tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73213394726667781232024-02-08T08:03:11.448+00:00Mirabilis - Year of WondersNews from the creators of the Mirabilis comicLeo Hartashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14417174942647091006noreply@blogger.comBlogger476125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-69955467935897119752023-12-03T00:00:00.001+00:002023-12-03T00:00:00.136+00:00God and Mr Fry<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="252" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-suvkwNYSQo?si=46fd-4EgAd9bcDxf" title="YouTube video player" width="448"></iframe></div><div><br /></div>Thank God for Stephen Fry. Actually, let’s leave God out of it. It’s Stephen Fry himself I want to thank. When I despair at the human race, often it’s the example of his wisdom, humour and intelligence that gives me hope. If I were Galactus, he’d be the main reason I decided not to eat your planet. In <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSlLVn6LhLBcFocQvZKtz5sHxooCwPGq0" target="_blank">this interview with Gay Byrne on RTÉ One</a>, Mr Fry is on brilliant and blistering form. He adduces his reasons for believing that, if God exists, <a href="http://stephenlaw.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/god-and-theodicies_10.html" target="_blank">He is ‘monstrous, evil, capricious, mean-minded, and stupid’</a>.
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Let’s start with ‘if God exists’. On one level, all gods are real. I’m arm in arm with Alan Moore when he says <a href="http://mirabilis-yearofwonders.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/world-of-ideas.html" target="_blank">he believes in fairies</a>. Odin and Thor have always felt more real to me than the Biblical deities, though. Probably that kind of preference has nothing to do with the universe and everything to do with how our childhood selves related to our parents – although even that implies religion is a free choice, which can hardly be true when so many are indoctrinated into their family’s beliefs from the time they can speak.
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In any case, that category of belief is not what we’re considering here. I’m not talking about a God as real as Humbert Humbert or Lizzie Bennet or Mr Toad. It’s that other reality we’re discussing now, the one that can stub your toe or launch a rocket to the Moon. Most people are uncouth in their beliefs. Their minds aren’t comfortable with the abstract. Not content with God being as real as love, truth, beauty, they want Him to be real in the way that wellington boots and wisdom teeth are real. So that’s the God we’ll talk about.
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How <i>did </i>it all come into being? We can evoke the idea of a mind hanging in the nothingness – but minds are complex things, much more complex than suns and planets. Some metaquantum aberration, a blip inside which a quindecillion tonnes of superstring unfolded, is easier to grasp as the <i>primum mobile </i>and considerably more likely. But hang on there. Occam’s Razor is a guide, not a rule. I can’t be <i>certain </i>that atheism is more reasonable than <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deism" target="_blank">deism</a>, and so I simply say that I’m an agnostic.
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We agreed to let God into this <i>Gedankenexperiment</i>. Okay, so where and why did He come into the picture? Supposedly He was needed originally to answer the question of why we are here at all. Declaring that everything exists because of God is no explanation, mind you. It just sweeps the question under the carpet of what is not known. However, this 28 billion parsec-sized parcel of spacetime – and indeed spacetime itself – may only be part of a much larger or even infinite reality, possibly with one or more cosmic intelligences in the strata from which our local reality arose. For all that I doubt it, I can’t prove our universe wasn’t created by an intelligent designer. For the sake of argument, we’re saying it was. What then can we deduce about the creator from His creation?
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The God that spoke to Moses and Muhammad appears to have shared the moral code, social priorities, and knowledge of the physical world that Moses and Muhammad themselves had. But that’s not the God we’re trying to intuit from the universe around us. It’s more than far-fetched to imagine that <i>our </i>God would take a personal interest in one small group of people at one time in history, and then couch whatever user’s manual points He deemed important in the form of legalistic rules communicated via the local power hierarchy. Anything He has to say, He could tell all mankind unequivocally by writing it on the Moon in a metalanguage. ‘Angels spoke to me,’ is no reason to take anybody’s word for anything, whether it happened yesterday or two thousand years ago. If that’s the kind of God you’re willing to conceive of, there’s no good reason not to choose the God of the Aztecs or of the Mesopotamians. One billion people <i>can </i>be wrong – or right; their numbers and their conviction make no difference.
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So put that aside. Suppose you had never heard any theories of God, and were just starting to look around and figure out what He might be like. For a start, if you were God, you wouldn’t build a thing like the universe in the way you would a wristwatch. You’d specify laws, the way a game designer does. You’d say the electron is a class with these attributes. Then you’d start it going: ‘Let there be plasma’ – not light, that took another 400,000 years – and you’d see what kind of a universe emerged from your rules. Maybe you’d hope for life, maybe you’d observe it as a happy accident. Or maybe life wasn’t what interested you in the first place.
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Wait. Didn’t God already know everything that was to come? As an omnipotent being, He could run the entire simulation in his mind. But we don’t <i>know </i>that our God is omnipotent, only that He is (or was) capable of initiating the beginning of the universe and possibly setting or tweaking the laws that govern it. And a <i>perfect </i>simulation is indistinguishable from reality in any case. So here it is, finally, 13.8 billion years later: the thin film of water and air around a ball of rock that interests us.
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Now, it’s a mistake to see all this from the top down. (That is if we insist on putting ourselves arbitrarily at ‘the top’.) We cannot make the universe in our image, we have to see it as it is – not a place of dietary and marriage rules, of ethics and prohibitions and cruel medieval punishments, but a place of simple physical processes, working away on a level more primitive than ants. The God we’re reading from the things He made seems more concerned with weevils than with evil, and quite right too. Evil is a human construct, and a clumsy one at that. How could an entity that doesn’t live in our social world even <i>have </i>an opinion on human morality – any more than we conceive of morality among the sparrows?
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So if we start with the God of the Big Bang rather than the God of the Good Book, I can’t agree with Stephen Fry that He is monstrous and mean-minded. Ebola and earthquakes are just the way the universe is. I don’t think we could honestly expect a real creator of worlds to trouble Himself about whether one species burrows into the eyes of another species. In fact, if you take our human partiality out of the equation, it’s kind of cool. You can imagine Him thinking, ‘I set this in motion, but the emergent effects are awesome.’
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Of course, Mr Fry is not answering Mr Byrne’s question from a deist perspective. He is addressing the question of what we should make of the world if the God of the Old Testament is in charge of it. This is a God we are told is concerned about human life – as well as being very bothered about what we eat, what we wear, and who we have sex with. Quite obviously such a God, if He were any more credible than a Dungeons and Dragons monster, would indeed be unworthy of respect. Fortunately mankind has had teachers like Jesus and Buddha to ameliorate primitive religious doctrine with a kinder message. But honestly, if you were properly brought up, you don’t need them to tell you anything. Our opinion about whether the universe has a creator or not has nothing to do with morality, just as the laws the police enforce have nothing to do with why I don’t commit robbery and murder.
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So, like Fry, I’d reject that strict and jealous God’s offer of paradise because it would not be any paradise I’d want to live in. His bribe of an afterlife, if it were anything but an infantile dream, is deserving of mere contempt. The power to create and destroy gives no man or deity the right to enforce an ethical code. That you can only find in your own heart.<br />
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "georgia"; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;"></span></div>Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-83932259019201125562023-11-13T22:33:00.006+00:002023-11-14T09:45:19.429+00:00The Killer (review)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhayjwFcR4tI0cJdKY-v2cDSvl6Bmok93tnXP-PmVijbqqLayP-UoKeEqaWb8HjQZUzsIHzok0_n2Pb6WNbQORslc1Nq_WtPwVc3sylp1XeXiy518KMHLzC5oP3e22vIcBN-Odd0wEpajCbGOrSZl9ejuT3ylHHh5tmzbvdvRjjp24K54Zy9QrHTqkR8us/s1481/Bang-Bang-Man.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1481" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhayjwFcR4tI0cJdKY-v2cDSvl6Bmok93tnXP-PmVijbqqLayP-UoKeEqaWb8HjQZUzsIHzok0_n2Pb6WNbQORslc1Nq_WtPwVc3sylp1XeXiy518KMHLzC5oP3e22vIcBN-Odd0wEpajCbGOrSZl9ejuT3ylHHh5tmzbvdvRjjp24K54Zy9QrHTqkR8us/w270-h400/Bang-Bang-Man.jpg" width="270" /></a></div><p>Today I went to the cinema, which is something I haven't done in quite a while. What tempted me back to the big screen? David Fincher's latest movie, <i>The Killer</i>. Was it worth seeing in a movie theatre? Not really. The action was fine, but would look just as good on a decent TV. Were the performances any good? Oh yes. Michael Fassbender is always great value. He should have been picked to play James Bond -- though admittedly he'd be too interesting an actor for the anodyne superhero that Bond has become. The scene with Tilda Swinton is worth the price of admission. But the plotting. Oh dear. </p><p>I'll talk about it because somebody has to care whether stories make any sense. You must expect spoilers from this point on, OK?</p>
<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="252" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5S7FR_HCg9g?si=hDayMOdFi32L9SaK" title="YouTube video player" width="448"></iframe></div><p>The Killer is a seasoned professional hitman with a string of successful and lucrative assassinations behind him, but he misses a shot on his latest target. Which is inconvenient, as the target is now alerted and it will be a while before there’ll be any chance of a follow-up attempt.</p><p>
Unknown to the Killer, his handler, Hodges, proposes to the client that he can have the Killer whacked for another 150k. Why kill the golden goose? Don’t know. Why would Hodges think that the Killer would blab after one slip-up? Don’t know. How would the client (just a rich business dude) ever know whether his 150k had actually been spent on rubbing out the Killer? He wouldn't, so why pay?</p><p>
Hodges hires two other assassins, the Expert and the Brute. It looks like all you need to know is in the names, except (as we will find out) they are fairly useless, which makes it surprising that Hodges is so blasé about writing off his star performer. They also haven’t worked together before, which would be a danger signal in many professions where the stakes are considerably lower than in assassination.</p><p>
Hodges sends them to the Killer’s isolated jungle home in the Dominican Republic, though he must realize the Killer won’t be back there yet. They find Magdala, the Killer’s girlfriend, and torture her for information. Why doesn’t Hodges just give them this information? Don’t know. Why not wait at the house to ambush the Killer when he comes back? Don’t know.</p><p>
They leave Magdala alive. Why? Ah, this one I do know – it’s because otherwise the writer couldn’t give the Killer the clues he needs to find the assassins. He tracks them via the taxi company who took them to the house. Why didn’t they hire a car? Why did they leave the taxi driver alive? How did Magda get a look at the taxi from hundreds of yards away through a jungle? You got me.</p><p>
The Killer now realizes Hodges hired the two assassins. He goes and kills him and gets info about the two assassins from Hodges’ secretary, whom he kills. (Unlike the Expert, he leaves no loose ends.) Meanwhile, you may ask, isn’t he in jeopardy from the Expert and the Brute, who have been hired to kill him? No, because having beaten up the Killer’s girlfriend and trashed his house, they went back to their homes and are now making no effort to look for him. This is convenient as it means that the Killer can track them down separately and kill them.</p><p>
After some more shenanigans involving the client who hired him in the first place, the Killer retires with all the money he’s made in his long and lucrative career. Does he have to create a new identity and set up a new home in a distant corner of the world? Not a bit of it. He goes back to his house in the Dominican Republic, a place which has been compromised and might well now be known to other assassins, and relaxes on a sun lounger.</p><p>
What might have happened after the missed shot: Hodges could say to the Killer that they either owed the client a hit and would have to follow-up despite the increased security, or they could hand the money back. The former would make a story, but it wouldn’t have the betrayal trope vital to lazy storytellers in this genre. If Hodges really decided that the Killer was now useless, he should have hired competent assassins, briefed them properly, and laid low till they reported the Killer was dealt with. It didn't matter to the client, certainly, who could have been told that the Killer had been iced and would have believed it.</p><p>
Why was this plot such a mess? I suspect because it’s based on a graphic novel by a videogame writer, both mediums being stronger on style than on substance or on coherent storytelling. Why wasn’t the plotting fixed by Andrew Kevin Walker, a screenwriter with a number of hits to his name, and David Fincher, who ought to be able by now to tell if story elements make no sense? Don’t know, but it may be because they no longer expect audiences to bother to question what they’re seeing on screen. If plots are only going to be skin-deep, no wonder screenwriters are worried about being replaced by AI.</p>
Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-32150345755971130092023-10-30T18:31:00.002+00:002023-10-30T18:31:26.684+00:00A deal with Death<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYX-p9nOdeHIdV7MNYIDUAE-m2U52Nii8yGrO7D8DMQ3q95c4sMhT01mq692JM7BboixYS_k7qcCbwDby0eqEkKCB9IMk7p4TZFveqzaMxl5SyLe7_qnw8QIp0bvMbAHEyJ12O-I3EVsmdw87W8bdi6EGfUVUVrA2ISkpakU2hG8mfH8xMzjViSYnxvF0/s1131/super-creeps.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1131" data-original-width="794" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYX-p9nOdeHIdV7MNYIDUAE-m2U52Nii8yGrO7D8DMQ3q95c4sMhT01mq692JM7BboixYS_k7qcCbwDby0eqEkKCB9IMk7p4TZFveqzaMxl5SyLe7_qnw8QIp0bvMbAHEyJ12O-I3EVsmdw87W8bdi6EGfUVUVrA2ISkpakU2hG8mfH8xMzjViSYnxvF0/w281-h400/super-creeps.jpg" width="281" /></a></div><p>Some years ago, <a href="https://rozmorris.org/" target="_blank">my wife</a> and I spent a week at Shute Gatehouse, a place owned by <a href="https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/" target="_blank">The Landmark Trust</a> that you find by turning off the main road, passing between two half-collapsed stone posts, and finding yourself on a narrow route that seems to take you a couple of decades back in time. The mist closed in and we spent a few days exploring the local woods, pubs, and footpaths. </p><p>One afternoon we came across a steep driveway lined with pumpkins - rotting, puckered and caved-in on themselves in the week since Halloween, but which must have marked out the way to a bonfire party. The story “A Wrong Turning” arrived in my head just like that, in one piece, a gift from the otherworld. </p><p>The premise: it's that time of year when the veil between life and death is so thin that to stray off the path could easily take you on a detour via undiscovered country. Guy Wasserman has already suffered one bereavement, and when his car is forced off the main road he finds Death waiting with an impossible demand: "You, or your son." </p><p><a href="https://downthetubes.net/halloween-comic-tales-a-wrong-turning-by-dave-morris-and-martin-mckenna/" target="_blank">“A Wrong Turning”</a> is my homage to the old <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Publishing" target="_blank">Warren horror comics</a> of the 1960s and 1970s. The tight, atmospheric pencils are by <a href="http://www.martinmckenna.net/" target="_blank">Martin McKenna</a>, and you’ll see right away why he was so in demand for movie storyboarding. His artwork on this little tale reminds me of the great EC Comics and <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creepy_(magazine)" target="_blank">Creepy </a></i>artists like Gray Morrow, Reed Crandall, Angelo Torres and Al Williamson.</p>Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-69182995152480315192023-08-24T13:37:00.001+01:002023-08-24T13:40:36.837+01:00Winding your way down Yancy Street<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgLjQBDw_8SWwtCgBf-b85a0APhvXCRACrln8Y_ksCHqJf5nZeGxP4-fDXoqPLdFlWPm7yBFG4ZUHlR0cLI3m2PWn73RYc41IVZkGS05NB0-c61dLhUxEtU9mH6LC5rB6YE_12CaWpCTM91TLuZ5YulRbog2KvTv5ywb0nxiL76noRVs4CqNdmseQ2GIw/s1029/streetCode05-06-tint.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="709" data-original-width="1029" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgLjQBDw_8SWwtCgBf-b85a0APhvXCRACrln8Y_ksCHqJf5nZeGxP4-fDXoqPLdFlWPm7yBFG4ZUHlR0cLI3m2PWn73RYc41IVZkGS05NB0-c61dLhUxEtU9mH6LC5rB6YE_12CaWpCTM91TLuZ5YulRbog2KvTv5ywb0nxiL76noRVs4CqNdmseQ2GIw/w400-h275/streetCode05-06-tint.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>I’ve never been to New York in the summer. And in particular I’ve never been to the Lower East Side in summer in the early 20th century. Yet I know the place like home. I can smell the fruit and cabbages that have rolled from barrows to get trodden underfoot. The stink of livestock and automobiles. The tobacco and stale sweat on the clothes of passers-by. The cheerfully rude street banter. The delighted shouts of kids running wild. The hissing gush of fire hydrants and the petrichor rising from the heat-stifled dust of the sidewalk.
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How did that become a familiar place in my childhood memory? Not from movies like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_End_(1937_film)" target="_blank"><i>Dead End</i> (1937)</a>, much as I love them. They can show you a photographic record, but they can never depict the way it felt. For that you need a guide like Jack Kirby.
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A time machine could drop you in Lower Manhattan, but it couldn’t find you Yancy Street, though you’d recognize the hard-as-nails stare of Yancy Streeters in the neighbourhood kids – among them, back then, the young Jacob Kurtzberg. Wikipedia credits the invention of Yancy Street to Jack and Stan Lee, but if any such claim stretched credibility it’s that one. Stan grew up ninety blocks away in the Upper West Side. If he ever saw a street gang it would most likely have been up on the movie screen. He never lived that life and breathed that air as Jack did.
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There’s been a lot of water under the Williamsburg Bridge since the Silver Age. Revisionists got their hands on the FF and soft-soaped everything for a more sentimental generation. So Ben Grimm became a former Yancy Streeter, Aunt Petunia a young medic, the gang itself openly reconciled with the hero they loved to hate – or hated to love. I’ll have none of it, and I don’t believe Jack would either. He could be big-hearted without getting schmaltzy. He could depict affection without corniness. He was a no-nonsense, stogie-chomping guy, just like his big orange creation, and his comic book New York was real in a way that nothing in Marvel’s universe feels these days.
</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5gf6GQTgVkxQ9cwWVhmIpWQ1_EFtHJ8ALwZWoJJArAsQj0-KtMUi-h2FPB62lf04DB-5ix1WSMD_gI6if-J9KG0cQxoL9SvU_jIyXQcghGxPFDsscLasXdArl1xD1agasWLwS3rTJNJXWHSbN3TMP2gRv6Zu5GuxcKtA7isfEam6Q5Pr2I3CoJQm4coM/s516/Yancy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="516" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5gf6GQTgVkxQ9cwWVhmIpWQ1_EFtHJ8ALwZWoJJArAsQj0-KtMUi-h2FPB62lf04DB-5ix1WSMD_gI6if-J9KG0cQxoL9SvU_jIyXQcghGxPFDsscLasXdArl1xD1agasWLwS3rTJNJXWHSbN3TMP2gRv6Zu5GuxcKtA7isfEam6Q5Pr2I3CoJQm4coM/w388-h400/Yancy.jpg" width="388" /></a></div><p>
And that’s why it matters. Because when we see the Surfer soaring over the skyscrapers of Manhattan, we also know the bustle of the ordinary folk way down there on the street. Jack shows us that so as to make the cosmic adventures real. When Galactus arrives, he doesn’t just come to chow down on concrete and girders. There are living, breathing people at threat, and the genius of Jack Kirby is to make them a richly contrary variety of types – not the nice, carefully set-up-for-sympathy cast of relatable bystanders that a modern comics writer would assemble, but real New Yorkers, warts ‘n all, many of whom might resent the high-handed experts like Reed Richards, the liberated women like Sue Storm, the loudmouth kids like her brother, and even be jealous of a rocky-skinned, two-fisted clobberin’ monster like Ben Grimm.
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The people who inhabit Jack Kirby’s New York – a place he evoked more expressively than any other comics artist, even Ditko – reflect the ambiguity the Fantastic Four themselves feel about their role as heroes. His New Yorkers are maddening, loud, ungrateful, fickle, adoring, demanding, vibrant, scrappy and fun. When the FF step forward to protect mankind, they stand as champions of the good, the bad, and the majority who are just in between.
