Lady Charlotte Guest - Victorian powerhouse of myth and iron

by Deborah Swift

Next weekend* I am booked to give a talk on the Mabinogion, the extraordinary collection of Welsh myths that were first brought to prominence in England by Lady Charlotte Guest. Not only are the myths fascinating, but Charlotte Guest was quite a phenomenon herself.

Charlotte Guest

Born Charlotte Bertie in May 1812, she was the eldest child of the ninth Earl of Lindsay of Lincolnshire, and was brought up at Uffington House, a large country estate. When she was six years old, her father died and her mother remarried a vicar, a man whom she disliked intensely. Charlotte was a bookish and intelligent child, and being educated at home, her only escape was into literature. She soon taught herself several languages, including Arabic, Hebrew and Persian. She began keeping a journal when she was nine, and so we know a lot about her life, because she carried on writing it for another seventy years - until she was was seventy-nine! 

Page from Charlotte Guest's Diary

Her interest in Wales and its history began after meeting the MP for Merthyr Tydfil,  John Josiah Guest.  Full of vitality and energy, Josiah ran the largest ironworks in the country, the Dowlais Iron Company, which employed 7,000 workers. In 1833 Charlotte and John were married. Charlotte took a keen interest in the business, and in the welfare and education of the workers. Moreover, she was keen to escape the oppression of her step-father and Wales was suitably far from her family home.

Ever a keen linguist, she launched herself into learning Welsh. At that time there was a romantic revival and a strong interest in Arthurian legends. Charlotte began translating some Medieval Welsh tales into English. These tales were part of an oral tradition, and drawn from the written sources of the Llyfr Coch o Hergest, or Red Book of Hergest. Her translations included the four branches of the Mabinogi, three Arthurian Romances, and a translation of the well-known myth Taliesin. 

The Lady of the Fountain  (an Arthurian tale) was first published in 1838, and in 1849 the collected tales appeared as The Mabinogion in a lavishly illustrated edition. Since then they have been widely studied by poets such as Tennyson and scholars of Welsh and Celtic mythology, as well as those interested in the spiritual and wisdom traditions they embody. The myths are much-loved by illustrators too, trying to capture the unknowable in paint.

Click picture for more great
illustrations by Lee

Back to Charlotte Guest.  Not content with documenting the ancient tribes of Britain, Lady Charlotte also produced her own tribe - ten children: five boys and five girls. She was ambitious for her children, marrying them into the aristocracy and ensuring their education through the schools she endowed (the Dowlais Central Schools cost £20,000 to build - an enormous sum in the Victorian era.) This area of Wales was heavily influenced by Chartism, and these principles were evident in Charlotte Guest's educational ideals for her workforce.

On her husband's death she became the only active trustee of the ironworks, and ran the business. Astute and energetic, she insisted on being in control. This included negotiating terms when the men went on strike, and dealing with dissatisfied workers who in those times were unused to being ordered by a woman. One cannot help but think, that the models of the powerful women in the tales from the Mabinogion must have proved an inspiration to her when faced with these difficulties.

Dowlais House, centre of Charlotte Guest's empire

Two years later Charlotte fell in love with her son's classics tutor, Charles Schreiber. They shared a passion for history and collecting ceramics, and from then on they travelled the continent collecting, as many wealthy Victorians did. Their collections were left to the nation and are housed in the V&A, where there is a 'Schreiber' Room, and in the British Museum, which houses her collection of playing cards and fans. In 1891 she became the first woman to receive the freedom of the Worshipful Company of Fanmakers. 

Below - an unmounted fan-leaf,  painted for the occasion of the Schreibers' silver wedding anniversary in 1880, now in the British Museum.

Lady Charlotte died in 1895 but it wasn't until 1950 that her grandson, the Earl of Bessborough, published edited highlights from her diaries. The originals are now housed in the National Library of Wales. 

Charlotte Guest is chiefly remembered for her translations of the Mabinogion, from which we receive most of our knowledge about Welsh mythology, including the story of Rhiannon, the tale of the mysterious mound that leads to the Otherworld, Bran and the ravens that now roost in the Tower of London, about Arianrhod and her turning wheel of stars. Although many now take issue with Guest's translations, without her a whole generation of people would have had the door to these wisdom stories closed to them.

Work with the myths and stories of the Mabinogion still goes on, and new translations have appeared and continue to do so, proving that good stories always outlast those that tell them.

