Smugglers, or Pub Crawl 2

24 Wednesday Jul 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Films and Music, Literary History

Tags

Anne, Church of St Peter and St Paul, Clegg, Disney, Doctor Syn, Doctor Syntax, Dymchurch, Fairfield, French Revolution, George Arliss, George I, George II, George III, inn, Kent, King John, Louis XIV, Louis XV, Louis XVI, Napoleon, Navy, Oxford, Patrick McGoohan, pub, Romney Marsh, Russell Thorndike, Ship Inn, Smuggler, St Tomas a Becket, The Scarecrow, William and Mary, William Combe

Welcome, as always, dear readers.

In our last, we were talking about inns and pubs, both in Middle-earth and in 1930s Oxford and we thought we had finished with the subject until there arrived in the mail/post a book from our good friend, Michael, in England.

Pubs anywhere are, we believe, immediately understandable, but why Kent and smugglers?

Since the royal government, under King John at the beginning of the 1200s, had begun to tax exports and imports, the best way around those taxes was either to smuggle or to deal, at some level, with smugglers.

Although such dealings had gone on for centuries, it appears that things intensified by the late 17^th century and France was the reason.

From the late 17^th-century, throughout the 18^th century, and into the early 19^th, England was at war with France, on land and sea. In governmental terms, this meant that this warfare went through the reigns of Louis XIV,

Louis XV,

image3louie15

Louis XVI,

image4louie16

the French Revolution and its multiple governments,

and Napoleon.

In English terms, this meant William and Mary, Anne, and Georges I, II, and III, basically from 1690 to 1815.

During each one of those wars, there were laws in England about the importation of goods from the enemy. That being the case, if those with the money to pay for such things wanted prohibited goods, they would have to rely upon the same smuggling used in peacetime, which they did.

Although the south coast of England in general had its smugglers, a map will show us why Kent would have been a very good place for such smuggling to go on.

As you can see, Dover, here, is only about 25 miles from the coast of France—a very easy trip and one not requiring large merchant ships to do it.

Smaller local boats, called luggers, could do the job and were also handy for offloading goods from larger English or foreign vessels, as well.

The government, seeing not only its laws violated, but revenue lost to the treasury from all the taxes not collected, tried to stop smuggling, using the navy

and occasional army units.

Success was very uncertain, however, as the officers of the law and their assistants were usually vastly outnumbered by the locals, whether smugglers or the many people in the area somehow complicit in smuggling operations. Because pubs were social meeting places, they were obviously useful as headquarters for smugglers.

In 1915, Russell Thorndike (1885-1972),

image12rt

an English actor and writer, published the first of a series of books about the adventures of a leader of one gang of smugglers, “Dr Syn”, in Doctor Syn, A Smuggling Tale of the Romney March.

(If you’d like to read a first edition, here’s a LINK.)

“Dr. Syn” looks like an easy joke on “sin”, but it may also be inspired by a figure from early-19^th-century English comic literature, “Dr. Syntax”, a clergyman whose rhymed adventures, began with The Tour of Dr. Syntax: In Search of the Picturesque, published in 1812 and written by William Combe.

image14drsyntax

The smuggler, “Dr. Syn” is actually a retired pirate, named Clegg, who masquerades as an Anglican priest, which is what “Dr. Syntax” actually is. As well, we might imagine that “Dr. Syn” the smuggler, finds it a sin to pay the import taxes the government charges and has therefore joined the local smugglers.

If Clegg is masquerading as a clergyman by day, by night he takes on another mask: as the leader of the gang which is based in Dymchurch, he becomes “The Scarecrow”. Dymchurch is at the edge of Romney Marsh. Here’s a map of the Marsh to give you an idea of its location and extent.

image15romney

And, to give you an idea of the Marsh itself, here’s an image of a church on the Marsh, St. Thomas a Becket, which was originally in the village of Fairfield. The village has disappeared, but the church remains. (You can see it depicted on the left-hand side of the map of the Marsh.)

Thorndike’s character has appeared several times in films, the first time in 1937, where Dr. Syn was played by a famous character actor of the time, George Arliss.

image17poster

If you would like to see this film, here are two links. The first LINK is to the Internet Archive version.

The second LINK is to that on YouTube.

In 1963, the Walt Disney studio released their own version, Dr. Syn,

starring Patrick McGoohan as “The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh” and we think he’s pretty creepy in his mask.

image19pm

Both movies are worth seeing, the Disney, in color, is full of Marsh and red coated dragoons, but the earlier film has a Dr. Syn who has the original pirate just below the surface—not so much hero, perhaps, as trickster.

But, you may be asking by this point, what about the pub? To which we answer, here it is—the Ship Inn, in Dymchurch, headquarters for “The Scarecrow” and his gang.

And, right across the way, is the Church of St Peter and St Paul, where, in his other disguise, the ex-pirate, Clegg, appeared each Sunday as “Dr. Syn”.

Thanks, as ever, for reading and

MTCIDC

A Tale of Two Swords

19 Wednesday Jun 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, Imaginary History, Military History

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Tags

Charles X, Crusades, Excalibur, French Revolution, Gesta Henrici II et Gesta Regis Ricardi, Glastonbury, King Arthur, King Tancred, Lady of the Lake, Lecce, Lionheart, Louis IX, Louis Philipe, Louis XIV, Louis XV, Louis XVI, Louis XVIII, Medieval, mosaic, Napoleon, Norman, Otranto, Rex Arturus, Richard I of England, Roger of Howden, swords, Third Crusade

So we were reading this really interesting book, Christopher Tyerman’sngcce How to Plan a Crusade, when, on pages 244-5, we came across this: “While Louis prayed to the relics of the Passion, Richard had carried the sword Excalibur.” And we said, “What? Excalibur?”

Welcome, as always, dear readers. In this post, we want to talk a bit about two historic—or mythical– swords, inspired, as we were, by that reference and by two kings involved with them.

The “Louis” in the passage above is Louis IX (1214-1270) of France,

aka St Louis, a saint of both the Catholic and Anglican churches, who led several crusades in the mid-13^th century, but not very successfully, being taken prisoner during the first (1250) and dying of a fever during the second (1270).

The “Richard” is Richard I of England (1157-1199), also called “Lionheart”.

He was also a crusader, having been one of the dominant figures in the earlier Third Crusade (1189-1192).

But how do we know that Richard had “Excalibur”? And how did he acquire it?

We begin with the passage from a contemporary of Richard’s, Roger of Howden (?-1201?), who has left us a history known as Gesta Henrici II et Gesta Regis Ricardi, “The Deeds/Acts of Henry II and the Deeds/Acts of King Richard”. This begins in the 8^th century and covers the period up to 1201, which is presumed to be the year of Roger’s death. Roger went on the Third Crusade with Richard, although he left it early. He either observed or heard about this event, which took place in 1191:

“Et contra rex Angliae dedit regi Tancredo gladium illum optimum quem Britones Caliburne[m?] vocant qui fuerat gladius Arthuri quondam nobilis regis Angliae.”

