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the amber of their perfect satisfaction
Sep. 6th, 2023 10:37 amI wrote another fic, oh dear me. (Best writing motivation: have a playlist of my favorite pieces/songs and only permit myself to listen to it when I’m writing.) This one is entirely thanks to elenothar, who got me to watch Under the Skin; about 8K worth of my favorite character (Lu Haizhou) plus Shen Yi, Du Cheng and ensemble.
In other fannish news, the Guardian Wishlist is still open for signups (or for creating things without signing up). Also I owe a bunch of DW comments that I haven’t gotten to yet…
Speaking of music, here’s my obscure-composer-of-the-moment recommendation, Quartet No. 1 by Vitězslav Novak: introduced to me posthumously by Taka and I think it’s very good indeed. His CD (not the recording linked here, sadly pre-YouTube) pairs it with Beethoven’s Opus 130, which needs no introduction.
Another project, not fannish, that I’m thinking about. Would people be interested in reading a collection of biographical notes on prewar Japanese women (and occasionally Korean/Taiwanese/etc.), posted one person at a time weekly or so to a Dreamwidth account? Specifics: “prewar” here is my catch-all term for the Meiji, Taisho, and early Showa periods, ie 1868 or thereabouts through 1945 ditto. I have a list of about 200 women who were active in that period, including novelists, doctors, murderers, religious figures, educators, activists, actresses, poets, politicians, and princesses, among others. Some lived past the three-figure mark, others didn’t even make it to twenty but made themselves remembered anyway.
Each entry would probably range from 500 to 1500 words or so, based largely on the various reference books I own (from various eras and standpoints, so I wouldn’t guarantee absolute historical accuracy, but it should come pretty close). Potted history of the woman in question and brief discussions of important historical issues/events relevant to her life; as many links as possible among entries, to create a cross-referenceable collection. Hopefully interesting to read as well as informative!
Reading Emily Post on etiquette via Gutenberg, as one does, and being struck here and there by her turn of phrase.
[I]t is unnecessary to add that none but vulgarians would employ a butler (or any other house servant) who wears a mustache! To have him open the door collarless and in shirt-sleeves is scarcely worse!
A head can be shaken politely or rudely. To be courteously polite, and yet keep one's walls up is a thing every thoroughbred person knows how to do—and a thing that everyone who is trying to become such must learn to do.Rules for online interactions?
Introspective people who are fearful of others, fearful of themselves, are never successfully popular hosts or hostesses. If you for instance, are one of these, if you are really afraid of knowing some one who might some day prove unpleasant, if you are such a snob that you can't take people at their face value, then why make the effort to bother with people at all? Why not shut your front door tight and pull down the blinds and, sitting before a mirror in your own drawing-room, order tea for two? Yes, why not? Sounds nice to me.
The endeavor of a hostess, when seating her table, is to put those together who are likely to be interesting to each other. Professor Bugge might bore you to tears, but Mrs. Entomoid would probably delight in him; just as Mr. Stocksan Bonds and Mrs. Rich would probably have interests in common. Here I feel “Professor Bugge” is obviously Enrique Borgos. Would the intervention of Emily Vorpost have saved Miles’ disastrous dinner party?
One inexorable rule of etiquette is that you must talk to your next door neighbor at a dinner table. You must, that is all there is about it! Even if you are placed next to some one with whom you have had a bitter quarrel, consideration for your hostess ,,, and further consideration for the rest of the table exacts that you give no outward sign of your repugnance and that you make a pretence at least for a little while, of talking together. At dinner once, Mrs. Toplofty, finding herself next to a man she quite openly despised, said to him with apparent placidity, "I shall not talk to you—because I don't care to. But for the sake of my hostess I shall say my multiplication tables. Twice one are two, twice two are four——" and she continued on through the tables, making him alternate them with her. As soon as she politely could she turned again to her other companion. Making him alternate them with her!!
