Love Letters

Like my hero Sinclair, the Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) studied to become doctor but unlike Sinclair’s his heart was not really in it. . Keats’s letters to Fanny Brawne are among the most famous love letters ever written. As next-door neighbours, they exchanged numerous short notes, and occasionally more passionate letters.

Keats trained as an apothecary at Guy's Hospital from 1815 to 1816 and attended lectures on the principles and practice of surgery by the famous surgeon Sir Astley Cooper who also makes a brief appearance in my novel. In 1816, Keats received his apothecary's licence, which made him eligible to practise as an apothecary, physician, and surgeon.

Poet and surgeon John Keats

Keats's desire to become a poet led him to abandon medicine soon after he completed his training. In his 'Ode to a Nightingale' recalls his experience of caring for the dying:

The weariness, the fever and the fret

Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,

Where youth grows spectre-thin, and dies.

Ironically, it was his medical training that made him such a good carer for his brother Tom when he died from tuberculosis. In giving that care Keats became infected with the disease himself; there was no inoculation at the time, the now well-know BCG vaccine was first used in humans in 1921. Infection for Keats meant certain death but not before, he fell in love and wrote some of the world’s greatest poetry and love letters. Here is one of them.

“25 College Street, London

My dearest Girl,

This moment I have set myself to copy some verses out fair. I cannot proceed with any degree of content. I must write you a line or two and see if that will assist in dismissing you from my Mind for ever so short a time. Upon my Soul I can think of nothing else – The time is passed when I had power to advise and warn you again[s]t the unpromising morning of my Life – My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you – I am forgetful of every thing but seeing you again – my Life seems to stop there – I see no further. You have absorb’d me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving – I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you. I should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I have no limit now to my love – You note came in just here – I cannot be happier away from you – ‘T is richer than an Argosy of Pearles. Do not threat me even in jest. I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion – I have shudder’d at it – I shudder no more – I could be martyr’d for my Religion – Love is my religion – I could die for that – I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet – You have ravish’d me away by a Power I cannot resist: and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often “to reason against the reasons of my Love.” I can do that no more – the pain would be too great – My Love is selfish – I cannot breathe without you.

Yours for ever

John Keats

Fanny, John Keat's great love

For more see:

http://englishhistory.net/keats/letters/love-letter-to-fanny-brawne-13-october-1819/

Outlander's Clair Fraser has jumped from second world war nurse, to eighteenth century healer cum witch to surgeon and that's what's great about fiction but the real story of female doctors, in Britain at least, is one of profound struggle and individual persistence. 

When Charlotte Leadam, in my up coming novel Sinclair, a story based on the real Leadam family who lived and worked as apothecary surgeons in Tooley Street from the late 18th century to the mid nineteenth century, inherits her husband's apothecary shop she was not allowed to run the shop on her own account - only men were allowed to be licensed as apothecaries.

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836 – 1917) was the first woman in Britain who qualified as a physician and surgeon and she did this when in 1865, she finally obtained a licence (LSA) from the Society of Apothecaries.

Garrett's life's work was opening the medical profession to women. She started her quest by working as a surgery nurse at Middlesex Hospital, In 1860 she attempted to enrol in the hospital's Medical School. She was not accepted but was allowed to attend private tuition in Latin, Greek and materia medica with the hospital's apothecary, while continuing her work as a nurse.

She employed a tutor to study anatomy and physiology three evenings a week. Eventually she was allowed into the dissecting room and the chemistry lectures.

Gradually, Garrett became an unwelcome presence among the male students, who in 1861 presented a memorial to the school against her admittance as a fellow student, despite the support she enjoyed from the administration.

She was obliged to leave the Middlesex Hospital but she did so with an honours certificate in chemistry and materia medica.

Garrett then applied to several medical schools, including Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrews and the Royal College of Surgeons, all of which refused her admittance.

Having privately obtained a certificate in anatomy and physiology and in 1862, she was finally admitted by the Society of Apothecaries who, as a condition of their charter, could not legally exclude her on account of her sex.

