Born Out of Wedlock, by Carol Drinkwater

 

I am a week away from publication of my latest novel, ONE SUMMER IN PROVENCE. 3rd July 2025. It is always an exciting as well as a nerve-racking time. 

A broad synopsis of what the novel is about: a British couple, Celia and Dominic, are living on a vineyard in the south of France. A vineyard that was inherited by Celia when her father died a decade earlier. Celia has decided to throw a huge summer party to celebrate the growing success she and her husband are making of their wine production. A few days before the big August bank holiday weekend when the party will be in full swing, Celia receives a forwarded letter from a man, David Hawksmith, who claims to be her son; the son she gave up at birth in 1977. David's existence is the outcome of a traumatic incident from Celia's past that she has never spoken about, not even to Dominic. Celia invites David to the party. Dominic graciously welcomes him (and David's unexpected and rather curious travelling companion) even though he has his doubts about the veracity of David's claims.

The book has elements of mystery but, ultimately, it is a story of  Betrayal and Belonging set against a backdrop of all the glorious ingredients - food, sunshine, scents etc - of living along the Mediterranean coast in the south of France. 

The Irish Times, in a recent Q and A, asked me whether the fact that I don't have children of my own had been the seed, the inspiration, for the novel. Giving up a child born out of wedlock is a very big issue in Ireland. Only two weeks ago, a dig began in search of the bodies of babies whose mothers were obliged to give up their "illegitimate" offspring during the last century.

https://news.sky.com/story/opening-the-pit-dig-for-remains-of-800-infants-at-former-mother-and-baby-home-in-ireland-begins-13384111?fbclid=IwY2xjawK8yglleHRuA2FlbQIxMQBicmlkETB5RzI4SXF3eFBab042VmNyAR7960m6fL8n0J55ru2FjHnpkPSRQPp9TKphdWrgRFnD2zV0qQ8HeqYtXUjj6A_aem__xN9uAsQA5bsM7CkprKizA

I have written a little about this subject before in one of my earlier History Girls blogs. Via the link below you will read that Ireland's right to abortion was not made legal until 2018.

http://the-history-girls.blogspot.com/search?q=carol+Drinkwater+Irish+childhood

Abortion was made legal in Britain on 27th October 1967, and came into effect on 27th April 1968. In theory, this means that Celia, the leading character in ONE SUMMER IN PROVENCE, could have legitimately terminated her pregnancy, but, for reasons  revealed in the novel, she did not.

The choices for young pregnant women before the late sixties in Britain were: a termination of the pregnancy (frequently a risky abortion, a backstreet illegal business), a hasty marriage, for some a shotgun wedding, or give up the child at birth for adoption.

In my novel, the young Celia gives birth to her son and, four days later, the child is taken from her for adoption. All she knows about the boy is the Christian name she has chosen for him, David.

Ghosts from the past. 

I am fascinated by secrets that step out of the shadows of our own lives and others' lives. The lives of those close to us. My mother was expecting me when she married my father in October 1947. I often joke about the fact that I was with them on their honeymoon in Devon. However, this was a fact I only discovered, by accident, when I was about ten or eleven. I found a stash of their honeymoon pics and calculated the dates! The subject had never been spoken about and when I confronted my parents with the question, they (both Catholics) were a little sheepish, but did not deny the fact. Why should they? I have, since that discovery, perceived my conception as one fired by love and passion. Would they have married if Mummy had not been pregnant with me? I believe they would, but who can say? The choice they made was to keep the baby, marry and start a family.

I love to be by the sea - I live overlooking the Mediterranean. I crave its rhythms and I have asked myself whether this has anything to do with the fact that my parents were happy on their honeymoon. A happiness that was tested in a relationship that was tumultuous even though they stayed together all their lives and my mother was deeply committed to her marriage. She loved my father loyally till the day he died, forty-six years later. Her face and her demeanour at his deathbed I will never forget. 

Now that both my parents are gone, I deeply regret all the questions I never asked. How did Mummy feel the moment she discovered she was pregnant; was she frightened, elated, guilty? What were the circumstances when she discussed her situation with Daddy? What was his response: "Let's get married, Phil" ... Was his willingness to tie the knot instantaneous? I know that they had been expecting a boy and had decided to Christian me Charles!

The morning the newly-weds, my parents, were boarding the luxurious Devon Belle train at Waterloo station heading to Ilfracombe in north Devon for their honeymoon, my father discovered that he had won the Football Pools. His win was the staggering sum of almost one hundred pounds. It was a fair fortune in those years of austerity after WWII. Mummy told me some years later that it felt as though their marriage had been blessed. It was all their wedding presents rolled into one. As an Irish country girl who had relocated to London during WWII to train as a nurse, she was far from home and her family. The wedding was a very quiet affair with only my father's brother and my mother's younger sister in attendance, as far as I am aware. 

