February Reading

Summarizing my whole month of reading worked out well for me in January so I thought I'd continue it (until I get tired of doing it).  In February, I read the following books:

1.  Proof of Guilt by Charles Todd.  I continue to love the Inspector Rutledge mystery series.  Rutledge, a Scotland Yard detective, is a World War I survivor who suffers from PTSD.   The series moves slowly.  The first book occurred just after the end of the war and each mystery takes no more than about six weeks (often less) to solve.  This latest installment (the 15th) brings us up to the summer of 1920.  The mystery, as usual, isn't the big draw for me (and might even be my least favorite of all the mysteries so far).  The draw for me is Rutledge and how he is progressing.  In this novel he still hears the voice of Hamish but not as often as in previous books and he seems to be dealing with "him" much better.  I like how Rutledge seems to be getting better very slowly because that seems realistic to me.    And I really liked one of the female characters (who Rutledge also liked) and I hope we see her again.

2.  The Walnut Tree by Charles Todd.  This was a holiday story that was published using the same universe as the Bess Crawford books (which are the same universe as the Inspector Rutledge books, but earlier in time).  I didn't care for it very much, I found it predictable.  I also disliked that Todd created a sympathetic figure that the reader had no choice but to wish bad things would happen to in order for the heroine to end up with the right man.   I also disliked the whole British aristocracy part of the novel --  Americans have a hard time writing about lords and ladies in a realistic way I think .  It took Elizabeth George a number of books to get Lynley right, in my opinion, and she only did it when she finally stopped focusing on the fact that he had a title.  Lady Elspeth just didn't ring true to me.  So far I haven't been particularly wild about any of the Charles Todd books that feature women as central characters.

3.   Listen to This by Alex Ross.  This is a series of essays that began as articles in the New Yorker.  If you like classical music you will love this book.  He covers so many topics:  Marian Anderson, Verdi, Schubert, Brahms.   If you are a classical music lover, this is a must read.  My favorite of the essays is Verdi's Grip in which he talks about my favorite moment in one of my favorite operas:  Amami Alfredo from La Traviata.  The courtesan, Violetta, after experiencing the only happiness she has ever known, living in the country with Alfredo, has been secretly convinced by Alfredo's father to give Alfredo up for his own good and leave him forever.   Right before she leaves, after some frantic dissimulation on her part, she looks right at Alfredo and says "love me, Alfredo".  When sung by the right soprano, a live performance of this moment literally makes the hairs on my arms stand on end.  It is the strangest sensation to be sitting in a dark theater, caught up in the dramatic moment and have such a physical reaction to the music.  Ross writes:

Verdi's writing for voice is a camera that zooms in on a person's soul.  Consider the moment in Act II of La Traviata when Violetta, the wayward woman, leaves her lover, Alfredo.  Alfredo believes that she is merely going into the garden, but he will soon receive a letter from her saying that she is gone forever.  "I will always be here, near you, among the flowers," Violetta says to him, "Love me, Alfredo, as much as I love you.  Goodbye!" Amami Alfredo, quant'io t'amo.  When a great soprano unfurls these phrases -- I am listening to Callas live at La Scala, in 1955 -- you hear so much you can hardly take it all in.  You hear what Alfredo hears, the frantic talk of an overwrought lover:  "I love you even though I am going into the garden." You hear what Violetta cannot bring herself to say out loud:  "I am leaving you, but will always love you."  And you hear premonitions of her deathbed plea, at the end of the opera: "Remember the one who loved you so."

This matrix of meaning is contained in a simple tune that you already know even if you have never seen an opera:  a twice-heard phrase that curves steeply down the notes of the F-major scale, followed by a reach up to a high B-flat and a more gradual, winding descent to a lower F. Beneath the voice, strings play throbbing tremolo chords.  ... So significant was "Amami, Alfredo" in Verdi's mind that he made the melody the main theme of the opera's prelude, even though its only appearance in the opera proper is in these eighteen bars of Act II.  There is no more impressive demonstration of Verdi's lightning art:  the audience hardly knows what hit it. 

 Callas's execution of "Amami, Alfredo" on the 1955 set is among the most stunning pieces of Verdi singing on record.  In the tense passage leading up to the outburst, the soprano adopts a breathless, fretful tone, communicating Violetta's initially panicked response to the situation - vocal babbling, the Verdi scholar Julian Budden calls it.  Then, with the trembling of the strings, she seems to flip a switch, her voice burning hugely from within.  When she reaches up to the A and the B-flat, she claws at the notes, practically tears them off the page, although her tone retains a desperate beauty. Her delivery is so unnervingly vehement ... that it risks anticlimax.  Where can the opera possibly go from here? When you listen again, you understand: Violetta's spirit is broken, and from now on she will sing as if she were already dead. 

