La vieille garde dans les Carolines

December 7th: the anniversary of the death of Marshal Ney. Ney was Napoleon's saviour at Eylau, the heroic commander of the French rear guard during the retreat from Russia, and a man who had five horses shot out from under him during Waterloo.

Unless, of course, it isn't the anniversary of the death of Marshal Ney. One of your loyal blogger's favourite Southern legends contends that Ney was not executed by firing squad in Paris on December 7, 1815, but instead faked his death, and, with the help of his Freemason brothers, successfully fled France for America.

In this version of the story, the supposedly "dead" Ney arrived in Charleston late in December of 1815, and lived here clandestinely until 1819. After being spotted by French agents in Charleston, the Masons again were forced smuggle him away. He moved around the Carolinas -Georgetown, Columbia, Brownsville- before eventually settling near Salisbury, North Carolina (today about an hour's drive north of Charlotte).

So Marshal of France Michel Ney, the man who took Madgeburg and trapped the Austrians at Elchingen, lived a quiet life in small-town central North Carolina as Peter Stuart Ney, schoolteacher. Neighbors and pupils left accounts of a man who matched the Marshall's description, down to matching scars; spoke perfect French; and was all too happy to draw richly detailed maps or share vivid stories from Napoleon's campaigns. Peter Ney died quietly, far from Paris, late in 1846. Those who were around him attested he claimed to be the Marshall with his final words.

True or not, it's a fantastic piece of regional folklore. And what's absolutely true is that while the Library's events calendar is almost dead and gone for 2011, it will have another life in the coming year! The last Wide Angle Lunch and the final concert of the year take will take place tomorrow. Our last Backgammon Night of the year is next Tuesday... but we're working on the Annual Meeting cards right now... it's been a great 2011, but we can't wait for all that's in store in 2012!

Spellcheck recognizes "Servian", but not "McDonalds". That's kind of nice, actually.

It's July 18th! Today is the 2,401st anniversary of the Battle of Allia, between Republican Rome and the Gaulish Senones. The Senones accused some Roman diplomats of a serious violation of international law, and demanded they be turned over to face justice. Long story short, the Romans refused and the Senones' army took to the field. A few miles north of the city they met the Roman army - a militia composed of Greek-style phalanxes with the weakest auxiliaries on both flanks - and promptly obliterated it. Rome was sacked, and the Senones stuck around until the plague struck (likely a consequence of too many unburied Roman bodies lying around).

The battle is notable because it was the last time Rome would be sacked for 800 years. The Romans built the Servian Wall (you can see a bit of it if you're ever in the McDonalds in Termini Station); they changed the relationship between social class and military status (no more putting all the nobles on the front line to get slaughtered first); and they abandoned the rigid phalanx for the famous testudo formation (the flexibility of which was a key to eventual Roman military dominance in the Mediterranean world). In many ways, the defeat at Allia built the foundations of Roman success for centuries to come.

In much the same way as those ancient Romans, the Library Society has regrouped and reevaluated our strategy after the evening events of the past few weeks. The conclusion we've reached: if y'all are going to keep coming out in droves, we're gonna have to start charging for summer lectures!

Though we knew the speakers would be good, we figured the hot weather, scant advertising, and traditional lack of summer programming would keep event attendance down. How wrong we've been. Last week's great Bastille Day event with Alan Hoffman brought in about 120 people. Your loyal blogger very much enjoyed his conversations with the dear folks at the Alliance Francaise who were responsible for the wine and snacks... "I know we had 19 RSVP's yesterday... we're up to 60 today"... "'I'm pretty sure we're going to break 100.', 'Yes ma'am, we're at 115'"... you get the picture.

Our thanks to everyone who has come out and made our summer events so successful. Unless we're lucky enough to have a guest speaker fall in our laps, we should be done with lectures for a little while. Pub Quiz night is this Thursday... bring $5 and some friends for beer, snacks, and a lot of nerdy fun!

Summertime hours = the living is now 8.75% easier.

  Over 130 people in attendance for two events, one quite hastily announced, in one week, in the middle of summer. Last week's event schedule was a pleasant revelation of just how many folks are willing to come out for lectures and events in the face of torrid temperatures and hellish humidity. Many thanks to everyone who came out to the great events with Robert Rosen and Charlie Geer.

  Though, to be fair, those events were air conditioned. Attendance for last week's Carolina Day parade was not so... robust. Your loyal blogger says if our noble forefathers could fight off the Redcoats in 93 degree weather, we can put on striped suits and walk down Meeting Street. 

  And if you disagree, General Moultrie would be disappointed in you.

  Oh well. As long as we're discussing Library events and our Revolutionary-era predecessors, it's a good time to mention our Bastille Day Lecture next week. Alan Hoffman, president of the Massachusetts Lafayette Society, will discuss the work he's recently translated, Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825. This work was the diary of Auguste Levasseur, Lafayette's secretary, and recounts the major general's trip around the young American republic (including his time here in Charleston). Things start here in the Main Reading Room at 7PM, Thursday July 14th. There's no charge for the event, though we do ask you RSVP by emailing us or giving us a call (843.723.9912). A light reception will follow the lecture.

