In Memory of Max Gallo, by Carol Drinkwater

Max Gallo at a book  signing

I am going to begin with an apology. I am on a book tour for my new novel, THE LOST GIRL, running between cities, so please forgive the brevity of this month's post. I didn't want to miss it.

During this month of July, many in Britain and especially here on this wonderful History Girls website, have been celebrating Jane Austen. And with good reason.

I am going to celebrate another writer who died this month on 18th July, Max Gallo.

Max Gallo was a member of the Académie française. He was elected to the Academy in 2007. He was a historian turned novelist and in France was considered by many to be a father of history, a writer who, through the riches of his imagination, brought history to the general reader and made it accessible. His canon of works is impressive.

Gallo was born in Nice in 1932, the son of Italian immigrants. His early career was in journalism and during those years he was very active within the communist party.  Later in life, he was a socialist.

Possibly Gallo is most well known to the English reader for his quartet of historiographies that with great dexterity and imagination narrate the life and career of Napoléon. Gallo wrote in total over one hundred novels, biographies and historical studies. He died of Parkinson's Disease. Last year his wife, Marielle Gallet published a memoir, Bella Ciao, recounting their daily combat as a couple against the disease. 

In France he will be sorely missed. R.I.P Max Gallo

Max Gallo 2009

Now, back to my book tour. I will be in Chester, Liverpool, St Helen's and Manchester for the rest of this week. If you are in the vicinity, please come along. The schedule is on my website under Events.

www.caroldrinkwater.com

History Exercise in a Hammock by Janie Hampton

This month I offer readers tips on how to get fit, ready for all that calorie-burning reading of history books that you plan to do this autumn. At the end of August you are tired from your holidays. You need to get your mind and body ready, but slowly and gently. Back in the 1980s Jane Fonda put us all to shame with her 'Feel the Burn' exercises. Now, with my patent Hampton History Hammock system, we can all stay fit, practice history and keep cool.

This Swedish lady by artist Anders Leonhard Zorn fell asleep in 1882 .
Will she wake in time for her History Exercise?

The hammock is a historic device, designed for people of all ages, shapes and temperaments. A hammock cradles and supports the back, neck and especially the brain. Hammocks help to relieve stress brought on by computers, stacking dishwashers and taking holidays.

Choosing the right hammock is crucial: it must be long enough to lie straight out in, and wide enough not to fall over the edge. Cotton hammocks are better than netting, which allows bits of your body to bulge through, leaving strange patterns on exposed areas. If the cotton is organic you will also feel smug, which  probably increases your intelligence too.

Attach your hammock to one or two strong trees. It should hang no more than 4 inches above the ground at the lowest point, when you are in it. This ensures that should it collapse, you don’t have far to fall. If you don’t have any trees, do not attach to a wall without a full survey – walls are inclined to bury people alive.

Always lie in the hammock in the direction that gives the best view. This should be away from guilt-inducing objects like the washing line, the shed with the lawn mower or your study with that half-read book waiting in it.

Before you start, place beside your hammock:
A book, quite a heavy one with very long words printed in small type.
A glass of iced water.
Optional bowl of strawberries.

Now for some action: Sit in hammock with legs together outside. Lift legs up and into hammock, and out again, keeping legs together. Do this once or twice, ending with both legs in the hammock. Try and remember the date of the Norman Invasion. Don't try too hard. And, rest. 

This lady in a hammock painted by James Tissot in 1879 had the right idea.
She is in the middle of the first exercise. Image courtesy of The Bridgeman Art Library.

 Warm up exercise: Lie down and feel every bit of your body go floppy. Think beautiful thoughts as you watch the clouds. Can you see an old man emerging? Does this remind you of the date of Napoleon's death? And, rest.

Oblique tummy stretch and underarm flattener: Keeping your legs straight, lean forward and touch your toes. If you can’t reach your toes, just wave at them, and say 'Hello'. Lift your arms up straight, and move them back over your head.
Do this a few times quite slowly. Or just do it once. Think of a number. Is it the same number as Henry VIII had wives? And, rest. 

Knee and bottom toner: Lift one bent leg and then the other leg up slowly. Pull back towards your head. Stop the moment it might hurt. Imagine you are a horse accompanying a Crusader. And, rest.

Waist curl trimmer: Pull knees up, and rock them from side to side. Roughly when was canned food first eaten? And, rest.

Groin and inner thigh strengthener: Bend knees. Pull legs up together, and then flop them apart. Wave your knees apart and together very slowly. Who first used chloroform during childbirth? And, rest.

