Pandemic Health and Fitness
1.1 Introduction
There is something so appealing, if possibly very American, about the idea that things could be different, could be better, if only we take responsibility for ourselves and try harder. When the world presents seemingly impossible challenges, when everything seems conspired against us, focusing on changing oneself cuts things down to size, scales them down, makes it seem like there is hope, that we really can make a real difference in our life and in the world, no matter what obstacles lay in our path.
Such optimism about the benefits of self-discipline is an ideology and though increasingly globally popular (Andreasson and Johansson 2014b), some consider it to be an individualist delusion. But this belief is not only an idea, it is also a real place: the gym. As Wacquant (2004: 14–15) emphasizes, gyms are important sites where self-discipline and moral behaviors are not only practiced but made possible, “the vector of a debanalization of everyday life in that [the gym] turns bodily routine and remolding into a bridge to a distinctive sensorial and emotional universe” (Wacquant 2004: 15, italics in original). Gyms are indeed specialized structures created for the purpose of achieving a variety of fitness goals by working out. They are therefore structured places where individuals can perform nearly any kind of training and exercises, though different gyms offer distinct options—anything from pools to treadmills, free weights, exercise bikes, weight machines, saunas, tracks to run on, and group classes to sign up for in everything from kickboxing to yoga (see Chapter 2). And gym rooms almost always have mirrors everywhere (Chapter 3). Most people who go to gyms are not professional or aspiring athletes. For the vast majority of the people we got to know during our fieldwork, and for ourselves as well, working out is an elective activity or hobby, but it is not work as such.
Gyms, and fitness more generally, have been very popular in the United States and elsewhere for several decades now (Andreasson and Johansson
2014b). More recently, at least prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, fitness fanatics (Hejtmanek 2020) have been populating gyms and other spaces while engaging in obsessive training and exercising practices. Some still do now that fears of COVID-19 seem to have subsided. What exactly makes someone a fitness fanatic? Perhaps surprisingly, it does not mean someone who appears to have some idealized body type. Regular gym goers may be dedicated but that does not mean all of them, or even most of them, achieve a six-pack, bulging biceps, narrow waists, and so on. Even so, this group stands out from the general population, just not necessarily because of how they look. It has to do with their routine, choreographed actions (Chapter 2), their self-understanding and possible self-delusion (Chapter 3), their relationships with instructors (Chapter 4), risk perceptions (Chapter 5), and the groups they belong to (Chapter 6). While we describe the gym as our ethnographic site in more depth in Chapter 2, here, we begin by explaining the rationale behind our choice of such a site for our study of fitness practices in the US.
Not that many people who go to gyms are as committed to training as our interlocutors, or to train at all. Even before March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic started, only a fraction of people attended gyms regularly. According to the Global Health and Fitness Association, roughly 20% of Americans belonged to some gym or fitness center in 2019 and barely 20% of this group went there consistently.1 The same number of Americans who attend gyms regularly, roughly 4% of the overall population, have significant food allergies2 or are polyamorous.3 Roughly twice that many Americans own motorcycles,4 are millionaires,5 or reportedly think that they could beat an elephant, a lion, or a gorilla in hand-to-hand combat.6 Our point in listing out these somewhat random groupings of people (some of which are surely in doubt) is that our research among ordinary gym goers is already fairly selective, ruling out some people who work out but not in gyms or who work out so irregularly that we never had the chance to meet them.
1.2 Gym Experiences before and during the
COVID-19 Pandemic
We provided a provisional definition of a gym: a structured space in which individuals undergo fitness training of some kind. But what counts as a gym, or what people consider the ideal gym, has changed over time and is not seen in the same way across the world. Moreover, every gym is embedded in a different context with different realities, histories, people, and so forth. Thus, a more universal definition of a gym is an ambitious, unrealistic task. As Wacquant (2004: 13) indeed writes, “[a] gym is a complex and polysemous institution, overloaded with functions and representations that do
not readily reveal themselves to the outside observer, even one acquainted with the nature of the place.” Since the 1970s (though anticipated by historical developments long before [Smith Maguire 2008]), gyms have typically been unisex, supposedly non-competitive arenas for physical training and recreation. Fitness centers (an increasingly popular term for “gyms”) are cultural domains that nevertheless offer a novel way to engage with questions of bodily change. At gyms, change is actually felt and embodied, hoped, and planned for, under one’s control in some ways, resistant in others. A gym thus carries many meanings: some of them are overt, while some others are covert, veiled. In our exploration, we have uncovered the “overloaded functions and representations” (Wacquant 2004: 13) through a close analysis of our interlocutors’ narratives, which we collected in interview settings and through attentive participant observation. Putting our own bodies on the line as it were, we thus have been able to unveil some of the patterns of this very American yet increasingly global model of fitness practice.
At least, that was our plan in the beginning. Then, everything changed in March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic started. Suddenly, the world seemed conspired against the very existence of gyms. This book is about the primary role played by gyms in Americans’ everyday lives, including our experiences conducting research and working out within them. But the importance of gyms as fitness centers partly comes to light as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which led gym members to leave the gym behind in search of new ways to meet their fitness goals and to replicate their gym spaces. The key question, therefore, is what it means to change for the better when in the best of times and the worst of times. What difference does it make when the pursuit of health comes at a time of an unprecedented global health crisis? Related to this are questions we will explore throughout the six chapters of our book. Namely: what will become of all of the strategies that gym members who were forced to leave their gyms behind developed in the interim? Did they create secret spaces where they could exercise anyway? Did they meet outside to practice together? Will these people ever go back to exercise in closed spaces such as gyms? Is the era of the global gym over? This book will answer these and other questions through an analysis of the histories that we have collected from our interlocutors, gym members, managers, fitness enthusiasts, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our interlocutors’ narratives and experiences make sense if considered within our own autoethnographic lenses, however, which add various layers of possible understanding of the realities emerging from these stories. Thus, throughout our book, we will zoom in and zoom out from our voices reflecting upon our interlocutors’ experiences and stories to our own voices as humans practicing fitness and participating in various gym-related activities. It is through the
accompaniment of our autoethnographic reflections that the everydayness of fitness regimes and practices thus becomes salient.
