Inner, Furious Peace

One of the joys of visiting my parents is the gentle drift of books which covers the house. The drifts especially tend to settle near the sunniest chairs in the house, at bedside tables, and (to a lesser extent) on actual bookcases. At the drift by the kitchen armchair, I recently picked up May Sarton's The House by the Sea, and began reading. Ten days into my visit and I have finished the book.

Sarton (1912-1955) was a prolific American poet, novelist, and journal-writer; she reminds me rather of another American writer, Madeline L'Engle, in that there could be a great divide between the person she was in her journals and the person her friends and biographers saw. She was complex and contradictory--unsatisfied with her level of critical acclaim yet irritated by fans who sought her out; incessantly insistent on her need for solitude yet constantly surrounded by people. Even with the information that she was not who she appeared to be, I found many passages in her work that resonated with me.

Here are some of these.

25 December 2021

On Aging

Old Age was one of the themes Sarton seems to have frequently returned to as writer--not just the variability of its effects on mind and body, but the way American culture of her day saw the elderly, and how she, as an aging person, saw herself. I loved this letter from a reader  responding to one of her novels in which she writes about old age:

Among the letters today were two from strangers--one from England to thank me for As We Are Now. "I am very old, nearly ninety-one, but I am most happily placed. My own dread is that I might find it necessary to go into an old people's home. At present I am in my beloved old farmhouse, restricted to driving in a radius of just three miles, very deaf, very lame, but with sight just as good as ever. So I live largely in books. I still do a little mild gardening, perched on a stool. Life owes me nothing. I've had pretty well everything I ever wanted--my share of trouble, of course. But one gets overcharged with experience." (Saturday, February 8th, four P.M., 1975 p 72).

It seems like a very English letter somehow, as well as an admirable way of being in the world. 'Life owes me nothing.'

In the House by the Sea, Sarton remarks repeatedly on the fact that old age is not a monolithic experience. As she noted on Thursday, January 22nd 1976,

There are as many ways of growing old as of being young, and one forgets that sometimes. (p 193)

and she observed with pleasure the freedom that aging might bring.

One of the good elements in old age is that we no longer have to prove anything, to ourselves or to anyone else. We are what we are. (Tuesday, February 3rd, 1976, p 198)

19 December 2021

On Housework 

As a feminist writer, Sarton reflected often (and seems to have been asked to speak fairly often) about being a woman and an artist at the same time. Some of her reflections on pursuing creative and domestic life were particularly striking.

 

She began 1975 by thinking about sanctity, and the difficulty of pursuing active and contemplative ways of life at the same time:

I want to think about saints, who they are and who they are not, as far as I am concerned. In the first place, people who want to be saints very rarely are in my experience...the chief problem women have, even now, is that they have to be both Mary and Martha most of the time and these two modes of being are diametrically opposite. (Sunday, January 19th, 1975 p 56-7)

And a year later,  she was still reflecting on the antithesis she saw between household tasks and artistic creation.

...it is this repetitiveness that makes housework as dulling [Sarton was writing about a friend who had decided to quit work at a marina]--no sooner are the dishes washed than it's time to get a new meal. The great thing with any creative work is that it is never repetitive. The problems are always fresh, one is never bored, and it is the same with teaching, I found. What makes the academic world so stultifying is not the teaching, but all the committee work, the politics, and playing for position. The "organization man" in the college world is what makes it deadly. (Monday, January 19th, 1976 p 188)

21 December 2021

On Becoming Oneself

For someone who could (according to her biographers, anyway), be very self-centered and prone to picking fights, it is interesting to see Sarton's reflections on from the beginning of 1976:

Peace does not mean and end to tension, the good tensions, or of struggle. It means, I think, less waste. It means being centered. (Tuesday, January 6th, 1976 p 177)

One would expect her to have argued that the self-realised artist must live a life apart, but in contrast Sarton argued that 'discipline and routine' were important for the tasks of finding oneself:

One does not find oneself by pursuing one's self, but on the contrary by pursuing something else and learning through some discipline or routine (even the routine of making beds) who one is and wants to be. (Thursday, January 8th, 1976 180)

This seems to be like the romanticizing of a woman who did not, in fact, have to make multiple beds every morning, but the point--that one finds oneself by pursuing something else--rings very true for me.

20 December 2021

On Publication 

For someone who seems to have been low-key (and sometimes high-key) obsessed with her standing and reputation among the literary establishment, Sarton seems to have been remarkably free from ego in her advice to young writers. She insisted that they should be disciplined, hardworking, patient, and lucky.

It is no good at twenty-three to produce a story or two in a year. A talent grows by being used, and withers if it is not used. Closing the gap between expectation and reality can be painful, but it has to be done sooner or later. The fact is that millions of young people would like to write, but what they dream of is the published book, often skipping over the months and years of very hard work necessary to achieve that end--all that, and luck too. We tend to forget about luck.' (Monday, May 3rd, 1976 p 244)

While I don't agree with any writing advice that refers to a One True Way, my own experience of attempting to pursue academic publication and success makes this advice to be realistic and work hard very resonant for me. Also, I absolutely adore this passage comparing the process of becoming a published poet to growing a garden:

 Gardening is like poetry in that it is gratuitous, and also that it cannot be done on will alone. What will can do, and the only thing it can do, is make time in which to do it. Young poets, enraged because they don't get published right away, confuse what it will do and what it can't. It can't make a tree peony grow twelve feet in a year or two, nand it can't force the attention of editors and publishers. What it can do is create the space necessary for achievement, little by little.' (Sunday, June 6, 1976, p 265)

22 December 2021

On Solitude 

A tremendous portion of Sarton's self-fashioning was dedicated to her insistence on the importance of solitude for her creative work but she wrote powerfully about loneliness and its creative potential, too.

