Group Read Crown of Aloes

[Peggy]

This is to start our discussion

[MaryC]

Thanks for starting the page, Peggy!

Here's something to get us thinking while we wait for the official starting date:

What were your impressions of Queen Isabella before you picked up Crown of Aloes? What did you know about her? I'll go first: I first heard of her in a children's book called Heroes and Holidays, so long ago that it was read to me, and I remember that she "saw the faith in Columbus' eyes." After that, I learned in elementary school that she pawned her jewels to finance his voyage. Until I was about ten, I supposed that she was a queen only because she was King Ferdinand's wife, and I was rather happily surprised to learn that she was in fact one in her own right. Then in my early teens I read Lawrence Schoonover's The Queen's Cross, which it would be interesting to compare with CofA if many others have read it. (Schoonover also wrote The Prisoner of Tordesillas, about Juana la Loca, whom we met in The King's Pleasure.)

Well, back to reading! :)

[Karyl]

I was fascinated by the Columbus/Isabella story when I was quite young. In 4th grade I wrote a "play" about them. My 2 room country school didn't have an encylopedia that I can remember so it was done without research and was pretty bad, but my teacher was very impressed that I had done it--it was not an assignment, just an idea I had.

[Sallie]

Werner ! Ifound an extra copy of Crown in my
library. If you haven't located one yet let me know and I will send mine to you.Sallie

[Barbara]

I came to Isabella much as you did Mary, the romantic selling of jewels etc, plus, of course, always being coupled with Ferdinand.

It came as something of very pleasant surprise to realise, via her , that not all lines of royal succession had to be male , raised as I was understanding English monarchical lines. Now if only her future son-in law Henry VIII could have taken her as a model ...
I so like NL's portrayal of Ferdinand's total acceptance of her abilities.

[Werner]

Sallie wrote: "Werner ! Ifound an extra copy of Crown in my
library. If you haven't located one yet let me know and I will send mine to you.Sallie"

Sallie, I just now saw your post. That's so sweet of you! No, I haven't arranged for a copy yet, so I'd be delighted to accept the gift of one. Thank you so very much! (I'll personal message you with my mailing address.)

[Sallie]

Book is on the way, Werner. Post Office person said it should arrive by the 23rd. Geez, I could have walked it over to your house by that time! Stay safe in the coming storm.

[Werner]

Sallie wrote: "Book is on the way, Werner. Post Office person said it should arrive by the 23rd. Geez, I could have walked it over to your house by that time! Stay safe in the coming storm."

Wonderful, Sallie; thanks again! Yes, I'll try to stay warm and safe in our impending blizzard. You too!

[Werner]

Sallie, the book arrived safely in yesterday's mail, and was waiting for me when I got home from work in the wee hours. Yay! Thanks again for your kindness! I'll be all set to start on it as soon as I finish the book I'm currently reading, which will be later this week.

[Werner]

I'm about to start reading Crown of Aloes later this morning. MaryC asked about our impressions of Isabella prior to going into the book. Being a history major, I know a bit about her, but not much. I know she was queen of Castile by inheritance; Spain was still not a unified country in her youth, and her arranged marriage to King Ferdinand of Aragon brought about a dynastic union that created the core of the modern nation as we know it. They were co-sovereigns, dividing the royal responsibilities (he managed foreign affairs, while she oversaw domestic policy).

She was a fervently religious Roman Catholic, and Columbus played on this to get her support for his mission (she famously offered to pawn her jewels to finance it) by suggesting that it would be an opportunity to spread the gospel in Asia. The main objection to his proposal wasn't fear that he would fall off the flat earth --the educated classes had known since antiquity that the world was round. They also knew how large it is; so the royal advisors made the very reasonable point that the small wooden ships of that day couldn't carry enough water to sustain the crews long enough to reach Asia. (They were right --Columbus was mistakenly convinced that the world was only about half as large as it really is-- but he was saved by the discovery of the lands of the Western hemisphere.)

