A Black British Nurse in the Crimea--and Twenty-First Century Outrage

Mary Grant Seacole, a "Pioneer Nurse" (1805-1881, married 10 November 1836)

On 30 June of this year (2016), after a twelve-year campaign, a statue of Mary Seacole was unveiled at St. Thomas's Hospital, London--though not without a great deal of controversy.

Sculptor Mark Jennings' statue
 of Mary Seacole
(photograph by Owen Blacker)

The story of Seacole and her role as a nurse in the Crimea has been largely overshadowed by that of her much more famous contemporary, Florence Nightingale--and, in fact, much of the opposition to recognition of Seacole has come from various Nightingale supporters and organizations, notably the Florence Nightingale Society. 

It's hard to see why these two women and their contributions have been pitted against one another--except, of course, the belief that there couldn't possibly be two accomplished, notable women working in the same profession at the same time in the the same place. 

The conflict seems to reflect a deeply tinged misogyny--obviously recognizing and appreciating one woman would take away recognition and appreciation of the other. The dispute has devolved to ridiculous levels--including objections to Seacole's sculpture being taller than one of Nightingale near Buckingham palace and outcries over the fact that Seacole's statue has been placed on the ground of a nursing hospital founded by Nightingale. (There is surely more than a little racism involved as well in all of this. One detractor scoffed at Seacole, who in 2004 was named the "greatest Black Briton" by a public vote, saying she was "three-quarters white.")

And, I'll add, as a side note, this conflict seems to be related to the persistent praise of a gifted woman as the "tenth Muse"--something I've railed about on numerous occasions in this blog. Obviously there can only exist one exceptional woman at any one time, imagined as an addition to the panoply of nine classical muses--who could possibly regard an accomplished woman as, simply, you know, normal? (For all my musings--okay, ranting--about all the tenth muses I've noted since beginning this blog, click the label, below.) 

I will let you google for yourself if you're interested in learning more about this "controversy" over Mary Seacole--Patrick Vernon's "Rubbishing Mary Seacole" (The Guardian, 21 June 2016), is a good introduction to the whole sorry mess.    

Instead, I'll focus here on Seacole's full and varied life. Born in Kingston, Jamaica on an unknown date in 1805, Mary Jane Grant was the daughter of James Grant, a Scottish lieutenant in the British army, her mother a free, mixed-race Jamaican woman who combined nursing skill and running a boarding house, Blundell Hall. About her mother, Seacole would later write:

My mother kept a boardinghouse in Kingston, and was, like very many of the Creole women, an admirable doctress; in high repute with the officers of both services, and their wives, who were from time to time stationed at Kingston. It was very natural that I should inherit her tastes; and so I had from early youth a yearning for medical knowledge and practice which has never deserted me. . . . [From her,] the ambition to become a doctress early took firm root in my mind; and I was very young when I began to make use of the little knowledge I had acquired from watching my mother. . . .*

Seacole was proud of her heritage--she is proud of the "good Scotch blood coursing through her veins," and she is proud of her brown skin. She later wrote about the difficulties she faced when trying to book passage on an American ship as she was trying to travel back to Jamaica from Panama:

my experience of travel had not failed to teach me that Americans (even from the Northern States) are always uncomfortable in the company of coloured people, and very often show this feeling in stronger ways than by sour looks and rude words. I think, if I have a little prejudice against our cousins across the Atlantic—and I do confess to a little—it is not unreasonable. I have a few shades of deeper brown upon my skin which shows me related— and I am proud of the relationship—to those poor mortals whom you once held enslaved, and whose bodies America still owns. And having this bond, and knowing what slavery is; having seen with my eyes and heard with my ears proof positive enough of its horrors— let others affect to doubt them if they will—is it surprising that I should be somewhat impatient of the airs of superiority which many Americans have endeavoured to assume over me?

As a child, young Mary Grant received an education from a woman she referred to as her "kind patroness" and more practical training from her mother, whom she assisted in the running of the boarding house and with her healing practice. In 1821, she traveled to England visit relatives. After a year she went back to Jamaica, then returned to England, taking with her West Indian spices, preserves, and pickles for trade, this time staying until 1825. In her autobiography, she provides few details about her trips to London--nothing about where she stayed or how she supported herself--though she does note that her companion, a woman whose color was darker than her own, was taunted by Londoners with "rude wit." 

She returned to Jamaica again, this time nursing her elderly patron and working with her mother, at times caring for invalid soldiers and their wives. (She mentions working at the British Army hospital in her memoir.) On 10 November 1836 (the occasion for today's post), she married Edwin Horatio Seacole, an English merchant (said also to be the godson of the great British naval hero, Admiral Horatio Nelson--according to family traditions, Seacole was Nelson's illegitimate son).

Albert Charles Challen's
1869 portrait of Mary Seacole
(National Portrait Gallery)

Within a few years, Mary Grant, now Mary Seacole, suffered a number of personal tragedies: in two short years, 1843 and 1844, Blundell Hall burned down, her husband died, and her mother died.  She allowed herself a short period of grief, then set about rebuilding her mother's business. She made a success not only of the business but of her nursing skills, notably in the cholera epidemic in Jamaica in 1850.

