Read only if'n you care about silly steampunk characters
So, this gorgeous-and-talented type shows up on the Steam Fashion forum looking for characters to cheerfully bundle into her upcoming writing venture and opening the door for any one to send their character in to be so bundled. So she sez: "I'm not against any character unless they're obviously inappropriate for a serious(ish) tale." An I sez: "Sounds marvelous but I'm afraid my character doesn't easily lend itself to serious. I'm an aging lower-upper-class lady with an (unfortunately somewhat morbid) interest in botany to complement my husband who is a naturalist (you can tell because he kills things). (1) --> (1)(He only kills small things, though, which I've found is a much more healthy trait in a husband, as I was originally engaged to a marvelously masculine naturalist engaged in all sorts of African travels and rhino hunts and such, but he was eaten by an elephant. *nods sadly, with regret leavened by passing time*)" An she, bein' Miss Kindly As She Is sez: "Ha. I like the sound of that.... When I said serious, I meant more coherent/realistic. Talking with others and thinking of scene possibilities has gotten me very eager to start something (:" An I sez: "In that case, you're certainly welcome to borrow her. She'd be an appropriate traveler in any case, since like the real Lady Isabella Bird she's quite peppy about trotting around the globe. She is really just entering middle age but likes to claim advancing age as an excuse for all kinds of behavior, and frequently chimes in with the groups of seventy year old biddies about how it's such a shame to grow old, but we certainly had our days, didn't we? - because it gives marvelous cover for then following them in shamelessly matchmaking, meddling with things, pushing buttons to see what they do, and wearing loud colors and hats with birds on them (see prior mentioned naturalist husband for source of said birds, although some of his birds, such as the puffin, didn't work very well for this purpose) instead of an appropriately sere sort of garb that would properly suit advancing age. (And I might mention that said husband remains firmly convinced that the problem with the puffin was *not* with the hat but with social expectations, so I would beg you not to mention puffins around him.)" And then I decides to share my general bio with you because, well it took time and thought to write and I'm entertained. Should you in fact wish to share your character, pop her a line via LJ ID Corvidaen - no charas are guaranteed entry, but she's a pleasant chat in any case.
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A quick note following up on our chat re: your writing work. I am so pleased to meet a Lady Author. I think we had best ought to have Lady Everythings, particularly Lady Chairpersons, Lady Explorers, and Lady Millionaires.
My name (in character) is Alice Herthenbotham. I have just turned forty years of age and therefore qualify as being "of a certain age," of which I intend to take utmost advantage since there is certainly no guarantee that I shall pass fifty, far less attain that stature in years which guarantees one first place in any line one can transcend with a good whacking by one's cane. As it is, I think I've lived quite enough in those forty years to qualify for eighty. Alas, as the years pass we lose in resilience of the skin what we gain in skill and cunning, so I would be perfectly happy to pass for a remarkably well-preserved sixty rather than a sadly clinging thirty-five.
My youth was a fairly uneventful one, and my education a sound one despite my sex, aside from moving continent to continent frequently due to Papa's work as an envoy, orchidist, and spy. I'm afraid I've become insufficient at developing any lasting attachment to only one place, and feel great discomfort should my feet be rooted in the soil of one spot for more than a year at a time. My travels have acquainted me with a wide range of botanical wonders, from which I make modest use of my time with writing articles for ladies' gazettes and producing occasional specialized tinctures for pharmaceutical needs of various patrons of the arts. You may have seen my treatise on the variety of toxins used upon the tips of weapons by the indigenous peoples of varying climes, or upon the means of inuring oneself to various poisons (some followed that particular article with more exactitude than others, and I would note here that the circumstances regarding the disappearance of Lady Hortense Swift and the subsequent appearance of the creature which haunts the swampy netherlands of her estate indicate less that someone took advantage of my methods and more that Lady Swift was incapable of correctly following directions, despite the gossip published in the "Ladies' Fifth Column"). In each location Papa frequented whether for orchid or assassination, I studied with both a local gentleman of some specific classical learning, and with a local member of the citizenry in regard to the arts and talents of the region. Hence, I learned to develop various dyes, unguents and salves, to carve teakwood, to build a frame of bamboo, to brand cattle, to fold a crane out of paper, to serve thirty kinds of tea, and to tie a decent knot. Unfortunately many of these skills have little application in common life (certain Ladies whose names I will not note having an abominable inability to appreciate either tidy branding or tea with salt and yak butter), although I have embroidered some lovely pillows with images of warrior dances of the Maori.
