manners unfaulted

I recently finished reading Hilary Mantel's new book, Bring Up the Bodies, and I liked it, every page. She's a marvelous writer, so good that it's difficult to pin down what she's doing that's so much better than anyone else does. Putting her work into the "historical fiction" warehouse doesn't make sense; it isn't genre, it's simply literature.

My affection for the book comes partly from my interest in the lives of early modern Englishmen who did not receive a university education. I've been studying one of them, the mathematician John Collins, and Mantel's subject, Thomas Cromwell, is another. The lives of the two men were very different. Cromwell lived a full century and a half before Collins and achieved wealth and power as an able politician and chief minister to a king (Henry VIII). Collins attained neither wealth nor power. He was a clerk, teacher, author, accountant, and, on the side, an "Ingenious Obstetrix of the Press promoting the laudable Design of getting Learned Men to impart their Labours to be Printed; and exciting others to encourage the same, as being of singular Use and advantage to the Republick of Learning; through the want whereof many Learned Mens Works of much worth have been lost, suppressed or long delayed."[1]

Nonetheless they were in some ways similar. Both were born "of low estate," Cromwell as son of a blacksmith and small businessman and Collins as son of a poor clergyman who was barred from preaching in any church. Both left England while young and, while on the Continent, gained knowledge and skills that served them well on their return home. Both were largely self-taught, learning more by experience than education. On returning to England both attracted the notice of high-placed men and used these contacts to advance themselves. Both married only once and were devoted to their wives and families.

I don't mark up books I'm reading, or turn down corners -- none of that. But I do occasionally write out something -- a phrase, line, paragraph, or page -- that seems especially meaningful and this I chose to scribble into my Moleskine from Bring Up the Bodies. In it we see Cromwell's thoughts about his son:

Gregory is a good boy, though all the Latin he has learned, all the sonorous periods of the great authors, have rolled through his head and out again, like stones. Still, you think of Thomas More’s boy: offspring of a scholar all Europe admired, and poor young John can barely stumble through his Pater Noster. Gregory is a fine archer, a fine horseman, a shining star in the tilt yard, and his manners cannot be faulted. He speaks reverently to his superiors, not scuffling his feet or standing on one leg, and he is mild and polite with those below him. He knows how to bow to foreign diplomats in the manner of their own countries, sits at table without fidgeting or feeding spaniels, can neatly carve and joint any fowl if requested to serve his elders. He doesn't slouch around with his jacket off one shoulder, or look in windows to admire himself, or stare around in church, or interrupt old men, or finish their stories for them. If anyone sneezes, he says, “Christ help you!”

I was able to copy and paste this quote, rather than key it, because a reviewer chose to quote it as well. Writing in the New Yorker on May 7, James Wood uses the paragraph to show how Mantel uses a "cunning universalism" to link Cromwell with modern parents, indeed any parents, whose concern about their children leads them to catalog their strengths and weaknesses.

I did not see this aspect of the quote. For me it shows in glorious detail some of the main attributes of the "gently-" as against the "meanly-" born young men of early modern England. Cromwell and Collins were "of mean birth" and by their attainments came to be known as gentlemen. As adults they mastered the forms of address, techniques of polite conversation, and deportment sufficiently well to be accepted among the gently born. By contrast Cromwell's son Gregory, as Mantel presents him, was raised from childhood to be "courteous" in the original sense of the word.[2]

Spenser gives this sense of "courtesie" in the Faerie Queene.

Of Court, it seemes, men Courtesie doe call
For that it there most useth to abound :
And well beseemeth that in Prince's hall
That vertue should be plentifully found
Which of all goodly manners is the ground.
And roote of civill conversation.
-- Spenser, Faerie Queene, VI, i, i.

It's implied that Gregory knows how to behave in Court, that is the chambers where royals and nobles gather. He knows how to restrain any of his impulses which might be considered impolite, he shows deference to his betters, and possesses a confident demeanor which frees him from distasteful arrogance. His manners are easy and graceful. This ease and grace is the basis of what Spenser calls "civill conversation."[3]

Mantel puts most of Gregory's courtly achievements as negative virtues — bad habits he has had to overcome — and this is typical of the many books of polite manners that appeared in the centuries after the invention of the printing press. She and they take it as given that people are born with unsocial impulses which must be restrained if they are to get along well with each other. It's also implicit that those belonging to the courtly classes have advantages which others lack — chiefly wealth (or at least credit) and leisure. To them being industrious is not a virtue, and, although many of the gently born do work hard, they are encouraged not to make a show of it. Their leisure is not one of idleness, ideally, but their energy should be expended in sport (tilting or hunting) and social engagements (such as riding and dancing) rather than any effort that would appear busy.

Gregory is not literally "gently born." Writers of courtesy books divided pretty much evenly over those who equated gentility with good breeding and those who said it could be acquired as well as bred, but they all acknowledged that people were accepted as gentles either way. They also implicitly or explicitly accepted that this characterization — gently born — applied pretty much equally to all those who belonged in the upper classes, from the lowest of gentry through to the highest of nobles and royals. The gap between people of mean birth and those of gentle birth was, in this instance at any rate, more significant than the gap between a poor but well mannered landowner and a duke or earl. Men like Cromwell and Collins breached the first sort of gap, but they did not do so easily and their hold on their new status was tenuous. I suspect they hoped their sons would, as men, be able to accept gentility with unselfconscious ease.

