1 March 1888: John Strange Winter, a military novelist from York, presents her husband with twins, to general amazement
Oliver Bainbridge. 1916. John Strange Winter. London: East and West. Get it:
.Unedited excerpt
If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.
Husband and wife must mutually bear and concede, if they wish to make home a retreat of bliss and joy. One alone cannot make home happy. There must be unison of action, meekness of spirit, and great forbearance and love in both husband and wife, to secure the end of happiness in the domestic circle.
Mr. Stannard, who was an excellent man of business, managed all his wife’s affairs. When they were married in 1884, Mr. Stannard was under engagement to proceed to Brazil as an engineer in charge of the construction of the North Brazilian sugar factories, at £1,000 a year, on behalf of a firm of contractors with whom he had been connected for some years.
While waiting for sailing orders Government troubles in Brazil disturbed the guarantee to the concessions, the contractors went bankrupt, and Mr. Stannard was suddenly without employment. While seeking a new sphere he interested himself in disposing of unsold MSS. in Mrs. Stannard’ s possession.
These brought an immense influx upon the author of correspondence and work of all kinds, far beyond the capacity of any one woman to cope with. Mr. Stannard naturally dealt with the business part and henceforward found incessant work in this, while Mrs. Stannard devoted herself assiduously to writing, in order to confirm and maintain the success she had so suddenly attained. For ten years she had been accustomed to rapid output, and by having to give no thought to the disposal of her work, she was able to sustain the burden of production, the cares of a young family, and the many claims made upon a genial and successful woman.
It took some years to attain an income equal to her needs, as Mrs. Stannard was much sought after, and the temptations of social life were irresistible; in fact it seemed most desirable and necessary to her that she should give outward confirmation to her success by living in accord with it. In truth the great difficulty of her life was to resist the claims made on her by reason of her popularity, which were always in advance of her income.
At the time of her first success, Mr. Stannard, after long seeking, had been offered a position with the Great Western Railway Company, but, as it would have involved residence in Cornwall, he felt that he could not take Mrs. Stannard from the centre of her world at the moment everything in her career seemed to make absence a bar to a brilliant future. It was clear that she would miss more than the salary he could earn.
Much as he would have liked to follow his profession, he could not reasonably so imperil her future, and he declined the opening with the intention of seeking a London engagement.
As time went on it was obvious that he could not do this without injury to her interests and abandoning to some extent a delightful partnership in which he took the greatest pride, and so he decided to forsake his profession.
Mrs. Stannard had four children. The first was a daughter christened Audrey, to which Noel was added because she was born on Christmas Day (1884). Then came twins, a boy and a girl, who were named Eliot and Violet Mignon, after two of their mother’s creations in fiction.
The announcement that John Strange Winter, the well-known novelist, had presented her husband with twins was the first intimation that the skilled writer of military life was of the fairer sex.
Comment
Comment
Also, from the same source:
Between the age of nineteen and twenty-seven, Mrs. Stannard wrote no less than forty-two novels, some of these three-volume length, besides numerous short tales and sketches.
These were published in the Family Herald, London Society, and other periodicals, chiefly under the pseudonym of “Violet Whyte.” Many of these army stories were subsequently incorporated in “Cavalry Life.” It was when this book was issued that the authoress was advised by her publishers to assume a masculine nom de plume, as they considered that the avowal of feminine authorship might prejudice the sale of such a work. She accordingly chose the name she had bestowed on one of the characters in a tale, and so came before the world as John Strange Winter.
And:
It may here be remarked that Mrs. Stannard holds very strongly the opinion that there should be “no sex in art,” and whilst never desiring to conceal her identity, deprecates the idea of receiving indulgence or’ blame on the ground of her work being that of a woman, as both unjust and absurd (Black 1893).
This story and the Black quote via John Bibby (Bibby 2022). I hope that the fact that the twins were born shortly after the couple’s move from York to London will not be held against me.
Something to say? Get in touch
Tags
Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.
- Eliot Stannard (1) W/G ·
- Feminism (6) W/G ·
- John Strange Winter (1) W/G ·
- Novelist (2) W/G ·
- Pseudonym (2) W/G ·
- Sexism (2) W/G ·
- 📌York (165) W/G ·
Comment
Comment
Also, from the same source:
Between the age of nineteen and twenty-seven, Mrs. Stannard wrote no less than forty-two novels, some of these three-volume length, besides numerous short tales and sketches.
