A Private Library For All

Samuel Pepys, Secretary of the Admiralty, Member of Parliament, President of the Royal Society, was born in 1633 and died in 1703. He's most famous as a diarist of seventeenth-century life in London. He was also a lifelong book collector and had amassed quite a large library. One of the treasures of the library is the series of diaries Pepys kept from 1660 to 1669.

Upon his death, he directed in his will that his library should pass to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was a Scholar. His directions precisely stipulation that his library be housed at Magdalene after the death of his nephew and heir John Jackson. 

Pepys' 3,000 volumes, bound specially for him, are to stand at the College as they were when he died, without addition or subtraction, 'for the benefit of posterity.' The volumes are kept as he left them, arranged 'according to heighth' in the book-presses which he had made for him in a naval dockyard. His catalogue, shelf-list, and library desk are still in use. 

The content of Pepys' library reflects a wide range of interests. Literature, history, science, music, and the fine arts are strongly represented. 

Pepys wrote, and I quite strongly believe, that a private library should comprehend 'in fewest books and least room the greatest diversity of subjects, styles and languages its owner's reading will bear.' 

Well said and practiced, sir.

Medical History, Oddities, and Curiosities

Today, I embarked on a theme - medical history - which ties my everyday life to my hobby of history. I first went to the Royal London Hospital Museum, which was a bit tricky to find as it is in the crypt (restored) of a late 19th century church, St. Philip's Church, in Whitechapel. The London Hospital was founded in 1740 and became Britain's largest voluntary hospital. (I could write so much about the history of the London Hospital, but will focus this just on the museum.)  The museum is divided by the centuries within which it has operated.

The 18th century section gives an overview on the foundation of the hospital and medical education and health in the 18th century. An operation bell of 1792 hangs by the front door. The bell was rung to call attendants to the operating room to hold a patient still. 

The 19th century section displays contemporary surgical instruments and medical equipment, surgery before antisepsis, and profiles Florence Nightingale and Eva Luckes, a hospital matron.  

The 20th century section focuses on the first and second World Wars, Nurse Edith Cavell, and scientific advances in medicines, such as x-rays. 

Continuing onwards, I next went to the Hunterian Museum, which is in the Royal College of Surgeons. On display is the collection of medical oddities and curiosities of the late 18th century physician John Hunter. He gathered all sorts of items, human, animal, and plant, to instruct his medical students. Hunter believed that surgeons should study the structure and function of all sorts of living things to understand how the human body adapts to injuries, diseases, and environmental impacts. Edward Jenner (of the smallpox vaccine fame) and Astley Cooper (a surgeon and anatomist who described several new anatomical structures, which are named after him) were both students of Hunter. The collection includes two floors and shelves upon shelves of pickled animal and body parts in jars, surgical instruments, and case studies of successful experimental surgeries, such as repairing facial gunshot wounds to World War I soldiers. The honestly coolest thing were boards of lacquered systems of arteries, veins, and nerves. The human subject would have been placed on the board and then all else but what currently remains on the board was dissected away.

Next, was the Wellcomme Collection. I was so excited to see this since it is described by my Frommer's guide as, "the capital's finest museum of medicine." Sadly, most of the collection is closed because the museum is undergoing remodeling. Here's what I missed! I'll just have to come back after it reopens in 2014.

So since I had more time then I had planned, I took the opportunity to visit the British Library. For a bibliophile  and nerd, the British Library is Mecca. First of all, it is receives a copy of every single title published in the U.K. and stored on 400 miles of shelves. The only thing I saw (and had time for) was "Treasures of the British Library," which displays 200 of the library's holdings, such as Shakespeare folios; drawings by Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Durer; Jane Austen's writing desk and letters; a slightly singed copy of Beowulf; musical scores by Beethoven, Mozart, and Handel (incidentally, Beethoven and Mozart's scores were clean but Handel's had many scribbles); a letter from Elizabeth I to her brother, Edward VI; a speech to Parliament by George III's; loads of illuminated manuscripts and maps; and of courses the 1215 Magna Carta. I never pass up the opportunity to see one of the many versions of the Magna Carta. To me it is the epitome of English and British history as a symbol of the foundation of the state. 

