Hitch: The Unrelenting Atheist

Not that I can add anything particularly erudite to the many thousands of obituaries, blog posts and news reports. However I can acknowledge, like so many others, how much the educated world has now lost with    Hitchens’ death.

I know that I have enjoyed Hitchens’ books and articles, his debates and discussions and have not wanted to face this day.

A lot of people have not wanted this day to arrive.  But now that it is here, I will spend it in contemplative mood and spice my evening sipping red wine. I bought my copy of Arguably a few weeks ago and it sits on my bed side table.  A consolation of sorts.

On reading so many of the on line comments about Hitchens’ death, I note how many acknowledge that the Hitch was instrumental in changing the way they thought; in helping them towards a sloughing off of religious belief.

He has many friends who, over the next few weeks and each anniversary of his birth will write, talk, broadcast and eulogise. And we will get through this sad day.

I didn’t agree with his politics but I found his scathing contempt for religion’s attempt to console human beings by imbuing them with fear and awe absolutely wonderful.

Finger of Hitch

We have all watched him deliver witty and devastating arguments for which his opponents on the stage, pulpit and lecture hall had no comeback. Some resorted to shouting in capital letters but I doubt I ever saw the Hitch fazed at all.

Not a lyrical person but one who wielded words with hammer and punch, he has left us with a plethora of quotable quotes.

He has ensured his immortality with his writings. The Telegraph has started the ball rolling with its initial list of quotes. There will be many more to come. And Hitchens will survive a lot longer than many of the rest of us.

So, to you Hitch, I will raise my glass, remember some of the things you said that made me smile and keep reading your essays. I applaud that you did not go gently into that goodnight!

Will the Real Macbeth Stand Up?

Scholars believe Shakespeare’s play to have been written sometime after Elizabeth 1 died in 1603. It is generally accepted that he wrote Macbeth sometime between 1604 and 1606, after James I of England and VI of Scotland had ascended the English throne.

James I by Daniel Mytens 1621

What better way than to take old Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587) and propose a Scottish play. Add a bit of artistic license to incorporate witches because James I and VI was known to be interested in such things having written a book on spirits and witchcraft in 1597 called Daemononlogie. Witches and portentous pronouncements would be just the ticket.

Olivier as Macbeth

Woo has always been part of the backstage world of the theatre. Macbeth the play has developed a reputation and is held to be cursed and instead of calling it Macbeth, it is called the Scottish play.

The Real Macbeth?

As for the personalities of the two main characters, Duncan and Macbeth, again Shakespeare’s portrayal is not historically correct although indubitably politically sound.

In the play Duncan is portrayed as a strong, wise and elderly king whereas in reality he was a young, weak and ineffective ruler. He made unsuccessful raids into England and in raiding Durham lost most of his cavalry and infantry. He was eventually either murdered by Macbeth or, more likely, killed in battle near Elgin. In any case, his cousin, Macbeth became King in 1040. Macbeth was king of Moray at that time as well. He ruled, apparently successfully and with generosity to the poor until 1057 when he was killed in battle by Duncan’s first son Malcolm.

Shakespeare’s Macbeth has virtually no legitimate claim to the throne whereas the real Macbeth had a respectable claim through his mother’s side – indeed both Macbeth and his wife were descended from Kenneth MacAlpin, the first King of Scotland. Shakespeare also gives Macbeth the title ‘Thane of Glamis’ but in fact Glamis was not known as a thanage in the 11th century.

Kean & wife as the Macbeths in accurate costumery? (1858)

In Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth’s friend Banquo is portrayed as a noble and loyal man, resisting evil, a contrast to the character of Macbeth. In Holinshed’s Chronicles however, Banquo is shown as exactly the opposite: he is an accomplice in Macbeth’s murder of Duncan.

The new king, James I of England and VI of Scotland, claimed ancestry from Banquo through the Stewart line of kings. Shakespeare could hardly portray Banquo in the way Holinshed described him and who knew whether Holinshed was right anyway. Apparently there is debate as to whether or not Banquo actually existed in an historical context.

To portray Banquo as a murderer of kings would not have brought the preferment from James that Shakespeare wanted and probably needed.

