An interview with Arushi Raina, by Y S Lee

Arushi Raina's potent debut novel, When Morning Comes, is a coming-of-age story set in apartheid-era South Africa. Told by four alternating first-person narrators - an angry revolutionary, an ambitious gangster, a son of extreme privilege, and a peaceful activist - it sets the narrators' personal stories against the backdrop of the Soweto Uprising of 1976.



Here's the official description:

Zanele is skipping school and secretly plotting against the apartheid government. The police can't know. Her mother and sister can't know.

Her best friend Thabo, schoolboy turned gang member, can tell she's up to something. But he has troubles of his own—a deal gone wrong and some powerful enemies.

Across the bridge, in the wealthy white suburbs, Jack plans to spend his last days in Johannesburg burning miles on his beat-up Mustang—until he meets a girl with an unforgettable face from the simmering black township—Soweto.

Working in her father's shop, Meena finds a packet of banned pamphlets. They lead to a mysterious black girl with a secret, a dangerous gangster with an expensive taste in clothes, and an engaging white boy who drives a battered red car.

A series of chance meetings changes everything.

A chain of events is set in motion—a failed plot, a murdered teacher, and a secret movement of students that has spread across the township.

And the students will rise.

When Morning Comes is a striking achievement. With four very distinct narrators who are often hostile to each other, it would be easy for the novel's structure to fracture or spin out of control. Instead, it coheres. Raina's handling of race and politics is both subtle and consistent. And her prose is by turns vivid and moving, striking and restrained - precisely the vehicle such a story demands. After finishing it, the novel haunted me for days. I'm so glad that Raina kindly agreed to answer some of my more persistent questions here.

YSL: I really admire the way you tell the story through four interlocking narratives. Each voice is incredibly distinct, the characters are frequently at odds with each other, and yet the novel holds together – an impressive technical accomplishment! Why did you choose to structure it in this way?

AR: I’m tempted to say that the book wrote itself that way—it’s a story about collisions, the personal, day to day collisions the characters have with eachother, against a backdrop of the larger collision of the Soweto Uprising of 1976. I needed to go to different parts of the city, to see things differently, to create the underlying tension in the story. But the truth is, I’ve been playing with different points of views for a while, I love how Zanele, Thabo, Jack and Meena all tell the story differently, and how the writer (me) and the reader has to come to terms with which, if any version they most relate to.

YSL: You were born in South Africa, but long after the novel’s action takes place. What inspired you to write about your earliest homeland and what kind of research did you do to establish a sense of time and place?

AR: For the longest time, I didn’t write about South Africa, partly because I didn’t feel I was able to, and partly because to write about home in North America made me feel like I was trying to pull some kind of exotic card out my bag of writer’s tricks. I was partly right about the first, wrong about the second. To write about something familiar from home may seem exotic to others, but may be the story you need to tell, which is less exotic to you, than, say writing about an epic slumber party in the heart of Jersey City (not that there is anything wrong with slumber parties or Jersey City). Like many, though, I finally felt inspired when was leaving Johannesburg to immigrate to Canada. And my doubts about being able to do the story justice, helped. I learned to tread carefully (but more on this later).

It was a tipping point, in many ways, but immigration is not super convenient for research. At high school, we’d spent a number of years studying apartheid history, and the Soweto Uprising in particular. This was a starting point, and a good one—I’d been a teenager then and remembered the experience of reading about it in a textbook. But it needed to be real. And for me, to make history breathe is to make it fiction.

After that, it was a lot of trawling through English and American libraries for the odd reference book on primary resources, and of course, the internet. And South Africans, too.

Arushi Raina, presently of Vancouver, B.C.

YSL: Inhabiting the minds of two black characters living under apartheid is a bold step. How could you feel confident that you were doing them justice? And what do you make of Lionel Shriver’s recent provocations on the subject of cultural appropriation?

AR: I think it is, and having grown up in Johannesburg, the complexities of the country and race relations are raw to me in a way that’s hard to describe. Being closer makes it harder to describe the context in large, defined brushstrokes. And the short answer to your question is no: I can never be fully confident that I’m doing them justice. I can only give my very best shot, I can tread carefully, questioning my assumptions at each step, pulling forward a universal humanity while not shying away from some of those differences. I can look at primary sources and read the words of the South African township youth (there are a number of speeches and records of letters available) - these words are sharper, more eloquent, than anything I could put to paper.

I think the attempt to reach and respectfully tell stories in other voices, marginalized voices is important, as much as the openness to further discussion and debate on my attempt, and depiction is important. I don’t want to be defensive, I want to try my best because it is an important story rarely told, and I want to hear all people’s views, least not South African teens. I think Lionel Shriver is contributing a specific point of view to the discussion, and she’s put forward a number of rather out-there examples. Living in post-apartheid South Africa, interacting with First Nations groups in Canada has made me aware that where there is pain, there is a need to tread carefully. But this does not lessen our responsibility to empathize and try telling difficult stories, always empowering these communities to either be involved or discuss/question what we do as storytellers. That’s really where our learning begins, or at least I hope it does.