“And, in return, the King of England gave to King Tancred that best of swords, which the Britons call ‘Calibern’, which had been the sword of Arthur, the one-time noble king of England.”

(The Latin text comes from page 392 of a collection of earlier English historians, entitled “Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores Post Bedam Praecipui”,–something like, “Writers of/on English Affairs in Particular After Bede”–which was published in London in 1596).

“King Tancred” (1138-1194) was the Norman ruler of Sicily from 1189-1194, just when Richard and his fellow Crusaders had reached that part of the world on their way eastward.

Tancred gave Richard a number of ships to help with transport and we might suppose that this was part of a reciprocal process. Remarkably for this early time, we have what appears to be concrete evidence not only that King Arthur was a well-known figure in southern Italy, but perhaps known to Tancred himself.

Tancred had been born in 1138 in Lecce (on the right-hand side of the map, just inland)

and just a few miles south is Otranto, with its cathedral (below Lecce on the map).

The main floor of that cathedral is covered by an enormous mosaic, installed between 1163 and 1165.

In that mosaic is a figure labeled “Rex Arturus”.

We’ve answered our first question, sort of: “How do we know that Richard had Excalibur?” But, again, how did he acquire it? Unfortunately, the only reference to Richard and the sword is the one we’ve quoted.

One thought, however. About 1191, the monks of Glastonbury Abbey

excavated a grave which

supposedly included a lead cross which read:

“Hic jacet sepultus inclytus rex Arthurius in insula avallonia cum Wennevereia uxore sua secunda”

“Here lies buried the renowned king Arthurius on the Avalonian island with Guinevere his second wife”

(Latin text from Giraldus Cambrensis, Speculum Ecclesiae, Chapter IX.)

Giraldus himself had been shown this cross by the Abbot, as he tells us. (For a more complete version of this story, in an English translation, please see this LINK.)

Modern research suggests that this was a fake, intended to boost the fortunes of a fading religious site, badly damaged by fire in 1184, but suppose that, to increase their patronage, the monks had added another level to their sham and “found” a sword, which they had then sent to Richard, who carried it off on his journey to the East.

(For more on the fakery, see, for example, this LINK.)

Louis IX, as we mentioned, died on campaign in 1270. His son, Philip, was with him at the time, but sailed back to France after his father’s death and was crowned Philip III in 1271. Our sources are vague here (they don’t always get the year right, for example), but all report that, for the first time, a special sword was used in the coronation ceremony. This was the so-called “sword of Charlemagne”, named “Joyeuse” (the “happy one”), which is mentioned in the 11^th-century Chanson de Roland:

“Si ad vestut sun blanc osberc sasfret,
Laciet sun elme, ki est a or gemmet,
Ceinte Joiuse, unches ne fut sa per,
Ki cascun jur muet.XXX. clartez.”

“[Charlemagne] was wearing his fine white coat of mail and his helmet with gold-studded stones; by his side hung Joyeuse, and never was there a sword to match it; its colour changed thirty times a day.”

(The translator for this was not identified at the site and we would make one small change—“clartez” might be better as “sheen/brightness” instead of “colour”.)

This, one of the few remaining pieces of the royal regalia, is, in fact, a mixture of a number of different periods, all the way up to Charles X (reigned 1824-1830), and experts argue over whether it is actually possible to date any part of it as early as Charlemagne’s time (see this LINK for more).

What isn’t questioned is that some version of this sword, at least, was used as part of the crowning ritual of French kings for centuries and its association with Charlemagne was as important for French history as linking something to King Arthur for English.

We haven’t managed to locate any medieval manuscript illustration which depicts a French coronation with the sword in place, but, when it comes to “The Sun King”, that is, Louis XIV, you can see that’s its hanging from his left side.

The same is true for Louis XV

and for that most unwarlike monarch, Louis XVI.

The French Revolution brought the crowning of kings to a halt, of course,

but Napoleon, all too aware both of the past and of his need to establish himself as the legitimate heir to the previous kings, brought it back, as you can see in this really over the top portrait.

When the younger brothers of the executed Louis XVI, Louis XVIII (1755-1824)

and Charles X (1757-1836)

became king successively in 1814 and 1824, one can still see the sword—although apparently Napoleon’s craftsmen had fiddled with it, as did those of Charles. His successor, Louis Philipe (1773-1850), who belonged to a cousin branch of the royal family, broke the tradition for good and the sword disappeared into history—and the Louvre, where it’s now on display.

And this brings us back to Excalibur. The tradition is a little murky, but the medieval sources are pretty clear that Excalibur had come from “The Lady of the Lake” and, as Arthur lay, gravely, perhaps fatally wounded, he commanded one of his knights, Griflet or Bedivere, according to the tradition, to return it to the Lady, which he finally, and very reluctantly, did.

With this, Excalibur disappears from the story—until Richard is reported giving it to the king of Sicily and our story—briefly—begins again.

Thanks, as always, for reading and

MTCIDC

Thirty Days Hath…

06 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Literary History, Research

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Tags

Calendar, consuls, decimalized time, French Revolution, Gregorian Calendar, Julian Calendar, Julius Caesar, leap year, Napoleon, New Republican Calendar, Numa Pompilius, Pontifex Maximus, Pope Gregory XIII, Remus, Revolutionary calendar, Romans, Rome, Romulus, Sir Percy Blackeney, Tarquinius Superbus

As ever, dear readers, welcome.

Our last posting, which involved, among other things, the French Revolution, made us think of calendars.

The traditional Western calendar has been with us a long time, beginning with the Romans.

They believed that the calendar had originally been devised by the founder of Rome, Romulus.

(Romulus is the one on the right. If you don’t know Roman mythology, this is part of the legend of Romulus and his twin, Remus, who were, at one time, raised by a she wolf. Romulus eventually clashed with Remus and killed him.)

Romulus produced a yearly calendar divided into 10 months and it was his successor, Numa Pompilius, who revised it by adding two months. Romulus and the rulers who followed him were traditionally believed to be seven in number (like the seven hills Rome was built on—or maybe just because 7 has been thought of as a magic number—to read more—maybe too much!—on this, see this LINK).

(If you’d like to improve your knowledge of early Rome—at least as the Romans believed it–here’s a neat way to remember these mythological kings in order.)

When the last of these kings, Tarquinius Superbus (“Tarquinius the Arrogant”) was overthrown in 509BC (as always, according to Roman tradition), he was replaced by two consuls, who were elected annually.

Because of the annual nature of their election, the consuls in time became the marker for each year—the year being designated in documents by their names. In Latin, this was written as, for example, “L. Sulpicio et M. Canonico consulibus”—“Lucius Sulpicius and Marcus Canonicus being the consuls”—that is, “in the year during which LS and MC were the consuls”.

In time, two events complicated this time-keeping to the point where it was a mess.