Online Translations of the Mabinogion Texts

Find out more about working with the Mysteries of the Mabinogion 

Watch a BBC video about The Mabinogion

The Dancing Floor Film - new film based on Mabinogion Myths

Sources:

V and A Museum

The Mabinogion - translations by Guest, Davies, Jones

Welsh Heroes

National Library of Wales

* This post is an Editors' Choice post, originally published on this blog on 16 March 2016

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Deborah Swift is the author of seven novels for adults and a trilogy for young adults. She lives in the North of England close to the mountains and the sea. Follow her on Twitter @swiftstory or find her on her website www.deborahswift.com

Giveaway: THE KING'S JUSTICE by E.M. Powell

A paperback copy of THE KING'S JUSTICE, the first in E.M. Powell's bestselling new medieval mystery Stanton & Barling series, is being offered.

A murder that defies logic—and a killer on the loose.

England, 1176. Aelred Barling, esteemed clerk to the justices of King Henry II, is dispatched from the royal court with his young assistant, Hugo Stanton, to investigate a brutal murder in a village outside York.

The case appears straightforward. A suspect is under lock and key in the local prison, and the angry villagers are demanding swift justice. But when more bodies are discovered, certainty turns to doubt—and amid the chaos it becomes clear that nobody is above suspicion.

Facing growing unrest in the village and the fury of the lord of the manor, Stanton and Barling find themselves drawn into a mystery that defies logic, pursuing a killer who evades capture at every turn.

Can they solve the riddle of who is preying upon the villagers? And can they do it without becoming prey themselves?

“Cleverly plotted, the action is fast paced and full of twists and turns, surprises, and suspense.” —Historical Novel Society

For a chance to win a copy, please leave a comment below. Don't forget to leave your contact details.

This giveaway will remain open until 11.59 pm on Sunday September 30 (Pacific Daylight Time)

Good luck!

Deadly or a Curative-poisons in medications

by Diane Scott Lewis

Toxins and poisonous plants have been utilized for centuries in medications. A Persian physician in the tenth century first discovered that poisons such as mercury could be employed as curatives and not only for applying on the tip of an arrow/spear to kill your enemy. But poisons had to be managed carefully.

Plants, long the healing forte of the wise-woman in England, were a common ingredient in medicinal "potions," though many had deadly qualities.

The foxglove, with its beautiful hooded, purple bloom is fatal if eaten.

William Withering

But eighteenth century British physician, William Withering, used infusions of this plant to treat dropsy (now known as edema).

Later, digitalis for heart failure, was created from this plant.

Rosy periwinkle is also toxic to eat. However, in traditional Chinese and Indian medicine, it’s used to treat diabetes and constipation.

More well known is the Opium poppy, used to make morphine (and unfortunately heroin-the killer of many an addict). Morphine is invaluable as a pain reliever for the sickest of patients. Small doses of other deadly toxins such as henbane, hemlock and mandrake have been employed to ease the pain of surgeries. But a dose slightly too high would kill the patient.

Strychnine, derived from a tree seed or bark, was made into medicines to raise blood pressure. It was first marketed as a poison to kill rodents.

In Shakespeare’s time, poisonous extracts were added to cough medicines. Opiates were common in cough remedies, mainly for sedation. Mrs. Cotton in the seventeenth century suggested a mixture of vinegar, salad oil, liquorice, treacle, and tincture of opium when "the cough is troublesome."

No one yet understood the addictive nature of some of these drugs—if the patient lived to find out.

The chemical element mercury, another toxin, was used starting in the 1500’s to treat syphilis.

Well into the twentieth century, mercury was an ingredient in purgatives and infant’s teething powder.

Arsenic is another poison (also utilized to kill rats) that was commonly added to medications. A chemical element, arsenic is found in many minerals. In the 18th to 20th centuries, arsenic compounds, such as arsphenamine (by Paul Ehrlich, 1854-1915) and arsenic trioxide (by Thomas Fowler, 18th c.) were popular. Arsphenamine was also used to treat syphilis. Arsenic trioxide was recommended for the treatment of cancer and psoriasis.

Numerous people suffered adverse effects or died after the ingestion of these lethal ingredients.

In my recent release, The Apothecary’s Widow, arsenic is found in the tinctures used to treat the ague of Lady Pentreath. Unfortunately, arsenic is not normally one of the ingredients listed in that cure, and never in such a large dose.


Who murdered Lady Pentreath, her miserable husband, Branek, or the apothecary Jenna who prepared the medicines, a widow about to be evicted from her shop, which is owned by the Pentreaths? A corrupt constable threatens to send them both to the gallows.

Click here to purchase The Apothecary’s Widow.

To find out more about my novels, please visit my website:

http://www.dianescottlewis.org


Sources:

livescience.com
The Power of Poison: Poison as Medicine, the American Museum of Natural History

William Buchan, Domestic Medicine: or, a treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases by regimen and simple medicines [second edition] (London: 1772)

Wikipedia