This young lady has not read the instructions –
the Hampton History Hammock system
must always be carried out on your own. No man may help you.

Beating gravity with triceps stretch: Lift arms in the air and try to pull yourself up by grabbing the air with your hands. Admire the pretty patterns that the leaves make in the tree above you. What year was  an aeroplane first flown solo across the Atlantic? And, rest.

Nutritional exercise for energy boost: Without moving your body, allow arms to flop out of hammock. Wave them about until you make contact with the strawberries. Lift bowl of strawberries up and place on stomach. Now exercise your fingers: lift one strawberry at a time and place in mouth. Work those jaw muscles hard until the strawberry has disappeared. Repeat until bowl is empty. Think about the date when South American strawberries were first eaten in Europe. And, digest. 

This Wife of a British Colonial Officer should not have made these men carry her while she exercises. She should remain in one place, with her hammock attached to two trees.

Improved toner control for hamstring and bottom: Raise your legs in the air, and over your head, and touch the hammock behind you with your toes. Do this backwards and forward, very slowly. Or don't do it at all. Think of a year when Brazil won the World Cup. Just one will do. And, rest.

Warm-down exercise or biceps curl: Now lean out of the hammock and pick up your book. With bent arms, lift the book above your head and close your eyes. How many books are in the British Library? Lower your arms, and open your eyes. Lean out of the hammock, and place book on the ground. And, rest. And rest again.

Advanced cool-down exercise: Swing legs out of hammock and place feet either side of glass of water. Grasp glass firmly with both feet and lift back into hammock, tip glass towards face. Which year did Captain Scott reach the Antarctic? And, rest.

Final exercise to boost your will power: Get out of hammock, and return indoors. This requires considerable determination and commitment. It may take at least an hour to achieve and become more difficult with each Hampton History Hammock session.

In case of rain – do all exercises in your swimming costume.

Only do each exercise for as long as you feel like, and do not exceed 30 seconds. All these exercises require a positive attitude. Be persistent and you will succeed, possibly in time for the autumn.

To ensure success, make a graph showing how relaxed you have become. You can waste even more time by keeping a diary about your time spent in the hammock. Then, in 100 years your great grand-daughters can publish it. 

This luscious lady in pink by Irish painter John Lavery certainly knows how to relax.
She may even be learning some history at the same time.

Answer to questions: 1832; 8; 1810; Queen Victoria; 1927; 1714; 1958,1962, 1970, 1994 & 2002; 150 million; 1912.

Janie Hampton will demonstrate the Hampton History Hammock system of exercises on alternate Mondays, by appointment. 

"Converting Our Island into a Peninsula" - Joan Lennon

You know how it is - when I was researching the Slightly Jones Mysteries* I came across far more fascinating tidbits than could possibly fit into the stories themselves.  My publishers kindly allowed me to play with a section at the end of each book, with Did You Know?s about the 1890s, about the different cities each book was set in, interesting facts, quizzes and challenges. For example, at the back of The Case of the Hidden City there is this question:

TRUE OR FALSE?
Today many people travel to Paris from Britain by train, going through the Channel Tunnel.  The first proposal for a Channel Tunnel was put forward early in the 20th century. 

FALSE.  Out by 100 years!  As early as 1802, French engineer Albert Mathieu had come up with the idea of a tunnel under the English Channel, lit by oil lamps, with horse-drawn coaches and an artificial island halfway across for changing horses.

That was all there was room for, but here is a picture of Matthieu's vision, complete with chimneys that go up to the surface to help purify the air.

Nothing came of it, but the idea was still out there, as this 1805 cartoon of a possible invasion plan by Napoleon, by sea, in the air, and under the ground, suggests:

Fifty years later, and we see Thomé de Gamond's 1856 plan for a Channel tunnel, with a harbour and air shaft partway across on the Varne sandbank. 

The New York Times in 1866 published a report from The Railway News, which wrote about Gamond's proposal as a challenging but entirely doable project.

"The estimated cost of the whole work was 170,000,000 of francs, or rather less than £7,000,000 ... The whole work would be completed in six years.  We are by no means sanguine that the plan of M. GAMOND  will ever be carried out; but certainly the plan of converting our island into a peninsular by means of a submarine isthmus is one within the range of the engineering science and mechanical appliances of the present day.  The grave and practical question, "Will it pay?" involves the consideration of other and totally different questions."

