Lovely goddess...talk of Demosthenes: my paper at the Durham Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies on March 7th, 2024

I'm writing this posting having just got back to Newcastle after an eventful day in Durham where I finally visited the Cathedral (and was introduced to medieval wall paintings which echoed quite uncannily what I was going to talk about just an hour or so after that: see below...), met up with colleagues one last time, and gave the talk for the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies that I've mentioned several times on this blog.

A written-up version the text the talk follows. I should say that I completed this version on Tuesday (today is Thursday) when I felt as though - as I think I convey below - I'd reached the end of this first phase of my adventures in the Palace Green collections. But then I made some further discoveries yesterday (Wednesday) that added in unexpected - and to me exciting - ways to my findings. I mentioned some of these when I spoke this afternoon. For now though - here's what I wrote on Tuesday. I will then share - hopefully tomorrow - these additional findings.

One final lead-in point: the illustrations in this posting are screenshots of the PowerPoint slides - they're image-less for several reasons, one being the fact that I'll need to apply for permission to publish photographs of materials in the Collection.

Many thanks for this opportunity to share what I have been doing while a Barker Fellow over the past few weeks. What I'll be sharing is all quite raw - and very much work in progress. I'll welcome any thoughts, including in places where I reveal just how much I've yet to find out. Also, though, these weeks have shown much me just how much can be done in a month...

Here are two lead-ins to my topic in the form of 'show and tells'. The first, like Deirdrie Raftery's which she showed at her recent talk in this room, is my latest book. Unlike Dee's, though, you might wonder what mine has to do with the 19th century - or with anything I'm here to work on - as it's a book of lessons for autistic children based on classical myth.

The book's focus, though, is a specific artefact, in a room at the University of Roehampton, where I used to work. This artefact dates to the late 18th century - so could come under the LONG 19th-century: it's a chimneypiece panel showing Hercules choosing between two different paths in life. But there's another - better? - fit as well between why my book's topic and what I've been doing in Durham...

When I joined the University of Roehampton, and discovered this chimneypiece panel at a time when I was writing on its subject, Hercules, I got curious as to its subject matter - and on things things like: what was it doing there in that room? and when did it date to? So I went into the archives and found out as much as I could. So much so that the archivist described me as the World Expert on the panel... meaning just that I'm the only person to have looked at everything that's available.

This was an intense experience which I loved - including not knowing what would be there waiting to be discovered, and with documents being retrieved for me in a haphazard order. And it has been wonderful having an opportunity to be that kind of academic again - immersed in a Collection.

And... again this month, I've been looking at materials no in order of date etc, but in the order that they can best be retireved by the librarians. The result, this time round, has been some puzzlement, excitement and a feeling of immersion.

To my second show and tell item...

While staying here in the North East, I have been reading A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr where, in a month, August, in the early 1920s, a young man uncovers a medieval mural in a church in Yorkshire while going on a journey into confronting his own experiences - the reader is with him as he uncovers/discovers various things about his personal life and those around him.

I am thinking of renaming my blog - currently called 'Adventures in the Palace Green' - 'A Month in the Palace Green' or something like that, and what I am going to do this lunchtime is not what I thought I might, namely to give a report of my main findings, weighed in terms of their importance. I WILL go on to do that, but further down the line. What I'm going to do now is to take you through features of my discoveries - now that I'm nearly at the end of my time here: the Fellowship ends tomorrow.

What I came here to do was, as I put it in my application...:

That final point is a hotter then ever topic just now - with the publication, during the time of my fellowship, of a report on class discrimination in Classics in the UK which is pretty damming and well-evidenced - and something that Durham classicists have long been seeking to address, not least Edith Hall and Justine Wolfenden.

Returning to what I proposed to do in my application, I stated that I intended to ask the following questions:

And also these:

Not all of this has happened - for instance the Duff Papers have turned out not a state to be retrieved. 

There's more still to be done...

But to what I HAVE found. I have looked at material on Headlam boys' formal education and on where Classics came in. But beyond that - and more interestingly perhaps - I have found out about what was done at home, and not just by young men but by young women as well.

