Henry Hudson's Search for the East Indies from the North

By Katherine Pym

Henry Hudson

In the first decade of 17th century, Henry Hudson worked for several merchantmen companies, both in England and in Holland. His goal was to find the northern route to the Spicerie Islands in the South Pacific.

He worked for the Muscovy Company, England's East India Company, and the Dutch East India Company.  These companies pooled their resources, made their captains sign extensive contracts, gave them long lists of rules and regulations, then sent them on their way to find the easiest, fastest passage to Spicerie ports of call.

The route south through the Cape of Good Hope was fraught with danger, i.e., weeks of calm or killer storms, scurvy, the bloody flux, pirates. Once into the Cape, there were added dangers of rogue waves that came out of nowhere, swamping and sinking a ship to the depths of the sea.

If it weren't for the ice that filled the northern regions, that route would be far easier to navigate.  When they went north toward Greenland or west to Newfoundland, these intrepid explorers found a vast ocean crowded with so much fish, they leaped into their boats rather than be netted.  They brought home stories of ling cod, and whale meat/lard.  Fishermen sent their ships to these waters, and the English dinner table began to find new foods that delighted the palate. Oil lamps and candles began to smell of whale lard. 

When Hudson worked for the Muscovy Company, he did not find a Northwest Passage, but alerted his employers of a place where one could catch many whales.  The Dutch East India Company (VOC) had so many failures, when they heard of Hudson, they enlisted his services.

Hudson promised better things.  He was certain the passage could be found.  All their previous captains could not find the passage, and the directors wanted to know how he would go about it. 
Henry replied that he followed Petrus Plancius' theory.  Plancius was one of the founders and cartographer of the VOC, so the directors nodded their approval. When Hudson offered this theory, Plancius was still alive. He could be consulted for authenticity.

The theory was of a temperate, open sea in the North Pole not covered with ice. What Hudson professed was a mild climate above '74 degrees latitude - the point at which the Dutch ships had always found their path blocked by ice'. Hudson not only affirmed to have seen this, he raised the stakes higher by adding the depth of the sea was so great at this point, the swells could never freeze. In this temperate area, Hudson declared to have seen a new land with many animals, sweet grasses wherein the animals grazed. It was a veritable paradise.

Hudson further added if he could go above '83 degrees latitude', he would sail west to the Pacific then south into the warmer seas of the East Indies. VOC demanded more proof, so Hudson sent for Petrus Plancius.  The gentleman, also an astronomer and clergyman, nodded his concurrence at Hudson's every point. He added the sun's long days and white nights during the summer kept the waters warm enough so that ice could not form. As a result, Henry was given the opportunity to seek a northern route to the South Seas.

Once aboard ship, Hudson disregarded all instructions by the VOC. He used his own maps and went northwest through bad weather. Finding the way too difficult, Hudson tootled south. He expected to find a waterway along the American coast he could travel to the Pacific. He did not find it, but did find a land rich in fisheries and game, trees so big they would make excellent ships.

Hudson had found Manhattan Island. The VOC was not impressed but other merchants were, which started the colonization of that area.
 

Henry Hudson's last journey

In 1610, this time financed by English merchants, Hudson tried again. He found his way into what is now the Hudson Bay. The seas were filled with ice. His crew turned surly, and one night mutinied. They grabbed hold of Henry Hudson and a few faithful crewmen, put them in a small boat without food, water, or warm clothing, and sent them adrift.  Henry Hudson disappeared into the night, never to be seen again.

Please find my novels (ebook and paperback) at http://www.amazon.com/Katherine-Pym/e/B004GILIAS
You can also find them at the NOOK.

Bibliography: Nathaniel's Nutmeg by Giles Milton, and Wikipedia (Hudson, Petrus Plancius)

The Legend of Fair Helen

From Wilson's Tales of The Borders

by Anita Davison

In the village of Eaglesfield in the Scottish Borders, stands the ancient church of Kirkconnel, where a 16th Century tragedy is said to have taken place.