Perhaps one must always feel absolutely naked and abandoned and desolate to be ready for the inner world to open again. Perhaps one has to dare that. This morning I feel better for having let the woe in, for admitting what I have tried for weeks to refuse to admit--loneliness like starvation. (Sunday, February 8th, 1976 p 203)

I find Sarton most compelling on solitude when she is engaging with what other people have to say abut it. This passage on being in the kitchen alone is particularly resonant for me:

I have been meaning to note something Charlotte Zolotov said in a letter the other day...'A lot of poetry of living, especially alone, takes place in the kitchen'...The poetry, perhaps, is in making something quietly without the anguish and tension of real creation. Often I am very tired when I have to cook my dinner, especially on these days of fierce work in the garden. But always, once I get started, I feel peace flow in and am happy.' (Thursday, October 16th, 1975 p 160)

Interesting to see Sarton once again thinking of creative work in domestic terms, but drawing a hard bright line between which of the two is 'real work' and which of the two is not. The age-old tension of feminism, still alive and well into this century of the millennium.

And finally, an absolutely delightful passage, once again proving that I find Sarton most compelling when she journals about someone else's words. This makes me think of several people I love when they are interrupted at a moment of concentration:

...I came on this in Rosten's People I Have Loved, Known or Admired. He is speaking of Babbage, a crotchety Cambridge professor who invented computers: "The moment he heard an organ-grinder or a street singer, he would run out of his house and give chase, with homicidal intent. He just went wild if anyone disturbed his inner, furious peace." (underlining mine). The phrase is so exact! (Sunday, July 27th, 1975 p 124) 

First of all, don't you want to begin to read a book with a title of People I Have Loved, Known or Admired right away? It promises good things. Secondly, like Sarton, I find the description too perfect for words: he just went wild if anyone disturbed his inner, furious peace. 

20 December 2021

Week 6: All the Fun

This is the seventh of a series of posts about my Humfrey Wanley Fellowship project, which investigated the scholarship of the women who staffed the Bodleian's unofficial research department in the early twentieth century. The full series of posts can be read here. The first post, which outlines the scope and background of the project, is here. 

'...a desire to have all the fun is nine-tenths of the law of chivalry.' ~ Dorothy Sayers, Gaudy Night 

My final task at the end of my fellowship at the Bodleian Libraries was to write a short report summarising what I had accomplished during my six weeks in the library. Because my fellowship focused on letters, I chose to write my report in the form of a letter to Humfrey Wanley (1672-1726), the person after whom the fellowship was named. Reading late nineteenth and early twentieth century epistolary style is a delight and I had 'all the fun' doing my best to imitate it.

I hope you enjoy reading my report as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Visiting Scholars Centre, Weston Library
Oxford
17 September 2021

A letter to Sir Humfrey Wanley concerning time spent during a fellowship bearing his name

Dear Sir,

I have been asked to give an account of my time as a visiting fellow at the Bodleian Libraries. I have been a grateful holder of the fellowship which bears your distinguished name and, as the compass of my researches includes medieval manuscripts and scholarly librarians, I hope that the following may be of some interest. Since my work has involved letters, it seemed appropriate to write my report in epistolary form—I trust that this might be acceptable, and will gladly provide plainer prose if preferred.

Trained as a historian at the University of Leeds, where my doctorate focused on friendship in the works of the late antique poet Venantius Fortunatus, I became an academic librarian and associate lecturer at the University of Lincoln in 2017. When I started those jobs, I carried with me curiosity about the story of a footnote in an article Theodor Mommsen’s edition of the Theodosian Code, which mentioned that between 1899 and 1903 he had manuscripts collated and transcribed in Oxford by a woman named Annie Parker. About her the author of the article, Brian Croke, knew nothing beyond her name. Mommsen’s praise for the high quality of Miss Parker’s manuscript work made me curious about who she was, and where and how she learned to work with medieval manuscripts. As a medieval studies librarian and associate lecturer, working with students whose level of preparation for the technical skills of the discipline (languages, codicology, paleography, and so on) vary widely, I also wondered Miss Parker’s journey towards expertise might provide lessons for how one learns to study manuscripts, and so provide inspiration for new ways to teach these skills. 

4 August 2021. Punts in the morning.

My work as an academic librarian, meanwhile, had led me to become interested in the fields of scholarly communication and research librarianship—questions which might be summarised as the way that historical research works as a process, from the time a scholar formulates a question they wish to answer, to the point where their findings are shared with others in some way. One often thinks of a large publication—an edition or monograph or catalogue—as the product of a single individual, but working with students and academics in my library made me aware of the ways in which published research, which often bears the name of a single author, is made possible by the labour of many other people. My project thus investigates the hidden and unacknowledged contributions of female library workers to scholarly publications, especially in the study of the Middle Ages.

