"Goings-on" in medieval nunneries by Carolyn Hughes

I have just finished writing the next book in my Meonbridge Chronicles series, set in medieval England. This story centres, not on Meonbridge, as the other novels do for the most part, but on a priory, to which one of the characters in the first Chronicle, Fortune’s Wheel, departed under something of a cloud. I always wanted to follow up what happened to her, but wasn’t sure that setting a novel almost entirely in a nunnery would make for an engaging story. So, I wrote other novels, about other characters, as the idea for this latest one gradually developed in my mind.

Then I discovered – or, actually, I think, re-discovered – Medieval English Nunneries, c. 1275 to 1535, a vast tome written in the 1920s by the well-known medieval historian, Eileen Power.

To digress briefly, I’ve often wondered who Eileen Power presumed her readership was… I have two others of her books, Medieval People and Medieval Women, and both include a few snatches of medieval texts, but I think I’m right in saying the quotes are translated into modern English. So perhaps those books were intended for a more-or-less inexpert readership. But Medieval English Nunneries is not only vast, with great quantities of notes, but is also littered with Middle English, Medieval French, and Latin, some of which is translated but a lot of which is not. Which overall makes it a challenging read for one who is not a trained, academic historian!

Nonetheless, I have read Medieval English Nunneries from cover to cover, and what I learned from it really opened my eyes, and soon enough I understood that writing a story about a medieval nunnery could indeed be engaging, not to say surprising and even exhilarating.

For what I read was that some medieval nunneries weren’t at all the havens of peace and prayer I might have expected them to be.…

Hildegard von Bingen and her nuns 13th century. Public domain.

There were apparently around 140 nunneries (priories and a few abbeys) in England in the later Middle Ages. Most were very poor, despite being largely inhabited by the aristocracy and gentry and, later, some women from upper-middle-class mercantile families. Many nunneries were small, very few with more than thirty nuns, a little over a quarter with between 10 and 20, well over half fewer than 10. As economic units, some of them must have struggled.

From what I gather, nunneries were not necessarily poor from lack of good management, but simply because their income was low. They would have relied on donations from benefactors, either permanent or long-term endowments, or shorter term or even one-off gifts from friends, relatives or people who wanted the nuns to pray for their or their loved-ones’ souls. The nunnery would also have the income from its estate, such as rents from tenants and money from the sale of crops. But their expenses were many: the costs of day-to-day living, food, clothing, candles, firewood; wages for servants (of which there could be several, even in relatively poor establishments); the costs of maintaining the buildings, which clearly could be huge; alms-giving to the poor, something nuns were supposed to do, albeit they were poor themselves! A few houses were wealthy, and presumably didn’t really struggle, but in many, if not most, the expenses often outstripped the income. Even in well-managed houses, the battle to keep their heads above the choppy waters of destitution must have been a real challenge.

That this was a problem can be construed from the measures put in place by bishops to safeguard nunneries’ financial health. The prioress was not supposed to make decisions by herself, but together with all the nuns – this communality of decision-making was a requirement of the Benedictine rule, and likely that of other orders too. Accounts were to be presented regularly to the bishop’s representatives, and it might seem obvious that a nunnery should have someone with specific responsibility for its finances (i.e. a treasuress), rather than letting the prioress have sole oversight. 

But what if a prioress had neither the ability nor the motivation to grapple with the mammoth task of managing the priory? Some prioresses were clearly terrible at their job. Yet perhaps it’s not surprising that some were unable to manage their priories properly, for, after all, they had no training. Maybe it is more surprising that so many were reasonably well-managed even if they did remain relatively poor?

However, in some cases, incompetence was not the (only) problem. For imagine a prioress who is discontented with the ascetic life and wants a bit of luxury, or who has a yen to assert herself above her sisters and do things “her way”, instead of by the Rules of her order, Benedictine or otherwise.

For a start, she might try to force her own election by whatever devices necessary. Eileen Power describes various examples of electoral subterfuge, where the community splits into rival factions, and the prospective prioress uses bribery or slander or some other devious, un-nun-like means to win the day.

Once in place, the prioress might then succumb to whatever “temptations” can help her assert her authority or implement her desires. Power mentions three such temptations:

• The desire to live a separate, superior sort of life, wearing luxurious clothes, not engaging with the life of the convent, sleeping and eating alone, travelling unnecessary, visiting friends, having friends to stay, even meeting men in private
• The urge to rule like a tyrant, instead of consulting the other nuns, as the Rule demanded
• The inclination to favour individual sisters, causing rifts, resentment, and even outrage…

These matters too were ones that bishops tried to tackle, but where their efforts were often in vain. Nunneries were typically visited and examined – by means of the bishop’s visitation, which was how all religious institutions, including religious houses and churches, were monitored and managed – only every three years or so. Therefore, the nuns were essentially left to their own devices for years at a time, during which all sorts of mayhem might be perpetrated.

It is through the records of the bishops’ visitations that Power is able to tell us so much about the difficulties of medieval nunneries and the measures the bishops tried to put in place to help them but also to curb their failings.

Apart from the financial problems, there were a number of other issues that might cause life in a nunnery to be less than contented.

For example, the very reason why the nuns were there. Had they entered the nunnery by choice, to pursue a religious life that they believed was their vocation? Or had they been sent there, possibly against their will, possibly even as a child?

Power makes it clear that at least some of the professed nuns in medieval nunneries were not there because they chose the life. Some were sent as children, others as young women. Power by no means claims that all of them were forced. She suggests that some – perhaps many, or even most? – professed happily enough, and might even have developed a vocation for the religious life. But it certainly was not always the case. For those, in particular, who entered the nunnery unwillingly, or at the very least, without their active consent, one can imagine the life might have seemed like a form of imprisonment.

To send your child to a nunnery was, I suppose, not necessarily done in order to “get rid of” them. For some, the religious life might have been seen as a sanctuary, an honour, or an insurance for the family. But at least some of these youthful internees might have met their fate when devious relatives did want to be rid of them, in order to access their inheritance, for a nun had no claim on her father’s estate.

