Writing the little bio of Peter the Great a few days ago introduced me to the story of Mary Hamilton, aka Maria Danilovna Gamentova, and from that to musing on the often unlucky fate of young women who catch the eyes of sovereigns. For the next few days this blog will recount their sad tales.
Mary Hamilton was the descendant of a Scots family which had emigrated to Russia in the sixteenth century and entered into the service of the tsars.By the early 1700s they were prominent enough to have a girl, Mary, chosen as a lady-in-waiting to the Empress Catherine, wife of Tsar Peter. It is quite common for women such a position to come to the attention of the royal spouse and for that wayward husband to take one as a mistress. So it was with Peter and Mary.
Empress Catherine was of a tolerant nature and for a while all was well with the illicit couple but then, as so often happens, the concubine’s charms fade and the emperor looked elsewhere for his pleasure. Mary remained at court and fell in love with Peter’s military aide-de-camp Ivan Orlov. He was an abusive drunk who beat her; to please her paramour she began to steal from the Empress to buy him gifts. She also aborted two pregnancies and strangled to death a child she was unable to kill in the womb.
In early 1725 she was betrayed by Orlov; Mary was tortured in the Tsar’s presence and confessed to her crimes. The penalty for murdering a child of the royal blood (the dead baby may have been Peter’s) was to be buried alive but the emperor spared her that, condemning her to be beheaded. He told her, “Without breaking the laws of God and the state, I can’t save you from death, so take your execution and believe that God will forgive you.” The painting above shows her awaiting her end.
1845 “The Raven” is first published under author’s name
One of the English language’s most famous poems appeared on this date, its author Edgar Allen Poe having sold it for $9.00 to a New York magazine. The poem’s clever use of internal rhyme, its supernatural vibes, and mournful tone have made it a favourite for reciters of verse ever since. As a child I learned it from listening to a 16 ⅔ rpm disk with a reading by Lorne Greene, Canada’s famous “Voice of Doom”.
The poem has been recorded by voices great and negligible, from James Earl Jones, to Basil Rathbone, to William Shatner. The most striking version is that produced by The Simpsons, available on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLiXjaPqSyY&t=113s
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the lost Lenore—
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Nameless here for evermore.
And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
“’Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door—
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;—
This it is and nothing more.”
Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
“Sir,” said I, “or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you”—here I opened wide the door;—
Darkness there and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”—
Merely this and nothing more.
Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—
’Tis the wind and nothing more!”
Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately Raven of the saintly days of yore;
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door—
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door—
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.
Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
“Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,” I said, “art sure no craven,
Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning—little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door—
Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as “Nevermore.”
But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing farther then he uttered—not a feather then he fluttered—
Till I scarcely more than muttered “Other friends have flown before—
On the morrow he will leave me, as my Hopes have flown before.”
Then the bird said “Nevermore.”
Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
“Doubtless,” said I, “what it utters is its only stock and store
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore—
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore
Of ‘Never—nevermore’.”
But the Raven still beguiling all my fancy into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird, and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore—
What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking “Nevermore.”
This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom’s core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!
Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee—by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite—respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore;
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!—
Whether Tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—
On this home by Horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—
Is there—is there balm in Gilead?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Prophet!” said I, “thing of evil!—prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us—by that God we both adore—
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore—
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting—
“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”
And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o’er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Rulers of nations and empires can die any day of the year, but it is remarkable to find three such consequential monarchs passing on the same calendar date.
814 Charlemagne
First to go was Frankish emperor Karl, aka Carolus Magnus, aka Charlemagne, second of the Carolingian dynasty. He unified and greatly enlarged Frankish territory creating a dominion that stretched from Denmark to the Spanish Marches, from the Atlantic to the Pannonian plains. He issued legal codes, encouraged Christian evangelism of pagan tribes, sponsored a renaissance of learning and arts, judged popes, crushed Lombards, Saxons, and Avars, and was crowned Emperor in Rome on Christmas Day, 800. His realm was splintered and frittered away by his son Louis the Pious and his quarrelsome grandsons.
