Kristine Hughes's Blog, page 144

Rufus Sewell on Masterpice...Sunday, July 17

Victoria, here. Be still, my heart!  I know I have been busy and preoccupied these past weeks, but RUFUS SEWELL, my #1 heart throb actor, on PBS Masterpice this week?   And I almost missed it???

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Luckily, I did not fall asleep during Miss Marple last Sunday, though I came close.   Not that the show was boring -- just that things have been catching up with me. So I nearly missed the promo for the next week's presentation: Zen, the story of a detective in Rome. Here is the PBS description of the three episodes.

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It will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog that I, Victoria, am a fan of Rufus. From the first moment I saw him as Septimus in Tom Stoppard's brilliant play Arcadia in London many years ago, I have followed his career with special interest.  See my blog of  8/11/2010 for more pictures and comments on his various film, stage and tv appearances.

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Though he is admired as a versatile actor in a wide variety of roles, Rufus Sewell has never hit the pinnacle of  acting, the BIG role that thrusts a performer into the stratosphere of stardom.  Though he has played many character parts, he also excelled in the leading man roles that capitalize on his dark good looks and sexy eyes. 

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Perhaps these three episodes in which he stars as Aurelio Zen, a Venetian-born detective in Rome, will do the trick. Or then again, perhaps he doesn't care to be a household name.  The episodes ran first in the UK on the BBC, based on novels by Michael Dibdin.

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The three episodes are Vendetta (screening July 17), Cabal (screening July 24) and Ratking (on July 31).  Watch with me and let me know if you think this is the break-through role for Rufus.

With The Beau Monde in New York City

On Tuesday, June 28, 2011, the Regency chapter of Romance Writers of America, met at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in advance of RWA's national convention. More on the Beau Monde here. The day's activities celebrated the 200th anniversary of the English Regency, which began in 1811 when George, Prince of Wales, became Regent for his incapacitated father, George III.


[image error] Mary Jo Putney, Keynote Speaker
The conference was ably arranged by Karen Erickson, chair; along with Isobel Carr, Melissa Golden,Susan Gee Heino, Mary Gramlich, Kate Pearce, Sally MacKenzie, Janet Mulany and Sharon Sobel. Many more members contributed to the silent auction. We had a fine menu of presentations.
[image error] Jo Ferguson spoke on Location: Traveling to England for research.

[image error] Janet Mullaney's topic was Saints, Sinners, Slavery and Sugar.

[image error] Victoria Hinshaw spoke about the Battle of Waterloo, here showing a slide of Vicky, left, and Kristine with the Duke of Wellington at the battlesite in 2010.  [image error] I missed a picture of Isobel Carr and Delilah Marvelle who spoke on The Culinary World of Regency England, but I caught up with Isobel later at the Literary Signing.  Sorry, Delilah!

[image error] Judith Laik told us all about Women Scientists in the late Georgian and early Nineteenth Century periods.

[image error] Paula A. Baxter spoke on Setting the Scene: Putting Authentic Period Interiors and Furnishings into Your Writing.

[image error] The menu at tea was equally tempting.

Below, a few tables of writers fulfilling two basic purposes of the meeting:  networking and noshing.
[image error] [image error] [image error] [image error] [image error] Left, our pal Louisa Cornell, and right, Victoria, who prepares to give her earlier talk.
[image error] The Beau Monde took a break for the National Literacy Signing, and Sally MacKenzie was ready to meet her fans.
[image error] And so was Julia Justiss, another of the 100's of authors who donated their time to benefit  literacy.
[image error] At the evening soiree, Beau Monde President Regina Scott prepared to lead the dancing. But where was Reggie, or more properly in true Beau Monde style, Sir Reginald?

[image error] More eager dancers, l-r, Sheri (Mysterious Lady), Leslie Carroll, Susan Gee Heino.

And now for a funny picture I found in a file of old RWA stuff.  This was taken at the first Beau Monde Conference held in Dallas in 1996.  A group of us had met at the last Marriott Marquis Hotel RWA conference two years before; we decided we could not arrange much for Hawaii the next year.  So we  organized for a great time in Dallas. The chapter started a pre-conference meeting tradition that continues to the present.   I appear below as The Dowager Duchess, whose late husband left her EVERYTHING because he had fallen in love when he saw the portrait of her long ago (above the bar in the penthouse of the Dallas hotel next to  the balloroom where we met).  Sadly,  the dress was later decorated by a glass of red wine and retired from the fray.

