��Ī - 18th century

Syphilitic City: one in five Georgian Londoners had syphilis by their mid-30s, study suggests

ta385 — Mon, 06 Jul 2020 08:45:00 +0000

250 years ago, over one-fifth of Londoners had been treated for syphilis by their 35th birthday, historians have calculated.

London’s forgotten businesswomen

ta385 — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 07:00:00 +0000

A new exhibition celebrates the City of London's 18th-century female entrepreneurs

Historian uncovers new evidence of 18th century London's 'Child Support Agency'

sjr81 — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 15:05:44 +0000

Dr Samantha Williams’ Unmarried Motherhood in the Metropolis: 1700-1850 reveals, using London’s few surviving ‘bastardy books’, how the parishes of Lambeth, Southwark and Chelsea chased the fathers of illegitimate babies – and the lengths some errant fathers went to in order to escape not only their moral and financial obligations, but the clutches of parish constables and the feared houses of correction.

Read the full Shorthand story

How 18th and 19th century London supported its unmarried mothers and illegitimate children – essentially establishing an earlier version of today’s Child Support Agency – is the subject of newly-published research by a ��Ī historian.

Workhouse Women in St. Giles's Church by Charles Holroyd (1880-84). ©Trustees of the British Museum

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Pox populi: Study calculates 18th century syphilis rates for first time

tdk25 — Thu, 14 Sep 2017 05:00:41 +0000

A new study has, for the first time, provided statistical information about the likely rate of venereal disease in a community in 18th century urban England. These rare findings are limited to a single city, but if they are representative of other urban centres, they suggest that the rate of sexually-transmitted infection was both surprisingly high, approximately equal among the two sexes and significantly greater than in rural areas.

Very unusually for a pre-census period, the research succeeded in measuring levels of venereal disease in the city of Chester, as well as its immediate surroundings, during the 1770s. It was carried out by Simon Szreter, Professor of History and Public Policy at St John’s College, ��Ī, who used two unique and contemporaneous sources to construct a picture of the rate at which people were contracting syphilis, then known as “the pox”.

He found that STI rates in Chester were surprisingly high. The study estimates that in the mid-1770s, approximately 8% of residents of both sexes had been infected with syphilis before the age of 35. The estimated infection rate among under-35s in rural communities within a 10 mile radius of the city, however, was a little under 1%.

Such figures contrast with the much lower infection rates of modern times. A recently published report by Public Health England, for example, shows that there were 5,920 diagnoses of syphilis across England as a whole during 2016. Even this is abnormally high; it represents the highest level since 1949 and has led to warnings about cuts to sexual health services.

The prevalence of sexually-transmitted diseases during the pre-modern era influenced both fertility and mortality rates, and being able to determine the rate of infection potentially allows historians to make better judgements about population change. But sources containing statistical information about STIs before the start of the 20th century are virtually non-existent, and the rate has therefore typically been regarded as incalculable.

Szreter’s study was made possible by the extraordinary coincidence of two unique pieces of evidence – the Chester Infirmary’s admissions register, or “Journal of Patients”, which survives for the years 1773-5, and a census carried out by an eminent local physician, John Haygarth, in 1774.

Although a national census only began in 1801, Haygarth – who in a further coincidence had studied at St John’s College, where Szreter is now a Fellow – was an unusually enlightened practitioner who developed his own census for Chester to calculate the prevalence of different types of disease.

“When I heard about the infirmary records, I thought, bingo!” Szreter said. “We have just enough information from Haygarth to reconstruct the most probable age structure of the City of Chester in 1774 – the middle of the three years for which we also have detailed information about who was entering the infirmary and why.”

“Not many academics have the chance to collaborate in their research environment with an eminent member of their own College who died over 200 years ago. But this brand new research would have been impossible without Haygarth’s highly original older research from the 1770s.”

The Chester Infirmary recorded 177 cases of “venereal distemper” during the 3 years 1773-5. These would have been treated depending on whether the condition was mild, and therefore likely to have been gonorrhoea (“the clap”), or more serious, and therefore syphilis (“the pox”).

The gruelling but almost universally-accepted treatment for syphilis involved the continual, supervised application of mercury, which caused patients to produce pints of saliva, supposedly flushing out the venereal poisons. Side-effects included swollen gums, mouth ulcers, and severe halitosis. Typically, the process took at least 35 days.