Josh: It is early June in 2019 and I am relieved classes are finally over and I can devote more days to working out at the Riverwalk. My plan is to do strength training three or four days a week, focusing on a specific muscle group using routines designed by my personal trainer, Morgan, whom I see once a week to work on form and learn new techniques. Each day takes me across a variety of machines and free weights. Six years ago, this was all foreign to me, but now I know how to use almost every device in here and am acquainted with the Anglicized Greek names of primary muscle groups (delts, quads, lats, pecs, biceps, abs, glutes …). I came to enjoy the helpful community vibe at the Riverwalk so much that I encouraged my new colleague, Sabina, to join up when she was looking for a place to go. But that was some time ago and now it is June. One day a week I do cardio, usually running for a half hour on the treadmill, but occasionally trying out a stationary bike, elliptical machine, swimming or stairs to spare my knees too much trauma. Morgan insists that I do no more than one cardio session a week to avoid losing too much weight, since I am trying to build muscle, something that does not seem to come as easily to my body as thinning out. I do additional activities to supplement strength training and avoid injuring muscles, which I occasionally strain by using a form that Morgan wouldn’t approve of or by forcing myself to lift too much weight. I try to eat a higher percentage of protein “macros,” which I track through an App on my phone, and eat fewer carbs and less fat. Once a week I also try to go to a yoga class at the gym with Whitney, and occasionally after a grueling workout I will sit in the hot tub and focus the jets on the places that worry me most, which are my back and shoulders. Both are cheaper than massage and all of these options are available at the gym.
In six months, my wife and I will cancel our gym membership and no longer see Morgan (though we will attend her wedding in 2020 via Zoom). I would have been gravely disappointed to know that I wouldn’t get back into a similar routine for nearly two years.
By April of 2021 the only thing I do for a workout is cardio, barely once, sometimes twice a week. I run outside in the area around our apartment complex, a mask in my pocket. I run along sidewalks and over bridges and give people additional distance
when I pass them. My runs are worse, harder to manage without treadmill-like specificity of knowing my exact speed and distance covered. I use an App, Run Keeper, that my wife introduced me to and uses frequently. It allows me to send an image of my run, in the form of a highlighted map, along with emojis showing how I felt afterward. She texts me encouragement, but I never feel better than “OK” and find myself gasping for breaths. I fluctuate anywhere from ten to fifteen pounds heavier than I was two years prior and feel weak and pathetic. I can’t believe how tight some of the clothes were that I bought for myself back then. Trying to remain positive, I don my mask on my walk back home out of courtesy and think about my next run.
Sabina: I first joined the Riverwalk in 2018 because my body felt neglected after so many years of working out by myself with nobody overseeing me or teaching me the correct moves. However, my fitness journey started when I was in my teens, or even earlier. At that time, I was engaging in various sport activities in school without really feeling the desire to improve my performances. It was mostly a way to play with my peers. I had no control on my body practices.
The first time I had the feeling that my body could improve its performance, and that I could perhaps control this improvement, was when I was seventeen. At that time, I was living in Northern Italy, where I was also born. To try various fitness activities, I had been taking bi-weekly ballet classes with an Italian ballet instructor, Roberto, who had been trained in Russia. One afternoon, we were practicing our barre routine while he asked us to raise our right leg up to our ear, by pulling it with our right hand. I looked at him, smiling, and said: “Roberto, I’ll never be able to raise my legs that high.”
He crossed the ballet room and came to me. I was at the barre, ready to continue the routine he had been teaching. He looked at me straight in my eyes. He smiled confidently. He came behind me and gently took my right hand. He directed it toward my leg which was resting on the barre ready to be raised higher. He said: “Your leg can go to the sky, and it can definitely touch your ear if you want to. You just need to believe in yourself. Now, listen to me, take your leg with your hand and lift it gently.”
I took my right leg with my right hand while he was guiding it through the movement. Once I lifted my leg from the barre, he powerfully pushed my leg upward until my calf touched my ear. I didn’t feel any pain, just a slight pressure. “See? You can
do it. Now try to keep it there without the help of my hand.” My leg collapsed when he let it go. “You need a strong core and stronger arms to lift your legs, but you can do it.”
That was the first time I had some agency on my body. I could direct my body to perform in the way I wanted for that particular move. I felt very powerful, physically, and mentally.
The day I signed up at the Riverwalk in January 2018, I didn’t have in mind to conduct an ethnography in that location. Nor did I have in mind to take any classes at the gym. I just wanted to keep my fitness journey going by using certain machines at the gym and by doing some stretching by just following my schedules. I just wanted to use the gym for quick sessions, especially in wintertime when the snow and ice cover the roads and make walking and other outdoor activities impossible. As soon as I signed up, however, I met some fitness instructors who invited me to try their classes for free instead of working out by myself. I did take various classes with all the instructors until I met Sophia, one of our main participants who will be part of several chapters in our book. I took various classes with her such as weightlifting, body blast, bootcamp, spinning, and step (see Chapter 3 for more details on fitness classes). One day, while I was preparing my fitness equipment for her class, I saw that she was taking very heavy dumbbells for herself. She is minute and fit. I looked at her and said: “Sophia, you are so strong! I’ll never be able to lift heavy dumbbells! I am very weak and I have long muscles for my past ballet training, as you know.”
Sophia looked at me straight in my eyes and said: “Yes, you can lift, Sabina, you can lift heavy dumbbells, too! You just need to believe in yourself. You can do it!”
At that moment, I had a powerful flashback. My body shook when I heard Sophia’s utterance. The same utterance was made by my ballet instructor when I was a teenager. At that time, I thought that I was not able to elevate my leg up to my ear. But Roberto proved that I was wrong. I immediately felt motivated and started a new fitness journey with Sophia and other gym members. Since that day, I have been taking classes with various instructors but especially with Sophia who teaches a wide variety of fitness classes as we describe in Chapters 2 and 6. Our classes were in person until March 2020, however.
As is clear from both of our autoethnographic vignettes, which we will explain in more detail below, regular gym goers were affected in a unique
way by various COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. While many public venues closed down as people were restricted to their homes, to reduce the spread of disease, gyms were the only places that suddenly changed to deadly spaces from the opposite, that is, sites of where people go specifically to acquire better health. That symbolic reversal was jarring for many of us, Sabina and Josh included, as we weighed the risks, in the early days of the pandemic, of going to the gym, which, initially, tried to find ways to stay open and serve customers, before being forced to close down entirely.
