I'm here via your comment on penknife's post about a Victorian melodrama, because I do love an OTT Victorian melodrama myself.
I had to drop you a line here to point out that I have a great-great grandfather by the name of John Cleland. I have a picture of him, his wife, and his 12 children all lined up in age order on my mantlepiece. It was probably taken sometime around the turn of the century. My great-grandmother was towards the tail end of the line.
More amusing is the picture we have of him and his wife on their wedding day, in the Civil War era. He is seated, sprawling and comfortable, lord of all he surveys, in a chair, one arm leaning on a nearby table with a fringed lamp upon it. She stands behind him, clearly hot, tired, dishevelled, and a mite out of sorts. Clearly she'd been toiling away readying all the details of the wedding breakfast, etc., when she wasn't busy getting married and sitting for the portrait. Obviously though, given the 12 strapping children (more boys than girls) she was normally a woman of great energy!
That John Cleland was a doctor, but he shared his name with a rather more famous direct ancestor, the John Cleland who wrote the rather renowned oft-banned book, Fanny Hill, Memoirs of a Lady of Pleasure. Wikipedia article here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Hill)
Obviously the blood has thinned out over the generations, because I really suck at writing the pr0n. Clearly I'm a disgrace to the family!
Edited because apparently I kant spel either. Or close out my HTML brackets. D'oh!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: Oct. 12th, 2011 03:45 am (UTC)I had to drop you a line here to point out that I have a great-great grandfather by the name of John Cleland. I have a picture of him, his wife, and his 12 children all lined up in age order on my mantlepiece. It was probably taken sometime around the turn of the century. My great-grandmother was towards the tail end of the line.
More amusing is the picture we have of him and his wife on their wedding day, in the Civil War era. He is seated, sprawling and comfortable, lord of all he surveys, in a chair, one arm leaning on a nearby table with a fringed lamp upon it. She stands behind him, clearly hot, tired, dishevelled, and a mite out of sorts. Clearly she'd been toiling away readying all the details of the wedding breakfast, etc., when she wasn't busy getting married and sitting for the portrait. Obviously though, given the 12 strapping children (more boys than girls) she was normally a woman of great energy!
That John Cleland was a doctor, but he shared his name with a rather more famous direct ancestor, the John Cleland who wrote the rather renowned oft-banned book, Fanny Hill, Memoirs of a Lady of Pleasure. Wikipedia article here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Hill)
Obviously the blood has thinned out over the generations, because I really suck at writing the pr0n. Clearly I'm a disgrace to the family!
Edited because apparently I kant spel either. Or close out my HTML brackets. D'oh!