THE SCANDAL OF MADAME X

By Essie Fox

Sargent with his painting of 'Madame X'

Virginie Gautreau was an American woman who married a wealthy French banker, living with him in Paris where her glamour and beauty were so renowned that the artist, John Singer Sargent, wrote a letter to one of his friends in which he expressed, “...a great desire to paint her portrait and have reason to think she would allow it and is waiting for someone to propose this homage to her beauty. If you are ‘bien avec elle’ and will see her in Paris, you might tell her I am a man of prodigious talent.”

In the June of 1883, the prodigiously talented young man was invited to visit with Virginie at her family's estate in Brittany. There, sketches were made for a final portrait where Sargent worked on a canvas that was almost seven feet (2 meters) in height, hoping that way to ensure the greatest attention when it was presented in Paris at the Salon of 1884. 

But whereas the model agreed with the artist that his painting was a masterpiece, Virginie's own mother was scandalised, demanding the portrait never be shown. The Salon members were just as outraged, and all because of the fact that a strap on Virginie’s gown had been depicted as fallen away from her shoulder, suggesting an air of decadence and sexual availability.

Sargent repainted his model’s gown with the strap restored to its rightful position, but the damage was already done. Reviews were disappointing. Madame Gautreau's reputation was lost, and even though Sargent withdrew the work and subsequently named it as Madame X, such was the affect upon his career that the artist left Paris in ignominy to set up a studio in London.

In England Sargent achieved great success, but he never lost faith in 'Madame X', even going so far as to write, “I suppose it is the best thing that I have ever done.” 

He refused to hide the work away and the painting was regularly displayed in various exhibitions until it was eventually sold it to the American Metropolitan Museum of Art for the sum of $1000. 

Goodness knows what it would be worth today.

A full-sized sketch of 'Madame X' remains on display in London's Tate Britain, where one of the straps on Virginie’s gown is still 'salaciously' removed.

Essie Fox's new novel, Elijah's Mermaid (to be published in November 2012) revolves around the work of a Victorian artist - some of his paintings being viewed as controversial and decadent, though later generations will consider them to be masterpieces.

www.essiefox.com

Cecil Jackson-Cole - grand father of charities, by Leslie Wilson

In early 1971, the telephone rang at our house at what my parents, who kept early hours, considered the ungodly hour of ten o'clock. My mother picked up the receiver, and a male voice said: 'Mrs Baker?'

'Yes?' she answered, wondering who it was.

'Would you like to live in London?'

It was before the era of cold calling, and she almost put the phone down, thinking she was talking to a lunatic, but instead, she said: 'I don't want to go and live in London, thank you.'

The unknown caller then asked if he could speak to her husband, so she went - with great misgivings - to get my father.

Photo courtesy of Andrews
Charitable Trust

The caller introduced himself to Dad, saying that he was Cecil Jackson-Cole, that he'd been hearing about my father on and off for the past ten years, and that he wanted to employ him. He suggested my father might like to take a senior post at Help the Aged. My father agreed to go and talk to Mr Jackson-Cole in London, and though he didn't want the post at Help the Aged, they put together a role for him, working half of his time as personnel manager at Andrews and Partners, the estate agents, and the other half dealing with personnel for Help the Aged and the umbrella charity, Voluntary and Christian Service, which existed to set up charities. And so my family came into the orbit of a great man - though not in physical stature; he was short and rather plump - and a great eccentric.



Cecil Jackson-Cole - generally known as 'CJC' was born in 1901, and I'm afraid I know nothing at all about his early life, except that he told me that as a child his family didn't have much money, but they had an aunt who lived in great style in a house she called 'Richborough'. Little Cecil assumed that meant she wanted everyone to know that she was wealthy. He himself became a wealthy man, but there was nothing ostentatious about him; he dedicated his wealth to assisting others.
The list of charities who were helped or set up by CJC include Oxfam, Help the Aged (now Age UK), Action in Distress (now Action Aid), and Toc H, but there are undoubtedly many more. He owned a series of furniture shops in London, called Andrews and Partners, but he disposed of the furniture business and used the name for an estate agent's instead. It was never widely known, but the estate agency's purpose was to fund Voluntary and Christian Service, and this remained the case during all the time that my father worked for the organisation.