The Devon Belle was a luxury passenger train which only began service in June 1947 so my parents would have been early travellers. I wonder, before his pools win, how my father, so soon home from life in the RAF entertaining the wartime troops in Africa, could have afforded to splash out on such a treat. But it does seem to suggest that he was celebrating their union, that he wanted to give my mother, pregnant with their first child, the best that was on offer. A luxurious and memorable debut to the life ahead of them together in post-war London.

Last week I was in London recording ONE SUMMER IN PROVENCE for audio. Reading the novel as an actress is quite another eye to when I am working on the text as a writer. This time, as I read, a period from my own teenage years came flooding back to me. Bromley in Kent, in England in the early 60s, a little earlier than my principal character, Celia's teenage years in a small provincial town outside Bristol. Without realising it, subconsciously, I must have taken from my own experiences of this era and interwoven it into Celia's story in the novel. 

When I was a late teenage girl, the battle to legalise abortion was underway. David Steel, Liberal MP, later leader of the Liberal Party, was responsible for introducing as a Private member's bill, the Abortion Act 1967. Fortunately, I had no need of the liberating results of this act once passed. Even so, as a teenage girl growing up, educated at a rather strict Irish convent, the waves of such a progressive bill would have been in the news and in debates all around me. As well, I must have had some awareness of the trials and terrors for young unmarried women who found themselves "in trouble" in the days before abortion was an available choice for them.

The episode that came flooding back to me as I was recording my novel last week was of a completely forgotten incident. It was the case of R., a girl in my class at the convent. We both would have been about fifteen at the time. R. discovered that she was pregnant. In our middle-class, Catholic-educated circles, this was completely unheard of and very shocking. How did R. deal with her situation? She said nothing, packed a bag and just disappeared. It was a scandal. Her parents, of course, were fraught with worry. I have a clear image of her mother and father paying a visit to our house one evening after school. We were all gathered in the sitting room, which in itself was rare. The white and gold-flecked three-piece suite was usually covered in dust sheets to keep it clean and protected from the light. The room was rarely used. Mummy kept it immaculate for "special occasions". Well, this must have been deemed a special occasion. I sat in a corner. Our guests remained standing. R.'s exceedingly tall mother was chain-smoking. (Smoking in Mummy's pristine sitting room!) She was clutching a small ashtray shaped like a shell in the palm of one hand. The reason for the gathering was information. "We need to hear what Carol knows about R. Her movements, her companions, before she fled." 

Or had she been kidnapped, abducted, murdered? Were any of these scenarios ever considered? I don't remember. Certainly the police had been called in and a search for R. had been set in motion. It wasn't known at this stage that R. had gone of her own volition nor that she was pregnant. I had no information to share with the grieving adults towering over me. R. had not confided in me - we weren't that close - and I had not overheard any chatter in the classrooms. I could shed no light on the crisis. R's mother was in tears as they exited our house. I felt so bad about their situation that I was almost inclined to run after them, invent a tale, but I knew better than to create false leads. 

It was at least another three weeks before R. was eventually tracked down, It was then her parents discovered that their daughter was pregnant. This was two or three years before David Steel's Abortion bill. R. was sent away somewhere unknown to me to give birth to the child who was then immediately handed over for adoption. My classmate never returned to the convent. She became a girl from our childhood whose story was not spoken aloud. Her parents split up, as I remember. Tragedy had befallen the family.

R. was a young woman shamed. From there on she and the "unsavoury business" was only spoken of in whispers.

What happened to R.'s child, her son? Did she and he ever make contact, did they find one another at some point later in their lives? I have no idea. I sincerely hope that there was some kind of happy ending to the tale.

In ONE SUMMER IN PROVENCE, Celia's son, David, contacts her out of the blue. A forty-seven-year-old man claiming to be the son she gave up at birth comes knocking, or rather, sends a letter requesting a meeting ... How does a mother respond? Invite the stranger into your life, welcome him as long lost kin ... Or deny his existence? Refuse to see him?

Earlier this year, I was honoured to be one of the two judges for the very prestigious Listowel Literary Festival's 'Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year Award.'  Settling on our overall winner was very tough; the standard of fiction being published by Irish writers right now is mesmerisingly good. The prize went to Niall William's, Time of the Child. Williams' story is set during the season of Advent in the year of 1962 in a small (fictional) village over on the west coast of Ireland. An abandoned baby is found in the churchyard and taken in by the local doctor and his unmarried youngest daughter ... The prose is luminous and the story, compassionate and heart-wrenching.

Coincidentally, having read fifty novels for the Kerry Prize, I am now reading another Irish novel, also delicately crafted. The Boy From the Sea from debut novelist, Garrett Carr. It is 1973. A baby is found in a barrel off the shore of a small coastal Atlantic town in Ireland. A local family adopts the boy ... Beautifully written, full of wry humour.

