Japan’s Jazz Age: Flappers and Feminists ~ by Lesley Downer

‘In the beginning, woman was the sun.’

Hiratsuka Raichō

Moga, pictured in 
Mainichi shimbun 

‘Modern gals’

If you had visited Tokyo in the 1910s and 1920s, you would have met Japanese women stepping out confidently with short flapper skirts and scandalously short hair, a million miles from the stereotypical ‘submissive Japanese woman.’ They were moga - ‘modern gals’ - a term coined by the great Tanizaki Jun’ichirō in his novel A Fool’s Love. Not all women were moga, but there were enough to flavour the era.

While Europe was engulfed in World War I, Japan, which was allied to Britain, was enjoying an economic boom. In the Meiji period, Japan’s Victorian era, the country had burst spectacularly into the modern age and onto the world stage. And by now westernisation, prosperity and mass culture had spread to nearly everyone in Japan. Now everyone was enjoying the benefits.

1929 ad for Shirokiya department store

Speed, sport and sex
After the hard work and discipline of the Victorian era, when the government was determined to build up the nation to protect it against colonisation, the new era (named Taishō, after a new emperor came to the throne) was like a fresh breeze blowing through.

The Meiji constitution had been all about keeping women in their place, slotting them into the template of ‘good wives, wise mothers’. But by the 1910s and 1920s the rebuilding was done. Suddenly people were free to let their hair down and be themselves. 

At last the younger generation had a voice. They didn’t have to follow in the drab footsteps of their elders. Those of us who remember the Sixties - Flower Power, Women’s Lib - will recognise the thrill, the exhilaration. 

Moga 1928 in 'beach pyjama' style

Youth power
This was Japan’s Jazz Age - the age of speed, sport and sex, of anything goes. There was universal education. With one of the world’s largest student populations, Tokyo was enjoying a boom in the publishing of books, journals and newspapers. People were free to think and talk and argue and throw around words and ideas like socialism, Marxism, anarchism, democracy and freedom. They also had money which they could spend any way they liked.

Forget ‘good wife, wise mother’. These women had jobs. They could be typists, elevator girls, shop clerks, nurses, writers, journalists or beauticians, and be financially independent. Some moga worked as waitresses in cafes, dispensing sexual favours where they saw fit, like Naomi in Tanizaki’s ground-breaking A Fool’s Love, a sort of Japanese Lolita, the story of a man hopelessly besotted with one of these cool aloof creatures.

Tipsy by Kobayakawa Kiyoshi

The moga were the trendsetters along with mobo - ‘modern boys’. Moga cut their hair short, like boys, and flaunted short flapper skirts, while dapper mobo wore their hair long and swept back in the all-back style and sported bell bottoms, bowler hats and horn-rimmed Harold Lloyd glasses.

They hung out in cafes and bars, they smoked, talked and argued, they practised free love and they strolled along the Ginza, Tokyo’s most fashionable street. They listened to jazz, danced the Charleston, watched American movies and ate ice cream. Until the authorities clamped down, Marxism was all the rage and everyone read the latest revolutionary Russian novels, such as Aleksandra Kollontai’s A Great Love.

Militant feminists
Out of this fizzing free love milieu sprang pioneering feminists.

Hiratsuka Raichō (1886 - 1971),
 from her autobiography

Hiratsuka Raichō lived the life. She famously said that marriage was ‘slavery during the daytime and prostitution at night.’ In 1908 at the age of 22 she eloped with an older married man, Morita Sohei, and the two tried - and failed - to commit suicide together in time-honoured Japanese fashion. She then had two children by a much younger lover whom she only married when her children were adults, taking her husband’s surname so that her son would not be negatively impacted when he was drafted.

She was also more than prepared to speak up for women’s rights. In 1911 she founded Seitō - Bluestocking - Japan’s first all-women literary magazine. The first words were ‘In the beginning woman was the sun’ - a reminder that in Japanese mythology the Sun Goddess, Amaterasu, is the creator of all life.

The first issue of Seitō, 

September 1911,

cover illustration by 

Naganuma Chieko

Seitō was packed with stories and articles expressing women’s sexuality with no holds barred. One story detailed the break up of an arranged marriage, another was a graphic description of casual sex with a man the author picked up in a bar. The upholders of traditional values, particularly in the government, were outraged and both issues were banned.

Then Hiratsuka started publishing articles daring to attack the capitalist system and the established order and demanding women’s rights. For the powers that be this was the last straw. In 1916 the Home Ministry forbade distributors to supply the magazine. Sales instantaneously dried up and the magazine had to close down.

But that didn’t stop Hiratsuka. At the time women were banned from attending political meetings on the basis that they should be at home looking after their families. In 1922 Hiratsuka and her fellow activists managed to get this law overturned though female suffrage was still a long way off. Women were not included when universal male suffrage was introduced in 1925. She and her fellow activists were condemned as ‘New Women’, a term which they enthusiastically embraced.

Yosano Akiko (1878 - 1942)

Seitō’s most famous contributor was the poet Yosano Akiko. She too had an affair with a married man whom she later married; the couple had eleven children. Her first volume of poems, Midaregami - Tangled Hair - was a passionate expression of her love for him. Critics attacked the book as immoral and obscene but it was loved and widely read and became a beacon for supporters of women’s rights. At the height of the Russo-Japanese War she published a poem entitled ‘Thou shalt not die’, exhorting her younger brother who was a soldier not to sacrifice himself for this senseless war. It became the anthem of the anti-war movement and was picked up again after World War II.