In other cases, a man with a lot of children – sons and daughters – would give his sons priority, and might send “superfluous” daughters to a nunnery for a lower dowry than he might need to find her a husband. (In fact, canon law forbade the giving of dowries to nunneries as “simony”, but they happened anyway, and indeed were commonplace.) For some, a career as a nun might have seemed a natural “alternative” to marriage. Power suggests that the majority of young medieval women who entered a nunnery as a career did not have any particular religious inclination, but simply had nothing else to do, assuming I suppose, that they were unable, for whatever reason, to find a husband.

It is undoubtedly true that a girl might choose to take the veil willingly, not to say eagerly. She might see it as an honourable life for a girl who was unwilling or unable to marry, or indeed she might have a real calling to the life. But, for others, the nunnery might prove a prison, into which they were forced, unwilling but unable to resist, perhaps out of fear or simply sheer lack of agency.

It is of course impossible to know how many were willing and how many not.

But it seems that the majority of nunneries were apparently not full of desperately unhappy, antagonistic women, but were reasonably calm and contented places so, perhaps, regardless of the way they had entered their life, most nuns did learn to accept their fate and make the best of it. We shall never know.

So, why the nuns were there was one of the potential issues that might make, for some, their life a less than happy one. Another was the day-to-day life itself.

In the early days of nunneries, a nun’s day (aside from eating and sleeping) was marked by prescribed periods of prayer, some hours of work, and time allowed for reading and study. But Power tells us, that by the fourteenth century, reading was no longer widespread, and even work occupied less, if any, time than it once had, as servants tended to do it. As a result, says Power, “all nuns had was prayer”.

Nuns dining in silence while listening to a Bible reading.  

Pietro Lorenzetti, 1341. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons  

Obviously, those for whom the life was a vocation, where prayer was one of its most important, indeed joyous, aspects, would undoubtedly have relished spending most of their time in chapel. Moreover, even if reading and study had declined overall, one can imagine that nuns with a vocation would read and study anyway, so much of their time would be usefully, and happily, occupied. 

But for others, especially those who had no vocation, the lack of occupation could have rendered their lives as tedium without relief. Some reacted negatively. For example, some neglected the services – the holy offices – either by not attending them at all or by disrupting them in some way, such as racing through the psalms, to render them cacophonous and meaningless. 

The dearth of meaningful activity also encouraged some to try and brighten their lives a little, with more colourful clothes, pet dogs and forms of entertainment. The evidence that bishops attempted to curb these “brighteners” does suggest it was a problem, though how widespread it was it is impossible to know. I have already mentioned unscrupulous prioresses who sought a more luxurious and entertaining life, and perhaps finding it at the expense of the nunnery’s financial health. But from the bishops’ viewpoint, this was also about the failure of the nuns to observe the life of simplicity and abstinence which a nunnery was supposed to have.

Worse was when nuns broke the bounds of morality.

In principle, the life of a nun was “cloistered”: she kept to the confines of the nunnery, and did not leave it for any reason. Yet, it seems that nuns made all sorts of excuses for escape, and again, the evidence that bishops tried to curtail it indicates that such getaways were commonplace enough. Excuses might include visits to friends and family, weddings, funerals or christenings, pilgrimages, walks (for exercise) and even field work on the nunnery’s home farm. Clearly some of these excuses were probably perfectly legitimate, but it’s equally clear that sometimes nuns took advantage, especially perhaps of weak-willed or incompetent prioress, and ended up visiting improper places, like monasteries, or men’s private houses, or taverns. The latter seems somewhat unlikely but perhaps it has some truth! Anyway, as Power says, for hundreds of years, the bishops were mostly unsuccessful in forcing nuns to stay “cloistered”, and in the end, of course, the nunneries (like the monasteries) were dissolved, with the excessive freedom to “get away” cited as one of the principal reasons.

One of the reasons for insisting upon enclosure was of course the desire by the authorities to keep nuns away from men, and the temptation they posed. Chastity was one of a nun’s vows, and the only way of preventing nature taking its natural course was to keep her locked up and prevent her from meeting men. Although, she might come across men anyway inside the nunnery. The priest-in-charge or chaplain might even live within the nunnery’s walls, and illicit liaisons with priests were certainly recorded in the visitation reports. Moreover, some of the in-house servants might be men, and if a nun did engage in any outdoor work, she might have occasional contact with farm workers. So opportunities were probably always there for those who wished to find them… Power concludes that the majority of nunneries were almost certainly perfectly moral, and didn’t have their nuns gallivanting around the countryside or getting themselves into inappropriate liaisons with men. Nonetheless, the records of the bishops’ visitations reveal that immoral, even outrageous, behaviour, did occur, some of which led to the inevitable unwanted consequences.

Sometimes it was the prioress herself who set a bad example. There appear to be examples – if few – of prioresses or even abbesses who bore several children and even brought them up in the nunnery, which sounds extraordinary. Sometimes it was a nun who got into trouble, and occasionally she left the nunnery – apostatised – perhaps to set up home with her child’s father. But it wouldn’t have been a happy answer to her problem, for she risked being excommunicated. Often it seems, the apostate returned to the nunnery and had to undergo arduous penances in order to recover her position. 

My novel, obviously, focuses on the sort of mischief that did go on in some – but probably very few – medieval nunneries. I liked the idea of political manoeuvring – electoral subterfuge – for the potential for duplicity and conflict that would arise between factions. Also the concept of a prioress imposing her own inappropriate or even immoral desires on a place where her word was “law”, given that nuns owed her complete obedience, regardless of the worth or rationality of her decisions. And finally, the notion that the dissipation she might create would engender such grief amongst those nuns for whom such dissipation was anathema that they might be willing to cast obedience aside and rise up against her. I thought it might all make for a stimulating if surprising story.

However, as I shall write in my Author’s Note, this picture of a medieval nunnery should not be taken as the norm! Most of the 140 or so nunneries in Medieval England (and indeed also the monasteries) were probably reasonably pious and tranquil, working hard to make ends meet as best they could, although the very few wealthy institutions presumably didn’t have to work so hard. But, as Eileen Power writes, the evidence – from the bishops’ visitations – shows clearly that there were a few that were badly managed, had prioresses who were hopeless managers and/or incorrigibly self-seeking, where discipline was lax, piety at a minimum, and the inmates possibly feeling like prisoners.

