Hanna

Miss Fisher Snippets (265)

I find it endearing that Phryne knew exactly what Jack liked to eat and had Mr. Butler prepare it beforehand. It didn’t require a psychic like Mrs. Bolkonsky to pick up on the intimacy. The chemistry – or the current flows between them (to borrow Warwick’s expression) – was palpable even though Jack was playing coy in front of others.

Regarding the ham, cheese and mustard pickle sandwich, it’s also called Ploughman’s Sandwich according to the Grilled Cheese Social website, inspired by the classic British lunch for a “ploughman” who ploughed land, essentially a farm laborer or farmhand. The show never revealed Jack’s family background, but many believed that he came from humble beginnings (at least partially) based on his liking of this sandwich.

I originally thought that the “mustard” here was simply referring to the sauce that was spread on the ham and cheese. Upon further research, I learned that there were recipes specifically for “mustard pickles”, which were made from chopped vegetables (cucumbers, cauliflowers, onions, etc.) preserved in a sweet and sour, mustard-based sauce. The Condon Bleu trained Mr. Butler must have his special recipe to fancy up this common condiment, and I wouldn’t be surprised that he had gifted a jar or two to the Inspector from time to time.

But I also imagine young boy Jack visiting his grandparents out in the country and helping his grandad on the farm. The lanky helpful boy would be absolutely ravenous when his Nanna brought them lunch out in the field. And what's more fitting than a ploughman's sandwich?

I suddenly have a very strong need to see Jack's backstory in writing by one of you brilliant creators 🙏

It's all formed in my mind, but putting it in writing?!?🫣

I can draw you a map, navigate on land and sea in every part of the world. MacGyver just about anything out in the field, hunt with both firearms and bows and arrows. Build a fire just about anywhere but under water, clean and maintain any weapon, speak 8-9 languages... But putting it in writing for everyone to see is just angst provoking 😱

Mr. Butler is happy to help, of course, but damn, this extra work has been going on long enough, and aren’t they supposed to be detectives? Somehow their powers of observation vanish whenever they need to observe things about their relationship (a fact Mr. B discovered way before there even was a relationship to talk of). So once Dorothy finally! discovers it (and who told them that making out in the interrogation room at the station was a good idea?), Mr. B is only too happy to enlist her to help in the cause of keeping their privacy.

But then Jane returns home from the continent, discovers it too, and Mr. Butler decides this is getting ridiculous and enough is enough. They are the only ones still thinking theirs is a secret affair (and Hugh, of course, who notices nothing). First, Mr. B tries to leave subtle hints. One morning Jack’s clothes are almost in the same place he left them in Phryne’s bedroom, but pressed, refreshed, and folded. But since that day Jack leaves before 6 a.m., when it’s still dark outside and he’s half-asleep, Mr. B’s clues go unnoticed. (It seems it’s true even smart people turn stupid when in love.) So the next morning (Saturday. And didn’t they think the house would be full at 9 a.m.!?) Mr. B has had enough. A not-so-discreet knock on the door (“Miss, I’m leaving your breakfast outside”), and when they retrieve the tray there’s a cup of coffee for Phryne, another with tea exactly how Jack drinks it, and a plate full of ham, pickles, and mustard sandwiches. Jack thinks he can’t be embarrassed enough, but he has to correct himself when he opens the door to leave the bedroom and finds Dot carrying a basket, about to knock, who happily asks him if he has anything for the laundry. Then he goes downstairs and is about to leave when Jane calls him and sweetly asks if he might bring his bicycle tonight so tomorrow after breakfast he can maybe teach her how to ride (he said yes, of course, but he really would have loved not to stutter that much in front of a 12-year-old girl). Finally (finally!) he opens Wardlow’s door to leave what has been the longest shame walk of his life, only to find Bert and Cec repainting the porch. He would have thought this was just a terribly nightmarish coincidence if he hadn’t turned his face just in time to see Bert looking at him with a knowing smile. They say caution is the better part of valour, so Jack opts for saying nothing and regrets agreeing to teach Jane how to ride, because he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to return to Wardlow in a year.

Phryne, of course, has discovered everything that's going on downstairs and is having a blast. Later, it takes a lot of persuading on her part to convince Jack to return to Wardlow that night; that it’s for the best if it’s all out in the open and that her family is only too happy to have him there as he should be (and she can be very persuasive, especially while pleasing him under his desk at lunch). But after some discomfort the first week, Jack finally gets used to and takes the place in Wardlow he has always been supposed to occupy (at least in the minds of everyone else).

Phryne, with gallows-humor glibness, is very specifically pointing out that her behavior is not the reckless self-indulgence of the idle rich but very much a deliberate and cogent response to the experience of surviving serving in the front lines of a world war where modern machine guns and chemical warfare gave even more stark clarity to the senselessness and cruelty and exploitativeness of war and nationalism and authoritarianism.

And Jack is going - you're right. We have admittedly chosen to respond to Surviving That Shit slightly differently, but perhaps less differently than outward appearances might first suggest. We each have our own methods and principles, but you are right that we are not very different at all, underneath, and for very good reasons.

And also yes eating out of her hand like that is incredibly hot too, yes there's definite commentary to be had on gender roles and dominance etc. but it's easy to get distracted by how good Nathan looks in that scene with those damned eyes eating off that fork, when the real critical moment is just before when he looks so old and weary as he understands what she's saying and doing... and then visibly realigns and comes alive again because he too survived and by god neither of them are going to let the bastards grind them down.

