Sunday 20 February 2011

William Blake

NAME William Blake

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Mystic poet and artist.

BIRTH b November 28, 1757 at 28 Broad Street (now Broadwick St) in the Soho district of London.

FAMILY BACKGROUND William's father, James Blake, was a non conformist who owned a clothing shop and was not rich. His mother was Catherine Wright Armitage Blake.
William was the third son of seven children, two of whom died in infancy. Dearest to his heart was his younger brother, Robert, who died very young in 1787.

CHILDHOOD A visionary from early childhood, at the age of 4 the Almighty peered at William through a window and made him cry. Once he told his parents he had seen a tree full of angels and the prophet Ezekiel, which angered his father who thought his son a liar.
As a child he wanted to be a painter and by the age of 12, William was diligently collecting prints. He was also writing poetry; the lyric, “How sweet I roam’d from Field to Field” is thought to have been written before he'd entered his teens.
Blake's Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794) provide the first example of literature concerned with the essential goodness of children in the spirit of Rousseau’s educational philosophy. Although not intended for children, they were highly influential; he portrayed childhood as a happy and virtuous time and growing up a saddening and complicated process.

EDUCATION William barely went to school, (only enough to lean to read and write) and was otherwise educated at home by his mother.
In 1779 William became a student at the newly formed Royal Academy located at the Old Somerset House, near the Strand. While the terms of his study required no payment, he was expected to supply his own materials. Throughout his time there, Blake rebelled against the aesthetic doctrines of its president, Sir Joshua Reynolds, an advocate of what he regarded as the unfinished style of fashionable painters such as Rubens. Blake preferred to draw from his imagination.
Later in life, he had a profound contempt for classical education, "I never was sent to school, to be flog'd into following the style of a fool," he Wrote.

CAREER RECORD William began engraving copies of drawings of Greek antiquities at ten years old, a practice that was then preferred to real-life drawing. Four years later he became apprenticed to James Basire of Great Queen Street, London. After two years Basire sent him to draw the monuments in the old churches of London, a task that he thoroughly enjoyed. At the age of twenty-one Blake finished his apprenticeship and studied briefly at the Royal Academy whilst setting himself up as a professional engraver. From then on Blake laboured most days on engraving mainly for book illustrations. He was only able to devote himself to art and poetry in his spare time.
A brief CV
1783 Blake's first collection of poems, Poetical Sketches, was printed. 1784-87 Started a print shop with another engraver James Parker and Blake’s brother, Robert, at 27 Broad Street, Golden Square, London after his father's death. It failed after three years.
1788 Blake began to experiment with relief etching, a method he would use to produce most of his books, paintings, pamphlets and poems.
1800-03 Blake moved to a cottage at Felpham in Sussex (now West Sussex) to take up a job illustrating the works of his friend and patron William Hayley, who was a mediocre but fashionable poet.
1804-20 Blake could get little work. In the 1820s he produced his beautiful illustrations to the Book of Job.

FASHION Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions and openly wore the red revolutionary bonnet in the streets.
For some mystical reason Blake was not fond of soap - his wife contended that his skin not only did not attract dirt, but positively repelled it.

CHARACTER Amiable and agreeable, single minded, unworldly, maybe mad, eccentric, stubborn visionary.

SENSE OF HUMOUR In the early 1780s Blake wrote the satirical fragment An Island in the Moon, which made fun of scientific dilettantism.

RELATIONSHIPS The first time Blake met pretty Catherine Boucher, the daughter of a Chelsea market gardener, the conviction that this was the man she must marry so overwhelmed her that she fainted. She was a visionary too. Blake, meanwhile was recovering from a relationship that had culminated in a refusal of his marriage proposal. He recounted the story of his heartbreak for Catherine and her parents, after which he asked Catherine, "Do you pity me?" When she responded affirmatively, he declared, "Then I love you."
At the age of 25 William married the illiterate Catherine, who was five years his junior, on 18 August 1782 in St. Mary's Church, Battersea. After the wedding she signed the register with a cross as she couldn't write her name. There were early problems, however, such as Catherine's illiteracy and the couple's failure to produce children. At one point, in accordance with the beliefs of the Swedenborgian Society, Blake suggested bringing in a concubine. Catherine was distressed at the idea, and he dropped it. Later Blake taught his wife to read and write. Whilst William engraved words and pictures on copper printing plates, Catherine made the printing impressions, hand coloured the pictures and bound the books. She cooked for him and made his clothes never complaining. He was never unfaithful to her despite writing about sexual energy and polygamy and their marriage remained a close and devoted one until his death.
"I have very little of Mr Blake's company. He is always in paradise." Catherine once quipped about her husband's visions.

