Great Women No.4

The collaboration continues apace between our very own illustraor, Sandy Nightingale and Sandi Toksvig (Star of TV, Radio, Writer, Performer and National Treasure). The Great Women series to date has celebrated Emily Post, Elizabeth Woodville and Dame Ethel Smythe. They are published in The Lady magazine.

We are proud to introduce a very controversial figure. Combining Religion, Power and beards we bring you . . .

Pope Joan

Pope Joan is a rather clear figure in history – either she was the only woman ever to be Pope or some anti-Pope person made up a load of Papal bull.  Thus her title was either Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Patriarch of the West, Primate of Italy, Archbishop and Metropolitan of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City, Servant of the Servants of God or she didn’t have one.

As she may have been made up we can be a little cavalier with the facts. Obviously she would need to live in Rome (the Vatican has rarely moved house) but exactly when is unclear.   This not surprising because it was most likely in the ninth century which was also known as the very Dark Ages when hardly anything was clear.

Fact or fiction she is quite a girl.  If she did exist then she was the only Pope to wreck a Vatican ceremony by giving birth.  If she was a legend then she was a strong enough a story for someone to spend a lot of seventeenth century man hours shredding references to her in history books.

If Joan existed then she was probably originally called Agnes or possibly Gilberta or maybe Jutta (OK, I’m not sure) when she was born in Germany of English missionary parents. Annoyingly for a girl in the ninth century she was very bright which was, of course, unnatural and dangerous. This was a girl who wanted to break the glass ceiling before most people had glass.  They say (you will note I am starting to get vague here) that at the age of twelve she was taken in ‘masculine attire’ to Athens by a ‘learned man’, a monk described as her teacher and lover which even today is a poor combination. 

Anyway she was very clever and Martin of Troppau (who was Polish and wrote the history of the world in the ninth century which must have taken less time than it would now) wrote that ‘there was nobody equal to her’ when it came to studying science.  Eventually, her knowledge of the scriptures led to her election as Pope John Anglicus where Martin reckons she ruled for two years, seven months, and four days before giving the game away by giving birth on the Via Sacra during a Papal procession. 

According to most versions, tourists and passers by were somewhat surprised when Pope John Anglicus tried to mount a horse, went into labour and gave birth to a son. At this point one of two things happened – 

The crowd tied her feet to the horse’s tail, and stoned her to death.

She was banished to a convent where her son grew up to follow in the family business and become a bishop. 

The case for Pope Joan includes the fact that there used to be a statue of Joan alongside all the other Popes in the Cathedral of Siena until Pope Clement VIII, commanded the sculpture be ‘metamorphosed’ into Pope Zacharias. The Church also brought in the ‘chair exam’ after her supposed reign which compelled each newly elected Pope to sit naked on a chair with a hole in the middle while others had a look and declared ‘Mas nobis nominus est’ - Our nominee is a man.  This was surely an embarrassing addition to an otherwise joyous day.

  

The case against is . . . uhm . . . there are no tea towels for sale with her face on in St Peter’s Square. 

Great Women No. 2

The second in the Great Women series has appeared in The Lady. We had a bit of a grumble about the layout especially as the portrait miniature by Sandy Nightingale was enlarged! But being constructive we sent in a suggested layout for the series to the magazine. Sandi Toksvig likes it too, as does her splendid agent Carol MacArthur, so we wait to see if they thought it was helpful.

Great Women No.2 - Elizabeth Woodville

Elizabeth was born in 1437 to a noble family who were good at most things apart from spelling. Today we write Woodville but in her own time anything from Wydeville to Widvile would have been just fine which suggest a pleasing medieval disinterest in identity theft.

Elizabeth was said to be the most beautiful woman in Britain with ‘heavy-lidded eyes like those of a dragon’ – not a compliment you hear much these days. When she was about 19 she married Sir John Grey of Groby, a Lancastrian, who history books say ‘fell at St. Albans’ in 1461. Many have fallen at St Albans during parky weather but sadly, John was killed in battle and left Elizabeth with two sons. By now Edward IV, a Yorkist, was King of England (hold on tight as we race through some parts of history). As a Lancastrian Elizabeth was on the other side of a dispute over the correct colour for roses that had managed to rage with the Yorkists for about 100 years. Liz, however, was bold. She wanted land for her sons so she went to see King Ed and, after one of those romantic meetings in the woods you normally only get in films, she and the king plighted their troth and married secretly.

It’s fair to say no one was pleased and things got worse when Elizabeth, who I think has been dead long enough for me to get away with calling her greedy and unscrupulous, kept getting the King to give land and money to her relations.Liz and Ed had ten kids of whom the ‘Princes in the Tower,’ Edward V and his brother, Richard, did least well. When Liz’s husband Edward IV died a heady game of numbers followed where, trust me, I can only scratch the surface. Ed V was only twelve so his uncle Richard of Gloucester (the hunchback one in Shakespeare) took the throne as Richard III, imprisoning Ed V and young Richard. Richard III then demanded that Elizabeth also turn over to his custody her daughters so she did. Eventually Richard III was killed by Henry Tudor (Bosworth Field but there isn’t the time). Henry became Henry VII and married Elizabeth’s daughter (also called Elizabeth) who followed in the family business and became queen. The Princes were probably murdered in the tower and Elizabeth Woodville retired to a nunnery where she had plenty of time to consider her failure to win Mother of the Year. She died there in June 1492 aged 55.