And that is exactly what I'm experiencing everyday in this magnificent city and country - the epitome of English and British history that surrounds me as I walk like the New Yorker I am up Bloomsbury Street and past the British Museum, around Lincoln's Inn and Chancery (Shout out to Bleak Houses!),  and through Whitechapel.

Photos from the day can be found here. 

A Very English Afternoon, the First of Many

After successfully transversing the Atlantic to arrive in London, and then making my way to Cambridge via various transportational devices, I spent the afternoon in sublime bliss full of tea, sunshine and breezes, and cows.

Taking a walk from Chesterton to Fen Ditton, I was informed of various aspects of local history by my resident tour guide, host, and dear friend, such as:

Chesterton used to be its own distinct village. As Cambridge grew, nearby villages, such as Chesterton, were absorbed to now be neighborhoods.

Chesterton was once a Roman settlment. 

The rectors for the church in Chesterton can be traced back to 1200.

Not only is there still a Common, Stourbridge Common, but it is used by local farmers for grazing their cattle. So as you are walking through the Common, cows graze throughout providing a brief glimpse of past farming practices. 

The Stourbridge Fair was held on Stourbridge Common, and was the largest Fair in the Medieval and Renaissance  periods. The Fair lasted for a month while in its headday. By the end, the Fair lasted for a few days.

A leper chapel still stands on Stourbridge Common. King John granted the chapel the right to hold the Fair in 1199 to raise funds for the chapel and their leper colony. The leper colony closed in the 13th century, and the Fair was then run by the City of Cambridge. The Fair contiuned to grow in popularity, declining in the late 18th century. The last year the Fair ran was 1933. 

The Fair made apperances in such literary works as Pilgrim's Progress, Vanity Fair, and Defoe's Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain. 

The Stourbridge Common follows the path along the raceway of the Cam, where the Bumps take place every year. 

And now it is time for a lovely dinnner with vegetables from a true English Garden. 

Reading History Without Judgement

I am currently reading Hilary Mantle's phenomenal Wolf Hall (a must read for Tudorphiles and Anglopihles alike.)  In an interview with The Guardian, Mantel sets out how she approached writing a historical novel about Thomas Cromwell and 16th-century Tudor England:

Her aim was to place the reader in "that time and that place, putting you into Henry's entourage. The essence of the thing is not to judge with hindsight, not to pass judgment from the lofty perch of the 21st century when we know what happened. It's to be there with them in that hunting party at Wolf Hall, moving forward with imperfect information and perhaps wrong expectations, but in any case moving forward into a future that is not predetermined, but where chance and hazard will play a terrific role."

Not only am I enjoying Wolf Hall, because of the plot, characters, and especially Mantel's writing, but also because I fundamentally believe in her approach to studying and writing about historical events and people. It is common, frequent, and easy to attribute emotions to historical figures and imagine what they would have felt in a given moment. And yet, Mantel steers from this introspective method to one of observation.

Mantel separates the study of the past from the assumptions of the present day. She reveals the Tudor world unencumbered by our omniscient knowledge of what will occur.

Despite the inevitability of Cromwell's death, however, [Mantel] said that "in every scene, even the quiet ones, I try to create turning points, multiple turning points. So the reader knows how it's going to turn out, but the reader's expectation of how and why is constantly challenged."

The discovery of truth in the study of a person, place, or time can only be done without the clouded visions and thoughts of today. To approach history without the veil of modern knowledge and judgement is difficult, but doing so honors the subject matter.

Celebrating Shakespeare

The end of April is the near-birth date of the great English poet and playwright, William Shakespeare. He was born in Stratford-upon-Avon and baptized there on 26 April 1564. His actual birthdate remains unknown, but is traditionally observed on April 23rd.

Let us appreciate his birth through his great works. I present a few of my favorite passages from his plays and his sonnets. I’m a particular fan of the Dark Lady Sonnets: 

141
In faith I do not love thee with mine eyes,
For they in thee a thousand errors note;
But 'tis my heart that loves what they despise,
Who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote.
Nor are mine ears with thy tongue's tune delighted;
Nor tender feeling, to base touches prone,
Nor taste, nor smell, desire to be invited
To any sensual feast with thee alone:
But my five wits nor my five senses can
Dissuade one foolish heart from serving thee,
Who leaves unswayed the likeness of a man,
Thy proud heart's slave and vassal wretch to be:
Only my plague thus far I count my gain,
That she that makes me sin awards me pain.

