Black Bile in Sunny Paris by Caroline Lawrence

I'm in Paris this weekend on the first glorious days after a wet and miserable winter. On Monday I will speak to children at Marymount International School about Mysteries of Ancient Rome. One of the things I do when I travel is look for the past in the present. But where are elements of ancient Rome to be found on a glorious Saturday evening on the Île de la Cité? The cafes are packed with tourists. Pedestrians are eating ice cream, crêpes and the latest Parisian craze: les macarons.

On Eurostar, I was listening to a podcast on Rick Steve's excellent (and free) travel app, an interview with a native Parisian. In Stuff Parisians Like, Olivier Magny tells us what Parisians like and – more importantly – dislike.

Parisians are exquisitely delicate people who like all things in moderation and shiver in horror at any manifestation of over-enthusiasm. They mistrust indulgence, and when something pleasurable is mentioned in conversation, Parisians always have to dilute it with their favourite word: petit.

Olivier tells of Parisians' disdain for grinning tourists. "In Paris enthusiasm is considered a mild form of retardation. If you complain on the other hand, you must be smart. The person who complains is the person who spotted the problem. The person who spotted the problem is a smart person." This observation made me think of the melancholic type person on my questionnaire for kids about Which of the Four Humours are You?

Romans believed the world was made of the four elements, and so are people. We all have a balance of the four, but everyone has more of one humour than the others. People with too much blood are sanguine: cheerful, optimistic, flighty. Those with too much yellow bile are choleric: good leaders but tending to be hot tempered. Phlegmatic types have too much phlegm or mucus, which apparently makes you easy-going and fearless. But an excess of black bile makes you a perfectionist trouble-shooter on your good days and a moody pessimist on a bad, or black day.

Marymount School in Neuilly-sur_Seine

Someone in this century has likened the melancholic to a beaver: resigned to a hard life of work. In this pattern the lion is choleric, a faithful dog the phlegmatic and a person of sanguine temperament is an otter, floating on his back and enjoying his abalone, a type of giant oyster.

My son Simon is of a typically melancholy disposition. Like the beaver on my questionnaire, he always found my sanguine cheerfulness a burden to be borne. His father is French Huguenot by descent, and I suddenly wondered if the French are melancholy by nature. Of course you can't plop a whole nation into a box, but it got me wondering.

As we walked through the glorious evening full of laughter and ice-cream, the sun sparkling on the Seine and Notre Dame looming like a benign golden souvenir, I spotted these two Parisian men (look at their body language) walking resignedly through the streets of Paris. "Fait beau," one of them might be saying gloomily to the other. "Oui, mais il y a trop de tourists."

I have now downloaded Stuff Parisians Like onto my Kindle and am enjoying it hugely. It turns out I have a soupçon of black bile, too.

Caroline devotes the months of March and October to school events. Sometimes she gets to go to Paris. 

'Sow-drunk or Sheep-drunk' by Karen Maitland

Now that January's month of sobriety is well and truly over and the wine intake has started to creep up again it is, perhaps, comforting to remember that the 8th March is the feast day of St Duthac, a Scottish bishop, who died in 1065. One of his miracles concerns a man who had drunk too much at a great feast and had a hangover. He sent some pork to St Duthac to ask the saint to cure his sore head. But Duthac’s disciple left the pork and a golden ring on a grave while he went off to pray. A kite, flying overhead, spotted the feast and stole both ring and pork. Duthac commanded the kite to return, took the ring from the bird, but allowed it to eat the pork as a reward for its obedience and the man’s hangover was cured.

If you don’t have local saint you can call upon to cure the after-effects of a party, there are a few other

remedies you could try. Gervase Marham,writing in 1611, said that if you didn’t want to get drunk, you

Field Cabbage or Colewort

should mix powdered betony and colewort and swallow as much of the mixture every morning 'that will lie upon a sixpence'. I’m not sure if this lessened the effects of alcohol or simply made you too queasy to drink.

Wearing a piece of jewellery that incorporated an amethyst was also supposed to ward off drunkenness. While an old Lincolnshire belief was that three horseshoes nailed to the bedhead would allow the person who slept in that bed to drink as much as he liked without becoming over-talkative.

Ivy used to be hung outside taverns as a sign that the wine was sold there, because ivy was sacred to the gods Bacchus and Dionysus, both gods of wine. A bowl made from ivy wood was thought to have the power to separate water from wine. If you knew you were in for a heavy night, drinking vinegar in which ivy berries had been soaked was supposed to protect the stomach from the ill-effects, while after a bout of drinking you were advised to boil ivy leaves and drink the water in which they’d been cooked.

In the 17th Century they distilled acorns to make a drink that would prevent alcoholics from craving alcohol. But the ancient Greeks claimed an owl egg broken into a cup would put you off alcohol for life.

On the other hand, if you wanted to heighten the effects of alcohol, you would have mixed the ashes of human bones with your favourite tipple to make you drunk more quickly.

Cyclamen, though a purging and emetic plant was also known as the ‘drinkers plant’ because it was said to hate the sobering plants and love the grape. Adding a little cyclamen to wine was believed to markedly increase the alcoholic effect. Whereas eating cakes of cyclamen was thought to make you a good lover. It also helped prevent baldness in men if you stuffed it up your nose, presumably not at the same time you were attempting to use it as an aphrodisiac. Curiously, while parsley seeds sprinkled over the head three times a year was also supposed to prevent hair loss, parsley seeds were also supposed help men with ‘weak brains’ stand up to the effects of alcohol better.

