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ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE TOUR–DAY ONE, PARIS

Eleanor of Aquitaine Tour, Penman

Day One of the tour began with a visit to my favorite cathedral, Notre Dame de Paris. The first stone was laid in 1163, under the supervision of the Bishop of Paris, Maurice Sully, and the consecration of the high altar in the choir was done in 1182. It would become one of the gems of the new style that we know today as Gothic. But if it was not begun until Eleanor had been long gone from Paris, what is its Angevin connection? A very strong one, actually, for it was here that Eleanor and Henry’s son Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany, was given a state funeral after being mortally wounded in a tournament in August of 1186. In past blogs, I’ve mentioned a friend, Malcolm Craig, who is very knowledgeable about Geoffrey’s life; Geoffrey was the subject of his senior thesis at Harvard and Malcolm subsequently published an article, A Second Daughter for Geoffrey of Brittany, in the Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, which was of great value to me during my writing of Devil’s Brood. Malcolm allowed me to post his article, called Proving Matilda, on my blog in January, 2010. It was from Malcolm that I learned there is a plaque in Notre Dame commemorating Geoffrey’s death. I’d never seen it on past visits, so we were determined to find it this time. Soon there were 36 tour members in the hunt, and we did locate it, thanks to Malcolm’s guidance. The date was wrong, 1185, but that is not so unusual; George of Clarence’s tomb has the wrong death date, too, in the chapel of St George at Windsor Castle. Before we left, I did what I always do at Notre Dame and lit a candle for Geoffrey.

We had two Paris guides, Jennifer and Herve. After pointing out the oldest tree in Paris, which dates from 1602, making it older than my own country, our guides took us to the Cluny Museum, which has a magnificent medieval collection, not surprising since its official name is Musee National du Moyen Age. The building itself is breathtaking, at least to me and my fellow medieval geeks. It was formerly the Paris residence of the abbots of Cluny, and the present structure was rebuilt in the late 15th century. For us, probably the most interesting occupant was Mary Tudor, Henry VIII’s sister, who’d been wed at 18 to the much older French king, Louis XII. He died only three months after their marriage, and the young widow took up residence at Cluny until the new French king could be sure she was not pregnant. She had agreed to wed the French king only upon condition that she could choose her second husband herself, but naturally brother Henry reneged on his promise and sent Charles Brandon to fetch her back to England. Instead Mary and Brandon were wed in the chapel at Cluny. Henry was infuriated, but he eventually accepted the marriage after exacting a huge fine from the guilty lovers.

Kings did not like it when their daughters and sisters showed they had minds of their own. While Henry III reluctantly allowed Simon de Montfort to wed his sister Nell, he nursed a grudge that would later explode into a public accusation that Simon had seduced Nell and Simon and Nell had to flee to France for a time. When Edward I’s spirited daughter Joanna dared to marry a squire after the death of her husband, the Earl of Gloucester, the enraged Edward imprisoned the bridegroom at Bristol Castle, and there is a wonderful entry in the Pipe Rolls listing the costs of repairing the royal crown, “which it pleased the lord king to throw into the fire.” In time, Edward recognized the marriage, although there is some evidence that he never really forgave them. And of course we know the outraged reaction of Louis VII, upon learning that his ex-wife Eleanor had not waited for him to arrange a second marriage to a puppet of the French Crown, but instead had dared to wed the young Duke of Normandy, Henry Fitz Empress.

Sorry for the digression, but there is something romantic about Mary’s secret marriage in Cluny Chapel, even if she is a Tudor! Cluny has been a public museum since the 19th century and has on display some of the most amazing tapestries I’ve ever seen, six panels known as The Lady and the Unicorn. They were woven in Flanders in the 15th century, and were rediscovered in the 19th century at Boussac Castle. I was fascinated to learn that the novelist George Sand used her celebrity status to focus attention upon the importance of this find, so in addition to her novels, she leaves another legacy. Tracy Chevalier has written about the creation of these magnificent tapestries in her novel, The Lady and the Unicorn.

After our visit to the Cluny we headed for the Louvre, which began life as a castle constructed by Richard Lionheart’s nemesis, Philippe Auguste; parts of the original wall have been preserved, but the building itself, of course, has been transformed over the centuries. It has been a museum since the late 18th century. Our major objective was to see the beautiful pear-shaped rock crystal vase that was given by Eleanor to Louis after their marriage in 1137. Louis later gave it to his trusted adviser, Abbot Suger, who displayed it proudly in the treasury of his abbey at Saint Denis. George Beech, author of “The Eleanor of Aquitaine Vase” in Eleanor of Aquitaine, Lord and Lady, my favorite book about our duchess, makes a convincing case that the vase was a gift from the Muslim king of the Spanish city of Saragossa to Eleanor’s grandfather, Duke William IX in 1120 and that it is of truly ancient origin, possibly crafted in Persia before the 7th century. There is an intimacy about this vase, perhaps because we know Eleanor held it, caressed it, and cherished it enough to give as a wedding gift, and the inscription by Abbot Suger brings us even closer to the “Queen of Aquitaine,” as he calls her, the “newly wed bride on their first voyage.” It is interesting, too, that Abbot Suger chose to name her as “Aanor,” for in her charters, she always called herself Alienor. I’d tried to convince my publisher to let me use this spelling for my Angevin trilogy, but to no avail. I hope Elizabeth Chadwick has better luck than I did!

It was believed until recently that Eleanor was 15 at the time of her marriage to Louis, but now, thanks to the research of Andrew W. Lewis, we know she was actually born in 1124, and was therefore only 13 when she became Louis’s bride and, several months, later, Queen of France. A very young age for a girl to — in a matter of months — lose her father, gain a husband, and leave her beloved homeland of Aquitaine for a new life in Paris. I think it is typical of Eleanor that over eight centuries after her death, she is still surprising us.

We naturally spent a lot of time admiring Eleanor’s vase, and many in our group wanted to take photos of me beside it; I couldn’t help noticing the puzzled expressions of other museum-goers, clearly wondering why I was the center of so much attention! Soon afterward, though, my day took a turn for the worse. Up until now, my back pain had been easily tolerable, thanks to a back brace and Motrin, but it suddenly flared up without warning. I soldiered on, but fortunately for me, our “resident physician” had a sharp eye and soon realized I was in considerable pain. John persuaded me to sit down and then found our guide to explain that I would not be able to continue with the rest of the museum tour. I am very glad that I had enough common sense to listen to him, for I think I may have jeopardized the rest of the tour had I not paid heed to what my body was telling me. By the time the others rejoined us several hours later, I was starting to feel somewhat better and I’d learned a valuable lesson—that I must pace myself for the remainder of the trip. (For those who are new visitors to my blog or Facebook page, I took a bad fall in March and as a result, I was coping with a herniated disk and a pinched nerve. Thankfully, I have a wonderful chiropractor, or otherwise I’d be making regular pilgrimages to Lourdes.)