In 1851 she joined her brother in Panama--arriving in time to experience a cholera epidemic that swept through the city of Crucis--her nursing experience, in particular treating cholera, helped. She assisted the rich, who paid for their treatment, and the poor, whom she treated for free. While in Panama, she also opened and ran a hotel. After returning to Jamaica in 1853, she again encountered disease; this time, authorities asked her to help in treating victims of yellow fever. She treated some in her boarding house, others at the British Army camp. 

In 1854 she was on the move again, returning briefly to Panama. In her autobiography she writes of having been compared to the Greek hero (and wanderer) Odysseus, a comparison she does not appreciate--"Some people, indeed, have called me quite a female Ulysses," she writes, adding, "I believe that they intended it as a compliment; but from my experience of the Greeks, I do not consider it a very flattering one." In Panama, she read of the escalation of the war in Crimea and decided to volunteer her services as a nurse.

Seacole left Panama for England, and although she brought with her "ample testimony" of her experiences, the War Office denied her application to be sent to the Crimea. An appeal to the Crimea Fund, a publicly sponsored organization that raised money to support the wounded, was also rejected. 

Seacole decided to fund herself, though she eventually found a partner, a Caribbean businessman named Thomas Day. Seacole's plan was to open the British Hotel, which she described as "a mess-table and comfortable quarters for sick and convalescent officers." (It is this description, I suppose, that leads some of her detractors to claim all she did was serve tea and lemonade while she was in the Crimea.) 

She left England in January of 1855--on her long trip, she writes of encountering men she had formerly treated, who greeted her with cries of "Mother Seacole, Mother Seacole!" During a stop in Malta, she receives a letter of introduction to Florence Nightingale to add to the many letters of reference she had received from British officers stationed in Jamaica.

In Constantinople, she was eventually to meet with Nightingale. She describes their meeting in her autobiography: 

[A nurse says to her,] "Miss Nightingale has the entire management of our hospital staff, but I do not think that any vacancy--"

"Excuse me, ma'am," I interrupt her with, "but I am bound for the front in a few days;" and my questioner leaves me, more surprised than ever. The room I waited in was used as a kitchen. Upon the stoves were cans of soup, broth, and arrow-root, while nurses passed in and out with noiseless tread and subdued manner. I thought many of them had that strange expression of the eyes which those who have gazed long on scenes of woe or horror seldom lose.

In half an hour's time I am admitted to Miss Nightingale's presence. A slight figure, in the nurses' dress; with a pale, gentle, and withal firm face, resting lightly in the palm of one white hand, while the other supports the elbow--a position which gives to her countenance a keen inquiring expression, which is rather marked. Standing thus in repose, and yet keenly observant--the greatest sign of impatience at any time, a slight, perhaps unwitting motion of the firmly planted right foot--was Florence Nightingale--that Englishwoman whose name shall never die, but sound like music on the lips of British men until the hour of doom.

She has read Dr. F—'s letter, which lies on the table by her side, and asks, in her gentle but eminently practical and business-like way, "What do you want, Mrs. Seacole--anything that we can do for you? If it lies in my power, I shall be very happy."

With this "blessing," Seacole traveled on to Balaclava, where she built her British Hotel from scrap materials she could scrounge. The hotel opened in March 1855. Seacole provided meals, comfort, support, and care. As a correspondent of The Times reported in September of that year, "Mrs. Seacole . . . doctors and cures all manner of men with extraordinary success. She is always in attendance near the battle-field to aid the wounded, and has earned many a poor fellow’s blessings."

In her memoir of the Crimea, Lady Alicia Blackwood wrote that Mary Seacole "personally spared no pains and no exertion to visit the field of woe, and minister with her own hands such things as could comfort or alleviate the suffering of those around her; freely giving to such as could not pay."

Seacole was the first British woman to enter the city of Sebastopol after it fell on 9 September, taking with her provisions and visiting the city's hospital, where thousands were dead and dying. (A light-skinned girl named Sarah eventually joined Seacole--many, including Nightingale, alleged she was Seacole's illegitimate daughter, but there is no evidence to support such an assertion.) 

Seacole continued her work in Crimea until the war's end; she returned to England, she would later write, "poorer than I left it." She was declared bankrupt in 1856. But when her plight was made known in the British press, a fund was established, raising enough money to discharge her bankruptcy. The fund was supported by the many soldiers and officers she had treated and tended. 

The cover of Seacole's
1857 autobiography

Undaunted, she hoped to travel to India in 1857 after the Indian Rebellion, but fundraising on her behalf was not successful. In the end, she returned to Jamaica after publishing her Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, the first autobiography published by a Black woman in England. 

In Jamaica, Seacole once again experienced financial difficulties. Hearing of her straitened circumstances, London supporters and patrons, including the prince of Wales, the duke of Edinburgh, the duke of Cambridge, and many senior military officers, raised funds for her. 

Although she would return to England in 1870, seemingly to offer her services as a nurse during the Franco-Prussian War, she did not make her way to the front again. She remained in London, dying there on 14 May 1881. 

You can read Seacole's autobiography by clicking here. It is just too bad that if you Google Seacole's name, you'll have to wade through all the crap. Too bad her detractors seem to think that recognizing Seacole somehow damages Nightingale (who herself would attempt to undermine Seacole by insinuating her British Hotel was really nothing but a brothel). 

