Category: Books

Great Lines

Writers of all kinds yearn for the blissful experience of writing a great line, a line that will reach readers, a line that will be remembered. Readers often have favorite lines from literature, lines they can quote from memory. Here’s a story about the gods that created “great lines in literature.”

The two gods had been hanging about, not doing much of anything. There had been some desultory conversation, then a look in on the human world where things, as might be expected, were going to hell in a handbasket. Nothing new. They had played a few hands of cards but soon lost interest and threw them down on the table.

“What are some of our greatest creations?”

“Hmmm. Our greatest creations?” The older of the two gods considered. “I’m rather fond of our creation of ‘the great line in a work of literature.’”

books and writing utensils.

“Yes! Bro! Wasn’t that fun? There were so many details to work out. It’s not easy to create something that both inspires and confounds. It was rather brilliant of you to add in the point about misquoting great lines. What was the ratio you used?”

“Three out of ten. Three out of ten humans who attempt to quote a great line from literature will misquote it. And one of those three misquoted lines will carry with it an unintentionally humorous or erotic interpretation.”

The younger god grinned in appreciation. “Nice touch.”

“Your contributions deserve accolades as well,” the older god continued. “Very clever to add in the bit about quoting accurately but misusing the line in a totally inappropriate way. A lot of pols and celebrities embarrass themselves royally doing that.”

“Do you think we got a little cruel with our invention?” The younger god took a sip from his wine. “When we directed the muses to put our brainchild to use, they added a few tricks of their own, like giving great lines to writers whose works will never see the light of day. Or giving great lines to writers then having editors delete them.”

“Yes. And I suspect muses might be even more cruel than gods. Maybe because they’ve spent eons giving great lines to male writers who then take all the credit, only giving lip service to the muse that actually planted the line in their brain in the first place. Muses seem to have a better relationship with women writers. I suspect women writers and muses understand each other.”

Painting of the muses.

“But it’s a beautiful creation, isn’t it? Look at Shakespeare: Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war. And Dostoevsky: If there is no god, everything is permitted. And Dickens:  It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ….

“Don’t forget Melville. Then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago. That’s a great line, you gotta admit.”

“A little bleak, perhaps.”

“Bleak lines are appropriate when you’re dealing with nature. No, let me amend that—when you’re dealing with humans thinking they are the masters of nature.”

“So true. But balancing the bleak lines are the ones that express joy or optimism or strength. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise.”

“Ah, Maya Angelou. That one kind of sticks with you, doesn’t it? Do you know this one? He did not belong with himself any more.”

“Jack London, right? ‘To Build a Fire.’”

“Yes. Always been one of my favorites. Great lines needn’t be elaborate or lengthy. Think Emily Dickinson: Hope is the thing with feathers.”

The older of the two gods picked up the cards again, studied them briefly, then tossed them back on the table. “I like lines that exhibit self-awareness and show how humans screw things up.”

“Here’s one you’ll appreciate then, a classic from the 1920s, a follow up to the Great War, handed out to Fitzgerald who shared it with the world: They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

“Ouch. Lines like that make me really glad I’m not human.” He paused to reflect. “You know, now that there’s another pandemic, there are bound to be some great lines written.”

“That’s so. But remember when we put in that provision messing around with the element of time? Some great lines will be written long before they are needed or understood or appreciated. Some lines will be written at the moment of utmost urgency, when they could make a difference, but will be ignored nonetheless. Here’s a prime example.”

He started to recite, but his companion chimed in. He, too, knew the line: “And darkness and decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.”

“Edgar Allan Poe. ‘The Masque of the Red Death.’ Do you know when that was written?”

“Of course I know when it was written. I keep track of our creations—well, I try to, anyway, with authors I love. That story was written in 1842. Before this pandemic. Before the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. I loved the 1964 Vincent Price movie adaptation. A total mash-up, but loads of fun. I took human form for a day, so I could watch it in a real movie theater holding a bucket of popcorn.”

The older god shook his head reflectively. “I haven’t taken human form since the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851 in Hyde Park. There were a lot of writers there: Charlotte Bronte, Lewis Carroll, George Eliot, Alfred Tennyson, William Makepeace Thackeray. Charles Dickens, too, of course. The muses complained about all the extra work they were doing handing out great lines, and there were rumblings of a strike to earn time-and-a-half, but nothing came of it.”