My main reason for having a somewhat negative impression of Isabella is the intolerant quality of her religiosity, which was narrow even by the standards of that time. She was probably the main instigator of (and certainly signed) the infamous Alhambra Decree of 1492, which expelled the Jews and Moslems from Spain, with no more of their possessions than they could carry on their backs, unless they would convert to Catholicism. And she was also no doubt the architect of the arrangements that made the Spanish Inquisition directly responsible to the Crown rather than to the Pope, and for using it mostly as an instrument for terrorizing Jews and Moslems whose conversions were suspected of being less than enthusiastic. :-(

[Barbara]

I think ( maybe merely romantically) that NL gives a kind of alternative account of her Isabella's religiosity . Not that I have any truck at all with fanaticism then or now, but I like NL's treatment of it, the way in she intertwines Isabella's personal convictions - and indeed reservations - with the unfolding of what became the "Spanish Inquisition " Which, as all Monty Python fans know, nobody expects!
I also like NL's intensely female take on Isabella's bravery with pregnancy , miscarriage and all thing physical.

[Werner]

Although I've been too busy to post here about it until now, I've been reading steadily in the book (I'm up into Chapter 8 now), and been brimming with thoughts I wanted to post. I've been learning a vast amount about Isabella's life and times that I didn't know! (Granted, this is fiction; but as the Author's Note makes clear, it's extremely well-researched fiction, and "very largely factual," NL's contribution being things like "motives, thoughts, private conversations." Of course, the Isabella who narrates here is the author's reconstruction of the queen's personality (so the narrative voice is really Lofts,' not Isabella's, though it's so convincing we may viscerally feel it's the latter). But it's a reconstruction that obviously accords with the way she impressed her contemporaries, including the authors of primary sources who knew her long and well; there's no reason to doubt that it's a pretty accurate picture, IMO.

Despite my initial rather negative view of her, I've felt my admiration and respect for Isabella grow markedly as I've been reading! I've always been very impressed, mostly from the BBC miniseries The Six Wives of Henry VIII, but also from what limited nonfiction reading I've done about her, with Catherine of Aragon (who was Isabella's daughter); she comes across to me as a brave, classy lady who was worth any six louts like Henry. Now I can see where she got it --the apple doesn't fall far from the tree! (Ferdinand, on the other hand, who I viewed fairly neutrally when I started the book, has decidedly lost ground with me; as far as I'm concerned, he comes across pretty much as the south end of a horse facing north.)

Learning more about her is giving me a somewhat more nuanced view of her religious policy, as well. Reading the thoughts Lofts attributes to her about the Inquisition raises the possibility that in her mind, at least, an Inquisition that was responsible to the Crown rather than to the Pope might be an institution that was less, rather than more, bloodthirsty and lacking in checks on its operations than the purely Papal one had proven to be.

Although I didn't need any convincing on either account, this book drives home the dual truths that hereditary monarchy is one of the most moronic systems of government ever devised by humanity; and that arranged marriages coupled with sexual double standards are such a grotesque perversion of the idea of marriage that we find in the Genesis creation story that they become almost a parody. Some of Isabella's perceptions of what women have to undergo under this system, and her conviction that it just has to be stoically borne with a stiff upper lip, are truly heartbreaking. We might say, "Wow, thank heaven we live in the 21st century!" But the underlying attitudes towards gender relations today aren't a lot different in many quarters, or a lot healthier, than they were in Isabella's day. (Granted, too, the track record of modern democracy in picking responsible leaders isn't perfect either. And a society like 15th-century Castile's, with a largely illiterate and ignorant populace, wasn't ready for direct popular election of a ruler. But a monarchy elected by the Cortes, from a pool of men and women who commanded the respect of the educated and informed citizenry, would almost certainly have put a more qualified person on the throne than Isabella's half-brother.)

[Barbara]

I do agree re 'the apple and the tree' as regards the truly admirable Katherine of Aragon. Isabella's daughters seem all very different from each other - of course poor Juana is the most different of all. I have been reading a little about her recently as wondering just how 'mad ' she really was .

The marrying off of daughters as political pawns is so much to the fore in COA. I know such princesses always knew that this would happened, but the fear and the loneliness they must have felt is heartbreaking .

Of course I take your point re hereditary monarchy in those times Werner , but must also make a case for the totally amazing people it did throw up. Both the Elizabeths for a start. And I don't believe the Cortes would have ever elected a woman no matter what her qualifications. Plus, there's the issue, in many countries of them believing that monarachs are God appointed and on the throne by the grace of God . ( which is why of course Elizabeth ll will never abdicate ) But I digress !

