Thursday Thirteen: Gay Love Poems

By Erastes

Continuing our month of love, and because love is love and is for everyone.

Thirteen Things about Gay Love Poetry


1. The Song of Songs, Now widely acknowledged to be a homoerotic poem:

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.

2. Shakespeare, notably the infamous (and very witty) Sonnet 20:

A man in hue all hues in his controlling,
Which steals men's eyes, and women's souls amazeth.
And for a woman were thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.

3. Abu Nuwas (756-815):

I die of love for him, perfect in every way,
Lost in the strains of wafting music.
My eyes are fixed upon his delightful body
And I do not wonder at his beauty.
His waist is a sapling, his face a moon,
And loveliness rolls off his rosy cheek
I die of love for you, but keep this secret:
The tie that binds us is an unbreakable rope.
How much time did your creation take, O angel?
So what! All I want is to sing your praises.

4. Michelangelo: In the 1530s, Michelangelo was sustaining a relationship with his much younger model Febo di Poggio. He calls Febo "that little blackmailer," because Febo adopted Michelangelo as "my honorary father" and steadily demanded money, clothes, and love-gifts from him. On a page containing financial calculations, Michelangelo wrote:

Here with his beautiful eyes he promised me solace,
And with those very eyes he tried to take it away from me.

Their passion raged through 1533-34, but ended when Michelangelo discovered that the mignon had "betrayed" him, perhaps by actually stealing money or drawings from his sugar-daddy. The artist felt humiliated by his subservience to the model.

Several poems pun upon the boy's name. "Febo" equals Phoebus, and poggio is the Italian word for "hill"--and suggest physical consummation:

Blithe bird, excelling us by fortune’s sway,
Of Phoebus' thine the prize of lucent notion,
Sweeter yet the boon of winged promotion
To the hill whence I topple and decay!

But such a topple was sweet:

Easily could I soar, with such a happy fate,
When Phoebus brightened up the heights.
His feathers were wings and the hill the stair.
Phoebus was a lantern to my feet.

5. Walt Whitman: Perhaps less love for a single man, but love for the rough-trade he would immerse himself in. Whitman's notebooks of this period are filled with descriptions of buss drivers, ferry-boat men, and other "rude, illiterate" men that he met

I share the midnight orgies of young men . . .
I pick out some low person for my dearest friend,
He shal be lawless, rude, illiterate, he shall be condemned by others for deeds done,
I will play a part no longer, why should I exile myself from my companions?

And more romantically. . .

When I Heard at the Close of the Day (No. 11, from 'Calamus')

And when I thought how my friend, my lover, was on
his way coming, then O I was happy,
Each breath tasted sweeter – and all that day my food
nourished me more – and the beautiful day passed well,
And the next came with equal joy – and with the next,
at evening, came my friend.

6. Lord Alfred (Bosie) Douglas: Famous for being linked to Oscar Wilde and his poem "Two Loves" gives us one of the most famous lines in gay poetry.

I am true Love, I fill
The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame.
Then sighing, said the other, 'Have thy will,
I am the love that dare not speak its name.

7. W H Auden's "Funeral Blues," famously famous in Four Weddings & a Funeral:

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

8. Christopher Marlowe's Edward II. In Gaveston's first speech he reads Edward's letter to him, and he remarks upon it:

'My father is deceased. Come Gaveston,
And share the kingdom with thy dearest friend.'
Ah, words that make me surfeit with delight!
What greater bliss can hap to Gaveston
Than live and be the favourite of a King!
Sweet prince, I come! These, these thy amorous lines
Might have enforced me to have swum from France,
And, like Leander, gasped upon the sand,
So thou wouldst smile, and take me in thine arms.

9. Sir Philip Sidney's "My True-Love Hath My Heart" from Arcadia:

My true-love hath my heart, and I have his,
By just exchange one for the other given..

10. Hafiz, circa 1320-1389:

With looks disheveled, flushed in a sweat of drunkenness His shirt torn open, a song on his lips and wine cup in his hand With eyes looking for trouble, lips softly complaining So at midnight last night he came and sat at my pillow. . . ."

11. Byron's Don Leon (attributed):

How oft, beneath the arbour's mystic shade,
My boyish vows of constancy were made!
There on the grass as we recumbent lay,
Not coy wast thou, nor I averse to play;
And in that hour thy virtue's sole defence
Was not thy coldness, but my innocence.