Every conception offers up the possibility of an untold story; a world of choices, of future bondings or terminations. Of aspirations and dreams dashed or built, of love washed up on unexpected shores. 

I beg to be forgiven for placing my novel on the same page as the very fine works of Williams and Carr. These are three very different stories. What they have in common is that each centres on the ripples and (tidal) waves caused by the arrival of a boy born out of wedlock. Interestingly, the other two are both written by male authors.

I hope you will enjoy ONE SUMMER IN PROVENCE. It is receiving some splendid feed back. It is a LoveReading Book of the Month for July. Available at all good bookstores and on Amazon etc. If you are outside the UK, Blackwells will have it in stock and they ship worldwide for free. Here is the link:

https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/One-Summer-in-Provence-by-Carol-Drinkwater/9781805462767

Have a wonderful summer. If you happen to be in Britain, Ireland or France during July, here, above, are a few of the events I will be talking at. It would be lovely to see you at one or other of them.

Enjoy your summer reading.

www.caroldrinkwater.com

My Life as a Historical Novel by Miranda Miller

 

This is the cover of my ninth novel, When I Was, which has just been published by Barbican Press.  I wrote this novel about growing up in London in the 1950s from memory. Strangely, I found myself unable to write about myself in the first person, although I’ve written about other people – the artists Richard Dadd and Angelica Kauffman, for instance – using “I’ and love the vividness of first person narratives. Yet I found that I couldn’t write in the first person about my own childhood, because as soon as I excavated behind my memories, I found other people there and had to attempt to see their points of view.

I’m a member of the  Historical Novel Society, so I looked up their definition of historical fiction: a novel that must be either written at least fifty years after the events it depicts. This made me feel very old (I was born in 1950) but also relieved, because throughout my career as a writer I’ve been told by agents and publishers that my novels don’t fit into any particular genre or category. Recently, I’m happy to see that borders between these territories are dissolving.

 

Timothy Hyman R A, Painting the Family 2003, Collection of David Smith.

This novel has a long history. Twenty years ago, when I first saw this painting by my late beloved brother Tim, I’d just moved back to London, where I grew up, from Oxford. Three of the people in the painting were dead and I was living in a flat very close to the flat in St John’s Wood where I lived from the ages of seven to ten. This combination of circumstances stirred up a tsunami of memories and I started to write a novel about my childhood, abandoning the timeslip novel I’d been working on, Nina in Utopia (Peter Owen 2010).

For over a year I feverishly wrote a novel about my life up to the age of seventeen I called (rather unoriginally) Family Portrait. After writing five novels with characters who were invented, I was trying to write autobiographically. It felt quite unlike my other novels: visceral, painful, embarrassing. I had to write it - yet I wondered if anybody would be interested in this unfashionably privileged family bumbling through the 1950s. When I sent it to my ex-agent he confirmed my doubts; he didn’t like it enough to send it out to publishers, so I returned to my timeslip story about nineteenth century Nina who finds herself in 21^st century London – a story, with a plot and characters who were invented.

The novel about my family languished on my computer until lockdown, that strange period when we all had too much time on our hands. I reread it and decided that although it was too long and one-sided, I might be able to rewrite it as a shorter, more balanced novel. Perhaps I’d mellowed in the years in between, I’d come to see that my parents did their best and long conversations with my brothers Tim and Nicky brought new dimensions to that lost world.

All this was in my head as I wrote When I Was. At the end of the novel Viola, my alter ego, is ten. Many people have been surprised that I have enough memories of my early years to fill a book. Actually, I have many more but chose the ones that were most alive. Perhaps novelists are people who have abnormally long emotional memories? One of the saddest things about getting older is watching dear friends lose their memories so that I can no longer have those comforting conversations that begin: “Do you remember…” They don’t, but I do, and it becomes harder to be sure what really did happen. A memory is altered as soon as you talk about it or write it down; it freezes, becoming a still photograph instead of a  chaotic movie, losing intensity rather as ancient Roman frescoes fade as soon as they are exposed to oxygen. 

Martin and Mike at Barbican Press wanted to use an actual photograph of my childhood for the cover of this novel. My parents were inept photographers in the days of Kodak box cameras and the few family photos that have survived are tiny, faded and black and white. This one was taken by a professional photographer at a children’s party at the Hungaria restaurant in Lower Regent Street. My parents had been loyal customers since the war, when the restaurant advertised itself enticingly as being “Bomb-proof. Splinter-proof. Blast-proof Gas-proof and BOREDOM PROOF.” 

I’m the sulky, dark little girl sitting behind my friend Claire, who seems to be enjoying the party more than me. I didn’t start to enjoy parties until I was about thirty. We are six years old and live next door to each other in Aberdare Gardens, near Swiss Cottage. My parents and their four children retreated to a small flat there after trustees abruptly withdrew their financial support and forced them to move from an enormous house in Chelsea. I’m the only member of my family who has not been devastated by this sudden fall; I love playing with Claire and digging in the back garden for the treasure my family seems to have lost.  I’m happy to share a room with my parents and I’m delighted that they keep keep forgetting to send me to school. 

