Off for 18th century conference at Baltimore Hyatt, the Inner Harbor

Irene Soames (Gine McKay) as old Jolyon (Corin Redgrave) comes upon her in the grounds of Robin House for the first time (2002 Forsyte Saga, Part 5)

Dear friends and readers,

I’ve not had time to blog here again since Saturday. I’ve been off-line from Hurricane Sandy: I hope all who read this blog and are in the area affected by the vast intense storm. are now safe and have access to power again or know when they are going to have access and in the meantime have somewhere to go for sleep, rest, comfort, and food. And that eventually you are compensated and helped out of your losses again insofar as this is possible.

And for been weeks busy with my own tales of upstairs/downstairs (house improvements DIY). Not to omit writing some portraits (Henry and Eliza Austen, Aunt Jane) and about Austen’s letters on Austen Reveries.

I’ve a new plan I hope to go through with. Preparatory to the third season of Downton Abbey, I will at least post my blogs on the episodes from last season, culminating in the Christmas special, as well my continual watching of the two Forsyte Sagas, both 1967 and 2002, a pleasurable and instructive comparison: both are superb. I mean to return to serious film studies, to go through the first and second; the still at the head of this blog is one of Irene Soames shortly after the death of Philip Bossiney, her lover, and her escape from Soames. She wanders in the idyllic Robin House grounds where the idyllic interlude with the old man begins.

I’ve been reading Gaskell (Mary Barton, North and South), Trollope (Castle Richmond), Dickens (Bleak House and now Little Dorrit), not to omit Charlotte Smith (Ethelinde, and just finishing her first novel, Emmeline, or, The Orphan of the Castle), and about historical fiction. I do hope to share some of this with you, as well as translation studies and foremother poets to come.

Where I spill my life, much I love close at hand, near to heart

Cheers,
from Ellen and Jim