Feast of Santa Lucia - December 11 in most Nordic countries

In the 1980s, my husband and I hosted an exchange student from Sweden, and he shared the custom of the Feast of Santa Lucia with us. Basically, it is light chasing away the dark.

From Wikipedia: St. Lucy/Lucia is one of few saints celebrated by the overwhelmingly Lutheran Scandinavian peoples (Danes, Swedes, Finns and Norwegians). The St. Lucy's Day celebrations retain many indigenous Germanic pagan, pre-Christian midwinter elements, and the practices associated with the day, predates the adoption of Christianity in Scandinavia, and is like much of Scandinavian folklore, and even religiosity today, based on the annual struggle between light and darkness.

The Nordic observation of St. Lucy is first attested in the Middle Ages, and continued after the Protestant Reformation in the 1520s and 1530s, although the modern celebration is only about 200 years old. It is likely that tradition owes its popularity in the Nordic countries to the extreme change in daylight hours between the seasons in this region.

Handel and the History of the Messiah

Handel Commemoration in
Westminster Abbey

In today's post, Sharon Lathan of Austen Austhors has a post on how Handel's Messiah came to be associated with the Christmas season. Scheduling concerts to raise money for charity is older than you may think, and one of the reasons why The Messiah is perfectly suited to the giving of alms that we associate with this time of year.

From Wikipedia:  Handel's  festival or ‘Commemoration’ took place in Westminster Abbey in 1784, to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the death of George Frideric Handel in 1759 and was organized by John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich. The Concert of Ancient Music took the form of a series of concerts of Handel’s music, given in the Abbey by vast numbers of singers and instrumentalists.

The commemoration established a fashion for large-scale performances of Handel’s choral works throughout the nineteenth century and much of the twentieth. E.D. Mackerness in A Social History of English Music described it as "he most important single event in the history of English music."

Hallelujah! Something to get you ready for the Christmas season

Thanks to Tony Grant of London Calling for finding this. :) Mary

Christmas at New College Oxford

If you are curious about what would have been served at a Christmas dinner at Oxford College in 1773, I just so happen to have a post today on Austen Authors that will give you a pretty good idea. But here is a sampling:

We had for dinner two fine cods boiled, with fried soles round them, and oyster sauce, a fine sirloin of beef roasted, some pease soup and an orange pudding, for the first course; for the second we had a lease of wild ducks roasted, a fore-quarter of lamb, and salad, and mince pies.

Since I don't eat fish, beef, duck, or lamb, I would have pretty much have been dining on salad and dessert. I might have had a bowl of pease soup, but was it nine days old?

For this bit of history, I consulted two friends, Tony Grant and Lynn Shepherd. Thank you. Now continue on to my favorite Holiday Movies post.

Americans Have Been Big Eaters at Thanksgiving for a Long Time*

Proclamation of Thanksgiving:  In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the Unites States the Eighty-eighth. By the President: Abraham Lincoln

Although a proclamation of Thanksgiving was issued in 1863 by President Lincoln, it was not until December 26, 1941 that President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill into law making the fourth Thursday of November a national day of Thanksgiving. But long before those dates, Americans had set aside a day in late November to give thanks for a multitude of blessings. The turkey and all the fixings, the visiting, and church attendance that we have come to associate with a modern Thanksgiving were already well established by the time of Federal Era in America, a time that corresponds to the Regency Era in England.

In 1834, the New Hampshire Patriot made note of the approaching holiday: A moderate rise in the price of molasses and spices—the increased demand for laces, ribbons, and dancing pumps—the hurrying of tailors, milliners, and mantua makers—frequent and important consultation of young gentlemen—whispering, flushed faces, and anxious looks among young ladies—and lastly, a string of proclamations announcing the 27th of November as a day of Thanksgiving in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Vermont.”** Farmers harvested their pumpkins, gathered their eggs, fatted their pigs, and selected the best turkeys and chickens for slaughter, all in preparation for the biggest holiday of the year.

I recently completed a story at A Happy Assembly, Mr. Darcy in Old New York, where Mr. Darcy, Georgiana, and Mr. Bingley travel to Tarrytown in the Hudson River Valley to visit Charles Bingley’s Uncle Richard, who has been living in America for twenty-five years. Of course, Darcy falls in love with American, Elizabeth Bennet, but a lot of the history of the region, including the Thanksgiving traditions, is included. Here are three excerpts:

Mining P&P Nuggets

Although I love to write Jane Austen fan fiction and novels with Austen tie-ins, I do not profess to be an Austen scholar. But because so many people out there DO know a lot about Austen and her works, I am learning something all the time. At present, I am reading the annotated edition of Pride and Prejudice, edited by Patricia Meyer Spacks. In her notes, Ms. Spacks states that when Mr. Darcy tells Bingley that "I am in no humour at present to give consequece to young ladies who are slighted by other men," there is more there than I thought. When Darcy declares that he will not give consequence to Elizabeth, what he is actually saying is that because of his rank in society, by dancing with Elizabeth, he would have elevated her status. So not only did Darcy insult Elizabeth by saying she is merely tolerable, he knowingly refused to confer status on her. No wonder she disliked him!

