Unicorn Recipe Discovered In Lost Medieval Cookbook Found In British Library

By Stephen J. Gertz

Detail of a unicorn on the grill in Geoffrey Fule's cookbook, England,
mid-14th century (London, British Library, MS Additional 142012, f. 137r).

"Taketh one unicorne," marinade with cloves and garlic, roast over an open fire, and serve.

So begins a recipe found in a long-lost 14th century medieval cookbook recently discovered in the British Library.

"We've been hunting for this book for years," said professor Brian Trump of the Medieval Cookbook Project. "The moment I first set my eyes on it was spine-tingling."

A lady bringing the unicorn's head to the table
(London, British Library, MS Additional 142012, f. 137v).

It is believed that the cookbook was compiled by Geoffrey Fule, Royal Chef to Philippa of Hainault, wife of Edward II and Queen of England 1328 - 1369.

In addition to roast unicorn, recipes for preparing tripe, herring, blackbirds, codswallop (a popular medieval fish stew), and gobsmack (a succulent gravy prepared with the boiled phlegm of royal pheasants), are found within the lushly illuminated manuscript. 

Scholarship strongly suggests that Fule's recipe for blackbirds forms the  basis for the traditional English nursery rhyme, "Sing a song of sixpence / A pocket full of rye / Four and twenty blackbirds / Baked in a pie."

The remains of the unicorn
(London, British Library, MS Additional 142012, f. 138r).

"Taketh one unicorne..."

But from whereth?

House of Meats, Tampa, FL.

Booktryst  made inquiries regarding  unicorn meat  to a sample  of American  purveyors  of fine animal protein.

House of Meat, Hamilton, NJ.

"We don't get as many calls for it as we used to," said one. "Fans appear to have taken it on the hoof because of PETA and pressure from the unicorn lobby," he continued. "It's unfortunate because, when braised, unicorn falls off the bone and is really quite tasty, a festival on the tongue. And when it hits the colon it's carnival time. It's cutting-edge carne, a fantasy come true for carnivores with intestinal fortitude."

The Meat House, all over the place.

 "Being on the Apocryphal Species Act list hasn't helped matters," an anonymous dealer, who wishes to remain under the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's radar, said. "I've tried very hard to imagine smuggling one in but, no matter what the hallucinogen, I can't. The Dream Police at work.

"It's weird," he went on, "because even though it's impossible to get a hold of a unicorn, tricorns are a dime a dozen.

"Have you ever had tricorn chowder?"

__________

Read the full story at the British Library here. It was originally posted on April 1, 2012. Draw your own conclusions. 

Illuminated images courtesy of the British Library, with our thanks.

 Apologies and thanks to the Homes of Meat for the images.

__________

N.B.: The Law Offices of Codswallop & Gobsmack are pleased to announce the expansion of their practice to include two new partners, and will henceforth be known as Codswallop, Gobsmack, Hornswoggle, & Hoosegow.

__________
__________

Chinese Watercolors Spice Up The British Library

By Nancy Mattoon

Durian.
Native to Borneo, this greenish-brown fruit
is said to, "taste like heaven but smell like hell."
(All Images Courtesy of The British Library.)

Eight watercolors by an anonymous Chinese artist, created in the late 19th century, have recently been digitized on the website of the British Library. These historic paintings are botanical illustrations of spices, the most coveted commodity Asia had to offer the West in the 1800's, aside from opium. They are part of the Raffles Family Collection, which contains over 150 natural history and topographical drawings from Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as family correspondence and papers, and an important collection of diplomatic letters.

Nutmeg.
Nutmeg originates from the Banda islands
in the Moluccas in eastern Indonesia.

The watercolors are probably by Chinese artists based in Sumatra or Penang during the early 19th century, and identify fruits, herbs and spices which were central to the cuisine and culture of Southeast Asia at that time. These plants were used to flavor and preserve food, but were also found in herbal medicines, soaps, perfumes, and traditional handicrafts. Westerners introduced the plants to Europe, and the spice trade became the stimulus for much of the exploration of the New World which followed.

Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles
in an 1824 engraving.

The Raffles Family Collection documents the career of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781–1826), known for two major achievements: the establishment of Singapore in 1819, and, in 1826, founding the Zoological Society of London (later, the London Zoo). Raffles was born on a ship off the Jamaican coast, and spent most of his short life (he died of a probable brain tumor at age 45) exploring the lands he reached by sea. He lost both his first wife and four of his five children to various tropical maladies, but never wavered in his quest to discover and colonize new settlements for the British crown.

Turmeric.
Javanese turmeric is noted
for its deep yellow color.