 And with two scenes from two of my favorite plays:

Patrick Stewart as Macbeth:

 

And Puck’s final soliloquy from A Midsummer Night's Dream:

A very happy birthday to William.

What Is In a Title?

I’m currently reading Maria McCann’s As Meat Loves Salt, and every time I speak about the book, I wonder what that title means. So to the Internets I ventured!  

The phrase ‘as meat loves salt’ seems to have originated in the English fairy tale “Cap O’ Rushes.” To summarize the story:

 

A wealthy man has three daughters and asks each one how much they love him. First two daughters respond accordingly with answers such as ‘as much as the world’ and ‘as much as life’ while the third states she loves her father ‘much as meat loves salt’. She is cast out, dresses in rushes, and becomes a scullery maid in a great estate. The plotline proceeds much like “Cinderella” with a ball, which the third daughter attends dressed up in finery and catches the attention of the estate owner’s son, who of course falls madly in love with her and marries her. At the wedding feast, the daughter, now bride, orders that the food be prepared without salt. All the dishes were tasteless and awful. Her father attends the wedding feast as a guest not knowing that his own daughter was the bride. He finally realizes what his daughter had meant when she declared her love to him ‘as meat loves salt’. The bride revels herself as his daughter and hurrah for happy ending.

 

The full “Cap O’ Rushes” can be read here. The story was published in 1890 by Joseph Jacobs in English Fairy Tales.

 Since discovering the provenance of ‘as meat loves salt’, I’ve become fascinated by the depth of devotion and complexity the phrase conveys and how it is portrayed in this novel. As Meat Loves Salt is as intriguing a book as the phrase it is named after. I found myself suddenly enthralled with the plot and characters and before I knew it, 300 pages into the complex passionate actions of the characters. Set in the 1640’s, the historical framework seamlessly supports the story that you forget you are reading a historical novel and settle in to enjoy the intimate scenery McCann has woven on the page.

I will not say much more because in this instance because the less you know before reading the better.

 

 

Impressions Upon Maternal Impression

There had been a farmer’s boy in our village who’d had a crimson stain across his brow and down one side of his face. The marked skin was raised and rough, its surface studded all over with little yellow pimples. His ear on that side was always scarlet, as though mortified to be appended to so unsightly a blemish. We had tormented him and called him names, but my mother had always been kind to him. “Its hardly the poor child’s fault,” she said and sighed, shaking her head. “The mother of his, she’s been a greedy lass her whole life. Longing for strawberries in February? She must have known it would mark the boy.” A responsible mother, she told me firmly, controlled her appetites or if she could not, made sure to satisfy them. Otherwise, they grew so powerful that they took her over, burning themselves into the flesh of her unborn child.

A large portion of this novel The Nature of Monsters, by Clare Clark, includes the superstitious beliefs about the nature of humanity, and in particularly the origin of disfigurements.  The passage above touches upon maternal impressions, which was a a reigning belief of the day. This theory centered on the emotional stimulation experienced by a pregnant woman could influence the development of the fetus, thus resulting in birth defects and congenital disorders. 

Lists of the perils of the maternal imagination taught to me in childhood. If an expectant mother urinated in a churchyard or crossed  water-filled ditch, her child would be a bed-wetter; if she peeped through a key-hole, he would squint; if she helped to shroud a corpse, he would be pale and sickly; if she spilled beer on her clothing, he would turn out a drunkard; if she ate speckled bird eggs, his skin would be thickly freckled.

As exemplified in the passage above, dangers were ever present for a pregnant woman and she had to be vigilant to avoid anything that could harm the child she carried. If she were to encounter any of these innumerable elements, there were a variety of remedies for her to turn to: 

Lists of remedies for the cures of the mother’s imagination: If a hare should cross your path, tear your dress; think upon gods and heroes; baptise the unborn child with holy water. Avert your eyes from cripples and felons hanging from the neck. 

