Monday 16 May 2011

Robert Browning


NAME Robert Browning

WHAT FAMOUS FOR English poet

BIRTH b 7 May 1812 Southampton Way, Camberwell, London, England

FAMILY BACKGROUND Robert's father Robert Browning, a man of fine intellect and character, was a well-off clerk for the Bank of England, earning about £150 per year. Browning's father had been sent to the West Indies to work on a sugar plantation. Revolted by the slavery there, he returned to England and became an abolitionist.
Robert's mother, Sarah Anna Wiedemann, was a devout non conformist Scot. The daughter of a German shipowner who had settled in Dundee, she was a talented musician,to whom Robert was very close.
Robert was bought up with his younger sister Sarianna in Camberwell. Sarianna, also gifted, became her brother's companion in his later years.

CHILDHOOD Robert was an extremely bright child and voracious reader and his father encouraged his interest in literature and the arts. By the age of twelve, Browning had written a book of poetry which he later destroyed when no publisher could be found.
His childhood hero was the poet, Shelley.

EDUCATION After being at one or two private schools, and showing an insuperable dislike to school life, Robert was educated at home by a tutor via the resources of his father's extensive library. He was a rapid learner and by the age of fourteen he was fluent in French, Greek, Italian and Latin. At the age of sixteen, Robert studied Greek at University College London but dropped out after his first year to pursue his own reading at his own pace. His mother’s staunch evangelical faith prevented his studying at either Oxford University or Cambridge University, both then open only to members of the Church of England. However, in later years he was awarded an honorary degree by Oxford University.

CAREER RECORD Robert refused a formal career and ignored his parents' remonstrations, dedicating himself to poetry. His earliest poem Pauline (1833) achieved little.


CHARACTER Elizabeth Browning said of Robert (see left)in a letter "Robert's goodness and tenderness are past speaking of.... He reads to me, talks and jests to make me laugh." But then she was biased. (1)

RELATIONSHIPS In 1846 Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were secretly married in St Marylebone church after correspondence in praise of her poetry led to their meeting and courtship. He called Elizabeth "A soul offire in a shell of pearl."
Six years his elder and an invalid, Elizabeth could not believe that the vigorous and worldly Robert Browning really loved her as much as he professed to. Browning imitated his hero Shelley by spiriting his beloved off to Italy in September 1846, which became her home almost continuously until her death. As Elizabeth had some money of her own, the couple were reasonably comfortable in Italy, and their relationship together was harmonious. The Brownings were well respected in Italy, and even famous. Elizabeth grew stronger and in 1849, at the age of 43, she gave birth to a son, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, whom they called Pen. He became an artist and critic, got married but had no legitimate children, so there are apparently no direct descendants of the two famous poets.
After Elizabeth's death, Robert had many flirtatious relationships. He was fond of writing tender, nonsensical verses to his many lady friends.
In 1869 he proposed marriage to Lady Ashburton only to be rejected. This proposal, an example of his propensity towards social climbing, embarrassed Browning in society and shamed him over his infidelity over his dead wife.

MONEY AND FAME Robert stayed at home until the age of 34, financially dependant on his family until his marriage. His father sponsored the publication of his son's poems.
Robert's wife was the better known poet during their life time, but he kept going in the rat race and gradually acquired a considerable and enthusiastic public fan base. Published separately in four volumes from November 1868 through to February 1869, The Ring and the Book was a huge success both commercially and critically, and finally brought Browning the renown he had sought and deserved for nearly thirty years of work. By the time of his death he was ranked as the leading poet of his time along with Tennyson.

FOOD AND DRINK Robert became a vegetarian aged 14 like his hero Shelley, which he gave up later.

MUSIC AND ARTS In 1830 Robert met the actor William Macready and tried several times to write verse drama for the stage - not very successfully. His most successful play was the 1837 Strafford.
Robert inherited substantial musical ability through his mother, and composed arrangements of various songs.

LITERATURE Robert's father was a literary collector, and he amassed a library of around 6,000 books, many of them rare. As a result, he was raised in a household of significant literary resources.
Some of Robert's early work was very heavy going. When members of the London Poetic Society asked Browning for an interpretation of a particularly obscure passage, he read it, twice shrugged his soldiers and said "When I wrote that, God and I knew what it meant, but now God alone knows."
Here's a list of some of Browning's major works
1833 Pauline Browning's career began with the publication of this anonymous poem. The piece, which disappeared without notice, would embarrass him for the rest of his life.
1835 Paracelsus The critics adored it but the public ignored it.
1841 Pippa Passes A beautiful collection of dramatic scenes.
1842 The Pied Piper of Hamelin This update of the medieval legend was one of Browning's most popular poems. It is probably the most famous verse written about rats until Michael Jackson sang about a rat called Ben.
1855 Men and Women This collection of fifty-one poems is now generally considered to contain some of the best of Browning's poetry. However, at the time it was not received well and sold poorly.
1868-69 The Ring and The Book This long blank-verse poem is considered by many to be Browning's greatest work. Based on a convoluted murder case from 1690s Rome, it tells the story of the murder in long dramatic monologues from 12 points of view.
1871 Balaustion's Adventure An adaptation of a play by Euripides about Ademtus and his devoted wife, Alcestis.
When challenged to find rhymes for orange, Browning came up with "From the Ganges to the Blorenge comes the Rajah once a month. Sometimes chewing on an orange. Sometimes reading from his Grunth. " (Blorenge is a small mountain in Wales. Grunth is a Sikh Holy Book.)



NATURE A couple of quotes: "And the muttering grew to a mumbling. And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling. And out of the houses the rats came tumbling." (The Pied Piper of Hamelin)
"That's the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you think he ever could recapture
The first fine careless rapture." (Home Thoughts From Abroad)

HOBBIES AND SPORTS In his poem about the unfortunate Pheidippides, the first marathon runner, who ran 26 miles to announce the Greek's glorious victory over the Persians before dropping dead, Browning wrote sympathetically, "Bursting his veins, he died, The bliss!"

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY When he was a teenager, Browning shocked his evangelical mother when he declared himself like his hero Shelley, an atheist. In later life he looked back on this as a passing phase and he became a knowledgeable Bible reader but always denied any Christian faith.
"God's in his Heaven. Alls right with the world." (Pippa Passes")

SCANDAL Browning's father in Law didn't smell a rat until Robert eloped with Elizabeth to Italy.

HOMES Browning was brought up at Southampton Way, Camberwell.
After he eloped to Italy with Elizabeth, they lived at Casa Guidi, Florence, which is now a home available to be rented.
After the death of Elizabeth in 1861 he spent the "season" in London and rest of time in the country or abroad. Between 1861 and 1887, his London address was 19 Warwick Crescent in Little Venice, Maida Vale. It is thought it was Browning who coined the name 'Little Venice.'

TRAVEL Browning travelled widely, joining a British diplomatic mission to St Petersburg, Russia in 1834, later journeying to Italy 1838 and 1844.
When the Brownings eloped from Wimpole Street, Robert was unable to work out the train and ferry timetables for their journey to Le Havre on their way to Italy. Elizabeth had to return to Wimpole Street for several days to take charge of organising the details of their elopement herself.
In 1878, he returned to Italy for the first time since Elizabeth's death, and returned there on several occasions
"Oh to be in England. Now that April's here." (Home Thoughts From Abroad 1845).

DEATH Browning died on 12 December 1889 at his son's apartment in the Ca' Rezzonico, Venice of bronchitis. He was brought back to London for burial in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey; his grave now lies immediately adjacent to that of Alfred Tennyson.

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA 1. The classic 1936 Hollywood movie The Barretts of Wimpole Street was based on a 1930 play by Rudolf Besier of the same title. Norma Shearer who played Elizabeth was Oscar-nominated, while Fredric March portrayed Robert Browning. In 1957 it was Jennifer Jones and Bill Travers turn to portray the same twosome.
2. John Lennon & Yoko Ono were inspired by the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Browning. They often joked they were the reincarnated spirits of "Bob and Liz". Two tracks, "Let Me Count The Ways" and "Grow Old with Me" on the Milk and Honey album were inspired by the poetry of Bob and Liz.

3. Clifford T Ward's "Home Thoughts From Abroad" is a tribute to Robert Browning. "You know, Home Thoughts From Abroad is such a beautiful poem
And I know how Robert Browning must have felt. 'Cause I'm feeling the same way about you."

ACHIEVEMENTS (1) Browning's innovative works incorporated psychological analysis and obscure historical characters and perfected the dramatic monologue. They have influenced many 20th century poet's such as Ezra Pound.
(2) His literary status was recognised by the award of an honorary fellowship at Balliol College, Oxford in 1867

Sources 1.800 years of Women's Letters Olga Kenyon
2. Wikipedia

Tuesday 10 May 2011

Elizabeth Browning


NAME Elizabeth (Moulton) Barrett Browning. Elizabeth and her siblings all had nicknames - Elizabeth's was "Ba".

WHAT FAMOUS FOR English poet famous for her love poetry.

BIRTH March 6, 1806 Coxhoe Hall, nr Durham (demolished in 1980s.)

FAMILY BACKGROUND Elizabeth's parents were Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett and Mary Graham Clarke, who married at St Nicholas Church, Gosforth (Tyne and Wear). His family, some of whom were part Creole, had lived for centuries in Jamaica, where they owned sugar plantations and relied on slave labour. Her mum came from a wealthy Newcastle family, also derived in part from slave labour. Liz lost her mother when she was 22.
Elizabeth was the eldest of their 12 children (eight boys and four girls). All the children lived to adulthood except for one girl, who died at the age of four when Elizabeth was eight. In 1840 her oldest and favorite brother Edward was tragically drowned.

CHILDHOOD Elizabeth was baptized at the age of 3 at Kelloe Parish Church, though she had already been baptized by a family friend in the first week after she was born. Later that year, their father bought Hope End, a 500-acre estate near the Malvern Hills in Ledbury, Herefordshire. Elizabeth had "a large room to herself, with stained glass in the window, and she loved the garden where she tended white roses in a special arbour by the south wall". (1) Liz lived a privileged childhood riding her pony round the grounds visiting other families in the neighbourhood and arranging family theatrical productions with her 11 brothers and sisters. She was a lively child until she suffered a spinal injury at the age of 15.
Liz's first known poem was written at the age of six or eight, On the Cruelty of Forcement to Man. As a present for her fourteenth birthday her father underwrote the publication of her epic Homeric poem entitled The Battle of Marathon .