 

www.mirandamiller.info             

 

The Whalebone Theatre, by Joanna Quinn - Sue Purkiss

 

I first read The Whalebone Theatre a couple of years ago. Lots of people had enjoyed it, and I did too, but it probably suffered a bit from something akin to 'tall poppy syndrome': do you know what I mean? It's when you hear so many good things about a book/film/place that when you eventually read it/see it/visit it, there's no way it can live up to all those high expectations. Also, I read very quickly, and I think I probably raced through it for the story and didn't accord it the time and attention it so richly deserved.

So I'm glad that Penny Dolan (another History Girl) mentioned earlier this week that she had read it recently, and, already having it on my Kindle, and being in search of a book to read while away on holiday, I was able to dive straight into it.

Reader, I'm so glad I did. It is a remarkable book. Of course, that's already established - it's been a huge best-seller - but it's one thing people telling you a book is good, and quite another to find it out for yourself.

In case you haven't come across it, it's a family saga, a little bit in the vein of Elizabeth Howard's Cazalet Chronicles, in that it tells the story of the fortunes of a well-to-do (to start off with) family, starting just after the end of the first world war, and finishing after the second. In particular, it focuses on Cristabel, a small child at the beginning, a grown woman by the end. But no character is neglected: each is gradually revealed in all his/her complexity - all reveal hidden depths, or indeed levels of shallowness. 

And because of the range of characters, Joanna Quinn is able to explore what is happening on both the national and international stages, in what seems like a perfectly believable and natural way. Old family friend Colonel Perry is key in this. He is a significant figure in one of the intelligence organisations, so he knows what's going on, and is also able to propel some of the other characters into particularly interesting places - notably, into wartime France. He's cool and perceptive, and clearly very fond of the Seagrave family - an enigmatic, pivotal character, though at first he seems like a bit of a bystander.

The writing is subtle and beautiful. I loved the way the author described the slowly unfolding relationship between Flossie, Cristabel's younger half-sister, and a German prisoner of war. They are two gentle characters, and theirs is not a dramatic affair, but it's a very moving one. And the descriptions of the Dorset landscape are simply gorgeous. (I'm sorry for not quoting in illustration of this, but useful as Kindle is, it doesn't easily lend itself to finding quotes.)

But it's not all gentle. Cristabel is a wild creature, prickly and tough: not surprisingly as her mother died at her birth, and her stepmother, Rosalind, ignores her as much as she can. The last section of the book, when she becomes an SOE agent in France, is very powerful - particularly towards the end, when she is searching for her beloved brother, Digby, in Paris, as the allies are marching to liberate the city. There were tears, I must confess, and it's a while since a book has made me cry.

Apart from this being a really good read and a beautifully written book, though, it made me think how valuable fiction can be in shining a spotlight (appropriate: I haven't mentioned about Cristabel's interest in the theatre) on historical events. Because history isn't just about the figures who set great events in motion: it's also about the countless millions of ordinary people who are affected - and often suffer - as a result. People sometimes ask writers which book they would like to have written: well, I would most certainly love to have written this one.

This week's post

 The History Girls regret there is no new post this week, due to illness. Normal service will be resumed next Friday, 13th June.

Birds of Blackfriars - Michelle Lovric

I love birds and have lived within chirping distance of Blackfriars Bridge for two decades. Yet I only quite recently realized that it’s a twitcher’s paradise.

From the road, you’d never suspect it. You have to lean over the parapet to see the full, strange spectacle. Each column, east and west, is adorned with life-size sculptures of sea and river birds rendered in Portland Stone. Many beaks and wings are sadly eroded by the uncontrolled emissions of vessels on the Thames (a long and interesting story for another time). But some of the birds are still magnificent and even magnificently eccentric.

The bridge, the second on this site, was designed by Joseph Cubitt. (Cubitt also built the first Blackfriars Rail Bridge, now visible only in attractive iron columns poking out of the water.)

The sculptures are the work of John Birnie Philip (1824 – 1875). a London-born sculptor who worked extensively for the architect George Gilbert Scott. Philip’s daughter Beatrix married James McNeill Whistler in 1888.

The bridge was opened by Queen Victoria in November 1869, and it is said that members of the public booed her. This may have been because many homes were demolished to create the run-up to the bridge. Or it may have been the public expressing their anger at her disappearance from public view in the previous eight years, following the death of her husband Prince Albert.

The sculpted birds, at least, deserved a better reception. They are very hard to photograph, and I’m a poor photographer at the best of times, but a few images follow to give you an idea of their charms. Probably the best way to photograph them would be from the water below ... but the Thames, with its six metre tides, is not a place where that can safely be accomplished. Filming on the river is in any case controlled by the Port of London Authority ...

