Celebrate Labor Day - Thank a Worker

I am the great granddaughter of four coal miners, all Irish immigrants, who worked in the hard-coal country of eastern Pennsylvania. Two of them were killed in roof falls, and one died of pneumonia in his thirties. Both of my grandfathers worked at the coal breaker picking slate out of the coal chutes before they were 12. My father graduated with honors from the University of Scranton and worked in an office near Wall Street. From despair to success in three generations. Celebrate labor!

Review: The English, Portrait of a People

In Jeremy Paxman’s The English, A Portrait of aPeople, the author attempts to establish a national identity for the English, not British, people. With their Celtic roots, he argues that the Welsh and Scots have a strong “national” identity. The Welsh have managed to hold on to their language and their songs while the Scots have their bagpipes, Parliament, legal system, and field their own football teams in World Cup competitions. So what about the English?

Paxman traces the history of the British stereotype, beginning with the obese, meat-eating, ale-drinking John Bull in the 18^th Century followed by the stiff-upper-lipped Englishman of the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries. The latter stereotype is the result of the British public (private in the U.S.) school system in which boys are treated badly as a matter of course, made to eat vile or tasteless food, and are expected to just “take it.” Their training served them well in the two world wars. But what about their 21^st century identity? That is the essence of the book.

For 266 pages, Paxman wanders the country in search of a national identity for the English, and in some cases, with amusing results. An editor and uber patriot, Roy Faiers, contends that you don’t have “to be English to be English.” “The actor James Stewart was an American, but he has Englishness.” By the time you get to the end of the book, you still have no sense of who a late 20th-Century Englishman is (other than he loves football and prefers lager). But in a country as ethnically diverse as England, is it even possible?

In the U.S., I have lived in the Northeast, Mid Atlantic, Southwest, and Texas (which is its own region). In Arizona, many of my friends are from the Midwest—refugees from the region's harsh winters. I can tell you that, like the English, it is difficult to say what a typical American is like. There are generalities: we are very patriotic and more religious than most Western nations, but you only have to look at our politics to see the great divide.

Although I enjoyed Paxman’s book, I was looking for something to hold on to—a Eureka moment where Paxman would reveal the true Englishman, but it never came. And so I ambled along. Because it was written 14 years ago, it is dated. But even in 1998, Paxman came up with very little to show for his efforts to find an English persona. I would think his task would be impossible today.

The Rear of Charles I's Horse

When you see a road sign that says X miles to Salt Lake City or Toronto, do you wonder exactly where that spot is in Salt Lake or Toronto? If you have ever been curious about London and Paris, I can tell you where they are.

According to London Remembers, the backside of Charles’s horse “serves as the centre of London for the purposes of measuring distances.  Key “London” into Google Maps and this is where the pin is plonked. Also, supposedly, the street numbering convention is that the low numbers in a street should be at the end closest to this spot—a rule much observed in the breach.”

Book Review - Daughter of Time

It’s been awhile since I wrote a book review, but I just loved The Daughter of Time. It has a lot of things going for it: It was published the year I was born (1951), it is history driven, and it is short (just like my attention span of late).

The mystery begins with Detective Inspector Grant of Scotland Yard laid up in the hospital with a broken leg. Supremely bored, a friend brings him museum postcards with portraits of famous historical characters who have mysteries connected with them (e.g., Louis XVII, the son of the guillotined Louis XVI - did he survive his imprisonment in the Concierge during the French Revolution?). Inspector Grant settles on the portrait of Richard III, the English king everyone loves to hate—thanks in large part to Shakespeare.

Bath - Where Classical Architecture Meets the Druids

During my parade of the Circus in Bath, I met Thomas, a historian who leads tours of the ancient Roman city. He was a fountain of information, including the fact that The Circus was meant to represent the sun while The Crescent was representative of the moon. When I got home, I looked it up. Here is what I learned from The Heritage Journal.

Bath is famed for its neo-classical architecture but what underpins the thinking of the 18th century architect John Wood the Elder when he drew the designs for The Circus is a strange mish-mash of legend and myth, this of course is the age of the new ‘druidism’ that took hold when such figures as William Stukeley called such places as Stonehenge the Druidical Temple.

