Bayan time (10): Ochi Chyornye

Another work-in-progress from Saturday: Ochi Chyornye (Очи чёрные = Black Eyes). Sorry about the general murkiness of sound; the laptop microphone isn't so good. It's a nice tune with such a huge history of variant covers that it allows plenty of scope for improvisation, whatever your skill level. It shows a couple of the many nice features of the bayan: the compactness of the layout, allowing a 'three-handed' effect (left-hand bass and, with unexceptional stretch, melody on right thumb and a third part over an octave above that using the other fingers of the right hand); and the ease of playing chromatic runs.

As the Wikipedia entry mentions, despite its reputation being stereotypically Russian, the lyrics to Очи чёрные are a Ukrainian romantic poem by Yevhen Hrebinka, and the music probably German. The poem is very Swinburne:

Очи чёрные, очи страстные
Очи жгучие и прекрасные
Как люблю я вас, как боюсь я вас
Знать, увидел вас я в недобрый час

Ох, недаром вы глубины темней!
Вижу траур в вас по душе моей,
Вижу пламя в вас я победное:
Сожжено на нём сердце бедное.

Но не грустен я, не печален я,
Утешительна мне судьба моя:
Всё, что лучшего в жизни Бог дал нам,
В жертву отдал я огневым глазам!

Dark eyes, passionate eyes
Burning and splendid eyes
How I love you, how I fear you
Verily, I espied you in an ill-starred moment

Oh, not for nothing are you darker than the deep!
I see mourning for my soul in you,
I see a triumphant flame in you:
A poor heart immolated in it.

But I am not sad, I am not sorrowful,
My fate is soothing to me:
All that is best in life, God gave us.
In sacrifice I returned to the fiery eyes!

Its tune is an 1884 arrangement of an originally piano piece called Hommage-Valse by a German composer, Florian Hermann. There's a deal of garbling of the composer name and title, but the most reliable sources I can find are in the Library of Congress Records of its Nicolas Slonimsky Collection ...

BOX 285 Gerdal, Sofus (arranger)
BOX 285 Ochi chernyia, ochi strastnyia (na motiv val'sa "Hammage" Germana)
[voice and piano]. Moscow: A. Gutkheĭl', 1884.
Photocopy and negative photocopy.
Based on "Hommage-valse" by Florian Hermann, quod vide.
...
BOX 287-A Hermann, Florian
Hommage-valse [piano]. [S.l.]: [s.n.], n.d.
Negative photocopy of original edition [?].

... and the entry in James J Fuld's The Book of World-Famous Music: Classical, Popular, and Folk (pp 417-418), which notes further that it appeared in collection billed as "favourite songs of the Moscow gypsies".

- Ray

All generalizations are false

A question on Yahoo! Answers drew my attention to yet another example of Mark Twain as a 'quote magnet' - an iconic author who attracts misattributions.

All generalizations are false, including this one.

This is widely attributed to Twain online, but it undoubtedly isn't by him: the first print attribution to Twain I can find dates to 1973. So who did coin it? Google Books finds the first appearances are in the second decade of the 20th century, with the usual vague attributions, including:

"some one, a Frenchman perhaps" (1911); "the man" (1917); "an old Chinese proverb" (1919); "Dumas" (1920);  "a French professor" (1920); "one of my history professors at college" (1921); "the Frenchman" (1922; "the witty epigrammatist" (1923); "the Gallic epigrammatist" (1926); "a witty philosopher" (1927); "the witty writer" (1928).

All that can really be said is that the earliest examples are all in US publications. The repeated attribution to a French origin did look hopeful (see previously, Batrachian breakfasts), but the French form - "Toutes les généralisations sont fausses, y compris celle-ci" - appears no older, nor any better attributed, than the English version.

I have, however, found a more detailed scenario for a different wording:

I would recall what happened in a debate of the French Chamber of Deputies. A deputy, criticising the previous speaker, said: "Monsieur X has generalized too freely. I contend that all generalizations are wrong" — and here he paused, and his Gallic wit saved him, when he added — "Yes, all generalizations are wrong, even this one."
- The Asiatic Review, Volume 24, The East India Association, 1928.

Currently, the trail ends there.

Addendum: 10 April 2014. I just pushed back the date a little, though with attributions no more likely to be true:

Voltaire has said, "All generalizations are false, and this is no exception."
- Engineering News, Vol 1, No. 26, page 366, 1903

.... as a Frenchman brilliantly said, “All generalities are false, this one included"
- The Blue and Gold, Volume 20, page 179, 1893

 The bulk of attributions, nevertheless, claim a French origin.

