A Book of Beasts by Kate Lord Brown

Choosing a book for a reading at the newly opened Doha Children's Library, it was hard to select from the well-loved, (read: torn, chewed, scribbled on), selection on our shelves. I narrowed it down to Slinki Malinki, Six Dinner Sid, and We're Going on a Bear Hunt. Browsing the shelves of the library afterwards, it struck me how many children's books feature animals - and I couldn't think of a single adult book with an animal protagonist. Can you? The last ones I remember reading were in my early teens - Animal Farm, Duncton Wood, Stonor the Eagle, (following on swiftly from an entire bookshelf of horse books). So many of the great children's books are peopled with animals - Aslan in Narnia springs to mind, perhaps you can think of other favourites? What happens - when do we 'grow out of' books with complex animal characters?

There's certainly a long history to the love affair between animals and literature, going all the way back to the medieval Bestiaries. As long as there have been books, there has been the desire to categorise, to illustrate, to understand the animals that share our world. I remember a copy of Diderot's 1751 Encyclopedie in the gallery I worked for in London - the illustrations were clearly not 'from life' and quite fantastical. But then, imagine trying to describe a duck billed platapus to someone who had never seen one before.

One yearly December tradition is Masefield's 'Box of Delights'. I love Judith Masefield's illustrations for the first edition of her husband's work - stark and lovely: 'the wolves are running ...' It is a tale that weaves fantasy, magic and the 'real': Herne the Hunter transforming into a stag, a phoenix rising from the embers of a pub fire, and lovely Barney dog trotting faithfully at Hawlings' side down the centuries. 

Perhaps it is 'children's' literature, but I know a lot of adults who still adore the story. Maybe the best of children's historical fiction does this, transcending age - Michael Morpurgo springs to mind for his animal characters, like noble Joey, the unforgettable War Horse.

Writers and animals: 'Why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this ... 

but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.’ Boswell on Johnson and Hodge

Admittedly, I am the kind of person who is as likely to ask after your dog/cat/horse as your human family, but recreating 'real' historical animal characters is tremendous fun. The newly finished book deals with a particularly tense few months in Marseilles in 1940, and the presence of Dagobert the faithful black poodle who belonged to the young American heiress at the heart of 'the real Casablanca' humanised scenes of the novel. The fact that 'the artist's Schindler' then adopted Clovis, a black poodle puppy, instead of rescuing the war orphan his wife hoped he would bring home to New York, spoke volumes about his character. That must have been an interesting conversation. 'Poo-dog ...' (yes, that was his nickname for her) '... I know you wanted a baby, but I've brought home a poodle.'

Virginia Woolf and Binka

I'd be fascinated to know if anyone can suggest adult historical fiction with animal protagonists, because I'm still drawing a blank. I can think of a few 'bit parts', and there's even a classic scriptwriting text 'Save the Cat' which reinforces the value of animals as a reflection on the human characters' strengths and weaknesses, (the thought being that if the protagonist shows his decency and compassion by 'saving the cat' literally or metaphorically, we identify with them). When so many writers work with four-legged companions at their side, it's strange that they don't appear at the heart of their fiction more often. But then there is ...

 Colette

 Beatrix Potter

If you are enjoying some pre-Christmas boondoggling, there are

more wonderful photos of writers and their animals here and here.

I've written with a succession of dogs dozing under the desk, from a rescued husky/MalamuteX in Spain, to an Afghan hound who had more in common with Muir's 'What-a-Mess' than a show dog. This evening there's a pencil stealing pug snoring at my feet, and a rescue flame point SiameseX draped across the bookshelf. All three of us send the HGs and everyone reading good wishes for a peaceful and happy Christmas to those who celebrate it, and we look forward to reading and writing with you next year. If you write with animal companions, it would be fascinating to hear who shares your writing day?

Seasonal Drinking by Imogen Robertson

My Dad making sure Christmas goes smoothly.