The first Oxfam shop in Broad Street.
 Photo courtesy of Oxfam archive



Cecil Jackson-Cole was one of the founders of the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, which was set up during the war to aid the starving people of Greece while it was being blockaded by the Nazis. At the end of the war it was suggested that the job had been done, and that the committee should disband, but but CJC leaped to his feet saying, ‘There is a world of need out there, we have been effective, so we must go on.’

Oxfam has gone on, and it will be 70 years old this year.





CJC with his wife Theo at my wedding
Photo by Michael Wheeler



He was interested that I worshipped with the Quakers - I later became a Quaker - because he also worshipped with the Society of Friends. I don't think he was ever a member, but he certainly lived out the Quaker testimony about simplicity of lifestyle. He lived in a flat in Hastings (I think it was Hastings, somewhere on the South Coast, anyway). I went there once with my parents, to have lunch with him, and I have a memory of shabbiness and brownness, the way old-fashioned places used to be in the 70s. Not at all like a millionnaire's residence.

His only treasure seemed to be a set of African carved animals, exquisitely made in a variety of lovely woods. He said something like: 'Animals are so beautiful, I love to look at them.' He handled these carvings with an almost childlike delight and wonder.
I remember how, at lunch that day - we had his favourite dish, lasagne, followed by tinned fruit or something similarly unluxurious - he asked me very seriously whether I thought that it was more effective for a charity to appeal to people with images of horror - it was the time of the Biafran war, when we were shocked by images of skeletal babies - or to show them positive things that they could help with. I said I thought positive was better than shock - I opined that people turned off the shocking images quite fast. I was still very young - in my first year at university - but he really wanted to know what I thought and treated me with a respect that I remember well, though probably my answer to his question only reinforced what he was already thinking.

Not that he was always an easy man to work with; a man so driven and dynamic was bound to have his shadow side. Luckily, CJCs colleagues and employees had the support, when there were difficulties, of his first wife, Phyllis. Phyllis was dead, but CJC talked to her every day - I'm not sure how - and she gave him advice - evidently very good advice - on staff relations. This tubby, unremarkable-looking little man was in touch with angels and otherworldly powers as well as with the dead: I remember him telling me that he had endured attacks by Satan and beaten them off by calling on the name of Christ.

He had a habit of saying 'Ye-es. Anything e-else?' and sometimes my father would telephone him and say: 'You asked me to ring you, Mr Jackson-Cole.' CJC would answer: 'Ye-es. Anything e-else?'

He came to my wedding with his second wife, a delightful woman called Theo, and at the end of the film that was made of the day is a shot of CJC directing the cars out of my parents' drive, with an expression of solemn satisfaction. My father said, when he saw the film, that he must have been saying: 'Ye-es. Anyone e-else?' as he directed the cars out.
My father told me that when he was dying, in 1979, CJC was engaged in an argument with God. 'I can't go yet,' he said. 'I've got so much more to do.' Then he was seen to listen to God's reply, which must have been convincing, because he gave way, saying: 'All right. I'll go now.' Then he died.

He left behind him a legacy of charitable work which continues today, and millions of people have been benefited by his initiatives. I am proud that my father was associated with some of them. I also am privileged to have known, however slightly, a man who made such a constructive mark on history.

 

photo: Leo Reynolds







ON OBSOLESCENCE, by Jane Borodale

Why do some things just disappear from normal use or parlance? What is it about certain objects or habits or words that makes them slip off the map – is it a temporary cultural amnesia that forgets to include them for a while, or is it more terminal than that?

Looking at the thesaurus throws up interesting historical equivalents for the word ‘obsolete’ itself: Stale (1562-), outworn (1565-), overworn (1581-1610), overgone (1654), lapsed (1822-1890), passed forth of use (1565), lain at a stand (1622), outplaced (1928), and this my favourite; out of ure (1553-a1600).