The Library Records collection affords a unique opportunity to explore these subjects; and during the period of my fellowship (August to September 2021), I have been reading letters sent to Bodleian Library Assistant George Parker, and his daughters, Angelina Frances New (nicknamed Annie) and Evaline Gertrude Parker. I am given to understand that as Keeper of the Harleian Library, you yourself spent much time replying to requests for information, and sharing details of the books in your care with those who could not travel to see them (or who lacked the facility with languages or paleography to access the texts without an intermediary). You would find familiar ground in many of the 2,583 letters I have had the pleasure to read during my fellowship—requests for information about the contents of the library in relation to specific subjects are extremely frequent, and so too are requests from scholars for copies of specific sections of manuscripts or books. Inquirers show a substantial level of interest in the material related to architecture, heraldry, and landholding collected by your correspondent Samuel Carte (bequeathed to the Bodleian by his son Thomas), and the antiquarians Roger Dodsworth and Richard Rawlinson.

11 September 2021. A run to Godstow Abbey.

Angelina and Evaline Parker, and their father George, contributed transcriptions, proof-reading, and research to a number of publications, including W.S. McCormick’s edition of the works of Chaucer, J.A. Herbert’s edition of the Middle English poem Titus & Vespasian or the Destruction of Jerusalem, F.W.D. Brie’s edition of the Brut, and other publications for the Early English Texts society. Indeed, correspondence from most of the editors of EETS volumes published between the late 1880s and 1910s are found in the Library Records collection. A number of letters are from Frederick James Furnivall, the redoubtable founder of that society, and his colleague Walter Skeat—who clearly regarded the Parker family (especially Annie) as trusted authorities on Oxford manuscripts. While the Parkers’ paleographic specialisms and interests do not seem to have entirely intersected with yours, theirs being much later, a letter from the antiquary Agnes Gibbons shows that Annie Parker read and transcribed Old English. Further to the subject of learned societies, you will be pleased to learn that there are twelve letters from that distinguished body which you cofounded, the Society of Antiquaries, relating to the researches of its secretary, William Henry St John Hope.

The Parkers’ correspondents were not limited to scholars and antiquaries in Great Britain—they corresponded with antiquaries, genealogists, and scholars in Austria, Bohemia, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, and the United States. Notable names among the German correspondents include the classicist Theodor Mommsen, the historians Ernst Dümmler and Oswald Koller, and the philologist Max Müller. American correspondents include the economic historian Charles Henry Hull, the art critic Frank Jewett Mather Jr, the writer Imogen Louise Guiney, and the Harvard University professors Chester Noyes Greenough, George Herbert Palmer, and Oliver Sprague. Letters which have some entertainment value as well as being of scholarly interest abound, but rather than recount these in full, I beg leave to refer you to a series of short essays about them, which you can find here. 

My office in the Visiting Scholars' Centre

As you wrote in your letter on the library of St Paul’s Cathedral, the librarian of that place should be ‘ready to receive strangers,’ and I must acknowledge the welcome I have received from members of the Bodleian Library community. I am very grateful to Neil Iden, Hannah Jordan, Ernesto Gomez, Nicola O’Toole, and other members of the Special Collections team who have shepherded me through archival work in a pandemic with kindness and efficiency. I am enormously grateful to Alex Franklin and Rachel Naismith, for their help in making arrangements for me to come to Oxford, and for making my time here such a great pleasure.

In addition to several helpful conversations about my findings as they progressed, Dr Franklin kindly arranged introductions and meetings with Oliver House, Faye McLeod, Martin Kauffman and Andrew Dunning, with whom I have discussed (respectively) the Library Records collection and special collections enquiries then and now; ways in which my research notes could be used to enhance the Bodleian’s electronic catalogue of these particular Library Records (our conversation also discussed the medieval and early modern records of the Vice Chancellor’s Court—to which I subsequently found reference in letters to the Parkers); and the Parker family’s work with medieval manuscripts. Ms McLeod kindly introduced me to Bethany Hamblen of Balliol, and we have corresponded about George Parker’s work in the Library of that College. I am most grateful for the time these people have taken, and the interest they have shown in my work, and I hope we will continue to correspond as my work progresses. While the time of year and state of the pandemic have meant that I have not been able to organize or deliver any seminars or lectures relating to my work, I would be honoured to do so should opportunities arise in the future. 

23 August 2021. At work in the reading room.

My application for the fellowship referred to two publications I hoped to produce as a result of my time here. Thanks to Dr Franklin’s kindness in recommending my project to Professor Elizabeth Baigent, I am presently working on an article about the Parker sisters’ research work for a special issue of the journal History of Universities, on the theme of women at the University of Oxford, which has an anticipated publication date of 2023. As Louise Guiney and her work are of interest to scholars of American literature, I have sought advice from experts in American Catholic writers, Holly Faith Nelson and Jonathan Nauman, about a publication of her forty letters in the Library Records collection. The Parkers corresponded with and referred to other ‘Record-searchers’ like themselves at the British Museum Library and Record Office, and I plan to expand my researches to investigate the scholarship of these women, with the intention of publishing a book on their lives and work.