Power’s book has been criticised for overstating the case for mismanagement and especially depravity in medieval nunneries, but I don’t feel she does especially overegg the situation. She draws on reports from the bishops’ visitations, which describe the “goings-on” in a few nunneries, sometimes in considerable detail. They certainly make intriguing reading, but there is no need to extrapolate from the few extraordinary examples to deduce that such behaviour was commonplace.

In truth, I feel that it is perhaps surprising that more nuns did not succumb to misbehaviour, given the circumstances in which some of them had entered their cloistered life, and the constraints with which they were required to live.

Anyway, I’ve drawn on Power’s descriptions of a few particular cases of prioresses or abbesses who brought either financial failure or shame, or both, to their houses, and overlaid them with my imagination to create a story that I hope gives a flavour of what life might have been like in those few houses that had the misfortune to be headed by a woman who was more interested in her own comfort, advancement and control than the well-being of her sisters. I hope it will be published early in 2025.

In Praise of Martial By LJ Trafford

Author's own pumpkin carving effort.

Alas the month of October has passed. October is a great month, it is the bridge between autumn and winter, the final resting point before the shops decide it’s Christmas and force the festival season down our throats until we surrender and start humming Slade’s Merry Christmas Everyone and having nightmares about undercooked/overcooked turkeys. There’s also this thing called Halloween at the end of October which bloggers feel compelled to write about.

My History Girls slot is pretty darn close to the 31st October but I’ll spare you the Halloween blog post because the Romans didn’t have Halloween. They did have ghosts and ghost stories and festivals connected to the dead but I am not going to make any tenuous links between anything they believed in and children dressed up as tiny Harry Potters escorted door to door collecting sweets.

No what I want to write about is #Classicstober ! #Classicstober as you’ll gather from the # is a Twitter, (or as it is now known X) event, it is a whole month dedicated to promoting ancient Greek and Roman history run by @GreekMythComix and @DrCoraBeth. Each day of October was dedicated to a different man or woman from antiquity offering up the opportunity for Classicists and enthusiasts alike to big them up for the education of the wider X audience. I was flattered to be asked to nominate an individual for the 24th October and as Pliny the Elder had already been nabbed I went for the poet Martial. Because I think he’s brilliant and by the end of this article you’ll think so too.

The Man

Author's own, heavily index stickered,  copy of The Epigrams by Martial.

Marcus Valerius Martialis was born probably in the late 30’s/maybe 40 CE or it could have been 41 CE and died possibly around 102/103/104 CE depending on what short bio you are reading on him. We certainly know he was alive during the 80s and 90s CE because he makes reference to Emperors Titus and Domitian and events under their reigns like the grand opening of the Colosseum in 80 CE. Yes really, Martial was there.

We also know that he was Spanish by birth, a Roman citizen who moved to the big city at some point in his life and attempted to make it big as a poet. Which he did. And that is about all we know about him. We could try to deduce his personality from his work but how much of that is truth and how much does he dish up to us simply because it makes a good gag? I like to think the latter because Martial as depicted by himself is not always a sympathetic character, in fact he’s often a bit of a git.

Why do I think Martial is brilliant? I’ll fess up and admit that a large part of his appeal is that he writes a form of poetry known as epigrams. An epigram according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary is ‘concise poem dealing pointedly and often satirically with a single thought or event and often ending with an ingenious turn of thought.’
Sssh, don’t tell the Classics lot but I’m not a big fan of epic poetry as written by Homer and Virgil. Epic poetry is well epic, and that means long, very long. Epigrams are much shorter, deliciously so. Some of Martial’s epigrams are only two lines, such as this one: 

‘If from the baths you hear a round of applause, 

Maron’s prick is bound to be the cause.’ 8.88.

Which means you can happily digest Martial’s views on a wide variety of topics in the same number of lines that Homer dedicates to listing the ships that made up the Greek forces battling Troy.

So, yes my own lack of attention is a part of why I enjoy reading Martial but there are many other reasons too, such as his versatility as a poet. I have written three non-fiction books on ancient Rome: How to Survive in Ancient Rome which was a general introduction to the city in the year 95 CE, Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Rome an in-depth look at that topic and Ancient Rome’s Worst Emperors. Three very different books to which Martial was a key source for all. Let me explain.

Do as the Romans do.
When ancient Rome is portrayed in film or on TV there is a leaning towards certain topics and these topics generally are soldiers, gladiators and sexually depraved crazed Roman Emperors. None of which I disapprove of, I hardly could when I’ve personally contributed to it through my own books. However, Ancient Rome was brim full of people who weren’t soldiers – so didn’t have to worry about them pesky British tribes, nor gladiators – so no need to worry about an imminent and bloody death and who weren’t emperors – so didn’t live in luxury beyond our wildest imaginations. No, it was full of men like Martial whose concerns in life were let us saw charitably somewhat more trivial.

A great many of Martial’s epigrams are dedicated to dinner parties, such as not getting invited to one:

'Our dinner invitations are one-sided. When I ask you, you usually come, yet you never ask me. I shouldn't mind provided you asked nobody else. However you do. Neither one of us, Gallus, comes out blameless. [] I'm stupid & you're shameless.’ 3.27.

Then there’s the growing suspicion and paranoia about why he’s not on the party list, is it because he has not reduced himself to bribery?

‘How has it so suddenly come to pass, that, after so many pledges of affection on my part, and after the lapse of so many years, I, old friend as I am, am not included in your invitations. But I know the reason; I have not sent you a pound of refined silver, or a fine toga, or a warm cloak.’ 7.86

Or is it because his penis is too small?

‘You invite no one, Cotta except those whom you meet at the bath; and the bath alone supplies you with guests. I used to wonder why you had never asked me, Cotta I know now that my appearance in a state of nature was unpleasing in your eyes.’ 1.23

When he does secure an invitation he is not at all grateful and whisks off epigrams that are uncannily like the end of Come Dine with Me when that night's host is cruelly critiqued. '

Last night, Fabullus, I admit you gave your guests some exquisite perfume

 - but not one slice of meat.'. 3.12

'You drink the best yet serve us third-rate wine. I'd rather sniff your cup then swill from mine.'

