Reading: Anna's Lucidity and Shakespeare, Cymbeline

Moving: walked to work.

Listened: up to John Softsword

30 August 2001: Another intervention

In January I needed an intervention for Jane Austen continuations. Today I'm worse. Though it shouldn't've taken me the right book to start walking to work again, at least I did start walking again (three of four days this week). The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England, edited by Antonia Fraser. Sure it's only a sketch, but I always get Stephen and Henry I confused and the Stuarts and Hanoverian kings barely exist in my head--they're like the presidents between Grant and Teddy Roosevelt: you mean there were any?*--so I need to start with at least a sketch.

*An exaggeration, but I know only their social aspects. I know Garfield was assassinated and so was McKinley; I know primitive air-conditioning was invented to relieve McKinley's feverish sufferings after being shot; I know Cleveland was the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms. I have vague ideas about Reconstruction, a silver crash, and a war that William Randolph Hearst invented that starred Rough Riders, but that's about it.

Willy, Willy, Harry, Ste
Harry, Dick, John, Harry Three
One, Two, Three Neds, Richard Two,
Harry Four, Five, Six, then who?
Edward Four, Five, Dick the Bad
Harrys twain, and Ned the lad
Mary, Bessie, James the Vain
Charlie, Charlie, James again.
William and Mary, Anna in Gloria
Four Georges, William, and Victoria.
Edward Seven was next and soon
We'll put George Five upon the throne.

That was the poem as I lifted it from Madeleine L'Engle's The Other Side of the Sun. A character recites it to her husband, who makes up a version for his own family. I love this book for two reasons: its autobiographical geneaology and the maiden aunts taunting each other with Shakespeare.

When I came back from the library with this, I ran into Lou and Minne in the lobby and flourished my treasure. Lou asked me to tell her when I finished it, because she had some questions. Why wait? She had confused Mary Tudor and Mary Stuart. That was easy. Also she had forgotten the title of the recent mystery about Edward V (Daughter of Time). I get the Lancastrians and the Yorks confused too, and I have work to backward from Shakespeare writing badly of Richard III because he belonged to the family that didn't result in the Tudors, upon whose patronage under Elizabeth he, Shakespeare, relied.

Anyway, I mentioned that there was this great rhyming poem, a hundred years old, to help you keep everyone straight. Looking for it online (have I said yet today how much I love the web?), I found that lines have been added for a century's worth of monarchs. Badly, I'd say: the original version has at least three and as many as six monarchs per line, but the new lines aren't nearly as efficient and lack the rigorous cadence:

...
Four Georges, William, and Victoria
Edward Seven next, and then
George the fifth in 1910;
Ned the eighth soon abdicated
Then George Six was coronated;
After which Elizabeth
And that's all folks until her death.

whose last line is too American

or

...
Four Georges, William, and Victoria
Edward Seven, then George Five,
But Edward Eight preferred his wife.
George the Sixth did then arrive
And Lizzie Two is still alive.

or

...
Four Georges, William and Victoria,
Edward, George, then Ned the eighth
quickly goes and abdicat'th,
leaving George, then Liz the second,
and with Charlie next it's reckoned.

That's the way our monarchs lie
since Harold got it in the eye!

PS. Sorry, Lady Jane Grey Ð you got the chop!

The last is clearly superior, since it mentions Harold Goodwin and poor puppet Lady Jane, and gets us up to Charles (III).

Anyway (there's no question still that I need an intervention?), today I went into Evil Barnes & Noble to look for a fabboo purple pen or trois to use in France. No pens, but I bought a book: National Portrait Gallery History of the Kings and Queens of England. Which is as sketchy (ha! the book is published by the National Portrait Gallery! I slay me!) as my audio book, but includes the Anglo-Saxon and Danish kings (portraits of whom simply abound, natch), and family trees. Of course the audio book can't have family trees.

I found myself, not for the first time, wishing I was Lyra. Lyra could see the many meanings of the 36 symbols on her alethiometer, and hold them in their various layers in her mind, in order to ask questions and learn answers. Family trees, howevermuch they try, can be only two dimensional, and three orders of descent from one person vary so much in age (one of my first cousins was already a grandmother when I was born) and it's just not fair. If Mr. Murry and Charles Wallace could built a model of a tesseract, surely I can build a model of a family tree.

When I brought it back to work, I showed the book to Lou, who opened it greedily and flipped its pages. She asked if I could name the eight wives of Henry VIII.
I said, "Six."
She said, "No, eight," and I gestured at the page with miniatures of each of the wives. I didn't want to contradict her, but I was right, after all. Was pointing a subtler way than insisting, "No, six, damn it!" Or maybe I should have just rattled them off and figured she would notice it herself.
But anyway, she saw her mistake. "Why do I always think there are eight, then?"
"Because their husband was the eighth? Another poem for you: divorced, beheaded, died, / divorced, beheaded, survived."

Late Minne came into my office and picked it up herself, and I suggested I keep it at work for a while--I'm betting CoolBoss will want to look at it too. We're all interested, apparently, but I've got consumption.

Don't mess with me about Tudor gossip. Tudor gossip, Jane Austen, and children's books: I don't know much, but by golly I know them.

D'you think it's possible I could rewatch "Becket," "The Lion in Winter," "Henry V," "Richard III," "Anne of a Thousand Days," "A Man for All Seasons," "Lady Jane," "Elizabeth" and "Mary of Scotland" in the next nine days? (i.e., before we leave)

Nine days! Comedic gold, I am. Tee hee. I would if Jane's nine-day reign be the origin of the prhase "nine days' wonder"?

P.S. That's "A Man for All Seasons" with Paul Scofield, not the Charlton Heston hack spew version, and "Mary of Scotland" starring Katharine Hepburn is superior to "Mary Queen of Scots." Sorry, Vanessa Redgrave.