Search for Elizabeth

By Margherita Smith

When her mirror fails to recognize her, Elizabeth seeks her being and its meaning by a panoptic indexing of “Elizabethness.” She explores names, people, places, stories, sounds, and numbers, documenting elements of an “Elizabeth continuum.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Margherita S. Smith
• Release date: Nov 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9780996196642

Margherita Smith

Margherita Smith has lived on three continents as the wife of an American diplomat. On his retirement, she worked as a proofreading manager, and taught proofreading in several seminars. She enjoys her retirement.

Book preview

Search for Elizabeth

by

Margherita Smith

Copyright © 2016  by Margherita Smith

All rights Reserved

ISBN 978-0-9961966-3-5

FIVE W’s (Late April 1988) 6

THREE WAYS TO THE FIFTH W 7

NOBLE ELIZABETHS 8

The annals tell us of Elizabeths who were born silver-spoon-in-mouth countesses and duchesses and baronesses and ladies. 8

LISA AND THE CLOUDS 10

ELIZABETH STORIES 11

A couple of real Elizabeths—Belle Starr and Betty Zane—have inspired legends: 17

KNOCK KNOCK 19

A LOOK AT MYSELF (Mid-May) 20

LOOK AT MYSELF (Late May) 25

ROYAL ELIZABETHS 27

The blood of many Elizabeth queens and princesses flows through history in the veins of the royal Louises, Charleses, Edwards, Georges, Jameses, Johns, Philips, and others: 27

Some royal Elizabeths marked history deeply: 27

ELIZABETHNESS 33

A LOOK AT MYSELF  (Early June) 34

ELIZABETH WIVES, MOTHERS, AND DAUGHTERS 37

ETYMOLOGY, FIGMENT 1 39

ELIZABETHS IN SONG AND VERSE 40

Several Elizabeths appear in ABC rhymes and books: 42

Various Elizabeths appear in James Whitcomb Riley’s verses, which describe events in a time far more innocent than ours. 43

