---------- Forwarded Message ----------
Date: 15 January 2003 00:00 -0500
From: Automatic digest processor <[log in to unmask]>
To: Recipients of VICTORIA digests <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: VICTORIA Digest - 13 Jan 2003 to 14 Jan 2003 (#2003-13)
There are 10 messages totalling 257 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. oysters (3)
2. atlantic post
3. Oysters (2)
4. Thanks
5. Ruskin and Artistic/Moral Greatness
6. Ruskin and artistic/moral greatness
7. clerks
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 08:28:14 -0000
From: Paul Lewis <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: oysters
Two references to oysters in Wilkie Collins's The Black Robe, the second of
which is rather obscure.
Romayne was plainly on his way to Boulogne. I gave him some useful
information. "Try the oysters," I said, "at the restaurant on the pier."
Consult your own taste, Father. After eating jelly, cream, and ice-pudding,
could you even _look_ at an oyster-omelet without shuddering? Would you
believe it? Her ladyship proposed to serve the omelet with the cheese.
Oysters, after sweets! I am not (as yet) a married woman--"
May I add - I know I have said it before - a reminder about
www.concordance.com which enables a search on the word 'oysters' (or indeed
any word or phrase!) in 1000 e-texted books including many from the 19C.
Dickens is a useful source of oysters and they are mentioned in Trollope,
Allcott, Galsworthy, Verne, Balzac, Dumas, Stevenson, Carroll, Reade, etc.
Paul
Paul Lewis
web www.paullewis.co.uk
tel 07836 217311
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 01:01:04 -0800
From: Sheldon Goldfarb <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: oysters
As William Craig Howes notes, you can find Dando the Oyster-Eater in
Thackeray's very early story, "The Professor" (reprinted in vol. 1 of the
Oxford Thackeray).
In the story, Dando, luckily for him, wins the heart of an oyster-monger's
daughter, and the climax of the story sees him devouring oysters in her
shop, leaving "a mighty pyramid" of oyster-shells at his feet.
In another Thackeray story, "Ottilia," found in _The Fitz-Boodle Papers_
(vol. 4 of the Oxford Thackeray) Fitz-Boodle disgustedly breaks off his
romantic relationship with Ottilia because he comes to realize that she is a
glutton. The final straw is when he discovers her eating rotten oysters.
He leaves that night.
Sheldon Goldfarb
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 11:21:15 -0000
From: Gill Culver <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: atlantic post
Richard,
In late response to your query, I am reliably informed by an expert in
postal history that the average time for a letter to reach New York from
London would have been 10 days. Speed would, however, have depended on the
route taken and the postal service used, as each strived to be the fastest
in order to monopolise this lucrative postal route.
Gill Culver
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 09:20:19 -0000
From: Chris Willis <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Oysters
Hi!
Maybe not quite what you're looking for, but I can't resist recommending
Sarah Waters' *Tipping the Velvet*!
Isn't there also a mention of oysters in "The Walrus and the Carpenter"?
All the best
Chris
================================================================
Chris Willis
[log in to unmask]
http://www.chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk/
http://www.hamrax.co.uk
"I have lived through two enormous world wars and other smaller ones; aged
three I wondered what the world would be like without a war. I have never
known, and now we are perilously close to another: my whole being cries
halt."
(Mary Wesley, d. 30 December 2002)
================================================================
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 09:21:32 -0000
From: Chris Willis <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Thanks
Hi!
Many thanks to everyone who replied to my appeal for a Shaw expert.
All the best
Chris
================================================================
Chris Willis
[log in to unmask]
http://www.chriswillis.freeserve.co.uk/
http://www.hamrax.co.uk
"I have lived through two enormous world wars and other smaller ones; aged
three I wondered what the world would be like without a war. I have never
known, and now we are perilously close to another: my whole being cries
halt."
(Mary Wesley, d. 30 December 2002)
================================================================
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 09:46:52 -0500
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: oysters
Dear Rebecca,
The first thing I thought of--besides Lewis Carroll, of
course, and his walrus and carpenter--is the scene in
Topsy-Turvey, when the Mikado actors become ill on
oysters. Could this vignette be based on fact?
Best wishes,
Deborah Morse
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 09:28:43 -0600
From: fasick <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Ruskin and Artistic/Moral Greatness
From far-distant reading I have a recollection of Ruskin having declared
that although great artists might have moral flaws, those flaws
always translated into artistic flaws as well. That is, great artists
achieved artistic greatness DESPITE the artistic weaknesses caused by
their vices, weaknesses that ultimately are overshadowed by
artistic strengths springing from the artist's virtues. One result is
that the more virtues and fewer vices an artist has, the greater
artist he will be. (Ruskin, of course, expressed this far more eloquently
and cogently than I have just done in this hasty and much-simplified
paraphrase!)
Also of course, I thought that I would be able to lay my hands on this
passage whenever I wanted to; now that I'm actually looking for it, I
wonder whether I simply dreamed it. Does this ring a bell with anyone
who could direct me to the appropriate work? I've been combing through
my home library of Ruskin and am about to start tackling the library
volumes, but considering how prolific Ruskin was I'd love to be able to
narrow my search.
Thanks in advance. Since this query is so very specific, private
replies are doubtless best.
Laura Fasick
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 12:52:58 -0800
From: "Margot K. Louis" <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Oysters
Then still, through dry seasons and moister,
One god had a wreath to his shrine;
Then love was the pearl of his oyster,
And Venus rose red out of wine.
A. C. Swinburne, "Dolores" 305-08 (_Poems and
Ballads_, First Series, 1866)
Margot K. Louis
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 10:43:14 -0800
From: Peter O'Neill <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Ruskin and artistic/moral greatness
Perhaps the source of Ruskin's remarks about these matters lie in his
discussion of "Ideas of Beauty," in Vol II of *Modern Painters,*
particularly the chapter called "The Theoretic Faculty,* in which he
distinguishes between sensuous and moral responses to beauty. Further, it
may help to recall that throughout *The Nature of Gothic* Ruskin asserts
the idea of beauty in imperfection. The preference for change and variety
in the Gothic style over symmetry and perfection, in Ruskin's mind,
expresses the flawed, but infinitely inspired, imagination of the Gothic
workman.
Peter O'Neill
[log in to unmask]
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 14 Jan 2003 14:12:15 -0500
From: June or Hilton Siegel <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: clerks
Also see Trollope, 'An Autobiography' opening chapters.
These, and the following references (from The 'Penguin Companion to
Trollope, Mullen and Munson) refer to clerking in the Civil Service, but,
as you point out, Sheldon, clerks are clerks:
'The Three Clerks', especially Chapter 6,
'The Vicar of Bullhampton'[9],
'Marion Fay'[29,45,64], which includes "a dialogue between a clerk in the
City and a Post Office clerk"
'Framley Parsonage'
There is a separate heading under 'Clerks' that also cites 'John Caldigate',
(and the wonderful Samuel Bagwax, postal clerk, whose dogged investigations
are instrumental in releasing the hero from jail), 'Miss Mackenzie'(briefly)
and 'Ayala's Angel'.
Cheers,
June
June W. Siegel
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------
End of VICTORIA Digest - 13 Jan 2003 to 14 Jan 2003 (#2003-13)
**************************************************************
---------- End Forwarded Message ----------
|
