Inside the Treasure Box

My father-in-law John, runs a second hand bookshop down in Folkestone, which receives a variety of donations from rare and antiquarian books, to magazines, CDs and sheet music. Occasionally, he gets brought in some unusual treasures; the personal items from house clearances that will not sell, like note books, letters and not so long ago, an extraordinary box.

This looks like a fairly modern jewellery box; not very expensive and rather worse for wear. It sits on little chipped feet and won't quite close properly because it is so full. There is a stylised flower painted across the top and has been painted black, like oriental lacquer on the back and sides. Some past spillage remains on the bottom right hand side and a sticker on the bottom declares, rather over confidently, "quality product, foreign." A ballerina once danced inside and the wind up device underneath still sends out a tinkling, unrecognisable melody.

While this may be of very little commercial value, the little wooden box contains the treasures and secrets of one woman's life, their significance now lost but their poignancy still as strong. As a historian of women's lives, I was fascinated to see the little tokens the owner had collected over the years: jewellery, tickets, stamps, cake decorations newspaper cuttings and letters, mostly from the 1970s, just the sort of thing that we all hoard away, never thinking they will mean anything to anyone but us. I couldn't help but wonder about the stories and memories attached to each and regret their loss. As an object, it was a wonderful Pandora's box of a life - briefly reopened and explored by a stranger - a remarkable period piece that could stand as a symbol for many lives. The items yielded up a few clues about their owner. There are leads I could pursue through official records but I rather prefer the many possibilities and stories they suggest, to the cold hard truths that research might reveal. I thought I would share some of the contents and hope they will be enjoyed by others too.

                                                The treasures within

                             "To the dearest, sweetest husband in the world..."

    These look like decorations from an old wedding cake or bridal headgear

                                          a lock of blonde hair on the left

                           wedding cake decorations and a man's wedding ring

                                                  more decorations

some stamps postmarked 1978, one pre-decimal and another celebrating the 1977 silver jubilee

                                            at the bottom, the box's key

The Rebirth of a Catholic Queen.

 Can Catherine of Aragon’s popularity be revived, 500 years on ?

A review of Giles Tremlett’s biography “Catherine of Aragon; Henry’s Spanish Queen.”

                                                     The young widow

To placate the seemingly insatiable modern appetite for the Tudors, biographers and historians have been seeking fresh angles on old favourites. Increasingly, the same narrow ground of Henry VIII’s marital struggles and Elizabeth’s courtiers is ploughed, while less popular figures like Henry VII and Edward VI are only tickled by the fingers of history. One surprising new darling of the biography shelf though, is Catherine of Aragon, the previously much maligned Spanish princess whose refusal to grant Henry VIII a divorce sparked his break with Rome and the redefinition of the English church.

Giles Tremlett’s biography “Catherine of Aragon: Henry’s Spanish Queen,” published in November 2010, was the first to reengage with this interesting and neglected figure, with Julie Fox’s dual biography “Sister Queens,” featuring Catherine and the legendary mad Juana following shortly after. Patrick Williams will complete the triumvirate with another new life, due for publication this October. This rash of interest may have been inspired by the five hundredth anniversary of her marriage and accession to the throne in 1509 or may be a consequence of the interest in her dazzling rival Anne Boleyn.

A spanish infanta, recently supposed to be Catherine.

Catherine has always suffered through comparison with the woman who replaced her. Anne’s allure is still felt by readers and historians interested in her powers of seduction and the heinous injustice of her fall; the Boleyn industry had spawned many times more books for Anne’s three year reign than Catherine’s entire twenty-four years of marriage. And as the opponent of the glamorous, quick-witted Anne, Catherine has tended to be painted as an old, obstinate and miserable figure, whose attempts to cling onto her husband stood in the way of the path of supposed “true love.” It was also Anne Boleyn’s modernism that held Catherine’s popular reputation in check. Recent studies have focussed on Anne as a religious reformer, berating nuns for not strictly adhering to moral codes and introducing the King to seditious literature. Her famous resistance to Henry’s advances and insistence on a relationship of sexual equality, expose her as far more than the figure head of Tudor factional politics. She has been liberated from the one-dimensional biographical depictions as either temptress or victim, while the Queen has remained her simplistic foil. These elements strike a chord with a modern reader, through which contrast Catherine appears to be old-fashioned and misguided. Yet Tremlett’s biography makes clear that she was in fact, an admirable, majestic, devoted and popular queen, dispelling the myths of straight-laced control to show her dancing, singing, laughing and enjoying the pleasures of the royal bed.