Although to be fair to Martial some of the dinners he attends do sound absolutely dreadful.

‘The reason you ask us to dinner, Ligurinus, is no other than this, that you may recite your verses. I have just put off my shoes, when forthwith in comes an immense volume among the lettuces and sharp-sauce. Another is handed, while the first course is lingering on the table: then comes a third, before even the second course is served. During a fourth course you recite; and again during a fifth. Why, a boar, if so often placed upon table, is unsavoury. If you do not hand over your accursed poems to the mackerel-sellers, Ligurinus, you will soon dine alone.’3.50

The picture of Rome that Martial paints is one we don’t often get to see, a Rome of battling dinner party hosts, of an overcrowded city ‘Novius is so close a neighbour I could stand at my window and touch him with a hand’ 1.86, of gossips ‘Marius’ earhole smells. Does that surprise you Nestor? The scandal that you tells enough to make it fester’ 3.28 and bad hair ‘You’ve dyed your hair to mimic youth, Laetinus. Not so long ago you were a swan, now you’re a crow. You can’t fool everyone.’ 3.48

As you can tell Martial is delightfully candid and unafraid of causing offensive. This is as true when he tackles the subject of sex.


Martial on Sex
When I was researching my book Sex and Sexuality in Ancient Rome, I would stumble across references to certain Martial epigrams only to track them down and discover that there was no officially published English translation of them. When I finally managed to locate an English version I quickly realised why; because they are pure filth.

As an example I give you an extract from poem 11.21, translation courtesy of sententiae antiquae who you will find on X. Martial's issue is with Lydia's vagina which he finds too wide, he then proceeds to compare it with a series of other roomy objects.
Lydia is as wide as the ass of a bronze rider’s horse,
[] Or the old trousers of a British pauper,
Or the foul throat of a Revennian Pelican.
I am reputed to have fucked her in a salty fishpond.
I am not sure: I think I fucked the fishpond

It’s not often you read a poet complaining his girlfriends vagina is too big. But Martial is not done complaining about vaginas, oh no he’s also plagued by noisy ones.

'Galla, you have a fault which is not altogether trifling. Whenever I came to you and we were moved about with mingling groins, you were silent – but your vagina wasn’t. Oh, would that the gods would make you speak and it stay silent! I am offended by your vagina’s loquacity. 7.18

The poem continues with Martial wondering if sodomy with Galla would have been a better option. This does make it surprising that Martial alongside such filth also wrote poems for the Emperor Domitian. Like I said, Martial is versatile.



Poet to An Emperor
The Emperor Domitian ruled from 81-96 CE, 15 whole years which counts as a bloody long reign for a Roman emperor. In the 3rd century the average reign of an emperor was a measly 2.3 years. There’s not a lot you can do as a leader in 2.3 years but there’s plenty you can do in 15 years and Domitian did, including introducing new morality laws which were placed stricter penalties on things like divorce. That Martial should end up as a poet to an emperor who cared deeply about public morals borders on the staggering.

The Emperor Domitian. Claude, Buste Vatican, James Anderson, silver print.. Digital image courtesy of Getty’s Open Content Program

Well maybe not so surprising because it wasn’t as if Domitian turned to his nearest lackey and requested he bring forth that poet who wrote that thing he liked about women with noisy lady parts. Martial desired the emperor’s attention, he wanted to get his poetry in front of Domitian and he petitioned to do so through his work in a poem aimed directly at one of Domitian's chief lackies, his chamberlain Parthenius.

‘You know the times when our Jove is at ease, when he beams on us with his own benignant countenance, with which he is wont to refuse nothing to suppliants. You have no reason to fear that our request is extravagant; a book which is decorated with cedar and purple, and swells proudly with dark bosses, never makes too great or inconvenient demands. Yet do not put these compositions too forward; but hold them as if you were offering and contemplating nothing. If I know the votary of the nine sisters, he will of his own accord ask for the purple-covered book.’ 5.6

Parthenius helped out, perhaps buttered up by poems Martial wrote for him, including one for the Chamberlain’s son Burrus on the occasion of his birthday.

Sooooo what type of poetry did Martial, the author of a poem about his girlfriend’s noisy vagina and a friend’s bad hair dye write for the emperor? The answering is exactly what was required of him. Sucking up poetry of the highest order, and my god when Martial does suck up he really gets on board with it.

‘The Rhine now knows that you have arrived in your own city; for he too hears the acclamations of your people. Even the Sarmatian tribes, and the Danube, and the Getae, have been startled by the loudness of our recent exultations. While the prolonged expressions of joy in the sacred circus greeted you, no one perceived that the horses had started and run four times. 

No ruler, Caesar, has Rome ever so loved before, and she could not love you more, even were she to desire it. 8.11

 There is this one on the palace that Domitian had built on the Palatine Hill.

Smile, Caesar at the miraculous pyramids of Egyptian kings; let barbarian Memphis now be silent concerning her eastern monuments. 

How insignificant are the labours of Egypt compared to the Parrhasian palace! The god of day looks upon nothing in the whole world more splendid. 8.36

Domitian's palace on the Palatine. Photo By Scott Rowland

This is a radically different style of poetry to that which Martial had otherwise produced. There’s no gag at the end, no caustic put down. Martial’s poetry for Domitian has a saccharine punchline..

O ye gods, but such as are due to earth; since for so great a god as Caesar what prayers can be extravagant? 4.1

When you do not wear it, Caesar it may be called a breast-plate; when it sits upon your sacred breast, it will be an aegis. 7.1 

 An aegis being a shield that was carried by the gods Jupiter and Minerva

Caesar, the barbarian is as much delighted as awed. 7.5

Come on, it’s impressive. The art of praise, of positivity is something we play down in our society. We think the caustic and the sarcastic the product of a cleverer mind. That Martial can do both, be offensively sardonic and flamboyant praise is testament to his talent.
Talking about talent, could you produce a poem on the niche topic of the Emperor Domitian’s recently introduced anti castration legislation? No? Martial can.

