should have made a film about the Goncourt Brothers casting FR Leavis, his fellow member of Downing College, Cambridge, as Flaubert. (Philip French)

DNA (India) reviews Sarita Mandanna's Tiger Hills:

Describing the genesis of the book, Mandanna said: “I wanted to write a book with a panoramic lens, similar to Jane Austen and Wuthering Heights.”

More wide-angle lens than panoramic.

The Australian Literary Review and Nao Consigo Evitar (in Portuguese) post about Wuthering Heights; Dhambizao devotes a poem and Cazadores de Palabras a post (in Spanish) to Jane Eyre.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Wuthering Heights

A young woman is lodging with an old woman and others in a garret in Augsburg in 1817; she has pawned a number of her possessions, and thinks it would be a nice idea to recover them again. So she kills the old woman while everyone else is out, hides her body in the attic, steals some of her meagre possessions, and takes them off to be sold. That evening it occurs to her that she might get into trouble if the body is discovered, and has a bright idea. This is what she says in her confession: "At about 10 o'clock we all went to bed. I began to ask myself how it might be possible to get rid of the body to prevent my crime from being discovered. The thought struck me all of a sudden that I ought to set fire to the house, simply for the purpose of destroying [the old woman's] corpse. With this idea in my mind I fell asleep. At the stroke of 12, I woke up again, and rose from my bed and crept out into the kitchen, where I set fire to the wood-shavings that I had heaped over the body. It must have been a quarter past twelve by now. I then went back to bed, but was unable to get back to sleep again. After a good quarter of an hour had passed, the fire really began to crackle, for the shavings were very dry at the place where I had lit the fire." So after she had set fire to a pile of woods-shavings in the attic of the house in which she herself was living, an old timber-framed building which would be burned to ground if the fire ran its course, she went back to bed and was apparently rather surprised that she could not get back to sleep again. This was my contribution to a discussion over dinner about the boundlessness of human stupidity; but it was ruled out of order on the ground that she must have been touched in the head. And perhaps it is true that no wholly sane person could be quite as stupid as that. (The fire was noticed by some neighbours and extinguished, and the girl was arrested after she tried to flee. She was spared the death penalty, incidentally, because it was felt that she had acted more out of stupidity - 'Leichtsinn, Unüberlegtheit und Unbesonnenheit' - than wickedness.)

Cool news! My novel, The Rake's Inherited Courtesan won one of the prestigious Daphne's here at the RWA conference in Orlando.


Here you see me with two other nominees from Harlequin Historicals, Julia Justiss and my chapter mate Kate Bridges, and the two harlequin editors, Joanne Grant and Linda Fildew. Needless to say we were all very happy.

Thank you Kiss of Death!

What an exciting evening.

A GLANCE AT FIELD LANE RAGGED SCHOOL.  

RAGGED SCHOOLS have been so long before the public, that they have lost the prestige of novelty. Whether John Pounds, the humble cobbler of Portsmouth, was the originator of the system in England, or whether, under a sense of individual responsibility, it sprung up in various districts at the same time, cannot easily be determined. Suffice it to say that, as the very best meaus of meeting the claims of the destitute and depraved classes, they have so multiplied that, not to refer to the provinces, there are now about 160 Ragged Schools in the Modern Babylon, wherein, by day and by night, 20,000 scholars are taught how to make the best of both worlds. Yet, though much has been done, more remains to be effected, before the social and spiritual needs of the parishes of London will be fully reached. For drunkenness and profligacy abound. " Gaffs " (unlicensed penny theatres) are permitted to give nightly lessons to youth how to perpetrate crime successfully; licentious periodicals, whose sale may be counted by hundreds of thousands, corrupt our youthful population; whilst in the low districts of London, too, the hovel of poverty and the felon's den are associated, and the offspring of honest penury and of the coiner, playing together in the same gutter, receive the same street education. Hence, could the "stones cry out of the wall, and the beam of the timber answer it," almost every rookery would bear witness to the fearful iniquity of its occupants.

A great sound installation is running at (well, underneath) Somerset House until 31st May entitled "River Sounding" ... I just went today and I wish I could go during the late-night opening on Thursdays (when it gets dark and must be seriously spooky). I seriously recommend it, if you have a few minutes to spare ... website here ... spotted via the great http://londonist.com/

Just came across an article which the hard-core equine economists amongst you might enjoy ...

Horse Traction in Victorian London by Ralph Turvey

For a similar contemporaneous account, see The Horse World of London.

One of the things I love about old photographs (of which I don't possess any originals - just Victorian photo books of 'sights' of London, which were mass produced for tourists) are the little people just visible in the picture. Two of them grace the title of this blog - a couple caught crossing Westminster Bridge, as it happens - I love the way he's carrying the baskets for them both - and how you can tell they're working class from him doing just that, and the cut of his clothes.

At the other end of the spectrum, I just came across this trio near Green Park

Of course, they may not be a trio at all ... the man on the left is looking away, as they cross the road. But I love his jaunty steps, the brisk walk with the cane, as opposed to the man on the right, loosely holding his umbrella, seemingly just sauntering - his wife hitching up her skirts to avoid the mess on the road. The man with the cane has a self-important air about him - was he a leading politican, financier or just a military man with an upright bearing?

All that's left of him, of course, is this smudge on a page.

Just in case you were wondering, here's a piece from the Cornhill Magazine, anthologised in the Times of Dec.27, 1862.

HOW BURGLARY IS MANAGED. We will suppose a burglary completely arranged and a dark gusty night arrived to favour its execution - bright nights are never chosen for such enterprises. After drinking a courage cup together, the thieves start away, but not in company. There are usually three in a gang, two to enter the house, and one to keep watch outside. Each man takes his own road to the house; and should anyh of them be watched or followed by the police, he avoids the place of rendevous, and the "job" is off for the night. The tools are either carried by one of the party in a travelling bag, or, more frequently, they are bestowed in multitudinous pockets about the person. There is no difficulty in carrying the most complex and formidable apparatus in this way, for such tools are made to separate into many pieces. And the thieves have agreed upon a plan of action for every emergency. Sometimes the motto of the expedition is "every man for himself," in which case each man makes his escape as best he can, should the attempt fail; but oftener it is understood that they shall stand by each other from first to last. The police-constable has once more passed the houses in his weary round, his footfall sounds far away down the street, and now the burglars commence operations. If yyou have a watchdog it is drugged; if you have a corruptible servant, he has been bribed, perhaps. A mould has been taken of your house-key by some innocent-looking woman, who has got into the hall for a moment on pretended business, and the door yields instantly to the counterfeit. Or perhaps your house is regularly broken into; and there are various ways of accomplishing that feat. "Jumping a crib" is entrance by a window; "breaking a crib," forcing a back door; "grating a cri,b" through cellar gratings;  "garreting a crib," through the roof or by an attic window. Entrance through the roof is sometimes cleverly effected (from the leads of an empty house adjacent) by means of an umbrella. First a few slates are removed, then a small hole is made, and through this aperture a strong springless umbrella is thrust and shaken open. Again tthe thieves go to work upon the hole in the roof, which they widen rapidly and with perfect confidence, since the debris falls noiselessly into the umbrella pendant beneath. By one of these means, then, the burglars have entered the house; and when they are determined to come in it is almost impossible to keep them out; and once within they fall to work rapidly and noiselessly.  At one time housebreakers held to the supersition that no sleeper could awake and no waking man could see them, if they carried their candle in a dead man's hand. There are no such superstitions now, but there are silent matches and indiarubber goloshes - things far more to the robber's purpose. Or he pulls a pair of thick stockings over his boots, and so moves about unheard within, while his confederate, the "crow," keeps watch without. The policeman again passes the house where this treasure is being sought; but nothing is discovered to him. Even if a panel hhas been cut from the door, and the constable, in passing, turns his head lantern on the very spot, discovery is by no means certain; for the panel has been replaced by a sheet of grained or painted paper provided for the purpose. The scout's signalss are anxiously observed by his comrades. By a cough, a whistle, a stamps of the foot, or by mewing like a cat, perhaps, he is able to inform them instantly, while they are at work in one room, that a light has beren struck in another; that the inmates are aroused, in fact, and immediately retreat necessary. Nor do burglars venture to leave the house, even when the booty is secured, until they are signalled that the way is clear for an escape.

The original Cornhill article is called "The Science of Garotting and Housebreaking" (and the whole thing, of course, dates from the garotting panic of 1862) and it can be viewed here.

Not remotely Victorian (except, perhaps, that she regularly performs ancient folk-songs, which would have been familiar to our Victorian ancestors) but I'm sitting here listening to June Tabor and I just want to share her with the world. Sit back and listen to these four songs on Spotify and I challenge you not to be astonished.

June Tabor on Spotify - click here ...

Dan Leno was the king of Victorian music-hall. You may remember Dan Leno and the Limehouse Golem, Peter Ackroyd's fantasy. I'm told by the people at I.B.Tauris that there's a new biography available by Barry Anthony and - what's more - if you contact me, I can send you the flyer offering 30% discount, as a friend of the site. Here's a nice web page, but a book would be even better, no?

A nice little book comes my way, courtesy of Shirebooks. It's called The Victorian Home by Kathryn Ferry and it covers all the ground you'd hope for in a well-written concise 100 pages that are also packed with some great illustrations and examples of Victorian households and houses (the latter are not only in London but throughout the country). Shirebooks are essentially pocket books that are not designed to provide a detailed study (go to Judith Flander's The Victorian House for that) but I think this is good example of the breed, and well worth having if you want a quick and straightforward introduction to the Victorians at home.

Another book to which I am alerted ... this one also includes a related small exhibition at the British Museum. It's called Jewellery in the Age of Queen Victoria. Here's the brief explanation from the BM:

Here's a letter contributing to the debate on managing unruly school-children which continues to this very day. It's remarkble how - although we associate the Victorians with iron discipline - the same issues about teacher authority - about parents teaching their children not to respect teachers - are raised in this letter from 1901.

THE JUVENILE HOOLIGAN

To the Editor of THE OUTLOOK

Elementary schoolmasters - or, at any rate, a great number of them - have a deep-seated grievance which deserves careful and whole-hearted consideration - a grievance which affects nothing more nor less than the very system of compulsory education. It is all very well to talk about this reform and that reform; but, after all, a great deal lies in the hands off the men who come into actual contact with the class for whom the school board system is run - the hundreds of children of all descriptions whose parents will not or cannot have them educated anywhere else. Many of these are tractable children, anxxious to learn, and well-behaved withal; others - and they are many, very many - are juvenile hooligans of an advanced and virulent type. And here the grievance of the master may  be said to begin.
    His cry is for authority - a freer hand. At present he is between the devil and the deep sea. Should he inflict the slightest corporal punishment upon a refractory pupil - a highly necessary action in some cases - he is placed between the enraged parent, who is determined to pursue the matter, on the one side, and the possibility that he may be strongly censured, or even dismissed by the Board, on the other.
     Well, what can he do?
      Every parent seems to drum into his or her children the fact that their schoomaster is merely a paid servant, supported by the money that they themselves pay. Naturally, the result of such a view as this is the utter overthrow of real authority.
      How can a master hope to do any good at all if his class does pretty well what it likes with absolute impunity? But I can hear people saying, why not "keep them in," and give them impositions to do? Impositions are all very well for children of the cultured classes, who are sensitive to punishments of this kind; but with children of the hooligan persuasion impositions are a mere farce. The punishment loses half its value when it does not appeal to the sensitiveness of the punished. The avverage child of, say, the Borough does not mind mere "stopping in," or writing lines; he does not see anything degrading about it. But give him a sharp reminder that he will feel and the ethics of punishment at once strike him as a disagreeable reality.
     I once visitted a board school in the South of London, in a neighnourhood which has a particularly bad name for violence and general bad behaviour. Never shall I forget the scene. The master was a mild, middle-aged man of undoubted abilities for teaching - but he was mild. Thhat sufficient for the youthgful hooligans of whom his class mostly consisted. They jeered at him when he reprimanded them, and when I asked him why he permitted such a state of affairs, and did not administer a sound thrashing to some of them, he replied wearily that it would be quite a fatal thing from his point of view. And on questioning him further, I gathered that his predecessor had been severely censured for striking a boy; and he had therefore sent in his resignation. Still, censure or no censure, had I been the master I should have given one or two of those little savages a sharp lesson. Even when the unhappy master dismissed his class they filed out making audible insulting remarks; some of them even  placed their finger to their noses and "booed" him.  I only hope that this school was an exception to the general rule; for the amount of work done appeared to me to be infinitesimal - a fact not due so much to the fault of the master as his helplessness as regards the judicious infliction of corporal punishment. Without this power he was pitifully weak, and his pupils were not slow to recognise this.
      Let us hope that the school boards will give this matter their earnest consideration as soon as possible. Some small regulation dealing with the matter might easily be framed in such a manner that certain restrictions in the infliction of corporal punishment were made. This would, I feel sure, do a great deal to check the growth of hooliganism by striking at the root, as it were, instead of waiting until the disease has had time to develop.

RONALD L. PEARSE

The Outlook, January 12 1901

Here's a lovely 'factual' piece from Reynold's Miscellany to chill the blood of any mid-Victorian young lady (or young man, for that matter).  It's from 1849 and contains all manner of interesting stuff (if you're interested in vampires) The author is one Frederick George Lee - who, it transpires, was a noted theologian and clergyman later in life, as well as penning a couple of books on the supernatural. At the time this article was written, he appears to have been only sixteen years old.

Did you know that you could become a vampire from eating infected beef? No, neither did I. Read on ...
 

THE VAMPYRE

BY FREDERICK GEORGE LEE.

Of all the superstitions that have from time to time terrified mankind, there is not one so revolting and disgusting as that regarding the vampyre. This blood-sucker has been pictured as "a ravenous corpse who rises in body and soul from the grave for the purpose of glutting his sanguinary appetite with the life-blood of those whose blood stagnates in his veins." He is endowed with an incorruptible frame to prey upon the lives of those of his nearest and dearest friends: he re-appears amongst them from the world of the tomb, not to tell the secrets of "joy or of woe,"—not to warn by his experience,— but to appal and assassinate those of his friends who were once dear to him;— and this, not for the gratification of any human feeling or revenge, but to feast a monstrous thirst after blood acquired in the tomb. Wasting illness, followed by death, was not all the punishment the victim had to suffer. He who was sucked by this monster, was in his turn compelled to become a member of this blood-thirsty community, and to inflict on others the same torments and evils he himself had endured. The vampyre not only sucked the blood of human beings but fed on that of cattle, to which he was supposed to communicate his  infections and loathsome disorder; so that if any one were unlucky enough to eat the flesh of cattle that had been sucked, he would, after death, be certain to become a member of the sanguinary fraternity.
     This horrible superstition was at its height in the beginning: of the eighteenth century. The peasants of Poland, Hungary,- Russia, and Germany, all believed in it; and the result was the greatest terror amongst that population. In many countries the belief was not confined to what is called the "lower classes:" all partook of it. Military and ecelesiastical commissions were appointed to examine: the facts; and whole countries rung with accounts of the ravages said to be committed by this infernal being.
    We quote from a translation of a foreign work the following mode which was employed in Germany, for the detection of vampyres:— "On a black horse they mounted a young male child, and compelled, them to gallop to and fro in the churchyard; and wherever the animal refused to proceed, they concluded that grave to contain a vampyre. Then they proceeded to remove the earth, and found a corpse to all appearance sleeping: the eyes half-closed, the face of a bright vermilion colour, the hair and. nails long, the limbs flexible, and the pulse beating.. By cutting off the head and filling up the trench, they supposed all danger to be removed; and those who had been attacked, with care obtained their usual strength."
    Other books on the subject, however, state that no village or town could be dispossessed of this nuisance until the creature was burned; during which time the spectators dipped leaves of rosemary into oil and sprinkled the charred body.
    Some authors affirm that this superstition owes its foundation to an ancient monastic legend which states that a certain Italian saint raised a young man from the grave in order that he should become a witness on behalf of the saint in a court of justice, after which he returned quietly to the solemn stillness of his tomb. In this instance, however, the satanic ferocity is in no way manifest, and therefore cannot exemplify that part of the vampyre's horrid conduct.
    In an article which appeared in a contemporary, the writer states, and with good foundation, that this superstition may be traced to the east. He brings forward a story related in that volume of interesting and extraordinary adventures "The Arabian Nights' Entertainments,"—which serves to show the similarity between the eastern European superstition—the likeness between the goule and the vampyre.
    For ourselves, we consider the superstition to have arisen from the actual ferocity of an animal known in. Africa and some parts of Asia,—we allude to the bat of Africa (Vespertilio Vampyrus), of which we will proceed to give a short description:— "This animal, which strongly resembles the common English bat in form, although perhaps ten times the size; its head is of a dark brown colour; its skin, which appears hard and thick, is of a greenish cast, and reflects beautiful colours in the sun's rays. The wings of the animal, which are very delicate and slender, appear like many coats of the spiders' web laid one upon the other, are used to fan the faces of its victim, whilst it inserts its two long fangs in the vein of some sleeping native—thereby producing a delicious coolness around, which renders repose the sweeter until the sufferer awakes in eternity."
    In this there certainly is a great resemblance to the superstition before related: but from a work published some time ago we quote a passage which throws still farther light upon the general features of the frightful belief:— "From the year 1730 to the year 1735, vampyres formed the general topic of argument and speculation. Pamphlets were published on them — the journals continually detailed fresh prodigies achieved by them—the philosophers scoffed at them—sovereigns sent-officers and.commissioners to iuquice into their terrific proceedings. Hungary, Poland, Silesia, Bohemia and Moravia , were the favourite scenes of :their appearance and exploits. The people of these countries, sunk in the: most abject ignorance, and living in a  condition and on a.coarse food, little above the brutes, placed implicit faith in these wonders. A vampyre haunted and tormented almost every village. Deceased fathers and mothers, who had reposed for years in their grave, appeared again at their dwellings, knocked at their doors, sat down to table in silence, ate little or nothing, sometimes nodded significantly at some unfortunate relation in token of their approaching death, struck them on the back, or sprang on their bellies or throats, and sucked draughts of blood from their veins. In general, however, this last consummation of vampyrism was left as an inference from the other facts; and the statement was, that certain. men or women of the village grew pale, and gradually wasted away — young girls in the flower of health lost the roses of their cheeks, and sank into rapid and premature decay — then an apparition of some deceased individual was seen, and. suspicion instantly fixed on him or her as the cause. The grave of the apparition was resorted to — where the corpse was invariably found fresh and well-preserved: the eyes open, or only half closed — the face vermilion coloured — the hair and nails long —the limbs supple and unstiffened — the heart beating. Nothing more was necessary to fix on the body the crime of vampyrism, and to attach to it the guilt of having drained the streams of life from all the pale youths and hectic maidens in thb vicinity. Some judicial forms were, however, often observed before proceeding to inflict the last penalty of justice on the offender. Witnesses were examined as to the facts alleged; the corpse was drawn from its grave, and handled, and inspected; and if the blood was found fluid in the veins, the members supple, and the flesh free from putrescence, a conviction of vampyrism passed—the executioner proceeded to amputate the head, extract the heart, or sometimes to drive a stake through it, or a nail through the temples, and then the body was burnt and its ashes dispersed to the wind. Burning was found the only infallible mode of divorcing the spirit from the frame of these pertinacious corpses. Impalement of the heart, which had been long considered to be the means of fixing evil and vagrant spirits to the tomb, and which in the case of suicides, our own law has barbarously retained from the days of superstition, was often ineffectual. A herdsman of Blow near Kadam, in Bohemia, on undergoing this ceremony, laughed at the executioners, and returned them many thanks for giving him a stake to defend himself against the dogs. The same night he arose to his nocturnal meal, and suffocated more persons than he had ever attacked before his impalement. He was at last exhumed and carried out of the village: On being again pierced with stakes he cried out most lustily — sent forth blood of a brilliant erubescence — and was at last finally quelled by being burnt to cinders."
   This incident, with many other similar narratives, is related in' a work called "Magia Posthuma," by Charles Ferdinand Schertz, dedicated to Prince Charles of Lorraine, Bishop of Olmutz, and printed at Olmutz in 1706.
    In a canton of Hungary, near the famous Tockay, and between the river Tessie and Transylvania, the people called the Heiduques were possessed by a firm conviction of the powers of vampyres. About 1727, a certain Heiduque, an inhabitant of Medreiga, named Arnold Paul, was crushed to death under a load of hay. .Thirty days afterwards four persons of the village died suddenly with all the symptoms indicative' of death by vampyrism. The people; puzzled and eager to discover the vampyre delinquent, at last recollected that Arnold Paul had often related how, in the environs of Casova on the frontiers of Turkish Servia, he had been tormented, and worried by a Turkish vampyre. This according to the fundamental laws of vampyrism should have converted Arnold into a vampyre in his grave; for all those who are passive vampyres on earth, invariably become vampyres active when they descend to the tomb. Arnold Paul, had, however, always stated that he had preserved himself from the attacks of the Turkish vampyre by eating some of the earth of his grave; and by embrocating himself with :his blood. These: precautions appeared, however, to be fruitless; for the inhabitants of Medreiga, on opening his tomb, forty days after his death, found upon him all the undoubted indices of an archvampyre — his corpse ruddy, his nails elengated; his veins swelling:with a sanguinary tide which oozed from his pores and covered his shroud and winding-sheet. The bailiff of the place proceeded to impale Arnold through the heart; on which he sent forth horrid cries with all the energy of a  living subject. His head was then cut off and his body burnt. Similar execution was then performed on the four deceased persons, the supposed victims of Arnolds' attacks; and.the Heiduques fancied themselves in safety from these terrific persecutors. Five years afterwards however, the same fatal prodigies reappeared. During the space of three months, seventeen persons of different ages and sexes died with all the old diagnostics — some without any visible malady — others, after several days of languor and :atrophy. Amongst others a girl named Stanosky, daughter of the Heiduque Stotutitzo, went one night to rest in perfect health, but awoke in the middle of the night; shrieking and trembling violently: she asserted that the son of the Heiduqe Millo, who had died nine weeks before, had. attacked her in her sleep, and had nearly strangled her with his grasp. Heiduque Millo's son was instantly charged with vampyrism. The .magistrates, physicians, and surgeons of the parish repaired to his grave, and found his body with all the usual characteristics of animation and.imputrescence, but they were at a loss to understand from what channel he had derived his faculties. At last it was discovered that the exhausted vampyre, Arnold Paul, had strangled, not only the four deceased persons but also a number of cattle, whose flesh had,been plentifully eaten by Millo's son and other villagers. This discovery threw the Heiduques into fresh consternation, and afforded, a horrid prospect of an indefinite renewal of the horrors of vampyrism. It was resolved: to open the tombs of all those who bad been buried since the flesh was consumed. Among forty corpses, seventeen were found with all the indubitable characteristics of confirmed vampyres. The bodies were speedily decapitated, the heads impaled, and the members burnt and their ashes cast into the river Teisse. The Abbé Dom. Calmet inquired into these facts, :and found them all judicially authenticated by local authorities, and attested by the officers of the.imperial garrisons, the surgeon majors of the regiments; and the principal inhabitants of the district. The account of the whole proceedings was sent in January 1735 to the Imperial Council of War at Vienna, who had established a military commission to inquire into the facts.