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In such a mix, the Yancy Street gang stand out as the most constant of the lot. Whenever the Thing’s self-pity inflates to grandly indulgent proportions, he can count on a snappy put-down from the Yancy Streeters to bring him back to Earth. He might go into space, fight alien empires and demi-gods, and save the whole furshlugginer galaxy, but when he’s back and takes a stroll past Yancy Street, it’s their jeers and catcalls that comprise the most sincere welcome home. It’s fitting that, with Ben Grimm’s self-loathing simmering just under the surface, the nearest he’d have to a fan club would be a bunch of hard-boiled, blue-collar guys who send him exploding cigars and pelt him with rotten tomatoes. And you get the feeling he wouldn’t have it any other way.</p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p><span style="color: #7f6000; font-size: x-small;">This essay originally appeared in <i>Jack Kirby: Variations On A Theme</i>, edited by Glenn B Fleming, who knew Jack Kirby personally. You need the whole book, true believer.</span></p>
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Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-24032214242352034482023-05-01T10:30:00.087+01:002023-05-01T10:30:00.140+01:00A far cry from cave paintings<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_lmyTP-iWngdYiZg4Nxq4HE5_RZBM_NGlqKQbOmFRhjsb0LVQPP1ymUp34kT6j0zh2DH3-KCfs-dTTcBpsDxNUZiAX5ep6t6_jLb6LwQ5fgCwKbMWicw2DkL2bNEnXURnDbYVWOziCGNFWzfrYbQVrpRmwQ-ikoxMsigAkdkIgQmpdpChtoZYqRHU/s1229/not-dame-sepia.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1229" data-original-width="819" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_lmyTP-iWngdYiZg4Nxq4HE5_RZBM_NGlqKQbOmFRhjsb0LVQPP1ymUp34kT6j0zh2DH3-KCfs-dTTcBpsDxNUZiAX5ep6t6_jLb6LwQ5fgCwKbMWicw2DkL2bNEnXURnDbYVWOziCGNFWzfrYbQVrpRmwQ-ikoxMsigAkdkIgQmpdpChtoZYqRHU/w266-h400/not-dame-sepia.jpg" width="266" /></a></div><p>Following on from <a href="https://mirabilis-yearofwonders.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-power-loom-approach-to-illustration.html" target="_blank">last time's discussion of AI artwork</a> in comics, there is the question of copyright. <a href="https://www.theregister.com/2023/03/16/ai_art_copyright_usco/#:~:text=The%20US%20Copyright%20Office%20will,a%20policy%20published%20on%20Thursday." target="_blank">US law allows AI-generated art to be copyrighted</a> if it involved a significant input from human beings. I don't know what they're going to do when we have <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligence" target="_blank">AGI</a>, but that's going to be a legal headache across the board.</p><p>It doesn't necessarily matter anyway if you're not able to claim copyright in your comic book's art. The text will be your copyright, so nobody can republish your story as is. I guess they could strip out the text and come up with a new story to go with the images, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Roundabout#:~:text=It%20used%20the%20footage%20of%20the%20French%20stop%20motion%20animation%20show%20Le%20Man%C3%A8ge%20enchant%C3%A9%20but%20with%20completely%20different%20scripts%20and%20characters." target="_blank">the way Eric Thompson wrote <i>The Magic Roundabout</i></a>, but if the underlying material is at all original that wouldn't be easy. (And in any case, what writer worth their salt would want to wear another's clothes that way?)</p><p>Certainly the way I envisage using AI art there'd need to be a lot of human input. As prompts I'd be using not only text but my own thumbnail panel layouts and Leo's rough pencils. <a href="https://mirabilis-yearofwonders.blogspot.com/p/the-creative-process-dave-how-do-we-put.html" target="_blank">How we make a comic</a> is quite an involved process. All the AI would be handling is the embellishments: the inks, flats and final colouring that are fairly arduous work for the artist.</p><p>Writer Steve Coulson is way ahead of where I thought the technology was now. He's already producing <a href="http://www.campfirenyc.com/comics/" target="_blank">a range of comic books</a> using art by <a href="https://www.midjourney.com/home/?callbackUrl=%2Fapp%2F" target="_blank">Midjourney</a>. You can <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/b31kb3vhl60c2ra/The_Bestiary_Chronicles_001.pdf?dl=0" target="_blank">download them </a>and take a look. Midjourney hasn't got anything like the charm of Leo's art, as you can see from the quite similar scene below from Mirabilis season 2. But while AI artwork wouldn't yet do for Mirabilis, it's already fine for something like <a href="https://hellboy.fandom.com/wiki/Hell_on_Earth_(story_cycle)" target="_blank">B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth</a>. Watch this space.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZOH8W4Kbr0M89C2lYwGy4uXRwe8FzTCuygZzRZLMxDA-2T6vwtV5DmcIupg-uv2l4yzcgTjqtP5KLpOioKpmNbubisPhPnprVyQZD5nAscbBfmsAXavtwZyDevmeUA1kIbZ-J1faLk5elTAX1xj3lvWshqgco21bVDfgjnja5lIxHqfoav11HJ-q3/s2047/Mirabilis9-p4.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2047" data-original-width="1452" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZOH8W4Kbr0M89C2lYwGy4uXRwe8FzTCuygZzRZLMxDA-2T6vwtV5DmcIupg-uv2l4yzcgTjqtP5KLpOioKpmNbubisPhPnprVyQZD5nAscbBfmsAXavtwZyDevmeUA1kIbZ-J1faLk5elTAX1xj3lvWshqgco21bVDfgjnja5lIxHqfoav11HJ-q3/w284-h400/Mirabilis9-p4.jpg" width="284" /></a></div>Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-76777954061058729272023-04-12T16:59:00.001+01:002023-04-12T17:00:10.360+01:00The power loom approach to illustration<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz7V3fevDZYjjQDN8ED-JLbdmvx2UcqayWyjFLV-dSHmY5GD1nOdKlAAB-zHcUPcKMi1dioh_5umRjzuu4-40Vu20SY3YTmeOIzCK6MXrpoKq3JVClr9RMOCONVWz_4Raq7eGG9Asb1dpva_Xc8-vXZQmghZa6Z7EeyHvXLHgyoAFF9R-D2IEsoRV_/s512/Jack-and-Estelle-2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="512" data-original-width="512" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz7V3fevDZYjjQDN8ED-JLbdmvx2UcqayWyjFLV-dSHmY5GD1nOdKlAAB-zHcUPcKMi1dioh_5umRjzuu4-40Vu20SY3YTmeOIzCK6MXrpoKq3JVClr9RMOCONVWz_4Raq7eGG9Asb1dpva_Xc8-vXZQmghZa6Z7EeyHvXLHgyoAFF9R-D2IEsoRV_/w400-h400/Jack-and-Estelle-2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>The other day I was adding some notes to my <a href="http://mirabilis-yearofwonders.com/" target="_blank">Mirabilis</a> plot summary. I have a good 15,000 words now, as well as the full scripts for the first half of <a href="http://mirabilis-yearofwonders.com/episodes/issue-9/" target="_blank">the Spring book</a>. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh99vNojBvQTk-ACE0QNliQNgNyAg3JpVXDPsCEzxjD2ELacwAxQuxVr2o5_VjH-J7TQYn30asabZth306Uz5hrgR5bdDC4J3GawRmcBEWnK4aXnKkrvj6W4JsogfISDJfjhVyVx-IadAb8vuCCvVzVXhud3N3qORqUK3AubuTxlFJsOqG-M6ROfLsI/s1024/_b8f66cb3-7b98-4e39-985f-e832f04adefd.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh99vNojBvQTk-ACE0QNliQNgNyAg3JpVXDPsCEzxjD2ELacwAxQuxVr2o5_VjH-J7TQYn30asabZth306Uz5hrgR5bdDC4J3GawRmcBEWnK4aXnKkrvj6W4JsogfISDJfjhVyVx-IadAb8vuCCvVzVXhud3N3qORqUK3AubuTxlFJsOqG-M6ROfLsI/w400-h400/_b8f66cb3-7b98-4e39-985f-e832f04adefd.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>Could I even write it today? Certainly it was far easier to contemplate when Leo and I were on a roll. We had little luck with publishers (variously uninterested or unable to get the books out) and the obstacle to going it alone was the cost of all the artwork.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsSp_DRwKOwRTpsvBfxbB3MRfC1j1Jt8-dvcQhpIm-oeC7DzJtUw11LLw58WwwDoc3_JRIsM4si4HZvzRsYB4ZXp0GCnSo1ENj5Bm4N_s-Y4Y5II6g5bZxtRnIxcE-0uPwklaPb4PyG4BE1E2DyZz6dPLF5K44efgIWmpBBhAv0ZJCUcKwP9BYKlzl/s1024/_6da32001-5b85-48a7-85d7-5b8e522cc54c.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsSp_DRwKOwRTpsvBfxbB3MRfC1j1Jt8-dvcQhpIm-oeC7DzJtUw11LLw58WwwDoc3_JRIsM4si4HZvzRsYB4ZXp0GCnSo1ENj5Bm4N_s-Y4Y5II6g5bZxtRnIxcE-0uPwklaPb4PyG4BE1E2DyZz6dPLF5K44efgIWmpBBhAv0ZJCUcKwP9BYKlzl/w400-h400/_6da32001-5b85-48a7-85d7-5b8e522cc54c.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>These days Leo is busy with some <a href="https://wowthatsme.com/" target="_blank">interesting but very different projects</a>. I could complete the story as a novel (if talk is cheap, prose isn't that much more costly) but it really feels like it should be a comic. What about using AI? Not a popular choice, I know, but it's not like I'd be doing a human artist out of a job, seeing as I can't afford a human artist in the first place.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbah36rg0tee0ahgfpvXpyWjK8gi9GpzBem-ap67-zTDUVBXdY_IwlRrRJgoWBRgR7h3_9bHrq36TMhH6KJ_vValGYMhkGbxtMT45SO3H50fX_WPGoxwEl1j7F_W03GLzn5CDx7eflGg-xZxhAFvqnabMgtSMMwdM7LTGzLSF-2DyeFO_i6V3Yh_Zq/s1597/A_page_of_the_comic_04_TradingCard.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1597" data-original-width="989" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbah36rg0tee0ahgfpvXpyWjK8gi9GpzBem-ap67-zTDUVBXdY_IwlRrRJgoWBRgR7h3_9bHrq36TMhH6KJ_vValGYMhkGbxtMT45SO3H50fX_WPGoxwEl1j7F_W03GLzn5CDx7eflGg-xZxhAFvqnabMgtSMMwdM7LTGzLSF-2DyeFO_i6V3Yh_Zq/w248-h400/A_page_of_the_comic_04_TradingCard.jpg" width="248" /></a></div><p>The AI isn't there yet, as these samples show. I'd need the characters to look like themselves and remain consistent from panel to panel. Also to have the right number of fingers (human artists have the edge there) and not to come out with two left hands (a mistake the robots have picked up from people).</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-MX6hr4YrcmC4OqRTM9xh3tBabt5Xex2_IdIhfe8sHF9GDb0k3MLWgkxCS8EoUsdqbCEUDPM6wz27k46o7-5EaHXGxyFfeClZVeHrXLyfPESmESaOXVR4XQund_SuiVKZMUQSXp9xsXQVi0tRyxuhjo7GRPe58vVTXkl0XQeYKhZLiLnJtjJH84iI/s1568/dream_TradingCard%20(1).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1568" data-original-width="960" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-MX6hr4YrcmC4OqRTM9xh3tBabt5Xex2_IdIhfe8sHF9GDb0k3MLWgkxCS8EoUsdqbCEUDPM6wz27k46o7-5EaHXGxyFfeClZVeHrXLyfPESmESaOXVR4XQund_SuiVKZMUQSXp9xsXQVi0tRyxuhjo7GRPe58vVTXkl0XQeYKhZLiLnJtjJH84iI/w245-h400/dream_TradingCard%20(1).jpg" width="245" /></a></div><p>First above is an image by <a href="https://creator.nightcafe.studio/" target="_blank">Nightcafe</a>. I don't mind the style but it hasn't got Jack and Estelle right. Still, it did better than <a href="https://www.bing.com/create" target="_blank">Bing Image Creator</a>, which first got Jack mixed up with Harry Potter and then with John Constantine. It did have a crack at lettering, though. Next is <a href="https://dream.ai/create" target="_blank">Wombo Dream</a>'s attempt at a whole page, which looks like a comic you might find in <a href="https://sandman.fandom.com/wiki/The_Dreaming" target="_blank">the Dreaming</a>. Trying to redeem itself, it next goes too manga and lovey-dovey for my tastes, and gives us two Jacks into the bargain. Back to Bing (below) for what could be from a future season of <i>Doctor Who</i>. And at the bottom another Bing image that's either channeling <a href="https://barrywindsor-smith.com/story-teller/" target="_blank">Barry Windsor-Smith</a> or trying to look like an actual Edwardian drawing. Or I guess it could be a Steeleye Span album.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb9wMzodw27IeeHjzEcHJeBM7QVktsE_c7qiVqoY8ECWpZheX0jQ41Kib8GvVnFR1mvzuAN6wu3GIv9f1OBvaxMvaQjgDCMkvh5EqOGo6pJpT5gTgpaCcbjxfap0X_plpi3h71rxz4Dil0z0xohbhYwrPJPWXaVarQuw-zaAEXrEC_F79xvU-n0k8d/s1024/_9c9d848e-1a6e-42d8-9fe3-cac48aa3f3b5.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb9wMzodw27IeeHjzEcHJeBM7QVktsE_c7qiVqoY8ECWpZheX0jQ41Kib8GvVnFR1mvzuAN6wu3GIv9f1OBvaxMvaQjgDCMkvh5EqOGo6pJpT5gTgpaCcbjxfap0X_plpi3h71rxz4Dil0z0xohbhYwrPJPWXaVarQuw-zaAEXrEC_F79xvU-n0k8d/w400-h400/_9c9d848e-1a6e-42d8-9fe3-cac48aa3f3b5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><p>What I haven't tried yet is <a href="https://www.midjourney.com/home/?callbackUrl=%2Fapp%2F" target="_blank">Midjourney</a>, the crème de la crème of generative art models. With AI advancing as it is, it might be ready within a year or two to take my thumbnail layouts and descriptions and turn those into something halfway decent. Then the only question is whether I still have those characters and stories in me. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAQruJ6Cp3KhNxTTKWF6THJ0kNWbrUs9qopSwMRou5chuD5y7b-u1SEeR4W--Fps_scbDOH4_IsAqKfakFh6ml_LEozi_RbTzNvzceLMjp8kRaIj_KNFSJ1TCDYlj5DySUAZyanm1MZz-AXYAx5dcMUMOybeazn5l2F4UoIVtLoH1_dsurJNUIiDIS/s1024/_1bd7fbe5-6f8e-4f18-9fae-67a603a47576.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="1024" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAQruJ6Cp3KhNxTTKWF6THJ0kNWbrUs9qopSwMRou5chuD5y7b-u1SEeR4W--Fps_scbDOH4_IsAqKfakFh6ml_LEozi_RbTzNvzceLMjp8kRaIj_KNFSJ1TCDYlj5DySUAZyanm1MZz-AXYAx5dcMUMOybeazn5l2F4UoIVtLoH1_dsurJNUIiDIS/w400-h400/_1bd7fbe5-6f8e-4f18-9fae-67a603a47576.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-76414924016384677782023-03-31T08:51:00.047+01:002023-03-31T08:51:00.194+01:00According to the mighty working<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="252" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FB0zofK6tDM" title="YouTube video player" width="448"></iframe></div>
<p>In <i>Bright Young Things</i> (Stephen Fry’s adaptation of <i>Vile Bodies</i>), the protagonist Adam arrives at Dover and in a scene played for broad farce (‘I know filth when I see it, and this is filth!’) has his novel manuscript taken away for burning by Customs. This triggers a whole series of misadventures as Adam needed the book to raise money to get married.
</p><p>
The trouble lies in making it completely arbitrary. It’s as if Fry was saying, ‘Look, I’m not even bothering to explain this because we all know it just has to happen for the sake of the plot.’ Audiences are willing to collude in that kind of thing but you do at least have to give them some kind of rationale, however flimsy.</p><p>
In the novel, Waugh has the Customs officer look through the manuscript and become increasingly appalled by what he reads. The movie doesn’t have time for that, but it should at least have him light on one line – something read out of context that sounds subversive or obscene. Anything, however spurious, would do. In fact the more absurd, the better; it makes us take Adam’s side. And that line out of context could be funny, too, which would recruit our sympathy even more strongly. But to have no reason given at all leaves the audience no reason to connect with the character and buy in.
</p><p>
It’s an abstract injustice and thus a failed opportunity. <a href="https://savethecat.com/" target="_blank">Blake Synder</a> would never have let that pass. Do watch the movie, it's a lot of fun and I wish Fry wrote & directed more movies, but read the novel first. Waugh tells a tougher and truer story throughout than the one the filmmakers have put on screen.</p>
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<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" sandbox="allow-popups allow-scripts allow-modals allow-forms allow-same-origin" scrolling="no" src="//ws-eu.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=GB&source=ss&ref=as_ss_li_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=printmedia-21&language=en_GB&marketplace=amazon&region=GB&placement=B0082FYQBO&asins=B0082FYQBO&linkId=58f11f89672451dc14b7803e001145e7&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=true" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-50459232220280258732023-03-06T18:44:00.001+00:002023-04-22T15:28:45.842+01:00Showing not telling revisited<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBYui0DNGBQDl4CJayuiVl-Uu-KJD5aF3FgxkP4_7pdZm_zTkrDh2Q-gXBmwopl3jtXnz2KuvDy_c5FeCPU7iNbRHZ-Jeejim9SiMZwe5nQ2DFmLU0SRoHvV7P6f6ckK5Hk_OOx0ZB61L8ZZLcdoFcu3T6g_aOYdI9zPxwckftY4wgQmTA5DA7y4JN/s1132/007.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="636" data-original-width="1132" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBYui0DNGBQDl4CJayuiVl-Uu-KJD5aF3FgxkP4_7pdZm_zTkrDh2Q-gXBmwopl3jtXnz2KuvDy_c5FeCPU7iNbRHZ-Jeejim9SiMZwe5nQ2DFmLU0SRoHvV7P6f6ckK5Hk_OOx0ZB61L8ZZLcdoFcu3T6g_aOYdI9zPxwckftY4wgQmTA5DA7y4JN/w400-h225/007.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>The recent announcement that the James Bond books are being reissued in versions edited by sensitivity readers provides us with a simple and striking example of the contrast between good and bad writing.
</p><p>(By the way, we’re not concerned here with whether literature should be <a href="https://archive.org/details/familyshakespear00shakuoft/page/n7/mode/2up" target="_blank">edited to reflect contemporary attitudes</a>, just with the craft of storytelling. The debate about revising novels of the past will no doubt continue to rage <a href="https://twitter.com/WanjiruNjoya/status/1631088088507203584?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" target="_blank">on social media</a> for a long while to come, so we don’t need to go into it here.)</p><p>
The example is from <i>Live & Let Die</i>. <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Live_and_Let_Die/VpmCEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22live+and+let+die%22+pigs+at+the+trough&pg=PT45&printsec=frontcover" target="_blank">Bond and Felix Leiter visit a strip club </a>and are watching the action on stage as a girl performs an erotic dance.
</p><p>
Ian Fleming’s version reads:
</p><p></p><blockquote>
“Bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough. He felt his own hands gripping the tablecloth. His mouth was dry.”
</blockquote><p></p><p>
And (allegedly) the new version:
</p><p></p><blockquote>
“Bond could sense the electric tension in the room.”
</blockquote><p></p><p>
If you ever need to explain the difference between <a href="https://mirabilis-yearofwonders.blogspot.com/2011/07/show-dont-tell-writing-rule-that-causes.html" target="_blank">showing and telling</a>, you have it right there. The second version is a cliché, of course, and it’s also abstract and unspecific, which is always weaker writing.