What is also significant of this theory is that a mother's imagination in addition to her behavior could also harm the developing child. The mother is seen as responsible for the physical and psychological development of the child. Her cravings and needs are impressed upon the unborn child, thus causing the child when it is born to either look, behavior, feel, or think in a particular way that was a direct result of the mother's actions, feelings, and thoughts. 


Maternal impressions is explored in the study of teratology, which is the scientific study of congenital abnormalities and formations. Though not directly mentioned in Nature of Monsters, this area of study is a driving force for one of the main characters. This area of study has a long history, dating back to the Egyptians and Greeks, as method to explore and understand the nature of this area of human development. 

In my online research for this post, I found two fascinating sources: 

1. Maternal Impressions: The History of Teratology - I encourage you to explore this entire page as it is quite a fascination overview of many different historical theories. 
2. A passage on maternal impressions from the journal of English philology, Anglia, which was founded in 1878 and is the oldest journal of English studies. (Anglia - Zeitschrift für englische Philologie. Volume 1926, Issue 50, Pages 287–290, ISSN (Online) 1865-8938, ISSN (Print) 0340-5222, //1926)

St. Paul’s Cathedral: A Search for Inspiration

For there, above my head, rising with glorious disregard from a low jumble of roofs and smoking chimneys, was the dome I had seen from Hampstead, only now it soared before me, its vaulting magnificence held by a vast coronet of pillars. The columned lantern at its summit reached upwards into the smoke-bruised sky…There was nothing of supplication in its appeal to Heaven, nothing of the humility before God so beloved of the Bible…It rose from the mud as a magnificent testament to the boundless ambitions of men, realized in all their inexorable glory.

This passage from the Nature of Monsters, by Clare Clark, is a description by Eliza, the protagonist, of her first viewing of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. In 1718, Eliza arrives in London as the maid to an apothecary. The position had been arranged for her by her mother and the family of the father of her unborn child, a wealthy merchant’s son, to smooth over the scandal of their attachment. Eliza finds herself in the clamor and chaos of eighteenth-century London struggling to free herself and to survive, with a view of the dome of St. Paul’s as a source of salvation.

After the Great Fire of 1666 destroyed most of Central London, Christopher Wren (1632-1723) dominated the rebuilding of the city, and English architecture, for the rest of the century. His major and most famous project was rebuilding St. Paul’s Cathedral on Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the city.

Eight years after the Great Fire, the ruins of St. Paul’s original structure had not been replaced or restored. Attempts to salvage the burned-out medieval church failed. Wren began demolishing the old building to make room for the new. The first stones were laid in the summer of 1675 and the last 35 years later.

For a faith with a profound distrust of Catholicism, Wren drew upon monumental Catholic examples in his design for St. Paul’s as the cathedral of the Diocese of London. As similar to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, St. Paul’s has a long nave, short transepts with semicircular ends, and a domed crossing. Commanding the city’s skyline, the dome for St. Paul’s has an interior masonry vault with an exterior sheathing of lead-covered wood, similar to the dome of the Florence Cathedral, and crowned by a lantern. Paired Corinthian columns line the main west front. The tremendous size of the Cathedral, complexity of form, and triumphant verticality make it a major monument of the English Baroque period.

Wren returned to England after travels in France in the 1660s and brought with him architectural books, drawings, engravings, and a great admiration of French classical Baroque design. St. Paul’s was to be the central point of Wren’s visionary redesign of London, where streets were to be extended from it. His artistic vision was to crown London’s skyline with a great domed church like the great European cities. Wren envisioned a modern European city with a series of intersecting avenues. But it was not to be had and the city remained along its ancient topographical lines.

The sheer enormity of St. Paul’s must have struck the everyday eighteenth-century Londoner with such awe at the ability and modern power to create such a building. In a time when life was dangerous, poverty was rampant, and destitution was a reality, the solidity of St. Paul’s Cathedral hopefully provided inspiration and hope as “as a magnificent testament to the boundless ambitions of men” to many, as it did for Eliza.

Sources:
London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd
Art History by Marilyn Stokstad