{Cromwell by Holbein from the Frick Collection; source: wikipedia}

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Some sources:

The ideal of a gentleman; or, A mirror for gentlefolks, a portrayal in literature from the earliest times by Abram Smythe Palmer (Routledge; New York, Dutton)

"The English Gentleman," by Sir George Sitwell in The Ancestor, No. I (Westminster, April 1902)

Peacham's Comple'at Gentleman (1634), with an introduction by G. S. Gordon (Oxford, 1906)

Rhetoric and Courtliness in Early Modern Literature by Jennifer Richards (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003)

From Civilitas to Civility: Codes of Manners in Medieval and Early Modern England by John Gillingham, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series, Vol. 12 (2002), pp. 267-289. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3679348.

Invitation to a Beheading, The Thomas Cromwell novels of Hilary Mantel, a review by James Wood in The New Yorker, May 7, 2012.

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Notes:

[1] ... -- The sphere of Marcus Manilius [by Marcus Manilius], made an English poem with annotations and an astronomical appendix by Edward Sherburne, squire (1675).

Sherburne says:
We should be injurious to him, if we did not farther inlarge, by telling the World how much it is obliged for his Pains in exciting the Learned to publish their Works, and in acting the Part of an Ingenious Obstetrix at the Press, in correcting and in drawing of Schemes; So that he hath been Instrumental in furnishing the World with the many learned Mathematical Books here lately published (for which, his chief Reward hitherto hath been to obtain from the Learned the Title of Mersennus Anglicanus) and many more may be expected, if moderate Encouragements towards Printing such Works, and Leisure for such an Affair be not impeded through the necessary Avocations for a livelyhood, and though it be besides my Design, yet I cannot but digress in giving him and others like minded (which are very rare to be found) their due commendations, in promoting the laudable Design of getting Learned Men to impart their Labours to be Printed; and exciting others to encourage the same, as being of singular Use and advantage to the Republick of Learning; through the want whereof many Learned Mens Works of much worth have been lost, suppressed or long delayed.

a Barnabas among those mathematical apostles, his tact and
devotion in calming the headstrong and drawing out the reticent
being above all praise.

[2] "Courteous" comes from the 14th-century French word curteis and it then meant "having courtly bearing or manners." The phrases I put in quotes were common in early modern England. In the 16th and 17th centuries a literature, quite a large literature, grew up giving instructions on courtesy.

[3] As one source says, Spenser took the term "civill conversation" from an Italian work of 1574 in which gentles are shown as harmoniously intermingling with an unselfconscious grace. (The Spenser Encyclopedia by Albert Charles Hamilton (Taylor & Francis, 1990)).

rules and other mathematical instruments

Rules matter: both the ones used, as Cleopatra says, by "Mechanic slaves / With greasy aprons, rules, and hammers" and the ones used by mathematical practitioners, as I wrote a little while ago.[1] We think of the simple straight edge — a ruler — that we used at school. The one I remember looked like this.


In the 16th and 17th centuries most rules probably were easily identifiable as ancestors of the school ruler of the 1950s. This one comes from a carpenter's toolbox aboard a warship that was sunk during a sea fight in 1545.

{From a group of carpenter's tools, including a mallet, drill handle, and plane, found in chests stowed in one of the main deck cabins of the Mary Rose, one of Henry VIII's warships which was sunk in battle in 1545; source: wikipedia}

From Shakespeare's time forward, however, rules could be and often were both more precise and more versatile. Here is a folding rule used by a ship's carpenter in during the first half of the 17th century.[2]

Front

Back

Extension arm

{17th Century English Three-Fold Ship Carpenter’s Rule, a two foot rule, made of boxwood and brass. Front has four scales (inch, two sets of lines for setting a ship's mast, and a scale for making octagon shapes — use of the octagon scale is described here). Back was used for timber and board measure and contains scales for measuring areas and volumes. The extension arm carries a logarithmic line of numbers 1-10 and would have been used with a pair of dividers. Source: http://www.teodolite.it/arch_carp_rule.htm in antichi strumenti topografici. (I have reproduced this image under fair use provisions of US copyright law.)}

The scales on the back of this rule are for estimating how much wood is needed for a given construction project, whether as timber or board measure. Timber measure was given in cubic feet or yards; board measure in square feet or yards. These scales accord with instructions given by Leonard Digges in 1556. Here is a page from Digges' book, A booke named Tectonicon, brieflie shewing the exact measuring, and speedie reckoning all manner of land, squares, timber, stone, steeples, pillers, globes, etc..

