tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34797927505613553232024-03-05T00:20:37.122-08:00MyLadyWeb: Women's History and Women AuthorsFeaturing Women's History, Women Authors, Writing In General, And Author Interviews. Home of the Teresa Thomas Bohannon author of the Historical, Paranormal Romance, Shadows In A Timeless Myth, the Regency Romance Novel, A Very Merry Chase, and the illustrated version of Jane Austen's posthumously published Juvenilia, The Widow's Tale.Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.comBlogger332125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-65773678002563569472018-11-10T07:38:00.000-08:002018-11-10T07:38:00.873-08:00Shadows In A Timeless Myth Presents Mary East And Her 30 Year MasqueradeMARY EAST<br />
<br />
The story of Mary East is a pitiful one,
and gives a picture of the civil life of the
eighteenth century which cannot be lightly forgotten.
The condition of things has so changed
that already we almost need a new terminology in
order that we may understand as our great-grandfathers
did. Take for instance the following sentence
and try individually how many points in it
there are, the full meaning of which we are unable
to understand:<br />
<br />
“A young fellow courted one Mary East, and for
him she conceived the greatest liking; but he going
upon the highway, was tried for a robbery and cast,
but was afterwards transported.”<br />
<br />
The above was written by an accomplished
scholar, a Doctor of Divinity, rector of an English
parish. At the time of its writing, 1825, every
word of it was entirely comprehensible. If a<span class="pagenum"></span>
reader of that time could see it translated into modern
phraseology he would be almost as much surprised
as we are when we look back upon an age
holding possibilities no longer imaginable.<br />
<br />
“Going upon the highway” was in Mary East’s
time and a hundred years later a euphemism for
becoming a highway robber; “cast” meant condemned
to death; “transported” meant exiled to a
far distant place where one was guarded, and escape
from which was punishable with death.
Moreover robbery was at this time a capital offence.<br />
<br />
In 1736, when Mary East was sixteen, life was
especially hard on women. Few honest occupations
were open to them, and they were subject to
all the hardships consequent on a system in which
physical weakness was handicapped to a frightful
extent. When this poor girl was bereft of her natural
hope of a settlement in life she determined, as
the least unattractive form of living open to her, to
remain single. About the same time a friend of
hers arrived at the same resolution but by a different
road, her course being guided thereto by having
“met with many crosses in love.” The two
girls determined to join forces; and on consulting
as to ways and means decided that the likeliest way
to avoid suspicion was to live together under the
guise of man and wife. The toss of a coin decided
their respective rôles, the “breeches part” as it is
called in the argot of the theatre, falling to East.<span class="pagenum"></span>
The combined resources of the girls totalled some
thirty pounds sterling, so after buying masculine
garb for Mary they set out to find a place where
they were unknown and so might settle down in
peace.<br />
<br />
They found the sort of place they sought
in the neighbourhood of Epping Forest where,
there being a little public-house vacant, Mary—now
under the name of James How—became the
tenant. For some time they lived in peace at Epping,
with the exception of a quarrel forced by a
young gentleman on the alleged James How in
which the latter was wounded in the hand. It must
have been a very one-sided affair, for when the injured
“man” took action he was awarded £500
damages—a large sum in those days and for such
a cause. With this increase to their capital the two
women moved to Limehouse on the east side of London
where they took at Limehouse-hole a more important
public-house. This they managed in so excellent
a manner that they won the respect of their
neighbours and throve exceedingly.<br />
<br />
After a time they moved from Limehouse to
Poplar where they bought another house and added
to their little estate by the purchase of other houses.<br />
<br />
Peace, hard work, and prosperity marked their
life thence-forward, till fourteen years had passed
since the beginning of their joint venture.<br />
<br />
Peace and prosperity are, however, but feeble
guardians to weakness. Nay, rather are they incentive
to evil doing. For all these years the two<span class="pagenum"></span>
young women had conducted themselves with such
rectitude, and observed so much discretion, that
even envy could not assail them through the web of
good repute which they had woven round their masquerade.
Alone they lived, keeping neither
female servant nor male assistant. They were
scrupulously honest in their many commercial dealings
and, absolutely punctual in their agreements
and obligations. James How took a part in the
public life of his locality, filling in turn every parish
office except those of Constable and Churchwarden.
From the former he was excused on account of the
injury to his hand from which he had never completely
recovered. Regarding the other his time
had not yet come, but he was named for Churchwarden
in the year following to that in which a
bolt fell from the blue, 1730. It came in this wise:
A woman whose name of coverture was Bently,
and who was now resident in Poplar, had known the
alleged James How in the days when they were
both young. Her own present circumstances were
poor and she looked on the prosperity of her old acquaintance
as a means to her own betterment. It
was but another instance of the old crime of “blackmail.”
She sent to the former Mary East for a loan
of £10, intimating that if the latter did not send it
she would make known the secret of her sex. The
poor panic-stricken woman foolishly complied with
the demand, thus forcing herself deeper into the
mire of the other woman’s unscrupulousness. The<span class="pagenum"></span>
forced loan, together with Bently’s fears for her
own misdeed procured immunity for some fifteen
years from further aggression. At the end of that
time, however, under the renewed pressure of need
Bently repeated her demand. “James How” had
not the sum by her, but she sent £5—another link
in the chain of her thraldom.<br />
<br />
From that time on there was no more peace for
poor Mary East. Her companion of nearly thirty-five
years died and she, having a secret to guard
and no assistance being possible, was more helpless
than ever and more than ever under the merciless
yoke of the blackmailer. Mrs. Bently had a fair
idea of how to play her own despicable game. As
her victim’s fear was her own stock-in-trade she
supplemented the sense of fear which she knew to
exist by a conspiracy strengthened by all sorts of
schemes to support its seeming <i lang="la">bona fides</i>. She
took in two male accomplices and, thus enforced,
began operations. Her confederates called on
James How, one armed with a constable’s staff, the
other appearing as one of the “thief-takers” of the
gang of the notorious magistrate, Fielding—an
evil product of an evil time. Having confronted
How they told him that they had come by order of
Mr. Justice Fielding to arrest him for the commission
of a robbery over forty years before, alleging
that they were aware of his being a woman.
Mary East, though quite innocent of any such offence
but acutely conscious of her imposture of<span class="pagenum"> </span>manhood, in her dismay sought the aid of a friend
called Williams who understood and helped her.
He went to the magistrates of the district and then
to Sir John Fielding to make inquiries and claim
protection. During his absence the two villains
took Mary East from her house and by threats secured
from her a draft on Williams for £100.
With this in hand they released their victim who
was even more anxious than themselves not to let
the matter have greater publicity than it had already
obtained. However, Justice demanded a
further investigation, and one of the men being
captured—the other had escaped—was tried, and
being found guilty, was sentenced to imprisonment
for four years together with four appearances in
the pillory.<br />
<br />
Altogether Mary East and her companion had
lived together as husband and wife for nearly
thirty-five years, during which time they had honestly
earned, and by self-denial saved, over four
thousand pounds sterling and won the good opinion
of all with whom they had come in contact. They
were never known to cook a joint of meat for their
own use, to employ any help, or to entertain private
friends in their house. They were cautious, careful,
and discreet in every way and seemed to live
their lives in exceeding blamelessness.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"> Article by Bram Stoker</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Compiled from sources in the public domain.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Please take a moment to "Like" <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006QAWQMI" target="_blank">Shadows In A Timeless Myth</a> on Amazon. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTZ6dnjCrRJckeHMznfxdHxOqjFwkPPoFDijSDW-zixQ_6IuIUafhTJHBsKv3FnHeafdxg3VYdn0-PBM8rij2fBjcpdGTRZavQ6L9R7qrnSptJGm25UXHdifk6o5H0-PU5r9rtK7Hu98ln/s1600/ShadowsInATimelessMythKindleCoverSmall.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTZ6dnjCrRJckeHMznfxdHxOqjFwkPPoFDijSDW-zixQ_6IuIUafhTJHBsKv3FnHeafdxg3VYdn0-PBM8rij2fBjcpdGTRZavQ6L9R7qrnSptJGm25UXHdifk6o5H0-PU5r9rtK7Hu98ln/s200/ShadowsInATimelessMythKindleCoverSmall.jpg" width="154" /></a></span></div>
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">(Shadows is also available at Barnes & Noble for the <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shadows-in-a-timeless-myth-teresa-thomas-bohannon/1113933396?ean=2940015745054" target="_blank">Nook</a>) </span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Complimentary<a href="http://www.spunsilk.com/ATrystInTymeByTeresaThomasBohannon.pdf" target="_blank"> Shadows In A Timeless Myth</a> Short Story </span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnLDjfGMe3Y&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">Shadows In A Timeless Myth</a> Book Trailer Video</span><br />
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<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"></span>
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Smiles & Good Fortune,</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Teresa</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">************************************</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It
is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity,
to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W.
Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-47087088767129172982018-11-03T07:22:00.000-07:002018-11-03T07:22:13.939-07:00Shadows In A Timeless Myth Presents La Maupin Mistress of Sword and Stage<h3>
C. LA MAUPIN aka <b>Julie d'Aubigny <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtjAGjeHG04V7WcAmPV5wzXGcVsuQxQL83G7HKu4VCr31PETxQRxEDX_rYpTNnp5UbYw6AyC5ns51eNFNu8T7wYsiDozTc0fTzT7qZaikrGVLd1r-TfT24FANo4stivsGz2J_jnm-yytaN/s1600/La+Maupin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="591" data-original-width="397" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtjAGjeHG04V7WcAmPV5wzXGcVsuQxQL83G7HKu4VCr31PETxQRxEDX_rYpTNnp5UbYw6AyC5ns51eNFNu8T7wYsiDozTc0fTzT7qZaikrGVLd1r-TfT24FANo4stivsGz2J_jnm-yytaN/s320/La+Maupin.jpg" width="214" /></a></div>
</b></h3>
The majority of the readers of the English-speaking
race who enjoy Théophile Gautier’s
fascinating romance <cite>Mademoiselle de Maupin</cite>
are not aware that the heroine was a real person.
The novelist has of course made such
alterations as are required to translate crude
fact into more elegant fiction, and to obliterate so
far as can be done the criminal or partly-criminal
aspect of the lady’s venturous career. But such is
one of the chief duties of an artist in fiction.
Though he may be an historian, in a sense, he is not
limited to the occasional bareness of truth. His
object is not that his work shall be true but rather
what the French call <i lang="fr">vraisemblable</i>. In narrative,
as in most arts, crudeness is rather a fault than a
virtue, so that the writer who looks for excellence
in his work has without losing force, to fill up the
blanks left by the necessary excision of fact by subtleties
of thought and graces of description, so that
the fulness or rotundity of the natural curves shall
always be maintained. In truth the story of <em>La
Maupin</em> is so laden with passages of excitement
and interest that any writer on the subject has only
to make an agreeable choice of episodes sufficiently
dramatic, and consistent with each other, to form a
cohesive narrative. Such a work has in it possibilities
of great success—if only the author has the
genius of a Théophile Gautier to set it forth. The<span class="pagenum"></span>
real difficulty which such an one would have to contend
against would be to remove the sordidness, the
reckless passion, the unscrupulousness, the criminal
intent which lies behind such a character.<br />
<br />
The Mademoiselle de Maupin of real life was a
singer at the Opera in Paris at the end of the
seventeenth century. She was the daughter of a
man of somewhat humble extraction engaged in
secretarial work with the Count d’Armagnac; and
whilst only a girl married a man named Maupin
employed in the province. With him she had lived
only a few months when she ran away with a
maitre d’armes (<i lang="fr">anglicè</i>, a fencing master) named
Serane. If this individual had no other good quality
in matters human or divine, he was at least a
good teacher of the sword. His professional arts
were used in the service of his inamorata, who became
herself an excellent swordsman even in an age
when swordsmanship had an important place in
social life. It may have been the sexual equality
implied by the name which gave the young woman
the idea, but thenceforth she became a man in appearance;—in
reality, in so far as such a metamorphosis
can be accomplished by courage, recklessness,
hardihood, unscrupulousness, and a willing
obedience to all the ideas which passion and sensuality
can originate and a greed of notoriety carry into
execution.<br />
<br />
In a professional tour from Paris to Marseilles,
in which she as an actress took the part of a man,<span class="pagenum"> </span>she gained the affections of the flighty daughter of
a rich merchant of Marseilles; and, as a man, ran
away with her. Being pursued, they sought refuge
in a convent—a place which at that age it was
manifestly easier to get into than to get out of.
Here the two remained for a few days, during
which, by the aid of histrionic and other arts, the
actress obviated the necessary suspicions of her
foolish companion and kept danger away. All the
while La Maupin was conscious that an irate and
rich father was in hot search for his missing daughter,
and she knew that any talk about the venture
would infallibly lose her the girl’s fortune, besides
getting herself within the grip of the law. So she
decided on a bold scheme of escape from the convent,
whereby she might obliterate her tracks. A
nun of the convent had died and her body was
awaiting burial. In the night La Maupin exchanged
the body of the dead nun for the living one
of her own victim. Having thus got her companion
out of the convent, she set the building on fire
to cover up everything, and escaped in secret to a
neighbouring village, taking with her by force the
girl, who naturally enough was disillusioned and
began to have scruples as to the wisdom of her conduct.
In the village they remained hidden for a
few weeks, during which time the repentance of the
poor girl became a fixed quantity. An attempt,
well supported, was made to arrest the ostensible
man; but this was foiled by the female swordsman
who killed one of the would-be captors and dangerously
wounded two others. The girl, however,
made good her escape; secretly she fled from her deceiver
and reached her parents in safety. But the
hue and cry was out after La Maupin, whose
identity was now known. She was pursued, captured,
and placed in gaol to await trial. The law
was strong and inexorable; the erring woman who
had thus outraged so many conventions was condemned
to be burned alive.<br />
<br />
But abstract law and the executive are quite different
things—at least they were in France at the
close of the seventeenth century: as indeed they are
occasionally in other countries and at varying times.
La Maupin, being a woman and a clever one, procured
sufficient influence to have the execution postponed,
and so had the full punishment delayed, if
not entirely avoided. More than this, she managed
to get back to Paris and so to begin her noxious
career all over again. Of course she had
strong help from her popularity. She was a favourite
at the opera, and the class which patronises
and supports this kind of artistic effort is a rich
and powerful one, which governments do not care
to displease by the refusal of such a small favour
as making the law hold its hand with regard to an
erring favourite.<br />
<br />
But La Maupin’s truculent tendencies were not
to be restrained. In Paris in 1695 whilst she was
one of the audience at a theatre she took umbrage<span class="pagenum"></span>
at some act or speech of one of the comedians playing
in the piece, and leaving her seat went round
to the stage and caned him in the presence of the
audience. The actor, M. Dumenil, an accomplished
and favourite performer but a man of
peaceful disposition, submitted to the affront and
took no action in the matter. La Maupin, however,
suffered, through herself, the penalty of her
conduct. She had entered on a course of violence
which became a habit. For some years she flourished
and exercised all the tyrannies of her own sex
and in addition those habitual to men which came
from expert use of the sword. Thus she went attired
as a man to a ball given by a Prince of the
blood. In that garb she treated a fellow-guest, a
woman, with indecency; and she was challenged by
three different men—each of whom, when the consequent
fight came on, she ran through the body,
after which she returned to the ball. Shortly afterwards
she fought and wounded a man, M. de
Servan, who had affronted a woman. For these
escapades she was again pardoned. She then went
to Brussels where she lived under the protection of
Count Albert of Bavaria, the Elector. With him
she remained until the quarrel, inevitable in such a
life, came. After much bickering he agreed to her
demand of a settlement, but in order to show his
anger by affronting her he sent the large amount
of his involuntary bequest by the servile hand of
the husband of his mistress, Countess d’Arcos, who
had supplanted her, with a curt message that she
must leave Brussels at once. The bearer of such a
message to such a woman as La Maupin had probably
reckoned on an unfriendly reception; but he
evidently underestimated her anger. Not contented
with flinging at his head the large <i lang="fr">douceur</i>
of which he was the bearer, she expressed in her
direct way her unfavourable opinion, of him, of his
master, and of the message which he had carried
for the latter. She ended her tirade by kicking
him downstairs, with the justification for her form
of physical violence that she would not sully her
sword with his blood.<br />
<br />
From Brussels she went to Spain as <i lang="fr">femme de
chambre</i> to the Countess Marino but returned to
Paris in 1704. Once more she took up her work
as an opera singer; or rather she tried to take it up,
but she had lost her vogue, and the public would
have none of her. As a matter of fact, she was
only just above thirty years of age, which should
under normal circumstances be the beginning of a
woman’s prime. But the life she had been leading
since her early girlhood was not one which made for
true happiness or for physical health; she was prematurely
old, and her artistic powers were worn out.<br />
Still, her pluck, and the obstinacy on which it
was grafted, remained. For a whole year she
maintained a never-failing struggle for her old supremacy,
but without avail. Seeing that all was
lost, she left the stage and returned to her husband
who, realising that she was rich, managed to reconcile
whatever shreds of honour he had to her infamous
record. The Church, too, accepted her—and
her riches—within its sheltering portals. By
the aid of a tolerant priest she got absolution, and
two years after her retirement from the opera she
died in a convent in all the odour of sanctity.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Article by Bram Stoker.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Compiled from sources in the public domain. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Please take a moment to "Like" <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006QAWQMI" target="_blank">Shadows In A Timeless Myth</a> on Amazon. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTZ6dnjCrRJckeHMznfxdHxOqjFwkPPoFDijSDW-zixQ_6IuIUafhTJHBsKv3FnHeafdxg3VYdn0-PBM8rij2fBjcpdGTRZavQ6L9R7qrnSptJGm25UXHdifk6o5H0-PU5r9rtK7Hu98ln/s1600/ShadowsInATimelessMythKindleCoverSmall.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTZ6dnjCrRJckeHMznfxdHxOqjFwkPPoFDijSDW-zixQ_6IuIUafhTJHBsKv3FnHeafdxg3VYdn0-PBM8rij2fBjcpdGTRZavQ6L9R7qrnSptJGm25UXHdifk6o5H0-PU5r9rtK7Hu98ln/s200/ShadowsInATimelessMythKindleCoverSmall.jpg" width="154" /></a></span></div>
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">(Shadows is also available at Barnes & Noble for the <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shadows-in-a-timeless-myth-teresa-thomas-bohannon/1113933396?ean=2940015745054" target="_blank">Nook</a>) </span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Complimentary<a href="http://www.spunsilk.com/ATrystInTymeByTeresaThomasBohannon.pdf" target="_blank"> Shadows In A Timeless Myth</a> Short Story </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnLDjfGMe3Y&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">Shadows In A Timeless Myth</a> Book Trailer Video</span><br />
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<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"></span>
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Smiles & Good Fortune,</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Teresa</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">************************************</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It
is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity,
to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W.
Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-60461215395689702492018-10-27T07:04:00.000-07:002018-10-27T07:04:06.891-07:00Shadows In A Timeless Myth Presents Mother Damnable Accused WitchE. MOTHER DAMNABLE<br />
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<br />
<div class="drop-cap">
<span class="smcap1">Owing</span> to a want of accord among historians,
the searcher after historic truth in
our own day can hardly be quite sure
of the identity of the worthy lady who passed under
the above enchanting title. To later generations
the district of Camden Town—formerly a suburb
of London but now a fairly central part of it—is
best known through a public house, the <em>Mother
Red-Cap</em>. But before controversy can cease we
are called on to decide if Mother Red-Cap and
Mother Damnable were one and the same person.
A hundred years ago a writer who had made such
subjects his own, came to the conclusion that the
soubriquet Mother Damnable was synonymous with
Mother Black-Cap whom he spoke of as of local
fame. But in the century that has elapsed historical
research has been more scientifically organised
and the field from which conclusions can be
drawn has been enlarged as well as explored. The
fact is that a century ago the northern suburb had
two well-known public houses, <em>Mother Red-Cap</em>
and <em>Mother Black-Cap</em>. It is possible that both
the worthy vintners who offered “entertainment for
man and beast” meant one and the same person,
though who that person was remains to be seen.
The distinctive colour line of the two hostelries was
also possibly due to considerations of business
rather than of art. <em>Red-cap</em> and <em>Black-cap</em> are, as
names, drawn from these varying sign-boards; the
term <em>Mother</em> held in common is simply a title given
without any pretence of doing honour to the alleged
practices of the person whom it is intended to designate.</div>
<div class="drop-cap">
<br /></div>
There were in fact two notorious witches, either
of whom might have been in the mind of either
artistic designer. One was of Yorkshire fame in
the time of Henry VII. The other was of very
much later date and of purely local notoriety. The
two publicans who exploited these identities under
pictorial garb were open and avowed trade rivals.
The earlier established of the two had evidently
commissioned a painter to create a striking sign-board
on a given subject, and the artist had fulfilled
his task by an alleged portrait of sufficiently
fearsome import to fix the attention of the
passer-by, at the same time conveying to him some
hint of the calling of the archetype on which her
fame was based. Prosperity in the venture begot
rivalry; and the owner of the new house of refreshment,
wishing to outshine his rival in trade whilst at
the same time availing himself of the publicity and
local fame already achieved, commissioned another
artist to commit another pictorial atrocity under
the name of art. So far as the purpose of publicity
went, the ideas were similar; the only differences
being in the colour scheme and the measure of
attractiveness of the alleged prototype. From the
indications thus given one may form some opinion—based
solely on probability—as to which was the
earlier and which the later artistic creation, for it
is by this means—and this means only—that we
may after the lapse of at least a century bring tradition
to our aid, and guess at the original of
Mother Damnable.<br />
<br />
Of the two signs it seems probable that the black
one is the older. After all, the main purpose of a
sign-board is to catch the eye, and unless Titian
and all who followed him are wrong, red has an
attractive value beyond all other hues. The dictum
of the great Italian is unassailable: “Red catches
the eye; yellow holds it; blue gives distance.” A
free-souled artist with the choice of the whole palette
open to him might choose black since historical
accuracy was a matter to be valued; but in a question
of competition a painter would wisely choose
red—especially when his rival had confined himself
to black. So far as attractiveness is concerned,
it must be borne in mind that the object of the
painter and his patron was to bring customers to
a London suburban public house in the days of
George III. To-day there is a cult of horrors in
Paris which has produced some choice specimens
of decorative art, such for instance as the café
known as <i lang="fr">Le Rat Mort</i>.<br />
<br />
Such places lure their customers by curiosity and
sheer horror; but the persons lured are from a class
dominated by “Gallic effervescence” and attracted
by anything that is <em>bizarre</em>, and not of the class
of the stolid beer-drinking Briton. But even the
most stolid of men is pleased by the beauty of a
woman; so the sign-painter—who knows his art
well, and has evolved from the ranks of his calling
such a man as Franz Hals—we may be sure, when
he wished to please, took for his model some
gracious personality.<br />
<br />
Now the artist of the lady of dark headgear let
his imagination run free and produced a face typical
of all the sins of the Decalogue. We may
therefore take it on the ground of form as well
as that of colour that priority of date is to be given
to Mother Black-Cap. There is good ground
for belief that this deduction is correct. Naturally
the owner of the earliest public-house wished to
make it as attractive as possible; and as Camden
Town was a suburb through which the northern
traffic passed on its way to and from London, it
was wise to use for publicity and entertainment
names that were familiar to north country ears.
Before the railways were organised the great
wheeled and horse-traffic between London and the
North—especially Yorkshire which was one of the
first Counties to take up manufacturing and had
already most of the wool trade—went through
Camden Town. So it was wise forethought to take
as an inn sign a Yorkshire name. The name of
Mother Shipton had been in men’s mouths and ears
for about two hundred years, and as the times had
so changed that the old stigma of witchcraft was
not then understood, the association of the name
with Knaresborough alone remained. And so
Mother Shipton of Knaresborough was intended
as the prototype of the inn portrait with black headgear
at Camden Town. In the ordinary course of
development and business one of the two inns succeeded
and lasted better than the other. And as
Mother Red-Cap has as a name supplanted Mother
Damnable, we may with some understanding discuss
who that lady was.<br />
<br />
She was a well-known shrew of Kentish Town,
daughter of one Jacob Bingham, a local brickmaker,
who had married the daughter of a Scotch
pedlar manifestly not of any high moral character
as shown by her later acts and the general mistrust
which attended them. They had one daughter,
Jinny, who in wickedness outdid her parents. She
was naturally warm-blooded and had a child when
she was sixteen by a man of no account, George
Coulter, known as Gipsy George. Whatever affection
may have existed between them was cut short
by his arrest—and subsequent execution at Tyburn—for
sheepstealing. In her second quasi-matrimonial
venture Jinny lived a cat-and-dog life with
a man called Darby who spent his time in getting
drunk and trying to get over it. Number Two’s
end was also tragic. After a violent quarrel with
his companion he disappeared. Then there was
domestic calm for a while, possibly due to the fact
that Bingham and his wife were being tried also
on a charge of witchcraft, complicated with another
capital charge of procuring the death of a young
woman. They were both hanged and thereafter
Jinny found time for another episode of love-making
and took up with a man called Pitcher. He
too disappeared, but his body, burned almost to a
cinder, was discovered in a neighbouring oven.
Jinny was tried for murder, but escaped on the
plea that the man often took refuge in the oven
when he wished to get beyond reach of the woman’s
venomous tongue, to which fact witness was borne
by certain staunch companions of Miss Bingham.<br />
<br />
Jinny’s third venture towards happy companionship,
though it lasted much longer, was attended
with endless bitter quarrelling, and came to an
equally tragic end, had at the beginning a spice of
romance. This individual, whose name has seemingly
not been recorded, being pursued in Commonwealth
times for some unknown offence,
had sought her aid in attempting to escape.
This she had graciously accorded, with the consequence
that they lived together some years
in the greatest unhappiness.<br />
At length he died—of poison, but by whom administered
did not transpire at the inquest. For
the rest of her life Miss Bingham, who was now
old, lived under the suspicion of being a witch.
Her ostensible occupation was as a teller of fortunes
and a healer of odd diseases—occupations
which singly or together make neither for personal
esteem or general confidence. Her public appearances
were usually attended by hounding and baiting
by the rabble; and whenever anything went
wrong in her neighbourhood the blame was, with
overt violence of demeanour, attributed to her.
She did not even receive any of the respect usually
shown to a freeholder—which she was, having by
her father’s death become owner of a house which
he had built for himself with his own hands on
waste ground. Her only protector was that usual
favourite of witches, a black cat, whose devotion
to her and whose savage nature, accompanied by
the public fear shown for an animal which was
deemed her “familiar,” caused the mob to flee before
its appearance.<br />
<br />
The tragedy and mystery of her life were even
exceeded by those of her death. When, having
been missed for some time, her house was entered
she, attended only by her cat and with her crutch
by her side, was found crouching beside the cold
ashes of her extinct fire. In the tea-pot beside her
was some liquid, seemingly brewed from herbs.
Willing hands administered some of this to the
black cat, whose hair, within a very short time, fell
off. The cat forthwith died. Then the clamour
began. Very many people suddenly remembered
having seen, after her last appearance in public, the
Devil entering her house. No one, however, had
seen him come out again. What a pity it was that
no veracious scribe or draughtsman was present in
the crowd which had noticed the Devil’s entry to
the house. In such case we might have got a real
likeness of His Satanic Majesty—a thing which
has long been wanted—and the opportunities of
obtaining which are few.<br />
<br />
One peculiar fact is recorded of Madame Damnable’s
burial; her body was so stiff from the <i lang="la">rigor
mortis</i>—or from some other cause—that the undertakers
had to break her limbs before they could
put her body in the coffin.<br />
<br />
Article by Bram Stoker<br />
<br />
Compiled from sources in the public domain. <br />
<br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">(Shadows is also available at Barnes & Noble for the <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shadows-in-a-timeless-myth-teresa-thomas-bohannon/1113933396?ean=2940015745054" target="_blank">Nook</a>) </span><br />
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<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"></span>
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Smiles & Good Fortune,</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Teresa</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">************************************</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It
is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity,
to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W.
Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-11632268196396278872018-10-20T07:10:00.000-07:002018-10-20T07:10:13.857-07:00Shadows In A Timeless Myth Presents Hannah Snell Adventurous ImpostorHANNAH SNELL<br />
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<br />
Hannah Snell is a good instance of how the life
of a woman who was not by nature averse from adventure
was moulded by chance in the direction
which suited her individuality. Of course, liking
for a militant life, whether in conventional or exceptional
form, presupposes a natural boldness of
spirit, resolution, and physical hardihood—all of
which this woman possessed in an eminent degree.<br />
<br />
She was born at Worcester in 1723, one of the
family of a hosier who had three sons and six
daughters. In 1740, when her father and mother
were dead, she went to live at Wapping with a sister
who had married a ship carpenter named Gray.
There she married a Dutch sailor, who before her
baby was born, had squandered such little property
as her father had left her, and then deserted her.
She went back to her sister, in whose house the baby
died. In 1743, she made up her mind to search
for her husband. To this end she put on man’s
clothes and a man’s name (that of her brother-in-law)
and enlisted in General Guise’s regiment. At
Carlisle, whither the regiment was sent she learned
something of a soldier’s duties. In doing so she
was selected by her sergeant, a man called Davis,
to help him in carrying out a criminal love affair.
In order to be able to warn the girl she pretended
acquiescence. In revenge the sergeant reported
her for an alleged neglect of some duty for which
according to the barbarous system of the time she
was sentenced to 600 lashes; of these she had actually
received 500 when on the intervention of some
of the officers the remaining hundred were foregone.<br />
<br />
After this, fearing further aggression on
the part of the revengeful petty officer she deserted.
She walked all the way to Portsmouth—a
journey which occupied a whole month—where
she again enlisted as a marine in Fraser’s regiment,
which was shortly ordered on foreign service to the
East Indies. There was a storm on the way out,
during which she worked manfully at the pumps.
When the ship had passed Gibraltar there was another
bad storm in which she was wrecked. Hannah
Snell found her way to Madeira and thence to
the Cape of Good Hope. Her ship joined in the
taking of Arcacopong on the Coromandel Coast;
in which action Hannah fought so bravely that she
was praised by her officers. Later on she assisted
in the siege of Pondicherry which lasted nearly
three months before it had to be abandoned.<br />
<br />
In the
final attempt she served on picket duty and had to
ford, under fire, a river breast high. During the
struggle she received six bullets in the right leg,
five in the left leg, and one in the abdomen. Her
fear was not of death but discovery of her sex
through the last-named wound. By the friendly
aid of a black woman, however, she avoided this
danger. She managed to extract the bullet herself,
with her finger and thumb, and the wound
made a good cure. This wound caused her a delay
of some weeks during which her ship had to leave
for Bombay and was delayed five weeks by a leak.
