Flight of the Heron read-along: Part II chapters 1-2

[regshoe]

Charlie is my darling, the Young Chevalier...

Flight of the Heron (under the title The Jacobite Trilogy) is doing very well in Yuletide sign-ups—3 requests and 4 offers at present :D

Next week we'll read the second half of Part II, chapters 3 and 4.

Comments

[luzula]

I like the title of this part ('Floodtide'). And the melody of the song should go like this, if it's the same as 'To Daunton Me'.

There might have been a sense of doomed gaiety to the scene at the ball, given how things will go later in the war, but since Broster rather goes for the comedy in the historical exposition that comes before it, we get a lighter tone. Which I appreciate! I like Ewen and Alison's banter, and then the whole atmosphere of spy antics, with disguises, secret passages, etc. It's a lot of fun, and I also enjoy seeing what Ewen's loyalty to the Prince means in practice: it doesn't mean uncritical devotion. He's quite willing to argue with BPC when he thinks he's wrong, and isn't willing to be insulted.

And of course there's Keith turning up again! Of which more in the next chapter. : D

O'Sullivan doesn't look very sympathetic through Ewen's eyes, which is realistic in the sense that there was definitely some dissension among BPC's followers. O'Sullivan wasn't just quartermaster in the sense that he was responsible for supplies--he was also responsible for coordinating staff work. According to Duffy he was very competent, and the quick tempo of the invasion of England was partly his work.

'The nightly stenches of Edinburgh proper', heh. There was a great description in a 1730's collection of letters from an English officer in Scotland that I recently read, saying how 10 pm was apparently the agreed-upon time for everyone to pour the contents of their chamber-pots from their windows. The hapless visitor did not know that this was a bad time to be out in the street...

I had to look up the Darnley reference ('Ewen went into the bedchamber which had once been the ill-fated Darnley's'), which I didn't know, and here it is.

Do you think amber is a good color for Ewen? Hmm. I guess it's a warm color that might go along with his auburn hair, but my instinct would have been blue or green, to contrast more with his hair. But really I don't know how people chose colors back then...and it's not like I'm great at fashion, anyway.

[hyarrowen]

I looked up colours for red haired, blue eyed people last year, and came up with blue and green, yes, and also dark brown and snuff-colour. I don't think either of those last two would be very suitable for a ball, but amber is close enough to snuff-colour that it might work.

[luzula]

Ah, my instincts were right, then. : ) Keith, on the other hand, looks good in red, I think...

[hyarrowen]

Keith looks good in anything.

:D

[luzula]

Hee! I am a huge fan of Keith myself, but I think you may in fact be his greatest fan. : D

[regshoe]

Yes, I like the light tone of the ball—less knowledge of what's going to happen later and more of an immediate sense of things as they are in this historical moment, which works well.

Oh dear, those chamber-pots are a good historical detail!

I suppose Ewen's hair being powdered would affect what colours he might wear with it—amber-colour and grey could go together fairly well. But I don't have any idea about eighteenth-century colour tastes either!

[luzula]

Oh, of course--his hair is powdered, I forgot that! And it would affect the color. Such a weird thing to do...

[regshoe]

Such a weird thing to do...

Fashion! :D

[impala_chick]

Now I'm trying to Google pictures of what powdered hair looked like...

[regshoe]

The historical fashion/hairstyling side of Youtube has some videos of people demonstrating the use of hair powder—here's one using a real 18th century hairdressing manual. Very interesting context...!

[luzula]

Oh my god. I hadn't actually realized what went into making those hair styles. *boggles* The person in that video is brave! I'm not sure I'd dare to try that--well, I couldn't, since my hair is less than a centimeter long, but I wouldn't dare if I had long hair. Somehow it seems typical that women had to go through all that, and men could just put on a wig!

Well, I had actually already planned in an upcoming fic to write more about the time in Edinburgh, some of it from Alison's POV, so I've got to work this in. : ) But surely Alison doesn't have a hairdo like this in the scenes at Ardroy? It seems impractical.

*checks the book* We have Who was this pretty Miss Grant with the blue fillet in her dark hair? And a fillet is a ribbon to tie up the hair, according to the OED. So it seems her hair isn't powdered. I wonder if she would wear a snood, which unmarried Scottish women seem to have done?

[regshoe]

I have to imagine that hairstyles like that were largely a way for very grand ladies to show off how much leisure time and how many skilled servants they had—surely women like Alison would have worn much simpler styles most of the time. Certainly the portraits of women in the illustrations to Damn' Rebel Bitches look a little bit simpler.

The snood is nice! I shall picture something like that.

[ethelmay]

Having red hair would also affect his complexion, which was presumably not powdered. The 1788 Trumbull portrait of Thomas Jefferson shows him with an amber sort of waistcoat.

[impala_chick]

Oh interesting info. I liked how Ewen is not just a blind follower too, which definitely goes with what we know about him so far. I was a little confused about the animosity towards some of BPCs crew, like O'Sullivan. that made for some funny situations though.