One Hundred Best First Lines

The American Book Review has posted what they consider to be the best 100 opening lines. Guess who is in the top ten? But here is my favorite:

In the last years of the Seventeenth Century there was to be found among the fops and fools of the London coffee-houses one rangy, gangling flitch called Ebenezer Cooke, more ambitious than talented, and yet more talented than prudent, who, like his friends-in-folly, all of whom were supposed to be educating at Oxford or Cambridge, had found the sound of Mother English more fun to game with than her sense to labor over, and so rather than applying himself to the pains of scholarship, had learned the knack of versifying, and ground out quires of couplets after the fashion of the day, afroth with Joves and Jupiters, aclang with jarring rhymes, and string-taut with similes stretched to the snapping-point. —John Barth, The Sot-Weed Factor (1960)

Thanks to Vic at Jane Austen's World  for finding this.

Fascinating Find Near Stonehenge: The Boy with the Amber Necklace

Amber Boy,
A Neolithic Robert Pattinson

A group of scientists and researchers have gathered near Stonehenge in preparation for the the publication of a collection of research papers on Stonehenge. The following is one of the subjects under discussion:

Stonehenge Visited By Bronze Age Mediterraneans from Red Orbit

Chemical tests on teeth from an ancient burial site containing the 3,550-year-old remains of a teenage boy wearing a unique necklace unearthed near Stonehenge indicate that the person buried there grew up around the Mediterranean Sea… A previous skeleton unearthed near Stonehenge was analyzed and was found to also be a migrant to the area.



Amber Beads or
Honeynut Cheerios

  The “Boy with the Amber Necklace,”* as he is known to archaeologists, was discovered in 2005, about three miles southeast of Stonehenge on Boscombe Down. The remains were found next to a Bronze Age burial mound, during construction of a road for military housing. The boy is around 14 to 15 years old and “is buried with this beautiful necklace,” said Professor Jane Evans, head of archaeological science for the British Geological Survey. “The position of his burial, the fact he’s near Stonehenge, and the necklace all suggest he’s of significant status.” Professor Evans compared the Stonehenge in the Bronze Age to Westminster Abbey today: a place where the “great and the good” were buried.

Austen and Gaskell

There is a lot going on out there that I think may be of interest to my readers:

Austen Authors: Author and illustrator Jane Odiwe is the spotlight today. In addition to her excellent post, in which she speaks about Austen and her books, Jane has shared several illustrations with her readers. Also, in celebration of MARILYN BRANT'S second novel, Friday Mornings at Nine, her publisher, Kensington Books, is giving away a free ebook download of her Austenesque debut novel, According to Jane. Check Austen Authors for details.

Must Reads

Vic at Jane Austen World has an interview with, Patricia Meyer Spacks, editor of Pride and Prejudice: An Annotated Edition. Any Austen fan would love to have this book on their shelf. Tony Grant has a post about the education of Jane Austen, also at Jane Austen World, with lots of illustrations.

Elizabeth Bennet's Inbox

I know that many of you probably saw this over at Austen Authors, but I thought it was worth a rerun. This laugh is courtesy of E-mail Marketing Reports.

The Star-Spangled Banner

On this day in 1814, Francis Scott Key, a 35-year-old lawyer and amateur poet, finished his poem, Defence of Fort McHenry, after witnessing the bombardment of Fort McHenry by the British Royal Navy ships in Chesapeake Bay during the Battle of Fort McHenry in the War of 1812.

On September 3, 1814, Francis Scott Key and John Stuart Skinner set sail from Baltimore aboard the ship HMS Minden, flying a flag of truce on a mission approved by President James Madison to secure the exchange of prisoners. Key and Skinner boarded the British flagship HMS Tonnant on September 7 and spoke with Major General Robert Ross and then-Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane over dinner while the two officers discussed war plans.

Because Key and Skinner had heard details of the plans for the attack on Baltimore, they were held captive until after the battle, first aboard HMS Surprise and later back on HMS Minden. During the bombardment of Fort McHenry, Key noted that the fort’s smaller storm flag continued to fly, but during the night, the storm flag had been lowered and the larger flag had been raised. Key was inspired by the American victory and the sight of the large American flag flying triumphantly above the fort.

Battle of Britain Day

RAF Fighter Pilots

In honor of the Battle of Britain Day, I am posting excerpts from two of Winston Churchill's speeches:

After the fall of France: "What General Weygand has called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. 