That evening, Academic Travel had arranged a medieval-style dinner at the request of several tour members. I’ve attended two medieval banquets in the past, both in York, and in all honesty, this was not in their class, for they’d been the “real deal,” with costumes, medieval music, a medieval menu, etc. But our travel agency did the best they could with so little time to prepare and found a restaurant that specialized in “event” dinners. The food was excellent, as was the wine, of course; we were in France, after all. So even if we were not wearing veils and wimples and tunics, we had a good time, a private room, and not an accordion player in sight!

Afterward, a few brave souls decided to return to Notre Dame to see if they could climb to the top of the tower. I went back to our hotel, where my netbook showed it is a true cousin of Demon Spawn and would not let me log onto the Internet. That was bad enough, but then my new Kindle froze up; I am surprised you all did not hear a primal scream echoing across the Atlantic. Clearly I bring my own “dead zone” with me wherever I go.

I’d been surprised to discover that I had a dazzling view of the Eiffel Tower from my 6th floor window. I was surprised because I always stay at Left Bank hotels, as close as I can get to Notre Dame, and this was the first time that I’d even gotten a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower from a hotel room. Never having been there after dark, I hadn’t realized it is lit up at night, rather like an ironclad Christmas tree. A storm soon broke over the city and the Eiffel Tower disappeared as if by magic in a torrential downpour. Slugabeds like me stayed safely dry, but a few of us did get drenched on the way back to the hotel. The last sight I remember that night was the return of the Eiffel Tower, gleaming through the mist as the rain clouds moved on. So ended our first full day in Paris. On the morrow we’d be heading for Falaise and then one of the seven wonders of the world — or it ought to be — the abbey at Mont St Michel.

 June 27, 2011

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS FOR LIONHEART

Penman

For the first time, I listed a bibliography in Lionheart, not all of the books I consulted, of course, but those that I found most helpful.  I’ve been asked to provide it before Lionheart’s publication, and I am happy to do so.  Here is the part of my Acknowledgments Page that deals with book recommendations.    

 More and more of my readers have been asking me to include a bibliography for my novels.  I have begun listing some of my sources on my website and blog, but that doesn’t help those readers without internet access.  So I am going to cite here the cream of the crop, those books I found to be most helpful and most reliable.  The gold standard for Ricardian biographies remains John Gillingham’s Richard I, published in 1999 by the Yale University Press; he has also written Richard Coeur de Lion; Kingship, Chivalry, and War in the Twelfth Century.  The Reign of Richard Lionheart by Ralph Turner and Richard R. Heiser does not address the most consequential and fateful event of Richard’s life—the Third Crusade—but it does cover the remainder of his reign and has an excellent concluding chapter called “Richard in Retrospect,” which analyses the way his reputation has fluctuated over the centuries.  Kate Norgate’s Richard the Lionheart, published in 1924, has stood the test of time surprisingly well.  In all honesty, I have not read the second half of Frank McLynn’s Richard and John, Kings at War, but the half of the book about Richard is accurate and insightful.   I also recommend Richard Coeur de Lion in History and Muth, edited by Janet Nelson, The Legends of King Richard I Coeur de Lion, by Bradford Broughton, and The Plantagenet Empire, by Martin Aurell, translated by David Crouch.  

        My favorite book about Richard’s mother is Eleanor of Aquitaine, Lord and Lady, a notable collection of essays edited by Bonnie Wheeler.  There are a number of biographies written about Eleanor, more than Henry, which would probably not please him much.  Just to list a few of her biographers: Ralph Turner, Regine Peroud, Allison Weir, Regine Pernaud, Jean Flori, Douglas Boyd, D.D. R Owen,Marion Meade, and Amy Kelly, though the last two authors’ conclusions about the so-called Courts of Love are no longer accepted.  I also recommend The World of Eleanor of Aquitaine: Literature and Society in Southern France between the Eleventh and Thirteenth Centuries, edited by Marcus Bull and Catherine Leglu, and Eleanor of Aquitaine, Courtly Love, and the Troubadours, by Ffiona Swabey.

        I was blessed with a treasure-trove while researching and writing Lionheart—two chronicles written by men who’d accompanied Richard on crusade, and two by members of Salah al-Din’s inner circle.   I felt very fortunate to have access to Helen Nicholson’s translation of The Chronicle of the Third Crusade, the Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi, and Marianne Ailes’s translation of The History of the Holy War; Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte; these wonderful books make fascinating reading and provide invaluable footnotes about the persons and places mentioned in the texts. Another crusader chronicle is The Conquest of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade, Sources in Translation, by Peter W. Edbury, and then there is Chronicles of the Crusades, edited by Elizabeth Hallam.  Baha al-Din ibn Shaddad wrote a compelling account of his time with Salah al-Din; in Lionheart, I quoted from the 19th century edition, Saladin or What Befell Sultan Yusuf, translated by the Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society, but there is a more modern translation by D. S. Richards, complete with annotated notes, titled The Rare and Excellent History of Saladin.  Other contemporary chronicles are The Chronicle of Ibn al-Athir for the Crusading Period, from al-Kamil fi’l-ta’rikh, Part 2, also translated by D.S. Richards, and a chronicle written by one of Salah al-Din’s scribes, Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani, translated into French by Henri Masse as Conquete de la Syrie et de la Palestaine par Saladin.  There is also Arab Historians of the Crusades, translated by Francesco Gabrieli. Non-crusading chronicles include The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes, translated by J.A. Giles, The History of William of Newburgh, translated by Joseph Stevenson, The Annals of Roger de Hoveden, translated by Henry T. Riley, and History of William Marshal, translated by S. Gregory and annotated by D. Crouch.

     Moving on to Sicily and Cyprus, there is The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, translated by Roland Broadhurst, a remarkable account of a pilgrimage to Mecca made by a Spanish Muslim in 1182-1183; his description of a deadly storm in the Straits of Messina was my inspiration for Alicia’s shipwreck in Chapter One of Lionheart.  The Kingdom in the Sun by John Julius Norwich is a beautifully written book about Norman Sicily, although his “take” on Richard is outdated.  Another outstanding book about Sicily is Admiral Eugenius of Sicily, his Life and Work and the Authorship of the Epistola ad Petrum and the Historia Hugonis Falcandi Siculi, by Evelyn Jamison; it is, however, almost as hard to find as the Holy Grail.  For the history of medieval Cyprus, readers need look no further than Peter Edbury’s The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191-1374.

