A Child's Reflections on the War Years - a Memoir by Linda Root

FDR circa 1933, Wikimedea Commons

I was born in 1939. There is a biography floating around that says I was born at a Franklin Delano Roosevelt fundraiser, but actually that is not entirely accurate. My mother's water broke at the fundraiser, leaving just enough time for her to make it to University Hospital in Cleveland without stopping to get a handshake from FDR. I have a weird memory for details, and I recall that the doctor's name was May McKinley and the maternity wing was called of all things, MacDonald House.  I, of course, have no independent recollection of the event but soon acquired a strong awareness that I had somehow robbed my mother of her shining moment.

THE THREE WITCHES FROM SHAKER HEIGHTS

For some strange reason, my first clear memory was entering a cemetery with my mother's two hated cousins Rachel and Charlotte. I have no clue as to whose grave we were visiting, perhaps President Garfield's.

By Greg via Wikimedia Commons

I also had no idea what I was doing with Rachel and Charlotte whom I hated worse than the bugs that crawled out of the drain pipe.  Feeding me horseradish on a teaspoon was their idea of  fun. Maybe we were at the cemetery visiting Charlotte's dead husband whose name was George. Rachel's husband Jimmy had left her after her mother locked him in a closet for three days simply for being Irish and for suggesting that he and Rachel get an apartment of their own. They all hated my grandfather who was also Irish, and if Aunt Liz Bussler had her way, my Grandma Julia would have locked him in a closet, too.  My mother swore that when the day came for her to bury her mother, she would tolerate Liz and her daughters during the wake in deference to the other guests, but when she walked them to the door she intended to tell them to never come back and would slam the door behind them. When I was eleven and my Grandma Julia died, that is exactly what my mother did. Even into her eighties, when she perceived that I had crossed her,  she would look me in the eye and declare, "Remember what happened with my Aunt Liz and my two hateful cousins."

MY MOTHER'S WAR HERO

I was two and a half years old when the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor. Then life became a series of strange events none of which meant much to a two-year-old.  Hardly anyone drove automobiles, and we sold ours, since there was no gasoline.  All of a sudden, toys were made of paper and we spread grease on our toast and called it butter after we squeezed orange -colored food coloring into it to turn it yellow. When I was a little older, coloring the Oleo was my job. 

In my family, the war had not begun on December 7, 1941.  It began just after I was born, when my Godmother Helen Cooper Patterson died.  When I was older I realized that she was part of the kind of bittersweet love story that F.Scott Fitzgerald should have written. I still have her photograph.  She was a tall, regal blond heiress from Chicago, the daughter of a man who owned a chain of theaters in the Midwest, and that was how she met my mother's cousin Guy Algae Patterson, who played bass fiddle in George Duffy's Band.  Right out of the script of the Eddie Duchin Story (Tyrone Power and Kim Novak, 1956) came lovely Helen to listen to him play every night in every city, except during the season when she had to check into the sanitarium.

Unfortunately, lovely Helen had what my mother called T.B.  Her doctors told her she could come to see me when I was born and could participate in my Christening, but she could only kiss me by brushing her lips on the back of my neck.  Towards the end, my parents would drive Helen's Stutz Bearcat from Cleveland down to Saint Louis and carry her inside the ballroom so she could watch G.A. perform.

Photo GeorgeDuffyBand , G.A. Patterson  in car at right.

Wikimedea Commons

After she died, he nearly killed himself doing daredevil stunts in his glider and probably would have succeeded if it hadn't been for Hitler and the Blitz. Grieving Guy Patterson defied the edict of his government, packed his bags and went to Canada to join the RCAF, presuming that he would end of crashing into the Channel.  His parents were our 'rich relatives' and Guy was their only child.  They were heartbroken when he left, and so was my mother, another only child.  She thought G.A. was a god, and now others were calling him a traitor for seeking to embroil America in a foreign war.

That's when my parents started wheeling me in my baby buggy to the movies to watch the newsreels. By the time I was three, I could sit through a double-feature, and long before December 1941, I had a vague idea of what war was. By the time I was three, I knew that the man named Hitler who shouted in the newsreels was a very bad man. And I also knew that G. A. Patterson was now an all American hero. When the United States entered the war, all of the boys who went across the pond to fight the Hun were given amnesty,and suddenly G.A. Patterson was a Captain in the United States Navy and the commander of an Air Wing. 

True to the tone of the story, he married a showgirl named Muriel Patterson Twelvetrees, widow of stage actor Clark Twelvetrees whose first wife was the screen star Helen Twelvetrees, to whom Muriel  bore a strong resemblance.   Muriel always sent  me expensive presents from Sax Fifth Avenue and called me "Doll Girl." Later when they descended into their Wine and Roses Phase, she bought the gifts at JCP and replaced them with labels from Sax. For a while after the war was over, Guy and Muriel were movers in the Coronado, California social set, but they never quite got off the cocktail circuit until they were living above a garage with a liquor bill at the North Island Officer's Club that equaled my father's salary as a mid-level executive with General Dynamics. In spite of their flaws, I loved them dearly.

By then I had read Gatsby and Theodore Dressler, and I knew a tragic love story when I saw it.  Even when he was dying, G.A. always was my mother's hero, whether or not he deserved to be. Her fawning over him often embarrassed me when I was growing up, because in Mother's eyes, he always outshone my Dad, who quite coincidentally had grown up as Guy's next door neighbor, the family of poor kids with the divorced mother.  Ironically, when G.A.'s mother died, she left all of her personal property to my father, the oldest of the Fetterly Boys.  Now as I reflect upon G. A.'s life, I see how much Guy Patterson was a creature of the times.  He and Muriel joined the ranks of the post war Beautiful People with no new worlds to conquer.  The lounge in the Officer's Club was his last battlefield.

THE FETTERLY BOYS

On December 8, 1941 both of my father's younger brothers enlisted, one in the Navy and the other in the Army Air Force.  My father had been born in 1908, already a little old for a buck private. And he was working in what was called a 'war plant', a company that made valves for aircraft engines.  I of course had no idea what a valve was, but it seemed that knowing how to price them was keeping my accountant Daddy from the war.

But I was aware that the draft could change all that and  I was convinced that if he left, I would die. Even as a three year old child, I knew my mother did not like children all that much.  In all fairness, there were reasons. She was afraid of us, and she was jealous.  Her firstborn, my brother Robert, was a SIDS death. Mother later told me that she was certain than if she had stayed up all night and watched him sleep, she could have saved him.  But there was more to it than that. 

While my mother had been an only child, Dad was one of five, and there was a large spread in ages. When  my father's father Thomas left Grandma Dick (another story there) for another woman, he left my nineteen-year-old father to serve as surrogate father to his unborn child, her toddler sister, and my father's two younger brothers. 

Dad  put off marrying my mother until he was 25 and she was out of patience. Even after I was born, when my aunts Edna Mary and Ruthie needed him, he was there for them. There was a lot of jealousy and resentment in that situation. Mother also envied my father's competence in child-rearing. He was the one with  hands on experience with measles, mumps and chicken-pox, and I benefited from his experience in raising his sisters.

It was Daddy who diagnosed my Whooping Cough when May McKinley was treating me for Scarlet Fever. And he was the one who took me to his mother's house and let me raid the candy store that had been there when he was a boy. That's  where I developed my life long love of licorice, although I soon outgrew the Horehounds.  If Mom had known he let me eat French fries when he took me to his bowling league meets, she would have collapsed.  I was terrified that he would be drafted.

FDR signs Selective Service Act of 1940, aka The Draft

I became so preoccupied with it that when I was five, on the advice of his aunt, my father took me to see the  team doctor for the Cleveland Indians who in private practice was a pediatric orthopedist or something of that ilk.  He talked to me for a few minutes and declared I had an overactive mind and nothing to keep me occupied.

Since I was three weeks too young for kindergarten, he suggested  art lessons at the children's program at the Museum of Art at Wade Park. Dad presented by enrollment there to my mother as a fait accompli.  I suspect his enthusiasm had less to do with my art talent than the excuse it gave to my father to visit his beloved Aunt Nanny, Miss Edna Jameson, who lived in a penthouse apartment in an upscale building across from Wade Park and knew absolutely everyone who mattered, including Eliot Ness, Bob Hope and Kate Smith. 

She controlled ticket sales for the Indians, and ball games were one of life's few pleasures during the war years.  She was considered the First Lady of Baseball, the first woman to have a night game dedicated to her honor. When most of my family slept under likenesses of the Christ, Aunt Nanny slept below autographed glossies of Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth and Tris Speaker, all of whom knew her well. When I was about seven, Lou Boudreau taught me to play Gin Rummy at a time when Mother thought I was painting landscapes at the Art Museum. When I was older, we played Canasta.

