You with the roses - what are you selling?
by James Wellard
Long long ago I wrote a blogpost
about taking the same book out of the library over and
over as a teenager – some other dedicated readers, eg Lissa
Evans have talked of the same experience. Nowadays you would buy
the book, or your parents would buy it for you, or you’d find it online. But
there was something tremendous and secret about the excitement of looking for
and finding an old favourite. Mostly mine were books that no-one else was going
to borrow, but occasionally, because of the limit in the number of books I
could take out at a time (4), I would hide the 5th book behind a row
of others so it would be there next time I came in. I also joined several other
branch libraries in the city in which I lived, Liverpool, which had a splendid
library system, for which I am forever grateful. I never knew whether it was
against the rules to join more than one – nowadays you’d be caught out in a
moment by the computer, back then it seemed like a good idea just not to ask. (My
brother once played a trick on me with a fake letter from the library system
telling me I was in trouble and would be banned.)
Libraries were the breath of life to me. A few years ago I
found a face cleanser which has an unusual feature: it smells of the libraries
I used to visit. I think it’s probably a perfectly fine cleanser, but I use it
because of the nostalgia. I assume it was something to do with the book-binding
and re-covering that went on back then. They were forever putting very
substantial solid covers on quite routine books, and must have used special
glues and potions. Libraries don’t do that anymore, or smell like that anymore:
I wonder if there is some ingredient in common between the binding materials
and the cleanser? No offence Ren. And no offence that it is called Glycol
Lactic Radiance Renewal Mask, and I really don’t know what any of that means,
but it does the job and smells like happiness. (Sali Hughes, a key
beauty expert, says it’s like washing your face in marmalade, which is –
obviously – a good thing.)
libraries AND marmalade? Bring it on
[ADDED LATER: I broke a rule of this blog when I first produced this post. I should have mentioned Eva Ibbotson's perfect, heart-wrenching piece on libraries from the Guardian website, and encouraged everyone to read it. I failed to do so, and remembered it in the comments below. Featured in my post here]
This is a lengthy preamble to a book that I must have read a dozen times, and yet again it is one that I have literally never heard or read anyone else mention ever. And let’s get this out of the way – I loved history, I loved grown-up novels, I was fascinated by ancient times and feisty heroines. But also, this was quite a sexy book by the standards of my normal reading, and that is one of the reasons I liked it. And I eventually found my own copy.
You with the roses, you who resemble a rose,
What are you selling? Yourself or your roses?
Or both together?
That’s the epigraph and provides the title.
The book tells the story of Theodora: it is a true and
extraordinary story taking place in the first half of the 6th century
CE. Some of the details are uncertain, but she started off living among the underworld
of the Hippodrome in Constantinople, daughter of a bear-keeper and an actress,
became a performer herself, and pretty clearly what we would now call a sex
worker. She was beautiful and a good dancer and actress, and apparently very
upmarket in her sex work. In some manner that in real life is not entirely clear
(but given a good version in this book), she eventually married Justinian, a
member of the imperial family and
SPOILER
she became ultimately the Byzantine Empress, and a very
active and influential one, well-recorded. It is truly fascinating – parallel
with the story of Katherine
in Anya Seton’s book of that name. Katherine Swynford had more claim to
respectability, but cannot equal this from Wiki: ‘Theodora is recognized as a
saint in the Oriental Orthodox Church and the Eastern Orthodox
Church.’
The picture shows the mosaics at the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, created in 547 CE. This is Theodora, centre; another panel shows her husband.
And Wellard takes this excellent story and runs with it,
filling in the gaps with wild adventures and unlikely happenings. The opening
of the book claims it is a free translation of a recently-rediscovered contemporary
text, but I assume that that is part of the fiction ie not at all true. (Tell
me if I am wrong). And as Hilary
Mantel tells us, when you’re reading a novelized version of
history, the bits that sound impossible are probably the real facts.
Theodora falls in and out with various men, she gets on the
wrong side of some religious factions, gets caught up in icon wars. She travels
around – to Alexandria, and to Libya and into the North African deserts. That adventure
has similarities to the story of Beau
Geste (PC Wren’s book, another library favourite of mine). Those empty lost forts….
