Part 8: Sewing Chronicles of Lady Lizbeth, Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maide

Gold on black,

Silver and wine.

 Thy clothes show the world

Ye can afford fine.

 Pithy sayings of Lady Margaret Hobey

Part 8: Clothes make the Maide

Since my readers are sewers, you’ll want to hear what I wore my first night down to supper. Did you wonder what I was going to do for clothes, beyond the outfit William had snatched up for me from the day-in-a-life dress up zone in the British Galleries? (That's right when he was supposedly looking for his cell phone, that weasel!) The real Lady Elizabeth’s trunk had been sent on ahead of her. That was before her uncle’s state of health had kept her from starting out as soon as she’d intended.  No one in the Hobey's household, other than the aforementioned weasel, had gotten a chance to read the letter from the other Liz’s auntie, conveying this rather pertinent piece of information. Ole Will had seen to that.

Luckily for me, Lady E.’s clothes fit me. Wouldn’t it have been tricky to explain otherwise?

So here's the scoop. First off, let me remind you that that the currently (current in 1581 that is) in style dropped-waist look, is carried off by means of a busk-point, in my case that's a nasty hard piece of bone, whittled into a kind of v-shape, that’s inserted into the front of my stays. This instrument of torture gives me that glamorous long pointy Elizabethan torso-look and it also makes sitting down a whole new experience. I'm sure you know, that the stays are laced over the chemise and the under petticoat. They stays also push all my womanliness into nearly full view, providing me with that bosom-on-a-platter look you see in all the portraits. There's also a farthangale. Cecily was surprised that I made any complaint about that, because apparently it’s the minimalist's version. Don’t even get me started on the joys of dealing with a farthingale. Are you wondering how long it took me to learn how to walk around in just my undergarments?

Over all this I somehow, with a lot of help from the maideservant Hannah, managed to struggle into a deliciously smocked soft yellow linen kirtle undergown. As far as I was concerned, that would have been enough. But then we got on to the outer bits, a deep green woolen bodice and matching bell shaped skirt, that opened down the front to display the rows of yellow smocking. About that time the whole process was starting to seem worth it.

Did I mention that there was blackwork embroidery on the sleeve and neck edges of the chemise? It just peeked out (rather fetchingly I thought) at the edges of the sleeves and the neckline of the green bodice. Oh, I didn’t tell you about the sleeves, did I? They were tied on to my kirtle (of course who wouldn’t want her sleeves tied on?) and were heavily embroidered with a couch stitch in black wool thread.- an all over intertwined arabesque design. 

The whole thing was yummy. I figured now I’d just run a brush through my curls and get on down to eat, that's assuming I could squeeze food into my stomach under those stays. Cecily had more plans for me however. I looked down at the fragile lacey item Hannah was starting to stitch onto the back neckline of my bodice.

“But the Queen’s 'Statutes of Apparel' forbids anyone not of noble birth from wearing lace or ruffs. I uh – well that is to say we never wear anything like that at home.”

“But we’re gentry, dear. It’s only a collar, not a full ruff. And besides that, it’s drawn-thread work, not proper bobbin lace like the nobility wears. 

I was starting to see just why the sumptuary laws had been a failure. The new merchant class could afford to be conspicuous consumers and no old-school noble types were really going to get in their way. There’s always a way around the rules aren’t there?

The household boosted a Venetian mirror on the landing just outside our chamber. Despite the fact that it made it hard to turn my head, I found the stiff lacey collar quite pretty. It frames my face nicely and would make anybody look like she’s got more neck than she does. Hannah brushed my hair back and secured it in a black threadwork caul embellished with little seed pearls and tied in place with a fillet of green ribbon. Cecily volunteered to pluck all those nasty hairs away from the top of my brow herself. It would look so much lovelier, but I said no thanks. Though she’s clearly too sweet and polite to let on, I can just imagine what Cecily thinks about me. A good thing I can put on my dogpatch attitude, blaming my total lack of fashion sense on my remote island upbringing.

~ ~ ~

Those Tudors Keep Me in Stitches (Co-Published)

These blog entries come from an iPad that my cousin Lizbeth left at my house when she went off to London for the summer. She asked me to post them for her in her blog, A Stitche in Time, if she ended up doing any traveling in areas where she might have difficulty accessing wifi. I’d say that being trapped in Tudor times, fills that bill.