All in all, the confusing mix of fact and fiction which runs through the play is bewildering when you try to unravel it all. So much is lost to antiquity and those recording what is known have different tales to tell. Even the different links I have provided are disparate in their relating of the history.

Contemporaneous or not so contemporaneous ‘histories’ as we should know from the ‘sainted’ Sir Thomas Moore are quite often written from hearsay accounts and presented as though the ‘historian’ were actually at the scene so to speak.

The name of Dunsinane Hill evokes magic as the witches intone:

Witches in Act IV, Sc.I

Macbeth shall never vanquish’d be until

Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill

Shall come against him.

Birnam Wood 1800

Going to Dunsinane (in reality Dunsinnan Hillfort in the Sidlaw Hills) by car from where we live is only a hop, skip and a jump (for an Aussie). However I have yet to make the trip and it is now snowing with the drifts around the car about 12” deep. So I did some searching around on the net and came across  Stravaiging around Scotland - a delightful blog of one Andy Sweet. He has taken some absolutely marvellous photographs of ancient historic places in Scotland. His photo gallery is a treat.

Dunsinnan Hill is north of Fife in Perthshire and houses the remains of the fortified castle in which Macbeth lived. Andy had a great photograph of the Hillfort.

Birnam Oak 900 yrs old?

Dunsinnan Hillfort and Forest – Andy Sweet

And the place where Malcolm Canmore (Cenn Mor) Duncan’s son and rightful claimant did defeat (but not kill) Macbeth in 1054. Malcolm was then invested as the ruler of Perth and Fife. It was 3 years later, in 1057, that Macbeth was killed by Malcolm at Lumphannan in Aberdeenshire. For a short time of 8 months, Macbeth’s stepson was king of Scotland – apparently a very young, somewhat simple-minded and hopeless ruler.

Malcolm eventually killed Lulach after his 8 month mis-reign and was invested as Malcolm III of Scotland.

However it has to be asked – who would have heard of these two Scottish kings had it not been for Shakespeare and the ‘Scottish Play’?

Matters of the Met – Lucia

Last night we watched the Metropolitan Opera’s 2009 presentation of Lucia di Lammermoor with Anna Netrebko singing the riveting role of Lucia.

Anna Netrebko as Lucia

This tragic opera, written by Donizetti, premiered in Naples during September 1835. It was a hit. Here is a copy of a lithograph of the first Lucia on stage.

Fanny Tacchinardi-Persiani 1839 London premiere

Scotland, its history and culture had become interesting to Europe in the 1830s and Sir Walter Scott’s novels were immensely popular throughout Europe. So Donizetti’s opera was a hit right from the beginning. It languished for some time later on but now is the most performed of all Donizetti’s serious operas. So says Sir Denis Forman – A Night at the Opera.

Book cover of Night at the Opera

Marvellous book by the way.

I don’t want to write a critique of the opera. My husband is far better able than I to undertake that. I just really like it; and anyway I am also interested in literature so that the changes in the storyline between Scott’s novel and Donizetti’s opera intrigue me. It is always called ‘artistic licence’.

Then I started digging further and found the historical incident on which Scott based his novel. It always staggers me that what we think we know represents about 10% of what there is to know. Same as an iceberg! The historical scene took place in the mid 1600s in the Lammermuir Hills.

The Lammermuir Hills are in the East Lothian region of The Borders and the photographs below just make me want to go there (especially in the snow!).

Beautiful Lammermuirs

Grassy Lammermuirs

Dressed in white!

Lammermuir Hills in Spring

The historical time was 1669 (Scott moved the time to just before the Act of Union in 1707 which added a different political flavour to his novel).

The Dalrymples were local landowners in the Lowlands and Janet Dalrymple was of marriageable age. Her father James, 1^st Viscount of Stair, incidentally, was sympathetic to the Covenantors and a Scottish lawyer and statesman. He is best known for his great legal work The Institutions of the Law of Scotland deduced from its Originals, and collated with the Civil, Canon and Feudal Laws and with the Customs of Neighbouring Nations. So there!