EDUCATION Liz was educated at home and attended lessons with her brother's tutor. This gave her a good education for a girl of that time. She was an intensely studious, precocious child and had read passages from Paradise Lost and Shakespearean plays, and the histories of England, Greece and Rome before the age of ten.
In her teen years went through the principal Greek and Latin authors in their original languages and learnt enough Hebrew to read the Old Testament from the beginning to the end.

CAREER RECORD 1820 Elizabeth's first published work, The Battle of Marathon.
1825 The Rose and Zephyr is published in the Literary Gazette.
1838 The Seraphim and other Poems is the first volume of Browning's poetry to appear in her name.

APPEARANCE Elizabeth (see left) was pretty and personable. Mary Russell Mitford wrote of her about the time she'd turned 20, "A slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on each side of a most expressive face; large, tender eyes, richly fringed by dark eyelashes, and a smile like a sunbeam." Her Creole ancestry gave Liz a slightly exotic look. Anne Thackeray Ritchie described her as, "Very small and brown" with big, exotic eyes and an overgenerous mouth.

FASHION Browning forced her 12 year old son to wear frilly knickerbockers and shoulder length ringlets.

CHARACTER Large minded, intelligent, quietly sympathetic manner, neurotic, emotional.

RELATIONSHIPS By 1844 Elizabeth had been an invalid for many years, spending most of her time in her upstairs room, spending much of her time writing. Her 1844 Poems made her one of the most popular writers in the land at the time and inspired well known poet Robert Browning to write to her, telling her how much he loved her poems. A family friend Kenyon arranged for Robert Browning to meet Elizabeth in May 1845, and so began one of the most famous courtships in literature.
The courtship and marriage between Robert Browning and Elizabeth were carried out secretly. Six years his elder and an invalid, she could not believe that the vigorous and worldly Robert Browning really loved her as much as he professed to. After a private marriage at St. Marylebone Parish Church, making her Bobby's girl, Browning imitated his hero Shelley by spiriting his beloved off to Italy in September 1846, which became her home almost continuously until her death. Elizabeth's loyal nurse, Wilson, who witnessed the marriage, accompanied the couple to Italy.
Her father disinherited Elizabeth, as he did each of his children who married. She repeatedly sought a reconciliation with her father but he returned her letters unopened.
As Elizabeth had some money of her own, the couple were reasonably comfortable in Italy, and their relationship together was harmonious. The Brownings were well respected in Italy, and even famous. Elizabeth grew stronger and in 1849, at the age of 43, she gave birth to a son, Robert Wiedemann Barrett Browning, whom they called Pen. Their son became an artist, got married but had no legitimate children, so there are apparently no direct descendants of the two famous poets.
"I love thee with a love, I seemed to lose with my lost Saints
I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears of all my life!
And if God chose I shall but love thee better after death." from Sonnets from the Portuguese "Portuguese" was a pet name her husband used.

MONEY AND FAME Elizabeth's extraordinary poems brought admirers (including Browning) to the room where she languished in her bed after her spinal injury. In her day she was more highly regarded poetry wise than Robert and was the most highly regarded female poet of her day. However her 1860 Political Poems Before Congress injured her popularity as many disapproved of the Browning version of Italian political matters.

LITERATURE Liz's first known poem was written at the age of six or eight, On the Cruelty of Forcement to Man. As a present for her fourteenth birthday her father underwrote the anonymous publication of her epic Homeric poem entitled The Battle of Marathon .
1838 The Seraphim and other Poems is favourably reviewed.
1844 Poems An important collection in Victorian literature. So highly regarded that when Wordsworth died she was tipped by many to be the next Poet Laureate.
1850 Sonnets from the Portuguese. (From Robert Browning's pet name for her "The Portuguese".) Elizabeth's most famous work was inspired by her love for her husband. At the time she was still in a hot flush over the mere mention of his name.
1857 Aurora Leigh, her verse novel about the subjection of women to the dominating male.
1861 The North and the South. The last poem she wrote before her death. An admirer of Hans Christian Anderson, her last poem was written for him shortly before her death.
In 1913 500 letters written by Elizabeth and Robert were sold for £32750 at an auction.



NATURE Flush, a red cocker spaniel was the only companion allowed to the invalid Elizabeth by her tyrannical father. The first time Robert visited Elizabeth at Wimpole Street, Flush bit him. She took Flush with her to Italy with Robert and the mutt was immortalised by her the poem To Flush my Dog. Virginia Woolf later wrote his life story.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Elizabeth was bought up by a family that attended services at the nearest dissenting chapel and her father was active for years in Bible missionary societies. Liz herself went through an evangelical “phase” and it is not clear how much she retained her faith as she developed an interest in spiritualism. However, she wrote a number of pieces about social injustice including the slave trade in America, the labor of children in the mines and mills of England and the restrictions placed upon women. Paine, Voltaire and Rousseau influenced her concern for human rights.
Elizabeth was fascinated by Italian politics and she supported (theoretically) Italian unity.

SCANDAL During her time as an invalid, Elizabeth became addicted to opium due to the pain of her spinal condition. She knocked back laudanum, a cocktail of opium and alcohol to help her to sleep. Robert Browning used Chianti to wean and cure his Elizabeth of her addiction to laudanum.

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS I've touched on Elizabeth's invalid condition previously in this trivial biography, but here's her full medical bulletin.
At the age of 15 Liz fell from a pony and injured her spine. She was slow to recover so a Dr Coker prescribed opium for a nervous disorder and she carried on taking it for the next 25 years. However it only made her worse and for much of the time she was bedridden, especially after 1838 when a burst blood vessel made her seriously ill.
Elizabeth's health forced her to move to Torquay on Devonshire coast, where her brother Edward accompanied her. His death by drowning was a massive blow and she returned to Wimpole Street and became a permanent recluse seeing only a few people.
In 1846, in preparation for her elopement with Robert, Elizabeth began to free herself of the habits acquired as an invalid practising standing without help and then walking where she had previously been carried.
She finally got better in Italy away from her oppressive father.

HOMES Elizabeth was brought up at the 240 acre Hope End, Herefordshire, near the Malvern Hills, which inspired some of her early poetry.
1832-37 The family moved three times due to Mr Barrett's financial losses, first Sidmouth, then 99 Gloucester Place, London, then 50 Wimpole Street, London.
1838-41 Due to her illness, Elizabeth moved back to Torquay (1 Beacon Terrace), and the sea air.
1846 Browning eloped to Italy, at Casa Guidi, Florence, now a home available to be rented. She lived in Florence until her death.

DEATH At the death of an old friend, G.B. Hunter, and then of her father, Elizabeth's health faded again, centering around deteriorating lung function. When news of the death of Elizabeth’s sister Henrietta reached her, in 1860, she became weak and depressed. Her faithful husband never left her bedside and she spent the last day of her life asleep in his arms. Elizabeth died on 29 June 1861 at Casa Guidi, and was buried in Florence's Protestant Cemetery.
She became gradually weaker and died on 29 June 1861
Died 1861 in Florence. Shortly after hearing of her father's death she suffered a complete physical collapse. Her faithful husband never left her bedside & she spent the last day of her life asleep in his arms. (2) She fell ill and died at Casa Guidi, and was buried in Florence's Protestant Cemetery.



APPEARANCES IN MEDIA 1. The classic Hollywood movie 1936 The Barretts of Wimpole Street was based on a 1930 play by Rudolf Besier of the same title. Norma Shearer who played Elizabeth was Oscar-nominated, while Charles Laughton portrayed the formidable Mr Browning. In 1957 it was Jennifer Jones and John Gielgud's turn to portray the same twosome.
2. John Lennon & Yoko Ono were inspired by the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Browning. They often joked they were the reincarnated spirits of "Bob and Liz". Two tracks, "Let Me Count The Ways" and "Grow Old with Me" on the Milk and Honey album were inspired by the poetry of Bob and Liz.

ACHIEVEMENTS A plaque in Kelloe church, where she was christened describes Elizabeth as "a great poetess, a noble woman, a devoted wife."

Sources (1) Rosalie Mader Mrs Browning: The Story of Elizabeth Barrett
(2)
Wikipedia

Sunday 1 May 2011

Emily Brontë

NAME Emily Brontë

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Author

BIRTH b 30 July 1818 at Thornton, Bradford, Yorkshire, England.

FAMILY BACKGROUND Emily was bought up by her father, Patrick, an eccentric Irish Clergyman, who was in the habit of carrying a loaded pistol in his pocket and an Aunt, who was her mother’s unmarried sister. Her Cornish mother, Maria died in 1821 at the age of 37 of cancer. The Aunt who came down to look after them was a Calvinist Methodist. Although they appreciated her efforts, she apparently did not become a second mother to them.
Emily had four sisters including Charlotte (1818-1848) who wrote Jane Eyre and Anne (1820-49) who wrote Agnes Grey . Her one brother Patrick (1817-1848) (always known simply as Branwell, so that's how I will refer to him), was addicted to opium and alcohol and often used to frequent the Nelson Inn at Luddenden Foot, West Yorks. He was the black sheep of the family. Her two other sisters Maria and Elizabeth also died of consumption, both in 1825. Her father outlived all his children.
CHILDHOOD In 1826 Mr Brontë bought home a box of wooden soldiers for Branwell to play with. Emily (left) and her sisters joined in and together they used the soldiers to create an imaginary kingdom called Angria. When Emily was 13, she and Anne withdrew from participation in the Angria story and began a new one about Gondal, a large island in the North Pacific. She filled thousands of pages of miniature books writing about her imaginary kingdom, continuing to do so until 1845.