So while Liz is otherwise engaged I’ll help out by cleaning up her notes and posting them on both our blogs, whenever I get a chance.

Laurel Shimer

I hope you've been enjoying Liz's story, The Sewing Chronicles of Lady Liz: Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maide, in this journal.  There's plenty more to come!

~ ~ ~

In the time of England’s Elizabeth I, the merchant class was enjoying new opportunities to travel and make a buck (ok let’s say a pound or a piece of eight) in the export/import business. That’s right, that means that if you were a white male, you might be enjoying new financial opportunities. These men and their families was beginning to rise in society by buying a place in the upper echelons. Sometimes their gold paved the way to marriages that united them with the titled classes. Their upper middle class wives and daughters, who might some day marry a lord, were enjoying some of the new prosperity as well.

It was becoming quite the thing now for women in such households to be educated. The well-read English woman was reading more than her book of Commoyne Prayer and hot-off-the-press Englishe Bible. She was also following artistic movements in Italy, Germany and France. Pattern-books for embroidery were becoming available and new designs emerged from her needle. Naturalistic styalized designs were hot. Flowers, as always, were big. With more freedom of movement, European designs were also influenced by interlaced Islamic arabesque designs.

With pattern books in her hands and money in her pockets, our Elizabethan-era sister also created a demand for new styles of embroidery from the professional workshops that provided the sumptuous hangings, that turned her brand new half-timbered house or stately brick manor into a right cozy nest.

Some of her needlework survives. The lovely linen piece above(*) is embroidered in deep pink silk thread, and features an interlaced trellis-work design (think Islamic motif) of carnations and roses worked in outline stitch.

~ ~ ~

I highly recommend the book 5,000 years of Textiles, ed. by Harris. Check your library or, mebbe even break down and buy it.

* This gorgeous piece of work is housed at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London

Part 7: Sewing Chronicles of Lady Lizbeth, Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maide

A ladye should be able with her pen

As well as with her needle.

With it, she should strive to keep her accounts well,

maintain a regular record of her devotions,

                           and record any unrighteous behavior amongst the members of her household.

Unless that behavior implicates those of  the higher orders,

            who ought not ever be discussed by their inferiors.

Pithy sayings of Lady Margaret Hobey

It might not occur to you, if you tend to stay in your own century, just how hard it was for me to turn up something like this diary to write in. There’s not much in the way of accessible writing materials around in these days. Back home if the battery on my iPad runs out of juice and I’m forced to jot down my shopping list or an idea for my blog the old-fashioned way, I’m used to opening up a drawer or grabbing a piece of paper off the printer tray. If I’m in some public place, well there’s usually a recycling bin where I can scrounge something to write on the back of.

But around here, if a woman needs a piece of paper, even assuming that woman is educated enough to be able to write her name, she’s going to have to ask for it and explain what she needs it for. And to add insult to injury she’s going to have to account for what she did with it. Lady Margaret reads all of Cecily’s letters to her grandmother out loud to her husband Sir Thomas before he puts them into the mail bag that goes into town. Reading about lack of privacy is one thing, actually dealing with it is quite another. So you can imagine how happy I was when I went to paw through that pile of linen scrap and wool thread ends that Lady Margaret had told one of the maidservants to drop off for me, and found this little book buried deep down in the pile of odds and ends. Maybe somebody as anxious as me to record their secrets hid it there, and then forgot where it was or had to leave the house suddenly. It’s old, but it will sure do the trick.

Lady Margaret also keeps a diary, but hers is public, so public, in fact, that she reads little passages out loud to us Maides when we’re stitching in the upstairs in the afternoons. My little book, on the other hand, is quite secret. Funny really when you consider that I’ve shared so many details about my life in my blog, not to mention that I plan to transcribe these entries into that blog just as soon as I get back to my own times. If I shared my diary here in the same way as good old Lady Madge, I’d be in for big trouble. I’ve seen the nasty ways they treat people who don’t fit the mainstream patterns here. Time on the ducking stool would be the lightest result, there’s a much greater possibility I’d be burnt as a witch.  Livin’ an alternative lifestyle in Tudor times ain’t , as my Aunt Grace (who was much influenced by coming of age in the sixties) used to say, “where it’s at”. Having to hide my journaling, makes me feel a little bit like the Emperor Claudius in that great book series by Robert Graves. 