She continued her battle to qualify by studying privately with various professors, including some at the University of St Andrews, the Edinburgh Royal Maternity and the London Hospital Medical School.

She co-founded the first hospital staffed by women, was the first female dean of a British medical school, the first female doctor of medicine in France.

She was the first woman in Britain to be elected to a school board and, as Mayor of Aldeburgh, she was the first female mayor and magistrate in Britain.

Pictures: 1. Claire Randall (Caitriona Balfe) in Outlander Season Two Finale "Dragonfly in Amber"
2. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

July Independence Days

July is the month when America and France celebrate their national independence days. For the Americans their celebrations focus on the signing of the Declaration of Independence on 4^th July 1776. The French commemorate the storming, on the 14^th July,1789 of Prise de la Bastille.

Photo credit: blog.fluentcity.com

The eastern seaboard of the country that is now known as the United States of America was Britain’s largest and most successful colony until the East India Company secured most of the Indian sub-continent for the company and the crown at the battle of Plessey (see previous post).

Along with the French, Spanish and the Dutch the British fought to keep and expand its territory on the American continent since its first colonies were established in the 16^th century but were eventually driven out in 1783.

The British adventure in America began with the establishment of the James Town colony in 1607 and since then the colony had grown. By the mid 18^th century the colony had achieved some measure of self government but was still subject to the British parliament.

The American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) has its origins in the resistance of many Americans to taxes imposed by the British parliament. On December 16, 1773, unhappy with the high price of tea, which had to be purchased from British East India Company, a shipment was dumped in Boston harbour as a protest, the event that is now known as the Boston Tea Party.

The British government retaliated by closing the port of Boston and taking away the self-government the colony had achieved. The Bostonians responded by rejecting British rule and setting up a shadow government. Twelve other colonies supported them and formed a Continental Congress to coordinate their resistance. On July 2, 1776, the Continental Congress formally voted for independence, and issued its Declaration two days later on July 4.

Thomas Jefferson, draftsman of the U.S. Declaration of Independence
and the nation's third president

In my novel Sinclair (available autumn 2016) which takes place between 1786 and 1788 Captain Francis Greenwood is bound for Madras on the East Indiaman, Sherwell. He is one of the hundreds of officers let go by the British at the end of the American war. Like ex-service men today Frank Greenwood, the fourth son of the MP for Staffordshire who would inherit nothing from his father, had to find another job when the British Army no longer needed him so he joined the East India Company like so many other hopefuls at that time and headed for Bengal.

“At supper Sinclair fell into conversation with Captain Greenwood a young man like himself intent on forging a successful career in the East. He was a retired British Army officer who like so many others had been let go after the defeat in America. Greenwood, much to Sinclair's chagrin, was admired by both the men and the women on board. His good looks and easy temperament seemed to smooth all his social interactions. He was gracious, charming and good company. He spoke eloquently of his experience in the American War telling Sinclair that he had had a mainly diplomatic role and had not seen much in the way of fighting. Over their meal he told Sinclair how he had sailed from Nova Scotia up the Hudson River with his commanding officer, Sir Guy Carleton to a conference with General Washington at Orangetown. There they agreed how what was left of the British Army and the thousands of ordinary people who had remained loyal to the Crown were to be removed from the new and independent country.”

Sir Guy Carleton: the last British Commander in North America

 Travelling in France at the end of 1788 Dr Sinclair and John Leadam discuss the state of the country: 

“In every town and village we pass through there are vagrants on the road and groups of young men looking for work. In the woods and along the roadside we see women and children foraging for food. It looks like they are eating weeds, snails, and mushrooms in fact whatever they can find. From what I have seen so far I am not impressed.”

“I agree John, things look pretty bad.”

 When they stopped for lunch John decided to their driver Joseph the cause of the malaise.

