TANGENT/

Speaking of Brussels sprouts, I’ve been noticing a disturbing web-wide trend of disparaging these heroic vegetables.  (Carolyn Jewel, I am looking at you!  Yes, I saw that interview!)  While driving along the coast, I obtained two stalks of Brussels sprouts and they changed my world.  I am here to tell you that said stalks are 1) fun to wave like wands; 2) ideal for bopping people atop the head; 3) DELICIOUS.  I now issue a dare to all the haters:

1. You get some Brussels sprouts and slice them into thirds.

2. You put them into a bowl and add a whole lot of olive oil, salt, and chopped raw garlic.

3. You mix it all up.

4. You toss the contents onto a tinfoil-covered pan and cook it for twenty to twenty-five minutes at 400-425 degrees, depending on your oven.

5. When the sprouts look nicely browned on top, you remove the pan and you eat the sprouts with sour cream.

6. Then you come back and talk to me about how you like Brussels sprouts!

* Disclaimer: If you steam the sprouts, all bets are off.  I cannot argue with the awfulness of steamed Brussels sprouts.

/END TANGENT

I am one of those curious children who truly enjoys being at home with my parents, doing nothing.  Indeed, if left to my own devices, I would have been shamefully content to spend all twenty days of my break sitting on my parents’ couch, egg nog (AND BRUSSELS SPROUTS) to my left, sourdough bread and e-reader to my right, mainlining various World War II-themed miniseries. Winds of War and War and Remembrance?  So fantastic!  (Apart from the whole miscasting thing. Robert Mitchum is a fantastic actor, but he was 65 at the time the first series was shot, playing a character who’s supposed to be 39 or 40.  As a result, a romance that thrilled me in the book began to seem rather…icky…on-screen.)

But the Lad, AKA my partner in crime, was out in California to meet the parents.  And he insisted we Do Stuff.  Which, you know, sounded reasonable.

So off we went to the aquarium in Monterey, where I ogled a great many jellyfish, cuttle-fish, octopuses (nope, it doesn’t pluralize to octopi, apparently.  This bums me out for obscure reasons.  I guess I like the idea of a Latinate sea creature), sharks, and otters.  I return to you with a discovery: the underwater world is twice as weird as anything ever shown to me in Star Trek: The Next Generation (a formative influence).

The aquarium experience also got me thinking about how wonder is such a devalued feeling in adult life.  As a child, so many things are new and strange, but once we grow up and settle into jobs and learn the art of juggling bills and various other responsibilities, we tend to forget to take time to search for the strange and unexpected.  I certainly forget how rejuvenating it can be to encounter something you knew absolutely nothing about.  Sea horses, for instance—did you know they could look like this?

Not a great photo, but trust me, the sea horse is technicolor.

At the aquarium, I felt like a wide-eyed kid as I walked through those rooms, and I left feeling younger and lighter, somehow.

The other wondrous highlight of my holiday was The Secret River, by Kate Grenville.  This is a beautifully written piece of historical fiction that conjures 18^th century London and Australia with vivid, gripping immediacy.  I highly recommend it to the historical fiction fans out there!

All right, I feel a wee bit bad having posted and said not a word about writing.  Suffice it to say that A Lady’s Lesson in Scandal is off my desk, into production, and features a heroine who’s my favorite yet.  (How amusing: I feel slightly bad admitting that…as though Lydia and Emma and Gwen et al might take offense.  Ha!)  I’ll be sure to speak more of ALLiS in my next post. In the meantime, please attend to your Brussels sprouts!

The question then becomes: how does this backstory make for a plot?  To answer this question, I… procrastinate. I play with random ideas, read everything I can get my hands on, and daydream to a long and inspiring playlist of Music that Deeply Offends My Boyfriend’s Superior Taste.

I also occasionally entertain myself by searching Parliamentary records and date-restricted Google results. During my most recent search, I discovered a Ghost in the Google Machine: Eva Fox-Strangway, birthdate: unknown; death: March 1910.

Eva Fox-Strangway: who were you?  Not who you said you were: that much is clear.