Helen Irving lived in Bell Tower, a Pele Tower on the Scottish border and served as a refuge from the Scots Reviers who raidede the cattle and sheep of the border farms.

Helen was reputed to be a beautiful girl with many suitors, including Robert Bell of Blacket House. Her family approved of Robert, who was from an important and financially secure family. Helen, however loved a young man named Adam Fleming of Kirkpatrick.

Torn between her parents’ wishes, and her love for Adam, she would meet him at twilight on Kirkconnel Lea, or in the churchyard, a romantic spot, surrounded by the river Kirtle.

Robert Bell, insane with jealousy and determined to win Helen’s hand, followed her when she met Adam armed with a carabine with the intent of confronting his rival. Seeing them together, his jealousy overcame his reason and he fired across the steam at Adam. At the last second, Helen threw herself in front of her lover and was shot in the chest, falling dead on the spot.

Kirconnel Church

In a fury of grief, Adam launched himself down the banks of the Kirtle Water where Bell was frantically trying to reload his gun. Raging, he hacked Bell to death with his sword, then returned to Helen’s body and cradled her in his arms throughout the night. In the morning, knowing he would hang for Bell’s murder, Adam fled the country and was not heard of again.

When Helen’s body, and Robert’s mutilated one were found, Adam was initially accused of a double murder in his absence. The truth finally came out when friends of Helen vouchsafed for the integrity of Adam, his love for Helen, the meetings in the churchyard and Bell’s jealousy.

A few years later a servant of the Bell Tower, found the prostrate body of a dead man lying atop Helen’s grave. He recognised the still handsome features of Adam Fleming and ran to inform Helen’s family. Adam was buried next to Helen, a sign that her parents had forgiven their daughter and her lover. The grave of the lovers exists in the church-yard of Kirconnell,  the tomb-stone into which a cross and a sword are sculpted and the inscription: ‘Hie jacet Adamus Fleming’

Graves of Helen and Adam

Sir Walter Scott, writing at the beginning of the nineteenth century, recorded the Ballad of Fair Helen in his ‘Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border’.

I wish I were where Helen lies,
Night and day on me she cries;
O that I were where Helen lies,
On fair Kirconnell Lee.

Curst be the heart that thought the thought,
And curst the hand that fired the shot,
When in my arms burd Helen dropt, (maid)
And died to succour me!

O think na ye my heart was sair (sore)
When my love dropt down and spak nae mair! (spoke no more)
There did she swoon wi’ meikle care, (with great care)
On fair Kirconnell Lee.


In John Mackay Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, the heroine is called Helen Palmer and her story is somewhat embellished, but  whether it is a legend passed down from the 16th Century, or  a Victorian romanticism of an original story, the legend of Fair Helen Irving and her Adam is still a lovely one.


Anita Davison is a Historical Fiction Author whose latest release, ‘Royalist Rebel’ a biographical novel set in 17th Century England, is being released by Claymore Books in early 2013 under the name Anita Seymour

Sir Francis Drake and the African Slaves, by Tim Vicary

As a boy, growing up in Devon, I was taught that Francis Drake and John Hawkins were great Elizabethan heroes.  Drake was the first Englishman to sail around the world, to return with untold riches and be knighted by Queen Elizabeth on the deck of his ship, the Golden Hind; Hawkins was the founder of the Royal Navy, the man who designed and built the fast, weatherly galleons which sailed rings around the Spanish Armada.

These men were pioneers, adventurers, founders of the British Empire. Everything they did seemed admirable. They had saved the nation once; if England were ever in danger of invasion again all we had to do was to sound Drake’s Drum (which was hidden somewhere in Plymouth) and like King Arthur, he would rise from the dead and sail back to our rescue. As schoolboys, we basked in the reflected glory of these men. The symbol for the county of Devon was an Elizabethan galleon – Drake’s ship - sailing proudly across a blue sea.