Painting of the Crystal Palace Exhibition Hall.

“Is that when the muses bequeathed that Dickens line?”

“No, it was a few years later. The muses were in a good mood that day. The line they gave him was the most glorious run-on. Let me see if I can remember the whole thing.”

He cleared his throat and began: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way.

Photograph of Charles Dickens.

“That’s a good one, all right,” the younger god said.

“He was gifted that line in 1859. Could have been yesterday.”

From somewhere outside, they heard a gentle tintinnabulation – the signal that supper was ready.

They looked at each other with complete understanding. “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”

“Did you know the original was slightly different?” the younger god asked. “We gave it to Donne differently but it got changed in 1936. Long story. But I’ll fill you in later. Let’s eat.”

What are some of your favorite lines from literature? I’ll bet you can quote them by heart. If you’re a writer, go back and reread some of your best lines. I’ll bet you know exactly where they are.

Remembering the Titanic

The Titanic sank 108 years ago on its maiden voyage. It had set sail from Southampton, England, on April 10, 1912. After picking up additional passengers in Cherbourg and Queenstown, it headed for New York. At 11:40 p.m. on Sunday, April 14—a calm, frigid, and moonless night—it struck an iceberg. By 2:20 a.m., Monday, April 15, it had disappeared beneath the waves. There were more than 2,200 aboard. There were lifeboats for only a fraction of this number.

Over the years, the Titanic disaster became a metaphor for many human failings including imprudence and hubris. It also spawned countless books and movies, especially after oceanographer Robert Ballard discovered the wreck on the ocean floor in 1985.

One of the best books on this event is Walter Lord’s classic, A Night to Remember. It was first published in 1955 and has never been out of print. As a child, Lord had traveled on the Olympic, one of Titanic’s sister ships, and became fascinated with the famous disaster. In the process of writing his book, Lord interviewed over sixty survivors, and those firsthand accounts are what make his narrative unforgettable.

Stanley Walker, who reviewed A Night to Remember for The New York Herald Tribune, said Lord’s writing was a kind of literary pointillism that arranged “contrasting bits of fact and emotion in such a fashion that a vividly real impression of an event is conveyed to the reader.” If pointillism in art is the application of dots of color to create an image, in Lord’s book, the points are distinct images created by the individuals he interviewed.

Here are some of the passengers’ descriptions of what they saw and felt just as the Titanic brushed against the iceberg:

Quartermaster George Thomas Rowe, standing on the after bridge first noticed how cold it was. There were what sailors called “whiskers ‘round the light.” These were “tiny splinters of ice in the air, fine as dust, that gave off myriads of bright colors whenever caught in the glow of the deck lights.” Then Rowe detected a break in the rhythm of the engines, and, glancing forward, saw what appeared to be a windjammer, sails set, passing by the side of the ship. Then he realized it was an iceberg, “towering perhaps 100 feet above the water.”

In the first class dining saloon, the passengers were long gone, but the tables had been set for breakfast. A small group of stewards were sitting together in the giant room, gossiping about the passengers, when the ship brushed against the iceberg. There was no large jolt, but suddenly the silverware on all the tables around them began to rattle.

Mrs. E. D. Appleton heard an “unpleasant ripping sound” like someone tearing a long long strip of fabric.

Mrs. J. Stuart White was about to turn off her light for the night when it seemed like the ship was rolling over “a thousand marbles.”

Mr. James B. McGough, a Gimbel’s buyer (remember Gimbel’s?) had his porthole open, and as the berg brushed by “chunks of ice fell into the cabin.”

Titanic survivors Mrs. Appleton, Mr. McGough, and Mrs. White

Stockbroker Hugh Woolner was playing cards and drinking a hot whiskey and water in the smoking room. When the men in the room felt the “grinding jar” produced by the berg, Woolner raced outside and saw “a mountain of ice standing black against the starlit sky.” Then it vanished into the dark behind them. It seemed like a momentary bit of excitement. Woolner and the others returned to the smoking room and resumed their card game.