MONEY AND FAME Blake initially made as much impact as a sponge dropped in a bath. His poetry in picture books did not sell well in his day and his Songs of Innocence earned him little. Neither were his unusual paintings popular. He was considered by many to have been insane and merely an interesting oddity.On the few occasions when critics did notice him, it was because they suspected he was mad. he was known as a lunatic.
At the end of his life Blake enjoyed a little success, particularly with his Bible illustrations when Samuel Palmer and his coterie looked to him as a guru figure for their movement, "The Ancients". He sold a a number of works to Thomas Butts, a patron who saw Blake more as a friend in need than an artist. Geoffrey Keynes, a biographer, described Butts as, "a dumb admirer of genius, which he could see but not quite understand." Dumb or not, we have him to thank for eliciting and preserving so many works.
By the end of the nineteenth century, he was recognised as the genius he was.

FOOD AND DRINK If Catherine thought her William was spending too much time with his angels and not enough earning his daily bread at meal time she would place an empty plate at his end of the table.

ART Blake's radical artistic techniques and colour experiments were not appreciated in his time. His figures were usually elongated and heavily muscled and he was poor at painting landscapes and animals. He habitually claimed that the biblical subjects of his paintings were actually present in his studio.
His poetry in picture books featured his great innovative art form, which he called "Illuminated Printing". Blake wrote his texts in reverse and illustrated them on metal plates through a method of relief etching. The pages were then printed and coloured before being bound. His precise method is not known. The most likely explanation is that he wrote the words and drew the pictures for each poem on a copper plate, using some liquid impervious to acid, which, when applied, left the text and illustration in relief. Ink or colour wash was then applied, and the printed picture was finished by hand in water-colours.
Blake shrank from drawing nude bodies because he found them corpse like and "smelling of mortality".
Blake's engraving of 21 pictures to his own Book of Job (1826), is considered by many to be his finest art. He was given the commission by the painter John Cinnell.



MUSIC Whenever he had the chance Blake would sing his poetry to friends and his wife. Instruments of the day included the church pump organ.

LITERATURE John Milton was his favorite poet, an ever present in the Blake library. William and Catherine liked to sit naked in their summer house being Adam and Eve whilst reciting passages from Paradise Lost.
Blake did all his publishing for his poetry in picture books, even making his own ink, hand-printing the pages and getting Mr's Blake to sew on the covers.
His Three most famous works are:
1789 Songs of Innocence poetry collection, which eloquently explored issues of divine love. Unable to find a publisher for his Songs of Innocence, Blake and his wife engraved and printed them at home.
1794 Songs of Experience , which considered the nature of evil. Amongst the 26 poems are the famous:
"Tyger, Tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry." Despite admiring its fearful symmetry Blake appears unable to spell 'tiger.'
1804 Jerusalem Taken from his preface to his long poem, Milton, it was one of the most complicated works Blake ever wrote. A hymn of spiritual power and sexual liberty, Blake wrote Jerusalem whilst living in Felpham, West Sussex despite the fact there are very few dark, satanic mills in that nick of the woods.

NATURE An lover of animals, Blake used his poetic gift to renounce cruelty to God's creatures. "A Robin Redbreast in a cage. Puts all Heaven in a rage," he wrote in Auguries of Innocence.

HOBBIES AND SPORTS As a youth, William spent his time on endless walks - and did these feet endlessly trot...

SCIENCE Anti science, Blake preferred an intuitive approach.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Baptised as a child at St James, Piccadilly, William was brought up on the Bible in a non-conformist household. The visionary English artist and poet was known as “barmy” Blake, as he believed he had long conversations with biblical heroes and other famous historic figures. Even as a child he had visions of angels in a tree and the prophet, Ezekiel in a field.
The Non-conformist mystic wanted to escape from puritanical repressive Christianity and had contempt for organized religion. He believed that England had a special relationship with God, having accepted the myth that Christianity had been established at Glastonbury almost in Christ’s own lifetime, by his follower Joseph of Arimethea, and that as the Jews have failed him, God replaced them with the English as his “chosen people.”
Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793) argued that in time evil will be turned into good thus precluding the need for hell.
Blake: "He who would do good must do it in minute particulars. General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite and flatterer."