1547 Henry VIII
An unpleasant character, mean and foolish in so many ways, Henry’s reign saw important changes in England. His marital woes led him to create the Church of England, which he meant to be Catholic in doctrine but under his thumb instead of the pope’s. He carried out the greatest redistribution of wealth in the country’s history by seizing vast monastic land-holdings – this profited his noble supporters more than it enriched the crown. He permitted the printing of the first English Bible – with his portrait on the title page. In order to justify these acts in the eyes of his political class he validated them through Parliament. This greatly enhanced the powers of that institution. He murdered wives, cardinals, monks, and rebels. Few mourned his passing.
1725 Peter the Great
After a tumultuous rise to the throne, marked by conspiracy and rebellion Peter achieved unfettered rule in 1696 at the age of 24. His impressive titles tell us a lot about the historical expansion of the Russian state: By the grace of God, the most excellent and great sovereign emperor Pyotr Alekseevich the ruler of all the Russias: of Moscow, of Kiev, of Vladimir, of Novgorod, Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan and Tsar of Siberia, sovereign of Pskov, great prince of Smolensk, of Tver, of Yugorsk, of Perm, of Vyatka, of Bulgaria and others, sovereign and great prince of the Novgorod Lower lands, of Chernigov, of Ryazan, of Rostov, of Yaroslavl, of Belozersk, of Udora, of Kondia and the sovereign of all the northern lands, and the sovereign of the Iverian lands, of the Kartlian and Georgian Kings, of the Kabardin lands, of the Circassian and Mountain princes and many other states and lands western and eastern here and there and the successor and sovereign and ruler.
Peter significantly modernized the backward Russian state, created a new capital city of St. Petersburg, improved the military (especially the navy), smacked down Swedes and Tatars, introduced Western ways, and laid the foundation of Romanov rule for centuries.
Feast of the Translation of the Relics of St John ChrysostomYou may have noticed that the more important Christian saints have a number of feast days dedicated to them. One good reason to mark their life is if their relics have been moved from one spot to another, usually a more honoured, location — such a shift in bones is called a translation. On this day in 438, the remains of the most celebrated preacher of the ancient Church were moved from where he had died on his way to exile to Constantinople’s Church of the Holy Peace.
John had been banished in 407 for upsetting the sensibilities of the Empress Eudoxia who was offended by his comparison of her to the evil wife of Herod. In 438 Proclus, the patriarch of Constantinople convinced Emperor Theodosius II, son of Eudoxia, to fetch the saint’s bones back to the imperial capital. The story goes:
The emperor, overwhelmed by Saint Proclus, gave his consent and gave the order to transfer the relics of Saint John. But those he sent were unable to lift the holy relics until the emperor realized that he had sent men to take the saint’s relics from Comana with an edict, instead of with a prayer. He wrote a letter to Saint John, humbly asking him to forgive his audacity, and to return to Constantinople. After the message was read at the grave of Saint John, they easily took up the relics, carried them onto a ship and arrived at Constantinople.
Safely in his new home, John’s body was visited by Theodosius who apologized for this mother’s actions.
In 1204 Latin crusaders broke open the tomb and stole the relics but in 2004 some of them were returned by Pope John Paul II and are now ensconced in St George’s Church, Istanbul. A silver and jewel-encrusted skull is held in the Vatopedi Monastery in Greece and the monks of Mount Athos venerate it as John’s but the Russian Orthodox Church claims that Vatopedi sold the skull to the Russian czar in the 17th century and they now have it in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Not to be outdone, two Italian churches also assert that they have the saint’s head.
Earlier on this site, I have commemorated General Charles “Chinese” Gordon on this date in 1885 who fell defending the city of Khartoum in Sudan from the forces of an Islamic jihad. Today let’s look at the leader of that movement, Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah known as “The Mahdi”.