A PERCEPTION OF ELIZABETH 45

The Art of Party Conversation 46

MRS. BEETON AND I 47

Recipes for Invalids  47

CONJUGATION 48

ELIZABETH AND BETTY—RENDEZVOUS 49

SMART ALEX 50

QUOTATIONS ON NINE 53

CONTEMPLATIONS FROM THE NINTH BOOK OF WILE AND WISDOM 54

Adages 54

Provocative Data About Animals, Umbrella Division 54

Provocative Data About Animals, Marshmallow Division 54

Unusual Methods of Our Ancestors, Fig Leaf Division 54

Unusual Methods of Our Ancestors, Charcoal and Benzoin Division 55

LILABET AND THE REALLY GOOD ADVENTURE 56

ETYMOLOGY, FIGMENT II 58

EPONYMOUS AND HOMONYMOUS ELIZABETHS 59

JEAN ELIZABETH AND THE FEAR OF CONSEQUENCES 63

ELIZABETH PATTERNS 64

BETH ANN AND THE PATTERNS OF PROFESSOR PLATZ 66

ELIZABETHS OF THE WRITTEN WORD 69

Bel, Bella, Belle 69

Bess, Beth, Rosabeth 69

Betsy, Bette, Betty 69

Elisabeth 70

Elisavietta 70

Eliza, Ann Eliza, Emma Dorothy Eliza, Frances Eliza 70

Elizabeth, Elizabeth 71

Whoever Elizabeth 78

Elsa, Else 80

Elspeth 80

Elzbieta 81

Isa 81

Isabel, Cicely Isabel, Isabella, Isobel 81

Lisa 82

Liz 82

Liza 82

Lizette 82

Lizzie 83

ELIZABETH AUTHORITIES AND SPECIALISTS, THEIR BOOKS 84

Diverse Specialties, A Sampling  84

•Animals 84

•Antiques  84

•Art and Architecture  84

•Collectibles 84

•Costume 84

•Death 84

•Exercise 84

•Feminism 84

•Food and Hospitality 85

•Games 85

•Gardening 85

•Handicraft 85

•History 85

•Interior Design 85

•Language 85

•Literature 85

•Music 86

•Religion 86

•Science 86

•Travel 86

Elizabeth Biographers 86

ELIZABETH PAINTERS AND SCULPTORS 88

A LOOK AT MYSELF (JULY) 89

ROOSTY GOES TO A WEDDING 90

(Adapted from a Spanish folktale) 90

A LOOK AT MYSELF (August) 100

QUEEN LIZAVETA AND THE ORIGINS OF THE J, THE U, AND THE W 101

A LOOK AT EHB !!! (September) 104

ELIZABETH’S RADIO CAREER 105

Cast 105

Scene 1 105

Scene 2 108

Scene 3 110

Eliza Jean and the Strange Phenomenon 114

ELIZABETHS IN MOTHER GOOSE 117

ELIZABETHS A LA MAMA GOOSE 120

A Look at Myself (Early October) 121

GEOGRAPHIC ELIZABETHS 122

Some geographic Elizabeths have been superseded. 122

ELIZABETH SITES AND INSTITUTIONS 123

ELIZABETH ACTRESSES 124

ELIZABETH SINGERS 125

A LOOK AT MYSELF  (MID-OCTOBER) 126

ELIZABETH PLACES REVISITED 127

ELIZABETH BASTARDS 128

ELIZABETH GHOSTS 129

ELIZABETH SPIES 130

SAINT ELIZABETHS 131

Elizabeth Witches 133

A LOOK AT ELIZABETH (Early DECEMBER) 134

Brook 134

Lane 134

INSPIRING ELIZABETHS 135

NOTABLE ELIZABETHS 137

Elizabeths in Biographies 143

Elizabeths in Biographies or Memoirs Written by Elizabeths 144

ELIZABETH FIRSTS AND FOUNDERS 145

ELIZABETH CHAMPIONS AND WINNERS 150

St. Isobel’s Wood 153

Part 8. Chapter One 156

Elisa Brooks and the Definitive Answer 156

A Look at Myself (December 1988) 158

A Fear of Numbers 158

The Magic of Vowels 159

Borogrove and the Spider 160

Vin Vinny Vinegar 162

Elizabeth Patterns II 164

Elizabeths the Year Around 167

Virtues of the Name Elizabeth 173

Elizabeth By Any Other Name 174

Some Elizabeths use initials, nicknames. pen names. or other names: 174

A few non-Elizabeths have adopted the name: 175

And at least one woman has made a strong beginning at finding her place in the immense complexity of the Elizabeth continuum:  175

NAMES 177

WWWWW 179

A LOOK AT MY SELF  (December 30) 180

FIVE W’s (Late April 1988)

Hello, I said to the long mirror on my closet door. Here I am, I said, Elizabeth Brooks, Elizabeth Hayward Brooks.

And the mirror answered, What? Where? Who are you?

Who What When Where Why? asked the Elizabeth in my skin along with her reversed image, htebazilE, in the mirror.

Oh, stop it, we protested. Put on your lipstick, Elizabeth. Take mirrors seriously; they are reflections of illusions.

But when I turned away, a voice called from somewhere inside me, a call that was a command filling me to my least consequential part, from top to bottom, bottom to top.

I am a professional copy editor working currently as an indexer and abstracter. I have instructed myself to try my professional skills in a personal quest.

So I have begun to search for Elizabeth Hayward Brooks—to inventory, to index, to document her. The walls of my little house are lined with books, and many contain accounts of Elizabeths, real and imaginary, dead and alive.

The walls of my mind are lined with recollections of people, places, facts, and feelings.

And within the walls of my mind is the furniture of invention, of my own fictional Elizabeths

I have taken Elizabeths one by one out of my books; I have copied and clipped Elizabeths from newspapers and magazines; I have collected Elizabeths on index cards. Card by card, group by group, I will organize; categorize, cross reference, and alphabetize the Elizabeths.