Jack Fetterly, courtesy of Dean Fetterly

Those were the good times, but there were some that were not so good.  My Grandma Dick received two telegrams from the War Department, one for Ralph, missing in action in the Pacific, and another for the youngest, Jack, shot down over German occupied France.  When my Cousin Marcia's Daddy suddenly became a war statistic, it all became very real to me, even though my redoubtable Grandma Dick kept consulting her Ouija Board and announced that both of her sons were alive.

Letters that came to our house in the mail from the draftboard were colored coded.  I've forgotten what the color scheme was, but I know that I was barely tall enough to reach the mailbox on my tiptoes, and I recognized the letters from the draft board immediately, because they were written on the cheapest paper imaginable, and they were produced on an Addressograph. 

The Addressograph-Multigraph Company was down the hill near the railroad yard  that I could see from my upstairs window. Someone told me that as long as both of my father's brothers were classified as Missing-in-Action, Presumed Dead, that Dad could not be drafted by Presidential Proclamation.  Finally my Uncle Ralph came out of a coma and was shipped to Crile Hospital in Ohio, and  Uncle Jack appeared on the list of prisoners in one of the Stalags. 

Ralph learned to make little wooden toys during his rehab and he sent one to me.  We received letters from Jack, censured by the Germans who cut out the words they thought might reveals locations or plans.  We were allowed to purchase pre-packed packages to send to him through the Red Cross.  I remember him telling us later that on the day his stalag was liberated the International Red Cross set up a canteen and actually charged for the donuts, although the coffee was free.  He resented that for as long as he lived. After months in a hospital he too returned to the states.

By then Ralph was out of Crile and had married a nurse from Cleveland to whom he had been writing.  I have a wonderful picture of the five Fetterly kids all lined up, Ralph and Jack in uniforms, their sisters grown up young women. Now only Ruthie is left.  She is 86  and emails  me off color jokes regularly.  She has a wonderful boyfriend.  As I recall, when she was in high school, she was what now would be called a 'hottie'.

THE DENT IN THE PIANO AND OTHER WAR WOUNDS

I remember the day that FDR died.  The Spangs Bakery Man brought the news to my mother and he was elated.  She threw a loaf of bread at him, and that was the end of our bakery delivery.  If he had been the milkman, he would have been concussed.

FDR Funeral at Hyde Park, NewYork.-Wikimeda Commons

The injuries to the piano occurred three years earlier when one of my grandmother Julia's friends whose name I do not recall since it soon became anathema in our house, informed my mother that between Mom's Steinbacher bloodline and my father's Fetterly surname, she could approach acquaintances of hers  to help my parents smuggle me into the Third Reich to be among my people before it was too late. She had forgotten, apparently,that my mother's temper was pure Patterson Irish and her politics were one hundred percent American. We never saw that woman again, but the dent remained in the piano where the tines of the meat fork missed the fat lady's leg.  Mother would not permit anyone to polish over it as a reminder of where my mother's loyalties were. And to boot, the Fetterlys were from Nancy and like many Lorrainers, my father considered himself more French than German. His grandparents had bilingual arguments when he was a boy.  If he had been home and thrown the fork, it would not have missed the fat lady and hit the piano.

THE SOLDIER AND THE PIN UP GIRL

Other than her brief venture into politics in 1939, my mother was never comfortable in crowds.  She was quiet and withdrawn when she ventured outside of the house, which she ruled with a velvet fist. Even as a child of five, I found it amazing that one of Cleveland's best known glamour girls, Miss Ann Swanson, was her closet  friend. Ann was a natural blond, a Swedish beauty who always had two romantic interests, one who was way too old and way too rich and another who was younger than she was, usually dirt poor, and better looking than Errol Flynn. Not surprisingly, the most handsome soldier in Cleveland was in love with Ann, and a frequent visitor at our house on the evenings when Ann was dining with whoever was heaping her with luxuries that only the wartime Black Market could yield. Of course, I fell madly in love with Sergeant Pruitt and had no idea what he saw in Ann.

 [CC-BY-SA-3.0

On the night when Bud went off to war, my parents and I met him and Ann at the Terminal Tower Building, which was, of course, a railway terminal, and I watched sadly as he presented her with an engagement ring.  I remember him hanging out of the train as it departed, frenetically blowing kisses a few of which  I swore  he sent to me.  I also remember  that as soon as he was out of sight, she took the ring from her finger and put it in her handbag.  It was the autumn of 1944. On the way out of the terminal I noticed young men on crutches, missing legs.

Wikimedia Commons

NEXT SEGMENT - THE DAY THE WAR WAS OVER

The Real Christopher Robin and His Father

by Stephanie Cowell

“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.” – Winnie-the-Pooh

I discovered England through books as a child as most of us do, and of course the very earliest I recall were the enchanting poems and stories of a little boy called Christopher Robin and his small animal friends who lived forever in an enchanted forest. Somehow I came to memorize many of the poems. I can’t remember most telephone numbers, passwords, etc., but tucked in my head are these verses.

It was only a few years ago I discovered that the real little boy spent many of his adult years wishing that his father had never written them.

How did the books and poems come to be?

A.A. Milne, his son and the bear

A.A. Milne was an editor at Punch, and the successful author of many plays and novels when his son Christopher was born in August 1920.  The first of the poems, Vespers, about a little boy saying his prayers, was written by the happily married Milne for his wife. In the subsequent year he watched his tiny son with tender adoration and created more poems, persuading Punch artist E.H. Shepard to illustrate them. Their publisher hadn’t much faith in the project, called When We Were Very Young, but printed a small edition. Six weeks following, the poems of a little boy and his stuffed animals were famous. The first book was followed by the stories Winnie-the-Pooh, then another book of poems Now We Are Six and finally the last stories, The House at Pooh Corner. By this time the little boy’s world of mangy stuffed animals who had strong personalities, the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, sitting half way on the stair, Bad King John and so many other poems were known all over the English-speaking world. His fame at six was as great as the young Queen Elizabeth.

(The fictional Hundred Acre Wood of the Pooh stories derives from the Five Hundred Acre Wood in Ashdown Forest in East Sussex. Milne and his son who lived on its edge often went walking there.)

The original stuffed animals in the NY Public Library

Christopher was a happy little boy; he rather liked all the attention, the awed tourists who visited his home in East Sussex, stared at the wood and the bridge from which the child in the poems throws sticks. And then he went to school. There his true nature as a shy, stammering, quiet boy emerged, and of course the others immediately taunted him with, “Hello, Christopher Robin! Still saying yours prayers?”

The boy was comfortable only with his father and unable to break away; boy and man found themselves increasingly isolated and trapped by the fame of the world A.A. Milne had created. The audience for A.A. Milne’s adult books and witty plays died away; his beloved wife abandoned him. Father and son drew closer. During World II, the sales of the books rose so steeply that the publisher found it difficult to obtain enough paper to print them.

Years later I too discovered the books and truly believed in my heart that there was even in that moment a little boy playing all day in the forest, being cared for by his nanny, living in this enchanted place in England. I knew that Christopher Robin lived in a far more enchanted place than me and was more loved. I wanted to knock on the door of a tree and be invited in for honey by Pooh. I wanted as loyal a friend as Piglet. (In fact when I began my second very happy marriage, my husband and I collected Pooh and Piglet Christmas ornaments; as my husband was then heavy and towered over me he was Pooh and I, very small and then rather slender, was Piglet.)

But like Lewis Carroll’s Alice and J.M. Barrie’s Lost Boys, the real Christopher Robin could not easily shake off the identity created around him by his adoring father. By the time he was twenty-five, he was searching for himself; he tried unsuccessfully to write and failed at several other jobs until he married and opened a bookshop. He became bitter and communications between father and son almost ceased.

The books continued to draw countless readers while A.A. Milne no longer had a career or a wife, and his son foundered. Later Christopher wrote, “It seemed to me, almost, that my father had got to where he was by climbing upon my infant shoulders… he has left me with nothing but empty fame by being his son.” Not true at all: the poems were written out of great love. Some people can walk away from the world-wide fame which fell upon them as a five-year-old; others cannot.

In his last years, A.A. Milne had mercifully reconciled with his wife but during his final crippling three-year-illness, Christopher visited him only twice.  

The little boy grows older

When I look at Amazon ranking right now for the combined four Pooh books, it was about 5000. That is a very good rate for a new book; for one which first saw light a hundred years ago, it is miraculous. And heaven knows how many more are sold in bookshops and toy stores.  Forbes magazine ranks Winnie-the-Pooh the most valuable fictional character; in 2002 Winnie the Pooh merchandising products alone had annual sales of more than $5.9 billion.

Four books, a lonely aging father, a little boy grown up who could not quite find his way.

And all of us who love the stories and poems? What have they meant to us? Books go on to a life beyond life, as the poet Milton said. In the final Chapter of The House at Pooh Corner, the whole little world of woods and toys and the little boy are about to change for the boy is going off to school. “But wherever they go,” says the book,” and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on top of the Forest a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.”