Midaregami (Tangled Hair)
by Yosano Akiko

These were women who took their lives in their own hands. Their power was their independence. Perhaps some of them even thought that the times they were a-changing, that a new age was dawning, as we did in the Sixties as we looked forward to the coming of the Age of Aquarius. But those that did discovered all too soon - as we did - that they were wrong. The era of speed, sport and sex turned out to be just a flash of brightness before the darkness of World War II closed in.

For more on Japan’s pioneering feminists, you could read

In the Beginning, Woman Was the Sun: The Autobiography of a Japanese Feminist by Hiratsuka Raichō, translated with an introduction and notes by Teruko Craig (Columbia University Press 2006)
and
A Girl with Tangled Hair: the 399 poems in the Midaregami by Akiko Yosano, translated by Jane Reichhold and Machiko Kobayashi

All images are courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Lesley Downer is a lover of all things Asian and in particular all things Japanese. For more about these amazing women and much else, please see my new book, The Shortest History of Japan (Old Street Publications). My travel book, On the Narrow Road to the Deep North, was also reissued last year, by Eland. For more see www.lesleydowner.com
    

The Fake Gestapo Cell in London in WW2

by Deborah Swift

During WW2 the government did its best to suppress the British Union of Fascists (BUF), but MI5’s effort to prevent fascist activities was hampered by the government’s advisory committee on internment. This advisory committee consisted of members who were influential in society, friends of aristocrats and the upper classes. They were there to make decisions about who should be removed from society as a threat to the war effort. But members of the BUF had friends on the committee who frequently recommended the release of their upper-class colleagues despite their fascist sympathies.

 

Pic: Oswald Moseley and the British Union of Fascists (British Library)  

Determined to stop this, MI5 set about forming a fake Gestapo cell. It was led by Eric Roberts, an unassuming-looking bank clerk who worked for the Westminster Bank. Roberts was a former fascist sympathiser, but he had changed allegiance and now became an undercover agent in the BUF.


Roberts was supplied with a fake Gestapo identify card and then assumed the alias of ‘Jack King’, supposedly a German agent who’d been recruited in Britain in early 1939 to compile information on those who would be ‘loyal to the Fatherland’ in the event of Nazi domination.

 

Pic Jack King's Nazi identity Card (National Archive)


Over the next three years, ‘Jack King’ put together a network of hundreds of Nazi supporters. His aim was to channel all the information given to him back to MI5 whilst pretending that this intelligence was being fed back to the Gestapo in Berlin. Jack King maintained his nerve and was able to successfully defuse many of the plans made by Hitler’s supporters in Britain.






Central to the BUF network were two ardent fascists, Marita Perigoe and Hans Kohout, who also feature in The Silk Code. Marita Perigoe had a grudge against the British because her husband Bernard, a committed fascist, had been imprisoned by the internment committee. Marita made herself King’s second-in-command, and unbeknownst to her, MI5 housed her in a specially bugged flat in central London so they could track her conversations and contacts.

In my novel 'The Silk Code' all these characters make an appearance. Spies like Marita provided ‘Jack King’ with maps showing the location of Britain’s petrol and aviation stocks, top secret research on new types of engines for fighter planes, and reports on experimental tanks. Some recruits spied in their home towns for information on possible targets for German bombers, or for sites of military bases and civil defence.

Some were even happy to gloat over the death and injuries caused by air raids, incorrectly putting their success down to intelligence they had provided, when in fact none of the information ever got to Germany.

When Oswald Moseley was released from prison he tried to revive his plans for a fascist Britain, but this failed. So in 1949 Marita Perigoe left England and headed for Australia where she had several further marriages and became a costume designer for theatre.

Marita Perigoe died in 1984, never learning that she had been fooled by ‘Jack King’ in WW2.

Read more about it on the BBC website

Read about Marita in The Telegraph 

 

‘The Silk Code had me absolutely hooked… A great storyline full of bravery, trust, love, survival, betrayal and determination.’ NetGalley reviewer ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Based on the true story of ‘Englandspiel’, one woman must race against the clock to uncover a traitor, even if it means losing the man she loves.

Universal Link https://mybook.to/SilkCode

Spitfire Women by Rebecca Alexander

At the start of the second world war, the government realised that the Royal Air Force (RAF) would play a pivotal role in defending Britain. The German air force, the Luftwaffe, had been devastatingly successful in invading first Poland then progressing through Europe. Fighter planes harried troops, provided intelligence and protected the heavier bombers. These strategically blew up important defence positions and infrastructure and demoralised the civilians on the ground. In response, the RAF needed to rapidly build its supply of modern planes, trained pilots and air fields. 

First Officer Maureen Dunlop on the cover of Picture Post magazine 1944

In response to this need, a organisation called the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) was set up rapidly, starting at White Waltham in Berkshire. Originally formed out of volunteers who had already learned to fly, whether commercially, through the RAF or recreationally. The service was created to ferry planes to where they were needed, the active aerodromes, to support the combat pilots. Eventually, the ATA had fifteen ‘ferry pools’, with women making up about twelve percent of the total at 166. The male pilots were mostly unsuitable for active service with the RAF, being impaired in some way or disqualified by age. Many came from other countries who were not able to recruit for combatant roles as their countries were neutral. 