Then I will type the information into my computer and mix it with memories and imaginings. Little by little, I hope to piece together the mosaic, and find the meaning of my being.

THREE WAYS TO THE FIFTH W

I’m going to try to locate my Why in three ways  (triangulation, it’s called):

1. Research—Potting on computer my index card research notes on all the recorded Elizabeths I have encountered, mostly in the library, including those in history, fiction, and song, and also those with variations and derivations of the name—and there are many, such as Betty and Isabel

2. Fantasy—writing fiction and inventing amusements involving my name and its like and thereby perhaps helping my search.

3. Personal notes—examining my past and present, my knowledge, insights, and ideas, aiming to recognize my own Elizabeth pattern.

NOBLE ELIZABETHS

The annals tell us of Elizabeths who were born silver-spoon-in-mouth countesses and duchesses and baronesses and ladies.

•Elisabetta Gonzaga (1471–1526) was the wife of the Duke Guidobaldo. In four widely translated books of dialogues by Castiglione, she was characterized as the hostess at the court of Urbino where on four successive evenings her guests conversed on the qualities and behavior of the ideal courtier. The conversations covered social problems and intellectual accomplishments, and the books codified the rules of etiquette and courtesy in European courts. Her portrait by Raphael (or perhaps Montegna) depicts a long face and heavy-lidded eyes.

•Isabella d’Este (1474–1539) was another Gonzaga, by marriage. She and her sister, Beatrice, were noted for their patronage of the arts. And in those days, at the center of the Renaissance, the arts included the works of geniuses like da Vinci.

•Elizabeth Bathory. Erzsébet (Hungarian), Alzbéta (Czech) and Slovak), Elzbieta (Polish), (1560–1614), known throughout Central Europe as the Bloody Countess of Hungary, she may be the source of the Dracula legend. She disciplined dozens, perhaps hundreds, of servant girls by burning them with heated irons, cutting off their fingers, and beating them to death. Some reports say that she bathed in human blood to preserve her youth. In 1611 she was finally tried and sentenced to solitary confinement for the rest of her life, which lasted only a few more years.

•Lady Elizabeth, Dryden’s wife, once told her studious husband that she wished she were a book so she could have more of his company. If you do become a book, he said, let it be an almanac, for then I shall change you every year.

•Elizabeth Foster, governess in the Duke of Devonshire’s family, became the Duke’s mistress, and eventually his wife, but before that she had other suitors, including Gibbon and a doctor who are said to have exchanged these words:

DOCTOR: When my lady sickens from your nonsense, I’ll cure her.

GIBBON: When my lady dies from your prescriptions, I’ll immortalize her.

It’s said that Gibbon, who was corpulent, proposed to her on his knees, and then couldn’t get up.

•Elizabeth Gunning was the wife of two dukes and the mother of four—perhaps a record. She was a baroness in her own right and a duchess thrice. (Dr. Samuel Johnson called her a duchess of three tails: Her first husband was Duke of Hamilton and of Brandon; her second was Duke of Argyle.) In her youth, I’ve read, she was so beautiful that mobs followed her in London.

•Elizabeth Harmon, Lady Longford (1907), is the author of more than a dozen books and of eight authors (her writing children include Antonia Fraser).

•Elizabeth, Lady Holland, wrote this to her son in 1824: The silly Bishop Pelham married Lord de Dunstanville and Miss Lemon. The little he had to do, he did ill, throughout; and to the consternation of the clerk, closed the ceremony, by saying, ‘You are now God and Man,’instead of ‘Man and Wife.’

•Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury (1518–1608), became known as Building Bess of Hardwick. The Oxford Companion to English Literature quotes Lodge’s description of her as a woman of masculine understanding and conduct, proud, furious, selfish, and unfeeling. She was widowed four times. With the fortunes left by her husbands, she built four of England’s stately homes and completed Chatsworth.

•Princess Elisabeth de Croy, whose ancestors fought at Agincourt, runs the Refuge de Thiernay, an animal shelter in Nevers, France. A sign at the refuge says this:

ICI

TOUTE BETE ABONDONNEE

trouvera

REFUGE, SOINS, AFFECTION

Translation: Here all abandoned animals will find shelter, care,  affection.