“I think we dream so we don’t have to be apart for so long. If we’re in each others' dreams, we can be together all the time,” writes A.A. Milne. He had no greater love than that for his little son. That love has not ceased to shine for nearly a century.

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About the author: Historical novelist Stephanie Cowell is the author of Nicholas Cooke, The Physician of London, The Players: a novel of the young Shakespeare, Marrying Mozart and Claude & Camille: a novel of Monet.  She is the recipient of the American Book Award. Her work has been translated into nine languages. Stephanie is currently finishing two novels, one on the love story of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, and the second about the year Shakespeare wrote Hamlet and all the troubles he had! Her website is http://www.stephaniecowell.com 

Juana Smith: After Waterloo

by Lauren Gilbert

One of my favourite true romances is the love story of Harry Smith and Juana Maria de Los Dolores de Leon. Their meeting after the fall of Badajob in 1812, when Harry was 24 and already a seasoned military veteran and when Juana was 14 and only recently out of a convent school resulted in a wedding 2 weeks later, with Wellington giving the bride away.

Juana followed the drum, staying with Harry as he fought his way through the Peninsular Wars until Bonaparte’s abdication in 1814. They were separated almost immediately when Harry was sent to America during the War of 1812 (he was there from April of 1814 until March of 1815, while she waited for him in England). He returned to England just in time to be sent to the continent following Napoleon’s escape from Elba, and Juana went with him. The climax of the story would seem to have been Waterloo, with the lovers reuniting after the battle.

If you have not already read their story thus far, you can read it in detail in THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF LT. GENERAL SIR HARRY SMITH BARONET OF ALIWAL ON THE SUTLEJ G.C.B., edited by G. C. Moore Smith, MA. which was first published in 1901 (it is available online, in print and as an e-book). Their love story is also referenced in John Kincaid’s memoirs, and is the subject of Georgette Heyer’s novel, THE SPANISH BRIDE. Although their romantic marriage and early married life is a wonderful story, what happened to them after Waterloo? For many soldiers, the end of the Napoleonic Wars marked the end of their careers. As with so many great stories, my question was, “What happens next?”

Harry was an ambitious man, with a fierce desire to succeed and advance in his chosen career, the Army. Juana had literally grown up in the Army, with Harry as much her commanding officer as her husband. This is hardly a combination that would result in a return to a quiet life in England for them as a couple. Juana seemed to have lost contact with any surviving family members in Spain, and despite having established an affectionate relationship with Harry’s family, had no reason to want to be in England without him. Their nearest and dearest friends, including 2 of Harry’s brothers, were in the military. So their peripatetic life continued...

Then a major, Harry was appointed by General Lambert to be the Town Major in Cambrai, France after Waterloo, in 1816, with an improved pay rate. He and Juana established a busy life, maintaining their friendship with Wellington, who maintained an interest in Harry’s career. They hunted, went to balls, and were favourites at official functions, apparently enjoying an active (and expensive) social life. The occupation ended, and they returned to England in October of 1818.

Before their return, in an effort to recoup some money, Harry decided to raffle his horse Lochinvar. Tickets were sold (including one purchased by Juana) and, much to everyone’s surprise, Juana’s ticket won.

Once returned to England, Harry was assigned to Glasgow in 1819 because of mob activity in the north, and Juana accompanied him. They were in Scotland until 1825, when Harry was posted to Ireland. However, that stay was fairly brief as in September of that year, Harry was ordered to Halifax Nova Scotia, commanding 2 ½ companies of his regiment. By all accounts, Harry and Juana had fun in Nova Scotia enjoying their usual active life among the military, even though money was short.

In November of 1825, they relocated again, to Jamaica, where Harry was to assume the rank of Lieutenant Colonel and serve as Deputy Quarter Master General. Right after they landed at Kingston, Jamaica, Harry was confronted by poor management and a yellow fever epidemic. During her time with the army in the Peninsula, Juana had learned to deal with issues of illness and injury, and accompanied Harry in his efforts to combat the disease, establishing convalescent camps. After a year, the epidemic was over, and Harry and Juana were happily settled in a home in the mountains.

However, because of his success in Jamaica, Harry was ordered to be Deputy Quarter Master General at the Cape of Good Hope, in South Africa in 1829. (They did take an opportunity in route to visit Harry’s famiy before continuing on.)

Once they arrived at the Cape of Good Hope, they again settled into a comfortable home and an active life with hunting, visiting and social events with friends in a fairly peaceful fashion until 1834. However, Harry was occupied with civil as well as military responsibilities.

On January 1, 1835, because of an uprising of the Kaffir tribes, Harry had to leave for Grahamstown, 600 miles away. A serious and dangerous situation, Harry still made time to write to Juana every day of what turned into a long separation. While Harry was away, Juana was kept busy with friends, attending balls and other social affairs, teaching in a school for African girls, and other civic activities. She also joined the Church of England.

During the time of their separation, Harry suggested she write down their story and would not hear of her joining him. Largely because of Harry’s efforts and successes, peace was finally restored, and Harry was put in charge of the newly- created Adelaide province and Juana was able to rejoin him in June of 1835. Although at peace, the area was still unsettled, and Juana was able to assist Harry by trying to influence Kaffir women.

Despite his apparent successes, Harry was removed from his post in Adelaide Province in 1837, which could have been a career disaster, but the Duke of Wellington’s influence resulted in Harry’s appointment as Adjutant General in India. After a stormy voyage, in June of 1840, the Smiths arrived in Madras, and went on to Calcutta, to be greeted by old friends and acquaintances. Although Harry was not immediately comfortable with Sir Jasper Nicholls, the commander in chief, Juana made friends with Sir Jasper’s daughters. A significant advantage to India was the ability to live a comfortable life on less money; another was the possibility of advancement.

At this time, India was embroiled in conflict with Afghanistan. This as a volatile and dangerous time; hostages were taken and unrest made many things difficult. In December of 1843, the British decided to attack at Maharajpore. The army was accompanied by Juana and several other officer’s wives riding on elephants. The ladies came under fire, but apparently escaped unscathed, and Juana received a special medal for bravery from Queen Victoria. The battle won, the Governor General ordered medals made from the captured canons, one of which was awarded to Juana. Harry also had a special gold star brooch made for her.

In 1845, the Sikh wars began and Harry was given command of the 1st Infantry Division. Harry was heavily involved in the action through 1846 until final success. Juana could not be with him on this campaign, and for at least part of the time was ill with a tropical fever. Because of his valor and success, Harry was awarded a baronetcy, made a Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath and received great acclaim.

Finally, after 18 years away, they were allowed to return to England. On arrival in Southampton in April of 1847, Harry and Juana were welcomed by crowds and taken to London in a private train. Harry was heaped with honors, and they were able to attend a dinner for veterans of the Light Division, a detailed report of which was written up in the Times. Juana also came in for her share of acclaim. At this time, Harry was 60 and Juana 49 years old. They returned to Harry’s famiy home in Whittlesey for a time.

In Glasgow, Harry was invited to become Member of Parliament (an unpaid position at that time). Despite the title and acclaim, the financial aspect of his success was less than satisfactory. Again, Wellington’s influence helped, and Harry was appointed governor of the Cape of Good Hope and awarded the rank of Lieutenant General. Between his military successes in India, and subsequent vindication of his previous policies in Africa, Harry (who had stayed current with affairs in Africa) seemed the obvious person to replace the current governor. Finances resolved, Juana, now Lady Smith, embarked with Harry on September 24 1847 for Cape Town.

Circumstances in Africa were not what they were during the Smiths’ previous stay, and Harry was no longer an impetuous youth, but a rather arrogant, bad tempered and impetuous older man without a commanding officer to keep him grounded. He managed to offend native chiefs and local people with aggressive policies and over estimated his own influence with the Boer settlers. A military action against the Boers was successful, although Harry was wounded. (Juana was awarded a pension of 500 lbs per year by the queen.)

After Harry returned to Cape Town in Oct. 1848, Juana was relieved of anxiety and ready to take part in social activities. Unfortunately, her Spanish formality and fondness for Spanish fashions and colourful fabrics was not admired. Juana and Harry also caused some concern in the conservative community as Harry was perceived as dangerously tolerant while Juana, in an effort to reach out to the Indian and Malay communities, attended some displays of local dancing that was considered unacceptable.

At the same time, they were faced with the prospect of Cape Colony receiving convicts due to a shortage of prisons. The local settlers were, of course, opposed to this, and Harry and Juana sympathized with them. In spite of everything, a ship was sent to Bermuda to pick up prisoners to take to Cape Town. Although Harry wrote repeatedly to prevent this, the ship arrived and was anchored off shore. Although the ship was ultimately sent on to Tasmania, the entire episode was a severe strain on both Harry and Juana. Subsequent unrest and disastrous policies resulted in both of them suffering ill health and a loss of popularity, as well as severe political unrest and division. Harry was dismissed from his position in March of 1852. Harry was ill when they left Cape Town, and Juana cried as they boarded ship to return to England.

