Unfinished Histories by Imogen Robertson

Joshua Reynolds - Study of a black man c.1770

I wonder how much black history is hiding in plain sight in the archives? I’m taking up Louise’s theme from yesterday here and Catherine Johnson's from earlier in the month, it’s one I hope we hear more of in the future, and that is how long, various and multi-faceted black history is in England. Naturally when we talk about race in the 18th century attention focusses on the horrors of the slave trade and the efforts of abolitionists, black and white, to bring it to an end. There is enough to talk about there to keep us going for at least another century, of particular interest to me at the moment is how culpable white abolitionists were in portraying Africans as poor victims, and failing to recruit black voices to campaign alongside them. I'm glad there were black writers who did not need recruiting to make their voices heard such as the first recorded black voter, Ignatius Sancho, and abolitionist campaigners Olaudah Equiano and Ottobah Cugoano all of whom wrote best-selling books. Their activism isn’t well enough known though and often our thinking tends to be wrongly polarized between the oppressed slaves and the white masters. While I’m not for a second minimising the horrors of slavery, it’s just as important to remember there were black people at every level in English society in the 18th century. It’s surprising how many people think there just wasn’t a black community in England before the 20th century. It’s just not true. We’ve been a country of immigration since year dot and people of all races have been coming here, settling down and getting on with life ever since. 

That said, the experience of the mass of the black population of England is largely hidden from us. Just as we see the experience of the vast proportion of the English in general only through the observations of the book and letter reading classes, so outside of those writers mentioned above, we tend to get only hints of the black community. Nevertheless it is enough to know there was a strong black community here even as the slave trade boomed. For instance when two black men were confined to Bridewell for begging in 1773 some three hundred black people visited them to offer support; there were clubs to support fellow blacks who were without a place, and after the Somerset verdict in 1772 the black community held a subscription ball to celebrate. That is not to say the black community was not well integrated too and that leads me back to my first question about how much black history is hidden in plain sight. Unless someone mentioned in a text is specifically referred to as black we tend to assume they are white and that is simply not always the case. 

I’ve been ferreting around in the Old Bailey records. You can learn a great deal about 18th century London by reading them, and there we see black Britons as prosecutors, witnesses and prosecuted. It is clear that the evidence of a black man or woman was as good as anyone else's, and there are plenty of cases where white criminals are transported or executed on the evidence of black witnesses. Sometimes a witness is asked if he is a Christian. One man who said he had been going to church for four years testified, another called Guardaloup who helped chase down a thief did not, because he said he knew nothing of religion. Now, I found those cases, and those of Isaac George, the messenger whose money was stolen after he went to a dance, Thomas Guy, a black highwayman who complained there were a thousand black men in London so why were they picking on him, and William Smith who was acquitted of pick-pocketing because of the ‘people of quality’ ready to testify to his character, because they are all referred to as black in the transcripts, but we should not assume that every person of colour who came up before the court was so designated.

For instance I have been reading about the short and very criminal life of Ann Duck. She was the daughter of a black man and a white woman. Her father taught the use of the small sword to gentleman and was acknowledged a ‘very good master.’ He provided for a good education for Ann, but after his death she began to run wild and ended up in 1743 being repeatedly tried for violent theft.  In fact she was up before the court five times and in only one trial is the fact she is black mentioned. In her account of her crimes given before her execution she herself mentions it only once:

...while the Punch was making, he began to be very rude and troublesome; particularly to Ann Barefoot; (for he seem'd to have no liking to me, he swore he did not like my Face, being of a tawny Complexion) upon which Barefoot severely reprimanded him, and ask'd him what he meant by it? What, did he take them to be Women of the Town? If you do, you are much mistaken, for we are both married Women, and have two very good Husbands (and God knows neither of us were ever married, but we have had many that we call'd Husbands, God forgive us!) Whereupon he began to be a little more civil, and we told him at the same time, it was a Thing they never did in their Lives, go into a House with a strange Man, and that he may take it as a particular Favour.

They got him drunk and stole twenty shillings from him, by the way. 