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Travels with Victoria: The Isle of Guernsey

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Continuing our cruise from Lisbon to Dover in late May and early June 2011, we stopped at Belle-Ile-en-Mer, above, off the coast of Brittany.  Like almost every other stop on this cruise, I'd enjoy going  back for more. One if the most famous people associated with Belle Ile was Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923), who had a holiday home here and entertained many of Europe's leading cultural figures.

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Arriving in St. Peter Port, Guernsey, I hardly knew where to focus my attention -- the distant Castle Cornet, the activity in the harbor or on the colorful waterfront line of shops.

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Before I read the wonderful novel The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, I admit that the only associations I made with the two main Channel Isles were the famous breeds of Guernsey and Jersey cows.  So here are a few wiki-facts.  Both are Bailiwicks of Great Britain, crown dependencies, a particular form of governing not quite part of the U.K. (they have their own currencies), but not independent either. Residents are British citizens, but you will often hear French spoken. Guernsey has a population of 65,000+ and Jersey has nearly 90,000.  Both islands are popular tourist destinations, only a few miles off the coast of Normandy; cruise ships like ours are more likely to stop in Guernsey.  Both islands are known for their relaxed living, quaint ways, and convoluted history.    [image error] [image error] Parish Church of St. Peter Port
We took a ride on the local bus all the way around Guernsey, which was particularly fun. Both tourist and residents use the buses and we eagerly eavesdropped on conversations about everything from the weather to the International Court.  The trip, which took about 90 minutes, passed neolithic sites, such as burial tombs, wide beaches, rocky coasts sprayed by wild waves, Napoleonic-era martello towers and a fort, Nazi bunkers dating from the German Occupation, and bright new cottages surrounded by colorful gardens.
[image error] Waterfront shops in St. Peter Port

 Unlike tour busses, the local conveyance did not stop for photo ops, so I can't share any of the sights along our ride.  I suggest you plan a trip and see for yourself.
[image error] St. Peter Port HarbourOur next stop was St. Malo, Brittany, from which we drove to see Mont St. Michel, an amazing sight no matter how many times you have see the pictures. More about it in my next post.

Travels With Victoria: To Sip a Rich Bordeaux

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Our ship cruised up the Garonne River to reach the wine capital of France, the city of Bordeaux. All along the shores of the river were vineyards and chateaux, villages and woods, truly idyllic scenes.

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The lovely Seabourn Pride docked right downtown and we could stroll all over the charming city of Bordeaux.
[image error] The Quay as we arrived

[image error] From the ship's deck we saw the jardin.

[image error] Later, we walked in the shade through the perfectly spaced trees - so very French!!


[image error] At Chateau Paloumey...the final products.One cannot visit Bordeaux without tasting the wines and we had the marvelous opportunity to visit
Chateau Paloumey (website here) where we indulged in a Blending Workshop.  We tasted three one-year old wines, a Merlot, a Cabernet Franc, and a Cabernet Sauvignon. Our instructor told us how to judge the color, aroma and taste of the young wines, at the very point at which a professional would choose to blend the three in the best proportions for future aging in the barrel and eventual bottling.

[image error] Due to a warm spring, in May they were predicting a very early harvest.


[image error] I can truly say that I have no future as a blender of fine wines.  I wasn't very good at it -- but I learned a lot and have a new appreciation of how the complexities of the various wines can enhance each other.  Bordeaux reds, like we tasted, need a long period of aging.  Blending after only one year in the barrel requires long years of experience. I recommend leaving this process to the experts!
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Chateau Paloumey is owned by Martine Cazeneuve, who is one of a group of six women wine-makers in the region. They have banded together for promotional activities and probably managed to shake up the centuries-old male-dominated wine business of the region.  You go, girl!


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Above are two shots of the Place de la Bourse (stock market) and the miroir d'eau, developed to reflect the beautiful 18th century buildings.  It is a broad raised slab of stone covered with a half inch or so of water, a perfect mirror, and also a great place for the kids to splash on a hot day.

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The Cathedral of St. Andre has a gothic facade...

[image error]              ...and brilliant stained glass windows -- as well as many sacred chapels and tombs.

We usually try to visit the leading art museum in major cities --- and Bordeaux has a honey! The Musee des Beaux Arts has a wonderful collection, covering many centuries. Naturally, I gravitated to the 18th and 19th century galleries and was reward by finding many interesting pictures and even a few old friends.

