Famous Handbag Quotes

It is very strange to realise that when you see those old films on television of the toothbrush moustache dictator ranting and the mass rallies, and the stiff-armed salutes and all the marching up and down, and the well-known flag standing to attention, that famous menace and what it would lead to - all of it was happening while people went on buying shoes and handbags and party dresses and gramophone records and ornaments and choosing a new car or a new wireless set, or just sitting in a café eating cream cakes.

Excerpted From Chapter One “Rock of Ages” floated lightly down the first floor corridor of the Hollywood Hotel’s west wing. It was Sunday morning, and Hattie Mae couldn’t go to church because she had to work, so she praised the Lord in her own way, but she praised Him softly out of consideration for the “Do Not Disturb” placards hanging from the doors she passed with her wooden cart full of fresh linens and towels. Actually Sundays were Hattie Mae’s favorite of the six days she worked each week. For one thing, her shift ended at noon on Sundays. For another, this was the day Miss Lillian always left a “little something” in her room to thank Hattie Mae for such good maid service. Most of the hotel’s long-term guests left a little change for their room maids, but in Miss Lillian’s case, the tip was usually three crinkly new one dollar bills. It seemed like an awful lot of money to Hattie Mae, whose weekly pay was only nineteen dollars. Still, Miss Lillian Lawrence could afford to be generous because she was a famous actress in the movies. She was also, Hattie Mae thought, a very fine lady. When Hattie Mae reached the end of the corridor, she knocked quietly on Miss Lillian’s door. It was still too early for most guests to be out of their rooms, but Miss Lillian was always up with the sun, not like some lazy folks who laid around in their beds ‘til noon, often making Hattie Mae late for Sunday dinner because she couldn’t leave until all the rooms along her corridor were made up. After knocking twice, Hattie Mae tried Miss Lillian’s door. It opened, so after selecting the softest towels from the stacks on her cart, she walked in. With the curtains drawn the room was dark, but Hattie Mae didn’t stop to switch on the overheard light because her arms were full of towels. The maid’s eyes were on the chest of drawers to her right where Miss Lillian always left her tip, so she didn’t see the handbag on the floor just inside the door. Hattie Mae tripped over the bag and fell headlong to the floor, landing inches from the dead body of Lillian Lawrence. In the dim light Hattie Mae stared into a pale face with a gaping mouth and a trickle of blood from a small red dot above one vacant green eye. Hattie Mae screamed at the top of her lungs and kept on screaming.

As the Roman Empire grew and newly enslaved people were flooding into the city of Rome along with the necessary wealth that allowed those at the top to enslave hundreds or thousands of them, Roman enslavers suddenly became very afraid that they were outnumbered. This became an especial fear as mass slave-owning became a marker of wealth and privilege and conspicuous consumption. Romans took to owning people like modern-day social media influencers have taken to owning Hermès Birkin bags. But unlike a handbag, enslaved people could be dangerous: the more enslaved people one purchased, the more sad and pissed-off people were literally in your house to hate you. Seneca, that old Stoic, wrote about this a few times. He famously said that a (rich, slave-owning) man had as many enemies as he had slaves. He also recorded an interesting senatorial debate about whether enslaved people in Rome should be forced to wear some kind of special clothing to make their status visible and unambiguous. The proposal was voted down because the enslavers feared that if the people they enslaved could see how many of them there were in the city, they’d feel the strength of their numbers and possibly act on it. Such a reasoning is probably nonsense, not least because in a household of four hundred enslaved people everyone definitely knew that they outnumbered their one enslaver, but it’s interesting that the rich experienced some anxiety about their actions. But, being Romans and being hugely wealthy men, and being very, very dedicated to the institution of slavery, the best solution the Senate could come up with was to terrorise those they enslaved into being too afraid to act against those who enslaved them.