POLITICS At weekly dinners Blake met the leading radicals and freethinkers of his age, including Wollstonecraft, Richard Price, Joseph Priestley, William Godwin, Henry Fuseli, and Thomas Paine. He espoused savage anarchy and also peace and love and was an anti monarchist.
SCANDAL Blake's feet in those ancient times, sure tread upon other people's toes.
(1)In the long afternoons Blake spent sketching in Westminster Abbey, during his apprenticeship to James Basire he was occasionally interrupted by the boys of Westminster School, one of whom "tormented" Blake so much one afternoon that he knocked the boy off a scaffold to the ground, "upon which he fell with terrific Violence".
(2) During his time at Felpham, Blake was charged with high treason. He'd been overheard by a soldier in his garden uttering such seditious expressions as "D—n the King, d—n all his subjects" and he would "fight for Napoleon sooner than England." Blake maintained that ”the whole accusation is a wilful Perjury“. Found not guilty but a time of great fear for Blake, he felt his whole work was on trial.
(3) Also during his time at Felpham, Blake had a punch up with a soldier whom he'd discovered in his garden.
(4) Blake helped Thomas Paine escape to France when his "Rights of Man was deemed too inflammatory in a revolutionary climate.

MILITARY RECORD Blake lived during a time of unrest, war and fear of revolutionary. Living in the capital city he felt it was a maelstrom of uncertainties.
A pacifist, his "Dark Satanic mills" in Jerusalem refer to gunpowder factories.

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS Though Blake's vast output of visionary art and poetry is revered now, in his own time they were regarded as convincing evidence of insanity. "There is no doubt this poor man was mad, but there is something, in the madness of this man which interest me more than the sanity of Lord Byron and Walter Scott," said Wordsworth said of the "cockney nutcase".

HOMES 1785-90 28 Poland Street, London.
1790-1800 Lived at 13 Hercules Buildings, Lambeth Marsh.
1800-03 Lived at Felpham, West Sussex at what is now Blake House until his arrest for treason. It was a damp, thatched cottage which he rented for £20 a year. It is still a private residence.
1804-21 Lived in one room in grim poverty at 17 South Molton Street, London.
1821-27 Fountain Court off West End of Fleet Street.

TRAVEL Couldn't afford it. He never ventured further than Sussex and that was only once.

DEATH Died 1827 in London. Buried Bunhill Fields in East End where traditionally the Non Conformists were buried.

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA 1. (a) Richard Ashcroft borrowed the words of William Blake's London for the 1995 Verve single "History".
(b) Jah Wobble's 1996 CD The Inspiration of William Blake is some of his poems set to music.
2. "If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is infinite." (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell) 1790-93. From this quote came the title of Aldous Huxley's book, The Doors of Perception. From this book came the name of Jim Morrison's rock band, The Doors.
3. Blake's poem Jerusalem was set to music in 1916 by Charles Parry to beef up British morale during the bleakest days of the First World War. Despite the unorthodox theology of the words it is now one of the most popular hymns in the English language and many of the English population would like this to replace God Save The Queen as their national anthem.
4. The Emglish classical vocal quartet Blake chose their namr from a mutual appreciation of the poet and artist's peerless thirst for innovation.



ACHIEVEMENTS 1. Blake created what he himself termed "Republican Art" in which themes of individual liberty and justice were explored. Much of his poetry was an expression of his anti-church brand of mystical religion.
2. Greatly influenced the 1950s Beat Generation.
3. Created a new form of art with his etching technique
4. His later writings such as Jerusalem and Milton (1804-08) were revolutionary in their free verse form having no plot, characters, rhyme nor metre.
4. There is a memorial to Blake in St Paul's Cathedral.
5. Jerusalem is the official hymn of the Woman's Institute.

References
(1) The Oxford Companion to English Literature
(2) Wikipedia

Sunday 13 February 2011

Otto Von Bismarck

NAME Otto Edward Leopold Von Bismarck also known as the Iron Chancellor.

WHAT FAMOUS FOR German Statesman.