Outside of the library, I have been an enthusiastic attender of concerts, particularly at the Holywell Music Rooms and Sheldonian Theatre—joyfully listening to live music for the first time since February 2020. Additionally, I have been training for the Manchester Marathon, and have enjoyed many miles on the beautiful river paths and meadows, that make Oxford such a pleasant place to be. The run to and from the ruins of Abingdon Abbey is a lovely sixteen miles—though it can be extravagantly muddy after heavy rain. I have also enjoyed trips to many of Oxford’s bookstores, and am returning home with many additions to my personal library. Serendipitously, one of these, Genki Kawamura's If Cats Disappeared from the World, is itself in the form of a letter. 

22 August 2021. Aftermath of a visit to Daunt Books.

I modestly hope that this letter has been a pleasant diversion from the great labours of your Librarianship, and sign myself, in the manner of Louise Imogen Guiney, a most ‘grateful undergraduate of Sir Thomas Bodley's eternal college,’ to which I anticipate returning on many further occasions. With great gratitude and many happy memories of a delightful and productive visit, I remain, Sir,

Yours very truly,

Hope Williard

The Mitten Prophet

It's mitten season again! When I last wrote about birds and mittens in the stories of medieval Christian saints, I mentioned that one of the things that surprised me was that Columbanus' miraculous recovery of his lost mittens from a thieving bird was not the only time such an incident occurred in early medieval Latin hagiography. 

Mitten Theft in Early Medieval England

A second incident of mitten theft occurs in the biography of the early English saint Guthlac (674-714 CE), written by a monk named Felix at the request of the East Anglian king Ælfwald, sometime between 730 and 740 CE. Guthlac's life of faith made for a dramatic story. Related to the royal family of Mercia, he pursued a military career for nine years, attracting fame and following until at the age of twenty-four he experienced a dramatic religious conversion and entered the monastery of Repton in Derbyshire. After some time learning the monastic way of life and studying the examples of Christian saints, Guthlac sought a more remote and difficult way of life. He chose to move to an island in the Lincolnshire fens called Croyland (modern Crowland) where he seems to have settled from around 699.

Moving to remote places in search of spiritual challenges is a trope of the lives of the saints--and it's a trope of scholarship on those selfsame texts that these places were rarely as deserted as hagiographers made them out to be. Guthlac's fame as a holy man meant that his life as a hermit was not an entirely solitary one. Like many saints in his position, he was regularly visited by petitioners and friends seeking help and advice. Among his visitors were Wilfrid, a fellow holy man, and Æthelbald, the future king of Mercia. In the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, a Lincolnshire illuminator depicted this visit as part of the marvelous Guthlac Roll, an account of the saint's life in pictures. In one illustration, Guthlac sits indoors comforting the exiled king while a third figure--perhaps Wilfrid?--is seated behind them listening.

St Guthlac in conversation with Æthelbald of Mercia, Harley Roll Y 6, f. 12v.

After they had spent some time chatting, Guthlac suddenly asked if they had left anything behind in their boat:

Now the Lord showed things that were absent to this man of blessed memory, Guthlac, filling him as with the spirit of prophecy; and so in the midst of their conversation, although he was seated in the house and could not see farther than the entrance, he suddenly began to ask them whether they had left anything in the ship. Wilfrid in reply said that he had forgetfully left his two gloves there. Guthlac declared that his jackdaws had possession of the gloves; and so it proved. Without any delay they leave the dwelling and see a black thief of the raven kind on the roof-top of a certain cottage tearing a glove with its mischievous beak. Thereupon St Guthlac restrained the bird with gentle words, and then, as if conscious of its ill-doing, it left the glove on the top of the cottage and like a fugitive fled westwards. So Wilfrid had the glove brought down from the top of the roof on the end of a stick; then, realizing that it was in the power of the great man to restore the other glove as he had done the first, Wilfrid began to be concerned about the loss of the other glove. ~trans. Bertram Colgrave, Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 124-125

This was not the first time Guthlac had had trouble with mischievous birds: this chapter about mitten theft is the fourth of a set of stories about the saint's interactions with animals. In the first of these stories, a jackdaw stole an unattended manuscript, which was recovered thanks to Guthlac's help, miraculously undamaged despite being dropped in the marsh. The next chapter of the saint's life describes him living in patient and amused tolerance of the further depredations of a pair of jackdaws. It was a sign of Guthlac's holiness that fish, birds, and other animals would come to him when he called and even take food from him. A third chapter of the life describes an instance in which Wilfrid witnessed the saint help a pair of swallows build a nest in his house.

"Thief !" by john.purvis is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Wilfrid might have been reassured that all was not lost through these prior experiences of the saint's way with animals but he still only had one of this gloves back. Guthlac, evidently seeing the humor in the situation, told him not to worry about it.

But the man of God noticed that he was greatly troubled in mind by the loss, and began to console him, uttering playful words and promising him that it was within God's power quickly to restore to them the lost article, if their faith did not falter. To be brief, while they were still speaking, three brethren sounded the signal and appeared at the landing-place of this same island. St Guthlac, quicker than words, as was his custom, turned aside towards them with joyful countenance; for always the most excellent grace of charity shone in his face and speech. As soon as he had saluted the brethren one of them immediately bent his head to him and, having thus asked permission to speak, declared that he had found by chance on the way a certain glove dropped from the curved claws of a jackdaw, and showed him the glove. Guthlac smiled for a moment and, taking the glove from his hand, marvelled at the kindness of the divine clemency, and gave thanks in the spirit. Then, bidding the brethren farewell, he returned the glove to Wilfrid as he had previously promised.  ~ trans. Colgrave, pp. 124-127.

