The Macclesfield Alphabet Book

 

Local map of Shirburn Castle area, near Watlington, Oxford.

I am in the process of downsizing; that includes disposing of furniture, ornaments, books, files, crockery, linen, clothes. Theoretically, this is a most useful discipline; practically, it is Very Hard Work. Mostly I can dispose without pain but with books, it is really challenging! Before I came to Brugge, I had given away all my husband’s professional books and mine too; all too elderly for modern professional use. I also managed to shed quite a number of others no longer deemed necessary to my well-being and entertainment! I remember thinking around 35/40% of the volumes in my house must have gone. But now, my daughter who lives in Bury St Edmunds where I intend to live, has visited my apartment-to-be several times and measured up. Her judgement, obviously based on fact and measurement, unlike mine based on possessiveness, is that three of my bookcases Must GO. Hence my present wrestling over which book goes where?

Shirburn Castle, seat of the 
Earls of Macclesfield.

During this current effort I have come across so many books I had shamefully forgotten I had and have spent far too long flicking through forgotten pages; dipping into unremembered volumes. A splendid volume entitled The Macclesfield Alphabet Book has me currently enthralled. Until very recently, this wonderful book, that is the original, was unknown to the mediaeval manuscript world and only emerged to share its glory in the early 2000s from the vast library of the Earl of Macclesfield in Shirburn Castle near Watlington in the Chilterns in Oxfordshire. In fact, the Castle had three great libraries chiefly assembled by Thomas Parker [1667-1732] Lord Chancellor and first Earl of Macclesfield, supplemented by the second Earl [1697-1764] and his family, all voracious collectors and polymaths’ as described by Christopher de Hamel in his Introduction in my copy. Apparently there was little further family interest in these treasures and the libraries remained in situ for more than two hundred years.

Thomas Park, first Earl
of Macclesfield.

By the early twentieth century it had become obvious that life in Shirburn Castle still without many modern amenities, was untenable and the family began to sell off books from 2004 onwards, to partially finance a move to a nearby new house. This series of sales at Sothebys also revealed a hitherto unknown fourteenth century East Anglian Macclesfield Psalter sold in June 2004 to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Subsequently the British Library acquired the Liber de Hyda, cartulary of Hyde Abbey in Winchester and the Macclesfield Alphabet Book in 2009. One must read the book i.e. my book introduced by Christopher de Hamel and Patricia Lovett, for all the lovingly detailed descriptions of the different folios contained therein, but basically, the Macclesfield Alphabet Book is a calligraphic alphabet book. Its possible purpose is discussed in the Introduction; for use by a scribe or illuminator; a showcase for a prospective client; used in a studio as an exemplar for apprentices; a record of pictorial information for wealthy patrons?

Sample page from the Alphabet Book

Principally, the work, comprises simplified images from natural history, mainly trees, animals and flowers, arranged in alphabetical order without text. The manuscript is composed of 46 leaves of parchment divided into sections which would originally have been separate, circulating perhaps as loosely folded separate booklets. The letters, both capital and lower case, are illuminated often by grotesque or whimsical images of members of all levels of society including kings. Many are of peasants or ugly people, spitting, grimacing, sticking out their tongues or showing their teeth [a particularly heinous social offence in the Middle Ages.] Animals in the illustrations are strange birds, dragons and monsters which might possibly have aided memory in the illiterate viewer. Patricia Lovett identifies the work of several hands in the book’s composition with some examples accomplished by a very able scribe but there are contributions by less able artists, possibly a left-handed scribe at one point; a working artist in a hurry; elsewhere, another level of skill is apparent, “a tour de force” in fact. Patricia Lovett’s introductory essay provides an amazingly detailed commentary on the levels of skill of the different artistic hands involved in this production.

Christopher de Hamel.

