Once a week on Friday, Uncle Bardie celebrates the creativity in others by shining a Spotlight on a movie, a song or a creator. In celebration of Women’s History Month, this week’s Spotlight Song is Janis Joplin’s amazing performance of “Ball and Chain” at the Monterrey Pop Festival in 1967:
There are no words for Janis. Just seeing her leaves you stunned. What a force of nature she was.
In which Two-Ems is disappointed. We meet our heroine and the dilemma she finds herself in.
Previously the reader is introduced to Lord Dunnie, a member of the British aristocracy with one foot in the cemetery and one in the grave. He is dead broke. Sir Myles di Fussye-Pants suggests an American heiress is the solution to his dilemma. Lord Dunnie agrees.
When Sir Myles arrived home that foggy day in Londontown, he introduced his darling dear to his matchmaking scheme. However Mrs. Sir was not in the least enthusiastic. She wasn’t sure she could get any American heiress to go along with the proposition.
“That old wrinkled old thang,” she said. “He’s beginning to putter on one putter. He’s such a prune Danish and I am sure his putter is a prune as well. After all, we Americans like our prunes primed and ready to putter like yours, my dear Mylesie. By the way, we haven’t puttered all week. I need some puttering or it’s off to Daddy.”
With a right good jolly tallyho, he followed his wife into their boudoir. After three or four y’alls and an equal amount of war whoops, Sir in his altogether altogethers brought up the subject again. “Yes,” he said lying next to his beloved Two-Ms in their room-sized bed, “Dunnie is from good Viking stock. Viking and American stock, what an amazing copulation that would be.”
“But … “Her pouty lips pouted their pouty-est.
“It is a done deal, this deal with Dunnie. Society must have what society must have and we must all do our part in the game. Otherwise there will be no tally to tally-ho. The hounds won’t run and the fox will make an escape. So pleeze, my sweet, no pouty-wouties pleeze
“Yes, Mylesie,” she said, knowing when the battle was lost to his stiff upper lip. “Give a little, get a lot” was her motto, and she knew this was one of those times when it wouldn’t do to lay down the gauntlet.
“We’ll commission a Commission for The Match that we shall match matchlessly, you see. You do see, don’t you. We’ll ask Mother to do the commissioning. She’s right good for a nuptial or two. After all, she did well by us.”
“So who shall the unlucky girl be? I mean, lucky. Who shall we commission for Lord Dunnie?”
“I had in mind someone your own sweet self suggested. The daughter of a certain John Smith, the owner of Pocahantas Shipping. In American financial circles, he is very very, if you know what I mean.”
“But, Mylesie, I didn’t mean to connect her with an old fuddy, duddley like Wimsey Prissysottsey. I meant her for one of your young layabout studdleys. I promised her Moms. We’re cousins, you know, and the Old Prune will be such a disappointment. She wanted a regular Beau Brummell for her sweet young thang.”
“It’s Wimpleseed-Prissypott, dears. He’s the one.”
“Well, if you insist,” she said, then rolled over and gave him her sexiest kiss. She knew it was settled, and she wasn’t completely unhappy. Now she would have a friend to shop with, to spend their fathers’ fortunes with, to attend the balls with, to show off the best of the colonies, to make all those spoiled British society ladies jealous.
Thus it was agreed, and thus it was an American heiress who was agreed upon. She would be the spot of tea to pour new life into that old Wimpie. She was the very very that Dunnie needed. And the money wouldn’t be bad either.
#####
When the subject was broached to her of the arranged arrangement, the future Lady Marye Caterina Wimpleseed-Prissypott thought the arrangement was another of her mother’s derangements. She wanted none of it. At that time, her ladyship was a plain-jane Mary-Mary Smith from Brooklyn Heights. She hated the very idea of marrying a title to provide respectability for her filthy nouveau-riche family from the Southside of Nowheresville. She wanted what everybody wants when they are young and looking at life in all its potentials and their hormones are hormoning all over the place and they’ve got a bankload of cash to do anything that pops into their pretty little heads. True love. And the true love Mary-Mary wanted was her boyfriend from Brooklyn.