The second nugget I mined was when Mrs. Bennet was recapping the night of the assembly for her husband. "Only think of that my dear; [Mr. Bingley] actually danced with [Jane] twice, and she was the only creature in the room that he asked a second time." Again, according to Ms. Spacks, when "a man asked a lady to dance, he would be expected to remain her partner for two dances. If he invited her a second time, they would share two more dances," i.e., four dances. That's a nice chunk of time to spend with one partner. So Jane truly was honored by Mr. Bingley's attentions.

Stay tuned for more nuggets or share your own. Mary

Kitten Overboard

I have a post on Austen Authors today about an 18th Century kitten who fell overboard from one of those great wooden sailing ships. It's an amazing story. Better yet, it's true. And this provides me with an excuse to introduce you to the newest member of the Simonsen household, our cat, Lucy, who showed up at our house every day for a month. Her persistence paid off. I relented and now she runs the house.

What to wear to the Pemberley ball?

I can whip out a blog post in a fairly short amount of time, but yesterday I spent an hour looking for a dress to wear to the Pemberley ball. Being a woman of a certain age, I wanted to wear something elegant, but nothing that would steal the limelight away from the younger girls who had just come out. I chose the dress at left. What do you think? Did I choose well?

Come One, Come All, To the Pemberley Ball

Velvet at vv32reads is hosting her Second Annual Pemberley Ball. (Please see invitation in the sidebar.) You may know one of the surprise guests. (That's a hint.) I hope you will join Velvet starting tomorrow. Let the dancing begin.

Pictures and Text to Supplement Mr. Darcy's Angel of Mercy



Hospital at Le Touquet
w/covered chandeliers in casino

Here are a few pictures that might help people visualize some of the people and places mentioned in my story. (Click on title, Mr. Darcy's Angel of Mercy, in the sidebar to read the story.)

One of the most famous of the Voluntary Aid Detachments (VAD) of World War I was Vera Brittain, who wrote Testament of Youth. As Paul Delany wrote in Literature Criticism: When Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth was published in 1933 it struck a deep chord among those in England who felt, as she did, that their youth had been 'smashed up' by the Great War. Nearly a million men of their generation lay buried in Flanders and Gallipoli; many of those who remained felt condemned to hollow lives, haunted by loss and grief. They believed that those sacrificed had been men of special grace, the irreplaceable flower of the nation's youth; and they blamed the post-war decline of Britain on their absence. The survivors—guilty, perhaps, simply of having survived—were left to bear the burden of a disappointing and mediocre peace.

In the early days of the war, the Duchess of Westminster, who was married to the wealthiest peer in the realm, the Duke of Westminster, Bendor Grosvenor, outfitted a hospital in the casino at LeTouquet. She is pictured below with her Irish wolfhound and is surrounded by her nurses and VADs.

Dancing with Jane Austen

While compiling a list of songs for my sister's birthday, I found myself thinking of how each song applied to one of Jane Austen's novels or their adaptations, so I thought I would share them with you. Keep in mind my sister was listening to these songs in the fifties and sixties.*

Why Must I Be a Teenager in Love? by Dion and the Belmonts – Catherine Morland falling in love with Henry Tilney

Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron - A Review

Jane and the Madness of Lord Byron by Stephannie Barron is a multi-layered Regency mystery, and the sleuth is none other than Jane Austen. Following the death of Henry Austen’s wife, Eliza, Comtesse de Feuillide, Jane and her brother make arrangements to visit the seaside town of Brighton. However, their plans for a quiet interlude fall by the wayside when a stop at a posting inn results in Jane and Henry rescuing a young lady, Catherine Twining, from a forced elopement with the scandal-ridden Lord Byron. When the girl’s body is discovered a few days later, a drowning victim, who is sewn into a canvas shroud and deposited in the bed of Lord Byron, the poet becomes the prime murder suspect.

Shocking News: Jane Austen Needed an Editor!

Jane Austen Could not Spell - What Does This Change?

From newsgather.com: Jane Austen apparently could not spell. The exquisite writer was not only a poor speller, but also a poor grammarian at times. Austen had a lot of help from her editor.