De Hamel concludes that the style of artistry is extremely competent but not of the highest order and the Alphabet Book is likely to have been made away from the professional workshops of London, almost certainly in Suffolk. At the end of the first alphabet, appears the phrase, ‘ Amen q’ [fryer] Baldry. The word ‘fryer’ has been scratched out undoubtedly at the Reformation when friars and monks were abolished in England. The initials R.B. drawn on a shield in an illustration may indicate the friar as Roger Baldry who was a Franciscan monk, subsequent prior [1503-1518] at the Cluniac Priory of Saint Mary at Thetford in Norfolk. The name Baldry comes from East Anglia and was especially common in the area around Ipswich. In the fifteenth century the greatest concentration of the name Baldry was at Creeting, eight miles north of Ipswich, Friars were not allowed to own property nor produce books professionally though they were often attached to great houses as spiritual mentors who might well advise on the production of manuscripts for domestic use.

Sample pages.

Mediaeval Franciscan friars.

 eight miles north of Ipswich. Friars were not allowed to own property nor produce books professionally though they were often attached to great houses as spiritual mentors who might well advise on the production of manuscripts for domestic use.

Foot-binding in China.

 

Emperor Song Huizong.
Not 'our' emperor merely a typical
portrait of a typical Emperor of
the Song Dynasty.

I recently met someone whose great grandmother had had bound feet and I was astonished at the relatively late occurrence of something I had imagined to be firmly in the long past! Knowing nothing about foot-binding but incredulous that something so presumably painful and grotesque had been universally and historically popular in China, set me off on what could be termed, ‘a lotus hunt’. I am now more knowledgeable but equally bemused at the enduring strength of social and sexual custom and pressure.

Bound foot in beautiful shoes.

Historical records from the Song Dynasty, 960-1279 A.D. date foot-binding as beginning during the reign of Li Yu who ruled over one region of China between 961-975 A.D. Legend has it that his heart was captured by a concubine, Yao Niang, a talented dancer who bound her feet to suggest the shape of a new moon and performed a ‘lotus dance’. During subsequent dynasties, foot-binding became increasingly popular, spreading from court circles to the wealthy and was seen as a powerful status symbol. Eventually it moved from cities to the countryside where ordinary young girls also realised that binding their feet could be their passport to social mobility and increased wealth.

Zhou Guizhen at 86 [2007]
Formerly very wealthy; grindingly
poor after 1949.
Resident of Liuyicun.

A village, Liuyicun, in southern China, formerly a thriving textile town where virtually every woman had bound feet, still harbours survivors with tiny feet. The practice survived there for longer than in other regions of China because of its long-term economic prosperity which encouraged people to want wealth signifiers. In 2000 there were still 300 women with bound feet living there and one of them, Wang Lifen, 80 when she was interviewed in 2007, was typical; her mother started binding her feet when she was 7, first breaking her toes then binding them underneath the sole of the foot with bandages. After her mother died, Wang carried on breaking the arch of her own foot to force her toes and heel ever closer. The pain, which must have been intense, she now claims not to remember, but says, “Because I bound my own feet I could manipulate them more gently until the bones were broken. Young bones are soft and break more easily.” In other words, she placed primary importance on how she managed to bind her own feet, not on why. She accepted the practice as a fact of life.

Foot Emancipation Society.
Publicity 1902.

When the Manchu Dynasty began, it tried to ban the practice but there was little support and the habit continued for centuries more until foot-binding was officially banned in 1912 after the revolution which toppled the Quing dynasty. Banned but not eradicated presumably as, after the Communists came to power in 1949, again foot-binding was outlawed. The American author, William Rossi who wrote, “The Sex Life of The Foot and Shoe” in 1976, estimated nonetheless that 40% to 50% of Chinese women still had bound feet in the 19^th century but for the upper classes, the figure was almost 100%. The belief endured that women with tiny feet were a status symbol who would bring honour upon their family and clan. The first anti-foot-binding committee was formed in Shanghai by a British priest in 1874 and 60 Christian women supported him. In 1883 the Women's Christian Temperance Movement petitioned for strict prohibition, so there were early moves to consider the health and mobility of the women involved and the morality of binding feet. From 1915 Government Inspectors could levy fines on those who continued to bind their feet, but it still continued in various defiant pockets of the national community.