The female recruits were different. Most had learned to fly for pleasure before the flying clubs closed in 1939. A few had worked in flying circuses or had taught flying. They ranged in age from teenagers to grandmothers. As well as the British recruits, led by Pauline Gower, groups of American and Polish pilots bolstered the number of active pilots. They were also joined by famous flyers like Amy Johnson, who had become a celebrity after flying solo to Australia in 1930. The press followed the story of the gallant band of diverse characters, calling them the ‘Attagirls’, as they worked through accelerated training to fly everything from low powered Tiger Moths to four engine American bombers like Liberators and Flying Fortresses. Much of their work was delivering new planes such as the Supermarine Spitfires and Hawker Hurricanes for fighter pilot units, and returning damaged planes back for repairs. Women of all ages joined up, married or not, and some had children during their service.

Women pilots were also teaching new pilots, especially in the more difficult planes. When the Bristol Beaufighter was introduced, the RAF refused to test it, considering it too unstable and temperamental. Guy Gibson VC DSO DFC described the moment one was delivered to an airfield in his book Enemy Coast Ahead (1944). 

“There is a story that one particular squadron in the north had got to the stage when they almost refused to fly it. They said that it stalled too quickly and that it was unmanageable in tight turns. They were sitting about one foggy day on their aerodrome when there was no flying possible, and were discussing the subject heatedly, when suddenly a Beau whistled over their heads at about 100ft, pulled up into a stall turn, dropped its wheels and flaps and pulled off a perfect landing on the runway. Naturally, this attracted a lot of attention. They all thought that this pilot must have been one of the crack test pilots who had come up to show them how. As it taxied up to the watch office, they all crowded around to get the gen. However, a lot of faces dropped to the ground when from underneath the Beau crawled a figure in a white flying-suit, capped by blonde, floating hair; it was one of the ATA girls. I am told that this squadron had no trouble from Beaus from that day on.”

Diana Barnato Walker climbing into the cockpit of a Spitfire

The ATA were required to fly their planes without radio or radar. They couldn’t phone ahead for weather reports or advice on enemy aircraft, they were on their own. They flew missions in weather conditions that were deemed unacceptable for RAF pilots. There was even a shortage of maps for the ATA, who had to carry out of date charts where they could. Each plane was described in a manual that covered all the most common planes with important information like weight, maximum velocity, fuel capacity and stall speed. Unlike RAF pilots who trained in the planes they were going to fly, ATA pilots were expected to fly anything in the manual. If they met an enemy plane (they did occasion) they carried no ammunition so the best they could do is try to evade the enemy. 

The recovery flights of damaged planes were highly dangerous. Aircraft could be labelled ‘one landing only’ or given speed restrictions because they were so damaged they might need to be brought down in an emergency. Many ATA flights ended with a crash landing on a beach, field or road. The ATA soon needed their own engineers, both men and women, who often flew with the pilots to help with the bigger planes or where the damage was unknown or severe. Pilots often flew two or three missions in succession, making their way back from their final drop off or delivery by train. 

Writing about a fictional ATA pilot in my latest book, I found it hard not to write about all the heroic women who defied social expectations and took on the most dangerous challenges. A US Army Air Force pilot caught a lift with one of the female pilots, to be absolutely horrified to see her hunkered in the pilot’s seat apparently reading a book while flying, single handed, a huge American bomber. He was not relieved when she explained she’d never flown one before and was just running through her manual before the landing. In many cases, I found true stories were more extreme than fiction. 

The ATA women were recognised in 1943 when they were given the same pay as the male ATA pilots. This was the first time any government agency had paid women the same rate as men. By the end of the war, the women had lost eighteen pilots and engineers to crashes, including Amy Johnson. She had been forced to put her plane down on the Thames Estuary on 5 January 1941, in thick fog, attempted to bale out and despite efforts to save her, disappeared under the water. 

Amy Johnson 1930

Over the course of the war, 1320 ATA pilots flew 309,000 delivery or recovery missions with a loss of 174 pilots in total. Without their efforts, RAF fighter and bomber pilots would have had to fly those missions, at a cost of half a million pilot hours flying.  

Further reading: 

Air Transport Auxiliary at War: 80th Anniversary of its Formation by Stephen Wynn (2021)

A Spitfire Girl by Mary Ellis (2016) 

Amy Johnson by Constance Babington Smith (1967)

A taste of Homer, Virgil and Ovid by Caroline K. Mackenzie

Five years ago, almost to the day, in March 2020, the pandemic had taken hold and daily life as we knew it was turned upside down. Everyone scrambled to find ways of keeping in touch, since meeting up in person was out of the question, and plans that had been made had to be abandoned. And so my Classics Club, newly formed and a weekly event in the picturesque Pavilion of Burwash Common migrated to Zoom instead. We had no idea how long the restrictions, or our reading material, would last so agreed simply to continue meeting for as long as everyone wished.

One of our members recently mentioned that we are about to celebrate our fifth birthday – tempus fugit, as Virgil observed. When Classics Club was just one year old, I wrote a History Girls' blog about its origins. Now, five years in, seems a good time to reflect on the works we have read and to share some of the highlights.

It is almost impossible to pick the ‘best bits’, as each week we have read something that resonates, entertains, surprises or even comforts us. Therefore, I decided to flick through my well-worn copies of each of the books and to stop where I noticed the most scribbles in the margin, or perhaps highlighted sections of the text, and have chosen from those pages a selection of passages which I hope you will enjoy. If you are new to Homer, Virgil and Ovid, this may give you a flavour of the style and subject matter of these wonderful poets and, I hope, tempt you to read more.

