Anthony Trollope and more

The Cape Cod Mystery, pgs 11-13

"Hooey," said Bill inelegantly. "Just as if you didn't swipe my entire stock of Old Sleuth in days gone by and force me to read Trollope or something equally wordy."

Old Sleuth

Old Sleuth, appearing in The Fireside Companion story paper beginning in 1872, was the first dime novel detective and began the trend away from the western and frontier stories that dominated the story papers and dime novels up to that time. He was the first character to use the word “sleuth” to denote a detective, the word’s original definition being that of a bloodhound trained to track. And he also is responsible for the popularity of the use of the word “old” in the names of competing dime novel detectives, such as Old Cap Collier, Old Broadbrim, Old King Brady, Old Lightning, Old Ferret and many, many others.

Anthony Trollope

Anthony Trollope (24 April 1815 – 6 December 1882) was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Some of his best-loved works, collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, revolve around the imaginary county of Barsetshire. He also wrote penetrating novels on political, social, and gender issues, and on other topical conflicts of his day.

Trollope has always been a popular novelist. Noted fans have included Sir Alec Guinness (who never travelled without a Trollope novel), former British Prime Ministers Harold Macmillan and Sir John Major, economist John Kenneth Galbraith, American novelists Sue Grafton and Dominick Dunne and soap opera writer Harding Lemay. Trollope's literary reputation dipped somewhat during the last years of his life, but he regained the esteem of critics by the mid-twentieth century.

"Of all novelists in any country, Trollope best understands the role of money. Compared with him even Balzac is a romantic." — W. H. Auden

Harvard

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation (officially The President and Fellows of Harvard College) chartered in the country. Harvard's history, influence, and wealth have made it one of the most prestigious universities in the world.

Harvard was named after its first benefactor, John Harvard. Although it was never formally affiliated with a church, the college primarily trained Congregationalist and Unitarian clergy. Harvard's curriculum and students became increasingly secular throughout the 18th century and by the 19th century had emerged as the central cultural establishment among Boston elites.

Following the American Civil War, President Charles W. Eliot's forty year tenure (1869–1909) transformed the college and affiliated professional schools into a centralized research university, and Harvard became a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900.

James Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to reform the curriculum and liberalize admissions after the war. The undergraduate college became coeducational after its 1977 merger with Radcliffe College. Drew Gilpin Faust was elected the 28th president in 2007 and is the first woman to lead the university. Harvard has the largest financial endowment of any academic institution in the world, standing at $27.4 billion as of September 2010.

The university comprises eleven separate academic units — ten faculties and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study — with campuses throughout the Boston metropolitan area. Harvard's 210-acre (85 ha) main campus is centered on Harvard Yard in Cambridge, approximately 3.4 miles (5.5 km) northwest of downtown Boston. The business school and athletics facilities, including Harvard Stadium, are located across the Charles River in Allston and the medical, dental, and public health schools are located in the Longwood Medical Area.

As of 2010, Harvard employs about 2,100 faculty to teach and advise, approximately 6,700 undergraduates (Harvard College) and 14,500 graduate and professional students. Eight U.S. Presidents have graduated from Harvard and 75 Nobel Laureates have been affiliated with the university as students, faculty, or staff. Harvard is also the alma mater of sixty-two living billionaires, the most in the country. The Harvard University Library is the largest academic library in the United States, and the second largest library in the country.

The Harvard Crimson competes in 41 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA Division I Ivy League. Harvard has an intense athletic rivalry with Yale University traditionally culminating in The Game, although the Harvard–Yale Regatta predates the football game

"Maybe he went incog., like a Student Prince."

The Student Prince is an operetta with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Dorothy Donnelly. It is based on Wilhelm Meyer-Förster's play Alt Heidelberg. The piece has elements of melodrama but lacks the swashbuckling style common to Romberg's other works. The plot is mostly faithful to its source.

It opened on December 2, 1924, at Jolson's 59th Street Theatre on Broadway. The show was the most successful of Romberg's works, running for 608 performances, the longest-running Broadway show of the 1920s. Even the classic Show Boat, the most enduring musical of the 1920s, did not play as long - it ran for 572 performances. "Drinking Song," with its rousing chorus of "Drink! Drink! Drink!" was especially popular with theatergoers in 1924, as the United States was in the midst of Prohibition. The operetta contains some of the most beautiful, yet gruelling, tenor arias in the operetta repertoire, notably the Serenade ("Overhead the moon is beaming").