Muhammad Ahmad was born in 1844 to a family of boat builders in Sudan who claimed descent from Muhammed, the 7th-century founder of Islam. At an early age he took an interest in religion and after studying with local Sufis, developed a reputation for wisdom and piety. He began to preach and began to attract followers; in 1881 he announced that he was The Mahdi.
The Mahdi is a figure in Islamic eschatology, prophesied to appear in a time of crisis and, accompanied by the Prophet Isa (Jesus), to usher in a new era of justice and universal peace. The hadith literature gives certain signs by which to know the true Mahdi but a multitude of local legends and variations have allowed for wide disagreement in Islam about the figure. Numerous Muslims of Muhammed’s lineage have appeared in history claiming the title.
Recognizing the potential for unrest attendant on anyone claiming the title, the Egyptian government of the Sudan first tried bribing and then arresting Muhammad Ahmad. He eluded capture and began to assemble forces large enough to pose a military threat. He defeated force after force of Egyptian troops, some of them led by British officers. By 1883 after his defeat of Hicks Pasha at the battle of El Obeid he controlled half of Sudan with more tribes coming over to him.
The reign of the Mahdi was not a happy one for those who doubted his claims. His variety of Islam was of the harsh and fundamentalist sort; he also restored the slave trade which the Egyptian authorities had suppressed. His success prompted the British to withdraw from most of the Sudan and to send Charles Gordon to oversee the evacuation of Egyptian garrisons, civilians and administrators. Gordon attempted to convince The Mahdi to come back to obedience and offered him a governorship if he agreed. The reply was stark: “I am the Expected Mahdi and I do not boast! I am the successor of God’s Prophet and I have no need of any sultanate of Kordofan or anywhere else!” Gordon was unable to hold Khartoum and along with all his troops was massacred when the city fell to the Mahdi, who ordered that Gordon’s head be cut off and stuck in a tree “where all who passed it could look in disdain, children could throw stones at it and the hawks of the desert could sweep and circle above.”
The Mahdi did not long survive Gordon, dying six months later of typhus. His successor, known as the Khalifa, ruled Sudan until a British expedition retook the country in 1898. General Kitchener took the opportunity to desecrate the Mahdi’s tomb, throw his body in the Nile and carry his head home as a souvenir.
The Church named January 25 as the festival day for the celebration of the conversion of St Paul (aka Paul of Tarsus) described in Acts 9. It was once the occasion of a colourful procession in London, whose patron saint was Paul. In 1555, in the reign of Mary and Philip, it is recorded that:
On St. Paul’s day there was a general procession with the children of all the schools in London, with all the clerks, curates, and parsons, and vicars, in copes, with their crosses; also the choir of St. Paul’s; and divers bishops in their habits, and the Bishop of London, with his pontificals and cope, bearing the sacrament under a canopy, and four prebends bearing it in their gray amos; and so up into Leadenhall, with the mayor and aldermen in scarlet, with their cloaks, and all the crafts in their best array; and so came down again on the other side, and so to St. Paul’s again. And then the king, with my lord cardinal, came to St. Paul’s, and heard masse, and went home again; and at night great bonfires were made through all London, for the joy of the people that were converted likewise as St. Paul was converted.
Connected to this day was the yearly presentation to the cathedral’s clergy of a fat buck and doe, an obligation incurred in 1375 in recompense for the enclosure of some of the Dean’s land. It sounds pretty darn pagan to me.
On these days, the buck and the doe were brought by one or more servants at the hour of the procession, and through the midst thereof, and offered at the high altar of St. Paul’s Cathedral: after which the persons that brought the buck received of the Dean and Chapter, by the hands of their Chamberlain, twelve pence sterling for their entertainment; but nothing when they brought the doe. The buck being brought to the steps of the altar, the Dean and Chapter, appareled in copes and proper vestments, with garlands of roses on their heads, sent the body of the buck to be baked, and had the head and horns fixed on a pole before the cross, in their procession round about the church, till they issued at the west door, where the keeper that brought it blowed the death of the buck, and then the horns that were about the city answered him in like manner; for which they had each, of the Dean and Chapter, three and fourpence in money, and their dinner; and the keeper, during his stay, meat, drink, and lodging, and five shillings in money at his going away; together with a loaf of bread, having in it the picture of St. Paul.