EDUCATION In August 1824, Emily was sent with three of her sisters, Charlotte, Maria, and Elizabeth, to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire, (which Charlotte would describe as Lowood School in Jane Eyre). As borders there cruelty, poor hygiene and starvation made life horrific and hastened the deaths of their older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth ho died of tuberculosis in June 1825. Soon afterwards Emily's father removed her and Charlotte from the school. Their father undertook to educate them himself, although this education seems to have been largely self-administered by Charlotte.
At the age of seventeen, Emily became a pupil at Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head, Mirfield, West Yorkshire, where Charlotte was a teacher, but managed to stay only three months before being overcome by extreme homesickness. She returned home and Anne took her place. At this time, the girls' objective was to obtain sufficient education to open a small school of their own

CAREER RECORD Emily took up various positions as governesses and teachers to earn money to pay for an art education for her brother Branwell. her CV reads thus:
1838-9 Emily became a teacher at Law Hill School in Halifax beginning in September 1838, when she was twenty. Her health broke under the stress of the 17-hour work day and she returned home in April 1839.
1839-42 A stay-at-home daughter, doing most of the cooking and cleaning and teaching Sunday school. She taught herself German out of books and practiced piano.
1842-43 Emily accompanied Charlotte to Brussels, Belgium, where they attended a girls' academy run by Constantin Heger. They planned to perfect their French and German in anticipation of f returning to Yorkshire to establish a school of their own.
1844 Using a small inheritance from her aunt Emily set up with Charlotte a school for girls in their home village of Haworth. Although they advertised they received no pupils, so the sisters turned to their poems and novels which they had been writing.
1846 It was the discovery of Emily's poetic talent by her family that led her and her sisters, Charlotte and Anne, to publish a joint collection of their poetry in 1846. The following year, Emily's only novel, Wuthering Heights was published.

CHARACTER Emily was a silent, reserved woman almost to the point of rudeness with strangers. In private she was somewhat wacky, preferring to live in her imaginary land of Gondal, and mystical to the extent that Charlotte had to tone down her image after she died. There's nowt as queer as folk.

RELATIONSHIPS The introverted Emily was a loner and never socialised well. She had few friends outside her family.



MONEY AND FAME Whilst Charlotte was widely acclaimed straight away for Jane Eyre, Emily's fame was wholly posthumous. Within a few years of her death, Brontë mania had started and people were flocking to Haworth.

FOOD AND DRINK Emily and her sisters were keen on berries. When not, er, berrying themselves in writing they ate blackberries, gooseberries, elderberries and other moorish berries.

LITERATURE After leaving school, Emily and her sisters read widely at home including Byron & Scott. They wrote magazines in imitation of Blackwoods Magazine. In 1844, Emily began going through all the poems she had written, recopying them neatly into notebooks. In the fall of 1845, Charlotte discovered the notebooks and insisted that the poems be published. Emily, furious at the invasion of her privacy, at first refused, but relented when Anne brought out her own manuscripts and revealed she had been writing poems in secret as well.
In 1846, the sisters' poems were published in one volume as Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Only two copies were sold. The next year the three sisters each sent a novel to the publishers, and Emily's Wuthering Heights along with Anne's Agnes Grey, were both accepted.
The ideas for Wuthering Heights evolved from Gondal, her fantasy world set on a Pacific island. Her classic, poetic story was about Heathcliffe's doomed, obsessional love for Cathy located on the Yorkshire moors that Emily knew so well. The 'Wuthering Height’'s building itself is said to be modelled on a local farm house.
The critics were initially shocked by the novel's immoral passion, unusual construction and violent nature. One referred to it as "brutal, coarse & vulgar”. The book subsequently became an English literary classic.

PETS Emily had a a large mastiff dog called Keeper who was so beloved that she rose from her sickbed the evening before her death to feed him . When she died, Keeper followed her coffin and then according to Charlotte, came into the church with the family, “lying in the pew couched at [their] feet while the burial service was being read”
She also had a cat called Tiger who played at Emily’s feet while she wrote Wuthering Heights.

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Emily and her sisters kept fit by walking over those desolate moors.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Emily was a silent, reserved, emotionally bound up woman. In private she preferred to live in her imagined land of Gondal rather than the real world. The mystical writer was obsessed by death and her classic, poetical story, Wuthering Heights, about Heathcliffe’s doomed, obsessional love for Cathy shocked many critics with its immoral passion, unusual construction and violent nature.

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS Throughout her last consumptive illness, Emily refused all drugs and medical attention despite being in extreme pain during its later stages.

HOMES Until 1820 Emily lived at a bleak, Georgian Vicarage in Market Street, Thornton, West Yorks. She moved to Haworth Rectory, in Church Street, Haworth (see left) where Emily and her sisters were bought up in isolation on the Yorkshire moors. The rectory is now a museum. Today over 200,000 tourists visit Haworth a year. Charlotte's father gave the first tour in the 1850s

DEATH Emily's health, like her sisters', had been weakened by unsanitary conditions at home and at school. Having caught She caught a cold during the funeral of her brother in September 1848, she grew very thin and ill, but rejected medical help and refused all proffered remedies, saying that she would have "no poisoning doctor" near her. She died on 19 December 1848 at about two in the afternoon. Emily was interred in the Church of St. Michael and All Angels family vault, Haworth, West Yorkshire.



APPEARANCES IN MEDIA 1. Wuthering Heights The 1939 movie with with Larry Olivier as Heathcliffe and Merle Oberon as Cathy is by far the finest of several film versions of Emily's classic novel. "No matter what I ever do or say Heathcliffe, this is me-now-standing on this hill with you. This is me, forever," said Merle Oberon memorably. The second best version was probably the 1970 one with Timothy "007" Dalton and Anna Calder-Marshall (what happened to her?) The 1992 version with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche with remarkably Sinead O'Connor as Emily was a Bernard Matthews. We mustn't forget Sir Cliff's 1995 musical version and the Monty Python semaphore version.
2. Kate Bush's 1978 UK #1 Wuthering Heights was the single that introduced her to the public. (Incidentally Kate Bush shares the same birthday as Emily).
3. Devotion, a 1946 film about the Brontës where Branwell has an American accent and the Rev Nicholls a German/Austrian one.

ACHIEVEMENTS 1. Wuthering Heights is the best selling Penguin Classic in the UK.
2. The success of the Brontës helped the equality for women cause. You could say Emily's tragic masterpiece was a great weep forward.

REFERENCES Wikipedia and my knowledge.

Wuthering Heights

Charlotte Brontë

NAME Charlotte Brontë

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Author

BIRTH b 21 April 1816 at Thornton, Bradford, Yorkshire, England.

FAMILY BACKGROUND Charlotte was bought up by her father, Patrick, an eccentric Irish Clergyman, who was in the habit of carrying a loaded pistol in his pocket and an Aunt, who was her mother’s unmarried sister. Her Cornish Mother, Maria died in 1821 at the age of 37 of cancer. The Aunt who came down to look after them was a Calvinist Methodist. Although they appreciated her efforts, she apparently did not become a second mother to them.
Charlotte had four sisters including Emily (1818-1848) who wrote Wuthering Heights and Anne (1820-49) who wrote Agnes Grey . She acted as "the motherly friend and guardian of her younger sisters." Her one brother Patrick (1817-1848) (always known simply as Branwell, so that's how I will refer to him), was addicted to opium and alcohol and often used to frequent the Nelson Inn at Luddenden Foot, West Yorks. He was the black sheep of the family. Her two other sisters Maria and Elizabeth also died of consumption, both in 1825. Her father outlived all his children.

CHILDHOOD In 1826 Mr Brontë bought home a box of wooden soldiers for Branwell to play with. Charlotte (left) and her sisters joined in and together they used the soldiers to create an imaginary kingdom called Angria. Over the next ten years, she filled thousands of pages of miniature books imagining and chronicling the fantastic world of Angria.

EDUCATION In August 1824, Charlotte was sent with three of her sisters, Emily, Maria, and Elizabeth, to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge in Lancashire (which she would describe as Lowood School in Jane Eyre). As borders there cruelty, poor hygiene and starvation made life horrific and hastened the deaths of their older sisters, Maria and Elizabeth who died of tuberculosis in June 1825. Soon afterwards Charlotte's father removed her and Emily from the school. I'm told the Clergy Daughters' School still exists, though it was moved to Casterton shortly after the scandal.
Afterwards their father undertook to educate them himself, although this education seems to have been largely self-administered by her. In 1831 14-year-old Charlotte became a pupil at Miss Wooler's school at Roe Head, Mirfield, West Yorkshire, but left the following year to teach her sisters at home.

CAREER RECORD Charlotte took up various positions as governesses & teachers to earn money to pay for an art education for their brother Branwell. Her CV reads thus:
1835-8 A teacher at her old school at Roe Head.
1839 A governess with Sidgwick family near Skipton
1841 A governess with a family at Rawdon
1842-43 Studied languages and school management at Brussels and taught at a boarding school, the Pensionnat Héger, in the hope of returning to Yorkshire to establish a school of their own.
1844 Using a small inheritance from her aunt Charlotte set up with Emily a school for girls in their home village of Haworth. Although they advertised they received no pupils, so the sisters turned to their poems and novels which they had been writing.
1846 It was the discovery of Emily's poetic talent by her family that led her, Charlotte and Anne, to publish a joint collection of their poetry in 1846. The following year, Charlotte's first novel, Jane Eyre was published.
1850s Charlotte cared for her aged father.

APPEARANCE Charlotte was a wee slip of a girl with brown hair, a square heavily featured face, bad complexion, fine eyes and spectacles. GH Lewis, (George Eliot's lover) described Charlotte as "a little plain, provincial, sickly looking old maid." She was very self-conscious about her teeth and never smiled with her mouth open. .

CHARACTER When at home, Charlotte was a saintly drudge, a long suffering victim of duty, but away a passionate, manipulative, dynamic, emotional rebellious lady who was criticised as being un-befitting a clergyman's daughter. By Gum they were a sensitive lot up there.

RELATIONSHIPS For years Charlotte thought she was too plain to marry and was consequently eloquent about the loneliness of a single woman. She fell in love several times herself including one Monsieur Héger, a choleric, small professor of logic whom she met whilst teaching in Belgium. When she returned to Haworth she continued to correspond with him, despite the fact he was married already, until he ceased the letters. Charlotte was heartbroken.
However, all was not lost. Charlotte actually received four proposals of marriage before, on 29th June 1854, she married her father's curate, the Reverend Arthur Nicholls after initial violent objections from her dad. Charlotte wore a white muslin wedding dress with delicate green embroidery and a lace trimmed bonnet. It was said she looked like a "snowdrop".
Arthur was faithful, pleasant ans indomitable and Charlotte at first merely admired but later grew to love her hubby. He did not share their intellectual interests but made her happy. They had nine months of an increasingly happy marriage as Charlotte found joy in domestic love. But in March 1855 Charlotte died.
The extroverted Charlotte had many friends including her future biographer, Mrs Gaskell.