We returned to England when I was twenty, with Mama in apoplexy that I would be unlikely to find a husband at such an advanced age, however we were in good fortune to return at the same time as my dear Lord Templeton Drake, adventurer and chief heir to his father's diamond mines. Good Tempie and I were smitten from the first, and spent fevered hours whispering to each other of the wonders of Peru, the bloody Aztec Festival of the Drinking Moon, and the properties of those solvents best designed to clean gore from a skinning blade. Tempie, you see, was a man among men, and I was Andromeda to his god-like Perseus. Yet the wings upon his heels took him but one month before our wedding date away to a far country from which he was never to return, eaten, as his men say, by an elephant, and a remarkably irascible one at that given the means of his departing this mortal coil.
God gives us small compensations for those things we lose, and while salving my wounds with a particularly potent infusion upon a gently sloping Tibetan hillside, a wandering traveller came to visit the small square yurt of my friends Dorjee and Pema. It was none other than my future husband Reginald Oswald Herthbotham III. Despite his lesser fortune in the area of names, he was the equal of dear Tempie in all but the tendency to wrestle wild hippo, which as we have briefly discussed does seem to be a point in his favor. In addition, while I managed to displace the puffin by means of transparent flattery into becoming a pelagic ornament for the dining table, I would dread the potential for similar argument in whether any part of a rhinoceros were appropriate for millinery use, as well as the probability that I would have to mount the dining table onto its back once I had suitably displaced the beast from my hat. There are certain practicalities of life to which we must attend; the degree to which my time would be taken up by taxidermy alone had Tempie lived would have been a sore and sorry dissuasion from continuing my global explorations.
Reggie and I now live comfortably upon his modest estate, and to touch a topic that is unfortunately unladylike, rarely need touch the resources left by his late parents and mine (Papa was digested by an orchid, Mama had unfortunate words with a Lady Practitioner of Voudoun - Reggie's parents passed on by the rather dreadful chance of falling off his roof, and I can't think what they thought they were doing up there in the first place). While I continue Papa's thriving trade in the rarest of orchids, funding is hardly short and I can rely upon the forward-thinking members of the Gentlemen's Association of Botanical Exploration to support my travels (particularly since I typically afford them a specific list of dangers to avoid upon their own journeys to locations I have marked out for pursuit within the club charter). Our needs are few aside from reliable or at least replaceable methods of conveyance and a source of well-cured jerky. We occasionally travel together, but often engage in our divers missions en solitude, to meet again in good cheer at our next crossing or to return to Herthbotham House for the annual thorough dusting it requires every Spring.
I do hope this brief sketch is of some use to you; if you have further questions please do not hesitate to inquire. I will endeavor to locate such portraiture as you have requested.
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A quick note following up on our chat re: your writing work. I am so pleased to meet a Lady Author. I think we had best ought to have Lady Everythings, particularly Lady Chairpersons, Lady Explorers, and Lady Millionaires.
My name (in character) is Alice Herthenbotham. I have just turned forty years of age and therefore qualify as being "of a certain age," of which I intend to take utmost advantage since there is certainly no guarantee that I shall pass fifty, far less attain that stature in years which guarantees one first place in any line one can transcend with a good whacking by one's cane. As it is, I think I've lived quite enough in those forty years to qualify for eighty. Alas, as the years pass we lose in resilience of the skin what we gain in skill and cunning, so I would be perfectly happy to pass for a remarkably well-preserved sixty rather than a sadly clinging thirty-five.