BIRTH Otto was born in 1815 on his family estate at Schönhausen, a village on the Elbe, NW of Berlin.

FAMILY BACKGROUND Otto came from a family who belonged to the Prussian Junker (landowner) class. From his birth he held the title Graf (Count). Otto's father, Ferdinand Von Bismarck, was a landowner and a former Prussian military officer; his mother, Wilhelmine Mencken, originally belonged to a prosperous bourgeois family. Otto had several siblings, but only an elder brother (Bernhard) and a younger sister (Malvina) survived into adulthood.

CHILDHOOD A very mischievous child, as a youth Otto was an indefatigable duellist. He was known as the mad Junker.

EDUCATION Otto was more cosmopolitan and highly educated than was normal for men of his background, speaking and writing English, French and Russian. He was educated at the Friedrich Wilhelm and the Grauen Kloster Secondary schools. Thereafter, at the age of seventeen, he joined the Georg August University of Göttingen, where he spent only a year before enrolling in the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin. Desirous of joining the civil service, he studied law and despite devoting little time to study, he passed his examinations in 1835.
His brain weighed 4lb 3oz.

CAREER RECORD 1836 Bismarck entered government service but could only obtain minor administrative positions in Aachen and Potsdam. As his work proved monotonous and uninteresting, he soon resigned as a civil servant.
1839 Upon his mother's death in 1839, Bismarck took over the management of his family's run-down estates at Schönhausen and restored their profitability.
1844 Had another go in the civil service but resigned after a month as he was unable to put up with his superiors.
1847 Entered Prussian parliament emerging as a rigid conservative. In the year of his marriage, Bismarck was chosen as a representative to the newly created Prussian legislature, the Vereinigter Landtag.
1851-59 Appointed Prussian representative to the Germanic Confederation, a league of the 39 German states at the Diet of Frankfurt.
1859-62 In St Petersburg as Prussian ambassador to Russia
1862 Offered a place in the Russian diplomatic service after the Czar misunderstood a comment about his likelihood of missing Saint Petersburg. Bismarck courteously declined the offer and instead was made sent to Paris to serve as ambassador to France. Returned to Berlin three months later and appointed Prime Minister and minister for foreign affairs
1871 Proclaims the German empire and becomes the first Chancellor.
1878 Presides over the international Congress of Berlin.
1890 When Kaiser Wilhelm II came to the throne in 1888 it was bad news Munchengladbach for Bismarck as Willy considered the Iron Chancellor's era to be over. In 1890 he forced him to resign over a quarrel about the rights of a minister to advise the emperor and the abolition of anti socialist legislation. He spent his last years in retirement looking after the family estates.

APPEARANCE Bismarck was ungainly, physically dominating, stern in expression, prematurely bald. Small hands and feet, clear and ruddy complexion, sparkling eyes, bushy eyebrows. He had a bushy upside v moustache.
He spoke with great vivacity, mellow and sonorous.
"Bismarck from the outlook of political actualities he was the greatest man of his century. I have never thought of him as merely the comic figure with three hairs on his bald head and a heavy football." Said Mussolini who himself was unable to part with a comb from an early age.

FASHION Bismarck liked to wear informal, simple Prussian country gentleman attire, with a soft hat, neckerchief, coat, trousers and double soiled boots. His formal uniform was that of a Prussian military officer.

CHARACTER Intelligent, perceptive, charming, straight forward, honest, stickler for formality, wily and calm. (Once in the Prussian Diet he was howled down. He calmly leant against the tribune, took out a newspaper from his pocket, read it and everything was calm.).

SENSE OF HUMOUR The original Herr Fun, when younger Otto got up to mischievous tricks such as releasing a fox out of a bag in a drawing room. Developed into a great wit and teller of anecdotes especially at the enormous dinners he threw.

RELATIONSHIPS Bismarck placed his civil service career in jeopardy after falling in love with an English heiress in Leicester and outstaying his leave trying to win her.
Bismarck married the noblewoman Johanna von Puttkamer (1824–1894) in 1847 on 28 July 1847 in Alt-Kolziglow, near Reinfeld. Their long and happy marriage produced three children, Herbert (b. 1849), Wilhelm (b. 1852) and Marie (b. 1847). Johanna was a shy, retiring and devout Lutheran. She helped iron out some of his madder tendencies.

