On Break in Hot Muggy Tally

The Victorians continue to amaze me, but then I’ve tended to think about them in cliches, and that’s never the most realistic or informative way to think about any group of people. I find it surprising that, for all their pride in progress, and the growing literacy rate, and scientific and technological advances, they had such a pervasive interest in the supernatural. One of the goals of the directed study I’ll do this fall is to find some reasons why.

I joined VICTORIA, the listserv for Victorian scholars, and the emails make for fun reading as people share things they've discovered or ask for, and receive, research help on various and sundry topics from servants to funeral practices to the fistfight between Sir George Chetwynd and the Earl of Lonsdale on July 23, 1885 in Rotten Row over who was to be Mrs. Langtry’s escort that day. Peers behaving badly! There's such a mass of written material out there still waiting to be mined for information, and some of it is starting to be digitized. If you belong to a subscribing school, for example, you can peruse the London Times of the 1800's from the comfort of your home.

I have another week of break (will find out on Tuesday what I’ll be teaching in the fall) and nowhere to go and nothing (official) to do, so I’m having loads of fun sorting and filing endless piles of paper which seem to accumulate and multiply on me no matter what I do. Also giving the place a good clean. I feel a little restless and homesick, but keep thinking (as Mom reminded me) that after this coming semester, I’ll have been here a year. Then one more year of coursework, and then prelims and the dissertation. Having invested this much time I am more determined than ever to finish. I am going to resist the temptation to go home to write the dissertation; always said I would, but I had no idea how strong the temptation would be. But I think it’s the path to derailment.

So I keep my eyes on the prize, spend a lot of time thinking about a dissertation topic that would be fun, and daydreaming about having my own little place again in Winter Park and seeing the girls and grandgirls and my friends, doing all the routine little things with them that I had taken for granted but which constituted A Life, one that I very much want to get back to.