First, this calendar was based upon the lunar year of 355 days. Set against the 365 ¼ days of the solar year, there was always a gap and so the months and the seasons could begin to separate. To close this gap, an intercalary month of 27 or 28 days was sometimes inserted, but, seemingly, without the strict regularity the marking of time really needed. Second, the chief priest of Rome, the Pontifex Maximus, with his assistants, the College of Pontiffs, had the legal (and religious) right to change the calendar and, if you think about this in political terms (and the Romans did), you can see what a less-than-neutral Pontifex could do: add days to the term of consuls he favored and subtract days from those he didn’t, potentially making the synchronization of lunar, solar, and consular years fall apart completely.

When Julius Caesar (100-44BC)

came to power, he ordered the reformation of the calendar, but retained the old lunar calendar of 355 days, dividing the year into 8 months of 29 days and 4 of 31, plus adding an intercalary month of 27 or 28 days every two years. This meant that, every 4 years, the total number of days, divided by 4, would come to 366 ¼–which meant more regularity, but trouble to come, in time (literally), especially because the College of Pontiffs was still in charge of maintaining things, which it doesn’t seem to have done with the necessary diligence.

In fact, the story is more complicated yet than this, but this at least gives us the so-called “Julian Calendar”, which was in use in the West from Caesar’s time until the Renaissance. In 1582, by the direction of Pope Gregory XIII,

to correct the seasonal drift which had gradually occurred over the centuries, the Julian calendar was reformatted, adding a full day to the month of February (February 29^th) every fourth year. The first year with such an addition to February was the next year, 1583, but, to help the calendar and actual year rejoin, Gregory ordered the addition of 11 days to October of 1582, so that October 4^th became October 15^th. We hope that all of this is clear?

For people who grew up with all of this adding here, changing there, it’s left us with a sort-of rhyme to remember what months now have how many days:

“Thirty days hath September,

April, June, and November.

All the rest have thirty-one—”

And then the thing breaks down into something like “Except February, which has twenty-eight, except every fourth year, when it has twenty-nine.”

So, why did the French Revolution remind us of calendars?

One of the main bases of the French Revolution, the thinkers of the Revolution would say, was the idea of REASON. In fact, for a short time, some revolutionaries attempted to replace Christianity with the worship of a goddess by that name.

Reason brought about the initial attempt to convert France by law to the metric system in 1795. Even before that, however, there had been a program to decimalize everything possible, including the currency and the time of day—here’s a watch from 1795 with both kinds of time marked on it.

Of course, the calendar would be a target and, between 1793 and 1805, France would mark its years by it in 12 months of 30 days each, each month divided into 3 decades. To keep the balance between months and seasons, five or six extra days were added to the end of the year. To remove any trace of the old royal (and religious) past, the new months were renamed—here’s the calendar. As you can see, the renaming was meant to reflect seasonal weather.

The committee (one major feature of the Revolution was that seemingly everything was created by a committee) even came up with the names for every day, the names being something ordinary to which the day was devoted.

If you look at the column marked “Nivose”, you can see that the first four days are “neige/glace/miel/cire”—“snow/ice/honey/wax” (although those first two make perfect sense in a month called “Snowy”, we’re a little unclear about “honey” and “wax”).

Napoleon participated in a coup which ended revolutionary government in 1799 (18 Brumaire, Year VIII-9 November, 1799).

He tolerated the revolutionary calendar for the next 5 years, but, after he made himself emperor, 11 Frimaire, Year XIII–2 December, 1804,

a decree was issued that, beginning 1 January, 1806, the old Gregorian calendar would be reinstated.

During the days of the Terror

and the Scarlet Pimpernel, however,

when Sir Percy Blakeney put down a rescue date on his calendar in Paris, he would have written January 1, 1794 as “day 2 of the second decade of Snowy, year II, “ a day devoted to “Argile”—“Clay”.

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

Death, Within 24 Hours

30 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by Ollamh in Uncategorized

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Tags

A Tale of Two Cities, All the Year Round, Anthony Andrews, Baroness Orczy, Bastille, British Navy, Charles Dickens, Citizen Chauvelin, Citizen King, Committee of Public Safety, Corvee, Culotte, Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, French Revolution, Garde Francaise, guillotine, Ian McKellen, Impots, Leslie Howard, liberty cap, Louis XV, Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Maximilien Robespierre, Sir Percy Blakeney, Taille, The Reign of Terror, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Three Estates, Thomas Carlyle, Vernet

As always, dear readers, welcome—and please forgive the rather forbidding title!

It’s just that, recently, we’ve been rereading Charles Dickens’ (1812-1870)

novel of the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities (1859), which first appeared in serial form in Dickens’ magazine All the Year Round

before being published in book form the same year.

Dickens was inspired in part by Thomas Carlyle’s (1795-1881)

three-volume History of the French Revolution (1837, second edition 1857).

What Carlyle wrote about and Dickens novelized was a very complex event. France, before the beginning of the Revolution in 1789, was in desperate straits, beginning with its social system. All of French society was divided into three “estates”. Here’s a “nice” picture of them.

Here’s a chart to show you what these divisions meant in terms of the economic structure.

And it’s easy to see, from this, why such caricatures as these typified, at the time, the truth of how the estates system worked for the benefit of the top two and very much against that of the third.

(The labeling of the rock in this last image points to some of the elements of the heavy financial burden on the Third Estate. Taille is a land tax levied upon all land-holding non-nobles. Impots might be translated as “income tax”, but more complicated (if possible!). Corvee went back to feudal times and was a system of unpaid labor for a certain number of days per year, to the state and to lords who rented land to tenants.)

This meant that a great deal of the Third Estate, both in towns and in the country, was desperately poor and often on the edge of starvation.

A major problem was that such a tax base, though broad, was always being squeezed beyond its limits, meaning that the royal government (in 1789, this meant Louis XVI–1754-1793) was always struggling to find the money both to pay off back debts and to keep itself in funds in the present. Then, when there were added expenses—such as the American War for Independence (1775-1783), in which the French played a major role from 1778 to the end—

new loans and new debts were created.

And the expenses didn’t stop there as the French, anxious about the power of the British Navy

and the closeness of many of its ports to Britain,

embarked upon a building campaign to further strengthen its harbor defenses.

(We’ve cheated a little with this last image—it and the previous one are actually from a series of paintings of the major ports of France by Claude-Joseph Vernet—1714-1789–commissioned by Louis XV, the grandfather of Louis XVI, and done between 1753 and 1765, but it gives you the idea of busy French ports in the 18^th century.)

(And an interesting little sidelight—if you read us regularly, you know we can never resist these—this Vernet may be a direct ancestor of Sherlock Holmes, who tells Watson in “The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter”–1893 —“My ancestors were country squires, who appear to have led much the same life as is natural to their class. But, none the less, my turn that way is in my veins, and may have come with my grandmother, who was the sister of Vernet, the French artist. Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms.”)

Finally, in the 1780s, the whole system began to collapse. Louis’ government (meaning the King and its ministers—there was no elected element in the royal government) tried to call a meeting of representatives of the Three Estates, the Estates General, in the late spring/summer, 1789,

but it was a flop. Louis had the Third Estate locked out and, instead of going home, they, with a few members of the First and Second, went down the street to an indoor tennis court and founded their own government, the National Assembly.

