Purple Prose, by Laurie Graham

 

Recently I’ve noticed an increase in the number of women of a certain age wearing purple. Is it the influence of Jenny Joseph’s treasurable poem Warning? Or are more women waking up to the fact that as the skin tones fade and hair turns to a vague shade of elephant’s breath a touch of purple really peps things up? I don’t know. But it got me thinking about purple. It’s one of those love it or hate it colours.

 

Purple has had a patchy history. It famously had its first heyday with the Romans, but the Phoenicians are credited with discovering how to obtain it and use it, and actually the Minoans were probably ahead of the Phoenicians. Sea snails were the secret, and a very costly and smelly one at that. Each sea snail contains only a tiny drop of colour which it uses to protect itself from predators, so tons of the creatures were required to sustain the dyeing industry in the ancient world.

There are many varieties of sea snail. The two most prized for the extraction of purple were Murex trunculus, which produced a blueish amethyst purple and Murex brandaris which gave a more crimson shade of fuchsia. Whichever was used the rotting flesh of these little creatures made an almighty stink which is why dyers’ establishments were always to be found on the outskirts of town. St Luke mentions a practitioner of the trade in his Acts of the Apostles: ‘Lydia, a seller of purple’ and evidently a well-to-do business woman who was encountered by St Paul on his journey through Thrace.

So purple used to be costly and therefore the privilege of the high-born  -  the Romans had a word for it, porphyrogenitus, born to the purple  -  or of the arriviste.  According to Lucan, Cleopatra had it draped everywhere. And the Romans took purple very seriously. Nero would have you executed if you had the temerity to wear it. Diocletian though, saw its economic potential, taxed it and encouraged everyone to buy it.  But purple eventually faded from the scene, until the mid 19^th century, when William Perkin enters the story.

 

Perkin was something of a schoolboy prodigy and by the age of eighteen was studying at the Royal College of Chemistry. His teacher was interested in creating a synthetic form of quinine, very expensive in its natural form and much in demand for the treatment of malaria. He set Perkin a kind of vacation project, to see if something useable could be created from aniline, a vile-smelling product of coal tar. One can imagine the inner conflict of poor Mrs Perkin, on the one hand proud of her lad William, and on the other obliged to live with the smells issuing from his attic laboratory. No doubt their neighbours on Cable Street in Shadwell voiced a few opinions too.                                 

William Perkin didn’t get as far as making synthetic quinine. He noticed a vibrant purple colour produced by one of his experiments, tried, very successfully, dyeing a piece of silk with it and, bright boy that he was, named it mauveine and patented it. The rest, as they say…  Queen Victoria saw the colour, loved it, ordered a gown in it. Napoleon III’s wife, Empress Eugenie, took it up too, and William Perkin did very well out of it financially which must have been nice for his Mum but little consolation for their downwind neighbours.

Perkin was part of that great Victorian explosion of invention, discovery and commercial canniness. He lived long and patented other dyes, including one to which he gave his name, Perkin’s Green. But that’s another colour and another story for another day.

 

Blue glass seahorses, hair sandwiches and veiled statues - Michelle Lovric

In 1902, the English folklore specialist Edward Lovett went to Venice. He wrote, ‘"I found itinerant hawkers of curios selling the hippocampus, tied in bundles of three with red worsted. These were sold for luck, a poor survival of a very old and grander legend ... I found that the wives of fishermen, nursing babies, kept a dried sea horse on their breasts to facilitate the flow of milk … I am very much inclined to believe that the curious white metal prow of this remarkable boat [the gondola] is evolved from the seahorse.’

Folkloric objects such as dried seahorses, or even glass ones, live hard because of frequent handling. They often don’t survive except in records of anthropologists. So Lovett, wishing to preserve Venetian seahorsery for posterity, commissioned some glass seahorses, which can still be seen today at London’s Wellcome Collection.

Lovett (1852-1933) was best known for his publication Magic in Modern London (1925), which deals with both good-luck objects and folk remedies for various afflictions. One of my favourite recipes collected by Lovett is the Whooping Cough hair sandwich. The idea was that the parents of a child with the disease should trim some hair from the nape of their son or daughter, put it between two pieces of bread and throw it out of doors for an animal to eat.

Lovett’s connections with the Wellcome were strong and continue to be so. He himself curated an exhibition at the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum called The Folklore of London in 1916.