This little book is going to help keep me sane until William helps me catch my ride back into the twenty-first century on the next neaps tide. The nerve of that man, putting on the big romantic-act in the museum! Did I mention he was responsible for posting all those tidbits about London and the Victoria and Albert to my blog, using different ids none-the-less? It seems he had some method for picking me out of the crowd as travel-able when he worked our spring feste last year. Though I didn’t meet him, he apparently learned quite a lot about me. And that included the fact that I was planning to come here this summer. Seems  then he just started planting  his little clues on my page when he got back to London. Then he maneuvered Gwen into that summer study abroad, and brought up the idea of oh-gee-that-blogger-needs-a-place-to-rent. Talk about manipulative! That toad-spotted malkin needed a time-able guide to help him steer through the portal because he was too weak to do the trick on his own. I was just his little time travelin’ guinea pig. Yes, ladies, I was set up!

It’s not exactly easy being tossed back in time, and I don’t just mean the getting there part. Everything’s different from peas to pottage. It’s tough not having anybody I can really let my hair down with about my sudden transition, except William that is and I’m determined I’m not speaking to him right now until I cool off. I could really care less that he stumbled out of his own slip-stream by mistake. If he can’t figure out how to stay put, that’s his problem. Unfortunately now he’s made it mine. 

* * *

Time Portal: Vertigo

Inspired by a prompt at A Year in the Life of an Art Journal

What is more likely to send a gal spinning through time than an episode of vertigo?

Part 6: Sewing Chronicles of Lady Lizbeth, Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maid

Part 6: A Tale of Tudor Time

Not only did I win a rather spontaneous, trip back to Tudor Times, it seems I get a husband in the bargain. Kidding, kidding! I won’t actually be around long enough to cut the big white cake (make that free four and twenty black birds trapped in a pie these days). You see there is a real Lady Elizabeth Chumley and I’m just her stand in back here in the year 1581, until the new moon rolls around. (William Sainsbury swears he can get me back through the time portal, on the next neaps tide. That boy better know what he’s talking about!)  Lady Elizabeth, it turns out, is from one of the new upwardly mobile merchant class, and she’s just rollin' in the shillings. Lucky Liz is apparently looking for the guy of her dreams, and I get to be her proxy.

If I’ve got it right, my hostess will be lining up the suitors and I more or less take my pick. Won’t the other Liz be surprised when she does eventually make it on over to Northumberland, and finds out the papers have been all drawn up? All she’ll need to do is sign on the dotted line!

My hostess is Lady Margaret Hoby, she of the time-portal-connecting claviorgan. (Did you miss the lead-in to this story? You can catch up by following this link and listening in to the June podcast. That podcast extends the introduction of this story beyond what is published in this art journal.)  Lady Madge has her own little flock of unmarried women living in the house right now, and I fit right in with the crowd. Thomas Hoby’s lady seems to be in the business of marrying off girls who need husbands, and from what I can tell that’s anybody who’s single, has her eyesight, and is more or less in possession of her right mind.

One good thing about my little time-away jaunt is that this group of unmarried gals, or Lady Margaret’s Maides as we’re called collectively, spend a good part of each afternoon and evening doing needlework and making music. And as you well know both are pretty high up on my list of priorities. It’s also late spring back in these times, just like it was when I left London in 2011. Up here in Northumberland the wildflowers are thick, the birds are singing, and the fuzzy lambs are gamboling their little hearts out. I’ve seen a bit of  English countryside in my own time and I must say, the rural scene, if you overlook manure piles, is even prettier back in the days of 1581.

The bad thing is that I have to share not only a room (yeah, yeah they call it a chamber) with the other Maides, but also a bed.  Cecily’ has adenoids and Lettice gets up several times during the night to pray out loud. The snoring I can live with and even the oratory has a kind of cadence that puts me back to sleep about as well as an old-movie on t.v. It’s more the lack of, (how can I put this delicately?), well let’s just say hygiene. Not only are these gals not at all big on bathing, they don’t go in for any kind of deodorant that I’ve been able to locate. And don’t let anybody tell you that gillyflower water will do the trick. It doesn’t. Believe me.

