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Books in Motion in Early Modern Europe: Beyond Production, Circulation and Consumption 1st Edition
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Acknowledgements
Women’s Private Practices of Knowledge Production in Early Modern Europe was produced at the Centre for Privacy Studies (PRIVACY), funded by the Danish National Research Foundation (DNRF138), a Centre of Research Excellence established in September 2017 and housed at the Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen, in collaboration with the Royal Danish Academy Architecture, Design, Conservation. The volume was fostered by the interdisciplinary research environment at PRIVACY and has received the help of colleagues and researchers at the Centre from its inception. We would like to thank the Head of Administration, Maj Riis Poulsen, for the logistical support and our Centre’s director, Mette Birkedal Bruun, for her trust and support. Most of all, this book would not have happened without the kindness and generosity of the authors in this volume and their brilliant take on the complex subject of privacy and gender in early modern knowledge-making practices. We are also deeply in debt to the anonymous peer reviewers who were incredibly helpful in this process and the editorial help of Sam Stocker at Palgrave.
Contents
Situating Women’s Private Practices of Knowledge Production in the Early Modern Context
Natacha Klein Kafer and Natalia da Silva Perez
References
Lady Jane Lumley’s Private Education and Its Political Resonances
Natalia da Silva Perez
Introduction: Education at a Noble Household
The Private, the Public, and the Political in Lady Lumley’s Writings
Lady Lumley’s The Tragedie of Euripides Called Iphigeneia
Comparing Translations of Iphigenia at Aulis
In Conclusion
References
Camilla Herculiana (Erculiani): Private Practices of Knowledge Production
Jelena Bakic
Herculiana’s Private Life and Connections: Biographical and Contextual Framework
Camilla Herculiana é Gregetta, Lettere di philosophia naturale (1584)
Inquisitional Trial
Conclusion
References
From Behind the Folding Screen to the Collège de France: Victorine de Chastenay’s Privacy Dynamics for Knowledge in the Making
Isabelle Lemonon-Waxin
Note-Taking and Knowledge Acquisition as Private Practices
Adapting the Household’s Privacy to Reconcile Writing and Social Obligations
Privacy in Institutional Spaces
Conclusion
References
“Fait à mes heures de loisir”: Women’s Private Libraries as Spaces of Learning and Knowledge Production
Joelle Weis
The Ducal Libraries: Private Collections?
Elisabeth Sophie Marie and Philippine Charlotte of BrunswickWolfenbüttel
The Duchesses’ Book Use and Knowledge Production
Private Knowledge Spaces: Concluding Remarks
References
Contingent Privacies: Knowledge Production and Gender Expectations from 1500 to 1800
Natacha Klein Kafer
Women’s Knowledges and Publicizing the Private Knowledge Production at Home
Women, Knowledge, and Their Bodies
References
Index
List of Figures
From Behind the Folding Screen to the College de France: Victorine de Chastenay’s Privacy Dynamics for Knowledge in the Making
Fig. 1 Reproduction of a collection of notes by Abraham Ortelius (1527–98), already published in (Blair 2004). (Courtesy of the Museum Plantin-Moretus, Antwerp –UNESCO, World Heritage, MS 285)
Fig. 2 Notes from Chastenay’s second astronomy lesson with Arago, 28 April 1812. The blue rectangle indicates the date, and the red rectangle, the number of the lesson. The green rectangle highlights the space left free for future corrections or additions. (Archives départementales de la Côte-d’Or, E SUP. 378/6. Reproduction Isabelle Lemonon-Waxin, 2016)
Fig. 3 Notes from Chastenay’s second astronomy lesson with Arago, 28 April 1812. The yellow rectangle indicates the crossed-out text. The orange ones mark the crosses showing where the new paragraph added on the left should go on the right hand of the page. (Archives départementales de la Côte-d’Or, E SUP. 378/6. Reproduction Isabelle Lemonon-Waxin, 2016)
Fig. 4 Notes from Chastenay’s visit to Desfontaine’s botanical lab at the Muséum, March 7th 1813. The blue rectangle indicates the date. (Archives départementales de la Côte-d’Or, E SUP. 378/6. Reproduction Isabelle Lemonon-Waxin, 2016)
Fig. 5 Index from Chastenay’s notes about Cuvier’s public lessons on natural history at the Collège de France, written on March 26, 1813. This index is entitled Appendices des leçons de M. Cuvier. The light blue rectangle indicates the column of the period (here sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries), and the purple rectangles the columns of names, objects, and places. From the sixteenth century onwards, the names of scienti ic disciplines (anatomy, chemistry, etc.) appear inside the column of the period (pink rectangles). (Archives départementales de la Côte-d’Or, E SUP. 378/25. Reproduction Isabelle Lemonon-Waxin, 2016)
“Fait a mes heures de loisir”: Women’s Private Libraries as Spaces of Learning and Knowledge Production
N. Klein Kafer, N. da Silva Perez (eds.), Women’s Private Practices of Knowledge Production in Early Modern Europe
https://doi org/10 1007/978-3-031-44731-0 1
Situating Women’s Private Practices of Knowledge Production in the Early Modern Context
Natacha Klein Kafer1 and Natalia da Silva Perez2
(1) (2)
Centre for Privacy Studies (DNRF138), University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Natacha Klein Käfer (Corresponding author)
Email: nkk@teol.ku.dk
Natália da Silva Perez
Email: asilvaperez@eshcc.eur.nl
Abstract
This chapter introduces the book Women’s Private Practices of Knowledge Production in Early Modern Europe by exploring the interplays of gender, knowledge-making practices, and notions of privacy in the broader early modern European context. Paying heed to recent development in the historiography of women’s intellectual works in relation to their association to the private realm, this chapter proposes an understanding of privacy as a privilege—although under constant negotiation—that elite women could instrumentalize in their knowledge pursuits, a notion that the following chapters lesh out in their nuanced case studies.
Keywords Women – Privacy – Practices of knowledge production –Early modern – Gender
Creating knowledge is a social endeavour. While it is true that individuals need time alone to ponder and re lect on their ideas, they also need a community of knowledge-making peers with whom to exchange and discuss these ideas. Women have always been a part of these social dynamics of knowledge-making, whether as interlocutors or as producers of knowledge.1 Historiography of intellectual practices, however, has traditionally focused on contributions made by men.2 In recent decades, this has begun to change, and women’s practices of knowledge production have received more careful attention.3 This volume will contribute to this growing interest by tackling how women’s knowledge production intersects with privacy studies. Here, we focus on the private knowledge practices of ive elite women to elucidate how they fostered knowledge in their domestic spaces. We also unveil how their private knowledge practices constituted a form of social privilege that enabled them to engage in knowledge-making and navigate knowledge circles.
Women have re lected on the conditions of ef icacy for their knowledge practices all through history. A paradigmatic example is The Book of the City of Ladies (1405),4 where Christine de Pizan defended women’s capacity to create knowledge, argued for the importance of providing women with a proper education, and praised her intellectual foremothers for serving as her role models. In the context of the Querelle des femmes, Pizan’s example would be followed in numerous philosophical, theological, and social debates throughout Europe, which increased in number with the turn of the sixteenth century.
With the development of humanist currents of thought, thinkers started to resituate women’s contributions to knowledge and society as a whole. Erasmus of Rotterdam, Juan Louis Vives, and Thomas Elyot famously supported the spiritual equality of women, although they had different opinions on their social and political standing.5 Henricus Cornelius Agrippa shook the print market when his lecture Declamation on the Preeminence and Nobility of the Female Sex reached the press in 1529, in a public claim of feminine superiority,6 a position followed in
1553 by Charles Estienne, the famous sixteenth-century anatomist, in his Paradoxes. 7 Marie de Romieu produced translations and poetry, writing on women being a source of learning in her Brief discours: Que l’excellence de la femme surpasse celle de l’homme. Marie de Gournay and Mary Astell defended the education of women and stressed women’s contribution to the development of new knowledge. Nevertheless, as inseparable as women are from the historical processes of knowledge production, medieval and early modern women’s intellectual work is still deemed distinct, marked by something that separates it from their male contemporaries.