Too bad more people don't remember the assessment of Sir Howard Russell, the Times war correspondent: "I trust that England will not forget one who nursed the sick, who sought out her wounded to aid and succour them, and who performed the last offices for some of her illustrious dead." His words are now engraved on the sculpture of Seacole.

Why would anyone want to trash a woman like that?

*Update, 15 January 2024: William Dalyrumple and Anita Anand, hosts of The Empire podcast, recently had an episode featuring Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole. Titled “Tale of Two Nurses,” it is available at all podcast platforms, but I’ll link to a YouTube broadcast here.

The guest on this episode of the podcast, Helen Rappaport, author of In Search of Mary Seacole: The Making of a Black Cultural Icon and Humanitarian (2022), identifies the unique role of the "doctoress" in Jamaica. A doctoress was a local African woman who treated sick African slaves in slave "hothouses" (hospitals), often incorporating herbal medicines, "pharmaceutical skills almost," into a "rich and sophisticated range of treatments." 

Hrotsvita of Gandersheim, a "Strong Voice" in the Tenth Century

Hrotsvita of Gandersheim (23 November)

First, an explanation of why I am posting today about Hrotsvita and the relevance of 23 November.

We don't actually know the birth and death dates for Hrotsvita (or Hrotsvit, Hrotsvitha, or Roswit, among other variant spellings). She may have been born about 935 and she may have died about 975 or as late as 1002. But we do know that she was a canoness at the imperial abbey of Gandersheim and among her works is a life of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I, "Otto the Great," who was born on 23 November 912. So there you go.

In his 1501 woodcut, 

Albrecht Dürer imagines Hrostvita,

on her knees, presenting her story 

of his life to the emperor, Otto, with

Abbess Gerberga looking on

We have no real evidence about Hrotsvit's family, although, given her place in Gandersheim, an important imperial family institution, she is likely to have been a member of a noble Saxon family. As her editor Katharina Wilson notes, "only daughters of the aristocracy were admitted to Gandersheim." 

The abbey became an extraordinary center for learning; in Wilson's words, it was "an oasis of intellectual and spiritual activity." It was also something of the all-female space we have seen before, a kind of "city of ladies": Gandersheim was a "free abbey," one in which Otto I "gave the abbess the authority to have her own court of law, keep her own army, coin her own money, and hold a seat in the Imperial Diet." 

In this remarkable setting, Hrotsvita received the kind of education, freedom, and support to produce a body of work, all of it composed in Latin: eight verse legends, six plays, and two epic poems. Several of her letters also survive.  

Hrotsvita organized her work into three books. The first contained her legends, prefaced by an introduction and dedication to her abbess, Gerberga. 

The second book contains the works for which Hrotsvita is best known today, her six comedies modeled on those of the Roman writer Terence. When I studied literature as an undergraduate and graduate, the "history" of drama that I was taught repeated the same story--classical drama was "lost" during the Middle Ages and not recovered until it was "reborn" in the Renaissance.

But Hrotsvita is the exception--not only was classical drama not lost, but here was a writer--a woman writer--composing original plays, based on the model of Terence, in the tenth century. 

The third book contains her two epic poems, the Carmen de gestis Oddonis imperatoris (Poem of the Deeds of the Emperor Otto) and De primordiis et fundatoribus coenobii Gandersheimensis (History of the Foundation of the Community of Gandersheim). There is also a shorter poem on the Apocalypse of St. John in this third book.

Here is the opening of her "Preface to the Legends":

I offer this little book,
small in stylistic merits, but not small in the efforts it took
to the good will of the wise
for correction and advice
at least to those who don't enjoy to rail
against authors who fail
but, rather, prefer to correct the work's flaws. . . .
However difficult and arduous and complex
metrical composition may appear for the fragile female sex,
I, persisting
with no one assisting
still put together my poems in this little work
not relying on my own powers and talents as a clerk
but always trusting in heavenly grace's aid
for which I prayed. . . . 

There are several excellent critical studies of Hrotsvita, but I recommend starting with her work, available in Wilson's Hrotsvit of Gandersheim: A Florilegium of Her Works.

Oh! One more thing--when Hrotsvita's works were discovered in 1494 and then published in Nuremberg in 1501 (the first edition contained several woodcuts, including the one by Dürer, above), she was praised as, you guessed it, a "tenth muse" and as a Christian Sappho. Sheesh.

Madeleine de Scudéry, "the Incomparable Sappho"

Madeleine de Scudéry (born 15 November 1607)

Ridiculed and satirized by many of her male contemporaries, Madeleine de Scudéry was, despite her critics, a wildly successful novelist whose works were quickly translated and published in England, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

Madeleine de Scudéry

The daughter of a minor aristocratic family, Scudéry was orphaned at the age of six. She was raised by an uncle who provided her with an extraordinary education: in addition to reading, writing, painting, dancing, and music, he exposed her to the study of agriculture, medicine, and "domestic economy." On her own, seemingly, she learned Spanish and Italian and developed an interest in philosophy.

