What I'll Miss About England (And What I Won't)

After about 8 years here in Manchester, UK, my English husband and I are moving back stateside in one week after the months-long process of obtaining his visa. I can't wait to be able to see my friends and family in Pennsylvania on a regular basis again but there's a lot of things I'm going to miss about living here . . . and a lot of things I won't.

I will really miss this kind of history in the UK.

Thing's I'll miss:

• The history. I love history. Don't all genealogists? I love it whether it's my own family history or not. And the UK is so rich in history. The castles, the halls and manors, the roman ruins, viking towns, etc. It's all so beautiful and romantic and it's been practically on my doorstep for eight years.
• The countryside. Drive a mere half hour out of the city and all you'll see for miles are lusciously green rolling hills dotted with fluffy sheep and lined with stone walls and fences. The UK does not really have the "suburban" culture so common in America.
• The accents. I loved getting to know all the different accents across the nation and I'll miss them all (well, most of them). At least my husband will be bringing his with us.
• The music! This is essentially what brought my husband and I together in the first place, our mutual love for British music. Of course we'll still be able to listen to British music but we'll miss the live music scene and our favorite radio station, XFM Manchester. I honestly don't know what we're going to listen to in the car without it.
• The chocolate. So smooth and creamy. Need I say more?
• The pubs/Sunday roast. How would you like to have a Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner every sunday? Roast turkey, beef, chicken, ham, or lamb, with gravy, roasted vegetables, perhaps even mashed potatoes, and my personal favorite, Yorkshire pudding. And you get to eat all this in a beautiful, historical, cozy gastro-pub with a roaring fireplace. Sounds great, right? My husband and I have vowed to maintain a Sunday roast tradition but it will be at home, not in our favorite pubs.
• No tipping necessary. In the UK, tipping is not commonplace and only done for exceptional service, which is the way it should be. By definition, gratuity is optional, not expected.
• Fewer bugs. I'm the kind of person who, for some inexplicable reason, attracts mosquitoes like a moth to a flame. I go to the Caribbean and come back with 30+ bug bites. England thankfully has so few bugs that most homes don't even have screened windows. I will miss itch-free summers.
• The plumbing. This might seem like a strange topic but it's time the truth was told! In the UK, toilets don't get clogged. That's right, you read it correctly, they don't clog. When my English husband clogged his first toilet in America, he had no idea what was wrong and I amusingly had to show him how to use a plunger. I couldn't understand how someone could reach the age he was without having clogged a toilet before! After living in the UK, I now understand. British toilets, instead of merely releasing water into the bowl to flush it, have a mechanism which pushes the water out forcefully, flushing it more effectively. Apparently, it is something which can be installed into American toilets, called a "flush assist" and for the life of me, I don't know why it isn't the norm like it is in the UK.

Thing's I won't miss:

• The WEATHER. I don't think words can fully express how much I hate the weather here but I'll try. It's cold, it's damp, it's rainy, it's cloudy, it's windy. I never minded the rain until I moved here, I even rather enjoyed a good thunderstorm. But in eight years, I've never seen a real thunderstorm here, it's just a dull, dreary drizzle. Maybe once or twice a year I'll hear a low murmur of thunder and my husband will excitedly exclaim "Whoa, did you hear that?!" That's not thunder, thunder is getting snapped awake from a dead sleep by what can only be described as God himself smacking his whip against the skies. But it's not just the rain which depresses me, the average highs in the summer are in the low to mid 60s. The rare days when it gets above 70, the warmth is quickly countered by 20-30 mph gusts of winds. And the winters aren't much different. Snow? Fat chance. Just more rain and wind, with average temperatures only about 20 degrees lower. The one big snowstorm we had while I lived here was not dissimilar to the snowstorms that usually hit the Philly region at least once a winter, except everyone in the UK kept declaring that they hadn't seen snow like this in 20 years and no one knew how to drive in it, though in their defense the city is ill-equipped to handle it since they're not used to it. They salt and grit the roads but there are no plows. 
• Having to do 90% of my genealogy research online. I have two, possible three English branches which originated from England and one of which were coincidentally from an area just outside where I live now in Manchester. But otherwise, the research that requires going to cemeteries and such in the U.S. could only be done in short bursts when I was visiting family back home. I can't wait to be able to go places for my research whenever I want!
• People looking at me like I've got two heads because they're not expecting me to have an American accent. Really. You'd think they'd never heard an American accent before. I can't wait until I no longer feel like I don't completely belong or fit in where I live. I realize it means my English husband might feel this way in America but he's much more adaptable and laid back than I am.
• Not being able to drive. Okay, I could have driven but it would have required learning to drive manual and on the left side of the road at the same time. I'll be so glad to be back in a situation where I am actually comfortable driving.
• The spoons! Another strange topic but seriously, the spoons here are either too big or too small, like some kind of weird Goldilocks universe. The big ones look more like mixing or serving spoons and the small ones have a very shallow scoop. My husband didn't understand what I was complaining about until my mom sent me a normal American spoon and while he was using it with his cereal exclaimed, "This is a good spoon, I like it." Yeah, I know! 