YSL: Early in the novel, Thabo says, “it was stupid to put the one thing that mattered to you in a red dress for everyone to see”. And yet he does, repeatedly, because he doesn’t believe he has a choice. This is a powerful metaphor for a lot of things that happen in the novel. Is choice – or the lack thereof - largely an illusion for your characters?

AR: That’s a tricky one. I’d like to think that the characters, including Thabo, come face-to- face with a narrowing pool of difficult choices. And their resilience is in their ability to make and come to grips with these choices.

YSL: Each interracial relationship in the novel begins with antagonism, or at least guarded suspicion. This is logical enough and I imagine there’s a lot of historical evidence for interracial romances like Jack’s and Zanele’s. I’m curious about Zanele and Meena, too. How unusual was it to form platonic friendships across racial barriers?

AR: Pretty unusual. Talking to South Africans who lived through that time, you only did so if you really stuck your neck out. Your entire life wasn’t designed for you to do so. In the rare cases they did, it was through anti-apartheid activism, which, to Meena’s credit, she does get embroiled in.

YSL: Family bonds seem largely broken and/or ineffectual in your portrait of South African society. Jack’s parents value his academic achievements and whatever glory his bright future can reflect upon them; Zanele’s mother is trapped both by single parenthood and institutional racism; and Meena’s relationship with her father is dutiful but remote. This is surely not a coincidence! What connection do you see between a dehumanizing body politic and its subjects’ humanity?

AR: You know, I never really noticed this until you pointed it out! The parents sort of wrote themselves that way, inflected of course, through the point of views of their children. As you’ve pointed out, in many ways the apartheid institution wears at the very core of the family—in Zanele’s case, her family has been split apart by labour and group area act laws, breaking open all the cracks that may have lain underneath a family that didn’t suffer the same injustice. In Meena’s, she has to come to terms with the strange triaging of color, where Indians were treated marginally better to black people. To take advantage of this slight preferential treatment is a recipe for survival, and Meena’s father has already surrendered to it.

I also think that families can be a source of insulation from the threats of the wider world. In many cases, they were, in apartheid South Africa, from my friends’ parents’ accounts. For Meena, Zanele, Thabo and Jack to be who they end up being, they needed to have the insulation damaged, or ripped off.

YSL: Could you leave us with a quotation (or two) that really encapsulates the flavour of When Morning Comes?

AR:

“It’s the kind of storm that happens only on the Highveld, the thunder loud and rapid. She doesn’t speak. I need her to. Maybe she’s counting the people who’ve died since we first met.”

YSL: Thank so much, Arushi. While it's a cliché to call a novel timely, that is precisely the case here. I hope When Morning Comes is very widely read, especially at a time such as this.

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This post is my (Ying's) last as a regular History Girl. Thank you to everyone who read and commented over the past two years! If you'd like to keep in touch, please consider signing up for my sporadic author newsletter.

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Arushi Raina grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa. So far, Arushi’s also lived in Egypt, Nigeria, India, the US, UK, and most recently, Canada. At Vassar College in New York, Arushi studied Economics and English, where she was able to put together the beginnings of When Morning Comes. Besides writing, Arushi enjoys travelling, arguments, and long car rides. As a day job, Arushi works as a consultant. One day she’ll explain what that means.

Y S Lee is the author of the award-winning Mary Quinn mysteries (also called The Agency quartet in North America). She's presently writing a novel set in Southeast Asia during the Second World War.

Pablo Fanque Catherine Johnson

Pablo Fanque and his trained Steed

This is another of those - why didn't I know that already? - posts. Pablo Fanque Victorian Impresario, Equestrian walker par exellence. He is massively famous, featuring in the Beatle's song - For The Benefit of Mr Kite - inspired by this poster John Lennon bought in an antique shop in Sevenoaks in the late sixties. And look at him on that fabulous horse! It is me in another body, one of my dreams come true. I never got as far as vaulting lessons sadly and now I think my body wouldn't could with the many many fallings off.

You all know the song Lennon wrote inspired by the poster, of course you do! If I type the first few lines no doubt you'll get the tune in your head....

For the benefit of Mr Kite
There will be a show tonight...

I just thought it was a tune. one of those late sixties faux Victorian psychedlicy nonsensey things like Maxwells' Silver Hammer or I am The Walrus....

But no, here's a man who was the best rider, a man who could make horses dance, who could breed as well as train and wh was the best circus rider of his day.

Pablo was born plain William Darby in Norwich in 1810, his father was a butler, and he was apprenticed to William Batty, who owned a small travelling circus aged 11.

He performed as Young Derby to begin with, eventually choosing the name Pablo Fanque and becoming renowned as a horseman. He didn't set up his own touring Circus until the 1840s, but he was also famous for horse breeding and training. His horses were known for their ability to dance and much prized.

The Illustrated London News said of his London debut in 1847;

Mr. Pablo Fanque is an artiste of colour, and his steed ... we have not only never seen surpassed, but never equalled ... Mr. Pablo Fanque was the hit of the evening. The steed in question was Beda, the black mare that Fanque had bought from Batty. That the horse attracted so much attention was testament to Fanque's extraordinary horse training skills.

Pablo Fanque's Circus toured all over the United Kingdom and Ireland, but his circus was especially popular in the North in Yorkshire and Lancashire. But a showman's life was always precarious and he endured bankruptcy and personal disaster too, when the arena in Leeds they were performing in collapsed, leading to the death of his first wife, Susannah.

