Lady Moppet’s Post #9: There’s Something About Moppet

Lady Moppet and two of her children. Image from http://karenswhimsy.com

Previously: Lady Moppet of Yorkshire, time-travelling mistress of King John, was alarmed to discover that Elizabeth Woodville was self-publishing an erotic historical novel about her entitled The Wicked Mistress, under the pen name Melusina Granger.The Wicked Mistress was largely based on a thirteenth-century manuscript, the Historia Moppetae, written by Brother Walter, editor of the Waltham Chronicle of the Universe, at the instigation of King John, who thought ruining Moppet’s reputation would help rehabilitate his own. Moppet was shocked to learn of John’s involvement and it caused a rift between them. When John discovered that she was secretly using contraception, he imprisoned her, and, leaving her in the custody of his half-brother William Longespee, made his way to the court of Henry VIII to find a secure hiding place for the Historia Moppetae. Moppet was released from captivity by Sir Gloucester Debrett-Burke, who is on a mission to make John sign Parva Carta, a charter about the right to hunt foxes. Making a brief return visit to the twenty-first century to confirm her suspected pregnancy, Lady Moppet was told that she is expecting twins:

I decided to rest for a few days before doing any more time travel, and, probably unwisely, whiled away my time reading The Wicked Mistress. I found it even worse than I’d supposed. It wasn’t just the repetitive sex, although that was bad enough (My nipples spring to attention. I arch my back, keening). It was the defamation of Lady Moppet. According to Melusina Granger, Moppet ended a typical weeknight like this:

I stagger outside. I reach for the support of the wall, miss it, and retch, spattering my silken gown, my embroidered slippers.

It was infuriating. But I had to remember that I would soon be the mother of three. I wanted to reconcile with the father of my children, but without colluding in the wrecking of my own reputation, if possible.

King John’s Post #3: Some bodices were ripped in the writing of this post

The Bodleian Library. Photo by Paul Joseph via Flickr

Previously: Lady Moppet of Yorkshire, time-travelling mistress of King John, was alarmed to discover that Elizabeth Woodville was writing an erotic historical novel about her entitled The Wicked Mistress, under the pen name Melusina Granger. The Wicked Mistress was largely based on a thirteenth-century manuscript, the Historia Moppetae by Brother Walter, editor of the Waltham Chronicle of the Universe. While Lady Moppet was shocked to learn that King John was collaborating with Brother Walter on the project, she was relieved that it seemed unlikely that The Wicked Mistress would find a publisher, due to the excessive number of sex scenes. Meanwhile, John, discovering that Moppet had secretly been using contraception, promptly imprisoned her before leaving, ostensibly to visit his northern territories. He takes up the tale from the time he decided to leave Moppet in the charge of his brother, William of Salisbury.

I sent for Oscar. He dashed in and skidded over the rushes to a kneeling position. I picked him up and held him up high. He kicked his little legs and stared down at me with Moppet’s blue eyes.

It’s never wise to get too attached to a small child. They’re too fragile. They’re like goldfish. Swimming happily round in their pond today, floating dead on the surface tomorrow. For no particular reason. So I’d never spent much time with any of my young children before. But Oscar was different. He would live to a great age. He would save the English monarchy. Moppet had brought him to me across the centuries so that he could fulfil his destiny. And I would never let him go.

That was why I was taking him with me. If Moppet escaped – and I didn’t put it past her – she might take Oscar with her. If she returned to her own time, I could send my mercenaries after her, to chloroform her and drag her back, as I had with Mrs Kensington (although God knew my to-do list was long enough). But if she hid somewhere else – somewhere in the past, or somewhere even further in the future – I might never be able to find her. Or Oscar. And I wouldn’t risk that.

[Warning: further on in this post Mary Boleyn will be using foul language.]

Lady Moppet’s Post #5: Dinner with Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn

King John lays down the law to Oscar. Image from Nan Hawthorne's Booking History

Previously: Lady Moppet was alarmed to discover that Melusina Granger was writing an erotic historical novel about her entitled The Wicked Mistress.  Discovering that it was based on a thirteenth-century manuscript, the Historia Moppetae, by Brother Walter, she is now upset to learn that King John collaborated with Brother Walter on the project:

“Brother Walter and I have worked out a strategy,” said John.

