Culpeper and Writing, by Gillian Polack

I often ask people “What would you like me to write about in my articles?” They want me (mostly) to write about people. 

My fiction is about people, but my historian side isn’t that kind of historian. I’m an historiographer and ethnohistorian. I think about cultures and about books and about books in culture and about stories.

Today, when I thought “I want to write about Nicholas Culpeper” because I was thinking of my own past, not because I’m interested in the seventeenth century nor in his life. At high school we were allowed to choose our own books for the end-of-year prizes. My English prize was Culpeper’s herbal. It combined so many of my interests. I chose it because I wanted a copy of my own, so that I could learn to decode the entries and know how Culpeper thought of herbs and used herbs. My kind of history. I had it even when I was seventeen.

I’ve used my volume of Culpeper so often since I was seventeen, but it’s been a while since I sat down and questioned how I use it. These days I use it as a reference for my fiction, but also as an historian. I know a lot more about the historical context of the book, and theoretically whenever I look at a page, that automatically kicks in. This makes my fiction quite different to what I wrote when I was eighteen. Around then my first short story was published and it was a very precise description of working at a rubber glove factory. If I had included Culpeper, it would possibly have been the main character going home and reading the book herself, for my writing was often very literal and everyday back then.

I’m not certain that we talk enough about what fiction writers do when they read a book to use in their fiction. I have a new short story to write soon and Culpeper is a useful source, since the story is set in a strange and wonderful shop. If the shop assistant had an array of herbs for various uses and only a single reference volume to consult, what would she know, and how do I read an entry to interpret it in this environment? Is it as simple as my response would have been when I was a brand-new writer with little life experience and only the beginnings of an understanding of what history is and how to use sources?

I want to begin with the second question. In fact, I have to begin with the second question.

What my character would know depends wholly on how I would read an entry for the place and time that character lives in. There’s a big difference between how I read Culpeper as a seventeen year old to how I read Culpeper forty years later, so let’s start with that.

The entry I’ve chosen to play with is that on the cherry tree, mainly because it’s a short entry. You can find it here: http://www.complete-herbal.com/culpepper/cherrytree.htm

When I was seventeen I read it literally. When I read ‘sour cherries” I thought ‘Morello’ and I looked for where a tree could be grown and how it could be eaten. I tasted uncooked sour cherries and I tried drying them to match what the entry described.

The health side of the entry I noted, but pushed aside, for a couple of my relatives were health professionals (doctors and dentists) and had given me strict warnings on health issues and old herbals. I used more modern herbals to test some medicinal properties, but Culpeper was of a period that, I was told, had dangerous medicine.

Now, in this day and place, I read it for the physical qualities Culpeper describes, for it’s a medical herbal, not a culinary one and I know far too well how few medieval medicines have actually been tested. I would check to see if Morello cherries are the same type of sour cherry as Culpeper describes, and if the change in cherries over time has been documented by specialists. I’d check sites like Brogdale to see what they tell me about fruit in general and about cherries in particular. Then, and only then, I’d play with the fruit itself, knowing more about the relationship between a modern cherry tree and Culpeper’s.

The next thing I do is look for the qualities of a plant in relation to the structure of the universe. 

This sounds big. It isn’t. It’s quite simple. In the case of cherries, they are of Venus. Culpeper tells us so. He always tells us so. This informs me how the cherry might work in relation to other plants if I were a doctor and finding suitable medicine for an ailment. Medicine back then didn’t operate along the same lines as modern medicine (it had to balance the humours, for instance) and knowing a plants qualities meant that the heat, the cold, the wet and the dry could be deduced. That sentence “It is a tree of Venus.” is a coded explanation for the long paragraph that follows and that describes different types of cherries, how they work fresh and how they work dried. 

It’s not a complete list of ways cherries might be used in medicine: it’s a guide to how cherries fit into the world of remedy.