She had every intention of marrying that boyfriend of six months, Dilly O’Jones. She called him “My Sweet Dills,” when she was in the throes of passion. She was always in the throes of passion when he was within a block of her nubile and ready body. She loved to run her slim fingers through his ultra-greased, dark, Italian hair, hair he had inherited from his mamma’s side of the family. She held onto his tresses for her dear dear life on the back of his motorbyke when they cruised the streets of Manhattan. Though there was a lot of foreplay between this Romeo and Juliet, they had never consummated the relationship. She remained untouched, as pure as the driven snow.
She was still a virgin, but there were times she longed to surrender the state of her virginia to this dilly of a boyfriend. He was such a handsome lad that all the females he passed swooned and fainted when they saw his baby blues. But he had sworn his true love to his Mary-Mary from Brooklyn Heights and he was a man of his word. He loved her true-ly with all the trulyness his passionate, young Irish-Italian heart contained. Even more than that, he loved her a lot.
Unfortunately, for the young lovebirds, Mary-Mary had a mother and this mother reminded her how much she and her father had done for her. “With great wealth comes great responsibility,” her Moms said.
“But, Moms,” the sweet young thing said as she primped in front of the large mirror in the hallway, “when a girl has money, she has money. But money is not enough. One must have true love to be a happy girl. Otherwise … well, just otherwise.”
“That responsibility,” her Moms came back at her, “is the cost of the money. And there isn’t an otherwise in the world that can change that. It’s a trade-off. You can either be happy or you can be rich. Me, I’d rather be nouveau-riche. I may not be able to buy happiness but, at least, I can buy the dress. I am not up to living in some hovel on the side of the road, worrying about the kids and their next meal. And neither are you, dear.”
“But, Moms,” Mary-Mary said, ignoring her Moms’ logic, “you want me to marry unhappiness and misery. I want My Sweet Dills and I don’t like the pickle you’re putting me in. Daddykins can give him a position in his shipping company.”
“You would have your husband living off your fortune?”
“That’s what you are suggesting,” the daughter said. “To prop up some old fuddy of a British lord with Daddykins’ money.”
“This is different,” Moms said. She said it in such a way that you could take it all the way to the bank. She took her daughter by the shoulders and turned her to face her mother. “We’re getting a title in exchange.”
“I want Dills,” Mary-Mary demanded. “My Sweet Dills, and you’re turning everything sour.”
“Oh, dear,” her mother, Margaret Smith, smiled, eyeing her daughter’s nubile buxomy bosomss, “your sweet dill of a pickle only wants one thing, and it’s not your Daddykins’ money.”
“But Daddykins said I could be with whoever I wanted. I want Dills.”
“Whom, dear.”
Next Week: An American Girl Gets Aristocratted
“I tried to stop. Honest I did,” the woman said.
“My car. My beautiful car.” The man was crying. “Look what you did to my beautiful car.”
Then she turned on him. “Oh, get over.” At that, she walked back to her Chevy. She was tired of men crying every time they got a little scratch. She waited for the police.
“She hit me,” the man said when the police arrived.
The cop said, “Oh, get over it. I hate it when men cry. Grow up.” He finished taking the man’s statement. The man’s name was Phillip Mason. The cop then rubbed the scratch on the man’s car. “Nice Porsche.”
“Not anymore.” He passed his insurance card over to the cop. “Give it to her. I don’t even want to get close to her.” He walked the card over to Jane Hughes, gave it to her and took her information. The cop walked her card back over to Phillip. Then he said to Phillip,” I’m going to have to write you a ticket.”
“What? But my car,” Phillip wanted to scream. Instead he cried the words.
“Seems it’s your car that caused the accident.” The cop pointed to all the people standing around. Then he passed the ticket over to Phillip and had him sign the paper. “Next time be more careful. You could hurt somebody with that thing.” He pointed to the Porsche.
The cop went back to his cruiser, then drove away.
As the crowd dispersed, Phillip got in his Porsche and cried out to God, “Why me?”
God whispered back, “Oh, get over. At least, you get to drive around in a Porsche. I’m still driving an Edsel.”
