Quickie Question: Who Would You Ask and What?
By Twistie
It’s fun sometimes to consider what one would do with access to a time machine. My favorite time machine is, as you might have already guessed, the TARDIS. I love the idea of wandering through time and space with a wildly eccentric alien – especially one who knows that bow ties and fezzes are cool.
Anyway.
But what if the deal were extremely limited? What if you could go to only one historic time/place and ask one question of one person? What if that person had to be related to your favorite craft in some way?
I want to go back to 1840 and ask a question of one Miss Jane Bidney of Beer a question related to the exquisite Honiton lace worn by Queen Victoria at her marriage to Price Albert. Miss Bidney oversaw the creation of that lace, wrangling some two hundred lacemakers for more than a year and eventually destroying the patterns so that the lace could never be duplicated.
So what is the question I want to ask her? No, it’s not that she make me a copy of the patterns! That would get me into huge amounts of hot water. No, I just want one piece of information. You see, there has always been great speculation about whether Victoria ordered the set of a deep skirt flounce, shaped sleeve flounces, fichu, and veil specifically in anticipation of the wedding or not. I would love to ask Miss Bidney this single burning question, and then return to my own time, smug in the knowledge that I’m in the loop.
So what about you? When would you go? Where? What would you ask? Of whom? And how in the Sam Hill is Stephen Moffatt going to get the Doctor and his friends out of this one???
Oh. Sorry. Still kind of disturbed by the latest Dr. Who cliffhanger. I get really wrapped up in these things.
I’ll definitely miss you and your take on the world. Best of...
April 25th, 2011 at 12:49 pm
I don’t know if I could narrow it down to one… but it makes me insanely happy that other people get all squee-ish about DW. Nothing like creepy kids voices on dead telephones to bring out the doctor…
April 25th, 2011 at 1:34 pm
… and make you afraid to blink.
Awesome stuff, that.
April 26th, 2011 at 2:20 am
A. I don’t know how they’ll get out of it, but doggone it, I can’t wait to find out. I actually SCREAMED when I realized it wasn’t going to get resolved last week!
B. I’d want to see the very first knitter. The first one who, while naalbinding maybe(?), thought, “Hey, if I just pull the loops partway through, and leave the open ones on my needle, I won’t have to cut the yarn so often…”
April 26th, 2011 at 6:41 pm
B: Ooh, good answer! If you ever get the chance you must let me know how it goes.
A: At least I know I wasn’t the only one screaming at her telly!
April 26th, 2011 at 8:16 pm
As a historical costumer, I would visit Queen Elizabeth I, and ask her “Do you wear underpants?” (And then she’d probably have my head cut off.)
You see, most Englishwomen went commando till the early 19th century. There are a few examples of 16th century underpants, or “drawers”, but they’re Italian, not English. But there’s an effigy statue of Elizabeth that was made for her funeral, and it’s dressed in real clothes. The outer ones were replaced in the 18th century, but the “pair of bodies”, or corset, is thought to be the original. And it’s wearing a pair of drawers, but they’re unlike anything worn in either the 16th or the 18th century, and they don’t seem to fit the statue very well. So did she, or didn’t she?
April 26th, 2011 at 8:28 pm
Margo, I think I love you. That would have been my second choice, no lie.
Oh, and seeing that funeral effigy up close and personal? Rates as one of my all-time top experiences.