This leads to something important. The shop assistant in my story would not be able to prescribe using Culpeper alone. She would need other references, or medicinal products already packaged, or someone she could ask for help. She could sell the dried fruit as dried fruit and helpfully explain that Culpeper lists it as ‘being cooling in hot diseases, and welcome to the stomach’. She would find it harder to create  prescription for a particular illness: medieval medicine required a lot more training than access to a herbal, no matter how wonderful the herbal is.

My short story, however, is a fantasy short story with historical elements. Can’t I use Culpeper any way I want, then? The answer to that is, sadly, “Only if I want historians to find it comic or sad or simply badly done.” Taking historical sources from a given time and lifting out fun facts and putting them into a context where those fun facts are distorted lead to such reactions. The reason for that is one of the things I’m researching right now, because it’s seriously cool.

Every single novel has certain attributes that readers pick up on. They’re the reason we choose to read this novel over that other one. Historical fiction tends to keep historical material in stronger historical context than historical fantasy does. Within a given novel, a certain level of historical accuracy is more or less appropriate and this fits very closely in with the genre of the novel. (This is my older research – if you want to explore it, History and Fiction is the place to go.)

All novels have an invented world. Some invented worlds look very much like ours (historical fiction) and some go in interestingly wayward directions (historical fantasy) and some borrow from history but deviate in even more ways. Other world fantasy is a good illustration of this description, but it applies to a range of genres. My short story will be part of a series of stories that are ‘portal’ – the shop door can lead from the shopfloor into a range of places. This means that the historical accuracy of the Culpeper really doesn’t matter, in one way. There is nothing medieval about this shop except… 

When we (writers) build a world for a novel, it has to contain a certain level of credibility for the reader. The need for credibility in the story itself applies to almost all novels. It even applies to short stories, but because short stories contain so much less detail, credibility is easier to achieve. A few bits of detail that give the right feel and all is good. When someone writers a linked sequences of short stories (as I am, now) that sequence has about the same credibility requirements as a short novel.

How does Culpeper relate to credibility? I need a reason to have cherries on that medicinal shelf. I need a reason to have Culpeper on the reference shelf (the door leads to our word sometimes, perhaps). I need someone who can read the book (ie speaks English) and knows what cherries are. Then come the questions about how those dried cherries are used, why they are being bought, why the book is picked up at all…

My decisions on all these things might make or break the short story, even if they are merely two paragraphs in twenty pages.

Every single bit of historical information in historical fiction carries such weight. This brings me to my endgame: I am not writing about Culpeper today. I’m using Culpeper as an example to show you the weight of the research behind the work of the History Girls and other writers. Evaluating every single element of history in a novel is part of the novel-writing game. Making sure it fits the kind of novel we’re writing, the place, the time, and even the characters in the novel is not easy. It is, however, what brings history into fiction in a way that more readers can enjoy.

Novelists and their sources - by Gillian Polack

Today I want to explore primary sources. Let me be honest: every day I want to explore primary sources. Today, however, I have a special reason. I’m in the middle of an online chat with some of my writer-friends about making a choice about what a character is going to do in a novel. The novel is set in the nineteenth century (and it’s not mine, so I can’t share more details, I’m afraid) and the character has done something that requires deep secrecy or they will lose everything.

Something that I always return to is that the type of secret a character will have depends very much on the nature of the historical novel rather than the nature of the history. If the novel is Gothic, there might be a child out of wedlock or an imprisoned wife. If the novel is historical fantasy, then the secret is likely to be hidden magic or a family heirloom that could destroy the world or that proves the character is royalty. If it’s historical fiction, then the secret is likely to be something that has been demonstrated as a secret in history as we know it. The character might be Giulia Tofana and the revelation would then be that she had poisoned an extraordinary number of people, for Tofana was possibly the seventeenth century’s most notorious professional poisoner.

The type of novel helps decide the type of secret. That’s a key part of how we tell our stories: finding the right example for the tale we’re telling. When you’re reading a fine novel and you stop and blink and think “That can’t be right” one of the reasons might be that the secret was perfect for another novel, but not for this one.

