Madeira Mondays: The best songs from ‘1776’

June 28, 2021June 27, 2021Leave a comment

Before there was Hamilton, there was 1776.

I honestly can’t believe that I’ve been posting on this blog regularly for about a year and a half and I’ve never once dedicated a whole post to the musical 1776. This makes no sense to me. Surely I’ve written about this before? But I looked back at my records and while I’ve definitely mentioned 1776 (for example in this post about queer activism and Grace and Frankie), I haven’t done a whole post about it. It’s time for that to change! Especially since this is one of my favorite films and 100% falls into the ‘Madeira Mondays’ remit (it’s historical fiction AND it’s about one of the most significant political events of the 18th century: the signing of the Declaration of Independence in America).

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Madeira Mondays: Benjamin Franklin and the ‘respectable’ turkey

November 23, 20203 Comments

There’s a song in the musical 1776, which features Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams arguing about what what bird should be used as America’s national symbol. Adams suggests it should be an eagle, Jefferson suggests a dove, and Ben Franklin suggests…a turkey. This song – called ‘The Egg’ – is such a delight, like the rest of the musical. There are some lovely three-part harmonies from the three men as they bicker good-naturedly about what bird it should be.

Adams argues passionately for the eagle, saying it’s a ‘majestic bird’. Franklin disagrees, saying the eagle is ‘a scavenger, a thief and a coward, a symbol of over ten centuries of European mischief.’

‘The turkey is a truly noble bird,’ Franklin argues in the song. ‘Native American, a source of sustenance for our original settlers, an incredibly brave fellow…’

Of course, in real life, as in the song, it was decided that the bald eagle would be the national bird. But, with Thanksgiving coming up, this song got me wondering if Franklin really did want our national bird to be a turkey…rather than an eagle?

Well the short answer, my friends, is that it’s a myth.

The Franklin Institute writes this:

The story about Benjamin Franklin wanting the National Bird to be a turkey is just a myth. This false story began as a result of a letter Franklin wrote to his daughter criticizing the original eagle design for the Great Seal, saying that it looked more like a turkey. In the letter, Franklin wrote that the “Bald Eagle…is a Bird of bad moral Character. He does not get his Living honestly…[he] is too lazy to fish for himself.”

However, while the story as a whole might be a myth, as you can see from that quote, Franklin didn’t seem to like eagles very much, calling the eagle a bird of ‘bad moral character’ because he’s a scavenger. Franklin also writes that the turkey is “a much more respectable Bird, and withal a true original Native of America…He is besides, though a little vain & silly, a Bird of Courage.” So, the Franklin Institute explains, while Franklin didn’t suggest the turkey for one of American’s national symbols, he did defend the turkey against the bald eagle.

Franklin goes so far as to say: ‘For my own part I wish the Bald Eagle had not been chosen the Representative of our Country.’

A painting featuring turkeys, and other birds, the 17th century, accessed via Wikimedia

So 1776 gets it ‘wrong’ in the sense that Franklin didn’t actually suggest the Turkey for the national bird, BUT they also get it quite right in the sense that Franklin did say turkeys would have been a better symbol for the country. I’m not sure how seriously we should take Franklin’s musings – it seems like he was, in typical Ben Franklin fashion (and fashion of the time), kind of intelligently waffling. But maybe he was actually disappointed, I don’t know!

A lot of the lyrics of the song ‘The Egg’ are quite evidently paraphrases from Franklin’s letter to his daughter. For example, in ‘The Egg’, fictional Franklin calls the turkey ‘an incredibly brave fellow who would not flinch at attacking a regiment of Englishmen single-handedly.’ And, in the real letter, Franklin says the turkey is ‘a Bird of Courage, and would not hesitate to attack a Grenadier of the British Guards who should presume to invade his Farm Yard with a red Coat on.’ The writers are clearly playing off the real quote. (And I love this image of a turkey attacking a British red coat – it’s just so goofy and also so Ben Franklin to me somehow!)

So, as with most historical fiction, it’s quite hard to draw clear cut lines between something being ‘accurate’ and ‘inaccurate’. This small example from 1776 just goes to show that something can, in a way, be accurate and inaccurate at the same time!