Here's Renee Fleming's version.  I like that she portrays Violetta as suffering the affects of tuberculosis in this scene; most performances I've seen save that for the third act:

4.  A Village Life by Louise Gluck.  This is Gluck's 11th collection of poems. I read it slowly through the month, a couple of poems before bed each night.  Gluck takes ordinary life in a small  Italian village and makes poetry of it.  It wasn't my favorite collection of her poems, although I enjoyed it while reading it.  However, I found that there wasn't any particular poem that I wanted to share. 

5.  Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey.  I blogged about this novel here. 

6.  The Hand That first Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell,  I fell in love with Maggie O'Farrell's novel, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox.  Because of that I was hesitant to read another novel by her; I doubted it could live up to my expectations.  This one didn't, although I did enjoy it.   I guessed early on what the connection between the characters was and thought the key plot point was somewhat unbelievable (a guy who is only slightly younger than me has NEVER seen his birth certificate?  In this day and age?)  I cared about what happened to the characters despite the fact that I didn't really like any of them.  If I had any specific complaint it would be -- too much breast feeding.

7.  Anatomy of Murder by Imogen Robertson.  Last month I read Robertson's first novel.  I blogged about it here.  This month I read the sequel and in many ways I liked it even better.  The story was better and a little less (although not much) melodramatic.  I will definitely read her next novel.  But ... one of the things I liked in the first novel was that the heroine was a happily married woman so there was none of the sexual tension nonsense with her investigative partner.  I'm pretty sure Robertson is caving to pressure and intending to go with sexual tension because the end of this novel sets that up.  I find that very disappointing.

8.   The Art of Fielding by Chad Hardwich.   I blogged about it here.   Let's just say I really liked it.

Right now I'm reading NW by Zadie Smith as well as Ancient Light by John Banville.   I also have Tony LaRussa's latest book about his life in baseball and am resisting starting it until next week.

250 Years Ago* .... What French Sounded like in Missouri

Back in the days before St. Louis existed and for a long time after that, the European language that was spoken in the region was French. There is an interesting interview on the Archaeology website in which Dennis Stroughmatt speaks about the French of Old Mines Missouri.   While you click through to read in another tab, you might want to listen to Dennis playing:

Oh, who is Dennis Stroughmatt?  From his website:  "A vibrant blend of Celtic, Canadian and Old Time sounds, this music bridges the gap between contemporary Canadian and Louisiana Cajun styles. Preserved by families in the Ozark foothills, the music remains largely intact and true to the traditions that have been passed down for over three centuries..It’ll make your soul jump, your head spin, and your heart glad to know that it is still here ... As they say in the hills, “On est toujours icitte: We are still here!”"

The linked interview is interesting.  Most people don't know that the French culture lasted in Missouri as long as it did, especially in the very rural parts prior to World War II, after which the young people moved out and began to forget, leaving only the older generation:

When I went into the mines in the late [1980's] there were probably nearly a thousand French speakers in the entire Old Mines region from Festus, you know, to Potosi, and as far west as, you know, farther west of Richwood, east to Bonterre. There were French get-togethers within the church. You'd find them in retirement homes, getting together and at houses and the parties that I went to. A lot of the French were there. They were elderly, but still very strong, getting out. Many of them were in their 60s, 70s. Some of them, probably the most intensive speakers were in their 80s. Even early 90s. Fact, I interviewed one time, videotaped an herbalist by the name of Robert Robard, who was 94. This was in 1992. And French was his first language, and he chose to speak French rather than English. But, like I say, that sort of dates where they were age-wise over a decade ago. 

 But the French spoken at that time didn't sound exactly like standard French today.  I thought this part of the interview with Dennis was really interesting.  He tells about visiting Quebec for the first time:

... It was really strange at first, because, I say I didn't really, I say I was illiterate. I had taken a couple courses in French at one point or another, here and there, but I spoke Creole French, and when I got there, the Québecois thought that, they thought that I was actually Cajun, because of my dialect. And the only reason I say that they thought I was Cajun when I got there was because I had spent so many years in Louisiana and around Cajuns that my dialect had been influenced in some ways. And of course actually Missouri French is an interesting language in itself, because, via its accent, it's very much more close to Canadian French than it is Louisiana French. But the vocabulary used by the Missouri French is almost identical to that of Louisiana, and that stands to reason because Missouri is Upper Louisiana, in that sense. And I guess, when I did go to Québec, in a lot of ways I really did feel like I was home. I used to sit down...I lived with a family there, and I remember many nights where I would sit out in the backyard at a campfire with the father of the household, and we would just sit and talk, and every now and again I would say words and he would get on me for using certain words. Because he would say "that's Old French," he said, "We don't use that anymore.”