The providential arrival of three more visitors, one of whom had just so happened to just pick up a glove dropped by a jackdaw, ensured that the story of mitten theft had a happy ending.

Felix's Sources?

Was this story related to Jonas of Bobbio's story about Saint Columbanus miraculously recovering his mittens after a raven flew off with them? It's within the realm of possibility, since by the time Felix was writing, the Life of Columbanus had been in circulation for nearly a century. Felix's quotations, vocabulary, and stylistic motifs show that he was familiar with a number of Latin saint's lives, though scholars do not seem to cite the Life of Columbanus as one of his sources.

One of the ways in which historians work out the relationship between medieval texts is by looking for quotations or shared use of unusual vocabulary. One place to begin is looking at the word our authors use for mittens. Jonas calls Columbanus' gloves tegumenta manuum or wantos (a word which he specifies is local dialect and defines for the reader). Felix, by contrast, consistently uses the Classical Latin word manica--which can refer to long sleeves which cover the hands, a fur muff or gloves, a piece of armor covering the forearms, or manacles. The absence of tegumenta manuum from the Life of Guthlac is not conclusive proof that Felix never read Jonas, and the possibility of a connection between the two is something I will keep exploring. Further investigation of each author's vocabulary could also shed light on possible connections with other authors: Jonas and Felix were not alone in their interest in birds stealing mittens.

"Medieval mitten, National Museum of Iceland" by Lebatihem is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

As I continue to write about instances of mitten theft in the early Middle Ages, I am fascinated by the reasons medieval writers chose to tell stories of birds stealing mittens. Felix's own framing of the story indicates that he intended it to demonstrate Guthlac's God-given power and authority over the natural world. Additionally, these stories demonstrate the power of the natural world to capture our attention--and sometimes also, our mittens.

Further Reading

Bertram Colgrave, Felix's Life of Saint Guthlac (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

 

'Guthlac Roll', (no date) British Library [website]. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/guthlac-roll [accessed 12 December 2021].

 

Jan-Peer Hartman, 'Barrow Agency: Reading Landscape in Felix's Vita Guthlaci', in Things and Thingness in European Literature and Visual Art, 700–1600 ed by Jutta Eming and Kathryn Starkey (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2021), pp. 125-152.

 

Rosie Mills, (no date) 'The Guthlac Roll', Crowland Abbey [website]. https://crowlandabbey.org.uk/guthlac-roll/ [accessed 12 December 2021].

 

Sally Shockro, 'Saints and Holy Beasts: Pious Animals in Early Medieval Insular Saints' Vitae', in Animal Languages in the Middle Ages ed by Alison Langdon (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018), pp. 51- 68.

South English Legendary, (no date), British Library [website]. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/south-english-legendary [accessed 12 December 2021].

Michael J. Warren, (2018) 'The miraculous mimicry of a jay', Medieval Ecocriticisms [blog]. 23 September. https://medievalecocrits.wordpress.com/2018/09/23/the-miraculous-mimicry-of-a-jay/ [accessed 12 December 2021].

Last Day!

It's the last day of November and I have successfully completed NaNoBlogMo! This time of the year is one I endure rather than enjoy--the dramatic disappearance of daylight and demands of this part of the academic year wear on me. It's hard to believe it has gone so quickly. 

I have enjoyed the challenge of writing a daily post. I did not end up finished everything I wanted to write--posts about my Humfrey Wanley fellowship and historians in science fiction are still in the pipeline. Oh, and 'tis the season where I should start writing posts about Medieval Mitten Miracles again. 

Get ready for tales of naughty birds flying off with mittens!

I was inspired and slightly awed by Pat Thomson's post about AcWriMo on her blog Patter--she used the month to get through an entire book draft. Wow! To be clear, she says in the post that she started with 14,000 words already written, and the book is 50,000 words long--but still, writing 36,000 words of academic prose in a month is a FEAT. 

I'm not going to try to write a book in a month in 2022, but I plan  to take part in AcWriMo myself next year--I might even organise something with other academic writers at my institution. A 7,500 word article is 250 words a day: an achievable but challenging target. Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed the poems, pictures, recipes, and news about my book! Thank you for reading.

Image credit: "Red-tailed Hawk" by Jon David Nelson is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

A Busy Week

Hard to believe it's almost the end of my November posts! It's an exciting week here in Lincoln--an application to finish and lots of grading to do, so here is a picture of a fine and fluffy owl.

"Owl" by g_kovacs is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Hang in there!

For the First Snow

We have had the first snow of the year here in Lincoln. To celebrate the peace it brings, I am listening to one of my favourite piano pieces and reading the following wintry poems. 

Do join me.

Snow-Flakes

Out of the bosom of the Air,

      Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,

Over the woodlands brown and bare,

      Over the harvest-fields forsaken,

            Silent, and soft, and slow

            Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take

      Suddenly shape in some divine expression,

Even as the troubled heart doth make

      In the white countenance confession,

            The troubled sky reveals

            The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,

      Slowly in silent syllables recorded;

This is the secret of despair,

      Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,

            Now whispered and revealed

            To wood and field. 