It’s different today. Look up Devon County Council on the web and what do you find? No ship – just a logo of two green leaves. Terrific. (So Devon has trees and the rest of England does not?) But it’s a sign of the times. The environment is fashionable, the British Empire is no longer something to be proud of. 

Do today’s school children learn much about Francis Drake and John Hawkins? I wonder. If they do, I’m sure they are taught a different version of British history differently to the one I learned; and to an extent, that’s quite right. For Sir Francis Drake was not just a hero; he was also a pirate and a thief. He was licensed by the Queen to steal, burn and destroy Spanish ships and colonies in the New World. He was as feared and hated by the Spanish just as much as the Vikings once were by English monks, or Somali pirates are by sailors today.  

So what about his cousin, Sir John Hawkins, the founder of the British Navy, the man who built Queen Elizabeth’s galleons to defend us against the Spanish Armada? Surely he was no pirate; he was a respectable merchant, a shipowner,  a businessman, a senior civil servant.

Well, yes. He was all of those things. But he was a slave trader too. That’s where much of his wealth came from.

Oh dear. If there’s one thing that’s really really bad about the British Empire, that has be it: the slave trade. African prisoners torn from their homes, chained and packed like sardines into the stinking holds of wooden ships for month-long voyages across the heaving Atlantic. Then poked and prodded, naked and trembling, in a marketplace where they stood waiting to be sold.

Everyone knows this. I’m sure if there’s one thing that British school children DO learn about in their history lessons it’s the slave trade. And quite right too. It was horrible. It was also one of the greatest forced migrations in history. It’s because of the slave trade that British and American classrooms today don’t just contain white children who can identify with men like Drake and Hawkins, but also black children whose African ancestors were enslaved by men just like them.

You might think John Hawkins was ashamed of being a slave trader, but he wasn’t. Not at all. After all he hadn’t started it; the Portuguese were selling slaves long before him; they regarded the whole of the west African seaboard as exclusively their own, granted to them by the Pope. They sold slaves across the Atlantic to Spanish colonists in New Spain, the part of the New World the Pope had granted exclusively to them. Hawkins was just trying to get some of this commerce for himself, in the spirit of free trade. He made three slave-trading voyages, and he was so successful that he commissioned a coat of arms, proudly featuring – of all things – a black man bound with a rope.

Not very politically correct. Not the sort of public relations we can celebrate in our schools today, where racism is rightly regarded with anathema. And it wasn’t just John Hawkins who was involved with this; his young cousin Francis Drake sailed with him too, on the third and most troublesome of his three slaving voyages.

Clearly, these men were no angels. They were slave-traders, pirates, thieves – how can we possibly regard them as heroes? Surely we should just condemn them outright; and say there was nothing good about their lives at all?

 Well, perhaps. But perhaps not. These men, like most historical figures, were more complex than they first appear.

John Hawkins was both a slave trader AND the Treasurer of Queen Elizabeth’s Navy. He was the man who commissioned and built the ships which defeated the Spanish Armada. And by doing that, he saved many English men from becoming slaves themselves, bound for years to an oar in a Spanish galley, or being burned alive by the Inquisition at an Auto-da-Fe.

Francis Drake was both a pirate AND a great explorer, consummate navigator, circumnavigator of the world. He, like Hawkins, saved England from invasion by Spain.

But the life of Francis Drake also shows us something else. Astonishingly, it seems that it was possible to be both a slave trader AND the friend of escaped African slaves!

Here is the evidence. In 1567 the young Francis Drake sailed to Sierra Leone in a fleet commanded by his cousin, John Hawkins. Here they bought, stole and captured some 500 African slaves which they transported to the Spanish Main and sold to Spanish colonists. But although the colonists were happy to buy the slaves, they were less happy about the vendor; their King, Philip of Spain, had made it very clear that English and French merchants should be kept out of his New World Empire, and treated as pirates.