The Bitter Tonic by Adriaen Brouwer (1605-1638)

Apparently though, parsley didn't work for every one, for in the Middle Ages they identified four levels of drunkenness which were supposed to correspond with how men behaved at each stage – sheep-drunk, lion-drunk, ape-drunk and sow-drunk. Seems rather unfair on the animals, though I think it does describe the stages vividly.

A final piece of advice on alcohol is to be found in John Myrc Instructions for Priests written in the late 14th Century. ‘But what if you are so drunk that your tongue will not serve you? Then you must not baptise the baby on any account, unless you can say the words.’

I’m sure many a mother has been grateful for that instruction, for quite apart from the danger of dropping the infant, there is always the problem of what the poor child might end up with as a name.

FIFTY YEARS ON: The Hang Down your Head and Die Reunion. by Adèle Geras

Back in September 2013, I promised that I'd write about the major theatrical event of my time at Oxford. I had a stroke of luck in my first week and it changed the whole of my time at University.

I went to audition for Braham Murray and David Wright in University College. They wanted to put on a Joan Littlewood type show (remember 'Oh What A Lovely War'?) about capital punishment which in 1963 was still a sentence available to judges. My own father was a judge in Tanganika, as it was then, and once the publicity machine started rolling, "Judge's Daughter in Anti-Hanging Play" was the kind of headline we were seeing.


The production hadn't been written yet. David Wright was the 'writer' which meant that his job was to collate, arrange, adjust all kinds of input from members of the cast. This was to be a collaborative show.


I was chosen. I was one of the lucky ones. I think it was my version of Joan Baez's 'El preso numero nueve' which swung it. I have a voice that doesn't need amplification and the huge room we were in had a marvellous acoustic. Braham and David were practically blasted out of their chairs.


That was in 1963. We had our run-ins with the Lord Chamberlain (who had to read all scripts and decide if they needed any censorship.) We had a simulated execution in the show which caused a bit of a problem, and it was touch and go at one point whether we'd be allowed the poster, which depicted a hanging, rather graphically. But in the end, the show when it opened in the Oxford Playhouse was a huge hit and moved to the Comedy Theatre in London in March 1964.

The first few nights coincided with some exams I inconveniently had to sit. Oh, the impossible things you can do when you're 20! As soon as I finished writing whatever exam it was, I ran out of the building, leapt into a waiting car driven by a lovely medical student called John Godber, and straight to the Comedy Theatre where I was into my costume before you could say "The Show Must Go On." At the end of the performance, John was again waiting and back we went to Oxford where I climbed in, and sank into bed, sometimes not even bothering to take my make up off properly. You had to wear sub-fusc (black skirt, white shirt etc) for exams and by the time my papers were over my shirt was terra cotta all round the neck. Who had time to do the laundry?

This year marks 50 years on....about 25 of us met in London in February for a really marvellous lunch and session of reminiscence. We sang all the songs again. We chatted about what an unusual coming together of talents it was at a particular time. Many who appeared in 'Hang' have gone on to make their mark in show business of one kind or another. Terry Jones, Michael Palin, Michael Elwyn, Richard Durden, David Wood, and of course Braham Murray (who is now a Grand Old Man of the Theatre) were all there. So was Paul Collins, who became a judge and never had to sentence anyone to death. And Viv Ault (now Wylie) Susan Solomon, Jasmina Hamzavi, and Greg Stephens, one of the musicians and still playing beautifully....they were all there. Also, Bob Scott (now Sir Bob!) who even when he was a very young man, had a paternal presence and a fabulous voice. We are older. Peter Wiles, the Stage Manager was there and still seeing, along with David Plowright, that everything ran like clockwork. Max McBurney who played banjo couldn't come but he did sent me a memory which may be of great interest to fans of guitar/banjo music. 

 

Several of our number are now dead: John Gould, master musician, Iwan Williams, who wrote the lovely 'Tripe Seller's Lament,' Tim Godden with whom I was in love at the time and who did the lighting. Hope McIntyre is gone but memories of her glamour live on. And David Wright, who was the most beautiful young man I'd ever seen. I asked for some memories of those days and the pieces that follow are what I've been sent.I'm starting with David Wood... his picture is below. He did more than anyone to set the tone of the show and has since then been the chief archivist and has kept brilliant records. Moreover, he's the one who organises reunions and we're all in his debt.
 

To get such a meaty role in such an experimental production in my very first term at Oxford was a dream come true. For us then to receive such plaudits at the Oxford Playhouse that we transferred – first to the famous Memorial Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon and then to London’s West End – was a huge cherry on the dream cake. I remember the audition – I had to improvise a commentary on a public hanging as though it were a sporting event. I remember the rehearsals, trying things out, with Braham, our director, cleverly assessing our individual skills and finding ways to utilise them. I remember commenting that to use THERE’S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS as our ironic closing number was a great idea, but why not have a new song rather than an existing one. ‘Go away and write one, then!’, barked Braham. I did, and sang it to him next day. THE SHOW’S THE THING was accepted, I was asked to write more, and suddenly I was a songwriter. Thanks to HDYH, fifty years on I’m still writing songs for my shows. HDYH introduced me to musical genius John Gould, with whom I performed, wrote and ran a theatre company for forty nine years until his early demise in 2012. I’ll never forget, in the Opening Parade of our circus-themed production, running across the stage and jumping joyfully into the arms of dear Bob (later Sir Bob) Scott. Da Da!!! We both played clowns. And before every performance my treat was to visit the girls’ dressing room, where the lovely (and much missed) Hope McIntyre would backcomb my extra-long locks into a wild afro. HDYH gave me my first tv appearance – we were featured in the BBC Arts programme MONITOR. And I was even nominated as Best Newcomer to the West End in the VARIETY Critics’ Poll. All at the age of 20. What more could I, theatre-mad from the age of six, ever wish for? Two years later, the incomparable songstress Adele Weston, Bob Scott, John Gould and I were reunited and back in the West End in FOUR DEGREES OVER, our post-degree gold-plated entree into the real world. HDYH opened up for me a magical world I am thrilled to be still part of..

