A Wish Comes True
Jun. 30th, 2015 02:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyJune books read
* The Silversmith's Wife - Sophia Tobin (2014)
Standard historical fiction; a bit bland. There's a chapter from the author's next book at the end, which seems to be a sequel of sorts that I'm not inclined to read, and it's called The Widow's Confession. Look out for my book, The Someone's Something, coming soon.
* The Lost Stradivarius - John Meade Falkner (1895)
Last month, The Nebuly Coat; this month, The Lost Stradivarius by the same author. This was quite good. The Coat was an odd little multi-genre book, but the Stradivarius is more straightforward: it's a Victorian ghost story based around the idea of a haunting melody. A haunting melody, do you see? A HAUNTING melody. John Meade Falkner must have been proud of himself for that.
This is the story of a young man who buys an old book of music and finds a violin, which leads him to a descent into MADNESS and maybe even DEPRAVITY. I think. The book says he "had twice passed the circle of the nous and enjoyed the fruition of the deity", so make of that what you will.
At one point he is ill, so his family feed him toast-and-water. Toast-and-water is not a nice piece of toast and a refreshing glass of water. No. It is so much less than that. Here is Mrs Beeton's recipe for it, in case you are caring for an invalid or are feeling a bit poorly yourself:
TO MAKE TOAST-AND-WATER
1876. INGREDIENTS.--A slice of bread, 1 quart of boiling water.
Mode.--Cut a slice from a stale loaf (a piece of hard crust is better than anything else for the purpose), toast it of a nice brown on every side, but do not allow it to burn or blacken. Put it into a jug, pour the boiling water over it, cover it closely, and let it remain until cold. When strained, it will be ready for use. Toast-and-water should always be made a short time before it is required, to enable it to get cold: if drunk in a tepid or lukewarm state, it is an exceedingly disagreeable beverage. If, as is sometimes the case, this drink is wanted in a hurry, put the toasted bread into a jug, and only just cover it with the boiling water; when this is cool, cold water may be added in the proportion required,--the toast-and-water strained; it will then be ready for use, and is more expeditiously prepared than by the above method. (From Victorian London)
Remember: Don't burn the toast or serve the drink lukewarm. That would be disagreeable.
According to the biographical notes at the start of this book, John Meade Falkner was an interesting chap. After graduating from university, he found a job as a tutor to the children of the vice-chairman of the Armstrong-Whitworth Aircraft company, who then offered him a job at his company. He worked his way up to becoming the chairman of the company during WWI. He was also a gentlemen scholar, doing amateur research into archaeology, folklore, palaeography, medieval history, architecture and church music. He receive a gold medal for his research from the Vatican, and was an Honorary Fellow at Hertford College, Oxford, Honorary Reader in Palaeography at Durham University and Honorary Librarian at Durham Cathedral. He also wrote a history of Oxfordshire, handbooks to that county and Berkshire, historical short stories and some mediaevalist verse. And he wrote three novels, two of which I have now read. Guess what else I've got lined up.
* Never Kiss a Man in a Canoe - Tanith Carey (2015)
Did I read this because of the title? Yes, I did. It's advice that applies to us all.
Basically, this is book of advice given by newspaper agony aunts from the late 1800s to 1960. That's all it is: page after page of advice. It was all very interesting, but it could have been more. As it was, you could trace changing opinions, but I felt that could have been drawn out with a bit more context. For example, there was some advice on parenting from 1870, giving a schedule for whipping your children. Start them off at one with two or three strokes with a light birch twig, gradually increasing the punishment. "Depend on it," the agony aunt advises, "children chastised systematically from a year old will seldom require the rod after ten." A few pages on and forty years later, the agony aunt says whipping is right out, and advises Mother to administer a regular dose of salts instead.
It did remind of something I often think when I watch period dramas, which is that the characters generally act as though they are modern people in old-fashioned clothes, when really they would probably do some very odd (to us) things. Next time you watch, say, Downton Abbey, imagine the characters following the advice they would have read in their contemporary magazines. For example, a young woman wanting to increase her bust was advised to take a regular course of cod liver oil and malt. A man suffering from what sounds like panic attacks was advised to "take a tumbler of hot cod liver oil mixed with rum before meals, five times a day, and every half-hour a good wineglass of Bloxter's Dyspeptic Elixir, alternating this with a quart of real turtle, water-gruel, or Fincher's Prepared Magnesia Paste... do not forget your hot mustard plunge-bath before going to bed every night." (I doubt that would cure his panic attacks, but it would almost certainly sap his will to live.)
My favourite advice: next time you watch characters preparing to going to a ball in 1900, imagine them painting blue veins on their arms with a mix of talc and powdered Prussian Blue.