12. Muhammad al-Nawaji bin Hasan bin Ali bin Othman (1383?-1455) wrote For a Beautiful Black Boy:

Aroused, he exhales
The intense perfume of his musk.
The sight of his face, lit by a ray of light
Imprints itself.

13. Byron's The Cornelian. Byron became obsessed with a choirboy, John Edleston (spelled "Eddleston" by Byron), whom Byron met as a student at Cambridge and with whom he was deeply in love (see The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature, ed. Byrne R. S. Fone, p. 219) and the poem is about a stone that Edleston once gave the poet.

He offer'd it with downcast look,
As fearful that I might refuse it;
I told him, when the gift I took,
My only fear should be, to lose it.

This pledge attentively I view'd,
And sparkling as I held it near,
Methought one drop the stone bedew'd,
And, ever since, I've lov'd a tear.

The Love Cycle: Change of Heart in the Early Middle Ages

By Vicki Gaia

During the early part of the Middle Ages, Christian life meant struggling between celibacy versus marriage, passionate libido verses affectionate continence. The human body was a battle ground in the war between good and evil. There were grooming rituals, laws against tonsuring hair of a free girl or boy, and every offense against the body. Men and women could be naked together in one place only: the bed. Starting in the Carolingian era, nudity took on a sexual connotation linking it to paganism. Pagan adoration of the naked body elicited hatred and fear of the body in the Christian populace.

Salic Law--law made between 507 and 511--made it clear that an individual had no right to protection if he was not part of a family. Therefore the survival of the family became paramount, and a woman was needed to ensure the continuation of the family line. The man headed the bloodline and was the guardian of the purity of the blood. It became imperative the bride had to be a virgin.

Rape, incest, abduction and adultery had to be avoided and punished by law. Rape victims were labeled corrupted, and therefore had no future value. The raped woman lost her rights to own property, and likely had no options except to become a prostitute.

Abduction was often used by a young couple in order to extort consent from reluctant parents. If a girl was abducted, and perhaps with her consent deflowered, than the marriage was a fait accompli. The girl would never confess that she consented to being deflowered, or she'd become the man's slave, instead of his wife. So much for romance!

Incest and adultery were more serious crimes than either rape or abduction. Besides marriage between parent and child or brother and sister, marriage between a father's wife and son was considered incestuous. Burgundian Law prohibited relations with "a female relative or the sister of one's wife."

Woman were severely punished if found guilty of adultery. A woman convicted of adultery could be immediately turned out of her house. Burned to death, strangled, stoned or tossed in a river with rocks tied to her feet, many women were killed for this crime. The adulterous man got away with far lesser punishment.

As the journey progressed from body to heart, the naked body as a temple for procreation and affection turned into something all together different. Love and affection didn't come under consideration, for marriages were arranged by the parents. Women became the targets of blame for the destructive folly of love, even though most sexual offenses were committed by men.

Information came from a terrific book titled: A History of Private Life, edited by Philippe Aries and Georges Duby

Thursday Thirteen: Historical Lovers from the Movies

By Marianne LaCroix

I don't know about some of you, but for me, a romance is crucial in a story, whether it is in a book or in a movie. When I write, I have an image of my hero in my head. Who influences our heroes? SOme of the most romantic, passion starved men we see in the movies. How many times have we screamed at the screem, "Just kiss her!" Okay, lots I bet. I'm not the only one! So, in celebration of love and its expressions, I am listing 13 male movie characters who influence our heroes, especially when they gaze upon their heroines with the "Look of Love".

Thirteen "Hot Men in Love" in historical movies:

1. Mr. Darcy

2. Will Turner

3. Robin Hood

4. William Wallace

5. Hawkeye

6. King Leonidas

7. Achilles

8. Prince Hector

9. Rodrigo "El Cid" Diaz
Oh come on, I had to put one Charleton Heston in there!

10. Robert Dudley

11. Sir Walter Raleigh

12. King of Siam

13. Rhett Butler
Of course!

Marianne LaCroix
Pirate's Mistress, Ellora's Cave (Coming to paperback Feb 2008)

The Love Cycle: The Struggle Buggy

By Delia DeLeest

The automobile changed more than the way Americans traveled. When it became something more than a toy for the rich, but a common means of transportation for the masses, society's morals and mores changed along with it.