I'm sure I'm forgetting some things but that's the bulk of my personal pros and cons of living in England. While it looks like there's more things I'll miss about it than those I'll be grateful to get away from, ultimately being near my friends and family again trumps everything. Also exciting about the move is that we'll we taking a ship instead of flying. I'd like to say it will be like taking the journey my immigrant ancestors did across the Atlantic but I'm pretty sure my trip will be much more luxurious!

Historical Fiction and Author's Notes

I'm going to take a slight diversion from the topic of genealogy for a moment and address an issue concerning historical novels. I am a historical fiction enthusiast as much as I am interested in non-fiction and genealogy but I am not the type that requires my fiction to be perfectly accurate. It is, after all, fiction and some creative license should be expected.

What concerns me is the issue of the Author's Note in the back of many historical novels in which it's become common for authors to detail which parts of the novel are factual, which are grey areas, and which are complete fabrications. This would normally be a great little educational tool but readers tend to take this as gospel, which they unfortunately shouldn't. In two specific cases, I have come across an Author's Note that contains false statements of fact.

The first of which was Jeanne Kalogridis' The Borgia Bride. It's an excellent work of fiction based on Sancha of Aragon, wife of Joffre Borgia (son of Pope Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia). But in her Author's Note at the end, she claims:

"Historians have speculated for centuries as to who actually poisoned Alexander VI and his eldest son. The mystery has never been solved."

My understanding is that most historians feel there is no conclusive proof that Alexander and his son were even poisoned at all. In fact, after reading The Borgias and Their Enemies by Christopher Hibbert, I am more convinced that they were merely the victims of a naturally occurring bacterial or viral infection. Take a look at the timeline detailed in Hibbert's work of non-fiction:

"On August 5, just four days before Cesare was due to leave Rome, father and son accepted an invitation to dinner at the villa of Cardinal Adriano Castellesi in the countryside some miles outside of Rome. On this occasion it was Cesare's health that caused the greater anxiety, since he was not only suffering from pain in his stomach, but also, according to Burchard, he was "much irritated by the skin on his face in the lower part, which falls apart like rotten leaves and results in a pus that he is much concerned to hide with his mask." On their arrival at Castellesi's villa, father and son were both extremely thirsty and asked for cups of wine, which they drank "most gratefully." It was a sultry evening, and the guests dined alfresco, thankful for the shade cast by the trees in the garden. The next day their host felt ill and went to bed; a week later the pope also took to his bed; Cesare then fell ill; so did several of the cardinal's other guests, as well as some of his servants. Poison was naturally suspected."

