William Joy on “the other Amelia”

Dear Reader,

We resume after a hiatus, with plans to honor Barbara in a number of ways, including some recollections of Malice Domestic.  But we begin with a post from William Joy, who has posted here before.  Who is William Joy?  For one answer to this question, we turned to Ray Johnson, director of the Epigraphic Survey at Luxor under the auspices of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute.  Ray wrote to us:

William Joy is one of the most positive, behind-the-scenes forces in Egyptology today.  He is a skilled archivist and a first-rate scholar in his own right, and is unceasingly generous with his time, knowledge, and expertise, particularly in the history of some of the earliest Egyptologists.  I suspect that there is no one in the world who knows more about 19th century writer and Egyptologist Amelia B. Edwards than William, or is more enthusiastic about her.  His knowledge is extraordinary.

As many of you know, Amelia Edwards provided some of the inspiration for our own Amelia Peabody.  Here is a picture of Edwards, along with a letter she wrote, both of which hung in Barbara’s hall for many years.  Now they hang in the Barbara Mertz Bioarchaeology Lab at the British Museum.

William wrote to us about Amelia Edwards after noticing a post on Twitter by avid Amelia fan Christina Startt.  He also sent the beautiful pictures of covers of Amelia Edwards’ books seen at top and bottom.

FROM WILLIAM JOY:

While I was on Twitter, I noticed a tweet by Christina Startt with a photo of her copy of Amelia B. Edwards’ “A Thousand Miles Up The Nile.” I could have said something about it, but I honestly don’t know how in the single short sentence that Twitter provides! So here is more than you probably ever wanted to know about Amelia’s most famous book.

The cover of her paperbound book is a reproduction of the second edition of Amelia’s work, which first appeared at the close of the year 1888 — just in time for Christmas of that year. These copies actually bear dates of “1889,” which was a standard practice for English publishers. They felt if the Christmas shoppers of 1888 saw a book with the date “1889,” they would know instantly that it was “new,” and therefore, be more encouraged to purchase it. Experience showed Victorian publishers that “old” books at Christmas time were never quite the big sellers that “new” ones were.

These copies of Amelia’s second edition were issued in varying base cloth colors. Christina’s is dark blue, but there were also red, green, tan, light blue… a veritable rainbow of colors. But the design was the same on each of them: patterned after one of the author’s paintings inside the book. 

Years ago, when I first noticed some of these, I thought they might be similar to American books of the same time (notably titles by Mark Twain), in that printing houses, when running out of a standard color cloth for a book, would just switch to whatever other color happened to be on hand, and continue the production. 

But no, that was not the case here. These books were purposely issued in variant colors — depending on the “color” and “mood” of your library, and where you were going to display the book — so the customer had a choice as to which would “look best” when they got the book home. 

One other Egyptology travel book, also by a woman, was like this: “Vom Nil” by Victoria, the Crown Princess of Sweden, which featured her photographs taken in Egypt in 1889 and 1890. It was issued in about six different color bindings. Speaking of Sweden, I recently sent a copy of “The Painted Queen” to Carolin Johansson, a professional Egyptologist based in Uppsala, Sweden, and she loves it! Well, who doesn’t? I sure did!

One more thing regarding “A Thousand Miles Up The Nile.” The first edition appeared in 1877 as a much larger and heavier quarto-sized volume than the second edition, a smaller octavo-sized book. It had thick bevel-edged boards. Copies of the first edition were usually covered with a red cloth cover, which had black and gold stamping on the upper board and spine, in Egyptian-style designs (though a few copies are known with a cream cloth; more on those in a moment). We have a copy of the red first edition that Amelia used for editing purposes, not long before the second edition appeared. She used a pencil to cross out words and experimented by writing in synonyms; she also added footnotes along the margins. 

We thought that a significant copy. But just recently I was alerted by Julian Mackenzie of Shapero Rare Books in London to something even more extraordinary. They obtained (and sold to us) another copy of the first edition, which has something no other copy has… and moreover, which no other Egyptology book of its time has, as far as we know. And that is a publisher-issued paper dust jacket, made in 1877, intended to be used for the first edition, with the printed title and author’s name on the front cover, and fold-over flaps and everything — just like a modern dust jacket. I have not made photographs of this yet, but it is real, and it is complete, and yes, we are simply astonished over it. Dust jackets, you see, are early 20th-century items; they generally don’t exist for books from the nineteenth century.