In 1869 a near tragedy was avoided when the tightrope walker, Madame Caroline lost her footing on a high wire 60 foot in the air fell. She held onto the rope with her hands and the riggers managed to lower the rope a few feet, then Caroline jumped and was caught by the crowd.

Fanque died in 1871 in Stockport, and there was a procession with his favourite horse following the mourners and brass band.

I'd always known the song, but never about Pablo, a man who out dressaged most and was respected and massively successful, his circus being one of the top troupes of the arts' golden age. 

After his death the Showmen's Guild chaplain said; "In the great brotherhood of the equestrian world there is no colour line, for although Pablo was of African extraction, he speedily made his way to the top of his profession. The camaraderie of the Ring has but one test, ability."

William Darby aka Pablo Fanque

Catherine's latest book is Blade and Bone published by Walker Books

SEEKING THE TRUTH IN A 'BOGUS' HISTORY – Elizabeth Fremantle

A chance encounter with Toby Litt the other day made me go back and take a look at his essay titled Against Historical Fiction. It is an oft-quoted and gently provocative piece that frequently puts the noses of historical fiction writers out of joint by calling their work ‘deeply bogus’ and suggesting the term historical fiction is an ‘oxymoron’. But, though Litt is clearly not a fan of historical fiction, it is easy to take what he says out of context.

He suggests historical fiction is created in ‘bad faith’. Though it is clearly a critical point it is not intended to be insulting or derogatory but to describe the function of fiction about the past and the contract between reader and writer. He takes the term ‘bad faith’, in a philosophical sense, from Sartre, as to mean the vacillation between what is known to be fact and what is purely speculative. He opposes this with history books, which he deems are ‘written in good faith’, meaning by this that they aspire to truthfulness.

It would be tempting to argue that even documented historical ‘fact’ can be subject to unreliability and misinterpretation. We know ‘the truth’ is a slippery concept and that the writers of history often have their own political agendas at play in their work, but it is Litt’s statement about it being only, as it were, ‘proper’ history that seeks, ‘in an honest way,’ to say something ‘useful or truthful about the past’ that interests me more.

What he seems to be saying is that the intentions of the ‘proper’ historical writer and the historical novelist are in opposition to one another. This is tricky territory as it lumps together the aims of all those who set their fiction in the past. Each novelist surely has a different, subjective, aim for his or her fiction. Some may indeed be simply be using history as an exotic screen on which to project stories with contemporary sensibilities, wilfully flouting known 'truths' for the sake of the aims of their particular narrative. Others, though, might be seeking to exploit the imaginative space between the known 'facts' of the past as a way to tell the untold stories, or as attempting to use historical parallels as a way to better understand the present.

Take, for example Arthur Miller’s 1953 play, The Crucible, a fiction which used the Salem witch-trials of the 1660s as a way to speak about the McCarthy investigations into un-American activities that swept through Hollywood during Miller’s time. The parallels of these two events, and Miller’s fictional account of the former, allowed those living through the McCarthy witch-hunts to scrutinise a contemporary event through the lens of a historical parallel.There are many such stories from the past, which could be used to shed light on the present. The recent US election brought to my mind the vilification and downfall of Anne Boleyn – a woman who paid the ultimate price for seeking to operate in a misogynist political arena. Hillary Clinton, like Boleyn, was labelled a ‘witch’, crooked, corrupt, unwomanly, unfit and even as having committed treason. This, for me, makes Anne Boleyn’s story potentially relevant as a feminist narrative. And it is fiction that would have the power and license to put it to work as a mirror to contemporary political misogyny. In this way fiction can be a means to access another, different kind of truth.

The late great Lisa Jardine discussed the role of fiction in history in Radio 4’s A Point of View (2014) in which she talks about her response to Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen, a fictional account of a meeting between two scientists who each played a role in the development of the atom bomb. She said, ‘Sometimes it takes something other than perfect fidelity to sharpen our senses, to focus our attention sympathetically, in order to give us emotional access to the past.’ So, where the ‘proper’ historical author might be seeking an empirical truth the fiction writer might in turn be seeking an emotional truth; but there is an inevitable blurring of the boundaries between these apparently opposing positions. Facts and events do not occur in a vacuum without a human response. It is the feelings that events inspire that many fiction writers aim to access.

Fiction is simply another mode through which we can understand history. Take Hilary Mantel’s novels about Thomas Cromwell, which go against the prevailing historical narrative of Thomas More as a ‘good’ person and Cromwell as ‘bad.’ Mantel does what a biographer cannot, she depicts Cromwell (a man about whom relatively little is known, given the enormity of his legacy) as a rounded individual, a vengeful and ambitious man who oversaw despicable acts yet also was capable of fierce loyalty and tenderness, who loved his wife and children. She places him as an entire person in her fictional world, extrapolating his love for his daughter from a touching line in his will. This view is assumption – plausible, yet not fact.

But Mantel’s choice of Cromwell as protagonist in her fiction allows us to look at ideas about social mobility, both then and now. The authorial admiration for a man who pulled himself up by the bootstraps from obscurity to high office bubbles up through the text but it doesn't make it any less relevant or useful as a narrative describing both the past and the present. This is not history in the conventional sense but it shines a light into the dark crannies of history making a valid and interesting depiction of an inaccessible past.