This distinction mostly derives from what we see as women’s more dif icult access to ‘publicity’ for the knowledge they produced. While women’s knowledge—especially practical knowledge dedicated to everyday situations8—was perceived as necessary, valuable, and commendable, it mostly circulated in contained networks marked by interfamilial, local, and domestic dynamics.9 When women’s intellectual work reached a wider audience via print, it usually depended on a combination of their status, connections, and how well their ideas it into expected norms and scholarly traditions. Women’s publications raised con licting reactions, from negative stereotypes of ‘public women’ to praise and exemplarity.10 Women were commended for their self-effacement, and their avoidance of public attention was often praised.11 Having their knowledge recognized and respected depended on women carefully navigating the complex rules of decorum of their social environments.
Decorum was expected of any woman, regardless of social position. In order to receive respect from others, women were expected, for example, to dress and behave modestly, to display obedience towards the male igures of authority in their lives, and to ful il their obligations as primary caregivers of their families, as mothers and wives. The example of the young Lady Lumley discussed by Natalia da Silva Perez shows a student learning how to practice deference to igures of authority in her life. In the hortatory letters to her father explored in Silva Perez’s chapter, we see a pupil eager to demonstrate her knowledge of Latin, Greek, and political themes in order to make her father proud. Silva Perez demonstrates how this exercise prepared the
young Lady Lumley for potentially writing deferential letters to other authority igures that could become patrons to her knowledge. Her ability to hone that skill in private before making her writing available to selective publics enabled her to explore her own ideal while engaging with classic texts.
The realm of knowledge for women in pre-modern times is often assumed to have been circumscribed to the private domain, away from the intellectual public—unless stringent parameters were met. Yet, elite women did not always take this association with the private as a restriction, but rather turned it into a strategy to lend their knowledge production an air of exclusivity, even exceptionality, thereby raising its status. Recent scholarship has delved deeper into women’s writings navigating intellectual publics12 and has demonstrated how privacy could be performed in female authorship in their process to achieve publicity.13 This entanglement of privacy, domesticity, and publicity when it comes to women’s writings has been carefully examined in the context of England and the Low Countries by Martine van Elk in a contrasting study of how women writers expressed and crossed the blurry lines between the public and the private.14 These recent works have complexi ied how women traversed the porous thresholds of private life and public visibility, showing us that thinking of women simply as associated with the domestic world—and of those that became published authors as exceptional examples—smooths out a lot of the complexities involved in early modern women’s practices of knowledge production and how they instrumentalized the label ‘private’ to support their knowledge endeavours.
We will add to this discussion by demonstrating how privacy played a role in how women were able to achieve knowledge, their strategies to disseminate and cross-pollinate their thoughts, and how they legitimized their practices. As Ronald Huebert stated, “privacy mattered to a great many early modern people—all the more so, I suspect, because of the religious and social pressures to conform and the efforts taken by authorities at various levels to monitor personal behaviour.”15 As historical agents under speci ic gendered scrutinies, women were very aware of the importance of privacy as a way to regulate what could be known and how to become someone in the circles of knowledge. Victorine de Chastenay, as shown here by Isabelle Lemonon-Waxin, had
to carefully navigate her contacts with the members of the learned community in the institutional spaces of eighteenth-century France. Her skill in manoeuvring these expectations granted her access to exclusive spaces where women were commonly not welcomed.
Considering this power of manoeuvrability of the thresholds along the public/private spectrum, we will work here with a broad understanding of what privacy could mean to early modern women and how it intersected with practices of knowledge-making. Previously, we have explored privacy as “the ability that people might have to regulate, adjust, or control access to themselves or to their material and immaterial resources”16 or “a constant and iterant compromise which depended on practices of concealment, consolidation or dissolution for social bonds, and unspoken agreements (a turn of the head to allow someone some discretion, using one’s own body to shield another person’s actions, and daily instances of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’).”17 In this volume, we add to this understanding of early modern privacy by dissecting how gender factored in how those strategies could be employed by knowledge makers. Our aim is to untangle the processes of how women produced knowledge, how this knowledge circulated, and how it was received by different audiences.
It seems straightforward to assume that, because of their common association with the domestic realm and their challenge to have their voices heard in public, women would have more moments in private to explore different knowledge practices. However, these domestic spaces were constantly populated by a myriad of people—relatives, servants, guests, and a variety of other folks depending on the social status of the household.18 Therefore, having the possibility to regulate access to spaces of knowledge was crucial to performing the activities and maintaining the infrastructure necessary for knowledge production. Duchesses Elisabeth Sophie Marie’s and Philippine Charlotte’s exquisitely kept private libraries were an integral part of their domestic spaces. At the same time, they were clearly delineated areas for their book collections, curated via the Duchesses’ own tastes and funds. These designated spaces create opportunities for social encounters between agents of knowledge, consolidating and amplifying these noblewomen’s networks.
A moment of privacy was something that needed to be created, adapted, and negotiated in particular situations.19 If we start from the idea that privacy was something that individuals needed to establish by themselves on a daily basis—as a practice—we notice that it was not necessarily easier for women.20 The boundaries of these created instances of privacy were porous and malleable and hardly ever respected by default. As such, carving out a moment in private to develop one’s practices of knowledge production depended on agreements, strategies, and constant concern over social expectations.21 The case of Camilla Herculiana, discussed here by Jelena Bakic, is a clear example of these negotiations. She was a woman from a merchant family, whose father invested in her education, but that did not have as high of a status as compared to the other women studied in this book. Therefore, she had to stress that she prioritized her womanly duties over her knowledge pursuits, which implied her compliance with the gendered moral standards expected of her.
Knowledge comes in many forms. In this volume, we will explore different forms of knowledge as practice. Early modern practices of knowledge production would include observation, collection, categorization, repetition, note-taking, experimentation, crafting, cataloguing, reading, re lecting, as well as other related activities, such as travelling, dialogue, or meditation. Pamela Long has explored how openness and secrecy played a crucial role in the long-term history of craft traditions, opening up a discussion about the entanglements of knowledge creation, revelation, and control.22 Knowledge, therefore, depended on the ability to explore trial and error in private, but also on the exchange of experience and technique in a wider network of people ‘in the know.’ Women—especially members of the nobility23—were part of knowledge networks and even created their own, exchanging knowledge they considered the most relevant for their experience in the early modern world.24
As such, we are less concerned about what kind of knowledge women produced but how they went about their processes of knowledge creation and how privacy factored into their practices. We notice that what stands out about early modern women’s knowledge production is not that they are on different subjects than men’s, or the
implied value of their knowledge.25 The main difference comes from the strategies that they had to implement in order to it into the expectations of intellectual circles at the same time that they upkept those of their gender and status. By focusing on their practices, we will highlight these rhetorical strategies, their particular knowledge networks, access to books, and how they went about cataloguing, notetaking, letter-writing, and engaging with specialists without crossing decorum norms.
