Since The Tale-Teller takes place during 1738 – 1739 I thought it could be useful to learn a little more about what was going on with the world during this time period in order to better understand the times Esther lived in.

After leaving no stone unturned during an comprehensive and exhaustive 90 minute binge of skimming and glossing over all the internet has to offer while simultaneously working at the Information Desk, here is a snapshot of some of the highlights and lowlights of 1738/39.

In ‘39 The English declare war on Spain in the intriguingly named conflict: The War of Jenkins’ Ear. What an odd name you may say. Surely it doesn’t literally refer to an ear that belonged to a man named Jenkins.  Yes. Yes it does.  The Spanish boarded a British merchant ship and liberated Robert Jenkins from his ear (or maybe it was the other way around). The detached ear was later held up for inspection during a meeting of the British Parliament.  The war on behalf of this severed ear lasted until 1742.  When I think of severed ears the first thing that comes to mind (obviously) is Blue Velvet.  

Other big news: The Methodist Church was founded after John Wesley converted from Anglicanism.  A few weeks after that took place in ’38, the future king of England – Mad George III was born.  Towards the end of his long life George suffered from dementia as portrayed in the film The Madness of King George (tag line: His Majesty was all powerful and all knowing. But he wasn’t quite all there). He was also is a character in Susanna Clarke’s great novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

Butcher turned famous highway man and member of the Essex Gang, Dick Turpin got his start in the deer theft racket in the early 1730s. (Deer theft as weirdly quaint as it sounds to my somewhat modern ears was an offense that would get you 7 years in an overeas penal colony such as Australia…I like to imagine the prisoners exchanging stories about why they were incarcerated – “I’m in for murder..what are you in for?”  “ I stole a deer”.  Turpin was executed in 1739 but his legend lives on in ballads, books and fanciful tales. 

One of the first cuckoo clocks ever was made.

The Royal Swedish Academy of  Sciences was founded.

To the dismay of the Flat Earth Society, Sur la Figure de la Terre was published by Pierre Louis Maupertuis which solidifiedNewton’s idea that the earth is an oblate spheroid.  Published in 1738…just in time to ease the fears of Esther’s shipmates.  Maupertuis also came up with the Principle of Least Action..I don’t know exactly what this entails but I pride myself in following my own improvised version of this principle each weekend.

American Founding Father, long time Govener of New York and the only guy to be Vice President under two different Presidents – George Clinton was born in 1739. I had trouble coming up with a physical representation  of Clinton but after some heavy duty searching I think I finally got it.

 1739 was witness to a very special Handsel Monday.  What is Handsel Monday you wonder? I was like you before yesterday – totally ignorant of this much overlooked tradition in Scotland and Northern England celebrating the first Monday of the New Year by giving a small gift to those people in your life who provide some household service. servants, mail carriers and the like.  But 1739 was no ordinary Handsel Monday for it was on this day that the following miracle took place.

“It is worth mentioning that one William Hunter, a collier (residing in the parish of Tillicoultry, in Clackmannanshire), was cured in the year 1738 of an inveterate rheumatism or gout, by drinking freely of new ale, full of harm or yeast. The poor man had been confined to his bed. for a year and a half, having almost entirely lost the use of his limbs. On the evening of Handsel Monday, as it is called, some of his neighbours came to make merry with him. Though he could not rise, yet he always took his share of the ale, as it passed round the company, and in the end he became much intoxicated. The consequence was that he had the use of his limbs next morning, and was able to walk about. He lived more than twenty years after this, and never had the smallest return of his old complaint”           

You will likely know him simply as Etteilla but to his mother he was called Jean-Baptiste Alliette. Born in 1738, Eteilla (or Alleitte backwards) rose to prominence at the first star of the Tarot reading circuit. In fact he was the first person who be able to support himself solely on tarot readings ( I imagine the happy day when he finally quit his day job of washing dishes or shoeing horses etc)..he died in 1791…just in time to avoid seeing the awful destruction wrought by the guillotine during the French Revolution. Joseph Ignace Guillotin like Eteilla was born in 1738. I had no idea that Guillotin not only did not invent the guillotine he was actually against the death penalty. He became so well known for campaigning against this instrument of death machine that his last name improbably got associated with it. He lobbied to get the machine’s name changed but was unsuccessful and his family ended up changing their own name instead.  As a footnote, there was later on a  Frenchmen whose last name happened to be Guillotin who met his fate by…the guillotine.

And rounding out this exploration of people and events of 1738/39 is the Canard Digérateur or the Digesting Duck. Invented in 1739 by Jacques de Vaucanson the duck is exactly what it sounds like. A automated duck that eats and digests grain and then… um…expels the waste.  Imagine a clockwork duck with similar functions to one of those creepy Baby Alive Learns to Potty dolls which likewise simulates bodily functions.  The duck was quite a sensation in France at the time and Voltaire himself wrote “without…the duck of Vaucanson, you will have nothing to remind you of the glory of France.”