Daily mail article: Richard's books

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2282802/550-year-old-hand-written-book-signed-Richard-III-contains-personal-motto.html

Ishita Bandyo
Sent from my iPad

From: Ishita Bandyo
To:
Sent: Saturday, February 23, 2013 10:24 PM
Subject: Daily mail article: Richard's books


> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2282802/550-year-old-hand-written-book-signed-Richard-III-contains-personal-motto.html

Boy, he was having Fun with Calligraphy, wasn't he - until he blodged the
downstroke on the S. And then he finished it off with an ornamental doodle
of a flower, which went a little bit wonky.

Ishita Bandyo wrote:
>
> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2282802/550-year-old-hand-written-book-signed-Richard-III-contains-personal-motto.html
>
Carol responds:

Timely post, Ishita, given the discussion of Richard's writing in a very different document, the postscript to the Buckingham letter. I notice the comment by Dr Kate Harris, curator at Longleat House, that "his handwriting is extremely competent, which shows he was highly educated."

I'll refrain from remarking on the typical Daily Mail stuff {"teenage king in waiting," probably killed his nephews, etc.). But I wonder where they got the part about his probably being educated as a cleric as the fourth son of a duke. The second son died when he was eight, making him the third son, and five years later, he was clearly being educated as a knight and future administrator. So why didn't they call him the "teenage priest in waiting"?

But great photo. I've copied it to my files.

Carol

That's a flower? ::squinting:: Good thing he was a duke and not a scribe.

Does he habitually refill his nib before starting S's? And did no one ever teach him to test the fill of the nib on scratch parchment after filling it? If he did those thick S's systematically throughout his life, maybe it's meant to be a personal flourish where he turns the nib so it thickens the letter? Are there examples of clean ones, I wonder?

His hand is a little shaky in places, but I think that's because he was writing on a curved, bound page and trying really hard not to muck it up. You can see where he had a leetle bit of trouble on the last stroke joining the bottom of the G. (It's four strokes to make that one letter.)

It takes so many finicky little strokes to make those nasty medieval letters. Ugh.

~Weds


--- In , "Claire M Jordan" <whitehound@...> wrote:

> Boy, he was having Fun with Calligraphy, wasn't he - until he blodged the downstroke on the S. And then he finished it off with an ornamental doodle of a flower, which went a little bit wonky.
>

From: wednesday_mc
To:
Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2013 3:40 AM
Subject: Re: Daily mail article: Richard's books


> If he did those thick S's systematically throughout his life, maybe it's
> meant to be a personal flourish where he turns the nib so it thickens the
> letter? Are there examples of clean ones, I wonder?

Here's a good selection of his signatures
http://www.r3.org/rnt1991/inkandpaper.html The graphologist makes some
interesting points but is trying hard to interpret his writing as that of
Shakespeare's villain - saying, for example, that his large signature shows
he was being intimidating. In fact, the largest handwriting I've ever seen
belonged to a Jewish girl called Gail who was a mathematical genius and not
in the least bit intimidating, just excessively jolly and expansive - she
used to sweep into the room crying "It's Gail the perfect, fans!"

He makes much of the changeability of Richard's signature. To a certain
extent that's fair - the wildly changing slopes in the Buckingham note, for
example, suggest that he was in a very erratic frame of mind, and some of
these signatures also look as though he was in a wild, stressed mood. But
the graphologist hasn't allowed for the fact that nobles and monarchs were
*supposed* to have extremely florid signatures as a sort of personal logo
and presumably a defence against forgery. What I see here is that Richard
wasn't terribly good at calligraphy and kept changing his signature, and his
style of pen, in an effort to find something he could reproduce reliably
without covering it in blobs and squiggles.

Here http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Places/Property/1193591 is a
low-resolution greyscale photo' of the "three signatures document, with
Edward V at the top, then Richard, then Buckingham. Here are their
individual signatures from the document:

http://www.joergs-british-autographs.de/k+q-edward5.html
http://thehpn.net/theforum/showthread.php?tid=31 (Richard - towards the
bottom of the page)
http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php?topic=4774.15
(Buckingham/Stafford is about halfway down, and you'll also see George of
Clarence and Eward IV - who looks drunk)

Richard has written his signature and motto with such unusual care and
neatness that I visualise him with the tip of his tongue sticking out in
concentration, and has then finished it off with a wild little flourishing
brace as if to say "Yay! I did it!"

Buckingham's signature is excessively thready, considering the rounded style
of the day, and also faint and erratic in the original. It suggests to me
that he was either very drunk or possibly had some neurological issue.