I wish a happy Thanksgiving to my American readers – whether you eat turkey or not. If you do, you can tell your family about this story! (I don’t eat meat, as I mentioned in my last blog post, so I usually eat something called ‘Tofurkey’ if I’m celebrating Thanksgiving/Christmas in the USA – it’s actually really good! I know that sounds impossible, given the silly name, but it is! This year I’m in Scotland and will be having a nut roast, which is another good option for those of us who don’t wish to eat Ben Franklin’s ‘respectable’ bird!)

‘A Turkey in a Landscape’ by Peter Wenceslaus, accessed via Wikimedia

What do you think about the turkey vs. the eagle as a national symbol? What is the bird (or national animal/flower etc.) of your country/state and do you think it was a good pick?

PS If you find yourself in the mood for some poetry tomorrow, I’ll be doing a reading at the American University of Dubai tomorrow (Tuesday November 24). It’s at 6 pm Dubai time, so you’d have to calculate what time that is for you! It’ll be a one hour poetry reading over Zoom, and it’s free and open to the public. I’ll mostly be reading poems out of my new poetry pamphlet published this summer, Anastasia, Look in the Mirror. If you fancy coming along – here is the Zoom registration link!

‘I hope yet I fear’: John and Abigail Adams on living through turbulent times

November 6, 20206 Comments

‘I feel anxious for the fate of our Monarchy or Democracy or what ever is to take place. I soon get lost in a Labyrinth of perplexities, but whatever occurs, may justice and righteousness be the Stability of our times – and order arise out of confusion. Great difficulties may be surmounted, by patience and perseverance.’ – Abigail Adams to John Adams, November 27, 1775

John and Abigail Adams were, in many ways, an unlucky couple. They had to spend a lot of their married lives apart: when John was serving in the Continental Congress (which declared the American colonies independent from Great Britain), when he was later serving as an Ambassador to England. Although this time apart is unlucky for them, it is quite lucky for us, because they wrote some of the most beautiful, profound, romantic, and insightful letters to each other during those turbulent times.

Although Abigail’s gender kept her from engaging in the public sphere directly, she was hugely intelligent and followed the developments of the American Revolution closely (as well as experiencing, first hand, the effects of the war: the loss of friends, food shortages, the constant threat of violence). She wrote about all of this.

These were two amazing people who shaped their world and ours. Adams and his peers wrote many of the laws and established the system of government that everyone in America still lives under today. John and Abigail were also quite progressive people by our modern standards (they were both, for instance, very against slavery). Like so many of the founding generation, it’s very easy for them to take on a sort of mythic quality in our imaginations now. But what I love about reading their letters to each other, and Adams’ journal entries, is seeing how freaked out and anxious they were…pretty much all the time.

They were deeply religious people and trusted in God, and they were early New England people so they were gritty and used to physical and mental hardship. But they were also human beings who were, quite understandably, nervous wrecks a lot of the time. Abigail worried about John’s safety, of course, but also about the fate of the war against Great Britain and about what would happen after, even if the colonies won. Who would write the new laws? What sort of government would there be?

Adams greatly missed his family when he was away and worried constantly about the ‘Ocean of Uncertainties’ before him and the thirteen colonies. He worried about the safety of his family, as well as his own safety (although he doesn’t mention this directly, once he’d signed the Declaration of Independence, he knew he’d committed high treason and would be executed for it if the revolution failed). He ends one letter, on May 22, 1776, with the simple sentence: ‘I hope yet I fear.’

In a diary entry from two years earlier, June 25, 1774, he wrote about his fears and his feelings of inadequacy:

I muse, I mope, I ruminate (…) The Objects before me, are too grand, for me and multifarious for my Comprehension. – We have not Men, fit for the Times. We are deficient in Genius, in Education, in Travel, in Fortune – in every Thing. I feel unutterable Anxiety. – God grant us Wisdom, and Fortitude!

‘We have not Men, fit for the Times.’ AKA ‘we’re not up for this challenge’, the challenge of the present. He worries there aren’t people smart enough, cultured enough, good enough to meet the historic moment. This is a peek behind the curtain, as it were, to the very human worries going on backstage, as America was moving towards becoming the first ever colony to break from its mother country and towards becoming a republic that would last for centuries. John Adams was so worried.

