Houyhnhnm Land

Regular visitors to this blog are aware that I tend to read books that are not, shall we say, first in line for canonization in the near future.  Or the far future.  Or...any future, really.  This is what happens when you have a taste for doing literary history.  In any event, prior to hanging out at UCLA's Sadleir Collection,  I decided to read the first volume of an 1829 novel that, for reasons not immediately clear to me, exists on GoogleBooks in volumes one and three, but not, as far as I can tell, volume two.  The Sadleir Collection, however, has all three volumes.  Isn't that lucky?

Ahem. 

The novel is Oldcourt, by Sir Martin Archer Shee, a man who usually did other things with his time than write novels.  Needless to say, I ought to have taken that as a sign.  Of impending doom.

For the edification of my readers, allow me to reconstruct the experience of reading volume one.  With allowances, of course, for some...self-dramatization. 

Pp. iii-v.  Shee breaks out the modesty trope.  Everybody in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is modest.  All books impose on the public.  Nobody publishes anything remotely interesting, noteworthy, or otherwise unusual.  It's a wonder that the novel even exists as a literary form, once you think about it.

Under the circumstances, this is not cause for concern.  Yet.

The introduction.  An Irish family sits around debating the state of contemporary fiction, its decline and fall (or rise and flourishing, depends on which character you ask), the merits of Sir Walter Scott, the brilliance of Fielding and Sterne, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam.   Presumably, Shee wants to justify writing a novel.  The less-than-charitably inclined, however, may feel an urge to remind him that introductions should not be forty-two pages long, and that it is generally considered advisable to get to the plot.  Alas, as Shee has been dead since 1850, it is somewhat difficult to point this out to him. 

Perhaps now would be a good time to invest in a ouija board, or conduct a seance.

Page 43.  Shee explains that this novel will be about the Oldcourts.  The reader, continuing to feel less than charitable, gently observes to no-one in particular that she knew this already, because the Oldcourts took up the first forty-two pages of the novel. 

Also, the book is called Oldcourt. Unless that's supposed to be some sort of bait-and-switch.

Page 44.  Shee decides that now would be a good time to discuss in medias res.  The innocent reader begins to feel a nagging concern.

Page 50.  Shee has been discussing the various problems facing poets, biographers, and novelists.  The reader, beginning to feel somewhat put-upon, wonders when we are going to get to the plot.

Page 50.  Wow! We're going to get to the plot!

Page 61.   The reader was, it seems, getting ahead of herself...and of Shee.  By page 61, we know something of the Oldcourt family background, and we know that they are Catholic.  But why, exactly, this book has come to exist upon the face of the earth, remains obscure.  And yet, surely, this novel must actually be about something?

Anything?

Hello?

Page 62.  The dawning of a new chapter.  Unfortunately, this dawn, no matter how rosy-fingered (rosy-fonted?), fails to bring the plot with it.  Instead, Shee's oh-so-playful narrator admits that his "powers of amplification" might be insufficient to produce a triple-decker.  The increasingly irate reader, shaking her first in the general direction of her Acer Aspire One (on which she is reading Oldcourt), points out sternly that this is a triple-decker, and that Shee's "powers of amplification" are all too obviously on view.  Because we still don't know a [insert epithet of choice here] thing about what the [insert second epithet of choice here] book is actually about, or why we should be reading it.

The reader calms herself.

Pages 65-66.  Shee is discussing historians, biographers, and novelists.

Again.

The horrified reader suddenly realizes that Shee is imitating Henry Fielding's digressions.  In a fit of inspiration, she wonders if it might be possible to charter a red phone booth and travel back in time to the eighteenth century, where she will eliminate Henry Fielding's novels from the historical record, thereby rendering Oldcourt impossible.  After further thought, she concedes that this might be overkill, and is somewhat unfair to Fielding.

Plus, she hasn't the slightest clue where to find a red phone booth.

Page 76.  NOW SHEE IS WRITNG ABOUT HOSPITALITY WHAT IS THIS I CAN'T I DON'T EVEN

After this moment of inarticulate rage, the reader reminds herself that she is an academic, and should therefore be approaching this novel in a state of scholarly calm.  Moreover, she further reminds herself, just because Shee has yet to establish a plot, the hint of a plot, or even the teensiest wisp of something that, with considerable TLC, could someday be a plot, doesn't mean that he's incompetent.  He might be subverting the conventions of linear narrative, thereby generating an altogether new sense of historical transformation that critiques Sir Walter Scott's post-Enlightenment theories of cultural progress!

