November Labours: Martinmas, killing pigs and swingling flax

Traditonally, November is the month for killing cattle and pigs to preserve their meat,  when there was little fodder to spare for livestock and the main drive was to lay in provisions  to last the household through the harsh winter months.  Many Calendars show pigs, as in the fifteenth century rhyme,
 "At Martinesmasse [11th November] I kylle my swine".
This medieval manuscript decoration shows a labourer with what might be a poleaxe, stunning the pig before it is despatched with the blade.

(Wikimedia commons)

Other Calendar versions for November show pigs still being  herded in the woodlands,  as in this late fifteenth century French calendar, with the zodiac sign of Sagittarius clearly having loosed his arrow below.  And is the young man in the background out to catch a bird?

Heures de la Reine Anne de Bretagne, Paris

© National Library of France

Anne of Brittany (1477-1514) was Queen Consort to two kings of France, Charles VIII and then his succeeding cousin Louis XII. Four surviving  Books of Hours bear her name. By the sixteenth century royal collectors liked their new style printed books to have hand-painted illustrations, and also still commissioned traditional illuminated manuscripts.

For those who did not have to labour, hunting was a source of meat as well as a pastime, and this later Venetian image for November shows a very relaxed young man with his dogs and hunting horn and again with a small bird - sparrow hawk, delicacy or pet?

Month of November,  oil painting, Venice c. 1580

© National Gallery London

And this November image from  the Da Costa Hours  is unusual as it shows an image from textile production - the preparation of flax, an important crop for seed (linseed oil), straw and linen. Flanders, where this painting was done, was a centre for the linen trade. 

Detail from November: Swingling Flax, Da Costa Book of Hours c.1515  Ghent

After being retted, which used water or outside weathering to soften the stalks, the flax was beaten to break up the fibres and separate them from the straw and woody stems.  

This "swingling" was done with a heavy ridged or toothed tool, although probably not in such an artistically neat circle as this. A scutching tool was also used to dress the flax, with a thin edge one side like knife.   The woman in the background is using one.  Finally the fibres would be combed, or "heckled" to remove the last shreds of straw and wood.  

It is clearly a winter occupation as the manuscript pages below are consecutive,  with bare trees and the pigs in the farmyard, and the actual calendar page ends with a fine Sagittarius as the zodiac tailpiece.

November illustration from the Da Costa Book of Hours, Simon Bening, Ghent c. 1515. 

From the coats of arms on the cover,  thought to be made for a wealthy family in Porto, Portugal, and then owned by Don Alvaro da Costa, the King's chamberlain.   © Morgan Library, NYK

From the Da Costa Book of Hours, as above.

Travels on the continent: The Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion 1764-65

The spirited writer of this diary is 20 year old  Cleone Knox,  taken off on a Grand Tour by her father and older brother Ned, from her  quiet home in Castle Kearney (near Portaferry, County Down).  This plan is prompted in particular by her unsuitable romantic attachment to a certain Mr. A. with his handsome black eyes.

Her abortive attempt to elope at  Mr A's urging  --  ("this is not a matter to be be decided all at once like buying a yard of watered tabby or a new gown")  could have taken place at Castle Blandings.  Already very late for the rendezvous, she knocks over a table of china ornaments in the dark, and has to cower underneath the table till her awakened relatives, fearing thieves, decide to blame the cat; but at last reaching the rendezvous in pouring rain, there is "Gemini!..not a trace of my Lover or Chaise or any damned thing!"

"Parental Anger and Disappointed Love has made me tremble in every limb. Made myself a roguish cap with lavender ribbons."

Setting off via family in Derbyshire, then London and Bath, the Knoxes arrive in France, where "I am delighted at the newness of it all," and in Amiens,  …"Two very genteel young officers escorted us around the Gothic Cathedral… Was gratified to notice that I can converse very Tolerably in French. Believe I shall be happy in this Country;  if Mr. A. were but here."

They spend August at Chantaloupe, guests of the Duc and Duchesse de Choiseul.
"...Our mode of life is sumptuous and we pass our days in Elegant Leisure.  Very dégagé except for Supper when we dress as Magnificently as if at Versaille."

"Last night our hosts held a fete champetre.  A magnificent affair.   The grounds all illuminated with torches and lanterns.  A sumptuous supper served in the hall and in the garden.  Sprightly music and a troupe of Opera Dancers performing on the lawn.

"There was even a flock of lambs festooned with blue ribbons to give a bucolic air.   The guests were all attired as Shepherds and Shepherdesses or Greek Gods and so on.    Madame de Brinoy had the goodness to assist me with my costume.  As Pomona, Nymph of  Gardens, I wore a green gown ornamented with flowers, grapes in my hair and a silver pruning knife in one hand.  Looked very passable indeed.  A party of gypsies hired by the Duchess to tell fortunes in the Rose Garden.  One swarthy hag seized my hand and poured out a stream of prophesy. …she declared that my fate was a handsome dark young man who loved me passionately, that there were difficulties in our path, but that if I wished for happiness, I must remain faithful to him.  This without any doubts points most clearly to Mr. A."

Vertumnus (in his disguise as an old woman) and Pomona,   

 Jean Ranc, c. 1710-22      Musee Fabre, Montpellier

After "Gay Cruel Paris"  where she was "astounded indeed at the swarms of ill-looking mob amidst all this splendour" and Christmas in Switzerland, the Knox family's Grand Tour ends in Venice in May: 

 "Apropos of the gondola, 'tis a most convenient mode of conveyance and takes the place of a chair.  One would be very uneasy without them with all this Plaguey Water."   A month later, after Carnival, balls, processions, gossip and more night-time escapades (masked and once in male attire), Cleone writes the last happy entry in her diary "Stupendous discovery!  Mr. A. is in Venice."