LISA AND THE CLOUDS

I don’t know how to read yet, said five-year-old Lisa, and there’s nothing interesting to do, Mother.

You’re wrong, said Lisa’s mother. "You can read, Lisa. You only have to look around.

You can read that chair. It says, ‘I’m brown, and I’m a good place to sit to see out the window. I’ve held many people and listened to lots of talk, and Lisa spilled her milk on me yesterday.’Go outside, Lisa, and find something to read.

Lisa went outside and taught herself to read the clouds. With her fingertips she traced their outlines. With her fingertips she went outside the outlines. She made a cloud change its shape and made another one jump. She waved one away and then beckoned it close. She pulled out tufts and scattered them and gathered them and patted them into a ball.

She played with them and worked with them, sculptor and painter of clouds, and felt her power grow. She stretched out her arms, pushed the sky apart like a curtain, and exploded her world in thunder and lightning as the curtain crashed closed.

With tears and rain and fright on her face, she ran to her mother, sobbing, Mother, I did it! I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was bad. I pushed the sky apart and made the storm.

Don’t cry, Lisa, said her mother. It’s all right now. Just don’t do it again.

And Lisa never again played with clouds. But years later, whenever she remembered that she had pushed the sky apart, she wished she had looked into the gap.

ELIZABETH STORIES

•Bess, in Porgy and Bess, a folk opera by George Gershwin (1935), originally a novel by DuBose Heyward (1925) and a play by Heyward and his wife, Dorothy (1927), lives on Catfish Row and sings Summertime, and the livin’ is easy and is sung to by Porgy, Bess, you is my woman now.

•Beth March, in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1868), is the youngest of four sisters. There are many Beths in the world, shy and quiet, sitting in corners till needed and living for others so cheerfully that no one sees the sacrifices till the little cricket on the hearth stops chirping and the sweet, sunshiny presence vanishes, leaving silence and shadows behind.

In Part One, a dramatic chapter describes Beth’s illness and recovery from a fever.

In Part Two, we learn that Beth was—

not an invalid exactly, but never again the rosy, healthy creature she had been; yet always hopeful, happy, and serene, busy with the quiet duties she loved, everyone’s friend, and an angel in the house, long before those who loved her most had learned to know it.

When  I was a girl and wanted a good cry, I would read Chapter 36, Beth’s Secret (her knowledge that her illness was terminal) and Chapter 40, The Valley of the Shadow (her death):

The tide went out easily; and in the dark hour before the dawn, on the bosom where she had drawn her first breath, she quietly drew her last, with no farewell but one loving look, one little sigh.

•Clever Else, in Grimm’s Fairy Tales, meets the demands of her suitor, Hans, by proving she can be not only clever but careful: She takes so long down the cellar where she’s been sent to draw beer that one by one the maid, the boy servant, Else’s mother, her father, and Hans go to see what’s wrong, and each joins her in grieving and weeping there, because, Else explains—five times—If we get married and have a child and it grows up and we send it down here to draw beer, maybe that pickax hanging on the wall will fall and kill the child, and who wouldn’t cry about that?

•Isabella Linton, in Wuthering Heights, is tricked by the vengeful Heathcliffe into a loveless marriage to him. (He has already hastened the death of Catherine, who married Isabella’s brother, by cruelly accusing her of betrayal.) The unhappy Isabella runs away to the south. Heathcliffe manipulates their son, an ailing, peevish creature, into marrying Catherine‘s daughter and thus secures Thrushcross Grange, the Linton family property.

•Dame Lisa, the nagging wife in Jurgen, by James Branch Cabell (1919), vanishes in the midst of getting supper. All Jurgen’s adventures occur in his search for her and for his lost youth. At the turning point of the book, he says this:

I wonder if I want Lisa back? She was an excellent cook. There were pies I shall always remember with affection. And she meant well, poor dear! But … if