This volume explores privacy in relation to knowledge practices in a gendered historical context. The cases chosen to exemplify women’s knowledge-creation processes come from a historical context—namely early modern Western af luent social circles—that was privileged enough to have left historical traces of such processes. We acknowledge that these cases are historically circumscribed and cannot necessarily be generalized as representing the practices of actors from lower social strata, of migrants, or of actors that stemmed from a broader geographic and ethnic background. Rather than seeing this focus on elite women as a limitation, we take the opportunity to study the private knowledge practices of these elite women to unveil how this private knowledge-making was a condition for them to claim exclusivity and status for their practice. In other words, there seemed to be a con lation between something being private and therefore being elite or high quality. Nonetheless, we believe that the cases studied here can help expand the way we think about privacy in relation to women’s knowledge. These examples can also help tease out patterns and strategies of private knowledge activities that can then be compared and contrasted, in future research, with the practices of women from different groups and social backgrounds.
In this volume, we will discuss knowledge practices by ive women from different European contexts. Our chapters document, analyse, and discuss how women employed practices of privacy to pursue knowledge that did not necessarily conform with the curriculum prescribed for them. The practices of Jane Lumley in England, Camilla Herculiana in Padua, Victorine de Chastenay in Paris, as well as Elisabeth Sophie Marie and Philippine Charlotte in BrunswickWolfenbuttel, will help us to exemplify the delicate balance between audacity and obedience that women had to employ to be able to explore
science, literature, philosophy, theology, and other types of learned activities.26 Our cases range from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, presenting continuities and discontinuities across temporal and geographical lines of the strategies that women used to protect their knowledge production and retain intact their reputations as good Christian daughters, wives, and mothers. We will see how having access to privacy—having the ability to regulate access to themselves while studying and learning—was a crucial condition for the success of the knowledge activities these women pursued.
In the chapters that follow, the reader will encounter discussions of the notebooks of Lady Jane Lumley illed with translations of works from the humanist canon; of the letters by Camilla Herculiana containing apothecary knowledge, and of her published book containing natural philosophy; of the scienti ic research notebooks produced by Victorine de Chastenay; and inally, of the opulent, rich private libraries gathered by Elisabeth Sophie Marie and Philippine Charlotte. These are all material testimonies to the practices of knowledge that these women conducted. Their analysis enables us to reconstruct a corner of the history of knowledge that is often left in second plan and elucidate the role that practices of privacy had in enabling these women to pursue their knowledge activities.
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Agrippa, Henricus Cornelius. 1996. Declamation on the Preeminence and Nobility of the Female Sex. 1529. Trans. Ed. Albert Rabil Jr. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press
De Pizan, Christine 1999 The Book of the City of Ladies 1405 Trans Rosalind BrownGrant London: Penguin
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Eger, Elizabeth, Charlotte Grant, Cliona O. Gallchoir, and Penny Warburton, eds. 2001. Women, Writing and the Public Sphere 1700–1830. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fennetaux, Ariane. 2008. Women’s Pockets and the construction of Privacy in the Long Eighteenth Century. Eighteenth-Century Fiction 20 (3): 307–334.
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Huebert, Ronald. 2016. Privacy in the Age of Shakespeare. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
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Hunter, Lynette. 2005. Women and Science in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century: Different Social Practices, Different Textualities, and Different Kinds of Science. In Men, Women, and the Birthing of Modern Science, ed. Judith P. Zinsser. DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press
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Klein Kafer, Natacha. 2023. Dynamics of Privacy at Sea: An Introduction to Privacy Studies in Maritime History In Privacy at Sea: Practices, Spaces, and Communication in Maritime History, ed Natacha Klein Kafer, 1–17 Cham: Palgrave Macmillan
Klein Kafer, Natacha, and Natalia da Silva Perez forthcoming Privacy and knowledge production: historical potentials and challenges KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge
Leong, Elaine Yuen Tien 2018 Recipes and Everyday Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and the Household in Early Modern England Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press [Crossref]
Long, Pamela O. 2001. Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Neighbors, Dustin and Natacha Klein Kafer. 2022. Zones of Privacy in Letters Between Women of Power: Elizabeth I of England and Anna of Saxony. Royal Studies Journal 9 (1): 60–89.
Orlin, Lena Cowen. 2007. Locating Privacy in Tudor London. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref]
Pender, Patricia, ed. 2017. Gender, Authorship, and Early Modern Women’s Collaboration. Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Pomata, Gianna. 2013. Was There a Querelle Des Femmes in Early Modern Medicine? ARENAL 20 (2): 334–335.
Rankin, Alisha Michelle. 2013. Panaceia’s Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. [Crossref]
Straznicky, Marta. 2004. Privacy, Playreading, and Women’s Closet Drama, 1550-1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref]
Tarbin, Stephanie, and Susan Broomhall. 2008. Women, Identities and Communities in Early Modern Europe. Aldershot; Burlington: Ashgate.
Trull, Mary E. 2013. Performing Privacy and Gender in Early Modern Literature, Early Modern Literature in History Ser. London: Palgrave Macmillan Limited. [Crossref]
Ullyot, Michael. 2022. The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Early Modern England. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press [Crossref]
van Elk, Martine 2017 Early Modern Women’s Writing: Domesticity, Privacy, and the Public Sphere in England and the Dutch Republic Cham: Springer International Publishing [Crossref]
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Zinsser, Judith P. 2005. Men, Women, and the Birthing of Modern Science. Northern Illinois University Press.
Footnotes
Zinsser, Judith P. Men, Women, and the Birthing of Modern Science. Northern Illinois University Press, 2005.
Pender, Patricia, ed. Gender, Authorship, and Early Modern Women’s Collaboration. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017, 1
Hunter, Lynette and Hutton, Sarah. Women, Science and Medicine, 1500–1700: Mothers and Sisters of the Royal Society. Stroud: Sutton, 1997; Ebbersmeyer, Sabrina, and Gianni Paganini, eds. Women, Philosophy and Science: Italy and Early Modern Europe. Vol. 4. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences. Cham: Springer
International Publishing, 2020; Boyle, Margaret E, and Sarah E Owens. Health and Healing in the Early Modern Iberian World a Gendered Perspective. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2021
De Pizan, Christine. The Book of the City of Ladies. 1405. Trans. Rosalind BrownGrant. London: Penguin, 1999.
Davies, Stevie. The Idea of Woman in Renaissance Literature: The Feminine Reclaimed. Brighton: Harvester, 1986.
Agrippa, Henricus Cornelius. Declamation on the Preeminence and Nobility of the Female Sex 1529 Trans Ed Albert Rabil Jr Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996
Pomata, Gianna. “Was There a Querelle Des Femmes in Early Modern Medicine?” ARENAL 20, no. 2 (2013): 334–5.
Havard, Lucy J. “‘Preserve or Perish’: Food Preservation Practices in the Early Modern Kitchen.” Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science 74, no. 1 (March 20, 2020): 5–33.
Leong, Elaine Yuen Tien Recipes and Everyday Knowledge: Medicine, Science, and the Household in Early Modern England Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2018.
Eger, Elizabeth; Grant, Charlotte; Gallchoir, Cliona O.; Warburton, Penny (eds.). Women, Writing and the Public Sphere 1700–1830. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, 2.
Ullyot, Michael. The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Early Modern England. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2022, 17.
Eger; Grant; Gallchoir; Warburton (eds.). Women, Writing and the Public Sphere 1700–1830; Williamson, Fiona. “Public and Private Worlds? Social History, Gender and Space: Social History, Gender and Space.” History Compass 10, no. 9 (September 2012): 633–43; Dzuback, Mary Ann. “Gender and the Politics of Knowledge.” History of Education Quarterly 43, no. 2 (2003): 171–95.
Trull, Mary E. Performing Privacy and Gender in Early Modern Literature. Early Modern Literature in History Ser. London: Palgrave Macmillan Limited, 2013.
Elk, Martine van. Early Modern Women’s Writing: Domesticity, Privacy, and the Public Sphere in England and the Dutch Republic Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2017
Huebert, Ronald. Privacy in the Age of Shakespeare. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016, 8.
