Word of the day: sept

It's not what you think.  Not even remotely.

I'm not referring to the Game of Thrones equivalent of a church (albeit it's the same spelling), nor any other meanings derived from septem, Latin for seven.

Definition

A sept is a division of a (large) family, especially a division of a clan.  It's particularly applicable to Scotland and Ireland, where there can be large groupings of people with identical surnames.


Context

"In seventeenth-century Scotland Clan Campbell stood by itself as a separate race, almost a separate state, whose politics were determined by the whim of its ruling prince.  Built upon the ruins of many little septs, it excelled [sic] in numbers and wealth every other Highland clan."

From John Buchan's Montrose (1928, p213), a biography of James Graham (1612 - 1650), Marquess of Montrose.  He was a Scottish nobleman in the time of the English Civil War, who fought on the royalist side against the Covenanters.  This was a Scottish movement which replaced the Anglican hierarchy of bishops with an assembly of elders, from which arose the Presbytarian church.  Montrose was on the losing side in several ways, but his victories gave him a good reputation as a military strategist.

Etymology

Sept appears to be a corruption of sect; State Papers from 1535 and 1537 refer respectively to secte then septe; possibly influenced by the Latin saeptum (fence, enclosure), which also gave rise to the anatomy term septum, for a partition between two cavities.  Sept is cognate (language derivation-equivalent) with the German equivalent, sippe.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927 - 2014)

The bright side of the death of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombian writer and Nobel Prize winner, is that it will stimulate interest in him and his works.

In reporting the event, the BBC read out the first sentence from his masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude:

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice".

But it's the last sentence of the book I remember... however, quoting it may be something of a spoiler - as would revealing the fate of the Colonel before the firing squad.  For me, the last moments of the book were an unanticipated but satisfying finale.  Read it yourself, you may not agree.

Although it's been seen as a historical allegory, Garcia Marquez says he actually wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude to leave a literary picture of his childhood, which "was spent in a large, very sad house with a sister who ate earth, a grandmother who prophesied the future, and countless relatives of the same name who never made much distinction between happiness and insanity".

From such springs the seeds of the "magical realism" genre of literature.

he also said that if he'd let the colonel in the story take power, he would have ended up writing The Autumn of the Patriarch instead - which, clearly, he did do later.  A worthy companion book.

The BBC also noted with a faint whiff of distaste that Garcia Marquez was friends with Fidel Castro.  Yes he was, and he defended the revolution despite what he termed the ups and downs he had with both Cuba and communists more generally.  His achievements on human rights have been downplayed, perhaps because the work he has done has been subtle, behind the scenes.

I include in the photo the book that for me most brings to mind the magic/realism of Garcia Marquez: The Mule's Foal, by Fotini Epanomitis, an Australian of Greek heritage who sadly never wrote another book.  Although grounded in a Greek village, its humour and surrealism sometimes threatens to overshadow Garcia Marquez.  Seek it out too.

Bryson and the pilfering Queen Elizabeth

Bill Bryson's book At Home, intended to be a "history of household life", is written in his usual avuncular style, rambling through his subject matter at will, with more a regard for an entertaining anecdote than academic rigour.

Some of his meanderings, however, strain belief a little bit.  At the very least, one would suspect that our Bill is prone to a dose of exaggeration for effect.

Still, even with a dose of healthy skepticism, it was a bit hard to swallow the following passage I read this morning:

"A hapless courtier named John Puckering gave Elizabeth a silk fan festooned with diamonds, several loose jewels, a gown of rare splendour and a pair of exceptionally fine virginals, then watched at their first dinner as Her Majesty admired the silver cutlery and a salt cellar and, without a word, dropped them into the royal handbag." (p69)

Now I'm the last to call myself a defender of royal privileges, but it did make me wonder if Uncle Bill had been on the grog.  So I did some research.


 After wading through similar double takes at the same passage, I found Bryson had belatedly added (some) references, via his web site.  That passage referred to a 2003 magazine (!) called History Today.  I found a copy of the article - however, it did not include the incident.  To be fair on Bryson, I suspect him more of shoddy record-keeping than out-and-out fibbing.



