IN THE ABSENCE OF CLOCKS the sun, moon and stars must have featured, but also shadows, bells, sermons, and festivals. history and a love of the Roman world have prompted him to spend decades studying the late Republic and the empire down as far as the days of Byzantium (http://simonturney.com/).
IN SEARCH OF LOST TIME BY MARTINE BAILEY
Almanacs and the Calendar Change How did our ancestors orient themselves in time? It is a subject that much historical fiction glosses over – how ordinary people knew what year it was, or even what day or hour. In the absence of clocks, the sun, moon and stars must have featured, but also shadows, bells, sermons, and festivals. This riddle gives another clue. My first is a part of the day; My second at feasts overflows; In a cottage my whole is often seen, To measure old Time as he goes. As well as the homely timekeeper described above, the wider passage of time was largely defined by almanacs. These pocket-sized booklets combined calendars and astronomical charts alongside sensational predictions. Before electricity they were essential references to record the waxing moon that lit the traveller’s way, for sowing crops, and trading at local fairs. They offer tantalising insights into our ancestors’ lives – care of livestock, medical remedies, weather lore, and even lucky and unlucky times to travel or cut one’s hair. Costing only a penny or two, they were read by ordinary people who read little else. Almanack sellers were a familiar sight on every High Street, crying their wares: “Here’s the Sun, Moon & Stars all for sale!” At times of crisis, almanacs outsold even the Bible. Much of their appeal stemmed from their astrological predictions on world affairs. By the mid-eighteenth century, the leading almanack by far was Old Moore’s Vox Stellarum (The Voice of the Stars). In spite of astrologer Francis Moore having died in 1714, his name still exerts selling power today. After buying an 1801 Old Moore’s for £20 on eBay, I wrote a historical mystery titled The Almanack (Severn House, 2019), about a sinister broadsheet that predicts a string of murders around the festivals of the British year. Further researches showed that eighteenth-century almanacs evolved to meet a middle-class desire for amusement and instruction. The Ladies’ Diary, founded in 1704, featured famous women, a short story, recipes and ferociously difficult mathematical problems. At the heart of its success were the rhyming riddles or ‘enigmas’. Unlike cryptic crosswords or sudoku, riddling was often a group activity, as seen in Jane Austen’s Emma. Austen herself was a clever writer of riddles, along with Jonathan Swift, Edgar Allan Poe, and other great literary minds. In 1752, we find one of the most curious pages ever printed in a calendar. The Calendar Act had announced the ‘annihilation of eleven days’, when 2 September was immediately followed by 14 September. The rationale was Britain’s continued usage of the Julian
calendar long after much of the rest of Europe had adopted the Gregorian system. As well as lagging behind solar time, Britain was also suffering Brexit-like confusion when trading abroad, struggling with ‘dual dating’ showing different days, months and even years. There was some apprehension around the change, rather like the fears of the year 2000 millennium bug. People worried about losing their birthdays, wages, rents and interest payments. As a novelist I spotted the perfect opportunity to play with time while my heroine strove to unmask a killer. I also selected 50 historical riddles (with answers) to head up each chapter. It is a myth that workers rioted about the loss of 11 days but generally the impact depended on an individual’s place in the social order. In Colonial America, Benjamin Franklin joked that “it is pleasant for an old man to be able to go to bed on the September 2 and not have to get up until September 14”. Yet amongst country people resistance persisted around the old-style festivals, particularly the four quarter days of Christmas, Lady Day, Midsummer and Michaelmas, dates when business was generally settled. In Time’s Alternation: Calendar Reform in Early Modern England, historian Robert Poole theorizes that the Georgian elite was working to regulate time by way of clocks, machines, and eventually the tyranny of the factory whistle (UCL Press, 1998). The calendar change disrupted the people’s ‘natural time’ that had always followed the stars and seasons and in response almanacs soon resumed printing the ‘Old Style’ dates of many festivals. For example, the autumn festival of Michaelmas was marked by eating a goose, yet at New Michaelmas the birds were insufficiently fat. Ancient weather lore no longer matched the date, with less chance of may blossom on New May Day or snowfall at New Style Christmas. Could our obsession with Christmas snow be a folk memory of the older calendar? In my latest novel The Prophet (Severn House, 2021), I revisited my characters to write a second murder mystery which asks if it is possible to see into the future. As historian Margaret Perkins notes in “A History of the Future”, the gradual suppression of ‘magical’ practices to glimpse the future may cost us a lack of wonder, imagination, and readiness for change (Mots Pluriels, Vol 1, 1996). So as I wrote my books I did my best to invite a little wonder into the process, following the red-lettered Saints’ days, and the lunar and solar year. From gathering my apple crop on St Ninian’s day to searching out All Hallows mummers in Chester’s pubs, I tried to commemorate the circling year. I still cannot tell the time by the Seven Stars (even with the app Star chart), but I can now recognise the moon’s phases and major constellations. During the Covid-19 lockdown, Zoom calls, entertainment streaming and augmented reality have continued to erode our awareness of natural time. Meanwhile, recent news is that Britain has lost half of its wildlife since the 1960s. Maybe more of us need to connect to the natural time and rhythms of the past again – for the sake of all our futures. Solution to riddle: Hour + glass = Hourglass Martine Bailey writes historical mysteries about food, time and memory. Her latest releases, The Almanack and The Prophet, are published by Severn House. http://www.martinebailey.com/
A publication of the Historical Novel Society | www.historicalnovelsociety.org
15