I don't do calligraphy and have certainly never been taught to write a 15thC hand, but some of the things that may look odd to us were part of the technique. Letters consisted of a combination of thick and thin lines, and the nib had to be turned to the appropriate angle for the appropriate bit of the letter. I know the s in Gloucestre looks rather scratchy, and that the s in desieree isn't thick, but the thickness of the s in Gloucestre was I think deliberate - compare the long s's in the MS itself. Richard's hand (other than in the Buckingham letter) is generally complimented on by historians. Really, you should see the writing of other people who were not trained clerks if you don't believe me. It is probably anachronistic to look at it as an exercise in calligraphy.
Marie


--- In , "wednesday_mc" <wednesday.mac@...> wrote:
>
> That's a flower? ::squinting:: Good thing he was a duke and not a scribe.
>
> Does he habitually refill his nib before starting S's? And did no one ever teach him to test the fill of the nib on scratch parchment after filling it? If he did those thick S's systematically throughout his life, maybe it's meant to be a personal flourish where he turns the nib so it thickens the letter? Are there examples of clean ones, I wonder?
>
> His hand is a little shaky in places, but I think that's because he was writing on a curved, bound page and trying really hard not to muck it up. You can see where he had a leetle bit of trouble on the last stroke joining the bottom of the G. (It's four strokes to make that one letter.)
>
> It takes so many finicky little strokes to make those nasty medieval letters. Ugh.
>
> ~Weds
>
>
> --- In , "Claire M Jordan" <whitehound@> wrote:
>
> > Boy, he was having Fun with Calligraphy, wasn't he - until he blodged the downstroke on the S. And then he finished it off with an ornamental doodle of a flower, which went a little bit wonky.
> >
>

Yes, I think there are two problems with handwriting analyses. Firstly they don't seem to be accurate even with modern hands. I saw an interesting documentary once in which graphologists were asked to pick out high flyers on the basis of samples of handwriting from anonymous individuals. They went for the round, well formed, hands which all actually belonged to well organised but not terribly creative secretaries. The real high flyers had much more individualistic hands which the graphologists looked at very disapprovingly and rejected out of hand! I get the impression that the rules of graphology were made up rather than determined by genuine studies.
I don't know if it's changed, but it certainly used to be the habit of graphologists to attribute backward-sloping writing to shyness and lack of self belief without even asking the obvious question as to whether the writer was left-handed.
Anyway, a purveyor of this (IMO) unscientific method of analysis then tries to analysise writing of a wholly unfamiliar type - ie 15th century - not knowing what characteristics were individual and what ones were normal for the period or the result of training.
Not an exercise I have much faith in, as you've probably worked out by this point.
Marie

--- In , "Claire M Jordan" <whitehound@...> wrote:
>
> From: wednesday_mc
> To:
> Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2013 3:40 AM
> Subject: Re: Daily mail article: Richard's books
>
>
> > If he did those thick S's systematically throughout his life, maybe it's
> > meant to be a personal flourish where he turns the nib so it thickens the
> > letter? Are there examples of clean ones, I wonder?
>
> Here's a good selection of his signatures
> http://www.r3.org/rnt1991/inkandpaper.html The graphologist makes some
> interesting points but is trying hard to interpret his writing as that of
> Shakespeare's villain - saying, for example, that his large signature shows
> he was being intimidating. In fact, the largest handwriting I've ever seen
> belonged to a Jewish girl called Gail who was a mathematical genius and not
> in the least bit intimidating, just excessively jolly and expansive - she
> used to sweep into the room crying "It's Gail the perfect, fans!"
>
> He makes much of the changeability of Richard's signature. To a certain
> extent that's fair - the wildly changing slopes in the Buckingham note, for
> example, suggest that he was in a very erratic frame of mind, and some of
> these signatures also look as though he was in a wild, stressed mood. But
> the graphologist hasn't allowed for the fact that nobles and monarchs were
> *supposed* to have extremely florid signatures as a sort of personal logo
> and presumably a defence against forgery. What I see here is that Richard
> wasn't terribly good at calligraphy and kept changing his signature, and his
> style of pen, in an effort to find something he could reproduce reliably
> without covering it in blobs and squiggles.
>
> Here http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Places/Property/1193591 is a
> low-resolution greyscale photo' of the "three signatures document, with
> Edward V at the top, then Richard, then Buckingham. Here are their
> individual signatures from the document:
>
> http://www.joergs-british-autographs.de/k+q-edward5.html
> http://thehpn.net/theforum/showthread.php?tid=31 (Richard - towards the
> bottom of the page)
> http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php?topic=4774.15
> (Buckingham/Stafford is about halfway down, and you'll also see George of
> Clarence and Eward IV - who looks drunk)
>
> Richard has written his signature and motto with such unusual care and
> neatness that I visualise him with the tip of his tongue sticking out in
> concentration, and has then finished it off with a wild little flourishing
> brace as if to say "Yay! I did it!"
>
> Buckingham's signature is excessively thready, considering the rounded style
> of the day, and also faint and erratic in the original. It suggests to me
> that he was either very drunk or possibly had some neurological issue.
>

From: mariewalsh2003
To:
Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2013 2:00 PM
Subject: Re: Daily mail article: Richard's books


> I know the s in Gloucestre looks rather scratchy, and that the s in
> desieree isn't thick, but the thickness of the s in Gloucestre was I think
> deliberate - compare the long s's in the MS itself.