Reynolds Miscellany, January 20, 1849

Ok, having found a nice piece on vampyres, I had to find a companion magazine piece on werewolves ... and I wasn't disappointed ...

WEREWOLVES.

THE idea of a being, half wolf, half man, and possessing also many demoniacal attributes, is a very curious piece of old-world superstition still to be found in very many European countries, and strengthened, no doubt, by the discovery, at times, of children who have been carried off and cared for by wolves who preferred the role of foster-mother to that of devourer—an occurrence of which there are frequent proofs on record. The wild and howling night winds, the Maruts that gave the name to our too familiar nightmare, may have given the first notion of demon wolves to the trembling listener as they passed shrieking by his solitary tent or hut. As these winds also represented the Pitris, the good patres or fathers, and the followers of Indra, the transition of thought by which the spirit-wolf and the human form became amalgamated is easily imagined.
    There appears to be plenty of evidence that, at different times, a form of madness has broken out by which individuals have fancied themselves to be turned into wolves. Burton, in his Anatomy of Melancholy, describes this disease, which he styles Lycanthropia, as "when men run howling about graves and fields in the night, and will not be persuaded but that they are wolves or some such beasts." He quotes authority for many instances; one, among the rest, of "a poor husbandman that still hunted about graves, and kept in churchyards, of a pale, black, ugly, and fearful look. Such belike," continues the garrulous old writer, "such, belike, or little better, were King Proteus' daughters, that thought themselves kine; and Nebuchadnezzar, in Daniel, as some interpreters hold, was only troubled with this kind of madness."
    King James the First also speaks in a somewhat similar manner in the First chapter of the Third Book of Daemonologie. Pliny states that men were changed into wolves, and again into men; Pausanias narrates a history of a man who remained a wolf for ten years; and Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, describes the transition of Lycaon, king of Arcadia, who was turned into a wolf as a punishment for offering human flesh to the gods.
    A legend also speaks of one of the family of Anthos, who, selected by lot, proceeded to the shores of a lake in Arcadia, where, after suspending his garments to the branches of an oak, he plunged in and swam across. Changing into a wolf, he was condemned to wander for nine years ; but should he have abstained from feeding on human flesh, he was permitted to resume his former shape by swimming back again, and regaining his clothes which were still in the tree.
    Herodotus states that the Neurians became wolves for a few days once a year, and then returned to the form of men. Virgil and Propertius give the same trans..formation, and Petronius tells a story related by Niceros at Primalchio's banquet in which he (Niceros) set off to walk in the early morning accompanied by a "valiant soldier, a sort of grim water-drinking Pluto. About cockcrow,when the moon was shining as bright as midday, we came among the monuments. My friend began addressing himself to the stars, but I was rather in a mood to sing or to count them, and when I turned to look at him—lo ! he had stripped himself, and laid down his clothes near him. My heart was in my nostrils, and I stood like a dead man ; but he made a mark round his clothes and on a sudden became a wolf. Do not think I jest ; I would not lie for any man's estate. But to return to what I was saying. When he became a wolf, he began howling, and fled into the woods. At first I hardly knew where I was, and afterwards, when I went to take up his clothes, they were turned into stone. Who then died with fear but I? Yet I drew my sword, and went cutting the air right and left, till I  reached the villa of my sweetheart." Here he is told that a wolf had been at the farm and worried the cattle, but that a slave had run a lance into his neck, so he sets off home as fast as possible. " When I came to the  spot where the clothes had turned into stone, I could find nothing but blood. But when I got home I found my friend the soldier in bed, bleeding at the neck like an ox, and a doctor dressing his wound. I then knew he was a turnskin (versipellis), nor would I ever have broken bread with him again—no, not if you had killed me."
    The title " turnskin " is also in accordance with the Norwegian idea of the werewolf, as the change has always been supposed to have been effected by means of a skin robe, or sometimes a girdle, which could be put on or taken off. In the Middle Ages the bandit or outlaw was said to wear a caput lupinum, or as it was called in England, wulfesheofod. (wolf's head). King Harald Harfagr had a body of men called Ulfhednar (wolf-coated) to distinguish them from the Berseker (bearskin shirted), and these men, according to Hertz, were originally supposed to put on the strength and fierceness of the animal with his skin. The myth of the giant wolf Fenris, the offspring of evil Loki and the giantess Angurboda, who created such a disturbance among the gods in Asgard, gave a semi-religious authority to the man-wolf idea in Scandinavia.
    Professor de Gubernatis, in his excellent volume on Zoological Mythology, mentions a she-wolf in an Esthonian story who comes up on hearing the cry of a child, and gives it milk to nourish it. "The story tells us that the shape of a wolf was assumed by the mother of the child herself, and that, when she was alone, she placed her wolf disguise upon a rock, and appeared as a woman to feed the child. The husband, informed of this, orders that the rock be heated, so that when the wolf's skin is again placed upon it, it may be burnt, and he may thus be able to recognise and take back to himself his wife. The she-wolf that gives her milk to the
twin brothers, Romulus and Remus, in Latin epic tradition, was no less a woman than the nurse-wolf of the Esthonian story."
    In Germany the transformation is believed to take place by means of a belt made of wolf-skin, and should this be unfastened or cut, the man-wolf immediately loses his wolf nature. Mr. Kelly, in his Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and Folk Lore, speaks of these girdles being once for sale. "A sale," says he, "was made by order of the authorities, of a heap of old things that lay in a room in the Erichsburg. Among them were old implements of the chase which had been taken from poachers, and also some werewolf girdles. The Amtmann's man, having a mind to try the effect of the latter, buckled one of them on, was immediately turned into a wolf, and started off for Hunnesruck. The Amtmann rode after him, and cutting at his back with a sword, severed the girdle, whereupon the man resumed his proper shape." Another story is told of a little boy who put on his father's girdle, and was transformed. His father overtook him and unfastened it. The boy afterwards said that, the moment he put on the girdle, he became ravenously hungry. A common German story, also quoted by Mr. Kelly, is that of a charcoal-burner, who, believing his two companions to be asleep, fastened his wolf-belt round him, became a wolf, and devoured a foal. His comrades, who had only been feigning sleep, had observed him, and when, on their way home, he complained of an internal pain, they told him it was hardly to be wondered at when a man had a whole foal inside him. "Had you said that to me out yonder," replied the werewolf, "you would never have reached home again;" and saying this he disappeared, and was not again seen.
    Another German tale tells of a farmer who was driving his wife through a wood, and who suddenly alighted, telling his wife to drive on, and to throw her apron to any beast that might attack her. She was attacked by a wolf, who tore her apron into shreds, and then retreated. Upon her husband's return she saw some threads of her apron sticking between his teeth, and knew he was a werewolf. Iron or steel thrown or held over a werewolf is, in Germany, supposed to split the wolf-skin, so that the man comes out through the forehead. Loups garoux are still supposed to linger in some parts of France, but daring the sixteenth century many people were burnt to death, having been found guilty of assuming the form and habits of the werewolf. In Portugal, the legend of the Lobis-homem still survives, but it appears to be often confused with another superstition, that of the demon horse, the phooka of Irish tradition.
    The following Polish stories are given in Naake's translation of Slavonic fairy-tales. Some young people were dancing and enjoying themselves on a hill near the Vistula, when an enormous wolf seized one of the handsomest girls, and was dragging her away. Some of the youths followed and overtook them, when the wolf dropped the girl and stood at bay. As they had no fire-arms the young men stood irresolute, or hurried back for weapons, so the wolf again seized the girl, and bore her into the forest. Fifty years passed, and another feast was taking place on the same hill, when an old man approached. The people invited him to join them, but he sat silently and gloomily down. An old peasant entered into conversation, and was astonished when the stranger hailed him by name as his elder brother, who had been lost fifty years before. The aged stranger then told the wondering peasants that he had been changed into a wolf by a witch, and had carried away his betrothed from that hill during a festival, that they had only lived together in the forest for a year, and then she had died. He showed them his hands covered with blood, and said : "From that moment, savage and furious, I attacked every one and destroyed every thing I fell in with. It is now four years since I again changed to human shape. I have wandered from place to place. I wished to see you all once more, to see the but and village where I was born and grew up a man. After that—ah, woe is me Fly, fly from me. I shall become a wolf again!" He was instantly transformed, howled piteously, and disappeared in the forest for ever.
    The second story is of a peasant with whom a witch fell in love. As he slighted her, she told him that when next he chopped wood in the forest he would become a wolf. He laughed at her threats, but they were fulfilled. He wandered about for some years, but would never eat raw flesh, preferring to frighten away the
shepherds, and eat their provisions. At last he woke one day from sleep, and found himself once more a man. He immediately ran to his old home, only to find his parents dead, his friends dead or removed, and his betrothed married and with four children. In this and the preceding tale there is a trace of the Rip van Winkle
incident and its older original. A third story is also given, but space will not allow its transcription.
    In the story of the Léshy, or wood demon, given in Ralston's Russian Folk Tales, there is a strong resemblance to a portion of the former tale, which might suggest that the Léshy and the werewolf
were not unconnected. The wood demon carries a girl off into the forest, where she lives with him until he is shot by a hunter. The story of The Treasure in the same volume speaks of a goat-skin uniting with the body of a pope or priest, so that he could not take it off, thus becoming half animal as in the tradition of the wolf-man.
    Dasent, in the introduction to his Popular Tales from the Norse, shows that the belief in werewolves was common in Sweden in the sixteenth century. Going back into mythical times, he states that "the Volsunga Saga expressly states of Sigmund and Sinfistli that they became werewolves, which, we may remark, were Odin's  sacred beasts . . . The wolf's skin ... was assumed and laid aside at pleasure." In Morte d'Arthur (Book xix,, chap. 11) mention is made of "Sir Marrok, the good knyghte, that was betrayed with his wyf, for she made hym seuen yere a werewolf." In a Latin poem of the twelfth or thirteenth century (printed in the Reliquim Antiquae, ii., 103) there are some lines describing men in Ireland who could change themselves into wolves and worry sheep, and who, if they were wounded in their wolf form, retained the wound on regaining human shape.
    Sir Frederick Madden, in his Note on the Word Werwolf (William of Palerne, Edit. 1832), states: "In The Master of Game, a treatise on hunting composed for Henry the Fifth, is the following passage, 'And somme ther ben ... that eten children and men, and eten non other fleische from that tyme that thei ben acharmed with mannes fleisch ... And thei ben cleped werewolves, for that men shulden be war of them.'" The ancient romance, to which this was a modern note, was translated from the French at the command of Sir Humphrey de Bohun, about A.D. 1350, and gives a curious history of a werewolf. Alphouns, eldest son of the King of Spain and heir to the crown, was bewitched by his stepmother Braunde (who wished her own son, Braundinis to be the heir), and turned into a werewolf. This wolf carried away from Palermo William, the child of Embrons, King of Apulia, swam the Straits of Messina with the boy, and took him to a forest near Rome, not doing him any injury. The wolf went to obtain food for the child, and, in his absence, a cowherd found the boy, took him home, and adopted him. William grows up, and is given by the Emperor of Rome to his daughter as a page. The romance deals with many adventures; but, at last, William ,and the Emperor's daughter, Melior, become lovers and elope together dressed in the skins of two white bears. They wander until they find a den, where they are hidden. When they are suffering from hunger, the werewolf finds them, and brings them cooked beef and two flasks of wine, of which he had robbed two men. The Emperor of Rome, who had betrothed Melior to Partenedon, son of the Emperor of Greece, still pursues the wandering lovers, who are guided and helped by the werewolf. After many adventures, they reach Palermo, which they find besieged by the Spaniards. William, who has a werewolf painted on his shield, takes the King and Queen of Spain prisoners, and compels Queen Braunde to reverse her enchantment, and to restore the werewolf to his original human form.
   Wolves have been so long extinct in England that it is hardly to be expected that there should now linger any tradition of them, but the old werewolf idea seems to have been closely allied with the horrible vampyre. Indeed, so prominent a personage as one of our kings —King John himself—is said, in an old Norman chronicle, to have wandered in this shape after death. The monks of Worcester were compelled, by the frightful noises proceeding from his grave, to dig up his body and cast it out of consecrated ground.
    Some old story of a man possessed by the wolf-demon may perhaps have suggested to Shakespeare the outburst of Gratiano to Shylock, who was so vindictively pursuing his victim to obtain his flesh:
    Thy currish spirit
Govern'd a wolf ; who, hang'd for human slaughter,
Even from the gallows did his fell soul fleet,
And . . . . . . .
Infused itself in thee.
    In Normandy, a hundred years ago, the vanipyre-like Loup Garou was supposed to be the re-animated corpse of one who had died in mortal sin, and had risen from the grave to prey upon mankind. First, the corpse began to gnaw the face-cloth, then it wailed and shrieked horribly, burst open the coffin, and flames arose from the ground. This pleasant spectre then commenced its midnight murders in the wolf form, and these could only be stopped by the priest taking up the body, decapitating it, and flinging the head into a stream.
    It is worth mentioning, in addition to the remark in the beginning of our paper, that the discovery of wild children reared by savage animals in the woods may have strengthened the belief in half-human animals, that Dr. Hubsch, physician to the hospitals of Constantinople, stated that in 1852 he saw a specimen of one of a Central African tribe which possessed tails and fed constantly on human flesh. Mr. Baring-Gould, in his article on Tailed Men (Curious Myths of the Middle Ages), gives the history of John Struys, a Dutch traveller, who, he states, visited the Isle of Formosa in 1677, and who thus describes a wild man whom his companions
caught, and who had murdered one of their number : " He had a tail more than a foot long, covered with red hair, and very like that of a cow."
    Before taking leave of this interesting but ghastly superstition, I would mention the derivation of the prefix "were " in the word werewolf, as given by Sir Frederick Madden: "Wer," or "wera," a man, being the same as the Gothic "wair," Teutonic "wer," Francic "uuara," Celtic "gur," "gwr," or " ur," Irish "fair," Latin " vir," etc.
    Gervaise, of Tilbury, writing in the reign of Henry the Second, states : " Vidimus enim frequenter in Anglia per lunationes homines in lupos mutari, quod hominum genus Gerulfos Galli nominant, Angli vero werewlf dicunt ; were enim Anglice virum sonat, wlf, lupum."