Down in the boiler rooms, things were quite different, of course. Fireman Fred Barrett heard an ear-splitting crash “and the whole starboard side of the ship seemed to give way” as the sea cascaded in, “swirling about the pipes and valves.”

Titanic’s boiler room and scene from the movie A Night to Remember

Just over 700 people survived. Approximately 1,500 perished. George Rowe would serve aboard a hospital ship in World War I and die in 1974 at the age of 92. Mrs. Appleton was on the ship with her two sisters. All three women survived. Mrs. White survived and later testified that the Titanic broke in two before sinking—a view that was disputed at the time, though verified decades later when the wreck was discovered. When she died in 1942, Mrs. White was living at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. James McGough returned to work as a department store buyer. He died of cancer in 1937. Hugh Woolner helped some of the women passengers into lifeboats. As the ship was about to sink, he and a friend jumped into one of the last of the lifeboats that had been lowered to the water when they noticed there was a bit of space. Fred Barrett survived in Lifeboat 13. He later married and had several children.

Second Officer Lightoller survived on an overturned lifeboat. Later in life he would use his own boat to save servicemen at Dunkirk.

One of the most interesting stories is that of Second Officer Charles Lightoller, the most senior member of the crew to survive. He oversaw the loading of the lifeboats, then dove into the water from the roof of the officer’s quarters as the ship began its final plunge. He was able to swim to an overturned lifeboat and climb aboard along with about thirty other men. Lightoller served in World War I, and was retired by the time World War II began. He owned a boat, the Sundowner, which was licensed to carry 21 passengers. When a call went out for private citizens to rescue English servicemen at Dunkirk, Lightoller, one of his sons, and a Sea Scout crossed the English Channel and brought back 127 servicemen.

Scenes from the movie A Night to Remember showing the loading of the lifeboats and survivors standing on an overturned boat.

A film adaptation of Lord’s book was made in 1958. It followed the book closely, and is considered quite accurate in its presentation of the sinking. It does not, however, show the ship breaking in half because, prior to Ballard’s discovery of the wreck, the accepted view was that Titanic went down in one piece. After the wreck was discovered in 1985, Walter Lord wrote a follow-up book called The Night Lives On.

Writing advice from writers

What do writers say about the process of writing? What advice can we find from novelists, poets, and writers of narrative history? Here are a few voices with something to say:

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. Jack London

If the doctor told me I had six minutes to live, I’d type a little faster. Isaac Asimov

You’ve got to jump off the cliff all the time and build your wings on the way down. Ray Bradbury

Jack London, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov

My youngest child asked me the other day, “Mummy, if you had to choose between us and writing, what would you choose?” And I said, “Well I would choose you but I would be very, very grumpy.” J.K. Rowling

It’s hard for me to believe that people who read very little – or not at all in some cases – should presume to write and expect people to like what they have written. Can I be blunt on this subject? If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time – or the tools – to write. Simple as that. Stephen King

Nothing turns out quite in the way that you thought it would when you are sketching out notes for the first chapter, or walking about muttering to yourself and seeing a story unroll. Agatha Christie

J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, Agatha Christie

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. Robert Frost

I don’t know about lying for novelists. I look at some of the great novelists, and I think the reason they are great is that they’re telling the truth. The fact is they’re using made-up names, made-up people, made-up places, and made-up times, but they’re telling the truth about the human being—what we are capable of, what makes us lose, laugh, weep, fall down, and gnash our teeth and wring our hands and kill each other and love each other. Maya Angelou

The revision for me is the exciting part; it’s the part that I can’t wait for—getting the whole dumb thing done so that I can do the real work, which is making it better and better and better. Toni Morrison

Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison

Books aren’t written, they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it…. Michael Crichton

I write to understand as much as to be understood. Elie Wiesel

I think all writers should take a drawing or painting class to learn how to paint with words. As Charles Dickens said, ‘Make me see.’ I try to make you see what’s happening and smell it and hear it. I want you to know what they had for dinner. I want you to know how long it took to walk from where to where. David McCullough

Michael Crichton, Elie Wiesel, David McCullough, Doris Kearns Goodwin

Telling stories is so important…Stories keep people alive. Doris Kearns Goodwin

Centenarian Series for Young Readers

In one scene in my novel, The Better Angels, an old man talks about his childhood in the 1920s and the grandfather that raised him: “At night we sat at the kitchen table and he read to me—Dr. Dolittle and the Hardy Boys, those were my favorites.” The early part of the 20th century was a great time for children’s literature. As printing costs decreased and more families had access to books, writers began to produce children’s books series with the same characters appearing in different adventures. Here are some notable series that appeared between 1900 and 1920.

