It’s an article of faith for those of us fortunate enough to have been brought up in the Metropolis of the West, or its immediate hinterland, that Bristol is one of the world’s great cities. We dismiss with scorn the rival claims of York or Norwich to having been England’s second city during the middle ages. For we know that position was held by Bristol right through to the end of the eighteenth century. York may have been founded by the Romans but they were mere humans. Our begetters were the giants Ghyston and Goram. Norwich may have preserved its mediaeval architecture intact, but that’s only because, like York, it was too unimportant for the Luftwaffe to waste bombs on its destruction. Our neighbour, Bath, may boast about its Roman heritage and Georgian townscape but we know it was merely a rest and recreation facility for the legionaries stationed in Bristol’s suburb, Sea Mills. And anyway we have Clifton.
As for Birmingham and Liverpool with their respectively repulsive and comical accents who could take them seriously? The same, of course, goes for those other northern middens, Manchester and Leeds. When Edward III made Bristol a county they were mere villages. It’s a matter of regret that they later emerged from decent obscurity to sprawl across a landscape which although vastly inferior to that of the West Country is not entirely devoid of charm.
Amongst Bristol’s innumerable claims to fame - including Friese-Greene, Old Elizabethan and inventor of the moving picture; Hugo Weaving, Old Elizabethan and illustrious movie star; and Ashley Pharoah, Old Elizabethan and writer of Life on Mars - is its discovery of America. Bristolians know that the New World was named after the Bristol merchant, Richard Ameryke not the Florentine map maker Amerigo Vespucci. Ameryke was one of John Cabot’s financial backers. And we know that it was John Cabot not Christopher Columbus who was the first European since the Vikings to land in America. The Genoan may have got to the West Indies first but it was the boy from Bristol who beat him to the mainland.
John Cabot and his son Sebastian loom especially large in the minds of Old Elizabethans for we spent seven years of our lives working and, if we were boarders, sleeping in the shadow of their commemorative tower. One of my form-mates managed to perform both simultaneously, falling asleep during one of Doug “Otto” Cropper’s French lessons. Unlike many other masters he was a kindly soul. Instead of cuffing him around the head, Otto gently spread a handkerchief over the sleeping schoolboy’s pate and left him to his slumbers.
Shortly after moving to Italy I was amazed to discover that many Italians have never heard of Bristol. One winter I went to the baker’s muffled in my Bristol City scarf. To my horror Enzo asked me if I were wearing Man United colours. I quickly enlightened him: the scarf proclaimed my allegiance to a football team from la gran città that Giovanni Caboto had sailed from to discover America. And like all Italians Enzo’d heard of Cabot.
All of the foregoing led me to break the habit of a lifetime. I recently came across a fictionalised account of the life of Sebastian Cabot, Memorie di un cartografo veneziano - ‘The Recollections of a Venetian Mapmaker’. I’ve never been keen on fiction based on real lives or on historical novels. One of the things I like about conventional novels is not knowing how they’re going to end. And whilst a great novel will bear re-reading many times, I would hate to be deprived of the initial journey into the unknown. In the case of fictionalised biography, however, one knows the end before the first page has been turned. My beef with historical novels is their inescapable inauthenticity. However well researched the historical details it is impossible for the author to write from within the mindset of the period in which he’s set his story. Using ‘italiano corrente ma con l'inserimento di impurità, costruzioni desuete delle frasi e altri accorgimenti che lo fanno sembrare di un'altra epoca’ [using contemporary Italian intermingled with some linguistic corruption, obsolete grammatical constructions and other linguistic features to make the text seem to originate from another age] doesn’t solve the problem. The difference between one of Fielding’s novels and an historical novel set in the eighteenth century, or between Ivanhoe and any of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales is immediately apparent. A great writer - such as Jorge Luis Borges in his short story Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote - will exploit this creatively, but on the whole I find the historical novel best avoided.
Nevertheless, despite ‘The Recollections of a Venetian Mapmaker’ being both historical and biographical fiction I bought it. What interested me was how the author would handle the Cabots’ stay in Bristol. I cherished a wild hope that although they were there almost a century before QEH was founded the author might have written something along the lines of: ‘I couldn’t help being moved by the plight of the many orphans I found begging in the streets. Maybe some day a wealthier man than I will found an ospedale, such as we have in Venice, to succour and educate these pitiful creatures. Perhaps he will name it after the sovereign of the day.’ Not only did he fail to include any such passage but there was worse: he gives a speaking part to Robert Thorne, the blackguard who founded that unspeakable institution currently situated in Tindall’s Park. The Bristol Gutter Snipes - as we called them in my day - moved there from the brand new buildings they’d stolen from QEH in the early eighteenth century, forcing the School to inhabit the picturesque squalor of St Bartholomew’s - previously occupied by BGS - for the best part of a century.
All in all, the novel confirmed my prejudices about historical fiction. The author, Francesco Ongaro, has obviously done some homework. Old Bristol Bridge with its houses is described as are several of Bristol’s mediaeval streets: he locates the Cabots’ house in Temple Street and Wine Street is mentioned. But the attitudes and concerns of Sebastian Cabot, the first-person narrator, are those of today, not those of the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The sense of alienation which underlies Sebastian’s self-perception wouldn’t be out of place in a novel by Camus. The narrator’s reflections on the religious upheavals of the day - ‘… l’inanità di siffatte beghe religiose. … ovunque un invocare Dio a testimonio dei propri principi , ma Lui, in tanto sentirsi tirato da ogni parte, temo che abbia finito per partirsene da tutto e da tutti e non si riconosca in nessuno di coloro che ritengono d’essere i suoi apostoli prediletti’ [the inanity of such bickering over religion … everywhere people invoking God to support their particular religious doctrines to the extent that I fear the Deity, feeling himself pulled in every direction will end up leaving them to it, refusing to identify himself with any of those who claim to be his beloved disciples] - whilst admirable, reflect the sentiments of a Guardian or Corriere della sera reader rather than the outlook of someone living then. And there is a curious omission: when the Cabots move to Bristol they seem to have no difficulty communicating with the natives. In fact there’s no mention of their speaking a different language. So perhaps Ongaro has stumbled upon a hitherto unknown fact: in the late fifteenth century Bristolians spoke Italian not English. Or perhaps I’ve got it wrong: maybe Venetians of the period spoke Brizzle not Italian.
In short, although the depiction of Sebastian’s character is interesting if unhistorical , if you’re looking for a book which brings Tudor Bristol alive I’d pass on this one in the unlikely event of its ever being published in English.