After the Communists came to power in 1949, foot-binding continued to be illegal and women carried on, for a while, binding their feet in secret. As Wang pointed out, “If you didn’t have tiny feet, no one worthwhile would marry you”. Indeed, her future in-laws had demanded of the matchmaker, that their son marry a woman with small feet and that was in the early twentieth century. However, Communism quickly introduced strict prohibition and also brought an entirely different life with contrary values; the centuries-old social structures collapsed and all wealth and valuable possessions were confiscated. Production methods changed; the wealthy became suddenly socially reduced and economically crippled while tiny feet meant many women struggled to cope with the practicalities of farm work and the demands of other hard manual labour which Communism enforced on both sexes.

Preparing for womanhood.

Hobbled feet had been an erogenous zone, perhaps the most forbidden of all; indeed feet 3 inches long were called Golden Lotuses and those between three and four inches, were Silver Lotuses. Pornographic books in the Quing dynasty listed 48 different ways of playing with Lotus feet with a preferred site for intercourse being the cleft between heel and ball of the foot. However the reality for women, was that, though bound feet were seen as a welcome mark of class, foot-binding deepened their subjugation, restricting their movements away from home, making them dependent on their menfolk and ensuring their chastity.

So a national foot fetish which persisted for centuries vanished overnight beneath the weight of Communism and its totally different values and practices.

Han Qinoni aged 102
of Yuxian County;
one of the last survivors.

"Autumn grows, Autumn in everything." ***

 

A week or two ago these runnels of leaves, like arboreal snakes,
crept everywhere. ....

...but a week later, such discipline was
impossible

Autumn has been encroaching surreptitiously for several weeks now but suddenly, vividly, it is here in technicolour fashion!! Summer’s wave goodbye has arrived with Winter’s hello to cold mornings outside and warmth in snug evenings indoors. I have just happened upon a slim volume, Thoreau on Man and Nature,
in a bookcase as I continue to look for clothes, books, furniture to give away before I leave. Thoreau is irresistible, a common feature among great writers! I quote a short extract:

“October is the month for painted leaves. Their rich glow now flashes around the world. As fruit and leaves and the day itself acquire a bright tint just before they fall, so the year nears its setting. October is its sunset sky; November the later twilight. “

Some early mornings I cannot see the Belfort or even
the Poorters Loge, 
normally, almost within reach of my windows!

A perfect description of the heaps of vivid leaves, before dampness overtakes them, scattered across the parks and walkways of Bruges and catching my eye and feet each time I wander along canal-side pathways beneath trees half-stripped of their finery, displaying their skeletal branches. BUT, as well as technicolour finery, there is a certain melancholy about autumn too; the smoky, misty, moisty vistas which give an added mystery to those same early morning walks alongside the canals of Brugge. Seen through a veil of haze, these slightly claustrophobic mornings call up for some, memories of Bruges la Morte, Rodenbach’s mournful novel which somehow delineates the special quiet, nebulous, concealed nature of this particular season [and of this particular town!]. November early walks have a suggestion of the unrevealed, despite the landscape’s familiarity and accessibility. Bruges is beautiful in all the seasons but the tentative incursion of light on a grey, foggy morning brings a half-visible reality gradually to form in a silent, shrouded almost unfamiliar revelation and this is Special! And the silence! Oh the silence of the narrow streets is almost complete, thick, enveloping, buffeted only by a far-off muffled tremor of sound which serves to accentuate the soundless misty state of the moment.

Minnewater in the mists of Autumn

And appropriately, other seasonal features have disappeared together with the green leaves. All the Trauma exhibits in the 2021 Triennale have now been dismantled and have sadly vanished from Brugge, their season of performance, over! Terraces often lack clientele as the cooler weather settles in and the ice cream shops have fewer customers!! Cafe menus displayed on pavements, feature rabbit stew and fish soup with salads rarely mentioned. Padded jackets are back with scarves and woolly hats replacing summer sandals and T shirts. But the inevitability of the expected changes are somehow reassuring in spite of climate change and Cop26; we are heartened by the implicit promise of the world still turning, somehow deciphering unexpected signals from Nature but continuing in its undeviating individual orbit. However, publicity on global climate change has made people abruptly aware of our existential need for the familiar landscapes and weather and sharpened the communal fear of significant, irreversible planetary change and loss. Delight in the shades and mists of Autumn this year is tinged with a certain uneasy apprehension. 