Once back in England, they did not resign themselves to a quiet life, and once again, the Duke of Wellington's influence helped. Harry had subsequent appointments, including one as a delegate to Lisbon to invest Don Pedro V with the Order of the Garter when Don Pedro married Princess Stephanie. He and Juana attended the festivities at Buckingham Palace for the princess on her way to Lisbon. In September 1859, Harry left his last post, which was in Manchester, and the Smiths moved to London. Although he continued to write, offering himself for other posts, none were forthcoming and he died Oct 12, 1860 at age 73.

Juana lived on, cared for by family and friends, until her death Oct. 10, 1872. She was buried in Harry’s tomb at St. Mary’s in Whittlesey, as Harry had wanted. In spite of many ups and downs, financial worries, and political disasters, I think it can be truly said that Harry and Juana Smith truly achieved the happy-ever-after ending in spite of having no children. She experienced his life with him. They were devoted to each other their whole lives. Juana Smith travelled the world with her beloved husband, and was allowed to take part in events that most women of her time could hardly have imagined. The township of Windsor in South Africa was renamed Ladysmith for her in 1850. As a couple, they seemed to live a charmed life, surviving multiple hardships and disasters together.


Sources include:

The History Blog. “Sir Harry and Lady Smith.” By Megan Abigail white, posted March 17, 2010. http://meganabigail.blogspot.com/2010/03/sir-harry-and-lady-smith.html

Look and Learn History Picture Library. “An unlikely love story set against the backdrop of the Peninsular War.” Posted June 5, 2013 (from an article published June 3 1967). http://www.lookandlearn.com/blog/24858/an-unlikely-love-story-set-against-the-backdrop-of-the-peninsular-war

Peterborough Telegraph. “IN FOCUS: Wild about Harry-the hero of Aliwal-and Juana, his teenage Spanish bride.” Posted Aug. 26, 2004. http://www.peterboroughtoday.co.uk/news/local/in-focus-wild-about-harry-the-hero-of-aliwal-and-juana-his-teenage-spanish-bride-1-150736

Rooney, David & Scott, Michael. IN LOVE & WAR The Lives of General Sir Harry Smith and Lady Smith. 2008: Pen & Sword Military, Barnsley, South Yorkshire.

Of course, Harry Smith’s autobiography is also a must-read.

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Lauren Gilbert lives in Florida, with her husband. Her first novel was published in 2011, and a second one is in process.

Love and Hate in February 1567, Part III by Linda Root

Prelude to Catastrophe:

Of the original Four Maries, only Marie Seton remained in the service of the queen. 

By mid-January 1567, the others were married. Of the four women, Seton had been the most devout. Rather than returning to Scotland in 1561, she would have preferred to remain at Saint Pierre les Dames with the queen’s aunt Rene and taken her holy vows, but she had bound herself to the Queen of Scots and took the commitment seriously. With outspoken Marie Flemyng finally married to Foreign Secretary Maitland, Seton became her mistress’s conscience. She had filled that role once before, warning the queen that people were uncomfortable with her late night card games with the Piedmontese musician David Rizzio, who had become the queen’s French language correspondence secretary.

 Now the queen was spending a great deal of time closeted in her chambers in the company of Scotland's notorious roué James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. In the case of the earl, the gossips of Holyrood Palace did not suspect the pair of merely playing cards. No one had observed any compromising conduct, but Bothwell’s reputation as a womanizer was enough to make Seton bite her lip and raise her brows. When that had no effect upon her mistress, she discussed her concerns with the queen. As she had feared, Marie reprimanded her: had she not observed Bothwell entering the queen’s chambers carrying batches of state papers in his arms? And later when he left her, did he not sort through the stack and issue instructions and commands to her counsellors and staff? No one had complained when the queen’s late night visitor had been her brother Moray.

 The Unusual Trip to Glasgow:

Without a word to her confidants beforehand, in late January the queen announced that she was traveling north with a horse litter to fetch her husband home again. Her usual retinue would accompany her only as far as the Livingston stronghold at Callendar House. They would spend a day there.  Then the earl and his men would travel back to Edinburgh and on to Liddesdale to resume dealing with the unruly Borderers while the queen continued on her journey. Bothwell's whereabouts after he parted from the queen  are confirmed by events on the Borders that required him to interface with the English warden at Berwick who kept records. For the second stage of the journey, the powerful Hamiltons appeared with a small army to escort her on to Glasgow. Since the Hamiltons were bitter enemies of the Lennox-Stewarts, so large a contingent of them announced to Lennox to watch himself. Obviously the queen was cognizant that the trip had an element of danger but it does not explain why she took the risk.

Gnarled tree at Callendar House where the queen stopped enroute to Glasgow

Different historians have differing points of view as to what inspired the Queen of Scots to put herself back in a relationship from which she had so recently extracated herself. It had to be something more than her empathy toward the ill and injured brought about by Darnley's outbreak of what he said was pox but which everyone suspected was syphilis. There are as many explanations aimed at  the queen's conduct in the current histories as there were factions rampant in the Sixteenth Century. Her severest  critic was her former friend and tutor George Buchanan who claimed the queen was bringing her husband into range of an assailant's knife.

Perhaps she was trying to impress her royal cousin Elizabeth with whom she was in significant negotiations that her virtue was intact and her marital fidelity assured? The inveterate gossip, politician and scribe James Melville of Hallhill reports that the English queen was within days of naming Marie Stuart as her heir. This was not just a rumor. Melville's  brother Robert was in England working out the details. One would think that the queen would have been on her best behavior at so critical a time. Was the trip taken in grim realization that in boycotting the baptism, Darnley had rekindled doubts about the prince’s paternity—doubts that needed to be resolved if Elizabeth was to become his 'Protector' as the negotiators had anticipated?

Or was it simply the queen's  acceptance that the sixteenth century was populated by bad husbands who were tolerated because, however royal, that was a 16th century wife’s role? Had she not chastised her sister Jean for refusing to accept that dynamic when dealing with her overbearing husband Argyll? Even the queen’s formidable former mother-in-law Catherine de Medici had to wait for her beloved husband’s death to be rid of his mistress Diane dePoitier.

The position taken by eminent historian John Guy in his outstanding history The Life of Mary Queen of Scots: My Heart is My Own, London, 2004, is that the queen had a reasonable fear based on reports of a man named Heigate and others that Darnley was planning to kidnap the prince and rule Scotland as his regent. Marie had been meeting with informants and her own brother Robert about Darnley's latest mischief, a proposal that involved kidnapping the prince and locking the queen in someplace desolate and remote for the rest of her life.

One explanation that apparently no one dared voice at the time and which has only been alluded to and discarded by the queen’s recent biographers including Alison Weir is that she was pregnant or thought she was. There is no indication that she and Darnley were cohabiting after the hunting trip to Traquair, where the queen used the possibility that she was pregnant to beg off hunting with Darnley. That trip is generally placed as occurring in late August. It lasted almost a month but ended abruptly after Darnley insulted the queen at dinner in the presence of the laird.  But that did not mean that more recent contact had not occurred.

Traqair Castle , PD Art

Darnley was not entirely out of the picture until after December 24th, and had made brief appearances at Alloa, Stirling, and Jedburgh as well as other locations where the queen stayed during her progress that autumn. Guy indicates that he declined to accompany her to Craigmillar in late November, but in Mary Queen of Scots and the Murder of Lord Darnley, Alison Weir states that he did show up there long enough to demand his conjugal rights, and when refused, took off for Dunbar.

In the sixteenth century, even an educated woman like Marie Stuart was ignorant of gynecology, and there is no definite indication as to when the king and queen's final act of intercourse occurred. Marie had believed herself to be pregnant and worn a smock while married to Francois II, in spite of evidence that his testicles had not descended. It is generally believed that she was still a virgin when she married Darnley.

And then there is her troubling new intimacy with Bothwell. No one really knows what occurred behind closed doors after Darnley left for Glasgow following the baptism, leaving the queen's stalwart supporters fearing that she was becoming irrational and falling under Bothwell's thrall. However, as Alison Weir points out,there is no credible evidence that they were sexually involved unless one finds credibility in the queen's former friend Buchanan's vitriolic fable that with the aid of Lady Reres she had been climbing out of windows and trysting with Bothwell  in the early fall.

What almost certainly did not transpire was any sort of meeting of the queen and her stalwart band from Craigmillar in January in which she might have ordered her champions to back off on any plan to eliminate the husband she was planning to restore. That never happened. Instead, she rode north to collect her perfidious consort and haul him home. And that is troubling.

It is at the point when Marie  leaves Glasgow during the last week of January with her husband in tow that students of Marian history are overwhelmed by the evidence suggesting her complicity in what transpired next. There are entire books written about the letters the queen is alleged to have penned while she was in Glasgow. However, the best argument that contemporary writers can come up with on the issue of her guilt is that she might have written parts of some of the self-condemning letters but likely did not write all of all of them. Her writing was distinctive and would have been easily copied especially by someone who had shared the same tutors, such a Marie Fleming or Marie Beaton, whose handwriting was very similar.  In other words, there is an excellent case that the Queen of Scots was framed.