MONEY AND FAME Charlotte was widely acclaimed straight away for Jane Eyre, William Makepiece Thackery was especially keen. Within a few years Brontë mania had started and people were flocking to Haworth. An American bought up part of Charlotte’s discarded sash window & carried it on his back to Keighley station.
The frenchified Brontë (with the accent over the "E") was Arthur Nicholls idea.

FOOD AND DRINK Charlotte and her sisters were keen on berries. When not, er, berrying themselves in writing they ate blackberries, gooseberries, elderberries and other moorish berries.

LITERATURE After leaving school, Charlotte and her sisters read widely at home including Byron & Scott. They wrote magazines in imitation of Blackwoods Magazine. Charlotte used the pseudynomn "Currer Bell" when she published her first two novels.
Charlotte was the first to try to get something published, a small book of poems written by her, Emily & Anne under the names Currer, Ellis & Acton Bell (named thus so as not to reveal their gender). Only two copies were sold. The next year the three sisters each sent a novel to the publishers, Charlotte, The Professor, which only came out posthumously in 1857, Emily, Wuthering Heights and Anne, Agnes Grey, which were both accepted. The disappointed Charlotte quickly raced off Jane Eyre, which actually got published before her sister's novels.



In case you don't know, Jane Eyre is about an orphan girl who grew up to become a governess in a mysterious neighbourhood. The first half was written whilst Charlotte nursed her father through the aftermath of a dangerous eye operation in a hotel. The plucky, plain downtrodden Jane was partly based on Charlotte's own experiences and Rochester supposedly on Lord Byron. The Morton to which Jane fled from Thornfield Hall corresponds to the village of Hathersage in the Peak District. The deserted Wycollier Hall on Brontë Way was Jane Eyre's Ferndean Manor. Lowood School was based on Cowan Bridge School.
Other novels were:
1849 Shirley The heroine was based on Emily
1853 Villette, which was written as a result of Charlotte's heartbreak over Monsieur Héger.
Charlotte left several unfinished novels when she died including Emma, which was eventually finished and published in 1980 by "Charlotte Brontë and Another Lady.",

PETS After Branwell, then Emily, and then Anne died within months of each other, Emily's dog Keeper and Anne's dog Flossey provided Charlotte some solace in her grief.

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Charlotte and her sisters kept fit by walking over those desolate moors.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY The saintly, long-suffering Charlotte Brontë was an Anglican feminist and a passionate anti-Catholic who had been influenced by her Wesleyan family background with its belief that only complete adherence to God’s will brings salvation. These themes stand out in her Jane Eyre, where only after the brooding romantic Mr Rochester’s blindness, like St Paul, and his subsequent repentance to God can the book's heroine and Rochester be bought together.
Politically a Tory, Charlotte preached tolerance rather than revolution. Despite her shyness in company, she was always prepared to argue her beliefs.

SCANDAL The extent of Charlotte Brontë's feelings for Monsieur Héger were not fully realised until 1913, when her letters to him were published for the first time. These letters, referred to as the 'Héger Letters', had been ripped up at some stage by Héger, but his wife had retrieved the pieces from the wastepaper bin and had meticulously sewn them back together.

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS The sickly Charlotte believed her time at the poorly run Cowan Bridge School, where two of her sisters both died of consumption permanently ruined her health.

HOMES Until 1820 Charlotte lived at a bleak, Georgian Vicarage in Market Street, Thornton, West Yorks. She moved to Haworth Rectory, in Church Street, Haworth (see left) where Charlotte and her sisters were bought up in isolation on the Yorkshire moors. The rectory is now a museum. Today over 200,000 tourists visit Haworth a year. Charlotte's father gave the first tour in the 1850s.

TRAVEL A favorite walk of the sisters lead for two miles west to the Brontë waterfall, by no means Niagara size, just a mere trickle. Charlotte came here to mourn the loss of her sisters.
In view of the enormous success of Jane Eyre, Charlotte was persuaded by her publisher to occasionally visit London, where she revealed her true identity and began to move in a more exalted social circle. However, she never left Haworth for more than a few weeks at a time as she did not like to leave her ageing father's side.
In 1851 Charlotte visited the Great Exhibition in London and attended lectures by Thackery. The same year she also journeyed to the Lake District and Scotland and Manchester

DEATH Charlotte found she was pregnant not long after her marriage, and it was felt she would have a difficult pregnancy due to previous ill-health. Despite this, her husband insisted on her accompanying him to visiting the Brontë waterfall in the rain. The ground underneath was extremely damp and Charlotte caught a chill, leading to pneumonia. She died on 31 March 1855 at Haworth House & are buried at St Michael’s Church there.

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA 1. Loads of TV and movie versions of Jane Eyre including one in 1943 where Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles starred as those famous fictional Brits, Jane Eyre & Rochester. In 1970 the lovely Susannah York played the supposedly plain Jane and George C "Patton" Scott, Rochester. There was also a 2006 BBC version, starring Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens, which you can see below.



2. Mrs Gaskill's Life of Charlotte (1857), is one of the classic biographies, and helped promote the Brontë legend.
3. Devotion a 1946 film about the Brontës where Branwell has an American accent and the Rev Nicholls a German/Austrian one.

ACHIEVEMENTS 1. In 1994 Jane Eyre was the 7th most borrowed classic from a library (I bet you didn't know that!) Jane was the first plain heroine in English literature.
2. The success of the Brontës helped the equality for women cause.

Sunday 24 April 2011

Johannes Brahms

NAME Johannes Brahms

WHAT FAMOUS FOR German composer

BIRTH b May 7, 1833 Hamburg

FAMILY BACKGROUND Johannes came from a humble but happy background. His father, Johann Jakob Brahms, was a poor (financially) musician who played the double bass in the orchestra of the Stadtheatre at Hamburg. He died in 1872.
His mother, Henrika Christiane Nissen, was a seamstress never previously married, who was seventeen years older than he was. Johannes had an older sister and a younger brother.

CHILDHOOD As a child, Johanne's two passions were toy soldiers and music. His father gave him his first musical training then he studied piano from the age of seven with Otto Friedrich Willibald Cossel. Owing to the family's poverty, as a boy Brahms played in dance halls and brothels – some of the seediest places in Hamburg – surrounded by drunken sailors and prostitutes.

EDUCATION Johannes hated French at school which resulted in a life long hatred of the nation. (He also hated the English).
He was twice invited to accept an honary doctorate at Cambridge. He never made it as he hated the sea and the thought of crossing the choppy English channel put him off.
After studying the violin and cello with his father, Johannes mastered the piano and began to compose under the guidance of the German music teacher Eduard Marxsen,
For a time, he also learned the cello, although his progress was cut short when his teacher absconded with Brahms' instrument.

CAREER RECORD From the age of 10 Brahms helped to supplement the rather meagre family income playing the piano in dockside dance halls, cafes, theatres, inns and later brothels. He would have a book of poetry in front of him to distract him from the noisy crowd.
1848 At the age of 15 Brahms gave his first formal recital as a solo pianist.
Spring 1853 Brahms' first concert tour with Hungarian gypsy violinist Edvard Remery.
1856-59 Brahms divided his time between Hamburg, where he formed and conducted a ladies' choir, and the principality of Detmold, where he was court music-teacher and conductor
1859-62 Travelled in Switzerland and Germany
1862-64 Conductor of Singakademie (Choral Academy) at Vienna.
1864-68 More composing and teaching. A hard taskmaster, Brahms never gave any of his students a word of praise.
1868 As a result of success of his German Requiem, Brahms was able to abandon teaching and began career as a composer-performer.
1874 Devoted himself to composition.
1890 The 57-year-old Brahms resolved to give up composing. However, as it turned out, he was unable to abide by his decision, and in the years before his death he produced a number of acknowledged masterpieces.

APPEARANCE As a young man, long flaxen hair and beautiful blue eyes, Brahms was clean shaven until he was well past 40, then made up for it with a distinctive, flowing white beard. Slim, but grew fatter as he became more successful. Though Brahms, had the chest development of a tall man, but his legs were so short they barely reached his piano pedals.

FASHION I can't say whether he dressed like a gentleman as I never saw Brahms dress.

CHARACTER Brahms was deeply emotional, like a cat on hot bricks, but lonely, insecure about his work and incapable of expressing himself in anything except his music. He tended to bottle things up.
Though agreeable, charitable and charming, to adults Brahms was often brusque and sarcastic, and he sometimes alienated other people. His pupil Gustav Jenner claimed that he was a pussycat really. He wrote: "Brahms has acquired, not without reason, the reputation for being a grump, even though few could also be as lovable as he.”

SENSE OF HUMOUR Brahms' sarcasm was a mask against his shyness. Once after a series of offensive remarks to a group of friends, he left the room with the parting words "if there is anyone here whom I have not insulted I beg his pardon."
He was aware of his shortcomings. On one occasion, a small child offered Brahms a rose and he responded, "Is that meant to represent my prickly nature."
A practical joker, Brahms would seat visitors in his trick rocking chair which unceremoniously tipped over to the accompaniment of Brahms’ loud guffaws.