The first book in the Oz series, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by author L. Frank Baum, was published in 1900. The series would eventually stretch to fourteen novels. Its phenomenal popularity continued to grow for decades, especially after the 1939 film adaptation starring Judy Garland as Dorothy.

Anne of Green Gables, the first book in a series by Canadian author Lucy Maud Montgomery, arrived in 1908. Anne, an 11-year-old orphan, is adopted by siblings Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, who thought they were getting a boy to help on their farm on Prince Edward Island. Anne is unconventional, always finding herself in scrapes, and bemoans her bright red hair. Montgomery eventually wrote six books about Anne, tracing her adventures into adulthood, and several books about Anne’s children and friends.

Anne of Green Gables with different cover designs

Connecticut can take pride in a series that began with Norwalk author Johnny Gruelle’s 1918 publication of Raggedy Ann Stories. Gruelle had received a patent for a rag doll design in 1915, and decided to write stories about her and her friends. Ann’s brother Andy arrived in a 1920 book, and dozens of books and stories about the dolls were written in the twenties and thirties.

In 1920, another children’s book series began with the publication of the first Dr. Dolittle book by the British author Hugh Lofting. The first book had the impressive title The Story of Doctor Dolittle, Being the History of His Peculiar Life at Home and Astonishing Adventures in Foreign Parts. The main character, John Dolittle, is a physician who learns how to talk to animals and becomes a naturalist. The first book was based on letters and pictures that Lofting sent to his children while serving in World War I. The series grew to number thirteen books and two volumes of short stories.

In the following decade, there was another new development in children’s literature: the adventure/mystery series written by ghostwriters all using the same pseudonym. The Hardy Boys were first on the scene, with three books published in 1927, all supposedly written by “Franklin W. Dixon.” Nancy Drew followed in 1930, with all titles published under the author name “Carolyn Keene.”

A series of ghostwriters produced the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books

What are your favorite children’s book series? The Goodreads website has wonderful lists of children’s and young adult series in many genres. Children’s librarians are another fabulous resource for anyone looking for books to engage, captivate, and delight young readers.

The Angel of the Waters

The cover of my novel, The Better Angels, features a photo of the Angel of the Waters statue which rises above Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain. Let me tell you a bit about the statue’s history, and how one woman’s vision was validated and embraced by generations of park visitors despite a sharply critical negative review published in the New York Times at the statue’s unveiling.

Cover of the novel The Better Angels by Bette Bono showing the Bethesda Fountain Angel.
Photo by Douglas Biklen. Cover design by All Things That Matter Press.

The angel was New York’s first major public art commission awarded to a woman. The sculptor, Emma Stebbins (1815-1882), was from a prominent New York family. Her brother, Henry, was chairman of the park’s Committee on Statuary, Fountains and Architectural Structure, and many assumed that was how Emma received the commission. This is not to say that Emma was untrained or untalented. She had shown promise from an early age and had studied sculpting in Rome. While in Rome, she also met and fell in love with the American actress Charlotte Cushman, and the two exchanged “unofficial vows.”

(Left) Emma Stebbins (Right) Charlotte Cushman and Emma Stebbins.

The angel is the only sculpture commissioned as a part of the park’s original design. It was intended to embody the idea of love. As the Central Park Conservancy puts it, Emma “put her own spin on the work, interpreting the statue’s directive, that it be dedicated to ‘Love,’ liberally by adding several layers of meaning.”

One of the meanings invested in the statue was healing, particularly the healing power of water. The design referenced the biblical story in which an angel gives healing powers to the waters of Bethesda. The fountain was also meant to celebrate the new Croton Aqueduct (a water distribution system built between 1837 and 1842) which supplied clean drinking water to the city.