Once a week on Friday, Uncle Bardie celebrates the creativity in others by shining a Spotlight on a movie, a song or a creator. In honor of Black History Month, this week’s Creator Spotlight is Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall:
The Absolutely Unbelievable Endearing Adventures of Lady Marye Wimpleseed-Prissypott
–an entertainment–
This novel is not based on a true story.
Chapter One
A Man Without a Wife is still a Man Without a Wife
Wherein we meet a member of the British lordly class
This story begins before the British brexited themselves. This story begins before Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair ran things. This story begins before the Beatles dumped Pete Best and ringoed their way into legend. This story begins before Edward renounced the throne. And, yes, it begins before the war to end all wars. It begins in the time when the sun never set on the Empire and Britannia ruled the waves. It begins when God was an Englishman and Victoria tended her garden.
It begins in the late, late, very late nineteenth century when Lady Marye Wimpleseed-Prissypott indeed was to come by her title honorably. Lady P. P., as she was referred to in the dispatches, married for it. When she was Mary-Mary Smith, a sweet young thing, all of eighteen, she wedded into the monocled class of the British aristocracy. She tied the metaphorical knot with the old fuddy-duddy Lord Dunnville Percival Wimpleseed-Prissypott of Haggismarshe.
Like many a red-blooded English blue-blood, the roots of Lord Wimpleseed-Prissypott’s family went deep into the once fertile soil of the English aristocracy. It stretched all the way back to the Conqueror and then some. He had a coat of arms to prove it too. In fact, his ancestral line could be traced farther back than that. His great-great-great-to-the-tenth great grandsire had been of the Viking persuasion. The man, Eric Prissyson, raped and plundered with the best of them, plowing a trail of terror through half the island of Britain. Anything in sight and great grandsire raped it, then looted it, then raped it some more.
When the Conqueror came to the Isles in One-Ought-Six-Six, EricPrissyson’s six boys, being the mercenaries they were, joined up with Duke William. They were responsible for composing the well-known “When Willie Comes Marching Home” to honor Conqueror’s conquest of the Isles. William the Norman Guy dubbed them Prissypottes, then rewarded them for their treachery with land, land, and more land. No cash, just land.
Somewhere along the way, between Conqueror and Lionheart, Lord Dunville’s progenitors dropped the “e.” It may have been his infamous ancestor, the Sheriff of Nottingham of Robin Hood fame, who started the practice, and it stuck. Under the reign of Henry 8, the Prissypotts combined their household with another illustrious family, the Wimpleseeds.
A duel or two was held over which family name would take precedence over the other and come first. Sir Alfred Prissypott, being a very near-sighted bloke and half blind too, lost to the head of the Wimpleseeds, Lord Pointe-head Wimpleseed. Thus the family name was Wimpleseed-Prissypott for all time.
Being of such an ancient and illustrious lineage, the Wimpleseed-Prissypotts intermarried throughout the aristocracy like crazy. The current Earl of Haggismarshe was in some way related to ninety-nine-point-nine-nine percent of the lords in the Lords. That’s the House of Lords for all you non-British readers. In spite of all the land and inbreeding and interbreeding, this final heir of Wimpleseed-Prissypott lineage lacked one thing. He had no cash.
Lord Dunnville had outlived five well-off wives. Nary a one of them had left him enough of a cash flow to sustain his large estates and provide a maintenance. His years as a Viceroy in the Raj had brought him nothing but a spot of fever. Poverty kept watch on the doorsteps of his holdings, and he had responsibilities. Oh, he had responsibilities. There were servants to provide for, illegitimate children to educate, tenants to employ. Plus a mistress or three on the side. And bankruptcy was out of the question. After all, this was England, and it wasn’t done.
Then one day in 1894, at The Club in London, his good friend Sir Myles di Fussye-Pants had proposed an ideal proposal. “Look west, old man,” Sir Myles offered, “look west.”
“Dear me, no,” Lord Dunnie said, his mustache raising its hairs in protest. “I lived in Ireland once and it was much too Irish for me. All that Guinness and a potatoes-only diet. No thank you. I’m a steak and kidney pie man myself.”
