How about historical; I need a genre!

An Historical (Romance)?

When I first designed the cover of ‘Ellen’s Tale’ I called it ‘an historical romance’.  I still consider the story historical despite it’s setting in 2161!  How so?  You may well ask.  The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, that hefty tome of a book, sums up history/historical as

History:

1) Original meaning of the word was learning or knowledge by enquiry

2) Narration of incidents

3) Continuous methodical record of important or public events

4) Branch of knowledge that deals with past events

Historical:

1) Pertaining to history

2) Concerned with events of history

3) Belonging to the past not the present

Ellen’s Tale concerns the work of two archivists in 2161 researching events fifty years in the past – 2111.  Using archival material they try and discover how these events influenced history.  They have to read and study around the basic source material so that the story can be placed in context.  The tale is the first part of a longer narrative which seeks to unearth the facts of the events.  Now tell me Ellen’s tale isn’t an historical something (I’ll come to romance in another post!).

I know, I know; life moves on, language changes.  However, it is to dictionaries we go for meanings; if we cannot do that language will mean nothing.  So moving on from the dictionary to Wikipedia – from the sublime to the ridiculous!  Amongst its pages on History we have

1) inquiry/knowledge acquired by discovery/ collection and organisation

2) presentation about past events

Alright, I know this a bit tongue in cheek but I have always liked to play around with the man-made, changing birthdays to suit myself ditto my names.  However, on this idea of straightjackets for fiction I do get so impatient.  Am I the only one who

1)    cares about the meanings of words

2)    thinks genre is just a useful ploy of distributers and book shops

3)   considers it not only a laziness of description but

4)   a bar against readers’ exploration of all fiction – readers also get into pigeon holes.

History is supposed to be real/factual – well we can dispute that.  As we are so often told, it is written and sometimes distorted by the winners, the powerful, to suit themselves (sounds like me!).  It is supposed to be a discipline which looks at past records (written by whom?); an inquiry into past truths by substantial and solid means.  So a strand of beads from a Roman ruin tells the historians a noble lady lived there? – sorry it doesn’t, it tells us someone dropped some beads there. 

Many historical novels and plays are about the author’s interpretations on their subjects or periods of time; events could differ substantially from ‘historians’ common pronouncements.  Shakespeare was a past master of this writing up historical events according to the ruling party of the day and why wouldn’t he be in the days when the Tower and the chopping block were real deterrents to doing otherwise!!  Robert Graves and Mary Renault presented their own interpretations of events in their novels and, of course, it is easier to play with ancient Rome and ancient Greece than something that happened last year.

'Historical romances', according to Wikipedia, are stories set before the Second World War.  Historical fiction, however, seems to follow the true course of the word history and allows stories from the past: such as Jonathan Coe’s ‘The Rotters’ Club’ set in the 1970’s or Courtney Thomas’ ‘Walls of Phantoms’ set in 1989.  So what makes romance different?

I accepted, reluctantly, that others had differing views to mine on the meaning of a history and went in search of romance.

Buried four metres down!

I have mentioned my liking for all things archival before, here and over here, and the fact that when looking for a framework on which to hang my Sefuty Chronicles I turned to them again.  What I like so much are the stories of real, ordinary people that one finds there. 

A few years ago I read of a letter discovered near Hadrian’s Wall, in Northumberland.  A party invite really and I was intrigued.  A Roman party invite.  At primary school we had the Roman Occupation of Britain and, for that matter, the known world (that gets me every time – the rest was known to those living there!) it seemed ad infinitum.  I wasn’t that interested then, although the thought of a defensive wall stretching across the country did appeal.  I imagined violent hairy Picts on the other side – my childish ideas of the Scots were grossly misinformed I was to find out later.  I filed the invite away in my mind, a memo to self go and see one day.

Then this year I did get a chance to holiday in Northumberland and realised I could go to the Roman ruins and see this invite for myself (actually it is a replica! The British Museum in London has the original).  There is this one site, Vindolanda Fort, a little way away from the Wall.  All together there were at least eight forts built on this spot.  Wooden buildings being built on wooden buildings and then stone on top of them.  Here I found an underground archive.