 

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Reprinted in the Zoo of the New, ed. Nick Laird and Don Paterson (London, 2017), p. 321

 

"Trees and snow" by Lorenzoclick is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Those Winter Sundays

Sundays too my father got up early

and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

then with cracked hands that ached

from labor in the weekday weather made

banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

 

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

When the rooms were warm, he’d call,

and slowly I would rise and dress,

fearing the chronic angers of that house,

 

Speaking indifferently to him,

who had driven out the cold

and polished my good shoes as well.

What did I know, what did I know

of love’s austere and lonely offices?

~  Robert Hayden. Reprinted in the Zoo of the New, ed. Nick Laird and Don Paterson (London, 2017), p. 359.

 

"North Maine woods - snow" by thepiper351 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

 

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

 

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

 

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

 

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

 

~ Wallace Stevens, reprinted on Poetry Foundation

Thanksgiving: Flypaper Thoughts Edition

 I love Barbara Emodi's flypaper thoughts; here is my own version

• Thanksgiving is the final Thursday in November
• unless you are Canadian
• Then it is in October
• If you choose your friends wisely 
• you can have two thanksgivings a year  
• Because I live over the ocean
• I can never remember when Thanksgiving is
• I've been telling British people it's the third Thursday for years
• This is not correct
• Since 2016, I have had my Thanksgivings
• On weekends
• When you have a job, it's easier
• to manage large dinner parties on Saturdays
• Than Thursdays
• But during my PhD, when I had Thanksgiving on Thursdays
• I would put the turkey in the oven
• go to a seminar
• skip the questions after the paper
  
• And head back to finish off the meal
• to be joined by a dozen or more guests afterwards
• Being young and fearless sure is something
• the turkey always turned out great
• sometimes things need less effort than we think they do
• My UK Thanksgivings began in 2012
• I borrowed a friend's apartment in Cambridge
• the 2013 one was in Leeds
• I had two Thanksgivings in 2014, 2015
• And 2016
• Small Thanksgivings in 2017 and 2018
• And a very special one in 2019
• Less than a week before I moved
• Nothing was packed
• It was so worth it
• There was no Thanksgiving in 2020
• I hate eating on zoom
• And Lincolnshire in November doesn't allow for outdoor picnics
• But this year, with vaccines and rapid testing kits
• I was able to have a small indoor Thanksgiving
• My guests announced themselves as "Thanksgiving virgins"
• So we began the meal joking and whooping with laughter
• Thank goodness for friends
  
• I overcatered
• No one minded
• It was so very lovely
• to have Thanksgiving again.
  

Thankful for the Cathedral Lights

It's the season of the year where Lincoln Cathedral is lit up at night.

"Lincoln Cathedral at night" by IRGlover is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Seeing its glow from the bottom of Steep Hill always brightens the cold and dark of late November.

"Lincoln Cathedral at night" by IRGlover is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

 

It is one of the most beautiful things about living in Lincoln, and I am grateful for it.

Happy Thanksgiving

Two years ago, I brought a pumpkin pie to work to celebrate Thanksgiving. I wasn't able to do that last year (the UK was just about to lock down again), but at the start of November my lovely colleagues began asking me about when Thanksgiving is, and would there be pumpkin pie again?

I was delighted to be able to bring a pie into work today, joined in the staff kitchen by the popup paper turkey I keep in my desk drawer, who makes an annual appearance on my desk every fourth Thursday in November.

 

Not my actual office but the turkey looks like this. "paper turkeys smell like holiday spirit" by Robert Couse-Baker is licensed under CC BY 2.0

I'm grateful for many things this year--lovely colleagues, friends, and family--and also the chance to share pie once again. In thankfulness for that, here is the recipe!

My Grandmother's Pumpkin Pie

• 1 ¼ cups of pumpkin (Hope’s Mom’s Note: Libby’s preferred and NOT pumpkin pie filling! I use the entire small can of Libby’s pumpkin.) [Hope’s Note: Libby’s is an American brand which is not always easy to find over here; if you can find any brand of canned pumpkin in the grocery store--the American foods section at Tesco has it--that will work great. No need to measure, as my Mom says just put the whole thing in the pie. When I can’t find canned pumpkin, I cut an orange-fleshed squash in half, scoop out the seeds, roast it in a 400 degree (180C) oven for 30-60 minutes, measure out 1 1/14 cups and then use a food processor to blend it smooth and mix it with the pie ingredients.]
• 1 scant cup of sugar
• ¾ teaspoon cinnamon [I generally up this to 1tsp.]
• ¼ teaspoon of allspice
• Pinch of ground cloves [If you like cloves, use 1/4tsp; if in doubt, use less.]
• ½ teaspoon of salt
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup evaporate milk 
• 1 piecrust, homemade or purchased
  

Combine the pumpkin, sugar, spices, and salt; stir.

Add 3 large eggs and stir until well mixed.

Add 1 cup of evaporated milk and stir together well.

Pour into pie crust [use your favorite piecrust recipe or a storebought crust] and bake in 400 degree (180C) oven for 1 hour. After the first 30 minutes be sure and check to see if the pie is getting too brown, if it is then turn oven down to 375 degrees (about 160C) and if need be cover the edges with foil. Serve with a dab of whipped cream! 

Someday

I'm teaching a class on ancient graffiti and someday when this plague is over, I want to visit some of the places we have discussed.