An employee of the British East India Company, Raffles spent his whole career in Southeast Asia, in what are now the countries of Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore. He started out in Penang, and from 1811 to 1816 was Lieutenant-Governor of Java. His last posting, from 1817 to 1824, was to Bengkulu on the west coast of Sumatra. One of Raffles’ greatest passions, throughout his career in the Orient, was the study of natural history. He collected and documented both plant and animal specimens, and commissioned countless drawings of his discoveries, mostly from Chinese artists. He was also an amateur writer, publishing a history of Java in 1817. Over a half-dozen plant and animal species bear his name, including a woodpecker, an ant, a fish, a spider, and an entire genus of parasitic flowers, Rafflesia.

Rafflesia arnoldii, a parasitical plant native to Sumatra.
First discovered by a Malay servant, but attributed to Raffles,
who commissioned this print made by the
Weddell firm of botanical engravers in 1826.

Excruciating and near-constant headaches caused Raffles to leave Singapore in February of 1824. He packed his enormous collections from Sumatra and Singapore, including about 2500 natural history drawings, one-of-a-kind Malay manuscripts, and animals specially captured for the voyage, aboard the ship Fame, forming what he called a "veritable Noah’s Ark." The vessel set sail on the morning of February 2, 1824 and began its long journey across the seas to Britain. That evening, a drunken sailor set a brandy cask on fire, forcing an emergency evacuation of the ship. Miraculously everyone on board was saved, but passengers and crew watched helplessly from the lifeboats as the Fame was consumed by flames. Raffles and his family lost all of their personal possessions, the fruits of his years of research, his caged animals, and an irreplaceable collection of specimens.

Sunda wrinkled hornbill (male).
The hornbill is native to Malaysia, Sumatra and Borneo.
This illustration from 1815 was by an unknown Chinese artist.

But in a testament to Raffles’ incredible determination, the very next day after his lifeboat reached Bengkulu, he began to rebuild his collection of scientific materials. He re-sketched his map of Sumatra, and found artists to recreate his natural history drawings. By the time he finally sailed for England just over two months later, Raffles had managed to accumulate 100 new drawings of plants, birds, and other animals. Together with an earlier collection from Penang, these works are now held in the British Library. The drawings have recently been fully described and illustrated in a published catalog: H.J. Noltie, Raffles’ Ark Redrawn: Natural History Drawings from the Collection of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (London: the British Library and the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, in association with Bernard Quaritch, 2009).
__________

Britain's Original Celebrity Chef: Alexis Soyer

By Nancy Mattoon

Portrait of Alexis Soyer in 1849,
By His Wife, Elizabeth Emma Jones.
(All images Courtesy of The British Library.)

With the arteries of the television airwaves virtually clogged with shows like Hell's Kitchen, Top Chef, Iron Chef, and Ace of Cakes, we tend to think of celebrity chefs as a relatively recent phenomenon. But earlier in the twentieth century Julia Child, James Beard, and Alice Waters were all at the top of their game, each establishing a culinary empire through restaurants, television appearances, and cookbooks.

Soyer's Name And Likeness Appeared On The Labels
Of His Many Kitchen Necessities.

In fact, to find the man generally accepted as the first celebrity chef, we must go all the way back to 18th century France, where Antonin Careme became internationally renowned as "The King of Chefs, and the Chef of Kings," after commanding the kitchens of Napoleon, the Romanovs, the Rothschilds, Rossini and King George IV. And a new online exhibit of cookbooks created by the British library highlights a 19th century chef who was at once a shameless self-promoter; an advertising genius; an advocate for the poor, the working class, and the infantryman; a masterful culinary innovator and inventor; and one of the most famous men in Victorian England: Alexis Soyer. He was the first English celebrity chef.

Soyer's Shilling Cookery for the People,
Published in 1855.

There's more than a little irony in the British Library being the organization putting Alexis Soyer back in the spotlight. Soyer was a transplanted Frenchman, who could read and write in his native tongue, but mastered only spoken English. The seven books he "wrote" in English were all dictated to an amanuensis, at first his English wife, and later a series of secretaries. This may be why several of Soyer's cookbooks were presented as chummy "letters" penned to an imaginary friend, allowing for much less formal language than was normally required of a Victorian writer. But however lacking in literary style, Soyer's books were both influential and popular, especially those aimed at home cooks with modest incomes.

Alexis Soyer was born in suburban Paris in 1810, and probably would have remained there had it not been for the French Revolution of 1830. As Soyer told the story, which may or may not have been true, he was well on his way to a stellar culinary career as sous chef in the French Foreign Office, when his kitchen was literally invaded by an angry mob. Two of his fellow chefs were summarily executed before his eyes, and Soyer would have been next, had he not broken into song, offering a rousing rendition of "La Marseillaise." The singing chef had once had aspirations to the stage, and was said to possess a deeply melodious and pleasing bass voice. Whether due to his talent or his song selection, Soyer claimed he was not only spared by the mob, he was carried off on their shoulders to cheers and applause.

Title Page And Frontispiece From An 1858 Edition
Of Soyer's Most Popular Cookbook.