“It’s because of you British,” he said with a sour face. “The men who weave are without work.  This new Commercial Treaty will be the death of us. We cannot compete with your English factories. And now there is no food. In the summer it did not rain and to compound our problems when the rains came the Lord sent us hail the size of men’s fists that destroyed the crops in the fields. This harvest is the worst in living memory. The bread you are eating is most probably made of English corn and the oats we feed the horses are English too. There is nothing here but the landlord must still have his rent. The King has been merciful and has suspended the collection of normal taxes but the country is bankrupt someone has to pay for fighting you British in America and Canada. The trouble is that the nobles don’t want it to be them; they think us little people should foot the bill. France is in crisis Monsieur, people disappear into prison never to see the light of day again and to make matters worse the weather was already unusually cold for the time of year; it will be very bad for many Frenchmen this year messieurs.”

The Bastille in 1715

The Storming of the Bastille on the afternoon of 14 July 1789 came as food prices soared in Paris. The castle was taken by the residents of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine who were some of the poorest people in city. The medieval fortress represented royal authority in the centre of Paris. The prison contained just seven inmates at the time but its storming became a symbol of the people’s triumph over the abuse of the absolutist monarchy governing France at the time.

The Bastille was demolished by order of the Committee of the Hôtel de Ville during the revolution and souvenirs of the fortress were transported around France and displayed as icons of the overthrow of despotism. Over the next century, the site featured prominently in political protests and revolutions. Today the there is little of the site to be seen except for some stone foundations that were relocated to the side of the Boulevard Henri IV.

Both the American Revolutionary War and the build-up to the French Revolution provide a back drop to my new novel. Times of war and conflict are times of misery and heroism: Find out what happens to Dr Sinclair and Frank Greenwood in my novel, Sinclair, which will be available to read in the autumn of 2016.

Underhand tactics win the day for East India Company

Lord Clive meeting with Mir Jafar after the Battle of Plassey, oil on canvas 

(Francis Hayman, c. 1762)

On 23rd June 1757 the Battle of Plassey (Bengali: পলাশীর যুদ্ধ, Pôlashir Juddho) was won by the British East India Company over the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies. This battle consolidated the Company's presence in Bengal, and allowed them to dominate the sub-continent for the next hundred years.

Plassey lies on the banks of the Bhagirathi River, about 150 kilometres (93 miles) north of Calcutta and south of Murshidabad, then capital of Bengal (now in Nadia district in West Bengal).

Prior to the battle Robert Clive, Commander-in-Chief of British India, and soldier of fortune undermined the Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah by bribing the his disgruntled army commander, Mir Jafar, promising him that he would make him Nawab if he won.

Siraj-ud-Daulah had a numerically superior force but Mir Jafar, along with his co-conspirators assembled their troops near the battlefield but made no move to actually join in when the fighting started. Siraj-ud-Daulah's army with 18,000 soldiers was defeated by 3,000 soldiers of Clive’s in just forty minutes.

After this battle the East India Company wielded enormous influence over the new Nawab and consequently acquired large concessions which enabled them to increase their revenues and military might which they used to push the other European colonial powers; the Dutch and the French out of South Asia.

My debut novel, Sinclair, begins on board an East Indiaman bound for Madras in 1786. I have based the beginning of the story on what happened to a real ship called the Halsewell which set out from Gravesend on New Year’s Day of that year with a contingent of fresh soldiers and military supplies for Fort St George in Madras. In the book I have called the ship the Sherwell as I have changed and added to the characters on board the original ship.

Like the real Halsewell the Sherwell never reaches its destination; it was brought to grief on the Dorset coast just 6 days later in one of the worst storms of the century.

Loss of the East Indiaman Halsewell by Robert Smirke

Of the 240 passengers and crew on board only 74 survive, my hero Sinclair is one of them. Find out how two young men; Dr James Sinclair and Captain Frank Greenwood, both on the brink of successful colonial careers with the East India Company rebuild their lives and search for meaning and love in the aftermath of this disaster in my new book called Sinclair which will be available this autumn.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité - but not for women

We are interested in all things French at the moment it seems form the BBC's new block buster drama on the life of Louis XIV and Versailles to Euro 2016. France as we all know is the home of revolution, of Liberté, égalité, fraternité but what is not so well known is that women were barred from political rights even as they were being proclaimed to be universal and inalienable and in 1793 were deemed to lack sufficient education to participate in the nation's political life and by the autumn of that year they were also barred from participating in clubs and societies.