'It used to be a common sport to violate the sacred rites of marriage; a common sport to mutilate innocent males. You now forbid both, Caesar and promote future generations, whom you desire to be born without illegitimacy. 

Henceforth, under your rule, there will be no such thing as a eunuch or an adulterer; while before, oh sad state of morals! the two were combined in one. 6.2

He’s brilliant, isn’t he?
And if you don’t agree with me I leave you with my all time favourite Martial poem which encompasses everything that is brilliant about him: it’s short, to the point, offending and funny.

‘You ask me what I get out of my country place, 

the profit gross or net, is never seeing your face.’ 2.38

LJ Trafford writes books about Ancient Rome. You can find some of them for sale here

November 9th, 1989 - Celia Rees

There are a few dates in history when the world turned. June 28th, 1914, when shots fired by Govrilo Princip in Sarajevo, set off a train of events which resulted in the outbreak of the First World War. April 19th, 1775, when the first shot fired on Lexington Green, Massachusetts, sparked the American Revolution, memorably described by Ralph Waldo Emerson as 'the shot heard around the world'. November 22nd, 1963, when another shot rang out across Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas, killing John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States. 9/11/2001 when two Boeing 767 passenger planes flew into the Twin Towers. 

9^th November, 1989 is one of those dates: the day, or rather the night, when the Berlin Wall fell.

 

When these things happen, we immediately recognise their huge significance. Years later, we can say where we were, what we were doing, when we heard the news. In that moment, we can't always see all the ramifications, but we know something very big has happened. The actual causes of the world changing events that follow might be complex, go back years, decades, even centuries, but there is that one thing, one event, which causes the dominoes to fall. 

 

This does not have to be violent, it could be minor, trivial even. As small as the turning of a page...

 

On 9th November, 1989, at 6pm a News Conference took place in East Berlin...

 

'The News Conference was due to start at 6pm promptly, live on East German TV. The usual thing. TV cameras ranged round the back and sides of the small rooms. Reporters in the centre, milling about, taking their red plush tip up seats in front of the East German spokespeople, four of them, ranged behind a long press conference desk which was the same drab mid brown as the wall panelling and raised at the front to hide their papers from view. Muddy green floor to ceiling drapes provided the backdrop. Microphone leads trailed from each station but the only one speaking was Günter Shabowski, the East German unofficial spokesman. Middle aged, thick set with heavy features, grey hair, grey suit, he droned in monotone German  ... They were about an hour in and, so far, pretty routine, nothing much said, nothing new anyway, just the usual water tread, change was coming but not quite yet .... Someone even reached to switch off the set when Schabowski picked up a sheet of paper and read a statement: East Germans would be able to leave the GDR without preconditions at all border crossings with West Germany. Everyone leaned forward. There was a moment of absolute silence, as if they could not quite believe what they had just heard. On the screen, people looked to one another, as if for confirmation, and then the hubbub started. An Italian journalist stood up and asked the question: When is this going to happen? A collective intake of breath as Schabowski shrugged, shuffled thorough his papers and answered: Das tritt nach meiner Kenntnis... ist das sofort... unverzüglich - As far as I know… this is immediate… immediately. 

Schabowski frowned and looked over his glasses stunned, perhaps, by what he’d just said. Over the page was the detail: the need to apply for travel permits, present passports for stamping, beginning the next day. The 10th. But he hadn’t read that. 

 

History turns on such small things.'

 

This is an extract from my work in progress, provisionally called the Berlin Birdwatchers but the title is likely to change. It's a contemporary spy novel, but the events go back to that night in Berlin. As a historical novelist, it is my task to take myself back to the past, to see with the eyes of those present, to re-create events as they are happening. 

 

This is how I saw that night in Berlin:

‘Several people nodded, unable to frame words for what was happening. Finally, finally the border was going to open with immediate effect. A hand reached up to change TV channels. The Conference was top of the Evening News. They would be seeing this in East Berlin. Everyone there watched TV from the West. They would come pouring out of their homes and apartments and on to the streets, family, friends, neighbours joining together and heading for their nearest border crossing. The guards would have had no warning. They’d had no orders. They didn’t know what was happening. No-one knew what was happening. But some tides are not for turning. They’d have to let the people through, a few at first, no doubt, then there would be no stopping the growing throng.

From outside, laughter, cheering, shouting. People were already out on the streets, making their way to the neopalladian splendour of the Brandenburg Gate with its four bronze horses pawing the sky. For so long, it had stood in brooding isolation behind a 3.6 metre high line of concrete, separating East and West. It would be attracting Berliners from both sides, like iron filings to a magnet.

‘Come on, let’s go.’ Rob grabbed her hand. ‘We can’t miss this.’

Outside, people were leaving their offices and apartment blocks, coming out of the shops, bars and cafes, joining from every side street and alleyway, all going towards the Brandenburg Gate. And then - there it was.

The Wall.

No guards, no barriers, warning signs rendered meaningless, the crowd was right against it looking up at people standing on the top. East Berliners. Many hands reached to help them down and into the West, welcoming them with Sekt, schnapps and beer. The crowd was laughing, cheering, dancing, many were crying. Perfect strangers kissed and parted in wild celebration. West Berliners were clambering on each other shoulders to be hauled up to join their brothers and sisters. The Wall, hated and feared for so long had suddenly become just a strip of graffiti strewn concrete. People straddled the top, beating at it, chipping away with tools they brought for that purpose. A man wielded a pickaxe. All along the wall, hammer and sickle was giving way to hammer and chisel.’

The rest, as they say, is history…

This is my last post for The History Girls. I was a founder member and, over the years, I’ve made many friends among this group of extraordinarily gifted women. I’m still amazed at the range and depth of their knowledge and their generosity in sharing this with our readers. So, my thanks to my fellow bloggers and of course to Mary Hoffman, who has kept us all going. I am, and will always be, proud to have been a History Girl! 