One pudding very much out of ure these days is a tansy. Even the inimitable Dorothy Hartley has nothing to say in Food in England about tansies – not even about their lengthy incarnation as Lenten cakes. Geoffrey Grigson at least gives them a mention but rather discouragingly says that they are not to be recommended.

But, presuming that obsolescences should be looked at individually on a case-by-case basis, I thought I’d share with you a rather slap-dash experiment I’m doing today in the spirit of historical investigation.

Having known theoretically what a tansy is for a while (one of my characters in THE KNOT, the florid Reverend Tope, enjoys one on p309, for example), in truth I didn’t know how it might taste beyond being a ‘bittersweet milky egg dish’. Nor did I really know if one should be making a tansy cake at all, as the herb does contain a powerful insecticidal substance called thujone that is highly toxic in excess. Too much tansy (the herb) causes abortion, venous congestion of the internal organs, and convulsions. But a moderate amount is apparently digestive and good against worms. I don’t have worms, but am still feeling mighty curious.

Just a small sprig, I say to myself, going out to the garden to pick a handful or two before it starts raining – it’s clearly in the dose. (NB. Am no expert but I definitely wouldn’t try the following recipe at home if pregnant.) Maybe this is why no-one makes them any more? It’s the Russian roulette of desserts. Or maybe they just taste bad. Gerard claims they ‘be pleasant in taste and good for the stomache, for if bad humours cleave thereunder, it doth perfectly concoct them and carry them off.’ The bad humours would be left over from the Lenten fasting, all that consumption of fish engendering moist and phlegmatic imbalances in the body. This reminds me that probably I should be doing this earlier in the year, when the leaves are young and tender, not just as the plant is coming into flower.

Well let’s see. I’ve chosen one of Hannah Glasse’s versions from her Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747) because it sounds the most edible. I’m going to quarter the quantities below for the size of my dish, and will brazenly omit the spinach juice, because some other recipes didn’t have it (and there was none at the Co-op this morning):

To make a Tansey.

Take ten Eggs, break them into a Pan, put to them a little Salt, beat them very well, then put to them eight Ounces of Loaf-Sugar beat fine, and then a Pint of the Juice of Spinage. Mix them well together, and strain it into a Quart of cream; then grate in eight Ounces of Naples Bisket, or white Bread, a quarter of a Pound of Jordin Almonds, beat in a Mortar, with a little Juice of Tansey to your Taste; mix these all together, put it into a Stew-pan, with a Piece of Butter as large as a Pippin. Set it over a slow Charcoal Fire, keep it stirring till it is hardened very well, then butter a Dish very well, put in your Tansey, bake it, and when it is enough, turn it out on a Pye-plate.

Overall impressions:

1. The tansy juice, (which I’ve got by grinding a fair few leafy sprigs in a pestle and mortar with drops of water, then squeezed out into the cake mixture, leaving the fibres behind) is a disconcertingly dark green. It has an extraordinary aromatic, balsamic smell I could best describe as half mint, half flyspray.

2. It's not difficult to make. At all. Unless trying to photograph at same time.

3. I can report, now it has cooled down enough and having had my first suspicious mouthful (with no immediate ill-effects or venous congestion of the inner organs), then a greedy slice – that it is actually delicious. Somewhere between a cake and an omelette in texture, sweetly toffee-edged almost like a macaroon, and suffused with a hint of tansy flavour, albeit rather greeny-greyer in hue than one might hope for in a pudding, but yes, very good.

It’s no looker, this tansy, but all-in-all I’d say of late it has been maligned, ignored and almost lost for no reason at all. Will I make it again? Possibly; my smallest child adored it. I should add that the name of the tansy herb Tanacetum is from the Greek athanasia, or ‘immortality’. The name might refer to the old practice of packing corpses with tansy leaves to keep them preserved before burial, or maybe it’s just that in the long run some things never die, even so-called obsolete, outmoded, out-of-fashion puddings... 