They soon produced a document, entitled “The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen”,

their second step towards changing the whole government and social structure of France.

Meanwhile, the people of Paris carried out their own form of changing things, assaulting the King’s fortress on the eastern side of Paris’ defenses, the Bastille.

You can tell that things are really crumbling when you realize that the men in blue coats and fuzzy hats in the center are actually members of the one of the units of the King’s bodyguard, the Garde Francaise.

Events quickly begin to speed up: the King gradually lost his royal powers and became “Citizen King”,

wearing the “liberty cap” patriots wore

and drinking toasts straight out of the bottle—like any good “Sans-culotte”. Culottes were the knee britches worn by people on the rise—

whereas “honest men” wore workman’s clothes with long trousers and, if they could obtain one, that red cap.

As time roared by, it became clearer and clearer that the previous administration was gone for good and that the Third Estate was now in charge.

Louis, terrified, tried to run away with his family, but was caught,

brought back to Paris basically under arrest and, before he knew it, on trial for his life.

The trial lasted most of December, 1792, and the King was executed in January, 1793,

followed by his wife, Marie Antoinette

in October.

But this was only the beginning of a wave of government bloodshed, now called “The Reign of Terror”, (“La Terreur” in French), in which a part of the state—the “Committee of Public Safety”, under Maximilien Robespierre,

sent thousands of people to their deaths, mainly but not entirely by guillotine, a medieval invention revived and used across France.

People who had done nothing or, at most, had made a passing remark critical of the Revolution could be swept up into a court

in which there was little or no defense and the usual sentence, if arrested, was “Death within twenty-four hours”.

One can see that, in England, with its Parliament and increasing wealth and stability, what went on in France, which many in England originally saw in its first—non-violent—stages as a positive thing, soon became nothing but a hideous cannibal feast.

And it’s into this world that Dickens, in the latter part of his novel, moves his main characters, in a story of family revenge entangled in the bloody days of the Terror.

Dickens is not alone in seeing this as a great opportunity for a novelist. A long time ago, we wrote a post which included the Baroness Orczy (1865-1947)—say that OR-tsee–

who, beginning with a short story, and then a play (1903)

and then the first of a whole series of novels, beginning in 1905,

created the first wimp-who’s-really-a-superhero in Sir Percy Blakeney, AKA, “The Scarlet Pimpernel”. In London, Sir Percy is an overdressed, drawling clown, but, in France, he is a daring rescuer of endangered noblefolk. As early film gradually became more sophisticated, the first Pimpernel version appeared in 1917,

followed by what many believe was the classic version in 1934, starring Leslie Howard.

Although we enjoy that one, our particular favorite may be the 1982 version, with Anthony Andrews as the Pimpernel.

The casting for this film actually takes us back to Tolkien in a funny way. The villain is an agent of the Terror, named “Citizen Chauvelin”.

Put a long white beard on him and age him many years and who is he?

Thanks, as always, for reading!

MTCIDC

If you would like to know more about the French Revolution, we can’t recommend highly enough Simon Schama’s Citizens (1990).

It’s a fat book full of all kinds of histories—cultural, political, social—and, with this volume in hand, you can quickly get a good basic grasp of a very large and complicated—and endlessly fascinating—subject. (And, if you enjoy history, it’s a page-turner.)

pps

And, if you’d like to know more about the Pimpernel, here’s a LINK to the website.

A Little Ring, the Least of Rings

02 Wednesday Jan 2019

Posted by Ollamh in J.R.R. Tolkien, Military History, Military History of Middle-earth

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Tags

Aladdin, Alexandre Dumas, Barad-Dur, Chateau d'If, Edmond Dantes, Elba, French Revolution, Galadriel, Harad, Hitler, Jinghiz Khan, Louis XVI, Morannon, Mordor, Napoleon, Nazgul, Ring Wraiths, St Helena, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien, Toulon, Umbar, Waterloo

Welcome, readers, as always, and, if it’s part of your culture, Happy New Year!

We’ve recently been reading a book about Napoleon

and his first fall, in 1814. He was forced to abdicate,

thereby losing the massive empire he had built up in the early 19^thcentury.

His many enemies had a number of possibilities as to what to do with him. They could, for example, have imprisoned him, as Edmond Dantes is in Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo (serialized 1844-46), in a fortress like the Chateau d’If.

Or, more radically—but certainly very effectively—they could have permanently removed him by the same means by which revolutionary France removed his predecessor, Louis XVI.

Instead, they allowed him not only to live, but even to continue to be a kind of monarch—although only of a tiny island, Elba, off the west coast of Italy.

They thought they’d seen the last of him, leaving him to spend the rest of his life as a sovereign of a ragged collection of fishermen and farmers.

For Napoleon, however, who always saw himself as destined for only the greatest things, being king of Elba must have felt to him rather like the way the genie in Disney’s Aladdin (1992) expresses the contrast in his life–

That being the case, Napoleon lived on Elba for less that a year before he planned and accomplished his escape.

Back in France, he was welcomed by the very soldiers sent to stop him,

image10fifth

raised new armies,

image11napog

marched north to deal with his nearest enemies, Prussia and England, and was finally—and permanently—defeated at Waterloo, 18 June, 1815.

image12waterloo

This time, his enemies, having learned their lesson, sent Napoleon as far away from Europe as they could and to a much less hospitable place, the island of St Helena, in the South Atlantic,

where he died in 1821.

From his first success, at the siege of Toulon in 1793,

Napoleon had climbed and climbed until, by 1801, he was the real ruler of France (as “First Consul”)

and then, in 1804, Emperor.

And yet, it was never enough, which reminds us of so many of the “great conquerors” of history, from Alexander,

to Jinghiz Khan and his successors,

to Hitler.

In every case throughout history, no conqueror has ever had enough and, if we move out of this earth to Middle-earth, we find Sauron, a figure in many ways like all of these earthly conquerors, who, although defeated by an alliance of Elves and Men in the past, has returned and, in time, reacquired immense power. To begin with, he has the entire realm of Mordor.

He has also somehow gained the means to create giant fortifications (sometimes based upon older constructions), like the Barad-dur

and the Morannon and all of the other inner and outer works of Mordor.

image26morannon image27mord image28cirithungol

He also controls the Nazgul,

massive armies of orcs,

as well as allies from the Harads and Umbar.

All of which he has done, it seems, by whatever innate powers he possesses—without the Ring. And this made us wonder: what is it that the Ring actually does for its wearer that Sauron wants it back?

Certainly, the only power Gollum appears to have gotten from the Ring is that of invisibility (and the side-effect of longevity).

This is true for Bilbo, as well,

and for Frodo–

although, when Frodo puts on the Ring on Weathertop, he is plunged into a kind of alternate dimension, seeing the Nazgul as they really are

and, again, on Ammon Hen, he is put into direct contact with the Ring’s real owner.

Does this suggest that the Ring’s power is only as powerful as the Ring’s current wearer? Galadriel confirms this when Frodo asks her about the other rings: “why cannot I see all the others and know the thoughts of those that wear them?”

To which she replies:

“Did not Gandalf tell you that the rings give power according to the measure of each possessor?”