[image error]                 Above is a portrait of John Hunter (c.1789) by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830).

[image error]               Countess Elisabeth of Salisbury (1769) is the work of Allan Ramsay (1713-1784).

[image error] Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863) painted this representation of 'Greece on the Ruins of Messolonghi' in 1828,  the site of Byron's death in 1824 in the war for the independence of Greece.

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A typical shop in Bordeaux where I was very tempted to buy French lavender plants, but I could not imagine keeping them alive and getting them home.  This was my very first visit to Bordeaux, which has a population of over a million in the metro area, the sixth largest city in France. I found it a delight and well worth another visit. In the meantime, I will comfort myself with Bordeaux -- by the bottle!

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Travels with Victoria: A Visit to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao

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I am going to stretch the boundaries of this blog a little here to relate this visit to our usual focus on the U.K.  Let's see.  Many large museums, such as the Tate(s) and the Guggenheim(s) have developed a number of branch venues over recent years. The Tate has not only the Tate Britain and the Tate Modern; there is the Tate Liverpool and the Tate St. Ives. The Guggenheim is not only in New York City and at Peggy Guggenheim's mansion in Venice. They have art museums in Bilbao, Spain; Berlin; and under construction, in Abu Dhabi. I guess it is the wave of the future in the rarefied world of the large art institutions. And provides the excuse for my post about Bilbao.

[image error] Santander SpainOur ship docked at the Spanish port of Santander on the north coast of Spain. This incredibly lovely natural harbour was the spot through which the British troops of General Wellington were supplied throughout much of the Peninsular War. But little is left of the old city due to a disastrous fire in 1941. 
We drove to Bilbao, a trip of about an hour, through countryside that was evocative of Switzerland rather than what I expect of Spain. Of course, Switzerland has no ocean beaches and we saw many on our drive. But the mountainous terrain, the lush green vegetation, even the look of the residential architecture was Alpine. A nice surprise.

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Bilbao has truly become a destination city since the construction of the signature museum building by Frank Gehry.  Gehry's unique style is popular worldwide; despite the almost random look of the huge structural elements of the buildings, the interiors are brilliantly functional and efficient.  On the large plaza in front of the main entrance stood Jeff Koons' gigantic flower-bedecked puppy, which had everyones' cameras clicking away.

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[image error] close-up of the puppy's colorful bloomsOn the waterfront plaza stands Maman (1999), from the Spider series by Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010). And here's another little connection to all things British -- it was first shown inside the great turbine hall in the Tate Britain.
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The Frank Gehry building, the Guggenheim Collection and the exhibitions here have had their desired effect. Bilbao has attracted many more activities, structures and events along with all attention.
One of my favorite contemporary architects is Santiago Calatrava (see Milwaukee's art museum here), who has designed the lovely Zubizuri foot bridge near Bilbao's Guggenheim.
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Calatrava also designed the Bilbao airport terminal, below.
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Back to the Guggenheim, Bilbao...and more of my 100's of shots, taken on a cloudy day. People told us that this region of Spain  has a cloud, misty, rainy climate, somewhat akin to the northwest coast of the US.  Certainly was on our visit.

[image error] The green street sweeper made a bright contrast to the steel and concrete.
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Adios, Spain. Bienvenue, France...Bordeaux is next.

Miss Marple in The Pale Horse Sunday

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Julia McKenzie is back as Agatha Christie's detective with a gentle smile and probing mind in the all-new episode The Pale Horse (July 10). Miss Marple's old friend is found murdered, and when she receives a list of names sent by the victim before his death, Miss Marple seeks justice.

From the Masterpiece website: "Fair is foul and foul is fair in the hamlet of Much Deeping, where the Pale Horse Inn is run by a trio of entrepreneurial witches, and the annual celebration of the town's witch trials of 1664 is about to commence. Arriving just in time is Miss Marple (Julia McKenzie, Cranford), who has set her knitting aside to pursue the murderer of her old friend, Father Gorman. Armed with a cryptic list of names sent to her by the good clergyman just prior to his death, Miss Marple follows clues as she joins the assemblage of eccentric guests and infiltrates the witches' sanctum santorum. But when a fellow guest at the Pale Horse Inn is found dead, the tidily tailored and unassuming sleuth must determine whether black magic or something even more sinister is at work."

