drat! can we just pretend it's true? (Elsie would probably put skirts on the furniture ... if papa told her to. And didn't insist she do the sewing on Sunday.)

can we just pretend it's true?

No. Sorry. It's a bit of a twitch of mine. But I'll totally go along with your Elsie hypothesis.

No. Sorry. It's a bit of a twitch of mine.

high-fives amych

ION, I need to whine about some shallow first-world stuff.

Dear Editor and Marketing Persons, answer my emails! I need to determine the text for my promo postcards! Plus, it freaks me out that I haven't heard from any of you for a week.

Dear Ebay UK sellers I've emailed: would at least ONE of you get back to me about if you'd be willing to ship to the USA? Please?

Shakespearian types...is Macbeth too much for a 12 year old?

Well, there's all sorts of murder and betrayal and whatnot, but I think I was reading Agatha Christie around that age, and it's no worse than that. Okay, maybe a little worse.

As I thought, her father's objections are that they're too young, and that his daughter is not going to marry a cripple.

(Elsie, by the way, is being a coward. She doesn't want to marry him, and is counting on her father saying no so that she doesn't have to be the one to tell Herbert no.)

Tuberculosis most often presents in the lungs, but can infect any part of the body. It cripples by eroding the joints and vertebrae. It's a terrible disease, and in the 19th and early 20th century, it infected 20 percent or more people in certain areas and was almost always a death sentence. Because it takes a while to be fatal and there's a lot of suffering, it's the perfect disease for the 19th century novel, allowing for lovely deathbed scenes.

My great-grandmother died of tuberculosis when my grandmother was 12, leaving her to care for her three siblings, one of whom died of TB a few years later.

Elsie, by the way, is being a coward. She doesn't want to marry him, and is counting on her father saying no so that she doesn't have to be the one to tell Herbert no.

That's one of the upsides to being completely under Daddy's thumb. Daddy gets to do the nay saying.

While I wouldn't rule out syph, TB does infect bone sometimes. There's a variant called Potts Disease that affects the spine—it's probably what Alexander Pope had. It also can affect joints so causing a limp doesn't seem out of the question.

But isn't TB also contagious? When he was first sick, Elsie sat by him and read to him and talked to him all the time, which was why I'd assumed it was a broken hip, until they started talking about the disease returning.

But isn't TB also contagious? When he was first sick, Elsie sat by him and read to him and talked to him all the time

Well, we know that. But in the 1800s people would be shut up with TB sufferers for hours on end, nursing and caring for them. That's probably how Keats got it from his brother, who Keats nursed until the brother died from TB. Modern epidemiology didn't really take off until after Snow and the whole London cholera thing.

Also, he first got sick when he was about seven, which I think would most likely rule out syphilis.