James’ problem was that he was stuck in his culture and hidebound in tradition in a changing world. That never does work to one’s advantage. However it was a distinguished family and all his five sons made their mark in their chosen professions. Poor Janet was sacrificed as women often were (and still are) into a marriage she seemed not to want. The males of such families were consumed by the acquisition of power and influence and young marriageable women were the honey pot. (Janet Dalrymple becomes the Lucy Ashton of Scott’s novel and Scott develops a feud between the two families that  is probably way over the top – there’s that artistic licence again!).

Scott’s Lucy had exchanged passionate vows with Edgar, Master of Ravenswood, whose family property had been lost to Sir William Ashton. Madly, and with the understanding of the impossibility of a fruitful outcome, Lucy and Edgar promise to love each other forever (This can be traced, sort of, through the historical incident as well).

Baldoon Castle in Bladnoch in Dumfries is now a ruin but it was the family seat of the Dunbars from 1530 to 1800. Scotland is full of ruins – it happens with ancient inhabited countries!

Baldoon Castle Ruins

Sir David Dunbar arranged for his son, also David, to marry Janet. Arranged marriages, especially amongst the upper classes were pretty normal – all to do with forging resource and territory accumulation with political influence.

However Janet had formed an attachment to Archibald, 3^rd Lord Rutherford and a Royalist. Unfortunately he was impoverished and Janet’s and his liaison was disregarded in favour of her marriage to David Dunbar. Janet’s mother appears to have been the evil manipulator here. (Donizetti makes Lucia’s brother Enrico the villain in his opera). Scott used stereotypes of feuds to write his novel The Bride of Lammermoor and it was very successful. The hapless husband in Scott’s novel is the Laird of Bucklaw, not killed but seriously wounded.

So far as the actual ‘history’ is concerned, David Dunbar was only wounded; he never, ever talked about what had happened and eventually married again. Archibald, heart-broken at the death of Janet, never married. In Scott’s novel he, as the character Ravenswood, drowns in quicksand on his way to a duel.

Looking through contemporary and later records, I am struck that in the later records, more than a smidgen of woo has entered into the story. Baldoon Castle is supposed to be haunted and Lucia is ‘seen’ and ‘heard’ screaming in her bloodied gown every 12 September which is the supposed date of her death. Ho hum.

Of course, Dame Joan Sutherland was an outstanding Lucia and performed it to acclaim several times. It was her signature role though not her favourite. It was she who gave Lucia’s mad scene such visual power by singing the aria with ’blood’ dripping all over her gown. Edit: In earlier productions, there was the intimation that the ‘blood’ on Lucia’s white gown represented virginal blood and the swooning ladies in the audience didn’t like it. Hahaha – we must have grown to be made of sterner stuff.

Sutherland as Lucia with dagger

There are some great arias including of course the mad scene “Il dolce suono … Spargi d’amaro pianto” which all today’s sopranos sing with ‘blood’ staining Lucia’s white bridal gown while she wields the knife with which she has killed her new husband. It truly is an amazing aria. I say riveting, but it is actually far more heart stopping than that.

There is an extraordinary sextet that is sung at Lucia’s wedding scene that is to be found everywhere. The music was used in Scarface where Camonte whistles “Chi mi frena?” just before murdering his victims. The melody is also used in Scorsese’s  The Departed. It has been lampooned, sung and featured in some form or another in such varied genres as comedy, slapstick, cartoons and fantasy. Actually there are a lot of arias that have been used in different ways throughout the entertainment world. Apparently a number of musical pieces were inspired by Sir Walter Scott’s novel, but I only know of Donizetti’s opera and I suppose that most people are like me.

Novels, history and legends and further fantasy notwithstanding, Lucia di Lammermoor is a wonderful opera with arias that are simply out of this world.

No WIBs but JY Simpson

I have a friend whose father wrote the forward for a biography of James Young Simpson. A fitting person to write such a forward to such a book, Ian Donald pioneered the introduction of ultra sound to midwifery in Glasgow. He was also a Professor of Midwifery, though at Glasgow. Simpson (1811 to 1870) was in Edinburgh in the century before. When I think about the remarkable rapidity with which new technology is expanded and overtaken by newer technology, I am full of awe. But that’s what happens!