What do you think - are you getting used to Julia McKenzie in the role of Miss Marple? For a review of actresses who have owned the role in the past, take a look at a past post on the subject here and then let us know who you're favorite Miss Marple is/was.

Travels With Victoria: From Lisbon to A Coruna, Spain


[image error] Lisbon from the Tagus River
Victoria here, recently back from a month in Europe, which started with a two week cruise up the Atlantic coast of Portugal, Spain and France, ending in Dover. We began our Cruise from Lisbon to Dover  by flying to Madrid to enter the EU, then on to Portugal. With an extra day to stroll the pleasant streets of Lisbon, we took a Metro (subway) ride to the waterfront. Once we found the spot where our ship would dock the next day, we toured the nearby National Army Museum.
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I was very naughty and snapped a forbidden photo (without my flash, of course) of a Portugese uniform from the Peninsular War. (Why are many museums so eager to forbid pictures?)
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In the courtyard of the museum, they were quite amenable to pictures.  Significant scenes from the military history of Portugal were executed in blue and white tiles. Magnificent.
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The grounds of the Foundation Gulbenkian offered us a perfect venue for a morning stroll before we departed Lisbon the next day. The two museums, the institute, and the library on the grounds were the gift of the late philanthropist Calouste Gulbenkian, and they house great treasures of the world's artistic and cultural heritage.

We left Lisbon on a sunny afternoon, cruising out of the Tagus River into the Atlantic.  We passed by three towers, representing entirely different architectural styles.  First is the monument to the discoveries, (e.g. Prince Henry the Navigator and Vasco da Gama) who led the way for European exploration of the globe, erected in the 20th century; next, the 16th century Tower of Belem, a real gem; and finally the contemporary Tower of Navigation, which guides traffic into and out of the Port of Lisbon.
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After a day at sea, we arrived at A Coruna, Spain (aka Corunna), a charming city on the Atlantic, with a busy harbor and magnificent beaches.  We walked around the Ciudad Vieja (Old Town) and found San Carlos Gardens,  the beautiful park where  Moore is buried.  It is marked, "In Memory of General Sir John Moore who fell at the Battle of Elvina while covering the embarkation of the British troops, 16 January 1809."  We also passed a small organization (closed, sadly, at the time) with another kind of memorial  to the British troops in the Peninsular Wars: The Royal Green Jackets.

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It was a quiet Sunday in A Coruna with a few tourists in the plaza in front of the Palacio Municipal, a regatta out in the harbor, many families out enjoying the fresh breeze, and riding bikes around the extensive seashore from harbor to beaches to the soccer stadium. A small but picturesque fort guards the harbor (and helped turn away the raids of Sir Francis Drake) and on a western-most peninsula is the famous Tower of Hercules, a lighthouse with origins in the Roman Empire. Beside our ship, the fishing boats were all in port for Sunday, but the neighboring marina was a little busier with leisure boating.

[image error] Palacio Municipal [image error] San Anton Castle

[image error] fishing boats in port
[image error] This beautiful beach wasn't as empty as it looks in my picture!
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 I can well imagine a leisurely holiday here in A Coruna...but that will have to wait for a while.
Next Stop: Santander, Spain

The Post Office Horse

From The Horse-World of London by William John Gordon  (1893)
The Post Office owns no horses; it does its work by contract, and McNamara's have `horsed the mails' ever since 1837, when so many good things began. They have now 600 horses at their central quarters in Finsbury and the local branches from which the outer ring of postal districts is worked, besides a few hundred others for trade traffic. And out of London there are forty-two horses on the Brighton road working the Parcels Coach, and the twenty-six Tunbridge Wells Coach horses, and the other coach horses; but these cannot fairly come into our census, except as regards those for the first stage out and last stage home —the stages being the ten-mile ones of' the gloricus old coaching-days,' concerning which we may have something to say presently.
The mail horse is the least conspicuous of draught animals. How often do we hear a shout of 'Here comes the mail!' and how seldom do we trouble as to what its horses are like! Our attention is caught and fixed by the scarlet cart, while horse and man pass unnoticed; scarlet will have its way, and a mass of it in movement throws all its surroundings into background. Not that the horse need fear criticism. At times he is somewhat rough, at others a trifle weedy; but, taking him by the hundred, he is a serviceable servant, with no nonsense about him, and rarely much to find fault with. Like most of his brethren, he makes his first appearance in the London streets between his fifth and seventh years. Younger than five, no wise master will have a horse for London cartage work. 'Under that age,' as an authority told us, 'they are like children and catch every ailment that comes along.'
The Post-Office. horse is always at work. What with 'mails inwards' in the morning, 'mails interchangeable' during the day, and ' mails outwards' at night, and 'foreign mails' arriving before their time at all hours of the day and night, and which he must always be at the railway to meet, he has quite enough to employ and worry him. He begins his week's work at four o'clock on Sunday afternoon; he ends it at halfpast ten on Sunday morning; and at any time during that long week he is liable for instant service, and has only five and a half hours' undisturbed rest. Of course he gets a good deal more as he becomes used to the bustle of the stable, but that is the only respite he is sure of—just enough, as it were, to go to church and digest the Sunday's dinner. And yet with all this, while the tram horse is cast after four years, and the omnibus horse after five, the mail horse is not weeded out of the service until on an average he has spent six in it.