We can’t help but regard the past through the prism of our own particular time. So the Cromwell of Robert Bolt’s mid 1960s play and film A Man For all Seasons is different to the Cromwell of Wolf Hall, more than forty years later, precisely because they are speaking to different generations. So when fiction is historical it is also necessarily contemporary. Fiction exists to ask questions and it is a valid enquiry to ask about how we regard the past and how the past impacts on the present.

Many writers now look to the past to tease out the stories of those who lacked a voice in, or were deemed insignificant by, mainstream history. Often the historical record is partial when it comes to such narratives so fiction serves to fill in the gaps. Previous generations have focused on women’s stories almost exclusively from a romantic perspective, as this upheld the prevailing narrative of the time that women were politically unimportant. You only have to look at the way the Victorians chose to see a figure like Katherine Parr as an obedient nursemaid to a tyrannical husband when contemporary narratives see her as a highly intelligent political activist and author. It is possible she was both of these things but we reject the story of obedience now, as it doesn’t fit with our view of how women should behave in the twenty-first century. We increasingly seek out women from the past who sought to define their own existence in a world that denied them that right, as this chimes with our prevailing ideals of feminism. Using fiction to look between the lines of history urges us to scrutinise our present attitudes and better understand them.

The invisible stories are important. The fact that Homosexuals (even the term is only a century old) and ethnic minority groups barely existed in the received western historical narrative doesn't mean they weren't there. And it becomes the role of fiction to imagine a plausible narrative and fill in the empty spaces as authors like Sarah Waters and Toni Morrison have done to great effect. At this moment in our cultural history we are preoccupied with issues about gender identity and multi-culturism so it seems natural that we might also look to the past even if only to see how far we have progressed but also to ensure we don’t return there.

If we are to learn from the past then we must first seek to understand it and fiction is another tool by which we can do this. Jardine quotes Michael Frayn, to make her point. ‘The great challenge is to get inside people’s heads, to stand where they stood and see the world as they saw it, to make some informed estimate of their motives and intentions, The only way into the protagonists’ heads is through the imagination.’ For me this goes some way to demonstrate that though the term historical fiction may seem oxymoronic there is deception in history just as there is truth in fiction and both serve a useful purpose in helping us to understand the present.

References:

Litt, Toby – Against Historical Fiction – Irish Pages, Vol. 5, No 1. Language and Languages (2008), pp 111-115

Jardine, Lisa – A point of view: When historical fiction is more truthful than historical fact, BBC 2014

Elizabeth Fremantle is the author of four novels set in the Tudor and Elizabethan period. For information about Elizabeth Fremantle's fiction see elizabethfremantle.com

The Consolation of Seneca, by Antonia Senior

Seneca is having a moment. There are two excellent new biographies out about him: Dying every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero, by James Romm and Seneca, a Life, by Emily Wilson. The Senecans, by Peter Stothard, my old boss at The Times[1], weaves the tale of a sort of high-brow Senecan fan-club with the politics of Thatcher.

In Glasgow at half-term. I was buying a copy of Seneca’s letters. I already own them, but this was a new edition with such a beautiful binding, I could not resist. The lovely Waterstones bookseller there said: “Seneca’s really big at the moment. He keeps cropping up. I should read him.”

“You should!” I cried in a slightly excessive squeal.

SENECA

We all should. Seneca is the antidote to our liberal malaise. He gives a hope for living intelligently in a surreal world. His is the intellectual rigour that could give bulk to all the mindfulness crap that is ubiquitous and yet hollow. I started reading him for research; I now read him for consolation, for joy and for pity.

I first came across him a few years ago, when I was doing a MA in Ancient History at Birkbeck under the wonderful Catherine Edwards. I’d been rather turned off the Stoics by the experience of translating Cicero’s advocacy for A-level. Dear Lord.

But Seneca and I got on, pretty quickly. (I also fell in love with his nephew Lucan; but his violent bitterness is a story for another blog.)

Lucius Annaeus Seneca was an equestrian of Spanish heritage. He was born around the same time as Christ – or a little earlier. His father was a rhetorician, and Seneca and his three brothers were immersed early in the Rome of letters and politics.

Seneca’s health was dreadful throughout his life – and he spent some time convalescing in Egypt as a young man. He returned to Rome and began to make connections in the court, becoming friends particularly with the Emperor Caligula’s sisters Agrippina and Julia Livilla. On the accession of Claudius, Seneca was charged with and adulterous affair with Julia and exiled to Corsica.

He was recalled by Agrippina on her marriage to Claudius and installed as the tutor to her son, Nero in AD 49. Claudius’ death in AD meant that Seneca’s charge became the most important man in the Western World. Yes, the source of all political power was a fat megalomaniac with bad hair and an attraction to showbiz that terrified the political elite: imagine that if you can people.