One of the cleverest twists in historical fiction was achieved by Robert Graves in his novels I, Claudius and Claudius the God. It was his literary conceit that Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, the fourth emperor of Rome, was not the bumbling fool that historians portrayed but rather a clever survivor and acute observer of murderous imperial politics. On this day in 41 A.D. Claudius succeeded to the throne after the death of the incumbent, the mad Gaius “Caligula”.
Caligula (b. 12 A.D.) was a very bad fellow indeed. His accession to power in 37 was a popular one as his predecessor Tiberius had turned paranoid and cruel and the young man was the descendant of both Caesar Augustus and Mark Antony. After a few months of stability, Caligula began to murder family members, Senators, and military officers and to squander public funds on vast and useless projects. He began to think himself divine and demanded to be worshipped – previous emperors had been regarded as gods only after their deaths. He awarded himself a triumphal parade for having vanquished the ocean, committed incest with his sisters, and is said to have thrown spectators in the arena to be killed by wild animals when a shortage of prisoners had spoiled the show. When members of the political class began to fear for their lives, they joined in a plot to assassinate Caligula whom they stabbed to death; his wife and daughter were also murdered. The Praetorian Guard took revenge on the conspirators. When one of the guardsmen discovered Caligula’s uncle, the last male of the Julio-Claudian line, hiding behind the curtain it seemed they had found a suitable successor.
Claudius was by this time in his 50s; he limped and stuttered and was widely considered to be a harmless fool, which probably saved him from deadly court intrigues. He was happy to have been spared by the Guard, promptly granted them bonuses and ordered the execution of the assassins. Claudius’s reign was generally successful – Rome expanded militarily while the imperial bureaucracy and tax collecting powers were made more efficient. The emperor’s personal life, however, was a disaster. During the reign of Caligula, Claudius had unwisely married the fifteen-year-old beauty Messalina. The young woman turned out to be promiscuous on an industrial scale and plotted against him, forcing the poor fellow to order her death. His fourth and final wife, Agrippina, ended the farce by poisoning him to put her son Nero on the throne.
Pascal publishes the first of his Provincial Letters.
Blaise Pascal (1623-62) was an enormously influential French scientist, philosopher and religious writer. His work on hydraulic power, geometry, mathematics and mechanical computation helped to energize the nascent Second Scientific Revolution.
In his 20s Pascal became acquainted with Jansenism, a Catholic movement with pronounced ideas on grace which ran into controversy with Church authorities who labelled it a heresy. Before the sect was outlawed by the pope and Louis XIV, Pascal began to write on religious subjects. On this day in 1656 he published the first of his Provincial Letters, which were eventually to number eighteen. In them, Pascal, under a pseudonym, used brilliant satire and elegant language to attack current notions on grace and the Jesuit use of the philosophical tool known as casuistry, which Pascal condemned as a mere clever use of language to rationalize moral laxity. The series of essays won wide praise for its literary style but condemnation for its religious content. The king ordered the writings shredded and publicly burnt; Pascal had to go into hiding.
The Provincial Letters remain a monument of French literature, praised by critics of all sorts. The agnostic philosophe Voltaire and Bossuet, the ultra-orthodox Catholic bishop, were both admirers. Even the 20th-century Catholic apologist Hilaire Belloc, who attacked Pascal’s accusations against the Jesuits, spoke of the work’s “wit and fervour”.
Pascal is probably best known for his famous wager about the existence of God, outlined in his Pensées and a giant step in probability theory.