I didn’t have much choice about my new persona. William had it all fixed up. (You probably guessed that ole Will was up to something back in the introduction didn’t you? I must have been taking my gormless pills that day.) My options were pretty limited and he knew it, the bozo. Either I said I was Lady Liz or I’d be lucky if they put me to work shoveling horse pucky or scrubbing pots in the Hoby’s kitchen. OK, call me elitist, but I got a whiff of my potential colleagues in the stable and the kitchen. At least Cecily and Lettice wipe themselves down once or twice a day, and dot on a little eau-de-gillyflower in the more offensive areas. I’ll take the less-crowded zone upstairs. Besides, given that I’ll be back in my own time in less than two weeks, I might as well make the most of the opportunity.

It’s all about culture isn’t it? Here I’ve got a change to sink my needle into a piece of blackwork embroidery that might just turn up at the V&A in my time, and blend my soprano with Cecily’s alto, while Lettice plays Crecquillon latest hot little chanson on her lute. I can think of at least three reenactors at our Elizabethan Springtyme Feste, who’d consider bumping off a fellow player with digitalis for this chance.

Travel’s like that, isn’t it? It’s the unexpected stuff that really hits me over the head. There was that time I came across three spring hares cavorting like total nuts around the meadows in Yorkshire. They made me feel like I’d taken a quick broomstick to OZ. Then there was the  cab-driver veteran of World War II, who told me about his life during the blitz, and how it impacted his attitude when he was part of the bombing raid to Dresden. That’s when it hit me, that the war had been real and not just something from books and the movies.

You gotta open your eyes and ears to the moment you land in. Then again, sometimes you just stumble on a real dissembling jolthead like William Sainsbury who finagles the moment for you. Should I even speak to a man who’s sent me spinning back to Tudor times unasked, just because he couldn’t get back there himself without an assist?

At the very least I ought to get some kind of free miles for this. I wonder what I could cash them in for…

* * *

Flex Time Travel

Flex Time

Gama por hora flexible

Gleitzeit 

Plage horaire flexible

Have you had enough with  Time Travel Package Tours ?

Portal Pilots Announces: Flex Time Travel

Bored with the Borgias?

Tired of Tudors?

Does the Roman Empire leave you sighing?

If you're ennuyeuse when it comes to visiting the same old eras, book your next time travel adventure with Portal Pilots.

Our specialized guides help you travel through time when, and where you want to go.

Time Portal Guardians: The Mystery Revealed

A couple of days ago, I posted an art journal entry titled Guardians of a Time Portal. Just what are my two cats doing when they're sleeping their time away amongst the roses on the driveway, I asked?


My friend,Judy Gosnell  was able to answer that question in a flash. That gal is a natural when it comes to time travel. What era other than ancient Egypt, when cats were worshipped properly, would a cat consider worthy of her guardianship?

Stop on by our driveway the next time you're in the mood to join Pharohs retinue. Just don't forget a little offering of mackerel to placate the guardian at the gate.

Clearly our furry companion Olivia, sees herself as a later day Bastet. It's certainly nice of her to spend so much time in the modern era when she could be chasing mice through Pharoh's graneries. I feel honored.


No, not honored enough to open up ANOTHER can of mackarel. You can wait until breakfast-time, Olivia.


I created the illustration above in Photoshop, using photos I took at the British Museum. In four trips to London we've never missed a visit to that delicious treasure trove.

Time Portal: Stopping in for a brew at The Time & Time Again

Just another British pub?

Maybe.

But have you got the nerve to open the door?

Could be a special locally brewed ale, a piece of Cheshire cheddar, and the most delicious meat pie you ever tasted.

And if you're really lucky, you might just happen by on a day when we specialize in Victorian Values, Cromwellian Conundrums or Tudor Time Travel.

Guardians of a Time Portal: Fantasy Cat Quilt

Don't think you're gonna paw past MY way

Without a little donation to the gods 

That guard your house

And keep those old mice at bay.

