Books, bathing, and a burned koala bear
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009I want to thank you all for continuing to suggest books for the rest of us to read. I’ve gotten very positive feedback from readers about this; it is a wonderful way to find new authors.
First of all, I want to alert you to an interview that Elizabeth Chadwick gave on http://myblog.susannesaville.com/2009/02/04/elizabeth-chadwick-at-the-chatty-cat-cafe.aspx, in which she discusses her cats and her dog; it is a lot of fun. Another alert: Dana Stabenow’s latest Kate Shugak mystery, Whisper to the Blood, is finally out. For those of you lucky enough to live within driving distance of the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, Arizona, (people like you, Cindy!), Dana is going to do a reading there on February 17th at 7 PM, hanging out with the brilliant mystery writer, Laurie King, and Barbara Peters and as many readers as turn out. And here I am, stuck in the Jersey Pinelands…drat.
I finished the novel, The Road to Jerusalem, by the Swedish writer, Jan Guillou, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. I have another book to recommend, too, an intriguing mystery set in revolutionary Boston, with Abigail Adams as the sleuth. The title is The Ninth Daughter and the author is Barbara Hamilton; it is coming out as a trade paperback in October, and I think any one who enjoys reading of a bygone time and place will like it.
It is easy to see Abigail Adams as a detective, given what we know of her intellect and curiosity and self-confidence. There is a clever mystery series by Stephanie Barron, in which Jane Austen is the protagonist and this works well, too, for Jane was an astute judge of character and a very observant eye-witness, qualities that any good detective needs to have. But I am so sorry to report that I’ve heard there are two other books about Jane Austen looming on the horizon, one in which Jane is a vampire and the other in which she is a zombie…..and to steal Dave Barry’s favorite line, No, I am not making that up. I have nothing against vampire novels; I was a huge fan of Josh Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel series. But for heaven’s sakes, Jane Austen???
Let me respond now to some of your questions. Suzanne, recommendations for biographies, histories, etc, are to be found under the Research Recommendations, as well as in some of the blogs. I hope to add to the list from time to time, my back and Richard permitting. You also asked about Bernard Cornwell. I have read only one of his other historicals, but I am a great fan of his Richard Sharpe series; I can’t think of another writer who does better battle scenes. Anne, I’ve never read Rosemary Sutcliffe, but I know she was a very well respected British writer. Any readers familiar with her work? Or Bernard Cornwell’s non-Sharpe books? Jeremy, I have never read Sandra Worth. Again, readers? Angela, you asked if I were tempted to change history. If only! I’d let Richard III win at Bosworth, Simon de Montfort win at Evesham, and the royal House of Gwynedd would be ruling Wales to this very day.
Leigh, I am in total agreement with you about the importance of language. I just finished a chapter set in Sicily, which had three official languages—Arabic, Greek, and Latin. The people themselves spoke Arabic, Greek, and French, and those who’d settled from Lombardy spoke an Italian dialect, In Devil’s Brood, I had characters speaking Norman-French, the purer French of the Ile de France, Breton, the lengua romana (today called langue d’oc or Occitan) of Eleanor’s domains, Welsh, and English. I always have to ask myself which language a character would have been likely to speak, and take this into account if I have someone snooping around and eavesdropping! And the reason the dialogue in Sunne differed so markedly from subsequent books is that Sunne was the only novel in which my characters were actually speaking English. What you get in the other books is a “translation” of French or Welsh, etc. Having said that, I think I would probably do some tinkering with the Sunne dialogue if I could go back in time, as I occasionally had a tin ear; this was my first book and it was therefore a learning experience.
Gayle, we do not know if Edward I permitted Davydd ap Gruffydd’s young sons to be educated or attend Mass. We know they were cruelly separated from their mother, and an order is extant in which instructions were given in 1305 to confine Owain in a cage at night. However, at least Edward spared the lives of the boys, who were five and three at the time of their capture. When Heinrich VI seized the Sicilian crown in 1194, his rival was a four year old boy; Heinrich sent the child to Germany, where he was castrated and blinded and died soon afterward.
Lastly, I want to respond to your interesting question about bathing, Kristen. One of the myths of the MA is that people went into the sea every ten years to bathe and were allergic to soap. Not true. Obviously the highborn were able to bathe more frequently because they had servants to do the heavy lifting, to lug the buckets of heated water up to their bedchambers, etc. Since castles were so drafty, I don’t imagine that people wanted to take many baths in the dead of winter, but daily washing in a basin was done by the upper classes, and hands were always washed before and after meals in the great halls. Since I usually am writing of people in positions of power, my characters are cleaner than the less affluent members of medieval society. We know that King John took a bath every ten days to two weeks or so, for money was paid to his laundress for each bath and carefully entered into the account books. Edward I’s young son, Henry, was sickly and indeed did not survive his childhood; a gallon of wine was added to his bath on Pentecost for health reasons. Cities and many towns had public baths, and medieval manuscripts often show people bathing. The historian, Margaret Wade Labarge concluded that the standard of cleanliness for the medieval upper classes was much higher than the standards prevailing in the 16th-18th centuries, and my own research supports her contention—which is why I have been known to joke that it was the Tudors who raised grime to an art form.
Another myth is that medievals knew nothing of sanitation. Cities hired men to clean the streets, and malodorous occupations like butchers, tanners, etc, were banished to the outskirts of town. There were laws against dumping chamber pots out of windows; London even had laws requiring the leashing of pet dogs. Obviously not all were law-abiding, good citizens, and many of these ordinances were ignored. But the same can be said of us.
I’d meant to continue our discussion about historical accuracy in novels, but before I knew it, I had a blog that would have rivaled Moby Dick in length. The tone was strikingly different, too, for I become quite indignant over some of the more egregious mistakes in historical writing. So I am saving my soapbox rant till next time. Since it is already partially written—and since my back pain is finally easing up—I ought to have it ready for posting in record time, a week or less.
Meanwhile, I know our hearts go out to my Australian readers; many prayers are being said for your besieged country. I think that photo of the smoke-blackened fire-fighter tenderly offering his bottle of water to a frightened and burned little koala will long remain in our memories; for those who haven’t seen it, I’ve been told it is on You-Tube.
Happy Valentine’s Day to all. Henry and Eleanor’s daughter Joanna was a Valentine’s Eve bride, wedding King William of Sicily on February 13, 1177.
February 11, 2009