Like the Craigmillar and Whittinghame Bonds, the damning documents known to history as the Casket Letters have disappeared,  and the surviving copies, to a large extent, are copies of copies. When they were used at the tribunal held in York the following winter, Elizabeth did not find them sufficiently compelling to resolve the issue of the queen's participation in the events that killed the king. And the persons who had possessed them for months before the hearing were the same three men who were governing Scotland after her surrender at Carberry Hill --her brother Moray, her duplicitous foreign secretary William Maitland, and her mortal enemy James Douglas, Earl of Morton. Other than a few salient and immutable facts, all of the rest is hearsay.

It is true that with Darnley's doting father begging him not to leave the safety of the Lennox enclave, she had to do some fast talking to get him to see things her way. In a likely authentic note written in her own hand and probably  inserted into the damning second Casket letter, she promised him she would resume sleeping with him if he came back. Since she had a good idea of what really ailed him and syphilis was known to be contagious, her plan was to lodge him at Craigmillar until his pustules dried and his loathsome mercury baths were suspended. Even Darnley was too smart to agree to that. He insisted on a residence of his own choosing and delayed announcing his choice until it was too late for his enemies to lay a trap. He finally settled on the Provost's house at Kirk o' Field. The property he chose was near to a house in the control of the Douglases and turned out to be a huge mistake on his part.

By the time the entourage arrived at Kirk o'Field, dealing with the king had become very much a Douglas-Bothwell enterprise with Morton, his cousin Archibald Douglas, and James Balfour  in charge. It is suspected that Balfour slipped the details to Elizabeth's minister Cecil who knew something evil was coming. Guy's position is that while Cecil was not implicated and did not know the details, he knew the personalities well enough to guess the plot.

 Kirk o' Field:

Sketch of the crime scene at Kirk o' Field prepared for Cecil 
by the English agent Drury who was in Scotland at the time.

The campus known as Kirk o' Field was located just outside the city wall of Edinburgh. The Provost's House was a two-story dwelling. After Darnley elected to stay there, the queen had extravagantly appointed a second story room for Darnley and had installed his travel bed--the one that had been her mothers. The walls were hung with fine tapestries and a bath was placed beside his bed. A room directly below it was furnished so that she could sleep there occasionally while his treatment continued.

During the days from his arrival on January 31st or February 1st until the events of February 9, a Sunday, Marie  assumed the role of nurse, companion and coquette. He wrote to his father on February 7 assuring him that the queen "yet doth use herself like a natural and loving wife." On Monday he was to move into the king's chambers at Holyrood. If the queen dreaded the reunion, she did a fine job of hiding it.

February 9, 1567 fell on the last Sunday before the beginning of Lent, a final opportunity for the queen and her companions to engage in fun and frolic before the austerity of Ash Wednesday.  The queen did not waste it sitting by her husband's bed. One of the principal events scheduled was the wedding of her favorite page Bastien Paget to her gentlewoman Christina Hogg. But there were intervening events including a farewell reception for the Duke of Savoy's ambassador. It was eight in the evening before Marie, Bothwell, Argyll and Huntly arrived at her husband's temporary retreat.

True to form, her illegitimate half-brother Moray had taken off for his estate in Fife, claiming health issues involving his wife. Darnley urged Marie to spend the night and was especially sexually advancive. The queen begged off. She had promised to be present at a masque that her servant Bastien Paget had planned and planned to be present at the bedding-in ceremony.

On her way out of the complex she was surprised to see her own servant Nicholas Hubert, known by the moniker French Paris, a former servant of Bothwell's, crossing the quad. She remarked about the dirt on his face and clothing. According to John Guy, if she had looked into the ground floor bedchamber where she had sometimes slept during Darnley's stay, she would have seen two of Balfour's henchmen hiding there.

The queen returned to Holyrood in Bothwell's company, arriving too late to enjoy the masque but in time for the bedding of the bride. Weir reports that she was the leader in the risque merrymaking. Then she went to bed. Bothwell was playing cards with friends when she left him. Apparently he did not stay there long, for in the wee hours of the morning of March 10, 1567, the Provost House at Kirk O' Field blew up in an explosion that rocked the city and lit the sky.

The silver box believed to have contained the Casket Letters,
Wikimedia Commons

The force of the explosion had not sent Darnley catapulting through the roof as was originally believed. His body and his valet’s were found in a garden near the city wall. He had escaped in a manner similar to the means used by Bothwell and Huntley at Holyrood the year before—on a chair tied to a rope. However, a contingent of Douglases caught him and his manservant making their escape and strangled them. Archibald Douglas even left a bedroom slipper behind.

Apparently the fuses Bothwell had ordered set had not detonated and when Bothwell arrived and finally lit them, he had no idea that the king and his man had escaped one form of death for another. All in all, it made for a very confusing crime scene until some women in a house overlooking the wall reported what they had heard—the king, who was a Douglas on his mother’s side, was imploring assailants he addressed as his kinsmen to spare his life.

When the news that Darnley was dead reached Marie, she made a series of disastrous moves. Nothing her enemies could possibly have done to thwart her was as effective as her own  actions. Cecil, who loathed her,  must have been ecstatic.  Public sentiment had already condemned the queen long before Balfour did his hocus pocus and made what was said to be Bothwell’s silver casket crammed with documents and papers appear.  By the time the condemning documents mysteriously appeared late in the summer, the queen had already lost her crown.

Allegedly instigated by the Earl of Lennox who was certain that his daughter-in-law had stage-managed the death of his favorite son, placards began appearing in the capitol and the other Scottish population centers. They showed a caricature of a mermaid and a hare. Mermaids were commonly hung on doors of taverns that included  sexual favors in the bill of fare. The hare was an old Hepburn icon. After a few days of general disbelief, fingers were pointing at the queen, and one of the them was on the hand of Elizabeth Tudor, who had been within days of naming Marie Stuart heir apparent to the English throne. Cecil had been right and she had been wrong, and Elizabeth did not like being out-guessed.  The Queen of Scots had a penchant for disaster.

It upset  Marie Stuart's regard for protocol to learn that Darnley's nearly nude corpse had been left in public view. Her first priority was seeing that he was covered up and transported to where he could be properly prepared to lie in state. Then she frenetically began draping her chamber at Holyrood in black.

However, her behavior after Darnley’s death was vastly different from her period of sequester while she was in France. Marian critic Jenny Wormald in Mary, Queen of Scots- Politics, Passion and a Kingdom Lost points out that she attended a wedding the very next day. The queen did not remain in cloister the entire 45 days dictated by custom. Instead she cited her physician’s concerns about keeping to a dark stuffy room and departed to Seton House where the air was fresher.

Original condolences received from Elizabeth Tudor and Catherine de Medici advised that her best course was to assume a conservative image as Elizabeth had after Amy Robsart's death and Catherine had assumed after the massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day, and soon the matter would blow over. While public opinion was that Bothwell and Queen were behind the affair, there was very little evidence to support it. However, when Marie did not take the advice, the second round of letters were less sympathetic.

While traipsing off to Seton the queen capriciously allowed Lennox’s henchmen to infiltrate the political arena of the capitol. Her least intelligent act was appointing Bothwell to investigate the regicide of which he was suspected. His critics were quick to note that Hepburn seemed much more enthusiastic in his efforts to apprehend those who were papering the capital with seditious pamphlets than in catching Darnley's killers.

Elizabeth wrote Marie a stern follow-up letter advising her to get serious about catching Darnley's murderers, even if they turned out to be persons very close to her. Elizabeth did not need to name names to make the point.  It was tacitly understood that any chance of becoming Elizabeth's heir was contingent upon Marie rehabilitating herself in the eyes of ordinary Scots and Englishmen. But Marie Stuart had never taken kindly to advice that did not suit her plan.

from the First Marie and the Queen of Scots

It did not help her reputation with her subjects when she gave many of the king's most valuable possessions to the man most of Scotland thought to be his murderer. Soon Bothwell was sporting Darnley's gold armor as well as sharing his leisure hours with Darnley's widow. It is rumored that Marie had taken to sitting on a low chair so she would not appear quite so much taller than her right hand man.

Lennox was outraged. He wanted Bothwell tried,  and to shut him up, the queen gave him what he wanted, but on terms that made it almost impossible for him to prevail. When Lennox asked for time to prepare his case, it was denied him.  When Elizabeth sent a special envoy to urge the queen to grant a short continuance, Bothwell and Maitland barred him access while the complicit queen watched from a window. Bothwell imported thousands of his Border Reivers to bully Lennox's agent until the man was afraid to present his case.  Lennox was no fool.  He did not appear other than by written declaration, and Bothwell was acquitted. He challenged anyone who took exception to the verdict to hand-to-hand combat.  There were no takers.