• Pompeii and Herculaneum
  
• Ostia
• Smyrna
• Aphrodisias
  
• Dura-Europos
• El-Kurru
• Tikal

"Pompeii" by Mark Vuaran is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Someday.

Book Blurb

Alongside choosing the cover for my book, I have also been writing a blurb for the back of it. Here it is!

Portrait of Venantius Fortunatus. Poitiers BM Ms 250 (136), f. 21v.

This book explores how one early medieval poet survived and thrived amidst the political turbulence of sixth century Gaul—with a little help from his friends. Born in northern Italy, Venantius Fortunatus made his career writing for and about members of the Merovingian elite. Although he is no longer dismissed as an opportunistic poetaster who wrote undistinguished flattery for undeserving kings and aristocrats, his work remains unduly neglected. This book reframes Fortunatus as a writer uniquely suited to his times, a professional poet who addressed his contemporaries’ needs and wishes for the prestige and sophistication of Classical culture. His poems and letters enabled his aristocratic patrons to situate themselves in networks, which they made and maintained in order to navigate a post-imperial but not post-Roman world. Tracking continuities and changes in the terminology of friendship, this book demonstrates how this language shaped beliefs and behaviours, leading to social cohesion even within kingdoms repeatedly wracked by civil wars. It thus makes an important contribution to our understanding of friendship in the Middle Ages and offers a fresh look at the Frankish kingdoms of Merovingian Gaul.

Choosing My Book's Cover

Lawrence Alma-Tadema's painting The Education of the Children of Clovis captured my imagination from the first time I saw it. It captures fundamental details of the Frankish kingdoms ruled by the Merovingians.

The Education of the Children of Clovis, Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Wikipedia Commons.

Present in the painting are the dynamism of the court, the violence of the kingdoms' repeated civil wars, the centrality of royal women, the clerics waiting to record history..and above all, the inseparable blend of Roman and Not Roman that makes the period absolutely intoxicating to study.

So when I finished writing my book, Friendship in the Merovingian Kingdoms: Venantius Fortunatus and His Contemporaries, there was only one image I wanted on the cover. This one, which says everything I hope that the book says.

Unfortunately, the painting is privately owned, and despite images of it being in the public domain, my publisher told me that copyright concerns would prevent us from using it. 

I grasped at the straws of other Lawrence Alma-Tadema paintings, including this amazing depiction of some late Roman ladies but sadly these too presented copyright issues.

Gallo-Roman Women, Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Source: Wikiart.

Alma-Tadema's Venantius Fortunatus Reading His Poems to Radegunda, which is absolutely delightful, would be a very strong choice, but this was used on the cover of Michael Roberts' splendid 2009 book about Fortunatus, The Humblest Sparrow, and I wanted my book to have its own image.

Source: Wikiart.

(Isn't it an amazing painting? Look closely. The fine details of Fortunatus declaiming and of the room he, Radegund, and Agnes occupy, get me every time.)

The production editor suggested that I look specifically at digitised images from museum collections marked as free to reuse, so I made a shortlist of some alternatives.

A graceful, forlorn hand holding a scroll.

Marble left hand holding a scroll, Metropolitan Museum of Art

A portrait of Venantius Fortunatus himself, wielding his pen, found in a medieval manuscript of one of his saints' lives.

Poitiers BM Ms 250 (136), f. 21v.

There is another lovely image from the same manuscript which tempted me greatly--an illustration of one of the miracles of Fortunatus' beloved patron and friend Radegund.

Poitiers BM Ms 250 (136), f.37v.

I love it because it looks like a small group of friends having a chat, something which is very well in keeping with the themes of the book.

Finally, after sorting through all of these choices, I discovered that the Rijksmuseum seems to have a public domain version of a print of the The Education of the Sons of Clovis; not quite as vibrant as the painting but still full of life and movement and community--just like Merovingian friendships.

Source: Europeana

The Thing With Feathers

River Witham, Spring 2021

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

Lincolnshire Wildlife Park, Summer 2021

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

Oxford Towpath, August 2021

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

~ Emily Dickinson

Shakshuka for a Day Well Spent

What do you cook when you don't want to cook?

When I was a PhD student, I developed a few meals that I would make when I came home from the post-seminar pub, hungry and tired; or when I had a lot of grading to do; or when life became very hectic. They included:

• popcorn with cheddar cheese, apples, and hot chocolate
• quick tuna burgers  
• some kind of pasta situation
• kale or chard sauteed with garlic and chili over couscous, topped with a fried egg
  
• scrambled eggs on toast

There are, however, only so many scrambled eggs one can eat before becoming faintly repulsed by the taste, and in these situations, I would end of making shakshuka, a Tunisian of eggs poached in spicy tomato sauce. Today, when I got home from a lovely hike in the Peak District, I decided it would make a perfect quick dinner.

Ladybower Reservoir, 20 November 2021

I started making shakshuka based on Deb Perlman's recipe from her blog Smitten Kitchen, but adapted it for a solitary hungry diner, like so.

Shakshuka for One

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1-3 cloves garlic, depending on size and preference
• 1 small chili pepper, chopped
  
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• 1 can chopped tomatoes
  
• salt
• 2 eggs
• 2 (or more) slices of bread
• butter
  

Start by slowly heating your oil while you chop the onion, then toss the onion in and chop garlic and chili. Add to the pot. 