Despite looming stardom in the music halls of Paris, Soyer left his homeland for the calmer shores of England posthaste. By 1831 he has established himself as chef to the Duke of Cambridge, and posts with other members of the nobility were to follow. In 1837 he was given his big break, as chef for the newly established Reform Club of London. Soyer designed the ultra-modern, state-of-the-art kitchen for this private meeting place of the more liberal Members of Parliament. It included innovations that today's cooks take for granted, such as gas-powered stoves, temperature-adjustable ovens, and refrigerators cooled by ice water. So valued was Soyer's talent that he was paid the then-exorbitant yearly salary of 1,000 pounds sterling, and he was enlisted to cook breakfast for 2,000 dignitaries at Queen Victoria's coronation.

A Typical Full Page Ad For One Of Soyer's Products,
Included In His Cookbooks' At No Extra Charge.

But cooking and publishing cookbooks were only part of Soyer's culinary trade. He also marketed a huge range of products, all carrying his name, likeness, and endorsement; including sauces, relishes, cooking gadgets, and tabletop stoves. Like many Victorian volumes, Soyer's recipe books included full page advertisements, encouraging readers who purchased his books to spend a little more of their household income on his unparalleled kitchen accoutrements. But Soyer wasn't completely mercenary, donating a portion of the proceeds from many of his books to various charities. And he was widely praised for setting up the first fully functional soup kitchens to aid victims of the Irish Potato Famine in 1847. (Although his famous recipe for inexpensive broth was lambasted in Punch as "not Soup for the Poor, but rather, Poor Soup!" )

A Elaborate Dessert, Designed By Sawyer
In Honor of His Longtime Love, Dancer Fanny Cerrito.

Soyer's fame as a chef was eclipsed only by the personal eccentricities that ensured he would always be the center of Victorian London's attention. He never forgot his childhood dreams of the stage, retaining an artistic and theatrical air throughout his life. His wife was a well-known portraitist whose work was displayed in the National Portrait Gallery, and upon her death he began a long-term affair with Fanny Cerrito, a famed prima ballerina. His dress, both in the kitchen and out, was outlandishly dandified. In place of chef's white, he wore embroidered silk suits in pastel shades of violet and green. And he even devised his own mode of tailoring, which he fancifully coined "dressing a la zoug-zoug." This meant all of his garments were cut along the bias or zig-zag, and sewn on the diagonal. Such was his abhorrence of horizontal and vertical lines that his hats were specially made to rest at a rakish angle, even his "carte de visite" was a parallelogram rather than a rectangle.

Soyer's Shapely Carte de Visite,
Displayed On A Black Backdrop.

The last thing one might expect from such a flamboyant showman would be an appearance on the battlefield, but during the Crimean War in the 1850's, this is precisely where Soyer chose to lend a hand, and where his longest standing contribution to culinary history was established. Soyer joined British troops on the continent at his own expense, and at great danger, to reorganize the provisioning of army hospitals alongside Florence Nightingale. He designed a field stove which was so efficient it remained in use through the First Gulf War in 1990. And he trained enough cooks for one to serve each regiment, ensuring that good nutrition and food safety would promote the morale and health of the English soldier. London's Morning Chronicle said of Soyer, "he saved as many lives through his kitchens as Florence Nightingale did through her wards."

The Famous Soyer Stove,
Used By The British Military For Nearly 150 Years.

Despite his many achievements, Soyer's flamboyance ensured he came in for his fair share of lampooning and ridicule. His good friend, William Makepeace Thackeray, poked gentle fun at the chef in an 1849 novel, Pendennis. His parody of Soyer is an outlandish French chef named "Alcide Mirobolant," a foppish womanizer who relocates to a small English village, determined to seduce every female who crosses his path. The Times of London criticized him much more savagely. Reviewing his book about his time in the Crimea, Soyer's Culinary Campaign (1857), the newspaper noted, "Alexis the Savoury opens his box of condiments, and shows us indisputably how fields are won. Such and such proportions of pepper and salt went to make such a breach or to repulse such a night attack."

A Punch Cartoon Of Soyer's Melodramatic
Resignation As Chef Of The Reform Club.

But in Victorian times, as today, for a celebrity the only thing worse than bad publicity is no publicity. Soyer remained one of the best-known figures in Victorian England until his death in 1858. Sadly, at the end of his life, Soyer was broke, and at the mercy of creditors. They seized his assets and destroyed most of his correspondence and his personal diaries, erasing much of his legacy. He was nearly a forgotten figure, until the first reliable biography of his life was published in 2008. Ruth Cowan's, Relish: The Extraordinary Life of Alexis Soyer, Victorian Celebrity Chef, returned the larger-than-life culinary star to center stage, where he undoubtedly belongs.

Take A Peake At The Twentieth Century's Optimum Alice

Mervyn Peake's 20th Century Update Of Alice.