There birds on the west side are fresh-water creatures. Those on the east, facing towards the estuary, are sea-birds. One explanation for this choice is that Blackfriars was the place where the river turned from salt to sweet. However, technically that is a moveable feast depending on freshwater flows from the west and tides from the east.

Going south to north on the west side of the bridge, you’ll see herons, swans with waterlilies, crows.

And on east side, going north to south, there are black back gulls, or albatrosses, Canada and other kinds of geese.

And here are a few images. I urge you to lean carefully over the parapet next time you find yourself on the bridge. It really is a delightful sight.

This video gives a few more glimpses of the birds: Secrets of Blackfriars Bridge - YouTube

Michelle Lovric’s website is www.michellelovric.com

Garbo and the Swedish Queen by Elisabeth Storrs

The life of Greta Garbo, the Swedish-American actress, is a rags to riches story. Born in Stockholm in 1905 as Greta Gustafsson, she earned her living as a ‘lather girl’ in a barber shop before becoming a fashion model, and then an accomplished actress who graduated from the Royal Dramatic Training Academy.

‘Discovered’ in Sweden in 1925 by Louis B Maher, the famous chief executive of Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), Greta came to Hollywood with frizzy hair, crooked teeth and no English. She was transformed into a stunning beauty known for her charisma and magnetism throughout the silent screen era then into the ‘talkies.’ Maher first marketed her as a vamp in a series of steamy movies. Her role in Flesh and the Devil catapulted her to box office stardom with her sizzling on screen chemistry (and off-screen romance) with her co-star, John Gilbert. Garbo later became famous for her melancholic portrayal of tragic characters such as the dying Camille or doomed Anna Karenina. She was praised for her subtle acting style where ‘worlds could turn on the movement of her eyes.’

Unable to speak fluent English during the silent era, she was reluctant to convert to sound films until she mastered the language. Her debut speaking role in Anna Christie, (1930) was billed with the tagline ‘Garbo talks’. Her famous first spoken line was ‘Gimme a whiskey, ginger ale on the side, and don’t be stingy, baby.’ The movie became the highest grossing film of the year and ‘Garbomania’ ensued. When she starred in Mata Hari, crowds were so rowdy that police reserves were called in to control the mob waiting outside the theatre. After appearing in the Oscar winning film Grand Hotel, Garbo was dubbed ‘the greatest moneymaking machine ever put on screen.’

In 1932, her contract with MGM expired and she returned to Sweden. However, she was lured back to Hollywood on the condition she could make a movie about the Swedish Queen Christina. The 1933 film was marketed with great fanfare as ‘Garbo Returns’. She earned a salary of $300,000 which equates to approximately 7 million today.

Queen Christina depicts the life of the unorthodox C17th Swedish queen who ascended to the throne at age 7 (although she wasn’t crowned until she turned 18). She was one of the most erudite women of her time, and has been described as the ‘Minerva of the North’ due to her strong support of arts and academics, the magnificent library she established, and her extensive art collection. Unfortunately, her extravagant lifestyle pushed the state to near bankruptcy and caused public unrest.

Her scandalous conversion to Catholicism, and refusal to marry, led to her abdication and move to Rome at age 29. Pope Alexander VII described Christina as ‘a queen without a realm, a Christian without faith, and a woman without shame.’

Christina’s father educated his daughter in the style of a prince. She wore men’s clothes and participated in fencing, horse-riding and bear hunting. She was said to be hirsute and masculine in features. Biographers vary in classing her as gay, bisexual, asexual or intersex. Christina herself wrote she was ‘neither Male nor Hermaphrodite, as some People in the World have pass'd me for.’ She was said to be romantically involved with women, in particular, Ebba Sparre. She maintained a close friendship with Cardinal Decio Azzolino (whom she made her heir) but it is doubtful theirs was a physical relationship.

Christina died at 62 having lived a life crammed with scandals, high culture and unconventional behaviour. However, the queen portrayed in Garbo’s movie was far removed from reality. The scriptwriters correctly portrayed Christina as being raised as a son who wore male clothes but the reason for her abdication is contrived. Her determination to remain celibate and convert to Catholicism is ignored. Instead, she leaves the throne for the love of a Spanish nobleman (played by John Gilbert). Garbo herself was troubled by the film’s historical inaccuracies and absurdities. She dreaded what her fellow Swedes would think. Nevertheless, the movie is famous for two scenes. The first incurred the ire of the censors as Garbo, dressed as a man, kisses Ebba. The other is the final sequence where Christina sails from Sweden to Spain after her lover has died. She stands stoically at the bow of the boat looking into the middle distance as though a living figurehead on a prow. The film became a box-office triumph and was the highest-grossing film of the year.