Or he might be incompetent.

Page 77.  Shee admits that he might be "going off, as it were, at a tangent..." As it were? As it were?? As it were?!!!

For those of you keeping track, the reader remains in the dark about why this novel has emerged from the depths of GoogleBooks to seize her in its Cthulhu-like tentacles.

(Cthulhu does have tentacles, I think.)

Page 82.  The family Oldcourt reappears.  The reader nearly faints from the shock. What next--a story, even?

Her hopes begin to rise.

Page 92.  There are many anecdotes about the Oldcourts and their various self-destructive behaviors.  This is not quite a plot, but one must applaud any move in that direction on the author's part.  Yet the reader is somewhat distressed to realize that the Oldcourts now under discussion are not the same Oldcourts as those hanging out in the introduction.  The forty-two-page introduction, in case you've forgotten.  

The reader's hopes, initially up, now begin to sink.

Page 93 ff.  Something vaguely resembling, not a plot, but at least a coherent narrative, puts in an appearance.  The reader wonders if she should faint, dance around the room in celebration, or some combination of the two. 

Page 115.  The narrator, who had temporarily digressed from digressing, is now digressing from his non-digression.  This prompts the reader to contemplate defenestrating the book.  Good sense, and an unwillingness to blow another three hundred dollars on a new Acer Aspire One, intervenes.

Page 189.  The narrator puts in an appearance at the Oldcourts' chapel.  The reader takes a moment to tell him exactly what she thinks of him.  For some reason, the narrator remains unconcerned. 

Page 240. After undigressing from the digression from the nondigression which followed the original digressions, the narrator begins redigressing.  (Reredigressing? The reader has lost count.)  By this point, given the choice between unconsciousness or continued perusal, the reader elects unconsciousness.

Several hours intervene, uninterrupted by any dreams pertaining to awful nineteenth-century novels.

Unfortunately, the reader awakes, and upon recollecting the novel's existence, rails at the heavens.  Why has she been forced to bear this burden? Is this some punishment for an unspeakable crime?

After striking some melodramatic poses, however, the reader concedes that this really is her fault, and reminds herself that if she had decided to specialize in Dickens, this would not be happening.

Onward!

Page 270ff.  It appears that Shee dislikes dueling.  The reader gathers this, because we now enter upon a lengthy set-piece about dueling, in which a character expounds his theories of same at length.  Considerable length.  So much length that one of the Oldcourts tries to get him to can it.  If only the author had taken his character's hint!

Page 357.  After much hobnobbing about dueling, the actual duel goes kerflooey. 

Kerflooey, incidentally, is a criminally-underused theoretical term. 

(Lord's day). Up and to my chamber, where all the morning close, to draw up a letter to Sir W. Coventry upon the tidings of peace, taking occasion, before I am forced to it, to resign up to his Royall Highness my place of the Victualling, and to recommend myself to him by promise of doing my utmost to improve this peace in the best manner we may, to save the kingdom from ruin. By noon I had done this to my good content, and then with my wife all alone to dinner, and so to my chamber all the afternoon to write my letter fair, and sent it away, and then to talk with my wife, and read, and so by daylight (the only time I think I have done it this year) to supper, and then to my chamber to read and so to bed, my mind very much eased after what I have done to-day.

David Edgerton

Although I have discussed the paper here a few times in the past, including in one of this blog’s first-ever posts, this post will revisit David Edgerton’s argument in “‘The Linear Model’ Did Not Exist” (available in .rtf format via his website @ #49, and published in The Science-Industry Nexus: History, Policy, Implications, Karl Grandin, Nina Wormbs, and Sven Widmalm, eds., 2004; hereafter GWW).

The “linear model” is a very specific claim stating that basic scientific research in universities (or other non-profit institutions) contributes to national economy and security by producing new knowledge, which can then be translated into new technological applications.  Edgerton’s argument that it “did not exist” is that it is an idea that has been held, in a strict sense, by few, if any, actors, and that it has been concocted as a straw man by individuals purporting to offer a superior alternative.  I believe continued discussion of Edgerton’s argument is needed because the reasoning underlying its claims is not obvious, it is now being used productively in new work such as Sabine Clarke’s, and because it has broader historiographical significance.