RELATIONSHIPS Although linked with one or two Brahms didn't strike a chord with many women. He never came close to marriage, possibly as he had impossibly high standards. The objects of his affections had to like him. Basically his luck with his love life was not un-adjacent to that of the last dodo on earth. His best friend was Clara Schumann (see left), wife of the composer Robert Schumann, who was 14 years older than him. Whether they ever became lovers after the death of her husband is unknown, but their destruction of their letters to each other may point to something beyond mere privacy.
Another of Brahms’ relationships was with one Bertha Faber, who sung in his women’s choir at Hamburg. The composer renewed his acquaintance with her when he moved to Vienna, by which time she had married. Bertha had the honor of having this lullaby written to celebrate the birth of her eldest child, Hans.
Brahms only really achieved intimate female companionship with prostitutes. He treated the girls well and they returned his affection. After his death, when asked about his love life, his housekeeper would only say, "he was a very naughty old gentleman."
Brahms had a wide circle of friends. Those who remained his friends, despite his sarcasm were very loyal to him, and he reciprocated in return with equal loyalty and generosity. He was a lifelong friend with Johann Strauss II though they were very different as composers
The elderly Brahms met a 25-year-old composer called Claude Debussy in Vienna and took him out to dinner and then onto the court opera to see Bizet's Carmen.

MONEY AND FAME Brahms name first became known as a result of an article, The One who is to Come, by his buddy Robert Schumann after he and his wife invited him to play the piano.
Starting in the 1860's, when his works sold widely, Brahms was well off financially. He preferred a modest life style, however, living in a simple three-room apartment with a housekeeper. He gave away much of his money to relatives, and also anonymously helped support a number of young musicians.
His fans were known as Brahmins.

FOOD AND DRINK Brahms enjoyed eating out in Vienna's cheap cafes and restaurants, especially his daily visit to his favourite 'Red Hedgehog' tavern in Vienna. There, he would drink strong coffee (so strong only he could make it to his satisfaction).
On one occasion, Brahms fell ill and his doctor instructed him to go on a diet. "But this evening I'm dining with Strauss" he protested "and we shall have chicken paprika." That's out of the question the doctor told him. "In that case" said the composer, "please consider that I did not come to consult you until tomorrow."
According to the autobiography of English operatic soprano and composer Liza Lehmann, when she met Brahms, she was left unimpressed by his bluff and coarse manners, particularly when he gobbled up a whole tin of sardines at breakfast and then drank the oil from the tin.

MUSIC AND ARTS A famed conductor and pianist Brahms played everything by heart. He wrote four symphonies, wrote settings for piano and voice of 144 German folk songs, and many of his lieder reflect folk themes or depict scenes of rural life. However, he never wrote an opera, nor did he ever write in the characteristic 19th century form of the tone poem.
Brahms venerated Beethoven, perhaps even more than the other Romantic composers did. In the composer's home, a marble bust of Beethoven looked down on the spot where he composed.
A merciless self-critic, Brahms burned all that he wrote before the age of 19 as well as some sketches of later masterpieces. It is known that he frequently reworked pieces over a period of 10 to 20 years, and before achieving the final form he often transcribed them for several different combinations of instruments.
Here's a selection of his greatest pieces:
1868 Brahms’ Lullaby (The Cradle Song) was originally written by Brahms in 1868 under the title of “Wiegenlied: Guten Abend, gute Nacht” ("Good evening, good night"), and included in his op.49 set of five songs. The lullaby's melody is one of the most famous and recognizable in the world, used by countless parents to sing their babies to sleep.
Brahms wrote this for his friend Bertha Faber, after she gave birth to her first child. He took the first verse from a collection of German folk poems called Des Knaben Wunderhorn; the second stanza was written by Georg Scherer (1824–1909) in 1849. The melody is based on a Viennese song that Bertha used to sing to him. Brahms later suggested with tongue in cheek that there should be a special edition in a minor key for naughty children!
1868 A German Requiem Brahms composed this choral work in three major periods of his life. An earlier version of the second movement was first composed in 1854, not long after Robert Schumann’s attempted suicide, and was later finished and used in his first piano concerto. The majority of the Requiem was composed after his mother’s death in 1865. The fifth movement was later added after the official premiere in 1868. It was so called because the text is taken from Luther's German translation of the Bible rather than the Latin texts normally used. (He used a Bible that he was given as a child to choose the passages for the work.) The piece, cast in seven divisions, focuses on the sorrow of those who mourn, rather than speculating on the fate of the dead. A great success, the Requiem marked a turning point in Brahms' career and made him famous all over Europe.
1876 First Symphony Brahms started this in 1862 and due to its similarities in style to Beethoven it was nicknamed Beethoven's 10th Symphony. However despite its long gestation period, Brahms was still not happy with it. He wrote in a letter to Carl Reincke: "My first symphony is long and not exactly amiable."
1878 Violin Concerto in D Major, Written for his great friend, Josef Joachim,
according to the violinist Nigel Kennedy its the cat's whiskers. He regards it as his favorite piece of music.
In 1889, one Theo Wangemann, a representative of American inventor Thomas Edison, visited the composer in Vienna and invited him to make an experimental recording. Brahms played an abbreviated version of his first Hungarian dance on the piano. The recording was later issued on a record of early piano performances. Sadly, the piano playing is largely inaudible due to heavy surface noise, but this remains the earliest recording made by a major composer.



LITERATURE Brahms was passionate about Shakespeare "In him one has everything and everyone all in one," he dais of the great English playwright in a letter.

ANIMALS Cats got Brahms back up. The composer spent much time at his window in his Vienna home trying to hit neighbourhood cats with a harpoon manufactured from a bow and arrow. He would have gone down a riot at a cat lovers convention.

HOBBIES AND SPORTS A keen walker and lover of nature, Brahms often went walking in the woods around Vienna, when he often brought penny candy with him to hand out to children. He also enjoyed walking holidays in Italy. The press noted his style of walking with his hands firmly behind his back

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY The theme of transition from anxiety to comfort runs throughout Brahms' German Requiem . However, although the Lord is the source of the comfort, asympathetic humanism persists through the work. In fact, Brahms purposefully omitted Christian dogma. In correspondence with Carl Reinthaler, when Reinthaler expressed concern over this, Brahms refused to add to the work references to "the redeeming death of the Lord", as Reinthaler put it, such as John 3:16.

SCANDAL As a promising young composer Brahms was introduced to the great Franz Liszt in Weimar who promptly played Brahms' Piano Sonata in C at a house recital, heaping praise on the young whippersnapper. Liszt then played his own piano sonata to which Brahms fell asleep to.

HEALTH AND PHYSICAL FITNESS In 1895 Brahms fell terminally ill with cancer of the liver though he was never told the nature of the disease.

HOMES From 1872 to his death, Brahms lived in a third floor apartment at Karlsgasse, Vienna. Presumably he had to do his own mousework.

TRAVEL In his last years being comfortable financially, Brahms could afford to do as he pleased. He frequently travelled, both for business (concert tours) and pleasure and often visited Italy in the springtime, and usually sought out a pleasant rural location there in which to compose during the summer.

DEATH Died 1897 of cancer of the liver in his bed watched over by his landlady. He retained consciousness to the last. Buried in Vienna's Zentralfriedhof (General Cemetery).

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA 1947 Robert Walker played Brahms in Song of Love" about the Schumanns and their marriage. Katharine Hepburn was Clara Schumann.
Francoise Sagan wrote a novel Aimez Vous Brahms?.

ACHIEVEMENTS 1. Brahms was a standard bearer of traditional music in the the late nineteenth century. One of the greatest composers of symphonic music and of songs.
2. "I believe Johannes to be the true Apostle, who will also write Revelations." said his good mate Robert Schumann

Sources My knowledge and Wikipedia

Sunday 10 April 2011

Boudicca

NAME Boudicca (Boudicca has been known by several versions of her name. William Cowper's poem, Boadicea, an ode (1782) popularised an alternate version of the name. From the 19th century and much of the late 20th century, "Boadicea" was the most common version of the name, which is probably derived from a mistranscription when a manuscript of Tacitus was copied in the Middle Ages. Her name was clearly spelled Boudicca in the best manuscripts of Tacitus, so though Wikipedia calls her "Boudica", we will ass another 'c' in this Trivia Biography.

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Wild Queen of the Iceni.

BIRTH Not sure, they had no birth certificates in those days.

FAMILY BACKGROUND Tacitus and Dio Cassius agree that Boudica was of royal descent.

APPEARANCE Tall, grim faced, piercing eyes and harsh voiced with strawberry blonde hair tumbling down to her hips. You can always check out the statue of Boudicca on Westminster Bridge in London.

FASHION Boudicca wore around her neck was a large golden necklace, and she was habitually clad in a many coloured tunic and a thick cloak fastened by a broach. She used the leaves of the plant woad to dye her body blue. According to Roman historian Dio Cassius her appearance was "terrifying." Dio Cassius

CHARACTER A stroppy British Amazon woman. When fighting the Romans she was a livid doll. Boudicca was a typical English rose - very prickly.

RELATIONSHIPS Boudicca's husband was Prasutagus, King of Iceni, which is sort of modern day East Anglia. He died around AD60 at the hands of the Romans. He'd bequeathed his property jointly to his two daughters and the Roman emperor Nero.

MONEY AND FAME In 60AD taxation was introduced to Britain with the legions of the Roman army, when slaves were subject to a 4% sales tax & there was a 1% tax on everything else. But corruption among the tax collectors of East Angela was one of the factors in prompting Boudicca to lead a revolution. Boudicca's fame took on legendary proportion in Victorian Britain, and Queen Victoria was seen as her "namesake".

MUSIC AND ARTS Boudicca spoke a Celtic dialect whose closest surviving language today is Welsh. Once the Romans came her tribe adopted the Latin script.



PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY
"When the British warrior Queen
Bleeding from the Roman rods
Sought with an indignant mien
Counsel at her country's gods." Boudicea by William Cowper

SCANDAL Originally a supporter of the Romans, Prasutagus' Iceni territory in Easten England was declared a slave province after his death. The just widowed Boudicca was flogged by the Romans, her daughters violated, no wonder she freaked out. After that one doesn't have to probe the recesses of the Boudicca psyche to understand why she was so wild.