Because of this, Szreter was able to identify likely syphilitic cases at the infirmary depending on the length of stay among patients reporting a venereal “distemper”. He then compared the figure with a set of age-specific estimates about the size of the at-risk population based on Haygarth’s census. Finally, he was able to make a comparable estimate for the rural population within a 10-mile radius of Chester itself.

Together, the results show that almost exactly 8% of residents in Chester had been infected with what was probably syphilis before they were 35, and that the urban population was approximately 8.65 times more likely to contract the disease compared with people living in the surrounding 290 square miles of countryside.

“It is the first time that we have had any historical statistical evidence like this for sexual disease rates anywhere in Britain,” Szreter said. “The demographic story of this period is defined by mortality and fertility, and rates of venereal disease could of course affect both. But because we haven’t been able to study the impact of STIs, much of the history of British population change has been written as if there wasn’t any.”

Aside from his pioneering census work, John Haygarth is known to have kept detailed patient records, which could provide further, valuable information about medicine and disease at this time. So far, these documents have never been found.

Szreter hopes that they may one day turn up, although his own search – including in the St John’s College archives – has proven fruitless to date. “It’s possible that they were thrown away some time after Haygarth’s death,” he added. “If they were ever discovered, it would be the medical historian’s equivalent of finding Richard III in a car park.”

The study, Treatment Rates for the Pox in early modern England, is published in the academic journal, Continuity and Change.

The unlikely coincidence of a local hospital record and a census led by a pioneering physician has enabled the first study charting rates of venereal disease in 18th century England, revealing high infection levels in the city of Chester at this time.

"Because we haven’t been able to study the impact of STIs, much of the history of British population change has been written as if there wasn’t any.”

Simon Szreter

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Detail from plate 5 of Hogarth’s “A Harlot’s Progress”, with the protagonist, Moll, dying of syphilis.

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Earliest-known children’s adaptation of Japanese literary classic discovered in British Library

sjr81 — Wed, 14 Jun 2017 09:38:47 +0000

Dr Laura Moretti, from the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at ��Ī, came across an unknown children’s picture-book, dating from 1766, under the title of Ise fūryū: Utagaruta no hajimari (The Fashionable Ise: The Origins of Utagaruta) while on a study trip with her students.

The British Library copy, part of the collection belonging to Sir Ernest Satow, a 19th century British scholar and diplomat, is a picture-book adaptation of Ise Monogatari. Translated into English as The Tales of Ise, it is one of the most important works in Japanese literature and was originally composed probably in the late 9th century following the protagonist, Ariwara no Narihira, through his many romances, friendships and travels.

The Tales of Ise has since been adapted and reinterpreted continually down the centuries as part of the canon of Japanese literature.

“If we were to hazard a comparison, The Tales of Ise could be seen as the equivalent of the works of Shakespeare in terms of canonical status in Japan but I had never heard of or seen a children’s adaptation before – no-one knew of this book,” said Moretti. “This is a missing piece of the jigsaw. No one ever knew if it had been rewritten for children – but now we know. And it was sitting in the British Library all along.”

Dr Moretti’s new book, Recasting the Past (Brill, 2016), presents a full-colour reproduction of the 18th century edition, alongside a transcription in modern Japanese, an English translation, and textual analysis. The publication of the 1766 adaptation of the Tales of Ise fills a gap in scholars’ understanding of the work’s history. Although much scholarship has taken place on the reception of Tales of Ise and its target audiences in different epochs, no one has previously explored the age of its readership.

The 1766 introduction by the publisher shows that the book was intended to be read by children and there are various clues to support this view. The main character Narihira first appears as a young boy at school, a portrayal which encourages young people to identify with him. The whole text is also written using mainly the phonetic syllabary which could be understood by readers with only two years of schooling. The story was also abbreviated to include only 13 of the original 125 episodes – making it easily accessible to a broad readership and was useful for introducing those with basic literacy to Japan’s cultural heritage. The book would have educated children in the narrative of The Tales of Ise as well as the aesthetic quality of the poetry.

Moretti, though, counters the notion that only children would have read Utagaruta no hajimari, and argues that the text could also work as a substitute of the The Tales of Ise for those adults with limited linguistic and cultural literacy.