David Wood OBE


SIR BOB SCOTT WRITES:


I remember a lot, like all of us trooping off to No11 Downing Street before a performance to have drinks with Reginald Maudling (his son was a friend of someone)and most of us arriving on stage drunk to the disgust of Braham. I think he was specially cross because he had not been at the party. I also remember Princess Margaret coming to the show one night and sitting Front Row Stage Left – literally below my feet when I sang Sam Hall. All went well for a verse or two until I got to the word “Parson” and my emphasis was on the “s” and suddenly a terrible glob of spit landed fair and square on the Royal lap. At which point she raised her programme either to protect herself or to find out the perpetrator`s name so that he could be taken to the Tower. I remember Michael Emrys-Jones (now Michael Elwyn) making me corpse dreadfully once. I remember a whole group of us waiting for the Reviews after the First Night Party and opening the Mail to read Bernard Levin and being rocked back by the one word headline – BRILLIANT. It all seemed so easy and normal somehow. What a crazy thing for us all.

DAVID PLOWRIGHT writes:

One memory of Hang in the West End which stays with me is the night when the communal flat was full and the only place I could find to sleep was the top floor bathroom with some mangy blankets. Not many people can say that they've caught crabs in Reginald Maudling's bath!

(note for the young. Reginald Maudling was Chanceller of the Exchequer at the time. Hence the party at Number 11 Downing Street ...AG)

MICHAEL ELWYN writes a characteristically witty piece which is pretending to be part of a historical novel!

An extract from THE SHADOW OF THE NOOSE by Michaela Jones

Oxford in the winter of fifty years ago was a cold, bleak city. The rain knifed down the alley way outside the Gloucester Arms as a black leather clad figure emerged from the warm fug of the inn and made a run for the stage door opposite, a Gauloises clenched in his nervous fingers. The Lord Murray, Master of the Experimental Revels, was about to confront his destiny; and so were the merry band of youthful rogues and vagabonds who awaited him inside the Playhouse…


‘History was indeed made that February night. The dreaming spires awoke from sleep to watch a tale of supreme dramatic horror, laced with biting wit and soaring songs. The audience applause rolled on and on, out of Beaumont Street, into the surrounding colleges - where the quadrangles resounded to one of the greatest theatrical triumphs Oxford had ever seen, And outside the Playhouse, The Lord Murray, somewhat drunk with success, was suddenly approached by an elegantly dressed stranger.


My name is Michael, Duke of Codron. You may know that I am Master of the West End Revels. Hang Down Your Head And Die is extraordinary. It must have another life - on a larger stage. I propose we open next month at the Comedy Theatre, London.’ For once, the Lord Murray was almost lost for words. ‘Yes’ he gasped. They shook hands. And the stranger vanished into the night.


PETER WILES writes:


I was in my first year when I was lucky enough to get swept into the HDYH whirlpool of excitement. Val Myers who was stage managing was my mentor. She, along with the wonderful staff at the Oxford Playhouse, including the lovely Ken Bonfield, taught me a huge amount. I remember the professionalism of the show. To end us as a youngster 'on the book' in the West End was amazing. I think capital punishment was abolished in 1965. I suppose one can't estimate Hang's influence in helping to end the barbaric practice?

PAUL COLLINS (later a Judge in the real world) writes:

I was parachuted in for the week in Stratford - a great thrill. I had been playing Toby Belch (in a production of Twelfth Night which was directed by Michael Rudman and starred Michael York) and unlike Emrys, couldn't do both at the same time! Unbelievably I had the no 1 dressing room with a balcony overlooking the Avon, with a hip bath. Similar luxury never repeated.


MAX MCBURNEY, banjo player extraordinary writes:

At the time when "Hang" was running in the UK, from February to April 1964, there was a whole new generation of British guitarists coming along on the folk/acoustic/roots scene, with a new way of playing.

Foremost among these were Bert Jansch and Davy Graham and I first bought their LPs in the year after "Hang". I hadn't heard of them at the time of the show.

The claw-hammer style they introduced is actually derived from five-string banjo playing, where the first finger picks up, the nails of the right hand drive down and the thumb follows through on the fifth string, a drone. By hammering on or pulling off notes, this creates a very satisfactory rhythm: bum-diddy, bum-a-diddy.

On the guitar, the thumb plays two beats in the bar on the bass strings, while the fingers play the melody line on the top strings. The little finger is normally anchored in front of the bridge. You can watch Mark Knopfler doing it at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_7feGF9TA8

One of our fastest songs was "900 miles", with the tempo depending on what Greg and I decided at that evening's strategic planning session in the Hand and Racquet. Dickon Reed would come out stage right and we would belt into the song, in E minor and G.

I used bluegrass picking for this song, a combination of first and second fingers with thumb that makes for a faster performance. It was the style that Earl Scruggs made famous.

After one performance, I think one of the hated matinees, two guys came rushing into the band's changing room at the Comedy, one asking "Who was the guy doing the fantastic banjo?" He sounded American. We exchanged a few pleasantries, no contact developed and I never saw him again.

However, many years later I picked up a CD with early pieces by Bert Jansch and was surprised to hear him doing the same song with classic banjo accompaniment on his second LP, It Don't Bother Me, in December 1965.

You can hear it at: at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VhmT6vOZRc

It seems he had a tendency to adopt an American accent. Could it have been?