The angel herself is eight feet tall and made of bronze. She carries a lily, the symbol of purity. The four cherubs that support her represent health, purity, temperance, and peace. Construction of the terrace and fountain occurred during the American Civil War, but the angel did not appear until 1873.

Now here’s the part of the angel’s story that had me shaking my head. I found the June 1873 New York Times review of the statue’s unveiling, and, reading it now, it is clearly wrong in every respect—completely, inarguably, laughably wrong. The unnamed reviewer hated just about everything about the statue and even disagreed with the placement of the fountain itself. (Placing a fountain directly beside a lake was described as “ill-chosen” because it was like adding “sugar to sweetmeats or carrying coals to Newcastle.”)

Close up of the Angel of the Waters. Photo by Douglas Biklen.
Photo by Douglas Biklen

He (I’m assuming the reviewer was male) began by saying everyone had expected “something great” and experienced “a revulsion of feeling” at the “feebly-pretty … thing of bronze.” He goes on to opine that the head is male, the breasts female, and the rest of the body a combination of male and female. He compares the figure to a servant girl doing a polka in the back kitchen and a dancing girl jumping over stepping stones. He apparently doesn’t like the fact that the angel seems to be wearing “voluminous folds” of petticoats that are nonetheless diaphanous and reveal the angel’s figure. The wings come in for criticism as well, as do the four cherubs (“hopelessly nondescript”).

Bethesda Fountain Angel with lake and trees in the background.
Photo by Douglas Biklen

All who have seen the angel, know how wrong the reviewer was. I found myself wondering how he could fail to fathom—to truly see—the beauty and the love embodied in that sculpture. If you would like to see the angel yourself, she can be found mid park, at about 72nd. Street.

The 1873 review is at https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1873/06/01/80321660.pdf. In May of this year, the New York Times published an “overlooked no more” obituary of Emma Stebbins. It is at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/29/obituaries/emma-stebbins-overlooked.html.  My publisher is All Things That Matter Press which can be found at https://www.allthingsthatmatterpress.com/.  The photo of the angel on the cover of my book is by Douglas Biklen. His website is http://biklenartphotography.com/. 

One Woman. A Lot of History.

What women’s names come to mind when you hear these descriptions? Writer. Feminist. Home décor guru. D.C. socialite. Suffragist. Journalist. Red Cross nurse. World traveler. Oh, one more thing: Titanic survivor. Well, the headline to this post kind of gave away the fact that a single woman fit all these descriptions. She’s Helen Churchill Candee. When I first learned about her, I was intrigued. Then I found out she had a connection to my own city, Norwalk, Connecticut, and her whole story came alive.

Mrs. Helen Churchill Candee

Helen was born in New York in 1858, but spent most of her youth in Connecticut. In 1880, she married Edward Candee of Norwalk, Connecticut, and had two children. But Edward was abusive and eventually abandoned his family. From that point on, Helen was on her own. She began supporting herself by writing magazine articles and moved to the Oklahoma Territory where she could more easily obtain a divorce. In 1900 she published How Women May Earn a Living offering advice on how to attain financial independence. A year later she penned An Oklahoma Romance. Her articles on life in Oklahoma became extremely popular and secured her reputation as a writer.

Helen Churchill Candee book How Women May Earn a Living
A copy of How Women May Earn a Living on display at the Lockwood Mathews Mansion in Norwalk, Connecticut

In 1904, Helen and her children moved to Washington, D.C., where she became part of the social and political scene, and a supporter of the National Women’s Suffrage Association. Having developed expertise in furniture and decorative styles, she worked as an interior design consultant. One of her clients was Theodore Roosevelt. In 1906, her first book on decorative styles was published.

Titanic classic book A Night to Remember by Walter Lord

Helen traveled extensively in Europe for pleasure and to do research on art and home décor. While in France, she received word that her son had been injured in an airplane crash—quite an unusual event in 1912—so she booked passage on the first available ship: the White Star Line’s brand new liner Titanic. In his classic book on the sinking, A Night to Remember, Walter Lord notes that Mrs. Candee “must have been attractive indeed,” because after the ship struck the iceberg “just about everybody wanted to protect her.” Several of her gentlemen friends helped escort her to a lifeboat. Unfortunately, upon stepping in, Helen’s ankle got caught and twisted, causing a fracture. Nonetheless, she helped pull an oar along with Mrs. Margaret Brown, later known as “the unsinkable Molly Brown.”