I wish the Ordinary of Newgate had asked her about her father’s career. Still, looking through those trials it is clear that there was nothing exotic or peculiar about seeing black faces on the streets of London, or in the inns or taverns, lodging houses or grand palaces or the courts. Most of the stories of black Britons have disappeared into time along with those of their friends and neighbours, but that doesn’t mean they are not there. 

Zoffany - Dido Lindsay and Elizabeth Murray

You can find the accounts of the trials of Ann Duck by searching for her name at www.oldbaileyonline.org and, like Louise I recommend Black London - Life Before Emancipation by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina. 

Cruising into Christmas, by A. L. Berridge

‘Christmas,’ they said. ‘If you’re blogging on 20th December, it’s got to be about Christmas.’

That seemed reasonable. It was true I was going to be on a Caribbean cruise at the time, but that oughtn’t to make any difference. December may be winter in Bethlehem as well as in England, but Christmas is Christmas the whole world over and has nothing to do with climate. So why did it feel wrong this morning when I stepped off the ship and saw this?

You hate me now, don't you?

Is it because our idea of Christmas is so inextricably linked to Dickensian notions of snow and winter that we can’t accept it in any other setting? The spirit of Christmas is everywhere in the Caribbean: the churches are humming, little girls in white dresses sing carols, and even taxi drivers call ‘God Bless You!’ quite as unselfconsciously as Tiny Tim could do it. Perhaps what makes it seem so bizarre is only the imposition of our own British (and American) commercial tastes over the top. The steel band in St Lucia greeted us enthusiastically in the 30 degree heat – but the tune they played was ‘Jingle Bells’. The main street of Barbados was exotically festive – but the piped music in the department stores was ‘Winter Wonderland’. The age of global travel may bring us a wonderful diversity of culture, but I think sometimes there’s a danger of homogenization that can swamp the real roots of our traditions and heritage.

That’s part of what I love about studying history. Much of what we do can be seen as reconstruction, the painstakingly recreation of details of a lost world – but some of it is almost the opposite. An archaeologist does not construct a dinosaur’s bones; he blows away the sand grain by grain until he can finally reveal what’s underneath. As a History Girl, I thought that’s what I’d try to do here – to peel away the layers of modern culture in an attempt to discover our real sense of Christmas underneath.

But there’s a snag. While the ship’s library is admirably well-stocked with light reading, there’s a decided shortage of primary historical source material. The internet is available even here on the Atlantic, but after one look at the cost of a minute on the Maritime Network my scholarly instincts began to take a back-seat to those of Scrooge. I decided on a cheaper option - to deconstruct purely on the basis of the decorations on the ship itself.

MV Queen Elizabeth

And it’s all there. Some of it is very modern and commercial, as exemplified by the piles of gaily-wrapped gifts ready for the Santa’s Grotto of the next cruise, but even that is of interest to a History Girl. The tradition of present-giving goes right back to the gifts of the Three Kings, but it’s the details of what was given that tell us most about what it was like to live in a particular age. I was fascinated as a child by Susan M Coolidge’s ‘What Katy Did’ (1872), where the hand-made gifts circulated among the children are listed in loving detail, including pin cushions, a handkerchief – and a mysterious felt object referred to as a ‘pen-wiper’. Even something as recent as Rebecca West’s semi-autobiographical ‘The Fountain Overflows’ (1957) shows a little boy’s excitement at a simple sugar pig, while his sisters eagerly delve in their stockings for the exotic rarities of nuts and oranges we might dismiss today as simply ‘groceries’. Perhaps modern children might feel pity for the poverty of such a Christmas, but I’m not sure I do. The joy of giving was the same - and so was the anticipation and joy in receiving.

I found the same kind of story in studying the menu outside the ship’s main dining room. Christmas has always been a feast, and the nature of the meal tells us only about the prosperity of the period in which it’s eaten. Roast goose or roast turkey might be the staples now, but in the boom of the 1980’s I remember people insisting on prime joints of beef because white meat was simply ‘not special enough’. Louis XIV might well have had roast goose for his Christmas dinner, but judging by the 17th century French cook-book I used to research my second novel, it would only have been acceptable if it was first stuffed with pigeons, then itself stuffed inside the carcase of a wild boar. Louis’ peasants, however, would have considered even a leg of rabbit a luxury, since for most days of the year they couldn’t afford meat at all. The traditions haven’t really changed here, only our means of honouring them.