James Wellard seems to have had a
successful career as a writer, but wholly forgotten now? (As always, put me
right if this isn’t the case). He was – you would guess – extremely
well-informed about the history and the region, and did a lot of research.
There are some areas he seems rather vague on – transport and clothes.
And – in a section we might call Aspects that Could Only
Have Been Written by a Man - Theodora gets pregnant at a key point in the
action. Wellard then, honestly, forgets about this for long periods of time,
doesn’t work out the dates properly, has her doing a lot of most improbable
things for a very pregnant lady, then suddenly says a bit later she had the
baby and gave it to foster parents. I found it hilarious and quite endearing.
(TBH I probably didn’t notice this when I was a teenager – perhaps my section
should be Could Only Be Written by Someone Who has Never Been Pregnant.)
And actually it is still a fun read, so long after I first
came across it and as I always say, good historical fiction doesn’t half teach
a young person some history, gets it into their head. It’s an era many people
don’t know much about, so every little helps. I had been reading Diarmaid
McCullough’s book about sex and Christianity, Lower than Angels and
one section seemed to feel very familiar in a most unlikely way – and that sent
me off to find this book again… I’m very
glad to have reread it after all this time. I suppose Theodora – unlikely as it
sounds – could fit in with my liking for Becky
Sharp characters, much discussed on the blog.
And by the way, although dealing with the demi-monde, the book is really not all that sexy – I am charmed by my naivete that I thought it was hot stuff back then.
Theodora is one of the women illustrated in Judy Chicago’s legendary artwork The Dinner Party – this picture from the Brooklyn Museum shows her place setting…
There is a Handel oratorio called Theodora, but it is about a different woman of this name, a Christian martyr from around 200 years earlier.
Top picture: Dance of Theodora by Ruth St Denis from the NYPL – the archive of the Denishawn modern dance company is a great favourite of mine. In the book, Theodora wore a lot less than this to dance in the Hippodrome in Constantinople.
Ruth St. Denis in Theodora. - NYPL Digital Collections
The mosaic picture is from Wikipedia By Petar Milošević - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60402597
Love this and yes, the scent if libraries! I wonder what it is - sweet, slightly musky, with perhaps a hint of roses and leather even if there were no leather bound books in mine! Many different repeat favourites here, from Gaudy Night and Mary Stewart to a forgotten writer called Jeffrey Farnol which I seem to recall Clive James also loving ( v romantic, total tosh but with a nice undercurrent of benign Capitalism/socialism in some).
ReplyDeleteLove this and yes, the scent if libraries! I wonder what it is - sweet, slightly musky, with perhaps a hint of roses and leather even if there were no leather bound books in mine! Many different repeat favourites here, from Gaudy Night and Mary Stewart to a forgotten writer called Jeffrey Farnol which I seem to recall Clive James also loving ( v romantic, total tosh but with a nice undercurrent of benign Capitalism/socialism in some).
ReplyDeleteI would never have said the smell of oranges for libraries, but that is what is in the Proustian face cleanser.
DeleteLovely choices! I loved Sayers and Stewart, and also some Jeffrey Farnol - -the kind of book older male relatives gave my brothers...
Thank you so much for this, and I will now order both the book and the marmalade face cleanser in the great hope that my own 1970s library comes floating back to me. It was a place of hard tiles and steel shelving and great silences. It also had tables, a huge luxury for me as my home had no room for spare tables or desks. (You lay on your stomach to do homework, draw pictures, and read through great quantities of anything you could lay your hands on, and I was well over 50 before I entirely dropped the habit, but I digress.) My dad was such a library lover that he had special library shoe (brogues) that he polished on Saturday for his weekly trip of book gathering. It was he who discovered that we could take our library cards on holidays with us and ransack other towns' treasures as well as our own. (He is long gone now, and I hope he somehow wangled his way into his own version of heaven which he often described as a very large library with Guinness on tap at one end and well behaved dogs.)
ReplyDeleteOh that's so perfect, what a lovely man. Did you tell me once that Sarah's Dad in Saffy's Angel was based on him? (My friend when I sent her Saffy's Angel texted me to say 'I am in love with Sarah's Dad').
