Raucous Royal of the Month: Juliette Recamier

"a bewitching face, the easiest of figures; she affected the most elegant simplicity." 

When raven haired Jeanne Francoise Julie Adelaide Recamier entered a room she was like a scratching post covered with catnip. Wherever she went...the claws came out. In one Paris reception, reigning society queen, Mme. Talien, threw off her shawl in a huff  to show off her splendid figure and long arms. Mme. Recamier even came to the attention of Marie Antoinette who was so taken with her beauty that she compared her side by side to Madame Royale. (every teenage girl's nightmare)

By the turn of the 19th century, nothing was more coveted than an invitation to Mme. Recamier's literary salon. Known as "Juliette," fashionistas flocked to her soirees to admire her furniture and elegant dresses. Men fell at her feet to worship her "betwitching face" unadorned with face paint. Recamier soon attracted the attention of notorious rake, Lucien Bonaparte who wrote her passionate love letters exclaiming, "Oh Juliette, life without love is but a long sleep...Happy the mortal who shall become the friend of your heart!" Add to her list of admirers, Josephine Bonaparte's son, Eugene Beauharnais who took a ring from her and then begged, "be good enough, Madame, to soften the lot of him who is sincerely attached to you." 

Considering the scandal that surrounded her upbringing, it is surprising that Recamier was so admired as the beacon of virtue. Rumors abounded that her husband was actually her father. Many of her recent biographers have speculated that her father married her to name her his heir and protect her fortune from the upheaval of Revolutionary Paris. 

Oddly, Recamier remained a safe distance from most of her admirers with the exception of the Prince Auguste of Prussia who she fell passionately in love with and became the only man "who ever made her heart beat". The upheaval in France and her own marital ties kept her from being with her love. Recamier's husband did agree to a divorce so that she could marry Prince Auguste, but Juliette was so afraid of the scandal that would follow that she eventually distanced herself from Auguste. Still heartbroken, Recamier considered fixing herself an opium pill cocktail, but eventually relegated her Prince to her long list of male friends.

You're fired Jacques-Louis David
As the reigning beauty throughout Paris, she became one of the models for The Three Graces and commissioned her portrait to be painted by Jacques-Louis David. Unfortunately, when Madame Recamier saw her portrait she was not pleased and promptly fired David from the commission.

Biographers have long speculated on why David was fired. Some have said it was due to the inordinately long time he took to complete the commission. The most obvious answer is because David took some artistic liberties with how he represented her. He had done the unthinkable. He had messed with her hair. Instead of painting her legendary, dark siren locks cascading down her back, he painted a much lighter shade to contrast with his darker background and match his artistic vision of the neoclassical beauty. (The Greeks really loved their blondes). David never finished the painting, but it was still admired throughout Paris. The sofa that Madame Recamier reclines on is even called a recamier today.

It does look like the poor girl was shorn by the executioner before sitting for this painting. You have to wonder if David did this on purpose?

After firing David, Recamier hired his student Francois Gerard to paint her portrait with less artistic license. 

Which painting do you like better? 

I have to agree with Recamier. Gerard's painting is far more flattering to the sitter. Besides, even if you are Jacques-Louis David, you just don't mess with a woman's hair.

Mme. Recamier experienced financial hardship after Napoleon's policies bankrupted her husband. She later became featured in her benefactor, Madame de Stael's novel Corinne. Sadly, Juliette went blind in her final years and died at the age of 71 of cholera. 

I am really not doing Juliette justice with this cursory biography, (her life is full of raucous scandal!) but Lucy Moore covers Juliette Recamier in her fabulous book Liberty: The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France.  You can even get this one at the bargain price over at amazon. See link below.

Sources and Further Reading:

Putnam's magazine: an illustrated monthly of literature, art and life, Volume 1

Austrian, Delia. The Life of Juliette Recamier, BiblioLife, 2010

Moore, Lucy.Liberty: The Lives and Times of Six Women in Revolutionary France, Harper Perennial, 2008.

Raucous New Releases in Children's Books

September's Raucous Book of the Month is sure to unglue your kids from iCarly.  More than just a pampered diva, Cleopatra gets the credit she deserves in Cleopatra Rules! The Amazing Life of the Original Teen Queen by Vicky Alvear Shecter. Shecter dispels many of the myths surrounding Egypt's most infamous queen such as her alleged promiscuity, her feminine wiles and the dirt behind her relationship with Rome's most influential rulers.  Kids will especially love the background information  about how Egyptians lived with sections on "Toys for Tuts" and "Books on a Stick."

Vicky will be stopping by next month for an interview on her new book so get your Cleo questions ready.