{A booke named Tectonicon, brieflie shewing the exact measuring, and speedie reckoning all manner of land, squares, timber, stone, steeples, pillers, globes, etc. ... With other things pleasant and necessarie, most conducible for surveyers, landmeaters, joyners, carpenters, and masons by Leonard Digges (London, Imprinted by F. Kyngston, 1605); first published in 1556}

Here is Digges' template for a carpenter's rule showing the timber scale and another one to be used for calculating board measure.[3]

This handsome example of a two-foot folding carpenter's rule has the Digges scales on its first arm (the arm having inch measure 1 to 12). The second arm continues the lumber measure scales and labels them. There are also degree markings on its hinged joint permitting the rule to be used as a sector for measuring distances and heights. It is nicely detailed and worth a close look (as usual, click to view full size).

{Folding Rule, Brass, 305 mm in radius, signed by Humfrey Cole, 1575, London; source: Museum of the History of Science, Oxford (I have reproduced this image under fair use provisions of US copyright law.)}

It's a safe bet that most of Digges' readers would use his instructions to obtain wooden rules like the ship's carpenter's version not shiny brass ones. The latter would be too expensive for most of the men whom Digges called artificers to afford. In writing the book, Digges addressed himself expressly to such men, those who could read but only in English and who could count money (as most men could) but whose knowledge of mathematics was limited.

In his prefatory remarks Digges says others before him have written books on surveying, carpentry, and related subjects, but they wrote in inaccessible languages (as he says, "locked up in strange Tongues") and assume knowledge of mathematics (that is, they require the "art of numbring"). For these reasons, he says, they have little value for British artificers: "they doe profit (or have furthered) very little the most part: Certes nothing at all, the Landmeater, Carpenter, Mason, wanting the aforesaid".[4]

Digges' book serves his readers well. It's written clearly in an informal style and gives many useful examples. The surveyors, carpenters, masons, and other workmen who followed his advice, giving it a first reading "confusely," then closely, and finally with diligence, "wittely to practise: so few things shall be unknowe."

Writing a whole century later, John Collins does much the same for seamen, makers of sun dials, and students of navigation.

In a book called Navigation by the mariners plain scale new plain'd he gives basic lessons in elementary geometry with many illustrations, provides detailed instructions for applying this mathematical knowledge in navigation at sea, and shows many demonstrations from actual experience. He tells his readers how to account for changes in vessel speed and in compass readings due to magnetic variation and how to adjust for the drift of a vessel due to wind and currents, and he discusses problems resulting from cloud covers obscuring the sun or stars, and the like.[5] He also acknowledges that seamen are hampered most of all through not having accurate charts for their points of destination: "unless the true Longitudes and Latitudes of Places be known, their true Courses and Distances cannot be found, whence it will unavoidably follow, that no true reckoning can be kept." This chapter concludes: "Notwithstanding the imperfections and uncertainties that arise in the practick part, yet it should be our endeavour to render this excellent Art as easie and certain as we can, which is the thing I am at, and the Instrument here used being the Plaine Scale, is, as I said before, in every mans power."[6]

The Plaine Scale to which Collins referred is a rule which he shows thus:


On this scale,

C is the scale of secants
S the scale of sines
C the scale of chords
R the scale of rhumbe
P the scale of semi-tangents, and
L the scale of tangents

Collins' plain scale is a version of Gunter's scale. Invented by Edmund Gunter and first described in a book he wrote in 1624,[7] this scale eventually became so common on sailing ships as simply to be called the Gunter by its users.[8] This is a detail from a common two-foot version of the scale. Its top line of numbers shows inches. I don't know what the next scale is. Below it you find rhumbe, chord, sine, tangent, semi-tangent.

{Detail from a Gunter's scale. You can vier the whole scale here. Source: KRING HISTORISCHE REKENINSTRUMENTEN}

Like Digges, Collins addresses readers of, in his words, the "meanest sort," i.e., those who possess few or no advantages of wealth and education. To that end he includes engraved plates showing the plain scale and other tools which readers could make for themselves. Aside from them, the only tools needed were a straight edge and a pair of dividers, or as he put it "a pair of Compasses and a bare Ruler."

A few years ago there was a Gresham lecture which brings out points similar to the ones I'm making here about the production and use of mathematical instruments and those who made them, about those who instructed others about these instruments, and about those who actually put them to use. It's History from Below: mathematics, instruments and archaeology, a lecture by Stephen Johnston, Museum of the History of Science, Oxford University, Thursday, 3 November 2005.

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Some sources:

A booke named Tectonicon, brieflie shewing the exact measuring, and speedie reckoning all manner of land, squares, timber, stone, steeples, pillers, globes, etc. ... With other things pleasant and necessarie, most conducible for surveyers, landmeaters, joyners, carpenters, and masons by Leonard Digges (London, Imprinted by F. Kyngston, 1605); first published in 1556

Navigation by the mariners plain scale new plain'd, or, A treatise of geometrical and arithmetical navigation; wherein sayling is performed in all the three kindes by a right line, and a circle divided into equal parts. Containing 1. New ways of keeping of a reckoning, or platting of a traverse, both upon the plain and Mercators chart ... 2. New rules for estimating the ships way through currents, and for correcting the dead reckoning. 3. The refutation of divers errors, and of the plain chart, and how to remove the error committed thereby ... as also a table thereof made to every other centesm. 4. A new easie method of calculation for great circle-sayling, with new projections, schemes and charts ... 5. Arithmetical navigation, or navigation performed by the pen, if tables were wanting ... By John Collins of London, Pen-man, accomptant, philomathet (London : printed by Tho. Johnson for Francis Cossinet, and are to be sold at the Anchor and Mariner in Tower-street, as also by Henry Sutton mathematical instrument-maker in Thread needle street, behinde the Exchange, 1659)

Digges, Leonard in the galileo Project at Rice Univ.

