Careening through the Dordogne Valley and stopping off to smell the wisteria

Driving fast on narrow, curvy roads through lush pastures and fields of golden flowers without encountering another car for miles. Exploring a village built into a cliff. Wandering through narrow medieval lanes filled with lovely homes built from honey-colored stone and draped with wisteria. If you find any of these images appealing, you may want to consider a trip to southern France. I spent several days last week visiting with good friends in the Dordogne River Valley, and I have to admit that were it not for the language (which I just can’t manage to speak without applying a German accent and with amusing results), I would be dangerously close to becoming a francophile. Since I am married to a historian who still seems to take the Anglo-French rivalries of the early modern period seriously, well, I find myself at an important crossroads.

Not to sound trite, but the Dordogne Valley offers the kinds of landscapes and picturesque villages that have inspired artists. Throughout the trip, I found myself continually giving thanks to God for the beauty of His creation. We passed many of the narrow trees lining the roads that apparently were a favorite subject of Picasso’s during his time at a French asylum. Extra points go to the reader who will remind me of the name of these strangely tall, narrow trees dotting the French countryside based on this vague description. The houses in the area are built almost entirely of a honey-colored stone mined from quarries in the region. We passed a few of these quarries on our drives. And we visited a couple of lovely cathedrals that were influenced by the Romanesque rather than the Gothic style. That generally dates them to the early medieval period. A cathedral in the lovely town of Sarlat displayed a mix of both the Romanesque and Gothic styles, which gave rise to a bit of debate with Elisa. But in the end, we were both right and wandered happily over to a creperie.

We stayed at a small rural resort with simple cottages in Gavaudon, a couple hours southeast of Bordeaux, and so had the chance to eat some meals or read outside in a lovely field behind our cottage or take long walks through the surrounding pastures and woods. We started every day with a chocolate croissant (called a chocolatine in this area). The epitome of luxury, no?

One of the more evocative moments on the trip was when we climbed up the very steep stairs to the ramparts and then to the top of the keep of Gavaudon castle, now mostly in ruins. I had to feel my way through the dark for part of this climb. We were off the usual tourist track and alone at the castle and could fully experience the excitement and peril of exploring something really old.

Among the highlights of our trip was a visit to Rocomadour, a town dating from the 12th century and built into high cliffs for protection. It was a popular pilgrimage site, and some pilgrims would climb the hill on their knees, following the stages of the cross in the hopes of healing. We did this trek as well, though not on our knees, to reach the top of the cliff and walked out onto the defensive ramparts of the town for a spectacular view. Another highlight was our visit to the town of St. Emilion en route back to Bordeaux. The town is named for a saint who lived a hermitic life of prayer and meditation in one of the limestone caves in the town. The truly spectacular site awaiting a visitor to St. Emilion is the monolithic church that was literally carved out of the limestone by monks starting in the 9th century when the area was attacked by Saracens. It was completed over the next several centuries. It was astounding to stand in this beautiful church, entirely carved, not built, which because of some fear of collapse, was closed for ten years until it could be properly reinforced in 2005. I could go on. So many of the towns we visited (most of them medieval fortified towns called bastides) deserve lengthy description. Hopefully I can add some photographs soon.

Adding to the adventure of it all was the enthusiastic but deft driving of Edward. I almost wanted to use the word ‘crazy’ back there, but Edward insisted that he was not even close to pushing the reasonable limits of driving on narrow country lanes that barely have room for two vehicles. I’m such a girl, right? Imagining all the perils rather than all the fun obstacles to be overcome. Anyway, at times, it was pretty exhilarating, motoring along in our little Nissan micro, affectionately named “The Wart,” passing through fields, vineyards and villages and listening to the GPS gadget pronounce the names of French street names in an almost defiant British accent. This only added to the above-mentioned linguistic confusion I experienced.

Now I’m back in Kew, and it’s lush and pretty here too, if a bit rainier. Our downstairs neighbor has planted lots of bluebells and a little blue flower called glory of the snow in the back garden. A fat yellow tabby cat is hunting birds, rather unimaginatively I think, by sitting directly beneath the bird feeder. My parents will arrive in a couple days for a visit, and I find myself feeling very blessed indeed.

-HDE

More good, bad, and ugly.

After another couple of months in the archives, a second work post seemed in order, especially since I’ve been taking loads of digital pictures recently. The research continues to frustrate, but that is the way it goes sometimes. I’ve changed gears to looking at a lot more stuff very quickly, instead of fewer things in some depth. That is where digital pictures come in handy, although it is always easier to read these things on paper or parchment than on the computer screen. Ugh, at least both beat microfilm, which kills the eyes. Digital images are definitely better, but the plain old codex style book with paper is truly a wonderful technology in its own right and will not be going away anytime soon.

The sources I’ve been looking at the most are from High Court Admiralty (HCA), England’s top maritime court. It was a civil law court, unlike most of the rest of England’s judiciary, which was/is Common Law. But I’m not terribly interested in HCA’s forms and functions, but rather what it can tell me about relations with the Spanish on a day to day level, and legal records are one of the few places that such records still exist for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These days, however, it’s not telling me a whole lot. HCA is a notoriously difficult class of documents to use, primarily because it’s never been indexed or cataloged. So no one – including The National Archives itself – really knows what is in here. In the months I’ve been here I’ve never seen anyone else using them. And therein lies the attraction. Could be gold somewhere in all those dirty old documents. And when I mean dirty, I’m not joking.