“What kind of a strategy?” I asked.

“Public relations.”

“Whose?”

“Mine.”

“I see,” I said. “You think maligning me will make you look better to historians.”

“Well, it will, Moppet,” he said seriously.

“So I’m to be libelled and my reputation traduced – “

“Better you than me, darling – ”

“And to add insult to injury, you’re publishing these ridiculous interviews that make me sound like a cross between a Doris Day character and a Dickens heroine!”

“I have to,” he said, “it’s what people want to hear.  I can’t let anyone know what a bossyboots you are – they’d never respect me again, and I wouldn’t get any more taxes out of them.  It’s all part of the strategy.  We present one version of Lady Moppet to my subjects, another to posterity.”

“And neither one is anything like the truth.”

“Well, I’m sorry if you’re miffed, darling, but I’m not going to change my plans.”

“Do just as you please, Sire.  You are the master.”

I made a mocking curtsey (I was good at that), turned my back on him and swept off to my room.  There I got into bed and dived under the covers.  I’d had enough of this day.

Warning: after the cut, Anne Boleyn, not for the first time on this blog, uses some very strong language!

January Poll: Who has been the most maligned by history?

Richard III, accused of murdering his two nephews, ran away with this one. It seems unlikely his name will ever be cleared.  The Richard III Society have a good analysis of the case and the suspects.

In second place, Anne Boleyn.  More about her at The Anne Boleyn Files including a post on her reputation and how far she was responsible for breaking up Henry VIII’s first marriage.

Despite the efforts of revisionist historians, King John, who ties for third place with Marie Antoinette, will probably always be Bad King John to most people, but one myth at least should be laid to rest: that the name John was never used again by the British royal family because of its association with him.

Catherine Delors has a great post on Marie Antoinette and cake here.  No, there is no proof she said, ‘Let them eat cake.’  It’s been attributed to various other French princesses, as far back as Louis XIV’s Queen, but there’s not much proof they said it either.  Nancy Barker has written an article I am trying to track down about how this phrase came to be associated with Marie Antoinette: ”‘Let Them Eat Cake’: The Mythical Marie Antoinette and the French Revolution,” Historian vol 55 no 4, 1993 (709-724).  For more about the vilification of Marie Antoinette in general, I highly recommend Chantal Thomas’s The Wicked Queen: The Origins of the Myth of Marie Antoinette, translated by Julie Rose.

In fourth place, Elizabeth Woodville, accused of being a witch and a social climber.  Susan Higginbotham has a page debunking Elizabeth Woodville myths here and recommending sources on her.  Susan also posts on the Woodvilles at her blog.

And last but not least, Edward II.  At the Edward II blog Alianore has a post on why, although Edward II may have been a bad king, he wasn’t a bad man.

Miss Moppet: Why I voted for Marie Antoinette

The cake thing. It will not go away. Although I enjoyed Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, and the film made it clear that MA did not say ‘let them eat cake’ it showed her stuffing cake morning, noon and night. Not one contemporary reports her doing this and at least two comment on her abstemious habits.  Nor was she likely to be found in the early hours passed out drunk:

Yes, she stayed up all night dancing and gambling.  But she didn’t drink.

Lady Moppet of Yorkshire: Why I voted for King John

Why do you think?  Because he would have given me no peace if I hadn’t!

I am not very pleased with John at the moment, due to his lack of concern for my own reputation.  I will say, though, that people fail to set his actions in context.  He executed hostages, including children, but that was (a) a legitimate act of war at the time and (b) part of the job of being a medieval king.  Mercy was all too easily equated with weakness. ( Thus Henry I on one occasion found it necessary to blind his own granddaughters and cut off their noses.)

***

If Richard III didn’t kill the Princes, who did?  Vote for your preferred candidate in the February poll!

The November Poll: results and analysis

And the winner is…

The lucky lady who doesn't have to marry Henry: his first wife, Katherine of Aragon

Every one of Henry’s wives got a vote.  There was some early interest in Catherine Howard.  But it was always going to be a grudge match between Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn.  Anne said it about Princess Mary, but in this case she could have been referring to Katherine: “She is my death, and I am hers.”