Folding Rule, signed by Humfrey Cole, 1575, London
Brass, 305 mm in radius, Inventory no. 49631, Epact number: 79726

A Late 17th-Century Armed Merchant Vessel in the Western Approaches by Neil Cunningham Dobson, Odyssey Marine Exploration, Tampa, USA, and Sean A. Kingsley, Wreck Watch Int., London, United Kingdom (pdf)

Like father, like son? John Dee, Thomas Digges and the identity of the mathematician by Stephen Johnston, Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford

The Logarithms and Rules on the Calculating Tools page of the History of Computers web site

Gunter's rule, one step before the Slide Rule, on the History of Computing web site

The description, nature and general use, of the sector and plain-scale briefly and plainly laid down; as also a short account of the uses of the lines of numbers, artificial sines and tangents by Edmund Stone (Printed for Tho. Wright; and sold by Tho. Heath mathematical instrument maker, next the Fountain Tavern in the Strand., 1721)

An introduction to the theory ... of plane and spherical trigonometry ... including the theory of navigation by Thomas Keith (London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1816)

On the history of Gunter's scale and the slide rule during the seventeenth century by Florian Cajori (Berkeley, Univ. of California Press, 1920)

History from Below: mathematics, instruments and archaeology, a lecture by Stephen Johnston, Museum of the History of Science, Oxford University, Thursday, 3 November 2005


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Notes:

[1] The post is men holding rules, Secondat, January 21, 2012.

[2] Full caption: "17th Century English Three Fold Ship Carpenter’s Rule — The two foot rule, made of boxwood and brass SCALES 1. Side A has four scales: -a. An inch scale [0]-18, divided to unit, half, quarter, eighth and numbered by 1 to 18. This continues to 24 on the brass leg. -b. A pair of sectoral lines, used for setting out the taper of a ship’s mast. The inner sector lines on each of the boxwood legs are graduated P, 3Q, 2Q, 1Q and MH, representing Partners, third, second, and first Quarters, and Masthead. The function of this sector is to provide a series of diameter measurements. The second, or outer set of the two sector lines are designated S, 3Q, 2Q, 1Q and YA, for Slings, third, second, and first Quarters, and Yardarm. -c. the octagon scale, to left and right of the rule joint, scaled 0 to 28 Side B for timber and board measure was designed to be used for measuring areas and volumes. This particular format was established during the 17th century as an adaptation of a design first published by Leonard Digges in 1556 Side B has three elements: -a. The line of board measure running from 9 to 36. The scale ends 4in from the end of the leg (4 x 36 = 144 = 1ft square). -b. The line of timber measure from 11 to 33. -c. A table of timber undermeasure. This is continuous with the timber line and supplies values for 1 to 8in, which the rule cannot accommodate on the scale line. The edge carries a logarithmic line of numbers 1-10. The logarithmic line of numbers on the edge was first published by Edmund Gunter in the 1620s. In the form found here, which appeared on a range of instruments in the 17th century, it would have been used with a pair of dividers."

[3] Note that Digges puts the lumber scales are on the front side of the rule he describes, along with a 12-inch scale. The back side of his rule has a scale for use in measuring angles and distances (a quadrant). Note also that he calls the device a ruler not a rule. The terms seem to have been interchangeable at the time. And finally, notice that the printer has done Digges wrong: the numbers by the side of the timber and board hash marks are grossly misplaced.

[4] The landmeater measured land, apparently with less skill than the surveyor. Here is Digge's address to the reader in full:

L. D. to the Reader — Although many have put forth sufficient and certain rules to measure all manner of superficies, etc., yet in that the art of numbring hath been required, yea, chiefly those rules hid and as it were locked up in strange tongues, they doe profit or have furthered very little, for the most part, yea, nothing at all, the landmeater, carpenter, mason, wanting the aforesayd. For their sakes I am here provoked not to hide but to open the talent I have received, yea, to publish in this our tongue very shortly if God give life a volumne containing the flowers of the sciences mathematicall largely applied to our outward practise profitably pleasant to all manner men. Here mine advice shall be to those artificers, that will profit in this or any of my bookes now published, or that hereafter shall be, first confusedly to read them through, then with more judgement, read at the third reading wittily to practise. So, few things shall be unknowne. Note, oft diligent reading joyned with ingenious practise causeth profitable labour. Thus most hartely farewell, loving reader, to whom I wish myselfe present to further thy desire and practise in these.

[5] Leonard's son, Thomas Digges, was John Dee's foster son wikipedia: "Thomas was the son of Leonard Digges, the mathematician and surveyor. After the death of his father, Thomas grew up under the guardianship of John Dee, a typical Renaissance natural philosopher."