One of the aspects of historical fiction that I love most is that all these secrets can call on primary sources. Our actual past is complex enough and rich enough so that choosing the right sources can give the perfect secret for a character. The best historical novelists often have an almost uncanny knack for matching up story with source material. (Some of the best have an uncanny knack for inventing an entirely false past that feels perfectly real, but that’s another subject.)

The historian in me has a lot of primary sources on the shelf. I selected three volumes pretty randomly (if I’d seen my copy of Mary, Queen of Scots' trial record, I’d have selected less randomly, but it’s currently hiding from me). I want to introduce you to these three sets of sources and talk about how they might be used in historical fiction. As I said, today is a day for exploring primary sources. This whole article is an excuse for me to play with books, which is one of my favourite, favourite things in life. The reason for this isn’t because I am desperately intellectual. Some days things go wrong and today has been one of them, so this is me sharing comfort food with people who will appreciate it.

The first volume is The Letters of JRR Tolkien. The cover was viciously attacked by silverfish years ago, so it has a false air of antiquity. It’s a modern edition of a modern writer.

What do I need to know about it as a writer? 

Firstly, it’s an edition of selected letters. This means that the editor, Humphrey Carpenter, is presenting us with his view of Tolkien using Tolkien’s own words. Volumes of selected letters for some other writers on my shelves are very selected indeed. So much has been edited out that the person is a shadow of themselves. The first thing I did when I read this book, many years ago, was ask myself how much was Tolkien and how much was Carpenter’s view.

If I were writing a novel about Tolkien, this would be a critical question. These letters explain Tolkien’s interests and his writing style. They’re full of insightful thoughts and self-disparaging wit.

If I were using the letters to give glorious colour to an historical novel set in England’s literary scene in the middle of the twentieth century, then it’s easier. Tolkien’s letters are full of his participation in that world and illustrate it beautifully. 

If I were writing historical fantasy based on anything other than the quite specific world Tolkien inhabited, these letters would be no use at all.

The type of novels we write governs the way we use sources.

Let me go back in time. 

The wonderful thing about going back in time is one reaches a moment when one doesn’t have to seek permission to use a writer’s words directly. Their writing still has to be acknowledged: to claim the words as one’s own is still plagiarism, but it doesn’t break copyright law. This is why some writers use many, many words from Shakespeare’s plays in novels about Shakespeare. It’s an easy way to get colour. It’s not always a wise way to get colour. I’ve pointed out elsewhere that using the very clearly metred lines Shakespeare uses in his plays can totally foul up dialogue when Shakespeare is speaking them as part of ordinary conversation.

Some of Tolkien’s letters may give a hint of his speech. Others are purely formal. 

My next volume is Ethel Turner’s diaries. Turner (1872-1958) is best-known for the  novel Seven Little Australians (published 1894), and she was a very popular novelist of her time. Ethel Turner’s diaries were written in her private voice, and are more likely to reflect some aspects of her actual speech. In some conversations, it would be possible to reflect her actual words. It’s still not a good practice, for her words are from  a different time and place and carry a different shape to the words of a novelist in the twenty-first century. 

What I’m saying is that another reason we, as readers, might be jolted out of a perfectly good book is because something inside us is noting that change of voice when the writer has used the words of someone else without making it clear. If there is a paragraph added as “Bob read in Ethel Turner’s diary…” and then the words from that diary are quoted, that’s less likely to jolt the historically-aware reader.

Apart from helping a writer understand the voice of a character, what use are the diaries? So very many uses… They’re one of the best sources around for bringing everyday life to the reader. Letters can be good (I love the Paston letters specifically for the moment when Margaret Paston demands a tub of treacle – that demand brings all the Pastons into everyday life) but a good diary shows what the writer did that they felt worthy of comment. 

It might be waking up with a headache, or it might be writing down a secret. It might be hints as to family relationships.  Opening Turner’s diaries at random, I find that, on 26 June 1893, that someone said “a very wicked word, and I overheard’. She went through his denial and his excuses and then declaimed that the child was being ruined. This is immediately followed (in the same paragraph!) by a note about her newest publication.