A section of the Berlin Wall. Imperial War Museum, London 

Celia Rees

www.celiarees.com

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FIGHTING FOR SPACE: A VISIT TO LEEDS ROYAL ARMOURIES. Penny Dolan

 

 Back in the late Nineties, and new to the North, I visited the Royal Armouries Leeds. I recall parking on an empty brownfield site, among broken brick outlines of past industrial buildings. Around the area, large hoardings offered investment opportunities and I could hear the constant rumbling from the cross-city routes and motorway junctions nearby. Edged by stunted bushes and brambles, that windswept space had not been inviting

However, among this emptiness, there stood what seemed a windowless fortress, created from vast blocks of smooth, steel-grey stone. Walking towards the roof-high glazed entrance, I saw it was marked by two copies of a strange curled-horn helmet.

This helmet is an emblem of the Royal Armouries Leeds. Opening in 1996, as one of several new ‘Northern’ museums, the building was designed to display and conserve the UK’s historic collections of armour and weaponry.

Inside were layers of galleries, filled with glittering, polished metal and craftsmanship, with different sections tracking the development of combat, armour, guns, pistols, and policing. Outdoors, but within the walls, was a tiltyard, an open area where exhibitions of combat, falconry and horsemanship were staged. I was interested enough during my visit but, no longer curious about the contents or place, had never returned.

And so it was, until this month, when a visiting friend with an interest in historical armour gave me reason to return. I went, wondering about that windswept site.

Years had passed, so how would the Armouries building look now? Did visitors still visit? Had any of that hoped-for regeneration happened? And was that ‘fortress’ still working as a place of cultural interest and inspiration?

I did not want keen to drive there by car this time, as the routes in, through and around Leeds are currently over-run with roadworks and redirections.

This time, we took the train from Harrogate to the 'new' Leeds Station. We left, as instructed, through a 'new' South exit, down gleaming escalators and sturdy glass doors. We arrived at the level of the Aire and Calder Navigation, and the place where the River Aire flows in a torrent between brick walls and under arches beneath the station. We were close to the famous dark arches of Granary Wharf, where quantities of goods were once loaded and unloaded, but where new businesses fill the renewed spaces.

Following signs to the towpath we arrived at a set of concrete steps and a short wait for the Waterbus. Opposite, on the far canal path, stood small groups, old and young, wrapped against the wet and weather. When the stretch of canal was clear, they cast large magnets on long ropes into the murky water, fishing for lost metal. They seemed more like characters from Mayhew or Dickens than proud examples of the city’s prosperity and regeneration, and I hoped the task brought them fun and occasional profits.

The friendly boatman helped us on to his twelve-pasenger ferry and, motor chugging, steered his craft through an area of the ‘new’ Leeds.

On both sides of the canal, historic warehouses had been converted into waterside apartments, with the new-builds squashed between echoing that same architectural pattern. People did seem to be living within: there were green plants on windowsills, tiny coffee tables on balconies, cloths drying on railings and so on: signs of sparse hopes that this was not an economic illusion.

As we chugged along, the sunshine set letters glittering on old signs, marking out the ornate ironwork decoration on the Victorian bridges and the wide steel arcs of a more recent crossing. Here and there, were glimpses of the smooth walkways and cyclepaths that wove alongside and through the area. When, I wondered, would we come to that bleak open space I remembered?

Suddenly the ferry steered to the right and took us through an open lock gate and into a canal basin. 'Leeds Dock,' the ferryman called as we moored at a long, low wooden jetty. Was this it, our destination?

I stared around. We stood among a horde of tall modern apartment buildings. At ground level, there were shops and offices, and a few house-boats moored in the overshadowed waters. This could have been any new waterfront development, but in brightly coloured eight-metre-high letters across one wall were two words. ‘CREATIVE LEEDS’.

That old windswept wasteland I remembered had been swallowed and changed into what is known as a city hub. We were in a ‘Destination Area,’ complete with coffee shops, yoga studios, tech businesses and monthly weekend craft-markets. Although Creative Leeds was not exactly pulsing with crowds, people were wandering busily or sociably about. As of course, was I, still looking for that empty expanse and the huge, solitary fortress.

Suddenly, turning a corner, I glimpsed two grotesque armoured heads, still on display; we were right beside the Royal Armouries. At that moment, my memory of that solitary grey fortress seemed somewhat diminished, even though the high-rise structures nestling closely beside its walls made the area more hopeful and welcoming.

And inside the Armouries?

The museum, purposefully designed by the architect Derek Walker, is still impressive in appearance, atmosphere and space, with many rooms tall enough for the carrying of an upright lance. Do look at the map of the Armouries maps on arrival: the floors are based around a slightly confusing ‘H’ floor pattern, which allows several floorspaces for talks and presentations. We took the long flight of stairs up the tall circular tower, whose walls house a striking display of weapons and blades, possibly missed by visitorswho ride up in the glass lifts.

The second floor held the collection we were after. The range of armour in the cases ran from mail tunics and simple body plate through to hinged elbow and knee joints, and onwards to neat, close-fitting padded jackets formed hundreds of metal ‘leaves’ and covered with delicate engraved patterns. The gallery offered videos, such as blacksmiths at work or a knight, helped by his squire, putting on armour, as well as several other information panels.

However, the finely honed skills of the metal-smiths would give little protection as handheld guns and firearms arrived. The museum contains a whole range of examples. from the early blunderbuss through to pistols, rifles and every sort and size of deadly device. Among the third floor galleries are displays about policing and modern spy-craft too. Too much to see it all on our short visit!

I must add that the museum seemed aware of the implications its lethal contents. While the second floor did hold a display about the Joust, with flags, banners and a brightly striped tent, overall the galleries overall had little colour: most backgrounds stood sombre and muted against the gleaming metal. Even the life-size tableau of embattled knights on horseback had been given a ghostly, powdery-white cast. To my mind, there was no emphasis on movie-level gore or awful glamour, with focus throughout on the design and technology.

However, along with these static exhibitions, the Armouries can bring its collections to life. Each day, there are real-person talks, displays of combat and more, depending on staffing issues, each event focusing on a different aspect and era of weapons or warfare.

We opted for a 'costumed character‘, who gave us a lively retelling of the 1485 Battle of Bosworth, the last of the Wars of the Roses. He took on the role of a mercenary pikeman in Lord Stanley’s army, waiting on the edge of in the battlefield and unsure who and which side they were to be fight in.