Let’s recap all the reasons these women had to regret marrying Henry:

Katherine of Aragon

Won the battle of Flodden while Henry was losing battles in France, but failed to give Henry a son, daughter not considered good enough, cast aside in favour of Anne Boleyn, told to her face she was lying when she said her previous marriage to Prince Arthur had not been consummated, had her marriage to Henry annulled, exiled to various increasingly uncomfortable residences and prevented from seeing Princess Mary.  Henry dressed in yellow to celebrate her death.

Anne Boleyn

Mother of the future Elizabeth I, this again not good enough for Henry, didn’t produce son fast enough so imprisoned and executed on trumped-up charges of adultery and witchcraft.  Henry did send for a swordsman from France to behead her though, rather than having her head hacked off with an axe.

Jane Seymour

Died of puerperal fever shortly after giving birth to Henry’s long-desired heir.

Anne of Cleves

Survived marriage to Henry but maligned ever since as unattractive and smelly, probably because he needed an excuse for his recurrent impotence.

Catherine Howard

Pushed into Henry’s arms by scheming uncle, sought fulfilment elsewhere and paid for it with her life.

Katherine Parr

Prevented from marrying the man of her choice by Henry who wanted her for himself, acted as regent while he was on campaign, made a home for three difficult stepchildren.  Despite all that Henry threatened her with arrest at least once and made it clear she was second best by choosing to be buried next to Jane Seymour.

Poll Results

Miss Moppet: why I voted for Catherine Howard

I didn’t vote for Katherine of Aragon because, while Henry undoubtedly did her wrong, would she have preferred to remain a Dowager Princess and not have Princess Mary?  I don’t think so.  Anne Boleyn did choose to marry Henry and knew the stakes were very high.  Besides, if she hadn’t married him there would have been no Elizabeth I.  Jane Seymour gave Henry an heir and she might have thought that was worth dying for.  And Anne of Cleves and Katherine Parr did at least survive.

So, Catherine Howard.  There seems to be a general feeling that she asked for what she got, and yes, Catherine was extremely foolish to begin an affair with Thomas Culpeper.  But look at it from her point of view.  She was young, she was pretty, she was married to an ailing king old enough to be her grandfather, and she thought there had to be more to life than this.  I think a society that idolises youth and sexuality to the degree ours does should judge Catherine Howard a little less harshly.

Lady Moppet of Yorkshire: why I voted for Katherine Parr

I quite see about Catherine Howard.  Only I like to think I would have managed things a little more cleverly than she did.  If I decided to have an affair with Thor, for example.  I’m just saying.

Anyway.  Back to the point.  Henry may not have killed Katherine Parr but he ruined her life.  Yes, when he died she got to marry Thomas Seymour but she died in childbirth less than two years later, at the age of thirty-six, with her marriage blighted by her new husband’s dalliance with her stepdaughter, Princess Elizabeth.  Who would never have been staying with her if it hadn’t been for Henry marrying her in the first place.  So thanks, Henry!  You managed to ruin someone else’s marriage from beyond the grave.

The December poll is here!  The Misadventures of Moppet wants to know: where do you stand on Twilight?

Royal Mistress Challenge: the allure of the mistress

Photo by John Cunliffe for Abigails Ateliers. All rights reserved.

When I began collecting the titles of novels for the Royal Mistress Challenge, I realised that this amounts to a sub-genre in itself. What is the perennial allure of the mistress? I think it comes down to five things:

1. Beauty
2. Power
3. Money
4. Sex
4. Mystery

Beauty first. We like reading about beautiful people, otherwise People magazine would go out of business pretty darn quick.  Mistresses were nearly always renowned for their beauty; the few who weren’t, like Mlle Choin, the mistress/secret wife of the Grand Dauphin, Louis XIV’s son, don’t tend to get written about very much.

Power. Mistresses and favourites were hated figures, because they were blamed for the poor decisions made by the king.  One of the reasons Marie Antoinette was so unpopular for much of her husband’s reign was that he did not have a mistress, so when things went wrong, there was no-one to blame but her.