Poor Hannah was again unfortunate in her officers,<span class="pagenum"></span>
one of them to whom she had refused to sing had
her put in irons and given a dozen lashes.<br />
<br />
In 1749
she went to Lisbon, where she learned by chance
that her husband had met at Genoa the death
penalty by drowning, for a murder which he had
committed. Discovery of her sex and her identity
would have been doubly dangerous now; but happily
she was able to conceal her alarm and so escaped
detection. She got back to London through
Spithead and once more found shelter in the house
of her sister who at once recognised her in spite of
her disguise. Her fine singing voice, which had
already caused her to be flogged, now stood her in
good stead. She applied for and obtained an engagement
at the Royalty theatre, Wellclose square;
and appeared with success as <em>Bill Bobstay</em> a sailor
and <em>Firelock</em> a soldier. She remained on the stage
for some months, always wearing male dress. The
government of the day gave her, on account of the
hardships she had endured, a pension of £20 per
annum. Later on she took a public-house at Wapping.
The sign of her hostelry became noted.
On one side of it was painted in effigy <em>The British
Tar</em> and on the other <em>The Valiant Marine</em>, and underneath
<em>The Widow in masquerade</em>, or the <em>Female
Warrior</em>.<br />
<br />
As Hannah appeared during her adventurous
career as both soldier and sailor she affords, in herself,
an illustrious example of female courage as
well as female duplicity in both of the services.<br />
<br />
Article by Bram Stoker.<br />
<br />
Compiled from sources in the public domain. <br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Please take a moment to "Like" <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006QAWQMI" target="_blank">Shadows In A Timeless Myth</a> on Amazon. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">(Shadows is also available at Barnes & Noble for the <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shadows-in-a-timeless-myth-teresa-thomas-bohannon/1113933396?ean=2940015745054" target="_blank">Nook</a>) </span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Complimentary<a href="http://www.spunsilk.com/ATrystInTymeByTeresaThomasBohannon.pdf" target="_blank"> Shadows In A Timeless Myth</a> Short Story </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnLDjfGMe3Y&feature=youtu.be" target="_blank">Shadows In A Timeless Myth</a> Book Trailer Video</span><br />
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<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"></span>
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Smiles & Good Fortune,</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Teresa</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">************************************</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It
is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity,
to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W.
Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-32256168131461515842018-10-13T06:56:00.000-07:002018-10-13T06:56:19.995-07:00Shadows In A Timeless Myth Presents Princess Olive A Famous Impostor<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmp2SnvXwEAUS2OdfBtr0GnBJum5RSFs1lkGbKO1TwAlm35CoA5S7nQfQv7Sc2uEL85n8Oh5BsE98z8dFsnN3LpO2o2w364dH4k-k_NO8GM4FSXTPkzjf0u1EywunUkf_8smpAi0hbecpu/s1600/Olivia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="505" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmp2SnvXwEAUS2OdfBtr0GnBJum5RSFs1lkGbKO1TwAlm35CoA5S7nQfQv7Sc2uEL85n8Oh5BsE98z8dFsnN3LpO2o2w364dH4k-k_NO8GM4FSXTPkzjf0u1EywunUkf_8smpAi0hbecpu/s320/Olivia.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>
<br />
<h3>
E. PRINCESS OLIVE </h3>
<div class="drop-cap">
<span class="smcap1">The</span> story of Mrs. Olive Serres, as nature
made it, was one thing; it was quite another
as she made it for herself. The result,
before the story was completely told, was a
third; and, compared with the other, one of transcendent
importance. Altogether her efforts,
whatsoever they were and crowned never so effectively,
showed a triumph in its way of the
thaumaturgic art of lying; but like all structures
built on sand it collapsed eventually. In the plain
version—nature’s—the facts were simply as follows.
She, and a brother of no importance, were
the children of a house painter living in Warwick,
one Robert Wilmot, and of Anna Maria his wife.
Having been born in 1772 she was under age
when in 1791 she was married, the ceremony therefore
requiring licence supported by bond and affidavit.
Her husband was John Thomas Serres
who ten years later was appointed marine painter
to King George III. Mr. and Mrs. Serres were
separated in 1804 after the birth of two daughters,
the elder of whom, born in 1797, became in 1822
the wife of Antony Thomas Ryves a portrait
painter—whom she divorced in 1847. Mrs. A. T.
Ryves twelve years later filed a petition praying
that the marriage of her mother, made in 1791,
might be declared valid and she herself the legitimate
issue of that marriage. The case was heard
in 1861, Mrs. Ryves conducting it in person.
Having produced sufficient evidence of the marriage
and the birth, and there being no opposition,
the Court almost as a matter of course pronounced
the decree asked for. In this case no complications
in the way of birth or marriage of Mrs. Serres
were touched on.</div>
Robert Wilmot, the house-painter, had an elder
brother James who became a Fellow of Trinity
College, Oxford, and went into the Church, taking
his degree of Doctor of Divinity. Through his
College he was presented in 1781 to the living of
Barton-on-the-heath, Warwickshire. The Statutes
of his College contained a prohibition against
marriage whilst a Fellow. James Wilmot D. D.
died in 1807 leaving his property between the two
children of Robert, after life-use by his brother.
James and Robert Wilmot had a sister Olive, who
was born in 1728 and married in 1754 to William
Payne with issue one daughter, Olivia, born in
1759. Robert Wilmot died in 1812.<br />
<div class="figcenter" id="ip_50" style="width: 505px;">
<br />
<div class="caption">
<br /></div>
</div>
Out of these rough materials Mrs. Olive Serres
set herself in due course to construct and carry out,
as time and opportunity allowed, and as occasions
presented themselves and developed, a fraudulent
romance in real life and action. She was, however,
a very clever woman and in certain ways—as was
afterwards proved by her literary and artistic work—well
dowered by nature for the task—crooked
though it was—which she set for herself. Her
ability was shown not only by what she could do
and did at this time of her life, but by the manner
in which she developed her natural gifts as time
went on. In the sum of her working life, in which
the perspective of days becomes merged in that of
years, she touched on many subjects, not always of
an ordinary kind, which shewed often that she was
of conspicuous ability, having become accomplished
in several branches of art. She was a painter of
sufficient merit to have exhibited her work in the
Royal Academy in 1794 and to be appointed landscape-painter
to the Prince of Wales in 1806. She
was a novelist, a press writer, an occasional poet
and in many ways of a ready pen. She was skilled
in some forms of occultism, and could cast horoscopes;
she wrote, in addition to a pamphlet on the
same subject, a book on the writings of Junius,
claiming to have discovered the identity of the
author—none other than James Wilmot D. D.
She wrote learnedly on disguised handwriting. In
fact she touched on the many phases of literary
effort which come within the scope of those who
live by the work of their brains. Perhaps, indeed,
it was her facility as a writer that helped to lead
her astray; for in her practical draughtsmanship
and in her brain teeming with romantic ideas she found a means of availing herself of opportunities
suggested by her reckless ambition. Doubtless the
cramped and unpoetic life of her humble condition
in the house-painter’s home in Warwick made her
fret and chafe under its natural restraint. But
when she saw her way to an effective scheme of enlarging
her self-importance she acted with extraordinary
daring and resource. As is usual with such
natures, when moral restraints have been abandoned,
the pendulum swung to its opposite. As
she had been lowly she determined to be proud; and
having fixed on her objective began to elaborate a
consistent scheme, utilising the facts of her own
surroundings as the foundation of her imposture.
She probably realised early that there must be a
base somewhere, and so proceeded to manufacture
or arrange for herself a new identity into which
the demonstrable facts of her actual life could be
wrought. At the same time she manifestly realised
that in a similar way fact and intention must
be interwoven throughout the whole of her contemplated
creation. Accordingly she created for
herself a new <i lang="fr">milieu</i> which she supported by forged
documents of so clever a conceit and such excellent
workmanship, that they misled all who investigated
them, until they came within the purview of the
great lawyers of the day whose knowledge, logical
power, skill and determination were arrayed
against her. By a sort of intellectual metabolism
she changed the identities and conditions of her
own relations whom I have mentioned, always taking
care that her story held together in essential
possibilities, and making use of the abnormalities
of those whose prototypes she introduced into fictional
life.<br />
<br />
The changes made in her world of new conditions
were mainly as follows: Her uncle, the
Reverend James, who as a man of learning and
dignity was accustomed to high-class society, and
as a preacher of eminence occasionally in touch with
Crown and Court, became her father; and she herself
the child of a secret marriage with a great lady
whose personal rank and condition would reflect
importance on her daughter. But proof, or alleged
proof, of some kind would be necessary and there
were too many persons at present living whose
testimony would be available for her undoing. So
her uncle James shifted his place and became her
grandfather. To this the circumstances of his
earlier life gave credibility in two ways; firstly because
they allowed of his having made a secret
marriage, since he was forbidden to marry by the
statutes of his college, and secondly because they
gave a reasonable excuse for concealing his marriage
and the birth of a child, publicity regarding
which would have cost him his livelihood.<br />
<br />
At this point the story began to grow logically,
and the whole scheme to expand cohesively. Her
genius as a writer of fiction was being proved; and
with the strengthening of the intellectual nature came the atrophy of the moral. She began to look
higher; and the seeds of imagination took root in
her vanity till the madness latent in her nature
turned wishes into beliefs and beliefs into facts.
As she was imagining on her own behoof, why not
imagine beneficially? This all took time, so that
when she was well prepared for her venture things
had moved on in the nation and the world as well
as in her fictitious romance. Manifestly she could
not make a start on her venture until the possibility
vanished of witnesses from the inner circle of her
own family being brought against her; so that she
could not safely begin machinations for some time.
She determined however to be ready when occasion
should serve. In the meantime she had to lead two
lives. Outwardly she was Olive Serres, daughter
of Robert Wilmot born in 1772 and married in
1791, and mother of two daughters. Inwardly
she was the same woman with the same birth, marriage
and motherhood, but of different descent being
(imaginatively) grand-daughter of her (real)
uncle the Rev. James Wilmot D. D. The gaps in
the imaginary descent having been thus filled up as
made and provided in her own mind, she felt more
safe. Her uncle—so ran her fiction—had early
in his college life met and become friends with
Count Stanislaus Poniatowski who later became by
election King of Poland. Count Poniatowski had
a sister—whom the ingenious Olive dubbed “Princess
of Poland”—who became the wife of her uncle (now her grandfather) James. To them was born,
in 1750, a daughter Olive, the marriage being kept
secret for family reasons, and the child for the
same reason being passed off as the offspring of
Robert the housepainter. This child Olive, according
to the fiction, met His Royal Highness Henry
Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, brother of the
King, George III. They fell in love with each
other and were privately married—by the Rev.
James Wilmot D. D.—on 4 March 1767. They
had issue one daughter, Olive, born at Warwick 3
April 1772. After living with her for four years
the Duke of Cumberland deserted his wife, who
was then pregnant, and in 1771 married—bigamously,
it was alleged—Lady Anne Horton, sister
of Colonel Luttrell, daughter of Lord Irnham, and
widow of Andrew Horton of Catton, Derbyshire.
The (alleged) Royal Duchess died in France in
1774, and the Duke in 1790.<br />
<br />
Thus fact and fiction were arrayed together in a
very cunning way. The birth of Olive Wilmot
(afterwards Serres) in 1772 was proved by a genuine
registry. Likewise that of her daughter Mrs.
Ryves. For all the rest the certificates were
forged. Moreover there was proof of another
Olive Wilmot whose existence, supported by genuine
registration, might avert suspicion; since it
would be difficult to prove after a lapse of time that
the Olive Wilmot born at Warwick in 1772 daughter
of Robert (the house-painter), was not the granddaughter of James (the Doctor of Divinity).
In case of necessity the real date (1759) of the
birth of Olive Wilmot sister of the Rev. James
could easily be altered to the fictitious date of the
birth of “Princess” Olive born 1750.<br />
<br />
It was only in 1817 that Mrs. Serres began to
take active measures for carrying her imposture
into action; and in the process she made some tentative
efforts which afterwards made difficulty for
her. At first she sent out a story, through a
memorial to George III, that she was daughter of
the Duke of Cumberland by Mrs. Payne, wife of
Captain Payne and sister of James Wilmot D. D.
This she amended later in the same year by alleging
that she was a natural daughter of the Duke
by the sister of Doctor Wilmot, whom he had seduced
under promise of marriage. It was not till
after the deaths of George III and the Duke of
Kent in 1820, that the story took its third and final
form.<br />
<br />
It should be noticed that care was taken not to
clash with laws already in existence or to run
counter to generally received facts. In 1772 was
passed the Royal Marriage Act (12 George III
Cap. 11) which nullified any marriage contracted
with anyone in the succession to the Crown to which
the Monarch had not given his sanction. Therefore
Mrs. Serres had fixed the (alleged) marriage
of (the alleged) Olive Wilmot with the Duke of
Cumberland as in 1767—five years earlier—so that
the Act could not be brought forward as a bar to
its validity. Up to 1772 such marriages could take
place legally. Indeed there was actually a case in
existence—the Duke of Gloucester (another
brother of the King) having married the dowager
Countess of Waldegrave. It was of common repute
that this marriage was the motive of the
King’s resolve to have the Royal Marriage Act
added to the Statute book. At the main trial it
was alleged by Counsel, in making the petitioner’s
claim, that the King (George III) was aware of
the Duke of Cumberland’s marriage with Olive
Wilmot, although it was not known to the public,
and that when he heard of his marriage with Lady
Anne Horton he was very angry and would not allow
them to come to Court.<br />
<br />
The various allegations of Mrs. Serres as to her
mother’s marriage were not treated seriously for a
long time but they were so persisted in that it became
necessary to have some denial in evidence.
Accordingly a law-case was entered. One which
became a <i lang="fr">cause célèbre</i>. It began in 1866—just
about a hundred years from the time of the alleged
marriage. With such a long gap the difficulties
of disproving Mrs. Serres’ allegations were much
increased. But there was no help for it; reasons
of State forbade the acceptance or even the doubt
of such a claim. The really important point was
that if by any chance the claimant should win, the
Succession would be endangered.<br />
<br />
The presiding judge was the Lord Chief Justice,
Lord Cockburn. With him sat Lord Chief Baron
Pollock and the Judge Ordinary Sir James Wilde.
There was a special jury. The case took the form
of one in the English Probate Court made under
the “Legitimacy Declaration Act.” In this case,
Mrs. Ryves, daughter of Mrs. Serres, was the petitioner.
Associated with her in the claim was her
son, who, however, is of no interest in the matter
and need not be considered. The petition stated
that Mrs. Ryves was the legitimate daughter of one
John Thomas Serres and Olive his wife, the said
Olive being, whilst living, a natural-born subject
and the legitimate daughter of Henry Frederick,
Duke of Cumberland and Olive Wilmot, his wife.
That the said Olive Wilmot, born in 1750, was lawfully
married to His Royal Highness Henry Frederick,
Duke of Cumberland, fourth son of Frederick
Prince of Wales (thus being grandson of
George II and brother of King George III), on
4 March 1767, at the house of Thomas, Lord
Archer, in Grosvenor Square, London, the marriage
being performed by the Rev. James Wilmot
D. D., father of the said Olive Wilmot. That a
child, Olive, was born to them on 3 April 1772, who
in 1791 was married to John Thomas Serres. And
so on in accordance with the (alleged) facts above
given.<br />
<br />
The strange position was that even if the petitioner
should win her main case she would prove
her own illegitimacy. For granting that the alleged
Olive Serres should have been legally married
to the Duke of Cumberland, the Royal Marriage
Act, passed five years later, forbade the
union of the child of such a marriage, except with
the sanction of the reigning monarch.<br />
<br />
In the making of the claim of Mrs. Ryves a
grave matter appeared—one which rendered it absolutely
necessary that the case should be heard in
the most formal and adequate way and settled once
for all. The matter was one affecting the legality
of the marriage of George III, and so touching
the legitimacy of his son afterwards George IV, his
son afterwards William IV and his son the Duke
of Kent, father of Queen Victoria—and so debarring
them and all their descendants from the Crown
of England. The points of contact were in documents
insidiously though not overtly produced and
the preparation of which showed much constructive
skill in the world of fiction. Amongst the many
documents put in evidence by the Counsel for Mrs.
Ryves were two certificates of the (alleged) marriage
between Olive Wilmot and the Duke of Cumberland.
On the back of each of these alleged certificates
was written what purported to be a certificate
of the marriage of George III to Hannah
Lightfoot performed in 1759 by J. Wilmot. The
wording of the documents varied slightly.<br />
<br />
It was thus that the claim of Mrs. Ryves and her
son became linked up with the present and future
destinies of England. These alleged documents
too, brought the Attorney General upon the scene.
There were two reasons for this. Firstly the action
had to be taken against the Crown in the matter
of form; secondly in such a case with the possibility
of such vast issues it was absolutely necessary that
every position should be carefully guarded, every
allegation jealously examined. In each case the
Attorney General was the proper official to act.<br />
<br />
The Case of the Petitioners was prepared with
extraordinary care. There were amongst the documents
produced, numbering over seventy, some
containing amongst them forty-three signatures of
Dr. Wilmot, sixteen of Lord Chatham, twelve of
Mr. Dunning (afterwards the 1st Baron Ashburton),
twelve of George III, thirty-two of Lord
Warwick and eighteen of H.R.H., the Duke of
Kent, the father of Queen Victoria. Their counsel
stated that although these documents had been
repeatedly brought to the notice of the successive
Ministers of the Crown, it had never been suggested
until that day that they were forgeries.
This latter statement was traversed in Court by the
Lord Chief Baron, who called attention to a debate
on the subject in the House of Commons in which
they were denounced as forgeries.<br />
<br />
In addition to those documents already quoted
were the following certificates:<br />
<br />
<blockquote>
“The marriage of these parties was this
day duly solemnized at Kew Chapel, according
to the rites and ceremonies of the
Church of England, by myself.<br />
<div class="sigright">
“J. Wilmot.”</div>
<div class="sigmiddle">
“George P.”<br />
“Hannah.”
</div>
<div class="in0">
Witness to this marriage</div>
<div class="sigmiddle">
“W. Pitt.”<br />
“Anne Taylor.”</div>
<div class="sigright">
May 27, 1759.</div>
<div class="tb">
* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
<div class="sigright">
April 17, 1759</div>
“This is to Certify that the marriage of
these parties (George, Prince of Wales,
to Hannah Lightfoot) was duly solemnized
this day, according to the rites and
ceremonies of the Church of England, at
their residence at Peckham, by myself.<br />
<div class="sigright">
“J. Wilmot.”</div>
<div class="sigmiddle">
“George Guelph.”<br />
“Hannah Lightfoot.”
</div>
Witness to the marriage of these <span class="locked">parties,—</span><br />
<div class="sigmiddle">
“William Pitt.”<br />
“Anne Taylor.”
</div>
<div class="tb">
* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
“I hereby Certify that George, Prince
of Wales, married Hannah Wheeler <i>alias</i>
Lightfoot, April 17, 1759, but from finding
the latter to be her right name I
solemnized the union of the said parties a
second time May the 27th, 1759, as the
Certificate affixed to this paper will confirm.<br />
<div class="sigmiddle">
“J. Wilmot.<br />
Witness (Torn)”
</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="tb">
* <span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">* </span><span class="in2">*</span></div>
The case for the Crown was strongly supported.
Not only did the Attorney-General, Sir Roundell
Palmer (afterwards Lord Chancellor and First
Earl of Selborne) appear himself, but he was supported
by the Solicitor-General, the Queen’s Advocate,
Mr. Hannen and Mr. R. Bourke. The Attorney-General
made the defence himself. At the
outset it was difficult to know where to begin, for
everywhere undoubted and unchallenged facts were
interwoven with the structure of the case; and of all
the weaknesses and foibles of the important persons
mentioned, full advantage was taken. The marriage
of the Duke of Gloucester to Lady Waldegrave
had made him unpopular in every way, and
he was at the time a <i lang="la">persona ingrata</i> at Court.
There had been rumours of scandal about the King
(when Prince of Wales) and the “Fair Quaker,”
Hannah Lightfoot. The anonymity of the author
of the celebrated “Letters of Junius,” which attacked
the King so unmercifully, lent plausibility
to any story which might account for it. The case
of Mrs. Ryves, tried in 1861, in which her own
legitimacy had been proved and in which indisputable
documents had been used, was taken as a
proof of her <i lang="la">bona fides</i>.<br />
<br />
Mrs. Ryves herself was in the box for nearly the
whole of three days, during which she bore herself
firmly, refusing even to sit down when the presiding
judge courteously extended that privilege to
her. She was then, by her own statement, over
seventy years of age. In the course of her evidence
a Memorial to George IV was produced,
written by her mother, Mrs. Serres, in which the
word offspring was spelled “orfspring”; in commenting
on which the Attorney-General produced
a congratulatory Ode to the Prince Regent on his
birthday in 1812, by the same author, in which occurred
the line:<br />
<br />
“Hail valued heir orfspring of Heaven’s smile.”
Similar eccentric orthography was found in other
autograph papers of Mrs. Serres.<br />
<br />
The Attorney-General, in opposing the claim,
alleged that the whole story of the Duke of Cumberland’s
marriage to Olive Wilmot was a concoction
from beginning to end, and said that the mere
statement of the Petitioner’s case was sufficient to
stamp its true character. That its folly and absurdity
were equal to its audacity; in every stage
it exposed itself to conviction by the simplest tests.
He added that the Petitioner might have dwelt so
long upon documents produced and fabricated by
others, that, with her memory impaired by old age,
the principle of veracity might have been poisoned,
and the offices of imagination and memory confounded
to such an extent that she really believed
that things had been done and said in her presence
which were in fact entirely imaginary. No part
of her story was corroborated by a single authentic
document, or by a single extrinsic fact. The
forgery, falsehood and fraud of the case were
proved in many ways. The explanations were as
false and feeble as the story itself. “I cannot of
course,” he said, “lay bare the whole history of the
concoction of these extraordinary documents, but
there are circumstances which indicate that they
were concocted by Mrs. Serres herself.”<br />
<br />
Having commented on some other matters
spoken of, but regarding which no evidence was adduced,
he proceeded to speak of the alleged wife
of Joseph Wilmot D. D., the Polish Princess, sister
of Count Poniatowski, afterwards elected King
of Poland (1764), who was the mother of his
charming daughter, Olive. “The truth is,” said
Sir Roundell, “that both the Polish Princess and
the charming daughter were pure myths; no such
persons ever existed—they were as entirely creatures
of the imagination as Shakespeare’s Ferdinand
and Miranda.”<br />
<br />
As to the documents produced by the Petitioners
he remarked:<br />
<blockquote>
“What sort of documents were those which were produced?
The internal evidence proved that they were the most ridiculous,
absurd, preposterous series of forgeries that the perverted
ingenuity of man ever invented ... they were all
written on little scraps and slips of paper, such as no human
being would ever have used for the purpose of recording
transactions of this kind, and it would be proved that in every
one of these pieces of paper the watermark of date was wanting.”</blockquote>
This was but a new variant of the remark
made by the Lord Chief Justice, just after the putting-in
of the alleged marriage Certificate of the
Prince of Wales and Hannah Lightfoot:<br />
<blockquote>
“The Court is, as I understand, asked solemnly to declare,
on the strength of two certificates, coming I know not whence,
written on two scraps of paper, that the marriage, the only
marriage of George III which the world believes to have
taken place, between His Majesty and Queen Charlotte, was
an invalid marriage, and consequently that all the Sovereigns
who have sat on the throne since his death, including Her
present Majesty, were not entitled to sit on the throne. That
is the conclusion which the Court is asked to come to upon
these two rubbishy pieces of paper, one signed ‘George P.,’
and the other ‘George Guelph.’ I believe them to be gross
and rank forgeries. The Court has no difficulty in coming to
the conclusion, even assuming that the signatures had that
character of genuineness which they have not, that what is
asserted in these documents has not the slightest foundation
in fact.”</blockquote>
With this view the Lord Chief Baron and the
Judge-Ordinary entirely concurred, the former adding:<br />
<blockquote>
“... the declarations of Hannah Lightfoot, if there
ever was such a person, cannot be received in evidence on the
faith of these documents ... the only issues for the
jury are the issues in the cause and this is not an issue in
the cause, but an incidental issue.... I think that these
documents, which the Lord Chief Justice has treated with all
the respect which properly belongs to them, are not genuine.”</blockquote>
Before the Attorney General had finished the
statement of his case, he was interrupted by the
foreman of the jury, who said that the jury were
unanimously of opinion that there was no necessity
to hear any further evidence as they were convinced
that the signatures of the documents were not genuine.
On this the Lord Chief Justice said:<br />
<blockquote>
“You share the opinion which my learned brothers and I
have entertained for a long time; that every one of the documents
is spurious.”</blockquote>
As the Counsel for the Petitioners had “felt it his
duty to make some observations to the jury before
they delivered their verdict,” and had made them,
the Lord Chief Justice summed up. Towards the
conclusion of his summing-up he said, in speaking
of the various conflicting stories put forth by Mrs.
Serres:<br />
<blockquote>
“In each of the claims which she made at different times,
she appealed to documents in her possession by which they
were supported. What was the irresistible inference? Why,
that documents were from time to time prepared to meet the
form which her claims from time to time assumed.”</blockquote>
The jury, without hesitation, found that they
were not satisfied “that Olive Serres, the mother of
Mrs. Ryves, was the legitimate daughter of Henry
Frederick Duke of Cumberland and Olive his wife;
and they were not satisfied that Henry Frederick,
Duke of Cumberland, was lawfully married to
Olive Wilmot on the 4th of March 1767....”<br />
<br />
The case of Mrs. Serres is an instance of how a
person, otherwise comparatively harmless but afflicted
with vanity and egotism, may be led away
into evil courses, from which, had she realised their
full iniquity, she might have shrunk. The only
thing outside the case we have been considering,
was that she separated from her husband; which indeed
was an affliction rather than a crime. She had
been married for thirteen years and had borne two
children, but so far as we know no impropriety was
ever alleged against her. One of her daughters remained
her constant companion till her twenty-second
year and through her long life held her and
her memory in filial devotion and respect. The
forethought, labour and invention which she devoted
to the fraud, if properly and honestly used,
might have won for her a noteworthy place in the
history of her time. But as it was, she frittered
away in criminal work her good opportunities and
great talents, and ended her life within the rules
of the King’s Bench.<br />
<br />
Article by Bram Stoker <br />
<br />
Compiled from sources in the public domain. <br />
<br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It
is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity,
to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W.
Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-72188011828981357462018-10-06T07:30:00.003-07:002018-10-07T09:15:02.495-07:00Shadows In A Timeless Myth Presents Bram Stoker on Women Disguised As MenWOMEN AS MEN: THE MOTIVE FOR DISGUISE<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhNQUyVTYTC76izg3h1I2ObRU72HiIYAtDQUqX4R39gpS_yHUMj79RQLFEmwyzQvAMP-rOEh5zfg949qZdGhUZXlBenQLpfn_fNUXyBISwk0Hku4zzfgO14m5bDZzjUtYapUZH_xBdz44b/s1600/Bram+Stoker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1032" data-original-width="800" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhNQUyVTYTC76izg3h1I2ObRU72HiIYAtDQUqX4R39gpS_yHUMj79RQLFEmwyzQvAMP-rOEh5zfg949qZdGhUZXlBenQLpfn_fNUXyBISwk0Hku4zzfgO14m5bDZzjUtYapUZH_xBdz44b/s320/Bram+Stoker.jpg" width="248" /></a></div>
<br />
by Bram Stoker<br />
<br />
<div class="drop-cap">
<span class="smcap1">One</span> of the commonest forms of imposture—so
common that it seems rooted in a
phase of human nature—is that of women
who disguise themselves as men. It is not to be
wondered at that such attempts are made; or
that they were made more often formerly when
social advancement had not enlarged the scope
of work available for women. The legal and
economic disabilities of the gentler sex stood
then so fixedly in the way of working opportunity
that women desirous of making an honest
livelihood took desperate chances to achieve
their object. We have read of very many cases in
the past; and even now the hum-drum of life is
broken by the fact or the echo of some startling revelation
of the kind. Only very lately the death of
a person who had for many years occupied a
worthy though humble position in London caused
a post-mortem sensation by the discovery that the
deceased individual, though looked on for about a
quarter of a century as a man, a widower, and the
father of a grown-up daughter, was in reality a
woman. She was actually buried under the name<span class="pagenum"> </span>of the man she had professed to be, Harry Lloyd.</div>
<div class="drop-cap">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinKLbRlp2tNnF1S7Nvt1M_isn7ch_EYL68KlmDfw6CYnbTCDMFru5dOdDDP1u2t98alvv5dbBUYpgu__IklJmrj71yvWN-IBzTTa29OooU_Qykr2MojNkvRWkmpnjSZUJjaZD992pMjSWj/s1600/Phoebe_Hessel00.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="702" data-original-width="501" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinKLbRlp2tNnF1S7Nvt1M_isn7ch_EYL68KlmDfw6CYnbTCDMFru5dOdDDP1u2t98alvv5dbBUYpgu__IklJmrj71yvWN-IBzTTa29OooU_Qykr2MojNkvRWkmpnjSZUJjaZD992pMjSWj/s320/Phoebe_Hessel00.jpg" width="228" /></a></div>
It is not to be wondered at that in more strenuous
times, when the spirit of adventure was less
curbed, and initial difficulties were less deadened
by convention, cases of concealment of sex were far
more numerous and more easily prolonged. In
an age of foreign wars, many existing barriers
against success in this respect were removed by
general laxity of social conditions. Perhaps I may
be allowed to say at the outset that, for my own
part, my mind refuses absolutely to accept that
which is generally alleged in each case, that the
male comrades of women concealing their proper
sex were, all through, ignorant of the true facts.
Human nature is opposed to such a supposition,
and experience bears out the shrewdness of nature.
On occasions, or even for a time, it is possible to
make such successful concealments. But when we
are told that a woman has gone through a whole
campaign or a prolonged voyage in all the overcrowded
intimacy of tent and bivouac or of cabin
and forecastle, without such a secret being suspected
or discovered, the narrator makes an overlarge
draft on human credulity. That such comrades,
and many of them, forbore to give away the
secret, no matter how it had come into their possession,
we may well believe. Comradeship is a strong
factor in such matters, and it has its own loyalty,
which is never stronger than when the various persons
interested are held together by the knowledge<span class="pagenum"></span>
of a common danger. But even to this there is a
contra; the whole spirit of romance, even when it
binds man to woman and woman to man, stands
side by side with love, affection, passion—call it
what you will—which opportunity can fan into
flame. Never more so than in the strenuous days
of fighting, when day and night are full of varying
fears—when the mad turmoil of working hours and
loneliness of the night forge new fetters for the
binding together of the sexes.<br />
<br />
In real life, when a man or a woman tries to escape
from capture or the fear of it in the guise of
the opposite sex, it is a never-ending struggle to
sustain the rôle successfully. If this is so, when the
whole of the energies of mind and body are devoted
in singleness of purpose to the task, how then
can the imposture be successfully prolonged when
the mind is eternally occupied with the pressing
things of the passing moments? There must infallibly
be moments of self-betrayal; and there is
sufficient curiosity in the average person to insure
that the opportunities of such moments are not lost.
