Continuing the Catholic theme, and prompted by a discussion of nuns over on C-18, I’ve dug out an amazing little treasure of a book that I picked up on a 10c stall: “I Leap Over the Wall: A Return to the World After 28 Years in a Convent”, by Monica Baldwin (a relation of Stanley), who came out of the convent on October 26, 1941.

She had an experience as close as anyone has ever known to travelling a time-machine, and finds the wardrobes, manners, language and behavouir of 1941 those not so much as of another race as another species.

Some examples:
“An object was handed to me which I can only describe as a very realistically modelled bust bodice. That its purpose was to emphasize contours which, in my girlhood, were always decorously concealed was but too evident.
‘This,’ said my sister cheerfully, ‘is a brassiere. And it’s no use looking so horrified, because fashions to-day go out of their way to stress that part of one’s anatomy. These things are supposed to fix one’s chest at the clasic angle. Like this –‘ she adjusted the object with expert fingers. ‘There – you see the idea?'” (p. 9)

Shops: “Gone were the frock-coated myriads of shopwalkers who had once thonged one’s path like obseqious black-beetles; gone were the satin-gowned moddoming ladies with swishing trains and incredible coiffures. Instead, a few rather disdainful elderly women and scornful blondes in their teens had taken over.” (p. 19)

London: “the ‘leisured classes’ – as I remembered them — had completely disappeared. I’ve never been able to discover what has become of them. Like Atlantis and the dodo, they have simply vanished away. In their place, London was thronged by what looked like the lower-middle and working class – a vast multitude with strained faces and tired, blitz-haunted eyes.” (p. 20)

After various unsuccessful attempts to find war work, she ends up as a matron in a women’s hostel for munitions workers. The manageress tells her: “They’re an age-group, so are, of course, consripted from different surroundings. You’ll find servants, shop-girls, flower-sellers, laundry-hands, quite a lot of mixed Irish, some thieves, a lady or two and several prostitutes. Most of them belong to what are called the working classes. One has to try and handle them according to their kind.” (p. 152)

No summary could do justice to her account of this experience.

(My copy is Pan 1957; first published 1949.)

I was delighted to read that the word “courtesan” was invented in the 15th-century, derived from the female version of “cortegiano” (courtier). It was applied to the women of the Papal court in Rome.

“The Master of Ceremonies at the Papal Court, who was responsible for hiring them, referred to them picturesquely as ‘our respectable prostitutes’…”

(This from Kate Hickman’s Courtesans, HarperCollins, 2003, p15)

It brings me to today’s events, a minor triumph of democracy in Europe, with the withdrawal of the nominated European Commission, which was about to be rejected by the parliament because of the position of Rocco Buttiglione as justice commissioner, responsible for rights issues, when he has expressed extremely prejudiced views on gays and women. He’s also apparently a friend of the Pope, certainly a disqualification in my mind.

While browsing around subjects associated with “Encounters”, I found this excellent article.

On the weekend I managed a quick rush around the Encounters exhibition at the Victoria & Albert.

Sharon at Early Modern Notes (with whom I on Monday enjoyed a very pleasant “bloggers’ lunch” – my first) has already ably reviewed the exhibition, and selected some of the items that I too would highlight.

But there’s a few others I’d also mention, particularly the first item in the exhibition, a celandon vase that is the “earliest recorded piece of Chinese porcelain in Europe”. It was “probably” given to Louis the Great of Hungary, when a Chinese embassy passed through his kingdom on the way to visiting the pope. (Not what you’d call a fine example of the designer’s art, it is, however, a virtuoso display of technology, with the decorative flowers growing out of the vase apparently unsupported.)

This pointed me in the direction of Giovanni de’ Marignolli, a traveller of whom I had not previously heard. He was sent to China in the return embassy, making it to Beijing in 1341.

Not much later – (1475-1500) – is a coconut that somehow made its way to England, where it was richly decorated with silver, a measure of its value and a great display of supply and demand.