The reason I chose to write about the Adams family (the 18th century one, not the TV one!) today is because this past week can be summed up, for me, in those words that John Adams wrote: ‘I hope yet I fear.’

Although it seems like things are moving in the direction which I believe, with my whole heart, is the only way forward for the country – the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris – it has still been a nerve-wracking week. We’ve had a President trying to undermine and stop the voting process – that’s scary. This is, in many ways, a dark moment, and it’s tough during dark moments to find that ‘patience and perseverance’ that Abigail talked about in the opening quote of this post.

I don’t know how everyone else is feeling, but I can tell you that I’ve been nervous, on edge, fearful and have cried…more than once, mostly out of exhaustion and sheer build up of emotions. Like Adams: ‘I muse, I mope, I ruminate.’ BUT I also have so much hope that we can meet the enormous challenges of the present moment: the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change etc.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is that even if you personally feel overwhelmed right now, or like you don’t have the energy or the skills to rise to this moment and to affect positive change in the coming weeks and months and years – you are enough. You are ‘fit for the Times.’ And we, as a nation, are enough. We’ll get through this.

John and Abigail’s letters and diaries remind us that it’s very human to doubt one’s own abilities and to fear for the future. But I truly believe, as they believed, that the country is heading towards something very bright indeed.

I hope that you are keeping well during this momentous election season, and, for my readers who are not American, I hope that this post offers something for you to think about too! I am thinking of you all, and hope that you are safe and well.

I’ll be taking this upcoming Monday off from ‘Madeira Mondays’, since I anticipate needing a break from being online next week. But I’ll be back with another ‘Madeira Mondays’ post the week after, November 16th! As always, thank you for reading, my friend.

Madeira Mondays: Grace and Frankie…and John Adams

March 23, 2020March 21, 20203 Comments

I think most people have ‘their shows’, those they gravitate to when times are tough and they just want to zone out and relax. Aside from Gilmore Girls (my #1 feel-good show), I love to watch Grace and Frankie. It’s good, quality easy-watching TV, and today, I wanted to tell you a little more about it and its surprising connections to early American history! Read on, friends…

Lily Tomlin, left, and Jane Fonda, right, star as the titular Grace and Frankie

Grace and Frankie is in many ways a radical show for network TV. It features two unconventional leading ladies – older women in their 70’s and 80’s – often talking frankly about sex, relationships and (small spoiler alert) trying to start a company where they sell sex toys! The premise is basically that these two women, Grace (Jane Fonda) and Frankie (Lily Tomlin), get stuck together when their husbands, longtime business partners, announce that they are gay…and marrying each other. So it’s a bit of an Odd Couple set-up: Grace and Frankie move in together when their husbands leave them. Grace is organized, severe, Type A. Frankie is a hippie, scattered, creative. They clash. Then they become besties. It’s cute.

The show has been running now for six seasons (the 7th one comes out later this year I believe and will be the last). But it’s a very relaxing watch because it’s funny, the stakes are low, and everyone more or less gets along with and loves each other.

But of course there is drama in the show, which brings me to how it ties together with American history! At the end of Season 3, Grace’s ex-husband Robert Hanson (Martin Sheen) becomes involved with a gay theatre company’s production of 1776. For those of you who don’t know – 1776 is a musical set during the American Revolution. It’s about John Adams and his push for the colonies to declare independence from Great Britain. Robert is cast in the leading role as John Adams, but his theatre company is plagued by homophobic protestors who try (and fail) to shut down the play.

Later, Robert wins an acting award for his portrayal of John Adams. He uses his acceptance speech as a platform for LGBT+ activism, citing Adams as his inspiration:

It was an honor to play John Adams, a man who stood up to things that were bigger and scarier and more powerful than he was. And you know we had a little taste of that during our run of 1776. We had to stand up to bullies, who were threatening to shut us down because we are a gay theatre group. But we did stand up. Because the show of eradicating intolerance must go on…I thank the one man who truly made all of this possible. John Adams.

Martin Sheen as Robert Hanson, playing John Adams in a gay community theatre production of 1776 in Grace and Frankie

Robert’s statement that Adams ‘made all of this possible’ refers not only to how Adams inspired the musical, but also that Adams made America possible, a country where he has the right to stand up and express his beliefs. I found this scene very moving and I’ll talk more about the musical 1776, and its connections to modern progressive politics, in a later post.