 

I remember one night, probably the very first night that happened. I remember it was a little cold, because when I got there it was the early part of the year and it was cold at night. And I said something like, "Mais, ca fait fraitte dehors," like "man it's cold outside." And he looked at me, he agreed, he said, "Yeah, yeah, it's cold." Then he stopped and he said, "Wait a second. Why do you know that word?" I said, "What word?" He said "cold," but of course "fraitte," which is a Missouri word. A Missouri French word for froid, for cold. But it's an old, old, old word that hasn't been...I didn't know this at the time, but it's a word that hasn't been in use in the language for hundreds of years. And he asked me where I learned this, and I told him where, and he said, "That's impossible." He said, "There are no French speakers in the Midwest. That's impossible." You know, and I got out the map, we got out the map of Illinois and Missouri, and started looking at it, going over all the little place names. Rivers, town names. And he set back and I remember him just looking at me like, "Wow, I never knew." He said, "I never would have guessed that there were French there." And I said, "Well, that's where I learned my French." And he told me, he said, "Well, you know, I've always found it really weird," because, he said, "You're not from Canada. You're not anywhere near from Canada, but yet your accent is strangely familiar." And the only thing I can say on that is that accent is coming through from the Missouri French. So, because there is a great similarity. I would go down to the pub and I would sing songs with some of the local bands that would come in, and it amazed me that I was able--and even playing the fiddle, I would sit in and play with them--that I was able to play tunes that I had learned in Missouri, play with them almost note for note. And this is a separation of what, a thousand miles? Fifteen hundred?

Here's another video where Dennis and his wife explain the difference between the French dialect of the Pays des Illinois and standard French:

I always thought that the reason we massacred the French names of streets around here was because of the German and Irish influx of the nineteenth century.  And, sure, that's probably the main reason.  But another reason might be that the original French didn't pronounce it the way it would be pronounced in French today.

Here's a link to another interesting article about French History and Language in the American Midwest.

*Part of my continuing blog series leading up to the 250^th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis in February 2014.

The Art of Fielding by Chad Hardwick

Henry Skrimshander is a baseball prodigy; a shortstop with an arm that can throw out anyone and pinpoint accuracy. But as a senior in a small town high school, with no hope of going to college, it looks like his baseball career is almost over.   Mike Schwartz plays college ball for the mediocre Westish College Harpooners.  He loves Westish and he loves baseball. The summer after Henry's senior year in high school, Mike Schwartz spots Henry during a Legion Ball tournament and recruits him to Westish.

Henry played shortstop, only and ever shortstop -- the most demanding spot on the diamond.  More ground balls were hit to the shortstop than to anyone else, and then he had to make the longest throw to first.  He also had to turn double plays, cover second on steals, keep runners on second from taking long leads, make relay throws from the outfield .... He's spent his life studying the way the ball came off the bat, the angles and the spin, so that he knew in advance whether he should break right or left, whether the ball that came at him would bound up high or skid low to the dirt.  He caught the ball cleanly, always, and made, always, a perfect throw.

 The Art of Fielding is Chad Hardwick's debut novel, and it is one of the best debut novels I've read in a long time.  Hardwick describes baseball with the combination of facts and poetry that baseball deserves, but this is not The Natural or Shoeless Joe.  This is no novel about baseball as a fantasy; there are no magic bats or ghosts in the cornfields.  There bad hops, and errors, and strikeouts.  If games are won, they are won the hard way.  And a hot prospect one day can be dismissed by the major league scouts the next.  More than anything, this novel explains what head-cases baseball players can be and why that is so.

But baseball was different.  Schwartz thought of it as Homeric -- not a scrum but a series of isolated contests.  Batter versus pitcher, fielder versus ball.  You couldn't storm around, snorting and slapping people, the way Schwartz did while playing football.  You stood and waited and tried to still your mind.  When your moment came, you had to be ready, because if you fucked up, everyone would know whose fault it was.  What other sport not only kept a stat as cruel as the error but posted it on the scoreboard for everyone to see. 