I used to think my kitties were just sleeping their day away in the sun. But just recently I learned that they are actually the guardians of a local time portal. In their case a little donation, of the right sort, will get me farther than just on to my back door without suffering a swipe on the ankle.

It will take me back to times long past.

Just what era would a cat be caring for?

Part 5: Listen In- The Sewing Chronicles of Lady Lizbeth:The Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maid – Podcast, Part 1

Time to listen in on the latest Unpolished Performances podcast!

The Sewing Chronicles of Lady Lizbeth:The Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maide (Part 1)

Download this audio show directly from the iTunes store with this link (or search the iTunes store using the term 'unpolished performances') 

You can also listen to this show from your computer by following this link http://web.me.com/simpleromantic/Simple_Romantic/Podcast/Podcast.html

* * *

Show Scoop: Our American blogger, Liz, is looking forward to a summer in London, sewing, sightseeing, practicing Bartok on the piano, and developing some great new historical and modern fashion content for her sewing blog.

It’s always a challenge keeping your online journal going when you’re on a trip, but Liz hadn’t counted on that trip extending back to the England of Queen Elzabeth the First.

Does anybody know if there’s a widget for blogging access that remote?

THERE HAVE been regular hints about, and excerpts from, this story in The Simple Romantic’s Art Journal for a few months now. I’m particularly partial to the “pithy sayings” that Lady Margaret Hoby, Lady LIzbeth’s mentor in past times, has been dropping like little time travel pearls amongst my illustrations.

The Podcast includes the full introduction to this story. As this serial short continues to emerge from the pages of The Simple Romantic An Art Journal, you can continue to follow it’s development (and that’s even easier if you signup for a free/no spam email subscription – look up in the upper right hand corner of the blog)

Though portions of the story are available in the online journal, the entire introduction is only available as part of this audio podcast, which also include some of my own background music performances. 

Quilt Romance: Ryeland Sheep in Clover

Click on the illustration above for the full

ITCHY detail

Hadrian's Wall Country, Ryeland Sheep In Clover

Our Ryeland Sheepe do have the best woole,

A face like a terrier dog,

And a friendly way about them.

Do ye step close to the Ryeland,

She will approach ye for a pat.

And she do loveth her kin, right well.

Old Daniel

Excerpt  from The Sewing Chronicles of Lady Lizbeth, Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maide

My work is inspired by people like my fellow-Photoshop-lover Judy Gosnell as well as the Romantic stylings of Jane Austen. My art-journaling has been inspired by a movement that's born of both modern digital and old-time analog techniques. Inspired by recent travels in England, I ran across another inspirational art-journaler,Rachel Whetzel, who makes her home and art in the U.K.

This farmyard scene from Rachel's site is reminiscent of the countryside where I spotted these sheep a few weeks back.
 IS that a darling little goat in Rachel's yard, or what?

Romancing England: Fields and Flowers, Gilsland

Keep only bees that love you,

And feed them with flowers you mind yourselves.

For bees mind flowers beloved by ladyes,

with blossoms fresh, orange and new.

As for sharing the bounty?

Well, think ye of gentlefolk most deserving,

And never mind those of ranke inferior to yer own.

Best they learn not the taste of the sweeting

'Lest they yearn for more than WE should wishe to grante them.

Pithy Sayings of Lady Margaret Hoby

as quoted in Sewing Chronicles of Lady Lizbeth, The Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maide

My work is inspired by people like my fellow-Photoshop-lover Judy Gosnell as well as the Romantic stylings of Jane Austen. My art-journaling has been inspired by a movement that's borne of both modern digital and old-time analog techniques. Inspired by recent travels in England, I ran across another inspirational art-journaler, Rachel Whetzel, who makes her home and art in the U.K.

This farmyard scene from Rachel's site is reminiscent of the countryside rights-of-way we were hiking only a few weeks back. IS that a darling little goat, or what?

Part 4: Sewing Chronicles of Lady Lizbeth, Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maid

This is a continuation of a serial story from this art journal. 

Have you missed the other parts?  

CLICK THE following links TO CATCHUP ON THE STORY

Part 1: The Bloggers Apologia

Part2: The Linen Purse

Part 3: By Chance, A Meeting

Part4: Comyn Interestes

Speake not to men outside of your ken,

Lest they forgete theyre place,

And lead ye to thoughts

Unbecoming in a maid.