</p><p>
More importantly (though for this you need to look at the story as a whole) a recurrent motif in Fleming’s novels is the way Bond projects his own self-disgust onto others. At the beginning of <i>Goldfinger </i>he devours (Fleming’s term) a banquet of stone crabs and toast washed down with pink champagne, only to be <a href="https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/flemingi-goldfinger/flemingi-goldfinger-00-h-dir/flemingi-goldfinger-00-h.html#:~:text=With%20ceremony%2C%20a,down%20his%20throat. " target="_blank">consumed by revulsion </a>at the sight of his pudgy dinner companion wiping butter off his chin, and thereby revolted also by his own gorging indulgence.</p><p>
Similarly, Bond’s attitude towards women is reflected in the way he regards the other men at the strip club as being “like pigs at the trough”. That <i>is </i>the writing. Start with <i>Casino Royale</i>:</p><p></p><blockquote>“The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling--a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension--becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it.”</blockquote><p></p><p>Fleming has a lot to teach you about storytelling, but it’s not a lesson his editors have learned, so be sure to <a href="http://gutenberg.ca/index.html#catalogueF" target="_blank">study him in the original</a>.</p>Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-78075599823691446782023-02-11T14:37:00.001+00:002023-02-11T16:50:50.791+00:00Aliens with jugs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtv5YxKz8WnrttRp6oj35rLOxvVRL78aI50WTX10YTb5GXSQbohZSYbhsNEwLdnZNKwRRGVW90QIftuWJIdsr-knzPS2i774wJaM9mvOVcYNcnP1ELO6X7YTfvjIirWRT0J3Px-W-vbellYXb8Y3t8MnMhI05e_Mv98mUSFwL8V9VvYgxjXyoNwxr7/s1200/avatar-2-box-office-india-update-001.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="630" data-original-width="1200" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtv5YxKz8WnrttRp6oj35rLOxvVRL78aI50WTX10YTb5GXSQbohZSYbhsNEwLdnZNKwRRGVW90QIftuWJIdsr-knzPS2i774wJaM9mvOVcYNcnP1ELO6X7YTfvjIirWRT0J3Px-W-vbellYXb8Y3t8MnMhI05e_Mv98mUSFwL8V9VvYgxjXyoNwxr7/w400-h210/avatar-2-box-office-india-update-001.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p><blockquote><span style="color: #0b5394;">"Right from the beginning I said, 'She's got to have tits,' even though that makes no sense because her race, the Na'vi, aren't placental mammals." <i>- James Cameron</i></span></blockquote><p></p>
<p>Science fiction is stuffed with "insectoid" or "reptilian" aliens, and interstellar fungi, even though those are all Terran <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_(biology)" target="_blank">families </a>of life. The creatures we encounter out there won't fit into any Earthly taxonomy. Nor will they have the musculature and skeletal structure of mammals, but most of the aliens we see in movies do because the animators trained on the principles of human anatomy and movement.</p><p>Predator and Alien were basically just humans with funny heads, but to be fair the film makers did originally have to put actors inside those costumes. Nowadays CGI means we ought to be freer to get creative. We can push through to the basics in order to create genuinely original creatures, starting with non-Terran musculoskeletal structures (like the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kzin" target="_blank">Kzin </a>skeleton below, for example) and working up from there.<br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkj9hIFI9f78bBYpqnpbYE9DJVGrUA-97aEV9vz_NhciH1SvZdfWd53WxAFNpOh968llNd2uIHkScn754_189pbvuo3_MxhJAYU0Ki7UHnjMriSl7brHUrlXT8z1SW3REWsfT25cm-CJy878JEd453oFkDy0-Q4wSdIJwcNYCdMT2CogNJZvvhhMZa/s1124/kzintis.gif" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1124" data-original-width="622" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkj9hIFI9f78bBYpqnpbYE9DJVGrUA-97aEV9vz_NhciH1SvZdfWd53WxAFNpOh968llNd2uIHkScn754_189pbvuo3_MxhJAYU0Ki7UHnjMriSl7brHUrlXT8z1SW3REWsfT25cm-CJy878JEd453oFkDy0-Q4wSdIJwcNYCdMT2CogNJZvvhhMZa/w221-h400/kzintis.gif" width="221" /></a></div><p>I'm not saying film makers have to be scientifically precise. SF writers never are. Some hand-wavy xenobiology speculation can be fun and fruitful. The concept artists could start by looking at zoologist Dougal Dixon’s seminal book <i>After Man</i>, in which he speculates on how Earth creatures might evolve if humans were no longer on the scene.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVFdRlNDZmI09BHaSc82M-NCEqtp8nvhnyX2XQfMjkVKmb-hDiCYi7P3S_3iNT7VcwJ0dFQpWQRkzUuaDFJ-t9brXEd73pi-xmcSM7f9JadmjauTIc3LbTMBag3qj27dBK1RD3nCct0FxTQrznySrxJgHK4VZkTaQjyY2-bBR6YPygYxgaUjGkqCAz/s1000/AM+0.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="1000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVFdRlNDZmI09BHaSc82M-NCEqtp8nvhnyX2XQfMjkVKmb-hDiCYi7P3S_3iNT7VcwJ0dFQpWQRkzUuaDFJ-t9brXEd73pi-xmcSM7f9JadmjauTIc3LbTMBag3qj27dBK1RD3nCct0FxTQrznySrxJgHK4VZkTaQjyY2-bBR6YPygYxgaUjGkqCAz/w400-h400/AM+0.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p>That's SF. In fantasy theoretically anything goes, and that’s fine when an author is just telling a story – Eddison in <i>The Worm Ouroboros </i>has goblins on the planet Mercury quoting Shakespeare at each other. It's a classic novel that sits at the dreamlike let's-pretend end of fantasy. But if you turned <i>Ouroboros </i>into a game so that players could explore the setting they'd start looking at all the bonkers inconsistencies and ask what they all meant. They’ll look for patterns and rules to exploit because that’s what humans are. They do science. So throw-it-at-the-wall fantasy doesn't always get a pass these days.</p>
<p>Where you draw the line is also different for prose (smaller audience, more discerning, requires imagination, benefits from interiority) and cinema (immediate emotional impact, less depth, more visual). And it's interesting that Cameron specifically identifies <i>Avatar </i>as science fantasy (a tradition dating back to <i><a href="https://archive.org/details/PlanetStories1940/Planet%20Stories%20v01n02%20%281940-Spring%29%20%28Microfilm%29/" target="_blank">Planet Stories </a></i>and earlier pulps) rather than science fiction. In that genre, breasts on an alien aren't necessarily a boo-boo.</p>
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<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" sandbox="allow-popups allow-scripts allow-modals allow-forms allow-same-origin" scrolling="no" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ss&ref=as_ss_li_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=fablland-20&language=en_US&marketplace=amazon&region=US&placement=B0B4DW7F3Q&asins=B0B4DW7F3Q&linkId=3c4236a75d2aed1435ab69858bd51862&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=true" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" sandbox="allow-popups allow-scripts allow-modals allow-forms allow-same-origin" scrolling="no" src="//ws-eu.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=GB&source=ss&ref=as_ss_li_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=printmedia-21&language=en_GB&marketplace=amazon&region=GB&placement=B00SLUWT6O&asins=B00SLUWT6O&linkId=33a591d1863ea967c32b2dd53576060c&show_border=true&link_opens_in_new_window=true" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-50966448924117450912023-01-28T10:44:00.004+00:002023-10-02T09:48:30.957+01:00A funny way to tell a story<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEUTTLMr_d8enDXykIWH4I1OiQel_HgojFJBIHybu29Xm70_4NgbtE6PHkT_4KVaSyVeGdh9-QlxlWHPiPxjSW7OIi1Tv7AbpdBNWtAZyV6DxtjOESPOQ2Pb0w_0pV99sCsNsaxgCMua63wpaVFySs7iWkfQKwW-2idP7XJ6b85NsK3luYa-XYxeea/s620/wishy-washy-entertainment.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="373" data-original-width="620" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEUTTLMr_d8enDXykIWH4I1OiQel_HgojFJBIHybu29Xm70_4NgbtE6PHkT_4KVaSyVeGdh9-QlxlWHPiPxjSW7OIi1Tv7AbpdBNWtAZyV6DxtjOESPOQ2Pb0w_0pV99sCsNsaxgCMua63wpaVFySs7iWkfQKwW-2idP7XJ6b85NsK3luYa-XYxeea/w400-h241/wishy-washy-entertainment.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div>There’s been a lot of talk lately of MCU style writing, meaning the kind of quip-filled dialogue which doesn’t take the story seriously. Characters behaving like high schoolers made sense in <i>Buffy</i>, where they actually were high schoolers, but is a lot less effective when the mighty Thor says lines that you’d expect from Xander Harris.
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Good writers know that their writing must be true, and thus it must include humour because humour is a part of life. Also that the humour must be in-character, not any old joke that will raise a laugh – then it’s not cinema, it’s panto. Thor’s comments in the first movie are funny because they are how an arrogant Asgardian god might see our world. But six years later: ‘<a href="https://www.looper.com/76770/thor-ragnarok-friend-from-work-line/" target="_blank">He’s a friend from work</a>,’ is the director* sneering at you for taking superhero movies seriously.
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That’s the lazy way to get a laugh, which is just to have characters in a fantasy setting use slangy modern idioms. But the writers who began the trend did it with serious intent; they still wanted you to believe in and care about their story. They were looking for ways to make the audience relate to the characters, and clearly lots of ‘Prithee, varlet’ dialogue wasn’t going to do it. There is plenty of humour (I hope you will agree) in <i><a href="http://mirabilis-yearofwonders.com/episodes/" target="_blank">Mirabilis</a></i>, but Leo and I try never to put a line in a character’s mouth if it isn’t true to the moment and spoken in their voice.<br />
<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNlFRbrvZyjr4lJnigS0cgrr3DvFta2lV6ZE5sa2EY9Qmtvo__49Vaqc2Svra34nT81hU1zCT2NNqBVeH142dncKVqMueO9Kk_CFR-7HIRYVoi5SWP4vanYMQI1G3_H26ehOe2omPD0esQ5-VKmmPYIOxvIdl7rQ0CTVq4_qzvfyUmOxVIWoXv1YP-/s1080/steed-peel.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="608" data-original-width="1080" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNlFRbrvZyjr4lJnigS0cgrr3DvFta2lV6ZE5sa2EY9Qmtvo__49Vaqc2Svra34nT81hU1zCT2NNqBVeH142dncKVqMueO9Kk_CFR-7HIRYVoi5SWP4vanYMQI1G3_H26ehOe2omPD0esQ5-VKmmPYIOxvIdl7rQ0CTVq4_qzvfyUmOxVIWoXv1YP-/s320/steed-peel.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Undercutting tension with humour can be very effective if it’s true to character. Look at Steed and Mrs Peel, most especially in the scene at the end of <a href="http://theavengers.tv/forever/peel1-23.htm" target="_blank">“The House That Jack Built”</a> when the defence mechanism of their insouciance almost breaks down. But for the writer who doesn’t care, it’s a short step from there to having every character reach for the glib line that will get a laugh.<br /><br />
It is unjust to call this MCU writing. The entire Captain America trilogy managed to include humour in a way that rang true. The Russo brothers’ Avengers movies likewise. And in any case, Marvel didn’t invent the trend. Look at the Universal monster series. They start off selling us the story straight with <i>Dracula</i>, <i>Frankenstein</i>, <i>The Mummy</i>. Four years on, <i>The Bride of Frankenstein</i> is most definitely Whedonesque – or perhaps we should say that Joss Whedon’s writing is <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0403398/" target="_blank">Hurlbutian</a>. It took Universal a bit longer to get into their non-stop gag phase but <i>Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein</i> could easily match <i>Thor: Love and Thunder</i> or <i>Willow </i>for hey-it’s-all-a-joke silliness.<div><br /><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFT0xa-AkXb4N0DWhGL6oEnZMqnaOYjHR2zwQk8IOhDpagpimne5-cFnot-Z-cmV3jkksLbzpTODjF_Ea5wwnmMbp2bW4UfRZIXPzJqkE1K2dBZ1CvLLDdp8MQ4LLdzeXYIGciWbXDvevC-NTo_6UPGzTdfYiMgFSllZFW8PpAJOOGsm2P7nwnWcgM/s611/Bride-of-Frankenstein_02.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="611" data-original-width="490" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFT0xa-AkXb4N0DWhGL6oEnZMqnaOYjHR2zwQk8IOhDpagpimne5-cFnot-Z-cmV3jkksLbzpTODjF_Ea5wwnmMbp2bW4UfRZIXPzJqkE1K2dBZ1CvLLDdp8MQ4LLdzeXYIGciWbXDvevC-NTo_6UPGzTdfYiMgFSllZFW8PpAJOOGsm2P7nwnWcgM/s320/Bride-of-Frankenstein_02.jpg" width="257" /></a></div><br />And, as a writer, how do you know when that funny line you’ve thought of serves the story and when it’s going to kill immersion? Well, that’s the job, isn’t it? But if you need some pointers, this video by author Brandon McNulty is an 8-minute masterclass in the use of humour:</div></div><div><br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="252" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/c_k_KTpkIM4?si=6yJUPK8jRJqVAbQU" title="YouTube video player" width="448"></iframe></div>
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<p>* <span style="font-size: x-small;">Yes, we all know that particular line was suggested by a kid who was visiting the set. But it's the director's choice whether to include it, and it fit in with <a href="https://youtu.be/c_k_KTpkIM4?si=wLqbapz5_JnX_iYC&t=406" target="_blank">the tone he decided on for the whole movie</a>.</span></p>Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-56520772311805805532022-10-23T14:22:00.002+01:002022-10-23T14:22:50.577+01:00Join me, and together we can rule Croydon<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="252" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1Uv9SQSJ8R8" title="YouTube video player" width="448"></iframe></div>
<p>Darth Vader did it. Then <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAfxBXAQCZM" target="_blank">the Green Goblin</a>. Now even Sauron has got in on the act. It’s one of the oldest tropes (or should that be clichés?) in the writers’ playbook: the bad guy inviting the hero to team up.
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There are <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeCanRuleTogether " target="_blank">dozens of examples</a>, and most of the time it’s entirely pointless. Nobody in the audience expects Spidey or Galadriel to suddenly abandon their principles, so the story spins its wheels to no purpose and then moves on.
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Those writers might think they’re paying homage to <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i>. After all, we don’t really expect Luke to turn evil either, do we, even though he has been tempted by the Dark Side? But that’s <i>not </i>what is really going on in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bv20ZoBcdO8 " target="_blank">this scene</a>. The emotional impact is that we finally see what Vader wants – to have his son at his side. More than that, he genuinely believes that together they could rule well.
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Most importantly, Vader’s offer sets up the denouement of <i>Return of the Jedi</i>. Luke doesn’t join Vader to overthrow the Emperor, instead it’s the other way round, completing the moral and emotional arc begun in that showdown on the gantry in the previous movie. Finally Vader realizes what really matters to him.
</p><p>
That’s why that scene is astonishingly powerful and has never been copied successfully. Accept no substitutes.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLbLKfRB-VudD0Na7-PQ2qPwuvgFn9zsNu2bSiVmIOTS7e7jJBABrwija2kzIWnLV8gE4ba0FMwiPKJU0xzaNLsHRmKSKtAWuap-ScSHtu_kUBCFw0svPg_YHZRKrefIgBTWIvec5e66bYQ-p872HkeQ8AkkZXXKiSHTd51B7byixK7rRg9OyD_mc5/s1400/join.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="788" data-original-width="1400" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLbLKfRB-VudD0Na7-PQ2qPwuvgFn9zsNu2bSiVmIOTS7e7jJBABrwija2kzIWnLV8gE4ba0FMwiPKJU0xzaNLsHRmKSKtAWuap-ScSHtu_kUBCFw0svPg_YHZRKrefIgBTWIvec5e66bYQ-p872HkeQ8AkkZXXKiSHTd51B7byixK7rRg9OyD_mc5/w400-h225/join.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><p></p>Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-67939989425677544952022-06-25T13:07:00.001+01:002022-06-26T20:50:09.147+01:00Pick a side. The future or the past?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHljucNAIyiRhXaLj_qI6OydHBMs9-G3UMwFmcAsSK0Y9JNgFXwczHiFpzL9A4WtxE1A7C5hlNwqZPDboyTbw4AILNTB-t7TVsbmiS6CIjKc9-Ne3DCYtI1cD7_4FtJnue40KqJW3BIps/s1600/odd-man-out.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHljucNAIyiRhXaLj_qI6OydHBMs9-G3UMwFmcAsSK0Y9JNgFXwczHiFpzL9A4WtxE1A7C5hlNwqZPDboyTbw4AILNTB-t7TVsbmiS6CIjKc9-Ne3DCYtI1cD7_4FtJnue40KqJW3BIps/s1600/odd-man-out.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
Funny how things get dredged up. I recently got to thinking about a very old idea of mine. I’ll tell you a bit later what jogged my memory. A long while ago – must’ve been four decades at least – I was watching an old Carol Reed movie called <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd_Man_Out" target="_blank"><i>Odd Man Out</i></a>, about an IRA man on the run in 1940s London. Thinking of spies having to lie low – soldiers, that is, but out of uniform – I got to imagining a society that waged war against its own future.<br />
<br />
What kind of a war would that be? Well, one way to do it would be old Nazis plotting revenge against a modern, distinctly anti-fascist Germany, but that felt a bit tired. It hardly counts as a war when a bunch of OAPs set fire to a bus stop or daub a swastika on a wall.<br />
<br />
I was striving for something more jolting to the audience’s expectations, which probably meant more science fictional. A war against the future suggested society having reached an impasse that only time could break. So should it be sleeper agents in a literal sense, floating underground in suspended animation tanks until the moment came to rekindle the conflict?<br />
<br />
Trouble with that, it’s a little like the core premise of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramids_of_Mars" target="_blank"><i>Pyramids of Mars</i></a>, only with a very different skin (or at any rate bitumen-soaked bandages) over the top. Nobody would notice, but I still felt that treating it that way would be wasting the idea. Obviously the best approach would be to have outright time travel, so that armies could pour out of the past to mow down their own descendents. Firing back could be a knotty problem. But done that way it’s not special. You wouldn’t notice that the interesting thing was a society at war with what it had become. The time travel business would overshadow all that.<br />
<br />
Sometimes you just can’t see the way to make an idea work. <a href="http://cinearchive.org/post/78998173824/the-iconic-crop-duster-sequence-from-hitchcocks" target="_blank">Hitchcock wanted Cary Grant pursued by a tornado</a> across Indiana. “But how can the heavies manufacture a tornado?” asked Ernest Lehman, who actually had to write the damned thing. Hitch settled for a crop-duster, but he wasn’t happy about it. I know how he feels. The war against the future got slung onto that subconscious junk heap of unworkable gems – or unpolishable you-know-whats.