A Visit to Jane Austen Centre in Bath

Paul and Bath Guide

I arrived at the Jane Austen Centre in Bath on a day where it was umbrella up and umbrella down, umbrella up and umbrella down, etc. It was getting late in the day, and the tours had just ended. This is pretty much how my husband and I travel. We have not toured some of the best known tourist sites in the world. An example: When we were in Paris in 1985, it was Memorial Day weekend, just as in the States. We did not know that everything shuts down in France for the holiday, including the Louvre, Musee d’Orsay, etc. It was suggested by a French woman that we visit the Arch de Triomphe where the U.S. Air Force band would be playing. Ah, the irony! (We did visit these sites on our most recent trip. We only had to wait 27 years!)

But back to the Centre. With their doors closing, I only had time to thank the greeter at the door, a handsome man dressed from top hat to Hessian boots, who is possibly the most photographed man in England. We picked up a map of locations of Bath’s great sites and the houses in which Austen had lived (one of them right down the street as it turns out). In looking around the gift shop, we noticed that the Centre was not averse to promoting the film and television adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, etc. Colin Firth was everywhere, including his portrait as Mr. Darcy.

A Personal Story of Decoration Day

My great great grandfather, William Mahady, was the first of my family to arrive in America. He left County Mayo in the northwest of Ireland around 1840, probably sailing from Queenstown (now Cork) in the far south. He made the voyage in a wooden ship with his older sister, Catherine. They arrived in New York City and traveled up the Hudson River where Catherine was employed as a domestic for a family who lived near West Point. William probably went to work on the D&H Canal that would eventually connect the coalfields of Pennsylvania with the Hudson River and New York City.

In 1854, when he married his wife, Mary Loftus, he was one of thousands of workers living in a workers’ camp near to the rails bein layed  for the D&H Railroad. In the 1860 census, he is living in Minooka, Pennsylvania, a coal-mining town south of Scranton where all my Irish ancestors from Cork and Galway would also settle. He was one of the first to inhabit this tiny hamlet.

Brighton Pavilion and George IV

I recently visited the Royal Pavilion at Brighton, and all I can say is that it is one heck of a place. The interiors are heavily influenced by British concepts of what they thought China looked like. The exterior definitely leans towards India, and the whole thing has the feel of one of those dreams you just can’t explain and wonder how these images ever got into your brain.

As a lover of history, I could not help but think of the vast, and I do mean vast, sums of money spent on this pleasure palace at a time when the country was in a financial crisis. These were the years after the end of the Napoleonic wars. The men who had marched and sailed against the Emperor of the French were now out of a job, and many of them were badly maimed and in need of medical attention and, most definitely, in need of financial assistance. Because England was no longer feeding large armies, prices for corn (any grain) and meat on the hoof had plummeted throwing farmers into bankruptcy and putting laborers on the road. Yet, here was their king acting like a kid with a Regency Era credit card.

Although the Pavilion is within easy walking distance of the beach, because the king’s presence attracted tourists to Brighton, George IV, growing fatter by the day, rarely went out in public. And it wasn’t as if he had an ocean view. His descendant, Victoria, noted that from her rooms only the slightest glimpse of the channel could be seen.

Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Louvre

I recently traveled to Paris with my husband and younger daughter, Kate, to visit the great museums and to walk one of the most beautiful cities in the world. But a funny thing happened on the way to a nighttime view of the Louvre. On May 6, the French went to the polls and elected a new president, Francois Hollande. We were out and about when the election results were announced. Our first hint that something big was about to happen was when car horns started going off. The second was when we were in the Place de la Concorde and found TV camera lights trained on US! We thought, "What a welcome!" But as the crowd grew, we realized that this was not a French welcoming committee. Before you knew it, the three of us were parading with thousands of  Parisians shouting "Vive le France!" We walked merrily along, enjoying the enthusiasm of the crowd, but when the numbers started approaching 10,000, we decided to leave the French to their celebrations. It was quite a night, the merrymaking going on for hours.

Can you find Paul, Kate, and me in the picture? I'll give you a hint. We are center right, just above the white marquee.