These were published in the Family Herald, London Society, and other periodicals, chiefly under the pseudonym of “Violet Whyte.” Many of these army stories were subsequently incorporated in “Cavalry Life.” It was when this book was issued that the authoress was advised by her publishers to assume a masculine nom de plume, as they considered that the avowal of feminine authorship might prejudice the sale of such a work. She accordingly chose the name she had bestowed on one of the characters in a tale, and so came before the world as John Strange Winter.
And:
It may here be remarked that Mrs. Stannard holds very strongly the opinion that there should be “no sex in art,” and whilst never desiring to conceal her identity, deprecates the idea of receiving indulgence or’ blame on the ground of her work being that of a woman, as both unjust and absurd (Black 1893).
This story and the Black quote via John Bibby (Bibby 2022). I hope that the fact that the twins were born shortly after the couple’s move from York to London will not be held against me.
Something to say? Get in touch
Similar
25 September 1066: The Stamford Bridge massacre by Harold Godwinson’s army of Harald Hardrada and Tostig Godwinson’s force – symbol of the end of the Viking Age
26 December 1570: Edmund Grindal, Puritan archbishop of York, orders the removal of rood-lofts (and their superstitious images), and the erection of pulpits
12 April 0627: In a triumph for his Kentish wife, Edwin of Northumbria is baptised on Easter Sunday by Paulinus, in the latter’s wooden oratory on the site of York Minster
Comment
Comment
Rimbault quotes one John Gregory, who in the Sarum Processionale found the following:
The Episcopus Choristarum was a chorister-bishop chosen by his fellow children upon St. Nicholas’ day… From this day till Innocents’ day at night (it lasted longer at the first), the Episcopus Puerorum [Boy-Bishop] was to bear the name and hold up the state of a bishop, answerably habited, with a crosier or pastoral staff in his hand, and a miter upon his head; and such an one too som had, as was multis episcoporum mitris sumtuosior, saith one – very much richer than those of bishops indeed. The rest of his fellows from the same time being were to take upon them the style and counterfeit of prebends, yielding to their bishops (or else as if it were) no less then canonical obedience. And look what service the very bishop himself with his dean and prebends (had they been to officiate) was to have performed, the mass excepted, the verie same was done by the chorister-bishop and his canons upon this Eve and the Holy Day.
This may be the origin of the York ritual, which nevertheless, and for reasons unknown to me, starts and ends later. The “account of Nicholas of Newark, guardian of the property of John de Cave, boy bishop in the year of our Lord 96” accounts for receipts (offerings in the cathedral, from canons, and from the nobility and monasteries visited) and expenditure (clothing, beer, food, music, etc.). The world-turned-upside-down visitations of the episcopus puerorum/Innocencium and his band remind me somewhat like those practised by the Raad van Elf of carnival associations in the Catholic Netherlands. Was there a similar serious business + drunken fun combination? For example, “the medieval breviary in the Sarum (but not in the Roman) use prescribed ‘O Virgo Virginum’ as antiphon upon the Magnificat for December 23, but was it sung for the boy-bishop on 23 December in humorous reference to his postulated sexual inexperience?
O Virgin of Virgins, how shall this be? For neither before thee was any like thee, nor shall there be after. Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at me? That which ye behold is a divine mystery (Bls 2007/12/23).
Yann Dahhaoui has compiled a map showing the locations visited by John de Cave numbered in chronological order:
There is a 13th century sculpture of what some say is a boy bishop at the marvellous St Oswald’s Church, Filey – the church guide suggests that it might instead by
one of the canons regular of St Augustine, a member of Bridlington Priory who served the church at Filey. It was not uncommon in the 13th and 14th centuries for such a person to keep up his connection with the church by having his heart buried there with an appropriate miniature representation of himself in stone.
The account documents 42 days starting on 23 December, but I don’t know how long John de Cave’s rule actually lasted. Liz Truss managed 49 days.
Irrelevant, but St. William is presumably William of Donjeon/Bourges, whose feast day is 10 January, to which 7 January was the closest Sunday.
https://archive.org/details/stationsofsunhis0000hutt/page/100/mode/1up
Something to say? Get in touch
Search
Subscribe/buy
Donate
Music & books
Place-People-Play: Childcare (and the Kazookestra) on the Headingley/Weetwood borders next to Meanwood Park.
Music from and about Yorkshire by Leeds's Singing Organ-Grinder.
RSS feed
Bluesky
Extwitter