Yes, but it's gone a little bit wrong - it looks like he's leaned in too
heavily and splayed the nib. Or perhaps the parchment was too absorbent and
so the large amount of ink involved in that stroke has "bled".

> It is probably anachronistic to look at it as an exercise in calligraphy.

It's the excessively elaborate and twiddly R and then the little flower at
the side which makes me think he was playing around a bit. Which is nice -
it means you can see one of his thought-processes taking place right there,
and it's a whimsical one. A young man who ornaments his signature with a
twiddly, slightly wonky flower is such a long way from Shakespeare's
villain.

From: mariewalsh2003
To:
Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2013 2:12 PM
Subject: Re: Daily mail article: Richard's books


> I get the impression that the rules of graphology were made up rather than
> determined by genuine studies.

There are some successful studies done by the police showing that certain
traits such as violence *can* be identified, but also studies showing that
it's next to useless in determining people's suitability for jobs, except at
the most basic "if somebody's handwriting suggests they are constantly angry
they're probably not going to work well in the customer complaints
department" level. Being able to tell from somebody's writing that they may
have an artistic temperament doesn't tell you whether they actually have any
artistic *talent*, for example.

I have a very good book on graphology which talks you through why certain
signs mean certain things, and I can see where this person who's analysing
Richard is going wrong by jumping to conclusions. Wide spacing between
words or between initial and surname does suggest hesitance in the writing
and he interprets that as a sign of depression or isolation, but often it
just means that the person is tired or unwell in some way. Scoliosis can
cause back pain and there may have been a big difference between making big
sweeping movements with a sword while wearing what was in effect a steel
corset, and making the repetitive cramped movements of Mediaeval writing, so
I would see this widely-spaced and slighty hesitant movement as a sign that
his back was twinging, or that he was thinking "Note to self: must leave
enough space for the G", rather than the sinister interpretation this author
puts on it.

What you also have to take into consideration is how many letters people were signing at the time. I know that sounds daft but I've had to sign a couple of hundred things at one go and believe me your signature gets worse and worse. Richard was a hard worker. I doubt he'd sign one letter a day.  Napoleon, we know, could dictate eight letters to his secretaries simultaneously. My guess is that Richard had a fair few on the go at the same time too. It's so easy to read significance into things that isn't really there.


________________________________
From: mariewalsh2003 <[email protected]>
To:
Sent: Sunday, 24 February 2013, 14:00
Subject: Re: Daily mail article: Richard's books

 

I don't do calligraphy and have certainly never been taught to write a 15thC hand, but some of the things that may look odd to us were part of the technique. Letters consisted of a combination of thick and thin lines, and the nib had to be turned to the appropriate angle for the appropriate bit of the letter. I know the s in Gloucestre looks rather scratchy, and that the s in desieree isn't thick, but the thickness of the s in Gloucestre was I think deliberate - compare the long s's in the MS itself. Richard's hand (other than in the Buckingham letter) is generally complimented on by historians. Really, you should see the writing of other people who were not trained clerks if you don't believe me. It is probably anachronistic to look at it as an exercise in calligraphy.
Marie

--- In , "wednesday_mc" wrote:
>
> That's a flower? ::squinting:: Good thing he was a duke and not a scribe.
>
> Does he habitually refill his nib before starting S's? And did no one ever teach him to test the fill of the nib on scratch parchment after filling it? If he did those thick S's systematically throughout his life, maybe it's meant to be a personal flourish where he turns the nib so it thickens the letter? Are there examples of clean ones, I wonder?
>
> His hand is a little shaky in places, but I think that's because he was writing on a curved, bound page and trying really hard not to muck it up. You can see where he had a leetle bit of trouble on the last stroke joining the bottom of the G. (It's four strokes to make that one letter.)
>
> It takes so many finicky little strokes to make those nasty medieval letters. Ugh.
>
> ~Weds
>
>
> --- In , "Claire M Jordan" wrote:
>
> > Boy, he was having Fun with Calligraphy, wasn't he - until he blodged the downstroke on the S. And then he finished it off with an ornamental doodle of a flower, which went a little bit wonky.
> >
>