Much difficulty may be caused by the problem of what it means for an idea to “exist” in history: how well does a historian’s articulation of an idea have to map on to the actual idea in order to claim that it existed?

For instance, at HSS last November, one participant (at the special session on John Krige’s American Hegemony book on the reconstruction of science in postwar Europe) held that Edgerton’s view that “the linear model did not exist” was absurd in that arguments for basic scientific research as leading to new technologies was prevalent, especially in the postwar period.  I forget who said this, but the idea is also expressed in David Hounshell’s comment on “Did Not Exist” in GWW.

In this view, to say that basic research was merely linked to technological development qualifies as an expression of the “linear model”; it is not necessary to say that there was a direct relationship between a research result and its technological implementation.  What seems to be the bottom line of qualification here is not the specificity of the model, but that it was used polemically as a justification to initiate new funding of basic research.  This justification was essentially a promise that the research would, in some sense, result in future technological advance.

This interpretation causes a problem, though, because the implication is that the linear model was a specious justification — a self-serving rationalization designed to garner public (or, in the case of industrial research labs, corporate) funding for work that had no necessary economic benefit.  However, to ascribe the status of rationalization to the idea is almost necessarily to presume the strictest version of the model.  But (as Dan Kevles pointed out at the aforementioned HSS meeting) the mere point that technology developers can make productive use out of recent research is practically a truism.

The upshot here is that, depending on one’s interpretation of what the linear model means, historical claims can range from truism to cynical and specious self-justification.  Clearly, then, much depends on what specific views historical actors held.  The difficulty is that historical actors saw no need to theorize explicitly and in detail about the relationship.  We must read their views from their proposals and their rhetoric.  Let us go to the canonical case.

As Edgerton detailed, Vannevar Bush’s published report to the President, Science: The Endless Frontier (1945), is often cited as an important expression of the linear model on account of its advocacy for federal funding for basic, university-based research on the basis of its importance for further technological progress.  Reference to the model allowed Bush to countenance a major violation of the tradition of federal non-involvement in university life.

However, one must willfully read a linear model into Bush’s phraseology, because nowhere did he state that basic research results are necessarily the immediate source of new technologies and applications.  The more likely reading is the weaker truism that scientific research simply makes new developments possible, perhaps as a kind of catalyst in the process of technological improvement.  Bush, remember, was himself an academic engineer, and would have understood intuitively the function of knowledge in technological work.

Reading Bush’s words against the spectrum of views described in Clarke’s recent Isis article, he seems to have been thinking of basic research somewhat along the prewar lines of Richard Gregory, wherein basic research provides a kind of pool of primordial intellectual resources, which were at that time being increasingly drawn upon in the advance of technical work:

Basic research leads to new knowledge. It provides scientific capital. It creates the fund from which the practical applications of knowledge must be drawn. New products and new processes do not appear full-grown. They are founded on new principles and new conceptions, which in turn are painstakingly developed by research in the purest realms of science.

However, Bush also seems to have been fully aware of the day-to-day independence of industrial and military “research and development” — geared specifically toward the improvement of existing technologies — from “basic research” activities.  (One would hope, given his wartime experience as head of OSRD, which oversaw decidedly non-basic research.)  Beyond that distinction, Bush likewise recognized the peculiar role of longstanding research programs in civilian government agencies, using language more-or-less echoing that used (per Clarke) to describe work in the British DSIR.  Bush:

Much of the scientific research done by Government agencies is intermediate in character between the two types of work commonly referred to as basic and applied research. Almost all Government scientific work has ultimate practical objectives but, in many fields of broad national concern, it commonly involves long-term investigation of a fundamental nature. Generally speaking, the scientific agencies of Government are not so concerned with immediate practical objectives as are the laboratories of industry nor, on the other hand, are they as free to explore any natural phenomena without regard to possible economic applications as are the educational and private research institutions. Government scientific agencies have splendid records of achievement, but they are limited in function.

Bush’s report was ultimately very ambiguous in describing the nature of “basic research”, industrial “research and development”, as well as the in-between work pursued in government agencies, and especially in describing the nature of the relationship between these categories.  This ambiguity should not be taken as a license to ascribe a naive linear model to him.  The only thing we can affirmatively ascribe to him, as far as basic research is concerned, is the view that basic research is simply important to the progress of technical development, that without it technical development, in the long run, may not be able to proceed past a certain point.