MONEY AND FAME Bismarck established his popularity in Prussia by whipping up nationalistic fervour and advocating his blood and iron policy-military power to achieve prosperity.
He introduced a single currency and central bank plus national accident and health insurance.
Bismarck also introduced an innovative pension scheme by which all workers earning over 2,000 marks a year aged over 16 contributed equal amounts and it was payable when they reached 70.

FOOD AND DRINK In his younger days, gastronomy was Bismarck's ruling passion. Once he started attending the Diet his intake increased even more. In 1878 Bismarck presided over the division of Africa by the colonial powers at the Conference of Berlin while eating pickled herrings with both hands. By 1883 he was very bloated, over 17 stone, which made him ill and very bad tempered so for months he lived on a diet of herrings. By 1885 he was down to 14 stone. So the lesson that can be learnt from this is, if at first you don't recede diet, diet again.
A chronic insomnia sufferer, the Iron Chancellor would nightly devour caviar to give him a thirst for strong beer to help him to sleep. His favorite tipple was Black Velvet, a mixture of champagne and Guinness. He was also partial to burgundy wine.

LITERATURE Bismarck spent his final years gathering his memoirs Gedanken und Erinnerungen, or Thoughts and Memories. A work of questionable accuracy, in which the former Iron Chancellor increased the drama around every event and always presented himself favorably.



NATURE When Bismarck was Chancellor he had two Danish hounds called Tyras and Tyras 2, a gift from the emperor.

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Bismarck enjoyed country pursuits such as horse riding and hunting.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Bismarck received a humanistic education and was a freethinker in his younger days. Around the age of thirty he had an intense friendship with Marie von Thadden, who was newly married to a friend of his. Under her influence, he became a Pietist Lutheran, and he later recorded that at Marie's deathbed (from typhoid) he prayed for the first time since his childhood. His Lutheran wife, who was Marie's cousin also helped him to discover the Christian faith.
As Chancellor, he cracked down on Catholics who resisted the power of the new economy. One of Bismarck’s ministers, Adalbert Falf, attacked Roman Catholic freedoms in the Kulturkampf (cultural struggle). It was an attempt to subordinate the Roman Catholic Church in Germany to the state and the laws arising from this prohibited all Catholic religious assemblies. Many members of Catholic religious orders were expelled, including the Jesuits, a thousand priests were imprisoned or exiled and a million Catholics were left without their sacraments.
Bismarck: "We Germans fear God and nothing else on earth and it is with the fear of God and nothing else that we have and cherish peace."

POLITICS The phrase ‘Dropping the Pilot’ meaning to dispense with a valued leader originated in Prussia in 1890 when a Punch cartoon showed Kaiser Wilhem II leaning over the side of the ship as Otto Bismarck dressed as a pilot walked down the steps to disembark.

SCANDAL Bismarck and King Wilhelm 1st had a love/hate relationship. They would have shouting matches which sometimes resulted in tears.

MILITARY RECORD Bismarck nearly enrolled in the British army in India whilst in England but he decided against it as he couldn't work out what the Indians had done to warrant what they had coming.
1862 Bismarck said in a 1862 speech in the Prussian chamber justifying an increase in taxes to pay for a larger army: "The great questions of our day cannot be solved by speeches and majority votes…but by iron and blood."
1864 Conquered the Danish duchies of Schleswig-Holstein.
1866 Defeated Austrian in the Seven Weeks War. Bismarck had engineered it himself to establish Prussia's position as leader of the German states. He told his general to treat the Austrians as "fellow countrymen homicidally if possible."
During the Battle of Sadowa in 1866, the King of Prussia exposed himself to danger from gunshot and refused to withdraw in spite of military advice. Bismarck (who was not any old iron) remained silent during arguments, but he gave the king’s horse a sharp unnoticed kick in the flank that caused the animal to go back. With victory at the Battle of Sadowa he warded off Austria and allowed Prussia to take an important place in the confederation of North Germany.
1870-71 The Franco- Prussian War was engineered by Bismarck by means of an alteration in the famous ems telegram. He tricked the French into this war by altering a telegram from the king of Prussia in which he struck out the king's conciliatory words so that the telegram sounded belligerent. As a result the French declared war.
1890 The idea that the age of 65 is officially "elderly" was originated by Bismarck when he wanted to get rid of some ageing army officers.
Bismarck: "As for England and Germany, I regard it as an impossibility that these two countries should ever be at war and as singularly unlikely that they should even quarrel. Seriously were that to happen however it might lead to a continental conflict."