MILITARY RECORD Despite her husband's bequest at his death those caddish Romans seized the late Prasutagus' territory. After her scourging the blue skinned Boudicca led an attack on Colchester whilst taking advantage of the Roman governor Suetonius' absence in Anglesey where he was putting down a revolt. She murdered its Roman inhabitants and seized its imperial temple. When news of the rebellion reached him, Suetonius hurried along Watling Street through hostile territory to Londinium (that's London to you and me). By this time Boudicca had gathered a sizable but ill disciplined army. Suetonius considered giving battle there, but considering his lack of numbers, decided to sacrifice the city to save the province. Londinium was abandoned to the rebels, who burnt it down, slaughtering anyone who had not evacuated with Suetonius. Verulamium (St Albans) was next to be sacked by Boudicca and her stroppy Brits. In the three cities destroyed, between seventy and eighty thousand people are said to have been killed. By now, Suetonius had gathered enough troops to engage and they encountered Boudicca and her unruly army somewhere on Watling Street. The battle was watched by a sizable crowd of British women, children and ineligible (too old or on the injury list) who had followed the rampaging Brits on their unbeaten run, helped by the fact all their fixtures were played at home. However they witnessed a shattering defeat, the thick woods not being the best site for the naive Brit's chariot warfare. 80,000 British warriors and spectators died and the groundsman was probably sacked. The Romans despite their army being stretched trying to subdue the Druids only lost 400.

TRAVEL Boudicca was a dangerous driver of a tiny, manoeuvrable horse drawn cart. However, it's not true what you may have read about the warrior queen attaching knives to her wheel spikes.

DEATH Died 60AD when routed by Suetonius. According to Tacitus, Boudicca and her daughters all poisoned themselves; Dio Cassius says she fell sick and died, and was given a lavish burial.In 1988 archaeologists claimed to have located her grave under platform 8 at Kings Cross Station.

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA 1. Boudicca has been the subject of numerous literary works such as the play, The Tragedy of Bouduca by Beaumont and John Fletcher and Tennyson's poem Boadicea and William Cowper's poem, Boadicea.
2. Boudicca has been the subject of two feature films, the 1928 film Boadicea, where she was portrayed by Phyllis Neilson-Terryand 2003's Boudica (Warrior Queen in the USA), a UK TV film written by Andrew Davies and starring Alex Kingston as Boudicca. She has also been the subject of a 1978 British TV series, Warrior Queen, starring Siân Phillips as Boudicca.
3. Thomas Thornycroft's vast bronze statue of Boudicca and her daughters on Westminster Bridge was completed in 1902.
4. One of the track's of Enya's 1987 debut album, is titled "Boadicea".

ACHIEVEMENTS 1. Inspired the whole of South East England to revolt against the Romans almost forcing them out of Britain.
2. If it wasn't for Boudicca’s stroppiness, Colchester then the capital of England might have remained so. However she sacked Colchester, the relatively new town of London became capital and it never looked back.
3. The first great Briton & first warrior queen.



Sources Wikipedia and my knowledge

Sunday 27 March 2011

William Booth

NAME William Booth

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Founder of the Salvation Army

BIRTH b 10 April 1829, Sneinton, Nottingham, England

FAMILY BACKGROUND William was the only son of four surviving children born to Samuel Booth and Mary Moss. Booth's speculative builder father was wealthy by the standards of the time, but during his childhood, as a result of bad investments, the family descended into poverty and Samuel Booth became an alcoholic. William said of him "He set his heart unduly upon worldly gains and was miserable when his fortune melted away."

CHILDHOOD A "careless" lad up to the age of 15, after a bad illness William's spirit became awakened and he joined a Wesleyan chapel.

EDUCATION In 1842, Samuel Booth, who by then was bankrupt, could no longer afford his son's school fees, and 13-year-old William was apprenticed to a pawnbroker.

CAREER RECORD Two years into his apprenticeship William was inspired by a hellfire preacher from USA. He was converted to Methodism. He then read extensively and trained himself in writing and in speech, becoming a Methodist lay preacher initially in the Nottingham slums and a pawn broker. Booth disliked pawnbroking and considered it ungodly.

1852 On 10 April, his 23rd birthday, Booth left pawnbroking and became a full-time preacher. He travelled through England as an itinerant preacher of the Methodist Reform Church and took on several minister's jobs.
1861 Booth resigned from the Methodist ministry as he was unhappy that the annual conference of the denomination kept assigning him to a pastorate, the duties of which he had to neglect to respond to the frequent requests that he do evangelistic campaigns. Instead he became an independent evangelist.
1865 Began work as unattached evangelist in London's East End heading up 'The Christian Mission.'
1878 Adopted name Salvation Army as churches were reluctant to accept his converts. 1880 William set up first Salvation Army branch in USA.

APPEARANCE With his very long beard, the elderly William Booth looked like Uncle Albert in (British comedy show) Only Fools and Horses.

FASHION Booth's Salvation Army adopted their famous uniform including the bonnets which provided protective headgear when the going got rough.

CHARACTER Gruff voiced and a strong disciplinarian. A good orator, miraculously with Booth's beard you wouldn't think he'd be able to speak above a whisper.

SENSE OF HUMOUR It was William Booth who explained the authoritarian framework of his Salvation Army by remarking that if Moses had operated through committees the Israelites never would have got across the Red Sea."

RELATIONSHIPS William first met Catherine Mumford when he came to preach at her church in 1852. They soon fell in love and became engaged on 15 May 1852. During their three year engagement, Catherine constantly wrote letters of encouragement to William as he performed the tiring work of a preacher. They married on 16 June 1855 at Stockwell Green Congregational Church in London. Their wedding was very simple, as they wanted to use their time and money for his ministry. Even on their honeymoon Booth was asked to speak at meetings.
Catherine was a fervent Methodist of tenderest affection and great force of mind. She started preaching around 1860 and initiated a ministry of women. Catherine bore William 8 children and they were reared with an iron disciple. His grand daughter Catherine Bramwell-Booth (1884-1987) was a regular on British chat shows including Parkinson in the 1970s & 80s. His son William Bramwell (1856-1929) succeeded his father as general of Salvation Army.

MONEY AND FAME Booth lived on a small income partly settled on him by a friend and partly derived from the sale of his publications.

FOOD AND DRINK In his book In Darkest England and the Way Out, which contains proposals for the physical and spiritual assistance of the great mass of down and outs, Booth wrote, "A starving man cannot hear you preaching. Give him a bowl of soup and he will listen to every word."
Catherine was a temperance advocate and banned her husband’s medicinal port.

MUSIC AND ARTS Booth's Salvation army pinched the pop songs of their day and added Christian words. The bearded wonder's reaction to this was "Why should the devil have all the best tunes." Their loud processions with their drums and bass and dancing Christians disrupting the Sunday peace and quiet annoyed a lot of people.

LITERATURE Booth's 1890 In Darkest England and the Way Out contained proposals for the physical and spiritual assistance of the great mass of down and outs. As a result a scheme was launched the following year for the spiritual and social betterment of the submerged tenth. Booth asked for £100,000 - more than that came in.
Booth founded The War Cry, the official organ of The Salvation Army.

ANIMALS Booth once ordered his children's pet dog to be shot when it snapped at a servant. He was surprised when they were heartbroken and retrieved the carcass in order to have the pelt made into a rug. The Sally Army leader was bewildered when they received this with hysteria rather than gratitude.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Booth experienced religious conversion at the age of 15 through the ministry of an American hellfire preacher and devoted his evenings over the following few years to religious work in the local slums. It is here that became acquainted with conditions of life among the very poor. Later Booth became a full-time travelling evangelist for the Methodist church. Trekking up and down the country by train, the recently married Booth and his wife, Catherine, survived on £2 a week.
In 1865 Booth and his wife started their mission aimed at the unprivileged classes that lived in unspeakable poverty in the East End of London. Thirteen years later, the annual Christmas appeal for William Booth’s Mission was drawn up. The circular was in dialogue form and to one of the questions “What is the Christian mission?” the answer was “a volunteer army”. Suddenly Booth seized a pen, crossed out “volunteer” and wrote instead “salvation”, thus coining the title “Salvation Army” for his movement.
His book In Darkest England, and the Way Out (1890) contained proposals for the physical and spiritual redemption of the many down-and-outs Booth ministered to. It was not only a best-seller after its 1890 release, but also set the foundation for the Army's modern social welfare schemes.
As a preacher Booth was a populist crowd puller. For example he was known to demonstrate the easy road to Hell by sliding down the stair-rail of his pulpit. A champion of the poor he railed against those who “reduce sweating to a fine art, who systematically and deliberately defraud the workman of his pay, who grind the faces of the poor and rob the widow and the orphan.”
In 1912 Booth, who had been in poor health for several years was dying. When asked what had been the secret of his success all the way through, the General replied “I will tell you the secret, God has had all there was of me!” The end of his last speech went as follows: “While women weep, as they do now, I’ll fight. While little children go hungry, I’ll fight. While there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, where there remains one dark soul without the light of God- I’ll fight! I’ll fight to the very end!”



SCANDAL In their early days Booth's "hallelujah band" of converted criminals and others met violent opposition. A skeleton army, supported by brewers which opposed Booth's teetotalism as a threat to their trade, was organised to break up meetings and for years the rank and file and the general himself incurred fines and imprisonment for breaches of peace. In 1882 642 Salvation Army officers including women were assaulted and 60 Salvation Army buildings damaged. Even leading evangelical, Lord Shaftesbury referred to him as "anti Christ."
When King Edward VII invited Booth to be officially present at his 1902 coronation ceremony, the public changed their views. By 1905 he was the cat's whiskers. The Salvation Army General went on a tour of the country and was received in state by many mayors and corporations.

HEALTH Booth discovered in 1909 that he was blind in his right eye and the sight in his left eye was dimmed by cataracts. On 21 August 1909 a surgeon at Guy's Hospital removed his right eye.

TRAVEL In 1904 Booth took part in a 'motorcade' when he was driven around Great Britain, stopping off in cities, towns and villages to preach to the assembled crowds from inside his open-top car.

DEATH William Booth was 83 years old when he died on 20 August 1912 at his home in Hadley Wood, London. He had been in poor health for several years. At the three day lying in state at Clapton Congress Hall 150,000people filed past his casket. On 27 August Booth's funeral service was held at London’s Olympia where 40,000 people attended, including Queen Mary, who sat almost unrecognised far to the rear of the great hall.
The following day Booth's funeral procession set out from International Headquarters. As it moved off 10,000 uniformed Salvationists fell in behind. Forty Salvation Army bands played the ‘Dead March’ from Handel’s Saul as the vast procession set off. He was buried with his wife Catherine Booth in the main London burial ground for 19th century non-conformist ministers and tutors, the non-denominational Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington.