(All Images Courtesy Of The Estate Of Mervyn Peake and The British Library.)

Is there anything more difficult for an artist than to reinvent, or even try to improve upon, a classic? Sensible creative types (and that's not necessarily an oxymoron) know better than to risk it. Daredevils who choose to attempt it will turn tail and run after watching one shockingly bad example: Gus Van Sant's inexplicable shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

But every once in a while a unique talent with a fresh point of view really can make something old new again. Such an artist strikes the perfect balance between reverence for his source and relevance to his audience. A new exhibit at Yorkshire's Sheffield University Library displays 22 pen and ink drawings and 5 rough sketches which prove that tweaking the traditional can, very rarely, result in a modern masterpiece.

Peake's Rough Sketch Of Alice
Graduating From Pawn To Queen.

The exhibit, Mervyn Peake's Alice, is one of the first to feature material from an archive acquired by the British Library in April of 2010. Author, illustrator, painter, and poet Mervyn Peake is perhaps best known as the creator of the three-volume Gothic-Fantasy tour-de-force, Gormenghast. But Peake also illustrated the work of authors he admired, such as Charles Dickens, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Louis Stevenson, and, of course, Lewis Carroll. A complete set of his original pen and ink drawings for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was part of the voluminous collection of letters, manuscripts, notebooks, sketches, and typescripts, obtained by the library from the Mervyn Peake Estate.

Alice Meets
Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Peake was already a successful painter when he was asked to illustrate Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem, The Hunting of the Snark in 1941. As a student of fine art, he turned to the masterworks of other illustrators, including Hogarth, Cruickshank, Durer, Blake, Dore, Goya, to perfect his own technique. Peake's illustrative style is noted for its fluid lines, subtle plays of light and shadow, and exacting use of stippling and cross-hatching. There is nothing hackneyed , broad, or leaden in his work. And as a writer himself, he maintained complete respect for the text he had agreed to enhance. The illustrator, he said, should "subordinate [himself] totally to the book, and slide into another man's soul."

Tenniel's Alice Goes Through The Looking Glass.

When he set out to illustrate Alice's Adventures In Wonderland in 1945, Peake knew he had more to deal with than embellishing Lewis Carroll's prose. John Tenniel's wood-cut illustrations for the 1865 first edition of the book were created in close concert with the author. They were so integral to the text that all 2,000 copies of the first printing were recalled when Tenniel found their reproduction of his illustrations to be of inferior quality. A second print run was ordered, and the book became an instant best-seller. Peake was well aware that Tenniel's work was inextricable from Carroll's text for many readers: "He is inviolate, for he is embedded in the very fabric of childhood memories."

Peake's Alice Goes Through
The Mirror Crack'd.

But Peake had tremendous faith in his artistic talent. He was willing to gamble that his 20th century painter's eye could bring a fresh perspective to Carroll's Victorian text. Tenniel's view of Alice was colored by the manners and morals of his age, and by his background as a cartoonist. He was a master of the style of illustration favored by the 19th century upper crust, and his conservative political cartoons were a regular feature in Punch. His Alice is quite a proper, if unusually adventurous, young lady. Peake's Alice is very much a creation of the 20th century.

Peake's Rough Sketch
Of The Queen Of Hearts.

Mervyn Peake's artistic vision was shaped by his exposure to three distinct cultures. He grew up in a walled compound built for English missionaries in pre-revolutionary China. As a young man he returned to England, in the twilight of the empire between the two world wars. Finally, he was a post-war artist, acting as an illustrator for journalists documenting conditions in battle-scarred Europe. One of Peake's first post-war assignments was a 1945 stint in Germany. Here he witnessed first hand the bombed-out rubble which was all that remained of what had been the city of Bonn. As Peake observed in a letter to his wife: "Terrible as the bombing of London was, it is absolutely nothing – nothing compared with this unutterable desolation." But there was worse to come as he continued his travels through the ruined nation.

Mervyn Peake Sketches
Amidst The Ruins Of Germany. (1945)

In a heart wrenching letter home, Peake wrote of the Cologne Cathedral, the lone building left standing in a sea of wreckage and debris: "Bonn was nothing to Cologne from the point of view of destruction. It is incredible how the cathedral has remained, lifting itself high into the air so gloriously, while around it the city lies broken to pieces, and in the city I smelt for the first time in my life the sweet, pungent, musty smell of death. It is still in the air, thick, sweet, rotten and penetrating… But the cathedral arises like a dream – something quite new to me as an experience – a tall poem of stone with sudden, inspired flair of the lyric and yet with the staying power, mammoth qualities and abundance of the epic. Before it and beside me stood a German soldier, still in his war-worn, greeny-coloured uniform. His face betrayed nothing. Cologne lay about him like a shattered life – a memory torn out."

The Comsumptive, Belsen 1945.