But people did not stop wanting to work out. After all, people found ways to work out as part of different fitness regimes that preceded the unisex, multipurpose gym we have today. The question was what could replace the gym? One answer came in the form of people attempting, like Josh, to work out alone, outside, or in their home, with more or less success. New devices became popularized for this purpose, home gym equipment like Peloton bikes. For many months during the pandemic, Amazon and other similar sites ran out of gym equipment and tools such as dumbbells, looped bands, standing bikes, and even treadmills. It was impossible to purchase anything, as it happened for some grocery items throughout the first year of the pandemic. In the meantime, new fitness possibilities were emerging, such as fitness groups finding ways to continue working out together, but at a distance, from various locations across the US and Europe. In the case of Sabina’s fitness classes, in early April 2020, Sophia acted rapidly and set up, out of nothing, a virtual space via Zoom “where” she has been working out together with Sabina and other gym members. Some of the members participate from across the ocean too. In this way, she managed to keep the group of her faithful members together even during very challenging times. Regardless of what strategy people who were once gym goers purposed, there was a sense during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic of a before and an after. In fact, we learned from our interlocutors that working out is typically framed through a straightforward temporal horizon of before and after. This took several forms.
First, even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, there was a sense of before and after going to the gym, in general. We heard person after person describe a time before the gym, when they were younger and exercise was something primarily concentrated in youth sports, followed usually by a time where they lost a connection to exercise only to regain their earlier enthusiasm or to develop an affection for fitness that they had not experienced previously. Sometimes, this sensibility was related to another one. People would talk about before and after they discovered the Riverwalk specifically, that is, what life was like before they found the positive community, training staff, and resources available to them at this gym. This became a dominant thread in the stories that people told us
and told themselves about their fitness journeys. Many of them, including some instructors, even referred to the Riverwalk as “their family.”
Second, many gym members talked about their own personal aspirations, about a hoped-for “after” that they were trying to make possible, whether to improve their overall health, lose weight, gain muscle, win competitions, or simply be more athletic. Working toward some goal, whether clearly or loosely defined, could also be framed as avoiding what they were like “before” just as easily as it could be about achieving an “after.” That is, some talked just as animatedly about not backsliding into previous behaviors and habits that characterized their time before the gym, before the Riverwalk, which they went through as a lived experience, not only as a life narrative. This was not purely hypothetical. Many talked about injuries or illnesses sidelining them for a time, in recent memory, and feeling less active, less fit, as a result, almost like a small encapsulation of the past, less-fit self that they once lived and they fear may return. As something that people embody, before and after can motivate people to work or work harder, to seek out trainers or join classes, to try new diets or fitness apps. Such lived temporality can make your body feel less like a static mass and more like a machine in process, on its way to becoming something else, different from either what it was once or what it is now. Our interviewees often mentioned their ideal body type, the muscles they wished to develop, the body masses they wanted to reduce, the strength they wanted to be proud of, their ideal weight, and so forth.
The way that people talk about gyms, whether or not they are gym members or even go regularly, tends to give them prime importance in fitness culture today. This book uses fitness centers, or “gyms,” as our central ethnographic sites. At least, that is how we began. After spending twenty months getting to know and interviewing gym members and employees at the Riverwalk, our project had to suddenly alter course. As we mentioned earlier, due to the spread of novel coronavirus (or COVID19), gyms around us and around the world immediately closed as some of the most “dangerous” locations for getting infected from COVID-19. Sabina remembers being on a spinning bike the night before our small gym decided to close with gym members anxious to know why this was happening. They were already asking when the gym would reopen. “It will be just for a couple of weeks; don’t worry; we don’t really know,” employees at the front desk were saying in a reassuring tone. In March 2020, millions of people were choosing to steer clear of their personal trainers and fitness centers. Our gym stayed closed for eight months, while trainers and clients moved to online forums, such as the now popular Zoom platform, for interaction and fitness practices. The Riverwalk reopened at
the end of October 2020 with a completely new approach, designed to reduce the likelihood of infection, and without offering any group classes or training until May 2021. What were the options, then, for gym fanatics and individuals who attended the gym weekly? How could they practice and follow their strict fitness regimes while in lockdown in their homes?
Now, quite literally, as our data show, self-improvement and selfdestruction have gone hand in hand (see Chapter 5). This is partly due to the growth of neoliberal capitalism and the related notion that selfimprovement is a cultural imperative. As anthropologist Carla Freeman (2011: 355) writes, “[b]odies under [neoliberal] globalization are sites of new modes of consumption as well. These range from changing habits of diet, expressed in expanding cuisines, changing nutritional profiles, eating disorders, and nutritional diseases, to transforming notions and forms of leisure, travel, sport, and entertainment.” And just as fitness gyms had once circulated the globe, spreading and shifting conceptions of wellness in their wake, so now had a disease that moved much faster, altering ideas and practices of wellness at a troubling pace. Our project followed these changes very closely. When we started, we met people endeavoring to change their bodies while fitness conditions stayed much the same. Then, all of a sudden, the main structures, gyms, where these practices and dreams were possible, collapsed. These changes at the level of the individual were dwarfed by global conditions shifting radically with stay-athome orders and lockdown policies. This provided a research opportunity for our project, which has also examined how people managed to keep changing their bodies when the primary means of doing so, gyms, had been altered forever, or for a long and indefinite period of time at least. What we discovered, as the crisis of the pandemic carried on and on, was that people were still finding ways to work out, to be healthy, to take care of their bodies, to practice on a daily basis, to aliment their body-related anxieties at an even more intense pace. Some of our friends and closest research informants, for example, were devoting themselves even more to fitness in fact, now without the use of gyms, some with incredible results and some to the point of what appeared to be self-harm. So, again, we had to ask, this time in new settings, at a dramatically different time in the history of wellness and self-discipline: what do people do with and to their bodies and why? Where can they perform their fitness practices to reach their fitness goals? Do they work out by themselves or in group settings? And what can this tell us about the sociality of fitness and wellness, when so much analysis and talk about these phenomena emphasize instead the individuality of the embodied self, striving to change? We will address these and other questions throughout the chapters of Pandemic Health and Fitness.