 Henry's bible is a book called "The Art of Fielding" written by the (fictional) legendary Cardinals shortstop, Aparicio Rodriguez.   (No, the fact that the St. Louis Cardinals are the primary major league baseball team in this novel did not influence me.  Well, maybe a little.)  It is as much a book of philosophy as a book of rules about baseball:

3.  There are three stages:  Thoughtless being. Thought. Return to thoughtless being.

33.   Do not confuse the first and third stages.  Thoughtless being is attained by everyone, the return to thoughtless being by a very few.

 In some ways, the story of Henry is the story of Henry trying to put the rules of "The Art" into effect.  It is not always easy.

 There were, admittedly, many sentences and statements in The Art  that Henry did not yet understand.  The opaque parts of The Art, though, had always been his favorites, even more than the detailed and extremely helpful descriptions of, say, how to keep a runner close to second base (flirtation, Aparicio called it) or what sort of cleats to wear on wet grass.  The opaque parts, frustrating as they could be, gave Henry something to aspire to.  Someday, he dreamed, he would be enough of a ballplayer to crack them open and suck out their hidden wisdom.

Although this is a great novel, it is not a perfect novel - what novel, especially what debut novel, is?  It might have been perfect if Harwick had stuck only to the baseball story.  But Henry and Mike are college boys and this is a college novel.  Hardwick does the college story well enough but not really any better than anyone else and the characters and the college storyline seemed derivative to me.  Especially the requisite older academic having an affair with a student storyline.  The fact that this particular affair involves the academic engaging in his first gay relationship isn't really enough, in my opinion, to differentiate it from all the other college novels with older academics having affairs with students.

Hardwick does a good job creating the character of the older academic but is less successful, in my opinion, with Henry's "gay mulatto roommate" Owen Dunne who ends up in the affair with the older academic.  I never really understood what made Owen tick, he seemed more of a device to me than a real character. 

One reason that it took me so long to pick up this novel, despite it being prominently displayed in bookstores, is because the blurbs made think that it would be too ... male ... to interest me.  And it is very male-oriented.  Hardwick throws in one female character (the older academic's "wild" daughter who never finished high school and instead ran away with yet another older academic, but who is now running home to dad).  Frankly, in many ways, her character didn't make a lot of sense to me. Every time I thought I was getting a handle on who she was, she would do something that seemed out of character.   There were times that I thought this was intentional -- that this is how men (especially college age men) see women -- as unpredictable and not wholly understandable.  But if that was the purpose, Hardwick undermined it by writing entire chapters from her point of view.  Again, she seemed more of a device than a real character.  He did give her a great name -- Pella.   

But none of that really mattered.  The story of Henry, Mike and baseball overwhelmed all the other stories.  I look forward to Hardwick's next novel.  I hope it is something entirely different.

 

250 Years Ago* ... St. Louis was only a twinkle in the eye...

Happy Birthday St. Louis.  Today, February 15, 2013, is your 249th birthday (or maybe it was yesterday, it depends who you ask.  The group arrived on the 14th but they didn't "break ground" until the 15th?).  One more year to go until the Big Birthday.

250 years ago St. Louis was still only a twinkle in the eyes of Maxent and Laclede.  The final copy of the Treaty of Paris, signed only a few weeks previously, would not yet have arrived in New Orleans.  In November, Paris had sent a letter to Governor Kerlerec notifying him of the proposed terms of the treaty but that letter would not arrive in New Orleans until April of 1763.  But Canada and Detroit had been under British occupation since the end of 1760.  If there were not rumors of the treaty 's proposed terms coming from the east, down the Wabash River to the Ohio and then the Mississippi, there certainly would have been speculation.  The transfer of the west side of the Mississippi from France to Spain, however, remained a secret.

In any event, Laclede was scheduled to leave with the summer convoys up the Mississippi to establish a post on the west side of the Mississippi near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.  Laclede would need men and merchandise to take with him. Presumably, by February of 1763 he and Maxent were in the midst of their planning for the new post and the journey up the Mississippi.  

In the meantime, the people of the Illinois Country were hearing rumors of continued war against the British by the allied Indian tribes.  It appears that the French garrison at Fort de Chartres held themselves aloof from the entreaties of the Indian allies to act against the British, but messages were traveling between the tribes in the Illinois and Ohio Countries.  In his excellent book, The Middle Ground, Richard White examines the rapidly deteriorating attitudes of the tribes to the conquering British.  "By the fall of 1762", he writes, "the most experienced Indian traders on the Ohio River expected war."  France could make peace only for itself, not for its Indian allies.

But the people of the little village of Nouvelle Chartres had other things on their mind.  Just the day before, the village had buried a ten year old boy.