* The Silversmith's Wife - Sophia Tobin (2014)
Standard historical fiction; a bit bland. There's a chapter from the author's next book at the end, which seems to be a sequel of sorts that I'm not inclined to read, and it's called The Widow's Confession. Look out for my book, The Someone's Something, coming soon.
* The Lost Stradivarius - John Meade Falkner (1895)
Last month, The Nebuly Coat; this month, The Lost Stradivarius by the same author. This was quite good. The Coat was an odd little multi-genre book, but the Stradivarius is more straightforward: it's a Victorian ghost story based around the idea of a haunting melody. A haunting melody, do you see? A HAUNTING melody. John Meade Falkner must have been proud of himself for that.
This is the story of a young man who buys an old book of music and finds a violin, which leads him to a descent into MADNESS and maybe even DEPRAVITY. I think. The book says he "had twice passed the circle of the nous and enjoyed the fruition of the deity", so make of that what you will.
At one point he is ill, so his family feed him toast-and-water. Toast-and-water is not a nice piece of toast and a refreshing glass of water. No. It is so much less than that. Here is Mrs Beeton's recipe for it, in case you are caring for an invalid or are feeling a bit poorly yourself:
TO MAKE TOAST-AND-WATER
1876. INGREDIENTS.--A slice of bread, 1 quart of boiling water.
Mode.--Cut a slice from a stale loaf (a piece of hard crust is better than anything else for the purpose), toast it of a nice brown on every side, but do not allow it to burn or blacken. Put it into a jug, pour the boiling water over it, cover it closely, and let it remain until cold. When strained, it will be ready for use. Toast-and-water should always be made a short time before it is required, to enable it to get cold: if drunk in a tepid or lukewarm state, it is an exceedingly disagreeable beverage. If, as is sometimes the case, this drink is wanted in a hurry, put the toasted bread into a jug, and only just cover it with the boiling water; when this is cool, cold water may be added in the proportion required,--the toast-and-water strained; it will then be ready for use, and is more expeditiously prepared than by the above method. (From Victorian London)
Remember: Don't burn the toast or serve the drink lukewarm. That would be disagreeable.
According to the biographical notes at the start of this book, John Meade Falkner was an interesting chap. After graduating from university, he found a job as a tutor to the children of the vice-chairman of the Armstrong-Whitworth Aircraft company, who then offered him a job at his company. He worked his way up to becoming the chairman of the company during WWI. He was also a gentlemen scholar, doing amateur research into archaeology, folklore, palaeography, medieval history, architecture and church music. He receive a gold medal for his research from the Vatican, and was an Honorary Fellow at Hertford College, Oxford, Honorary Reader in Palaeography at Durham University and Honorary Librarian at Durham Cathedral. He also wrote a history of Oxfordshire, handbooks to that county and Berkshire, historical short stories and some mediaevalist verse. And he wrote three novels, two of which I have now read. Guess what else I've got lined up.
* Never Kiss a Man in a Canoe - Tanith Carey (2015)
Did I read this because of the title? Yes, I did. It's advice that applies to us all.
Basically, this is book of advice given by newspaper agony aunts from the late 1800s to 1960. That's all it is: page after page of advice. It was all very interesting, but it could have been more. As it was, you could trace changing opinions, but I felt that could have been drawn out with a bit more context. For example, there was some advice on parenting from 1870, giving a schedule for whipping your children. Start them off at one with two or three strokes with a light birch twig, gradually increasing the punishment. "Depend on it," the agony aunt advises, "children chastised systematically from a year old will seldom require the rod after ten." A few pages on and forty years later, the agony aunt says whipping is right out, and advises Mother to administer a regular dose of salts instead.
It did remind of something I often think when I watch period dramas, which is that the characters generally act as though they are modern people in old-fashioned clothes, when really they would probably do some very odd (to us) things. Next time you watch, say, Downton Abbey, imagine the characters following the advice they would have read in their contemporary magazines. For example, a young woman wanting to increase her bust was advised to take a regular course of cod liver oil and malt. A man suffering from what sounds like panic attacks was advised to "take a tumbler of hot cod liver oil mixed with rum before meals, five times a day, and every half-hour a good wineglass of Bloxter's Dyspeptic Elixir, alternating this with a quart of real turtle, water-gruel, or Fincher's Prepared Magnesia Paste... do not forget your hot mustard plunge-bath before going to bed every night." (I doubt that would cure his panic attacks, but it would almost certainly sap his will to live.)
My favourite advice: next time you watch characters preparing to going to a ball in 1900, imagine them painting blue veins on their arms with a mix of talc and powdered Prussian Blue.