Ankling, bloomers and fanning oh my!
Here is Part II of my compilation of the very first time Parasol Duelling appeared in our Role Playing group The Airship's Messdeck.
In Part I Madame Saffron Taxus-Hemlock, her maid Maddie Hatter, and the Comms Officer of the HMAS Velvet Brush Lt Beulah Bueckert (Miss BB) meet Lady Mary Formingham at a Parasol Duelling event at the Savoy Hotel in London. Lady Mary is the wife of the former head of the Royal Navy's Experimental Airship Division (the EAD) now posted to the bleak and isolated navy base at Scapa Flow due to a scandal involving the design and construction of the experimental airship the Velvet Brush.
I have been serializing a set of stories from our adventures as crew and passengers on that ship. You can follow Lt Cmdr(E) Maxwell MacDonald-Smythe, aka Max (me), Miss BB and other members of the crew, in our adventures starting here.
The events portrayed below took place several months before the events in my serial story.
We join the Ladies as the Parasol Duelling continues.
Enjoy
Keep your sightglass full, your firebox trimmed and your water iced.
KJ
At the Parasol Duels
Part 2
An episode from the Airship's Messdeck
Compiled by Kevin Jepson
While appearing to watch the elegant sweep and motion of the expert parasol duelists competing in the middle of the Grand Ballroom of London's Savoy Hotel, Madame Saffron Taxus-Hemlock ponders all that Lady Mary Formingham has revealed of her interest and knowledge in the designs of the HMAS Velvet Brush.
"Lady Mary,” says Madame, “you must have been a great help to your husband through his career. Or did your social life keep you too busy for dry science and technological advances?"
Mary, taking advantage of a lull while the judges argue a ruling, says, "I don’t have a great deal of social life. At school, I was the odd one out, always. When Sylvia came to the school, she too was left out, though that was because of her family. Or rather its lack. Girls can be rather beastly to those who do not fit the correct mold of young womanhood.
The duelling continues and then is suddenly stopped. Madame exclaims, "Gracious! Did you see that? The one in blue tried the Hungarian sideways stab. She'll surely be disqualified now."
Miss BB watches the commotion around the duel closely. "That lady in the stripy outfit is very fast to have jumped out of the way." Then, referring back to their previous conversation about pants, "I have some pants." says BB, "I got them in Africa. They are really good for riding camels."
"Ew camels, don't they spit?" Maddie says, once again a bit too loudly. Heads turn.
Miss BB says, "Camels are very spitty, and stinky. More stinky than spitty. I got a blister on my bum when I rode one for a whole day."
Maddie laughs, "I think that's what happened to the young queen when learning to parasol duel. The blister that is."
As the next pair of Duelists take their places and begin Maddie says, "Hmmm, very clever tactic. It's really a mind game, the parasol duel."
"When she pretended to move one way and then went the other?" BB asks, staring hard at the duel.
Madame claps her hands. "Oh, well played. Maddie, did you note that very forceful snub? And just where one would have expected a reverse twirl!” She leans back to Mary. “Did Sylvia share your interest in aeronautics?"
"Snubs, snubs, I could do a snub I bet," says BB.
Mary claps as a bout comes to an end with the loser weeping gracefully into a lacy hankie. "Sylvia? No. She thinks of nothing but the houses and keeping the lower servants in line. When she used to come out with us – me and Max and William Macleod – it was in part because I needed a chaperon. Then she fancied the Macleod, who returned her regard for a time. But nothing came of it in the end. She was not at all interested in anything to do with the ships they were on, or their dreams of joining the airship navy. The EAD was very small in those days, you see, and not all sailors were suited for it."
Maddie says, "My parasoling coach said my twirls were inspired."
"Can you teach me the twirl? I would love to twirl," says BB.
Madame is watching the crowd. "I say, is that Lady Grantham’s oldest daughter? I had no idea she was a duelist.” She looks at Maddie. “You’ve gone white again dear. Are you not well today?"
Miss BB looks at Maddie with concern. "Oh, you are very white. Like a sheet. Would a drink of medicine help you? Like the Doctor's Medicine?"