Be this as it may, we must in the first instance stick
to matters of fact; the record is our sheet-anchor.
After all, when we learn of a case where an imposture
of the kind has been successfully carried
out, it is time enough to argue with convincing perspicacity
that it should not have been possible.<br />
<br />
As to record, there are quite sufficient cases to
convince any reader as to the fact that, allowing for<span class="pagenum"></span>
all possible error and wastage, there have been a
sufficient number undetected at the time of their
happening, and only made known by after-confession
and by the force of ulterior circumstances.
Whatever opinion we may form of the women who
carried out the venture, there is neither occasion nor
need to doubt the fact they were so carried out.
The consideration of a few cases culled from the
records of this class of successful imposture will
make this plain. It would be useless, if not impossible,
to make full lists of the names of women who
have passed themselves off as men in the fighting
world—soldiers and sailors, with side interests
such as piracy, duelling, highway robbery, etc.
Amongst the female soldiers are the names of
Christian Davis (known as Mother Ross), Hannah
Snell, Phœbe Hessel. Amongst the sailors those
of Mary Talbot, Ann Mills, Hannah Whitney,
Charles Waddell. In the ranks of the pirates are
Mary Reid and Ann Bonney. In many of these
cases are underlying romances, as of women making
search for lost or absconding husbands, or of
lovers making endeavours to regain the lost paradise
of life together.<br />
<br />
If there were nothing else in these little histories,
their perusal in detail would well repay attention
as affording proof of the boundless devotion of
woman’s love. No matter how badly the man may
have treated the woman, no matter how heartlessly
or badly he may have behaved towards her, her affection<span class="pagenum"></span>
was proof against all. Indeed it makes one
believe that there is some subtle self-sustaining,
self-ennobling quality in womanhood which her
initial self-surrender makes a constant force towards
good. Even a nature which took new
strength from the turmoil of battle, from the harrowing
suspense of perpetual vigil, from the strain
of physical weakness bravely borne, from pain and
want and hunger, instead of hardening into obstinate
indifference, seems to have softened as to
sentiment, and been made gentle as to memory, as
though the sense of wrong had been purged by the
forces of affliction. All this, though the stress of
campaigning may have blunted some of the conventional
susceptibility of womanhood. For the after
life of some of these warlike heroines showed that
they had lost none of the love of admiration which
marks their sex, none of their satisfaction in posing
as characters other than their own. Several of
them found pleasure in a new excitement different
from that of battle, in the art of the stage.
Whenever any of them made any effort to settle
down in life after their excitement in the life of the
camp or the sea, such did so at some place, and
in some way congenial to herself and consistent
with the life which she was leaving.<br />
<br />
Compiled from sources in the public domain.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Please take a moment to "Like" <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006QAWQMI" target="_blank">Shadows In A Timeless Myth</a> on Amazon. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">(Shadows is also available at Barnes & Noble for the <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shadows-in-a-timeless-myth-teresa-thomas-bohannon/1113933396?ean=2940015745054" target="_blank">Nook</a>) </span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Complimentary<a href="http://www.spunsilk.com/ATrystInTymeByTeresaThomasBohannon.pdf" target="_blank"> Shadows In A Timeless Myth</a> Short Story </span><br />
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<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"></span>
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Smiles & Good Fortune,</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Teresa</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">************************************</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It
is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity,
to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W.
Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-64589915951760630672018-09-30T10:41:00.000-07:002018-09-30T10:41:07.155-07:00 Shadows In A Timeless Myth Presents Mrs Anna Ottendorfer Journalist and Philanthropist<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"Whenever our people gratefully point out their benefactors, whenever
the Germans in America speak of those who are objects of their
veneration and their pride, the name of Anna Ottendorfer will assuredly
be among the first. For all time to come her memory and her work will be
blessed." Thus spoke the Hon. Carl Schurz at the bier of Mrs.
Ottendorfer in the spring of 1884.<br />
<br />
Anna Behr was born in Würzburg, Bavaria, in a simple home, Feb. 13,
1815. In 1837, when twenty-two years old, she came to America, remained
a year with her brother in Niagara County, N.Y., and then married Jacob
Uhl, a printer.<br />
<br />
In 1844 Mr. Uhl started a job-office in Frankfort Street, New York, and
bought a small weekly paper called the <i>New-Yorker Staats-Zeitung</i>. His
young wife helped him constantly, and finally the weekly paper became a
daily.<br />
<br />
Her husband died in 1852, leaving her with six children and a daily
paper on her hands. She was equal to the task. She declined to sell the
paper, and managed it well for seven years. Then she married Mr. Oswald
Ottendorfer, who was on the staff of the paper.<br />
<br />
Both worked indefatigably, and made the paper more successful than ever.
She was always at her desk.<span class="pagenum"></span> "Her callers," says <i>Harper's Bazar</i>, May
3, 1884, "had been many. Her visitors represented all classes of
society,—the opulent and the poor, the high and the lowly. There was
advice for the one, assistance for the other; an open heart and an open
purse for the deserving; a large charity wisely used."<br />
<br />
In 1875 Mrs. Ottendorfer built the Isabella Home for Aged Women in
Astoria, Long Island, giving to it $150,000. It was erected in memory of
her deceased daughter, Isabella.<br />
<br />
In 1881 she contributed about $40,000 to a memorial fund in support of
several educational institutions, and the next year built and furnished
the Woman's Pavilion of the German Hospital of New York City, giving
$75,000. For the German Dispensary in Second Avenue she gave $100,000,
also a library.<br />
<br />
At her death she provided liberally for many institutions, and left
$25,000 to be divided among the employees of the <i>Staats-Zeitung</i>. In
1879 the property of the paper was turned into a stock-company; and, at
the suggestion of Mrs. Ottendorfer, the employees were provided for by a
ten-per-cent dividend on their annual salary. Later this was raised to
fifteen per cent, which greatly pleased the men.<br />
<br />
The New York <i>Sun</i>, in regard to her care for her employees, especially
in her will, says, "She had always the reputation of a very clever,
business-like, and charitable lady. Her will shows, however, that she
was much more than that—she must have been a wonderful woman." A year
before her death the Empress Augusta of Germany sent her a medal in
recognition of her many charities.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span class="pagenum"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="Page_330" name="Page_330"></a></span><br />
Mrs. Ottendorfer died April 1, 1884, and was buried in Greenwood. Her
estate was estimated at $3,000,000, made by her own skill and energy.
Having made it, she enjoyed giving it to others.<br />
Her husband, Mr. Oswald Ottendorfer, has given most generously to his
native place Zwittau,—an orphan asylum and home for the poor, a
hospital, and a fine library with a beautiful monumental fountain before
it, crowned by a statue representing mother-love; a woman carrying a
child in her arms and leading another. His statue was erected in the
city in 1886, and the town was illuminated in his honor at the
dedication of the library.<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Compiled from sources in the public domain.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Please take a moment to "Like" <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006QAWQMI" target="_blank">Shadows In A Timeless Myth</a> on Amazon. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">(Shadows is also available at Barnes & Noble for the <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shadows-in-a-timeless-myth-teresa-thomas-bohannon/1113933396?ean=2940015745054" target="_blank">Nook</a>) </span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Complimentary<a href="http://www.spunsilk.com/ATrystInTymeByTeresaThomasBohannon.pdf" target="_blank"> Shadows In A Timeless Myth</a> Short Story </span><br />
<br />
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<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"></span>
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Smiles & Good Fortune,</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Teresa</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">************************************</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It
is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity,
to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W.
Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-36612843870101635982018-09-23T06:49:00.000-07:002018-09-23T06:49:02.193-07:00Shadows In A Timeless Myth Presents Mary McLeod Bethune<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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On October 3, 1904, a lone woman, inspired
by the desire to do something for the
needy ones of her race and state, began at
Daytona, Florida, a training school for
Negro girls. She had only one dollar and
a half in money, but she had faith, energy,
and a heart full of love for her people. To-day
she has an institution worth not less
than one hundred thousand dollars, with
plans for extensive and immediate enlargement,
and her school is one of the best conducted
and most clear-visioned in the country.
Such has been the result of boundless
energy and thrift joined to an unwavering
faith in God.<br />
Mary McLeod was born July 10, 1875, in
a three-room log cabin on a little cotton and
rice farm about three miles from Mayesville,
South Carolina, being one in the large
family of Samuel and Patsy McLeod. Ambitious
even from her early years, she
yearned for larger and finer things than her
environment afforded; and yet even the life<span class="pagenum"></span>
that she saw around her was to prove a
blessing in disguise, as it gave to her deeper
and clearer insight into the problems, the
shortcomings, and the needs of her people.
In course of time she attended a little mission
school in Mayesville, and she was converted
at the age of twelve. Later she was
graduated at Scotia Seminary, Concord,
North Carolina, and then she went to the
Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. In the
years of her schooling she received some assistance
from a scholarship given by Miss
Mary Chrisman, a dressmaker of Denver,
Colorado. Mary McLeod never forgot that
she had been helped by a working woman.
Some day she intended to justify that faith,
and time has shown that never was a scholarship
invested to better advantage.<br />
<br />
In 1898 Mary McLeod was married. She
became the mother of one son. Not long
after, the family moved to Palatka, Florida.
Now followed the hard years of waiting, of
praying, of hoping; but through it all the
earnest woman never lost faith in herself,
nor in God. She gained experience in a
little school that she taught, she sang with
unusual effect in the churches of the town,
and she took part in any forward movement
or uplift enterprise that she could. All the<span class="pagenum"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="Page_75" name="Page_75"></a></span>
while, however, she knew that the big task
was yet to come. She prayed, and hoped,
and waited.<br />
<br />
By the fall of 1904 it seemed that the time
had come. In a little rented house, with five
girls, Mrs. Bethune began what is now the
Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute
for Negro Girls. By means of concerts and
festivals the first payment of five dollars was
made on the present site, then an old dump-pile.
With their own hands the teacher and
the pupils cleared away much of the rubbish,
and from the first they invited the co-operation
of the people around them by lending a
helping hand in any way they could, by
"being neighborly." In 1905 a Board of
Trustees was organized and the school was
chartered. In 1907 Faith Hall, a four-story
frame house, forty by fifty feet, was "prayed
up, sung up, and talked up;" and we can
understand at what a premium space was in
the earlier days when we know that this
building furnished dormitory accommodations
for teachers and students, dining-room,
reading room, storerooms, and bathrooms.
To the rear of Faith Hall was placed a two-story
structure containing the school kitchen
and the domestic science room. In 1909 the
school found it necessary to acquire a farm for the raising of live stock and vegetables
and for the practical outdoor training of the
girls. After six weeks of earnest work the
twelve-acre tract in front of the school was
purchased. In 1914 a Model Home was
built. In this year also an additional west
farm of six acres, on which was a two-story
frame building, was needed, asked for and
procured. In March, 1918, the labors of
fourteen years were crowned by the erection
and dedication of a spacious auditorium;
and among the speakers at the dedication
were the Governor of Florida and the Vice-President
of the United States. Efforts now
look forward to a great new dormitory for
the girls.<br />
<br />
Such a bare account of achievements,
however, by no means gives one an adequate
conception of the striving and the hopings
and the praying that have entered into the
work. To begin with, Daytona was a strategic
place for the school. There was no other
such school along the entire east coast of
Florida, and as a place of unusual beauty
and attractiveness the town was visited
throughout the winter by wealthy tourists.
From the very first, however, the girls were
trained in the virtues of the home, and in
self-help. Great emphasis was placed on
domestic science, and not only for this as an
end in itself, but also as a means for the
larger training in cleanliness and thrift and
good taste. "We notice strawberries are
selling at fifty and sixty cents a quart," said
a visitor, "and you have a splendid patch.
Do you use them for your students or sell
them?" "We never eat a quart when we
can get fifty cents for them," was the reply.
"We can take fifty cents and buy a bone that
will make soup for us all, when a quart of
berries would supply only a few."<br />
<br />
For one interested in education few pictures
could be more beautiful than that of
the dining-room at the school in the morning
of a day in midterm. Florida is warm often
even in midwinter; nevertheless, rising at
five gives one a keen appetite for the early
breakfast. The ceiling is low and there are
other obvious disadvantages; but over all is
the spirit of good cheer and of home. The
tablecloths are very white and clean; flowers
are on the different tables; at the head of
each a teacher presides over five or six girls;
the food is nourishing and well-prepared;
and one leaves with the feeling that if he had
a sister or daughter he would like for her to
have the training of some such place as this.<br />
<br />
Of such quality is the work that has been
built up; and all has been accomplished
through the remarkable personality of the
woman who is the head and the soul of every
effort. Indomitable courage, boundless energy,
fine tact and a sense of the fitness of
things, kindly spirit, and firm faith in God
have deservedly given her success. Beyond
the bounds of her immediate institution her
influence extends. About the year 1912 the
trustees felt the need of so extending the
work as to make the school something of a
community center; and thus arose the McLeod
Hospital and Training School for
Nurses. In 1912, moved by the utter neglect
of the children of the turpentine camp
at Tomoka, Mrs. Bethune started work for
them in a little house that she secured. The
aim was to teach the children to be clean and
truthful and helpful, to sew and to sweep
and to sing. A short school term was
started among them, and the mission serves
as an excellent practice school for the girls
of the senior class in the Training School.
A summer school and a playground have
also been started for the children in Daytona.
Nor have the boys and young men
been neglected. Here was a problem of
unusual difficulty. Any one who has looked
into the inner life of the small towns of<span class="pagenum"></span>
Florida could not fail to be impressed by the
situation of the boys and young men. Hotel
life, a shifting tourist population, and a climate
of unusual seductiveness, have all left
their impress. On every side to the young
man beckons temptation, and in town after
town one finds not one decent recreation
center or uplifting social influence. Pool-rooms
abound, and the young man is blamed
for entering forbidden paths; but all too
often the Christian men and women of the
community have put forth no definite organized
effort for his uplift. All too often
there results a blasted life—a heartache for
a mother, or a ruined home for some young
woman. In Daytona, in 1913, on a lot near
the school campus, one of the trustees, Mr.
George S. Doane, erected a neat, commodious
building to be used in connection with
the extension work of the institution as a
general reading-room and home for the
Young Men's Christian Association; and
this is the only specific work so being done
for Negro boys in this section of the state.
A debating club, an athletic club, lecture
club, and prayer-meetings all serve as means
toward the physical, intellectual, and spiritual
development of the young men. A
"Better Boys Movement" is also making
progress and the younger boys are becoming<span class="pagenum"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="Page_80" name="Page_80"> </a></span>interested in canning and farming as
well as being cared for in their sports and
games.<br />
<br />
No sketch of this woman's work should
close without mention of her activities for
the nation at large. Red Cross work or a
Liberty Loan drive has alike called forth her
interest and her energy. She has appeared
on some great occasions and before distinguished
audiences, such as that for instance
in the Belasco Theatre in Washington in
December, 1917, when on a noteworthy patriotic
occasion she was the only representative
of her race to speak.<br />
<br />
<br /><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">(Shadows is also available at Barnes & Noble for the <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shadows-in-a-timeless-myth-teresa-thomas-bohannon/1113933396?ean=2940015745054" target="_blank">Nook</a>) </span><br />
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<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"></span>
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Smiles & Good Fortune,</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Teresa</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">************************************</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It
is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity,
to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W.
Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-1598090624509347852018-09-16T06:44:00.000-07:002018-09-16T06:44:04.060-07:00Shadows In A Timeless Myth Presents Meta Warrick Fuller<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuoCtOfNYNYIZQbqjvjBg81NkqwRass-lDbRrCiT9rn73nbzNkDx1jJsme_q-WYO83NF5-APImW6CqNUJMaznMBsqdpaHgg6RHHA7bdaqeaQCwOTDHdFA8XzKInBQk4t7y8cnX1zxNNEoT/s1600/Meta+Warrick+Fuller.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="368" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuoCtOfNYNYIZQbqjvjBg81NkqwRass-lDbRrCiT9rn73nbzNkDx1jJsme_q-WYO83NF5-APImW6CqNUJMaznMBsqdpaHgg6RHHA7bdaqeaQCwOTDHdFA8XzKInBQk4t7y8cnX1zxNNEoT/s320/Meta+Warrick+Fuller.jpg" width="196" /></a></div>
<div class="chaptertitle">
</div>
<div class="chaptertitle">
The state of Massachusetts has always
been famous for its history and literature,
and especially rich in tradition is the region
around Boston. On one side is Charlestown,
visited yearly by thousands who make
a pilgrimage to the Bunker Hill Monument.
Across the Charles River is Cambridge, the
home of Harvard University, and Longfellow,
and Lowell, and numerous other
men whose work has become a part of the
nation's heritage. If one will ride on through
Cambridge and North Cambridge and Arlington,
he will come to Lexington, where
he will find in the little Lexington Common
one of the most charming spots of ground
in America. Overlooking this he will see
the Harrington House, and all around other
memorials of the Revolution. Taking the
car again and riding about seven miles more
he will come to Concord, and here he will
catch still more of the flavor of the eighteenth<span class="pagenum"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="Page_60" name="Page_60"></a></span>
century. Walking from the center of
the town down Monument Street (he <i>must</i>
walk now; there is no trolley, and a carriage
or automobile does not permit one to linger
by the wayside), he will come after a while
to the Old Manse, once the home of Emerson
and of Hawthorne, and then see just around
the corner the Concord Bridge and the
statue of the Minute Man. There is a new
bridge now, one of concrete; the old wooden
one, so long beloved, at length became unsafe
and had to be replaced. In another
direction from the center of the town runs
Lexington Road, within about half a mile
down which one will see the later homes of
Emerson and Hawthorne as well as that
of Louisa May Alcott. Near the Alcott
House, back among the trees, is a quaint
little structure much like a Southern country
schoolhouse—the so-called Concord
School of Philosophy, in which Emerson
once spoke. It is all a beautiful country—beautiful
most of all for its unseen glory.
One gives himself up to reflection; he muses
on Evangeline and the Great Stone Face
and on the heroic dead who did not die in
vain—until a lumbering truck-car on the
road calls him back from it all to the workaday
world of men.</div>
<br />
It is in this state of Massachusetts, so
rich in its tradition, that there resides the
subject of the present sketch. About halfway
between Boston and Worcester, in the
quiet, homelike town of Framingham, on a
winding road just off the main street, lives
Meta Warrick Fuller, one of America's foremost female sculptors.<br />
<br />
There are three little boys in the family.
They keep their mother very busy; but they
also make her very happy. Buttons have
to be sewed on and dinners have to be prepared
for the children of an artist just as
well as for those of other people; and help
is not always easy to get. But the father,
Dr. S. C. Fuller, a distinguished physician,
is also interested in the boys, so that he too
helps, and the home is a happy one.<br />
<br />
At the top of the house is a long roomy
attic. This is an improvised studio—or, as
the sculptor would doubtless say, the workshop.
Hither, from the busy work of the
morning, comes the artist for an hour or
half an hour of modeling—for rest, and for
the first effort to transfer to the plastic clay
some fleeting transient dream.<br />
<br />
Meta Warrick Fuller was born in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, June 9, 1877. For four years she attended the Pennsylvania
School of Industrial Art, and it was at this
institution that she first began to force serious
recognition of her talent. Before very
long she began to be known as a sculptor
of the horrible, one of her first original
pieces being a head of Medusa, with a hanging
jaw, beads of gore, and eyes starting
from their sockets. At her graduation in
1898 she won a prize for metal work by a
crucifix upon which hung the figure of
Christ in agony, and she also won honorable
mention for her work in modeling. In a
post-graduate year she won a much coveted
prize in modeling. In 1899 Meta Warrick
(then best known by her full name, Meta
Vaux Warrick) went to Paris, where she
worked and studied three years. Her work
brought her in contact with many other artists,
among them Augustus St. Gaudens,
the sculptor of the Robert Gould Shaw
Monument at the head of Boston Common.
Then there came a day when by appointment
the young woman went to see Auguste
Rodin, who after years of struggle and dispraise
had finally won recognition as the
foremost sculptor in France if not in the
world. The great man glanced one after
another at the pieces that were presented to
him, without very evident interest. At
length, thrilled by the figure in "Silent
Sorrow," sometimes referred to as "Man
Eating His Heart Out," Rodin beamed
upon the young woman and said, "Mademoiselle,
you <i>are</i> a sculptor; you have the
sense of form." With encouragement from
such a source the young artist worked with
renewed vigor, looking forward to the time
when something that she had produced
should win a place in the Salon, the great
national gallery in Paris. "The Wretched,"
one of the artist's masterpieces, was exhibited
here in 1903, and along with it went
"The Impenitent Thief." This latter production
was demolished in 1904, after meeting
with various unhappy accidents. In the
form as presented, however, the thief, heroic
in size, hung on the cross torn by anguish.
Hardened, unsympathetic, and even
defiant, he still possessed some admirable
qualities of strength, and he has remained
one of the sculptor's most powerful conceptions.
In "The Wretched" seven figures
greet the eye. Each represents a different
form of human anguish. An old man, worn
by hunger and disease, waits for death. A
mother yearns for the loved ones she has
lost. A man bowed by shame fears to look
upon his fellow-creatures. A sick child
suffers from some hereditary taint. A youth
is in despair, and a woman is crazed by sorrow.
Over all is the Philosopher who suffers
perhaps more keenly than the others as he
views the misery around them, and who,
powerless to relieve it, also sinks into despair.<br />
<br />
Other early productions were similarly
characterized by a strongly romantic quality.
"Silent Sorrow" has already been remarked
in passing. In this a man, worn and
gaunt and in despair, is represented as leaning
over and actually eating out his own
heart. "Man Carrying Dead Body" is in
similar vein. The sculptor is moved by the
thought of one who will be spurred on by
the impulse of duty to the performance of
some task not only unpleasant but even
loathsome. She shows a man bearing across
his shoulder the body of a comrade that has
evidently lain on the battlefield for days.
The thing is horrible, and the man totters
under the great weight; but he forces his
way onward until he can give it decent
burial. Another early production was
based on the ancient Greek story of Oedipus.
This story was somewhat as follows:
Oedipus was the son of Laius and Jocasta,
king and queen of Thebes. At his birth an
oracle foretold that the father Laius would<span class="pagenum"></span>
be killed by his son. The child was sent
away to be killed by exposure, but in course
of time was saved and afterwards adopted
by the King of Corinth. When he was
grown, being warned by an oracle that he
would kill his father and marry his mother,
he left home. On his journey he met Laius
and slew him in the course of an altercation.
Later, by solving the riddle of the sphinx,
he freed Thebes from distress, was made
king of the city, and married Jocasta.
Eventually the terrible truth of the relationship
became known to all. Jocasta
hanged herself and Oedipus tore out his
eyes. The sculptor portrays the hero of the
old legend at the very moment that he is thus
trying to punish himself for his crime.
There is nothing delicate or pretty about all
such work as this. It is grewsome in fact,
and horrible; but it is also strong and intense
and vital. Its merit was at once recognized
by the French, and it gave Meta
Warrick a recognized place among the
sculptors of America.<br />
<br />
On her return to America the artist resumed
her studies at the School of Industrial
Art, winning in 1904 the Battles first
prize for pottery. In 1907 she produced a
series of tableaux representing the advance
of the Negro for the Jamestown Tercentennial
Exposition, and in 1913 a group for the
New York State Emancipation Proclamation
Commission. In 1909 she became the
wife of Dr. Solomon C. Fuller, of Framingham,
Massachusetts. A fire in 1910 unfortunately
destroyed some of her most
valuable pieces while they were in storage
in Philadelphia. Only a few examples of
her early work, that happened to be elsewhere,
were saved. The artist was undaunted,
however, and by May, 1914, she
had sufficiently recovered from the blow to
be able to hold at her home a public exhibition
of her work.<br />
<br />
After this fire a new note crept into the
work of Meta Warrick Fuller. This was
doubtless due not so much to the fire itself
as to the larger conception of life that now
came to the sculptor with the new duties of
marriage and motherhood. From this time
forth it was not so much the romantic as the
social note that was emphasized. Representative
of the new influence was the second
model of the group for the Emancipation
Proclamation Commission. A recently
emancipated Negro youth and maiden stand
beneath a gnarled, decapitated tree that has
what looks almost like a human hand stretched over them. Humanity is pushing
them forth into the world while at the same
time the hand of Destiny is restraining them
in the full exercise of their freedom. "Immigrant
in America" is in somewhat similar
vein. An American woman, the mother of
one strong healthy child, is shown welcoming
to the land of plenty the foreigner, the
mother of several poorly nourished children.
Closely related in subject is the smaller
piece, "The Silent Appeal," in which a
mother capable of producing and caring for
three sturdy children is shown as making a
quiet demand for the suffrage and for any
other privileges to which a human being is
entitled. All of these productions are clear
cut, straightforward, and dignified.<br />
In May, 1917, Meta Warrick Fuller took
second prize in a competition under the
auspices of the Massachusetts Branch of the
Woman's Peace Party, her subject being
"Peace Halting the Ruthlessness of War."
War is personified as on a mighty steed and
trampling to death numberless human beings.
In one hand he holds a spear on which
he has transfixed the head of one of his victims.
As he goes on his masterful career
Peace meets him and commands him to cease
his ravages. The work as exhibited was in
gray-green wax and was a production of
most unusual spirit.<br />
<br />
Among other prominent titles are "Watching
for Dawn," a conception of remarkable
beauty and yearning, and "Mother and
Child." An early production somewhat detached
from other pieces is a head of John
the Baptist. This is one of the most haunting
creations of Mrs. Fuller. In it she was
especially successful in the infinite yearning
and pathos that she somehow managed to
give to the eyes of the seer. It bears the
unmistakable stamp of power.<br />
<br />
Compiles from information in the public domain.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">(Shadows is also available at Barnes & Noble for the <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shadows-in-a-timeless-myth-teresa-thomas-bohannon/1113933396?ean=2940015745054" target="_blank">Nook</a>) </span><br />
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<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"></span>
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Smiles & Good Fortune,</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Teresa</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">************************************</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It
is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity,
to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W.
Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-42919758926680621852018-09-02T06:32:00.000-07:002018-09-02T06:34:07.449-07:00Shadows In A Timeless Myth Presents Harriet Tubman<div class="chaptertitle">
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Greatest of all the heroines of anti-slavery
was Harriet Tubman. This brave
woman not only escaped from bondage herself,
but afterwards made nineteen distinct
trips to the South, especially to Maryland,
and altogether aided more than three hundred
souls in escaping from their fetters.<br />
<br />
Araminta Ross, better known by the
Christian name <i>Harriet</i> that she adopted,
and her married name of <i>Tubman</i>, was born
about 1821 in Dorchester County, on the
eastern shore of Maryland, the daughter of
Benjamin Ross and Harriet Greene, both
of whom were slaves, but who were privileged
to be able to live their lives in a state
of singular fidelity. Harriet had ten brothers
and sisters, not less than three of whom
she rescued from slavery; and in 1857, at
great risk to herself, she also took away to
the North her aged father and mother.<br />
<br />
When Harriet was not more than six
years old she was taken away from her
mother and sent ten miles away to learn the
trade of weaving. Among other things she
was set to the task of watching muskrat
traps, which work compelled her to wade
much in water. Once she was forced to
work when she was already ill with the
measles. She became very sick, and her
mother now persuaded her master to let the
girl come home for a while.<br />
<br />
Soon after Harriet entered her teens she
suffered a misfortune that embarrassed her
all the rest of her life. She had been hired
out as a field hand. It was the fall of the
year and the slaves were busy at such tasks
as husking corn and cleaning up wheat.
One of them ran away. He was found. The
overseer swore that he should be whipped
and called on Harriet and some others that
happened to be near to help tie him. She
refused, and as the slave made his escape she
placed herself in a door to help to stop pursuit
of him. The overseer caught up a two-pound
weight and threw it at the fugitive;
but it missed its mark and struck Harriet a
blow on the head that was almost fatal. Her
skull was broken and from this resulted a
pressure on her brain which all her life left
her subject to fits of somnolency.<br />
<br />
Sometimes
these would come upon her in the
midst of a conversation or any task at which
she might be engaged; then after a while
the spell would pass and she could go on as
before.<br />
<br />
After Harriet recovered sufficiently from
her blow she lived for five or six years in
the home of one John Stewart, working at
first in the house but afterwards hiring her
time. She performed the most arduous
labor in order to get the fifty or sixty dollars
ordinarily exacted of a woman in her situation.
She drove oxen, plowed, cut wood,
and did many other such things. With her
firm belief in Providence, in her later years
she referred to this work as a blessing in
disguise as it gave her the firm constitution
necessary for the trials and hardships that
were before her. Sometimes she worked for
her father, who was a timber inspector and
superintended the cutting and hauling of
large quantities of timber for the Baltimore
ship-yards. Her regular task in this employment
was the cutting of half a cord of
wood a day.<br />
<br />
About 1844 Harriet was married to a free
man named John Tubman. She had no
children. Two years after her escape in
1849 she traveled back to Maryland for her
husband, only to find him married to another
woman and no longer caring to live with
her. She felt the blow keenly, but did not
despair and more and more gave her
thought to what was to be the great work
of her life.<br />
<br />
It was not long after her marriage that
Harriet began seriously to consider the matter
of escape from bondage. Already in
her mind her people were the Israelites in
the land of Egypt, and far off in the North
<i>somewhere</i> was the land of Canaan. In
1849 the master of her plantation died, and
word passed around that at any moment she
and two of her brothers were to be sold to
the far South. Harriet, now twenty-four
years old, resolved to put her long cherished
dreams into effect. She held a consultation
with her brothers and they decided to start
with her at once, that very night, for the
North. She could not go away, however,
without giving some intimation of her purpose
to the friends she was leaving behind.
As it was not advisable for slaves to be seen
too much talking together, she went among
her old associates singing as follows:<br />
<br />
<div class="poem">
When dat ar ol' chariot comes<br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I'm gwine to leabe you;</span><br />
I'm boun' for de Promised Land;<br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Frien's, I'm gwine to leabe you.</span><br />
<br />
I'm sorry, frien's, to leabe you;<br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Farewell! oh, farewell!</span><br />
But I'll meet you in de mornin';<br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Farewell! oh, farewell!</span><br />
<br />
I'll meet you in de mornin'<br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When you reach de Promised Land;</span><br />
On de oder side of Jordan,<br />
<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For I'm boun' for de Promised Land.</span><br />
</div>
The brothers started with her; but the
way was unknown, the North was far
away, and they were constantly in terror
of recapture. They turned back, and Harriet,
after watching their retreating forms,
again fixed her eyes on the north star.