Garbo retired at 36 having made 28 films over 16 years. She was nominated three times for a best actress Oscar but never won. However, in 1954, she was awarded an Academy Honorary Award ‘for her luminous and unforgettable screen performances’. She failed to show up at the ceremony, and the statuette was mailed to her. The American Film Institute ranked her fifth on their list of greatest female stars in the classic golden years of cinema. In her personal life she appeared to suffer from depression and led a reclusive life. She also was said to be bisexual. Like Christina, she was an avid art collector. She is forever associated with the quote ‘I want to be alone’ when in fact she later clarified she said ‘I want to be let alone.’ She was denied her wish. To this day people rake over the details of her life, intrigued by one of the most iconic screen goddesses of the 20th century.

Elisabeth Storrs is the author of A Tale of Ancient Rome series. She is also the founder of the Historical Novel Society Australasia. Find out more at www.elisabethstorrs.com

Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The Many Faces of Anne Boleyn.

 Anne Boleyn – home-wrecker, whore, wicked stepmother, scheming bitch, witch, the woman responsible for encouraging the early years of the English reformation – or simply a woman whose fate was determined by the love or hate of a King?

 

 About the author:

Wendy J. Dunn is an Australian writer obsessed by Tudor History. She is the award-winning author of two Anne Boleyn novels, Dear Heart, How Like You This? and The Light in the Labyrinth and The Duty of Daughters and All Manner of Things. Shades of Yellow, Wendy's fifth novel, will be published on September 7th.

Defiled is my name full sore

Through cruel spite and false report,

That I may say for evermore,

Farewell to joy, adieu comfort.

For wrongfully you judge of me

Unto my fame a mortal wound,

Say what ye list, it may not be,

Ye seek for that shall not be found.

Anne Boleyn.

(Believed written the night before her execution.)

 

Anne Boleyn – home-wrecker, goggled-eyed whore, wicked step-mother, scheming bitch, witch, the saintly woman responsible for encouraging the early years of the English reformation – or simply a woman whose fate was determined by the love or hate of a King? Dead for over 400 years, Anne Boleyn arouses passions even today. People either love or hate her.

Many long years ago, Anne of the Thousand Days (Geneviève Bujold evoking Anne so brilliantly) was my first introduction, to the vibrant and intelligent mother of my favourite Queen, Elizabeth I. For most of my life I have been an advocate of Anne Boleyn, speaking up in her defence. 

The continuing interest in Tudor history over the last decade or more has also resulted in returning to centre stage the second and probably most infamous wives of Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn well liked the centre stage – but she deserves it for better reasons than the alternative histories presented in many films and novels.

Anne Boleyn has a ‘Public Relations’ problem. It started in her own times and remains in place even today. For centuries, writers loved misunderstanding Anne Boleyn, shaping and distorting her to their own devices. With their constant merry-go-rounding, it is difficult to determine Anne’s true face. Even Alison Plowden, a writer of many respected Tudor histories, falls into the trap of believing Nicholas Sanders – a man writing years after Anne’s death and only a young child at the time of her execution. Sanders, a devout Catholic, described Anne Boleyn as six-fingered, jaundiced, buck toothed and please let’s not forget the unfortunate large facial mole, situated under her chin in the view of all – deformities which would have identified her to the superstitious people of this period as a witch. I can't believe Henry VIII, a fastidious man of his time, could have ever been smitten with such a vision of loveliness.

Today, historians and writers of history debate about Anne Boleyn’s true character — something now shrouded in the mists of time. We don’t even know if any of Anne’s so-called portraits really depict her. 

Philippa Gregory, a very respected and awarded fiction author, reinforced Anne Boleyn’s bad press in her best-selling novel “The Other Boleyn Girl.” Gregory – despite saying she believes in Anne’s innocent of the charges resulting in her execution, as well as five men accused of being her lovers – shapes a totally ambitious Anne Boleyn. Gregory suggests in her novel Anne, desperate for pregnancy to ensure she remains Queen, beds and becomes pregnant with her own brother, one of the men executed with Anne during those blood-bathed days of May, 1536.

Similarly to the Anne painted in the dispatches of Chapuys, the Spanish ambassador to Henry VIII’s court and one of the reporters of this period in Tudor history, Gregory’s fictional Anne is a woman with barely any redeeming features. But Chapuys’ diplomatic news-sheets to Spain reflect his stance as a loyal friend and champion of Katherine of Aragon, whilst Gregory writes as a fiction writer with a story to tell.

Despite his six marriages, Henry VIII was never very good at dealing with wives who forgot to be “gentle, humble and buxom,” their expected place in Tudor society, and spoke their minds. It shocked him when his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, became short-tempered about being expected to be welcoming and “wifely”. He had decided to relax in the comfort of her chambers, and well away from his very stressed mistress, when they all were living in a kind of ménage à trois.