How much power the mistress actually had varied.  In the medieval period the mistress was a shadowy figure, there for the king’s convenience, and baronial families objected to their daughters being ‘despoiled’ by the king.  By 1500 the mistress was emerging as a power player, and during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries families backed potential mistresses like political candidates.  In return they expected their piece of the pie.  And that leads us on to:

Money. The early modern period was the heyday of the mistress, who, in addition to houses, jewels and art, gathered land, money, offices, privileges and pensions and redistributed them to supporters and relatives.  By the nineteenth century, with the decline of royal autonomy, the mistress was less rapacious, but still enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle.

Sex. By definition, a mistress is desirable.  We like reading about desirable people.  Otherwise InStyle magazine would go out of business pretty darn quick.  An aura of exciting sex hangs around the mistress.  Whether she was enjoying all this sex as much as the king is another matter, which merits further discussion.  When she was having sex with the king, that was.  Anne Boleyn held Henry VIII off for six years because she didn’t want a hit-and-run romance like the one he had with her sister Mary.  Madame de Pompadour made the transition from mistress to best friend and confidante of Louis XV without losing any of her influence over him.

Mystery. The mistress might be a public figure, but unlike her counterpart, the queen, she was not constantly on display.  She wasn’t crowned, she didn’t eat in public or have crowds of people trooping through her apartment.  Often surprisingly little is known about her relationship with the king.  While sources abound for the reign of Louis XIV – we know what he was doing every day for much of the time – almost no letters survive between him and his mistresses, none of whom wrote their memoirs.

And maybe there’s an X-factor that defies analysis.  One thing is certain: looking at reviews of royal mistress novels, a theme quickly emerges.  Major Mary Suedom.  Wikipedia is pretty good on popular culture, so I’ll leave the definition of a Mary Sue to them:

A Mary Sue (sometimes just Sue), in literary criticism and particularly in fanfiction, is a fictional character with overly idealized and hackneyed mannerisms, lacking noteworthy flaws, and primarily functioning as wish-fulfillment fantasies for their authors or readers.

And so I decided that the heroine of every one of these novels I read, and I mean every one, will have to undergo that most dreaded ordeal of any fictional character.

Yes.  You know what I’m talking about.

The Mary Sue Litmus Test.

Anyway.  Having decided this, Moppet felt she’d better put her own house in order before she started calling other people’s characters Mary Sues.  I.e.: make her own alter ego, Lady Moppet of Yorkshire, take the Mary Sue Litmus Test.

The phrase ‘alter ego’ should give everyone a clue that there was never much hope that Lady Moppet wasn’t a Mary Sue.  But there’s always some hope.  Isn’t there?

So, first, Miss Moppet did the Writers’ Mary Sue Test (squeaking with laughter all the way through).  The results:

Lady Moppet of Yorkshire isn’t a character: she’s you, or you as you’d like to be. She isn’t really very cool: she blends into crowds, she hangs out on the fringes at parties, and wearing shades after dark makes her run into things. She may have sometimes thought that she was special, or destined for greater things, but probably dismissed the idea as a fantasy. She’s come in for her share of hurt, but gotten off with minor damage. And you’ve been sparing with the free handouts: whatever she gains, she’s worked for.

You may have let yourself get a little too close to Lady Moppet of Yorkshire. Maybe she’s you as you wish you were, or maybe you’re just afraid no one will like her and are trying to give her a free ride. Have some confidence in your writing! Lady Moppet of Yorkshire is a good character. Give her room to be herself before you stifle her.

I’m not going to use this test for the Royal Mistress Challenge novels because there are too many questions that only the writer can answer, such as ‘do you frequently fantasise about being your character?’  I could have a guess, but it hardly seems fair.

So Miss Moppet found another test, The Original Fiction Mary-Sue Litmus Test.  And did the test again.  Hoping that maybe this one might come out differently!  The way you re-read Gone with the Wind!  Hoping that this time, everything will be okay!

And you were expecting?  She is a royal mistress, after all.