Underground because all the letters, bills, reports etc., hundreds of them, had been buried under layers of packed earth and preserved in a way I fear our modern archives will not be able to manage. The Vindolanda tablets are thin pieces of wood, about the size of a large postcard about 3mm thick, with ink writing.  The pen used was made of reed.  Most of them date from AD 92-105 – my imagination boggles at the age of them.

I saw the party invite; they think it was the earliest found piece of writing by a woman.  In it Claudia Severa invites her friend Lepidina

 ‘on 11 September, for the day of the celebration of my birthday.  I give you a warm invitation to make sure you come to us, it will make the day more enjoyable for me if you are present . . ‘.*

She also mentions her ‘little son’.  What did she feel about following her husband (a senior army officer Aelius Brocchus) so far from home with her child?

A small ambition of mine achieved.

Other tablets found discuss provisions; a shopping list

‘2 modii of bruised beans, 20 chickens, 100 apples, if you can find nice ones, 100 or 100 eggs, if they are for sale at a fair price, 8 sextarii of fish sauce, a modius of olives*’

           

I do wonder how, in a countryside not exactly heaving with people, 100-200 eggs could be found – was this an early form of factory farming or did they just not mind stale/bad eggs? 

These tablets show the soldiers were eating a varied diet; the food found listed included

‘Beans, lentils, bread, pancakes, barley, wheat, apples, eggs, porridge, chicken, pork chops, fish, venison, oysters, ham, herbs, radishes, beetroot, butter, honey, spices, pepper, mustard, fish sauce, olive oil, olives, vinegar, salt, garlic, wine, and British beer’ * 

Were all these local produce?  Was the climate in England warm enough for olive trees back then or were they imported? They would come from the sunnier climes of the Roman Empire, so then the mind can travel with them across the seas to the inclement northern parts of this little island.  So many stories!

We know from other tablets that many of the soldiers had eye infections and ointments were made up.  One tablet mentions

‘anise, nuts, berries, soft wheat flour, beans, alum, wax, bitumen, bull’s glue, pitch, blacking, anchusa, mustard seed, verdigris, linen soaked in honey, resin, cumin, oak gall’ *

All ingredients that could be used for the treatment of wounds and illnesses.

Northumberland can be a very cold windy place and one tablet says

‘I have sent you some socks from Sattua, two pairs of sandals and two pairs of underpants.’* 

Was it from a mother anxious for her son? Had he already written to her complaining.  It is understood the basic uniform was supplied but these extras had to supplied by the soldier – nothing much changes it seems!

When they were not fighting those maligned Picts, the soldiers were occupied in trades.  Another tablet shows

            ‘24 April, in the workshops 343 men including: shoemakers 12; builders to the bath-house 18;  lead working, saw-makers, builders to the hospital, workers to the kilns, plasterer.’*

Now I can smell the cooking, the smelting; hear hammering, listen to men, women and children talking, shouting, just being.  The artefacts dug up lend substance to the tablets, the outlines of ruins show the hospital, bath houses, kitchens. 

Buried under four metres of soil this is a treasure trove, more are found every year and it so satisfied my archival soul.

* excerpts from The British Museum  ‘V-Mail Letters from the Romans at Vindolanda Fort near Hadrian’s Wall’ by Katherine Hoare

(1 modii = 9 litres – 1 sextarii =1/2 litre)

Let's Hear It For The Archives

The day I pruned the Buddleia and decided to make Archives the framework and the reason for the Sefuty Chronicles, to place ‘Ellen’s Tale’ firmly in recorded memories, it was but a step from one of my soapbox passions.  The archives – wondrous places of excitement, adventure, exploration and revelation.  They are places of puzzles and answers.

I first fell in love  with archives and archival material when I took myself, in my early 40s, to Oxford Brookes University to try my hand at gaining a degree.  The first degree obviously involved libraries (I already loved those from early childhood) but then I moved to Sussex University to do a Masters and, while there, did an extra course on Oral History.  Sussex holds the Mass Observation Archives.  Part of our course involved this Archive – what treasures – I had never realised there were resources so interesting.  A few years later my friend – who by then was into Family History – stirred my interest in this also.  The archives are an essential part of this form of research.