So when Hawkins’s fleet was caught in a hurricane, and forced to seek shelter in the Spanish port of San Juan de Ulloa, he knew he was in trouble. While he was there, repairing his ships, the new Viceroy arrived from Spain with a fleet of 13 ships. At first, Hawkins negotiated an uneasy truce with the Viceroy: hostages were exchanged, and the Spanish fleet entered the harbor, mooring a short distance from the English. But the Spanish Viceroy had no intention of doing deals with a pirate. The truce was broken, and after a fierce battle most the English ships were sunk or captured. Hawkins escaped in one ship, Drake in another. Hawkins’s ship, the Minion, was so overcrowded with sailors from his other ships that he was forced to maroon several hundred men on land, where they were taken prisoner by the Spanish. When the Minion eventually reached England, only 15 men were still alive on board.

This incident made it crystal clear, as the Spanish Viceroy intended, that there was no possibility of English merchants trading with the Spanish colonists. Over the next few years Hawkins tried to negotiate with Spain for the return of his imprisoned sailors, even pretending, at times, that he was a Catholic. But Francis Drake took a more direct method. Since it was no longer possible to trade with the Spanish colonists, he decided to raid them instead. He set out to steal the gold and silver from the mines of South America which made the Spanish king so rich.

Francis Drake was very successful at this. In fact, he became one of the most successful pirates in all history. Historians estimate that each shareholder in his voyage of circumnavigation round the world made a profit of £47 for each £1 they invested. Queen Elizabeth got more money from that one pirate ship, than all other Exchequer receipts for a year.

But Francis Drake couldn’t have done all this on his own. Many of his most successful raids were due to some very important allies – the Cimarrons. These Cimarrons were escaped African slaves; people exactly like those whom he and John Hawkins had captured in Sierra Leone. Some of them may have actually travelled in Hawkins’s ships. But a lot of the Africans who were sold as slaves to the colonists had escaped. So many of them escaped, in fact, that they became a major threat to the Spanish colonists – just as big a threat as the English and French pirates. But unlike the pirates, the Cimarrons didn’t want gold and silver; they didn’t have much use for it.  They wanted freedom, and revenge, and the ability to defeat their Spanish masters.

All the accounts suggest that Francis Drake got on really well with these people. In a famous raid in Panama Drake presented the Cimarron leader, Pedro, with a gold encrusted scimitar which had previously belonged to Henry II, king of France. A true pirate’s sword! His Cimarron allies also took him to a hilltop in Panama, and showed him a famous tree. They climbed this tree with Francis Drake and his friend, John Oxenham, and showed them a marvelous sight: the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Pacific to the west. It was this vision which inspired Drake’s later voyage round Cape Horn.

Some of these Africans liked Drake so much that they even chose to sail with him. As the wounded Drake was getting back into his pinnace after a raid on Nombre de Dios in 1573, a black man called out to him from the shore: ‘Are you Francis Drake? Then I am coming with you!’ This man, an escaped African slave called Diego, became one of Drake’s longest-serving seamen, and stayed with him until he died on the Golden Hind’s round-the-world voyage six years later. And in 1586, at the siege of Santo Domingo, Drake sent a different black servant to receive a Spanish officer who carried a flag of truce. When the Spaniard, apparently insulted by this, callously ran the black man through with his sword, Drake was so incensed that he insisted that the Spanish hanged their own officer before any further negotiations took place.

So perhaps, even though he was once a slave-trader, we can exonerate Drake from the modern slur of racism. Slavery, after all, was common in the sixteenth century, and not necessarily linked to race. Thousands of slaves were chained to the oars of the galleys on both sides, Spanish and Turkish, at the battle of Lepanto; that was how Mediterranean sea-battles were fought. Moorish sailors from North Africa raided the coasts of Cornwall and southern Ireland for slaves to sell in the markets of Constantinople. For sailors and people who lived near the coast, slavery was an unfortunate hazard of life. It could happen at any time, out of the blue, and transform a person’s life forever.

For someone writing a historical novel about Drake and Hawkins today, what does all this mean? Surely the story can’t, or shouldn’t, be only about the heroic English sailors, as books were when I was young. John Hawkins’s third slave-trading voyage transformed the lives of hundreds of unlucky Africans – more Africans, probably, than there were English sailors on his ships. So in a novel about these events, surely the Africans should have a prominent place too. What was life like for them, as well as for the English sailors who captured them?