NERO: even scarier than The Donald

Seneca essentially believed that the purpose of life is to become a sapiens, or a wise man. The ideal wise Stoic is free, tranquil and happy at all times. This is clearly hard to achieve – and Cicero particularly disagreed with the notion that it is possible to divorce yourself from passions. Emily Wilson argues that Seneca’s insistence that a wise life is possible marks the changing times: “It was more important than ever to hang on to an ideal of tranquillity in a world where it is so difficult to achieve.”

Perhaps this accounts for the surge in Seneca’s popularity. In this post-truth politics world of Brexit and Trump, is it time to look for new mentors? Seneca is a very human sage. He was criticised for hypocrisy in his own life-time; partly for his immense wealth and his stated indifference to it. But Seneca’s central dilemma was also a very modern one. How does a virtuous soul approach the exigencies of politics?

Epicureans, who were the alternative school to the Stoics in Rome, believed that the philosopher is obliged to withdraw from public life. That the compromises demanded by politics are anathema to the philosophical soul. Their beliefs demand silence; at most the benign chatter of one’s like-minded friends.

But not the Stoics. Their creed demanded that they were bound to serve the common good. They were duty-bound to engage with power; unless their lives were endangered by their service. But what if the retreat from that power was where the danger lies? What if confronting tyranny, and fleeing tyranny were both suicidal?

The way Tacitus tells the story, the early part of Nero’s reign was a golden age – because Seneca was effectively running the show. But the 17 year old Emperor grew up, began asserting himself, and side-lined his erstwhile mentor. As Nero grew more difficult, Seneca sought to withdraw from political life. He offered his entire fortune to Nero in return for a retirement. But Nero knew that Seneca was the virtuous figleaf that his reign demanded – and refused the request.

Their relationship became poisonous, until at last Seneca became tainted by a conspiracy against the Emperor. He killed himself. Suicide was the great refuge of the sapiens – it guaranteed freedom in the face of tyranny.

I have paraphrased his life. I haven’t even touched on his remarkable tragedies, which explore the darkness of human passions unleashed. Nor his letters, with their sharp insights into daily life. We have a dozen essays, more than 100 letters, nine tragedies and a satirical piece. A treasure trove which keeps on giving. How to give a flavour in this very short blog? Here are just a few of my favourite quotes from a writer famous for his pithiness and paradoxes.

“You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire”
― Seneca, On the Shortness of Life

Summer has gone, but another year will bring it again; winter lies low, but will be restored by its own proper months; night has overwhelmed the sun, but day will soon rout the night again. The wandering stars retrace their former courses; a part of the sky is rising unceasingly, and a part is sinking. 

Letter 36

What then is good? The knowledge of things. What is evil? The lack of knowledge of things. Your wise man, who is also a craftsman, will reject or choose in each case as it suits the occasion; but he does not fear that which he rejects, nor does he admire that which he chooses, if only he has a stout and unconquerable soul. 

Letter 31

Kindly remember that he whom you call your slave sprang from the same stock, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives, and dies. It is just as possible for you to see in him a free-born man as for him to see in you a slave…..

…“He is a slave.” His soul, however, may be that of a freeman. “He is a slave.” But shall that stand in his way? Show me a man who is not a slave; one is a slave to lust, another to greed, another to ambition, and all men are slaves to fear. I will name you an ex-consul who is slave to an old hag, a millionaire who is slave to a serving-maid; I will show you youths of the noblest birth in serfdom to pantomime players! No servitude is more disgraceful than that which is self-imposed.

Letter 47

@tonisenior

www.facebook.com/antoniaseniorbooks 

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[1] He does not know he was my boss. I was a junior reporter writing about pensions. He was editor. He was the Sun King; I was an ant. Everything I know about the strange and wonderful world of Court politics comes from working in a newspaper. 

Victorian Tattooed Ladies: Circus freaks or pioneering feminists? by Katherine Clements

The history of tattooing goes back to prehistory but the English word, in this context, is first attested in the writings of Captain Cook. An entry in Cook’s ship’s log of 1769 refers to male and female ‘tattooed savages’ in Polynesia, proudly displaying their tribal marks: 

"Both sexes paint their Bodys, Tattow, as it is called in their Language. This is done by inlaying the Colour of Black under their skins, in such a manner as to be indelible."

Many of Cook’s men returned to England with tattoos they’d received on their voyages and the practice quickly became a tradition, hence the enduring association with sailors and men of the sea. It might have been common to see crudely inked bodies in the eighteenth century docks and taverns of London and Liverpool, but otherwise tattoos were stigmatised, associated with criminals and prostitution. No respectable woman would have displayed one.

This began to change in the latter half of the nineteenth century when tattoos became fashionable among the upper classes. Notable society figures, including European royals, acquired tattoos, creating something of a fad that wasn’t confined to men.

One magazine of 1898 estimated that a fifth of British landed gentry had tattoos, while the New York Times claimed that many society women had designs in ‘inaccessible places’. Famous beauty, Lady Randolph Churchill (Winston’s mother) was said to sport a serpent wrist tattoo that she covered with bracelets, and some have even suggested that Queen Victoria herself succumbed to the craze.

This cover of the Police Gazette from 1870 shows a well-heeled woman receiving a tattoo in her boudoir – more than a hint of titillation about it. A tattoo might have been a provocative fashion statement for some women, but mostly they were not to be shown in public; they were private and rarely visible.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, a few women found fame and fortune exhibiting their ink in the circuses and freak shows of America.