What Catherine possessed that Anne lacked was an inherited regality and understanding of the nature of Queenship. She was not averse to using theatre and histrionics when the occasion demanded yet she always performed within the compass of her role; there would be none of Anne Boleyn’s upstart confrontationalism that so damaged her relations with Henry and gave rise to his famous threat to cast her down, just as he had raised her up. Catherine’s demeanour was always royal. The daughter of two of the most powerful rulers of early modern Europe, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, she was reared amid much elaborate pomp and ceremony and knew when to use her strength and when to bite her tongue: frequently her queenly nature won over the messengers sent by Henry to browbeat her into submission. One of the highlights of Tremlett’s biography is the section spent on her childhood in Spain, a unique insight previously lacking from studies, which Tremlett is well placed to write as the Guardian’s Madrid correspondent. The princess is pictured at key moments, delineated in vivid details of war, ceremony and marriage, contrasting sharply with her later years of privation in England. Leaving the exotic, sun-drenched and barbaric life of her parents, she was ready to rule, even though she was never intended for Henry VIII. In many ways, it was her unshakeable belief in her own regality that was to cause problems later.

                                              The triumphant queen

There is little new material in Tremlett’s handling of Catherine’s short-lived marriage to Arthur, Prince of Wales, the same old question of consummation evades answer, yet he approaches her hitherto neglected years of widowhood with a degree of empathy. His Catherine is an admirable survivor, caught between the difficult figures of Henry VII and her father, whilst trying to maintain her rapidly diminishing household. One of the things Tremlett does very well is to address the interplay of the personal and private, exploring Catherine’s illnesses and personal relationships in parallel with her role as an international figure. It was a waiting game, the outcome of which was never guaranteed. When, after seven years, she finally married Henry and became Queen, the happiest period of her life began. Readers of popular Tudor history might be forgiven for not realising her marriage lasted more than twice as long than those of the king’s five other wives put together. Tremlett stresses convincingly how well suited the pair were and in spite of Henry’s roving eye, Catherine’s position at his side was initially unquestioned.

The problem arose when it came to producing an heir. The real tragedy lies in Catherine’s string of miscarriages and stillbirths: by the early 1520s, with only one surviving daughter, relations between the couple began to change. Anne Boleyn arrived at court and the rest is well known. Where Tremlett’s biography manages to look at the old issue afresh, is in Catherine’s role in the Reformation. Undoubtedly, her refusal to retire from her marriage and her insistence on her queenship until the day of her death, contributed to the religious changes of the 1530s. Without her obstinacy, England may have remained a Catholic country until the death of Henry VIII and the lives of many of her advocates such as Thomas More and John Fisher, may have been spared. She was also prepared to become a martyr herself and to include her daughter in her fate. Yet Catherine did not have the benefit of hindsight. She could not have predicted just how far Henry would go in order to marry Anne Boleyn: in fact, the most common aspect of her response to the divorce was disbelief. She continued to believe that her husband would come to his senses and summon her again, even after she had heard of his remarriage and the birth of Elizabeth. In this, she was Henry’s match. They underestimated each other and the result was the Henrician Reformation.

Catherine died in 1536 just after her fiftieth birthday, removed from the husband and daughter she loved, as well as most of her friends. Henry gradually isolated her from the centre of court life until she found herself in virtual exile. Tremlett’s biography presents a mixed picture of a complex woman, who emerges admirably in adversity. Yet her stubbornness and sense of self importance, although a facet of her time, was largely responsible for changing those times. It is a long overdue reassessment of a life that has moments of intense joy and success, such as in her relations with her daughter and her regency during the French and Scottish wars, as well as the affection the English people had for her. Yet above all it is a tragedy and a great love story, for what emerges most from Tremlett’s book are the cruel twists of fate that affected the couple’s ability to have children: had Catherine born a healthy son, the marriage might have endured and remained happy. Speculation and "what'ifs" are a notorious cul-de-sac of history but it is on such small things that monumental historical changes hang. The fate of a nation was determined by the fertility of a Spanish princess’s womb.

“Catherine of Aragon: Henry’s Spanish Queen” Giles Tremlett. Faber and Faber, 2010.

“Sister Queens: Katherine of Aragon and Juana Queen of Castile.” Julia Fox. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, May 2011.