All the Year Round, 1883

I'm going to write an article on London cabs and cab-drivers soon, so expect the odd addition to the website. Here's a nice article:

LONDON CAB REFORM

If John Bull were not, with all his grumbling, one of the most patient animals in existence, he could never have endured so long the cabs which he has to employ for the conveyance of his person through the streets of the metropolis. They are very poorly furnished and nasty, far below similar conveyances in any continental city with which we are acquainted. Greater fault still is to be found with the drivers, a large proportion of whom are so prone to overreach, that it is hardly possible to settle for their fares without a squabble. Our experience leads us to say, that at an average a stranger pays 30 per cent. above the proper sum, besides having his temper in almost every instance ruffled to some extent by the sense of having no adequate protection from the rudeness of this class of men. For a lady, there seems to be no chance of escape but by the alternative of some enormous over-charge. Altogether this department of public economy in London is in a most unsatisfactory state. Most people avoid using these street vehicles whenever thhey can, and this is especially true of strangers. We can state as a fact that a provincial gentleman of our accquaintance is accustomed to take the inconvenience of the cab-system into account in deliberating whether he shall have a month of Londdon life or not. It is one of the repelling considerations, to a degree that the Londoners themselves are not aware of.
    In an age of such exquisite contrivance and precision in mechanical and commercial matters, it might have been anticipated that the bad system of London cabs could not long survive. All dishonest businesses write their own doom. Those only thrive which sincerely seek the good of the public. Accordingly, it is not surprising, at a time when one-and-a-half per cent. is a fact in banking, to find two large and powerful companies getting up to supersede the bad, old, dear, cheating cabs with a new and civilised set. It is proposed by one of these bodies to 'provide for the public a superior class of carriages, horses, and drivers, at reduced and definite fares; to afford the utmost possible security for property; ans especially prompt and easy redress of complaints.' With better vehicles at three-fourths of the present charges - namely 6d. a mile - and these to be settled for in a manner which will preclude disputes, this company deserves, and will be sure to obtain, the public patronage. One good feature of the proposed arrangements will, we think, be highly satisfactory: the companyh will form a sufficient magistracy in itself to give quick and easy redress in the case of any wrong. But, indeed, from the precautions taken as to the employment of drivers, and the hold which the company will have over them, through the medium of guarantee and their own deposits in a benefit-fund, it seems to us that the good conduct of the men towards their 'fares' must be effectually secured. The other company proposes to have two classes of vehicles - one at 8d. and the other at 4d. a mile; and it contemplates the use of a mechanism for indicating the distance passed over. We most earnestly hope that both companies will succeed in establishing themselves and carrying an improvement so important to the public into effect.

Chambers Edinburgh Journal, 1852

Another article from Chambers, on the subject of cabs:

CABS AND CABMEN

At no time were cabman a popular class in London. Since the opening of the International Exhibition, they have become more unpopular than ever. Their life is a hard one; they constantly incline to take over-liberal views of diistance; and when a fare is refractory, they are anythhing but nice about the choice of language in enforcing extortionate demands. We know from the experience of 'strikes' that mechanics go to great lengths occasionally on a question of wages; but when once the price at which they are to be paid is fixed, and they assent to it, they never think of demanding more so long aa the particular rate of payment remains in force. It is not so with the cabman. He has his ostensible strike now and then; but, in point of fact, he indulges in one continual, though covert resistance to his employers - the public. He considers himself an ill-used man if he is paid only his fare. The person is an impostor who tenders it - 'a cove as ought to walk, and not be bilking cabman.' This system of abuse succeeds, or the public are more generous in their dealings with cabmen than with any other class of the working community, or there is a general feeling that the scale of fares is an insufficient one; for the Jehus themselves admit that in nineteen cases out of twenty they receive more than their legal due. They go further, and tell you that if such were not the case, the occupation 'would not be worth a follorin' on.'
     As the riding population know little more about the matter than what they gather from the payment of fares, the strong language of those to whom the money is paid, and the reports of cases in the police courts, it may not be out of place to state a few facts connected with the working of the cab-system. Of 'four-wheelers' and 'Hansoms,' there are nearly five thousand in London. Each cab is obliged to have a number for which the owner pays one shilling a day. Thus, if the cab is licensed to ply on Sundays as well as week-days, seven shillings a week are paid for the licence; but if only a week-day licence iss required, six shillings is the amount. The licensed owner of a cab is liable for any infraction of the law committed by means of the vehicle. The licence-duty is paid at Somerset Housse. Any person applying for permission to drive a cab plying for hiree must get a certain form filled up. On presenting this at Scotland Yard, a badge and a book of fares are given to him. For the former, he pays five shillings; for the latter, half-a-crown. In addition, he is taxed to the amount of five shillings annually, so long as he remains a driver. A driver may not lend his badge to any other person. It is clear that if he were permitted to do so, there would be an end of responsibility in case of misconduct.
    A new four-wheel cab costs about forty pounds; a second-hand one may be had for ten or twelve pounds; but any owner who can afford it, thinks it the better economy to purchase a new article. A new Hansom may be had for about thirty-five pounds; but if it be a 'spicey' one, and made to order, it will cost as much as a four--wheeeler. A well-made cab will run for about twelve months without requiring any repair, except in case of accident. At the end of that time, probably it will want new tires on the wheels. The tires on the front wheels wear out sooner than those on the hind wheels. A set of four tires costs about four-and-twenty shillings. When the London season is over, an aged or 'stale' horse, that will do very well for a four-wheel cab, may be got in London for ten or twelve pounds. Those cab-owners who have a little capital generally purchase young horses in Ireland or at fairs in this country.
     For a Hansom, quite a different style of horse is required. If he have no height, 'blood,' and action, the whole concern will look worse than the shabbiest of four-wheel cabs. Hence the owners of Hansoms go to a different market. Tattersall's is their ground. They purchase racers and hunters who have done thier worl, and who, though still showy, are sold without a warranty. Such animals would not do for four-wheelers. The class of work done by each description of cab is different. The four-wheelers go in for long distance, and more than two passengers; the Hansoms for short fares and one or two riders. There is to some extent an impression - arising, no doubt, from the 'large' manner of the men and the mettlesome appearance of their animals - that the drivers of Hansom receive highher fares than those of their more humble-looking competitors on four wheels.  Experienced men in the trade say that this is not the case. For twon work, the Hansom has the advantage. In the city and at the west end, they receive three fares for every one picked up by a four-wheeler; but at the railways and in general family hire, the latter 'beat them to bits.' The relative advantages may be summed up thus: The cabs on four wheels get fewer jobs, but larger fares; the Hansoms do shorter distances, bur are hired more frequently. A cab of either kind cannot be well worked without a couple of horses. There are men who have only a single horse, but they are obliged to work at a great disadvantage. They must be very economical of their horse-power, and the system on which they act is to pull up on the nearest  'rank' after discharging their fare, so that they may goo over as little ground as possible, when no earning money. Those who have two horses, usually take out one in the morning, and work it up to three or four o'clock in the afternoon; put it up then, and take out the other for the evening; or give each horse a rest every alternate date. Owners of a single cab are, in nearly every instance, their own drivers; and they are the most steady and civil men connected witht the occupation. If they are not sober and careful of their horses and cab, they cannot make a living out of the business. It is your mere driver, generally, who is reckless and a rogue; but it is right to say that there are very many exceptions.
       The system on which these men work is a bad one and goes far to account for the numerous police-court cases in which cabmen figure as defendants. They are like the unfortunate organ-grinders; they do not receive wages from their masters, but ppay them so much a day. In order that this sum and the driver's own profit may be secured, horses and the public are made victims. A careful owner, driving his own cab and keeping a pair of horses, calculates on earning fifteen or sixteen shillings a day tthroughout the whole year, except during the autumn vacation and the two or three weeks after Christmas. These are his dull times. The same amount is about the sum paid by a driver for the hire of a cab and two horses. This pays the large cab-owner very well, even though the horses be overworked. The driver has no interest in easing the animals; or obtaining a good character for the owner: his object is to get as many fares as he can in the day, and bully his riders out of as much money as possible. These men drink a good deal, at their own expense and are frequently 'treated' by their customers. They go through much hardship in the way of exposure to wet and cold, and long waits on the ranks. To these causes may be ascribed the habits of dissipation into which too many of them sink. It is to be hoped that the efforts of Lord Shaftesbury and other philanthropists, who have turned their attention to the establishment of cabmen's clubs, may work a reformation.
    Cab-horses are fed well on good oats and chopped clover. If they were not , they would very soon be unfit for work. To keep one, costs about fifteen shillings a week; and a cab-owner who is his own driver and who receives five or six pounds a week, calculates his profits - allowing for wear and tear of  cab and horse, and stable expenses - at from two pounds ten shillings to ten pounds, for the six days: no an inordinate profit surely, considering how hard he works, and tthe capital which he has embarked in his horse and rolling stock. A great proportion of the small cab-owners do not work their cabs on Sunday, concurring as they do with Mr Bianconi, the extensive Irish cab-proprietor, that giving horses one day's rest in the week is a saving of money in the long-run, to those who have purchased the animals, and will have to replace them when used up. The night-cabs are worked by the worst description of horses: there is scarcely one of them that is no spavine or partially blind or both. To see one whose fore-legs are not looped and palsied from falling down and breaking his knees, is an exceptional curiosity;. No cab-horses are worked day and night. Many cabs are. Seven shillings a night is considered a suffficient payment by a driver for the hire of a horse and cab. In some cities, Dublin, for instance, the fares between twelve at night and six in the morning are double. In London, this is not the case; and it sems a hardship on a cabman that he should be obliged to take a rider at sixpence a mile, within the four-mile radius, in the middle of a cold and wet winter's night, when he has not the least chance of a return fare.
     At all the gret railway stations there are whhat are called 'privileged cabs.' The railway companies admit a certain number of cabs to take up their position on the rank outside the platform, and await the arrival of the trains. For this privilege each cab pays a sum, varying at the different stations, of from one-and-sixpence to three shillings a week. The company keep an inspector of cabs, a policeman to take down the number of each privileged vehicle as it leaves the station with its fare, and a book in which the numbers of all the cabs and the names of their owners and drivers are recorded. The number kept in this book is not that issued witht the licence at Somerset House, but one painted on the side of the cab in proximity with the initials of the company. Passengers arriving by trains are afforded protection for their luggage and a precaution against imposition by the regulationds in respect of the privileged cabs. As has just been observed, a policeman at the exit-gate takes down the number of each cab as it passes out; and in addition the driver must every evening fill up a return of the number of fares he has had during the day, and the places to which he has conveyed them. When the privileged cabs have all been hired up, the cabs on the rank nearest to the station are admitted to the railway on the a la queue principle.
    I have found no cabman to deny that the Exhibition enormously increased his profits. Owners charged drivers as much as one pound a day and more for the hire of a cab; but the latter at that time were taking their two pounds ten shillings and three pounds a day, and only for what they call the tyranny and worry of the police-constables at South Kensington, they would have made a great deal more. They state that as soon as the police observed an argument as to the amount of the fare, they would step forward, ask the distance travelled, tell the rider the proper amount, and order the cabman off. No higher testimony, can be paid to the efficiency of the officers whom the commissioners of police stationed at the Exhibition. Men who drive their own horses have no reaped quite so large a harvest, but their profits have been proportionally increased. Cabmen do not like lady-fares; they have a horror of an 'unprotected female;' because, if any dispute arises, a sympathetic crowd assembles, and imposition is stopped. The theory of cab-management in the metropolis on the part of the authorities is admirable - in the regulations regarding the deposit in the police-stations of left property, for example - but in pracctice it is found to be very defective. A cabman may give you all sorts of insolence, and make off before you have had time to take his number; or you may not have a pencil about you. In Paris, the driver must hand you a ticket on which his number is inscribed, when he takes you up. The introduction of that plan would be a great improvement here. On the other hand, something may be said for the cabbies. For instance, is sixpence sufficient payment for the carriage of two passengers, and as much luggage as they can stow inside, for a full mile from a railway station, at which man, horse, and cab have been standing for an hour or two awaiting the arrival of a train?

I've been reading the very occasional piece of Victorian poetry recently, and I like the grim stuff the best. Here's In the Great Metropolis by Arthur Hugh Clough:

IN THE GREAT METROPOLIS

Each for himself is still the rule
We learn it when we go to school
The devil take the hindmost, O!

And when the schoolboys grow to men,
In life they learn it o’er again
The devil take the hindmost, O!

For in the church, and at the bar,
On ’Change, at court, where’er they are,
The devil takes the hindmost, O!

Husband for husband, wife for wife,
Are careful that in married life
The devil takes the hindmost, O!

From youth to age, whate’er the game,
The unvarying practice is the same
The devil take the hindmost, O!

And after death, we do not know,
But scarce can doubt, where’er we go,
The devil takes the hindmost, O!
Ti rol de rol, ti rol de ro,
The devil take the hindmost, O!

And here's another by Coventry Patmore, better known as the author of The Angel in the House.

A LONDON FETE

All night fell hammers, shock on shock;
With echoes Newgate's granite clang'd:
The scaffold built, at eight o'clock
They brought the man out to be hang'd.
Then came from all the people there
A single cry, that shook the air;
Mothers held up their babes to see,
Who spread their hands, and crow'd for glee;
Here a girl from her vesture tore
A rag to wave with, and join'd the roar;
There a man, with yelling tired,
Stopp'd, and the culprit's crime inquired;
A sot, below the doom'd man dumb,
Bawl'd his health in the world to come;
These blasphemed and fought for places;
Those, half-crush'd, cast frantic faces,
To windows, where, in freedom sweet,
Others enjoy'd the wicked treat.
At last, the show's black crisis pended;
Struggles for better standings ended;
The rabble's lips no longer curst,
But stood agape with horrid thirst;
Thousands of breasts beat horrid hope;
Thousands of eyeballs, lit with hell,
Burnt one way all, to see the rope
Unslacken as the platform fell.
The rope flew tight; and then the roar
Burst forth afresh; less loud, but more
Confused and affrighting than before.
A few harsh tongues for ever led
The common din, the chaos of noises,
But ear could not catch what they said.
As when the realm of the damn'd rejoices
At winning a soul to its will,
That clatter and clangour of hateful voices
Sicken'd and stunn'd the air, until
The dangling corpse hung straight and still.
The show complete, the pleasure past,
The solid masses loosen'd fast:
A thief slunk off, with ample spoil,
To ply elsewhere his daily toil;
A baby strung its doll to a stick;
A mother praised the pretty trick;
Two children caught and hang'd a cat;
Two friends walk'd on, in lively chat;
And two, who had disputed places,
Went forth to fight, with murderous faces.

And, since we've had werewolves and vampires this month, it seems fitting to end with goblins, or, at least, goblin men and their fruit, which is largely to be avoided (courtesy of Christina Rossetti).

GOBLIN MARKET

MORNING and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
"Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpecked cherries-
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheeked peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries,
Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries--
All ripe together
In summer weather--
Morns that pass by,
Fair eves that fly;
Come buy, come buy;
Our grapes fresh from the vine,
Pomegranates full and fine,
Dates and sharp bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and bilberries,
Taste them and try:
Currants and gooseberries,
Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citrons from the South,
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye,
Come buy, come buy."

Evening by evening
Among the brookside rushes,
Laura bowed her head to hear,
Lizzie veiled her blushes:
Crouching close together
In the cooling weather,
With clasping arms and cautioning lips,
With tingling cheeks and finger-tips.
"Lie close," Laura said,
Pricking up her golden head:
We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?"
"Come buy," call the goblins
Hobbling down the glen.
"O! cried Lizzie, Laura, Laura,
You should not peep at goblin men."
Lizzie covered up her eyes
Covered close lest they should look;
Laura reared her glossy head,
And whispered like the restless brook:
"Look, Lizzie, look, Lizzie,
Down the glen tramp little men.
One hauls a basket,
One bears a plate,
One lugs a golden dish
Of many pounds' weight.
How fair the vine must grow
Whose grapes are so luscious;
How warm the wind must blow
Through those fruit bushes."
"No," said Lizzie, "no, no, no;
Their offers should not charm us,
Their evil gifts would harm us."
She thrust a dimpled finger
In each ear, shut eyes and ran:
Curious Laura chose to linger
Wondering at each merchant man.
One had a cat's face,
One whisked a tail,
One tramped at a rat's pace,
One crawled like a snail,
One like a wombat prowled obtuse and furry,
One like a ratel tumbled hurry-scurry.
Lizzie heard a voice like voice of doves
Cooing all together:
They sounded kind and full of loves
In the pleasant weather.


Laura stretched her gleaming neck
Like a rush-imbedded swan,
Like a lily from the beck,
Like a moonlit poplar branch,
Like a vessel at the launch
When its last restraint is gone.

Backwards up the mossy glen
Turned and trooped the goblin men,
With their shrill repeated cry,
"Come buy, come buy."
When they reached where Laura was
They stood stock still upon the moss,
Leering at each other,
Brother with queer brother;
Signalling each other,
Brother with sly brother.
One set his basket down,
One reared his plate;
One began to weave a crown
Of tendrils, leaves, and rough nuts brown
(Men sell not such in any town);
One heaved the golden weight
Of dish and fruit to offer her:
"Come buy, come buy," was still their cry.
Laura stared but did not stir,
Longed but had no money:
The whisk-tailed merchant bade her taste
In tones as smooth as honey,
The cat-faced purr'd,
The rat-paced spoke a word
Of welcome, and the snail-paced even was heard;
One parrot-voiced and jolly
Cried "Pretty Goblin" still for "Pretty Polly";
One whistled like a bird.

But sweet-tooth Laura spoke in haste:
"Good folk, I have no coin;
To take were to purloin:
I have no copper in my purse,
I have no silver either,
And all my gold is on the furze
That shakes in windy weather
Above the rusty heather."
"You have much gold upon your head,"
They answered altogether:
"Buy from us with a golden curl."
She clipped a precious golden lock,
She dropped a tear more rare than pearl,
Then sucked their fruit globes fair or red:
Sweeter than honey from the rock,
Stronger than man-rejoicing wine,
Clearer than water flowed that juice;
She never tasted such before,
How should it cloy with length of use?
She sucked and sucked and sucked the more
Fruits which that unknown orchard bore,
She sucked until her lips were sore;
Then flung the emptied rinds away,
But gathered up one kernel stone,
And knew not was it night or day
As she turned home alone.

Lizzie met her at the gate
Full of wise upbraidings:
"Dear, you should not stay so late,
Twilight is not good for maidens;
Should not loiter in the glen
In the haunts of goblin men.
Do you not remember Jeanie,
How she met them in the moonlight,
Took their gifts both choice and many,
Ate their fruits and wore their flowers
Plucked from bowers
Where summer ripens at all hours?
But ever in the moonlight
She pined and pined away;
Sought them by night and day,
Found them no more, but dwindled and grew gray;
Then fell with the first snow,
While to this day no grass will grow
Where she lies low:
I planted daisies there a year ago
That never blow.
You should not loiter so."
"Nay hush," said Laura.
"Nay hush, my sister:
I ate and ate my fill,
Yet my mouth waters still;
To-morrow night I will
Buy more," and kissed her.
"Have done with sorrow;
I'll bring you plums to-morrow
Fresh on their mother twigs,
Cherries worth getting;
You cannot think what figs
My teeth have met in,
What melons, icy-cold
Piled on a dish of gold
Too huge for me to hold,
What peaches with a velvet nap,
Pellucid grapes without one seed:
Odorous indeed must be the mead
Whereon they grow, and pure the wave they drink,
With lilies at the brink,
And sugar-sweet their sap."