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS Bismarck carried a great scar from one of his youthful duels.
Bismsrck suffered from neuralgia, chronic insomnia, headaches, gall bladder problems and gluttony. His hypochondria led him to wrongly believe he'd had a stroke in 1880.
A pioneer of state socialism, Bismarck managed to get a social insurance system passed by the Reichstag, insuring against illness. Germany was the first European country to establish such a system of health insurance for its workers.

HOMES Bismarck's official residence was in Wilhelmstrasse. He spent his last years at Friedrichsruh, an estate near Hamburg given to Bismarck by the old emperor when he was appointed emperor. It was 20,000 acres comprising 4,000 farming and 16,000 woodland.

TRAVEL During his time as a minister in Paris, Bismarck spent as much time as possible in Biarritz as he greatly disliked the French capital city.

DEATH Died 1898 at Friedrichsruh, where he is entombed in the Bismarck-Mausoleum. He managed one final attack on Wilhelm II by having his tombstone inscribed with the epitaph "Here lies a true servant of the Emperor Wilhelm I".

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA Possibly the most famous cartoon of the 19th century was Tennell's drawing of Bismarck having been sacked by Kaiser Wilhelm entitled "Dropping the Pilot".
Curt Jurgens played Bismarck in several episodes of the 1974 BBC TV series Fall of Eagles.

ACHIEVEMENTS 1. Changed Germany from an unruly collection of states dominated by Prussia to a rich powerful country by provoking wars with Denmark, Austria and France. The ensuing patriotic fever united all the states and in 1871 Bismarck struck whilst the iron was hot and founded the new German empire.
2.1878 The Congress of Berlin with Bizzy and Dizzy (Disraeli). His role was the honest broker in recognising independent Romania, Serbia and Montenegro and creating an autonomous Bulgaria.
3. The first leader to introduce between insurance schemes for illness, work related accident and chronic invalidism. In 1889 he introduced pension schemes. A reformer without getting bogged down by too many irons in the fire. (sorry, that's the last of the 'iron' puns)
4. Bismarck, the state capital of North Dakota, is named after the famous Prussian.

Sunday 6 February 2011

Saint Bernadette

NAME Saint Bernadette (born Maria-Bernada Soubirous - Bernadette being the sobriquet by which she was universally known so we call her Bernadette too).

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Saint

BIRTH b1844 Lourdes, France

FAMILY BACKGROUND Bernadette was the daughter of François Soubirous (1807–1871), a poor miller with no regular employment, and his wife Louise (née Castérot) (1825–1866), a laundress. She was the eldest of five children who survived infancy. Hard times had fallen on rural France and the family lived in extreme poverty, relying on their love and support for one another and their religious devotion.

CHILDHOOD All the family members sought what employment they could. Bernadette did farm work, notably sheep herding, for a family friend in nearby Bartres, and also waited tables in her Aunt Bernarde's tavern. She returned to Lourdes in January 1858 having just turned 14 to attend a free school and a month later Bernadette saw her first vision of Our Lady.

EDUCATION After Bernadette returned to Lourdes in January 1858, she attended the free school run by the Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction so she could finish learning the Catechism in order to receive her first Holy Communion.

CAREER RECORD 1856-58 Put into service doing farm work and waiting tables
1858 Saw visions of Mary, after which Bernadette left her home town and joined the Sisters of Notre Dome of Nevers. There, she did light work and leaned to read and write
1866 Bernadette joined the mother house at Nevers. She spent the rest of her brief life there, working as an assistant in the infirmary and later as a sacristan, creating beautiful embroidery for altar cloths and vestments. She was kept as a novice for ten years by the ill-natured mother superior.

CHARACTER Sensitive, pleasant, rather backward and slow, humble, self effacing.

MONEY AND FAME Bernadette entered a convent in order to get on with her life and get away from the trying publicity and over enthusiastic attentions of insensitive Lourdes pilgrims.