A recent study by Oxford University English Professor Kathryn Sutherland revealed the truth about Austen’s spelling and grammar usage. Sutherland looked at 1,100 handwritten pages from Austen. Although Austen’s brother Henry claimed that "everything came finished from her pen," it appears that that claim was not the truth.

Sutherland read several unpublished manuscripts and found that the delicate precision of spelling and grammar is missing. In fact, there are blots and general messiness throughout. Also, Austen, like many, actually ended up breaking nearly all the rules for good English writing...

Continue reading the article at NEWS (newsgather.com) and...

Little G, the Daughter of the Duchess of Devonshire

Castle Howard, Yorkshire

 

The snuff box sold at the Duke of Devonshire’s attic sale showed a picture of the most famous Duchess of Devonshire, Georgiana Spencer Cavendish, and her eldest child, Georgiana Dorothy Cavendish. (See picture in post below.) The Duchess, who was married to the 5th Duke of Devonshire, was bound to him in a loveless marriage, one in which he showed no affection for her, probably because he was showering his love on the Duchess’s dearest friend, Lady Elizabeth Forster, his mistress of 25 years, and co-resident of Chatsworth. Lady Elizabeth became the Duke’s second Duchess upon the death of Georgiana in 1806.



Duchess and Little G by Reynolds

 But what happened to Georgiana's little girl? Little G married the 6th Earl of Carlisle and took up residence at their beautiful home in Yorkshire, Castle Howard, the setting for the television series, Brideshead Revisited. The earl served in the moderate Tory government of George Canning. However, Carlisle split with the Tories over electoral reform and later served as a member of the cabinet in the Whig administration of Lord Grey. Ironically, Lord Grey had had an affair with Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, and together they had had a child, Eliza Courtney Ellice. Lord Grey was married to Mary Ponsonby, a descendant of the 3^rd Duke of Devonshire. Are we clear on this?

The Duke of Devonshire Cleans Out His Attic




Snuff Box with
Georgiana and Little G



When Peregrine Cavendish, the present Duke of Devonshire, inherited Chatsworth, the ancestral home of the Dukes of Devonshire, five years ago, he discovered that the attic of the manor house was stuffed to the gills with centuries of accumulated bric-a-brac. Crates of china, glass and silver, lanterns, lacquered screens, paintings, rocking horses, train sets, globes, a pram, stuffed animals and birds were among the attic’s treasures. According to His Lordship, “It was scarcely possible to open doors, let alone to store anything else.” His response was to contact Harry Dalmeny, deputy chairman of Sotheby’s, and to conduct “the greatest attic sale ever held.”

Duke of Devonshire



Sotheby’s estimated that the three-day sale in early October of 20,000 items would raise £2.5m. The final total was closer to £6.5m. The 400 people in attendance competed with 1,000 more registered remote bidders. The highest price was £565,250, almost twice the top estimate, paid for a 1735 white marble fireplace designed by William Kent for Devonshire House, the family’s enormous London home that was demolished in the 1920s to make way for the Green Park tube station. The fireplace had been dismantled into 30 pieces and stored in a building once used to repair tractors.

October 13 - A Busy Day in History

Nero Fiddles While
Rome Burns

*54 – Nero ascends to the Roman throne – not a good thing for Rome or anyone else

Knight Templar



*409 – The Vandals cross the Pyrenees into Spain – not a good thing for civilization in general

*1307 – Hundreds of Knights Templar in France are arrested by agents of Philip the Fair. They were tortured until they confessed to heresy – not a good thing for the Templars. However, Philip the Fair enriched his coffers from the fabulous wealth of the Templars. “Fair” refers to the color of his hair not his treatment of others.

*1362 – The Chancellor of England opens Parliament with a speech in English for the first time. Prior to that, the address was made in French. In the same year a statute decreed that English was to be the official language of the courts, and English replaced French in the schools – good for the common folk who spoke only English.

The Story of Old English - The Building Blocks of a Language

I love English. It has a richness and depth that is unmatched by any other language. German has a vocabulary of about 185,000 and French fewer than 100,000. Compare that to the 650,000 to 750,000 entries in an unabridged English dictionary. According to The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language by Melvyn Bragg, “Our everyday conversation is still founded on and funded by Old English… We can have intelligent conversations in Old English and only rarely do we need to swerve away from it. Almost all of the hundred most common words in our language, wherever it is spoken, come from Old English. There are three from Old Norse: “they,” “their” and “them,” and the first French derived word is “number” at seventy-six.” Here are the 100 most commonly used words:

Venn Diagram

I thought this Venn diagram was a riot. It appeared last week on Austen Authors, but I thought I would kick off the week with a chuckle.

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.