Marie naively  considered the matter settled. But then came the events of April and the queen's high speed race to doom.

According to Wormald, it was never Darnley's murder that brought the queen to ruin, but the manner in which she handled it.  Dr. Wormald asserts that had she managed the April Parliament in the manner her ancestor James II handled his under similar circumstances, she might have weathered the events of February with relative ease.  James II had taken steps to convince his Parliament that business was going forth as usual.

The Queen of Scots did the opposite.  On her way from Holyrood to the Tollbooth for the opening session, she rode with Bothwell,who carried the sceptre. Argyll carried the crown and Lord Crawford carried the sword of state.

She turned Parliament into a three act play designed to solidify her position but which did nothing to ease the tensions.  A review of the proceedings independent of Wormald's analysis which some find harsh indicates it was little more than a feeble attempt to exaggerate the successes of the queen's six years of personal rule. The queen ratified  the acts of the Reformation Parliament that had met before she came to Scotland. John Guy writes that  'Bothwell oversaw every aspect of the parliament.' Toward the end, she presented a series of grants and releases from forfeiture  that benefited not just Bothwell, but the Douglases including Morton, her brother Moray and most of all the Gordons whose cooperation would be needed if she intended to wed the already married Earl of Bothwell.  And if that was not foremost in her mind, it certainly was in his.

On the evening after Parliament adjourned,  Bothwell hosted a dinner party alleged to have been held at Ainslee's Tavern in the Canongate, although it may have started there and ended up at Holyrood.  The most prominent of the Parliamentarians were there.

The wine must have a flowed freely, because before the night was out, the most powerful men in Scotland had signed a bond that not only ratified Bothwell's acquittal but recommended him to the queen as the man she should marry.  Maitland and Atholl did not show up although invited, and apparently Argyll refused  to cooperate and walked out.

Some say that it was misrepresented to the signatories that the queen desired to marry Bothwell and was seeking their ratification. Whether they were coerced or simply afraid to defy a man of Bothwell's reputation,  the bond was signed by enough of the men in power in Scotland that Bothwell was ready to make his move. He and Maitland took the bond to the Queen of Scots the following day.

Bothwell fully expected her to honor  the bond her lairds had signed and accept his proposal of marriage.  But the Queen of Scots often did not do the expected thing.  The best she offered was an indication that she would think about whether or not it would be detrimental to her honor.  Bothwell did not take it well.

From Stirling to Dunbar:  April 21-April 24, 1567:

The events that occurred two days later are one of history's  greatest puzzles, and one that is not easily solved in the context of twenty first century values.  It begins innocuously and centers on a mother's concern for her child.  It is what happens thereafter that is so difficult to fathom.

Stirling Castle - John Slezer, Public Domain

Even before the Christening, probably  just after  the king and queen's disastrous hunting trip to Traquair House when according to Alison Weir, infant Charles James Stuart was in the party, the prince had been  living at Stirling Castle under the care of the Earl of Mar.  It was the traditional treatment of heirs to the Scottish throne.  The Queen of Scots had  been the exception to the rule, primarily because from the time of her coronation there was an English army on her trail that kept her in her mother's care and  on the run until she was ultimately sent to France and the protection of Henri II. The Queen of Scots did not enjoy such options when it came to safeguarding her son.  But like her mother Marie of Guise, she decided to handle matters herself. It bothered her that Mar's wife was a kinswoman of the Douglases.

Anonymous- a fictional portrayal

At the time Marie left her son with Mar in 1566, she had instructed him not to give him over to anyone the earl did not trust to keep him safe, even in the face of violence. Then after the encounter with Hepburn on April 21st when she rejected his suit for her hand, she developed a mother's natural urge to bring the prince to Edinburgh Castle, the most secure fortress in Scotland.

She rode to Stirling with a contingent of approximately thirty, including Secretary Maitland and her friend and long time confidant, Sir James Melville of Raith who had known her since her childhood in France.  When they arrived at Stirling, the Earl of Mar greeted her in the courtyard and to her utter shock, informed her that he was denying her access to her son.  He had taken her earlier instructions seriously and due to her association with Bothwell, numbered her among those persons who presented a danger to Prince James. The queen was flabbergasted.

Because he was not an insensitive man, Mar allowed the queen  to enter the prince's nursery with two of her ladies so she could play with her son.  She and her entourage lodged in the compound overnight and she bid her son farewell the following morning.  It was the last time the Queen of Scots saw the child who would become James VI of Scotland before the year was out.

On the morning of April 24, a most unhappy queen and her entourage headed for Edinburgh, totally unaware that the worst part of the misadventure had yet to happen.  Unless, of course, the queen had foreknowledge of what  was waiting for them at the bridge that crossed the Almond River near Cramond.

Says Melville,who was there:

"and in her back-coming betwixt Linlithgow and Edinburgh the Earl of Bothwell rencountered her with a great company and took  Her Majesty's horse by the bridle; his men took the Earl of Huntly, Lethington and me and carried us captives to Dunbar. ...Then the Earl of Bothwell boasted that he would marry the queen; who would or who would not; yea,whether she  would herself or not."
(The Memoirs of Sir James Melville of Halhill, Gordon Donaldson, Ed. London, The Folio Society, 1969)

At Dunbar, the queen was attended by ladies chosen by Bothwell, and by all accounts, he ravished her. Just as is often the case in modern times, the issue was one of consent. One of Bothwell's men, Captain Blackadder, who had been charged with supervising Melville, told him that the queen had conspired in her own kidnapping. But even if that is true, there is a reasonable explanation for it which does not make the queen a wanton.

The queen's behavior both before and after Darnley's murder suggests that she had focused on Bothwell as a suitable husband. She had lived her entire life depending upon strong men for support. In France it had been her uncles of the House of Guise. In Scotland it had been her half-brother James Stewart, Earl of Moray, with a strong assist from Maitland. It had never been Darnley,  which is part of what prompted him to act so rashly.

At a point close in time to Rizzio's murder the queen began to openly favor Bothwell. In spite of what she had said to him in Maitland's presence, it makes sense that she and Bothwell privately planned to meet on the queen's return from of Stirling, anticipating that she would have obtained custody of the prince. Then the three of them would go to Dunbar and Huntly would assist in getting his sister Jean to agree to a divorce. Using Dunbar as a power base, they would engage Maitland to bring the lairds around. As much as the lairds of the congregation complained about his methods, Maitland had a way of bringing them into line. Besides, most of them had already signed the Ainslie tavern bond.

Some witnesses to the event at the bridge indicated that the queen seemed shocked when Bothwell appeared with his 800 armed Borderers. That, too makes sense if she believed that Bothwell had received word that she had been refused custody of the prince, in which case the rendezvous would have been called off. Maitland and Melville both believed her reaction was one of honest surprise. Most accounts agree that Bothwell drew her aside and the two had a heated discussion before she called off her men and agreed to go with him.

What Is more, what Melville put down on paper in his memoirs is not what he and Maitland indicated when they were first released. It was their feeling that after they arrived at Dunbar, the queen had been raped -- Bothwell's solution to her honor problem.  Melville was cut loose to return to court after  the first night at Dunbar with a message from the queen indicating that the earl's behavior had been rude in the beginning but meant for her protection. Any modern day rape crisis counselor would have made short shrift of that.

The citizens of Edinburgh were not persuaded. Melville accompanied a large contingent of citizens armed with picks and farm implements to Dunbar the following day, to learn that the queen and Bothwell were in Hailes where she was teaching him the game of golf. The announcement had a sobering effect of the men who came to rescue her. Maitland remained in Bothwell's custody until the earl escorted the queen back to the capitol, showing her whatever deference he thought was due. Thus, by the time April had merged with May, Bothwell was very much in control of the queen's life and the queen was suffering mood swings revealed in speech patterns which were sometimes crude and at other times, suicidal.

Maitland stayed around until Bothwell tried to kill him. Maitland's smug intellect would have been grating on a man as arrogant as the earl. Then, Maitland and his wife Mally Flemyng rode to Halyards, the house of Melville's nephew Sir William Kirkcaldy who was already engaged with the Earl of Morton in mustering  a rebel army. The only one of the cast of characters at Craigmillar left behind in Edinburgh was James Balfour, who was the governor of Edinburgh Castle and had been secretly recruited by the rebels for the purpose of withholding possession of Scotland's great fortress from the queen and Bothwell if they demanded it.

Bothwell got his divorce from Jean on grounds of consanguinity in spite of the fact that there had been a dispensation granted at the time of their marriage. A week later, on May 15, 1567, the queen and Bothwell were married in the Chapel at Holyrood in a protestant service that left the bride in deep depression. There was a wedding breakfast for which the queen cast off her widow's weeds for a gown of yellow, but it brought little cheer.