And his own collection featured in a 2011-12 exhibition called Charmed Life: the Solace of Objects, curated by the artist Felicity Powell. Her undulating display of tiny charms and amulets included a miniature Venetian gondola ferro as well as several of the pink and blue glass seahorses that were thought to be good luck talismans in Venice in the nineteenth century.

            I was very much taken aback at the sight of the cavallucio marino in the London exhibition because at that point I was writing blue glass seahorses into a dystopian alternative 18^th century Venice for a children’s novel. In The Fate in the Box, I was imagining a city where automata were replacing the poor of every parish, who were consequently starving, and in which children were sacrificed in a barbaric ceremony known as the Lambing devised by my villain Fogfinger. Those who rebel against the regime form a band known as The Piccoli Pochi, or The Tiny Few, and their talisman is …. a blue glass seahorse.

            As I often create window displays for bookshops, I decided to see if I could find some blue glass seahorses, like Lovett’s. Countless tramps around Venice revealed only lurid multicoloured seahorses with labels that claimed a Murano provenance, but very obviously lied.

            Inspired by Lovett, I decided to commission some proper seahorses of my own. I took a photograph of Lovett’s hundred-year-old seahorses to Marco Vettor, a proper Venetian glass merchant. A few weeks later he presented me with this beauty, almost an exact replica of those that Lovett had commissioned, also based on the real size of the original nineteenth century amulets.

            I’m now working on the next book, and thought seahorses were behind me. But I was rereading my Ruskin this week for a television programme and came across a charming letter to Charles Eliot Norton, in which he wrote about keeping Venetian seahorses in a basin in his lodgings during a stay in 1857.

            I love coincidences and loved that letter for what it showed of the humour and tenderness of this much misjudged man. Ruskin was disappointed because the seahorses would not curl their tails around his pencil when he wanted them to do so. Nevertheless he advised Norton to get a fishermen to bring him two or three cavalluci next time he was in Venice and to put them in a basin so he could have the pleasure of watching them swim.

            ‘But don’t keep them more than a day,’ he urged, ‘or they’ll die, put them them into the canal again.’

            Here is a video of a Venetian cavallucio being released to the wilds of the lagoon, just as Ruskin wished. 

              In the Miracles & Charms exhibition held in the Wellcome at the same time as Lovett’s, I noticed that the statue of Saint Jude in the church of San Hippolito in Mexico City was given a cloth mask during the Swine Flu epidemic – which was what gave me the idea of the saints having their faces veiled during the reign of terror in Venice created by Fogfinger in The Fate in the Box. 

And from this week, a rare joy has been permitted to the public in Venice – admission to the Conservatorium of Music, which is hosting one of the Biennale exhibitions.

In one of the courtyards I found this statue, veiled just as I had imagined.

None of the staff with whom I talked could tell me anything about the statue.

They were amused that I wanted to know.

‘Un mistero,’ I was told conclusively.

And that was just what I wanted.

Michelle Lovric’s website

Marco Vettor's website 

The Wellcome has made a treasure hunt app using the amulets collected by Edward Lovett and set in Edwardian London.

Pearls of Antiquity

Coleman Douglas Pearls

by Caroline Lawrence

Last Thursday I attended a small exhibit of portraits by my friend Lorna Lawson-Cruttenden. The paintings were on show at an unusual venue, a jewellery shop specialising in pearls. Coleman Douglas Pearls is located at 42 Beauchamp Place in Knightsbridge, London.

The owner of the store, Ms. Christianne Douglas, served us champagne with a pearl at the bottom of each flute! Naturally this led to a discussion of Cleopatra and her pearl dissolved in vinegar. I told Ms. Douglas that I would try to rustle up some famous pearls of antiquity. Here are seven:

pearls in champagne

I. Cleopatra's Amuse Bouche
Pliny the Elder tells the story in book nine of his Natural History. Cleopatra and Mark Anthony, in the first flush of love, were vying to outdo each other. She boasted to Anthony that she could consume the most expensive meal known to man. Possessor of the two largest pearls in the known world – which she had made into earrings – she now removed one from her ear, dissolved it in a beaker of vinegar and drank it down! She was about to do the same to the other one when the 'umpire' declared that she had won and Anthony lost. Cleopatra had the remaining pearl cut in half and dedicated it to the goddess of love, placing the two halves on the lobes of the statue of Venus in the Pantheon at Rome.
(Pliny Nat. Hist. IX.59.119-121)