One thing, though: there is, for perhaps every 10 copies of the red first edition of Amelia’s book, one cream color copy. And as this newly discovered dust-jacketed copy is of the scarcer cream variety, it is possible that the dust jackets were made only for the cream-colored copies. Both the cream and red varieties bear the same binder’s ticket on the rear pastedown (Westleys & Company, of London).

Thank you, William, for sharing this with us!!

The British Museum’s Barbara Mertz Lab

British Museum Lab Opening

About a year ago, in May of 2018, the British Museum honored Barbara Mertz by opening a laboratory named in her honor.  We thought readers might like to hear a little more about that.  The lab was generously sponsored by Dr. Roxie Walker, a bioarchaeologist who is Director of the Institute for Bioarchaeology at the British Museum.

Friends, colleagues, and fans gathered for the joint celebration that marked the openings of the Mertz Lab and the Adams Research Lab.  (One observer remarked that the group that attended to honor Mertz was considerably more rowdy — and costumed — than the others there … but that seemed in keeping with her memory!)  Among the outstanding visuals were Dr. Walker as Anubis ….

 

 

 Dr. Neal Spencer (seen above with Anubis!)… Dr. Salima Ikram as the Crocodile Lady (worshiper of Sobek?) …..

  

… and … why, is it Amelia and Nefret? (with Barbara’s daughter Beth in-between…)   Actually, these intrepid members of the Mertz/Peters/Michaels (MPM) fandom family — known to us as AmeliaPeabodyEmerson and Amelia-Peabody-Book-Club on Tumblr — traveled to the UK from the US to join in the merriment!

Featured on the walls of the lab were a letter from the formidable Amelia B. Edwards — one of the inspirations for Barbara’s beloved Amelia Peabody character — as well as original artwork for the cover of The Ape Who Guards the Balance (featuring Thoth), one of the books in the Amelia Peabody series.

… from a hallway in Barbara’s home …

 

Barbara’s long-time editor, Jennifer Brehl, from HarperCollins was also in attendance, as was Barbara’s dear friend and Frederick Maryland bookseller Chuck Roberts of WonderBook.  Chuck contributed our final picture from the London event — a martini with rosemary (as we all know, that’s for remembrance).  The gathering featured hilarity and tears, quite a few toasts, and a robust gathering of Egyptology lovers.  Thank you, Dr. Walker, for remembering Barbara in style!

MPM Writing Process 1: Scouting the Terrain

Again in response to a very helpful suggestion from a “dear reader” of MPM’s, we are venturing into an exploration of the clues she left about her writing process.   Over the years, she kept various notebooks and loose notes tracking her projects, all of which we’re just beginning to unpack (literally and figuratively).  Eventually, this will all be archived (about which, more as we have information).

So we can start here with just a modest set of handwritten notes from a small three-ring notebook Barbara was carrying with her between 1962 and 1964 (with a few random notes from later years).  In this notebook she documented aspects of her family’s move to live in Rome for 2 years, as well as a trip she took to Egypt.  The loose-leaf pages contain her observations on many topics pertinent to her writings — intermingled with to-do lists, etc.,  and occasional brilliant artwork by her young kids.  (We are completely objective on this last point.)

Within this funny mix of mundane and writerly notes, it’s apparent that Barbara was always busy scouting various terrains for possible book topics and ideas.  As devoted readers of Peters and Michaels know, settings for the books ranged across time as well as all over the Middle East, Europe, and the U.S.  It probably would not surprise those readers that we found notes on English history peppered throughout a notebook where she tracked the costs of an outing to Pompeii and kept shopping lists.  Some of the notes detailed her ongoing and systematic search through a journal (Archaeologia– and remember, this was long before one could search online…).  For example, there’s a series of notes on heraldry:

“Archaeologia 1949: The Ghost or Shadow as a Charge in Heraldry.  Charge is blazoned “ombre” or “umbra” in Fr. + Latin. Tr. “ghost or phantom;” but by Engl. armorists it was misread shadow”…. (& these MPM notes go on for several pages-the underlining in these excerpts is hers)

More notes from the same journal track articles on “King John’s Baggage Train,” the “Body of Henry IV at Canterbury, lead perfectly preserved,”  and one from 1883 on “Decorations of H. VII’s chapel” that clearly delighted her imagination:

“St. Wilgeforte (sic), In H. VII’s chapel, a young woman with long hair + turban and beard. … Was a famous image of her at St. Paul’s, + she was once a favorite.  A saint who had obtained a beard to escape matrimony, thus should have some sympathy for ladies who wished to escape from it.  Ladies who had husbands they wished to get rid of used to ask for her help, hence her popular name of St. Uncumber.  

