Philobiblon

Various minority communitites have reclaimed pejorative words about themselves and chosen to use them with pride; I think women should do the same with “virago”.

The OED gives two definitions

2. a. A man-like, vigorous, and heroic woman; a female warrior; an amazon. Now rare.

Citing the example:

1885 19th Cent. May 472 She [Vittoria Colonna] was a virago, a name which, however misapprehended now, bore a different and worthy signification in her day.

or the far more common use:

3. A bold, impudent (or [obsolete sense] wicked) woman; a termagant, a scold.
c1386 Chaucer Man of Law’s T. 359 O Sowdanesse, roote of Iniquitee, Virago,
thou Semyrame the secounde [etc.].
1680 C. Nesse Ch. Hist. 178 God sets this black brand upon this virago Jezabel.
1865 Trollope Belton Est. xxvii. 329, I believe Lady Aylmer to be an
overbearing virago, whom it is good to put down.

I came to this from a curious but interesting piece of semi-feminist history writing, Uncrowned Queens: Women Who Influenced Manners and Moulded the Society They Lived In, by Amy Latour, first published in English in 1970 (in French in 1967). Its main characters include Isabella D’Este (who she calls in flattering terms a virago), Madame de Rambouillet and Madame de Scudery; Madame Geoffrin and Madame du Deffand; “Mrs Montagu and the Blue Stockings”; Rahel Varnhagen, Princess Cristina di Belgiojocso; Juliette Adam ; and Gertrude Stein.

I’m ashamed to confess that there was several in that list previously unknown to me; a reminder about how limited the Anglo-Saxon academic approach can be.

(Thanks to Simon from copyediting-L for the OED info). It is, by the way, a great community if you are interested in words.

P.S. It has just been pointed out to me (thanks Hal from CEL-ery) that there is already Virago Press, so the campaign has been started already: we just need to carry it forward.

“Among the earliest duels upon record” was in AD878. Ingelerius, count of Gastinois, was found dead one morning by his countess in bed. Gontran, his relative, accused her of murdering him, having been unfaithful, and challenged her to produce a champion to prove his innocence.

Unfortunately for the countess, however, Gontran was a renown warrior, so no one dared to come to her aid, until her godson, Ingelgerius, count of Anjoy, who was only 16, stepped forward.

Everyone thought he had no hope, including the king, who sought to dissuade him from the enterprise, but he persisted in his resolution “to the great sorrow of all the court, who said it was a cruel thing to permit so brave and beautiful a child to rush to such butchery and death,” however …

“Gontran rode so fiercely at his antagonist, and hit him on the shield with such impetuosity, that he lost his own balance and rolled to the ground. The young count, as Gontran fell, passed his lance through his body, and then dismounting, cut off his head, which, Brantome says, ‘he presented to the king, who received it most graciously, and was very joyful’.”

I haven’t checked it out, but a great story, and a reminder of the mentality of the age.

from Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, C. Mackay, Wordsworth Reference 1995, (first published 1852) p. 656.

… time to take the Inferno test …

And then I’m going away to finally started Dorothy L. Sayer’s translation of the real thing, which has been on my “to-read” pile for a very long time.

The Dante’s Inferno Test has banished you to the Sixth Level of Hell – The City of Dis!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Take the Dante’s Inferno Hell Test

… was Richard II, or so it would seem.

Some time between 1384 and 1386 a clerk in the Great Wardrobe recorded, (in Latin) the presence of “small pieces of linen made to be given to the Lord King for blowing and covering his nose”. Such a careful record certainly suggests an innovation.

By 1395-8 this was old hat: the clerk just recorded the acquisition of “11 portions of linen cloth from Rheims , for clearing the nose of the king”.

This suggests either a severe case of catarrh or, more plausibly, that the king was distributing these to courtiers, which well might have made the court a more pleasant place. It was also “consistent with what we know of his earlier distribution of the badges of the white hart”.

From G.B. Stow, “Richard II and the invention of the pocket handkerchief,” Albion, Vol 27, No 2, 1995. (And no, not what I was supposed to be researching, although I did make a couple of nice small discoveries in that area also.)

From Thomas Sprat’s History of the Royal Society (1667): Language is a …

“weapon … as easily procur’d by bad men as good …
Eloquence ought to be banish’d out of civil societies
as a thing fatal to Peace and good Manners”

(p.111, St Louis, 1958)

And then for the frivolous bit, going back a couple of centuries, I did the medieval “humour” test online (and suffered only a momentary shiver of temporal dissonance) to find how I might have been classified. The answer was:

You are Phlegmatic. You have a peace-loving
nature, and make a good listener and a faithful
friend. You do have a tendency to be selfish
and stubborn in your worst moments, and your
worrying can lean towards paranoia. Phlegmatics
should consider careers as accountants,
diplomats, engineers, and administrators. You
are a somewhat reluctant leader, but your
practicality and steady nerve under pressure
makes you a natural choice for leadership
roles.

Well, not so far off, although I can’t see myself as an engineer,
and the one time I got to play diplomat was not a great success.

Which of the Humours are you?
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Rachel Speght, writing in 1621 about her mother’s death:

“…A sodeine sorrow pierceth to the quicke,
Speedie encounters fortitude doth try;
Unarmed men receive the deepest wound,
Expected perils time doth lenifie;
Her sodeine losse hath cut my feeble heart,
So deepe, that daily I indure the smart.

The roote is kil’d, how can the bough but fade?
But sith that Death this cruel deed hath done,
I’le blaze the nature of this mortall foe,
And shew how it to tyranize begun.
The sequell then with judgement view aright,
The profit my and will the paines requite.”

(From Mortalities Memorandum, with a Dream Prefixed, Jacob Bloom, London.)
It is not known when Rachel’s mother died; she was 19 when she wrote this.

A post for my Mum, Joy Louise Bennett (White)
09/08/46- 25/4/89
and my grandmother, Bertha Bennett (Broughton)
1/1/09-12/7/04