DeleteI absolutely didnt know you could use a library card in another town! There would have been no stopping me....
My library was by so much my second home.
The smell of libraries in a face cleanser! I haven't come across that but a relative gave me a library-scented candle for Christmas a few years ago. It was pleasant enough - notes of leather, unsurprisingly - but the predominant scent (even before it was lit) was smoke. I considered suggesting to the makers that they rename it Great Library of Alexandria ...
ReplyDeleteI remember being very excited to get a ticket for the adult library when I was nine - specifically so that I could borrow "The Lord of the Rings", but when I returned it I didn't draw anyone's attention to the fact that I was keeping the ticket. I also remember when libraries were QUIET and their main reason d'etre was to allow people to read and/or borrow books - these days whenever I go into my local library there is inevitably a group of small children sitting in a circle on the floor, singing at the tops of their voices, led by harassed-looking library staff.
The book about Empress Theodora sounds like fun - adding it to the list.
Sovay
Yes - what struck me about the facial cleanser was that it wasn't at all what a scented candle maker would describe as libraries - hence my thinking it was perhaps binding materials. Leather is a lovely smell of course.
DeleteI so hope someone will read the Theodora book so they can tell me what they make of it.
Impossible to pin down a single “library” smell. The reference section of my childhood library always smelt powerfully of Dettol as it was a popular gathering place for the local homeless, and one of the librarians used to come round regularly spaying all the furniture and all the patrons indiscriminately with disinfectant.
DeleteSovay
I can imagine. Ours was spacious, the sitting/desks area very big and apart from the books. Very much attracted all sorts, I suppose they were the original warm hubs.
DeleteLibraries doubling as community spaces isn’t a bad thing in itself – it’s just very unfortunate that this tends to result in the actual books getting less and less space and resources. When I started going to my current local library over twenty years ago the whole of the large ground floor was given up to books; now they occupy well under half the area.
DeleteMy immediately local library when I was a child smelt of cooking more often than not – it was the converted front room of a smallish house in the village, the rest of which was let out to a family (not the librarian’s). I spent very little time there though as its stock was mostly Mills and Boon, Westerns and manly adventure (Hammond Innes, Alistair MacLean and the like) – the library in the nearest town had a lot more to offer despite the Dettol.
Sovay
Our local library turned into The Discovery Centre, and is now called The Arc. I try not to be one of the old people saying '...at the library, oops, we're not allowed to call it that now are we.' But I'm not convinced by the name change.
DeleteI'm loving reading everyone's memories of their own personal childhood libraries.
As a child it never occurred to me to wonder why our village had its own library; these days I think maybe it started as one of those little private circulating libraries that are always cropping up in early and mid 20th century novels as a feature particularly of women's lives. My copy of Sheila Pim's "Common or Garden Crime" used to belong to one in Norfolk (Starlings Library, 27 High Street, East Dereham) and still has the little pocket for the ticket. It could be borrowed for 4d for 7 days.
DeleteSovay
Oh yes - so many references to the circulating libraries, and women (particularly) asking for 'a nice love story' as it might be, and forever saying 'last week's book was no good'. Presumably a lot of detective stories were in stock too. An absolute mainstay of mid 20th C fiction, along with complaining about the servants.
DeleteIt was believed - I don't know how accurately - that diseases could be spread via library books. I've got early twentieth century books with notices telling borrowers not to return books that had been in contact with a range of diseases, and the books were destroyed if the disease was serious or infectious enough. Perhaps circulating books were thought immune to the more plebeian infections.
DeleteYes, I think there is a lingering doubt over books. When my children were small, there were other mums who said they didn't like getting books out of the library for fear of diseases... One of them would disinfect them in some way when she got them home. (The books, not the toddlers)
DeleteThat sounds very likely – nice middle-class families would probably steer clear of public libraries just as they’d avoid sending their children to the village school. I’m sure I’ve read references to library books found in fever patients’ homes being baked to kill any infection – can’t think they’d have been readable after that treatment. These days, it seems, freezing is recommended for the same purpose.