INTERESTS FOOD AND DRINK As a child, Bernadette lived on mashed corn, the staple

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY One cold February day in 1858 a poor 14-year-old peasant girl from Lourdes, France, called Bernadette was collecting twigs for firewood together with her sister, Marie and friend, Jeanne Abadie when she saw a vision of a lady near a small cave on the bank of a river. This lady looked like, according to Bernadette, a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus. To make sure the vision was not a manifestation of the devil, Bernadette threw holy water at her. The lady inclined her head gracefully until the bottle was empty. Despite the temptation to run away the young peasant girl fell to her knees transfixed. Despite no one else seeing the vision, soon crowds gathered at the place of her “acquero” as Bernadette referred to it.
The peasant girl started seeing more visions. During the ninth vision the gathered crowd witnessed Bernadette dig into the earth and uncover a trickle of water that proved to be a spring. An old stone mason with a blind eye bathed it in the spring’s water and his eyesight was restored. A large crowd of people gathered at Lourdes on the day of Bernadette’s eighteenth vision but still she was the only one to see the lady. This time she asked the young woman who she is; the answer in Provencal was “Que soy era Immaculada Councepciou”, (“I am the Immaculate Conception”.) The young peasant girl did not understand this but reported it to her parish priest. Despite the church authorities scepticism regarding Bernadette’s claims of a miracle, sick people from all over France began making their way to Lourdes.

SCANDAL Bernadette was beaten by her mother when she told her of her visions. Also the church authorities were sceptical of Bernadette's claims of a miracle.

MILITARY RECORD As a nun at Nevers, Bernadette helped nurse wounded casualties of the Franco-Prussian war.

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS Bernadette was frail and asthmatic after a near-fatal attack of cholera in infancy and after joining the Sisters of Nevers she was often bedridden. She used snuff to help relieve the symptoms for which she was roundly criticised by another sister who told her St Vincent de Paul nearly wasn't canonised because of his snuff use. "Well" said Bernadette to her critic, "doesn't that mean that because you don't take snuff you will be canonised."
During a severe asthma attack, she asked for water from the Lourdes spring, and her symptoms subsided, never to return. However, Bernadette did not seek healing in this way when she later contracted tuberculous of the bone in the right knee.
At the ninth visitation the lady told Bernadette to drink from the spring that flowed under the rock. A crowd gathered and they witnessed Bernadette dig in the earth and drink from a muddy patch. In the next few days, a spring began to flow from the muddy patch first dug by Bernadette. An old stone mason with a blind eye bathed it in the spring's water and as others also followed her example it was soon reported to have healing properties. In the years that followed, Bernadette followed the development of Lourdes as a pilgrimage shrine, but was not present for the consecration of the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception there in 1876.

HOMES By the time Bernadette received her visions, her family's financial and social status had declined to the point where they lived in a one-room basement, in the old Lourdes prison. They had previously been evicted from two mills and were housed there for free by her mother's cousin, Andre Sajoux.
By 1860 her father was set up in a new mill by the local bishop.

DEATH Bernadette died at her convent of tuberculous. On 16 April 1879 the terminally ill Bernadette was heard to mumble “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for me, poor sinner, poor sinner.” A few seconds later she died. Her body was buried and exhumed three separate times in the next 45 years in attempts to verify the incorruptibility of her corpse and therefore her sainthood. Her body is today remarkably intact and is on display at the chapel of the Convent of St Gildard at Nevers.

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA 1. (a) The Village of St Bernadette won the 1959 Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. Anne Shelton got to #27 in the UK chart with her version whilst Andy Williams peaked at #7 in the USA with the same song.
(b) Song of Bernadette is a song first recorded by Jennifer Warnes from her 1986 album Famous Blue Raincoat Warnes also co-wrote it with Leonard Cohen and Bill Elliott. The song was later covered by Bette Midler.

2. Bernadette's life was given a fictionalised treatment in Franz Werfel's 1942 novel, The Song of Bernadette. It was extremely popular, spending more than a year on the New York Times Best Seller list and 13 weeks in first place.

3. Werfel's novel was adapted into a 1943 film, also titled The Song of Bernadette. Jennifer Jones won the Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of the French saint.

ACHIEVEMENTS 1. Saint Bernadette was canonised in 1933 by the Catholic Church and her feat day is celebrated on 16 April.
2. Lourdes is now a major center where Catholic pilgrims from around the globe reaffirm their beliefs. Close to 5 million pilgrims visit the town every year. Within France, only Paris has more hotels than Lourdes.