After her uncle's death in 1637, Scudéry left Normandy for Paris, where she joined her brother, the playwright Georges de Scudéry, who introduced her into the vibrant salon life of the city. Her "pretensions" in becoming a regular figure in the salons--and then in establishing one of her own--are what seems to be the source of the ridicule directed at her.

Or at least one source. She also dared to write, at first using her brother's name as her pseudonym. Her first two works, the historical novel Ibrahim, ou l'illustre Bassa (Ibrahim or the Ilustrious Basa,1641) and the series of angry orations delivered by famous women, Les femmes illustres, ou Les harangues héroïques (Illustrious Women or Heroic Harangues, 1642), were both published under Georges de Scudéry's name.

Her Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus (Artamène or the Great Cyrus), published in ten volumes (over two million words!!!) between 1648 and 1653 brought her fame and acclaim (and the subsequent ridicule).* The historical romance was set in ancient Assyria and featured fictionalized versions of her contemporaries, with Scudéry writing herself as Sappho. 

After 1653, the Scudéry siblings moved to the Marais, where Madeleine established her Saturday salon, which she called her "Société du samedi." There the group discussed many literary works, including those of Marguerite de Navarre. Among those who regularly attended was a writer whom we have met before, Madame de la Fayette. (Her work was also appreciated and praised by another woman we've met, Madame de Sévigné.)

She continued to publish fiction, both multi-volume novels and novellas, but Scudéry also published philosophical dialogues (such as Conversations sur divers sujets, [Conversations upon Several Subjects, 1680] and Conversations morales [Moral Conversations, 1686) and epistolary fictions, following the model of Ovid's Heroides, in her Lettres amoureuses de divers autheurs de ce temps (Amorous Letters from Various Contemporary Authors, 1641).

More recently, Scudéry's philosophical achievements have come to be recognized. In the introduction to his entry on Scudéry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, John Conley notes,

A prominent novelist, Madeleine de Scudéry (1607–1701) composed a series of dialogues dealing with philosophical issues. Primarily ethical in focus, her dialogues examine the virtues and vices proper to the aristocratic society of the period. They also explore questions of moral psychology, in particular the interplay between temperament and free will. In the area of epistemology, Scudéry analyzes the problem of certitude and self-knowledge. Theologically, she defends cosmological arguments demonstrating God's existence. Her aesthetic theory endorses the mimetic thesis concerning art as the imitation of nature but the individuality of artistic perception also receives attention. In her philosophical speculation, Scudéry stresses questions of gender; the relationship of philosophical theories to the condition of women receives substantial analysis.

Long framed by her critics as a pedantic précieuse, Scudéry has only recently attracted the interest of professional philosophers. . . . In the recent feminist expansion of the canon of humanities . . . the philosophical significance of her writings has emerged. Her literary corpus presents a novel version of the ancient philosophical method of dialogue; it also expresses original, sophisticated theories concerning the ethical, aesthetic, and theological disputes of early modernity.

For a wonderful introduction to Scudéry's diverse work, Jane Donawerth's Selected Letters, Orations, and Rhetorical Dialogues offers an excellent sampling. And if you're not up to tackling the two million words of Scudéry's Artamène, Karen Newman's The Story of Sapho offers a "self-contained section" of the historical romance:

The Story tells of Sapho, a woman writer modeled on the Greek Sappho, who deems marriage slavery. Interspersed in the love story of Sapho and Phaon are a series of conversations like those that took place in Scudéry's own salon in which Sapho and her circle discuss the nature of love, the education of women, writing, and right conduct. This edition also includes a translation of an oration, or harangue, of Scudéry's in which Sapho extols the talents and abilities of women in order to persuade them to write.

Madeleine de Scudéry died on 2 June 1701, at the age of ninety-three. To her friends, she was "the incomparable Sappho." (When they are not being described as a "tenth muse," women seem to be identified as a new Sappho . . . )

*When I was in graduate school, my professors went on and on about Samuel Richard's Clarissa, estimated to be 984,870 words long. Ha!!!!! Less than half as long as Artamène!

Anna Maria van Schurman--One More "Tenth Muse"!!

Anna Maria van Schurman (born 5 November 1607)

Born in Cologne, the daughter of Frederik van Schurman and Eva von Harff, who had fled from Antwerp to avoid increasing conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, Anna Maria van Schurman was a prodigy. She was widely recognized and admired for her skill in languages (she reputedly knew fourteen, including Arabic and Syriac), philosophy, poetry, music, and painting.

Anna Maria van Schurman, 1649,
portrait by Jan Lievens

And, of course, she became known as "the Tenth Muse"! How many women have I posted about this year who have been awarded that "praise"! I know it's meant as high praise, but, really--any and every highly regarded and accomplished woman becomes the "Tenth Muse."*

Anyway, after about five years, the family returned to the Netherlands, settling in Utrecht, where Anna Maria would spend the better part of her life. She was sent briefly to a local French school, but after two months returned home, where she was tutored along with her brothers, the children's education supervised and directed by their father.

By 1620 and still in her early teens, she was recognized by the Dutch artist, poet, and translator Anna Roemers Visscher, who praised Schurman's knowledge of the classical languages, her drawing, and her musical accomplishments as a singer and as a performer--in particular, she excelled at the harpsichord and lute.