[5] This discussion of the "uncertainties of navigation" includes description of the parallax error that occurs when the sun is at the horizon. Since readings are taken at noon, this problem only occurs during winter in northern latitudes.

[6] Collins gives this definition: "By a Plain Chart, is meant a Chart drawn on Paper or Pasteboard, lined with Meridians and Parallels, making right Angles each with other, and numbered with degrees both of Latitude and Longitude, each equal to other, and what is commonly performed in casting up a Traverse on such a Chart, we shall perform on a Blank of Paper."

[7] Gunter's book is The description and use of the sector, cross-staff, bow, quadrant, and other instruments (London, 1624) republished in The works of Edmund Gunter : containing the description and use of the sector, cross-staff, bow, quadrant, and other instruments. with a canon of artificial sines and tangents to a radius of 10,00000 parts, and the logarithms from an unite to 10000 ... and some questions in navigation added by Mr. Henry Bond ... To which is added, the description and use of another sector and quadrant, both of them invented by Mr. Sam. Foster ... furnished with more lines, and differing from those of Mr.Gunters both in form and manner of working by Edmund Gunter, ed. by William Leybourn (London, Printed by A.C. for Francis Eglesfield, 1673).

[8] Gunter's navigational scale was used by the Royal Navy up to the 1840s. The historian of mathematics, Florian Cajori, gives this description:

We begin with Anthony Wood's account of Wingate's introduction of Gunter's scale into France.

In 1624 he transported into France the rule of proportion, having a little before been invented by Edra. Gunter of Gresham Coll. and communicated it to most of the chiefest mathematicians then residing in Paris: who apprehend[ed] the great benefit that might accrue thereby...

Gunter's scale, which Wingate calls the "rule of proportion," contained, as described in the French edition of 1624, four lines: (1) A single line of numbers; (2) a line of tangents; (3) a line of sines; (4) a line, one foot in length, divided into 12 inches and tenths of inches, also a line, one foot in length, divided into tenths and hundredths.

who will swear the saints in their niches

In writing Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel used a workmanlike prose that is appropriate to Thomas Cromwell her industrious subject. But, just as she occasionally shows him poetically creative¹, so her words occasionally sing to the reader. Here is an instance.

[Cromwell has prepared an oath —] a test of loyalty to Henry [the king], and he means to swear the men of every burgh and village, and all women of any consequence: widows with inheritances, landowners. His people will be tramping the wold and heathland, pledging those who have barely heard of Anne Boleyn to uphold the succession of the child in her womb. If a man knows the king is called Henry, swear him; never mind if he confuses this king with his father or some Henry who came before. For princes like other men fade from the memory of common people.... Yet beneath Cornwall, beyond and beneath this whole realm of England, beneath the sodden marches of Wales and the rough territory of the Scots border, there is another landscape; there is a buried empire, where he fears his commissioners cannot reach. Who will swear the hobs and bogarts² who live in the hedges and in hollow trees, and the wild men who hide in the woods? Who will swear the saints in their niches, and the spirits that cluster at holy wells rustling like fallen leaves, and the miscarried infants dug into unconsecrated ground: all those unseen dead who hover in winter around forges and village hearths, trying to warm their bare bones? For they too are his countrymen: the generations of the uncounted dead, breathing through the living, stealing their light from them, the bloodless ghosts of lord and knave, nun and whore, the ghosts of priest and friar who feed on living England, and suck the substance from the future. (470-71)

{Thomas Cromwell, reproduced, as you can see, from a print shown in Life magazine}

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Notes:

¹ As for example when he hums a song about his "going to war" as a clerk in an Italian bank while still a teenager. A boy of the kitchen in the Frescobaldi house in Florence, his hard work and reliability earn him the right to be brought "upstairs." The song is one he picks up from a boy who has been hired on in his own house and is scrubbing stairs:

Scaramella va alla guerra        Scaramella goes to the war
colla lancia et la rotella.          With his lance and buckler
la combero lor barombetta

Scaramella fa la gala               Scaramella is on a spree
colla scharpa et stivali.            With the boot and the shoe
la combero lor barombetta
-- Scaramella va alla guerra

This boy is much like he was at the age. Mantel writes:

"If you please, Giacomo," he said. To let him pass, the boy moved aside, into the curve of the wall. A shift of the light wiped the curiosity from his face, blanking it, fading his past into the past, washing the future clean. Scaramella is off to war... But I've been to war, he thought.

He had gone upstairs. In his ears the roll and stutter of the song's military drum. He had gone upstairs and never come down again. In a corner of the Frescobaldi countinghouse, a table was waiting for him. Scaramella fa la gala, he hummed. He had taken his place. Sharpened a quill. His thoughts bubbled and swirled, Tuscan, Putney, Castilian oaths. But when he committed his thoughts to paper they came out in Latin and perfectly smooth. (170)

Later, Cromwell will bring the boy with him as helper and miniature body guard.