What army should the regiment cheer for? Who should they join? The rightful king, Richard of York, with the bigger army? Or Henry Tudor, with the smaller army, who is also a rightful ruler?

While the soldiers wait and watch, rumours arrive that determine their stance and loyalty. When reports suggest that Richard III's army is struggling, or even that the Yorkist king has been killed, the devious

Lord Stanley and his men set off to join battle on the winning Lancastrian side.

As a presence, our pikeman was large, rough, energetic and told his story with plenty of action and humour. He made it clear that payment, not loyalty, was what interested soldiers like him, as well as rights to the plunder once the battle was over. In fact, he stressed how he was actually protected by such stolen goods: from the thickly padded jacket he stripped from a German soldier, to his brightly patterned metal helmet collected after another battle, and even his treasured short sword.

Tellingly, with humour and gusto, he demonstrated how easily his handy blade could slip through the many gaps in an un-horsed knight's armour, despite such glamourous 'protection'. The audience's groans and gasps proved the relevance of such details, among the parade of glittering armour.

Do, if you go, look on the notice boards for any 'live' activities on offer, as they add much to the whole experience, and come from different periods of time. I did not, that afternoon, have time for the display of non-European armour and weapons, nor the magnificent armoured elephant, but my friend had the information and ideas she needed.

This second visit to the Royal Armouries Leeds was interesting in itself, but also gave me a useful way of reflecting on time passing. That lone fortress in a desolate wasteland is now part of the history of the city's landscape.

And I've reaclled that I may need an 'imagined' sword for in my current working novel. I know where there's help if I need it.


Penny Dolan

Ps. The Royal Armouries Leeds is free, donations welcome and a paying car-park has been built nearby. Closed Mondays. There is still a Royal Armouries collection displayed in the White Tower, at the Tower of London, as well as at Fort Nelson, Fareham, near Portsmouth. Website:  https://royalarmouries.org/leeds

 

Marianne North - Victorian traveller and painter of plants: by Sue Purkiss

 (Apologies - life has caught me on the hop, and I don't have a new post for today. However, I'm happy to have the opportunity to repost this one, from seven years ago: it's about one of my favourite historic characters, Marianne North.)

Marianne North was one of those extraordinary Victorian women who wasn't content to follow the usual pattern involving marriage, children, and domesticity. Like the plant hunters, she travelled the world searching for exotic new plants - but in order to paint them, rather than to collect them.

Marianne North at work

What she did would be remarkable if she had been doing it today - but she did it in the Victorian Age, which makes her even more extraordinary. The conventional image of Victorian women is that they sat at home looking demure, painting water colours and doing embroidery. But some of them weren't content with that kind of life, and they not only broke the mould but utterly smashed it - by climbing the Alps, by writing great novels - and by exploring dangerous corners of the world: women such as Lady Hester Stanhope, Gertrude Bell and Isabella Bird.

Marianne North belongs in their company. She was born in 1830 into a comfortably well-off (and well-bred) family - her father was the Liberal MP for Hastings. Her first passion was for singing, but with a background like hers, a career in music wasn't an option. So then she turned to flower painting. Her sisters married, but Marianne thought marriage was a terrible idea, which turned women into 'a sort of upper servant', and she avoided it. Instead, when her mother died in 1855, she took to travelling with her father, who was also interested in botany. Then when he died some 15 years later, she, at the age of 40, determined to continue her travels, exploring far-flung corners of the world and painting the plants and flowers she found there. She usually travelled alone, finding companions a distraction and an annoyance, and she lived simply - it wasn't a case, obviously, of hopping on a plane and staying in a nice hotel: travelling was difficult, but she did it anyway.

Morning glory climber in South Africa

She wasn't formally trained, so maybe this is why her paintings are so unlike conventional botanical illustrations, in which the plant is shown against a white background. Marianne shows her flowers in context, where they grew - though she clearly took some liberties in order to show a beautiful view or an interesting insect: she didn't simply paint what she saw. Also, she didn't use water colours, she used oils, so her paintings are dense with brilliant colour - full of drama and absolutely wonderful.

In 1879 she offered her paintings to Sir Joseph Hooker, the Director of Kew Gardens. She designed a special building for them, and decreed how they were to be hung: close together, and grouped according to geographical area. However, she lost one fight. She wanted visitors to be served tea or coffee (so sensible!) but Sir Joseph huffed and puffed and said he was running a scientific institution, not a cafe. But she had the last word - she painted a tea plant and a coffee plant above the entrance.

The gallery at Kew

I think I first heard about Marianne North when I went to Kew Gardens when I was researching my children's novel about plant hunting, Jack Fortune, though for some reason I didn't go to the gallery then - I probably didn't know about her till I'd been to the shop, where I bought a pack of reproductions of her paintings. I was enchanted by their boldness and brilliance, and one of them showed a view of the Himalayas through a framework of foliage, which was in my mind as I wrote about my characters' first sighting of the mountain which plays a pivotal part in the book:

Then, between two houses, Jack saw something that stopped him in his tracks. In the distance he could see immense mountains with snow glistening on their peaks. “Look, Uncle!” he breathed.

 
His uncle stood still. He didn’t say a word, and Jack glanced at him. He was gazing at the distant peaks with a look of the most desperate longing on his face. Jack suddenly saw just how much his uncle wanted – no, needed – to reach them. On impulse, he touched his arm, and said seriously, “It’ll be all right, Uncle Edmund. We will get there. I promise you we will.”

His uncle looked surprised. Then he smiled sadly. “I hope so, Jack,” he said. “Oh, I do hope so!”

I showed this picture to the cover designer for Jack Fortune, and he used it as a starting point for the cover. A tiny nod towards Marianne North, and I'm sure she would have been bemused by it - but I'm happy to have made it. And if you go to Kew, be sure to visit the Marianne North Gallery - I promise you, you will be enchanted.

