As someone who has a penchant for the past and a hunger for history I sometimes ask myself what history actually is? And why does it fascinate me so? Mary Wellesley’s Hidden Hands, and books like them, play a part. For if you stop and pare it down all we know of the past, history and its people is from what has been left behind. I am of an age now where events from my younger life are now considered history and I know they are well documented, not just because I was around then and can remember them but because our methods of communications and the dissemination of knowledge and events are, not so much more sophisticated (is there anyone living today who could produce from scratch an illuminated manuscript?) but far wider reaching due to the advancements in printing and media. So anything pertaining to ‘old’ history becomes so precious and so awe inspiring.
Hidden Hands looks specifically at manuscripts and scribes with some detailed explorations of artefacts like St. Cuthbert’s Gospel, The Winchester Bible and The Lindisfarne Gospels and some investigations into the lives of those handful of scribes and authors whose works have survived with enough detail to tell us a little about them - Bede, Chaucer. It’s not all historical figures, either, ordinary people feature, too, with their everyday struggles to earn a living and pay their way.
It’s a scholarly work with a loving attention to detail and the authors passion for her subject shines through. I learnt so much from this book. How ink was made, how colours were achieved and the sheer labour involved in these creations. The lives of some of those who were active in the productions of manuscripts was absorbing. I was fascinated learning about the anchorites.
Something else that occurred to me, too, was how through time there are some issues that endure. We like to think, in our 21st century ’freedom’ that women are slightly more emancipated than they were so nothing could have prepared me for a 15th century Welsh poet’s ‘Ode to the Vagina’! Gwerful Mechain? You rock!
Discovering that Henry VIII annotated what he read made me glad that the nowadays ubiquitous Post It note was not available to him or they might not have survived to let us know his kingly thoughts!
I also wondered that for all the material that has survived the rigours of time how much more must have been lost? Ms. Wellesley tells us of specific fires and confrontations that jeopardised some of the artefacts she refers to in the book. But all we know of history, certainly early history, is from those relics that have survived.
My copy of this book was a gifted proof from Ana McLaughlin at riverrun books but I will be purchasing a finished copy so that I can behold the visual beauty of the manuscripts. I am someone who gets a palpable buzz from concrete evidence of history. I cannot pass the Tower of London without getting goosebumps. and I know that were I to physically behold something that Henry VIII had actually written on every nerve ending would be fizzing!
My final thoughts are about words and books and how much they have contributed to our detailed knowledge and understanding of the past. But also the skill and artistry that existed and allowed such manuscripts to be produced. And I was also reminded of Amy Jeff’s Storyland which retells myths and legends of Britain and Cnut is mentioned here as well as in Hidden Hands. The synchronicity of reading two books in the same month that mentions Cnut somehow delights me! So much of the past is revealed to us through words and pictures. Not merely the events of the age but the social histories and protocols of an age we might find hard to comprehend in our ‘enlightened’ lives today. And without the past there is no present - and certainly no future.
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