1.3 Phenomenology and Semiotics: A Theoretical Orientation
For the remainder of Chapter 1, our introductory chapter, we first explain how and why we chose to study gyms the way we did. We then explain the structure of the book, which, like our vignettes, will vacillate throughout between a before and an after. Before and after joining the gym, before and after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, before and after the gym.
1.3.1 Phenomenology and Semiotics: Gyms as Habit Forming
This book takes both halves of fitness culture into consideration, both the bodily experiences of working out and what people say about working out, their affects and aches, stories, and speech. This makes our analysis a combination of linguistics, or semiotics more broadly, and phenomenology, or the study of our consciousness of experience.7
Semiotics and phenomenology might seem an odd pairing, especially since when philosophers and theorists have tried to articulate consciousness of and through things, they have often highlighted the failure of words and self-conscious representations more broadly to capture phenomena as they appear to us as we live in the world. There is a tendency, Morten Axel Pedersen (2020: 621, emphasis in original) argues, “among phenomenological anthropologists to accord methodological and epistemological primacy” to prereflexive or practical activity, meaning that “all language is relegated to the margins of analysis.” Indeed, some scholars turn to phenomenology precisely to get away from language and representation, to avoid restricting their analysis to humans—though this problematically treats all representation as alike (see Kohn 2013: 40). To be clear, experience and symbolic representation are not isomorphic. Action words like “sprint” cannot adequately convey, for instance, the way it feels when you push yourself to finish a run, sweat pouring down your face, your heart pounding as you swallow air in big gasps and swing your arms and legs in unison to make it just a bit further, just a bit further, before that blessed relief. Josh loves that feeling in a way that the literal word “sprint” does not and cannot represent. It is precisely for this reason that phenomenology has been important to ethnographers of exercise and exercise important to ethnographers interested in phenomenology.
At the same time that prereflexive, bodily activity is important for our analysis, language need not be marginalized in phenomenological analysis (Pedersen 2020). In fact, we found that language, in the form of narrative and storytelling, is a critical part of gym practices as much as is the feeling and flow of bodies in space and time. It changed Josh’s workout routine when he could think of his “lats” as different from his “trapezius” and to make sure he was focusing attention or “targeting” one, the other, or
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
Scarcely was he in his grave than the fulfilment of these dying wishes was gravely imperilled. The Huguenots had sunk into almost complete disfavour at Court. Death and disaffection had played sore havoc with the leaders of their party. Du Plessis was in disgrace; one reason for this, among others, being his close friendship with de Thonars, who, in his turn, was a connection of the Duke de Bouillon, still in rebellion. Why, demanded the Court party, did he mix himself up with such persons? On the other hand, the disquiet of the Protestants increased when the King gave orders for the little Duke de Thonars to be brought to Court, so that he might be educated with the Dauphin.
This was a great blow to Madame de la Trémoille; the child was only five years old, and she had just lost her daughter Elizabeth. To part with the boy now, was to lose him for ever. He would be severed alike from every domestic tie, as entirely as he would be estranged from Protestantism. She would sooner see him laid in his coffin than this. Monsieur du Plessis bestirred himself to resist the project. He represented to the King that its carrying out would create a real grievance for the Protestants. Already the Prince de Condé had been taken from them, and was it worth while, for the mere sake of having the boy about the Court, to irritate the Huguenots further?
Henri yielded the point, and the child was allowed to remain at Thonars, under his mother’s care. At the end of her first year of widowhood, however, Madame de la Trémoille, in obedience to the repeated commands of the King, repaired to Paris, leaving her children at Thonars.
The mother’s heart was doubtless not a little cheered during this enforced separation by the letters which reached her from her little daughter, who was now about six years old. “In the midst,” says her biographer, “of grave family documents relating to the family of de la Trémoille—side by side with parchments filled with pompous titles, or lengthy enumerations of estates and seignorial rights—one feels a curious stirring of the heart at sight of the big round-hand characters, written on ruled paper, which commemorate the first attempts of a child destined to do great deeds.”
Here is one of the letters:—
“M , Since you have been gone, I have become very good, God be thanked You will also find that I know a great deal I know seventeen Psalms, all Pibrac’s quatrains, and the verses of Zamariel: and more than that, I can talk Latin My little brother[2] is so pretty, that he could not be more so; and when people see him, they are able to talk of nothing else but of him It seems a long time since we had the honour of seeing you Madame, I pray you to love me Monsieur de Saint Christophe tells me that you are well, for which I have thanked God. I pray heartily to God for you. I humbly kiss the hands of my good aunt, and of my little cousins.
2 The Count de Laval
“I am, Madame, your very humble and very obedient and good daughter,
“C
T .”
In learning the Psalms by heart, Charlotte was taught to follow the custom of all Protestant families of the time. For her Latin attainments she had doubtless to thank the still older custom of teaching the language to quite young children, in order that they should be able to follow the celebration of the Mass and the other services of the Roman Church; and though for young Huguenots the knowledge for this purpose was not necessary, Latin was still regarded as indispensable to the polite education of both sexes.
The children of Madame de la Trémoille occasionally accompanied her in her frequent absences from Thonars at this time, but generally they remained at home when she resided at Court or visited her relations in Holland. Yet, although separated from them, she took care to be informed of all their doings, so that she knew about their faults as well as the progress they made; for when she is at the Hague, in 1609, her daughter, then no more than eight years old, writes to her as follows:—
“M , I am exceedingly sorry to have disobeyed you; but I hope henceforth you will not have occasion to complain of me, although hitherto I have not been too good: but I hope in future to be so very much so, that you will have reason to be satisfied, and that my Grandmama and my uncles will not find me ungrateful any more, as I hope to be
obedient, and mindful of them. They have shown me their great kindness in having given me some beautiful New Year’s presents: that is to say, Madame (the Princess of Orange) has given me a carcanet of diamonds and rubies; the Princess of Orange, a pair of earrings; his Excellency, three dozen pearl and ruby buttons My Uncle has given me a gown of cloth of silver Monsieur Suart has done what you wished him to do
“I beg you to love me always, and I shall all my life remain, Madame, your very humble and very obedient daughter and servant, “C T ”
In 1609 Charlotte and her mother were together again, without being separated for any length of time for the next ten years. During this period, all the letters extant are written to the Duke de la Trémoille, her brother, who was generally absent from his family.