Anniversary of La Marseillaise

Can you listen to the French national anthem without wanting to jump out of your seat? When you hear its pulsing rhythms, you can picture the men and women at the barricades ala Les Miserables? How about Victor Lazlo singing La Marseillaise at Rick's Saloon incurring the wrath of the Germans? This song causes you to react, which was the point. Below is the history of the anthem taken in its entirety from Wikipedia. (I didn't even bother to paraphrase.)

de Lisle singing his composition
for Mayor of Strousbourg

On 25 April 1792, the mayor of Strasbourg requested his guest. Rouget de Lisle. compose a song “that will rally our soldiers from all over to defend their homeland that is under threat.” That evening, de Lisle wrote Chant de guerre pour l’Armée du Rhin and dedicated the song to Marshal Nicolas Luckner, a Bavarian in French service from Cham. The melody soon became the rallying call to the French Revolution and was adopted as La Marseillaise after the melody was first sung on the streets by volunteers (fédérés) from Marseille. These fédérés were making their entryway into the city of Paris on 30 July 1792 after a young volunteer from Montpelier named Francois Mireur had sung it at a patriotic gathering in Marseille, and the troops adopted it as the marching song of the National Guard of Marseille. A newly graduated medical doctor, Mireur later became a general under Napoleon a nd died in Egypt at age 28.

Happy Birthday, Richard Trevithick - Who?

Trevithick's steam circus.

In 1808, Richard Trevithick (1771 - 1833) publicized his steam railway locomotive expertise by building a new locomotive called 'Catch me who can.' He ran it on a circular track just south of the present day Euston Square tube station in London. The site in Bloomsbury has recently been identified archaeologically as that occupied by the Chadwick Building, part of University College London.

Admission to the "steam circus" was one shilling including a ride and it was intended to show that rail travel was faster than by horse. However, the venture suffered from weak tracks and a lot of black smoke. Public interest was limited.

Trevithick was disappointed by the response and designed no more railway locomotives. It was not until 1812 that twin cylinder steam locomotives, built by Matthew Murray in Holbeck, successfully started replacing horses for hauling coal wagons on the Middleton Railway from Middleton colliery to Leeds, West Yorkshire.

If you look closely at the sketch or click on this link to see the enlarged photo on Wikipedia, you will note that many of the men are still sporting the old-fashioned coats worn by the "fops" and not the more stylish cutaway favored by Beau Brummell, a style of dress that we associate with Mr. Darcy.

Napoleon and Mr. and Mrs. Darcy

Napoleon's Generals Conspire

After Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813, Napoleon withdrew back into France, his army reduced to 70,000 soldiers and 40,000 stragglers against more than three times as many Allied troops. Paris was captured by the Coalition in March 1814.

When Napoleon proposed that the army march on the capital, his marshals decided to mutiny. On 4 April, led by Marshall Ney, they confronted Napoleon. Napoleon asserted the army would follow him, and Ney replied the army would follow its generals. Napoleon had no choice but to abdicate. He did so in favor of his son. However, the Allies refused to accept this, and Napoleon was forced to abdicate unconditionally on 11 April.

Was Mr. Darcy Irish?

by Mairie O'Loideain O'Simonsen

When you hear someone’s last name that starts with the prefix, “Fitz,” as in Fitzgerald, Fitzsimmons, Fitzpatrick, Fitzhenry, etc., you probably assume you are speaking to someone of Irish descent. So it is possible that Fitzwilliam Darcy was descended from a Hiberno-Norman family. And who exactly were the Hiberno (Irish) Normans (French) by way of England people? This group came to Ireland at the request of Diarmaid Mac Murchadha, aka Dermot MacMurrough, King of Leinster, who had been given the heave-ho by Tighearnán Ua Ruairc. (Try and pronounce that!) These Hiberno-Normans liked what they saw of the Emerald Isle, decided to stay, and freely intermarried with the Irish and became “more Irish than the Irish.”

High Collars and the Regency Era

As I mentioned in the post below, At Home by Bill Bryson is full of fun historical facts including a paragraph about the clothing worn by the Prince Regent, the future George IV:

"Some of the fashion was dictated by the ever-increasing stoutness of the prince of Wales (or "Prince of Whales," as he was known behind his back). By the time he reached his thirties, the prince had taken on such a fleshy sprawl that he had to be forcibly strapped into a corset... All this pushed his upper body fat upward through the neck hole, like toothpaste coming out of a tube, so the very high collars fashionable in his day were a kind of additional mini corset designed to hide an abundance of chins and the floppy wattle of his neck."