In A Sick Day for Amos McGee, Amos the lovable, Mr. Rogers look-a like, zoo keeper can't get to the zoo for his usual visit with his friends. Blame it on that darn sniffling rhino who gives Amos a bad case of rhinovirus.

No worries. Amos' friends decide they will just have to come to him and Amos spends the day in bed playing chess with his elephant buddy, reading books with the owl and getting his feet warmed by his pal the penguin. What child wouldn't want a penguin warming his feet? Kids who hate being thrown out of their routine for the sniffles will find comfort in this story of friendship. Pair it with I Feel Better with a Frog in my Throat (shameless promotion) and your child will just feel lucky that they don't have to wear smelly socks around their neck to feel better.

Now, I am going to make a bold statement with A Sick Day for Amos McGee... I think it is the next Caldecott winner for the year. I know. I know. It is only August. Too early to start predicting winners. But when I saw, Red Sings from Tree Tops last year, I predicted  that it was the next Caldecott winner and it was a Honor Book. So now I am all cocky thinking I have this hidden talent for predicting Caldecott Winners.

I think you will agree with me when you see some of the pictures.

I stole this image for Erin Stead's site. I am hoping she won't mind since I just awarded her the Caldecott.

Ripple Sketches

Just a quick reminder that my art (below) will be auctioned tonight tomorrow at 7:00 pm EST. The donation is $50.00 and it goes to the first person who reserves it. All proceeds go toward a great cause. More info here.

A sneak preview of I Feel Better with a Frog in my Throat.... and the censorship begins!

A few months ago, I got a letter from my editor telling me that a well-respected librarian refused to carry I Feel Better with a Frog in my Throat because she was afraid that children would think the people of minorities shown in the book only existed in the past.

My first reaction to this comment was the same feeling that I got when I hid Jennifer Nagel's chair on her in the first grade. I thought hiding Jennifer's chair would be funny. She was my friend and we were always playing pranks on each other. What I didn't forsee was Jennifer thinking her chair was where she left it and falling straight on her arse. I will never forget the look in Sister Agnes' eyes. I could count every line in the road map of her furrowed brow and they all pointed in one direction—utter disappointment.

That was my first reaction. I had done something horrible and just like Jennifer's sore bum; there was no way to fix it.

My second reaction (about 3 seconds later) was..."What the *$#@?" I Feel Better with a Frog in my Throat is a history book. The entire book shows people of the past trying out wacky cures and finding that some of the strange ones really did work. Why would any child viewing a book about the past think that minorities only existed in the past? Aren't kids smarter than that? Maurice Sendak certainly thought so. He sums up my reaction far more eloquently:

'People look for whether a picture book has followed the "rules" about what is right and healthy for children. This comes into conflict all the time with those things that are mysterious, because no serious artist’s work is ever just a single thing. What I object to is that picture books are judged from a particular, pedantic point of view vis-à-vis their relation to children- and I insist that any work of art is much more.
 

Besides, children don't need this approach to a book. They are much more catholic in taste; they'll tolerate ambiguities, peculiarities, and things illogical; they will take them into their unconscious and deal with them as best they can.
 

Most people are out to protect children from what they think is dangerous. Genuine artists have the same concern. Their work, however, may not confirm to what the specialists think is right or wrong for children. Artists are going to put elements into their work that come from their deepest selves. They draw on a peculiar vein from their own childhoods that is always open and alive. This is their particular gift. They understand that children know a lot more than people give them credit for. Children are willing to deal with many dubious subjects that grownups think they shouldn't know about.'

It is a sad thing when this kind of censorship shapes which picture books get in front of kids because I believe it makes artists and writers afraid to give a part of their deepest selves. Yes, we should always tell the truth, but should we stuff that truth into a prescribed checklist of politically correct interpretations? Don't children deserver better than that?

Above: The most powerful cure in history - kisses

The book includes history's strangest cures from maggots, mud, and mummy powder to leeches and purging and then explains why doctors believed they worked, but the last page contains a 'cure' that every child has used throughout history - kisses.   I know it sounds corny, but I wanted to show that medicine has progressed because the power of hope pushed it forward.

This final spread is "my peculiar vein" and just so happens to be the page that this librarian most objected to. The last page is the only page in the book that illustrates a modern mother and child and that mother and child are white (gasp!) while the minorities depicted are set in the past. Her logic was that because only a white mother and child get a modern depiction that kids might think only whites are modern. Really, I might think this too if my head was trepanned with a blunt object (one of the many cures).