Golden head by golden head,
Like two pigeons in one nest
Folded in each other's wings,
They lay down, in their curtained bed:
Like two blossoms on one stem,
Like two flakes of new-fallen snow,
Like two wands of ivory
Tipped with gold for awful kings.
Moon and stars beamed in at them,
Wind sang to them lullaby,
Lumbering owls forbore to fly,
Not a bat flapped to and fro
Round their rest:
Cheek to cheek and breast to breast
Locked together in one nest.

Early in the morning
When the first cock crowed his warning,
Neat like bees, as sweet and busy,
Laura rose with Lizzie:
Fetched in honey, milked the cows,
Aired and set to rights the house,
Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat,
Cakes for dainty mouths to eat,
Next churned butter, whipped up cream,
Fed their poultry, sat and sewed;
Talked as modest maidens should
Lizzie with an open heart,
Laura in an absent dream,
One content, one sick in part;
One warbling for the mere bright day's delight,
One longing for the night.

At length slow evening came--
They went with pitchers to the reedy brook;
Lizzie most placid in her look,
Laura most like a leaping flame.
They drew the gurgling water from its deep
Lizzie plucked purple and rich golden flags,
Then turning homeward said: "The sunset flushes
Those furthest loftiest crags;
Come, Laura, not another maiden lags,
No wilful squirrel wags,
The beasts and birds are fast asleep."
But Laura loitered still among the rushes
And said the bank was steep.

And said the hour was early still,
The dew not fallen, the wind not chill:
Listening ever, but not catching
The customary cry,
"Come buy, come buy,"
With its iterated jingle
Of sugar-baited words:
Not for all her watching
Once discerning even one goblin
Racing, whisking, tumbling, hobbling;
Let alone the herds
That used to tramp along the glen,
In groups or single,
Of brisk fruit-merchant men.

Till Lizzie urged, "O Laura, come,
I hear the fruit-call, but I dare not look:
You should not loiter longer at this brook:
Come with me home.
The stars rise, the moon bends her arc,
Each glow-worm winks her spark,
Let us get home before the night grows dark;
For clouds may gather even
Though this is summer weather,
Put out the lights and drench us through;
Then if we lost our way what should we do?"
Laura turned cold as stone
To find her sister heard that cry alone,
That goblin cry,
"Come buy our fruits, come buy."
Must she then buy no more such dainty fruit?
Must she no more such succous pasture find,
Gone deaf and blind?
Her tree of life drooped from the root:
She said not one word in her heart's sore ache;
But peering thro' the dimness, naught discerning,
Trudged home, her pitcher dripping all the way;
So crept to bed, and lay
Silent 'til Lizzie slept;
Then sat up in a passionate yearning,
And gnashed her teeth for balked desire, and wept
As if her heart would break.

Day after day, night after night,
Laura kept watch in vain,
In sullen silence of exceeding pain.
She never caught again the goblin cry:
"Come buy, come buy,"
She never spied the goblin men
Hawking their fruits along the glen:
But when the noon waxed bright
Her hair grew thin and gray;
She dwindled, as the fair full moon doth turn
To swift decay, and burn
Her fire away.

One day remembering her kernel-stone
She set it by a wall that faced the south;
Dewed it with tears, hoped for a root,
Watched for a waxing shoot,
But there came none;
It never saw the sun,
It never felt the trickling moisture run:
While with sunk eyes and faded mouth
She dreamed of melons, as a traveller sees
False waves in desert drouth
With shade of leaf-crowned trees,
And burns the thirstier in the sandful breeze.

She no more swept the house,
Tended the fowls or cows,
Fetched honey, kneaded cakes of wheat,
Brought water from the brook:
But sat down listless in the chimney-nook
And would not eat.
Tender Lizzie could not bear
To watch her sister's cankerous care,
Yet not to share.
She night and morning
Caught the goblins' cry:
"Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy."
Beside the brook, along the glen
She heard the tramp of goblin men,
The voice and stir
Poor Laura could not hear;
Longed to buy fruit to comfort her,
But feared to pay too dear,
She thought of Jeanie in her grave,
Who should have been a bride;
But who for joys brides hope to have
Fell sick and died
In her gay prime,
In earliest winter-time,
With the first glazing rime,
With the first snow-fall of crisp winter-time.

Till Laura, dwindling,
Seemed knocking at Death's door:
Then Lizzie weighed no more
Better and worse,
But put a silver penny in her purse,
Kissed Laura, crossed the heath with clumps of furze
At twilight, halted by the brook,
And for the first time in her life
Began to listen and look.

Laughed every goblin
When they spied her peeping:
Came towards her hobbling,
Flying, running, leaping,
Puffing and blowing,
Chuckling, clapping, crowing,
Clucking and gobbling,
Mopping and mowing,
Full of airs and graces,
Pulling wry faces,
Demure grimaces,
Cat-like and rat-like,
Ratel and wombat-like,
Snail-paced in a hurry,
Parrot-voiced and whistler,
Helter-skelter, hurry-skurry,
Chattering like magpies,
Fluttering like pigeons,
Gliding like fishes, --
Hugged her and kissed her;
Squeezed and caressed her;
Stretched up their dishes,
Panniers and plates:
"Look at our apples
Russet and dun,
Bob at our cherries
Bite at our peaches,
Citrons and dates,
Grapes for the asking,
Pears red with basking
Out in the sun,
Plums on their twigs;
Pluck them and suck them,
Pomegranates, figs."

"Good folk," said Lizzie,
Mindful of Jeanie,
"Give me much and many"; --

Held out her apron,
Tossed them her penny.
"Nay, take a seat with us,
Honor and eat with us,"
They answered grinning;
"Our feast is but beginning.
Night yet is early,
Warm and dew-pearly,
Wakeful and starry:
Such fruits as these
No man can carry;
Half their bloom would fly,
Half their dew would dry,
Half their flavor would pass by.
Sit down and feast with us,
Be welcome guest with us,
Cheer you and rest with us."
"Thank you," said Lizzie; "but one waits
At home alone for me:
So, without further parleying,
If you will not sell me any
Of your fruits though much and many,
Give me back my silver penny
I tossed you for a fee."
They began to scratch their pates,
No longer wagging, purring,
But visibly demurring,
Grunting and snarling.
One called her proud,
Cross-grained, uncivil;
Their tones waxed loud,
Their looks were evil.
Lashing their tails
They trod and hustled her,
Elbowed and jostled her,
Clawed with their nails,
Barking, mewing, hissing, mocking,
Tore her gown and soiled her stocking,
Twitched her hair out by the roots,
Stamped upon her tender feet,
Held her hands and squeezed their fruits
Against her mouth to make her eat.

White and golden Lizzie stood,
Like a lily in a flood,
Like a rock of blue-veined stone
Lashed by tides obstreperously, --
Like a beacon left alone
In a hoary roaring sea,
Sending up a golden fire, --
Like a fruit-crowned orange-tree
White with blossoms honey-sweet
Sore beset by wasp and bee, --
Like a royal virgin town
Topped with gilded dome and spire
Close beleaguered by a fleet
Mad to tear her standard down.

One may lead a horse to water,
Twenty cannot make him drink.
Though the goblins cuffed and caught her,
Coaxed and fought her,
Bullied and besought her,
Scratched her, pinched her black as ink,
Kicked and knocked her,
Mauled and mocked her,
Lizzie uttered not a word;
Would not open lip from lip
Lest they should cram a mouthful in;
But laughed in heart to feel the drip
Of juice that syruped all her face,
And lodged in dimples of her chin,
And streaked her neck which quaked like curd.
At last the evil people,
Worn out by her resistance,
Flung back her penny, kicked their fruit
Along whichever road they took,
Not leaving root or stone or shoot.
Some writhed into the ground,
Some dived into the brook
With ring and ripple.
Some scudded on the gale without a sound,
Some vanished in the distance.

In a smart, ache, tingle,
Lizzie went her way;
Knew not was it night or day;
Sprang up the bank, tore through the furze,
Threaded copse and dingle,
And heard her penny jingle
Bouncing in her purse, --
Its bounce was music to her ear.
She ran and ran
As if she feared some goblin man
Dogged her with gibe or curse
Or something worse:
But not one goblin skurried after,
Nor was she pricked by fear;
The kind heart made her windy-paced
That urged her home quite out of breath with haste
And inward laughter.

She cried "Laura," up the garden,
"Did you miss me ?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me:
For your sake I have braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men."

Laura started from her chair,
Flung her arms up in the air,
Clutched her hair:
"Lizzie, Lizzie, have you tasted
For my sake the fruit forbidden?
Must your light like mine be hidden,
Your young life like mine be wasted,
Undone in mine undoing,
And ruined in my ruin;
Thirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden?"
She clung about her sister,
Kissed and kissed and kissed her:
Tears once again
Refreshed her shrunken eyes,
Dropping like rain
After long sultry drouth;
Shaking with aguish fear, and pain,
She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth.

Her lips began to scorch,
That juice was wormwood to her tongue,
She loathed the feast:
Writhing as one possessed she leaped and sung,
Rent all her robe, and wrung
Her hands in lamentable haste,
And beat her breast.
Her locks streamed like the torch
Borne by a racer at full speed,
Or like the mane of horses in their flight,
Or like an eagle when she stems the light
Straight toward the sun,
Or like a caged thing freed,
Or like a flying flag when armies run.

Swift fire spread through her veins, knocked at her heart,
Met the fire smouldering there
And overbore its lesser flame,
She gorged on bitterness without a name:
Ah! fool, to choose such part
Of soul-consuming care!
Sense failed in the mortal strife:
Like the watch-tower of a town
Which an earthquake shatters down,
Like a lightning-stricken mast,
Like a wind-uprooted tree
Spun about,
Like a foam-topped water-spout
Cast down headlong in the sea,
She fell at last;
Pleasure past and anguish past,
Is it death or is it life ?

Life out of death.
That night long Lizzie watched by her,
Counted her pulse's flagging stir,
Felt for her breath,
Held water to her lips, and cooled her face
With tears and fanning leaves:
But when the first birds chirped about their eaves,
And early reapers plodded to the place
Of golden sheaves,
And dew-wet grass
Bowed in the morning winds so brisk to pass,
And new buds with new day
Opened of cup-like lilies on the stream,
Laura awoke as from a dream,
Laughed in the innocent old way,
Hugged Lizzie but not twice or thrice;
Her gleaming locks showed not one thread of gray,
Her breath was sweet as May,
And light danced in her eyes.

Days, weeks, months,years
Afterwards, when both were wives
With children of their own;
Their mother-hearts beset with fears,
Their lives bound up in tender lives;
Laura would call the little ones
And tell them of her early prime,
Those pleasant days long gone
Of not-returning time:
Would talk about the haunted glen,
The wicked, quaint fruit-merchant men,
Their fruits like honey to the throat,
But poison in the blood;
(Men sell not such in any town;)
Would tell them how her sister stood
In deadly peril to do her good,
And win the fiery antidote:
Then joining hands to little hands
Would bid them cling together,
"For there is no friend like a sister,
In calm or stormy weather,
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands."

Browsing an article by 'Meath' about London's parks, 'The Possibilities of Metropolitan Parks', which appeared in The New Review of 1894.

The most interesting information is the sizes of parks in the metropolis (I have re-ordered to show the largest to smallest, sizes in acres, nothing listed smaller than 10 acres) ...

Epping Forest 5348
Richmond Park 2358
Wimbledon Common 1412
Bushey Park 994
Hampton Court Park 752
Hampstead Heath 505
Regent's Park 473
Hyde Park 361
Hackney Marshes 345
Kensington Gardens 275
Blackheath Park 267
Kew Gardens 246
Victoria Park 244
Clapham Common 220
Battersea Park 198
Wormwood Scrubs 193
Greenwich Park 185
Wandsworth Common 183
Tooting Bec Common 144
Finsbury Park 115
Peckham Rye 113
Petersham Park 111
Barnes Common 100
Plumstead Common 100
St. James's Park 93
West Ham Park 80
Brockwell Park 78
Dulwich Park 72
Highgate Woods 70
Streatham Common 66
Southwark Park 63
Tooting Graveney Common 63
Bostall Woods 61
Bostall Heath 55
Green Park 54
Clissold Park 53
Ealing Common and Greens 50
Ladywell Recreation Ground 47
Hilly Fields 45
Hackney Downs 41
Ravenscourt Park 32
Kilburn Park 30
Waterlow Park 30
Highbury Fields 27
London Fields 26
South Mill Field 26
Acton Recreation Ground 25
Paddington Recreation Ground 25
Ealing Lammas Land 24
North Mill Field 23
Little Scrubs 22
South Hackney Common 20
Kennington Park 19
Sydenham Recreation Ground 17
Eelbrook Common 14
Myatts' Fields 14
Thames Embankment Gardens 14 
Acton Green 12
Back Common 12
Maryon Park 12
Kew Green 11
Victoria Park Cemetery 11
Richmond Green 10
Royal Victoria Gardens 10

I wonder if all these spaces remain? I recognise most of them, but some are small suburban parks beyond my knowledge. Any modern list of London parks out there?

Other fascinating facts from 1894, "London County Council spends £5,000 a year in providing music in the parks under its control, and has engaged the services of 92 bandsmen, four conductors, a librarian, and attendants, under the control of a musical director" ... I wonder how this compares to modern spend on music festivals etc?

The author presses for electric lighting ("It is impossible for any respectable man or woman to venture to cross Hyde Park of an evening, or at night, without risk of robbery or outrage") and also suggests "I cannot see why goat carriages for children should not be found in our London parks as well as in the Champs Elysées" (an innovation I do not believe was ever introducted ... yes, goat carriages, that's carriages drawn by goats).

Here's a quote from Building News in 1875, considering Victorian Gothic as a form of architecture:

"Railway termini and hotels are to the nineteenth century what monasteries and cathedrals were to the thirteenth century. They are truly the only real representative kind of building we possess. Our churches, scholastic establishments, and domestic structures are more or less copies of mediaeval buildings."


This interior was constructed in the 1870s and is the best example of high Victorian Gothic I've happened upon (although I don't get out much) ...

I particularly like the placement of this exit sign ...

The answer is here.

In 1897, The Lady's Realm (a popular magazine of the day) asked some minor male celebrities to define 'an ideal woman'. Here's some edited highlights. We begin with little-remembered author and poet Frank Frankfort Moore, who waxes poetical:

She is easy to live with. She is worth dying for. She is the high light in the charcoal drawing of humanity, man being the charcoal. She is the skylight in the edifice of human life. She has no history. She has no story. She is the plectrum that makes music with the haert-strings of a man. She is the key by which he is kept constantly in tune. She is the rhythm which transforms the prose of life into poetry.

But then gets a little more prosaic:

She wears a reasonable hat at matinées ... She knows sixteen ways of arranging flowers on the dinner-table. She abhors coloured paper-shades on the candles. She knows how to choose a juicy joint of beef. She laughs when the fishmonger gives her hints about turbot. 

Then a bit moralising:

She knows there is no difference between the woman who calls herself smart and the woman whom respectable people called vulgar.

Then frankly mysterious:

She makes an honest attempt to understand cats, and cats understand her.

But then he pulls it back for all the women out there:

She knows that every real woman is the Ideal Woman, the fact being that every idea of the Ideal Woman is wholly dependent on the idealist, and every woman who is idolised is idealised.

Ah, Frank, I bet you were a devil with the ladeez, my friend.

For any female readers who only know fifteen ways of arranging flowers on the dinner table, or just can't get their head round cats, don't despair, there's more on 'Ideal Women' to follow ... watch this space ...

We continue our exploration of the ideal woman under the helpful guidance of the Viscount Mountmorres, who, at the very least, possessed an impecable moustache.

For my part, I think the first requirement in woman in true womanliness ... That outrage on human nature which seeks to cover its defective womanhood under an ill and grotesque copy of man's trappings in speech, manner, thought, and appearance, is fortunately an abomination rarely met with in life, being rather the creature of modern imagination.

Thank heavens for that, sir.

Detestable as is the blue-stocking, I am almost inclined to think the vapidity some times met with worse. There is scarcely any charm, to my mind, greater than a truly beautiful mind, bright in expression, quick of comprehension; a mind that keeps its owner apace with the times, enables her to shine - always without effort - in any company ... If a woman be blessed with such a mind, and have at the same time escaped conceit and self-consciousness, she is always an agreeable companion; and were more women agreeable companions there would be fewer unhappy homes.

So, make an effort, girls.

My ideal is she whose moods are variable as an April day, full of sunshine and gladness, yet capable of deep distress; bringing light and gaiety and warm laughter in her train, but at the same time with a fount of tears for the sorrowing and sad or in the presence of suffering ... 

A fun time to be had be all, if you bag a Viscount, plainly.

I always think it is this very combination, this mixture of bright levity and true depth of feeling, which many Englishmen have found so lovable in our transatlantic cousins, in whose blood it has been innoculated by generationd which have known the wild, glad freedom, yet serious responsibilities and trials, or building up a new country.

Well, that's one theory, I suppose. But, strangely, he agrees with Mr. Frankfort Moore, right at the end:

Let a woman who would merit and gain a man's love and lasting respect not seek after effect, let her think nothing of being ideal, but live her own life according to her own natural instincts, and she will come as near to perfection as she was meant to be. Let her once endeavour to be perfect and that moment she will fall back into the outer darkness of unloved woman.

So, for all you unloved woman out there, the Viscount's message is, ladies, don't try too hard.

I will spare you the full thoughts of the Hon. Stuart Erskine, who ends the piece, except for this gem:

There are two kinds of ideal womankind - the useful, and the purely (and merely) ornamental.

This post is dedicated to all the useful ladies out there.