Turn up the heat and give everything a nice stir--it should cook for a few minutes, enough time for the onions to soften and colour a bit. Add spices.

In less than a minute, you'll be able to smell the spices, and can then dump in your canned tomatoes. Stir so that the spices, onion, chili, garlic and tomatoes are all mixed together. Sprinkle with salt.

Let your tomato sauce cook for a bit while you locate eggs, toast, and butter.

Crack eggs into tomato sauce, and cover your pot with a lid so that the eggs cook before the tomato sauce scorches (if you have a hob that heats up quickly, or are prone to scorching food, turn the heat down at this stage).

Toast your bread to your liking; give it a nice coat of butter when it is done. 

Your eggs are done when the white has formed a thin, opaque film over the egg yolks, so that they are just invisible. If you like runny yolks, stop here; if you don't you may want to leave the pan on the heat a few minutes longer.

When eggs are cooked to your liking, transfer eggs and tomato sauce to a shallow bowl.

Eat with a spoon, using your buttered toast to mop up the egg yolks and tomato sauce.

What it really means

Sometimes when I'm trying to analyse a medieval text, I can take things too seriously.

Searching out the meaning and implications of every word and phrase, turning the text inside out.

Abingdon Abbey, 6 September 2021

I like how this poem reminds me to hold the text lightly and daydream.

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem

and hold it up to the light

like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem

and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room

and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose

to find out what it really means.

~ Billy Collins, The Apple that Astonished Paris (University of Arkansas Press, 1996).

All My Pretty Chickens

So, it turns out the summaries of Race of Scorpions, which I read to have some hope of following the density of a Dorothy Dunnett plot, skipped the events of chapters nine and ten.

"Head in Hands" by Alex E. Proimos is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Said events, dear reader, messed me up.

Beware: Race of Scorpions is not the charming boat-trip-and-competition-between-merchants-is-fun hi-jinks that is Spring of the Ram. 

(Good clean fun in that portion of the Niccolo-verse includes faking the plague, setting things on fire, and pretending you've taken a vow of chastity to get out of sleeping with an emperor. Never let it me said that Dunnett novels are undramatic.)

I'm obviously going to keep reading but very gingerly.

And in the meantime, if you have a cat, give it a snuggle and a treat from me.

Like herding cats

Yesterday I mentioned my intrepid high school English teacher, who required her students to compose anthologies of writing which mattered to us, and then read one of our choices aloud and explain why it mattered to us. Here is the piece I read for that assignment.

I don't remember what I said then, but if I had to tell you why it still matters to me now, I'd say that sometimes I think of the line 'shepherding the saints is like herding cats' during faculty meetings and it keeps a smile on my face. Most of all, I love McDonnell's wry deprecation of his brothers and himself. Kindness and a sense of humor, I have learned, goes a long way in being a good member of a community.

Church of St Mary the Virgin, Iffley, Oxfordshire. Detail of west doorway.

The Monks of St. John’s File in for Prayer

In we shuffle, hooded amplitudes,
scapulared brooms, a stray earring, skin-heads
and flowing locks, blind in one eye,
hooked-nosed, handsome as a prince
(and knows it), a five-thumbed organist,
an acolyte who sings in quarter tones,
one slightly swollen keeper of the bees,
the carpenter minus a finger here and there,
our pre-senile writing deathless verse,
a stranded sailor, a Cassian scholar,
the artist suffering the visually
illiterate and indignities unnamed,
two determined liturgists. In a word,
eager purity and weary virtue.
Last of all, the Lord Abbot, early old
(shepherding the saints is like herding cats).
These chariots and steeds of Israel
make a black progress into church.
A rumble of monks bows low and offers praise
to the High God of Gods who is faithful forever.

~ Kilian McDonnell, in Swift, Lord, You Are Not (Collegeville, 2003)

In Sleep A King

In my senior year of high school, our English teacher made us do two things. The first was to choose a Shakespeare sonnet and memorise it. She told us that it would be good for us, and useful one day. For the second, we were tasked with creating an anthology of poems and excerpts from books that mattered most to us at the time, a commonplace book of our seventeen and eighteen year old selves. We were asked to read an excerpt from our anthologies, in front of the entire class; we were also asked to explain why what we chose to read mattered to us. One kid shared the scene from A Clockwork Orange where the protagonist violently enjoys Beethoven. 

What I remember most about both assignments is that we were encouraged respond emotionally to both our Shakespeare and our anthologies. There was no pressure to define what these texts meant or how they worked; no beating the poems with hoses, in the inimitable words of Billy Collins, to find out what they really meant. We were allowed love without judgement.

Because of this, I still remember the poem I chose to read to the class when it was my turn, and my sonnet. Over a dozen years later I can still recite most of it without looking up the text. Particularly over the past few months, as I've missed being in Oxford, it has regularly come to mind. Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter / in sleep a king, but waking no such matter.

Sunset at Osney Lock, 17 September 2021

Sonnet 87

Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,

And like enough thou knowst thy estimate.

The Charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;

My bonds in thee are all determinate.

For how do I hold thee but by thy granting,

And for that riches where is my deserving?

The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,

And so my patent back again is swerving.

Thy self thou gavest, thy own worth then not knowing,

Or me, to whom thou gavest it, else mistaking,

So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,

Comes home again, on better judgement making.

    Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter:

    In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.

~ William Shakespeare