antiquarianism

I discovered a wonderful motto today, in the strange ground between humility and self-aggrandizement which mottoes often occupy: Je me consume au service d'autrui or I consume myself in service to others, which was originally borne along with a painted shield showing an oil lamp burning up.

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In Iran, watermelon is a staple, the sort of food which one gives to one's burgeoning family to stave off their demands as one cooks the real dinner. My mother grew a lot of watermelon this year; but with Tooraj and my sister gone, the watermelon no longer disappeared in huge quantities, and so I was left with a full melon to consume by myself. In despair, I incorporated it in a medieval lentil salad (which does allow some sort of melon as an optional element). The dish turned out astonishingly well; and it appears that watermelon is African in origin and has been popular since ancient times, so this may even be a reasonable recreation.

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Following sartorias' recommendation, I recently went looking for the novels of Catherine Grace Gore. In the academic libraries of Oregon and Washington, there is exactly one novel by Mrs. Gore available in its printed form (as opposed to microfilm); this is A Man of Business, which I promptly acquired via interlibrary loan. They sent me the original edition, in three volumes, printed in 1837 and described on the title page as "By the authoress of" two other novels, rather than "By Catherine Gore."

Over its three volumes, A Man of Business engages in a bit of genre-sliding. It begins as a light-but-sometimes-biting social comedy. There are two sisters who are described, in an echo of Mansfield Park, as being so thoroughly vain that their lesser faults are obscured. Then there are occasional stinging flashes of portraiture, such as the description of dull George Holloway, who was teased at school for not being a lord, and then despised because he did not tease and joke in return, but who mistakenly decides in later life that a peerage-- the only thing he has ever found himself obviously lacking-- will make him a Respected Man.

The heroine is Margaret, daughter of the Man of Business, a lawyer who married beyond his deserts and (at the start of the novel) is occupying himself by doing the business-- for free and for his neighbours-- which as a lawyer he could have charged for through the nose. Margaret is soft, pliable, mild, and womanly, unlike the endlessly feisty heroines of historical romance. At first I found this almost as refreshing as her fictional acquaintance do. As time wore on, though, Margaret's mildness produced incredulity; why must she marry one man whom she danced with half-a-dozen times five or ten years before, rather than the virtuous German lord? And then Margaret's acquaintance, like the acquaintance of some of Frederick Marryat's heroes, is strangely cursed: not only do the men and women who oppose her interest Go To The Bad and have uniformly miserable marriages a few years later, those who are most in the way are struck down by various bolts, from mortal illness to actual suicide. I suspect a nineteenth-century reader may have been more accustomed to rampant mortality than I am; but one does begin to suspect Mrs. Gore's charity.

But though Margaret's slide into moral perfection grows tiresome, the sights of life along the way are worth it. This is a novel, after all, which runs from the business of a small town through Parliament and glittering Society to ruin, and thence again to foreign courts; and certain characters, like Margaret's solidly lower-class Presbyterian uncle, appear with admirably human virtue and solidity. Furthermore, no character actually ruins himself or his family through gambling; this is the first novel set within eighty years of 1837 which I have read in recent memory that avoids harping upon its evils.