Silva Perez, Natalia da. ‘Privacy and Social Spaces’, TSEG - The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History 18, no. 3 (29 November 2021): 5–16.
Klein Kafer, Natacha, ‘Dynamics of Privacy at Sea: An Introduction to Privacy Studies in Maritime History’ in Klein Kafer, Natacha (ed ) Privacy at Sea: Practices, Spaces, and Communication in Maritime History Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023, 2
Orlin, Lena Cowen. Locating Privacy in Tudor London. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Fennetaux, Ariane. “Women’s Pockets and the construction of Privacy in the Long Eighteenth Century”, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 20:3 (2008): 307–334.
Klein Kafer, Natacha and da Silva Perez, Natalia, “Privacy and knowledge production: historical potentials and challenges”, KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge, forthcoming
Klein Kafer, ‘Dynamics of Privacy at Sea’.
Long, Pamela O. Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001.
Rankin, Alisha Michelle. Panaceia’s Daughters: Noblewomen as Healers in Early Modern Germany Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013
Neighbors, Dustin and Klein Kafer, Natacha. “Zones of Privacy in Letters Between Women of Power: Elizabeth I of England and Anna of Saxony”. Royal Studies Journal 9:1 (2022), p. 60–89; Tarbin, Stephanie, and Susan Broomhall. Women, Identities and Communities in Early Modern Europe. Aldershot; Burlington: Ashgate, 2008.
Hunter, Lynette. “Women and Science in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Century: Different Social Practices, Different Textualities, and Different Kinds of Science” in Men, Women, and the Birthing of Modern Science edited by Judith P. Zinsser. DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005.
Straznicky, Marta. Privacy, playreading, and women ’ s closet drama, 1550–1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, 9–11.
N. Klein Kafer, N. da Silva Perez (eds.), Women’s Private Practices of Knowledge Production in Early Modern Europe
https://doi org/10 1007/978-3-031-44731-0 2
Lady Jane Lumley’s Private Education and Its Political Resonances
Natalia da Silva Perez1
(1)
Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Natália da Silva Perez
Email: dasilvaperez@eshcc.eur.nl
Abstract
In this chapter, Natalia da Silva Perez focuses on Lady Jane Lumley, who lived in England in the middle of the sixteenth century. As a young member of a noble household close to the throne, her study practices were fomented and shaped by her family’s political aspirations and alignments, all the while remaining within the private circle of her family. In what follows, Silva Perez maps ideas that Lady Lumley articulated through translations and letters that she wrote for her father as a young woman. In her texts, the private, the political, and the public appear not as distinct categories but are rather co-constructed as mutually interdependent.
Keywords Lady Lumley – Drama – England – Knowledge – Education –
Translation
Introduction: Education
at a Noble Household
Lady Jane Lumley was the daughter of the Earl of Arundel, Henry Fitzalan, and Catherine Grey (who died in 1542, when Jane was a
child).1 Lord Arundel was an important Catholic noble who was close to the royal circle.2 He “had served as Lord Chamberlain in the households of Henry VIII and Edward VI until 1550” and, after a period where he had fallen out of grace with the royal family, he was instrumental in Mary I’s accession to the throne in 1553.3 In the midst of a succession controversy following the death of King Edward VI, Lady Jane Grey was crowned and reigned for nine days, thanks to the manoeuvres of the Duke of Northumberland.4 Jane Grey was a cousin of Lord Arundel’s irst wife, so at irst he supported her as the lawful queen, even though she was a protestant.5 A politically clever Catholic, when a chance presented itself to him, Arundel led a party against the Duke of Northumberland and turned against Jane Grey, helping Mary I ascend to the throne, consequently becoming one of those responsible for Jane Grey’s imprisonment.6 Later, Jane Grey was executed for high treason after having spent some time at the Tower of London.
Arundel’s allegiance to Mary I gained him the sympathy of the Catholic queen, who would “continually demonstrate her gratitude to Arundel in little favours.”7 For example, when Mary I took power in 1553, Protestant Archbishop Thomas Cranmer was imprisoned in the Tower of London and his property con iscated.8 The queen’s sympathy towards Arundel eventually secured him possession of Cranmer’s library, adding the archbishop’s books to Arundel’s already “substantial collection of some 400 volumes, representing three different interests.”9
Acquiring books and developing a prestigious humanist learning was part of noble people’s practices of religious and political views.10 It was part of their way to perform politics, not simply as a conspicuous display, but in the sense of ‘perform’ that encompasses both the idea of displaying something and of bringing about a certain reality.11 Given the symbolic value of education, it is not surprising that even those families who were not aspiring to foster direct successors to the throne also sought to follow the advice from hortatory books on education, like Erasmus of Rotterdam’s Institutio principis Christiani. In 1516, Institutio principis Christiani was published by Froben Press in Basel, making this practical manual on humanist education available to a wide public of readers.12 In principle, the book addressed the educational needs of
rulers; Erasmus dedicated it to Prince Charles of Spain on his accession to the throne of Aragon and later also offered a hand-illuminated copy to Henry VIII.13 In the book, Erasmus asserted that it is “the spirit that distinguishes king from tyrant, not his title.”14
This is the type of humanist education that Lady Jane Lumley and the other young people in her family received at her father’s house. The young people of the Earl of Arundel’s household, boys and girls alike, received a strong and erudite education.15 They made use of the rich holdings of the ever-expanding Arundel library and also contributed their own manuscripts of translations to the collection.16 Mary, Jane, and Henry, the Fitzalan children from the Earl of Arundel’s irst marriage with Catherine Grey, and John Radcliff, their stepbrother, who came to live at their home after Arundel’s second marriage to Mary Radcliff, all left manuscripts of translations, which were in their majority offered as New Year’s gifts to their father.17 When the young Henry Fitzalan went to Cambridge, he became friends with John Lumley. John Lumley eventually also came to live in the Arundel household when, at about the age of 17, he married Jane, who was about 13 years old at the time.18 Shortly after their marriage, John translated Institutio principis Christiani and offered it as a gift to Lord Arundel, signing it “your Lordeshippes obedient sone, J. Lumley, 1550.”19 Within the private sphere of the Arundel household, the young people of the family were carefully educated for their future in politics.
The gift of Institutio principis Christiani by John Lumley to his father-in-law is symbolic of the intellectual interests fomented at the Earl of Arundel’s household, centred as they were in the appropriate conduct for political actors. Institutio principis Christiani counsels the leader to rule by consent. Lisa Jardine explains that Erasmus believed it was better to maintain stability in the political order to avoid “discord and social disintegration,” in accordance with his support for European monarchies.20 For Jardine, Institutio principis Christianis had as its purpose “to ensure that those born to rule are educated so as to govern justly and benevolently, and so that the prince’s rule never degenerates into oppression.”21 Indeed, these ideas are echoed in Lord Arundel’s speech in defence of Mary I being the queen:
I am onely hereto induced for the safety of the com’on wealth and liberty of this kingdome, wheareto we are bounde noe lesse then to ourselves, both by the lawe of God and nature, as likewise through remorse of conscience, seeing the Lady Maryes right, lawfull successor to this Crowne, by an other possessed, and thearby all we like to be deprived of that liberty wch we have so longe enjoyed under our lawfull Kings and Princes.22
Erasmus’s advice on princely education was complemented by his references to the type of Christian philosophy that he had developed earlier in Enchiridion militis Christiani (1501), and to the rhetorical strategies that he suggested in his De Utraque Verborum ac Rerum Copia (1512), which included the use of translation. He did not simply recommend translation but showed how his own learning owed much to translating Greek works into Latin. Through Erasmus’s in luence, translation became a cherished exercise in humanist curricula.