I’m glad to say that my family tend to get on very well, particularly at Christmas. After considering this for some years, I’ve decided it’s because we start the day by drinking Champagne Cocktails. So, on that dubious premise, here’s my personal guide to festive drinking for History Girls:

1. Champagne Cocktail

Now I know this is just a Robertson Christmas tradition, but it’s a great tradition so I feel it only right to try and spread the word. Cocktails are an American invention - thanks, guys - and were regarded with a sort of delighted fascination when they crossed the pond in the 19th century. There is a sort of drooling delight in the way the British papers report on these strange American mixed drinks. In 1884 they list with palpable relish the huge range of cocktails available at the American Bar of the International Health Exhibition, London. A medal was awarded to Plymouth Gin at the same event, by the way. That sounds like my kind of Health Exhibition. Still, the Champagne Cocktail was King. It is described as a ‘capital soother for a sore head and coppery tongue.’ Which is true, and probably why it works for us in Darlington on Christmas morning. 

Mr Gladstone was offered one in 1888 when he visited the United States Exchange in the Strand. After drinking it he offered a general invitation to the people of the Republic to write to him, giving his address as ‘Mr Gladstone, England’. Which is the sort of thing I do after a cocktail.

2. Mulled Wine

Ok. Back to more traditional Christmas fare. Well-ish. It is the mulled wine that Fred lifts to drink the health of his Uncle Scrooge in ‘A Christmas Carol’, and it’s certainly associated with Christmas now, but basically I think the British were always up for the idea of mulling something whenever the weather got chill. 

John Hutton’s Dictionary of Modern Slang in 1859 defines to mull as to spoil or destroy, which seems a bit harsh in this context, though maybe that depends on what you think of posset. 

Let me explain. For Elizabeth Raffald in her mid-eighteenth century cookbook, mulling wine involves a lot of egg yolks as well as sugar, nutmeg cinnamon and optional orange peel, to create a drink that is ‘hot and pretty thick’ to be served with toast, so her mulled wine is basically boozy custard.

Please tell me there's booze in that cup.

By the mid-19th century recipes are offered with or without eggs, so the ‘egg-nog / posset’ tradition separates from the ‘adding spices and sugar to anything alcoholic’ tradition of mulling as we know it now in the UK. Possets were regarded as health drinks, which is perhaps why in the early 19th century mulled wine seemed to be the drink of choice for men who went in for ultra marathons. Well, at least it was for a Chairman named Spence who in 1801 went 42 miles in the space of eight hours at a ‘kind of trot or half-run’.  He had three rests of a quarter hour each when he took a little mulled-wine. In 1806 a Shropshire man was similarly sustained during his attempt to walk 142 miles in 30 hours. Neither news item states this is the 'with egg' version of mulled-wine, but it would make sense. Obviously it was the drink of champions - a sort of 19th century version of those protein shakes beloved by modern sports fiends.

3. Punch

Now degraded to a nasty neon concoction left at office parties to provoke the prankster and trap the unwary, it was the high holiday drink of the 18th century country squire. In 1792 he was already thought of as a creature of a former age, mourned over thus in the Annual Register: ‘[He] never played at cards but at Christmas when a family pack was produced from the mantle piece, was commonly followed by a couple of grey hounds and a pointer and announced his arrival at a neighbour's house by smacking his whip or giving the view halloo. His drink was generally ale except on Christmas, the fifth of November or some other gala days when he would make a bowl of strong brandy punch garnished with a toast and nutmeg.’ Again with the toast! Reminds me of my days drinking in Russia, when the locals repeatedly told me vodka could do you no harm if you had a bite of black bread after every shot. They were wrong.

4. Spiced ale / Wassail!

Laurie Graham has got ahead of me in this excellent post, but I can’t resist adding this 1784 account from a correspondent to The Gentleman’s Magazine: 

‘In that part of Yorkshire near Leeds where I was born, and spent my youth, I remember, when I was a boy, that it was customary for many families on, the twelfth eve of Christmas […] to invite their relations, friends and neighbours to their houses, to play at cards and to partake of a supper, of which minced pies were an indispensable ingredient; and after supper was brought in the Wassail Cup, being a large bowl, such as is now used for Punch, filled with sweetened ale and roasted apples. I have seen bowls used for this purpose that held above a gallon. A plate of spiced cake was first handed about to the company, and then the Wassail Bowl, of which every one partook, by taking with a spoon, out of the ale, a roasted apple and eating it, and then drinking the healths of the company out of the bowl, wishing them a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. […] I am of opinion that the custom was very ancient, but from whence it arose, or why the mixture was called Lamb Wool, I do not at present pretend to account.’