What would you bring back from the brink?

Ada Leigh: Heroine of the Belle Époque by Imogen Robertson

Henri Brisport - Les Belles au parc Monceau, 1908

I’m editing my latest book at the moment. It is set largely in Paris during the winter of 1909 / 1910 and my lead character is a young English woman studying art at one of the women only ateliers. The pleasure of any sort of writing is to loose yourself in a different world and the Paris of the Belle Époque has been a fascinating place to spend a year, if somewhat dazzling. I’ve been overwhelmed with material, photographs and films, travel guides and memoirs but as always it has been the accidental discovery that has made the biggest impression. 

Librairie Stock, Paris, rue Saint-Honoré, 1909

I spent the first part of my research period at the London Library, and knowing the Paris floods of 1910 were going to play a big part in the final novel, I was browsing through their copies of the Times from January of that year. Before I’d even opened the page to the foreign news section though, my eye was snagged by one of the Special Announcements on the front page. The Ada Leigh Homes in Paris for English and American girls were acknowledging donations and asking for more, saying this: ‘The Homes have sheltered 22,723 Young Women who might otherwise have lived at questionable lodgings.’ At first I imagined an institution, deeply religious and probably unnecessary. Who were these women who had so much to fear from questionable lodgings? What did that even mean exactly? Still, the announcement was intriguing. Everything I had been reading about Paris up to that point had been soaked in champagne and the new electric lights, recommendations for the best hotels, tea-rooms reserved for ladies and the most useful omnibus routes for tourists. The poor were only mentioned to provide a contrast with the diamonds and satin of the customers crossing the pavement to the Café de Paris, or to add a little colour such as the cries of the street sellers pushing their carts. True, in reading the biographies of artists of the time one saw a certain sort of poverty, but it was a bohemian poverty still glamourised even when it was sordid and full of men and their mistresses arguing over the café tables of Monmartre. The heroine of my book was middle-class but with little money. She would not be at home in either setting and the story of those Young Women, English and American that the advert suggested were in Paris, and in need in great numbers didn’t seem to have made it to the literature I was reading. 

James Wilson Morrice - Street Scene Paris Pink Sky, 1908

I looked for more information on the homes and found, well very little, but in the end I found in the British Library a thin volume by Mrs Travers Lewis, Ada Leigh herself in fact called ‘Homeless in Paris.’ It had been printed as part of her fund raising activities. I started to read and it was one of those moments when a voice from a century ago speaks so clearly and fearlessly across the years, the emotion is a little like falling in love. 

The book tells the story of how Ada, an upper-middle class young woman, very religious from the first, came to spend most of her life in Paris caring for the destitute. Her story begins when, staying in Paris, she found the girl selling her gloves in the department store was English, and was not aware that there was an English chapel in the city. Ada offered to spend her Sundays reading the bible with the girl and any of her friends who wished to come. It was in this way she discovered any number of English women were living in Paris working six days a week for only their bed and board, and were locked out of their boarding houses on Sunday from sunrise to sunset. Some of these women started to come to study with her, she fed them too, and she began approaching others on the street, pressing invitations into their hands signed ‘from one who cares for you’. They told her ‘such sad stories I could not sleep.’

Gwen John - Chloe Boughton-Leigh, 1904-08

By 1873 she had moved to France and set  up a hostel for women in need. She did not ask questions or lecture, she simply cared for those who needed it and prayed for them, which probably won her a great deal more converts than haranguing them would have done. She dealt with drunks and pimps, went and collected girls out of brothels and opened a free registry for her charges to find respectable work. All this in face of deep opposition from her family to whom the idea of her, an unmarried woman, employed in such work was shocking. She was told that a gentlewoman’s name should only appear in public papers when she was ‘born, married and departed,’ and here was she openly campaigning for money. She asked where the more suitable candidates might be found, and as there was no one else willing to step forward she gained her point. Even her father was eventually won round. 

