Philobiblon

It is sometimes easy to forget that we have come a long way in a few decades. I was pulled up short by the information that “as recently as 1974 there was correspondence in the Lancet about why flowers handled by a menstruating woman should wilt”.

Odd how many florists are female then …

(From Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500-1800, Anthony Fletcher, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1995, p. 63)

To the Victoria and Albert today – and one of those annoying times when I was waiting to meet someone while they were waiting somewhere else. (He didn’t have a mobile – still this must have happened an awful lot more before they existed … )

So I spent the afternoon with the Tudors – something I should have done long before; I’ve had a bit of a mental block on the V&A and the whole “decorative arts” business: I spent too much of my childhood being dragged around antique shops that bored me silly. (Odd that seems now, but there were never any stories attached to things, only prices.)

The collection of textiles is truly astonishing. Not perhaps the royal stuff – that the marriage suit of James II should have survived, albeit without the waistcoat, is no great shock, but I was impressed by some of the humbler costumes, such as the embroidered lying-in smock dating back to 1630 using patterns from A Schole-house for the Needle by Richard Shorleyker (1624) and the jacket of Margaret Laton, whose portrait also survives.

I was also taken by a posset cup, looking rather more like a teapot, but with the spout instead meant as a straw. The V&A example looks not unlike this one, although not quite so elaborate. The V&A said that these were used for “warm nutritious drinks, often given to women after birth: milk beaten with eggs, sugar and spices and curdled with ale or sherry”.

It hardly seems that women would have these just for the odd occasion they needed them, so I wondered if they might not be part of a midwife’s kit, at least among midwives catering to the higher classes. Anyone come across this?

There’s more about possets, and a recipe, here. Not altogether sure about sherry AND ale in it – otherwise it is more or less an alcoholic egg nog, which sounds fine to me. This article suggests these were not for new mothers, but rather for convivial suppers, with the liquor drunk from the spout and the “custard” eaten from the top.

According to this ballad, it certainly was ceremonial fare …

The candles being light againe,
And things well and quiet,
A goodly posset was brought in
To med their former diet.
Then Robin for to have the same
Did turn him to a beare;
Straight at that sight the people all
Did run away for feare.

While in my cups, I also learnt another new term: fuddling cup. The root of the term is the same as “befuddled”, and was an elaborate drinking joke, of the “fart cushion” sort that I suspect the Tudors would have found hilarious, and us in general less so.

Several vessels were linked together in a ring and the drinker would have required greater manual dexterity than is common late in the evening to end up with the liquid in his mouth rather than on his shirt. (There’s an example here.)

A reminder of other differing sensibilities comes in the locket commemorating the birth of John Monson in 1597. Annoyingly, as in the case of many other characters in the gallery, the V&A tells you no more about him – a little biography please! He presumably is the same John Monson reported on this website as marrying Ursula Oxenbridge in 1627 and had a son John, later “Sir John” in the following year. He was the grandfather of the “1st Lord Monson” (b. 1693).

Nothing unusual in that, you might say, except this heart-shaped locket was made to hold the caul, which covered the baby’s head when he was born. It was dried and placed in it. That’s what you call a personal momento.

History

* Marina Warner is an author for whom I have enormous respect. In this excellent piece in the TLS, she explores the meaning and significance of the fictional, quasi-fictional and non-fictional apocalypes on our screens today. Think of its as Baudrillard grounded in the flesh.

* This review of a biography of James Hogg certainly made me want to read the book, although it suggests it might not be for those of delicate sensibilities, or stomaches. It reminds me that that Australian country term for testicles is “bush oysters” – that give you a clue?

* A satirical thoughout experiment in Cro-Magnon science fiction? That’s how you might describe this Brad DeLong post. If that doesn’t seem to make much sense, try it for yourself.

* A Booklist on the subject of lesbians in Paris and London in the early 20th century. (Now that should bring some search traffic – although they’ll be horribly disappointed.)

* Stories in America is taking a roadtrip through “Red” America and asking the questions of the day of “ordinary” people. The results are interesting, and frightening. So much for the Land of the Free, at least in Texas:

“It would hurt your job search if a potential employer heard you criticize Bush?

Of for sure, it could hurt. If I were lockstep in agreement with the Bush administration, there would be no issue. You do learn to conform. It’s very common. You learn the hard way. I consider it a rabid form of Republicanism. It’s not like the east coast Republicanism of the first Bush administration. That was completely different. Those Republicans don’t recognize these Republicans, but these Republicans are the ones who are dominating.”

On 10 May 1790 Sir Benjamin Hammett brought a bill before the House of Commons “for altering the Sentence of burning Women”, which was to finally abolish the punishment of being burnt at the stake for petty treason (killing of a husband) and high treason (almost invariably “coining” – making fake or adulterated coins). The Bill became law on 5 June.

(I might note at this point that this is not a post for those prone to nightmares.)