In my book, Nobody’s Slave, I try to imagine what this may have been like. Nobody’s Slave is the story of two teenage boys, one African, one English, whose lives collide on John Hawkins’s third slave-trading voyage. I have tried to write an adventure story which, I hope, can be read by anyone, white or black, as part of our shared and troublesome history. It’s a work of fiction, but all the main events really happened; they are based on original sources, and as true and accurate as I can make them.

Sources:  Much of the original source material can be found in The Principal Navigations Voyages Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, by Richard Hakluyt. Hawkins’ own account of his voyage (written and approved by John Sparke, who sailed with him) is in Volume 7; two other very colorful accounts, by Miles Philips and Job Hortob, both of whom sailed with Hawkins and were captured by the Spanish, are in Volume 6.

Links: Amazon US

Amazon UK

Tim’s website

Feeling a little flushed, dear?- the invention of the flush toilet.

By Mike Rendell

I have always wanted to write a truly lavatorial post for this blog, and this is it – the story of the flush toilet!

Its origins lay back in Elizabethan times when in 1596 Sir John Harington came up with his mighty Ajax (his name for a flushing privy).His invention was therefore the very first 'john'. The Ajax closet (a pun on the fact that 'a jakes' was the medieval name for a toilet) consisted of a seat perched over a brick tank, with a cistern of water which could be directed by means of a valve being opened. Once a week it was necessary to empty the contents of the closet into a cesspool. Harington made two – one for himself and one for his godmother, who happened to be Queen Elizabeth.

Harington published a book entitled 'The Anatomy of the metamorphosed Ajax' giving builders etc details of how to build his privy (the Frontispiece reads 'How unsavoury places may be made sweet, noysome places may be made wholesome, filthy places made cleanly'). Harington never got over the ridicule and scorn heaped upon him for his invention, and in particular for having written a book about it, and it never caught on.

A lady of easy virtue, and a commode: both covered by the title 'Conveniences' (©British Museum).

People continued to use the 'close stool' and it appears in all its glory in a number of Gillray's cartoons including this one showing His Majesty George III and his wife Queen Charlotte enthroned on their respective latrines, when in rushes William Pitt with news that the King Gustavus III of Sweden has been assasinated. The year was 1792.

 By that date the world was finally ready for the flush toilet. The saviour had come in the form of Alexander Cumming, a watch maker who in 1775 patented his design. This consisted of a pan with a sliding valve at the bottom called The Strap, which could be released by the user at the same time as water was delivered from a cistern operated by a separate tap.

The Cummings Patent Toilet, Courtesy of the Gladstone Pottery Museum.

Around this time a young locksmith-cabinet maker called Joseph Bramah appeared on the scene. Suffice to say that he was working with a Mr Allen, installing closets based upon the Cummings patent, when Mr Allen decided on a few improvements aimed at stopping the water freezing in cold weather. He replaced the Strap with a hinged flap which sealed the base of the bowl. To Allen should go the credit, but to young Bramah went the patent. He opened a factory in Denmark Street, St Giles and throughout the next century the Bramah factory poured out the new-fangled sanitary ware. They were generally housed in fine mahogany furniture, and there is a particularly fine example to be seen in Kew Palace, and another at the residence of Queen Victoria at Osbourne House on the Isle of Wight.

It wasn’t long before potters like Josiah Wedgwood got in on the act, designing his first decorated closet pan in around 1777. Small wonder they became status symbols with their beautiful designs. Mind you, there was no sewerage system to go with them, so ‘the problem’ of the effluent was merely moved further down-stream, so to speak.

Fortunately another design improvement hit the market in 1782 when the stink trap was introduced by John Gallait. This consisted of a water trap (similar to a modern bottle trap), but unfortunately they were impossible to keep clean…but at least it was a step in the right direction.