“Oh no, dear chap,” Sir retorted. “Good god, man, certainly not Ireland. I mean look to America.”
“Rah-ther pleeze,” Dunnie said. “I am not interested in barbarians. They’re savages over there. I saw Buffalo Bill at the Royal Albert. That Annie Oakley lass shooting up the American Exhibition, you know. Too much bang-bang. If I had wanted an Indian wife, I would have arranged for one when I was in the Raj. I knew quite a few maharajahs out there in the Frontier. They all had daughters they were trying to get off their hands.”
“No, no, my good Dunnie,” Sir said. “The Americans are not all savages. Some of the colonists even have a smattering of manners. They know when to sit and they know when to stand. And they can be taught when to curtsy and when to bow.”
“Can they now?”
“In New York, they have heiresses, just lounging around and waiting for a title. That’s how I acquired my EmmiliaLouise. I call her my Two Em’ed Emma or Two-Ems for short. She used to be Emmylou Muddythwistle, the daughter of a cattle baron. Of course, they are not real barons the way we English are. They like to call themselves thus.”
“I could never stand the smell of a steak in the raw,” Dunnie commented. “No cattle ranching for me. I like mine well-cooked.”
“No, no, Dunnie, old boy. I’ve never been required to commune with the cows. The baron sends Two-Ems a very generous allowance and we spend it. Rah-ther I spend it. Once we were engaged I couldn’t introduce her to society as Emmylou. We changed her to an EmmiliaLouise and gave the Muddythwistles a pedigree as well as a pedicure. She became a Thwistle from Muddystenstein-in-the-Alps. Now that we have tied the proverbial knot, I am fixed for life, you see. And look how mannered she has become. She curtsies very well when she is out and about in society.”
“I say,” Dunnie said. “Quite a setup you have there, dear boy.”
“Only one disconcerting item. It is quite troubling to have the wife do a y’all and a war whoop during fornication. Quite disturbing. Quite disturbing. But that’s the way they do it in some place called Texas. Wherever Texas is.”
“Terribly embarrassing, I would suspect.”
“One must suffer for one’s class. Noblesse oblige and all that rot, you know.”
“How right you are, how right you are.”
“Anyway, old sport, I have the right heiress for you. Someone my dear Two-Ems suggested would be a perfect match for you after I told her of your ‘situation.’ She’s an endearing young thing all of eighteen, blonde, buxomy and tall. What she lacks in manners, she’ll make up in bank account.”
“You don’t say. That does sound like a very attractive proposition. After all, my bankie is down to its last shilling. I could very well use an influx of cash. Have servants to pay, crops to grow, mistresses to mistress.”
“This marriage could be the hit of the social season. It’s been a bit of a time since the Prissypotts have had a hit. And this would be a coup de hit.”
“You do say? ”Dunnie said.
“Yes, I do say. After all, the Crown is beginning to wander if you are a one-hit wonder. Viceroying and all.”
“I must admit I am such a silly wicket and you are quite correct. Quite. Being in the poorhouse does build character. But I’ve enough character for three generations. By george, make the match, and I shall do it. I shall do it up good.”
“Besides,” Sir said, “it will give your wicket a chance to wacket.”
“I have mistresses for that, dear boy. Mistresses.”
“You can still have them on the side. By the by, how do you keep it up, old chap?”
“One has to do one’s duty for Queen and country. One does have to do one’s duty.”
“Yes, one does as I well know,” Sir asked, “So? Are we agreed? Do we have an engagement?”
“I would say rah-ther,” Lord said. “I do seem to be running out of rah-thers to say. But yes. Most definitely. That is, if America is willing.”
“Three cheers for you, old bugger. Three cheers and run up the colors. The Regiment’s about to have a wedding. It would have been a bore of a bear of a season without one. And you’ll come through with your very stiff upper lip as always. You’re going to do your class proud. My dear Two-Ems will see to the arrangements. She is very good at arranging arrangements, you know.”
Next Week: A Muddythwistle by any other name is still a Muddythwistle
Uncle Bardie's Stories & Such 