To say that the linear model did not exist is to liberate us to ask further questions, which cannot be answered by textual exegesis, but only by examining how Bush actually managed various activities in basic research, and in industrial and military research and development, working as director of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, as chair of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, as director of the committee structure of the wartime OSRD, and the postwar Research and Development Board.  It is clear, for example, that Bush did not derive his budget proposals for his proposed National Research Foundation from any sort of correlation between university funding and expected economic output, but rather from “studies by the several committees” which provided “a partial basis for making an estimate of the order of magnitude of the funds required to implement the proposed program.”  We have little idea of how these “studies” were conducted and integrated into recommendations, but they clearly point to a more sophisticated point-of-view than we would garner from being satisfied by describing Bush’s ideas simply in terms of the “linear model” divined from his rhetoric.

In a follow-up post, we will look at the persistent difficulties in finding a role for basic research in industrial organizations, wherein it will be emphasized that a lack of clear policy is not adequately described in terms of adherence to a linear model.

Up and to the office, where I hear that Sir John Coventry is come over from Bredah, a nephew, I think, of Sir W. Coventry's: but what message he brings I know not. This morning news is come that Sir Jos. Jordan is come from Harwich, with sixteen fire-ships and four other little ships of war: and did attempt to do some execution upon the enemy, but did it without discretion, as most do say, so as that they have been able to do no good, but have lost four of their fire ships. They attempted [this], it seems, when the wind was too strong, that our grapplings could not hold: others say we come to leeward of them, but all condemn it as a foolish management. They are come to Sir Edward Spragg about Lee, and the Dutch are below at the Nore. At the office all the morning; and at noon to the 'Change, where I met Fenn; and he tells me that Sir John Coventry do bring the confirmation of the peace; but I do not find the 'Change at all glad of it, but rather the worse, they looking upon it as a peace made only to preserve the King for a time in his lusts and ease, and to sacrifice trade and his kingdoms only to his own pleasures: so that the hearts of merchants are quite down. He tells me that the King and my Lady Castlemayne are quite broke off, and she is gone away, and is with child, and swears the King shall own it; and she will have it christened in the Chapel at White Hall so, and owned for the King's, as other Kings have done; or she will bring it into White Hall gallery, and dash the brains of it out before the King's face.1 He tells me that the King and Court were never in the world so bad as they are now for gaming, swearing, whoring, and drinking, and the most abominable vices that ever were in the world; so that all must come to nought. He told me that Sir G. Carteret was at this end of the town; so I went to visit him in Broad Street; and there he and I together: and he is mightily pleased with my Lady Jem's having a son; and a mighty glad man he is. He [Sir George Carteret] tells me, as to news, that the peace is now confirmed, and all that over. He says it was a very unhappy motion in the House the other day about the land-army; for, whether the King hath a mind of his own to do the thing desired or no, his doing it will be looked upon as a thing done only in fear of the Parliament. He says that the Duke of York is suspected to be the great man that is for raising of this army, and bringing things to be commanded by an army; but he believes that he is wronged, and says that he do know that he is wronged therein. He do say that the Court is in a way to ruin all for their pleasures; and says that he himself hath once taken the liberty to tell the King the necessity of having, at least, a show of religion in the Government, and sobriety; and that it was that, that did set up and keep up Oliver, though he was the greatest rogue in the world, and that it is so fixed in the nature of the common Englishman that it will not out of him. He tells me that while all should be labouring to settle the kingdom, they are at Court all in factions, some for and others against my Lord Chancellor, and another for and against another man, and the King adheres to no man, but this day delivers himself up to this, and the next to that, to the ruin of himself and business; that he is at the command of any woman like a slave, though he be the best man to the Queene in the world, with so much respect, and never lies a night from her: but yet cannot command himself in the presence of a woman he likes. Having had this discourse, I parted, and home to dinner, and thence to the, office all the afternoon to my great content very busy. It raining this day all day to our great joy, it having not rained, I think, this month before, so as the ground was everywhere so burned and dry as could be; and no travelling in the road or streets in London, for dust. At night late home to supper and to bed.