The Private, the Public, and the Political in Lady Lumley’s Writings
Most of Lady Jane Lumley’s extant texts were translations. Dedicatory letters addressed to her father, several translations from Isocrates’s texts, and an entry she copied from an encyclopaedia appeared in Latin. The Tragedie of Euripides Called Iphigeneia is the only text that appeared in English. Translated sometime after 1553, this play was both the irst instance where an Ancient Greek tragedy appeared in English, as well as the earliest extant drama by a woman in England.23
Three separate volumes of Lady Jane Lumley’s writings survive: the irst two volumes seem to be clean copies, each containing only one translation and its corresponding letter-preface, while the third volume seems more like a commonplace notebook, containing varied works in more casual handwriting:
“Oratio Isocratis quem Archidamus inscribitur”, which is prefaced by an “Argumentum” in the form of a letter signed “Filia tua dominationi tue deditissima, Joanna Lumleya” (BL MS Royal 15 A i);
“Evagoras, Oratio quarta Isocratis ad Nicoclem regem Cypri, versa e graecis in latina per Dominam Lumleyam”, which is prefaced by a letter to her father “Epistola ad dominum patrem” (BL MS Royal 15 A ii);
A commonplace notebook containing multiple texts (BL MS Royal 15 A ix):
– “Oratio prima Isocratis ad Demonicum” (incomplete);
– “Epistola”, adressed to her father;
– “Oratio Isocratis 2a ad Nicoclem”;
– “Nicocles 3a Oratio Isocratis”;
– “Epistola”, a draft copy of the above mentioned “Epistola ad dominum patrem”;
– “Evagoras, Oratio quarta Isocratis ad Nicoclem,” a draft copy of above-mentioned presentation volume;
– “Argumentum Orationis Isocratis quam in laudem pacis scripsit”;
– “Oratio Isocratis in laudem pacis”;
– “The Tragedie of Euripides called Iphigeneia translated out of Greake into Englisshe”, accompanied by “The Argument of the Tragedie”;
– A single sentence, “acerba audire tolerabilius, quam videre”, which appears upside down on the verso of folio 98;
– Two pages written by someone other than Lady Lumley (judging by the headings indicating dates, they seem like book-keeping entries, perhaps by John Lumley);
– And inally, once again in the handwriting of Lady Jane Lumley, a copy of the entry on “Lapis Aquilae” from the encyclopaedia of medicaments Pandectarum Medicinae, compiled by Mattheus Silvaticus in the fourteenth century.
Most of the texts contained in Lady Lumley’s volumes—The Tragedie of Euripides Called Iphigeneia, the orations by Isocrates, and her letters—share the concern with principles of good conduct for rulers, common among those living in the Arundel household. The play The Tragedie of Euripides Called Iphigeneia is an example of this concern with political themes. It dramatizes a crucial moment in the life of a political family, an instance when the cliff between the private and public realms comes crumbling down. It is the story of a young woman
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thought of the withheld cablegram and the purloined letter She had suffered far more in proportion to her doings than the satisfaction she had derived from them.
Presently Carl entered her office and in a strangely calm voice asked, “Miss Huntington, do you know if there is another party in this building by the name of Lohman? There was a cablegram and a letter that I should have received probably some ten days ago.”
“I do not know,” was her rather quickly spoken reply, and a flush that spread over her face, but without any apparent hesitation she went on with her work. Fortunately, Carl did not notice her embarrassment.
“It is very strange. I ought to be able to find out the particulars of delivery at the cable office. Would you be kind enough to drop in there on your way to lunch and inquire if they have any record for the last two weeks, or longer, of receiving and delivering a cablegram for me from Timbuktoo, Africa? You know, when they deliver a cablegram the receiver must sign for it.”
“Yes, surely, with pleasure,” came with difficulty from Grace’s pale lips and then momentarily summoning courage, she added, “Were you expecting a cablegram?”
“No, but I received a letter in which it was stated that a cablegram had been sent.”
“Was it an important message?”
“Yes—and no.”
“Probably the sender confirmed the cable wording in the letter you received this morning.”
Carl turned without an answer, as though he had not heard this final remark and stepped into his own office.
Her heart beat high, and fearfully she racked her mind for some way out of the difficulty in which she now perceived she had gotten herself. It would never do to let Carl make any personal inquiries at the cable office since then most assuredly she would be detected in the game she had tried to play. Many plans and schemes came to
her mind but upon consideration none appeared to answer her purpose. As she murmured to herself, “I may as well take the chance and pretend to have stopped there. He would never know the difference and I can easily report that no such cablegram had been received.”
Her lunch hour having arrived she prepared to go out, and as she was putting on her hat, Carl happened to pass and gave a parting caution, “Now don’t forget about that cable.”
Her reply, “No I won’t,” was given in a rather strange tone and she was thankful that Carl did not appear to notice it. Hurriedly she left the office, her entire body atremble. She did not go near the cable office nor did she partake of her customary ice-cream soda lunch. The fear that rose up within her had robbed her of all desire to eat. Instead she walked the streets, thinking, thinking.
Returning to the office a little later than usual she summoned her courage and at once went to Carl’s private office.
In response to his eager and questioning look she said, “There has been no such message received for the past three months.”
This she figured, certainly covered the period since Carl himself had left Timbuktoo, and continued, “I had them look over all the books and through all their files, and having done so, they were positive that no cable of any sort had been received for you from Timbuktoo or any other place in Africa. In fact, you did not receive any foreign messages since you returned from abroad.”
Carl turned away in silence, not knowing what to make of it, but realizing all too well that the cable might have gone astray.
Grace stood silently, noting carefully Carl’s every gesture and expression, as she awaited a reply. He dismissed her with apparently kindly spoken words, “All right, never mind it then.”
As she left his office, she breathed much easier and a great burden seemed to have been lifted from her guilty soul. He suspected nothing!
A few minutes later however, Carl asked her for a cablegram blank and instead of dictating the message to her he wrote it out himself, and personally rang for a messenger.
When the messenger arrived, Grace, going to the door of Carl’s office, said, “The boy is here Mr. Lohman, will you give me the cablegram?”
“Send the boy in here.”
As the boy entered the office, Grace closed the door behind him, remaining close outside in an effort to hear what was said. But all she heard was “Charge it.”
She went quickly to her desk and sat down as the boy came out and departed through the outer door. It occurred to her too late that she might have gone out into the hall and demanded the message from the boy and after having perused it, handed it back to him with no one the wiser as to her deception.
In her high-strung and nervous state, her mind was not working as clearly as usual, or she surely would have realized that she could have gone to the cable office, at the end of the day, and for some plausible reason, such as having failed to retain a copy for the office file, procured a copy of the message.
Picking up her pencil and notebook she muttered sadly, “Out of luck this time,” and entered Carl’s office with the words “Mr. Lohman, you wished me to remind you of that letter you desired to dictate before the close of the day. Shall I take it now?”
“Ah yes, sit down and I will dictate at once.”
And, greatly to the surprise and chagrin, of Grace, he, in the calmest manner imaginable, sat back in his chair and dictated the long business letter without a single halt or change. He was at ease, mentally and physically, in great contrast with his bewildered words of the morning.
It was the message he had sent to Sana that had relieved his spirit and restored him to his normal bearing.
It was Grace, who, if she had known the contents of that cablegram, would have trembled and been unfit to take the letter he was now dictating.
CHAPTER XIV GETTING HIS IDEAL MATE
AFTER dinner that evening, Carl wrote a long letter to Sana, enclosing the gift he had purchased that afternoon. In higher spirits than at any time since that fateful morning on the desert he went to his club to spend the evening in quiet reverie.
In the days that followed, the change in Carl became more and more noticeable to Grace, who at last realized that all her hopes were now gone as the winds of yesterday. This realization was a bitter pill to swallow but she tried to make the best of it.
