Good morning. In First Things, Joseph Epstein writes about learning Latin at 81: “Why Latin? And why so late in life? The short answer is that I found not knowing Latin a deficiency, especially in a person of my rather extravagant intellectual and cultural pretensions. I also felt I had a fair chance of mastering the language. Latin presents the same alphabet as English. The language also offers no strenuous problems in pronunciation. One will never be called upon to speak it (except of course, in the bad old joke, to Latin Americans). Then there is the fact that for centuries, from Roman times through the Middle Ages, Latin was the language of the educated. As for taking up Latin so late in life, my response, which comes from St. Edmund of Abingdon, is: ‘Disce quasi semper victurus; vive quasi cras moriturus,’ or ‘Learn as if you will live forever; live as though you would die tomorrow.’”

Paul A. Cantor reviews Jonathan Bate’s How the Classics Made Shakespeare: “It is a sad commentary on the current state of Shakespeare criticism that this book needed to be written, but Bate has indeed performed a valuable service by reminding us that the achievement of the greatest English author was deeply rooted in traditions that go all the way back to the ancient Greek and Roman worlds. As Shakespeare criticism becomes increasingly redirected and limited to our own contemporary concerns, people are in danger of forgetting that Shakespeare drew a great deal of his wisdom and inspiration from the ancient past. It is not just that people today have lost sight of Shakespeare’s grounding in the classical tradition. They are on the verge of losing sight of the classical tradition itself. How can they appreciate the ways that Shakespeare drew sustenance from the Greek and Roman classics when they have never experienced for themselves the depth and grandeur of these works?”

The messy W. H. Auden: “‘The speed with which he could wreck a room was barely credible, certainly dangerous,’ observed his friend James Stern. He spoke from experience. On one occasion he had left Auden in his flat for the day, dropping back shortly afterward to pick something up: ‘If it hadn’t been for the pictures on the walls I wouldn’t have known where I was,’ Stern remembered: ‘Frustrated burglars could not have created greater chaos … God, Wystan, was a mess! “My dear, I do love this apartment, but I can’t understand why it doesn’t have more ashtrays!”’ The Saint Mark’s apartment rapidly came to resemble what Robert Craft, Stravinsky’s right-hand man, had witnessed with some incredulity in Auden’s previous place, a litter of ‘empty bottles, used martini glasses, books, papers, phonograph records.’ Dinner with them would be boozy and delicious (Kallman was an excellent cook); but the cutlery would be greasy and the plates often only imperfectly washed. ‘He is the dirtiest man I have ever liked,’ said Stravinsky of Auden, a touching if qualified mark of regard.”

The enduring appeal of writers’ homes: “In the 1980s, my father wrote a guide, Writers in Sussex, for which I took the photographs. During our research we visited the former homes of 40 or so writers. They included William Blake’s flint cottage in Felpham (‘the sweetest spot on earth’, according to Blake); Rudyard Kipling’s imposing stone manor house, Bateman’s, at Burwash; Hilaire Belloc’s home, King’s Land, at Shipley, which was originally a tithe barn built by monks; and the cottage Mervyn Peake lived in while writing Titus Groan, within sight of the massive grey walls of Arundel Castle – an inspiration, perhaps, for Gormenghast. Peake is buried nearby, his gravestone inscribed with a moving line from one of his poems: ‘To live at all is miracle enough.’ Sadly some of the houses have now gone. One of those is Asheham House, near Beddingham, which Virginia and Leonard Woolf rented in 1912, before they bought Monk’s House, in nearby Rodmell, in 1919.”

Bret Stephens writes about his grandmother, the painter Annette Nancarrow: “My father once asked his mother, the artist Annette Nancarrow, what she thought of Leon Trotsky. It wasn’t a political question. He just wanted her impression of the exiled Bolshevik, whom she had first met in Mexico City in the late 1930s, in the studio of her close friend (and, my father suspected, future lover) Diego Rivera. ‘Well, I was surprised to see the leader of the proletariat so elegantly dressed,’ she recalled, many decades after Trotsky’s murder by a Soviet agent in 1940. ‘His attire was impeccable, and I was particularly struck by the Parisian calf-skin gloves he took off of his beautifully manicured hands.’ The answer was vintage Annette. As a painter, she saw the part of the surface that revealed the inner man — the bourgeois fop within the fiery revolutionary. As a judge of character, she sensed why he had lost his power struggle with Joseph Stalin for control of the Soviet Union — people who take care of their fingernails don’t usually enjoy getting them bloody. And as a connoisseur of style, she appreciated good leather.”