The young Duke was not such a good correspondent as his sister; and to the great annoyance of his mother, frequently delegated the writing of his letters home to some good-natured friend. He married his cousin, Marie de la Tour d’Auvergne, the daughter of the Duke de Bouillon and of Elizabeth of Nassau. In the young wife Charlotte found a true sister, and their mutual affection lasted through life.
Charlotte remained with her brother and sister-in-law at Thonars, and Monsieur du Plessis paid them occasional visits from his château of Forêt-sur-Sèvres. Although by nature and from circumstance a reserved and somewhat stern-mannered man, he seems to have been regarded with affection as well as with reverence by the family of his old friend.
Charlotte, when about nineteen years old, does not appear to have been strong in health. Her spirit, even in girlhood as throughout her life, was stronger than the flesh. It is unfortunate that her zeal as a correspondent frequently outruns her caligraphic powers, since her voluminous letters to her mother are full of interesting gossip; so much of them, that is to say, as are decipherable. The paper however, is no longer ruled, and the writing is not, as heretofore, done under the eyes of “Ma Mie,” the careful governess. Equally without heed to writing and spelling, she pours forth details of
neighbouring doings, tells who comes to and from the château, and of what Monsieur du Plessis has said.
Always a very woman, the liking for dress occupies a prominent place in her mind—if its expression on paper does not belie her. Madame de la Trémoille’s mind’s eye is treated with word-pictures, infinite in detail and variety, of her daughter’s gowns “of cloth of silver, trimmed with gold fringe.” Mademoiselle’s jeweller and mantua-maker are important members of the household at sumptuous Thonars; and the young Duke de la Trémoille is no whit behind his sister in his taste for magnificence.
A portrait by Rubens of Charlotte, painted at the time of her marriage, shows us a bright, graceful girl. She wears a bodice of scarlet satin, and her hat is adorned with white plumes; she is looking over her shoulder with an arch smile.
The letters to her mother, though written in terms of the formal respect which the times exacted, are full of gaiety and lively sallies, and show that she enjoyed existence, sweetened as it was by close intercourse with her brother’s wife, who still, when the sea divided them, and the clouds of Charlotte de la Trémoille’s stormy life grew dense and almost without a ray of hope, remained the recipient of her confidences, till death severed the sisterly tie.
CHAPTER II
AT THE HAGUE. A DREARY COURT. A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE. A LADY OF HONOUR. HOME. THE FIRSTBORN. CLOUDY SUNSHINE
In 1626 Charlotte de la Trémoille was present with her mother at the Hague, the Court, at that time, of Prince Fréderic-Henri of Nassau, her great-uncle.
In the only letter preserved at this time, Charlotte expresses a great dislike to Holland. She finds the Court very “triste,” and already the conviction that “the world is a very troublesome place to live in” forces itself upon her.
Meanwhile, negotiations for her marriage were being speedily concluded, and in the month of July of the same year (1626) Charlotte de la Trémoille was married at the Hague to James Stanley, Lord Strange, eldest son of the Earl of Derby and Elizabeth de Vere, daughter of the Earl of Oxford.
The Earl of Derby, the representative of one of the most illustrious families of the English nobility, was lord paramount of the counties of Cheshire and Lancashire, and hereditary sovereign of the Isle of Man.
His eldest son, who took the title of Lord Strange, was only twenty years of age at the time of his marriage. Handsome, high-minded, brave, intellectual, he was worthy of the wife who shared so faithfully in the fortunes of his troubled existence. A marriage less of choice
than of convenience, it was to prove a union that could put to shame many a love match; but the passing of the years was to test its value.
At first, the separation from the home and the scenes of her childhood and girlhood was very grievously felt by the young wife. The civil dissensions in France, scotched only, not destroyed, were beginning to regain their old virulence; and travelling, apart from its ordinary difficulties and perils at that period, was rendered almost impossible for women. In England a similar state of things was rapidly developing; and so it came about that Charlotte, now Lady Strange, never again set foot in her native country, or beheld the loved face of her more than sister, the Duchess de Thonars.
After the conclusion of the wedding festivities, Madame de la Trémoille accompanied her daughter to England, to see her duly installed in her new home.
For a very short time Lady Strange now appeared at Court, in the capacity of lady-of-honour to Queen Henrietta Maria, sister of the French King, herself but the wife of a year to King Charles I. Twelve months later, in the month of August, Lord and Lady Strange were established at Lathom House.
Lathom House was situated in Lancashire, about three miles north-east of Ormskirk, and eight from the sea-coast. The ground on which it stood, as well as its outlying territories and neighbourhood, had been in the possession of the Earls of Derby, and of the de Lathoms and Ferrars (from whom the Stanleys had descended) before them, from Saxon times. Orm, the Saxon lord of Halton, which is one of the thirty-eight manors mentioned in Domesday Book, married Alice, the daughter of a Norman nobleman; obtaining, thereby, large estates in the county. Orm appears to have founded the church which was co-existent with the name of Ormskirk in the reign of Richard I., when Robert, son of Henry de Tarbosh and Lathom—who is supposed to be a descendant of Orm—founded the priory[3] which was for long the burial-place of the Earls of Derby. The mansion, which was very ancient, moated and walled, and built for the defiance and self-defence which those turbulent and unsettled feudal days demanded, came into possession of the Stanleys by the
marriage of Isabella de Lathom with Sir James Stanley in the reign of Henry IV.
3. Baines.
The Earl of Derby of the earlier years of Charles’s reign presented Lathom House to his eldest son and heir, James, Lord Strange, the Earl himself making his home at Chester. Concerning her father-inlaw, Lady Strange writes to her mother in the following terms—after premising that her epistle is merely the replica of one previously written, but which had gone astray in transit; a matter of far from infrequent occurrence in those days, when postal facilities were only in the first throes of being:—
“I informed you Madame, that I had been to see my father-in-law at Chester, the capital city of Cheshire, where he has always lived, in preference to any of his other residences, for these three or four years past. He speaks French; and conversed with me in very agreeable terms, calling me lady and mistress of the house; that he wished to have no other woman but myself (sic, for daughter-in-law?), and that I was to have full authority We were well received by the townspeople, although our visit was not expected Many came out to conduct us I also told you, Madame, how greatly I found Lathom House to my liking; and that I have to thank God and you for placing me so excellently I do not question Madame, that you will do all in your power about my money I am waiting to hear from you regarding it. Truly Madame, necessity constrains me to be more importunate than I ought; but your kindness gives me courage. Indeed, my happiness a little depends upon it, in order to shut the mouths of certain persons who do not love foreigners; although, thank God, the best among them wish me no harm. Your son (in law) is well, I am thankful to say, and feels no return of his disorder. He almost lives out of doors, finding the air very good for him.”