But a final memory from Germany haunted Peake most of all. He was one of the first civilians to enter the just liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. His harrowing sketches of the victims who survived unimaginable horrors there are the human equivalent of the Cologne Cathedral. They are the last bastion of humanity left standing in a hell on earth where men, women, and children were routinely and relentlessly murdered; reduced to anonymous corpses dumped in mass graves, or incinerated into piles of ash. Like the cathedral, the survivors of this ultimate evil "arise like a dream" from a human wasteland rank with the "thick, sweet, rotten and penetrating" smell of death.

Peake's White Rabbit
In His Nightmarish Wonderland.

Peake's experiences in post-war Germany, along with witnessing the fall of the Imperial China as a child and the decline of the British Empire as an adult, had a profound effect on his art. This shows most notably in his own dark creations, but is no less omnipresent in his illustrations for the works of other authors. It is readily seen in the Alice In Wonderland illustrations now on show in Sheffield. Peake's Alice is a dewy-eyed gamine set adrift in a very dark and dangerous Wonderland.

The Duchess And Her Baby:
Two Of Wonderland's Grotesques.

Unlike Tenniel's Victorian lass, with a moral compass forever set to return her to the true North of proper society, Peake's Alice seems far more capable of succumbing to the topsy-turvy, dog-eat-dog anarchy that reigns in Wonderland. The reader feels a genuine fear for her safety in a sea filled with monstrous grotesques, where she may or may not be able to keep her head above water--or even attached to her shoulders. Mervyn Peake's Alice both enriches Carroll's text, and illuminates it in a way impossible for a 19th century artist. This Alice starts out as a naive English rose, but her exposure to the winds of Wonderland teaches her the necessity of growing thorns. She's a survivor of a trip to the netherworld, one of the lucky few who make it out alive but lose their innocence and illusions in the process. She returns from Wonderland a wised-up, clued-in sophisticate--impossible for a straitlaced gentleman like Tenniel to imagine, much less depict.

The Mad Tea Party:
Fiddling While Wonderland Burns.

Mervyn Peake was praised by Graham Greene as "the first artist since Tenniel to recast Alice in a contemporary mould." Later acclaimed author Will Self remarked that Peake's version of Carroll's fantasy world was "as valid a depiction of Wonderland as Tenniel's, and arguably the best one achieved since his." Peake's son Sebastian, who opened the exhibition and manages the Peake Estate, including two excellent official websites, said: "I'm sure that had my father been alive he would have been delighted to see his illustrations to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland displayed in such glorious surroundings. With ample space for each drawing to be seen as a separate work within the collection, each of the characters depicted can come to life, reminding the viewer that the basis of any interpretation is vision."

Readers are invited to examine Mervyn Peake's work in person at Sheffield University Library or online at the British Library, and to contemplate what the finest 21st Century artist's vision of Wonderland might look like.

__________

Previously On Booktryst:
200 Rabbit Holes Await At Canadian Library
Peake Archive Takes British Library To New Heights

Peake Archive Takes British Library To New Heights

Mervyn Peake, Self-portrait, submitted to the Royal Academy
in 1931. Now in the National Portrait Gallery.
(All Images Courtesy of the Mervyn Peake Estate, mervynpeake.org )

He's been been likened to Tolkien, Dickens, Kafka, and Poe, but the work of poet, painter, playwright, author, and illustrator Mervyn Peake (1911-1968) defies comparison. Anthony Burgess wrote in his introduction to the first volume of the Gormenghast Trilogy, Peake's most famous work: "There really is no close relative to it in all our prose literature. It is uniquely brilliant..." Now scholars and readers have a chance to see the creative process of such a singular talent. In April 2010 the British Library announced it had purchased Mervyn Peake's papers, including notebooks, sketches, manuscripts, and correspondence.

Mervyn Peake's White Rabbit From Alice’s Adventures in
Wonderland.
Illustration first published in 1946.

The Mervyn Peake Archive includes a complete set of his drawings for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures In Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass. Peake's illustrations, first published in 1946 and 1954, were praised by both Graham Greene and Will Self as being among the best since Tenniel's 1865 originals. Short stories, radio plays, poems, and unpublished material are also included in the collection acquired by the British Library. But the big prize here is the 39 hand-written Gormenghast notebooks, which include plot summaries, character sketches, outlines, revisions, corrections, ink drawings, watercolors, and decorative text borders.

Steerpike, Gormenghast's Villain, Watercolor and Ink by Mervyn Peake.

"If ever he had harboured a conscience in his tough narrow breast he had by now dug out and flung away the awkward thing - flung it so far away that were he ever to need it again he could never find it. High-shouldered to a degree little short of malformation, slender and adroit of limb and frame, his eyes close-set and the colour of dried blood, he is climbing the spiral staircase of the soul of Gormenghast..."