Book Cover for Simpson’s biography

JY Simpson’s biography was written and published in 1972 by Myrtle Simpson who had married into the Simpson family. She was an intrepid person in her own right and has written some amazing travel books.

The biography is a fascinating story of the man who first introduced chloroform as an anaesthetic initially in both dentistry and midwifery. The first article written by Simpson seems to have been to the Lancet in 1847.

A major driving thrust was to try and reduce the pain experienced by anyone who had to undergo surgery of any sort. Sulphuric ether had been used but delivery of the ether was cumbersome, dangerous and complicated. Simpson had been actively looking for some other gas with easier properties to replace ether that had come into use in 1846.

A young James Young Simpson

He certainly was no slouch. Through 1847 he experimented (tested chloroform on himself, his colleagues and his dinner guests!!) and was satisfied that chloroform was the agent of anaesthesia he had been looking for. He produced a prodigious number of articles for the Monthly Journal of Medical Science and the London Medical Gazette during that year. The problem was always how much to give a patient.

There are some hilarious stories of eminent physicians in non-eminent straits after inhaling chloroform at Simpson’s home (and professional rooms) at 52 Queen Street, Edinburgh.

Simpson lived and practised at 52 Queen St

Simpson first used chloroform in obstetrics on 8 November 1847. He delivered Jane Carstairs of a baby girl 25 minutes after administering chloroform to Jane. When she woke up she mentioned having a restful sleep. She was unaware that she had given birth.

I often think that in the earlier times, fields of potential endeavour being wider open than now, the people who filled these fields with their inventions, their insights, their experiments and their conclusions on which later generations built, had very fulfilling and satisfying, if controversial lives.

Notwithstanding the lack of public health measures, no germ theory and a raft of other ‘didn’t haves’, people like JY Simpson forged through the accepted wisdom and was one of those who instead of asking why, asked why not. He was to all intents and purposes a practical man with an enormous energy. He wasn’t fearful of trying new things and so became well known early on in his career as a controversialist.

He lived in a time when cleanliness in hospitals came into being thus saving lives, when infant mortality dropped from 60% to 30% in the crowded cities, when silk was used for suturing rather than unclean animal tendon; it saw the end of scurvy and the idea that prevention was better than cure. Public Health initiatives started delivering clean water, air wasn’t as polluted and refuse collection and waste drainage in cities was becoming a proper urban practice.

He became Professor of Midwifery at Edinburgh University in 1840, Physician to Queen Victoria in 1847, President of the Royal College of Physicians in 1850 and Baronet in 1866.

He was an ebullient and very compassionate man given to innovation and testing and finding practical solutions to problems he came across in his everyday medical practice. He certainly had many patients and colleagues who revered him and, of course, the few colleagues whose noses were put out of joint as Simpson’s reputation grew. He locked horns with the religious on whether man should interfere with ‘god’s’ handiwork.

He had no time for religious dogma. He became a Christian but eschewed bible teachings.

“The Bible, however, as it always seems to me teaches us no kind of knowledge which the intellect of man is unable to discover. It is a revelation of religious truths, not a revelation of scientific truth; and when the Westminster divines insisted their opinion of the duration and age of the world, they took up a position in science which science has since entirely contradicted.” Simpson, p.248

My little post here is just a snippet. It serves to indicate my high regard for medical science and its pioneers. We women owe doctors like JY Simpson a lot.

The biography itself is absolutely un-put-downable. The images Myrtle creates are so evocative. The descriptions of Simpson’s Edinburgh in the 1800s made old Edinburgh come alive in my mind’s eye and I have a much better understanding of how the ‘auld toun’ was built and what a disease infested place it became during the Highland Clearances when so many, thrown off their lands, came to the towns.

What an interesting, albeit dangerous, time to have lived in over-crowded towns and cities. I don’t envy that age but am grateful for the innovative people who did live at that time. We have a lot to thank them for. They pioneered so much in the way of health and the management of a burgeoning urbanisation.

Simpson – Princes St., near St. John’s Church

WIBs #4 – RBS education schemes!