(By the way, Anna Roemers Visscher was herself described as a muse and a second Sappho, her sister Maria Tesselschade Visscher described as, you guessed it, "the Tenth Muse." See what I mean?)

By the 1630s, Schurman was corresponding with a number of scholars, including André Rivet, a French Huguenot theologian at the University of Leyden, and the Dutch theologian Gisbertus Voetius, rector of the University of Utrecht.

It was in her correspondence with Rivet that Schurman took up the question of women's education, specifically the subject of “whether the study of letters is fitting for a Christian woman,” the topic of a brief dissertation she wrote for him in 1632. While she defends women's capacity for education, Anna Maria van Schurman is more cautious about women and certainly never argues for their equality. 

Schurman knew the work of both Marie le Jars de Gournay and Lucrezia Marinella, for example, but she disapproved of both of them. In her correspondence with Rivet on the subject of women’s education, she denies the arguments of those who have made the “invidious and groundless assertion of the preeminence” of women. Schurman says that her “maidenly modesty” and “innate shyness” have been troubled by Marinella’s work, and while she “can by no means disapprove of the little dissertation of the most noble Gournay,” neither does she entirely approve of it. 

The virtues of women “ought to be proved rightly,” Schurman asserts, but instead of undertaking the proof herself, she writes that she “very much desire[s] that role be handed over” to Rivet, “a sublime herald of the virtues.” Her treatise on the subject, Num feminæ Christianæ conveniat stadium litterarum? (Whether a Christian Woman Should Be Educated) is, as editor Joyce Irwin observes, "purely academic, a formal exercise in logic": "Nowhere does she suggest changes in the power structure of political or religious institutions."

And the question of whether women "ought" to be educated was further qualified--only women who had private means ("those women who enjoy wealth as their lot in life") and women who were unmarried and thus had no children to care for--the "study of letters" is "appropriate" for a woman who needs to follow a pastime at home." 

Anna Maria van Schurman's association with Voetius dates to 1636, when he enabled her to attend lectures at the University of Utrecht. It is frequently claimed online that Schurman was the first female student at the university, which is not quite the case at all--she could attend some lectures, sitting in a special niche that concealed her from male students, but she was never formally enrolled as a student. 

By this point, too, René Descartes came to know of Schurman, and she was impressed by his philosophy. In 1640, Descartes visited Schurman in Utrecht, but was disappointed by the turn in her thinking. "This Voetius has blighted Miss Schurman," Descartes wrote, "for she did have an eminent talent for verse, painting and other pleasures. But in the past five or six years he has gained complete mastery over her. She is occupied entirely with theological deliberation, which has caused her to lose contact with all cultured society."

By the 1650s, Schurman withdrew from her intellectual pursuits--whether from "deepening piety" or "because family obligations" became more pressing. She dedicated twenty years to caring for two elderly, blind aunts and then, after their deaths, she joined a religious community in Friesland, where she died in May of 1678.

Anna Maria van Schurman's correspondence with André Rivet, including her "logical dissertation" on women's education, was published in Paris in 1638 as Amica Dissertatio inter Annam Mariam Schurmanniam et Andr. Rivetum de capacitate ingenii muliebris ad scientia, though she would claim this was published without her consent.

Three years later, in 1641, she published Dissertatio de ingenii Muliebris ad Doctrinam et meliores Litteras aptitudine in Leyden (later translated and published in English as The Learned Maid or, Whether a Maid may be a Scholar. Her collected works, including letters and poems, Opuscula Hebraea, Graeca, Latina, Gallica, prosaica et metrica, was published in 1648.

Her autobiography, defending her choice to follow the Labadie religious sect, Eukleria seu Meliores Partis Electio (Eucleria, or Choosing the Better Part), was published in 1673.

In addition to her familiarity with the work of Gournay and Marinella, she corresponded with Gournay as well as with another women we have met, Bathsua Makin. She was also visited in Utrecht by Queen Christina of Sweden. 

Joyce Irwin's edition of Schurman's works is Anna Maria van Schurman: Whether a Christian Woman Should Be Educated and Other Writings from Her Intellectual Circle.

And here's the only mention of Anna Maria van Schurman in my favorite love-to-hate resource, the Encyclopedia Britannica (it comes from an entry on glassmaking!): "engraving was practiced there [Venice] widely by talented amateurs in the 17th century, among them Humanists such as Maria Tesselschade Roemers Visscher, her even more famous sister Anna Roemers Visscher and Anna Maria van Schurman. The latter two decorated their glasses with flowers and insects drawn with a gossamer touch, often accompanied by epigrams in Latin or Greek capitals. . . ." Sheesh!!!

*You can access my posts about various women called the "Tenth Muse" by clicking the label, below.

Anne Bradstreet, Yet Another "Tenth Muse"!

Anne Dudley Bradstreet (died 16 September 1672)

Anne Dudley was born in England on 20 March 1612, the daughter of Thomas Dudley and Anne York. Although the younger Anne was not formally educated, her father was the steward of the earl of Lincoln, and she had access to the library there, where she read Greek and Roman classics, from Hesiod and Homer to Virgil and Seneca, and English writers like Spenser, Sidney, and Milton.