A Victorian Marital Disaster

by Stephanie Williams

In the 1850’s the public breakdown of the marriage of Edward Bulwer-Lytton and his wife Rosina filled the press with a scandal that resounded through the drawing rooms of Mayfair and the back-rooms of Westminster. It’s a case that makes Johnnie Depp and Amber Heard look like a walk in the park.

You only have to look at his portraits to know you are dealing with a rogue. That knowing gaze, the laid-back look, the ringlets and slightly unkempt auburn hair.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton © Henry Lytton Cobbold 

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, first Baron Lytton – of Knebworth Hall – member of parliament, and for a brief time Secretary of State for the Colonies, has a reputation for being a wit and a dandy. He is also a famous and prolific writer – in his time selling almost as well as his good friend Charles Dickens. To Bulwer-Lytton we must credit such phrases as ‘pursuit of the mighty dollar’, ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’, ‘the great unwashed’, and ‘it was a dark and stormy night'. The Last Days of Pompeii, published 1834, was a best-seller for decades; his melodrama inspired Wagner.

As a Cambridge student, his virginity is lost to Bryon’s famous lover, Lady Caroline Lamb, in 1824. He is 21, she is nearly 40. When their affair comes to an end, he consoles himself in Paris among the fashionable ladies of le beau monde.

On the day before his 23rd birthday, Edward returns to London. That evening, his mother takes him to what he fears will be a very boring soirée. There he sets eyes on green-eyed, dark haired Rosina Wheeler, a noted and well-educated Irish beauty.

© National Portrait Gallery, London

You could say it was doomed from the start 

 His mother wanted him to marry money. She forbade the marriage, cut off his allowance, refuses to speak to him and forces him to work. Rosina’s mother, Anna – who at this time Rosina finds slightly embarrassing -- is regarded as a dangerous radical: a socialist and one of the nation’s first campaigners for women’s rights. She thinks Edward is a worthless dandy.

In 1827 the couple set up home in an expensive house in Oxfordshire.

Edward, who had won the chancellor’s medal for English verse at Cambridge, has no choice but to write for his living. Once inspired, he is in a state of fierce concentration. When finished, he sinks into depression. In May 1828 Rosina is in the final weeks of her first pregnancy when half-way up a ladder in the library fetching a book for him, she tells him she feels faint. 

‘He stared at me blankly for a moment, and then suddenly sprang to his feet. A look of hideous fury filled his face. He made a vile curse and pushed me to the ground. The next thing he did, was kick me in the side with such savage violence that I fainted from the pain.’

The next day, he is all sweetness – brushing away any reference to what had happened. Rosina cannot believe his behaviour. Meanwhile, he tells the servants she merely had fall. When their daughter Emily is born a month later, she is immediately given to a wet-nurse. From that time Rosina is scarcely permitted to see her. With his literary career flourishing, they move to London. Edward adds politics to his workload. The birth of a son in November 1831 does nothing to rekindle the marriage. By his own admission, Edward, with his tendency to melancholy, has a vicious temper and voracious sexual appetite. And is now flaunting an affair with a society beauty, Mrs Robert Stanhope. 

In an attempt to repair the marriage, Edward and Rosina travel to Italy – to Rosina's surprise, Mrs Stanhope, with her husband in tow, appears on the Channel crossing to accompany them. Terrible scenes erupt in Naples, where Edward, accuses of her of infidelity with a Neapolitan prince. He attacks her again, this time with a knife. 

'I had frightened myself, as well as Rosina… I possessed a temper so constitutionally violent that it amounted to a terrible infirmity. She should, after all our years together have understood that it was inhumane to tamper with so terrible an infirmity as mine. '

Back in England, they agree to separate. Both are just 33. Edward awards Rosina an allowance that is pitiful. She is denied access to her children. Rosina is forced to write. She does not hold back. Her 1839 novel, Cheveley, or the Man of Honour, takes Edward apart revealing such physical abuse that The Age newspaper dubbed him ‘Wifewhack’.

They are now equally obsessed with loathing one another. In 1847, their daughter Emily, who had spent her life consigned to various governesses, died of typhus fever in poor lodgings, aged nineteen. Rosina, who had to force admission to her death bed, accused him of wilful neglect.

Emily, © Henry Lytton Cobbold

Now Rosina pursues him with embarrassing public pronouncements at every opportunity: writing to Prince Albert decrying the Queen’s support for such a scoundrel by giving a royal premiere of his play, Not So Bad as We Seem in 1851, and posting advertisements around Devonshire House for Even Worse than We Seem by 'Sir Liar-Coward Bulwer Lytton, who has translated his poor daughter into Heaven, and nobly leaves his wife to live on public charity.'

In June 1858, Edward canvasses for re-election as Colonial Secretary in Hertford. Rosina plasters the town with flyers denouncing him. She takes to the hustings herself to tell the world what a man he is. In response, he has her committed to a lunatic asylum. 

 The outcry against him – spearheaded by Rosina’s women friends -- will not be silenced. He has a chat with Dickens at his club who warns him this is a scandal he will not survive. Within three weeks, Rosina is released. 

Both make extensive records of their feelings. As time goes by Rosina’s prose gets wilder and wilder. It may be the drink – of which he accuses her – speaking. But by now she has also realised the validity of many of her mother’s ideas on the rights of women. She will go on to publish a further 20 novels exposing the ill treatment of wives, haunting him for the rest of his life.

'The representative of Romance.'

Vanity Fair, Oct 29 1870

Bulwer-Lytton dies in 1873. Lonely and ill, still often mocked, he is covered in honours: a baronetcy and a peerage, knight grand cross of St Michael and St George and is buried with huge pomp in Westminster Abbey.

She lives on, still beautiful, troubled by pain, sorrow and debt. She dies in obscurity in 1882. Her own grave in Upper Sydenham lay unmarked for over one hundred years, until in 1995 when her great-great grandson arranged for a tombstone with the inscription she had requested: 'The Lord will give thee rest from thy sorrow, and from thy fear, and from the hard bondage wherein thou wast made to serve.'

Rosina’s most immediate legacy was passed to her granddaughter Lady Constance Georgina Bulwer-Lytton (1869–1923), who became one of the heroines of the Edwardian women's suffrage movement. 

But that’s another story.