One small day, and one small diary entry and it reaches out to us. This is why diaries are so handy for historical fiction writers who can use them (not all cultures and not all time periods have diaries): a good diary can make the everyday in a novel vibrant. 

I love diaries and letters so much that I have four shelves of them. They give me time with fascinating people. That’s the gift they give fiction writers who use them cleverly, too.

Alas, I’m a Medievalist, and very few diaries exist for the Middle Ages. In fact, most written sources are quite different for the Middle Ages. The random primary source I pulled down from a shelf (do not ask how many shelves I have of Medieval material, for it’s embarrassing) was Pipe Roll 45, of John I, or, to be more precise, The Great Roll of the Pipe for the First Year of the Reign of King John, Michaelmas 1199. This is one of my actual favourite books. In my perfect world I own many more volumes of pipe rolls. In my imperfect world I have wonderful friends, one of whom gave me this volume.

This volume was published in the year that Tolkien let his friend CS Lewis read The Hobbit for the first time and when Ethel Turner had her sixty-first birthday. It was over seven hundred years after John’s administration was documented in the Pipe Rolls.

It takes a lot of work to write fun stories of daily life from this kind of document. First, knowing Latin helps. Second, knowing the sort of documents copied into these rolls is essential. They’re not casual documents: they’re part of governance. 

Understanding the rules and the background means that a lot of cool stuff can be obtained to write fiction about or to use to bring a place and time to life… but it’s hard work. I was going to do what I did with Ethel Turner’s diaries and open this volume at a random place and give you a cool quote, but the pipe rolls are not written the way diaries are. They’re full of abbreviations and formulae. Names are there, easy to read (Hugo Bardulf, Galfridi f. Petri, Willelmus de Stuteuill) but they are the Latin forms and if you shouted that out to the street only some of the owners of the name would recognise themselves. The language of formal record and the language of every didn’t overlap the way they do, say, for modern England: they were entirely different languages. 

The writer needs to know more about what actually happened in England under John’s rule to effectively use a pipe roll. These rolls were not made to be read alone. They work alongside other documents. This gives writers handy approaches, for used alongside chronicles of the early part of John’s reign and the reasons for some of the entries springs out and gives novelists tools to illustrate disturbances and unrest or to give the actual names of those who might have met with John during his month in England that year.

Not all primary sources are easy for writers to use, and this is an excellent example. Where these are the critical sources for a place or time (as the pipe rolls are for John’s reign) then novelists depend more on the work of historians to make sense of it.

This brings us full circle, for the choice the novelist makes of which historian to use will depend very much on the story they want to tell.

Waking up in a French cave, by Gillian Polack

This morning I’m dreaming of France. 

I suspect this is a problem that writers who use history in their fiction tend to have. Not specifically to dream about France, but to wake up mentally in the place and time of a novel. This morning I was certain that I would step out of bed into a cave system and that, just outside the main entrance, I’d find the Languedoc I used for Langue[dot]doc 1305.

I can tell you exactly how this strange moment came about, and the story of how it came about is actually more interesting than the moment itself.

My favourite research time was when I walked in the countryside, on the pilgrim’s route. I saw the flowers and felt the air. That gave me a mental toolkit for walking from the channelled air and warm streets of St-Guilhem-le-Désert to a flowing path of the pilgrimage to what I already knew about the stillness and chill of limestone caves. To be honest, caves are seldom entirely still if they are alive, but compared with the different feel of the air in different parts of the hillside outside the caves, they felt so still that they became contemplative.

Leaving town to go on pilgrimage. Photogr

aph: Gillian Polack

The caves became my hallmark moment for the novel, the one I used as a bridge to get into it. This isn’t because that’s how the time travellers got there. It’s because I’ve loved cave systems since I was a child. The feel of my caves was from Australia, married with research into how the caves in that part of France were different to those I knew.