(Ladies who wanted husbands paid their devotions to Rood of Northdoor at St. Paul’s — Paston Letters, 11, 23.)

Uncumber is mentioned by T. More.  She is offered oats — possibly because she provides a horse for an evil “housebonde” to ryde to the Devyll upon.  In Ger. she was called Kummerniss, St. Liberata in Portugal + France.”

A small triumphant notation states: “Checked Archaeologia 1890 – 1909“.   This was years before her book on The Murders of Richard III, but it seems as if Barbara was busily soaking up ideas from all over the historical sources she could access, as they engaged her interest and imagination.  She would later explain that: “The research skills I learned can be applied to any field; I have used them to collect background material for novels that deal with the Peasants’ Revolt, Etruscan archaeology, vintage clothing, the Risorgimento, the chartist movement, and innumerable other subjects. Accuracy is very important to me as a novelist; not only does my own professional pride demand it, but I have many readers whose expertise in various fields is at least as great as my own. They can and do chastise me when I make mistakes.”  (Yikes!  Daunting!)

Whether to avoid mistakes or just to pick up ideas, she was clearly scouting many possible terrains for her novels from very early on.  Canadian comics artist Kate Beaton seems to engage in a very similar process, investigating all sorts of historical sources to come up with ideas for her hilarious send-offs of people and events from long ago.  For Barbara, going to original sources and places as much as she could, steeping herself in the little details of different lives:  all this became a rich and fertile background from which more full-blown characters and plot lines would eventually emerge — sometimes surfacing as a (seemingly) throw-away line that made dialogue feel richer, other times forming a major backbone for particular plot arcs.  In the meantime, it’s apparent she was also having a lot of fun!

The “Writing Den”–Barbara’s Study

In response to a great suggestion from one of Barbara’s “dear readers,” we’ve been inspired to post a little something about the room where she did her writing, in her beloved “MPM Manor” out in the Maryland countryside.  She bought the old farmhouse from an interior designer, so it had already been decked out and updated in style.  The study area already had a beautifully draped fabric hung from the ceiling; when it came time to replace that, MPM decided to have fun and “go golden.”  Her house contained large collections of all kinds of books — mysteries, science fiction, historical novels, children’s books, classic literature (Jane Austen!), melodramatic old accounts of desert romances, you name it.  In the study she kept a collection of her own books — one copy of each edition, including those in many different languages and the audio book versions.  She also surrounded herself with books and journals pertaining to her central interests — Ancient Egypt, and the histories surrounding the exploration and development of archaeology there ….

 

Also bedecking her walls and shelves were many humorous notes and pictures from her writer friends, many of whom shared her often quirky sense of humor.  Take, for example, the “Literary Cupcake” prize that she received from a mysterious group — for some serious accomplishments (tooth-chipping, anyone?):

It was less than a month before she died when Barbara put down her pen, announcing that she would not be writing any more.  This caught many of us by surprise, much as we’d known the day would have to come.  But despite many attempts to “retire” in previous years, she’d always found herself bored, restless, at sea when she stopped writing – and eventually relented to write (usually) “one more” Amelia.  As it had been since she was a very young woman, writing remained her solace, the goal toward which so many of her days were bent.  Through even the worst of days, it was the imaginative lens through which she loved to think about the world — and the magic that she sought to share with her readers.  What a gift.

Vintage Barbara! …hats,clothing,parasols….

“My own frock was a new one, and I had put aside my heavy working parasol for one that matched the dress … ruffles and lace concealed its utility” AP, Ape Who Guards the Balance

It turns out that Barbara just couldn’t write about things without doing intensive research … at least maybe that would have been how she thought about the collection of clothing, hats, and even parasols that she amassed over the years!  Or maybe it’s just that she was an enthusiast and jumped into every new discovery with Amelia-like passion and thoroughness…

It’s been amazing to see the kind of depth Barbara went to in investigating so many details that went into her writing; her bookshelves are lined with references on so much of the background information — from clothing of different eras, to all kinds of aspects of Egyptian history, to jewelry and plants and …  (the list just keeps going!)

Everything from English Women’s Clothing to Bloomingdale’s Illustrated 1886 Catalog!

… and one tiny sample from the many shelves of books on Egypt….

