Depression-era America was a period in which its criminal element were figures of great public interest. The restrictions of Prohibition and the hardships of the Dirty Thirties helped persuade many law-abiding citizens that the nation’s outlaw class were latter-day Robin Hoods or at least celebrities worth reading about. The names of John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Baby Face Nelson, Bonnie and Clyde, and Ma Barker were on the lips of school children, reporters, politicians, and furious police officials.
One of the most famed of the banditti was Charles Arthur Floyd, aka “Pretty Boy”, fabled in literature, film, and song. Listen to his tale as recounted by Woody Guthrie:
Well gather round me children, a story I will tell About pretty boy Floyd the outlaw, Oklahoma knew him well. It was in the town of Shawnee on a Saturday afternoon His wife beside him in the wagon as into town they rode.
Then along came the deputy sheriff in a manner rather rude Using vulgar words of language, his wife she overheard. Then pretty boy grabbed a long chain and the deputy grabbed a gun And in the fight that followed he laid that deputy down.
Then he ran to the trees and bushes to live a life of shame Every crime in Oklahoma was added to his name. He ran to the trees and bushes on the Canadian river shore And many a starving farmer opened up his door.
It was in Oklahoma City, it was on a Christmas day A whole carload of groceries with a letter that did say: You say that I’m an outlaw, you say that I’m a thief Well here’s a Christmas dinner for the families on relief.
As through this life you travel you meet some funny men. Some will rob you with a six-gun and some with a fountain pen. As through this life you ramble, as through this life you roam You’ll never see an outlaw take a family from their home.
There is a lot of poetic anti-capitalist license in Guthrie’s version of events. Rather than being forced into a life of crime, Floyd was already a thief and convict by the time he was 21. After his release from prison in 1929 he turned his hand to bank robbing. Despite the killings that often marked his passage, he acquired a reputation as a friend of the common man. Tales spread of his destroying mortgage documentation in banks and giving money to poor farmers, but there is little hard proof of this. What can be proven is a series of murders and thefts in Oklahoma, Missouri, and Ohio.
In June 1933 “the Kansas City Massacre” made the headlines; four policemen and a prisoner were killed in a botched rescue attempt – Floyd was named as a suspect but he publicly denied his involvement. By now local and federal authorities were turning up the pressure on the brigands. Machine Gun Kelly was caught, Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger had been gunned down, vaulting Floyd to the top of the Most Wanted List. In October 1934, after a car crash Floyd was cornered in a farmer’s field and shot to death. Baby Face Nelson was killed within weeks and Ma Barker was shot a few months later. The age of the rural outlaws had ended.
Like Nell Gwynn, Marie-Jeanne Bécu, aka Madame du Barry, rose from the depths of the sex trade to the heights of royal favour.
She was born in 1743, the illegitimate daughter of a seamstress and a monk. After a convent education, she worked as a street pedlar, a lady’s companion, a shop assistant, and a prostitute. She caught the eye of Jean du Barry, a Gascon nobleman who had made a fortune as a war contractor and who operated as a high-class pimp. He took her as his mistress and with his help she became one of Paris’s most successful courtesans. Her blonde hair, blue eyes, and pretty face (which seems rather insipid in contemporary portraits) eventually attracted Louis XV’s attention in 1768. Since the death of the king’s previous favourite Madame de Pompadour four years earlier, Louis had acknowledged no one as his maîtresse en titre. (Only the French could have invented an official role for a royal doxy, complete with state-funded apartments and privileges.) Du Barry needed a noble title to aspire to that role so a convenient marriage was arranged and she could openly appear at court.
Du Barry kept her royal lover happy until his death in 1774 by which time she had made powerful enemies for her dabbling in politics and her unbridled extravagance. The new queen, Marie Antoinette, had her banished to a convent for a time and du Barry was never able to return to the court of Louis XVI. She lived quietly on her rural estates until the French Revolution. She managed to survive the first few years of turmoil but her support of counter-revolutionary émigrés led to a sentence of death in December 1793. Her last words on the scaffold were “You are going to hurt me, please don’t hurt me, just one more moment, I beg you!”
