Too Dead to Swing

While at the library, I happen upon an interesting find in the audio-visual section with the radio programs. Too Dead to Swing is a audio play which focuses on a mystery set in an all-girl swing band in 1940. Cabaret singer Ann Hampton Calloway provides the singing for the group. Susan Egan plays the main character Katy Green, a struggling violinist & alto saxophonist. The composer and band director is played by Harry Groener who I remember fondly from his stint as the Mayor of Sunnydale on Buffy. And the band's new publicity representative is Simon Jones who my parents would know as Arthur Dent from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Small world. There are four cassette tapes in the program. Supposedly they intend to release other titles in the series.

Lost from her Majesties back

I returned my Interlibrary Loan book to my local library. I borrowed Janet Arnold's "Lost from Her Majesties Back", a fascinating little book on the gowns and jewels of Elizabeth I, published by the Costume Society in 1980. The manuscript came from a Day Book maintained by one of queen's ladies-in-waiting. Whenever an article of clothing was given away, or fabric was given as livery, an entry was written in the book, along with the receiving signature. Or if a jewel went missing, even a single pearl during the beading of a Queen's dress, an entry was also included, so that every gown or jewel was accounted for. Arnold includes a glossary for those who don't know a farthingale from a partlet. She also includes a helpful key, so you can tell if an entry was crossed out of the book. After all, a Queen has a right to change her mind.

The entries themselves are stories in themselves like Queen Mary's old jewelry that was lost after it was loaned out for use in a play. Or the fabric sent to the steward of a bishop as payment for spying on his master for the Queen. Or the garments given to an "Irish gentlewoman" at a time when Elizabethan relations with Ireland were tenuous at best. [And would-be writers scoff at doing research when so many ideas *come* from research in the first place!]

Reading biographies on Elizabeth I, one can almost understand her fascination with clothes. When her father King Henry VIII married Jane Seymour, he seems to have completely forgotten about the little Princess Elizabeth. The princess was at the age when children outgrow their clothing quicker than they can wear them, prompting the royal nanny to complain to King Henry. The mistake was rectified, but my guess is Elizabeth never forgot. She was thrifty, though, recycling old gowns to her ladies when necessary.