All quotations are taken from the Penguin Classics series, the cover images of which I have included for each work. I have chosen this set of translations as they were the first versions of these poems which I read and have therefore been on my bookshelves for as long as I have been studying and teaching Classics. But the variations between translations and the difficulty of choosing just one for each Greek or Latin work was the topic of a History Girls’ blog I wrote last year.

As these passages are simply a taster, I have not attempted to summarise the stories of the epics or provide a detailed background. Some of the themes, such as the Trojan War, or characters from Greek mythology, such as the Cyclops, may be familiar in any event. However, for each one I have noted whether the original poem was Greek or Latin and the approximate date when the poem was composed and/or completed. The dates for Homer’s epics are approximate and the source of much academic debate.

Homer’s Iliad - Greek - around 750BC

Homer’s characters often utter observations which have a distinctly proverbial flavour, such as this musing by one of the warriors on the battlefield outside Troy:

The generation of men is just like that of leaves. The wind scatters one year’s leaves on the ground, but the forest burgeons and puts out others, as the season of spring comes round. So it is with men: one generation grows on, and another is passing away. (Book 6: 146-9.)

Or this:

…whatever we do, the fates of death stand over us in a thousand forms, and no mortal can run from them or escape them… (Book 12: 326-7.)

Homer is also known for his vivid and striking similes. The Trojan prince, Paris, whose love affair with Helen was the cause of the Trojan war, is cleverly captured with this simile:

Paris did not dally long in his high house, but once he had put on his glorious armour of intricate bronze, he dashed through the city, sure of the speed of his legs. As when some stalled horse who has fed full at the manger breaks his halter and gallops thudding across the plain, eager for his usual bathe in the lovely flow of a river, and glorying as he runs. He holds his head high, and the mane streams back along his shoulders: sure of his own magnificence, his legs carry him lightly to the haunts where the mares are at pasture. So Paris, son of Priam, came down from the height of Pergamos, bright in his armour like the beaming sun, and laughing as he came, his quick legs carrying him on. (Book 6: 503-14.)

Similes are also used to heighten the pathos of a scene. Note here the reference to Menelaos, the Spartan king and husband of Helen, now in the thick of the Trojan war and trying to reclaim his wife from Paris:

As when a woman stains ivory with crimson dye, in Maionia or Caria, making a cheek-piece for horses. It lies there in her room, and many horsemen yearn to have it for the wearing: but it waits there to be a treasure for a king, both horse’s finery and rider’s glory. Such, Menelaos was the staining with blood of your sturdy thighs, and your legs, and your fine ankles below. (Book 4: 141-7.)

A simile is used to great effect to describe the leader of the Greeks, and brother of Menelaos, Agamemnon:

Agamemnon rose to speak, letting his tears fall like a spring of black water which trickles its dark stream down a sheer rock’s face. (Book 9: 13-15.)

Words, so important in Homer’s oral tradition, are often likened to nature:

But when he released that great voice from his chest and the words which flocked down like snowflakes in winter, no other mortal man could then rival Odysseus. (Book 3: 221-3.)

Nestor the sweet-spoken, … from his tongue the words flowed sweeter than honey. (Book 1: 247-9.)

Homer’s Odyssey - Greek - around 725BC

Odysseus returns home to Ithaca after twenty years of absence: 10 years at the Trojan war and 10 years making his tumultuous journey home. He is disguised but his faithful dog recognises him:

As they stood talking, a dog lying there lifted his head and pricked up his ears. Argus was his name. Patient Odysseus himself had owned and bred him, though he had sailed for holy Ilium [Troy] before he could reap the benefit… in his owner’s absence, he lay abandoned on the heaps of dung from the mules and cattle which lay in profusion at the gate…. But directly he became aware of Odysseus’ presence, he wagged his tail and dropped his ears, though he lacked the strength now to come nearer his master. Odysseus turned his eyes away, and, making sure Eumaeus did not notice, brushed away a tear….. As for Argus, the black hand of Death descended on him the moment he caught sight of Odysseus – after twenty years. (Book 17: 291-305… 326-7.)

Odysseus is cunning, crafty and has a way with words. The word-play in the following episode is one of his more famous tricks. The Cyclops has just eaten alive some of Odysseus’ companions and washes them down with wine. Odysseus is narrating the story:

The Cyclops took the wine and drank it up. And the delicious drink gave him such exquisite pleasure that he asked me for another bowlful. “Give me more, please, and tell me your name, here and now – I would like to make you a gift that will please you. We Cyclopes have wine of our own made from the grapes that our rich soil and rains from Zeus produce. But this vintage of yours is a drop of the real nectar and ambrosia.”…

“Cyclops,” I said, “you ask me my name. I’ll tell it to you; and in return give me the gift you promised me. My name is Nobody.”…

The Cyclops answered me from his cruel heart. “Of all his company I will eat Nobody last, and the rest before him. That shall be your gift.” He had hardly spoken before he toppled over and fell face upwards on the floor, where he lay with his great neck twisted to one side, and all-compelling sleep overpowered him. In his drunken stupor he vomited, and a stream of wine mixed with morsels of men’s flesh poured from his throat. (Book 9: 353-9… 364-74.)