We have spoken about ladies-in-waiting and the ease of their transition to the role of royal mistress. Sometimes, however, a woman is just so gosh-darn attractive that the king plucks her from the lower orders and keeps her as a pet. For a while.
Say hello then to Nell Gwynn, prostitute and actress (then, as now, the two professions were often considered one and the same), born in London in 1650 in the midst of the revolutionary Puritan rule of England. She seems to have grown up in a brothel but was attracted to the life of the stage where, since the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, for the first time in English history women were allowed to take women’s parts. By her mid-teens she had moved from being an orange-seller in the theatre to increasingly large roles in plays, especially comedies. Her reputation as “pretty, witty, Nell” attracted a series of noble lovers and by 1668 she had captured the attention of dissolute King Charles II.
Charles II kept a string of mistresses, often juggling more than one at a time, so there was no reason to think that Nell’s tenure would be a long one. In 1670 she gave birth to a royal bastard, whom she named Charles. The king had so many illegitimate children that he was known as “The Father of his Country” but he was uncommonly good to them, handing out royal titles and pensions with an open hand; in fact many of today’s English upper crust owe their noble status to these episodes. Nell’s son became the Duke of St. Albans.
Charles was a secret Catholic who was receiving bribes from French king Louis XIV to openly proclaim himself a member of the Church of Rome and to bring the country into obedience to the pope but by this time anti-Catholicism had become the English popular religion. Thinking Nell’s coach to be that of the king’s Catholic mistress, the Duchess of Portsmouth, an Oxford mob created a disturbance — to quell it, she stepped out and cried “Good people you are mistaken; I am the Protestant whore.”
Nell was a gambler and big spender, leaving her frequently in debt. On Charles’s deathbed he asked of his brother and heir James II, “Let not poor Nelly starve.” She died in 1687, probably of syphillis. She requested that her funeral sermon be preached on the text from Luke 15: “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.”
As we learned in yesterday’s thrilling episode, the post of lady-in-waiting to a queen may be a launching pad to the role of mistress to the king. Such women are chosen for their beauty and amiability, are generally well-born, and are constantly at court, where they are visible – and accessible– to the monarch. Because royal wives are usually chosen for their dowries or political connections, pretty young ladies-in-waiting often outshine their queen, hanging upon the cheek of night like a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear.
Let me then introduce Înes de Castro, lady-in-waiting to Constanza Manuel, wife of the Portuguese Prince Peter. However great the attractions of Constanza were , they paled in Peter’s eyes to those of Înes with whom he soon began an illicit relationship. The prince, nonetheless, did his marital duty and poor Constanza died giving birth in 1345 to a son, Fernando. As far as Peter was concerned, this left him free to marry his true love, but he was forbidden to do so by his father King Afonso who, for dynastic reasons, needed his son to wed higher up the royal ladder than Înes.
Peter stubbornly refused to remarry and rejected the princesses his father suggested for a future bride. He lived apart from the court with Înes who produced three children. King Afonso feared that his son was favouring Spanish relatives of Înes and that civil war might erupt if the relationship continued, so in 1355 he sent three assassins to where she was living. They murdered her in front of one of her children.
At this affront Peter rebelled against his father. He was defeated but soon after succeeded to the throne of Portugal upon the king’s death. He captured two of the assassins and ripped their hearts out with his own hands. A splendid legend says that he had Înes disinterred, her corpse clad in royal robes and enthroned. All the nobility that had slighted her when she was alive were forced to kneel before the cadaver and kiss the skeletal hands.
Peter had a magnificent dual tomb erected in the Alcobaça monastery. He and Înes were buried facing each other so that on Resurrection Day the first thing they would see would be each other.
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.