He is generally English, but comes from no county in particular, and costs rather more than the omnibus horse, for we shall be averaging him rather under the mark at 36L; but he is well looked after and has few ailments. It is not often that a mail horse is sick or goes very wrong. At every railway station to which he goes there is a foreman to look after him, and at every stable there is a keeper to every dozen horses, so that he is attended to at both ends, and his keepers check each other to his advantage. And he lives, as a rule, in flats, in an atmosphere of disinfectants and a continual round of whitewashing; so that everything is done to keep him in health, and the result justifies the effort.
And he is fed well—indeed, if he were not, he could not stand the work. One of the noticeable things at the ever-extending headquarters in Castle Street is the mixing machine, in which the oats and clover and hay and beans are blended into the general mass which forms the fodder. On one floor the hay and clover are being chopped by steam, the knives, owing to the silex in the straw, requiring renewal every twenty minutes; on another floor the chopped stuff is being poured into hoppers sackful by sackful; on another, oats are being poured into another hopper, beans into another; and all these hoppers communicate with channels and spiral travellers and ingenious mixers, so that in the delivery the blend is even and free from all patchiness—the last stage being when the mixture is shot into a huge bin, the bottom of which is, by a turn of a lever, converted into so many swing-fans, between which the provender falls instantly into the sacks below.
McNamara's not only mix their own fodder, but make their own harness, their own shoes, their own wheels, and even their own carts—for the mail carts are not designed by the Post Office, but by the contractors, and then built on approval. The body of a one-horse mail cart looks n6t unlike a cupboard until it gets the wheels on, but it is rather more elaborate in its decoration, simple as it may seem, for before it gains the royal colour which saves the horse from notice it requires no less than sixteen different coats of paint and varnish. There are 260 of these red carts and vans, and the yard is busy with them and the parcel coaches coming in splashed and thick with mud—the coaches having been out all night, to remain till night, and the carts having most of them been out since four in the morning, and being off again with the change horse.


In and out the horses are worked with very little attempt at a hard-and-fast routine, owing to the irregularity in time and bulk of the foreign mails, which forms the great difficulty of the business, and makes the problem to be dealt with that of dealing with surprise trains. The unexpectedness of these is due to the limit being made as wide as possible at the shipping company's request, in order to save them from all risk of penalty for being behind-hand, and the arrival taking place as far as possible within the limit, for the sake of the company's reputation. The inland mail that comes to the moment can be provided for as easily as the outgoing mail that starts to its time; it is the foreign mail brought by the record-breaker, and delivered any number of hours before it is due, for which the Post Office horse has to suffer.