If there is a God, He is infinitely incomprehensible, since, having neither parts nor limits, He has no affinity to us. We are then incapable of knowing either what He is or if He is…God is, or He is not.” But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is infinite chaos that separated us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager? According to reason, you can do neither the one thing nor the other; according to reason, you can defend neither of the propositions.
Do not, then, reprove for error those who have made a choice; for you know nothing about it.
“No, but I blame them for having made, not this choice, but a choice; for again both he who chooses heads and he who chooses tails are equally at fault, they are both in the wrong. The true course is not to wager at all.”
Yes; but you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.
In the midst of a world steeped in “disinformation”, it may be useful to consider the thoughts of an English politician whose brilliant public career ended amid rigged accusations of bribe-taking. Francis Bacon, Viscount St Albans, was a contemporary of William Shakespeare, a favourite of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth I, and an intellectual giant. This is the man who coined the phrase “knowledge is power”, who wrote the first essays in the English language, penned our first science fiction and, by proposing that observation and induction replace all previously-accepted knowledge, laid the foundation of the scientific method. He is believed by many to be the “real author” of the plays attributed to Shakespeare. He wasn’t but he was an important figure in the philosophical history of the Anglophone world.
Bacon was born into a family which was prominent in Elizabethan religion and politics. His father Nicholas was Lord Keeper of the Great Seal and his uncle was William Cecil, Lord Burghley, Elizabeth’s closest advisor. He entered politics at age 20, rose to be the Queen’s legal counsel and the Attorney General of her successor James I. His enemies brought him down in 1621 on grossly-inflated charges but he never lost the respect of the thinking classes.
In his ground-breaking Essays, Bacon claimed that humans were barred from seeing reality by four obstacles. The first of his three barriers to clear thinking dealt with individual eccentricities, common superstitions, and false knowledge; the fourth was what he called “Idols of the Market-place” on account of the commerce and consort of men there. For it is by discourse that men associate; and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into numberless empty controversies and idle fancies.
For Bacon, words wrongly used could keep people from discovering the truth and this was a tragedy. For North American politicians, truth-avoidance has become precisely the point. Spokesmen of each party in debates, press releases, and speeches use language as a means of obfuscation more than clarification; the power of words to cloud issues is valued over its ability to shed light.
Bacon died in 1626, possibly the victim of his own belief in scientific observation, having caught pneumonia while conducting an experiment in refrigeration.
Though the prohibition of alcohol is a story well-known to fans of Elliot Ness and the Untouchables, less attention has been paid to the serious campaigns waged against the consumption of tobacco.
The Women’s Christian Temperance Union was a leader in this campaign, urging boys and girls to take the Clean Life Pledge: “I hereby pledge myself with the help of God to abstain from all intoxicating liquors as a beverage and from the use of tobacco in any form.” At the turn of the 20th century a number of states and municipalities had enacted legislation banning the sale of cigarettes, cigars, and chewing tobacco. Particularly worrisome to the nation’s legislators was the sight of the fair sex ingesting the smoke of the demon weed.
On January 21, 1908 New York City passed an ordinance, the Sullivan Act, forbidding women from smoking in public. The very next day, a female scofflaw named Katie Mulcahey was arrested after striking a match against the wall of a house and lighting a cigarette.
The officer protested, “Madame, you mustn’t! What would Alderman Sullivan say?”
“But I am,” Mulcahey replied, “and don’t know.”
In night court she stated her views to the judge, who was, of course, a man: “I’ve got as much right to smoke as you have. never heard of this new law, and don’t want to hear about it. No man shall dictate to me.”
The shameless hussy was found guilty and fined $5.00 but she refused to pay and was thrown in jail for her impudence.
The Sullivan Act lasted only two weeks before being vetoed by Mayor George McClellan. Smoking attracted women as a symbol of liberation and sophistication, especially in the post-World War I period. Here is a picture of my parents in the late 1940s. What makes my mother’s cigarette addiction so important is that she was a recovering tuberculosis patient with only one lung.