The Bruges Diptych in the slow act
of deconstruction. The Goudenhandrei
seems empty now though nearby
houses are released from captivity!

Ethereal, other-worldly, in its black and white beauty.

Russet hues catch the Autumn spirit

**** Andrea del Sarto by Robert Browning.

The Art of Paula Rego

 

I recently bought a book for two small children entitled The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy; it is a book I first met about eighteen months ago and it is a delight. I bought my copy in January 2020 without the excuse of having a child around to read it to, though in the introduction, the author does declare, “This book is for everyone whether you are eighty or eight.” It is idiosyncratic in its ‘handwritten’ scrawl with enchanting drawings and Charlie, the author, manages to create a wonderful, universal world where love, friendship, honesty and kindness are held dear. The sort of world one would want any small child to inhabit or indeed, would prefer for oneself instead of the real world which seems to grow ever more nasty.

Cut from this dreamy, ideal, charming universe to the world of Paula Rego. A friend recently spent a day with his family in Antwerp and while there bought a book from the Museum De Reede at a Paula Rego exhibition entitled Power Games. The text describes, with many illustrations, her 1989 exhibition on Nursery Rhymes; her Peter Pan in 1992; her Abortion Series in 1999; her After Hogarth in 2000; her Work on Mylar in 2000; her Jane Eyre in 2002; her Prince Pig in 2006; her Wine in 2007; her Beyond Abortion in 2009 and other Out of Series drawings.

I have borrowed the copy and the copious illustrations show a very different world to that of Charlie Mackesy but it was the first section [of Paula] on nursery rhymes that jogged my mind to remember the story of the boy and his three animal friends in their search for understanding and friendship. Paula’s nursery world for instance, begun as a pictorial narrative for her grand-daughter, with drawings and watercolours and eventually worked up into etchings, uses distortions, comedy and dream-like effects to create a claustrophobic, often sinister, effect, inspired by both 18^th and 19^th cartoonists and artists like Daumier and Goya while her childhood in the Portugal under the strict regime of the Roman Catholic Church and the conservative autocracy of Salazar, plays a seminal role in her creations. She seized on

In The Comfort of The Bonnet.  Jane Eyre.

the figure of Jane Eyre, using that character in many etchings and lithographs, as a way of exploring her own transition from girl to woman to represent her growing up in a dark and threatening Portugal.

Three Blind Mice 1.

From a totally different literary background, she encountered [and loved] the traditional, often absurd, English nursery rhymes at the English School she attended in Lisbon and eventually learned more from the iconic Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes by the famous Iona and Peter Opie. She followed the English oral tradition of adapting the rhymes for contemporary social comment, reinterpreting apparently innocent stories [often founded in historical fact unknown to the children who sang] to give erotic or ominous existential undertones.

Frankly the result is often terrifying. For instance, her first version of Three Blind Mice has three leaping enormous ferocious mice, their severed tails held in the triumphant hands of a peasant woman, with blood on the walls and fire in the background. I learned that the farmer’s wife represented Queen Mary, known as Bloody Mary [1516-1558] and the blind mice are Protestant clergy and noblemen who rebelled against her and were subsequently executed by her for their trouble [and their faith!]. This one detail of one rhyme has to stand for mention of all the other etchings and drawings executed by Paula Rego over a long life. [Get the book!] Her depictions of abortions which are stunning in their detailed social comment; the Victorian world of Jane Eyre and the psychological drama of the Wide Sargasso Sea [based on Jane Eyre]; plus the inner turmoil and anguish of other characters in other stories, all merge into a strong image of a woman artist who observes, but who also lives, these micro-dramas from literature and from life.