And then I came across a couple of brilliant tweets by <a href="https://twitter.com/Paul_Cornell" target="_blank">Paul Cornell </a>that bought it all back.<br />
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
I lived through Thatcher, and I have to say, this coming General Election is the one, the future or the past.<br />
— Paul_Cornell (@Paul_Cornell) <a href="https://twitter.com/Paul_Cornell/statuses/471204156859232256">May 27, 2014</a></blockquote>
<script async="" charset="utf-8" src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
So there you are. No need for a Tardis or a cryonic pod. No need even for superannuated reactionaries blowing up their hippy grandchildren to teach them a lesson. The war against the future is interesting when it happens (as it always does) between neighbours, within families, both sides lining up to decide whether civilization should point forwards or backwards. And I knew that. I’ve read about enough revolutions, hot and cold, throughout history. That’s how to write my story. The answer was staring me in the face all along. Maybe it was just <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/26/supreme-court-attack-midterms/" target="_blank">too close for comfort</a>.Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-27748229835826256302021-11-16T15:57:00.002+00:002021-11-16T15:57:49.950+00:00Grammar angels<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikMLRhRO0549Xg0b_MLCz-hOUiKBwQCjIWPSjzq6_RPCJbBMoHTMYQ2sUNemhvwdMhCG6XPcoWTE4LA0AFDrANhbmPxCh7gjal-K1O13SOSaAeHLDmOuVDTUf0vMSxtG4fZoky9HSogNc/s1354/grammar-medics.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="99" data-original-width="1354" height="29" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikMLRhRO0549Xg0b_MLCz-hOUiKBwQCjIWPSjzq6_RPCJbBMoHTMYQ2sUNemhvwdMhCG6XPcoWTE4LA0AFDrANhbmPxCh7gjal-K1O13SOSaAeHLDmOuVDTUf0vMSxtG4fZoky9HSogNc/w400-h29/grammar-medics.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div>If you hear that, it's a sign that your butler is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloysius_Parker" target="_blank">Parker </a>rather than a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeeves" target="_blank">Jeeves</a>. Because, of course, it should be: '<i>Who </i>shall I say is calling?'<div><br /></div><div>People who don't think it through assume that the person who is being referred to is the object of the sentence. That's not so. You wouldn't say, 'Shall I say him is calling?' The 'who is calling' is a subordinate clause. A coder would get it where the tyro writer might not:</div><div><br /></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><span style="color: #660000;">{</span></div><div><span style="color: #660000;">Butler.out.println("who is calling")</span></div><div><span style="color: #660000;">}</span></div></blockquote><div><br /></div><div>Recently I heard an even gnarlier example of the same mistake on a highbrow podcast:</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsgTpwz3eSrzn4XudAZP2-zNUCE5jk5NyzlcCpHn717-SjQbUBP2w-ApZDMkNIglN6YLPTpgfrg1owgbNYXSbYB9vpfhEcPshjEEzvGQ1GQLWNsoVg3vRkndkL3uw_tLfGSIdS1FfFOJ8/s1245/grammar-medics2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="78" data-original-width="1245" height="25" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsgTpwz3eSrzn4XudAZP2-zNUCE5jk5NyzlcCpHn717-SjQbUBP2w-ApZDMkNIglN6YLPTpgfrg1owgbNYXSbYB9vpfhEcPshjEEzvGQ1GQLWNsoVg3vRkndkL3uw_tLfGSIdS1FfFOJ8/w400-h25/grammar-medics2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Wrong again, of course. You wouldn't say, 'He hoped her would see it.' That unspecified she is not the object of the verb to hope, but the subject of the subordinate clause 'who would see it'.</div><div><br /></div><div>Does it matter? We're told that people have had enough of experts, that feelz are what matter, and that <a href="https://blog.simplejustice.us/2019/07/13/short-take-the-hampster-chronicles/" target="_blank">correcting spelling is an act of aggression</a>. But if you want to be a writer, or even if you care about expressing yourself clearly, then you have to accept there are common protocols of communication -- grammar, spelling, punctuation -- and not bothering to learn them not only risks misunderstandings, it signals to other people that you don't have a mind capable of thinking things through. In the examples above, for instance, you don't need to have studied English at school or to know what a subordinate clause is, you just need to reframe the sentence to see immediately whether it should be <i>who </i>or <i>whom</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>That's all good writing is: thinking of interesting things to say and expressing yourself clearly. Now go and do thou (not thee) likewise.</div>Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-22881147680174994932021-02-22T13:34:00.000+00:002021-02-22T13:34:33.679+00:00An Unprotected Female at the Pyramids<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXfqG_mcvnbSCERZK_e_n2za0ekIFSvk4PmP1Zq5WokiijuKdodN3Ek-gVyJPMbxq6DzhIMXtRr8GvU2hFmlgB1jJ8aXezXrj-W7ZIEO5ExR4B-60ihWIaiz_BJksIN3ql6ENYUQwuMJw/s1617/pyramids-ancient-egypt.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1617" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXfqG_mcvnbSCERZK_e_n2za0ekIFSvk4PmP1Zq5WokiijuKdodN3Ek-gVyJPMbxq6DzhIMXtRr8GvU2hFmlgB1jJ8aXezXrj-W7ZIEO5ExR4B-60ihWIaiz_BJksIN3ql6ENYUQwuMJw/w317-h320/pyramids-ancient-egypt.jpg" width="317" /></a></div><p></p><p><span style="color: #274e13;"><i>Here's a story by Anthony Trollope that originally appeared in </i>Cassell's Illustrated Family Paper<i> for October 1860. Like a lot of Trollope it's surprisingly modern.</i></span></p><p style="text-align: center;">* * *</p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; font-variant: small-caps; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In</span><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;"> the happy days when we were
young, no description conveyed to us so complete an idea of mysterious reality
as that of an Oriental city. We knew it was actually there, but had such
vague notions of its ways and looks! Let any one remember his early impressions
as to Bagdad or Grand Cairo, and then say if this was not so. It was
probably taken from the ‘Arabian Nights,’ and the picture produced was one of
strange, fantastic, luxurious houses; of women who were either very young and
very beautiful, or else very old and very cunning; but in either state
exercising much more influence in life than women in the East do now; of
good-natured, capricious, though sometimes tyrannical monarchs; and of life
full of quaint mysteries, quite unintelligible in every phasis, and on that
account the more picturesque.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And perhaps Grand Cairo has thus filled
us with more wonder even than Bagdad. We have been in a certain manner at
home at Bagdad, but have only visited Grand Cairo occasionally. I know no
place which was to me, in early years, so delightfully mysterious as Grand
Cairo.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">But the route to India and Australia
has changed all this. Men from all countries going to the East, now pass
through Cairo, and its streets and costumes are no longer strange to us.
It has become also a resort for invalids, or rather for those who fear that
they may become invalids if they remain in a cold climate during the winter
months. And thus at Cairo there is always to be found a considerable
population of French, Americans, and of English. Oriental life is brought
home to us, dreadfully diluted by western customs, and the delights of the ‘Arabian
Nights’ are shorn of half their value. When we have seen a thing it is
never so magnificent to us as when it was half unknown.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">It is not much that we deign to learn
from these Orientals,—we who glory in our civilisation. We do not copy
their silence or their abstemiousness, nor that invariable mindfulness of his
own personal dignity which always adheres to a Turk or to an Arab. We
chatter as much at Cairo as elsewhere, and eat as much and drink as much, and
dress ourselves generally in the same old ugly costume. But we do usually
take upon ourselves to wear red caps, and we do ride on donkeys.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Nor are the visitors from the West to
Cairo by any means confined to the male sex. Ladies are to be seen in the
streets quite regardless of the Mahommedan custom which presumes a veil to be
necessary for an appearance in public; and, to tell the truth, the Mahommedans
in general do not appear to be much shocked by their effrontery.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">A quarter of the town has in this way
become inhabited by men wearing coats and waistcoats, and by women who are
without veils; but the English tongue in Egypt finds its centre at Shepheard’s
Hotel. It is here that people congregate who are looking out for parties
to visit with them the Upper Nile, and who are generally all smiles and courtesy;
and here also are to be found they who have just returned from this journey,
and who are often in a frame of mind towards their companions that is much less
amiable. From hence, during the winter, a cortége proceeds almost daily
to the pyramids, or to Memphis, or to the petrified forest, or to the City of
the Sun. And then, again, four or five times a month the house is filled
with young aspirants going out to India, male and female, full of valour and
bloom; or with others coming home, no longer young, no longer aspiring, but
laden with children and grievances.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The party with whom we are at present
concerned is not about to proceed further than the Pyramids, and we shall be
able to go with them and return in one and the same day.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">It consisted chiefly of an English
family, Mr. and Mrs. Damer, their daughter, and two young sons;—of these
chiefly, because they were the nucleus to which the others had attached
themselves as adherents; they had originated the journey, and in the whole
management of it Mr. Damer regarded himself as the master.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The adherents were, firstly, M.
Delabordeau, a Frenchman, now resident in Cairo, who had given out that he was
in some way concerned in the canal about to be made between the Mediterranean
and the Red Sea. In discussion on this subject he had become acquainted
with Mr. Damer; and although the latter gentleman, true to English interests,
perpetually declared that the canal would never be made, and thus irritated M.
Delabordeau not a little—nevertheless, some measure of friendship had grown up
between them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">There was also an American gentleman,
Mr. Jefferson Ingram, who was comprising all countries and all nations in one
grand tour, as American gentlemen so often do. He was young and
good-looking, and had made himself especially agreeable to Mr. Damer, who had
declared, more than once, that Mr. Ingram was by far the most rational American
he had ever met. Mr. Ingram would listen to Mr. Damer by the half-hour as
to the virtue of the British Constitution, and had even sat by almost with
patience when Mr. Damer had expressed a doubt as to the good working of the
United States’ scheme of policy,—which, in an American, was most
wonderful. But some of the sojourners at Shepheard’s had observed that
Mr. Ingram was in the habit of talking with Miss Damer almost as much as with
her father, and argued from that, that fond as the young man was of politics,
he did sometimes turn his mind to other things also.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And then there was Miss Dawkins.
Now Miss Dawkins was an important person, both as to herself and as to her line
of life, and she must be described. She was, in the first place, an
unprotected female of about thirty years of age. As this is becoming an
established profession, setting itself up as it were in opposition to the old
world idea that women, like green peas, cannot come to perfection without
supporting-sticks, it will be understood at once what were Miss Dawkins’s
sentiments. She considered—or at any rate so expressed herself—that peas
could grow very well without sticks, and could not only grow thus unsupported,
but could also make their way about the world without any incumbrance of sticks
whatsoever. She did not intend, she said, to rival Ida Pfeiffer, seeing
that she was attached in a moderate way to bed and board, and was attached to
society in a manner almost more than moderate; but she had no idea of being
prevented from seeing anything she wished to see because she had neither
father, nor husband, nor brother available for the purpose of escort. She
was a human creature, with arms and legs, she said; and she intended to use
them. And this was all very well; but nevertheless she had a strong
inclination to use the arms and legs of other people when she could make them
serviceable.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In person Miss Dawkins was not without
attraction. I should exaggerate if I were to say that she was beautiful
and elegant; but she was good looking, and not usually ill mannered. She
was tall, and gifted with features rather sharp and with eyes very
bright. Her hair was of the darkest shade of brown, and was always worn
in bandeaux, very neatly. She appeared generally in black, though other
circumstances did not lead one to suppose that she was in mourning; and then,
no other travelling costume is so convenient! She always wore a dark
broad-brimmed straw hat, as to the ribbons on which she was rather
particular. She was very neat about her gloves and boots; and though it
cannot be said that her dress was got up without reference to expense, there
can be no doubt that it was not effected without considerable outlay,—and more
considerable thought.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Miss Dawkins—Sabrina Dawkins was her
name, but she seldom had friends about her intimate enough to use the word
Sabrina—was certainly a clever young woman. She could talk on most subjects,
if not well, at least well enough to amuse. If she had not read much, she
never showed any lamentable deficiency; she was good-humoured, as a rule, and
could on occasions be very soft and winning. People who had known her
long would sometimes say that she was selfish; but with new acquaintance she
was forbearing and self-denying.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">With what income Miss Dawkins was
blessed no one seemed to know. She lived like a gentlewoman, as far as
outward appearance went, and never seemed to be in want; but some people would
say that she knew very well how many sides there were to a shilling, and some
enemy had once declared that she was an ‘old soldier.’ Such was Miss
Dawkins.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">She also, as well as Mr. Ingram and M.
Delabordeau, had laid herself out to find the weak side of Mr. Damer. Mr.
Damer, with all his family, was going up the Nile, and it was known that he had
room for two in his boat over and above his own family. Miss Dawkins had
told him that she had not quite made up her mind to undergo so great a fatigue,
but that, nevertheless, she had a longing of the soul to see something of
Nubia. To this Mr. Damer had answered nothing but ‘Oh!’ which Miss
Dawkins had not found to be encouraging.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">But she had not on that account
despaired. To a married man there are always two sides, and in this
instance there was Mrs. Damer as well as Mr. Damer. When Mr. Damer said ‘Oh!’
Miss Dawkins sighed, and said, ‘Yes, indeed!’ then smiled, and betook herself
to Mrs. Damer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Now Mrs. Damer was soft-hearted, and
also somewhat old-fashioned. She did not conceive any violent affection
for Miss Dawkins, but she told her daughter that ‘the single lady by herself
was a very nice young woman, and that it was a thousand pities she should have
to go about so much alone like.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Miss Damer had turned up her pretty
nose, thinking, perhaps, how small was the chance that it ever should be her
own lot to be an unprotected female. But Miss Dawkins carried her point
at any rate as regarded the expedition to the Pyramids.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Miss Damer, I have said, had a pretty
nose. I may also say that she had pretty eyes, mouth, and chin, with
other necessary appendages, all pretty. As to the two Master Damers, who
were respectively of the ages of fifteen and sixteen, it may be sufficient to
say that they were conspicuous for red caps and for the constancy with which
they raced their donkeys.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And now the donkeys, and the donkey
boys, and the dragomans were all standing at the steps of Shepheard’s
Hotel. To each donkey there was a donkey-boy, and to each gentleman there
was a dragoman, so that a goodly cortége was assembled, and a goodly noise was
made. It may here be remarked, perhaps with some little pride, that not
half the noise is given in Egypt to persons speaking any other language that is
bestowed on those whose vocabulary is English.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">This lasted for half an hour. Had
the party been French the donkeys would have arrived only fifteen minutes
before the appointed time. And then out came Damer père and Damer mère,
Damer fille, and Damer fils. Damer mère was leaning on her husband, as
was her wont. She was not an unprotected female, and had no desire to
make any attempts in that line. Damer fille was attended sedulously by
Mr. Ingram, for whose demolishment, however, Mr. Damer still brought up, in a
loud voice, the fag ends of certain political arguments which he would fain
have poured direct into the ears of his opponent, had not his wife been so
persistent in claiming her privileges. M. Delabordeau should have
followed with Miss Dawkins, but his French politeness, or else his fear of the
unprotected female, taught him to walk on the other side of the mistress of the
party.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Miss Dawkins left the house with an
eager young Damer yelling on each side of her; but nevertheless, though thus
neglected by the gentlemen of the party, she was all smiles and prettiness, and
looked so sweetly on Mr. Ingram when that gentleman stayed a moment to help her
on to her donkey, that his heart almost misgave him for leaving her as soon as
she was in her seat.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And then they were off. In going
from the hotel to the Pyramids our party had not to pass through any of the
queer old narrow streets of the true Cairo—Cairo the Oriental. They all
lay behind them as they went down by the back of the hotel, by the barracks of
the Pasha and the College of the Dervishes, to the village of old Cairo and the
banks of the Nile.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Here they were kept half an hour while
their dragomans made a bargain with the ferryman, a stately reis, or captain of
a boat, who declared with much dignity that he could not carry them over for a
sum less than six times the amount to which he was justly entitled; while the
dragomans, with great energy on behalf of their masters, offered him only five
times that sum.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">As far as the reis was concerned, the
contest might soon have been at an end, for the man was not without a
conscience; and would have been content with five times and a half; but then
the three dragomans quarrelled among themselves as to which should have the
paying of the money, and the affair became very tedious.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘What horrid, odious men!’ said Miss
Dawkins, appealing to Mr. Damer. ‘Do you think they will let us go over
at all?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Well, I suppose they will; people do get
over generally, I believe. Abdallah! Abdallah! why don’t you pay
the man? That fellow is always striving to save half a piastre for me.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I wish he wasn’t quite so particular,’
said Mrs. Damer, who was already becoming rather tired; ‘but I’m sure he’s a
very honest man in trying to protect us from being robbed.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘That he is,’ said Miss Dawkins. ‘What
a delightful trait of national character it is to see these men so faithful to
their employers.’ And then at last they got over the ferry, Mr. Ingram having
descended among the combatants, and settled the matter in dispute by threats
and shouts, and an uplifted stick.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">They crossed the broad Nile exactly at
the spot where the nilometer, or river guage, measures from day to day, and
from year to year, the increasing or decreasing treasures of the stream, and
landed at a village where thousands of eggs are made into chickens by the
process of artificial incubation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Mrs. Damer thought that it was very
hard upon the maternal hens—the hens which should have been maternal—that they
should be thus robbed of the delights of motherhood.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘So unnatural, you know,’ said Miss
Dawkins; ‘so opposed to the fostering principles of creation. Don’t you
think so, Mr. Ingram?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Mr. Ingram said he didn’t know.
He was again seating Miss Damer on her donkey, and it must be presumed that he
performed this feat clumsily; for Fanny Damer could jump on and off the animal
with hardly a finger to help her, when her brother or her father was her
escort; but now, under the hands of Mr. Ingram, this work of mounting was one
which required considerable time and care. All which Miss Dawkins
observed with precision.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘It’s all very well talking,’ said Mr.
Damer, bringing up his donkey nearly alongside that of Mr. Ingram, and ignoring
his daughter’s presence, just as he would have done that of his dog; ‘but you
must admit that political power is more equally distributed in England than it
is in America.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Perhaps it is,’ said Mr. Ingram; ‘equally
distributed among, we will say, three dozen families,’ and he made a feint as
though to hold in his impetuous donkey, using the spur, however, at the same
time on the side that was unseen by Mr. Damer. As he did so, Fanny’s
donkey became equally impetuous, and the two cantered on in advance of the whole
party. It was quite in vain that Mr. Damer, at the top of his voice,
shouted out something about ‘three dozen corruptible demagogues.’ Mr.
Ingram found it quite impossible to restrain his donkey so as to listen to the
sarcasm.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I do believe papa would talk politics,’
said Fanny, ‘if he were at the top of Mont Blanc, or under the Falls of
Niagara. I do hate politics, Mr. Ingram.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I am sorry for that, very,’ said Mr.
Ingram, almost sadly.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Sorry, why? You don’t want me to
talk politics, do you?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘In America we are all politicians,
more or less; and, therefore, I suppose you will hate us all.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Well, I rather think I should,’ said
Fanny; ‘you would be such bores.’ But there was something in her eye, as
she spoke, which atoned for the harshness of her words.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘A very nice young man is Mr. Ingram;
don’t you think so?’ said Miss Dawkins to Mrs. Damer. Mrs. Damer was
going along upon her donkey, not altogether comfortably. She much wished
to have her lord and legitimate protector by her side, but he had left her to
the care of a dragoman whose English was not intelligible to her, and she was
rather cross.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Indeed, Miss Dawkins, I don’t know who
are nice and who are not. This nasty donkey stumbles at ever step.
There! I know I shall be down directly.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘You need not be at all afraid of that;
they are perfectly safe, I believe, always,’ said Miss Dawkins, rising in her
stirrup, and handling her reins quite triumphantly. ‘A very little
practice will make you quite at home.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I don’t know what you mean by a very
little practice. I have been here six weeks. Why did you put me on
such a bad donkey as this?’ and she turned to Abdallah, the dragoman.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Him berry good donkey, my lady; berry
good,—best of all. Call him Jack in Cairo. Him go to Pyramid and
back, and mind noting.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘What does he say, Miss Dawkins?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘He says that that donkey is one called
Jack. If so I’ve had him myself many times, and Jack is a very good
donkey.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I wish you had him now with all my
heart,’ said Mrs. Damer. Upon which Miss Dawkins offered to change; but
those perils of mounting and dismounting were to Mrs. Damer a great deal too
severe to admit of this.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Seven miles of canal to be carried out
into the sea, at a minimum depth of twenty-three feet, and the stone to be
fetched from Heaven knows where! All the money in France wouldn’t do it.’
This was addressed by Mr. Damer to M. Delabordeau, whom he had caught after the
abrupt flight of Mr. Ingram.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Den we will borrow a leetle from
England,’ said M. Delabordeau.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Precious little, I can tell you.
Such stock would not hold its price in our markets for twenty-four hours.
If it were made, the freights would be too heavy to allow of merchandise
passing through. The heavy goods would all go round; and as for passengers
and mails, you don’t expect to get them, I suppose, while there is a railroad
ready made to their hand?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Ye vill carry all your ships through
vidout any transportation. Think of that, my friend.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Pshaw! You are worse than
Ingram. Of all the plans I ever heard of it is the most monstrous, the
most impracticable, the most—’ But here he was interrupted by the
entreaties of his wife, who had, in absolute deed and fact, slipped from her
donkey, and was now calling lustily for her husband’s aid. Whereupon Miss
Dawkins allied herself to the Frenchman, and listened with an air of strong
conviction to those arguments which were so weak in the ears of Mr.
Damer. M. Delabordeau was about to ride across the Great Desert to
Jerusalem, and it might perhaps be quite as well to do that with him, as to go
up the Nile as far as the second cataract with the Damers.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘And so, M. Delabordeau, you intend
really to start for Mount Sinai?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Yes, mees; ve intend to make one start
on Monday week.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘And so on to Jerusalem. You are
quite right. It would be a thousand pities to be in these countries, and
to return without going over such ground as that. I shall certainly go to
Jerusalem myself by that route.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Vot, mees! you? Would you not
find it too much fatigante?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I care nothing for fatigue, if I like
the party I am with,—nothing at all, literally. You will hardly
understand me, perhaps, M. Delabordeau; but I do not see any reason why I, as a
young woman, should not make any journey that is practicable for a young man.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Ah! dat is great resolution for you,
mees.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I mean as far as fatigue is
concerned. You are a Frenchman, and belong to the nation that is at the
head of all human civilisation—’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">M. Delabordeau took off his hat and
bowed low, to the peak of his donkey saddle. He dearly loved to hear his
country praised, as Miss Dawkins was aware.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘And I am sure you must agree with me,’
continued Miss Dawkins, ‘that the time is gone by for women to consider
themselves helpless animals, or to be so considered by others.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Mees Dawkins vould never be
considered, not in any times at all, to be one helpless animal,’ said M.
Delabordeau civilly.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I do not, at any rate, intend to be so
regarded,’ said she. ‘It suits me to travel alone; not that I am averse
to society; quite the contrary; if I meet pleasant people I am always ready to
join them. But it suits me to travel without any permanent party, and I
do not see why false shame should prevent my seeing the world as thoroughly as
though I belonged to the other sex. Why should it, M. Delabordeau?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">M. Delabordeau declared that he did not
see any reason why it should.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I am passionately anxious to stand
upon Mount Sinai,’ continued Miss Dawkins; ‘to press with my feet the earliest
spot in sacred history, of the identity of which we are certain; to feel within
me the awe-inspiring thrill of that thrice sacred hour!’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The Frenchman looked as though he did
not quite understand her, but he said that it would be magnifique.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘You have already made up your party I
suppose, M. Delabordeau?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">M. Delabordeau gave the names of two
Frenchmen and one Englishman who were going with him.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Upon my word it is a great temptation
to join you,’ said Miss Dawkins, ‘only for that horrid Englishman.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Vat, Mr. Stanley?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Oh, I don’t mean any disrespect to Mr.