DeleteMany private libraries must also have provided only reassuringly respectable books - eg the Provincial Lady, warned in advance that she is to meet a notable author at Lady Boxe’s house: “Ask for Symphony in Three Sexes at the library, although doubtfully. Doubt more than justified by tone in which Mr. Jones replies that it is not in stock, and never has been.” Not that the PL is necessarily an unadventurous reader but she clearly knows on what criteria Mr Jones selects his stock.
Sovay
Yes. I was in hospital for a while as a small child, and accumulated quite a collection of books and games from kind aunties. My parents were told I couldn't take any of it home for fear of spreading infection. My mother stood up to them on the case of my teddy, and they said it would have to be sterilized - boiled up in a pan of water. I am proud to say that my mother agreed to all this and then did nothing of the sort. Exactly as I would have with my children. (I suppose I should stress that I did not have the Black Death or anything similar, it was total overkill on the part of the medical staff I am sure)
DeleteIt is interesting that all those well-off middle class ladies in books very rarely buy them - I think their equivalents today would definitely be buying hardbacks for bookgroup! (Or to mee the author at a dinnerparty)
It’s good to know that both you and your teddy came out unscathed!
DeleteIn the PL’s shoes I wouldn’t have wanted to spend good money on Symphony in Three Sexes either. But I seem to recall her commenting wistfully during a train journey on a fellow passenger’s lovely glossy brand-new book, unmarked by library labels.
There’s a sad little private library in Winifred Peck’s “Bewildering Cares” - opened in 1910 in combination with a tea-shop, but come 1940 both sides of the business are hanging by a thread. It’s hinted that the library may be failing because the owner Miss Croft has been too highbrow - too much serious literature on her shelves perhaps and not enough mysteries and nice romances.
Sovay
You have such a good memory for books! I read and liked Bewildering Cares, and indeed blogged on it, but I did not remember the library. I just looked, and when I read it in 2017 I actually highlighted a passage about Miss Croft 'as a girl of twenty in 1910, in a cretonne overall, bead chains and a volume (I feel sure) of Henry James in her suit-case,' because I obviously loved the description and wondered if I could find a picture...
DeleteMiss Croft looks back to better days when her library was the focus of all kinds of cultural activities – theatre and music groups, people gathering eagerly to discuss Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf. But in 1940 the local people have barely even heard of these authors – they’d rather spend their time at the pictures. At least she has a happy ending IIRC, even if her library doesn’t.
DeleteSovay
Bearing out the theory that people always say the same things about the old generation and teh new generation. Culture is dead, no-one reads, young people are more badly-behaved, no-one writes thank you letters. You can find these all down the generations for hundreds of years....
DeleteI'm so glad you have such wonderful memories of your library, Moira. So do I. I think there's nothing like a good library! I love your story of hiding a book that you wanted, too! As for this one, Theodora sounds like such an interesting person in real life; I can see why you were so fascinated by that book. I've read a few biographies like that, that I could read time and again.
ReplyDeleteMy comrades-in-arms are always the library lovers - we know each other don't we?
DeleteAnd yes, nothing like getting lost in a good 'true' story.
I wish more people over here had this love of libraries. Nowadays it seems as if lots of folks see them almost as dens of iniquity. Sad and scary times!
ReplyDeleteI'm sure plenty of people do, but I agree that it is scary if people are trying to censor or ban boks, and see something wrong in libraries.
DeleteI used to love libraries - the one in Holmes Road had the entire back catalogue of Joan Aiken. Alt slightly in the futures - real life with one or two differences. Try The Butterfly Picnic. Also the ENTIRE works of HP Lovecraft which I read from cover to cover. Kentish Town had LPs of African bands in lurid shirts. Don't think I gave back those Irish folk songs but I can sing them to you. Also a lot on the history of Hollywood. The one in Stoke Newington Church Street was not bad: a history of the Gateways Club and similar, and LOTS of sheet music. They all modernised, ie chucked out anything "old-fashioned".
ReplyDeleteAnd the smell is lignin in the paper. Lucy
DeleteThink I started reading that Theodora book - does it start with her as a 14-year-old walking on her hands? The real Empress set up a home for retired prostitutes. Lucy
DeleteI am proud to have triggered such varied memories, I love hearing what people read when they were young. (and which books they somehow never returned).
DeleteI will check out the smell of lignin...
