DOWNLOADS

Larklight poster - PDF

Larklight paper - PDF

Website music - MP3

HOW TO BE A LADY

BY MISS MYRTLE MUMBY

From The Orbital Gentleperson & Young Lady’s Companion
Christmas number, December 1851

A good day to you.  My name is Myrtle Mumby, and I should like to share with you a few thoughts upon the subject of being ladylike.

In these exciting times, with the British Empire expanding ever outwards across the limitless oceans of space, it is more important than ever that young persons of the gentler sex comport themselves in a seemly and modest manner, offering support and comfort to our menfolk whilst setting a good example to females of the many alien races over which the Almighty has seen fit to grant us dominion.

It is, of course, quite easy to be ladylike if one dwells in dear old England.  Why, I believe that there are even parts of Wales and Scotland where genteel behaviour is not entirely unknown.  But those of us who make our homes among her Majesty’s Extra-Terrestrial possessions may sometimes be faced with situations which try to the limit our natural sense of modesty and decorum.

For instance, how does one address the Grand Oblate of Quirn?  How is one to manage one’s crinoline in zero-gravity?  And is it permissible for a lady to break into a gentle run when she is being pursued by a ravening Martian sand-clam?

Some young women (one can hardly call them ‘ladies’) seem to feel that they must be as plucky and resourceful as any man, and when danger threatens they are liable to produce cutlasses and small firearms and set about their assailants in a most un-feminine manner.  I am convinced that this is a MISTAKE.  Surely, if monsters need to be fought, or disasters averted, we should wait for a gentleman to spring to our assistance.  If no gentleman is available, a fellow of the labouring classes will do.  And if no help of any kind is forthcoming, why, it would surely be better to be eaten alive or perish in the aether’s boundless deeps than to engage in violent physical activity, with the attendant risk that one may be seen to perspire, or (Heaven Forfend!) expose one’s petticoats to the common gaze.

There are, of course, many things which a lady may do if mortal peril looms.  Personally I always that a short prayer bucks one up tremendously.  Naturally no well brought-up person would wish to wish to pester the Good LORD with their own little problems when he doubtless has so many other, weightier matters to attend to, but something along these lines may well do the trick.

Excuse me, O all-merciful GOD, but if you could possibly see your way to delivering me from this exploding aether-ship/ pirate attack/ loathsome space-spider (delete whichever does not apply) I should be jolly grateful.  And please forgive my brother Art for being such a horrid little beast.  Amen.

If all else has failed, and even your most fervent prayer has not resulted in Divine Intervention, I recommend swooning as a practical and genteel response to almost any disagreeable occurrence.  Not only does it draw attention to the fact that one is a Helpless Female and requires the assistance of a gentleman, it ensures that one cannot be tempted to express one’s emotions in an un-ladylike manner, such as by screaming, mime, or the use of intemperate language.  Indeed, I would go so far as to say that a lady is often at her most ladylike when unconscious.  When the danger is past, one may generally be revived by a whiff of sal volatile, of which all true gentlemen will be sure to have a small bottle or phial about their persons.  In it’s absence, a very small sip of brandy will suffice, but never rum, gin or Dr Knees-Up’s Patent Nettle Noggin.

(A word of caution: a sensible lady always looks before she swoons.  There are some places more suited to swooning than others.  I would recommend swooning onto a well-upholstered divan, a nice thick rug, or into the arms of one’s father, brother or other male relative, or, should they be unavailable, those of a gentleman in Holy Orders or an officer of Her Majesty’s armed forces, ALWAYS PROVIDING that said gentleman has been formally introduced to one’s parents or guardian.)

If you are interested in Swooning, and would like to read more about how to do it, may I whole-heartedly recommend Mrs Aelfreda Quire’s Swooning for Beginners and its sequel The Insensate Gentlewoman; a Young Girl’s Guide to Swoons, Fainting and Fits of the Vapours, published by Rashwallop, Hurtlebee and Phigg of Lamb’s Conduit-street, London.

FLABBERGASTING yet FACTUAL

Some Quaint Customs and Fascinating Fauna from the Fathest Corners of Our Empire.