"I had reasoned dis out in my min'," said
she; "there was one of two things I had a
right to, liberty or death. If I could not
have one, I would have de other, for no man
should take me alive. I would fight for my
liberty as long as my strength lasted, and
when de time came for me to go, the Lord
would let them take me."<br />
<br />
"And so without money, and without
friends," says Mrs. Bradford, "she started
on through unknown regions; walking by
night, hiding by day, but always conscious
of an invisible pillar of cloud by day, and of
fire by night, under the guidance of which
she journeyed or rested. Without knowing
whom to trust, or how near the pursuers
might be, she carefully felt her way, and by
her native cunning, or by God-given wisdom
she managed to apply to the right people for
food, and sometimes for shelter; though
often her bed was only the cold ground, and
her watchers the stars of night. After
many long and weary days of travel, she
found that she had passed the magic line
which then divided the land of bondage from
the land of freedom." At length she came to
Philadelphia, where she found work and the
opportunity to earn a little money. It was
at this time, in 1851, after she had been employed
for some months, that she went back
to Maryland for her husband only to find
that he had not been true.<br />
In December, 1850, she had visited Baltimore
and brought away a sister and two
children. A few months afterwards she took
away a brother and two other men. In December,
1851, she led out a party of eleven,
among them being another brother and his
wife. With these she journeyed to Canada,
for the Fugitive Slave Law was now in
force and, as she quaintly said, there was no safety except "under the paw of the
British Lion." The winter, however, was
hard on the poor fugitives, who unused to
the climate of Canada, had to chop wood in
the forests in the snow. Often they were
frost-bitten, hungry, and almost always
poorly clad. But Harriet was caring for
them. She kept house for her brother, and
the fugitives boarded with her. She begged
for them and prayed for them, and somehow
got them through the hard winter. In
the spring she returned to the States, as
usual working in hotels and families as a
cook. In 1852 she once more went to
Maryland, this time bringing away nine
fugitives.<br />
<br />
It must not be supposed that those who
started on the journey northward were
always strong-spirited characters. The
road was rough and attended by dangers
innumerable. Sometimes the fugitives grew
faint-hearted and wanted to turn back.
Then would come into play the pistol that
Harriet always carried with her. "Dead
niggers tell no tales," said she, pointing it
at them; "you go on or die!" By this heroic
method she forced many to go onward
and win the goal of freedom.<br />
<br />
<br />
Unfailing was Harriet Tubman's confidence
in God. A customary form of prayer
for her was, "O Lord, you've been with me
in six troubles; be with me in the seventh."
On one of her journeys she came with a
party of fugitives to the home of a Negro
who had more than once assisted her and
whose house was one of the regular stations
on the so-called Underground Railroad.
Leaving her party a little distance away
Harriet went to the door and gave the peculiar
rap that was her regular signal. Not
meeting with a ready response, she knocked
several times. At length a window was
raised and a white man demanded roughly
what she wanted. When Harriet asked for
her friend she was informed that he had been
obliged to leave for assisting Negroes.
The situation was dangerous. Day was
breaking and something had to be done at
once. A prayer revealed to Harriet a place
of refuge. Outside of the town she remembered
that there was a little island in a
swamp, with much tall grass upon it.
Hither she conducted her party, carrying in
a basket two babies that had been drugged.
All were cold and hungry in the wet grass;
still Harriet prayed and waited for deliverance.
How relief came she never knew; she
felt that it was not necessarily her business to know. After they had waited through
the day, however, at dusk there came slowly
along the pathway on the edge of the
swamp a man clad in the garb of a Quaker.
He seemed to be talking to himself, but
Harriet's sharp ears caught the words: "My
wagon stands in the barnyard of the next
farm across the way. The horse is in the
stable; the harness hangs on a nail;" and
then the man was gone. When night came
Harriet stole forth to the place designated,
and found not only the wagon but also
abundant provisions in it, so that the whole
party was soon on its way rejoicing. In the
next town dwelt a Quaker whom Harriet
knew and who readily took charge of the
horse and wagon for her.<br />
<br />
Naturally the work of such a woman
could not long escape the attention of the
abolitionists. She became known to Thomas
Garrett, the great-hearted Quaker of Wilmington,
who aided not less than three thousand
fugitives to escape, and also to Grit
Smith, Wendell Phillips, William H.
Seward, F. B. Sanborn, and many other
notable men interested in the emancipation
of the Negro. From time to time she was
supplied with money, but she never spent
this for her own use, setting it aside in case of need on the next one of her journeys.
In her earlier years, however, before she
became known, she gave of her own slender
means for the work.<br />
<br />
Between 1852 and 1857 she made but one
or two journeys, because of the increasing
vigilance of slaveholders and the Fugitive
Slave Law. Great rewards were offered for
her capture and she was several times on the
point of being taken, but always escaped by
her shrewd wit and what she considered
warnings from heaven. While she was intensely
practical, she was also a most firm
believer in dreams. In 1857 she made her
most venturesome journey, this time taking
with her to the North her old parents who
were no longer able to walk such distances
as she was forced to go by night. Accordingly
she had to hire a wagon for them, and
it took all her ingenuity to get them through
Maryland and Delaware. At length, however,
she got them to Canada, where they
spent the winter. As the climate was too
rigorous, however, she afterwards brought
them down to New York, and settled them
in a home in Auburn, N. Y., that she had
purchased on very reasonable terms from
Secretary Seward. Somewhat later a mortgage
on the place had to be lifted and
Harriet now made a noteworthy visit to
Boston, returning with a handsome sum
toward the payment of her debt. At this
time she met John Brown more than once,
seems to have learned something of his
plans, and after the raid at Harper's Ferry
and the execution of Brown she glorified
him as a hero, her veneration even becoming
religious. Her last visit to Maryland was
made in December, 1860, and in spite of the
agitated condition of the country and the
great watchfulness of slaveholders she
brought away with her seven fugitives, one
of them an infant.<br />
<br />
After the war Harriet Tubman made
Auburn her home, establishing there a refuge
for aged Negroes. She married again,
so that she is sometimes referred to as
Harriet Tubman Davis. She died at a very
advanced age March 10, 1913. On Friday,
June 12, 1914, a tablet in her honor was unveiled
at the Auditorium in Albany. It was
provided by the Cayuga County Historical
Association, Dr. Booker T. Washington
was the chief speaker of the occasion, and
the ceremonies were attended by a great
crowd of people.<br />
<br />
The tributes to this heroic woman were
remarkable. Wendell Phillips said of her:
"In my opinion there are few captains, perhaps
few colonels, who have done more for
the loyal cause since the war began, and few
men who did before that time more for the
colored race than our fearless and most sagacious
friend, Harriet." F. B. Sanborn
wrote that what she did "could scarcely be
credited on the best authority." William H.
Seward, who labored, though unsuccessfully,
to get a pension for her granted by
Congress, consistently praised her noble
spirit. Abraham Lincoln gave her ready
audience and lent a willing ear to whatever
she had to say. Frederick Douglass wrote
to her: "The difference between us is very
marked. Most that I have done and suffered
in the service of our cause has been in
public, and I have received much encouragement
at every step of the way. You, on the
other hand, have labored in a private way.
I have wrought in the day—you in the night.
I have had the applause of the crowd and the
satisfaction that comes of being approved by
the multitude, while the most that you have
done has been witnessed by a few trembling,
scarred, and footsore bondmen and women,
whom you have led out of the house of bondage,
and whose heartfelt 'God bless you' has
been your only reward."<br />
<br />
Of such mould was Harriet Tubman,
philanthropist and patriot, bravest and noblest
of all the heroines of freedom.<br />
<br />
<br />
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Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-53637981022646230552018-08-19T10:07:00.000-07:002018-08-19T10:07:08.350-07:00Shadows In A Timeless Mytth Presents A Hidden Heroine of the French Revolution<br />
<div class="drop-cap noindent">
THE year 1788 was the last of the old <i><span lang="fr">régime</span></i>. Mme. Le Brun was now thirty-two and at the height of</div>
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her fame and prosperity. She had more commissions than she could execute, more engagements than she could keep, more invitations than she could accept, but her mind was full of gloomy presentiments. She passed the summer as usual between Paris and the country houses where she stayed.<br />
<div class="drop-cap noindent">
<br /></div>
As she drove with a friend down to Romainville to stay with the Comte de Ségur, she noticed that the peasants they met in the roads did not take off their hats to them, but looked at them insolently, and sometimes shook their sticks threateningly at them.<br />
<br />
While she was at Romainville there was a most awful storm, the sky which had become deep yellow with black clouds of alarming appearance, seemed to open and pour forth flash after flash of lightning, accompanied by deafening thunder and enormous hailstones, which ravaged the country for forty leagues round Paris. Pale and trembling, Mme. de<span class="pagenum"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="Page_80" name="Page_80"></a></span> Ségur and Mme. Le Brun sat looking at each other in terror, fancying that they saw in the awful tempest raging around them, the beginning of the fearful times whose approach they now foresaw.<br />
<br />
When the storm had subsided the peasants were crying and lamenting over the destruction of their crops, and all the large proprietors in the neighbourhood came most generously to their assistance. One rich man distributed forty thousand francs among them. The next year he was one of the first to be massacred.<br />
<br />
As time went on and affairs became more and more menacing, Mme. Le Brun began to consider the advisability of leaving the country, and placing herself and her child out of the reach of the dangers and calamities evidently not far distant.<br />
<br />
Early in 1789 she was dining at La Malmaison, which then belonged to the Comte de Moley, a rabid Radical; he and the Abbé de Sieyès and several others were present, and so fierce and violent was their talk that even the Abbé de Sieyès said after dinner—<br />
<br />
“Indeed, I think we shall go too far;” while the Comtesse du Moley and Mme. Le Brun were horror-stricken at the terrible prospects unfolded to them.<br />
<br />
After this, Mme. Le Brun went for a few days to Marly to stay with Mme. Auguier, sister of Mme. Campan, and attached like her to the Queen’s household.<br />
<br />
One day as they were looking out of a window into the courtyard which opened on to the road, they saw a man stagger in and fall down.<br />
<br />
Mme. Auguier sent her husband’s <i><span lang="fr">valet de chambre</span></i><span class="pagenum"></span> to help him up, and take him into the kitchen. Presently the <i><span lang="fr">valet</span></i> returned, saying, “Madame is indeed too kind; that man is a wretch. Here are some papers which have fallen out of his pocket.” He gave them several sheets of papers, one of which began, “Down with the Royal Family! down with the nobles! down with the priests!” and all of which were filled with a tissue of blasphemies, litanies of the Revolution, threats and predictions horrible enough to make their hair stand on end.<br />
<br />
Mme. Auguier sent for the <i><span lang="fr">maréchaussé</span></i>, four of whom appeared, and took the fellow in charge; but the <i><span lang="fr">valet de chambre</span></i> who followed them unperceived, saw them, as soon as they thought themselves out of sight, singing and dancing, arm in arm with their prisoner.<br />
<br />
Terror-stricken, they agreed that these papers must be shown to the Queen, and when, a day or two afterwards, Mme. Auguier was in waiting, she took them to Marie Antoinette, who read and returned them saying—<br />
<br />
“These things are impossible. I shall never believe they meditate such atrocities.”<br />
<br />
Mme. Auguier’s affection for the Queen cost her her life. In the fury of the Revolution, knowing her to be without money, she lent Marie Antoinette twenty-five <i>louis</i>. This became known, and a mob rushed to her house to take her to prison and execution. In a frenzy of terror Mme. Auguier threw herself out of the window, and was killed on the spot.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="FNanchor_37_37" name="FNanchor_37_37"></a><br />
<span class="pagenum"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="Page_82" name="Page_82"></a></span><br />
The last time Mme. Le Brun saw the Queen was at the last ball given at Versailles, which took place in the theatre, and at which she looked on from one of the boxes. She observed with indignation the rudeness of some of the young Radical nobles; they refused to dance when requested to do so by the Queen, whose agitation and uneasiness were only too apparent. The demeanour of the populace was becoming every day more ferocious and alarming; the drives and streets were scarcely safe for any but the lower classes. At a concert given by Mme. Le Brun, most of the guests came in with looks of consternation. They had been driving earlier in the day to Longchamps, and as they passed the <i><span lang="fr">barrière de l’Étoile</span></i>, a furious mob had surrounded and insulted everybody who passed in carriages. Villainous looking faces pressed close to them, horrible figures climbed on to the steps of the carriages, crying out, with infamous threats and brutal language, that next year they should be in the carriages and the owners behind them.<br />
<br />
The continual terror in which she now lived began to affect the health of Lisette. She knew perfectly well that she herself was looked upon with sinister eyes by the ruffians, whose bloodthirsty hands would soon hold supreme power in France. Her house in the <i><span lang="fr">rue Gros-Chenet</span></i>, in which she had only lived for three months, was already marked; sulphur was thrown down the grating into the cellars; if she looked out of the windows she saw menacing figures of <i><span lang="fr">sans-culottes</span></i>, shaking their fists at the house.<br />
<br />
If she had not got away in time there can be no<span class="pagenum"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="Page_83" name="Page_83"></a></span> doubt as to what would have been her fate; fortunately her fears made her act with prudence. M. Brongniart, the architect, and his wife, friends of hers, seeing her so pale and altered, persuaded her to go and stay with them for a few days at the Invalides, where they had rooms; she gladly accepted and was taken there by a doctor attached to the Palais Royal, whose servants wore the Orléans livery, the only one that was now respected, and in whose carriage she consequently arrived safely. Her kind friends nursed and tried to comfort her; made her take Bordeaux and soup as she could eat nothing, and tried to reassure her, being amongst those who did not believe in the perils to come. It was no use. When they went out they heard the threats and violent talk of the mob, and the discussions they held with each other; by no means calculated to give comfort to those who were listening.<br />
<br />
Mme. Le Brun returned home, but dared not stay there, so she accepted the invitation of her brother’s father-in-law, M. de Rivière, in whose house she thought she would be safe, as he was a foreign minister. She stayed there a fortnight, treated as if she were a daughter of the house, but she had resolved to get out of France before it was too late.<br />
<br />
It would in fact have been folly to stay any longer; already the mob had set fire to the <i><span lang="fr">barrière</span></i> at the end of the <i><span lang="fr">rue Chaussée-d’Antin</span></i>, where M. de Rivière lived, and had begun to tear up the pavement and make barricades in the streets. Many people disapproved of emigrating, some from patriotic <span class="pagenum"></span> reasons, others as a matter of interest. To many it was of course a choice between the certainty of losing their property and the chance of losing their lives; and rather than become beggars they took the risk and stayed, very often to the destruction of themselves and those dearest to them. To Lisette there was no such alternative. Wherever she went she could always provide herself with money without the least difficulty; she had always longed to see Rome, now was the time.<br />
<br />
She had numbers of orders, and of portraits half finished, but she was too nervous and agitated to paint, and she had a hundred <i>louis</i> which some one had just paid for a picture—to herself fortunately, not to M. Le Brun, who generally took everything, sometimes never even telling her it had been paid, at other times saying he must have the whole sum for an investment, or to pay a bill owing.<br />
This hundred <i>louis</i> would take her to Rome with her child and nurse, and she began in haste to pack up and prepare for the journey.<br />
<br />
It was the evening before the day fixed for their departure, the passport was ready, her travelling carriage loaded with luggage, and she was resting herself in her drawing-room, when a dreadful noise was heard in the house, as of a crowd bursting in; trampling of feet on the stairs, rough voices; and as she remained petrified with fear the door of the room was flung open and a throng of ruffianly-looking <i><span lang="fr">gardes nationaux</span></i> with guns in their hands, many of them drunk, forced their way in, and several of them approaching her, declared in coarse, insolent terms, that she should not go.<br />
<br />
In reply to her observation that she had a perfect right to go where she chose, they kept repeating—<br />
“<i><span lang="fr">Vous ne partisez pas, citoyenne, vous ne partisez pas.</span></i>”<br />
<br />
At last they went away, but in a few moments two of them whose appearance was different from the rest returned and said—<br />
<br />
“Madame, we are your neighbours; we have come back to advise you to go, and to start as soon as possible. You cannot live here, you are so changed that we are sorry. But do not travel in your carriage; go by the diligence, it is safer.”<br />
<br />
Lisette thanked the friendly <i><span lang="fr">gardes</span></i> with all her heart, and followed their advice. She sent to take three places in the diligence, but there were none to be had for a fortnight, as so many people who were emigrating travelled by it for greater safety.<br />
<br />
Those of her friends who were Radicals blamed Lisette for going, and tried to dissuade her. Mme. Filleul, formerly Mlle. Boquet, said to her—<br />
<br />
“You are quite wrong to go. I shall stay, for I believe in the happiness the Revolution will bring us.”<br />
She remained at La Muette until the Terror began. Mme. Chalgrin, of whom she was an intimate friend, came there to celebrate very quietly the marriage of her daughter. The day after it, both Mme. Chalgrin and Mme. Filleul were arrested by the revolutionists and guillotined a few days later, because they were said to have “burnt the candles of the nation.”<br />
<br />
Lisette paid no attention to the dissuasions of her friends; in spite of all they said she knew quite well that she was in danger. No one could be safe, however innocent, if any suspicion or grudge against them was in the minds of the ruffians who were thirsting for blood.<br />
<br />
“Although, thank Heaven, I have never done harm to anybody,” she said. “I agree with the man who said: ‘They accuse me of having stolen the towers of Notre Dame; they are still in their place, but I am going, for it is clear that they have a grudge against me.’”<br />
<br />
“What is the use of taking care of one’s health?” she would say when her friends were anxious about her. “What is the good of living?”<br />
<br />
It was not until the 5th of October that the places in the diligence could be had, and on the evening of the 4th Lisette went to say goodbye to her mother, whom she had not seen for three weeks, and who at first did not recognise her, so much had she changed in that short time and so ill did she look.<br />
They were to start at midnight, and it was quite time they did so.<br />
<br />
That very day the King, Queen, and royal family were brought from Versailles to Paris by the frantic, howling mob. Louis Vigée, after witnessing their arrival at the <i><span lang="fr">Hôtel de Ville</span></i>, came at ten o’clock to see his sister off, and give her the account of what had happened.<br />
<br />
“Never,” he said, “was the Queen more truly a Queen than to-day, when she made her entry with so calm and noble an air in the midst of those furies.”<br />
<br />
It was then she made her well-known answer to Bailly, “<i><span lang="fr">J’ai tout vu, tout su, et tout oublié</span></i>.”<br />
Half beside herself with anxiety and fear for the fate of the royal family and of all respectable people, Lisette, her child, and the nurse or nursery <span class="pagenum"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="Page_87" name="Page_87"></a></span>governess went to the diligence at midnight, escorted by M. Le Brun, Louis Vigée, and M. Robert, the landscape painter, an intimate friend of theirs, who never left the diligence, but kept close to its doors as it lumbered along through the narrow dark streets to the <i><span lang="fr">barrière du Trône</span></i>. For the terrible <i><span lang="fr">faubourg Saint Antoine</span></i> had to be passed through, and Lisette was dreadfully afraid of it.<br />
<br />
However, it happened on that night to be unusually quiet, for the inhabitants had been to Versailles after the King and Queen, and were so tired that they were asleep.<br />
<br />
At the barrier came the parting with those she was leaving in the midst of perils. When they would meet again, if they ever did at all, it was impossible to guess.<br />
<br />
The journey was insupportable. In the diligence with them was a dirty, evil-looking man, who openly confessed that he was a robber, boasting of the watches, &c., that he had stolen, and speaking of many persons he wished to murder <i><span lang="fr">à la lanterne</span></i>, amongst whom were a number of the acquaintances of Mme. Le Brun. The little girl, now five or six years old, was frightened out of her wits, and her mother took courage to ask the man not to talk about murders before the child.<br />
<br />
He stopped, and afterwards began to play with her; but another Jacobin from Grenoble, also a passenger, gave vent to all kinds of infamous and murderous threats and opinions, haranguing the people who collected round the diligence whenever they stopped for dinner or supper; whilst every now and then men rode up to the diligence, <span class="pagenum"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="Page_88" name="Page_88"></a></span>announcing that the King and Queen had been assassinated, and that Paris was in flames. Lisette, terrified herself for the fate of those dear to her, tried to comfort her still more frightened child, who was crying and trembling, believing that her father was killed and their house burnt. At last they arrived safely at Lyon, and found their way to the house of a M. Artaut, whom Lisette did not know well. But she had entertained him and his wife in Paris on one or two occasions, she knew that their opinions were like her own, and thought they were worthy people, as indeed they proved to be.<br />
<br />
They did not know her at first, for besides her altered looks she was dressed as an <i><span lang="fr">ouvrière</span></i>, having just exhibited in the Salon her portrait which she had painted with her child in her arms, and fearing she might be recognised.<br />
<br />
They spent three days in the Artaut family, thankful for the rest, the quietness and the kindness they received. M. Artaut engaged a man he knew to take them on their journey, telling him that they were relations of his, and recommending them to his care. They set off accordingly, and, this journey was indeed a contrast to the last. Their driver took the greatest care of them, and they arrived in safety at the bridge of Beauvoisin, the frontier of France.<br />
<br />
Never, would Mme. Le Brun say in after years, could she forget or describe the feelings with which she drove across that bridge to find herself at the other side—safe, free, and out of France.<br />
Henceforth the journey was a pleasure, and with<span class="pagenum"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="Page_89" name="Page_89"></a></span> feelings of admiration and awe she gazed upon the magnificent scenery as she ascended the mighty Mont Cenis; stupendous mountains rising above her, their snowy peaks buried in clouds, their steep sides hung with pine forests, the roar of falling torrents perpetually in her ears.<br />
<br />
“Madame should take a mule,” said a postillion coming up to her, as she walked slowly up the precipitous mountain path. “It is much too tiring for a lady like Madame to go up on foot.”<br />
<br />
“I am an <i><span lang="fr">ouvrière</span></i>,” she replied, “and am accustomed to walk.”<br />
<br />
The man laughed.<br />
<br />
“Ah!” he said, “Madame is no <i><span lang="fr">ouvrière</span></i>; it is very well known who she is.”<br />
<br />
“Well, who am I, then?”<br />
<br />
“You are Mme. Le Brun, who paints with such perfection, and we are all very glad to know that you are far away from those wicked people.”<br />
<br />
“I could never guess,” said Lisette, “how the man knew me. But this proved the number of spies the Jacobins had everywhere. However, I was not afraid of them now; I was out of their execrable power. If I had no longer my own country, I was going to live where art flourished and urbanity reigned—I was going to Rome, Naples, Berlin, Vienna, and St. Petersburg.”<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Compiled from sources in the public domain</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-50947394621681870292018-08-12T09:58:00.000-07:002018-08-12T09:58:00.201-07:00Shadows In A Timeless Myth Presents The American Spinster Circa 1913<h2 class="nobreak" id="THE_AMERICAN_SPINSTER">
THE AMERICAN SPINSTER<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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</h2>
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BY AGNES REPPLIER</div>
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Author of “The Fireside Sphinx,” etc.</div>
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<span class="drop-cap">T</span>HAT this is the Golden Age of spinsters no one will deny, and that America furnishes the soil in which these hardy plants put forth their finest bloom is equally indisputable. How many years have passed since the “antient maydes” of Boston—which term included all unmarried women older than twenty-five—were pronounced by John Dunton to be a “dismal spectacle”? How many years since a few “acute and ingenious gentlewomen” in colonial Virginia had the temerity to remain single and cultivate their own tobacco plantations, for which unnatural behavior they were subjected to repeated “admonishments”? <i>Now</i> the “antient mayde” flaunts her freedom in the faces of those who are patiently doing their duty to the world. <i>Now</i> if a woman runs a successful apple-orchard or dairy-farm, her exploits are heralded far and wide, and other women write exultant papers about her, intimating that the day of the male agriculturist is virtually over. I am not sure that the attitude of our great-great-grandfathers, who jealously and somewhat fearfully guarded their prerogatives, was not more flattering to my sex than this enthusiasm evoked by achievements which in a man would not be found worthy of notice.</div>
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As for age—well, who in these years of grace is frankly and confessedly old? We no longer say, “On a l’âge de son cœur,” but “On a l’âge de sa volonté.” Jane Austen settled down to caps and spinsterhood before she was thirty. Dr. Johnson alluded to Miss Lucy Porter’s “hoary virginity” when that lady was fifty-two. The Ettrick Shepherd stubbornly protested that “to ca’ a woman saxty, and then mainteen that ye didna ca’ her auld, is naething short o’ a sophism.” But now no one gets beyond middle age, or “the prime of life.” I have heard a Boston spinster of eighty-two (a remarkable woman, I admit) casually spoken of as middle-aged; and when, in a desperate resolve to push matters to an issue, I said: “Miss D—is not middle-aged; she is old. If you are not old when you are eighty-two, when <i>are</i> you old?” the remark was taken in ill part. “I should not dream of calling Miss D—old,” said one gallant Bostonian, and all his hearers agreed with him.<br />
<br />
The French spinster is a negligible factor. The English spinster has conquered her territory and become a force to be reckoned with. But the American spinster is the standard-bearer of the tribe. Her incessant activities and her radiant self-satisfaction have made her appear more dominant than she is, and have caused her critics much needless apprehension. When Mrs. Van Vorst wrote, in 1903, “Our factories are full of old maids, our colleges are full of old maids, our ball-rooms in the worldly centers are full of old maids,” Americans read these words with placid unconcern. They had given too many wedding presents in their day to have any doubts anent the permanent popularity of marriage. But English readers, who are ever prone to be literal, appear to have accepted Mrs. Van Vorst’s statements <i>au pied de la lettre</i>. Mr. Marriott Watson, chilled to the heart—as well he might be—by the vision of a ballroom destitute alike of girls and matrons, wrote for the “Nineteenth Century” a severe and agitated protest. He asserted that a woman’s “functions” “alone excuse or explain her existence,”—which is one way of looking at the matter; and he pointed out that American women are the most remote the world can show from the primitive and savage type which represents the dynamic force of a race.<br />
<br />
The mere fact that the American spinster is so often and so sharply censured marks the strength of her position. No one dreams of censuring the French <i>vieille fille</i> or the German <i>jungfrau</i>. These victims of fate meet with scorn or sympathy, according to the taste and breeding of commentators. In either case, their lives<span class="pagenum"> </span>are registered as failures. Nothing can rob the German woman of those vital sensibilities which center in the home and family. “Every great movement of the Teutonic soul,” says Mr. Havelock Ellis, “has been rooted in emotion.” If the women of Germany are demanding “rights,” and demanding them with no uncertain voice, it is because they seek to meet their responsibilities with authority. The sphere of home and child-rearing is their sphere, and they purpose to rule in it.<br />
<br />
It is not possible for the Frenchwoman, who understands the structure of society, to welcome spinsterhood. “All her instincts of expansion,” says that acute observer Mr. William Crary Brownell, “are hostile to it. There is no more provision in the French social constitution than in the order of nature itself for the old maid.” Therefore, as the twin passions of the French heart are to be in rational accord with nature and in rational accord with social life, the unmarried woman has no alternative but to feel herself doubly incomplete. She is unstirred by the American woman’s vaulting ambition to be man’s rival, or by an uneasy envy of man’s estate. Perhaps it is because a French girl never regrets her sex that France has produced more eminent women than any other nation in the world. Certainly the only man who ever had the courage to say he would like to be a woman (a beautiful woman, he stipulated) was that distinguished Frenchman M. Jules Lemaître.<br />
<br />
No one since De Quincey has spoken so generously of the English spinster as has Mr. John B. Atkins in the pages of T<span class="smaller">HE</span> C<span class="smaller">ENTURY</span>. He does not, like so many of his contemporaries, accuse her of gross selfishness. He does not deny her the right to control her own life. He goes so far as to say that she may use it to good purpose, and extract from it some measure of content. He points out the philanthropic paths which it should be her duty and her pleasure to tread. He draws a pleasing picture of the maiden aunt giving to nieces and nephews—to nephews especially—her sympathy and comradeship. Sir Leslie Stephen says that “Woman to a boy is simply an incumbrance upon reasonable modes of life,” and it is to be feared that many women—aunts and others—have the same doubtful regard for boys. But British sentimentality demands of the old maid, if she be a good old maid, that yearning attitude toward other people’s children which marks her as “womanly” and earns for her the tolerance of the world.<br />
<br />
The American spinster is seldom sentimental, which is in her favor, and she is seldom emotional, which is both gain and loss. Her attenuation of feeling lessens her charm and influence, but serves to keep her in accord with the orderly conventions of society. She is keenly competitive, and eager for new fields of activity; but she can read Ellen Key’s “Love and Marriage” with intelligent detachment. She cries occasionally for the moon, but she is in no immediate danger of scorching her fingers by trying to play with the sun.<br />
<br />
The flexibility of American social life gives to the unmarried woman an assured position which has no counterpart in the older civilizations. She may be an anomaly in nature, but she is in perfect accord with her more or less agreeable surroundings. She has no background to give repute and distinction to her rôle; but she infuses into it her own persuasive personality. She stands free from the common obligations of her sex, but she does work which is well worth doing, and she not infrequently adds to the gaiety of life. “Of how many homes,” says Mr. Brownell, “is she not the decorously decorative ornament! She may have courted or have drifted into her position of dignified singleness; it is in either case equally sure that she has not considered her estate incomplete in itself, or disengaged from the structure of society.”<br />
<br />
As a matter of fact, she is wont to feel herself—birth and fortune permitting—a pillar of society. It is no question with her of wasted force or blighted vitality. It is a question of directing her superabundant energy into those channels where she can accomplish measurable results. She seeks and finds a constructive human existence remote from marriage and maternity. The French or German woman remains unmarried because the unkindly fates have so decreed. The English woman occasionally assists fate from sheer love of independence. “The most ordinarie cause of a single life,” says Bacon,<span class="pagenum"></span> “is liberty, especially in certain self-pleasing and humorous minds.” But it is surely reserved for the American woman to remain unmarried because she feels herself too good for matrimony, too valuable to be intrusted to a husband’s keeping. Her attitude bears some resemblance to that of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who wrote with praiseworthy conviction: “I may say without vanity that just Heaven would not bestow such a woman as myself upon a man who was unworthy of her.”<br />
<br />
This is not idle jesting. Would it be possible in any country save our own for a lady to write to a periodical, explaining, “Why I am an Old Maid,” and be paid coin of the realm for the explanation? Would it be possible in any other country to hear such a question as “Should the Gifted Woman Marry?” seriously asked, and seriously answered? Would it be possible for any sane and thoughtful woman who was not an American to consider even the remote possibility of our spinsters becoming a detached class, who shall form “the intellectual and economic élite of the sex, and leave marriage and maternity for the less developed woman”? What has become of the belief, as old as humanity, that marriage and maternity are highly developing processes, forcing into flower a woman’s latent potentialities; and that the less developed woman is inevitably the woman who has escaped this keen and powerful stimulus. “Never,” says Edmond de Goncourt, “has a virgin, young or old, produced a work of art.” One makes allowance for the Latin point of view. And it is probable that M. de Goncourt never read “Emma.”<br />
<br />
Signor Ferrero, contemplating the unmarried women of England, those amazing creatures who “devote themselves to sterility, not from religious motives, but from sheer calculation” (which is also a Latin point of view), has recorded his conviction that they will make themselves felt as a force, and has expressed his genuine dismay as to the possible results of their activity. He has even confessed to some whimsical misgivings lest Italian and Sicilian women should acquire this Saxon taste for spinsterhood. Yet England is emphatically a man’s country—which France has never been—and its attitude toward marriage is a robustly masculine attitude, as unacceptable to the French as to the American woman. There is no attempt anywhere to gloss over this rude fact. The Englishman believes with Mr. Kipling:<br />
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“He travels the fastest who travels alone.”</div>
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He echoes the verdict of Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson, “Marriage narrows and damps the spirits of generous men.” “The position of a single man,” says a stout-hearted writer in the “Contemporary Review,” “is in itself envied and applauded; that of a single woman certainly is not. To every woman marriage is still accounted a promotion. There may be counterbalancing circumstances, but to be married is, in itself, an object of desire and a subject for congratulation.”<br />
<br />
In the good old days when English spinsters softened the reproach of spinsterhood by borrowing the prefix “Mrs.,” as did those excellent ladies, Mrs. Hannah More and Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, the position of a single man was neither envied nor applauded. He was held to be (if of decent life,—much allowance was made for rakes) only a little less contemptible than a single woman. “The pain and the opprobrium o’ defunckin an auld bachelor,” writes the Ettrick Shepherd, expressing after his hardy fashion the sentiment of his time. Dr. Johnson firmly maintained that marriage was more necessary for a man than for a woman, because a woman could make herself comfortable and a man could not. The responsibility for the more modern and more supercilious masculine attitude must be placed where it belongs,—on the shoulders of the Englishwoman, who has accepted the creed that for her marriage is a promotion, and that “counterbalancing circumstances” should not be held to weigh too heavily in the scale. As Dean Hole’s friend said to him, when congratulated on her daughter’s engagement: “To be sure, Jenny hates the man, but then there’s always something.”<br />