II. Caesar's Mistress
The imperial biographer Suetonius tells how Julius Caesar was 'much addicted to women' and 'debauched many ladies of the highest quality'. But his favourite was a certain Servilia. He loved her so much that he bought her a pearl which cost six million sesterces. Servilia was the mother of Marcus Brutus and some wonder if Caesar might have been his father. If so, this would give added poignancy to the words Caesar reportedly uttered when Brutus dealt the death stab; not 'Et tu, Brute?' but the Greek, Kai su teknon? ('And you, my child?')
(Suetonius Life of Caesar)

III. Jesus' Parable
Although luxurious pearls were often equated with sinful indulgence in the New Testament (e.g. 1 Timothy 2:9 & Revelation 17:4) Jesus said, 'The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.' (Matthew 13.45-46)

IV. Vitellius's campaign
Suetonius tells how the Emperor Galba sent General Vitellius into Lower Germany to conquer some lower Germans. In those days you had to finance your own campaigns. Vitellius was strapped for cash, so in order to raise funds, he pawned a magnificent pearl earring belonging to his mother. This gamble paid off. He soon became emperor.
(Suetonius Life of Vitellius)

pearl earrings from Oplontis

V. Oplontis Earrings
Among the treasures on show at the British Museum’s current Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum exhibition is a cache of jewellery found on a woman fleeing Oplontis, the site of a luxurious villa between Herculaneum and Pompeii. Along with the gold and emerald necklaces were a pair of superb pearl earrings. These kind of pearl earrings were often called crotalia 'castanets' because the dangly pearls clicked as they knocked one another. (Pliny Nat. Hist. 9.55) According to Paul Roberts’ brilliant guide to the exhibition, the cheaper freshwater pearls survived in Pompeian tufa (hardened volcanic ash) much better than more expensive seawater pearls.

VI. Pearly Pets
In the Satyricon of Petronius, the nouveau riche Trimalchio sets his dog on the beloved dog of one of his 'boys'. How do we know the dog was beloved? Because her master named her Margarita or 'Pearl'. (Petronius Satyricon LXVII) The first century poet Martial writes of a lap-dog named Issa who was more precious to her master than 'Indian stones', i.e. pearls. (Martial Epigrams I.109)

strings of cultured pearls

VII. A Syrian prostitute named ‘Pearl’
Pelagia was a breathtakingly beautiful prostitute who lived in Antioch in the late 4th century. She wore so many pearls that the locals called her Marganito (Syriac for 'Pearl'). One day some bishops and monks were gathered near the tomb of a saint when she rode by on her donkey, followed by a crowd of admirers. The 'God-loving' bishop Nonnos saw her and prayed fervently for her salvation with tears and fasting. When Marganito showed up at the weekly service she was so overwhelmed by the power of his preaching that she immediately repented of her sins and gave all her pearls to the church with instructions they be sold to feed widows and orphans. She then put off the nickname Marganito, dressed as a man and travelled to Jerusalem where she became famous as the holy 'eunuch' Pelagius!
(from Holy Women of the Syrian Orient by Sebastian P. Brock)

Lorna Lawson-Cruttenden's portraits will be on show at Coleman Douglas Pearls until 22 June 2013 and you can see a magnificent collection of natural and cultured pearls there any time.  

Competition winners May

The winners of copies of Mary Hooper's the Disgrace of Kitty Grey are as follows:

WonderlibrarianCPD23Blog (Sue)
Ruan Peet
CharmedLassie
Marjorie
Francesca Scanlan

Mary chose the winners herself and found it very hard, since they were all argued for so passionately. In the end there were two Emmas, two Persuasions and one Pride and Prejudice!

To claim your prizes, pleas contact Emma (!) Bradshaw at Bloomsbury:  Emma.Bradshaw@bloomsbury.com

Congratulations!

Bad Eggs by Karen Maitland

I was in Diss in Norfolk recently and came across a monument with this intriguing inscription.

‘Matilda, Daughter of Robert Fitzwalter, The Valiant, Lord of the manor of Diss rejected the advances of King John. The angry king sent a messenger with a poisoned potched-egg whereof she died.’

Digging around a little more I found an essay written about Diss in 1805, quoting an older account, which makes the whole business appear even more dastardly.

