Hungry like the Wolf

My Week 9 of WolfCrawl

• On the table week 9

• “Lift your eyes from the page and learn to look”

Stephen Gardiner is on the menu

What an ascent. From kitchen boy who devours hungrily leftovers on his way home to the king's advisor, who is richly endowed with game by the nobility. But Cromwell has not forgotten his beginnings, he cares for his kitchen boys and he distributes food to those who need it.

What´s on the table this week: painted Easter eggs, game, broth, beer and bread. Stephen Gardiner on the menu turns out to be an empty promise. A life-saving pigeon for Henry Wyatt. Soft fruit, fat brambles with yellow cream and cinnamon wafer for Wyatt as well. Still Life with waffles, Circle of Georg Flegel (1566-1638) 17th century

Wikimedia Commons

“I drank the water that ran down the wall”

I immediately grew fond of Sir Henry Wyatt. Despite everything he suffered in the Tower and the severe physical consequences he has to endure for the rest of his life, he is a warm-hearted and, it seems to me, sincere man full of resilience. In other words, someone you very, very rarely find in Henry's court.

The painting could have been done at dinner with Cromwell: Cromwell nibbles on almonds and Wyatt dips the pastry in good wine before he can eat it. Still life by Georg Flegel 1637

Wikimedia Commons

“Lift your eyes from the page and learn to look”

The quote¹ in the headline comes from "A Memoir of My Former Self" by Hilary Mantel, which I am currently reading. “You have to expand your area of curiosity, away from political history and into the area of culture…At first you are a stranger in your chosen era. But a time comes when you can walk around in a room and touch objects²,” she writes about the preparatory stage before writing.

This inspired me as a reader to try to imagine what some of the objects in the room mentioned in the conversation between Johane and Cromwell might look like.

“You gave me an ivory comb”

A comb is just a commodity to me now, but when I look at this piece from the mid-16th century, I get an idea of what an exquisitely beautiful piece it could be at the time and how Cromwell, with his Italian connections, could have chosen such a special piece as a gift for Johane and how much more meaningful it would have been. Double comb made of ivory, 1550, Venice

»©KHM-Museumsverband«

“…these things we have now. The Clock.”

I don't know which clock Cromwell might have had, but I could well imagine this piece. Perhaps a little less magnificent. Cromwell would definitely have wanted the best that technology could offer in his day.

I also had to think of the description of how Dr. Kratzer pursues his studies: “The scholar´s lips move, like the lips of a monk at vespers”. Cromwell's clock also reflects this; time is no longer just a matter for the church with the sundial on the church, just as science is detaching itself from the omnipotent authority of the church. A new time not only in Cromwell's room. Table Clock³, France around 1530 (Deutsches Uhrenmuseum Furtwangen ) The Side view shows a lute player (another object that is in Cromwell´s room: a lute)

Deutsches Uhrenmuseum Furtwangen

Detail Interior and Side view

Books of Music

With the music books, Cromwell again has things that are all the rage at the time. At the end of the 15th century, it became possible to print music with movable types in the letterpress, which enabled music to be disseminated on a larger scale. Opening of the Missa Papae Marcelli (around 1565) von Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

1. Hilary Mantel, A Memoir of My Former Self. Part IV: The Reith Lectures, 2017. Can these bones live p. 270

2. same page

3. This watch is surprisingly small: height 12.50 cm, width 6.60 cm, depth 6.60cm