(The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

This then accounts for Gandalf’s almost violent explanation when Frodo offers it to him:

“’No!’ cried Gandalf, springing to his feet. ‘With that power I should have power too great and terrible. And over me the Ring would gain a power still greater and more deadly.’ His eyes flashed and his face was lit as by a fire within. ‘Do not tempt me! For I do not wish to become like the Dark Lord himself. Yet the way of the Ring to my heart is by pity, pity for weakness and the desire of strength to do good. Do not tempt me! I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused. The wish to wield it would be too great, for my strength. I shall have such need of it. Great perils lie before me.’” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 2, “The Shadow of the Past”)

Or when Frodo offers it to Galadriel:

“You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 7, “The Mirror of Galadriel”)

Sauron has been able to accomplish so much without the Ring—what would happen should he ever wear it again? In “The Shadow of the Past”, Gandalf tells Frodo that it controls the other rings—even the three long-concealed from Sauron:

“The Three are hidden still. But that no longer troubles him. He only needs the One; for he made that Ring himself, it is his, and he let a great part of his own former power pass into it, so that he could rule all the others. If he recovers it, then he will command them all again, even the Three, and all that has been wrought with them will be laid bare, and he will be stronger than ever.”

And, just as important—maybe even more so—Sauron has based his place of power and refuge, his sure foundation in Middle-earth, upon it, as Elrond tells the council:

“Sauron was diminished, but not destroyed. His Ring was lost but not unmade. The Dark Tower was broken, but its foundations were not removed; for they were made with the power of the Ring, and while it remains they will endure.” (The Fellowship of the Ring, Book Two, Chapter 2, “The Council of Elrond”)

So, then, just as Napoleon, exiled on Elba, could plot and accomplish return, given the Ring, Sauron, defeated before, could return and, with a greed for conquest as insatiable as that of the French emperor, reappear again and again in Middle-earth, where there was no St Helena to keep him for good.

Thanks for reading!

MTCIDC

Theme and Variations.2

27 Wednesday Jun 2018

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, Fairy Tales and Myths, Films and Music, Literary History, Military History

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Arthur Rackham, Baron Friedrich de la Motte Fouque, Brothers Grimm, Charles Dickens, Charles Perrault, Charles S Evans, Cinderella, Disney, Dornroeschen, Edgar Taylor, ETA Hoffman, French Revolution, George Cruikshank, German Popular Stories, Hans Christian Andersen, Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passe, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, James Robinson Planche, Kinder und Hausmaerchen, La Belle au Bois Dormant, Little Briar-Rose, Louis XIV, Louis XVIII, Mariinski Theatre, Napoleon, Robert Samber, Sleeping Beauty, St Petersburg, Tchaikovsky, The Little Mermaid, Undine

Welcome, as ever, dear readers.
In our last, we began talking about the fairy tales of Charles Perrault (1628-1703), originally published under the rather vague title, Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passe, (“Stories or Tales of the Past”) in 1697.

Among his stories was one entitled “La Belle au Bois Dormant”—literally “The Beautiful Girl in the Sleeping Woods”, which we English-speakers call “Sleeping Beauty”. We had said that we thought it would be interesting to look at various treatments of that story over time and, so far, we’ve discussed James Robinson Planche’s (plawn-SHAY) two works, an 1840 “extravaganza” (a kind of very early musical comedy) and his 1868 story-in-verse version (here’s the first edition).

Planche could read the French original, but those whose knowledge of French was confined to menus could find English translations dating all the way back to the first, that of Robert Samber, in 1729.

(This image, by the way, explains not only why English-speakers call this story “Sleeping Beauty”, but also why we call the stories as a group “Mother Goose Tales/Stories”. Please see our previous posting for where Mother Goose came from in Perrault.)
In the early 19th-century, a competitor to Perrault appeared. In 1812, two German scholars, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (1785-1863, 1786-1859,)

began publication of a work which they would enlarge numerous times through the first half of the 19th century, Kinder und Hausmaerchen (something like “Children’s and Domestic Wondertales”), the first volume of which first appeared in 1812.

“Sleeping Beauty” appears as #50, under the title Dornroeschen, “Little Briar-Rose”. This is like the Perrault story, but not the same, providing an alternate version of the tale. For those without German, an English translation was published in 1823.

Although their names aren’t on the title page, this is a collaboration between Edgar Taylor (1793-1839), translator,

and George Cruikshank (1792-1878), illustrator.

Of the two, Cruikshank is the better-known. Originally, he was famous as what we now call an “editorial cartoonist”, creating images critical of politicians and political events of his time. Here is his 1823 caricature of Louis XVIII of France (reigned 1814-1824 with a little gap in 1815 when Napoleon came back briefly from exile on Elba).

His public relations people wanted Louis to look like this:

to remind them that he was the direct descendant of Louis XIV, the famous “Sun King”, a grand and heroic figure in recent French history.

In reality, Louis was old and fat and looked more like this—
image12louis
It wasn’t about Louis per se, weak and temporary monarch though he was, so much as the long-standing English/French rivalry/hostility, which went back for centuries and which had intensified during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, stretching almost without a break from 1792 to 1815. Napoleon, as representative of what the English of the time saw as revolution-which-led-to-chaos-and-worse, was a regular target from the later 1790s on and Cruikshank certainly aimed his pen and brush at him—as in this mocking depiction of the fate of Bonaparte after his first abdication in April, 1814.

Political commentary aside, Cruikshank, as we see in his illustrations for the Brothers Grimm (and isn’t it odd that we never say, in English “the Grimm Brothers”—which sounds either like a menacing secret society or perhaps an old, established firm of teakwood importers), was involved in all sorts of illustrating, including a second volume of the Grimms, in 1826. This is the 1868 reprint which the editor says duplicates in one volume the text and illustrations of the original two. (We include a LINK so that you can download your own copy.)

As well, he illustrated the original serialized version of Charles Dickens’ (1812-1870) Oliver Twist (1837-1839). This is a famous scene near the end of the novel, where the main villain, Fagin, is in the condemned cell, awaiting dawn and his execution. Dickens was famous for his performance of this.

On a more cheerful note, here’s Cruikshank’s sketch of Dickens himself from 1836.

The Grimms’ version of the “Sleeping Beauty” story is combined with that of Perrault in our next example. It’s the 1920 The Sleeping Beauty,

text by Charles S. Evans (1883-1944), of whom we have found no picture, and Arthur Rackham (1867-1939) of whom this may be our favorite picture.

The year before, Evans and Rackham had collaborated on a version of Perrault’s “Cinderella”—and we’ll talk about that in our next. The Sleeping Beauty is anything but sleepy—its illustrations practically dance off the page. (Here’s a LINK for your own copy.)

And dance itself is the basis of our last example.
In 1888, Pyotr/Peter Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

image22tchai

was offered a commission for a ballet. Originally, the subject was to be a famous early German Romantic novella, Undine (un-DEE-neh), written by the Baron Friedrich de la Motte Fouque (foo-KAY) (1777-1843),

and published in 1811. It’s the story of a knight and a water spirit and shares the basic plot of HC Andersen’s later “The Little Mermaid”. Here’s an illustration from Rackham’s 1909 version.

