my dad gave me one engraved with his favorite quote, from Calvin Coolidge. I had it hanging in my childhood bedroom, then in my college dorm room; I have it still, hanging here above my desk. It reads: Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
But I wasn’t suggesting you could serve a soufflé any which way; I simply wanted it done in such a way that tradition didn’t interfere with hospitality. It was a different kind of correct.
On behalf of his wife and sons, Geoffrey of Anjou led the fighting in Normandy with drive and energy, riding into battle with a ‘Planta Genista’ – the Latin name for a type of yellow-blooming flower – as his talisman. This was, it is said, the root of his nickname of ‘Plantagenet’.
Out of this extraordinary tax evolved a system, overseen by Roger of Salisbury, the name of which survives as the centre of British government finances today: the Exchequer, so-called because the moneys due to the crown in Henry’s time – rents, taxes and fines – were laid out on a large table. It was ten feet by five, with a three-inch rim around its edge to stop anything from falling off. This counting table was covered with a cloth, on which there was a pattern of horizontal and vertical squares, as would be found on a board for a game of chequers. The columns of squares had different values, starting with pennies, progressing through shillings to pounds, all the way up to tens of thousands of pounds. The royal accountant set out counters across the top row of squares, representing the sums that he had calculated as being due to the crown. Along the row immediately below this were laid out further counters, showing what had actually been paid in against the debt. In an age of complicating Roman numerals, the employment of what was, in essence, a giant chequerboard abacus reduced payments and debts to their simplest and most digestible form.
Someone from a medieval landowning family had a life expectancy of a little over thirty years from birth. This rose to forty-five if they successfully ran the gauntlet of childhood diseases and reached the age of twenty-one.
In a cruel age, he became a byword for particular viciousness. At a time when the fear of God persuaded many to respect (or at least bear in mind) the concept of mercy, and divine retribution, de Bellême seems to have been devoid of religious belief or conscience. He chose not to ransom his prisoners – then normal practice, since it was lucrative – because he preferred to keep victims on hand for torture and mutilation.
Suddenly, in the vernacular of popular culture, the woman who wore white lace collars (and a jet-black collar for dissent days) with her black robes was “cool.”