<br />
Miss Austen was the most veracious of chroniclers, one who with careful self-control refused to wander beyond the area of her own observation; but there is nothing in American fiction, and very little, I fancy, in the fiction of any land, which is comparable to the marriage of <i>Charlotte Lucas</i> and <i>Mr. Collins</i>. Many novelists have made easy copy of husband-<span class="pagenum"></span>hunting. It is a favorite theme with Trollope, who treats it with ruthless cynicism, and it is a not uncommon element in modern story-telling. But <i>Charlotte Lucas</i> staggers us. Miss Austen calls her “sensible and intelligent.” She is also well-bred, clear-headed, and kind. She is <i>Elizabeth Bennet’s</i> chosen friend. And she marries <i>Mr. Collins</i>! Marries him with alacrity, and with permanent satisfaction. If there be any one episode in life and letters which is calculated to reconcile us to the rapid increase of spinsterhood in England and America, it is the amazing fact that Jane Austen not only married <i>Charlotte Lucas</i> to <i>Mr. Collins</i>, but plainly considered it a not unnatural thing for her to do.<br />
<br />
Ten years ago, when a rage for compiling useless statistics swept over Europe and the United States, it occurred to some active minds that children should be made to bear their part in the guidance of the human race. Accordingly a series of questions—some sensible and some foolish—were put to English, German, and American school children, and their enlightening answers were given to the world. One of these questions read: “Would you rather be a man or a woman, and why?” Naturally this query was of concern only to little girls. No sane educator would ask it of a boy. Even Jules Lemaître at twelve must have shared the convictions of his fellows. German pedagogues, be it noted, struck the question off the list. They said that to ask a child, “Would you rather be something you must be, or something you cannot possibly be?” was both foolish and useless. Interrogations concerning choice were of value only when the will was a determining factor.<br />
<br />
In this country no such logical inference chilled the examiner’s zeal. The question was asked and was answered, and we discovered as a result that a great many little American girls (a minority, to be sure, but a respectable minority,) were well content with their sex; not because it had its duties and dignities, its pleasures and exemptions; but because they plainly considered that they were superior to little American boys, and were destined, when grown up, to be superior to American men. One small New England maiden wrote that she would rather be a woman because “Women are always better than men in morals.” Another, because “Women are more use in the world.” A third, because “Women learn things quicker than men, and have more intelligence.” And so on through varying degrees of self-sufficiency. “Lord, gie us a gude conceit o’ ourselves!” prayed the Scotchman, who knew the value of assurance.<br />
<br />
Now certainly these little girls were old maids in the making. They had stamped upon them in their tender infancy the hall-mark of the American spinster. In a few more years they will be writing papers on “The Place of Unmarried Women in the World’s Work,” and reading addresses on “The Woman of Intellect: her Duty to Herself and to the State.” There is a formidable lack of humor in this easy confidence, in the somewhat contemptuous attitude of women whose capacities have not yet been tested, toward men who stand responsible for the failures of the world. It denotes, at home or abroad, a density not far removed from dullness. In that dreary little Irish drama, “Mixed Marriages,” which the Dublin actors played in New York two years ago, an old woman, presumed to be witty and wise, said to her son’s betrothed: “Sure, I believe the Lord made Eve when He saw that Adam could not take care of himself”; and the remark, while received with applause, reflected painfully upon the absence of that humorous sense which we used to think was the birthright of Irishmen. The too obvious retort which nobody uttered, but which everybody must have thought, was that if Eve had been designed as a care-taker, she had made a shining failure of her job.<br />
<br />
It is conceded, theoretically at least, that woman’s sphere is an elastic term, comprising any work she is able to do well. Therefore, it may be that American spinsters, keen, college-bred, ambitious, and, above all, free, are destined to compete vigorously and permanently with men. They are, we are told, the only women who can give themselves unreservedly to work, and from them alone enduring results are to be expected. Yet it is at least worthy of notice that most of the successful business women of France,—Mme. Clicquot-Ponsardin, Mme. Pommery, Mme. Dumas, Mme. Bernet, Mme. Boucicault,—have been either married wo<span class="pagenum"></span>men who were their husbands’ partners, or widows who took upon their capable shoulders the burden of their dead husbands’ cares. They were also mothers who, with the definite aims and practical instincts of their race, projected themselves into the future, and wove out of their own pursuits the fabric of their children’s lives.<br />
<br />
At present the American spinster is in a transition stage, a stage so replete with advantages that we may be permitted to hope it will last long. She has escaped from the chimney-corner, and is not yet shut up in banks and offices. She does a reasonable amount of work, and embraces every reasonable opportunity of enjoyment. She gratifies her own tastes, and cherishes her natural affinities. She sometimes cultivates her mind, and she never breaks her heart. She is the best of friends, and she has leisure for companionship. She is equally free from <i>l’esprit gaulois</i> and from “<i>les mœurs de vestales pétrifiées</i>,” which are the Scylla and Charybdis of the French <i>vieille fille</i>. She is content with a contentment which the German <i>jungfrau</i> neither understands nor envies. She is assured with an assurance unknown to the experienced English old maid. She is, as I have said, the standard-bearer of her tribe, and the pibroch to which she marches blithely through life has the ring of the old Covenanting song:<br />
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“That a’ the world may see</div>
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There’s nane in the right but we.”</div>
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All this is far removed, as Mr. Marriott Watson warns us, from the savage and primitive woman, who represents the dynamic force of a race. But who shall ring the bells backward? And who shall reconcile the primitive woman to the exigencies and formalities of civilization? Some years ago in South Carolina I came to know and love an old Negro “mammy,” a wise, fat, kind, mysterious old mammy, whose heart was soft, whose touch was healing, whose voice was like a lullaby, and whose experiences would have colored half a dozen ordinary lives. Her sister, the laundress, was one day under discussion, and I asked, with more than my customary ineptitude: “Aunt Cordelia, is Caroline an old maid?”<br />
<br />
Aunt Cordelia turned upon me a look in which contempt for my ignorance blended with a deep acceptance and understanding of life as she had known it, unfiltered, unsheltered, unevasive. “Laws, honey,” she said, “we’s no ole maids. Some’s married, and some isn’t; but we’s no ole maids.”<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"> Compiles from Sources in the Public Domain.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">(Shadows is also available at Barnes & Noble for the <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shadows-in-a-timeless-myth-teresa-thomas-bohannon/1113933396?ean=2940015745054" target="_blank">Nook</a>) </span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-57670451858023562252018-08-05T09:28:00.000-07:002018-08-05T09:28:16.076-07:00Shadows in a Timeless Myth Presents Frances Namon Sorcho First Female Deep Sea Diver<br />
<h2>
HOW MRS. SORCHO BECAME A DIVER.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKvK9t63S9RhJi2p2EvIQXIaRr0I0rhTEr20qDyb9D0hJa0ZoNjOFs-BxkQTZfUkh_BldNbXHR2X18t7nPfVYB2ylRatUiF1tk0uR4Jjc4k4eEiX-sQAQrQHS_G3HHbrca5M2-bsbe10tR/s1600/Frances+Namon+Sorcho.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="700" data-original-width="550" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKvK9t63S9RhJi2p2EvIQXIaRr0I0rhTEr20qDyb9D0hJa0ZoNjOFs-BxkQTZfUkh_BldNbXHR2X18t7nPfVYB2ylRatUiF1tk0uR4Jjc4k4eEiX-sQAQrQHS_G3HHbrca5M2-bsbe10tR/s320/Frances+Namon+Sorcho.jpg" width="251" /></a></div>
</h2>
<div class="figcenter">
</div>
“As a girl in a quiet little home in Virginia, I little thought I would ever become a diver. In fact I didn’t know what a real diver was.<br />
<br />
“When I first saw the queer rig I shuddered, but now the grotesque costume is as natural to me as is my tea-gown, and perhaps I feel a little more at home in it.<br />
<br />
“Only arms, limbs and a body well trained muscularly can walk about in shoes that weigh 27 pounds apiece, supporting an armor with copper helmet and breastplate, and leaden belt of weights which tip the scale-beam at 246 pounds. Therefore, the commencement of my education as a diver consisted of a year’s training in a school of physical culture. When it was completed my muscles were as hard and springy as steel, and I felt no fear on the score of physical strength as I contemplated my first visit to the ‘bottom of the sea.’<br />
<br />
“My first dive was off the southern coast of Florida, not far from Clear Water Harbor. My husband was at the time engaged in the business of collecting rare shells and coral for several Northern Universities. I well remember how I felt when I first donned the armor. Fear and curiosity were so closely blended that I hardly know which I felt the most of. At any rate, my husband was waiting, and almost before I realized it the queer canvas armor had been adjusted and the breastplate had been slipped over my head. A thick pad or collar had been put on my shoulders to take the weight off the breastplate and helmet, which alone weigh 56 pounds; but even then the plate felt quite heavy, and as the metal gaskets were being screwed down with thumb-nuts and a wrench, I felt as if I were being screwed up in my coffin. But there was little time for such gruesome reflections, and a stout leather belt holding the sub-marine knife was next girded about my waist.<br />
<br />
“This knife, a double-edged affair, sharp as a razor, screws into a watertight brass scabbard. It is the diver’s only weapon, and with it he must protect himself against sharks and other sub-marine monsters. The shoes come next. How heavy and awkward they looked, with their soles of cast-iron two inches thick, and how clumsy they felt when I tried to walk in them for the first time!<br />
<br />
“The life-line—that all-important half-inch manilla rope—was then knotted about my waist, and the belt of leaden weights was strapped about me under the arms, and I was told to step over the railing of the boat on to the short ladder that had been suspended over her stern. I did so, mechanically I fear, and when I had managed to get down a few steps, the helmet was slipped over my head and by a deft turn locked.<br />
<br />
“The queer headpiece was much larger than my head, and admitted of considerable freedom of movement inside it.<br />
<br />
“‘Now recollect,’ said my husband, ‘if you want to come up quick in case anything happens, give one jerk on the life-line. If you want more air give two jerks, or less air three jerks.’<br />
“I expected to shoot to the bottom like a lump of lead, owing to all the weight I had on me, but I sank gradually instead, so buoyant was the inflated armor. I was on the bottom with five fathoms of water over my head almost before I realized it.<br />
<br />
“I felt a sensation of pressure on the chest, and in my ears and head, which was quite painful. The first thing that I noticed, was a boiling of the water about me for which I was unable to account, until I happened to think of the foul air escaping through the valve in the back of the helmet.<br />
<br />“I found, also, to my surprise, that I could see quite well some distance about me, and observed a number of little fishes, which finally swam quite close to me and appeared to gaze in the glass front of the helmet with their little bead-like eyes, as though wondering what sort of a fish I was. I felt strangely light and buoyant, and found that with the slightest upward movement I would shoot surfaceward several feet. The armor also felt so stiff and hard that I could scarcely move in it.<br />
<br />
“The next time I went down was not on a pleasure trip, but to work, and for several weeks my husband and I took turns diving for shells and curios. We finally completed our contract.<br />
<br />
“Recovering a dead body is the task a diver dislikes more than any other kind, and although I have recovered quite a number, the work is yet horrible to me.<br />
<br />
“The first dead body I ever brought to the surface was that of a man who was supposed to have been murdered and thrown into a lake near Atlanta, Ga. I searched the entire bottom of the lake, and finally in a deep hole found the body.<br />
<br />
“It was shockingly mutilated and disfigured, and was almost unrecognizable, but we never found out whether the man had been murdered or not.<br />
<br />
“When I came to the surface with that bloated, disfigured corpse, strong men were made sick and turned away, and to tell the truth I felt a little squeamish myself; but it was a matter of business, not sentiment, with me, so I doffed the armor and pocketed the reward that had been offered.<br />
“The exploding of sub-marine torpedoes is dangerous work, and you can take my word for it that one does not feel very comfortable groping about with five or six pounds of dynamite in her hand, not knowing what minute it may take a notion to go off and blow her into kingdom come. Diving is fascinating, but it is dangerous, and there are very few women who would care to engage in it even if they had the nerve.”<br />
<br />
<div class="signed">
<span class="small-caps">Frances Namon Sorcho.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="small-caps">Compiled from sources in the public domain </span></div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">(Shadows is also available at Barnes & Noble for the <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shadows-in-a-timeless-myth-teresa-thomas-bohannon/1113933396?ean=2940015745054" target="_blank">Nook</a>) </span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">************************************</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-91857980250262859232018-07-29T09:04:00.002-07:002018-07-29T09:04:26.726-07:00Shadows In A Timeless Myth Presents Women In Ancient Britain<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSSFbmDROn3gr0rcZv8KuudXT_3JDvDCyH_avLz04oiraSqUHEz_4OQjpRQ3Jhr0z7uQ4t2bEvpQja-2QaZR4sdaw9NE3EfyDVnavCxcDFF5GsBFntSCNJAs0LUeaisn00mb5uPy8Vfizt/s1600/Boudicca+by+John+Opie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="317" data-original-width="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSSFbmDROn3gr0rcZv8KuudXT_3JDvDCyH_avLz04oiraSqUHEz_4OQjpRQ3Jhr0z7uQ4t2bEvpQja-2QaZR4sdaw9NE3EfyDVnavCxcDFF5GsBFntSCNJAs0LUeaisn00mb5uPy8Vfizt/s1600/Boudicca+by+John+Opie.jpg" /></a></div>
No deities were nearer to the hearts of Celtic peasants than those who were known as <i lang="la">deae matres</i>,—the mother goddesses. Once they were thought to belong to Germans and Celts alone; but their statues have been found in numbers at Capua; and, slightly modified, they survived into the Middle Age. Generally figured in groups of three—a mystic number—their aspect was that of gentle serious motherly women, holding new-born infants in their hands, or bearing fruits and flowers in their laps; and many offerings were made to them by country folk in gratitude for their care of farm and flock and home.<br />
<br />
There is evidence, though it is hardly needed, that the inevitable hardships of life were not equally shared, and that the lot of the women was worse than that of the men. Judging from the measurements of the neolithic skeletons, the disparity between the sexes in stature was as great as it is among modern savage tribes. The average height of the men was about five feet six inches, of the women only four feet ten inches: the difference in civilized communities is about half as much. It is perhaps safe to conclude that when food was scarce, the men thought first of themselves, and that the women not only suffered from the effects of early child-bearing, but had more than their <span class="sidenote" id="PI_CIII_Pg91b">Duration of life.</span> share of toil. No doubt disease, the attacks of wild beasts, and frequent accidents, as well as intertribal wars, tended to shorten the duration of life: at all events Thurnam calculated that the average age of the people whose skeletons he had examined was not more than forty-five years.<br />
<br />
<br />
We all learned in childhood that the Britons admitted the sovereignty of women. In the middle of the first century Cartismandua was queen of the Brigantes; and a few years later, when the Iceni revolted against Rome, their general was Boudicca, who is better known by the barbarous misnomer of Boadicea. The Gauls may have had the same institution; and perhaps it would hardly be worth noticing if it were not apparently inconsistent with what Caesar tells us about the status of Gallic wives. They were indeed permitted to own property. The bride brought a dowry to her husband; but he was obliged to add an equivalent <span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">270</span> from his own estate and to administer the whole as a joint possession, which, with its accumulated increments, went to the survivor. On the other hand, the husband had the power of life and death over his wife as well as his children; and when a man of rank died his relations, if they had any suspicion of foul play, examined his wife, like a slave, by torture, and, if they found her guilty, condemned her to perish in the flames of the funeral pyre.<br />
<br />
<br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Compiled from sources in the public domain. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">************************************</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-79098389678135462512018-07-04T06:34:00.001-07:002018-07-04T06:53:33.717-07:00Shadows In A Timeless Myth Giveaway on Amazon<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qnLDjfGMe3Y" width="480"></iframe><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">(Shadows is also available at Barnes & Noble for the <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shadows-in-a-timeless-myth-teresa-thomas-bohannon/1113933396?ean=2940015745054" target="_blank">Nook</a>) </span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">************************************</span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity,<br />to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W. <br />Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-91178880254158929732018-04-07T09:11:00.002-07:002018-04-07T09:16:20.371-07:00Shadows in a Timeless Myth presents The Socialist and the Suffragist<div style="text-align: left;">
<b><span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"> </span>THE SOCIALIST AND THE SUFFRAGIST</b></div>
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Said the Socialist to the Suffragist:</div>
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“My cause is greater than yours!</div>
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You only work for a Special Class,</div>
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We for the gain of the General Mass,</div>
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Which every good ensures!”</div>
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Said the Suffragist to the Socialist:</div>
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“You underrate my Cause!</div>
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While women remain a Subject Class,</div>
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You never can move the General Mass,</div>
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With your Economic Laws!”</div>
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Said the Socialist to the Suffragist:</div>
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“You misinterpret facts!</div>
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There is no room for doubt or schism</div>
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In Economic Determinism—</div>
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It governs all our acts!”</div>
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Said the Suffragist to the Socialist:</div>
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“You men will always find</div>
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That this old world will never move</div>
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More swiftly in its ancient groove</div>
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While women stay behind!”</div>
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“A lifted world lifts women up,”</div>
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The Socialist explained.</div>
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“You cannot lift the world at all</div>
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While half of it is kept so small,”</div>
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The Suffragist maintained.</div>
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The world awoke, and tartly spoke:</div>
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“Your work is all the same:</div>
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Work together or work apart,</div>
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Work, each of you, with all your heart—</div>
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Just get into the game!”<br />
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<h2 title="The Anti-Suffragists">
THE ANTI-SUFFRAGISTS<a class="origin plain" href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/56931/56931-h/56931-h.htm#asterisk" id="anti" name="anti" title="Go to Note"></a></h2>
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Fashionable women in luxurious homes,</div>
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With men to feed them, clothe them, pay their bills,</div>
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Bow, doff the hat, and fetch the handkerchief;</div>
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Hostess or guest; and always so supplied</div>
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With graceful deference and courtesy;</div>
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Surrounded by their horses, servants, dogs—</div>
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These tell us they have all the rights they want.</div>
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Successful women who have won their way</div>
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Alone, with strength of their unaided arm,</div>
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Or helped by friends, or softly climbing up</div>
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By the sweet aid of “woman’s influence”;</div>
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Successful any way, and caring naught</div>
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For any other woman’s unsuccess—</div>
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These tell us they have all the rights they want.</div>
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Religious women of the feebler sort—</div>
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Not the religion of a righteous world,</div>
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A free, enlightened, upward-reaching world,</div>
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But the religion that considers life</div>
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As something to back out of!—whose ideal</div>
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Is to renounce, submit, and sacrifice,</div>
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Counting on being patted on the head</div>
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And given a high chair when they get to heaven—</div>
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These tell us they have all the rights they want.</div>
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Ignorant women—college bred sometimes,</div>
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But ignorant of life’s realities</div>
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And principles of righteous government,</div>
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And how the privileges they enjoy</div>
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Were won with blood and tears by those before—</div>
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Those they condemn, whose ways they now oppose;</div>
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Saying, “Why not let well enough alone?</div>
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Our world is very pleasant as it is”—</div>
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These tell us they have all the rights they want.</div>
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And selfish women—pigs in petticoats—</div>
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Rich, poor, wise, unwise, top or bottom round,</div>
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But all sublimely innocent of thought,</div>
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And guiltless of ambition, save the one</div>
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Deep, voiceless aspiration—to be fed!</div>
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These have no use for rights or duties more.</div>
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Duties today are more than they can meet,</div>
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And law insures their right to clothes and food—</div>
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These tell us they have all the rights they want.</div>
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And, more’s the pity, some good women, too;</div>
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Good, conscientious women with ideas;</div>
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Who think—or think they think—that woman’s cause</div>
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Is best advanced by letting it alone;</div>
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That she somehow is not a human thing,</div>
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And not to be helped on by human means,</div>
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Just added to humanity—an “L”—</div>
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A wing, a branch, an extra, not mankind—</div>
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These tell us they have all the rights they want.</div>
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And out of these has come a monstrous thing,</div>
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A strange, down-sucking whirlpool of disgrace,</div>
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Women uniting against womanhood,</div>
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And using that great name to hide their sin!</div>
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Vain are their words as that old king’s command</div>
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Who set his will against the rising tide.</div>
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But who shall measure the historic shame</div>
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Of these poor traitors—traitors are they all—</div>
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To great Democracy and Womanhood!<br />
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Compiled from sources in the public domain.</div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"></span> <span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Smiles & Good Fortune,</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Teresa</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">************************************</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-1129854528423837352018-02-26T08:32:00.000-08:002018-02-26T08:32:02.753-08:00Shadows In A Timeless Myth Presents Women's Lives During The Civil War<div>
<h1 class="c001" style="text-align: center;">
<span class="xlarge">OUR WOMEN IN THE WAR.</span><br /> AN ADDRESS</h1>
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<span class="small">BY</span></div>
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<span class="xxlarge">Capt. Francis W. Dawson,</span></div>
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DELIVERED FEBRUARY 22, 1887,</div>
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<span class="small">AT THE</span></div>
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FIFTH ANNUAL RE-UNION</div>
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<span class="small">OF THE</span></div>
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<span class="large">ASSOCIATION OF THE MARYLAND LINE,</span></div>
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<span class="small">AT THE</span></div>
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<span class="sc">Academy of Music, Baltimore, Md.</span></div>
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PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE ASSOCIATION.</div>
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CHARLESTON, S. C.</div>
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<span class="small"><span class="sc">Walker, Evans & Cogswell Company, Printers</span>,</span></div>
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<span class="xsmall">Nos. 3 and 5 Broad and 117 East Bay Sts.</span></div>
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<span class="xsmall">1887.</span></div>
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Have you any just idea of the burdens and cares of the Southern women in the last two or three years of the war? Take the vivid description given by Mrs. Mary Rhodes, of Alabama, as an illustration:</div>
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“We not only had to furnish clothes for our own immediate soldiers, but there were others belonging to the company whose friends were entirely out of reach, and we clothed them to the end. The clothing for the negroes was a heavy item, and all supplies of that kind was cut off, and we could only give them what was made at home. On every plantation, and almost in every house, were heard the constant hum of the wheels and click of the looms. The soldiers’ clothes were a constant care. As soon as one suit was sent another was made, for they often lost their clothing, and it had to be ready to send at a moment’s notice.</div>
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“We wore homespun dresses, which were really very pretty. At a little distance they looked like gingham, and we were very proud of our work. We dyed them very prettily, and were more anxious to learn a new process of dyeing than we ever had been to learn a new stitch in crochet or worsted work. We knitted all the undershirts the soldiers wore, also socks and gloves, besides those required at home. We often knitted until midnight, after all the day’s work was done, and ladies knitted as they rode in their carriages. Indeed, we were very busy, and in the constant employment found our greatest comfort. I heard one woman say: ‘I never go to bed until I am too tired and worn out to think.’</div>
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“And through all the trials, and trouble, and work, the love of the South kept us up. We never would listen to the thought that <span class="pageno" id="Page_13"></span>we might fail. We fully realized what defeat meant, and dreaded it so much that we were willing to risk our all rather than submit to it. We had the hardest lot. The men were moving about—to-day a fight, or looking forward to one, the constant excitement keeping them up; and even when not on duty the camp seldom failed to provide amusement. We at home had to sit still and wait.</div>
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“Now in those last two years all our medicines were exhausted, and we had to go to the woods for bark, and roots and herbs. We made quinine of dogwood and poplar, boiled to a strong decoction, and then to paste. We had to do the work of a chemist, without his laboratory. We made our own mustard and opium and castor oil. This last, with all the refining that we were capable of, was a terrible dose, and only used in extreme cases.”</div>
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There was a host of queer devices. Shoe blacking was made from the China berry, and it unfortunately happened, once at least, that a bottle of it which was sent, with a quantity of edibles, to a cadet at the Virginia Military Institute was applied internally instead of externally. The comment of the cadet who swallowed it was that “the catsup was rather insipid.”</div>
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For ordinary candles and lamps there were many substitutes, such as sycamore balls split in half and soaked in some fatty substance. On the large plantations candles were made from beef tallow, with twisted cloth for wicks, or of tallow and beeswax. There were also green candles made of the wax of myrtle berries.</div>
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Then the children in those days, as even in these days, would burst their buttons. Pins could take their place, but pins cost $5 a paper. Persimmon, peach and gourd seeds were then resorted to. It was only necessary to extract the seeds and bore holes in them, by which they could be sewed on, and lo! there was a button more durable than that of pearl or porcelain.</div>
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Exquisite artificial flowers were made from goose feathers, and what was considered a very pretty head-dress was made from the pith of a pumpkin.</div>
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House-made dyes were easily devised: For yellow, sassafras; for drab, kalmia or dwarf laurel; for slate color in cotton and blue-black, in wool or linen, willow bark; for chocolate brown, red oak bark; for lead color, white oak bark; for dyeing cotton a dun color, sweet gum bark; for dyeing wool lead color, the seeds of guinea corn.</div>
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Here is another woman’s story:</div>
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“The nimble fingers were never idle, nor did they stop at the adornment of self. The women stitched incessantly. What a precious thing a needle was in those days! Bone and wooden knitting needles were used when steel failed. Our women wove domestic and linsey-woolsey. Black and white check was very popular. Gray and brown flannels, piped with scarlet, made very pretty and serviceable suits. Then Garibaldis came into vogue. These were made of every material, from velvet to muslin, and worn with black or <span class="pageno" id="Page_14"></span>plaid skirts. Cotton and woollen yarn was used for a hundred different purposes. It was knitted into gloves, caps, jackets, comforters, socks, shirts and skirts. Our shoes were carefully husbanded. Happy was that maiden whose lover captured and sent her a pair when out on a raid. Sheepskin made a soft but stretchable shoe. Hats were crocheted of homespun cotton, bleached, starched, pressed and trimmed with odds and ends of ribbons and flowers made of feathers. Sometimes they were made of palmetto, bleached, split and plaited. Those palmetto hats, without trimming, cost only $30. They were trimmed with ornaments made of palmetto or dried natural grasses, wheat ears, &c. Hats for the boys and men were made of remains of the soldiers’ clothes, or of rushes, and sometimes of pine needles twisted and sewn together with strong homespun twisted and dyed thread. Heavy? Yes, but what would you do? They could not go bare-headed. Stylish jackets were contrived out of the cast-off clothes of some male member of the family, and all were glad to make over old clothes which, in ante-bellum days, were scarce good enough for the negroes.</div>
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“Money there was in plenty, but some things were not to be bought. One dollar was good for a piece of gingerbread five inches square, but the syrup and flour were home-raised, and ginger there was none. Fifty cents would buy a pint of ‘goobers,’ but they, too, were home-raised. ‘Striped candy’ for the little ones was not come-at-able, but our women boiled the home-made syrup, and that answered as well.”</div>
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Tea was made of the sassafras root or blackberry leaf. Coffee was made of parched meal, rye, wheat, okra, corn and black-eyed peas. Late in the war, it was discovered that parched sweet potato was the best substitute. Miss Kate Burwell Bowyer, of Bedford, Va., gives an amusing illustration of the patriotic adaptability of our people. It was, as she says, at once amusing and pathetic when the old Virginia cavaliers would meet and innocently endeavor to assist each other in sustaining our various patriotic Confederate delusions. Then such a colloquy as this would take place:</div>
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“Now, Mr. B., what do you think this coffee is?”</div>
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Mr. B., emphatically: “Think it is? Madame, I do not often now, as I said, taste the genuine article, but still I can never be deceived when I do come across it. This is the real old Mocha!”</div>
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Mrs. Bowyer’s mother, who prided herself upon her own particular admixture and adjustment, as did other housekeepers, with equal right, pride themselves upon theirs, now came forth deliberately and with triumph.</div>
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“This, sir, is parched wheat, with a little rye and a few roasted chestnuts added, I never put sweet potatoes in <i>mine</i>!”</div>
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Mr. B., rising in eloquence: “If such a drink as this can be compounded without coffee, I find we have in our time expended hundreds of dollars uselessly upon the product, and if the war should end to-morrow, I protest I shall never desire any better drink than the cup of coffee you gave me to-day.”</div>
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And not only in Virginia. There is a venerable gentle woman in South Carolina, who numbers well-nigh four-score years, who insists to this day that the best coffee she ever tasted was made during <span class="pageno" id="Page_15"></span>the war, and from rye at that. Such were our Southern women. This lady last mentioned was born in a Northern State, yet firmly believes that there is no place like the South, and that, as one of the preachers said at Columbia, after the burning of that city, “there will be no villanous Yankees in the New Jerusalem”—unless “they have entirely new hearts.”</div>
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Dress was peculiar, if pretty. The bodies of black silk dresses were turned into bonnets, which were lined with red or blue satin from the lining of old coat sleeves.</div>