Anne Dudley married the Puritan Simon Bradstreet when she was sixteen.

In 1628, Anne's father was involved in forming the Massachusetts Bay Company; in 1630, she and her husband immigrated to the new Massachusetts Bay Colony with her parents. Both her father and her husband would become governors of the colony.

Anne herself would give birth to eight children between 1633 and 1652. She would also write, becoming the first woman published in North America. 

Her earliest poem is dated to 1632, "Upon a Fit of Sickness." A volume of her work, titled The Tenth Muse, Lately Sprung up in America, was published in London in 1650, ostensibly without her knowledge. The book was first published in America in 1678, after her death on 16 September 1672, as Several Poems Compiled with Great Wit and Learning.

For Wendy Martin's excellent biographical essay on Anne Bradstreet and Martin's introduction to Bradstreet's work, click here. This material, from the website of the Poetry Foundation, includes a bibliography and a generous sampling of Bradstreet's poetry.

And, yes, it's September, nine months into my year-long project, and I'm still bitching about the whole "tenth muse" thing--the idea of a woman writer is so astonishing that she must be "the tenth muse." (To see others, click the label, below--and there will be more before the end of the year.)

Update, 16 September 2021: It's six years later, and I am still writing, well beyond the bounds of my initial plans for a one-year project!

Élisabeth Sophie Chéron, "An Ornament to France for All Time"

Élisabeth Sophie Chéron (died 3 September 1711)

Born in Paris on 3 October 1648, Élisabeth Sophie Chéron was the daughter of Henri Chéron, a French miniature painter, enameller, and engraver.

Élisabeth Sophie Chéron,
self-portrait, 1672

She was trained in the art of painting in enamel by her father and proved a very successful pupil--by the age of fourteen, she had already begun to paint portraits.

She had also experienced conflict in her family--her Huguenot father was a strict Calvinist, and she had been raised in the reformed faith, but her mother, Marie Lefebvre, was Catholic. Despite her father's preferred religion, the young Élisabeth Sophie spent at least a year in the Benedictine convent of the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Jouarre.

It was in the convent that she began her work, painting portraits of some of her aristocratic classmates and of the abbess, Henriette Lourraine. In his discussion of Élisabeth Sophie, Norman Shapiro notes that, by the time she was sixteen, she had to "help support a family that was all but abandoned by her father."

Her training as a painter allowed her to do that, and she garnered further support by painting portraits of a number of the French nobility. Meanwhile, on 25 March 1668, Élisabeth Sophie confirmed a religious break with her father, abjured her reformed faith, and converted to Catholicism at the Paris Church of St. Sulpice.

In 1672, she was admitted to the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, sponsored by the French painter Charles Le Brun.* Between 1673 and 1690 she exhibited her work frequently. She earned enough money that she could afford to send her brother, Louis, also a painter, to study art--for eighteen years. In 1700, she was provided with an annual pension of 400 livres by the French king, Louis XIV.

Although known for her portraits, particularly those produced with royal patronage, Chéron also produced paintings with classical themes, religious subjects, and landscapes.

A portrait either of
Madame Deshoulières
or another self-portrait

Élisabeth Sophie's religious training also introduced her to Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, which allowed her to publish Essay de pseaumes et cantiques mis en vers, et enrichis de figures (Psalms and Hymns Put into Verse, Enriched with Figures) in 1694, in which she paraphrased the biblical Psalms.

The volume was illustrated with engravings done by her brother, Louis. Chéron's psalms were set to music in 1699, the same year that she was elected to the Accademia del Ricovrati in Padua, where she was praised as "the Sappho of her time." (That damn "tenth muse" thing again!)

Among other work, she also published a book on the principles of design, Livre des Principes à Dessiner, in 1706, and another translation, this one of the song in the book of Habbakuk (published posthumously). 

While she refused many suitors, she married Jacques Le Hay, an engineer for King Louis XIV, in 1692. She died on 3 September 1711, and was buried in the Church of St. Sulpice, where she had celebrated her conversion. Above her tomb are a portrait and poem, which praises her for her "two exquisite talents, assembled anew" and describes her as the "ornament of France": "Nothing less excellent comes from her pen than from the grace of her brush."

In 1717, one more poem of Chéron's, this one a humorous narrative, was published, Les Cerises Renversées (Spilled Cherries).

There is no biography of Élisabeth Sophie Chéron, but there is a good account of her and her painting in Germaine Greer's The Obstacle Race, as well as in the sources I link to, below. The most authoritative information is the SIEFAR essay which includes a comprehensive list of her paintings. (See the note below; the site is in French, however.)

The best account of Chéron's poetry is in Norman Shapiro's French Women Poets of Nine Centuries, which I've referred to, above. Shapiro also includes several English translations of Chéron's psalms.

Although there is not much information available about her, Élisabeth Sophie Chéron's sister, Marie Anne (1649?-1718), who married Alexis Simon Belle, was also a miniature painter.