What makes her little book so remarkable to me though is the way she gives the women she helps their own voices. For instance she quotes one woman saying: ‘I hate Christian people… they build fine institutions for us when we are lost. Who will build one to prevent our being so?’  Another, an American girl brought over as a governess then dismissed with a pay off of 20 francs threw herself in the Seine. She told Ada, ‘It was not that I wished to die, but I did not know how to live.’ That girl did not recover from the illness that followed her suicide attempt. At other times Ada reports her cards offering help and prayer were handed back to her with the dry comment ‘give it to one of the new girls.’

Rue de Rivoli 1907

That book told me more about the loneliness and isolation that could overcome a stranger in Paris than anything else I came across in my research. I also developed a deep respect for this woman, her courage and generosity. Ada saved many lives and gave comfort to those in great need. She married in 1889 and was widowed in 1901 but was actively involved in the management of the homes until her death in 1931. She is all but forgotten now despite the many thousands of women she saved. She should be celebrated.

'To Thee or Not to Thee: Writing Historical Voices' by A L Berridge

I admit it. I enjoy ‘Downton Abbey’ – but I’m also one of those killjoy pedants who cringes at its use of modern slang. I can live with ‘get knotted’, I squirm at ‘get shafted’, but when it comes to ‘As if!’ I experience a strange desire to kill. 

But in this I'm a hypocrite, because my ‘Chevalier’ novels use modern idiomatic English for the spoken parts of the narrative – although the series is set in 17th century France. So how dare I criticize Downton Abbey?

To justify myself, I have to be brave and open up The Big Question. This is a notoriously dangerous topic to raise with historical writers, and the resultant spat is usually as polarizing and violent as anything in Hansard. The difference is that while one half of the combatants will be shouting ‘Hie thee hence, varlets!’ the others are yelling ‘Sod off.’

Language. We all know people ‘spoke differently’ in the past, but we don’t all agree on how to reflect that in our novels. If we write in the correct linguistic pattern for our period we’ll be incomprehensible, but if we ignore it altogether then we’re anachronistic. If characters speak ‘in period’ then readers struggle to identify with them, but if they don’t then we’re jarring the reader out of the very historical world we’re trying so hard to recreate. When George Bernard Shaw wrote that ‘it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman hate or despise him’ he might have been speaking for historical novelists.

Historical Novelists debating language

So what do we do?

It’s ultimately a personal choice, but with 18th century or later I prefer to stick within period – as I’ve done in 'Into the Valley of Death'. The English is perfectly understandable, there are no 'thee's and 'thou's to worry about, and as long as we make our period slang clear in context then it’s hard to justify writing any other way. 

My hero George Macdonald Fraser was the first to prove the Victorian period can produce fluid, natural, idiomatic, and even witty dialogue that’s both comprehensible and full of personality – as even one page of his Flashman series will illustrate. There is no NEED to resort to modern slang – so why do it?

The trouble starts with earlier history, because there is so much more latitude. No-one expects Roman History novelists to write in the language of their time, and I doubt they'd sell as well if they wrote in Latin. The same applies (in my opinion) to anything set in a non-English speaking country, or even in Britain prior to the 15th century. We are reading what is in effect a translation – which means the writer is free to be as modern as she likes.

But we still need readers to believe in it, and that’s where it gets difficult. One of the best solutions I’ve seen is the one used by Robert Graves in ‘I, Claudius’, where his style and syntax cunningly suggest to the reader that what they’re reading is a translation of a Latin original penned by Claudius himself.

Derek Jacobi in the BBC's 'I, Claudius'

 This sentence about the Sybils, for instance, which comes only a few pages from the start:

‘Others prophesy, indeed, but seem more inspired by Bacchus than by Apollo, the drunken nonsense they deliver; which has brought the oracle into discredit.’

It’s a hideous sentence to modern ears, but a perfect imitation of the truly ghastly prose produced by translating a ‘Latin Unseen’. I first read the novel at the age of 16, and still remember my reaction of ‘This is a real document. It’s all true.’ The book would be unreadable if Graves had written it all like that, but he didn’t need to. He had me right there.