Witches' Sabbath by Francisco de Goya

She abhorred conservative morality which she attacked, exposing and exploiting its ambiguity and was drawn to artists like William Hogarth, the satirical/realist English painter; Honore Daumier and his grotesque exaggerations satirising society and politics; and James Ensor in his subversive and eccentric world. In particular, her kindred spirit was Francisco de Goya, master etcher who confronted social hypocrisy and human cruelty.

A typical James Ensor.

The role of literature is hugely important in Rego’s work, not as illustrations to the stories or rhymes but as translations; explanations; often as an embodiment, used by her to chart and illustrate her own life course. In all of her complex work, there is often a strong chiaroscuro which underlines the strange and eerie happenings she has re-created, in direct contrast to the centuries-old chanting of innocent entertainment. Her mastery of drawing, pastel and graphic techniques is undisputed and she is now considered to be on the same artistic level as Matisse, Picasso, Modigliani and Soutine.

Honore Daumier's Drunken Man.

Paula Rego. Born 1935.

Little Miss Muppet.

Multum in Parvo.

Well-rounded pigeon who visits occasionally
to survey Woensdagmarkt.

Beautiful but details not noted.

There seem to be many recent photos in my Iphone picture store to suggest in brief, a multitude of little things busily happening in my life. From the photo of a well-fed pigeon perched for ages on my terrace, to images of vintage cars at an event The Zoute Rally which I stumbled over in the Markt last week; to a stage set on the Burg today for an unknown [to me] half marathon with an inviting but closed tent advertising Gratis Brugse Zot. Additionally there are photos of documents for the solicitor in the preparations for my purchase of a small flat in Bury St Edmunds plus a video of that apartment. Further investigations in the photo department reveal a chaise longue [one of the many possessions which Must Go] which I am endeavouring to sell! With no real wish to bore the reader, I will spare more details, but my photos indicate, unintentionally, very clearly the enduring attractions of living in Brugge and the quite convoluted manoeuvres necessary for me to divest myself of many things before I move away from Bruges and its charms.

One oleander-free space!

Wardrobe, companion of over fifty years, but now
destined for a younger owner in the family. Perfect.

Long weekend visit by son and younger daughter has resulted in my deciding, with much help, mainly what must go and what might stay with me when I move back to Britain. Although I have downsized before, I now realise how minimal that must have been each time! To discard half of my furniture is difficult, surpassed in complexity only by considering HOW I do it. Who might be interested? To give or to try to sell? I don’t have too much of the sentimental attachment often described by commentators on the difficulties the elderly have in relinquishing ancient possessions. However, certain items are a little more painful to say Farewell to, after forty or fifty years. For one thing, there is the familiarity of habit developed through half a century of everyday, unremarked use. The many books and pieces of furniture, voluntarily discarded; not earth-shattering but a diminution of the old and loved backdrop to my life. Of course, I can manage without that beautiful, capaciously stylish wardrobe, a dear companion since 1968! No sweat to move on without that Georgian linen cupboard presently full of china and glass! And as for those tribal rugs, some very worn, others just a beautiful background for the tread of my life, and of others’; I shall just choose the favourites and move resolutely on.

Along the Kruisvest, early one morning.

I have made a small start; a bronze Japanese maple tree and one of the two oleanders, were carefully uprooted and taken away yesterday from my terrace by a friend offering a garden space for them. An offer of my tiny black freezer has been happily accepted this morning. The beloved huge wardrobe has found a future home eventually. The white desk has GONE as has the twelve set dinner service. Definitely, I have started to reduce my possessions though there is a way to go before I flee the nest next year. I am currently playing my C.Ds [obsolete technology, so my offspring inform me!] and whittling them down to fit into a small box so that I can give away my smart transparent C.D. tower which holds many discs. Occasionally I am overtaken by feelings of smugness as so slowly I give away, or prepare to give away, things!! Alternatively, slight feelings of panic are subdued, as I contemplate the extent of sifting still to go through! But then, I remind myself that we are still in October “and miles to go before I sleep!” as Robert Frost might say. And now that I remember the poet, Robert Frost, another of his apparently simple poems comes to mind. 

