Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

‘how I survived while so many other kids were just gone. Checked out. Someone was always screaming in a straitjacket or confined on suicide watch. Some ex-footballer orderly was always staring at me with his disconnected stare. Every time I ended up in Obs, I was terrified I’d come out like one of the zombie kids—lights on, nobody home—or like the soul-dead staff who were too jaded to feel anything.’

‘Even now, with all the survivor stories pouring out on the internet, we don’t hear many stories from the damaged families. Some parents are defensive and refuse to believe they could have been so wrong. Some parents are consumed by shame and guilt—especially parents who subsequently lost a child to suicide.’

‘Situated in a nice neighborhood near a golf course, Provo Canyon School appeared to be a conservative boarding school with pleasant grounds and well-maintained facilities. The tour didn’t include the area where kids screamed in straitjackets, slept on the floor, and were locked in solitary confinement.’

‘Another lesson learned: No matter what happened from here, I’d be better off alone. Always.’

Don’t blame her, she is right. The way everyone fell for the ‘school’’s (use the term very loosely) brainwashing and allowed them to kidnap her, as well as mentally, sexually and physically abuse her etc.

Now I know this is different from the original, been altered, then reverted back etc. I also know Emilie is a very unique individual and not to everyone’s taste, so this book tends to appeal to fans of her, who know what to expect. Many seem to assume that this is real, where it seems it is more fictional with some real parts thrown in, which I don’t mind. (1)

‘Desperate parents latched on to the idea of this artsy, intellectual place where “tough love” would fix a broken child they loved but could not understand. A staff psychiatrist made regular visits to the CEDU campus to supply prescription drugs and report back to parents on their child’s progress.’

What happened to her was vile, I would never forgive my parents for that.

‘We know that in the 1160s Abbot Richard built two fine, two-storey guesthouses for important visitors. Each floor had a hall with a fireplace, a bedchamber and a toilet over the river. Prestigious guests slept and dined here, with the guestmaster preparing their food and looking after them. Ordinary visitors would stay in the large aisled hall.‘

‘Three or four times a year, the abbot would order blood-letting for the monks, in order to purify the body. It would take place here in the Warming Room. Afterwards, the weakened monks could rest either on their beds or in the Cloister. The blood itself was buried, as a sign of reverence for the life believed to be in the blood.’

Not my usual read, but I’ve heard so many good reviews of this, saying how moving it is but also how dark, so I’m curious.

‘He also advises me of other holy persons that I can speak to, and today he told me about Dame Julian, an anchoress in Norwich, who lives an exemplary life. He said that many visit her for her good counsel and that, if I can’t rest easy, despite his and Master Spryngolde’s assurances that my visions are from God, then perhaps Dame Julian can help me.’

‘I stood in my cell and the Bishop and Master Thomas scattered earth on my shoulders, to remind me that I was come from the earth and would return to the earth.
Then they stepped out of my cell and two workmen stepped forward. In silence, they bricked up the door.
I knelt on the floor, dazed and fearful.
I wanted my mind to be driven deep into God like a nail.’

‘And when my monthly bleeding began – oh, I thought I would die from shame. My mother showed me how to roll strips of linen and push them inside myself, but all the while I was crying and telling her it couldn’t be true that women had to do this.
‘Get pregnant and you’ll have some respite from this misery,’ she said. ‘Although then there’ll be fresh misery to keep you busy.’‘

‘Sometimes I wonder that people think me wise. Perhaps I am only a coward, scribbling in secret, allowing the stone walls of my cell to protect me from life’s rough winds, like a snail’s shell protects its damp muscle of flesh.
I often think of the man who feared God was not real. His soul was hungry, and to this day I fear I let him down, that I had spiritual food to offer but held back to protect myself.’

‘Much of my day is given to prayer. I have grown stiff with kneeling till it is now quite an effort to haul myself up. But I am careful not to suffer. The life of an anchoress should be one of quiet reflection, not pain or self-denial. Indeed, it even has its pleasures. Within the confines of my cell I spend my time as I wish: in thought and prayer and writing. Not many women can make such a claim.’

‘the Archbishop of Bourges paid fine tribute to the late Queen. He spoke of her arrival in France as a splendid bride with a great dowry, the ten children she had borne Henry II, and lauded her personal courage during the many wars that had taken place during her widowhood. Whether at Rouen or Le Havre, she had been present with her armies and walked between the warring troops without fear.’