Stanley. The horridness I speak of does not attach to him personally, but
to his stiff, respectable, ungainly, well-behaved, irrational, and uncivilised
country. You see I am not very patriotic.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Not quite so much as my friend, Mr.
Damer.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Ha! ha! ha! an excellent creature,
isn’t he? And so they all are, dear creatures. But then they are so
backward. They are most anxious that I should join them up the Nile,
but—,’ and then Miss Dawkins shrugged her shoulders gracefully, and, as she
flattered herself, like a Frenchwoman. After that they rode on in silence
for a few moments.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Yes, I must see Mount Sinai,’ said
Miss Dawkins, and then sighed deeply. M. Delabordeau, notwithstanding
that his country does stand at the head of all human civilisation, was not courteous
enough to declare that if Miss Dawkins would join his party across the desert,
nothing would be wanting to make his beatitude in this world perfect.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Their road from the village of the
chicken-hatching ovens lay up along the left bank of the Nile, through an
immense grove of lofty palm-trees, looking out from among which our visitors
could ever and anon see the heads of the two great Pyramids;—that is, such of
them could see it as felt any solicitude in the matter.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">It is astonishing how such things lose
their great charm as men find themselves in their close neighbourhood. To
one living in New York or London, how ecstatic is the interest inspired by
these huge structures. One feels that no price would be too high to pay
for seeing them as long as time and distance, and the world’s inexorable
task-work, forbid such a visit. How intense would be the delight of
climbing over the wondrous handiwork of those wondrous architects so long since
dead; how thrilling the awe with which one would penetrate down into their
interior caves—those caves in which lay buried the bones of ancient kings,
whose very names seem to have come to us almost from another world!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">But all these feelings become strangely
dim, their acute edges wonderfully worn, as the subjects which inspired them
are brought near to us. ‘Ah! so those are the Pyramids, are they?’ says
the traveller, when the first glimpse of them is shown to him from the window
of a railway carriage. ‘Dear me; they don’t look so very high, do
they? For Heaven’s sake put the blind down, or we shall be destroyed by
the dust.’ And then the ecstasy and keen delight of the Pyramids has
vanished for ever.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Our friends, therefore, who for weeks
past had seen from a distance, though they had not yet visited them, did not
seem to have any strong feeling on the subject as they trotted through the
grove of palm-trees. Mr. Damer had not yet escaped from his wife, who was
still fretful from the result of her little accident.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘It was all the chattering of that Miss
Dawkins,’ said Mrs. Damer. ‘She would not let me attend to what I was
doing.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Miss Dawkins is an ass,’ said her
husband.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘It is a pity she has no one to look
after her,’ said Mrs. Damer. M. Delabordeau was still listening to Miss
Dawkins’s raptures about Mount Sinai. ‘I wonder whether she has got any
money,’ said M. Delabordeau to himself. ‘It can’t be much,’ he went on
thinking, ‘or she would not be left in this way by herself.’ And the
result of his thoughts was that Miss Dawkins, if undertaken, might probably
become more plague than profit. As to Miss Dawkins herself, though she
was ecstatic about Mount Sinai—which was not present—she seemed to have
forgotten the poor Pyramids, which were then before her nose.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The two lads were riding races along
the dusty path, much to the disgust of their donkey-boys. Their time for
enjoyment was to come. There were hampers to be opened; and then the
absolute climbing of the Pyramids would actually be a delight to them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">As for Miss Damer and Mr. Ingram, it
was clear that they had forgotten palm-trees, Pyramids, the Nile, and all
Egypt. They had escaped to a much fairer paradise.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Could I bear to live among
Republicans?’ said Fanny, repeating the last words of her American lover, and
looking down from her donkey to the ground as she did so. ‘I hardly know
what Republicans are, Mr. Ingram.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Let me teach you,’ said he.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘You do talk such nonsense. I
declare there is that Miss Dawkins looking at us as though she had twenty
eyes. Could you not teach her, Mr. Ingram?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And so they emerged from the palm-tree
grove, through a village crowded with dirty, straggling Arab children, on to
the cultivated plain, beyond which the Pyramids stood, now full before them;
the two large Pyramids, a smaller one, and the huge sphynx’s head all in a
group together.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Fanny,’ said Bob Damer, riding up to
her, ‘mamma wants you; so toddle back.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Mamma wants me! What can she
want me for now?’ said Fanny, with a look of anything but filial duty in her
face.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘To protect her from Miss Dawkins, I
think. She wants you to ride at her side, so that Dawkins mayn’t get at
her. Now, Mr. Ingram, I’ll bet you half-a-crown I’m at the top of the big
Pyramid before you.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Poor Fanny! She obeyed, however;
doubtless feeling that it would not do as yet to show too plainly that she
preferred Mr. Ingram to her mother. She arrested her donkey, therefore,
till Mrs. Damer overtook her; and Mr. Ingram, as he paused for a moment with
her while she did so, fell into the hands of Miss Dawkins.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I cannot think, Fanny, how you get on
so quick,’ said Mrs. Damer. ‘I’m always last; but then my donkey is such
a very nasty one. Look there, now; he’s always trying to get me off.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘We shall soon be at the Pyramids now,
mamma.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘How on earth I am ever to get back
again I cannot think. I am so tired now that I can hardly sit.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘You’ll be better, mamma, when you get
your luncheon and a glass of wine.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘How on earth we are to eat and drink
with those nasty Arab people around us, I can’t conceive. They tell me we
shall be eaten up by them. But, Fanny, what has Mr. Ingram been saying to
you all the day?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘What has he been saying, mamma?
Oh! I don’t know;—a hundred things, I dare say. But he has not been
talking to me all the time.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I think he has, Fanny, nearly, since
we crossed the river. Oh, dear! oh, dear! this animal does hurt me
so! Every time he moves he flings his head about, and that gives me such
a bump.’ And then Fanny commiserated her mother’s sufferings, and in her
commiseration contrived to elude any further questionings as to Mr. Ingram’s
conversation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Majestic piles, are they not?’ said
Miss Dawkins, who, having changed her companion, allowed her mind to revert
from Mount Sinai to the Pyramids. They were now riding through cultivated
ground, with the vast extent of the sands of Libya before them. The two
Pyramids were standing on the margin of the sand, with the head of the
recumbent sphynx plainly visible between them. But no idea can be formed
of the size of this immense figure till it is visited much more closely.
The body is covered with sand, and the head and neck alone stand above the
surface of the ground. They were still two miles distant, and the sphynx
as yet was but an obscure mount between the two vast Pyramids.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Immense piles!’ said Miss Dawkins,
repeating her own words.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Yes, they are large,’ said Mr. Ingram,
who did not choose to indulge in enthusiasm in the presence of Miss Dawkins.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Enormous! What a grand idea!—eh,
Mr. Ingram? The human race does not create such things as those nowadays!’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘No, indeed,’ he answered; ‘but perhaps
we create better things.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Better! You do not mean to say,
Mr. Ingram, that you are an utilitarian. I do, in truth, hope better
things of you than that. Yes! steam mills are better, no doubt, and
mechanics’ institutes and penny newspapers. But is nothing to be valued
but what is useful?’ And Miss Dawkins, in the height of her enthusiasm,
switched her donkey severely over the shoulder.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I might, perhaps, have said also that
we create more beautiful things,’ said Mr. Ingram.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘But we cannot create older things.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘No, certainly; we cannot do that.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Nor can we imbue what we do create
with the grand associations which environ those piles with so intense an
interest. Think of the mighty dead, Mr. Ingram, and of their great homes
when living. Think of the hands which it took to raise those huge blocks—’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘And of the lives which it cost.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Doubtless. The tyranny and
invincible power of the royal architects add to the grandeur of the idea.
One would not wish to have back the kings of Egypt.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Well, no; they would be neither useful
nor beautiful.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Perhaps not; and I do not wish to be
picturesque at the expense of my fellow-creatures.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I doubt, even, whether they would be
picturesque.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘You know what I mean, Mr.
Ingram. But the associations of such names, and the presence of the
stupendous works with which they are connected, fill the soul with awe.
Such, at least, is the effect with mine.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I fear that my tendencies, Miss
Dawkins, are more realistic than your own.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘You belong to a young country, Mr.
Ingram, and are naturally prone to think of material life. The necessity
of living looms large before you.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Very large, indeed, Miss Dawkins.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Whereas with us, with some of us at
least, the material aspect has given place to one in which poetry and
enthusiasm prevail. To such among us the associations of past times are
very dear. Cheops, to me, is more than Napoleon Bonaparte.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘That is more than most of your
countrymen can say, at any rate, just at present.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I am a woman,’ continued Miss Dawkins.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Mr. Ingram took off his hat in
acknowledgment both of the announcement and of the fact.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘And to us it is not given—not given as
yet—to share in the great deeds of the present. The envy of your sex has
driven us from the paths which lead to honour. But the deeds of the past
are as much ours as yours.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Oh, quite as much.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘’Tis to your country that we look for
enfranchisement from this thraldom. Yes, Mr. Ingram, the women of America
have that strength of mind which has been wanting to those of Europe. In
the United States woman will at last learn to exercise her proper mission.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Mr. Ingram expressed a sincere wish
that such might be the case; and then wondering at the ingenuity with which
Miss Dawkins had travelled round from Cheops and his Pyramid to the rights of
women in America, he contrived to fall back, under the pretence of asking after
the ailments of Mrs. Damer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And now at last they were on the sand,
in the absolute desert, making their way up to the very foot of the most
northern of the two Pyramids. They were by this time surrounded by a
crowd of Arab guides, or Arabs professing to be guides, who had already
ascertained that Mr. Damer was the chief of the party, and were accordingly
driving him almost to madness by the offers of their services, and their
assurance that he could not possibly see the outside or the inside of either
structure, or even remain alive upon the ground, unless he at once accepted
their offers made at their own prices.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Get away, will you?’ said he. ‘I
don’t want any of you, and I won’t have you! If you take hold of me I’ll
shoot you!’ This was said to one specially energetic Arab, who, in his
efforts to secure his prey, had caught hold of Mr. Damer by the leg.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Yes, yes, I say! Englishmen
always take me;—me—me, and then no break him leg. Yes—yes—yes;—I
go. Master, say yes. Only one leetle ten shillings!’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Abdallah!’ shouted Mr. Damer, ‘why
don’t you take this man away? Why don’t you make him understand that if
all the Pyramids depended on it, I would not give him sixpence!’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And then Abdallah, thus invoked, came
up, and explained to the man in Arabic that he would gain his object more
surely if he would behave himself a little more quietly; a hint which the man
took for one minute, and for one minute only.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And then poor Mrs. Damer replied to an
application for backsheish by the gift of a sixpence. Unfortunate
woman! The word backsheish means, I believe, a gift; but it has come in
Egypt to signify money, and is eternally dinned into the ears of strangers by
Arab suppliants. Mrs. Damer ought to have known better, as, during the
last six weeks she had never shown her face out of Shepheard’s Hotel without
being pestered for backsheish; but she was tired and weak, and foolishly
thought to rid herself of the man who was annoying her.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">No sooner had the coin dropped from her
hand into that of the Arab, than she was surrounded by a cluster of beggars,
who loudly made their petitions as though they would, each of them,
individually be injured if treated with less liberality than that first
comer. They took hold of her donkey, her bridle, her saddle, her legs,
and at last her arms and hands, screaming for backsheish in voices that were
neither sweet nor mild.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In her dismay she did give away sundry
small coins—all, probably, that she had about her; but this only made the
matter worse. Money was going, and each man, by sufficient energy, might
hope to get some of it. They were very energetic, and so frightened the
poor lady that she would certainly have fallen, had she not been kept on her
seat by the pressure around her.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Oh, dear! oh, dear! get away,’ she
cried. ‘I haven’t got any more; indeed I haven’t. Go away, I tell
you! Mr. Damer! oh, Mr. Damer!’ and then, in the excess of her agony, she
uttered one loud, long, and continuous shriek.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Up came Mr. Damer; up came Abdallah; up
came M. Delabordeau; up came Mr. Ingram, and at last she was rescued. ‘You
shouldn’t go away and leave me to the mercy of these nasty people. As to
that Abdallah, he is of no use to anybody.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Why you bodder de good lady, you dem
blackguard?’ said Abdallah, raising his stick, as though he were going to lay
them all low with a blow. ‘Now you get noting, you tief!’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The Arabs for a moment retired to a
little distance, like flies driven from a sugar-bowl; but it was easy to see
that, like the flies, they would return at the first vacant moment.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And now they had reached the very foot
of the Pyramids and proceeded to dismount from their donkeys. Their
intention was first to ascend to the top, then to come down to their banquet,
and after that to penetrate into the interior. And all this would seem to
be easy of performance. The Pyramid is undoubtedly high, but it is so
constructed as to admit of climbing without difficulty. A lady mounting
it would undoubtedly need some assistance, but any man possessed of moderate
activity would require no aid at all.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">But our friends were at once imbued
with the tremendous nature of the task before them. A sheikh of the Arabs
came forth, who communicated with them through Abdallah. The work could
be done, no doubt, he said; but a great many men would be wanted to
assist. Each lady must have four Arabs, and each gentlemen three; and
then, seeing that the work would be peculiarly severe on this special day, each
of these numerous Arabs must be remunerated by some very large number of
piastres.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Mr. Damer, who was by no means a close
man in his money dealings, opened his eyes with surprise, and mildly
expostulated; M. Delabordeau, who was rather a close man in his reckonings,
immediately buttoned up his breeches pocket and declared that he should decline
to mount the Pyramid at all at that price; and then Mr. Ingram descended to the
combat.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The protestations of the men were
fearful. They declared, with loud voices, eager actions, and manifold
English oaths, that an attempt was being made to rob them. They had a
right to demand the sums which they were charging, and it was a shame that
English gentlemen should come and take the bread out of their mouths. And
so they screeched, gesticulated, and swore, and frightened poor Mrs. Damer
almost into fits.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">But at last it was settled and away
they started, the sheikh declaring that the bargain had been made at so low a
rate as to leave him not one piastre for himself. Each man had an Arab on
each side of him, and Miss Dawkins and Miss Damer had each, in addition, one
behind. Mrs. Damer was so frightened as altogether to have lost all
ambition to ascend. She sat below on a fragment of stone, with the three
dragomans standing around her as guards; but even with the three dragomans the
attacks on her were so frequent, and as she declared afterwards she was so
bewildered, that she never had time to remember that she had come there from
England to see the Pyramids, and that she was now immediately under them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The boys, utterly ignoring their
guides, scrambled up quicker than the Arabs could follow them. Mr. Damer
started off at a pace which soon brought him to the end of his tether, and from
that point was dragged up by the sheer strength of his assistants; thereby
accomplishing the wishes of the men, who induce their victims to start as
rapidly as possible, in order that they may soon find themselves helpless from
want of wind. Mr. Ingram endeavoured to attach himself to Fanny, and she
would have been nothing loth to have him at her right hand instead of the
hideous brown, shrieking, one-eyed Arab who took hold of her. But it was
soon found that any such arrangement was impossible. Each guide felt that
if he lost his own peculiar hold he would lose his prey, and held on, therefore,
with invincible tenacity. Miss Dawkins looked, too, as though she had
thought to be attended to by some Christian cavalier, but no Christian cavalier
was forthcoming. M. Delabordeau was the wisest, for he took the matter
quietly, did as he was bid, and allowed the guides nearly to carry him to the
top of the edifice.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Ha! so this is the top of the Pyramid,
is it?’ said Mr. Damer, bringing out his words one by one, being terribly out
of breath. ‘Very wonderful, very wonderful, indeed!’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘It is wonderful,’ said Miss Dawkins,
whose breath had not failed her in the least, ‘very wonderful, indeed!
Only think, Mr. Damer, you might travel on for days and days, till days became
months, through those interminable sands, and yet you would never come to the
end of them. Is it not quite stupendous?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Ah, yes, quite,—puff, puff’—said Mr.
Damer striving to regain his breath.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Mr. Damer was now at her disposal; weak
and worn with toil and travel, out of breath, and with half his manhood gone;
if ever she might prevail over him so as to procure from his mouth an assent to
that Nile proposition, it would be now. And after all, that Nile
proposition was the best one now before her. She did not quite like the
idea of starting off across the Great Desert without any lady, and was not sure
that she was prepared to be fallen in love with by M. Delabordeau, even if
there should ultimately be any readiness on the part of that gentleman to
perform the rôle of lover. With Mr. Ingram the matter was different, nor
was she so diffident of her own charms as to think it altogether impossible
that she might succeed, in the teeth of that little chit, Fanny Damer.
That Mr. Ingram would join the party up the Nile she had very little doubt; and
then there would be one place left for her. She would thus, at any rate,
become commingled with a most respectable family, who might be of material
service to her.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Thus actuated she commenced an earnest
attack upon Mr. Damer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Stupendous!’ she said again, for she
was fond of repeating favourite words. ‘What a wondrous race must have
been those Egyptian kings of old!’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I dare say they were,’ said Mr. Damer,
wiping his brow as he sat upon a large loose stone, a fragment lying on the
flat top of the Pyramid, one of those stones with which the complete apex was
once made, or was once about to be made.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘A magnificent race! so gigantic in
their conceptions! Their ideas altogether overwhelm us poor,
insignificant, latter-day mortals. They built these vast Pyramids; but
for us, it is task enough to climb to their top.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Quite enough,’ ejaculated Mr. Damer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">But Mr. Damer would not always remain
weak and out of breath, and it was absolutely necessary for Miss Dawkins to
hurry away from Cheops and his tomb, to Thebes and Karnac.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘After seeing this it is impossible for
any one with a spark of imagination to leave Egypt without going farther
a-field.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Mr. Damer merely wiped his brow and
grunted. This Miss Dawkins took as a signal of weakness, and went on with
her task perseveringly.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘For myself, I have resolved to go up,
at any rate, as far as Asouan and the first cataract. I had thought of
acceding to the wishes of a party who are going across the Great Desert by
Mount Sinai to Jerusalem; but the kindness of yourself and Mrs. Damer is so
great, and the prospect of joining in your boat is so pleasurable, that I have
made up my mind to accept your very kind offer.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">This, it will be acknowledged, was bold
on the part of Miss Dawkins; but what will not audacity effect? To use
the slang of modern language, cheek carries everything nowadays. And
whatever may have been Miss Dawkins’s deficiencies, in this virtue she was not
deficient.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I have made up my mind to accept your
very kind offer,’ she said, shining on Mr. Damer with her blandest smile.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">What was a stout, breathless,
perspiring, middle-aged gentleman to do under such circumstances? Mr.
Damer was a man who, in most matters, had his own way. That his wife
should have given such an invitation without consulting him, was, he knew, quite
impossible. She would as soon have thought of asking all those Arab
guides to accompany them. Nor was it to be thought of that he should
allow himself to be kidnapped into such an arrangement by the impudence of any
Miss Dawkins. But there was, he felt, a difficulty in answering such a
proposition from a young lady with a direct negative, especially while he was
so scant of breath. So he wiped his brow again, and looked at her.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘But I can only agree to this on one
understanding,’ continued Miss Dawkins, ‘and that is, that I am allowed to
defray my own full share of the expense of the journey.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Upon hearing this Mr. Damer thought
that he saw his way out of the wood. ‘Wherever I go, Miss Dawkins, I am
always the paymaster myself,’ and this he contrived to say with some sternness,
palpitating though he still was; and the sternness which was deficient in his
voice he endeavoured to put into his countenance.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">But he did not know Miss Dawkins.
‘Oh, Mr. Damer,’ she said, and as she spoke her smile became almost blander
than it was before; ‘oh, Mr. Damer, I could not think of suffering you to be so
liberal; I could not, indeed. But I shall be quite content that you
should pay everything, and let me settle with you in one sum afterwards.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Mr. Damer’s breath was now rather more
under his own command. ‘I am afraid, Miss Dawkins,’ he said, ‘that Mrs.
Damer’s weak state of health will not admit of such an arrangement.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘What, about the paying?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Not only as to that, but we are a
family party, Miss Dawkins; and great as would be the benefit of your society
to all of us, in Mrs. Damer’s present state of health, I am afraid—in short,
you would not find it agreeable.—And therefore—’ this he added, seeing that she
was still about to persevere—’I fear that we must forego the advantage you
offer.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And then, looking into his face, Miss
Dawkins did perceive that even her audacity would not prevail.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Oh, very well,’ she said, and moving
from the stone on which she had been sitting, she walked off, carrying her head
very high, to a corner of the Pyramid from which she could look forth alone
towards the sands of Libya.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In the mean time another little
overture was being made on the top of the same Pyramid,—an overture which was
not received quite in the same spirit. While Mr. Damer was recovering his
breath for the sake of answering Miss Dawkins, Miss Damer had walked to the
further corner of the square platform on which they were placed, and there sat
herself down with her face turned towards Cairo. Perhaps it was not
singular that Mr. Ingram should have followed her.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">This would have been very well if a
dozen Arabs had not also followed them. But as this was the case, Mr.