Time and Boudica's Daughters - Katherine Roberts

Tomorrow, Templar will publish our very first History Girls anthology Daughters of Time, edited by Mary Hoffman, with short stories from authors of this blog who write for young readers:

My story is first in the book by virtue of being about the 'daughter' who comes first on the historical timeline - Boudica, warrior queen of the Iceni - so I'm sneaking in here a day before publication to write one of the first posts on the book's blog tour.

Boudica's story is a brutal one, containing material at first sight unsuitable for younger readers - both her daughters were reported to have been raped by the Romans, but rape is obviously not something I could include in a children's book, so my first challenge was to work out how to tell the story without losing its power.
 
This is not the first time I've written a short story about the queen of the Iceni. My first attempt "Empire of the Hare" was published in a small women's literary fiction magazine QWF in 1998, when it was also shortlisted for the Library of Avalon Geoffrey Ashe Prize.

In this version, which was published for an adult readership, I used the elder daughter to tell the story and had her fall in love with the Roman tax collector, meaning that she had already lost her virginity behind the stables with her Roman sweetheart before the rape scene. This was long before the days of ebooks, when Boudica was spelt Boudicca (and sometimes still Boadicea - the spelling in common use when I first came across the red-haired warrior queen at school, and therefore always the most romantic one in my mind). I also named her daughters differently, since this was pre-internet days and no popular names existed to confuse people... or if they did, I was not aware of them. Historically, of course, the girls' names are not recorded, and neither is the queen's childhood name - she received her popular name Boudica, which means 'Victory', when she led her people against the Romans.

statue of Queen Boudica in London

The young readership Templar proposed for Daughters of Time gave me the perfect opportunity to use Boudica's younger daughter to give the story a new slant. In "Tasca's Secret", my heroine Tasca is removed from the violence before it begins by her young Roman friend Marcus, who sneaks her into his father's camp when the soldiers attack Boudica's village. The younger daughter is therefore held as a hostage but not mistreated. Later, when the queen captures Marcus to take her revenge, Tasca defies her mother to save her friend.

If you know a young reader who has been inspired by Queen Boudica's story, I came across a wonderful illustrated poem about her over at History for Kids, which is written with the same age group in mind and uses humour to brighten up the history.

To me, this is one of the joys of writing historical fiction. There is always a new way into an old story - whether it is a different viewpoint, or a fictional character (such as the boy Marcus in "Tasca's Secret") who can be introduced to breathe new life into historical fact, or a different style that can be used to tell it. There is even a bit of leeway with well-known historical characters, especially if their ages are flexible, as with Boudica's daughters.