‘Catherine felt no great fondness for Mary Stuart and despised her reckless actions while on the throne of Scotland. She had been particularly outraged by the murder of Lord Darnley in 1567, that ‘horrible, mischievous and strange enterprise and execution done against the King’s majesty’. At the time, the Queen Mother had demanded that her former daughter-in-law show her innocence to the world’

‘On 22 November, while walking and chatting to Alençon in a gallery at Whitehall, the Queen [Elizabeth I] was asked by the French ambassador for a definite answer about the marriage. Her reply silenced everyone: ‘You may write to the king that the Duke of Alençon shall be my husband.’ Having uttered those words, she drew Alençon to her and kissed him full on the lips’

‘After many obstacles had been cleared during the marriage talks it was decided that the duke should actually meet Elizabeth. Catherine, who at the time was still on her journey of pacification in the south, even talked of travelling to England herself, to push matters along. She wrote to the Duchess d’Uzès, ‘Although our age is more suited to rest than to travel, I must go to England.’‘

‘Moreover, few lay people, however devout, were prepared to give back monastic lands for which they had paid good money, particularly as no-one could guarantee that this set of changes would last any longer than those that had immediately preceded them. There was also doubt about the wisdom of re-establishing the religious guilds that had once played so dominant a role in lay life’

‘Her adoption of tobacco was naturally taken up by the Court and eventually by the people, who called it herbe de la reine or nicotiane, and it is thus thanks to Catherine de Medici that the French learned to love tobacco. For all the talk of her as a poisoner, this is the only definite evidence of her use of it - albeit unwittingly.’

To those who adhered to orthodox teaching, Protestant ideas appeared very threatening. By questioning the role of priests and the church, Protestant reformers seemed to be overthrowing authority, destroying corporately held belief, and encouraging anarchy in which each person operated independently of others. They challenged people’s deepest securities by denying that the living and the dead could help each other

‘There was even a clamour of self-righteous protest from Tsar Ivan IV of Russia, who criticised the French for their barbarism. This sounds pretty rich coming from the man who rightfully earned history’s sobriquet ‘The Terrible’ for his savage repression of the boyars in the 1560s… Nor did age mellow Ivan, who in a fit of ill temper accidentally killed his eldest son in 1581.’

‘Although it is impossible to say with any accuracy how many people perished during what was later called the ‘Season of Saint Bartholomew’ in Paris and its aftermath in the provinces, most experts believe that the death toll throughout the kingdom was possibly as high as between 20,000 and 30,000. In Paris alone it is thought that 2000 to 3000 people lost their lives.‘

‘The King’s complete loss of control over what were meant to be limited and legal executions showed how slight was his authority and what terrifying power the mob possessed. The Queen Mother also understood how the Massacre, originally driven by religious passions, had quickly spun out of control and had become a popular uprising of angry despair by people who felt little or no fear of royal retribution.’

‘It was impossible to ignore the whispering and febrile activity around her, yet she was cold-shouldered by both sides. In her memoirs she recalled that dreadful night:
The Huguenots suspected me because I was a Catholic, and the Catholics because I had married the King of Navarre, so that no one told me anything until that evening.’

‘unstable King is said to have uttered the immortal cry for which he is principally remembered: ‘Then kill them all! Kill them all!’ It is almost certain that by this he meant all those on a list drawn up by Catherine and not, as has often been claimed, all the Huguenots in France. A terrible massacre would not resolve anything, but the killing of a select few might eliminate the heretics’ high command.’

‘It is inappropriate to ask whether something was done for religious or secular reasons because people at the time would not have made that distinction. Financing a chantry chapel was a statement of social status and a reflection of religious concern. Guilds served both a religious and a socio-economic function.’

‘A rumour now circulated about a scented apple that the Queen Mother had supposedly ordered as a gift for Condé at the start of the religious troubles. When the apple arrived from her infamous parfumier Maître René, the prince’s surgeon, Le Cros, happened to be present. His suspicions aroused, he took the apple and held it to his nose to smell it. Immediately his nostrils became red and inflamed.‘

‘The fact that the queen mother had chosen to write a letter to Elizabeth at her pinnacle of glory, without mentioning her victory and instead praising a rival in Dudley’s affections, was an audacious move, and a sign of her personal disrespect. It was also a way of downplaying the importance of Elizabeth’s victory, though both of them knew that a shift of power in Europe had just occurred.’