How Alison Weir was duped

John Guy’s review of Alison Weir’s latest book, The Lady in The Tower: The Fall of Anne Boleyn, has various criticisms to make, one of which I am going to deal with here.

If you look at the section in Weir’s book entitled ‘Notes on Some of the Sources’ you will find, listed separately, Lancelot de Carles: Epistre contenant le proces criminel faict a l’encontre de la royne Anne Boullant d’Angleterre and, a few pages on, Crispin, Lord of Milherve. Carles is described as ‘almoner to the Dauphin of France (the future Henri II), a renowned poet and man of letters, and the author of blazons and sacred poetry…who was present at Anne’s trial’ (p.338).  Milherve is described, again, as a man of letters who was present at Anne’s trial (p.341).  Both sources produced poetry describing Anne’s fall.

What’s the problem with all that?  Well, according to Guy:

Weir believes that a separate poem by another Frenchman, an “eyewitness” at Anne’s trial, one Crispin de Miherve, corroborates de Carles and adds extra details. Unfortunately, “Crispin” is a phantom. A French scholar proved in 1844 that the text Weir is using had been doctored, and in 1927 it was shown by comparing all the genuine manuscripts that the two poems are identical and by de Carles. Weir has been duped.

When I read this I turned to the index of The Lady in the Tower to see if I could find a page where both de Miherve and de Carles were mentioned.  I could – page 262.  This page and the following one discuss who served Anne as ladies-in-waiting during her time in the Tower.  The advantage of writing a book focussing on only part of a subject’s life is that there is room to discuss matters like this, which might go by the board in a full biography.  It’s an interesting section which I will return to in a later post.  Weir concludes that as a special favour to his disgraced queen, during her imprisonment in the Tower of London Henry VIII permitted Anne the company of four of her young maids of honour (in addition to four older women, two of whom departed after her condemnation).  In the footnotes Weir cites, in total, six sources to support the fact that Anne was attended by young women at this time, not just her older ladies-in-waiting.  Two of those sources are by Carles and Milherve – in other words, by the same person.

So the six sources Weir cites are reduced to five.  Does that matter?  To the general reader, no.  Even without the Milherve corroboration, it’s still very likely that Anne was attended by maids of honour in the Tower.  Five sources are ample to support a fairly minor point such as this one.  But to the academic world, it does matter.  Narrative history is a constant balancing act, a weighing up of one source against another, and every tip in the balance is crucial.

However.  If Weir has slipped up, she’s not the only one.

Two otherwise excellent books dealing with fashion in Louis XIV’s France (an under-studied subject), Diana de Marly’s Louis XIV and Versailles and Pamela Cowan’s A Fanfare for the Sun King: Unfolding Fans for Louis XIV, cite the memoirs of the Marquise de Montespan, one of Louis XIV’s mistresses and the mother of several of his children.  Here’s a quote from the Montespan memoirs, reproduced on page 90 of A Fanfare for the Sun King, describing a lottery held by Cardinal Mazarin.  (Lotteries, in the seventeenth century, could be a means of entertaining guests at a party and distributing expensive gifts.)

The Queens distributed the tickets with every appearance of honesty and good faith.  But I had reason to remark, by what happened to myself, that the tickets had been registered beforehand.  The young Queen, who felt her garter slipping off, came to me in order to tighten it.  She handed me her ticket to hold for a moment, and when she had fastened her garter, I gave her back my ticket instead of her own…My number won a portrait of the King set in brilliants, much to the surprise of the Queen Mother and His Eminence; they could not get over it.

Reading this left me puzzled.  I had spent several years in the British Library, reading primary and secondary sources for exactly this period without ever, once, encountering any memoirs by Madame de Montespan.  There was nothing obviously fake in the quote, in fact, quite the reverse: it is likely lotteries of this nature were fixed, with the biggest prizes going to those highest in rank, as they did at the lottery held at the festival of the Enchanted Isle, held by Louis XIV at Versailles in May 1664.