And what of Thomas Crapper, widely believed to have invented the flush toilet? Well, he wasn’t even born until 1836 and in fact what he invented was the ballcock. And no, he didn’t give his name to the human waste we all associate with his name – ‘crap’ had been in use for some time, although quite possibly it became fashionable because of the association with his toilets. The story has it that American servicemen, visiting these shores in the First World War, popularised the phrase ‘going to the Crapper’ because that was the name in bowl! Try telling that to the compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary, who point out that the word was in use in its modern sense by 1846, probably deriving from the Old French ‘crappe’ meaning waste.

Post script: ‘spending a penny’? Look no further than the Great Exhibition of 1851 where visitors wishing to avail themselves of the facilities (known as Monkey Closets and designed by George Jennings) were obliged to part with one penny for the privilege.

And one final Gillray to end with: a delightfully revolting engraving showing the different national characteristics of conveniences: the English use a water closet, the Scots use a bucket, the French les Commodites, and the Dutch...the lake.




So there you have it: if the characters in your novel need to visit the 'smallest room' you know what was historically accurate!



Mike has written a book entitled The Journal of a Georgian Gentleman based upon the diaires and writings pof his ancestor Richard Hall, who lived between 1729 and 1801. He also writes a  blog most days on one aspect or another of life in the Eighteenth Century which you can find here.

The Demise of the Medieval Rood Loft

Judith Arnopp

Before the Reformation the focal point of all churches, even small ones, was the Holy Rood; a great crucifix that stood high above the congregation upon the Rood beam above the chancel. The cross was often accompanied by figures of Mary and John where candles were kept burning, paid for by the many bequests for 'the light to burn before the Rood.’ 

Access to the beam was by way of the Rood Loft, usually an ornately carved and painted structure set just above the Rood Screen beneath the chancel arch.  On occasion the priest would preach from the loft, lit by the candles about the Rood, the added height and position providing extra impact to his sermons.

During the Reformation of the Church the changes did not at first, affect the Roods although it was ordered that the accompanying images be removed.  There were those at this time who saw the Rood as a prime object of idolatry and instances of vandalism are recorded, but the Rood was allowed to remain and there was no major demolition of the Roods until the reign of Edward VI.

Early in his reign his zealous reforms called for the removal of all shrines, images, candlesticks, painted images on walls, screens and even on the stained glass windows. This general destruction began in London in 1548 and spread throughout the realm.

Although many reformers regarded them as Popish idolatry the figures about the Rood were highly valued in most parishes. When they were ordered to be destroyed many parishes, unable to face their ruin, hid their prized images away and later, at the time of Queen Mary’s reversal of the reforms, they were simply brought  out of hiding and reinstated in the church.

It was during the Elizabethan Injunctions that irreversible damage occurred when anything connected with the old religion was ripped out and burnt on huge bonfires.

With the Roods and Rood figures gone, the loft itself had little use and in the following years most of them slowly decayed until they were removed altogether. The stairs that led to them were largely blocked up and plastered over but in a few churches, the stairs still remain today, built into the solid walls, leading nowhere, a reminder of our medieval past. 

There are no Rood Crosses left in Britain today but some Screens remain, often ornately carved and painted. They stand as testament to the changes the church has endured and marking the medieval divisions between the earthly and divine. Very few Rood Lofts are left although some have been reconstructed, as only a small amount survived the upheavals of reform.

I recently had the good luck to visit The Church of Merthyr Issui at Patricio in Mid-Wales which houses a splendid unspoiled example of an intact Rood Loft and Screen.

Patricio is a tiny church nestling on a hillside in a wooded valley; a valley infused with natural peace where the only sound is of grazing sheep and birdsong. The building has no ostentatious grandeur, no opulent riches on display but for me, the simplicity adds to its charm. It is the sort of place that makes an atheist pause and begin to question his convictions.

Somehow, possibly due to its remote location, Patricio escaped the devastation of church reform and stands today pretty much as it did in the medieval period. On opening the door you are assailed by cold, the smell of damp and the impact of a thousand years of prayer. 