But not all Frenchmen and revolutionaries were against women's rights. Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet (September 17, 1743–March 28, 1794) was one such man. In 1786 at the age forty-two, he married the twenty-two year old Sophie de Grouchy (1764–1822), with whom he forged a loving relationship. The pair shared similar political convictions and developed a solid intellectual partnership.

Like her husband, de Grouchy was committed to bringing about major judicial and political reforms in France; and her own experiences of convent schooling had left her with fierce dislike of the Church and a commitment to secular values. They both dreamed and worked towards a liberal, rational and democratic France. 

In 1790 as the French Revolution was well under way her husband called for “the admission of women to the rights of citizenship” but he was widely opposed on the grounds that women were innately inferior and destined to only to be wives and mothers.

In 1791, along with Thomas Paine, the Condorcets founded la Société républicaine [the Republican Society], sometimes credited as the first republican society in France; and Mme de Condorcet translated Paine's writings for the journal of the Society, La Républicain ou défenseur du gouvernement représentatif [The Republican or defender of representative government].

In the autumn of 1792, the Marquis was elected to the National Convention of the newly constituted first French Republic, and became chairman of the Committee on a Constitution. He proposed what became known as, “La Girondine” a constitution that was rejected in favour of the Jacobin Constitution, in June 1793 and his impassioned defence of La Girondine led to an order for his arrest and he was forced to flee from his beloved France.

Separated from one another de Condorcet wrote until he was found dead in prison cell under suspicious circumstances while his wife worked on her own text known as Lettres à Cabanis sur la sympathie [Letters to Cabanis on Sympathy], in which she sets forth her own ideas on achieving “a society of happiness” and struggles with the question of what holds society together while her own life and the life of the nation was being rent asunder as the Terror raged.

Sophie was rendered penniless by her husband's proscription and death and to support herself, her child and her sister she opened a shop and put aside her writing and translation work for years until she eventually published a translation of Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) in 1798, adding eight letters, Lettres sur la Sympathie, commenting upon this work.  This became the standard French translation for the next two centuries. Her eight letters on sympathy were however ignored by historians of economic thought, and were only recently (2008) translated into English.

In the French Revolution we see for the first time the issue of gender as a constitutional condition for the possession of political rights and it is a sad irony that the women of France would not achieve the ballot until 1944, and many of the advancements in civil law passed in the euphoria of the 1790s were withdrawn by Napoleon, and not again fully secured until the last half of the twentieth century.

The Marquis de Condorcet was symbolically re- interred in the Panthéon in 1989, in honour of the bicentennial of the French Revolution and Condorcet's role as a central figure in the Enlightenment. He started his academic life as a mathematician then transferred those skills into social and political affairs developing a model he called “social arithmetic”. He could be called the ‘father of statistics’ because he advocated the use of statistics and probability theory, to the financial reforms, the reform of hospital care, jury decision-making and voting procedures.

Sophie's contribution to modern political and economic thought is now being properly evaluated and recognised particularly in the United States where her contribution to the discussion on the nature of liberty is now being widely acknowledged. In a world of political and social turmoil she advocates that educators and social reformers should nurture 'sympathy'  the feeling for others induced by imagining yourself in another’s place and imagining how you would feel. In this way, people would be led to strive to maintain good relations with their fellows and provide the basis both for specific benevolent acts and for the general social order. 

Sympathy may be an old idea but I think its a good one and many of our politicians and economists would do well to consider it once more.