- Ray

Bayan time (9): San Antonio Rose

I keep meaning to post videos on the bayan progress, but I seem to go into palm-sweating panic the instant the webcam is switched on.  However, here's one at last. I learned this today: the Western swing classic, San Antonio Rose. It's technically New San Antonio Rose, as I recalled the tune from the sung version, not the original Bob Wills instrumental. Check out the excellent Patsy Cline cover. My left little finger: I think it must be some flavour of dystonia. When my other left fingers are doing stuff, it does that.

- Ray

Topsham Inns

I just put up a post - Topsham Inns - backdated to 26th August 2010. I didn't post it here previously as there was a slight conflict of interest involved in posting a rather lukewarm book review on a blog closely associated with the shop selling the book. Now JSBlog is unequivocally personal, and the book has been out over a year, I guess it's OK to post.

- Ray

Ameliaranne and the Linking R

I've just been reading the 1930 Ameliaranne in Town, one in the long series of early 20th century children's illustrated books published by George Harrap and featuring the adventures of Ameliaranne Stiggins.  Ameliaranne is a country girl who lives in an unnamed village with her washerwoman mother Mrs Stiggins (no Mr Stiggins ever makes an appearance) and five younger siblings. The series started in the 1920s with Ameliaranne and the Green Umbrella, written by Constance Heward and illustrated by Susan Beatrice Pearse; the latter (a prolific illustrator of book and cards) drew the series throughout the unageing Ameliaranne's thirty-year career, while the stories were written by various authors including Heward, Natalie Joan, Margaret Gilmour, Eleanor Farjeon, and Ethelberta Morris.

The stories tend to be rather slight. Ameliaranne is a helpful and competent girl who goes around overcoming difficulties in largely realistic circumstances. For instance, Ameliaranne in Town tells of her visit to an aunt in London who has connections with a large toy store. Due to a mix-up, she isn't collected at the station, but safely negotiates the Underground and gets to her aunt's house unaided. Later, she is accidentally locked in the toy store, but is unafraid, finding a bed to sleep in, and guarding its four corners with four benign toy animals she identifies with the Matthew, Mark, Luke and John of her bedtime prayer. When a fire breaks out on a floor below, she raises the alarm and helps fight the fire, and consequently she and her family are rewarded by the directors of the store.

A cynic might find Ameliaranne a poster-girl for the clean, pious and socially obedient working-class. DL Kirkpatrick's Twentieth-century Children's Writers (1983) notes that the feisty little girl of the early books (in Green Umbrella she tries to smuggle food from the Squire's tea-party for her siblings, who can't attend through illness) became "a collection of virtues" toward the end of the series. Nevertheless, the books are very charmingly illustrated and the stories satisfyingly resolved; they've become highly collectable.  See Ameliaranne and other stories ... and Ameliaranne and knitted elephants for more pictures (and of course Google Images).

A point that became forgotten as the series proceeded was the origin of the name "Ameliaranne" - quite clearly a representation of "Amelia Anne" or "Amelia-Anne" with the linking/intrusive r that appears at vowel-vowel transitions in some UK dialects. This is explicit in the very first imprints of Green Umbrella, where both the cover and text refer to the heroine as "Ameliar-Anne" (as in the image at this post at the blog Umelecky Reconsidered).

Her name was Ameliar-Anne Stiggins. She was a pale child with black hair which she wore in curl rags from Friday night till Sunday morning. Her mother was poor and took in washing; because, besides Ameliar-anne, who was the eldest, there were some five other little Stigginses to feed.

This r-insertion and the country setting, we can assume, fits into with Ameliaranne being among the now-diminishing rhotic rural speakers of southern England. I'm not sure much else can be deduced about her background, because the writers didn't make much attempt at dialectical consistency. In Green Umbrella, she speaks with a dialect more consistent with urban London (with its dropped aitches and hypercorrected form of "awful") ...

"Oh sir, I'm glad you saw, 'cos I didn't take a bit more'n what I could easy 'ave ate; and the five of them's got colds in their 'eads, and when I left them they was all howlin' somethink horful, and I couldn't bear to go home and tell them everything and them not 'ave a bite, as you might say."

... but in Ameliaranne in Town, her speech shows no sign of any non-RP dialect at all.