Peake's three volume literary magnum opus has been called a classic of fantastic literature. But if you're looking for the usual fantasy suspects, like filmy-winged fairies, wand-wielding wizards, or tiny twee trolls, Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone aren't the magical potion for you. The trilogy is closer to Shakespeare than J.K. Rowling. Peake once said he considered himself "a painter first and foremost," and it shows in his prose. This writer's alchemy lies in his dazzlingly descriptive style. "Art," said Peake, "is really sorcery."

A Rare View of Gormenghast Over Titus's Shoulder, From Peake's Notebooks.

"Titus the seventy-seventh. Heir to a crumbling summit: to a sea of nettles: to an empire of red rust: to rituals' footprints ankle-deep in stone. Gormenghast."

Peake's canvas-like creation of the crumbling, claustrophobic, castle-keep of Gormenghast, ossified by centuries of arcane ritual yet slowly rotting from within like Hamlet's Denmark, is as demonically detailed as the nightmare world of Hieronymus Bosch. The society within the walls of Gormenghast castle is completely isolated from the outside world. It is defined by a rigid class structure, kept in place by ancient rules of law which are slavishly observed, despite having lost all meaning. Literally walled-off, and surrounded on all sides by impassable geographic barriers, the kingdom is as desolate as the highest mountains of Tibet. Such a place seems inspired by the wild delirium of a fever dream, but its roots lie in Mervyn Peake's very real exposure to three earthly locations.

Peake was an Englishman, but he was born and raised in China. His father, Ernest Cromwell Peake was a missionary doctor; his mother, Amanda Elizabeth Powell, a missionary nurse. He spent the first twelve years of his life in the port city of Tianjin, but led a life very separate from the society around him. Mervyn Peake's boyhood home was in a compound of six gray stone houses, which he remembered as "a world surrounded by a wall. And on the other side of that wall was China."

Peake's 1940 Portrait Of His Wife, Maeve Gilmore.

In her memoir, A World Away, Peake's wife, Maeve Gilmore, described his "strange childhood" this way: "Congregational hymns, tea-parties, a straight-laced upbringing... outside surrounded by dragons and carvings of ancient imagination and disastrous beauty... How could it not have influenced a mind which from somewhere had a vision that finally betrayed it by its richness?" Peake remembered reading the book that would remain his favorite for all of his life, Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, under a tree in that isolated world. He later remarked that his memories of those years haunted him like "some half-forgotten story in a book."

Peake's school years in Southeast England were spent preparing for a career as a painter. He attended The School For The Sons of Missionaries, which was later renamed Eltham Collegiate School. For a short while he studied at the Croydon School of Art, and then spent one year at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Then came another sojourn in a strangely anomalous place.

Lady Clarice and Lady Cora Groan, Sketch From Peake's Notebooks.

"So limp of brain that for them to conceive an idea is to risk a haemorrhage. So limp of body that their purple dresses appear no more indicative of housing nerves and sinews than when they hang suspended from their hooks."

In 1933 a former art teacher of Peake's at the missionary school invited him to join an artists' colony on the island of Sark. Sark is the smallest of the Channel Islands, just over three miles long and half a mile wide. Even today it has only 600 residents, and cars have never been allowed on its shores. It is distinguished by a craggy coastline of cliffs so steep that railings were erected around them to keep children from being blown into the sea by high winds.

Sark is part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, and officially a British Crown Dependency, but the island was ruled by the Seigneur (or in the rare case of a woman, the "Dame") of Sark. The title was hereditary, although it could be sold with the permission of England's ruling King or Queen. From the time of Queen Elizabeth I through the time of Queen Elizabeth II, over 440 years, Sark remained a fiefdom, essentially ruled by a monarch and 39 landowners. It was officially the last European territory to abolish feudalism in 2008.

Mervyn Peake's two years on Sark, 1933 to 1935, were idyllic. (He loved it so he returned to live there with his wife and two children in 1946, and his third child was born there.) But he had to be aware of the island's bizarre legal code, which had remained virtually unchanged since its enactment in 1565. For example, all landowners were required to give their ruler one chicken every year, and legal claims were instigated by going down on one knee, reciting the Lord's Prayer in French and announcing before a witness (roughly translating from the French): "Help me my Prince, someone does me wrong!"

Steerpike And The Object Of His Desire, Fuchsia, From Peake's Notebooks.

"A girl of about fifteen with long, rather wild black hair. She was gauche in movement and in a sense, ugly of face, but with how small a twist might she not suddenly have become beautiful. Her sullen mouth was full and rich – her eyes smouldered. A yellow scarf hung loosely around her neck. Her shapeless dress was a flaming red. For all the straightness of her back she walked with a slouch."

The final location which clearly influenced Peake's creation of the society in Gormenghast, is the source of its darkest and most grotesque aspects. In 1945, as a war artist, Peake was one of the first civilians to enter the German concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. He had already begun work on the what became his trilogy by this time, but his biographer, John Watney, wrote, "For years he had drawn strange worlds. Now he was seeing, in its reality, a monstrous world more terrible than any he could have imagined...."