Previously, when a young man came courting, he would arrive at a young lady's house and sit chastely in the parlor under her parent's watchful eye. Maybe they'd play a game of charades or sing songs around the piano. Due to the restraints of horse and buggy, night travel was dangerous. The roads were dark and unreliable. Nice young ladies would never risk their reputations being alone with a man in such conditions.

Then the automobile roared onto the scene. All it took was the spin of a crank and a car came to life, a turn of a key and it was off. No longer did a horse's needs and demands come first. A Studebaker didn't mind sitting alone in the dark for hours on end, it could travel many more miles than a horse...and it had a backseat.

The post World War I modern girl experienced a much different life than her mother before her. In many cases, she worked outside the home earning her own money, sometimes actually leaving home to live in the city. She didn't have to report her whereabouts to her father and, as a "modern," she took advantage of that fact.

She would roll her scandalous, flesh-colored stockings down below her knees, perm her hair and rouge her cheeks, all in preparation for a night on the town with her sheik at a gin joint to down a little coffin varnish, all the while puffing on a ciggy. Before you knew it, she'd be in a car, many times behind the wheel--she was a modern girl, remember. A car was commonly called a struggle buggy because of the activity that went on inside, something a horse would never stand still for. Neither would the girl's daddy, if he only knew. But he didn't. A car took young people to places they never could have gone to otherwise. Ballgames, dances and picnics in the park were all easily accomplished if you had a Lincoln or a Model "T" at your disposal.

The automobile gave unmarried people a freedom previously unheard of in modern society. Society would never be the same.

The Love Cycle: Love Poems

By Anne Whitfield

Throughout the centuries, people have written love poems to express desires, longing, hope, heartache and the sheer wonder of love.

I came across a book titled One Hundred And Twenty Asiatic Love Poems, translated by E. Powys Mathers. The book features love poems from around the world.

Here are a few examples.

WE WERE TWO GREEN RUSHES
We were two green rushes by opposing banks,
And the small stream ran between.
Not till the water beat us down
Could we be brought together,
Not till the winter came
Could we be mingled in a frosty sleep,
Locked down and close.
--From the Chinese of J. Wing (nineteenth century).

GEORGIA
PART OF A GHAZAL
Lonely rose out-splendouring legions of roses,
How could the nightingales behold you and not sing?
--By Rustwell of Georgia (from the Tariel, twelfth century).

FARD
Love brings the tiny sweat into your hair
Like stars marching in the dead of night.
--From the Hindustani of Mir Taqui (eighteenth century).

INCURABLE
I desire the door-sill of my beloved
More than a king's house;
I desire the shadow of the wall where her beauty hides
More than the Delhi palaces.
Why did you wait till spring;
Were not my hands already full of red-thorned roses?
My heart is yours,
So that I know not which heart I hear sighing:
Yaquin, Yaquin, Yaquin, foolish Yaquin.
--From the Hindustani of Yaquin (eighteenth century).

A POEM
Joy fills my eyes, remembering your hair, with tears,
And these tears roll and shine;
Into my thoughts are woven a dark night with raindrops
And the rolling and shining of love songs.
--From the Hindustani of Mir Taqui (eighteenth century).

FARD
Ever your rose face or black curls are with Shaguil;
Because your curls are night and your face is day.
--From the Hindustani of Shaguil (eighteenth century).

FARD
A love-sick heart dies when the heart is whole,
For all the heart's health is to be sick with love.
--From the Hindustani of Miyan Jagnu (eighteenth century).

PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE
Your eyes are black like water-melon pips,
Your lips are red like the red flesh of water-melons,
Your loins are smooth like smooth-rind water-melons.
You are more beautiful than my favourite among mares,
Your buttocks are sleeker and firmer,
Like her your movements are on legs of light steel.
Come and sit at my hearth, and I will celebrate your coming;
I will choose from the hundred flocks of each a hundred,
Passing at the foot of the Himalaya,
The two most silky and most beautiful great sheep.
We will go to the temple and sacrifice one of the two
To the god Pandu, that you may have many children;
And I will kill the other and roast it whole,
My most fair rose-tree serving as a spit.
I will ask the prettiest eaters and the prettiest drinkers;
And while they eat and drink greatly for three days,
I will wind silver rings upon your arms and feet
And hang a chain of river gold about your neck.
--Popular Song of Kafiristan.