[MaryC]

" . . . there's the issue of believing that monarachs are God appointed and on the throne by the grace of God . ( which is why of course Elizabeth ll will never abdicate . . .)"

Another angle on that aspect of monarchy, one that was brought home to me when I taught Shakespeare's history plays, is that coronation seems to have been regarded almost as an eighth sacrament, as inviolable as a Catholic marriage. In Richard II, the Bishop of Carlisle tells Richard that not only is Bolingbroke wrong in seizing Richard's crown, but Richard is also wrong in giving it up so easily, since coronation is a lifetime commitment. The monarch takes an oath to serve for all his or her life. I've read that that is the reason the Queen will never abdicate. And then there's the memory of her Uncle Edward VIII, whose abdication (although he hadn't been crowned) is evidently still viewed as a shameful dereliction of duty. (Digression: From what I've read about his actions during WWII, it seems to me that the country should still be offering prayers of thanks for That Woman from the city where I've lived most of my adult life, for keeping him from remaining King!)

But to get back on track, some readers are probably already far enough into CoA to have observed that, when Isabella's brother died, her supporters had her crowned almost immediately, to forestall any such action from La Beltraneja.

[Barbara]

Yes poor little La Beltraneja. I read COA so far in advance of the group read I have now forgotten, was it a gross traducing of her or was she really 'illegitimate' to use a phrase of the day ?

[MaryC]

Apparently it's generally agreed that she wasn't Henry's daughter, although he acknowledged her as such at some point. Her mother seems to have been notoriously promiscuous, but CoA suggests that Henry (known in some sources by the epithet "Henry the Impotent") encouraged her to have a child by one of his favorites, and the truth leaked out. It seems to me that NL may have been implying that Henry merited his nickname only in regard to women.

[Werner]

Barbara wrote: "Yes poor little La Beltraneja. I read COA so far in advance of the group read I have now forgotten, was it a gross traducing of her or was she really 'illegitimate' to use a phrase of the day ?"

Besides what Mary wrote above, it's also suggestive that she was born so late in Henry's marriage (by the time that most people had concluded that Henry would already have sired a child if he was capable of it). And the fact that the poor baby's nose was apparently deliberately broken in a misguided attempt to make it more closely resemble Henry's is also highly suspicious, IMO.

Classical Christian thought regarded civil government, including kingship, as a responsibility given by God. But in Western European history from the Dark Ages on down through most of the Middle Ages, that wasn't seen as requiring hereditary succession or as conferring a blank check for kings to do anything they wanted. That kind of ideology of the "divine right of kings" was a deliberate construction of the very late medieval/early Renaissance, when kings were trying to centralize their power and make themselves into absolute monarchs. (It's instructive that quotes from Richard II, like "Not all the waters of the rude sea can wash the balm from an anointed king!" were actually written in the 1590s, not the 1390s.)

Kingship in the political traditions of the northern European tribes who created the nations that succeeded the Roman Empire was not hereditary; the king was whomever the warriors chose to recognize. (Usually they picked a son or other male relative of the previous king; but they didn't have to.) Recognition of the hereditary principle (under the influence of Roman law) was very slow and gradual; in England, for instance, kings still had to be elected by the Witan until 1066. (But the kings so elected were still anointed with holy oil, and that was taken seriously.) And as we see from CoA, even much later, as far as the Church was concerned, crowned kings could be un-crowned, for cause; the primate of Spain was quite willing to jettison Henry. So the idea of elective monarchy wouldn't have been totally foreign to the medieval mind, and could still be seen as a mandate from God. (Popes, after all, were --and still are--thought to be chosen by God, but their office was elective, not hereditary.)

But you're probably exactly right, Barbara, that the Cortes would have been too sexist to ever elect a woman. (Sigh!) Sometimes it was hard for women even to inherit a throne when they had an indisputable claim to it (as Henry I's daughter Maud could testify!). That mentality isn't totally dead even today; the U.S. has still never had a female President, and the U.K. only one female Prime Minister.

[Werner]

IMO, the prologue, with Isabella on her deathbed contemplating her life, was the perfect way to segue into her first-person narration of her life story. I found it a very effective literary device.

And on that note, I'll hush up and let some of the rest of you post! I'm sure Barbara, Mary and I aren't the only ones in the group who are reading/have read this novel.... Are we? :-)

[Peggy]

I am here, lurking in the shadows and enjoying what's being said. I can't find my copy of COA; may have loaned it out so I won't be able to give much input until we reach the parts of the book that stand out the most in my memory.