Now, after several years of negotiating the necessary permissions to use the two complete extant copies (one held at the National Institute of Japanese Literature and the other at the Gotoh Museum, both in Tokyo; alas the British Library copy has only one volume of three) and to finish the transcription, translation and textual analysis, Utagaruta is available again for readers to enjoy – more than 250 years after it was first printed.

While graphic novels and comic books such as manga remain hugely popular in Japan and across the world today, instances of books where images and text are interdependent abound in pre-modern and early-modern Japanese literature. In this specific case, Moretti shows that the primary function of images was to complement the prose by filling in the gaps left by the narrative. Images set the scene for the story and helped to characterize the protagonists by depicting their dress and physical appearance.

Moretti believes that studying this children’s adaptation can give a contribution to the study of children’s literature in general, discovering aspects that might not be apparent in other cultures.

“Utagaruta no hajimari, for example, is trying to draw children into the world of the adult, rather than shield them from it by introducing children to sex and appropriate romantic behaviour,” she said.

“A vast number of early-modern Japanese picture-books that adapt canonical literature awaits to be studied. This research is the first step in the foundation of this field of study. If appropriately developed, it has the potential to shed light onto new sides of children’s literature as well as to advance in the understanding of how early-modern Japanese graphic prose functioned.”

A chance discovery in the British Library has led to the discovery and reproduction of the earliest-known children’s adaptation of one of Japan’s greatest works of literature.

This is a missing piece of the jigsaw. And it was sitting in the British Library all along.

Laura Moretti

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The Channel: a historian’s view of an iconic stretch of water

amb206 — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 07:00:00 +0000

An image of a rowing boat takes pride of place in the ornamental stonework above the doorway of 10 Halsmere Road in south London. The house was built in the 1930s as a home for district nurses serving a deprived area of Lambeth. Aboard the boat several figures hunker down as they pull their oars through a choppy sea. Above their heads, a sturdy oak tree symbolises their destination: England. Today the motif of a perilous sea journey is once again particularly poignant.

The bas relief in Halsmere Road tells the story of the Minet family who, in the late 17th century, escaped religious persecution in France to seek sanctuary in Britain. The fortunes of this family, who over the course of 200 years prospered to become property-owners and benefactors, are recounted in riveting detail by Renaud Morieux in The Channel: England, France and the Construction of a Maritime Border in the Eighteenth Century, published tomorrow by ��Ī University Press.

The first book to look at the history of the narrow seas which connect Britain and the Continent, The Channel examines the enduring symbolism, and permeability, of one of the world’s most iconic borders. Morieux was born and raised in France and now teaches British history at ��Ī. He is ideally qualified to explore the narratives of the stretch of water that separates and joins Britain and France.

The focus of Morieux’s research is on maritime rather than naval history and his book looks at the experiences of the communities who made their living on or beside the sea during the extended 18th century. In the telling of these stories, some local, some national, he raises some of the bigger political and philosophical questions about identity, sovereignty and border-control.

The Channel, a strait only 21 miles at its narrowest, has for centuries been perceived as a divider – a body of water that gives Britain its unique, and much trumpeted, identity as an island. “La nature a placé l’Angleterre et la France dans une situation respective, qui doit nécessairement établir entres elles une éternelle rivalité,”declared the propagandist Jean-Louis Dubroca in 1802. His assertion translates as: “Nature has placed England and France in a geographical location which must necessarily set up an eternal rivalry between them.”

Generations of British historians plugged a similar line (among them John Seeley and George Macaulay Trevelyan, both Regius Professors of History at ��Ī) to represent Britain as a thrusting sea-faring nation, shaped by its rocky shores. The almost sacrosanct idea of borders connects with the notion that geography creates natural divisions. Almost three centuries ago, the geographer Jean-Nicholas Buache de La Neuville wrote: “Nature herself had parcelled out the globe since its beginning; she had divided up its surface unto an infinite number of parts and had separated them from each other by barriers that neither time nor human intervention can ever destroy.”

But Morieux’s thesis is that the narrow Channel joined as well as divided – and acts as a zone for contact as well as conflict. As a body of water, it creates opportunities for trade and transport, informal and cultural exchanges. Britain and France were famously at war for much of the ‘long’ 18th century, between the Nine Years’ War of 1689-1697, which set William of Orange’s England and his European allies against Louis XIV’s France and the wars of the French Revolution, which ended with Waterloo in 1815.