Weeks passed. Weeks that seemed ages to the anxious man but weeks that were as fleeting moments to the girl who dreaded the day when another letter should reach him from across the seas.
At last the letter came. Receiving it from the postman, Grace, without hesitation now, placed it on Carl’s desk. What mattered it to her! But just the same her feelings were thrown out of balance and with, “What’s the use,” she threw her notebook angrily on her desk just as Carl came in with his usual morning smile.
Grace made a brave attempt to appear unconcerned, saying, “Mr. Lohman, there is a letter on your desk from your African friend.”
Carl hurried into his office and as he opened the envelope turned to Grace, asking, “How did you know it was from Sana?”
“Oh I thought so.”
“Why, you did not know that she was alive. How did you guess it?”
“To be frank, when you received the letter from Timbuktoo and when you forwarded the cablegram, I thought something unusual must have happened. Isn’t that so?” looking at her chief with a smile.
“Yes, you are right, Miss Huntington. I told you that Sana had been burned to death, but I was greatly mistaken. Sana is alive.”
“I am glad to hear it,” came the lying response.
Carl was reading the letter for a second time, when he was called to the telephone and while still engaged in conversation over the wire, a business friend dropped in requesting Carl to accompany him up town, without delay, to attend to some important business matters.
As they left the office, Carl informed Grace that he did not believe he would be back until late in the afternoon.
Later on, Grace, when placing some papers on his desk noticed Sana’s letter. Carl in his hurry had forgotten to put it in his pocket as was his custom with personal mail.
Without hesitation Grace picked up the letter and returning to her desk, read:
My darling boy:
You cannot imagine how thrilled I was to get your sweet note, saying that you are safe and happy and to know that you still love me. I am, and I always shall be yours. I am so hungry for you, my love.
The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose, when you are once more with me.
Your message and the beautiful ring have removed all doubts from my heart. Thank you, my own.
You must have been in an extremely loving mood when you wrote that letter, and looking at its date I found that you wrote at a time when I could not keep you out of my mind. I was longing, longing for you, beloved. It must have been mental telepathy. At any rate that very evening I removed an old ring of mine, something told me to do it, and sure enough with your letter came that wonderful ring to take the place of the one I had discarded. To think, dear, that you will be my very very own. I wish you were here now so that I could better express my feelings for you. But
alas being so far apart I can but press your picture to my heart and lips. I am living in my dream of the future which like all great happenings, and like your sparkling solitaire, casts its brilliant beams ahead.
You know I love you dearly and I hope the day of supreme joy will soon come, when I shall register a vow before God, you and myself, to devote my life and love to you. I will be yours, yours—entirely yours and you will be mine, all mine! Won’t it be wonderful, too wonderful to believe?
As you read these lines I am longing, longing for your embraces and caresses.
When thinking of you and the short sweet hours we had together, the mirror reflects my eyes like two bright stars of the desert night and I shall keep them shining to lead you back across the desert to your Sana.
Many thanks again, Carl, for the lovely surprises of today. Having now your splendid photograph to make clearer my mental picture of you, I am reading your character and writing down my observations and comparing them with what astrology has to say.
This is my Carl—You are a keen observer, quick in thought, practical, energetic, patient, good natured, self controlled and determined. You are a planner and a diplomat. The finely chiseled features of your head and hands, as well as your silky hair and fine skin show natural refinement, love of beauty, harmony and quality. This is also proven by your voice. Your forehead, nose and eyes, prove your intellectual power.
Zodiac says: (Born between August 22nd and September 23rd). You have a fine and discriminating mind, great endurance and aptitude in acquisition of knowledge. You are capable of attainments in whatever line you undertake; but if you follow literary pursuits or astronomy you will obtain decided distinction. Whatever you do is done in an
orderly, systematic manner You are fond of variety You possess great rallying powers and it would be hard to keep you down. You are emotional, generous, large hearted, fond of music and the arts. You are instinctively discriminating, having likes and dislikes, but do not care to be restrained or opposed in your inclinations. You like things tasty, rich and elegant but are still a strict observer of the rules of health and nature.
While the stars say you are fond of art and tasty things, they do not say you are fond of the feminine sex. I suppose that those old astrologers who always looked at that imaginary belt in the heavens containing the twelve constellations of the Zodiac, to forecast human destiny, did not care anything about us women. So, this is my Carl!
Well, goodbye then for a while, with much love, Your little girl of the desert,
Sana.
Grace, having finished reading the letter, realized that Sana was much cleverer than herself in expressing her feelings, and able to say far more than she would have ever attempted to put down on paper.
Comparing herself with Sana, Grace appeared to herself as a hypocritical puritan. She hated herself now for having let Carl slip away from her. Yet, she no longer bore him any grudge. She realized that he had treated her more kindly than she deserved.
It did not occur to her that the greater the intelligence and culture of a person, the greater the expression and the appreciation of love. The less intelligent cannot understand it. The lower the plane, the less refined, the fewer and feebler are the inner feelings. The imagination of women plays a great role and it is just this that the dull unsophisticated human being is unable to comprehend.
Even the mating of the intelligent with the dull does not help the latter; it is beyond their power to learn. That they miss joys of life, they cannot see, or know why.
Society would do well to teach the public the true meaning of love and the part it plays in the progress of civilization. Unadvised, most people plunge blindly and madly along, not realizing the truth and heading straight for destruction. Much of this could be avoided were we of today but properly versed in the real meaning of life. Of course, such teaching would deprive many so-called vice crusaders and other self-appointed fanatical apostles of an easy way to make a living, but the world would be wiser and happier.
Carl was more than anxious now to have his plans and specifications finished. Several weeks of hard work went by quickly, then came the message that made Carl forget all about engineering problems and sent him hurrying across the ocean to Sana’s side.
Upon going to his office one morning he found a cablegram awaiting him, telling him that von Sarnoff and de Rochelle were causing Sana a great deal of annoyance and that she wished he could come to aid her in her distress.
Grace, too, had read the cablegram from Sana. Although she had long realized that the man was slipping through her fingers, she was determined now to go to whatever extreme might be necessary to obtain her end.
Once more the temptation of using the machinery of the law, by means of the Mann Act, occurred to her. Should she take advantage of it? The more she studied the situation, the more promising did the invoking of this law appear to her. Surely, she mused, she was in a position to make things disagreeable for Carl. Her word, she knew, would carry more weight with the minions of the law than his. His denials would be useless once she had stated her case and started the wheels aturning.
Carl had certainly set the trap for himself when he had refused to allow her to repay the money he had advanced for her passage from Africa.
Grace could not refrain from laughing aloud as she thought of this. At any rate, she figured, there was enough against him to prevent his leaving the country, at least for the time being.
And in the meantime what of Sana? If Carl could not get to her side to protect her from de Rochelle and von Sarnoff, they would, no doubt, take care of her. With Sana out of the way, Grace saw better chances for her own cause.
At her home that night Grace gave much thought and consideration to the matter. Several schemes came to mind, but at last she came to the conclusion that it would best serve her purpose to consult a lawyer.
She knew of no lawyer to whom she could entrust her case, so at the office the following day, she called up several of her girl friends, asking them whether they knew any such lawyer. After a few calls she was referred to one, as being just the sort of counsel she should seek. Upon getting his office on the ’phone she was asked to drop in during her lunch hour to talk things over.
Grace told her side of the story, being careful not to say anything with regard to the scheming she had done to ensnare Carl in the meshes of her net. Being pressed for time, on account of a case in court that afternoon, the attorney asked that she return that evening.
At the end of her office day, Grace again visited the lawyer. After relating her story once more in detail, Grace was assured that she had a good case.
“I would advise that you sue him for at least twenty-five thousand dollars,” the lawyer suggested, craftily adding, “You can easily get several thousand dollars anyway.”