Readers who are curious about the interior redevelopment of St. Pancras hotel (the best piece of Victorian Gothic in London?), should refer to this link, which I only just discovered (although it appeared in May):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2010/may/03/st-pancras-chambers-flats#/?picture=362135666&index=0

A nice piece from 1858 on London dining:

It is evening, and the grey twilight is hovering over the busy streets. The city of London has had its dinner, and having, for the most part, transacted their affairs for the day, its men of business have nearly vanished from the scene — gone in all directions, some to their comfortable villas in the suburbs, north, south, and west, and some by rail to Croydon, Reigate, or uttermost Brighton. The grand army of clerks, dismissed hours ago to enjoy their temporary furlough, have trudged or "bussed" it home to their families; and now there is a comparative solitude in that wide area fronting the Exchange; Cheapside mitigates its myriad march, aud Cornhill takes breath, after the moil and tussle which lasted almost from dawn to sundown. Let us turn out of the main route, down this quiet flag-paved court—quiet now, but which a few hours ago echoed with the ceaseless hum of voices and. the tread of hurrying feet. Yonder is the dining-house, at whose interior, with the permission of our friend the proprietor, we are going to take a glance. A waiter, after his warm day's work, is standing, aproned, at the door, to catch a mouthful of air, and just a glimpse of a few pale stars struggling forth in the deepening blue of the sky.
    "Is Mr. — within?"
    Mr.— steps forward at the sound of our voice, with an answering word of welcome.
    "A busy day to-day?" we ask.
    "Rather—nothing extraordinary ; about six hundred dinners, and the usual bar practice."
    "You have considerable standing at the bar, I believe?"
    "Yes; no sitting allowed. Out benchers don't come to the bar at all, you understand. The bar lunches—the bench dines. Come this way, I will show you where."
    Passing the bar, a plain polished slab, flanked by regiments of bottles and decanters and flies of glasses of ail shapes, we enter the lower dining-room, a capacious chamber, decorated in a style rather solid and substantial than attractively ornate. The tables, of dark mahogany on bronze importers, are parallelograms, projecting endways from the wall, and over them are brass rails and supports for the reception of hats, overcoats, and umbrellas. The benehes are nothing less than a series of well-padded easy chairs, constructed on the true accommodation principle of allowing to each diner his fair two and twenty inches, or thereabouts, of sitting-room, on which his neighbours on each side are prevented from encroaching by the stout supports for the elbows, which shut him in. With all this liberal space, the room will hold, and does hold daily, and several times a-day, about a hundred diners at once. Our friend tells us that he takes in few newspapers or literary attractions of any kind. The attraction of his house, on which he relies, is a good dinner at a moderate cost, served on the instant; and he confesses, without hesitation or reserve, that when he has seen a customer's money he is glad to see his back as soon as possible. This is as it should be. Men, whose time is money, whose very minutes are sometimes rateable at a golden value, do not come here to read. They call for their dinners— they dine, as deliberately as they choose; but, having dmed, they pay their reckoning and depart. Loungers, gossippers, disputants, newsmongers, and men with nothing to do, do not come here—or if they do, they soon find that the atmosphere of the price does not suit them, and they seek a congenial resort elsewhere.
    From the lower room we mount into the upper, noting as we go that the staircase is plated, so to speak, with a thick ribbed coating of leaden mail, which is found to be the only kind of stair-carpet which will stand the everlasting wear and tear of commercial feet. The upper room is furnished in a similar manner to the lower one as to accommodations, but in a superior style of ornament; the walls are divided into panels, in which are groups of flowers brilliantly executed, and a tracery of flowers winds round the painted pillars that divide the panelling. The gaselier is of the last new design, and the padded seats appear to be covered with morocco leather. This room will dine even a larger number than the one below, and with the same individual allowance of space. The dining, our friend tells us, begins at one o'clock, is at flood tide about three, languishes and ebbs at half-past four, and finishes before six, save on rare occasions.
    We now follow our friend to the kitchen, which is on the basement floor. It is a large airy apartment, lighted with gas, and fitted up in the regular English style, differing nothing from the ordinary kitchen of a gentleman's house, save in the multiplied appliances for doing the same thing ten times over at one and the same time. Thus, the range is large and deep enough to accommodate half a dozen spits, and the spits are long enough to contain three or four joints each. Then, for boiling, steaming, grilling, frying, stewing, there are a number of boilers, pans, grills, and circular orifices in what looks like a stone sideboard, underlaid with fires and furnaces—to say nothing of ovens for baking, and warming, and the usual culinary etceteras. The cooking being over tor the day, the kitchen is clean as a new pin; and the only vestige or symptom of anything eatable at all is a sleepy turtle lying on the stones in one corner, w here he slowly blinks his sad eyes as he peeps from under his shell, awaiting his turn for decapitation and evisceration. Our friend has periodical turtle-soup days, well known to the diners on 'Change. One of them comes off on Friday next, and then—good-bye to poor turtle.
   From the kitchen we descend into the cellar, lying at considerable depth beneath. There we have an imitation in miniature of the huge winevaults in the London docks. There is the same black, dusty drapery of cobwebs pendant from the ceiling, the accumulation, probably, of more than a century ; there is the same darkness and vinous odour, and the same moderate temperature. The chief difference is, that instead of interminable perspectives of casks, we have here interminable rows of bottles ranged on shelves, heels outwards, and swathed in the dust of more than one generation. The bottles are in a large variety of shapes—some with long, crane-like necks, others with barely neck enough for the cork; some large enough to hold an imperial quart, and others only professing to contain half-a-pint, and that only the conventional measure. The mass, however, are the familiar wine-bottle ; but this is as various in value as the others are in form: there are new wines from the wood, and old and sea-borne wines, which have not moved from the position they occupy since Victoria ascended the throne. Wines, especially wines in bottle, require careful looking after; they must not be exposed to the great heats of summer or the frosts of winter, or they would lose in flavour, and therefore in value. Our friend shows us the contrivance by which he can keep them at a nearly uniform temperature of about sixty degrees, all the year through. This he does by an ingenious ventilating apparatus, with which he can admit either warm or cold air at pleasure. Looking to the myriads of bottles displayed here, we have an idea that the consumption annually must be no trifle; and as we pass out we note, in an adjoining cellar, that the process of bottling from the pipe is going on, to supply the deficiencies that so regularly occur.
    Ascending from the cellar, our friend invites us to look at his larder. This also is no trifle. The larder is in the open air, and is in fact a small inclosed court in the rear of the house, roofed in only in part, like the stalls in Leadenhall market, and very like a miniature market in looks. There is the green-grocer's stall, with every variety of culinary vegetable, to the amount of something like a wagon-load; there is the poulterer's stall, with twexnty geese and as many turkeys all of a row, with no stint of fowls and game of all kinds; there is the butcher's stall, with thirty legs of mutton, half as many haunches, huge sirloins, barons, and buttocks of beef, and pork ad infinitum ; there are horns from Westphalia, bacon from Wiltshire, and sausages from Norfolk in piles. Then there is the baker's stall, with bread in all shapes, and store of flour for puddings and pies—not to insist upon a whole cargo of preserves and fruits in and out of season, and delicacies of various kinds for the dessert. Who would not like the run of such a larder as that?
    We have seen all now, and are ready to take our leave; but our friend does not allow visitors to his cellar to depart without tasting its contents. A bottle of that beeswing port, of some famous vintage whose precise date we forget, has been sent upstairs, and we are expected to take a glass or two.
    Pending this welcome refreshment after a rather toilsome day, we put one or two questions to our host
    "What do you do with the broken and refuse viands, which must unavoidably be left on your hands after six hundred people have been dining here, and with the numerous joints, which you cannot denude to the bone in serving your customers ?"
    " It is all given away," he replies; " a number of poor persons come for it every evening; we have no difficulty in getting rid of it, I assure you. It forms the chief support of several needy families, and they are grateful for it."
    We note this as an interesting fact, and cannot help wondering whether the same rule is at all general throughout London. If so, it forms a remarkable contrast to the practice which prevails universally in Paris, where the refuse of the higher class estaminets and restaurants is sold for its full value to those of a lower grade, who in turn sell their refuse to a grade lower still.
    "But," we resume, " we saw in your larder a huge tub full of fragments ef meat and vegetables. Why was that not fetched away with the rest?"
   "That is for to-morrow's soup."
    "To-morrow's soup! why, to-morrow is Sunday. You don't open your house on Sunday!"
   "No, but I make soup every Sunday morning, or rather it makes itself during the night. You see, this is a little work of charity which I have thought it my duty to look after. There is a wretched district down in Westminster, where the people are starving, body and soul. I used to go and speak to them of a Sunday morning before service time, in the hope of doing them some good, if it might be. But I found it a sad one-sided business, that of speaking of the state of their souls to people whose bodies were starving for want of food. So I hit upon this soup plan. I make some gallons of wholesome stuff, which costs me no great deal beyond the trouble. I have it served up hot to as many as choose to come on the Sunday morning early, and while they are eating it I read a chapter or two in the Bible, and after they have had their breakfast I can talk to them and pray with them a bit, with a little better face and more satisfaction to myself and them too, than I could when they were too hungry to think of anything else. I suspect my plan is vulnerable to objectors, but, notwithstanding that, I think it works well on tx`he whole; at any rate, the hungry are fed."
    We, who know by experience that the hungry stomach has the deafest of ears, make no objection to the plan. We rise and shake hands with our host, and depart, not without a notion that we have made more discoveries in the old dining-house than we had anticipated.

The Leisure Hour, 1858

The Tinman Gallery in Spokane, Washington is hosting an Alice in Wonderland Invitational from July 30 to August 21, 2010. The event, which features paintings, drawings and sculptures inspired by portrayals of Alice 1865 through 2010, was reviewed by the Pacific Northwest Inlander last Wednesday:

While much of the exhibit artwork pulls directly from literature, others explore Alice in Wonderland’s more adult themes. Ric Gendron’s Feed Your Head is a provocative triptych complete with pot leaves and hookah. Is he pro-drug use? Against? Curiouser and curiouser.

Bernadette Vielbig asks a similar question with her Lewis Carroll Understood the Future of Modern Medicine, a refined aesthetic piece using weathered maple, eerily accurate cast plaster face and hands and a bottle of Kentucky bourbon. More…

The exhibition will be formally opened this evening with an Artist’s Reception from 5-9pm.

Alice in Wonderland Invitational
Tinman Gallery, 811 West Garland Avenue, Spokane, WA 99205
Free and open to the public, July 30 to August 21, 2010

Rose at 6. Grey ― pleasant. Drew. At 9, drew at the Morning sketch till 10 being bright & [pretty].

Breakfast. ― Drew again afterwards & “packed.” ― At 1short walk with C. Braham ― & with C. Harcourt. Hurried lunch, και αλλα πραγματα.¹ ― At 1.40 off in Fly, with C.F. & C.B. to Cultham. ― Rail to town ― (C.B. fussy ― & lost his hat,) by 4. ― Cab home. Letters from,

Jane Hunt
Fanny Coombe
S.W. Clowes.
Mrs. G. Scrivens
E. Drummond.
Mrs. E. Drummond.
W. Nevill.
Lady Farquhar
Mrs. Shakespear &c. &c. &c.

One of the Drawing Cabinets [arrived]: ― worked at placing Drawings. F.W. Gibbs came. Wrote & worked till 7. ―

Cab, with Canvasses, to Foord’s, & then []² to Blue Posts ― with merry kindly Chichester Fortescue, & we dined together very happily. Home by 10. ―

XXX12

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

1. And other things (GT).
2. A blot makes the word unreadable, or perhaps Lear decided to cross it out.

Slate reviews Plain Jane, a particularly disgusting reality show. What interests us is the following:

Some sources trace the expression "plain jane" to early criticism of Jane Eyre, but Step 3 [Facing Her Biggest Fear] calls to mind a different Brontë sisters moment. So wonderfully subtle in employing a slimy snail tube as a metaphor for sexual experience, it led me to reflect on Wuthering Heights and the rock mass over the Fairy Cave, apprehended by Cathy with fear and desire: "The abrupt descent of Penistone Crags particularly attracted her notice." (Troy Patterson)

This other comment is so wrong that it's pointless to discuss it:

"Is that person sexy?" asks Roe. "Yes," squeals the young lady, not incorrectly. (To be certain, that sexy person has no personality, but Jane of course dressed herself with no personality to begin with.)

EDIT: The author of the piece has written to us clarifying his point. He was talking about the "Jane" of the show, not the original Jane Eyre.

The pleasures of reading in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

I don't leave home without my Kindle. If I have to wait in a doctor's office or for my car's oil to be changed, I can sample a Sherlock Holmes story, a book or two of Paradise Lost, a couple of pages of The Autobiography of Ben Franklin, the stories of Mark Twain, or any of the novels of the Brontë sisters. I've downloaded all of those and more, many more—for free—and read to suit my mood. I'll also download whatever new blockbuster mystery Amazon is offering up gratis. (Rachel Toor)

The Millions has an essay about Shakespeare's Iago:

But there is something far more understated, and sinister, about Iago as a villain. Like Zoe Heller’s Barbara Covett from Notes on a Scandal, Daphne Du Maurier’s Mrs. Danvers, or perhaps even Brontë’s Heathcliff, the real evil that Iago inflicts is upon the people to whom he is closest. He is the godfather of villains who rot from the inside out. (Ujala Sehgal)

IFC News has an article about Angelina Jolie. The reference to Wuthering Heights fortunately has nothing to do with that rumour of some years ago that placed Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp in a Wuthering Heights production:

Then, it was her marriage to Billy Bob Thornton and the vials of each other's blood they wore around their necks. (If "Wuthering Heights" were published today, there'd be people worrying that Heathcliff and Cathy don't seem to be making healthy choices.) (Charles Taylor)

Iraan (TX) is not Wuthering Heights. Confirmation comes from Odessa American:

I didn’t relish trekking up there alone at night, thinking I might hear the faint tapping at the window and the little voice of Catherine begging to come in from the moors. I had to remind myself that this was Iraan, not Wuthering Heights. (Charlena Chandler)

The Hull Daily Mail announces the Hull Truck Theatre 2010/11 season which includes a production of Wuthering Heights (October 2010):

Hull Truck has also announced its autumn/winter season, with highlights including A Passionate Woman starring its writer Kay Mellor and Wuthering Heights featuring ex-Coronation Street stars Gaynor Faye and Rupert Hill.

Emily Maguire is interviewed on ABC (Australia) and described as follows:

Emily Maguire is a young feminist known for her essays on sex, culture and literature. Her feminist views have been influenced by writers from Charlotte Brontë to Naomi Wolf.

Steph Su Reads waits for the release of April Lindner's Jane, The Squeee reviews Shirley and Arizona Forever Joan Sowards's Chocolate Roses.

Categories: Books, Jane Eyre, References, Sequels, Shirley

192 years ago Emily Brontë was born in Thornton. Hers tends to be the thinnest biographies on Brontë bookshelves, and yet there's something intriguing about her literary output that sends people looking for biographies of her in hopes that they can help explain how a provincial - albeit highly learned, despite what Charlotte would have the world believe - young woman could have written such words. (And we are pretty sure that this 'mystery' is a two way street. Emily may have scorned the public, but we are quite confident that she would have been quite amazed at what Wuthering Heights particularly has achived in terms of readership, influences, literary status, etc.).

And yet that is the magic and mightiness of the pen. If ever anyone showed that to the world, that was undoubtedly 'our Emily'. No explanations are really needed - a good book and good poetry are always self-explanatory.

Happy birthday!

Categories: Emily Brontë, Reminder

Light of the Harem by Frederic Lord Leighton

Painting of the Day Archive

Archaeologists in the Canadian Arctic have made a startling discovery by coming across a ship which was abandoned 157 years ago. Dispatched by the Royal Navy to the frigid waters ...

Read Full Post

Volunteer docents are needed to provide gallery tours of the Lilly Library exhibitions. Applicants should possess a genuine interest in books and manuscripts. Orientation and instruction sessions to learn about the Lilly Library collections and new exhibitions are required. Because of the training investment, docents are expected to make a commitment of at least one year to the program. Time commitment varies, usually 2–5 hours per month. We ask volunteers to commit to at least one Friday from 2:00–3:00 per month.

The Lilly Library is a rare book, manuscripts, and special collections library of Indiana University, serving as a resource for scholars throughout the world as well as a center of cultural enrichment for the public. With collections containing over 7,000,000 manuscripts, 400,000 books, and 100,000 pieces of music, the Lilly Library makes its holdings available to a diverse public through publications, exhibitions, and public programming.

Library Hours: Monday–Friday: 9:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.; Saturdays: 9:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m.

For more information or to apply, call Sue Presnell, 855–3006 or e-mail: mpresnel@indiana.edu

Campfire Graphic Novels, a publishing house out of New Dehli, India, released their Alice in Wonderland this week, as part of their large and expanding series of comic versions of classics, biographies, mythology, and originals. The adaptation (72 pages, full color) is by Lewis Helfand with art by Rajesh Nagulakonda (who has previously illustrated their Joan of Arc, The Time Machine, and Oliver Twist.) Campfire’s mission statement: “It is night-time in the forest. A campfire is crackling, and the storytelling has begun. In the warm, cheerful radiance of the campfire, the storyteller’s audience is captivated. Inspired by this enduring relationship between a campfire and gripping storytelling, we bring you four series of Campfire Graphic Novels…” A noble cause, but isn’t reading comic books by firelight a bit hard on the eyes?

Campfire’s Alice in Wonderland is for sale on their website for $9.99 with free shipping worldwide!

Sir Humphry Repton (1752-1818), who was mentioned in a previous post about the paint color Invisible Green was a famous landscape designer during the end of the 18th century and early 19th century. “In his day, [he]was equal in stature to Capability Brown or Gertrude Jekyll, but is now often-overlooked. However, he was once favoured [...]

Rose at 6. fine ― cloudy ― calm, fresh, green, quiet, birdy, flowery. O morning! ― Worked till 9 ― & a small walking. ― After breakfast church, ― not unagreable.

Poi with Lady W. & Mr. H. ― Drawing by fits, or reading.

Lunch. ― Afterwards ― storm & rain. Then wandered ― on each side the house, & into the Park, & down to the dock ― alone ― μονος εισαι;¹ said the man of [Χοροπισκοπος], & so it is. A heavy sadness. ― At 6 a walk with Canon C.H. ― & later with C.F. has asked me to bring a picture ― any picture* ― as long as I like [* & stay here] ― but this cannot be done for many reasons. ― Late, & hurry dress for dinner.

(C.F. speaks of the S. de R.’s complaints: I could tell a good deal of this, but it is better να σιωπω.)²

Dinner ― lively & pleasant. The Old Canon weds the little Miss M.; & much fun.

Sang a great deal afterwards ― & looked over some letters of George 3 to the then Lord Harcourt.

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

1. You are alone (GT).
2. To be silent (GT).

An alert for today, July 29, from Wooler (Northumberland):

Wooler U3A
Thursday, July 29: Lecture.
Wooler U3A's lecture is on Charlotte Brontë's influential novel, Jane Eyre. The free lecture and discussion afterwards will be led by Andrew Leng.

In the Cheviot Centre, Padgepool Place, Wooler. 2.30pm.