The article appeared to be an extract from a book about "royal progresses", where the court, with all its baggage and hundreds of attendants, would visit (or descend upon) a member of the gentry, at some cost to the host.


Bryson again:

"But his daughter Elizabeth cannily saw that it was much cheaper to visit others and let them absorb the costs of her travels, so she resurrected the venerable practice of making annual royal progesses." (p68)

Elsewhere I read that these progresses actually left her out of pocket, so I suspect Uncle Bill of interpolating somewhat.

However, I did finally find reference to that very incident - in an official site called The History Of Parliament Online:

"Elizabeth twice visited Puckering’s ‘poor hermitage’ at Kew, where her entertainment in 1595 was ‘great and costly’. Puckering gave her a fan (its handle garnished with diamonds), a jewel valued at £400, and a pair of virginals. The Queen ‘to grace his lordship the more ... took from him a salt, a spoon, and a fork of fair agate’. In the same year Puckering complained that serving her as lord keeper was costing him £1,000 a year, that the job had no residential accommodation, and that he had never been paid for being Speaker, which had cost him £2,000 in losses from his law practice. He claimed £400 was due, as each Parliament had lasted two sessions, but the suggestion that he had not been paid was, in fact, false, as his fee had gone to cancel a debt he owed the Crown."

 In fact, Puckering was apparently a self-made man, who rose through the ranks from a legal profession to eventually become a man of fortune and the Speaker of the Parliament.  He wasn't exactly crying poor mouth...  well actually he was, judging by the comments above.  But he certainly was a man of means.  He left estates in four counties, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

And yes, clearly Uncle Bill was heightening the story for effect (I bet he tells whoppers around the campfire).  Elizabeth did take, but not in the manner Bryson depicted; I suspect any more details found would put the incident in even more realistic a context.

It does rather sound like I'm defending royalty, doesn't it?  Whoops.  And I'm just as guilty as Bryson of incomplete referencing.  Well I had them here somewhere...


...Here's Bryson's notes (such as there are); the magazine was May 2003; the book was Royal Court and Progresses, by Alison Sim.

The year ahead in books

Christmas added to the daunting pile of books that I have some hope of reading.  Actually, that's rather too optimistic: I'm always adding more  to the list than I have any hope of reading (a number of last year's crop have fallen by the wayside and just adorn the increasingly cluttered shelves of my library.)

In order of likelihood of getting through them:

Anthony Horowitz – The House of Silk (a very promising Sherlock Holmes novel.  I will need to pace myself to make it last.)

Bill Bryson – At Home (very readable, often very informative, if somewhat tabloid)

R J Unstead – Invaded Island (one of a job lot of history picture books I acquired.  This one covers my areas of interest nicely, dwelling on the waves of invasion of England up to the Normans)

Gardner Dozois (ed.) – Year’s Best Science Fiction 15 [1998]

Margaret Atwood – The Blind Assassin (yet another Booker prizewinner)

P G Wodehouse – Heavy Weather (dubious so far, but he’s an easy read)

R G Grant – 1848: Year of Revolution (another history picture book)

David Piper – Kings and Queens of England and Scotland (yes, another picture book, particularly dubious this time, but a very useful quick reference)

Christopher Hitchens – Arguably (large book of essays from the recently-deceased journalist)

Stanislaw Lem – The Chain of Chance (sci fi, of a style I find dry – not progressed much through it in the past year)

Simon Schama – Rough Crossing (potentially boring book from an interesting historian)

Eric Hobsbawm – The Age of Revolution (history, albeit not my current area of interest)

- I’ve started on all bar the Schama book.

Lots of history, hey?  I'm sure if I came across some decent readings on genetics and evolution, they'd be added - but I fear the easy pickings have been done.  This list excludes the plethora of non-book readings I go through, magazines such as New Scientist, and various web sites.  There’s also a smattering of other books lying around the house that I will doubtless bump into well before I get through these ones.