THE DREAM
I dreamed that I was touching her eyelids, and I awoke
To find her sleepy temples of rose jade
For one heart-beat....
Though the moonlight beats upon the sea,
There is no boat.
--Lyric of Korea.

SEPARATION
As water runs in the river, so runs time;
And ever my eyes are wasted of her presence.
The red flowers of the second moon were yesterday;
To-day the earth has spots of blood, and there are no flowers.
The wild geese were harnessed to the autumn moon;
They have come, I heard their crying, and they are gone.
They have passed and given me no message;
I only hear the falling, falling noise of white rain.
--Song of Korea

Thursday Thirteen: Historical Quotations of Love

By Jacquie Rogers

1. Who can give law to lovers? Love is a greater law to itself. ~~Boethius (Anicius Manlius Severinus), De Consolatione Philosophiae

2. All the pictures that hung in my memory before I knew you have faded and given place to our radient moments together. Now I cannot live apart from you...Your words are my food, your breath my wine. You are everything to me. ~~Sarah Bernhardt

3. Love is a blazing, crackling, green-wood flame, as much smoke as flame; friendship, married friendship particularly, is a steady, intense, comfortable fire. Love, in courtship, is friendship in hope; in matrimony, friendship upon proof. ~~Samuel Richardson

4. As for me, to love you alone, to make you happy, to do nothing which would contradict your wishes, this is my destiny and the meaning of my life. ~~Napoleon Bonaparte

5. 'Tis said of love that it sometimes goes, sometimes flies; runs with one, walks gravely with another; turns a third into ice, and sets a fourth in a flame: it wounds one, another it kills: like lightning it begins and ends in the same moment: it makes that fort yield at night which it besieged but in the morning; for there is no force able to resist it. ~~Miguel de Cervantes

6. We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end. ~~Benjamin Disraeli

7. Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get--only with what you are expecting to give--which is everything. ~~Katharine Hepburn

8. I cannot exist without you--I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again--my life seems to stop there--I see no further. You have absorb'd me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I were dissolving... I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion--I have shudder'd at it--I shudder no more--I could be martyr'd for my Religion--Love is my religion--I could die for that--I could die for you. My creed is Love and you are its only tenet--You have ravish'd me away by a Power I cannot resist. ~~John Keats

9. Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone deeply gives you courage. ~~Lao-Tzu

10. The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden, a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it... you and you alone make me feel that I am alive. Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough. ~~George Moore

11. At the touch of love everyone becomes a poet. ~~Plato

12. There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not. ~~La Rochefoucauld

13. Love, and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation. ~~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Honorable Mentions, because verse messes up the numbering:

With love's light wings did I o'erperch these walls,
For stony limits cannot hold love out,
And what love can do, that dares love attempt.
~~William Shakespeare

Love wing'd my Hopes and taught me how to fly
~~The Oxford Book of English Verse

Love, and you shall be loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as the two sides of an algebraic equation. ~~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Love is like the wild rose-briar;
Friendship like the holly-tree.
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms,
But which will bloom most constantly?
~~Emily Bronte
Sources:
Quotations.Com
Bartleby

Happy Valentine's Day!

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Coming soon: Down Home Ever Lovin' Mule Blues

The Love Cycle: The Secret Lives of Flowers

By Jennifer Linforth

Edelweiss--it brings to mind Baron von Trapp strumming his guitar and singing to his children. It should conjure images of fools plummeting to their deaths.

Edelweiss, the flower of the clouds, is the flower of fools and emperors. (Its meaning is noble and daring.) The nobility of Austria used the flower to represent their rank—hence the emperor part. But the small white flower also represented love. Many young men climbed the dangerous crags of the Alps in search of the flower. The bigger the bouquet they presented to a lady, the loftier their intent to court her. Unfortunately, many fell to their deaths before they could even try. Hence, the daring part of its meaning and the resulting fool.

The Victorians had a brilliant knack for languages outside the spoken word. What lover of historicals in not familiar with the famous fan language? But beyond a coy flip of a fan, the Victorians perfected the art of sending their messages through flowers. And tokens of love are a very important part of The Love Cycle.