I know the other History Girls who contributed to this anthology have taken their own unique route into their chosen stories, which they'll be telling you more about at various stops on the blog tour. I, for one, am looking forward to reading all the stories when the anthology is published tomorrow!

~~~

Daughters of Time (edited by Mary Hoffman) includes stories by Penny Dolan, Adele Geras, Mary Hoffman, Diane Hoffmeyr, Marie-Louise Jensen, Catherine Johnson, Katherine Langrish, Joan Lennon, Sue Purkiss, Celia Rees, Katherine Roberts, Anne Rooney, and Leslie Wilson.

Katherine Roberts writes historical fantasy and legend for young readers. Her latest series Pendragon Legacy about King Arthur's daughter is also available from Templar. More details at www.katherineroberts.co.uk

Mary Anning in My Mind - Joan Lennon

Mary Anning (1799-1847) was a fossil finder along England's Jurassic Coast, during the earliest days of the new science of paleontology. The theme on History Girls this month is Cranky Ladies in History, and Mary certainly had plenty of reasons to be unhappy, fed-up, angry, obstreperous, or, indeed, eccentric. (Tricky, these transatlantic translations ...) She had money worries, serious health problems, and more than her fair share of griefs, and she was under-valued by a scientific community made up largely of rich guys with beards. There are very few contemporary images of her other than the ones below:

sketch of Mary Anning by Henry De la Beche

painting by B.J. Donne (Mary is meant to be pointing at a fossil, not telling her dog Tray to stay)

Salt print photograph by William Henry Fox Talbot ("The Geologists" 1843) which may or may not include Mary Anning as the lump on the left (see Suzanne Pilaar Birch's article in the Guardian here.)

But the thing is, none of these images is a bit like the one of her I have in my mind.  I've been crazy for fossils for as long as I can remember, and I've had a soft spot for Mary Anning for about as long.  Which is why, when the chance to write a story about her in the History Girls' anthology Daughters of Time came along, I jumped at it.  I did my research.  I found out things I hadn't known before.  I felt sorry for all her troubles and trials and frustrations.  I was in awe of her (self)learning and meticulous skill in separating her fossils from the surrounding rock and her revolutionary understanding of their meanings.  But still that was not what I saw in my mind.  For me, Mary Anning will always be a figure running along a shingly beach, with a hammer in her hand and a dog at her side and the next amazing discovery waiting for her in the rocks just ahead.  The girl who could see things that other folk couldn't - exciting things - wonderful things ...  So that's how I wrote her.

Mary Anning:  Best After Storms

Joan Lennon's website.

Joan Lennon's blog.


P.S.  Back in 2010, the first Slightly Jones Mystery was published, all about the theft of the astonishing (and sadly fictional) dragonfish fossil from the then-new Natural History Museum in London - and this is the dedication:

Everybody's heard of Florence Nightingale 

and David Livingstone.  These books are dedicated 

to the Victorian heroes and heroines 

who aren't quite so famous!

This one's for 

Mary Anning, Fossil Finder

Prescient, eh?

In a Country Churchyard - by Katherine Langrish

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

         The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

         And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimm'ring landscape on the sight,

         And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

         And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r

         The moping owl does to the moon complain

Of such, as wand'ring near her secret bow'r,

         Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Gray's 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard'


History is all around us.  The nearest place to find a date, outside a book, is probably in a church or a churchyard.  On a recent walk through our village churchyard, I came across the memorial stone of one Joseph Lyford, pictured above.  He 'departed this life' in 1809,  and his stone is elegantly and gracefully carved with scrolls, flowers and cherubs. Perhaps he was a landowner: there is a hamlet called Lyford a mile or two over the fields.

The older part of the churchyard is all leaning headstones and ivied tombs. We certainly have plenty of owls, and Gray's 'moping' is a lovely word to describe the sound (if not the likely emotion) of any owl intent on hunting the mice and voles which undoubtedly live in the undergrowth.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,

         Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

         The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,

         The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

         No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed

Churchyards are supposed to be spooky places, but I like ours, especially on a sunny spring day with the crocuses and snowdrops blossoming on graves where they were planted years ago.

Gray's Elegy is set in the evening, of course, when thoughts would tend to melancholy.  I don't know if you've read it, or re-read it lately, but it's a long and beautiful poem.  Gray 'considers', as the modern poet Geoffrey Hill says, 'the outnumbering dead': and wonders not only at the way in which death levels all pomp and state, but also about the forgotten or unrecognised talents and abilities of those who lie beneath:

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

         Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;

Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,

         Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page

         Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;

Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,

         And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,

         The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:

Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen,

         And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

 

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast

         The little tyrant of his fields withstood;

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,

         Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

'Some mute, inglorious Milton - some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood'! Marvellous and poignant: for the truth is that gravestones - set up for no other purpose than to commemorate the dead - can preserve so little.  Even the ones which haven't yet weathered or crumbled into illegibility have little room for more than a name and a date.   Churchyards are places of lost information as much as gardens of remembrance.

And yet:

... ev'n these bones from insult to protect,

         Some frail memorial still erected nigh,

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,

         Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. 

Like every churchyard, ours has its share of 'shapeless sculpture': but let's leave that unchronicled.  Instead, here are two recent graves, less than a decade old.  Plain and unadorned, especially compared to the elaborate Victorian tombstones. I never knew this couple, so I hope their family won't mind the photo appearing here.  But a gravestone is a public statement as well as a family monument, and to my mind these are the most touching inscriptions in the churchyard. 

The first one reads: 

ALWAYS A GENTLE MAN                              

GEORGE OBERMAN

HUSBAND OF LAURIE

The second one reads:

LIFE WAS AN ADVENTURE

LAURIE OBERMAN, (NEE RIGUELLE)

WIFE OF GEORGE

They died within a few weeks of one another, aged ninety and ninety-one, and their stones celebrate a man's gentleness and a woman's courage. I can't think of a lovelier way to be remembered.