But even in times of war, for the maritime and coastal communities of Britain and France, business continued much as usual. Fishermen harvested the ocean’s resources, sold their wares in ‘enemy’ ports and even joined forces to lobby national governments. Postal services were maintained as a result of ‘postal truces’ which safeguarded the passage of packet boats.

Smugglers flourished with the complicit support both from undercover agents and corrupt officials. In 1774 the number of smugglers (a term that became smogleur in French) operating out of the French port of Dunkirk was estimated at between 1,000 and 1,500. The goods that flowed illicitly from France to Britain, avoiding import duties, included Dutch gin, French tea from China and India, coffee from Saint-Domingue and textiles from Rouen and Lyon. These items arrived at the innumerable small coves and inlets of Kent and Sussex. The pickings were rich and the networks that made them possible were truly transnational.

Britain’s jagged shape and the existence of its surrounding seas are the result of massive geological and climatic changes over vast spans of time. That this island was, until 9,000 years ago, connected to mainland Europe by a chalk bridge represented a profound challenge to the notion of divine and impregnable isolation. In a chapter titled ‘The impossibility of an island’, a pun on Michel Houellebecq’s 2005 novel The Possibility of an Island, Morieux traces successive shifts in public discourse, both sides of the Channel, about the very formation of Britain as a physical entity encircled by protecting water – “this scepter'd isle” and “precious stone set in the silver sea” immortalised by Shakespeare in Richard II.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, debates about the origins of the people of the British Isles became increasingly conflicted. Commentators wrestled with Biblical teachings about creation and the growing evidence for what later become known as evolutionary theory. As early as 1677 Matthew Hale wrote: “We have reason to believe that we of this island [Britain] are not aborigines, but came hither by migrations, colonies, or plantations from other parts of the world.” Earlier still, Andre Du Chesne (1584-1640) doubted “that in the first age of the world men were drawn out of the earth, like pumpkins or mushrooms that are born of moisture in woods and forests”.

Maps are attempts to define the outlines of land and sea – and identify who owns what. Names, especially the naming of geographical features at points where national borders meet, are loaded with meaning and fraught with potential conflict. In the 1607 edition of William Camden’s Britannia, a section was devoted to the ‘British Ocean’: “This sea which is generally called MARE BRITANNICUM, and OCEANUS CALEDONIUS, … hath sundry and distinct names. Eastward… they call it the German sea.. But Southward where it inter-floweth France & Britain, it is properly called the BRITISH sea, & by the common mariners, The Chanel: by the English sailers, THE SLEEVE, and in the same sense, Le Manche in French, because it grow narrow in maner of a sleeve.”

In the 18th century, new names emerged for the Channel. The French monarchy aligned France’s territorial boundaries with the French shore – hence ‘La Manche’ in French, a neutral place-name –while the British viewed the Channel as an integral part of their territory. Seen from its northern shores, the Channel was ‘English’ or ‘British’.

Sharing the rich resources of the sea, and regulating fishing and other harvests, remained a matter of constant debate. Where did one state’s territorial waters begin and end? Was it possible to own parts of the sea and its wealth, or was the sea a common resource, belonging to all? Fisherman did not have the same relationship to, and imagination of, the coast as a cartographer, whose own conceptions differed from those of the customs officer.

In a discussion of fish stocks, an anonymous 18^th-century author made a distinction between ‘sedentary’ fish such as shellfish and river fish (which he deemed as needing urgent protection from over-exploitation) and ‘travelling’ fish such as herring and mackerel (which needed no such protection). He noted that: “All the maritime nations of Europe regard the fruit of this fishing as one of the most advantageous products of their industry, and the men employed therein as the base and foundation of their strength and power.”

In The Channel, Morieux paints a portrait of a sea alive with activity and peopled by communities who were intimately connected as ‘transnationals’ benefitting from networks that operated regardless of national boundaries. For the Minet family, who as Huguenots (Protestants) were forbidden to practise their religion in Roman Catholic France, this narrow stretch of water offered an escape route. Isaac Minet, who was born in Calais in September 1660 and died in Dover in April 1745, recorded personal and family details in his accounts book. His recollections included the family’s undercover crossing from France to the safety of Protestant England, a trip that meant evading a posse of French customs’ officials.