New placards were appearing in the capital. They proclaimed that:

Only harlots wed in May.

Carberry Hill:

Little occurred between the queen’s wedding to Bothwell and their final kiss on the hill while the queen's army dwindled to a disillusioned few. Balfour at least kept his pledge to the lairds and refused the queen and her consort--now known as the Duke of Orkney-- access to the fortress and its devastating artillery. They moved from one location to another while Bothwell tried to build an army. He was not nearly as successful as he and the queen anticipated. Marie had misjudged the public sentiment that had built against her since Darnley’s death. Even the hand drawn white rebel battle flag was artful propaganda…the likeness of a small child in prayer, calling out ‘Hear and revenge my plea, O Lord!'

Much has been written about the confrontation at Carberry Hill that ended in the surrender of the queen. It is incorrect to call it a battle, since it never went that far. As the battle lines were being drawn, neither force was obviously superior to the other. There were tactical mistakes made by Bothwell and the queen. They were expecting Huntly to arrive with a large contingent of forces from the Catholic houses in the north. In a flash of Stewart impetuosity, the queen refused to wait. It was unusually hot for Scotland. The ragtag bands of rebels were drinking water and marching out of the sun. The royals were marching into the sun and they were drinking wine. The rebels forces were tended and victualed by the people along the way,  many of whom had tied white bands on their upper arms. The queen’s forces had marched without enthusiasm for their cause and desertions were wide spread.

The queen sat on a rock atop a rise ironically called Queen Mary’s Hill, and from there she watched  her title as Queen of Scots slip away. When she saw the rebel general and recognized him as her old champion Kirkcaldy, the soldier who had earned his fame in France riding beside her beloved father-in-law Henri II, it all came apart, and she sent for him to ascend the hill. When he did so, one of Bothwell’s men acting on his master's orders tried to shoot him, but the queen stood in the way and soundly chastised Bothwell for the effort.

Just as he had done after his controversial acquittal, Bothwell offered to settle the matter in single combat, but there were no takers he would accept as his equal. Kirkcaldy was the obvious choice of the lairds, but he was a mere baron. Even the Earl of Morton was rejected. It was obvious that Bothwell, now Duke of Orkney, would find no one to suit him.

As the sun lowered, so did the aspirations of the queen, who proposed to surrender if Bothwell were allowed to freely leave the field and if she was assured that she would be taken to Holyrood and allowed to perform her role as queen. The lairds declared that if she renounced Bothwell, she would remain Queen of Scots. There was a passionate kiss between Marie and Bothwell before he reluctantly rode away.

According to one version, before he left the field, he called out to her, warning her not to believe them. Two days later, she was imprisoned at Loch Leven Castle, home of her half-brother Moray’s mother Margaret Erskine, the Dowager Countess Douglas of Lochleven. The queen's half-brother Moray was on his way back to Scotland from France to assume the role of Regent of Marie's infant son, and thus, the leadership of the nation. His mother Margaret had always claimed that he was Scotland's rightful sovereign and that she had been King James V's handfasted wife.

By the end of July, the Queen of Scots  had been forced to abdicate under threat of death and her son had been crowned James VI of Scotland. When Marie Stuart surrendered to Kirkcaldy of Grange at Carberry as he knelt before her and kissed her hand, a much disturbed Bothwell rode away. She never saw him again.

Linda Root from The Last Knight and the Queen of Scots

CONCLUSION:

It is impossible not to have an opinion about the events surrounding Darnley's death. As to the conspiracy at Craigmillar, my opinion is that Marie Stuart at the very least knew the crux of what her advisers were planning. She wanted to be free of Darnley but she was not about to instruct her men as to how to achieve their goal. She asked them to solve the problem in a manner that would preserve her honor and the legitimacy of the prince. It is important to remember that they were as anxious as she was to be rid of their obstreperous king. Ironically, the manner in which they proceeded defeated Marie Stuart's claim to the English throne and brought her to her ruin.

It would be easy to agree with John Guy that she carted Darnley home to Edinburgh to keep an eye on him. I do not think her act was that benign. I believe she enticed him home so the men she depended upon could handle her Darnley problem while allowing her to retain the credible deniability that is the hallmark of kings and emperors and presidents then and now.

Thank you for joining me in this tripartite exploration into the death of Henry Darnley and the part played by Marie Stuart, Queen of Scots.

~*~

Linda Root is the author of the books in the Queen of Scots Suite on Amazon.The Queen of Scots Suite by Linda Root

Giveaway: Lest Camelot Fall by Danny Adams

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Austen's England: Peaceful as all that? I don't think so

by M.M. Bennetts

Today, for your edification and delight, I am going to rant about a thing very dear to my heart but which causes me no end of frustration and, even, dare I admit it, shuddering rage.

It is this--this often firmly held conviction (in defiance of the facts) that the Regency England about which Jane Austen wrote was this idyllic, peaceful, sheep-may-safely-graze land, nothing more than a jammy backdrop for aristos to chase young women in flimsy muslin gowns, wholly untouched by the war which just across the Channel was ravaging every Continental land, destroying societies and lives from a spreading cancer of French military tyranny and conquest.

So, some of those facts.  In the myriad country towns during the period, the places where most of the population still dwelled, what might have made up the fabric of their daily existence?  Jane Austen's or anyone's, really?

Well, let's start with what they heard.  Daily.  Writing in 1806, the British satirist, George Cruikshank noted, "Every town was...a sort of garrison--in one place you might hear the 'tattoo' of some youth learning to beat the drum, at another place some march or national air being practiced upon the fife, and every morning five o'clock the bugle horn was sounded through the streets, to call the volunteers to a two hours' drill...and then you heard the pop, pop, pop, of the single musket, or the heavy sound of the volley, or distant thunder of the artillery..." 

So much for waking to the gentle bleating of spring lambs and baby blackbirds learning to sing as melodiously as their parents, then.  The place was a sea-to-sea military base with all the serenity of a WW2 siren call.

And what about the sceptred isle landscape, the rolling beauty of the hills and Downland, the endless fields, pieced, ploughed, sown and fallow?  The landscape beyond every village and town, all of covered by farms and estates?  This perfect setting for a breath-taking ride with one's Mr Wickham in a high-perch phaeton?  Right?

Well, it may surprise and amaze you to know that from well before 1802, the great fear in Britain was that of invasion by the French.  It was a national obsession and the preparations to repel such an invasion wherever it came from and whenever were all-consuming.  And it wasn't for another decade, until Napoleon and his Grand Armee were well and truly whooped in Russia, that the national fever of defensive building works started to calm down.

They weren't exactly paranoid about nothing either in their fears. There had been the unsuccessful attempt to invade the British Isles in 1797 by the French--a huge storm, gales, blizzard and all that had blown the estimated 40,000 troops off course and had saved the day...but you can't count on that sort of divine intervention every day, can you?

So, hoppity poppity into the new Napoleonic era of the new century.  The short Corsican tyrant is in prime position in France.  He loves nothing better than a good conquest with himself as the new ruler.  Britain is allegedly at peace with France during the period known as the Peace of Amiens, which, just like later dictators have done, Napoleon is using to get his military machine in gear and ready to roll.

What's happening on the ground?  Once the peace of Amiens was officially over, well, across those counties thought to be most at risk--the southern coastal counties--everyplace became immersed in the preparations for war and invasion.

By August 1803, it was being reported that in fifteen counties, from Devon in the west across to the Isle of Wight, including the Cinque Ports along the coast, and all the way up in Northumberland and Fife, that over 50% of the male population, those aged between seventeen and fifty-five, were in uniform, wearing regular, yeomanry or volunteer uniform.

That's a lot of fellows in uniform if you think about it.  The counties of Kent and Sussex had 49% and 45% of their men in uniform respectively.  That's half the male population.  Imagine.

Another snippet you might like...they weren't all wearing red coats which shone brightly in the sunshine as we see in the old portraits.  Yes, originally, the uniforms were meant to be red.

But for the uniforms of the men, the government didn't have the money for the well-dyed red wool--that was for officers who could afford their own.  The enlisted or volunteer uniform was provided by the government, so obviously they were getting all they could on the cheap.  And the dye used in those job lots was madder, which after a year in the sun and perpetual rain of this country fades to a kind of rusty, blotchy sienna brown...Good for camouflage in autumn, I dare say.  

By 1804 then, a consensus had been reached on coastal defenses and across the face of the south coast, an intense programme of building ensued for the next several years, so that by 1808, 73 Martello towers and two 11-gun circular forts had been built.  Another 29 towers had been constructed along the Wash--the coasts of Suffolk and Essex. (Eventually the number of Martello towers constructed reached 168, extending all along the coast all the way to Orkney.)

These were quite impressive defensive towers they were building too.  Not cheap.  The walls were of varying thickness, but generally from between six to thirteen feet thick, with the heaviest walls facing seaward.  The bricks were bedded in hot lime mortar (imagine the smell as they were constructed) calculated to withstand bombardment from the sea.  The roofs were flat, supported from underneath by a central column, and carried on top a 24-pounder cannon which would have been mounted on a sliding traverse carriage which enabled it to fire round 360 degrees...