[Barbara]

I like the first person prologue too Werner - in some way it seems to me to underline Isabella's essential loneliness , though she was blessed with friends of great calibre . And a husband who, whatever else his faults , knew how to value her bravery and fortitude.
I think too, that failure , or at least the feeling of having personally failed is there too, all the way through . What do others think?

[Barbara]

I have just read, or rather re read chapters 7 and 8. As ever , I so admire NL's gift of threading through the humanity and plausible inner lives of her characters in amongst real events etc.

One can imagine that Isabella really did cleave to her husband and genuinely love and esteem him (and he her) , despite the clearly political and arranged nature of the marriage relationship. I like the contrast of her naturally rather austere and pious nature compared to Ferdinand's pragmatic and soldierly yet hedonistic one.

And then as Werner has given in more - and better - detail in message 12, her difficulties with the Holy Office , better now known as the Inquisition. She worried right away about Torquemada's tendency to fanaticism and cruelty , and was honest enough to admit to herself, when she allowed the extent of it of it to pass from for her sight
"Pilate washed his hands too"

[Werner]

I've now finished the novel, and my four-star review is here: www.goodreads.com/review/show/1528806603 . I've come to view Isabella much more positively as a result of this read! My comment above in message 10 was based on the pop-history picture we get of Isabella that floats around as conventional wisdom; but like a lot "conventional wisdom," I now think it's superficial and inaccurate.

That comment also contains a factual error; the Alhambra Decree only applied to the Jews. (The Moslems were expelled some years later.) At the time I typed the comment, I was going by inaccurate memory of what I'd read about it, and didn't double-check; sorry! (This is an excellent illustration of the fact that you can learn an awful lot about history from serious historical fiction.)

[MaryC]

Absolutely, Werner! I learned quite a bit about Isabella from the first novel I read about her, Lawrence Schoonover's The Queen's Cross (which ends with her vowing to pawn her jewels again to finance Columbus), so when I saw a documentary film called 1492 about ten years later, I wasn't greatly surprised to learn that she and Ferdinand also expelled the Jews from Spain. However, not until I read CofA did I think of questioning and verifying some of the details, especially looking up some of the secondary historical characters. For example, Schoonover also features Beatriz as Isabella's lifelong best friend, as she evidently was. However, although both Schoonover and NL make her about Isabella's age, it turns out (at least according to one historical source I found online) that she was about ten years older!

Other details that I haven't looked up yet (and maybe someone else has and can tell us) are her relationship with the Marquis of Cadiz, the Jewish doctor who analyzed her son's problem, and the building of Santa Fe--the point in the story that I've reached in this reading.

[Werner]

MaryC, the mutual attraction that Lofts attributes to Isabella and Rodrigo of Cadiz is something that was strictly in both of their minds, hinted at only subtly in their interactions, and certainly not memorialized in anything either of them ever said or wrote. I'd say this is one of those areas not covered by the historical record where the author was free to give her imagination scope, as long as she didn't contradict that record or violate what we know about these people's personalities. So the real people may or may not have shared an attraction; but even if they did, it was a purely private feeling that they never left evidence of for posterity.

[Peggy]

Excellent review, Werner! I liked your emphasis on how much (generally accurate) history can be learned through Lofts' books. Her books always lead me to try to learn more. Your review makes me want to learn more about Columbus.

[Werner]

Thanks, Peggy! Yes, this book has made me want to do some serious reading about Columbus, too.

[MaryC]

I was somewhat surprised by her characterization of Columbus, but as I think about it, it seems that anyone who was so determined to do what he did would almost have to have had those qualities.

Incidentally, I laughed when I came to the part of the story where one of her advisers tells her there's a man asking to see her and, when that man is still there a couple of hours later and she tells the adviser that she just can't, replies that he thinks she'll enjoy meeting that "old sailor." Nice, subtle way to slip in the person with whom her name is most associated!

[Barbara]

Not yet got to the review, which I am bound to enjoy . I just wanted to say I agree with pps' and like the humanisation and characterisation of NL's Isabella.
I think the carefully controlled attraction between her and Rodrigo Ponce de Leon, Lord of Cadiz -I just wanted to write that name out in full - was beautifully done, passionately felt yet utterly unacted-upon.
I'm a sucker for nobility and sacrifice (in fiction !) .