A very young girl may motor around the country alone with a man, with her father's consent, or sit with him on the rocks by the sea or on a log in the woods; but she must not sit with him in a restaurant. All of which is about as upside down as it can very well be.
If [a baby] cries in church it just has to cry! …It is trying to a young mother who is proud of her baby's looks, to go to no end of trouble to get exquisite clothes for it, and ask all her friends in, and then have it look exactly like a tragedy mask carved in a beet!
No one declined [to spend a week “camping out” with few amenities], not even the Worldlys, though there is a fly in the amber of their perfect satisfaction. Mrs. Kindhart wrote "not to bring a maid." Mrs. Worldly is very much disturbed, because she cannot do her hair herself. Mr. Worldly is even more perturbed at the thought of going without his valet. He has never in the twenty years since he left college been twenty-four hours away from Ernest. He knows perfectly well that Ernest is not expected. But he means to take him—he will say nothing about it; he can surely find a place for Ernest to stay somewhere. Result: Ernest was found a place to stay, made himself supremely useful, and was specifically invited back the next year. Mr. Worldly/Ernest?
The difference though, between letter-writers of the past and of the present, is that in other days they all tried to write, and to express themselves the very best they knew how—to-day people don't care a bit whether they write well or ill. Plus ça change…
Never put a single clinging tentacle into writing. No comment.
A very beautiful Chicago woman who is always perfectly dressed for every occasion, worked out the cost of her own clothes this way: On a sheet of paper, thumb-tacked on the inside of her closet door, she put a complete typewritten list of her dresses and hats, and the cost of each. Every time she put on a dress she made a pencil mark. By and by when a dress was discarded, she divided the cost of it by the number of times it had been worn. In this way she found out accurately which were her cheapest and which her most expensive clothes.This actually sounds kind of practical! Maybe not for evening dresses, but you know.
And if you happen to like to be talked to by strangers, and if they in turn like to talk to you, it can not be said that there is any rule of etiquette against it.
Photos: crepe myrtle/百日紅, which is nice this time of year but very hard to photograph well. Also a grape arbor, the gas bulbs and a passing train, an old house, some stealth figs, a deco-tora, and a lurking cat.
Be safe and well.
In other fannish news, the Guardian Wishlist is still open for signups (or for creating things without signing up). Also I owe a bunch of DW comments that I haven’t gotten to yet…
Speaking of music, here’s my obscure-composer-of-the-moment recommendation, Quartet No. 1 by Vitězslav Novak: introduced to me posthumously by Taka and I think it’s very good indeed. His CD (not the recording linked here, sadly pre-YouTube) pairs it with Beethoven’s Opus 130, which needs no introduction.
Another project, not fannish, that I’m thinking about. Would people be interested in reading a collection of biographical notes on prewar Japanese women (and occasionally Korean/Taiwanese/etc.), posted one person at a time weekly or so to a Dreamwidth account? Specifics: “prewar” here is my catch-all term for the Meiji, Taisho, and early Showa periods, ie 1868 or thereabouts through 1945 ditto. I have a list of about 200 women who were active in that period, including novelists, doctors, murderers, religious figures, educators, activists, actresses, poets, politicians, and princesses, among others. Some lived past the three-figure mark, others didn’t even make it to twenty but made themselves remembered anyway.
Each entry would probably range from 500 to 1500 words or so, based largely on the various reference books I own (from various eras and standpoints, so I wouldn’t guarantee absolute historical accuracy, but it should come pretty close). Potted history of the woman in question and brief discussions of important historical issues/events relevant to her life; as many links as possible among entries, to create a cross-referenceable collection. Hopefully interesting to read as well as informative!
Reading Emily Post on etiquette via Gutenberg, as one does, and being struck here and there by her turn of phrase.
Lengthy selection from Emily Post, with occasional commentary
It would seem that the variability of the weather was purposely devised to furnish mankind with unfailing material for conversation.[I]t is unnecessary to add that none but vulgarians would employ a butler (or any other house servant) who wears a mustache! To have him open the door collarless and in shirt-sleeves is scarcely worse!