 

‘About the year 1213, there arose a great discord between King John and his Barons, because of Matilda, surnamed the Fair, daughter of Robert Fitz-Walter, whom the King unlawfully loved, but could not obtain her nor her father's consent thereunto; Whereupon (and for divers other like causes) ensued war throughout the whole realm; the King banished the said Fitz-Walter, among others, and caused his castle called Baynard, and other his houses, to be spoiled, which being done, he sent a messenger unto Matilda the Fair, about his old suit in love, and because she would not agree to his wicked motion, the messenger poisoned a boiled or potched egg, against she was hungry, and gave it unto her, where of she died in 1213.’

 Of course, the question is, why did Matilda eat the egg knowing it had been delivered by the king’s messenger? Was the King in the habit of sending her boiled eggs in case she felt peckish? Was there a traitor in the household who gave her the egg without telling her its source? Or did she deliberately eat the egg as an act of suicide to spare her father any further trouble? 

The story reminded me of reminded of something I learned about when was working in Nigeria. In the 14th Century in Yoruba Empire, the Alaafin or king could not be removed by voting him out so, once a year at the festival of Orun the religious leader would practise divination to determine if the Alaafin was still in favour. If the results were negative, the Alaafin would be presented with an empty parrot’s egg, with the words ‘the gods reject you, the people reject you, the earth rejects you,’ a sign that he and all his council must commit suicide.

Of course, eggs have longed linked to death as well as life. In Britain sailors would never say the name on board ship and referred to them as ‘roundabouts’, and children were warned that when they’d finished eating a boiled egg, they must crush the eggshell or a witch could use it to row out to sea and sink a ship. It was considered unlucky to bring an egg in or out of a house after sunset and to dream of an egg was a warning someone in the house would die.

In 1583, in Wells-next-the-sea in Norfolk, fourteen men were drowned ‘by the detestable working of an execrable wtiche of Kings Lynn, whose name was Mother Gabley.’ She apparent caused a ship to sink by boiling eggs in a pail and mashing them. And as late as 1904, a mother accused a neighbour in the Scarborough Court of causing the death of her baby by bewitching the child by boiling and mashing eggs.

 Perhaps just the sight of this egg was enough frighten poor Matilda to death. Or maybe the King John was innocent, after all, and she just ate a bad egg!

IN ZODIAC LIGHT by Robert Edric....a review by Adèle Geras

IN ZODIAC LIGHT tells the story of Ivor Gurney, while he was a patient at the City of London Mental Hospital in Dartford. That's not the only story it tells, however. Robert Edric plaits the narrative about an English composer who's not nearly well-enough known with that of the narrator of the novel: the doctor in charge of his care at the asylum. Many of the characters are taken from real life and Edric has not as far as I know played fast and loose with the historical record. Gurney was abandoned by his family and his friends and admirers in London didn't quite realize what effect his service in France had had on him in every way. For anyone who doesn't know Gurney's music, here is his song 'Sleep.'

And for anyone who doesn't know his verse, here is a short poem that I like very much.
Ballad Of The Three Spectres As I went up by Ovillers
In mud and water cold to the knee,
There went three jeering, fleeing spectres,
That walked abreast and talked of me.
The first said, 'Here's a right brave soldier
That walks the dark unfearingly;
Soon he'll come back on a fine stretcher,
And laughing for a nice Blighty.'
The second, 'Read his face, old comrade,
No kind of lucky chance I see;
One day he'll freeze in mud to the marrow,
Then look his last on Picardie.'
Though bitter the word of these first twain
Curses the third spat venomously;
'He'll stay untouched till the war's last dawning
Then live one hour of agony.'
Liars the first two were. Behold me
At sloping arms by one - two - three;
Waiting the time I shall discover
Whether the third spake verity.
The book begins with a trip by some of the inmates to see the body of a beached whale and it's easy to make the link between this creature and Ivor himself. We meet some of the characters who are going to be important in the story, especially Cox the orderly who turns out to be a very nasty piece of work
The narrative moves from the present to the narrator's childhood and youth and this means that the story has some air let into it, which has the effect of lightening the claustrophobia of the asylum and also providing the contrast of glimpses of ordinary life in a story which would otherwise be depressing.
Edric tells in a very understated and unhysterical way a story of great sadness and suffering. Not all the doctors are as benign as our narrator. His background as the son of a very careful and diligent and scholarly apiarist is important. There are beehives in the grounds of the asylum which have gone to rack and ruin and the way these are restored is a parallel with the way the hospital works to restore its patients' minds, with greater or lesser success. The nurse, Alison, is the main force driving the beehive rescue and she is the representative of all that is good and kind and loving. She stands for caring women everywhere, whose job is to help repair matters after a war, and look after those who have lost their minds in the fighting of it.
The bees provide a respite and another focus of interest in a novel which follows a slow and yet fascinating path to its climax. This is a concert, given in the hospital, by Ivor Gurney and others. Tragedy strikes even as the music is played. It's a terrific climax to a very fascinating and unusual book which didn't make a great stir when it appeared. Robert Edric is not well enough known and I hope I've persuaded some people to try his novels. I loved this one, which in its quiet way says a great deal about war and nature and all the things that are worth preserving.
NB:  I didn't have time to hunt down a photo of Ivor Gurney which I was sure was free to use. Just put his name into Google images and you will find a great many photographs to look at.

