Miscellaneous

A coup attempt, and a great scandal

My 19th-century retroblogger, Frances Williams Wynn, is today writing on one of the great 19th-century European scandals, that of Caroline Ferdinande Louise, duchesse de Berry.
From Wikipedia:

She was the daughter of Francis I of the Two Sicilies and married Charles Ferdinand, duc de Berry in 1816, thus becoming duchess of Berry. She became an important figure during the Restoration after the assassination of her husband in 1820. Her son, Henri V, was named the “miracle child” because he was born after his father’s death and continued the Bourbon line.
She unsuccessfully attempted to restore the Bourbon dynasty in the reign of Louis Philippe (1798-1890), known as the July Monarchy. Her failed rebellion in the Vendee in 1832 was followed by her arrest and imprisonment in November 1832. She was released in June 1833 only after giving birth to a child and revealing her secret marriage to an Italian prince.

Dumas wrote up her story at the time, and Baroness Orczy wrote a biography in 1935, but there doesn’t seem to have been much done on her since. (Unless anyone can tell me of other material?)

The Deutz mentioned is the man who betrayed her to the French authorities. Miss Williams Wynn thinks he was the baby’s father, but that doesn’t seem to be the view of the modern sources.

On other media

Appearing on ‘Life Matters’

Australian readers might have been surprised this morning to hear something sounding familiar on their radios – I did a long interview (which covered a lot of ground about the Carnival of Feminists and other blogging topics) on Radio National’s Life Matters.

You can find the podcast, or listen through your computer, here.

I am not sure that I will listen to it – experience suggests that I will think on every second sentence “Could have said that better”, and of all the things I should have said but didn’t!

Carnival of Feminists

Final call for the Carnival of Feminists

Don’t forget that you’ve only got a day to get in your nominations for the Carnival of Feminists No 13, which will be posted on I See Invisible People on Wednesday.

The theme of the issue will be “Feminism and Challenges – physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.” Possible topics including: self-determination in health and mental health care, disability issues, transgender issues, issues of aging, integration of religion and feminist beliefs, economic issues, etc.

Nominations can be sent to ISeeInvisiblePeople AT gmail.com or through the online form.

Friday Femmes Fatales

Friday Femmes Fatales No 52

Late again this week. Sorry. Am I regretting putting a day of the week in the name? Yes. Have I been a journalist so long that I should know better? Yes. Sorry. Will do better.

So, the ten brilliant posts, and ten new (to me) women bloggers worth waiting for…

First up, a huge find, (thanks to the latest History Carnival), The Old Foodie, who has a daily posting about food and history. Friday was – what you didn’t know? – St Lidwina’s Day, and her herb is borage. The Foodie not only tells us all about its culinary and medicinal properties (it might, modern science says, be useful against eczema), and a recipe – not any old recipe, but one from the “first English cookbook”, from 1390, from Richard II’s cooks.

Staying on the food theme, want to know how to make your garden into a feast? On Eat Your History, Deborah offers her practical, spectacular example. (Although the California climate must help.)

And while on gardens, on The Ethel Experience, a wonderful range of pictures from the Chicago Botanical Gardens. No 1, 2, 3 and 4. The swans (No. 2) are in there to make up for the fact that I didn’t get to take any pics of the many I saw while cycling the Thames path today. (I was too busy just keeping up with the group.)

Moving into the workplace, Simplicus, on the group effort Blogging the Renaissance, has a post that will have resonances for academic readers (in fact for anyone who socialises professionally). She reports on the social traps and frustrations of the academic conference. On The Hag’s Mouth, The Hag reports on staff from failed but cool companies who use them as models at staff meetings. (I’ve been reading a fictional account of the dotcom crash, so this really resonated.)

Turning to books, on Between an Oxymoron and a Redundancy (what a great name!) Lucyrain starts to read Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and finds a sentences that speaks volumes to her. Then, getting artistic, Lisa on Digital Medievalist (no, not a contradiction), offers thoughts on the National Gallery’s attempt to buy a portrait of John Donne.

Turning personal, Caron on Women Creating the World is hoping to create a community of debate. She’s looking now for thoughts on dealing with difficult family relationships.

Then OK, The Chronicles of Hermione Granger Reed is a dog blog, but it is a very classy dog blog, not written in the dog’s voice, and this post has an hilarious twist in the tail… it involves Harvard Law school and mange.

Finally (and this comes with the warning that it might be upsetting to some), two shattering posts about itinerant thinker’s gradual discovery of the extent of health problems of her foetus Annabel, starting with the 19-week ultrasound. Part 1 and Part 2. (The story has not yet been finished.) Those producing hysterical vitriol about “late” abortions should be made to read this. (Not of course that they will – might interfere with some of their comfortable preconceived notions.)

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If you missed last week’s edition, it is here.

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Please: In the next week if you read, or write, a post by a woman blogger and think “that deserves a wider audience” (particularly someone who doesn’t yet get many hits), drop a comment here.

It really does make my life easier!

Cycling

Spring on the Thames path

Well, having managed not to fall off my bicycle and into the Thames, I’m back from my jaunt. The Thames path is gorgeous in many places and the English spring was doing its stuff: the new lambs were gambolling, the daffodils were blooming in the churchyards, the coxes at Henley-on-Thames were bawling at their crews, and the flocks of parakeets were swirling. (Those of you who find the last of that group odd; yes they were originally Australian, but escaped pets are apparently naturalising very successfully, and in large numbers, in the south-east of England.)

There was also a hovering raptor, but I wasn’t close enough to the front to hear the identification. I wasn’t Tail End Charlie ALL day, just most of it. This was a group I would never have kept up with were it not for the large numbers of otherwise irritating stiles that dot the path. We made it from Reading to Windsor (and some people set off to cycle on to London – though not on the Thames path, since it had taken us from 10ish to 4 to get that far.)

That was at least 35 miles, about half of it on non-sealed paths, forest tracks and straight out rough fields – and those soft and spongy river meadows are damn hard riding. I may have done a bit more than that – the juddering shook loose the speedo magnet; my knees are swearing it must have been at least 40 miles total for the day, and they might even be right.

UPDATE: in case you should think this means I’m a “real” cyclist, read this post to discover what real cyclists do.

SECOND UPDATE: Thanks to Barry, the organiser, I learn that the raptor was a red kite, “Very rare a few years back…now spreading”.

History

History carnival, and an apology…

First the apology, to those who’ve asked and those who haven’t: yes Friday Femmes Fatales is running late again this week. (Hopefully it will arrive tonight.)

Now the excuses: Green campaiging (1,000 newsletters out in the past two days, and 2,000 sitting reproachfully on the floor that should mostly be delivered before postal ballots go out at the end of this week for the May 4 election), and I’m working on an all-new, shiny Philobiblon. There’s nothing but a rough layout yet (no content), but it is philobiblon.co.uk, for anyone who feels like being a design critic.

And today I’m off on a jaunt – to cycle the Thames (well as much of the Thames path as I can manage).

But would I leave you without anything to read? Of course not! History Carnival No 29 is up over on (a)musings of a grad student. I haven’t had time for a proper read, but it looks like a cracker.