When this eighteenth century diary was published in 1925 by a 'descendant' of the Knox family,  it was likened to the discovery of Pepys' diary, and became a best seller and a cause celebre, since many critics doubted its authenticity.  It was in fact written by a modern young girl, Magdalen King-Hall, to alleviate the boredom of living in Hove, her first published historical novel.  She based Cleone's home beside the sea on childhood visits to her mother's Irish relatives, along with some family anecdotes,  and research in Hove public library.   Her best known novel, The Wicked Lady Skelton was made into a successful film, The Wicked Lady, starring James Mason and Margaret Lockwood, but for charm and wit  her young Cleone Knox is a wonderful creation who leaps off the page.

The Diary of a Young Lady of Fashion in 1764-65 Quotations from the Folio Society edition, 1982

Leonine stories

Persian Astrological illustration for Leo,  gouache, c. 1800s. 

(from the Wellcome Library Images ) 

 This is the time when the constellation of Leo is in the ascendent.  There are many examples of the kingly Lion as a symbol from myth and legend, from the lion-killing hero in the Epic of Gilgamesh, or the Old Testament's  Samson and David, or the Greek Hercules, all often shown wearing a lion skin.  Gentler heroes are St. Jerome, who befriended a lion by removing a thorn from its paw, a story taken from the classics and reimagined by G. B. Shaw in Androcles and the Lion,  and of course, the fourth Gospel-maker, St. Mark and his winged lion, historically associated with Venice. 

But for my Lion illustration I have gone back to the Babylonian myth of the tragic lovers, a tale popular in the  later Renaissance: 

"In such a night  

Did Thisbe fearfully overtrip the dew, 

And saw the lion's shadow ere himself, 

And ran dismayed away."  (Merchant of Venice  Act V)

Pyramus and Thisbe, maiolica plate from Urbino, c. 1550s  © Fitzwilliam Museum

As Ovid recounts, the eloping lovers are due to meet at Ninus' fountain outside Nineveh, but Thisbe, arriving first, is frightened by a bloody-mouthed lion and flees, dropping her cloak. Pyramus arrives, sees the lion mauling Thisbe's bloodstained cloak, and, most true lover, falls on his sword.   Here we see Thisbe returning and desperately following  Pyramus' example, watched by Cupid.

Not the finest rendering in maiolica - a very cluttered image with all the city backdrop encroaching.  The painter (or his customers) obviously liked scenes of impalement, but the lion has not got Thisbe's bloodstained cloak in its mouth, in fact Thisbe still seems to have a cloak around her; nevertheless the painter has captured the popular tragedy with dramatic 3D effect.  According to Ovid, a mulberry tree grew beside the fountain and, drenched in the lovers' blood, its white berries were ever after deep purple.

There are other finer maiolica examples in e.g. the Wallace Collection, and this popular story appears in paintings, mosaics, on Venetian glassware and French tapestry, although you sometimes have to look hard to spot the deadly lion.

I could not resist this Footnote:  a fresco by Benozzo Gozzoli, c. 1425, from Montefalco, Italy.

Penny plain

"Venice en fete is an incomparable thing to see, but to live with, give me the Venice of every day; for the Venice of every day is perfect, wanting nothing; and when, in this world, you get for once anything already perfect, why not be content with the penny plain, why hanker after the twopence coloured?"

Wanderings  Arthur Symons

Venetian inkstands

"In Venice, staying at the Leone Bianco (comfortable,  but by Austrian decree no French wine at dinner)  Lady Blessington began her collection of objects that had once belonged to famous people with the purchase of an inkstand once owned by a Doge.  She recalls she had bought some specimens of the old Venetian glass and some curious cameos.  In the ante-room by her apartments, an Italian Jew pesters her daily in broken English to buy the inkstand of the last Doge, Manin.   'I ventured to insinuate that had it been the inkstand of Paolo Luca Anafesto, the first instead of the last Doge, it would have had more attractions for me.'

In the end, she became the owner of  'Manini's inkstand; the inkstand in which he dipped his pen to sign the capitulation  of Venice after it had counted twelve centuries of sway.' "

Venice  The Most Triumphant City  George Bull

Henry James in Venice

"But even as he gazed at the Barbaro's painted walls and sculpted ceilings, James had in mind a very different sort of palace.

At the time, June of 1887, he was deep in thought about a dilapidated ruin on a lonely canal in a melancholy, rarely visited part of town.  The once-grand interior of this other palace was shabby, dusty, and tarnished.  Its walled garden had become an overgrown tangle of weeds and vines.  Two impoverished spinster ladies lived in the palace, rarely went out, saw no one.

James told nobody about this other derelict palace or its two lonely inhabitants, because they were fictional. They were characters in a short novel he was then composing --The Aspern Papers, the other of his two masterful novels set in Venice.  In the mornings, he would go to the Barbaro's breakfast room, sit down at the Chinese lacquered desk beneath the 'pompous Tiepolo ceiling', and write a few pages.  During his five-week stay at the Barbaro, he put the finishing touches on the manuscript and sent it off to his publisher."

The City of  Falling Angels  John Berendt