The Suffragette Who Died To Be Heard - Katherine Roberts

100 years ago today, suffragette Emily Davison lay unconscious in hospital after stepping in front of King George V’s horse while it ran in the Derby on June 4th, bringing down horse and jockey and being thrown across the course. She never regained consciousness. Four days later, on June 8^th 1913, she died of her injuries.

The whole tragic episode was caught on film. I've chosen the longer 7 minute film here to show the build up of the race. There is no sound. Watch closely after Tattenham Corner...

 

Having worked in horse racing, I’ve always thought of Emily as a crazed woman who threw herself in front of a horse galloping flat out in a race – rather like someone might throw themselves in front of a bus today. I was always told that this was a publicity stunt by the suffragettes campaigning for Votes for Women, and Emily planned to become a martyr on Derby Day by taking her own life in the most public way possible for the time. But Clare Balding presented an interesting programme on Channel 4 recently, investigating the truth behind Emily’s desperate act. There is now evidence that Emily meant to petition the king by attaching a suffragette scarf bearing “Votes for Women” to his horse, and did not in fact mean to kill herself or bring down the horse and jockey in the process.

Sadly, however, Emily’s attempt ended in tragedy. The jockey Herbert Jones and king's horse Anmer both survived the fall, though Jones' career never recovered after getting his foot caught in the stirrup and being dragged for some distance. Many years later, he killed himself by putting his head in a gas oven.

The suffragettes resorted to many other such desperate acts as fire-bombing buildings and other actions of civil unrest that might today be counted as acts of terrorism. For their efforts, they were arrested and punished in prison by beatings, rape and force feeding. Yet these were not terrorists as we know them. They were otherwise civilised Western women, campaigning for the vote and equality with men. What I find remarkable is that this happened a mere 100 years ago, here in Britain, a country proud of her democracy. I have been alive for half of those years and take my right to vote for granted - indeed sometimes I haven't even exercised it, for which I apologise to Emily and her suffragette sisters all over the world, and promise to be more appreciative in future.

suffragettes active in the US earlier that year - picture copyright Adam Cuerden

A year after Emily’s death, the First World War intervened, and the suffragettes paused their militant campaign to aid the war effort enabling the UK government to “reward” them afterwards with a limited vote for women in 1918, followed eventually by The Representation of the People Act 1928 extending the vote to all women over the age of 21 and granting women the vote on the same terms as men. Yet I can’t help wondering what might have happened otherwise, with no war effort to pull the country together.

We hear over and over that “this country will never give in to terrorism”. It's a scary thought but would we, as independently-minded History Girls, still be throwing ourselves under speeding horses in an effort to get our voices heard?

***

Katherine Roberts writes historical fantasy for young readers.

Her latest series is the Pendragon Legacy quartet about King Arthur's daughter, published by Templar in hardcover, paperback and ebook editions:
Sword of Light
Lance of Truth
Crown of Dreams
Grail of Stars

Her Seven Fabulous Wonders series is now available for Kindle, Nook, Kobo and Apple i-devices.
Read Book 1 "The Great Pyramid Robbery" for only 77p/99c on Kindle & Nook, or FREE at Kobo & Apple itunes.

Find out more at www.katherineroberts.co.uk
Follow Katherine on Twitter www.twitter.com/AuthorKatherine