Later still, after retirement, I began a Living History Group at our local U3A branch, it was hard work to interest people, they would insist they had lived such dull lives that no one would be interested in them.  I had to use a lot of persuasion to make them realise they were wrong.  Four years on and they have  produced their own book of memories. Maybe all these memories will only be passed down through family members but, as long as memories of lives lived are remembered history is enriched, and now the memories have been written down they can be archived and are a resource for the future.

I would like to enter a plea for everyone to record in some way some part of their life for future generations.  In the group that I run we have handwritten, typed, Braille and taped memories to show for our months together.  Some are ‘in depth’ life histories, some just isolated aspects of a life. 

Just by chance, on a web search (doing family history in fact), I discovered my father had recorded some interviews back in the early 1960’s.  These interviews of my father had been included in a book.   The reel to reel tapes had been lodged in the archives in Wales and only released a couple of years ago to public access.  His interviews were some of the over one hundred collected in that particular study.  

Primary source material, the glory of all students and researchers, novelists and family history buffs.  Every one of us is an original source of some aspect of life through the 20^th century and beyond.  Archives all over the country will keep our memories safe and, who knows, anyone of us could turn up in a piece of historical research, a biography or an historical novel.    

How many of us bemoan the fact we did not ask our parents / grandparents about their lives before it was too late.  Most of us are not interested when we are younger but there comes a time when we wish we had known more.  So a plea from me, please think of recording something in some format to leave to the generations that follow.  For your families or the archives or both. 

PS. The Archives sent me a CD of my father’s interviews. Now how cool is that, getting to listen to him again, nearly 20 years after his death! 

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Ellen's Tale: her birth.

Ellen was one of those short stories – well she was intended as one.

Ellen might appear at first to be quiet and well behaved but right from the beginning she’s had a mind of her own. 

Ellen leapt onto the page ready made and named, Bix following so close behind her heels were almost trampled.  I told them firmly they were ‘short’.  I reminded them of it at regular intervals.  They took not a blind bit of notice.  I hastily researched among friends and text books, how long a sort story was, Ellen and Bix had romped well pass the mark, maybe a novella?  They were not having any of it, they took over the keyboard and raced on.  I gave in as gracefully as I knew how and Ellen and Bix slid to a gentle halt when they were ready. 

Proving yet again I was rubbish at ‘short’.  Ah well.

Thinking about Ellen and how she came about is a lesson in how the different influences in one’s life all meld together in the mind.  When I settled down that day to start her Tale I had just finished reading a book about the global food market throughout history.  Fascinating read.  No real leap of the imagination to see the idea of the Sefuty Line being seeded then.

Then those that rode the line had to be bold and brave Heros because . . .? What kind of world would they inhabit?  Well we had been living through a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, following a century of such. . . you get the picture  . . . a world at war.  After that it was easy, my  long held concerns of planet trashing, the horror of modern warfare brought both the reason and the land mines. 

Once the new world was created, it was a matter of thinking about the lack of resources.  On my travels I had often been in places where these lacks are apparent.  Think about super foods and medicine based originally on plants but now manufactured in factories, project into the future and I had pastiles, artificial food. 

I am a confirmed carnivore, so much so that some friends have expressed concern at being shipwrecked with me! Many times travelling through areas of want, meat has not been on the menu, while respecting the reasons I did miss it, (I am sorry if I offend).  I just had to think how much I would miss my roast meat to summon up Grans dying request.

Whilst pruning the Buddleia I was thinking about another interest in my life Family History, and was prompted ponder on the wonder that are ‘The Archives’. I was preparing a small speech about them for a meeting. I host a group, in our local U3A, on Living History where we have been writing about our lives. Among the many passions of my life ‘archives’ loom large. The hidden stories concealed within them fascinate.  A recurring rant of mine at the meetings is for all of us to preserve our memories in the archives for future generations.  Of course Ellen and Bix would be archival material. 

She might have been intended as a short story but Ellen in her determined way has led me into different pasture indeed.  A series of ‘Sefuty Chronicles’ now jostle for space in my head, for room on my computer.

this post was originally published as two on my website.  http://www.albertaross.co.uk/

I also blog about almost anything on
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