The illness Cesare was suffering from prior to the incident was Syphilis, though probably of no importance regarding this. Hibbert does mention that poison was suspected; it often was. But people at the time had little understanding of illness, disease, and poison. After all, they still believed malaria was caused by "bad air". With the knowledge we have today, one only needs to look at the timeline of events (which I've bolded) to understand that it could not have been poison. After the dinner at which they were supposedly poisoned, the host first falls ill the next day. A full week later, the pope takes ill and soon after, so does Cesare and several of the other guests and servants who had attended the dinner. I admit I am no expert on poison but I've never heard of one which, after only one dosage, takes a week to kick in and then kicks in hard. I can not see how that would even be medically possible. Gradual poisoning wasn't possible, not with so many ill who were all only in the same place one night. It seems more likely to me that this is the result of a natural disease and the timeline we're seeing is due to the incubation period (the time between one is infected and one shows symptoms). The host of the night was already infected but not showing symptoms yet (at least not strong or obvious ones, he could have been ignoring minor, beginning symptoms in order to host the party) and was unknowingly infecting many others at the dinner, since one can be contagious during the incubation period. With an incubation period of about one week, everyone else at the party who had been infected suddenly comes down ill too.

Surely, that makes more sense than an unknown poison which, after only one dose, takes a week to kick in and then somehow is powerful enough to kill? And ultimately, the fact of the matter still remains that most historians don't conclusively believe Alexander's death was the result of poison. I did not have a problem with the use of poison in the novel but I do have a problem with the author claiming that Alexander and Cesare were indeed poisoned when there is no proof of that and little evidence.

The second inaccurate Author's Note I came across was found in Jessica McCann's All Different Kinds of Free, a novel based on the life of Margaret Morgan and the Prigg vs Pennsylvania case regarding slavery laws and whether escaped slaves in Pennsylvania could be returned to their owners in the south or not, especially with no documented proof of their ownership. Margaret Morgan had claimed to be free but was captured and returned to the south where she was sold into slavery. In the Author's Note, McCann claims that Margaret was indeed free, not a slave, when she went to Pennsylvania and as evidence of this states:

"In fact, in the 1830 U.S. census, she, her husband and their children were recorded as 'free blacks' by the county sheriff."

It's true that there is an 1830 U.S. Census record of a black Jerry Morgan, who McCann claims was Margaret's husband, living in the right area. What she fails to inform the reader of is that Margaret's husband's name is lost to history and that in the 1830 census, only the "head of household" is recorded by name. Here is where knowledge of genealogy research does come into play a little bit because every genealogist knows that you can't make assumptions like this. McCann is assuming Jerry Morgan was Margaret's husband without any proof of it since Margaret is never named on the census herself. Could it be an accurate assumption? Yes, it's possible that Jerry Morgan was Margaret's husband and that they were free and therefore Jerry's name was recorded on the 1830 census. But it's also possible they were escaped slaves whose names were never recorded on the 1830 census and Margaret's husband's name was something else entirely. Naturally, it goes without saying that regardless of their slave status, Margaret's fate (being sold into or back into slavery) was immoral. But that doesn't justify making false statements to suit one's agenda. I certainly don't have a problem with Margaret being portrayed as free in the novel or even if the author personally believes Margaret was free - I would like to believe the same thing. But she still needs to be clear about the facts in the Author's Note, which she wasn't. Had she explained that the census record may not be Margaret's family but that she believes it is, fair enough, I'd have no complaints. But don't claim something is factual when you're actually only making assumptions.

While I respect all the hard work and research that goes into any historical novel, it's important to remember that if you would not use it as a credible source for an academic study, it's best to take it with a grain of salt. You wouldn't cite the Author's Note from a novel in an academic report of the topic so don't take it as gospel. The author can make mistakes or might be motivated to exaggerate the facts, even within the Author's Note, to lend authenticity to their story, making it more interesting to the reader. It's possible these were rare cases and that most Author's Notes can be trusted; I am not criticizing all historical novelists, I respect and admire most of them. But as I am not an expert in all fields of history, how can I know what to trust and what not to? So just keep this in mind the next time you read an Author's Note in a historical novel.

I will step off my soapbox now and return to genealogy in my next post!