Constance Heward et al weren't the only authors to note the r-phenomenon as it manifested with the name "Amelia", and "Ameliar" crops up in a number of late 19th century and early 20th century texts.  For instance:

From Miss Mary Ann Patten, Calcutta, to Miss Amelia Sophia Roshervile, lady's maid in the family of John Stiffneck, Esquire, Portman Square.

Deer Ameliar—I ope this finds you well, as it leaves me at present. I received your kynd note, which as I now confess I did not expect, for I know well the duties of high life take up a great deal of time ...
- p222, The Ganges and the Seine: scenes on the banks of both, Volumes 1-2, Sidney Laman Blanchard, 1862

One cried out " Oh !" the other began to laugh; and with a knowing little infantine chuckle, said, " Missa Pen-dennis !" And Arthur, looking down, saw his two little friends of the day before, Mesdemoiselles Ameliar-Ann and Betsy-Jane. He blushed more than ever at seeing them, and seizing the one whom he had nearly upset, jumped her up into the air, and kissed her : at which sudden assault Ameliar-Ann began to cry in great alarm.
- p125, The History of Pendennis, William Makepeace Thackeray, 1869

"You won't have to wait long. There's apoplexy in that woman's red face and short neck, as sure as my name is Ameliar Berringer."

Mrs. Berringer was not above introducing a superfluous " r " at the end of a word, any more than she was above uttering virulent ill-nature, in spite of her "good-heartedness," against her professedly dearest friend.
- p300, Only Herself, Annie Thomas, 1869

A few passers-by, attracted by Ameliar's cries, have collected round them, and are looking on with that eager, delighted interest in a "row" always manifest on such occasions.
- A great mystery solved: a sequel to 'The mystery of Edwin Drood', by Gillan Vase, Elizabeth Newton, 1878

But though authors tended to stereotype it as a feature of uneducated speech (or American speech), the reality was (and still is) quite different. As I mentioned previously, the philologist Henry Sweet was probably the first to notice that it was also an unacknowledged feature of educated Southern English speech.

The fact is that the statements of ordinary educated people about their own pronunciation are generally not only valueless, but misleading. Thus I know as a fact that most educated speakers of Southern English insert an r in idea(r) of, India(r) office etc. in rapid speech, and I know that this habit, so far from dying out, is spreading to the Midlands; and yet they all obstinately deny it. The associations of the written language, and inability to deal with a phonetic notation, make most people incapable of recognizing a phonetic representation of their own pronunciation.
- A Primer of Spoken English, 1890, Preface, page viii.

Addendum: if this is a general phenomenon, one might predict that it would appear in relation to similar names. It is: again, used by authors as a marker of non-prestige speech.

"Sartain, ma'am, he gin it to me hisself; an' he said I should 'form you, Miss Celiar, he would n't be so ill-mannerly as to send his bill, only as his landlord craved him for money, an' he was out of pocket."
- "The Travelling Artist", AMF Buchanan, Godey's Magazine, 1840

Now Hamlet was a prince upon
A throne, and flunkeys kep';
So never did conductin' on
A humble bus door-step.
They call him a philosophar,
Who overtaxed his brain;
His treatment of Opheliar
Vos certainly insane.
- "The Cockney Bus Conductor", Woodin's whimsies: satiric, comic and pathetic, W. S. Woodin, 1868

I wouldn't hurt you for the world, you know that, Ceciliar." The girl winced slightly ; his pronunciation of her name was one of the little things that grated on her sensitive taste ; but a superfluous letter or two lose force when the aggressor is handsome and spirited.
- Donahoe's Magazine, 1892

- Ray

New address

Since its launch five years ago (the first post was at the end of September 2006) JSBlog has always been my personal books blog. It was written on my own time, but informally affiliated with Joel Segal Books. However, as I'm thinking of publishing on some topics I've covered here, to make the copyright and ownership situation clear-cut I've decided to rebadge it as an unequivocally personal site - hence the new title and web address. Business will, otherwise, remain entirely as usual and the informal affiliation continue with the new incarnation of the shop as The Topsham Bookshop.

I'll probably be experimenting with new templates over the next day or so. Pardon the web equivalent of scaffolding and dust-sheets. I'm also finding a lot of broken links: exporting and importing Blogger .xml files occasionally renames files and alters file paths, breaking internal links.

- Ray

More on Teignmouth

Angela Williams - whose Literary Places blog I've mentioned previously - very kindly sent me some more details about Teignmouth's historical and literary connections, starting with John Keats.