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For ornaments the girls wore jewelry of their own making. Dainty chains and bracelets were formed of water-melon seeds, linked together and varnished and dried. Earrings, pins and bracelets were made of S. C. army buttons, also of palmetto cut into lace fibres, and so prepared and cured as to be cream-tinted. Gleaming pearl-like flowers were formed of bleached and polished fish scales.</div>
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The most ingenious dress that is recorded was a black silk, made from the covers of worn parasols, the umbrella-form being preserved. It was lined with mosquito netting and considered very stylish.</div>
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By the autumn of 1863, any lingering tendency to follow the fashions “had long since been beaten out of the female mind, and women now aspired to nothing beyond the mere wearing of clothes, irrespective of style, shape or texture. Large women appeared squeezed into garments of smallest proportions, small women floating about in almost limitless space, while women of tall statue dangled below circumscribed skirts, and others trailed about in fathoms of useless material. To all these eccentricities of costumes the Confederate eye had become inured, as well as to the striking effect of blue bonnets with green plumes, red dresses with purple mantles, &c., until these extraordinary modes failed to offend even the most fastidious.”</div>
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But there were some bright spots, as in the account of a Confederate marriage at Bull’s Gap, Tennessee, which is found in Mr. de Fontaine’s <cite>Marginalia</cite>:</div>
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“The bridegroom stood largely over six honest feet in his socks, was as hairy as Esau, and pale, slim and lank. His jacket and pants represented each other of the contending parties at war. His shoes were much the worse for wear, and his toes, sticking out of the gaping rents thereof, reminded one of the many little heads of pelicans you observe protruding from the nest which forms a part of the coat of arms of Louisiana. The exact color of his suit could not be given. Where the buttons had been lost in the wear and tear of the war, an unique substitute, in the shape of persimmon seed, was used. The bride had assayed to wash ‘Alabam’s’ clothes, while he modestly concealed himself behind a brush heap.</div>
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“The bride was enrobed in a neat but faded dress. Her necklace was composed of a string of chinquapins, her brow was environed by <span class="pageno" id="Page_16"></span>a wreath of faded bonnet flowers, and her wavy red hair was tucked up behind in the old-fashioned way. She wore a stout pair of number nine brogans, and her stockings and gloves were made of rabbit skin, fur side next to the skin. On her fingers were discerned several gutta percha and bone rings, presents, at various times, from her lover. All being ready, the ‘Texas parson’ proceeded to his duty with becoming gravity. ‘Special’ acted the part of waiter for the bride and groom. Opening the book, the parson commenced: ‘Close up!’ and the twain closed up. ‘Hand to your partner!’ and the couple handed. ‘Attention to orders!’ and we all attentioned. Then the following was read aloud: ‘By order of our directive general, Braxton Bragg, I hereby solemnly pronounce you man and wife, for and during the war, and you shall cleave unto each other until the war is over, and then apply to Governor Watts for a family right of public land in Pike County, the former residence of the bridegroom, and you and each of you will assist to multiply and replenish the earth.’”</div>
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The end was drawing nigh. Sadness sat on the brows of patient mothers who had demeaned themselves so gallantly, and of wives who had blithely buckled on their husbands’ swords. In the latter part of 1863 flour was $50 a barrel, bacon $2.25 a pound, salt 70 cents a pound, butter $1 a pound, meal $2.25 a bushel, tobacco $4 a pound, sugar $2 a pound, sheeting $1.75 a yard, nails $1.50 a pound. Fearful prices; but low in comparison with the prices a year later, when butter was as high as $10 a pound, bleached domestic $12.50 a yard, spool cotton $1 a spool, and a pair of cavalry boots $250. In Richmond, in March, 1865, the prices, as recorded at the time, were: Barrel of flour $300, coffee per pound $40, butter $25, beefsteak $13, shoes $80 a pair, and sewing cotton $4 and $5 a spool.</div>
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Under the stress of the rapidly depreciating currency and the demands of refugees who had no place where to lay their heads, rents became enormously high, and houses of average size were usually occupied by five or six families. Each family had its own rooms, with the right to use the common parlor. Those who had had whole houses now only had rooms. The fit phrase was coined, “Are you housekeeping?” “No,” was the response, “I room-keep.” Prices went higher and higher. It sorrowfully was said, towards the end of the war, that the frugal housewife took her Confederate money to market in a basket and brought back in her pocket all she could buy with it. But how touching is the history of the Confederate note:</div>
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Too poor to possess the precious ores,</div>
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And too much of a stranger to borrow,</div>
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We issue to-day our promise to pay,</div>
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And hope to redeem on the morrow.</div>
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The days rolled on and weeks became years</div>
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But our coffers were empty still.</div>
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Gold was so scarce, the treasury quaked,</div>
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If a dollar should drop in the till.</div>
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<span class="pageno" id="Page_17">17</span>But the faith that was in us was strong indeed,</div>
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Though our poverty was undiscerned,</div>
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And this little note represented the pay</div>
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That our suffering veterans earned.</div>
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They knew it had hardly a value in gold,</div>
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But as gold our soldiers received it;</div>
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It gazed in our eyes with a promise to pay,</div>
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And every true soldier believed it.</div>
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But our boys thought little of price or pay,</div>
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Or of bills that were overdue.</div>
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We knew if it bought our bread to-day</div>
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’Twas the best our poor country could do.</div>
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Keep it, it tells all our history o’er,</div>
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From the birth of the dream to the last;</div>
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Modest, and born of the Angel Hope,</div>
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Like our hope of success it Passed!</div>
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Nevertheless, there was no doubt, no dismay. The army must be fed and clothed. Boxes must still be sent to the dear boys in the West, or in the trenches around Petersburg and Richmond. Yet how different was the picture. Miss A. C. Clark, of Atlanta, draws a vivid sketch of the scene:</div>
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“Were these the same people—these haggard, wrinkled women, bowed with care and trouble, sorrow and unusual toil? These tame, pale, tearless girls, from whose soft flesh the witching dimples had long since departed, or were drawn down into furrows—were they the same school girls of 1861? These women who, with coarse, lean and brown hands, sadly and mechanically were stowing away into boxes, (not large ones,) meat, bread, cabbage, dried fruit, soda, syrup, home-made shoes and coarse home knit socks, garments of osnaburg and homespun, home-woven clothing of every description—these women with scant, faded cotton gowns and coarse leather shoes—these women who silently and apathetically packed the boxes, looking into them with the intense and sorrowful gaze that one casts into the grave—were these, I say, could these be the same airy-robed, white-fingered women, so like flowers, who, months and months ago, (it appeared an eternity) packed away, ’mid laughter and song, smile and jest those <i><span lang="fr">articles de luxe</span></i> for the boys at the front?</div>
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“Before the close of the conflict I knew women to walk twenty miles for a half bushel of coarse, musty meal with which to feed their starving little ones, and leave the impress of their feet in blood on the stones of the wayside ere they reached home again. When there, the meal was cooked and ravenously eaten, though there was not even salt to be eaten with it. Yet these women did not complain, but wrote cheerful letters to their husbands and sons, if they were yet living, bidding them to do their duty and hold the last trench.”<br />
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Compiled from sources in the public domain. </div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-25535787826544578542018-02-03T09:15:00.000-08:002018-02-03T09:15:41.612-08:00Shadows In A Timeless Myth Presents Marriage Among The Vikings<br />
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It is particularly striking, in reading the Sagas and the ancient laws which corroborate them, to see the high position women occupied in earlier and later pagan times.<br />
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If we are to judge of the civilisation of a people in their daily life by the position women held with regard to men, we must conclude that in this respect the earlier Norse tribes could compare favourably with the most ancient civilised nations whose history has come down to us.</div>
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A maiden was highly respected, and on becoming a wife she was greatly honoured, and her counsels had great weight; by marrying she became the companion and not the inferior of her husband. She held property in her own right, whatever she received by inheritance and by marriage being her own; though there were restrictions put upon her, as well as upon her husband, in regard to the use of her property.</div>
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In a word, a retrograde movement in regard to the rights and standing of women took place after the extinction of the Asa creed. The high position they had occupied before was lost, and it is only latterly that they have striven, and in some countries with success, to regain the authority that once belonged to them in regard to property and other matters.</div>
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From the earliest time we see the chivalrous regard that men had for women, and the punishment that any breach of its laws involved. Young men went into warlike expeditions to attain great fame, so that their acts of bravery could be known or extolled, and that they might become worthy of the maiden they wished to woo. The same spirit afterwards spread from the North to other countries in Europe, where, however, the opinion only of women of higher rank was valued. Among the earlier tribes of the North all were respected.</div>
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Marriage was not a religious contract or ceremony. It was simply regarded as a civil compact, owing to the relations which man and wife held towards each other in regard to property. It was the means of joining families together, which was called <i>tengja saman</i>, and therefore the relation was called <i>tengdir</i>. Consequently marriage itself was a bargain and on that account was called <i>brud-kaup</i> (bride-buying).</div>
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When a man had selected for himself, or by the advice of his parents, a woman or maiden whom he wanted to marry, he, accompanied by his father, or nearest relatives or best friends, and by a retinue, according to his rank, went to get the consent of the father, or of those who were the guardians of the woman. It was the exception for the suitor himself not to go on this journey, which was called <i>bonordsför</i> (suit journey).</div>
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<span class="pageno" id="Page_3"></span>The suitor, even if present, had a spokesman who spoke on his behalf, and enumerated his good qualities, deeds of valour, &c., and other qualifications which might speak well for the suit. If the suit was favourably received, a talk ensued in regard to the conditions of the marriage<br />
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The qualities which the parents or guardians took most into consideration were good birth, powerful and prominent relatives. Families on both sides had to be well matched in rank, wealth, and personal bravery, the last being highly prized by the one whose hand was sought.</div>
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In order that marriage should be regarded as perfectly lawful, the woman had to be “<i>mundi keypt</i>”; that is, bought with <i>mund</i> acquired by a legal agreement between the man on one side, and the parents or guardians of the intended bride on the other, in regard to the dower or property agreed on both sides as belonging to the bride.</div>
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<i>Mund</i> was originally the name for all the conditions in regard to the property of both, especially that of the wife. This agreement was the most important thing at the <i>festar</i> (betrothal, fastening). Children born without the payment of it were not <i>inheritance-born</i>—in a word, were considered illegitimate.</div>
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If the wife was poor and entirely without property the husband had to give a <i>mund</i> of twelve <i>aurar</i>, in order that the marriage should be regarded as fully legal.</div>
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“Next we must know how we shall buy women with <i>mund</i>, so that the child is <i>inheritance-born</i>. The man shall give that woman a poor man’s <i>mund</i>, amounting to 12 <i>aurar</i>, and have witnesses (at the ceremony). He shall have bridesmen, and she bridesmaids, and he shall give her a gift in the morning when they have been together one night, as large as the one at the betrothal. Then the child born thereafter is <i>inheritance-born</i>” (Gulath., 5).</div>
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“All men are not inheritance-born though they are free-born. The man whose mother is not bought with <i>mund</i>, with a mark, or still more property, or not wedded, or not betrothed, is not inheritance-born. A woman is bought with <i>mund</i> when a mark consisting of <i>aurar</i>, of the value of 12 feet of <i>vadmal</i>, or more property, is paid or stipulated by <i>hand-shaking</i>. A wedding is lawfully made if the lawful man betroths the woman, and six men at least are present” (Gragas, i. 75).</div>
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<span class="pageno" id="Page_6"></span>If a man married a girl without the consent of her parents or guardians, or made a runaway match, the husband was outlawed.</div>
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“The mother shall take as much property if her daughter dies childless as she has given her from home, and also the <i>mund</i> without interest. She and her children shall get this in preference to the father. Every man who has given anything for the <i>heimanfylgja</i> shall get it back if the wife dies childless, and also get the mund, if he has declared it at the betrothal or the wedding” (Gragas, i. 174).</div>
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The givers-away of the bride were called <i>giptingar-men</i>, and were either parents, kinsmen, or guardians.</div>
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After the preliminaries to the marriage had taken place, and the agreement had been announced to the witnesses, the <i>festar</i> or betrothal followed, when the parties became <i>festarmadr</i> or betrothed man, and <i>festarkona</i> or betrothed woman. This was a legal tie which could not be broken with impunity. The suitor went over to the father or guardian of the woman, and the latter betrothed her to him with a “<i>handsal</i>” (hand-shaking); at the same time both parties also named their witnesses to their betrothal. Gragas gives the formula used at this ceremony, which is as follows:—</div>
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“A woman is betrothed according to law if a man recites the agreement about the <i>mund</i>; then the guardian and the man to whom the woman is betrothed shall name witnesses to it. The man who is betrothed shall say: ‘We name witnesses that thou N. N. betrothest thyself to me N. N. with a lawful betrothal, and givest me the <i>heimanfylgja</i> with <i>hand-shaking</i>, as the fulfilment and performance of the whole agreement which was a while ago recited between us without fraud and tricks.’ This is a complete and lawful match. It is lawful when the betrother is the one who has the right to betroth according to law; and it is complete if the betrothed is in such health that she would be bought at no less price if she was a bondmaid, or has no other faults or blemishes which would make her cost less or which she had when sixteen winters old. But if these faults are found in the woman, the man who knowing it betrothed the woman is liable to lesser outlawry for it, and the wedding may be prevented if the man betrothed wishes it, provided he had before pronounced the words, ‘a complete and lawful match’—but not otherwise. Now if the betrothed man wants to demand the <i>mund</i> he shall summon the guardian, because he has betrothed the woman knowing such faults in <span class="pageno" id="Page_8">8</span>her that she would cost less if she were a bondmaid. He shall summon him to lesser outlawry, and summon nine of his neighbours to the <i>Thing</i>. If the witnesses are against him he is to be outlawed, and the <i>mund</i> cannot be claimed. If the witnesses say that the guardian knew not the faults of the woman he can defend himself, but he cannot claim the <i>mund</i> unless he can get five dwellers at the farm of the woman as witnesses that she has not these faults; then the <i>mund</i> is to be paid back” (Gragas, i. 316)</div>
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If the betrothed woman was injured or wronged in any way the man had the same right to gain redress as if she were his wife.</div>
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“Every man has full <i>rétt</i> on the behalf of his betrothed as well as his wife, as long as it is due; but if she sits at home in the house of a father or brother they have the full rétt on her behalf which her betrothed would otherwise have had” (Frostath., xi. 12).</div>
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“If a man runs away with a betrothed woman he shall pay full <i>rétt</i> to the betrothed man and also to her father” (Bjarkey law, 125).</div>
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The virtue of a betrothed woman was very carefully guarded.</div>
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“If the father dies before the wedding within the twelve months, and the child is begotten, then that child shall take its father’s inheritance as if its mother were bought with <i>mund</i>. But in no other way is a man inheritance-born unless his mother is bought with <i>mund</i>, or he is led lawfully into the family (adopted). Though a man betroth his concubine in order that according to this law his children be inheritance-born, or delays the wedding on account of this, it does not matter, for neither shall <i>inheritance-fraud</i> be committed, nor the wedding be dishonoured by this” (Frostath., 13).</div>
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The breaking of a betrothal by either party was severely punished, and the laws on the subject were strict.</div>
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“If a man will not take his betrothed he shall be summoned home to take her, and a day be fixed. Thereupon he shall be summoned to the <i>Thing</i> because he flees from his betrothed. <span class="pageno" id="Page_9"></span>Then the thingmen shall make him an outlaw, and he is called a runaway (<i>fudflogi</i>)” (Gulath., 51).</div>
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“If a man wants a better match, the father shall betroth his daughter himself if she is a maiden, and the brother shall do it if the father is dead. If the father will not give his daughter to the man to whom she has been betrothed, he shall be summoned home and a day be fixed on which he shall have his betrothed. If the betrother will not let him have her, he shall demand the dowry of his betrothed, and summon him to the <i>Thing</i> for robbery; then the thingmen have to outlaw him. The maiden has no power in this matter, if she does not draw back from the marriage herself. The man who has charge of the betrothed woman may keep her from the betrothed man for a twelvemonth. A widow may betroth herself, but shall take the advice of her kinsmen; then she cannot break her troth. If she has not taken the advice of her kinsmen, she may break it and pay three marks for the breach of faith to the one who was betrothed to her. If a man betroths to a man a woman over whom he has no betrothing power, he shall pay three marks to the one who was betrothed to her. Two or more brothers shall have power over their sister; if one of them betroths her to a man, and the others object, then they shall draw lots who of them shall rule; if the one who betrothed her draws the lot, the betrothal shall be kept, otherwise not, and then the betrother shall pay three marks for breach of faith” (Earlier Gulathing’s Law, c. 51).</div>
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The length of the betrothal, if no special agreement had been made, was limited to twelve months, that being the longest time that a woman’s guardian could defer a marriage against the will of her future husband. Three years seems to have been the longest delay allowed; during that time the woman was said to <i>sit as betrothed</i>, if the suitor was away and did not return within that time the agreement was void, and the woman was free to marry another man.</div>
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The betrothed who without valid reason did not fulfil her engagement, and the giver-away who kept back the betrothed woman, were outlawed. If she of her free will took another man than her betrothed, both she and the giver-away were outlawed.</div>
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“If a man betroths a woman he shall have her married within twelve months if no necessity hinders” (Frostath., iii. 12).</div>
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“The giver-away of a woman may keep her from her betrothed man for twelve months” (Gulathing’s Law, 51).</div>
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“If she (the betrothed woman) wants to break the betrothal within twelve months, and says she has been betrothed against her will, he can use his witnesses against her words and get her. If he lacks witnesses then she and also her father and mother, or their nearest kinsmen if they do not exist, shall assure it is against her will with an oath, and pay the betrothed man as much as was promised. If this takes place after the wedding she loses her third” (Frostath., iii. 22).</div>
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“If the man to whom a woman is betrothed becomes sick he shall send word half a month before (the wedding) to the man who has betrothed the woman that he will not come to the wedding on account of his health, and the woman need not be brought home to him though it was agreed, and the reasons must be told. Then the wedding shall not be before the same time next year, unless the man wants it before, and then word must be sent half a month or more before, and he shall keep the wedding at his sole cost. If he does not recover in the <span class="pageno" id="Page_11">11</span>next twelvemonth the betrothal is dissolved, unless both wish otherwise” (Gragas, i. 310).</div>
<div class="c000">
<br /></div>
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The wedding generally took place at the home of the bride; very seldom at the bridegroom’s: on the wedding-night the <i>mund</i> became the wife’s personal property.</div>
<div class="c011">
<br /></div>
<div class="c000">
After the marriage the bride and bridegroom were <i>hjón</i>, a word which means man and wife; and then the wife became an <i>eiginkona</i> (own woman, wife, spouse) and <i>hùsfreyja</i> (housewife), and enjoyed the rights belonging to that position.</div>
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<br />
<div class="c011">
This bridal linen was a long wide head-dress hanging down the back from the top of the head, or a kind of veil. In <i>Thrymskvida</i> the bride wore such a head-dress, which was fastened on the head with an ornament. At the waist a bunch of keys was placed to show her authority as mistress of the household, and on her breast she had an ornament.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The jötun Thrym had got Thor’s hammer and would not give it back, unless Freyja were married to him. Thor was <span class="pageno" id="Page_12"></span>disguised as Freyja, and sent as a bride to Thrym; he got hold of the hammer, and crushed Thrym and the jötnar.</div>
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Then said Thor,</div>
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The mighty Ás,</div>
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The Asar will me</div>
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Effeminate call</div>
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If I let myself</div>
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Be tied in bridal linen.</div>
</div>
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Then they tied Thor</div>
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In the bridal linen,</div>
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And the great</div>
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Brisinga-necklace;</div>
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Let keys hang</div>
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From his belt,</div>
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And woman’s clothes</div>
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Hang round his knees,</div>
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And broad stones</div>
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Be on his breast,</div>
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And fastened the cloth</div>
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On his head with skill.</div>
</div>
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(Thrymskvida.)</div>
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</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="c000">
We have nothing to show positively that marriage was celebrated with religious ceremonies, but certain forms may have taken place. In the later Edda we have the goddess <i>Vár</i>, who hears the vows of men and women. In Helgi Hjörvardson there are also vows called by her name, and it seems that she was solemnly invoked at weddings, and the sign of the hammer of Thor made over the bride.</div>
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Then said Thrym,</div>
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The chief of Thursar:</div>
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Carry in the hammer</div>
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To consecrate the bride,</div>
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Lay Mjöllnir</div>
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In the maiden’s lap.</div>
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Wed us together</div>
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With the hand of <i>Var</i>.</div>
</div>
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The mind laughed</div>
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In the breast of Hlórridi</div>
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As the hard-minded one</div>
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Saw the hammer;</div>
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Thrym killed he first,</div>
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The lord of Thursar,</div>
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And thrashed</div>
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The Jötun’s whole kin.</div>
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(Earlier Edda; Thrymskvida.)</div>
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</div>
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Marriage without betrothal proceedings and dowry was called <i>skyndibrúdhlaup</i> (hasty wedding), or <i>lausa-brudhlaup</i> (loose wedding). Such an union was illegal, and the children begotten thereby had no right of inheritance.</div>
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The father or the guardian of the girl had the decision over her marriage. If the father was dead the brothers were the guardians of the unmarried sister. If she had neither father nor brothers, her mother in connection with the nearest uncle could give her away; and as the maiden had no voice in the matter, she could be forced by her father or guardians into a marriage against her will.</div>
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<span class="pageno" id="Page_14"></span>“The giver away next to a father or brother is a lawfully wedded mother. If there is no mother, then the man twenty winters old or more who is the nearest heir after the woman who is married” (Frostath., law ii. 13).<br />
<br />
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The father did not always exercise his right of deciding about the marriage; sometimes he left the decision of the suit entirely in the hands of the daughter, but such cases must be regarded as an exception.</div>
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<br /></div>
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If a girl married against the will of her parents or kinsmen the latter could disinherit her, and her progeny were illegitimate, and this act of disobedience would even get her self-chosen husband declared an outlaw as a woman-robber.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="c000">
When a poor girl was given in marriage to a rich man, one of the conditions made was that her clothes and ornaments should be provided, though if she was an heiress and fifteen years of age she could betroth herself with the advice of her kinsmen.</div>
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<br /></div>
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The different Sagas and laws place the age of majority of men as well as of women at fifteen years, and early marriages of women at that age were not uncommon.</div>
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“The maiden who becomes an heiress may marry herself to whomever she likes when she is fifteen winters old, with the counsel of those of her kinsmen who are the wisest and nearest both on her father’s and mother’s side” (Frostath., xi. 18).</div>
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When girls were of age they could transact their own business.</div>
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<span class="pageno" id="Page_16"></span>“There are maidens called <i>baugryg</i>. They shall pay with rings and take rings when they are only children and inheritance-born, till they sit down on a bride’s chair. Then they throw this into the lap of their kinsmen, and shall neither pay nor take rings thereafter” (Frostath., vi. 4).</div>
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A widow, who had the same rights as a girl of age, could not be forced into a new marriage by her father or kinsmen, but on the other hand she could not marry without their consent; and the conditions of the marriage were generally settled by the spokesmen of the suitor and her nearest of kin in the usual manner.</div>
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“A widow shall betroth herself and take the advice of her kinsmen” (Gulathing’s Law, 51).</div>
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<br /></div>
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People could not marry unless they had means enough to support themselves in comfort. If they acquired wealth afterwards, then he owned two-thirds, and she one-third, both of land and movable property, and the husband could not take his wife’s property out of the country without her consent. Partnership between husband and wife was said to be established after a certain time, which according to Frostathing’s Law was twelve months.</div>
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But according to the Gulathing, man and wife could not, without the consent of the heirs of both, enter into partnership before they had children; but when they had, they could make whatever partnership they liked. When they had been married twenty years they were partners according to law.</div>
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“If men marry who have less property than one hundred legal <i>aurar</i>, besides their everyday clothes, and no children, then they are liable to lesser outlawry unless the woman is barren. No <i>féránsdóm</i> shall be held, and their property is not confiscated, and they shall leave the land with their children, and not come back unless their property increases <span class="pageno" id="Page_18">18</span>so much that they own a hundred or more, or the woman is barren” (Gragas, i. 323).</div>
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“If man and wife have equal property they shall make partnership if they wish, which is also valid for their heirs. The contract of betrothal is valid between man and wife while its witnesses live and no other contracts are made. But if the witnesses remembering it are dead, then their property is in common, according to law, if he owned a mark or more, and the <i>mund</i> was paid, and they have lived together three winters or more. If they are poor and earn property, their property is in common according to law. According to law the joint partnership is always thus, that he owns two parts, and she one-third” (Gragas, i. 334).</div>
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“If a wife loses her husband, and they have lived twelve months together, she owns one-third of the farm and of all loose property, and her clothes besides” (Frostathing, xi. 6).</div>
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“If a man marries a widow or maiden who owns a farm, he owns nothing of the farm before they have lived together twelve months. Then the laws lay their property together.</div>
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“If two paupers marry according to the laws of the land, and their property increases, then he owns two-thirds, and she one-third of lands and loose property” (Frostathing, ix. 8, 9).</div>
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“A man shall not take the property of his wife out of the land, except with her consent. He shall rule over all their property for their use. Neither of them shall by word or deed forfeit the property of the other. Every man has the same <i>rétt</i> for his wife as for himself” (Earlier Gulathing’s Law, 52).</div>
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“If a man wants to leave the country with the property of his wife, she may give full powers to any man she wishes to forbid him going, and prosecute him and the men who take him away, if needed” (Grágás, i. 331).</div>
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“A wife shall not refuse partnership to her husband. If a man marries a maiden, they cannot enter into partnership unless the men who have right to their inheritance assent; but if they have inheritance-born children, they can enter into such partnership as they like.</div>
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“If a man marries a widow, and she has children (inheritance-born children) which are under age, and the man nevertheless wants to enter into partnership with her, ‘then a meeting shall be summoned of the children nearest of kin on their father’s side, and a partnership be made according to the worth of their property; land shall be valued against land, <span class="pageno" id="Page_19"></span>and loose property against loose property,’ and his property valued also if it is more than hers. It cannot be broken if thus made.</div>
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<br /></div>
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“If they enter into partnership in another way, it may be broken, whether his heirs or hers want it, by going to a <i>Thing</i> before they have been twenty winters together, and declaring that the partnership is broken. If this is not done before they have been twenty winters together, he (the husband) can never change it thereafter.</div>
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<br /></div>
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“Wherever husband and wife enter into partnership, they shall declare it before many men. Now if they have lived together twenty winters or more, they are partners according to the laws, if they were not before. Then she owns a third of the property, and he two-thirds. Though it (the partnership) be made, if it is not made public during the twenty winters, it is as if it had not been made” (Gulathing’s Law, 53).</div>
<div class="c000">
<br /></div>
<div class="c011">
Marriages were forbidden to the fifth degree of relationship.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="c011">
“It is a new law that marriage is not allowed nearer than the fifth degree in the same degrees of relationship and kinsmanship. If they are both kinsmen in the fifth degree they may marry if they like, but pay a larger tithe of all their property” (Grágás, i. 308).</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="c011">
The wedding feasts, at which the gods were invoked for the happiness of the marriage, were often very splendid, and guests, to whom presents were given, came from long distances. The length of the feasts varied according to the rank and wealth of the family, and were so gorgeous that they remained long in the memories of the people.</div>
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In sparsely-settled countries we find that a bondi was obliged to shelter the bridal party.</div>
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<br /></div>
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“A bondi shall feed at least five of them (the bridesmen and bridesmaids). He is an outlaw if he refuses to lodge them. This is if the bride or bridegroom are with them; otherwise he must feed three men” (Kristinrett Thorláks og Ketils biskupa, p. 94).</div>
<div class="c011">
<br /></div>
<div class="c011">
In the hall where the wedding-feast took place there were bridal benches, which were probably kept in the family for such an occasion; just as to-day the bridal crowns are kept in Norway.</div>
<div class="c000">
On one of the long benches the bridegroom was seated with his men; on the other, which was opposite, the father of the bride and his male guests. On the cross-bench sat the women, with the bride in the middle; therefore this bench was called <i>brudbekk</i> (bride-bench).</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="c011">