In spite of the reporter's lack of sanguineness, the proposal was accepted by Napoleon III and Queen Victoria - until the Franco-Prussian War put paid to it.  General Wolseley was adamant that:

"A couple of thousand armed men might easily come through the tunnel in a train at night, avoiding all suspicion by being dressed as ordinary passengers, and the first thing we should know of it would be by finding the fort at our end of the tunnel, together with its telegraph office, and all the electrical arrangements, wires, batteries, etc., intended for the destruction of the tunnel, in the hands of an enemy ... The invasion of England could not be attempted by 5,000 men, but half that number, ably led by a daring, dashing young commander might, I feel, some dark night, easily make themselves masters of the works at our end of the tunnel, and then England would be at the mercy of the invader."

Finally, nearly 200 years after Mathieu's proposal, the Channel Tunnel was opened.  And the daring, dashing, young French commander?  I'm still waiting.


Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.

* The Slightly Jones Mysteries are:
          The Case of the London Dragonfish
          The Case of the Glasgow Ghoul
          The Case of the Cambridge Mummy
    and The Case of the Hidden City

The giraffe that beguiled not just a King but a nation – Dianne Hofmeyr

A giraffe walking through the streets of Paris in 1827 must have been a wondrous sight. What was this strange horned, half horse, half camel creature with impossibly long legs and a black tongue? Not just Paris but the whole of France was agog. 

Giraffes go way back in history. San people recorded them in their rock art and during the reign of Queen Hatshepsut in the 15th century BC, giraffes were brought back from the Land of Punt and there are paintings of them in her mortuary temple. In Egyptian hieroglyphics, the symbol of a giraffe stands for ‘to predict or foretell’. The actual word giraffe comes from the Arab word ‘xirapha’ which means ‘one that walks swiftly’. But the Paris giraffe was only the second to have ever been seen in Europe. The first had been a gift to the Lorenzo de Medici in 1486.

When Napoleon conquered the Mamelukes at the Battle of the Pyramids, he brought his corp des savants ­– a group of 154 scientists – to investigate Egypt’s relics and so began France’s fascination with Egypt. After Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, Muhammad Ali, became the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt and the Sudan. He was a ruthless ruler, a slave dealer and a contradictory force – a man who cared nothing for Egypt’s antiquities but continually courted France for her western expertise and learning. 

It was the entrepreneurial talents of the French consul general in Cairo at the time – an Italian by the name of Bernardino Drovetti – that brought the giraffe to Paris. Drovetti was a tomb raider and antiques dealer who helped assemble the collections of Egyptian artefacts that are still on display in museums across Europe. In addition, he dealt in exotic animals ­–Arabian stallions, Nubian sheep as well as shells and fossils from the Libyan desert.

He was an expert at turning royal gratitude to his own advantage and as the confidante of the Pasha Muhammad Ali, when the new French king, Charles X, ascended to the throne in September 1824, he spotted an opportunity. Muhammad Ali had been engaged in an aggressive expansion, attacking Cyprus and threatening Greece. The exotic gift of a giraffe would charm the French public and reassure the King about the Pasha's amicable intentions towards France.

The journey of the giraffe, starting with her capture in the Sudan, the 2000 mile trip down the Nile from Khartoum to Alexandria, the three week sail across the Mediterranean Sea and finally the 550 mile walk from Marseilles to Paris accompanied by two milk cows to provide her with milk, took two and a half years. By the time she arrived in Paris, she stood four metres tall. The year was 1827.

She lived with her keeper, Atir, in a building called la Rotonde in what was then known as Jardin du Roi later renamed the Jardin des Plantes. Atir slept high up on a specially built platform close to her face and never left her side. 

Zeraffa’s fate was very different to that of Marius the giraffe in a Copenhagen zoo – as twelve years later a second young female giraffe was transported down the Nile and sent to Paris to keep her company. And when Zeraffa died of old age on January 12th 1845 after living in Paris for 18 years, Atir was still at her side. After her death she stood on display in the foyer of the museum at the Jardin des Plantes and was then sent to Le Musée Lafaille in La Rochelle. Today if you visit this museum you will find her peering down inquisitively from the landing of some stone stairs. She’s there with a collection of other African animals that might have browsed on the same African plains with her in an earlier life.  

The buildings of La Rotonde still stand in the Jardin des Plantes today. And while I was writing my picture book ZERAFFA GIRAFFA, I went there and tried to imagine the giraffe with the young Atir in their very foreign environment. What was it like for a young boy who had never been further than Khartoum to be so alone in a strange city in Europe in 1827? What would it be like even today? 

If you visit La Rotonde on a quiet day, close your eyes and perhaps you’ll feel the hot wind of Africa and imagine yourself standing there with Zeraffa and her keeper Atir, while he whispers stories to her of a land far away.