In the year one thousand seven hundred sixty-three, the fourteenth of January was buried the body of the son of Sanschagrin, otherwise called Joseph Henet, who died at ten years of age, without the Sacraments.+

The boy is a member of the Hennet dit Sanschagrin family, one of the older families in Nouvelle Chartres.  He seems to be the son of Joseph Hennet dit Sanchagrin (although the clumsy wording makes it possible that the boy's name was also Joseph).  The fact that the mother is not named and no sacraments were administered might mean that the child was illegitimate, but it isn't clear.

Joseph Hennet dit Sanschagrin was the son of Francois Hennet dit Sanschagrin, who had emigrated to the Illinois country from Switzerland, and Marianne Charpain.  Marianne seems to have died in 1734.  Francois, the father, died in December, 1746 at age 50 leaving children who were not yet of age, including his son Joseph.  The oldest son, Francois the younger, was named guardian of his younger siblings.  Francois the younger was a master roofer and in June of 1746 he had married Marguerite Becquet, the daughter of my ancestors Jean Baptiste Nicolas Becquet and Catherine Barreau.  So, depending on the circumstances, it is possible that the entire Becquet family had attended the burial.

+See Brown and Dean's The Village of Chartres in Colonial Illinois 1720-1765;  See also, Natalia Maree Belting's Kaskaskia under the French Regime .

*Part of my continuing blog series leading up to the 250^th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis in February 2014.

The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey

The discovery that a skeleton buried under what is now a parking lot near Leicester England is the skeleton of King Richard III, the last Plantagenet monarch of England was very exciting news for those of us who love history and archaeology.   It also made me think of Josephine Tey's novel, The Daughter of Time, which I read many years ago.  So I dug it out and read it again, in honor of the finding of Richard.

I'm not a British historian and I have no dog in the fight about the true nature of Richard - monster or good man?  Murderer of his own nephews or scapegoat for Henry VII?  I leave the arguments to those who spend their time reading about that period.

But what I do know is that history is written by the winners and even if winners don't intend to skew history in their favor, they inevitably do if only because they have more access to their own "facts" than to the other side's "facts".  I also know that history in textbooks is never as interesting as history that you "discover" for yourself.  That is why I am enjoying delving into North American French colonial history, which is not taught to us in school except at the most basic level.

In the years since I last read this novel, I had forgotten most of the arguments Tey made for why Richard was not a monster.  I had also forgotten what a good writer Tey was.   And how witty.  In this novel, her regularly appearing Scotland Yard detective, Adam Grant, is laid up in hospital after falling through a trap door.  I'm assuming he is in some kind of traction, but in any event he is required to be flat on his back for a very long time.  He is bored. Very bored.  But he cannot bring himself to read any of the books that well meaning friends have brought him. 

Tey spends a couple of pages describing these novels and I was struck by both her wit and by how much life has not changed in over sixty years of publishing:

Authors today wrote so much to a pattern that their public expected it.  The public talked about "a new Silas Weekley" or "a new Lavinia Fitch" exactly as they talked about "a new brick" or "a new hairbrush."  They never said "a new book by" whoever it might be.  Their interest was not in the book but in its newness.  They knew quite well what the book would be like.

Tey published this novel in 1951, at the beginning of the Cold War.  Although the subject that begins the discussion of truth-in-history is Richard III, Tey spends some time pointing out that even in modern times stories are circulated that the public accepts as true even though there are many people alive who know for a fact that the stories aren't true.  The American researcher assisting Grant talks about the true story of the Boston "Massacre" and Grant tells him about an incident that allegedly took place in Tonypandy Wales that never really happened.  The term "Tonypandy" becomes their code for accepted history that turns out to be myth.

If I was a professor trying to make students understand the importance of research into "minutia" I would have them read Tey's novel.   As a lawyer I've understood for year's that eyewitness accounts are inherently unreliable.  What most people think of as "circumstantial" evidence can be much more reliable.  Tey understands that too.

Give me research.  After all, the truth of anything at all doesn't lie in anyone's account of it. It lies in all the small facts of the time. An advertisement in a paper. The sale of a house.  The price of a ring.

Tey's Detective Grant grows disgusted with historians who report only on what someone said happened without wondering about the likelihood of something happening or not happening.  Grant asks where human nature comes into things.  He wonders if the Queen Dowager, the mother of the two boys who are allegedly murdered by Richard, could actually bring herself to be in the court of the man who murdered her sons, accepting a pension from him and having her daughters attend court functions?

But the thing is ... maybe she could.  Maybe she was that kind of woman.  Tey does a good job making the case for Richard but, as a lawyer, I know that with the ambiguity in the story I could argue either side with a straight face.   But I do like that Tey puts the argument out there and shows the average reader that history is messy, the interest lies in the gray areas and sometimes it just isn't going to be possible to know for certain exactly what happened. 