Your story seems as extraordinary as any piece of fiction. The internet has only two records of your existence: both New York Times articles, the first of which details your arrest, and the second of which records (after an amusing article on how ladies’ Bible study groups will save us from the evils of suffrage) your death.

As far as I can tell, you were clever, well-educated, ambitious, and beautiful – or “personally attractive,” as the newspaper so delicately put it.  You also had a talent for lying.  You came to the United States in 1907; to acquaintances on your ocean liner, you introduced yourself as the niece of the Earl of Ilchester.

But you weren’t the niece of Lord Ilchester.

Who were you?

Your new acquaintances were charmed by you; by the time autumn rolled around, you were a staple in America’s most glittering social circles: Newport, New York, Philadelphia.  But by the summer, you must have realized that you’d overplayed your hand.  You disappeared, leaving behind you a string of creditors who wanted recompense—dressmakers, jewelers, the Savoy Hotel.

You reappeared a month later in Montreal.  You must have felt more daring than ever, for now you were not merely the niece of Earl Ilchester, you were his countess.  You stayed at Place Viger Hotel.  They caught on quicker this time.  They seized your trunks for collateral.  You fled to Toronto, where you were caught and arrested at the end of August.

How did you get out of custody so quickly?  Did you work some magic on the lawmen?  For a year later, in autumn 1908, you were back in New York, where you now introduced yourself as Helen Drummond.

Why did you go back to New York?  With such talents of deception, I expect you could have moved to a new city and started your game from scratch.  Instead, you chose to go back.  Was there someone in New York whom you’d decided you couldn’t leave behind?

And why, of all things, did you choose to work as a journalist – side by side with someone who had interviewed you when you were Eva Fox-Strangway? You liked living on the edge; that much is clear. And for a time, you succeeded.  Somehow, the journalist didn’t recognize you.

And so you took bigger risks.  (Why?  What was driving you?)  You went to the very police station where your photograph was hanging in the Rogues’ Gallery, to ask questions related to your new job as a journalist.  You became a public figure, briefly.  You claimed to have known the President, and he never contradicted you.  You gave speeches about women’s right to vote.  You interviewed U.S. senators and society leaders.  You had your articles published in London newspapers.  (Was that where you were really from?  Were you amused at the idea of former acquaintances from the homeland—former lovers, your mother, your brother or sister—reading your words, all unaware of the success you’d found under your new name?)

But your end was nearing, although you didn’t know it.  An acquaintance spotted you and outed you to one of your fellow journalists, who scented a story.  (Was his ardent pursuit of the truth motivated, perhaps, by his envy of your sudden rise to journalistic fame?)  He confronted you.  Asked you if you knew one Eva Fox-Strangway. You bluffed your way through it—successfully, you must have thought.

This was when you should have run.  It seems you had the chance.  But instead you stuck around (who or what was holding you there?  Why was it so important for you to be in New York?), trading on the new friendships you’d made, hoping you could secure a loan and keep your new life going.

On March 3, 1910, they came to arrest you.

You drank poison.  It didn’t kill you immediately.

They shipped you off to Bellevue Hospital for treatment.  They held a trial while you lay unconscious.

You were sentenced to twelve months imprisonment.

On March 9, you died of the poison you’d drunk.

Eva, if I put you into a romance novel, I would knock that poison from your hand.  I would give you a history that illuminated why deception seemed to be the only choice remaining to you.  I would give you a mother who anxiously hunted through newspapers for the articles you published – or a brother who was searching for you tirelessly.  I would give you a hero who appreciated the extraordinary nature of your talents, and who helped you turn them to something other than petty thievery.  I would give you a happy ending.

There’s only one thing I wouldn’t do: I would never, ever strip of you of your incredible nerve.

That journalist who asked you about the criminal, Eva Fox-Strangway?

“I’m very sorry,” you told him, “but I can’t help you in this.  You see, I haven’t been in the habit of associating with swindlers of any kind, international or otherwise.”

Such incredible steel.  From such steel are heroines born.