A head can be shaken politely or rudely. To be courteously polite, and yet keep one's walls up is a thing every thoroughbred person knows how to do—and a thing that everyone who is trying to become such must learn to do.Rules for online interactions?
Introspective people who are fearful of others, fearful of themselves, are never successfully popular hosts or hostesses. If you for instance, are one of these, if you are really afraid of knowing some one who might some day prove unpleasant, if you are such a snob that you can't take people at their face value, then why make the effort to bother with people at all? Why not shut your front door tight and pull down the blinds and, sitting before a mirror in your own drawing-room, order tea for two? Yes, why not? Sounds nice to me.
The endeavor of a hostess, when seating her table, is to put those together who are likely to be interesting to each other. Professor Bugge might bore you to tears, but Mrs. Entomoid would probably delight in him; just as Mr. Stocksan Bonds and Mrs. Rich would probably have interests in common. Here I feel “Professor Bugge” is obviously Enrique Borgos. Would the intervention of Emily Vorpost have saved Miles’ disastrous dinner party?
One inexorable rule of etiquette is that you must talk to your next door neighbor at a dinner table. You must, that is all there is about it! Even if you are placed next to some one with whom you have had a bitter quarrel, consideration for your hostess ,,, and further consideration for the rest of the table exacts that you give no outward sign of your repugnance and that you make a pretence at least for a little while, of talking together. At dinner once, Mrs. Toplofty, finding herself next to a man she quite openly despised, said to him with apparent placidity, "I shall not talk to you—because I don't care to. But for the sake of my hostess I shall say my multiplication tables. Twice one are two, twice two are four——" and she continued on through the tables, making him alternate them with her. As soon as she politely could she turned again to her other companion. Making him alternate them with her!!
A very young girl may motor around the country alone with a man, with her father's consent, or sit with him on the rocks by the sea or on a log in the woods; but she must not sit with him in a restaurant. All of which is about as upside down as it can very well be.
If [a baby] cries in church it just has to cry! …It is trying to a young mother who is proud of her baby's looks, to go to no end of trouble to get exquisite clothes for it, and ask all her friends in, and then have it look exactly like a tragedy mask carved in a beet!
No one declined [to spend a week “camping out” with few amenities], not even the Worldlys, though there is a fly in the amber of their perfect satisfaction. Mrs. Kindhart wrote "not to bring a maid." Mrs. Worldly is very much disturbed, because she cannot do her hair herself. Mr. Worldly is even more perturbed at the thought of going without his valet. He has never in the twenty years since he left college been twenty-four hours away from Ernest. He knows perfectly well that Ernest is not expected. But he means to take him—he will say nothing about it; he can surely find a place for Ernest to stay somewhere. Result: Ernest was found a place to stay, made himself supremely useful, and was specifically invited back the next year. Mr. Worldly/Ernest?
The difference though, between letter-writers of the past and of the present, is that in other days they all tried to write, and to express themselves the very best they knew how—to-day people don't care a bit whether they write well or ill. Plus ça change…
Never put a single clinging tentacle into writing. No comment.
A very beautiful Chicago woman who is always perfectly dressed for every occasion, worked out the cost of her own clothes this way: On a sheet of paper, thumb-tacked on the inside of her closet door, she put a complete typewritten list of her dresses and hats, and the cost of each. Every time she put on a dress she made a pencil mark. By and by when a dress was discarded, she divided the cost of it by the number of times it had been worn. In this way she found out accurately which were her cheapest and which her most expensive clothes.This actually sounds kind of practical! Maybe not for evening dresses, but you know.
And if you happen to like to be talked to by strangers, and if they in turn like to talk to you, it can not be said that there is any rule of etiquette against it.
Photos: crepe myrtle/百日紅, which is nice this time of year but very hard to photograph well. Also a grape arbor, the gas bulbs and a passing train, an old house, some stealth figs, a deco-tora, and a lurking cat.
Be safe and well.
