Thackeray
"The wicked are wicked, no doubt, and they go astray and they fall, and they come by their deserts; but who can tell the mischief which the very virtuous do?"
That's Thackeray for you, and it's his birthday today -- he was born in Calcutta in 1811. I couldn't find anything that sounded good at the moment in my Victorian Cookbook -- though it's got nice things in it, they all just sounded too stodgy today. So, obeying a colonialist impulse, we're having curried shrimp.
And we'll read a bit out of Vanity Fair -- I should take it out again; I used to reread it every 10 years or so, but I haven't looked at it in a while. Back when the BBC was going through its "let's film every Victorian novel ever written" stage, they showed a TV version that was pretty entertaining -- the baby watched the first part of it with me, and was SCANDALIZED by Becky Sharp, as indeed we all should be -- in his case, though, it was because she actually threw a book out the window of a moving carriage. A BOOK, I tell you. How evil is that! All her sexual shenanigans and greediness made him no never mind. She threw a book out of a window. That's all he needed to know.
Surely that's one of the ways you can recognize a future serial killer, right? Torments playmates, tortures animals, throws books out of windows?
As for the knitting content today: Go here for Thackeray's rendition of yarn-winding and its relationship to spider-like behavior, and here for Thackeray's illustration of how some sort of needlework -- he doesn't seem to care much exactly of what sort it is -- can be used in later stages of courtship.
Yes, I think I'll go reread Thackeray. Clear-eyed but charitable view of the foibles of the humans, and a nice solid sense of humor.
That's Thackeray for you, and it's his birthday today -- he was born in Calcutta in 1811. I couldn't find anything that sounded good at the moment in my Victorian Cookbook -- though it's got nice things in it, they all just sounded too stodgy today. So, obeying a colonialist impulse, we're having curried shrimp.
And we'll read a bit out of Vanity Fair -- I should take it out again; I used to reread it every 10 years or so, but I haven't looked at it in a while. Back when the BBC was going through its "let's film every Victorian novel ever written" stage, they showed a TV version that was pretty entertaining -- the baby watched the first part of it with me, and was SCANDALIZED by Becky Sharp, as indeed we all should be -- in his case, though, it was because she actually threw a book out the window of a moving carriage. A BOOK, I tell you. How evil is that! All her sexual shenanigans and greediness made him no never mind. She threw a book out of a window. That's all he needed to know.
Surely that's one of the ways you can recognize a future serial killer, right? Torments playmates, tortures animals, throws books out of windows?
As for the knitting content today: Go here for Thackeray's rendition of yarn-winding and its relationship to spider-like behavior, and here for Thackeray's illustration of how some sort of needlework -- he doesn't seem to care much exactly of what sort it is -- can be used in later stages of courtship.
Yes, I think I'll go reread Thackeray. Clear-eyed but charitable view of the foibles of the humans, and a nice solid sense of humor.
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