And yet they have changed – they must have. Gifts and feasting are centuries old, but so much of what we consider essential to a ‘British’ Christmas derives from the 19th century that it is almost as if Dickens invented the concept. Even the Christmas trees with which the ship is forested are a largely German tradition that was only popularized in Britain during Victoria’s reign. My current novel is set in the 1850s, just ten years after the publication of ‘A Christmas Carol’ and the selling of the first commercial Christmas card – but what came before? Little sprigs of holly along the ships’ rails offer the only glimpse of the older time, when the plant of the old Druids’ religion became absorbed respectably into the Christian story, but few outside the universities can explain their religious significance, and it seems unlikely the heart of our popular Christmas is really here.
Then I see it. Tucked away behind a grand coffee bar is this little scene, and at once everything falls into place.

The Crib

This is it. This is Christmas, right here. Cribs and static Nativity scenes go back at least as far as the 13th century, and the more I look at this one the stranger it begins to seem. There’s nothing new in devotees producing statues and figurines to illustrate their gods and goddesses, but what’s startling about the Christmas scene is its very ordinariness. There’s nothing magic here, only scruffy badly-dressed people sharing a stable with some rather surprised looking animals, but at once it’s something even the poorest can relate to. Louis XIV’s peasants mightn’t have seen much of the goose and even less of the presents, but they could see and believe in this scene – and they could participate in it too. France is still famous for its santons – the little terracotta figures of saints and holy figures produced at least as far back as the 16th century, and now a thriving specialized industry in Provence.

Antique French santons

Some of the earliest are only primitive wood-carvings, but produced with love and displayed with reverence - a show of the real Christmas spirit I’ve seen in the Caribbean, in Europe, all over the world, and which owes nothing to fashion, or climate – or time.

Because, as always, it’s the story that’s the thing. That’s a truism, of course, but the Christmas story is an unusual one because in one sense it’s the very first dramatisation of history for education and entertainment.

‘Living cribs’ have been around since at least the 12th century, and by the mid 14th century England was following the German traditions that dramatized the entire Christian Story in a cycle of so-called ‘Mystery Plays’ performed outside the churches. There’d been history plays before, of course, and even Greeks and Romans enjoyed drama about their own heroic roots, but the Christian ‘Mystery Plays’ were the forerunners of modern theatre - realistic, down-to-earth, and often bawdy. I remember being mildly shocked when I first read a scene in (I think) the York Cycle, where Joseph makes some very blunt remarks about Mary’s claims to virgin pregnancy and her relationship with this dodgy bloke called Gabriel. A stand-up comic today might be censured for such jokes – but the 13th century saw nothing disrespectful in them. They were bringing the Christmas story to life, making it real, taking it off its pedestal and helping people understand what its true impact would have been.

And I find that comforting – because on a different, very much lower level, that’s what we try to do too. The key to celebrating the past is understanding it, and that’s certainly what I aspire to in my writing. Those French peasants who crafted the terracotta figurines and arranged them to tell a story were exploring history just as we do, and it’s a tradition to which I can feel proud to belong.

But not too proud. I don’t even want to mention any of my own books today, because that’s not what this post’s about. Today is about Christmas and a story that’s held millions spellbound for more than two thousand years. In that context even thirty degree heat and a chorus of ‘Jingle Bells’ make sense, and so do the most sentimental utterances of Dickens. My cruise is nearly over, I’m heading back to the horrors of winter, but right now I’m raising a cocktail to all the History Girls and all our readers of 2011 - and wishing a Very Happy and Peaceful Christmas to you all.

August Competition

Competition Question to win one of five copies of Louise Berridge's In the Name of the King

If you had all the modern forensic techniques at your disposal, what
historical crime or mystery would you like to investigate and why?

Competition Question to win one of five copies of Eve Edwards' The Rogue's Princess

 The Rogue's Princess is set in the Tudor theatre world of the 1580s when Shakespeare was just starting out on his career.  What was the name of the theatre in which Shakespeare and company acted after 1599? (Hint - you can visit it near its original site today in London).

Closing date 7th September

All entries to be comments on this post only.

We are very grateful to Penguin and Puffin for donating competition prizes.