Flowers have had hidden meaning for centuries. The origins of many are rooted in mythology (the narcissus and hyacinth). Who doesn’t know the red rose means love? Victorians classified hundreds of flowers, grasses and herbs into a secret language, assigning each a simple message. A bouquet of snowdrop blooms mixed with jonquils was a suitor's secret way of saying he hoped (snowdrops) for the return of the ladies affections (jonquils).

The flowers had to be presented in the correct fashion to have the deepest meaning. A ribbon tied to the left held a message regarding the sender, tied the right, the message was for the recipient. More meaning could be added by adding more flowers. Blooms presented upside down held the opposite meaning. Never would a lady wish to receive and upside down rose...

Small details like this add to the fun of reading a historical novel. Here are a few favorites used in Victorian times:

Pimpernel: rendezvous
Lavender: distrust
Daisy: 'I will think on it'
Forget-me-not: true love
Spiderwort: esteem, but not love
Lily of the Valley: a return of happiness
Gentian: 'you are unjust'
Yellow rose: infidelity
Hibiscus: delicate beauty

Your turn. Have a flower you are wondering about? Leave a reply--let's see what the Victorians had to say.

The Love Cycle: The Language of the Fan

By Jennifer Mueller

The sixteenth century English writer Joseph Addison stated: "Men have the sword, women have the fan and the fan is probably as effective a weapon!" It was said even a plain woman could be attractive if she used her fan well.

With chaperones always about, how exactly were lovers to communicate? In a time when there was no air conditioning, every woman carried a fan with her to keep cool. The fan proved ideal for communication purposes. Even from the earliest times they seem to have been used for this purpose. During the Elizabethan era, both men and women in Europe practiced a secret language of the fan. The alphabet of the fan made it possible to spell out where a clandestine meeting might take place. The number of fan blades displayed might suggest the time.

However there is a conundrum to consider: If everyone knew the language, wouldn't the chaperones know what you were conveying across the room as well? And what if a certain man was just dense or distracted? Your entire discourse, memorized to declare your love or annoyance, might fall on deaf eyes. This wasn't just a woman making secret codes to her love; entire lists were published. Granted, how much actually made it into practice is in debate. But there is no doubt that people gave it a lot of thought. Matthew Towle's Young Gentleman and Lady's Private Tutor devoted several pages to the subject, and portraits of the period show ladies holding their fans in one or other of Towle's recommended positions. In 1877, a book by Daniel R. Shafer titled Secrets of Life Unveiled gave another such list. Those are just to name a few.

Below is a list drawn from several different sources. As you can see, they contradict themselves. So it would even depend on making sure you and the intended recipient knew the same list, or you might just ruin someone's life.

Letting it rest on the right cheek: 'Yes'

Letting it rest on the left cheek: 'No'

Looking closely at the painting: ‘I like you"

With the handle on to the lips: 'Kiss me.

Resting the fan on her lips: 'I don't trust you'

Resting it open over her lips: 'Don't doubt about me'

Drawing across the cheek: 'I love you'

Hitting her palm: 'Love me'

Resting it closed on her left cheek: 'I'm all yours'

Resting it closed over her heart: 'I love you dearly'

Resting the fan on her heart: 'My love for you makes me suffer'

Having it open, hanging upside down: 'Without your love, I prefer to die'

Giving the fan to the boyfriend: 'My heart belongs only to you'

Resting it open over her heart: 'I want to get married'

Twirling it on the left hand: 'I love another'

Closing an open fan very slowly: 'I promise to marry you'

Resting the fan on her heart: 'My love for you is breaking my heart'

Dropping down the fan: 'I'm suffering, but I love you'

Dropping the fan: 'I belong to you'

Dropping it: 'We will be friends'

Spinning the fan in the left hand: 'We are being watched'

Drawing across the forehead: 'We are watched'

Resting it closed on her right cheek: 'Be careful, my family is watching.'

Drawing across the eyes: 'I am sorry'

Opening and closing the fan very quickly: 'You are mean'

Fanning very rapidly: 'I have doubts about you'

Fanning quickly: 'I love you so much'

Carrying it closed and hanging from her left hand: 'I want to have a boyfriend'

Carrying the fan closed and hanging from her left hand: 'I'm engaged'

Carrying it closed and hanging from her right hand: 'I'm engaged.'