As things developed, however, this story was replaced by the Perrault/Grimms’ “The Sleeping Beauty”, which first appeared at the Mariinski Theatre

in St Petersburg in January, 1890. We are lucky to have a number of photos of the original production and cast.

And here’s a LINK to a suite (selection) of music from the ballet—but the full ballet is available on YouTube and we hope that you like this suite so much that you’ll try the whole thing.
In our next, we’ll move on to a second Perrault story, “Cinderella”.
Thanks, as always, for reading.
MTCIDC
CD
ps
If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that we can rarely resist adding something more. In fact, in this ps, we add two somethings more.
First, before Undine was proposed for a ballet, it was the subject of an opera by the strange and wonderful German Romantic author and composer ETA Hoffmann (1776-1822).

Here’s a LINK to the overture. In a future post, we’ll have more to say about Hoffmann…
Second, as people who grew up on Disney, we can’t close without mentioning Disney’s 1959 Sleeping Beauty, with its attempt at a new style of visual presentation—as well as its use of Tchaikovsky’s music as the basis of its score. If you haven’t seen it, we certainly recommend it, especially for its combination of elements of the older look of such films as Cinderella (1950) with a newer, simplified one.
image30disney

Crowning Achievement

20 Wednesday Sep 2017

Posted by Ollamh in Artists and Illustrators, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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Alexander the Great, Alice in Wonderland, Barrow-downs, Barrow-wights, Bayeux Tapestry, Brunhilde, Charlemagne, Cheshire Cat, circlet, Cleopatra VII, diadem, Egypt, Egyptian crowns, Elightenment France, Eowyn, French Revolution, Gondor, Gondorian crown, Greek, Greek coins, Hildebrandts, Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, Julius Caesar, Lupercalia, Marcus Antonius, Medieval, Napoleon I, Nazgul, Octavian Augustus, Pharoahs, Philip II, Pontifex Maximus, Ptolemy I, Queen Elizabeth I, Queen Elizabeth II, Queen Victoria, Richard Wagner, Rohan, Romans, Tenniel, The Lord of the Rings, Theoden, Tolkien, William Shakespeare, Witch-King of Angmar, wreaths

Welcome, dear readers, as ever.

Recently, one of us was lecturing on ancient Egypt, a country of two lands, in fact, Upper and Lower, and each could be represented in the crown worn by the pharaoh.

Within in blink, we began to think about JRRT’s illustration of the traditional crown of Gondor,

of which Tolkien says:

“I think that the crown of Gondor (the S. Kingdom) was very tall, like that of Egypt, but with wings attached, not set straight back but at an angle.

The N. Kingdom had only a diadem (III 323). Cf. the difference between the N. and S. kingdoms of Egypt.”

(Letters, letter to Rhona Beare, 10/14/58, 281)

For us, the first crown we believe we ever saw as children was either one in an illustrated fairy tale (here’s a Tenniel illustration from Alice)

or the actual one of Queen Elizabeth II, and that hardly fits JRRT’s idea about the southern crown—or the northern one

or that of her ancestor, Queen Victoria

or that of their distant ancestor, Elizabeth I.

When we think of a “diadem”, however, we are reminded of the earliest western European crowns, which, in contrast to Elizabeth’s, is barely there at all.

Here is the first type of crown we know of being depicted—it’s that “diadem” in a Greek form, being on a coin of Philip II, King of Macedon and father of Alexander the Great (the reverse—the back side—the front side is called the “obverse”—shows Philip’s Olympic victory horse and Philip’s name in the genitive—possessive—case, “of Philip”—showing not only possession of the horse, but of the victory, of the coin, and, by implication, the right to issue coins).

This became a regular pattern, both of coin and of crown for those who followed Philip, and, thinking about Philip’s victory, we can imagine that the original of the crown was based upon the wreath athletic game victors wore.

And coins like Philip’s set the pattern for classical coins—and crowns—for centuries. Here’s the crown pattern on the head of Ptolemy I, one of Alexander’s generals.

At Alexander’s death, Ptolemy seized Egypt, making it a family possession for the next nearly three hundred years, all the way down to his greatgreatgreat etc granddaughter Cleopatra VII.

The pattern was not confined to Greece or Egypt, however—Julius Caesar wore something similar—

although, unlike Ptolemy and other such rulers, Caesar might have hoped to muddy people’s perceptions of what such a thing symbolized and what position (dictator for life) he’d forced the Senate to give him. Rome had hated monarchs, after all, since they’d kicked out their last king 450 years before.

(And see Act I, Sc.2 of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar in which, at the festival of the Lupercalia, Marcus Antonius publically offers him a crown and Caesar rejects it, much to the loud delight of the mob.)

In the Greco-Roman world, wreaths had many purposes: besides Greek kings and winners at games, people at parties and weddings and other festive occasions wore them, as well as celebrants at religious rites.

Perhaps Caesar hoped that, appearing in one, he might appear less like a Hellenistic king and more like anything from an Olympic victor or party-goer to a priest (he was Pontifex Maximus, head of religion in Rome, so there was a certain credibility to the latter).

Malicious people in Rome also suggested another reason for the wreath: Caesar was sensitive about his thinning hair.

Caesar’s grandnephew and successor, Octavian/Augustus, continued the tradition,

as did following emperors for several centuries—and even Charlemagne, hundreds of years after the last western emperor, revived it.

At some point, just after Charlemagne’s time or thereabout (c1000ad), a new pattern appeared, which you can see in the famous “Imperial Crown of the Holy Roman Empire”.

Instead of a wreath, this was a built-up circlet, with lots of “bits and bobs” on top.

This newer look persisted in various more or less complicated forms in the west for centuries

and seems to underlie the crowns seen in more recent times (often with what appears to be a red velvet balloon in the middle).

There is a throwback, however: Napoleon I. He had grown up in Enlightenment France, in a world which idealized classical learning and art, and so, when he made himself emperor in 1804, his model wasn’t medieval and Germanic, but Augustine.

This doesn’t mean that he wasn’t aware of that other model and he would have used it—the so-called “crown of Charlemagne”–at his self-coronation

had it not suffered the fate of many medieval treasures and been destroyed during the French Revolution (the famous Bayeux Tapestry was almost converted to wagon covers by revolutionaries). In fact, a “crown of Charlemagne” did turn up for the ceremony—“recreated” by a clever Paris jeweler.

[A footnote about the coronation. In the painter David’s sketches for it, he shows the pope (Pius VII) with his hands in his lap.

Napoleon saw the drawing and said to David that the pope should be blessing the occasion—after all, that’s why Napoleon had dragged him all the way from Rome. David redid his sketch, of course!]