Isaac Minet had well-established contacts in Dover, and within a single generation he and his family became integrated into civic society. He was naturalised English in 1705 and was elected ‘jurrat’ of the town corporation in 1731. Isaac’s grandson Hugues became mayor of the city in 1765. In 1770 Hugues Minet, having prospered as a businessman and owner of packets (boats), purchased land in Lambeth. Until these lands were sold to the City of London in 1968, his descendants continued to play a capital role in the development of the area. Among local institutions to bear the Minet name was The Mary Minet District Nurses Home in Halsmere Road.

Historic British conceptions of the maritime border continue to play out in current debates about migration control. The presence of British police and customs officers in Calais to monitor the crossing of the Channel reminds us of a period when the British monarchy claimed its sovereignty over the ‘narrow sea’. But human trajectories defy rules imposed by the state. In 2016 Calais, hundreds of British volunteers daily bring help to the refugees trapped in the so-called ‘jungle’. Then, as now, migrants, fishermen, merchants, smugglers and travellers follow their own agendas and itineraries. As much as it is an international frontier, the Channel also remains a truly transnational border.

The Channel: England, France and the Construction of a Maritime Border in the Eighteenth Century by Renaud Morieux is published by CUP on March 31, 2016.

Inset images: Ornamental stonework about the doorway at 10 Halsmere Road, South London (Photograph by Jon Newman); Robert Morden, A New Map of England Containing the Adjacent Parts of Scotland, Ireland, France, Flanders and Holland (1673). (��Ī University Library, Map Department, Atlas.3.68.4 (plate 2)).

Water joins as well as divides – and maritime communities often defy the borders imposed by the state. In the first book of its kind, Dr Renaud Morieux offers a fascinating insight into the history of the ‘English’ Channel during the 18th century. He also tackles some of the big questions about identity and sovereignty that continue to be pertinent today.

Nature has placed England and France in a geographical location which must necessarily set up an eternal rivalry between them.

Jean-Louis Dubroca,1802

��Ī University Library

Robert Morden, A New Map of England (1673) (detail)

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To the death

amb206 — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 10:34:48 +0000

Two of the most famous duels in English literature take place at the beginning and end of that giant among novels, Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa.

In the first encounter, Robert Lovelace, Clarissa’s would-be suitor, is challenged to a duel by her brother, James Harlowe. Their antipathy dates back to a “College-begun” tiff and has been inflamed by Lovelace’s interest in Clarissa and her sisters. During their bout, Lovelace has the chance to kill Harlowe but “gives him his life”. The incident helps to establish Lovelace, “a finished libertine”, as a man who lives his life as a sort of extended duel, continually challenging fate itself.

As the book draws to a close, Clarissa’s cousin William Morden seeks to avenge her death in a duel with Lovelace. In doing so, Morden ignores Clarissa’s pleas that “vengeance is God’s province” and that her good-natured cousin should not risk losing his life to a guilty man. Letters are exchanged as the details of the duel are fixed; rapiers are chosen over pistols. When Morden kills Lovelace, the villain perishes but the victor risks carrying a moral burden that will never leave him. The lack of a winner is one of the great paradoxes of the duel.

In Touché: The Duel in Literature, Dr John Leigh (Medieval and Modern Languages) explores expositions of duelling in three centuries of writing. The first ever book devoted exclusively to the depiction of duelling in fiction, drama and poetry, Touché is pan-European in its scope and scholarly in its unpacking of contests that range from the comic stand-offs between Sir Lucius O’Trigger and Captain Jack Absolute in Sheridan’s The Rivals to the elegantly orchestrated cut and thrust of Dumas’s musketeers.

When Richardson wrote Clarissa, in the mid-1700s, duelling had long been illegal in Britain. With beautiful irony, laws renewed over the centuries made it a practice punishable by death. Arguments against duelling shifted over the centuries: framed in the 17th century as a theological wrong, it was condemned as barbarous (and non-classical) in the 18th century, and, finally, in the 19th century as an unseemly display of primitive urges. In his famous 1841 study of fashionable delusions, Charles Mackay likened duellists to “two dogs who tear each other for a bone, or two bantams fighting on a dunghill for the love of some beautiful hen”.

