Did They Really Say That?

One of the joys of leafing through the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue is running across slang expressions and figures of speech still in use today that you would never guess were particularly old...but as it turns out, are. Here’s a list of the ones I’ve run across, along with their definitions as listed in the DVT, that make me laugh...and marvel at their longevity. Enjoy!

Sea Lawyer: A shark  (Yes, really!  This reminds me of an anecdote that I posted about a while back. Who knew lawyer jokes had such a long and distinguished history? )

Coming!  So is Christmas: Said of a person who has long been called, and at length answers, Coming! (We use this all the time in my family, so it totally tickled me to find it here.)

Birth-day Suit: He was in his birth-day suit, that is, stark naked. (Okay, this one totally surprised me—it just doesn’t sound old, does it?)

Black and White: In writing. I have it in black and white; I have written evidence. (Another very modern-sounding expression—maybe because we have a picture in our 21^st century heads of 19^th century paper being brownish rather than white?)

Kick the bucket: To die. He kicked the bucket one day; he died one day. (I did a little research on the origin of this phrase; the Oxford English Dictionary favors the one which involves pigs to be slaughtered being hung from a beam to allow the blood to drain from the carcass, the beam in question being a trébuchet or buque in French (so presumably a Norman borrowing?)

Bears and Bulls: A bear is one who contracts to deliver a certain quantity or sum of stock in the publics funds, on a future day, and at stated price; or, in other words, sells what he has not got, like the huntsman in the fable, who sold the bear’s skin before the bear was killed. As the bear sells the stock he is not possessed of, so the bull purchases what he has not money to pay for; but in case of any alteration in the price agreed on, either party pays or receives the difference. (Wow, who knew?  It looks like the terms date from as much as a century before, tied up with the South Sea Bubble incident of ca. 1717.)

All right!: A favourite expression among thieves, to signify that all is as they wish, or proper for their purpose.

And speaking of all right, Regina and I thought it might be an all right time to have a group read since we haven’t done one for a long time. So mark your calendars for the week of March 29, when we’ll be discussing Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1853 classic Cranford. Regina and I will provide some history, but we hope you’ll jump in with comments and opinions.  And the cool thing is you can find Cranford for free on-line, at both Amazon and Barnes and Noble as well as at Project Gutenberg. 

  

Happy reading!

The Young Bluestockings discuss Cotillion by Georgette Heyer

Well, how did you like it?

I thought this book would be perfect for discussion on Nineteenteen for a couple of reasons.

• The heroine, Kitty Charing, is one of Heyer’s ingenue heroines, very young but certainly not lacking in spunk. She’s never been to London, so we get to view the city and the Season through her eyes. We get a mini-course on the amusements of fashionable London—Almack’s, the Egyptian Hall in Bullock’s Museum, the Elgin Marbles (didn’t you love the bit in Chapter 11 where Freddy complains about them to his father?)—and not-so-fashionable London—shopping at Grafton House and public masquerade balls at the Opera House and Pantheon.


• We get a look at the manners and etiquette around courtship and marriage of the time (a word of warning here—though Heyer frequently uses the device, engagement announcements were NOT published in the newspapers—only marriages were.)


• We get bad boys of a couple of different stripes in Jack and Camille, and of course the difference between true gentlemen and not-so-true ones in Jack and Freddy.