Dorset Hall - A Refuge for Britain's Suffragettes

In an earlier post, I wrote about the 90th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States. Tony Grant, from London Calling, mentioned that the home of Rose Lamartine Yates served as a refuge for these persecuted women. Tony rode into the London Borough of Merton and took some pictures of Dorset Hall. He also provided a link to My Merton, a publication of the Merton Council, which included the following:

Austen Authors - Day 5

Amanda Grange, author of Mr. Darcy's Diary and Mr. Darcy, Vampyre, is featured on Austens Authors today. Also Sia McKye of Thoughts Over Coffee is featuring Austen Authors as well. Hope you will visit her blog and say hello.

Jane Austen and Napoleon - 1812 - Two People Who Changed the World

Jane Austen spent most of the year 1812 making extensive revisions to First Impressions, but while Jane toiled away on her manuscript, events were taking place in Russia that would change the world. However, not a word about the Napoleonic Wars would appear in her masterpiece, the renamed Pride and Prejudice.

The Prince and the Author - Dedication of Emma

After finishing the post, please read the important postscript because it is, well, important.

One of Jane Austen’s most ardent supporters of her writing efforts was her brother Henry. Despite being cautioned by his sister that she did not want her identity known, Henry could not help but brag about his younger sister’s success, especially when the very popular Pride and Prejudice went into its third printing. It was Henry, from his sickbed, who successfully negotiated her agreement with John Murray, Lord Byron’s publisher, for her fourth novel, Emma. After an agreement had been secured with Murray, Jane went up to London to see if she could expedite the printing of her book. During her stay, she was contacted by Rev. James Stanier Clarke, the Regent’s librarian. His Royal Highness had learned that Jane was in town from his physician who also happened to be her brother Henry’s doctor.

Pearls of Wisdom from an Edwardian Nursery

I am reading An Edwardian Childhood by Jane Pettigrew. In this charmingly illustrated book, Pettigrew recounts what it was like to be a child growing up in an Edwardian Era home where there was sufficient income to hire a nanny. One of my favorite passages was "Nursery Philosophy," that included favorite sayings of Nanny, some of which have been around for hundreds of years: "Save your breath to cool your porridge," which appears in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, or "Eating toast crusts makes your hair curl, so eat them up," a wisdom shared when I was growing up. (It'd didn't work.) Here are a few others:

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

I love witty quotes, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan was a noted wit during his lifetime.

Before Noel Coward, there was Sheridan, poet and playwright, who wrote the brilliant comedy of manners, The School for Scandal, which was performed at the Royal Theatre, Drury Lane, during Jane Austen’s lifetime. She most assuredly would have been acquainted with the play as we know that she had read The Critic.


Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) was born in Ireland and was the owner of Drury Lane. On February 24, 1809, the theatre burned down. He observed the conflagration while drinking a glass of wine, and Sheridan was famously reported to have said: “A man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine by his own fireside.” This  man, who had once served as Treasurer of the Navy, was a notorious spendthrift and refused to satisfy his creditors on the grounds that “paying only encourages them.” For thirty-two years he was also a Whig member of the House of Commons and friend to Charles James Fox and the Duchess of Devonshire. He is buried in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey.

Mrs. Bennet's First Name

What is Mrs. Bennet's first name? According to someone at Yahoo Answers, it is Blossom, which the respondent says Mr. Bennet used quite a bit. Who knew? LOL

P.S. Someone on meryton.com just informed me that Mr. Bennet calls Mrs. Bennet "Blossom" in the 2005 movie. I'll have to rewatch it now.

Review of To Kill a Mockingbird

This year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, one of the great novels of American literature. The story centers on the defense of a black man in Depression-era Alabama, who is accused of raping a white woman. A local lawyer, Atticus Finch, agrees to defend Tom Robinsion even though he knows that an acquittal is virtually impossible in the South of the 1930s. When asked by a neighbor why he is doing something that will only anger the town, he states: “[Even though] you’re licked before you begin, you begin anyway, and you see it through no matter what.” It is simply a matter of a decent man doing the right thing.

The heart of the story belongs to Atticus's six-year old daughter, Scout, her older brother Jem, and a visitor, Dill (based on Harper Lee’s friend, Truman Capote). Although they are merely children, they sense that a great injustice is about to descend on the head of Tom Robinson, whose only crime is that he is black. Forbidden by their father to attend the trial, they sit in the “colored gallery” in the courtroom and watch as Atticus destroys the case against Robinson.