But its appeal endured, in literature as in life. Duels feature in the works of dozens of British writers: Tobias Smollett was prodigiously fond of duels (his sword-happy characters include the wonderfully named Roderick Random and Peregrine Pickle) as were Sir Walter Scott, William Thackeray and GK Chesterton. Among the many French writers intrigued by duelling are Molière, Hugo and Maupassant. In Russian literature, Anton Chekhov and Alexander Pushkin (the latter an inveterate duellist) are masters in the telling of stories in which the duel plays a pivotal part.

The sheer theatricality of the duel makes it an irresistible literary device, whether to demonstrate a gentleman’s valour in facing down a rogue or to mock the posturing of a foolish buck. The richness of the drama lies in the stage directions: the count-down to the allotted hour, the scene at dawn or dusk, the pacing out of the exact distance between opponents, the checking of weapons, and the sobbing of bystanders. The deeper fascination, for the reader, is with the process by which words become deeds and the freedom of the nobleman is enmeshed in an utterly inexorable, irrevocable process.

Duelling is a posh pursuit, imbued with notions of privilege and sportsmanship. Fencing and swordsmanship, like dancing and riding, were accomplishments that defined the wellborn young man. Likewise, many of the most celebrated bouts in fiction depict noble combatants seeking to uphold or defend family honour against slur or slight. As Leigh writes, the duellist is the “antithesis of the bourgeois, because he fights not for gain from his adversary but to declare who or what he is”.

But there are notable exceptions. Charles Dickens, most of whose characters are working or middle class, incorporates duels in several of his novels. In Pickwick Papers, duels generally assume the form of a comic set piece. “A duel in Ipswich!... Nothing of the kind can be contemplated in this town,” says the magistrate, summoned to halt plans for a confrontation between Samuel Pickwick and Peter Magnus. In Nicholas Nickleby, the protagonists are highborn but the message to the reader is that all life hangs on a thread. The tragedy of Lord Frederick Verisopht’s death, at the hand of Sir Mulberry Hawk, is set against the majesty of the rising sun and the running river - and the “twenty tiny lives” present on every blade of grass.

Leigh divides his text into themes, slotting duels into categories of ‘comical’, ‘poignant’, ‘judicial’, ‘romantic’ and ‘grotesque’. In a chapter devoted to the ‘paradoxes of the duel’, he explores the incompatibility of a pursuit steeped in style and swagger with the seriousness of its likely outcome – the finality of death. The elegant language of duelling, sometimes couched in French, and its insistence on carefully regulated protocol, seemingly elevates it from the notion of brutal murder. But, in the end, the calculated nature of duelling is perhaps even more chilling.

The noblest of duelling weapons is the sword. Firearms bring a certain sense of anonymity; sometimes they gain an identity all of their own. In his poem Eugene Onegin, Pushkin describes in steely detail the mechanisms of the pistols loaded by Onegin and Lenski. “The weapon,” writes Leigh, “acquires a sinister life of its own, as one action leads mechanistically and remorselessly to another, before the final, fateful event is triggered.” In stark contrast, as Lenski’s life ebbs away, the poet turns to nature to describe the slow fall of snow and the sudden grip of cold.

The slaughter that took place in the muddy trenches of the First World War eclipsed the aristocratic notion of duelling as a test of nerve and a clean way of settling scores. But single combat remained, for some, an idealised form of warfare. Leigh writes that the Australian Spitfire pilot Richard Hillary recounts in his book The Last Enemy that: “In a fighter plane, I believe, we have found a way to return to war as it ought to be, war which is individual combat between two people, in which one either kills or is killed.”

Duels have been considered anachronistic for some four hundred years – but we remain fascinated by those who could take lives after taking exception.

Touché: The Duel in Literature is published by Harvard University Press. John Leigh is a Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, ��Ī.

Inset image: French cased duelling pistols by Nicolas Noel Boutet. Single shot, percussion, rifled, .58 caliber, blued steel, Versailles, 1794-1797. Exhibit in the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Dr John Leigh has written the first book exclusively devoted to the duel in literature. In Touché, he offers a compelling picture of the ways in which novelists, playwrights and poets have used duelling as a trope to reveal the extent of manly valour, trickery and sheer foolishness.

The duellist fights not for gain from his adversary but to declare who or what he is

John Leigh

G. Durand - Harper's Weekly

"The Code Of Honor—A Duel In The Bois De Boulogne, Near Paris", wood engraving by Godefroy Durand

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Where to find a dragon in ��Ī

jeh98 — Wed, 24 Jun 2015 08:00:00 +0000

Scroll to the end of the article to listen to the podcast.