Leading on from my first WIBs article that mentioned Henry Dundas, 1^st Viscount Melville, I decided to take a look at Dundas House on the eastern side of At Andrew Square. I took a couple of photographs of this imposing building that was built in 1774 as a house for Sir Lawrence Dundas.

HQ of the RBS St Andrew Square

This mansion of a building became the headquarters for the Royal Bank of Scotland in the 1820s. I have yet to go inside.

Dundas House dome

I do know the ceiling is magnificent. Lawrence was a businessman, landowner and politician.

But long before the RBS shifted from the ‘auld toon’ it had developed a name for itself. Indeed, Scotland and banking especially during Adam Smith’s time in the late 1700s brought capitalism to the fore with banks moving from gold and silver based currencies to paper money redeemable against the banks’ assets.

Edinburgh and Scotland itself, can notch up so many ‘firsts’ it boggles the mind. These ‘firsts’ are from all across the board as well, though banking and finance was a Scottish speciality for some time!

The RBS, in 1728 was the first bank in the world to offer an overdraft facility. Whether or not some of these ‘firsts’ are for good or ill is debatable!

The 1700s were rife with the Acts of Union and the Jacobites and Whigs,  banks, the Scottish Enlightenment and, I discovered yesterday listening to a talk by Rachel Hewitt, the first Ordnance Survey map of Britain. 1791 was its start date with complaints about the lack of accurate topographical knowledge of Scotland after the 1784 rebellion.  Ms Hewitt’s doctoral thesis has been published as a book – Mapping the Nation.

Rachel Hewitt

Anyway, the “Old Bank” the Bank of Scotland was suspected of Jacobite leanings and the Royal Bank of Scotland, the “New Bank” chartered in 1727 was established with decidedly Hanoverian and Whig ties. The RBS was out to either kill the Bank of Scotland or take it over.

The rivalry between these banks led to internecine policies that saw the RBS buying up Bank of Scotland notes and then presenting them in bulk for payment, thus forcing the Bank of Scotland to call in all loans. This toing and froing made both banks vulnerable to attack from each other and eventually a truce was called but it was 1751 before the banks agreed to accept each other’s notes.

In any case, the RBS grew, opened branches and bought out failing banks in England and has become the biggest clearing bank in Scotland today.

Of course the threat of the global collapse of the financial sector in 2008-2009 affected the RBS as much as any other bank except there was the added disadvantage that the RBS had Sir Fred Goodwin as its mismanager. He offered his resignation that was accepted, presumably with alacrity by RBS’s chairman. But it cost a pretty penny in pension moneys that he had written into his contract.

Fred Goodwin

He had led the massive aggressive expansion taking RBS to the world’s largest company by assets and, of course, also oversaw RBS’s spectacular fall during the financial crisis. His name became Scottish mud after his £3 million lump sum payout and the disclosure that his pension would be about £700,000 annually for life. He agreed to slice £200,000 per year from his pension after a huge outcry from the community.

Now he has a lucrative job with the architectural firm that worked on the Scottish parliament. Here’s a great quote from the Linlithgow MP at the time, Michael Connarty:

“This is a very odd appointment and will confuse people.  People wonder what he knew about banking and will now wonder what he knows about building. There is a deep irony that one the architects of RBS’ downfall is now working for the architects involved in the Holyrood building fiasco.”

The Scottish parliament building opened three years late and £431million was 10 times over budget.

The oddness of Goodwin’s appointment to RMJM Architects becomes somewhat clearer when you realise that his mate helped him out. All together now ….

Sometimes I look at the buildings that house the headquarters of banks and reflect on their being training grounds for people like Fred the Shred. Like politicians and used car salesmen, banks and bankers enjoy little or no respect from the ordinary bloke.

The obscenity that forms the bonus structures in firms like banks, investment and insurance monoliths, resource giants, retail and armament firms is what will bring capitalism to its knees. Eventually. It is an unsustainable system of wealth creation and brings out the worst possible aspects of human nature.

I must say that I find enjoyment in ferreting out information on people who form the ‘best’ and the ‘worst’ in our societies. It is always enlightening, and never black and white!