Another skirt weight?

 After our little trip up to Stanley to vote, we had a quiet afternoon, reading and sketching. (I ought to start work on the garden beds, but it's been so dry I've been putting off planting our winter vegetables, but it's getting to the point when I can't procrastinate any longer.)

For election night our plan was pretty simple, steak on the barbecue, baked potatoes and a salad, all accompanied by a bottle of decent red, the idea being that by the time we finished dinner, the first election results would be coming in, and we could either drown our sorrows, or toast success while we watched the ABC's election coverage.

While we were sitting outside cooking steak, talking and looking at the stars, my foot scrunched on what I first thought was a pebble, and I bent down to pick it up, to chuck into one of the garden beds,

But it wasn't a pebble, it was a blue glass blob like the possible skirt weight I found the summer before last.

Our bower bird is still hanging about and still keeping his bower neat, so I'm guessing, and it is only a guess that he found it on the surface in a neighbour's garden an dropped it on his way back to his bower.

Otherwise, I'm still having a bit of downtime after finishing the documentation of the contents of Lake View, but I did go up to the Athenaeum on Friday for a couple of hours to work on the controlled vocabulary of publisher names, and generally show my face and touch base with people.

I've also spent a little bit of time tracing Ethel Voynich through the British censuses.

I need to go and use the Library's edition of Ancestry to check the full census records, but even using the barebones free summaries you get from UK Census online it's quite interesting.

In 1881, when she was 16, and still living at home as far as I can tell, she is described in the census as a professional music teacher, which fits, as once she secured a small legacy when she was 18, she took herself off to the Hochschule fűr Muzik in Berlin, where she became involved with the Russian dissident community and learned Russian, smuggled banned books into Russia, and spent time as a governess to the family of Sergei Kravchinski's sister in law in Russia.

By 1891 she was back in London, working for a group supporting Russian dissidents. She still gave her name as Ethel Boole, although she was possibly in a relationship with Wilfrid Voynich by then, and listed her profession as that of journalist and translator. (This is in part why I need to use the Library's copy of Ancestry, I need to see who else was listed as living at the same address.)

Fast forward another ten years, and after her 1895 affair with Sidney Reilly, she was listed as Ethel Voynick in the 1901 census (until I check Ancestry I don't know if this is a transcription error, or if the census clerk was too cloth eared to spell Voynich correctly), and her profession given as a novelist and author.

Again, ideally I need to see the original census document to see who was living at the same address, especially as Wilfrid and Ethel's marriage certificate dates from 1902.

In 1911, she was listed as Ethel Voynicz, which would be the Polish rendering of Voynich and is still listed as a novelist and author. Unsurprisingly, she doesn't feature in the 1921 census, as Wilfred had moved the antiquarian book business to New York by then and Ethel had followed him to New York.

We might, of course have another story here, as by then Wilfred was employing Anne Nill as a cataloguer, and she, rather than Ethel accompanied him on his book buying trips to Europe. Anne moved in with Ethel after Wilfred's death as her long term companion.

I do wonder if perhaps there had been a ménage à trois going on there, or maybe I've just got an overly suspicious mind ...