Earth, water, air and fire. If you were to pick an element that you most associate with dragons, you would probably choose the last – fire. And though the jaws of all the dragons to be found lurking in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) are devoid of flames, they do speak to the immense power of the dragon to ignite cultural imagination in all corners of the globe.

From the Anglo-Saxons of Old England, to the lamas of Tibet and the jungles of Borneo, dragons have been carved, stitched and emblazoned on countless artefacts of human creativity and endeavour.

But on closer inspection, a more appropriate element to associate with these mythical reptiles may indeed be water.

Sporting arguably the finest beard in the MAA, this dragon formed the fearsome figurehead of a canoe. On display in the Maudslay gallery, it was found in the Baram River District of Borneo by alumnus of Christ’s College and influential anthropologist, Dr Alfred Cort Haddon, during his fieldwork expedition to Malaysia and the Torres Strait Islands in 1898.

In the folklore of Borneo, the dragon is a goddess of the underworld. She protects the living, guards over the dead, and is associated with earth, water, thunder and lightning. One particular folktale tells of a dragon that guards a precious jewel on the top of Mount Kinabalu, the highest point of the island.

This fellow, and his mighty fine facial hair, has been temporarily removed for conservation but will be back to take his place in the museum soon.

A few paces across the gallery take you all the way from the coasts of Borneo to the former Kingdom of Derge, high in the Himalayan peaks of Tibet, and takes our watery connection in a slightly different direction. This extremely rare piece of Derge ware is an iron water bottle covered in silver and gold ornamentation and bound with brass. The hexagonal spout rises from the mouth of a sea monster at the base, and anyone looking closely at the handle will notice that it is in the form of a dragon.

The dragon, or zhug, is a deity in Tibetan mythology. Influenced by the dragons of Chinese and Indian culture, Tibetan dragons are believed to have control over the rainfall and represent water. The dragon keeping a close eye on this water container was presented to Frederick Williamson, a ��Ī graduate and Political Officer of the British Raj, by the Prime Minister of Tibet in 1933 and deposited in the museum by his wife, Margaret, in 1976.

Stepping further back in time, we find dragons that were traded across the seas by Anglo-Saxons between the 5th and 11th centuries.

The museum's collection of Anglo-Saxon brooches, some with dragon-like creatures engraved on the front, were among the first in Britain to have testing carried out on their garnets – decorative pieces of red gemstone. The results of this testing have provided evidence that the Anglo-Saxons were trading with India.

Serpentine or dragon-like shapes were common in Anglo-Saxon art as they were easy to work into the interlaced designs that were popular during the period. Beyond just being carved on jewellery and armour, the association between dragons and treasure was particularly strong in Anglo-Saxon writing – even entering proverbial sayings such as the maxim “draca sceal on hlæwe, frod, frætwum wlanc” (a dragon must be in a mound, old and proud in his ornaments).

Students in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNAC) come face-to-face with dragons in a number of courses, according to Dr Richard Dance. Probably the most famous of these is the dragon that defeats the eponymous hero of Beowulf in the epic poem’s dramatic finale.

Ða se gæst ongan gledum spiwan,

beorht hofu bærnan; bryne-leoma stod

eldum on andan; no ðær aht cwices

lað lyft-floga læfan wolde.

Wæs þæs wyrmes wig wide gesyne,

nearo-fages nið nean and feorran,

hu se guð-sceaða Geata leode

hatode and hynde: hord eft gesceat,

dryht-sele dyrnne ær dæges hwile.

(Beowulf – XXXIII. Project Gutenberg.)

The stranger began then to vomit forth fire,

To burn the great manor; the blaze then glimmered

For anguish to earlmen, not anything living

Was the hateful air-goer willing to leave there.

The war of the worm widely was noticed,

The feud of the foeman afar and anear,

How the enemy injured the earls of the Geatmen,

Harried with hatred: back he hied to the treasure,

To the well-hidden cavern ere the coming of daylight.

(Beowulf – XXXIII. Project Gutenberg.)

“A major theme in heroic and epic literature is obtaining treasure and giving it out to the people – treasure was particularly important in a pre-monetary economy. Dragons, often depicted jealously guarding their hoard, represent the obverse of generosity, like a bad king figure,” says Dance.