Ingram had to play his game under some difficulty. He had no sooner
seated himself beside her than they came and stood directly in front of the
seat, shutting out the view, and by no means improving the fragrance of the air
around them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘And this, then, Miss Damer, will be
our last excursion together,’ he said, in his tenderest, softest tone.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘De good Englishman will gib de poor
Arab one little backsheish,’ said an Arab, putting out his hand and shaking Mr.
Ingram’s shoulder.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Yes, yes, yes; him gib backsheish,’
said another.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Him berry good man,’ said a third,
putting up his filthy hand, and touching Mr. Ingram’s face.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘And young lady berry good, too; she
give backsheish to poor Arab.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Yes,’ said a fourth, preparing to take
a similar liberty with Miss Damer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">This was too much for Mr. Ingram.
He had already used very positive language in his endeavour to assure his
tormentors that they would not get a piastre from him. But this only
changed their soft persuasions into threats. Upon hearing which, and upon
seeing what the man attempted to do in his endeavour to get money from Miss
Damer, he raised his stick, and struck first one and then the other as
violently as he could upon their heads.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Any ordinary civilised men would have
been stunned by such blows, for they fell on the bare foreheads of the Arabs;
but the objects of the American’s wrath merely skulked away; and the others,
convinced by the only arguments which they understood, followed in pursuit of
victims who might be less pugnacious.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">It is hard for a man to be at once
tender and pugnacious—to be sentimental, while he is putting forth his physical
strength with all the violence in his power. It is difficult, also, for
him to be gentle instantly after having been in a rage. So he changed his
tactics at the moment, and came to the point at once in a manner befitting his
present state of mind.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Those vile wretches have put me in
such a heat,’ he said, ‘that I hardly know what I am saying. But the fact
is this, Miss Damer, I cannot leave Cairo without knowing—. You
understand what I mean, Miss Damer.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Indeed I do not, Mr. Ingram; except
that I am afraid you mean nonsense.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Yes, you do; you know that I love
you. I am sure you must know it. At any rate you know it now.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Mr. Ingram, you should not talk in
such a way.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Why should I not? But the truth
is, Fanny, I can talk in no other way. I do love you dearly. Can
you love me well enough to go and be my wife in a country far away from your
own?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Before she left the top of the Pyramid
Fanny Damer had said that she would try.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Mr. Ingram was now a proud and happy
man, and seemed to think the steps of the Pyramid too small for his elastic
energy. But Fanny feared that her troubles were to come. There was
papa—that terrible bugbear on all such occasions. What would papa
say? She was sure her papa would not allow her to marry and go so far
away from her own family and country. For herself, she liked the
Americans—always had liked them; so she said;—would desire nothing better than
to live among them. But papa! And Fanny sighed as she felt that all
the recognised miseries of a young lady in love were about to fall upon her.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Nevertheless, at her lover’s instance,
she promised, and declared, in twenty different loving phrases, that nothing on
earth should ever make her false to her love or to her lover.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Fanny, where are you? Why are
you not ready to come down?’ shouted Mr. Damer, not in the best of
tempers. He felt that he had almost been unkind to an unprotected female,
and his heart misgave him. And yet it would have misgiven him more had he
allowed himself to be entrapped by Miss Dawkins.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I am quite ready, papa,’ said Fanny,
running up to him—for it may be understood that there is quite room enough for
a young lady to run on the top of the Pyramid.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I am sure I don’t know where you have
been all the time,’ said Mr. Damer; ‘and where are those two boys?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Fanny pointed to the top of the other
Pyramid, and there they were, conspicuous with their red caps.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘And M. Delabordeau?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Oh! he has gone down, I think;—no, he
is there with Miss Dawkins.’ And in truth Miss Dawkins was leaning on his
arm most affectionately, as she stooped over and looked down upon the ruins
below her.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘And where is that fellow, Ingram?’
said Mr. Damer, looking about him. ‘He is always out of the way when he’s
wanted.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">To this Fanny said nothing. Why
should she? She was not Mr. Ingram’s keeper.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And then they all descended, each again
with his proper number of Arabs to hurry and embarrass him; and they found Mrs.
Damer at the bottom, like a piece of sugar covered with flies. She was
heard to declare afterwards that she would not go to the Pyramids again, not if
they were to be given to her for herself, as ornaments for her garden.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">The picnic lunch among the big stones
at the foot of the Pyramid was not a very gay affair. Miss Dawkins talked
more than any one else, being determined to show that she bore her defeat
gallantly. Her conversation, however, was chiefly addressed to M.
Delabordeau, and he seemed to think more of his cold chicken and ham than he
did of her wit and attention.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Fanny hardly spoke a word. There
was her father before her and she could not eat, much less talk, as she thought
of all that she would have to go through. What would he say to the idea
of having an American for a son-in-law?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Nor was Mr. Ingram very lively. A
young man when he has been just accepted, never is so. His happiness
under the present circumstances was, no doubt, intense, but it was of a silent
nature.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And then the interior of the building
had to be visited. To tell the truth none of the party would have cared
to perform this feat had it not been for the honour of the thing. To have
come from Paris, New York, or London, to the Pyramids, and then not to have
visited the very tomb of Cheops, would have shown on the part of all of them an
indifference to subjects of interest which would have been altogether fatal to
their character as travellers. And so a party for the interior was made
up.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Miss Damer when she saw the aperture
through which it was expected that she should descend, at once declared for
staying with her mother. Miss Dawkins, however, was enthusiastic for the
journey. ‘Persons with so very little command over their nerves might
really as well stay at home,’ she said to Mr. Ingram, who glowered at her
dreadfully for expressing such an opinion about his Fanny.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">This entrance into the Pyramids is a terrible
task, which should be undertaken by no lady. Those who perform it have to
creep down, and then to be dragged up, through infinite dirt, foul smells, and
bad air; and when they have done it, they see nothing. But they do earn
the gratification of saying that they have been inside a Pyramid.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Well, I’ve done that once,’ said Mr.
Damer, coming out, ‘and I do not think that any one will catch me doing it
again. I never was in such a filthy place in my life.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Oh, Fanny! I am so glad you did not
go; I am sure it is not fit for ladies,’ said poor Mrs. Damer, forgetful of her
friend Miss Dawkins.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I should have been ashamed of myself,’
said Miss Dawkins, bristling up, and throwing back her head as she stood, ‘if I
had allowed any consideration to have prevented my visiting such a spot.
If it be not improper for men to go there, how can it be improper for women?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I did not say improper, my dear,’ said
Mrs. Damer, apologetically.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘And as for the fatigue, what can a
woman be worth who is afraid to encounter as much as I have now gone through
for the sake of visiting the last resting-place of such a king as Cheops?’
And Miss Dawkins, as she pronounced the last words, looked round her with
disdain upon poor Fanny Damer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘But I meant the dirt,’ said Mrs. Damer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Dirt!’ ejaculated Miss Dawkins, and
then walked away. Why should she now submit her high tone of feeling to
the Damers, or why care longer for their good opinion? Therefore she
scattered contempt around her as she ejaculated the last word, ‘dirt.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And then the return home! ‘I know
I shall never get there,’ said Mrs. Damer, looking piteously up into her
husband’s face.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Nonsense, my dear; nonsense; you must
get there.’ Mrs. Damer groaned, and acknowledged in her heart that she
must,—either dead or alive.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘And, Jefferson,’ said Fanny,
whispering—for there had been a moment since their descent in which she had
been instructed to call him by his Christian name—’never mind talking to me
going home. I will ride by mamma. Do you go with papa and put him
in good humour; and it he says anything about the lords and the bishops, don’t
you contradict him, you know.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">What will not a man do for love?
Mr. Ingram promised.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And in this way they started; the two
boys led the van; then came Mr. Damer and Mr. Ingram, unusually and
unpatriotically acquiescent as to England’s aristocratic propensities; then
Miss Dawkins riding, alas! alone; after her, M. Delabordeau, also alone,—the
ungallant Frenchman! And the rear was brought up by Mrs. Damer and her
daughter, flanked on each side by a dragoman, with a third dragoman behind
them.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And in this order they went back to
Cairo, riding their donkeys, and crossing the ferry solemnly, and, for the most
part, silently. Mr. Ingram did talk, as he had an important object in
view,—that of putting Mr. Damer into a good humour.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">In this he succeeded so well that by
the time they had remounted, after crossing the Nile, Mr. Damer opened his
heart to his companion on the subject that was troubling him, and told him all
about Miss Dawkins.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I don’t see why we should have a
companion that we don’t like for eight or ten weeks, merely because it seems
rude to refuse a lady.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Indeed, I agree with you,’ said Mr.
Ingram; ‘I should call it weak-minded to give way in such a case.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘My daughter does not like her at all,’
continued Mr. Damer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Nor would she be a nice companion for
Miss Damer; not according to my way of thinking,’ said Mr. Ingram.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘And as to my having asked her, or Mrs.
Damer having asked her! Why, God bless my soul, it is pure invention on
the woman’s part!’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Ha! ha! ha!’ laughed Mr. Ingram; ‘I
must say she plays her game well; but then she is an old soldier, and has the
benefit of experience.’ What would Miss Dawkins have said had she known
that Mr. Ingram called her an old soldier?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I don’t like the kind of thing at all,’
said Mr. Damer, who was very serious upon the subject. ‘You see the
position in which I am placed. I am forced to be very rude, or—’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘I don’t call it rude at all.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Disobliging, then; or else I must have
all my comfort invaded and pleasure destroyed by, by, by—’ And Mr. Damer
paused, being at a loss for an appropriate name for Miss Dawkins.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘By an unprotected female,’ suggested
Mr. Ingram.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Yes, just so. I am as fond of
pleasant company as anybody; but then I like to choose it myself.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘So do I,’ said Mr. Ingram, thinking of
his own choice.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Now, Ingram, if you would join us, we
should be delighted.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Upon my word, sir, the offer is too
flattering,’ said Ingram, hesitatingly; for he felt that he could not undertake
such a journey until Mr. Damer knew on what terms he stood with Fanny.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘You are a terrible democrat,’ said Mr.
Damer, laughing; ‘but then, on that matter, you know, we could agree to differ.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Exactly so,’ said Mr. Ingram, who had
not collected his thoughts or made up his mind as to what he had better say and
do, on the spur of the moment.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Well, what do you say to it?’ said Mr.
Damer, encouragingly. But Ingram paused before he answered.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘For Heaven’s sake, my dear fellow,
don’t have the slightest hesitation in refusing, if you don’t like the plan.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘The fact is, Mr. Damer, I should like
it too well.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Like it too well?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Yes, sir, and I may as well tell you
now as later. I had intended this evening to have asked for your
permission to address your daughter.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘God bless my soul!’ said Mr. Damer,
looking as though a totally new idea had now been opened to him.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘And under these circumstances, I will
now wait and see whether or no you will renew your offer.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘God bless my soul!’ said Mr. Damer,
again. It often does strike an old gentleman as very odd that any man
should fall in love with his daughter, whom he has not ceased to look upon as a
child. The case is generally quite different with mothers. They
seem to think that every young man must fall in love with their girls.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘And have you said anything to Fanny
about this?’ asked Mr. Damer.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Yes, sir, I have her permission to
speak to you.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘God bless my soul!’ said Mr. Damer;
and by this time they had arrived at Shepheard’s Hotel.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Oh, mamma,’ said Fanny, as soon as she
found herself alone with her mother that evening, ‘I have something that I must
tell you.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Oh, Fanny, don’t tell me anything
to-night, for I am a great deal too tired to listen.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘But oh, mamma, pray;—you must listen
to this; indeed you must.’ And Fanny knelt down at her mother’s knee, and
looked beseechingly up into her face.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘What is it, Fanny? You know that
all my bones are sore, and I am so tired that I am almost dead.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Mamma, Mr. Ingram has—’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Has what, my dear? has he done
anything wrong?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘No, mamma: but he has;—he has proposed
to me.’ And Fanny, bursting into tears, hid her face in her mother’s lap.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">And thus the story was told on both
sides of the house. On the next day, as a matter of course, all the
difficulties and dangers of such a marriage as that which was now projected were
insisted on by both father and mother. It was improper; it would cause a
severing of the family not to be thought of; it would be an alliance of a
dangerous nature, and not at all calculated to insure happiness; and, in short,
it was impossible. On that day, therefore, they all went to bed very
unhappy. But on the next day, as was also a matter of course, seeing that
there were no pecuniary difficulties, the mother and father were talked over,
and Mr. Ingram was accepted as a son-in-law. It need hardly be said that
the offer of a place in Mr. Damer’s boat was again made, and that on this
occasion it was accepted without hesitation.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">There was an American Protestant
clergyman resident in Cairo, with whom, among other persons, Miss Dawkins had
become acquainted. Upon this gentleman or upon his wife Miss Dawkins
called a few days after the journey to the Pyramid, and finding him in his
study, thus performed her duty to her neighbour,—<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘You know your countryman Mr. Ingram, I
think?’ said she.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Oh, yes; very intimately.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘If you have any regard for him, Mr.
Burton,’ such was the gentleman’s name, ‘I think you should put him on his
guard.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘On his guard against what?’ said Mr.
Burton with a serious air, for there was something serious in the threat of
impending misfortune as conveyed by Miss Dawkins.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Why,’ said she, ‘those Damers, I fear,
are dangerous people.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Do you mean that they will borrow
money of him?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Oh, no; not that, exactly; but they
are clearly setting their cap at him.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Setting their cap at him?’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Yes; there is a daughter, you know; a
little chit of a thing; and I fear Mr. Ingram may be caught before he knows
where he is. It would be such a pity, you know. He is going up the
river with them, I hear. That, in his place, is very foolish. They
asked me, but I positively refused.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Mr. Burton remarked that ‘In such a
matter as that Mr. Ingram would be perfectly able to take care of himself.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">‘Well, perhaps so; but seeing what was
going on, I thought it my duty to tell you.’ And so Miss Dawkins took her
leave.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Mr. Ingram did go up the Nile with the
Damers, as did an old friend of the Damers who arrived from England. And
a very pleasant trip they had of it. And, as far as the present historian
knows, the two lovers were shortly afterwards married in England.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify; text-indent: 14.2pt;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Baskerville BT",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">Poor Miss Dawkins was left in Cairo for
some time on her beam ends. But she was one of those who are not easily
vanquished. After an interval of ten days she made acquaintance with an
Irish family—having utterly failed in moving the hard heart of M. Delabordeau—and
with these she proceeded to Constantinople. They consisted of two
brothers and a sister, and were, therefore, very convenient for matrimonial
purposes. But nevertheless, when I last heard of Miss Dawkins, she was
still an unprotected female.<o:p></o:p></span></p><br /><p></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoU18S0RpXfj6qJE4vshGmH9df2x6BIQKo8xGLKsOR4x1KOEDCHDf86aUUfXIXavsWHDFKjzqH8AiTIWAI7bvlyY45i_TZMTaJL9VQY5jgXLyKp8hqGNkMO4RARboPXgRBQQTtHyUl9ew/s1600/pyramids-1938.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1377" data-original-width="1600" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoU18S0RpXfj6qJE4vshGmH9df2x6BIQKo8xGLKsOR4x1KOEDCHDf86aUUfXIXavsWHDFKjzqH8AiTIWAI7bvlyY45i_TZMTaJL9VQY5jgXLyKp8hqGNkMO4RARboPXgRBQQTtHyUl9ew/w320-h275/pyramids-1938.jpg" title="Tourists in Egypt in 1938" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="color: #274e13; font-size: x-small;">(In case you're thinking that looks a bit bold for the 1860s, you're right; this photo was taken in 1938.)</span></i></div>Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-84914569526954692222021-01-31T13:10:00.001+00:002021-01-31T14:42:21.614+00:00From Mytek the Mighty to the TARDIS control room<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="252" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/DSggfyj-L_c" width="448"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>
<div>I was delighted and honoured to be invited to appear at CRoM Con Europe, the convention for comics fans and SF/fantasy geeks. Many thanks to Pops Van Sant, our esteemed host, and <a href="https://downthetubes.net/?tag=glenn-b-fleming" target="_blank">Glenn B Fleming</a>, UK comics powerhouse, for including me. I got to hold forth about Mirabilis for a bit, describe my visit to the <i>Doctor Who </i>studios back in the Hartnell era, and as an added bonus I got to meet the guys from the <a href="https://www.earthstationone.com/" target="_blank">Earth Station One podcast</a>. Their back catalogue of episodes will be the soundtrack to my country walks well into the spring.</div><div><br /></div><div>At one point we got to talking about <i><a href="https://www.comicartfans.com/gallerypiece.asp?piece=1331920" target="_blank">Wrath of the Gods</a></i>, a fabulously scary '60s comic strip set in the mythic age of Greece. It was illustrated by the (also mythic) Ron Embleton, of course, not "Ron Pemberton" as I burbled during the podcast. (I'd been chatting about <i><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hJNLwCmkh8" target="_blank">Inside Number 9 </a></i>recently; that's the only excuse I've got.)</div><div><br /></div><div>If you want to skip, <a href="https://youtu.be/DSggfyj-L_c?t=12783" target="_blank">I come in </a>after about three and half hours, but listen to the whole thing (there's a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMVxGIg357E" target="_blank">part two </a>as well) because there are so many fascinating people with stories to tell and wisdom to impart. Talking of which, here's the time Glenn met Jack "King" Kirby:</div><div><br /></div>
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=US&source=ac&ref=qf_sp_asin_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=naiyounov-20&marketplace=amazon&region=US&placement=1916119662&asins=1916119662&linkId=dbe447315ac069b1724fbbb6014f71d0&show_border=false&link_opens_in_new_window=false&price_color=333333&title_color=0066c0&bg_color=ffffff" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;">
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And if you've just joined us:
