Friends

Queer Non-Monogamy in Edwardian London.

Author of article does point out that this is happening among people with huge amounts of privilege and possibilities of discretion:

[I]t is certainly easy to romanticise the traditions of lavender marriages and queer non-monogamy that were so prevalent in the London arts scene during the Belle Epoch. However, to over-simplify the past in this way would be to overlook the many tensions that existed between queer couples, as well as the growing interest in alternative relationship structures within heterosexual participants in this scene. Most importantly, however, it would be a failure not to take into consideration the considerable inequalities that allowed the rich and the powerful to live by a double-standard of sexual propriety. Provided they avoided relationships that troubled other structures like class and race, this group remained free from the expected social and legal repercussions of queer sex in the early twentieth century.

Does she not realise quite how much This Sort of Thing - negotiating the boundaries of marriages that were made for various reasons of status, money, and politics, to accommodate other relationships - had been going on For A Very Long Time, and has she not seen that movie about the Duchess of Devonshire in the late C18th? (Which included sapphic dalliance.)

Will concede (she concedes) that a) Lords Strachan and Warwick did not seem on-board with their Ladies' sapphic dalliance (see icon), though the issue there does seem to have been they had not been sufficiently Pas Devant the wrong kind of people who would gossip and go away to make satirical prints sold in Piccadilly and b) the whole thing probably got even more discreet in the Victorian era, though when one considers Edward the Caresser's set, did it do so by very much?

I once, in fact, I think, put forward an argument that Bertrand Russell, e.g., in his arguments for free love, was proposing to democratise a way of life his family had been practising for generations.

Take five books off your bookshelf: I took 5 fairly random books from the various piles around the room I am in.

First sentence from Book no 1: 'Two women had arranged to have tea together, in the flat of one of them which was in a rather distant and not so fashionable quarter of the Left Bank'.

Last sentence from page 50 of Book no 2 -- last sentence on page fifty: 'Eleanor wrote that their great difficulty would be in managing their first break with their friends'.

Second sentence on page 100 of Book no 3: 'Canfield was polite, softening his rejection by saying if Sybille were to write a full-length novel one day he would be pleased to read it'.

Next to the last sentence on p 150 of book no 4: 'Because it's true, you know--he's not like any of them, he's completely alien to that whole bright, corrupt court'.

Final sentence of book 5: 'We have many more evenings before us if we want them'.

Make these sentences into a paragraph:

Two women had arranged to have tea together, in the flat of one of them which was in a rather distant and not so fashionable quarter of the Left Bank. Eleanor wrote that their great difficulty would be in managing their first break with their friends. Canfield was polite, softening his rejection by saying if Sybille were to write a full-length novel one day he would be pleased to read it. Because it's true, you know--he's not like any of them, he's completely alien to that whole bright, corrupt court. We have many more evenings before us if we want them.

1: Beyond This Limit: Selected Shorter Fiction of Naomi Mitchison (I skipped the editorial introduction.)
2. Mary Gordon, Chase of the Wild Goose (about the Ladies of Llangollen).
3. Selina Hastings, Sybille Bedford: an appetite for life
4. Pamela Dean, Tam Lin
4. Barbara Pym, Jane and Prudence.

Last week's bread held out pretty well.

Grocery delivery came early enough that I had time to get going dough + tomato topping for a sardegnera for Friday night supper, with Salame Milano added before baking.

Saturday breakfast rolls: adaptable soft rolls recipe, 4:1 white spelt/dark rye flour, dried blueberries.

As I was going to an afternoon gathering chez coughingbear and hano, and time did not permit of making foccaccia, I made cornbread (plain white flour + baking powder, half and half with mixture of fine/coarse cornmeal, since sourcing medium cornmeal remains impossible) to take instead.

Today's lunch: had seabass fillets, and for the wild variety, cooked them thus, which worked quite well, served with baby Jersey Royal potatoes roasted in goosefat and asparagus steamed and splashed with lime butter.

Dr rdrz are by now aware that one way to irk the hedjog is to compile lists of the 100 Greatest Novels that Everybody Should Read.

Especially when a) you go culturally woezing:

Never has such a list been more needed. Dwindling attention spans, screens, Netflix; whatever we blame, reading for pleasure is a dying pursuit. Half of adults in the UK say they never read, and levels among children and young people are at their lowest in 20 years. This year has been declared the National Year of Reading to address this crisis. “Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all,” Henry David Thoreau advised. We are here to help.

And b) in There Is A History, the article actually admits that These Lists Change Over Time!!! and certain 'Big Beasts' who were considered Timelessly Major Urgent Phalluses some decades ago are Out! Out! Out!

Is anything more wearisome than the implicit 'should' that haunts these lists?

I am so there for this apercu:

But where is Nancy Mitford’s glittering 1945 The Pursuit of Love, which deserves a place for its last two lines alone? The comic novel, like science fiction and crime, rarely fares well in bookish horse races.

Personally, we would not take reading advice from Mr Thoreau to begin with, and we sit here, hymning the work of those presses that are recovering the neglected and overlooked (perhaps overlooked is better than 'forgotten', I mutter to myself) works from the past that do not make the big bowwow lists like this - Furrowed Middlebrow, Persephone, British Library Women Writers and the mother of them all, Virago.