ACHIEVEMENTS (1) Booth founded the Salvation Army. By the time of his death his activities for the down and outs had extended all over the world.
(2) Booth's Salvation Army learnt that Under 16-year-old girls were being exploited as prostitutes. They were trapped and lured into brothels in London by adverts in county newspapers requesting "domestic help needed." Lured inside, drugged, raped and shipped off in caskets to Brussels and Antwerp, they were delivered to businessmen who had put in orders. The Salvation Army exposed this trade in a series of articles in the Pall Mall Gazette in the mid 1880s. As a result a 400,000 petition persuaded Parliament to change the age of consent from 12 to 16.
(3) His book In Darkest England And The Way Out not only caused a sensation after its 1890 release, but it set the foundation for modern social welfare schemes.

Sources Wikipedia
Food For Thought by Ed Pearce

Sunday 13 March 2011

Simon Bolivar

NAME Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios Ponte y Blanco. You will more likely know him as Simón Bolívar.

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Played a key role in Hispanic America's successful struggle for independence from the Spanish Empire.

BIRTH b July 24, 1783, Caracas, Venezuela

FAMILY BACKGROUND Simon's father, Coronel Don Juan Vicente Bolívar y Ponter, was a wealthy aristocratic landowner who had married into Spanish aristocracy. His mother was Doña María de la Concepción Palacios y Blanco . He had two older sisters and a brother: María Antonia, Juana, and Juan Vicente. Another sister, María del Carmen, died at birth.
Bolívar's father died when Simon was two and a half years old and his mother passed away when he was approaching nine years of age. He then was placed in the custody of a severe instructor, Miguel José Sanz, but this relationship did not work out and he was sent back to his home.

CHILDHOOD Simon's nanny, Hipólita gave young Simon all the affection he needed and indulged him in all his wishes and desires.

EDUCATION Not a simple Simon - Bolívar was educated by private tutors in Caracas and also in Spain, which he completed in 1799. The most influential of his tutors was Don Simón Rodríguez, who understood young Simon's personality and inclinations, and tried from the very beginning to be an empathetic friend. They took long walks through the countryside and climbed mountains. Don Simón taught the youngster how to swim and ride horses, and, in the process, taught him about liberty, human rights, politics, history, and sociology.
When Simon was fourteen, Don Simón had to abandon the country, as he was accused of being involved in a conspiracy against the Spanish government in Caracas. Thus, Simon entered the military academy of the Milicias de Veraguas, which his father had directed as colonel years earlier. Through these years of military training, he developed his fervent passion for armaments and military strategy, which he later would employ on the battlefields of the wars of independence.

CAREER RECORD 1804 For a time Bolívar was part of Napoleon's retinue during which he witnessed the coronation of the French Emperor in Notre Dame, and this majestic event left a profound a impression upon him. From that moment he wished that he could emulate similar triumphant glory for the people back home in Venezuela.
1807 Returned to Venezuela.
1810 After the Spanish governor is deprived of office Bolívar travels to London as representative of the Venezuelan government to attempt to secure British support for revolt against Spanish occupation.
1813 After invading Venezuela successfully, Bolívar is proclaimed El Libertador
1814 Bolívar entered Bogota, Columbia recapturing the city from the dissenting republican forces of Cundinamarca.
1815, After a number of political and military disputes with the government of Cartagena, Bolívar flees to Jamaica, then onto Haiti, where he was granted sanctuary and protection.
1817 With Haitian soldiers and vital material support (on the condition that he abolish slavery), Bolívar lands in Venezuela. He sets up provisional government in Venezuela & is elected president.
1819 Appointed himself President of Greater Colombia.
1824 Proclaimed himself Emperor of Peru.
1825 The Republic of Bolivia is created at the Congress of Upper Peru. Bolívar is thus one of the few men to have a country named after him.
1830 Abdicated as President of Colombia. "America" Bolívar said on his deathbed, " is ungovernable. Those who have served the revolution, have ploughed the sea."

APPEARANCE Long, thin face, long sideburns, dark hair. Like all good revolutionaries Bolívar had a beard.

FAMILY & OTHER AFFAIRS While in Madrid during 1802, he married María Teresa Rodríguez del Toro y Alaysa, who was the daughter of a nobleman. However on a brief return visit to Venezuela the following year, she succumbed to yellow fever. Bolívar never married again.

In the last eight years of his life, Bolívar had a relationship with Manuela Sáenz (1797 – 1856), the illegimate daughter of a Spanish nobleman in Quto, Ecudaor. She married a wealthy English merchant in 1817 and became an aristocrat and socialite in Lima, Peru, where she became active in support of revolutionary efforts. Leaving her husband in 1822, she soon began an eight-year collaboration and intimate relationship with Bolívar that lasted until his death in 1830.
After Manuela prevented an 1828 assassination attempt against her lover and facilitated his escape, Bolivar began to call her, "Libertadora del Libertador", the liberator of the liberator and she was celebrated and given many honors.

MONEY The Bolívar, Venezuela’s basic unit of currency is named after him.

LITERATURE In 1814 during his exile in Jamaica Bolívar wrote Letter From Jamaica, a vision of what he hoped Latin America might become.

PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION Bolívar was influenced by Napoleon, Rousseau and the French and American Revolutions. He dreamt of creating one nation from Mexico to Cape Horn. His Letter From Jamaica outlined a continent of constitution Republics based on England’s Houses of Lords and Commons. The president (him of course!) would serve for life.
Religion-wise Bolívar was brought up in the Catholic Church but got himself excommunicated and became an atheist.
Bolívar was a Freemason. He was initiated in 1803 in Cadiz, Spain's Masonic Lodge Lautaro. It was in this lodge that he first met some of his revolutionary peers, such as
José de San Martín. In May 1806 he was conferred the rank of Master Mason in the "Scottish Mother of St. Alexander of Scotland" in Paris.

SCANDAL Bolívar was prevented from fulfilling his dream of one single South American state by the powerful families whose dreams he threatened.
If one is being critical you could say that having destroyed Spanish rule Bolívar failed to replace it with an adequate form of government and was forced into dictatorship.

MILITARY RECORD During his time in Europe Bolívar was influenced by the revolutionary fervour of the time and vowed to free Venezuela. He fought over 200 battles in his military career.
1810 Bolívar fought under the command of Francisco de Miranda who led the revolt against the Spanish royalists.
1813 Bolívar invaded Venezuela, he captured Caracas, where he established a dictatorship.
1814 Bolívar commanded a force for the United Provinces and entered Bogota, Columbia, recapturing the city from the dissenting republican forces of Cuninamarca.
1815 Withdrew to Jamaica and Haiti. Bolívar raided Spanish American coasts and rallied the insurgents in Haiti proclaiming it a republic.
1817 Bolívar again invaded Venezuela, this time more successfully. He established a revolutionary government at Angostura (now Ciudad Bolívar).
1818 Secured independence for Chile & Venezuela
1819 Defeated Spanish in Colombia.
1821 Bolívar countered a resurgence of Spanish royalist activity by leading his army to an overwhelming victory near Carabobo, thus ensuring Venezuelan independence.
1822 Liberated Ecuador. New republic of Colombia now completely independent of Spain
1823 Bolívar was invited to lead Peruvian struggle. Did he accept? Do chicken have lips?
1824 Final victory won and framed constitution
1825 Independence of Upper Peru proclaimed.



TRAVEL Bolívar travelled widely in Europe in his younger days, which inspired him to liberate his country from Spain. He also saw a lot of West Indies and South America

DEATH Died a disillusioned & hated man at a friend’s estate in Columbia, having failed to pacify contending factions in Columbia.
Bolívar resigned his presidency on April 27, 1830, intending to leave the country for exile in Europe or the Caribbean. However he died a disillusioned man on December 17, 1830, at a friend’s estate in Columbia after a painful battle with tubercolis. His remains were buried in the cathedral of
Santa Marta. Twelve years later, in 1842, at the request of President José Antonio Páez, they were moved from Santa Marta to Caracas, where a monument was set up for his interment in the National Pantheon of Venezuela. The 'Quinta' near Santa Marta has been preserved as a museum with numerous references to his life.

APPEARANCES IN MEDIA 1. French composer Darius Milhaud wrote an opera in 1943 "Bolívar," based on his life.
2. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 1991 novel, The General In His Labyrinth, describes the last four months of Bolívar’s life.

ACHIEVEMENTS 1. Freed much of South America from Spanish occupation. Thus creating Panama, Venezuela and Ecuador from Spain
2. Bolivia (formerly Upper Peru ) is named thus in Bolívar’s honour.
3. In Venezuela & Bolivia Bolívar’s birthday is a national holiday.
4. Proclaimed the liberty of slaves in Venezuela.

Sources Wikipedia and my knowledge.

Sunday 6 March 2011

Anne Boleyn

NAME Anne Boleyn

WHAT FAMOUS FOR Second wife of King Henry VIII.

BIRTH born sometime between 1501 - 1507 at Blicking Hall, Norfolk. I cannot be more accurate as a lack of parish records from the period has made it impossible to establish Anne's date of birth.

FAMILY BACKGROUND Her father, Sir Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire (1477-1539), was a wealthy diplomat whose offices included ambassador to France and Envoy to Holy Roman Emperor. Anne's mum, Elizabeth Howard was the daughter of the 2nd Duke of Norfolk. Later tradition would claim that the Boleyns were practically middle-class, but recent research has proven that Anne Boleyn was born a "great lady". Her great-grandparents included a Lord Mayor of London, a duke, an earl, two aristocratic ladies and a knight
Anne's older sister, Mary was a mistress to Henry VIII for four years, before Anne and Henry were an item. Her brother George was born some time around 1504.

CHILDHOOD Anne and her siblings grew up at Hever Castle in Kent and she later accompanied her father to France when he was posted there as an ambassador.

EDUCATION Anne's father secured a place for her with Margaret, Archduchess of Austria and daughter of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, for Anne to be educated in the Netherlands where it is believed she lived from the spring of 1513 to the autumn of 1514. This was followed by some years in France, until 1521, where she was lady-in waiting to Queen Claude of France. In the Queen's household, she completed her study of French as well as acquiring a thorough knowledge of French culture and etiquette. For all practical purposes, she was a Frenchwoman.
Anne's European education ended in the winter of 1521, when she was summoned back to England on her father's orders, sailing from Calais around January 1522.