Historians don’t usually get dirty in their line of work, which has its pluses and its minuses. But every once in a while I pull a box of documents that is simply covered in the dirt of the centuries, or just plain old coal soot, and it seems like no one else has even looked at them for forty or more years. At the end of the day I’ll look at the sleeves or the front of my shirt and they’ll be filthy.

I have to admit, the HCA documents occasionally make feel a little like one of the poor Christians in the Colosseum. When the gates go up, I’m not sure if a lion, a bear, or who knows what else is going to jump out. Or in this particular case, I don’t know whether I’m going to get a box the size of a television set.

Or a box where the documents spill out when you take the top off.

Or just a bunch of loose letters with no dates and no sorting.

Or perhaps just a bunch of documents that have been stuffed haphazardly in a box.

It’s the last ones that worry me the most, both as a historian and a PhD student. These documents are literally irreplaceable, even if they are quotidian bits and bobs of the early modern legal process, so you want to see them last forever. As a PhD student they are alarming because you’re just not sure what you’re supposed to do with them. I nearly wept when I finally fished these documents out of the box.

No, that is not some sort of wrapping paper. Those are small documents, wrapped inside large ones, with the largest ones getting mutilated in the process.

Large bits of these documents have simply been worn away, and you have to kind of guess what they might say, which is not an ideal situation! Sometimes they are wrapped up like this, and bound together, so you can’t even pull them apart to read them, but have to hold them down with weights and kind of peer into the document.

So there is a good reason historians tend to shy away from HCA documents. No one knows exactly what is in there, what they say, how they should be organized, if they are organized, etc. They’ll come Just as they were originally filed four centuries ago. I’m starting to think that those historians who do shy away from HCA are just plain ole smarter than me for it!

Don’t forget the brolly!

Perhaps it’s lack of inspiration that’s driving me to write about the weather, or perhaps I’m just taking up a much-beloved English pastime. Your average Englishman does relish the opportunity to discuss and have a laugh over the local weather. Or maybe it’s just that unpredictable weather patterns over the past three weeks have left their mark on my psyche. But I now officially confirm the cliche that English weather is unpredictable, and that it’s always a good idea to carry your umbrella. In the words of the locals: “This is England.” And yes, those words have been uttered in my presence.

If the past few weeks are an accurate reflection, it is not unusual in the course of the day to alternate between bright sunny blue skies and three minutes of heavy rain every hour or two for a continuous 24-hour period. A rain storm will often approach rather suddenly and then just as suddenly end, leaving fluffy white cumulous clouds and a particularly English blue in its wake. Jason and I have found ourselves lying down for a brief nap on a rainy afternoon, when the clouds looked as if they’d set in to stay a few hours, only to reemerge thirty minutes later to sunshine and happily twittering birds.

When my sister came to visit last week, I wasn’t quite sure what to recommend in terms of dress. English forecasters are notoriously oblique. A typical weather forecast might read: “Sunny spells with occasional heavy showers.” Eh? And just to hedge their bets: “Clear skies interrupted by the odd spot of rain.” One needn’t bother with percentages or anything more specific. You just count on clear skies, pack the brolly and duck inside when a five-minute hail storm arrives. As indeed it did just an hour before I was moved to compose this post.

Lately, we’ve been alternating between gorgeous clear days at comfortable 60-degree temperatures and frigid days with sleet or heavy snow. Indeed we awakened on Easter morning to a snow-covered garden, though of course by the afternoon, the snow had melted and the sun was out. My sister probably didn’t expect to see London blanketed in snow the first week of April, but she had the privilege of seeing it this past Sunday nonetheless. And I must say, it was beautiful to see London’s streets covered in snow, and the air felt clean and crisp afterwards.

I find myself regularly emailing Jason at the archives with a weather status update, especially before lunch, so that he knows whether to hurry home to beat the impending hail storm or to stay put until the rain stops. His reading room has very small windows that don’t allow much chance for a peek outside. Now back home, staying put until the rain ends might result in a long day or overnight stay at the library or archives, but in England, a lengthy rainstorm is quite rare. So even if the forecasts do occasionally sound as noncommittal as a fortune cookie, they ring true for the most part.

Yesterday I watched an approaching storm with some fascination. It looked to be a powerful storm. It was a windy day, and the dark clouds encroached on the blue skies over Kew at an amazingly quick pace. I caught sight of a magpie sitting in the top branches of a tall tree behind the rail tracks. He balanced gracefully on the swaying branch, flicking his blue-accented tail feathers, seemingly unperturbed by the intensifying winds and the lightning cracking behind him. I was captivated by the beauty of the scene, though I thought he’d put himself in a bit of a precarious position. Magpies are the bullies of the London bird kingdom, but one has to admire their boldness and tenacity. He didn’t budge from his teetering perch until the hail set in, and then he flew for cover. Unfortunately on this particular day, my email warning Jason to come home for lunch right away to avoid the storm was received a bit late. He left to walk home just as the hail storm began and trudged home with the protection of our rather pathetic, broken umbrella (a casualty of a previous storm). He arrived fairly soaked. Luckily, I had some tea brewing, and by the time lunch ended, he walked back under blue English skies.

Well, I just saw a gray squirrel run by carrying a slice of bread the size of his entire body in his mouth. He hopped onto our garden shed and then tried to leap onto the lower branch of the tree next to it. Things looked a little dicey for him as he tottered on the branch for a moment, but he seems to have caught his balance and moved along. He probably has no idea what season it is and just keeps storing up for the winter. A magpie just flew by with a branch in his beak. I think I’ll just watch the creatures and the clouds for awhile before preparing dinner. I should probably email Jason to tell him to come home from the archives. It looks like it might rain.

-HDE