There's probably a few books about her - this one starts with her hosting a dinner for her male friends.
DeleteOh! Joan Aiken! Still a pleasure to read for me. My mother, despite not having much spare cash, would always buy them, to read to us at bedtime. Pan books - I don't think I ever found one I didn't like.
DeleteAlso joining the chorus for libraries. The library cards that were envelope shaped to hold the book's loan card. I too have been guilty of hiding a book behind others...
[small voice] I never took to Joan Aiken, and she is loved by so many people I share tastes with, I really feel I have to look at her again.
DeleteYes the little envelope, I could feel it in my hand as I read that. I later moved to a town where you had small plastic tokens to swap for fiction, separate system for non-fiction. I found the tokens didnt feel right because there was no indication or record of which books you had taken out.
Lucy: I have discovered the book with the girl walking on her hands! It was mentioned in the comments below so I started reading it: Count Belisarius by Robert Graves. And up popped the acrobatic dancing girl.... who is Theodora's sister.
DeleteI got a library card at a reference library nearby before I was 18, even though that was supposed to be the age limit (for unclear reasons). I got to experience a rare feeling of being rebellious when I did that.
ReplyDeleteOh you have identified something! I hadn't thought of! I wouldn't have dreamt of shoplifting or being rebellious in any other way, but I absolutely gamed the libraries - and that WAS my way of being a rebel. And I bet that applies to many of the people on here: wild for books.
DeleteBorges wrote 'I have always imagined Paradise to be a kind of library.' One of my favourite places in the world is the London Library which never de-accessions books, hence its fine collection of GA crime fictions. Chrissie
ReplyDeleteOf course one of your favourite places is a library! Their joys and comforts never fail us.
DeleteRobert Graves's Count Belisarius deals with Antonina, Theodora's friend and colleague. It relies on Procopius's The Secret History, as does Theodora, I expect. Very few sex workers can have done as much harm to the rest of the human species as saints. Eliza Lynch is an exception.
ReplyDelete- Roger Allen
Actually, Count Belisarius was one of the books that was always in the library, and I never picked it up. Libraries seemed to have much more fixed stock in those days, the same books stayed there for years without ever being borrowed, and I don't think that happens nowadays. Or is that just my perception?
DeleteMaybe one day I'll read it...
I had to look up Eliza Lynch: a very interesting story....
I notice there's no mention of Graves in your book list.
DeleteSixty years ago - my god! - books in general and libraries worked in very different ways. Hardbacks came out several years before paperback editions - if paperbacks came out at all; Faber sold poetry only in Collected hardbacks and Selected paperbacks - and were about five times as much. Paperbacks fell to pieces quickly - not just pulp and popular ones, but Penguins too (Pelican seem to have held up comparatively well).
There were many fewer pbs. in libraries and they were usually rebound. Any individual book was more valuable, so if a library had it it probably was kept for some time. They also had much more space for books, behind the scenes as well as on display. I can remember being astonished when a library started lending people records.
I came across Eliza Lynch via R.B. Cunninghame Graham, Scottish traveller and South American historian. MP, founder of the Scottish Nationalist Party, the Scottish Socialist Party and claimant to the throne of Scotland. His books were hard to find, but over thirty years ago I came across a large stock of reading copies in a bookshop/country house near Aylesbury and grabbed the lot. Downsizing lately, they're all on Gutenberg, so I'm afraid they went to charity.
DeleteI'm surprised by the lack of Graves too! I read them too long ago I guess - the Claudius books, and Goodbye to All That. One I really liked was Antigua, Penny, Puce - which like Belisarius was always in the library and I felt had an intriguing title (so clear when you know). (I must have been regularly looking for an author with a name near Graves). I read it relatively recently and absolutely loved it, I must see if I still have it. I had his 2-vol Greek myths and legends on my shelf till recent downsizing - disappointingly dry I always thought, but useful reference.
Deletethe poems too - Welsh Incident is a great favourite, and I am a frequent user of the knockout last line: 'I was coming to that'. A useful phrase to have at hand.
Yes, I like your explanation of the way libraries viewed their stock then and now.
and yet another rabbit-hole to go down with Mr Cunninghame Graham!
