Reading, etc.
Jul. 19th, 2020 07:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeI have had a pretty meh weekend. For the last few months I've been precariously balancing going out for walks, very early in the morning when it's nice and quiet, and getting enough sleep, and this weekend I was tired enough that the walks had to be sacrificed entirely. And it's been such nice weather, and there are terns on the river, and I really want to go out for a properly long walk, and I suppose the idea that I won't be able to just do that in the daytime for many months yet is getting to me a little.
However! Other things continue. I have finished a draft of my latest Flight of the Heron fic, which has ended up over 11,000 words long—the second longest fic I've ever written, which I'm quite pleased with, although some of the ideas in it are still slightly rough and it needs a bit more polishing before it'll be ready to post. We shall see.
Also, lots of reading. I've finished the third and final volume of The Lyon in Mourning (1750-75), which contains all sorts of good stuff. Forbes kept on collecting for some years after the Rising, and went on taking an interest in the people he got these stories from also—he's a real champion of the men who helped the Prince in his flight after Culloden, singing their praises to all his correspondents (do you know that they spurned a reward of thirty thousand pounds sterling—which, to be fair, was an awful lot of money in those days, Forbes is right to be so impressed) and organising collections of money for them when they fall on hard times. There's also some more useful stuff for Broster fandom, including a detailed description of the Prince's relations with Lochiel and Archibald Cameron during his time in hiding, which appears to have been Broster's source for some of the timeline in part 5 of FotH, and an account of Dr Cameron's later execution, which I suppose will be relevant later on... About halfway through this volume Forbes appears to have run out of material on the '45 itself, and the rest of the collection is made up of copies of his correspondence with various Jacobite friends—in which Charles, still evidently a dangerous topic, is referred to under such disguised names as 'Cousin Peggie' and 'the Sultan of Constantinople'. These were less immediately relevant, although there are some interesting comments on current events later on in the century—including the troubled economic times, the Parliamentary drama surrounding John Wilkes, the brewing War of American Independence and a sadly prophetic observation of the beginnings of mass emigration from the Highlands, which, says Forbes, 'may terminate in depopulating Old Caledon!'. Volume III read, I now only have the itinerary of Prince Charles's movements while he was in Scotland, put together by the publishers as a supplement, to go—I will either get to this at some point, or just use it for reference when writing FotH fic and meta, I think.
Now I'm reading another Selma Lagerlöf book, which is going well. I've also discovered that the excellent fadedpage.com has South Riding by Winifred Holtby (which, due to the way the dates work out, is public domain in both Canada and the UK but not in the US, so not on the big US-based ebook sites)—I'm very happy about this and anticipating a re-read soon. :)
However! Other things continue. I have finished a draft of my latest Flight of the Heron fic, which has ended up over 11,000 words long—the second longest fic I've ever written, which I'm quite pleased with, although some of the ideas in it are still slightly rough and it needs a bit more polishing before it'll be ready to post. We shall see.
Also, lots of reading. I've finished the third and final volume of The Lyon in Mourning (1750-75), which contains all sorts of good stuff. Forbes kept on collecting for some years after the Rising, and went on taking an interest in the people he got these stories from also—he's a real champion of the men who helped the Prince in his flight after Culloden, singing their praises to all his correspondents (do you know that they spurned a reward of thirty thousand pounds sterling—which, to be fair, was an awful lot of money in those days, Forbes is right to be so impressed) and organising collections of money for them when they fall on hard times. There's also some more useful stuff for Broster fandom, including a detailed description of the Prince's relations with Lochiel and Archibald Cameron during his time in hiding, which appears to have been Broster's source for some of the timeline in part 5 of FotH, and an account of Dr Cameron's later execution, which I suppose will be relevant later on... About halfway through this volume Forbes appears to have run out of material on the '45 itself, and the rest of the collection is made up of copies of his correspondence with various Jacobite friends—in which Charles, still evidently a dangerous topic, is referred to under such disguised names as 'Cousin Peggie' and 'the Sultan of Constantinople'. These were less immediately relevant, although there are some interesting comments on current events later on in the century—including the troubled economic times, the Parliamentary drama surrounding John Wilkes, the brewing War of American Independence and a sadly prophetic observation of the beginnings of mass emigration from the Highlands, which, says Forbes, 'may terminate in depopulating Old Caledon!'. Volume III read, I now only have the itinerary of Prince Charles's movements while he was in Scotland, put together by the publishers as a supplement, to go—I will either get to this at some point, or just use it for reference when writing FotH fic and meta, I think.
Now I'm reading another Selma Lagerlöf book, which is going well. I've also discovered that the excellent fadedpage.com has South Riding by Winifred Holtby (which, due to the way the dates work out, is public domain in both Canada and the UK but not in the US, so not on the big US-based ebook sites)—I'm very happy about this and anticipating a re-read soon. :)