My youth was a fairly uneventful one, and my education a sound one despite my sex, aside from moving continent to continent frequently due to Papa's work as an envoy, orchidist, and spy. I'm afraid I've become insufficient at developing any lasting attachment to only one place, and feel great discomfort should my feet be rooted in the soil of one spot for more than a year at a time. My travels have acquainted me with a wide range of botanical wonders, from which I make modest use of my time with writing articles for ladies' gazettes and producing occasional specialized tinctures for pharmaceutical needs of various patrons of the arts. You may have seen my treatise on the variety of toxins used upon the tips of weapons by the indigenous peoples of varying climes, or upon the means of inuring oneself to various poisons (some followed that particular article with more exactitude than others, and I would note here that the circumstances regarding the disappearance of Lady Hortense Swift and the subsequent appearance of the creature which haunts the swampy netherlands of her estate indicate less that someone took advantage of my methods and more that Lady Swift was incapable of correctly following directions, despite the gossip published in the "Ladies' Fifth Column"). In each location Papa frequented whether for orchid or assassination, I studied with both a local gentleman of some specific classical learning, and with a local member of the citizenry in regard to the arts and talents of the region. Hence, I learned to develop various dyes, unguents and salves, to carve teakwood, to build a frame of bamboo, to brand cattle, to fold a crane out of paper, to serve thirty kinds of tea, and to tie a decent knot. Unfortunately many of these skills have little application in common life (certain Ladies whose names I will not note having an abominable inability to appreciate either tidy branding or tea with salt and yak butter), although I have embroidered some lovely pillows with images of warrior dances of the Maori.
We returned to England when I was twenty, with Mama in apoplexy that I would be unlikely to find a husband at such an advanced age, however we were in good fortune to return at the same time as my dear Lord Templeton Drake, adventurer and chief heir to his father's diamond mines. Good Tempie and I were smitten from the first, and spent fevered hours whispering to each other of the wonders of Peru, the bloody Aztec Festival of the Drinking Moon, and the properties of those solvents best designed to clean gore from a skinning blade. Tempie, you see, was a man among men, and I was Andromeda to his god-like Perseus. Yet the wings upon his heels took him but one month before our wedding date away to a far country from which he was never to return, eaten, as his men say, by an elephant, and a remarkably irascible one at that given the means of his departing this mortal coil.
God gives us small compensations for those things we lose, and while salving my wounds with a particularly potent infusion upon a gently sloping Tibetan hillside, a wandering traveller came to visit the small square yurt of my friends Dorjee and Pema. It was none other than my future husband Reginald Oswald Herthbotham III. Despite his lesser fortune in the area of names, he was the equal of dear Tempie in all but the tendency to wrestle wild hippo, which as we have briefly discussed does seem to be a point in his favor. In addition, while I managed to displace the puffin by means of transparent flattery into becoming a pelagic ornament for the dining table, I would dread the potential for similar argument in whether any part of a rhinoceros were appropriate for millinery use, as well as the probability that I would have to mount the dining table onto its back once I had suitably displaced the beast from my hat. There are certain practicalities of life to which we must attend; the degree to which my time would be taken up by taxidermy alone had Tempie lived would have been a sore and sorry dissuasion from continuing my global explorations.
Reggie and I now live comfortably upon his modest estate, and to touch a topic that is unfortunately unladylike, rarely need touch the resources left by his late parents and mine (Papa was digested by an orchid, Mama had unfortunate words with a Lady Practitioner of Voudoun - Reggie's parents passed on by the rather dreadful chance of falling off his roof, and I can't think what they thought they were doing up there in the first place). While I continue Papa's thriving trade in the rarest of orchids, funding is hardly short and I can rely upon the forward-thinking members of the Gentlemen's Association of Botanical Exploration to support my travels (particularly since I typically afford them a specific list of dangers to avoid upon their own journeys to locations I have marked out for pursuit within the club charter). Our needs are few aside from reliable or at least replaceable methods of conveyance and a source of well-cured jerky. We occasionally travel together, but often engage in our divers missions en solitude, to meet again in good cheer at our next crossing or to return to Herthbotham House for the annual thorough dusting it requires every Spring.
I do hope this brief sketch is of some use to you; if you have further questions please do not hesitate to inquire. I will endeavor to locate such portraiture as you have requested.