We can’t all do that, nor would it always be appropriate. Mimicry of archaic language draws attention to how different these people were from ourselves, when (in my opinion) the main point of historical fiction is to make us feel closer. That’s why even scholarly editions of archaic work don’t offer literal translations, but aim instead for the closest modern equivalent.

That’s what I’ve attempted to do in my ‘Chevalier’ novels, which purport to be translations of original French documents. What would be the point of translating ‘Sacré Bleu!’ as ‘Holy Blue’? I could get closer to the meaning by making my character say ‘Good Heavens!’ – but I’d still be way off in terms of the tone, impact and emotional expression of the original. If I want a modern English reader to be as shocked as a 17th century French one would have been, I need to use something much stronger – and probably sexual rather than religious. To me, that’s being more true to the period rather than less.

Probably inappropriate

 But this is where the debate begins. I’d agree it’s inappropriate to substitute an idiom clearly identified with a very different period or location (such as an Americanism), but for some readers any liberty with the ‘translation’ can make such writing seem ‘unhistorical’.

I respect that opinion, but my characters didn’t speak ‘historical’ in their lifetime, so why should I make them do so now? I’m happy with either strictly period writing or strictly modern writing, but the one approach that drives me madder than Downton Abbey is the compromise that consciously aims to sound ‘historical’. This is the style that allows you to write modern English – but only the most formal, stilted version of it. Whether you’re writing Romans or French Revolutionaries, you must avoid slang, idioms, and contractions and your grammar must be perfect.

To which I say ‘Heavens forfend!’ (or even ‘Aargh, no!’). I can see the logic, in that the writing gives a historical ‘feel’ while remaining perfectly comprehensible, but the end result is too often a kind of bastardized Regency-speak which no-one EVER spoke at ANY time.

And verily they didn’t. It’s true we often have to deduce the speech of the past from formal written records, but why would anyone believe people didn’t use contractions in their everyday speech? What do we think the possessive apostrophe is? We write ‘John’s book’ because the speaker is contracting the original Old English genitive ending of ‘es’ and the apostrophe indicates the missing ‘e’. People have always slurred their speech, or how would the original ‘a norange’ have elided over time into ‘an orange’? The entire history of our language is one of orally-dictated change, so much of which has already happened by the 14th century that Chaucer’s language is regarded as ‘Modern English’.

But there’s something else vetoed in the 'Historical Bland' style, and that’s what forum-speak calls ‘teh swears’. I can understand this in books for young people or those aimed for the North American market, but I do object to the pretence that it’s done for historical accuracy. The ancient pedigree of the most infamous words is so well known they’re even referred to as ‘Anglo-Saxon’ – so are we really expected to believe we never actually used them, but merely put them in cold storage until a suitable climate appeared in the 20th century? Really? In sooth? Srsly?

 It’s true they weren’t used as commonly as the virtual punctuation we can hear around us today. It’s also true they weren’t (generally) used in the drawing room or corridors of power – though a quick listen to the Watergate tapes shows the difference when a public figure speaks in private. It’s even more true that their use was frowned on in literature, but I rather doubt the ‘strange oaths’ Shakespeare attributes to the soldier had anything to do with Freemasonry.

It’s ludicrous even to have to say this, but people have always been imperfect, always slurred their speech, always hurt, always bled, and always sworn. Why should a novelist – of all people – ever pretend otherwise? If we think historical fiction is a place to hide from the unpleasant realities of the modern world, I would respectfully suggest we’d be better off reading fantasy.

But I have a greater problem with Historical Bland than mere accuracy. Slang, idioms and varying syntax are all part of what makes a character’s speech individual, and if we deny all these we end up with a book where everybody sounds exactly the same. The rules allow some variance for old-style social class, but even if we assumed a London chimney sweep spoke in exactly the same way as a Lancashire mill worker, what about the differences between a Lyons Corner House ‘nippy’ called Gladys and a Lyons Corner House ‘nippy’ called Anne? Are they really identical? When I read a novel I want to hear individual voices, to spend time with living men and women who speak like real people rather than a book.