 

For a taste of history for young readers, ZERAFFA GIRAFFA published by Frances Lincoln, is out on 3rd April. Jane Ray’s exquisite illustrations capture the long travaille through the Egyptian desert, the voyage across the Mediterranean, the walk through the French countryside… one wonders if Zeraffa nibbled cherries or peeped through the high windows of the ‘silk’ houses as she walked through the Luberon valley and then along the Rhone… until she finally reached the streets of Paris. 

www.diannehofmeyr.com

So, Charles, what did you do on your holidays? by K. M. Grant

I'm highly indebted to Eve Edwards for including in the list of accepted but erroneous beliefs (3rd November), that ‘Napoleon was short’. It reminded me that interestingly, whatever height Napoleon actually was, the perception that he was short was contemporary to him - belittling propaganda, perhaps - rather than something foisted on him by posterity. A nosey ancestor visiting Napoleon on the island of Elba certainly describes the great man as on the small side, although who knows whether that was because he felt it politic to do so.


This nosey chap was Charles Standish. On the Grand Tour with friends in early 1815 and bored with marble heroes – he didn’t think much of Canova’s Three Graces either – he decided to inspect a human villain instead. Napoleon saw him coming. Believing Boney to be ‘history’, Standish answered every question Napoleon asked. What a noodle! Charles didn’t realise that all the questions were loaded and that Napoleon was milking him for information which would then be used to effect a successful escape.*

Knocking about in a drawer, my father had the letter Charles Standish wrote to his cousin Peregrine Towneley of Towneley, Burnley, about this visit. I transcribed the letter, occasionally berating my dead relation for his poor handwriting. I don't have a picture of Charles, but here's a picture of Peregrine in later life, and one of Towneley.


Standish begins with the usual salutations. Omissions are marked with … and I’ve offered, in italics, a few explanatory remarks and notes:

‘We embarked in a small boat for Porto Torreno where we arrived with tolerably prosperous gales in about four hours (18 miles) … His palace, for it is by courtesy called so, is a small house two stories high, built on the top of a rock and overlooking the town on one side and the sea on the other. The strictest possible system of police is established in the island …



He [Napoleon] had us one by one. The first room I was shown into was a small ante-room, where there were two aides-de-camp in waiting, and one or two other officers, all of whom appeared sullen, downcast and most shabby in their accoutrements. It is a fact, by the by, that does not much redound to the honour of France, that Napoleon has not as yet received one sous of the stipend that was guaranteed to him by the Treaty of Paris [signed on 30th May 1814, this restored Louis XVIII to the throne and set out how Napoleon and his family were to be treated]. In consequence of which, he has been obliged to reduce half his establishment and to curtail all the salaries of the people about him, and is now selling all the ordnance on the walls to Tuscany to get a little ready [cash]. He complains of it bitterly but says he will never apply for it.

He received me standing with his back to the fire, draped in a shabby green uniform with the Legion of Honour’s Grand Cross, Iron Crown and several other orders, a very small cocked hat under his arm and a snuff box in his hand, and ever and anon he put it to his nose and took it away again but seemed to make little use of its contents.

I was never more deceived in the idea I had formed of what were a man’s looks. That he is very low in stature and grown extremely lusty, we knew from most recent reports. But his physiognomy I expected to find most markedly striking. On the contrary, it is quite an inanimate face with a light grey eye and fat chops. Altogether those sorts of features that in a crowd would be passed by unnoticed. But I must not forget to say that when animated, he lights up in an extraordinary manner and becomes quite a different man, all fire and animation.’


Standish and Napoleon then spoke about the rumour that when Napoleon had been in Egypt, he had become a Muslim. Napoleon raised an eyebrow. He had certainly tried to court Muslim good opinion, and had even asked how to become a good Muslim. He was pleased, though, to tell Standish how he wriggled out of what might have been a rather uncomfortable conversion.

‘They [the Muslims] told me that I must first leave off the use of wine, and be circumcised. ‘As for wine,’ I replied, ‘I am a soldier and it is necessary for my wellbeing. As for being circumcised, not having much to circumcise, this would be impossible … these parts are not toys with which to amuse children.’

Standish was a Catholic, and as such was barred from serving in the army or navy. This gave Napoleon the opportunity to be rude about the stupidity of the British, and sneakily to add:

‘But the Princess of Wales, she is pretty lively is she not? At least that is what people say. However, there is something not quite right about her. She is not young, eh? But you love the older woman, you funny old English, don’t you.’