Carrying the fan closed and hanging from her right hand: 'I want to be engaged'

Fanning slow: 'I am married'

Slowly fanning herself: 'Don't waste your time; I don't care about you'

Covering the left ear with an open fan: 'Don't betray our trust or our secret'

Closing it very fast: 'Talk with my father'

Closing the fan quickly and impetuously: 'I'm jealous'

Hitting her dress with the fan: 'I'm jealous'

Hitting any object: 'I'm impatient'

Closing it: 'I wish to speak with you'

Open wide: 'Wait for me'

Hiding the sunlight: 'You're ugly'

Drawing through the hand: 'I hate you'

Abrupt, threatening gestures with a closed fan: 'Do not be careless or hasty'

Taking the fan from her boyfriend: 'I don't want anything else from you'

Covering part of her face with the open fan: 'We have finished'

Resting it closed over her forehead: 'I am ignoring you'

Putting away the fan closed: 'I'm not going out today'

Taking it out of her purse: 'I'll be out today'

Playing with the fan: 'I'm in a hurry'

Fanning herself with her left hand: 'Don't flirt with that woman'

Passing the fan from hand to hand: 'I see that you are looking at another woman'

Running her fingers through the ribs: 'I want to talk to you'

Gently touching one finger to the edge of the fan: 'I need to speak to you'

Carrying in the right hand: 'You are too willing'

Carrying in the left hand: 'Desirous of an acquaintance'

Carrying in your right hand in front of your face: 'Follow me'

Placing it on the right ear: 'You have changed'

Shut: 'I have changed'

The Love Cycle: Romance Novels and the Working Girl

By Eliza Tucker

At the turn of the twentieth century, London, Paris, and New York attracted dreamers and bohemians. Young suburban women who, when finished with as much school as their parents deemed necessary, shuffled into big cities in search of employment. Excited by stories of girls making the munificent sum of $8 per week, young women went from milliner to florist, factory to laundry-room in search of the ideal job and the ideal wage.

The Industrial Revolution set more than just machines in motion. Working-class women were thrust into close proximity to men on a continual basis in every part of their lives. Girls were allowed to walk city streets, to dine with men in certain establishments, and to date without supervision without suffering much in the way of tarnished reputations. In many ways, the working-class woman enjoyed more freedom than the lady of fashion.

With literacy on the rise, romance lived in the dress factories and sweatshops, where the hopeful young employees read books during breaks, hoping for better lives. In The Long Day by Dorothy Richardson, the narrator considers the role of fiction in the lives of working girls of her era, New York City in 1905:

Promptly at half-past twelve the awakening machinery called us back to the workaday world. Story-books were tucked away, and their entranced readers dragged themselves back to the machines and steaming paste-pots, to dream and talk as they worked, not of their own fellows of last night’s masquerade, but of bankers and mill-owners who in fiction have wooed and won and honorably wedded just such poor toilers as they themselves.

This entertaining discourse over the daily task of box-making follows:

IN WHICH PHOEBE AND MRS. SMITH HOLD FORTH UPON MUSIC AND LITERATURE

Don't you never read no story-books?" Mrs. Smith asked, stirring the paste-pot preparatory to the afternoon's work. She looked at me curiously out of her shrewd, snapping dark eyes as she awaited my answer. I was conscious that Mrs. Smith didn't like me for some reason or other, and I was anxious to propitiate her. I was pretty certain she thought me a boresome prig, and I determined I'd prove I wasn't. My confession of an omnivorous appetite for all sorts of story-books had the desired effect; and when I confessed further, that I liked best of all a real, tender, sentimental love-story, she asked amiably:

"How do you like 'Little Rosebud's Lovers'?"

"I've never read that," I replied. "Is it good?"

"It's fine," interposed Phoebe; "but I like 'Woven on Fate's Loom' better--don't you?" The last addressed to Mrs. Smith.

"No, I can't say that's my impinion," returned our vis-à-vis, with a judicious tipping of the head to one side as she soused her dripping paste-brush over the strips. "Not but what 'Woven on Fate's Loom' is a good story in its way, either, for them that likes that sort of story. But I think 'Little Rosebud's Lovers' is more int'resting, besides being better wrote."

"And that's just what I don't like about it," retorted Phoebe, her fingers traveling like lightning up and down the corners of the boxes. "You like this hot-air talk, and I don't; and the way them fellows and girls shoot hot-air at each other in that there 'Little Rosebud's Lovers' is enough to beat the street-cars!"