Peake did not set out to write a trilogy based in the strange world he created. He would have written at least a fourth volume, and perhaps more, had illness not made that impossible. And for an artist, the illness that afflicted Peake, and from which he ultimately died, was especially cruel. In the late 1950's he began to show signs of mental and physical deterioration, and was thought to have some form of dementia. After undergoing unnecessary electroshock therapy and brain surgery, he was finally properly diagnosed as suffering from Parkinson's Disease. Twelve years of long, slow decline followed. Peake confided to a friend that he could no longer write, and could barely draw, and that: "It feels like everything is being stolen."

Mervyn Peake, Self Portrait In Oils, 1933.

Peake's Gormenghast books were out-of-print at the time of his death. They only became successful when reprinted in paperback by Penguin in late 1968. Though the trilogy had been published to fine reviews, its genius was recognized by the public too late for Mervyn Peake to know of it. Having Peake's papers in the British Library will once again shine a light on the darkly brilliant world he so vividly brought to life. Peake once described the goal of his life's work more eloquently than anyone else could: "It is one’s ambition to create one’s own world in a style germane to its substance, and to people it with its native forms and denizens that never were before, yet have their roots in one’s experience."

Note: Some minor changes were made in the biographical information in this piece, thanks to a most gracious e-mail from Mervyn Peake's son, Sebastian. He is the keeper of Peake's official website and of the official Gormenghast website, both of which are extraordinary in their design and detail.

Posted by Nancy Mattoon

Thomas Hardy Stays At Home Thanks To 104 Year Old Friend

Victorian Novelist Thomas Hardy

Norrie Woodhall has a new claim to fame when it comes to Victorian novelist Thomas Hardy. She's just provided the inspiration for a successful campaign to keep some valuable Hardy manuscripts in his native Dorset. At 104 years-of-age, Norrie might seem an unlikely muse for Dorset's die hard Hardy fans. But she's been connected with the writer since before she was born: Norrie Woodhall says her mother was the inspiration for Hardy's tragic heroine, Tess of the D'Urbervilles.

Augusta Noreen "Norrie" Bugler Woodhall is one of the last people alive who actually knew Thomas Hardy. When she was but a lass of 16, Hardy himself cast Norrie to play Tess's little sister, Liza Lu, in a dramatization of Tess of the D'Urbervilles. It was typecasting. Her older sister, Gertrude, had landed the lead role of Tess, the tragic milkmaid who winds up dangling from the hangman's noose. According to Norrie, the beautiful Gertrude was the image of the girl's mother, Augusta Way Bugler. And at age 18, Augusta was herself a milkmaid on an Dorsetshire estate where Thomas Hardy was a frequent visitor.

Augusta Bugler With Her Daughters Norrie (left) and Gertrude.

(Image Courtesy of Norrie Woodhull.)

Norrie says that Hardy himself revealed to her that her mother was the inspiration for the doomed Tess: "Thomas Hardy told us that he used to walk past our mother each day when she was milking. She was a beautiful woman. He said himself that the memory must have entered his mind when he was creating the character of Tess." She elaborated in an interview with The Daily Telegraph: "He used to walk to the Kingston Maurward estate, near Dorchester, as the lady who lived there thought he was clever and gave him great encouragement. On his way he would walk past a gray manor house where my mother Augusta and three other families lived. My grandfather ran a dairy there and my mother and her sisters would sit outside and milk the cows."

The Manor House At The Kingston Maurward Estate
(Image By Phillip V. Allingham For The Victorian Web.)

But unlike Alec D'urberville and Angel Clare, Thomas Hardy never dared to approach the beautiful milkmaid. "I do not believe Hardy ever spoke to my mother though, as he was a very shy person," said Norrie. "He would never have made advances." Augusta married Arthur Bugler soon after she unwittingly became the model for one of the great heroines of Victorian literature. She went on to have three daughters Eileen, Gertrude, Norrie, and a son, Arthur.

Two decades later, Norrie and her sister Gertrude were chosen to be members of Dorset's "Hardy Players" (.pdf format). Stage manager Thomas Tilley and writer Alfred Evans wrote dramatic adaptations of Hardy's novels and short stories beginning in 1908. They took their efforts to Hardy's cottage at Max Gate hoping to gain the author's blessing for their productions. According to Dr. Jon Murden of the Dorset County Museum, "Hardy was a bit wary about how the plays of his novels would work but he got more involved with it and it became a very important thing in his life. " Norrie Woodhall knew just how involved Hardy became: "When I was a teenager my sister and I were in the Hardy Players and Thomas Hardy would direct us. Everybody who became a member of the Hardy Players was chosen by Hardy himself."

Thomas Hardy's Cottage At Max Gate.
(Image Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.)