Tattooed native women had been displayed as circus freaks in America for years, but the earliest known tattooed white woman was Olive Oatman. Her story is a sad one. In the 1850s, during an ill-fated journey to California, Yavapai Indians attacked her family. Only Olive and her sister survived. The girls were rescued and adopted by Mohave Indians, who gave Olive a traditional facial tattoo. Her sister died but Olive lived with the Mohave until she was ransomed some years later. 

Olive Oatman

She soon became a celebrity, touring the country giving lectures about her experiences. People flocked to see the facial markings that, according to Olive, were inflicted without her consent. More recent research suggests her stories may not have been entirely truthful and the tattoo was a sign of willing acceptance among her new Native American family. Later she married, turning her back on her extraordinary past, abandoning the lecture circuit and using veils and make-up to cover the evidence of her time with the Mohave.

Others played on Oatman’s story, and many of the ‘tattooed ladies’ who began performing as circus attractions in the latter half of the nineteenth century claimed to have been captured and forcibly tattooed by native tribes.

One of the best known is Nora Hildebrandt, America’s first professional tattooed lady, who toured with Barnum and Bailey’s circus throughout the 1890’s. Nora claimed to have been held captive for a full year, tortured daily with hours under the needle. She even suggested that the famous chief, Sitting Bull, had been involved. 

Nora Hildebrandt

It soon became evident that this fabricated history, while entertaining, was hardly true: Nora is commonly said to have been the daughter, or wife, of Martin Hildebrandt, an artist who opened the first tattoo parlour in New York City (possibly as early as the 1850s) and was heavily in demand among American Civil War soldiers. But this too is doubtful. Nora was actually born in England and there’s no proof she was either married to or related to Martin. (He’s recorded as married to a woman called Mary, with one son – Frank). Perhaps she took his name in acknowledgement of the art with which he covered her body, but the reasons are lost in almost as much myth and hearsay as Nora’s own stories. 

Nora’s debut was quickly followed by that of Irene Woodward – or La Belle Irene – who billed herself at ‘The Original Tattooed Lady’. She and others often used salacious stories like Hildebrandt’s, to attract and entertain audiences. These women were mostly viewed as risqué circus attractions, little better than those working in peepshows or burlesque follies. Margot Mifflin, author of Bodies of Subversion: A Secret History of Women and Tattoo says:

“The women afforded a peepshow, along with a freak show, because at that time women just didn’t show that much skin publicly, The tattoos gave them a reason to strip down and show their bodies. Certainly a number of people who came to see them were interested in the flesh as much as the art.”

Even so, some of these women became stars. Artoria Gibbons was the highest paid tattooed lady of the 1920s, with a legion of fans, and others, such as Betty Broadbent, went on working as pin-ups and performers right up until the 1960s. It certainly offered a level of fame and financial independence, more so once women became more than just a canvass.

Artoria Gibbons

One of the most enduring, evocative images of early tattooed women is that of Maud Wagner (née Stevens); widely regarded as the first American female tattoo artist.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Maud was a circus performer, making a living as an acrobat and contortionist – hardly a conventional career choice to begin with. While entertaining visitors at the St Louis World Fair she met Gus Wagner, a renowned tattoo artist (and the last to work with old-fashioned needle and ink, rather than a machine). Legend has it that Maud agreed to go on a date with Gus only if he gave her lessons. She learned the art from him, going on to become a circus attraction and respected tattoo artist in her own right. They ran a successful business together and their daughter, Lovetta, continued the tradition, becoming a well-known artist, working up until the 1980s, despite apparently never getting inked herself. I’d love to know how many of Maud’s clients were women.

Maud Wagner in 1911

Margot Mifflin’s book, mentioned above, is one of several that chart the history of tattooing in relation to the female body, the changes in gender prejudices and stigma over the years and the reasons for them. It’s a complicated history that’s synonymous with women’s rights, feminism and the changing representation of women’s bodies. 

Mifflin writes in her introduction to the most recent edition: “Tattoos appeal to contemporary women both as emblems of empowerment in an era of feminist gains and as badges of self-determination at a time when controversies about abortion rights, date rape, and sexual harassment have made them think hard about who controls their bodies—and why.”

I wonder what these tattooed ladies of a century ago would have made of the proliferation of body art that adorns all kinds of women – and men – today. Would they see themselves as pioneers? Even if some of them were motivated by money, renown or simply a passion for the art, they certainly broke the rules, and in doing so, made a statement which was far more subversive – and gutsy – than it is today.

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The Great Venice Boil-Off - Michelle Lovric

This post is about Venetian Treacle, the crème de la crème of all quack preparations. Like all such, Venetian Treacle was said to cure everything from ingrown toenail to plague. It probably cured nothing.

 Known as ‘teriaca’ locally, its ingredients (69 including viper flesh) deserve a post of their own. This one’s about the ceremony of making the stuff.
Ceremony was very important. Teriaca was among Venice’s premier exports and extremely expensive. It had a cult status in every Venetian family's medicine cabinet too. So, in order to make sure that no one was quacking about it with the recipe, it had to be made in public with proper regulation, proper costumes, proper songs, proper bribes, proper nibbles and a great many feathers.
The ingredients were displayed in public, then mashed in public and finally boiled in public until the teriaca emerged as a dark stick liquid known as an electuary.

