Crack out the streamers, don the paper hats (well, OK, only if you can face another party)…

… the Third Early Modern Carnival is here, and here, in a two-part extravaganza.

Thanks to Claire at Early Modern Material Culture, who put it all together.

The Carnival directed me to Old is the New New’s excellent post on Benjamin Franklin, which I had missed. It chimed nicely with a recent post on Ephems of BLB of quotations from the the Founding Fathers, including Franklin, on religion.

This is going to be a hard act to follow, but in a “moment of madness”, as the politicians traditionally put it, I’ve volunteered to host the next carnival, in early March. BUT, please, don’t put it in your “think about it sometime” file; if you see a post on early modern history (the traditional definition is c.1450-1850, but I don’t want to be too prescriptive about it), please send me the link, either through this site or to natalieben at journ.freeserve.co.uk . Self-nominations are entirely welcome – don’t be shy.

If you haven’t encountered a carnival before there’s more information here, with links to the first two events.

On the subject of links, I’ve put up two posts on the Dictionary of Received Ideas, on a wonderful historical dictionary (in French), and on Japanese folktales, Otogi Zoshi.

Finally, on a light note, the Sunday Times takes an entirely one-eyed look at the comparatively lower marriage rates of women with high IQs. It seems not to have even crossed their mind that women with higher IQs might make more independent decisions: being trapped in an institution (at least theoretically) for life didn’t appeal to many of them. (Thanks to Brutal Women.)

Today’s Oxford Dictionary of National Biography character is “Bennelong”, who was to my recollection the only Aboriginal character who featured in the (very limited) Australian history that we were taught at school.

Typically enough, the first governor of the Australian colony, Phillip, who was in many respect a decent man, had “Bennelong” and several other local men kidnapped in an attempt to make friends with them. “Bennelong” was the one most amenable to the treatment, and he eventually sailed to England and is said to have met King George III. (The quote marks are around the name because his “Aboriginal” name was never properly recorded.)

And there’s an excellent piece in the New York Review of Books about Wal-Mart, a review of a book arising from an academic conference on the subject – just like there are “area studies” it would seem there are now “company studies”, a further reflection of the changing balance of power.

Of course a lot of its abuses are already well-charted, but I found this enlightening:

Wal-Mart is also a burden on state governments. According to a study by the Institute for Labor and Employment at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2003 California taxpayers subsidized $20.5 million worth of medical care for Wal-Mart employees. In Georgia ten thousand children of Wal-Mart employees were enrolled in the state’s program for needy children in 2003, with one in four Wal-Mart employees having a child in the program.

Having been brought up in a rightwing household that complained regularly of “dole-bludgers”, it reminds me of that “aha” moment in agricultural economics when it was pointed out that tax relief and other government subsidies to companies were just another form of welfare. (There weren’t many other moments like that, but I suppose it taught me something.)

It makes me wonder about the Blair government’s achievements in lifting some children out of poverty with benefits; which employers are they subsidising?

Finally there’s a lovely storm in a tea-cup about a rightwing report about crime. The “moral values” stuff is nonsense, of course, but I can’t disagree with its view of British policing.

My encounters with it suggest that it hasn’t got out of the 19th-century; when my credit card was cloned two bobbies wasted an hour getting a statement from me that I could have typed in five minutes, one taking it down laboriously in longhand (and no doubt spending as long typing it up). Then, when I later found some relevant information, I found it impossible to contact the investigating officer – his name was Smith, there were five of them at the station, and no one showed the slightest interest in ensuring he got the message.

Whenever you see police in London they are either travelling at ridiculous speed with blue lights flashing or, far more commonly, standing around in groups coffeehousing or taking a gentle stroll on a pleasant evening (which no doubt counts as “community policing”, “bobbies on the beat” that the right-wing press is always getting excited about).

… you hear around, but without mention of the source.

“Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”

It is from Jean Meslier, curé of Ètrèpigny in Champagne (1664-1729). “Initially he was not an atheist but a blasphemer. In his cooler moments, however, he realized that the monster-God that he railed against could not in fact exist – a fact which saddened and depressed him as it would appear later to have saddened and depressed John Stuart Mill and Bertrand Russell, taking the sting out of their rebellious stand. Promethean defiance was not something that accorded well with reason.”*

Depressingly, but not surprisingly, the first four hits on Google are Christian sites. There’s a private translation into English of part of his Mon Testament (edited by Voltaire) here, the text in French here, and a short English biography is included here.

Interestingly, his home town celebrates him. I can feel a pilgrimage coming on …

* From A Short History of Western Atheism, J. Thrower, Pemberton Books, 1971, London, p. 100.

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pipes2, originally uploaded by natalieben.

Apologies to Sharon (see previous pipe post comments for explanation), this is a collection of late 19th and early 20th-century figurative pipes.

The one on the top right is described as “Mrs Sarah Wilson, poetess”. An extensive web search (not helped by the fact there is a modern poet of that name), found only one possible book of hers, a children’s book, Early Recollections, or Scenes from Nature. Intended for Children. This source suggests that her maiden name was Atkins. Anyone know anything more?

She must have been quite well known in her own time, for this is described as “an expensive portrait clay produced from a three-piece mould and finished in baked varnish”.

The others are described as, from top left, “a proud lady, a lady motorist, King Edward VII, William Gladstone, Ally Sloper”. [More on the last, of whom I had not previously heard, here.]

From Clay Tobacco Pipes, Eric G. Ayto, Shire, 2002. (Illustration from page 18)

In case you want some more information, try the Society for Clay Pipe Research. (No I didn’t make that up, I promise.)

In an article in today’s Observer, one of the two French hostages, both journalists, recently freed in Iraq says: “I would like to tell my British friends in the profession to stay out of Iraq, it’s not worth it. These guys will do a Google search on you, and then you will be killed. You are a walking target.”

I’m reminded of Milan Kundera: “Unity of mankind means: No escape for anyone anywhere.”

But if you want to be cheered up, check out Lesbian novel was ‘danger to nation’.

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pipes, originally uploaded by natalieben.

This diagram, from Clay Tobacco Pipes, Eric G. Ayto, Shire, 2002, shows how the shape changed in England over time, from the 1580s to the early 20th century. Even if you knew nothing of the national history, you could, I suggest, develop a theory of economical development from it.

In the 1580s tobacco was an expensive product, so the bowl was small and carefully cupped (around 6m inside diameter) the product. The bore of the stem only about 3mm. “They are sometimes referred to as plague pipes because of the large numbers found in plague pits during excavation work” – the theory was that tobacco would ward off disease – p. 4.)

From about 1660 onwards, however, (number 5 above), pipes rapidly got larger and over the turn of the century deeper, a trend that only continued right through the history of the pipe – richer nation, relatively cheaper tobacco.

They are not shown in this diagram, but from the middle of the 19th-century onwards fancy patterned pipes appeared, allowing the gentlemen smoker to show his interests – an early form of personal branding. Among those illustrated are footballs, angling gear, vines (for lovers of vino, presumably), jockeys, and political figures.

However, this was largely a middle class product …. “the 19th-century working man preferred his ordinary short clay, which was very cheap and often given away with a pint of beer by the local publican. The shorter pipe had the advantage of reducing the load on the teeth when smoking and working at the same time. This new habit (previously it was usual for a clay pipe to be smoked at leisure with the stem supported in the hand) brought about the production of special short pipes such as the Scottish cutty and the Irish dudheen … Short pipes were often referred to in the north of England as “nose warmers” (p. 10).