In ‘The Road Not Taken’ he writes:

Yet knowing how way leads on to way, 

 I doubted if I should ever come back.

I have thought, several times in the past two months, as I savour an early morning walk along the Vest, admiring the sunlight dazzling on the water, that I am in effect, experiencing a long Good bye to Brugge. And Frost’s famous but superficially simple poem hits the spot. I won’t be coming back to Brugge in any substantial sense and I remind myself that ageing is often also a long good-bye. But with compensations!                                                   

                                                         I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

I took the one less travelled by,

 And that has made all the difference.

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, ......"

ence.

Revisiting The Past While Anticipating The Future

In Brugge for my 80th in 2014.

I returned from Britain several days ago but fatigue [and 

Some of the guests even more colourful than
the rest!

backache from soft beds!] have reduced the enthusiasm normally reserved for my blog! So this is extra late! My week in Bury St Edmunds and Long Crendon was super in that I saw lots of my family. It included the splendid Celebration of Life for my sweet sister, Heather, who died a few weeks ago. She hadn’t wanted a funeral service so her two ‘children’ interpreted her final wish by organising a Celebration Day in which everyone was asked to wear bright colours and attend, bringing a flower each. Flowers, plants and gardens had been central to Heather’s life and was an inspired idea while the resulting bowls of flowers were a delightful hommage to her. There were three ‘speeches’; a heartfelt tribute from Russell, her son; a spirited rendition of Heather’s favourite poem, Jenny Joseph’s ‘When I Am Old, I Shall Wear Purple’ by daughter Joanne, and an encomium from me, full of some of the many memories from our 80 plus companionable years. I was surprised, as I finished my tribute, to see how many people were in tears and I guess the culprit was the final quote from Leonard Cohen’s note to Marianne, a former lover, as she lay dying of leukaemia and written about a year before he died in 2016. I had very slightly adapted it and quote my version here which I announced that I was reading to her:

“Well Heather, it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine. And you know that I have always loved you for your beauty and your elegance …… but now, I just want to wish you a good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love; see you down the road. “

A second viewing of this photo by Cait!
 Heather and I 
playing Mah Jong on my terrace in 2017.

Tears were soon dried, and a long and lively afternoon of conversation ensued, filled with Heather-memories, and the cheerful, jolly melange of voices reverberated as the large group of friends and relatives reminisced and chatted, many often catching up with people they hadn’t seen in ages because of Lockdown and geography. It was a warm and happy day, one which enfolded rather than distressed, one which would have pleased my sister enormously [and which delighted the garden congregation too] and one which has changed my mind around my eventual departure for the Great Classroom in The Sky! Definitely not a formal service for me; surely, a celebration based in a garden if I can get the timing right for the weather and temperature! I am considering booking the same garden, in fact! It is quite perfect

Heather, en fleur, at 15 in 1955.

After I had written the title of this blog, I was reminded of Janus, the God of motion who looked after passages, caused actions to begin and presided over all beginnings. Since movement and change are interconnected, he had a double nature, symbolised by his two-headed image.

SO, I was in the U.K. for a very sad reason which caused me to revisit the past, but Janus-like, my children and I were also looking ahead to start to implement  my recent decision to return to Britain and go to live near my youngest, in Bury St Edmunds. The result is that I found, and am starting to buy, a small, two bedroom flat there, a choice which ticks many of my desired boxes; a terrace; a lift; a spare bedroom; in the mediaeval heart of the little town; near the beautiful Abbey Gardens! Perhaps Janus was presiding over this beginning to the next phase of my life to which I am looking forward while simultaneously feeling sad, contemplating leaving my present beautiful apartment and terrace in Brugge. A typical mixture of many human decisions; change and movement; anticipation and regret.

Remains of the Abbot's Palace in the Abbey Gardens,
Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk.

Abbey Gardens with Cathedral in the background

Heather in Brugge, 2017.or 2018.