1. Charles owned only four children by Lady Castlemaine-Anne, Countess of Sussex, and the Dukes of Southampton, Grafton, and Northumberland. The last of these was born in 1665. The paternity of all her other children was certainly doubtful. See pp. 50,52. ↩

We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. Num 11:5 ESV
Nous nous souvenons des poissons que nous mangions en Égypte, et qui ne nous coûtaient rien, des concombres, des melons, des poireaux, des oignons et des aulx. Nombres 11:5 (Louis Segond)

GARLIC, is produced by the offshoots which are formed out of the ground around a stem, & is an onion species: one calls these offshoots cloves of garlic. To multiply it one plants these cloves in ground in April or March [or the preceding Fall], four inches deep, & three or four inches from each other: one leaves them in the ground until towards the end of July, & one puts them to dry to keep them then from one year to another, in a place which is not wet. Most of the major garlic diseases are soilborne, so proper site assessment and yearly rotations are crucial in maintaining a healthy garden of garlic. Garlic has a very strong odor.

Garlic scapes are the flower stalk of the garlic pulled to allow the head to become bigger below the ground. Scapes make a wonderful pickle, can be pounded into a «pesto», or just cut and added to stirfries.

***AIL, est produit par des caïeux qui se forment en terre autour de pied, & qui font tous ensemble une espéce d’oignon: on appelle ces caïeux des gousses d’ail. Pour le multiplier on remet ces caïeux en terre au mois de Mars ou d’Avril, à quatre pouces de profondeur, & à trois ou quatre de distance les unes des autres: on les sort de terre vers la fin de Juillet, & on les met sécher pour les garder ensuite d’une année a l’autre, dans un lieu qui ne soit pas humide. La meme terre ne peut pas porter de l’ail deux années de suite; & cette plante craint dit de Sarres, de s’y succéder à elle-même. L’ail est d’une odeur très-forte.

La Nouvelle Maison Rustique, Troisieme Partie, Le Jardinage, Livre Second, Chap. II, pp. 87.

 I spend a lot of time looking at these things, so I posted a picasa web album. And as a break from the dusty dead, another of orchids. The slide show facility works pretty well.


http://picasaweb.google.com/108102900983084646130/ChurchesAndMonuments#

http://picasaweb.google.com/108102900983084646130/BritishOrchids#

Up, and betimes to the office, where Mr. Hater and I together all the morning about the perfecting of my abstract book of contracts and other things to my great content. At noon home to dinner, and then to the office again all the afternoon doing of other good things there, and being tired, I then abroad with my wife and left her at the New Exchange, while I by water thence to Westminster to the Hall, but shops were shut up, and so to White Hall by water, and thence took up my wife at Unthanke's, and so home, mightily tired with the dust in riding in a coach, it being mighty troublesome. So home and to my office, and there busy very late, and then to walk a little with my wife, and then to supper and to bed. No news at all this day what we have done to the enemy, but that the enemy is fallen down, and we after them, but to little purpose.

[Second half of a deleted section from Book Two, analyzing an Irish Protestant response to Catholic Emancipation in 1829.  Originally, this section was part of a larger examination of "interchangeability" in nineteenth-century pro- and anti-tolerationist rhetoric.  See the post below for Part One.]

As Montgomery/Mortimer dryly notes, he cannot dine with the Catholic priest because his “real sentiments” would produce a sensation most “unpleasing” (42); convivial politeness cannot survive Protestant truths, which the local community will later denounce as “rancor and bigotry” (44). By the end of the story’s first part, the Protestant critique of anti-Catholic prejudice emerges as a form of silencing: in this act of framing avant la lettre, the Protestants render anti-Catholic language unspeakable by describing it as “bigotry,” and create a public sphere indifferent to religion by systematically negating all attempts to bring the Bible to bear on any denomination. In the story’s second half, Egerton’s wife comments that “Protestant writers” (126) bear the responsibility for negative views of Catholics in the nineteenth century, an assertion of bias that the rest of the narrative promptly disallows: the Protestant narrative of the past is the right narrative, from which pro-tolerationists deviate at their peril. From a devout Protestant point of view, the response to Montgomery’s/Mortimer’s sermon, which “did not allow that all religions were alike, or that, in point of fact, no religion was really requisite” (45), reveals the fault line in the logic of interchangeability, for while the curate disallows that religions are interchangeable, the populace demonstrates that an indifferentist attitude to religion is interchangeable with total secularism. In this context, any attempt to delineate a positive truth seems not only rude, but violently disruptive, “tending to set man against man” (44)—a pointedly ironic contrast to the imagery of martyrdom and warfare preserved in Egerton’s library. What the Protestants have done, then, is confuse perceived rhetorical violence with actual physical violence, while suppressing the historical and Biblical narratives that properly differentiate between the two. As we have seen in Egerton’s case, toleration for Catholicism requires Protestants to be bad readers or non-readers, resisting the very texts that would declare pro-Catholic attitudes out of bounds.