Ernst Lubitsch made a silent film of the operetta titled The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg, starring Ramon Novarro and Norma Shearer. The stage work was revived twice on Broadway – once in the 1930s and again in the 1940s. Mario Lanza's performance on the soundtrack of the 1954 MGM film The Student Prince, renewed the popularity of many of the songs. Composer Nicholas Brodszky and lyricist Paul Francis Webster wrote three new songs for the film. Two of these songs – "I'll Walk with God" and "Beloved" – became closely associated with Lanza, although the role was played on screen by British actor Edmund Purdom, who mimed to Lanza's recordings. In recent years, the operetta has been performed each summer at the Heidelberg Castle Festival

"I've noticed in him is is tendency to say "Thank you" in one syllable, as though it were a thing you played billiards with."
In other words, he says, "k'You," sort of like Patrick McGoohan.

Bill Porter is a selectman

The board of selectmen is commonly the executive arm of the government of New England towns in the United States. The board typically consists of three or five members, with or without staggered terms.

"You know, the more I look at your friend Emma, the more she reminds me of that mammoth bronze Buddha, the resigned one in Japan somewhere."

Bill is referring to teh Great Buddha of Nara.

Buddha was never fat, however. Author Phoebe Atwood Taylor may have confused the Buddha with Hotei, a fat-bellied individual whom even Chinese restaurants use as a "happy Buddha" representation!

(Hotei, God of Luck)
Why venerate a ... gasp.... extremely fat man? Because up until the later 20th century, most people in the world barely got enough to eat. To be "overweight" was the sign of a prosperous individual.

Patum Peperium - or, Never Assume

This isn't from the current book I'm annotating, The Cape Cod Mystery (1931) or indeed from any mystery story.

But when I take a break from my work, I like to read the children's books of Margery Sharp - more specifically her The Rescuers series - they are a lot of fun and I love Miss Bianca.

Well, for years and years I've read The Turret, and Miss Bianca always offers a young half-Irish mouse named Shaun, toast and patum peperium spread. And I'd always assumed that this was some kind of pepper spread.

But today, I finally decided to look it up, and no, it has nothing to do with pepper. Anchovies are its main ingredient.

It's also called Gentlemen's Relish, and while I believe I have read of Gentlemen's Relish being served...I think in a couple of Catherine Aird's mystery novels, I had never looked that up either.

I'm afraid it never would have occurred to me that anything would be made out of anchovies!

So, you learn something new every day, especially if you're willing to look up words to which you already thought you knew the correct definition.

Gentleman's Relish is a type of anchovy paste. It is also known as Patum Peperium.

It was created in 1828 by an Englishman called John Osborn. It has a strong, very salty and slightly fishy taste, and contains anchovies (minimum 60%), butter, herbs and spices. The exact recipe however has remained a secret and has been passed down by word of mouth over the years. Today, only Elsenham Quality Foods in Elsenham, England, is licensed to make it.

Gentleman's Relish is traditionally eaten thinly spread on slices of buttered white-bread toast, either on its own, or with cucumber, or "Mustard and cress" sprouts. It can also be added to minced meat for a different-tasting shepherd's pie or to the mixture for fish cakes, potato cakes and croquettes. Alternatively it can be melted into scrambled eggs or be used as a topping for jacket potatoes. It has been depicted as an upper or middle class taste, for example Gentleman's Relish is mentioned in Nancy Mitford's book, The Pursuit of Love as a favorite food of Uncle Matthew. In Ian Fleming's book For Your Eyes Only (short story collection) - it mentions that at the time of the visitors, Mr and Mrs Havelock were having Patum Peperium sandwiches.

Cape Cod Mystery by Phoebe Atwood Taylor, annotated, continued

"Let's institute a reform," says Betsey on page 9.

In the 1900s in America, there was a great reform movement, led by women for the most part. There were religious revivals among Protestants, non-religious Utopian communities, temperance, education reform, women's rights, humane treatment for the insane, and abolitionism (prior to the Civil War).

In the 1930s, most of these reform movements were still going on.