As I finished the novel, I recalled that Richard made an appearance in Dorothy Dunnett's final novel in the House of Niccolo series, Gemini.   King Edward is still on the throne of England and his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, is in the north on the Scottish border, part of an invasion force.  Since the point of view of the novel is Scottish, not much time is spent on the English characters.  I don't think it was technically necessary for the story to have Nicolas specifically meet Richard, but it must have been too tempting for Dunnett.  Here she has this complicated historical figure, Richard, right there on the Scottish border, how could she not have him at least meet her very complicated creation, Nicolas.

Gemini is the only Dunnett novel that I've only read once and I couldn't remember exactly how Dunnett came down on Richard's character.  I did recall that he wasn't a major character, he simply appears in the story at a key point.  So, I dug out my copy of Gemini to see how Dunnett made Richard, Duke of Gloucester and the future king, come to life. 

[Nicolas] had never met Gloucester, but was prepared for the black hair, the jagged profile, the uneven shoulders.  His voice was charming and so were his clothes:  a soft brocade robe over a fine shirt, doublet and hose.  There was a brooch in his hat. 

Dunnett refers to Richard as "Dickon Gloucester" and I wonder if there is historical precedence for that or if she just realizes that most people probably didn't call him by his full name any more than people today named Richard are called that by their friends.

Dunnett gives Nicolas two audiences with Gloucester and both are in relatively formal settings.  In the second, Gloucester gives Nicolas some unexpected and, to Nicolas, shocking, information.  "His voice was solicitous, but his eyes hinted at a wicked amusement ... He smiled.  Nicolas could not bring himself to smile back."

And that's pretty much all we get from Dunnett about Richard.  There is no meeting of the minds between Nicolas and Richard but they do speak as intellectual equals which generally means that Dunnett had some respect for the historical personage.  In the entire encounter she seems to have decided to treat Richard as pragmatic and intelligent, which by all accounts he was. It is also made clear that Nicolas expects him to be ruthless but is not shocked by that understanding.  There is nothing in these encounters to give us a clue as to whether or not Dunnett believed he would eventually murder his nephews, but she creates him as a character who was the kind of man who could have done it.

Since this comports pretty much with how I view Richard, I was satisfied with my re-reading. 

250 Years Ago ... The Treaty of Paris*

On February 10, 1763 the Mississippi River became, in the eyes of the world, an international boundary line. On that date the Treaty of Paris, which formalized the peace between France and Great Britain, was signed.  The Seven Years War (known in the British North American colonies as the French and Indian War) was over.  Britain had won.

Under the terms of the treaty, France formally ceded to Britain all of its possession east of the Mississippi River, except for New Orleans.  Although France had previously ceded to Spain all of its land west of the Mississippi, as well as New Orleans, under the Treaty of Fontainbleau, that fact had not yet been made public and Spain had made no move to take control of her new possession. 

Article VII of the treaty (a full copy of which is here) makes the middle of the Mississippi River the boundary line and ensures free navigation of the river to those on both sides:

VII. In order to re-establish peace on solid and durable foundations, and to remove for ever all subject of dispute with regard to the limits of the British and French territories on the continent of America; it is agreed, that, for the future, the confines between the dominions of his Britannick Majesty and those of his Most Christian Majesty, in that part of the world, shall be fixed irrevocably by a line drawn along the middle of the River Mississippi, from its source to the river Iberville, and from thence, by a line drawn along the middle of this river, and the lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain to the sea; and for this purpose, the Most Christian King cedes in full right, and guaranties to his Britannick Majesty the river and port of the Mobile, and every thing which he possesses, or ought to possess, on the left side of the river Mississippi, except the town of New Orleans and the island in which it is situated, which shall remain to France, provided that the navigation of the river Mississippi shall be equally free, as well to the subjects of Great Britain as to those of France, in its whole breadth and length, from its source to the sea, and expressly that part which is between the said island of New Orleans and the right bank of that river, as well as the passage both in and out of its mouth: It is farther stipulated, that the vessels belonging to the subjects of either nation shall not be stopped, visited, or subjected to the payment of any duty whatsoever. The stipulations inserted in the IVth article, in favour of the inhabitants of Canada shall also take place with regard to the inhabitants of the countries ceded by this article. 