*There is a great deal of conflict about the date of  Chéron's admission--Shapiro indicates 1672, a date confirmed in other sources, including the authoritative entry by Sandrine Lesly and Véronique Meyer at the SIEFAR (Société Internationale pour l'Etude des Femmes de l'Ancien Régime) website, which documents Le Brun's nomination of her on 11 June 1672 and her election the following September. While the nineteenth-century General Biographical Dictionary (quoted above) is a fund of detail, it gives the date of Chéron's election as 1676; Clara Erskine Clement, in her monumental Women in the Fine Arts from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. (1904) says her nomination occurred in 1674.

There is similar "confusion" (or disagreement) about her marriage--with some sources indicating that she didn't marry until age sixty. 

Juliana Morell, Yet Another "Tenth Muse"

Juliana Morell (27 August 1637)

First, an explanation. In trying to work in all the women I'd like to write about this year, I have to do a bit of juggling. 

We actually do have dates for Juliana Morell, a Spanish Dominican nun, writer, and student of the law. Morell was born on 16 February 1594 and died on 26 June 1653, but I've already used those dates to write about two other women--27 August 1637 is actually the date of the death of the Spanish playwright Lope de Vega. Why write about Juliana Morell today, then? 

Well, Lope de Vega offers a series of praises to Morell in his poem "El laurel de Apollo" (1630), a purported account of a festival celebrated by Apollo in honor of contemporary poets. In the lines dedicated to Morell, she is described as "the tenth Muse" (Where have we heard that before? Click the label, below, and you'll see where). Lope de Vega adds that Morell publicly lectured on  "all the sciences" (todas las ciencias) in "cathedrals and schools," while noting that, in light of Morell's achievements, even Cassandra and Marcella "lose their fame."

Born in Barcelona, Juliana Morell belonged to a converso family, her father a Catalan banker. After her mother's death, when Juliana was just two or three years old, she was educated by the Dominicans, though sources vary as to whether they were Dominican nuns or Dominican monks. In any case, she learned so much so quickly that these Dominicans said there was no more they could teach her. 

Her education seems to have been continued in her home--where, beginning at the age of four, she was tutored in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. When Juliana was seven, her father fled to Lyon, taking the young prodigy with him. (He was accused of murder.) 

There she continued her education, adding rhetoric, ethics, mathematics, astronomy, physics, music, and law to her studies. By the age of twelve, in 1606 or 1607, she wrote and defended in public her theses on ethics and morality, dedicated to Margaret of Austria, queen of Spain (wife of Philip III).

Morell continued her studies in Avignon, applying herself especially to the study of civil and canon law. She was awarded a degree of doctor summa cum laude in 1608 after publicly defending her law theses at the papal palace of the vice-legate in Avignon. 

Morell entered the Dominican convent of San Práxedes Avignon in the same year, taking her final vows on 20 June 1610. Three years later, she became prioress of the convent, a responsibility she fulfilled until her death on 26 June 1653.

While a nun, Morell published several works, including a translation from Latin into French of the Spanish Dominican friar Vincent Ferrer's Vita spiritualis (Spiritual Life, 1617), and a French translation of the Rule of St. Augustine (published posthumously in 1680). She also wrote Exercices spirituels sur l'éternité et une petite exercice préparatoire pour la sainte profession (Spiritual Exercises for Eternity and a Small Preparatory Exercise for the Holy Profession, 1637), a history of the convent of San Práxedes Avignon, and Latin and French poetry. 

There's a good biographical essay here, from El Diccionari Biogràfic de Dones, focusing on "la contribució de les dones a l'esdevenir de la història dels territoris de parla catalana" ("the contribution of women throughout the evolution of the history of Catalan-speaking territories"). 

Update, 27 August 2023: I've had some trouble with the El Diccionari Biogràfic de Dones link--if it doesn't lead you directly to the entry for Morell, click the second link ("focusing on," here), type "Juliana Morell" into the “Nom o paraula clau” search box, and you'll find it.)

Sappho of Lesbos: The "Tenth Muse"

Sappho of Lesbos (new poem published 21 June 2005)

Today's post on Sappho may seem oddly dated--but we know so little about the life of this renowned lyric poet, and we have no definite dates.

But on 21 June 2005, classics scholar Martin West announced the recovery of a "new Sappho poem" in the Times Literary Supplement: scholars had matched a newly discovered Sappho fragment with a previously identified fragment, the two together making a "new poem," though still incomplete, of about twelve lines. So I've used this date for today's post on Sappho.*

A Roman copy of a 5th c. BCE
bust of Sappho

The Greek poet Sappho was likely born around 620 BCE (dates range from 630 to 612), and she seems to have lived into the mid sixth century BCE--perhaps to around 550. 

All we really know about Sappho is found in her poetry--and even that is mostly fragmentary.

The great Library of Alexandria had nine books of Sappho's poetry, organized by the kind of metrical patterns in the lyrics. Today, only one complete poem survives, the "Hymn to Aphrodite," usually labeled as Fragment 1. Fragment 16, "Some Say," is about twenty lines.

Fragment 31 is perhaps my favorite lyric poem in the western canon. Here it is, in Mary Barnard's 1958 translation: 

He is more than a hero

He is a god in my eyes—
the man who is allowed
to sit beside you—he

who listens intimately
to the sweet murmur of
your voice, the enticing

laughter that makes my own
heart beat fast. If I meet
you suddenly, I can’t

speak—my tongue is broken;
a thin flame runs under
my skin; seeing nothing,

hearing only my own ears
drumming, I drip with sweat;
trembling shakes my body  

and I turn paler than
dry grass. At such times
death isn’t far from me.