Categories: Jane Eyre, Talks

The Summer Stroll by Giovanni Boldini

Painting of the Day Archive

The National (United Arab Emirates) has a list of weird choices for musicals. We don't agree that Jane Eyre was such a weird choice:

A musical version of Charlotte Brontë’s restrained gothic romance does not sound like a must-see but, after opening on Broadway in 2000, the show received good reviews and Tony nominations for Best Musical and Best Actress in a Musical. (Natalie Robehmed)

According to The Independent, Emily Brontë suffered from insomnia:

Marcel Proust wrote at night, during periods of chronic sleeplessness. So did Emily Brontë and Walt Whitman. (Hannah Duguid)

Discover Magazine talks about the forebears of the futuristic exoskeletons of Avatar. Corsets, of course:

Corsets and girdles are the best known types of “foundation garments” or “shapewear,” but for me at least, they are more Jane Eyre than Madonna, despite the latter’s use of them in her performances over the past twenty years. (Malcolm McIver)

Gabriel Byrne describes Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor's love story like this for The Huffington Post, blunder included:

The public's need to create a latter day Cathy and Heathcliff, to mythologize their story (he was reading the novel in Vienna and thought the cruel and romantic Heathcliff a product of Charlotte Brontë's [sic]repressed sexual fantasies and Cathy the idealized feminine self).

Michelle Kerns recommends Jane Slayre in the Book Examiner as summer reading because

I'm reading this book because I will consider my life sadly wasted if I make it to my deathbed without having had the chance to read these words in a Jane Eyre spoof: "Reader, I buried him."

The West Australian mentions recent shootings in Derbyshire:

Blacksmiths, cobbles and willow-shaded streams - if corners of the Midlands remind you of a costume drama landscape designed by the sisters Brontë, you're right: Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre, not to mention the more contemporary Peak Practice, are among the many productions that have been filmed here.
Other major locations in Derbyshire include Haddon Hall (Jane Eyre), Sudbury Hall (Pride and Prejudice) and the Peak District village of Crich (Cardale in Peak Practice).

On the blogosphere. Kindle Author interviews M.M. Bennetts:

DAVID WISEHART: What authors most inspire you?
M.M. BENNETTS: John Donne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Leo Tolstoy, Dorothy Dunnett, Paul House, Adam Zamoyski, Dorothy L. Sayers, Dominic Lieven...

Posts about Wuthering Heights: Encore's World of Film and TV and Lori Sizemore. Posts about Jane Eyre: Penelope Bouqine... (in French) and Not Another Reading Journal. Nottinghamshire Notes visits Haworth. Finally Suite101 publishes an article with the title The Influence of Branwell Brontë on the Brontë Sisters Works and Och solen har sin gång posts about the Brontës (in Swedish).

Categories: Branwell Brontë, Emily Brontë, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Music, References, Theatre, Wuthering Heights

Rose at 5.30: ― & drew till 9 ― (Gethsemanes.) Very calm & pleasant. Walk with Sir J.J. ― Breakfast.

Peel & Morier went afterwards. ― Walk with Granville Vernon. C. Newton is to be married, to Miss Severn! ― ― I am extremely glad.

Later ― walk with Lady W. & G.V. ― & we fix on a print from a topography. Then came C. Fortescue.

Then Lunch. ― Then no end of storm & rain ― & cloud ― but I got to the “hint” with Mr. H., & also drew a good (sic) but by degrees. ― Sang to Lady J. & Mrs. M. ― At 6 ― walk with C.H. ― & Sir John J.

Dinner: much laughter & fun. Evening ― si cantava (― cioè ― io ― assai.[)]¹ ― Bed at 11½.

Lady W. wants a 2^nd picture ― but I do not see my way to that this year.

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

1. One sang (― that is ― I did ― quite a lot[)].

More comments about the film Black Field comparing it to the Brontës. In the Edmonton Journal:

The gothic frontier drama, shot in Manitoba, has received favourable reviews from critics, who compare the story to the Bronte sisters on the Prairies instead of the moors. (Jamie Hall)

Northern District Times (Australia) talks about the Brontë performances in Sydney:

The play questions what inspired them to follow their passion in a time where women’s talents and ambitions were strongly opposed rather than supported.
[Joanne] Sanders said she chose to produce Brontë because she was passionate about exploring the way women’s roles were represented in society.
“I read the script and fell in love with it instantly,” Sanders said.
“The vision of strong female roles created from the play and underlying themes are expressed through the dialogue.
“As Emily Brontë says during her speech, she is ‘free to be whatever she might imagine’.
“That is an integral part of what inspires her to write and what influential factors shape her.”
Sanders said she was also interested in the way the sisters overcame obstacles and persevered, creating what are now considered to be outstanding literacy works.
“The sisters were born into an oppressive era in which females were not given equal opportunities such as an education, those rights were bestowed to the son of the family,” Sanders said.
“It explores the lives of pioneering women who remain role models for us and other women to this day.”
At its heart, Brontë is a heartfelt and inspirational play about not giving up, even when the odds of succeeding are low.
“It is a play that encompasses our theatrical ambitions,” Sanders said. (Melissa Davey)

North Side interviews Laura Francis, who plays Emily Brontë in this production:

How do you portray one of the biggest names in literary history? If you’re Lindfield actress Laura Francis, the answer is “carefully”.
“The only thing you can do is to try and take in as much as possible,” she said. “It’s a big task but it’s an interesting one.”
Francis, 25, is tackling the role of Emily Brontë, author of Wuthering Heights in the new play Brontë, by British writer Polly Teale, at Studio 1, The Wharf until August 1.
Contrary to expectations, there’s not a bonnet in sight in the play, which puts the lives of the three sibling writers - Charlotte, Emily and Anne - under the microscope to examine their passion for writing, despite a culture where such ambitions were discouraged.
“So often with women in plays, they’re the ‘beauty’ of the play or they’re the woman behind the man,” said Francis, who along with the other actors will go on stage without make-up and “disgusting centre parts” lest their attractiveness detract from the achievements of the three sisters.
“But these three women are complicated, they’re like the women they write about. They’re not the usual heroines,” she said.
Francis had barely read any Brontë when she was first approached by friend Jennifer Williams (who plays Charlotte Brontë) to join the play last year. (Polly Simons)

Deccan Chronicle (India) has opinions, both in favour and against, on the comic versions of books. Both opinions are, in fact, very simplistic:

However, there are those who feel classics should be left alone. “Please don’t touch the classics,” says Class 10 student Vasundhara Singh Bhati. “I don’t want to read Shakespeare or Emily Brontë in the comic form. The feel of the novel goes away. Comics cannot do justice to these classics. However, I’d love to read a comic version of the Twilight series, the book will become much more interesting with pictures,” she says nonchalantly. Not everyone is against the idea of reading a classic in the comic form. Says, Vibha Kundra, assistant manager, Signature Staff, “I wish there was a comic version of Jane Eyre when I was in school. At least, it would have spared me the torture. Comic versions of any book will be a success.

Cathal Kelly in the Toronto Star has a suggestion for the creators of Jane Austen’s Fight Club:

Sure, Jane Austen’s Fight Club is awesome. But call me when they make Charlotte Bronte’s Straw Dogs.

More suggestions. Jim Ludlow in The Guardian to Steven Moffat after Sherlock, his update on Sherlock Holmes for the BBC:

But, Moffat's recent tendency has been to go dark, so I'm holding out for Eyre: when Jane becomes a nanny for multimillionaire single parent Ed Rochester, it seems she's found her one true love. But viewer, beware ... There's a madwoman in the penthouse.

The massive cuts in budget by the Cameron-Clegg administration have reached the UK Film Council that will be suppressed. The Council was backing Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights project. We hope that the already current commitments will be respected but there is no confirmation. More information here.

Finally an alert from the Ulysses Philomathic Library, Trumansburg, NY

An open book discussion on Jean Rhys' Wide Sargasso Sea will take place at noon Wednesday. Joan Ormondroyd will facilitate. (The Ithaca Journal)

Zhangtwo compares Jane Eyre 1944 and 1970. Dior Girl investigates settings in Wuthering Heights and Ibsen's A Doll's House. The Bookish Type interviews author Kate Kaynak:

What are your favorite books? What about them appeals to you?
(...) Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte) and Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen): These classic love stories have surprisingly vibrant female main characters for their day.

Soy Chai Bookshelf reviews Wuthering Heights 2009. Literature/Photos/Journal*ism has visited a place called Howarth that looks quite similar to Haworth, A blog devoid of all depth and thought is reading Wuthering Heights and Gealachs Blogg is about to readhas read Jane Eyre. Bohemio Mundi posts about Charlotte Brontë's novel in Spanish. Virtual Margin reviews another Charlotte novel, Villette. Les Brontë à Paris translates into French a fragment of an Emily diary paper. Star Crossed and JDP News both review briefly Chocolate Roses. Hellofromtam publishes a picture of Haworth's graveyard on flickr.

Categories: Brontëites, Fiction, Haworth, In the News, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Theatre, Villette, Wuthering Heights

More covers of Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights on YouTube:

Aine, Nuala and Niamh singing a cover of the Puppini Sisters's rendition of Wuthering Heights:	A transposition on guitar by Stuart James:
Elisa Toffoli sings Wuthering Heights live on Che Tempo che fa. 23-05-2010:	At the Brazilian MTV program Infortúnio, the band makes an homage to metal singer Andre Matos, ex Angra (who made a WH cover):

Another live version of Wuthering Heights by Elisa can be found here ("A voice for children" Parco della Musica 08.07.10).

Categories: Music, Wuthering Heights

Vase with Flowers by Odilon Redon

Painting of the Day Archive

Consider this recipe for a modern Austenesque mystery: Take a familiar and beloved novel, Mansfield Park, with characters whose motives and actions we know intimately, and tear the book up. Throw the pages inside a bag, shake vigorously, and let the characters and plot fall where they may. Add a writer who has cooked up [...]

The September 2010 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction hits newsstands today. The two poems in this issue both use Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland themes as their central metaphors. “The Now We Almost Inhabit” by Roger Dutcher and Robert Frazier uses the Cheshire Cat and Alice’s changing size “as images of changable realities”, and Ruth Berman’s poem “Egg Protection” (mistakenly called “Egg Production” in the table of contents) uses “the pigeon’s opinion of long-necked Alice as a predatory serpent as the opinion of birds in general regarding humans.” (Quotes describing the poems from Ruth Berman.) Here’s an excerpt from “Egg Protection”:

For about two weeks, two robins
Kept yelling at me
Every time I appeared outside the door
In (apparently) a cloud
Of flames and brimstone
Visible to birdseyes,
To grab the paper or the mail.

[...]

Like Alice, I have eaten eggs, certainly,
But I don’t want theirs.
Birds consider only the first bit.
They don’t take a human’s word for the rest.

To read the whole poem, please consider purchasing September’s Asimov’s Science Fiction, where all fine magazines are sold!

An anonymous poster pointed out to me that the video for the country music group The Band Perry's "If I Die Young" features imagery from Tennyson's Lady of Shalott. I wouldn't have caught the reference, but the poster pointed out the book of Tennyson she is holding while floating on the water.

Normally I am not at all a modern country music fan, but I do like Appalachian/bluegrass, so I enjoy the song itself as well.

Rose later. The days are gray & cool: not wet, but always about to be so. ―

Dickenson came. I worked at Bright’s Cervara ― & at 11.30 dear old Ann came ― placid, but, alas! older ― older. ―― We sate pleasantly enough, & lunched at 1. ― At 2 came a letter from C.F. saying I had been expected at Nuneham, & had agreed to come on the 26! ― So, all things considered, ― I wrote to Drummond, & prepared to go. Ann went at 3: ― & I ―soon after, to Chappell’s, where I took 3 songs to publish. ― Then to Mrs. Middleton, & Mrs. E. Drummond, & Mr. Morier. Poi και επειτα, to Gt. Western rail. Mr. Harcourt was in the carriage, ― but strangely behaved ― sullen? ― At Culham we got out, ― & he was the same ―: asking him if he were well, he said: “In body, yes.” ― & then driving across the Park, he told me his brother Leveson had died suddenly. Before dinner I saw B. Morier, & C. Braham. ―

δεν εμπορουσα να λαβω κανεν αρασι, δια τον Παπαδα Καρλον, ο οποιος δεν  ηθελει παρασει το συκαλιον.¹

Lady W. Wants me to paint her a picture here.

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

1. I did not receive any snatch from traders, by the priest Charles’s wife, who does not like [] performances.

On ebay:
Charlotte Brontë Parsonage medallion medal and chain

"Charlotte Brontë 1816 - 1855 :
Brontë Parsonage , Haywoth , Yorkshire"
metal medallion and chain
diameter size = 3.5 cm / 1 and a half inches
the picture shows the front (the other side shows the Brontë Parsonage)
condition : = excellent / just need a clean

Latherati Soap offers handmade soap, roll-on perfume or dry oil body spray, all of them inspired by Wuthering Heights:

Avarice
THE INSPIRATION: Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
THE SCENT: warm cedarwood, patchouli and black pepper with hints of raspberry and a lush green forest
THE QUOTE: "That is how I'm loved! Well, never mind. That is not my Heathcliff. I shall love mine yet; and take him with me: he's in my soul." - Wuthering Heights

THE INGREDIENTS:
*Soap: saponified oils of olive, palm, coconut, castor, rice bran oils, shea butter, fragrance and essential oils, oxides.
*Roll-on: cyclomethicone, fragrance & essential oils
*Body oil: Caprylic/Capric Triglyceride, jojoba oil, cyclomethicone, fragrance & essential oils

Antique Fashionista has several Jane Eyre-related items to sell:

Thoughtful Jane 5''x7'' original watercolor
This watercolor was inspired by part of Jane Eyre where Mr. Rochester tells Jane of when he first took notice of her.
Plain Jane
This painting measures 8 x 10 inches and is done on quality 150 lbs. cold press watercolor paper.
Jane Eyre bookmarks
This bookmark is printed on heavy gloss paper from my original watercolor Plain Jane.
Jane Eyre Bookmark (wherever you are is my home)

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Weirdo

Earth Mother by Sir Edward Burne-Jones

Painting of the Day Archive

There’s a series of comics at a site called Webcomics Nation, reminiscent in style to David Rees’  cut-&-paste web strips (My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable & Get Your War On), except it uses Tenniel’s Alice illustrations as the stock images. The series, Here We Come A-Carrolling, is created by a certain Doctor Randomness of Randomness Productions.

CNN Shanghai interviews singer, composer and director Eheart Chen whose latest album is "简, 爱" ("Jane, Love"). The Jane of the title has some relation to our Jane Eyre:

The album’s addictive hit song is "Jane Love," which pays tribute to Shanghai’s popular dubbing actor Qiu Yuefeng, who passed away 30 years ago. The half-Russian’s legendary voice was the most recognizable one in the media for most Chinese people from the 1950s to 1970s.
“Qiu was the voice behind Chinese dubbing classics like 'Jane Eyre.' Dubbed movies were culture symbols in Shanghai for several decades. It was the entertainment I grew up with,” explains Chen.
Chen made the song's music video by himself, using rare movie footage and photos he got from Shanghai Film Dubbing Studio and Qiu’s son. Chen also invited his friend Moz Wang, an editor at Shanghai's Chinese Timeout, to collaborate on the lyrics.
“I’m also a fan of Eheart’s music,” Wang says. “[He] might not be the best musician in Shanghai, but he’s definitely the most Shanghainese one. He uses music to relive the city’s past and to tell stories.” (Tracy You)

Click here to watch the "Jane Love" music video (Youku).

The Calgary Herald talks about the premiere of the film Black Field and mentions the series The Vampire Diaries in relation to presumpted Emily Brontë's influences:

[Sara] Canning is talking from the Atlanta, Ga., set of the CW TV show The Vampire Diaries, which seems more than a few worlds away from the Emily Brontë-like mix of manners, corsets and doomed romance found in Black Field. (Eric Volmers)

John Farr reviews several Joan Fontaine/Olivia de Havilland films for The Huffington Post. No review of Devotion (in which Olivia de Havilland was an improbable Charlotte Brontë) but there's one of Jane Eyre 1944:

Sent to a girls' reformatory by a hateful aunt (Agnes Moorehead), young orphan Jane Eyre (Fontaine) endures ten years of harsh discipline and abuse at the hands of a sadistic headmaster. Ten years later, Jane finds work as a governess at the gloomy estate of gruff, imperious Edward Rochester (Orson Welles), where she cares for his coquettish, French-born daughter, Adele (Margaret O'Brien). Though Rochester is clearly fighting some inner demons, he's also increasingly fond of Jane, who becomes his most trusted confidante. Welles put his distinctive stamp on this haunting adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's canonical novel playing the brooding, ill-starred baron who falls for his humble governess, movingly played by the fresh-faced Fontaine. Director Robert Stevenson worked closely with author Aldous Huxley on the script, but apart from the excellent cast and writing, what makes this version so memorable is its oppressive, darkly romantic Gothic atmosphere: in particular, Jane and Rochester's first terrifying meeting on the fog-shrouded moors will surely etch into your mind. Look, too, for Liz Taylor early on as Jane's consumptive childhood friend.

The Hindu insists on Emily Brontë's influence on Sarita Mandanna's Tiger Walls:

When Sarita Mandanna sat down to write her first novel, she knew it would have to be in the mould of her favourite novels from childhood — the grand, sweeping sagas of Emily Brontë or Jane Austen. (Divya Kumar)

Masala interviews actress Sonam Kapoor:

Tell us about your favourite real-life love story and your fave movie love story.
Real-life would have to be my mum and dad (Anil and Sunita Kapoor). From the movies, ‘Gone With The Wind’, ‘Wuthering Heights’, and ‘Mughal-E-Azam’. Wait a minute, none of them end very romantically, do they? (Nazia Khan)

Azar Nafisi remembers Neda Agha-Soltan (and mentions her Brontë interests) in The Huffington Post; Stitching Words, One Thread at a Time hates Jane Eyre as much as she loves Wuthering Heights; Gypsyscarlett's weblog posts about Wuthering Heights translated into German; Avant-garde reviews Jane Eyre. Several blogs review Wide Sargasso Sea: Seeing and Being Seen, The Long Distance Book Club and Soy Chai Bookshelf. Somehow it gets to be tomorrow posts icons of Jane Eyre 1944 and The Other Ayn icons of Jane Eyre 2006. Tädi-Blogi reviews the performances of Wuthering Heights in Vanemuine (in Estonian). Also in Estonian orkaani südames on vaikus posts about Jane Eyre. Finally PrimaveraLuna reviews Wuthering Heights in Lithuanian.

Finally, Sarah Barrett shares some pictures on Facebook witnessing to the current decaying state of Anne Brontë's grave.

Categories: Anne Brontë, Brontëana, Brontëites, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, Music, References, Wuthering Heights

The explorer and U.S. Army officer Zebulon Pike is remembered for expeditions on the American frontier that remain mysterious to this day. Was Pike simply mapping the Louisiana Purchase, or ...

Read Full Post

An Italian who settled in Paris, and became a friend of Degas. He painted pictures of everyday life in a bright cheerful style, becoming quite a master in the use of pastel. This shows a scene in the Parc Monceau.



Mother and Daughter, 1879


A late work from the year of his death, 1917


At the theatre

Fine ― tolerably ― no sun, ― but no rain. ―

A day of bothers ― & going bax. ―

Rose at 5 ― 7 ― but unwell. ― Resolved to paint a small Cervara ― partly because, doing so, I could improve on Gibbs’s, & partly because, as I promised to do one for Bright, I can do it better now than otherwise, as the large Cervara is still here. So I set to work, outline, tracing, scraping &c. &c. ― & at 12 fell asleep. ― then X10 & slept again.