When I was working on this page, I pictured one image over and over again - a child holding my book in their hands with a sick parent, grandparent, sibling or pet and they can do absolutely nothing to make them feel better. Who has not wanted a little bit of hope in the face of hopelessness? Does hope need the right skin color to resonate with a child? I guess I will find out when the book is released, but I believe it does not.

Above: did caterpillar fungus cure? 

Now being a people pleaser, I thought long and hard about what I could have done differently to not get such a negative reaction. Maybe I could have shown tiny mothers and children of every nationality stuffed into the last frame of the final spread? Unfortunately, if you have ever been ill and had your child come to you with a glass of water, a warm blanket or even a kiss then you know this is a very intimate moment. A rainbow tribe singing Kumbaya would have only cheapened these very intimate emotions.

Above: the philosopher stone holds the key to never getting sick.

Don't get me wrong. This is not an attack on librarians or this particular librarian. I love librarians. They are our brave gate-keepers with the impossible job of keeping our children safe in an unsafe world. I may write children's book for children, but I want to make librarians proud. But censoring children's books on the grounds of political correctness only serves to make a Faustian bargain with young readers. They may gain knowledge, but at what price? Is it worth losing the soul of a book?

Illustration Friday: Caged

This poor bull in a china shop can hardly move caged inside his tight Victorian bodice.

This painting was done using a custom static bristle made in Corel Painter on top of the gessoed canvas. Patterns were modeled in Photoshop. 

Ripple: Saving the animals of the gulf oil spill

Illustrator Kelley Light has done an amazing thing. Instead of sitting on her butt and whining about the oil spill she has started a nonprofit called Ripple. All proceeds go toward helping clean up the mess and so far she has raised over $9000.

Here is how it works: Artists have donated their art and you can purchase prints for $10.00. Original art is $50.00. $50 is nothing to get an ORIGINAL piece of art.

I would have killed for this illustration by Dan Santat: 

Of course I had to do something melodramatic. My contribution is a painting of the Scarlet Ibis. I will let people know when it is available for purchase.

I chose the ibis because he happens to be a very important bird in the history of mankind. 

oh no, I feel some history coming... 

The ancient Egyptians worshiped the ibis because of his um....hidden talent. This industrious bird can evacuate his bowels by pushing a beak full of water right up his rectum. ouch! Well, when the ancient Egyptians saw the ibis doing his business, they immediately said - my, that looks like fun. According to Pliny (who liked to comment on such things) Egyptians learned the art of clean bowels from the majestic ibis.

Now, doesn't my little enema story make you want this postcard even more? 

Head over to ripple sketches and treat yourself to some wildlife art. 

What should you never feed a vampire?

The obvious answer to this week’s quiz is garlic, but garlic may have been the one food that could cure a vampire.

The word vampire was first recorded in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1734, a year after an insidious disease had erupted throughout the Old World. Symptoms of this unexplained sickness included bad breath, sensitivity to light, dementia, aggression and eventually death. No one was safe and no one could figure out the cause. Romanian peasants described the epidemic as nosferatu, a term derived from the Greek nosophorus, meaning ‘plague carrier.’ Before long, the word vampire came into 18^th century lexicon and a cottage industry of Hollywood dramas and teen literature was born.

Today we know the disease that ravaged Europe’s population as pellagra, a vitamin deficiency of niacin and tryptophan. One food is now believed to have caused it.

The mystery food that led to vampirism

If you look on any food box in your cabinet you will probably find the food that caused pellagra. Its derivatives are listed as dextrose, dextrin, xanthan gum and a bunch of other scary chemically modified foods. It is the number one food crop grown in America and our first known genetically engineered diet staple. You can find it in everything from soda to crackers and it may even someday power our cars.

What is this mystery food? Scroll down for answer…

Keep scrolling you scrolling fool.

Studies show that scrolling is the best way to tone your wrist.

Work it

Work it

You're too sexy for this blog.
too sexy for this blog.
too sexy for this blog

oh….you are looking better already.

Answer: The indigenous Americans called it maize, but we know it as corn.

A Brief history of Corn

Ancient mesoAmericans may have been a little slow discovering the wheel, but they sure knew how to whip up a good batch of corn. Corn did not sprout out of the ground with its sunny kernels begging for some butter. Maize was originally an inedible weed-like grass that was crossbred with a wild grain called teosinte. After a series of genetic mutations….voila corn on the cob. But corn still needed a little more coaxing to make it digestible so indigenous Americans soaked the maize in ashes of lime in a process known today as nixtamaliuzation. They called it Nahuati (which sounds far more magical and is much easier to spell).

This last step was VERY important!