Odysseus and his men seize the opportunity and drive a sharpened olive stake, heated in fire, into the Cyclops’ single eye, blinding him. He shrieks and calls for help from his fellow Cyclopes who gather outside his cave and ask what is wrong and whether somebody is trying to kill him. The conversation that follows goes like this:

“O my friends, it's Nobody’s treachery… that is doing me to death.”

“Well then," came the immediate reply, "if you are alone and nobody is assaulting you, you must be sick… and cannot be helped.” (Book 9: 408, 410-11.)

Odysseus’ trick has worked, just as the Trojan horse trick worked, another of Odysseus’ cunning plans, which brought an end to the ten year Trojan war. That story was not told by Homer but by our next poet, Virgil, in his epic poem, the Aeneid.

Virgil’s Aeneid - Latin - 19 BC

Virgil’s use of personification is perhaps best showcased in this wonderful description of rumour. An ancient take on ‘fake news’:

Rumour did not take long to go through the great cities of Libya. Of all the ills there are, Rumour is the swiftest. She thrives on movement and gathers strength as she goes. From small and timorous beginnings she soon lifts herself up into the air, her feet still on the ground and her head hidden in the clouds…. Rumour is quick of foot and swift on the wing, a huge and horrible monster, and under every feather on her body, strange to tell, there lies an eye that never sleeps, a mouth and tongue that are never silent and an ear always pricked. By night she flies between earth and sky, squawking through the darkness, and never lowers her eyelids in sweet sleep. By day she keeps watch perched on the tops of gables or on high towers and causes fear in great cities, holding fast to her lies and distortions as often as she tells the truth. (Book 4: 173-88.)

Book 4 is dedicated to the story of Dido and Aeneas. If you only have time to read one book of the Aeneid, this might be the one to pick. It inspired Purcell’s opera Dido and Aeneas which includes the haunting and exquisite Dido’s Lament. Virgil’s account hints at the tragic ending with this observation:

Love is a cruel master. There are no lengths to which it does not force the human heart. (Book 4: 412.)

Ovid’s Metamorphoses - Latin - AD 8

Perhaps what sets Ovid apart from Homer and Virgil is his wit and rather mischievous take on popular myths. He can certainly rival his predecessors in beautiful narrative and storytelling but this passage demonstrates his comic portrayal of the man-eating monster, the Cyclops, named Polyphemus, whom we met above. In Ovid’s version, Polyphemus has fallen in love with a beautiful nymph, Galatea, and attempts to win her affections:

The wild Polyphemus was combing his prickly locks with a mattock, attempting to trim his shaggy beard with a pruning-hook, and trying to look less fierce when he gazed at his face in a pool…. (Book 13: 765-7.)

“Truly, I know myself, I recently saw my reflection in pure clear water and liked the image that met my gaze…Don’t think me ugly because my body’s a bristling thicket of prickly hair….I’ve only one eye on my brow, in the middle, but that is as big as a fair-sized shield. Does it matter?” (Book 13: 840-1, 846, 851-2.)

Ovid invites sympathy for Polyphemus and shows his romantic side when Polyphemus attempts to woo Galatea with promises of gifts: 

“My orchards are groaning with apples, my trailing vines are swollen with grapes, both golden yellow and purply red; I am storing each harvest for your delight.” (Book 13: 812-4.)

Sadly for Polyphemus his love is unrequited and, to add insult to injury, his beloved Galatea is smitten instead with ‘a beautiful boy of sixteen, with the first smooth down on his cheeks’ (753-4) – quite the opposite of a huge, hairy monster. Polyphemus’ romantic side soon turns to anger when he is rejected and he issues this threat about his love rival: 

“I’ll draw his guts from his living body, then tear it to pieces and scatter his limbs all over the fields and the waves where your home is.” (Book 13: 865-6.)

This sounds more like the Cyclops we met in Homer.

What next? Greek plays - 5th century BC

It is hard to follow the works of Homer, Virgil and Ovid but, inspired by our theatre trips to West End productions of Oedipus (two different ones within just a few months) and Elektra, Classics Club will spend the summer term reading Greek tragedies written by the playwrights, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. One of our members discovered this lovely edition with 16 plays in total: how will we choose which ones to read together? Perhaps we shall simply read them all.

www.carolinetutor.co.uk

Medieval Women (and a few men) by Mary Hoffman

 

 

The Middle Ages are having a bit of a moment, at least in the UK. This is a boon for me, as I am writing a "Plantagenet novel" covering the rough half century from 1352 to 1403. In January, I went to a day conference on Women of the Wars of the Roses, which is a bit after the scope of the first book but bang on the money for books two and three of what I see, somewhat ambitiously, as a trilogy. More in a couple of months when the first book should be finished.

The day conference, held in Southwark cathedral by Tudor Times consisted of six talks given by experts on six prominent women of the fifteenth century, four of whom were queen consorts of England. Since I have researched all these women, I was hoping to be surprised by one or two nuggets of information.

First up, Marguerite (Margaret) of Anjou.