I still have a scribbled diagram somewhere of how I drew the caves and built them. My town is real and my countryside is something I could walk on today if I didn’t live so very far away. This whole blogpost is being written by someone in Canberra who woke up in Languedoc then got out of bed and thought, “Bother. Still Canberra.”

There be caves in these rocks! Photograph: Gillian Polack

But my caves are a place that cross time and space and I can wake up in them from time to time. Today a group of triggers tricked me into waking up to a cool and still world. Another blanket and I’d’ve stayed in bed an hour longer and dreamed dreams of France. 

The first of the events that triggered this morning’s moment of strangeness was my return to France this July. I was in the north. A different type of warmth. Amiens is clammier in summer, with marshes rather than hot hillside. Cooler, but it felt warmer. I found respite in a boat rather than in stone houses and in dreams of caves. Still, each time I’m in France, I remember other times and Languedoc was lurking.

The pilgrim route. Photograph: Gillian Polack

Then someone read my novel and didn’t like it. We all have our audiences and this reader wasn’t one of mine. He gave a neutral review, which was very fair, and I nodded to myself and hoped that he’d find a book to his taste in the next one he picked up.  The reviewer not enjoying it was not a problem.

One thing he said, though, niggled me.

When I built up that very careful Middle Ages, I put in a lot of history that people were living. It wasn’t explained. 

The way my Medieval people behave is based on research concerning lives, economy, religion and a range of other things. I already had The Middle Ages Unlocked to play with and all the notes on the French Middle Ages that went with earlier research (for I am a Medieval historian, when all’s said and done), and I also had all the material that didn’t go into that volume. This was my starting point for Langue[dot]doc 1305. I then spent several weeks building up the commerce of the region and understanding it and working out where each character fitted and how it affected their lives. I knew the flow of trade and what made that trade. I knew the seasons and the hierarchies and the odd little opportunities that came up.

There were no explanations of these commerce systems because my characters were living them. Bona’s apprenticeship was derived from some comments made in a teaching document from Montpellier. The document challenged existing assumptions about the opportunities for girls in medieval Montpellier. I measured its challenge against what we knew about local trades and crafts. from a commercial history of Montpellier and its region to see how to give her that path out of small town living that would have been so very desirable.

Modern Montpellier. Photograph: Gillian Polack

I researched how the sale of cloth took the sales part of a weaving team to fairs outside the town and why a particular type of horse should neither be kept in a small hilly town without the social infrastructure that would enable it to be used and why it was unlikely to simply be sold locally. I showed where people bought different items and how a noble would move from being in the world of his peers to being in the Mediterranean trade world and what it would cost him. I only showed these things as the story and its characters required it. 

I didn’t explain any of this. Anyone wanting a primer on Medieval commerce or politics or… most things… needs to go to non-fiction. My characters were living the world and didn’t tell each other the obvious. If I were to tell you I was typing this article on my trusty computer, it would be very tactful of you to stifle a laugh because, right now, it’s only if I get the article together in another way (by dictating as I swim in the local streams, especially given I cannot swim) that really is worth of comment. 

It’s a difficult decision that each writer makes. Worlds don’t come magically to life. We work at them and think them through and decide which bit works for us and how it will work and, today, why one particular approach worked for me for one particular novel and why this one approach is not a universal one and doesn’t work for all readers. 

The bottom line is which parts of daily life need explaining and which don’t. Some writers would give a description of that commerce and their book would be perfect for that reader. I did not and my book was not. Thinking about it and working out why I did not and just how important it was to me to have my townsfolk live and my scientists talk about things led me into the cultural differences between my time travellers and the Languedocian townsfolk. 

That was why I made the choices I made. I wanted readers to see my Middle Ages from the inside, since I already had The Middle Ages Unlocked to show them from the outside. And that was the thought I went to bed on last night.

I may be a Medieval historian, but bringing the Medieval world to life in my novel meant I had to make it so believable that I myself can step into it and it’s there when I wake up in the morning. This morning I did just that.