²Of hobs and bogarts:

The name "Hob" has been noted as a generic term given to a goblin, boggle or brownie. Hobs are frequently described as short, hairy, ugly and bad tempered. Despite some claims that they have also been know to heal and help the Bogart is more commonly characterised by malevolence and causes mischief by souring milk, turning stock lame and hiding peoples' belongings. If you were unlucky enough to find your house inhabited by a troublesome Hob running away would not help as you would only be followed! The very worst thing to do would be to give the Bogart a name as once this has been done there will be no reasoning with him. Whilst commonly a house hold creature several of Whitby's local beauty spots have links with Hobs and Bogarts which can be seen reflected in their names; Boggle Hole and Hob Hole begin the most obvious. Boggle Hole lies between Whitby and it's coastal neighbour Robin Hoods Bay. In local folklore Boggles were believed to be little people that inhabited many of the caves running along the coast and these tales may have been the inspiration for the characters found in the pages of of Robin Jarvis' trilogy "The Whitby Witches". In reality it is thought that this natural costal cave was actually used by local smugglers as a place to unload and hide their contraband. Hob Hole lies near the fishing village of Runswick Bay and is said to be inhabited by a Hob with an uncommon gift. The local fishermen and their families are said to have believed that the cave's resident Boggle could cure whooping cough. Whilst the fishermen themselves where apparently too fearful to cross the entrance to the cave at night their wives are said the have shown more courage in times of need by carrying their sick children down to the cave with them to call upon the Hobs mystical healing powers.
-- Whitby Myth and Folklore: Hob

a perfect mathmatician

I'm almost done reading Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. It's as good as the reviews say it is. There are no endnotes; she doesn't tell her sources or give hints for further reading, but — for a novel — it's pretty good history all the same; much like Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. And, like his work, hers views history as an agglomeration of small actions, individually of no consequence: a merchant moving a casting counter from one box to the next on his counting board¹ or meticulous entry of debits and credits in an Italian ledger book.² As she puts it: "The fate of peoples is made like this, two men in small rooms. Forget the coronations, the conclaves of cardinals, the pomp and processions. This is how the world changes: a counter pushed across a table, a pen stroke that alters the force of a phrase, a woman's sigh as she passes and leaves on the air a trail of orange flower or rose water; her hand pulling close the bed curtain, the discreet sigh of flesh against flesh." (p. 499)

In fact there's much of business in the book, of counting, measuring, filing, and calculating; discovering, evaluating, and keeping track of details.

Mantel's Cromwell is not — as some accounts have it³ — a vicious schemer or base master of black arts who uses flattery and back-stabbing betrayal in a unquenchable quest for power. Quite the contrary, he is intelligent, knowledgeable, and hard-working; he uses merchant skills to gain and hold the trust of others. He gains power as much through his financial acumen as his skill in manipulating political affairs. He is loyal to friends and family and generous even to those who hate him.

Her Cromwell reveres Luca Pacioli, the Venetian monk who wrote the first comprehensive treatise on what was then called the Italian method of bookkeeping by debitus and creditus. In Wolf Hall, Cromwell presents a copy of Pacioli's great work to a protegé:

"What do you think of this? [says Cromwell.] It is perhaps the only good thing ever to come out of a monastery. Brother Luca Pacioli. It took him thirty years to write."

The book is bound in deepest green with a tooled border of gold, and its pages are edged in gilt, so that it blazes in the light. Its clasps are studded with blackish garnets, smooth, translucent. "I hardly dare open it:' the boy says.

"Please. You will like it."

It is Summa de Arithmetica. He unclasps it to find a woodcut of the author with a book before him, and a pair of compasses. "This is a new printing?"

"Not quite, but my friends in Venice have just now remembered me. I was a child, of course, when Luca wrote it, and you were not even thought of." His fingertips barely touch the page. "Look, here he treats of geometry, do you see the figures? Here is where he says you don't go to bed until the books balance."

"Master Vaughan quotes that maxim. It has caused me to sit up till dawn."

"And I." Many nights in many cities. "Luca, you know, he was a poor man. He came out of Sansepulcro. He was a friend of artists and he became a perfect mathematician in Urbino, which is a little town up in the mountains, where Count Federigo the great condottiere had his library of over a thousand books. He was magister at the university in Perugia, later in Milan. I wonder why such a man would remain a monk, but of course there have been practitioners of algebra and geometry who have been thrown into dungeons as magicians, so perhaps he thought the church would protect him... I heard him lecture in Venice, it will be more than twenty years ago now, I was your age, I suppose. He spoke about proportion. Proportion in building, in music, in paintings, in justice, in the commonwealth, the state; about how rights should be balanced, the power of a prince and his subjects, how the wealthy citizen should keep his books straight and say his prayers and serve the poor. He spoke about how a printed page should look. How a law should read. Or a face, what makes it beautiful."
-- 297-98

{Thomas Cromwell by Hans Holbein and associates}

{Painting of Luca Pacioli, attributed to Jacopo de' Barbari, 1495. The table is filled with geometrical tools: slate, chalk, compass, a dodecahedron model. A rhombicuboctahedron half-filled with water is suspended from the ceiling. Pacioli is demonstrating a theorem by Euclid.}

{Title page: Summa de Arithmetica geometria. Proportioni: et proportionalita: Novamenta impressa. Toscolano, Paganino da Paganini 1523. }

{Preface and definitions page of Summa de arithmetica geometria proportioni et proportionalita}

{Pacioli, Luca; Summa de arithmetica, geometria, proportioni et proportionalita
Venice [1494] 6, 224, 76 p. 32 cm}

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See also:

Luca Pacioli: The Father of Accounting

Luca Pacioli in wikipedia

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Notes:

¹ See the Jeton entry in wikipedia for a discussion of casting counters. The counting board on which counters were cast was a kind of Abacus.