I was intrigued to see this report: London's Wellcome Collection returns 2,000 manuscripts to the Jain community given that that is a repository I know well although not a part of the collections with which I was particularly acquainted.

I was also a bit taken aback to see that there is a Centre of Jain Studies at the University of Birmingham, though on a spot of further looking around I find that there is also a Jain Ashram in Birmingham. (Not of as great antiquity as the Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking, f. 1889, and featuring in HG Wells' The War of the Worlds.)

It is a religious tradition particularly associated with non-violence.

While one might think that this collection of South Asian origin might return there: article points out that there are hardly any Jains left in Pakistan, where a significant tranche of the mss came from. I also wonder - it is not mentioned in the article - what is the position of Jainism at present in India. Some sources I have looked at suggest it is relatively assimilated to Hinduism? The article refers to them as a 'fragmented community'.

The Wikipedia article does suggest that they have a long tradition of being involved in commerce, banking and trade, and founding an array of philanthropic enterprises, including libraries....

Honestly, have we become entirely blase about walruses frolicking in British territorial waters? Because this was the first I had heard about Magnus, who has been making quite the tour of Scotland for the past month before wafting off to Noroway o'er the faem: Magnus the wandering walrus leaves Scotland for Norway.

Goo-goo-ja-{YAWN}.

***

However, much more excitement over Choughs reappear at Tintagel Castle in Cornwall after decades of absence:

Choughs are considered Cornwall’s “national bird” and feature in its coat of arms but vanished as a resident from the far south-west of the UK in the early 1970s, largely because of the decline of their grazed clifftop habitat.
Their disappearance was keenly felt across Cornwall but particularly, perhaps, in and around Tintagel because of the bird’s connections to the legend of King Arthur.

***

Cockrow Bridge in Surrey will open in the coming weeks to provide wildlife, including lizards and insects, with the ability to move between fragmented habitats:

The bridge itself is a floating patch of nature reserve; its contents were excavated and transplanted from the heathland on either side. Heather, the tough wiry shrub that defines heathland, is already springing up in purples and yellows above the A3’s roar, supporting the area’s insects and reptiles.
“They can feed here, get cover, they can bask, they can breed,” says Herd. Ground-nesting birds, such as nightjars, woodlarks and Dartford warblers, will also benefit from the newly connected landscape.

But alas, Camden Highline, London’s answer to New York park, is scrapped. Though it's not entirely clear whether the completed stretch will remain?

One stretch of the Highline has been completed as part of the Coal Drops Yard development, involving a bridge across the Regent’s canal from the Camley Street nature reserve that transforms into a landscaped walkway popular with office workers and tourists.

(Mix and shake that metaphor and pour it over ice and serve it up with a wee paper umbrella!)

Somebody today on Another Site was mourning the Old Days on LJ which made me think of:

All the various Old Days in my life on and offline which were by their nature transient -

- but that transient didn't mean that they didn't have lasting effects/influence.

(I will spare dr rdrz accounts of various short-lived initiatives I encountered among the archives and in the course of Mi Researchez which nonetheless echoed down the years.)

Also that even had things not fallen out the way things did with LJ (hiss, boo, etc) by now it would almost certainly not be the same experience as it was in the 00s - people would have come, people would have gone, our interests and energies would have changed....

So we would probably be nostalgically regetting the glory days before [whenever].

Having spent a fair amount of time last week finally doing some prep for forthcoming talk on condomz - well, at least pulling together existing visuals from former presentations and digging up a few fresh items to create suitable slides - get message that advance bookings are being very laggardly (apparently a problem with event programme generally?) and they may have to cancel.

SIGH, though I feel this is not lost work and may very well come in useful at some time.

And of course they may not have to cancel, bookings may pick up I suppose.

In rather more cheery news, a little while ago I bopped off an enquiry to The Academic Press with which I published The Co-authored Volume, since I have not heard from them for many a year, and in spite of the fact that lo, 'tis over twenty years now since it burst upon the world, it is still in print. (And still getting cited, yay.)

And I must say their website was a bit of a nightmare to navigate and I ended up sending a plaintive message to a very generic enquiry email as I could not find any other relevant one to apply to.

Behold, I have heard from an Accounts person that they sent a cheque to Former Workplace in 2020 (hah!) which was never cashed, surprise - what between lockdown and the various staff upheavals I was not at all astonished to hear this - but they have now sent me a statement of the royalties accruing (a very modest sum) and asking for my bank details.

Which is better than a bat in the eye with a burnt stick, do admit.

(I am not sure whether the royalties match up to the amounts earned for the same work via the Authors' Licensing and Copyright Society over the same period, but I am not sure that I am massively motivated to check.)

This week's bread: a Standen loaf, 4:1 strong brown/buckwheat flour, honey, Rayner's barleymalt extract, turned out nicely.

Saturday breakfast rolls: the ones more or less after James Beard's mother's raisin bread, more or less 50/50% Marriages Light Spelt Flour (end of bag) and Golden Wholegrain Flour, turned out quite well.

Today's lunch: as there were potatoes left from last week, made a gratin provencale sorta, served with slowcooked purple sprouting broccoli (this really needed even longer slow-cooking, was still fairly al dente) and padron peppers.