 Only a few Venetian apothecaries were allowed the honour of making teriaca. They were called triacanti. Most of them had their premises around Rialto, where the foreign merchants flocked and usually stayed. Those who made teriaca would print handbills about it in many languages for their international customers. This one's from lo Struzzo, the Ostrich:

 

Earlier this year I had the honour of escorting members of London’s Worshipful Society of Apothecaries on medical tour of Venice. I took them to see most of the triacanti around Rialto –

 Lo Struzzo, (the Ostrich), Ponte dei Baretti

La Testa d’Oro (the Golden Head), at the foot of the Rialto Bridge

L’ Aquila Nera (the Black Eagle) at Rialto

La Madonna at Rialto

 Il Pomo d’Argento (the Silver Apple) at Rialto

 Il Pellegrin (the Pilgrim) at San Lio

 L’Umiltà Coronata (Crowned Humility) at San Severo

 Il Doge on the Riva degli Schiavoni (where he had to contend with competition from the ciarlatani, or quacks)

 Il Redentore (the Redeemer) at San Marco

 I Due Mori (the Two Moors) at San Salvador

 Il Paradiso at the Riva di Vin


For the London Apothecaries, I translated the following document that shows how much bribery and nibbles had to be provided by the apothecary (‘speziale’) who wanted to get his Teriaca properly supervised.

 This is a supplication from the speziale at the Sign of the Doge on the Riva degli Schiavoni - an invitation sent to the chancellor of the of the Magistrato alla Sanità (the health department) on 4th September, 1787.

 You will note he is writing in September – but his ceremony would not take place until May because that was when most of the ingredients, especially the viper flesh, were said to be in the best condition; also because the movement of the stars in that month specially favoured remedies. Weather was probably a factor too. You didn’t want rain or snow falling on your teriaca parade, either, because all the various substances had to be displayed in public for three days to assure everybody of the genuineness and quality. Then the ceremony itself took place outdoors, so that everyone could observe and enjoy the lusty singing of the facchini mixing and breaking up the ingredients to the rhythm of a song.

So … here are the inducements offered by the speziale in the hope of being allowed to make a bit of teriaca:

 Invited: one notary from the Magistrato alla Sanità,
one financial officer from the same magistracy,
one protomedico (one prior and two councillors from the medici fisici)
and the prior and two councillors from the Collegio degli Speziali.

 For the tips that will be given out in great quantity,
I’ll limit myself to indicating that for the weighing part of the ceremony,
to the leader, the second in command and the facchini (the lowliest and busiest workers in the apothecary business), I will give a beret of black silk.
That of the leader will have three feathers, two red and one black;
the second in command, two feathers, one red and one black;
the ordinary facchini will have one red feather each.
The facchini who grind the mortars will get a beret of yellow wool
with a pink tassel and a red feather.

 Before starting the weighing, the chancellor will be given a silver tray
and a bunch of beautiful flowers costing at least 10 lire,
and the others who are supervising will receive a bouquet worth at least 3 lire.

Once the drugs are weighed, they will be displayed, carried around
first in front of the noblemen, who will stand centrally,
then to the doctors and noble ministers, who will stand on the right of the chancellor,
and then to the speziale, who will be on the left.

Once the cinnamon has been weighed, we will offer some of the best,
wrapped up in paper, to all these officers, who will number ten.
When just over half of the drugs have been weighed,
we will hand out lemon water, hot chocolate, pastries and coffee.

The magistrates will at this point leave, with the weight registered,
and the second councillor of the spezierie,
the one who was supervising the weight of the drugs,
will then be given his flowers and his cinnamon.

 When the facchini begin to break up the ingredients,
they get a snack too, which will consist of
a slice of salami, a slice of cheese, some bread and a glass of wine.
After this food, they will begin their work and
they’ll be given two more drink breaks.
That’s how it is on the first day.

 On the following days, everyone will be given a bottle of rosolio and
a half-bottle of acquavita.
In the course of the morning, they will twice be given a glass of wine
and after lunch another glass of wine and so on until their work is finished.

On the day of mixing, the weighing won’t be done
unless three officers are present to examine it.
When it is half finished,
they get some lemonade, hot chocolate, pastry and some coffee.
And after the weighing, more coffee.

 Payments to the facchini: all the facchini get 7.1 lire per day.
Only in the first half-day
in which they are weighing the ingredients
they get an extra 4 lire.

 All those who do the grinding get a little bottle of Teriaca.
All the facchini who work in the honey get 7.10 lire
and those who work in the paste get the same.
The leader gets a tip of 40 lire and a little bottle of Teriaca,
and the second in command, 24 lire and a bottle of Teriaca.

 The presents that are given after the compost:
to the chancellor, six loaves of fine sugar and Teriaca,
to the notary of the Sanità, sugar as above, Teriaca and in money, 16 lire.
To the financial officer of the Sanità, sugar and Teriaca.
To the protomedico of the Sanità, four loaves of sugar and Teriaca.
To the two officers of the Sanità, 80 lire and 5.10 lire for lunch.
All these presents will be delivered to an officer of the Magistrato,
and the money will be given to the officers directly.