{Counting table (woodcut probably from Strasbourg). The spaces between the lines function as the wires on an abacus. The place value is marked at the end. Source: wikipedia}

{Gregor Reisch: Margarita philosophica, 1508. Arithmetica is supervising a competition between Boethius (sometimes credited with the introduction of Hindu-Arabic numbers into Christian Europe) using the new Arabic numerals and Pythagoras using a counting board. The woodcut thus shows the new versus the old aritmetic; source: wikipedia}

² See Franz-Josef Arlinghaus's Double-entry Bookkeeping and, in wikipedia, Double-entry bookkeeping system.

³ For example: Prince of Darkness: The truth about Thomas Cromwell by C J Sansom in the Daily Mail (9th October 2009)

written by hand

This week Anne Trubek tells us that Handwriting Is History but we should already have known this fact. Not many weeks ago Umberto Eco told us the art of penning was lost and he was not alone in noting the death of the art of handwriting. A century and a quarter past, Cassell's family magazine joined not a few others* in saying much the same.

Our great grandparents were told to watch out that the typewriter did not destroy penmanship and their much greater grandparents were told that the printing press would do the same.

So it goes. I haven't yet seen complaints that ten-finger qwerty keyboarding is giving way to text-thumbing and writing via touch-screen, but of course it is and I'll not be surprised when a complaint is made of it.

Just to show there's no trend without its counter, a new service called celery is trying to entice the fountain-pen generation to subscribe to a service that converts their scrawls to tweets.

All this is mere excuse for an opportunity to show off some artful writing of the seventeenth century.

Here's the signature of a man named John Collins, who taught writing before making himself indispensable as a disseminator of mathematical advances in the time of Newton.



And here a bit of clerkly writing in which Collins petitions for recovering of a long-overdue government pension.



This is Isaac Newton addressing a complimentary letter to Collins in which he answers some thorny mathematical questions.



These are some anonymous samples, respectively, from 1623, 1653, 1667, 1670, and 1675..











This is a detail from the example of 1667.



Although seventeenth-century folk might learn to read when young, they weren't likely to take up writing until years later. When the time came, there were many pen-men to give them instruction and some of these men prepared elegant teaching texts to smooth the way. One of the best was Martin Billingsley, whose book, The Pens Excellencie or the Secretaries Delighte, of 1618 became a model for most that followed. He described the principal hands, including Secretary, Bastard-Secretary, Roman, Italian, Court, Chancery, with their variations (e.g., sett, facill, and fast Secretary). He gave their principal uses and then, of course, showed how they were made.







The English Renaissance Electronic Service of Cambridge University gives both the preceding page scans and the following re-creations from Billingsley's plates:

{This is in the Italian hand}

{This shows the Court hand}

While at all times there are those who write with elegance and clarity and those who scrawl with varying legibility, there seem to have been more who wrote with pride, like Collins and Newton, in the seventeenth and more who wrote less artfully, like Boswell whose hand is shown below, in the eighteenth and onward.

{Example of Boswell's handwriting; source: http://beineckeearlymodern.wordpress.com/}

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Note:

* for example:
The theory and practice of handwriting, a practical manual for the guidance of school boards, teachers, and students of the art, with diagrams and illustrations, by John Jackson (W.B. Harison, 1894)

The reign of the manuscript by Perry Wayland Sinks (R. G. Badger, 1917)

Year Books of Richard II: 12 Richard II, 1388-1389, Volume 6 of Year Books of Richard II, edited by George Feairheller Deiser (Harvard University Press, 1914)

The origin and progress of the art of writing, a connected narrative of the development of the art, by Henry Noel Humphreys (Ingram, Cooke, 1853)

Pitman's journal of commercial education, Volume 66 (1907)

Women, whether proper to be learned

In my daily grind I turned up a book by a prolific author John Dunton. He was an eccentric Londoner of Defoe's time and was fortunate to have been taken on by a capable wife. She ran his publishing business enabling him to spend his days scribbling. In the 1690s he scribbled up a periodical called Athenian Gazette which morphed into the Athenian Mercury both of which were popular magazines, the first of their kind. The Mercury had short news items and answered lots of questions sent in by readers. The book I found, Young Student's Library, gave lists of these questions in index format. Unfortunately, it didn't include the answers, but the questions themselves have interest. Here are a few from among the W's:

