Posted on 09/27/2018 7:05:53 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Elsie’s father, a keen amateur photographer who developed the prints, never doubted they were fakes, his wife Polly was a believer and in 1919 she took prints of the two photographs to show members of the Theosophical Society in Bradford where they were giving a lecture on fairy life.
From there things spiralled out of control, first through the enthusiastic belief of leading society member Edward Gardner, who used photography expert Harold Snelling to produce photographic prints of them to be sold at Gardner’s theosophical lectures in 1920. It was during 1920 that Conan Doyle, a committed and leading spiritualist believer, became aware of the photographs and wanted to use them for an article on fairies he had been commissioned to write for The Strand Magazine.
Gardner and Doyle sought further expert opinions from the photographic companies, while Gardner met the Wright family and organised a camera and plates for the girls to try and capture more photographs of the fairies.
During the summer of 1920 the youngsters managed to “capture” three more images of themselves with fairies.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Yeah I wasn’t exacting on the lingo(tights, leotards, some of them wore just pantyhose since money was tight), but you got the idea of what I was describing. A few of the fairies looked just like posting 13. I remember one of the principle speaking part fairies(who was a fellow choir member with me in school), a Korean girl, was absolutely smashing in green lacy chiffon. The queen was rather “stout” but in “moderation” and she was dressed more regally with a sort of cape and a holding a rather imposing wand.
Yes they are, largely because of the Conan Doyle connection. I'm guessing they will fetch a lot more than £2K. Lots of photos taken back then. In this case it's not so much the subject matter of the photos, but the actions they prompted from well known people that makes them famous.
Funny things with antiquities. As once related to me, you can set a 12 lb. iron ball on a desk and at current scrap value, it's worth $3-4.
Place a piece of paper next to it establishing provenance that it was recovered at the Gettysburg Battlefield and that same iron ball is now worth around $200.
Place a piece of paper next to it establishing a rock solid provenance that it is the very cannonball that removed General Sickle's leg at the Battle of Gettysburg, and you've raised the value into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The FAIRY QUEEN has ALWAYS been dressed as a Valkyrie ( with enormous wings and winged helmet...which was Gilbert's design! ), or a gigantic ballgown, wings, and twinkling crown.
I'm a purist, so get put off by changes of any kind.
And I'm also a stickler for all of the traditional "bits", that the famous early people added. Yes, I do know them all and when listening to/seeing an operetta, must work V. hard to constrain myself, in public, from doing them. I have the hardest time, constraining myself, during THE MIKADO, because, as a rather little kiddo, that's the operetta I spent the most time watching my parents rehearse/was taught, by my mother, all of the motions for the fan.
I was gonna say the queen I mentioned was garbed that way...I remember a helmet and sword and of course a wand.
The Mikado was the last show I was a chorus member of. At one point in the show there was a bit of dialog, a locally famous(went on to sing in the NY Opera run then by Beverly Sills) tenor Ricky Leach came wandering in singing “Butterfly....Butterfly”....He pauses and asks Yum YUm/…..”excuse’...Nagasaki? while holding a map upside down...she replies No...Tittipu and turns the map right side up and pointing to a location...Leach/Pinkerton replies “”ahhh grazzi(sic) and wanders off the stage singing “Butterfly” in a pure tenor f sharp while the audience laughed and applauded!
Had I had the misfortune of being in the audience, for that desecration, I would have stood, BOOOOOOed, delivered a few "salty" words, and stomped out of the theatre, demanding my money back!
"Butterfly, butterfly"....HUNH; "Poor Butterfly", something from "Madame Butterfly", something else, not G&S at all?
There have been two ( that I know of )all Negro versions of The Mikado; one in the late 1800s, but done correctly and one, "THE HOT MIKADO, in 1939, that was mucked up, which I don't approve of at all!
Then Jonathan Miller came along with deJapanesing, COMPLETELY, his version and another stab at it all, moved to the boardrooms of BIG Japanese firm ( the name of which escapes me at the moment. The later was coming to the Chicago Opera House...which does NOT ever give refunds. Well, I had tickets and when I heard what was what ( hadn't known when the I purchased the tickets ), I called and demanded a refund. They weren't going to give it me, until I told them what I would do, if no refund was forthcoming; which it suddenly was on its way to me! I'm the ONLY one, that I know of, to have EVER gotten a refund, EVER, for ANY reason, from that theatre.
Well like it or not, a lot of modern G&S productions are doing those little asides. Some of them pretty funny in my view and some not so funny; especially in Mikado productions where Trump and conservatives find themselves on the Lord High executioner’s “little list”. The Brits, who always seem to have some sort of production going on in some town and village have been “modernizing things”...too much in my view...to keep things “relevant”.
Me...well you’ve already seen that I can “adapt” G&S phrasing and skewer progressives. There’s just something in the music, the rhymes schemes(to which I stay loyal, and the sarcasm that allows such skewering of progressives to be done!...
And as for who it was that may have “fondled” Blasey Ford”...”ehrr right....it was the cat!”
But for anyone interested, the at least 100 year old tradition of including names of local pols ( NEVER a PM nor American president though! ) and places, in I HAVE A LITTLE LIST, is just normal and solely specific to this song.
See your FRmail!
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