We find that during the feast the bride was seated between the bridesmen and bridesmaids, a custom that has come down to this day; the <i>linfé</i> was then presented to her as she sat under the bridal linen.</div>
<div class="c011">
“Then he (the bridegroom) shall sit between the bridesmen, and she between the bridesmaids. He shall walk across the floor and give her <i>linfé</i>. That is lawful whether the gift is small or great” (N. G. L., ii. 305, King Magnus’ Laws).</div>
<div class="c011">
<br /></div>
<div class="c011">
It was the custom to offer to the bride a <i>bekkjar-gjöf</i> (bench-gift) while she sat on the bridal bench.</div>
<br />
<div class="c011">
The man, as the guardian of his wife, had to manage their property; but nevertheless the property of each was quite separate. At the marriage the property of both was valued, and the <i>heimanfylgja</i>, <i>tilgjöf</i>, <i>linfé</i>, and also what she had got or would get by inheritance or other ways, were regarded as the property of the woman.</div>
<div class="c011">
<br /></div>
<div class="c000">
If the husband died first, his natural heir got his property, while the wife kept hers; but if the wife died first, the husband took back the <i>tilgjöf</i>, and the other property went to her heirs.</div>
<div class="c000">
<br /></div>
<div class="c000">
If a man did not value the property of his wife at the marriage, then he had to pay the value to her heirs if she died before him, and take an oath that he had not received more. But if he died first, and his property also had not been valued, and they had been married for twelve months, then she got one-third of the loose property and land, besides her clothes.</div>
<div class="c000">
<br /></div>
<div class="c011">
“A man shall rule over his wife’s property while they are married, and not separated, except that which is stipulated at their betrothal or their marriage; that property shall she answer for and rule herself. If an inheritance falls to a man’s wife, and there are <i>umagi </i>in that inheritance but no property, her husband shall take care of these, and “fit them out,” but her <i>heimanfylgja</i> shall not diminish when it is made public in a drinking-hall. But if there is property in that inheritance, the lands and all loose property shall be valued, and he shall have the care of them and the increase, but he shall pay as much back as he got, except the land-rents which he got afterwards” (Earlier Frostathing’s Law, xi. 5).</div>
<div class="c011">
<br /></div>
<div class="c011">
“A gift given to a woman shall be her property, in whatever manner she may be separated. All the property of a maiden shall be valued, loose property against loose property, but one half of a widow’s property shall be valued. The valuation shall be lawful in every case except two—if she dies childless or leaves him without a protector” (Gulath., 54).</div>
<div class="c011">
<br /></div>
<div class="c011">
The only certain examples of polygamy occur among the great chiefs, such as Harald Fairhair. Harald Hardradi had two wives, Elizabeth, the daughter of the King of Gardaríki, and Thora, the daughter of a Norwegian chief; both enjoyed the name of queen.</div>
<div class="c011">
<br /></div>
<div class="c000">
The husband was obliged to protect his wife, and take as much care of her honour as of his own.</div>
<div class="c011">
“Now is about the rights of women. Every man has claim on behalf of his wife. A <i>Hauld</i> owns three marks if she is struck; but a widow shall have the same <i>rétt</i> as her last husband (had), and the one she wishes shall prosecute. But if a maiden is struck, her nearest kinsman shall claim her <i>rétt</i> as if it were his own. But if she is to have it herself, the right plaintiff shall summon a <i>Thing</i>” (Earlier Frostathing’s Law, x., c. 37).</div>
<div class="c011">
<br /></div>
<div class="c011">
The following laws show how strict people were in regard to kisses:—</div>
<div class="c011">
<br /></div>
<div class="c011">
“If a man kisses a woman (belonging to another) secretly, with her will, he is liable to pay three marks, and the one who would have to prosecute for seduction has to prosecute. If she gets angry at it, she may prosecute herself, and the man is then liable to lesser outlawry. If a man kisses a man’s wife secretly, he is liable to lesser outlawry whether she allows it or refuses it. Nine neighbours are to be called as witnesses to this at the <i>Thing</i>.... If a man puts on a <i>fald</i> or <i>woman’s clothes</i> to deceive a woman, he is liable to lesser outlawry” (Gragas, i. 337).</div>
<div class="c011">
<br /></div>
<div class="c011">
“If a man makes a <i>song of love</i> on a woman, he is to be outlawed. If the woman is twenty years or older, she shall prosecute the case herself. But if she is younger, or will not prosecute, her legal guardian has to do it” (Gragas, vol. ii., p. 150).</div>
<div class="c011">
<br /></div>
<div class="c011">
Women’s rights appear to have been not altogether unknown even in these early days; for women who got their own livelihood and whose kinsmen did not trouble themselves about their support, were their own masters.</div>
<div class="c011">
<br /></div>
<div class="c011">
“If kinsmen will not take proper care of women, and they (the women) get their living themselves, then they shall rule over themselves as they like” (Frostath., xi. 17).</div>
<div class="c011">
<br /></div>
<div class="c011">
Compiled from sources in the public domain.</div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-37877181859267674522018-01-20T09:11:00.000-08:002018-01-20T09:11:12.217-08:00Shadows in a Timeless Myth Presents Divorce Among The Vikings<br />
<div class="c011">
A divorce was declared in the following manner. The wife had to declare the separation, and the reason of it, three times in three places in the presence of witnesses—first, in front of them on a bed; secondly, in front of the men’s door; and, thirdly, at the <i>Thing</i>; but separation did not prevent either party from marrying again afterwards.</div>
<div class="c011">
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<div class="c000">
Mörd gave advice to his daughter Unn how she should separate herself from her husband, Rut, when he was not at home.</div>
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<div class="c011">
“When thou art quite ready thou shalt go to thy bed, and with thee the men who are thy followers; thou shalt name witnesses at the bedside of thy husband, and declare that thou art separated from him by a lawful divorce, as fairly as is possible after the rules of the <i>Althing</i> and the laws of all the people. The same naming of witnesses thou shalt also have at the men’s door, and then thou shalt ride away” (Njala, c. 7).</div>
<div class="c011">
<br /></div>
<div class="c011">
The causes for divorce were numerous. A cause of divorce was that of wearing clothes belonging to the opposite sex, as when a man wore a shirt so open that you could see his breast; or when women wore breeches; and we find that sometimes these clothes were cunningly made on purpose to bring about a separation.</div>
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One day Thórd Ingunnarson asked Gudrún what a woman was liable to if she always wore breeches like men. She answered:</div>
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<div class="c011">
“‘They are to be punished for that just as a man is <span class="pageno" id="Page_26"></span>punished who has such a large opening in his clothes that his bare chest is displayed. Both are reasons for divorce....’ Thórd at once rushed to the law court and named witnesses, he declared himself divorced from Aud, because she wore closed breeches like men” (Laxdæla, c. 35).</div>
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“Gudrun, Usvifr’s daughter, was forced by her father to marry Thorvald Halldórsson, of Garpsdal. She always asked him to buy her the most costly things. Once, when she asked him for something, he said that she knew no moderation, and gave her a cheek-horse (box on the ear). She answered: ‘Now thou hast given me what we women think of great importance, and that is a good complexion, and thou hast cured me of importunate requests.’ The same evening Thórd (Ingunnarson, a good friend of hers) came in. Gudrun told him of this disgrace, and asked how she should take revenge for it. Thórd smiled, and replied: ‘I know a good way; make a shirt for him with an opening of divorce, and declare thyself separated from him for this reason.’ Gudrun said nothing against this, and they left off speaking, but that same spring Gudrun declared herself separated from Thorvald, and went home to her father at Laugar” (Laxdæla, ch. 34).</div>
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Divorce was easy to get, especially for the man, on the ground of the wife’s infidelity; while the wife could get it on the ground of repeated ill-treatment from her husband.</div>
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“If a man does not sleep in the same bed with his wife for six seasons on account of dislike, then her kinsmen can claim her property and also her <i>rétt</i>, but she shall herself keep her property” </div>
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A man could separate from his wife without a lawful reason, but the separation was looked upon as a disgrace by her kinsmen, and revenge was sure to follow.</div>
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“If a man wants to separate from his wife, he shall declare himself separated so that each of them may hear the other’s voice, and have witnesses present” (Gulathing’s Law, 54).</div>
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<sup> </sup>If a husband tried to take his wife out of the country against her will she could separate herself from him.</div>
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<span class="pageno" id="Page_27"></span>“If a man wants to take his wife against her will out of this land she shall declare herself separated if she likes, wherever they happen to be, if she can do it with reason; then he is liable to lose her and her property as if they had owned no property together, and he has no more right to that woman after they have separated than to any other woman with whom he has not lived” (Gragas, i. 331).</div>
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A wife could not separate without reason, and even if she left her husband with good reason on her side, he could keep her dower, and could force her to come back.</div>
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In case of a separation, the wife’s parents or kinsmen could claim the <i>mund</i> and the <i>heimanfylgja</i>.</div>
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A bondi, Thorkel, having heard that his wife Asgerd loved another man, was, on his remonstrating, told by his wife to choose one of two alternatives.</div>
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“Thou mayst choose one of two conditions. To stay with me as if nothing had happened; otherwise I will at once name witnesses, and declare myself separated from thee, and let my father claim my mund and heimanfylgja” (Gisli Sursson’s Saga, p. 16).</div>
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If a separation took place where neither party could be said to have been guilty of criminality, then the wife took the same amount of property as she would have at the death of her husband, or as she would take in case she left him on account of any unfaithfulness on his part. If she left him without any valid cause, or he separated from her on account of her repeated infidelity, then the husband had the right to retain all her property as long as she lived, and her heir had no claim to anything of the <i>tilgjöf</i>. </div>
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But if she was unfaithful only once, she forfeited her <i>tilgjöf</i>, and kept the rest of her property. If the man drove her away against her will for that single offence, she came into all her rights.</div>
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“If a wife commits adultery, or separates from her husband without reason, she has forfeited her mund and her increase of a third (<i>thridjungsauki</i>). If her husband offers to take her back and she will not accept it he shall keep all her property while she is alive and then her next heir shall get her heimanfylgja <span class="pageno" id="Page_28"></span>but no increase of a third. If they are reconciled and he takes her back, their property shall remain as if there had been no breach between them. If she repeats the crime he shall keep her property while he is alive, and if he will not take her back, then it shall be as has already been said. If she does not and promises redress, and offers to live with her husband and he will not take her, then she shall get her heimanfylgja but not the increase of a third. If the husband wants to rob her of her heimanfylgja and says she has committed this crime before, and people have not before heard him accuse her of it, she shall take the <i>einseidi</i> (oath of one) and get her heimanfylgja, but not her increase of a third if he will not take her back. If a hindrance separates them according to God’s laws each of them shall have their respective property” (Frostathing’s Law, xi. 14).</div>
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It was a common provision in all the laws that a man was not allowed to beat his wife, under a penalty of paying the same indemnity as he had a right to receive if he himself were beaten. If he had beaten her three times and did it a fourth, then she could leave him, taking with her her <i>heimanfylgja</i> and <i>tilgjöf</i>.</div>
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“If a man beats his wife with keys or latches, then he is liable to pay three marks. Also if he takes another woman and puts her in the house; she is called <i>hearth-rival</i>. Thirdly, if a man beats his wife with a horn or with the fist on an ale-bench, then he is to pay three marks. If she three times gets <i>rétt</i> for these reasons, the fourth time she may separate from him, or not, as she likes” (Borgarthing Laws, ii. 8).</div>
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“When Börk had left his farm Helgafell Thordis went forward and named witnesses that she declared herself separated from her husband Börk, and pleaded as a reason that he had struck her, and she would not put up with his blows. Their property was divided, and Snorri (a son of her former marriage) took charge of it on behalf of his mother, for he was her heir” (Eyrbyggja, c. 14).</div>
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Restrictions were put upon the extravagance of women.</div>
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“The wife of a <i>hauld</i> (odal’s bondi) is allowed to buy to the extent of one eyrir, and not more. If she buys for more the<span class="pageno" id="Page_29"></span>bargain shall not be kept, except her husband wishes it so” (Earlier Frostathings Law, xi. 22).</div>
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“If a wife gives away her husband’s property he can claim it all, and prosecute the man who received it. If a man sends his wife to the Thing to pay debts or other expenses of theirs, her hand-shaking is valid, and also when she goes to a ship to make bargains with his consent, but no other transactions are valid unless he wishes them to be so. When she buys what is necessary for their household while he is at the Thing, that is also valid. The woman shall not sell half her land, a farm or more, or a <i>godord</i> (dignity of godi), or a seagoing ship, except with the will of her guardian” (Gragas, i. 333).</div>
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Compiled from sources in the public domain </div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-31008381875970604202018-01-06T06:00:00.001-08:002018-01-06T06:00:33.536-08:00Shadows In a Timeless Myth Presents Tales of The Valkyrie<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"> The Valkryie or Valkyrja of Norse Legend</span><br />
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“The daughter of King Eylimi was Svava; she was a Valkyrja and rode over air and sea; she gave this name to Helgi, and often afterwards sheltered him in battles” (Helga Kvida Hjörvardssonar).</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga2nKaJk7LBakT0QpQ9idWH8OeYQZoRffnsBYDNPlPBry5tUoMpLGzDWe0O8uOu9w0TvaQA3KmQtUDT_hAeR9uTY_r-a7eConl2ULVIpCMlGRs4nvFVkB77CINHN6KnBr3en7u-f80FEUt/s1600/The_Ride_of_the_Valkyrs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="626" data-original-width="1024" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga2nKaJk7LBakT0QpQ9idWH8OeYQZoRffnsBYDNPlPBry5tUoMpLGzDWe0O8uOu9w0TvaQA3KmQtUDT_hAeR9uTY_r-a7eConl2ULVIpCMlGRs4nvFVkB77CINHN6KnBr3en7u-f80FEUt/s320/The_Ride_of_the_Valkyrs.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The following among other poetical and figurative names <span class="pageno" id="Page_389"></span><span class="pageno" id="Page_389"></span>are given to the Valkyrias:—The maidens of victory, the goddesses of the fight, the graspers of spears, the witches of the shield, the maidens of the slain, the exultant ones, the strong one, the entangling one, the silent one, the storm-raisers. They are mentioned as riding through the air, over the sea, and amid the lightning, helmet-clad, with bloody brynjas, and glittering spears; the spear which carried death and victory being the emblem of Odin. When their horses shake their manes, the froth which comes from their bitted mouths drops as dew into the valleys, and hail falls from their nostrils into the woods.</div>
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The slain were called <i>Val</i> (chosen), and belonged to Odin. From the word <i>Val</i> are derived the names of Valkyrias, Valfödr (the father of the slain), Valhalla (the hall of the slain), Valól (field of battle, field of the slain), and probably also of those birds of prey which after the battle visited the field of action.</div>
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<i>Skuld</i>, the youngest of the three Nornir, who personified the future, followed the Valkyrias, probably in order to witness the decrees of fate given to men at their birth.</div>
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“There are others that have to serve in Valhöll, carry drink and take care of the table-dressing and the beer cups. These are called Valkyrias; Odin sends them to every battle; they choose death for men and rule victory. Gunn and Róta and the youngest Norn, Skuld, always ride to choose the slain and rule <i>man-slayings</i>” (Gylfaginning,).</div>
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It was believed that during a battle warriors sometimes saw Valkyrias coming to their help: how grand and beautiful must have been the vision created in their mind by their faith in them, as they thought they saw them riding on their fiery steeds, and sweeping over the battle-field, by land or by sea. It is hard to realise a grander picture for a warrior to behold.</div>
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Helgi saw:—</div>
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Three times nine maidens,</div>
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But one rode foremost</div>
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A white maiden under helmet;</div>
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Their horses trembled,</div>
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From their manes fell</div>
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Dew into the deep dales,</div>
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Hail on the lofty woods;</div>
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Thence come good seasons among men,</div>
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All that I saw was loathsome to me.</div>
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[Helga Kvida Hjörvardssonar.]</div>
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<span class="pageno" id="Page_390"></span>Sometimes the Valkyrias came to earth and remained among men.</div>
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“Nidud was a king in Sweden. He had two sons and one daughter, whose name was Bödvild. There were three brothers, sons of the Finna-king, one Slagfinn, the other Egil, and the third Völund; they ran on snow-shoes, and hunted wild beasts. They came to the Ulfdal, where there is a lake called Ulfsjár (Wolf’s lake), and there made themselves a house. Early one morning they found at the shore of the lake three women who were spinning flax, near them lay their swan-skins; they were Valkyrias. </div>
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Two of them were daughters of King Hlödver (Louis), Hladgunn Svanhvit (Svan-white), and Hervör Alvitr (All-wise); and the third Ölrún, daughter of Kjar of Valland. The brothers took them to their house. Egil got Ölrún; Slagfinn, Svan-white; and Völund, All-wise. There they dwelt for seven winters; after which the women went to visit battle-fields, and did not return. Then Egil went on snow-shoes to look for Ölrún, and Slagfinn for Svan-white, while Völund remained in Ulfdal. He was the most skilled smith that is spoken of in ancient Sagas. King Nidud had him captured, as is told in the song” (Völundar Kvida).</div>
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Helga Kvida gives an account of how Sigrun, a Valkyria, betrothed herself to Helgi, and of how she comes with other Valkyrias to protect him. Their appearance is thus described:—</div>
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Then gleams flashed</div>
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From Logafjöll,</div>
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And from those gleams</div>
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Came lightning;</div>
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The high ones rode helmet-clad</div>
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Down on the Himinvangar;</div>
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Their brynjas were</div>
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Blood-bespattered,</div>
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And from their spears</div>
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Sprang rays of light.</div>
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Early (in the day) asked</div>
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From the wolf-lair</div>
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The <i>dögling</i> (the king) about this</div>
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The southern disir</div>
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If they would home</div>
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With hilding</div>
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That night go;</div>
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There had been clang of bowstrings.</div>
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But from the horse</div>
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The daughter of Högni (Sigrun)</div>
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Hushed the clatter of shields;</div>
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She said to the king,</div>
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I think we have</div>
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Other work to do</div>
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Than drink beer</div>
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With the ring-breaker. (Helgi)</div>
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Compiled from sources in the public domain. </div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-62328406513031625792017-10-13T08:22:00.001-07:002017-10-13T08:22:10.909-07:00Shadow in a Timeless Myth presents Contemporary Observances On Queen Victoria<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7aEPrAqPp9JklebqAlc2nPevoqAOwjRG0gtlBYO_YFgKcTXTO7Zmu1pM19ORb4KWpcOACdLLpgcXBwm_WRkn8YkhoaY2AhuuKht1JSayqopqYB2xfjnbJvZ1GHks52mPJLDjBon2lRrDf/s1600/illus11.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="234" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7aEPrAqPp9JklebqAlc2nPevoqAOwjRG0gtlBYO_YFgKcTXTO7Zmu1pM19ORb4KWpcOACdLLpgcXBwm_WRkn8YkhoaY2AhuuKht1JSayqopqYB2xfjnbJvZ1GHks52mPJLDjBon2lRrDf/s1600/illus11.jpg" /></a></div>
Stories of Queen Victoria contemporary to her lifetime, which just goes to prove that speculation, titillating gossip and yellow journalism have always been popular.<br />
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In regard to Victoria, Queen of England, the reason why silence is kept in relation to her private life is because of a sneaking regard for the manners, customs, and good opinions of titled individuals among most American travelers.<br />
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The Queen has been a good wife and mother, but in these two qualities she is more than equaled by thousands of American women. She is no better and no worse than the average married woman; has her faults, her weaknesses, and her good qualities, and it is among her own people that her failings find their loudest trumpeters.<br />
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In honestly dealing with these stories I shall not stop to give the gross yarns which are spun by the Jenkinses of the press, who make what they call an honest penny by chronicling all the loose street scandal that is poured into their ears.<br />
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The London Times, the leading paper of England, has on several occasions soundly berated the Queen for her continued seclusion from the public, her exalted position being, it is said, her only excuse, and subsequent to the death of Prince Albert this seclusion was continued so long that the shopkeepers and tradesmen who profit by the receptions, festivals, and gaieties of the court, were loud in their complaints of what they deemed to be an overstrained and extravagant grief.<br />
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Several leading modistes or dress makers were obliged to give up business, owing to the Queen having closed her drawing rooms; murmuring loudly that they had been ruined by her Majesty, as their principal business was to make dresses for the ladies of rank who have nothing else to do but go to balls, parties, and drawing-room receptions when invited. Indeed for the past three years there has been a growing dissatisfaction with her Majesty, and sad stories are told of that royal lady in the English capital—chiefly the shopkeepers were enraged—although this class of people are usually the most loyal—then the Fenian affair came and was added as fuel to the general discontent.<br />
But the worst remains to be told, and it is with no feeling of pleasure that I am compelled to lift the veil.<br />
<div class="sidenote">
<br /></div>
The story is everywhere prevalent that the seclusion of the Queen is owing to her fondness for liquor; this statement has never been openly promulgated in the papers, but is continually hinted at obscurely in the more liberal organs. It is boldly spoken of by private individuals that the temper of her<span class="pagenum"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="Page_52" name="Page_52"> </a></span>Majesty has of late years become very irascible and is sometimes ungovernable, and the cause is attributed to drink and its consequent delirium which has seized upon this unfortunate lady.<br />
<br />
I was told by a clergyman who had it direct from the wife of a former chaplain of her Majesty, that the Queen was in the habit of drinking half a pint of raw liquor per day. The effects of these liberal potations are making visible havoc in her once comely face. I saw her thrice, and her inflamed face and swollen eyes gave her all the appearance of an inebriate. Perhaps the trouble caused by her scapegrace of a son, the Prince of Wales, who, without doubt, is as reckless a scamp as ever existed, has had much to do with his mother's present condition, and has driven her to drinking.<br />
<br />
It is also notorious that the Queen has chosen for her body servant one John Brown, a raw boned, robust, and coarse Highlander, and clings to him with more warmth and tenacity than becomes a lady who carried her sorrow for a deceased husband previously to such an extravagant pitch.<br />
<br />
This John Brown whom I saw is over six feet in height, a powerful looking fellow; but he has a face that would find favor in the eyes of very few women. He was formerly a body servant of Prince Albert, and was always an attendant on him in his hunting and fishing excursions. The Queen took notice of him at Balmoral, her summer residence in Scotland, and here she made a great pet of him.<br />
After the death of Prince Albert the Queen attached Brown to her person, and ever since he has constantly attended her.<br />
<br />
It is the custom of the Queen to have herself pushed around the grounds of her lodge at Balmoral in a perambulator or hand carriage when she visits that charming spot.<br />
<br />
The person selected for this duty was the lucky John Brown. Day after day he might be seen pushing around the spacious lawn, the Majesty of England.<br />
<br />
<div class="sidenote">
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During her hours of idleness Brown is always allowed to converse with the Queen in a familiar manner, and it is said presumes on her gracious condescension more than her noblest subject would dare to do.</div>
<br />
<div class="center">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="illus12" name="illus12"></a></div>
<div class="caption">
JOHN BROWN EXERCISING THE QUEEN.</div>
<div class="caption">
<br /></div>
When the Queen takes her seat in her perambulator it might often occur that a servant would spring forward with a lowly reverence to assist the royal lady, but in every instance the unfortunate flunkey would receive a rebuking frown, and in a moment after might have to undergo the mortification of a sneering laugh from Brown, who at this crisis would make his appearance—strolling in a leisurely fashion toward the perambulator, and stretching his long Celtic legs, his arms full of warm wraps in which he proceeds to enfold the person of the Queen, with as much seeming fondness as if he were the husband instead of the low lackey of royalty, without polish and breeding; then in addition to the silent rebuke of the Queen the offending servant would hear from Brown some such remark as "I say my douce laddie, dinna ya offer yer sarvices till her<span class="pagenum"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="Page_54" name="Page_54"> </a></span>Majesty asks ya fur them. Dinna ye be sticking yer finger in till anoother mun's haggis or ye moon be scalded."<br />
<br />
"That will do Brown," the Queen would say to prevent a scene which would be sure to take place were Brown's violent temper not curbed in time to prevent an explosion, for the tall Highland gillie is no respecter of persons, and cares very little for royalty except in the person of its chief representative.<br />
<br />
It is a current anecdote in the Pall Mall clubs, that the Queen's cousin, the Duke of Cambridge, who is also the commander-in-chief of the British Army, having one day desired an audience with the Queen of a private nature, waited upon her at Buckingham Palace and presented his card like any other private citizen. He was desired to wait, and did so until he became tired, and finally he was admitted to the presence, and was somewhat astonished to find the servant, John Brown, in the room.<br />
<br />
The Duke being a member of the royal family did not hesitate to say to her majesty in a respectful way: "Will your Majesty be so kind as to ask your footman to leave the saloon, I desire to speak to you on a matter of importance, privately."<br />
<br />
"Very well, you may speak without intrusion," said the Queen, turning her head slightly to the window where her servant stood with his back turned coolly upon the Queen's cousin, "there is no one here but Brown, he is very discreet."<br />
<br />
<div class="sidenote">
</div>
Finding that the Highlander could not be prevailed upon to leave the room, the Duke made a virtue of necessity and proceeded to state the purport of his visit. The Queen engaged in conversation with her cousin, and some minutes having elapsed the conversation turned upon different subjects. The Duke was relating a joke about the Clubs for the edification of the Queen, in which a noble person was made to assume a ridiculous position, when all at once he was interrupted with a peal of coarse and irreverent laughter, which rang through the apartments, and the Duke turning around with a thrill of<span class="pagenum"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" id="Page_55" name="Page_55"> </a></span> horror and astonishment, heard Brown scream out while he held his sides to contain his mad mirth:<br />
"Oh! oh! What a d—d fule that fellow must have been."<br />
<br />
The Duke for a moment stood petrified with horror, an unpleasant tremor ran down the small of his back, and then being seized with a sudden idea, he took his hat and making a low reverence left the apartment as the Queen said in an irritable tone:<br />
"Oh! never mind, it's only Brown."<br />
<br />
The story was too good to keep, and in a few days it was known all over London.<br />
<br />
On the day that the Queen opened Blackfriars bridge she rode in a state carriage with Brown behind her, and the act was so flagrant that when the procession passed through the Strand, the Queen was openly hissed by the people who stood on the sidewalks and saw the burly form of the Scotsman in the carriage, so close to her Majesty.<br />
<br />
I leave facts to speak for themselves, there is no need of comment. The great rival of Punch is a paper called the Tomahawk, published in Fleet street, and which is edited with fearless ability. The chief artist is a Matthew Morgan who excels all others of his craft in London for the beauty and spirit of his cartoons. Well, one day the Tomahawk appeared with a large two paged cartoon, in which the queen was pictured in her perambulator, and the tall form of Brown behind pushing the vehicle, while he leaned over the back and looked with an affectionate leer into the face of the sovereign of England. There was no inscription at the bottom of the picture, but it was so truthful and telling, that every person who looked, saw the whole scandalous story at a glance. Three editions of this number of the Tomahawk were sold in a few days, and in the corner of the picture the daring artist did not hesitate to sign his initials, "M.M." It is sufficient to state that no proceedings were taken, nor was a suit of libel brought against the editors who publish the paper.<br />
<br />
I have here only recounted facts well known in England, and I set them down without malice or extenuation.<br />
<br />
The salary or income of Queen Victoria is, I believe, about five thousand two hundred dollars a day, including Sundays, for which she also receives her regular stipend. Like other sovereigns, she does not toil or spin, yet the people must pay the bills all the same. Being of a very economical and thrifty disposition, it is supposed that her Majesty will leave a fortune of many millions of pounds to her scapegrace son when she dies, that is to say, if he has common decency enough too wait for her decease, and ceases to outrage her feelings to much.<br />
<br />
Queen Victoria was born May 24th, 1819, and is consequently in her fifty-second year.<br />
<br />
Compiled from sources in the Public Domain.<br />
<br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-6674773639806668202017-10-07T07:16:00.004-07:002017-10-08T07:31:24.181-07:00Shadows in a Timeless Myth Presents The Ancient Tale of the Queen of the Night<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<h4>
</h4>
<b>The Queen of the Night - An Ancient Tale Revisited </b><br />
<br />
Once upon a time there was an old man who had three daughters. All of them were beautiful, but the youngest, whose name was Rosa, was not only more lovely, but also more amiable and more intelligent than the others. Jealous and envious exceedingly were the two sisters when they found that the fame of Rosa's beauty was greater than the fame of theirs. They, however, refused to believe that Rosa was really more lovely than they were, and they resolved to ask the Sun's opinion on the subject.<br />
<br />
So, one day at dawn, the sisters stood at their open window and cried, "Sun, shining Sun, who wanderest all over the world, say who is the most beautiful among our father's daughters?"<br />
<br />
The Sun replied, "I am beautiful, and you are both beautiful; but your youngest sister is the most beautiful of all."<br />
<br />
When the two girls heard this, they were beside themselves with anger and spite, and determined to get rid of the sister who so outshone them. Saying nothing to her of what the Sun had told them, they on the following day invited Rosa to accompany them to the wood to gather a salad of wild herbs for their father's dinner. The unsuspecting Rosa at once complied, took her basket, and set out with her sisters, who led her to a spot she had never before visited, a long way from her father's house, and surrounded on all sides by forest. When they were arrived, the eldest sister said, "Do thou, Rosa, gather all the herbs that are here; we will go a little farther on, and when we have filled our baskets we will return."<br />
<br />
The wicked girls, however, went straight home, abandoning Rosa to her fate. When some hours had passed, and she found that they did not return, she feared that she might, while seeking for the herbs, have wandered from the spot where her sisters had left her. Too innocent to suspect them of the wicked treachery of which they had been guilty, she only blamed herself for her carelessness, and wept bitterly at the thought of remaining all night alone in the wild and lonely wood.<br />
<br />
After a time the sun set, the twilight came and passed, and darkness fell. The birds ceased their songs, and the silence of the forest was broken only by the flutter of a bat or great gray moth, the melancholy hoot of an owl, and the faint little rustle made by the other flying and creeping things that come forth with the stars. Seated on a great tree-trunk, Rosa wept more and more bitterly as the darkness deepened, and no one came to her aid. Hours passed, the air grew chilly; and faint with hunger and cold, she was about to lay herself down to die, when suddenly a brilliant light, like the sparkling of many stars, shot through the wood and advanced toward the spot where she sat. It was the Queen of Night, who, attended by all her court, was returning to her palace after her usual journey, for it was now near dawn. Rosa, dazzled and frightened, covered her face with her hands, and wept more bitterly than ever. Attracted by the sound of her sobbing, the Radiant Lady approached the weeping girl, and in a kind and gentle voice asked how she came to be there. Rosa looked up, and, reassured by the benign countenance of the Queen of Night, told her story.<br />
"Come then and live with me, dear girl; I will be your mother, and you shall be my daughter," said the Queen, who knew perfectly well how it had all happened.<br />
<br />
Gladly the poor girl accompanied the Queen to her palace, and being, as we know, as amiable and intelligent as she was beautiful, her protectress soon became very fond of her, and did everything in her power to make her adopted daughter happy. She gave Rosa the keys of all her treasures, made her the mistress of her palace, and let her do whatever she pleased.<br />
<br />