You can see a couple of photos of one candidate for Keats' house on my website: Keats at Teignmouth.

I've spent quite a bit of time roaming the back streets of Teignmouth tracking down the various literary associations - it's well worth making several visits. I've got a lot more pictures still to add to my site including some of another Keats house which the staff at the Museum say is the 'real' one. The 'doggerel' poem is nicely displayed on the exterior wall of a pub down by Back Beach and Keats' description of the beach and sea opposite the Ness in his 'Epistle to J. H. Reynolds' poem still makes perfect sense.

Wilfred Owen went there twice because of the Keats connection - he had relatives in Torquay and it's all recorded in the biog of him by Dominic Hibberd
...
Charles Babbage was married at the church on the seafront - St Michael's - and Edmund Gosse went to school there too. Then there's the poet Winthrop Mackworth Praed…

Yesterday was definitely a "pier, promenade and tea shop" visit. And I must have still been slightly addled from the previously mentioned bug: however did I manage to forget (despite knowing it perfectly well) that Babbage was born in Teignmouth? (Anthony Hyman's 1985 Charles Babbage: Pioneer of the Computer has a section about his early life there - see page 12). A return visit when more compos mentis is definitely in order.

- Ray

Keats in Teignmouth

Teignmouth - SW toward Shaldon

I really fancied a day out today - I was feeling fragile after flu, and thought fresh air would help - so we went to Teignmouth for the first time today, I was surprised. I'd been told, on the basis of friends' experience a decade or more ago, that it was rather seedy, but it was by no means that. It came across as a mix of rather quiet off-season resort and sympathetically-renovated Georgian, with some remarkably folksy corners. We had a pleasant afternoon pottering between tea shops - marred only by the end, on finding at 5.20pm that all the facilities at the railway station (ticket/information office, cafe, toilets, waiting room) were shut. That's pretty lame, but I'm trying not to let that detract from the general niceness of Teignmouth: a pretty town, flanked at one end (north-east) by the long sea-wall walk by the railway leading toward the Parson and the Clerk rocks; and at the other (south-west) by a view across the outlet of the Teign estuary to the headland of Shaldon. We must go again when I feel better.

Teignmouth - NE toward 'Parson and Clerk'.

The Devon Heritage website has an interesting page - John Keats comes to Teignmouth - about the romantic poet John Keats's visit to Teignmouth, when his brother Tom (ill with tuberculosis) came there in the hope of remission/cure. Keats wrote a poem, that he called "some doggerel", about the area:

TEIGNMOUTH
by John Keats

For there’s Bishop’s teign
And King’s teign
And Coomb at the clear Teign head -
Where close by the stream
You may have your cream
All spread upon barley bread.

There’s arch Brook
And there’s larch Brook
Both turning many a mill;
And cooling the drouth
Of the salmon’s mouth,
And fattening his silver gill.

There is Wild wood,
A Mild hood
To the sheep on the lea o’ the down,
Where the golden furze,
With its green, thin spurs,
Doth catch at the maiden’s gown.

There is Newton Marsh
With its spear grass harsh -
A pleasant summer level
Where the maidens sweet
Of the Market Street,
Do meet in the dusk to revel.

There’s the Barton rich
With dyke and ditch
And hedge for the thrush to live in
And the hollow tree
For the buzzing bee
And a bank for the wasp to hive in.

And O, and O
The daisies blow
And the primroses are waken’d,
And violets white
Sit in silver plight,
And the green bud’s as long as the spike end.

Then who would go
Into dark Soho,
And chatter with dack’d-hair’d critics,
When he can stay
For the new-mown hay,
And startle the dappled Prickets?

The commentary to this poem, in the 1818 Gowans & Gray edition of The Complete Works of John Keats, Volume 2, notes that that the poem, sent in a letter to BR Haydon, must have involved an extremely active travelogue if he had really visited all the places mentioned in the "three fine days" he described.