When the bewildered king complained to Anne Boleyn of Katherine’s behaviour, he found her offering little comfort. Anne did a bit of straight talking, saying she feared he planned returning to Katherine, followed by her frustration at remaining in the role of “the other woman”: 

         “I have been waiting long and might in the meanwhile have contracted some advantageous marriage, out of which I might have had issue, which is the greatest consolation in this world, but alas! Farewell to my time and youth spent to no purpose at all.”(1)

Some years later, Henry discovered a permanent way of chopping his wives down to size. But in this period, before his first ‘divorce’, these two very intelligent and strong women often rendered Henry wordless. No wonder when it came time to selecting a third bride he chose the wisely humble and obedient Jane Seymour.

But was Anne Boleyn really a home wrecker? Katherine and her daughter Mary, who never forgave Anne for what she did to her mother and her own early life, probably saw her as such, as did many other women of the time. Before she became Henry’s queen, a group of women threatened to lynch Anne. (2)

 The people of England loved Katherine of Aragon, taking her into their hearts when she first arrived in England as a sixteen-year-old princess to marry Arthur, the first-born son of the first Tudor King. Marrying Henry, Arthur’s brother, on his ascension to the throne, it didn’t seem to matter to the populace that, twenty years later, she had failed to provide her second husband with a living son. Queen Katherine had given them Mary, and they accepted her as her father’s heir, no doubt an offshoot of the great love they bore her mother. Like the struggle to accept Camilla in Princess Diana’s place, the English people’s great love of Katherine made it difficult for them to accept Anne as their queen.

All England had to do a lot of accepting to do before that moment arrived. In the first days of Anne and Henry’s relationship, nobody guessed Anne’s destiny lay as a crowned Queen of England, consort of Henry VIII. Her own family would have viewed the prospect beyond their wildest fancies.

Anne’s father, Thomas Boleyn (originally Bullen), who later became the Earl of Ormonde and Wiltshire, held only the rank of knight at the time of her birth. The eldest son of a man whose own father, Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, a self made man who became mayor of London, stood even lower on the rungs of English society. Thomas Boleyn, the ambitious father of Anne Boleyn, continued the uphill society climb of his grandfather.

The Tudors lived in a patriarchal society, which considered women as little more than property. The King controlled Anne’s life and that of her family; Henry’s obvious interest in her left her no other choice but to play interested, too. But Anne showed her own daughter’s characteristic of using her sex well to her own advantage. By keeping the King’s passion hot by refusing to bed with him, Anne soon showed her mettle as a different kettle of fish to his usual easy catch.

Having watched the king bed and discard her sister, Mary, Anne unsurprisingly desired to avoid a similar fate. Indeed, Anne never set out to catch a king. Rather, it seems she first wanted to wed the twenty-year-old Henry Percy, later Earl of Northumberland. George Cavendish, a gentleman of the cardinal’s household, documented this relationship, as well as later brought up during the trial for Anne’s life.

Showing all the hallmarks of young man and woman’s ‘first true love,’ both of Anne and Henry embarked upon their relationship as if unaware of how their place in Tudor society dictated their lives. There are even strong hints suggesting Anne and Percy may have pre-contracted themselves to one another, casting in shadow the legality of any future marriage entered by Anne and Percy to another party. (2) Disregarding Percy’s loud protests concerning his commitment to Anne Boleyn, Wolsey broke up their relationship, Percy’s father dragging his son back to home to marry an heiress in quick haste – a marriage doomed to failure from the start.

As for Anne and Percy?

History suggests this break-up hit them hard, and they never forgot what happened. It seems more than just a simple coincidence that the man leading the party to arrest Wolsey for treason was Percy. Anne said later that she rather had been Henry’s Countess (meaning the wife of Percy) than Henry’s Queen. When they delivered the verdict at her trial, Percy, a judge at her trial, fainted and they had to carry him out.

Cavendish believed the King commanded Wolsey to cause the original break-up after he decided on a fresher Boleyn girl to warm his bed. But people of this period rarely blamed the King for the break-up of his marriage. They saw Anne Boleyn as the young hussy, out for all she could get and aiming to replace Katherine of Aragon as queen. Henry was always good at staying in his subjects’ good books by shifting the blame to another person.

At the beginning of 1536, the heartbroken Katherine of Aragon died. The year’s beginning also saw Anne Boleyn, married to the king for three years and ‘big-bellied’ with probably her third pregnancy. Anne was an intelligent woman. She knew this pregnancy needed the result of a living son. That and only that would secure her position as Henry’s consort and keep her safe. With Katherine’s demise, and a question mark lingering even to this day over the legality of her marriage to the king, if she failed to give her husband a living son, then a death knell would sound over her time as queen. Anne Boleyn would not have realised failure to give the King a living son also death knelled her own life.

As the king’s wife, Anne experienced firsthand the same pain of Katherine of Aragon, For those born noble, Tudor mindset didn’t encourage sex through the long months of a pregnancy, so Henry VIII habitually took a mistress during the pregnancies of his wives.