"But she'll play Russian Banque with you." pg 10

Russian Bank is a card game for two players from the solitaire family. It is also known as crapette or crapot in Brazil and Portugal. It is played with two decks of 52 standard playing cards. It is much like the game of double solitaire. The goal of Russian Bank, like many card games, is to get rid of your forty-eight cards before your opponent can rid themselves of theirs. At the same time, it is required to build "piles" of suits, Ace through King, in the center of the board. If a rule regarding the placement of piles is broken, the opponent may call "Stop!" to end one's turn.

Narrator Prudence Whitsby is reading a mystery novel when Bill Porter walks in, on pg 11.

"Is it blood and thunder...or gin and sawdust?"

Closely related to the Gothic novel of the late eighteenth century, blood-and-thunder fiction features malignantly motivated villains seeking to possess the hearts and souls of characters made vulnerable by their youth, gender, and penniless condition. The events of these stories, occurring in settings distant from the workaday world, limn the obsessive behavior of these predatory characters whose deceptive exploitation of their victims' emotions work a psychological violence never far from physical consummation. Making few concessions to verisimilitude, the blood-and-thunder narratives function as psychic dramas abstracted from the ordinary world of secondary contingencies, generating their suspense by sketching the attenuated assault upon the ego of its prey by a relentless will to domination.
SOURCE: Blood-and-Thunder Fiction - The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Monk, Wieland - Rosamond, Novel, Tempest, and Characters http://www.jrank.org/literature/pages/6379/Blood-Thunder-Fiction.html#ixzz1L4tqksOD

Sawdust was used on the floors of gin-palaces in the early 1900s.

A gin palace is an English name originally for a lavish bar selling gin, later transferred by association to late Victorian pubs designed in a similar style.

In the 18th century, gin shops or 'dram shops' were just small shops (often originally chemist's shops as gin originally had medicinal associations) that sold gin mostly to take away, or to drink standing up. As the legislation changed establishments generally became larger; they also had to be licensed and sell ale or wine. In the late 1820s the first 'Gin Palaces' were built, Thompson and Fearon's in Holborn and Weller's in Old Street, London. They were based on the new fashionable shops being built at the time, fitted out at great expense and lit by gas lights. They were thought to be vulgar at the time, although hugely popular. Charles Dickens described them as "perfectly dazzling when contrasted with the darkness and dirt we have just left…" in his Sketches by Boz.

The design hugely influenced all aspects of the design of later Victorian pubs, even after gin had declined in importance as a drink; the bar in pubs is based on the shop counter of the gin palace, designed for swift service and ideal for attaching beer pumps; the ornate mirrors and etched glass of the late 19th century. The term has survived for any pub in the late 19th century style; as this was the peak of pub building in Britain the style has become associated with the pub, even though none of the original gin palaces survive.

Well preserved examples of the late 19th century style include the Princess Louise in Holborn and the Philharmonic Dining Rooms in Liverpool.

Latin Phrases Part 2 - Crossing the Rubicon

ad hominem - appealing to feelings rather than reasonThe phrase literally means "to the man" and includes any argument that involves an element of hysteria, emotional ranting, blackmail, manipulation and very little in the way of logic or rationality.

ad nauseum - to sickness
Meaning 'to a ridiculous/nauseating degree' thais is often used to refer to arguments where someone just repeats themselves, but it can be applied to pretty much any area of life where someone or something is doing something over and over again.

Alea iacta est - the die has been cast
The Roman historian Suetonius quotes Julius Caesar as saying this in 49 BCE when he crossed the Rubicon (although Caesar actually stole the phrase from ancient GReek comedy.) Crossing ther Rubicon was a definitive act of defiance and the beginning of the Civil WAr against Pompey and the Optimates; the phrase has since come to mean a decision that is a "point of no return."

Haute Couteur: Christian Dior

Christian Dior (21 January 1905, Granville, Manche – 23 October 1957, Montecatini), was an influential French fashion designer, best known as the founder of one of the world's top fashion houses, also called Christian Dior.

Christian Dior was born in Granville, a seaside town on the coast of France, the second of the five children of Maurice Dior, a wealthy fertilizer manufacturer (the family firm was Dior Frères), and his wife, the former Madeleine Martin. He had four siblings: Raymond (father of Françoise Dior), Jacqueline, Bernard, and Ginette (aka Catherine).

Chirstian's family had hopes he would become a diplomat, but Dior was artistic and wished to be involved in fashion. To make money, he sold his fashion sketches outside his house for about 10 cents each. In 1928 after leaving school he received money from his father to finance a small art gallery, where he and a friend sold art by the likes of Pablo Picasso.