[MaryC]

And Dante would surely have approved! A love that never expressed itself explicitly--courtly love at its finest, even more rarified than his for Beatrice!

[Sylvia]

Usually bringing up the rear, I've been recuperating from major surgery, but hope you all won't mind a late-in-the-discussion comment. Regarding the religious fervor of Isabella, even as a teen, I was struck by her strength when, after she prayed for days and nights to be spared a marriage to the old and grotesque Don Pedro Giron, and was delivered, she vowed to never drink wine again, which she liked, so that every time she refused it, she would remember God's intervention and thank Him again.

What a great sacrifice in an age when there was not that much choice in beverages, not to mention wine's medicinal qualities. I think she probably kept that vow. How many of us would have that kind of strength? I don't think I could give up tea for one year!

Werner, I also thought your review was excellent. I loved your phrase, "The family dynamics were spectacularly dysfunctional," and also your statements about NL's thorough research and what the reader can learn from fiction. The fact that the size of the earth was more debated then than the shape was a new idea to me.

[Werner]

Thanks, Sylvia; glad you liked my review! (And it's great to have you back online!)

[MaryC]

Sylvia wrote: "The fact that the size of the earth was more debated then than the shape was a new idea to me. "

Since I've already drawn Dante into this discussion, here he is again. In the Divine Comedy, he clearly envisioned the earth as round--with hell in the middle. He also realized that, once one went down to the very center of the earth, continuing on a straight line meant one was going up again.

In any case, isn't it strange and rather scary to think that, as recently as a little over 500 years ago, the ancestors of most of us just didn't know what was over there?

[Sallie]

I have a great sign out on my fence( which keeps the cows in their pasture and not in my yard..)

Beyond this Place there be Dragons.

Stand on the shore and look out over the ocean...EVERYONE can see that there's a dropoff!! and who really knows what lies beneath! lol

[MaryC]

Sallie wrote: "Stand on the shore and look out over the ocean...EVERYONE can see that there's a dropoff!! and who really knows what lies beneath! lol"

Right! And ships that sailed away appeared to drop off the edge! Of course, when they eventually came back, maybe that fact helped people conclude that the world was round.

[Sylvia]

Bible scholars may have noticed Isaiah's statement in Isaiah 40: 22 that God is "enthroned above the circle of the earth" unless they pictured the earth as a flat, round pancake shape! But I believe at this time of the Inquisition in Europe, the scriptures were forbidden to most, and Bibles were, in fact, to be burned as forbidden reading. Most people couldn't read anyway, but the corrupt church did not want even their priests to realize the extent of their corruption.

[Werner]

Actually, Sylvia, that's a common misconception among Protestants (and I'm a Protestant myself, so I don't hold any brief for the Roman Catholic denomination as such). Bibles were scarce (and also very expensive) throughout the Middle Ages, because they're long books that had to be laboriously hand copied onto parchment or paper usually made from linen rags (wood pulp paper hadn't been invented yet). Pulpit Bibles in churches were often chained down, so they couldn't be stolen and sold. But the Church never discouraged Bible reading as such. Most copies of the Bible in that era were actually produced by Catholic monks.

The standard Bible translation of the day was the Latin Vulgate, since Latin served as a common lingua franca for all educated people amidst a Babel of national languages and regional dialects. After John Wycliffe was declared a heretic in 1415 (over 30 years after he died), his writings were burned, including his English translation of the Bible. (It was regarded as a heretical perversion of the real Bible, much the way most believers today would regard the Jehovah Witnesses' "New World" translation.) But the Church authorities would never have burned Bibles produced by Catholics under church authorization, either in Latin or in the various vernaculars --and there was actually a great deal of vernacular Bible translation done in that era, though it was mostly haphazard and piecemeal.

The invention of printing, around the time that Isabella was born, was destined to make the Bible much more widely available than it had ever been before (and the first whole book to be printed was a Vulgate Bible). But printing technology spread slowly. The first entire Bible to be printed in Spain (under the sponsorship of Cardinal Jimenez de Cisnernos) came off the presses in 1517.