Beyond the Crowns of Gondor, most of the crowns seen in The Lord of the Rings are described as “circlets”—

Sam, Merry, and Pippin, laid out in the barrow:

“About them lay many treasures of gold maybe, though in that light they looked cold and unlovely. On their heads were circlets, gold chains were about their waists, and on their fingers were many rings.”(The Fellowship of the Ring, Book One, Chapter 8, “Fog on the Barrow-Downs”)

Theoden:

“Upon it sat a man so bent with age that he seemed almost a dwarf; but his white hair was long and thick and fell in great braids from beneath a thin golden circlet set upon his brow.” (The Two Towers, Book Three, Chapter 6, “The King of the Golden Hall”)

But there is one which, well, looking at the various illustrations of its wearer, reminds us of Alice’s comment upon the Cheshire Cat:

“Well! I’ve often seen a cat without a grin…but a grin without a cat! It’s the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!” (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 6, “Pig and Pepper”)

On the Fields of the Pelennor, a “great shadow descended like a falling cloud. And behold! It was a winged creature.”

This might be bad enough, but:

“Upon it sat a shape, black-mantled, huge and threatening. A crown of steel he bore, but between rim and robe naught was there to see, save only a deadly gleam of eyes: the Lord of the Nazgul.” (The Return of the King, Book Five, Chapter 6, “The Battle of the Pelennor Fields”)

We are aware of at least half-a-dozen professional renderings of this scene (and we plan to discuss them all in a future post), but it seems to us that those eyes, seeming to float in space, make it extremely difficult to illustrate it, no matter what crown—simply described as “steel”—he’s wearing. And that brings us back to our original crown. As JRRT described it:

“It was shaped like the helms of the Guards of the Citadel, save that it was loftier, and it was all white, and the wings at either side were wrought of pearl and silver in the likeness of the wings of a sea-bird, for it was the emblem of kings who came over the Sea; and seven gems of adamant were set in the circlet, and upon its summit was set a single jewel the light of which went up like a flame.” (The Return of the King, Book Six, Chapter 5, “The Steward and the King”)

If his drawing (seen at the beginning of this post) is what he had in mind, then the only professional illustration we’ve seen of it, by the Hildebrandts, is only an approximation.

And, in fact, reminds us all-too-easily of Brunhilde, the Walkuere, from Wagner’s operas.

If illustrators as good as the Hildebrandts struggle, this must be a tough one. The designers of the P. Jackson films are even farther away from the original, as so often.

Here, however, we have some sympathy! Somehow the medieval world of Middle-earth can not easily assimilate an Egyptian artifact. And so, we suspect that they thought “circlet” and “wings” and left it there. What do you think, readers? How do you imagine the crown?

Thanks, as ever, for reading.

MTCIDC

Prizes

26 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by Ollamh in Fairy Tales and Myths, Heroes, Imaginary History, Literary History, Narrative Methods

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A Tale of Two Cities, Achilles, Admetus, Alcestis, Ancient Greece, Aphrodite, Archery, Atalanta, Baroness Orczy, chariots, Charles Dickens, Constantinople, contests, footrace, French Revolution, Greek, Heracles, Hippomenes, Icarius, Jacques-Louis David, King Oenomaus, King of Pherae, Lord Leighton Frederick, Odysseus, Olympia, Pelops, Penelope, The Death of Marat, The Odyssey, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Trojan War, Zeus

Welcome, as always, dear readers.
In our last posting, our second about archers, we talked about the archery contest which Penelope

arranged, as a way of finally ridding her house of a gang of mooching suitors. It was, in reality, a two-part contest:
1. the contestants were required to string Odysseus’ bow
2. then fire an arrow through—but the story as told in the Odyssey is a little confusing here—through a series of axe heads? Through the rings on the axe heads? Through rings on the shafts of the axes? The following illustrations will show you that there are all sorts of possibilities!

Odysseus, disguised as an old beggar, is the only one who can string the bow and fire it,

and then goes on to begin picking off Penelope’s obnoxious suitors with it.

Prizes and women seem to be a not-uncommon theme in Greek mythology. When we were discussing Penelope and the archery contest, we also mentioned that there was an ancient story that Odysseus had actually won Penelope from her father, Icarius, in a footrace.
In general, Odysseus was regarded in Greece as neither a bowman nor a runner, but as the supreme trickster (he even has his own adjective, in fact polumetis, which we might translate “multiplotter”) but he is recorded in Book 23 of the Iliad as a runner, when he competes (and wins) in a footrace as part of the funeral games for Achilles’ beloved companion, Patroclus.

(This amazing piece, from 1778, is by the “painter of the French Revolution”, Jacques-Louis David, 1748-1825. In his earlier career, David had painted grand, florid things like this, often with a classical theme. When the Revolution came, David became an enthusiast, as well as one of its visual recorders, his most dramatic painting being “The Death of Marat”, commemorating the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat, a major revolutionary, killed in his bath in 1793.

The era of the French Revolution has been a favorite of ours for years, probably originally because we grew up with Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, 1859,

and the Baroness Orczy’s The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1903-05.

We plan to write about the Pimpernel in a later posting—he’s a very important figure for 20th-century images of heroes with double-identities, being, it would seem, the original.)
It is worth wondering whether, in the choice of the bow and the archery contest, Penelope was actually indicating that she already knew the identity of the beggar. Certainly it put a deadly weapon into the hands of someone who immediately used it to rid her of the suitors. If that’s true, then offering herself as a prize was not a kind of passive surrender, but the beginning of an attack on the occupiers. This would give us a Penelope who was the very opposite of the girl offered as a prize in her father’s footrace. But that footrace reminded us of an earlier one, in which the prize stated the terms—and then enforced them.
Several generations before the Trojan War, Atalanta was a princess and huntress,

who was pressed by her father to marry. She agreed—but only on the condition that a suitor would have to join in a footrace with her and, if she beat him, she would kill him. A number of suitors tried and failed and paid the price before Hippomenes, brighter than the rest, knowing that he couldn’t outrace her, outthought her, praying to Aphrodite for help. The goddess gave him three golden apples and, as the two raced and Hippomenes was being outrun, he tossed one of the apples to the side. Atalanta was distracted and thus slowed until, after the third apple, Hippomenes won the race—and Atalanta.

The pattern of winning brides by races is repeated not only on foot, however. In another pre-Trojan-War story, King Oenomaus took fright from a prophecy that he would be killed by his son-in-law. When suitors came for his daughter, Hippodamia, he demanded that they join him in a chariot contest: they would race, but it was more a race for life than a sport, as, if Oenomaus caught up with the suitor, he would kill him.
So far, Oenomaus had managed to polish off eighteen suitors before Pelops, son of King Tantalus, appeared. Like Hippomenes, he was not the most scrupulous of competitors. (In one version of the story, Oenomaus displayed the heads of the unsuccessful suitors on the pillars of his palace—this might have proved a strong incentive to cheat!) In Pelops’ case, he persuaded Oenomaus’ charioteer to replace the bronze lynchpins (the pins which hold the chariot wheels on the axles) with ones made of wax and, in the (literal) heat of the contest, they melted and Oenomaus was dragged to his death. (And so the death-by-son-in-law prophecy came true!) Pelops then betrayed and murdered the charioteer, who, dying, put a curse upon Pelops and his descendants.

