Some Books Linger With Me: "Hanging Mary"

You might remember the quotation from Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey: “It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.” Susan Higginbotham's Hanging Mary reminded me of that quotation, and even after I reviewed the novel in April, I couldn't get it off my mind, so I wrote about it some more, submitting a different commentary to The Christian Review, "Part of the Story: Justice, Love, and Loyalty in Hanging Mary":

Susan Higginbotham’s historical novel Hanging Mary is set in Washington, DC during the waning months of the Civil War. Two narrators, Mary Surratt, proprietor of a boarding house and Honora (Nora) Fitzpatrick, one of her boarders, tell the story of John Wilkes Booth’s conspiracy either to kidnap or murder Abraham Lincoln for the sake of the Confederacy—at least as much as they each know from interacting with Booth, Surratt’s son John, and other conspirators who visit the boarding house from the Autumn of 1864 to the Holy Week of 1865 (Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, Good Friday). . . .

Hanging Mary brings up several moral issues. One issue is whether it is just for U.S. civilians to be tried in a military tribunal without recourse to the protections of civilian courts—a question resolved in 1866 by the U.S. Supreme Court: no, it is not ( Ex parte Milligan ).

The web of conspiracy at the Surratt household brings up other tests of love and loyalty. The genre of historical fiction and the narrative structure of this novel foster meditation on the virtues of justice, love, and loyalty. The reader becomes the judge, weighing the evidence: whose love and loyalty are well-placed and whose are not?

Read the rest there.

For the Christian Review: Amateurs and Music

My comparison/contrast essay on Florence Foster Jenkins and Gilbert Kaplan has been posted on The Christian Review site:

From France and the USA/UK, two movies have been made recently about the same woman. The French movie, titled “Marguerite,” presents a fictionalized version of the story, while the U.S. film, starring Meryl Streep, is presented as a “biopic” titled simply “Florence Foster Jenkins,” with the explanatory subtitle, “The Inspiring Story of the World’s Worst Singer.” . . .

Florence Foster Jenkins (1868-1944) loved music; she attended concerts and operas; she studied singing; she wanted to perform. She had the money and time to dedicate to the art of classical singing; to learn the languages and the arias; to pay her accompanist and to rent the concert hall.

The only problem: Florence Foster Jenkins could not sing on pitch. Or in rhythm. Or even with proper diction. There was indeed a medical problem as her husband had, like Isak Dinesen’s, given her syphilis. Nevertheless, she fulfilled her dreams of singing on stage.

The two movies examine this story to depict what happens when someone so self-deluded takes the delusion public. It’s one thing to sing the Queen of the Night aria from Mozart’s “Die Zauberflöte” in the shower (you’ll swallow lots of water!), another to sing it on stage at Carnegie Hall. Sample her efforts at singing Mozart here. . . . .

Perhaps a counter-balance to her story is Gilbert Kaplan’s fascination and dedication to Mahler’s Second Symphony, the “Resurrection.” Kaplan, who died at the age of 74 on January 1, 2016, followed the same path as Mrs. Jenkins—but as a conductor.

He earned his money on Wall Street in financial publishing and went to a performance of Mahler’s Second conducted by Leopold Stokowski in 1965; it changed his life. With money enough and time, he studied the score; he learned how to conduct; he traveled around the world to hear live performances of Mahler’s massive symphony: five movements; 90 minutes long; 100 piece orchestra; large choir; soloists; offstage brass and percussion—and an organ!

Then he conducted the Mahler Second Symphony with several world-class symphony orchestras, recorded it twice, and still continued to study it. There was quite a debate among critics and even symphony orchestra musicians whether or not he truly conducted the performances or what he contributed to the interpretation of the masterpiece.

But Kaplan’s dedication bore great fruit and he became known as a specialist on the “Resurrection” Symphony. He purchased the autograph manuscript and published a facsimile, co-editing the latest critical edition of the symphony. Kaplan never accepted a fee for his conducting engagements and limited them to three outings with the Second Symphony annually, the only work he conducted in public, although he did record the “Adagietto” from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. When the Vienna Philharmonic, which Mahler conducted, invites you to conduct and records the results, you have succeeded.

Read the rest there, of course.

The Fortnight for Freedom Begins: St. John Rigby

The annual Fortnight for Freedom, sponsored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to promote religious liberty, begins today and ends on July 4, our Independence Day.