Phoebe goes on to tell the story of 'Little Rosebud's Lovers,' which is complete with an exotic setting (South Carolina), two lovely sisters (but only Rosebud had a demeanor to match her physical beauty; the other, Maud was jealous and spiteful), and Harvard-grad lover (who turned out to be 'a villain of the deepest dye'). The story-book fans go on to discuss the plot holes in a way that would fit well on a current-day lit forum:

"Where did she get the money to come to New York with?" interrupted the practical Phoebe. "That's something I don't understand. If she didn't have no money to hire a room at a hotel down in South Carolina for overnight, I'd like to know where she got the money for a railroad ticket."

"Well, that's just all you know about them swells," retorted Mrs. Smith. "I suppose a rich man's daughter like that can travel around all over the country on a pass."

The banter continues for a chapter, and gives us a great look into the origins of romance, while the book glimpses how average girls fit courtship and passion into otherwise taxing lives. Write on, romance authors!

Thursday Thirteen: A World of Advice

By Anna C. Bowling

All the world loves a lover, and for centuries, has had choice words to say about it as well. No matter where or when our characters have their happily ever after, chances are they'll have friends, family and hangers-on with something to say about every step of the process. Consider some of these:

We bachelors grin, but you married men laugh until your hearts ache. – English

Old bachelors and old maids are either too good or too bad. – Basque

A short courtship is the best courtship. – Manx

Nobody's sweetheart is ugly. - Dutch

With a sweetheart, you can have paradise in a hut. - Russian

When the groom is desired, the bride doesn't need words. - Yiddish

Marriages are not as they are made, but as they turn out. - Italian

A foolish bride gets no presents. - Indian (Bihar)

In bed, husband and wife. Out of bed, guests. - Chinese

Love or fire in your trousers is not easy to conceal. - Swedish

Loving one who loves another is a bellyful of trouble. - African (Hausa)

Take a good wife even if you have to sell your pots and kettles. - Japanese

When husband and wife agree with each other, they can dry up the ocean with buckets. - Vietnamese

The above are taken from the Prentice Hall Encylopedia of World Proverbs by Wolfgang Meider, a wonderful resource for traditional wisdom from around the world. What advice might your hero or heroine's people have to give on love in all its forms?

Photo courtesy SXC.hu

The Love Cycle: Catholic Mourning

By Carrie Lofty

All good things come to an end. Even the most passionate lovers will eventually be parted by death, and thus mourning customs can be included as part of The Love Cycle. How did people mourn the person they loved most in the world? Readers familiar with novels set in 19th century England may be acquainted with the elaborate Victorian customs for mourning, but customs in Catholic countries on the Continent are less familiar.

During medieval times, "white mourning" or deuil blanc, was practiced by those in the deepest throes of grief, generally after having suffered the loss of several close family members or following the murder of a spouse. Pictured is Mary, Queen of Scots in white mourning, c. 1559, following the deaths of her father-in-law, mother, and husband.

When mourning a murdered spouse in German and Austrian principalities, women wore white adornments. White lace and silver jewelry against black mourning garb provided a stark visual contrast and spoke of the severe shock of the crime. Wives of murdered husbands could also expect to mourn far longer than women whose husbands died by natural causes.

Middle- to upper-class Catholic women were expected to be bedridden with grief and were cared for by members of their congregation. Their servants would have put away excessively bright and colorful household items and draped the bedchamber in black. Women would rub ashes in their hair and sit with the corpse, if it was not too badly disfigured, but few women attended graveside services. The ceremonies were thought likely to cause an excess of hysterics. These staunch Germanic customs foreshadowed the behavior Victoria would adopt upon the death of her husband, Albert, as they both hailed from German states.

The key difference between established customs in Victorian Britain and those in Catholic countries was the role of the clergy. Society--from the Queen on down--dictated the stages of British mourning, but priests held the final say among their parishioners. A year of mourning was standard, but in the case of a murder, the priest might prescribe additional months. He might also determine that a woman's health and safety required her to marry before the end of her mourning, and he would authorize a quiet marriage. A sizeable charitable donation to the Church could also grease the wheels. An official, public marriage ceremony would then be conducted at the end of the mourning year. This allowed the Catholic communities more leeway in caring for its citizens, circumventing custom for the sake of practicality.

I know many of you study other cultures--Africa, ancient Rome, 20th century USA, etc. What unusual mourning customs can you share?