Imagine yourself as a third generation French North American, suddenly finding yourself abandoned by your monarch and country and now under the jurisdiction of the enemy.  Think of the trauma.  And the uncertainty.  Britain was a Protestant country with a significant anti-Catholic faction - Catholics were seen as threats to the stability of Britain after the Jacobite rebellions.  France was a Catholic country and the French subjects in North America were (to greater and lesser degrees) practicing Catholics.  If they stayed on, would they be persecuted?  And if they wanted to leave - how are a defeated people to effect an orderly evacuation?   The French army was leaving but it would be more difficult for other French to just pick up and move in an orderly fashion.  

Note the last sentence of Article VII, which was intended by the French monarch to assure his former subjects in the Illinois Country that the rules that would apply to the cession of Canada would apply to them too.  Article IV provides in part:

IV.  .... His Britannick Majesty, on his side, agrees to grant the liberty of the Catholick religion to the inhabitants of Canada: he will, in consequence, give the most precise and most effectual orders, that his new Roman Catholic subjects may profess the worship of their religion according to the rites of the Romish church, as far as the laws of Great Britain permit. His Britannick Majesty farther agrees, that the French inhabitants, or others who had been subjects of the Most Christian King in Canada, may retire with all safety and freedom wherever they shall think proper, and may sell their estates, provided it be to the subjects of his Britannick Majesty, and bring away their effects as well as their persons, without being restrained in their emigration, under any pretence whatsoever, except that of debts or of criminal prosecutions: The term limited for this emigration shall be fixed to the space of eighteen months, to be computed from the day of the exchange of the ratification of the present treaty.

In short, if the inhabitants of the Illinois Country decided to stay put, they could still practice their religion within the laws of Great Britain (which at the time prohibited Catholics from holding governmental or judicial appointments).   

According to Wikipedia:

Article IV has also been cited as the basis for Quebec often having its unique set of laws that are different from the rest of Canada. There was a general constitutional principle in the United Kingdom to allow colonies taken through conquest to continue their own laws. This was limited by royal perogative, and the monarch could still choose to change the accepted laws in a conquered colony. However, the treaty eliminated this power because by a different constitutional principle, terms of a treaty were considered paramount. In practice, Roman Catholics could become jurors in inferior courts in Quebec and argue based on principles of French law. However, the judge was British and his opinion on French law could be limited or hostile. If the case was appealed to a superior court, neither French law nor Roman Catholic jurors were allowed.

The Illinois Country inhabitants were also free to liquidate their possessions and leave, as long as they sold their estates to British subjects.  And for an eighteen month period they were guaranteed that no one would restrain them from leaving. 

The clock was running for the people of the Illinois Country. 



*Part of my continuing blog series leading up to the 250^th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis in February 2014. 

My January Reading

I intended to write some blog posts about the books I've been reading but never got around to it.  So here's a list of the books I read in January and my take on each of them.  My goal this year was to read fewer mysteries and more literary fiction.  I'm still having the problem that not much is appealing to me. So  I'm still reading a fair number of mysteries but, yes, I did manage to read some literary fiction too.

1. The Round House by Louise Erdrich.  I truly intended to write an actual blog post about this novel but it has law as a theme and every time I sat down to write I found I just couldn't face writing about law in my free time after the last few busy months. It isn't my favorite Louise Erdrich novel but I did enjoy it.  I thought the voice she created for the main character was very realistic.  And I was somewhat surprised by the direction the story took at the end.
   
   
2. The Bookseller by Mark Pryor.  As I said here, a little too much explanation and a little too much serendipity.  But it is a first novel so maybe he'll improve.
   
   
3. Bruno, Chief of Police by Martin Walker.   This one is cheating a bit because I started it back in October and never finished it.  I noticed it on my NOOK one day at lunch and realized I only had two more chapters to go to find out who dunnit so I finished it. I think the reason I stopped reading it had more to do with my crazy busy end of the year than the book itself.   It is the first in a series and, while it shows, I did like the French locale so I may read others in the series.
    
4.  The Strange Fate of Kitty Easton by Elizabeth Speller.  I read The Return of Captain John Emmett, Speller's first book in this series, last year when I was on my World War I novel kick.   I said "I don't think this is intended to be a series as the main character isn't a detective."  Well, I was wrong.  This novel is better than the first, the plot is a little more believable and wasn't as easily guessable.  But I'm still unclear how she can make a series of it.  After all, how many crimes can a church architectural historian come across?   Wait.  Don't answer that.
   
