Betty Goes to Church

The day went slowly by, following the exact pattern of all the Sundays Letitia could remember at home. Church, breakfast, church, lunch, then help with Sunday School and Evensong to finish the day...[she] sat quietly through Matins, listening to her father's voice and the enthusiastic singing of the surprisingly large congregation, and admiring, as she always did, the carving on the rood screen, and all the while her thoughts were miles away, with Jason Mourik van Nie, driving his great Jensen motor-car back to his own country.

-A Small Slice of Summer

Contest Winners

I had a contest post all ready to go...and then we got a just-under-the-wire set of e-mail entries from Betty JoDee. Drat her evil genius! Kidding...about the evil thing. Betty Keira and I, in our roles as The Grand High Poobah Arbiters of Everything, decided to add a separate category just for her. The right hand picture in each collage is Betty JoDee's, the center is an original, and the left is our winner. Best re-naming of The End of the Rainbow, congratulations Betty Barbara. Elegantly simple. Betty JoDee used this contest as a family project (extra points for awesomeness!). Her helpers for this entry included "The Heir and The Spare".
Best re-naming of The Most Marvellous Summer? Thank you opramum! We here at The Uncrushable Jersey Dress are suckers for double lower-case "f's". Well played. Betty JoDee took it over the top with her entry...here is the note she added: Parental Advisory: Professor van der Hertenzoon ventured that the title includes a slang connotation (of what, I have no idea. If men spent more time painting porches and fixing window screens, they would have less time to dream up such foolishness but I digress…). He postulated that a RBD would certainly know, a RDD would probably know, but perhaps few Bettys would. So in the spirit of A Neels Naïveté: Can I get a raise of hands of all those who just snorted milk out their nose?

Best re-naming of A Small Slice of Summer? We love the allusions to both Tishy's deplorable temperament AND the bull chasing episode. Well, done Shilpa! Betty JoDee nailed the pink car to the wall! Hil-freakin-larious. Of course she had some girly help: "The Princess Royale and The Littlest Princess".

Winners:

Betty Barbara, opramum, shilpa AND Betty JoDee!

*Send us an email with your address and your prize preferences. Winners are eligible for a super-cute tote-bag OR a super-fantastic book cover OR a Betty Neels book (we have about 3 dozen to choose from).

Life After Betty: Summer of Summers (Final Edition)

It's been a fun little spree through some of the collected works of Miss Essie. I thought I'd toss you tossers a few more titles and some retrospective for our final post on her.

First the wrap-up. Essie Summers is not for everyone but the things that set her apart are, for me, excellent. Early Harlequin had a masculinity problem, confusing awesome manliness for testosterone-fueled temper tantrums. Essie has plenty of heroes who get flaming mad but it's never a prime character trait. They are intrinsically decent traditionalists with a great work ethic, gentle tolerance towards old people and children and a nice sense of humor. That they don't engage in yucky sexual double standards is also a bonus. Essie heroes are 'saving themselves'. Right on.

Another thing I love is how hard everybody works in the world of Essie. Much though I adore La Neels it's shopping and eating an awful lot. For Essie, work is not stigmatized as an undesirable end.

In one of my recently acquisitions (thank you paperbackswap.com!), Goblin Hill, some characters are discussing the death of an author. "He's a loss to the world. In the main, these days, you either get very tame books, which we can't stand, or books that are morbid and depressing and...what is the word I want Chassie?" "Ugly, I should think...Your father's books are strong meat, yet never distasteful..."

That is Essie to a tee.
The House of Gregor's Brae For those Bettys who like Cassandra By Chance, here's another go at the blind hero. As a young journalist, Gregor MacGreor (!) contributed to young Jenny getting adopted and moving to New Zealand. Now back in Scotland and raising her parents' other children she meets him again. How dismaying that he's crabby and aloof and blind. He also can't remember her. This one has a lovely villainess and Gregor doesn't regain his sight (of course he does!)...until after the wedding.