Now you know. :)

The Clergy - Time for Other Things

I am currently reading At Home, A History of Private Life  by Bill Bryson, and it is chock full of interesting facts including the role of clergy in England: "Piety was not necessarily a requirement or even an expectation. Ordination in the Church of England required a university degree, but most ministers read classics and didn't study divinity at all... Many didn't even bother composing sermons, but just bought a big book of prepared sermons and read one out once a week. Though no one intended it, the effect was to create a class of well-educated, wealthy people who had immense amounts of time on their hands. In consequence, many of them began to do remarkable things:

George Bayldon, a vicar in remote Yorkshire, became a self-taught authority in linguistics and compiled the world's first dictionary of the Icelandic language.

Laurence Sterne vicar of a parish near York, wrote popular novels, including The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy.

My Take on Downton Abbey

Because so many bloggers have written their thoughts on the recently concluded Downton Abbey, I thought I’d chime in. Unlike Season 1, which was an outstanding drama on every level, Season 2 was a mixed bag.

Weaknesses:

The scripts – Frankly, the plots were terrible. In some cases, they were so bad that it affected the actors’ performances as with Lord Grantham and the maid. Even someone as talented as Hugh Bonneville wasn’t convincing as a man lusting after a servant. Why? Because he knew his character wouldn’t do that. The scripts gave him little to do except strut and pout, very unlike the Lord Grantham of Season 1.

Repetition: How many times can Lady Grantham put on hand lotion while O’Brien gossips? How many times can Daisy say her marriage to William was a fraud? How many times can Mary look longingly at Matthew, and vice versa? How many times can Thomas screw up?

Two Reviews for Captain Wentworth

It's not often I get two good reviews in one day for the same novel, but that was what happened yesterday at Diary of an Eccentric and Austenprose. Here are excerpts:

Diary of an Eccentric: Like Persuasion, Captain Wentworth Home from the Sea  is a sweet story about second chances.  I loved this book and was sad that it was so short....  I’d love to see this book expanded into a full-length novel!

Austenprose: Captain Wentworth Home from the Sea is a very pleasant diversion for Persuasion enthusiasts. Simonsen respects the intensity of Anne and Frederick’s love, and her alterations to Austen’s plot are neither extreme nor implausible. 

Review of Charles Dickens

For about a year, I knew Claire Tomalin’s biography of Charles Dickens would be released in 2012, the 200^th anniversary of his birth. Because Dickens is tied with Jane Austen as my favorite author, I eagerly awaited its release.

Tomalin’s research is amazing. If I wanted to know where Charles Dickens was on any given day, there’s a good chance she wrote about it. This is no easy feat because the man was constantly on the move. With the success of the serializations of his novels, he had the money to travel back and forth to the Continent and to the United States as well. But what I wanted out of this biography was to get into the man’s head. I wanted to know what magic he used in creating Mr. Micawber, Mrs. Havisham, Uriah Heep, Pip, Fagin, the Artful Dodger, etc. But it is not in this book. Perhaps, it is not in any book.

Me? A Romance Novelist? I don't think so.

I'm posting today on Austen Authors. Are you a romantic? Practical? A practical romantic? Please let me know.

By the way, that is my wedding picture. Paul and I married on June 12, 1976. It is one of the few pictures I have because the person who took all the photos over-exposed the film. But I got the guy, and that's what matters.

Charles Dickens and the Heiress

Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts, 1st Baroness Burdett-Coutts (21 April 1814 – 30 December 1906) was a nineteenth-century philanthropist, and the granddaughter of banker Thomas Coutts. In 1837, she became the wealthiest woman in England when she inherited her grandfather's fortune of nearly three million pounds sterling. She spent the majority of her wealth on scholarships, endowments, and a wide range of philanthropic causes. One of her earliest was to establish, with the novelist Charles Dickens, Urania Cottage, a home that helped young women who had turned to a life of immorality including theft and prostitution. By the time of her death, she had given more than £3 million to good causes. She was buried on 5 January 1907 near the West Door in the nave Westminster Abbey.*

In 1847, Dickens found a small, solid brick house near Shepherd’s Bush, then still a part of the countryside and surrounded by fields. The idea was to create a home environment rather than that of an institution. Miss Coutts funded the project for about £50,000 per annum in today’s money.