“Catherine of Aragon: A Life” Patrick Williams.  Amberley publishing. Due Oct 2011

Three extraordinary, dead women

Writer Sophie Brzeska, artist Ida Nettleship and model Fernande Olivier, who spent their lives with famous men. 

Taken from a multiple biography currently in progress

                                 Sophie, painted by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska in 1913

When Sophie Brezska was born in 1873, Charles Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” was fourteen years old but by the time of Fernande Olivier’s death in 1966, mankind was only three years away from setting foot on the moon. The world changed beyond recognition during the lives of their generation. Their maturation was concurrent with the suffrage movement and whilst none engaged directly with the more political activities of their contemporaries, their lives reveal continual conflict between more conservative, traditional values and new codes of conduct and experimentation. Nor was their challenge to gender stereotypes constant. Each experienced specific moments when changing social and moral expectations informed their decision making and resulted in deliberate acts of defiance, which although frequently motivated by personal desire, expose a complex interrelation of individual and context. What seems most strikingly and inescapably time-specific, was the power of men to define and limit their artistic achievement: their success being as durable as contemporary masculine understanding and generosity. Sophie lived briefly with the tragic Vorticist sculptor Henri Gaudier, linking her name with his; Ida was married to the rakish and fecund Augustus John while Fernande was Picasso's first love. Each had ambitions of their own yet little of their work survives.

 Separated by the passage of a century and vocal women’s movements, it is easy now to talk about wasted opportunities and romanticise these women as heroines sacrificed to male success, but as artist Edna Clarke Hall put it in response to her critics, women’s responsibilities lie equally with their children and “…in the development of the powers in herself which are her true expression.” The early twentieth century does provide examples of women who became successful artists as well as raising children: Bloomsbury’s Vanessa Bell, poetess Frances Cornford, Ida’s friends Edna Clarke Hall and Gwen Smith all persisted despite complicated personal arrangements. Yet there were also a significant number of successful women who remained single, delayed marriage, or did not have children, featuring on the fringes of these three lives: artists Ursula Tyrwhitt, Dorothy Brett, Gwen John, Dora Carrington, Nina Hamnett and Marie Laurencin; writers Virginia Woolf, Julia Strachey, Gertrude Stein and Katherine Mansfield. Of course there are many others, but although equal success in the realms of domesticity and creativity was achievable, it was significantly more difficult for women of the early twentieth century. Sadly, the most consistent and significant factor was financial circumstance: they could not all afford rooms of their own.

                                A pregnant Ida in 1901, painted by Augustus John

 Possibly of the three, Ida came the closest to having what would now be considered the most successful if short lived “career”, studying at the Slade throughout her teenage years: a handful of Fernande’s pictures have been reproduced in biographies of Picasso and until recently, Sophie’s unpublished diaries and short stories languished in a Colchester library, where water damage made her French-Polish writing difficult to read: a 2008 translation and limited edition of her stories and autobiography went a long way to address this. Ironically, their posthumous existence has been allied to the fame of those who directly affected their output but it is significant that they have been remembered primarily as women and not artists or writers.

 The arena of relationships and gender expectations was difficult and complicated for Sophie, Ida and Fernande: all three rejected the marital ideals of their families in order to follow their hearts. Their quests for romance were not always successful though, as the men they encountered could be predatory and selfish, exploiting double standards of sexual behaviour even when professing themselves most in love. Nor did marriage guarantee security. Instead, these women sought to forge new family units and open relationships that allowed for greater sexual and personal freedom, although the idea often proved more fulfilling in theory than practice. The casual encounters and affairs of Sophie and Fernande were strikingly modern in comparison with the expectations of their upbringing and despite remaining faithful, Ida saw her marriage become a ménage. As such, the conditions and experiences of these three women’s lives identify them as representatives of a changing world.

                                    Fernande, painted by Kees Van Dongen

All three led tragic lives. Sophie's belief that Henri would be killed during the Great War, was proven in April 1915; after a peripatetic existence, teaching, writing and moving about to escape great poverty, she ended her days in a psychiatric hospital in 1925. After six years of marriage, Ida's youthful hopes were buried in drudgery and repeated childbearing; her final labour proved too much and she died in Paris in 1906, at the age of thirty. Fernande lived the longest, flitting between artists and lovers after she and Picasso split in 1912; again poverty oppressed her despite stints working for Paul Poiret and the writing of her memoirs in the 1930s; she died in 1966.