[Sylvia]

Good info, Werner, though we'll both be in trouble for wandering too far into this subject. I did just want to remark that before I made my above statement, I researched the subject of burning Bibles and found this info:
Church Council of Toulouse (1229) - Laity forbidden to have Old Testament, New Testament or translations (so there must have been some, as you said, vernaculars).
Council of Tarragona (1234) - No one to possess a Bible. Must turn over to a Bishop for burning.
Index of Trent, Pope Pius IV (1559) - One who reads or owns a translation cannot be absolved of sins until the book is turned in.

From these church rulings, it seems likely that there were copies afloat other than the beautiful and priceless hand copies of the monks.

Wiki states (conflicting with NL) that Alfonzo most likely died of the plague, though the nobles suspected poison. I think we can assume that NL had good reasons for suspecting poison as well. The list of books at the end of Wiki's article on Isabella does not include NL's CoA, in case someone who knows how wishes to add it.

[Werner]

Sylvia, thanks for that info (is it from Wikipedia?). That would paint a picture of medieval Catholicism that's disturbingly darker than I previously thought! It looks like I'm going to need to do some more research.

[Sylvia]

Only the info on Alfonzo was from Wiki, under Queen Isabella. One of the sites I referenced on the Councils was "justforcatholics" and I believe one was a Baptist site out of Canada, but I don't remember the name or others. My topic search was "burning of Bibles - Inquisition."

[Werner]

Thanks, Sylvia; that's helpful!

[MaryC]

Years ago, when I was researching a talk on Bible translations, I learned (or at least was informed) that the Church frowned on translations only in times when heresy was strong. If so, evidently you're both right. However, it does seem that there was opposition to translation remarkably early in the history of the faith: St. Augustine thought St. Jerome's project of translating the Bible from Greek into Latin was unwise. And there also seems to be a shred of Catholic opposition to lay people's reading the Bible even today. I was surprised to see, on the site of a nun who spoke reconcilingly of Luther, an admonition that reading the Bible could be dangerous for most people.

Some miscellaneous thoughts on the subject:

Even if monks spent most of their time transcribing (and illuminating) Bibles, they couldn't have been mass-producing them. (No pun intended. :) ) It would just have taken too long! (BTW, anyone else know the story of what happened when St. Columba surreptitiously made a copy of ONE Gospel?) Then, I once heard a friend of mine actually refer to Jehovah's Witnesses as heretics!

[Barbara]

Just read your review of COA Werner , as ever really readable and informative . I said in my comment on it that

".... even though I was already familiar with the book ...it is always instructive and pleasing to hear another take on it (from someone you trust that is! )
Also, frankly, to be shown things one had missed , even in several readings . I don't think, for instance, that I had quite grasped HOW much Torquemada's influence and agency was behind the Holy Office/Inquisition . Also the idea that her granddaughter poor sad Mary Tudor kind of followed in those same priest-led footsteps, albeit on far smaller scale "

Which I think bears repeating here .

Thank you everybody for the COA group read. We will leave it open so if anyone has a memory or thought or missed it the first time , then it can be added . Hope this OK with everyone.

[MaryC]

My goodness! Yes, we're almost at the end of the month! I've almost finished--am a little past the building of Santa Fe on the site of the fire. I'd love to know whether the incident in which Ferdinand and Isabella ran INTO the fire from opposite sides of the pavilion, calling to each other, is historic! I do know that Ferdinand remarried after her death--shades of Hume Cronin and Fibber McGee! However, after their only son died, he no doubt felt that he had to keep trying for an heir to Aragon. I suppose that Juana's Hapsburg marriage eventually made that issue irrelevant, as, Aragonese law or not, all of Spain got sucked into the Holy Roman Empire. Maybe someone else here knows more about how that happened, too.

BTW, I believe it was the descendant of that Duke of Medina Sidonia whose entertainment Isabella retreated from and thereby met Rodrigo, who commanded the Spanish Armada.

[Werner]

Glad you enjoyed my review, Barbara!

[Barbara]

.BTW, I believe it was the descendant of that Duke of Medina Sidonia whose entertainment Isabella retreated from and thereby met Rodrigo, who commanded the Spanish Armada.
.."
Love it Mary , what a charming after note !

[MaryC]

Then you should like this, too, Barbara: In The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody, Will Cuppy says of the Duke of MS, "[He] was very disappointed and very, very seasick," and adds in a footnote, "He always was, on a boat."