                                                                       

And here it is, in Diane Rayor's, from 1991 :

To me it seems
that man has the fortune of the gods,
whoever sits beside you, and close,
who listens to you sweetly speaking
and laughing temptingly;
my heart flutters in my breast,
whenever I look quickly, for a moment--
I say nothing, my tongue broken,
a delicate fire runs under my skin,
my eyes see nothing, my ears roar,
cold sweat rushes down me,
trembling seizes me,
I am greener than grass,
to myself I seem
needing but little to die.

But all must be endured, since. . . .

Aside from Sappho's hymn addressed to Aphrodite and a handful of extended but incomplete poems, the remaining poetry is fragmentary, sometimes just a word or phrase. In modern editions, all of the fragments together number about 264. 

Just recently, another large bit of fragment has been recovered--its discovery was made  in 2014.

I've already had my little rant about Plato's reference to Sappho as the "tenth Muse" elsewhere on this blog--so I'll restrain myself here and just provide a link in case you want to see for yourself . . . We'll also see this "praise"--she's the "tenth muse"!--several more times, later in the year.

There's a nice overview of Sappho at the Poetry Foundation website. But, more important than reading about Sappho, read some Sappho today!!! 

Fragments of Sappho

*I used to be able to link to West's piece, but I can no longer find it online. Plenty of discussion is available if you google, but for now, I'll leave this link to a news article about the announcement available at The Guardian.

Juana Inés de la Cruz, "the Tenth Muse"

Juana Inés de la Cruz (died 17 April 1695)

Born in a village in Mexico, New Spain in 1651, Juana Inés de Asbaje y Ramírez de Santillana was a devout child raised and educated by her grandfather, Pedro Ramirez. According to many sources, she learned to read in a school for girls when she was just three years old, then turned to her grandfather's library, where she explored widely, wrote poetry, and learned Greek, logic, Latin, and the Aztec language of Nahuatl. (Her mother was Isabel Ramirez--her father, a Spanish captain, played no role in her life.)

Sor Juana in her study
(a mid-eighteenth century portrait),
with an escuda de monja (nun's shield)
showing the Annunciation

Her grandfather died when Juana Inés was still young, only eight years old, and the girl was sent to live with an aunt in Mexico City. There she hoped to disguise herself as a boy so she could attend the university, and though that didn't happen, she continued her studies privately.

The extent of her learning ultimately gained her a public reputation, which led to her spending five years in the colonial viceroy's court, where she met (and was tested by) theologians, mathematicians, historians, and philosophers. 

Rejecting marriage, Juana Inés entered into a Carmelite convent in 1667 but, finding the discipline a bit too rigorous, she moved in 1669 into a convent associated with a different religious order, the Hieronymites. The Order of St. Jerome, founded in the fourteenth century, allowed her more latitude to devote herself to study. At the Hieronymite convent, she had her own study and library, she could pursue her interests in music, philosophy, and science, and she could continue her discussions with learned members of the church, scholars, and the court.

She could also write. Juana Inés, now Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (Sister Juana Inés of the Cross), wrote lyric poetry in multiple forms, including sonnets; plays, both secular and religious; and prose, in particular her 1691 Reply to Sister Filotea (Respuesta a sor Filotea), often described as a feminist manifesto, a defense of women's intellectual capacities and their right to education. (The bishop of Puebla had written a letter chastising Sor Juana for her intellectual aspirations, signing it with the pen name "Sor Filotea"--the "reply" is addressed to this fictional letter-writer.)

Sor Juana's intellectual pursuits and unconventional life (even in a convent) had always attracted criticism, controversy, and detractors. Her respuesta led ultimately to a condemnation in 1693 for "waywardness." Her response seems to have been to put down her pen and dedicate herself to penance. She died in 1695, nursing plague-stricken nuns in her convent.

Title page from a 1689 edition
of Sor Juana's works,
published in Madrid

Sor Juana's literary output is significant. Margaret Sayers Peden's translation and selection for Penguin, Poems, Protest, and a Dream, offers an excellent introduction. This very affordable volume includes an essay about Sor Juana's life and a generous sample of her work, including romances, satires, epigrams, sonnets, selections from her plays, and Sor Juana's defense of women, her "reply" to the "most illustrious . . . Sor Filotea." This is also a dual-language edition, with Spanish on the left, English translations on the right.

In the title for this post, I have put quotation marks around "the tenth Muse." Yes, during her lifetime, Juana Inés de la Cruz was praised with this phrase--a reference to the nine classical muses, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, goddesses of knowledge and the arts. It's a compliment, I know, but every damn woman who wrote well, from Sappho on, was referred to as the "tenth Muse." (Plato was supposed to have said, "Some say the Muses are nine--how careless! Look, there's Sappho, too, the tenth!) I guess there can only be one great woman writer at a time--you know, in addition to those nine goddesses, maybe one woman could be a writer . . . 

Update, 17 April 2021: I just came across an episode of the BBC podcast, The Forum, on Sor Juana. To listen to "Sister Juana, a Great Mind of Mexico," click here.