I have an old, brown carved box, daily polished but never locked; the lid is broken and tied with a string but I treasure it above everything. In it I keep little squares of paper, mapped with grey mildew spatter, with hair inside, and a little picture with a saying from the holy scripture, which […]
Tag: Victorian
A Victorian Vignette
My response to Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie Wordle #110 With her flushed neck and face, She is a damask rose Entwined by tendrils of waist-length hair. She gasps, moonstruck at the care And flawless delicacy of the vignette, The frontispiece of a book she hasn’t read yet: Poetry that will melt her with metaphors, Set alight a […]
Thinking about women in literature…
I read in an article that, in large parts of Victorian England, women had higher death rates than men because of differences in the impact of tuberculosis, also known as consumption, the most common single cause of death at that time. I was also reminded of Mimi in La Boheme. Consumed A wracking cough Leaves […]