Abigail works hard for her money, but she's awfully shy about asking Dominic for it. Maybe she ought to hire a bill collector or some more pushy intermediary to dun her employers for money.
I assume Abigail is a Methodist, since her father was a 'Methodist parson'. She's probably the only Neels heroine that's Methodist. Betty Debbie pointed out to me that while there are Methodist characters littered about the Neels landscape, they tend to be butlers and housekeepers and char women named Maisy. They're worker types...oh, Betty. You have so many layers!
The Goldbergs are a nice American couple with vulgar decorating taste, of course. Recently I was reading a decorating blog and one of the posts was discussing the recent Oval Office make-over (No I am not piloting the Good Ship Uncrushable into dicey territory...). Aside from discovering a heretofore undiscovered passion for mica coffee tables (see right) within my unsuspecting bosom (No, I am not piloting the...etc.), I discovered something not pleasing at all in our national character--a tendency toward trendiness. President Eisenhower ruined the floors with golf shoes. President Johnson installed wood-grain linoleum flooring. 
President Kennedy's oval office (see left) was remarkably ugly given how famously chic his wife was. President Clinton's color palette looks like something from a hip-hop video. And President Bush put stripes on those lovely Martha Washington chairs.Maybe we do have bad decorating sense.
Our heroine wears a nurse's cap and it's called sexy. "Hmmm," she thinks to herself. "No one had called her cap sexy before." It's Halloween time. There's practically a cottage industry built around the premise that all nurses and nurse caps are sexy.
One of Abigail's jobs is with Mrs. Macklin--a widow of a Scottish Presbyterian parson. It seems as though Betty were making up for her Anglican-centric novels all in one go.
We detour into nicer weather when our hero's neice swallows three pesetas. (Question: With the advent of the EU currency, do pesetas even exist anymore?) I remember being dared to swallow money when I was a kid but I'd only go as far as pennies and dimes. The mother in me now shudders to think of it.
I just love Abigail and her trip to the 'bathroom never to be forgotten'. I haven't found myself gobsmacked by bathrooms very often except when visiting back East. Most of the buildings in the West are young enough to have been built by people who were well and intimately acquainted with indoor plumbing. Am I the only one that finds bathrooms in older buildings to either be tiny (as though they stuffed it into an existing closet) or massive (as though they allocated an entire room for the purpose)?
When the Founding Bettys come East for their pilgrimage to the Aaronic Priesthood site, I'll host a brunch at Patsel's in Clarks Summit. The bathroom there is worthy of Abigail's huge eyes. I will say no more -- it's that sumptuous and divine. (Oh, and the food is superb. Brunch is an all-you-can-eat affair with just the best food imaginable.)
ReplyDeleteThat was JFK's oval office, but he never walked on that carpet. He left the White House for TX on 11/21/63, whereupon the blue carpet was replaced with the red carpet - but JFK died the next day so .. and then the carpet was changed again, because now it was LBJ's office. For some reason no President ever walked that carpet.
ReplyDeleteThank you Anonymous for the short-lived history of the red carpet. Who knows where it went to... Perhaps its story could be turned into picture book or even a Disney Vista movie: Little Red Rug - Kicked out of White House. The gruesome tale of the scarlet carpet.
ReplyDeleteBathrooms:
Gruesome tales of bathrooms usually involve pre-historic plumbing. Like an old clawfoot tub which you are supposed to use where you can look down the drain - and you really don't want to do that!
Space:
"Am I the only one that finds bathrooms in older buildings to either be tiny" - because not too much space was to be wasted for a mere bathroom
"or massive (as though they allocated an entire room for the purpose)?" - because there may not have been a bathroom in the original blueprint of the house (what with outhouses and a wash bowl and pitcher in the bedroom and/or kitchen). Bathrooms were often put in later into one of the former bedrooms - hence the comfortable space.
A Matter of Taste:
"The Goldbergs are a nice American couple with vulgar decorating taste, of course."
I once stayed at a high-priced appartment on Park Avenue in New York City (you know, the kind with a doorman and video surveillance and all that) just for a couple of days. The furniture was not worth mentioning. What really struck me was the "pretentious" wall-paper in the bathroom: dark green with gold patterend velvet. (Shudder!)But I'm not sure the lady who owned the appartment was an American, and she may have rented the place as is.
Betty Magdalen, I went to Patsels.com and took the tour. If you know the decor was chosen by artists/artistically minded people...But still...
Taste is a matter of taste. And that's just as it should be.
Betty Anonymous