After landing in New York on the rescue ship Carpathia, Helen went to stay with her married daughter, Mrs. H.C. Mathews who lived in a beautiful mansion back in Norwalk, Connecticut. That home, known as the Lockwood-Mathews Mansion, is now a National Historic Landmark.

Helen’s adventures were not over, of course. In 1913, she rode a horse along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., as part of a massive suffrage parade. She published another book, this one on Jacobean furniture, and raised money for a variety of charitable causes. When World War I broke out, she volunteered with the Italian Red Cross. She was one of several nurses that tended a wounded eighteen-year-old Ernest Hemingway who had been driving an ambulance for the American Red Cross.

Women's suffrage parade in 1913 with Helen Churchill Candee riding a horse
Helen riding at the head of the 10,000-person-strong suffrage parade in 1913

At war’s end, Helen returned to travel and writing. In the 1920s she produced two more books, one on the temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and a second on her journeys through Asia. In her 70s, she began writing articles for National Geographic. Helen Candee died in Maine in the summer of 1949. She was ninety. The photos below were taken at the Lockwood-Mathews exhibit From Corsets to Suffrage: Victorian Women Trailblazers. Several displays feature artifacts and information relating to Mrs. Candee.

I realized, as I finished writing this post, that the title I chose is not apt. Yes, it is the story of one woman. But so many others—men and women—must have been inspired by her life and work. Who picked up her book on women earning a living and said, “I can do this, too”? Who else, besides Hemingway, were comforted and healed by her care in World War I? Who learned about tapestries or home décor because of her books? Who saw her riding a horse down Pennsylvania Avenue and determined to work for women’s rights? Who was encouraged to travel and write and seek adventure because of her example?

Many of Helen Candee’s books and articles are still available. The Lockwood-Mathews Mansion Museum in Norwalk, Connecticut, a National Historic Landmark, offers tours and exhibits. Their website is https://www.lockwoodmathewsmansion.com/. Walter Lord’s classic A Night to Remember, is still in print and available in most libraries. I recommend the 50th anniversary edition which features an introduction by Nathanial Philbrick who characterizes the work as a “finely cut gem of a book.”

Victorian Flower Cryptography

Everything has a history. Even the simple act of handing someone a flower. In Victorian times, flowers had symbolic meanings. Giving someone red roses conveyed a message of romantic love. If the roses were yellow, however, the message was an accusation: You’ve been unfaithful!

Today, with a few exceptions—like red roses on Valentine’s Day—people select flowers without regard to symbolism. Rather, they choose freely for practical or personal reasons: What’s in season? What corsage will look good with the dress? What smells heavenly? What makes a nice cut flower? What will bloom all summer and repel mosquitoes, squash bugs, and tomato worms? (Hint: Go with marigolds on that one.)

cover of Language of Flowers, a Victorian flower dictionary by Kate Greenaway
Many flower dictionaries appeared, offering a guide to the symbolism of different blooms

It was different in England and the United States in the nineteenth century. Floriography—the language of flowers—was a means of cryptological communication, a secret code that carried a message from the donor to the recipient. Many cultures attribute symbolic meanings to flowers, but the Victorians went all out on this. At its height, floriography inspired writers to produce dozens of magazine articles on the topic as well as scores of books including floral poetry collections and dictionaries listing meanings for both flowers and herbs. Some of these books are still available, including Language of Flowers by Kate Greenaway (1846-1901), an English writer and illustrator, whose work appeared in children’s books and on greeting cards and bookplates.

Page from Language of Flowers, a Victorian flower dictionary by Kate Greenaway

Inevitably, there were disagreements among floriography authors on what certain flowers symbolized. It made me wonder if someone handing over a bouquet needed to provide an explanatory note citing their sources in order to avoid ambiguity in the message. Another problem developed when florists realized that flowers with negative meanings were not big sellers. No one wanted to risk giving someone a gift of beautiful, expensive flowers only to find out they stood for an unflattering trait. This led to the invention of inoffensive “new meanings.” You’d be hard pressed now to find any florist or nursery that will tell you that dahlias were thought to represent instability and lobelia symbolized malevolence.