     The best book about the Crusades, IMHO, is Thomas Asbridge’s riveting The Crusades.  Other books on my list include God’s War, by Christopher Tyerman, Holy Warriors, a Modern History of the Crusades, by Jonathan Phillips, Fighting for the Cross, by Norman Housley, the six volume A History of the Crusades, edited by Kenneth Setton, and The Assassins, by Bernard Lewis.  The definitive study of Salah al-Din is still Saladin; the Politics of the Holy War, by Malcolm Cameron Lyons and D.E.P. Jackson.  I also recommend The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives, by Carole Hillenbrand.  Some social histories are The World of the Crusaders, by Joshua Prawer, The Crusaders in the Holy Land, by Meron Benvenisti, Medicine in the Crusades, by Piers D. Mitchell, and Daily Life in the Medieval Islamic World, by James E. Lindsay.  For books dealing with warfare during the Crusades, a classic study is Crusading Warfare, 1097-1193, by R.C. Smail; there is also David Nicolle’s two volume Crusader Warfare.

       Lastly, for books that cover medieval warfare in general, I have several exceptional books to recommend:  By Fire and Sword; Cruelty and Atrocity in Medieval Warfare, by Sean McGlynn, Noble Ideals and Bloody Realities; Warfare in the Middle Ages, edited by Niall Christie and Maya Yazigi, Western Warfare in the Ages of the Crusades, 1000-1300, by John France, Tolerance and Intolerance; Social Conflict in the Age of the Crusades, edited by Michael Gervers and James M. Powell, and War and Chivalry; the Conduct and Perception of War in England and Normandy, 1066-1217, by Matthew Strickland.  

ELEANOR OF AQUITAINE TOUR–OUR ARRIVAL

Eleanor of Aquitaine Tour, Penman

 

Well, I am finally on the mend after my bout with Angevinia, as Sherill, one of our tour group, named the ailment that struck so many of us down upon our return home. So I feel up to starting my tour reports — sadly, after the fact. But even if my netbook had let me log onto the internet as often as I’d wished, I wouldn’t have been able to manage daily bulletins — too much fun, friends, and wonderful French wine. My intentions were good; I just wasn’t being very realistic.

I thought I’d do a day at a time. Most of us arrived in Paris on Sunday, June 4th, though a few lucky souls got there earlier and Paula, one of our four Australians, was able to spend time in England and Wales beforehand. Once we checked into our hotel on the Left Bank, jet-lagged but excited, some of us went out for lunch, where we discussed — quelle surprise — books, with great enthusiasm. Several of us then wandered over to one of Paris’s best-known English language bookshops, Shakespeare and Company. The original Shakespeare and Company was a famous hangout in the 1920s for the “Lost Generation,” writers like Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and James Joyce. It was closed during the Nazi occupation of Paris, but later reopened at its current location, very close to the Seine and Notre Dame. The last time I was there, there was a very sleek and elegant black cat napping in the window, but he wasn’t around on this visit.

We had a very interesting and eclectic group — four from Australia, one of whom is now living in Viet Nam, one from Canada, one from England, and the rest from the US, with a large number of states represented — California, Oregon, Colorado, Texas, Illinois, Oklahoma, Nevada, Maryland, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, New York, Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Ages ranged from Anna at 14 to those of a “certain age” like me, and it was skewed toward the female side, though the three men aboard were not complaining about that! We had a fascinating mix of professions, too — a doctor, two psychotherapists, a diver at Disneyworld, a librarian, a lawyer, several students, two midwives, two accountants, a pharmacist, an optometrist, and a cellist, just to name some of them off the top of my head. We had three mother-daughter combinations, which pleased me and made me a little sad that I’d never been able to take a trip like this with my own mother. And we had one family, Lisa and her two daughters and her sister Kathy. Lisa’s daughter Julia is the one who videotaped the tour for us, and did an outstanding job, always very unobtrusive, almost invisible at times. Best of all, we were a very congenial group, bonding easily and getting along very well; I am sure that a number of friendships were forged in those ten days. I know I feel as if I made 36 new friends.

That evening, we had our first official tour dinner, which was the only real misstep of the tour, for it was at a restaurant that was small and cramped and very, very noisy. I remember thinking that we’d need to shout to be heard — and then the musicians arrived. Imagine being trapped in an elevator with an exuberant accordion player and you get an idea of the acoustics. So we were soon being serenaded by such French classics as “I can’t get no satisfaction,” which a group of German tourists seemed to enjoy more than we did. John, our retired English doctor, who would later prove to be my guardian angel on the tour, performed an act of great chivalry and changed seats with Paula, who was seated in the line of fire, right next to the accordion player. I would rate that with Sir Walter Raleigh’s sacrifice of his cloak to keep Gloriana’s feet dry.

As I said, not an auspicious start to the tour. But when I talked to J.D., our tour guide, he explained that we were supposed to eat in a private room upstairs; the restaurant’s air conditioning had stopped working, though, and they’d had to put us downstairs. So it was not the fault of our tour planners, had to be written off as one of those inevitable minor mishaps that occur whenever people travel. I’m sure medieval pilgrims often found themselves staying at inns with leaky roofs or mice that wanted to get too up close and personal. All in all, I was quite impressed with the itinerary set out by Academic Travel and would highly recommend them in the future. We were very well looked after by J.D. and by Janus, our bus driver; wait till you read about our experience on a narrow bridge on the way to Fontevrault! Tomorrow I will start the tour in earnest, with our first day in Paris.

 PS  The photo is one of John’s — the Ile de la Cite, which was the beating heart of Paris in the MA.

 June 24, 2011

 

FOLLOWING IN ELEANOR’S FOOTSTEPS

Penman

This is not a real blog, just a reminder that I will be leaving today for the Eleanor of Aquitaine tour, and so if anyone has specific questions for me, please hold them till mid-June.   I’d hoped to blog about the tour, but my netbook, with typical computer contrariness, won’t let me log onto it.  I will definitely be able to post notes on Facebook, and I hope to be able to use my friend John’s iPad to do at least one blog while in France.  If not, I will do an extra long one when I get home.  I am sure that somewhere Eleanor is smiling, after having pointed out to Henry that no one has booked a tour to follow in his footsteps.
June 4, 2011

INTERVIEW WITH JOAN SZECHTMAN

Penman

This has been Ricardian month on my blog, as I recently interviewed Anne Easter Smith to discuss her new novel about Cecily Neville and today I am visited by Joan Szechtman, author of two novels about Richard III, This Time and Loyalty Binds Me.   I haven’t had a chance yet to read Loyalty Binds Me, mainly because of the upcoming Eleanor tour, but I did read This Time and enjoyed it.  The premise is very imaginative–snatching Richard from Bosworth Field at the moment before his death and transporting him to our time–and Joan executed it quite well.  She dealt with issues that would be bound to come up for a medieval man suddenly finding himself in our time, both the serious (religious intolerance) and the more mundane (cars, computers, etc.)    I found her Richard to be believable and likable and I am looking forward to continuing his journey in the 21st century.  I am sure he will find voice mail and never-ending political campaigns every bit as annoying as the rest of us do, but he also faces a unique challenge–having to prove he did not murder his nephews!   