Karel Van Mander III

5. Nappy to finish

I apologise, ‘nappy’ was just slang for strong ale, but mentioning it here means I can quote this, and having found it, I must. It’s from a volume called ‘The Oxford Sausage’ of 1772.

Meanwhile then, make us Statesmen happy 

This Christmas with a Cup of Nappy: 

Bring forth your punch, your strong, and stale 

The shivering Newsman's sure regale: 

Nor let the authors of these rhymes 

Find your hearts - harder than the times.  

Cheers! 

Merry Christmas, folks. 

www.imogenrobertson.com

'Christmas - Ritual and Remembrance' by A L Berridge

We used to have my grandparents over for Christmas Day. I didn’t realize my grandfather was nearly blind or that his deafness dated from the Somme, and can only remember the frustration of watching ‘The Towering Inferno’ while he sat four inches from the screen and turned round after an hour to ask in a hoarse whisper, ‘Is there a fire?’

Yes, I hate myself now. But it wasn’t only my grandparents’ own history that I missed, and I was always puzzled when at the end of the meal my grandfather would raise his glass and make a solemn toast to ‘Absent Friends.’ The gravity whizzed straight over my childish head, and it was many years before I realized we weren’t just drinking to family in Canada for Christmas, but to people who were actually dead.

It seemed a strange way to celebrate what should be a happy occasion, but Christmas is a time of ritual togetherness, and when everything else is the same we feel more acutely the sense of what is lost. The first Christmas after bereavement is terrible, with every little treat an aching reminder of those no longer there to enjoy it, but as time goes on the season becomes a pleasure rather than a pain, a way of keeping our loved ones alive and with us in memory. This year (as every year) I’ll be preparing sprouts and stuffing to the sound of 'Carols from Kings’, and smiling at the memory of my father.

But there's more to this than any one individual's recollections. Ritual is a repetition of acts performed in the same way over the long parade of years, and in its performance we are opening the door to history. That the Commons doors should be slammed in Black Rod’s face at the opening of Parliament derives from the 17th century, that the Lord Chancellor should sit on the ‘Woolsack’ goes back to the 14th, and when we see these things done then we’re watching history.

We saw it in July when the board at Buckingham Palace announced the birth of Prince George. We can see it every day – in the lowering of a flag, the wearing of a Judge’s wig, the Changing of the Guard. When a Latin Grace is recited at High Table, when monks chant Plainsong, when a bugler plays the Last Post, then we are hearing it too. And when we take communion, or drop a penny in wishing well, or even say ‘Bless you’ to someone who sneezes, then we’re not re-enacting history, we’re living it for real.

Popular wishing well in Kyoto

It’s perhaps this last which matters most to historical novelists. It’s true we spend our time recreating worlds profoundly different from our own, but when we want to engage our readers’ emotions then we concentrate most on those things that are the same. Love, death, friendship, betrayal – everyone can identify with these, and empathize with those characters who experience them. I would argue that the same is true of ritual.

Obviously it’s harder in some periods than others. Not many of us have actually poked about in an animal’s entrails as a means of foretelling the future, and I can’t say I’ve ever made an offering to Athene, but even in the classical civilizations we can still recognize the familiar seeds of actions we perform today.

When someone ‘tempts fate’ by a careless remark I may not say ‘Absit omen!’ and ‘spit in my bosom’, but I might well cry ‘Don’t say that!’ and jump to touch wood. Different actions, but when Robert Graves described a character doing this in ‘I, Claudius’ then the jolt of recognition was just the same.

And as the centuries roll on it gets easier and easier. There are Christian churches where the readings still come from the King James Bible (1611) and the communion service is conducted by the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. There are (secret) places in England where Morris Dancing isn’t a re-enactment, but continuation of a tradition handed down from generation to generation to keep alive the pagan ritual. My own favourite annual Fair is the one at Bampton in Devon, which has been going on even before Henry III granted its Charter in 1258. It’s not a quaint re-enactment like a Victorian ‘Christmas Fayre’, it’s a real county trade-meet which has quite simply never stopped. 