But let us now leave this lucky girl with the Queen of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264"></span> Night for a little while, and return to her sisters. Though they fully believed she must either have perished of hunger or been devoured by wild beasts, they after a time, to make quite certain, went again to their window and cried, "Sun, shining Sun, who wanderest all over the world, tell us who is the most beautiful of our father's daughters?"<br />
<br />
The Sun replied as before, "I am beautiful, and you are both beautiful; but your youngest sister is the most beautiful of all."<br />
<br />
"But Rosa has long been dead!"<br />
<br />
"No," replied the Sun, "Rosa still lives, and she is in the palace of the Queen of Night."<br />
<br />
When the sisters heard this, their rage and spite knew no bounds. Long they consulted together as to the best means of bringing about her death; and finally these wicked girls decided to obtain from a witch of their acquaintance an enchanted kerchief which would make the person wearing it appear to be dead.<br />
<br />
Well, they set out, and presently arrived at the palace at an hour when they knew that the Queen of Night would be absent and they might find their sister alone. Rosa was delighted to see them, for though they had often been unkind to her, she loved her sisters very dearly, and welcoming them warmly, she offered them everything she had, and pressed them to remain. They, on their part, pretended to be overjoyed at finding again the sister they had mourned as lost, and congratulated her on her good fortune. When they had eaten and drunk of the good things she set before them, and were about to take their departure, the eldest sister produced from her basket the enchanted kerchief.<br />
"Here, dear Rosa," said she, "is a little present which we should like you to wear for our sakes. Let me pin it round your shoulders. Good-bye, dear!" she added, kissing her affectionately on both cheeks, "we will come and see you again before long and bring our father with us."<br />
<br />
"Do, dear sisters, and tell my dear father that I will go to see him as soon as my kind protectress may give me leave."<br />
<br />
Rosa watched her sisters from the window till they were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_265"></span> out of sight, and then turned to the embroidery-frame which she had laid aside on their arrival. She had not, however, made many stitches, before a feeling of faintness came over her; and letting her work slip from her hands, she fell back on the sofa and lost consciousness. When the Queen of Night came home, she went first, as was her wont, to the chamber of her dear adopted daughter, and finding her thus, she said, as she bent over the maiden and kissed her beautiful mouth, "She has tired herself, poor child, over that embroidery-frame; she is so industrious."<br />
<br />
<div class="heading">
</div>
<div class="figcenter">
</div>
But the beautiful lips were cold and white, and the maiden neither breathed nor stirred. Distracted with grief, the Queen of Night began to unfasten Rosa's dress in order to ascertain whether her death had been caused by the bite of some poisonous reptile, and while doing so, she observed that the kerchief on her shoulders was not one that her daughter was in the habit of wearing. When she had unpinned and taken it off, Rosa heaved a deep sigh, opened her eyes, and seeing the Queen bending over her, smiled and stretched out her arms to her dear mother, saying, "I must have slept a long time! Oh, I remember!" she added, "I was feeling faint and giddy and lay down, and, I suppose, fell asleep immediately, for I don't recollect anything else."<br />
<br />
"But where did you get this?" asked the Queen, picking up the kerchief from the floor. "I don't remember having given it to you."<br />
<br />
"Oh, I have not told you that I had a great pleasure yesterday. My sisters, who had thought me forever lost, found out where I was and came to see me, bringing this kerchief as a present. Is it not pretty?"<br />
These words told the Queen of Night the secret of the whole matter; but, not wishing to distress her daughter by acquainting her with her sisters' cruel perfidy, she only replied, "Yes, very pretty. Will you give it to me, Rosa? I should like to have it for myself."<br />
<br />
Rosa was naturally only too pleased to be able to give her kind protectress something in return for all her favors; and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266"> </span>she also promised her, though not without tears, never again to receive any visitors, not even her sisters, when she was left by herself in the palace.<br />
<br />
These wicked creatures in a little while again stood at their window and cried, "Sun, shining Sun, who wanderest the world over, say, is there now any one more beautiful than we are?"<br />
<br />
But the Sun only replied as before, "I am beautiful; you, too, are beautiful; but Rosa is the most beautiful of all!"<br />
<br />
The sisters looked at each other in dismay. "The kerchief has then failed," said the elder to the younger. "We must try some other method of getting rid of her."<br />
<br />
So the wretches went to the same old witch who had given them the magic kerchief, and got from her an enchanted sugar-plum. When at nightfall they again knocked at the door of the palace, the porter informed them that his mistress was absent, and had given orders that the palace-gates were not to be opened until her return. They, however, saw Rosa at her window, and pretending to be greatly distressed at their exclusion, asked her at least to accept from them the delicious sugar-plum which they had brought for her.<br />
<br />
"Let down a basket," said the eldest; "I will put the sugar-plum inside, and you can draw it up."<br />
Rosa did so, and drew up the sweetmeat.<br />
<br />
"Taste it at once," cried the second sister, "and if you like it, we will bring you more of the same kind."<br />
<br />
The poor girl, suspecting no evil, put the sugar-plum into her mouth; but scarcely had she tasted it, than she fell back as if dead; and her sisters, seeing this, hurried away home.<br />
<br />
When the Queen returned and again found her favorite lifeless, she was both grieved and angry. All her servants, however, when questioned, assured her that no one had entered the palace during her absence, and that Rosa's sisters had only been allowed to speak to her from a distance as she stood at her high window. In the hope of bringing her to life again, as on the previous occasion, the Queen of Night searched every fold of the maiden's dress, but in vain; she could not discover the fatal charm.<br />
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267"><br /></span> "Perhaps," said she to herself, as she sat and gazed on the lifeless features of her adopted daughter, "what I can not discover, chance may, and I could never bring myself to bury her, dead though she seems to be."<br />
<br />
So the grieving Queen sent for a cunning workman, who made at her orders a coffer of silver; and after dressing Rosa in her most beautiful clothes and jewels, she laid her in it, closed the lid, fastened the coffer on the back of a splendid horse, and let him loose to wander at will.<br />
<br />
The horse, following his fancy, carried his fair burden in a few hours' time into a neighboring country, the ruler of which was the handsomest man of his time; and this King, being that day out hunting with his court, happened to catch sight of the horse. Attracted by its beauty and fleetness, and by the strange shining burden it bore on its saddle, he approached, and seeing the animal to be masterless, he bade his people seize and lead it to the palace. The silver coffer the King caused to be carried into his bed-chamber, and there he opened it. Imagine, if you can, his surprise on seeing within the form of a beautiful maiden. Though apparently lifeless, she was more lovely than any living woman he had ever beheld, and his heart became filled with such ardent love for her that he would sit for hours together gazing upon her beautiful features, neglecting duties and pleasures alike; and when his ministers came and prayed him to accompany them to the council chamber, he only said,<br />
"Go, I pray you, and do justice in my name."<br />
<br />
Days passed, his gentlemen tried to tempt him out hunting, but again he only replied, "Do you go without me."<br />
<br />
The royal cooks vied with one another in preparing the most delicious dishes for his table; but these he hardly tasted, nor did he even appear to notice what he was eating. When this state of things had continued for some days the ministers became alarmed, and sent a messenger to inform the Queen-Mother, who was away at her country palace. She came with all speed, and was much distressed to find her son so dispirited and melancholy. To all her anxious inquiries,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_268"></span> however, he only replied that he was quite well, but preferred to remain alone in his bed-chamber. The Queen had, of course, already heard from the courtiers the story of the riderless horse and the silver chest; and she rightly guessed that her son had been bewitched by what he had found in it, and determined to discover what this might be.<br />
<br />
So the very next day, while the King was at dinner with his vizier, his mother went to his chamber—for she had a master-key that would open all the doors in the palace—and there, extended on the divan, she saw the silver chest. Going hastily up to it, she raised the lid which the King had closed before leaving. At first she could only gaze in astonishment at the wonderful beauty of the maiden lying within; but her admiration presently changed to anger when she thought of her son; and seizing poor Rosa by her long hair, she dragged her out of the coffer and shook her violently, saying, "You wicked dead thing! Why are you not decently buried instead of wandering about casting spells on Princes?" But as the Queen shook her the enchanted sugar-plum was jerked out of Rosa's mouth, and she immediately came to life again, and gazed around her in bewilderment. And as she opened her large, lovely eyes, the Queen's anger passed away, and she embraced and kissed Rosa tenderly, weeping with delight the while. The poor girl was so astonished by the strangeness of everything around her, that it was some minutes before she could ask:<br />
<br />
"Where am I, noble lady, and where is my dear mother?"<br />
<br />
"I know not, my child, but I will be your mother. For you shall marry my son, the King, who is dying for love of you."<br />
<br />
As she spoke, footsteps were heard at the door, and the King entered. Imagine, if you can, his amazement and joy at finding, seated on the divan by his mother's side, the maiden he loved so dearly, restored to life, and twenty times lovelier than before. Not to make too long a story of it, the King took her by the hand, and asked her to be his wife. And when Rosa heard of his love for her, and saw how handsome and noble he was, she could not but love him in return. So<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269"></span> they were married with great splendor, and there were feasts for the poor, and fountains running honey and wine, and rejoicings for everybody.<br />
<br />
Well, the King and Rosa lived very happily together for some time; but her troubles were not over, for her wicked sisters had not yet done their worst to her. They had for long feared to go near the palace again, and nearly a year passed before they learned what had been the result of their last visit. One day, however, in order to make quite sure that Rosa was dead, they once more stood at their window, and cried,<br />
<br />
"Sun, shining Sun, who wanderest all over the earth, tell us if thou hast, since our youngest sister died, seen any maiden fairer than we?"<br />
<br />
But the Sun only replied as before, "I am beautiful; you, too, are both beautiful; but your youngest sister is the fairest of all."<br />
<br />
"But Rosa is dead!"<br />
<br />
"No, Rosa lives, and she is the wife of the King of the neighboring country."<br />
<br />
Well, if these wicked women could not bear that their sister should be considered fairer than they, still less could they allow her to be a Queen. So, disguised as two old women, they set off at once for Rosa's palace. When they arrived in the royal city, great rejoicings were going on because a baby prince had just been born.<br />
<br />
"That is good news," said the elder to the younger when she heard this, "for now we will be the nurses." So they went to the Queen-Mother and gave themselves out to be wonderfully clever nurses from the neighboring country who had nursed the princes there; and the Queen-Mother, deceived by their story, put them in charge of her daughter-in-law and the baby. On the pretext of keeping the young Queen and her child free from evil spells, the make-believe nurses sent away all the other attendants from her apartments; and when they were left alone with their sister, they stack into her head an enchanted pin.<br />
<br />
She was immediately changed into a bird, and flew away<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270"></span> out of the window; and her eldest sister laid herself down on her bed in her place.<br />
<br />
When the King came in to see his wife, he could hardly believe his eyes. This could not be his wife. The false Queen, guessing his thoughts, said,<br />
<br />
"You find me changed, dear husband? It is because I have been so ill."<br />
<br />
The King, however, pretended not to have observed anything, but his heart froze within him as he looked on the object of this pretended transformation.<br />
<br />
It was his custom to breakfast alone every day in the garden; and one day while he was sadly musing there, a pretty bird flew down, perched on a branch overhead, and said, "Tell me, my lord, have the King, and the Queen-Mother, and the little Prince slept well?"<br />
<br />
The King smiled and nodded, and the bird continued, "May they ever sleep sweetly. But may she whom they call the young Queen sleep the sleep that knows no waking, and may all things over which I fly wither away!"<br />
<br />
This said, the bird spread its wings, and wherever it passed, the grass and flowers withered, and the place became a desert. The gardeners, in despair, asked the King if they might not kill the bird which caused the mischief; but he forbade them, on pain of death, to do it any injury.<br />
<br />
Afterward the bird came every day while he was at breakfast in the garden; and the kind voice of the Prince soon made it so tame and fearless that it would perch on his knee and eat from his hand. This familiarity enabled the Prince to observe the bird's plumage more closely, and one day he caught sight of the pin in its head. Surprised at this, he ventured to withdraw it, when the bird disappeared, and his own dear wife stood again by his side. When he had recovered a little from the joy and surprise caused by this strange event, and had welcomed his wife back, he asked her to tell how it had all happened. And Rosa, whose eyes were now fully opened to the malice and wickedness of her sisters, told him all she knew of her own adventures.<br />
<br />
When the Prince had learned the evil deeds of his sisters-in-law,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_271"></span> he bade his guards bring these wretches before him, and condemned them both to a death suitable to their crimes. In vain did Rosa entreat him to pardon them. The King was inexorable. But when, at sunset, the criminals were being led away to execution, the Queen of Night appeared on the scene, followed by all her train; and touched by the distress of her adopted daughter, she prevailed upon the King to change the sentence he had pronounced. The two evil-doers were then offered the choice of dying a violent death, or living to witness their sister's happiness while deprived of the power of ever again being able to injure her.<br />
<br />
They chose the latter fate; and it was not long before they both died of spite and jealousy.<br />
<br />
Compiled from sources in the public domain.<br />
<br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"></span> <span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Smiles & Good Fortune,</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Teresa</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">************************************</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity, to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-5110500680198598332017-08-06T13:30:00.000-07:002017-08-06T13:30:16.409-07:00Shadows In A Timeless Myth Presents Two Gems Of Historical Misogyny Circa 1841 <i><b>THE LADY WITH THE SPECTACLES</b></i><br />
<br />
<b>A historical reference that greatly predates Dorothy Parker's famous quip, </b><br />
<b>"Men seldom make passes</b><br />
<b> At girls who wear glasses." </b><br />
<br />
Beauty in spectacles is like Cupid in knee breeches, or the
Graces with pocket handkerchiefs—an excrescence of refinement;
an innovation of the ideas which spiritualize woman
into a goddess; a philosophical blossom of the “march of
mind.” Beauty in spectacles! and has it come to this?<br />
<br />
Burke said that the age of chivalry was past, and publishers
say that the age of poetry has followed it; powder and periwigs
destroyed the one, and spectacles have gone far to annihilate
the other. Think of the queen of beauty of some
tournament—thanks to my Lord Eglintoun for making such
words familiar to us—looking on the encountering knights
through a patent pair of spectacles!—picture to yourself a
beautiful and romantic young lady parting from her lover,
taking the “first long lingering kiss of love,” as pretty Miss
Pardoe terms it, and just imagine the figure the spectacles
would cut in such an encounter; think of Mary Queen of
Scots, Lady Jane Grey, Scott’s “Jewess,” or Shakspeare’s
“Lady Macbeth,” with such appendages!<br />
<br />
I think of a heroine
in a novel taking off her spectacles to shed “salt tears” for
her lover’s absence, or in the emotion of a distressing juncture
throwing herself at the feet of some obdurate tyrant,
breaking the lenses of her “sight preservers;” think of all
this, and judge of the effect which spectacles, as an ornament,
have upon romance.<br />
<br />
Beauty has three stages—the coy, the
dignified, and the intellectual. The first exists until about
twenty, the second until twenty-five, and the last until beauty
has made unto itself wings and flown away. It is in this last
stage that women wear spectacles.<br />
<br />
The symptoms of spectacles
begin at an early age. The young Miss has a primness,
a staidness, and a miniature severity of aspect, at
variance from her years. They never seem young; there
is no freshness of heart in them: they become women faster
than other girls, and become old faster than other women;
they are remarkable for thin lips, sharp noses, and white
artificial teeth. They are walking strictures upon human
life—bleak visions of philosophy in petticoats—daughters, not
it would seem of love, but of Fellows of the Royal Society!
They are fond of phrenology and meetings of scientific associations.
They like a good pew in church, and write long
letters to their unfortunate “friends in the country.” They
are generally spinsters, or, if married, motherless. No young
wife with “six small children” ever wore spectacles. They
go a good deal into company, where they are seen seated on
sofas talking to ladies older than themselves, or turning over
the leaves of a book, and with interesting abstraction poring
over it. They dance quadrilles, but never waltz. Heaven
and earth! think of a pair of spectacles whirling in a waltz.
They have a genius for the “scholastic profession,” and frequently
exercise it as amateurs “never eat suppers;” and
are, many of them, members of the Horticultural Society.<br />
<br />
The lady with the spectacles! Half a century ago this would
have been understood to refer to some one stricken in years,
but now-a-days infirmity of eye-sight has been raised to the
rank of a charm. The moment spectacles become really
useful they are abandoned; it is the harmonious combination
of youth and short-sightedness which gives beauty to the
guise. Intense interest is expected to be felt towards her,
who, still young and lovely, abandons the frivolities of her sex
for the calm secluded pleasures of intellect. This is the point
our heroines aim at. But we have done with them. They
may be very good in their way, but their ways are not as our
ways. Flirts, coquettes, prudes, and a host of other orders
into which the sex are classified, have their failings, but they,
at least, are women; while the “lady with the spectacles”
seems hardly a daughter of Eve, but a mysterious being; a
new creation, come into the world to gladden the lovers of
modern science, and patronise the house of Solomons and Co.—<cite>Court
Gazette.</cite><br />
<cite> </cite><cite><b> </b></cite><br />
<cite></cite><br />
<cite></cite><br />
<div class="gap4">
<span class="smcap">Marriage.</span>—It is the happiest and most virtuous state of
society, in which the husband and wife set out early together,
make their property together, and with perfect sympathy of
soul graduate all their expenses, plans, calculations and desires,
with reference to their present means, and to their
future and common interest. Nothing delights me more than
to enter the neat little tenement of the young couple, who
within perhaps two or three years, without any resources but
their own knowledge or industry, have joined heart and hand,
and engage to share together the responsibilities, duties, interests,
trials, and pleasures of life. The industrious wife
is cheerfully employing her own hands in domestic duties,
putting her house in order, or mending her husband’s clothes,
or preparing the dinner, whilst, perhaps, the little darling sits
prattling upon the floor, or lies sleeping in the cradle—and
everything seems preparing to welcome the happiest of husbands
and the best of fathers, when he shall come from his
toil to enjoy the sweets of his little paradise. This is the true
domestic pleasure, the “only bliss that survived the fall.”
Health, contentment, love, abundance, and bright prospects,
are all here. But it has become a prevalent sentiment, that
a man must acquire his fortune before he marries—that the
wife must have no sympathy, nor share with him in the pursuit
of it, in which most of the pleasure truly consists; and
the young married people must set out with as large and expensive
an establishment as is becoming those who have been
wedded for 20 years. This is very unhappy. It fills the
community with bachelors, who are waiting to make their
fortunes, endangering virtue and promoting vice—it destroys
the true economy and design of the domestic institution, and
it promotes idleness and inefficiency among females, who are
expecting to be taken up by a fortune, and passively sustained,
without any care or concern on their part—and thus
many a wife becomes, as a gentleman once remarked, not a
“help-mate,” but a “help-eat.”—<cite>Winslow.</cite></div>
<div class="gap4">
<br /></div>
<div class="blockquote">
<br />
Compiled from sources in the public domain. <br />
</div>
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">(Shadows is also available at Barnes & Noble for the <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shadows-in-a-timeless-myth-teresa-thomas-bohannon/1113933396?ean=2940015745054" target="_blank">Nook</a>) </span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Smiles & Good Fortune,</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Teresa</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">************************************</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It
is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity,
to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W.
Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-55046423460885209622017-07-29T09:00:00.000-07:002017-07-29T09:00:05.966-07:00<br />
<h3>
Apollonius of Tyana reads your future</h3>
From <i>The Circus of Dr. Lao</i>, Charles G. Finney, 1935.
<br />
<hr />
The widow Mrs. Howard T. Cassan came to the circus
in her flimsey brown dress and her low shoes and went
direct to the fortuneteller's tent. She paid her mite and sat
down to hear her future.<br />
<br />
Apollonius warned her she
was going to be disappointed.<br />
<br />
"Not if you tell me the truth," said Mrs. Cassan. "I
particularly want to know how soon oil is going to be
found on that twenty acres of mine in New Mexico."<br />
<br />
"Never," said the seer.<br />
<br />
"Well, then, when shall I be married again?"<br />
<br />
"Never," said the seer.<br />
<br />
"Very well. What sort of man will next come into my
life?"<br />
<br />
"There will be no more men in your life," said the seer.<br />
<br />
"Well, what in the world is the use of my living then,
if I'm not going to be rich, not going to be married again,
not going to know any more men?"<br />
<br />
"I don't know," confessed the prophet. "I only read
futures. I don't evaluate them."<br />
<br />
"Well, I paid you. Read my future."<br />
<br />
"Tomorrow will be like today, and day after tomorrow
will be like the day before yesterday," said Apollonius.
"I see your remaining days each as quiet, tedious
collections of hours. You will not travel anywhere. You
will think no new thoughts. You will experience no new
passions. Older you will become but not wiser. Stiffer but
not more dignified. Childless you are, and childless you
shall remain. Of that suppleness you once commanded in
your youth, of that strange simplicity which once attracted
a few men to you, neither endures, nor shall you
recapture any of them any more. People will talk to you
and visit with you out of sentiment or pity, not because
you have anything to offer them. Have you ever seen an
old cornstalk turning brown, dying, but refusing to fall
over, upon which stray birds alight now and then, hardly
remarking what it is they perch on? That is you. I cannot
fathom your place in life's economy. A living thing
should either create or destroy according to its capacity
and caprice, but you, you do neither. You only live on
dreaming of the nice things you would like to have happen
to you but which never happen; and you wonder
vaguely why the young lives about you which you occasionally
chide for a fancied impropriety never listen to
you and seem to flee at your approach. When you die you
will be buried and forgotton, and that is all. The morticians
will enclose you in a worm-proof casket, thus sealing
even unto eternity the clay of your uselessness. And
for all the good or evil, creation or destruction, that your
living might have accomplished, you might just as well
have never lived at all. I cannot see the purpose in such a
life. I can see in it only vulgar, shocking waste."<br />
<br />
"I thought you said you didn't evaluate lives," snapped
Mrs. Cassan.<br />
<br />
"I'm not evaluating; I'm only wondering. Now you
dream of an oil well to be found on twenty acres of land
you own in New Mexico. There is no oil there. You dream
of some tall, dark, handsome man to come wooing you.
There is no man coming, dark, tall, or otherwise. And
yet you will dream on in spite of all I tell you; dream on
through your little round of hours, sewing and rocking
and gossiping and dreaming; and the world spins and spins
and spins. Children are born, grow up, accomplish, sicken,
and die; you sit and rock and sew and gossip and live on.
And you have a voice in the government, and enough
people voting the same way you vote could change the
face of the world. There is something terrible in that
thought. But your individual opinion on any subject in
the world is absolutely worthless. No, I cannot fathom the
reason for your existence."<br />
<br />
"I didn't pay you to fathom me. Just tell me my future
and let it go at that."<br />
<br />
I have been telling you your future! Why don't you
listen? Do you want to know how many more times you
will eat lettuce or boiled eggs? Shall I enumerate the
instances you will yell good-morning to your neighbor
across the fence? Must I tell you how many more times
you will buy stockings, attend church, go to moving
picture shows? Shall I make a list showing how many
more gallons of water in the future you will boil making
tea, how many more combinations of cards will fall to you
at auction bridge, how often the telephone will ring in
your remaining years? Do you want to know how many
more times you will scold the paper-carrier for not leaving
your copy in the spot that irks you the least? Must I tell you
how many more times you will become annoyed at the
weather because it rains of fails to rain according to your
wishes? Shall I compute the pounds of pennies you will
save shopping at bargain centers? Do you want to know
all that? For that is your future, doing the same small
futile things you have done for the last fifty-eight years.
You face a repetition of your past, a recapitulation of the
digits in the adding machine of your days. Save only one
bright numeral, perhaps: there was love of a sort in your
past; there is none in your future."<br />
<br />
"Well, I must say, you are the strangest fortuneteller
I ever visited."<br />
<br />
"It is my misfortune only to be able to tell the truth."<br />
<br />
"Were you ever in love?"<br />
<br />
"Of course. But why do you ask?"<br />
<br />
"There is a strange fascination about your brutal frankness.
I could imagine a girl, or an experienced woman,
rather, throwing herself at your feet."<br />
<br />
"There was a girl, but she never threw herself at my
feet. I threw myself at hers."<br />
<br />
"What did she do?"<br />
<br />
"She laughed."<br />
<br />
"Did she hurt you?"<br />
<br />
"Yes. But nothing has hurt me very much since."<br />
<br />
"I knew it! I knew a man of your terrible intenseness
had been hurt by some woman sometime.<br />
<br />
Women can do
that to a man, can't they?"<br />
<br />
"I suppose so."<br />
<br />
"You poor, poor man! You are not so very much older
than I am, are you? I, too, have been hurt. Why couldn't
we be friends, or more than friends, perhaps, and together
patch up the torn shreds of our lives? I think I could understand
you and comfort and care fir you."<br />
<br />
"Madam, I am nearly two thousand years old., and all
that time I have been a bachelor. It is too late to start over
again."<br />
<br />
"Oh, you are being so delightfully foolish! I love whimsical
talk! We would get on splendidly, you and I; I am
sure of it!"<br />
<br />
"I'm not. I told you there were no more men in your
life. Don't try to make me eat my own words, please. The
consultation is ended. Good afternoon."<br />
<br />
She started to say more, but there was no longer anyone
to talk to. Apollonius had vanished with that suddenness
commanded by only the most practiced magicians. Mrs.
Cassan went out into the blaze of sunshine. There she
encountered Luther and Kate. It was then precisely ten
minutes before Kate's petrification.<br />
<br />
"My dear," said Mrs. Cassan to Kate, "that fortuneteller
is the most magnetic man I ever met in my whole life. I
am going to see him again this evening."<br />
<br />
"What did he say about the oil?" asked Luther.<br />
<br />
"Oh, he was frightfully encouraging," said Mrs. Cassan.<br />
<br />
Compiled from sources in the public domain. <br />
<br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Please take a moment to "Like" <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006QAWQMI" target="_blank">Shadows In A Timeless Myth</a> on Amazon. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">(Shadows is also available at Barnes & Noble for the <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shadows-in-a-timeless-myth-teresa-thomas-bohannon/1113933396?ean=2940015745054" target="_blank">Nook</a>) </span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Complimentary<a href="http://www.spunsilk.com/ATrystInTymeByTeresaThomasBohannon.pdf" target="_blank"> Shadows In A Timeless Myth</a> Short Story </span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Smiles & Good Fortune,</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Teresa</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">************************************</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It
is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity,
to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W.
Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3479792750561355323.post-63209190873766449892017-07-22T11:55:00.000-07:002017-07-23T13:16:20.202-07:00Shadows In A Timeless Myth Presents Roxelana, The Murderous Sultana<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrjE0B8Mu4lLWpr7OraUkON7yebmYOdoM0tKnScOqPzf3uIOwYRDjaR-wpafqYBQ57Iog_2zg0RfXJpy7iIwXoyshY0EvTupNWGrUXo6ta76fvRqriXphpzPvC0OHdD4jLIIAFAPiB7jP7/s1600/Roxalana.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="875" data-original-width="684" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrjE0B8Mu4lLWpr7OraUkON7yebmYOdoM0tKnScOqPzf3uIOwYRDjaR-wpafqYBQ57Iog_2zg0RfXJpy7iIwXoyshY0EvTupNWGrUXo6ta76fvRqriXphpzPvC0OHdD4jLIIAFAPiB7jP7/s200/Roxalana.jpg" width="156" /></a></div>
Ibrahim, Grand Vizier, was the only trusted counselor of Suleiman the Magnificient. He
who had been originally a slave had risen step by step in the favour of his
master until he arrived at the giddy eminence which he occupied at the time
of his death. It is a somewhat curious commentary on the essentially
democratic status of an autocracy that a man could thus rise to a position
second only to that of the autocrat himself; and, in all probability,
wielding quite as much power.<br />
<br />
Ibrahim had for years been treated by Suleiman more as a brother than as a
dependent, which, in spite of his Grand Viziership, he was in fact. They
lived in the very closest communion, taking their meals together, and even
sleeping in the same room, Suleiman, a man of high intelligence himself, and
a ruler who kept in touch with all the happenings which arose in his
immense dominions, desiring always to have at hand the<span class="pagenum"></span> man whom he loved;
from whom, with his amazing grip of political problems and endless
fertility of resource, he was certain of sympathy and sound advice. But in
an oriental despotism there are other forces at work besides those of <i>la
haute politique</i>, and Ibrahim had one deadly enemy who was sworn to compass
his destruction. The Sultana Roxelana was the light of the harem of the
Grand Turk. This supremely beautiful woman, originally a Russian slave, was
the object of the most passionate devotion on the part of Suleiman; but she
was as ambitious as she was lovely, and brooked no rival in the affections
of Suleiman, be that person man, woman, or child. In her hands the master of
millions, the despot whose nod was death, became a submissive slave; the
undisciplined passions of this headstrong woman swept aside from her path
all those whom she suspected of sharing her influence, in no matter how
remote a fashion. At her dictation had Suleiman caused to be murdered his
son Mustafa, a youth of the brightest promise, because, in his intelligence
and his winning ways he threatened to eclipse Selim, the son of Roxelana
herself.<br />
<br />
This woman possessed a strong natural intelligence, albeit she was totally
uneducated; she saw and knew that Ibrahim was all-powerful with her lover,
and this roused her jealousy to fever-heat. She was not possessed of a cool
judgment, which would have told her that Ibrahim was a statesman dealing
with the external affairs of the Sublime Porte, and that with her and with
her affairs he neither desired, nor had he the power, to interfere.<span class="pagenum"></span> What,
however, the Sultana did know was that in these same affairs of State her
opinion was dust in the balance when weighed against that of the Grand
Vizier.<br />
<br />
Suleiman had that true attribute of supreme greatness, the unerring aptitude
for the choice of the right man. He had picked out Ibrahim from among his
immense entourage, and never once had he regretted his choice. As time went
on and the intellect and power of the man became more and more revealed to
his master, that sovereign left in his hands even such matters as despots
are apt to guard most jealously. We have seen how, in spite of the
murmurings of the whole of his capital, and the almost insubordinate
attitude of his navy, he had persevered in the appointment of Kheyr-ed-Din
Barbarossa, because the judgment of Ibrahim was in favour of its being
carried out. This, to Roxelana, was gall and wormwood; well she knew that,
as long as the Grand Vizier lived, her sovereignty was at best but a
divided one. There was a point at which her blandishments stopped short;
this was when she found that her opinion did not coincide with that of the
minister. She was, as we have seen in the instance of her son, not a woman
to stick at trifles, and she decided that Ibrahim must die.<br />
<br />
There could be no hole-and-corner business about this; he must die, and
when his murder had been accomplished she would boldly avow to her lover
what she had done and take the consequences, believing in her power over
him to come scatheless out of the adventure. In those days, when human life
was so cheap, she might have<span class="pagenum"></span> asked for the death of almost any one, and her
whim would have been gratified by a lover who had not hesitated to put to
death his own son at her dictation. But with Ibrahim it was another matter;
he was the familiar of the Sultan, his <i>alter ego</i> in fact. It says much
for the nerve of the Sultana that she dared so greatly on this memorable
and lamentable occasion.<br />
<br />
On March 5th, 1536, Ibrahim, went to the royal seraglio, and, following his
ancient custom, was admitted to the table of his master, sleeping after the
meal at his side. At least so it was supposed, but none knew save those
engaged in the murder what passed on that fatal night; the next day his
dead body lay in the house of the Sultan.<br />
<br />
Across the floor of jasper, in that palace which was a fitting residence
for one rightly known as “The Magnificent,” the blood of Ibrahim flowed to
the feet of Roxelana. The disordered clothing, the terrible expression of
the face of the dead man, the gaping wounds which he had received, bore
witness that there had taken place a grim struggle before that iron frame
and splendid intellect had been levelled with the dust. This much leaked
out afterwards, as such things will leak out, and then the Sultana took Suleiman into her chamber and gazed up into his eyes. The man was stunned by
the immensity of the calamity which had befallen him and his kingdom, but
his manhood availed him not against the wiles of this Circe. Ibrahim had
been foully done to death in his own palace, and this woman clinging so
lovingly around his neck now was the murderess. The heart’s blood of his
best friend was coagulating on the threshold of his own apartment when he
forgave her by whom his murder had been accomplished. This was the
vengeance of Roxelana, and who shall say that it was not complete?<br />
<br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">(Shadows is also available at Barnes & Noble for the <a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shadows-in-a-timeless-myth-teresa-thomas-bohannon/1113933396?ean=2940015745054" target="_blank">Nook</a>) </span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Complimentary<a href="http://www.spunsilk.com/ATrystInTymeByTeresaThomasBohannon.pdf" target="_blank"> Shadows In A Timeless Myth</a> Short Story </span><br />
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<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;"></span>
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Smiles & Good Fortune,</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">Teresa</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">************************************</span><br />
<span style="color: #073763; font-size: x-small;">It
is not wealth one asks for, but just enough to preserve one’s dignity,
to work unhampered, to be generous, frank and independent. W.
Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) Of Human Bondage, 1915</span>Teresa Thomas Bohannonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07168835091832993119noreply@blogger.com0