Supposedly, the chariot race which formed a central part of the Olympic games in later centuries

was either in commemoration of the death of Oenomaus or a celebration of the victory of Pelops. In fact, we have, on the eastern pediment (that’s the big triangular bit just below the roof) of the temple of Zeus at Olympia

the main characters in the story depicted.

This was a very grand temple and contained one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, a giant seated statue of Zeus, made of ivory and gold.

The statue didn’t survive the eastern Roman government’s attacks on pre-Christian culture, however, either being destroyed in a fire in the temple in 426AD, or in a fire at the eastern capital of Constantinople in 475AD.
In fact, the temple at Olympia itself was badly damaged in that fire of 426 and its whole structure was tumbled in earthquakes in 551 and 552AD, its columns collapsing onto the ground into lines of column drums like piles of stacked coins.

Seeing that fallen building, we wonder whether Oenomaus’ charioteer’s curse extended to the site of the famous (and deadly) race!
To all of this mayhem around women as prizes at athletic events, we would add one happy occasion. Among the stories about Heracles, there was that of his wrestling match with death. This was not done to win a prize for himself, but to rescue Alcestis, the heroic wife of Admetus, King of Pherae, who had given her life to save her husband. (In fact, Admetus had won Alcestis in a challenge—but that’s a story for another posting!) Having brought her back, Heracles, to tease Admetus, says, truthfully, that Alcestis was a woman he had won in a contest—but neglects to say with whom he’d wrestled!

(This, by the way, is a painting by Frederick, Lord Leighton, 1830-1896, who built much of his reputation on his reconstructions of the Greek classical and mythological world. We plan a future posting on him and on other classical myth-painters—among whom, in fact, was David, whom we mentioned above.)
Thanks, as ever, for reading.
MTCIDC
CD

One for All…

24 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by Ollamh in Films and Music, Literary History, Military History, Narrative Methods

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Alexandre Dumas, Aramis, Athos, battle of Fontenoy, Cardinal Richelieu, D'Artagnan, French Revolution, Garde Republicaine, Harpers Ferry, La Rochelle, Louis XIII, Louis XIV, Louis XV, Louis XVI, Louis XVIII, Musket, Musketeers, Porthos, Richard Lester, Royal Heralds, tabard, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, Vicomte de Bragelonne

Dear Readers,

Welcome, as always.

In our last, we said that we were having a little holiday from the works of JRRT and we’re continuing that break in this posting, as well. After all, although we have a deep affection and admiration for them, we began this blog with the intention of focusing upon adventure in general.

In this, we want to look at musketeers—three, in fact, plus a fourth, who, although he lacks an official position in their company, has the heart of one.

A musket is now a generic word for a pre-breech-loading long arm, like this one—

harpersferry1809

made at the Harpers Ferry arsenal in 1809.

harpersferryearly

Once upon a time, however, a musket was a specific weapon, a heavier firearm which was supported on a wooden rest.

Musketeer

Such weapons were inaccurate at any distance and, in time, soldiers were gradually trained to load and fire in groups, to have more effect upon the enemy.

Manual_of_the_Musketeer,_17th_Century

military-musketeers-thirty-years-war-1618-1648-drawing-by-anton-hoffmann-bjn61w

Certain cavalry were issued lighter versions of such muskets and, in 1622, one company—later two—was formed as a bodyguard for the young Louis XIII.

0_Louis_XIII_en_costume_de_deuil_-_Frans_Pourbus_le_Jeune_(2)

At this time, the idea of uniforms was only beginning to appear and so these men would have worn whatever they wished (probably a fancier version of period civilian clothes—they were guarding the king, after all).

To identify them as belonging to the king’s household, however, they were issued with a kind of loose overgarment called a tabard, which we can still see today as worn by the Royal Heralds of Elizabeth II.

Pursuivant_tabard Heralds-at-the-Garter-Service-Julian-Calder-1024x681 fae2a692a2dfd52e3931b64ed85bf5ab

One of these musketeers was named D’Artagnan (1611-1673)

invalides-mousquetaires-portrait-du-vrai-dartagnan-mais-aucune-preuve-dauthenticitc3a9

and, in 1700—27 years after his death at the siege of Maastricht in 1673—a well-known French author of the period, Courtilz de Sandras (1644-1712), published a semi-fictionalized “memoir” by D’Artagnan, supposedly based upon D’Artagnan’s papers.

Courtilz_Mémoires_titreWP

It depicted his adventures in a complex world of king and the man behind the king, Louis XIII and his prime minister, Cardinal Richelieu, and the court politics and foreign wars of the era.

Philippe_de_Champaigne_-_Louis_XIII_Crowned_by_Victory_(Siege_of_La_Rochelle,_1628)_-_WGA4712

index

And, in this equestrian portrait, you can see the Cardinal literally behind the king.

Louis_XIII_Richelieu_devant_La_Rochelle

In 1844, there appeared a totally fictionalized account by Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870),

000101

The Three Musketeers,

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which proved so successful that Dumas produced two sequels, Twenty Years After (1845), and The Vicomte de Bragelonne (1847). The success of the first book was such that, since its publication, well—just google “The Three Musketeers in film”! The story of a young man from an impoverished noble family coming to Paris and how, through luck and bravery, he becomes a musketeer, is clearly irresistible—certainly for us! (And Dumas had the gift to do this more than once—he is also the author of the equally-irresistible The Count of Monte Cristo—google that to see its history.)

We have read various versions of this since childhood, from comic books to school texts in French, but, of all of the film versions, our favorite is the 2-part Richard Lester adaptation (script by one of our favorite historical novelists, George Macdonald Fraser—more about him in a future posting) of 1973-1974.

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This is a version which keeps some of our favorite scenes—the duel in the convent courtyard, where D’Artagnan proves his courage to his new friends-to-be among the Musketeers, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis,

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and the wager of the four friends to defend the bastion at the siege of La Rochelle while having breakfast there,

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but is, on the whole, a very light-hearted telling of the story (after all, Lester was famous for being the director of several earlier films starring the Beatles—the original idea even being that John, Paul, George, and Ringo were to be the Musketeers), set against a very grainy depiction of the world of the 1620s (which we find very convincing).

As for the real Musketeers, they had a long career as part of the King’s household guards, from the time of Louis XIII

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through that of Louis XIV

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through a famous charge at the battle of Fontenoy (1745) in the time of Louis XV.

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They were swept away at the time of the French Revolution, along with their master, Louis XVI,

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but restored in 1814 by his royal successor, Louis XVIII.

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In this new edition of the Musketeers, there appeared for a short time a recruit named Dumas,

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but, unlike his father (1762-1806), a famous general of the French revolutionary period,

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he had another career waiting for him…

Thanks, as always, for reading.

MTCIDC

That last reincarnation of the Musketeers was a brief one: they were finally abolished in 1816. We can’t resist, in this ps, showing you a kind of descendant, however—at least in looking French and splendid. Here is the Garde republicaine in Paris. Its name tells you that, although monarchy might be dead in France, guards are certainly not.

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doubtfulsea

~ adventure fantasy

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