Interview with SKP

 

SKP: Before we start, I hope you don’t mind if I ask you how you pronounce your name.

 

JS: Joan? Just the way it’s spelled—just kidding. 😉 Szechtman is easy if you pretend the “z” is an “h” and then pronounce it the way it’s spelled. All joking aside, I’m quite honored to be doing this interview. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity.

 

SKP: I understand that Loyalty Binds Me is the second book in this series after This Time. Since this is your first interview with me, please tell us a little about both books.

 

JS: THIS TIME starts moments before Richard III loses to Henry Tudor on the field of Redemore near Leicester, England on August 22, 1485. In THIS TIME, a team of Ricardians substitutes an armor-clad corpse for the king and brings him into Portland, Oregon. Richard awakens August 21, 2004 to an alien world where even the English he speaks is different.

 

The story follows two parallel paths: the present where Richard must learn how to adjust to not only the technological advancements but also the more difficult cultural differences; and looking back at the past to solve some of the mysteries that have haunted and maligned his image for over 500 years.

 

The second book, LOYALTY BINDS ME, continues Richard III’s story. Richard has married a divorcee, adopted her two daughters, and with the help of his new wife, has been able to rescue his son Edward, who had predeceased him in the 15th-century. Richard has lived in the twenty-first century for two years, and his son has been with him for the past year. At the start of the novel, they have just arrived in London, when Richard is brought in by the Metropolitan Police for questioning about the alleged murder of Richard III’s nephews in 1483. Richard must now find a way to clear his name and protect his family while concealing his true identity.

 

The books are written to stand by themselves; there are no cliffhangers at the end of each novel and there’s enough information in the second book for a new reader to understand the story without boring those who have read the first book.

 

SKP: I usually don’t read fictional books about one of my characters, but I was so intrigued by your premise of bringing Richard III into the 21st century that I put aside my usual reservations. Why did you bring Richard III into the 21st-century?

 

JS: One of the things that really got to me about Richard III was that he was so young—only 32—when he died. I felt his story wasn’t finished and I wanted to examine his character in a modern light, without forcing our modern sensibilities onto his 15th-century actions. To do this, I had to let him speak for himself. Admittedly, I could have done something akin to Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book and send a protagonist back in time, but I thought that by bringing Richard into the present day, I could challenge him in ways that I couldn’t by writing a period piece. Additionally, I didn’t feel the need to tell Richard’s life story. You beat me to it. In fact, it was your book, Sunne in Splendour, which put me on the Ricardian path to the point where I felt compelled to write about Richard, but from a different perspective.

 

SKP: Many time-travel novels ignore language differences, but you didn’t. Yet, Richard was able to adjust rapidly to modern English.

 

JS: Richard was probably fluent in three or four languages, and although today’s English would have at first sounded foreign to him, I felt that there was enough similarities—based on my reading of The Paston Letters, for example—between Early Modern English and today’s English that he would have been able to understand a lot of what he heard fairly quickly. I also provided a linguist that was able to help him over the inevitable speed bumps.

 

SKP: Another rapid adjustment that Richard achieved was his ability to absorb and take advantage of today’s technology. It left me a bit breathless.

 

JS: There have been modern instances of individuals from isolated primitive cultures being brought to technologically advanced cultures. Most of these individuals were able to use the technology quickly. The more difficult adjustment has to do with cultural differences. Such was the case for Richard. Because he was intentionally brought into the future, and not by accident, he had access to people who could help him learn how to use such things as phones, computers, cars, etc.

 

I also decided to advance his adjustment so that I wouldn’t put the reader to sleep having him learn every single detail that we take for granted. So I tried to show him learn some things and let the reader imagine him learning the rest.

 

SKP: I understand that not only do you think that Richard did not kill his nephews, but that they may well have survived him.

 

JS: Yes. Despite the rumors the princes had met an evil end and Tudor’s willingness to parley these rumors to his advantage, extant documentation and contemporary reports show only that the boys disappeared. Setting aside the lack of documentation, I also took into consideration the behaviors of both Richard III and Henry VII. Then, it was standard operating procedure to display bodies to “prove” that their reigns were without credible challenge. Despite the way Henry had Richard’s body mistreated immediately after the battle, he nevertheless had it put on display to show that he was now the undisputed king. I have to think that if Henry had killed the princes or knew where their bodies were, he would have displayed them and blamed Richard for their deaths. If Richard had had them killed, he could have easily first blamed Welles for their deaths during the botched attempt to “free” them from the tower, and then later, Buckingham, when Richard had him executed for treason.

 

Richard had far less reason to want the princes dead than did Henry. Through “Titulus Regius” parliament declared Richard the rightful king and bastardized all of Edward IV’s children. As bastards, the princes could not inherit any title. Henry VII had his parliament revoke “Titulus Regius” which enabled his marriage to Edward IV’s oldest daughter, Elizabeth Woodville. If the princes were alive, they now had more claim to the crown now that their impediment had been removed. In fact, based on how he handled the man he called Perkin Warbeck, I think he was more than a little afraid that Warbeck was really Richard of York, the younger of Edward IV’s two sons. Interestingly, Warbeck claimed to have been in Edward Brampton’s household in Portugal. Now Brampton was a Portuguese Jew who converted soon after Edward IV first became king and served both Edward and Richard. Among the many awards that Richard gave Brampton, he knighted him in 1484—the first monarch to knight a converted Jew. As much as Richard may have liked the guy, I think there had to have been an extraordinary reason for him to grant Brampton knighthood. I think the reason was that Richard had entrusted Richard of York’s care to Brampton.

 

SKP: Now that you’ve “saved” Richard and brought him into our time, do you have any more books planned for him?

 

JS: There is a third book in the works with its own set of surprises. The working title is STRANGE TIMES. This one is partially about Francis Lovel—someone most Ricardians think was close to Richard’s heart.

 

SKP:  Francis was very close to my heart,too, while writing Sunne, for he was the only Francis in a book packed with Edwards, Richards, and Elizabeths.    It sounds very intriguing.   Thank you so much, Joan, for a most interesting interview about one of my favorite medieval kings.