The second half of the story devotes itself to restoring the sense of difference between Protestantism and Catholicism. Mr. Egerton receives a series of shocks, all of which reinforce the story’s main point: Catholics believe that the two religions are incommensurable. First, a Catholic servant is refused last rites because he will not allow his Protestant daughter to attend the local Catholic school; Egerton, understandably troubled by the priest’s behavior, nevertheless insists that “We must not, however, judge of churches by individuals: and I shall continue to respect the religion of the Church of Rome, though I cannot but feel shocked at the inhumanity of one of her ordained ministers” (128). Egerton’s resistance to reading the priest symptomatically, however, soon runs into further difficulties. A new priest arrives who undermines the Egertons’ attempts to maintain a Protestant school in the town. Even worse, Egerton, accustomed to regard Moneyrogue as a safe seat, discovers that the Catholics have decided to oppose him. When a loyal Catholic servant of Egerton’s continues to work on his behalf, he is brutally murdered, his “head literally pounded to pieces” (132). Although the perpetrators are caught and executed, Egerton—who loses his parliamentary seat after all—must hear the priest “[speak] to them and of them, as if they had been martyrs” (132). Catholics, who have benefited from Protestant toleration, reassert their difference from Protestants through both physical violence and alternative narratives; if Protestants refuse to identify themselves with their own history of martyrdom, the Catholics are only too happy to represent justice for murder as martyrdom in the cause of truth. The Catholics win the war of rhetorical framing because Protestants falsely associate Scriptural truths with deadly violence. At the same time, the story insists that Catholic rhetoric ultimately produces violence in a way that Scriptural truths do not.  Protestants are right to believe that some religious discourse exemplifies “rancor and bigotry,” but they just happen to be wrong about which religion will have this effect. The story’s ending, with the Protestant turfed out of his parliamentary seat and replaced by a Catholic tool, the alternative school reduced to “silence,” and the countryside glowing with vaguely apocalyptic “bonfires” and the “distant thunder” of Catholic celebrations (133), lays out the ultimate effect of toleration: not egalitarian relations in a polite public sphere, but the brutal removal or suppression of Protestant influence from the nation’s culture. Protestants who keep silent, in other words, will be silenced.

The OED cites this phrase from Sir Philip Sidney writing circa 1586:
a1586 SIDNEY Arcadia II. (1867) 190 Yet he durst not but kiss his rod and gladly make much of his entertainment. 1628 SHIRLEY Witty Fair One I. iii, Come, I’ll be a good child, and kiss the rod.

But it’s of an earlier invention, and a search on EEBO traces it back to a likely originator, William Tyndale, and that unusual but characteristic work, The Obedience of a Christian Man, 1528. There’s a chance Tyndale came up with this first, as he was such a great maker of memorable phrases and idioms (notably in his New Testament translation, of course). But this other work, once so highly regarded, also strikes me as a likely source because The Obedience of a Christian Man is so appallingly masochistic. Tyndale seems to have wrenched his mind (and the minds of his readers) free from the grip of obedience to the Catholic church at the cost of an unlimited pay-off in cringing obedience to any other authority God might mysteriously have set over you. Politically, it’s a counsel of despair: you are a child in respect of your ruler, good or bad, and you have to learn to kiss the rod with which you are chastised. Here’s the context, slightly edited:


“Let us receive all things of God whether it be good or bad … let us not take the staff by the end or seek to avenge our selves on his rod which is the evil rulers. The childe as long as he seeketh to avenge himself upon the rod hath an evil heart. For he thinketh not that the correction is right or that he hath deserved it neither repenteth but rejoyseth in his wickedness. And so long shall he never be without a rod: yea so long shall the rod be made sharper and sharper. If he 'knowledge his fault and take the correction meekly and even kiss the rod and amend himself with the learning and nurture of his father and mother then is the rod take away and burned. So if we resist evil rulers seeking to set ourselves at libertie we shall no doubt bring ourselves in to more cruel bondage and wrap ourselves in much more misery and wretchedness … If we submit ourselves unto ye chastising of god & meekly 'knowledge our sins for which we are scourged and kiss the rod and amend our living: then will God take the rod away, that is he will give the rulers a better heart.”