The floor is slate, the walls are stone and, here and there, a wall painting peeps from beneath the layer of white wash. There is the depiction of Time, a skeleton with scythe and hourglass, reminding us of our mortality; the Royal coat of Arms; a biblical text in thick, black, forbidding script … but it is the Rood Screen and Loft that draws your eye and pulls you toward the altar.

It lies beneath the chancel arch, stretching the width of the church, a masterpiece of craftsmanship, laden with carved  leaves and flowers concealing a dragon, the emblem of evil, consuming a vine, the emblem of good.  

The loft and screen are in an unpainted state, it has never been painted, the Irish oak has  been left to flaunt its own natural beauty which makes it, as far as I know, quite unique. You are forced to stand and stare until, at length, you stretch out a finger to trace the path of the ancient chisel.

A short stone stairway is cut into the wall, the Tudor headed doorway suggesting it was added later than the two stone altars which have also somehow escaped the destruction ordered in the Elizabethan period.

I love this place. I do not want to leave. My camera clicks, recording what I see but there are things the lens can never quite capture; the serenity of the graveyard, the cool tranquility of the interior, the brush strokes of long dead painters, the chisel marks of the carpenter on the Rood Loft and Screen, the antiquity of the incised consecration crosses on the altars. And, most of all, it can never capture the whispering echoes of  the prayers of the long dead congregation. 

You will have to make the journey there to experience that.

Photos by the author. For information about Judith's novels and work please visit her webpage: www.juditharnopp.com

The Real Identities Behind the Books we Love

By Karen V. Wasylowski

Not surprisingly, we all conjure up images of the characters in the books we love.  Did you ever consider that there were actual living people used as inspirations by the authors; and, if so, how close is our imagination to the reality?  I found an interesting article the other day that showed just that - the reality behind many of our most beloved books...

Alice - Alice Liddell

Author Lewis Carroll knew many families whose children he loved to play with but he had a special friendship with his neighbors the Liddells, and a great affinity for their daughter, Alice, the little girl pictured above.  This snapshot was taken of her by him sometime in 1860 when she was seven years old. She was the inspiration for the wonderful "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and he even used her real name for the character.

The One - The Only - Peter Pan!  - Michael Davies

It is well known that J. M. Barrie based the children in his books on the Davies family, friends of his in 1897, but it was Michael Davies who was the basis for Peter Pan.  Michael was an infant when Barrie began to write about Peter and as the child grew Barrie incorporated many of Michael's characteristics into the story, such as Michael's nightmares.  It was later that Michael's brother Nico said of his brother, "he was the cleverest, the most original, the potential genius."  That's our Peter.

Sherlock Holmes - Dr. Joseph Bell

Dr. Joseph Bell was a teacher in medical school where a young Arthur Conan Doyle studied.  When creating his iconic character Conan Doyle said he thought of Dr. Bell - of his eagle face, of his curious ways, of his odd ability to spot details that others missed.  In a letter to Dr. Bell, Conan Doyle wrote, "I do not think that [Holmes’s] analytical work is in the least an exaggeration of some effects which I have seen you produce in the out-patient ward. Round the centre of deduction and inference and observation which I have heard you inculcate, I have tried to build up a man who pushed the thing as far as it would go—further occasionally.”  The astute Dr. Bell shot back a note to his friend -  ”you are yourself Sherlock Holmes and well you know it.”

Anne Shirley???? - Evelyn Nesbit

It is hard to believe now, but Gibson Girl Evelyn Nesbit, above, played a very important role in the creation of Anne of Green Gables.  When Lucy Maud Montgomery was trying to envision her Anne she cut out a picture of the model from Metropolitan magazine and pasted it on the wall of her bedroom, not knowing who the girl was.  I myself imagined Anne as a bit more demure.