From the Book of Romances 1445

 

The talk was given by Lauren Johnson, who has written books on Henry Vl, Henry Vlll, and Margaret Beaufort and she gave me what I hoped for early on. I should have known, but didn't, that among the many gifts the young Henry Vl showered on his bride, was a lion. What a wedding present! *

Next up was Cecily Neville:

Neville Book of Hours 1445

The talk was given by Joanna Laynesmith, whose book on the last medieval queens is now insanely expensive to buy on A*a**n. Fortunately, I bought it when it came out. Cecily was one of the two women discussed who did not become queen - though all Yorkists believe she should have. She had to be content that two of her sons, Edward lV and Richard lll were kings. I didn't know that she had been friendly with the Woodvilles in France, or that she had written a book of household management. She died a wealthy woman at eighty, so perhaps she was the winner in her rivalry with Margaret of Anjou, althgough the latter had the title.

Alison Weir talked about Elizabeth of York:

16th century image from Royal Collection

 

Alison told us that Elizabeth, one of the "good queens" and beloved of the people, might have had an iron deficiency. But if she told us the source, I didn't note it down. More research needed.

Elizabeth Woodville:

A copy of a portrait in Queens College

 

Melita Thomas, who wrote The King's Pearl about Henry Vlll and his daughter Mary, talked about this controversial figure. The first Wars of the Roses course I did in Oxford was taught by Lynda Pidgeon, whose subsequent book Brought up out of Nought did her best to rectify the notion that Elizabeth was a grasping, ambitious woman, out to get preferment for her numerous siblings. It is not completely baseless but more nuanced than many historians have seen it.

She was one of the most tragic of queens, losing her husband young and seeing her father, brothers and sons all put to death. Good to know that seven years after Bosworth, she was reinstated as Queen Mother.

Sarah Gristwood thought she might have drawn the short straw, being allocated to talk about Anne Neville:

Salisbury Roll 1483

 

Anne would seem to be the answer to "Who suffered most in the Wars of the Roses?" We know so little about Anne or what she thought of Richard as husband or usurping king. Their only child died and overwhelmed them both with grief, which shows a human side. As Sarah said, "Anne Neville was not a strong or powerful woman." But she is a good example of how heiresses are pawns in the hands of ambitious men.

Margaret Beaufort:

Meynart Wewyck 1510, Christ's College, Cambridge

So much has been written about this remarkable woman, both in history and fiction, that it was hard to see what was left for Elizabeth Norton to say about her. But she has written several books about Tudoe women and queens, including Margaret Beaufort. Her opening statement, that Margaret "did not kill the princes in the tower," was met with a resounding cheer that echoed round the nave of the cathedral.

She attended Richard lll's coronation gorgeously gowned in crimson, blue and gold, at odds with the image of her above, which is how she is usually thought of, as a single-minded and pious mother. She lived long enough to see her grandson crowned Henry Vlll but got food poisonming at the Coronation Feast and died.

I left the conference with sheaves of notes and too many books, energised that there was still so much to say and find out about these women.

Interlude with kings

Helen Castor, who wrote She-wolves: the Women who Ruled England before Elizabeth and has been a guest on the History Girls, has a new book out. The Eagle and the Hart is subtitled "the Tragedy of Richard ll and Henry lV." which is right on topic for what I am writing now. Before this the best book I knew about the first cousins born only months apart was Ian Mortimer's The Fears of Henry lV. It's a fascinatinmg topic: two boys, one born and raised in France, the other in England, both grandsons of Edward lll, both equal in royal blood and so different in their routes to the English crown.

 

Richard was in every way unsuited to be king, except one: he was the undisputed legal heir. His father Edward (known to later centuries as the Black Prince) predeceased Edward lll and Richard's older brother, another Edward, who never set foot in England, was also dead when Richard inherited the throne at the age of ten. Hopes were high, especially when the boy king rode out to face the rebels in what is no longer known as the Peasants' Revolt. It was probably his finest hour. But he had left his cousin Henry in the Tower to take his chances while other nobles were summarily executed by the mob. Richard did not go back for him.

Henry, on the other hand, was robust where Richard was effete, a champion jouster, a soldier, a traveller, an intellectual. He would have made a splendid king at any point before his usurpation. But he wasn't first in line. His father, the fabulously rich Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt, was Edward lll's third son to reach adulthood. The brother in between, Lionel Duke of Clarence, had sired one daughter and her descendant married one of the York line, descended from Edmund, the next brother down. But could a woman inherit? There you have the crux of the Wars of the Roses, as it is still convenient to call them.

Henry was more robust in other ways too: he married Mary de Bohun when they were both young teenagers, having known each other since infancy. As soon as they were old enough to co-habit, they had a child every year, the first four boys. Richard married soon after his cousin, his wife his contemporary, Anne of Bohemia, and she never became pregnant. Both wives died in same year, 1394, Mary in giving birth to her sixth child, a second daughter. 

Was Richard gay? He certainly had "favourites," his relationship with Robert de Vere closer than friendship. When de Vere was exiled and died in France in a boar hunt some years later, Richard arranged for his embalmed body to be brought back to England. At the re-interment, the king ordered the coffin to be opened and, in one of his typically theatrical gestures, gazed upon his lost love's face and held his embalmed hand for the last time. 

But he was also very fond of his queen and had Eltham Palace razed to the ground a year after she died there of the plague. But it was different from the love between Henry and Mary, who made a new baby, every time he returned from his restless travels. It is doubtful whether the marriage was even consummated. And Richard chose as his second wife, Isabella of France, who was a five-year-old child when the marriage was first proposed. Richard's thirtieth birthday was the day after her coronation.