Enter my favorite guy Columbus. He brought maize to Europe and everyone loved it. It was easy to grow. It packed a high caloric punch and it soon became the staple food supply for most of rural Europe. Unfortunately, Columbus and the rest of his marauding thugs forgot the instructional booklet on how to grow maize and Europeans skipped the nixtaumaluzation process. Bad move. What resulted was a bunch of crazed lunatics in need of some serious Flinestone vitamins. By skipping the last step, the maize essentially prevented the body from naturally absorbing niacin. The disease that resulted was pellagra and it bore a eerie resemblance to vampirism.

Sensitivity to Light

Remember when Bram Stoker described the Count’s skin as of  “an extraordinary parlor"? Vampires throughout legend have always been sensitive to light, but were they really suffering from pellagra? One of the first symptoms of pellagra is an increased sensitivity to light with shiny, paper-thin skin following any exposure to sunlight. Hmmmm.... coincidence? 

Vampire fangs

Pellagra victims also suffered from a swollen, red tongue and inflamed reddened lips which made them look like they had just chugged a big blood fruit smoothie and forgot to wipe their mouth. The swollen tongue may have also resulted in tooth imprints on the tongue and lips that could appear to be caused by....fangs.

Dementia

Things get really fun in the later stages of pellagra when grandma starts acting wacky and eating the family pet. Pellagra victims suffer from insomnia, anxiety, depression and a desire to eat strange things. When a person has unnatural food craving caused by vitamin deficiencies we call it pica, but to an 18^th century peasant it looked a lot like their loved one had gone to the dark side.

Death

Pellagra is not always a quick death. Victims slowly become anemic due to gastrointestinal bleeding. When a person becomes anemic, they lose weight, get paler and paler and appear as if the blood is getting sucked right out of them. In Dracula, everyone suspected Lucy was being drained of her blood, but maybe she was just eating too many corn chips in bed?

Springtime for Vampires

In Stoker’s Dracula, Jonathan Harker is warned as he enters Transylvania that, ‘it is the eve of St. George’s Day. Do you know that tonight, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway?' Stoker had done his research. According to legend, vampires would gather at the edge of the village on St. George’s Day in late April for their annual vampire convention. Springtime was not only mardi gras for vampires, it was also the worst time for pellagra victims. Before new crops could be harvested, cornmeal was often the only food source for a typical peasant resulting in increased cases of pellagra.

Garlic

So where did we get the myth that eating garlic keeps away vampires? Well, if you were living in an impoverished village where all your friends and family were turning into vampires then eating garlic may have been the one food that could save you. Eating garlic actually prevents niacin deficiencies and may have prevented pellagra.

So our superstitious ancestors may have been smarter than we think when it comes to living with vampires. Let that be a little raucous history for your teen (or you) going to see the latest Twilight movie. Stay away from the popcorn or you could return a vampire. (insert evil/geeky laugh here)

You can read more about real life vampire, Vlad the Impaler in my book The Raucous Royals or wait for more medical wackiness in I Feel Better with a Frog in my Throat due out in October. 

Sources and Further Reading

Standage, Tom. An Edible History of Humanity, Waterville, Me. : Thorndike Press, 2009.

Pellagra and the origin of a myth: evidence from European literature and folklore, Jeffrey S. Hampl & William S. Hampl. JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF MEDICINE, Volume 90 November 1997

Have I stumped readers for the first time?

UPDATE: No one has got both answers yet. For some reason comments are not showing up in the old post. So post your comments in this new post. 

It's Quiz time! I know the Anne Boleyn junkies are probably going to get the first one pretty quickly so I had to throw in a vampire question too.

1. There was a bird in Anne Boleyn's Greenwich garden whose screams drove her mad. What was that bird?
2. In the 18th century, what food may have given rise to the belief in vampires?

Leave your answer in the comments below. The first person to answers both questions correctly wins a copy of  Boleyn Tudor Vampire by Cinsearae S.

This one is for the US folks only.

Quiz time: Win a copy of Boleyn, Tudor Vampire

It's Quiz time! I know the Anne Boleyn junkies are probably going to get the first one pretty quickly so I had to throw in a vampire question too.

1. There was a bird in Anne Boleyn's Greenwich garden whose screams drove her mad. What was that bird?
2. In the 18th century, what food may have given rise to the belief in vampires?

Leave your answer in the comments below. The first person to answers both questions correctly wins a copy of  Boleyn Tudor Vampire by Cinsearae S.

This one is for the US folks only.

Reminder: I will be giving away a copy of Heart of Lies by M.L. Malcolm to a lucky newsletter subscriber this week. If you are not a newsletter subscriber then you can subscribe here.