Two sessions today

[julian_griffith]

Project: Napoleonic Era Arthurian Romance With A Happy Ending
Deadline: Labor Day-ish
New words written: since my last update? 1186
Present total word count: 54317
Mean things: Sympathy just makes it harder
Fun things: Honest to God plays performed at Drury Lane in the time frame, though I fudged one by a month
Stimulants: Green tea, iced; white tea, iced

302 words of Lieutenant Lancelot reacting to the news of Viscount Arthur's impending marriage; 884 words of Miss Guinevere's letter to a school friend, explaining how the viscount has shown her particular attention, and how she thinks a proposal might be in the offing.

I spent an AWFUL lot of time with the calendars for 1804-1805 today. I swear this all started back in the early chapters with needing to know when Easter fell in 1802, and wanting accurate days of the week to head letters. Now it's taken on a life of its own, and I've been doing things like borrowing incidents from the Brest blockade in the given time frame (interestingly, the Wikipedia article on the HMS Pickle is a good resource for that). Today, I wanted to date Guinevere's letter, so I had to sort out when the proposal would have happened, which meant I really needed to know when the wedding was, and then I figured while I was at it, I'd better sort out the heir's birthdate and christening because the christening has to be enough after Trafalgar to let Lancelot get back to England. And then txanne pointed out that there are restrictions on christening dates in the Anglican calendar, so I had to push it and the birthdate back three weeks to get it out of Advent.

I also knew that, before the invention of the weekend, there was no particular reason for a wedding to be on Saturday, so I decided to look up whether there were any superstitions about lucky days of the week for weddings, like the Monday's Child rhyme about birthdays. (I know that there's an Orthodox Jewish custom about Tuesdays because that's the day of Creation where "And God said it was good" appears twice in the description, where the other days it only appears once.)

Naturally, there was one. There are superstitious rhymes for everything, I think.

Monday for wealth
Tuesday for health
Wednesday the best day of all
Thursday for losses
Friday for crosses
Saturday for no luck at all

and also for months:

Married when the year is new, he'll be loving, kind and true.
When February birds do mate, You wed nor dread your fate.
If you wed when March winds blow, joy and sorrow both you'll know.
Marry in April when you can, Joy for Maiden and for Man.
Marry in the month of May, and you'll surely rue the day.
Marry when June roses grow, over land and sea you'll go.
Those who in July do wed, must labour for their daily bred.
Whoever wed in August be, many a change is sure to see
Marry in September's shrine, your living will be rich and fine.
If in October you do marry, love will come but riches tarry.
If you wed in bleak November, only joys will come, remember.
When December snows fall fast, marry and true love will last.

So the viscount and his bride will be married on Wednesday, November 7, 1804.