There’s also the wonderful portrait of Shen Fu Tsang, who came to Europe in 1681 and had a prominent place at the court of James II. I’ve been focusing on that recently for other reasons; you have to wonder what he made of all the political ferment. In 1688 – perhaps after the Glorious Revolution, it didn’t say – he left England and became a Jesuit. he died in 1691 near Mozambique, as he was heading home.

The world was perhaps never quite so large as we tend to think.

Finally, worth the price of entrance alone, is Tippoo’s Tiger; a must-see.

I learn from the notes on my copy of Aesop’s Fables that the ancient Greeks caught birds with ixos (“birdlime”), a sticky substance usually made from crushed mistletoe berries, or sometimes from oak-gum or similar. This was spread on branches, on the theory that a bird would then land on them and be caught. (The method is still employed today in mouse and rat-trapping paper sheets they sell in shops in Britain, although the thought of dealing with the trapped rodents … ugghh!)

But it is hard to imagine this method of bird-catching working; you could smear a lot of paste around without a bird landing anywhere near it. Presumably you’d have to lure them with some food, but surely it would be an obvious trap?

Still, it appears in several of the fables, so it must have been common enough.

eg. Fable 137 (p. 103)
The Bird-catcher and the Asp
A bird-catcher took his snare and birdlime and went out to do some hunting. He spotted a thrush on a tall tree and decided to try and catch it. So, having arranged his [sticky] twigs one on top of the other, he concentrated his attention upwards. While he was gazing thus he didn’t see that he had trodden on a sleeping asp, which turned on him and bit him. … [He dies.]

Fable 242 (p. 178)
The Ant and the Pigeon
A thirsty ant went down to a spring to drink but was caught by the flow of water coming from it and was about to be swept away. Seeing this, a pigeon broke a twig from a nearby tree and threw it into the water. The any clambered on to it and was saved.
While this was going on, a fowler came along with his limed twigs ready to catch the pigeon. The ant saw what was happening and bit the man’s foot, so that the pain made him suddenly throw down the twigs, and the pigeon flew off. … [Motto: One good turn deserves another.]

Those hunters seem to have been a clumsy lot.

From: Aesop: The Complete Fables, O. and R. Temple (trans), Penguin, 1998.
Also the subject of a previous post, here.

I’m always keen to find examples of women making a success of their lives, rather than looking for victims, but I was taken today with the fate of Mary Feilding/Hamilton, who was in the court of Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I.

Mary was married off in 1620 at the age of seven to the 14-year-old Hamilton. The marriage, however, was not binding until consummated, and six years later he (commendably it would seem) fled to Scotland rather than be forced to have sex with his still extremely young bride, her father having taken her to him for that purpose.

She, and her husband, however, were at the mercy of greater forces, and King Charles, by a mixture of threats and blandishments, eventually forced him back to London, and, on the night of his return, into the bed of his wife 13/14-year-old wife. He pleaded exhaustion and lack of clean linen in the cause of a brief postponement, “Whereupon his Majestie commanded his owne Barber to attend him with a shirt, wastcoat & nightcap of his majesties, & would not be satisfyed till he had seene them both in bed together.”

About 10 years later, at the age of 24 or 25, Mary died of consumption, after being at the centre of an unseemingly and, for the dying woman surely hugely traumatic, struggle over her soul.

“The indefatigable Olive Porter … who was largely responsible for several of the actual of attempted conversions to Roman Catholicism for which Montagu almost found himself sent into exile again, urged proselytising literature on Lady Hamilton; her father, the Protestant Earl of Denbigh, countered by summoning the Bishop of Carlisle. George Con, the Papal agent visited her daily during the autumn of 1637, presumably with the support of her Catholic mother. Both sides threatened her …. with the loss of her immortal soul.” (p. 179)

Neither, however, was able to proclaim success, so perhaps Mary was a strong-minded character despite, or perhaps because of, her experiences. The court thought her “gentle and virtuous”; unfortunately it would seem none of her own account of her life survives.

This from Sarah Poynting, “In the name of all the sisters”: Henrietta Maria’s notorious whores” in Women and Culture at the Courts of the Stuart Queens, ed. Clare McManus. London: Palgrave (2003), pp. 163-85.

Found while researching this, a surprisingly good bibliography of the relevant royalty.