  

May 23, 2010

INTERVIEW WITH ANNE EASTER SMITH

Penman

I am pleased to welcome a friend and fellow Ricardian, Anne Easter Smith, whose new novel about Cecily Neville, Queen by Right, hits the stores this week.  There can never be enough books about Richard III and his family and I am looking forward to reading Anne’s view of Cecily’s life.   

Q.  “Queen By Right” is your fourth book in a series about the York family. Where does it fit in with the others?

A.    First of all, let me thank you very much for agreeing to let me guest post on your prestigious blog. As you are one of my favorite authors, it is quite an honor to be here! To answer your question, you could call this the prequel to the other three, Sharon. I started, like you, with the story of the real Richard III in “A Rose for the Crown”, and because I had a two-book contract with Simon & Schuster, I chose to write about Richard’s sister Margaret of Burgundy in “Daughter of York.” I followed up on a thread in that book about a “secret boy” Margaret had taken under her wing and wrote “The King’s Grace.” It includes my theory on whether or not Perkin Warbeck, the pretender to the throne in the 1490s, was indeed the younger of the two princes in the Tower, who were supposedly murdered by their uncle, Richard III. (You and I know that was not the case, however!) In all three of those books, the matriarch of the house of York, Cecily Neville, duchess of York, kept popping in and out or was never far from her children’s thoughts when it came to them making decisions, and when she did, you could not help be drawn to her strong personality, notice the influence she had on her children, and be intrigued by the drama of her life. Richard was only nine, George of Clarence twelve and Margaret fourteen when Cecily was widowed. Her oldest son, Edward became king at nineteen, six months after his father’s death, and Cecily guided his steps in those first years of his reign. I end the book with Edward’s coronation, and when I watched the royal wedding last week, I could not help but imagine the young Edward taking exactly the same walk up that astonishing nave to the altar as William did.

 

Q.  What did you find out about Cecily Neville that you didn’t know from your previous research?

A.   “Queen By Right” takes us to Cecily’s early life when she and Richard became betrothed in 1424 and up to Edward’s coronation. I had written lots about events during the Wars of the Roses, but I had never really delved into why Richard of York chose to assert his claim to the throne when he did. So all of that research meant understanding Richard’s whole life and career. He was orphaned at age four and lived in the shadow of the treason and attainting of his father, and I think it affected his behavior for a long time and caused many of Henry VI’s councilors to shun him–like father like son, they may have thought, and he believed. Like Benedict Arnold during the Revolutionary War, the man was pushed out of the circle of power one too many times and he eventually snapped.  In 1424, when the book starts, England was in the second half of the Hundred Years War (of course, they didn’t know this at the time or that it would be called that!) and how important Normandy was in the scheme of things. England had “owned” it since Willie the Conk (William the Conqueror) was crowned in 1066. Over the next three hundred years, bits and pieces were lost to the French and finally Edward III decided to start fighting for it. It wasn’t until Henry V (“Once more unto the breach dear friends”) won decisive victory at Agincourt in 1415 (three months before Cecily was born) that things began to go England’s way. To get back to your question, though. Cecily and Richard found themselves in Rouen, the seat of the English government in Normandy, a couple of times: once with the king’s household in 1431. If that date doesn’t quite ring a bell with anyone, they are forgiven! It isn’t all of us who know that in May of that year, Joan of Arc was tried and burned at the stake. And yes, Cecily was there. Then I followed the couple to back to Normandy when Richard was governor in the early 1440s, and onto Ireland, where Richard was “ordered” to be lord lieutenant (actually to get him out of the way again). Cecily’s role was very much one of military wife, and that’s something I can relate to, having been one myself! I had not realized how much Cecily had traveled.

 

Q.  What were the challenges you faced with this book compared with the others?

A.    My biggest challenge was having to start my research from scratch this time. All my other books took place from 1460 and to the end of the century. Now I was in the first half of the century and I suddenly realized I was back in the Hundred Years War, an event I had conveniently buried in my schoolbook memory and had to resurrect. I didn’t know the politics and more importantly, I didn’t know the characters. Most of the people were dead by the time my other books started. Up until then for me, the only duke of Gloucester was our Richard, and now I had to get to know another one–and a very important man from 1420s to 1440s. So instead of borrowing from my knowledge and library of the second half of the 15th century, I was having to build a whole new framework for my story. I don’t know how some authors are able to jump around history so effortlessly! I have been steeped only in the 15th century for fifteen years. Another challenge was creating a character whose personality so many readers have already formed from other sources. Cecily will invariably show up in any book about Richard III, Edward IV, Elizabeth Woodville, Margaret of Anjou etc., but other than Eleanor Fairburn’s 1970s trilogy about Cecily, “Queen by Right” is the only novel about her since then. I truly loved telling her story.

 

Q.  On a personal note, Anne, which of your characters do you relate to most?

R.   I have to say that Margaret of York is the one that made me want to befriend her. When I was researching her, I was thrilled to know she was tall for her age. Being six feet myself, I know we would have some horror stories to share about our height problems. I was also delighted to know that she was such a bibliophile, as am I. And of all the romantic interests in any of my four books, Anthony would have also been the one I fell for! Although I was also drawn to John of Gloucester in “The King’s Grace.” Both were much too young for me, however 😉

 

Q.  Are you writing another book?

R.   I never thought I’d ever write more than one, Sharon, so to be writing a fifth blows my mind. I have threatened that this is the last in the York family series, but who knows what might transpire while I am writing it. Someone might jump out at me during my research and say “Tell my story,” so I am hedging my bets. This new one is about Edward IV’s mistress, Jane Shore, who made an appearance in “Sunne in Splendor” I believe. She had quite a dramatic 10 year period in her life that I couldn’t resist, and so, as with my other books, I am showing one of the important men of the period through the eyes of a woman. Even though Edward IV figures in all of my books as a major character, I have not really focused on him yet.

Thanks again, Sharon, for sharing your space with me. I can’t wait to read “Lionheart”!

      Thank you, Anne, for sharing your thoughts with us.   I am delighted that you will be writing about Jane Shore next, as she is one of my favorite royal mistress, second only to Charles II’s Nell Gwynn.  It is about time Jane got a book of her own!
May 9, 2011

LIONHEART COVER

Penman

I am very happy to reveal here the book jacket for Lionheart, which I think is truly spectacular.   I haven’t always been able to say that about past books, but I think this one is as close to perfect as mortal man can get.   The publication date for Lionheart will be October in the United States, and November at the latest in Australia; I still don’t know when my new British publisher plans to publish it in the United Kingdom, but I will let you know as soon as I do.   And yes, it will definitely be available on Kindle and Nook and in other e-book formats, both in the US and the UK.         I hope you all like it as much as I do!  
April 23, 2011

INTERVIEW WITH LAUREL CORONA

Penman

      Last year, I had a very interesting interview with Laurel Corona, author of Penelope’s Daughter, and received very positive feedback from my readers.  So I am pleased to have persuaded Laurel to stop by again, this time to mark the publication of her new novel, Finding Emilie, which is set on the eve of the French Revolution.  Laurel, as you know, for I quote her often enough, has eloquently articulated the responsibility of the historical novelist in five very powerful words–Do not defame the dead.  
Sharon:  Tell us a little about the book.  Who is Emilie du Châtelet, and why were you interested in her story?