“Beowulf is the longest Anglo-Saxon poem that we know of, and it is complex, carefully wrought and evocative. It’s good poetry as well as being a good poem — a finely crafted piece of treasure in its own right. A lot of words and the way it arranges its ideas are recognisably poetic compared to Old English prose”.

Dance explains that the words “draca” (dragon) and “wyrm” (serpent, reptile) are used fairly interchangeably in the poem to refer to the hero’s final foe.

“When the dragon appears towards the end of the poem we see that, very early on in written culture, the fantasy fiction idea of a dragon that we have today is already formed. Looking at dragons in modern fiction you can see that our ideas of what a dragon is depend quite closely on the ways they are presented in medieval literature like Beowulf, especially via the works of authors like J. R. R. Tolkien, himself an Anglo-Saxon scholar,” says Dance.

Dr Judy Quinn of ASNAC, who researches Old Norse poetry, says that Scandinavian and Icelandic poems demonstrate how productive a symbol the dragon remained for poets in the medieval period.

“Poets were drawn to the legend of dragons such as Fáfnir and Níðhöggr found in the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda – a 13th century Icelandic anthology of traditional anonymous verse. The proverb ‘dragons often rise up on their tails’ is recorded in the 12th century Icelandic poem Málsháttakvæði,” says Quinn. “The dreki or dragon most often encountered in medieval Scandinavian poetry is a ship, named for the dragon shape carved out of the prow of Viking-Age war-ships.”

Whether in it, or on it, or providing a useful container for it, the dragons of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology have a long and storied relationship with water. Which is perhaps unsurprising given how the fire-breathing lizards of our imaginations started life in many cultures and mythologies – as serpents, sea monsters, or river deities.

But to find the most unusual connection between the MAA’s dragons, we need to turn to an even more essential element – tea.

Medieval England, between the 16th and 18th centuries, gives us an exhibit affectionately nicknamed “Dragon in a cup”. One of the highlights of the MAA’s permanent Archaeology of ��Ī display, this piece of stained glass depicts St John the Evangelist. At the end of an outstretched arm, St John holds a poisoned chalice – with a tiny dragon peeping over the rim. It is a fairly common motif for St John to be depicted in this way, bearing an ominous cup of dragon – although the dragon in question looks far too friendly to be poisoning anybody.

For the next stop on our tea cup quest, we’re off to Borneo by canoe again to find another intricately carved prow, known to the museum staff as George.

Part-crocodile, part-dragon, George is afflicted by a condition that most tea-lovers will be able to sympathise with – he sees tea cups wherever he goes.

And finally, once more to Tibet and this tea cup decorated with a long, green dragon. Donated to the museum by the Williamsons, this cup is part of a large collection of Tibetan artefacts, including a teaspoon and a folding tea table both decorated with images of dragons.

All that remains is for someone to discover a dragon using a tea cup and the MAA’s collection will truly be complete.

You can meet all of these dragons, and many more of their friends prowling the treasures at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology – from Javanese Batik cloth, to Japanese netsuke.

During the summer, children can embark on their own animal adventure and try their hand at finding all of the exhibits in the museum’s Animal Safari Trail.

Admission to the museum is free and it is open every day except Mondays.

Next in the ��Ī Animal Alphabet: E is for an animal that takes pride of place among the medieval manuscripts in the Parker Library, and is the subject of vital conservation research in Thailand's 'Golden Triangle'.

Inset images: Figurehead of a canoe, accession number Z 2403 (��Ī); Derge iron water bottle, accession number D 1976.115 (��Ī); Viking ships (Jos van Wunnik); Circular panel of glass, showing a saint with a dragon in a chalice, accession number Z 16318 (��Ī); Head for front of canoe, accession number Z 2698 (��Ī); China tea cup (��Ī).

The ��Ī Animal Alphabet series celebrates ��Ī's connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, D is for Dragon. Watch out for fire-breathers among the treasures of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, in Anglo-Saxon proverbs, and in fantasy literature from medieval Scandinavia to the present day.

When the dragon appears in Beowulf we see that, very early on in written culture, the fantasy fiction idea of a dragon that we have today is already formed

Richard Dance

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Derge iron water bottle. Accession number: D 1976.115.

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