Anyone for a Regency stroll by the seaside?  Bring those parasols...

Finally, food.  The years of the early 19th century had seen a number of harsh winters and bad late harvests--courtesy of a mini-Ice Age--which had left the English feeling vulnerable on this point, and the government took this quite seriously.  Bread riots or any food shortages can too easily cause panic.  Hence, with the threat of invasion and the assumption that the French would head for London first--probably via Kent--great plans were laid to stockpile foodstuffs for the capital, so that it might hold out under siege.

Thus plans were made to create emergency stores near the capital, including rice, flour and salted provisions as well as 250 tons of biscuit meal, all stockpiled in depots around and in the capital at locations such as Fulham, Brentford and Staines...

Also, there were huge stockpiling needs across the South Coast to feed those thousands of militia, gathered to repel and defend the land--in 1804, more than 18,000 regular troops were stationed in Sussex, with another 20,000 more stationed nearby to be deployed at short notice.  There were thousands more stationed in Kent, particularly ready to defend Dover, where it was assumed the 'big assault' would happen.

And, within these troop numbers and within their training too, it's important to note that within each year, these troops would march hundreds of miles across counties, going where they were sent, training, marching, recruiting...England in the early 19th century was a country at war.  Fully and wholly at war.

There was not a day not an hour of any day, which did not include some element of the Napoleonic conflict.  And they knew it.

The plethora of English World War Two dramas and films will give one the true picture of the state of things--just change the uniforms to 200 years back and add sideburns.  Then you'll have it.

War everywhere, bulwarks, vast defensive buildings like Martello tower, drums, artillery practice, the post office going through all foreign post (probably Austen's letters to and from her sister-in-law were opened and read), the food shortages, the militia on every street corner of every village and town, the recruiting officers in the public houses, the thousands of marching, marching, marching men...And the drums at Portsmouth beating out Hearts of Oak at dawn, or the fife thinly whistling a new recruits poor-boy's version of Rule Britannia...

This then, 200 years ago was "This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, This fortress built by Nature for herself Against infection and the hand of war...This precious stone set in a silver sea...This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England."

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M.M. Bennetts is a specialist in early 19th century British and European history and the Napoleonic wars and is the author of two novels, May 1812 and Of Honest Fame set during the period.  A third novel, Or Fear of Peace, is due out in 2014.

For further information, please visit the website and historical blog at www.mmbennetts.com

From the Sands of Africa to a Hidden Frontier in Roman Britain

by Adam Alexander Haviaras

The streets of Thugga

One of the great pleasures of writing historical fiction is the research that goes into it. Every period in history is a warren of rabbit holes. You can get lost, confused, or run into dead ends. You can also experience the joy of discovery, and the enrichment of your own knowledge.

No matter your level of experience, there is always something new, something to turn your previous views on end.

I’ve trained for years as an historian, but I’m a firm believer that historical fiction is often the best way for readers to learn about history. It’s not only entertaining, but it helps one to connect with history on a more emotional and visceral level than any classroom experience.

The onus is on the author to make it as accurate as possible with the information available, and that means research!

Sahara landscape

I’m definitely enjoying the research for my current novel, Warriors of Epona – Eagles and Dragons Book III. For some years I’ve been researching and writing about the world of Rome itself and the provinces of Roman North Africa. It’s been fantastic, and I’ve travelled to some pretty amazing sites in the Sahara for my research.

But as much as the historic novelist must put the story first, he or she must always be guided by the historical timeline. The first Eagles and Dragons novels take place during the reign of Emperor Septimius Severus, the North African emperor who won the civil war and defeated the Parthian Empire. It’s an extremely exciting time in Roman history with the world in great flux.

In my current novel, the battlefield has moved away from Mesopotamia, North Africa, and the marble palaces of Rome, to northern Britain for Severus’ campaign to conquer Caledonia once and for all.

And so I find myself in familiar territory once more. I’ve traded the sweat and sand of Africa Proconsularis for the green plains and grey skies of central and eastern Scotland.

Having lived and studied in St. Andrews for a few years, I was happy to get a new perspective on an area I thought I had known very well.

Of course, I knew that the Romans had invaded Caledonia prior to the 3rd century. Many of you have probably heard of the invasion of c. A.D. 71 under Governor Gnaeus Julius Agricola which culminated in the much debated victory at Mons Graupius in A.D. 84.

Hadrian's Wall

And there is absolutely no doubt that you will be familiar with that most famous of monuments, Hadrian’s Wall, which was built in the 120s A.D. This, and the later Antonine Wall, which was built around A.D. 142, were intended to keep the troublesome Caledonians at bay.

For myself, I was aware of and studied all of these events and monuments that are a part of Roman history in Scotland and the Borders. They occupy some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve seen, from stones of Hadrian’s Wall, to the fortress at Newstead (Trimontium), and on to the Antonine Wall which stood in the shadow of the Highlands.

But there is another frontier that many people may not know of. You may have heard of some of the forts or camps that make up a part of this frontier, such as the legionary base at Inchtuthil.

I’m talking about a line of forts and camps known as the ‘Gask Ridge’.

Research on this particular frontier has been less in depth than either the Antonine or Hadrianic walls. However, over the past ten years or so, the Gask Ridge has received its due attention thanks to the efforts of Birgitta Hoffmann and David Woolliscroft who have spearheaded the Roman Gask Project.

The importance of this frontier cannot be over-emphasized.

The Gask Ridge

The Gask Ridge frontier has seen action in every one of Rome’s Caledonian campaigns and some of the research even shows that it was the first chain of forts in northern Britain, predating the other walls. Some believe it is the first such frontier in the Empire!

It consists of a long line of forts and temporary marching camps that run from the area of Stirling, on the Antonine Wall, past Doune, along the edge of Fife and up into Angus, all the way to Stracathro.

This is a very impressive line of defence built by Rome with the intent of holding the Caledonii at bay, and separating the highlands from the flatter plains leading to the North Sea.

The trick for me as a writer and researcher is finding out which forts may have been in use during the campaigns of Septimius Severus in the early 3rd century A.D.

The forts of the Gask Ridge were used mostly during Agricola’s campaign in the late first century, and then by Antoninus in the late second.

The Romans definitely knew how to pick a strategic location along the perfect line of march, so it is likely marching camps would have been reused in later campaigns. But some of that is supposition.

One site that we know was built as part of the Severan campaign was the fort at Carpow, on the banks of the Tay, in Fife. With a large part of a legion stationed there, the supply chain could be maintained by sea with Roman galleys coming up the Tay. It was also at this time that some believe the first Tay Bridge was built when Severus ordered the creation of a boat or pontoon bridge to the Angus side of the river.

Carpow was a large base of operations intended to make a statement, and according to Cassius Dio, one of the main contemporary sources for the period, when the inhabitants of the island revolted a second time, Severus “summoned the soldiers and ordered them to invade the rebels’ country, killing everybody they met; and he quoted these words: ‘Let no one escape sheer destruction, No one our hands, not even the babe in the womb of the mother, If it be male; let it nevertheless not escape sheer destruction.”

Ardoch

Cassius Dio did have a flair for the dramatic, true, but Severus was a military emperor who liked to prove his point. The quote may not be far off. He was in Caledonia to finish what other Roman emperors had started, just as he did in Parthia.
The Gask Ridge will play a key role in my story, and I have something of an idea as to which forts may have seen re-use during the third century, among them the camps at Camelon and Ardoch, and possibly Bertha and Fendoch.

Of course, one of the exciting things about writing historical fiction, after the research, is filling in the gaps and exploring possibilities.

My research journey on the Gask is not yet finished, and I’m certainly looking forward to learning more.

One thing that I have discovered is that though the history and research are very important, at the end of the day, in fiction, the story must come first.

When history and story come together, well, that is pure magic!

Cheers, and thank you for reading.

If you are interested in reading more about the Roman Gask Frontier, or about the Romans in Scotland, do have a look at the following resources:

The Roman Gask Project: http://www.theromangaskproject.org.uk/

Further Reading: Rome's First Frontier: The Flavian Occupation of Northern Scotland. By D. J. Woolliscroft and B. Hoffman. Pp. 254. ISBN: 0 7524 3044 0. Stroud: Tempus. 2006.

Dr. Fraser Hunter Documentary (Scotland: Rome’s Final Frontier): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p66rv

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Adam Alexander Haviaras is an author of historical fiction/fantasy set in the ancient world. He has studied history and archaeology in Canada and the United Kingdom. Adam blogs weekly on his website, Writing the Past, about ancient and medieval history and historical fiction. You can Tweet him at @AdamHaviaras or find him on Google+ and Facebook. He loves to hear from readers, writers, and fellow history-lovers.