   
5. Standing in Another Man's Grave by Ian Rankin.  I've been waiting for this book to finally cross the pond.  Rebus returns!  Now he's a civilian working in the cold case unit.  He's also trying to return to active duty because the mandatory retirement age has  been increased.  I actually liked Rebus as a retired cop and wouldn't mind him staying retired and "consulting" with Siobhan from time to time.  It gives him more freedom of movement but, of course, less access to information.  I also liked seeing him traveling back and forth to Inverness  because I've done that drive and could picture it - even the turn-off to Aviemore.   It didn't seem quite as dark and gritty as previous Rebus novels and that may be because Rebus has nothing to lose - he's retired, they can't fire him. 
   
   
6. The Patrick Melrose Novels by Edward St. Aubyn.   This is really four very short novels bound together in one volume: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope and Mother's Milk.    Although these were all issued much earlier in the UK, they were just released in the US this year.  A number of book reviewers listed this novel on their Best Books of 2012 list so I thought I would check it out.  I disliked the characters, was uninterested in the plot and loved St. Aubyn's writing style.  I can only describe it as a cross between Martin Amis and J.M. Barrie. 
   
    St. Aubyn creates a main character who was raped by his own father at the age of five and spends the rest of his life messed up because of that.  A very serious situation ... and yet, at what point is a person responsible for his own life despite the terrible things that have happened to him?   And where is the line between the tragic and the ludicrous?    As St. Aubyn lets us into the mind of the deeply troubled Patrick Melrose, who regularly sees the ludicrousness of his situations, we can't help but think that this is a character that is smart enough and self aware enough  that he should be able to rise above his background.  And yet ... he doesn't.  Is that because he can't or because he won't?
   
   I truly enjoyed St. Aubyn's acerbic social commentary.
   

   The English didn't ask much of their Dukes in Anne's opinion.  All they had to do was hang on to their possessions, at least the very well-known ones, and then they got to be guardians of what other people called 'our heritage'.  She was disappointed that this character with a face like a cobweb had not even managed the small task of leaving his Rembrandts on the wall where he found them.

   And while his characters are nasty, they are also funny.   For instance the character of the father, David, is a particularly horrible man but only his wife Eleanor and his son Patrick seem to know it.
   

   When they arrived in the hall, Eleanor was delighted by David's absence.  Perhaps he had drowned in the bath.  It was too much to hope.  

   And Patrick isn't always particularly likeable.  But he is sometimes sympathetic, especially when his thoughts are blackly humorous:
   

   He was definitely going to get drunk and insult Seamus, or maybe he wasn't.  In the end it was even harder to behave badly than to behave well.  That was the trouble with not being a psychopath.  Every avenue was blocked.

   My least favorite of the four novels was Bad News because I have no interest in drug addicts in real life and see no point in spending time in their fictional minds. The entire novel is a day in the mind of a twenty-something Patrick who is doped up to the nth degree.  I admit to skimming through parts of it.  And I tired, as I often do with Martin Amis, of reading about a character who is a man-child.  At least JM Barrie made his character a real boy who wouldn't grow up, perhaps knowing that while there is something distasteful about grown men who act  and think like children you can always get away with a child acting and thinking like a grownup.  At points St. Aubyn slips into a child's point of view and it works fairly well for him despite the fact that the child thinks like an adult.   There is one more book in the series and I will eventually go find it and read it.  Part of me hopes he kills off Patrick and part of me hopes he redeems him.
   
   
7. The Piccadilly Plot by Susanna Gregory.   I picked this up at the library one day when I could find nothing else I wanted. I'm not even sure why I bothered finishing it.  I was drawn to it because it was set in Seventeenth Century London during the Restoration but found the setting did not make up for the writing.
8. Instruments of Darkness by Imogen Robertson.  This was also a first novel, set during the eighteenth century.  I enjoyed it.  Although it is a mystery I think it was at its best when it focused on characters and setting.  The main character is a scientist type who just wants to be left alone, but one day his neighbor finds a dead body on her estate and comes to him for help.  One thing I really liked is that Robertson made the neighbor a happily married woman whose husband is a sea captain off fighting the "American Rebellion".  So she can act fairly independently but there is none of that boring love interest stuff with the scientist.  They are just two people.  At first I wasn't sure how the American Rebellion was relevant and thought the scenes that were set there were meant simply to draw in American readers, but in the end I realized that the theme of insurrection and the dangers it poses to those caught up in it, was a larger theme in the book.   She has written another book and I will read it. 

And that's it for January.  I'm glad that I'm reading again after three or four months of not reading much at all and not having time to even make a blog mention (for instance I read Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl back in November and was intending to write about it but never got around to it.)

I'm starting February by reading the new Charles Todd that just came out (yes, another mystery).  I'm also working through Alex Ross' essays in his  Listen to This.  I picked that book up a couple of years ago and then forgot I had it.