It’s actually a little distressing to think about the message a Victorian-era visitor might get from what I’ve planted at home. My lilacs represent the first expression of love, peonies symbolize a happy marriage, and the Rose-of-Sharon—those tall bushes that sprout like weeds and are covered in pink, white, and lavender blooms—mean you are consumed by love. All good. But the pots along my front walk hold geraniums and petunias which the Victorians associated with stupidity and anger. And I could only pray that they would overlook the dill, a symbol of lust.

Bouquet of red roses, the symbol of romantic love

Thankfully, I don’t have to worry about the symbolism of my garden. I’ve happily learned some of the Victorian definitions, and just as happily thrown them overboard. And yet … my heart still turns over when my true love brings me red roses.

Early Morning Editing

I had a lovely start to the morning. What made it so? My partner/best friend/true love/lawfully-wedded companion knew I was going to spend the day editing so made BLTs for breakfast. Let me say that again, in case it didn’t sink in. He made BLTs. For breakfast.

BLT on a plate served for breakfast to author Bette Bono

I am now ready to dive back into the editing comments from my wonderful publisher, All Things That Matter Press. I am actually looking forward to the hours ahead wrestling with concepts such as the serial comma, introductory adverbial phrases, phrasal adjectives, supplementary or parenthetical dependent clauses, parentheses and em dashes, suspension points versus ellipses, and aesthetic considerations regarding punctuation and font (yes, this is a real thing) as addressed in the Chicago Manual of Style. Life is good.

I know. Some of you are laughing. Some of you are rolling your eyes. But I am pretty much serious about this. Language is a structure. A structure as ingenious and baffling and complicated as the most advanced computer or telescope or rocket ship to Mars. It is also a structure that grows and changes, modified through time by millions and millions of users.

Should rules about language be simpler? What artist or craftsperson would choose simpler tools or fewer options? Would a painter opt for fewer colors? Would a photographer elect to use a primitive camera? Would any person devoted to a creative enterprise willingly accept less precision? I think not. But enough philosophy. Back to work.

The history of the Chicago Manual of Style—a history dating back to 1891—is on their website at https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/help-tools/about.html.

1933

I’ve been spending a lot of time in 1933. Not literally. Unlike my fictional characters, I am not a time traveler. But I’ve been reading about the Great Depression and FDR’s rise to the presidency. As always, when I dive into history, I am fascinated by the complicated interplay of events—both monumental and mundane—that form the mosaic of an era.

When FDR was inaugurated on March 4, the nation was in crisis. Thousands of banks had failed and unemployment was at 25 percent. Roosevelt’s brilliant speech called for broad executive power to combat the Great Depression and declared “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Speaking on that day, at that moment, on that topic, those words brought hope to millions. Looking back, we know that new fears–and global war–would require FDR’s continuing leadership and courage.

FDR delivers his first inaugural address declaring "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
FDR delivers his first inaugural address on March 4, 1933

Here’s a sampling of what else was going on in 1933:

On January 5, construction begins on the Golden Gate Bridge. On January 30, just over a month before FDR’s inauguration, Hitler is appointed Chancellor of Germany. It is also the date of the first radio broadcast of The Lone Ranger. In February, the Reichstag is set afire. Hitler uses this as an excuse to arrest opponents without charges, dissolve political organizations, and limit the press. On February 21, Nina Simone is born.

Hitler's speech following passage of the Enabling Act which gives him absolute power
Hitler becomes a dictator following passage of the Enabling Act

A lot happens in March. On the 2nd, King Kong premieres. On March 3, Mount Rushmore is dedicated. On the 4th, FDR is inaugurated. He declares a “bank holiday” on March 5. On March 7, the board game Monopoly appears. On March 9, Congress begins working with FDR on the legislation of the “first hundred days.” The first fireside chat is delivered on March 12. Two days later, Quincy Jones is born. The next day Ruth Bader Ginsburg is born. On March 20, the first Nazi concentration camp, Dachau, is completed. On March 23, the Reichstag passes the Enabling Act giving Adolf Hitler absolute power. Albert Einstein renounces his German citizenship on March 28. The month ends with the establishment of the Civilian Conservation Corps on March 31.

