Philobiblon

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.

I’m fascinated by the following paragraph:
“One of the great mythic transformations of the early nineteenth century was the feminisation of angels. Until the 1790s, British art and prose portrayed the angel as masculine or, at most, bisexual – characteristically muscular, strong and even displaying male genitalia, and a free divine spirit inhabiting the chasm of sky and space. But by the early Victorian period angels were virtuously feminine in form and increasingly shown in domestic confinement, no longer free to fly. Women had become divine, but an angel now confined to the house.” (p. 58)

A trip to the Tate Britain to check this out is definitely in order.

But I have seen from personal experience, particularly in the case of my grandmother (born 1901), evidence for the following passage:
“Few women before the mid-twentieth century could even attempt to throw off these shackles of their moral identity. Those who did were … overwhelmingly aristocratic, upper-middle-class, or bohemian and artistic. But for the ‘ordinary’ women to contemplate revolt against evangelical discourse was, as with ‘Amoebe'{a correspondent to the Telegraph], to endanger being a woman. ‘My whole motive in life seemed gone, and I felt that the moral which hung upon the motive must go too.’ Clinging to or acquiring the status of being ‘a Christian’ was sine qua non for most women between 1800 and 1950.” (p. 128.)

A focus on the start as well as the end date there might be important, as the (approximate) date when the position of women changed very fundamentally.

See here for earlier post and reference.

It seems that several times a week now I find another wonderful woman writer from the 16th or 17th or 18th centuries, before, on many popular accounts, there were any at all.

Today’s is Mary Davys, who I encountered during an excellent paper at the “The Women’s Studies Group: 1500-1837”, of which more here.

It was about her The Fugitive, 1705, of which unfortunately there is not a modern edition, but I’ve gone looking for some other writing. A sample:
On why she wrote fiction …

“The Pedant despises the most elaborate Undertaking, unless it appears in the World with Greek and Latin Motto’s; a Man that would please him, must pore an Age over Musty Authors, till his brains are as worm-eaten as the books he reads . . . I have neither Inclination nor Learning enough to hope for his favour, so lay him aside.
The next I can never hope to please, is the Dogmatical Puppy, who like a Hedgehog is wrapt up in his own Opinions . . . I leave him therefore . . . I confess the Royal Exchange, Southsea with a P-x, Exchange Alley, and all trade in general, are so foreign to my understanding that I leave ’em where I found ’em and cast an oblique glance at the Philosopher, who I take be a good clever fellow in his way. But I am again forced to betray my ignorance. I know so little of him that I leave him to his, No Pleasure, No Pain; and a thousand other Chimera’s while I face about to the Man of Gallantry. Love is a very common topick, but ’tis withal a very copious one; and wou’d the Poets, Printers, and Booksellers but speak the truth of it, they wou’d own themselves more obliged to that one subject for their Bread, than all the rest put together. ‘Tis there I fix.”

(The Reformed Coquet, 1724, p. 2)

That’s typical of her delightfully blunt writing, but it seems she suffered for her style, and with the increasing gentrification of the literary world during her lifetime (1674-1732); the Grub-Street Journal (No 80, 15 July 1731) dismissed her as the author of “several bawdy Novels”. Earthy, or down-to-earth
would be a better label.

This is the title of an interesting-looking magazine out of Turkey, with a focus on the meeting of eastern and western cultures, which you can find here. They only have abstracts on the web, but still worth a look.
Two typical stories juxtapose Byzantine amulets and Ottoman talismanic seals.
The Byzantine: “Talismans or amulets were also hung at the doors of houses and churches, in graveyards, and on the cradles of infants. Small bronze bells known as tintinnabula were similarly believed to chase away evil spirits. The 4th century monk Ioannes Khrysostomos recommended a crucifix instead of a bell hung around children’s necks or attached to their clothing as a means of protection.”
The Ottoman: “The relationship of these beliefs with religion is not always a comfortable one, however. Where the Islamic faith is concerned, the Prophet Muhammad specifically prohibited the use of magic, warning that such practices were harmful and a violation of religious principles. Believers were advised to recite certain prayers from the Koran as protection against the evil eye and magic.”
A posting on H-Asia tells me a “women in art” edition is on the way.

for my piece in today’s Independent, about the exhibition Iron Ladies: Women in Thatcher’s Britain .

The exhibition is at the Women’s Library in London until April.