Was it a relief for him not to have to prove his manhood for another decade? We can't know, as he had been deposed and died long before Isabella reached puberty. She was not the grown woman Shakespeare shows us in his play. Her second marriage, to her cousin, Charles d'Orléans, showed she was fertile but she died in childbirth at the age of twenty, her daughter surviving. 

So there are women in the story of the rival cousins but mostly with sad stories. Death in childbirth was very common, even if you were the first lady in the land, with all the medical help money could provide. As Elma Brenner writes in the catalogue to the Bitish Library's Medieval Women: Voices and Visions, "Childbirth and its aftermath marked a moment of significant danger in the Middle Ages, with risks of great pain, infection and death."

She also tells us that Richard's queen in the year before her death bought plantain water, spikenard and theriac from an apothecary, These were all remedies for infertility so perhaps they had been to bed together but perhaps also she didn't at that stage know the facts of life. 

Most of the women in the exhibition, which finished last Sunday, were from periods before or after the one I am working in. But guess who turned up.

 

*The label tells us that this skull, found in the moat of the Tower of London, is that of Margaret of Anjou's lion! It has been carbon-dated to 1420-80, which is the right period. But it seems that Margaret brought the lion with her from France so it wasn't, after all, a present from her husband-to-be.  Presumably it was a lioness, rather than a male, but it lived in the Menagerie at the Tower and wasn't a pet being fed scraps from her table.

Don't worry if you missed the exhibition, as the catalogue is excellent. It covers women from from the continent of Europe, like Joan of Arc and Hildegarde of Bingen, as well as the home-grown Julian of Norwich and Margarets Beaufort and Paston.

 

 

'A Happy Accident of War' by Karen Maitland

Daffodils in the hedgerow in Tamar Valley
Photo:Tony Atkin

‘Daffy-down-dilly is new come to town, with a yellow petticoat, and a green gown.’

A traditional nursery rhyme recorded in Songs for the Nursery, 1805

Daffy-down-dilly, is an old name for the daffodil dating back to 1500’s. Other ancient English names for the flower were affodil, affodilly, dilly, daff-a-down-dilly or the Lent lily. And, if you are lucky enough to find yourself in the beautiful Tamar Valley on the border of Devon and Cornwall at this time of year, you will discover that the high banks that line the narrow winding lanes around the villages of Weir Quay and Bere Alston are bursting with daffodils. Not just the plain yellow ones you might expect, but white ones too, and double blooms with twisted petals, or vivid orange trumpets. Between February and May, you can spot as many as 15 different varieties growing wild in the hedgerows and woods there, a riot of perfumed flowers – all as a result of a happy accident from a much darker time in world history.

Wild Daffodil known as the 'Lent Lily'
Photo: Meneerke bloem

As early as 1597, John Gerard noted in his herbal, ‘Historie of Plants’ that ‘The common wilde Daffodill growth wilde in fields and sides of woods in the West parts of England.’ But he added that, unlike the ancient Greek nymphs who went out to gather wild daffodils, Londoners had no need to seek out the wild ones, since daffodils grew ‘in great aboundance’ in London gardens.

But in the sheltered and sunny Tamar valley of Devon, daffodils came into bloom much earlier than the rest of England, not that this was much use to the locals. You can’t eat daffodils and in fact, country folk were wary about even bringing them into the house. There was an old superstition in Devon that if these flowers were brought inside, no ducks would be hatched that year on that farm. On the Isle of Man, daffodils in the house would prevent geese hatching and if daffodils were brought indoors when hens were sitting on eggs in Hertfordshire, it was said no chicks would hatch. 

Flower Women of Covent Garden 
Photo: LSE Library
From 'Street Life in London, 1877
By John Thomson & Adolphe Smith

But by the 19th century, gardens had become a luxury in London and in the other rapidly expanding and overcrowded industrial towns and few city dwellers hatched their own poultry. So, the scented golden daffodils, far from being ‘unlucky’, were prized in the soot-caked towns as welcome sign of spring. Enterprising Devonians began to gathered both wild and cultivated blooms which they sent down the Tamar River by ‘market boat’ to the great port of Plymouth, where the wives of merchants had money enough to spare for such luxuries. 

But with the building of the railways across England, suddenly a very large and lucrative market for daffodils opened up. From 1865 onwards, daffodils grown in the warm fields of the Tamar could be taken by river boat to the railway stations and thence by train to Covent Garden market in London. So, more and more fields were planted up with this botanical gold.

Bere Alston Station, Devon 1930
Photo: Roger Griffith

So, important was the trade that in 1890, a railway station was built at the village of Bere Alston where daffodils and other market garden produce could be loaded directly on to trains for London, eliminating the need to carry them down river by boat. This ensured the blooms reached London faster and in better condition. 

Many different varieties were cultivated in the Tamar valley to extend the flowering season. One, known as the ‘Whitsun Lily’ because it blooms late in May, was a beautiful double white blossom, which had been discovered in a local hedge in 1880, and was so prized in London it was transported packed in boxes lined with blue tissue paper to help preserve its strong sweet perfume.