 I teach the Enlightenment era in my San Diego City College humanities classes, and her association with her longtime lover, Voltaire, sometimes comes up as a side note in textbooks. Quite frankly, the wigged-and-corseted women one sees in paintings from that era never interested me that much.  How could starchy-looking Madame de This-or-That be any fun?
I first learned about Emilie from Einstein’s Big Idea, a DVD I show snippets of in class. Based on David Bodanis’ book E=MC₂, the program gives the history of each part of the equation, focusing on Emilie’s advocacy for the importance of squaring.  What grabbed me was not the science, however, but her astonishing life.  She was not only a brilliant physicist and mathematician, but a free-spirited woman who dared to be herself despite the cruel and often frivolous constraints of her society. Wild woman and scientist make quite an interesting combination, especially in light of the tragedy that put an early end to her life.
Sharon: Wasn’t it unusual for a woman in her era to be a scientist?
Women of means were able to pursue intellectual pursuits as a private matter, but their work was rarely published, and indeed credit was often taken by the men around them, including Voltaire for some of Emilie’s pioneering work on Newton. 
She was unusual, but far from alone. Laura Bassi was championing Newton in Italy at the same time. Compatriots and fellow physicists Sophie Germain and Marie Lavoisier worked a few decades later. Only in recent years, by the way, has Marie been seen as a scientist in her own right, rather than a mere secretary and lab assistant to her famous husband, Antoine de Lavoisier. In FINDING EMILIE, I modeled my protagonist Lili and Jean-Étienne’s relationship loosely after that of Marie and Antoine, who was beheaded in the Reign of Terror after the judge announced that the Revolution had no need of scientists.
Sharon: You said Emilie had a wild side.  What kinds of things did she do?
She was an inveterate gambler, amusing herself as a teenager at salons by using her prodigious math skills to win enough at cards to finance her purchases of the latest science and physics books. Later, she and Voltaire had to make a quick nighttime escape from Fontainebleau because she had lost a small fortune and could not pay up (a high-ranking guest was cheating, but it was improper and dangerous to make the accusation).  She figured out how to make good on the debt by inventing a scheme today known as trading in derivatives.
She cross-dressed on occasion to go to meetings of scientific societies, where women were not permitted.  She discouraged a dull suitor by trouncing him in a fencing match. She set up a bathtub in her parlor so she could receive houseguests while she bathed. She used her dowry to pay the greatest mathematicians in France to tutor her. But it is her scandalous love life where she really made her mark.  
Her match with the Marquis du Châtelet was a marriage of convenience, and I don’t think either expected fidelity. Emilie and Voltaire lived openly as lovers for fifteen years at her husband’s ancestral home.  He would come to visit from time to time, apparently unconcerned about his wife’s cozy arrangement with another man under his own roof.
Emilie and Voltaire remained lifelong friends after their affair ended, but tragically life would not be that long for her.  She fell madly in love with a dashing young soldier-poet and became pregnant by him at 43, unheard of at the time. Six days after the birth of a daughter, Stanislas-Adélaïde, she complained of a headache and within hours she was dead, probably of a stroke from an embolism.
Sharon: With such a fascinating real-life character, it’s surprising she isn’t the protagonist in the novel.  Why did you choose to focus on the life of her daughter instead?
 First, I think it is harder to write historical fiction when the protagonist is a real character. You are basically stuck with the actual life story, and too much inventing or embellishing is a violation of what I think is an unwritten pact with readers not to misinform them.  It’s worked for me better to invent the protagonists and have the real characters come in and out of their lives. Second, I fell in love with Emilie, I didn’t want my novel to end in the sad way her story does. I just couldn’t do that to readers, who I am sure will love her too.
Sharon: Tell us a little about Lili, the daughter.  What is her life like?
Lili grows up in an aristocratic home, raised by a friend of her mother’s after the Marquis (knowing he is not her father) shows no interest in her.  Julie de Bercy, whom Lili calls Maman, has a daughter Lili’s age, and she and this girl, Delphine, grow up like sisters. Julie is a free-thinking salonnière who introduces Lili to Rousseau, Diderot, and the Comte de Buffon, luminaries of their time.  From them, Lili develops an independent mind, despite the efforts of a dour Châtelet relative to shape her into a docile, pious, unrebellious future wife and mother.  Uninterested in the inanities of court life, Lili finds solace in books and in her own satirical stories of an adventurous little alter-ego named Meadowlark. As she and Delphine reach marriageable age and her life constricts around her, Lili realizes that the life of the scandalous mother whom no one will speak of may offer insight into how to avoid death by destiny.  Lili goes off in search of information about her mother, hoping to find answers about how to take control of own life.
Sharon: Without spoiling the plot, what answer does Emilie have for her daughter, and for us?  
Everyone is entitled to pursue happiness. The key to happiness lies in understanding who we are as individuals, and then letting our deepest self lead us. It’s up to us to use our minds and talents to escape the ordinary.  Conformity is often deformity–that’s one of the themes of the book–and we mustn’t feel guilty at our efforts to resist it.
Thank you, Laurel, for another fascinating interview.  I am looking forward to reading Finding Emilie once I sort out Coeur de Lion once and for all.   And readers will love the fact that you’ve added a Who’s Who of characters, a pronunciation guide, an author’s note, and  a discussion guide for reading groups.

    

THE FOUR SEASONS, PENELOPE’S DAUGHTER, and FINDING EMILIE are now available in bookstores and online. Support your local independent bookstore and library!

INTERVIEW WITH MARGARET GEORGE

Penman

      I am delighted to be able to offer my readers an interview with one of my favorite historical novelists, Margaret George.   Margaret has tackled some challenging and elusive subjects in the past–the megalomaniac Henry VIII, the ill-fated Mary, Queen of Scots, the fabled Helen of Troy, and the even more legendary Cleopatra, among others.   She has now turned her attention and her considerable talents to one of history’s most intriguing figures–Elizabeth Tudor.     Elizabeth I covers the Tudor queen’s life from the Armada until her death, stubbornly refusing to go to bed and reminding Cecil that “Must is not a word to be used to princes.”  I was fortunate enough to be able to read an ARC of Elizabeth I and I think it is Margaret’s best book yet.  Tomorrow you can read Elizabeth I.  Tonight, though, you can read Margaret’s interview with me.