Henry was a conservative man; he had done his bit, got his wife pregnant, now it was up to her to do what was expected of her and hatch out his prince. Henry probably thought a mistress was the best solution all round. For Anne, a jealous and now very insecure woman, this was hard to come to terms with; she had rudely awakened to the fact that her true worth as his queen equated to her success in the birthing chamber.

Just thirteen weeks into her pregnancy, on the very day they buried Katherine, Anne miscarried the son she hoped would save her marriage and protect her. His lustful gaze and hands already resting on Jane Seymour the previous year, Henry now lusted for a bon fide marriage to another woman,

Henry VIII said, after Anne lost her baby and her last chance to hold the king, “I was seduced into this marriage and forced into it by sorcery.”

 Anne Boleyn was no witch, white or black. Protestant bishops held her in great esteem; the men dying with her were not her lovers but men staying loyal to her even when it was obvious the tide had turned against her. Sir Thomas Wyatt, the elder, the man I endeavored to give voice in Dear Heart, How Like You This?, my first Tudor novel, once said, “I could gladly yield to be tied forever with the knot of her love.”

Anne was a woman who loved her daughter, a woman who said children were the greatest consolation in the world.cShe wasn’t perfect. But none of us are. Anne had many terrible moments as step-mother to Mary, the eldest daughter of the King. But the relationship probably reflected much of Anne’s frustration in her efforts to solve the problem. The one time she tried to achieve a better rapport with Mary, Catherine of Aragon’s loyal and loving daughter slammed the door on Anne’s attempt. For Mary, there reigned only one Queen in England, and it wasn’t Anne Boleyn.

Shortly before her execution, knowing she had failed in her duty of care of Mary, Anne fell on her knees, entreating the wife of the Tower’s Constable to go in her place and beg Mary’s forgiveness. She didn’t want to die with a weight of guilt on her soul about her treatment of Mary.

I believe a lot of Anne’s ‘bad’ behaviour stemmed from living on her ‘nerves,’ grappling with the immense insecurities as consort to the king. She lacked the training of Katherine of Aragon, a daughter of a ruling queen who had ensured her daughter’s readiness to assume her own queen’s mantle. But Katherine and Anne shared a similarity. Both of them acted like lionesses with claws out when it came to ensuring their daughters’ rights.

Anne was well aware of her many enemies, one her own uncle (the duke of Norfolk) who didn’t take kindly to her Lutheran leanings and independent spirit. Most wives would struggle to behave well if their spouse expected them put up with mistresses. Especially if your husband said, as Henry VIII did when she was heavily pregnant with Elizabeth– “Shut your eyes, do as your betters had done, and endure.”

The Anglican Church owes more debt to Anne Boleyn for its inception than is ever really acknowledged. During her time as Queen, Anne encouraged men such as Cranmer, Parker, Latimer and other Protestant bishops to plant the new church in the soil of England. Latimer and Cranmer, martyred during the reign of Katherine of Aragon’s daughter, planted it with their own blood.

 Yes – Anne Boleyn possessed a temper and forceful personality, a person who often spoke her mind, but as the mother of Elizabeth, could we expect any less? But she tried hard during her time as queen to be a good queen, following the great example of Katherine of Aragon. 

Anne was no witch, despite the excuse flung by Henry VIII to his subjects in 1536, inferring his main reason for marrying her, and the reason to rid himself of her. His words prepared the ground for Anne Boleyn’s juridical murder on trumped-up charges of adultery. During Anne’s trial for her life, when she fought every step of the way to clear her name, Henry himself said, “She has a stout heart.”

Elizabeth I remained silent about her mother. Some writers infer her silence as her way to distance herself from Anne, and that she must have believed the political spin put in place after Anne Boleyn’s death. Yet actions speak louder than words. Throughout Elizabeth’s long reign, Anne Boleyn’s gifted, intellectual daughter surrounded herself with her mother’s kin, making them part of her inner circle. Some of those closest to her were men and women who had also been close to her mother. More poignant than this was the discovery after her death. Until days before her death, when they cut the ring from her finger, Elizabeth wore a ring containing her own portrait as an aged queen and that of a much younger woman—her mother’s portrait. It is a picture worth a thousand words.

 

 

 

 

(1)         Antonia Fraser, The six wives of Henry VIII, page 169.

(2)         Alison Plowden; HOUSE OF TUDOR; page 119

(3)         Antonia Fraser, work cited, page 126

 

References:

Antonia Fraser; The six wives of Henry VIII; Arrow Books, 1998

Alison Plowden; HOUSE OF TUDOR; Sutton Publishing; 2003

George Cavendish; The life and Times of Cardinal Wolsey; Renaissance Electronic texts, Gen. Ed. Ian Lancashire; Web Development Group;