Shin-Kickers
I have a soft spot for historical characters who push society’s boundaries and make them bend.* People who sit where they aren’t supposed to sit, speak up when the world wants them to be quiet, and study things people tell them they can’t study. ** People who find their voice or kick open doors. People who challenge empires and win. People who rise up from poverty to found empires. (I’m looking at you Genghis Khan.) Women who disguise themselves as men and join the army. In short, shin-kickers.
But in looking over the last two years of posts here on History in the Margins, I see that stories about people who kick their way out of society’s margins and onto the page are in short supply. That’s going to change. In the coming months, I’m going to introduce you to some of my favorite shin-kicker. But I’d also like to introduce some of yours.
Who are your favorite Shin-Kickers From History? Give me a name, a link, a sentence, a story. I’ll take it from there.
*This will not come as a surprise to those of you who know me in real life.
**Sometimes the pursuit of knowledge is rebellion in its purest form.
Image credit: iamsania / 123RF Stock Photo
Erasmus Darwin Is Tracking Me Down
One of the weird facts about historical research (or maybe just about life in general) is that once a person or idea has come to your attention you find references to him/it/them everywhere. In a footnote. As a tangential character is a study of something else. The subject of a new book sitting on the front table at your local bookstore.
The upside is that there is always a new subject clamoring for my attention. The downside is that sometimes it feels like I'm being stalked. Right now, Erasmus Darwin is tracking me down.
I've been vaguely aware for a long time that Erasmus Darwin was Charles Darwin's grandfather and wrote some funky poetry about botany, but I never gave him much thought. Then a friend of mine raved about a study of Erasmus with the engaging subtitle of Sex, Science and Serendipity.* I wrote it down on the ever expanding To-Be-Read-Someday list and went on my merry way. A few days later, Mr. Darwin appeared in a book I was reading on a totally different subject. Then it happened again. Soon it felt like I couldn't even think about eighteenth century England without tripping over at least one reference to Erasmus Darwin--physician, poet, botanist, and proponent of progress.
It turns out that Erasmus Darwin was an Enlightenment figure of some importance--if an idea was going around he was sure to catch it. He was a founding member of the Lunar Society, an informal group of influential scientific entrepreneurs that included, among others, James Watt (who harnessed the power of steam), Joseph Priestly (who discovered oxygen), and Josiah Wedgwood (innovative potter, social reformer, and, incidentally, Charles Darwin's other grandfather). He promoted new technologies not only with his wallet but with his words--writing heroic couplets celebrating the scientific accomplishments of others.** He invented a speaking machine, a copying machine and a steering mechanism for his carriage that was adopted for automobiles 130 years later. He supported the French Revolution, campaigned for education for women and the abolition of slavery, and developed an early theory of evolution.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, himself no slouch in the polymath department, credited Erasmus with "perhaps a greater range of knowledge than any other man in Europe."
Mr. Darwin, I look forward to getting to know you better..
* Patricia Fara. Erasmus Darwin: Sex, Science and Serendipity . Available in a bookstore near you, or at least by special order, depending on the bookstore.
** He also wrote The Loves of the Plants, a long poem about Linnaean classifications. It was later republished as part of a two-part work titled The Botanic Garden, illustrated by William Blake and Henry Fuseli. I have not read it, but I assume that it is weird. Because really, how could it not be?
Words With a Past: Strike While The Iron Is Hot
I've always assumed that the phrase "strike while the iron is hot" was simply a term derived from blacksmithing. I recently learned that the phrase has a history beyond the making of horseshoes and sword blades. Who would have thought it was linked to marriage?
Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act of 1754 changed the laws governing marriage in England. Couples under the age of 21 couldn't marry without their parents consent. Marriage could only take place in an Anglican church, and only after the banns were read in church on three successive Sundays. (The alternative to reading the banns was an expensive special license, obtainable only from a bishop.) The idea was to stop "irregular" marriages and to keep minors from marrying without parental consent.*
In Scotland, a couple could legally marry by simply declaring their intention in front of two witnesses and swearing that they were both over the age of sixteen and free to marry. As any reader of Jane Austen or Regency romances knows, Gretna Green, just one mile inside the Scottish border and on the main road from London, soon became the preferred stop for those who found the English laws inconvenient.
Although anyone could perform the ceremony, Gretna Green's blacksmith, Joseph Paisley knew an opportunity when he saw one and soon established himself as the first of the so-called "anvil priests". Eloping couples often arrived in the village with the bride's angry father in hot pursuit and Paisley was renowned for his speed in performing the service. His motto was "strike while the iron's hot" and he boasted that he could join two people in matrimony as firmly as he welded two pieces of iron together. **
Basically, getting married "over the anvil" was the eighteenth century equivalent of running off to Vegas, without the Elvis impersonator.
* The fictional trope of a wealthy young heiress pursued by fortune-hunters seems to have been a real fear among the political classes in Regency England. I haven't yet figured out whether it was a genuine problem or a bit of class-paranoia. Anyone out there know?
** He also talked about welding the fetters of marriage, a phrase only a few degrees away from "the old ball and chain".