CAREER RECORD Before she'd reached her teens, Anne's father arranged for her to attend Henry VIII's sister, Mary Tudor, Queen of France, for Mary's marriage to Louis XII of France. She went on to be a maid of honour to Queen Claude of France, with whom she stayed nearly seven years. Anne was later promoted by Henry VIII from a maid to marchioness then to Queen in 1533. She was Queen for a thousand days but failed in her prime duty of royal breeding machine.

APPEARANCE Reputedly, Anne has six fingers on one hand despite the popular prejudice falling in favour of five and a strawberry birth mark on her throat. In fact she had two finger tips on the end of one finger. Anne wasn't all fingers and thumbs, having beautiful coal black eyes with long dark hair, long neck,swarthy complexion, middling to pert stature. Anne wasn't a physical beauty but had the ability to exploit her vivaciousness.
Her enemies exaggerated her defects, claiming she was a witch with three nipples and six fingers.



FASHION Anne wore special gloves to hide her extra finger.

CHARACTER Indiscreet, tempestuous, ambitious, bossy. Possessed a quick temper and savage tongue. On the other hand, enchanting, flirty and bold and resolute.
Anne's personality was complex, and it has been greatly distorted by those opposed to her marriage and religious views. She was also a very loyal woman who gave generously to charity and, contrary to popular myth, was extremely emotional. In her youth she was "sweet and cheerful," enjoyed gambling, drinking wine and gossiping. She was also brave and charismatic and her personal motto loosely translated as "This will be, no matter who grumbles!" She was also well-educated, bold, resolute and charming. Yet Anne could also be extravagant, neurotic, indiscreet, bossy and possessed a quick temper and savage tongue.

SENSE OF HUMOUR Prone to bouts of hysterical laughter.

RELATIONSHIPS Anne was taken to court in early life, and was courted first around 1522 by Lord Henry Percy, the son of the Earl of Northumberland. Some say that they became lovers, while others maintain that it was just a simple courtship. The latter was probably true, for Anne was far too intelligent to waste what value she had on a few nights' passion that were to avail her nothing. Her elder sister, Mary Boleyn had been sexually 'adventurous' in France, and Anne had been deeply humiliated as a result.
Around the spring of 1523, Anne and Percy were secretly betrothed. Lord Henry's father refused to sanction the marriage when he heard of it from Cardinal Wolsey, who was possibly acting upon the King's instructions to leave Anne free for him. Anne was sent from court to Hever Castle in Kent. It is not known how long she remained away from court, although she was certainly back by mid-1525.
Henry, who for four years had dated Anne's big sis was attracted to her and at Shrovetide 1526 he began the serious pursuit. Anne refused to become the King's mistress, but began a correspondence with him, (The Vatican library preserves 12 love letters he wrote to her) and Henry proposed marriage to her sometime in 1527 (probably around New Year), while he sought a divorce from Katherine of Aragon. After some hesitation, she agreed. Anne and Henry finally slept together for the first time in late 1532 at Calais, and her reasons for submitting at this point are difficult to fathom. They married in secret on January 25, 1533 and Archbishop Cranmer blessed the marriage a few months later. The couple had fingers crossed for a male heir but there were only several miscarriages, a still birth and the illegitimate Elizabeth, who was conceived before they married. Anne and Henry were soon heading for splitsville, the result being she became the new kid on the block.
Anne was obviously very alluring. The French ambassador, de la Pommeraye, was completely captivated by her and paid tribute to her formidable intellect and influence over English foreign policy. The diplomat John Barlow was devoted to her, and spied for her in Rome. Later in life this ability to attract fanatical male devotion back-fired spectacularly when she found herself the object of feverish unrequited love from a Dutch musician in her household called Marc Smeaton.

MONEY AND FAME Once she became the king's mistress, Anne became the victim of a public hate campaign, mobilised by Katherine of Aragon's supporters, and in 1531 a crowd of 8,000 women marched through the streets of London in an attempt to lynch her.
Anne's coronation in 1533 was marked by the people's hostility, and the crowds refused to remove their hats as a sign of respect for their new queen. When asked what she had made of London at her coronation, Anne replied, "I liked the City well-enough, but I saw few caps in the air and heard few tongues."

FOOD AND DRINK Anne had a rather off-putting habit, first observed during her coronation banquet, of vomiting during meals. So one of her ladies in waiting had to hold up a sheet to shield her from other diners at appropriate moments.
In her younger days Anne created a recipe for a small tart with an almond, curd cheese and lemon filling. Henry was so enchanted he named the creator of the cake maid of honour.

MUSIC AND ARTS Anne was gifted musically - her extra finger must have made her a mean harpsichord player. Ole dark eye's ballads included "O Deathe oche me on Sepe" which is said to have moved her husband.
William Forrest, author of a contemporary poem about Catherine of Aragon, complimented Anne's "passing excellent" skill as a dancer. "Here", he wrote, "was [a] fresh young damsel, that could trip and go."

LITERATURE Fluent in French, some of Anne's love letters between her and Henry were in French.
Final words from Anne Boleyn's Book of Hours "Remember me when you do pray. That hope doth lead from day to day."

NATURE Anne had a wolfhound called Vrian who was allegedly beheaded along with her.

HOBBIES AND SPORTS Quite sporty, Anne went riding and hunting with Henry. However during a deer shoot with the king, she ruined her chances of winning Sports Personality of the Year when she shot a cow.
Anne also played indoor bowls with the king. Presumably her extra finger came in handy for imparting extra spin.
Anne was a great card player and she won loads of dosh and other things when she played Henry for money.
Legend has it that a 19th-century painting based on a disputed sketch by Hans Holbein the Younger of Anne is the basis for the queens in a deck of cards. However, the actual inspiration was Anne's mother-in-law Elizabeth of York.
The queen was watching some real tennis when she was arrested and taken off to the Tower before she had a chance to collect her winnings.

SCIENCE AND MATHS Anne could count on her fingers to 11.

PHILOSOPHY & THEOLOGY Despite being a Catholic herself, Anne was sympathetic towards the new Bible based Protestantism and Martin Luther viewed her rise to the throne as a positive sign.
When Anne was executed in 1536 for alleged adultery and incest, her last words being “Christ have mercy on my soul.”

SCANDAL Henry VIII was passionately in love with Anne and despite being already married to Catherine of Aragon he was concerned about letting her slip through his fingers. When the king appointed as archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer as archbishop of Canterbury, one of the first things he did was declare the former marriage void and gave his blessing to the proposed marriage thus incurring the wrath of the pope. Henry and Anne were excommunicated and in the next year Parliament passed an Act of Supremacy which made the king head of the Church of England and severe penalties for anyone who opposed Henry's marriage to Anne. However, Anne's lack of success on the child bearing front was causing concern and when she miscarried, Henry thought the marriage was damned.
That esteemed historian Jane Austen wrote in her History of England "It is however but justice and my duty to declare that this amiable woman was entirely innocent of the crimes with which she was accused and of which her beauty, her elegance and her sprightliness were sufficient proofs, not to mention her solemn protestations of innocence, the weakness of the charges against her and the king's character;"

HOMES Anne was brought up at Hever Castle in Kent, her family having purchased it in 1462.

DEATH Anne died 19 May 1536(aged 29-35 depending on when she was actually born... I must sort out those darn parish records) The queen was fingered for incest with her half brother and infidelity with four others. When told of the charge he said "Oh, Lord help me as I am guiltless of that where I am charged." She continued to protest her innocence, but Henry didn't lift a finger, in fact he was probably behind the trumped up charges as by this time the cad was in love with Jane Seymour. Anne was sentenced to be beheaded at Tower Green, London. She requested to be executed by sword and the service of a skilled executioner of Calais was engaged, who used a sword for the beheading according to French practice instead of the axe used by English executioners. Anne rehearsed the beheading the night before and the execution itself had to be delayed so she had to walk around the block weeping and laughing in turns. Her last words were probably sarcastic about her husband, "A gentler or more merciful prince was there never. To me he was ever a good, gentle and sovereign lord. Christ have mercy on my soul." Anne refused to be blindfolded and the executioner found her so disarming he persuaded someone to attract her attention so he could steal up silently behind her to carry out the death penalty.
Meanwhile Henry was in Epping forest taking part in a hunt waiting for a signal to proclaim the news that "it" had been done.
Anne was buried in the chapel of St Peter at the Tower of London in a box that had contained arrows. Henry wore white to her funeral. A day later he was betrothed to Jane Seymour.
When the chapel was restored in 1876, Queen Victoria had the 1,500 bodies buried there exhumed and properly reburied including Anne.



APPEARANCES IN MEDIA 1. Three big film appearances
1936 Played by Merle Oberon in The Private Life of Henry 8th .
1971 Played by Genevieve Bujold in Anne of a Thousand Days.
2008 Played by Natalie Portman in The Other Boleyn Girl (Incidentally, one of uncredited lawyers in the court scene was yours truly)
2. Dorothy Tutin was nominated for a BAFTA TV Award for her role as Anne in the 1970 mini-series Henry 8th and his Six Wives and Natalie Dormer portrayed Anne in the Showtime series The Tudors (2007-10)
3. Donizetti wrote an opera Anne Bolena (1830).
4. You may not be aware of the 1936 novelty song "With Her Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm" but its worth checking out. Click here to listen to the ditty and read its songfacts.

ACHIEVEMENTS 1. Giving birth to Queen Elizabeth
2. It was in order to marry Anne that Henry divorced his first wife, Catherine of Aragon and thus initiated the quarrel with the pope that led to the English reformation. In other words if Anne had been born with a double chin and cauliflower ears maybe the Church of England would never have been born. On the other hand she did have six fingers.
3. The first babe.
4. Anne played an enormous role in England's international position, by solidifying the French alliance in 1531. She established an excellent rapport with the French ambassador, de la Pommeraye, who was captivated by her.
5. When, in 1532, Henry gave her the title Marchioness of Pembroke, it was the first time a woman had ever been created a peer in her own right.

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