For me, my entire family (2 parents, me and my brother) all had a library card so that I could take out 16 books as a small kid each week. I read them all too.
ReplyDeleteI used to use the library cards to take out all the forbidden books cos my dad used to go through my books to "disappear" anything deemed unsuitable, too childish, too twee, or not sufficiently literary, so I would take out as many Enid Blytons and similar authors as possible because I knew my dad would NEVER do anything to a Library Book.
Sixteen books a week! I have never envied someone so much.
DeleteThere have been many discussions here about the likes of Enid Blyton: I have always been of the opinion that anything that gets children to read is a good thing. And she most certainly knew how to tell a story.
I agree with Dad - library books are sacrosanct. I did once, in the days before the Internet made it easy to track down pretty much anything, consider claiming I'd lost a book and offering to pay for it (so not EXACTLY stealing) because I couldn't see any other way to get hold of a copy. I still feel slightly guilty about this even though I didn't actually go through it. So long ago I can't remember what book it was that I coveted so much.
DeleteSovay
Oh my goodness, I went through the exact same thoughts and internal arguments. After all, if no-one else ever reads it? And doesn't paying make it all right? And in those days there was no guarantee at all that you would ever come across another copy, ever.
DeleteWhat a wondetful post -thank for the reminder of the soft safe smell of libraries. Yes, I was a serial library book borrower and have subsequently bought books that I loved and knew I would re-read, including childrens books. I've even given books to charity shops and friends thinking I'd fiinished with them and then rebought them. I am on my third copy of Balzac's Cousin Bette and I have just ordered Count Belisarius which I suddenly need to read again. I had not heard ofYou with the roses..but it sounds fascinating so have bought a cheap copy. I do my bit to keep the secondhand book trade going!
ReplyDeleteThank you! I love finding other people feel the same.
DeleteI am now going to have to read Count Belisarius too. And look forward to hearing what you think of You With the Roses.
I am more willing to get rid of books now, because I know I can track down a 2nd hand copy, or find it online - proably!
What a great post, Moira. My first library had lots of dark brown wood; it was very old and there was a sort of worthiness about it, I can see now. You could imagine people in the 1910s 'bettering themselves' via books. It' s been gone for years, of course, like the old Central Library in Birmingham, which also had the dark wood.
ReplyDeleteThe cleanser sounds most interesting, and if Sali Hughes says it's good, then it is!
The new library in Birmingham is amazing isn't it, I was very impressed when I visited.
DeleteLibraries from every generation.... did you see this piece by Eva Ibbotson, which I push every now and again on the blog and online? https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jul/09/fiction.features
It features a library sounding like your childhood one...
Yes, Sali Hughes is a trustworthy legend when it comes to beauty products.
Libraries! I grew up in a raw new suburb 15 miles from Pittsburgh, PA, in a staunchly Republican (translation: low-tax) jurisdiction, and our so-called public library was half of a building shared with the police department. The book selection was paltry and of course there were no e-books, no internet, no reciprocal borrowing privileges with better libraries nearby. By my teens, I was old enough to ride two public buses by myself to the wonderful Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. "Free To The People." See photos at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnegie_Library_of_Pittsburgh. Vaulted ceilings, communal wood tables, seats hollowed out by generations of bums in both senses of the word. Enormous collection. It was my escape from my stifling suburb. I now live in Washington, DC, but Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh is the main beneficiary of my will. -- Your blogfriend, Trollopian
ReplyDeleteWow that is some library. What a contribution to mankind a library is.
DeleteI understand your legacy: the worry is always that the libraries won't be there for the new generations of young people who were like us (all the people commenting here). A library can make all the difference...
I have spent 46 years as a member of the Board of Directors of the Melfort Public Library which is part of the Wapiti Regional Library partly because at 7 I went in the back of a truck from our one room schoolhouse to the new Wapiti library at Ethelton where I could borrow 6 books every two weeks.
ReplyDelete(Eva's story choked me up. Perfect is the right word for the story.)
Oh Bill, why does that not surprise me? We are library people, and library people are the best. And we all have our stories.
DeleteAnd Eva's is by so much one of the best. I re-read it every now and again if I'm feeling jaded.