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<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="//ws-eu.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=GB&source=ac&ref=qf_sp_asin_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=fablland-21&marketplace=amazon&region=GB&placement=0956712118&asins=0956712118&linkId=1eee614d02c2a212eaa8673ec95fe8db&show_border=false&link_opens_in_new_window=false&price_color=333333&title_color=0066c0&bg_color=ffffff" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;">
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<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="//ws-eu.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&OneJS=1&Operation=GetAdHtml&MarketPlace=GB&source=ac&ref=qf_sp_asin_til&ad_type=product_link&tracking_id=fablland-21&marketplace=amazon&region=GB&placement=0956677827&asins=0956677827&linkId=46bc0a20e3677ae748bc12b8ff86640f&show_border=false&link_opens_in_new_window=false&price_color=333333&title_color=0066c0&bg_color=ffffff" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;">
</iframe>Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-11771184154706203982021-01-11T17:23:00.005+00:002021-01-12T09:16:48.926+00:00Tales of Old Skaro<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7uuqUOv32ZJA-llwsjCmJwMB1toeF17JXFMJcOJVGGf_PZnTvwMlIwDGpd2tsrKhg_dVI3BH9TtlqxoBQ_n_jY0jklKZO_2Z00V9nLk8O5UC0nlkN7QdDoNly1zM_MkvYa8JWW2Mh3S8/s708/Daleks_Richard-Jennings.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="708" data-original-width="502" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7uuqUOv32ZJA-llwsjCmJwMB1toeF17JXFMJcOJVGGf_PZnTvwMlIwDGpd2tsrKhg_dVI3BH9TtlqxoBQ_n_jY0jklKZO_2Z00V9nLk8O5UC0nlkN7QdDoNly1zM_MkvYa8JWW2Mh3S8/w284-h400/Daleks_Richard-Jennings.jpg" width="284" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Nation" target="_blank">Terry Nation</a> said he didn't like other <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who" target="_blank">Doctor Who</a></i> writers using his creations because they couldn't get <a href="http://mirabilis-yearofwonders.blogspot.com/2010/05/aint-broke.html" target="_blank">the Daleks' psychology</a> right. He had a point. Certainly <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalek" target="_blank">the Daleks </a>have been increasingly badly handled in the 21st century version of the series. I think modern writers are all suckled on character arcs and <a href="http://www.craftyscreenwriting.com/ducky.html" target="_blank">rubber ducky </a>motivational cues. Screenwriting doctrine teaches them to wrangle stories into those familiar shapes, but they aren't taught to stretch their imaginations out of the box so as to dream up really strange and original fantasies. Give them an alien menace and they want to portray it in soap opera terms -- were they abused? what's their character diamond? how can I make them more human? </div><div><br /></div><div>Ugh to all that. The reason the post-Nation Dalek stories kept featuring Davros (who was good for <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_of_the_Daleks" target="_blank">just one story</a></i>) was that writers said they could give him a lot of dialogue, whereas the Daleks' own monotonous voices meant their dialogue had to be terse. Well, less is more and vice versa. To take an example from another show, as soon as you have a <a href="https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Borg_Queen" target="_blank">Borg queen </a>spouting theatrically villainous dialogue like Ming the Merciless, the Borg are no longer <a href="http://mirabilis-yearofwonders.blogspot.com/2011/06/day-i-met-dalek.html" target="_blank">the Other </a>and you have to start from scratch to create that weirdness and menace. Or (attention, writers) you could just not cock them up to begin with.</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, back to our would-be overlords from Skaro. For two years <i>The Daleks</i> was a strip on the back of the weekly UK comic <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_Century_21" target="_blank">TV Century 21</a></i>. There's the first surprise. Only two years? I remember it as a major part of my childhood but the fact is (like the Silver Age heyday of Marvel Comics that same decade) it came and went in a blink. Now those 104 strips have been <a href="https://downthetubes.net/?p=117717" target="_blank">collected in book form</a>, which you might be able to get <a href="https://doctorwhomagazine.com/bookazines/the-daleks/ " target="_blank">here </a>or <a href="https://store.panini.co.uk/GBDRWZ023_UK02/gbdrwz023-doctor-who-magazine-the-daleks" target="_blank">here</a>. Just not anywhere convenient like Amazon.</div></div><div><br /></div>Quite apart from the stories, which are gems of compressed comics writing by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Fennell" target="_blank">Alan Fennell</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Whitaker_(screenwriter)" target="_blank">David Whitaker</a>, the background material about the strips is fascinating. As a child I never knew the artists’ names, but I remembered the first one (Richard Jennings) as being quite sloppy in the way he drew Daleks, which for speed he just did as round bullet-shapes. He also drew the strips in the first two <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalek_comic_strips,_illustrated_annuals_and_graphic_novels" target="_blank">Dalek annuals</a>.<div><br /></div><div>Ron Turner took over after a year. His work was more stylish, and he put more effort into getting the Daleks’ shape right, but I don’t think the stories were as good later on. And because his artwork was executed with such technical precision it was less engaging than Jennings's scrappier panels. There's a lesson there for comics artists today.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT4rj3AwD_zadLCGaTpEdz0GEc4fPafz-c9uuEjqNjXWdN6LbyNttsx_EakQbBiCjxQ7wawFS4o06uIzixheNWEn_0dAIfLQe3EGtMYXDssMgYqQomyHdR7VoJR-wBZQFC9Z7uRJLPPBw/s689/Daleks_Ron-Turner.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="689" data-original-width="500" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT4rj3AwD_zadLCGaTpEdz0GEc4fPafz-c9uuEjqNjXWdN6LbyNttsx_EakQbBiCjxQ7wawFS4o06uIzixheNWEn_0dAIfLQe3EGtMYXDssMgYqQomyHdR7VoJR-wBZQFC9Z7uRJLPPBw/w290-h400/Daleks_Ron-Turner.jpg" width="290" /></a></div><br /><div>Why did Jennings leave the strip? I found the answer on the ever-reliable <a href="https://bearalley.blogspot.com/2006/11/richard-jennings.html" target="_blank">Bear Alley</a>:</div><div><div><blockquote>
"[Jennings] spent a year drawing <i>The Daleks </i>for the back page of <i>TV Century 21</i> in 1965 but drifted away from comics. 'For 18 months I worked as a long-distance lorry driver. Not very exciting but I was broke! I took my ancient jeep up to the Yorkshire Dales where I travelled around painting pub signs and portraits.'"</blockquote></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Dg1MZg2hke0hK0YNoaudEoMUcxBZSfoWClRTjlrex1IWJ0DOP5y7GCaNM738Xqb4pdwK-tSw1zTYp48ePD0mETfS2YVIwFhRir0_j8ShuHF9UqhEDEGIANwCfkvOP6FI7DDIDHNYVnU/s450/DalekOuterSpaceBook.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="360" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Dg1MZg2hke0hK0YNoaudEoMUcxBZSfoWClRTjlrex1IWJ0DOP5y7GCaNM738Xqb4pdwK-tSw1zTYp48ePD0mETfS2YVIwFhRir0_j8ShuHF9UqhEDEGIANwCfkvOP6FI7DDIDHNYVnU/s320/DalekOuterSpaceBook.jpg" /></a></div><br />And that was when there were a lot of comics selling in the hundreds of thousands of copies every week. How much more impossible it is to make a living as an artist today. To think of a talented creative craftsman reduced to driving a lorry because it wasn't possible for him to actually get a decent wage for his work. I'd say it makes me weep but mainly it just makes me furious.</div><div> <br />Still, those are old battles lost long ago. Back to the present day: the collection's editor, Marcus Hearn, theorizes that the end of the strip runs straight into the TV/movie storyline <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dalek_Invasion_of_Earth" target="_blank">Daleks' Invasion Earth</a></i>. But that’s set in 2150 AD, whereas the human race in the <i>TV21</i> strip are clearly much more advanced, with FTL spaceships, which implies that it leads into the events of <i><a href="https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/The_Dalek_Book" target="_blank">The Dalek Book</a></i> and <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6376892-the-dalek-world" target="_blank">The Dalek World</a></i>, which are set in the 25th century. (Since that’s the Daleks’ first contact with humanity, they must use their later discovery of time travel to conquer Earth in 2150, presumably to prevent their defeat at the end of <i>The Dalek Book</i>.)</div></div>Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-7413657097116220832020-11-02T09:19:00.003+00:002020-11-02T09:19:37.774+00:00Martin's mum and the banshee<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbcxEtaNGj65FMf7mR9qfN6CC2-WslqqPH4u1Qu266MRzLg5ecl_uNOMrt1c4gvzWvVr9G6bWDYmU0ThhMhbBs25JxnoTye1ExQmdh-s5rS2jwS-BybM2K3OI1Xt4Wm1_uBVlHkfJ9czE/s602/Nightdreamers_main.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="602" data-original-width="424" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbcxEtaNGj65FMf7mR9qfN6CC2-WslqqPH4u1Qu266MRzLg5ecl_uNOMrt1c4gvzWvVr9G6bWDYmU0ThhMhbBs25JxnoTye1ExQmdh-s5rS2jwS-BybM2K3OI1Xt4Wm1_uBVlHkfJ9czE/w281-h400/Nightdreamers_main.jpg" width="281" /></a></div><p>I've just learned of the death in September 2020 of Martin McKenna, a friend and colleague on many projects besides <a href="http://mirabilis-yearofwonders.com/story/the-year-of-wonders/" target="_blank">Mirabilis</a>, including <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrior_Kings" target="_blank">Warrior Kings </a>and <a href="http://fabledlands.blogspot.com/2012/07/creative-doctrine-for-frankensteins.html" target="_blank">Frankenstein's Legions</a>. I'm going to write at length about my memories of Martin, but that will take a while -- the term is over-used, but he was unique. In the meantime, I wanted to share something he told me which shows his love of the strange. He was no more superstitious or religious than I am, but we both enjoyed stories like this for <a href="http://mirabilis-yearofwonders.blogspot.com/2009/05/world-of-ideas.html" target="_blank">the real magic</a> in them. Not magic that's real in the way a table or chair are real, that is, but the much more vital and wonderful magic of the human imagination.</p><p>Over to Martin:</p>
“This little story was told to me by my mother during a week’s holiday that she and I spent at South Foreland Lighthouse, a decommissioned light on the White Cliffs in Kent now run as a holiday cottage by The National Trust. We were there just before Christmas 2007. It wasn’t entirely ideal, as it turned out, because my elderly mum found the place a little too dark and isolated for her liking and she felt a bit uneasy at night-time, surrounded as we were by pitch blackness. This was my first surprise as I hadn’t expected her to be at all bothered by anything like that, having been born and brought up in darkest rural Ireland in the 1930s, and in fact had expected her, a country girl at heart, to enjoy escaping from London to the peace and quiet of this isolated bit of coast while being safe and cosy at the lighthouse; it really was a lovely spot for a quiet holiday, I thought. Added to this was the association the place had with my eldest brother, who had been stationed there during his career as a lighthouse-keeper.
<br /><br />
“Trying to analyse why she sometimes felt unsettled in the place, we chatted about it one night in the lighthouse kitchen and our talk unexpectedly turned to the subject of ghosts. This was my next surprise because throughout my life my mum has always been sceptical about supernatural things, and would always derogate any talk of such stuff. She admitted that the stretch of coast where we were staying felt haunted to her - with its long history and hundreds of shipwrecks (‘All those drowned souls’) right on our doorstep as it were – and this was what made her uneasy at night. I was amazed, especially when she followed this by saying, ‘I’ve seen ghosts and things, when I was younger’. She was very matter-of-fact about this, and following my incredulous reaction of, ‘You have?! What like?’ she said simply, ‘Of course, Ireland’s full of that sort of thing; and I saw a Banshee’.
<br /><br />
“Hearing this from my own mum was remarkable, as I’d never heard her talk about anything like this before, let alone the Banshee which is one of my favourite creatures from Irish folklore. This was bizarre! Of course I asked her to tell me everything about it.
<br /><br />
“To set the scene a little, my mum grew up in County Monaghan in Ireland, in the sparsely-populated rural community of Aughaderry. The nearest actual town was (and probably still is) Aughnacloy over the border in Co. Tyrone. Her local community as she describes it was very scattered, with farms and houses dotted about over a wide area, sometimes a mile or more between neighbours. As a youngster, my mum was always riding about this and neighbouring townlands on her bike, out on various jobs and errands for her parents from their farm. My mum reckons when the following took place she was aged about 13 or 14, which would’ve made it 1942 or 1943. While WWII was raging elsewhere, my mum was away on the bogs encountering spooks.
<br /><br />
“It was getting near dusk, and my mum was riding home on her bike (all the ghostly sightings she described to me – there were about three or four others – were witnessed from this mystery-machine bicycle). She was riding along one of the lonely back roads in the neighbouring town of Killabrone, behind the house of a guy called Paddy Traynor. My mum remembers that he was a farmer who lived alone, and was known to the local kids because he had an orchard with fantastic apples which they’d always be stealing. Paddy Traynor’s house was on the ‘main’ road (still only a minor country road), and directly behind the house was a field, and at the bottom of that was the road along which my mum was riding that evening.
<br /><br />
“At the point where the road bordered Paddy Traynor’s field it climbed a steep hill, so my mum was walking her bike up it as she was accustomed to doing every time she took that road home. From the road she could see over a hedge directly into Paddy Traynor’s field, beyond which was his house. What my mum saw and heard then was very odd. There was a strange woman in a floor-length dress walking about in the field, and she was screaming. The woman was walking to and fro across the scrubby, muddy field endlessly screaming, and screaming. As my mum described it, “It was a terrible strange cry, not like a normal scream, more like a fox or something”.
<br /><br />
“I asked her to describe the woman, and she said that she remembers the long skirt, and that her long hair was all tied back and ‘like straw’. But my mum couldn’t recall the woman’s face, or what sort of age she might’ve been; pointing out that that day was more than sixty years ago. Besides, my mum didn’t hang about; this screaming, pacing woman understandably frightened her, and without another soul anywhere in sight, she quickly hurried on up the hill to get away home. She left the woman behind her, screaming in the field in the dusk.
<br /><br />
“When she got home she told her mother what she’d experienced, and her mum – my grandmother – very matter-of-factly said, “Oh, you saw the Banshee. That means someone soon is going to die”. Sure enough, within two or three days they heard the news of Paddy Traynor’s death.
<br /><br />
“This all struck me as remarkably odd, and I quizzed my mum for further details to help fill in the gaps. Most importantly, this strange screaming woman was a total stranger, and this was unheard of in that neighbourhood at that time – it’s not like she might’ve been some upset relative or neighbour of Paddy’s, or a traumatized survivor of a nearby accident or some such who’d wandered into Paddy’s field; or a patient who’d legged it from some nearby asylum. Folk really didn’t travel far, and outsiders were rarely if ever encountered in those days in that part of the country, apparently. My mum maintains that it was unheard of for strangers to just turn up in that neighbourhood without everyone else knowing, and no-one ever spoke of seeing any unfamiliar woman going about the place (screeching or otherwise), so no plausible scenario seems to explain this woman’s presence.
<br /><br />
“Strangest of all of course is the coincidence of Paddy Traynor’s death, just a couple of days after this ‘Banshee’-like figure was in the man’s field outside his house. From what my mum remembers, Paddy Traynor lived alone, was aged around 40, and as far as she can recall died of natural causes.”<div><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">* * *</div><div><br /></div><div>It's too early for the card below, which Martin titled "Harpy Christmas", but just this once let's waive the rules.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0TJDeVnJ8-S0aU4EZh1npggDJ8XIqup4XPh_0gVpdgmALN34RA8WC3xkAdwcluJZ9z7f3aiMHnrNb2edw-feomF3EIuMSfsZH0WWy5hBW0ZsN72k5lspMbbfs8pIGlBeuKe5rIgFI-q4/s1000/HarpyChristmas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="707" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0TJDeVnJ8-S0aU4EZh1npggDJ8XIqup4XPh_0gVpdgmALN34RA8WC3xkAdwcluJZ9z7f3aiMHnrNb2edw-feomF3EIuMSfsZH0WWy5hBW0ZsN72k5lspMbbfs8pIGlBeuKe5rIgFI-q4/w283-h400/HarpyChristmas.jpg" width="283" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div></div></div>Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-50797400771612071692020-09-14T16:12:00.002+01:002020-09-14T16:12:21.556+01:00"I may run an elevator, but I'll never write a hack story"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWT-p4nvrblJ3HiPUEN6HoaRzQ2-MJ2dJd4q_J-udokt4RG5n6iQDH_rUppGGc1i7fE9AH-cLy5xY2OIHciHT6cDgLSCvC12MqfxLV4zaYzOa_Bym66fviNnjuF-r4-aJQtZhQvDkWo00/s1296/HPLbookplate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1296" data-original-width="906" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWT-p4nvrblJ3HiPUEN6HoaRzQ2-MJ2dJd4q_J-udokt4RG5n6iQDH_rUppGGc1i7fE9AH-cLy5xY2OIHciHT6cDgLSCvC12MqfxLV4zaYzOa_Bym66fviNnjuF-r4-aJQtZhQvDkWo00/s320/HPLbookplate.jpg" /></a></div><br /><div>"[Frank Belknap Long] has stopped looking for the real spirit and essence of a work of fiction, but has begun to appraise fiction according to the popular, commercial standard, laying favourable stress on such meretricious tricks as plot twists, exaggerated dramatic tableaux, jack-in-the-box climaxes, snappy dialogue, scene-shifting pageantry and all the other superficial, artificial devices."</div><div><br /></div><div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" height="90" mozallowfullscreen="" msallowfullscreen="" oallowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" src="//html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/15152843/height/90/theme/custom/thumbnail/yes/direction/backward/render-playlist/no/custom-color/359445/" style="border: none;" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="100%"></iframe></div>
<br />
<div>The good folks at the <a href="https://www.hplhs.org/voluminous.php" target="_blank">H P Lovecraft Historical Society </a>regularly read and discuss his letters, and I found this one on the writing process particularly interesting. Listen from 8m 30s in, as the first part is housekeeping between HPL and his agent. But when he gets onto writing, and how <a href="https://mirabilis-yearofwonders.blogspot.com/2010/07/real-measure-of-success.html" target="_blank">success in writing </a>(as opposed to success at selling books) can only be measured against your personal standards of the craft -- then it gets fascinating.</div>Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-65039319599354052952020-06-16T13:10:00.000+01:002020-06-16T13:10:05.652+01:00Is the world ready for two-speed fiction?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfWTix_DAqalhi2U2mmSNjatY-9AggBXKNKdLGs7B0VVU8bNRb-LgR5Im0WrwdccYOIEogyeALSfiVHDuND-mgbHnR55AOxaV0gfaEoFl4b-wWx1fNm2NCzN4c8FI03uyFgKi090m5DuI/s1600/WTAF.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfWTix_DAqalhi2U2mmSNjatY-9AggBXKNKdLGs7B0VVU8bNRb-LgR5Im0WrwdccYOIEogyeALSfiVHDuND-mgbHnR55AOxaV0gfaEoFl4b-wWx1fNm2NCzN4c8FI03uyFgKi090m5DuI/s400/WTAF.jpg" width="271" /></a></div>
<br />
The writer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fay_Weldon" target="_blank">Fay Weldon</a> provoked outrage a while back. (It’s the dream of every writer to still be doing that in our eighties, and boy is the Internet making it easier.) Ms Weldon’s heresy was to suggest that writers in the future might need to produce two versions of each novel: one opening with a bang and racing through the story, the other taking all sorts of leisurely detours into character.
<br />
<br />
If I’d read only the headline, maybe I would have been spluttering at that myself. But <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/fay-weldon-interview-abandon-your-dignity-and-write-a-racy-page-turner-10086140.html" target="_blank">here’s what Ms Weldon actually said</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Writers have to write now for a world where readers are busy, on the move, and have little time for contemplation and reflection. The writer has to focus on writing better, cutting to the chase, and doing more of the readers’ contemplative work for them.”
</blockquote>
“Writing better” seems pretty key there. Leaving aside the possibility that she was indulging in a certain amount of hyperbole, she is acknowledging that all well written books are page turners. Literary fiction – if we must use the term – is not the plotless meandering indulgence that its detractors would have you believe. <i>War & Peace </i>goes down a lot smoother than a Dan Brown novel, let me tell you.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi80c20f6Cq8Y7VrQDOlmhZ-vLrY7zdoTxRzVOvpKUG8WgxCH-l_wmo9GrZEUd8VJ0qwAO01ghGzsl3xEgL5dxStgXA-5Z71ZB2raMiU8FShLMfhMwQgmuhkgHpYCJLAEwp9HnwB9atnic/s1600/Napoleons_retreat_from_moscow.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi80c20f6Cq8Y7VrQDOlmhZ-vLrY7zdoTxRzVOvpKUG8WgxCH-l_wmo9GrZEUd8VJ0qwAO01ghGzsl3xEgL5dxStgXA-5Z71ZB2raMiU8FShLMfhMwQgmuhkgHpYCJLAEwp9HnwB9atnic/s320/Napoleons_retreat_from_moscow.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
The refutation of Ms Weldon’s points seem primarily to take the form of: “Pish and tosh, I read <i>Fifty Shades of Grey</i> in print and <i>Ulysses </i>on Kindle; so there.” At least I took that to be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/mar/06/fay-weldon-non-literary-ebook-readers" target="_blank">the thrust of Alison Flood’s argument</a> as she delivered a sound Johnsonian kick to Ms Weldon’s assertion:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Weldon’s reading of the situation just makes me think she doesn’t have an e-reader. And that she hasn’t looked at the current physical bestseller charts, stuffed with commercial fiction, either.”
</blockquote>
And yet nothing Fay Weldon is saying particularly contentious, or even new. Nor surely would she claim it to be. Dial back eighty years and zero in on a Brooklyn newsstand. <i>Black Mask</i> and <i>Argosy </i>and <i>The Shadow</i> were selling north of a hundred thousand copies a month. Had Hemingway been willing to dumb down <i>To Have and Have Not </i>just a teeny bit (you can suggest that to him while I wait in the Tardis) then it wouldn’t have looked out of place in the pulp magazines. In good writing, the contemplative and the exciting happen <i>at the same time</i>.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKt04wdySA1TAtP5N-WyHMoysUuSElmOUfyLnhhBwrOyvbUe1UgHBtU-2C3GCrTm_KDFE-Sv9b1r3JrPIpLcnQCugduPYgqhHDrPe45Z11HLQIye4r2Lx_JTiwDWsxOiGtZl0KvB3uscM/s1600/cosmo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKt04wdySA1TAtP5N-WyHMoysUuSElmOUfyLnhhBwrOyvbUe1UgHBtU-2C3GCrTm_KDFE-Sv9b1r3JrPIpLcnQCugduPYgqhHDrPe45Z11HLQIye4r2Lx_JTiwDWsxOiGtZl0KvB3uscM/s400/cosmo.jpg" /></a>Still, you couldn’t pull that dumbing-down trick with just any quality novel. <i>The Sound and the Fury</i>, say. So there always was a spectrum from pulp to highbrow, even if nobody could quite point to the boundaries. And Ms Weldon’s proposal that authors write two versions was common practice even back then. <i>To Have and Have Not </i>germinated from a short story Hemingway wrote for <i>Cosmopolitan</i>.