The 'doggerel' on Teignmouth and its surroundings has collateral interest out of all proportion to its merits. Keats's correspondence for the Spring of 1818 shows that on his arrival in Devonshire he had on his hands, besides attendance on his sick brother, the final work connected with the publication of 'Endymion.' At the end of the first ten days he writes to Haydon of having copied the fourth book for the press; and between the completion of that operation and the end of April, when the poem was out, he must have been more or less busy with it. The greater part of' Isabella' was composed at Teignmouth, whence he wrote of it to Reynolds towards the end of his stay, as about to be copied out. These circumstances would account for the limited extent of the series of poems special to Devonshire. These, although inferior in interest to the Scottish series of the Summer of 1818, are full of the individuality of Keats. The first piece belongs to the 14th of March 1818. It occurs in a letter to Haydon published by Mr. Tom Taylor in Haydon's Autobiography without any date beyond "Teignmouth, Saturday morning"; but the verses form, with the next song, the staple of the letter, and appear from the context to have been written off as a part of it, and not copied into it . The date of the letter is to be fixed thus: Keats says in the prose paragraph of which the verses are the continuation—" the six first days I was here it did nothing but rain; and at that time having to write to a friend I gave Devonshire a good blowing up—it has been fine for almost three days, and I was coming round a bit; but to day it rains again—with me the County is yet upon its good behaviour. I have enjoyed the most delightful Walks these three fine days beautiful enough to make me content..." Now on the 25th of March Keats wrote to Reynolds or the weather as if the county's trial had lasted three weeks: this gives the 4th as the day of his arrival; and the tenth day from that (when he was writing to Haydon) would be the 14th, which was a Saturday. Keats describes these verses as "some doggrel." If he had gathered all their local details in the three fine days, he had not been idle; for he had been exploring both sides of the Estuary of the Teign. Starting from Teignmouth along the right-hand bank he would come to Bishop's Teignton about three miles distant, and King's Teignton or Teignton Regis about five miles distant; and crossing the ferry at Teignmouth to get to the left-hand hank he would go through Shaldon and Ringmore to get to the village of Coomb-in-Teign-Head—perhaps three or four miles from his lodgings. He oonld not have had his cream and barley bread close to the stream in the village proper; but twenty or thirty years later, and onwards, there was certainly every accommodation of that kind in a group of curious old oottages perched up over the mud-banks, and known as Coomb Cellars—a favourite place for pic-nics, not so celebrated for cream as for cockles, raked out of the mud bottom of the Estuary at low tide. He would cross Arch Brook, or Archy Brook, by a single-arch bridge just before he reached Coomb Cellars. Of 'Larch Brook' I know nothing except that it rhymes with 'Arch Brook.' It may be either the brook in Brimley Vale or the brook in Coomb Vale, both on the Teignmouth side of the Estuary. The "Wild wood" of stanza 3 answers to any of the thick plantations of little Haldon on the Exeter road. —a down such as Keats describes—furze and all. Newton Abbot, about six miles from Teignmouth, lies in a marshy situation enough, though the name of "the Marsh" has been appropriated to a spot near the Railway station. The town still has, like most country towns of any consequence, a Market Street. Of the dykes, ditches &c. of "the Barton" I can give no account, as I do not know to what particular manor-house and demesne the term was ever applied at Teignmonth. There is a touch of "local colour" in the white violets of stanza 6; for, though primroses and violets are found in almost all parts of the country, white violets are not quite common about Teignmonth, but are to be found at Bishop's Teignton. It is a pity that this choice little hit of trifling should be disfigured by the false rhyme "critics" and "Prickets". Keats does not seem to have been quite certain when he despatched his letter whether his "doggerel" had been written seriously or not; for he resumes prose with—" I know not if this rhyming fit has done anything; it will be safe with yon, if worthy to put among my Lyrics." We must consider these trifles worthy to go among his lyrics, in virtue of their fine sense of rhythm and their keen relish for out of door life. It is clearly to the present poem, and not to the Epistle to Reynolds, that the title 'Teignmouth' belongs of right; and I have therefore headed it accordingly. The text has been very copiously amended from the original letter—quite clearly written; and I need not detain the reader with the details of the absurd perversion of it by Mr. Taylor. But I must mention that "Barton" as a place-name instead of "the Barton " was suspicious on the face of it, as there is no such place there; that the critics are clearly described, not as dark-hair'd or as dank-hair'd, but as dack'd hair'd (=shock-headed); and that the dappled creatures are certainly not crickets, but Prickets, or two-year-old deer.
- pp207-210, The Complete Works of John Keats, Volume 2, John Keats, Gowans & Gray, 1818

The modern poet Charles Causley wrote a poem - Keats at Teignmouth - commemorating Keats's visit, that I think conveys beautifully both the nature of Teignmouth and of Keats himself.

Keats At Teignmouth - Spring 1818

By the wild sea-wall I wandered
Blinded by the salting sun,
While the sulky Channel thundered
Like an old Trafalgar gun.