INTERVIEW WITH MARGARET GEORGE

 

Why did you write Elizabeth?

I wanted to show the older Elizabeth, the consummate statesman, in the arena.  She had reigned for thirty years before the great crisis of the Armada tested her—and England.  Her leadership was a legend in action.  Following that was the uprising of the charismatic and troubled Earl of Essex—the last time a nobleman in England challenged the throne, but at the time she couldn’t know that.  And then there was the greatest adversary of all, the only one she couldn’t best: time itself.  But she put up one heck of a fight.

 Do you think issues Elizabeth faced still resonate today?

 I think they are as timely as ever.  How to protect the citizens of your country?  How to assure peace so that prosperity can follow?  How to make do on less money than is needed for national expenses?  (Budget crisis!)  How to keep enemy regimes from harming your country?  How to protect against assassination without violating the principles of law and freedom? How to instill courage in your people by example? Last, how to erase the lingering suspicion that a woman can’t lead as well as a man?

 What will the reader learn after reading your book?

That literary Elizabethan England as we think of it was a ‘late bloomer’—Shakespeare didn’t even arrive in London until about the time of the Armada.  When Elizabeth first became queen, he hadn’t been born.

 Do you get along with your muse?  How do you treat her?

Not as well as I should.  I don’t feed her enough.  She needs free time and random input, daydreaming and deep reading.  Instead she gets dull errands, grocery lists, and small talk at obligatory social events.  If she were a dog, she’d run away.

 But when I do get time alone with her, what bliss!  It’s my favorite thing in the world.  At least I don’t take her for granted.  I hope she understands.

 As an author, what is your greatest reward?

 I would say it is split between two things—the joy of spending time in another dimension, another world, learning things I never knew existed, and the deep pleasure of knowing I’m introducing others to it and they are happy for it.

 How long did it take you to research and write “Elizabeth”? 

Technically, five years, but I had already done a lot of background research on that era, had a lot of the books already, and had visited many of the sites.  So I had a head start.

 How do you select your characters?

I am always looking for people who led operatic lives.  Whose private passions have changed—or at least influenced—history.  It helps if they die young and tragically.  In that way Elizabeth is a departure from my other subjects, living to a ripe old age without being sick and dying peacefully in her bed with no regrets.

 Do you have other passions besides writing?

 I compete in national masters track and field meets, 100 meters and 200 meters, and in the long jump. 

 Tell us one of your secrets, something the general public wouldn’t guess.

 I am a Mars fanatic!  I have a link on my toolbar to NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Mission so I can follow what’s going on up on Mars. When Mars’s orbit brought it close to the earth a few years ago, I saw Mars through an historic telescope at an observatory open house.  I eagerly absorb every morsel of new information about the Red Planet.  I collect Mars photos and reread “The Martian Chronicles” regularly.

 If you could be a character in any book, who would you choose?

Scarlett O’Hara.

 If you could ask any historical character a question, what would it be?

 Elizabeth Tudor, were you truly a virgin?

 Favorite line from a book?

  “There are all kinds of love in the world, but never the same love twice.”  F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Sensible Thing.”

Margaret, thank you so much for agreeing to do this interview.   You have done justice to this remarkable woman and have given your readers 662 pages of pure reading pleasure, plus a wonderful Author’s Note and bibliography.  For lovers of historical fiction, it doesn’t get any better than that.

Shadow’s Legacy

Penman


Tristan with his toys
Tristan with his toys

    

After my shepherd Cody died last year, I found it helped to write a blog about him, to write about what a special dog he was.  I am not yet ready to write about Shadow; that wound is still too raw.  But I can write about Shadow’s legacy–the dog sleeping peacefully on the rug beside me. I had become worried that I might never be ready to adopt another dog after losing Shadow, for he was proving to be as loyal in death as he’d been in life, such a loving ghost that I could not bear to bring another dog into my house or heart.   Yet I did want to adopt again.   Eventually I realized what I needed to do—to give a home to a dog that might otherwise not find one. So I went looking for senior shepherds and the search led me to a 9 year old white shepherd in Florida named Hank. 

 

 

 

     We don’t know his history, but he was not housebroken, which makes it very likely that he was always an outside dog.  He’d been on his own for a long time, for he was half-starved, so skeletal that it was painful to look at him.  But then his luck finally changed, for Joan Alexander, a volunteer with Echo Dogs White German Shepherd Rescue, pulled him from a kill shelter on his last day.  Then Becky Dunne was kind enough to offer to foster him.  Foster families are the unsung heroes of the rescue movement and deserve so much credit, for without them, countless dogs could not be saved.  It was obvious that Hank had never been in a house before; initially, he was fearful of any footing except grass and when he first saw a glass door, he tried to walk through it.  But Becky was patient in introducing him to this brave new world; she housebroke him in record time and began to teach him the family rules–no stealing food, no chasing the cats.  He thought that was great fun, but the cats were not too thrilled about it.  After a few weeks, he was ready to go up for adoption and I found him on Echo’s website. 

       I’d been approved for adoption by Echo last year after I’d lost Cody, and so in less than a week, Hank—now renamed Tristan by me—was ready to go to his new home.  The only problem was that it was one thousand miles away.  But Echo has a network of truly amazing people who volunteer for missions like this.  In no time at all, Tristan had fourteen guardian angels lined up for his pilgrimage from Orlando to Aberdeen, MD, where I’d meet him.

        I’d worried that it would be very stressful for him—traveling through eight states in two days, being turned over from one stranger to another.  But Tristan proved to be a trooper, handling it with remarkable composure and élan.  As he began his journey, I posted status reports on my Facebook page—he’s now in GA, he’s just entering SC, etc.  I felt like NASA tracking Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve, and Tristan was soon being cheered on by people from the US to the UK to South Africa to Australia!  The best description of his odyssey came from one of my Australian friends, Glenne Gilbert, who compared it to the passing of the Olympic Torch.

       A friend and I met Tristan on Sunday afternoon in Aberdeen, MD, and I like to think it was love at first sight for us both.  I will be eternally grateful to Lizbeth and Paul, who drove that last lap, to Jonathan and Ronnie, who took him into their home in VA on Saturday night, and to Becky, Joan, Alicia, Sheila, Trisha, Rebecca, Jez, and Trish, who were willing to chauffeur a skinny, elderly shepherd on his way to a new life.  I’d like to thank Jeanmarie, who organized our convoy, and Patrice, who offered to drive hundreds of miles to help out if need be, and Ellie, who met us in MD.   The only catch in an otherwise perfect trip was that we had to drive back to NJ in a monsoon; you know it was bad when I had to keep asking, “Are we still on the road?” 