I checked the bibliography of the most authoritative biography of Montespan I knew to exist, Madame de Montespan by Jean-Christian Petitfils, Fayard, 1988.  This did indeed include a two volume 1829 edition of the Memoires.  But there was a note with it, which, translated, reads:

These memoirs, apocryphal but quite well written, have been attributed to Philippe Musoni.  The same series includes the Memoires, equally apocryphal, of Mlle de La Valliere.

Of course, it could be that Musoni (supposing him to be the author) based his work on a genuine source, written by Montespan or someone close to her.  But in the absence of any evidence, we have to assume he didn’t, which means the entire book must be completely discounted.

And here’s another book which has to be discounted:

I’ve saved the best till last.  This is Madame du Hausset’s Memoires sur Louis XV et Madame de Pompadour, purporting to be an account of du Hausset’s time in Pompadour’s service, described by Alden R. Gordon, ‘The Longest-Enduring Pompadour Hoax: Senac de Meilhan and the Journal de Madame du Hausset‘ (Art and culture in the eighteenth century: new dimensions and multiple perspectives, ed. Elise Goodman, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2001) as ‘one of the most successful literary fabrications of all time, enduring for eighteen decades…No single source has been so frequently used as the basis for anecdotal insight into the intimate life of Madame de Pompadour and Louis XV.’

Indeed.  Some of Hausset’s most interesting passages concern Louis XV’s private brothel, and how Pompadour (who was no longer sleeping with the King) would arrange for the children of the King’s mistresses to be cared for.

Madame du Hausset was indeed employed in the household of Madame de Pompadour, but her so-called memoirs were written after the Revolution, probably by Gabriel Senac de Meilhan, the son of one of Louis XV’s doctors.  He would have had inside knowledge of the royal court.  But he wasn’t a lady-in-waiting to Madame de Pompadour.

Doubts were raised about the authenticity of the Madame du Hausset manuscript as early as October 1954 by Pierre Gaxotte.  It has been reprinted (presented as almost entirely authentic) in a scholarly edition as recently as 2002.  Why has it taken so long for it to be debunked?  Well, hoaxes like this one, when they work, work because they’re good – they’re written by people who know what they are talking about and have access to authentic sources of information.  The other reason?  The Hausset memoirs filled a gap, providing details of Pompadour’s private life that are available nowhere else.

Gordon:

The anecdotes in Madame du Hausset are delightful and have seemed so necessary to the biographer because they are the only sustained intimate descriptions of the private life shared by Louis XV with Madame de Pompadour.  And therein lies the gnawing sensation that the journal of Madame du Hausset is too good to be true.  The anecdotes supply precisely the kind of voyeuristic intimacy about incidents, emotions, and personal quirks that people desperately want to know about any famous person.  Having not existed in actuality they had to be invented to supply the lack.

Gordon also concludes that ‘In a scholarly generation given to interpretation, the need to vet primary sources for authentication has not been aggressively practiced.’

And now a confession: Miss Moppet is not clean on this.  The dissertation I completed in the third year of my history degree, which looked at the lives of eighteenth-century French noblewomen through the medium of their memoirs, included extensive quotations from the Memoires de Madame de Crequy.  What I didn’t know (and, presumably, nor did my tutors or examiners, because the dissertation got a high mark and no-one mentioned it) was that Madame de Crequy’s memoirs are a suspect source.  The British Library catalogue attributes them to Pierre-Marie-Jean Cousin de Courchamps.

I will freely admit that even now I have not got to the bottom of this matter.  I had taken it for granted that the memoirs were authentic because they were quoted in one of the seminal works on the French nobility, Guy Chaussinand-Nogaret’s 1976 The French Nobility in the Eighteenth Century: From Feudalism to Enlightenment. But according to Will L. McLendon, ‘A Problem in Plagiarism: Washington Irving and Cousen de Courchamps’, Comparative Literature, Vol 20, No.2, Spring 1968, pp. 157-169, the Crequy memoirs were declared false as early as 1836.

One other fact makes me feel that some mystery surrounds the matter.  One of the sources used to disprove the authorship of the Crequy memoirs happens to be Madame de Crequy’s authentic correspondence with none other than that supremely successful hoaxer…Senac de Meilhan.

Did the poacher turn gamekeeper?  I’m not sure.  But if I find out, you’ll be the first to know.