Essay of the Day:

In Lapham’s Quarterly, Eric Jager tells the story of the last judicial duel in France:

“On a freezing December day in 1386, at an old priory in Paris that today is a museum of science and technology—a temple of human reason—an eager crowd of thousands gathered to watch two knights fight a duel to the death with lance and sword and dagger. A beautiful young noblewoman, dressed all in black and exposed to the crowd’s stares, anxiously awaited the outcome. The trial by combat would decide whether she had told the truth—and thus whether she would live or die. Like today, sexual assault and rape often went unpunished and even unreported in the Middle Ages. But a public accusation of rape, at the time a capital offense and often a cause for scandalous rumors endangering the honor of those involved, could have grave consequences for both accuser and accused, especially among the nobility.

“Marguerite de Carrouges, descended from an old and wealthy Norman family, had claimed that in January of that year she had been attacked and raped at her mother-in-law’s château by a squire (the rank below knighthood) named Jacques Le Gris, aided by one of his closest companions, one Adam Louvel. Marguerite’s father, Robert de Thibouville, had once betrayed the king of France, and some may have wondered whether this ‘traitor’s daughter’ was in fact telling the truth.

“Marguerite’s husband, Sir Jean de Carrouges, a reputedly jealous and violent man—whose once close friendship with Le Gris had soured in recent years amid court rivalry and a protracted dispute over land—was traveling at the time of the alleged crime. But when he returned a few days later and heard his wife’s story, he angrily brought charges against Le Gris in the court of Count Pierre of Alençon, overlord to both men. Le Gris was the count’s favorite and his administrative right hand. A large and powerful man, Le Gris was well educated and very wealthy, though from an only recently ennobled family. He also had a reputation as a seducer—or worse. But the count, infuriated by the accusation against his favorite, declared at a legal hearing that Marguerite ‘must have dreamed it’ and summarily dismissed the charges, ordering that ‘no further questions ever be raised about it.’

“Carrouges, without whom his wife could not even bring a case, resolutely rode off to Paris to appeal for justice to the king. A 1306 royal decree based on ancient precedent allowed the duel as a last resort for nobles involved in capital cases—e.g., murder, treason, and rape—but by now judicial duels were extremely rare. That July, at the old royal palace on the Île de la Cité, the knight formally challenged the squire, throwing down the gauntlet, as witnessed by the young Charles VI, many other royals, and the magistrates of the Parlement of Paris, the nation’s highest court.

“The challenge did not lead directly to a duel, however, but marked the start of a formal investigation by the Parlement, which would authorize a duel only if unable to reach a verdict on the basis of the available evidence. Over the next several months, famous lawyers were hired, witnesses were summoned, and testimony was gathered. Marguerite herself—now pregnant, perhaps as a result of the rape—came to Paris and testified in great detail about the alleged attack by Le Gris and his accomplice. ‘I fought him so desperately,’ she claimed, ‘that he shouted to Louvel to come back and help him. They pinned me down and stuffed a capucium [a hood] over my mouth to silence me. I thought I was going to suffocate, and soon I couldn’t fight them anymore. Le Gris raped me.’

“Le Gris countered with a detailed alibi for not just the day in question but the entire week, calling numerous witnesses to establish his whereabouts in or near another town some twenty-five miles away. Le Gris’ attorney, the highly respected Jean Le Coq, kept notes in Latin that still survive, allowing us a glimpse into attorney-client discussions. Le Coq seems to have had some doubts about his client’s truthfulness, while admitting that this was the thorniest of ‘he said, she said’ cases. Despite the lady’s many oaths, and those of the squire, he confided to his journal, ‘No one really knew the truth of the matter.’

“The Parlement ultimately failed to reach a verdict, and in September it officially ordered a trial by combat, where—in theory—God would assure a just outcome. If Carrouges won the duel, the couple would go free, their claims vindicated. But if Marguerite’s husband and champion lost, thus ‘proving’ her accusation to be false, she too would be put to death. And not just any death. In accord with ancient tradition, she would be burned alive as a false accuser.”

Read the rest.

Photo: California Street

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