      But Tristan was worth it.  He is such a sweet dog, as mellow as my Cody, who I called my surfer-dude-dog, smart and curious and very affectionate, brave enough to trust.  He has settled in as if he’d always lived here. He gets along very well with my other dog and I have no cats to tempt him.  He loves stuffed toys, probably because he’d never had any in his years of outdoor exile; he soon mastered stair climbing, and is so well behaved that I stopped using his crate after just three days.  Above all, he is happy, as happy as Cody and Shadow were once they’d realized that they were in a home where they’d be safe and loved.  And it is not always true that no good deed goes unpunished, for my vet thinks Tristan is younger than nine!

       I have such admiration for those who work in rescue.  They see the worst that people are capable of.  They see dogs that have been cruelly abused like Shadow or shamefully neglected like Tristan.  They give unselfishly of themselves for animals that are not theirs, teach them to trust again, and then let them go to new homes.  And they learn the hardest lesson of all—that they cannot save them all.

      This weekend, Joan Alexander, Tristan’s guardian angel, is trying to rescue two white shepherds in Florida—Sheeba, a young female who has been running the streets of Key West, and Pistol, a young male whose owners no longer want him.  They are stunningly beautiful dogs, look like sleek white wolves, friendly and playful, dogs that deserve a second chance.  If anyone in Florida is interested in fostering either of these shepherds, please contact me and I’ll put you in touch with Joan.  And if any of you are thinking about adding a loving, young shepherd to your families, remember that Echo delivers! 

     But even as Joan rejoiced that she’ll be able to take Pistol and Sheeba under Echo’s protection, she learned about a female white shepherd and her three pups, being held at one of Florida’s worst kill shelters.  And until she can find foster or forever homes for Sheeba and Pistol, she can do nothing for that mother and pups even though their time may be running out.  For people in rescue, triumphs and tragedies are spokes on the same wheel.

       Their success stories keep them going, though.  My friend, Annalori Spaulding, is trying to find a foster or forever home for a sweet little girl named Buffy, a West Highland White Terrier.  She was suffering from serious allergies, but has made great progress.  Her problem now is that she wants to be an “only child,” so she needs to go to a home without other dogs.  If anyone would like to know more about Buffy, you can find her photo on my Facebook page, or you can contact me and I’ll put you in touch with Annalori.

       Annalori has three Westies of her own, all rescues.  She recently wrote about how she came to adopt Lily, who’d been used as a breeder at one of those infernal puppy mills, and her account is so eloquent that I want to share part of it with you all.  After you read about Lily Belle, what she endured, and what her life is like now, I hope you’ll think about adoption the next time you want to bring a new dog into your families.  Now, here is Annalori.

       “I work with kids for a living, and not just any kids, but abused and neglected ones.  I work with the kids everyone has given up on, because I want to be the one who shows them that adults are just as capable of giving love as causing pain.  It shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that when I went to Maryland Westie Rescue for adoption in July, 2009, I specifically asked for a puppy mill rescue.  Soon I was contacted about a girl who was nearly seven years old, had been used as a breeder, and had been abused.  I had to drive to Annapolis to get her and wasn’t sure what to expect. 

       “As soon as she was led out and our eyes met, that was it, for she immediately ran over to me and tried to climb into my lap.  Those liquid brown eyes had hooked me and there was no way I was ever giving her back.  She was my Lily Belle.”

        Annalori and her family soon learned that Lily had been abused by men, for she was fearful at first of Annalori’s father.  She’d never been on grass before, having spent her life in a cage.  And she was so quiet because she’d been debarked, part of her vocal cords cut for the convenience of her puppy mill owners.  Annalori says that all she can manage is “a very hoarse, whispery kind of gurgle, which is both adorable and very sad.”  She’d never had toys before and was puzzled by them at first; eventually she began to play with their cat’s toy, so now she has her own pink mouse, which she sleeps with each night.  

       Annalori concludes, “Every time I see her, I remember what she was like when I brought her home, and I marvel anew at the difference that love and patience can make.  Athough she spent her entire life in a cage, she goes into her ‘house’ with wagging tail when we leave because she knows we are coming back.  I may have been the one to rescue her, but I think I got the better end of the deal.  For almost seven years, she experienced the worst of what humans can give, but hasn’t let that stop her from being a happy, loving little girl who shows me by example every day that love itself is a miracle.  She rescued me, too, and for that, I will be eternally grateful.”

       I don’t want to ignore cats—they take that rather badly.  So I’d like to close with a story by Persia Woolley. I’m sure that many of you are fans of her writing and for those few who’ve not read one of her books, you are in for such a treat.   Persia recently moved and was planning to get a cat.  She was thinking of an elegant Abyssinian or possibly a Maine Coon cat.  But when she heard that one of her neighbors had died, leaving her cat in desperate need of a home, she felt compelled to go to see her.  In Persia’s words, she found “a poor old wreck, too fat to walk normally, with broken-down ankles, a listless attitude, and terrible breath from eating nothing but tuna.”  She also had serious kidney and liver problems.  Not exactly the ideal candidate for adoption.  But Persia knew the old girl would likely be put down if she didn’t take her, and she found herself remembering Grizabella from “Cats,” the old stray who got a second chance at life.  So Persia ended up with a cat utterly unlike the one she’d expected to take into her new home.   It took a while, about two months, for her to adjust, for she was likely mourning her former owner, but Persia wrote to me that “One morning I woke up to my face being patted by the gentlest little cloud-soft paw.”   As her confidence increased, her health improved, too, although Persia knows she is probably on borrowed time.  She says that “She’ll never be the bright, sprightly animal I thought I wanted, but we get on well together and tend to grin at the world while announcing, ‘There is a dance in the old dames yet, toujour gaie, toujour gaie.’”

          I couldn’t end on a better grace note than that.  I hope some of you (well, all of you, actually) will check out Echo’s website and their wonderful white shepherds in need of homes.  http://www.petfinder.com/fpm/petlist/petlist.cgi?shelter=IN147,PA752,MO339,NH77,FL1031,TX1106&status=A&age=&limit=25&offset=0&animal=&title=Adoptable%2520Pets%2520from%2520Echo%2520Dogs%2520White%2520Shepherd%2520Rescue&style=10&ref=s9KU_pXEFbsw1ja    Tristan is sleeping at my feet as I write this.  My friend Jim sent him a stuffed duck which has become his favorite toy, and he is using it now as a pillow.   The photo below is one of my boy surrounded by his bones, practically radiating happiness.  All three of my rescue shepherds came frighteningly close to falling through the cracks.  I feel blessed that they did not.

March 18, 2011