It can be done, even when we write ‘in period’. There is no such thing as ‘Victorian speech’, any more than the mere word ‘Latin’ will give us ‘Roman speech’. In 'Into the Valley of Death' I have a Blue Coat school boy who speaks of ‘fellows being beastly’, but also a Londoner of dodgy antecedents who says things like ‘We had a rag carrier come flashing his gab about your getting the bump-up’ – which I promise is easily understandable in context. In my current Crimean novel I have several minor characters of the officer class, and have to keep a very precise dictionary of which slang is used by whom – right down to the different variants of ‘old boy’, ‘old chum’, ‘old son’, ‘old man’ and ‘old fellow’. I know many writers who do the same.

Because we care. Even if we use modern English, that doesn’t mean we’re not bothered about being ‘true’ to the period. I’d never use words like ‘galvanised’, ‘electrified’ or ‘obsessed’, for instance, because the concept behind the words is anachronistic. When I found myself tempted to use ‘hypnotised’ in ‘Honour and the Sword’ instead of the more religious ‘entranced’, I knew I’d come out of the proper historical ‘mind-set’ and it was time to take a break. The language is only a secondary thing – it’s the thinking behind it that matters.

Which is why I can’t come down on either side of this debate. Ultimately there IS no right way. We each have our own, and that’s part of what gives us our ‘voice’. Each of us must write what works for our period, our story, our style, and our characters. And hope nobody hates us for it.

As long as we’re consistent, of course. If you write a sentence like ‘Verily, Mistress Sharon, thou art hot stuff,’ then we’ll ALL hate you.

                                                                           *******

Abuse can be sent directly to A L Berridge's website.

Mary Queen of Scots - Escape from Borthwick Castle, by Theresa Breslin

She was a game girl was Mary Stuart, and escaped from ‘secure’ premises quite a few times. The most widely recorded, and certainly the one I remember being told in my childhood was when, disguised as servant, she escaped from Loch Leven aided by the young lad, Willie Douglas.   

While researching Spy for the Queen of Scots the escape that most impressed me took place at Borthwick Castle where, poignantly, she spent her last night with the Earl of Bothwell. It is a forbidding fortress with hugely thick walls. Lord Borthwick offered Mary shelter when rebel Lords threatened to kill Bothwell after Mary married him. Immediately the would-be assassins gathered an army, closely pursuing the newly weds, to besiege the castle. Once Mary was safely inside Bothwell daringly slipped out of the castle to gather his men to defend the Queen:

Spy for the Queen of Scots is told in the first person of the main character, Jenny, who is Mary’s companion. That night Mary and Jenny sit together, huddled under a blanket in the window embrasure of the Queen’s bedroom, praying that Bothwell will elude the surrounding rebel forces…

‘Do you love him?’ I asked Mary.

‘He is going out to risk his life for me. How can I not love him?’

We held onto each other until dawn, when we heard the blast of a hunting horn from the distant hills. Then we knew he’d won free, whereupon we both gave way to a fit of weeping. 

The rebels called on Mary to surrender, telling her they’d sent for heavy cannon to bring down the castle walls. She refused to betray Bothwell and donned disguise to make her own bid for freedom.

Borthwick Castle is now a private hotel http://www.borthwickcastle.com/  You can book dinner (delicious!) to eat in the great hall, or indeed hire the whole castle for a weekend for family and friends! Situated not far from Edinburgh in beautiful countryside, it has the most hospitable staff who will happily give you a free guided tour before your meal to tell you of the history of the wild Border Clans and the ghosts they have heard laughing and chatting in the corridors. You can see the window Mary climbed out during the night of her own escape. You can stand in the top towers and look at the hill beyond and imagine the campfires of the rebels. You can sit in the window alcove of her bedroom and look down into the forest as she did, hoping that her lover would not get caught by the vengeful Scottish rebel Lords. I thought of her, orphaned, scarce out of her teens, twice Queen, twice widowed, a mother with no access to her baby, betrayed by family and former friends and in dire danger of losing her throne and her life.  With Research comes Insight. With similar insight I hope that historians might judge her less harshly.    