FYI: tomorrow, Monday, June 22, I'll be on the Son Rise Morning Show to discuss the Fortnight and Saints John Fisher and Thomas More, whose shared feast is always an important part of the Fortnight.

Today, however, we should honor an English Catholic martyr who died because England did not respect religious freedom in the sixteenth/seventeenth centuries (who did? until Lord Baltimore founded Maryland), and one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales, the layman St. John Rigby:

Rigby was born circa 1570 at Harrock Hall, Eccleston, near Chorley, Lancashire, the fifth or sixth son of Nicholas Rigby, by his wife Mary (née Breres). In 1600 Rigby was working for Sir Edmund Huddleston, whose daughter Mrs. Fortescue was summoned to the Old Bailey for recusancy. Because she was ill, Rigby appeared for her, was compelled to confess his Catholicism, and sent to Newgate. The next day, the feast day of St Valentine, he signed a confession saying that since he had been reconciled to the Roman Catholic faith by Saint John Jones, a Franciscan priest, he had not attended Anglican services. He was sent back to Newgate and later transferred to the White Lion. Twice he was given the chance to recant, but twice refused. His sentence was carried out. He gave the executioner who helped him up to the cart a piece of gold, saying, "Take this in token that I freely forgive thee and others that have been accessory to my death." Rigby was executed by hanging at St Thomas Waterings on June 21, 1600.

Saint John Jones, the priest who had reconciled Rigby, had died at the same place Rigby had died, St Thomas Waterings, two years earlier, on July 12, 1598.

St John Rigby Roman Catholic Sixth Form College in Orrell, Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, Greater Manchester is named after St. John Rigby. One of its buildings, Harrock House, is named after Rigby's birthplace.

Other reports of his execution include this exchange:

On his way to execution, the hurdle was stopped by a Captain Whitlock, who wished him to conform and asked him if he were married, to which the martyr replied, "I am a bachelor; and more than that I am a maid", and the captain thereupon desired his prayers.

Rigby's conversion to Catholicism was a felony in Elizabethan England (so much for Elizabeth I's claim not to want to see into men's souls!), as was attendance at the Catholic Mass--he would have just been fined and/or imprisoned for not attending Anglican services.

I will be highlighting the several English martyrs, canonized and beatified--and one Irish martyred saint--throughout the Fortnight. Here is an overview of them, published on The Christian Review.

A New Outlet: The Christian Review

This is my third piece for The Christian Review: on the reputation of Mary I:

In spite of the efforts of several biographers over the past seven years, the rehabilitation of Mary I’s reputation seems impossible. The burning bodies of 280 English men and women haunt her legacy — and the memory of Catholicism in England.

Historians such Linda Porter, Anna Whitelock, Judith Richards, Susan Doran and Thomas S. Freeman, and John Edwards have pointed out that Mary, Henry VIII, and Catherine of Aragon’s daughter forged the path that her half-sister, Elizabeth, would follow. Mary I was the first queen regnant of England; her anointing and crowning broke the taboo of those semi-sacraments being reserved for men; she and Reginald Cardinal Pole, the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, revived and renewed the practice of Catholicism in England; and she possessed the Tudor charisma while being a hard-working and thoughtful monarch.

But for all of Mary I’s historic attainments, the smoke from the pyres of Smithfield still gets in our eyes.

When Anna Whitelock, author of Mary Tudor: Princess, Bastard, Queen (Random House: 2010) stated in the BBC History Magazine (Christmas 2014) that the campaign to extirpate heresy in England was working, one reader’s response in January 2015 was immediately negative—the heresy campaign was evil, even if it was effective. Eamon Duffy made the same statement in his study The Fires of Faith: Catholic England under Mary Tudor in 2010, arguing that the negative campaign of heresy trials and executions was matched by a positive campaign of preaching, publishing, and rebuilding—and he met with the same response from reviewers like Hilary Mantel and Richard Wilkinson.

The 2lst century biographers follow the lead of H.F.M. Prescott’s 1953 Mary Tudor: The Spanish Tudor to present Mary’s great qualities of generosity, love of children, faithfulness to her religion, dedication to her mother, and adoration of her father, and how horrible her adolescence and early adulthood were; not allowed to see her dying mother, forced by her adored father to swear to her own bastardy, prevented from the normal course of marriage and childbearing.

Read the rest there. Here are my other two pieces: one on William Byrd; the other another review of Jessie Child's God's Traitors.