Maddie, slinks further behind the greenery. "Am I? Perhaps it's all the excitement."
Madame watches Maddie for moment, then calls, "Waiter! A very small brandy for the young lady. The excitement is too much for her."
Looking for the lady Madame mentioned, BB asks, "Do you mean the really tall one? With the ugly dress? Should we wave at her?"
“No!” gasps Maddie, grabbing BB’s arm.
"No." Madame nods across the room. "Miss Grantham’s the dark-haired one with the haughty expression."
Miss BB spots the lady in question and hrumphs. “Her dress is ugly too.” She puts her hand to her mouth. "But I shouldn't say such things. Maybe I need some medicine as well. We should all have medicine."
"I would benefit from some brandy as well," says Mary.
BB shakes her head. "I can't drink brandy, only medicine."
Again half hidden by fern fronds, Maddie says to herself, "I cannot believe that girl made it as a duelist, her prancing was dreadful and her twirls were weak at best."
"So Sylvia is still with you, Lady Mary?" Madame inquires.
Mary waves to the waiter in a manner more suited to a tavern than the Savoy Ballroom. "Yes, as my housekeeper. She travels between all the small farms and estates that Sir Gordon and I both have inherited, terrifying the staff into obedience. Just now she is off on the Welsh border, I think, worried that the kitchens there would not have prepared properly for any early lambs that must be raised by the hearth on account of being born into the inclement weather they have on those mountains. I’m sure the staff would have done it, being bred up in those very mountains and coming to us from those very farms and crofts, but Sylvia has a will of her own in these matters, and I long ago gave her leave to attend to the estates as she chooses."
Madame says to BB, "It's the same medicine, Miss BB. Only here they keep it in nicer bottles."
Maddie chuckles. "And charge a nicer price!"
Madame explains, "Crystal ones, like the chandeliers up there. No, don't point with your parasol, dear. You could have taken out the Duchess of Devonshire's eye."
Maddie, anxiously watching the crowd from behind her fern, thinks to herself, "Oh wouldn't that just be the thing, to be found out and found to be drinking as well."
BB looks shocked. "Oh no, it can't be the same stuff. I can't drink brandy, only medicine. They must be different. I would go to hell for sure if I drank brandy."
Maddie hoots from behind her plant. "Hey are you blind? That was intentional fanning!"
"Can you teach me fanning? That looked oh so clever." says BB.
Maddie explains, "Strictly against the rules, fanning is. It involves opening and closing your parasol quickly to create a breeze. Also called bellowing. Dust could blow in your opponent’s eye, giving you an advantage."
All the room hushes as a particularly well orchestrated Free-Style duel begins between two past champions. After the Mayfair Duelist raps her opponent’s ankle and ladders her stocking, a move for which no penalty can be grave enough, the displeased crowd emphatically rattles their teacups in their saucers, and turns their backs until the disgraced duelist is removed from the ballroom.
The waiter, taking advantage of the rustle of shoulders turning, slips between tables with a crystal decanter and several elegant, though very small, glasses.
"I wonder where she got those stockings," says BB. "They sure are nice ones. Before they were laddered."
"There is a penalty for that laddering, Miss BB. The offender will lose her parasol AND her previous champion's glove," says Madame.
"Well! Bunch of wimps. They would never make it on the farm," says BB, shaking her head. "But I could learn fanning, and laddering. Just in case I mean. It could save my life one day. And maybe the life of baby sheeps."
"Have some medicine, Miss BB," says Mary. "They will start the next duel in a moment."
"Oooo. medicine. I don't mind if I do. These glasses are very small."
Lady Mary once more leans toward Madame Saffron, saying softly, "These documents. Please, can you advise me what to do with them?”
Madame leans in close. "I don’t know if the Commander passed along this suggestion, but I could readily arrange for the documents to be ‘found’ aboard the ship by an EAD worker, as if they had been shoved into a corner and forgotten, perhaps while the ship was being repaired after the Portsmouth explosion."