Foreshadowing the tragedy that will soon unfold, when his children receive air rifles for Christmas, Atticus tells them that they can “shoot all the blue jays they want,” but they must remember that “it is a sin to kill a mockingbird.”  As a neighbor explains, “They don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.” To Kill a Mockingbird is not a story about justice, because there is none, but individual courage and the death of innocence.

This is Harper Lee's one and only novel, but when you write a masterpiece your first time out, it is enough.

Emily Brontë and Claudette Colbert

On this day in 1818, English novelist, Emily Brontë, was born in Thornton, near Bradford in Yorkshire, to Patrick Brontë and Maria Branwell. From Wikipedia: "She was the younger sister of Charlotte Brontë and the fifth of six children. In 1824, the family moved to Haworth, where Emily's father was perpetual curate, and it was in these surroundings that their literary oddities flourished. In 1847, she published her only novel, Wuthering Heights, as two volumes of a three volume set (the last volume being Agnes Grey by her sister Anne). Although it received mixed reviews when it first came out, the book subsequently became an English literary classic. In 1850, Charlotte edited and published Wuthering Heights as a stand-alone novel and under Emily's real name.

Tea with Jane Austen by Kim Wilson, a Book Review

Come, come, Miss Prissy, make it up,

And we will lovers be,

And we will go to Bagnigge Wells,

And there will have some tea;

It’s there you’ll see the lady-birds

Upon the stinging nettles,

And there you’ll see the waiters, ma’am,

With all their shining kettles.

“The Prentice to His Mistress” - 18th Century Song

Tea with Jane Austen is a charming book, a lovingly told tale, of the importance of tea in the life of those who lived in the Regency Era. It is all here: How to make tea, tea and toast for breakfast (the usual breakfast fare for all but the wealthiest households), seeping the tea leaves, tea caddies and miscellaneous utensils, shopping for tea sets, and the different types of teas. In Austen’s time, tea was a valuable commodity that was kept under lock and key. In the Austen household, Jane was the keeper of the keys to the tea chest.

But, for me, the most interesting part of the book was Jane’s excursions into London to buy the best tea from Twinings warehouse. “[Jane] would have walked through a doorway that looked virtually the same as it does today... Once inside, she would have been greeted with the aromatic scent of many different sorts of teas… [S]he would probably have smelled the tea to judge its fragrance and character before she bought it.”

This was the most expensive way of buying tea, but there was a reason for buying the best. Tea was regularly adulterated with things you don’t want to think about. Dregs were sold out the back door by kitchen maids. After being dried, they were mixed with “leaves, twigs, and sometimes floor sweepings.” That’s if you were lucky. “The dyes used on adulterated tea were often quite poisonous.”

Although the afternoon tea we associate with the British belongs to the Victorian Era, there were rituals aplenty in the Regency Era, and this book shows how important tea was to Jane Austen and her contemporaries. Five stars.

Jane Austen's Guide to Good Manners

Josephine Ross's  Jane Austen’s Guide to Good Manners, Compliments, Charades & Horrible Blunders (with illustrations by Henrietta Webb) is a little book, duplicating the size of Austen’s original volumes. (Pride and Prejudice was published in three volumes.) It fits perfectly in my delicate feminine hands. The book is chock full of rules that kept everyone on the straight and narrow (at least for the middle and upper classes). For example, all ladies and gentlemen should carry calling cards, and once you visited with someone, you could not call again until the visit had been returned. This might leave someone twiddling their thumbs for a very long while if the visited party chose not to come a-calling.

Of course, the rules for young people were quite exacting, and if a lady was able to secure the affection of a gentleman, there was a whole other set of rules to observe, most especially, avoiding open shows of affection. Kissing, at any time, was out of the question. And so it went through marriage, child rearing, maturity, and death.

Occasionally, the author includes an interesting tidbit, such as “Manners Makyth Man is, of course, the famous motto of Winchester College, where the Authoress’s much-loved nephews were pupils; and it is no coincidence that… she gave the name of Winchester’s revered headmaster, Dr. Goddard, to the fictional proprietress of the modest little ladies school in Emma.” But mostly, it is a recitation of those rules that governed the lives of Jane Austen and her contemporaries.