“Is that all?” questioned the girl, now quite mercenary, at the thought of getting easy money.
“Yes—that is unless you happen to have something in writing to hold against him.”
“I have nothing.”
“Too bad. If you did it would be worth a hundred thousand to you.”
“A hundred thousand!”
“Yes, easily—but never mind, I can make it worth your while, as it is.”
“Are you sure we have a good case against him?”
“Positively—when he paid your fare to this country he committed a criminal offense, if we want to look at it that way—and when it comes to a show-down that is the way we look at it. He has a year of imprisonment staring him in the face. I believe it will be well worth his while to pay you to keep quiet.”
“Yes”—replied Grace, thinking of Carl’s eagerness to get to Sana, “I think he would.”
“Well then, do you want me to take your case?”
“Of course”—responded Grace. “Why do you ask?”
“You know, without doubt, that the profession cannot handle cases of this sort without a retainer being paid in advance.”
“Oh, I see—what retainer would you like?”
“One thousand dollars. As soon as you pay it, I shall proceed against Mr. Lohman. There will be no notoriety attached; simply a case of making him come across on the quiet.”
“But I haven’t a thousand dollars,” Grace objected faintly.
“No? Then I’m sorry that I cannot be of assistance to you.”
Grace had had visions of fur coats and luxurious gowns, purchased with the gold she and her attorney would squeeze from Carl. Blackmail, you may call it if you wish—but the nastiness of the name means nothing in the life of a “gold digger.” Now those fanciful dreams were fading from sight, just because she did not happen to have a paltry thousand dollars with which to satisfy the greed of the lawyer. She called it greed, as she sat there, trying to find a way out of the quandary, giving no thought to the fact that even “gold diggers” are often “played” for all they are worth.
The attorney, too, saw some easy money slipping through his fingers, so turning to Grace he said, in rather a patronizing tone, “Well—I could consider five hundred.”
But that sum was just as unavailable as the first and Grace hastened to tell him so, suggesting that he take the case on a fifty-fifty basis.
“Nothing doing,” came the quick response. Although he didn’t tell her, the lawyer wasn’t so positive that they would get anything out of Carl, as he had appeared to be in his conversation. Why then, should he waste his time on a far fetched gamble?
This outcome of her plans took Grace rather by surprise. She had hoped to hold Carl by hook or by crook, and failing to hold him, the next best thing seemed the getting of some of his money. Now it looked as if she would have neither the man nor the gold. So far she had not struck “pay dirt” in her gold digging.
But like all fortune hunters, one failure did not mean utter disaster and rout to Grace’s plans. There must be some way, she told herself, on her way home. Yes, there must be a way and she would sooner or later find it. Then she would show Carl she was not to be trifled with! Suppose there was notoriety and scandal connected with it. What cared she? Like so many other women she would, no doubt, gain by it. And that alone was her object.
Luckily, Carl was entirely unaware of Grace and her scheming. He had troubles enough of his own, without being further burdened by any such menace as blackmail.
He spent the day going from one steamship office to another in an effort to book passage for an immediate sailing to Africa. But his hunt was fruitless. There were no vessels leaving for Africa within a week —neither passenger nor freight.
The best he could do was arrange to go by boat to Cadiz in Spain, trusting to his luck to be able to secure quick passage from there on some coastwise steamer, touching at different African ports.
Returning to his office he attended to a few of the most important matters that required his personal attention and prepared to leave. His baggage was already on its way to the steamer, which sailed the following morning. Before saying “goodbye” however, he gave specific instructions as to the completion of the competitive irrigation plans, and their delivery to the New York office of the Sahara Development Organization.
As Carl shook hands with Grace, she made a brave attempt at smiling, saying, “Don’t forget to send us a wireless, so that I can meet you at the dock when you return.”
After Carl had gone, and she was alone in the outer office, Grace sank heavily into her chair, and pointing her finger at the door through which he had just passed, she muttered, through clinched teeth, “I’ll get you yet. Yes, I’ll be at the dock when you return, all right. And what will happen then will be some surprise to you and your desert vamp.”
When one is in a hurry, delay sets in. Such were Carl’s thoughts when the hour of sailing had long passed, and still the steamer remained in her berth. But all delays come to an end sometime, and at noon the vessel was warped from the dock, and soon Carl was waving a farewell to New York’s skyscrapers.
As the boat steamed out to sea, Carl thought of the rum-runners he had encountered on his last trip. He wondered whether the boats he saw on the horizon were of that calling. But these were but passing fancies. His thoughts were in Africa, beside a little lake and of a girl, who even now might be in grave danger.
The passage to Spain was a slow one it is true, but to Carl it seemed as if they would never get there. The hours of sea travel became days in his fancy and the days ages. Every low-lying cloud bank, he prayed meant land, and when it proved otherwise, he cursed the fact that he did not have a real “Meteor,” like the one of his dream, at his disposal.
At last Cadiz hove in sight. Assured by the Captain of the steamer he had come over on, that he could get passage on a freighter or cattleboat engaged in trade along the African coast, he hurried from the ship and immediately sought the offices of the steamship people named by the Captain.
Luck smiled kindly on him. There was a vessel leaving that day, destined to Spanish Africa. It was a tramp freighter, but it seemed a floating palace to Carl.
On board, Carl made plans on how to reach Timbuktoo in the quickest possible way. The steamer would take him to Senegal. From there he could take the railroad that runs along the Senegal River, for some eight hundred miles, into the African interior. So far so good. At the terminus of the railway, however, he faced a journey of some three or four hundred miles on horseback. That was the part he dreaded. As good a horseman as he was, he realized the strain such a journey would place upon man and beast, especially so if they were in a hurry. But the journey itself did not worry him as much as the procuring of sufficient relays of horses to carry on.
Slow as the trip across the Atlantic had seemed, the passage of the freighter along the African Coast was still slower and more tedious.
Languidly the vessel crept from port to port. Being a tramp her holds held a general cargo consigned to hundreds of different points in the interior of the continent, which meant a stop at a half dozen different coast towns. The mere calling at these varied ports would not have displeased Carl as much as did the fact that the Captain of the boat saw fit to lay-up at each of the ports for a day or two. To plead with him for a more hurried journey was useless. He had made the trip a half hundred times, he told Carl, and it was always fast enough to suit him. And when an African coaster says that, he means it.
Carl was desperate, when, one rainy morning, some four weeks after leaving New York, he finally left the steamer at the port of Saint Louis, lying at the mouth of the Senegal River.
Inquiring at the railroad station as to the first train for Segu Sikoro, the last stop, on the road he was told that it would be some hours before the train left.
Cursing the indifference to time one encounters all over Africa, Carl turned to a little telegraph office, and from there dispatched a message to Sana, saying he was on his way to Timbuktoo, and hoped to see her within a week.
At last the train started its weary journey up the Senegal River. Carl had never traveled on an African railway, but, from what he had heard of the experiences of friends, it was something not to be
considered in the light of a pleasure trip. Just how many stops it would make from time to time, for water and wood it used for fuel, he dared not picture in advance. Suffice to say, they would be too many to suit anyone in as great a hurry as he was.
From the outset the trip promised to be an unpleasant one. The rain and the heat, together with the swarming flies, foretold as much.
Carl tried to concentrate on his books, but after a few hours dreary ride, punctured by several jerking stops, and accompanied by shrieking wheels, he gave it up. He would just have to sit there and wait for his journey’s end.
So he sat looking out through the rain at the dismal waters of the Senegal, until the train came to a halt at a little way station, the name of which Carl could not ascertain.
Here he was joined, in way of company, by a tall rugged fellow, wearing tweeds that looked totally out of place in that part of the country.