In a plot rivaling that of Hardy's novels, the casting of Norrie's sister as Tess provoked such envy that it threatened the very existence of The Hardy Players. "Gertrude and my mother were very much alike - Gertrude was beautiful like her," recalled Norrie. "In 1924, we did a production of Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Thomas Hardy made it a condition that Gertrude play the lead role. Hardy called her 'the impersonator of Tess'. Gertrude was a great success in the play and Thomas Hardy sat in the audience and enjoyed it no end." But there was someone who didn't enjoy seeing Hardy gaze upon the reincarnation of his heroine night after night, the author's second wife, Florence. "Gertrude became the absolute lead, and the London people were noticing and coming down," remembers Norrie. "Gertrude was very good and wanted to be an actress, but Florence put a stop to that."

Tess's Seduction By Alec d'Urberville, 1891 Illustration By E. Borough Johnson.
(Image Courtesy Of The Victorian Web.)

Hardy decided to take the show on the road to London. Starring in a London production of Tess of the d'Urbervilles would have been Gertrude's big break. But Hardy's wife had other ideas. "Florence never liked the Hardy Players and she was insanely jealous of Gertrude," says Norrie. Florence told the much younger Gertrude that rumors were already swirling about an off-stage relationship between the writer and his leading lady. "Mrs Hardy spoke of the fact that he would want to go to London to see her, that it would raise more untrue stories. She kept on at her until Gertrude wrote a letter of refusal to Thomas Hardy, which really she didn't want to do. Florence was a very deceitful woman and Hardy died not knowing the truth." The Hardy Players disbanded shortly after Hardy's death in 1928.

Over 80 years later, Norrie Woodhall still remembers her time with her sister in the Hardy Players as one of the highlights of her life. A letter she found at the museum in Dorchester brought it all back. "I saw a letter in the Dorset County Museum in which Hardy suggested I should go with Gertrude to London. He said I should accompany her as London is a very lonely place. I liked acting and believe that if it was not for Florence, my life would have been different." But Norrie is nothing if not determined. As a 100th birthday present to herself she revived the Hardy Players.

An 1893 Edition Of Tess of the d'Ubervilles Published By A.L. Burt.
(Image Courtesy of Flicker.com)

The New Hardy Players soon picked up right where the old troupe had left off. Norrie was the bridge between the groups, and is the only actor to have been a member of both. At 104 she still struts and frets her hour upon the stage, and recently did so to help keep the original manuscripts of the player's scripts from leaving Dorset.

Dating from 1908 to 1924, the manuscripts include scripts with hand-written production notes by Hardy, transcripts of 12 novels and short stories, programs, and even stage set models. The items belonged to Thomas Tilley, the stage manager of the original Hardy Players. The papers had been purchased at auction by an unnamed American university for nearly $93,000. But due to their importance to England's literary heritage, the British Library arranged for the government to place a temporary export ban on the items. The embargo began in January, 2010, and would have ended in April. This meant the only way to keep the papers in the U.K. was for a British group to raise enough money to meet the purchase price before the export ban expired.

The Cottage In Marnhull Village, Dorset That Was Reportedly The Model For Tess Derbyfield's Home.
(Image By Philip B. Allingham For The Victorian Web.)

Dr. Murden of the Dorset County Museum spearheaded the effort. "It's been such a great community effort. Lots of people from across Dorset have been involved, given their support, sent money... to make sure we've been able to do this. It's a really nice feeling to know that everyone has come together on this and shown how much they really care about the heritage of Dorset, and how much they really wanted the manuscripts to stay where they belong."

Norrie Woodhall and the New Hardy Players became the public focus of the effort. Norrie read poetry in a special performance of Hardy's works to raise money for the campaign to keep the manuscripts in Dorset. A charity auction raised more money, with the biggest prize a chance to have "Tea With Norrie," and chat with one of the last people alive who actually knew Thomas Hardy. The New Hardy Players raised over $3,000, but more than that, the story of the 104 year old actress became a media sensation. Hardy fans all over England rallied to the cause, and individual contributions, along with grants from The Victoria and Albert Museum and the Heritage Lottery Fund, raised the money needed to buy the Hardy manuscripts with two weeks to spare.

The Dorset Countryside Surrounding The Kingston Maurward Manor House.
(Image By Phillip V. Allingham For The Victorian Web.)

The manuscripts so crucial to the history of the Hardy Players will be housed at the Dorset County Museum, and at the library of nearby University of Exeter. Norrie Woodhall thinks that's just as it should be: "Everyone has done so well to raise a lot of money. I didn't think we would do it. I am so pleased. I'm looking forward to seeing the manuscripts very much. It might trigger off a memory about the past. What good would they be in America? I do feel that Dorchester as a town doesn't realize that it has something that no other town in the world has: Thomas Hardy."

Posted by Nancy Mattoon