Since we live in a time where just about anything goes, it might appear that people living in the Regency Era walked around in a cultural minefield. On the other hand, think how thrilling it would be for a young girl, new to society, to learn that a gentleman had approached a master of ceremonies at a dance for the purpose of seeking an introduction. It could almost make you swoon. Ladies, get out your fans.

She Done Him In - 1793

Today is the day in 1793 that Royalist supporter, Charlotte Corday, stabbed French Revolutionary, Jean Paul Marat, a supporter of Robespierre, to death. Because he suffered from a skin disease, Marat often spent hours in his bath, and it was there that he met his death. Corday did not try to escape and was sent to the guillotine four days later.

The painter, Jacques Louis David, was a disciple of the Revolution. He had visited Marat the day before his assassination and was able to recreate the scene of the crime.  However, he depicted an idealized version of Marat, free of all evidence of his skin disease.

With Robespierre's overthrow and execution in July 1794, David fell out of favor and went into exile in Belgium. Fortune signed on him once again with the rise of Napoleon.

David's death: "When David was leaving a theater, a carriage struck him, and he later died, on 29 December 1825. At his death, some portraits were auctioned in Paris, they sold for little; the famous Death of Marat was exhibited in a secluded room, to avoid outraging public sensibilities. Considered a regicide of King Louis XVI, the body of the painter was buried at Evere Cemetery, Brussels, while his heart was buried at Père Lachaise, Paris.

"In one of history's great coincidences, David's close association with the Committee of Public Safety during the Terror resulted in his signing of the death warrant for Alexandre de Beauharnais, a minor noble. De Beauharnais's widow, Rose-Marie Josèphe de Tascher de Beauharnais would later be known to the world as Joséphine Bonaparte, Empress of the French. It was her coronation by her husband, Napoleon I, that David depicted so memorably in the Coronation of Napoleon and Josephine, 2 December 1804." Wikipedia

Marie Therese, Marie Antoinette's Daughter, Jane Austen's Contemporary

Marie Therese (1778-1851) is the story of the only surviving child of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI of France. Because of their tragic end on the guillotine, the royal couple is a favorite of biographers and historical novelists, and the first third of the book recounts the circumstances that led to their execution, the difference being that, in Marie Therese, we are looking at these events through the eyes of a young girl. The downward spiral that began with the storming of the Bastille and led to the Reign of Terror started when Marie Therese was only 11 years old. While at Versailles, "Madame Royal" was forced to hide from armed mobs screaming for her mother's blood and to step over the butchered bodies of servants.

Three years later, the king, queen, Marie Therese, and her brother, the Dauphin, Louis-Charles, are incarcerated in the Temple Prison in Paris, and the horrors begin: the execution of her parents, the prolonged torture of her little brother who would die of neglect, and her own imprisonment. When she is finally released 3-1/2 years later, she is allowed to join her mother's brother, Emperor Franz II, in Austria. However, "The Orphan of the Tower" is now a young woman of steely resolve and one who recognizes the importance of her role as a representative of the Bourbon dynasty in exile.

In the years following her release from prison, Marie Therese and her husband, the Duc D’Angouleme, lived a peripatetic existence, finally ending up in England, where they watched the events unfolding in France. With Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, the Bourbon dynasty was again restored. For the next 15 years, France would be Marie Therese's home until, once again, the French wanted to be rid of their king, Charles X.

Marie Therese is an exhaustive, highly detailed account of the life of Madame Royal, the French Revolution, and the complexities of European politics in the early 19th century. In addition to the great events in the lives of the royals, minutiae, such as travel itineraries, meals, the appearances of numerous pretenders to the throne, are recorded. At times, the inclusion of so many mundane details bogs down the book, but for anyone who ever wanted to know what happened to the only surviving child of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, they will have to wonder no longer.

* * *

After exile in Vienna, Marie Therese and her husband moved to Great Britain in 1809 where she settled at Hartwell House, Buckinghamshire. Marie Therese's  father-in-law, the Comte d'Artois, spent most of his time in Edinburgh, where he had been given apartments at Holyrood House.

The long years of exile ended with the Napoleon's abdication  in 1814 and the restoration of Bourbon dynasty. The ascension of  Louis XVIII  to the throne of France took place twenty-one years after the death of his brother, Louis XVI.