  Also, new summertime hours start this week! Monday-Thursday remains the same (9:30-5:30), while Friday gets trimmed down to "Saturday Size", (9:30-2:00), enabling our staff to get home in time for dinner for once.

  Finally, we're having a dry-run, get-the-kinks-out, first go at a trivia night this Thursday at 7PM. Cover is $5, beer & snacks are provided, and there'll be a little prize for the winning team. Get some folks together- groups of 2-5 might be best - and join us for a little beer and brainteasing! If you'd like more info, fire us an email.

Allons enfants de la Patrie, vous pouvez acheter vos billets...

It's May 10th, the 284th birthday of Anne Robert Jacques Turgot! If you don't know Turgot, he very briefly the French Minister of Finance in the 1770s. He tried to repair the French treasury, destroy restrictions on trade, abolish illiberal privileges of the upper class, end discrimination against French protestants, and argued against French intervention in the American Revolution not just on financial grounds, but in opposition to America's slave holding. As you might imagine, he had a lot of enemies, and was soon fired with most of his proposals dismissed by the French aristocracy.

Though as we all know, that aristocracy was dismissed by the people barely decade later...

Just as French (but much more popular), Le Creuset has donated a cast-iron pot to be raffled at this Friday's Wide Angle Lunch! The lunch (sponsored by terrific new local bookstore Heirloom Book Company) will feature Matt and Ted Lee, two Charleston chefs now living up North and spreading the gospel of Southern foodways in publications like Food & Wine, GQ, and the New York Times. Tickets for the event are going very quickly, so if you'd like to be a part of this most appetizing Wide Angle (and have a shot at the pot), get yours now.

Coming up soon: the final Unedited concert of the season is next week, and promises "chamber music with a twist". Tickets are $15... get yours now. Also, the last Wide Angle Lunch of the series is next Friday, with Alexandra Mack sharing stories from her time with Vogue magazine. Finally, the Piccolo Spoleto Literary Festival is right around the corner... tickets are available at piccolospoleto.com, the Visitors Center, and the Gaillard Box Office.

"He turned to me as if to say, Hurry boy, It's waiting there for you."

Since there are no more events left at the Library Society this month (other than standing events like Toddler Tuesdays), your loyal blogger is going to make a book endorsement, preceeded by a brief story.  Because today, April 20th, is the 182nd anniversary of René Caillié's entrance into Timbuktu.

In the late 1700s, European soldiers left unemployed by the end of the Seven Years War, lined up in the search for the fabled lands of the African interior.  Legend held it to be the home of the great river Niger, which flowed into the Nile, and drained a valley filled with rich kingdoms and cities.  The greatest of these -and the rumour that kept European explorers awake at night- was a city of solid gold, known as Timbuktu.

A Scot named Mungo Park became the first white man to reach the Niger River (1795), but was forced by bandits and ill health to return home before reaching Timbuktu.  Soon after, another Scot, Alexander Gordon Laing, crossed the Sahara and became the first European to visit Timbuktu: he received twenty four wounds fighting with desert raiders on the way there, and lost his life shortly after leaving, leaving the "golden city" as distant and mysterious to Europeans as it ever was.

It took René Caillié to get there and get back.  Caillié was a sickly orphan, born in the west of France in 1799.  A voracious reader, the young Caillié's favourite book was Robinson Crusoe, and at age sixteen he set off for adventures that would impress even Defoe's fictional hero.  He worked in West Africa- even helping to resupply a failed British mission to Timbuktu- and became familiar with the string of elaborate expeditions that, one after another, could not manage the trip to Timbuktu.  Caillié decided that he, individually, could succeed where great collective effort had failed.

To do this Caillié went native.  He moved to Mauritania, living with Senegalese Moors, absorbing their language and culture.  Having done this, he moved down the coast to a British indigo plantation, where he worked to save up money for his trip.  One day he put on his best Moorish garb and declared he was an Arab from Egypt, abducted by the French on the way to Mecca, and joined a native caravan headed east.

Caillié blended in well enough.  His ostentatious show of Muslim prayer probably aroused more suspicion than it allayed, but was certainly received better than the bombastic shows of Christian religiosity performed by prior British travellers.  Largely he was ignored because he was too poor to steal from.  Arriving safely at Timbuktu, he spent a few weeks wandering the ancient city, noting that it was made not of gold, but "...a mass of ill-looking houses, built of earth."  While it was once an important city during the Mali and Songhai empires, its glory days were long gone.  He caught a caravan headed north, trekked across the Sahara, and arrived safely back in France.  He became a national hero: he was awarded many francs, the Légion d'honneur, and the state even underwrote the publishing of his book Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo; and across the Great Desert, to Morocco.

The other half of this story- and my endorsement- is what France later did in pursuit of Caillié's legacy: thirty years of failed expedition after failed expedition in an attempt to tame the Sahara and open a north-south route from Algiers to the Niger.  This (perhaps surprisingly) interesting story is covered in Douglas Porch's The Conquest of the Sahara.  It's at the Library Society... upstairs, to the right, fourth isle down, number F78 P82.  And don't forget, reading 300 pages describing the Sahara makes good preparation for the upcoming Charleston summer...