<br />
<br />
There’s nothing revelatory about saying that medium influences content. The novel a Victorian would expect to read in paper-bound partwork would be more of a sensational affair than he’d look for in a hardcover. Chinese and Japanese publishers, who experience the future a little sooner than we do in the West, were finding ten years ago that classic works like <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dream_of_the_Red_Chamber" target="_blank">Dream of the Red Chamber </a></i>weren’t what strap-hanging commuters wanted to read on their phones. As so the thumb novel was born. Or rather reborn, like a Water Margin hero, from the spirit of the Shadow and Doc Savage.
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<br />
But was that the device, or was it the price? Zipping back to mid-30s New York, a brand new copy of a short novel like <i>To Have and Have Not </i>or <i>Of Mice and Men</i> is going to set you back $2.75, while you can take home <i>Black Mask</i> for 15 cents. Pulp fiction and literature were separate Galapagos islands – as far apart as news-stands and bookstores, as pocket change and a billfold. The digital market has lowered the ocean so that those ecosystems are joined, and so self-publishers can push the pulp formula to its ultimate expression: a horizon-blanketing tsunami of genre novels at a penny or less. Under such conditions even <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law" target="_blank">Sturgeon’s Law</a> breaks down. We look back longingly at the days when only nine-tenths of this stuff was crap.
<br />
<br />
But don’t forget what bobbed up from the bottom of Pandora’s jar. Hollywood may be in a creative nose-dive, but that hasn’t prevented the rise of ten-hour movies (<i>Breaking Bad</i>, <i>The Americans</i>, <i>Chernobyl</i>) of a quality and story depth von Stroheim could only dream about. The ubiquity of McDonald’s doesn’t stop me from chowing down at the Gourmet Burger Kitchen. And a million overweight dads booting footballs around the park doesn’t damage the standard of play at Old Trafford. (I have to confess that last example is purely theoretical; I never watched a game in my life.)
<br />
<br />
The truth, as Fay Weldon said right at the start of all this, is that we could all do with better writing. The gripping immediacy of a Robert E Howard or Walter Gibson yarn is something even Will Self might aspire to. And just to show that under the sun there is no new thing, let’s give <a href="http://www.web40571.clarahost.co.uk/wilkie/biography/Trollope1883.htm" target="_blank">the last word to Anthony Trollope</a> writing a hundred and thirty years ago -- though it could as easily have been just last week:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Among English novelists a great division is made. There are sensational novels and anti-sensational, sensational novelists and anti-sensational, sensational readers and anti-sensational. The novelists who are considered to be anti-sensational are generally called realistic. I am realistic. My friend Wilkie Collins is generally supposed to be sensational. The readers who prefer the one are supposed to take delight in the elucidation of character. Those who hold by the other are charmed by the continuation and gradual development of a plot. All this is, I think, a mistake — which mistake arises from the inability of the imperfect artist to be at the same time realistic and sensational. A good novel should be both, and both in the highest degree. If a novel fail in either, there is a failure in art.”
</blockquote>
Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-26010434435758341322020-05-16T16:12:00.003+01:002020-05-16T16:12:49.341+01:00The green comet has arrived<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix_c1arQ6R89lUz9uxgMgb0-2f6rMODhEyyFbTEEejjl_6-mA-GHeiJ17L2loEJXDQh0qpDHAHJXtx2MUXqmXuAYKTXwGkxxT3QDHs-A8cUGBkJsR8C-0hIQmHdt9K7TjV99UIYzY8zTo/s1600/green-comet.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix_c1arQ6R89lUz9uxgMgb0-2f6rMODhEyyFbTEEejjl_6-mA-GHeiJ17L2loEJXDQh0qpDHAHJXtx2MUXqmXuAYKTXwGkxxT3QDHs-A8cUGBkJsR8C-0hIQmHdt9K7TjV99UIYzY8zTo/s400/green-comet.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Finally, and only 119 years and four and a half months behind schedule, <a href="https://themindunleashed.com/2020/05/brilliant-green-comet-with-10-million-mile-long-tail-will-be-visible-tonight-as-it-comes-close-to-earth.html" target="_blank">here comes that comet</a>. It's a once-in-120-centuries occurrence and it's only coming within about fifty million miles of Earth, but if that's near enough for one wish I'm going to hope for some way to carry on with Mirabilis, the project that's still the dream of my heart. Never say never, I keep telling myself.Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-50368376237693829992019-12-30T15:30:00.000+00:002019-12-30T23:36:12.893+00:00The shows that rinse and repeat<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz9XKVQObBdan9h07Kd4vGmYB3HlbIyfgSVD6j06xBLfQ0bCepod23bQ-gwybAsYlC7YC6jANhL1sl5pnUi0GoACLVe6h0KOVHoLVdEYDaSQmSLmH9RMCvtQQAgVb4CdbyFhqUbX9G6AA/s1600/vinyl-cancelled-hbo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhz9XKVQObBdan9h07Kd4vGmYB3HlbIyfgSVD6j06xBLfQ0bCepod23bQ-gwybAsYlC7YC6jANhL1sl5pnUi0GoACLVe6h0KOVHoLVdEYDaSQmSLmH9RMCvtQQAgVb4CdbyFhqUbX9G6AA/s400/vinyl-cancelled-hbo.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Who watches the <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmen_(TV_series)" target="_blank">Watchmen</a></i>? I will, but only if you can assure me that the story is properly wrapped up in one season. I've seen too many TV shows that throw a bunch of plates in the air, keep them spinning for a dozen episodes, adding more until it looks like they'll all come down either in a triumphant flourish or a crash of broken crockery -- only for the season finale to tie up no loose ends whatsoever; merely saying, in effect: "Come back next year for more of the same."<br />
<br />
I know why writers do it. Well, yes, there's the lure of another payday, obviously. That's not nothing. But also it's because bringing a story together is <i>hard</i>. The job is so much easier in the early stages where you can throw everything in. The only limit is the writer's imagination. But then, around the midway point, the terrible hectoring inner voice can be heard that speaks up for the craft. Things that have been set up must pay off. Threats must be faced and dealt with. Promises that have been tacitly made with the viewer must be kept. If you're lazy, you tune that out and try to keep the throw-everything-in stage going forever.<br />
<br />
Serious offenders include <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_(TV_series)" target="_blank">The Fall</a></i>, whose first series followed a nail-biting cat-&-mouse between the detective heroine and a serial killer. How would she catch him? And what would the personal cost be? As it turned out, she <i>wouldn't</i> catch him. Rather than dream up a new adversary for season two, the writer just had him slip away so that the high jinks could resume next time. Nothing was resolved.<br />
<br />
Likewise with <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Eve" target="_blank">Killing Eve</a></i>, where after a season of queasy death-wish teasing between the antagonists, the psycho we're meant to like slips away with a knife-wound in her side. "Go after her!" I wanted to yell at the heroine (the eponymous Eve; the show's title was another promise never kept) who could even then have brought the story to a satisfying conclusion. "She's literally ten seconds ahead of you and she's bleeding out." But no. Somebody else comes in and says, "It's too late. She's gone." And you can almost hear Eve thinking it will go on and on, this chase, like the plot of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Worm_Ouroboros" target="_blank">The Worm Ouroboros</a></i>, only in this case not because of an elegant reflection of the story's underlying themes but just to ensure ongoing pay packets for those concerned and an endlessly interrupted coitus of spy-porn wankery.<br />
<br />
Oh, and <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westworld_(TV_series)" target="_blank">Westworld</a></i>. Great first season. But by the finale they clearly have nowhere interesting left to go, so it ends with the gnawing sense that new rails will be laid in front of the engine forever. It even looks like it's ending on a cliffhanger. That's the worst crime for any ongoing series, if the cliffhanger comes simply as a break in the ongoing plot rather than being a new threat emerging after old strands have been tied up. The show's writers are saying, in effect, that the whole season you thought was going to have a beginning, middle and end has in fact been just the bringing together of pieces so that the real party could begin in season two. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramatic_structure" target="_blank">Aristotle </a>would punch 'em in the kisser.<br />
<br />
But look. It <i>can </i>be done well. <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_(TV_series)" target="_blank">Vinyl </a></i>built up over ten episodes as multiple narrative trains hurtled towards collision. The finale brought all the immediate threats to a conclusion while setting up the basis for another season. Instead of just breaking at the end of the season as though it were just another episode, there is closure there and in the closure the seeds of a new direction. Unfortunately <i>Vinyl </i>never got a second season while less carefully crafted shows hurtle on and on towards the eventual heat death of the medium.<br />
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<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="252" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iqoEvvwDEb8" width="448"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
A conscientious writer (<a href="https://paperknife.wordpress.com/2012/09/02/boneland-by-alan-garner-preliminary-notes/" target="_blank">Alan Garner</a>, for example; or arguably J Michael Straczynski) won't start until they have the end of the story planned. As Andrew Stanton explains below, it's "knowing your punchline, making sure that everything... is leading to a singular goal". That's why I'd ask every show creator about their ending in the first pitch meeting. If you have a destination in mind, the journey will be much more enjoyable -- and, if the Fates are kind and it turns out the dollars are there for another trip, you'll have satisfied customers queuing up to go again.
<br />
<br />
<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="252" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KxDwieKpawg" width="448"></iframe>Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-8873851242786304822019-12-20T10:23:00.000+00:002019-12-20T10:23:37.131+00:00How not to script an action climax<iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="252" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/f_LZU7TdvWA" width="448"></iframe>
<br />
Picture this . You’re at a Hollywood pitch meeting: "And as the LEM descends towards the moon, Armstrong has a crisis of confidence. 'I can't do it, Buzz!' he says. But then he has a dream in which he's standing in the Midwest somewhere with a baseball bat, and Chuck Yeager is there dressed as a giant eagle and he's about to pitch the ball. Neil drops the bat, but Chuck tells him to pick it up, he can do it. And as he reaches for the bat we're back on the LEM and he's reaching for the controls. Determined look from Neil, admiring look from Buzz, swelling music, and then we cut to Houston and after a long tense pause: 'The <i>Eagle </i>has landed.'"
<br />
<br />
That’s terrible writing. Yet it’s the sort of thing that’s all the rage in superhero movies. We’re at the climax and the hero is on the brink of defeat. They go into a dream sequence, get a pep talk from a (usually dead) mentor, then snap back to the present and "with one bound" they’re free and turn the tables on the baddie. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor:_Ragnarok" target="_blank"><i>Thor: Ragnarok</i></a>, <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Marvel_(film)" target="_blank">Captain Marvel</a></i>, you name it.
<br />
<br />
To be clear, I'm not complaining about mentors (though they are overused because every screenwriter swears by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell" target="_blank">Joseph Campbell</a> these days), I’m complaining about the interior vision in which the hero is given a boost of wisdom or courage: ‘Here’s your elixir like Campbell talks about on page 497. Now get back and fight.’ It's lazy writing. The dream sequence approach is no different from fixing all the loose ends in a story by dropping a god out of the machinery.
<br />
<br />
It’s bad writing because it’s telling, not showing. It kills momentum by building to what ought to be a nail-biting moment and suddenly swerving off into a fantasy scene. In effect, rather than crafting the story, the writer is taking a time out to try and convince us why his or her story should work. Those writers are so used to notes and rewrites that they don’t know that’s not how the finished thing should look; it’s as though you arrived at a building and found the only way to the upper storeys was by way of scaffolding left by the builders.
<br />
<br />
Good writing would be to have already done the work throughout the story so we are able to see the character’s arc leading inevitably to this point. Examples: <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man_(2008_film)" target="_blank">Iron Man</a></i> and <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_America:_The_First_Avenger" target="_blank">Captain America: The First Avenger</a></i>. Or, returning to the building analogy: put the bloody stairs in.
Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-83751009234367853102019-10-31T12:13:00.000+00:002019-10-31T12:14:49.738+00:00Talk to the hand<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHhUEFELxL6CIlKg10BELvFVvArm0-rLHocz7qrbylDAzPLxawqONdN3M6tkqmQ_-EtWSDsdlmSxLa1kIp112BBahL4CXlT1uS0HjjKjPiJFvNqazjzl3HW_oVQy7XIcxdrE_cxw-sPcQ/s1600/Royal-Mythological-Society_MIRABILIS-P.4-copy.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="397" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHhUEFELxL6CIlKg10BELvFVvArm0-rLHocz7qrbylDAzPLxawqONdN3M6tkqmQ_-EtWSDsdlmSxLa1kIp112BBahL4CXlT1uS0HjjKjPiJFvNqazjzl3HW_oVQy7XIcxdrE_cxw-sPcQ/s400/Royal-Mythological-Society_MIRABILIS-P.4-copy.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Each week Prof Bromfield and Dr Clattercut roll up their sleeves and plunge into the mail sacks that have arrived at the Royal Mythological Society's offices. (Dame Sepia wisely stays out of it.)<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 36.0pt;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "centschbook bt" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Dear gents<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: "centschbook bt" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">I’m not one for fancy words so I’ll come right to
point. I’m the gamekeeper for the Earl of Derby at his Whitley estate. Few days
back, there were a right exodus from the woods up by his coverts. Squirrels and
birds and mice and frogs, insects too, all come pouring out. You’d think whole
forest were aflame. And dead quiet after. I went on me own to take a look, none
of the beaters would stir an inch, and you’ve never heard the like of that
silence. Right in the heart of wood all the trees were down like skittles, and
in the midst were a great gigantic hand, knuckles like boulders and each nail
as big as a coal cellar door. Hairs on it like barbed wire. The old dog would
have nowt to do with it, no fool him.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: "centschbook bt" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">It’s just the hand, like, no blood or bone showing.
You’d mark it clay but for the plain fact it’s warm flesh. And it lies there,
cupped with the palm down, but not limp like a dead ‘un. More like your own
hand if it were resting on the arm of a chair, now and then moving just a bit,
a twitch or a scratch.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: "centschbook bt" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Well, there’s no shooting to be done while it’s there.
No wildlife will come within a mile of it, you see, except for adders. And I
can’t think what it’d take to move the thing. Any notions?<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #212121; font-family: "centschbook bt" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB;">Yours, Ben Gummer, Great Heck, Yorkshire<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "centschbook bt" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Dr Clattercut</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "centschbook bt" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">
replies: </span><span style="color: #212121; font-family: "centschbook bt" , serif;">This is a curiosity indeed. From the scale of the
extremity, I think we can surmise it belongs to a giant, god or titan. It is
unfortunate, Mr Gummer, that you omit to say whether it is a right or left
hand. The god Tyr, of course, famously had his right hand bitten off by the
Fenris wolf, whereby the Old Norse word for the wrist was “wolf-joint”.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "centschbook bt" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Prof Bromfield</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "centschbook bt" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">: </span><span style="font-family: "centschbook bt" , serif;">It would be a bit chewed up in that case, wouldn’t it?
Not to mention that Fenris swallowed the hand, so you’d expect to see
industrial quantities of wolf poo around. As Mr Gummer specifically says the
wrist is clean of blood, I take it to be more in the nature of a supernatural
dismemberment. Didn’t the Egyptian god Set use magic to sunder Osiris’s body
into fourteen parts?</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "centschbook bt" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Dr Clattercut</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "centschbook bt" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">: </span><span style="color: #212121; font-family: "centschbook bt" , serif;">But none of those parts, I think, would logically turn
up now in a wood in Yorkshire. More likely, I feel, the hand is a fragment of
one of the giants Gog and Magog, who were disjected by Brutus of Troy when he
founded Britain. This could also explain why snakes, which owe their allegiance
to older gods, are comfortable in the hand’s presence.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "centschbook bt" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Prof Bromfield</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "centschbook bt" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">: </span><span style="font-family: "centschbook bt" , serif;">As to the practicalities: it’s obviously too big to
get on a cart, even if Mr Gummer could induce the horses to approach it. So
what about tickling it with a feather. It’d take a bit of patience, but that
way it should be possible to get the hand to twitch and convulse enough to drag
itself out of the woods.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: black; font-family: "centschbook bt" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Dr Clattercut</span></b><span style="color: black; font-family: "centschbook bt" , serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">: </span><span style="color: #212121; font-family: "centschbook bt" , serif;">And, always assuming it didn’t flick its tormentor
away, unless you would take the trouble to tickle it all the way to the sea
that would still only result in a giant hand blocking the road. Personally I’d
advise putting a fence around the woods and moving the coverts elsewhere. No
doubt it’s a bother, but it’s the lesser of two bothers.</span></div>
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</iframe>Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-48440079576774316472018-09-10T08:27:00.001+01:002018-09-10T08:27:25.631+01:00The future back then<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSktHlHI6CZVNdowySzBrfeum494Pt1wm7lf5NsD2eMdYcRxSwQFOdGM7-AZz9QE2gz0w4YiTLgj0JYQBrCe6pejIxexf2uybphhw0n-bSeAhYd__Hn3kEcQR-zzKdjE4dbl6bOrbTmwM/s1600/Start-Trek-1-Blish.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSktHlHI6CZVNdowySzBrfeum494Pt1wm7lf5NsD2eMdYcRxSwQFOdGM7-AZz9QE2gz0w4YiTLgj0JYQBrCe6pejIxexf2uybphhw0n-bSeAhYd__Hn3kEcQR-zzKdjE4dbl6bOrbTmwM/s400/Start-Trek-1-Blish.jpg" width="237" /></a>I had an odd introduction to <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek" target="_blank">Star Trek</a></i>. Before I even knew the TV show existed, I came across the first <i>ST </i>book by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Blish" target="_blank">James Blish</a> in the newsagents on Wych Hill in Woking where I used to hang out in the hope of grabbing occasional US imports of Conan and Lin Carter books. The <i>Pokemon Go </i>of its day, that book-hunting. This must have been late '68 or early '69.
<br />
<br />
OK, so I'd heard of Blish and I figured this was in the same vein as Eric Frank Russell's <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Men,_Martians_and_Machines" target="_blank">Men, Martians & Machines</a></i>. It was only when I got home and read the blurb that I realized the stories were adapted from TV episodes which were not, as it turned out, going to air in Britain until the summer of '69. My mental image of the characters was informed solely by that cover. So I read the stories envisaging Spock as green and Bones looking like an older Jimmy Olsen.
<br />
<br />
I gave the book to a friend of mine at school who was taken to hospital with rapid-onset diabetes. He and I used to swap <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ace_double_titles" target="_blank">Ace Doubles</a> (back-to-back SF books) that you could buy super-cheap in Woolworths back then, so I figured he'd enjoy <i>Star Trek</i>. A few months later the BBC started running the show and all my friends became Trekkers. But I got there first.
<br />
<br />
With its grown-up storylines and in-built socialist humanism, <i>Star Trek</i> was always going to appeal more to me than the reactionary trend in SF typified by tropes like - well, royalism and mysticism and black-&-white morality and libertarianism. Naming no names. It was another era; an age of reason and hope. We were boldly going together towards a future that never contained the likes of Trump and Brexit.Dave Morrishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14468228790874490693noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7321339472666778123.post-64074249838643811522018-07-02T15:27:00.002+01:002018-07-02T15:27:28.618+01:00Wishing makes it so<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlb_sTRrfj_7NxK6NQznyg3764aGuqTSX21heTG64AAR8Bq6cNl0AnRjyiOA26PXZhbcNmMHqXHWDwzVtg2y34_2JEgx4G_c8rAfcFWNdcW6-xQkK7QQEfM7WhJKwm0PFkWGK9wJh6UA8/s1600/Green_Meteor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="272" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlb_sTRrfj_7NxK6NQznyg3764aGuqTSX21heTG64AAR8Bq6cNl0AnRjyiOA26PXZhbcNmMHqXHWDwzVtg2y34_2JEgx4G_c8rAfcFWNdcW6-xQkK7QQEfM7WhJKwm0PFkWGK9wJh6UA8/s400/Green_Meteor.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Another snippet of correspondence from the files of the Royal Mythological Society:<br />
<br />
<i>Dear Doctor Clattercut and Professor Bromfield</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>As it is the season for falling stars, and this summer we may expect a number of green meteors from the tail of Comet Meadowvane, I wonder what will result from the consequent spate of wishes all coming true?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>Yours,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>Frank Dyson,</i></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<i>Greenwich</i></div>
<br />
<b>Dr Clattercut replies:</b> It has been my experience that, for every person harbouring a given wish, there is somebody else who wishes the exact opposite. Therefore, although hundreds of wishes will be granted during this year’s meteor showers, the overall effects can be expected to cancel out. You’re very quiet, Bromfield.<br />
<br />
<b>Prof Bromfield:</b> I just realized that I’ve blown rather a lot of money at the bookies.<br />
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