At this point however, Lord Strange must have come indoors; for the postscript is in his handwriting, which is of a sort preferable to his wife’s, both in penmanship and spelling.
“M ” (runs this post-scriptum),—“I cannot let my wife’s letter go without myself thanking you for the honour you do me. If I were able to speak with you, I should rejoice in constantly assuring you that I can
never be other, Madame, than your very humble and obedient son and servant J. S .”
In the autumn of this year, the first child of Lady Strange was born. The home was complete; but domestic peace and content were destined to be lost like a beautiful dream, in the gloom of the times. Charles had not reigned twelve months before the first signs of the coming struggle took form and shape; if even already, in marrying the Roman Catholic Henrietta Maria, he had not hopelessly offended his subjects. Marriage with French princesses has almost invariably brought disaster on our English kings, and violent death in some form; the union of Henry V. with the Princess Catherine of France being one of the exceptions proving the rule. Even in his domestic affections the evil destiny of the Stuarts thus attended Charles; and truly his fate was an ill one indeed which placed him at the head of a kingdom at such an epoch in its history. The times were out of joint; and the vacillating, arbitrary Charles was not the man to set them right at this crisis, when the very strength of the divinity hedging a king was being questioned and tested by that sense of the rights of individual and collective humanity which was beginning to quicken on every side.
The state of England however, on Charles’s accession, was but the effect of causes which had been at work for many a generation past. Looking back no farther than to the Wars of the Roses, we see the resistance of a proud and jealous nobility to supreme kingly power, and its subjection by the ruthless Henry VIII., who suffered no mortal to live, from loftiest to lowliest, who attempted to cross his path or to thwart his will. Henry’s despotism, inherent in Queen Mary, and carefully nourished by her bigoted husband, Philip of Spain, was in Elizabeth softened by the chastening experiences of early life, and throughout her long reign kept in check by prudent counsellors. During the time that she was on the throne moreover, the new religion was on its probation. In its form of “Church of England, as by law established,” it had still to approve itself to the nation. But long before her successor James I. took her place, Episcopalianism had been accepted by the English people from Tyne to Thames. By Roman Catholics it might be regarded as a hollow pretence, and by
nonconformists as a popishly tainted compromise; but by the bulk of the community it was recognised as an ark of safety, spiritual and temporal, whose bulwarks warded off the shafts of Rome as effectually as her course ran clear of the shoals and whirlpools of the sectaries. The Church of England, risen purified from the ashes of Romanism, was, or at least was accepted as, the reproduction of the church of the early Christians. It contained the ideal scheme of a perfect law of liberty—religious, social, and political; and allowed a range of thought and of speculation not to be found in any other formulated expression of Christian belief whatever Only of papistry the Church of England was intolerant. Pains and penalties, in countless instances not one degree less cruel than “Bloody Mary” inflicted on the Protestant martyrs, did “good Queen Bess” and her successor, “gentle King Jamie,” inflict on the confessors of the older creed. To all other Christians, the Church of England extended sympathy. While her sanctuaries, retaining much of the pomp and ceremonial of Roman ritual, were served by consecrated bishop, priest, and deacon, the crypts beneath them afforded places for the simple and austere public worship of refugee Huguenots and Calvinists. Singing boys still chanted psalm and antiphon; and in the private chapel of Elizabeth, the “morning star of the Reformation,” the retention of the lighted candles on the altar betokened the belief in the reality of Christ’s presence in the sacramental bread and wine. The transubstantiation of Romanism—the consubstantiation of Lutheranism—the spiritual presence only of Christ in the elements of Calvinism—the unchanged condition of the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper of Nonconformity and of Dissent generally, were alike set aside by the Established Church. The answer quoted by Elizabeth when questioned as to her conception of the manner of the divine presence in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper:—
“Christ’s was the Word that spake it; He took the bread, and brake it And what that Word doth make it, That I believe, and take it”—
was signally characteristic of the teaching of the Church of England, which claimed primitive Catholicity and unbroken Apostolical succession. The assertion was at once pious and safe, and eminently illustrates the temper of the communion which has embraced within its fold such children as Jeremy Taylor, Burnet, Nicholas Ferrar and his ascetic following, Sherlock, Laud, Stanley, Pusey, the Wilberforces; and whose rebuke to a Sacheverell was administered mainly on the score of good breeding, and, if it lost a Wesley, is not careful to cry mea culpa.
For a generation or two the interest attaching to the new-old teaching of the Church of England, and its general adopting, pretty well absorbed the attention of all classes, more especially of the upper and middle ranks; but the more the doctrines were assimilated, the more they nourished a sense of the need of temporal freedom, and roused speculation in thoughtful minds as to what was most needed and wholesome for the social well-being of the State. The old dogma of kingly supremacy had become, to say the least, unpalatable since the days of the despotic Henry VIII. The English nation had no mind to endure tyranny from the new dynasty; and many had looked with suspicion upon James Stuart, not forgetful that the blood of the papist and haughty Guises ran in his veins, and that he held with marvellous tenacity to the dogma, if in his case one might not call it the hobby, of kingly supremacy. Fond of scribbling, and endowed in his own estimation with surpassing argumentative and theological faculties, he sustained and comforted his bodily and mental timidity by pompous assertion and spiritual aphorism concerning the right of kingly control over everything the sun shone upon within his realm. The dogma of the infallibility of the Pope, James I. matched by his postulate that the king could not merely do no wrong, but that everything he did and willed was to be applauded and obeyed. The difficulty was to impose this view upon a sufficient number of his influential subjects to make it work satisfactorily; those wise and moderate counsellors of Elizabeth’s reign, who survived into James’ time, kept him in check, and their experience of feminine weaknesses and short-comings in Elizabeth’s vigorous mind was further widened by an acquaintance with the depths of folly and of childish self-conceit into which an anointed king
could fall. Such men as Lord Chancellor Cecil and John Hampden had troublesome conviction of this; and King James I., whom Sully dubbed the wisest fool that ever lived, and Henri IV. relegated to the grades of “Captain of Arts and Bachelor of Arms,” however strong himself in the comfortable doctrines of the divine right of kings, failed in arresting the growth of the life of political liberty.