No 12 An Inominate Sauromorph.
In 1836 a clutch of blue-ish green eggs was discovered embedded in the ice of the comet-mine Flamsteed IV. Most had been crushed by the shifting pressure in the ice, but one appeared whole. The mine-manager brought it home to Earth with him, and presented it to the Institute. After being incubated for several months (in a modified kitchen-range in the Institute’s premises at Russell Square) the egg hatched, releasing a humanoid female reptile whose origin and species remains unknown to this day. Is she an inhabitant of one of the unexplored outer worlds? Or a native of some long-exploded sphere of which comet Flamsteed IV is but an icy remnant? Or does she come from somewhere without our solar system? Dr Ptarmigan, and other learned gentlemen, have suggested that her egg may have drifted through the aether from some world which orbits another star.

Christened Melissa by the gentlemen who hatched her, this unique creature has shown herself to be intelligent and sensible. More remarkably, she has an ability to understand the motions and currents of the aether which rivals that of our own Alchemists. Clearly, if her race was ever to develop its own aether-ships, it might pose a serious threat to our great Empire, and for this reason no expense has been spared in studying Melissa’s abilities. It is believed that the structure of her brain somehow allows her to comprehend the movements of the aetheric medium in a manner unknown to us. Fortunately we live in an advanced scientific age, and the gentlemen of the Royal Xenological Institute will be able to solve the mystery by simply sawing her head open and having a jolly good rummage about inside.

No 62. Callistan Snails.
No doubt you are used to hearing your Pater’s gardener complain about the slugs and snails that menace the kitchen-garden on wet nights? Well, next time the fellow falls to grumbling about them, you may tell him to think himself grateful that he does not have to contend with the Callistan Snail (Gastropodus Horibilis). These gigantic brutes, with their impenetrable ceramic shells, can reach speeds of up to 70miles per hour as they slither along on their trails of slime, and they do not just devour cabbages and runner-beans but birds, lizards, mammals – yes, even gardeners, if they can catch them! In olden days they were used as war-mounts by the Callistans, one of the fiercest races of warriors in the Jovian Aether. Nowadays the snails are used only for sport, and the annual Gastropod Derby is popular attraction at Callisto’s capital, Squb. Wild snails still roam free in the moon’s jungly hinterlands, and travellers in those regions are well-advised to carry a large jar of salt. Salting dissolves the brutes, leaving only their shells, which are much prized as trophies by sporting gentlemen.

No 45. A Selenite.
These curious little fellows are natives of our own Moon. Shy and retiring sorts, they spend their days herding the giant lunar land-snails upon which they rely for milk, and the discarded shells of which they turn into rude dwellings. When a selenite reaches maturity he releases a cloud of spores from beneath his cap which settle into the lunar dust and, nourished by moonbeams, grow into infant selenites. On the moon, families of several thousand children are not at all uncommon!

No. 82. Twin Anemonoids from the Oceans of Ganymede.
Sir Abednego Steam’s expedition to Jupiter’s watery moon discovered a great many strange creatures, but none stranger than the amenonoids, who dwell in clusters of hollowed-out jelly-whale eggs which they attach to the stems of giant sea lilies. They live in large clans, and are usually peaceful, though when Sir Abednego Steam attempted to capture a few for closer study they reacted angrily and drove his men back with painful electric shocks from their crowns of tentacles. Generally, however, they keep themselves to themselves, and busy themselves fishing in the depths, so they are not regarded as a threat to the many people who nowadays take holidays on Ganymede’s many pleasure-rafts and lily-pad resorts.

Sir Abednego was finally able to collect two juvenile specimens, which he brought back with him to the Royal Xenological Institute. Close study of these two has revealed many interesting facts, not least that the anemonoids have devised a way to communicate with other by the power of thought, which is no doubt most useful to them in their deep-sea hunts.

No. 97. The Froward Hogweed.
Venus, that verdant but unwelcoming world, is famous for its exotic flora. Every schoolboy knows of the dreadful Venusian Changeling Trees, for instance, and most will have heard of the Snapping Thistles, Grumbling Shrubs and Quivering Lupins, examples of which may be seen in many genteel English gardens nowadays. Less welcome, however, is the Froward (or Impertinent) Hogweed. Originally imported as a bedding plant for use in country gardens, it has developed ideas above its station, and many a fete and garden party has been spoiled when these impudent vegetables come rustling out of the shrubbery, making coarse remarks in their wheedling, somewhat common voices and eating all the cake.

A BRITISH BOY’S GUIDE TO THE PLANETS.

By ART MUMBY.