So I would recommend Grace and Frankie not only because it’s cute, smart, sweet and enjoyable, but also because of its fun nods to American history. I hope that it brings you joy during this troubling time. Let me know if you’ve seen it in the comments below and please do recommend other ‘feel good’ shows. What are your favorites?

‘Madeira Mondays’ is a series of blog posts exploring Early American history and historical fiction. I’m not a historian, but an author and poet who is endlessly fascinated by this time period. I am also currently writing/researching a novel set during the American Revolution and recently finished a Doctorate of Fine Art looking at how creative writers access America’s eighteenth-century past. Follow the blog for a new post every Monday and thanks for reading!

Madeira Mondays: Trinity HistoryCon

November 18, 20193 Comments

‘Most of us began our love of history from something we saw on TV, in movies or other pop media.’

This was one of the opening remarks at Trinity History Con 2019, a two day long conference in Dublin at Trinity College, all about the intersections of pop culture and history. And that remark really stood out to me because I think it’s so true! Often the first time that we encounter history is through historical fiction – be that books, TV, films etc. For me it was reading books like Johnny Tremain about the Revolutionary War that ignited my curiosity in that whole time period. I know from speaking to other historical fiction writers, historians, and lovers of history that pop culture media often sparks a love or curiosity in a period that leads to academic research or just a lifelong fascination with a particular place and time.

In one panel at the conference, ‘How We Remember Her’, featuring actress Lotte Verbeek (from TV shows like Outlander and The Borgias), she discussed some of the different reasons someone might watch a historical fiction TV show like The Borgias: to get a sense of the past, to understand a bit, but also (perhaps primarily) to be entertained. Yet a show like that can also ‘open up a world for people’ who might otherwise know nothing at all about the time period and might now be encouraged to seek out further information.

The Borgias was one of dozens of pieces of pop media that were discussed at HistoryCon. While I was there, I saw talks on (to name a few!): Star Wars, Games of Thrones, Star Trek, and the Christmas film It’s a Wonderful Life. There were presentations on Kate Bush’s song ‘Wuthering Heights’ and its relationship to the novel, as well as discussions on Charles Manson and American film. There was even a presentation from two St Andrews researchers, Christin Simons and Elena Romero-Passerin, who research 18^th century mercantilism and botany respectively, on the history-inspired board game they have designed based on their research called ‘Mer-plant-ilism’. Basically, this conference was a dream event for a history nerd (and all around nerd, let’s be honest!) like me.

Conference organizer and presenter Dawn Seymour Klos giving her talk on Leia Organa and 13th century English Women

But in addition to academic talks from researchers from all over the world there was also a brilliant sword fighting demonstration in a college square and a costume contest!

Sword fight demonstration from Medieval Armoured Combat of Ireland in Fellows’ Square, Trinity College

I was encouraged to enter the costume contest and actually won third place for my John Adams costume. What do you think of the outfit? (We actually had to walk down an aisle and pose in front of a panel of judges and I imagined RuPaul there and calling out, ‘Category is: Revolutionary Realness’).

My John Adams costume for Trinity HistoryCon

And what I loved in particular about the concept of HistoryCon was that it was free, fun and open to the public. We were told to structure our talks more like Ted Talks, so that the general public (and several people did just wander in on the day) could engage with the material and have something to take away. Academic researchers are often encouraged to do public engagement and to disseminate their research with the wider community, and that is built in to the whole ethos of this event. Breaking down those barriers between the academy and the general public, and hopefully sparking curiosity about the past and the various ways to study and interact with it, was the name of the game.

I, for one, had a brilliant time presenting on representations of John Adams in pop culture. I delivered my talk ‘Obnoxious and Disliked’: John Adams’ Legacy in Popular Media, from 1776 to Hamilton, dressed as Adams and I’m not sure when I’ll ever have the opportunity to do that again!

I learned a lot throughout the busy two days and made so many new nerdy, academic friends. So I’d like to thank the organizers at Trinity College for creating such a fun and accessible conference and for inviting us all to Dublin. Thank you! Live long and prosper.

Carly Brown

Author. Poet. Time Traveler.

Tag: 1776