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LADIES ALMANACK
Djuna Barnes



LADIES ALMANACK
showing their Signs and their tides;
their Moons and their Changes;
the Seasons as it is with them;
their Eclipses and Equinoxes; as
well as a full Record of diurnal
and nocturnal Distempers

WRITTEN ILLUSTRATED

BY A LADY OF FASHION
NOW this be a Tale of as fine a Wench as ever wet Bed, she who was called
Evangeline Musset and who was in her Heart one Grand Red Cross for the
Pursuance, the Relief and the Distraction, of such Girls as in their Hinder
Parts, and their Fore Parts, and in whatsoever Parts did suffer them most,
lament Cruelly, be it Itch of Palm, or Quarters most horribly burning, which do
oft occur in the Spring of the Year, or at those Times when they do sit upon
warm and cozy Material, such as Fur, or thick and Oriental Rugs, (whose very
Design it seems, procures for them such a Languishing of the Haunch and Reins as
is insupportable) or who sit upon warm Stoves, whence it is know that one such
flew up with an "Ah my God! What a World it is for a Girl indeed, be she ever so
well abridged and cool of Mind and preserved of Intention, the Instincts are,
nevertheless, brought to such a yelping Pitch and so undo her, that she runs
hither and thither seeking some Simple or Unguent which shall allay her Pain!
And why is it no Philosopher of whatever Sort, has discovered, amid the nice
Herbage of his Garden, one that will content that Part, but that from the day
that we were indifferent Matter, to this wherein we are Imperial Personages of
the divine human Race, no thing so solaces it as other Parts as inflamed, or
with the Consolation every Woman has at her Finger Tips, or at the very Hang of
her Tongue?"
For such then was Evangeline Musset created, a Dame of lofty Lineage, who, in
the early eighties, had discarded her family Tandem, in which her Mother and
Father found Pleasure enough, for the distorted Amusement of riding all
smack-of-astride, like any Yeoman going to gather in his Crops; and with much
jolting and galloping, was made, hour by hour, less womanly, "Though never",
said she, "has that Greek Mystery occurred to me, which is known as the Dashing
out of the Testicles, and all that goes with it!" Which is said to have happened
to a Byzantine Baggage of the Trojan Period, more to her Surprise than her
Pleasure. Yet it is an agreeable Circumstance that the Ages thought fit to hand
down this Miracle, for Hope springs eternal in the human Breast.
It has been noted by some and several, that Women have in them the Pip of
Romanticism so well grown and fat of Sensibility, that they, upon reaching an
uncertain Age, discard Duster, Offspring and Spouse, and a little after are seen
leaning, all of a limp, on a Pillar of Bathos.
Evangeline Musset was not one of these, for she had been developed in the Womb