And I watched the gaudy river
Under trees of lemon-green,
Coiling like a scarlet bugle
Through the valley of the Teign.

When spring fired her fusilladoes
Salt-spray, sea-spray on the sill,
When the budding scarf of April
Ravelled on the Devon hill.

Then I saw the crystal poet
Leaning on the old sea-rail;
In his breast lay death, the lover,
In his head, the nightingale.

- Ray

Rolle on autumn

View west from Orcombe steps

Few towns can boast of a walk more suitable for invalids than that through the Plantation and along under the cliff to the lime-kiln. It is almost perfectly level, and whilst it lies open to the south and west, it is sheltered by a continuous cliff from the cold winds of the north and east. It will be found to afford a warm and delightful winter walk. Excellent seats are placed at intervals along this path, and also upon the sea-wall. The latter affords a very agreeable promenade to those who prefer more bracing air. The sands, also, stretching away under the red eliffs to Straight Point, will give the pedestrian ample scope for exercise; and if he is wary, he will know where to pick out a firm footing thereon. The rock-pools near the rifle-targets contain ample stock for the aquarium.
- Memorials of Exmouth, compiled by W. Everitt, 1885

Some things don't change much. I've been down with a sub-flu bug this past week, but with the current 'Indian summer' continuing, I felt up to a gentle stroll in Exmouth. It turned into a four-mile walk, via charity shops and the park, along the beach to Orcombe Point and back, so I'm clearly on the mend.

Everitt's description of the walk along what's now Bath Road - a wooded pedestrian road, with a parallel higher footpath, at the foot of the red sandstone cliffs fronting Exmouth - is still largely accurate. We owe its general flavour to Lord and Lady Rolle, who left a major stamp on the townscape of Exmouth.

On the third of April, 1842, occurred the death of John, Lord Rolle ... For upwards of half a century Lord Rolle was actively engaged in public life. As a landlord, Exmouth owed much to his liberality. Indeed, almost all the improvements that had taken place in the town, with the exception of those due to Mr. Richard Webber, were made at the expense of Lord and Lady Rolle. The plantations and public walks on and under the Beacon, the extensive and costly seawall, and the large Chapel of the Holy Trinity, are among the enduring memorials of their regard for the town.
...
The splendid sea-wall begun in 1841, and constructed at the expense of the late Lord Rolle, was completed in 1842 by Messrs. Plewse, builders, London, under the direction of John Smeaton, Esq., architect. It is built of Babbacombe limestone, and is secured by a row of piles. Considerable additions to it were made in 1848, and a massive parapet added at the northern end. The cost of this work is said to have exceeded £20,000.
- Memorials of Exmouth, compiled by W. Everitt, 1885

The location and viewpoint of the photo illustrating this post is fairly close to that in Devon County Council's image archive - EXM00672 - showing the wreck of the Tehwija in 1907.

- Ray

Elizabeth Robins Pennell on Margate

I've never been to Margate, but even the barest details have very comfortable resonances for me: resorts set on the chalk coasts of southern England were central to my childhood, and appeal to me wherever I see them (even across the Channel). And yet I think the ones I know best were, to various extents, gentrified by location away from major population centres. Britain has any number of resorts that were historically much more vigorous and downmarket because of their catchment area: day-trip distance from major working-class conurbations. Blackpool, within rapid access of Manchester and Liverpool, is a classic example; and so is Margate, repeatedly mentioned in late-Victorian works as the day-trip destination of "'Arrys and 'Arriets" from East London.

I couldn't resist quoting in full the article - London at play: on Margate's sands - written by Elizabeth Robins Pennell in 1897 for the US-published The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine. An American who lived for most of her working life in London, she was a wide-ranging writer who wrote on art, food, biographical topics, and travel.

The piece was written for Century as part of a regular commission for travel writing she took on, with her artist husband Joseph Pennell, who provided the illustrations (I'll try to sort these out later). It's a realistic yet affectionate 'outsider' view of Margate and its London visitors - imagine a late-Victorian Bill Bryson analogue. That Margate is long gone, but this vivid piece rather makes you wish you could visit it.

Here it is (usual disclaimers about the period's racist language apply): London at play: on Margate's sands. Due to the vagaries of Google Books hosting, US readers can access it directly via one of the links here. The piece is packed with contemporary and literary references - perhaps labouredly so - and I've annotated ones that may not be self-explanatory.

- Ray