I surmise (perhaps unsafely, but I think the thought is worth entertaining) that from this particular work, ‘kissing the rod’ spread explosively across early modern English culture. It is even possible that what Tyndale meant metaphorically was adopted as a literal prescription, by those made sadistic by the idea of the quasi-divine righteousness of punishment:

“You have heard sometimes of schoolmasters which make their boys kiss the rod, wherewith they were beaten…” observes Robert Parsons, in his A discoverie of I. Nicols minister (1581). The basic, cruel idea was then susceptible to refinement: apparently, a father might make his child go out and select a rod to be beaten with, and restrain the child with ties so frail and easily broken that that preservation was a sign that the child had been patient throughout his chastisement:

“I have sometimes seen an indulgent father
Make his dear child, rods for himself to gather,
And then his wanton liberty restrain,
Nay make him fetters of a slender twine,
Sharply correct him, make him kiss the rod,
Tries his obedience: And just thus does God
With his dear children, (if well understood)
Wise parents know 'tis for their children’s good.” From ‘Upon a true contented Prisoner’ in Characters and elegies. By Francis Wortley, Knight and Baronet (1646).

Tyndale directed his prescription of acceptance of punishment to all Christians. Inevitably, it was a sentiment women heard from men. Here, a puritan spiritual director addresses a ‘Gentlewoman troubled in minde’:

“12. Beware of a discontented mind in any case: yea, be contented to have your desires denied you of God: and if your prayer be not heard of God, vex not your self too much, neither vehemently covet, nor be grieved for any thing, saving the having or loss of the favour of God.
13 Labour for meekness and patience, and be ready to kiss the rod, and to offer up all to him of whom you have received your self: for if you struggle, it will fare with you as with a Bird in a Gin, the more she striveth, the faster she is.” (Short Rules sent by Maister Richard Greenham to a Gentlewoman troubled in minde, for her direction and consolation, 1612).

Here, in Stephen Denison’s The monument or tombe-stone: or, A sermon preached at Laurence Pountnies Church in London, Nouemb. 21. 1619 at the funerall of Mrs. Elizabeth Juxon, the late wife of Mr. John Juxon. By Stephen Denison minister of Gods word, at Kree-Church in the honourable citie of London (1620), the minister deploys this serviceable thought when accounting for poor Mistress Juxon having cried out in the agony of her final illness (there had apparently been some adverse comment on this evident failure of Christian patience):

“was grief and smart irksome and troublesome unto Job himself? Then it was the great mercy of God, to give patience unto this our sister in any measure. And let us not think it strange if she roared and cried with pain at some times; but let us rather fear, that if we had been in her case, and had tasted her sorrows, we had been like to fall into greater extremity then ever she fell. It is the property of a good child to cry whilst he is a-beating, as well as of a bad. But here is the difference; a good child, when the smart is gone, will kiss the rod, and love his parents, and be sorry for his fault; whereas a wicked child will murmur against and hate his parents. Now this our worthy sister showed her self to be a good child; for she cried when she felt the smart: but when she had any mitigation, she condemned her impatiency, and justified God, kissing his rod, by showing a very tender affection of love to God, whensoever she thought or spoke seriously of him.”

Shakespeare, however (and thank goodness), uses the phrase only in a far more rousing context, as Queen Anne rebukes Richard II for his supinity:
Queen.
What is my Richard both in shape and mind
Transform’d and weaken’d? hath Bullingbrook,
Deposed thine intellect? hath he been in thy heart?
The Lyon dying thrusteth forth his paw,
And wounds the earth if nothing else with rage,
To be ore-power’d, and wilt thou pupil-like
Take the correction, mildly kiss the rod,
And fawn on Rage with base humility,
Which art a Lion and the king of beasts?