Great Woman/Emily Post

The very first of the Great Women series by Sandy Nightingale & Sandi Toksvig has been published in The Lady magazine. They will appear in the first issue every month, with the next on February 2nd. 2010. Image and text are © Copyright of the artist & author respectively and pilferers will be pursued relentlessly!

EMILY POST 

Emily Post was the doyenne of American Etiquette, a title which some Europeans might have the poor manners to suspect of not being hotly contested.  Emily was awash with good manners.  There was nothing she didn’t know about tea gowns or the rather complex rules governing which kind of lifts require a man to take his hat off or indeed, the answer to the rather vexing question - Should damask be hemmed or hem stitched? (hemmed by hand, of course.  I’m surprised you had to ask.)

Emily began her journey towards social grace from the beginning by not being clear about her birthday. She may have been born on October 27,1872 but it could just as easily have been October 3, 27 or 30th 1873. It is not a subject a woman of breeding should dwell on. Emily also knew enough about etiquette to realise it is easier to have all the right place settings for any event if you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth in the first place. 

She was born into a wealthy, socialite family in Baltimore, Maryland and led a heady life of chaperones and cotillions. (Curiously ‘cotillion’ is the old French word for petticoat yet the Americans used it to describe a ball where showing your underwear would not go well.)  Educated at home Emily was then polished off at Miss Graham's finishing school in New York.  She married a society banker,  Edwin Main Post. Sadly Edwin liked society rather too much and they divorced after he banked in the wrong places. Finding herself financially embarrassed Emily began writing. 

In 1922 she published  Etiquette - The Blue Book of Social Usage, a book to help the nouveau riche and became pleasingly riche herself. The publication went on to hold the distinction of being second only to the Bible as the book most often not returned or stolen from libraries. Clearly people read her work but didn’t entirely follow the rules. In 1945 USO clubs for American troops reported Emily Post as the most requested book after the Rand McNally Atlas. This suggests many soldiers didn’t know where they were going or what to say when they got there. 

The Blue Book in a nutshell –

1. Be nice to others

2. Don’t go on overnight automobile trips with a man.

3. Never wear light stockings on a heavy ankle.

4. Remember - a woman is ready to meet most emergencies if she has a hair-pin and a visiting card.

The book went through ten editions and nine reprints but good manners forbids me to tell you how much money she made. It seems that people across America were desperate for advice, so she also had a radio show and a daily column on good taste syndicated in more than 200 newspapers from which she received more than 5,000 letters a week.

The Chicago News reported 'While Betty Grable is the armies Pin Up Girl, Emily Post is their Look Up Girl'.

The Two Sandies

Good news for the Great Women project. The Lady magazine, best known for au pair ads and country cottages, has a new Editor. The new broom is Rachel Johnson, sister of Boris, Mayor of London. She knows a good thing when she sees one!

Great Women celebrates the famous, the curious and, the frankly very peculiar, women in history. Joyfully written by Sandy Toksvig and gleefully illustrated by Sandy Nightingale, the spot will appear monthly starting December/January. We will announce the date when it is confirmed. Our thanks to Carol Macarthur for her skill in steering Sandy & Sandi to the start line.

Heavenly Bodies for sale . . .

From today Sandy Nightingale's first four cards under the banner of Heavenly Bodies are available for sale online. The cards are blank inside and cover a range of scenes: Marie Antoinette, Egyptian Temple Dancers, Eve and a group of jolly ladies collapsing with the giggles.

There will be more cards to follow. All your comments and suggestions are welcome. In the mean time please visit the shop and share with your friends . . .

Heavenly Bodies Take Off

Heavenly Bodies is the series name for Sandy Nightingale's new line in greetings cards. We chose  Abacus, in The Lake District for the repro and print. The proofs have been given the OK by the artist (our thanks to Danny at Abacus). And the first print run is happening this week.

They will be on sale online and at discerning West Country retail outlets soon. Watch this space  as we will be revealing the details soon.

Great Women

Sandy Nightingale  is busy in the studio on a favourite project she has been developing with Sandi Toksvig. There are quite a few paintings with accompanying text as the project looks for the right home. History is festooned with fabulous females. Sandy and Sandi take unusual slants on the most famous - Elizabeth I and Mata Hari - and relish the marvellously obscure women who deserve to be discovered and celebrated - Pope Joan and the chaos that caused, Domestic Goddess, Fanny Farmer and Dame Ethel Smyth conducting an orchestra of suffragettes with a tooth brush from her prison cell window, to name just a few.

The list of subjects and paintings is always growing while publishers tread water over the potential of a book about half the population with an audience of more.
  
They are having great fun with lots of women to celebrate but suggestions are always welcome . . .