The brain & all the mind are sick (sic.)

All the afternoon worked partiklar hard, ― but Drummond didn’t come with Mrs. D. as he said.

No one else came, but a lad with a frame, which I sent back to Dickenson.

At 8 dined on cold beef & beer: & letters (alone).

Reading Churchill’s Lebanon¹ ―: I am wretched about all those places.

Saw Mr. Gush: who is going to America again, ― I envy him his energy. αλλα εγω δεν υχω τοσον τα φυσικα Χρειασθομενα.²

XXX11

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

1. Churchill, Colonel Charles Henry. Mount Lebanon. A Ten Years’ Residence from 1842 to 1852. 3 vols. London: Saunders and Otley, 1853.
2. But I did not [] both [Christendoms].

Inquiring reader: This is the second post by historical paint expert Patrick Baty of Papers and Paints, who has carried out extensive research into the use of pigments in architectural and decorative paintings. He has kindly answered a question about the paint color “invisible green,” which was left on his previous post, Painting a House [...]

Lewis Carroll and the Liddell family made the July 26th 2010 issue of the New Yorker in reference to his work on election mathematics. Anthony Gottlieb, in his article in the book review department called “Win or Lose: No voting system is flawless. But some are less democratic than others“, gives Dodgson praise for considering voting systems that are more fair than, for instance, the U.S.’s current winner-take-all method.

The history of voting math comes mainly in two chunks: the period of the French Revolution, when some members of France’s Academy of Sciences tried to deduce a rational way of conducting elections, and the nineteen-fifties onward, when economists and game theorists set out to show that this was impossible. Perched in the middle is the Reverend Charles Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, the author of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking-Glass.”

[...]

National politics weren’t on Dodgson’s mind, it appears, when he first became interested in the theory of voting, in the early eighteen-seventies. Ostensibly, he was pondering the best way for the governing body of Christ Church, Oxford, where he was a tutor in mathematics, to decide on the design for a controversial belfry, and to pick new members of the college. As to what explained his sudden interest in college politics, some people—notably the late economist and Dodgson scholar Duncan Black—have suggested that Alice Liddell, who inspired the Wonderland tale, in 1862, was at the bottom of it. Alice’s father, the head of Christ Church, had forbidden Dodgson further contact with his daughters, and meddling in college politics may have been Dodgson’s way of getting back at him.

The whole article is pretty interesting, and concludes that one of the fairest methods of voting might be similar to how people regularly rank favorites on internet sites like Yelp (“Approval Voting”).

Appointment with Death is the last new Hercule Poirot mystery to be shown on PBS for Season X. David Suchet and a sterling ensemble cast reenacted Agatha Christie’s tale in Syria – or did they? Big changes were made to the original storyline, which Christie had originally set in Petra. Lord Boynton, a famous archeologist, [...]

The covers of two upcoming Brontë-related fiction:
1. After Jane Slayre, another Brontë mash-up:

Wuthering Bites
Author: Sarah Gray
Pub Date: August 31, 2010
Imprint : Kensington
978-0-7582-5408-5

What if the enigmatic hero of one of our most timeless love stories was part vampire? The answer lies in this haunting retelling of the classic tale of Catherine and Heathcliff, kindred spirits bound by a turbulent—and now forbidden—passion…

When a young orphan named Heathcliff is brought to Wuthering Heights by the manor’s owner, Mr. Earnshaw, rumors abound. Yet the truth is more complicated than anyone could guess. Heathcliff’s mother was a member of a gypsy band that roamed the English countryside, slaying vampires to keep citizens safe. But his father was a vampire. Now, even as Heathcliff gallantly fights the monsters who roam the moors in order to protect beautiful, spirited Catherine Earnshaw, he is torn by compassion for his victims—and by his own dark thirst.

Though Catherine loves Heathcliff, she fears the vampire in him, and is tempted by the privileged lifestyle their neighbors, the Lintons, enjoy. Forced to choose between wealthy, refined Edgar Linton and the brooding, increasingly dangerous Heathcliff, she makes a fateful decision. And soon Heathcliff, too, must choose—between his hunger, and the woman he will love for all eternity…

2. A YA novel:

Jane
April Lindner
Reading level: Young Adult
Publisher: Poppy (October 11, 2010)
ISBN-10: 0316084204

Forced to drop out of an esteemed East Coast college after the sudden death of her parents, Jane Moore takes a nanny job at Thornfield Park, the estate of Nico Rathburn, a world-famous rock star on the brink of a huge comeback. Practical and independent, Jane reluctantly becomes entranced by her magnetic and brooding employer and finds herself in the midst of a forbidden romance.
But there's a mystery at Thornfield, and Jane's much-envied relationship with Nico is soon tested by an agonizing secret from his past. Torn between her feelings for Nico and his fateful secret, Jane must decide: Does being true to herself mean giving up on true love?
An irresistible romance interwoven with a darkly engrossing mystery, this contemporary retelling of the beloved classic Jane Eyre promises to enchant a new generation of readers.

Categories: Books, Jane Eyre, Sequels, Wuthering Heights

A Difference of Opinion by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Painting of the Day Archive

Someone mentioned to me today that under Swedish a law a family is not allowed to own more than nine cats; I found that hard to believe, but it seems to be absolutely true. When checking on it, I found that 'a woman was discovered in 2007 living with 11 swans in a one-room apartment in Stockholm'; sounds uncomfortable, but I don't know if it is laid down in Swedish law how many swans one is allowed to have in the house.

7–9 October 2010

University of Delaware, Newark, DE

Winterhtur Museum & Country Estate, Wilmington, DE

Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE

Info: Mark Samuels Lasner, marksl@udel.edu

(302) 831-3250

www.udel.edu/conferences/uandb

Rose before 6 ― & excepting breakfast ― worked hard all day at Gibbs’ Cervara, only Hansen came. At 4.30, cab to Drummonds, & drew out 10£. Saw Edgar D.

Called on Gibbs, Evans, Percy, Farquhar, Clive, Grey, Blencowe, & Hornby ――― all out. Saw, [A.] Wilson, C. Monk, R. Curzon, Sir F. Baring, Malcolm, & lastly Edgar Drummond, who came home with me. ― At 8 to the Blue Posts, where I dined alone ― but too expensively. ― Abdel Kader is to be king of Syria it seems. Afterwards walked to Foords, to order frames for the Damascus, Interlaken, & Beirût, ― for if the weather is always uncertain, there is no use in waiting for the chances of outdoor working.

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

What are the odds that two Richmonds a world apart would boast two historic churches named St. Johns? St John’s in Richmond was built in 1837 and is the oldest Roman Catholic Church in Australia (actually, Tasmania). The structure is situated near the oldest bridge, built between 1823 and 1825 by Australian convicts over the [...]

This is a recently published LDS novel inspired by Jane Eyre:

Chocolate Roses.
A Jane Eyre Parody
by Joan Sowards
Publisher: Brigham Distributing
ISBN-10: 1935217623
ISBN-13: 978-1935217626

Janie Rose Whitaker's world revolved around her chocolate shop until Roger Wentworth and his young daughter moved into the apartment across from Janie's. Anyone would think Roger fit the mold of the "perfect" guy, but soon Janie discovers secrets that could keep them apart forever. Though she resists getting involved in Roger's complicated life, they are drawn further into a bittersweet relationship.
You will laugh, cry, and crave chocolate as you read this LDS parody of the classic novel Jane Eyre.

The first chapters can be read here.

The author is taking a blog tour (July 26-August 6) so we will probably talk about this novel again in our newsrounds. For the time being we highlight this interview on Rebecca Talley:

What genre or sub-genre do you write? Why did you choose this genre?
I write LDS romance. Haunts Haven is a paranormal mystery romance, Chocolate Roses is pure romance with a Jane Eyre parallel. I haven't been able to get away from the LDS genre. I guess because it is so ingrained in me.

Categories: Books, Jane Eyre

Hylas and the Nymphs - Study of Two Nymphs by John William Waterhouse

Painting of the Day Archive

Jacqueline Wilson publishes an extraordinary article in The Times about her personal discovery, reading and loving Jane Eyre. Regrettably the article is for subscribers only and we can only quote a few sentences, but it's one of those not to be missed:

I started browsing in a rather bored way inside my parents’ bookcase. Most of the books there were not very exciting: Victorian Sunday-school prizes inherited from my grandparents, a set of encyclopaedias, a few fat novels by J. B. Priestley and H. E. Bates — and a little red leatherette edition of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. I didn’t like the slithery feel of the cover. The tiny dense print inside was not promising. But I started reading — “There was no possibility of taking
a walk that day” — and I was hooked. I discovered that the narrator is 10, as I was. She likes reading, too. When she chooses a book from an adult bookcase she takes care that it is one “stored with pictures”. Jane’s an odd one out, a tiny fierce, discontented child bullied by her hateful cousins. But when she hides herself away on the windowseat and turns the pages of Bewick’s History of British she’s happy. I was interested to see that she didn’t properly read the book, she made up stories to go with the pictures — my own favourite activity. (...) Most show cosy countryside scenes, often comical or coarse. Jane doesn’t even glance at these. She’s interested only in the strange, the eerie, the deliciously Gothic. Three pages into the story we’re seeing through Jane’s eyes, and we have a feeling that this dark and Gothic tale — but one so fiercely imagined that it will seem as if every word is true, and that it is really the autobiography it declares itself to be on the title page. (....)
I think it belongs in the Top 10 greatest novels of all time because because Jane herself is such an original heroine, an ugly little orphan who grows into a poor, plain young woman — a governess who looks like a mouse, but has a lion’s passion and spirit. She’s looked for love all her life, clutching her childhood doll, clasping the dying Helen in her arms, lying her head on Diana’s lap, and melting in Rochester’s embrace. Jane is no fairytale heroine waiting to be awakened by a loving kiss — she’s a brave quester after her own good fortune, who rescues her beloved again and again. Jane is the first modern feminist heroine.

The Guardian surprises us with an article by Ian Sansom about Branwell Brontë (the title is Great Dynasties of the World: The Brontës, but the focus is on the brother). The excuse for it is the current exhibition at the Brontë Parsonage, Sex, Drugs and Literature (until May 20, 2011):

Everyone now has heard of the Brontë sisters, of course – the "three weird sisters", Ted Hughes called them. (...) But what of the fourth Brontë sibling, the only brother, Branwell? He was the fourth of the six Brontë children – two older sisters died young. As he was the only son, expectations were high. (...)
As the sisters began to achieve recognition – a joint collection of their poems was published to critical acclaim in 1846 – Branwell sank deeper into depression and despair. He began drinking heavily, and taking laudanum. He had failed to gain admission to the Royal Academy, failed as a portrait painter, and had begun working variously as a tutor, and as a clerk at a railway station, posts from which he was dismissed for incompetence, or worse – in one case for conducting an affair with the mother of one of his pupils. Daphne du Maurier, in The Infernal World of Branwell Brontë (1960), her brilliant and bizarre biography of Branwell, hints darkly at Branwell leading one of his young charges astray. Emily described her brother at this stage of his life as a "hopeless being".
Branwell's one and only famous painting is the only known portrait of the three sisters together: see left, now at the National Portrait Gallery. He had originally painted himself in the centre, but obliterated his image. The paint has faded, so that his ghostly presence now hovers ominously beside his sisters.
After Branwell's death in 1848, aged only 31, Charlotte wrote to her friend William Smith Williams: "I do not weep from a sense of bereavement – there is no prop withdrawn, no consolation torn away, no dear companion lost – but for the wreck of talent, the ruin of promise, the untimely, dreary extinction of what might have been a burning and a shining light."

The New York Times describes writer China Miéville as follows:

Tall and buff, he has a shaved head, a row of earrings curving sharply around the edge of his left ear, a Ph.D. in international relations from the London School of Economics and a mind that skips easily from “Jane Eyre” to welfare reform to the joys of bicycling around London. He is also a serious Socialist who ran for Parliament in 2001. The Evening Standard called him “the sexiest man in British politics.”(Sarah Lyall)

The Times of India talks about best-sellers in India not forgetting the classics:

The classics have always had a formidable presence, with the Brontë sisters and the Austens constantly jostling for space in bookshops. (Biswadeep Ghosh)

The Sydney Morning Herald has an article about film locations in Derbyshire. The information
is a bit outdated:

It appeared in the films Elizabeth and The Other Boleyn Girl, in two productions of Jane Eyre and the bawdy TV adaptation of Moll Flanders. There is a rumour of yet another Jane Eyre coming to Haddon soon, with Australian actor Mia Wasikowska in the title role.

No rumour and not soon. The film has already been shot.

When director Susanna White used Haddon in 2006 as Thornfield, Mr Rochester's home for the TV version of Jane Eyre, she devised a spectacular fire sequence that was so realistic the local fire brigade received more than 100 calls from residents convinced the place was burning down. (...)
Other houses in the district that have hosted film crews include the handsome neo-classical Kedleston Hall near Derby, designed by Robert Adam. Like Chatsworth, the approach to Kedleston shows off its elegant pillared facade, which appeared in The Duchess and Jane Eyre. (Caroline Baum)

The Guardian reviews Day for Night by Frederick Reiken. The book contains at least a Wuthering Heights reference:

Later, she catches him talking in his sleep about a surprising affection for a Wuthering Heights character. It's a beautiful moment of tenderness after the horrors that have gone before. (Patrick Ness)

The Age reviews a book about Australian football: Best on Ground edited by Peter Corris and John Dale. A Heathcliff mention appears:

[Malcolm] Knox recalls from his childhood an image of Francis Bourke, ''running out of defence with his floppy black hair like Heathcliff galloping across the moor for Cathy''. (Greg Baum)

Charleston Movie Examiner talks about important movie moments:

It's 1943. Robert Stevenson's version of Jane Eyre. Joan Fontaine, as the title character, is starting to come to grips with the depths of her feelings for Edward Rochester (ably played by Orson Welles). Hillary Brooke is Blanche Ingram: young, desirable and anxious to get her claws into Rochester. Across a room Fontaine's eyes meet with Brooke's. Only for an instant, but everyone in the theater knows the gauntlet has been thrown down. (Michael Wolff)

In the Seattle Writing Career Examiners, Jennifer Conner reviews Melanie Jackson's The Ghost and Miss Demure:

"What’s the appeal of watching people fall in love in the scariest of settings? I think it’s twofold. One, it’s tradition—look at the enduring popularity of a story like Wuthering Heights. Thanks to the Brontës and other early gothic writers, the haunted house has been chic for centuries, at least in novels.

A Haworth summer walk in The Times:

Haworth Hills, West Yorkshire.
Even at tourist high tide, the hills around Haworth retain their brutish, Brontë-esque appeal. In town, you can hobble across the cobbles to the family to the family graves, and pick up souvenirs at the apothecary’s shop where doomed Branwell Brontë bought his laudanum. To seek the unquiet ghosts of Heathcliff and Cathy, though, you need to strike out west across Penistone Hill and onto the bleakly beautiful Pennine moors. A farm track leads to the Brontë waterfalls, where the sisters composed verse while enthroned on a chair on a chair-like boulder. Not much has changed but the finger posts (now in English and Japanese). Cross the beck and keep on west to Top Withens ruin, a blasted farmhouse at 1,400ft. The guidebooks say it is Wuthering Heights but we say it’s nowhere near grand enough — though the desolate atmosphere seeps straight from the Brontë novel. From here, pick up the Pennine Way northeast to Ponden Hall, thought to be the model Thrushcross Grange, the rather less forbidding home of the Lintons. Double back now, returning to Haworth via Stanbury village. (Vincent Crump)

Tim Butcher reviews Shades of Greene by Jeremy Lewis in The Times. The book follows the saga of the Greenes and the saga of the Brontës is also mentioned:

Charlotte, Emily, Anne and Branwell grew up in a highbrow household: their father Patrick was a curate who loved to read to read and write poetry, and subscribed to literary magazines. The siblings wrote together as children wrote together as children but, while the sisters went on to produce classic works, Branwell became an alcoholic and published only a handful of poems.

More comments on the Brontë Parsonage Blog about Anne Brontë's grave. By the way, the Restore Anne Brontë's Grave Facebook group has published the following on its wall:

I have received an email from a Trustee of The Brontë Society who has informed me that they have a meeting, at the end of August, with the Reverend of St. Mary's Church to discuss what can be done to resolve this situation. We now have over 200 members and support that something needs to be done. Keep spreading the word. Thanks everyone. (Dave Selby)

The Basler Zeitung (Switzerland) discusses Twilight:

Bloss: Auch selbstbestimmte Frauen strömen ins Kino, um sich «Twilight» anzusehen. Die englische Journalistin Mathilda Gregory, die sich mit Genderthemen befasst, kann mit dem feministischen Aufschrei deshalb nicht viel anfangen. «Twilight» spreche die romantische Ader von Frauen an, vergleichbar mit den düster-emotionalen Geschichten einer Emily Brontë. (Philippe Zweifel) (Google translation)

Finally, Kate's Books reviews Jane Eyre.

Categories: Anne Brontë, Branwell Brontë, Haworth, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References

Rose at 6. Cold! ― Suddenly began to paint over the old Tyrana picture.

8½ breakfast. ― S. Vincent came: Thence I painted pretty hard at Gibbs’ Cervara ― till 4 ― when J.B. Edwards came: ― at 6 or 7 H. Farquhar & a Mr. Benett came. & at 7.30 I, & J.B.E. walked to Hansens, where the 2 large Canvasses are all ready ― & thence to the Blue Posts ― where we dined. E. is the same good lad as in 1856. ― Home by 10.30.

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

The Edmonton Journal and See Magazine review the film Black Field:

[Danishka] Esterhazy attempts to transplant the gothic genre of the Brontë sisters to a desolate Canadian Prairie setting, and she succeeds most spectacularly in the look of the film. In collaboration with gifted cinematographer Paul Suderman and production designer Ricardo Alms, Esterhazy saturates the frame with striking images -- diffused, lantern-lit interiors and the gorgeous desolation of an early Prairie spring. (Randall King in EJ)

Inspired by the “dark romance” of the Brontë sisters — whose novels she calls “early feminist literature” — Esterhazy started writing the screenplay for Black Field in early 2008. So striking was her basic scenario that she found a producer with the first draft: Winnipeg thespian and acting teacher Jeff Skinner. (Kenton Smith in SM)

The Yorkshire Post interviews actor Brian Blessed who remembers the following anecdote:

"My mother never had any doubts acting was the right thing to do," he says. "But I think my father was a little worried. However, when he saw me appear as Bramwell (sic) Brontë, that changed everything. Afterwards, he turned to me and said he had found the death scene absolutely terrifying. He had never seen an audience sit in stunned silence before. He lived until he was 98 and his opinion was always important to me." (Sarah Freeman)

Wonder Wall interviews Charlaine Harris, writer and probable Brontëite.