On Day 1 in the Special Collections, I found something relating to what studying classics could be like when I looked at correspondence of Isabella Headlam, one of many children of John Headlam who lived between 1815 (or '18?) and 1871. Much of what I looked at that day was day-to-day suff including - in the first letter I read - details of a correspondent's hunt for baskets. Along with this, I found a letter from one of her brothers, Francis John Headlam, sent from Eton where he had not long arrived and which was sent when he'll have been around 12:

Greek is included among the day-to-day things he writes about - showing just how far studying ancient Greek was a customary part of an elite schooling.

He doesn't say how well or badly it's going, and it is when he turns to another subject, Botany, that he goes into details - thus the letter gave a window on what interests him, and/or on what he felt would interest his aunt.

The next day (Wednesday of week 1), I looked at the papers of Isabella's younger sister, Margaret, including a series of letters from the 1840s when she'd have been in her 20s from someone who is translating Cervantes and whose translations she has been commenting on.

I also saw a set of letters from her brother John (I think it's John at least... - NB John went on to be left less that his siblings in his father's Will....), where he is furious about something, but what the issue is I have not been able to work out, except to say that it looks to be connected with her being in Brighton and to involve something doctrinal. For example:

In Margaret's papers of a few decades later, I found letters from her brother Arthur's sons Arthur and James - when they'll have been aged around 9 and 10. As with the correspondence about the sibling argument and about the Cervantes translations, there was nothing classical here, but plenty to show what interested the authors of the letters. The boys write in detail, above all, about some athletics competitions they've been taking part in and one shares that they've been trying to make as many words as possible out of 'facetious'.

I also read a later letter, from their younger brother Lionel written while he was a tutoring a young man in France. It's a reflective, in times despondent letter, where he starts by sharing that he's fallen out of practice at letter writing and goes on to say that he doesn't think much of his pupil - without saying anything about what he is trying to teach the boy. Then while sharing news about his brother Jimmy (James') education, he says...

Here's what stuck me as things to follow up on, including whether it might be significant that it's Lionel's MOTHER who now considers herself to have knowledge about Demosthenes:

The next day, I saw two further letters from members of this generation, this time to Uncle John while he was ill, and from two of the brothers. Here, in the midst of stuff about daily life, e.g. on their sister Rose's bridesmaid's costume and what flowers are appearing, one of the brothers, Arthur, says: 'on Saturday we do Latin fables' - without elaborating.  I would like to investigate what these fables might have been.

But where I did get to know more about the role classics played in family life was in relation to Arthur's father (also called Arthur) and his many siblings, including Isabella, Margaret and Francis John.

It started, for me, with Margaret when I came upon a series of works of poetry by her, often concerned with nature and with young women who died before/instead of marriage. These, to me, suggested classical influences, though I'm aware that I might be creating my OWN reception here. I also saw an unfinished play by Margaret  written when she was young, around 12, with some classical content:

Then, among the papers of their father John, I found school reports for those of his sons who were away at school. Among these, I read that Arthur consistently did well academically, particularly in Maths, while Francis John did well in Latin but with a recurrent comments along the lines of 'could do better', including after he'd got to Eton - from where he'd written the letter to Isabella.

Then, finally, most excitingly of all, I got to see what the siblings would all do at home - both the girls and the boys - which was to write poems on topics that seem to have been set by their father. 

In addition to these, there were a number of unattributed poems.

Many of the poems - just like Margaret's longer poems I'd already read - are concerned with nature, as well as other topics such as war and the fall of Carthage. Some are written in collaboration with other siblings, and some are written when they are very young, e.g, Margaret when she was 8. Most are in English, though there are some written in Latin.

I've not had time to work through them all yet. When I do this, what I especially plan to focus on are the poems on topics such as On Aurora ('lovely goddess... rising from Tithonus' (!) according to Frances Elizabeth's poem on the topic), On Iris and On Zephyrus.

I've not seen any difference in terms of gender in relation to the depth of engagement with classical themes.

As well as their own compositions, there are translations of Latin poems, including where several of the  siblings have translated the same Horace Ode - so I'll have an opportunity to compare and contrast their work and to investigate how they set out translating and consider what this says about how they engaged with classical authors.

I wish I could say more, but that'll be for later when I work though my photos.

So, in conclusion, I found less in some respects than I'd hoped for - there was nothing from the children themselves on how well or badly their classical studies have gone for instance: though that lack might be significant in itself. 

What IS there is above all the children's poems - and I want to investigate how typical or otherwise these are of privileged and literary homes.