Maximus superbus
Photo: Uleli

Some varieties they grew were old and native to England, such as the daffodil now known Maximus superbus, a large yellow trumpet with twisted petals which was has been recorded since the mid-16th century. Perhaps Shakespeare was thinking of this one when he wrote in The Winter’s Tale (1610) - ‘Daffodils that come before the swallow dares and take the winds of March with beauty.’ (take is used here in the Elizabethan sense, meaning to ‘enchant’ or ‘bewitch’) 

But the Tamar farmers began to try other varieties too, such as Van Sion, a double star-shaped daffodil developed by a Flemish man recorded as living in London in 1620. In fact – whisper this if you dare – some Devonians even lay claim to making the sweet-scented daffodil a more popular button-hole for the Welsh on St David’s Day than the pungent leek, when a Devon engineer discovered the pretty yellow daffodil known as Sir Watkin in 1810, and introduced it to Wales.

The daffodil business was blooming. But in 1939, came disaster in the form of the World War II. Britain could no longer rely on imported food. All over country, flowers and lawns in parks and gardens were dug up and the land re-planted with food crops. The daffodil fields of the Tamar could not be spared. The bulbs were torn up. But what to do with them? Daffodil bulbs are poisonous so they could not be fed to livestock, but the fields needed to be cleared swiftly. So, the bulbs were dumped in the surrounding hedgerows to rot. But some took root and began to naturalize – rays of golden sunshine in the darkest hours of the war. 

Ice Follies 
Photo: Phil Sangwell

After the war, bulb fields were once again planted, some with new varieties such as the white Ice Follies brought over from the Netherlands in 1953, as a vigorous grower. But as country railway lines and stations were closed, the trade never thrived again in the Tamar as it had before the war, and when rail transport for daffodils finally ended in 1969, the Ice Follies too were dug up and tossed into the hedges and verges. But like their older cousins, these daffodils still run wild in valley, bringing joy.

In some of the former fields left to pasture,
the daffodils still come up each spring.
Photo: Tony Atkin
geograph.org.uk

If you discover a daffodil growing wild and want to know if it is one of the old varieties, a rough guide is that those which existed before 1890, have thin, twisted or rolled petals which are separated at the base, and often twisted leaves too. Varieties developed since 1890 have broader flatter petals that overlap at the base. Enjoy your dilly spotting this spring!

All Women's History Matters by Janet Few

 

Here on the History Girls’ website you will read posts about women’s history, posts about the history of women and sometimes, accounts of the lives of individual women. If you are a woman reading this, have you told your own story? Every woman’s life story is part of the fabric of women’s history, no story is too ‘ordinary’, no story is boring or irrelevant. History is weighted in favour of men; it is important to redress the balance.

Writing your life story can be a daunting and for some, a painful experience. At best, we relive life’s less than wise decisions and teenaged embarrassments, at worst, we confront traumas of the past that may have been left buried. Every woman owes it to herself to record an account of her life, the achievements and the hardships alike. For most of us, it is not going to become a best-seller, maybe no one will read it but the writing itself is a satisfying and cathartic process. Your story is about so much more than you, it is also about the history of the communities that you lived in, the schools you attended, the people whose lives you have touched. In a fast-changing society, the lifestyles of our childhoods seem like another world to subsequent generations.

 

Everyone can tell their own story; you don’t have to be a writer. Back in 2014, I set out to help eighty women recount their memories, with particular emphasis on the period 1946-1969. This era, like many others, was one of enormous change, as post-war Britain transformed into the ‘Swinging Sixties’. We moved from liberty bodices to mini-skirts , from ration books to ready meals. These years heralded the dawn of the National Health Service, the comprehensive education system, a new wave of feminism and conspicuous consumerism. In the end, those memories became a book,  Remember Then: women’s memories of 1946-1969 and how to write your own. The book has my name on the cover but the words are those of my eighty volunteers.

 

If you are wondering how to set about writing your own life story, here is some advice that others who have taken this step have found useful. Set yourself a deadline and make that realistic; there is nothing worse than not meeting self-imposed deadline. Most people find that about a year is a suitable time-scale. Divide the task into sections and subsections. Although the temptation is to write chronologically, it is actually easier and often more interesting, to take a thematic approach. Having said that, a timeline is helpful as a framework. Add key dates of births, marriages and death of those close to you. List house moves and changes of school and work. You can include holidays, concerts, sporting events and other special occasions. Don’t forget achievements, learning to  driving, passing an exam, winning a competition and anything else you are proud of. Note down local, national and international events that had an impact on your life. Raid your photograph album and any souvenirs you may have kept to help jog your memory; reminisce with contemporaries.

Then start to put notes together. Take a topic at a time; covering one a month works well. In this way you can write about, clothes, homes, neighbourhoods, work, leisure time, food, schools, celebrations and relationships with friends and family, for example. Let’s just think about the topic of clothes. There is no need to spend a whole day writing all you can remember about what you and your family used to wear. In ten to fifteen minutes you can write about footwear, or swimwear, or nightwear. The key is to break the task down into manageable chunks. When you are writing about homes, take one home at a time, one room at a time and describe it. As you do so, can you recall an incident that happened in that room? If so, include it at that point.

 

Don’t put this task off until next year, the year after or when you retire, make a start now. One word of warning, depending on who you decide to share your story with. Your
story is also the story of your parents, your siblings, your spouse and others whose lives have touched your own. You may have to face ethical dilemmas about what you share, who you anonymise and what you leave out. Of course you want to tell the complete story, the good, the bad and the ugly; a sanitised account of just the successes and the cheerful bits does you no favours and paints a distorted version of the past. History hurts, it can be an uncomfortable and dark place. We’ve have all made mistakes and done things that we regret and we shouldn’t airbrush this from our stories. Just be mindful of the impact on others whose lives have touched your own. Good luck.