Debates with leading authors will be streamed live world-wide from 17^th – 21^st August during the Edinburgh Book Festival at a special World Writers’ Conference. These will be interactive – you might like to join in!

Theresa Breslin events in EDINBURGH this August include discussing the Researching & Writing  Historical Novels with fellow novelist Berlie Doherty (author of  Treason)  on 27^th August plus an event about the Illustrated Treasury of Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales, illustrated by Kate Leiper on 28^th August – both at the Edinburgh Book Festival.  

Divided City - Conversation and Performance extract from the musical is on at the Festival of Spirituality and Peace Venue on 25^th  August with excerpts from the play at the closing ceremony on 26^th August    

Random Thoughts in August - Celia Rees

I was lucky enough to be asked to the Edinburgh International Book Festival this year.  A flying visit,  up one day, back the next, so I didn't have much time to mooch round Edinburgh, one of my favourite cities. I have never actually set a book there but I did once go on a ghost tour and found plenty of material for a whole series of spooky books (back when I wrote that kind of thing).

I was there for an event, in conversation with Sally Gardner, who although not a History Girl, is an excellent writer of historical fiction, whose titles include I, Coriander, The Red Necklace and The Silver Blade. Our Chair was ex History Girl, Nicola Morgan. We were there to talk about our latest books. Her novel, The Double Shadow, is historical but like her other fiction has a fantasy twist to it. I was talking about This Is Not Forgiveness, which is not historical, but I guess soon will be. 

Afterwards, we were taken for lunch (there have to be some perks) and Sally and I had a very different, more intense, more private conversation about writing. What else? Put two writers together, especially when they write in a similar genre, and the conversation always comes round to some aspect of our craft. It is always interesting to know how someone else works, what someone else does, how they go about things, with historical novels, how they research. Sally is very different from me. She likes to consult experts in the particular field that interests her. I don't do this. That's always made me feel vaguely guilty, that I'm really a dilettante. I've always been a tiny bit scared that when I explain what it is I want to know, what it is about, they will tell me, 'Oh, no, you can't do that!'. So I prefer to nose about on my own.

The beauty of these conversations lies in what you learn about yourself as a writer, not just the other person. Talking to Sally, I realised, yet again, that there are no rules, no right or wrong way to go about things. There's just what works for you. One can can learn from other people, but one doesn't have to be like them. 

You can even break your own rules or working habits. For example, I don't usually consult documents. My primary sources have tended to be published letters, diaries, novels, plays, poems, songs. I don't go to the archive offices and ferret about in dusty papers. I'm not a historian, I tell myself, I don't have to do that, but recently you would have found me in the Imperial War Museum Research Room, opening boxes and undoing bundles of letters. It's not how I normally work, but it seems right for the project I'm working on now. 

Every writer has to learn to follow his or her instincts. Do what feels right. Fiction writing differs from non fiction. It is much more intuitive. A lack of discipline is sometimes an advantage. What I really like is being able to explore odd avenues, go off on tangents. As you can see, I have been doing 'proper' research, which also includes going to the library (I have always done that). In my case, Warwick University Library. August is a good time to visit. It's quiet in vacation time and they have a coffee bar downstairs, as well as an excellent collection of books. I'm still capable of being distracted, however, going 'off task'. Walking along the shelves, I spotted this book. 

Not on my reading list, nothing directly to do with my research at all, I just knew I had to get it out. Through the wonders of the internet, I have now downloaded it as a pdf file. It is not directly relevant, but I'm not writing a definitive history of the period. I'm looking for plot lines, ways into characters. That is what this book can give me. I also know that I'm past the background research stage and into something new.