But take up thy work.

A needle well-placed in a piece of fruite

Has ofte distracted me from thoughts ill-suited to a ladye.

Pithy Sayings of Lady Margaret Hoby

The man plucked a semblance of a bass run on the lute. I wondered if the guy worked this gallery regularly. A sneaky look from under my lashes told me that his name was ‘William Sainsbury’. Talk about a classic British name! It sounded like one the re-enactors made up for their character names at the Elizabethan Springtyme Feste back home. Come to think of it, his name-

“Are you a musician then?”

The guy certainly knew how to get me going. It wasn’t long before he’d heard a fair amount of the story of my career, hobbies, education, family life and what I was doing in London for the summer. Any opportunity to do all the talking makes me TOTALLY happy. I suppose I’m not the first person who gets a kick out of having a member of the opposite sex hang on their every word.

I got so caught up in discussing my interest in music, sewing, antique instruments and fabrics with William, that the voice booming over the announcement system to inform us that the museum was closing in fifteen minutes almost made my drop my iPad.

Quickly he drew a business card out of his pocket. “I’d love to hear more about your plans for the summer. Maybe even-”

I was studying the red thread work on the small case, from which he’d taken the museum card. “Hey I know the woman who made that!”

The embroidery on the little receptacle was a characteristic pattern, and one that I’d seen many times. My sister’s best friend, Jacquie Fitzcannon, had originally designed the pattern of pansies that meandered around a background of diamonds. They sold quite well at her booth. I reached out and stopped the hand that was putting the card-holder back in his pocket.

“Have you been to the springtime feste? Well you must have been! When were you in California?”

“I worked there this year,” he laughed. “demonstrating sheep sheering and cheese making. Jacquie traded me that case in turn for ten pounds of unripened cheddar.”

“I’m surprised I didn’t meet you there. I was playing in the strolling musicians group. Are you going back next year?”

An odd tremor seemed to cross his face. I realized later that he had ignored my question.

“I tell you what, there’s a pub just around the corner called “Her Grace’s Garters”. A lot of the staff goes after work. That researcher who specializes in blackwork embroidery goes quite often. Do you want to join us?”

The guy was obviously safe, not only did he work for the V&A, he knew Jacquie well enough to trade cheddar for embroidery.

Was there really ever any question of my NOT showing up at The Garters?

* * *

Time Travel: Discover Your Career of the Future (or the Past)

Time Portal: Another Way to Spin Through Time

Click on the illustration above to try a spin with this portal

The Old Rose Cathedral Window 

of Durnsmuir Haugh

Most of yon stained glass winders were taken down in Cromwell's Time.
But there was somethin' about this yer 'un that did foil even the most determined of them Reformers.
They do say as three different Roundheads tried to take her down, and all three died in the trying.
It was a woman who convinced 'em to just leave her be.
The Red Rose of Durnsmuir, folks 'round here call her.


The womenfolk 'round here do say the Red Rose, she's got powers.
Codswallop sez I, tis just an old Rose winder, 
         pretty though she may be when the light shines through her panes,
       especially so on the night of a neaps tide.


And though sometimes when those days do come when there's bare a tick o' difference betwtixt the ebb and flow,
I do think I see the old Red Rose spinning with the wind,
And then, well I just puts that down to the ale at the Swallow and Dove, and I go home by 'tother road.

Time Travelers Spotted?

I don't know their story, but I'm pretty sure this pair aren't totally twenty-first century.

Click on the illustration above to check out these time-travellers yourself.

Spotted while walking past Queen Wilhemina's Windmill in Golden Gate Park this afternoon.

Part 3:Sewing Chronicles of Lady Lizbeth, Secret Diary of a Time Traveling Maid

This is a continuation of a serial story from this art journal. 

Have you missed the other parts?  

CLICK THE following links TO CATCHUP ON THE STORY

Part 1: The Bloggers Apologia

Part2: The Linen Purse

Part 3: By Chance, A Meeting

If a lady aspires to virtuous standing ,

She should attend well to her work,

And leave idle contemplation,

And distractions, such as the desire for precious objects

         or the attractions of comely men 

To the vulgar.