The Bampton Mummers at this year's Charter Fair

Ritual has a way of surviving, particularly when it’s fun. I doubt we’d really bother to ‘Remember, remember the 5th of November’ if it didn’t have fireworks and a bonfire thrown in – but we do, and it’s one of our strongest links to the past. In the Sussex village of Lindfield they even have a Guy dressed like Fawkes himself and the Lindfield Bonfire Society lead it to its doom with 17th century speeches and cries from the crowd of ‘Down with Popery!’

But it’s not just Guy Fawkes we remember now, any more than it’s only Christ we think of at Christmas. The ritual has entered history in its own right, and ‘Bonfire Night’ links us to other centuries simply on the grounds that we have all celebrated the same thing. I remember experiencing a moment’s ‘double-take’ when Sergeant Timothy Gowing in the Crimea wrote of the Battle of Inkerman (5th November 1854) ‘That was keeping up Gunpowder Plot with a vengeance!’

It can even apply beyond the specific event being commemorated. Bonfires and fireworks were around long before Guy Fawkes, but it was my experience of November 5th that made it easy for me to write about them. Describing a display in 1640’s Paris for ‘In the Name of the King’ I had to remember that the fireworks were white rather than coloured, and arranged mainly in static set pieces, but the effect on the crowd was one with which we’re all familiar. They made the same noises of ‘ooh’ and ‘ah’, and my rustic narrator noted with wonder how ‘men with hardened faces and swords on their hips turned suddenly into children.’ 

From Claude Lorrain's Firework Series (1637)

But in Europe at least, the biggest ritualized event has got to be Christmas. Traditions vary between countries, and some have faded altogether, but the ritual is still so powerfully laden with memory that for many people it’s become something to avoid. Divorce, bereavement, a reaction against an oppressive religion – hotels do a roaring trade on December 25th as customers flee the haunting shade of Christmas.

It has the power to touch us like nothing else. This little video of Christmas in 1914 is only two minutes long, but it contains one image that hits me like a kick in the stomach.

For me it’s the hats. The tins of pudding are unfamiliar to me, as alien as the trenches themselves, but those hats are identical to the ones that fall out of crackers at every Christmas table in Britain. Their remembered flimsiness is suddenly so vivid that the jollity becomes unbearable, everything so real and immediate that I want to reach into the screen and grab the men out of it, anything to save them from the horrors that only we know lie ahead.

And Christmas is full of such ambushes, each a little sensory pool of memory to trap the unwary. The glittering decorations, the trees and fluttering candles, the taste of turkey and mulled wine, the smell of cinnamon and mince pies, the tearing of paper, the sound of carol singers, a Salvation Army band, the snap of crackers and the laughter of children. Even (heaven help us) bloody Slade. Memory catches in every particle of it, and the older we get the more we find nothing has been lost. If ritual is the doorway to the past, then on Christmas Day it’s gaping wide open.

And to history too. Mince pies may no longer contain meat – but a recent culinary experiment proved that few could tell the difference between the modern pie and those created by Mrs Rundle 160 years ago. Health-and-safety may have killed the idea of charms in the Christmas pudding, but crackers still contain their substitutes – just as they in turn are the modern equivalent of ‘pulling the wishbone’. It’s true that many of our Christmas traditions date back only as far as the 19th century and Dickens, but some are far, far older, and carols like ‘Good King Wenceslas’ and ‘The Holly and the Ivy’ are mediaeval in origin. The sole surviving manuscript of ‘Adam lay ybounden’ is dated to the fifteen century, and the song itself is believed to be even older. Listen to such things, and you won’t be going back just to your own youth – but to the childhood of Henry Tudor.

Fragment of the surviving MS of 'Adam Lay Ybounden'

That doesn’t always help when we’re writing about places with their own traditions, but my own favourite Christmas ‘ingredient’ is universal to all the so-called ‘Christian countries’. It’s rarer now, and whether we personally experience it depends entirely on the town or village in which we live, but to me it’s the most magical of sounds, and one that spans the years like no other. In 17th century Paris it would have been uttered most dominantly by the voices of Marie, Jacqueline, Gabrielle, Guillaume, Pasquier, Thibaud and the Sparrows, but the same kind of sound rang out from besieged Sevastopol in 1854, and can be heard today in every city in Europe. 