After a financial disaster that resulted in his father losing control of Dior Frères, Christian Dior was forced to close the gallery. From the 1930s to the 1940s he worked with fashion designer Robert Piguet until being called up for military service. In 1942, having left the Army, Dior joined the fashion house of Lucien Lelong, where he and Pierre Balmain were the primary designers. For the duration of World War II, Christian Dior, as an employee of Lelong—who labored to preserve the French fashion industry during wartime for economic and artistic reasons—dressed the wives of the Nazi officers and French collaborators, as did other fashion houses that remained in business during the war, including Jean Patou, Jeanne Lanvin, and Nina Ricci. While her brother dressed Nazi wives, Dior's sister Catherine (1917—2008) served as a member of the French Resistance, was captured by the Gestapo, and sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp; she was liberated in May 1945.

On 16 December 1946 Dior founded his fashion house, backed by Marcel Boussac, a cotton-fabric magnate. The actual name of the line of his first collection, presented in early 1947, was Corolle (literally the botanical term corolla or circlet of flower petals in English), but the phrase New Look was coined for it by Carmel Snow, the editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar. Dior's designs were more voluptuous than the boxy, fabric-conserving shapes of the recent World War II styles, influenced by the rations on fabric. He was a master at creating shapes and silhouettes; Dior is quoted as saying "I have designed flower women." His look employed fabrics lined predominantly with percale, boned, bustier-style bodices, hip padding, wasp-waisted corsets and petticoats that made his dresses flare out from the waist, giving his models a very curvaceous form.

Initially, women protested because his designs covered up their legs, which they had been unused to because of the previous limitations on fabric. There was also some backlash to Dior's designs form due to the amount of fabrics used in a single dress or suit. During one photo shoot in a Paris market, the models were attacked by female vendors over this profligacy, but opposition ceased as the wartime shortages ended. The "New Look" (a name given it by American fashion-magazine editor Carmel Snow) revolutionized women's dress and reestablished Paris as the center of the fashion world after World War II.

Death
Dior died while on holiday in Montecatini, Italy on October 23, 1957. Some reports say that he died of a heart attack after choking on a fish bone. Time magazine's obituary stated that he died of a heart attack after playing a game of cards. However, the Paris socialite and Dior acquaintance Alexis von Rosenberg, Baron de Rédé stated in his memoirs that contemporary rumor had it that the fashion designer succumbed to a heart attack after a strenuous sexual encounter. Some even think that he died because of a seizure. To this day, no one knows for sure.

Tributes
The Paul Gallico novella Mrs 'Arris Goes to Paris (1958, UK title Flowers for Mrs Harris) tells the story of a London charlady who falls in love with her employer's couture wardrobe and decides to go to Paris to purchase herself a Dior ballgown.

A perfume named Christian Dior is used in Haruki Murakami's novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle as an influential symbol placed at critical plot points throughout.

The English singer-songwriter Morrissey released a song titled "Christian Dior" as a b-side to his 2006 single "In the Future When All's Well".

1948 Britain: Advertisements: Pomeroy Makeup

This advertisement appeared in the September 1948 issue of Theatre World.

Text
Decolletage by Dior
A famous French designer has brought back
the extremely daring decolletage....
unsurpassed for great occasions in a woman's
life. Such splendour naturally demands the
perfect grooming and meticulous make-up
which are such an essential part of this
"New Look".

Lovely women use Pomeroy.

London Salon: 174 New Bond,St, W.1

Skin food, cleansing cream, beauty milk, powder, lipstick, dathos (for extra dry skin), day cream, hand lotion, astringent lotion, foundation cream, make-up base
Prices from 18 6 to 4/ - (including purchase tax)

Cave Canem: A few Latin phrases #1

a priori - from what was before.
Commonly used in a legal sense. This denotes something known previously. In the arena of logic, it describes something which is obvious or self evident.

ad absurdum - to the point of absurdity
A shortened version of reductio ad absurdum. "Reduced to the point of absurdity." Used in the context of argument, where one takes a clsim to its most extreme and ridiculous conclusion in an attempt to prove the claim itself to be false.

Bibliography
Cave Canem: A Miscellany of Latin Words and Phrases, by Lorna Robinson