South Island Stowaway Best title ever, right?! When Julia 'stows-away' in her brother's car so that he'll have to accept her help as his housekeeper, she is flummoxed to be making such a long trip...to the South Island! Adam didn't mean to take on a hitch-hiker but when his fiancee' finds her (cramped horribly from crouching so long on the floor of the back seat and needing to pee desperately) all heck breaks loose. Engagements are broken, heroines are awash in guilt and it doesn't take long for the hero to become awfully philosophical about being dumped. I love this one.

Summer in December Also one of my favorites. Joanna has been brought up to be decorative and attentive to her employer/foster-mother, a famous television star. When she strikes out on her own to discover her roots, she becomes hopelessly stranded in a remote sheep station with a bachelor and three kids. What rotten luck, our hero thinks, but at least she'll be able to help us cook. Um...about that. She wasn't brought up to be domestic at all. Watching her learn is all the fun.

Cinema Betty

When Betty penned the words 'Laurens has a very good post in Pittsburgh' I knew immediately which movie I would suggest:

The Valley of Decision (1945)

Like Tante Emilie's obsession with her son and nephew's status as jonkheers (and her pointed refusal to see Serena as worthy of them), the wealthy steel mill owners of Pittsburgh see Greer Garson as a maid and nothing more. The son of the household (a very young and RDD-looking Gregory Peck), however, falls in love. Class struggles follow, Garson runs off to England (sound familiar?), Peck marries another (another what? Exactly.), and happiness is found (at last) in the end.

A Small Slice of Summer has a famous incident regarding a bull. So, obviously, I had to choose a film with some bull fighting and the one that made the strongest impression on me was:

Blood and Sand (1941)

This is sure to end well...

I'll be honest, this one is the teensiest bit of a downer. Tyrone Power is an impoverished boy who runs off to Madrid, becomes rich and famous as a bull fighter, marries Linda Darnell (his childhood sweetheart) and becomes ensnared by Rita Hayworth (what's good enough for Orson Wells is good enough for Tyrone Power). He returns to his wife after losing everything (honey, don't they all?) and vows to give up fighting after one last match. But it isn't called Blood and Sand for nothing. If only he'd had Tishy in the wings ready to distract this charging bull...

Re-name That Book II! Final Call.

We have such clever Bettys! Here are the entries thus far:

The End of the Rainbow:
1. Olympia's Finish Line Surprise (opramum)
2. Where's Waldo? (Betty Barbara)
3. Blood is Not Thicker than Water (Bettyellen)
4. A Titian for Olympia (Betty Kylene)
5. A Tale of Two Terrible Aunts (Betty Barbara)

A Small Slice of Summer:
1. Tishy Takes a Tumble (opramum)
2. Love, Beta Edition (Betty Keira)
3. Tish Tosh (Bettyellen)
4. Tish's Take Two (Kandidly yours)
5. Letitia Won't Go To Brighton (Betty Kylene)
6. Letitia's Trust (Betty Kylene)
7. Letty's Longings (opramum)
8. Tishy the Wet Tissue (Betty Barbara)

For The Most Marvelous Summer:
1. Lumps for Matilda (opramum)
2. Lumps, Mumps and ffrumps (opramum)
3. The Many Careers of Matilda (Betty Kylene)
4. Matilda's Messes (opramum)

It's not too late for more entries! The Founding Bettys, in their roles as Grand High Poobah Arbiters of Everything will be selecting the winner (or possibly winners) sometime Saturday morning. Not interested in entering? Let us know which one's are your favorites.

Betty and the Real World

Uncertain Summer:

Serena, for their first dinner party, chooses a dish (the nasty sounding Gurkas Norge) from the Galloping Gourmet. The Galloping Gourmet began in 1969 and ended in 1971 after a car accident that left Graham temporarily paralysed. (Seriously? What a wonderful plot for a Betty Neels book.)