The Man Who Made Lists by Guest Blogger Jo Manning - Part Two

So, then, after all this, how did he come to compile that outstanding reference work, Roget's Thesaurus? It seems like such a departure from what his life was.
It seemed, though, that ever since his childhood, Roget was fond of making lists. Kendall opines that this gave order to an otherwise confused, if not chaotic life, with its moves across continents, the death of one parent and the mental instability, in a family prone to severe depression, of another. Making lists, sorting things into categories, making sense of a world that was puzzling and no doubt upsetting to him, was a source of satisfaction and provided a modicum – or more than a mere modicum -- of stability.
I believe that Kendall rightly describes Roget as an obsessional personality, but I would venture even further.
It's interesting, this making of lists, when taken into consideration with Roget's intelligence, his genius with science and mathematics, plus the strains of mental illness in his family, and his inability to communicate well with other human beings. Perhaps something else was going on.
It was said of Peter Mark Roget that he got along with words much better than he ever got along with people, and there is probably a great deal of truth in that surmise. Imposing order on words, categorizing things –whether space, matter, affections, et al. – seemed to settle his perhaps too-active mind. And this made me wonder if he might have had a form of high-functioning autism now called Asperger's Syndrome. (This condition was not described until the mid-20th century, too late for Roget to have been diagnosed.)
The symptoms of autism are many, but consider as one example, the problem of not being able to recognize how severely depressed his uncle was in his last days. Was Roget unable to relate to him – a prime "tell" for autism sufferers – and did that lack of empathy play a large role in his uncle's doing away with himself? Was he constitutionally unable to read the signs of a soul in distress, even one who had been so very close to him?
This constant list-making, this never-ending attempt to impose order on a world that confused him, this outward manifestation of his restless intellect, was this perhaps another "tell"? Impossible to diagnose from so far way in time from Roget's world, but other incidents in his life confirm his continual problems with social interaction.
Kendall does not deal with the possibility of autism; it is my own notion, for whatever it is worth, but he does make a forceful case for OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. He discusses Freud's 1913 paper on the condition, noting the psychiatrist's finding that "obsessions, which tend to first appear between the ages of six and eight, serve the function of helping people ward off intense and painful emotions such as anxiety and hate… [and that] obsessionality…is remarkably consistent over the life span."
The author goes on to state: "That was certainly the case for Roget; some eighty years after he started his notebook, he was harnessing the same obsessive energy to churn out new editions of his Thesaurus."
Whatever psychological condition(s) Peter Mark Roget might have had, his genius was in his ability to compile words brilliantly into his many lists, in notebook after notebook, starting at the tender age of eight. Roget was in a long tradition of word-compilers, but he was the very best. His contribution to anyone who struggles to find the right word is unparalleled.
As Kendall notes: "For Roget, the careful use of language depended on understanding not only the meanings of individual words but also the relations between them." Further, "These neighboring lists of opposing ideas, he believed, opened up all kinds of new vistas for readers."
One of the intriguing aspects of Kendall's book is his clever use of these lists throughout the text, and also in chapter headings.
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Peter Mark Roget, his lists, and his Thesaurus


For instance, Chapter 7, Mary, which introduces Roget's wife, lists synonyms for Marriage:

…MARRIAGE, matrimony, wedlock, union, match, intermarriage, coverture, vinculum matrimonii.

A married man, a husband, spouse, bridegroom, benedict, neogamist, consort.

A married woman, a wife, bride, mate, helpmate, rib, better half, feme covert.

(Bet there are a few words here you haven't come across!)

And in what was apparently a time-honored tradition in the Roget-Romilly clan, Mary Hobson was rich, the daughter of a wealthy Liverpool merchant, and considered beautiful. Kendall notes that she was also, "Roget's opposite…with a lively sense of humor... [and she] exuded warmth." He married her in 1824, when she was 29 and he was 45; he was sixteen years older.
She seems to have been the ideal wife for someone like this obsessive polymath. She even attended all his lectures and took notes! Her diaries show her pride in the success of these public events featuring her husband. As Kendall comments: "Though Roget couldn't always connect with others one on one, he never failed to dazzle his audience."
Alas, the bad luck of the Rogets when it came to their physical and mental health was to run its appointed course. In 1833, his 38-year-old wife died of cancer. They'd been married just under ten years. Kendall notes: "Roget's immediate reaction was the same as the one that followed his uncle's suicide: emotional paralysis."
Although his in-laws were kind to him in his loss, they immediately stopped the monies they'd been regularly sending to Roget since his marriage to their daughter. (I found this startling and have to wonder what sort of dowry arrangement Roget had made with the wealthy Hobson family, but there is no further explanation.)
A few years after his wife's death, Roget hired a new governess for his two children, a Margaret Spowers, the daughter of a wealthy Hampstead businessman. (Always these wealthy women! Is a pattern emerging here?) During the summer of 1840, Roget and the governess were to begin to live together as man and wife, but never to marry. The nature of their relationship apparently so embarrassed Roget's family that they "would do everything they could to cover [it] up," according to Kendall.
The relationship no doubt contributed to the emotional breakdown of Roget's fragile daughter Kate, who was made to leave their home, eventually residing for some years with her former governess, the botanist Agnes Catlow. (When Margaret Spowers died – leaving nothing of her considerable wealth to Roget – oddly harkening back to being cut off financially by his wife's relatives-- Kate returned to her father and was his companion until his death.)
More drama was to come.
In the mid- to late-1840s, Roget was involved in a series of "alleged missteps" at the Royal Society and perhaps forced to resign his prestigious post as Secretary, though he "refused to take responsibility for any of his questionable behavior." Were these "missteps" and "questionable behavior" further manifestations of his problems in dealing with others? It was 1847, he was now 70 years old, and his life-long issues with insensitivity, coupled now with challenges to his scientific credibility, were coming under close scrutiny. He did resign.
Like the crisis with his uncle's death, this was not a good time for Roget. But, as Kendall writes: "As the curtain fell on his academic career at the end of 1848, Roget wasn't quite ready to pack it in. His mind was sharp as ever, and he was still teeming with ambition."
Taking a look at other works then available that dealt with English synonyms, Roget decided at long last to publish his lists, which he felt were superior to anything in print. The first edition of Roget's Thesaurus, 1,000 copies published in the spring of 1852 by Longman, quickly sold out. Reviews, Kendall notes, were "glowing." It has remained solidly in print for over one hundred and fifty years. After Roget's death in 1869, future editions were edited by his son John Lewis Roget and his grandson Samuel Romilly Roget.