Antonia Shimerdas — Annie Sadilek Pavelka

“Every story I have ever written,” said Willa Cather “… has been the recollection of some childhood experience, of something that touched me as a youngster.” Cather once called the real Antonia (My Antonia) “one of the truest artists I ever knew in the keenness and sensitiveness of her enjoyment, in her love of people and in her willingness to take pains.”

Daisy Buchanan – Ginevra King

F. Scott Fitzgerald dated the socially important Ginerva King between 1915 to 1917 and, sure enough, their romance faltered because of the unequal social standing between them.  A heartbroken Fitzgerald wrote, "Poor boys shouldn’t think of marrying rich girls.”  She figured in other books of his as well.  And I always thought it was Zelda!

( http://www.flavorwire.com/333197/fascinating-photographs-of-famous-literary-characters-in-real-life?all=1)

Now to the important news - my new book, SONS AND DAUGHTERS, is on sale at Amazon.com and Amazon UK.com.  It is a continuation of my first book, DARCY AND FITZWILLIAM, a sequel to PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (yes, I know - it gets confusing)

This is shaping up to be a Family Saga of sorts with SONS AND DAUGHTERS taking the iconic Mr. Darcy and his best friend and cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam, farther into the future with their growing families and all the problems that naturally come with parenthood.

Visit my blog, THE LEAGUE OF BRITISH ARTISTS, to read an excerpt of the new book and for a chance to win a Kindle or a copy of either 'Sons and Daughters' or 'Darcy and Fitzwilliam'

VISIT LEAGUE OF BRITISH ARTISTS 
AND ENTER 

THE "SONS AND DAUGHTERS" GIVEAWAY

Superstitions and Bodily Health

Before modern medicine lay people and some physicians held the belief that transferring the ailment to another object could cure you of disease.  Since antiquity, and well into the eighteenth century, people believed that men reflected aspects of the natural world. It was a dominant strategy that explained the mysteries beyond the ken of the science of the day.

A man in late seventeenth century Somerset claimed that his brother was cured of a rupture by being passed through a slit cut in a young ash tree, three times on three Monday mornings before dawn. When the tree was later cut down, his brother grew ill again.

To cure jaundice, you took the patient’s urine, mix it with ashes and make three equal balls. Put these before a fire, and when they dried out, the disease leaves and he’s cured.

 In Devon, to cure the quartan ague, you baked the patient’s urine into a cake, then fed the cake to a dog, who would take on the disease.

 Even Richard Wiseman—a Barber Surgeon—who wrote Chirurgicall Treatises during the time of Charles II, believed to remove warts you rub them with a slice of beef, then bury the beef.

Color as well played a part in how health was viewed. “Yellow” remedies were used to cure jaundice: saffron, celandine with yellow flowers, turmeric, and lemon rind. John Wesley, who wrote Primitive Physick, in the mid-eighteenth century, suggested thatsufferers of this illness wear celandine leaves under their feet.

 

Health was also governed by astrological explanations. Manuals intended for physicians and apothecaries included this “otherwordly” advice. Nicholas Culpeper detailed which herbs were presided over by which planets in his famous health text, Culpeper’s Complete Herbal. For example, if a headache was caused by the actions of Venus, then fleabane (an herb of Mars) would cure the malady.

However, the Vox Stellarum, the most popular almanac in the eighteenth century, took a more moderate view: “Men may be inclin’d but not compell’d to do good or evil by the influence of the stars.” Yet this same almanac, in 1740, listed which diseases were prevalent in certain months—a vestigial form of astrological medicine.

 

Thank goodness more enlightened physicians, such as brothers William (a leading anatomist and renown obstetrician) and John Hunter (one of the most distinguished scientists and surgeons of his day) in the eighteenth century, came along to bring medical thinking into the modern world. Though superstition among the lay people remained.

I delved into this research for a character, a young physician, in my still unpublished novel, Ring of Stone. Information taken from, Patients, Power, and the Poor in Eighteenth Century Bristol, by Mary E. Fissell, 1991.

 To learn more about my novels: http://www.dianescottlewis.org

Hope's Betrayal by Grace Elliot

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