Their engagement is announced in the Telegraph and Elseviers Weekblad. During the Second World War, The Daily Telegraph covertly helped in the recruitment of code-breakers for Bletchley Park. The ability to solve The Telegraph's crossword in under 12 minutes was considered a recruitment test. The newspaper was asked to organise a crossword competition, after which each of the successful participants was contacted and asked if they would be prepared to undertake "a particular type of work as a contribution to the war effort". The competition itself was won by F H W Hawes of Dagenham who finished the crossword in less than eight minutes

A Small Slice of Summer:

When the surgeons are doing their work they get a woman in for a Caesarean Section. They charmingly call it a Caesar as though they were ordering lunch from a greasy spoon. ("I'll get two flyers, slap 'em down and make 'em moo. Slip me a Caesar while you're at it.")
Caesarean section usually resulted in the death of the mother; the first recorded incidence of a woman surviving a Caesarean section was in 1500, in Siegershousen, Switzerland: Jakob Nufer, a pig gelder, is supposed to have performed the operation on his wife after a prolonged labour.
This pic to the left is of one being performed successfully in Uganda in 1879. Wow. Show of hands for all you ladies willing to let a pig gelder anywhere near your delivery room?

A Small Slice of Summer--Discussion Thread

A Small Slice of Summer begins with a 'Commando operation'. For the potty-minded among us (imagining a team of surgeons operating without their knickers on), I offer the true definition: Surgery A term attributed to Hayes Martin, a pioneer in head & neck surgery, for the en bloc removal of an advanced 1º malignancy of the oral cavity, usually SCC–lymphoma is amenable to RT or chemotherapy; the CO is a very aggressive procedure, and entails partial removal of the mandible, floor of the mouth and/or tongue, accompanied by a radical neck dissection. Bo-ring.


I don't like Tishy much but can totally relate to her penny-pinching ways. 'Buying her meals had become a major exercise in basic arithmetic.' During my second semester of college (after my scholarship ran out and before I got my first paycheck) I was in a similar way. I had a 10 pound sack of potatoes, a few sticks of butter and some salt. Maybe I was hoping for a repeat of the Old Testament miracle (the one about the meal and oil and the widow) as it would have to last me two weeks. I would have done it too but my student congregation (my ward) was having a pay-it-forward week going on and one day I stepped out of my front door at 6:30 in the morning (in the freezing cold and snow to head off to work) and found a large (for a student) sack of groceries. I never found out who that person was but it was the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me and probably represented a sizable amount of their food budget. I felt very Tishy-esque.


Jason drives a Jensen Interceptor convertible (right). (Can I get a show of hands for those that mentally hear "The Dauntless is the power in these waters but there's not a ship that can match The Interceptor for speed."?) When he drives her home he does so with the 'hood down'. Those crazy Brits--calling hoods 'bonnets' and tops 'hoods'. I live in rainy Oregon so 'hood down' driving is more theoretical than actual. But even if it were sensible, I have hair issues. No, better to cover it up and crack a window...

Gypsies with Typhoid! Whenever La Neels discusses gypsy caravans I know I'm supposed to picture crummy RVs but I instantly conjure Stromboli from Pinocchio with the wooden cart. As for Typhoid... Typhoid Mary, was the first person in the United States to be identified as a healthy carrier of typhoid fever. Over the course of her career as a cook, she is known to have infected 53 people, three of whom died from the disease.Her notoriety is in part due to her vehement denial of her own role in spreading the disease, together with her refusal to cease working as a cook. She was forcibly quarantined twice by public health authorities and died in quarantine. It is possible that she was born with the disease, as her mother had typhoid fever during her pregnancy.

'Typhoid is not the long drawn out thing now that we have Chloramphenicol.' Sure, but once upon a time it was a real danger. First Lady Abigail Adams, the third son of Abraham Lincoln, one of the Wright brothers and Prince Albert (consort of Queen Victoria) all died from the disease. The moral of the story? There were no good old days.

Tishy usually tries to keep her food budget around 40 pence a day, she tells the doctor while dining with him at Le Gaulois in Chancery Lane. Not to harp on my desperate college days, but if I recall correctly, my monthly food budget was around $50. Lots of rice and potatoes and eggs and barbecue sauce and ramen noodles. I don't think a RDD would be on a speaking acquaintance with ramen noodles.

Jason buys her a painting of a gypsy caravan which she nails to her wall with the heel of her winter boot. I wonder if nailing things to the wall was strictly allowed in the nurse's home. To me it sounds like a cross between a nunnery and a dorm room--places where the integrity of the walls are guarded like a Romulan warship. Stands to reason that she couldn't get a hold of a simple hammer.