As Carl looked up, the newcomer nodded pleasantly, remarking as he did so, “Beastly weather, this.”
Carl, glad to get in conversation, replied to this greeting with a pleasant, “Fine for ducks.”
The other, settling his bulky figure into the seat opposite Carl, proceeded to fill and light his pipe, saying—“Not supposed to, you know, but I’ve never been stopped yet—Smoke?” offering his tobacco pouch.
“Yes thanks, I will,” and Carl, too, was soon wreathed in a cloud of pipe smoke.
They sat silently for a time, each studying the other, when Carl, anxious to renew the conversation, said “From your remarks, I take it you have traveled this road before.”
“Many a time. Guess I know every inch of it and each different shriek in the wheels. By the way, name is Rogers—trader and so on.”
“Mine’s Lohman, engineer from New York.”
“Glad to know you, Lohman,” from the other, who, it was apparent, did not believe much in the formalities. Of this Carl was glad. Here was a man he could talk to without having to watch his step every inch of the way.
The other continued, “You won’t mind my rudeness, I hope—but would you mind my asking what you are doing here?”
“Not at all,” replied Carl; “and I’ll answer you too. I’m trying to get to Timbuktoo in a hurry. And I’m sorry to say that ‘hurry’ seems to be the last thing thought of here.”
“You have a long way to go, friend.” Rogers paused for a moment, then continued with “How are you going on from Segu Sikoro?”
“I intended to go by horse if possible, but for the last few hours I have been worrying as to how I can get the horses.”
“Well you would have good cause for worry if you hadn’t met me. But having met me, you need not worry.”
To Carl this sounded like bragging, but he felt, from within, that the man was sincere.
Without waiting for Carl to say anything, Rogers added “My place is but a few miles from the station, and a servant will be waiting for me with a buckboard. If you will accept my offer, I can fit you up.”
“I shall be greatly indebted to you.”
“Not at all, friend. My motto is ‘Help others—you may need help some day.’ I’m not asking questions as to what you are in a hurry about and I don’t want you to tell me, either. All I know is you are in a hurry and that’s enough for Rogers.”
Carl was no fool, and realizing the offer was made in good faith readily accepted it.
In due time they reached the railhead, and as predicted by Rogers, his servant was there, waiting to take him home. He hustled Carl into the wagon and away they went at a lively pace.
Rogers, turned to Carl, laughing and remarked “Some speed in Africa, according to where you look for it.”
After a half hour’s drive across the grassy plains they swung through a grove of trees, arriving shortly at the great palatial house Rogers called home.
Inside, Rogers called for whisky and soda, after which he led Carl to the bath where he could rid himself of the dust of the journey. It was then late in the afternoon, and although Carl was anxious to be on his way, he could not refuse the invitation to remain overnight.
Dawn, the following morning, found Carl up and dressed, after a night of refreshing sleep and rest. Rogers was up before him, however, and had seen to it that breakfast was on the table when his guest came downstairs.
While eating, Rogers outlined his plan to Carl. A native servant, who knew the country as only a native can, would accompany Carl the entire distance. They would take two of Rogers’ best saddle horses and ride to a distant ranch. There they would be given fresh horses for the next stage of the trip. Rogers explained that they would have to go a little out of their way, but they would make better time by having fresh horses for about every hundred miles.
Breakfast over, Rogers led Carl out of doors, where the guide and the horses were already awaiting him.
Thanking Rogers for his assistance and assuring him of his gratitude, Carl mounted, and following the guide rode speedily away. As he did so, he heard Rogers call after him “Don’t forget to let me know if you find the girl safe.”
“How the devil did he guess it?” Carl mused. “There certainly are strange folk in this world.”
Hour after hour they rode silently. The horses seemed to realize the urgent need of speed and every tendon was strained as they galloped along, placing the miles rapidly behind them. The sun rose high overhead and sank in the distant west and still the two men rode, urging their mounts on and on. Twilight, the short misty African twilight, came and was swallowed by night, and yet there was no halting in the ride.
The moon of midnight saw the weary men drop from their more weary horses at the first stopping place, a little ranch run by a friend of Rogers. The baying hounds had awakened the owner, who came out to see what caused the disturbance. Recognizing Rogers’ man, he took them into the house, and being told that Rogers desired that they be given fresh horses the following morning, he assured them that Rogers’ wish was his pleasure, and made haste to make the travelers comfortable for the night.
The following day was much the same as the one previous. All day they rode and far into the night. They came at last to a little lake, which Carl thought he recognized as Faguibin, but to his chagrin the guide informed him that Faguibin was still a long distance away. They stayed overnight at a lonely ranch, and set out, once more, the following morning, before the sun had risen above the horizon, on the last stage of their ride. Again good fortune favored them and without mishap their horses fairly flew over the remaining miles.
Weary to the point of exhaustion, Carl fairly staggered, late that night, into Sana’s home.
But Sana was not there to greet him. Her mother informed him, between her tears, that Sana had disappeared the day before while out riding. Where she was she did not know. All she knew was that Sana was not to be found in the village, and that she believed Sana had been spirited away by someone in the employ of de Rochelle. She directed Carl to the hotel where von Sarnoff was staying, saying that he was getting up a searching party and that no doubt, he would assist Carl in anything he would do to find the lost one.
“Von Sarnoff?” cried Carl, “I thought he, too, was annoying Sana?”
“He was in the beginning, but when he learned the truth from Sana, he ceased bothering her, and since then has been only trying to protect her from de Rochelle.”
With the words—“All right, I’ll see him,” Carl rushed from the house and hurried to the hotel.
Making himself known to von Sarnoff, Carl sought his aid. Gladly was the request granted. The searching party would start out early the following morning, Carl was informed, and as von Sarnoff expressed it, they would find Sana even if they had to sift the desert sands.
No time was lost the next day in getting away on the search. As they proceeded, von Sarnoff told Carl that he had learned that the local telegraph operator had been bribed by de Rochelle and had handed Carl’s message to Sana over to him.
The village had been searched thoroughly for Sana, and the leader of the searching party directed the party to the jungle that lies close to the town, believing that it was there that de Rochelle would take his captive. Sana was too well known and too well liked in Timbuktoo for de Rochelle to risk keeping her, against her wish, anywhere in the city.
All that day the little group of searchers beat the bush, but in vain; Sana was not to be found; nor were they even sure that the hoof prints they saw in the soft soil were those of the fugitives.
Too late to continue, they camped for the night in the deep jungle, lying huddled on the ground, trying as best they could to keep warm. They dared not build a fire for fear it might warn de Rochelle, if he were near, that he was being followed.
Long before dawn Carl roused the party and again the search was on. No light was thrown on the trail until about noon one of the hunters found a hat. Von Sarnoff, rushing to the spot cried —“Lohman—it is Sana’s hat—we are on the right road after all.”
But as the day went by, their hope of finding Sana grew less and less. They were getting into the thickest of the jungle, which they were experiencing great difficulty in penetrating.
Wearily they pushed their way through thorn and underbrush, becoming more and more discouraged as the hours flew by.
Suddenly, to their startled ears, came the panic stricken shrieks of a woman and the wild snorting of a horse.
There was no holding them now No brush grew thick enough to keep them from hurrying to the spot from which the cries had seemed to come.
They had not gone far, when, with a great crashing of branches, a madly galloping horse plunged past them.
“Good God!” Carl gasped as he recognized Sana’s white Arab. As the horse careened by, the watchers saw hanging from his torn and bleeding neck, a black panther.
Again the screams resounded through the jungle depths.
Throwing all caution to the winds Carl plunged ahead. Entangling vines, scratching thorns and bruising branches strove to hinder him. But he was unmindful of all these. Nothing mattered! He must get to Sana, it was she who had torn the silence with her cries.
