MDMD(11): Susannah Peach

[Dave Monroe]

"Of course Mason was there hoping to see Susannah
Peach, even if it had to be from a distance,
surrounded by cousins and friends,  She would appear,
as always, in silk." (M&D, Ch. 16, p. 169)

Of course, despite her seemingly, Pynchonally
improbable name, an historical Susannah Peach would
indeed later marry instead the Revd. James Bradley,
A.R.S. (1693-1762), the third Astronomer Royal
(1742-62) on 25 June 1744 at Minchinhampton,
Gloucester ...

http://web.ukonline.co.uk/flight/minchin/minchmarr8.html

I'm presuming that her father, Samuel Peach, was
indeed "a silk mercahnt of some repute, and a growing
Power within the East India Company" (p. 169), but
apparently his Power did not grow enough such that I
could much get the goods on either father of daughter
here.  So if anyone has anything ...

But do note, from p. 169 ...

"Savage flowers of the Indies, demurer Blooms of the
British garden, stripes and tartans ..."

Not only that Savage/demure//Indies/British thing, but
also ...

Pastoureau, Michel.  The Devil's Cloth:
   A History of Stripes and Striped Fabric.
   Trans. Jody Gladding.  NY: Columbia UP, 2001.

Trevor-Roper, Hugh.  "The Invention of Tradition:
   The Highland Tradition of Scotland."  The Invention
   of Tradition.  Ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence
   Ranger.  New York: Cambridge UP, 1983.  15-41.

http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/history/material_culture/rmclean/html/trad.htm

But cf. nonetheless, on Rebekah ...

"If she was not like Susannah, a Classick English
Rose, neither was she any rugged Blossom of the Heat."
(p. 171)

And continuing from p. 169 ...

"... foreign colors undream'd of in Newton's
prismatics ..."

Pastoureau, Michel.  Blue: The History of a Color.
   Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 2001.

"... damasks with epic-length Oriental tales woven
into them, requiring hours of attentive gazing whilst
the light at the window went changing so as to reveal
newer and deeper labyrinths of event ..."

James, Henry, "The Figure in the Carpet" (1896) ...

ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext96/fgcpt10.txt

Thanks again for that one, Sam ...

"Velvets whose grasp of incident light was so
predatory and absolute that one moved closer to
compensate for what was not being refelcted, till it
felt like being drawn, oneself, inside the unthinkable
contours of an invisible surface."

E.g. ...

Thorne, Kip S.  Black Holes and Time Warps:
   Einstein's Outrageous Legacy.  New York:
   W.W. Norton & Co., 1994.

And do see ...

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/htmltest/rjn_bht.html

Okay, winding down here now ...




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