These are just some of the occurrences an EEBO search turns up. It’s an idiom which is so expressive of how they thought, of their sense of powerlessness. I will cite two final, related examples: perhaps both were written by the author named in the first as George Elliott, though the latter example was published anonymously. In each, the personified city of London is speaking, first about the great plague visitation of 1665, and then about the Great Fire. In each instance, ‘London’ is made to draw the almost inescapable conclusion: God is punishing you, and your business is rod-kissing:

“…Although I suffer Punishment awhile;
I willingly submit my self to God,
And with Humility will kiss the Rod…”
London’s lamentation: or, Godly sorrow and submission. By George Elliott, author of God's warning-piece to London. 1665

“My Sins have forc’d this Vengeance from my God,
Shall I then kick? No, I will kiss the Rod…”LONDON Undone; OR, A Reflection upon the Late DISASTEROUS FIRE 1666.

I recollected how in 1988 Germaine Greer and her collaborators gave the title Kissing the Rod to their Virago Press collection of 17th century women’s verse. The end of the introduction says this:

“Before publication we were already hearing shock reaction to the title we have chosen … whether the rod is wielded by the paternal authority, the male establishment, a husband, the king, Cromwell or God himself, women have always been obliged for their own survival to humble themselves before it, and to flatter it”. And they cited Torriano’s Proverbial Phrases (1666), who explained: “taken from children, who when they do amiss, and are punished, they are made to vent their vexation no otherwise than by kissing the rod with which they were punished”.

The Virago press printed this anthology on a paper that has yellowed dramatically: it looks like 1888, not 1988, was the publication date. Even 1988 seems a long time ago…

London Lives 1690-1800 is a new searchable directory of over 240,000 contemporary primary sources relating to the lives of 3 million 18th century Londoners at the lower end of the social spectrum.

The project manager is Sharon Howard, who writes Early Modern Notes and is one of the coordinators of the long-running history blog carnival Carnivalesque.

The site is based around workhouse records, criminal registers, coroners' reports and court orders, and the London these documents describe is one where the death penalty was standard for run-of-the-mill thieving.

In many cases individuals with reasonable education and prospects fell in with wrong'uns and ended up on the wrong side of the law, and the consequences were often fatal or involved transportation "down under".

The Keyword search facility is itself evocative - who could resist exploring CopesMadhouse and HardLabouronHulks ?

Documents relating to the same individual are assembled into biographies or lives, with historical background written by the project team. This is one of the most powerful features of the site, and will expand as more biographies are added.

I decided to have a look at the fate of Margaret Larney, an Irish mother of five who was sentenced to death for "degrading the coin of the realm". This involved filing down gold coins, selling the filings, then passing off the "light" coin.

For women the death penalty even in this century was burning at the stake, but in this case there is no surviving record of how Larney perished.

This is an excellent resource that gets under the skin of 18thC London.

The Guardian/Observer has a glowing review too.

The picture is Hogarth's portrait of Sarah Malcolm, hanged for her part in the murder of three women in 1733 (also featured in the Observer review above)

Shakespeare at Kalamazoo is sponsoring two sessions at the 46th International Congress on Medieval Studies, which will be held at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI, May 12-15, 2011; website: http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/. We welcome individual paper proposals for a session on “Shakespeare’s Middle Ages” and a session on “_Hamlet_: Pre-Texts, Texts, and After-Texts.” Please note that [...]

Knowledge is of little use, when confined to mere speculation: But when speculative truths are reduced to practice, when theories, grounded upon experiments, are applied to the common purposes of life; and when, by these, agriculture is improved, trade enlarged, the arts of living made more easy and comfortable, and, of course, the increase and happiness of mankind promoted; knowledge then becomes really useful.

Harriet Martineau, philosopher, essayist, novelist, advocate for women

And who else so completely dominates the history of a major city, or its modern identity, in the same way?

It’s funny, while I work at the LCP during the day, I’ve been spending my evenings rereading the Autobiography. It’s hard to remember the role of anyone else in that book, when you compare them to the vividness and centrality of Franklin.  He fills the frame.

Emma goldman, 20th century philosopher, reformer, feminist

Emma goldman Bibliography, books and articles by and about Goldman

Footnotes Barbon article about Gabrielle Suchon

Bibliography Suchon article

Gabrielle Suchon Steve Barbone's article: Third Way Beyond Gender

I believe that ecumenical dialogue is important. For one thing, the current divisions of the Church are not just a shame but a sin. For another thing, I think that Timothy Ware is correct in claiming that God intended for differing perspectives between different linguistic and cultural groups, and also between differing tastes and focuses to balance each other out. Instead (and let me, as a Protestant, admit that the Reformation only made this worse), we tend to congregate with people who think like us and look like us and talk like us and want the same styles of preaching...