There’s little around on the internet on the issue, beyond this draft article about the attitudes of the period that may have led to the abolition. (And an interesting case of Nimbyism, in that it suggests the moving of the site of execution from semi-rural Tyburn to heavily built-up Newgate may have played a part in the change.)

Sir Benjamin was remembered in Notes and Queries in the 19th century, but seems to have been otherwise little noted.

N&Q reports that he told parliament this was

“One of the savage remains of Norman policy, disgracing our statute book, as the practice did the common law.”

The replacement punishment still meant being hung by the neck until dead, but when you read an account of the death of Eleanor Elsom in Lincoln in 1722, that does sound like a mercy. Like most women in the 18th century (except occasionally when practical arrangements went wrong, as in the famous case of Catherine Hayes in 1726, when the executioner was said to be drunk), she was, it seems, dead before the fire reached her, but what she had endured first …

“She was clothed in a cloth ‘made like a shift’, saturated with tar, and her limbs were also smeared with the same inflammable substance, while a tarred bonnet had been placed on her head. She was brought out of the prison barefoot, and, being put on a hurdle, was drawn on a sledge to the place of execution near the gallows. Upon arrival, some time was passed in prayer, after which the executioner placed her in a tar barrel, a height of three feet against the stake. A rope ran through a pulley in the stake, and was placed around her neck, she herself fixing it with her hands. Three irons also held her body to the stake, and the rope being pulled tight, the tar barrel was taken aside and the fire lighted. The details in the ‘Lincoln Date Book’ state that she was probably quite dead before the fire reached her, as the executioner pulled upon the rope several times whilst the irons were being fixed.” (From William Andrews, Bygone Punishments, 1899 quoted in “Sentence of Death By Burning For Women” in The Journal of Legal History, Vol 5, No 1, May 1984, pp. 44-59; p. 47).

As Sir Benjamin told Parliament, this was gender inequality, for men convicted of the same offenses were no longer subject to drawing and quartering and “women should not receive a more dreadful punishment than men”. Plus “it had been proved by experience that the shocking punishment did not prevent the crime”. (p. 55)

Interestingly there seems to have been little debate, and almost unanimous support for the Bill, in, as Sir Benjamin put it, “the cause of humanity”.

There’s a very brief outline of Sir Benjamin’s background, from a Taunton perspective, here. But I thought he deserved a bit more recognition as the architect of a small step on the road to civilisation. It would take another two centuries (not, you’d have to say in the broad sweep of these things a bad rate of progress), to finally, definitely, end the barbarism of the death penalty in Britain.

History, a Technorati tag

There’s nothing new about “idiots’ guides” or shortcuts for those who want to write that exam essay without reading the text on which it is supposed to be based. I’ve just been reading a fascinating essay on Elizabethan and Jacobean examples.

The merchant William Fulwood in 1568 produced The Enime of Idlenesse: Teaching the manner and stile how to endite, compose, and write all sorts of Epistles and Letters: as well by answer, as otherwise, Devided into foure Bokes, no lesse pleasaunt than profitable.

He tells his “reasonable Reader” that this is not for the “cunning clearke” but the “unskilful scholar that wanteth instructions”. It wasn’t just for business, also including “what sorte thou mayest (I say at such vacant times) take thy penne in hande and gratifie thy friend with some prettie or pleasant conceit”.

It went through eight editions up until 1621. By that time, women were also seen as a market. The Academy of Complements. Wherein Ladyes, Gentlemwomen, Schollers, and Strangers may accomplish their Courtly Practice with most Curious Ceremonies, Complements, Amorous, High Expressions and formes of speaking, or writing … with Additions of witty Amorous Poems. And a Table expounding the hard English Words. This was published, perhaps unsurprisingly, pseudonomously. by one “Philomosus”.

Travel guidebooks and phrasebooks start about the same time. One of the first in English was probably Andrew Borde’s The fyrst boke of the Introduction of knowledge, which contained all of the information we’d recognise: descriptions of countries, their monetary systems, and useful foreign phrases. It was published in 1542, less than 70 years after printing had been introduced into England – it is amazing how fast printers learnt to seek out new markets.

There was even marriage guidance, if only as an aside from business advice. In An Essay of Drapery, Or the Compleate Citizen. Trading Justly, Pleasingly, Profitably (1635) William Scott wrote that a certain amount of dissemination was allowed, as “with one who hath married a wife, whome hee must use well, pretending affection to her, though hee cannot love her”.

From “Handbook Learning of the Renaissance Middle Class”, Louis B. Wright, in Studies in Philology, Vol 28, 1931, pp. 58-86.

I’ve been finding lately odd bits of fascinating scholarship in social history published in the Thirties. It seems that this trend was disrupted by the war, and a lot of the work has disappeared from view – the Fifties perhaps not being very “socially” inclined. I’ve found some of these Thirties journals very good hunting grounds for little-referenced material.