Normally today would be a Shakespeare-themed poem — but given the only line in all of his works referring to mushrooms is when Prospero says to his elves: “whose pastime/Is to make midnight mushrumps, that rejoice/To hear the solemn curfew” in the famous drown my book monologue which ends The Tempest, I thought I’d try something different this year & write about another British writer.

Today’s Factoid is one which logically follows on from the main poem. 

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The Swift Rise & Glorious Achievements of H. B. Heelis, Mycologist 
Scientific illustrations and work in mycology

upper middle class : privately educated at home : Victorian : by all accounts very bright : natural science : her delight : bewitched by botany : interested in most things a la nature : fossil-collector : archaeological artefact inspector : entomology expert 

drew & painted across every interest area : with swiftly increasing skill : peppered letters to friends : or handmade christmas cards : with whimsical illustrations of : anthropomorphic mice, rascally rabbits, cute kittens : & so on : soon honed in on : the fantastic field of fungi

perfected microscopic sketches : of fungus spores : theorised as to their germination : reproduction : dismissed symbiosis : two men supported her interests : others mocked her : saying she was : only an amateur : (not a barrier if a man) : but worse — a woman — which of course : at the time : was the biggest crime of all : in the world of academia

despite this : she wrote up her research : submitted a paper : to the Linnean Society : read by a male supporter : because naturally : she could neither read it herself : nor even attend : eventually discouraged : from the field altogether : by the blockhead male gatekeepers

in need of money : transformed a cute tale she’d written : to amuse a friend’s child : about “four little rabbits named Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter” : & so Beatrix Potter’s illustrious career was born : establishing her renown worldwide as : writer-artist-storyteller

so mycology’s loss : was literature’s gain — but wouldn’t it be nice : if she’d lived in a world : that didn’t turn her away : from her first love : perhaps even could’ve done both : or is that too much of a fantasy : to be believed

footnote
a century passes : since the tabling of her paper : at the stuffy old Linnean Society : when they issue : a posthumous apology : for the sexist way they handled her research : ahhh lovely : she’d only been dead 54 years

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Day 23 Factoid – A Scathing Critique about Civilisation as it Stands To Date

Myc(elium) Drop

Beatrix Potter
is the neither the first
nor the last woman
this kind of shit
has happened to