Keep your eyes on your needles, ladies

And your hands on your work.

Pithy Sayings of Lady Margaret Hoby

* * *

When I had told my older sister where I was headed for the summer, the first words out of her mouth were to warn me about the men I’d meet there. According to Prissy, they’d be after me in droves the minute they cast their eyes my way. If only the world thought as much of us as do our ever-loving families! Then again, if it did then restaurant staff would be reminding us to eat our broccoli,and supervisors would check to see that we flossed when we got to work. So maybe it’s just as well that we’re not quite so important as our siblings and parents find us.

“I know how you react to men with accents! Just remember that British men can be terribly controlling,” Prissy reminded me. “And I should know.”

My sister had been married to a one-time citizen of Britain for ten years before she washed her hands of him. I don’t recall that my erstwhile brother-in-law had been particularly controlling, if anything, Prissy was the more controlling of the two. I ascribed their lack of marital stamina to severe political differences, but kept my opinion to myself.

“I don’t have the time, or energy to get married,” I assured her. I’m going to spend the summer sewing, practicing Bartok on the piano, and getting in some sightseeing. I’ve got a new contract starting in four months, that’s not even enough time to jump into the dating pool, never mind locating some man I find appealing enough to want to propose to.

* * *

I had been caught up in my admiration of a series of life-sized mosaics on the landing, when I first passed the gallery guide-attendant. I’d been vaguely conscious of the leggy copper-haired lad’s bountiful smile and cheerful salutation, but museum folk are paid to be gracious after all. Caught up in the tapestries, blackwork embroidery and gilt stitchery as I was, I knew that the young man passed through the hall a few times. But, frankly, I thought he was interested in a couple of boisterous American college girls over near the Renaissance instrument collection.

I became more aware of that giggling pair as they began to struggle into some farthingales they’d discovered in the interactive Daily-Renaissance-LIfe costume-area. The young women began to dissolve into helpless laughter as they commenced photographing each other and composing humorous subtitles to go along with the visuals of their now-expanded figures, that they then texted back home to the U.S.  Seeing that no one else was around, I put aside photographing and sketching sewing design ideas on my ipad, and offered my services as a photographer for a sisterly portrait of the two.

“I think we should call this one ‘our new school uniforms’, the taller of the pair gurgled.

“Are you ladies doing study-abroad then?”

“We’re just here for a summer program at UCL.”

The tall form of the guide moved back out of the tapestry niche about the time the students moved on to stare dutifully at the Raphael tapestry cartoons, and I decided I had probably studied every square centimeter of the embroidered purse and headed over to check out the instruments.

The gallery-guide-guy moved over to hover beneath a collection of reproduction lutes hanging in an artful arrangement from the ceiling, as I transferred my lust for beautiful ancient items to a virginal that, the information plaque indicated, was believed to have really, actually, maybe, been played by the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth the First herself.

I looked up from my careful examination of an inlaid bird on the spinet’s case, to find that he was watching me, in a rather obvious manner. I began to wonder if I fit some musical terrorist profile, and considered moving on to study a bass viol in the corner, when he broke the ice by pulling down one of the lutes and plucking out a brief interrogative three note melody.

“So, are you interested in a be-farthingaled photo of yourself for your friends back home?” 

Was the kid flirting with me, I wondered? Then, I decided it was simply a part of the stock patter to chat up solitary travelers.

I gave him the sort of middling-interested smile I reserved for the occasional cocktail party, and shook my head.

“Do you play?”

I looked at him more carefully now. There were lines around his eyes. Though he was built like a young man, he wasn’t as young as I’d first thought.  “What gave me away?”

“Your left hand was shaping chords, when you were examining the keyboard.”

He had a distractingly attractive lock of golden-red hair that wouldn’t stay put. I tried not to stare. “I was trying to remember how to play ‘Smoke on the Water’, but I forgot to bring along one of those kind of picks Queen Elizabeth would have used,” I responded. I hoped my attempt at humor wouldn’t fall flat.

The lock of hair swayed gently when he laughed “I think you mean a plectra. And by the way, I’m pretty sure the Queen’s Grace was a bigger fan of ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida’.”

* * *

To Be Continued