Hitler outlaws trade unions on May 2. On May 10, book burnings are carried out throughout Germany. In Chicago, the “Century of Progress” World’s Fair opens on May 27. Mussolini’s air marshal, Italo Balbo, arrives at the fair in July with 24 flying boats that land on Lake Michigan. He receives an enthusiastic welcome. In October, the Graf Zeppelin bearing a Nazi swastika on its tail circles over the fair grounds and the city of Chicago.

On June 6 the first drive-in movie theater opens in New Jersey. In October, Germany withdraws from the League of Nations, and the New York Giants defeat the Washington Senators in the World Series. In November, Fiorello La Guardia is elected mayor of New York City. Prohibition is repealed on December 5.

What are people reading? William Butler Yeats, H.G. Wells, Virginia Woolf, Dashiell Hammett, Dorothy Sayers, Gertrude Stein, Erle Stanley Gardner, and Agatha Christie all publish books in 1933. The 9th and 10th Nancy Drews appear. What are people listening to? Ethel Waters, Duke Ellington, and Bing Crosby have hit songs at the top of the charts.  

Jonathan Alter’s book The Defining Moment: FDR’s Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope offers a compelling look at Roosevelt’s first months as president and his role in creating “a new notion of social obligation, especially in a crisis.” You can read more about Jonathan Alter and his other books at https://jonathanalter.com/

Mathew Brady and Civil War Photography

One reason I chose to write a time travel novel was because of my fascination with history. One area I explored was the history of photography.

A lithograph of Civil War photographer Mathew Brady
Mathew Brady as a young man.

This is Mathew Brady, considered the father of photojournalism because he sent photographers out of the studio to the battlefields of the Civil War. In October, 1862, his New York City gallery displayed photographs of the dead at Antietam. The New York Times review of the exhibit stated: “Mr. Brady has done something to bring home to us the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards and along the streets, he has done something very like it.”

Photo of dead at the Battle of Antietam. In The Better Angels, the characters attend the exhibit at Mathew Brady's studio.
One of the photos shown at Brady’s exhibit “The Dead of Antietam.”

Brady did not travel to the battlefield himself. The photographs were taken by Alexander Gardner and James Gibson between September 19 and 22, 1862. The photographs were “stereos” and were displayed in boxy stereograph viewers, giving the images a 3-D effect.

Robert Wilson, the author of a terrific biography of Brady, states that the photographs of Antietam “marked a turning point in the portrayal of war.” Sketch artists, whose drawings were featured in the illustrated newspapers of the era, tended to soften and romanticize warfare. Photography, on the other hand, was remorseless.

This vintage photo shows Mathew Brady's photography studio at the corner of Broadway and 10th street in New York City. Grace Church is across the street.
Mathew Brady’s New York Studio at 785 Broadway at 10th Street, New York City. Courtesy The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

The photograph above shows Brady’s studio at the corner of 10th and Broadway in New York City, diagonally across the street from Grace Church. The building that held the studio is long gone (there’s a bank there now) but Grace Church is still there.

One level of the studio served as a gallery, displaying portraits of political and military leaders as well as distinguished writers, artists, and celebrities. Photographs were displayed from floor to ceiling, with the pictures at the top hung at an angle so visitors could see them better.

Drawing showing the interior of Civil War photographer Mathew Brady's studio.
This drawing shows the interior of Brady’s studio. Photographs were displayed on the second floor. The upper floors had skylights to provide lighting for the photographers.

I love it when I find a book that transports me to a different time and place. Can you tell I spent a lot of time with Wilson’s wonderful book?

Are you interested in learning more about Mathew Brady and the history of photography? Mathew Brady: Portraits of a Nation by Robert Wilson offers a fascinating look at the early years of photography and how this invention shaped and was shaped by the momentous events of the nineteenth century. You can find out more about the book and its author at http://www.mathewbrady.net/author.html