He gives Jo an orange and their fingers meet and we think on her behalf, "Oh my gosh I touched his THUMB!"
Such a Victorian moment. I had one once. Remember the scene in Age of Innocence when Daniel Day-Lewis is dreaming of unbuttoning Michelle Pfeiffer's glove? That was it exactly, I was even wearing gloves.
**********
Anyway that was not my point for writing today.
Hey, there has been a blue Rolls Royce parked outside my window aaallll week. No one has been near it. Do you think I should move in and declare squatter's rights on it???
Sorry! That was another tangent.
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I had such a nice day out! After two of my weekend plans fell through, I had to think of something, so I went to drool over Queen Maud's dress collection. (She was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, and daughter of the fashionable Alexandra, Princess of Wales. She married Prince Carl of Norway, second in line to the throne who became King Haakon.)From 1896 to 1938, she did not change dress size and had the most adorable waist. We're the same size! I want her dresses, her riding habits, her tea gowns...! They are exquisite.
Clicking on the picture will take you to a little slideshow.
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In the spirit of this post I will end with an email my former French teacher sent me:
Women are like apples on trees. The best ones are at the top of the tree.
Most men don't want to reach for the good ones because they are afraid of falling and getting hurt.
Instead, they just take the rotten apples from the ground that aren't as good, but easy to pick up...
The apples at the top think something is wrong with them, when in reality, they're amazing.
They just have to wait for the right man to come along, the one who's brave enough to climb all the way to the top of the tree.
Share this with other women who are good apples, even those who have already been picked.
Now men...men are like a fine wine.
They begin as grapes, and it's up to women to stomp the crap out of them until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with.
...I wonder if Maud ever had to stomp on Haakon ;)
28 comments:
haha Yes I have read the apples and grapes bit before. I think they are quite true sometimes.
I'm sure you could do a PhD in cynacism and the romatic period drama :) Would be more interesting than most PhD dissertations :)
Your grape quote reminded me on a bit in Stephen Fry's first novel, The Liar:
'I'm like a good wine" said Adrian.
"You improve with age?"
"No," said Adrian, "whenever I'm taken out I get drunk"
That's probably why men are like wine ;)
-- Anon INTJ
Caesura - yes, I don't usually post things like this, or forward them...
INTJ - Stephen Fry? I love that guy!
I'd run out of steam in the first two minutes of my tirade, probably couldn't even manage a BA in it...
Wow that dress collection must be something to see in person. I just took the short tour and they are wonderful. Number 6 is particularly stunning. Can you imagine the entrance one would make in that with a strand of pearls and white silk gloves? She was a dainty lady wasn’t she?
Have you seen any Tudor collections? I quite like Anne Boylin. For some reason she stands out as being stylish among women of that era. Someday I will visit Hampton Court and the Tudors of the Kent area. Wasn’t she from Kent? I forget.
Anyway, those are great dresses. Thaks for sharing them here.
There’s a bit of a resemblance between you and Maude besides being the same size, at least in this photo of her and your photo here.
Caesura - I'm heartily glad you appreciate the costume bit!
As for Anne Boleyn, she wasn't beautiful but she was captivating. That's always better isn't it? So she captivated the King. For some reason, to us moderns, she is probably the most alluring of Henry's wives - and her ghost is said to inhabit the haunted gallery at Hampton Court Palace. She was from Norfolk, and spent a few years in France. In fact, Boleyn is a nicer version of a mundane English name, Bullen, that I've noticed on some portraits. I know, ewwww.
Hey you posted that while I was writing the above.
Thanks for the comparison...hehehe...
Your full name is Olivia Cumberbatch-Bullen isn't it?...hehe.
Eeeeewwwwwwww that's hilariously nasty...!
Thanks for the nice comment Olivia. Please read my reply when you have time.
That name doesn't quite suit you.
Oh, I remember when we went to the gallery together. what beautiful dresses!!!!!
You would look good in those dresses.
Vanessa
yaa Oli.. three historical times i like the most:
1. the victorian in europ
2. the tesar and tsarena in russia
3. the ottoman empire in egypt.
and the common thing about the 3 , is the lady treatment. then ladies were something so unique in a special way.. GOSh i love it...
I want to be there sometime..
and the apple graps theory is soo cool.
Hey V
I'm glad you remember.
Blue
I know! Why can't we be treated like ladies? It's so confusing now to have equal rights and still a female wishing for attention.
I bet you the man is just as confused.
Vanessa
Vanessa
You're absolutely right. Looks as if we're all lost in the forest without a compass!
I wouldln't know this obviously, but I have a sneaking suspicion we have always been lost in the forest without a compass...lol. I'm glad we bump into each other though.
hi got here from another blog
Hey Steli, welcome back after your long weekend. You marched in with a comment after all!
Romanticism: have you ever read one of those Victorian novels?
Personally, I find the Queen Maud picture a bit too shallow and traditional for Van Leo.
"The Picture of Dorian Gray" is essentially a Victorian novel.
As are those by Thomas Hardy, the Bronte Sisters, George Eliot, Dickens, et al.
Some of them are laughable, but those might be the 3-penny novels which I've never read.
Oscar Wilde himself was a scandal! Many of his plays were banned or cancelled.
I don't think Wilde saw himself as typically Victorian. Even in Dorian Gray, some of the characters make disparaging comments on Victorian society, speaking as if they're outside observers of their own world. It was a surprise to me that they called their age "Victorian" even as they lived in it. Not leaving it to subsequent generations to name...
Some famous novels by the Bronte Sisters: Wuthering Heights, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Jane Eyre.
Thomas Hardy: Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Far from the Madding Crowd, Jude the Obscure.
All amazing classics. Some of them discuss shocking topics for the Victorians, and, for the Bronte's, books written by women. It's surprising.
De rien Steli. Bonne nuit.
oh, I need to catch up on my readings...
Vanessa
A bit off topic, but if you like Oscar Wilde I can recommend Saki's short stories which are in a similar style, just written a few years later (circa 1910ish if I remember correctly). The Clovis stories, which I'm reading at the moment, are my faves. However, just like Wilde, I find that you can saturate yourself if yuo read too much of their rich style of writing too quickly.
Don't think I've read any other Victorian works, and like you say Olivia, I suspect Wilde is atypical.
-- Anon INTJ
Hey Vanessa, yes! Read read read. I mean look at you, you've done Jane Austen! After that the rest is easy.
INTJ -
I may have tried a bit of Saki (ok, little pun) in high school. Thank you for the tip. Have you read O. Henry? I struggled a bit with him last month. (At the moment I am dragging myself through some Umberto Eco.)
Dear Oscar Wilde, I miss him right now. I love that rich style of writing but you're right, it's best to take a break so when you return, it's quite refreshing.
Hmm, women as apples. An irish female friend of mine compared women with pears, but I feel that that is wholly unfair.
Anyway, to extend the analogy further, far too many apples today are the insipid light green apples - all fashion - nature bent towards something eminently sellable but very bland in taste. Unfortunately there are too many apples like this around today, creatures little more than a shell reflecting what society dictates and no persobality at all.
What society needs are more proper apples, some a little sweet*, some more with a good, individual, strong taste, apples that say, 'I am me!'.
Apples need to be their own colour, not something decided for them.
* I'm trying hard to use 'bitter' in a positive context here. Bitter apples are great! They have such flavour when eaten with cheese and the little seriously sour crab-apples make the most incredible apple-jelly.
sean.
...please where can I buy a unicorn?
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