With much pompous declaration however, and long-winded argument, James did his best. Warfare of words was better suited to the man who, it is said, was apt to swoon at sight of a naked sword; and when all other argument and precept failed to produce the desired impression, he took refuge in citing the example of his brother monarchs of France and of Spain. “The King of England,” said James, by the mouth of his ministers to the Commons, “cannot appear of meaner importance than his equals.” And in this creed he caused his son to be reared. An early death took the elder and promising Prince Henry from the coming troubles, and the sensitive, proud, obstinate, vacillating Charles was left to struggle with the coil of cruel circumstance already so rapidly beginning to tangle up.
As if to strengthen the effect of this mental sustenance with which Charles had been fed as regularly as he had partaken of daily material food, James sent the young prince—or at least allowed him to go—to Spain with the gay, extravagant, thoughtless Duke of Buckingham. “Baby Charles” and “Steenie,” as the King called the two, travelled incognito upon this romantic pilgrimage, stopping by the way in Paris, to sow the seeds of future mischief at the Court of Louis XIII. in the Duke’s thinly veiled admiration for Anne of Austria. The journey to Madrid however, which was originated for the end of marrying Charles to the Infanta, defeated its own object; but Charles returned to England perfected by what he had seen in his travels—in his lesson of kingcraft. Endowed with a graceful presence, and, despite a certain coldness and reserve, with winning manners, he had a scholarly and thoughtful mind; but both nature and rearing had made him a man only of his day, or, more truly, of the time preceding it. He had no gifts of penetration or of prescience. He could not look into the future, any more than he was able to read the existing signs of the times. He had been to Spain. His eyes had been dazzled by
the glitter of spoil from the New World, the splendour and pomp and punctilio of the Court of Madrid, and the magnificence of the Spanish grandees. He had seen with his own eyes the success of Loyola’s scheme of religious and political orthodoxy, and its supreme power of snuffing out obnoxious speculation, theological and scientific; but he could not discern beneath the rich embroidery of the veil its rotten foundation, which in two or three generations was to crumble like the cerements of the grave in the pure light of day, and disclose the corruption and festering beneath. He had witnessed the brilliancy of the afterglow which the memory of the adored soldier Henri Quatre had left, and it was small wonder if his mind’s eye failed to reach across the gulf of coming years to that time when lettres de cachet would make fuel for burning the Bastille, and the yellow sanbenitos of heretics should be changed for bonnets rouges and carmagnoles. The guillotine was to reek with the blood, not alone of aristocrats, but of the sons and daughters themselves, of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. “The Revolution,” said one of its noblest victims, “is devouring its own children”; and the contagion of hatred against kings and queens and all their tribe spread over Europe till confusion grew worse confounded.
Looking back to those early days of Charles’s reign, the question hardly fails to suggest itself, how far the troubles of the time would have been even aggravated had he married the Infanta of Spain instead of the French princess. Protestantism in Spain had been stifled at the birth; but in France it still had healthy breathing-room, tempering the atmosphere of Romanist belief, and influencing even the most devoted and uncompromising of Rome’s adherents. Neighboured by Switzerland, Holland, and Germany, the philosophy of Erasmus, the humanitarianism of Arminius, the teaching of Luther and of Calvin, all mingled with the stream of orthodox theological speculation, till, overflowing into fresh channels, it verged so closely and so frequently on theories of Catholic reform, that Pope Urban made a vigorous attempt to stem the tide by his bull Unigenitus, ostensibly directed against the Jansenists only. Thus, in France, thought and religious speculation were kept not merely from stagnating, but in active ferment; while in Spain, the repressive Jesuit system froze and fossilised religion. Outside passive
obedience to dogma, said the disciples of Loyola, could be no salvation; but in France, such cast-iron ruling was gone for ever in Church and State. The white plume in the cap of the Huguenotreared hero of Ivry brought loyal subjects rallying round him, as entirely as the little leaden images of Our Lady and the saints, with which the bigoted Louis XI. decorated his hat-brims, had repelled his people.
The growing Puritanic spirit in England however, which had but scanty affection for Episcopalianism itself, was not likely to draw fine distinctions. In the popular acceptation of the term, “Catholic” was identical with papist and Romanist; for, with a singular indifference, the papists had been permitted to appropriate the term. The young Queen was a Roman Catholic, greatly attached to the forms and ceremonial of her Church; bringing with her from France a train of Romanist priests and followers. Charles himself was the grandson of the woman who had died kissing the crucifix with her last breath. None of these considerations were lost sight of when the King began to ask subsidies of his faithful Commons, and showed generally a disposition to rule with a high hand.
He met with a strong resistance; and fearing the influence of Buckingham over him, the flame of accusations which had long smouldered, was fanned against the Duke, until his removal was brought about. Thus the Commons triumphed; but Parliament was dissolved.
These events took place a year after Charles’s accession; and about that time Lady Strange arriving in England, entered upon her post of lady-of-honour to the Queen. The coveted position has, before and since that time, been found to have its drawbacks, as rosebuds have their crumpled leaves; and Lady Strange seems to have relinquished her part in the Court pageantry as soon as might be, retiring to the home which one day she was so bravely to defend —Lathom House, in Lancashire.
CHAPTER III
“RES
ANGUSTA DOMI.” A WHITE ELEPHANT. GATHERING CLOUDS. KEEPING A BRAVE HEART. A GRAND FUNCTION. ROYAL GIFTS. FRESH ANXIETIES. BARON STRANGE. NATIONAL GRIEVANCES. “SHORTCOATS.” A CONTRACT.
Established at Lathom, Lady Strange sent intelligence to her mother of the hope that ere long a child would be born to her; adding:—
“The length of our sojourn here is not decided upon, but if the twenty thousand crowns do not come, it will not be easy to leave the place. Your son-in-law is well, thank God, and joins frequently in the chase. On Monday, a great number of people were here, and for several days my husband has had to entertain many gentlemen. He shows me great affection; and God bestows upon us the blessing of living in great contentment and tranquillity of mind. We have some trouble with the Isle of Man; and if Château-Neuf were here, we should have offered him the charge of it. The appointment is worth a thousand francs: and that in a place where one can live for next to nothing.”