 To the prior and the two councillors of the medici
will be given four loaves of sugar and Teriaca
and to the officers of the speziali, six loaves of sugar, Teriaca, 22 lire in cash, nutmeg oil, goma storace calamita and castoreo.

The proprietor of the Teriaca pays as a tax to the Collegio dei Medici of 5 ducats for every 1000 parts of the drug.

the Magistrato alla Sanita near San Marco

 After two months, the officers from the Collegio degli Speziali are requested to come as well as the officers of the Sanità, to open the big terracotta urn.

 Once it’s opened the usual tests are carried out, and as recompense, those who attend get 8 lire. Two bottles of Teriaca are sealed and delivered to the prior of the speziale, who has to deliver them to the Magistrato della Sanità.


                                                                                 *



In 1441 it was ordered that any fake teriaca and mithridatum (a cheaper, simpler version) would be burned in the middle of the Rialto Bridge

In theriaca’s countries of origin (the middle east), makers of bad teriaca would be beaten by physicians … but in Venice the faker would be ordered to pay 1 ducat for every pound of his fake product. The fine would be divided between the denouncer, the magistrato and the collegio.

The trade in teriaca, and especially all the pomp and solemnity that went into the public making of it, really became important from about 1500. Teriaca production continued until the mid-nineteeth century ... in the early 1900s the only pharmacy still making it was the Testa d’Oro, but they were doing so only within the walls of their laboratory, not in the street, because from 1842, all the solemn ceremonies and the supervision of the state were abandoned.

Without the ceremony, the drug simply lost its allure.
Teriaca was effectively replaced by a liquor known as Fernet Branca.

I suggest you try some ...

Michelle Lovric


Translation © Michelle Lovric 2016

Time Travel in Rome's Piazza Navona

On the day this blog is due I will be in Rome, being a writer-in-residence to kids at St Stephen's High School. So I thought I’d dig up a suitable post from my Roman Mysteries Travel Guide. When in Rome, try a little Time Travel. Here’s how to do it in Rome’s Piazza Navona! Caroline Lawrence

A Top Fan took my advice... and loved it!

Sit in at an outdoor table of the Tre Scanlini in Piazza Navona as the afternoon is cooling into evening. Order a tartuffo. Tartufo is Italian for ‘truffle’. But this is no fungus; it’s a triple chocolate ice-cream treat. It will be expensive. That doesn’t matter. You will never forget this experience. 

As you wait for your tartuffo to arrive, look at the shape of the

Piazza Navona. Does it remind you of anything? It used to be a race-course for chariots, like the Circus Maximus, only smaller. It was built by the Emperor Domitian, Titus’s younger brother. Where the people are walking (and where you are sitting!) used to be the race course, with chariots driving at breakneck speed. Imagine four-house chariots driving there now – from your left to your right, and trampling all the unsuspecting tourists! 

The central part of the Piazza Navona – with its obelisk and fountains – would have been much thinner in the first century AD, about the width of the base of the obelisk. That was the central barrier of the racecourse, called the ‘spina’ or the ‘euripus’. The fountains are too wide and wouldn’t have been there in Roman times, but parts of the euripus would have been filled with water for the sparsores, the boys who sprinkled the track with water to keep the dust down. Instead of the big fountains at either end, imagine bronze cones, each about as tall as a cypress tree. Those cones were called metae, and they were the turning posts. This is where all the worst crashes occurred, as charioteers made a 180 turn at great speed. 

The chariots weren’t wooden chariots like the ones in Ben-Hur. Those were ceremonial chariots, used for solemn processions. Racing chariots were probably not much more than a wicker basket on wheels, designed to be as light and fast as possible. Imagine driving a basket on wheels behind four powerful stallions going at breakneck speed.

You have the reins wrapped around your waist, to keep your hands free to use the whip or tweak a particular rein. But if you are thrown out of your chariot you will be pulled along the sandy racetrack. Charioteers were given a knife in their belt to cut themselves free of the reins if they were thrown out of the chariot. Imagine trying to cut through eight thick leather straps as you are dragged along the sandy track with horses thundering past on your right and left, their hooves only inches away! Whew!

Your tartuffo should have arrived by now. You deserve it. As you savour the triple chocolate, remind yourself that chocolate was unknown to the Romans. Poor Romans. But wait, they had chariot races and we don’t. Which would you rather have: chocolate or chariot races? 

Now look at some of the Roman men and women walking in the Piazza. Imagine them dressed in tunics and sandals. Imagine the women in stolas and pallas. You can easily see which Roman men would have been patricians or senators. And you can easily spot the rustic farmers and peasants. That beautiful female street-sweeper must be a slave from Germania. And that big muscular youth, showing off to his friends, is probably a gladiator. That man with the thinning hair and the wire-rimmed glasses is the spitting image of Cicero. 

One mystery I have never been able to solve is this: What did Italian men do with their hands before cigarettes and mobile phones were invented? 

Author of the million-selling Roman Mysteries, Caroline Lawrence is now writing the Roman Quests, a series set in Rome and Roman Britain in the final years of the volatile Emperor Domitian, who had a caffé named after him.