Sources:

The Status of Women in Classical Economic Thought edited by Robert William Dimand, Chris Nyland

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/histfem-condorcet/

http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/rousseaus-theory-of-sentiments-57752.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_de_Condorcet
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquis_de_Condorcet

Euro 2016 Liberté, Égalité, Footé

In Europe we are obsessed with all things French at the moment. No it's not because of terrorism, the Euro, fashion, the strikes or the sophistication of French culture - it's the football or more precisely the UEFA Euro 2016 Competition.

The BBC has tapped into the trend with a new multi-million pound drama, Versailles which is proving to be a hot, steamy romp of sex and violence at the court of Louis XIV and with an impressive trailer for the football with a host of commentators and sports stars dressed in 18th century costume, parading with the tricolour in hand and proclaiming - Liberte, Egalite Foote! Who says 18th century history is not relevant today?

June - is it the most romantic month of the year?

Tourism promoters on the Caribbean Island of Nevis have declared June the island’s Official Month of Romance. Nevis is undeniably gorgeous but where did this tradition of June romance and weddings come from? 

Let's start at the beginning - was it the Romans? 

The month of June gets its name from the Latin name for the month which was Junius which in turn is named after the Roman goddess Juno. Juno was the daughter of Saturn and sister and wife to the chief god Jupiter (the ancient immortals were prone to incest. I suppose it comes from having so few immortals to choose from!)  Juno was the patron goddess of Rome and the Roman Empire she was called Regina ("queen") and, together with Jupiter and Minerva their daughter she was worshipped on the Capitol (Juno Capitolina) in Rome. As well as being the goddess of marriage she was also the goddess who watched over the finances of the empire and her temple on the Arx (one of two Capitoline hills), was the Roman mint, so she had her hands on the purse strings too.

In ancient Rome, the period from mid-May through mid-June was considered inauspicious for marriage. Ovid says that he consulted the Flaminica Dialis, the high priestess of Jupiter, about setting a date for his daughter's wedding, and was advised to wait till after June 15. Plutarch, however, implies that the entire month of June was more favourable for weddings than May. This may have been because there are several meteor showers disturbing the heavens in May. So it seems that the Roman’s were not too keen on June weddings despite the name of the month.

Was it the Medievals?

There is a popular belief that the tradition of June brides in northern Europe began in 1500s and that it is associated with bathing. Folklore dictates that the common people took a bath once a year, in May, when the weather was warm enough for a young person to take off their clothes and wash and that with this annual grooming ritual out of the way they could get on with the business of marriage and mating.

It is certainly true that many people, especially the poor, covered their chests in goose fat and sewed themselves into their clothes for the winter in an effort to ward off the cold and diseases. They were then cut out of them in the spring when they washed, the fetid clothes were burned and new ones were put on. Which must have made anyone feel better and smell more fragrant. Of course there is no denying that a clean vest is better than a rancid one if you’re after a bit of loving but it’s hardly enough to get someone to the altar.

In her book, A General View of the Rural Economy of England, 1538-1840 (CUP, 1990), Ann Kussmaul concludes that there was no immutable season for English weddings, they happened at all times of year but having said that she goes on to identify a trend but it was not for weddings in June even though the term 'honeymoon' referred to the first moon of after the summer solstice on June 21, a term which became synonymous with 'time following the wedding.'  

Was it the weather?

It seems that our ancestors got married either in early spring before the main agricultural work of the year had begun or in the autumn when it was over. What is more it seems also that after dancing around the Maypole and having a bath our ancestors were prone to a bit of illicit frolicking in the hay. 

Over the summer months when our young ancestors were clean and fragment and they could get out into the fields and woods away from their parents’ supervision they frequently got themselves pregnant. So their romantic frolics under the summer sun and the honeyed moon led them to altar in the autumn and christenings in spring.

So perhaps June was the most romantic month. It was a time when young people discovered each other, discovered sex, formed bonds that would last the rest of their lives. Today a June a wedding is a beautiful thing whether it's in Nevis or the local Town Hall.

See my collection of 18th century inspired wedding dresses and gowns 

https://uk.pinterest.com/juliaherdman107/

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