Dr Elizabeth MacMillan In The Episode “Blood & Money”

1. There is a murderer in the house and you might get killed

And

Then I accidentally opened a Tumblr notification, and the very first post on my dashboard was this one.

And just like that, I knew.

There is no pause. There is no turning back. I’m hopelessly in love with this fandom, and there’s simply no escape for me.

With magnificent food (I'm sure Mr Butler is entirely on Team Jack/Phrack)

Possibly a lengthy dessert 👉👌😏

Then... Henry George Fisher arrived...

But can we talk about the fact that Jack decided to think that Phryne was that shallow? That she would just throw him over for the first male who arrived at her door!

Since I became a fan of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, I have thought about what it would be like if she went to Sweden and/or Scandinavia. Some of this comes from the fact that a colleague of mine are actually writing crime novels set in Sweden in the 1930′s. The thought process kind of escalated yesterday when there were talks about Essie’s time in Norway and of Nathan posted this on instagram. In fact Nathan’s latest two book posts on instagram have been Scandinavian, with his second last one being a Swedish book. So I talked to @whopooh and she suggested I presented my thoughts about the subject for everyone to read. Being Swedish I know most about Sweden during this time, but I’m sure there are interesting things happening in the other Nordic countries as well.

There were many contradictons in Sweden during this time. The Social Democrats created an ideology called Folkhemmet who really became the foundation for the Swedish welfare state. It stood for solidarity and inclusion, proclaiming that everyone should have the same rights and opportunities to do what ever he/she wanted in life. But there was a darker side to it, because Folkhemmet was also racist and elitist. Seriously, the things done to minorities like the Sami and Romani people at the time were horrific and Sweden also practiced compulsory sterilisation of people the gouvernment did not see fit to procreate. In 1922 an institute of scientific racism was also founded in Uppsala (the first of its kind in the world) and prior to this (during the 19th and a bit into the 20th century) the profesor of anatomy Anders Retzius and his son Gustaf (who also were profesor of anatomy) travelled around the world making the biggest skull collection in the world. (These skulls have been or are about to be repatriated, among the first to be “going home” were actually the aboriginal ones.)

In 1931 the army also shot some peaceful protesters in Ådalen in Northern Sweden in 1931 and it became a huge political deal.

Besides, there is one Swede contemporary with Phryne that I really think she and Jack would love to befriend! His name was Harry Söderman. He was a professor in criminology and the founder of what today is known as the Swedish National Forensic Centre and quite the character. Of course the main reason for why both Phryne and Jack would like him is that him seemed to have been a great detective. However I think Jack would also like him because he actually tried to travel across the world on his bicycle. That trip actually seems to have been an adventure. Among other things he had shooting duels with Arabic robbers and got the daughter of a maharaja pregnant. He picked up a monkey on the way to have as his sole companion, but it got stuck in the wheel and he had to shoot it. He managed to get as far as China before he turned back.

Harry’s biggest dream was to go to Lyon in France where the greatest forensics lab was at the time. And he was lucky because he got snowed in with a group of tourist in the mountains in Northernmost Sweden. One of them was a French man and a friend of the boss at that forensics lab so afterwards Harry went there.

Harry got a PhD in ballistics which gave him the nickname Revolver-Harry (Pistol-Harry), got back to Sweden and established a detective business (kind of like Phryne!). Harry became famous across the world working with for example both Scotland Yard and FBI from time to time and he also co-founded Interpol. However he hired a secretary during the 1930′s who would become even more famous than him. Her name was Astrid Lindgren and she would be famous across the world as the author of Pippi Longstocking. She has, however, written many other fantastic books as well and three of them, about a boy called Kalle Blomkvist who likes to solve crimes (and play “the War of the Roses”) togethe with his friends Anders and Eva-Lotta, are actually worth mentioning here: Mästerdetektiven Blomkvist (Master detective Blomkvist - about a jewel theft), Mästerdetektiven Blomkvist lever farligt (Master detective Blomkvist lives dangerously - about a murder) and Kalle Blomkvist och Rasmus (Kalle Blomkvist and Rasmus - about a kidnapping). The inspiration for Kalle is most likely Harry.

Sweden was never occupied by the Germans during the Second World War, but Norway was, so many of the Norwegian opposition fled to Sweden. There Harry started training them. He actually managed to gather 17 000 Norwegains to a secret army, ready to free Norway whenever presented he opportunity. In 1945 Germany was about to give up, but there were still many Germans in Norway. Harry then took the train to Oslo heading straight to the German commandant’s office and telling him to give up… and the Germans did almost immediately. Harry continued on to Grini, where the political prisoners were kept. He freed them and picked up a mistress on the way. Because Harry seems to have been quite the lady’s man, a fact that would be really interesting in consideration to Phryne’s interest in men/sex and Jack’s tendency to be jealous. Harry might actually provide a different kind of threat to Phrack than “French artists, fugitive anarchists, Russian clairvoyants and tango dancers” with him actually being a ciminialist.

But love is also the most wonderful and rewarding feeling.

And to love like phrack… Both of them dragged kicking and screaming into a world where being without each other is utterly unbearable. Well that’s rare and so so precious 💞

Elisabeth Barrett Browning sums it up quite accurately:

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of being and ideal grace.

I love thee to the level of every day’s

Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.

I love thee freely, as men strive for right.

I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use

In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose

With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,

Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,