Some of her favorite writers that may have influenced her: Edgar Allen Poe, Charlotte Bronte, Jane Austen, Nigel Marsh, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Robert Heinlein. (Zap2it)

Another Brontëite is singer and actress Kelly Clarkson who knows perfectly well what she would bring to a desert island

“I would take Hugh Jackman,” Kelly replied when asked what three things she would take with her to a desert island during an interview with British television show The Hot Desk. “I am sorry to his wife by the way – I guess I would also take a good book, one of my favourite books because you would be pretty bored right? Maybe I would take Jane Eyre. (MusicRooms)

Thanks to Wonkette, we have discovered that in Laura Bush's memoirs, Spoken from the Heart, the Brontës are actually mentioned:

You enjoyed living by yourself and with roommates in Houston and in Austin, where you occasionally poked around in the University of Texas library, “a treasure trove of rare manuscripts from Shakespeare’s First Folio to manuscripts by the Brontë sisters and John Keats and the page proofs from James Joyce’s Ulysses” (p. 91).

Makes sense to Ms. Spafford, whose love of fiction began with The Cat in the Hat and graduated to an obsession with the Brontë sisters and, most recently, novels by African-American authors. (Hayley Mick)

More Jane Eyre podcasts are posted on Classic Literature Podcast; the Brontë Parsonage Blog publishes another opinion on the Scarborough car park in Anne Brontë's graveyard issue; Life, Love & Why has mixed feelings after reading Wuthering Heights; Provo City Library Staff Reviews posts about Romancing Miss Brontë.

Categories: Anne Brontë, Brontëites, Fiction, Jane Eyre, References, Wuthering Heights

An alert from the Australian Brontë Association for today, July 24:

April 24, 10:30 AM
Sydney Mechanics' School Arts

Music and the Brontës by Michael Links

Michael will be looking at the music the Brontës listened to and played, as well as the composers who were popular in the Brontës' era.

Categories: Talks

The Return from Calvary by Herbert Gustav Schmalz

Painting of the Day Archive

Two years ago, I did a post on a comment Edward Burne-Jones had made about how he saw the days of the week as different colors, except for Sunday which was "wet, ever since I was tiny, though I don't know why." At the time, an anonymous poster mentioned that there was a term for this condition, Synesthesia, but I didn't do much follow up on the idea, I'm sorry now to admit. Then, the other day, while perusing a totally unrelated blog that was talking about animating inanimate objects as another symptom of synesthesia, the subject came to my attention again, and I read the Wikipedia article about the condition.

According to the article, Synesthesia is "a neurologically-based condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway." Burne-Jones' admission that the days of the week represent different colors is probably an example of grapheme ---> color synesthesia, in which "letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored."


Also according to the article, "Although synesthesia was the topic of intensive scientific investigation in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was largely abandoned by scientific research in the mid-20th century, and has only recently been rediscovered by modern research." If the condition was discussed in the late 1800s, it makes me wonder if Burne-Jones was aware of it. I would love to find out how people with synesthesia were regarded in the late Victorian era. Was it considered just a quirk, or was it a symptom of a more serious mental condition to them?

Quite a few synesthetes end up in artistic careers. "Many people with synesthesia use their experiences to aid in their creative process, and many non-synesthetes have attempted to create works of art that may capture what it is like to experience synesthesia." Or, as another wonderful article on the topic states, "There are elements of synethesia in almost any creative endeavor. It is no wonder that so many artists were self-proclaimed synesthetes. The ability to create metaphors, tying together seemingly unrelated things has been responsible for some of the most beautiful poetry and prose created by human kind. It is this connection between senses, this cross-linkage that allows us to easily comprehend such abstract concepts as "the bitter wind" or such descriptions as "Juliet is the sun."

Not everyone with synesthesia, even the same type, see the world the same. "Some grapheme ? color synesthetes report that the colors seem to be "projected" out into the world (called "projectors"), while most report that the colors are experienced in their "mind's eye" (called "associators")." This calls to mind for me the frequent references in Burne-Jones' writings to wanting to "go on always in that strange land that is more true than real" or that he "lived inside the pictures and from the inside of them looked out upon a world less real than they." Perhaps if Burne-Jones had synesthesia of the "minds eye" variety, the conflict between his inner and outer reality would have been even more deep and pronounced, explaining in part his desire for the inner landscape.

In the Wikipedia article section on famous people with synesthesia, it says "Determining synesthesia from the historical record is fraught with error unless (auto)biographical sources explicitly give convincing details." Because of this, we can't guarantee that Burne-Jones had synesthesia, although I would love to now re-read The Memorials of Edward Burne-Jones by his widow, Georgiana, with this idea in mind. The particular example that sparked this exploration, the colors of the weekdays, is especially fascinating to me, because six out of the seven days are marked by a color, but the seventh day is marked by a different sense, feeling "wet." Perhaps someone with more knowledge of Synesthesia could tell us what this might mean.

In the conclusion to a fascinating article on the evolutionary function of Synesthesia, Alexandra Mnuskin writes "The extraordinary experience of synesthesia has opened the door to some of the most complicated and as yet uncharted functions of the brain. We all experience a certain amount of cross wiring, and it is this which defines us as human beings. Researchers have shown cases where color-blind synesthetes were actually able to perceive colors in numbers without ever having seen those colors before [2]. To me, this discovery is really the culmination of everything I have been learning about the brain. All on its own, the human mind can create something we have never experienced such as an abstract concept of color. It can produce a subtle and poetic language to tell stories about things we have never seen with our eyes. This one mass of cells can encompass our entire reality." If Burne-Jones had Synesthesia, perhaps the image in his mind's eye wasn't so much an escape from reality, but another way of perceiving things that truly are, on some level, real. This was part of his genius, and why his art still seems to carry us away into another "strange land."

Constance Sackville-West (English, 1846–1929) or Amy Augusta Frederica Annabella Cochrane Baillie (English, 1853–1913), untitled page from the Sackville-West Album, 1867/73; collage of watercolor and albumen silver prints; 9 5/8 x 11 13/16 in. (24.5 x 30 cm); courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

This wonderful collage combining photography and watercolor, part of an album created by relatives of Vita Sackville-West, is featured in the fascinating exhibition "Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage," which originated at the Art Institute of Chicago last autumn, made a stop at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York earlier this year, and is now at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto through 5 September.

Anticipating the avant-garde collages of Braque and Picasso by about six decades and showing a sly, absurdist sense of humor, aristocratic women of the 1860s and 1870s cut figures from photographic cartes de visite and glued them onto watercolor backgrounds in ways that created new and surprising narratives, simultaneously validating and parodying the exclusive circles in which they moved. Photos of people known to the artists, and in many cases photos of the artists themselves, imbue several of the collages with personal meaning. Others seem to be constructed in the same way that a teenager today would assemble magazine clippings of her favorite celebrities.

"The compositions are whimsical and fantastical, combining human heads and animal bodies, placing people into imaginary landscapes, and morphing faces into common household objects," say the Art Institute of Chicago curators.

Is it possible that the creators of these collages anticipated literary modernism, as well? Their works remind me of many contemporary novels in which minutely observed characters are foregrounded against the barest suggestion of a physical setting, forcing the reader's attention onto the specific and idiosyncratic. Playthings of the artist, plucked from disparate sources, the characters in these collages find themselves arranged against one another in dramatic juxtaposition, prompting the viewer to imagine the story behind each one.

What story does the Sackville-West collage suggest to you? 


Read more...
 
Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage (Art Institute of Chicago, 2009)
 
The Marvelous Album of Madame B: Being the Handiwork of a Victorian Lady of Considerable Talent (Scala Publishers, 2009)
 
New York Times, 4 February 2010, "The Pastime of Victorian Cutups" (exhibition review)
 
Toronto Star, 9 June 2010: "The Roots of Surrealism in Victorian Collage" (exhibition review)

VICTORIAN POETRY

Volume 48, Number 2, Summer 2010

Table of Contents

This is evidently a sketch which was used in the preparation of the well-known painting below the cut; I'm not sure that I don't prefer the original sketch.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-10733442

Fine early. Up by 5.30. ― Walk before breakfast with G.S. ― after which it rained ― pouring all day.

Drew Gethsemanes till 2. ― Rail, by Tunbridge to London Bridge ― by 5.15. ― Dined with Mr. Bell. & J. Salter only. … Cab home by 11.30. Pouring rain.

Letter from Mrs. Leake & Photograph of Col. L.

[Transcribed by Marco Graziosi from Houghton Library, Harvard University, MS Eng. 797.3.]

Inquiring readers, One of the perks of overseeing a blog is getting to know the fascinating people one encounters while researching a topic. One such individual is Patrick Baty of Papers and Paints. Mr. Baty has carried out extensive research into the use of pigments in architectural and decorative paintings. Recently I asked him the [...]

Jane Eyre in Twelfth Scale
Dollhouse Miniatures Auctions

Jane Eyre was written in 1847. This story is said to be somewhat autobiographical as Charlotte Brontë worked as a governess herself. This delightful miniature is illustrated with tiny pen and ink drawings.
Size: 0.8" x 0.62 x 26 pages.
All our books are authentically handmade using traditional book making techniques and every page is scrutinised for quality. They have a realistic one-twelfth scale size print. These delightful little books are printed on both sides of paper and every endeavour is made to ensure that they are as realistic as possible.

Two paintings by Leon Goodman are being sold on his web and ebay:

"Wuthering Heights....My Cathy!!" by Leon Goodman
Measurements height 20 inches by 16 inches Oil on Canvas.

"Cathy and Heathcliff " by Leon Goodman
Measurements height 20 inches by 16 inches Oil on Canvas.

Another Wuthering Heights painting for sale can be found on John Corcoran's Gallery website:

Wuthering Heights
John Corcoran
27.5” x 35.5” Canvas - Frame Size 33 x 41.5”

Categories: Art-Exhibitions, Weirdo

Entertainment Wise, Hollywood Life, The Dirt and SugarScape seem to be very excited knowing that Twilight's Edward is named after Jane Eyre's Edward Rochester and Sense and Sensibility's Edward Ferrars as was published some days ago. We thought it was rather obvious... The Cleveland Plain Dealer notices further Brontë references:

The Twilight Saga: There’s really not much reason for me to go on at length about this third (of four) installments in the review-proof Twilight series, given that the diehard fans of the franchise are second only to Harry Potter’s in terms of brand loyalty. The movie is based on the Stephenie Meyer best seller which in turn was ostensibly-inspired by Emily Brontë’s gothic novel “Wuthering Heights.” (Kam Williams)

The connection is also explored on the blog Demon Vampire Horror.

Chowk (Pakistan) describes the life of a young woman in Karachi. We are frankly amused by this fragment:

After my O-level exams, I had no plans for the rest of the summer. At first, I slept for days and when I finally emerged out of my room; my first stop was at the British Council Library to issue a bunch of books. (...) And while on one end were stacks of intellectual literature, on the other end of the backseat lay a stack of rented videos of Bollywood and Hollywood. Balance is healthy, a little bit of Jaaneman for every few pages of Jane Eyre! (Padash)

The Memphis Flyer reviews Brian Dillon's The Hypochondriacs:

What do James Boswell, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Darwin, Florence Nightingale, Alice James, Daniel Paul Schreber, Marcel Proust, Glenn Gould, and Andy Warhol have to share? Not much. Except they all led tormented lives, lives tormented enough to make them literally sick. Or so they believed. And so writes Brian Dillon, brilliantly, in The Hypochondriacs (Faber and Faber). (Leonard Gill)

More things: A Brontë cow (literally) in Keighley News, a students reading Wuthering Heights in The Lowell Sun, Cuir de Russie reviews the Classical Comics adaptation of Jane Eyre (in French), Public Republic publishes combines pictures and quotes by Emily Brontë. A thousand books with quotes reviews and quotes from Juliet Gael's Romancing Miss Brontë.

Categories: Books, Comics, Fiction, Jane Eyre, References

Walking in the Bois de Boulogne by Giovanni Boldini

Painting of the Day Archive

by Michele Ann Young

Another week gone already? Oh no. I want summer to last forever.

After Horse Guards I wandered back to my hotel. Refreshed, the next day I had one very particular spot on my mind. St. George's, Hanover Square, because Ann had just written a wedding scene there for "The Gamekeeper's Lady", due out in Hardcover in December. Anyway, my luck wasn't in. The Church is closed for renovations. They need lots of donations and I am providing you with a link to the official site. http://www.stgeorgeshanoversquare.org/ Dame Judi Dench is their Patron. However, I did take some pictures, as we were interested in the steps and the access.

One thing you need to know, the Church is not in Hanover Square, but on St George's Street to the south of the square.  You will see this quite clearly on Google if you wish, and probably in the A to Z of Regency London.







Here you can see along the street, with Hanover Square behind on the left.  There are several very nice Georgian buildings remaining in this street.On the right is a picture taken looking up towards the square, where the trees are. Again, more Georgian buildings.




These are views of buildings from the steps.  I thought it particularly interesting that one of the shops, the one with the bow front was a bespoke taylors which now incorporates Hicks and Sons, established in 1797.  Hicks and sons would have been most likely located in Saville Row, but the building they occupy now might well have been around at the time.

And below are the steps up which the hero's brother dashed just in time!



Since I had walked to Hanover Square, in search of my church, we ought to pay it a visit too.

Hanover Square was the first square built in London. Started in 1717, it was originally surrounded by fields. This picture shows it around 1754 looking north.

Included in the surrounding buildings in our time were the Hanover Square rooms built in 1774-75 in place of the original Number 4. They were built by the Swiss-Italian dancing master to the royal family, Sir John Gallini. Bach was a shareholder in the rooms and gave concerts there from 1775-1782, as did Hayden between 1791 to 1794.  The musical connection continued well past the Regency until 1874.

Number 21 was occupied by the French Ambassador, Prince Tallyrand, but after our period.

Today, there are a great many more trees, a whole lot more traffic of a very different sort, and it is fenced in with iron railings.

That is all I have time for tonight, I hope you enjoyed this visit. Lots more to come, until then, Happy Rambles.

What I am reading right now.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Examples of Abraham Lincoln's handwriting don't turn up very often, and a recent discovery has to count as one of the strangest places anyone has found something from Lincoln's pen. ...

Read Full Post

There’s an interesting anecdote in a June 4th 2010 New York Times article about Pawn Stars, a History Channel television show about Las Vegas’s Gold and Silver Pawn Shop.

Shelby Tashlin of Las Vegas walked to the counter clutching a boxed edition of “Alice in Wonderland” containing an etching and 12 lithographs by Salvador Dalí. Ms. Tashlin’s opening thrust: the Dali prints were limited in number. Mr. Harrison’s parry: “He’s pretty well known for fudging numbers.” Mr. Harrison spoke about etching versus lithography and allowed that Dalí and Lewis Carroll were a “wonderful combination.” Then it was time for business. Ms. Tashlin wanted $10,000. Mr. Harrison asked if she had taken a little blue pill, and offered $5,000.

She politely declined and walked away still clutching “Alice in Wonderland.” “I was hoping it would go the other way, but I’m not surprised,” she would tell a reporter later.

The Highline Times reviews the performances of Withering Heights in Burien, WA:

"Withering Heights" is an affectionate parody of the beloved novels by Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters. The more you know about their stories, the more you will enjoy this show.
Miss Clarity Fugue (Adrienne Grieco) is a newly-orphaned debutante who finds herself saddled with her late father's (Martin J. Mackenzie) enormous debt. How large is his debt? Well, according to the bankers Mr. Kneckerbreaker (Eric Hartley) and Mr. Sponge (Doug Knoop), it is monumental. World famous. Legendary. Off the charts. You get the picture.
So it is left to Miss Clarity to find a way to live without being sent to debtor's prison. One possible solution is to marry well.
Thus, Miss Clarity and her best friend Darcy (Amber Rack) must insinuate themselves into proper society in order to meet eligible, wealthy gentlemen. Among those they befriend are the dashing Dashwood (Steven Schenck), the quiet Eustace (Brenan Grant) and the handsome but vacuous Janeway (David Roby).
Add to the mix the man-hating Miss Fedora (Laura Smith), Miss Clarity's trashy relatives (Melissa Malloy and Martin Mackenzie) and harmonious musical interludes by the "Jane Austen City Limits Quartet" (J Howard Boyd, Doug Knoop, Megan Krogstadt and Nancy Warren) and you've got a "parody of Victorian proportions."
The Breeders Theater company of actors continue on with their usual fine performances, getting plenty of laughs from the preview audience last Wednesday evening. Adrienne Grieco is the perfect Austenian heroine: pretty, perky, optimistic and long suffering. Knowing that Ms. Grieco is also a fine singer, it was too bad that she wasn't also given a heart-felt solo during the show.
Making his BT debut, David Roby does very well as the comedic leading man Janeway. It isn't easy to play pompousness and willful ignorance at the same time, while making the audience like you. He did.
Special shout-outs go to Amber Rack as the airhead Darcy, to Brenan Grant as the man who cannot finish a sentence, and to director J. Howard Boyd, musical director Nancy Warren and chief playwright T. M. Sell for their fine work. (...)
For a most amusing time complete with comedy, hors d'oeuvres and fine wines, you won't go wrong with an evening of "Withering Heights." (Aya Hashiguchi Clark)

Los Angeles Times talks about Ian McShane and remembers his Heathcliff in 1967:

His signature early role was the darkly mysterious Heathcliff in the BBC's "Wuthering Heights," from 1967. (Scott Timberg)

.... Twilight zone .... where Stephenie Meyer talks about why Edward was named Edward:

Edward was a perfect choice as it belongs to two great literary romantic heroes, Mr Rochester in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre and Mr Ferrars in Jane Austen's Sense And Sensibility. (Now Magazine)

Endgadget examines the Kobo e-reader ending the article with the following sentence:

So, if the Kobo reader isn't quite the future of reading devices, it's certainly firmly entrenched in the present, with enough likeable qualities at a price point that few could argue with, to keep it on our list of readers we wouldn't mind spending a night at home curled up with on the sofa, reading Wuthering Heights while our significant other plays Red Dead Redemption. (Laura June)

The Berkshire Eagle talks to Lynette Cornwell who transforms old books into purses:

The most popular book title has been "Jane Eyre"; the most often requested but hardest to find, is the hardback version of "To Kill a Mockingbird." The book alone can run $40 to $50, if she can put her hands on one. (Charles Ponenti)

Stephen C. Rose on Associated Content conjectures about why Emily christened her (anti)heroe Heathcliff. Noticias Breves (in Spanish) briefly posts about Jane Eyre and Kristen's World writes about Wuthering Heights. Cristaux de verre reviews Agnes Grey in French. Les Brontë à Paris translates into French Patrick Brontë's poem The Rainbow.

Categories: Agnes Grey, Humour, Jane Eyre, Movies-DVD-TV, References, Theatre, Weirdo, Wuthering Heights