Writers of historical fiction who do their homework seemingly have to know about everything from capes and hats to undergarments … and Barbara’s own collection included some of everything.  The collection is on display right now on the Alex Cooper website — we’re not advocating that anyone but collectors buy anything — but just thought fans might have fun browsing through the offerings.  There are Egyptian robes and Victorian clothes and some items that clearly were just for fun.  The collection echoes not only of Elizabeth Peters characters, but also of Barbara Michaels at points …

We note that one of the parasols is a bit cracked at the end — perhaps due to the kind of vigorous prodding for which Amelia was infamous???

“I approached Alberto and jabbed him in the waistcoat with my parasol.  He jumped back.”  AP, Crocodile on the Sandbank

Knowing Barbara, this seems quite possible!

Sir E A Wallis Budge’s cat Mike (thanks to the Joys)

Emerson: It may even be a perverse joke perpetrated by a modern tourist or by one of my professional enemies.  Some of those fellows — I name no names, Peabody, but you know to whom I refer– would like nothing better than to see me make a fool of myself over a bundle of sticks or a dead sheep.  Wallis Budge —

Amelia: “Yes, my dear,” I said soothingly.  When Emerson gets on the subject of his professional rivals, especially Wallis Budge, the keeper of Egyptian antiquities at the British Museum, it is necessary to cut him short.  SEEING A LARGE CAT

To round up our discussion of cats this month — courtesy of the fabulous Joy collection — we’re delighted to share with you the story of Mike.  William Joy wonders whether Amelia might have softened on Budge had she known of his abiding attachment to the British Museum cat?  In this pamphlet MPM-Joy-Mike the Cat (1) Budge details Mike’s mysterious arrival at the British Museum in the mouth of Black Jack, and his subsequent long career there — ending when Mike was almost 20 years old.  Apparently the British Museum house cats trained Mike to catch (but not kill) pigeons: The pigeons were taken into a little side room, and after they had eaten some maize and drunk water, they flew out of the window none the worse for their handling by the cats.…

NOTE TO SALIMA IKRAM:  Mike attached himself to the Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities because of the care which that official bestowed on the mummies of Egyptian cats.

Mike also eventually developed the habit of chasing dogs out of the Courtyard of the Museum — The dogs that laughed at policemen and gatekeepers fled in terror before the attack of Mike, who, swelling himself to twice his normal size, hurled himself on them. 

As Mike aged, he received the royal treatment: He preferred sole to whiting, and whiting to haddock, and sardines to herrings; for cod he had no use whatever.

In what Budge describes as “the most excellent Memorial Poem on Mike,” F.C.W. Hiley, M.A., Assistant Keeper in the Department of Printed Books, details Mike’s disdain for pats or handling by most people: And if perchance some forward minx/ Dared to go up and stroke the Sphinx — / Her hand shot back, all marked with scores / From the offended Michael’s claws ….BUT he laid aside his anti-human grudge for Budge: Each morn Sir Ernest, without qualms / Would take up Michael in his arms.

Now the pamphlet does tell us that Mike especially disliked the pokings in his ribs which ladies bestowed upon him with their parasols — but then Amelia would totally know better than to treat a cat that way.

Great ending to the poem includes:  Old Mike! Farewell! We all regret you /  Although you would not let us pet you

So, would this have softened Amelia? (realizing that nothing would have softened Emerson!) ….  well, knowing how she felt about the smuggling of antiquities, and her dire suspicions of Budge — it’s hard to say!

How many people really fit on a dahabeeyah?

…speaking of ON THE NILE, IN STYLE, readers may remember that Amelia’s  favorite way of traveling the Nile was … in a dahabeeyah (or, if you prefer, a dahabeah, dahabiah, dahabiya, dahabiyah, dhahabiyya, dahabiyeh or dahabieh) ….

“On my first trip to Egypt I had traveled by dahabeeyah.  The elegance and charm of that mode of travel can only be dimly imagined by those who have not experienced it.”  Amelia, in The Curse of the Pharaohs

The attached pictures show Barbara enjoying a dahabeeyah trip in 2003 (thanks to Ray Johnson!) — along with an antique photograph of a dahabeeyah courtesy of William Joy and his mother, from their extensive collection.  William reports that the photo was made on the Nile, around 1875 — and that several Egyptologists looking at it have wondered whether a shadowy woman who appears in the picture might be Amelia Edwards (the daring woman after whom Amelia Peabody was named)…..   Could that be a parasol in her hand…..???

Looking at these pictures, some of us have wondered …. really, how many people could travel together on a dahabeeyah???  (And how friendly would they have to be with one another????)