This sound. This. You don’t need to be Christian to appreciate the gladness of this, or to share in the experience that’s been enjoyed across the centuries by rich and poor alike. This is the very sound of history, and if December 25th takes us back down the tide of memory, then in my mind it does so to the sound of Christmas bells. 

***

A L Berridge's much less sentimental website is here.

Her shameless appeal to Christmas charity for soldiers without graves is here.

The rest of her is probably somewhere else scoffing mince pies.

Christmas Cribs & Nativity Tableaux

Theresa Breslin

Recently I’ve been engaged in some banter on Twitter with @KatharineEdgar about modern Nativity Plays in schools. We were commiserating re the number we had to sit through and exchanging views on modern interpretations of the Age-Old Story.  

All of which led me to think about Nativity Tableaux of Christmas Past and Christmas Present.  

Every year, on Christmas Eve, my parents would bring out the battered biscuit-tin box containing the family Crib set. I and my siblings were allowed, very carefully, to unwrap the ceramic figures of Mary, Joseph, Shepherds, the Kings in richly coloured garments, ox, ass, and Baby Jesus lying in his manger bed. Under some supervision (?) we’d hammer together a rough shelter for the figures - I do actually recall handling a chisel when I was about seven years old, Health & Safety be danged! - and spread straw liberally about.

After that was done, and the Crib was set up on a side table by the fire, the Big Deal was: Who got to put Which figures Where…

There was intense rivalry for Mary and Joseph and normally these were allocated to the Two Bossy Big Sisters. I’d usually kick up a fuss about this. I didn’t particularly want to take charge of Mary and Joseph but felt obliged to make a token gesture of objecting, in the hope that I could earn an extra biscuit before bed in compensation. Then it was the turn of middle sister and older brother. I waited. With the major characters allocated I knew that I could get the one I secretly wanted. My favourite was the young shepherd wearing a rough coat of sheepskin with a flute held to his lips. I always chose him, this unnamed shepherd. I think it was because he was different. I’d place him on the side at the back to play his music, and imagine how the notes might sound as he watched his sheep on the hillside at night near Bethlehem two thousand years ago

I have a vague recollection of, at one time, being allowed to position the very last figure to go in - the Baby Jesus. This was the privilege accorded to the youngest in the family. My little sister arriving five years after me usurped my role. I will admit to pangs of jealousy when no other child came after her and so she held that post for all of our childhood.

Of course, as soon as she had turned her back I rearranged the baby into what I considered a more appropriate position.

It seems that the oldest known picture of what might be termed a Nativity Scene was found on the walls of the catacombs of Rome. 

Another very old example is the wonderfully simple depiction on a 4^th century sarcophagus in Milan as seen here.

 

The tradition that is followed now is less ancient than those. St Francis of Assisi is credited with creating the first representation of the stable and the manger about a thousand years ago. To inspire spirituality he arranged a living nativity scene with real people and animals in a in a cave near the Italian village of Greccio. Not too long after this Arnolfo di Cambrio made the first set of Crib figures which can still be seen in the church of St Mary Major in Rome.   

 

 

Styles changed to become elaborate and ornate but in recent years have become more simple again.

I love this hand-knitted version a friend of mine has so that her children can rearrange the figures without any damage being done.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               My own family Crib set is very plain.

  

 

Through the years I’ve experienced many living Christmas Nativities of great variety. I’ve watched it told from the Point Of View of the Sheep, Donkey, Innkeeper, Innkeeper’s Wife, Wise Man, the Star etc. You name it. I’ve seen it. This year the Aliens were a startling innovation, but Baby Jesus didn’t look too fazed as he was plonked down in the middle of a stage full of spacemen and green-faced creatures from the Planet Zog.

When my parents died the family agreed that my youngest sister should have the Christmas Crib set and every December she puts it out. The paint is faded and the figures are chipped with pieces knocked off, but they seem to radiate the love and affection of yesteryears .

 

And yes, occasionally, over the Festive Season, when there’s no one about I do find my fingers wandering to rearrange the Baby Jesus in his manger bed.   

Happy Christmas one and all!

Images and Photographs Copyright:  © SCARPA

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