grand tour

Balthasar's Extract - Part 5


(The Titanic Era Diary of Evelyn Westcott)


Evi Westcott (born Edward Tucker) is a turn-of-the-20th Century Alpha female, impatient with the roles polite society has assigned to women — including accidental women like herself — and in a hurry to set things straight. Evi is eighteen. Touring Europe with Auntie Enid, she’s learning about Life in its astonishing diversity and seeking the key to a safe future for herself and the rest of ‘Tottie’s Girls’ — the dozen gender-dsyphoric youth who like Evelyn depend for their happiness on a secure supply of ‘Balthasar’s extract.’

1911 is a fine time to be young. The world is full of new things — the automobile, the aeroplane, social consciousness, moving pictures, mental hygiene and ragtime. Women are dumping the corset and demanding the vote, kicking over the pedestals upon which Victorian Sensibility has placed them. It is a time of creativity and experimentation in the natural sciences, of rapidly growing comprehension of how ‘internal secretions’ regulated human physiology.

Join Evi as she and Aunt Enid arrive in Vienna — sophisticated, elegant and decadent to the core. Of, if you are new to this series, begin at the beginning (some 75,000 words ago) or go to the end of this chapter for a very short synopsis of the story so far.

Balthasar's Extract (Evelyn's Diary : 4)

 © 01.2008 by Daphne Laprov

Balthasar's Extract - Part IV
 
Evelyn Westcott's Turn of the Century Diary

It was an age of new things — the automobile, the aero- plane, social consciousness, moving pictures, mental hygiene and ragtime. Women were dumping the corset and demanding the vote, kicking over the pedestals upon which Victorian Sensibility had placed them. A time of creativity and experimentation in the natural sciences, of rapidly growing comprehension of how 'internal secretions' regulated human physiology. Our heroine, Evelyn Westcott, born Edward Tucker, is now seventeen and in the full bloom of youth. She and her friends are awakening to social injustice and sensual pleasures, spreading their wings, setting forth to conquer the widening world.

          
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