A Good German? by Eve Edwards

For me, part of being a historical novelist is challenging myself with the question: in this era, what kind of person would I have been?  On what side would I have fought?  Roundhead or cavalier? Whig or Tory or radical?  Mod or rocker?

Recently, thanks to a rummage through an Oxfam bookshop, I picked up Joseph Kanon's The Good German.  It is set in Berlin in 1945 and falls into the spy thriller category but also taps into some intriguing historical themes that go far beyond a good page-turner.  I can highly recommend it for its portrait of a ruined city and the early days of partition.  I was particularly fascinated because the Nazi round up raises one such difficult question for me. Had I had the misfortune to be born a Berliner in those years, what kind of German would I have been?  I hope that I would make all the right choices, but a good novel like Kanon's confronts me with the very real possibility that I would not.

It is easy to imagine everyone on the 'enemy' side was bad - it helps make the history books cleaner, more white hat/black hat as Hollywood prefers in its superhero movies.  But history isn't clean or simple.  Last week Deutsche Welt ran an article by Anne-Sophie Brandlin  - translated and reported in The Week under the strap line: Grow up, America - we aren't all Nazis.  The writer is tired of the lack of nuance with which the events of WWII are portrayed and argues that Berlin 'is packed with reminders of the past' whereas in Washington in the National Mall there is not a single memorial to non-American victims of the Vietnam War.  I don't know if that is true and the contexts are very different, but I get the point Brandlin is trying to make.  Most Germans are not slow to acknowledge their 20th century faults but they also need to be allowed to portray recent history in its full complexity without being accused of trying to bury ugly truths.

That was why it was intensely moving this week to read Clive James' essay on Sophie Scholl in his  Cultural Amnesia - an amazingly broad and erudite essays collection on 20th century thinkers.  If you thought he was only a TV critic, think again.

Sophie Scholl with brother Hans and Christoph Probst,
leaders of the White Rose resistance - photo from US Holocaust Memorial Museum

Back to Sophie.  Is her name familiar to you?  It wasn't to me, but she deserves to be up there with Anne Frank as one of our heroes.  She joined with her brother in the White Rose resistance movement - young Germans who knew the Nazis were evil and did what they could to register their protest.  She was executed at age 21 by the Gestapo in 1943, along with her brother and other members of the group.  The most remarkable aspect of her bravery was she was told she did not have to die - she could claim she was misled and be spared the guillotine. Instead she chose to stick by her principles and is reported by the chief executioner to have died more courageously than anyone else he had led to the block.  I'd like to declare her an unambiguous good German.

We are running a theme of cranky ladies this month on the blog but Sophie is too great to be saddled with that title. She was 'cranky' in the sense that word is often used to attack women: those who refuse to fit in, make themselves awkward for their society.  Good for you, Sophie. I can only hope I would display a fraction of your courage if ever I had to make such a difficult moral choice.

www.eve-edwards.co.uk

Georgians Revealed at the British Library - Lucy Inglis

Today I do the last of my walking tours for the British Library's Georgians Revealed exhibition, which examines eighteenth century print culture, from high life to low life. It contains so many things that are rarely brought together, such as pattern books for interior design, sales material, maps and even trade cards and racecards. With the rise of literacy (in reading, if not always in writing), printed paper came to play a far larger part in ordinary life throughout the century with everything from newspapers to sheet music being available even to the very poor for the first time. This exhibition shows what a tremendous variety of this material still remains with us, despite its ephemeral quality. It runs for another week and will close on the 11th of March. So go now while you still can!

Part of the exhibition’s remit was to bring in the wider landscape of Bloomsbury and a surprising amount of Georgian architecture remains, despite the devastations of nineteenth century poverty and the air raids of 1941. The walks today feature a mile tour, starting at the Library and passing through Georgian Bloomsbury, taking in Judd Street, The Boot pub on Cromer Street, where the Gordon Rioters met in 1780, through to Regent Square, so badly damaged during the Blitz. Regent Square retains only one side of its Georgian buildings; the other three sides were lost during the Blitz. It does however, have one of London’s best ghost signs on one outside terrace wall: Bates’ Cures for Wounds and Sores. After Regent Square we move onto the Foundling Museum, to discuss the work of Thomas Coram and the original governors and the process of being admitted as a foundling, plus the terrible social conditions of the period which sparked the need for such an institution. Gin, prostitution and identity all feature. In Hunter Street, we discuss to the work of the Hunter brothers, John and William, and how they contributed so much to Georgian medicine and to the modern science of obstetrics. In Handel Street we discuss the musician and his move from a German composer of Italianate opera to the master of English choral music, plus his work for charity on the side. Then it’s up to Cartwright Gardens for the work of James Burton the architect, taking in Burton Street; to Woburn Walk, London’s finest outdoor Georgian shopping ‘mall’. Finally, it’s back to the Library via Flaxman Terrace, named for John Flaxman, artist and sculpture (possibly the finest designer of the period - for my money at least). Back in the eighteenth century garden of the British Library, built for the exhibition, we discuss London’s growth, gardens, and of course, the Georges. These walks are huge fun and have been well-received, so much so that they were all sold out in November. However, should you wish to take part in this walk in your own time (it’s about a mile and takes around an hour) please email me here for a PDF version of it. (My address will be displayed in the browser bar and can be copied from there.)

If you have a whole morning or afternoon to take in the delights of Georgian London, the British Library have also had me create a walk which includes the Foundling Museum, Coram’s Fields, The Hunterian, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, the Soane Museum and Woburn Walk, and takes you along many of the remaining Georgian Streets of Bloomsbury. This walk is free to download from the British Library here and the walking itself takes a couple of hours, so add that on to the amount of time you want to spend at the museums. Free, paper copies of this walk are also available inside the Library until the end of the exhibition. If you're on social media and doing the walks, the hashtag for the exhibition is #BLGeorgians. Enjoy!

Cranky Ladies of History

Sometimes we have a theme running through our posts for a month. Since this March, International Women's History Month celebrates Women of Character, Courage, and Commitment, and March 8th, International Women's Day, has the theme Inspiring Change, we are linking to a site that is attempting to crowdsource a book on Cranky Ladies of History. The editor of the book will post about it here on 22nd March.*

Not all our posts will be about this and we have had some discussion about what "cranky" means and interpreted it in our own way.