[image error] 1935 Grosset & Dunlap American edition, edited by Roget's heirs



His contract for the first edition was ½ of the profits from all sales; with later editions it was to be 2/3 of the profits. He did very well financially from his lists of words!
And what about Roget and Dr Johnson, the maker of that formidable dictionary of the English language? What further parallels and similarities might lie between these two geniuses of the written word?
Dr Samuel Johnson's genius lay in defining words, and his Dictionary – the first real dictionary of the English language -- broke new ground; his was an altogether different category of genius. But it is tantalizing to note that Johnson also had an obsessive personality and was prone to tics and strange behavior. (At one point there was a theory bruited about that he exhibited the symptoms of Tourette's Syndrome.)
Johnson did have a strange routine of counting his steps when he came to a door so to enter by the correct foot, and, like the fictional detective obsessive character Monk in the American television series, with his need to touch light poles and mailboxes, Dr Johnson apparently needed to touch all the lampposts on the street as he walked to and from his house on Gough Square.
Word nerds are interesting and amusing folk, to be sure.
Postscript: Simon Winchester, who was at the time writing a book on the OED (Oxford English Dictionary)* launched a scathing attack on Roget's work a few years ago, declaring that it was "a serious force for bad" as "uncritically offering up lists of alternative words" leads to poor writing habits, to "our current state of linguistic and intellectual mediocrity" and to a language that is "decayed, disarranged, and unlovely."
He continued on this track for 15,000 furious words – none of which, he said proudly, had been assisted by the use of any thesaurus. He also went on to disparage folks who dare to use the book to solve crossword puzzles, insisting that using a reference book of any kind to complete a puzzle is "simply not done".
Oh, dear, I do admire Winchester's writing – I think I own most of his very well-written books – but I do not think it's possible to disagree more with him on all these points. Speaking as a reference librarian and as a wordsmith, I do not – and will not, ever – hesitate to say that reference books are a great help in finding answers to all kinds of questions and clarifying one's thoughts, and that using a thesaurus to find the right word(s) teaches us a great deal.
Reference books are not crutches, but sturdy ladders to higher learning and understanding. Rather than being – as Winchester says – a kind of vulgar substitute for thinking – they are stimuli to thinking. We owe Roget, and Webster, Johnson, James Murray, and other lexicographers/word nerds a great deal; I, for one, am willing to acknowledge that, and to express my eternal gratitude to these giants who loved words as much as I have loved them every day of my life.
*The Meaning Of Everything: The Story Of The Oxford English Dictionary, ©2003

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The Man Who Made Lists by Guest Blogger Jo Manning - Part One