Pecuniary cares, which harassed Lady Strange all the rest of her life, were setting in. With the adoption of the Romanist faith by Henri IV., the prospects of the Huguenots darkened. The League took possession of the towns and castles belonging to the Duke de la Trémoille; the agricultural prosperity of France was again blighted by renewed civil warfare, and the tenant-farmers were in arrears with their rents and payments. The Duke was not able to sell his acres of arable and pasture land, and consequently could not send his sister
the money which was hers by right. The Earl of Derby was likewise impoverished by the loss of certain moneys which, hitherto appertaining to the male heirs of his family, had now become alienated and divided: yet upon these reduced incomings the Earl was expected still to maintain all the old state and magnificence of the house of Stanley.
The Isle of Man was, moreover, a possession of exceedingly doubtful value to its suzerain lords. The people were turbulent, and difficult to rule and to please. As a separate and independent kingdom, they claimed certain rights and privileges, and it required an Act of Parliament to settle their differences. Lady Strange’s dower would have been incalculably useful towards the settlement of all these troubles, and about the close of the year 1627 she writes:—
“I am not without anxiety on many accounts; but God of His goodness will provide.” She goes on to say that her husband is much pressed for money, and how great her satisfaction would be if she were able to help him with her own dower.
“I am assured Madame, that you will understand better than I do myself the need for this; and also what a happiness it will be to me to afford consolation and help to those to whom I have been hitherto but a burden.”
Still, however, no money came, and Charlotte writes later on:—
“I should be glad to know that my fortune existed not only in words, but in fact. It causes me great grief and anxiety.”
A letter, written to Madame de la Trémoille by Lady Strange on the eve of her accouchement, is strikingly characteristic of the brave and spirited, but wholly tender and womanly nature of the Lady of Lathom. Expressing constantly a deep longing to see peace established between England and France, and greatly desiring the general welfare of both her native and adopted country, feminine and domestic interests chiefly occupy her mind. Far from her own people, Lady Strange had hoped to have her mother with her during her hour of trial; but the coming of the Duchess was found to be
impracticable, and Charlotte thus writes to her sister-in-law in the December of 1627:—
“For the journey of Madame (the Dowager-Duchess), I see, dear heart, the same objections to it as you do; and though I have passionately desired her coming, I dread the discomfort and dangers to which she would be exposed; and for myself, I trust in God that He will not forsake me, although I am alone and inexperienced. But there, my dear one, I will think no more about it, trusting in God. I know, dear heart (mon cœur), that you remember me in your prayers, and how rejoiced you are for me in thinking of the hopes I cherish. Also you are assured that the blessing which Heaven may bestow upon us will be always at your service.”
At the end of January 1628, Lord Strange informs the Duchess of the birth of a son; and again, a month later, Lady Strange, writing in more detail of the important event, is critical upon the English mode of baby treatment.
“I forgot,” she says, “to tell you that he (Baby) is dark. I wish you could see the manner in which children are swaddled in this country. It is deplorable.”
Since the time of Lady Strange, custom in such matters must have considerably changed, for in these days it is the tight swathing and impeding garments of Continental babies which challenges the compassion of English mothers for the small, cramped-up bodies.
“My husband,” continues Lady Strange, “would have written to you, but he does not express himself in any language but his own. He is none the less your very humble servant.”
On the 17th April she again writes:—
“I have informed Madame of the baptism of your nephew, whom God thus graciously received on Sunday, 30th March.[4] He was carried by my sister-in-law, and attended by the ladies of four gentlemen of rank of this country I had him dressed in white, after the French fashion, for here they dress them in colours, which I do not like The Bishop of Chester baptized him in our private chapel, and, as you know, by the King’s name only Afterwards, sweetmeats were served; and at supper, the roast joints were brought to table by gentlemen of this neighbourhood, as also upon
several preceding and succeeding days. The King has presented him with two gold mugs, which is his custom with those upon whom he bestows the honour of his christian name In addition to this however, he has sent me a very beautiful present which cost two thousand crowns; the diamonds ornamenting it are very fine, and all faceted I did not expect to receive it The Duchess of Richmond, his godmother, has given him a large bowl and a gilded enamel knife, such as is used to remove the rolls and pieces of bread with from the table before the fruit is brought in; and to me she has given a turquoise bracelet ”
4 Old style The Gregorian calendar was not used in England
Previous to the birth of his eldest son, the young father, who was only twenty-two, was called to take his seat in the House of Lords, under the title of Baron Strange. This arose out of error The fact had been overlooked that the barony of Strange formed one of the titles fallen into disheritage at the death of Ferdinand, Earl of Derby. The error led to the creation of a new peerage, which went to the house of Athol, and for several years Lord Strange sat in the Upper House, during the lifetime of his father, the Earl of Derby.
A new Parliament was now summoned; and Sir Robert Cotton, the mildest and most temperate among the prominent men of the popular party, was called to the King’s counsel table. He spoke there with wisdom and frankness, setting forth the just grievances of the nation; and in order to win its due support, impressing the necessity for redress. Sir Robert recalled those words of Lord Burleigh to Queen Elizabeth:—
“Win their hearts, and their purses and their arms will be yours.”
Concerning her husband’s summons to town, Lady Strange writes on 18th May 1628:—
“I write under much anxiety; for I believe my husband goes the day after to-morrow to London. This is the more grievous, as the air there does not suit him; but God of His goodness will preserve him. As for our little one, he is very well, Heaven be thanked I have already in two of my letters asked you for frocks for him, for he is very big for his age; and they are needed the more that in this country children are short-clothed at a month or six weeks old I am considered out of my senses that he is not
yet short-coated. I also asked you to send hoods. I hope that all may arrive together.
“God grant that all that Parliament decides be for His glory, and for the good of the King and of the nation.”
Lord Strange did not however, go to London at this time.
“My husband,” writes Lady Strange a little later, “has not been summoned to London (June 1628). There are great disturbances there. One day all is confusion, the next everything goes well.”
It is small wonder that, to such a state of things, Lord Strange preferred the tranquillity and domestic happiness of his ancestral home.