Reprinted by kind permission of The Boy’s Own Journal

It’s amazing how little some chaps know about the planets which make up our solar realm. Even Venus, Mars and the Moons of Jupiter, which are coloured red upon maps of the Solar System to show that they belong to Queen Victoria, are but vague names to many living now in England. To be sure they are glad enough to find a slab of Ionian Treacle-Cake among their Christmas presents, or to fit Martian Crystal in their window-frames, but of the worlds those useful items hail from they have only the vaguest notions. So I have written this quick primer, which you may cut out and pin upon your wall for easy reference.

1. MERCURY
Mercury is a small, hot, dusty planet which orbits inconveniently close to the sun. It is a rather unattractive shade of brown. When Commodore Pentreath’s expedition first landed there in 1809 they discovered many large ruins, and other learned fellows have since decided that Mercury was once home to a space-faring race, which has long since died out. Its present inhabitants are only a few species of drab cacti, some nasty flies and a creature called the Twook, which smells like damp corduroy and will bite your head off as soon as look at you. The planet has an artificial tin moon, which was resumably set in orbit by the original inhabitants, for some reason of their own. Best avoided, but if you must go there, be sure to wear a tropical-weight suit and a sun-helmet.

2. VENUS
Venus is a lovely planet, covered in blue seas and verdant forests and jungles. All manner of strange plant-life thrives there, and the northern continent was known for a while as New Britain, and seemed set to make an excellent home for Britain’s excess population, who were expected to settle it as farmers and fishermen. Unfortunately the planet is also home to the peculiar Changeling Trees, whose flowering brought about the emergency of 1836, in which almost all of our colonists were lost. Since then, the place has been left to the plants, with the exception of a few mining camps near its southern pole, where our horny handed sons of toil dig up Venusium and Rufous Mercury for use in alchemy. It is most picturesque, and well worth a visit, but do be sure that the Changeling Trees are not in bloom.

3. EARTH & Her MOON
There seems little point discussing Earth in detail here, since I am sure you know all about it. But perhaps you would like to read a little about the Moon, which became the first of Britain’s extra-terrestrial colonies when Captain Frobisher landed there to claim it in the name of Good Queen Anne in 1703. It is 240,000 miles from Earth, and it’s gravity is one sixth of British Standard. Its principal use is a penal colony, to which rogues and vagabonds are transported, and where they learn the error of their ways whilst breaking rocks and sewing mailbags among the dismal lunar plains and craters. There are also some mines where diamonds and Selenium are extracted, and a thriving town, Port George, from which ships may be taken to the other worlds. Interesting lunar fauna includes the mushroom people, the lunar puffball, giant land-snails, and the dreadful Potter Moth, about which you may read in my first volume of memoirs ‘LARKLIGHT’ (2d at all good bookshops).

4. MARS
Long before Mars was conquered, Earthly scientists had known that it harboured a form of civilization, for the Martians’ canals were clearly visible to them through their telescopes. What no one had anticipated, however, was that the dominant race on Mars would turn out to be human beings. Slender, delicate, ruddy-skinned folk, they live in small clans, and ride into battle on their huge war-worms, waving multi-pointed axes and letting out unearthly whoops. For the most part, however, they are meek and mild, and spend most of their time harvesting Rufous Knotweed and turning it into a form of crude paper, from which they make their clothes, houses, boats and almost everything else they possess.

How this far-flung off-shoot of humanity came to exist, we can only surmise. Did some forgotten Earthly race - perhaps inhabitants of drowned Atlantis – develop long ago the means to travel across the aether, and establish a colony upon that distant sphere? I have even heard it suggested that we are the Martians: that Earthly humanity is descended from a colony established on this world by long-ago travellers from the Red Planet.

This seems unlikely, yet we should not forget that Mars was once the centre of a great empire. Thousands of years ago the Martians built mighty temples of porcelain and semi-precious stone, and lived in cities whose ruins rival those of Rome. The remains of their brass aether-ships have been uncovered as far afield as Io and Mercury, and it would be strange indeed if some had not visited Earth.

However, the Martian Empire declined and fell many millennia ago, and when the Duke of Marlborough landed with his army in 1712 he found it fairly easy to conquer the planet for Queen Anne, for despite the Martians’pluck, their axes and war-worms were no match for our quick-firing cannon and phlogiston agitators. Mars was swiftly established as a British colony (Huzzah!) and has proved a valuable source of minerals. It is the site of many great manufacturing and ship-building enterprises, as well as the scene of many important archaeological discoveries which have helped our scholars to understand the history of the once-great Martian race. It has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which house the factories of Rain & Co (makers of Automata by appointment to her majesty Queen Victoria).