- Weapons, which most serviceable, Gun or Bow?
- Weed call'd Cats-tail, why does it come but once in three years?
- Weeping and Laughing, whence proceeds?
- Weeping on the Wedding night, from what it proceeds?
- Welch-light, before Persons die,
- What will make Persons wakeful?
- Whores common ones seldom have Children
- Widows more forward to marry than Maids
- Wife abus'd, how to demean her self?
- Wife doubly married, whose is she?
- Wife whither she may beat her Husband?
- Wife, taking for the Maid
- Wife, that forsakes her Husband
- Wife, whether oblig'd to discover her Husband, who has murther'd?
- Wife, whether she may dispose of her Husbands Goods?
- Wind in our Body, from whence it proceeds?
- Wind, its causes, and whether they go?
- Wind, whence it has its force?
- Wise, or the Fools, which most Happy·
- Witchcrafts, and other Possessions, whither Credited?
- Witches, whither there be any?
- Wits, why generally the greatest Sots?
- Wives, a form of Prayer for 'em
- Woman at Maryland, when she is with Child
- Woman believ'd when she says she will not marry
- Woman cloth'd with the Sun, what the meaning of it?
- Woman impoverish'd, by relieving her Relations
- Woman plagued with an ill Husband
- Woman proper to yield at first to a Man we love
- Woman taken in Adultery
- Woman with Childs longing, the Reason of marking, &c.
- Woman, how soon Marry after the death of a Husband?
- Womans Condition in Marriage, worse than Mans
- Women an Army of 'em, do more then Men
- Women supposed to have no Souls
- Women when bad, why worse than Men?
- Women, if meer Machines?
- Women, whether not Banter'd into a belief of being Angels?
- Women, whether proper to be learned?
- Women, whether they have Souls?
- Women, whether Wiser than Men?
- Women, why commonly fonder and falser than Men?
- Women, why fonder of those Men that slight 'em?
- Womens Voice shriller than Mens
- World hath it any kindness in it, besides Interest?
- World, does it hang upon nothing?
- World, what quarter of the Year it began?
- World, what was it made of?
- Worlds, are there more than one?

Here's the man's wikipedia entry and his very own home page. This is what the Cambridge History of English and American Literature has to say about him.

An engraving on the Dunton home page:


A page from the book, found on wofford.edu's library page:

an old book

Have you been following the press coverage about the copy of Shakespeare's First Folio that showed up at the Folger Library recently? The Washington Post rushed in to somewhat breathlessly cover the story when it first broke and followed up later with a personality piece on the man who brought it in. The NYT has been somewhat more restrained. While the British tabloids are loving it up:

- Cuban lover of Briton at centre of Shakespeare Folio probe tells of her shock at his arrest

- 'I'm innocent', says book dealer arrested over £15m Shakespeare ...

And the British press in general has had some fun with it:

- I want my book back arrested man says

- Experts examine mountain of books at Folio suspect's home

- FBI investigate Shakespeare theft drama

I particularly like this from the Sunderland Echo: My innocent role in Shakespeare drama, by Ross Robertson.

It's hard to know how serious to take this. The alleged perp is far from the usual type of obsessive, clinically depressed, and reclusive rare book thief. Ditto his alleged accomplice. The persons connected with the discovery and all the academics called upon to spout about its importance are clearly reveling in their pleasant moment in the public eye. I suppose the story will ravel in time though may not be news when it does.


It does interest me that the Folger has nothing on its web site about the incident, not even in is "press room" section.

Also, I'm interested in the role played by Garland Scott, Folger's press secretary. She appears to have done her job well, fronting for the org and keeping its employees from being pestered by the press. She was clearly a main source in the original WaPo account:

"It's come back after all this time, and there is an interesting tale to it," said Charlie Westberg, a spokesman for the Durham Constabulary. "That is what will make this a great movie one day," said Garland Scott, head of external relations for the Folger library. . . . When the mysterious man arrived at the Folger last month, he had a story to go with his book: He said the work was from a family library in Cuba, and he was representing the family. "From time to time, people have asked us to help them to figure out what a book might be," the Folger's Scott said. "On the other hand, usually those people have called or e-mailed beforehand. It's a little unusual to just show up." Librarian Richard Kuhta met the man and examined the book. "It's clear to Richard immediately that this is something important," Scott said. Kuhta asked the man if the library could keep the volume for further study, and the man agreed to leave it for two days. "Alarm bells" were going off in the minds of the library's staff, Scott said. "It's the first time a genuine First Folio has walked into our doors unannounced."

You can read about her :here and in this brief profile in a local weekly freepaper, the Hill Rag: A Capital Person: Garland Scott.

Finally, this all interests me because I've been working with a whole lot of books published in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I've read, skimmed, and glanced at somewhat more than 600 so far, and thought myself a bit blasé about old printed books when the Folger discovery hit the news. A Shakespeare first folio, I have to say, is another thing altogether.

Also, I was stirred to pull this stuff together now on reading this nice piece in Slate today: Folioed Again!
Why Shakespeare is the world's worst stolen treasure, by Paul Collins.

Some photos from sources cited above:


Scott with alleged accomplice and her mom.

Raymond Scott, of course.


Police hauling stuff away from Scott's place.