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I browsed recently through a biography I picked up at the public library, Joshua Kendall's The Man Who Made Lists: Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus (G.P. Putnam's Sons, 2008).
Happily having used Roget's Thesaurus – that incomparable list of synonyms and antonyms -- throughout my writing career, I realized I didn't know anything at all about its compiler, Peter Mark Roget (1779-1869). I'd never even wondered why someone with a French surname had written a book on the English language. Neither did I know when it was first published. Roget's was simply a book of synonyms that was always there, that people knew, and used – especially when solving crossword puzzles or writing essays -- and that was that. Right? I was also grateful to him, very grateful, because he so alleviated (whew!) my monologophobia (the fear of using the same word twice in a piece of writing).
But, seriously, who was this lexicographer who'd produced such a seminal work?
Author Joshua Kendall, a journalist who describes himself as a "word nerd", tells a fascinating and dramatic story, one well worth reading. (His current project is the biography of another word nerd, America's Noah Webster.)
Roget began his career as a medical doctor, but went on to many accomplishments, among them his invention of the slide rule, his role in nitrous oxide/laughing gas experiments with Thomas Beddoes, developing filtration systems for London's sewers, posing the first chess problems for newspapers, his work on optics (that led some to link his name in a later century with moving pictures), his popular lectures on anatomy and other scientific subjects, and his wealth of writings on physiology and health. In 1834 he became the first Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institution and he was a founder of the Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge.My curiosity having been aroused, I began to read the book, especially interested in the tantalizing promise of the love and madness part, as a writer of romantic fiction and as the biographer of a famous courtesan.
First, his ethnicity. The Rogets were French-speaking Swiss from Geneva. Jean Roget, his father, was the minister of a Protestant church in the Soho neighborhood of London, which had a large Huguenot (French Protestant) population in the 18th century. His mother was from a wealthy middle-class Huguenot family; her mother Margaret Garnault, was an heiress, and her father Peter Romilly was a well-off jeweler. His mother's brother, the highly respected Sir Samuel Romilly, had a distinguished career in government.
Sir Thomas Lawrence painted that great man circa 1806-1810:

[image error] Sir Samuel Romilly (1757-1818)


But there were serious health problems – mental as well as physical – in the Roget and Romilly families. The mental illness was in the Romilly family; Roget's maternal grandmother, Margaret, was an unstable personality who needed constant supervision. Roget's father's problem fell into the physical realm: he developed tuberculosis. This necessitated a move back to Switzerland, where treatments for the condition were considered better. The infant Peter was left with his maternal grandparents, and when just a toddler he was taken to Switzerland by his uncle Samuel to be with his parents and new baby sister Annette. But all was not well with his parents. His mother may have been suffering from post-partum depression after Annette's birth, and when his father finally succumbed to TB after four years, she fell into a sharp mental decline.
As Kendall observes, "Madness ran in the immediate family. [His maternal grandmother] … suffered from an unidentified mental disorder – probably severe depression or schizophrenia – that left her in an almost vegetative state for most of her life." Roget's mother, who was described as "temperamental and emotionally demanding," lapsed into paranoia in her old age.
Alas, it didn't end there. Roget's sister Annette – and, later, his daughter Kate – also suffered from severe bouts of depression. And his kind uncle Sir Samuel Romilly, longtime Member of Parliament and internationally renowned reformer of the system of British criminal law, among many other legal triumphs, fell into a deep depression and committed suicide in 1818.

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By this time, Peter Mark Roget, almost 40 years of age and unmarried, had a thriving medical practice and had become a member of the Royal Society; he was the one called to his uncle's bedside. Sir Samuel had slashed his throat with a razor, inconsolable after the death of his wife, whom Roget had attended in her last, fatal, illness. (This incident is described in tragic detail in the opening pages of the Kendall biography.)
Sir Samuel's demise was a great loss to his family and to the nation. A good part of the blame for his suicide, alas, was attributed later to the insensitivity of the medical treatment of his nephew, Peter Mark Roget. This blame, unfortunately, may well have been warranted.
Kendall states "no one questioned Roget's concern for his uncle" but "a consensus emerged that he had failed to grasp the full extent of Romilly's emotional agony" upon the loss of his wife. But, again, severe depression ran in the Romilly family, and perhaps no physician could – at that time – have done anything to alleviate Roget's uncle's grief and deterred him from suicide.
Samuel Romilly's suicide unhinged Peter Mark Roget for a good long while.
According to Kendall, the tragedy – and the guilt -- caused Roget to undergo what Kendall dubs "a midlife crisis." He left the medical profession and pursued a second – and hugely more successful -- career as a lecturer at the Royal Institution.

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Roget's Royal Institution Medal, 1819
 Part Two Coming Soon! [image error]