5. THE ASTEROIDS
If you go north from Mars you will quickly run into the Asteroids, which are a lot of rocky little wordlets dotting the Trans-Martian Aether. Life has found a foothold on most of them, and the largest are covered with spindly Aether-trees and a nourishing space-moss much prized by our aethernauts as a source of fresh greenstuff on the long haul from Earth to Jupiter. Few of these places have any gravity to speak of, but the development of patent Gravity Generating devices has allowed normal life to be lived upon them, and several are now home to private estates and minor public schools. The most interesting asteroids are Vesta, the home of the one-legged Clodhoppers, and Abnegation, a man-made wordlet woven out of string by a stern sect of Puritans who fled England to set up home in this lonely portion of the sky in 1762.

6. JUPITER
The great gas-planet Jupiter is perhaps the grandest of all the worlds. Not only is it unimaginably huge, and inhabited by Hover-hogs, Sky-whales, Aerial octopi and sentient hurricanos, it has a fleet of moons which teem with quaint and interesting life-forms. The most important is Io, home to the world-city of Farpoo and to the stocky, trustworthy Ionians, those four-armed fellows who crew so many of our aether-ships. After that come the watery moon of Ganymede, the gravely desert world Europa, picturesque Callisto and a host of smaller satellites, such as Pogglus and Chumbley, each with a fascinating history, flora and fauna of its own. A chap could spend a lifetime wandering among the moons of Jupiter, and in the temperate, teeming seas of aether which lie between them, and many chaps do. If you are interested in learning more you should seek out Mr Kingsleighs’s book A Child’s Miscellany of the Jovian Satellites, or Arqo Grootle’s History of the Spore Wars.

7. SATURN
Britain’s dominion reaches only as far as Jupiter. However, something is known of Saturn, which has long been observed by the Astronomer Royal from his observatory on Europa. We know, for instance, that it has numerous moons, although it does not appear that civilisations have arisen upon any of them, as they have on the moons of Jupiter. This may be because of the curious and disagreeable creatures who inhabit the planet’s peculiar cluster of rings – but if you wish to find out more about them I must recommend that you seek out a copy of ‘LARKLIGHT’, for if I tell you of them here I may give away the ending. Suffice it to say that they are exceeding old and very wicked, and that they ate almost the entire crew of our aether-ship Aeneas when it tried to explore the planet. What dreadful manners!

8. GEORGIUM SIDUS
Beyond Saturn lies a vast, unknown ocean of aether, into which have ventured a few daring or foolhardy traders and explorers, and out of which has come little more than rumour. Can it be true that vast creatures cruise the aether there, swallowing up ships whole, just as Jonah was swallowed by the whale? Nobody can know for sure, at least, not until some brave explorer sallies forth to plant the flag of Britain upon the chilly worlds which orbit out there in the cold and dark, far from the invigorating light of the sun, and comes home to tell us all of what he finds.

The foremost of the Outer Worlds is Georgium Sidum. (Forward-thinking astronomers prefer to call it Uranus, but my sister Myrtle has forbidden me from using that name, as she believes it may become a source of Low Humour for Droll Schoolboys, who will say, “If you bend over and peer between your legs you can see Uranus,” etcetera, etcetera.) It is a bluish planet, and according to the legends of old Io it has a vast number of moons that are home to many savage races.

9. NEPTUNE
Quite recently astronomers noticed another world out in the mirk beyond Georgium Sidum, and christened it Neptune, since it appears to be a plashy, watery sort of sphere. Lately it has been suggested that there may be yet more planets beyond it (indeed, my Mother says she is sure of it, and she should know).

It’s jolly exciting to think of so many far-flung places just waiting to be added to the Empire, and so many odd and savage creatures living out there, needing to be named and classified. When I grow up, I intend to have an aether-ship of my own, and sail her right out to the very edge of the solar system so that I may take a peek into the ocean of night which separates the worlds of our sun from those of our neighbour-stars. And who knows what strange beasts swim in that ocean? Or what strange ships may sail across it, bound on unknown missions from nameless worlds inconceivably distant?

One thing is certain: that we stand upon the threshold of a great age of discovery. And to be born into that age as a British boy is to have won first prize in the lottery of life.