Ah, Freddy. Some Heyer aficionados have speculated that Heyer was poking fun at herself and her previous books by having the unpromising Freddy as her romantic lead in this book…but I'm not so sure. To me Freddy is a representation of how love can transform a person: he goes from being rather foolish and dim-witted, if gentlemanly, at the beginning, and ends up being the one to solve, gently and with a minimum of fuss, all the tangles Kitty has wrought upon her friends’ (and her own) affairs. Freddy’s father Lord Legerwood is a fascinated witness to the changes Freddy goes through, saying to Kitty, “I like Freddy’s engagement very well, you know. It has done him a great deal of good.” When Freddy tells Kitty at the end of the book, “…Thought you was in love with him [Jack]. Don’t mind telling you it was as much as I could do to keep a still tongue in my head when he asked you to marry him. What I mean is, like you to have everything you want. Wished it was me, and not Jack, that’s all,” it’s terribly romantic, despite Freddy’s characteristically telegraph-like delivery. After Freddy’s not very prepossessing first appearance in Chapter 3, Heyer begins almost immediately after his and Kitty’s engagement to drop clues that he may be hero material after all: first we see even his self-important cousin Lord Biddenden follows his lead in fashion...then we see his kind heart as he cleverly figures out how to bankroll Kitty’s wardrobe without embarrassing her…then we see how well-liked he is in society because of his perfect manners and deportment…and onward through the book until, at the end, he truly is a hero. I think he’s probably one of Heyer’s best-drawn romantic leads.

And what wonderful characters—clueless Meg and her terrible color sense (oh, the lilac gown!), the ravishing but equally clueless Olivia and her awful mother, the sardonic but kindly Lord Legerwood. I especially enjoyed the few scenes between Lord Legerwood and Freddy, showing Lord L.’s growing respect for his firstborn.

The book does have flaws. Poor Dolph got a little monotonous, though of course that was the point…I think it might have been nice to somehow show how living quietly in the country with his horses made him much better able to function coherently, to contrast with his confusion in town. And not to cross too far into applying today’s sensibilities to the past, but at times I couldn’t help squirming a little at how a character with intellectual challenges was depicted…except that the fact he could live a happy, productive life in the right atmosphere was an important plot point. The pacing was a little slow at first—the beginning chapters set at Arnside House rather dragged, I thought, though Mr. Penicuik and Miss Fishguard were both delightfully awful in their own ways. But the action picked up once it moved to London, and simmered pretty nicely after that.

On the whole, Cotillion is one of my top five Heyers, along with The Grand Sophy, Frederica, The Unknown Ajax, and Arabella. How about you? Did you find any of the Regency references or vocabulary confusing, or was it on the whole pretty readable? If this was your first Heyer, do you think you'll read more?

Discussion is now open!

New for the New Year: Announcing the Young Bluestockings Book Club!

Happy 2010 to you all! We hope this new year will be a happy, healthy, and historical one for all of you!

In keeping with new beginnings, Regina and I thought this would be a great time to kick off a new venture we've been contemplating for a while now (galvanized by a suggestion from ChaChaneen back in September): a book club! So today we would like to introduce the Young Bluestockings Book Club!

HOW: Because we're new at this, we're going to stick to holding it here on the blog, posting our thoughts on the chosen book to open the discussion; however, if we find there's interest, we may add on or switch to a chat format.

WHEN: We're contemplating doing this bi-monthly, unless you decide you want to do it more often...we'll see how it goes after the first meeting or two. Since we're announcing today, we've decided the first meeting will happen on Tuesday, February 16, which will give you plenty of time to find and read our assigned book.

WHAT: In keeping with NineteenTeen's theme, we will try to focus on books related to 19th century teens and teen life. That actually gives us a reasonably broad field from which to choose: expect to see everything from Jane Austen to Georgette Heyer to recent YA fiction...and perhaps even some non-fiction as well. We'd like to compile a list to work with, so please send us your suggestions for possible book club books: anyone who sends us a title we decide to add to the list will get one of our NineteenTeen fans as a thank-you.

To start with, we're going for pure fun with Patricia C. Wrede's delightful YA historical fantasy, Mairelon the Magician, which is set in an alternate Regency England where magic is an accepted fact of life. It seems to recently have gone out of print, but is still widely available on the internet at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, half.com, abebooks, or alibris, or at your local library.

So please join us on February 16 to discuss Mairelon the Magician, and don't forget to send in your suggestions for other books we could discuss!