It links in well with our launch of Daughters of Time, which I wrote about on the first day of the year. That contains thirteen stories by members of the blog suitable for young readers of nine years and upwards, about women in English history, some whom might have been considered "cranky" in their time according to one or other definition.

My own choice, Lady Jane Grey, was not, in my opinion the helpless pawn of ambitious men and their political manoeuvrings. She was stubborn as a mule. After all, she could have saved her life by converting to Mary Tudor's religion but refused to - a rejection of clemency which saw her executed in the Tower of London.

Other contributors will write about their own "daughter of time" this month and next.

And four of us will be appearing at the Oxford Literary Festival to talk about the women in our stories, including Mary Wollstonecraft, Emily Davison and the protesters in the Peace Camp at Greenham Common. If you're in the area, do make a date for 2pm on Sunday 30th March.

Here I am putting flowers on the grave of Aphra Behn, who features in the book in a story by Marie-Louise Jensen:

We did this a few days ago in Westminster Abbey, following Virginia Woolf's advice:

“All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds.” (A Room of one's own) Seven History Girls came here with our publishers from Templar Books, who had organised the bouquet.

And we are pretty good at speaking our minds.

Eva Reckitt


But here I'd like to write about my own "cranky lady'" Eva Reckitt, in whose house I lived for four and a half years and who was a very influential person in my life. Obviously in that time I got to know her quite well, although she was eighty when I met her and I was twenty-five. But when I searched the Net for her there was only one rather unflattering photograph taken in her youth and some stern reports on how her phones were tapped and an official eye kept on her in the '20s because of her political affiliation.

For Eva was that oddity: a communist and a wealthy woman. Her fortune came from the family firm that made Reckitt's Blue - a phenomenally successful wash day aid used in lots of homes. Her older brother Maurice was an Anglo-Catholic writer and croquet player; her younger brother Geoffrey, known as "Bunny", was I think already dead when I met Eva.

She was born in 1890 and never married, though she spoke very warmly of the Socialist and academic G.D.H. Cole. Cole was married and indeed co-wrote many detective novels with his wife, Margaret Postgate. But I think Eva carried a bit of a torch for him.

Her main claim to fame, apart from generous donations to the Communist Party, was setting up the Collet's Book Shop in Charing Cross Road:

She was also on the executive of the LRD (Labour Research Department) and she was still going to meetings there when I knew her in the '70s. Her great friend was Olive Parsons and they shared a weekend cottage in Sussex. Olive, another committed communist and by then a widow, had also come under surveillance.

Olive's daughter-in-law was the poet Patricia Beer, whom I met in Eva's house and liked very much. (I remember staying up all one night in Eva's house to read Mrs Beer's House, Patricia's account of her childhood in a family of Plymouth Brethren, which antedates Oranges are not the Only Fruit by seventeen years).

So what was I doing in Eva Reckitt's house? I suppose I was her Companion. I got a free almost self-contained flat at the top of the house, in return for walking her cavalier King Charles spaniel night and morning and doing some gardening (always also rewarded with a curry lunch) and generally helping out.

We had breakfast together every morning, sitting under her painting by Roger Fry of Mediterranean rooftops. after I had taken the dog for a walk on Hampstead Heath. Later my husband-to-be also moved in and we were married from there, Eva coming to our very small wedding in Cambridge in a cold and frosty December.

I wrote my first book in her house. She taught me to have friends of all ages, so that one wouldn't outlive them all (Eva was 86 when she died, Olive 104). She introduced me to the Bookseller, a journal I still take every week, the Wine Society, William Morris - oh. so many things! Many a night she would invite me - later both of us - down to her living-room to watch a TV programme - a drama or an Arts documentary - while sharing a bottle of claret with her.

We still use some of her phrases and made-up words (she always went to the "hairmonger" for instance). She was both a thorn in the side of the British establishment and the most wonderful friend and companion. When she died, she left me a bowl by Lalique, a walnut bureau and a marble tiger, given her on a trip to China. To my husband she left her Nonesuch Shakespeare in seven volumes.

I loved her like a grandmother (I never knew a grandmother) and treasure her memory. So she is my "cranky lady," my woman of character, courage and commitment and one who inspired much change and development in me.

* Pozible Campaign
Roundup page on FableCroft


This post is written as part of the Women's History Month Cranky Ladies of History blog tour. If you would like to read more about cranky ladies from the past, you might like to support the FableCroft Publishing Pozible campaign, crowd-funding an anthology of short stories about Cranky Ladies of History from all over the world.

Jan Karski, messenger from the past, by Clare Mulley

When we think about the Holocaust today, we mostly remember the victims, perpetrators, bystanders and collaborators. We should also think about those who risked their lives to protect individuals, families and groups, or even in the attempt to end the genocide altogether. Last month, to mark Holocaust Memorial Day, I attended an event at the London Central Synagogue organised in tribute to the Polish Catholic, Jan Karski, who attempted just that. After Rabbi Barry Marcus, Cantor Steven Leas and Polish Ambassador Witold Sobków had welcomed guests, Martin Smith’s short film Messenger from Poland was screened, in which Jan Karski told his own story. 

Rabbi Barry Marcus opens the Jan Karski tribute evening
at the London Central Synagogue. 

In the winter of 1943, Karski was selected by the Polish Underground State to alert the international community to the mass murder of the Polish Jews by the Nazis. The young former diplomat was already a veteran of clandestine war-work. Taken prisoner by the Russians in the early weeks of the war, Karski had been released in a prisoner exchange, thereby avoiding death in the Katyn forests. In August 1940, having escaped from a second detention, this time by the Gestapo, Karski served as an underground courier with the Polish resistance, smuggling information out of the country. 

Jan Karski, 1943

Eighteen months later he was chosen to bring news of the genocide to the outside world. It was felt that his diplomatic credentials, along with the fact that he was not Jewish himself, made him a strong emissary. To give him even greater authority, Karski was smuggled into the Warsaw ghetto where he watched two boys from the Hitler Youth 'shooting mindlessly' into the miserable scene of ‘poverty, hunger and death’. Then, disguised as a Ukranian militiaman, he was taken to Izbica, a Nazi ‘sorting station’ where he watched ‘masses of Jews’ being sent to the Treblinka death camp for ‘liquidation’. 

Karski reached London in November 1942, where he put a simple plan to the Polish Government-in-Exile. Germany should be leafleted with details of the camps, Karski began, 'so the German nation could not say that they did not know'. The Nazi government should be directly lobbied to stop the genocide, and if they failed to do so the Allies should respond by bombing key sites in retaliation until action was taken. ‘In the name of common values’, the Pope should be called to publically intervene, calling on German Catholics to find their consciences. 'Who knows', Karski argued, perhaps if the Pope threatened to excommunicate those who did not protect the Jewish population, enough Germans might take a stand. Karski also wanted blank passports and hard currency to bribe Nazi officials, and the Polish resistance to operate a strict policy of execution for those who betrayed their Jewish neighbours. 