Anne Boleyn: Venus or witch?

The movie tie-in cover

It was the original cover of The Other Boleyn Girl which famously started the trend for ‘headless women’ covers for historical novels.  I may be in the minority in not liking that original cover.  It was the colours: I just found them drab and boring.  I far prefer the vibrant emerald green of the movie tie-in cover.  This was the first copy of the book which I bought, and the green helped sell it to me (rather than the Photoshopping, which I’ve seen better done).

The question I want to answer is: why green?  Why not blue, red or yellow?  Why associate Anne Boleyn with the colour green?

Personally, the first thing that comes to mind is the idea of envy and jealousy: the ‘green-eyed jealousy’ and ‘green-eyed monster’ Shakespeare wrote about in The Merchant of Venice.  That’s pretty appropriate to the storyline of TOBG, which is chock full of envy and jealousy in the form of rivalry between Anne and her sister Mary.  Both envy the other at different times, but it is Anne who is portrayed as devoured by envy, consumed by ambition and determination to shove her sister out of the way and get to the top.

The second thing Anne’s green dress made me think of is another woman who dresses in green – a character in one of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, The Silver Chair.  When Jill and Eustace meet The Lady of the Green Kirtle on their journey to the land of the giants, they think she is lovely.  But their companion and guide, Puddleglum, is suspicious, and rightly so.  The Lady is a witch, with the power to transform into a serpent, ‘shining, and as green as poison.’

Well, Anne Boleyn doesn’t transform into a serpent in the pages of TOBG (don’t want to disappoint anyone who hasn’t read it) but she is shown to resort to witchcraft on more than one occasion.  She also attempts to poison an enemy.  Whether she was really guilty of this or not, it was something of which she was accused.   So again the green dress seems appropriate.

Or at least that’s how a 21st century audience sees it.  Jane Ashelford, discussing the language of colours in the sixteenth century, says that green was then known as ‘the colour of love and joy’ (The Art of Dress: Clothes and Society 1500-1914, London: The National Trust, 1996, revised ed. 2000, p.32).  Why love and joy?  Green was associated with Venus, the goddess of love, who was portrayed rising from green waves, as in Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus.  This association continued right through the early modern period (about 1500-1800) and was the reason why women’s bedchambers were so often decorated in green.  One of the best examples is the Green Velvet Bedchamber at Houghton Hall, Norfolk, England.  In 1732 William Kent designed a bed for this room with a gilded double shell against the headcloth (which you can just about glimpse through the curtains in the image below) to represent the shell in which Venus was borne to the shore.  There’s another green-upholstered bedchamber (although the colour has faded badly) at Osterley Park on the outskirts of London.  For this, the State Bedchamber, Robert Adam designed an eight-poster bed as a Temple of Venus in 1775-6 – click through the slide show to see it.

So although the ‘green’ Other Boleyn Girl cover may have been designed with the intention of portraying Anne as less than angelic, I like to think that she and her contemporaries would have seen it quite differently – as a tribute to her beauty and desirability.

Miss Moppet tours the Houses of Parliament: part two

Parliamentary copyright images are reproduced with the permission of Parliament

Westminster Hall was completed for William Rufus in 1099, so this year it celebrates its 910th birthday. It survived the two fires and has been the setting for numerous royal events – every coronation feast from Richard I in 1189 to George IV in 1832, the trials of Anne Boleyn and Charles I, and the lying in state of kings and queens, most recently (2002) HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. At the time I wanted to go because it’s not the sort of thing you see every day, but the four-mile queue put me off.

My first impression of the hall was that it was big. The second was that it was intensely atmospheric – you really sense the weight of the past here, and it feels quite different from the rest of the palace. The third was that it was absolutely freezing cold. It was quite a cold day – in fact I’ve lost one of my gloves and this was the day I gave in and bought a new pair because my hands were so cold – but it seemed even colder in that hall. I couldn’t see any fireplaces. Possibly they would have brought in braziers in the Middle Ages?

The hall was designed as living space – until the reign of Henry VIII, who moved to Whitehall, monarchs lived at the Palace of Westminster.

Next: how a chapel became a debating chamber