Fifty years since the publication of
The Game of Kings, one of the books which changed and shaped my life. Fifty years today, exactly. It isn't that I wouldn't have loved history anyway, or dramatically epic romantic heroes; I already did, back when I first read the book. But I would never have travelled, probably, to gatherings in Malta and Philadelphia, Dublin and Paolo Alto; I might never have been to Orkney. And I would never have known some of the wonderful people I have met through Dunnett fandom.
The Dorothy Dunnett Society suggested that fans the world over should get together and drink a toast to Dorothy Dunnett at 1 p.m. local time. So we did. Seven of us, at
The Tea Party Cafe on York Street, Ottawa.
The Dorothy Dunnett Society proposed the text of toasts, but I made up ours:
To Dorothy Dunnett, the best of the best.And we toasted her.I passed around my photo album of pictures from the first Dorothy Dunnett gathering in Edinburgh, in 1990. Beulah's comment: "We were so young, then." Tasia and
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josanpq replied, "We still are."
Beulah passed around cards with contact information for the Dorothy Dunnett Society. I showed them the latest issue of their publication,
Whispering Gallery, and let them browse it - but made sure they gave it back. It's precious.
I had proposed that we each bring a favourite Dunnett quote, and some of us brought more than one.
josanpq quoted Thorkel's advice to Thorfinn in
King Hereafter: "Accept the consequences." She also quoted Groa's line about 'five minutes'.
Tasia quoted
Pawn in Frankincense when Lymond is talking to Philippa:
"...The coast's a jungle of Moors, Turks, renegades from all over Europe, sitting in palaces built from the sale of Christian slaves. There are twenty thousand men, women and children in the bagnios of Algiers alone. I am not going to make it twenty thousand and one just because your mother didn't allow you to keep rabbits, or whatever is at the root of your unshakeable fixation."
"I had weasels, instead," said Philippa shortly.
"Good God," said Lymond, looking at her. "That explains a lot."
She also quoted a lovely passage from
King Hereafter, which I don't know where to find. It begins, "You have only to lift your hand".
I chose, from
Checkmate:
A lie is a broad and spacious and glittering thing, sweeping belief before it from its very grandeur. But the truth fits, like an old man cutting cloth in an attic.
And from
The Spring of the Ram:
Calmness was a weapon and a defence; beauty was only a weapon and best left alone. He was to face the Emperor of the eastern Greek world, and he employed his only real rule. Put yourself in the other man's place. War and trade; love and freedom from love - it was the way to success in them all. When he failed, it was because he had forgotten it. Or, occasionally, because someone was better at it that he was. But only occasionally.
One reader chose the very beginning of
Dolly and the Doctor Bird, which I would quote if I had my copy to hand.
Gemma chose the final verse of the wonderful rhyming game played by Lymond and Philippa in the House of the Revels in
The Ringed Castle:
Ah, Lamuel, lest your Life be Light
Lament not for your Lost Delight
Beshrew Loose Ladies in the Night
OR LANGUISH LOCKED IN L!!"
We voted on who had the best hat; three votes went to Tasia, three to Gemma, and someone just voted "Everybody", so
josanpq flipped a coin to break the tie, and Gemma won the prize - a coffee table book with pictures of houses of Scotland, called
The Scottish House.
And all the time we were drinking delicious tea from beautiful but mismatched cups, since it's a Mad Tea Party: spiced chai, Earl Grey, Lady Grey - or drinking coffee; or delicious mushroom soup, or eating cucumber sandwiches, or grilled cheese and veggies, or dahl over rice; and for dessert, pastries and scones. Mine was pumpkin scone with clotted cream and raspberry jam. I shared it. Mmm.
And though the Tea Party Cafe chef couldn't have known it, raspberry jam is a great Dunnett reference.
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