Republic of Poland report for the United Nations, 1942

Karski’s was not the first report of mass killings to reach the West but it was one of the most detailed, an eyewitness account, and considered very reliable. But despite his testimony, the Allies remained largely indifferent to the fate of the Jews in Poland. All those who met Karski gave various reasons why nothing could be done. The Pope took six weeks to respond, and then only stated that he had already done all he could. In Britain Lord Selbourne, who met Karski in place of Churchill, told him that no political leader would comply with the idea of providing hard currency to bribe Nazi officials, which would effectively mean subsidising the enemy regime. Roosevelt ‘looked like a master of humanity’, Karski felt, but seemed more interested in the fate of Polish horses than Polish Jews, and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, possibly the most influential Jewish man in the USA, simply said he could not believe Karski’s report. When asked if he was suggesting that Karski was lying, Frankfurter replied only that not being able to believe was not the same as doubting the reliability of the source. 

Karski was horrified by the lack of action, despite his reaching the highest authorities. ‘I swore to them’, he told film-maker Martin Smith at the end of his interview, ‘as long as I will live, I will speak about it’. Karski was true to his word, but Smith felt that he seemed ‘weighed down by doubt and death’. Karski died in July 2000, believing to the end, Smith told me, that he had achieved nothing. In fact his constant lobbying had helped lead to the development of the USA’s War Refugee Board, an important achievement but not the goal he had set himself. In 1982 Yad Vashem recognised Karski as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. In 2012 he was honoured with the USA’s highest civilian honour, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and this year, 2014, has been designated Jan Karski year by the Polish parliament. 

Film-maker Martin Smith talks with a member of the audience.

Important though such recognition is, Jan Karski has been honoured as a hero too late. Over drinks after the film, I asked why Karski’s testimony had been so largely ignored. The responses were diverse. Some felt that Karski had been treated by suspicion because he was known to be a socialist. Others, that the Western powers were fearful of giving too much weight to the Jewish question when there was so much general suffering caused by the war. Certainly there was also the refusal to believe, as expressed so starkly by Felix Frankfurter. Above all, however, the feeling was that no government felt justified in diverting any resources from the ultimate goal of defeating Nazi Germany. What everyone seemed to agree, however, was that if we remain silent, then we too, in a sense, are tacit.

During the Second World War, despite Karski’s unceasing meetings with journalists, authors, officials and MPs, and his own writing, the vast majority of people did not know the truth about the genocide until July 1944, when the first Nazi death camp was liberated. Those who did know had other priorities. Today the world has changed. Courageous reporters, and members of the public armed with mobile phones and internet access, have taken the place of brave couriers like Jan Karski, and there are few conflicts around the world where atrocities, state-sponsored or otherwise, go unreported. If anything people feel overwhelmed. General knowledge is not lacking, and nor perhaps is public conscience; what is lacking is clear solutions to these complex situations. What is certain, however, is the importance of constant vigilance and repeated challenges to those who abuse human rights. Perhaps the most significant lesson from Karski’s story is that without knowledge nothing can be achieved, but with knowledge comes both collective and personal responsibility.  

Brown Girls Collective, by Louisa Young

Today I am shamelessly promoting and thieving. Thieving to promote. I have discovered this lovely page, Brown Girls' Collective, which is full of History Girls from the Black/Brown/African-American/ Caribbean (and a bit of British) strands. 

One of its great joys is the habit of inviting people to send in pictures of their beautiful brown daughters, so in that sense it's pure pleasure. And there are plenty of people saluted who we know about.  But the meat of it is tales of women of yore, and there are some corkers. 


Here, for example, are Lt. Harriet Ida Pickens and Ens. Frances Wills, the first African-American Waves to be commissioned. from December 21, 1944.

Then there's the story of Rebecca Cox Jackson, born in 1795, near Philadelphia. Her father, who is unknown, died; her mother, Jane, was unable to care for her and died when Rebecca was 13.  She was a seamstress, and after God cured her of a terror of thunderstorms she became a preacher, much to her husband and brother's disinclination. Seeking alternatives the male-dominated churches around her, she visited a Shaker community near Albany, New York, in 1843, where, she recalled, "the power of God came upon me like the waves of the sea". She appreciated their pioneering stand on racial equality; they recognised her as a visionary. She joined the Shaker community and became a Shaker eldress in April 1859, and went on to establish a community of black Shakers in Philadelphia that survived for 40 years after her death in 1871. 

'In addition to her 40 years of preaching, Jackson's most noteworthy contribution to the world was her spiritual autobiography, "Gifts of Power: The Writings of Rebecca Jackson, Black Visionary, Shaker Eldress," an amazingly detailed and compelling account for a woman with no education.' It was not published until 1981.

Here is 'educator, newspaper publisher and activist Charlotta Bass', born in South Carolina in 1874. 

Here is 'attorney, educator and activist' Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher 1924-1995: the first African American woman to attend an all white law school in the South. By this time she was married and pregnant with the first of her two children. The law school gave her a chair marked "colored," and roped it off from the rest of the class. Her classmates and teachers welcomed her, shared their notes and studied with her, helping her to catch up on the materials she had missed. Sipuel had to eat in a separate chained-off guarded area of the law school cafeteria. She recalled that years later some white students would crawl under the chain and eat with her when the guards were not around. Her lawsuit and tuition were supported by hundreds of small donations, and she believed she owed it to those donors to make it.'

                                                 

Here's 'musician and educator Ella Sheppard Moore, one of the original Fisk (University) Jubilee Singers', born in Nashville in 1851'. When she was a little girl her father was permitted to buy her for 350 dollars.

Ann Spencer, Poet. 

The adorable Florence Mills: 

                                                  And Angela Davis with Toni Morrison! 

And here is Leontyne Price, singing Aida: http://youtu.be/fTuvi2IgFSk

There are so many stories and so many women on this page. Doctors and dancers, sculptors and teachers, lawyers and campaigners and athletes and writers and musicians and actresses and four tiny Rwandan ballerinas and an Olympic fencer and Nina Simone and Alek Wek and Coretta King and Josephine Baker and a gun-toting postwoman from the wild wild west . . .  I'm not going to nick any more stories, because I want you to go there and read them, read and learn. It's a treasure trove. Every congratulation to the people who put it together.