With disarming, self-deprecatory charm, Napoleon then asked ‘what do they say about me in France?’ Being a polite kind of chap, Standish answered in a polite kind of way that Napoleon had lots of friends, particularly in the army, and writes ‘This seemed to delight him and he betrayed it by a sort of vulgar wriggling of his whole person as an old woman does who is delighted with a scandalous story.’ Reading this, I sensed a distinctly pricklish Charles getting his own back for Napoleon’s rudery about the British.

There is, of course, lots more of this letter**, but you have the flavour. One of its delights is that it was written entirely unselfconsciously, i.e. not for posterity but for ‘my dear Peregrine’, a cousin of whom Charles Standish was extremely fond. Standish jokes about the inordinate length of the letter and promises ‘sternest silence till we next meet’. He signs off in the rather pretentious manner typical of the Grand Tourist, and if you’ll forgive me, I’ll do the same.

Affettuosamente tuo,
Katie Grant
November 28th

* Charles Standish’s letter is dated January 17th. Napoleon escaped from Elba on February 26th.
* *More of the letter was printed in a piece I wrote about it for the Daily Telegraph of Saturday 24h April 1999, and in the Quarterly Journal of Military History, Autumn 1999, Volume 12, No. 1, Primedia, USA.

Ten things I now know are wrong by Eve Edwards

Eve Edwards

Have you ever come across something that overturned all your preconceived notions about a subject?  I do frequently – partly thanks to a teenage son who is a firm fan of QI, but also because I have been researching historical periods that I thought I knew well – then discovered I didn’t.  Here are some that have come to me recently; perhaps you can add your own?

1. Napoleon was short.  That made him angry and decide to take over Europe. 

In fact, he was a respectable 5’ 7”.  I suspect it was the cartoonists that gave us the idea he was tiny.  Bang goes the Napoleonic complex.

2. Richard the Lionheart was the good king, John the bad one.

Sorry Disney and Kevin Costner, Richard was pretty horrible, only good if not setting foot much in England is counted as good.  He has the usual sins of a Medieval king to his name (high taxes to pay for his armies pursuing interests that had nothing to do with England, war crimes during campaigning) and certainly was no hero. I’ll never cheer at the end of a Robin Hood film again.  John wasn’t great, but he neither was he so much worse than his brother.  He made the mistake of staying in England perhaps?

3. The Bayeux Tapestry is a tapestry.

No, it is an embroidery.

4. The Great Plague ended with the Fire of London.

The part of London destroyed was not the hotbed of the plague and it is not know why the disease faded away eventually.

5. Vikings wore horns on their helmets.

Apparently we think they did because some horned helmets were dug up in Scandinavia by Victorian archaeologists.  They assumed a connection to the Vikings when in fact they were much older (Bronze Age) and possibly ceremonial.  Now I stop and think about it, horns are not a great idea, are they, in a fight?  Why give the enemy something with which to yank your helmet off?  And what about the poor guy sitting next to you in the boat when you are pulling on the oars?

6. Pirates made enemies walk the plank.

A real life example was found in 1829 but this is not the era of the pirate of our imagination.  I think this is one of those things that should be true.

7.  Shakespeare wasn’t Shakespeare.

Yes, you’ve read it too (and the idea is being revisited in the film Anonymous as I write), but the best and simplest proof that Shakespeare was the Stratford man I’ve read is in John Bate’s Soul of the Age.  He takes a close look at the local references cross-checked with parish records and finds bags of proof that we are reading the work of a man from Warwickshire.  Of course there’s also the argument that his contemporaries who knew him, including Ben Jonson, all agreed it was him.  Unless the conspiracy was huge (and for what purpose?) there seems little point arguing against them.

8. Bronze age tools were bronze.

Actually, the majority were stone.

9. Cornish wreckers regularly lured ships on to the rocks with false lights.

Only in novels.  There is no known case of the trick lighthouse as in Jamaica Inn.  Wreckers salvaged stuff washed up on the shore, which was regarded as theft, possibly failed to save sailors trying to get ashore, but not quite the mass murder of the literary imagination.

10.  Julius Caesar declared ‘Veni Vidi Vici’ on stepping ashore in Britain.

This announcement refers to his victory in the quite different Battle of Zela 47 B.C.  He didn’t do anything very memorable in Britain but visit a couple of times and give it up as a bad idea. He probably took one look at the cold, soggy coast of England and decided he was too early for tea so might as well go home.

(with thanks to Wikipedia for images that are not author's own)

Please visit my website for more news on my writing.

 The Rogue's Princess out now in the UK

The Other Countess out now in the US